009. The Fatal Line
The Fatal Line
Gen_6:3 : ’93My spirit shall not always strive.’94
God was going to destroy the world with a universal deluge. He would give the people one hundred and twenty years in which to repent; but, in the chapter from which my text is taken he practically says: ’93That will be the utmost limit; I will not always importune men; my Spirit shall not always strive.’94 What was true and appropriate before the flood is true and appropriate since the flood. God is going to give you, my friends, a fair chance for heaven. It shall not be told in the Judgment Day, or in eternity, that Satan was permitted, unchallenged, to impose upon any man, or that one had no opportunity for escape.
Some years ago a steamer burned on Long Island Sound. The hulk of it was beached, yet the bell of that steamer kept tolling during the day and tolling during the night and tolling for weeks, and it was very solemn to those who passed by. And I have to tell you, my brother, that wherever there is a moral shipwreck, wherever there is a spiritual catastrophe, God lifts a warning and it rings through day and through night and through month and through year. ’93Beware! beware!’94
When I first began to preach, I was very cautious lest I be misrepresented, and guarded the subject on all sides. I have got beyond that point. I find that I get on better when, without regard to consequences, I throw myself upon the hearts and consciences of men, telling them all I feel in regard to their present happiness and their eternal welfare. I come before you now with a special message. The trumpet shall give no uncertain sound. I stand between the living and the dead. Hear me, O immortal men and women! while I tell you how God’92s Spirit strives with the soul, and then, as well as I may, set forth the fact that there is a limit to that merciful ministration. ’93My Spirit shall not always strive.’94 God help us!
In the first place, I remark that God strives with us through silent contemplation. I take it for granted that you are thinking people, not among those absurd persons who pride themselves on having no thought about this life and no thought about the future. You do not belong to that class. Some day, perhaps, you were in the store, and a thought of the great future flashed across your mind. You opened your account-books. You bethought yourself: ’93Oh, that long debit account of God’92s mercy toward me, and oh, that credit account’97it is a blank page. ’93Are my accounts right with God?’94 You put your key into the money safe, you opened the door, you said to yourself: ’93If a fire should sweep down this street and destroy all my other valuables, those which I have put in this safe would be unharmed. Is my soul safe? Would it be safe in the conflagration which shall twist New York and Brooklyn and Boston and London and Paris with its tongue of flame as an ox’92s tongue twists a grass blade?’94 Then there came a thought across your mind that brought the perspiration to your brow. Some one standing in the store said: ’93Do you feel well today?’94 A messenger had come to your store, the best messenger that ever came, a messenger from the Throne of God. It was a spiced gale from heaven that struck your cheek; it was a note from the heavenly bell that rang across your soul; it was the Spirit of Almighty God moving through your soul in the hour of silent contemplation. There, with your letters on the file above you, samples of goods all around you, the weigher whistling thoughtlessly on the step, all the surroundings completely secular, the Holy Spirit touched your heart. Did you realize it? Or perhaps you were in your front parlor on Sabbath morning. You saw the people going down the street. You said: ’93Where are they going? To church, I suppose. What is the use of all this praying and preaching and singing? I wonder if those people will be any better off than I at the last. Let me see. I am getting old. Am I getting better? What is this within me? They say it is a soul. What is a soul? Where am I bound? To eternity. What is eternity? Will I be happy, or will I be wretched?’94 And there, perhaps, under sudden impulse, you ejaculated the prayer which a man once offered: ’93O God! if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul, from hell, if there be a hell.’94 You did not hear the Holy Spirit stepping on the floor. You did not hear the rustling of his robes as he passed by, but he was there with a chalice. If you had taken one drop of water from that chalice it would have thrilled you with life eternal.
Sometimes the Spirit comes in on the pavement of the sunlight, and then he comes floating in on the wave of the midnight; but come to every one of you he does, come to every one of you he has. No door can shut him out. No darkness can make him lose his way. No distance can weary him. He came to you and he said: ’93Child immortal, pilgrim to the grave, traveler to the Judgment Day, heir of eternity, are you ready?’94
But I remark in the second place that God strives with us through the preaching of the Gospel. The sermon may be a very poor sermon according to the rules of human criticism; but did it present a sympathetic and a pardoning Christ to the woes and the wants and the sins of men? What is preaching? Is it a philosophical disquisition? Is it scientific exploration? Then let us have our pulpits covered with philosophical apparatus, and let us have disquisitions about air currents and Faraday’92s theory of electrical polarization. Preaching, I think, is hauling men out of their sins and starting them heavenward. If it do that, it does all. If it fail in that, it fails in all. Stand aside, then, with all your theories about how this thing ought to be done. Christ wants the people saved. That truth I mean to preach and pray and sing until every muscle of my body, every faculty of my mind, and every energy of my soul is exhausted. Glorious Gospel of the Son of God!
Well now, how many sermons have you heard? A hundred? Some of you have heard five hundred, yea, a thousand. I suppose there are some of you who have heard two thousand sermons during the course of your life. Did you surrender your heart to God? God was striving through all those sermons. Have they been piled up and piled up against the last day? Some of you go back to boyhood. You remember the time when in the old country meeting-house, your father at one end of the pew, your mother at the other end of the pew, praying people all around, the aged minister bending over with his gray locks, pleading for your salvation. How long ago was that? Twenty, forty, fifty years ago? You remember it as though it were yesterday. O man! that was your chance for heaven. You have not had so good a chance since. The Holy Spirit was striving with your heart. Why, then, my brother, did you not surrender?
But now you are in the house of God again. All things are propitious. Sun in mid-heavens shining brightly, many consecrated men and women present, ready to pray for your soul, the Holy Spirit striving with your heart, you feeling your sense of duty. What will be the result of this service? Will you now say, ’93Lord God, I now take thee for mine, I take thee for time, and I take thee for eternity?’94 In this vast audience there is not one with whom the Spirit of God is not striving. ’93Oh,’94 says some one, ’93I mean to become a Christian after a while, when I get rid of my bad habits!’94 My brother, you are going to work in the wrong way. Not the righteous, but sinners, Jesus came to call; and there is only one being in the whole universe that can get you out of your bad habits, and that is the Lord God, your Creator, Judge, and Saviour.
’93Oh,’94 says some one, ’93I am willing to become a Christian, but I can’92t understand that doctrine of the atonement, how Christ died for my sins.’94 It is easily explained. You want it explained? During the Civil war, every day, you knew what substitution was’97some man going into the war to save another from going, he taking the fatigues of the march, he taking the battle wounds, even dying for another. That is all there is in this doctrine of atonement. Christ taking our wounds, weeping our sorrows, bearing our burdens, dying our death. That is the meaning of the doctrine of the atonement. Substitution! Substitution! If you could get that doctrine into your soul you would march right out into the free land of the Gospel. In the name of the King of Heaven and Earth, I proclaim emancipation to all the enslaved. Oh, that God’92s Spirit with his omnipotent hammer would strike that truth into your soul!
Again I remark that God’92s Spirit strives with a man through business annoyances and embarrassments. Where is your property? Gone. It may have taken you twenty, thirty, forty years to accumulate it. How long did it take you to lose it? A year, a month, a week, perhaps only just long enough to write your name on the back of a note. Oh, you have seen hard times in business! You have had struggles, trials, and annoyances enough to kill you. That was a dark day when the store rent became due and you had not the money to pay it. That was a dark day when the house rent became due and you had not the money to pay it. That was a dark day for you when the winter was coming on, and you could not clothe your household as it was your ambition to do. That was a dark day for you when the school bill became due and you could not meet it. You have hard times, some of you. That was a dark day when you called your friends together and told them you would have to suspend payment. That was a dark day when your household goods went down under the auctioneer’92s mallet. That was a dark day when you had to give up your home.
I stand before men whose life has been a business tragedy. You cannot tell me anything about it: I know it. Perhaps there was an evening when the boat was coming from New York, and the passengers came to the front of the boat to land on the Brooklyn side and you went to the back part of the boat and got outside the chain and looked down into the water and thought how calm and peaceful it must be under the wave. Oh, yes; you have had trial, my brother, and God was striving through all that, he was telling you to make a higher investment, to seek after treasures that never fail, in banks that never break. By every bank protest, by every insulting dun, by every snap judgment, by every foreclosed mortgage, God was telling you to look beyond this scene of grip and gouge and loss and gain. Did you do it? No, my brother, you went to the bank to get a discount, you went to the broker’92s to get a note discounted, you went to your creditors to get an extension of time and you went to a friend to get his name on your paper and you borrowed here to pay there and you went to every one but God, to whom, first of all, you ought to have gone, for he never saw a good man in trouble but he helped him out. But some of you tomorrow morning, at seven, eight, or nine o’92clock, will go over to business, and what will become of you in that whirl of New York life before Saturday night, I know not. Men all the time going overboard in morals, overboard in business, no one to help them. Plenty of friends to help when you do not want any help, but when you want help, no friends.
’93Oh!’94 you say when you see a man going overboard, ’93it’92s only a man, only one man.’94 What is a man? A soul with imperishable hopes, high as the Throne of God. What is a man? The battle ground of three worlds, his hands taking hold of destinies of light or darkness. A man! No line can measure him, no boundary line can limit him, the archangel before the throne cannot outlive him. The stars will go out, but he will watch their extinguishment; the world will burn, but he will gaze on the conflagration; endless ages will march by; he will count their tramp! tramp! A man! A man! The masterpiece of the Lord Almighty. Yet you say it is only a man gone overboard!
Oh, when a man goes overboard, try to help him, get over the side of the ship, with your left arm cling to the ship, with your right hand clutch for his immortal soul, and may God give grip to your fingers and strength to your arms until you bring him clear over the gunwales! Know that through all bankruptcy, through all panic, through all insolvency, through all business losses, through all financial embarrassments, God was striving, striving, striving with your soul.
I remark again: God strives with man through bereavement. Are your families all together today? How many families represented in this audience are unbroken? Not many. It is a sad thing to lose property, it is a sad thing to lose social position, it is a sad thing to lose a name, a good name; but bereavement in addition to all this loss’97bereavement with fiery fingers taking hold of the roots of your soul and pulling until the tendrils snap! We have all tasted of that cup of bereavement, we know what it is. If you can keep your home, it does not make much difference about anything else. If the world abuses us outside, we go home, and there all is forgotten; if the world misinterprets us, we go home, there we are understood; but if the home be abolished or shadowed by some great bereavement, unto what resource shall the soul then run? But God knows best. A mother in my parish came to me and said: ’93I have buried my child, and the beauty and the attraction of the world are gone, and I have only one desire, and that is to get up into his companionship.’94 You see that was the Holy Spirit drawing her upward into the kingdom. That is the way you got into the kingdom of God, my brother. I could indicate many who have told me this was the truth in regard to them. You see where Christ, the Shepherd, takes a lamb in his arms, the sheep will follow. A daughter was dying in a cabin in the West, and she said: ’93Father, lie down with me, it is so cold.’94 He said: ’93My child, is the flood strong?’94 and she said, ’93Yes, the flood is strong, but I see angels on the other bank. Father, there is a mist in the room. You will be lonely, father, won’92t you? Is this death, father?’94 ’93My child, it is.’94 ’93Thank God,’94 she said as her spirit vanished into the skies.
Through how many bereavements God has called you! Oh, you remember that day after the obsequies, when all your friends had left the house and you were alone. There was a voice whispering into your heart ’93Poor, beaten, broken spirit, in Christ is thy comfort. Go to him; not in wrath, but in mercy, cometh this stroke.’94 Who was it that whispered that? The Spirit! The Spirit! Through sickness that well-nigh took you away, through abuse of false friends, through losses that put their foaming mouth into the fountain of your strength and drank it dry, God’92s Spirit has been striving with your soul.
But my text says God’92s Spirit will not always strive. What does that mean? It means that there is a line, a fatal line, beyond which if a man go unpardoned there is no mercy to be had. There are men who seem to have sinned away their day of grace. The city of Jerusalem was an illustration of this. That city was doomed to destruction forty years before it was destroyed. Christ said: ’93O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate.’94 That was the announcement. Thereafter it stood forty years. Then the destruction came. In the courts there is a space of time between the sentence and the execution, and in religious things it may be so; the sentence may come at one time and the execution of that sentence be postponed for months or for years. If you go through a forest you will sometimes find a mark around a tree; the woodman has come with his ax and marked that tree. It is to be cut down after a while. I am told by the woodman that that tree will not grow after it is marked in that way. It is girdled. So there are men who are marked for death. They have sinned away their day of grace. They have grieved away God’92s Spirit. Their opportunity is gone. They are girdled. Says some one, ’93Do you suppose there is any one present who has come into that condition and who has crossed that fatal line?’94 I do not know. I think not. My reason for thinking that no one present has crossed the line is because you are still attentive, thoughtful about your soul, and ambitious for heaven. This is the work of the Holy Ghost, and it makes me think the Spirit has not been fatally grieved away, and that you have not yet crossed the line. Let me say, however, the line of the grave will certainly be a line beyond which an unpardoned soul may not go and yet find mercy. There will be no place in all the sepulchre where we can kneel down and pray. Our friends may call to us, we cannot answer. ’93As the tree falleth, so it must lie.’94 ’93My Spirit shall not always strive.’94
A minister came to a man eighty years of age, and implored him to be a Christian. ’93Why,’94 said the man, ’93there is no chance for me; when I was twenty years of age, the Spirit of God strove with my heart; I grieved him away, and I haven’92t had a serious emotion since.’94 ’93Well,’94 said the minister, ’93it is not too late to pray.’94 The aged man said, ’93It will do no good.’94 But the minister persisted in praying and persisted in religious conversation. Some years passed on, and notwithstanding all that was done for that aged man’92s soul, his last words were: ’93I know I shall be lost.’94 He had grieved away the Spirit, crossed the line. ’93The door was shut.’94
Why are you here today? Is it to hear what odd or peculiar thing the preacher may say? Is it because you are tired of your home that you come forth? Is it because you want to see many people gathered together? Is it accidental that you are here? My brother, you remember that accidental calls decided your life. You made a business call one day that decided all your financial history. The event which seemed of so little importance you hardly thought it worth mentioning, decided everything; and though your coming here may seem to be accidental, it may decide your eternity. God says to his Spirit this moment, ’93Go to that man, knock at the gate of his soul, say to him, ’91I come with pardon for thy sin, with comfort for thy trouble, with deliverance from thy captivity.’92’93 Oh, what a moment! Charged with eternal destinies. You know that there is no pillow soft in the last hours but the bosom of Jesus. You know that there are no hands that can help you up the steep of heaven but the hands of Christ. You are a captive, you want to be free, you dash against the door of your prison house, the door partially opens, you almost get out but the door slams shut against you and crushes you against the door-post. Oh, when will the day of deliverance come? I wish it might come now. But I am powerless. Omnipotent spirit of God, seize that man and pull him back from ruin. Plant his feet upon the eternal rock.
Two men were standing among the Alps, and one of them remarked that the ground was insecure and they had better retreat; but before they could retreat, the ground broke under them. One was precipitated hundreds of feet. The other in his descent threw his arm around a tree and was saved. It seems we are standing, some of us, on a slippery place. Our hopes are going away, our prospects of heaven are going away, leaving us less and less chance. Some, perhaps, from this service will be precipitated. They will go out farther from God and farther from heaven. Oh, throw your arm around the cross; there is a tree that can save you. Throw both arms around the cross of the Son of God. Your life is in it, your eternal life is in it. Believe and live. Refuse and die.
There will be many, I hope, who will start for heaven this morning. Here is a great multitude of young people. I think I hear them say, ’93I will not wait until my life is worn out, and I have nothing to surrender to the Lord; I will give him my best days, I will give him my physical health, I will give him ail the hilarities of my spirit. My Father! Thou are the guide of my youth.’94 There are young men here who are hardly beset in business matters’97they had great temptations yesterday and Friday and Thursday and Wednesday, and they will have great temptations tomorrow’97they will say this morning: ’93We want God, and we want him now. Lord God of my father, Lord God of my mother, have mercy on us.’94
Then I think there will be whole families who will this day turn into the kingdom of God. The father will say, ’93We have never had prayers at our house; we must have prayers today.’94 The mother will say, ’93We have too long neglected religion; we have not brought up our children in the fear and love of God.’94 The mother will come into the kingdom, and then the children will come, and there will be a whole family, one on earth and one in heaven. There will be an aged man tottering on his staff. Stand back and let him hasten to the cross. It is the eleventh hour with him. Let him pass. Put no impediment in the way. This is his last hour. God is waiting for him. Mercy even for the chief of sinners. The aged man will find the peace of the Gospel today. Here is some one in yonder gallery who says, ’93No one cares for my soul.’94 I care for it, immortal man, I care for it. Enter the kingdom of God. Do you know that you are very near it now? Do you know that there are only three steps?’97I counted wrong; there are only two steps before you enter the kingdom of God. Nay, there is only one’97one step. Believe, believe and live. Oh, take that step into the kingdom of God.
You may have read in history that Constantine marching with his army saw the figure of a cross on the night sky, and over it the words, ’93By this conquer.’94 After this day is past and the night is come, I would God that you might see on the night sky the figure of a cross, the cross of a Saviour’92s suffering in your behalf, and that you might read, ’93By this conquer; by this conquer sin; by this conquer trouble; by this conquer death and hell.’94 Come into the kingdom. I give a wide invitation. I do not allow one man, one woman, in all the audience to escape it. All, all may come. But not always. There is a fatal line that may be crossed.
Sinner, perhaps this very day
Thy last accepted time may be;
Oh! shouldst thou grieve him now away,
Then hope may never beam on thee.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage