The Grenada Sentinel

The Heavenly Treasures—Only Work of Christianity—Conquest of the Earth for Christ Not to Be Taken Lightly, Also, Encouragement to Well-Doers by T. DeWitt Talmage.

He gave words of encouragement to well-doers by T. DeWitt Talmage in a recent sermon at Washington. He took for his text: Isaiah lii, 12. 'He shall divide the spoil with the strong.'

As used to let out the half in the Coliseum at Rome, where persecution is now planted the figure of a fierce piece has become the symbol of wood nailed to a cross. And I rejoice to know that the cross speaks. As a kingly warrior, it is of Christ the conqueror that I speak more of suffering than of victory. As among his people, and you shall divide up all the earth and all the fullness thereof, his officers, so Christ is going to subdue the lowlands and valleys and mountains, the palaces and mansions and homes. Just as Alexander, having subdued an empire, might divide the spoil among his generals, so Christ is going to divide the spoil with the strong in faith and strong in our Christian loyalty, for my text declares we shall divide the spoil with the strong.

It is not so much of a job as you imagine when the church takes off its coat and rolls up its sleeves for the work, as it will. There are 1,600,000,000 people now in the world, and 450,000,000 are Christians. Subtract 450,000,000 who are Christians from 1,600,000,000, and there are 1,150,000,000 left. Divide the 1,150,000,000 who are not Christians by the 450,000,000 who are Christians, and you will find that we shall have to average less than three souls each, brought by us into the kingdom of God, to have the world redeemed. Certainly the church rising up to its full height, no Christian will be willing to bring less than three souls into the kingdom of God. I hope and pray, Almighty God, that I may bring more than three. I know evangelists who have already brought 50,000 each for the kingdom of God.

There are 200,000 people whose one absorbingly business in the world is to save souls. When you take these things into consideration, that the Christians will have to average the bringing of only three each into the Kingdom of our Lord, all impossibility vanishes from this omnipotent crusade. Why, I know a Sabbath-school teacher who for many years has been engaged in training the young, and she has had five different classes, and they averaged seven to a class, and they were all converted, and times seven are 35, as near as I can calculate. So that she brought 35 into the Kingdom of God and 33 to spare. My grandmother led her children into the kingdom of Christ, and her great-grandchildren, and I hope all her grandchildren; for God remembers a prayer 50 years old as though it were a minute old; and so she brought 35 into the kingdom of God, and more than a hundred to spare.

Besides that, through the telephone and the telegraph, this whole world, in a few years, will be brought within the compass of ten minutes. Besides that, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience are presiding in this work of the world's betterment, and that takes the question of the world's conversion out of the impossibilities into the possibilities, and then out of the possibilities into the probabilities, and then out of the probabilities into the certainties. The building of the Union Pacific railroad from ocean to ocean was no greater undertaking than the ringing of the earth with the Gospel; the one enterprise depended upon the human arm, while the other depends upon Almightiness.

I really mean all the earth will surrender to Christ. Yes. How about the uninviting portions? Will Greenland be evangelized? The possibility is that after a few more hundred brave explorers have dashed out among the icebergs of that great refrigerator, the polar region, will be given up to the seal and bear, and that the inhabitants will come down by invitation into more tolerable climates, or those climates may soften; and, as it has been vividly demonstrated that the polar region was once a blooming garden and a fruitful field, those regions may change climate and again be blooming garden and a fruitful field.

It is proved beyond controversy, by European and American scientists, that the Arctic regions were the first portions of this world inhabitable; the torrid regions were, of course, the first too hot beyond human endurance, regions were cool enough for human foot and human lung. It was positively proved that the Arctic region was a tropical climate. Prof. Heer, of Zurich, says remains of flowers have been found in the Arctic region, showing it was once like Mexico for climate, and Prof. Wallace found that the Arctic was the mother region from which all flowers descended. Prof. Wallace says the remains of all styles of animal life are found in the Arctic region, including those animals that live only in warm climates. Now, the Arctic region, which has been demonstrated by flora and fauna and geological argument to have been as full of vegetation and life as our Florida, may be turned back to its original beauty and glory, or it will be shut up as a museum of crystals for curiosity seekers once in awhile to visit. But the Arctic and Antarctic, in some shape, belong to the Redeemer's realm.

What about other unproductive or impassive regions? All the deserts will be irrigated, the waters will be lifted up to the great American desert between here and the Pacific by machinery now known or yet to be invented, and, as Great Salt Lake City was once so barren and could not raise an apple or a bushel of wheat in a hundred years without artificial help, but is now through such means one great garden, so all the unproductive parts of all the continents will be turned into harvest fields and orchards. A half-dozen De Lesseps will furnish the world with all the canals needed, and will change the course of rivers and open new lakes, and the great Sahara desert will be cut up into farms with an astounding yield of bushels to the acre. The marsh will be drained of its waters and cured of its malaria. I saw what was for many years called the Black swamp of Ohio, its chief crop chills and fevers, but now, by the tiles put into the ground to carry off the surplus moisture, transformed into the richest and healthiest of regions. The God who wastes nothing, I think, means that this world, from pole to pole, has come to perfection of foliage and fruitage. For that reason He keeps the earth running through space, though so many fires are blazing down in its timbers and so many meteoric terrors have threatened to dash it to pieces. As soon as the earth is completed Christ will divide it up among the good. The reason He does not divide now is because it is not done. A kind father will not divide the apple among his children until the apple is ripe. In fulfillment of the New Testament, 'The meek shall inherit the earth,' and the promise of the Old Testament, 'He shall divide the spoil with the strong,' the world will be apportioned to those worthy to possess it.

It is not so now. In this country, capable of holding, feeding, clothing and sheltering 1,200,000,000 people, we have only 60,000,000 inhabitants, we have 2,000,000 who can not get honest work, and with their families an aggregation of 5,000,000 that are on the verge of starvation. Something wrong, most certainly. In some way, there will be a new apportionment. Many of the millionaire estates will crack to pieces on the dissipation of grandchildren and then dissolve into the possession of the masses who now have an insufficiency.

What, you say, will become of the expensive and elaborate buildings now devoted to debasing amusements? They will become schools, art galleries, museums, gymnasiums and churches. The world is already getting disgusted with many of these amusements, and no wonder. What an importation of unclean theatrical stuff we have within the last few years had brought to our shores! And professors of religion patronizing such things! Having sold out to the devil, why don't you deliver the goods and go over to him publicly, body, mind and soul, and withdraw your name from Christian churches, and say: 'Know all the world by these presents that I am a patron of uncleanness and a child of hell!' Sworn to be the Lord's, you are perjurers. If you think these offenses are to go on forever, you do not know who the Lord is. God will not wait for the Day of Judgment. All these palaces of sin will become palaces of righteousness. They will come into the possession of those strong for virtue and strong for God. 'He shall divide the spoil with the strong.'

'But,' you say, 'this is pleasant to think of for others, but before that time I shall have passed up into another existence, and I shall get no advantage from that new apportionment.' Ah, you have only driven me to the other more exciting and transporting consideration, and that is, that Christ is going to divide up Heaven in the same way. There are old estates in the celestial world that have been in the possession of the inhabitants for thousands of years, and they shall remain as they are. There are old family mansions in Heaven filled with whole generations of kindred, and they shall never be driven out. Many of the victors from earth have already got their palaces, and they are pointed out to those newly arrived. Soon after our getting there we will ask to be shown the apostolic residences, and ask where does Paul live, and John; and shown the patriarchal residences, and shall say: 'Where does Abraham live, or Jacob?' and shown the martyr residences, and say: 'Where does John Huss live, and Ridley?' We will want to see the boulevards where the chariots of conquerors roll. I will want to see the garden where the princes walk. We will want to see Music row, where Handel and Haydn and Mozart and Charles Wesley and Thomas Hastings and Bradbury have their homes, out of their windows, ever and anon, rolling some snatch of an earthly oratorio or hymn transported with the composer. We will want to see Revival terrace, where Whitefield and Nettleton and Payson and Rowland Hill and Charles Finney and other giants of soul-reaping are resting from their almost superhuman labors, their doors thronged with converts just arrived, coming to report themselves.

But brilliant as the sunset, and like the leaves for number, are the celestial homes yet to be awarded, when Christ to you, and millions of others, shall divide the spoil. What do you want there? You shall have it. An orchard? There it is: 12 manner of fruits and fruit every month. Do you want river scenery? Take your choice on the banks of the river, in longer, wider, deeper roll than Danube or Amazon or Mississippi if mingled into one, and emptying into the sea of glass, mingled with fire. Do you want your kindred back again? Go out and meet your father and mother without the staff or the stoop, and your children in a dance of immortal glee. Do you want a throne? Select it from the billion burnished elevations. Do you want a crown? Pick it out of that mountain of diamonded coronets. Do you want your old church friends of earth around you? Begin to hum an old revival tune and they will flock from all quarters to revel with you in sacred reminiscence. All the earth for those who are here on earth at the time of continental and planetary distribution, and all the heavens for those who are there.

Right after him comes a soul that makes a great stir among the celestials, and the angels rush to the scene, each bringing her a dazzling coronet. Who is she? Over what realm of earth was she queen? In what great Dusseldorf festival was she the cantatrice? Neither. She was an invalid who never left her room for 20 years; but she was strong in prayer, and she prayed down revival after revival and Pentecost after Pentecost, upon the churches, and with her white hands she knit many a mitten or tippet for the poor, and with her contrivances she added joy to many a holiday festival, and now with those thin hands so strong for kindness and with those white lips so strong for supplication, she has won coronation and enthronement and jubilee. And Christ said to the angels who have brought each a crown for the glorified invalid: 'No, not these; they are not good enough. But in the jeweled vase at the right-hand side of my throne there is one that I have been preparing for her many a year, and for her every pang I have set an amethyst, and for her every good deed I have set a pearl. Fetch it now and fulfill the promise I gave her long ago in the sick room: Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown.''

But notice that there is only one Being in the universe who can and will distribute the trophies of earth and Heaven. It is the Divine Warrior, the Commander-in-chief of the Centuries, the Champion of Ages, the Universal Conqueror, the Son of God, Jesus. You will take the spoils from His hand or never take them at all. Have His friendship and you may defy all time and all eternity, but without it you are a pauper, though you had a universe at your command. We are told in Revelation that Jacob's 12 sons were so honored as to have the 12 gates of Heaven named after them—over one gate of Heaven Naphtali, over another gate of Heaven Issachar, over another Dan, over another Gad, over another Zebulun, over another Judah, and so on. But Christ's name is written all over the gates, and on every panel of the gates; and have His help, His pardon, His intercession, His atonement. I must, or be a forlorn wretch forever. My Lord and my God! make me and all who hear me this day, and all to whom these words shall come, Thy repentant, believing, sworn, consecrated and ransomed followers forever.

What a day it will be! This entire assemblage would rise to its feet if you could realize it, the day in which Christ shall, in fulfillment of my text, divide the spoil. It was a great day when Queen Victoria, in the midst of the Crimean war, distributed medals to the soldiers who had come home sick and wounded. At the Horse Guards, in presence of the royal family, the injured men were carried in or came on crutches—Col. Trowbridge, who lost both feet at Inkermann; and Capt. Seaver, who had the ankle joint of his right leg shot off at Alma; and Capt. Currie, his disabled limb supported by a soldier, and others maimed, and disfigured, and exhausted—and with her own hands the queen gave each the Crimean medal. And what triumphant days for those soldiers when, further on, they received the French medal, with the imperial eagle, and the Turkish medal, with its representation of four flags—France, Turkey, England and Sardinia—and beneath it a map of the Crimea spread over a gunwheel. And what rewards are suggested to all readers of history by mere mention of the Waterloo medal, and the Cape medal, and the Gold Cross medal, and the medals struck for bravery in our American wars.

But how insignificant all these when compared with the day when the good soldiers of Jesus Christ shall come in out of the battles of this world, and in the presence of all the piled-up galleries of the redeemed and the unfallen, Jesus, our King, shall divide the spoil: The more wounds, the greater the inheritance. The longer the forced march, the brighter the trophy. The more terrible the exhaustion, the more glorious the transport. Not the gift of a brilliant ribbon, or a medal of brass, or silver, or gold, but a kingdom in which we are to reign forever and ever. Mansions on the eternal hills. Dominions of unfading power. Empires of unending love. Continents of everlasting light. Atlantic and Pacific oceans of billowing joy. It was a day when Aurelian, the Roman emperor, came back from his victories. In the front of the procession were wild beasts from all lands, 1,600 gladiators richly clad, wagon loads of crowns and trophies presented by conquered cities among the captives Syrians, Egyptians, Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Franks; and Zenobia, the beautiful captive queen, on foot in chains of gold that a slave had to help her carry, and jewels under the weight of which she almost fainted. And then came the chariot Aurelian, drawn by four elephants in gorgeous caparison, and followed by the Roman senate and the Roman army; and from dawn till dark the procession was passing. Rome in all her history never saw anything more magnificent. But how much greater the day when under our Conqueror, Jesus, shall ride under the triumphal arches of Heaven: His captives, not on foot, but in chariots, all the kingdoms of earth and Heaven in procession; the armies celestial on white horses. Rolling artillery of thunderbolts never again to be unlimbered. Kingdoms in line, centuries in line, saintly, cherubic, seraphic, archangelic splendor in line; and Christ seated on one great rolling hosanna, made out of all hallelujahs of all worlds, shall cry halt to the procession. And not forgetting even the humblest in all the reach of His omnipresence, He shall rise, and then and there, His work done and His glory consummated, proceed, amid an ecstasy such as neither mortal nor immortal ever imagined, to divide the spoil.