284. Distribution of Rewards
Distribution of Rewards
Isa_53:12 : ’93He shall divide the spoil with the strong.’94
My family, who saw it for themselves year before last, tell me that in the Coliseum at Rome, where persecutors used to let out the half-starved lions to eat up Christians, there is now planted the figure of a cross. And I rejoice to know that the upright piece of wood nailed to a transverse piece has become the symbol, not more of suffering than of victory. It is of Christ the Conqueror that my text speaks. As a kingly warrior, having subdued an empire, might divide the palaces, and mansions, and cities, and valleys, and mountains among his officers, so Christ is going to divide up all the earth and all the heavens among His people, and you and I will have to take our share if we are strong in faith and strong in our Christian loyalty; for my text declares it, ’93He shall divide the spoil with the strong.’94
The capture of this round planet for Christ is not so much of a job as you might imagine, when the Church takes off its coat and rolls up its sleeves for the work, as it will. There are sixteen hundred millions of people now in the world, and there are four hundred and fifty million Christians. Subtract the four hundred and fifty millions who are Christians from the sixteen hundred millions, and there are eleven hundred and fifty millions left to be Christianized. Now divide the eleven hundred and fifty millions by the four hundred and fifty millions already Christianized, and it makes less than three people for each Christian to bring to Christ. Surely when the Church gets wide awake no Christian will be content to take to heaven less than three. Why, I hope to take with me at least ten thousand. I know evangelists that have already gathered fifty thousand each for the kingdom. There are at least two hundred thousand men in Christendom whose one business it is to save souls. So that when I tell you all that we need to average is three souls reaped for God in a lifetime, all idea of impossibility vanishes from this omnipotent crusade. I know of a Sabbath-school teacher who has spent her lifetime in teaching the young, and she has had five different classes during all these years, and she tells me they averaged about seven in a class, and they were all converted; and five times seven are thirty-five, as near as I can calculate. She brought her three and had thirty-two to spare. My grandmother brought her whole family into the kingdom, and her grandchildren, and, I hope, all her great-grandchildren, for God remembers a prayer seventy-five years old as well as though it were a minute old; and she took her three into the kingdom and had at least a hundred to spare. Besides that, through the telephone and the telegraph, this whole world, within a few years, will be brought within compass of ten minutes. Besides that, omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience are presiding in this matter of the world’92s betterment, and that takes the question of the world’92s salvation out of the impossibilities into the possibilities, and then out of the possibilities into the probabilities, and then out of the probabilities into the certainties. The building of the Union Pacific Railroad from ocean to ocean was a greater undertaking than the girdling of the earth with the Gospel, for one enterprise depended upon the human arm, while the other depended upon Almightiness.
Do I really mean all the earth will surrender to Christ? Yes. How about the uninviting portions? Will Greenland be evangelized? The possibility is that after a few more hundred brave lives are dashed out among the icebergs, that great refrigerator, the polar region, will be given up to the walrus and the bear, and that the inhabitants will come down by invitation into tolerable climates, or those climates may soften; and as it has been positively demonstrated that the Arctic region was once a blooming garden and a fruitful field, those regions may change climate and again be a blooming garden and a fruitful field.
It is proved beyond controversy, by German and American scientists, that the Arctic regions were the first portions of this world inhabitable; the world hot beyond human endurance, these regions were of course, the first to be cool enough for human foot and human lung. It was positively proved that the Arctic region was a tropical climate. Professor Heer, of Zurich, says the remains of flowers have been found in the Arctic, showing it was like Mexico for climate; and it is found that the Arctic was the mother-region from which all the flowers descended. Professor Wallace says the remains of all styles of animal life are found in the Arctic, including those animals that can live only in warm climates. Now, that Arctic region which has been demonstrated by flora, and fauna, and geological argument to have been as full of vegetation and life as our Florida, may be turned back to its original bloom and glory, or it will be shut up as a museum of crystals for curiosity seekers once in a while to visit. But Arctic and Antarctic in some shape will belong to the Redeemer’92s realm.
What about other unproductive or repulsive regions? All the deserts will be irrigated, the waters will be forced up to the great American desert between here and the Pacific by machinery now known or yet to be invented, and, as Great Salt Lake City has no rain and could not raise an apple or a bushel of wheat in a hundred years without artificial help, but is now through such means one great garden, so all the unproductive parts of all the continents will be turned into harvest fields and orchards. A half dozen De Lesseps will furnish the world with all the canals needed, and will change the course of rivers and open new lakes, and great Sahara Desert will be cut up into farms with an astounding yield of bushels to the acre.
The marsh will be drained of its waters and cured of its malaria. I saw the other day what was for many years called the Black Swamp of Ohio, its chief crop chills and fevers, but now, by the tiles put into the ground to carry off the surplus moisture, transformed into the richest and healthiest of regions. The God who wastes nothing, I think, means that this world, from pole to pole, has to come to perfection of foliage and fruitage. For that reason He keeps us running through space, though so many fires are blazing down in its timbers, and so many meteoric terrors have threatened to dash it to pieces.
As soon as the earth is completed Christ will divide it up among the good. The reason He does not divide it now is because it is not ready. A kind father will not divide the apple among his children until the apple is ripe. In fulfilment of the New Testament promise, ’93The meek shall inherit the earth,’94 and the promise of the Old Testament, ’93He shall divide the spoil with the strong,’94 the world will be apportioned to those worthy to possess it.
It is not so now. In this country, capable of holding, feeding, clothing, and sheltering twelve hundred million people, and where we have only sixty million inhabitants, we have two millions who cannot get honest work, and with their families an aggregation of five millions that are on the verge of starvation. Something wrong, most certainly. In some way there will be a new apportionment. Many of the millionaire estates will crack to pieces on the dissipations of grandchildren, and then dissolve into the possession of the masses, who now have an insufficiency.
What, you say, will become of the expensive and elaborate buildings now devoted to debasing amusements? They will become schools, art galleries, museums, gymnasiums, and churches. The world is already getting disgusted with many of these amusements, and no wonder. What an importation of unclean theatrical stuff we have within the last few years had brought to our shores! And professors of religion patronizing such things! Having sold out to the devil, why do you not deliver the goods and go over to him publicly, body, mind, and soul, and withdraw your name from Christian churches, and say, ’93Know all the world by these presents, that I am a patron of uncleanness and a child of perdition.’94 Sworn to be the Lord’92s, you are perjurers.
But at last the tide has turned, and the despisers of purity overdid the matter. A foreign actress of base morals arrived intending to make the tour of the States, but the remaining decency of our cities rose up and canceled the contracts, and drove her back from our American stage, a woman fit for neither continent. In the name of Almighty God I take these abominations by the throat. If you think these offenses are to go on forever, you do not know who the Lord is. God will not wait for the Day of Judgment. All these palaces of sin will become palaces of righteousness. They will come into the possession of those strong for virtue and strong for God. ’93He shall divide the spoil with the strong.’94 China and Africa, the two richest portions of the earth by reason of metals and rare woods and inexhaustible productiveness, are not yet divided up among the good because they are not ready to be divided. Wait until all the doors that Livingstone opened in Africa shall be entered, and Bishop Taylor, with his band of self-supporting missionaries, have done their work, and the Ashantees and Senegambians shall know Christ as well as you know Him, and there shall be on the banks of the Nile and the Niger a higher civilization than is now to be found on the banks of the Hudson, then Christ will divide up that continent among His friends. Wait until China, which is half as large as all Europe, shall have developed her capacities for rice, and tea, and sugar, among edibles; and her amethyst, and sapphire, and topaz, and opal, and jasper, and porphyry, among precious stones; and her rosewood, and ebony, and camphor, and varnish trees among precious woods; and turned up from her depths a half dozen Pennsylvanias of coal and iron, and twenty Nevadas of silver, and fifty Californias of gold, and her five hundred million of people shall be evangelized; then the Lord will divide it up among the good.
If my text be not a deception, but the eternal truth, then the time is coming when all the farms will be owned by Christian farmers, and all the commerce controlled by Christian merchants, and all the authority held by Christian officials, and all the ships commanded by Christian captains, and all the universities under the instruction of Christian professors; Christian kings, Christian presidents, Christian governors, Christian mayors, Christian common councils. Yet, what a scouring out! What an upturning! What a demolition! What a resurrection must precede this new apportionment!
I do not underrate the enemy. Julius C’e6sar got his greatest victories by fully estimating the vastness of his foes, and prepared his men for their greatest triumph by saying, ’93To-morrow King Juba will be here with thirty thousand horses, one hundred thousand skirmishers, and three hundred elephants.’94 I do not underrate the vast forces of sin and death, but do you know who commands us? Jehovah-Jireh. And the reserve corps behind us are all the armies of heaven and earth, with hurricane and thunderbolt. The good work of the world’92s redemption is going on every minute. Never so many splendid men and glorious women on the side of right as today. Never so many good people as now. Diogenes has been spoken of as a wise man because he went with a lantern at noonday, saying he was looking for an honest man. If he had turned his lantern toward himself he might have discovered a crank. Honest men by the ten thousand!
Through the International Series of Sunday-school Lessons the next generation all through Christendom are going to be wiser than any generation since the world stood. The Kingdom is coming. God can do it. No housewife with a chamois cloth ever polished a silver teaspoon with more ease than Christ will rub off from this world the tarnish, and brighten it up till it glows like heaven, and then the glorious apportionment, for my text is re-enforced by a score of other texts, when it says of Christ, ’93He shall divide the spoil with the strong.’94
’93But,’94 you say, ’93that is pleasant to think of for others, but before that time I shall have passed up into another existence, and I shall get no advantage from that new apportionment.’94 Ah! you have only driven me to the other more exciting and transporting consideration, and that is that Christ is going to divide up heaven in the same way. There are old estates in the celestial world that have been in the possession of its inhabitants for thousands of years, and they shall remain as they are. There are old family mansions in heaven filled with whole generations of kindred, and they shall never be driven out. Many of the victors from earth have already got their palaces, and they are pointed out to those newly arrived. Soon after our getting there we will ask to be shown the apostolic residences, and ask where does Paul live, and John, and ask to be shown the patriarchal residences, and shall say, ’93Where does Abraham live, or Jacob?’94 and shown the martyr residences, and say, ’93Where does John Huss live, and Ridley?’94 We will want to see the boulevards where the chariots of conquerors roll. I will want to see the gardens where the princes walk. We will want to see Music Row, where Handel, and Haydn, and Mozart, and Charles Wesley, and Thomas Hastings, and Bradbury have their homes, out of their windows, ever and anon, rolling some sonnet of an earthly oratorio or hymn transported with the composer. We will want to see Revival Terrace, where Whitefield, and Nettleton, and Payson, and Rowland Hill, and Charles Finney, and other giants of soul-reaping are resting from their almost supernatural labors, their doors thronged with converts just arrived, coming to report themselves.
But brilliant as the sunset, and like the leaves for number, are the celestial homes yet to be awarded, when Christ to you, and millions of others, shall divide the spoil. What do you want there? You shall have it. An orchard? There it is; twelve manner of fruit, and fruit every month. Do you want river scenery? Take your choice on the banks of the river, in longer, wider, deeper roll than Danube, or Amazon, or Mississippi, all mingled in one, and emptying into the sea of glass, mingled with fire. Do you want your kindred back again? Go out and meet your father and mother without the staff or the stoop, and your children in a dance of immortal glee. Do you want a throne. Select it from the million burnished elevations. Do you want a crown? Pick it out of that mountain of diamonded coronets. Do you want your old church friends of earth around you? Begin to hum an old revival tune and they will flock from all quarters to revel with you in sacred reminiscence. All the earth for those who are here on earth at the time of continental and planetary distribution and all the heavens for those who are there.
That heavenly distribution of spoils will be a surprise to many. Here enters heaven the soul of a man who took up a great deal of room in the church on earth, but sacrificed little, and among his good works selfishness was evident. He just crowds through the shining gate, but it is a very tight squeeze, so that the doorkeeper has to pull hard to get him in; and this man expects half of heaven for his share of trophies, and he would like a monopoly of all its splendor, and to purchase lots in the suburbs, so that he could get advantage from the growth of the city. Well, he had a little grace of heart, just enough to get him through, and to him is given a second-hand crown, which one of the saints wore at the start, but exchanged for a brighter one as he went on from glory to glory. And he is put in an old house once occupied by an angel who was hurled out of heaven at the time of Satan’92s rebellion.
Right after him comes a soul that makes a great stir among the celestials, and the angels rush to the scene, each bringing to her a dazzling coronet. Who is she? Over what realm on earth was she queen? In what great Dusseldorf festival was she the cantatrice? Neither. She was an invalid who never left her room for twenty years; but she was strong in prayer, and she prayed down revival after revival, and pentecost after pentecost, upon the churches, and with her pale hands she knit many a mitten or tippet for the poor, and with her contrivances she added joy to many a holiday festival, and now, with those thin hands so strong for kindness, and with those white lips so strong for supplication, she has won coronation and enthronement and jubilee. And Christ says to the angels who have brought each a crown for the glorified invalid, ’93No, not these; they are not good enough. But in the jewelled vase at the right-hand side of my throne there is one that I have been preparing for her many a year, and for her every pang I have set an amethyst, and for her every good deed I have set a pearl. Fetch it now and fulfill the promise I gave her long ago in the sick-room. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown.’94
But notice that there is only one being in the universe who can and will distribute the trophies of earth and heaven. It is the Divine Warrior, the Commander in-Chief of the centuries, the Champion of the ages, the universal Conqueror, the Son of God, Jesus. You will take the spoils from his hand, or never take them at all. Have his friendship and you may defy all time and all eternity, but without it you were a pauper, though you had a universe at your command. We are told in Revelation that Jacob’92s twelve sons were so honored as to have the twelve gates of heaven named after them’97over one. gate of heaven Naphtali, over another gate of heaven Issachar, over another Dan, over another Gad, over another Zebulon, over another Judah, and so on. But Christ’92s name is written over all the gates, and on every panel of the gates, and have his help, his pardon, his intercession, his atonement, I must, or be a forlorn wretch forever. My Lord and my God! make me and all who hear me this day, and all to whom these words shall come, Thy repentant, believing, sworn, consecrated, and ransomed followers forever. What a day it will be! This entire assemblage would rise to their feet if they could realize it, the day in which Christ shall, in fulfilment of my text, divide the spoil. It was a great day when Queen Victoria, in the midst of the Crimean War, distributed medals to the soldiers who had come home sick and wounded. At the Horse Guards, in presence of the royal family, the injured men were carried in or came on crutches’97Colonel Trowbridge, who lost both feet at Inkerman; and Captain Sayer, who had the ankle joint of his right leg shot off at Alma; and Captain Curre, his disabled limb supported by a soldier, and others maimed, and disfigured, and exhausted’97and with her own hands the Queen gave each the Crimean medal. And what triumphant days for those soldiers when, further on, they received the French medal with the imperial eagle, and the Turkish medal with its representation of four flags’97France, Turkey, England, and Sardinia’97and beneath it a map of the Crimea! And what rewards are suggested to all readers of history by the mere mention of the Waterloo medal, and the Cape medal, and the Gold Cross medal, and the medal struck for bravery in our American wars! But how insignificant all these compared with the day when the good soldiers of Jesus Christ shall come in out of the battles of this world, and in the presence of all the piled-up galleries of the redeemed and the unfallen, Jesus, our King, shall divide the spoil! The more wounds, the greater the inheritance. The longer the forced march, the brighter the trophy. The more terrific the exhaustion, the more glorious the transport. Not the gift of a brilliant ribbon, or a medal of brass, or silver, or gold, but a kingdom in which we are to reign forever and ever. Mansions on the eternal hills. Dominions of unfading power. Empires of unending love. Continents of everlasting light. Atlantic and Pacific Oceans of billowing joy.
It was a great day when Aurelian, the Roman Emperor, came back from his victories. In the front of the procession were wild beasts from all lands; among the captives Syrians, Egyptians, Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Franks. And Zenobia, the beautiful captive queen, on foot, in chains of gold that a slave had to help her carry, and jewels under the weight of which she almost fainted. And then came the chariot of Aurelian, followed by the Roman Senate and the Roman army; and from dawn till dark the procession was passing. Rome in all her history never saw anything more magnificent. But how much greater the day when our Conqueror, Jesus, shall ride under the triumphal arches of heaven, his captives in thousands, not on foot but in chariots, all the kingdoms of earth and heaven in procession; the armies celestial on white horses. Rumbling artillery of thunderbolts never again to be unlimbered. Kingdoms in line, centuries in line; saintly, cherubic, seraphic, archangelic splendors in line, and Christ seated on one great rolling Hosanna, made out of all Hallelujahs of all worlds, shall cry Halt! to the procession. And not forgetting even the humblest in all the reach of His omnipresence, He shall rise, and then and there, His work done and His glory consummated, proceed, amid an ecstasy such as neither mortal nor immortal ever imagined, to divide the spoil.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage