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THE SUNNY SOUTH, ATLANTA. GEORGIA. SEPTEMBER 30 189*.
II
BROOKLYN, Sept. 24.—At the Brooklyn
Tabernacle this forenoon Rev. Dr. Talmage
preached a sermon of unusual interest to a
vast audience, the subject being “TheNine
teen Hundredth Anniversary—A Proposi
tion Concerning It.” The text was taken
from Isaiah ix, C, “To us a child is born.”
That is a tremendous hour in the history
of any family when an immortal spirit is in
carnated. Out of a very dark cloud there
descends a very bright morning. One life
spared and another given. All the bells of
gladness ring over the cradle. I know not
why uny one should doubt that of old a star
pointed down to the Saviour’s birthplace,
for a star of joy points down to every hon
orable nativity.
A new eternity dates from that hour,
that minute. Beautiful and appropriate is
the custom of celebrating the anniversary
of such an event, and clear on into the
eighties and nineties the recurrence of that
day of the year in an old man’s life causes
recognition and more or less congratula
tion. So, also, nations are accustomed to
celebrate the anniversary of their birth
aud the anniversary of the birth of their
great heroes or deliverers or benefactors.
The 22d of February and the 4th of July
are never allowed to pass iu our laud with
out banquet aud oration and bell ringing
aud cannonade. But all ot her birthday an
niversaries are tame compared with the
Christmas festivity, which celebrates the
birthday described in my text.
A CONTINENTAL CIIORUS.
Protestant aud Catholic and Greek
churches, with all the power of music and
garland and procession aud doxology, put
the words of my text into national and
continental and hemispheric chorus, “To
ns a child is born.” On the 25th of Decem
ber each year that is the theme in St. Paul’s
and St. Peter’s and St. Mark’s and St.
Isaac’s and all the dedicated cathedrals,
chapels, meeting houses and churches clear
round the world. We shall soon reach the
nineteen hundredth anniversary of that
happiest event of all time. This century is
dying. Only seven more pulsations and
its heart will cease to beat. The fingers of
many of you will write at the head of your
letters and the foot of your important
documents, “1900.”
It will he a physical and moral sensation
nulike anything else you have before ex
perienced. Not one hand that wrote “1801”
at the induction of this century will have
cunning left to write “1901” at the induc
tion of another. The death of one century
mid the birth of another century will be
sublime and suggestive aud stupendous be
yond all estimate. To stand by the grave
of cue century and by the cradle of another
will be an opportunity such as whole gen
erations of the world’s inhabitants never
experienced.
1 Pray God that there may be no sickness
°r casualty to hinder your arrival at that
goal, or to hinder your taking part in the
Maledictory of the departing century and
the salutation of the new. But as that sea-
sonwill be the nineteenth hundredth .an
niversary of a Saviour's birth I now nomi-
nate that a great international jubilee or
oxpositiou be opened in this cluster of cities
y ‘he seacoast on Christmas day, the 25th
of December, 1900, to be continued for at
^ e *ft one month into the year 1901.
Ikis century, closing Dec. 31,1900, and
the new century beginning Jan. 1, 1901,
will it not be time for all nations to turn
&s»de for a few weeks or months from
everything else and emphasize the birth of
the greatest being who ever touched our
Planet, and could there be a more appro
priate time for such commemoration than
this culmination of the centuries which are
dated from his nativity? You know that
all history dates either from before Christ
or after Christ, from B. C. or A. D. It will
bo the year of our Lord 1900 passing into
the year 1901. We have had the Centen
nial at Philadelphia, celebrative of the one
hundredth anniversary of our nation's
irth. \\ e have bad the magnificent expo
sitions at New Orleans and Atlanta and
Augusta and St. Louis.
\V e have the present World’s exposition
»t Chicago, celebrative of the four hun-
redth anniversary of this continent's emer
gence, and there are at least two other great
oelebr&tions promised for this country, and
countries will have their historic
events to commemorate, but the one event
that has most to do with the welfare of all
nations is the arrival of Jesus Christ on
this planet, and all the enthusiasm ever
witnessed at London or Vienna or Paris or
any of our American cities would be eclipsed
by the enthusiasm that would celebrate the
ransom of all nations, the first step toward
the accomplishing of it being taken by an
infantile foot one winter’s night about five
miles from Jerusalem when the clouds
dropped the angelic cantata, “Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
to men.”
ITS PRACTICAL ASPECTS.
The three or four questions that would be
asked me concerning this nomination of
time and place I proceed to answer. What
practical use would come of such interna
tional celebration? Answer—The biggest
stride the world ever took toward the evan
gelization of all nations. That is a grand
and*wonderful convocation, the religious
congress at Chicago. It will put intelli
gently before the world the nature of false
religions which have been brutalizing the
nations, trampling womanhood into the
dust, enacting the horrors of infanticide,
kindling funeral pyres for shrieking vic
tims and rolling juggernauts across the
mangled bodies of their worshipers.
But no one supposes that any one will be
converted to Christ by hearing Confucian
ism or Buddhism or any form of heathen
ism eulogized. That is to be done after
ward. And how can it so well be done as
by a celebration of many weeks of the birth
and character and - achievements of the
wondrous and unprecedented Christ? To
such an exposition the kings and queens of
the earth would not send their representa
tives—they would come themselves. The
story of a Saviour’s advent could not be
told without telling the story of his mis
sion. All the world would say, Why this
ado, this universal demonstration?
What a vivid presentation it would be
when, at such a convocation, the physicians
of the world should tell what Christ had
done for hospitals and the assuagement of
human pain, and when Christian lawyers
declare what Christ has done for the estab
lishment of good laws, and Christian con
querors should tell wnat Christ had done in
the conquest of nations, and Christian
rulers of the earth would tell what Christ
had done in the government of earthly do
minions. Thirty days of such celebration
would do more to tell the world who Christ
is than any thirty years. Not a land on earth
but would hear of it and discuss it. Not
an eye so dimmed by the superstition of
ages but would see the illumination.
The difference of Christ’s religion from
all others is that its one way of dissemina
tion is by a simple “telling”—not argu
ment, not skillful exegesis, polemics or the
science of theological fisticuffs, but “tell
ing.” “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Be
hold, thy king cometh!” “Go quickly and
tell his disciples that he has risen from the
dead.” “Go home to thy friends and tell
them how great things the Lord hath done
for thee.” “When he is come, he will tell
us all things.” A religion of “telling.”
And in what way could all nations so
well be told that Christ had come as by
such an international emphasizing of his
nativity? All India would cry out about
such an affair, for you know they have
their railroads and telegraphs, “What is
going on in America?” All China would
cry out, “What is that great excitement
in America?” All the islands of the sea
would come down to the gangplanks of
the arriving ships and ask, “What is
that they are celebrating in America?” It
would be the mightiest missionary move
ment the world has ever seen. It would
be the turning point in the world’s destiny.
It would waken the slumbering nations
with one touch.
Question the Second—How would you
have such an international jubilee con
ducted? Answer—All arts should be mar
shaled, and art in its most attractive and
impressive shape. First, architecture.
While all academies of music and all
churches and all great halls would be
needed, there should be one great audi
torium erected to hold such an audience as
has never been seen on any sacred occasion
in America. If Scribonius Curio at the
cost of a kingdom could build the first two
vast amphitheaters, placing them back
to back, holding great audiences for
dramatic representation, and then by
wonderful machinery could turn them
round with all their audiences in
them, making the two auditoriums one
amphitheater, to witness a gladiatorial
contest, and Vespasian could construct the
Coliseum with its 80 columns and its tri
umphs in three orders of Greek architec
ture and a capacity to hold 87,000 people
seated and 15,000 standing, and all for pur
poses of cruelty and sin, cannot our glori
ous Christianity rear in honor of our glori
ous Christ a structure large enough to held
50.000 of its worshipers?
A CONGREGATION OF 50,000 PEOPLE.
If we go groping now among the ruined
amphitheaters of Verona and Pompeii and
Capua and Puzzuoli and Tarraco, and then
stand transfixed with amazement at their
immense sweep that held from 50,000 to
100.000 spectators gathered for carousal and
moral degradation, could not Christianity
afford one architectural achievement that
would hold and inthrall its 50,000 Chris
tian disciples? Do you say no human
voice could be heard throughout such a
building? Ah! then you were not present
when at the Boston peace jubilee Parepa
easily with her voice enchanted 50,000 au
ditors.
And the time is near at hand when in
theological seminaries, where our young
men are being trained for the ministry, the
voice will be developed, and instead of the
mumbling ministers, who speak with so
low a tone you cannot hear unless you lean
forward and hold your hand behind your
par and then are able to guess the general
drift of the subject and decide quite well
whether it is about Moses or Paul or some
one else—instead of that yqu will have
coming from the theological seminaries all
over the land young ministers with voice
enough to command the attention of an
audience of 50,000 people.
That is the reason that the Lord gives ns
two lungs instead of one. It is the divine
way of saying physiologically, “Be heard!”
That is the reason that the New Testament,
in beginning the account of Christ’s ser
mon on the mount, describes our Lord’s
plain articulation and resound of utterance
by saying, “He opened his mouth.” In that
mighty concert hall and preaching place
which I suggest for this nineteen hun
dredth anniversary let music crown our
Lord. Bring all the orchestras, all the ora
torios, all the Philharmonic and Handel
and Haydn societies.
Then give ub Haydn’s oratorioof the “Cre
ation,” for our Lord took part in universe
building, and “without him,” says John,
“was not anything made that was made,”
and Handel’s “Messiah,” and Beethoven’s
“Symphonies” and Mendelssohn’s “Eli
jah,” the prophet, that typified our Christ,
and the grandest compositions of German
and English and American masters, living
or dead. All instruments that can hum or
roll or whisper or harp or flute or clap or
trumpet or thunder the praises of the Lord,
joined to all voices that can chant or war
ble or precentor multitudinous worshipers.
What an arousing when 50,000 join in “An
tioch” or “Coronation” or “Ariel,” rising
into halleluiah or subsiding into an almost
supernatural amen!
Yea, let sculpture stand on pedestals all
around that building, the forms of apostles
and martyrs, men and women, who spoke
or wrought or suffered by the headsman’s
ax or fire. Where is my favorite of all arts,
this art of sculpture, that is not busier for
Christ, or that its work is not better ap
preciated? Let it come forth at that
world’s jubilee of the nativity. We want
a second Phidias to do for that new temple
what the first Phidias did for the Par
thenon. Let the marble of Carrara come
to resurrection to celebrate our Lord’s res
urrection. Let sculptors set up in that
auditorium of Christ celebration bas-relief
and intaglio descriptive of the battles won
for our holy religion.
Where are the Canovas of the nineteenth
century? Where are the American Thor-
waldsens and Chan treys? Hidden some
where, I warrant you. Let sculpture turn
that place into another Acropolis, but more
glorious by as much as our Christ is
stronger than their Hercules, and has more
to do with the sea than their Neptune, and
raises greater harvests than their Ceres,
and rouses more music in the heart of the
world than their Apollo. “The gods of the
heathen are nothing but dumb idols, but
our Lord made the heavens.” In marble
pure as snow celebrate him, who came to
make us “whiter than snow.” Let the
chisel as well as pencil and pen be put down
at the feet of Jesus.
PAINTING AND FLOWERS.
Yea, let painting do its best. The foreign
galleries will loan for such a jubilee their
Madonnas, their Angelos, their Rubens,
their Raphaels, their “Christ at the Jor
dan,” or “Christ at the Last Supper,” or
“Christ Coming to Judgment,” or “Christ
on the Throne of Universal Dominion,”
and our own Morans will put their pencils
into the nineteen hundredth anniversary,
and our Bierstadts from sketching “The
Domes of the Yosemite” will come to pre
sent the domes of the world conquered for
Immanuel.
Added to this I would have a floral
decoration on a scale never equaled. The
fields and open gardens could not furnish
it, for it will be winter, and that season ap
propriately chosen, for it was into the frosts
and desolations of winter that Christ im
migrated when he came to our world. But
while the fields will be bare, the conserva
tories and hothouses within 200 miles
would gladly keep the sacred coliseum radi
ant and aromatic during the convocations.
Added to all, let there be banquets, not
like the drunken bout at the Metropolitan
Opera House, New York, celebrating the
’ centennial of Washington’s inauguration,
where the rivers of wine drowned the
sobriety of so many senators and govern
ors and generals, but a banquet for the
poor, the feeding of scores of thousands of
people of a world in which the majority
of the inhabitants have never yet had
enough to eat. Not a banquet at which a
few favored men and women of social or
political fortune shall sit, but such a ban
quet as Christ ordered when he told his
servants to “go out into the highways and
hedges and compel them to come in.” Let
the mayors of cities, and the governors of
States, and the president of the United
States proclaim a whole week of legal hol
iday, at least from Christmas day to New
Year’s day.
Added to this let there be at that inter
national moral and religious exposition a
mammoth distribution of sacred literature.
Let the leading ministers of religion from
England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Ger
many and the world take the pulpits of all
these cities and tell what they know of him
whose birth we celebrate. At those convo
cations let vast sums of money be raised for
churches, for asylums, for schools, for col
leges, all of which institutions were born
in the heart of Christ. On that day and in
that season when Christ gave himself to
the world, let the world give itself to him.
WHY AMERICA?
Why do I propose America as the coun
try for this convocation? Because most
other lands have a state religion, and while
all forms of religion may be tolerated in
many lands America is the only country
on earth where all evangelical denomina
tions stand on an even footing, and all
would have equal hearing in such an inter
national exposition. Why do I select this
cluster of seacoast cities? Answer—By that
time—Dec. 25,1900—these four cities or New
York, Brooklyn, Jersey City and Hoboken,
by bridges and tunnels, will he practically
one, and with an aggregate population of
about 6,000,000. Consequently no other
part of America will have such immensity
of population.
Why do I now make this nomination of
time and place? Answer—Because such a
stupendous movement cannot be extem
porized. It will take seven years to get
ready for such an overtowering celebra
tion, and the work ought to begin speedily
in churches, in colleges, in legislatures, in
congresses, in parliaments, in all styles of
national assemblages, and we have no
time to lose. It would take three years to
make a programme worthy of such a com
ing together.
Why do I take it upon myself to make
such a nomination of time and place? An
swer—Because it so happens that in the
mysterious providence of God, born in a
farmhouse and of no royal or princely de
scent, the doors of communication are open
to me every week by the secular and reli
gious printing presses and have been open
to me every week for many years, with all
the cities and towns and neighborhoods of
Christendom, and indeed in lands outside
of Christendom, where printing presses
have been established, and I feel that if
there is anything worthy in this proposi
tion it will be heeded and adopted.
On the other hand, if it be too sanguine
or too hopeful or too impractical, I am
sure it will do no harm that I have ex
pressed my wish for such an international
jubilee, celebrative of the birth of our Im
manuel. My friends, such a birthday cele
bration at the close of one century and
reaching into a new century would be
something in which heaven and earth
could join. It would not only be interna
tional, but interplanetary, interstellar, in
terconstellation. If you remember what
occurred on the first Christmas night, you
know that it was not a joy confined to our
world.
The choir above Bethlehem was import
ed from another world, and when the star
left its usual sphere to designate the birth
place all astronomy felt the thrill. If there be
anything true about our religion, it is that
other worlds are sympathetic with this
world and in communication with it. The
glorified of heaven would join in such a cele
bration. The generations that toiled to have
the world for Christ would take part in such
jubilation and prolonged assemblage. The
upper galleries of God’s universe would ap
plaud the scene, whether we heard the clap
of their wings and the shout of their voices
or did not hear them.
Prophets who predicted the Messiah, and
apostles who talked with him, and martyrs
who died for him would take part in the
scene, though to our poor eyesight they
might be invisible. The old missionaries
who died in the malarial swamps of Africa,
or were struck down by Egyptian typhus,
or were butchered at Lucknow, or were
slain by Bornesian cannibals, would come
down from their thrones to rejoice that at
last Christ had been heard of, and so speed
ily in all nations. At the first roll of the
first overture of the first day of that meet
ing all heaven would cry: “Hear! Hear!”
MIGHT HASTEN THE LORD’S COMING.
Aye! ayel I bethink myself such a vast
procedure as that might hasten our Lord’s
coming, and that the expectation of many
millions of Christians, who believe in the
second advent, might realize then at that
conjunction of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. I do not say it would
be, yet who knows but that our blessed
aud adored Master, pleased with such a
plan of worldwide observance, might say
concerning this wandering and rebellious
planet, “That world at last shows a dispo
sition to appreciate what I have done for
it, and with one wave of my scarred hand I
will bless and reclaim and save it.”
That such a celebration of our Lord’s
birth, kept up for days and months, would
please all the good of the earth and might
ily speed on the gospel chariot and please
all the heavens, saintly, cherubic, seraphic,
archangelic and divine, is beyond question.
Oh, get ready for the world’s greatest fes
tivity I Tune your voices for the world’s
greatest anthem 1 Lift the arches for the
world’s mightiest procession 1 Let the ad
vancing standard of the army of years,
which has inscribed on one side of it “1900”
and on the other side “1901,” have also in
scribed on it the most charming name of
all the universe—the name of Jesus.
Whether this suggestion of a world’s
celebration of the nativity be taken or not,
it has allowed me an opportunity in a
somewhat unusual way of expressing my
love for the great central character of all
time and all eternity. He is the infinite
nonesuch. The armies of heaven drop on
their knees before him. After Bourdalone,
before overwhelmed audiences,has preached
him, and Milton in immortal blank verse
has sung him, and Michael Angelo has
glorfied the ceiling of the Vatican with
his second coming, and martyrs while
girdled and canopied with the flames of
the stake have with burning lips kissed
his memory, and in the “hundred and forty
and four thousand” of heaven, with feet on
seas of glass intershot with sunrise, have
with uplifted and down swung baton, and
sounding cornets, and waving banners, and
heaven capturing doxologies, celebrated
him, the story of his loveliness, and his
might, and his beauty, and his grandeur,
and his grace, and his intercession, and his
sacrifice, and of his birth and his death, will
remain untold. Be his name on our lips
while we live, and when we die, after we
have spoken farewell to father and mother
and wife and child, let us speak that name
which is the lullaby of earth and the trans
port of heaven.
Before the crossing of time on the mid
night between Dec. 31, 1900, and the 1st
of January, 1901, many of ns will be gone.
Some of you will hear the clock strike
19 of^ne century, wd m hoar after it
hear it stride Yo? another century, "but
many of you will not that midnight hear
either the stroke of the city clock or of the
old timepiece in the hallway of the home
stead. Seven years cut a wide swath
through churches and communities and
nations.
HEAVEN WILL WITNESS IT.
But those who cross from world to world
before Old Time in this world crosses that
midnight from century- to century will talk
among the thrones of the coming earthly
jubilee, and on the river bank, and in the
house of many mansions, until all heaven
will know of the coming of that celebra
tion that will fill the earthly nations with
joy and help augment the nations of heaven.
But whether here or there, we will take
part in the music and the banqueting if
we have made the Lord our portion.
Oh, how I would like to stand at my
front door some morning or noon or night
and see the sky part and the blessed Lord
descend in person, not as he will come in
the last judgment, with fire and hail and
earthquake, but in sweet tenderness, to
pardon all sin, and heal all wounds, and
wipe away all tears, and feed all hunger,
and right all wrongs, and illumine all dark
ness, and break all bondage, and harmonize
all discords.
Some think he will thus come, but
about that coming I make no prophecy,
for I am not enough learned in the Scrip
tures, as some of my friends are, to an
nounce a very positive opinion. But this
I do know—that it would be well for us to
have an international and an interworld
celebration of the anniversary of his birth
day about the time of the birth of the new
century, and that it will be wise beyond all
others’ wisdom for us to take him as our
present and everlasting coadjutor, and if
that darling of earth and heaven will only
accept you and me, after all our lifetime of
unworthiness and sin, we can never pay
him what we owe, though through all the
eternity to come we had every hour a new
song and every moment a new ascription
of homage and praise, for you see we were
far out among the lost sheep that the gos
pel hymn so pathetically describes:
Out in the desert he heard its cry.
Sick and helpless and ready to die,
Rut all through the mountains, thunder
riven.
And up from the rocky steep.
There rises a cry to the gate of heaven,
“Rejoice, I have found jay sheep!”
And the angels echo round the throne,
“Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own!”
A YEAR AT COLLEGE FREE
This is of Interest to Every Gill
The Sunny South is anxious to in
crease its circulation and thereby en
large the field of its work, which is
the fostering of literature in the
south. The following offer is in di
rect line with this work:
We will give free of cost a full year’s
tuition, including board, at a first-
class college, to any girl or young
lady who sends us 260 subscribers at
our regular subscription price of $2.60
a year. The young lady who sends us
this number of subscribers will be en
titled to a full year’s course in a
strictly first-class College, such as
Nashville College for Young La
dies, Nashville, Tenn., or Lucy Cobb
Institutb, Athens, Ga. We believe
there are a lot of energetic girls in
the South who would like a college
education and we make this offer in
order to give them an opportunity to
secure it. The offer is good until
September 1st, 1893, and the year’s
tuition at College will be given for
the course that starts next September.
The Sunny South is easy to canvass
for, since it is the bett $2.00 a year
paper published anywhere. Get your
friends to take it. Write to your ac
quaintances at a distance and secure
their subscription. It ought to be an
easy matter for a young lady who ap
plies herself to the task to secure 260
subscribers between now and the 1st
of September. Sample copies will be
sent when requested.
Address Sunny South
Atlanta, Ga.
JLl-naen or Itwf-nine.
Some people say “ke-neen” for quinine
Some people do not. This is the point of
a conversation which Senator Mitchell, of
Oregon, held recently with Representa
tive Binger Hermann, of that state. Mr.
Hermann was educated in Maryland, but
he went to Oregon when he was quite a
young man. Mr. Mitchell was educated
in Pennsylvania, and he remained there
long enough to practice law. Now, out in
Oregon such choice etymological moraela
as Tillamook and Wallowa and Kubli and
Scappoose are daily diet. Mr. Hermann
doesn’t have to ask anybody how to pro
nounce them. But since Mr. Hermann
went into the West a good many words
that were doubtless familiar to him in his
youth have become anglicized or galli-
cized or in some other way altered.
A few days ago Mr. Hermann was com
plaining of feeling unwell. When the
average Washingtonian has “that tired
feeling” he always thinks he has malaria.
Mr. Hermann was quite sure that he had
it, and he sat on a oouch in the Senate
chamber telling Mr. Mitchell all about it.
Mr. Mitchell was much interested and
apathetic. „ ^ .
don’t yon see a good doctor? he
id take a course of ke-neen?” for
>enator pronounced the familiar
ieve I’ll do that,” said Mr. Her-
‘I have been taking a lot of kwi-
1 it doesn’t seem to do me a hit