New Tabernacle SermonsTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
New Tabernacle Sermons
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Presbyterian Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American
Every day I find happy Christian people. I find some of them with no
second coat, some of them in huts and tenement houses, not one earthly
comfort afforded them; and yet they are as happy as happy can be. They
sing "Rock of Ages" as no other people in the world sing it. They
never wore any jewelry in their life but one gold ring, and that was
the ring of God's undying affection. Oh, how happy religion makes us!
Did it make you gloomy and sad? Did you go with your head cast down? I
do not think you got religion, my brother. That is not the effect of
religion. True religion is a joy. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace."
Why, religion lightens all our burdens. It smooths all our way. It
interprets all our sorrows. It changes the jar of earthly discord for
the peal of festal bells. In front of the flaming furnace of trial it
sets the forge on which scepters are hammered out. Would you not like
to-day to come up from the swine-feeding and try this religion? All
the joys of heaven would come out and meet you, and God would cry from
the throne: "Put a ring on his hand."
You are not happy. I see it. There is no peace, and sometimes you
laugh when you feel a great deal more like crying. The world is a
cheat. It first wears you down with its follies, then it kicks you out
into darkness. It comes back from the massacre of a million souls to
attempt the destruction of your soul to-day. No peace out of God, but
here is the fountain that can slake the thirst. Here is the harbor
where you can drop safe anchorage.
Would you not like, I ask you--not perfunctorily, but as one brother
might talk to another--would you not like to have a pillow of rest to
put your head on? And would you not like, when you retire at night, to
feel that all is well, whether you wake up to-morrow morning at six
o'clock, or sleep the sleep that knows no waking? Would you not like
to exchange this awful uncertainty about the future for a glorious
assurance of heaven? Accept of the Lord Jesus to-day, and all is well.
If on your way home some peril should cross the street and dash your
life out, it would not hurt you. You would rise up immediately. You
would stand in the celestial streets. You would be amid the great
throng that forever worship and are forever happy. If this day some
sudden disease should come upon you, it would not frighten you. If you
knew you were going you could give a calm farewell to your beautiful
home on earth, and know that you are going right into the
companionship of those who have already got beyond the toiling and the
weeping.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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