205. Equipage of Cloud
Equipage of Cloud
Psa_104:3 : ’93Who maketh the clouds his chariot.’94
Brutes are constructed so as to look down. Those earthly creatures that have wings, when they rise from the earth, still look down; and the eagle searches for mice in the grass, and the raven for carcases in the field. Man alone is made to look up. To induce him to look up, God makes the sky a picture-gallery, a Dusseldorf, a Louvre, a Luxembourg, a Vatican, that eclipses all that German or French or Italian art ever accomplished. But God has failed so far to attract the attention of most of us by the scenery of the sky. We go into raptures over flowers in the soil, but have little or no appreciation of the ’93morning-glories’94 that bloom on the wall of the sky at sunrise, or the dahlias in the clouds at sunset. We are in ecstasies over a gobelin tapestry or a bridal veil of rare fabric or a snowbank of exquisite curve; but we see not at all, or see without emotion, the bridal veils of mist that cover the face of the Catskills or the swaying upholstery around the couch of the dying day or the snowbanks of vapor piled up in the heavens.
My text bids us lift our chin three or four inches and open the two telescopes which, under the forehead, are put on swivel easily turned upward, and see that the clouds are not merely uninteresting signs of wet or dry weather, but that they are embroidered canopies of shade; that they are the conservatories of the sky; that they are thrones of pomp; that they are crystalline bars; that they are paintings in water-color; that they are the angels of the mist; that they are great cathedrals of light with broad aisles for angelic beings to walk through and bow at altars of amber and alabaster; that they are the mothers of the dew; that they are ladders for ascending and descending glories, Cotopaxis of belching flame, Niagaras of color; that they are the masterpieces of the Lord God Almighty.
The clouds are a favorite Bible simile, and the sacred writers have made much use of them. After the Deluge, God hung on a cloud in concentric bands the colors of the spectrum, saying: ’93I do set my bow in the cloud.’94 As a mountain is sometimes entirely hidden by the vapors, so, says God, ’93I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.’94 David measured the divine goodness, and found it so high he apostrophized: ’93Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.’94 As sometimes there are thousands of fleeces of vapor scurrying across the heavens, so, says Isaiah, will be the converts in the millennium ’93as clouds and as doves.’94 As in the wet season, no sooner does the sky clear than there comes another obscuration; so, says Solomon, one ache or ailment of old folks has no more than gone than another pain comes ’93as clouds return after the rain.’94
A column of illumined cloud led the Israelites across the wilderness. In the Book of Job, Elihu, watching the clouds, could not understand why they did not fall, or why they did not all roll together, the laws of evaporation and condensation then not being understood, and he cries out: ’93Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds?’94 When I read my text, it suggests to me that the clouds are the Creator’92s equipage, and their whirling masses are the wheels, and the tongue of the cloud is the pole of the celestial vehicle, and the winds are the harnessed steeds, and God is the Royal occupant and driver, ’93who maketh the clouds his chariot.’94
To understand the Psalmist’92s meaning in the text, you must know that the chariot of old was sometimes a sculptured brilliancy, made out of ivory, sometimes of solid silver, and rolled on two wheels, which were fastened to the axle by stout pins; and the awful defeat of ‘8cnomaus by Pelops was caused by the fact that a traitorous charioteer had inserted a linchpin of wax instead of a linchpin of iron. All of the six hundred chariots of Pharaoh lost their linchpins in the Red Sea, for the Bible says: ’93The Lord took off their wheels.’94 Look at the long flash of Solomon’92s fourteen hundred chariots, and the thirty thousand chariots of the Philistines.
If you have ever visited the buildings where a king or queen keeps the coaches of state, you know that kings and queens have a great variety of turnouts. The keeper tells you: ’93This is the state carriage, and used only on great occasions.’94 ’93This is the coronation carriage, and in it the king rode on the day he took the throne.’94 ’93In this the queen went to open Parliament.’94 ’93This is the coach in which the Czar and the Sultan rode on the occasion of their visit.’94 All costly and tessellated and enriched and emblazoned are they, and when the driver takes the reins of the ten white horses in his hands, and amid mounted troops and bands in full force sounding the national air, the splendor starts, and rolls on under arches entwined with banners, and amid the huzza of hundreds of thousands of spectators, the scene is memorable. But my text puts all such occasions into insignificance, as it represents the King of the Universe coming to the door of his palace, and the gilded vapors of the heavens rolling up to his feet, and he, stepping in and taking the reins of the galloping winds in his hand, starts in triumphal ride under the arches of sapphire, and over the atmospheric highways of opal and chrysolite, the clouds his chariot.
Do not think that God belittles himself when he takes such conveyance. Do you know that the clouds are among the most wondrous and majestic things in the whole universe? Do you know that they are flying lakes and rivers and oceans? God waved his hand over them and said: ’93Come up higher!’94 and they obeyed the mandate. That cloud, instead of being, as it seems, a small gathering of vapor a few yards wide and high, is really seven or eight miles across, and is a mountain, from its base to its top, fifteen thousand feet, eighteen thousand feet, twenty thousand feet, and cut through with ravines five thousand feet deep. No, David did not make a fragile or unworthy representation of God in the text, when he spoke of the clouds as his chariot. But, as I suggested in the case of an earthly king, he has his morning-cloud chariot and his evening-cloud chariot’97the cloud chariot in which he rode down to Sinai to open the law, and the cloud chariot in which he rode down to Tabor to honor the Gospel, and the cloud chariot in which he will come to judgment. When he rides out in his morning chariot he puts golden coronets on the dome of cities, and silvers the rivers, and out of the dew makes a diamond ring for the fingers of every grass blade, and bids good cheer to invalids who in the night said: ’93Would God it were morning.’94 From this morning cloud chariot he distributes light’97light for the earth and light for the heavens, light for the land and light for the sea; great bars of it, great wreaths of it, great columns of it, a world full of it. Hail him in worship as every morning he drives out in his chariot of morning cloud, and cry with David: ’93My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee and look up.’94 I rejoice in these Scripture ejaculations: ’93Joy cometh in the morning.’94 ’93My soul waiteth for thee more than they that watch for the morning.’94 ’93If I take the wing of the morning.’94 ’93The eyelids of the morning.’94 ’93The morning cometh.’94 ’93Who is she that looketh forth as the morning.’94 ’93His going forth is prepared as the morning.’94 ’93As the morning spread on the mountains.’94 ’93That thou shouldest visit him every morning.’94 What a mighty thing the king throws from his chariot when he throws us the morning!
He has his evening cloud chariot. It is made out of the saffron and the gold and the purple and the orange and the vermilion and upshot flame of the sunset. That is the place where the splendors that have marched through the day, having ended the procession, throw down their torches and set the heavens on fire. That is the only hour of the day when the atmosphere is clear enough to let us see the wall of the heavenly city with its twelve manner of precious stones, from foundation of jasper to middle strata of sardius and on up to the coping of amethyst. At that hour, without any of Elisha’92s supernatural vision, we see horses of fire and chariots of fire and banners of fire and ships of fire and cities of fire and seas of fire, and it seems as if the last conflagration had begun and there is a world on fire. When God makes these clouds his chariot let us all kneel. Another day past, what have we done with it? Another day dead, and this is its gorgeous catafalque. Now is the time for what David called the ’93evening sacrifice,’94 or Daniel called the ’93evening oblation.’94
Oh! what a chariot made out of evening cloud! Have you hung over the taffrail on the ocean and seen this cloudy vehicle roll over the pavements of a calm summer sea, the wheels dripping with the magnificence? Have you, from the top of Ben Lomond or the Cordilleras or the Berkshire hills, seen the day pillowed for the night, and yet had no aspiration of praise and homage? What a rich God we have, who can put on one evening sky pictures that excel Michael Angelo’92s ’93Last Judgment,’94 and Ghirlandjo’92s ’93Adoration of the Magi,’94 and whole galleries of Madonnas, and for only an hour, and then throw them away, and the next evening put on the same sky something that excels all that the Raphaels and the Titians and the Rembrandts and the Corregios and the Leonardo da Vincis ever executed, and then draw a curtain of mist over them, never again to be exhibited! How rich God must be to have a new chariot of clouds every evening!
But the Bible tells us that our King also has his black chariot. ’93Clouds and darkness,’94 we are told, ’93are round about him.’94 That chariot is cloven out of night, and that night is trouble. When he rides forth in that black chariot, pestilence and earthquake and famine and hurricane and woe attend him. Then let the earth tremble. Then let nations pray. Again and again he has ridden forth, in that chariot of black clouds, across England and France and Italy and Russia and America, and over all nations. That which men took for the sound of cannonading at Sebastopol, at Sedan, at Gettysburg, at Tel-el-Kebir, at Bunker Hill, was only the rumblings of the black chariot of storm-cloud armed with thunderbolts, and neither man nor angel nor devil nor earth nor hell nor heaven can resist him. On those boulevards of blue, this chariot never turns aside for anything. No one else drives there. Under one wheel of that chariot, Babylon was crushed, and Baalbec fell dead, and the Roman Empire was prostrated, and Atlantis’97a whole continent that once connected Europe with America’97 sank clear out of sight, so that the longest anchor of ocean steamer cannot touch the top of its highest mountains. The throne of the C’e6sars was less than a pebble under the right wheel of this chariot, and the Austrian despotism less than a snowflake under the left wheel. And over destroyed worlds on worlds, that chariot has rolled without a jar or jolt. This black chariot of war-cloud rolled up to the northwest of Europe in 1812, and four hundred thousand men marched to take Moscow; but that chariot of clouds rolled back, and only twenty-five thousand out of the four hundred thousand troops lived to return. No great snowstorm like that ever before or since visited Russia.
The chariot of the Lord is irresistible. There is only one thing that can halt or turn any of his chariots, and that is prayer. Again and again it has stopped it, wheeled it around, and the chariot of black clouds, under that sanctified human breath, has blossomed into such brightness and color that men and angels had to veil their faces from its brightness. Mark you, the ancient chariot which David uses as a symbol in my text, had only two wheels, and that was that they might turn quickly, two wheels taking less than half the time to turn that four wheels would have taken. And our Lord’92s chariot has only two wheels, and that means instant reversal and instant help and instant deliverance. While the combined forces of the universe in battle array could not stop his black chariot a second, or diverge it an inch, the driver of that chariot says: ’93Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.’94 ’93While they are yet speaking, I will hear.’94 Two-wheeled chariot, one wheel justice and the other wheel mercy. Ay, they are swift wheels. A cloud’97whether it belongs to the cirrus, the clouds that float the highest; or belongs to the stratus, the central ranges; or to the cumulus, the lowest ranges’97seems to move slowly along the sky if it moves at all. But many of the clouds go at such a speed that a vestibule, limited, lightning express-train would seem lethargic, so swift is the chariot of our God; yea, swifter than the storm, swifter than the light. Yet a child ten years old has been known to reach up, and with the hand of prayer take the courser of that chariot by the bit and slow it up or stop it or turn it aside or turn it back. The boy Samuel stopped it. Elijah stopped it; Hezekiah stopped it; Daniel stopped it; Joshua stopped it; Esther stopped it; Ruth stopped it; Hannah stopped it; Mary stopped it; my father stopped it; my mother stopped it; my sister stopped it; and we have have in our Sabbath Schools children who again and again and again have stopped it.
Notice that these old-time chariots, which my text uses for symbol, had what we would call a high dashboard at the front, but were open behind. And the king would stand at the dashboard and drive with his own hands. And I am glad that he, whose chariot the clouds are, drives himself. He does not let fate drive, for fate is merciless. But our Father King drives himself, and he puts his loving hand on the reins of the flying coursers, and he has a loving ear open to the cry of all who want to catch his attention. Oh! I am so glad that my Father drives, and never drives too fast, and never drives too slow, and never drives off the precipice; and that he controls, by a bit that never breaks, the wildest and most raging circumstances. I heard of a ship-captain who put out with his vessel with a large number of passengers from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, very early in the season and while there was much ice. When they were well out, the captain saw, to his horror, that the ice was closing in on him upon all sides, and he saw no way out from destruction and death. He called into the cabin the passengers, and all the crew that could be spared from their posts, and told them that the ship must be lost unless God interposed, and although he was not a Christian man, he said: ’93Let us pray,’94 and they all knelt, asking God to come for their deliverance. They went back to the deck, and the man at the wheel shouted: ’93All right, Cap’92n, it’92s blowing nor’92 by nor’92west now.’94 While the prayer was going on in the cabin the wind changed and blew the ice out of the way. The mate asked: ’93Shall I put on more sail, Cap’92n?’94 ’93No!’94 responded the captain. ’93Don’92t touch her. Some one else is managing this ship.’94 Oh, men and women, shut in on all sides by icy troubles and misfortunes, in earnest prayer put all your affairs in the hands of God. You will come out all right. Some one else is managing the ship!
It did not merely happen so that when Leyden was besieged, and the Duke of Alva felt sure of his triumph, that suddenly the wind turned, and the swollen waters compelled him to stop the siege, and the city was saved. God that night drove along the coast of the Netherlands in a black chariot of storm-cloud. It did not merely happen so that Luther rose from the place where he was sitting just in time to escape from being crushed by a stone that the instant after fell on the very spot. Had he not escaped where would have been the Reformation? It did not merely happen so that, when George Washington was in Brooklyn, N. Y., a great fog settled down over all the place where my church once stood, and over all that end of Long Island, and that under that fog he and his army escaped from the clutches of Generals Howe and Clinton. In a chariot of mist and cloud the God of American Independence rode along that place. What solace in a theme like this. It is a sedative, a tonic, a stimulus.
On that pillow of consolation I put down my head to sleep at night. On that solid foundation I build when I see this nation in political paroxysm every four years, not because they care two cents about whether it is a high tariff or low tariff or no tariff at all, but only whether the Democrats or the Republicans shall have the salaried offices. When European nations are holding their breath, wondering whether Russia or Germany will launch a war that will incarnadine a continent, I fall back on the faith that my Father drives. Yea, I cast this as an anchor, and plant this as a column of strength, and lift this as a telescope, and build this as a fortress, and propose without any perturbation to launch upon an unknown future, triumphant in the fact that my Father drives. Yes, he drives very near. I know that many of the clouds you see in summer are far off, the bases of some of them five miles above the earth. High on the highest peaks of the Andes, travelers have seen clouds far higher than where they were standing. Gay Lussac, after he had risen in a balloon twenty-three thousand feet, saw clouds above him. But there are clouds that touch the earth and discharge their rain; and, though the clouds out of which God’92s chariot is made may sometimes be far away, often they are close by, and they touch our shoulders, and they touch our homes, and they touch us all over. I have read of two rides that the Lord took in two different chariots of clouds, and of another that he will take. One day, in a chariot of clouds that were a mingling of fog and smoke and fire, God drove down to the top of a terrible crag fifteen hundred feet high, now called Jebel-Musa, then called Mount Sinai, and he stepped out of his chariot among the split shelvings of rock. The mountain shook as with an ague, and there were ten volleys of thunder, each of the ten emphasizing a tremendous ’93Thou shalt,’94 or ’93Thou shalt not.’94 Then the Lord resumed his chariot of cloud and drove up the hills of heaven. They were dark and portentous clouds that made that chariot at the giving of the law. But one day he took another ride, and this time down to Mount Tabor; the clouds out of which his chariot was made, bright clouds, roseate clouds, illumined clouds; and music rained from all of them, and the music was a mingling of carol and chant and triumphal march: ’93This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’94 Transfiguration chariot!
’93Oh,’94 say hundreds of you, ’93I wish I could have seen those chariots’97the black one that brought the Lord to Jebel-Musa, at the giving of the law, and the white one that brought him down to Tabor!’94 Never mind, you will see something grander than that, and it will be a mightier mingling of the sombre and the radiant, and the pomp of it will be such that the chariots in which Trajan and Diocletian and Zenobia and C’e6sar and Alexander and all the conquerors of all ages rode, will be unworthy of mention; and what stirs me the most is, that when he comes in that chariot of cloud and goes back, he will ask you and me to ride with him both ways. How do I know that the judgment chariot will be made out of clouds? Rev_1:7 : ’93Behold he cometh with clouds.’94 Oh, he will not then ride through the heavens alone as he does now. He is going to bring along with him escort of ten full regiments. Inspiration says: ’93Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints.’94 But these figures simply mean that there will be a great throng. And as we shall probably, through the atonement of Christ, be in heaven before that, I hope that we can come down in that escort of chariot. Christ in the centre chariot, but chariots before him to clear the way and chariots behind him and chariots on either side of him. Perhaps the prophets and patriarchs of the old dispensation may ride ahead, each one charioted’97Abraham and Moses and Ezekiel and David and Joshua, who foretold his first coming. On either side of the central chariot, apostles and martyrs, who, in the same or approximate centuries, suffered for him’97Paul, Stephen and Ignatius and Polycarp and Justin Martyr, and multitudes who went up in chariot of fire, now coming in chariot of cloud, while in the rear of the central chariot shall be the multitudes of later days and of our own time, who have tried to serve the Lord’97ourselves, I hope, among them. ’93Behold the Lord cometh, with ten thousand of his saints.’94
Yes; although all unworthy of such companionship, we want to come with him on that day to see the last of this old world which was once our residence. Coming through the skies, myriads of chariots rolling on and rolling down. By that time how changed this world will be! Its deserts all flowers, its rocks all mossed and lichened, its poorhouses all palaces, its sorrows all joys, its sins all virtues; and in the same pasture-field, lion and calf; and on the same perch, hawk and dove. Now the chariots of cloud strike the earth, filling all the valleys and covering all the mountainsides, and halting in all the cemeteries and graveyards, and over the waters deep, where the dead sleep in coral sarcophagus. A loud blast of the Resurrection trumpet is given and the bodies of the dead rise and join the spirits from which they have long been separated. Then Christ our king, rising in the centre chariot of cloud, with his scarred hands waves the signal, and the chariots wheel and come into line for glorious ascent. Drive on! Drive up! Chariots of cloud ahead of the king, chariots of cloud on either side of the king, chariots of cloud following the king. Upward and a-past starry hosts, and through immensities, and across infinitudes, higher, higher, higher! unto the gates, the shining gates. Lift up your heads, ye Everlasting Gates! For him who maketh the clouds his chariot, and who, through condescending, and uplifting grace, invites us to mount and ride with him!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage