397. The Broken Net; or, Objection to Revivals

The Broken Net; or, Objection to Revivals

Luk_5:6 : ’93They inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake.’94

Simon and his comrades had experienced the night before what fishermen call ’93poor luck.’94 Christ steps on board the fishing-smack and tells the sailors to pull away from the beach, and directs them again to sink the net. Sure enough, very soon the net is full of fishes, and the sailors begin to haul in. So large a school of fishes was taken, that the hardy men begin to look red in the face as they pull, and hardly have they begun to rejoice at their success when snap goes a thread of the net, and snap goes another thread, so there is danger not only of losing the fish, but of losing the net. Without much care as to how much the boat tilts, or how much water is splashed on deck, the fishermen rush about, gathering up the broken meshes of the net. Out yonder there is a ship dancing on the wave, and they hail it: ’93Ship ahoy! bear down this way!’94 The ship comes, and both boats, both fishing-smacks, are filled with the floundering treasures. ’93Ah!’94 says some one, ’93how much better it would have been if they had stayed on shore, and fished with a hook and line, and taken one at a time, instead of having this great excitement, and the boat almost upset, and the net broken, and having to call for help, and getting sopping wet with the sea!’94

The Church is the boat, the Gospel is the net, society is the sea, and a great revival is a whole school brought in at one sweep of the net. I have admiration for that man who goes out with a hook and line to fish. I admire the way he unwinds the reel, and adjusts the bait, and drops the hook in a quiet place on a still afternoon, and here catches one and there one; but I like also a big boat and a large crew and a net a mile long and swift oars and stout sails and a stiff breeze and a great multitude of souls brought’97so great a multitude that you have to get help to draw it ashore, straining the net to the utmost until it breaks here and there, letting a few escape, but bringing the great multitude into eternal safety. In other words, I believe in revivals. The great work of saving men began with three thousand people joining the church in one day, and it will close with forty or a hundred million people saved in twenty-four hours when nations shall be born in a day. But there are objections to revivals. People are opposed to them because the net might get broken, and if by the pressure of souls it does not get broken, then they take their own penknives and slit the net. ’93They inclosed a great multitude of fishes, and the net brake.’94

It is sometimes charged against revivals of religion that those who come into the church at such times do not hold out; as long as there is a gale of blessing, they have their sails up; but, as soon as strong winds stop blowing, then they drop into a dead calm. But what are the facts in the case? In all our churches, the vast majority of the useful people are those who are brought in under great awakenings, and they hold out. Who are the prominent men in the United States in churches, in prayer-meetings, in Sabbath-schools? For the most part they are the product of great awakenings. I have noticed that those who are brought into the Kingdom of God through revivals have more persistence and more determination in the Christian life than those who come in under a low state of religion. People born in an icehouse may live, but they will never get over the cold they caught in the icehouse! A cannon-ball depends upon the impulse with which it starts for how far it shall go and how swiftly; and the greater the revival force with which a soul is started, the more far-reaching and far-resounding will be the execution.

But it is sometimes objected to revivals that there is so much excitement that people mistake hysteria for religion. We must admit that in every revival of religion there is either a suppressed or a demonstrated excitement. Indeed if a man can go out of a state of condemnation into a state of acceptance with God, or see others go, without any agitation of soul, he is in an unhealthy, morbid state, and is as repulsive and absurd as a man who should boast he saw a child snatched out from under a horse’92s hoofs, and felt no agitation, or saw a man rescued from the fourth story of a house on fire, and felt no acceleration of the pulses. Salvation from sin and death and hell into life and peace and heaven forever, is such a tremendous thing, that if a man tells me he can look on it without any agitation, I doubt his Christianity. The fact is, that sometimes excitement is the most important possible thing. In case of resuscitation from drowning or freezing, the one idea is to excite animation. Before conversion we are dead. It is the business of the church to revive, arouse, awaken, resuscitate, startle into life. Excitement is bad or good according to what it makes us do. If it make us do that which is bad, it is bad excitement; but if it make us agitated about our eternal welfare, if it make us pray, if it make us attend upon Christian service, if it make us cry unto God for mercy, then it is a good excitement.

It is sometimes said that during revivals of religion great multitudes of children and young people are brought into the church, and they do not know what they are about. It has been my observation that the earlier people come into the Kingdom of God the more useful they are. Robert Hall, the prince of Baptist preachers, was converted at twelve years of age. It is supposed he knew what he was about. Matthew Henry, the commentator, who did more than any man of his century for increasing the interest in the study of the Scriptures, was converted at eleven years of age; Isabella Graham, immortal in the Christian Church, was converted at ten years of age; Dr Watts, whose hymns will be sung all down the ages, was converted at nine years of age; Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the mightiest intellect that the American pulpit ever produced, was converted at seven years of age; and that father and mother take an awful responsibility when they tell their child at seven years of age, ’93You are too young to be a Christian,’94 or, ’93You are too young to connect yourself with the church.’94 That is a mistake as long as eternity.

If during a revival two persons present themselves as candidates for the church, and the one is ten years of age and the other is forty years of age, I will have more confidence in the profession of religion of the one ten years of age than the one forty years of age. Why? The one who professes at forty years of age has forty years of impulse in the wrong direction to correct, the child has only ten years in the wrong direction to correct. Four times ten are forty. Four times the religious prospect for the lad that comes into the Kingdom of God and into the church at ten years of age than the man at forty.

I am very apt to look upon revivals as connected with certain men who fostered them. People who in this day do not like revivals, nevertheless have not words to express their admiration for the revivalists of the past, for they were revivalists’97Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitefield, Fletcher, Griffin, Davies, Osborne, Knapp, Nettleton, and many others whose names come to my mind. The strength of their intellect and the holiness of their lives make me think they would not have had anything to do with that which was ephemeral. Oh! it is easy to talk against revivals. A man said to Mr. Dawson: ’93I like your sermons very much, but the after-meetings I despise. When the prayer-meeting begins I always go up into the gallery and look down, and I am disgusted.’94 ’93Well,’94 said Mr. Dawson, ’93the reason is you go on the top of your neighbor’92s house and look down his chimney to examine his fire, and of course you get only smoke in your eyes. Why don’92t you come in the door and sit down and warm?’94

Oh! I am afraid to say anything against revivals of religion, or against anything that looks like them, because I think it may be a sin against the Holy Ghost, and you know the Bible says that a sin against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven, neither in this world nor the world to come. Now, if you are a painter, and I speak against your pictures, do I not speak against you? If you are an architect, and I speak against a building you put up, do I not speak against you. If a revival be the work of the Holy Ghost, and I speak against that revival, do I not speak against the Holy Ghost. And whoso speaketh against the Holy Ghost, says the Bible, he shall never be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come. I think sometimes people have made a fatal mistake in this direction.

Many of you know the history of Aaron Burr. He was one of the most brilliant men of his day. I suppose this country never produced a stronger intellect. He was capable of doing anything good and great for his country, or for the Church of God, had he been rightly disposed; but his name is associated with treason against the United States Government, which he tried to overthrow, and with libertinism and public immorality. Do you know where Aaron Burr started on the downward road? It was when he was in college, and he became anxious about his soul, and was about to put himself under the influence of a revival, and a minister of religion said: ’93Don’92t go there, Aaron, don’92t go there; that’92s a place of wildfire and great excitement; no religion about that; don’92t go there.’94 He tarried away. His serious impressions departed. He started on the downward road. And who is responsible for his ruin for this world, and his everlasting ruin in the world to come? Was it the minister who warned him against that revival?

When I am speaking of excitement in revivals, of course I do not mean temporary derangement of the nerves; I do not mean the absurd things of which we have read as happening sometimes in the Church of Christ; but I mean an intelligent, intense, all-absorbing agitation of body, mind, and soul in the work of spiritual escape and spiritual rescue.

Now I come to the real, genuine cause of objection to revivals. That is the coldness of the objector. It is the secret and hidden but unmistakable cause in every case’97a low state of religion in the heart. Wide-awake, consecrated, useful Christians are never afraid of revivals. It is the spiritual dead who are afraid of having their sepulchre molested. The chief agents of the devil during a great awakening are always unconverted professors of religion. As soon as Christ’92s work begins, they begin to gossip against it, and take a pail of water and try to put out this spark of religious influence, and they try to put out another spark. Do they succeed? As well when Chicago was on fire might some one have gone out with a garden watering-pot trying to extinguish it. The difficulty is that when a revival begins in a church it begins at so many points, that while you have doused one anxious soul with a pail of cold water, there are five hundred other anxious souls on fire. Oh! how much better it would be to lay hold of the chariot of Christ’92s Gospel and help pull it on rather than to fling ourselves in front of the wheels, trying to block its progress. We will not stop the chariot, but we ourselves will be ground to powder.

Did you ever hear that there was a convention once held among the icebergs in the Arctic? It seems that the summer was coming on and the sun was getting hotter and hotter, and there was danger that the whole icefield would break up and flow away; so the tallest and the coldest and the broadest of all the icebergs, the very king of the Arctic, stood at the head of the convention, and with a gavel of ice smote on a table of ice, calling the convention to order. But the sun kept growing in intensity of heat, and the south wind blew stronger and stronger, and soon all the icefield began to grind up, iceberg against iceberg, and to flow away. The first resolution passed by the convention was: ’93Resolved, That we abolish the sun.’94 But the sun would not be abolished. The heat of the sun grew greater and greater until after a while the very king of the icebergs began to perspire under the glow, and the smaller icebergs fell over, and the cry was: ’93Too much excitement! order! order!’94 Then the whole body, the whole field of ice, began to float out, and a thousand voices began to ask: ’93Where are we going to now? Where are we floating to? We will all break to pieces.’94 By this time the icebergs had reached the Gulf Stream, and they were melted into the bosom of the Atlantic Ocean. The warm sun is the Eternal Spirit. The icebergs are frigid Christians. The warm Gulf Stream is a great revival. The ocean into which everything melted is the great, wide heart of the pardoning and sympathizing God.

But I think, after all, the greatest obstacle to revivals throughout Christendom today is an unconverted ministry. We must believe that the vast majority of those who officiate at sacred altars are regenerated; but I suppose there may float into the ministry of all the denominations of Christians men whose hearts have never been changed by the grace of God. Of course they are all antagonistic to revivals. How did they get into the ministry? Perhaps some of them chose it as a respectable profession. Perhaps some chose it as a means of livelihood. Perhaps some of them were sincere, but were mistaken. As Thomas Chalmers said he had been many years preaching the Gospel before his heart had been changed, and as many ministers of the Gospel declare they were preaching and had been ordained to sacred orders years and years before their hearts were regenerated. Gracious God, what a solemn thought for those of us who minister at the altar! With the present ministry in the present temperature of piety this land will never be enveloped with revivals. While the pews on one side the altar cry for mercy, the pulpits on the other side the altar must cry for mercy. Ministers quarreling. Ministers trying to pull each other down. Ministers struggling for ecclesiastical place. Ministers lethargic with whole congregations dying on their hands. What a spectacle!

Aroused pulpits will make aroused pews. Pulpits aflame will make pews aflame. Everybody believes in a revival in trade, everybody likes a revival in literature, everybody likes a revival in art; yet a great multitude cannot understand a revival in matters of religion. Depend upon it, where you find a man antagonistic to revivals, whether he be in pulpit or pew, he needs to be regenerated by the grace of God. I could prove to a demonstration that without revivals this world will never be converted, and that in a hundred or two hundred years without revivals Christianity will be practically extinct. It is a matter of astounding arithmetic. In each of our modern generations there are at least thirty-two million children. Now add thirty-two million to the world’92s population, and then have only one or two hundred thousand converted every year, and how long before the world will be saved? Never’97absolutely never! Your common sense will tell you that as long as more are born into the world than are born unto God, the world’92s redemption will never come. Yet it is to come, and how is it to come? Through revivals. In time of war recruiting stations are established. Flute and drum are sounded, and the more people who come and enlist the better you like it. It is war now. Heaven on one side, hell on the other side. The Church of God is merely a recruiting station, and the greater the multitudes who press in, the better we ought to be pleased. During our Civil War the President of the United States made proclamation for seventy-five thousand troops. Some of you remember the big stir. But the King of the universe today asks for eight hundred million more troops than are enlisted, and we are so foolish as to want it done softly, imperceptibly, gently, no excitement, one by one!

You are a dry-goods merchant on a large scale, and I am a merchant on a small scale, and I come to you and want to buy a thousand yards of cloth. Do you say: ’93Thank you; I’92ll sell you a thousand yards of cloth, but I’92ll sell you twenty yards today and twenty to-morrow and twenty the next day, and if it takes me six months I’92ll sell you the whole thousand yards; you will want as long as that to examine the goods, and I’92ll want as long as that to examine the credit; and besides that, a thousand yards of cloth are too much to sell all at once’94? No, you do not say that. You take me into the counting-room, and in ten minutes the whole transaction is consummated. The fact is, we cannot afford to be fools in anything but religion! That very merchant who on Saturday afternoon sold me the thousand yards of cloth at one stroke, the next Sabbath in church will stroke his beard and wonder whether it would not be better for a thousand souls to come straggling along for ten years, instead of bolting in at one service.

We talk a good deal about the good times that are coming, and about the world’92s redemption. How long before they will come? There is a man who says five hundred years. Here is a man who says two hundred years. Here is some one more confident who says in fifty years. What, fifty years? Do you propose to let two generations pass off the stage before the world is converted? Suppose by some extra prolongation of human life, at the end of the next fifty years, you should walk from Fulton Ferry to South Bushwick, and from Hunter’92s Point to Gowanus, and from the Battery, New York, to Central Park’97in all those walks you would not find one person that you recognize. Why? All dead, or so changed you would not know them. In other words, if you postpone the redemption of this world for fifty years, you admit that the majority of the two whole generations shall go off the stage unblessed and unsaved. I tell you the Church of Jesus Christ cannot consent to it. We must pray and toil and have the revival spirit, and we must struggle to have the whole world saved before the men and women now in middle life pass away.

’93Oh!’94 you say, ’93It is too vast an enterprise to be conducted in so short a time.’94 Do you know how long it would take to save the whole world if each man would bring another? It would take ten years. By a calculation in compound interest, each man bringing another, and that one another, and that one another, in ten years the whole earth would be saved. Before this organ is worn out, it ought to sound the grand march of the whole earth saved. If the world is not saved in the next ten years, it will be the fault of the Church of Christ.

Is it too much to expect each one to bring one? Some of us must bring more than one, for some will not do their duty. I want to bring ten thousand souls. I should be ashamed to meet my God in judgment if with all my opportunities of commending Christ to the people I could not bring ten thousand souls. But it will all depend upon the revival spirit. The hook and line fishing will not do it. Catching one here and another there. It will be by a great net like that which was swung through the lake of Galilee until the net brake.

It seems to me as if God is preparing the world for some quick and universal movement. A celebrated electrician gave me a telegraph chart of the world. On that chart the wires crossing the continents and the cables under the sea looked like veins red with blood. On that chart I see that the headquarters of the lightnings are in Great Britain and the United States. In London and New York the lightnings are stabled, waiting to be harnessed for some quick despatch. That shows you that the telegraph is in the possession of Christianity. It is a significant fact that the man who invented the telegraph was an old-fashioned Christian’97Professor Morse; and that the man who put the telegraph under the sea was an old-fashioned Christian’97Cyrus W. Field; and that the president of the most famous of the telegraph companies of this country was an old-fashioned Christian’97William Orton, going from the communion table on earth straight to his home in heaven. What does all that mean? I do not suppose that the telegraph was invented merely to let us know whether flour is up or down, or which filly won the race at the Derby, or which marksman beat at Dollymount. I suppose the telegraph was invented and built to call the world to God.

In some of the attributes of the Lord we seem to share on a small scale. For instance, in his love and in his kindness. But until of late, foreknowledge, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, seem to have been exclusively God’92s possession. God desiring to make the race like himself, gives us a species of foreknowledge in the weather probabilities, gives us a species of omniscience in telegraphy, gives us a species of omnipresence in the telephone, gives us a species of omnipotence in the steam power. Discoveries and inventions all around about us, people are asking what next? I will tell you what next. Next, a stupendous religious movement. Next, the end of war. Next, the crash of despotisms. Next, the world’92s expurgation. Next, the Christlike dominion. Next, the judgment. What becomes of the world after that I care not. It will have suffered and achieved enough for one world. Lay it up in the dry-docks of eternity, like an old man-of-war gone out of service. Or, fit it up like a Constellation to carry bread of relief to some other suffering planet. Or, let it be demolished. Farewell, dear old world, that began with Paradise and ended with Judgment conflagration.

Last summer, I stood on the Isle of Wight, and I had pointed out to me the place where the Eurydice sank with two or three hundred young men who were in training for the British navy. You remember when that training-ship went down there was a thrill of horror all over the world. Since then there is another training-ship missing’97the Atalanta’97gone down, we fear, with all on board. By order of her majesty’92s government, vessels are now cruising up and down the Atlantic trying to find that lost training-ship, in which there were so many young men preparing for the British navy. Alas for the lost Atalanta! O my friends, this world is only a training-ship. On it we are training for heaven. The old ship sails up and down the ocean of immensity, now through the dark wave of the midnight, now through the golden-crested wave of the morn, but sails on and sails on. After a while her work will be done, and the inhabitants of heaven will look out and find a world missing. The cry will be: ’93Where is that earth where Christ died and the human race were emancipated? Send out fleets of angels to find the missing craft.’94 Let them sail up and down the ocean of eternity, and they will catch not one glimpse of her mountain masts, or her top-gallants of floating cloud. Gone down! The training-ship of a world perished in the last tornado. Oh! let it not be that she goes down with all on board, but rather may it be said of her passengers as it was said of the drenched passengers of the Alexandrian corn-ship that crashed into the breakers of Melita: ’93They all escaped safe to land.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage