250. Noontide of Life

Noontide of Life

Son_1:7 : ’93Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon?’94

Reference is here made to the habit of shepherds in taking their flocks about twelve o’92clock of the day, under the shadow of trees or rocks, and by cool streams, for repose. It is a noonday scene, and typical of life at the meridian. I have received about one hundred letters of birthday greeting from all professions and occupations, and from all parts of Christendom, reminding me that I am fifty-three years of age. It is with me the warmth and the light and the vigor of a July noonday.

My discourse will speak of life at the meridian. I will tell you how it seems to me now, and how it seems to me when I look backward and forward. The prayer of the text is appropriate for me to offer, and for many of you to offer: ’93Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon.’94 Noonday privilege. Noonday joy. Noonday reflection.

Albert Barnes, after he had arrived in the seventies, preached a memorable sermon about the evening of life. If you ask me how life seems to me now, I answer, ’93Very bright.’94 I have had sad days; dark, tumultuous days; but there is now not one cloud on my sky. My surroundings suit me exactly. My friends are kind and sympathetic and indulgent. The world is to me a most agreeable abode. I have nothing against the weather; for if it be cold I have stout apparel, and if it be hot I fly to the mountains, and if it be stormy, I carry my own sunshine. I have no indictments to present against anybody or anything. After all the contests in which I have been engaged, there is not a being with whom I would not willingly’97ay, gladly’97shake hands. It seems to me that in some respects the hilltop in the journey of life is the best part of the journey.

While in early life we are climbing up the steep hillside, we have worries and frets, and we slip and fall and slide back and run upon sharp antagonisms, and all the professions and occupations have drudgeries and sharp rivalries at the start. We are afraid we will not be properly appreciated. We toil on, and we pant and we struggle and we are out of breath, and sometimes we are tempted to lie down in the bower of lazy indulgence. In addition to these difficulties of climbing the hill of life, there are those who rejoice in setting a man back and trying to make a young man cowed down. ’93DeWitt,’94 said a man to me as we were walking the fields at the time I was in the theological school, ’93DeWitt, if you don’92t change your style of thought and expression, you will never get a call to any church in Christendom as long as you live.’94 ’93Well,’94 I replied, ’93if I cannot preach the Gospel in America, then I will go to heathen lands and preach it.’94 And every young man has had somebody to meet him, as he was climbing up, and say to him: ’93Don’92t, don’92t’97you can’92t, you can’92t’97quit, quit!’94 Every young man has twenty disheartenments where he has one round word of good cheer. But after we have climbed to the top of the hill of life, then we have comparative tranquillity and repose. We begin to look about us. We find that it is just three miles from cradle to grave: youth the first mile, manhood the second mile, old age the third mile. Standing on the hilltop of the journey of life and in the second mile, having come up one side of the hill, and before I go down the other side, I want to tell you that life is to me a happiness, and much of the time it has been to me a rapture, and sometimes an ecstasy.

I would be the worst ingrate on earth if I did not acknowledge the goodness of God and tell you that the profoundest emotion of my soul is one of gratitude to God for his undeserved mercy, in that in the twenty-nine years of my professional life I have missed but one day of service through ill-health. Oh, how good God has been to me, while I have seen others with a hundredfold more consecration than I have had, who have staggered under burdens of pain, incapacitated for work for which they were otherwise gloriously equipped; and I must this day rear a monument to the divine goodness, as did one of old, and inscribe on it: ’93Hitherto hath the Lord helped me.’94 This life has been to me and is now a great happiness; and if the atheistic theory were true, which I can never believe, that annihilation comes after death, and the sepulcher, instead of being, as we believe it to be, simply the wayside inn where we rest for a night and in the morning, fully invigorated, start out on grander journeying amid brighter prospects’97I say, even if the sepulcher were the abolition of body and soul, I should be nevertheless glad that I live, and that I live here, and that I live now.

There has been a great deal of wholesale slander of this world. People abuse it, the traveler on the mountain cursing the chill, and the voyager on the deep cursing the restlessness; and there are those who say it is a mean, old, despicable world; and from pole to pole it has been calumniated. If the world should present a libel suit for all those who have slandered it, there would not be gold enough in the mountains to pay the damages, or places enough in the penitentaries to hold the offenders. The people not only slander the world, but they slander its neighbors, and they belabor the sun, now because it is too ardent and now because it is too distant; but by experience coming up the hill of life I have found out when there is anything wrong the trouble is not with the sun or the moon or the stars or the meteorological conditions, the trouble is with myself.

Judging from the reports that come from the astronomical observatories, I believe that in all the universe, excepting heaven, this is the most comfortable and convenient world to live in. Some of these other worlds are all water, others are all rock, others are all fire. Some are swept with electric cyclones and others are upheaved by volcanoes that toss whole continents into the air with one jerk. And if Dr. Chalmers was right in his theory that other worlds are inhabited, I am sorry for some of them. I wish all the agonizing climates might have an asylum, and that the unfortunate inhabitants might have genial skies like those which bless us, and as blushing a sunset, and as glorious a morning, in which the archangel of sublimity and pomp spreads his pinions over cloud and mountain and sea, incubating a new day! Before God launched this ship of a world from the dockyards of eternity, he so splendidly fitted it up’97the cabins, the masts, the wheelhouses, the decks’97that though that world has been beating on the rocks for many years because of man’92s pilotage, it is magnificent still, and good men are trying to get the ship off the rocks, and before long the wreckers with the pulleys and the tugs will have completed their work, and through all the earth and all the heavens will be heard the cry, ’93She floats, she floats!’94

Oh, I am so glad that while this world as a finality is a dead failure, as a hotel where we stop for a little while in our traveling on toward a better place, it is a very good world, a very kind world; and I am glad that the shepherd in so pleasant a place makes his flocks to rest at noon!

But having told you how life seems to me on the hilltop of the journey, you naturally want to know how it seems to me when I look backward, and when I look forward. The first thing a traveler does after climbing up to the top of a mountain is to take a long breath, and then look about and see what is all around him. He sees out in this direction the winding road up which he came, and out in that direction the winding road down which he will go. And so, standing on the hilltop of life’92s journey, I put my outspread hand to my forehead, so as to keep off the glare of the noonday sun and to concentrate my vision, and I look back on the winding road on which I have traveled, and I see far on down at the foot of that road, in the dim distance, something small, something insignificant, and it vibrates and it trembles and it rocks. I wonder what it is. I guess what it is. A cradle! Then I turn, and still keeping my outspread hand to my forehead so as to shade my eyes from the glare of the noonday sun, and to concentrate my vision, I look on the winding road down which I shall travel, and I see at the foot of the road something that does not tremble, does not vibrate, does not rock, and then near it a bank of the earth, and I wonder what it is. Ah! I see what it is. I guess what it is. I know what it is. A grave. So, standing on the hilltop, having come up one side of the hill, and before I go down the other side, you ask me two or three questions, and I tell you that I have learned in coming up this side of life’97the steep side, the first side’97I have learned that nothing is accomplished without hard work. Although I have been prospered to an exceptional degree, I never had any good luck. I have heard people talk a good deal about a streak of good luck. In all my life I never had one streak of good luck. But I have had a good God watching me, guiding me, controlling me, helping me, forgiving me, correcting my mistakes, and he has always blessed me when I worked hard, and he did not bless me so much when I was lazy! Whether my work has amounted to anything or not I must leave to others to judge; but during the past twenty-nine years I have worked to my full capacity of endurance, and if I have gone off to rest, it was only to qualify me for hard work, and all this against the full protest of my nature, for I sometimes have felt I was naturally the laziest man that was ever born. But I am afraid of indolence’97as afraid of indolence as any reformed inebriate is afraid of the wine-cup. He knows if he shall take one glass he will be flung back into inebriety. And I am afraid if I should take one long pull of nothing to do I would stop forever. So I keep busy all the time. And I say to the multitude of young people here today starting in occupations and professions, nothing is accomplished without work, hard work, continuous work, all-absorbing work, everlasting work.

A parishioner asked a clergyman why the congregation had filled up and why the church was now so prosperous above what it had ever been before. ’93Well,’94 said the clergyman, ’93I will tell you the secret. I met a tragedian some time ago, and I said to him, ’91How is it you get along so well in your profession?’92 The tragedian replied, ’91The secret is, I always do my best; when stormy days come, and the theater is not more than half or a fourth occupied, I always do my best, and that has been the secret of my getting on.’92’93 And the clergyman reciting it, said: ’93I have remembered that, and ever since then I have always done my best.’94 And I say to you, in whatever occupation or profession God has put you, do your best; whether the world appreciates it or not, do your best’97always do your best. Domitian, the Roman emperor, for one hour every day caught flies and killed them with his penknife; and there are people with imperial opportunity who set themselves to some insignificant business. Oh, for something grand to do, and then concenter all your energies of body, mind, and soul upon that one thing, and nothing in earth or hell can stand before you. There is no such thing as good luck.

I have learned also in coming up this steep hill of life, that all events are connected. I look back and now see events which I thought were isolated and alone, but I find now they were adjoined to everything that went before and everything that came after. The chain of life is made up of a great many links’97large links, small links, silver links, iron links, beautiful links, ugly links, mirthful links, solemn links’97but they are all parts of one great chain of destiny. Each minute is made up of sixty links, and each day is made up of twenty-four links, and each year is made of three hundred and sixty-five links; but they are all parts of one endless chain which plays and works through the hand of an all-governing God. No event stands alone. Sometimes you say, ’93This is my day off.’94 You will never have a day off. Nothing is off. Your coming here this morning, which was not long premeditated, and may seem to you only accidental, may be an event which will mean more to you than any worldly event of the last ten centuries, and which will mean more to you than the final destruction of this world, because it may decide where you will be after all worlds are demolished, some by collision and some by explosion, some by fracture and some by hurricane, some by frost and some by conflagration; all worlds destroyed except two, and those rolling on, the one through cycles and immensities of rapture, and the other through cycles and immensities of pang’97rolling up, rolling up; rolling down, rolling down. Two worlds, the one a charred and the other an irradiated sphericity!

But if you continue to ask me how the past seems, I answer it seems like three or four picture-galleries’97D’fcsseldorf, Louvre, and Luxembourg’97their corridors interjoining. Boyhood gallery, church gallery, home gallery. Boyhood gallery in my memory. I close my eyes and see them coasting the hillside and flying the kite and trundling the hoop and gathering nuts in the autumnal forests, and then a little while after bending in anxious study over the lexicons and the trigonometries. Where are those comrades? Most of them gone. Some are in useful spheres on earth. Some died in rapture, and a good many of them perished in dissipation before thirty years of age. The wine-cup with its sharp edge cut the jugular vein of their soul. Poor fellows! They tried the world without God, and the world was too much for them. Splendid fellows! Oh, what forehead they had for brain, and what muscle they had for strength, and what gleam of eye they had for genius, and what loving letters they got from home, and how they carried off the bouquets on Commencement Day! But they made the terrific mistake of thinking religion a superfluity, and now they are in my memory, not so much canvas as sculpture’97some Laocoon struggling with snapped muscles and eyes starting from the socket for torture; struggling amid the crushing folds of a serpentine monstrosity, a reptile horror, a Laocoon worse than that of the ancients. Satan has a fastidious appetite, and the vulgar souls he throws into a trough to fatten his swine; but he says: ’93Bring to my golden plate all the fine natures, bring to my golden plate all the clear intellects, bring them to me; my knife will cut down through the lusciousness; fill my chalice with the richest of their blood; pour it in until it comes three-fourths full; pour it in until it comes to the rim of the chalice; pour it in until the blood bubbles over the rim. There, that will do now. Oh, this infernal banquet of great souls! Aha! aha! let the common demons have the vulgar souls, but give to me, who am the king of all diabolism, the jolliest and gladdest and the grandest of all this immortal sacrifice. Aha!’94

There is another picture gallery in my mind, the church gallery, the people to whom I have ministered in the Gospel, and who are gone now to the better country. Belleville gallery. Syracuse gallery. Philadelphia gallery. Brooklyn gallery. Some of those figures in the gallery have frame of hosanna and hallelujah. Sweet spirits, glorious spirits, transported spirits, blessed spirits! Dying children with faces like that in Raphael’92s ’93Madonna.’94 Octogenarians with patriarchal demeanor, and a look which makes me think that Elijah having arrived sent back his flaming equipage to bring up another passenger. Fair maidens in death looking like a transfiguration. Young men dying with anthem on the lip and flash of pearline portal in the eye.

Then in my mind there is the home gallery. Oh, those dear faces, old faces and young faces, faces that have lost nothing of their loveliness by the recession of years, faces into which we looked when we sat on their laps, faces that looked up to us when they sat on our laps, faces that wept, faces that laughed, faces wrinkled with old age, faces all aflush with juvenile jocundity, faces that have disappeared, faces gone.

But you ask how the rest of the journey appears to me. As I look down now, having come up one side, and standing on the hilltop, and before I take the other journey, let me say to you, the road yet to be traveled seems to me brighter than the one on which I have journeyed. I would not want to live life over again, as some wish to. If we lived over again we would do no better than we have done. Our lives have been lived over five hundred times before. We saw five hundred people make mistakes in life, and we went right on and made the same mistakes. Our life was not the first. There were five hundred or a thousand people living before us whose blunders were known to us. We did not profit by their example. We went right on and broke down in the same place, and if we did not do any better with those experiences before us, do you think we would do any better if we tried life over again? No. I should rather go right on. If we tried life over again we would repeat the same journey.

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93don’92t you know there may be trials, hardships, sicknesses, and severe duties ahead?’94 Oh, yes! But if I am on a railroad journey of a thousand miles, and I have gone five hundred of the miles, and during those five hundred miles I have found the bridges safe and the track solid and the conductors competent and the engineer wide awake does not that give me confidence for the other five hundred miles? God has seen me through up to this time, and I am going to trust him for the rest of the journey. I believe I have a through ticket, and although sometimes the track may turn this way or the other way, and sometimes we may be plunged through tunnels, and sometimes we may have a hot box that detains the train, and sometimes we may switch off upon a side track to let somebody else pass, and sometimes we may see a red flag warning us to slow up, I believe we are going through to the right place.

I have not a fear, an anxiety, this morning that I can mention. I do not know one. I put all my case in God’92s hands, and I have not any anxiety about the future. I do not feel foolhardy. I only trust. And’97for there are those here of my own age’97let me say, when we come to duties and trials and hardships, God is going to see us through.

The late Willard Parker, the eminent surgeon, had a case of goitre brought to him for treatment. Those of you who have traveled in Switzerland know of the awful swelling that is called the goitre. The patient brought to Dr. Parker was a millionaire many times over, and they wanted the doctor to perform the surgery and to warrant the safety of the patient and his recovery, and they said they would give him a million dollars if he would warrant the undertaking. ’93Oh,’94 said the doctor, ’93I cannot warrant anything, but I will do the best I can!’94 My friend said to Dr. Parker, ’93How did you feel when you were about to undertake that surgery?’94 ’93Well,’94 said he, ’93my hand trembled dreadfully, because, you know, I am an old man now; my hand trembled dreadfully; but just as soon as the instrument touched the delicate place my nerves were strong as steel, and without any excitement I went right through the successful operation, and with no anxieties; as soon as I began my hand was firm.’94 And we may have a great many anxieties about what is to come in life, and we may tremble about the great responsibility, but when we come up to the right place God will steady our hand, he will take hold of us, he will give us courage, and without any perturbation we will go right through. All I want to know is, that God has my hand and is helping me on. And beside that, notwithstanding all the balderdash of infidels and atheists and freethinkers in our time, I am quite certain’97I am very certain’97that right beyond this life there is another life. The three miles of this journey, from cradle to grave, are not an inch long compared with that other life which then will begin, and the picture-gallery ahead is brighter than the picture-gallery in the rear. Ay, we take the best of those pictures from the gallery in the rear, and on step-ladder of amethyst we go up, and with loops of celestial light we hang those pictures against the burnished wall of heaven.

Look! look! There is Christ. Cuyp painted him for earthly gallery, and Corregio and Tintoretto and Benjamin West and Dor’e9 painted him for earthly galleries, but all those pictures are eclipsed by this masterpiece of heaven. Christ! Christ! There is Paul, the hero of the Sanhedrin, and of Agrippa’92s courtroom and of Mars Hill and of Nero’92s infamy, shaking his chained fist in the very face of teeth-chattering royalty. Here is Joshua, the fighter of Beth-horon, and Gideon, the man that postponed sundown. Here is Vashti, the profligacy of the Persian Court unable to remove her veil of modesty or rend it or lift it. And all along the corridors of this picture-gallery I find other great heroes and heroines’97David with his harp, and Miriam with the cymbals, and Zachariah with the scroll, and St. John with the seven vials, and the resurrection angel with the trumpet. On farther in the corridors I see the faces of our loved ones, the cough gone from the throat, the wanness gone from the cheek, the weariness gone from the limbs, the languor gone from eye. Let us go up and greet them. Let us go up and embrace them. Let us go up and live with them. We will! we will!

From this hilltop of life I catch a glimpse of those hill-tops where all sorrow and sighing shall be done away. Oh, that God would make that world to us a reality! Faith in that world helped old Dr. Tyng, when he stood by the casket of his dead son, whose arm had been torn off in the threshing-machine, death ensuing; and Dr. Tyng, with infinite composure, preached the funeral sermon of his own beloved son. Faith in that world helped Martin Luther without one tear to put away in death his favorite child. Faith in that world helped the dying woman to see on the sky the letter ’93W,’94 and they asked her what she supposed that letter ’93W’94 on the sky meant. ’93Oh,’94 she said, ’93don’92t you know? W stands for welcome,’94 O Heaven, swing open thy gates! O Heaven, roll upon us some of thine anthems! O Heaven, flash upon us the vision of thy luster.

An old writer tells us of a ship coming from India to France. The crew was made up of French sailors, who had been long from home, years gone away from their families; and as the ship came along by the coast of France the men became uncontrollable, and they skipped the deck with glee, and they pointed to the spires of the churches where they once worshiped and to the hills where they had played in boyhood. But, the writer says, when the ship came into the port, and these sailors saw father and mother and wife and loved ones on the wharf, and heard these loved ones call them by their names, they sprang ashore and rushed up the banks into the city, and the captain had to get another crew to bring the ship to her moorings. Thus, heaven, our fatherland, will after a while be so fully in sight we can see its towers, and we can see its mansions, and we can see its hills; and as we go into port and our loved ones shall call from that shining shore and speak our names, we will spring to the beach, leaving this old ship of a world to be managed by another crew, our rough voyaging of the seas ended forever.

Rocks and storms I’92ll fear no more,

When on that eternal shore;

Drop the anchor, furl the sail,

We are safe within the vale.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage