095. Forbidden Honey
Forbidden Honey
1Sa_14:43 : ’93I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand, and, lo, I must die.’94
The honey-bee is a most ingenious architect, a Christopher Wren among insects; geometrician drawing hexagons and pentagons; a freebooter robbing the fields of pollen and aroma; wondrous creature of God whose biography, written by Huber and Swammerdam, is an enchantment for any lover of nature. Virgil celebrated the bee in his fable of Arist’e6us; and Moses and Samuel and David and Solomon and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and St. John used the delicacies of bee-manufacture as a Bible symbol. A miracle of formation is the bee; five eyes, two tongues, the outer having a sheath of protection, hairs on all sides of its tiny body to brush up particles of flowers, its flight so straight that all the world knows of the bee-line. The honeycomb is a place such as no one but God could plan and the honey-bee construct; its cells, sometimes a dormitory, and sometimes a storehouse, and sometimes a cemetery. These winged toilers first make eight strips of wax, and by their antenn’e6, which are to them hammer and chisel and a square and plumb-line, fashion them for use. Two and two these workers shape the wall. If an accident happens, they put up the buttresses of extra beams to remedy the damage. When about the year 1776 an insect before unknown, in the night-time attacked the bee-hives all over Europe, and the men who owned them were in vain trying to plan something to keep out the invader which was the terror of the bee-hives of the continent, it was found that everywhere the bees had arranged for their own protection, and built before their honeycombs an especial wall of wax with portholes through which the bees might go to and fro, but not large enough to admit the winged combatant, called the Sphinx atropos.
Do you know that the swarming of the bee is divinely directed? The mother-bee starts for a new home, and because of this the other bees of the hive get into an excitement which raises the heat of the hive some four degrees, and they must die unless they leave their heated apartments, and they follow the mother-bee and alight on the branch of a tree, and cling to each other and hold on until a committee of two or three bees have explored the region and found the hollow of a tree or rock not far off from a stream of water, and they here set up a new colony, and ply their aromatic industries, and give themselves to the manufacture of the saccharine edible. But who can tell the chemistry of that mixture of sweetness, part of it the very life of the bee, and part of it the life of the fields?
Plenty of this luscious product was hanging in the woods of Beth-aven during the time of Saul and Jonathan. Their army was in pursuit of an enemy that by God’92s command must be exterminated. The soldiery were positively forbidden to stop to eat anything until the work was done. If they disobeyed, they were accursed. Coming through the woods, they found a place where the bees had been busy’97a great honey manufactory. Honey gathered in the hollow of the trees until it had overflowed upon the ground in great profusion of sweetness. All the army obeyed orders and touched it not, save Jonathan, and he, not knowing the military order about abstinence, dipped the end of a stick he had in his hand into the candied liquid, and as yellow and tempting, it glowed on the end of the stick, he put it to his mouth and ate the honey. Judgment fell upon him, and but for special intervention he would have been slain. In my text Jonathan acknowledges his awful mistake: ’93I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand, and, lo, I must die.’94 Alas, what multitudes of people in all ages have been damaged by forbidden honey, by which I mean temptation, delicious and attractive, but damaging and destructive!
Corrupt literature, fascinating but deathful, comes in this category. Where one good, honest, healthful book is read now, there are a hundred made up of rhetorical trash consumed with avidity. When the boys on the cars come through with a pile of publications, look over the titles and notice that nine out of ten of the books are injurious. All the way from New York to Chicago or New Orleans notice that objectionable books dominate. Taste for pure literature is poisoned by this scum of the publishing house. Every book in which sin triumphs over virtue, or in which a glamor is thrown over dissipation, or which leaves you at its last line with less respect for the marriage institution and less abhorrence for the paramour, is a depression of your own moral character. The bookbinding may be attractive, and the plot dramatic and startling, and the style of writing sweet as the honey that Jonathan took up with his rod; but your best interests forbid the reading of it, your moral safety forbids it, your God forbids it, and one taste of it may lead to such bad results that you may have to say at the close of the experiment, or at the close of a misimproved lifetime: ’93I did but taste a little honey with the rod that was in my hand, and, lo, I must die.’94
Corrupt literature is doing more today for the disruption of domestic life than any other cause. Elope-merits, marital intrigues, sly correspondence, fictitious names given at post-office windows, clandestine meetings in parks and at ferry gates and in hotel parlors and conjugal perjuries are among the ruinous results. When a woman, young or old, gets her head thoroughly stuffed with the modern novel she is in appalling peril. But some one will say: ’93The heroes are so adroitly knavish, and the heroines so bewitchingly untrue, and the turn of the story so exquisite, and all the characters so enrapturing, I cannot quit them.’94 My brother, my sister, you can find styles of literature just as charming that will elevate and purify and ennoble and Christianize while they please. The devil does not own all the honey. There is a wealth of good books coming forth from our publishing houses that leave no excuse for the choice of that which is debauching to body, mind and soul. Go to some intelligent man or woman and ask for a list of books that will be strengthening to your mental and moral condition. Life is so short and your time for improvement so abbreviated that you cannot afford to fill up with husks and cinders and debris. In the intervals of business, that young man is reading that which will prepare him to be a merchant prince, and that young woman is filling her mind with an intelligence that will yet either make her the chief attraction of a good man’92s home, or give her an independence of character that will qualify her to build her own home and maintain it in a happiness that requires no augmentation from any one of our rougher sex. That young man or young woman can, by the right literature and moral improvement of the spare ten minutes here or there every day, rise head and shoulders in prosperity and character and influence above the loungers who read nothing or read that which be-dwarfs. See all the forests of good American literature dripping with honey. Why pick up the honeycombs that have in them the fiery bees which will sting you with an eternal poison while you taste it? One book may for you or me decide everything for this world and the next. It was a turning-point with me when in a book store in Syracuse, New York, one day, I picked up a book called ’93The Beauties of Ruskin.’94 It was only a book of extracts, but it was all pure honey, and I was not satisfied until I had purchased all his works, at that time expensive beyond an easy capacity to own them, and with what delight I went through reading his ’93Seven Lamps of Architecture,’94 and his ’93Stones of Venice,’94 it is impossible for me to describe, except by saying that it gave me a rapture for good books, and an everlasting disgust for pernicious or immoral books that will last while my life lasts. All around the church and the world today there are busy hives of intelligence occupied by authors and authoresses from whose pens drip a distillation which is the very nectar of heaven, and why will you thrust your rod of inquisitiveness into the deathful saccharine of perdition?
Stimulating liquors also came into the category of temptation delicious but deathful. You say, ’93I cannot bear the taste of intoxicating liquor, and how any man can like it is to me an amazement.’94 Well, then, it is no credit to you that you do not take it. Do not brag about your total abstinence, because it is not from any principle that you reject alcoholism, but for the reason that you reject certain styles of food’97you simply do not like the taste of them. But multitudes of people have a natural fondness for all kinds of intoxicant. They like it so much that it makes them smack their lips to look at it. They are dyspeptic and they like to aid digestion, or they are annoyed by insomnia, and they take it to produce sleep; or they are troubled, and they take it to make them oblivious; or they feel happy, and they must celebrate their hilarity. They begin with mint julep sucked through two straws on a Long Branch piazza and end in the ditch, taking from a jug a liquid half kerosene and half whisky. They not only like it, but it is an all-consuming passion of body, mind, and soul; and after a while have it they will, though one wine-glass of it should cost the temporal and eternal destruction of themselves and all their families and the whole human race. They would say, ’93I am sorry it is going to cost me and my family and all the world’92s population so very much, but here it goes to my lips, and now let it roll over my parched tongue and down my heated throat, the sweetest and most inspiring, the most delicious draught that ever thrilled a human frame.’94 To cure the habit before it comes to its last stages, various plans were tried in olden times. This plan was recommended in the books: when a man wanted to reform he put shot or bullets into the cup or glass of strong drink’97one additional shot or bullet each day, that displaced so much liquor. Bullet after bullet added day by day, of course the liquor became less and less until the bullets would entirely fill up the glass, and there was no room for the liquid, and by that time it was said the inebriate would be cured. Whether any one was ever cured in that way I know not, but by long experiment it is found that the only way is to stop short off, and when a man does that he needs God to help him. And there have been more cases than you can count when God has so helped the man that he left off the drink forever; and I could count a score of them, some of them pillars in the house of God.
One would suppose that men would take warning from some of the ominous names given to the intoxicants, and stand off from the devastating influence. You have noticed, for instance, that some of the restaurants are called ’93The Shades,’94 typical of the fact that it puts a man’92s reputation in the shade and his morals in the shade and his prosperity in the shade and his wife and children in the shade and his immortal destiny in the shade. Now, I find on some of the liquor signs in all our cities the words ’93Old Crow,’94 mightily suggestive of the carcass and the filthy raven that swoops upon it. ’93Old Crow!’94 Men and women without numbers slain of rum, but unburied, and this evil is pecking at their glazed eyes, and pecking at their bloated cheek, and pecking at their destroyed manhood and womanhood, thrusting beak and claw into the mortal remains of what was once gloriously alive, but now morally dead. ’93Old Crow!’94 But alas! how many take no warning! They make me think of C’e6sar on his way to assassination fearing nothing; though his statue in the hall crashed into fragments at his feet, and a scroll containing the names of the conspirators was thrust in his hands, yet walking right on to meet the dagger that was to take his life. This infatuation of strong drink is so mighty in many a man that, though his fortunes are crashing and his health is crashing and his domestic interests are crashing and we hand him a long scroll containing the names of perils that await him, he goes straight on to physical and mental and moral assassination. In proportion as any style of alcoholism is pleasant to your taste and stimulating to your nerves, and for a time delightful to all your physical and mental constitution, is the peril awful. Remember Jonathan and the forbidden honey in the woods at Beth-aven.
Furthermore, the gamester’92s indulgence must be put in the list of temptations delicious but destructive. You who have crossed the ocean many times have noticed that always one of the best rooms has, from morning until late at night, been given up to gambling practices. I heard of men who went on board with enough for a European excursion who landed without money enough to get their baggage up to the hotel or railroad station. To many there is a complete fascination in games of hazard, or the risking of money on possibilities. It seems as natural for them to bet as to eat. Indeed, the hunger for food is often overpowered by the hunger for wagers. It is absurd for those of us who have never felt the fascination of the wager to speak slightingly of the temptation. It has slain a multitude of intellectual and moral giants, men and women stronger than you or I. Down under its power went glorious Oliver Goldsmith, and Gibbon, the famous historian, and Charles Fox, the renowned statesman, and in olden times, senators of the United States, who used to be as regularly at the gambling-house all night as they were in the halls of legislation by day. Oh, the tragedies of the faro-table! I know persons who began with a slight stake in a ladies’92 parlor, and ended with the suicide’92s pistol at Monte Carlo. They played with the square pieces of bone with black marks on them, not knowing that Satan was playing for their bones at the same time, and was sure to sweep all the stakes off on his side of the table. State Legislatures have again and again sanctioned the mighty evil by passing laws in defense of race-tracks, and many young men have lost all their wages at such so-called ’93meetings.’94 Every man who voted for such infamous bills has on his hands and forehead the blood of these immortals.
But in this connection some young converts say to me: ’93Is it right to play cards? Is there any harm in a game of whist or enchre?’94 Well, I know good men who play whist and euchre and other styles of games without any wagers. I had a friend who played cards with his wife and children, and then at the close said: ’93Come, now, let us have prayers.’94 I will not judge other men’92s consciences; but I tell you that cards are in my mind so associated with the temporal and spiritual ruin of splendid young men, that I would as soon say to my family: ’93Come, let us have a game of cards,’94 as I would go into a menagerie and say: ’93Come, let us have a game of rattlesnakes,’94 or into a cemetery, and sitting down by a marble slab, say to the gravediggers: ’93Come, let us have a game of skulls.’94 Conscientious young ladies are silently saying: ’93Do you think card-playing will do us any harm?’94 Perhaps not, but how will you feel if in the great day of eternity, when we are asked to give an account of our influence, some man should say: ’93I was introduced to the game of chance at your house, and I went on from that sport to something more exciting, and went on down until I lost my business and lost my morals and lost my soul, and these chains that you see on my wrists and feet are the chains of a gamester’92s doom, and I am on my way to a gambler’92s hell.’94 Honey at the start, eternal catastrophe at the last.
Stock-gambling comes into the same catalogue. It must be very exhilarating to go into the stock-market and, depositing a small sum of money, run the chance of taking out a fortune. Many men are doing an honest and safe business in the stock-market, and you are an ignoramus if you do not know that it is just as legitimate to deal in stocks as it is to deal in coffee or sugar or flour. But nearly all the outsiders who go there on a financial excursion lose all. The old spiders eat up the unsuspecting flies. I had a friend who put his hand on his hip-pocket and said to me in substance: ’93Talmage, I have here the value of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’94 His home is today penniless. What was the matter? Stock-gambling. Of the vast majority who are victimized you hear not one word. One great stock firm goes down, and whole columns of newspapers discuss their fraud or their disaster, and we are presented with their features and their biography. But where one such famous firm sinks, five hundred unknown men sink with them. The great steamer goes down, and all the little boats are swallowed in the same engulfment. Gambling is gambling, whether in stocks or bread-stuffs or dice or race-horse betting. Exhilaration at the start, but a raving brain and a shattered nervous system and a sacrificed property and a destroyed soul at the last. Young men, buy no lottery tickets, purchase no prize packages, bet on no baseball games or yacht-races, have no faith in luck, answer no mysterious circulars proposing great income for small investment, drive away the buzzards that hover around our hotels trying to entrap strangers. Go out and make an honest living. Have God on your side, and be a candidate for heaven. Remember, all the paths of sin are banked with flowers at the start, and there are plenty of helpful hands to fetch the gay charger to your door and hold the stirrup while you mount. But further on the horse plunges to the bit in a slough inextricable.
The best honey is not like that which Jonathan took on the end of the rod and brought to his lips, but that which God puts on the banqueting table of mercy, at which we are all invited to sit. I was reading of a boy, among the mountains of Switzerland, ascending a dangerous place with his father and the guides. The boy stopped on the edge of the cliff and said, ’93There is a flower I mean to get.’94 ’93Come away from there,’94 said the father, ’93you will fall off.’94 ’93No,’94 said he; ’93I must get that beautiful flower;’94 and the guides rushed toward him to pull him back when, just as they heard him say, ’93I almost have it,’94 he fell two thousand feet. Birds of prey were seen a few days after circling through the air and lowering gradually to the place where the corpse lay. Why seek flowers off the edge of a precipice, when you can walk knee-deep amid the full bloom of the very Paradise of God? When a man may sit at the King’92s banquet, why will he go down the steps and contend for the refuse and bones of a hound’92s kennel? ’93Sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,’94 says David, is the truth of God. ’93With honey out of the rock would I have satisfied thee,’94 says God to the recreant. Here is honey gathered from the blossoms of trees of life, and with a rod made out of wood of the Cross I dip it up for all your souls.
The poet Hesiod tells of an ambrosia and a nectar, the drinking of which would make men live forever, and one sip of the honey from the Eternal Rock will give you eternal life with God. Come off the malarial levels of a sinful life. Come and live on the uplands of grace, where the vineyards sun themselves. ’93Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!’94 Be happy now and happy forever. For those who take a different course the honey will turn to gall. For many things I have admired Percy Shelley, the great English poet, but I deplore the fact that it seemed a great sweetness to him to dishonor God. The poem ’93Queen Mab’94 has in it the maligning of the Deity. Shelley was impious enough to ask for Rowland Hill’92s Surrey Chapel that he might denounce the Christian religion. He was in great glee against God and the truth. But he visited Italy, and one day on the Mediterranean with two friends in a boat which was twenty-four feet long he was coming toward shore when an hour’92s squall struck the water. A gentleman standing on shore through a glass saw many boats tossed in this squall, but all outrode the storm except one, in which Shelley and his two friends were sailing. That never came ashore, but the bodies of two of the occupants were washed up on the beach, one of them the poet. A funeral pyre was built on the sea-shore by some classic friends, and the two bodies were cremated. Poor Shelley! He would have no God while he lived, and I fear had no God when he died. ’93The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.’94 Beware of the forbidden honey!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage