The Pile of Stones Speaking

“What mean je by these stones?” — Joshua iv., 6.

OU are wiser than most people if you have not mixed in your mind the passage of the Red Sea and the passage of the Jordan. The scenery is different, and the lessons to be learned from them are different. The Jordan, like the Mississippi, has bluffs on the one side and flats on the other. Here and there a sycamore shadows it; here and there a willow dips into it. In the months of April and May the snows on Mount Lebanon thaw and flow down into the valley, and then Jordan overflows its banks. Then it is wide, deep, raging, and impetuous. At this season of the year I hear the tramp of forty thousand armed men coming down to cross the river. You say, “Why do they not go up nearer the rise of the river at the old camel ford?” Ah! my friends, it is because it is not safe to go around when the Lord tells us to go ahead. The Israelites had been going around forty years, and they had enough of it. I do not know how it is with 3’ou, my brethren, but I have always got into trouble when I went around, but always got into safety when I went ahead.

There spreads out the Jordan, a raging torrent, much of it snow-water just come down from the mountain top; and I see some of the Israelites shivering at the idea of plunging in, and one soldier says to his comrade, “Joseph, can you swim?” And another says, “If we get across this stream we will get there with wet clothes and with damaged armor, and the Canaanites will slash us to pieces with their swords before we get up the other bank.” But it is no time to halt. The great host marches on. The priests, carrying the ark, go ahead; the people follow. I hear the tramp of the great multitude. The priests have now come within a stone’s-throw of the water. Yet still there is no abatement of the flood. Now they have come within four or five feet of* the stream; but there is no abatement of the flood. Bad prospect! It seems as if these Israelites who have crossed the desert are now going to be drowned in sight of Canaan. But “Forward!” is the cry The command rings all along the line of the host. “Forward JSTow the priests have come within one step of the river. This time they lift their feet from the solid ground and put them down into the raging stream. No sooner are their feet there than Jordan flies. On the right hand, God piles up a great mountain of floods; on the left, the water flows off toward the sea. The great river, for hours, halts and rears. The backwaters, not being able to flow over the passing Israelites, pile wave on wave, until perhaps a sea-bird would find some difiiculty in scaling the water cliff. Now the priests and all the people have gone over on dry land. The water on the left-hand side by this time has reached the sea; and now that the miraculous passage has been made, stand back and see the stupendous pile of waters leap. God takes his hand from that wall of floods, and, like a hundred cataracts, they plunge and roar in thunderous triumph to the sea.

How are they to celebrate this passage? Shall it y with music? I suypose the trumpets and cymbals wsrs

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all worn out before this. Shall it be with banners waving? Oh no, they are all faded and torn. Joshua cries out, “I will tell you how to celebrate this: build a monument here to commemorate the event;” and every priest puts a heavy stone on his shoulder, and marches out, and drops that stone in the divinely-appointed place. I see the pile growing in height, in breadth, in significance; and in after years men went by that spot and saw this mon-ument, and cried out one to another, in fulfillment of this prophecy of the text, “What mean ye by these stones?”

Blessed be God, he did not leave our church — I mean this particular church — down in the wilderness! We wandered about for a while, and some people said we had better take this route; and others, that route. Some said we had better go back, and some said there were sons of Anak in the way that would eat us up; and before the smoke had cleared away from the sky after our Tabernacle had been consumed, people stood on the very site of the place, and said, “This church will never again be built.” Our enemies laughed among themselves, and said, “Aha, aha!” Meanwhile the rubbish was being cleared away, the foundation was being laid, and the pillars were being lifted; and instead of the temporary structure in which we worshiped, we have this building, in which we hope the people of God will worship him for hundreds and hundreds of years. We came down to the bank of the Jordan; we looked off upon the waters. Some of the sympathy that was expressed turned out to be snowwater melted from the top of Lebanon. Some said, ^’’’ You had better not go in; you will get your feet wot But we waded in, pastor and people, farther and

THE I’lLh OF STOXES SPEAK LU. ‘^’])

further. and in some way, the Lord only knows Low, we got tbrougb; and to- night 1 go all around about this gi’cat house, erected by your prayers, and sympathies, and sacrifices, and cr^ out in the words of my text, “What mean ye by these stones?”

It is an outrage to build a house like this, occupying so much room in a ci-owded thoroughfare, and with such vast toil and outlay, unless there be some tremendous j’tasons for doing it; and so, my friends, I pursue you to-night with the question of my text, and I demand of these trustees, and of these elders, and of all who have assisted in the building of this sti’ucture, “What mean ye by these stones?”’

In the first place, we mean that they shall be an earthly residence fur Christ. Poor Jesus! He did not have much of a home when he was here. Who and wdiere is that child crying? It is Jesus, born in an outhouse. Where is that hard breathing? It is Jesus, asleep on a rock. Who is that in the back part of the fishing-smack, with a sailor’s rough overcoat thrown over him? It is Jesus, the worn-out voyager. Oh Jesus! is it not time that thou hadst a house? We give thee this. Thou didst give it to us first, but we give it back to thee. It is too good for us, but not half good enough for thee. Oh, come in and take the best seat here! Walk up and down all these aisles. Speak through these organ-pipes. Throw thine arm over us in these arches. In the flaming of these chandeliers speak to ns, saying, “I am the light of the world.” 0 King! make this thine audience-cham- ])er. Here proclaim righteousness and make treaties. We clap our hands, we uncover our heads, we lift our ensigns, we cry with multitudinous acclamationj until the

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place rings, and the heavens listen, “0 King! live forever!”

Is it not time that he who was born in a stranger’s house and buried in a stranger’s grave should have an earthly house? Come in, 0 Jesus! not the corpse of a buried Christ, but a radiant and triumphant Jesus, conqueror of earth, and heaven, and hell.

“He lives, all glory to his name,
He lives, my Jesus, still the same;
Oh, the sweet joy this sentence gives:
I know that my Redeemer lives!”

Blessed be his glorious name forever!

Again, if you ask the question of the text, ^’What mean ye by these stones?” I reply that we mean the communion of saints. Do you know that there is not a single denomination of Christians in Brooklyn that has not contributed something toward the building of this house? And if ever, standing in this place, there shall be a man who shall try by any thing he says to stir up bitterness between different denominations of Christians, may his tongue falter, and his cheek blanch, and his heart stop! My friends, if there is any church on earth where there is a mingling of all denominations, it is our church. I just wish that John Calvin and Arminius, if they are not too busy, would come out on the battlements and see us. Sometimes in our prayer-meetings I have heard brethren use phrases of a liturgy, and we knew where they came from; and in the same prayer- meetings I have heard brethren make audible ejaculation, ‘Amen!” “Praise ye the Lord!” and we did not have to guess twice where they came from. When a man knocks at our church door, if he comes from a sect where they will not give him a certificate, we say, “Come in by confession of faith.” While Adoniram Judson, the Baptist, nnd John Wesley, the Methodist, and John Knox, the glorious old Scotch Presbyterian, are shaking hands in heaven, all churches on earth can afford to come into close communion. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Oh, my brethren, we have had enough of Big Bethel fights — Fourteenth New York Eemment fii<htino- the Fifteenth Massachusetts Regiment. Now let all those who are for Christ, and stand on the same side, go shoulder to shoulder, and the church, instead of having a sprinkling of the divine blessing, go clear under the wave, in one glorious immersion, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. I saw a little child once, in its dying hour, put one arm around its father’s neck, and the other arm around its mother’s neck, and brino- them close down to its dying lips and give a last kiss. Oh, I said, those two persons will stand very near to each other alwaj’s after such an interlocking. The dying Christ puts one arm around this denomination of Christians, and the other arm around that denomination of Christians, and he brings them down to his dying lips, while he gives them this parting kiss: “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.”

“How swift the heavenly course they run,
“Whose hearts and faith and hopes are one!”

I heard a Baptist minister once say that he thought in the millennium it would be all one great Baptist church; and I heard a Methodist minister say that he thought in the great millennial day it would be all one great Methodist church; and I have known a Presbyterian minister

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who thought that in the millennial day it would be all one great Presbyterian church. Now I think they are all mistaken. I think the Milleimial Church will’ be a composile church; and just as you may tnke the best parts of five or six tunes, and under the skillful hands of a Handel, Mozart, or Beethoven, entwine them into one grand and overpowering symphony, so, I suppose, in the latter days of the world, God will take the best parts of all denominations of Christians, and weave them into one great ecclesiastical harmony, broad as the earth and high as the heavens, and that will be the Church of the future. Or, as mosaic is made up of jasper and agate and many precious stones cemented togethermosaic, a thousand feet square in St. Mark’s, ov mosaic hoisted into colossal seraphim in St. Sophia — so I sup- y)ose God will make, after a while, one great blending of all creeds, and all faiths, and all Christian sentiment the amethyst and the jasper and the chalcedony of all different experiences and beliefs, cemented side by side in the great mosaic of the nges; and while the nations look upon the columns and architraves of that stupendous Church of the future, and cry out, “What mean ye by these stones?” there shall be innumerable voices to respond, “We mean the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’’ I remai-k again, lue mean hij these stones the salvation of the people. We did not build this church for mere worldly reforms, or for an educational institution, or as a platform on which to read essays and philosophical disquisitions; but a place for the tremendous work of soul -saving. Oh, 1 had rather be the means in this church of having one soul prepared for a joyful eternity than iive thousand souls prepared for mere “worldly success! All churches are in two classes, all communities in two classes, all the race in two classes — believers and unbelievers. Those going into light, these going into darkness. To augment the number of the one and subtract from the number of the other, we built this chuich; and toward that supreme and eternal idea we dedicate all our sermons, all our songs, all our prayers, all our Sabbath hand-shakings. We want to throw defection into the enemies’ ranks. We want to make them either surrender unconditionally to Christ, or else fly in rout, scattering the way with canteens, blankets, and knapsacks. We want to popularize Christ. We would like to tell the story of his love here, until men would feel that they had rather die than live another hour without his sympathy and love and mercy. We want to rouse up an enthusiasm for him greater than was felt for Nathaniel Lyon when he rode along the ranks — greater than was exhibited for AYellington wdien he came back from Waterloo — greater than was expressed for ISTapoleon when he stepped ashore from Elba. We really believe in this place Christ will enact the same scenes that were enacted by him when he landed in the Orient; and there will be such an opening of blind eyes and unstopping of deaf ears, and casting out of unclean spirits — such silencing bestormed Gennesarets, as shall make this house memorable five hundred years after you and I are dead and forgotten. Oh, my friends, we want but one revival in this church: that beginning now and running on to the day when the chisel of Time, that brings down even St. Paul’s and the Pyramids, shall bring this house into the dust. We want the host of newly-converted souls who shall next Sabbath morning pass in review by this sacramental table — we want them only the first regiment of a great army that will take this place on their way to glory.

But since there are so many uncertainties ahead, perhaps we had better begin now the work of salvation. Oh that this day of dedication might be the day of emancipation to all imprisoned souls! My friends, do not make the blunder of the ship-carpenters in Noah’s time, who helped to build the ark, but did not get into it! God forbid that you who have been so generous in building this church should not get under its saving influence! “Come, thou and all thy house, into the ark.” Do you think a man is safe out of Christ? Wot one day, not one hour, not one minute, not one second. Three or four years ago, you remember, a rail train broke down a bridge on the way to Albany, and after the catastrophe they were looking around among the timbers of the crushed bridge and the fallen train, and found the conductor. He was dying, and had only strength to say one thing, and that was, “Hoist the flag for the next train.” So there come up to us to-night voices from the eternal chasm of darkness, and sin, and death, telling us, “You can not save me, but save those who come after me. Lift the warning. Blow the trumpet. Give the alarm. Hoist the flag for the next train.”

Oh that to-night my Lord Jesus would sweep his arm around this great audience, and take you all to his holy heart! You will never see so good a time for personal consecration as now. “What mean ye by these stones?” We mean your redemption from sin, and death, and hell, by the power of an omnipotent Gospel. Lord God Almighty, with thy presence now shake this house from foundation to cap-stone I Stretch out thine arm. Here is the sacrifice. Lord God of Elijah, answer as bj fire.

Well, the Brooklyn Tabernacle is erected again. The Sabbath after the old Tabernacle was burned, in the Academy of Music, in December, 1872, 1 prophesied this building. I said it would be dedicated in 1873. I made a mistake of only two months. Would God that had been the largest mistake I had ever made! But now that it is done, it more than pleases us. We came here to-night not to dedicate it. That was done this morning by an illustrious company of Christian ministers of every name; and that eloquent and thrilling sermon still rings through and through our soul, telling us that “the glory of the second house shall be greater than that of the first.” God grant it! But I am here to preach the dedication sermon of all your hearts. In the Episcopal and Methodist churches they have a railing around the altar, and the people come and kneel down at that railing and get the sacramental blessing. Well, my friends, it would take more than a night to gather you in circles around this altar. Then just bow where you are for the blessing. Aged men, this is the last church you. will ever dedicate. May the God who comforted Jacob the patriarch, and Paul the aged, make this house to you the gate of heaven; and when, in your old days, you put on your spectacles to read the hymn or the Scripture lesson, may you get preparation for that land where yolx shall no more see through a glass darkly! May the warm sunshine of heaven thaw the snow off your foreheads!

Men in mid-life, do you know that this is the place where you are going to get your fitigues rested, and your sorrows appeased, and your souls saved? Do you know that at this altar your sons and daughters will take upon themselves the vows of the Christian, and from this place you will carry out, some of you, your precious dead? Between this baptismal font and this communion-table you will have some of the tenderest of life’s experiences. God bless you, old and young and middle-aged! The money you have given to this church to-day will be, I hope, the best financial investments you have ever made. Your worldly investments may depend upon the whims of Wall Street or the honesty of business associates; but the money you have given to the house of the Lord shall yield you large percentage, and declare eternal dividends in the day when, instead of being the story of one burning church, it shall be the tragedy of a world on fire ’

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