The Sun-Struck Child
2Ki_4:18-20 : ’93And when the child was grown, it fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head! And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And when he had taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died.’94
There is at least one happy home in Shunem. To the luxuriance and splendor of a great house had been given the advent of a child. Even when the Angel of Life brings a new soul to the poor man’92s hut, a star of joy shines over the manger. Infancy, with its helplessness and innocence, had passed away. Days of boyhood had come’97days of laughter and frolic, days of sunshine and promise, days of strange questions and curiosity and quick development. I suppose among all the treasures of that house, the brightest was the boy.
One day there is the shout of reapers heard afield. A boy’92s heart always bounds at the sound of sickle or scythe. No sooner have the harvesters cut a swath across the field than the lad joins them, and the swarthy reapers feel young again, as they look down at that lad, as bright and beautiful as was Ruth in the harvest fields of Bethlehem, gleaning after the reapers. But the sun was too hot for him. Congestion of the brain seized on him. I see the swarthy laborers drop their sickles; and they rush out to see what is the matter, and they fan him and they try to cool his brow; but all is of no avail. In the instant of consciousness, he puts his hands against his temples and cries out: ’93My head! my head!’94 And the father said: ’93Carry him to his mother,’94 just as any father would have said; for our hand is too rough, and our voice is too harsh, and our foot is too loud to doctor a sick child, if there be in our home a gentler voice, and a gentler hand, and a stiller footstep. But all of no avail. While the reapers of Shunem were busy in the field, there came a stronger reaper that way, with keener scythe and for a richer harvest. He reaped only one sheaf, but oh, what a golden sheaf was that! I do not want to know any more about that heart-breaking scene than what I see in just this one pathetic sentence: ’93He sat on her knees till noon, and then died.’94 Though hundreds of years have passed away since that boy skipped to the harvest-field and then was brought home and died on his mother’92s lap, the story still thrills us. Indeed, childhood has a charm always and everywhere I shall now speak to you of childhood; its beauty, its susceptibility to impression, its power over the parental heart, and its blissful transition from earth to heaven.
The child’92s beauty does not depend upon form or feature or complexion or apparel. That destitute one that you saw on the street, bruised with unkindness and in rags, has a charm about her, even under her destitution. You have forgotten a great many persons whom you met, of finely cut features and with erect posture and with faultless complexion, while you will always remember the poor girl who, on a cold, moonlight night, as you were passing late home, in her thin shawl and barefoot on the pavement, put out her hand and said: ’93Please to give me a penny.’94 Ah! how often we have walked on and said: ’93Oh, that is nothing but street vagabondism;’94 but after we got a block or two on, we stopped and said: ’93Ah, that is not right;’94 and we returned up that same way and dropped a mite into that suffering hand, as though it were not a matter of second thought, so ashamed were we of our hard-heartedness.
With what admiration we all look upon a group of children on the playground or in the school, and we clap our hands almost involuntarily, and say: ’93How beautiful!’94 All stiffness and dignity are gone, and your shout is heard with theirs and you trundle their hoop, and fly their kite, and strike their ball, and all your weariness and anxiety are gone as when a child you bounded over the playground yourself. That father who stands rigid and unsympathetic amid the sportfulness of children, ought never to have been tempted out of a crusty and unredeemable solitariness. The waters leap down the rocks, but they have not the graceful step of childhood. The morning comes out of the gates of the east, throwing its silver on the lake and its gold on the towers and its fire on the cloud; but it is not so bright and beautiful as the morning of life! There is no light like that which is kindled in a child’92s eye, no color like that which blooms on a child’92s cheek, no music like the sound of a child’92s voice. Its face in the poorest picture redeems any imperfection in art. When we are weary with toil, their little hands pull the burdens off our back. Oh, what a dull, stale, mean world this would be without the sportfulness of children. When I find people that do not like children, I immediately doubt their moral and Christian character.
When the grace of God comes upon a child, how unspeakably attractive. When Samuel begins to pray and Timothy begins to read the Scriptures, and Joseph shows himself invulnerable to temptation’97how beautiful the scene! I know that parents sometimes get nervous when their children become pious, because they have the idea that good children always die. The strange questions about God and eternity and the dead, excite apprehension in the parental mind rather than congratulation. Indeed, there are some children who seem marked for heaven. This poor world is too poor a garden for them to bloom in. The hues of heaven are in the petals. There is something about their forehead that makes you think that the hand of Christ has been on it, saying: ’93Let this one come to me, and let it come to me soon.’94 While that one tarried in the house, you felt there was an angel in the room, and you thought that every sickness would be the last; and when, finally, the winds of death did scatter the leaves you were no more surprised than to see a star come out above the cloud on a dark night; for you had often said to your companion: ’93My dear, we shall never raise that child.’94
But I scout the idea that good children always die. Samuel, the pious boy, became Samuel the great prophet. Christian Timothy became a minister at Ephesus. Young Daniel, consecrated to God, became prime minister of all the realm, and there are in hundreds of the schools and families of this country today, children who love God and keep his commandments, and who are to be foremost among the Christians and the philanthropists and the reformers of the next century. The grace of God never kills any one. A child will be more apt to grow up with religion than it will be apt to grow up without it. Length of days is promised to the righteous. The religion of Christ does not cramp the chest or curve the spine or weaken the nerves. There are no malarias floating up from the river of life. The religion of Christ throws over the heart and life of a child a supernal beauty. ’93Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.’94
I pass on to consider the susceptibility of child-hood. Men pride themselves on their unchangeability. They will make an elaborate argument to prove that they think now just as they did twenty years ago. It is charged to frailty or fraud when a man changes his sentiments in politics or in religion, and it is this determination of soul that so often drives back the Gospel from a man’92s heart. It is so hard to make avarice charitable, and fraud honest, and pride humble, and scepticism Christian. The sword of God’92s truth seems to glance off from those mailed warriors, and the helmet seems battle-proof against God’92s battle-axe. But childhood; how susceptible to example and to instruction! You are not surprised at the record: ’93Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob;’94 for when religion starts in a family, it is apt to go all through. Jezebel a murderess, you are not surprised to find her son Jehoram attempting assassination. Oh, what a responsibility upon the parent and the teacher! The musician touches the keys, and the response of those keys is away off amid the pipes and the cords, and you wonder at the distance between the key and the chord. And so it is in life; if you touch a child, the results will come back from manhood or old age, telling just the tune played, whether the dirge of a great sorrow or the anthem of a great joy. The word that the Sabbath-school teacher will this afternoon whisper in the ear of the class, will be echoed back from everlasting ages of light or darkness. The home and the school decide the republic or the despotism; the barbarism or the civilization; the upbuilding of an empire, or the overthrowing of it. Higher than Parliament or Congress are the school and the family, and the sound of a child’92s foot may mean more than the tramp of a host. What, then, are you doing for the purpose of bringing your children into the kingdom of God? If they are so susceptible, and if this is the very best time to act upon their eternal interests, what are you doing by way of right impulsion?
I pass on to consider the power which a child wields over the parental heart. We often talk about the influence of parents upon children. I never hear anything said about the influence of children upon their parents. You go to school to them. You no more educate them than they educate you. With their little hands they have caught hold of your entire nature and you cannot wrench yourself away from their grasp. You are different men and women from what you were before they gave you the first lesson. They have revolutionized your soul. There are fountains of joy in your heart which never would have been discovered had they not discovered them. Life is to you a more stupendous thing than it was before those little feet started on the pathway to eternity. Oh, how many hopes, how many joys, how many solicitudes that little one has created in your soul. You go to school every day’97a school of self-denial, a school of patience, in which you are getting wiser day by day; and that influence of the child over you will increase and increase; and though your children may die, from the very throne of God they will reach down an influence to your soul, leading you on and leading you up until you mingle with their voices and sit beside their thrones.
The grasp which the child has over the parent’92s heart is seen in what the parent will do for the child. Storm and darkness and heat and cold are nothing to you if they stand between you and your child’92s welfare. A great lawyer, when yet unknown, one day stood in the court-room and made an eloquent plea before some men of great legal attainments; and a gentleman said to him afterward: ’93How could you be so calm stand-ing in that august presence?’94 ’93Oh,’94 said Erskine, ’93I felt my children pulling at my skirts crying for bread.’94 What stream will you not swim, what cavern will you not enter, what battle will you not fight, what hunger will you not endure for your children? Your children must have bread though you starve. Your children must be well clothed though you go in rags. You say: ’93My children shall be educated though I never had any chance.’94 What to you are weary limbs, and aching head, and hands hardened and callous, if only the welfare of your children can be wrought out by it? Their sorrow is your sorrow, their joy your joy, their advancement your victory. And, oh, when the last sickness comes, how you fight back the march of disease, and it is only after a tremendous struggle that you surrender. And then when the spirit has fled, the great deep is broken up, and Rachel will not be comforted because her children are not, and David goes up the palace stairs, crying: ’93O Absalom, my son, my son, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’94
There is not a large family, or hardly a large family that has not bent over such a treasure and lost it. In the family fold is there no dead lamb? But there is nothing said about a child’92s death save the grief in the parent’92s heart. You see the little ones go right out from a world of sin and suffering to a world of joy. How many sorrows they escape, how many temptations, how many troubles! Children dead are safe. Those that live are in peril. We know not what dark path they may take. The day may come in which they will break your heart; but children dead are safe’97safe forever. Weeping parents, do not mourn too bitterly over your child that has gone. There are two kinds of prayers made at a child’92s sick-bed. One prayer the Lord likes; the other prayer he does not like. When a soul kneels down at a child’92s sick-bed and says: ’93O Lord, spare this little one; he is very near to my heart; I do not want to part with him, but thy will be done,’94’97that is the kind of prayer the Lord loves. There is another kind of prayer which I have heard men make in substance when they say, ’93O Lord, this is not right; it is hard to take this child; you have no right to take this child; spare this child; I cannot give him up, and I will not give him up.’94 The Lord answers that kind of a prayer sometimes. The child lives on and lives on, and travels off in paths of wickedness to perish. At the end of every prayer for a child’92s life, say: ’93Thy will, O Lord, be done.’94
The brightest lights that can be kindled, Christ has kindled. Let us, old and young, rejoice that heaven is gathering up so much that is attractive. In that far land we are not strangers. There are those there who speak our name day by day, and they wonder why so long we tarry. If I could count up the names of all those who have gone out from these families into the kingdom of heaven, it would take me all day to mention their names. A great multitude before the throne. You loved them once; you love them now; and ever and anon you think you hear their voices calling you upward. You want no book to tell you of the dying experience of Christian children. You have heard it; it has been whispered in your ear, O father, O mother, O brother, O sister. Toward that good land all Christians are journeying. This snapping of heart-strings this flight of years, this tread of the heart reminds us that we are passing. Before we mount our throne before we drink of the fountain, before we strike the harp of our eternal celebration, we will cry out: ’93Where are our loved and lost?’94 And then, how we shall gather them up! O, how we shall gather them up!
In This Dark World of Sin and Pain
We Only Meet to Part Again;
But When We Reach the Heavenly Shore
We There Shall Meet to Part No More.
The Hope That We Shall See That Day
Should Chase Our Present Griefs Away;
When These Short Years of Pain Are Past
We’92ll Meet Before the Throne at Last.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage