Some preachers use a chisel, others a hammer, some are sharp and piercing, some poetic, while others carve and sand, but T.DeWitt Talmage I liken to a painter whose brush paints Christ and his sermons with sweeping soft colors.

There are times when his brush is just what I long for.

The context of this paragraph is about magnetism in personality.

“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 fist 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 of a poor young man who 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 epaulets; 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 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.”

Here is another example as he exhalts the Lord.

“In the Eye Infirmary, how many diseases of that delicate organ have been cured? But Jesus says to one born blind, “Be open!” and the light of heaven rushes through gates that have never before been opened. Nature is his servant. The flowers – he twisted them into his sermons; the winds – they were his lullaby when he slept in the boat; the rain – it hung glittering on the thick foliage of the parables; the star of Bethlehem – it sang a Christmas carol over his birth; the rocks – they beat a dirge at his death. Behold his victory over the grave! Here comes the Conqueror of Death. He enters that realm and says: “Daughter of Jairus, sit up;” and she sat up. To Lazarus, “Come forth”; and he came forth. To the widows son he said, “Get up from that bier”; and he goes home with his mother. Then Jesus snatched up the keys of death and hung them to his girdle, and cried until all the graveyards of earth heard him, “O Death! I will be thy plague! O Grave! I will be thy destruction!”

Photos taken from the Internet