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
In many cases it will be a complete and immediate reversal of all
earthly conditions. Some who in this world wore patched apparel will
take on raiment lustrous as a summer noon. Some who occupied a palace
will take a dungeon. Division regardless of all earthly caste, and
some who were down will be up, and some who were up will be down. Oh,
what a shattering of conventionalities! What an upheaval of all social
rigidities, what a turning of the wheel of earthly condition, a
thousand revolutions in a second! Division of all nations, of all
ages, not by the figure 9, nor the figure 8, nor the figure 7, nor the
figure 6, nor the figure 5, nor the figure 4; but by the figure 2.
Two! Two characters, two destinies, two estates, two dominions, two
eternities, a tremendous, an all-comprehensive, an all-decisive, and
everlasting two!
I sometimes think that the figure of the book that shall be opened
allows us to forget the thing signified by the symbol. Where is the
book-binder that could make a volume large enough to contain the names
of all the people who have ever lived? Besides that, the calling of
such a roll would take more than fifty years, more than a hundred
years, and the judgment is to be consummated in less time than passes
between sunrise and sunset. Ah! my friends, the leaves of that book of
judgment are not made out of paper, but of memory. One leaf in every
human heart. You have known persons who were near drowning, but they
were afterward resuscitated, and they have told you that in the two or
three minutes between the accident and the resuscitation, all their
past life flashed before them--all they had ever thought, all they had
ever done, all they had ever seen, in an instant came to them. The
memory never loses anything. It is only a folded leaf. It is only a
closed book.
Though you be an octogenarian, though you be a nonagenarian, all the
thoughts and acts of your life are in your mind, whether you recall
them now or not, just as Macaulay's history is in two volumes,
although the volumes may be closed, and you can not see a word of
them, and will not until they are opened. As in the case of the
drowning man, the volume of memory was partly open, or the leaf partly
unrolled; in the case of the judgment the entire book will be opened,
so that everything will be displayed from preface to appendix.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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