563. Christ’s March Through the Centuries

Christ’92s March Through the Centuries

Rev_19:12 : ’93On his head were many crowns.’94

May your ears be alert and your thoughts concentrated, and all the powers of your soul aroused, while I speak to you of ’93The march of Christ through the centuries.’94 You say, ’93Give us then a good start, in rooms of vermilion and on floor of mosaic and amid corridors of porphyry and under canopies dyed in all the splendors of the setting sun.’94 You can have no such starting place. At the time our Chieftain was born, there were castles on the beach of Galilee, and palaces at Jerusalem, and imperial bath-rooms at Jericho, and obelisks at Cairo, and the Pantheon at Rome, with its Corinthian portico and its sixteen granite columns; and the Parthenon at Athens with its glistening coronet of temples; and there were mountains of fine architecture in many parts of the world. But none of them were to be the starting-place of the Chieftain I celebrate.

A cow’92s stall, a winter month, an atmosphere in which are the moan of camels and the baaing of sheep and the barking of dogs and the rough banter of hostleries. He takes his first journey before he could walk. Armed desperadoes with hands of blood were ready to snatch him down into butchery. Rev. William H. Thompson, the veteran and beloved missionary, whom I remember meeting in Denver in his eighty-sixth year, has described, in his volume, entitled ’93The Land and the Book,’94 Bethlehem as he saw it. During my sojourn in Palestine I walked up and down the gray hills of Jura limestone on which the village now rests. The fact that King David had been born there, had not during ages elevated the village into any special attention. The other fact that it was the birthplace of our Chieftain did not keep the place in after years from special dishonor, for Hadrian built there the grove of Adonis and for one hundred and eighty years the religion there observed was the most abhorrent debauchery the world has ever seen. Our Chieftain was considered dangerous from the start. The world had bent suspicious eyes upon him because at the time of his birth the astrologers had seen stellar commotions, a world out of its place and shooting down toward a caravansary. Star divination was a science. As late as the eighteenth century it had its votaries. At the court of Catherine Medici it was honored. Kepler, one of the greatest philosophers the world ever saw, declared it a true science. As late as the reign of Charles II, Lilly, the great astrologer, was called before the House of Commons of England to give his views of future events. For ages, the bright appearance of Mars was said to mean war, of Jupiter, power, of the Pleiades, storms at sea. And after a while it may be found that as the moon lifts the tide of the sea, and the sun affects the growth or blasting of crops, other worlds may have something to do with the destiny of individuals and nations in this world.

I do not wonder that the commotions in the heavens excited the wise men on the night our Chieftain was born. As he came from another world, and after thirty-three years was again to exchange worlds, it does not seem strange to me that astronomy should have felt the effect of his coming. And instead of being unbelieving about the one star that stopped, I wonder that all the worlds in the heavens did not, that Christmas night, make some special demonstration. Why should they leave to one world, or meteor, the bearing of news of the humanization of Christ? Where was Mars that night, that it did not indicate the mighty wars that were to come between righteousness and iniquity? Where was Jupiter that night, that it did not celebrate Omnipotence incarnated? Where were the Pleiades that night, that they did not announce the storms of persecution that would assail our Chieftain?

In watching this march of Christ through the centuries, we must not walk before him or beside him, for that would not be reverential or worshipful; so we walk behind him. We follow him while not yet in his teens, up a Jerusalem terrace, to a building six hundred feet long and six hundred feet wide, by walls of beveled masonry, and under the hovering splendor of gateways, and by a pillar crowned with capital chiseled into the shape of flowers and leaves, and near a marble screen, until a group of white-haired philosophers and theologians gathers around him, and then the boy bewilders, and confounds, and overwhelms these scholarly septuagenarians with questions they cannot answer, and under his quick whys and whyfors, and hows and whens, they pull their white beards with embarrassment, and rub their wrinkled foreheads in confusion, and putting their staff hard down on the marble floor as they arise to go, they must feel like chiding the boldness that allows twelve years of age to ask seventy-five years of age such puzzlers. Out of this building we follow him into the Quarantania, the mountain of temptation, its side to this day black with robbers’92 dens. Look! Up the side of this mountain come all the forces of perdition to effect our Chieftain’92s capture. But although weakened by forty days and forty nights of abstinence, he hurls all Pandemonium down the rocks, suggestive of how he can hurl into helplessness all our temptations. And now we climb right after Him, up the tough sides of the ’93Mount of Beatitudes,’94 and on the highest pulpit of rocks, the Valley of Hatin before him, the lake of Galilee to the right of him, the Mediterranean Sea to the left of him, he preaches a sermon that yet will transform the world with its applied sentiment. Now we follow our Chieftain on Lake Galilee. We must keep to the beach, for our feet are not shod with the supernatural, and we remember what poor work Peter made of it when he tried to walk the water. Christ, our leader, is on the top of the tossing waves, and it is about half-past three in the morning, and it is the darkest time just before daybreak. But by the flashes of lightning we see him putting his feet on the crest of the wave, stepping from crest to crest, walking the white surf, solid as though it were frozen. The sailors think a ghost is striding the tempest, but he cheers them into placidity, showing himself to be a great Christ for sailors. And he walks the Atlantic and Pacific and Mediterranean and Adriatic now, and if exhausted and affrighted voyagers will listen for his voice at half-past three o’92clock in the morning on any sea, indeed, at any hour, they will hear his voice of compassion and encouragement.

We continue to follow our Chieftain, and here is a blind man by the wayside. It is not from cataract of the eye or from ophthalmia, the eye-extinguisher of the East; but he was born blind. ’93Be opened!’94 he cries, and first there is a smarting of the eye-lids, and then a twilight, and then a midnoon, and then a shout. ’93I see! I see!’94 Tell it to all the blind, and they, at least, can appreciate it. And here is the widow’92s dead son, and here is the expired damsel, and here is Lazarus! ’93Live!’94 our Chieftain cries, and they live. Tell it through all the bereft households; tell it among the graves. And here around him gather the deaf and the dumb and the sick, and at his word they turn on their couches, and blush from awful pallor of helpless illness to rubicund health, and the swollen foot of the dropsical sufferer becomes fleet as a roe on the mountains. The music of the grove and household wakens the deaf ear, and lunatic and maniac return into bright intelligence, and the leper’92s breath becomes as sweet as the breath of a child, and the flesh as roseate. Tell it to all the sick, through all the homes, through all the hospitals. Tell it at twelve o’92clock at night; tell it at two o’92clock in the morning; tell it at half-past three, and in the last watch of the night, that Jesus walks the tempest. Still we follow our Chieftain, until the government that gave him no protection insists that he pay tax; and, too poor to raise the requisite two dollars and seventy-five cents, he orders Peter to catch a fish that has it in its mouth’97a Roman stater, which is a bright coin, (and you know that fish naturally bite at anything bright), but it was a miracle that Peter should have caught it at the first haul. Now we follow our Chieftain until, for the paltry sum of fifteen dollars, Judas sells him to his pursuers. Tell it to all the betrayed! If for ten thousand dollars, or for five hundred dollars, or for one hundred dollars, your interests were sold out, consider for how much cheaper a sum the Lord of earth and heaven was surrendered to humiliation and death. But here, while following him on a Spring night between eleven and twelve o’92clock, we see the flash of torches and lanterns, and we hear the cry of a mob of Nihilists. They are breaking in on the quietude of Gethsemane with clubs’97like a mob with sticks chasing a mad dog. It is a herd of Jerusalem ’93roughs’94 led on by Judas to arrest Christ and punish him for being the loveliest and best being that ever lived. But rioters are liable to assail the wrong man. How were they to be sure which one was Jesus? ’93I will kiss him,’94 says Judas, ’93and by that signal you will know on whom to lay your hands of arrest.’94 So the kiss, which throughout the human race and for all time God intended as the most sacred demonstration of affection’97for Paul writes to the Romans concerning the ’93holy kiss,’94 and celebrates the kiss of charity, and with that conjunction of the lips Laban met the lips of Jacob, and Joseph met his brethren, and Aaron met Moses, and Samuel met Saul, and Jonathan met David, and Orpah parted from Naomi, and Paul separated from his friends at Ephesus, and the father in the parable greeted the returning prodigal, and all the world is commanded to ’93Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and ye perish from the way’94’97that most sacred demonstration of reunion and affection was desecrated as the treacherous lips of Judas touched the pure cheek of Christ, and the horrid smack of that kiss has its echo in the treachery and debasement and hypocrisy of all ages. As in December, 1889, I walked on the way from Bethany, and at the foot of Mount Olivet, a half-mile from the wall of Jerusalem, through the Garden of Gethsemane, and under the eight venerable olive trees now standing, their pomological ancestors having been witnesses of the occurrences spoken of, the scene of horror and of crime came back to me, until I shuddered with the historical reminiscence.

In further following our great Chieftain’92s march through the centuries, I find myself in a crowd in front of Herod’92s palace in Jerusalem, and on a movable platform placed upon a tesselated pavement, Pontius Pilate sits. And as once a year a condemned criminal is pardoned, Pilate lets the people choose whether it shall be an assassin of our Chieftain, and they all cry out for the liberation of the assassin, thus declaring they prefer a murderer to the salvation of the world. Pilate took a basin of water in front of these people and tried to wash off the blood of this murder from his hands, but he could not. They are still lifted, and I see looming up through all the ages, eight fingers and two thumbs red with the carnage.

Still following our Chieftain, I ascend the hill of which General Gordon, the great English explorer and arbiter, made the first clay model. It is hard climbing for our Chieftain, for he has not only two heavy timbers to carry on his back, the upright and horizontal pieces of the Cross, but he is suffering from exhaustion, caused by lack of food, mountain chills, desert heats, whippings with elm-wood rods, and years of maltreatment. It took our party in 1889 only fifteen minutes to climb to the top of the hill and reach that limestone rock in yonder wall, which I rolled down from the apex of Mount Calvary. But I think our Chieftain must have taken a long time for the ascent, for he had all earth and all heaven, and all hell on his back, as he climbed from base to summit, and there endured what William Cowper, and John Milton, and Charles Wesley, and Isaac Watts, and James Montgomery, and all the other sacred poets have attempted to put in verse; and Angelo, and Raphael, and Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci, and all the great Italian, and German, and Spanish, and French artists have attempted to paint; and Bossuet, and Massillon, and Jonathan Edwards, and Thomas Chalmers have attempted to preach. Something of its overwhelming awfulness you may estimate from the fact that the sun which shines in the heavens could not endure it’97the sun which unflinchingly looked upon the deluge that drowned the world; which, without blushing, looked upon the ruins of the earthquakes that swallowed Lisbon and Caraccas, and has looked unblanched at the battlefields of Arbela, Blenheim, Megiddo and Esdraelon, and all the scenes of carnage that have ever scalded and drenched the earth with human gore’97the sun could not look upon the scene. The sun dropped over its face a veil of cloud. It withdrew. It hid itself. It said to the midnight, ’93I resign to thee this spectacle upon which I have no strength to gaze; thou art blind, O Midnight! and for that reason I commit to thee this tragedy!’94 Then the nighthawk and the bat flew by, and the jackal howled in the ravines.

Now we follow our Chieftain, as they carry his limp and lacerated form amid the flowers and trees of a garden, the gladioluses, the oleanders, the lilies, the geraniums, the mandrakes, down five or six steps to an aisle of granite where he sleeps. But only a little while he sleeps there, there is an earthquake in all that region, leaving the rocks to this day, in their aslant and ruptured state, declarative of the fact that something extraordinary there happened. And we see our Chieftain arouse from his brief slumber and wrestle down the ruffian Death, who would keep him imprisoned in that cavern, and put both heels on the monster, and coming forth with a cry that will not cease to be echoed until on the great resurrection day the door of the last sepulchre shall be unhinged and flung clanging into the debris of demolished cemeteries.

We follow our Chieftain to the shoulder of Mount Olivet, and without wings he rises, the disciples grasping for his robes too late to reach them, and across the great gulfs of space with one bound he gains that world which for thirty-three years had been denied his companionship, and all heaven lifted a shout of welcome as he entered, and of coronation as up the mediatorial throne he mounted. It was the greatest day heaven had ever seen. They had him back again from tears, from wounds, from ills, from a world that never appreciated him, to a world in which he was the chief delight. In all the libretto of celestial music, it was hard to find an anthem enough conjubilant to celebrate the joy, saintly, seraphic, archangelic, deific.

But still we follow our Chieftain in his march through the centuries, for invisibly he still walks the earth, and by the eye of faith we still follow him. You can tell where he walks by the churches, and hospitals, and reformatory institutions, and houses of mercy that spring up along the way. I hear his tread in the sick room, and in the abodes of bereavement. He marches on, and the nations are gathering around him. The islands of the sea are hearing his voice. The continents are feeling his power. America will be his! Europe will be his! Asia will be his! Africa will be his! Australia will be his! New Zealand will be his! All the earth will be his! Do you realize that until now it was impossible for the world to be converted? Not until very recently has the world been found. The Bible talks about ’93the ends of the earth,’94 and ’93the uttermost parts of the world,’94 as being saved, but not until now have the ’93ends of the earth’94 been discovered, and not until now have the ’93uttermost parts of the world’94 been revealed. The navigator did his work, the explorer did his work, the scientist did his work, and now for the first time since the world has been created has the world been known, measured off, and geographized, the last, hidden and unknown tract has been mapped out and now the work of evangelization will be begun with an earnestness and velocity as yet unimagined. The steamships are ready; the lightning expresses are ready; the printing presses are ready; the telegraph and telephone are ready; millions of Christians are ready, and now see Christ marching on through the centuries. Marching on! Marching on!!

One by one governments will fall into line, and constitutions and literatures will adore his name. More honored and worshiped is he in this year of grace than at any time since the year one, and the day hastens when all nations will join one procession ’93following the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.’94 Marching on! Marching on!!

This dear old world, whose back has been scourged, whose eyes have been blinded, whose heart has been wrung, will yet rival heaven. This planet’92s torn robe of pain and crime and dementia will come off, and the white and spotless and glittering robe of holiness and happiness will come on. The last wound will have stung for the last time; the last grief will have wiped its last tear; the last criminal will have repented of his last crime, and our world, that has been a straggler among worlds, a lost star, a wayward planet, a rebellious globe, a miscreant satellite, will hear the voice that uttered childish plaint in Bethlehem, and agonized prayer in Gethsemane, and dying groan on Golgotha, and as this voice cries ’93Come,’94 our world will return from its wandering never again to stray. Marching on! Marching on!!

What a day in heaven that will be, when this march of Christ is finished! I know that on the Cross Christ said, ’93It is finished,’94 but he meant his sacrificial work was finished. All earth and all heaven know that evangelization is not finished, but there will come a day in heaven most rapturous. It may be after our world, which is thought to have about fifteen hundred million people, shall have on its decks twice its present population, namely, three thousand million souls, and all redeemed, and it will be after this world shall be so damaged by conflagration that no human foot can tread its surface and no human being can breathe its air, but most certainly the day will come when heaven will be finished and the last of the twelve gates of the eternal city shall have clanged shut, never to open except for the admission of some celestial embassage returning from some other world, and Christ may strike his scarred but healed hand in emphasis on the arm of the amethystine throne and say in substance: ’93All my ransomed ones are gathered; the work is done; I have finished my march through the centuries.’94

When, in 1813, after the battle of Leipsic, which decided the fate of the nineteenth century’97in some respects the most tremendous battle ever fought’97the bridge down, the river incarnadined, the street choked with the wounded, the fields for miles around strewn with a dead soldiery from whom all traces of humanity had been dashed out, there met in the public square of that city of Leipsic the allied conquerers, and kings who had gained the victory’97the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Russia, the Crown Prince of Sweden’97followed by the chiefs of their armies. With drawn swords these monsters saluted each other and cheered for the continental victory they had together gained. History has made the scene memorable. But greater and more thrilling will be the spectacle when the world is all conquered for the truth, and in front of the palace of heaven the kings and conquerors of all the allied powers of Christian usefulness shall salute each other, and recount the struggles by which they gained the triumph, and then hand over their swords to him who is the Chief of the conquerors, crying: ’93Thine, O, Christ! is the Kingdom; take the crown of victory; the crown of dominion; the crown of grace; the crown of glory.’94 ’93On his head were many crowns.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage