012. The Shut-In

The Shut-In

Gen_7:16 : ’93The Lord shut him in.’94

Cosmogony has no more interesting chapter than that which speaks of that catastrophe of the ages, the submersion of our world in the time of Noah, the first ship carpenter. Many of the nations who never saw a Bible have a flood story’97Egyptian flood story; Grecian flood story, of which Deucalion was the Noah; Hawaiian flood story; New Zealand flood story; Chinese flood story; American Indian flood story’97all of which accounts agree in the immersion of the continents under universal rains, and that there was a ship floating with a select few of the human family and with specimens of zoological and ornithological and reptilian worlds, although I could have wished that these last had been shut out of the ark and drowned.

All of these flood stories represent the ship thus afloat as finally stranded on a mountain top. Hugh Miller in his ’93Testimony of the Rocks,’94 thinks that all these flood stories were infirm traditions of the Biblical account, and I believe him. The worst thing about the great freshet was that it struck Noah’92s Campania from above and beneath. The seas broke the chain of shells and crystal and rolled over the land, and the heavens opened their clouds for falling columns of water which roared and thundered on the roof of the great ship for a month and ten days. There was one door to the ship, but there were three parts to that door, one part for each of the three stories. The Bible account says nothing about parts of the door belonging to two of the stories, and I do not know on which floor Noah and his family voyaged, but my text tells us that the part of the door of that particular floor on which Noah stayed was closed after he had entered. ’93The Lord shut him in.’94 So there are many people now in the world as thoroughly shut in’97some by sickness, some by old age, some by special duties that will not allow them to go forth, some surrounded by deluges of misfortune and trouble, and for them my sympathies are aroused, and from them I often receive messages, and this sermon, which I hope may do good to others, is more especially intended for them. To-day I address the shut-in. ’93The Lord shut him in.’94

Notice, first of all, who closed the door so that they could not get out. Noah did not do it, nor his son Shem, nor did Ham, nor did Japheth, nor did either of the four married women who were on shipboard; nor did desperadoes who had scoffed at the idea of peril, which Noah had been preaching, close the door: they had turned their backs on the ark and had gone in disgust away. I will tell you how it was done. A hand was stretched down from heaven to close that door. It was a divine hand as well as a kind hand. ’93The Lord shut him in.’94 And the same kind and sympathetic Being has shut you in, you invalid. You thought it was an accident, ascribable to the carelessness or misdoings of others, or a mere ’93happen-so.’94 No! no! God had gracious designs for your betterment, for the cultivation of your patience, for the strengthening of your faith, for the advantage you might gain by seclusion, for your eternal salvation. He put you in a school-room where you could learn in six months or a year more than you could have learned anywhere else in a lifetime. He turned the lattice or pulled down the blinds of the sick-room, or put your swollen foot on an ottoman, or held you amid the pillows of a couch which you could not leave, for some reason that you may not now understand, but which He has promised He will explain to you satisfactorily. If not in this world, then in the world to come, for He has said, ’93What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.’94

The world has no statistics as to the number of invalids. The physicians know something about it, and the apothecaries and the pastors, but who can tell us the number of blind eyes, and deaf ears, and diseased lungs, and congested livers, and how many jangled nerves, and neuralgic temples, and rheumatic feet, or how many took no food this morning because they had no appetite to eat, or digestive organs to assimilate, or have lungs so delicate they cannot go forth when the wind is in the east, or there is a fog rising from the river, or there is a dampness on the ground or pavement because of the frost coming out? It would be easy to count the people who every day go through a street, or the number of passengers carried by a railroad company in a year, or the number of those who cross the ocean in ships; but who can give us the statistics of the great multitudes who are shut in? I call the attention of all such to their superior opportunities of doing good.

Those of us who are well can see clearly, and hear distinctly, and partake of food of all sorts, and questions of digestion never occur to us, and we can wade the snowbanks, and take an equinox in our faces, and endure the thermometer at zero, and every breath of air is a tonic and a stimulus, and sound sleep meets us within five minutes after our head touches the pillow. So we do not make so much of an impression when we talk about the consolations of religion. The world says right away, ’93I guess that man mistakes buoyancy of natural spirits for religion. What does he know about it? He has never been tried.’94 But when one goes out and reports to the world that that morning on his way to business he called to see you and found you cheerful and hopeful after being kept in your room for two months, and that you had not one word of complaint, and asked all about everybody, and rejoiced in the success of your business friends, although your own business had almost come to a standstill through your absence from store or office or shop, and that you sent your love to all your friends, and told them that if you did not meet them again in this world, you hoped to meet them in dominions seraphic, with a quiet word of advice to the man who carried the message about the importance of his not neglecting his own soul, but through Christ seeking something better than this world can give him’97why, all the business men in the counting-room say, ’93Good! Now, that is religion!’94 And the clerks get hold of the story and talk it over, so that the weigher and cooper and hackman, standing on the doorstep, say, ’93That is splendid! Now, that is what I call religion!’94

It is a good thing to preach on a Sunday morning, the people assembled in most respectable attire and seated on soft cushions, the preacher standing in neatly upholstered pulpit, surrounded by personal friends, and after an inspiring hymn has been sung, and that sermon, if preached in faith, will do good; but the most effective sermon is preached by one seated in dressing gown, in an arm-chair into which the invalid has, with much difficulty, been lifted, the surrounding shelves filled with medicine bottles, some to produce sleep, some for the relief of sudden paroxysm, some for stimulant, some for tonic, some for anodyne, and some for febrifuge, the pale preacher quoting promises of the Gospel, telling of the glories of a sympathetic Christ, assuring the one or two or three persons who hear it of the mighty reinforcements of religion. You say that to such a sermon there are only two or three hearers. Aye! But the visitor calling at that room, then closing the door softly and going away, tells the story, and the whole neighborhood hears it, and it will take all eternity to realize the grand and uplifting influence of that sermon about God and the soul, though preached to an audience of only one man or one woman. The Lord has ordained all such invalids for a style of usefulness which athletics and men of two hundred pounds healthy avoirdupois cannot affect. It was not an enemy that fastened you in that one room, or sent you on crutches, the longest journey you made for many weeks being from bed to sofa, and from sofa to looking-glass, where you are shocked at the pallor of your own cheek and the pinchedness of your features; then back again from mirror to sofa, and from sofa to bed, with a long sigh, saying, ’93How good it feels to get back again to my old place on the pillow!’94 Remember who it is that appointed the day when, for the first time in many years you could not go to business, and who has kept a record of all the weary days and all the sleepless nights of your exile from the world. Oh, weary man! Oh, feeble woman! It was the Lord who shut you in. Do you remember that some of the noblest and best of men have been prisoners? Ezekiel was a prisoner, Jeremiah a prisoner, Paul a prisoner, St. John a prisoner, John Bunyan a prisoner. Though human hate seemed to have all to do with them, really the Lord shut them in.

No doubt, while on that voyage, Noah and his three sons and all the four ladies of the antedulivian world often thought of the bright hillsides and the green fields where they had walked, and of the homes where they had lived. They had many years of experiences. Noah was six hundred years old at the time of this convulsion of nature. He had seen six hundred springtimes, six hundred summers, six hundred autumns, six hundred winters. We are not told how old his wife was at this wreck of earth and sky. The Bible tells the age of a great many men, but only once gives a woman’92s age. At one time it gives Adam’92s age as one hundred and thirty years, and Jared’92s age as one hundred and sixty-two years, and Enoch’92s age as three hundred and sixty-five years, and all up and down the Bible it gives the age of men, but does not give the age of women. Why? Because, I suppose, a woman’92s age is none of our business. But all the men and women who tossed in that oriental craft had lived long enough to remember a good many of the mercies and kindnesses of God, and they could not blot out, and I think they had no disposition to blot out the memory of those brightnesses, though now they were shut in.

