Ceredo Advance

A COLD CHALLENGE.

There is No Chance For an Alibi in Our Case.

We Must Throw Ourselves on Christ's Mercy—There Is Only One Lawyer Who Can Plead Our Case at Heaven's Bar.

Talmage's Sermon.

Rev. Dr. Talmage Sunday chose for his subject, "A Bold Challenge," the text being Romans viii., 34. "Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us."

…This is the last sermon I shall ever preach," said Christmas Evans, on the 18th of June, 1838. Three days afterward he expired. I do not know what his text was, but I know no man could choose a better theme—though he knew it was the last time he should ever preach—than the subject found in this text.

Paul flung this challenge of the text at the feet of all ecclesiastical and civil authority. He feared neither swords nor lions, earth nor hell. Diocletian slew uncounted thousands under his administration, and the world has been full of persecution; but all the persecutors of the world could not affright Paul. Was it because he was physically strong? Oh, no. I suppose he was very much weakened by exposure and maltreatment. Was it because he was lacking in sensitiveness? No: you find the most delicate shades of feeling playing in and out of his letters and sermons. Some of his communications burst into tears. What was it that lifted Paul into this triumphant mood? The thought of a Saviour dead, a Saviour risen, a Saviour exalted, a Saviour interceding.

All the world has sung the praise of Princess Alice, one child having died of a contagious disease—she was in the room where another was dying, and the court physician said to her: "You must not breathe the breath of this child, or you yourself will die." But seeing the child mourning because of the death of her brother, the mother stooped down, and in sympathy kissed the little one, caught the disease and perished. All the world sang of the heroism and self-sacrifice of Princess Alice, but I have to tell you that when our race was dying the Lord Jesus stooped down and gave us the kiss of everlasting love, and perished that we might live. "It is Christ that died."

Can you tell me how tender-hearted Paul could find anything to rejoice at in the horrible death scene of Calvary? We weep at funerals, we are sympathetic when we see a stranger die, when a murderer steps upon a scaffold we pray for his departing spirit; and how could Paul—the great-hearted Paul—find anything to be pleased with at the funeral of a God? Beside that, Christ had only recently died, and the sorrow was fresh in the memory of the world, and how in the fresh memory of a Saviour's death could Paul be exultant?

It was because Paul saw in that death his own deliverance, and the deliverance of a race from still worse disaster; he saw the gap into which the race must plunge, and he saw the bleeding hands of Christ close it. The glittering steel on the top of the executioner's spear in his sight kindled into a torch to light men heavenward. The persecutors saw over the cross five words written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin; but Paul saw over the cross of Christ only one word—"Expiation!" He heard in the dying groan of Christ his own groan of eternal torture taken by another. Paul said to himself: "Had it not been that Christ volunteered in my behalf, those would have been my mauled hands and feet, my gashed side, my crimson temples."

Men of great physical endurance have sometimes carried very heavy burdens—three hundred pounds, four hundred pounds—and they have still said: "My strength is not yet tested, put on more weight." But after a little while they were compelled to cry out: "Stop! I can carry no more." But the burden of Christ was illimitable. First, there was his own burden of hunger, and thirst, and bereavement, and a thousand outrages that have been heaped upon Him, and on top of that burden were the sorrows of His poor old mother, and on top of those burdens the crimes of the ruffians who were executing Him.

"Stop," you cry, "it is enough: Christ can bear no more." And Christ says, "Roll on more burdens, roll on me the sins of the entire nation, and after that roll on me the sins of the inhabited earth and then roll on me the sins of the four thousand years past so far as those sins have been forgiven." And the angels of God seeing the awful pressure cry "Stop! He can bear no more." And the blood rushing to the nostril and lip seems to cry out, "Enough! He can endure no more." But Christ says "Roll on a greater burden, roll on the sins of the next nineteen hundred years; roll on me the sins of all the succeeding ages; roll on me the agonies of hell, ages on ages, the furnaces and the prison-houses and the tortures." That is what the Bible means when it says, "He bore our sins and carried our sorrows."

Now says Paul "I am free: that suffering purchased my deliverance; God never collects a debt twice; I have with me then what do all the threats of earth and hell amount to? Bring on all your foes, do your worst against my soul! I defy you; I dare you! I challenge you! Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died! Oh, what a strong argument that puts in the hand of every Christian man! Some day all the past sins of his life come down on him in a fiery troop, and they pound away at the gate of his soul, and they say "We have come for your arrest. Any one of us could overcome you: we are ten thousand strong: surrender!" And you open the door, and single-handed and alone you contend against that troop: you fling this divine weapon into their midst: you scatter those sins as quick as you can think it. It is Christ that died!" Why then bring to us the sins of our past life? What have we to do with those obsolete things?

You know how hard it is for a wrecker to bring up anything that is lost near the shore of the sea: but suppose something be lost half way between Liverpool and New York: it cannot be found, it cannot be fetched up.

"Now," says God, "your sins I have cast into the depths of the sea." Mid-Atlantic! All the machinery ever fashioned in foundries of darkness and launched from the doors of eternal death, working for 10,000 years, cannot bring up one of our sins forgiven and forgotten and sunken into the depths of the sea.

When a sin is pardoned it is gone—it is gone out of the books, it is gone out of the memory, it is gone out of existence. Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."

From other tragedies men have come away exhausted and nervous and sleepless; but there is one tragedy that soothes and calms and saves. Calvary was the stage on which it was enacted, the curtain of the night falling at noon was the drop scene, the thunder of falling rocks the orchestra, angels in the galleries, and devils in the pit the spectators, the tragedy the crucifixion. "It is Christ that died." Oh, triumphant thought:

If you go through the picture galleries of Versailles you will find a great change there. I said to a friend who had been through those galleries: "Are they as they were before the French war?" and I was told there was a great change there; that all that multitude of pictures which represented Napoleonic triumphs had been taken away, and in the frames were other pictures representative of Germanic success and victory.

Oh, that all the scenes of Satanic triumph in our world might be blotted out, and that the whole world might be a picture gallery representing the triumphant Jesus! Down with the monarchy of transgression! Up with the monarchy of our king! Hail! Jesus, hail!

But I must give you the second cause of Paul's exhilaration. If Christ had stayed in that grave we never would have got out of it. The grave would have been dark and dismal as the Conciergerie during the reign of terror, where the carts came up only to take the victims out to the scaffold. I do not wonder that the ancients tried by embalmment of the body to resist the dissolution of death.

The grave is the darkest, deepest, ghastliest chasm that was ever opened if there be no light from the resurrection throne streaming into it: but Christ stayed in the tomb all Friday night and all Saturday, and Saturday night and a part of Sunday morning, He stayed so long in the tomb that He might fit it for us when we go there. He tarried two whole nights in the grave so that He saw how important it was to have plenty of light, and He has flooded it with His own glory.

It is early Sunday morning, and we start up to find the grave of Christ. We find the morning sun gilding the dew, and the shrubs are sweet as the foot crushes them. What a beautiful place to be buried in! Wonder they did not treat Christ as well when He was alive as they do now that He is dead. (Give the military salute to the soldiers who stand guarding the dead.) But hark to the crash! an earthquake! The soldiers fell back as though they were dead, and the stone at the door of Christ's tomb spins down the hill, flung by the arm of an angel. Come forth, O Jesus: from the darkness into the sunlight. Come forth, and breathe the perfume of Joseph's garden.

Christ comes forth radiant, and, as He steps out of the excavation of the rock I look down into the excavation, and in the distance I see others coming hand in hand, and troop after troop, and I find it is a long procession of the precious dead. Among them are our own loved ones—father, mother, brother, sister, companion, children coming up out of the excavation of the rock until the last one has stepped out into the light and I am bewildered, and I cannot understand the scene until I see Christ wave His hand over the advancing procession from the rock, and hear Him cry, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." And then I notice that the long dirge of the world's woe suddenly stops at the arch-angelic shout of "Come forth!"

Oh, my friends, if Christ had not broken out of the grave I would never come out of it. It would have been another case of Charlotte Corday attempting to slay a tyrant, herself slain. It would have been another case of John Brown attempting to free the slaves, himself hung. It would have been death and Christ in a grapple, and death the victor. The black flag would have floated on all the graves and mausoleums of the dead, and hell would have conquered the forces of Heaven and captured the ramparts of God, and Satan would have come to coronation in the palaces of Heaven, and it would have been devils on the throne and sons of God in the dungeon. No! no! no! When that stone was rolled from the door of Christ's grave, it was hurled with such force that it crashed in all the grave doors of Christendom and now the tomb is only a bower where God's children take a siesta, an afternoon nap to wake up in nightly invigoration. "Christ is risen." Hang that lamp among all the tombs of my dead! Hang it over my own resting place! Christ's sufferings is ended: His work is done. The darkest Friday afternoon of the world's history becomes the brightest Sunday morning of its resurrection joy. The good Friday of bitter memories becomes the Easter of glorious transformation and resurrection.

I give you the third cause of Paul's exhilaration. We honor the right hand more than we do the left. If in accident or battle we must lose one hand, let it be the left. The left hand being nearer the heart, we may not do much of the violent work of life with that hand without physical danger, but he who has the right arm in full play has the mightiest of all weapons. In all ages and in all languages the right hand is the symbol of strength and power and honor. Hiram sat at the right hand of Solomon. Then we have the term, "He is a right hand man." Lafayette was Washington's right hand man; Marshal Ney was Napoleon's right-hand man, and now you have the meaning of Paul when he speaks of Christ who is at the right hand of God.

That means He is the first guest of Heaven. He has a right to sit there. The Hero of the universe! Count His wounds, two at the feet, two in the hands, one in the side—five wounds. Oh, you have counted wrong. These are not half the wounds. Look at the severer wounds in the temples: each thorn an excruciation.

If a hero comes back from battle, and he takes off his hat, or rolls up his sleeve and shows you the scar of a wound gotten at Hall's Bluff, or at South Mountain, you stand in admiration of his heroism and patriotism; but if Christ should make conspicuous the five wounds gotten on Calvary—that hero of all the ages—he would display only a small part of his wounds. Wounded all over, let Him sit at the right hand of God.

He has a right to sit there. By the request of God, the Father, and the unanimous suffrage of all Heaven let him sit there. In the grand review, when the redeemed pass by in cohorts of splendor, they will look at him and shout "Victory!" The oldest inhabitant of Heaven never saw a grander day than the one when Christ took His place on the right hand of God. Hosanna! With lips of clay I may not appropriately utter it, but let the martyrs under the altar throw the cry to the elders before the throne, and they can toss it to the throne on the sea of glass until all Heaven shall lift it—some on point of scepter, and some on string of harp, and some on the tip of the big branches. Hosanna! Hosanna!

A fourth cause of Paul's exhilaration: After a clergyman had preached a sermon in regard to the glories of Heaven and the splendors of the scene an aged woman said: "If all that is to go on in Heaven I don't know what will become of my poor head." Oh! my friends, there will be so many things going on in Heaven I have sometimes wondered if the Lord would not forget you and me.

Perhaps Paul said sometimes: "I wonder God does not forget me down here in Antioch, and in the prison, and in the shipwreck. There are so many sailors, so many wayfarers, so many prisoners, so many heartbroken men," says Paul, "Perhaps God may forget me; and then I am so vile a sinner. How I whipped those Christians! With what vengeance I mounted that cavalry horse and dashed up to Damascus! Oh, it will take a mighty attorney to plead my cause and get me free." But just at that moment there came in upon Paul's soul something mightier than the surges that dashed his ship into Melita, swifter than the horse he rode to Damascus. It was the swift and overwhelming thought of Christ's intercession.

My friends, we must have an advocate. A poor lawyer is worse than no lawyer at all. We must have one who is able successfully to present our cause before God. Where is he? Who is he? There is only one advocate in all the universe that can plead our cause in the last judgment, that can plead our cause before God in the great tribunal.

Sometimes in earthly courts attorneys have specialties, and one man succeeds better in patent cases, another in insurance cases, another in criminal cases, another in land cases, another in will cases, and his success generally depends upon his sticking to that specialty. I have to tell you that Christ can do many things, but it seems to me that His specialty is to take the bad cases of the sinner and plead it before God until he gets eternal acquittal. Oh! we must have Him for our advocate.

But what plea can we make? Sometimes an attorney in court will plead the innocence of the prisoner. That would be appropriate for us; we are all guilty! guilty! Unclean! unclean! Christ, our advocate, will not plead our innocence. Sometimes the attorney in court tries to prove an alibi. He says: "This prisoner was not at the scene: he was in some other place at the time." Such a plea will not do in our case. The Lord found us all in our sins, and in the very place of our iniquity. It is impossible to prove an alibi. Sometimes an attorney will plead the insanity of the prisoner, and say he is irresponsible on that account. That plea will never do in our case. We sinned against light, against knowledge, against the dictates of our own consciences; we knew what we were doing. What, then, shall the plea be? The plea for our eternal deliverance will be Christ's own martyrdom. He will say: "Look at all these wounds. By all these sufferings I demand the rescue of this man from sin, and death, and hell. Constable, knock off the shackles—let the prisoner go free."

Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us."

But why all this gladness on the faces of these sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty? I know what you are thinking of. A Saviour dead, a Saviour risen, a Saviour exalted, a Saviour interceding. "What," say you, "is all that for me?" All! All! Never let me hear you complaining about anything again. With your pardoned sin behind you, and a successful Christ pleading above you, and a glorious Heaven before you, how can you be despondent about anything?

"But," says some man in the audience, "all that is very good and very true for those who are inside the kingdom, but how about those of us who are outside?"

Then I say, come into the kingdom; come out of the prison house into the glorious sunlight of God's mercy and pardon, and come now.