The Golden Age of Jerusalem

[Delivered in Jerusalem, December 8, Jerusalem!’’’ Matt, xxiii, 37,

JERUSALEM! JERUSALEM ! — ITS MIGHTY PAST.

^^/HIS exclamation burst from Christ’s lips as He came in sight of this great city, and although o things have marvel ously changed, who can visit Jerusalem to-day without having its mighty past roll over on him, and ordinary utterance must give place for the exclamatory as we cry, O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Disappointed with the Holv Land manv have been, talmage’s skrmons.

and I have heard good friends say that their ardoi* about sacred places had been sa dampened that they were sorry they ever visited Jerusalem. But with me the city and its surroundings are a rapture, a solemnity an overwhelming emotion. O! Jerusalem, Jerusalem! The procession of kings, conquerors, poets and immortal men and women pass before me as I stand here. Among the throng are Solomon David and Christ.

SOLOMON^S SPLENDOR PORTRAYED.

Yes, through these streets and amid these surroundings rode Solomon, that wonder of splendor and wretchedness. It seemed as if the world exhausted itself on that man. It wove its brightest flowers into his garland. It set its richest gems in his coronet. It pressed the rarest wine to his lips. It robed him in the purest purple and embroidery. It cheered him with the sweetest music in that land of harps. It greeted him with the gladdest laughter that ever leaped from mirth’s lip. It sprinkled his cheek with spray from the brightest fountains. Royalty had no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, flowers no sweetness, song no melody, light no radiance, upholstery no gorgeousness, waters no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, architecture no grandeur but it was all his. Across the thick grass of the lawn, fragrant with tufts of camphire from Engedi, fell the long shadows of trees brought from distant forests.

Fish pools, fed by artificial channels that brought the streams from hills far away, were perpetually rufiied with fins, and golden scales shot from water cave to water cave with endless dive swirl, attracting the gaze of foreign potentates. Birds that had been brought from foreign aviaries glanced and fluttered amdng the foliage, and called to their mates far beyond the sea. From the royal stables there came up the neighing of twelve thousand horses, standing in blankets of Tyrian purple, chewing their bits over troughs of gold, waiting for the king’s order to be brought out in front of the palace when the official dignitaries would leap into the saddle for some grand parade, or harnessed to some of the fourteen hundred chariots of the king, the fiery chargers with flaunting mane and throbbing nostril would make the earth jar with the tramp of hoofs and the thunder of wheels. While within and without the palace you could not think of a single luxury that could be added, or of a single splendor that could be kindled, down on the banks of the sea the dry-docks of Ezion-geber rang with the hammers of the shipwrights who were constructing larger vessels for a still wider commerce, for all lands and climes were to be robbed to make up Solomon’s glory. No rest till his keels shall cut every sea, his axmen hew every forest, his archers strike every rare wing, his fishermen whip every stream, his merchants trade in every bazaar, his name be honored by every tribe; and royalty shall have no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, song no melody, light no radiance, waters no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, upholstery no gorgeousness, architecture no grandeur, but it was all his.

BUT SOLOMON IS NOT HAPPY.

^’WelV’ you say, ‘’if there is any man happy, he ought to be.’’ But I hear him coming out through the palace, and see his robes actually incrusted wth jewels, as he stands in the front and looks out upon the vast domain. What does he say? King Solomon, great is talmage’s sermons.

your dominion, great is your honor, great is your joy? No. While standing here amidst all the splendor, the tears start, and his heart breaks and he exclaims: *^Vanity of vanities; all is vanity/^ What! Solomon not happy yet? No, not happy. The honors and the emoluments of this world brings as many cares with them that they bring also torture and disquietude. Pharoah sits on one of the highest earthly eminences, yet he is miserable because there are some people in his realm that do not want any longer to make bricks. The head of Edward I. aches under his crown because the people will not pay the taxes, and Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, will not do him homage, and Wallace will be a hero. Frederick William III, of Prussia, is miserable because France wants to take the Prussian Provinces. The world is not large enough for Louis XIV and Willian III. The ghastliest suffering, the most shriveling fear, the most rendering jealousies, the most gigantic disquietude, have walked amidst obsequious courtiers, and been clothed in royal apparel, and sat on judgment seats of power.

Honor and truth and justice cannot go so high up in authority as to be beyond the range of human assault. The pure and good in all ages have been execrated by the mob who cry out: “Not this man, but Barabbas. Now, Barabbas was a robber.’’ By honesty, by Christian principle, I would have you seek for the favor and the confidence of your fellow men; but do not look upon some high position as though that were always sunshine. The mountains of earthly honor are like the mountains of Switzerland, covered with perpetual ice and snow. Having obtained the confidence and love of your associates, be content with such things as you have. You brought nothing into the world, and it is very certain you can carry nothing out. ‘’Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils.” There is an honor that is worth possessing, but it is an honor that comes from God. Thisdayrise up andtakeit. ^’Behold what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” Who aspires not for that royalty? Come now, and be kings and priests unto God and the lamb forever.

If wealth and wisdom could have satisfied a man, Solomon would have been satisfied. To say that Solomon was a millionaire gives but a very imperfect idea of the property he inherited from David, his father.

SOLOMON’S RICHES, WISDOM AND WRETCH-EDNESS.

He had at his command gold to the value of six hundred and eighty millon pounds, and he had silver to the value of one billion, twenty-nine million, three hundred and seventy-seven pounds sterling. The queen of Sheba made him a nice little present of seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and Hiram made him a present of the same amount. If he had lost the value of a whole realm out of his pocket, it would hardly have been worth his while to stoop down and pick it up. He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost everything. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth out of the wall, and about birds and beasts and fishes. No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on hunter’s trapping, and went out with his arrows to bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then with his fishing apparatus he went down to the stream to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into (he forest and found the rarest specimens of flow talmage’s sermons.

and then he came back to his study and wrote books about zoology, the science of animals; about ichthyology, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science of birds; about botany, the science of plants. Yet, notwithstanding all his wisdom and wealth, behold his wretchedness, and let him pass on. Did any other city ever behold so wonderful a man? O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

THE CITY OF DAVID-SORROW FOR ABSALOM.

But here passes through these streets, as in imagination I see him, quite as wonderful and a far better man. David the conqueror, the king, the poet. Can it be that I am in the very city where he lived and reigned! David great for power, and great for grief He was wrapped up in his boy Absalom. He was a splendid boy, judged by the rules of worldly criticism. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot there was not a single blemish. The Bible says that he had such a luxuriant shock of hair that, when once a year it was shorn, what was cut off weighed over three pounds. But, notwithstanding all his brilliancy of appearance, he was a bad boy, and broke his fathers heart. He was plotting to get th throne of Israel. He had marshalled an army to overthrow his fathers government. The day of battle had come. The conflict was begun. David, the father, sat between the gates of the palace waiting for the tidings of the conflict. Oh, how rapidly his heart beat with emotion! Two great questions were to be decided; the safety of his boy, and the continuance of the throne of Israel. After awhile, a servant, standing on the top of the house, looks off, and he sees some one running. He is coming with great speed, and the man on top of the house annotmces the coming of the messenger, and the father watches and waits, and talmage’s sermons.

as soon as the messenger from the field of battle comes within hailing distance the father cries out. Is it a question in regard to the establishment of his throne? Does he say: * ‘Have the armies of Israel been victorious? Am I to continue in my imperial authority? Have I overthrown my enemies?’’ Oh, no. There is one question that springs from his heart to his lip, and springs from the lip into the ear of the besweated and bedusted messenger Hying from the battlefield — the question: “Is the young man Absalom safe!’’ When it was told to David, the king, that, though his armies had been victorious, his son had been slain, the father turned his back upon the congratulations of the nation, and went r p the stairs of his palace, his heart breaking as he went, wringing his hands sometimes, and then again pressing them against his temples as though he would press them in, crying: Absalom! my son! my son! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom! my son! my son!” Stupendous grief of David resounding through all succeeding ages. This was the city that heard the woe. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

THE CITY OF GREAT TEMPLES.

I am also thrilled and overpowered with the remembrance that yonder, where now stands a Mohammedan mosque, stood the temple, the very one that Christ visited. Solomon’s temple had stood there, butNebuchadnezzar thundered it down. Zerubbabel’s temple had stood there, but that had been prostrated! Then Herod biriit a temple because he was fond of great architecture, and he wanted the preceding temples to seem insignificant. Put eight or ten modern cathedrals together, and they would not equal tluit structure. It covered nineteen acres. There were marble pillars supporting roofs of cdar, and silver tables on wdiich stood golden cups, and there were carvings exquisite and inscrijotions resplendent, glittering balustrades and ornamented gateways. The building of this temple kept ten thousand workmen busy forty-six years. Stupendous pile of pomp and magnificence! But the material and architectural grandeur of the building were very tame compared with the spiritual meaning of its altars and holy of holies, and the overwhelming significance of its ceremonies. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

CHRIST’S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY. But standing in this old city all other facts are eclipsed when we think that near here our blessed Lord was born, that up and down the streets of this city he walked, and that in the outskirts of it he died. Here was his only day of trimph and his assassination. One day this old Jerusalem is at the tiptop of excitement. Christ has been doing some remarkable works and asserting very high authority. The police court has issued papers for his arrest; for this thing must be stopped, as the very government is imperiled. News comes that last night this stranger arrived at a suburban village and that he is stopping at the house of a man whom he had resuscitated after four days sepulture. Well, the people rush out into the streets, some with the idea of helping in the arrest of this stranger when he arrives, and others expecting that on the morrow he will come into the town and by some supernatural force oust the municipal and royal authorities and take everything in his own hands.. They pour out of the city gates until the procession reaches to the village. They come all around about the house where the stranger is stopping, and peer into the doors and windows that they may get one glimpse of him or hear the hum of his voice. The police dare not make the arrest, because he has o l^HE GOLDEN AGE.

«iOmeliow won the affections of all the people. Oh; it is a lively night in yonder Bethany! The heretofore quiet village is filled with uproar, and outcry and loud discussion about the strange acting coun try ma.n. I do not think there was any sleep house that night

where the stranger was stopping. Although he came in weary he finds no rest, though for once in his lifetime he had a pillow. But the morning dawns, the olive gardens wave in the light, all along y onder road, reaching the top of Olive, toward this city, there is a vast swaying crowd of wondering people. The excitement around the door of the cottage is wild as the stranger steps cut besides an unbroken colt that had never been mounted, and after his friends had strewn their garments on the beast for a saddle the Saviour mounts it, and the populace, excited and shouting and feverish, push on back toward this city of Jerusalem.

‘^KOSANNA! HOSANNA!” CRY THE PEOPLE.

Let none jeer now or scoff at this rider; or the populace will trample him under foot in an instant. There is one long shout of two miles, and as far as the eye can reach you see wavings of demonstrations and approval. There was something in the ridel’s visage, something in his majestic brow, something in his princely behavior, that stirs up the enthusiasm of the people. They run up against the beast and try to pull the rider off into their arms and carry on their shoulders the illustrious stranger. The populace are so excited that they hardly know what to do with themselves, and some rush up to the roadside trees and wrench off branches and thro w them in his way; and others doff their garments what though they be new a,nd costly, and spread them for a carpet for the conquerer to ride over. ‘’Hosanna!” cry

TALMAGE^S SERMONS.

the people at the foot of the hill. ‘’Hosanna!’’ cry the people all up and down the mountain.

THE SCENE FROM OLIVET.

The procession has now come to the brow of yonder Olivet. Magnificent prospect reaching out in every direction — vineyards, olive groves, jutting rock, silvery Siloam, and above all, rising on its throne of hills, this most highly honored city of all the earth, Jerusalem. Christ there, in the midst of the procession, looks off and sees here fortressed gates, and yonder the circling wall, and here the towers blazing in the sun, Phasaelus and Mariamme. Yonder is Hippicus, the king’s castle. Looking along in the range of the larger branch of that olive tree, you see the mansions of the merchant princes. Through this cleft in the limestone rock you see the palace of the richest trafficker in all the earth. He has made his money by selling Tyrian purple. Behold now the temple! Clouds of smoke lifting from the shimmering roof, while the building rises up beautiful, grand, majestic, the architectural skill and glory of the earth lifting themselves there in one triumphant doxology, the frozen prayer of all nations. The crowd looked around to see exhilaration and transport in the face of Christ. Oh, no! Out from amid the gates, and the domes, and the palaces, there arose a vision of the city’s sin, and of this citiy’s doom, which obliterated the landscape from horizon to horizon, and he burst into tears, crying; ‘’O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!’’ But that was the only day of pomp that Jesus saw in and around this city. Yet he walked the streets of this city the lovliest and most majestic being that the world ever saw or ever will see.

A ROMAN LETTER DESCRIBING JESUS. Publius Lentilus, in a letter to the Roman senate, detalmage’s sermons.

, scribes him as “a man of stature somewhat tall, his hair the color of a chestnut fully ripe, plain to the ears, whence downward it is more orient, curling and waving about the shoulders; in the midst of his forehead is a stream, or partition of his hair; forehead plain, and very delicate: his face without a spot or a wrinkle, a lovely red; his nose and mouth so forked as nothing can be represented; his beard thick, in color like his hair — not very long; his eyes gray, quick and clear.”

THE CITY OP CHRIST’S AGONY AND DEATH!

He must die. The French army in Italy found a brass plate on which was a copy of his death warrant, signed by John Ferubbabel, Raphael Robani, Daniel Roban and Capet. Sometimes men on the way to the scaffold have been rescued by the mob. No such attempt was made in this case, for themob were against him. From nine in the morning, until three in the afternoon, Jesus hung a-dying in the outskirts of this city. It was the scene of blood. We are so constituted that nothing is so exciting as blood. It is not the child’s cr^ in the street that arouses you as the crimson dripping from his lip. In the dark hall, seeing the finger marks of blood on the plastering, you cry: ‘’What terrible deed has been done here?” Looking upon this suspended victim of the cross, we thrill with the sight of blood — blood dripping from thorn and nail, blood rushing upon his cheek, blood saturating his garments, blood gathered in a pool beneath. It is called an honor to have in one’s veins the blood of the house of Stuart, or of the house of Hapsburg. Is it nothing when I i:)oint you to the outpouring blood of the king of the universe?

In England the name of Henry was so great that its honors were divided among different reigns. It was Henry the First, and Henry the Second, and Henry the Third, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry the Fifth. In France the name of Louis was so favorably regarded that it was Louis the First, Louis the Second, Louis the Third, and so on. But the king who walked these streets was Christ the First, and Christ the Last, and Christ the Only. He reigned before the czar mounted the throne of Russia, or the throne of Austria was titled, king eternal, immortal. Through indulgences of the royal family, the physical life degenerates, and some of the kings have been almost imbecile, and their bodies weak, and their blood thin and watery: But the crimson life that flowed upon Calvary had in it the health of immortal God.

THE LAST SAD HOUR.

Tell it now to all the earth, and to all the heavens — Jesus, our king, is sick with his last sickness. Let couriers carry the swift dispach. His pains are worst; he is breathing a last groan; through his body quivers the last anguish; the king is dying; the king is dead!

It is royal blood. It is said that some religionists make too much of the humanity of Christ. I respond that we make too little. If some Roman surgeon, standing under the cross, had caught one drop of the blood on his hand and analyzed it, it would have been found to have the same plasma, the same disk, the same fibrin, the same albumen. It was unmistakably human blood. It is a man that hangs there. His bones are of the same material as ours. If it were an angel being despoiled I would not feel it so much, for it belongs to a different order of beings. But my Savoir is a man, and my whole sympathy is aroused. I can imagine how the spikes felt — how hot the temples burned — what

TALMAGE’S vSERMONS.

deadly sickness seized his heart — how mountain, and city, and mob swam away from his dying vision — something of the meaning of that cry for help that makes the blood of all the ages curdle with horror: *’My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?’*

Forever with all these scenes of a Savior’s suffering will this city be associeted. Here his unjust trial and here his death. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

THE NEW JERUSALEM.

But finally I am thrilled with the fact that this city is a symbol of heaven which is only another Jerusalem. “TheNew Jerusalem!” And this thought has kindled the imagination of all the sacred poets. I am glad that Horatio Bonar the Scotch hymnist rummaged among old manuscripts of the British museum until he found that hymn in ancient spelling, parts of which we have in mutilated form in our modern hymn books, but the quaint power of which we do not get in our modern versions:

Hierusalem, my happy home!

When shall I come to thee?
When shall my sorrows have an end,

Thy joys when shall I see?
Noe dampish mist is seene in thee,

Noe colde nor darksome night:
There everie soule shines as the sunne,

There God himselfe gives light.

Thy walls are made of peetious stones,

Thy bulwarkes diamondes square;
Thy gates are of right orient pearle,

Exceedinge riche and rare,

Thy turrettes and thy pinnacles

With carbuncles doe shine;
Thy verrie streets are paved with gfould,

Surpassinge ckare and fine.

Thy houses are of yvorie,

Thy windows crystal cleare;
Thy tyles are made of beaten qovlM,

O God! that I were there.

Our sweete is mixt with bitter gaule,

Our pleasure is but paine;
Our joyes scarce last the lookeing on.

Our sorrowes stille remaine.

But there they live in such delight,

Such pleasures and such play,
As that to them a thousand yeares

Doth seem as yesterday.

Thy gardens and thy gallant walkcs

Continually are greene;
There grow such sweete and pleasant flowers

As no where else are scene.

There trees for evermore beare fruite

And evermore doe springe;
There .evermore the angels sit.

And evermore doe singe.

Hierusalem! my happie home!

Would God I were in thee!
“Would God my woes were at an end,

Thy joyese that I might see I

JESUS CROSSING GALILEE, AND STILLING TUV. TEMPEST,