513. Forgiveness Before Sundown

Forgiveness Before Sundown

Eph_4:26 : ’93Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’94

What a pillow, embroidered of all colors, hath the dying day! The cradle of clouds from which the sun rises is beautiful enough, but it is surpassed by the many colored mausoleum in which, at evening, it is buried. Sunset among the mountains! It almost takes one’92s breath away to recall the scene. The long shadows stretching over the plain make the glory of the departing light, on the tip-top crags, and struck aslant through the foliage, the more conspicuous. Saffron and gold, purple and crimson commingled. All the castles of cloud in conflagration. Burning Moscows on the sky. Hanging gardens of roses at their deepest blush. Banners of vapor, red as if from carnage, in the battle of the elements. The hunter among the Adirondacks, and the Swiss villager among the Alps, know what is a sunset among the mountains. After a storm at sea the rolling grandeur into which the sun goes down to bathe at nightfall is something to make weird and splendid dreams out of for a lifetime. Alexander Smith, in his poem, compares the sunset to ’93the barren beach of hell,’94 but this wonderful spectacle of nature makes me think of the burnished wall of heaven. Paul, in prison, writing my text, remembers some of the gorgeous sunsets among the mountains of Asia Minor, and how he had often seen the towers of Damascus blaze in the close of the Oriental day, and he flashes out that memory in the text when he says, ’93Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’94

Sublime and all-suggestive duty for people then and people now! Forgiveness before sundown! He who never feels the throb of indignation is imbecile. He who can walk among the injustices of the world inflicted upon himself and others, without flush of cheek or flash of eye or agitation of nature is either in sympathy with wrong or semi-idiotic. When Ananias, the high priest, ordered the constables of the court-room to smite Paul on the mouth, Paul fired up and said: ’93God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.’94 In the sentence immediately before my text Paul commands the Ephesians: ’93Be ye angry and sin not.’94 It all depends on what you are mad at and how long the feeling lasts, whether anger is right or wrong. Life is full of exasperations. Saul after David, Succoth after Gideon, Korah after Moses, the Pasquins after Augustus, the Pharisees after Christ, and every one has had his pursuers, and we are swindled or belied or misrepresented or persecuted or in some way wronged, and the danger is that healthful indignation shall become baleful spite, and that our feelings settle down into a prolonged outpouring of temper displeasing to God and ruinous to ourselves, and hence the important injunction of the text: ’93Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’94

Why that limitation to one’92s anger? Why that period of flaming vapor set to punctuate a flaming disposition? What has the sunset got to do with one’92s resentful emotions? Was it a haphazard sentiment written by Paul without special significance? No, no; I think of five reasons why we should not let the sun set before our temper sets.

First, because twelve hours is long enough to be cross about any wrong inflicted upon us. Nothing is so exhausting to physical health or mental faculty as a protracted indulgence of ill-humor. It racks the nervous system. It hurts the digestion. It heats the blood in brain and heart until the whole body is first overheated and then depressed. Besides that, it sours the disposition, turns one aside from his legitimate work, expends energies that ought to be better employed, and does us more harm than it does our antagonist. Paul gives us a good, wide allowance of time for legitmate denunciation, from six o’92clock to six o’92clock, but says: ’93Stop there!’94 Watch the ascending orb of day, and when it reaches the horizon, take a reef in your disposition. Unloose your collar and cool off. Change the subject to something delightfully pleasant. Unroll your tight fist and shake hands with some one. Bank up the fires at the curfew bell. Drive the growling dog of enmity back to its kennel. The hours of this morning will pass by, and the afternoon will arrive, and the sun will begin to set, and, I beg you, on its blazing hearth throw all your feuds, invectives, and satires.

Other things being equal, the man who preserves good temper will come out ahead. An old essayist says that the celebrated John Henderson, of Bristol, England, was at a dining party where political excitement ran high and the debate got angry, and while Henderson was speaking, his opponent, unable to answer his argument, dashed a glass of wine in his face, when the speaker deliberately wiped the liquid from his face and said: ’93This, sir, is a digression; now, if you please, for the main argument.’94 While worldly philosophy could help but very few to such equipoise of spirit, the grace of God could help any man to such a triumph. ’93Impossible,’94 you say, ’93I would have either left the table in anger or have knocked the man down.’94 But I have come to believe that nothing is impossible if God help, since what I saw at Bethshan faith-cure in London, England, two summers ago. While the religious service was going on, Rev. Dr. Boardman (glorious man! since gone to his heavenly rest) was telling the scores of sick people present that Christ was there as of old to heal all diseases, and that, if they would only believe, their sickness would depart. I saw a woman near me, with hand and arm twisted of rheumatism, and her wrist was fiery with inflammation and it looked like those cases of chronic rheumatism which we have all seen and sympathized with, cases beyond all human healing. At the preacher’92s reiteration of the words: ’93Will you believe? Do you believe? Do you believe now?’94 I heard this poor sick woman say, with an emphasis which sounded through the building: ’93I do believe.’94 And then she laid her twisted arm and hand out as straight as your arm and hand, or mine. If I had seen her rise from the dead, I would not have been much more thrilled. Since then I believe that God will do anything in answer to our prayer and in answer to our faith, and he can heal our bodies, and if our soul is all twisted and misshapen of revenge and hate and inflamed with sinful proclivity, he can straighten that also and make it well and clean.

Ay, you will not postpone till sundown forgiveness of enemies if you can realize that their behavior towards you may be put into the catalogue of the ’93all things’94 that ’93work together for good to those that love God.’94 I have had multitudes of friends, but I have found in my own experience that God so arranged it that the greatest opportunities of usefulness that have been opened before me were opened by enemies. And when, years ago, they conspired against me, their assault opened all Christendom to me as a field in which to preach the Gospel. So you may harness your antagonists to your best interests and compel them to draw you on to better work and higher character. Suppose, instead of waiting until six minutes past five o’92clock this evening, when the sun will set, you transact this glorious work of forgiveness before meridian.

Again, we ought not to let the sun go down on our wrath. Because we will sleep better if we are at peace with everybody. Insomnia is getting to be one of the most prevalent of disorders. How few people retire at ten o’92clock at night and sleep clear through to six in the morning! To relieve this disorder all narcotics and sedatives and chloral and bromide of potassium and cocaine and intoxicants are used, but nothing is more important than a quiet spirit if we would win somnolence. How is a man going to sleep when he is in mind pursuing an enemy? with what nervous twitch he will start out of a dream! That new plan for cornering his foe will keep him wide awake while the clock strikes eleven, twelve, one, two. I give you an unfailing prescription for wakefulness: spend the evening hours rehearsing your wrongs and the best way of avenging them. Hold a convention of friends on this subject in your parlor or office at eight and nine o’92clock. Close the evening by writing a bitter letter expressing your sentiments. Take from the desk or pigeon-hole the papers in the case to refresh your mind with your enemy’92s meanness. Then lie down and wait for the coming of the day, and it will come before sleep comes, or your sleep will be a worried quiescence, and, if you take the precaution to lie flat on your back, a frightful nightmare.

Why not put a bound to your animosity? Why let your foes come into the sanctities of your dormitory? Why let those slanderers who have already torn your reputation to pieces or injured your business, bend over your midnight pillow and drive from you one of the greatest blessing that God can offer’97sweet, refreshing, all invigorating sleep. Why not fence out your enemies by the golden bars of the sunset? Why not stand behind the barricade of evening cloud, and say to them: ’93Thus far and no farther.’94 Many a man and many a woman is having the health of body as well as the health of soul eaten away by a malevolent spirit. I have in time of religious awakening had persons night after night, come into the inquiry room and get no peace of soul. After a while I have bluntly asked them: ’93Is there not some one against whom you have a hatred that you are not willing to give up?’94 After a little confusion they have slightly whispered, ’93Yes.’94 Then I have said: ’93You will never find peace with God as long as you retain that virulence.’94

A boy in Sparta having stolen a fox, kept him under his coat, though the fox was gnawing his vitals, he submitted to it rather than expose his misdeed. Many a man with a smiling face has under his jacket animosity that is gnawing away the strength of his body and the integrity of his soul. Better get rid of that hidden fox as soon as possible. There are hundreds of domestic circles where that which most is needed is the spirit of forgiveness. Brothers apart, and sisters apart, and parents and children apart. Solomon says a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Are there not enough sacred memories of your childhood to bring you together? The rabbis recount how that Nebuchadnezzar’92s son had such a spite against his father that after he was dead, he had his father burned to ashes and then put the ashes into four sacks and tied them to four eagles’92 necks which flew away in opposite directions. And there are now domestic antipathies that seem forever to have scattered all parental memories to the four winds of heaven. How far the eagles fly with those sacred ashes! The hour of sundown makes to that family no practical suggestion. Thomas Carlyle, in his biography of Frederick the Great, says the old king was told by the confessor that he must be at peace with his enemies if he wanted to enter heaven. Then he said to his wife the queen: ’93Write to your brother after I am dead that I forgive him.’94 Roloff, the confessor, said: ’93Her majesty had better write him immediately.’94 ’93No,’94 said the king, ’93after I am dead; that will be safer. So he let the sun of his earthly existence go down upon his wrath.

Again, we ought not to allow the sun to set before forgiveness takes place, because we might not live to see another day. And what if we should be ushered into the presence of our Maker with a grudge upon our soul? The majority of people depart this life in the night. Between eleven o’92clock P. M. and three o’92clock A. M. there is something in the atmosphere which relaxes the grip which the body has on the soul, and most people enter the next world through the shadows of this world. Perhaps God may have arranged it in that way so as to make the contrast the more glorious. I have seen sunshiny days in this world that must have been almost like the radiance of heaven. But as most people leave the earth between sundown and sunrise they quit this world at its darkest, and heaven, always bright, will be the brighter for that contrast. Out of darkness into irradiation.

Shall we then leap over the roseate bank of sunset into the favorite hunting-ground of disease and death, carrying our animosities with us? Who would want to confront his God, against whom we have all done meaner things than anybody has ever done against us, carrying old grudges? How can we expect his forgiveness for the greater, when we are not willing to forgive others for less? Napoleon was encouraged to undertake the crossing of the Alps because Charlemagne had previously crossed them. And all this rugged path of forgiveness bears the bleeding footsteps of him who conquered through suffering, and we ought to be willing to follow. On the night of our departure from this life into the next, our one plea will have to be for mercy, and it will have to be offered in the presence of him who has said: ’93If you forgive not men their trespasses neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.’94 What a sorry plight if we stand there hating this one and hating that one and wishing that one a damage and wishing some one else a calamity, and we ourselves needing forgiveness for ten thousand times ten thousand obliquities of heart and life. When our last hour comes, we want it to find us all right. Hardly anything affects me so much in the uncovering of Pompeii as the account of the soldier who, after the city had for many centuries been covered with the ashes and scori’e6 of Vesuvius, was found standing in his place on guard, hand on spear and helmet on head. Others fled at the awful submergement, but the explorer, seventeen hundred years after, found the body of that brave fellow in right position. And it will be a grand thing if, when our last moment comes, we are found in right position toward the world, as well as in right position toward God, on guard and unaffrighted by the ashes from the mountain of death. I do not suppose that I am any more of a coward than most people, but I declare to you that I would not dare to sleep to-night if there were any being in all the earth with whom I would not gladly shake hands, lest during the night hours my spirit dismissed to other realms, I should, because of my unforgiving spirit, be denied divine forgiveness.

’93But,’94 says some woman, ’93there is a horrid creature who has so injured me that rather than make up with her I would die first. Well, sister, you may take your choice’97for one or the other it will be’97your complete pardon of her or God’92s eternal banishment of you. ’93But,’94 says some man, ’93that fellow who cheated me out of those goods or damaged my business credit or started that lie about me in the newspapers or by his perfidy broke up my domestic happiness, forgive him I cannot, forgive him I will not.’94 Well, brother, take your choice. You will never be at peace with God till you are at peace with man. Feeling as you now do, you would not get so near the harbor of heaven as to see the lightship. Better leave that man with the God who said: ’93Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’94 You may say: ’93I will make him sweat for that yet; I will make him squirm; I mean to pursue him to the death,’94 but you are damaging yourself more than you damage him, and you are making heaven for your own soul an impossibility. If he will not be reconciled to you, be reconciled to him. In five or six hours it will be sundown. The dahlias will bloom against the western sky. Somewhere between this and that take a shovel and bury the old quarrel at least six feet deep. ’93Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’94

’93But,’94 you say, ’93I have more than I can bear; too much is put upon me, and I am not to blame if I am somewhat revengeful and unrelenting.’94 Then I think of the little child at the moving of some goods from a store. The father was putting some rolls of goods on the child’92s arm, package after package, and some one said: ’93That child is being overloaded and so much ought not to be put upon her,’94 when the child responded: ’93Father knows how much I can carry’94; and God our Father will not allow too much imposition on his children. In the day of eternity it will be found you had not one annoyance too many; not one exasperation too many; not one outrage too many. Your Heavenly Father knows how much you can carry.

Again, we ought not to allow the passage of the sunset hour before the dismissal of all our affronts, because we may, as De Quincy suggests, associate the sublimest action of the soul with the sublimest spectacle in nature. It is a most delightsome thing to have our personal experiences allied with certain subjects. There is a tree or river bank where God first answered your prayer. You will never pass that place or think of that place without thinking of the glorious communion. There was some gate or some room or some garden wall where you were affianced with the companion who has been your chief joy in life. You never speak of that place but with a smile. Some of you have pleasant memories connected with the evening star or the moon in its first quarter or with the sunrise. Because you saw it just as you were arriving at harbor after a tempestuous voyage. Forever and forever, O hearer, associate the sunset with your magnanimous, out-and-out, unlimited renunciation of all hatreds and forgiveness of all foes.

I admit it is the most difficult of all graces to practise, and at the start you may make a complete failure, but keep on in the attempt to practise it. Shakespeare wrote ten plays before he reached Hamlet and seventeen plays before he reached The Merchant of Venice and twenty-eight plays before he reached Macbeth. And gradually you will come from the easier graces to the most difficult. Beside that, it is not a matter of personal determination so much as the laying hold of the almighty arm of God, who will help us to do anything we ought to do. Remember that in all personal controversies the one least to blame will have to take the first step at pacification, if it is ever effective. The contest between Aeschines and Aristippus resounds through history, but Aristippus, who was least to blame, went to Aeschines and said: ’93Shall we not agree to be friends before we make ourselves the laughing stock of the whole country?’94 And Aeschines said: ’93Thou art a far better man than I, for I began the quarrel, but thou hast been the first in healing the breach,’94 and they were always friends afterwards. So let the one of you that is least to blame take the first step toward conciliation. The one most in the wrong will never take it.

Oh, it makes one feel splendidly to be able by God’92s help to practise unlimited forgiveness. It improves one’92s body and soul. It will make you measure three or four more inches around the chest and improve your respiration, so that you can take a deeper and longer breath. It improves the countenance by scattering the gloom and makes you somewhat like God himself. He is omnipotent, and we cannot copy that. He is independent of all the universe, and we cannot copy that. He is creative, and we cannot copy that. He is omnipresent, and we cannot copy that. But he forgives with a broad sweep all faults and all neglects and all insults and all wrongdoings, and in that we may copy him with mighty success. Go harness that sublime action of your soul to an autumnal sunset’97the hour when the gate of heaven opens to let the day pass into the eternities, and some of the glories escape this way through the brief opening. We talk about the Italian sunsets and sunset amid the Apennines and sunset amid the Cordilleras, but I will tell you how you may see a grander sunset than any mere lover of Nature ever beheld; that is, by flinging into it all your hatreds and animosities, and let the horses of fire trample them and the chariots of fire roll over them and the spearmen of fire stab them and the beach of fire consume them and the billows of fire overwhelm them.

Again, we should not let the sun go down on our wrath, because it is of little importance what the world says of you when you have the affluent God of the sunset as your provider and defender. People talk as though it were a fixed spectacle of Nature and always the same. But no one ever saw two sunsets alike, and if the world has existed six thousand years there have been about two million one hundred and ninety thousand sunsets, each of them as distinct from all the other pictures in the gallery of the sky as Titian’92s ’93Last Supper,’94 Ruben’92s ’93Descent from the Cross,’94 Raphael’92s ’93Transfiguration,’94 and Michael Angelo’92s ’93Last Judgment’94 are distinct from each other. If that God of such infinite resources that he can put on the wall of the sky each night more than the Louvre and the Luxembourg galleries all in one, is my God and your God, our Provider and Protector, what is the use of our worrying about any human antagonism? If we are misinterpreted, the God of the many-colored sunset can put the right color on our action. If all the garniture of the western heavens at eventide is but the upholstery of one of the windows of our future home, what small business for us to be chasing enemies? Let not this Sabbath sun go down upon your wrath.

Mohammed said: ’93The sword is the key to heaven and hell.’94 But, my hearers, in the Last Day we will find just the opposite of that to be true, and that the sword never unlocks heaven, and that he who heals wounds is greater than he who makes them, and that on the same ring are two keys’97God’92s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of enemies’97and these two keys unlock Paradise.

And now, I wish for all of you a beautiful sunset in your earthly existence. With some of you it has been a long day of trouble, and with others of you it will be far from calm. When the sun rose at six o’92clock it was the morning of youth and a fair day was prophesied, but by the time the noonday of middle-life had come and the clock of your earthly existence had struck twelve, cloud-racks gathered and tempest bellowed in the track of tempest. But as the evening of old age approaches, I pray God the skies may brighten and the clouds be piled up into pillars as of celestial temples to which you go, or move as with mounted cohorts come to take you home. And as you sink out of sight below the horizon, may there be a radiance of Christian example lingering long after you are gone, and on the heavens be written in letters of sapphire and on the waters in letters of opal and on the hills in letters of emerald, ’93Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.’94 So shall the sunset of earth become the sunrise of heaven.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage