093. The Stolen Grindstones

The Stolen Grindstones

1Sa_13:19-21 : ’93Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his ax, and his mattock. Yet they had a file for the mattock, and for the coulters, and for the forks and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.’94

What a galling subjugation for the Israelites! The Philistines had carried off all the blacksmiths, and torn down all the blacksmiths’92 shops, and abolished the blacksmiths’92 trade in the land of Israel. The Philistines would not even allow these people to work their valuable mines of copper and iron, nor might they make any swords or spears. There were only two swords left in all the land. Yea, these Philistines went on until they had taken all the grindstones from the land of Israel, so that if an Israelitish farmer wanted to sharpen his plow or his ax, he had to go over to the garrison of the Philistines to get it done. There was only one sharpening instrument left in the land, and that was a file; the farmers and the mechanics having nothing to whet up the coulter and the goad and the pick-ax, save a simple file. Industry was hindered and work practically suspended. The great idea of these Philistines was to keep the Israelites disarmed. They might get iron out of the hills to make swords of, but they would not have any blacksmiths to weld this iron. If they got the iron welded, they would have no grindstones on which to bring the instruments of agriculture or the military weapons up to an edge. Oh, you poor, weaponless Israelites, reduced to a file, how I pity you! But these Philistines were not forever to keep their heel on the neck of God’92s children. Jonathan, on his hands and knees, climbs up a great rock, beyond which were the Philistines; and his armor-bearer, on his hands and knees, climbs up the same rock, and these two men, with their two swords, hew to pieces the Philistines, the Lord throwing a great terror upon them. So it was then; so it is now. Two men of God on their knees, mightier than a Philistine host on their feet!

I learn, first, from this subject, that it is dangerous for the Church of God to allow its weapons to stay in the hands of its enemies. These Israelites might again and again have obtained a supply of swords and weapons, as for instance, when they took the spoils of the Ammonites; but these Israelites seemed content to have no swords, no spears, no blacksmiths, no grindstones, no active iron mines, until it was too late for them to make any resistance. I see the farmers tugging along with their pickaxes and plow, and I say, ’93Where are you going with those things?’94 They say, ’93Oh, we are going over to the garrison of the Philistines, to get these things sharpened.’94 I say, ’93You foolish men, why don’92t you sharpen them at home?’94 ’93Oh,’94 they say, ’93the blacksmiths’92 shops are all torn down, and we have nothing left us but a file.’94 So it is in the Church of Jesus Christ today. We are too willing to give up our weapons to the enemy. The world boasts that it has gobbled up the schools and the colleges and the arts and the sciences and the literature, and the printing-press. Infidelity is making a mighty attempt to get all our weapons in its hand, and then to keep them. You know it is making this boast all the time, and after a while, when the great battle between Sin and Righteousness has opened, if we do not look out we will be as badly off as these Israelites, without any swords to fight with and without any sharpening instruments. I call upon the superintendents of literary institutions to see to it that the men who go into the classrooms to stand beside the Leyden jars and the electric batteries and the microscopes and telescopes, be children of God, not Philistines.

The Spencerian and Tyndallean thinkers of this day are trying to get all the intellectual weapons in their own grasp. We want scientific Christians to capture the science, and scholastic Christians to capture the scholarship, and philosophic Christians to capture the philosophy, and lecturing Christians to take back the lecturing platform. We want to send out against Schenkel and Strauss and Renan, a Theodore Christlieb, of Bonn, and against the infidel scientists of the day, a God-worshiping Silliman, a Hitchcock and an Agassiz. We want to capture all the philosophical apparatus, and swing around the telescopes on the swivel, until through them we can see the morning star of the Redeemer, and with mineralogical hammer discover the Rock of Ages, and amid the flora of all realms find the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. We want a clergy learned enough to discourse of the human eye, showing it to be a microscope and telescope in one instrument, with eight wonderful contrivances, and lids closing thirty to forty thousand times a day; all its muscles and nerves and bones showing the infinite skill of an infinite God, and then winding up with the peroration, ’93He that formed the eye, shall he not see?’94 Then we want some one to discourse about the human ear, its wonderful integuments, membranes and vibratory nerves, and closing with the question, ’93He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?’94 And we want some one able to expound the first chapter of Genesis, bringing to it the geology and the astronomy of the world, until, as Job suggested, ’93The stones of the field shall be in league’94 with the truth, and the stars in their course shall fight against Sisera. Oh, Church of God, go out and recapture these weapons!

Let men of God go out and take possession of the platform. Let any printing-presses that have been captured by the enemy be recaptured for God; and the reporters and the typesetters and the editors and the publishers swear allegiance to the Lord God of Truth. Ah, my friend, that day must come, and if the great body of Christian men have not the faith, or the courage or the consecration to do it, then let some Jonathan on his busy hands and on his praying knees, climb up on the Rock of Hindrance, and in the name of the Lord God of Israel slash to pieces those literary Philistines. If these men will not be converted to God, then they must be overthrown.

Again: I learn from this subject what a large amount of the Church’92s resources is actually hidden, buried, and undeveloped. The Bible intimates that that was a very rich land, this land of Israel. It says, ’93The stones are iron, and out of the hills thou shalt dig brass;’94 and yet hundreds and thousands of dollars’92 worth of this metal was kept under the hills. Well, that is the difficulty with the Church of God at this day. Its talent is not developed. If one half of its energy could be brought out, it might take the public iniquities of the day by the throat, and make them bite the dust. If human eloquence were consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ, it would in a few years persuade this whole earth to surrender to God. There is enough undeveloped energy in one church to bring a city to Christ’97enough undeveloped Christian energy in one city to bring all the United States to Christ’97enough of undeveloped Christian energy in the United States to bring the whole world to Christ; but it is buried under strata of indifference, and under whole mountains of sloth. Now, is it not time for the mining to begin, for the pickaxes to plunge, and for this buried metal to be brought out and put into the furnaces, and be turned into howitzers and carbines for the Lord’92s host? The vast majority of Christians in this day are useless. The most of the Lord’92s army belong to the reserve corps. The most of the crew are asleep in the hammocks. The most of the metal is under the hills. Is it not time for the Church of God to rouse up and understand that we want all the energies, all the talent and all the wealth enlisted for Christ’92s sake? I like the nickname that the English soldiers gave to Blucher, the commander. They called him ’93Old Forwards.’94 We have had enough retreats in the Church of Christ; let us have a glorious advance. And I say to you as the general said when his troops were affrighted’97rising up in his stirrups, his hair flying in the wind, he lifted up his voice until twenty thousand troops heard him crying out, ’93Forward, the whole line!’94 We want all the laymen enlisted. Ministers are numerically too few. They do the best they can. They are the most overworked class on earth. Many of them die of dyspepsia because they cannot get the right kind of food to eat, or, getting the right kind, are so worried that they take it down in chunks. They die from consumption, coming from early and late exposure If a novelist or a historian publishes one book a year, he is considered industrious. But every faithful pastor must originate enough thought for three or four volumes a year. Ministers receive enough calls in a year from men who have maps and medicines and lightning-rods and pictures to sell, to exhaust their vitality. They are bored with agents of all sorts. They are set in draughts at funerals, and poisoned by the unventilated rooms of invalids, and waited upon by committees who want addresses made, until life becomes too heavy a burden to bear.

It is not hard study that makes ministers look pale. It is the infinity of interruptions and botherations to which they are subjected. If I die before my time, it will be at the hand of committees that want a sermon or a lecture. A man called on me to give him a lecture, by which he might pay the expenses of his wedding trip. If there were fifty hours in each day of the year, and I worked forty of them, I could not do the work of one parish; and I am not behind most clergymen in disposition to toil. Numerically too weak. It is no more the work of the pulpit to convert and save the world than it is the work of the pew. If men go to ruin, there will be as much blood on your skirts as on mine. Let us quit this grand farce of trying to save the world by a few clergymen, and let all hands lay hold of the work. Give us, in all our churches, two or three aroused and qualified men and women to help. In most churches today five or ten men are compelled to do all the work. A vast majority of churches are at their wits’92 end how to carry on a prayer-meeting if the minister is not there, when there ought to be enough pent-up energy and religious force to make a meeting go on with such power that the minister would never be missed. The Church stands working the pumps of a few ministerial cisterns until the buckets are dry and choked, while there are thousands of fountains from which might be dipped up the waters of eternal life. Before you and I have the sod pressing our eyelids we will, under God, decide whether our children shall grow up amid the accursed surroundings of vice and shame, or come to an inheritance of righteousness. Long, loud, bitter, will be the curse that scorches our grave if, holding within the Church today enough men and women to save the city, we act the coward or the drone. I wish I could put enough moral explosives under the conventionalities and majestic stupidities of the day to blow them to atoms, and that then, with fifty thousand men and women from all the churches, knowing nothing but Christ and a desire to bring all the world to him, we might move upon the enemy’92s works. For a little while heaven would not have trumpets enough to celebrate the victories.

Again: I learn from this subject that we sometimes do well to take advantage of the world’92s grindstones. These Israelites were reduced to a file, and so they went over to the garrison of the Philistines to get their axes and their goads and their plows sharpened. My text distinctly states that they had no other instruments now with which to do this work, and the Israelites did right when they went over to the Philistines to use their grindstones. My friends, is it not right for us to employ the world’92s grindstones. If there be art, if there be logic, if there be business faculty on the other side, let us go over and employ it, for Christ’92s sake. The fact is, we fight with too dull weapons, and we work with too dull implements. We hack and we maul, when we ought to make a clean stroke. Let us go over among sharp business men and among sharp literary men and find out what their tact is, and then transfer it to the cause of Christ. If they have science and art, it will do us good to rub against it. In other words, let us employ the world’92s grindstones. We will listen to their music, and we will watch their acumen, and we will use their grindstones, and will borrow their philosophical apparatus to make our experiments, and we will borrow their printing-presses to publish our Bibles, and we will borrow their rail-trains to carry our Christian literature, and we will borrow their ships to transport our missionaries. That was what made Paul such a master in his day. He not only got all the learning he could get of Doctor Gamaliel, but afterward, standing on Mars’92 Hill, and in crowded thoroughfare, quoted contemporaneous Greek poetry, and grasped their logic, and wielded their eloquence, and employed their mythology, until Dionysius the Areopagite, learned in the schools of Athens and Heliopolis, went down under his tremendous power.

That was what gave Thomas Chalmers his influence. He conquered the world’92s astronomy and compelled it to ring out the wisdom and greatness of the Lord, until, for the second time, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. That was what gave to Jonathan Edwards his influence in his day. He conquered the world’92s metaphysics and forced it into the service of God, until not only the old meeting-house at Northampton, Massachusetts, but all Christendom, was thrilled by his Christian power. Now we all have tools of Christian power. Do not let them lose their edges. We want no rusty blades in this fight. We want no coulter that cannot rip up the glebe. We want no ax that cannot fell the trees. We want no goad that cannot start the lazy team. Let us get the very best grindstones we can find, though they be in possession of the Philistines, compelling them to turn the crank while we bear down with all our might on the swift revolving wheel, until all our energies and faculties shall be brought up to a bright, keen, sharp, glittering edge.

Again, my subject teaches us on what a small allowance Philistine iniquity puts a man. Yes, these Philistines shut up the mines, and then they took the spears and the swords; then they took the blacksmiths, then took the grindstones, and they took everything but a file. Oh, that is the way sin works; it grabs everything! It begins with robbery, and ends with robbery. It despoils this faculty and that faculty and keeps on until the whole nature is done. Was the man eloquent before, it generally thickens his tongue. Was he fine in personal appearance, it mars his visage. Was he affluent, it sends the sheriff to sell him out. Was he influential, it destroys his popularity. Was he placid and genial and loving, it makes him splenetic and cross; and so utterly is he changed that you can see he is sarcastic and rasping, and that the Philistines have left him nothing but a file.

’93The way of the transgressor is hard!’94 His cup is bitter. His night is dark. His pangs are deep. His end is terrific. Philistine iniquity says to that man: ’93Now surrender to me and I will give you all you want’97music for the dance, swift steeds for the race, imperial couch to slumber on, and you shall be refreshed with the rarest fruits, in baskets of golden filagree.’94 He lies. The music turns out to be a groan. The fruits burst the rind with rank poison. The filagree is made up of twisted reptiles. The couch is a grave. Small allowance of rest, small allowance of peace, small allowance of comfort. Cold, hard, rough’97nothing but a file. So it was with Voltaire, the most applauded man of his day.

The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew

Bon mots to gall the Christian and the Jew.

An infidel when well, but what when sick?

Oh, then a text would touch him to the quick!

So it was with Lord Byron: his uncleanliness in England only surpassed by his uncleanliness in Venice, then going on to end his brilliant misery at Missolonghi, fretting at his nurse, Fletcher, fretting at himself, fretting at the world, fretting at God; and he who gave the world Childe Harold, and Sardanapalus, and The Prisoner of Chillon, and The Siege of Corinth, reduced to nothing but a file. Oh, sin has a great facility for making promises; but it has just as great facility for breaking them!

A Christian life is the only cheerful life, while a life of wicked surrender is remorse, ruin, and death. Its painted glee is sepulchral ghastliness. In the brightest days of the Mexican Empire, Montezuma said he felt gnawing at his heart something like a canker. Sin, like a monster wild beast of the forest, sometimes licks all over its victim in order that the victim may be more easily swallowed; but generally sin rasps and galls and tears and upbraids and files. Is it not so, Herod? Is it not so, Hildebrand? Is it not so, Robespierre? Ay; ay! It is so, it is so. ’93The way of the wicked he turneth upside down.’94

History tells us that when Rome was founded, on that day there were twelve vultures flying through the air; but when a transgressor dies the sky is black with whole flocks of them. Vultures! vultures! vultures! When I see sin robbing so many of my hearers, and I see them going down day by day and week by week, I must give a plain warning. I dare not keep it back, lest I risk the salvation of my own soul. Rover, the pirate, pulled down the warning bell on Inchcape Rock, thinking that he would have a chance to despoil vessels that were crushed on the rocks; but one night his own ship crashed down on this very rock, and he went down with all his cargo. God declares: ’93When I say to the wicked thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, that same man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thy hands.’94

I learn from this subject what a sad thing it is when the Church of God loses its metal! These Philistines saw that if they could only get all the metallic weapons out of the hands of the Israelites, all would be well, and therefore, they took the swords and the spears. They did not want them to have a single metallic weapon. When the metal of the Israelites was gone, their strength was gone. This is the trouble with the Church of God today. It is surrendering its courage. It has not enough metal. How seldom it is that you see a man taking his position in pew or pulpit or in a religious society, and holding that position against all oppression and all trial and all persecution and all criticism. The Church of God today wants more backbone, more defiance, more consecrated bravery, more metal. How often you see a man start out in some good enterprise, and at the first blast of opposition he has collapsed, and all his courage gone; forgetting the fact that if a man be right, all the opposition of the earth pounding away at him, cannot do him any permanent damage. It is only when a man is wrong that he can be damaged. Why, God is going to vindicate his truth, and he is going to stand by you, my friends, in every effort you make for Christ’92s cause and the salvation of men.

Go forth in the service of Christ, and do your whole duty. You have one sphere. I have another sphere. ’93The Lord of hosts is with us, and the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.’94 We want more of the determination of Jonathan. I do not suppose he was a very wonderful man, but he got on his knees and clambered up the rock, and with the help of his armor-bearer he hewed down the Philistines; so a man of very ordinary intellectual attainments on his knees can storm anything for God, and for the truth. We want something of the determination of the general who went into the war, and as he entered his first battle his knees knocked together, his physical courage not quite up to his moral courage; and he looked down at his knees, and said: ’93Ah, if you knew where I was going to take you, you would shake worse than that!’94

There is only one question for you to ask, and for me to ask, what does God want me to do? Where is the field? Where is the work? Where is the anvil? Where is the prayer meeting? Where is the pulpit? Then, finding out what God wants us to do, let us go ahead and do it’97all the energies of our body, mind and soul enlisted in the undertaking. Oh! my brethren, we have but little time in which to fight for God! You will be dead soon. Put in the Christian cause every energy that God gives you. ’93What thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might; for there is neither wisdom nor device in the grave’94 whither we are all hastening. Opportunities of usefulness gone forever; souls that might have been benefited three months ago never again coming under our Christian influence. Is it not high time that we awake out of sleep?

Church of God, lift up your head at the coming victory! The Philistines will go down and the Israelites will go up. We are on the winning side. I think just now the King’92s horses are being hooked up to the chariot, and when he does ride down the sky there will be such a hosanna among his friends and such a wailing among his enemies, as will make the earth tremble, and the heavens sing. I see now the plumes of the Lord’92s cavalrymen tossing in the air. The archangel before the throne has already burnished his trumpet; he will put its golden lips to his own, and then he will blow the long, loud blast that will make all the nations free. Clap your hands, all ye people! Hark! I hear the falling thrones, and the dashing down of demolished iniquities. ’93Hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! Hallelujah, the kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage