240. Spiders in Palaces

Spiders in Palaces

Pro_30:28 : ’93The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’92 palaces.’94

Privileged a few years ago to attend the meeting of the British Scientific Association at Edinburgh, I found that no paper read excited more attention than that read by Rev. Dr. Cook, of America, on the subject of ’93Spiders.’94 It seems that my talented countryman, banished from his pulpit for a short time by ill-health, had in the fields and forests given himself up to the study of insects. And surely, if it is not beneath the dignity of God to make spiders, it is not beneath the dignity of man to study them.

We are all watching for phenomena. A sky full of stars, shining from year to year, calls out not so many remarks as the blazing of one meteor. A whole flock of robins take not so much of our attention as one blundering bat darting into the window on a summer eve. Things of ordinary sound and sight and occurrence fail to reach us, yet no grasshopper ever springs up in our path, no moth ever dashes into the evening candle, no mote ever floats in the sunbeam that pours through the crack of the window-shutter, no barnacle on ship’92s hull, no burr on chestnut, no limpet clinging to a rock, no rind of an artichoke but would teach us a lesson if we were not so stupid.

God, in his Bible sets forth for our consideration the lily and the snowflake and the locust and the stork’92s nest and the hind’92s foot and the aurora borealis and the ant-hills. One of the sacred writers, sitting amid the mountains, sees a hind skipping over the rocks. The hind has such a peculiarly shaped foot that it can go over the steepest places without falling, and as the prophet looks upon that marking of the hind’92s foot upon the rocks, and thinks of the divine care over him, he says: ’93Thou makest my feet like hinds’92 feet that I may walk on high places.’94 And another sacred writer sees the ostrich leave its egg in the sand of the desert, and, without any care of incubation, walk off; and the Scripture says that is like some parents leaving their children without any wing of protection or care. In my text, inspiration opens before us the gate of a palace, and we are inducted amid the pomp of the throne and the courtier, and while we are looking around upon the magnificence, inspiration points us to a spider plying its shuttle and weaving its net on the wall. It does not call us to regard the grand surroundings of the palace, but to a solemn and earnest consideration of the fact that ’93the spider taketh hold with her hands and is in kings’92 palaces.’94 It is not very certain what was the particular species of insect spoken of in the text, but I shall proceed to learn from it:

First, the exquisiteness of the divine mechanism. The king’92s chamberlain comes into the palace and looks around, and sees the spider on the wall, and says, ’93Away with that intruder,’94 and the servant of Solomon’92s palace comes with his broom and dashes down the insect, saying, ’93What a loathsome thing it is.’94 But under microscopic inspection I find it more wondrous of construction than the embroideries on the palace wall, and the upholstery about the windows. All the machinery of the earth could not make anything so delicate and beautiful as the prehensile foot with which that spider clutches its prey, or as any of its eight eyes. We do not have to go so far up to see the power of God in the tapestry hanging around the windows of heaven, or in the horses and chariots of fire with which the dying day departs, or to look at the mountain swinging out its sword-arm from under the mantle of darkness until it can strike with its scimiter of the lightning. I love better to study God in the shape of a fly’92s wing, in the formation of a fish’92s scale, in the snowy whiteness of a pond-lily. I love to track his footsteps in the mountain moss, and to hear his voice in the hum of the rye-fields, and discover the rustle of his robe of light in the south wind. Oh! this wonder of divine power that can build a habitation for God in an apple blossom, and tune a bee’92s voice until it is fit for the eternal orchestra, and can say to a firefly, ’93Let there be light,’94 and from holding an ocean in the hollow of his hand, goes forth to find heights and depths and lengths and breadths of omnipotency in a dewdrop, and dismounts from a chariot of midnight hurricane to cross over on the suspension bridge of a spider’92s web. You may take your telescope and sway it across the heavens in order to behold the glory of God; but I will take the leaf holding the spider and the spider’92s web, and I will bring the microscope to my eye, and while I gaze and look and study, and am confounded, I will kneel down in the grass and cry: ’93Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty.’94

Second: Again, my text teaches me that insignificance is no excuse for inaction. This spider that Solomon saw on the wall might have said, ’93I can’92t weave a web worthy of this great palace; what can I do amid all this gold and embroidery? I am not able to make anything fit for so grand a place, and so I will not work my spinning-jenny.’94 Not so said the spider. ’93The spider taketh hold with her hands.’94 Oh! what a lesson that is for you and me! You say if you had some great sermon to preach, if you only had a great audience to talk to, if you had a great army to marshal, if you only had a constitution to write, if there were some great thing in the world for you to do, then you would show us. Yes. you would show us! What if the Levite in the ancient temple had refused to snuff the candle because he could not be a high priest? What if the hummingbird should refuse to sing its song into the ear of the honeysuckle, because it cannot, like the eagle, dash its wing into the sun? What if the raindrop should refuse to descend because it is not a Niagara? What if the spider of the text should refuse to move its shuttle because it cannot weave a Solomon’92s robe? Away with such folly! If you are lazy with the one talent you would be lazy with the ten talents. If Milo cannot lift the calf he never will have strength to lift the ox. In the Lord’92s army there is order for promotion; but you cannot be a general until you have been a captain, a lieutenant, and a colonel. It is step by step, it is inch by inch, it is stroke by stroke that our Christian character is builded. Therefore be content to do what God commands you to do. God is not ashamed to do small things. He is not ashamed to be found chiseling a grain of sand, or helping a honey-bee to construct its cell with mathematical accuracy, or tingeing a shell in the surf, or shaping the bill of a chaffinch. What God does, he does well. What you do, do well, be it a great work or a small work. If ten talents, employ all the ten. If five talents, employ all the five. If one talent, employ the one. If only the thousandth part of a talent, employ that. ’93Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.’94 I tell you if you are not faithful to God in a small sphere, you would be indolent and insignificant in a large sphere.

Third: Again, my text teaches me that repulsiveness and loathsomeness will sometimes climb up into very elevated places. You would have tried to kill the spider that Solomon saw. You would have said, ’93This is no place for it. If that spider is determined to weave a web, let it do so down in the cellar of this palace, or in some dark dungeon.’94 Ah! the spider of the text could not be discouraged. It clambered on and climbed up, higher and higher and higher, until, after a while it reached the king’92s vision, and he said, ’93The spider taketh hold with her hands and is in king’92s palaces.’94 And so it often is now that things that are loathsome and repulsive get up into very elevated places. The church of Christ is a palace. The King of heaven on earth lives in it. According to the Bible, her beams are of cedar, and her rafters of fir, and her windows of agate, and the fountains of salvation dash a rain of light. It is a glorious palace; and yet sometimes unseemly and loathsome things creep up into it’97evil-speaking and rancor and slander and backbiting and abuse, crawling up on the walls of the church, spinning a web from arch to arch, and from the top of one communion tankard to the top of another communion tankard. Glorious palace, in which there ought only to be light and love and pardon and grace’97yet a spider in the palace!

Home ought to be a castle. It ought to be the residence of everything loyal. Kindness, love, peace, patience, and forbearance ought to be the princes residing there, and yet sometimes dissipation crawls up into that home, and the jealous eye comes up, and the scene of peace and plenty becomes the scene of domestic jargon and dissonance. You say, ’93What is the matter with the home?’94 I will tell you what is the matter with it. A spider in the palace.

A well-developed Christian character is a grand thing to look at. You see some men with great intellectual and spiritual proportions. You say, ’93How useful that man must be!’94 But you find amid all his splendor of faculties there is some prejudice, some whim, some evil habit, that a great many people do not notice, but that you have happened to notice, and it is gradually spoiling that man’92s character; it is gradually going to injure his entire influence. Others may not see it, but you are anxious in regard to his welfare, and you deplore it. A dead fly in the ointment. A spider in the palace.

Fourth: Again, my text teaches me that perseverance will mount into the king’92s palace. It must have seemed a long distance for that spider to climb in Solomon’92s splendid residence, but it started at the very foot of the wall and went up over the panels of Lebanon cedar, higher and higher, until it stood higher than the highest throne in all the nations’97the throne of Solomon. And so God has decreed it, that many of those who are down in the dust of sin and dishonor shall gradually attain to the king’92s palace. We see it in worldly things. Who is that banker in Philadelphia? Why, he used to be the boy who held the horses of Stephen Girard while the millionaire went in to collect his dividends. Arkwright toils on up from a barber’92s shop until he gets into the palace of invention. Fletcher toils on up from the most insignificant family position until he gets into the palace of Christian eloquence. Hogarth, engraving pewter mugs for a living, toils on up until he reaches the palace of world-renowned art. And God hath decided that though you may be weak of arm and slow of tongue and be struck through with a great many mental and moral deficits, by his Almighty grace you shall yet arrive in the King’92s palace’97not such a one as is spoken of in the text, not one of marble, not one adorned with pillars of alabaster and thrones of ivory and flagons of burnished gold’97but a palace in which God is the King and the angels of heaven are the cupbearers.

The spider crawling up the wall of Solomon’92s palace was not worth looking after or considering as compared with the fact that we, who are the worms of the dust, may at last ascend into the palace of the King immortal. By the grace of God we may all reach it. Oh! heaven is not a dull place. It is not a worn-out mansion with faded curtains and outlandish chairs and cracked ware. No; it is as fresh and fair and beautiful as though it were completed but yesterday. The kings of the earth shall bring their honor and glory into it.

A palace means splendor of apartments. Now, I do not know where heaven is, and I do not know how it looks, but if our bodies are to be resurrected at the last day, I think heaven must have a material splendor as well as a spiritual grandeur. What grandeur of apartments, when that divine hand which turns the sea into blue and the foliage into green, and sets the sunset on fire, shall gather all the beautiful colors of earth around his throne, and when that arm which lifted the pillars of Alpine rock and bent the arch of the sky shall raise before our soul the eternal architecture, and that hand which hung with loops of fire the curtains of morning shall prepare the upholstery of our kingly residence!

A palace also means splendor of associations. The poor man, the outcast, cannot get into the Tuileries, or Windsor Castle. The sentinel stands there and cries ’93Halt!’94 as he tries to enter. But in that palace we may all become residents, and we shall all be princes and kings. We may have been beggars, we may have been outcasts, we may have been wandering as we all have been, but there we shall take our regal power. What companionship in heaven! To walk side by side with John and James and Peter and Paul and Moses and Joshua and Caleb and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Micah and Zechariah and Wilberforce and Oliver Cromwell and Philip Doddridge and Edward Payson and John Milton and Elizabeth Fry and Hannah More and Charlotte Elizabeth, and all the other kings and queens of heaven. O my soul, what a companionship!

A palace means splendor of banquet. There will be no common ware on that table. There will be no unskilled musicians at that entertainment. There will be no scanty supply of fruit or beverage. There have been banquets spread that cost a million of dollars each; but who can tell the untold wealth of that banquet? I do not know whether John’92s description of it is literal or figurative; I cannot prove it. I do not know but that it may be literal. I do not know but that there may be real fruits plucked from the tree of life. I do not know but that Christ referred to the real juice of the grape when he said that we should drink new wine in our Father’92s kingdom. I do not say it is so; but I have as much right for thinking it is so as you have for thinking the other way. At any rate, it will be a glorious banquet. Hark! the chariots rumbling in the distance. I really believe the guests are coming now. The gates swing open, the guests dismount, the palace is filling, and all the chalices, flashing with pearl and amethyst and carbuncle, are lifted to the lips of the myriad banqueters, while standing in robes of snowy white they drink to the honor of our Glorious King! ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93that is too grand a place for me.’94 No, it is not. If a spider, according to the text, could crawl up on the walls of Solomon’92s palace, shall not our poor souls, through the blood of Christ, mount up from the depths of sin and shame, and finally reach the palace of the Eternal King? ’93Where sin abounded grace shall much more abound, that whereas sin reigned unto death, even so may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.’94

Years ago, with lanterns and torches and guide, we went down in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. You may walk fourteen miles and see no sunlight. It is a stupendous place. In some places the roof of the cave one hundred feet high. The grottoes filled with grotesque echoes. Cascades falling from invisible height to invisible depth. Stalagmites rising up from the floor of the cave, stalactites descending from the roof of the cave, joining each other and making a pillar of the Almighty’92s sculpturing. There are rosettes of amethyst in halls of gypsum. As the guide carries the lantern ahead of you, the shadows have an appearance supernatural and spectral. The darkness is fearful. Two people getting lost from their guide only for a few hours, years ago, were demented, and for days sat in their insanity. You feel like holding your breath, as you walk across the bridges that seem to span the bottomless abyss. The guide throws his calcium light down into the caverns, and the light rolls and tosses from rock to rock and from depth to depth, making at every plunge a new revelation of the awful power that could have made such a place as that. A sense of suffocation comes upon you, as you think that you are two hundred and fifty feet in a straight line from the sunlit surface of the earth. The guide after a while takes you into what is called the ’93star chamber’94 and he says to you, ’93Sit here,’94 and then he takes the lantern and goes down under the rocks, and it gets darker and darker, until the night is so thick that the hand, an inch from the eye, is invisible. And then, by kindling one of the lanterns and placing it in a cleft in the rock, there is a reflection cast on the dome of the cave and there are stars coming out in constellation’97a brilliant night heaven’97and you involuntarily exclaim ’93Beautiful! Beautiful!’94 Then he takes the lantern down in the other depths of the cavern and wanders on and on, until he comes up from behind the rocks gradually, and it seems like the dawn of morning, and it grows brighter and brighter. The guide is a skilled ventriloquist, and he imitates the voices of the morning. Soon the gloom is all gone and you stand congratulating yourself over the wonderful spectacle. Well, there are a great many people who look down into the grave as a vast cavern. They think it is one thousand miles subterraneous, and all the echoes seem to be the voices of despair, and the cascades seem to be the falling tears that always fall, and the gloom of earth seems coming up in stalagmites, making pillars of indescribable horror. The grave is no such place as that to me, thank God! Our Divine Guide takes us down into the cavern, and we have the lamp at our feet and the light to our path, and all the echoes in the rifts of the rocks are anthems, and all the falling waters are fountains of salvation, and after a while we look up and behold the cavern of the tomb has become a King’92s star chamber. And while we are looking at the pomp of it, and everlasting morning begins to rise, and all the tears of the earth begin to crystallize into stalagmites rising up in a pillar on the one side, and all the glories of heaven seem to be descending in a stalactite, making a pillar on the other side, and you push against the gate that swings between the two pillars, and as that gate flashes open, you find it is one of the twelve gates which are twelve pearls. Blessed be God that through this Gospel the Mammoth Cave of the sepulcher has become the illuminated star chamber of the King. Oh, the palaces, the eternal palaces, the King’92s palaces!

In the far East there is a bird called the huma, about which is the beautiful superstition that, upon whatever head the shadow of that bird rests, upon that Head there shall be a crown. Oh, thou Dove of the Spirit, floating above us, let the shadow of thy wing fall upon this congregation, that each at last in heaven may upon his head wear a crown! a crown! and hold in his right hand a star! a star!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage