T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. (continued 7)

Why do the wicked live? In order that they may build up fortresses for righteousness to capture. Have you not noticed that God harnesses men, bad men, and accomplishes good through them? Witness Cyrus, witness Nebuchadnezzar, witness the fact that the Bastile of oppression was pried open by the bayonets of a bad man. Recently there came to me the fact that a college had been built at the Far West for infidel purposes. There was to be no nonsense of chapel prayers, no Bible reading there. All the professors there were pronounced infidels. The college was opened, and the work went on, but, of course, failed. Not long ago a Presbyterian minister was in a bank in that village on purposes of business, and he heard in an adjoining room the board of trustees of that college discussing what they had better do with the institution, as it did not get on successfully, and one of the trustees proposed that it be handed over to the Presbyterians, prefacing the word Presbyterians with a very unhappy expletive. The resolutions were passed, and that fortress of infidelity has become a fortress of old-fashioned, orthodox religion, the only religion that will be worth a snap of your finger when you come to die or appear in the Day of Judgment. The devil built the college. Righteousness captured it.

In some city there goes up a great club-house—the architecture, the furniture, all the equipment a bedazzlement of wealth. That particular club-house is designed to make gambling and dissipation respectable.

Do not fret. That splendid building will after a while be a free library, or it will be a hospital, or it will be a gallery of pure art. Again and again observatories have been built by infidelity, and the first thing you know they go into the hand of Christian science. God said in the Bible that He would put a hook in Sennacherib's nose and pull him down by a way he knew not. And God has a hook to-day in the nose of every Sennacherib of infidelity and sin, and will drag him about as He will. Marble halls deserted to sinful amusements will yet be dedicated for religious assemblage. All these castles of sin are to be captured for God as we go forth with the battle-shout that Oliver Cromwell rang out at the head of his troops as he rode in on the field of Naseby: "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered!" After a great fire in London, amid the ruins there was nothing left but an arch with the name of the architect upon it; and, my friends, whatever else goes down, God stays up.

Why do the wicked live? That some of them may be monuments of mercy.

So it was with John Newton, so it was with Augustine, perhaps so it was with you. Chieftains of sin to become chieftains of grace. Paul, the apostle, made out of Saul, the persecutor. Baxter, the flaming evangel, made out of Baxter, the blasphemer. Whole squadrons, with streamers of Emmanuel floating from the masthead, though once they were launched from the dry-docks of diabolism. God lets these wicked men live that He may make jewels out of them for coronets, that He may make tongues of fire out of them for Pentecosts, that He may make warriors out of them for Armageddons, that he may make conquerors out of them for the day when they shall ride at the head of the white-horse host in the grand review of the resurrection.

Why do the wicked live? To make it plain beyond all controversy that there is another place of adjustment. So many of the bad up, so many of the good down. It seems to me that no man can look abroad without saying—no man of common sense, religious or irreligious, can look abroad without saying, "There must be some place where brilliant scoundrelism shall be arrested, where innocence shall get out from under the heel of despotism." Common fairness as well as eternal justice demands it.

We adjourn to the great assizes, the stupendous injustices of this life. They are not righted here. There must be some place where they will be righted. God can not afford to omit the judgment day or the reconstruction of conditions. For you can not make me believe that that man stuffed with all abomination, having devoured widows' houses and digested them, looking with basilisk or tigerish eyes upon his fellows, no music so sweet to him as the sound of breaking hearts, is, at death, to get out of the landau at the front door of the sepulcher and pass right on through to the back door of the sepulcher, and find a celestial turnout waiting for him, so that he can drive tandem right up primrosed hills, one glory riding as lackey ahead, and another glory riding as postilion behind, while that poor woman who supported her invalid husband and her helpless children by taking in washing and ironing, often putting her hand to her side where the cancerous trouble had already begun, and dropping dead late on Saturday night while she was preparing the garments for the Sabbath day, coming afoot to the front door of the sepulcher, shall pass through to the back door of the sepulcher and find nothing waiting, no one to welcome, no one to tell her the way to the King's gate. I will not believe it. Solomon was confounded in his day by what he represents as princes afoot and beggars a-horseback, but I tell you there must be a place and a time when the right foot will get into the stirrup. To demonstrate beyond all controversy that there is another place for adjustment, God lets the wicked live.

Why do the wicked live? For the same reason that He lets us live—to have time for repentance.

Where would you and I have been if sin had been followed by immediate catastrophe? While the foot of Christ is fleet as that of a roebuck when He comes to save, it does seem as if he were hoppled with great languors and infinite lethargies when He comes to punish. Oh, I celebrate God's slowness, God's retardation, God's putting off the retribution! Do you not think, my brother, it would be a great deal better for us to exchange our impatient hypercriticism of Providence because this man, by watering of stock, makes a million dollars in one day, and another man rides on in one bloated iniquity year after year—would it not be better for us to exchange that impatient hypercriticism for gratitude everlasting that God let us who were wicked live, though we deserved nothing but capsize and demolition? Oh, I celebrate God's slowness! The slower the rail-train comes the better, if the drawbridge is off.

How long have you, my brother, lived unforgiven? Fifteen, twenty, forty, sixty years? Lived through great awakenings, lived through domestic sorrow, lived through commercial calamity, lived through providential crises that startled nations, and you are living yet, strangers to God, and with no hope for a great future into which you may be precipitated. Oh, would it not be better for us to get our nature through the Grace of Christ revolutionized and transfigured? For I want you to know that God sometimes changes His gait, and instead of the deliberate tread He is the swift witness, and sometimes the enemies of God are suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy.

Make God your ally. What an offer that is! Do not fight against Him. Do not contend against your best interests. Yield this morning to the best impulse of your heart, and that is toward Christ and heaven. Do not fight the Lord that made you and offers to redeem you.

Philip of France went out with his army, with bows and arrows, to fight King Edward III. of England; but just as they got into the critical moment of the battle, a shower of rain came and relaxed the bow-strings so that they were of no effect, and Philip and his army were worsted. And all your weaponry against God will be as nothing when he rains upon you discomfiture from the heavens. Do not fight the Lord any longer. Change allegiance. Take down the old flag of sin, run up the new flag of grace. It does not take the Lord Jesus Christ the thousandth part of a second to convert you if you will only surrender, be willing to be saved. The American Congress was in anxiety during the Revolutionary War while awaiting to hear news from the conflict between Washington and Cornwallis, and the anxiety became intense and almost unbearable as the days went by. When the news came at last that Cornwallis had surrendered and the war was practically over, so great was the excitement that the doorkeeper of the House of Congress dropped dead from joyful excitement. And if this long war between your soul and God should come to an end this morning by your entire surrender, the war forever over, the news would very soon reach the heavens, and nothing but the supernatural health of your loved ones before the throne would keep them from being prostrated with overjoy at the cessation of all spiritual hostilities.

THE END.