On my snowiest, nicest Sunday night of the
year, we begin a series which I believe
will be probably the best that I have
ever given here, comparing myself with myself, not
with somebody else but with myself.
And I want to read a passage which
will be a kind of a general text.
It is the 45th Psalm, or at least
part of it.
Psalm 45.
My heart is indicting a good matter.
I speak of the things which I have
made touching the King.
My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer.
Then, after that preface, he says, then addressing
the King, Thou art fairer than the children
of men.
Grace is poured forth by thy lips.
Therefore God hath blessed thee forever.
Gird thy sword upon my thigh, O Most
Mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty.
And in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of
truth and meekness and righteousness.
Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things,
and arrows are sharp in the heart of
the King's enemies, whereby the people fall unto
thee.
Then he addresses him as God.
He had addressed him as King, now he
addresses him as God.
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever.
The scepter of thy kingdom is a right
scepter.
Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness.
Therefore, God, thy God, hath anointed thee with
the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes
and cashew out of the ivory palaces, whereby
they have made thee glad.
Kings' daughters are among thine honorable women.
Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen
in gold of Ophir.
Hearken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine
ear.
Forget also thine own people and thy father's
house.
So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty,
for he is thy Lord, worship thou him.
Verse 11 will be the verse which I'll
sort of lay down as a background.
So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty,
the desire of God is toward his people,
and he is thy Lord.
Therefore, worship thou him.
Now, I am down in front of that
big building, I think they call it City
Hall, which has some benches out in front.
I'm waiting on a man there, and he
and I are going to a meeting.
As I sit quietly waiting and looking at
the people go by, an interesting-looking young
man comes over and occupies the bench alongside
of me.
I notice that he is friendly, but a
little puzzled.
He looks at me inquiringly, as if he
were wanting to address me.
I smile, and he smiles back, and I
say to him, Do we know each other?
No, he said, I think not.
Well, is there anything I could do for
you?
Well, maybe, he said, I don't know really.
I seem to be in a kind of
a jam.
I said, well, I'll say, what's the trouble?
Well, he said, something happened.
He said, I dimly remember that it seemed
like several days ago I tripped and fell
somewhere here in the city, and I bumped
my head, and it's terribly sore still.
And an odd thing now is, I can't
remember anything beyond that bump.
When I woke up, I'd been robbed, my
wallet was gone, my papers, I have nothing
to identify me, and I don't know who
I am.
I think he's teasing me.
And I say, now wait, you don't know
who you are?
What's your name?
And he says, you'll think I'm foolish, but
I don't know.
Where do you live?
And he says, now again, you won't believe
me, but I don't know where I live.
Are you married?
He said, I can't remember.
Do you have children?
Do you have family in the home, any
relatives?
He said, I probably have, but I can't
recall.
He said, I know nobody.
Well, I say, where are you from?
He said, I don't know where I'm from.
I must be either Canadian or American or
English.
He said, I've been thinking hard these two
or three days that I'm evidently of that
side, but I don't know where I'm from.
And by that time I'm disturbed.
And I say, now wait, why are you
in Toronto?
Well, he says, that's the thing.
I don't know why I'm here in the
city.
What do you do?
And he says, I don't know what I
do.
I can't recall.
And I have no wallet, no papers, no
identification.
I only know I'm getting terribly tired.
I've been wandering the streets, and you're the
friendly looking, and I came over, but I
don't know that you can help me.
I don't know who I am.
I don't know my name.
I don't know any of friends that I
might have.
I simply have a blank.
And it dates back to when I took
that terrible fall and bumped my head there
on the concrete.
He said, it's just everything is gone, and
I don't know where I came from nor
why I'm here.
And I said, now try to think a
little bit.
Do you live in Toronto?
Are you from Montreal, Vancouver, maybe across the
border, maybe you're from Chicago, New York?
He said, I wish I could tell you,
but I simply don't know.
It's headache, he said.
I can't think.
I can't recall a thing.
I can remember everything back to that, but
I can't remember anything beyond it.
Now, that man has what is called amnesia.
That can affect you mildly, or that can
affect you totally, so that you do not
know anything at all about your past, or
it'll affect you only in certain areas.
That is a reality.
That's not nonsense or foolishness.
That happens, and people do find themselves.
They wake up out of a shock and
find themselves completely without memory.
They don't know where they came from, or
who they are, or what their name is.
And if their friend walks up, they don't
know him.
Let's go a little further with our story.
About the time I'm about to give the
fellow up, a distinguished-looking gentleman comes down
the sidewalk.
He has a little goatee, and his collar
turned about, gait's ajar, collar on.
And he turns idly and looks toward the
bench where we sit, and suddenly lets out
a delighted yell, and rushes over, calls my
newfound friend by his name, grabs hold of
him, shakes his hand, and says, Where have
you been?
Well, he said, Pardon me, sir, but you
evidently know me, but I don't know you.
What?
You don't know me?
Why, man, we came here three days ago.
Don't you know we're the Philharmonic Orchestra?
I'm the leader, and you're the violinist, and
we were to do several violin concertos, or
concerti, if you like the Italian back there,
two days, two nights ago.
And you didn't show up, and I didn't
know you weren't there.
And when the time came for the violin
to come in, no violin, it was humiliating
to me.
We've been searching the city for you.
So he says, That's who I am, and
that's why I'm in Toronto.
I'm here at the, call it down here,
the King Center, and we're here to give
concerts, yes.
And I'm the featured violin soloist, and we're
doing Bach and Beethoven, and I didn't know
it.
No, you didn't know it, evidently, but that's
come on with me.
Well, he said, I thank you, but I
can't take your word for it.
I don't know whether I can play a
violin or not.
I don't know you, and I don't know
what city this is.
I don't know anything.
Well, now that sounds rather silly, but that's
going on all the time.
The police are having this kind of trouble,
and doctors and psychiatrists are working with this
all the time.
Gets into the newspaper sometimes, sometimes it doesn't.
No more did I make up that story,
which is not a made-up story, really,
it could happen and does.
Because I wanted to tell you something, that
there was a man one time by the
name of Adam, and he had a fall,
and he got a terrible bump, and his
wife had a fall too, and she got
a terrible bump.
And when they shook the fog out of
their eyes and looked at each other, he
didn't know where he was, nor where he'd
come from, and she didn't know who she
was, nor where she'd come from.
And they didn't know why they were here,
they didn't know what they were here for,
and they didn't know their own names, they
didn't know their relatives, if they had any.
They didn't know the purpose for their existence.
They simply tried to shake the fog out,
but it wouldn't shake.
They didn't know why they were born, and
they didn't know where they were precisely, and
they didn't know why they were here, and
they didn't know what they were born to
do.
So they took hand in hand, as Milton
said, and through the valley made their solitary
way.
Now that, my brothers and sisters, is exactly
where we are.
That's where the city of Toronto is tonight,
and that is where the North American continent
is tonight.
That's where the Asiatics and the Negroes and
the Arabs and the Anglo-Saxons and the
Germans and the English, that's where we are,
from pole to pole and from river to
the end of the earth.
We have a strange amnesia.
We got a bump, and now we don't
know why we were created, we don't know
why we're here.
And I say to my imaginary friend, Can
I do anything for you?
He said, I'm hungry and I'm cold and
I need to sleep.
I need three things.
I need food, I need a warm shelter,
and I need a bed to sleep in.
I need these three things.
But I say to him, these are your
immediate appetites, immediate needs.
But what is your big, important need?
Until his friend walked up, the concert director,
he didn't know why he was in the
city.
He didn't know what he had come to
do.
And that's exactly where we find the human
race.
We're here, and outside of our immediate appetites,
we don't know why we're here.
You say to the young fellow, he's just
out of high school or maybe just out
of college, and you say, Good morning, Bob,
good morning.
And you sit him down and get to
talking with him.
And why are you here, Bob?
Well, a certain appetite, a certain immediate appetite.
I want to get married, I'd like to
make money, and I'd like to travel.
Certain immediate appetites, I want to fulfill them,
and so I'm going to live for the
fulfillment of these immediate appetites.
But listen, Bob, those are short-sighted things.
You'll do them and then you'll get old
and die, but what's the big overriding purpose
of your life?
And he says, I don't know whether I
have any.
But wait a minute, now, you're telling me
you don't know why you were born?
He laughs embarrassedly and says, No, I don't
know why I was born.
I only know that I came to myself
and found I was, and I went to
school and I am here, but I have
no memory of any past and I have
no expectation of any future.
I don't know why I'm here.
I don't know what I was born for.
My brothers and sisters, let me tell you,
that's what's the matter with the world today
everywhere, anywhere from the universities to the coal
mines.
We don't know why we're here.
We have spiritual amnesia.
We don't know what our purpose in life
is.
We don't know why we were created at
all.
We don't know what we were sent to
do.
We don't know why we exist.
But we try to get by somehow.
We travel, we play golf, we drive cars,
we eat, we sleep, we rest, we look
at beautiful things, and they're all short-sighted.
They're all imperfect and contingent.
They don't lead all the way out.
No man can stand and say, I stand
here knowing why I was born.
I stand here knowing what I'm here for.
I stand here and look up and know
why I came into the world and what
I've got to do and why God ever
made me in the first place.
Well, now, my brothers and sisters, I want
to tell you that the Bible is the
book that tells us.
It tells us that that bump we got
that gave us amnesia was called the fall
of man.
It tells us that when God created us,
he made us for a purpose, and we
were created for a purpose.
You know, the Shorter Catechism asks the question,
What is the chief end of man?
And it furnishes the answer.
There wouldn't be any answer.
If it didn't come from the Bible, furnish
the answer.
What is the chief end of man?
That is, what are you here for, Bob?
What's your chief end?
Well, what's your purpose for being?
And he shakes his head until he's fed
the answer out of the book.
And the book says to glorify God and
enjoy him forever.
Worship, that's the chief end of man.
Now, that's my thesis for all these coming
weeks, and if you don't like that and
if that's not interesting at all, then I
can't expect you to come and hear me.
But if you want to hear this developed
on through, then I'd like to have you
come and I'd like to have you tell
others, because I want to deliver my soul
as a prophet of God to the people
of Toronto for the next few weeks, and
to tell them why they're created and why
they're here.
Not to the satisfaction of a needed appetite
only, but to something bigger and grander and
more eternal, and it is that we might
worship God and enjoy him forever.
Now, you see, that's why we were created.
God never does anything without a purpose.
God is intelligent because intellect is an attribute
of the deity, and everything God does, he
does with a purpose.
And so he never acts without an intelligent
purpose.
Nothing in the world is without meaning, even
if we don't see the meaning.
I confess that I murk a little sometimes,
as we all are at these student uprisings.
A lot of young fellows and girls, not
dry behind their ears yet, decide they know
how to run the world better than the
older people who have gone through the fire.
And so they stage demonstrations.
They stage one demonstration that kept Eisenhower out
of Japan.
They staged another demonstration that overthrew the Korean
man, what was named Sigmund Henry.
And they are constantly staging demonstrations.
What are they demonstrating for?
Well, apart from the fact that they are
just full of ginger and have to get
rid of it, that's the natural part.
But as far as any purpose is concerned,
they are staging demonstrations because they are mad.
They are mad at themselves, they are mad
at the world, they are mad at everybody
because they don't know why they are here.
They suddenly wake up to consciousness and intelligent
life and they say, wait a minute, look,
look, look at me, what am I here
for?
Somebody says, why are you here?
To get married and bear a family.
Oh, very well, but what will they be
here for?
Well, they'll be here to get married and
bear a family.
What will they be here for?
I demand an answer, why am I here?
Nobody knows.
And so the students get angry.
They say, well, I'm surely not here simply
to be cannon fodder.
I'm not here simply to be blown up.
I'm not here simply to pay taxes.
Surely that's not the chief end of man.
I am not here just in order that
I might eat because my dog eats and
the horse over there eats.
I'm not here that I might breed the
cat breed in the alley.
I am not here.
These are short range things.
There must be something bigger, but they don't
know what.
And so they get mad and stage demonstrations
and utter curses against us older folks who
didn't tell them why they were born.
But God tells us why we were born.
He says, now this is why.
I started to say, when I interrupted myself,
that one of the most interesting poems that
I've ever seen was written by a Mohammedan
Sufi back in, oh, sorry, I mentioned it.
I don't remember what century it was, but
a long time ago, maybe 14th, 15th century.
Omar Khayyam was his name, and Fitzgerald translated
101 of his quatrains into English, along with
the New Testament and Emerson and Wordsworth.
That was my early education.
Well, he says in one of these quatrains,
into this universe and why not knowing nor
whence like water willy-nilly flowing, and out
of it like wind along the waist, whither
I know not, whither willy-nilly going.
He doesn't know where he came from, he's
like the wind that blows, he's like the
water that flows, and he doesn't know where
he's going.
Then he says that he's in the universe
and doesn't know why.
And that great sense of sadness is over
all that long poem.
I don't recommend you bother reading it, there's
lots of other finer things.
But at least I liked it a long
time ago, and it saddened me because this
great mathematician, this great astronomer, this great Sufi,
with his tremendous poetic soul, mourned the fact
that he didn't know why he was born,
didn't know why he had come into the
world.
But I could have said to him, now
wait a minute, my heart's indicting a good
matter, I speak of the things touching the
King.
I know why I came into the world,
hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine
ear.
So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty,
for he is thy Lord, and worship thou
him.
And I could have taken him further over
in the psalms, where the scripture says, O
come and let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
I could have gone on and said to
him, O sing unto Jehovah a new song,
sing unto the Lord all the earth, sing
unto the Lord, bless his name, show forth
his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders
among all the people, for Jehovah is great
and greatly to be praised.
He is to be feared above all gods.
Honor and majesty are before him, strength and
beauty are in his sanctuary.
Give unto the Lord the glory, do unto
his name, bring an offering, and come unto
his courts.
O worship the Lord in the beauty of
holiness, fear thou before him all the earth.
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth
be glad, and the sea roar in the
fulness thereof.
Let the fields be joyful, and the woods
rejoice before the Lord, for he cometh to
judge the earth.
He shall judge the world with righteousness, and
the people with his truth.
There is a call to worship, as they
say in some churches.
It is the sound of the voice of
worship.
Here is why we were born.
We were born in order that we might
forever worship God, that we might enjoy him
forever, that we might glorify him forever, and
that we might, above all creatures, know and
admire and love and adore the Triune God.
Are you sorry you were born, or are
you glad?
Are you sorry you are a Christian, or
are you glad?
If you are not a Christian, would you
like to be a Christian?
For this is the purpose of redemption, not
to save us from hell only, that's secondary.
But it is that we might be saved
unto the worship of God.
We read that they worship God day and
night in the temple, and they are never
silent, saying, Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty,
heaven and earth are full of the majesty
of thy glory.
If what I have said up to now
is true, then I want you to compare
this with the average run-of-the-mind
church, even evangelical church.
Where there seems to be a great love
of everything but this.
This, my brother, was why you were born.
But it says, what is a revival?
And the answer is, a revival is a
sudden intensification of the worship of God.
That's a revival.
But what is it when the Holy Ghost
came at Pentecost?
Why did they, when the Spirit came at
Pentecost, break out into ecstatic language?
It was because they were worshiping for the
first time rightly.
Worship leaped out of their hearts, and God
calls his people to be worshipers of the
Most High God.
Now, I say that nothing in the world
is without a meaning.
Science looks after meanings and seeks to discover
the meaning of things.
Their relation to each other and their interaction
with each other and their effect upon each
other, that's I have nothing against science, as
I've said before.
I'm not up here to ignorantly shout down
my nose at scientists.
Let them play with their toys and I'll
take the benefit of it while I'm here.
I'll take anything that comes along, thank God
for it.
But their relation deals only with short-term
affairs.
You have a cure for heart disease, and
I wish they would get a cure for
heart disease.
I've lost so many good friends by sudden
heart attacks.
I don't want that.
I don't like to have my friends suddenly
topple over.
Maybe they may be in another state and
they don't know where I am, and they're
buried when I come back home.
I've had that happen.
I don't want that to happen.
I wish we could get a cure for
that business.
I don't like cancer either.
My father died of cancer of the cheek,
and I don't like cancer.
I don't like polio.
I've seen some dear people crippled and twisted
with that terrible polio.
I don't like those things, and I'm glad
that science is making some headway toward doing
something against them.
And I believe they are, and if we
live and the Lord carries for a few
more decades, I believe the time will be
when nobody will be dying of heart attacks.
When I was a kid back on the
farm in the state of Pennsylvania a few
years ago, we used to have epidemics, or
what we call smallpox.
I don't know the technical doctor name for
it, but that's what we called it.
And it would go through the neighborhood and
it would just kill people right and left.
And the ones it didn't kill, it would
pock.
Their faces would get pocked, and afterward they
were always just pocked like Swiss cheese, only
finer pocks.
And all over they had them.
And if he made it, and if he
lived, he would pock for the rest of
his life.
Now, you never hear of it anymore.
You had diphtheria.
My wife had diphtheria and almost died.
Her mother dragged her through it the best
she could.
But diphtheria used to pounce down on the
little kid, and it would choke to death
in his mother's arms, bloom in the face,
and die for want of oxygen with a
choked-up throat.
They called that diphtheria, a terrible thing.
No diphtheria anymore.
I suppose it breaks out here, but it
isn't long until it's gone.
Nobody dies of it much.
They cured it, and so I'm glad for
anything they can do.
But listen to me now.
If you save a man when he's a
baby from diphtheria, save him when he gets
in his teens from smallpox, save him when
he's in his 20s from polio, save him
when he's in his 50s from a heart
attack, and keep him right on until he's
90, and he still doesn't know why he's
here, what has he gained?
What's it all about?
If he doesn't know why he's here and
doesn't know his purpose, all you're doing is
simply perpetuating the life of a mud turtle,
that's all.
He's just a turtle with two legs in
place of four and no shell and no
tail, but he's still nothing beyond a common
mud turtle, because he doesn't know what it's
all about.
You say to him, but what are you
living for?
I'm just living because it's the best alternative
to dying that I can think of.
But what else now?
What are you around for?
I don't know if I am around.
Oh, I've reared a family, Ma and I.
We've reared a family.
We had nine children and we've got 37
grandchildren now, and I say to him, well,
what are they here for?
And he says, I don't know, but I
do know they're not going to die of
smallpox, they're not going to die of diphtheria,
and the probabilities are very strong they won't
get polio and will die heart attack.
And I say, now that's wonderful and good
and that'll keep you around until you'll be
cutter up the ground, nobody will know what
to do with you, and your friends will
all be dead, and the lips that you
have pressed in their bloom will long ago,
and the names will be long ago, be
growing graven on the tomb, and you'll be
a lonely old man under the sky.
But what are you, where are you going,
why are you here?
And he says, I don't know why I'm
here and I don't know where I'm going.
When Roosevelt was financing everybody and everything except
Canada with money, he never asked for any,
but they did all around.
He was handing it out as if he
owned it, and I was paying it, I
and a few others, and they told this
story about him.
They said, Roosevelt is like Columbus.
I said, why?
They said, Columbus went out not knowing where
he was going, when he got there he
didn't know where he'd been and where he
was, and when he got back he didn't
know where he'd been, and he did it
all with other people's money.
So they said, this is the way Roosevelt
operated.
And here's the way we do it.
We don't know where we are, and we
don't know where we've been, and we don't
know why we're here, and we don't know
where we're going, and we do the whole
thing on borrowed time and borrowed money, and
borrowed strength and then die.
Science can't help you there.
Science can keep you alive a while longer
so you'll have longer to think it over,
but it'll never give you the answer.
But you know, there's a kind of people
that I associated myself with when I was
17 years old, a kind of people, and
they're not scientists, although some of them might
be.
They're plain people.
I like to call them plain people.
And they're the Christians.
They're the Saints and the Mystics and the
Brethren and the people of God, and they've
got a simpler and more beautiful view of
the world than the scientists have.
Their view of the world is this.
They say, now wait a minute, maybe we're
not as bright as you are, but we
know something that you don't know.
If I were to walk over here on
the campus of Toronto University with everybody there,
a doctor of this and that, and I
didn't know nearly as much as they knew,
if I met one of them out here
lost and didn't know where he was, I'd
know more than he did on that one
thing, wouldn't I?
If I met him out here between here
and Vineland, where I'm going towards the morning
to preach to the men tonight, if I
met him and he drove up and spoke
to me in a very cultured manner and
said, Where am I?
I said, You're between Hamilton and Vineland on
number so-and-so.
Thank you, he said.
I could smile to myself and say, I
haven't studied in Germany and I haven't got
all his degrees, but I knew more than
he did about one thing.
I knew where he was, and he didn't
know.
So we Christians say, well, maybe you've got
it on us on some things.
I've never been able to understand the fourth
dimension.
I quit even trying it years ago.
But I knew something that Einstein didn't know.
I know who I am here.
I belong to that company of plain people
who believe a book called the Bible.
That company says, God in the beginning made
the heaven and earth and all things that
are therein.
God in the beginning made man in his
own image and blew into him the breath
of life and said to man, Now live
in my presence and worship me, that is
your chief end, and increase and multiply and
fill the earth with worshipers, fill the earth
with men and women who shall worship me
in the beauty of holiness.
That's why you're here.
Now, maybe I don't know all Einstein knows,
but I know that much he didn't know.
So I don't walk around with my head
down looking sad because somebody has written more
books or knows more, has been to school
longer, because I do have a little secret.
And that secret is, I can answer the
question, what is the chief end of man?
I can tell you why I was born.
I can tell you why I'm here.
I can tell you my everlasting duty while
the ages rose.
It will be to worship God in the
beauty of holiness and to enjoy him forever.
And these plain people say that God created
the flowers to be beautiful so that man
might enjoy them.
They say that God created the birds to
sing, but you know, the scientist wouldn't be
caught dead admitting that.
Nah, he says, that's nothing to that.
God didn't create the birds to sing.
You know how a bird sings?
It's only the male that sings.
And the male sings in order to attract
the females so that he can have a
nest and some little ones.
That's just simply a biological deal.
That's all.
Okay, well, why couldn't he just squeak or
groom or gargle or something?
Why did he have to sing like a
harp?
Well, God made him to sing.
If I were a male bird and wanted
to attract a female, I could turn handsprings
or anything, you know.
But why do they sing so beautifully?
Because the God who made them is the
musician of the universe.
He's the composer of the cosmos.
And he made and put a harp in
their little throats and put some feathers around
them and said, now go sing.
And they've been singing ever since.
The scientist says it isn't so, but my
heart tells me it is so, and the
Bible declares it so.
God made the trees to bear fruit, and
the scientist shrugs his shoulders again and says,
there you go, you Christians, you're a helpless
bunch.
The trees bear fruit, not for you.
Their bear fruit is the seed, so there'll
be more fruit.
And I say, now hold on a minute
here, now, Professor.
Why is it necessary to have a tree
bear fruit if there's nothing for the fruit
to bless or help or anything?
God made the fruit and said, now eat
of anything you want, we'll help yourself.
And then God made the beasts of the
field to clothe mankind.
When you catch a sheep and throw him
down on his side and shear him, wash
his wool and dye it and send it
in and make you a nice sweater to
keep you warm in the sweet storm, that's
why God made the sheep.
He made it so you could have it,
to have wool, like God made a silkworm,
a humble little silkworm, a little Japanese silkworm,
if you like.
Why did God make that silkworm to feed
on mulberry leaves?
In order that they might spin their cocoon
and then man might unravel it and make
silk.
I like silk myself.
I got a tie from down in Hawthorne,
Nevada from an old friend of mine that
says, all silk.
I don't know, I kind of like them.
I'm not exactly what you'd call ten blessed
men, but I like them better than to
do these synthetic things rolled out of a
vat somewhere.
This came off a worm's back.
But anyhow, God made the worm, and the
worm made the web, and the web was
unraveled and unraveled back into a tie.
So I believe in this.
That's so much easier and more delightful to
believe what God says about it.
The Lord and his prophets and the apostles
all say the same thing.
God made us to worship him.
That's our purpose.
A silkworm was made to make silk.
A bird was made to sing, and a
sheep to bear mint and wool, and everything
has its purpose.
But God said, I'm making man in my
image, and man is to be above all
other creatures.
Man is to be above the beasts of
the earth and the birds of the air
and the fishes of the sea.
Man is even to be above the angels
in heaven, finally.
He is to enter my presence, and there,
unashamed, he is to worship me and look
on my face while the ages roll.
That is why man was created, and that's
man's chief end.
Apart from that, we have no more idea
why we're here than that poor man I
pictured sitting down here on a bench in
front of the city hall.
He doesn't know why he was here, and
yet he was the chief violinist and could
play the great concertos of the music literature
of the world, but he didn't know it.
He didn't know why he was here.
His violin was somewhere gathering dust, and he
was walking the streets lost.
So it is with the world now.
God gave you not a violin but a
harp and placed it in your own heart,
and when you had that fall, you forgot
about it and lost it, and your children
and your parents before you and your grandchildren
after you, until Jesus Christ finds us and
retunes our harp and says to us, Now,
here's why you were born.
You are the chief violinist of the orchestra
of glory, and God made you in order
that you might stand up there and charm
the listening universe as you sing praises unto
Jesus Christ the Lord.
Well, that's why we were made in his
image.
I have said this, and I'm glad I
got confirmation on this.
My son in California wrote and said that
I think I have a book that you'll
really like.
He said, Did you ever hear of Edward
Taylor?
I said, No, I never heard of Edward
Taylor.
Well, he said he was a congregational Puritan
preacher who lived in the 15th century and
wrote.
He was an Englishman who went to the
United States when he was 25, and he
became a poet equal to Dunn and Herbert.
I said, I'd like to see it.
He said, Well, the things have been lying
buried in Yale University.
He brought it up.
So I got it and sent it, had
it sent from Yale University, big book, $10.
I thought, Well, here's one more.
I don't like Herbert, and I don't like
Vaughn, and I don't like Dunn.
Maybe I won't like this fellow.
But I opened it up and began to
read.
Oh, my soul, I would have been warmed
and blessed by reading this and praying as
I read.
For this man sees what the other poets
didn't see, this theologian, and his poems are
chiefly meditations before communion.
He would have communion and he would write
himself a long poem before communion, getting ready.
And among the other things that he said,
this was one of them.
He said, O God, thy Godhead has married
my manhood and made it thy bride.
And he said, I dwell in thee, and
thee in me, and we're one.
And then he looked at the Father and
pointed to Jesus and said, There is thou
and I.
That awful, awful statement, there is thou and
I.
Jesus is God and man.
He's Godhead and manhood, he's thou and I.
It was a Calvinist preacher who said this,
if you please.
And I'm going to have to take that
back.
I wrote something in the Alliance-Whitmer that
got over into England, and I said that
as a rule, Calvinists weren't mystics.
And they wrote letters until the editor of
the Life of Faith had to stop them.
He said, No more of this now.
We've had enough.
All over England and over into Scotland they
were arguing about my saying that there weren't
any Calvinists who were mystics.
I thought there weren't.
But bless my soul, here is this man,
Edward Taylor, a Congregationalist preacher, and he's as
much a mystic as Madame Guillaume, but as
much a theologian as John Knox.
And he taught that God made man to
worship him.
And because we're made in his image, we
have more strings on our hearts than anybody
else.
O, could I speak the matchless worth!
O, could I sound the glorious forth that
in my Savior shine!
I'd soar and touch the heavenly strings, and
vie with Gabriel while he sings in notes
almost divine.
Isaac Watts was an English preacher, and one
of the greatest of his kind, as it
is today.
He wrote a lot of great hymns on
the Psalms.
He wrote one that went like this, I'll
praise my Maker while I have breath, and
when my voice is lost in death, praise
shall employ my noble powers.
My days of praise shall ne'er be
past, till life and breath and being last,
or immortality endures.
Well, John Wesley got a hold of that,
and John Wesley said, now that's a great
hymn, all right, but it's wrong in one
spot and I'm going to change it.
Not very many people ever would have the
effrontery to change Isaac Watts, but Wesley felt
he was capable of it, and I think
he was.
So when he says, My days of praise
shall ne'er be past, while life and
breath and being last, Wesley said, No.
Don't say, My days of praise shall ne
'er be past, while life and breath and
being last, because my days of praise are
going to continue after and stop breathing.
So he said, Let's put it like this.
My days of praise shall ne'er be
past, while life and thought and being last.
You can think after you've stopped breathing, brother,
and that's the glory and wonder of it
all.
We don't come to an end.
Our dear sister, Mrs. Perry, they sat and
watched her and she stopped breathing quietly, and
that was the end.
But she didn't stop thinking and she didn't
stop praising.
Keep that in mind, because when they lower
her tomorrow into the hard, cold, frozen ground,
there will be nothing down there but an
old tabernacle.
Life and thought and being are still with
God, and she is still able to think.
So her days of praise shall not be
past, while life and thought and being last.
Not life and breath.
If you can stop breathing, you know that's
not the worst thing that can happen to
you, brother.
Stop breathing.
It will get you out of a lot
of trouble, just stop breathing.
Moses went up on the mountain, where was
it?
Pisgah.
He just lay down and stopped breathing, he
wasn't sick.
One of the things sick about him was
his eye wasn't dim, he wore no glasses,
his strength was just as mighty as it
had been before.
But God said, I want you, so he
went up and laid down and stopped breathing.
That's not the worst thing that can happen
to you.
But I would say if you stop thinking
before you stop breathing, you've had it.
A lot of people have stopped thinking, or
never started, but they're still breathing by instinct.
That glorious light, and that glorious home, we
have been praising long after we stopped breathing
down here.
When Wesley was dying, he was an Armenian,
you know.
When Wesley was dying, he was trying to
sing, but his voice was gone, he was
87, I think, or 83 or 87 or
something.
He traveled around 25,000 miles around the
earth on a horseback, and he preached three
and four and five times a day, and
founded a great church, and the eye was
finished.
They gathered around his bed and heard him
trying to sing, this Armenian.
And what do you suppose he was singing?
He was singing an old Calvinist song.
I'll praise my Maker while I've breathed.
That's why I can't get all the things
about one side or the other.
If Isaac Wright, the Calvinist, could write it,
and John Wesley, an Armenian, could sing it,
and they could both meet and hug each
other in the glory, why should I allow
anybody to get me down this side alley
into a dark hole and hide in a
barrel and say, I don't know which I
am, don't bother me, I don't care which
I am.
I was made to worship God, and I
was redeemed that I might worship God, and
that's why we're here, my brothers.
That's why we invite you to be converted,
not that you might have peace of mind,
not that you might be a better businessman.
You will be a better businessman, and you
will have peace of mind, but you were
created to worship, and when you fell, you
were redeemed for worship.
This is it.
But we've lost it, as I shall show
how we've lost it, why we've lost it,
and what kind of worship there is, and
the right and the wrong kind, and how
to recapture the art of worship.
This I'll deal with over the days of
Sunday nights ahead.
Now, I want you to join me reverently
in singing 1, 2, 3.
1, 2, 3.
Now, always keep one thing in mind.
I am presenting here the reason for the
gospel.
I'm presenting the reason you ought to get
converted if you're not converted.
I'm presenting the reason, and if this is
not the true background for evangelism, then I
don't know my Bible.
I'm giving you the reason.
I'm telling you why you ought to be
a Christian.
So if any of you who aren't converted
want to be, see the pastor, see me,
speak to any elder at the door, anybody
you know, come and ask for a prayer,
call up and ask for an engagement.
But for this Sunday night, I will deal
with this transcendent subject, worship.
Now, I want you to join us in
singing, the fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all
nature.
1, 2, 3.