414. Apologies
Apologies
Luk_14:18 : ’93And they all with one consent began to make excuse.’94
After the invitations to a levee are sent out the regrets come in. One man apologizes for non-attendance on one ground, another on another ground. The most of the regrets are founded on prior engagements. So in my text a great banquet was spread, the invitations were circulated, and now the regrets come in. The one gives an agricultural reason, the other a stock-dealer’92s reason, the other a domestic reason. All poor reasons! The agricultural reason being that the man had bought a farm and wanted to see it. Could he not see it the next day? The stock-dealer’92s reason being that he had bought five yoke of oxen, and he wanted to go and prove them. He had no business to buy them until he knew what they were. Besides that, a man who can own five yoke of oxen can command his own time. Besides that, he might have yoked two of them together and driven them on the way to the banquet, for locomotion was not as rapid then as now. The man who gave the domestic reason said he had got married. He ought to have taken his wife with him. The fact was, they did not want to go. ’93And they all with one consent began to make excuse.’94
So now God spreads a great banquet; it is the Gospel feast, and the table reaches across the hemispheres; and the invitations go out and multitudes come and sit down and drink out of the chalices of God’92s love, while other multitudes decline coming’97the one giving this apology and the other giving that apology; ’93and they all with one consent begin to make excuse.’94 I propose this morning, so far as God may help me, to examine the apologies which men make for not entering the Christian life.
Apology the first: I am not sure there is anything valuable in the Christian religion. It is pleaded that there are so many impositions in this day, so many things that seem to be real are sham. A gilded outside may have a hollow inside; there is so much quackery in physics, in ethics, in politics, that men come to the habit of incredulity, and after a while they allow that incredulity to collide with our holy religion. But, my friends, I think religion has made a pretty good record in the world. How many wounds it has salved, how many pillars of fire it has lifted in the midnight wilderness, how many simoon-struck deserts it hath turned into the gardens of the Lord; how it hath stilled the chopped sea; what rosy light it hath sent streaming through the rift of the storm-cloud, what pools of cool water it hath gathered for thirsty Hagar and Ishmael, what manna whiter than coriander seed it hath dropped all around the camp of hardly-bestead pilgrims, what promises it hath sent out like holy watchers to keep the lamps burning around deathbeds, through the darkness that lowers into the sepulchre, what flashes of resurrection morn!
Besides that, this religion has made so many heroes. It brought Summerfield, the Methodist, across the Atlantic Ocean with his silver trumpet to blow the acceptable year of the Lord, until it seemed as if all our American cities would take the kingdom of heaven by violence. It sent Jehudi Ashman into Africa alone, in a continent of naked barbarians, to lift the standard of civilization and Christianity. It made John Milton among poets, Raphael among painters, Christopher Wren among architects, Thorwaldsen among sculptors, Handel among musicians, Dupont among military commanders; and to give new wings to the imagination and better balance to the judgment and more determination to the will and greater usefulness to the life and grander nobility to the soul, there is nothing in all the earth like our Christian religion. Nothing in religion! Why, then, all those Christians were deceived, when in their dying moment they thought they saw the castles of the blessed; and your child, that with unutterable agony you put away into the grave, you will never see him again nor hear his sweet voice nor feel the throb of his young heart? There is nothing in religion! Sickness will come upon you. Roll and turn on your pillow. No relief. The medicine may be bitter, the night may be dark, the pain may be sharp. No relief. Christ never comes to the sickroom. Let the pain stab. Let the fever burn. Curse it and die. There is nothing in religion! After a while death will come. You will hear the pawing of the pale horse on the threshold. The spirit will be breaking away from the body, and it will take flight’97whither? whither? There is no God, no ministering angels to conduct, no Christ, no heaven, no home. Nothing in religion! Oh, you are not willing to adopt such a dismal theory! And yet the world is full of skeptics. And let me say there is no class of people for whom I have a warmer sympathy than for skeptics. We do not know how to treat them. We deride them; we caricature them. We, instead of taking them by the soft hand of Christian love, clutch them with the iron pinchers of ecclesiasticism. Oh, if you knew how those men had fallen away from Christianity and become skeptics, you would not be so rough on them. Some were brought up in homes where religion was overdone. The most wretched day in the week was Sunday. Religion was driven into them with a trip-hammer. They had a surfeit of prayer-meetings. They were stuffed and choked with catechisms. They were told by their parents that they were the worst children that ever lived, because they liked to ride down-hill better than to read Pilgrim’92s Progress. They never heard their parents talk of religion but with the corners of the mouth drawn down and the eyes rolled up. Others went into skepticism through maltreatment on the part of some who professed religion. There is a man who says: ’93My partner in business was conspicuous in prayer-meeting and he was officious in all religious circles; but he cheated me out of three thousand dollars and I don’92t want any of that religion.’94 Then there are others who got into skepticism by a natural persistence in asking questions, why? or how? How can God be one Being in three persons? They cannot understand it. Neither can I. How can God be a complete sovereign, and yet man a free agent? They cannot understand it. Neither can I. They cannot understand why a holy God lets sin come into the world. Neither can I. They say: ’93Here is a great mystery; here is a disciple of fashion, frivolous and Godless all her days’97she lives on to be an octogenarian. Here is a Christian mother training her children for God and for heaven, self-sacrificing, Christlike, indispensable, seemingly, to that household’97she gets a cancer and dies.’94 The skeptic says: ’93I can’92t explain that.’94 Neither can I.
I can see how men reason themselves into skepticism. With burning feet I have trodden that blistering way. I know what it is to have a hundred nights poured into one hour. There are men in the arid desert of doubt who would give their thousands of dollars if they could get back to the old religion of their fathers. Such men are not to be caricatured, but helped, and not through their heads, but through their hearts. When these men really do come into the kingdom of God, they will be worth far more to the cause of Christ than those who never examined the evidences of Christianity. Thomas Chalmers once a skeptic, Robert Hall once a skeptic, Christmas Evans once a skeptic; but when they did lay hold of the Gospel chariot, how they made it speed ahead! If, therefore, I address men and women who have drifted away into skepticism, I throw out no scoff; I rather implead you by the memory of those good old times when you knelt at your mother’92s knee and said your evening prayer, and those other days of sickness when she watched all night and gave you the medicines at just the right time and turned the pillow when it was hot, and, with hand long ago turned to dust, soothed your pains, and with that voice you will never hear again unless you join her in the better country, told you never mind’97you would be better by and by; and by that dying couch where she talked so slowly, catching her breath between the words’97by all those memories I ask you to come and take the same religion. It was good enough for her’97it is good enough for you. Ay, I make a better plea: by the wounds and the death-throe of the Son of God, who approaches you this morning with torn brow and lacerated hands and whipped back, crying: ’93Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’94
Other persons apologize for not entering the Christian life because of the incorrigibility of their temperament. Now, we admit it is harder for some people to become Christians than for others; but the grace of God never came to a mountain that it could not climb or to an abyss that it could not fathom or to a bondage that it could not break. The wildest horse that ever trod Arabian sands has been broken to bit and trace. The maddest torrent tumbling from mountain shelving has been harnessed to the mill-wheel and the factory-band, setting a thousand shuttles all a-buzz and a-clatter; and the wildest, the haughtiest, the most ungovernable man ever created, by the grace of God may be subdued and sent out on ministry of kindness, as God sends an August thunderstorm to water the wild flowers down in the grass. Peter, with nature tempestuous as the sea that he once tried to walk, at one look from Christ went out and wept bitterly. Rich harvests of grace may grow on the summit of the jagged steep, and flocks of Christian graces may find pasturage in fields of bramble and rock. Though your disposition may be all a-bristle with fretfulness, though you have a temper a-gleam with quick lightnings, though your avarice be like that of the horse-leech, crying, ’93Give!’94 though damnable impurities have wrapped you in all-consuming fire’97God can drive that devil out of your soul, and over the chaos and the darkness he can say: ’93Let there be light.’94 Converting grace has lifted the drunkard from the ditch and snatched the knife from the hand of the assassin and the false keys from the burglar and in the pestiferous lanes of the city met the daughter of sin under the dim lamplight and scattered her sorrow and her guilt with the words: ’93Thy sins are forgiven’97go, and sin no more.’94 For scarlet sin a scarlet atonement.
Other persons apologize for not entering the Christian life because of the inconsistencies of those who profess religion. There are thousands of poor farmers. They do not know the nature of soils nor the proper rotation of crops. Their corn is shorter in the stalk and smaller in the ear. They have ten less bushels to the acre than their neighbors. But who declines being a farmer because there are so many poor farmers? There are thousands of incompetent merchants. They buy at the wrong time. They get cheated in the sale of their goods. Every bale of goods is to them a bale of disaster. They fail after a while and go out of business. But who declines to be a merchant because there are so many incompetent merchants? There are thousands of poor lawyers. They cannot draw a declaration that will stand the test. They cannot recover just damages. They cannot help a defendant escape from the injustice of his persecutors. They are the worst impediments against any case in which they are retained. But who declines to be a lawyer because there are so many incompetent lawyers? Yet there are tens of thousands of people who decline being religious because there are so many unworthy Christians. Now I say it is illogical. Poor lawyers are nothing against jurisprudence; poor physicians are nothing against medicine; poor farmers are nothing against agriculture; and mean, contemptible professors of religion are nothing against our glorious Christianity.
Sometimes you have been riding along on a summer night by a swamp, and you have seen lights that kindled over decayed vegetation’97lights which are called Jack-o’92-lantern or Will-o’92-the-wisp. These lights are merely poisonous miasmata. My friends, on your way to heaven you will want a better light than the Will-o’92-the-wisps which dance on the rotten character of moribund Christians. Exudations from poisonous trees in our neighbor’92s garden will make a very poor balm for our wounds.
Sickness will come and we will be pushed out toward the Red Sea which divides this world from the next, and not the inconsistency of Christians but the rod of faith will wave back the waters as a commander wheels his host. The judgment will come, with its thunder-shod solemnities, attended by bursting mountains and the deep laugh of earthquakes, and suns will fly before the feet of God like sparks from the anvil and ten thousand burning worlds shall blaze like banners in the track of God omnipotent. Oh, then we will not stop and say: ’93There was a mean Christian; there was a cowardly Christian; there was a lying Christian; there was an impure Christian.’94 In that day as now: ’93If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; but if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.’94 Why, my brother, the inconsistency of Christians, so far from being an argument to keep you away from God, ought to be an argument to drive you to him. The best place for a skilful doctor is in a neighborhood where they are all poor doctors; the best place for an enterprising merchant to open his store is in a place where the bargain-makers do not understand their business; and the best place for you who want to become the illustrious and complete Christian’97the best place for you is to come right down among us who are so incompetent and so inconsistent sometimes. Show us how. Give us an example.
Other persons apologize for not becoming Christians because they lack time. As though religion muddled the brain of the accountant or tripped the pen of the author or thickened the tongue of the orator or weakened the arm of the mechanic or scattered the briefs of the lawyer or interrupted the sales of the merchant. They bolt their store doors against it and fight it back with trowels and with yardsticks, and cry: ’93Away with your religion from our store, our office, our factory.’94 They do not understand that religion in this workday world will help you to do anything you ought to do. It can lay a keel; it can sail a ship; it can buy a cargo; it can work a pulley; it can pave a street; it can fit a wristband; it can write a constitution; it can marshal a host. It is as appropriate to the astronomer as his telescope, to the chemist as his laboratory, to the mason as his plumb-line, to the carpenter as his plane, to the child as his marbles, to grandfather as his staff.
No time to be religious here! You have no time not to be religious. You might as well have no clerks in your store, no books in your library, no compass on your ship, no rifle in the battle, no hat for your head, no coat for your back, no shoes for your feet. Better travel on toward eternity bareheaded and barefooted and houseless and homeless and friendless, than to go through life without religion. Did religion make Raleigh any less of a statesman or Havelock any less of a soldier or Grinnell any less of a merchant or West any less of a painter? Why, my friends, religion is the best security in every bargain, it is the sweetest note in every song, it is the brightest gem in every coronet. No time to be religious! Why, you will have to take time to be sick, to be troubled, to die. Our world is only the wharf from which we are to embark for heaven. No time to secure the friendship of Christ. No time to buy a lamp and trim it for that walk through the darkness which otherwise will be illumined only by the whiteness of the tombstones. No time to educate the eye for heavenly splendors or the hand for choral harps or the ear for everlasting songs or the soul for honor, glory, and immortality. One would think we had time for nothing else.
Other persons apologize for not entering the Christian life because it is time enough yet. That is very like those persons who send their regrets and say, ’93I will come in perhaps at eleven or twelve o’92clock; I will not be there at the opening of the banquet, but I will be there at the close.’94 Not yet! Not yet! Now, I do not give any doleful view of this life; there is nothing in my nature, nothing in the grace of God, that tends toward a doleful view of human life. I have not much sympathy with Addison’92s description of the ’93Vision of Mirza,’94 where he represents human life as being a bridge of a hundred arches and both ends of the bridge covered with clouds and the race coming on the most of them falling down through the first span and all of them falling down through the last span. It is a very dismal picture. I have not much sympathy with the Spanish proverb which says, ’93The sky is good and the earth is good’97that which is bad is between the earth and the sky.’94 But while we as Christian men are bound to take a cheerful view of life, we must also confess that life is a great uncertainty, and that man who says, ’93I can’92t become a Christian because there is time enough yet,’94 is running a risk infinite. You do not perhaps realize the fact that this descending grade of sin gets steeper and steeper and that you are gathering up a rush and velocity which after a while may not answer to the brakes.
Be not among those who give their whole life to the world and then give their corpse to God. It does not seem fair that while our pulses are in full play of health, that we serve ourselves and serve the world, and then make God at last the present of a coffin. It does not seem right that we run our ship from coast to coast carrying cargoes for ourselves, and then when the ship is crushed in the rocks, give to God the shivered timbers. It is a great thing for a man on his dying pillow to repent’97better that than never at all; but how much better, how much more generous, it would have been if he had repented fifty years before! My friends, you will never get over these procrastinations.
Here is a delusion. People think, ’93I can go on in sin and worldliness, but after a while I will repent and then it will be as though I had come at the very start.’94 What a mistake! No one ever gets fully over procrastination. If you give your soul to God some other time than this, you will enter heaven with only half the capacity for enjoyment and knowledge you might have had. There will be heights of blessedness you might have attained, you will never reach; thrones of glory on which you might have been seated, but which you will never climb. We will never get over procrastination, neither in time nor in eternity.
We have started on a march from which there is no retreat. The shadows of eternity gather on our pathway. How insignificant is time compared with the vast eternity! As I was thinking of this one day while coming down over the Alleghany Mountains at noon, by that wonderful pass which you all have heard described as the Horseshoe’97a depression in the side of the mountain where the train almost turns back again upon itself, and you see how appropriate is the description of the ’93Horseshoe’94’97and thinking on this very theme and preparing this very sermon, it seemed to me as if the great courser of eternity speeding along had just struck the mountain with one hoof and gone on into illimitable space. So short is time, so insignificant is earth, compared with the vast eternity! This morning, voices roll down the sky and all the worlds of light are ready to rejoice at your disenthralment. Rush not into the presence of the king ragged with sin, when you may have this robe of righteousness. Dash not your foot to pieces against the throne of a crucified Christ. Throw not your crown of life off the battlements. All the scribes of God are this moment ready with volumes of living light to record the news of your soul emancipated.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage