His Name Is Wonderful
By T. Dewitt Talmage
Dr. Talmage
The prophet lived in a dark time. For some three thousand years the world had been getting worse. Kingdoms had arisen and perished. As the captain of a vessel in distress sees relief coming across the water, so the prophet, amid the stormy times in which he lived, put the telescope of prophecy to his eye, and saw, seven hundred and fifty years ahead, one Jesus advancing to the rescue.
I want to show that when Isaiah called Christ the Wonderful, he spoke wisely.
In most houses there is a, picture of Christ. Sometimes it represents him with face effeminate; sometimes with a face despotic. I have seen West’s grand sketch of the rejection of Christ; I hare seen the face of Christ as cut on an emerald, said to be by command of Julius Caesar; and yet I am convinced that I shall never know how Jesus looked until, on that sweet Sabbath morning, I shall wash the last sleep from my eves in the cool river of heaven. I take up this book of divine photographs, and I look at Luke’s sketch, at Mark’s sketch, at John’s sketch, and at Paul’s sketch, and I say, with Isaiah, “Wonderful!”
I think that you are all interested in the story of Christ. You feel that he is the only one who can help you. You have unbounded admiration for the commander who helped his passengers ashore when he himself perished, but have you no admiration for him who rescued our souls, himself falling back into the waters from which he had saved us?
Christ was wonderful in the magnetism of his person.
After the battle of Antietam, when a general rode along the lines, although the soldiers were lying down exhausted, they rose with great enthusiasm and huzzaed. As Napoleon returned from his captivity, his first step on the wharf shook all the kingdoms, and two hundred and fifty thousand men joined his standard. It took three thousand troops to watch him in his exile. So there have been men of wonderful magnetism of person. But hear me while I tell you of a poor young man that came up from Nazareth to produce a thrill such as has never been excited by any other. Napoleon had around him the memories of Austerlitz, and Jena, and Badajos; but here was a man who had fought no battles; who wore no epaulettes; who brandished no sword. He is no titled man of the schools, for he never went to school. He had probably never seen a prince, or shaken hands with a nobleman. The only extraordinary person we know of as being in his company was his own mother and she was so poor that in the most delicate and solemn hour that ever comes to a woman’s soul she was obliged to lie (down amid camel-drivers grooming the beasts of burden.
I imagine Christ one day standing in the streets of Jerusalem. A man descended from high lineage is standing beside him, and says, “My father was a merchant prince; he had a castle on the beach at Galilee. Who was your father?” Christ answers, “Joseph, the carpenter.” A man from Athens is standing there unrolling his parchment of graduation, and says to Christ, “Where did you go to school?” Christ answers, “I never graduated.” Aha! the idea of such an unheralded young man attempting to command the attention of the world! As well some little fishing village on Long Island shore attempt to arraign New York. Yet no sooner does lie set his foot in the towns or cities of Judea than every thing is in commotion. The people go out on a picnic, taking only food enough for a day, yet are so fascinated with Christ that, at the risk of starving, they follow him out into the wilderness. A nobleman falls down flat before him, and says, “My daughter is dead.” A beggar tries to rub the dimness from his eyes, and says, “Lord, that my eyes may be opened.” A poor, sick, panting Roman presses through the crowd, and says, “I must touch the hem of his garment.” Children, who love their mother better than any one else, struggle to get into his arms, and to kiss his cheek, and to run their fingers through his hair, and for all time putting Jesus so in love with the little ones that there is hardly a nursery in Christendom from which he does not take one, saying, “I must have them; I will fill heaven with these; for every cedar that I plant in heaven I will have fifty white lilies. In the hour when I was a poor man in Judea they were not ashamed of me, and now that I have come to a throne I do not despise them. Hold it not back, oh weeping mother; lay it on my warm heart. Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
What is this coming down the road? A triumphal procession. He is seated, not in a chariot, but on an ass; and yet the people take off their coats and throw them in the way. Oh, what a time Jesus made among the children, among the beggars, among the fishermen, among tile philosophers! You may boast of self-control, but if you had seen him you would have put your arms around his neck and said, ” Thou art altogether lovely.”
Jesus was wonderful in the opposites and seeming antagonisms of his nature.
You want things logical and consistent, and you say, ” How could Christ be God and man at the same time?” John says Christ was the Creator: “All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made.” Matthew says that he was omnipresent: “Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Christ declares His own eternity: “I am Alpha and Omega.” How call he be a lion, under his foot crushing kingdoms, and yet a lamb licking the hand that slays him? At what point do the throne and the manger touch? If Christ was God, why flee into Egypt? Why not stand his ground? Why, instead of bearing the cross, not lift up his right hand and crush his assassins? Why stand and be spit upon? Why sleep on the mountain, when he owned the palaces of eternity? Why catch fish for his breakfast on the beach in the chill morning, when all the pomegranates are his, and all the vineyards his, and all the cattle his, and all the partridges his? Why walk when weary, and his feet stone-bruised, when he might hare taken the splendors of the sunset for his equipage, and moved with horses and chariots of fire? Why beg a drink from the wayside, when out of the crystal chalices of eternity he poured the Euphrates, the Mississippi, and the Amazon, and dipping his hand in the fountains of heaven, and shaking that hand over the world, from the tips of his fingers dripped the great lakes and the oceans? hy let the Roman regiment put him to death, when he might have rode down the sky followed by all the cavalry of heaven, mounted on white horses of eternal victory?
You cannot understand. Who can? You try to confound me. I am confounded before you speak;. Paul said it was unsearchable. He went climbing up from argument to argument, and from antithesis to antithesis, and from glory to glory, and then sank down in exhaustion as he saw far above him other heights of divinity unscaled, and exclaimed, “that in all things he might have the PRE-EMINENCE.”
Again: Christ was wonderful in his teaching.
The people had been used to formalities and technicalities; Christ upset all their notions as to how preaching ought to be done. There was this peculiarity about his preaching: the people knew what he meant. His illustrations were taken from the hen calling her chickens together; from salt; from candles; from fishing tackle; from a hard creditor collaring a debtor. How few pulpits of this day would have allowed him entrance? He would have been called undignified and familiar in his style of preaching. And yet the people went to hear him. Those old Jewish rabbis might have preached on the side of Olivet fifty years and never got an audience. The philosophers sneered at his ministrations and said, “This will never do!” The lawyers caricatured, but the common people heard him gladly. Suppose you that there were any sleepy people in his audiences? Suppose you that any woman who ever mixed bread was ignorant of what he meant when he compared the kingdom of heaven with leaven or yeast? Suppose you that the sunburned fishermen, with the fish-scales upon their hands, were listless when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven as a net? We spen
Charles H Spurgeon
“It’s above me, around me, in me and under me,” he said.