458. Self-Slaughter
Self-Slaughter
Act_16:28 : ’93Do thyself no harm.’94
Here is a would-be suicide arrested in his deadly attempt. He was a sheriff, and, according to the Roman law, a bailiff himself must suffer the punishment due an escaped prisoner; and if the prisoner breaking jail was sentenced to be endungeoned for three or four years, then the sheriff must be endungeoned for three or four years, and if the prisoner breaking jail was to have suffered capital punishment, then the sheriff must suffer capital punishment. The sheriff had received especial charge to keep a sharp lookout for Paul and Silas. The government had not much confidence in bolts and bars to keep safe these two clergymen, about whom there seemed to be something strange and supernatural. Sure enough, by miraculous power, they are free, and the sheriff, waking out of a sound sleep, and supposing these ministers have run away, and knowing that they were to die for preaching Christ, and realizing that he must therefore die, rather than go under the executioner’92s ax on the morrow and suffer public disgrace, resolves to precipitate his own decease. But before the sharp, keen, glittering dagger of the sheriff could strike his heart, one of the unloosened prisoners arrests the blade by the command, ’93Do thyself no harm.’94
In olden times, and where Christianity had not interfered with it, suicide was considered honorable and a sign of courage. Demosthenes poisoned himself when told that Alexander’92s ambassador had demanded the surrender of the Athenian orator. Isocrates killed himself rather than surrender to Philip of Macedon. Cato, rather than submit to Julius C’e6sar, took his own life, and three times after his wounds had been dressed, tore them open and perished. Mithridates killed himself rather than submit to Pompey, the conqueror. Hannibal destroyed his life by poison from his ring, considering life unbearable. Lycurgus a suicide, Brutus a suicide. After the disaster of Moscow Napoleon always carried with him a preparation of poison, and one night his servant heard the ex-emperor arise, put something in a glass and drink it, and soon after the groans aroused all the attendants, and it was only through utmost medical skill that he was resuscitated. Times have changed, and yet the American conscience needs to be toned up on the subject of suicide. Have you seen a paper in the last month that did not announce the passage out of life by one’92s own behest? Defaulters, alarmed at the idea of exposure, quit life precipitately. Men losing large fortunes go out of the world because they cannot endure earthly existence. Frustrated affection, domestic infelicity, dyspeptic impatience, anger, remorse, envy, jealousy, destitution, misanthropy are considered sufficient causes for absconding from this life by Paris green, by laudanum, by belladonna, by Othello’92s dagger, by halter, by leap from the abutment of a bridge, by fire-arms. More cases of felo de se in the last two years than in any two years of the world’92s existence. The evil is more and more spreading.
In a pulpit not long ago there was expressed some doubt as to whether there was really anything wrong about quitting this life when it became disagreeable, and there are found in respectable circles people apologetic for the crime which Paul in the text arrested. I shall show you before I get through that suicide is the worst of all crimes, and I shall lift a warning unmistakable. But in the early part of this sermon I wish to admit that some of the best Christians that have ever lived have committed self-destruction, but always in dementia and while irresponsible. I have no more doubt about their eternal felicity than I have of the Christian who dies in his bed in the delirium of typhoid fever. While the shock of the catastrophe is very great, I charge all those whose Christian friends have under cerebral aberration stepped off the boundaries of this life, to have no doubt about their happiness. The dear Lord took them right out of their dazed and frenzied state into perfect safety. How Christ feels toward the insane you may know from the way he treated the demoniac of Gadara and the child lunatic, and by the potency with which he hushed tempests either of sea or brain.
Scotland, the land prolific of intellectual giants, had none grander than Hugh Miller. Great for science and great for God. He was an elder in St. John’92s Presbyterian Church. He came of the best Highland blood, and was a descendant of Donald Roy, a man eminent for piety and the rare gift of second sight. His attainments, climbing up as he did from the quarry and the wall of the stone-mason, drew forth the astonished admiration of Buckland and Murchison, the scientists, and Dr. Chalmers, the theologian, and held universities spellbound while he told them the story of what he had seen of God in ’93The Old Red Sandstone.’94 That man did more than any other being that ever lived to show that the God of the hills is the God of the Bible, and he struck his tuning-fork on the rocks of Cromarty until he brought geology and theology accordant in divine worship. His two books, entitled ’93Footprints of the Creator’94 and ’93The Testimony of the Rocks,’94 proclaimed the banns of an everlasting marriage between genuine science and revelation. On this latter book he toiled day and night, through love of nature and love of God, until he could not sleep and his brain gave way, and he was found dead with a revolver by his side, the cruel instrument having had two bullets’97one for him and the other for the gunsmith, who at the coroner’92s inquest was examining it and fell dead. Have you any doubt of the beatification of Hugh Miller after his hot brain had ceased throbbing that winter night in his study at Portobello? Among the mightiest of earth, among the mightiest of heaven.
No one doubted the piety of William Cowper, the author of those three great hymns, ’93Oh, for a Closer Walk With God,’94 ’93What Various Hindrances We Meet,’94 ’93There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood’94’97William Cowper, who shares with Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley the chief honors of Christian hymnology. In hypochondria he resolved to take, his own life, and rode to the river Thames to drown himself, but found a man seated at that very point from which he intended to spring, and rode back to his home, and that night threw himself upon his own knife, but the blade broke; and then he hanged himself to the ceiling, but the rope broke. No wonder that when God mercifully delivered him from that awful dementia he sat down and wrote that other hymn just as memorable:
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.
While we make this merciful and righteous exception in regard to those who were plunged into mental incoherence, I declare that the man who, while having the use of his reason, by his own act snaps the bond between his body and his soul, goes straight into perdition. Shall I prove it? Revelations, 21:8: ’93Murderers shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.’94 Revelations, 22:15: ’93Without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers.’94 You do not believe the New Testament? Then, perhaps, you believe the Ten Commandments: ’93Thou shalt not kill.’94 Do you say that all these passages refer to the taking of the life of others? Then I ask you if you are not as responsible for your own life as for the life of others? God gave you a special trust in life, and made you the custodian of your own life, as he made you the custodian of no other life. He gave you as weapons with which to defend it two arms to strike back assailants, two eyes to watch for invasion, and a natural love of life which ought ever to be on the alert. Assassination of others is a mild crime compared with the assassination of yourself, because in the latter case it is treachery to an especial trust; it is the surrender of a castle you were especially appointed to keep; it is treason to a natural law, and it is treason to God added to ordinary murder.
To show how God in the Bible looked upon this crime, I point you to the rogues’92 picture gallery you will find in the Bible’97the pictures of the people who have committed this unnatural crime. Here is the headless trunk of Saul on the walls of Bethshan. Here is the man who consulted a clairvoyant, the Witch of Endor. Here is a man who, whipped in battle, instead of surrendering his sword with dignity, as many a man has done, asks his servant to slay him, and when that servant declined, then the giant plants the hilt of his sword in the earth, the sharp point sticking upward, and he throws his body on it and expires’97the coward, the suicide! Here is Ahithophel, the Machiavelli of olden times, betraying his best friend, David, in order that he may become prime minister of Absalom, and joining that fellow in his attempt at parricide. Not getting what he wanted by change of politics, he takes a short cut out of a disgraceful life into the suicide’92s eternity. There he is, the ingrate! Here is Abimelech, practically a suicide. He is with an army, bombarding a tower, when a woman in the tower takes a grindstone from its place and drops it upon his head, and with what life he has in his cracked skull he commands his armor-bearer: ’93Draw thy sword and slay me, lest men say a woman slew me.’94 There is his post-mortem photograph in the book of Samuel. But the hero of this group is Judas Iscariot. Dr. Donne says he was a martyr, and we have in our day apologists for him. And what wonder, in this day, when we have a book revealing Aaron Burr as a pattern of virtue; and in this day when we uncover a statue of George Sand as the benefactress of literature, and in this day when there are betrayals of Christ on the part of some of his pretended ministers’97a betrayal so black it makes the infamy of Judas Iscariot white! Yet this man by his own hand hung up for the execration of all ages, Judas Iscariot.
All the good men and women of the Bible left to God the decision of their earthly terminus, and they could have said with Job, who had a right to commit suicide if any man ever had, what with his destroyed property and his body all aflame with insufferable carbuncles and everything gone from his home except the chief curse of it’97a pestiferous wife and four garrulous people pelting him with comfortless talk, while he sits on a heap of ashes scratching his scabs with a piece of broken pottery, yet crying out in triumph: ’93All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change comes.’94
Notwithstanding the Bible is against this crime, and the aversion it creates by the loathsome and ghastly spectacle of those who have hurled themselves out of life, and notwithstanding Christianity is against it and the arguments and the useful lives and the illustrious deaths of its disciples are all against it, it is a fact alarmingly patent that suicide is on the increase. What is the cause? I charge upon infidelity and agnosticism this whole thing. The agnostic logically says: ’93If there be no hereafter, or if that hereafter be blissful without reference to how we live and how we die, why not move back the folding doors between this world and the next? And when our existence here becomes troublesome why not pass right over into Elysium?’94 Put this down among your solemn conclusions; there has never been a case of suicide where the operator was not either demented, and therefore irresponsible, or an infidel. I challenge all the ages, and I challenge the universe. There never has been a case of self-destruction while the victim was in full appreciation of his immortality and of the fact that that immortality would be glorious or wretched, according as he accepted Jesus Christ or rejected him.
