The Palestine Sermons

[Delivered on board steamer “City of Paris,” in New York harbor, October

29,

And they accompanied Him unto the ship.’’ Acts xx, 38.

OFF FOR THE HOLY LAND.

|g=Sf?0 the more than 25,000,000 people in many

countries to whom my sermons come week by week in English tongue and by translation, through the kindness of the newspaper press, I address these words. I dictate them to a stenographer on tli TALMAGK’o ISERMONS.

eve of my departure for the Holy land, Palestine. When you read this sermon I will be rftid-atlantic.

I go to be gone a few weeks on a religious journey. I go because I want for myself and hearers and readers to see Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and Jerusalem, and Calvary, and all the other places connected with the Savior’s life and death, and so reinforce myself for sermons. I go also because I am writing the *^Life of Christ, and can be more accurate and graphic when I have been an eye-witness of the sacred places. Pray for my successful journey and my safe return.

I wish on the eve of my departure to pronounce a loving benediction upon all my friends in high places and low, upon congregations to whom my sermons are read in absence of pastors, upon groups gathered out on prairies and in mining districts, upon all sick and invalid and aged ones who cannot attend churches, but to whom I have long administered through the printed page. My next sermon will be addressed to you from Rome. I think I feel like Paul when he said: “So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also,”

PAUL AS A SAILOR. ’

The fact is that Paul was ever moving about on land or sea. He was an old sailor — not from occupation, but from frequency of travel. I think he could have taken a vessel across the Mediterranean as well as some of the ship captains. The sailors never scoffed at him for being a ^4and lubber,” If Paul’s advice had been taken the crew would never have gone ashore at Melita.

When the vessel went >^ciuUlii]!g under bare poles Paul was the only sdf-pOvSSessed wmm Qti board, and, turning to the excited passengers, he exclaims in a voice that sounds above the thunder of the tempest and the wrath of the sea: Be of good cheer.”

ANCIENT NAVIGATION.

The men who now go to sea with maps, and charts, and modern compass, warned by buoys and light-house, know nothing of the perils of ancient navigation. Horace said that the man who first ventured on the sea must have had a heart bound with oak and triple brass. People then ventured only from headland to headland and from island to island, and not until long after spread their sail for a voyage across the sea. Before starting the weather was watched, and the vessel having been hauled up on the shore the mariners placed their shoulders against the stern of the ship and heaved it off, they at the last moment leaping into it. Vessels were then chiefly ships of burden — the transit of passengers being the exception; for the world was not then migratory as in our day, when the first desire of a man in one place seems to be to go into another place. The ship from which Jonah was thrown overboard and in that which Paul was carried prisoner went out chiefly with the idea of taking a cargo. As now, so then, vessels were accustomed to carry a flag. In those times it was inscribed with the name of a heathen deity. A vessel bound for Syracuse had on it the inscription ‘’Castor and Pollux.

The ships were provided with anchors. Anchors were of two different kinds — those that were dropped into the sea and those that were thrown up onto the rocks to hold the vessel fast. This last kind was what Paul alluded to when he said: ‘’Which hope we have

TALMAGE^S SERMONS.

as an alichor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the vail.’* That was what the sailors call a ‘hook anchor,” The rocks and sand-bars, shoals and headlands, not being mapped out, vessels carried a plumb line. They would drop it and find the water fifty fathoms, and drop it again and find it forty fathoms, and drop it again and find it thirty fathoms, thus discovering their near approach to the shore.

TRAMPLING THE BILLOWS.

In the spring, summer, and autumn, the Mediterranean sea was white with the wings of ships, but at the first wintry blast they hied themselves to the nearest harbor, although now the world’s commerce prospers in January as well as in June, and in mid-winter all over the wide and stormy deep there floats palaces of light, trampling the billows under foot and showering the sparks of terrible furnaces on the wild wind, and the Christian passenger, tippeted and shawled, sits under the shelter of the smoke-stack, looking off upon the phosphorescent deep, on which is written in scrolls of foam and fire: *^Thy way, O God, is in the sea and thy path in the great waters! ‘*

It is in those days of early navigation that I see a group of men, women, and children on the beach of the Mediterranean. Paul is about to leave the congregation to whom he had preached and they are come down to see him off. It is a solemn thing to part. There are so niany traps that wait for a man’s feet. The solid ground may break through, and the sea — how many dark mysteries it hides in its bosom! A few counsels, a hasty good-by, a last look, and the ropes rattle, and the Scils are hoisted, and the planks are talmage’s sermon?

hauled in, and Paul is gone. I expect to sail over some of the same waters over which Paul sailed, but before going I want to urge jou all to embark for heaven.

THE CHURCH IS THE DRY DOCK FOR REPAIRS.

The church is the dry dock where souls are to be fitted out for heaven. In making a vessel for this voyage the first need is sound timber. The floor timbers ought to be of solid stuff. For the want of it vessels that look able to run their jibbooms into the eye of any tempest when caught in a storm have been crushed like a wafer. The truths of Gods word are what I mean by floor timbers. Away with your lighter materials. Nothing but oaks hewn in the forest of divine truth, are staunch enough for this craft.

LOVE IS THE HELM.

You must have love for a helm to guide and turn the craft. Neither pride nor ambition nor avarice will do for a rudder. Love, not only in the heart, but flashing in the eye and tingling in the hand — love married to work, which many look upon as so homely a bride — love, not like brooks, which foam and rattle, yet do nothing, but love like a river, that runs up the steps of mill-wheels and works in the harness of factory bands — love that will not pass by on the other side, but visits the man who fell among thieves near Jericho, not merely saying; ^*Poor fellow! you are dreadfully hurt,’’ but like the good Samaritan, pours in oil and wine and pays his board at the tavern. There must also be a prow, aranged to cut and override the billow. That is Christian perservance. Thefe are three mountain surges that sometimes dash againist a soul in a minute — the world, the flesh and the devil — and that is a well built prow that can bound over them. For lack of this many have put back and never started again. It is the broadside wave that so often sweeps the deck and fills the hatches, but that which strikes in front is harmless. Meet troubles courageously and you surmount them. Stand on the prow, and as you wipe off the spray of the split surge, cry out with the apostle: None of these things move me.^’ Let all your fears stay aft. The right must conquer. Know that Moses, in an ark of bulrushes, can run down a war-steamer.

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