Staunton Spectator

From Dungeon to Palace.

"AT HAND,"

OUR IDEAS

OF THE

CHRISTIAN'S

DEATH ARE

MORBID AND SICKLY.

WHOLE SUBJECT ODOROUS

WITH

VARNISH

AND DISINFECTANTS, INSTEAD

OF

SWEET WITH MIGNONETTE.

ST. PAUL'S HOLY GLEE.

DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON, SUNDAY, JULY 10TH.

The Hamptons, July 10.—The Brooklyn Tabernacle being closed for enlargement, the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D., pastor, spends the first Sabbath away from his flock the present season at this summer home. His subject for to-day was: "From Dungeon to Palace," and his text: The time of my departure is at hand—II. Timothy, iv., 6.

The way out of this world is so blocked up with coffin and hearse, and undertaker's spade and screw-driver, that the Christian can hardly think as he ought of the most cheerful passage in all his history. We hang black instead of white over the place where the good man gets his last victory. We stand weeping over a heap of chains which the freed soul has shaken off, and we say: "Poor man! What a pity it was he had to come to this?" Come to what? By the time the people have assembled at the obsequies, that man has been three days so happy that all the joy of earth accumulated would be wretchedness beside it, and he might better weep over you because you have to stay, than you weep over him because he has to go. It is a fortunate thing that a good man does not have to wait to see his own obsequies, they would be so discordant with his own experiences. If the Israelites should go back to Egypt and mourn over the brick-kilns they once left they would not be any more silly than that Christian who should forsake heaven and come down and mourn because he had to leave this world. Our ideas of the Christian's death are morbid and sickly. We look upon it as a dark hole in which a man stumbles when his breath gives out. This whole subject is odorous with varnish and disinfectants, instead of being sweet with mignonette. Paul, in my text, takes that great clod of a word "death" and throws it away, and speaks of his "departure"—a beautiful, bright, suggestive word, descriptive of every Christian's release.

Now, departure implies a starting place, and a place of destination. When Paul left this world, what was the starting point? It was a scene of great physical distress. It was the Tullianum, the lower dungeon of the Mamertine prison. The top dungeon was bad enough, it having no means of ingress or egress but through an opening in the top. Through that the prisoner was lowered, and through that came all the food and air and light received. It was a terrible place, that upper dungeon; but the Tullianum was the lower dungeon, and that was still more wretched, the only light and the only air coming through the roof, and that roof the floor of the upper dungeon. That was Paul's last earthly residence. It was a dungeon just six feet and a half high. It was a doleful place. It had a chill of long centuries of dampness. It was filthy with the long incarcerations of miserable wretches. It was there that Paul spent his last days on earth, and it is there that I see him to-day, in the fearful dungeon, shivering, blue with the cold, waiting for that old overcoat which he had sent for up to Troas, and which they had not yet sent down, notwithstanding he had written for it.

If some skillful surgeon should go into that dungeon where Paul is incarcerated we might find out what are the prospects of Paul's living through the rough imprisonment. In the first place, he is an old man, only two years short of seventy. At that very time, when he most needs the warmth and the sunlight and the fresh air, he is shut out from the sun. What are those scars on his ankles? Why, those were gotten when he was fast, his feet in the stocks. Every time he turned the flesh on his ankles started. What are those scars on his back? You know he was whipped five times, each time getting thirty-nine strokes—one hundred and ninety-five bruises on the back (count them!) made by the Jews with rods of elmwood; each one of the one hundred and ninety-five strokes bringing the blood. Look at Paul's face and look at his arms. Where did he get those bruises? I think it was when he was struggling ashore amidst the shivered timbers of the shipwreck. I see a gash in Paul's side.—Where did he get that? I think he got that in the tussle with highwaymen, for he had been in peril of robbers, and he had money of his own. He was a mechanic as well as an apostle, and I think the tents he made were as good as his sermons.

There is a wanness about Paul's looks. What makes that? I think a part of that came from the fact that he was for twenty-four hours on a plank in the Mediterranean sea, suffering terribly, before he was rescued, for he says positively: "I was a night and a day in the deep." Oh, worn-out, emaciated old man! surely you must be melancholy; no constitution could endure this and be cheerful. But I press my way through the prison until I come up close to where he is, and by the faint light that streams through the opening I see on his face a supernatural joy, and I bow before him, and I say: "Aged man, how can you keep cheerful amidst all this gloom?" His voice startles the darkness of the place as he cries out: I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. Hark! what is that shuffling of feet in the upper dungeon? Why, Paul has an invitation to a banquet, and he is going to dine to-day with the King. Those shuffling feet are the feet of the executioners. They come, and they cry down through the hole of the dungeon: "Hurry up, old man. Come now; get yourself ready." Why, Paul was ready. He had nothing to pack up. He had no passage to take. He had been ready a good while. I see him rising up and straightening out his stiffened limbs and pushing back his white hair from his creviced forehead, and see him looking up through the hole in the roof of the dungeon into the face of his executioner, and hear him say: I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand.

Then they lift him out of the dungeon and they start with him to the place of execution. They say: "Hurry along, old man, or you will feel the weight of our spear. Hurry along."

"How far is it," says Paul, "we have to travel?" "Three miles."

Three miles is a good way for an old man to travel after he has been whipped and crippled with maltreatment. But they soon get to the place of execution—Acquae Salvia—and he is fastened to the pillar of martyrdom. It does not take any strength to tie him fast. He makes no resistance. O Paul! why not strike for your life? You have a great many friends here. With that withered hand just launch the thunder-bolt of the people upon those infamous soldiers. No! Paul was not going to interfere with his own coronation. He was too glad to go. I see him looking up in the face of his executioner, and, as the grim official draws the sword, Paul calmly says: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand." But I put my hand over my eyes. I want not to see that last struggle. One sharp, keen stroke, and Paul does go to the banquet, and Paul does dine with the King.

What a transition it was! From the malaria of Rome to the finest climate in all the universe the zone of eternal beauty and health. His ashes were put in the catacombs of Rome, but in one moment the air of Heaven bathed from his soul the last ache. From shipwreck, from dungeon, from the biting pain of the elm-wood rods, from the sharp sword of the headsman, he goes into the most brilliant assemblage of heaven, a king among kings, multitudes of the sainthood rushing out and stretching