566. Pain

Pain

Rev_21:4 : ’93Neither shall there be any more pain.’94

At the close of a period of much suffering, many perishing day by day under the heat, and thousands of cases unreported, save to the mothers and the wives and the daughters who received the faint and exhausted ones, and while there are many wounded of great and appalling casualty, in midsummer I preach a sermon consolatory. The first question that you ask when about to change your residence to any city is, ’93What is the health of the place? is it shaken of terrible disorders? what are the bills of mortality? what is the death-rate? how high rises the thermometer?’94 And am I not reasonable in asking, What are the sanitary conditions of the heavenly city into which we all hope to move? My text answers it by saying, ’93Neither shall there be any more pain.’94

First, I remark, there will be no pain of disappointment in heaven. If I could put the picture of what you anticipated of life when you began it beside the picture of what you have realized, I would find a great difference. You have stumbled upon great disappointments. Perhaps you expected riches, and you have worked hard enough to gain them; you have planned and worried and persisted until your hands were worn and your brain was racked and your heart fainted, and at the end of this long strife with misfortune you find that if you have not been positively defeated it has been a drawn battle. It is still tug and tussle’97this year losing what you gained last, financial uncertainties pulling down faster than you build. For perhaps twenty or thirty years you have been running your craft straight into the teeth of the wind. Perhaps you have had domestic disappointment. Your children, upon whose education you lavished your hard-earned dollars, have not turned out as expected. Notwithstanding all your counsels and prayers and painstaking they will not do right. Many a good father has had a bad boy. Absalom trod on David’92s heart. That mother never imagined all this as twenty or thirty years ago she sat by that child’92s cradle.

Your life has been a chapter of disappointments. But, come with me, and I will show you a different scene. By God’92s grace, entering the other city you will never again have a blasted hope. The most jubilant of expectations will not reach the realization. Coming to the top of one hill of joy, there will be other heights rising upon the vision. This song of transport will but lift you to higher anthems; the sweetest choral but a prelude to more glorious harmony; all things better than you had anticipated’97the robe richer, the crown brighter, the temple grander, the throng mightier.

Further, I remark, there will be no pain of weariness. It is now twelve or fifteen hours since you quit work, but many of you are unrested, some from overwork, and some from dulness of trade, the latter more exhausting than the former. Your ankles ache, your spirits flag, you want rest. Are these wheels always to turn? these shuttles to fly? these axes to hew? these shovels to delve? these pens to fly? these books to be posted? these goods to be sold? Ah! the great holiday approaches. No more curse of taskmasters. No more stooping until the back aches. No more calculation until the brain is bewildered. No more pain. No more carpentry, for the mansions are all built. No more masonry, for the walls are all reared. No more diamond-cutting, for the gems are all set. No more gold-beating, for the crowns are all completed. No more agriculture, for the harvests are spontaneous.

Further, there will be no more pain of poverty. It is a hard thing to be really poor, to have your coat wear out, and no money to get another; to have your flour-barrel empty, and nothing to buy bread with for your children; to live in an unhealthy row, and no means to change your habitation; to have your child sick with some mysterious disease, and not be able to secure eminent medical ability; to have son or daughter begin the world, and you not have anything to help them in starting; with a mind capable of research and high contemplation, to be perpetually fixed on questions of mere livelihood. Poets try to throw a romance about the poor man’92s cot; but there is no romance about it. Poverty is hard, cruel, unrelenting. But Lazarus waked up without his rags and his diseases, and so all of Christ’92s poor wake up at last without any of their disadvantages’97no almshouses, for they are all princes; no rents to pay, for the residence is gratuitous; no garments to buy, for the robes are divinely fashioned; no seats in church for poor folks, but equality among temple worshipers. No hovels, no hard crusts, no insufficient apparel. ’93They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat.’94 No more pain!

Further, there will be no pain of parting. All these associations must some time break up. We clasp hands and walk together, and talk and laugh and weep together; but we must after a while separate. Your grave will be in one place, mine in another. We will look each other full in the face for the last time. We will be sitting together some evening, or walking together some day, and nothing will be unusual in our appearance or our conversation; but God knows that it is the last time; and messengers from eternity, on their errand to take us away, know it is the last time; and in heaven, where they make ready for our departing spirits, they know it is the last time.

Oh, the long agony of earthly separation! It is awful to stand in your nursery fighting death back from the couch of your child, and try to hold fast the little one, and see all the time that he is getting weaker, and the breath is shorter, and make outcry to God to help us, and to the doctors to save him, and see it is of no avail, and then to know that his spirit is gone, and that you have nothing left but the casket that held the jewel, and that in two or three days you must even put that away, and walk around about the house and find it desolate, sometimes feeling rebellious, and then to resolve to feel differently, and to resolve on self-control, and just as you have come to what you think is perfect self-control, to suddenly come upon some little sack or picture or shoe half worn out, and how all the floods of the soul burst in one wild wail of agony! Oh, my God, how hard it is to part, to close the eyes that never can look merry at our coming, to kiss the hand that will never again do us a kindness. I know religion gives great consolation in such an hour, and we ought to be comforted; but anyhow and anyway you make it, it is awful. On steamboat wharf and at rail-car window we may smile when we say farewell; but these good-byes at the deathbed, they just take hold of the heart with iron pincers, and tear it out by the roots until all the fibers quiver and curl in the torture, and drop thick blood. These separations are wine-presses into which our hearts, like red clusters, are thrown, and then trouble turns the windlass round and round until we are utterly crushed, and have no more capacity to suffer, and we stop crying because we have wept all our tears.

On every street, at every doorstep, by every couch, there have been partings. But once past the heavenly portals, and you are through with such scenes forever. In that land there are many hand-claspings and embracings, but only in recognition. That great home circle never breaks. Once find your comrades there, and you have them forever. No crape floats from the door of that blissful residence. No cleft hillside where the dead sleep. All awake, wide awake, and forever. No pushing out of emigrant ship for foreign shore. No tolling of bell as the funeral passes. Whole generations in glory. Hand to hand, heart to heart, joy to joy. No creeping up the limbs of the death-chill, the feet cold until hot flannels cannot warm them. No rattle of sepulchral gates. No parting, no pain.

Further, the heavenly city will have no pain of body. The race is pierced with sharp distresses. The surgeon’92s knife must cut. The dentist’92s pincers must pull. Pain is fought with pain. The world is a hospital. Scores of diseases, like vultures contending for a carcass, struggle as to which shall have it. Our natures are infinitely susceptible to suffering. The eye, the foot, the hand, with immense capacity of anguish.

The little child meets at the entrance of life manifold diseases. You hear the shrill cry of infancy as the lancet strikes into the swollen gum. You see its head toss in consuming fevers that take more than half of them into the dust. Old age passes, dizzy and weak and short-breathed and dim-sighted. On every northeast wind come down pleurisies and pneumonias. War lifts its sword and hacks away the life of whole generations. The hospitals of the earth groan into the ear of God their complaint. Asiatic choleras and ship-fevers and typhoids and London plagues make the world’92s knees knock together.

Pain has gone through every street, and up every ladder, and down every shaft. It is on the wave, on the mast, on the beach. Wounds from clip of elephant’92s tusk and adder’92s sting and crocodile’92s teeth and horse’92s hoof and wheel’92s revolution. We gather up the infirmities of our parents and transmit to our children the inheritance augmented by our own sicknesses, and they add to them their own disorders, to pass the inheritance to other generations. In 262 the plague in Rome smote into the dust five thousand citizens daily. In 544, in Constantinople, one thousand grave-diggers were not enough to bury the dead. In 1813 the ophthalmia seized the whole Prussian army. At times the earth has sweltered with suffering. Count up the pains of Austerlitz, where thirty thousand fell; of Fontenoy, where one hundred thousand fell; of Chalons, where three hundred thousand fell; of Marius’92 fight, in which two hundred and ninety thousand fell; of the tragedy at Herat, where Genghis Khan massacred one million six hundred thousand men, and of Nishar, where he slew one million seven hundred and forty-seven thousand people; of the eighteen million this monster sacrificed in fourteen years, as he went forth to do as he declared, to exterminate the entire Chinese nation and make the empire a pasture for cattle. Think of the death-throes of the five million men sacrificed in one campaign of Xerxes. Think of the one hundred and twenty thousand that perished in the siege of Ostend; of three hundred thousand dead at Acre; of one million one hundred thousand dead in the siege of Jerusalem; of one million eight hundred and sixteen thousand of the dead at Troy, and then complete the review by considering the stupendous estimate of Edmund Burke, that the loss by war has been thirty-five times the entire then present population of the globe.

Go through and examine the lacerations, the gunshot fractures, the saber wounds, the gashes of the battle-ax, the slain of bombshell and exploded mine and falling wall, and those destroyed under the gun-carriage and the hoof of the cavalry horse, the burning thirsts, the camp fevers, the frosts that shivered, the tropical suns that smote. Add it up, gather it into one line, compress it into one word, spell it in one syllable, clank it in one chain, pour it out in one groan, distill it into one tear.

Ay, the world has writhed in six thousand years of suffering. Why doubt the possibility of a future world of suffering when we see the tortures that have been inflicted in this? A deserter from Sebastopol coming over to the army of the allies pointed back to the fortress and said, ’93That place is a perfect hell.’94 Our lexicographers, aware of the immense necessity of having plenty of words to express the different shades of trouble, have strewn over their pages such words as ’93annoyance,’94 ’93distress,’94 ’93grief,’94 ’93bitterness,’94 ’93heartache,’94 ’93misery,’94 ’93twinge,’94 ’93pang,’94 ’93torture,’94 ’93affliction,’94 ’93anguish,’94 ’93tribulation,’94 ’93wretchedness,’94 ’93woe.’94 But I have a glad sound for every hospital, for every sick room, for every lifelong invalid, for every broken heart. ’93There shall be no more pain.’94 Thank God! thank God! No malarias float in the air. No bruised foot treads that street. No weary arm. No painful respiration. No hectic flush. No one can drink of that healthy fountain and keep faint-hearted or faint-headed. He whose foot touches that pavement becometh an athlete. The first kiss of that summer air will take the wrinkles from the old man’92s cheek. Amid the multitude of songsters, not one diseased throat. The first flash of the throne will scatter the darkness of those who were born blind. See, the lame man leaps as a hart, and the dumb sing. From that bath of infinite delight we shall step forth, our weariness forgotten.

Who are those radiant ones? Why, that one had his jaw shot off at Fredericksburg; that one lost his eyes in a powder blast; that one had his back broken by a fall from the ship’92s halyards; that one died of gangrene in the hospital. No more pain. Sure enough, here is Robert Hall, who never before saw a well day, and Edward Payson, whose body was ever torn of distress, and Richard Baxter, who passed through untold physical torture. All well. No more pain. Here, too, are the Theban legion, a great host of six thousand six hundred and sixty-six put to the sword for Christ’92s sake. No distortion on their countenances. No fires to hurt them, or floods to drown them, or racks to tear them. All well. Here are the Scotch Covenanters, none to hunt them now. The dark cave and imprecations of Lord Claverhouse exchanged for temple service, and the presence of him who helped Hugh Latimer out of the fire. All well. No more pain.

In this sermon I set open the door of heaven until there blows on you this refreshing breeze. The fountains of God have made it cool, and the gardens have made it sweet. I do not know that Solomon ever heard on a hot day, the ice click in an ice-pitcher, but he wrote as if he did when he said, ’93As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.’94

Clambering among the Green Mountains one summer, I was tired and hot and thirsty, and I shall not forget how refreshing it was when, after a while, I heard the mountain brook tumbling over the rocks. I had no cup, no chalice, so I got down on my knees and face to drink. Oh, ye climbers on the journey, with cut feet and parched tongues and fevered temples, listen to the rumbling of sapphire brooks, amid flowered banks, over golden shelvings. Listen! ’93The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them unto living fountains of water.’94 I do not offer it to you in a chalice. To take this you must bend. Get down on your knees and on your face, and drink out of this great fountain of God’92s consolation. ’93And lo! I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage