221. Traps for Men
Traps for Men
Pro_1:17 : ’93Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.’94
Early in the morning I went out with a fowler to catch wild pigeons. We hastened through the mountain gorge and into the forest. We spread out the net and covered up the edges of it as well as we could. We arranged the call-bird, its feet fast and its wings flapping in invitation to all fowls of heaven to settle down there. We retired into a booth of branches and leaves and waited. After a while, looking out of the door of the booth, we saw a flock of birds in the sky. They came nearer and nearer, and after a while were about to swoop into the net, when suddenly they darted away. The fowler was very much disappointed as well as myself. We said to each other, ’93What is the matter?’94 and ’93Why were not these birds caught?’94 We went out and examined the net, and by a flutter of a branch of a tree part of the net had been conspicuously exposed, and the birds coming very near had seen their peril and darted away. When I saw that, I said to the old fowler, ’93That reminds me of a passage of Scripture: ’91Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.’92’93
Now the net in my text stands for temptation. The call-bird of sin tempts men on from point to point, and from branch to branch, until they are about to drop into the net. If a man finds out in time that it is the temptation of the devil, or that evil men are attempting to capture his soul for time and for eternity, the man steps back. He says, ’93I am not to be caught in that way: I see what you are about: surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird.’94
There are two classes of temptations’97the superficial and the subterraneous’97those above ground, those under ground. If a man could see sin as it is, he would no more embrace it than he would embrace a leper. Sin is a daughter of hell, yet she is garlanded and robed and trinketed. Her voice is a warble. Her cheek is the setting sun. Her forehead is an aurora. She says to men: ’93Come, walk this path with me; it is thymed and primrosed, and the air is bewitched with the hanging gardens of heaven; the rivers are rivers of wine, and all you have to do is to drink them up in chalices that sparkle with diamond and amethyst and chrysoprasus. See! It is all bloom and roseate cloud and heaven.’94 But, my friends, if for one moment the choiring of all these concerted voices of sin could be hushed, we could see the orchestra of the pit with hot breath blowing through fiery flute, and the skeleton arms on drums of thunder and darkness beating the chorus: ’93The end thereof is death.’94
I want this morning to point out the insidious temptations that are assailing more especially our young men. The only kind of nature comparatively free from temptation, so far as I can judge, is the cold, hard, stingy, mean temperament. What would Satan do with such a man if he got him? Satan is not anxious to get a man who, after a while, may dispute with him the realm of everlasting meanness. It is the generous young man, the ardent young man, the warm-hearted young man, the social young man, that is in especial peril. A pirate goes out on the sea, and one bright morning he puts the glass to his eye and looks off and sees an empty vessel floating from port to port. He says: ’93Never mind; that’92s no prize for us.’94 But the same morning he puts the glass to his eye, and he sees a vessel coming from Australia laden with gold, or a vessel from India laden with spices. He says: ’93That’92s our prize; bear down on it!’94 Across that unfortunate ship the grappling-hooks are thrown. The crew are blindfolded and are compelled to walk the plank. It is not the empty vessel, but the laden merchantman that is the temptation to the pirate. And a young man empty of head, empty of heart, empty of life’97you want no Young Men’92s Christian Association to keep him safe; he is safe. He will not gamble unless it is with somebody else’92s stakes. He will not break the Sabbath unless somebody else pays the horse hire. He will not drink unless somebody else treats him. He will hang around the bar hour after hour, waiting for some generous young man to come in. The generous young man comes in and accosts him and says: ’93Well, will you have a drink with me today?’94 The young man, as though it were a sudden thing for him, says: ’93Well, well, if you insist on it I will’97I will.’94 Too mean to go to perdition unless somebody else pays his expenses! For such young men we will not fight. We would no more contend for them than Tartary and Ethiopia would fight as to who should have the great Sahara Desert; but for those young men who are buoyant and enthusiastic, those who are determined to do something for time and for eternity’97for them we will fight, and we now declare everlasting war against all the influences that assail them, and we ask all good men and philanthropists to wheel into line, and all the armies of heaven to bear down upon the foe, and we pray Almighty God that with the thunderbolts of his wrath he will strike down and consume all these influences that are attempting to destroy the young men for whom Christ died.
The first class of temptations that assaults a young man is led on by the skeptic. He will not admit that he is an infidel or atheist. Oh, no! he is a ’93freethinker;’94 he is one of your ’93liberal’94 men; he is free and easy in religion; he is so ’93liberal’94 that he will give away his Bible; he is so ’93liberal’94 that he will give away the throne of eternal justice; he is so ’93liberal’94 that he would be willing to give God out of the universe; he is so ’93liberal’94 that he would give up his own soul and the souls of all his friends. Now, what more could you ask in the way of liberality? The victim of this skeptic has probably just come from the country. Through the intervention of friends he has been placed in a shop. On Saturday the skeptic says to him: ’93Well, what are you going to do to-morrow?’94 He says, ’93I am going to church.’94 ’93Is it possible?’94 says the skeptic. ’93Well, I used to do those things; I was brought up, I suppose, as you were, in a religious family, and I believed all those things, but I got over it; the fact is, since I came to town I have read a great deal, and I have found that there are a great many things in the Bible that are ridiculous. Now, for instance, all that about the serpent being cursed to crawl in the garden of Eden because it had tempted our first parents; why, you see how absurd it is; you can tell from the very organization of the serpent that it had to crawl; it crawled before it was cursed just as well as it crawled afterwards; you can tell from its organization that it crawled. Then all that story about the whale swallowing Jonah, or Jonah swallowing the whale, which was it? It don’92t make any difference, the thing is absurd; it is ridiculous to suppose that a man could have gone down through the jaws of a sea monster and yet kept his life; why, his respiration would have been hindered; he would have been digested; the gastric juice would have dissolved the fibrin and coagulated albumen, and Jonah would have been changed from prophet into chyle. Then all that story about the miraculous conception’97why, it is perfectly disgraceful. O sir! I believe in the light of nature. This is the nineteenth century. Progress, sir, progress. I don’92t blame you, but after you have been in town as long as I have, you will think just as I do.’94
Thousands of young men are going down under that process day by day, and there is only here and there a young man who can endure this artillery of scorn. They are giving up their Bibles. The light of nature! They have the light of nature in China; they have it in Hindostan; they have it in Ceylon. Flowers there, stars there, waters there, winds there; but no civilization, no homes, no happiness. It has had lancets to cut, and Juggernauts to fall under, and hooks to swing on; but no happiness. I tell you, my young brother, we have to take a religion of some kind. We have to choose between four or five. Shall it be the Koran of the Mohammedan, or the Shaster of the Hindoo, or the Zendavesta of the Persian, or the Confucius writings of the Chinese, or the Holy Scriptures? Take what you will; God helping me, I will take the Bible. Light for all darkness; rock for all foundation; balm for all wounds. A glory that lifts its pillars of fire over the wilderness march. Do not give up your Bibles. If these people scoff at you as though religion and the Bible were fit only for weak-minded people, you must tell them you are not ashamed to be in the company of Burke, the statesman, and Raphael, the painter, and Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, and Mozart, the musician, and Blackstone, the lawyer, and Bacon, the philosopher, and Harvey, the physician, and John Milton, the poet. Ask them what infidelity has ever done to lift the fourteen hundred millions of the race out of barbarism. Ask them when infidelity ever instituted a sanitary commission; and, before you leave their society once and forever, tell them that they have insulted the memory of your Christian father, and spit upon the death-bed of your mother, and with swine’92s snout rooted up the grave of your sister who died believing in the Lord Jesus.
Young man, hold on to your Bible! It is the best book you ever owned. It will tell you how to dress, how to bargain, how to walk, how to act, how to live, how to die. Glorious Bible! whether on parchment or paper, in octavo of duodecimo, on the center-table of the drawing-room or in the counting-room of the banker. Glorious Bible! Light to our feet and lamp to our path. Hold on to it!
The second class of insidious temptations that comes upon our young men is led on by the dishonest employer. Every commercial establishment is a school. In nine cases out of ten, the principles of the employer become the principles of the employee. I ask the older merchants to bear me out in these statements. If, when you were starting in life, in commercial life, you were told that honesty was not marketable; that though you might sell all the goods in the shop, you must not sell your conscience; that while you were to exercise all industry and tact, you were not to sell your conscience’97if you were taught that gains gotten by sin were combustible, and at the moment of ignition would be blown on by the breath of God until all the splendid estate would vanish into white ashes scattered in the whirlwind’97then that instruction has been to you a precaution and a help ever since. There are hundreds of commercial establishments in our great cities which are educating a class of young men who will be the honor of the land, and there are other establishments which are educating young men to be nothing but sharpers. What chance is there for a young man who was taught in an establishment that it is right to lie, if it is smart, and that a French label is all that is necessary to make a thing French, and that you ought always to be honest when it pays, and that it is wrong to steal unless you do it well? Suppose, now, a young man just starting in life enters a place of that kind where there are ten young men all drilled in the infamous practises of the establishment. He is ready to be taught. The young man has no theory of commercial ethics. Where is he to get his theory? He will get the theory from his employers. One day he pushes his wit a little beyond what the establishment demands of him, and he fleeces a customer until the clerk is on the verge of being seized by the law. What is done in the establishment? He is not arraigned. The head man of the establishment says to him: ’93Now, be careful; be careful, young man, you might be caught; but really that was splendidly done; you will get along in the world, I warrant you.’94 Then that young man goes up until he becomes head clerk. He has found there is a premium on iniquity.
One morning the employer comes to the establishment. He goes into the counting-room and throws up his hands and shouts: ’93Why, the safe has been robbed!’94 What is the matter? Nothing, nothing; only the clerk who had been practising a good while on customers is practising a little on the employer. No new principle introduced into that establishment. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways. You must never steal unless you can do it well. He did it well. I am not talking an abstraction; I am talking a terrible and a crushing fact.
Now, here is a young man. Look at him today. Look at him five years from now, after he has been under trial in such an establishment. Here he stands in the shop today, his cheeks ruddy with the breath of the hills. He unrolls the goods on the counter in gentlemanly style. He commends them to the purchaser. He points out all the good points in the fabric. He effects the sale. The goods are wrapped up, and he dismisses the customer with a cheerful ’93good morning,’94 and the country merchant departs so impressed with the straightforwardness of that young man that he will come again and again, every spring and every autumn, unless interfered with. The young man has been now in that establishment five years. He unrolls the goods on the counter. He says to the customer, ’93Now, those are the best goods we have in our establishment;’94 they have better on the next shelf. He says, ’93We are selling these goods less than cost;’94 they are making twenty per cent. He says, ’93There is nothing like them in all the city;’94 there are fifty shops that want to sell the same thing. He says, ’93Now, that is a durable article, it will wash;’94 yes, it will wash out. The sale is made, the goods are wrapped up, the country merchant goes off feeling that he has an equivalent for his money, and the sharp clerk goes into the private room of the counting-house, and he says: ’93Well, I got rid of those goods at last; I really thought we would never sell them; I told him we were selling them less than cost, and he thought he was getting a good bargain; got rid of them at last.’94 And the head of the firm says: ’93That’92s well done; splendidly done; let’92s go over to Delmonico’92s.’94 Meanwhile, God has recorded eight lies’97four lies against the young man, four lies against his employer, for I undertake to say that the employer is responsible for all the iniquities of his clerks, and all the iniquities of those who are clerks of these clerks, down to the tenth generation, if those employers inculcated iniquitous principles. I stand before young men who are under this pressure. I say, come out of it. ’93Oh!’94 you say, ’93I can’92t. I have my widowed mother to support, and if a man loses a situation now he can’92t get another one.’94 I say, come out of it. Go home to your mother and say to her, ’93Mother, I can’92t stay in that shop and be upright; what shall I do?’94 and if she is worthy of you she will say, ’93Come out of it, my son’97we will just throw ourselves on him who hath promised to be the God of the widow and the fatherless; he will take care of us.’94 And I tell you no young man ever permanently suffered by such a course of conduct. In Philadelphia, in a drug shop, a young man said to his employer: ’93I want to please you, really, and am willing to sell medicines on Sunday; but I can’92t sell this patent shoe-blacking on Sunday.’94 ’93Well,’94 said the head man, ’93you will have to do it, or else you will have to go away.’94 The young man said: ’93I can’92t do it; I am willing to sell medicines, but not shoe-blacking.’94 ’93Well, then, go! Go now.’94 The young man went away. The Lord looked after him. The hundreds of thousands of dollars he won in this world were the smallest part of his fortune. God honored him. By the course he took he saved his soul as well as his fortunes in the future. A man said to his employer: ’93I can’92t wash the wagon on Sunday morning; I am willing to wash it on Saturday afternoon; but, sir, you will please excuse me, I can’92t wash the wagon on Sunday morning.’94 His employer said: ’93You must wash it; my carriage comes in every Saturday night, and you have got to wash it on Sunday morning.’94 ’93I can’92t do it,’94 the man said. They parted. The Lord looked after him, grandly looked after him. He is worth today a hundred-fold more than his employer ever was or ever will be, and he saved his soul. Young man, it is safe to do right. There are young men in this house today who, under this storm of temptation, are striking deeper and deeper their roots, and spreading out broader their branches. They are Daniels in Babylon, they are Josephs in the gyptian court, they are Pauls amid the wild beasts at Ephesus. I preach to encourage them. Lay hold of God and be faithful.
There is a mistake we make about young men. We put them in two classes; the one class is moral, the other is dissolute. The moral are safe. The dissolute cannot be reclaimed. I deny both propositions. The moral are not safe unless they have laid hold of God, and the dissolute may be reclaimed. I suppose there are self-righteous men in this house who feel no need of God, and will not seek after him, and they will go out in the world and they will be tempted, and they will be flung down by misfortune, and they will go down, down, down, until some night you will see them going home hooting, raving, shouting blasphemy’97going home to their mothers, going home to their sister, going home to the young companion to whom only a little while ago, in the presence of a brilliant assemblage, flashing lights and orange blossoms, and censers swinging in the air, they promised fidelity and purity and kindness perpetual. As that man reaches the door, she will open it, not with an outcry, but she will stagger back from the door as he comes in, and in her look there will be the prophecy of woes that are coming: want that will shiver in need of a fire, hunger that will cry in vain for bread, cruelties that will not leave the heart when they have crushed it, but pinch it again, and stab it again, until some night she will open the door of the place where her companion was ruined, and she will fling out her arm from under her ragged shawl and say, with almost omnipotent eloquence, ’93Give me back my husband! Give me back my protector! Give me back my all! Him of the kind heart and gentle words, and the manly brow’97give him back to me!’94 And then the wretches, obese and filthy, will push back their matted locks, and they will say, ’93Put her out! Put her out!’94 O self-righteous man! without God you are in peril. Seek after him today. Amid the ten thousand temptations of life there is no safety for a man without God.
But I may be addressing some who have gone astray, and so I assault that other proposition that the dissolute cannot be reclaimed. Perhaps you have only gone a little astray. While I speak are you troubled? Is there a voice within you saying, ’93What did you do that for? Why did you go there? What do you mean by that?’94 Is there a memory in your soul that makes you tremble? God only knows all our hearts. Yea, if you have of iniquities gone through the whole catalogue, I invite you back. The Lord waits for you. ’93Rejoice! O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.’94 Come home, young man, to your father’92s God. Come home, young man, to your mother’92s God. I wish that all the batteries of the Gospel could today be unlimbered against all those influences which are taking down so many of our young men. I would like to blow a trumpet of warning, and recruit, until this whole audience would march out on a crusade against the evils of society. But let none of us be disheartened. Christian workers, my heart is high with hope. The dark horizon is blooming into the morning of which prophets spoke, and of which poets have dreamed, and of which painters have sketched. The world’92s bridal hour advances. The mountains will kiss the morning radiant and effulgent, and all the waves of the sea will become the crystal keys of a great organ, on which the fingers of everlasting joy shall play the grand march of a world redeemed. ’93Instead of the thorn there shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar there shall come up the myrtle tree, and the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the woods shall clap their hands!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage