The Upper Forces
2Ki_6:17 : ’93And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’94
As it cost England many regiments and two millions a year to keep safely a troublesome captive at St. Helena, so the King of Syria sends out a whole army to capture one minister of religion’97perhaps fifty thousand men to take Elisha. During the night, the army of Assyrians came around the village of Dothan, where the prophet was staying. At early daybreak the man-servant of Elisha rushed in and said, ’93What shall we do? there is a whole army come to destroy you. We must die; we must die.’94 But Elisha was not scared a bit, for he looked up and he saw the mountains all around full of supernatural forces, and he knew that if there were fifty thousand Assyrians against him there were one hundred thousand angels for him; and in answer to the prophet’92s prayer in behalf of his affrighted man-servant, the young man saw it too. Horses of fire harnessed to chariots of fire, and drivers of fire pulling reins of fire on bits of fire; and warriors of fire with brandished sword of fire, and the brilliance of that morning sunrise was eclipsed by the galloping splendors of the celestial cavalcade. ’93And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’94 I have often spoken of the Syrian perils which threatened the destruction of American institutions’97the bribery, the low morals, the drunkenness, the political abandonment; but this morning I speak of the upper forces of the text that are to fight on our side. If all the low levels are filled with armed threats, I have to tell you that the mountains of our hope and courage and faith are full of the horses and chariots of divine rescue. You will notice that the divine equipage is always represented as a chariot of fire. Ezekiel and Isaiah and John, when they come to describe the divine equipage, always represent it as a wheeled, harnessed, and upholstered conflagration. It is not a chariot like kings and conquerors of earth mount, but an organized and a compressed fire. That means purity, justice, chastisement, deliverance through burning escapes. Chariot of rescue? yes, but chariot of fire. All our national disenthrallments have been through scorching agonies and red disasters. Through tribulation the individual rises. Through tribulation nations rise. Chariots of rescue, but chariots of fire.
But how do I know that this divine equipage is on the side of our institutions? I know it by the history of the last hundred years. The American Revolution started from the pen of John Hancock, in Independence Hall, in 1776. The colonies, without ships, without ammunition, without guns, without trained warriors, without money, without prestige. On the other side, the mightiest nation of the earth, the largest armies and the grandest navies, and the most distinguished commanders, and resources inexhaustible, and nearly all nations ready to back them up in the fight. Nothing, as against immensity. The cause of the American colonies, which started at zero, dropped still lower, through the quarreling of the generals, and through the jealousies amid small successes, and through the winters which surpassed all their predecessors in depth of snow and horrors of congealment. Elisha surrounded by the whole Syrian army did not seem to be worse off than did the thirteen colonies encompassed and overshadowed by foreign assault. What decided the contest in our favor? The upper forces, the upper armies. The Green and White mountains of New England, the Highlands along the Hudson, the mountains of Virginia, all the Appalachian ranges were full of reinforcements which the young man Washington saw by faith, and his men endured the frozen feet, and the gangrened wounds, and the exhausting hunger, and the long march, because ’93the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw; and, behold, the mountains were full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’94
Washington himself was a miracle. What Joshua was in sacred history. the first American President was in secular history. A thousand other men excelled him in different things, but he excelled them all in roundness and completeness of character. The world never saw his like, and probably never will see his like again, because there probably never will be another such exigency. He was let down by divine interposition. He was from God direct. I do not know how any man can read the history of those times without admitting that the contest was decided by the upper forces.
In 1861, when our civil war opened, many at the North and at the South pronounced it national suicide. It was not courage against cowardice, it was not wealth against poverty, it was not large States against small States. It was heroism against heroism, it was the resources of many generations against the resources of many generations, it was the prayer of the North against the prayer of the South, it was one-half of the nation in armed wrath meeting the other half of the nation in armed indignation. What could come but extermination? At the opening of the war, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States forces was a dear old man with gout and vertigo and asthma, who could not mount a horse, and he rode on the battlefield in a carriage, asking the driver not to jolt it too much. During the most of the four years of the contest, on the Southern side was a man in mid-life, who had in his veins the blood of many generations of warriors, himself one of the heroes of Cherubusco and Cerro Gordo, Contreras and Chapultepec. As the years passed on and the scroll of carnage unrolled, there came out from both sides a heroism and a strength and determination that the world had never seen marshaled. And what but extermination could come when Philip Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson met, and Nathaniel Lyon and Sydney Johnston rode in from north and south, and Grant and Lee, the two thunderbolts of battle, clashed? Yet, we are a nation, and yet we are at peace. Earthly courage did not decide the conflict. The upper forces of the text. They tell us there was a battle fought above the clouds on Lookout Mountain; but there was something higher than that. The horses and chariots of God came to the rescue of this nation.
In 1876, at the close of a Presidential election, famous for devilish ferocity, a darker cloud yet settled down upon this nation. The result of the election was in dispute, and revolution, not between two or three sections, but revolution in every town and village and city of the United States seemed imminent. The prospect was that New York would throttle New York, and that New Orleans would grip New Orleans, and Boston, Boston, and Savannah, Savannah, and Washington, Washington. Some said Mr. Tilden was elected; others said Mr. Hayes was elected; and how near we came to universal massacre some of us guessed, but God only knew. I ascribe our escape not to the honesty and righteousness of infuriated politicians, but I ascribe it to the upper forces of the text. Chariots of mercy rolled in, and though the wheels were not heard and the flash was not seen, yet all through the mountains of the North and the South, and the East and the West, though the hoofs did not clatter, the cavalry of God galloped by. I tell you, God is the friend of this nation. In the awful excitement at the massacre of Lincoln, when there was a prospect that greater slaughter would open upon this nation, God hushed the tempest. In the awful excitement at the time of Garfield’92s assassination, God put his foot on the neck of the cyclone.
To prove that God is on the side of this nation, I argue from the last five great national harvests, and from the national health for the last quarter of a century, epidemics very exceptional, and from the great revivals of religion, and from the spreading of the Church of God, and from the continent blossoming with asylums and reformatory institutions, and from an Edenization which promises that this whole land is to be a Paradise where God shall walk in the cool of the day.
If in two sermons I showed you what was the evil that threatened to upset and demolish American institutions, I am encouraged more than I can tell you as I see the regiments wheeling down the sky, and my jeremiads turn into doxologies, and that which was the Good Friday of the nation’92s crucifixion becomes the Easter Morn of its resurrection. Of course, God works through human instrumentalities, and this national betterment is to come, among other things, through a scrutinized ballot-box. By the law of registration it is almost impossible now to have illegal voting. There was a time’97you and I remember it very well’97when droves of vagabonds wandered up and down on election day, and from poll to poll, and voted here and voted there, and voted everywhere, and there was no challenge; or, if there was, it amounted to nothing, because nothing could so suddenly be proved upon the vagabonds. Now, in every well-organized neighborhood, every voter is watched with the severest scrutiny. Just think of it! The record is already made up, and has been made up for nearly a week, although yet the ordeal is nine days off. I must tell the registrar my name, and how old I am, and how long I have resided in the State, and how long I have resided in the ward or the township, and if I misrepresent fifty witnesses will rise and shut me out from the ballot-box. Is not that a great advance? And then notice the law that prohibits a man voting if he has bet on the election. A step further needs to be taken, and that man forbidden a vote who has offered or taken a bribe, whether it be in the shape of a free drink or cash paid down, the suspicious cases obliged to put their hand on the Bible and swear their vote in if they vote at all. So through the sacred chest of our nation’92s suffrage redemption will come.
God will also save this nation through an aroused moral sentiment. There has never been so much discussion of morals and immorals as during the present political campaign. Men, whether or not they acknowledge what is right, have to think what is right. We have men who have had their hands in the public treasury the most of their lifetime, stealing all they could lay their hands on, discoursing eloquently about dishonesty in public servants, and men with two or three families of their own preaching eloquently about the beauties of the seventh commandment. The question of sobriety and drunkenness thrust in the face of this nation as never before, and to take a part in the great national contest. Prohibition, which was only a joke four years ago when Neal Dow ran for the Presidency, no longer a joke, but flushing the cheek of this nation with excitement, and agitating the land from Lake Erie to Mobile Bay, and from Bangor to San Francisco, and will in four years from now, holding the balance of power, decide who shall be the President of the United States. The loud, long laugh at fanatical reformers has caught in the windpipe, and turned into a paroxysm of strangulation, and the question of national sobriety is going to be respectfully and deferentially heard at the bar of every Legislature and every House of Representatives and every United States Senate, and an omnipotent voice will ring down the sky and across this land and back again, saying to these rising tides of drunkenness which threaten to whelm home and church and nation, ’93Thus far shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.’94
I have not in my mind a shadow of disheartenment as large as the shadow of a house-fly’92s wing. My faith is in the upper forces, the upper armies of the text. God is not dead! The chariots are not unwheeled. If you would only pray more and rub your eyes from the sleep of indifference, and wash them in the cool, bright water fresh from the well of Christian reform, it would be said of you as of this one of the text: ’93The Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’94
You ask me whom I will vote for. I reply, it is of very little importance whom I vote for; but it is a matter of vast importance what these throngs and throngs of people shall vote for, and so, in these three or four sermons, I put before you all the facts and all the principles so that you can intelligently decide. Vote for the best men, vote conscientiously, vote in the fear of God, vote as you will wish you had voted when you can vote no more.
When the army of Antigonus went into battle, his soldiers were very much discouraged, and they rushed up to the general and said to him: ’93Don’92t you see we have a few forces, and they have so many more?’94 and the soldiers were affrighted at the smallness of their number and the greatness of the enemy. Antigonus, their commander, straightened himself up, and said with indignation and vehemence: ’93How many do you reckon me to be?’94 And when we see the vast armies arrayed against the cause of sobriety it may sometimes be very discouraging, but I ask you in making up your estimate of the forces of righteousness’97I ask you how many do you reckon the Lord God Almighty to be? He is our Commander. The Lord of Hosts is His name. I have the best authority for saying that the chariots of God are twenty thousand, and the mountains are full of them.
You will take, without my saying it, that my only faith is in Christianity and in the upper forces suggested in the text. Political parties come and go, and they may be right and they may be wrong; but God lives, and I think He has ordained this nation for a career of prosperity that no demagogism will be able to halt. I expect to live to see a political party which will have a platform of two planks’97the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. When that party is formed, it will sweep across this land like a tornado, I was going to say, but when I think it is not to be devastation but resuscitation, I change the figure and say such a party as that will sweep across this land like a thousand-spaced gale from heaven.
American politics, you know as well as I do, will never be purified or made decent by anything less powerful than the Christian religion. Take, for instance, the fact that we have now one hundred million dollars surplus in the United States Treasury. What is the great anxiety? I think the great question is, with a vast multitude, whether the Democratic party or the Republican party will have the privilege of stealing it. Will anything short of an infusion of Christian principle in this country lead this nation to be honest? There is only one honest thing to do with that one hundred million dollars of surplus’97subtract it from the taxation of this nation next year, letting the people up from this accursed burden of overtaxation. Suppose you overpaid me in a bargain, what is the honest thing for me to do? Pay it back to you. Ought not a nation to be as honest as an individual? Will it be done? Not unless we have a great revival of religion in Congress, and three-fourths of the members down on the ’93anxious seat.’94
Have you any doubt about the need of the Christian religion to purify and make decent American politics? What is the fact now? Just look at it. We are to have for our next President either a man who has been pictorialized and excoriated as a thief, or we are to have a man who has been pictorialized and excoriated as a libertine. Now that is the simple fact. What a state of things it is! Never such a carnival of mud. All the candidates may have their faults, and I have no doubt great injustices have been done them. The trouble is, we have in this country two great manufactories’97manufactories of lies’97the Republican manufactory of lies and the Democratic manufactory of lies’97and they are run day and night, and they turn out half a dozen a day all equipped and ready for full sailing. Large lies and small lies. Lies private and lies public and lies prurient. Lies cut bias and lies cut diagonal. Long-limbed lies and lies with double-back action. Lies complimentary and lies defamatory. Lies that some people believe, and lies that all the people believe and lies that nobody believes. Lies with humps like camels and scales like crocodiles and necks as long as storks’92, and feet as swift as an antelope’92s, and stings like adders’92. Lies raw and scalloped and panned and stewed. Crawling lies and jumping lies and soaring lies. Lies with attachment screws and ruffles and braiders and ready-wound bobbers. Lies by Christian people who never lie except during elections, and lies by people who always lie, but beat themselves in a Presidential campaign..
I confess I am ashamed to have a foreigner visit this country in these times. I should think he would stand dazed, his hand on his pocketbook, and dare not go out nights. What will the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who come here to live think of us? What a disgust they must have for the land of their adoption! The only good thing about it is, many of them cannot understand the English language. But I suppose the German, and Italian, and Swedish, and French papers translate it all, and peddle out the infernal stuff to their subscribers. Nothing but Christianity will ever stop such a flood of indecency. The Christian religion will speak after a while. The billingsgate and low scandal through which we have waded for the last three or four months must be rebuked by that religion which speaks from its two great mountains, from the one mountain intoning the command, ’93Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,’94 and from the other mount making plea for kindness and love and blessing rather than cursing. Yes, we are going to have a national religion. There are two kinds of national religion. The one is supported by the State, and is a matter of human politics, and it has great patronage, and under it men will struggle for prominence without reference to qualifications, and its archbishop is supported by a salary of seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and there are great cathedrals, with all the machinery of music and canonicals, and room for a thousand people, yet an audience of fifty people, or twenty people, or ten or five or two. We want no such religion as that, no such national religion; but we want this kind of a national religion’97the vast majority of the people converted and evangelized, and then they will manage the secular as well as the religious.
Do you say that it is impracticable? No. The time is coming just as certainly as there is a God, and that this is His Book, and that He has the strength and the honesty to fulfil His promises. One of the ancient emperors used to pride himself on performing that which his counselors said was impossible, and I have to tell you today that man’92s impossibles are God’92s easies. ’93Hath he said and shall he not do it? Hath he commanded, and will he not bring it to pass?’94 The Christian religion is coming to take possession of every ballot-box, of every school house, of every home, of every valley, of every mountain, of every acre of our national domain. This nation, notwithstanding the evil influences that are trying to destroy it, is going to live.
Never since, according to John Milton, when ’93Satan was hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal skies in hideous ruin and combustion down,’94 have the powers of darkness been so determined to win this continent as they are now. What a jewel it is’97a jewel carved in relief, the cameo of this planet! On one side of us the Atlantic Ocean, dividing us from the worn-out governments of Europe. On the other side the Pacific Ocean, dividing us from the superstitions of Asia. On the north of us the Arctic Sea, which is the gymnasium in which the explorers and navigators develop their courage. A continent ten thousand five hundred miles long, seventeen million square miles, and all of it but about one-seventh capable of rich cultivation. One hundred millions of population on this continent of North and South America’97one hundred millions, and room for many hundred millions more. All flora and all fauna, all metals and all precious woods, and all grains and all fruits. The Appalachian range the backbone, and the rivers the ganglia, carrying life all through and out to the extremities. Isthmus of Darien, the narrow waist of a giant continent, all to be under one government, and all free and all Christian, and the scene of Christ’92s personal reign on earth, if, according to the expectation of many good people, he shall at last set up his throne in this world. Who shall have this hemisphere, Christ or Satan? Who shall have the shores of her inland seas, the silver of her Nevadas, the gold of her Colorados, the telescopes of her observatories, the brain of her universities, the wheat of her prairies, the rice of her savannas, the two great ocean beaches’97the one reaching from Baffin’92s Bay to Terra del Fuego, and the other from Behring Straits to Cape Horn’97and all the moral and temporal and spiritual and everlasting interests of a population vast beyond all human computation? Who shall have the hemisphere? You and I will decide that, or help to decide it, by conscientious vote, by earnest prayer, by maintenance of Christian institutions, by support of great philanthropies, by putting body, mind, and soul on the right side of all moral, religious and national movements.
It will not be long before it will not make any difference to you or to me what becomes of this continent, so far as earthly comfort is concerned. All we will want of it will be seven feet by three, and that will take in the largest, and there will be room and to spare. That is all of this country we will need very soon’97the youngest of us. But we have an anxiety about the welfare and the happiness of the generations that are coming on, and it will be a grand thing if, when the archangel’92s trumpet sounds, we find that our sepulchre, like the one of Joseph of Arimathea, provided for Christ, is in the midst of a garden.
One of the seven wonders of the world was the white marble watch-tower of Pharos of Egypt. Sostratus, the architect and sculptor, after building that watch tower, cut his name on it. Then he covered it with plastering, and to please the king he put the monarch’92s name on the outside of the plastering, and the storms beat, and the seas dashed in their fury, and they washed off the plastering, and they washed it out, and they washed it down, but the name of Sostratus was deep cut in the imperishable rock. So across the face of this nation there have been a great many names written, across our finances, across our religions, names worthy of remembrance, names written against the architecture of our churches, and our schools, and our asylums, and our homes of mercy, but God is the architect of this continent, and he was the sculptor of all its grandeurs, and long after, through the wash of the ages and the tempests of centuries, all other names shall be obliterated, the divine signature and divine name will be brighter and brighter as the millenniums go by, and the world shall see that the God who made this continent has redeemed it by his grace from all its sorrows and from all its crimes. Have you faith in such a thing as that? After all the chariots have been unwheeled, and after all the war chargers have been crippled, the chariots which Elisha saw on the morning of his peril will roll on in triumph, followed by all the armies of heaven on white horses. God could do it without us, but he will not. The weakest of us, the faintest of us, the smallest brained of us shall have a part in the triumph. We may not have our name, like the name of Sostratus, cut in imperishable rock and conspicuous for centuries, but we shall be remembered in a better place than that, even in the heart of him who came to redeem us and redeem the world, and our names will be seen close to the signature of his wound, for as this morning he throws out his arms toward us, he says: ’93Behold, I have graven thee on the palms of my hand.’94 By the mightiest of all agencies, the potency of prayer, I beg you to be before God until after the first Tuesday of November.
There are four million six hundred thousand letters in the dead letter post-office at Washington’97letters that lost their way’97but not one prayer ever directed to the heart of God miscarried. The way is all clear for the ascent of your supplications heavenward in behalf of this nation. Before the postal communication was so easy, and long ago, on a rock one hundred feet high on the coast of England, there was a barrel fastened to a post, and in great letters on the side of the rock, so it could be seen far out at sea, were the words, ’93Post-office;’94 and when ships came by a boat put out to take and fetch letters. And so sacred were those deposits of affection in that barrel that no lock was ever put upon that barrel, although it contained messages for America, and Europe, and Asia, and Africa, and all the islands of the sea. Many a storm-tossed sailor, homesick, got message of kindness by that rock, and many a homestead heard good news from a boy long gone. Would that all the heights of our national prosperity were in interchange of sympathies’97prayers going up meeting blessings coming down! Postal celestial, not by a storm-struck rock on a wintry coast, but by the Rock of Ages. In the cleft of that rock let this nation hide until all its calamities be overpast.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage