Mysteries by T. D. Talmage

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1882

Mysteries.

By T. D. Talmage

And so many people in this day get up into the tree of curiosity or speculation to see Christ. They ask a thousand queer questions about his divinity, about God's sovereignty, and the eternal decrees. They speculate, and criticise, and hang on the outside limbs of a great sycamore. But they must come down from that if they want to be saved. We cannot be saved as philosophers, but as little children. You cannot go to Heaven by way of Athens, but by way of Bethlehem. What matters it who are elected to be saved, when we know that unless we believe and repent, we shall be damned? Why be perplexed about the way sin came into the world, when the great question is, how shall we get sin driven out of our hearts? How many spend their time in criticism and religious speculation! They take the Rose of Sharon, or the Lily of the Valley, pull out the anther, scatter the corolla, and say: “Is that the beautiful flower of religion that you are talking about?” No flower is beautiful after you have torn it all to pieces. The path to Heaven is so plain that a fool need not make any mistake about it, and yet men stop and cavil. Suppose that going toward the Pacific Slope, I had resolved that I would kill all the grizzly bears and the panthers on either side of the way. I would never have got to the Pacific Coast. When I went out to hunt the grizzly bear, the grizzly bear would have come out to hunt me. Here is a plain road to Heaven. Men say they will not take a step on it until they make game of all the theories that bark and growl at them from the thicket. They forget the fact, as they go out to hunt the theory, the theory comes out to hunt them; so they perish. We must receive the kingdom of Heaven in simplicity. William Pennington was one of the wisest men of this country; Governor of his own State, and afterward Speaker of the House of Representatives. Yet, when God called him to be a Christian, he went in and sat down among some children who were applying for church-membership, and said to his pastor: “Talk to me just as you do to these children, for I know nothing about it.” There is no need of bothering ourselves about mysteries when there are so many things that are plain.—Rev. T. D. Talmage.