You say it is a business trouble or you say it is electrical currents, or it is this or it is that or it is the other thing. Why not go clear back, my friend, and acknowledge that in every case it is the abdication of reason or the teaching of infidelity, which practically says: ’93If you do not like this life, get out of it, and you will land either in annihilation, where there are no notes to pay, no persecutions to suffer, no gout to torment, or you will land where there will be everything glorious and nothing to pay for it.’94 Infidelity has always been apologetic for self-immolation. After Tom Paine’92s ’93Age of Reason’94 was published and widely read, there was a marked increase of self-slaughter. A man in London heard Mr. Owen deliver his infidel lecture on socialism, and went home, sat down and wrote these words: ’93Jesus Christ is one of the weakest characters in history, and the Bible is the greatest possible deception,’94 and then shot himself. David Hume wrote these words: ’93It would be no crime for me to divert the Nile or the Danube from its natural bed. Where, then, can be the crime in my diverting a few drops of blood from their ordinary channel?’94 And, having written the essay, he loaned it to a friend; the friend read it, wrote a letter of thanks and admiration, and shot himself. Appendix to the same book. Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, Montaigne were apologetic for self-immolation. Infidelity puts up no bar to people rushing out from this world into the next. They teach us it does not make any difference how you live here or go out of this world; you will land either in an oblivious nowhere or a glorious somewhere. And infidelity holds the upper end of the rope for the suicide, and aims the pistol with which a man blows his brains out, and mixes the strychnine for the last potion. If infidelity could carry the day and persuade the majority of people in this country that you are sure to land safely, and it does not make any difference how you go out of this world, the Potomac would be so full of corpses that the boats would be impeded in their progress, and the crack of the suicide’92s pistol would be no more unusual than the rumble of a streetcar.
I have sometimes heard it discussed whether the great dramatist was a Christian or not. He was a Christian. In his last will and testament he com-mends his soul to God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I know that he considered appreciation of a future existence the mightiest hindrance to self-destruction:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’92s wrong, the proud man’92s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’92s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death’97
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns’97puzzles the will?’94
Would God that the coroners would be brave in rendering the right verdict, and when in a case of irresponsibility they say: ’93While this man was demented he took his life;’94 in the other case say: ’93Having read infidel books and attended infidel lectures, which obliterated from this man’92s mind all appreciation of future retribution, he committed self-slaughter!’94
Infidelity, stand up and take thy sentence! In the presence of God, angels and men, stand up, thou monster! Thy lip blasted with blasphemy, thy cheek scarred with uncleanness, thy breath foul with the corruption of the ages! Stand up, Satyr, filthy goat, buzzard of the nations, leper of the centuries! Stand up, thou monster, Infidelity! Part man, part panther, part reptile, part dragon, stand up and take thy sentence! Thy hands red with blood in which thou hast washed, thy feet crimson with the human gore through which thou hast waded, stand up and take thy sentence! Down with thee to the pit, and sup on the sobs and groans of those thou hast destroyed, and let thy music be the everlasting miserere of those whom thou hast cursed. I brand the forehead of Infidelity with all the crimes of self-immolation for the last century on the part of those who had their reason.
My friends, if ever your life, through its abrasions and its molestations, should seem to be unbearable, and you are tempted to quit it by your own behest, do not consider yourselves as worse than others. Christ himself was tempted to cast himself from the roof of the temple, but as he resisted, so resist ye. Christ came to medicine all wounds. In your trouble I prescribe life instead of death. People who have had it worse than you will ever have it have gone songfully on their way. Remember that God keeps the chronology of your life with as much precision as he keeps the chronology of nations; your grave as well as your cradle. Why was it that at midnight, just at midnight, the destroying angel struck the blow that set the Israelites free from bondage? The four hundred and thirty years were up at twelve o’92clock that night. The four hundred and thirty years were not up at eleven, and one o’92clock would have been tardy and too late. The four hundred and thirty years were up at twelve o’92clock, and the destroying angel struck the blow, and Israel was free. And God knows just the hour when it is time to lead you up from earthly bondage. By his grace, make not the worst of things, but the best of them. If you take the pills, do not chew them. Your everlasting rewards will accord with your earthly perturbations, just as Caius gave to Agrippa a chain of gold as heavy as had been the chain of iron with which he had been bound. For the asking you may have the same grace that was given the Italian martyr, Algerius, who, down in the darkest of dungeons, dated his letters from ’93the delectable orchard of the Leonine prison.’94 And remember that this brief life is surrounded by a rim, a very thin but very important rim, and close up to that rim is a great eternity, and you had better keep out of it until God breaks that rim and separates this from that. To get rid of the sorrows of earth, do not rush into greater sorrows. To get rid of a swarm of summer insects, leap not into a jungle of Bengal tigers.
There is a sorrowless world, and it is so radiant that the noonday sun is only the lowest doorstep, and the aurora that lights up our northern heavens, confounding astronomers as to what it can be, is the waving of the banners of the procession come to take the conquerors home from church militant to church triumphant. You and I have ten thousand reasons for wanting to go there, but we will never get there either by self-immolation or impenitency. All our sins slain by Christ who came to do that thing, we want to go in at just the time divinely arranged, and from a couch divinely spread, and then the clang of the sepulchral gates behind us will be overpowered by the clang of the opening of the solid pearl before us. O God! whatever others may choose, give me a Christian’92s life, a Christian’92s death, a Christian’92s burial, a Christian’92s immortality!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage