504. Paul in a Basket

Paul in a Basket

2Co_11:33 : ’93Through a window in a basket I was let down by the wall.’94

Sermons on Paul in jail, Paul on Mars Hill, Paul in the shipwreck, Paul before the Sanhedrin, Paul before Felix, are plentiful, but in my text we have Paul in a basket.

Damascus is a city of white and glistening architecture, sometimes called ’93the eye of the East,’94 sometimes called ’93a pearl surrounded by emeralds,’94 at one time distinguished for swords of the best material called Damascus blades, and upholstery of richest fabric called damasks. A horseman by the name of Paul, riding toward this city, had been thrown from the saddle. The horse had dropped under a flash from the sky, which at the same time was so bright it blinded the rider for many days, and, I think so permanently injured his eyesight that this defect of vision became the thorn in the flesh he afterwards speaks of. He started for Damascus to butcher Christians, but after that hard fall from his horse he was a changed man and preached Christ in Damascus till the city was shaken to its foundation. The mayor gives authority for his arrest, and the popular cry is, ’93Kill him! Kill him!’94 The city is surrounded by a high wall, and the gates are watched by the police lest the Cilician preacher escape. Many of the houses are built on the wall, and their balconies projected clear over and hovered above the gardens outside. It was customary to lower baskets out of these balconies and pull up fruits and flowers from the gardens. To this day visitors at the monastery of Mount Sinai are lifted and let down in baskets. Detectives prowled around from house to house looking for Paul, but his friends hid him now in one place, now in another. He is no coward, as fifty incidents in his life demonstrate. But he feels his work is not done yet, and so he evades assassination. ’93Is that preacher here?’94 the foaming mob shout at one house door. ’93Is that fanatic here?’94 the police shout at another house door. Sometimes on the street incognito he passes through a crowd of clenched fists and sometimes he secretes himself on the house-top. At last the infuriated populace get on sure track of him. They have positive evidence that he is in the house of one of the Christians, the balcony of whose home reaches over the wall. ’93Here he is! Here he is!’94 The vociferation and blasphemy and howling of the pursuers are at the front door. They break in. ’93Fetch out that Gospelizer, and let us hang his head on the city gate. Where is he?’94 The emergency was terrible. Providentially there was a good stout basket in the house. Paul’92s friends fasten a rope to the basket. Paul steps into it. The basket is lifted to the edge of the balcony on the wall, and then while Paul holds on to the rope with both hands his friends lower away, carefully and cautiously, slowly but surely, farther down and farther down and farther down, until the basket strikes the earth and the apostle steps out and a-foot and alone starts on that famous missionary tour, the story of which has astonished earth and heaven. Appropriate entry in Paul’92s diary of travels: ’93Through a window in a basket was let down by the wall.’94

Observe first, on what a slender tenure great results hang. The ropemaker who twisted that cord fastened to that lowering basket never knew how much would depend on the strength of it. How if it had been broken and the apostle’92s life had been dashed out? What would have become of the Christian Church? All that magnificent missionary work in Pamphilia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Macedonia, would never have been accomplished. All his writings that make up so indispensable and enchanting a part of the New Testament would never have been written. The story of resurrection would never have been so gloriously told as he told it. That example of heroic and triumphant endurance at Philippi, in the Mediterranean Euroclydon, under flagellation and at his beheading would not have kindled the courage of ten thousand martyrdoms. Put that rope holding that basket bore the strain, and how much depended on it? So again and again great results have hung on what seemed slender circumstances.

Did ever ship of many thousand tons crossing the sea have such important passenger as had once a boat of leaves from taffrail to stern only three or four feet, the vessel made waterproof by a coat of bitumen and floating on the Nile with the infant lawgiver of the Jews on board? What if some crocodile should crunch it? What if some of the cattle wading in for a drink should sink it? Vessels of war sometimes carry forty guns looking through the portholes, ready to open battle. But that tiny craft on the Nile seems to be armed with all the guns of thunder that bombarded Sinai at the law-giving. On how fragile craft sailed how much of historical importance!

The parsonage at Epworth, England, is on fire in the night, and the father rushes through the hallway for the rescue of his children. Seven children are out and safe on the ground, but one remains in the consuming building. That one wakes, and finding his bed on fire and the building crumbling, comes to the window, and two peasants make a ladder of their bodies, one peasant standing on the shoulder of the other, and down the human ladder the boy descends’97John Wesley. If you would know how much depended on that ladder of peasants ask the millions of Methodists on both sides of the sea. Ask their mission stations all round the world. Ask their hundreds of thousands already ascended to join their founder, who would have perished but for the living stair of peasants’92 shoulders.

An English ship stopped at an island in the South Pacific, and right in the midst of surrounding cannibalism and squalor the passengers discovered a Christian colony of churches and schools and beautiful homes and highest style of religion and civilization. For fifty years no missionary and no Christian influence had landed there. Why this oasis of light amid a desert of heathendom? Sixty years before, a ship had met disaster, and one of the sailors, unable to save anything else, went to his trunk and took out a Bible which his mother had placed there and swam ashore the Bible held in his teeth. The Book was read on all sides until the rough and vicious population were evangelized, and a church was started, and an enlightened commonwealth established, and the world’92s history has no more brilliant page than that which tells of the transformation of a nation by one book. It did not seem of much importance whether the sailor continued to hold the book in his teeth or let it fall in the breakers, but upon what small circumstance depended what mighty results!

Practical inference: there are no insignificances in our lives. The minutest thing is part of a magnitude. Infinity is made up of infinitesimals. Great things an aggregation of small things. Bethlehem manger pulling on a star in the Eastern sky. One book in a drenched sailor’92s mouth the evangelization of a multitude. One boat of papyrus on the Nile freighted with events for all ages. The fates of Christendom in a basket let down from a window on the wall. What you do, do well. If you make a rope, make it strong and true, for you know not how much may depend on your workmanship. If you fashion a boat let it be waterproof, for you know not who may sail in it. If you put a Bible in the trunk of your boy as he goes from home, let it be remembered in your prayers, for it may have a mission as far-reaching as the book which the sailor carried in his teeth to the beach of the island in the South Pacific. The plainest man’92s life is an island between two eternities’97eternity past rippling against his shoulders, eternity to come touching his brow. The casual, the accidental, that which merely happened so are parts of a great plan, and the rope that lets the fugitive apostle from the Damascus wall is the cable that holds to its mooring the ship of the Church in the northeast storm of the centuries.

Again, notice unrecognized and unrecorded services. Who spun that rope? Who tied it to the basket? Who steadied the illustrious preacher as he stepped into it? Who relaxed not a muscle of the arm or dismissed an anxious look from his face until the basket touched the ground and discharged its magnificent cargo? Not one of their names has come to us, but there was no work done that day in Damascus or in all the earth compared with the importance of their work. What if they had in the agitation tied a knot that could slip? What if the sound of the mob at the door had led them to say: ’93Paul must take care of himself, and we will take care of ourselves.’94 No, no! They held the rope, and in doing so did more for the Christian Church than any thousand of us will ever accomplish. But God knows and has made eternal record of their risky undertaking. And they know. How exultant they must have felt when they read his letters to the Romans, to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, and when they heard how he walked out of prison with the earthquake unlocking the door for him and took command of the Alexandrian corn ship when the sailors were nearly scared to death, and preached a sermon that nearly shook Felix off his jugdment-seat. I hear the men and women who helped him down through the window and over the wall talking in private over the matter, and saying: ’93How glad I am that we effected that rescue! In coming times others may get the glory of Paul’92s work, but no one shall rob us of the satisfaction of knowing that we held the rope.’94

There are said to be about one hundred thousand ministers of religion in this country. About fifty thousand I warrant came from early homes which had to struggle for the necessaries of life. The sons of rich bankers and merchants generally become bankers and merchants. The most of those who become ministers are the sons of those who had terrific struggle to get their everyday bread. The collegiate and theological education of that son took every luxury from the parental table for eight years. The other children were more scantily appareled. The son at college every little while got a bundle from home. In it were the socks that mother had knit, sitting up late at night, her sight not as good as once it was. And there also were some delicacies from the sister’92s hand for the voracious appetite of a hungry student. The father swung the heavy cradle through the wheat, the sweat rolling from his chin bedewing every step of the way, and then sitting down under the cherry-tree at noon thinking to himself: ’93I am fearfully tired, but it will pay if I can once see that boy through college, and if I can know that he will be preaching the Gospel after I am dead.’94 The younger children want to know why they cannot have this and that as others do, and the mother says: ’93Be patient, my children, until your brother graduates, and then you shall have more luxuries, but we must see that boy through.’94

The years go by, and the son has been ordained and is preaching the glorious Gospel, and a great revival comes, and souls by scores and hundreds accept the Gospel from the lips of that young preacher; and father and mother, quite old now, are visiting the son at the village parsonage, and at the close of a Sabbath of mighty blessing father and mother retire to their room, the son lighting the way and asking them if he can do anything to make them more comfortable, saying if they want anything in the night just to knock on the wall. And then all alone father and mother talk over the gracious influences of the day, and say: ’93Well, it was worth all we went through to educate that boy. It was a hard pull, but we held on till the work was done. The world may not know it, but, mother, we held the rope, didn’92t we?’94 And the voice, tremulous with joyful emotion, ’93Yes father; we held the rope. I feel my work is done. Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’94 ’93Pshaw!’94 says the father, ’93I never felt so much like living in my life as now. I want to see what that fellow is going on to do, he has begun so well.’94

Something occurs to me quite personal. I was the youngest of a large family of children. My parents were neither rich nor poor; four of the sons wanted collegiate education, and four obtained it, but not without great home-struggle. We never heard the old people say once that they were denying themselves to effect this, but I remember now that my parents always looked tired. I do not think they ever got rested until they lay down in the Somerville Cemetery. Mother would sit down in the evening, and say: ’93Well, I do not know what makes me feel so tired!’94 Father would fall immediately to sleep, seated by the evening stand, overcome with the day’92s fatigues. All of the brothers after preaching the Gospel, one for fifty years, another forty-five years, and another for forty-two years, have entered heaven. At our last family meeting we, the children, talked it all over, and acknowledged our obligation to the old folks at home. About thirty-five years ago the one, and about thirty-three years ago the other put down the burdens of this life, but they still hold the rope.

O men and women, you brag sometimes how you have fought your way in the world, but I think there have been helpful influences that you have never fully acknowledged. Has there not been some influence in your early or present home that the world cannot see? Does there not reach to you from among the New England hills or from western prairie or from southern plantation or from English or Scottish or Irish home a cord of influence that has kept you right when you would have gone astray, but which, after you had made a crooked track, recalled you? The rope may be as long as thirty years or five hundred miles long or three thousand miles long, but hands that went out of mortal sight long ago still hold the rope. You want a very swift horse, and you need to rowel him with sharpest spurs and to let the reins lie loose upon the neck and to give the shout of a racer, if you are going to ride out of reach of your mother’92s prayers. Why, a ship crossing the Atlantic in six days cannot sail away from them! A sailor finds them on the lookout as he takes his place, and finds them on the mast as he climbs the ratlines to disentangle a rope in the tempest, and finds them swinging on the hammock when he turns in. Why not be frank and acknowledge it’97the most of us would long ago have been dashed to pieces had not gracious and loving hands steadily and lovingly and mightily held the rope.

But there must come a time when we shall find out who these Damascenes were who lowered Paul in the basket, and greet them and all those who have rendered to God and the world unrecognized and unrecorded services. That is going to be one of the glad excitements of heaven’97the hunting up and picking out of those who did great good on earth and got no credit for it. Here the Church has been going on nineteen centuries, and this is probably the first sermon ever recognizing the services of the people in that Damascus balcony. Charles G. Finney said to a dying Christian: ’93Give my love to St. Paul when you meet him.’94 When you and I meet him, as we will, I shall ask mm to introduce me to those people who got him out of the Damascene peril.

We go into long sermon to prove that we will be able to recognize people in heaven, when there is one reason we fail to present, and that is better than all’97God will introduce us. We shall have them all pointed out. You would not be guilty of the impoliteness of having friends in your parlor not introduced, and celestial politeness will demand that we be made acquainted with all the heavenly household. What rehearsal of old times and recital of stirring reminiscences. If others fail to give introduction, God will take us through the celestial neighborhood, and before our first twenty-four hours in heaven’97if it were calculated by earthly timepieces’97 have passed, we shall meet and talk with more heavenly celebrities than in our entire mortal state we met with earthly celebrities. Many who made great noise of usefulness will sit on the last seat by the front door of the heavenly temple, while right up within arm’92s reach of the heavenly throne will be many who, though they could not preach, or do great exploits for God, nevertheless held the rope.

Come, let us go right up and accost those on this circle of heavenly thrones. Surely, they must have killed in battle a million men. Surely, they must have been buried with all the cathedrals sounding a dirge and all the towers of all the cities tolling the national grief. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? ’93I lived by choice, the unmarried daughter in an humble home, that I might take care of my parents in their old age, and I endured without complaints all their querulousness and administered to all their wants for twenty years.’94 ’93Is that all?’94 ’93That is all!’94

Let us pass on ’91round the circle of thrones. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? ’93I was for thirty years a Christian invalid, and suffered all the while, occasionally writing a note of sympathy for those worse off than I, and was general confidant of all those who had trouble, and once in a while I was strong enough to make a garment for that poor family in the back lane.’94 ’93Is that all?’94 ’93That is all!’94 Pass on to another throne. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? ’93I was the mother who raised a whole family of children for God and they are out in the world Christian merchants, Christian mechanics, Christian wives, and I have had full reward of all my toil.’94 Let us pass on in the circle of thrones. ’93I had a Sabbath-school class, and they were always on my heart and they all entered the Kingdom of God and I am waiting for their arrival.’94 But who art thou, the mighty one of heaven, on this other throne? ’93In time of bitter persecution I owned a house in Damascus, a house on the wall. A man who preached Christ was hounded from street to street, and I hid him from the assassins, and when I found them breaking in my house and I could no longer keep him safely, I advised him to flee for his life, and a basket was let down over the wall with the maltreated man in it, and I was one who helped hold the rope.’94 And I said: ’93Is that all?’94 and he answered, ’93That is all.’94 And while I was lost in amazement, I heard a strong voice that sounded as though it might once have been hoarse from many exposures and triumphant as though it might have belonged to one of the martyrs, and it said: ’93Not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught things which are, that no flesh should glory in his presence.’94 And I looked to see from whence the voice came, and lo! it was the very one who had written: ’93Through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall.’94

Henceforth think of nothing as insignificant. A little thing may decide your all. A Cunarder put out from England for New York. It was well equipped, but in putting up a stove in the pilot box a nail was driven too near the compass. You know how that nail would affect the compass. The ship’92s officers, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship two hundred miles off her right course, and suddenly the man on the lookout cried, ’93Land ho!’94 and the ship was halted within a few yards of her demolition on Nantucket shoals. A six-penny nail came near wrecking a Cunarder. Small ropes hold mighty destinies. A minister seated in Boston at his table, lacking a word, puts his hand behind his head and tilts back his chair to think, and the ceiling falls and crushes the table and would have crushed him if his chair had not been tilted. A minister in Jamaica at night by the light of an insect, called the candle-fly, is kept from stepping over a precipice a hundred feet deep. F. W. Robertson, the celebrated English clergyman, said that he entered the ministry from a train of circumstances started by the barking of a dog. Had the wind blown one way on a certain day the Spanish Inquisition would have been established in England; but it blew the other way, and that dropped the accursed institution with seventy-five thousand tons of shipping to the bottom of the sea or flung the splintered logs on the rocks. Nothing unimportant in your life or mine. Three noughts placed on the right side of the figure one, makes a thousand, and six noughts on the right side of the figure one, a million, and our nothingness placed on the right side may be augmentation illimitable. All the ages of time and eternity affected by the basket let down from a Damascus balcony.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage