357. Shadows and Sunshine on the Cradle

Shadows and Sunshine on the Cradle

Mat_1:17 : ’93So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.’94

From what many consider the dullest and most unimportant chapter of the New Testament I take my text, and find it full of practical, startling, and eternal interest. This chapter is the front door of the New Testament, through which all the splendors of evangelism and apostolicity enter. Three times fourteen generations are spoken of in my text; that is, forty-two generations, reaching down to Christ. They all had relation to him. And at least forty-two generations past affect us. If they were good, we feel the result of the goodness. If they were bad, we feel the result of their wickedness. If some were good and some were bad, it is an intermingling influence that puts its mighty hand upon us. And as we feel the effect of at least forty-two generations past, we will in turn influence at least forty-two generations to come, if the world shall last a thousand years. So you see the cradle is more important than the grave.

I propose to show you some of the shadows upon the Christic cradle of Bethlehem, and then the sunshine that poured in upon the pillow of straw. Notice among the shadows on that infant’92s bed that there was here and there a specimen of dissolute ancestry. Beautiful Ruth his ancestress? Oh, yes! Devout Asa one of his forefathers? Oh, yes! King David his forefather? Oh, yes! Holy Mary his mother? Oh, yes! But in that genealogical table were idolatrous and cruel Ammon and oppressive Rehoboam, and some men whose abominations may not be particularized. So you see bad men may have good descendants. One of the most consecrated men I ever knew was the son of a man who lived and died a blasphemer. In the line of an oppressive Rehoboam comes a gracious and merciful and glorious Christ. Great encouragement for those who had in the forty-two generations that preceded them, however close by or however far back, some instances of pernicious and baleful and corrupt ancestry.

To my amazement, I found in those parts of Australia to which many years ago felons were transported from England, that the percentage of crime was less than in those parts of Australia originally settled by honest men and good women. Some who are now on judicial benches in Australia, and in high governmental position and in learned and useful professions and leaders in social life are the grandsons and granddaughters of men and women who were exiled from Great Britain to Australia for arson and theft and assault and fraud and murder. So you see it is possible for the descendants of those who do wrong to do right. Perhaps we make too much of the doctrine of heredity. While those of us who can gratefully turn in our family record to healthful and virtuous pedigree, let not those who have had abhorrent natures in the ancestral line despair of usefulness and happiness and heaven.

Since we are all more or less affected by our ancestry we ought to be patient with those who go wrong, remembering that they may be the victims of unhappy antecedents. How lenient it ought to make us in our judgments of the fallen! Perhaps they had forty-two generations back of them pushing them the wrong way. Five hundred years before they were born there may have been a parentage of iniquity augmented by a corrupt parentage two hundred years ago. Do not blame a man because he cannot swim up the rapids of Niagara. Do not blame. a ship captain because he cannot outride a Caribbean whirlwind. The father of this man who does wrong may have been all right and his mother all right, but away back in the centuries there may have started a bad propensity which he now feels. One of the Ten Commandments given on Mount Sinai recognizes the fact that evil may skip a generation, when the commandment speaks of visiting ’93the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,’94 but says nothing about the second generation; and if evil may skip one generation, why not two and three and four and five generations, making a mighty leap and alighting very hard upon the head and the heart of some poor victim? Better be a little merciful toward the culprit, lest after a while some hereditary evil born in the year sixteen hundred or seventeen hundred, having skipped the centuries, alight just as heavy upon you.

Meanwhile keep carefully your family records. The old place for the family record in the Bible, between the Old and New Testaments, is a most appropriate place. That record, put in such impressive surroundings of chapter, bounded on one side by the prophesies of Malachi, and on the other side by the Gospel of Matthew, will receive stress and sanctity from its position. That record is appropriately bound up with the eternities. Do not simply say in your family record: ’93Born at such a time and died at such a time,’94 but if there has been among your ancestors some man or woman especially consecrated and useful, make a note of it for the encouragement of the following generations. Two family records of the Bible: the one in Matthew reaching from Abraham to Christ, and the one in Luke beginning with Joseph and reaching back to the garden of Eden, with the sublime statement ’93which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.’94 I charge you to this duty of keeping the family record by the forty-two generations which are past and the forty-two generations which are to come. It is a good thing’97the new habit abroad of seeking for one’92s pedigree. The old family records hardly ever went back further than the grandfather and grandmother. Scarcely one of us knows anything about our great-grandparents, although they may have been indescribably better than their children or grandchildren.

Another shadow on the Christic cradle was that it stood under a depraved king. Herod was at that time ruler, and the complete impersonation of all depravities. It was an unfavorable time for innocence to expect good treatment. So dark was the shadow dropping on the cradle from that iniquitous throne that the peasant mother had to lift her babe out of it and make hasty flight. Depraved habits of those in authority are apt to be copied by subjects, and from the immorals of the Herodic throne I judge of the immorals of a nation. There was a malaria of sin in the air when the infant Christ first breathed it. Thickest shawl could not keep the babe warm when in that wintry month with his mother he became a fugitive.

Historians say that it was at a time of peace that Christ was born, but his birth aroused an antagonism of which the Bethlehem massacre was only a feeble expression. War of the mightiest nation of the earth opened against that cradle! The influence that came forth that night from that surrounding of camels and sheep and oxen challenged the iniquities of all the centuries, and will not cease until it has destroyed them. What a pronunciamento went forth from that black and barbarian throne! practically saying, ’93Slay all the babes under two years of age, and that wide slaughter will surely include the death of the one child that most threatens my dominion.’94 Awful time was it for the occupant of that cradle! If he escaped the knife of the assassin, then the wild beast’92s paw or the bandit’92s clutch or the midnight chill between Bethlehem of Judea and Cairo, Egypt, will secure his destruction. All the powers of earth and all the demons of hell bombarded that cradle.

Another shadow upon that Christic cradle was the obscurity of the place of birth. Bethlehem was an obscure village. David, the shepherd boy, had been born there, but after he became general and king he gave it no significance, I think never mentioning it but to ask for a drink of water out of the old well to which he used to go in childhood. The village so small and unimportant that it had to be separated in mind from another Bethlehem then existing, and so was called Bethlehem of Judea. There was a great capital of Jerusalem; there were the fifteen beautiful cities on the beach of Galilee, any of them a good place to be born in; there were great towns famous at that time, but the nativity we to-day celebrate was in a village which Christ intimated had been called by some ’93the least among the princes of Judea.’94 Christ himself was to make the town famous for all time and all eternity. So heroes in later days by their deeds have given celebrity to neighborhoods that would never otherwise have been heard of beyond the radius of a few hundred miles. What a place for Christ to arrive at and to start from! The hero of the eternities!

O men and women of Messianic opportunity! why do you not make the place of your nativity memorable for your philanthropies’97by the churches you build, the free libraries you open, the colleges you endow? Go back to the village where you were born, as George Peabody went back to Danvers, Massachusetts, and with your wealth bless the neighborhood where in childhood you played, and near by where your father and mother sleep the last sleep. There are scores of such villages in America being generously remembered by prosperous men during life, or helped in their last will and testament, and there are a hundred neighborhoods waiting for such benediction from their prosperous sons. By some such charity invite the Bethlehem angels to come back again, and over the plain house of your nativity ring out the old anthem of ’93Good-will to men.’94 Christ, born in an obscure place, made it so widely known by his self-sacrifices and divine charity that all round the earth the village of Bethlehem has its name woven in garlands and chanted in Te Deums and built in houses of prayer.

But it is time we see some of the sunshine breaking through the shadows on that cradle. For we must have jubilance dominate the Christmas festival. That was Walter Scott’92s opinion when in ’93Marmion’94 he wrote:

A Christmas gambol oft would cheer

A poor man’92s heart through half the year.

It was while the peasant and his wife were on a visit for purposes of enrollment that Jesus was born. The Bible translators got the wrong word when they said that Joseph and Mary had gone to Bethlehem to be ’93taxed.’94 People went no farther then to get taxed than they do now. The effort of most people always has been to escape taxation. Beside that, these two humble folk had nothing to tax. The man’92s turban that protected his head from the sun was not worth taxing. The woman’92s sandals which kept her feet from being cut by the limestone rock of which Bethlehem is mostly made up, were not worth taxing. No; the fact is that a proclamation had been made by the emperor that all the people between Great Britain and Parthia, and of those lands included, should go to some appointed place and give their names in, be registered, and announce their loyalty to the Roman emperor. They stood up before the officer of the government and answered the questions: ’93What is your name? Where were you born? When were you born? Where do you live now? Lift your hand and swear that you will support the Empire of C’e6sar Augustus.’94 During that patriotic and loyal visit the first cry of the Divine Boy was heard.

They had walked eighty miles over a rough road to give in their names and take the oath of allegiance. Would we walk eighty miles to announce our allegiance to our King, one Jesus? C’e6sar Augustus wanted to know by the record on which that man and that woman wrote their names, or had them written, just how many people in his Empire he could depend on in case of exigency. How many men would unsheath sword for the Roman eagle, and how many women could be depended on to take care of the wounded on battlefields? The trouble is that in the kingdom of Christ we do not know how many can be depended on. There are so many men and women who never give in their names. They serve the Lord on the sly. They do not announce their allegiance to the King who, in the battles to come, will want all his troops. In all our churches there are so many half-and-half disciples, so many one-third espousers. They rather think the Bible is true’97at any rate, parts of it’97and they hope that somehow Christianity will disenthral the nations. They stay away from church on communion days, and hope when they have lived as long as they can in this world, they can somehow sneak into heaven. Oh, give in your names! Be registered on the Church record down here, and in the Lamb’92s Book of Life up there. Let all the world know where you stand, if you have to go as far as Joseph and Mary walked, if you have to go eighty miles before you find just the right form of worship and just the right creed. Start in this modern December, as those villagers started in an ancient December, and amid the congratulations of Church militant and Church triumphant give in your names. It was while Joseph and Mary were on a visit of duty and obeying a reasonable command of Emperor Augustus that the star pointed to the place of nativity.

Another gleam of sunshine striking through the shadows above that Christic cradle was the fact of a special divine protection. Herod was determined upon the child’92s destruction. The monster put all his wits together in stratagem for the stopping of that young life just started. He dramatized piety. He suddenly got religious. He would leave his palace and take chariot and have steeds whipped up, so that he could kneel at that cradle. We have to smile at what the imperial villain said when he ordered: ’93Go and search diligently for the young child, and when ye have found him, bring me word, that I may go and worship him also.’94 Dore’92s picture of the ’93Massacre of the Innocents’94 at Herod’92s command’97a picture full of children hurled over walls and dashed against streets and writhing under assassin’92s foot’97gives us a little impression of the manner in which Herod would have treated the real child if he could once have got his hand on it. But Herod could not find that cradle. All the detectives he sent out failed in the search. Yet it had been pointed out by flashlight from the midnight heavens. All the neighborhood knew about it. The angelic chorus in the cloud had called musical attention to it. No sentinel guarded it with drawn sword, passing up and down by the pillow of that Bethlehem caravansary. Why, then, was it that the cradle was not despoiled of its treasure? Because it was divinely protected. There were wings hovering that mortal eye could not see. There were armed immortals whose brandished sword mortal eye could not follow. There were chariots of the Omnipotent, the rumble of whose wheels only supernaturals could hear. God had started through the cradle to save our world, and nothing could stop him.

You cannot reasonably account for that unhurt cradle, except on the theory of a special divine protection. And most cradles are likewise defended. Can you understand why so many children, with all the epidemics that assault them and all their climbing to dangerous heights and all their perilous experiments with explosives and their running against horses’92 hoofs and daring of trolleys and carts fast driven, yet, somehow, get through, especially boys of high spirit and that are going to amount to much? I account for their coming through all right, with only a few wounds and bruises, by the fact that they are divinely protected. All your charges of ’93Don’92t do this’94 and ’93Don’92t do that’94 and ’93Don’92t go there’94 seem to amount to nothing. They are the same reckless creatures about whom you are constantly anxious and wondering what is the matter now. Divinely protected! The most of your children would have been dead long ago but for that. They can go through more perils and fall from more heights and stumble into more holes and cough with more influenzas and endure more earaches and suffer with more runrounds and burn with more fevers and yet get through not permanently damaged. How many children go through all the accidents of childhood without an eye dimmed or a limb fractured or a finger broken? Every healthy boy is a miracle of divine protection. Be thankful, all parents, that it is so; and trust your darlings under what the Book of Ruth calls the ’93wings of the Almighty.’94 Nearly all cradles pass under six old-fashioned ailments. It always has been so. They may be called by different names, but we all had them and we got through; and yours, I hope, will get through. Young mothers, be not affrighted. Through the clouds of invalidism hovering over your cradles, catch a little of this sunshine of consolation.

Another gleam of light scattering some of the gloom of that Christic pillow in Bethlehem was the fact that it was the starting place of the most wonderful of all careers. Looking at Christ’92s life from mere worldly standpoints, it was amazing beyond all capacity of pen or tongue or canvas to express. Without taking a year’92s curriculum in any college or even a day at any school, yet saying things that the mightiest intellects of subsequent days have quoted and tried to expound. Great literary works have for the most part been the result of much elaboration. Edmund Burke rewrote the conclusion of his speech against Warren Hastings sixteen times. Lord Brougham rewrote his speech in behalf of Queen Caroline twenty times, but the Sermon on the Mount seemed extemporaneous. Christ was eloquent without ever having studied one of the laws of oratory. He was the greatest orator that ever lived. It was not an eloquence Demosthenic or Ciceronic or like that of Jean Baptiste Massillon or like that which William Wirt, himself a great orator, was overcome with in log-cabin meeting-house of Virginia, when the blind preacher cried out in his sermon, ’93Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ died like a God.’94

Christ’92s oratory was unlike anything that went before or came after. Even the criticism of the world said: ’93Never man spake like this man.’94 Dramatic? Why, he took up a child out of the audience and set him on a table and by the embarrassed look of the child taught humility. He sent the prosecutors of a poor, sinful woman, blushing and confounded out of the room by one sentence of sarcasm. Notice his power of emphasis and enunciation when he revealed himself after his resurrection by the peculiar way he pronounced the one word ’93Mary.’94 His power of look shown by the way Peter, the great apostle, wilted under it. The Book says: ’93The Lord turned and looked upon Peter.’94 It was an Omnipotent facial expression. He looked upon Peter. Power of distinct utterance, so that everyone could hear. ’93He opened his mouth, saying.’94 No mumbling and indistinct utterance. He opened his mouth. His voice, which had been developed by open-air speaking, was a resonant and sonorous voice, or he would not have taken the top of the rocks of the Mount of Beatitudes for a pulpit; for that pulpit is so high, as I declare from observation, that no speaker that I have ever known could have from that point made any audience hear one word of a sermon. His power of hyperbole: A camel trying to crowd its hump through the eye of a sewing-woman’92s needle and all that learned talk about a gate called the ’93needle’92s eye,’94 only belittling the hyperbole. Power of sarcasm: The hypocrites styled by him ’93the whole who need not a physician.’94 His power of peroration: The crashing of the timbers of the poorly-built house on the beach of the Mediterranean. Power to take advantage of circumstances: When an auditor asked him whether they ought to pay taxes to C’e6sar, Christ practically said: ’93If any gentleman in this audience has in his pocket a Roman penny, I wish he would just hand it up to me’94; and some one handed him a penny, such as you can now find in some of the museums, the obverse of it bearing the face of Tiberius, the Emperor, and the reverse the words, ’93Pontifex Maximus,’94 the other title of the emperor, and then came the overwhelming answer of Christ: ’93Render to C’e6sar the things that are C’e6sar’92s, and to God the things that are God’92s.’94 Magnetic and epigrammatic this inspired peasant! Useless attempts he declares as ’93pearls cast before swine.’94 Unimportant results he describes as the attempt to ’93gather figs of thistles.’94 Allegories! Why, the parables are all allegories and how he flung them out upon his audiences, whole armfuls of amethysts and emeralds and diamonds and rubies!

But we must not only look at him from a worldly standpoint. How he smote whirlwinds into silence and made the waves of the sea lie down and opened doors of light into the midnight of those who had been born blind and turned deaf ears into galleries of music and with one touch made the scabs of incurable leprosy fall off and renewed healthy circulation through severest paralysis and made the dead girl waken and ask for her mother and at his crucifixion pulled down the clouds until at twelve o’92clock at noon it was as dark as twelve o’92clock at night and starting an influence that will go on until the last desert will grow roses and the last weak lung make full inhalation and the last case of paresis take healthful brain and the last illness become rubicund of cheek and robust of chest and bounding of foot and the last pauper will get his palace and the last sinner taken unto the warm bosom of a pardoning God! Where did all these start? In that cradle within sound of bleating sheep and bellowing cattle and amid rough bantering of herdsmen and camel-drivers. What a low place to start for such great heights! O artists! turn your camera obscura on that village of Bethlehem. Take it all in’97the wintry skies lowering, the flocks shivering in the chill air, Mary, the pale mother, and Jesus the child. No wonder that Paul Veronese and Cuyp and Rubens and Tintoretto and Correggio and Perugino and Ghirlandajo and Raphael put their best pencils in that scene. Lord God! by thy gracious Spirit, fix that Madonna in all our souls! So these thoughts come in upon us at this gladdest part of the year!

Swing softly bells, on Christmas moon,

Wake not the King of Glory!

Swing soft and swift across the snow,

The old Judean story.

So I have shown you the shadows and the sunshine of that Christic cradle of Bethlehem. In these Christmas times I realize that there are many cradles under shadows. Oh, the story of empty cradles all up and down the earth, in cabins and in palaces! There are standing in garrets or in store-rooms cradles that will never rock again. ’93Rachel mourning for her children, and will not be comforted because they are not.’94 But through all the shadows break gleams of sunshine, as the clouds of the Christic cradle were cleft by glorious light. Escaped from the struggles through which we have all passed, and must yet pass, those little ones took heaven at one bound. Instead of an earthly career, it is a heavenly career, with capacities, with velocities, with opportunities beyond our comprehension. Instead of celebrating on earth the Saviour’92s birth, they stand in the Saviour’92s presence. Instead of the holiday celebrations of the old homestead, it is to them eternal jubilee, at a table where the angels of God are the cupbearers and amid festivities that resound with a laughter and a music and blaze with a brilliance and a glory ’93that eye hath not seen nor ear heard.’94 No use in wishing them a Merry Christmas, for the merriments of heaven ring out upon them from temples that are always open, amid pleasures that never die. Oh, it is not a dull heaven, but a lively heaven, for there are so many children there. They throng the streets. They look out of the ’93House of Many Mansions.’94 They stand on the beach to see the fleets cast anchor within the vale. They crowd the gates with greetings when the old folks come in. They clap their hands in an eternal gladness. They dance in an eternal glee. See you not the sunshine that pours into the shadows of that cradle until they are all gone?

But shadows have their uses. There must be a background to every good picture. Turner always put at least a fleck of cloud on his canvas, and the clouds of earth will be the background to bring out more mightily the brightness of heaven. And will it not be glorious if, after all this scene of earthly vicissitude, we meet again in our Father’92s house and talk over the past in an everlasting holiday. But meanwhile, look out for the cradles. How much they decide for this world and the next! When Wellington was born at Mornington, England, that decided Waterloo and saved Europe. When Handel was born in Halle, Saxony, that decided the oratorios of ’93Judas Maccab’e6us’94 and ’93Esther’94 and ’93Israel in Egypt’94 and ’93Jephthah’94 and ’93Messiah’94 When Eli Whitney was born at Westboro, that decided the wealth of all the cotton-fields of the South. When Gutenberg was born at Metz, Germany, that decided the libraries of all Christendom. When Clarkson was born in Cambridgeshire, England, that decided the doom of human bondage. When Morse was born at Breed’92s Hill, Massachusetts, that decided that the lightnings of heaven should become galloping couriers or stretch a throbbing iron nerve clear under the sea. When Washington was born at Westmoreland, Virginia, that decided American independence. When Christ was born at Bethlehem, that decided the redemption of the world. Oh, look out for the cradles! May a Bethlehem star of hope point down to each one of them and every hovering cloud be filled with chanting angels of mercy.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage