031. Return From the Chase

Return From the Chase

Gen_49:27 : ’93In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.’94

There is in this chapter such an affluence of simile and allegory, such a mingling of metaphors, that there are a thousand thoughts in it not on the surface. Old Jacob, dying, is telling the fortunes of his children. He prophesies the devouring propensities of Benjamin and his descendants. With his dim old eyes he looks off and sees the hunters going out to the fields, ranging them all day, and at nightfall coming home, the game slung over the shoulder; and reaching the door of the tent, the hunters begin to distribute the game, and one takes a coney and another a rabbit and another a roe. ’93In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.’94 Or it may be a reference to the habits of wild beasts that slay their prey, and then drag it back to the cave or lair and divide it among the young.

There is nothing more fascinating than the life of a hunter. On a certain day in all England you can hear the crack of the sportsman’92s gun, because grouse-hunting has begun; and every man who takes pleasure in destroying life and can afford the time and ammunition and can draw a bead, starts for the fields. On the twentieth of October our woods and forests will resound with the shock of firearms, and will be tracked by pointers and setters, because the quail will then be a lawful prize for the sportsman. Xenophon grew eloquent in regard to the art of hunting. In the Far East, people elephant-mounted, chase the tiger. The American Indian darts his arrow at the buffalo until the frightened herd tumble over the rocks. European nobles are often found in the fox-chase and at the stag-hunt. Francis I was called the father of hunting. Moses declared of Nimrod: ’93He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.’94 Therefore in all ages of the world the imagery of my text ought to be suggestive whether it means a wolf after a fox or a man after a lion. ’93In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.’94

I take my text, in the first place, as descriptive of those people who in the morning of their life give themselves up to hunting the world, but afterward, by the grace of God, in the evening of their life divide among themselves the spoils of Christian character. There are aged Christian men and women who, if they gave testimony, would tell you that in the morning of their life they were after the world as intensely as a hound after a hare, or as a falcon swoops upon a gazelle. They wanted the world’92s plaudits and the world’92s gains. They felt that if they could get this world they would have everything. Some of them started out for the pleasures of the world. They thought that the man who laughed loudest was happiest. They tried repartee and conundrum and burlesque and madrigal. They thought they would like to be Tom Hoods or Charles Lambs or Edgar A. Poes. They mingled wine and music and the spectacular. They were worshipers of the harlequin and the Merry Andrew and the buffoon and the jester. Life was to them foam and bubble and cachinnation and roystering and grimace. They were so full of glee they could hardly repress their mirth even on solemn occasions, and they came near bursting out hilariously even at the burial, because there was something so dolorous in the tone or countenance of the undertaker. After a while misfortune struck them hard on the back. They found there was something they could not laugh at. Under their late hours their health gave way, Or there was a death in the house. Of every green thing their soul was exfoliated. They found out that life was more than a joke. From the heart of God there blazed into their soul an earnestness they had never felt before. They awoke to their sinfulness and their immortality, and here they sit today at sixty or seventy years of age, as appreciative of all innocent mirth as they ever were, but they are bent on a kind of satisfaction which in early life they never hunted; the evening of their days brighter than the morning. In the morning they devoured the prey, but at night they are dividing the spoil.

Then there are others who started out for financial success. They see how limber a man’92s back is when he bows down before some one transpicuous. They felt they would like to see how the world looked from the window of a three-thousand-dollar turnout. They thought they would like to have the morning sunlight tangled in the headgear of a dashing span. They wanted the bridges in the park to resound under the rataplan of their swift hoofs. They wanted a gilded baldrick, and so they started on the dollar hunt. They chased it up one street and chased it down another. They followed it when it burrowed in the cellar. They treed it in the roof. Wherever a dollar was expected to be they were. They chased it across the ocean. They chased it across the land. They stopped not for the night. Hearing that dollar even in the darkness thrilled them as an Adirondack sportsman is thrilled by a loon’92s laugh. They chased that dollar to the money vault. They chased it to the Government treasury. They routed it from under the counter. All the hounds were out’97all the pointers and setters. They leaped the hedges for that dollar, and they cried: ’93Hark, away! a dollar! a dollar!’94 and when at last they came upon it, and had actually captured it, their excitement was like that of a falconer who has successfully flung his first hawk. In the morning of their life, oh, how they devoured the prey!

But there came a better time to their soul. They found out that an immortal nature cannot live on Government bonds. They took up a Northern Pacific bond, and there was a hole in it through which they could look into the uncertainty of all earthly treasures. They saw some Ralston, living at the rate of twenty-five thousand dollars a month, leaping from San Francisco wharf because he could not continue to live at the same rate. They saw the wizen and paralytic bankers who had changed their souls into molten gold stamped with the image of the earth, earthy. They saw some great souls by avarice turned into homunculi, and they said to themselves: ’93I will seek after higher treasure.’94

From that time they did not care whether they walked or rode if Christ walked with them; nor whether they lived in a mansion or a hut if they dwelt under the shadow of the Almighty; nor whether they were robed in French broadcloth or in homespun if they had the robe of the Saviour’92s righteousness; nor whether they were sandaled with morocco or calfskin if they were shod with the preparation of the Gospel. Now, you see peace on their countenance. Now, that man says: ’93What a fool I was to be enchanted with this world! Why, I have more satisfaction in five minutes in the service of God than I had in all the first years of my life while I was gain-getting. I like the evening of my day a great deal better than I did the morning. In the morning I greedily devoured the prey; but now it is evening, and I am gloriously dividing the spoil.’94

This world is a poor thing to hunt. It is healthful to go out in the woods and hunt. It rekindles the luster of the eye. It strikes the brown of the autumnal leaf into the cheek. It gives to the rheumatic limbs a strength to leap like the roe. Christopher North’92s pet gun, the muckle-mounted Meg, going off in the summer in the forests, had its echo in the winter-time in the eloquence that rang through the University halls of Edinburgh. It is healthy to go hunting in the fields; but I tell you that it is belittling and bedwarfing and belaming for a man to hunt this world. The hammer comes down on the gun-cap and the barrel explodes and kills you instead of that which you are pursuing. When you turn out to hunt the world, the world turns out to hunt you; and as many a sportsman aiming his gun at a panther’92s heart has gone down under the striped claws, so while you have been attempting to devour this world, the world has been devouring you. So it was with Catherine of Russia. Henry II went out hunting for this world, and its lances struck through his heart. Francis I aimed at the world, but the assassin’92s dagger put an end to his ambition and his life with one stroke. Mary Queen of Scots wrote on the window of her castle:

From the top of all my trust

Mishap hath laid me in the dust.

The Queen Dowager of Navarre was offered for her wedding-day a costly and beautiful pair of gloves, and she put them on; but they were poisoned gloves and they took her life. Better a bare hand of cold privation than a warm and poisoned glove of ruinous success.

’93Oh,’94 says some young man, ’93I believe what you are preaching. I am going to do that very thing. In the morning of my life I am going to devour the prey, and in the evening I shall divide the spoil of Christian character. I only want a little while to sow my wild oats, and then I will be good.’94 Young man, did you ever take the census of all the old people? How many old people are there in your house? One, two, or none? How many in any vast assemblage? Only here and there a gray head, like the patches of snow here and there in the fields on a late April day.

The fact is that the tides of the years are so strong that men go down under them before they get to be sixty, before they get to be fifty, before they get to be forty, before they get to be thirty; and if you, my young brother, resolve now that you will spend the morning of your days in devouring the prey, the probability is that you will never divide the spoil in the evening hour. He who postpones until old age the religion of Jesus Christ postpones it forever. Where are the men who, thirty years ago, resolved to become Christians in old age, putting it off a certain number of years? They never got to be old. The railroad collision or the steamboat explosion or the slip on the ice or the falling ladder or the sudden cold put an end to their opportunities. They have never had an opportunity since, and never will have an opportunity again. They locked the door of heaven against their soul, and they threw away the key. They chased the world, and they died in the chase. The wounded tiger turned on them. They failed to take the game that they pursued. Mounted on a swift courser, they leaped the hedge, but the courser fell on them and crushed them. Proposing to barter their soul for the world, they lost both and got neither.

While this is an encouragement to old people who are yet unpardoned, it is no encouragement to the young who are putting off the day of grace. This doctrine that the old may be repentant is to be taken cautiously. It is medicine that kills or cures. The same medicine given to different patients in one case saves life and in the other destroys it. This possibility of repentance at the close of life may cure the old man while it kills the young. Be cautious in taking it.

Again, my subject is descriptive of those who come to a sudden and radical change. You have noticed how short a time it is from morning to night in winter’97eight or ten hours. You know that a winter day has a very brief life. The heart of the longest day beats twenty-four times and then it is dead. How quick the transition in the character of these Benjaminites! ’93In the morning they shall devour the prey, and at night they shall divide the spoil.’94 Is it possible that there shall be such a transformation in any of our characters? Yes; a man may be at seven o’92clock in the morning an all-devouring worldling, and at seven o’92clock at night he may be a peaceful, distributive Christian. Conversion is instantaneous.

A man passes into the Kingdom of God quicker than down the sky runs the zigzag lightning. A man may be anxious about his soul for a great many years; that does not make him a Christian. A man may pray a great while; that does not make him a Christian. A man may resolve on the reformation of his character and have that resolution going on a great while; that does not make him a Christian. But the very instant when he flings his soul on the mercy of Jesus Christ, that instant is lustration, emancipation, resurrection. Up to that point he is going in the wrong direction; after that point he is going in the right direction. Before that moment he is a child of sin; after that moment he is a child of God. Before that moment, hellward; after that moment, heavenward. Before that moment, devouring the prey; after that moment, dividing the spoil. Five minutes is as good as five years.

You know very well that the best things you have done you have done in a flash. You made up your mind in an instant to buy or to sell or to invest or to stop or to start. If you had missed that one chance you would have missed it forever. Now, just as precipitate and quick and spontaneous will be the ransom of your soul. This morning you are making a calculation. You are on the track of some financial or social game. With your pen or pencil you are pursuing it. This very morning you are devouring the prey; but to-night you will be in a different mood. You find that all heaven is offered you. You wonder what resources it will give you now and hereafter. You are dividing peace and comfort and satisfaction and Christian reward in your soul. You are dividing the spoil.

On a Sabbath night at the close of the service I said to some persons: ’93When did you first become serious about your soul?’94 and they told me: ’93Tonight.’94 And I said to others: ’93When did you give your heart to God?’94 and they said: ’93Tonight.’94 And I said to still others: ’93When did you resolve to serve the Lord all the days of your life?’94 and they said: ’93Tonight.’94 I saw by their apparel that when the grace of God struck them they were devouring the prey; but I saw also in the flood of joyful tears and in the kindling raptures on their brow and in their exhilarant and transporting utterances that they were dividing the spoil. At night with one touch of electricity all these lights blaze. Oh, I would to God that the darkness of your souls might be broken up and that by one quick, overwhelming, instantaneous flash of illumination you might be brought into the light and the liberty of the sons of God!

You see that religion is a different thing from what some of you supposed. You thought it was decadence; you thought religion was emaciation; you thought it was highway robbery; that it struck one down and left him half dead; that it plucked out the eyes and the plumes of the soul; that it broke the wing and crushed the beak as it came clawing with its black talons through the air. No; that is not religion. What is religion? It is dividing the spoil. It is taking a defenseless soul and panoplying it for eternal conquest. It is the distribution of prizes by the King’92s hand, every medal stamped with a coronation. It is an exhilaration, an expansion. It is imparadisation. It is enthronement. Religion makes a man master of earth and death and hell. It goes forth to gather the medals of victory won by Prince Emmanuel, and the diadems of heaven and the glories of realms terrestrial and celestial, and then, after ranging all worlds for everything that is resplendent, it divides the spoil.

What was it that James Turner, the famous English evangelist, was doing when in his dying moment he said: ’93Christ is all! Christ is all!’94 Why, he was entering into light; he was rounding the Cape of Good Hope; he was dividing the spoil. What was the aged Christian Quakeress doing when, at eighty years of age, she arose in the meeting one day and said: ’93The time of my departure is come. My graveclothes are falling off?’94 She was dividing the spoil.

She longed with wing to fly away,

And mix with that eternal day.

What is Daniel, the lion-tamer, now doing? and Elijah, who was drawn by the flaming coursers? and Paul, the rattling of whose chains made kings quake? and all the other victims of flood and fire and wreck and guillotine? Where are they? Dividing the spoil.

Ten thousand times ten thousand,

In sparking raiment bright,

The armies of the ransomed saints

Throng up the steeps of light.

’91Tis finished, all is finished,

Their fight with death and sin;

Fling open wide the golden gates

And let the victors in.

Oh, what a grand thing it is to be a Christian! We begin on earth to divide the spoil, but the distribution will not be completed to all eternity. There is a poverty-stricken soul, there is a business-despoiled soul, there is a sin-blasted soul, there is a bereaved soul’97why do you not come and get the spoils of Christian character, the comfort, the joy, the peace, the salvation that I am sent to offer you in my Master’92s name? Though your knees knock together in weakness, though your hand tremble in fear, though your eyes rain tears of uncontrollable weeping’97come and get the spoils. Rest for all the weary. Pardon for all the guilty. Harbor for all the bestormed. Life for all the dead. I verily believe that there are some who have come in here downcast because the world is against them, and because they feel God is against them, who will go away today saying:

I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary and worn and sad;

I found in him a resting-place,

And he has made me glad.

Though you came in children of the world, you may go away heirs of heaven. Though you were devouring the prey, now, all worlds witnessing, you may divide the spoil.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage