This is a transcription to the best of my ability of the portion of AGG's original sermon book dated 1870 that I have:

[begins here]so fearful in its consequences is committed by many that are dear to us by the tier of friendship and perhaps there are those that are related to you by the ties of affinity againist whom this fearful anathema is foranounced. Perchance my brethren some of you who can hear the heavenly music and almost see the potals as they open to [tresiened] you, have children that have no love for Christ and some have companions that are unmoved at the name of Jesus that name around which clusters all your hopes of heaven. And so upon them this fearful sentence is foranounced. Let him be accused when the Lord shall come. Let us see why this condemnation is foranounced againist those who love not Christ. In the first place not to love Christ shows a corrupt and vicious mind.

What would you think of a politician who has no esteem for Washington, Who could read his noble deeds of valor his noble and [aspiring] feelings for man and liberty and have no love for him who was first in the hearts of his countrymen young man you who have felt the [kindleing] aspirations of Washington with admiring his deed you exhibit a corrupt [tast] are preparing yourself to be a traitor [sic] to your country and tyrant to man.

What would you think of the man who could read the Paradise Lost or Virgil or Homer and say that he had no admiration for their [sic] natureal [sic] talent. What would you say of him. Why that he had no [tast] or if any a very corrupt one. Not to admire the paintings of Raphael and Michael Angelo would be evident to all men that we have no correct [tast] for fine art but how do these things apply to our subject.

Christ blends in his character every moral excellency - The perfection of every moral beauty. Amid the shining ranks of Angels or the noblest and the purest spirits of earth there is none that can compare with Jesus. Before the splendors of his moral excellency nothing can retain its brightness for he is the chief among [man] and all together lovely. [h]is life was so spotless that melignant [sic] nature itself could not fin[d] upon it one stain. Both Pontus Pilate and Herod declared we find no fault in him.

See what majisty [sic] and humanity are blended. In his majisty [sic] he rebukes the storm and there is a great calm. Se him at the grave of Lazarus as he weeps as a man but with the voice of a God he crys [sic] and the man already dead comes fourth [sic]. Compassionately he takes little children in his arms and blesses them saying suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of heaven. See him as he weeps over Jerusalem and hear him as he exclaims of Jerusalem, Jerusalem how oft I would have gathered thee together and ye would not. In his whole life there was not an impure thought or a [railing] word was heard to fall from his lips or and [sic] action that he could not ask his Father to bless. He was holly [sic] and separate from sinners. In his character the boldness of the lion was blended with the meekness of the [dove] lamb and the wisdom of the serpent with the [moceny] of the dove.

Christ was to the oral worlds what the rainbow is to the colors. In the rainbow every color is beatifully blended and not one is [wanting]. So every moral excellency is found in the character of Christ. Not to love Christ shows [trehea?] is [unknown] againist [sic] God. Not to love Jesus then shows (abreneer) or the utter [defirmity] of all spiritual and moral excellency. If we love not Christ heaving would any be to us [sic] what [Bunzon's] castle of despair was to Pilgrim and faithful. All the glory and the beautyes [sic] and joys of heaven are made up in the moral excellency seen in the character of our redeemer.

Hence if any man love not the Lord let him bet Anathema Marangetha [sic].

In the second place.

Not to love Christ shows ingratitude and that should be punished. Bretheren [sic] is looking this subject [sic], I am lost in its vastness. Not to love friends is ungratful-not to [unknown] a mother's devotion would brand any child with infamy and men who are judges of human nature never confide in any man or woman who is ungratful [sic] to a mother. Such persons may have a clear heads [sic] and many extended virtues but thier [sic] hearts are black. All men (and justly) conclude and justly so that a heart that is insensible to such kindness cannot be pure. Not love a benefactor is a greavous [sic] sin a sin which all men abhor.

The amount of gratitude is measured by the amount of favors bestowed, and the disinterestedness of the bestowers.

Then let us my Brethren measure our gratitude by the disinterested kindness of Jesus and see if we do not deserve this fearful sentence Anathema Maranetha to be foranounced against us. While we were sinners without any eye to pity as an arm to save.

Plunged in a gulf of dark despare [sic]

We wretched sinners lay

Without one cheerful beam of hope

Or sparkle of glimmering

With pitying eyes the Prince appears

Beheld our helpless grief

He saw oh amazing love

He fled to our relief.

Down from the [Son] from the seat

with joyful haste he fled.

We will now notice Christ as the instructor of the world of man. That the needed [adored or adorned] teacher was evidence to everything man. The nations of the earth felt this. Hence Christ was called the desire of all nations.

The most he [sic] eminent of the heathen Philosophers felt that they were groping thier [sic] way in darkness. And even in their [sic] dying moments rejoiced in the dim prospects of a coming Divine teacher. Socrates in his very last words spake concerning the immortality of the soul. Our pathway from the cradle to the grave is filled with deep pits and ruinious [sic] and along it are the prowling wolves and roaming lions. And along this pathway the millions of Adams race are bounded to pass. This pathway stands in darkness and man needs something to illuminate his way. It is time that the light of nature and tradition might shed a flash of meteoric light over this dark pathway but like the lightning that flashes in the East and shines against the West and vanishes in a moment and leaves that darkness darker still. Yes the light of nature is insufficient, that nature gives some light we are ready to admit but it cannot teach men the Attributes of God or teach them to bow to scepter of Prince Emanual. For it is only the dim light of the [bumbling] and the distant (morning) stare [sic]. Conscience also throws some light on this dark pathway but its light is only as the light of the morning star more brilliant indeed but still too feeble to guide the family of Adam safely a mid the deep pits of since and from the roaming Lions of hell.

As I see the human family wandering in darkness upon the shores of time the slaves of sin and superstition and ignorance it seems to me that every tear and every sigh is a voice crying for a devine [sic] teacher. And as I see the heathin [sic] widow as she constructs the funeral pile [sic - pyre] and places the body of her dead husband upon it and adds fuel untill [sic] she enough to consume it than placing herself up on the funeral pile then touching the fatal match both are consumed. Amid these [devoring] hears a cry as ascends to heaven calling for a demon teacher. As we see the [vielin] [curting] himself beneath the when of [Pergonnont] do we not hear a voice in thunder tones from beneath that ponderous [inteel] crying for a devine [sic] teacher that God does not delight offerings or sacrifices but is a broken and a contrite spirit. Man by wisdom knows not God all was darkness. [t]here was not a ray of light all was a rayless gloom. While this was the condition of the human family, the Savior the great teaches comes the Son of righteous rises with healing in his bright beams.

Now my friends us Jesus the devine [sic] teacher has come and baptist [sic] the world with a flood of light while some of its bright beams perchance has penetrated that dark and benighted mind of [unknown] with you not to love have Jesus. While he is on the [meditorial] throne while he is approachable for the time will come when he will surround himself with twenty thousan[d] blazing chariots to take vengeance upon all that do not love his [suffering]. So if man love not the Lord let him be accursed when the Lord come.

February [25] 1871

Waco

[Bedmelbs]

The Necessity of the Revelation

No Man hast seen God at any time: The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hast declared him. John 18.

My hears as the revelation is the only medium through which Christ can reveal the Father.

Hence we deduce as a theme the necessity of the revelation. In doing this we would not contend that the vast volume of nature is insufficient to teach the existence of a God.

The Queen of night us she moves in magisty [sic] through the serene heavens and the stars by night exclaim the existence of a God and the King of day us he rolls back the deart [dreary?] cirtains [sic] of night proclaiming the existence of a God.

Both the diurnal and the annual revolution of the earth bringing thier times and seasons demonstrate the existence of some grand and first cause.

While nature proves the existence of God it is insufficient to point out the attributes of the Deity.

When the mighty tornado is passing or the terriable [sic] Simoon is sweeping its torrents of sand before it or when the lightning flashes while the thunder shakes the earth to her centre. Without the revelation is there not a tendency to look upon God as an angery [sic] being. And if this be true where is the man who will [approace - approach] his neighbors while the wild[,] the wild passions of anger hold revel in his bosom. Hence the need of the revelation to teach us that while we were sinners that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever beleiveth [sic] on him should not perish but have everlasting life and although he has set a time in which he is coming the second time to take vengance [sic] upon all that know him not in the pardon of thier sins yet tonight he is on the meditorial throne making intercessions for man. Hence the need for the revelation as a voice crying from the battlements of heaven saying look unto me all ye ends of the earth and be saved for I am God and besides me there is none other. But if intelligents such as have been mention[ed] can proceed from no finite [exuthar] the sequences of nature may be traced back through successive ages in order to find, a cause for the wonderful phenomena of nature, but at no point can the fact be ascertained. It cannot be founded in the present and the past is no more intelligent than the present. And therefore must of necessity center a round and upon one grand centrial [sic] point.

While natural religion very forcibly teaches the existence of a God but it is insufficient to lead men to God: and to govern men as moral agents with out the aid of the revelation which has been clearly demonstrated in the past where man has been left to nature and to the tradition of men they have sunk deeper and deeper the cesspool of degradation. This fact has not been denied by the heathens themselves. thier poets delighted to sing of the golden age when the gods condecended [sic] to commune with men Which they walked in the ways of virtue.

This degenercy cannot be ascribed to ignorance and superstition for Greece and home were the glory of the world the bright luminary of learning and Athens and Sparta gave laws to the world and they were submerged in idolatry.

The presentation of the revelation is enough to prove the insufficiency of natural religion for the world by wisdom knew not of God. After man had sought for 11000 years for a being that he might worship to what did he pray his addoration [sic] too perchance a hero of vice or some creeping reptile but the idea of the true God never entered his mind that God which the revelation reveals.

Hence the necessity of that revelation which reveals a God whose wisdom is infinite, whose power is unbounded whose piercing eye scans the universe in a moment of time, who knows thought[,] sees every action and hears every word that is uttered on earth every sigh from the world of the damned and every shout of the redeemed in the glory lord. At the same it reveals Jesus that name around which clusters all the Christians hope of heaven and immortality.

If when the divine law was violated the penalty had been inflicted at once and the human family exterminated from the earth, in such an event, then there could have been no need for the revelation as if it had been [forible - foreseeable] without any inter [parition] in behalfe of the human family to have with held the penalty that was ledge against our fore parents untill they had proffagated thier species upon the earth intending at same time in the future to inflict the punishment upon the whole human family. in this case the revelation would have been of no us[e] a knowledge of the attributes and laws of God would have neather [sic] redeemed to the glory of God, or to the good of man, or if the law under which man was created and incorporated within his moral or physical being secured to him the means by which he could recover his first state and restoration the divine law as government of God, there would be no need of the revelation or at least there would have been no need of the revelation concerning Christ, the Mediator nor the plan of salvation by him.

And if all that is concerning Christ be blotted from the Bible, the fallen sons and daughters of Adam would be left in a gulf of dark despair without a beam of hope or spark of glimering [sic] day.

The compa[s]sion of Jesus for mankind may be urged as a reason for the revelation for when he beheld man doomed to woe he was moved to devise a plan to redeem them which was based upon faith in the only begotten son. And it became necessary that he should reveal his will to man through the devine [sic] revelation.

And when he established his kingdom upon the earth, it was necessary in order that the kingdom might be compleat to present the subjects of that kingdom a code of laws which is found in the revelation to man. Without the revelation there would [have] been no foravissions made known to man by which he might restore himself to the favor of God.

The light of nature, or the tradition of men, as angelic host could not reveal that new and living way which was open in the house of David for sin and uncleanness.

Revelation reveals Christ as the sacrificial lamb who being slained [sic] in his death made foravissions to satisfy the broken law. Who has open wide [celyercial -celestial] gates and bade us enter and by his passion has changed the sword unto the golden wand of peace.

In contemplating the goodness of God toward the children of men we find a great and grand reason why there should be a revelation from God to man in order to reveal the wondrous plan of salvation through our Lord and Saviour and to make it [sa] plain that the wayfaring man need not [erar] there in. Leaving all men without escence [sic] but the revelation was not only necessary to manifest God's love toward the children of men but to fur[n]ish suitable instances to man concerning his moral relation to the devine government and the reward

and future punishment and the consequences of a final impenitence. In the dark ages of the world the most eminent heathen Philosophers felt they were groping their way in the darkness, when dying rejoiced in the prospect of a coming and a devine teacher. The revelation is [larnfo] suspended from the throne of God to shine upon the dark pathway a which the teeming millions of Adam's race must face. Man needs the revelation to illuminate his pathway and the light of nature is insufficient that nature gives some light we are bound to admit but it is only as the dim light of the trembling stars.

Consciences also throws some light on the dark path way of eternity but its light is only as the light of the morning star more brilliant indeed but still to feeble to guide the race of Adam amid the deep pits of sin.

And as we behold the human family wandering a long in the darkness upon the ruinous [precipice], the slave of sin superstition and ignorance. It seems in every sigh and every tear there is a cry for the revelation and when the wife places the body of her deceased husband upon the funeral pile and places wood there on until enough to consume it then placing her own body up on the pile she touches the match. In this do we not see the need and amid the devo[u]ring flames do we not hear a voice ascending to the King of heaven for the revelation. does not the victim from beneath the [unknown - ends here].