Neither should the shut-in of our time forget the blessings of the past. Have you been blind for ten years? Thank God for the time when you saw as clearly as any of us can see, and let the pageant of all the radiant landscapes and illumined skies which you ever looked upon kindle your rapturous gratitude. I do not now see Raphael’92s ’93Madona di San Sisto’94 in the picture gallery of Dresden, nor Rubens’92 ’93Descent from the Cross’94 at Antwerp, nor Michael Angelo’92s ’93Last Judgment’94 on the ceiling of the Vatican, nor ’93Saint Sophia’94 at Constantinople, nor the Parthenon on the Acropolis, nor the Taj Mahal of India; but shall I not thank God that I have seen them? Is it possible that such midnight darkness shall ever blast my vision that I cannot call them up again? Perhaps you are so deaf that you cannot hear the chirp of a bird or solo of cantatrice, or even organ in full diapason, though you feel the foundations tremble under its majestic roll, or even the thunder-storm that makes Mount Washington echo. But are you not grateful that once you could hear trill and chant and carol and doxology? I cannot this hour hear Jenny Lind sing ’93Comin’92 Through the Rye’94 or Ole Bull’92s enchanted viol, or Parepa Rosa’92s triumphant voice over many thousands of voices and many thousands of instruments in the National Peace Jubilee of many years ago, all these sounds accompanied by the ringing of bells and the guns on Boston Common; but can I ever have my ears so silenced that I will not remember that I did hear them? Are you chained to your room now, your powers of locomotion all gone, or if coming to the house of God every step is a torture? Do you forget when, in childhood, you danced and skipped because you were so full of life you had not patience to walk, and in after years you climbed the mountains of Switzerland, putting your alpen stock high up on the glaciers which few others ever dared, and jumped long reaches in competition, and after a walk of ten miles you came in jocund as the morning? Oh, you shut-ins! Thank God for a vivid memory of the times when you were as free as the chamois on the rocks, as the eagle going straight for the sun. When the rain pounded the roof of the ark the eight voyagers on that craft did not forget the time when it gaily pattered in a summer shower, and when the door of the ark shut to keep out the tempest they did not forget the time when the door of their home in Armenia was closed to keep out the spring rains which came to fill the cups of lily and honeysuckle and make all the trees of the wood clap their hands.

Again, notice that during those forty days of storm which rocked that ship on that universal ocean of Noah’92s time, the door which shut the captain of the ship inside the craft kept him from many outside perils. How those wrathful seas would like to have got their wet hands on Noah, and pulled him out and sunk him? And do all of you of the great army of the shut-in realize that though you have special temptations where you are now, how much of the outside style of temptations you escape? Do you, the merchant incarcerated in the sick-room, realize that every hour of the day you spend looking out of the window, or gazing at the particular figure on the wall-paper, or listening to the clock’92s ticks, men are being wrecked by the allurements and uncertainties of business life? How many forgeries are committed, how many trust funds are swamped, how many public moneys are being misappropriated, how many bankruptcies suffered? It may be, it is very uncomfortable for Noah inside the ark, for the apartment is crowded and the air is vitiated from the breathing of so much human and animal life; but it is not half as bad for him as though he were outside the ark. There is not an ox, or a camel, or an antelope, or a sheep inside the ark as badly off as the proudest king outside. While you are on the pillow or lounge you will make no bad bargains, you will rush into no rash investments, you will avoid the mistakes which thousands of as good men as you are every day making.

Notice, also, that there was a limit to the shut-in experience of those ancient mariners. I suppose the forty days of the descending and uprising floods, and the one hundred and fifty days before the passengers could go ashore, must have seemed to those eight people in the big boat like a small eternity. ’93Rain, rain, rain!’94 said the wife of Noah. ’93Will it never stop?’94 For forty mornings they looked out and saw not one patch of blue sky. Floating around amid the peaks of mountains Shem, and Ham, and Japheth had to hush the fears of their wives lest they should dash against the projecting rocks. But after a while it cleared off. Sunshine, glorious sunshine! The ascending mists were folded up into clouds, which, instead of darkening the sky, only ornamented it. As they looked out of the windows these worn passengers clapped their hands and rejoiced that the storm was over, and I think if God could stop such a storm as that, He could stop any storm in your lifetime experience. If He can control a vulture in the mid-sky, He can stop a summer bat that flies in at your window. At the right time He will put the rainbow on the cloud and the deluge of your misfortunes will dry up. I preach the doctrine of limitation, relief, and disenthrallment. At just the right time the pain will cease, the bondage will drop, the imprisoned will be liberated, the fires will go out, the body and mind and soul will be free. Patience! An English proverb referring to long-continued invalidism, says, ’93A creaking gate hangs long on its hinges,’94 and this may be a protracted case of valetudinarianism; but you will have taken the last bitter drop, you will have suffered the last misinterpretation, you will feel the gnawing of the last hunger, you will have fainted the last time from exhaustion, you will have felt the last cut of the lancet, you will have wept under the last loneliness. The last week of the Noachian deluge came, the last day, the last hour, the last moment. The beating of the rain on the roof ceased, and the dashing of the billows on the side of the ship quieted, and peacefully as a yacht moves out over quiet Lake Cayuga, Como, or Luzerne, the ark, with its illustrious passengers and important freight, glided to its mountain wharfage.

Notice, also, that on the cessation of the deluge, the shut-ins came out, and they built their houses and cultivated their gardens and started a new world on the ruins of the old world that had been drowned out. Though Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after this world-wide catastrophe, and no doubt his fellow-passengers survived centuries, I warrant they never got over talking about that voyage. Now, I have seen Dor’e9’92s pictures, and many other pictures, of the entrance into the ark, two and two of the human family and the animal creation into that ship which sailed between two worlds, antediluvian world and the postdiluvian world, but I never saw a picture of their coming out; yet, their embarkation was not more important than their disembarkation. Many a crew has entered a ship that never landed. Witness the line of sunken ships, like a submarine cable of anguish, across the ocean depths, from America to Europe. If any ship might expect complete wreckage, the one Noah commanded might have expected it. But no! Those who embarked, disembarked. Over the plank reaching down the side of the ark to the Armenian cliffs on which they had been stranded, the procession descended. No other wharf felt so solid or afforded such attractiveness as that height of Ararat when the eight passengers put their feet on it. And no sooner had the last one been helped down the plank upon the rock, than the other apartments of the ship were opened, and such a dash of bird music never filled the air, as when the entire orchestra of robin-redbreast, and morning lark, and chaffinch, and mocking-bird, and house swallow took wing into the bright sky, while the cattle began to low and the sheep to bleat and the horses to neigh for the pasture, which from the awful submergence had now begun to grow green and aromatic. I tell you plainly, nothing interests me more in that tragedy, from the first to the last act, than the ’93Exit’94 and the ’93Exeunt;’94 than the fact that the ’93shut-ins’94 became the ’93got-outs.’94 And I now cheer with this story all the inmates of sick rooms and hospitals, and those prisons where men and women are unjustly endungeoned, and all the thousands who are bounded on the north, and south, and east, and west by floods, by deluges of misfortune and disaster. The ark of your trouble, if it does not land on some earthly height of vindication and rescue, will land on the heights celestial. If you have put your trust in God you will come out in the garden of the King, among orchards bending with twelve manner of fruits, and harvests that wave in the light of a sun that never sets.

As the eight passengers of that craft of Captain Noah never got over talking about their seafaring experiences, so you who have been the shut-ins of the earth will add unbounded interest to the conversation of heaven by recalling and reciting your earthly experiences, and the rougher those experiences, the more thrilling will they be to yourself and to others who listen. As when we sit amid a group of soldiers and hear their story of battle, or a group of sailors and hear their story of cyclones, we feel stupid because we have nothing in our life worth telling how uninteresting will be those souls in heaven who had smooth sailing all their lives and no accidents, while Noah tells his story of the deluge, and Lot tells his story of escape from destroyed cities, and Paul his story of the Alexandrian corn-ship, and you tell your story of the days and nights and years of the time when you were shut in. You will be interesting and sought after in heaven in proportion as you are martyrized of persecution and pain on earth. And surely you do not want to get the advantage of heavenly association and consideration without yourself adding some interest to the interview.

I hail all the shut-ins because they will be the come-outs. Heaven will be all the brighter for your earthly privations and environments. For a man who has always lived in a mansion, and walked in fine gar-dens, and regaled his appetite on best fruits, and had warmest furs for winter attire, and coolest linens for August heat, and brilliant earthly surroundings, heaven will not be so much of a change of scene. He will be disposed to say, ’93Why, I am used to this. Don’92t show me the gardens. Why, I was brought up at Chatsworth. Don’92t invite me into the chariot; I always had a splendid turn-out. Don’92t invite me to the feast; I have been accustomed to Belshazzarian banquets. It would be a relief to me if I could leave heaven a little while and rough it in some other world.’94 But what a heaven it will be for those whose limbs were so rheumatic they could not take a step when they find locomotion a delight. What a heaven it will be for those who were always sick when they are always well; and after twenty years of pain to have millions of years of health! What a light will be the light of heaven for those who on earth could not see their hand before their faces! And what will the music of heaven be to those the tympanum of whose ears for many years has ceased to vibrate! Denied on earth the pleasure of listening to Handel, and Haydn, and Mendelssohn’92s symphonies, at last reaching a world where there has never been a discord and hearing singing where all are perfect songsters, and oratorios in which all the nations of heaven chant! Great heaven it will be for all who get there, but a hundred times more of a heaven for those who were shut in.

Meanwhile you have all divine and angelic sympathy in your infirmities. That Satan thoroughly understood poor human nature was evidenced when, in plotting to make Job do wrong, the great master of evil, after having failed in every other way to overthrow the good man proposed physical distress, and then the boils came which made his wife advise him to swear right out. The mightiest test of character is physical suffering. Critics are impatient at the way Thomas Carlyle scolded at everything. His seventy years of dyspepsia were enough to make any man scold. When you see people out of patience and irascible and lachrymose, inquire into the case, and before you get through with your exploration your hypercriticism will turn to pity, and to the divine and angelic sympathy will be added your own. The clouds of your indignation, which were full of thunderbolts, will begin to rain tears of pity.

By a strange Providence, for which I shall be forever grateful, I have admission through the newspaper press, week by week, to tens of thousands of God’92s dear children who cannot enter church on the Sabbath, and hear their excellent pastors, because of the age of the sufferers, or their illness, or the lameness of foot, or their incapacity to stay in one position an hour and a half, or their poverties, or their troubles of some sort will not let them go out of doors, and to them as much as to those who hear me I preach this sermon, as I preach many of my sermons, the invisible audience always vaster than the visible, some of them tossed on wilder seas than those which tossed the eight members of Noah’92s family, and instead of forty days of storm, and five months of being shut in, as they were, it has been for these invalids five years of ’93shut-in,’94 or ten years of ’93shut-in,’94 or twenty years of ’93shut-in.’94 Oh, comforting God! Help me to comfort them! Give me two hands full of salve for their wounds.

When we were three hundred miles out at sea, a hurricane struck us, and the lifeboats were dashed from the davits, and all the lights in the cabin were put out by the rolling of the ship and the water which through the broken skylights had poured in. Captain Andrews entered and said to the men on duty, ’93Why don’92t you light up and make things brighter, for we are going to outride this storm? Passengers, cheer up! Cheer up!’94 And he struck a match and began to light the burners. He could not silence either the wind or the waves, but by the striking of that match, accompanied by encouraging words, we were all helped. And as I now find many in hurricanes of trouble, though I cannot quiet the storm, I can strike a match to light up the darkness, and I strike a match: ’93Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’94 I strike another match: ’93Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’94 I strike another match: ’93We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but one who was in all points tempted like as we are.’94 Are you old? One breath from heaven will make you everlastingly young again. Have you aches and pains? They insure Christ’92s presence and sympathy through the darkest December nights, which are the longest nights of the year. Are you bereft? Here is a resurrected Christ, whose voice is full of resurrectionary power. Are you lonely? All the angels of heaven are ready to swoop into your companionship. Here is the Christ of Mary and Martha when they had lost Lazarus, and of David when he had lost his son, and of Abraham when he had lost Sarah, and of your father and mother when in time of old age they parted at the gates of the tomb.

When last I was in Savannah, Georgia, at the close of the Sabbath morning service, I was asked to go and see a Christian woman for many years an invalid. I went. I had not, in all that beautiful city of splendid men and gracious women, seen a face brighter than hers. Reaching her bedside, I out out my hand, but she could not shake hands, for her hand was palsied. I said to her, ’93How long have you been down on this bed?’94 She smiled and made no answer, for her tongue had been palsied; but those standing around her said, ’93Fifteen years.’94 I said to her, ’93Have you been able to keep your courage up all that time?’94 She gave a very little motion of her head in affirmation, for her whole body was paralytic. The sermon I had preached that morning had no power on others compared with the power that silent sermon had on me. What was the secret of her conquest over pain and privation and incapacity to move? Shall I tell you the secret? I will tell you: The Lord shut her in.

There is a good deal of fanaticism abroad about the recovery of the sick, but if we had as much faith as Martin Luther we would have Luther’92s success. His friend, Myconius, was very ill, and Luther fell upon his knees and said, ’93O Lord, no! Thou must not yet take our brother Myconius to thyself. Thy cause will not prosper without him. Amen.’94 Then he wrote, ’93My dear Myconius: There is no cause for fear. The Lord will not let me hear that you are dead. You shall not and must not die. Amen.’94 Luther’92s letter so excited Myconius that an ulcer on his lungs broke, and he got well. Would to God that like that we might be able to pray, that we might have similar results! Oh, men and women, visible and invisible! The probability is you will never write your autobiography. It is the most difficult book to write, because you are tempted to omit passages in your life that were not complimentary to yourself, and to quote from a diary, which is always incomplete, because there are some things which you do not think best to write down. As you will not undertake an autobiography, the story of yourself, I will take the responsibil-ity of presenting your biography, which is the story of one’92s life by some one else. If you will give your love and trust to Him of Bethlehem and Calvary, this will be your biography: ’93Born at the right time, but the most important event in his life was when he was born again. Died at the right time, but long before that he had died unto sin. He had many crises, but in all of them he was divinely directed; weaknesses, but they were divinely sympathized with. In his life there were many sorrows, wave after wave, storm after storm, but he outrode everything and landed in eternal safety. Why? Why? Because the Lord shut him in.’94

But do not think that heaven is made up of an indiscriminate population. Some of my friends are so generous in their theology that they would let everybody in without reference to condition or character. Do not think that libertines and blasphemers and rejecters of God and His Gospel have ’93letters of credit’94 that will draw anything from the Bank of Heaven. Pirate crafts will not be permitted to go up that harbor. If there are those who as to heaven are to be ’93shut-ins,’94 there are those who will belong to the ’93shut-outs.’94 Heaven has twelve gates, and while those twelve gates imply wide-open entrance for those who are properly prepared to enter them, they imply that there are at least twelve possibilities that many will be shut out, because a gate is of no use unless it can sometimes be closed. Heaven is not an unwashed mob. Show your ticket or you will not get in’97tickets that you may get without money and without price, tickets with a cross and a crown upon them. Let the unrepentant and the vile and the offscourings of earth enter heaven as they now are, and they would depreciate and demoralize it so that no one of us would want to enter, and those who are there would want to move out. The Bible speaks of the ’93withouts’94 as well as the ’93withins.’94 Rev_22:15 : ’93Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’94 Through the converting, pardoning, sanctifying grace of God, may we at last be found among the shut-ins and not among the shut-outs!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage