528. A Scroll of Heroes

A Scroll of Heroes

2Ti_2:3 : ’93Thou therefore endure hardness.’94

Historians are not slow to acknowledge the merits of great military chieftains. We have the full-length portraits of the Washingtons, the Napoleons, the Wellingtons, the Baldwins, the Cromwells, and the Marshal Neys of the world. History is not written in black ink, but with red ink of human blood. The gods of human ambition did not drink from bowls made out of silver or gold or precious stones, but out of the bleached skulls of the fallen. But I am today to unroll before you a scroll of heroes whom the world has never acknowledged; they who faced no guns, blew no bugle-blast, conquered no cities, chained no captives to their chariot-wheels, and yet, in the great day of eternity, will stand higher than those whose names startled the nations; and seraph and rapt spirit and archangel will tell their deeds to a listening universe. I mean the heroes of common, every-day life.

In this roll, in the first place, I find all the heroes of the sick-room. When Satan had failed to overcome Job, he said to God: ’93Put forth thy hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.’94 Satan had found out what we have all found out, that sickness is the greatest test of character. A man who can stand that can stand anything: to be shut in a room as fast as though it were a Bastille; to be so nervous you cannot endure the tap of a child’92s foot; to have luscious fruit, which tempts the appetite of the robust and the healthy, excite our loathing and disgust when it first appears on the platter; to have the rapier of pain strike through the side or across the temples like a razor, or to put the foot into a vise, or to throw the whole body into the blaze of a fever. Yet there have been men and women, but more women than men, who have cheerfully endured this hardness. Through years of exhausting rheumatisms and excruciating neuralgias they have gone, and through bodily distresses that rasped the nerves and tore the muscles and paled the cheeks and stooped the shoulders. By the dim light of the sick-room taper they saw on their wall the picture of that land where the people are never sick. Through the dead silence of the night they heard the chorus of the angels. Those who suffered on the battle-field, amid shot and shell, were not so much heroes and heroines as those who in the field-hospital and in the asylum had fevers which no ice could cool and no surgery could cure. No shout of comrade to cheer them, but numbness and aching and homesickness’97yet willing to suffer, confident in God, hopeful of heaven. Heroes of rheumatism; heroes of neuralgia; heroes of spinal complaint; heroes of sick headache; heroes of lifelong invalidism; heroes and heroines; they shall reign forever and forever. Hark! I catch just one note of the eternal anthem, ’93There shall be no more pain.’94 Bless God for that!

In this roll I also find the heroes of toil, who do their work uncomplainingly. It is comparatively easy to lead a regiment into battle when you know that the whole nation will applaud the victory; it is comparatively easy to doctor the sick when you know that your skill will be appreciated by a large company of friends and relatives; it is comparatively easy to address an audience when in the gleaming eyes and the flushed cheeks you know that your sentiments are adopted; but to do sewing where you expect that the employer will come and thrust his thumb through the work to show how imperfect it is, or to have the whole garment thrown back on you to be done over again; to build a wall and know there will be no one to say you did it well, but only a swearing employer howling across the scaffold; to work until your eyes are dim, and your back aches, and your heart faints, and to know that if you stop before night your children will starve’97that is heroism.

Ah! the sword has not slain so many as the needle! The great battle-fields of our civil war were not Gettysburg and Shiloh and South Mountain. The great battle-fields of that war were in the arsenals and the shops and the attics where women made army jackets for a sixpence. They toiled on until they died. They had no funeral eulogium, but in the name of my God I enroll their names among those of whom the world was not worthy’97heroes of the needle, heroes of the sewing-machine, heroes of the attic, heroes of the cellar, heroes and heroines. Bless God for them!

In this roll I also find the heroes who have uncomplainingly endured domestic injustices. There are men who for their toil and anxiety have no sympathy in their homes. Exhausting application to business gets them a livelihood, but an unfrugal wife scatters it. The husband is nagged at from the moment he enters the door until he comes out of it’97the exasperations of business life augmented by the exasperations of domestic life. Such men are laughed at, but they have a heart-breaking trouble, and they would have long ago gone into appalling dissipations but for the grace of God. Society today is strewn with the wrecks of men who under the northeast storm of domestic infelicity have been driven on the rocks. There are tens of thousands of drunkards in this country today made such by their wives. That is not poetry; that is prose!

But the wrong is generally in the opposite direction. You would not have to go far to find a wife whose life is a perpetual martyrdom’97something heavier than a stroke of the fist, unkind words, the companionship of a brute, staggering home at midnight, and constant maltreatment, which have left her only a wreck of what she was on that day when in the midst of a brilliant assemblage the vows were taken and full organ played the wedding-march, and the carriage rolled away with the benediction of the people. What was the burning of Latimer and Ridley at the stake compared with this? Those men soon became unconscious in the fire, but here is a fifty years’92 martyrdom, a fifty years’92 putting to death, yet uncomplaining. No bitter words, when rollicking companions at two o’92clock in the morning deposit the husband dead drunk on the stoop; no bitter words when wiping from the swollen brow the blood struck out in a midnight carousal, or bending over the battered and bruised form of him who, when he took her from her father’92s home, promised love and kindness and protection; nothing but sympathy and prayers and forgiveness before it is asked for. No bitter words when the family Bible goes for rum, and the pawnbroker’92s shop gets the last decent dress. Some day, desiring to evoke the story of her sorrows, you say, ’93Well, how are you getting along now?’94 And, rallying her trembling voice, and quieting her quivering lip, she says: ’93Pretty well, I thank you; pretty well.’94 She never will tell you. In the delirium of her last sickness she may tell all the other secrets of her lifetime, but she will not tell that. Not until the books of eternity are opened on the thrones of judgment will ever be known what she has suffered. O ye who are twisting a garland for the victor! put it on that pale brow.

When she is dead the neighbors will beg linen to make her a shroud, and she will be carried out in a plain box, with no silver plate to tell her years, for she has lived a thousand years of trial and anguish. The gamblers and the swindlers who destroyed her husband will not come to the funeral. One carriage will be enough for that funeral’97one carriage to carry the orphans and the two Christian women who presided over the obsequies. But there is a flash, and a clank of a celestial door, and a shout, ’93Lift up your head, ye everlasting gates, and let her come in!’94 And Christ will step forth and say, ’93Come in! ye suffered with me on earth, be glorified with me in heaven.’94 What is the highest throne in heaven? You say, ’93The Throne of the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.’94 No doubt about it. What is the next highest throne in heaven? While I speak it seems to me that it will be the throne of the drunkard’92s wife, if she, with cheerful patience, endured all her earthly trials. Heroes and heroines!

I find also in this roll the heroes of Christian charity. We admire the George Peabodys and the James Lenoxes of the earth, who give tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to good objects. When Moses H. Grinnell was buried, the most significant thing about the ceremonies was that there was no sermon and no oration; a plain hymn, a prayer, and a benediction. ’93Well,’94 I said, ’93that is very beautiful.’94 All Christendom pronounces the eulogium of Moses H. Grinnell, and the icebergs that stand as monuments to Franklin and his men will endure as the memorial of this great merchant, and the sunlight that plays upon the glittering arctic cliffs will write his epitaph.

But I am speaking of those who, out of their pinched poverty, help others’97of such men as those Christian missionaries at the West, who are living on two hundred and fifty dollars a year, that they may proclaim Christ to the people. And of those people who have only a half loaf of bread, but give a piece of it to others who are more hungry; and of those who have only a scuttle of coal, but help others to fuel; and of those who have only a dollar in their pocket and give twenty-five cents to somebody else; and of that father who wears a shabby coat, and of that mother who wears a faded dress, that their children may be well appareled. You call them paupers or ragamuffins or tatterdemalions. I call them heroes and heroines. You and I may not know where they live, or what their name is. God knows; and they have more angels hovering over them than you and I have, and they will have a higher seat in heaven. They may have only a cup of cold water to give a poor traveler, or may have only picked a splinter from under the nail of a child’92s finger, or have put only two mites into the treasury, but the Lord knows them. Considering what they had, they did more than we have ever done, and their faded dress will become a white robe, and the small room will be an eternal mansion, and the old hat will be a coronet of victory, and all the applause of earth and all the shouting of heaven will be drowned out when God rises up to give his reward to those humble workers in his Kingdom, and to say to them, ’93Well done, good and faithful servant.’94

You have all seen or heard of the ruin of Melrose Abbey; I suppose in some respects it is the most exquisite ruin on earth. And yet, looking at it, I was not so impressed’97you may set it down to bad taste’97but I was not so deeply stirred as I was at a tombstone at the foot of that abbey’97the tombstone planted by Walter Scott over the grave of an old man who had served him for a good many years in his house; the inscription most significant’97and I defy any man to stand there and read it without tears coming into his eyes’97the epitaph, ’93Well done, good and faithful servant.’94 Oh, when our work is over, will it be found, because of anything we have done for God, or the Church, or suffering humanity, that such an inscription is appropriate for us? God grant it may.

Who are those who were bravest and deserved the greatest monument’97Lord Claverhouse and his soldiers, or John Brown, the Edinburgh carrier, and his wife? Mr. Atkins, the persecuted minister of Jesus Christ in Scotland, was secreted by John Brown and his wife, and Claverhouse rode up one day with his armed men and shouted in front of the house. John Brown’92s little girl came out. He said to her, ’93Well, miss, is Mr. Atkins here?’94 She made no answer, for she could not betray the minister of the Gospel. ’93Ha!’94 Claverhouse said, ’93then you are a chip of the old block, are you? I have something in my pocket for you. It is a nosegay. Some people call it a thumbscrew, but I call it a nosegay.’94 And he got off his horse, and he put it on the little girl’92s hand, and began to turn it until the bones cracked, and she cried. He said, ’93Don’92t cry, don’92t cry; this isn’92t a thumbscrew; this is a nosegay.’94 And they heard the child’92s cry, and the father and mother came out, and Claverhouse said, ’93Ha! it seems that you three have laid your holy heads together, determined to die, like all the rest of your hypocritical, canting, sniveling crew; rather than give up good Mr. Atkins, pious Mr.

Atkins, you would die. I have a telescope with me that will improve your vision,’94 and he pulled out a pistol. ’93Now,’94 he said, ’93you old pragmatical fellow, lest you should catch cold this cold morning, and for the honor and the safety of the king, to say nothing of the glory of God and the good of our souls, I will proceed simply and in the neatest and most expeditious style possible to blow your brains out.’94

John Brown fell upon his knees and began to pray. ’93Ah!’94 said Claverhouse, ’93look out, if you are going to pray; steer clear of the king, the council, and Richard Cameron.’94 ’93O Lord,’94 said John Brown, ’93since it seems to be thy will that I should leave this world for a world where I can love thee better and serve thee more, I put this poor widow woman and these helpless, fatherless children into thy hands. We have been together in peace a good while, but now we must look forth to a better meeting in heaven; and as for these poor creatures, blindfolded and infatuated, that stand before me, convert them before it be too late, and may they who have sat in judgment, in this lonely place on this blessed morning, upon me, a poor, defenseless fellow-creature, may they, in the last judgment, find that mercy which they have refused to me, thy most unworthy but faithful servant. Amen.’94

He rose and said, ’93Isabel, the hour has come of which I spoke to you on the morning when I proposed hand and heart to you; and are you willing now, for the love of God, to let me die?’94 She put her arms around him and said, ’93The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!’94 ’93Stop that sniveling,’94 said Claverhouse. ’93I have had enough of it. Soldiers, do your work. Take aim! Fire!’94 And the head of John Brown was scattered on the ground. While the wife was gathering up in her apron the fragments of her husband’92s head’97gathering them up for burial’97Claverhouse looked into her face and said, ’93Now, my good woman, how do you feel now about your bonnie man?’94 ’93Oh!’94 she said, ’93I always thought weel of him; he has been very good to me; I had no reason for thinking anything but weel of him, and I think better of him now.’94

Oh, what a grand thing it will be in the last day to see God pick out his heroes and heroines! Who are those paupers of eternity trudging off from the gate of heaven? Who are they? The Lord Claverhouses and the Herods and the Lord Jeffreyses of the earth. They had sceptres and they had crowns and they had thrones, but they lived for their own aggrandizement, and they broke the heart of nations. Heroes of earth, but paupers in eternity. I beat the drums of their eternal despair. Woe! woe! woe!

But there is great excitement in heaven. Why those long processions? Why the booming of that great bell in the tower? It is coronation day in heaven. Who are those rising on the thrones, with crowns of eternal royalty? They must have been great people on earth, world-renowned people. No. They taught in a ragged school. Taught in a ragged school! Is that all? That is all. Who are those souls waving sceptres of eternal dominion? Why, they were little children who waited on invalid mothers. That all? That is all. She was called ’93Little Mary’94 on earth. She is an empress now. Who are that great multitude on the highest thrones of heaven? Who are they? Why, they fed the hungry, they clothed the naked, they healed the sick, they comforted the heart-broken. They never found any rest until they put their head down on the pillow of the sepulchre. God watched them. God laughed defiance at the enemies who put their heels hard down on these his dear children; and one day the Lord struck his hand so hard on his thigh that the omnipotent sword rattled in the buckler, as he said: ’93I am their God, and no weapon formed against them shall prosper.’94 What harm can the world do you when the Lord Almighty with unsheathed sword fights for you?

Go home to the place just where God has put you, to play the hero or heroine. Do not envy any man his money or his applause or his social position. Do not envy any woman her wardrobe or her exquisite appearance. Be the hero or the heroine. If there be no flour in the house, and you do not know where your children are to get bread, listen and you will hear something tapping against the window-pane. Go to the window, and you will find it is the beak of a raven; and open the window, and there will fly in the messenger that fed Elijah. Do you think that the God who grows the cotton of the South will let you freeze for lack of clothes? Do you think that the God who allowed the disciples on that Sabbath morning to go into the grain-field and then take the grain and rub it in their hands and eat’97do you think God will let you starve? Did you ever hear the experience of that old man: ’93I have been young, and now am I old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread?’94 Get up out of your discouragement, O troubled soul, O sewing woman, O man kicked and cuffed by unjust employers, O ye who are hard bested in the battle of life and know not which way to turn, O you bereft one, O you sick one with complaints you have told to no one! Come and get the comfort of this subject. Listen to our great Captain’92s cheer: ’93To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage