171. The Mission of the Frost

The Mission of the Frost

Job_37:10 : ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94

Nothing is more embarrassing to an organist or a pianist than to put his finger on a key of the instrument and have it make no response. Though all the other keys are in full play, that one silence spoils the music. So in the great cathedral of nature if one part fail to praise the Lord the harmony is halted and lost. While fire and hail, snow and vapor, respond to the touch of inspiration, if the frost made no utterance, the orchestral rendering would be hopelessly damaged and the harmony forever incomplete. I am more glad than I can tell that the white key of the frost sounds forth as mightily as any of the other keys, and when David touches it in the Psalm, it sounds forth the words: ’93He scattereth the hoar frost like ashes,’94 and when Job touches it in my text, it resounds with the words: ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94

As no one seems disposed to discuss the mission of frost, depending on divine help, I undertake it. This is the first Sabbath of winter. The leaves are down. The warmth has gone out of the air. The birds have made their winged march southward. The landscape has been scarred by the autumnal equinox. The huskers have rifled the corn-shocks. The night sky has shown the usual meteoric restlessness of November. Three seasons of the year are past, and the fourth and last has entered. Another element now comes in to bless and adorn and instruct the world. It is the frost. The palaces of this king are far up in the Arctic. Their walls are glittering congelation. Windsor Castles and Tuileries and Winter Palaces and Kenilworths and Alhambras of ice. Temples with pendant chandeliers of ice. Thrones of iceberg, on which eternal silence reigns. Theatres on whose stage eternal cold dramatizes eternal winter. Pillars of ice. Arches of ice. Crowns of ice. Chariots of ice. Sepulchres of ice. Mountains of ice. Dominions of ice. Eternal frigidity! From those hard, white, burnished portals King Frost descends, and waves his silvery sceptre over our temperate zone. You will soon hear his heel on the skating pond. You already feel his breath in the night wind. By most considered an enemy, coming here to benumb and hinder and slay, I shall show you that the frost is a friend, with benediction divinely pronounced, and charged and surcharged with lessons potent, beneficent and tremendous. The Bible seven times alludes to the frost, and we must not ignore it. ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94

First, I think of Frost as a painter. He begins his work on the leaves and continues it on the window-panes. With palette covered with all manner of colors in his left hand, and pencil of crystal in his right hand, he sits down before humblest bush in the latter part of September, and begins the sketching of the leaves. Now he puts upon the foliage a faint pallor, and then a touch of brown, and then a hue of orange, and last a flame of fire. The beech and ash and oak are turned first into sunrises and then into sunsets of vividness and splendor. All the leaves are penciled one by one, but sometimes a whole forest in the course of a few days shows great velocity of work. Weenix, the Dutch painter, could make in a summer day three portraits of life-size, but the frost in ten days can paint ten mountains in life-size. He makes the last days of an autumnal wood the days of his chiefest glory. Luxembourgs in the Adirondacks; Louvres in the Sierra Nevadas; Vaticans in the White Mountains. The work of other painters you must see in the right light to fully appreciate; but the paintings of the frost in all lights are enchanting, and from the time when the curtain of the morning lifts to the time when the curtain of the night drops. Michael Angelo put upon one ceiling his representation of the Last Judgment, but the frost represents universal conflagration upon three thousand miles of stretched-out grandeur. Leonardo da Vinci put upon a few feet of canvas our Lord’92s ’93Last Supper’94 for all ages to admire, but the frost puts the gleaming chalices of the imperial glories of the Last Supper of the dying year on the heights and lengths and breadths of the Alleghanies. When Titian first gazed upon a sketch of Correggio he was wrought up into such ecstasy that he cried out: ’93If I were not Titian I would be Corregio;’94 and so great and overpowering are the autumnal scenes of our American forests that one force of nature might well exclaim to another: ’93If I were not the sunlight I would be the frost.’94 Rugendas, the German painter, suffering from weakness in his right hand, laboriously learned to paint with his left hand; but the frost paints with both hands, and has in them more skill than all the Rembrandts and Rubens and Wests and Poussins and Albert Durers and Paul Veroneses and Claudes gathered in one long art gallery.

But the door of that great museum of autumnal coloring is now closed for a twelvemonth, and another spectacle just as wonderful is about to open. I put you on the alert and ask you to put your children on the alert. Tired of working on the leaves, the frost will soon turn to the window-panes. You will soon waken on a cold morning and find that the windows of your home have during the night been adorned with curves, with coronets, with exquisiteness, with pomp, with almost supernatural spectacle. Then you will appreciate what my text says, as it declares, ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94 You will see on the window-pane, traced there by the frost, whole gardens of beauty: ferns, orchids, daffodils, heliotropes, china-asters, fountains, statues, hounds on the chase, roebucks plunging into the stream, battle-scenes with dying and dead, catafalques of kings, triumphal processions; and as the morning sun breaks through you will see cities on fire, and bombardment with bursting shell, and illuminations as for some great victory, coronations, and angels on the wing. All night long, while you were sleeping, the frost was working, and you ought not to let the warmth obliterate the scene until you have admired it, studied it, absorbed it, set it up in your memory for perpetual refreshment, and realized the force and magnitude and intensity of my text: ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94

Oh, what a God we have! What resources are implied by the fact that he is able to do that by the finger of the frost fifty times in one winter and on a hundred thousand window-panes for thousands of winters! The great art galleries of Venice and Naples and Dresden are carefully guarded, and governments protect them, for, once lost, they can never be reproduced; but God sets up the Royal Galleries of. the Frost, pictures such as no human art could ever produce, hundreds of thousands of them, only for four or five hours, and then rubs them out, making the place clear for a display just as magnificent the next morning. No one but a God could afford to do that. It would bankrupt everything but infinity and omnipotence.

Standing here between the closed doors of the pictured woods and the opening doors of the transfigured window-glass, I want to cure my folly and your folly of longing for glorious things in the distance, while we neglect appreciation of glorious things close by. ’93Oh, if I could only go and see the factories of lace at Brussels,’94 says some one. Why, within twenty feet of where you awaken some December morning, you will see richer lace interwoven for your window-panes by Divine fingers. ’93Oh, if I could see the factories of silk at Lyons,’94 says some one. Why, without leaving your home, on the north side of your own house on Christmas morning you may see where the Lord has spun silken threads about your windows this way and that. Embroideries such as no one but God can work. Alas! for this glorification of the distant and this belittling of the close-by! This crossing of oceans and paying a high admission in expenses to look at that which is not half as well done as something we can see by crossing our own room, and free of charge. This praising of Raphaels hundreds of years gone, when the greater Raphael, the Frost, will soon be busy at the entrances to your own home.

Next I speak of the frost as a physician. Standing at the gates of New York harbor, autumn before last, the frost drove back the cholera, saying, ’93Thus far shalt thou come and no farther.’94 From Memphis and New Orleans and Jacksonville, he smote the fever plague till it reeled back and departed. The frost is a physician that doctors cities, nations and continents. He medicines the world. Quinine for malaria, antifebrile for typhoids, sulphonal for sleeplessness, anti-spasmodic for disturbed nerves; but in all therapeutics there is no remedy like the small pellets prepared by the cold, and no physician so skilful or so mighty as the frost. Scotland has had great physicians, but her greatest doctors have been the Abernethies and Abercrombies that have come down over the Highlands horsed on the north wind. England has had her great physicians, but her greatest doctors have been the Andrew Clarkes and the Mackenzies who appeared the first night the fields of England were rimed with white. America has had its great physicians, but her greatest doctors have been the Willard Parkers and Valentine Motts who landed from bleak skies while our fingers were benumbed and our ears tingled with the cold. Oh, it is high time that you add another line to your liturgy. It is high time that you make an addendum to your prayers. It is high time that you enlarge the catalogue of your blessings. Thank God for frost! It is the best of all germicides. It is a factor in bacteriology. It is the medicament of continents. It is the salvation of our temperate zone. It is the best tonic that God ever gave the human race. It is the only strong stimulant which has no reaction. The best commentary on it I had while walking out one cool morning with my brother John, who spent the most of his life as a missionary in China, and in that part of it where there are no frosts. He said there was a tingling gladness in his nerves indescribable, and an almost intoxication of delight from the fact that it was the first time for years he had felt the sensation of frost. We complain of it, we scold it, we frown upon it, when we ought to be stirred by it to gratitude, and hoist it on a doxology.

But I must go further and speak of the frost as a jeweler. As the snow is frozen rain, so the frost is frozen dew. God transforms it from a liquid into a crystal. It is the dew glorified. In the thirty-eighth chapter of that inspired drama, the book of Job, God says to the inspired dramatist, with ecstatic interrogation: ’93The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?’94 God there asks Job if he knows the parentage of the frost. He inquires about its pedigree. He suggests that Job study up the frost’92s genealogical line. A minute before God had asked about the parentage of a raindrop in words that have already given me a suggestive text for a sermon: ’93Hath the rain a father?’94 But now the Lord Almighty is catechising Job about the frost. He practically says: ’93Do you know its father? Do you know its mother? In what cradle of the leaves did the wind rock it? ’91The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?’92’93 He is a stupid Christian who thinks so much of the printed and bound Bible that he neglects the Old Testament of the fields and does not read the wisdom and kindness and beauty of God written in blossoms on the orchard, in sparkles on the lake, in stars in the sky, in frost on the meadows. The greatest jeweler of all the earth is the frost. There is nothing more wonderful in all crystallography. Some morning in December a whole continent is found besprent with diamonds, the result of one night’92s work by this jeweler. Do you make the depreciatory remark that the frost is impermanent and will last only two or three hours? What of that? We go into London Tower and look at the crown jewels of England, but we are in a procession that the guards keep moving on, and five minutes or less are your only opportunity of looking at those crown jewels; but at the crown jewels bestarred of the frost in parks and fields, you may stand to look deliberately and for hours, and no one to tell you to move on.

Oh, these regalias and diadems of beauty flung out of heaven! Kings and queens on celebrative days have come riding through the streets, throwing handfuls of silver and gold among the people; but the Queen of the Winter Morning is the only queen rich enough to throw pearls, and the King of Frost the only king rich enough to throw opals and sapphires and diamonds. Homer describes a necklace of amber given to Penelope; but the frost necklaces a continent. The carcanet of precious stones given to Harmonia had pinions of orange jasper and white moonstone and Indian agate, but it brought misfortune to any one who owned or inherited it, and its history, generation after generation, was a history of disaster; but the regalia of frost is the good fortune of every morning that owns it. The imperial household of Louis XVI could not afford the diamond necklace which had been ordered for Queen Marie Antoinette, and it was stolen and taken apart and lost; but the necklace that the frost puts on the wintry morning, though made of as many brilliants as the withered grass blades, is easily afforded by divine opulence, and is never lost, but after its use in the coronation of the fields is taken back to heaven. O men and women, accustomed to go into ecstasy when in foreign travel you come upon the historical gems of nations, whether the jewel be called ’93The Mountain of Glory’94 or the ’93Sea of Light’94 or ’93The Crown of the Moon’94 or ’93The Eye of Allah’94 or ’93The Star of Sarawak’94 or ’93The Koh-i-noor,’94 I implead you study the jewels strewn all ’91round your wintry home, and realize that ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94

But I go a step further and speak of the frost as an evangelist, and a text of Scripture is not of much use to me unless I can find the Gospel in it. The Israelites in the wilderness breakfasted on something that looked like frozen dew. The manna fell on the dew, and the dew evaporated and left a pulverized material, white, and looking like frost, but it was manna, and of that they ate. So now this morning, mixed with the frozen dew of my text, there is manna on which we may breakfast our souls. You say the frost kills. Yes, it kills some things, but we have already seen that it gives health and life to others. This Gospel is the savor of life unto life or of death unto death. As the frost is mighty, the Gospel is mighty. As the frost descends from heaven, the Gospel descends from heaven. By the breath of God frost is given. As the frost prepares for food many things that otherwise would be inedible, so the frost of trial ripens and prepares food for the soul. In the tight grip of the frost the hard shells of walnut and chestnut and hickorynut open, and the luxuries of the woods come into our laps or upon our tables; so the frost of trial takes many a hard and prickly shell and crushes it until that which stung the soul now feeds it.

There are passages of Scripture that once were enigmas, puzzles, riddles, and impossible for you to understand; but the frosts of trouble after awhile exposed the full meaning to your soul. You said, ’93I do not see why David keeps rolling over in his Psalms the story of how he was pursued and persecuted.’94 He describes himself as surrounded by bees. He says: ’93They compassed me about like bees; yea, they compassed me about like bees.’94 You think what an exaggerating thing for him to exclaim, ’93Out of the depths of hell have I cried unto thee, O Lord.’94 And there is so much of that style of lamentation in his writings you think he overdoes it; but after awhile the frost comes upon you in the shape of persecution, and you are pierced with this censure and wounded with that defamation and stung with some falsehood, and lies in swarms are buzzing, buzzing about your ears, and at last you understand what David meant when he said: ’93They compassed me about like bees; yea, they compassed me about like bees,’94 and you go down under nervous prostration, and feel that you are as far down as David when he cried: ’93Out of the depths of hell.’94 What opened all those chapters that hitherto had no appropriateness?

Frosts! For a long while the Bible seemed lopsided and a disproportionate amount of it given up to the consolatory. Why page after page and chapter after chapter and book after book in the Bible taken up with alleviations, with pacifications, with condolences? The Book seems like an apothecary store with one-half of the shelves occupied with balsams. Why such a superfluity of balsams? But after awhile the membranous croup carries off your child, or your health gives way under the grip, or your property is swept off by a bad investment, or perhaps all three troubles come at once’97bankruptcy, sickness and bereavement. Now the consolatory parts of the Bible do not seem to be disproportionate. You want something off almost all the shelves of that sacred Dispensary. What has uncovered and exposed to you the usefulness of so much of the Bible that Was before hidden? The frosts have been fulfilling their mission.

Put down all the promises of the Bible on a table for study, and put on one side the table a man who has never had any trouble, or very little of it, but pile upon the table beside him all encyclopaedias and all dictionaries and all archaeologies and all commentaries; and on the other side of the table put a man who has had trial upon trial, disaster upon disaster, and let him begin the study of the promises without lexicon, without commentary, without any book to explain or help, and this latter man will understand far more of the height and depth and length and breadth of these promises than the learned exegete opposite almost submerged in sacred literature. The one has the advantage over the other because he has felt the Mission of the Frosts. Oh, take the consolation of this theme, ye to whom life is a struggle and a disappointment and a gauntlet and a pang. That is a beautiful proverb among the Hebrews which says: ’93When the tale of bricks is doubled, then Moses comes.’94

Mild doses of medicine will do for mild sickness, but violent pains need strong doses, and so I stand over you and count out some drops that will alleviate your worst troubles if you will only take the medicine, and here it is: ’93In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’94 ’93Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’94 Thank God for frosts. What helped make Milton the greatest of poets? The frost of blindness. What helped make Washington the greatest of generals? The frosts of Valley Forge. What made it appropriate for one passing John Bunyan’92s grave to exclaim, ’93Sleep on, thou prince of dreamers’94? The frosts of imprisonment. The greatest college from which we can graduate is the College of Frosts. Especial trial fits for especial work. Just now watch, and you will see that trouble is preparative and educational. That is the grindstone on which battle-axes are sharpened. I have always noticed in my own case that when the Lord had some especial work for me to do, it was preceded by especial attack upon me. This is so proverbial in my own house that if for something I say or do I get poured upon me a volley of censure and anathema, my wife always asks, ’93I wonder what new opportunity of usefulness is about to open? Something good and grand is surely coming!’94

What is true in my case is true on a larger or smaller scale in the history of every man and woman who wants to serve the Lord. Without complaint take the hard knocks. You will see after awhile though you may not appreciate it now, that by the breath of a good and loving God frost is given. Let the corners of your mouth so long drawn down in complaint be drawn up in smiles of content.

For many years poets and essayists have celebrated the grace and swiftness of the Arabian horse. The most wonderful exhibition of horsemanship that I ever witnessed was just outside the city of Jerusalem’97an Arab steed mounted by an Arab. Do you know where these Arab horses got their fleetness and poetry of motion? Long centuries ago, Mohammed, with thirty thousand cavalry on the march, could find for them not a drop of water for three days. Coming to the top of a hill a river was in sight. With wild dash the thirty thousand horses started for the stream. A minute after an armed host was seen advancing, and at Mohammed’92s command one hundred bugles blew for the horses to fall in line, but all the thirty thousand continued the wild gallop to the river, except five, and they, almost dead with thirst, wheeled into line of battle. Nothing in human bravery and self-sacrifice excels that bravery and self-sacrifice of those five Arabian war-horses. Those five splendid steeds Mohammed chose for his own use, and from those five came that race of Arabian horses for ages the glory of the equestrian world. And let me say that, in this great war of truth against error, of holiness against sin, and heaven against hell, the best war horses are descended from those who, under pang and self-denial and trouble, answered the Gospel trumpet and wheeled into line. Out of great tribulation, out of great fires, out of great frosts, they came. And let me say it will not take long for God to make up to you in the next world for all you have suffered in this. As you enter heaven he may say: ’93Give this man one of those towered and colonnaded palaces on that ridge of gold overlooking the Sea of Glass. Give this woman a home among those amaranthine blooms and between those fountains tossing in the everlasting sunlight. Give her a couch canopied with rainbows to pay her for all the fatigues of wifehood and motherhood and housekeeping, from which she had no rest for forty years. Cup-bearers of heaven, give these newly-arrived souls from earth the costliest beverages and roll to their door the grandest chariots, and hang on their walls the sweetest harps that ever responded to fingers seraphic. Give to them rapture on rapture, celebration on celebration, jubilee on jubilee, heaven on heaven. They had a hard time on earth earning a livelihood, or nursing sick children, or waiting on querulous old age, or battling falsehoods that were told about them, or were compelled to work after they got short-breathed and rheumatic and dim-sighted. Chamberlains of heaven! Keepers of the King’92s robes! Banqueters of eternal royalty! Make up to them a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a millionfold for all they suffered from swaddling clothes to shroud, and let all those who, whether on the hills or in the temples or on the thrones or on jasper wall, were helped and sanctified and prepared for this heavenly realm by the Mission of the Frosts stand up and wave their sceptres!’94 And I looked, and behold! nine-tenths of the ransomed rose to their feet, and nine-tenths of the sceptres swayed to and fro in the light of the sun that never sets, and then I understood, far better than I ever did before, that trouble comes for beneficent purpose, and that on the coldest nights the aurora is brightest in the northern heavens, and that ’93By the breath of God frost is given.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage