219. The Cold
The Cold
Psa_147:17 : ’93Who can stand before his cold?’94
The almanac says that winter is ended and spring has come, but the wind and the frost and the thermometer, in some places down to zero, deny it. This whole land has recently been afflicted with depressed temperature. In Dakota, the thermometer forty degrees below zero. Window-glass in Chicago cracked under the cold. A sea-captain coming last night into port tells me that in Charleston, South Carolina, it has been colder than in one hundred and thirty years, with one exception. Flocks of sheep, herds of cattle have perished on the mountains. One of the severest winters this land has ever experienced; these severities finding their echo in the text: ’93Who can stand before his cold?’94
The psalmist lived in a more genial climate than this, and yet he must sometimes have been cut of the sharp weather. In this chapter he speaks of the snow like wool, the frost like ashes, the hailstones like morsels, and describes the congealment of lowest temperature. We have all studied the power of the heat. How few of us have studied the power of the frost. ’93Who can stand before his cold?’94 This challenge of the text has many times been accepted. October 19, 1812, Napoleon’92s great army began its retreat from Moscow. One hundred and fifty thousand men, fifty thousand horses, six hundred pieces of cannon, forty thousand stragglers. It was bright weather when they started from Moscow, but soon something wrathier than the Cossacks swooped upon their flanks. An army of arctic blast, with icicles for bayonets and hailstones for shot, and commanded by voice of tempest, marched after them. The flying artillery of the heavens in pursuit. The troops at nightfall would gather into circles and huddle themselves together for warmth; but when the day broke they rose not, for they were dead, and the ravens came for their morning meal of corpses. The way was strewn with rich stuffs of the East brought as booty from the Russian capital. An invisible power seized over one hundred thousand men and hurled them dead into snowdrifts, and on the hard surfaces of the chill rivers, and into the maws of the dogs that had followed them from Moscow. That freezing horror which has appalled history was proof to all ages that it is a vain thing for any earthly power to accept the challenge of my text: ’93Who can stand before his cold?’94
In the middle of December, 1777, at Valley Forge, eleven thousand troops were with frosted ears and frosted hands and frosted feet, without shoes, without blankets, lying on the white pillow of the snow-bank. As during our Civil War, the cry was: ’93On to Richmond!’94 when the troops were not ready to march, so in the Revolutionary War there was a demand for wintry campaign until Washington lost his equilibrium, and wrote impatiently: ’93I assure these gentlemen it is easy enough, seated by a good fireside and in comfortable home to draw out campaigns for the American army; but I tell him it is not so easy to lie on a bleak hillside without blankets and without shoes.’94 Oh, the frigid horrors that gathered around the American army in the winter of 1777! Valley Forge was one of the tragedies of the century. Benumbed, senseless, dead!
’93Who can stand his cold?’94 ’93Not we,’94 say the frozen lips of Sir John Franklin and his men dying in arctic exploration. ’93Not we,’94 answer Schwatka and his crew falling back from the fortresses of ice which they had tried in vain to capture. ’93Not we,’94 say the abandoned and crushed decks of the Intrepid, the Resistance and the Jeanette. ’93Not we,’94 say the procession of arctic martyrs this moment on their way home for American sepulture, De Long and his men.
The highest pillars of the earth are pillars of ice. Mount Blanc, Youngfrau, the Matterhorn. The largest galleries of the world are galleries of ice. Some of the mighty rivers are at this moment lying in captivity of ice. The greatest sculptors of the ages are the glaciers, with arm and hand and chisel and hammer of ice. The cold is imperial, and has a crown of glittering crystal, and is seated on a throne of ice, with footstool of ice and scepter of ice. Who can tell the sufferings of the winter of 1433, when all the birds in Germany perished? or the winter of 1658 in England, when the stages rolled on the Thames, and temporary houses of merchandise were built on the ice? or the winter of 1821 in America, when New York harbor was frozen over and heavy teams crossed on the ice to Staten Island? Then come down to our own winter, when there had been so many wrapping themselves in furs, or gathering themselves around fires or threshing their arms about them to revive circulation’97the millions of the temperate and the arctic zones who are compelled to confess, ’93None of us can stand before his cold.’94 One-half of the industries of our day are employed in battling inclemency of the weather. The furs of the North, the cotton of the South, the flax of our own fields, the wool of our own flocks, the coal from our own mines, the wood from our own forests’97all employed in battling these inclemencies, and still every January with blue lips and chattering teeth answers, ’93None of us can stand before his cold.’94
Now, this being such a cold world, God sends out influences to warm it. I am glad that the God of the frosts is the God of the heat, the God of the snow is the God of the white blossom, that the God of January is the God of June. The question as to how we shall warm this world up is a question of immediate and all-encompassing practicability. In this zone and weather there are so many fireless hearths, so many broken window-panes, so many defective roofs that sift the snow. Coal and wood and flannels and thick coats are better for warming up such a place than tracts and Bibles and creeds. Kindle that fire where it has gone out. Wrap something around those shivering limbs. Shoe those bare feet. Hat that bare head. Coat that bare back. Sleeve that bare arm.
Nearly all the pictures of Martha Washington represent her in courtly dress as bowed to by foreign ambassadors; but Mrs. Kirkland, in her interesting book, gives a more inspiring portrait of Martha Washington. She comes forth from her husband’92s hut in the encampment, the hut sixteen feet long by fourteen feet wide’97she comes forth from that hut to nurse the sick, to sew the patched garments, to console the soldiers dying of the cold. That is a better picture of Martha Washington.
Hundreds of garments, hundreds of tons of coal, hundreds of glaziers at broken window-sashes, hundreds of whole-souled men and women are necessary to warm this January weather. What are we doing to alleviate the condition of those not so fortunate as we? Know ye not, my friends, there are hundreds and thousands of people who cannot stand before his cold? It is useless to preach to bare feet and to empty stomachs and to gaunt visage. Christ gave the world a lesson in common sense when, before preaching the Gospel to the multitude in the wilderness, he gave them a good dinner.
But, my friends, there is more than one way of warming up this cold world, for it is a cold world in more respects than one, and I am here this morning to consult with you as to the best way of warming up the world. I want to have a great heater introduced into all your churches and all your homes and throughout the world. It is a heater of divine patent. It has many pipes with which to conduct heat, and it has a door into which to throw the fuel. Once get this heater introduced, and it will turn the Arctic zone into the temperate and the temperate into the tropics. It is the powerful heater, it is the glorious furnace of Christian sympathy. The question ought to be not, how much heat can we absorb, but, how much heat can we throw out? There are men that go through the world floating icebergs. They freeze everything with their forbidding look. The hand with which they shake yours is as cold as the paw of the polar bear. If they float into a religious meeting the temperature drops from eighty above to ten degrees below zero. There are icicles hanging from their eyebrows. They float into a religious meeting and they chill everything with their jeremiads. Cold prayers, cold songs, cold greetings, cold sermons. Christianity on ice! The Church a great refrigerator! Christians gone into winter quarters! Hibernation! On the other hand, there are people who go through the world like the breath of a spring morning. Warm greetings, warm prayers, warm smiles, warm Christian influence. There are such persons. We bless God for them. We rejoice in their companionship.
A general in the English army, the army having halted for the night, having lost his baggage, lay down tired and sick without any blanket. An officer came up and said: ’93Why, you have no blanket; I’92ll go and get you a blanket.’94 He departed for a few moments, and then came back and covered the general up with a very warm blanket. The general said: ’93Whose blanket is this?’94 The officer replied: ’93I got that from a private soldier in the Scotch regiment, Ralph McDonald.’94 ’93Now,’94 said the general, ’93you take this blanket right back to that soldier. He can no more do without it than I can do without it. Never bring to me the blanket of a private soldier.’94 How many men like that general would it take to warm the world up? The vast majority of us are anxious to get more blankets whether anybody else is blanketed or not. Look at the fellow-feeling displayed in the rocky defile between Jerusalem and Jericho in Scripture times. Here is a man who has been set upon by the bandits, and in the struggle to keep his property he has got wounded and mauled and stabbed, and he lies there half dead. A priest rides along. He sees him, and says: ’93Why, what’92s the matter with that man? Why, he must be hurt, lying on the flat of his back. Isn’92t it strange that he should lie there? But I can’92t stop. I am on my way to temple services. Go along, you beast. Carry me up to my temple duties.’94 After a while a Levite comes up. He looks over and says: ’93Why, that man must be very much hurt. Gashed on the forehead. What a pity! Stabbed under his arm. What a pity! Tut! tut! what a pity! Why, they have taken his clothes nearly all away from him. But I haven’92t time to stop. I lead the choir up in the temple service. Go along, you beast. Carry me up to my temple duties.’94 After a while a Samaritan comes along, one whom you might suppose through a national grudge might have rejected this poor wounded Jew. Coming along he sees this man and he says: ’93Why that man must be terribly hurt. I see by his features he is a Jew, but he is a man and he is a brother. Whoa!’94 says the Samaritan, and he gets down off the beast and comes up by this wounded Jew, gets down on one knee, listens to see whether the unfortunate heart is still beating, makes up his mind there is some chance for resuscitation, goes to work at him, takes out of his sack a bottle of oil and a bottle of wine, cleanses the wound with some of the wine, then pours some of the restorative into the wounded man’92s lips, then takes some of the oil, and with it soothes the wound. After a while he takes off a part of his own garments for bandage, for the bandits have nearly stripped the man. Now, the sick and wounded man sits up pale and exhausted, but very thankfully. Now, the good Samaritan says: ’93You must get on my saddle, and I will walk.’94 The Samaritan helps, and tenderly steadies this wounded Jew until he gets him on the beast. They pass on toward the tavern, the wounded man holding on with the little strength he has left, ever and anon looking down at the good Samaritan and saying: ’93You are very kind; I had no right to expect this thing of a Samaritan, when I am a Jew; you are very kind to walk and let me ride.’94 Now they come up to the tavern. The Samaritan, with the help of the landlord, assists the sick and wounded man to dismount, and puts him to bed. The Bible says the Samaritan stayed all night. In the morning, I suppose, the Samaritan went in to look how his patient was and ask him how he had passed the night. Then the Samaritan comes out, and says to the landlord: ’93Here is money to pay that man’92s board, and if his convalescence is not as rapid as I hope for, charge the whole thing to me. Good morning, all.’94 He gets on the beast and says: ’93Go along, you beast, but go slowly, for these bandits sweeping through the land may have left somebody else wounded and half dead.’94 Sympathy! Christian sympathy! How many such men as that would it take to warm the cold world up?
Everything dried up. There is a widow with a son and no food except a handful of meal. She is gathering sticks to kindle a fire to cook the handful of meal. Then she is going to wrap her arms around her boy and die. Here comes Elijah. His two black servants, the ravens, have got tired of waiting on him. He asks that woman for food. Now, that handful of meal is to be divided into three parts. Before, it was to be divided into two parts. Now she says to Elijah: ’93Come in and sit down at this solemn table and take a third of the last morsel.’94 How many women like that would it take to warm the cold world up? Recently an engineer in the southwest, on a locomotive, saw a train coming with which he must collide. He resolved to stand at his post and slow up the train until the last minute, for there were passengers behind. The engineer said to the fireman: ’93Jump! one man is enough on this engine. Jump!’94 The fireman jumped and was saved. The crash came. The engineer died at his post. How many men like that engineer would it take to warm this cold world up?
A vessel struck on a rocky island. The passengers and the crew were without food, and a sailor had a shellfish under his coat. He was saving it for his last morsel. He heard a little child cry to her mother: ’93Oh, mother, I am so hungry; give me something to eat, mother, I am so hungry.’94 The sailor took the shellfish from under his coat and said: ’93Here, take that.’94 How many men like that sailor would it take to warm the cold world up?
Xerxes fleeing from his enemy got on board a boat. A great many Persians leaped into the same boat, and the boat was sinking. Some one said: ’93Are you not willing to make a sacrifice for your king?’94 and the majority of those who were in the boat leaped overboard and drowned to save their king. How many men like that would it take to warm up this cold world?
Elizabeth Fry went into the horrors of Newgate Prison, and she turned the imprecation and the obscenity and the filth into prayer and repentance and a reformed life. The sisters of charity in 1863, on the Northern and Southern battlefields, came to be boys in blue and in gray while they were bleeding to death. The black bonnet with the sides pinned back and the white bandage on the brow may have been an unusual sight to the wounded man; but you could not persuade that soldier dying a thousand miles from home that it was anything but an angel that looked him in the face. Oh, with cheery look, with helpful word, with kind action try to make the world warm.
Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no generous action done.
It was his strong sympathy that brought Christ from a warm heaven to a cold world. The land where he dwelt had serene sky, balsamic atmosphere, tropical luxuriance. No storm blasts in heaven. No chill fountains. On a cold December night Christ stepped out of that warm heaven into the world’92s frigidity. The thermometer in Palestine never drops below zero, but December is a cheerless month, and the pasturage is very poor on the hilltops. Christ stepped out of a warm heaven into this cold world that cold December night. The world’92s reception was cold. The surf of bestormed Galilee was cold. Joseph’92s sepulcher was cold. Christ came, the great Warmer, to warm the earth, and all Christendom today feels the glow. He will keep on warming the earth until the tropic will drive away the arctic and the antarctic.
He gave an intimation of what he was going to do when he broke up the funeral at the gate of Nain and turned it into a reunion festival, and when with his warm lips he melted the Galilean hurricane and stood on the deck and stamped his foot, crying: ’93Silence!’94 and the waves crouched and the tempests folded their wings. Oh, it was this Christ who warmed the chilled disciples when they had no food, by giving them plenty to eat, and who in the tomb of Lazarus shattered the shackles until the broken links of the chain of death rattled in the darkest crypt of the mausoleum. In his genial presence the girl who had fallen into the fire and the water is healed of the catalepsy, and the withered arm takes muscular, healthy action, and the ear that could not hear an avalanche catches a leaf’92s rustle, and the tongue that could not articulate, trills a quatrain, and the blind eye was relumed, and Christ instead of staying three days and three nights in the sepulcher, as was supposed, as soon as the worldly curtain of observation was dropped began the exploration of all the underground passages of earth and sea wherever a Christian’92s grave may after a while be, and started a light of Christian hope, resurrection hope, which shall not go out until the last cerement is taken off and the last mausoleum breaks open.
Ah! I am so glad that the Sun of Righteousness has dawned on the polar night of the nations. And if Christ is the great Warmer, then the Church is the great hothouse with its plants and trees and fruits of righteousness. Do you know, my friends, that the Church is the only institution that proposes warmth? I have been for twenty-seven years studying how to make the Church warmer. Warmer architecture, warmer hymnology, warmer Christian salutation. All outside Siberian winter, we must have it a prince’92s hothouse. The only institution on earth today that proposes to make the world warmer. Universities and observatories, they all have their work. They propose to make the world light, but they do not propose to make the world warm. Geology informs us, but it is as cold as the rock it hammers. The telescope shows where the other worlds are, but an astronomer is chilled while looking through it. Chemistry tells us of strange combinations and how inferior affinity may be overcome by superior affinity; but it cannot tell how all things work together for good. Worldly philosophy has a great splendor, but it is the splendor of moonlight on an iceberg. The Church of God proposes warmth and hope’97warmth for the expectations, warmth for the sympathies.
Oh! I am so glad these great altar fires have been kindled. Come in out of the cold. Come in and have your wounds salved. Come in and have your sorrows solaced. Come in and have your sins pardoned. Come in by the great Gospel fireplace.
Notwithstanding all the modern inventions for heating, I tell you there is nothing so full of geniality and sociality as the old-fashioned country fireplace. The neighbors were to come in for a winter evening of sociality. In the middle of the afternoon, in the best room of the house, some one brought in a great back-log with great strain, and put it down on the back of the hearth. Then the lighter wood was put on armful after armful. Then a shovel of coals was taken from another room and put under the dry pile, and the kindling began, and the crackling, and it rose until it became a roaring flame which filled all the room with geniality and was reflected from the family pictures on the wall. Then the neighbors came in two by two. They sat down, their faces to the fire, which ever and anon was stirred with tongs and readjusted on the andirons, and there were such times of rustic repartee and story telling and mirth as the black stove and the blind register never dreamed of. And then the best luxury of orchard and farmyard was roasted and prepared for the cable to meet the appetites sharpened by the cold ride. O my friends, the Church of Jesus Christ is the world’92s fireplace, and the woods are from the cedars of Lebanon, and the fires are fires of love, and with the silver tongs of the altar we stir the flame and the light is reflected from all the family pictures on the wall’97pictures of those who were once here and are gone now. Oh! come up close to the fireplace. Have your worn faces transfigured in the light. Put your cold feet, weary of the journey, close up to the blessed conflagration. Chilled through with trouble and disappointment, come close up until you can get warm clear through. Exchange experiences, talk over the harvests gathered, tell all the Gospel news. Meanwhile the table is being spread. On it bread of life. On it grapes of Eshcol. On it new wine from the kingdom. On it a thousand luxuries celestial. Hark! as a wounded hand raps on the table and a tender voice comes through saying: ’93Come, for all things are now ready. Eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.’94
My friends, that is the way the cold world is going to be warmed up by the great Gospel fireplace. All nations will come in and sit down at that banquet. While I was musing the fire burned: ’93Come in out of the cold! Come in out of the cold!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage