047. An Obnoxious Diet

An Obnoxious Diet

Lev_11:13-30 : ’93And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls… the owl, the vulture, and the bat… These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth… the chameleon… and the snail.’94

The Bible offers every possible variety of theme, of argument, and of illustration. We care not much in what kind of a pitcher the water of life is brought, if it is only the clear, pure water. God gave the ancients a list of the animals that they might eat, and a list of animals that they might not eat. These people lived in a hot climate, and certain forms of animal food corrupted their blood, and disposed them to scrofulous disorders, depraved their appetites, and bemeaned their souls. A man’92s food, when he has the means and opportunity of selecting it, suggests his moral nature. The reason the savage is as cruel as the lion is because he has food that gives him the blood of the lion. A missionary among the barbarians says that, by changing his style of food to correspond with theirs, his temperament was entirely changed. There are certain forms of food that have a tendency to affect the moral nature. Many a Christian is trying to do by prayer that which cannot be done except through corrected diet. For instance, he who uses swine’92s flesh for constant diet will be diseased in body and polluted of soul’97all his liturgies and catechisms notwithstanding. The Gadarene swine were possessed of the devil, and ran down a steep place into the sea, and all the swine ever since seem to have been similarly possessed. In Leviticus, God struck the meat off the table of his people, and placed before them a bill of fare at once healthful, nutritious, and generous.

But, higher than his physical reason, there was a spiritual reason why God chose certain forms of food for the ancients. God gave a peculiar diet to his people, not only because he wanted them to be distinguished from the surrounding nations, but because certain birds and animals, by reason of their habits, have been suggestive of moral qualities. By the list of things from which they were to abstain, God wished to prejudice their minds against certain evils; and, in the list of lawful things given, he wished to suggest certain forms of good. When God solemnly forbade his people to eat the owl, the vulture, the bat, the chameleon, and the snail, he meant to drive out of his people all the sins that were thus emblemized.

I take the suggestion of the text, and say that one of the first unclean things the Christian needs to drive out of his soul is the owl. The owl is the melancholy bird of the night. It hatches out whole broods of superstitions. It is doleful and hideous. When it sings, it sings through its nose. It loves the gloom of night better than the brightness of the day. Who has not slept in the cabin near the woods, and been awakened in the night by the dismal ’93too-hoo’94 of the owl? Melancholy is the owl that is perched in many a Christian soul. It is an unclean bird, and needs to be driven away. A man whose sins are pardoned, and who is on the road to heaven, has no right to be gloomy. He says: ’93I have so many doubts.’94 That is because you are lazy. Go actively to work in Christ’92s cause, and your doubts will vanish. You say: ’93I have lost my property’94; but I reply: ’93You have infinite treasures laid up in heaven.’94 You say: ’93I am weak and sickly and going to die.’94 Then be congratulated that you are so near eternal health and perpetual gladness. Catch a few morning larks for your soul, and stone this owl off your premises.

As a little girl was eating the sun dashed upon her spoon, and she cried: ’93Oh, mamma, I have swallowed a spoonful of sunshine!’94 Would God that we might all indulge in the same beverage! Cheerfulness’97it makes the homeliest face handsome; it makes the hardest mattress soft; it runs the loom that weaves buttercups and rainbows and auroras. God made the grass black? No; that would be too somber. God made the grass red? No; that would be too gaudy. God made the grass green, that by this parable all the world might be led to a subdued cheerfulness. Read your Bible in the sunshine. Remember that your physical health is closely allied to your spiritual. The heart and the liver are only a few inches apart, and what affects one affects the other. A historian records that by the sound of great laughter in Rome, Hannibal’92s assaulting army was frightened away in retreat. And there is in the great outbursting joy of a Christian soul that which can drive back any infernal besiegement. Rats love dark closets, and Satan loves to burrow in a gloomy soul. ’93Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous! and again I say, rejoice!’94

Hoist the window of your soul in this the twelve o’92clock of your spiritual night. Put the gun to your shoulder and aim at the black jungle from which the hooting comes, pull the trigger, and drop that croaking, loathsome, hideous owl of religious melancholy into the bushes.

Again, taking the suggestion of the text, drive out the vulture from your soul. God would not allow the Jews to eat it. It lives on carcasses; it fattens among the dead; with leaden wing it circles about battle-fields. Wilson, the American ornithologist, counted two hundred and thirty-seven vultures around one carcass. If crossing the desert when there is no sign of wing in the air a camel perish out of the caravan, immediately the air begins to darken with vultures. There are many professed Christians who have a vulture in their souls. They prey upon the character and feelings of others. A doubtful reputation is a banquet for them. Some rival in trade or profession falls, and the vulture puts out its head. These people revel in the details of a man’92s ruin. They say: ’93I told you so!’94 They rush into some store and say: ’93Have you heard the news? Just as I expected! Our neighbor has gone all to pieces! Good for him!’94 That professedly Christian woman, having heard of the wrongdoing of some sister in the church, instead of hiding the sin with a mantle of charity, peddles it all along the streets.

The most loathsome, miserable, God-forsaken wretch on earth is a gossip. I can tell her on the street, though I have never seen her before. She walks fast, and has her bonnet-strings loose, for she has not had time to tie them since she heard the last scandal. I think that when Satan has a job so infinitely mean that in all the pit he cannot find a devil mean enough to do it, and all bribes and threats have failed to get one willing for the infernal crusade, he says to one of his sergeants: ’93Go up to that town, and in such a street, on such a corner, get that gossiping woman, and she will be glad to do it.’94 And sure enough, like a hungry fish, she takes the hook in her mouth, and Satan slackens the line, and lets her run out farther and farther, until after a while he says: ’93It is time to haul in that line,’94 and with a few strong pulls he brings her to the beach of fire. What do you say? That she was a member of the church? I cannot help that. When Satan goes a-fishing, he does not care what school the fish belongs to, whether it is a Presbyterian mackerel or an Episcopalian salmon. Amidst the thunder-crash of Sinai God said: ’93Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’94 And in Leviticus he says: ’93Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer.’94

Take not into your ear that scum of hell that people call tittle-tattle. Whosoever willingly listens to a slander is equally guilty with the one who tells it, and an old writer says they ought both to be hanged; the one by the tongue and the other by the ear. Do not smile upon such a spaniel, lest, like a pleased dog, he puts his dirty paw upon you. Throw back the shutter of your soul, O Christian men and women! and see if there be within you a vulture with filthy talons and cruel beak. Let not this unclean thing roost in your soul, for my text says: ’93Ye shall hold in abomination the vulture.’94

Again, taking the suggestion of the text, drive out the bat from your soul. No wonder God set this bird among the unclean. It is an offense to every one. Let it fly into the window of a summer night, and all the hands, young and old, are against it. It is half bird, half mouse. It seems made partly to walk and partly to fly, and does neither well, and becomes an emblem of those Christians who try to cling to earth and heaven at the same time. They want to walk on earth in worldliness, and yet fly toward heaven in spirituality; and their soul between feet and wings, is constantly perplexed. Be one thing or the other! Choose the world, if you prefer it, and see how many dollars you can win and how much applause you can gain and how large a business you can establish and how grand a house you can build and how fast a span of horses you can drive. You may be prospered until you can fail for five hundred thousand dollars, instead of having the disgrace of failing for only ten thousand, as some unenterprising people do. It is quite a reward to be able for ten or twenty years to be called one of the solid men of your own city; and then, to make your fortune last as long as possible, we will give you a splendid funeral, and you shall have twenty-five carriages following you, with somebody in the most of them, and your coffin shall have silver handles on the sides and we will mourn for you in splendid pocket-handkerchiefs bound with crape and with bombazine twenty full yards long trailing half across the parlor, so that all the company may stand upon it; and we will write our letters for the next six months on paper edged with black. But, my friends, your worldly fortunes will not last. I will buy out now all that you will be worth in worldly estate seventy-five years from now. I have the money in my pocket with which to do it. Here it is! Two cents! It is a large sum to offer for all you will possess at the close of seventy-five years. Choose the world, if you want to; but if not, then choose heaven. That estate lies partly on this side of the river, but mostly on the other. It is ever accumulating. The prospect of it makes one independent of earthly misfortunes; so that Rogers, the martyr, slept so soundly the night before his burning, that they violently shook him in order to get him awake in time for the execution; and Paul exults at the thought of the ’93joy unspeakable and full of glory.’94 Choose earth or heaven! Make up your mind whether you will walk in earthly joys, or fly with heavenly expectations. Be not a bat, fit neither to walk nor fly, having just enough of heaven to spoil the world, and so much of the world as to spoil heaven. Christ says that your present condition nauseates him to positive sickness: ’93Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth!’94 In the ruins of Pompeii there was found a petrified woman, who, instead of trying to flee from the destroyed city, had spent her time in gathering up her jewels. She saved neither her life nor her jewels. There are multitudes making the same mistake. In trying to get earth and heaven they lose both. ’93Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.’94 Be one thing or the other. Tread the earth like a lion, or mount the air like the eagle; for my text says: ’93Ye shall have in abomination among the fowls the bat.’94

Again, taking the suggestion of the text, drive out the chameleon from your soul. There is some difference among good men as to the name of this creeping thing which God pronounced unclean, but I shall take the opinion which seems best suited to my purpose. The chameleon is a reptile, chiefly known by its changeableness of color, taking the color of the thing next to it, sometimes brown, sometimes red, and sometimes gray, but always the color of its surroundings, a type of that class of Christians who are now one thing in religious faith, and now another, just to suit circumstances, always taking their color of religious belief from the man they are talking to. They go to one place, and are first-rate Unitarians. ’93Jesus was a good man, but nothing more.’94 They go to Princeton, and they are Trinitarians, almost willing to die for the divinity of Jesus. Among the Universalists they refuse the idea of future punishment; and, going among those of opposite belief, announce that there is a hell with a gusto that makes you think they are glad of it. Drive out that unclean chameleon from your soul. Do not be ever changing the color of your faith. Liberal Christianity, falsely so-called, believes in nothing. God is anything you want to make him. The Bible to be believed, in so far as you like it. Heaven a grand mixing up of Neros and Pauls. The man who dies by suicide in his right mind in 1888, beating into glory by ten years the Christian man who dies a Christian death in 1898’97the suicide proving himself wiser than the Christian. O my friends, let us try to believe in something! An infidel was called to the bedside of his daughter. The daughter said: ’93Father, which shall I believe, you or mother? Mother took the religion of Christ, and died in its embrace. You say that religion is a humbug. Now I am going to die, and I am very much perplexed; shall I believe you, or take the belief of my mother?’94 The father said: ’93Choose for yourself.’94 She said: ’93No; I am too weak to choose for myself; I want you to choose for me.’94 ’93Well,’94 said the father, after much hesitation and embarrassment: ’93Mary, I think you had better take the religion of your mother.’94

The time will come when we shall have to believe something. We cannot afford to be on the fence in religion. Truth and error are set opposite to each other. The one is infinitely right, and the other infinitely wrong. In the Judgment Day we must give an account of what we believed as well as how we acted. The difference between believing truth and believing error is the difference between paradise and perdition. I beg you, in the light of the Bible, and on your knees before God, to form your religious opinion and then stick to it, though business companions scoff and wits caricature and the air crackles with the fires of martyrdom. Surely truths in behalf of which Christ died, and angels of God trooped forth, and the whole universe is marshaled, are worth living for and worth dying for. Amidst the most unclean things is this ever-changing chameleon of religious theory. Away with the reptile! God abhors it with an all-consuming abhorrence.

Once more, taking the suggestion of the text, drive out the snail from your soul. God has declared it unclean. It is an animal to be found everywhere between the coldest north and the hottest south. There are fifteen hundred species of the snail. They have no backbone, and they are so slow that their movement is almost imperceptible. You see a snail in one place today; go to-morrow and you will find it has advanced only a few inches. It becomes an emblem of that large class of Christian people who go to work with a slowness and sluggishness that is wonderful. They are stopped by every little obstacle, because, like the snail, they have no backbone. Others mount up on eagle’92s wings, but they go at a snail’92s pace. O child of God, arouse! We have apotheosized Prudence and Caution long enough. Prudence is a beautiful grace, but of all the family of Christian graces I like her the least, for she has so often been married to Laziness, Sloth, and Stupidity. We have a million idlers in the Lord’92s vineyard, who pride themselves on their prudence. ’93Be prudent,’94 said the disciples of Christ, ’93and stay away from Jerusalem’94; but he went. ’93Be prudent,’94 said Paul’92s friends, ’93and look out for what you say to Felix’94; but he thundered away until the ruler’92s knees knocked together. In the eyes of the world, the most imprudent men that ever lived were Martin Luther and John Oldcastle and Wesley and Knox. My opinion is, that the most imprudent and reckless thing is to stand still. It is well to hear our Commander’92s voice when he says ’93Halt!’94 but quite as important to hear it when he says ’93Forward!’94 This Gospel ship, made to plow the sea at thirty knots an hour, is not making three. Sometimes it is most prudent to ride your horse slowly and pick out the way for his feet and not strike him with the spurs; but when a band of Shoshone Indians are after you in full tilt, the most prudent thing for you to do is to plunge in the rowels and put your horse to a full run, shouting ’93Go ’91long!’94 until the Rocky Mountains echo it. The foes of God are pursuing us. The world, the flesh, and the devil are after us; and our wisest course is to go ahead at swiftest speed.

When the Church of God gets to advancing too fast, it will be time enough to use caution. No need of putting on the brakes while going up-hill. Do not let us sit down waiting for something ’93to turn up,’94 but go ahead in the name of God, and turn it up. The great danger to the Church now is not sensation, but stagnation. Oh, that the Lord God would send a host of aroused and consecrated men to set the Church on fire, and to turn the world upside down. Let us find the last snail in our souls. With divine vehemence let us stamp its life out; for my text declares: ’93These also shall be unclean to you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the chameleon and the snail.’94

I have thus tried to persuade these Christian men and women against gloominess and slander and half-and-half experiences and changeableness and sloth. Our opportunities for getting better are being rapidly swallowed up in the remorseless past. This moment may we drive out all the unclean things from our souls’97the vulture and the bat and the owl and the chameleon and the snail; and in place thereof bring in the Lamb of God and the Dove of the Spirit! The case is urgent. Arouse! before it be eternally too late! ’93Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage