New Tabernacle Sermons

by T. De Witt Talmage

You say: "It is a matter of $10,000 whether I see him or not." Oh, that men were as persistent in seeking for Christ! Had you one half that persistence you would long ago have found Him who is the joy of the forgiven spirit. We may pay our debts, we may attend church, we may relieve the poor, we may be public benefactors, and yet all our life disobey the text, never seek God, never gain heaven. Oh, that the Spirit of God would help this morning while I try to show you, in carrying out the idea of my text, first, how to seek the Lord, and in the next place, when to seek Him. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."

I remark, in the first place, you are to seek the Lord through earnest and believing prayer. God is not an autocrat or a despot seated on a throne, with His arms resting on brazen lions, and a sentinel pacing up and down at the foot of the throne. God is a father seated in a bower, waiting for His children to come and climb on His knee, and get His kiss and His benediction. Prayer is the cup with which we go to the "fountain of living water," and dip up refreshment for our thirsty soul. Grace does not come to the heart as we set a cask at the corner of the house to catch the rain in the shower. It is a pulley fastened to the throne of God, which we pull, bringing the blessing.

I do not care so much what posture you take in prayer, nor how large an amount of voice you use. You might get down on your face before God, if you did not pray right inwardly, and there would be no response. You might cry at the top of your voice, and unless you had a believing spirit within, your cry would not go further up than the shout of a plow-boy to his oxen. Prayer must be believing, earnest, loving. You are in your house some summer day, and a shower comes up, and a bird, affrighted, darts into the window, and wheels about the room. You seize it. You smooth its ruffled plumage. You feel its fluttering heart. You say, "Poor thing, poor thing!" Now, a prayer goes out of the storm of this world into the window of God's mercy, and He catches it, and He feels its fluttering pulse, and He puts it in His own bosom of affection and safety. Prayer is a warm, ardent, pulsating exercise. It is the electric battery which, touched, thrills to the throne of God! It is the diving-bell in which we go down into the depths of God's mercy and bring up "pearls of great price." There was an instance where prayer made the waves of the Gennesaret solid as Russ pavement. Oh, how many wonderful things prayer has accomplished! Have you ever tried it? In the days when the Scotch Covenanters were persecuted, and the enemies were after them, one of the head men among the Covenanters prayed: "Oh, Lord, we be as dead men unless Thou shalt help us! Oh, Lord, throw the lap of Thy cloak over these poor things!" And instantly a Scotch mist enveloped and hid the persecuted from their persecutors—the promise literally fulfilled: "While they are yet speaking I will hear."

Oh, impenitent soul, have you ever tried the power of prayer? God says: "He is loving, and faithful, and patient." Do you believe that? You are told that Christ came to save sinners. Do you believe that? You are told that all you have to do to get the pardon of the Gospel is to ask for it. Do you believe that? Then come to Him and say: "Oh, Lord! I know Thou canst not lie. Thou hast told me to come for pardon, and I could get it. I come, Lord. Keep Thy promise, and liberate my captive soul."

Oh, that you might have an altar in the parlor, in the kitchen, in the store, in the barn, for Christ will be willing to come again to the manger to hear prayer. He would come in your place of business, as He confronted Matthew, the tax commissioner. If a measure should come before Congress that you thought would ruin the nation, how you would send in petitions and remonstrances! And yet there has been enough sin in your heart to ruin it forever, and you have never remonstrated or petitioned against it. If your physical health failed, and you had the means, you would go and spend the summer in Germany, and the winter in Italy, and you would think it a very cheap outlay if you had to go all round the earth to get back your physical health. Have you made any effort, any expenditure, any exertion for your immortal and spiritual health? No, you have not taken one step.

O that you might now begin to seek after God with earnest prayer. Some of you have been working for years and years for the support of your families. Have you given one half day to the working out of your salvation with fear and trembling? You came here this morning with an earnest purpose, I take it, as I have come hither with an earnest purpose, and we meet face to face, and I tell you, first of all, if you want to find the Lord, you must pray, and pray, and pray.

I remark again, you must seek the Lord through Bible study. The Bible is the newest book in the world. "Oh," you say, "it was made hundreds of years ago, and the learned men of King James translated it hundreds of years ago." I confute that idea by telling you it is not five minutes old, when God, by His blessed Spirit, retranslates it into the heart. If you will, in the seeking of the way of life through Scripture study, implore God's light to fall upon the page, you will find that these promises are not one second old, and that they drop straight from the throne of God into your heart.

There are many people to whom the Bible does not amount to much. If they merely look at the outside beauty, why it will no more lead them to Christ than Washington's farewell address or the Koran of Mohammed or the Shaster of the Hindoos. It is the inward light of God's Word you must get or die. I went up to the church of the Madeleine, in Paris, and looked at the doors which were the most wonderfully constructed I ever saw, and I could have stayed there for a whole week; but I had only a little time, so, having glanced at the wonderful carving on the doors, I passed in and looked at the radiant altars, and the sculptured dome. Alas, that so many stop at the outside door of God's Holy Word, looking at the rhetorical beauties, instead of going in and looking at the altars of sacrifice and the dome of God's mercy and salvation that hovers over penitent and believing souls!

O my friends! if you merely want to study the laws of language, do not go to the Bible. It was not made for that. Take "Howe's Elements of Criticism"—it will be better than the Bible for that. If you want to study metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings of William Hamilton. But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned, and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, search the Scriptures, "for in them ye have eternal life."

When people are anxious about their souls—and there are some such here to-day—there are those who recommend good books. That is all right. But I want to tell you that the Bible is the best book under such circumstances. Baxter wrote "A Call to the Unconverted," but the Bible is the best call to the unconverted. Philip Doddridge wrote "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," but the Bible is the best rise and progress. John Angell James wrote "Advice to the Anxious Inquirer," but the Bible is the best advice to the anxious inquirer.