320. The College Student

The College Student

Dan_1:5 : ’93And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’92s meat, and of the wine which he drank; so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king.’94

My text opens the door of a college in Babylon, and introduces you to a young student seventeen years of age, Daniel by name. Be not surprised if in the college you find many hilarities. Put a hundred young men together and they are sure to have a good time. There is no harm in that. God does not write out the trees and the grass and the blossoms in dull prose. The old robin does not sit moping in the nest because of the chirpings and the lively adventures of the fledglings that have just begun to fly. Do not come into an orchard looking for winter apples on a May morning.

But Daniel of the text is far from being gay. What oppressive thoughts must have come over him as he remembered that he was a captive in a strange land! The music that came into his study window was not the song of Zion, but the sound of flute, sackbut and dulcimer in the worship of the heathen god. Moreover, he had no hope of ever getting back home again and meeting those who had missed him long and missed him bitterly, wondering if he were still alive, and finding many a luxury tasteless because they did not know but Daniel might be lacking bread.

When you and I were in school or college, and the vacation approached, we were full of bright anticipation, and we could not study the last day and we could not study the last night. The lexicon and the philosophical apparatus were transparent, so we could see right through them into the meadows and the orchards. Not so with poor Daniel. He did not know that he should ever escape from captivity, or, escaping, he did not know but when he got home the loved ones would be dead, and he would go wandering and weeping among the sepulchers of his fathers. Besides that, the king tried to make him forget his home and forget his country; for that purpose, actually changed his name. The king wanted him to be a prodigy in personal appearance, and so he ordered meat and wine sent from his own table to Daniel; but Daniel refuses all this, and puts himself upon the humblest diet, the poorest of all herbs, called pulse, and plain water. His attendants cry out against this, and tell him he will perish under such a diet. ’93No,’94 he says, ’93you try us for ten days, and if at the end of that time we are not full cheeked and robust as any, it will be surprising.’94 Ten days pass along and the students come up for examination, and all declare that none are so ruddy and robust as Daniel and his fellow-captives. The days of industrious pupilage and the years pass by, and the day of graduation has come, and Daniel gets his diploma, signed by the king, and reading as follows: ’93In all matters of wisdom and understanding that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.’94 And so Daniel took the first honor, and here the story ends, for Daniel the student hereafter will be Daniel the prime minister.

The first thought suggested to me by this subject is that young men may be carried into captivity by their enemies. There is a captivity more galling than the one in which Daniel was transported; it is the captivity of evil habit. Men do not go into that wittingly. Slyly and imperceptibly are the chains forged upon them, and one day they wake up to find themselves away down in Babylon. Cyrus afterward consented that some of his captives should return, and fifty thousand of them accepted the opportunity; but tell me what evil habit ever consented to let a man go. Ten plagues made Pharaoh consent to the departure of God’92s people; but tell me what Pharaoh of evil habit ever cheerfully consented to let any of its victims go. Men talk of evil habits as though they were light and trivial; but they are scorpion whips that tear the flesh; they are spikes more bloody than the path of a Brahmin; they make the poisonous robe of Nessus; they are the sepulchers in which millions are buried alive. The young are in more peril because they are unsuspecting. The lions are asleep in their soul, and their power is not suspected. The time when a ship’92s company makes mutiny is when the watchman is off his guard. When a spider meets a fly, it does not say, ’93Go down with me to the place where I murder insects.’94 No; it says: ’93Come and take a bright morning walk with me on this suspension bridge of glittering gossamer.’94 Oh! there is a difference between the sparkle of a serpent’92s eye and the crush of its slimy folds. There is a difference between the bear’92s paw toying with a kid, and the crackling of the bones in the terrific hug. Pike’92s Peak looks beautiful in the distance, but ask the starved travelers by the roadside what they think of Pike’92s Peak. Are there those around whom suspicious companions are gathering? Do their jests and their entertainments make the hours go blithely by when you are with them? Have you taken a sip from their cup of sin, or gone with them in one path of unrighteousness? Turn back. From Babylon they came and to Babylon they would carry you. If so many plague-stricken men would like to enter your companionship, before any one is allowed to pass into the intimacy of your heart put on them severest quarantine.

My subject also impresses me with the fact that early impressions are almost ineffaceable. Daniel had a religious bringing up. From the good meaning of his name I know he had pious parentage. But as soon as he comes into the possession of the king, his name is changed, all his surroundings are changed, and now, you say, will begin the demoralization of his character. Before, his name was Daniel, which means ’93God my judge;’94 now, his name is to be Belshazzar, which means ’93the treasurer of the god Bel.’94 Now you expect to see him overthrown amid all these changed circumstances. Oh, no! Daniel started right, and he keeps on right. When I find what Daniel is in Jerusalem, I am not surprised to find what he is in Babylon. I wish I could write upon all parents’92 hearts the fact that early impressions are wellnigh ineffaceable. When I see Joseph, a pious lad, in the house of his father, Jacob, I am not surprised to see him acting so nobly down in Egypt. When I find Samuel, a pious lad, in the house of his mother Hannah, I am not surprised that he gives a terrible smiting to idolatry as soon as he comes to manhood. David planned the Temple at Jerusalem, and gathered the materials for its building; but Solomon, the son, came and put up the structure, and that goes on in all ages. The father plans the character of the child, and its destiny for time and for eternity; then the son completes the structure. You might as well put down a foundation ten feet by five and expect to rear on it a great cathedral, as to put down a contracted character in a child’92s soul and yet rear upon it something extensively grand and extensively useful.

Let me say to those Christian parents who are doing their best in the education of their children: take good heart; your sons this morning may be far away from you and in a distant city, but God, to whom you dedicated them, will look after them. The God of Daniel will take care of them far away in Babylon. ’93Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.’94 He may wander away for a while and fall into sin, and break your heart; but before he is done with this life, you having commended him to God, he will come back again; for I put the emphasis in the right place and on the world ’93old,’94 when I repeat that passage and say, ’93Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.’94 May you all have the glorious satisfaction of seeing your children walk in paths of righteousness and peace! One with them on earth, may you be one with them in heaven.

But I learn also from this subject the beauty of Christian sobriety. The meat and the wine that were to come to Daniel’92s table were to come from the king’92s table. Well, Daniel had no right to take that food. The king was a heathen, and, like all the heathens, was accustomed to ask a blessing before he partook of food, and in that blessing they always dedicated the food to the gods. So that if Daniel had taken this food he would have broken the law which forbade the taking of food dedicated to idols. He chose pulse. It was a miracle that he did not dwindle away. There is nothing in pulse, such a poor herb, to make a man ruddy and healthful. Some people talk as though that were a kind of diet which would make a man swarthy and competent to do the duties of this life. That is not the lesson at all. But for a positive miracle Daniel would have dwindled away, and when God for his self-denial puts upon him this benediction, he puts a benediction upon all Christian sobriety. I would not have you class your preacher among those who would put unnecessary restraints upon lawful appetites. There are those in this day who dispute the grant which God gave to man for animal food, and they make a religion of their hunger as the Pharisees expected heaven for their fasting. Daniel did not always live on pulse. He was not a Grahamite, he was not a vegetarian. He went through that self-denial because the food offered him was idolatrous food. When I see God filling the earth with all varieties of food I have not much confidence in the teaching of those who would put us on severe regimen. There are parents who, with a wrong theory in this respect, deny their children all harmless luxuries, and without sufficient inquiry send them out to boarding-schools where their intellects are cultured to the disadvantage of their starved bodies; so that from many a boarding-school a class of twenty will graduate, nineteen of them ghosts! Now, when I see the three angels eating the calf which Abraham slew, and when I find Christ eating broiled fish even after his resurrection, I come to the conclusion that the theories of the vegetarian are not, from a religious standpoint, well founded.

But oh, how many temptations to dissipation! With so many things to tempt the appetite, how many temptations to gluttony! With so many sparkling beverages, how much temptation to drunkenness! Could I bring before you this morning the mothers and the wives and the sisters who have wept at the graves of the inebriate, your soul would be overpowered with the spectacle. Could I show you the manly forms robbed of their beauty, the eye-flashings quenched in the wine cup, the ruddy cheek from which rum has wormed the rose, your souls would recoil with horror, and you would rise up and cry, ’93Begone, thou dream of hell!’94

Charles Lamb, who made all the world laugh at his humor, and then afterward made all the world weep at his fate, who outwitted everybody, and was at last outwitted of his own appetites, wrote thus:

’93The waters have gone over me; but out of the depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those who have set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth to whom the flavor of the first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of his life, or the entering upon some newly-discovered paradise’97could he look into my desolation and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will; to see his destruction and have no power to stop it, yet feel it all the way emanating from himself; to see all godliness empty out of him, and yet not able to forget the time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his own ruin’97could he see my feverish eye, feverish with last night’92s drinking, and feverishly looking for tonight’92s repetition of that folly’97could he but feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly with feeble outcry to be delivered, it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation.’94

Are you fond of pictures? Here is one drawn by Solomon: ’93Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it moveth itself aright in the cup. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.’94

’93Do you know what you are doing?’94 said a mother who had broken into a restaurant, the door locked against her, her son inside. She came up to the counter and saw the man of the restaurant mingling the intoxicating cup for her own son. She said to the man behind the counter: ’93Do you know what you are doing?’94 ’93No,’94 said he, ’93I don’92t.’94 Says she: ’93You are fattening graveyards.’94

I was told at Des Moines of a train of cars going through a very stormy night over one of the western prairies. The young man who was present told us the story. In the night there was a little child in the sleeping-car, fretful and worrying and crying hour after hour. A man on the opposite side of the car lost his patience, and said: ’93Either make that child shut up or take it to its mother!’94 Then another man on the opposite side of the sleeping-car’97a man with a broken heart’97pushed back the curtain, and looked out, and said: ’93Young man, that child’92s mother is dead in the baggage-car, and the little thing is wailing for her.’94 Then the man who had committed the affront rose up, offered his services for the night, and took care of the child until the morning, and all the passengers in the car were broken down with emotion. Oh! if the cry of one child could arouse so many sympathies, what ought to be the effect of the ten-thousand-voiced shriek of orphanage and widowhood from the inebriate’92s grave? God save this country from the perils of strong drink.

My subject also impresses me with the beauty of youthful character remaining incorrupt away from home. If Daniel had plunged into every wickedness of the city of Babylon, the old folks at home would never have heard of it. If he had gone through all the rounds of iniquity, it would have cast no shadow on his early home. There were no telegraphs, there were no railroads. But Daniel knew that God’92s eye was on him. That was enough. There are young men not so good away from home as at home. Frederick tending his father’92s sheep among the hills, or threshing rye in the barn, is different perhaps from Frederick on the Stock Exchange. Instead of the retiring disposition, there is bold effrontery; instead of an obliging spirit, there is perhaps oppressive selfishness; instead of open-handed charity, there is tight-fisted stinginess; instead of reasonable hours, there is midnight revel. I speak to many young men on this matter. You who may have left your father’92s house, and others who, though still under the parental roof, are looking forward to the time when you will go forth to conflict, alone in this world, with its temptations and its sorrows, and when you will build up your own character. Oh, that the God of Daniel might be with you in Babylon!

I think the most thrilling passage of a young man’92s life is when he leaves home to make his fortune. The novelty and the romance of the thing may keep him from any keen sorrow, but the old people who have seen the destruction of so many who started with high hope, cannot help but be anxious. As long as he was in his father’92s house his waywardness was kindly chided, and although sometimes he thought the restraint rather bitter and rather severe, in his calmer moments he acknowledged it was salutary and righteous. Through the influence of metropolitan friends, the father has obtained a situation for his son in the city. The comrades of the young man come the night before his departure to bid farewell to the adventurer. The morning of his going away he walks around the place to take a last look at things’97perhaps comes upon some object that starts a tear, some old familiar place, but no one sees the tear. The trunk is put upon the wagon, the young man is off for the city. He is set down amid excitements and amid associates who are not over-careful about their words and thoughts and actions. Morning comes. No family altar. Sabbath comes. No rural quiet. The sanctuary comes, but all the faces are strange, and no one cares whether he comes to church or does not come. On his way home from the store he sees a placard announcing a rare and a vicious amusement. He has no greeting at the door of the boarding-house. He has no appetite for the food. No one cares whether he eats or does not eat’97rather he would not eat’97it is cheaper! After the tea he goes into the parlor, takes up a book, finds it dull, no sister to look over it with him. Goes upstairs to his room in the third story, finds it cold and uninviting, and in despair he rushes out, caring for nothing but to get something to make him stop thinking. He is caught in the first whirl of sin. He has started out on the dark sea where the gleam of the joy is the flashing of the pit, and the laughter is the creaking of the gate of the lost. Oh, how many graves there are in the country churchyard which, if they could speak, would tell of young men who went off with high hopes and came back blasted and crushed to disgrace the sepulcher of their fathers!

And yet this exodus must go on. As from distant hills the rivers are poured down through tunnels to slake the thirst of our great cities, so from distant country-places the streams of incorrupt population must pour down to purify our great cities. To-morrow morning, on all the thoroughfares, in every steamboat, and in every rail-car will be young men going forth to seek their fortune in our great towns. O Lord God of Daniel! help them to be as faithful in Babylon as they were at Jerusalem. Forget not in the great seaports the moral and religious principles inculcated by parental solicitude, and if today, O my young friend! seated in the house of God, you feel the advantage of early Christian culture, forget not those to whom you are most indebted, and pray God that as old age comes upon them and the shadow of death, the hope of Heaven may beam through the darkness. God forbid that any of us through our misconduct should bring disgrace upon a father’92s name or prove recreant to the love of a mother. The dramatist made no exaggeration when he exclaimed, ’93How sharper than a serpent’92s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’94 Oh! that God would help you as parents and as young people to take to heart the lessons of this important subject; and if we shall learn that there is danger of being carried into captivity, and that early impressions are almost ineffaceable, and that there is something beautiful in Christian sobriety, and that there is great attractiveness in piety away from home’97then it will be to you and to me a matter of everlasting congratulation that we considered how Daniel behaved when he became a college student at Babylon.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage