Habakkuk more sublime; but when you want to see Christ
coming out from the gates of prophecy in all His grandeur and glory,
you involuntarily turn to Isaiah. So that if the prophecies in regard
to Christ might be called the "Oratorio of the Messiah," the writing
of Isaiah is the "Hallelujah Chorus," where all the batons wave and
all the trumpets come in. Isaiah was not a man picked up out of
insignificance by inspiration. He was known and honored. Josephus, and
Philo, and Sirach extolled him in their writings. What Paul was among
the apostles, Isaiah was among the prophets.

My text finds him standing on a mountain of inspiration, looking out
into the future, beholding Christ advancing and anxious that all men
might know Him; his voice rings down the ages: "Seek ye the Lord while
He may be found." "Oh," says some one: "that was for olden times."
No, my hearer. If you have traveled in other lands you have taken a
circular letter of credit from some banking-house in New York, and in
St. Petersburg, or Venice, or Rome, or Antwerp, or Brussels, or Paris;
you presented that letter and got financial help immediately. And I
want you to understand that the text, instead of being appropriate for
one age, or for one land, is a circular letter for all ages and for
all lands, and wherever it is presented for help, the help comes:
"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."

I come, to-day, with no hair-spun theories of religion, with no nice
distinctions, with no elaborate disquisition; but with a plain talk on
the matters of personal religion. I feel that the sermon I preach this
morning will be the savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.
In other words, the Gospel of Christ is a powerful medicine: it either
kills or cures. There are those who say: "I would like to become a
Christian, I have been waiting a good while for the right kind of
influences to come;" and still you are waiting. You are wiser in
worldly things than you are in religious things. If you want to get to
Albany, you go to the Grand Central Depot, or to the steam-boat wharf,
and, having got your ticket, you do not sit down on the wharf or sit
in the depot; you get aboard the boat or train. And yet there are men
who say they are waiting to get to heaven--waiting, waiting, but not
with intelligent waiting, or they would get on board the line of
Christian influences that would bear them into the kingdom of God.

Now you know very well that to seek a thing i