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a' ; K-. . - if** rrcßcaw * » w*v- erful Sermwa Aaaiuat Kvil-W* Munt BwVolite, m the Wreetiere ot 014, la Combatin* Sla. [Copyright, ISM, American Press Amo- W ashing ton, Nov. fl.—ln this discourse Dr. Talmage seleote one of the boldest fig ures of the Bible to present moot practical and encouraging truths; test, Ephesians vi, 12, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. ” Squpwniisbnees and fastidiousness were ! never charged against Paul’s rhetoric. In the war against evil he took the first weapon he could lay his hand on. For il lustration, he employed the theater, the arena, the foot race, and there was noth ing in the Isthmian game, with its wreath of pine leaves,dM- Pythian game, with its wreath of laurel and palm, or Nemean game, with its wreath of parsley, or any Boman circus, but he felt he had a right to put it in sermon or epistle, and are you not surprised that in my text he calls upon a wrestling bout for suggerilrcnessf Plu tarch says that wrestling is the most ar tistic and cunning of athletic games. We must make a wide difference between pugilism, the lowest of spectacles, and wrestling, which is an effort in sport to put down another on floor or ground, and we—all of us—lndulged in it in our boy hood days If we were healthful and plucky. The ancient wrestlers were first bathed in oil and then sprinkled with sand. The third throw decided the victory, and many a man who went down in the first throw or second throw in the third throw was on top, and his opponent under. Tho Homans did not like this game very much, for It was not savage enough, no blows or kicks being allowed in the game. They preferred the foot of hungry panther on the breast of fallen martyr. In wrestling, the opponents would bow in apparent suavity, advance face to face, put down both feet solidly, take each other by the arms and push each other backward and forward until the work began In real earnest, and there were contortions and strangulations and violent strokes of the foot of one contestant against the foot of the other, tripping him up, or, with strug, gle that threatened apoplexy or death, the defeated fell and the shouts of the specta tors greeted the victor. I guess Paul had seen some such contest, and it reminded him of the struggle of the soul with temp tation and the Struggle of truth with error and the struggle of heavenly forces against Apollyonio powers, and he dictates my text to ah amanuensis, for all his letters, save the one to Philemon, seem to have been dictated, and as the amanuensis goes on with his work I hear the groan and laugh and shout of earthly and celestial belliger ents. ‘ ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Polita Athletes. I notice that as these wrestlers advanced to throw each other they bowed one to the other. It was a civility, not only in Gre cian and Boman games, but in Ihter day, ttfvdl the wrestling bouts at Clerkenwell, England, and in the famous wrestling match during' the reign cf Henry 111, in pt. Giles' Field, between men of Westmin ster and people of London. However rough a twist and hard a pull each wrestler contemplated giving his opponent, they approached each other with politeness and suavity. The genuflexions, the affability, the courtesy in no wise hindered the de cisiveness of the contest. Well, Paul, I see what you mean. In this awful strug gle between right and wrong, we must not forget to be gentlemen and ladies. Affability never hinders, but always helps. You are powerless as soon as you get mad. Do not call rumsellers murderers. Do not call infidels fools. Do not call higher critics reprobates. Do not call all card players and theater goers children of the devil. Do not say that the dance breaks through into hell. Do not deal in vituper ation and billingsgate and contempt and adjectives dynamitic. The other side can beat us at that. Their dictionaries have more objurgation and brimstone. We are in the strength of God to throw Oat on jta back every abomination that curses the earth, but let us approach oyp mighty antagonist with suavity. Her cules, son of Jupiter and Alcmena, will by a precursor of smiles be helped rather than damaged for the performance of his “12 labors.” Let us be as wisely strategic in religiops circles as attorneys in court rooms, who are complimentary to each other in the opening remarks before they pomp into legal struggle such as that which left Rufus Choate or David Panj Brown triumphant or defeated. People who get into a rage in reformatory work accomplish nothing but the depletion of their own nervous system. There is such a thing as having a gun so hot at the touchhole that it explodes, killing the one that sets it off. There are some reforma tory meetings to which I always decline to go and take part, because they are apt to become demonstrations of bad temper. 1 never like to hear a man swear, even though he swear on the right side. The very Paul who in my text employed in illustration the wrestling match behaved pn a ipptporablp occasion as we ought to behave. The translators of the Bible made pn unintentional mistake when they rep resented Paul as insulting the people of Athens by speaking of ‘‘the unknown god Whom ye ignorantly worship.” Instead pt charging them with ignorance the orig inal Indicates be complimented them by suggesting that they were very religious, but as they confessed that there were some things they did not understand about God he proposed to say some things concern ing him, beginning where they had left off- The same Paul who said in one place, courteous,” and who had noticed tie bow preceding the wrestling match, her? exercises suavities before he proceeds proa? tically to throw down the rooky side of the AcropoUs the whole. Parthenon of Idolatries, Minerva and Jupiter smashed up with the rest of them. In this holy war polished rifles will do more execution than blunderbusses. Let our wrestlers bow as they go into the struggle which will leave all perdition under and all heaven on top. > Th* Teat of Strength. Remember also that these wrestlers went through severe and continuous course cf preparation for their work. They were put upon such diet as would best develop their Paul says, “Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.” The wrestlers were put under complete discipline—bathing, gym nastics, struggle in sport with each other to develop strength end give quickness to it was giant clutching giant. And, my friends, if we do not want ourselves to be thrown in this wrestte with the rin and error of the world we had better get ready by Christian discipline, by holy self de nial, by constant practice, by submitting to divine Mijtwvtod and direction. Do nut begrudgo the time and the money low that young man who to in preparation for IB* ministry, spending two years in grammar school and fonr years in college and three yean in theological seminary. I know that nine years are a big slice to take off of a man’s active life, but if you realized the height and strength of the archangels of evil iu our time with which that young man is going to wrestle you would not think nine years of preparation were too much. An uneducated ministry was ex cusable in other days, but not in this time,, loaded with schools and colleges. A man who wrote me the other day a letter asking advioe, as he felt called to preach the gospel, began the word “God” with a small g. That kind of a man is not called to preach the goapelr Illiterate men, preaching the gospel, quote for their own enoourhgment the Scriptural passage, “Open thy mouth wide, and I fill it." Yes! He will fill it with wind. Prepara tion for this wrestling is absolutely neces sary. Many years ago Dr. Newman and Dr. Sunderland, on the platform of Brig ham Young’s tabernacle at Salt Lake City, gained the victory because they had so long been skillful wrestlers for God. Otherwise Brigham Young, who was him self a giant in some things, would have thrown them out of the window. Get ready in Bible classes. Get ready in Chris tian Endeavor meetings. Get ready by giving testimony in obscure places before giving testimony in conspicuous places. A Miarhty Straggle. Your going around with a Bagster’s Bible, with flaps at the edges, under your arm does not qualify you for the work of an evangelist. In this day of profuse gab remember that it is not merely capacity to talk, but the fact that you have some thing to say, that is going to fit you for the struggle into which you are to go with a smile on your face and illumination on your brow, but out of which you will not come until all your physical and mental and moral and religious energies have been taxed to the utmost and you have not a nerve left or a thought unexpended or a prayer unsaid or a sympathy unwept. In this struggle between right and wrong aocept no challenge on platform or in newspaper, unless you are prepared. Do not misapply the story of Goliath the Great and David the Little. David had been practicing with a sling on dogs and wolves and bandits, and a thousand times had he swirled a stone around his head be fore he aimed at the forehead of the giant, and tumbled him backward, otherwise the big foot of Goliath would almost have covered up the crushed form of the son of Jesse. Notice also that the success of a wrestler depended on his having his feet well Slanted before he grappled his opponent. luch depends upon the way the wrestler stands. Standing on an uncertain piece of ground or bearing all his welghPon right foot or all his weight on left foot, he is not ready. A slight cuff of his antag onist will capsize him. A stroke of the heel of the other wrestler will trip him. And in this struggle for God and right eousness, as well as for our own souls, we want our feet firmly planted in the gospel —both feet on the Bock of Ages. It will not do to believe the Bible in spots or think some of it true and some of it un true. You just make up your mind that the story of the garden of Eden is an alle gory, and the epistle of James an interpo lation and that the miracles of Christ can be accounted for on natural grounds, with out any belief in the supernatural, and the first time you are Interlocked in a wrestle with sin and satan you will go un der and your feetwill be higher than your head. It will not do to have one foot oq a rook and the other on the sand. The old book would long ago have gone to pieces if it had been vulnerable. But of the millions of Bibles that have been printed within the last 25 years, not one chapter has been omitted, and the omis sion of one chapter would have been the cause of the rejection of the whole edition. Alas, for those who while trying to prove that Jonah was never swallowed of a whale, themselves get swallowed of the whale of unbelief, which digests but never ejects its Victims, The inspiration of the Bible Is not more certain than the preser vation of the Bible in its present condi tion. After so many centuries of assault on the book would it not be a matter of economy, to say the least—economy of brain and economy of stationery and econ omy of printers’ ink—if the batteries now assailing the book would change their aim and be aimed against some othey books, and the world shown that Walter Scott did not write “The Lady of the Lake,” nor Homer “The Iliad,” nor Virgil “The Georgies,” sor Thomas Moore “Laila Bookh,” or that Washington’s farewell address was written by Thomas Paine, and that the war of the American Devolu tion never occurred. That attempt would be quite as successful as this long timed attack anti-Biblical, and then it would be new. Oh, keep out of this wrestling bout with the ignorance and the wretchedness of the world unless you feel that both feet are planted in the eternal veracities of tho book of Almighty God! Science of Wrestling, Notice also that in this science of wres tling, to which Paul refers in my text, it was the third throw that decided the con test. A wrestler might be thrown once and thrown twice, but the third time he might recover himself, and by an unex pected twist of arm or curve of foot gain the day. Well, that is broad, smiling, un mistakable gospel. Some whom I address through ear or eye, by voice or printed page, have been thrown in their wrestle with evil habit. Aye, you have been thrown twice, but that does not mean, oh, worsted soul, that you are thrown forever! I have no au thority for saying how many times a man •znay sin and-be forgiven, or how many times he may fali and yet rise again, but I have authority for saying that he may fall 490 times, and 490 times get up. The Bible declares that God will foigive 70 times 7, and if you will employ the rule of multiplication you will find that 70 times 7is 490. Blessed be God for such a gos pel of high hope and thrilling encourage ment and magnificent rescue. A goepel of lost sheep brought home on shepherd’s shoulder, and the prodigals who got into the low work of putting husks into swines’ troughs brought home to jewelry and ban queting and hilarity that made the -raft ers ring. Three sketches of the same man: A hap ly home, of which he and a lassie taken from a neighbor’s house are the united a I bcn<i. ic/tfi of bappiDft-s roil on aftor | a A K _.a a I I w ® « - * , . ® I,— ♦ I tunate acquaintance who lead* him in cir cles too convivial, too late housed, too scandalous. After awhile, hto money gone and not able to bear bls part of the ex- ■ pence, he to gradually shoved out and Ig- Xored and pushed away. Now, wbat a dilapidated home is bls! A dissipated lift always shows itself in faded window our -1 lalds, and impoverished wmmliolm, and ddv jeoted burroundings, and in broken paiC Jugs of the garden fence, and the unhinged gate, and tho dislocated doorbell, and the disappearance of wife and children from beCnito among which they shone the bright est, and laughed the gladdest. If any man was ever down, that husband and fa ther is down. " < A Pawerfal Foe. The fact is he got into a wrestle with evil that pushed and pulled and contorted and exhausted him worse than any Olympian game ever treated a Grecian, and he was thrown—thrown out of prosperity into gloom, thrown out of good association in to bad, thrown out of health into invalid ism, thrown out of happiness into misery. But one day while slinking through one of tho back streets, not wishing to be rec ognized, a good thought crosses hto mind, for he has heard of men flung flat rising again. Arriving at his house, he calls his wife in and shuts the door and says: “Mary,l am going to do differently. This Is not what I promised you when we were married. You have been very patient with me and have borne everything, al though I would have had no right to com plain if you bad left me and gone home to your father’s house. It seems to me that <moe or twice when I was not myself I struck you, and several times, I know, I called you hard names. Now I want you to forgive me. I am going to do better, and I want you to help me.” “Help you!” she says. “Bless your soul, of course I will help you. I knew you didn’t mean it when you treated me roughly. All that is in the past. Never refer to it again. Today let us begin anew. ” Sympathizing friends come around and kind business people help the man to something to do, so that he can again earn a living. The children soon have clothing so that they can go to school. The old songs which the wife sang years ago come back to her memory and she sings them over again at the cradle or while preparing the noonday meal. Do mestic resurrection! He comes home earlier than he used to, and he is glad to spend the evening playing games with the children or helping them with arithmetic or grammar lessons which are a little too , hard. Time passes on, and some outsider . suggests to him that be is not getting as k much out of life as he ought and proposes , an occasional visit to scenes of worldliness , and dissipation. He consents to go once, and, after much solicitation, twice. Then his old habit comes back. He says he has been belated and could not get back until midnight. He had to see some western merchant that had arrived and talk of business with him before he got out of town. Kindness and geniality again quit the disposition of that husband and father. The wife’s heart breaks in a new place. That man goes into a second wrestle with evil habit and is flung and all hell cackles at the moral defeat. “I told you so I’ ’ say many good people who have no faith in the reformation of a fallen man. “I told you so! You made a great fuss about hto restored home, but I knew it would not last. You can’t trust these fellows who have once gone wrong.” So with this un fortunate, things get worse and worse, and his family have to give up the house, and the last valuable goes to the pawn broker’s shop. But that unfortunate man to sauntering along the street one Sunday night, and he goes up to a church door, and the congregation are singing the sec ond hymn, the one just before sermon, and it to William Cowper’s glorious hymn: There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains. Victory Through Christ. He goes into tho vestibule of the ahurch and stope there, not feeling well enough dressed to go among the worshipers, and he hears the minister say, “You will find the words of my text in Luke, the nine teenth chapter and tenth verse, ‘The Son . of Man to oome to seek and save that which was lost. ’ ” The listener in the vestibule says: “If any man was ever lost, I am lost, and the Son of Man came to save that which is lost, and he has found me, and he will take me out of this lost con dition. Oh, Christ, have mercy on me.” The poor man has courage now to enter the main audience room, and he sits down on the first seat by the door, and when at the close of the service the minister comes down the aisle the poor man tells his story, and he is enoouraged and invited to come again, and the way is cleared for him for membership Ina Christian church, and he feels the omnipotence of what Peter the apostle said when he spoke of those “kept by the power of God through faith unto complete salvation.” Yet he is to have one more wrestle before he is free from evil habits, and he goes into it not in his own strength, for that has fail ed him twice, but in the strength of the Lord God Almighty. The old habit seises him, and he seizes it, and the wrestlers bend backward and forward and from side to side in awful struggle, until the mo ment comes for his liberation, and with both arms infused with strength from God he lifts that habit, swings it in air and hurls it intothe perdition from which it camo and from which it never again will rise. Victory, victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ! Hear it, all ye wres tlers! It threw him twice, but the third time he threw it, and by the grace of God threw it so hard he is as safe now as if ho had been ten years in heaven. Oh, lam so glad that Paul in my text suggests the wrestlerand the power of the third throw. But notice that my text suggests thee the wrestlers on thoother side in the great struggle for the world’s redemption have all the forces of demonology to help them, “We wreetle not against flesh and blood, , but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this , world, against spiritual wickedness in i high places.” All military men will tell you that there l u nothing more unwise than to under estimate an army. In estimating what we have to contend with the most of the reformers do not recognize the biggest op posers. They talk about the agnosticism, and the atheism, and the materialism, and the Nihilism, and the Pantheism, and the Brahmanism, and the Mohammedanism, as well as the more agile and organized and endowed wickednesses of our day. But these are only a part of tho hostili ties urrayed against God and the best In terest aof humanity. The Invisible hosts ■ - - - -x- saflfT > /• . - 3- SVTot^n^XT-SiT toto Ihed£ I 11 to no luuch the gambling. It * “be great best of spiritual antagonists led on by Asia) or Luo! for or Beelzebub or Asmodeus or Abrimanoa or Abaddon, just as you please to call tba leader infrenallstie. Can yon doubt that the human agencies of evil are backed up by Plutonic agencies? If to were only a cowman we® steed, with panting nostril and flaunting mane and clattering hoof, rushing upon us, perhaps we might eiutoh him by the bit and hurl him back upon bis haunches, but it to tho black horse cavalry of perdition who dash down, and 'their riders swing swords which, though irtvtaibie, cleave individuals and homes ana-nations. I tell ycu Paul was right when nbsuggeeted that we wrestle not with pygmies, but with giants that will don u us unless the Lord Almighty to our coad jutor. Bleeecd i.e God that we have now and further on will have In mightier de gree that divine help! Triumph of liiphteosuacM. The time is coming—l know it will quicken your pulses when I mention to— when the last mighty evil of the world Will be grappled by righteousness and thrown. Which of tho great evils will survive all the others I know not, whether war er revenge or fraud or lust or intem perance or gambling or Sabbath desecra tion. II will not be “the survival of the fittest, ” but the survival of the worst. It will be the evil the most thoroughly in trenched, moat completely re-enforoed, moot patronized by wealth and fashion and pomp, most applauded by all the prin cipalities and powers and rulers of dark ness. It will stand, with grim viaage, looking down upon the graves of all the other slain abominations—graves dug by the hot shovels of despair and surmounted by such epltaphlology as thto: “It biteth like a serpent and stlngeth like an adder. ” “The wages of sin is death.” “Her house Inclineth unto death and her paths unto the dead. ” * ‘There is away that Beemeth right to a man, but the end thereof to death. ” Yes! I imagine we have arrived at the time when we may say, Yonder stands the last and only great evil of all the world to be wrestled down. It stands, not only looking upon the graves of all the entombed and epltaphed iniquities of the world, but ever and anon gazing up ward in defiance of the heavens and shak-' Ing its fist at the Almighty, saying: “Nothing can put me down. I have seen all tho other enemies of the human race wrestled down and destroyed, but there to no arm or foot, human or angelio or de iflethat can throw me. I have ruined whole generations, and I swear by all the thrones of diabolism that I will ruin thto generation. Come on, all ye churches and all ye reformatory institutions and all ye legislaturesand all ye thrones! I chal lenge you! I plant my feet on this redhot rock of the world’s woe. I stretch forth my arms for the mightiest wrestle any world has ever seen. Come on, oome on!” Then righteousness will aocept the chal lenge, and the two mighty wrestlers will grapple, while all the galleries of earth and heaven look down from one side, and all the fiery chasms of perdition look up from the other side. The two wrestlers sway to and fro and turn this way and that, and now the monster evil seems the mightier of the two, and now righteous ness seems about to triumph. The prize is worth a struggle, for to to not a chaplet of laurel or palm, but the reecue of a world and a wreath put on the brow by him who promtoed. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown.” Three worlds—earth, heaven and hell—hold their breath while waiting for the result of-tbis struggle, when, with one mighty swing of an arm muscled with omnipotence, right eousness hurls the last evil first on its knees and then on its face, and then roll ing off and down with a crash wilder than that with which Samson hurled the tem ple of Dagon when he got hold of its two chief pillars, but more like the throwing of satan out of heaven, as described by John Milton: Him the Almighty power flung Headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal Are Who durst defy tho Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day end night To mortal man, he, with his horrid crew, Lay vanquished, rolling in the flcry gulf, Confounded, though immortal. A Boante World. Aye, that suggests a cheering thought, that if all the realms of demonology are on the other side all the realms of angel ology are on our side, amtfflg them Gabriel and Michael the archangel, and the angel of the new covenant, and they are now talking over the present awful struggle and final glorious triumph, talking amid the alabaster pillars and in the ivory pal aces, and along the broad ways and grand avenues of the great capital of the uni verse, and amid the spray of fountains with rainbows like the “rainbow round the throne,” and as they take their morn ing ride In the chariots with white horses bitted with gold that were seen by John in vision apocalyptic, and while waiting In temples for the one hundred and forty and four thousand to chant, accompanied by harpers and trumpeters, and thunder ingsand halleluiahs like the voice of many waters. Yes, all heaven is on our side, and the “high places of wickedness” spo ken of in my text are not so high as the high places of heaven, where there are enough reserve forces if our earthly forces should be overpowered, or in cowardice fall back, to sweep down some morning at daybreak and take all this earth for God before the city clocks could strike IS for noon. And the cabinet of heaven, the most augusfl cabinet in the universe, made Up of three—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost—are now In ses sion in the King’s palace, and they are with us, and they are going to see us through, and they invite us as soon as we have done our share of the work to go up and see them and celebrate the final vic tory, that to more sure to oome than to morrow’s sunrise. While I think of to, the Scotch evangelistic hymn comes upon me and stirs the strong tide of Scotch blood that rolls through my arteries: lies bonnie, bonnie vol' that we're Jivia ja the noo. 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