013. Hunting for Souls

Hunting for Souls

Gen_10:9 : ’93He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.’94

In our day hunting is a sport, but in the lands and the times infested with wild beasts it was a matter of life or death with the people. It was very different from going out on a sunshiny afternoon with a patent breech-loader, to shoot reed-birds on the flats, when Pollux and Achilles and Diomedes went out to clear the land of lions and tigers and bears. My text sets forth Nimrod as a hero when it presents him with broad shoulders and shaggy apparel and sun-browned face and arm bunched with muscle’97’94a mighty hunter before the Lord.’94 I think he used the bow and arrow with great success practising archery. I have thought if it is such a grand thing and such a brave thing to clear wild beasts out of a country; if it is not a better and braver thing to hunt down and destroy those great evils of society that are stalking the land with fierce eye and bloody paw and sharp tusk and quick spring. I have wondered if there is not such a thing as Gospel hunting, by which those who have been flying from the truth, may be captured for God and Heaven. The Lord Jesus, in his sermon, used the art of angling for an illustration when he said: ’93I will make you fishers of men.’94 And so, I think, I have authority for using hunting as an illustration of Gospel truth; and I pray God that there may be many a man who shall begin to study Gospel archery, of whom it may, after a while, be said: ’93He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.’94

How much awkward Christian work there is done in the world! How many good people there are who drive souls away from Christ instead of bringing them to him! Religious blunderers, who upset more than they set right. Their gun has a crooked barrel, and kicks as it goes off. They are like a clumsy comrade who goes along with skilful hunters’97at the very moment he ought to be most quiet, he is cracking an elder or falling over a log and frightening away the game. How few Christian people have ever learned the lesson of which I read at the beginning of the service: how that the Lord Jesus Christ, at the well, went from talking about a cup of water to the most practical religious truths, which won the woman’92s soul for God! Jesus in the wilderness was breaking bread to the people. I think it was good bread; it was very light bread, and the yeast had done its work thoroughly. Christ, after he had broken the bread, said to the people: ’93Beware of the yeast, or of the leaven, of the Pharisees!’94 So natural a transition it was, and how easily they all understood him! But how few Christian people understand how to fasten the truths of God to the souls of men! Truman Osborne, one of the evangelists who went through this country some years ago, had a wonderful art in the right direction. He came to my father’92s house one day, and while we were all seated in the room, he said: ’93Mr. Talmage, are all your children Christians?’94 Father said: ’93Yes, all but De Witt.’94 Then Truman Osborne looked down into the fireplace, and began to tell a story of a storm that came on the mountains, and all the sheep were in the fold; but there was one lamb outside that perished in the storm. Had he looked me in the eye, I should have been angered when he told me that story; but he looked into the fireplace, and it was so pathetically and beautifully done that I never found any peace until I was inside the fold, where the other sheep are.

The archers of old times studied their art. They were very precise in the matter. The old books gave special directions as to how the archers should go, and as to what an archer should do. He must stand erect and firm, his left foot a little in advance of his right foot. With his left hand he must take hold of the bow in the middle, and then, with the three fingers and the thumb of his right hand, he should lay hold of the arrow and affix it to the string’97so precise was the direction given. But how clumsy we are about religious work! How little skill and care we exercise! How often our arrows miss the mark! Oh, that we might learn the art of doing good, and become ’93mighty hunters before the Lord!’94

In the first place, if you want to be effectual in doing good, you must be very sure of your weapon. There was something very fascinating about the archery of olden times. Perhaps you do not know what they could do with the bow and arrow. Why, the chief battles fought by the English Plantagenets were with the long bow. They would take the arrow of polished wood, and feather it with the plume of a bird, and then it would fly from the bow-string of plaited silk. The broad fields of Agincourt and Solway Moss and Neville’92s Cross, heard the loud thrum of the archer’92s bow-string. Now, my Christian friends, we have a mightier weapon than that. It is the arrow of the Gospel; it is a sharp arrow; it is a straight arrow; it is feathered from the wing of the dove of God’92s Spirit; it flies from a bow made out of the wood of the Cross. So far as I can estimate, or calculate, it has brought down four hundred million souls. Paul knew how to bring the notch of that arrow on to that bow-string, and its whirr was heard through the Corinthian theaters, and through the courtroom, until the knees of Felix knocked together. It was that arrow that stuck in Luther’92s heart when he cried out: ’93Oh, my sins! Oh, my sins!’94 If it strike a man in the head, it kills his skepticism; if it strike him in the heel, it will turn his step; if it strike him in the heart, he throws up his hands, as did one of old when wounded in the battle, crying: ’93O Galilean, thou hast conquered.’94

In the armory of the Earl of Pembroke there are old corselets which show that the arrow of the English used to go through the breastplate, through the body of the warrior, and out through the back-plate. What a symbol of that Gospel which is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and body, and of the joints and marrow! Would to God we had more faith in that Gospel! The humblest man in this house, if he had enough faith in him, could bring a hundred souls to Jesus’97perhaps five hundred. Just in proportion as this age seems to believe less and less in it, I believe more and more in it. What are men about that they will not accept their own deliverance? There is nothing proposed by men that can do anything like this Gospel. The religion of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the philosophy of icicles; the religion of Theodore Parker was a sirocco of the desert, covering up the soul with dry sand; the religion of Renan is the romance of believing nothing; the religion of Thomas Carlyle is only a condensed London fog; the religion of the Huxleys and the Spencers is merely a pedestal on which human philosophy sits shivering in the night of the soul, looking up to the stars, offering no help to the nations that crouch and groan at the base. Tell me where there is one man who has rejected that Gospel for another, who is thoroughly satisfied and helped and contented in his skepticism, and I will take the car to-morrow and ride five hundred miles to see him.

The full power of the Gospel has not yet been touched. As a sportsman throws up his hand and catches the ball flying through the air, just so easily will this Gospel after a while catch this round world flying from its orbit and bring it back to the heart of Christ. Give it full swing, and it will pardon every sin, heal every wound, cure every trouble, emancipate every slave, and ransom every nation. Ye Christian men and women, who go out to do Christian work, as you go into the Sunday-schools and the lay preaching stations and the penitentiaries and the asylums, I want you to feel that you bear in your hand a weapon, compared with which the lightning has no speed and avalanches have no heft, and the thunderbolts of heaven have no power; it is the arrow of the omnipotent Gospel. Take careful aim. Pull the arrow clear back until the head strikes the bow. Then let it fly. And may the slain be many!

Again, if you want to be skilful in spiritual hunting, you must hunt in unfrequented and secluded places. Why does the hunter go three or four days in the Pennsylvania forests, or over Raquette Lake into the wilds of the Adirondacks? It is the only way to do. The deer are shy, and one ’93bang’94 of the gun clears the forest. From the California stage you see, as you go over the plains, here and there a coyote trotting along, almost within range of the gun’97sometimes quite within range of it. No one cares for that; it is worthless. The good game is hidden and secluded. Every hunter knows that. So, many of the souls that will be of most worth for Christ, and of most value for the Church, are secluded. They do not come in your way. You will have to go where they are. Yonder they are, down in that cellar, yonder they are, up in that garret. Far away from the door of any church, the Gospel arrow has not been pointed at them. The tract distributor and the city missionary sometimes just catch a glimpse of them, as a hunter through the trees gets a momentary sight of a partridge or roebuck. The trouble is we are waiting for the game to come to us. We are not good hunters. We are standing in a city street, expecting that the timid antelope will come up and eat out of our hand. We are expecting that the prairie-fowl will light on our church steeple. It is not their habit. If the Church should wait ten millions of years for the world to come in and be saved, it would wait in vain. The world will not come. What the Church wants now is to lift their feet from damask ottomans and put them in the stirrups. We want a pulpit on wheels. The Church wants not so much cushions as it wants saddle-bags and arrows. We have to put aside the gown and the kid gloves, and put on the hunting-shirt. We have been fishing so long in the brooks that run under the shadow of the Church that the fish know us, and they avoid the hook, and escape as soon as we come to the bank, while yonder is Upper Saranac and Big Tupper’92s Lake, where the first swing of the Gospel net would break it for the multitude of the fishes. There is outside work to be done. What is that I see in the backwoods? It is a tent. The hunters have made a clearing and camped out. What do they care if they have wet feet or if they have nothing but a pine branch for a pillow or for the northeast storm? If a moose in the darkness steps into the lake to drink, they hear it right away. If a loon cry in the midnight, they hear it. So in the service of God we have exposed work. We shall have to camp out and rough it. We are putting all our care on the thousands of people in the cities who, they say, come to church. What are we doing for the hundreds of thousands that do not come? Have they no souls? Are they sinless, that they need no pardon? Are there no dead in their houses, that they need no comfort? Are they cut off from God to go into eternity, no wing to bear them, no light to cheer them, no welcome to greet them? I hear surging up from the lower depths of our great cities a groan that comes through our Christian assemblages and through our Christian churches; and it blots out all this scene from my eyes today, as by the mists of a great Niagara, for the dash and the plunge of these great torrents of life dropping down into the fathomless and thundering abyss of suffering and woe. I sometimes think that just as God blotted out the Church of Thyatira and Corinth and Laodicea, because of their sloth and stolidity, he will blot out American and English Christianity, and raise on the ruins a stalwart, wideawake, missionary church, that can take the full meaning of that command: ’93Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.’94

I remark, further, if you want to succeed in Gospel Jaunting, you must have courage. If the hunter stand with trembling hand, or shoulder that flinches with fear, instead of his taking the catamount, the catamount takes him. What would become of the Greenlander if, when out hunting for the bear, he should stand shivering with terror on an iceberg? What would have become of Du Chaillu and Livingstone in the African thicket, with a faint heart and a weak knee? When a panther comes within twenty paces of you, and it has its eye on you, and has squatted for the fearful spring, ’93Steady there!’94 Courage, O ye spiritual hunters! There are great monsters of iniquity prowling all around about the community. Shall we not in the strength of God go forth and combat them? We not only need more heart, but more backbone. What is the Church of God that it should fear to look in the eye any transgression?

There is the Bengal tiger of drunkenness that prowls around, and instead of attacking it, how many of us hide under the church pew or the communion table? There is so much invested in it we are afraid to assault it; millions of dollars in barrels, in vats, in spigots, in corkscrews, in gin palaces with marble floors and Italian-top tables, and chased ice-coolers, and in the strychnine and the logwood and the tartaric acid and the nux vomica that go to make up our ’93pure’94 American drinks. I looked with wondering eyes on the ’93Heidelberg tun.’94 It is the great liquor vat of Germany, which is said to hold eight hundred hogsheads of wine, and only three times in a hundred years has it been filled. But, as I stood and looked at it, I said to myself: ’93That is nothing’97eight hundred hogsheads. Why, our American vat holds four million five hundred thousand barrels of strong drinks, and we keep three hundred thousand men with nothing to do but to see that it is filled.’94 Oh, to attack this great monster of intemperance, and the kindred monsters of fraud and uncleanness, requires you to rally all your Christian courage. Through the press, through the pulpit, through the platform, you must assault it. Would to God that all our American Christians would band together, not for crack-brained fanaticism, but for holy Christian reform.

I think it was in 1793 that there went out from Lucknow, India, under the sovereign, the greatest hunting party that was ever projected. There were ten thousand armed men in that hunting party. There were camels and horses and elephants. On some, princes rode and royal ladies, under exquisite housings, and five hundred coolies waited upon the train, and the desolate places of India were invaded by this excursion, and the rhinoceros and deer and elephant fell under the stroke of the saber and bullet. After a while the party brought back trophies worth fifty thousand rupees, having left the wilderness of India ghastly with the slain bodies of wild beasts. Would to God that instead of here and there a straggler going out to fight these great monsters of iniquity in our country, the sixteen million membership of our churches would band together and hew in twain these great crimes that make the land frightful with their roar, and are fattening upon the bodies and souls of immortal men. Who is ready for such a party? Who will be a mighty hunter for the Lord?

I remark again, if you want to be successful in spiritual hunting, you need not only to bring down. the game, but bring the game in. I think one of the most beautiful pictures of Thorwaldsen is his ’93Autumn.’94 It represents a sportsman standing under a grape-vine as he is coming home. He has a staff over his shoulder, and on the other end of that staff are hung a rabbit and a brace of birds. Every hunter brings home the game. No one would think of bringing down a reindeer or whipping up a stream for trout, and then going away, letting them lie in the woods. At eventide the camp is adorned with the treasures, beak and fin and antler. If you go out to hunt for immortal souls, not only bring them down under the arrow of the Gospel, but bring them into the Church of God, the grand home and encampment we have pitched this side the skies. Fetch them in, do not let them lie out in the open field. They need our prayers and sympathies and help. That is the meaning of the Church of God’97help. O ye hunters for the Lord! not only bring down the game, but bring it in.

If Mithridates liked hunting so much that for seven years he never went indoors, what enthusiasm ought we to have who are hunting for immortal souls. If Domitian practised archery until he could stand a boy down in the Roman amphitheater, with a hand out, the fingers outstretched, and then the king could shoot between the fingers without wounding them, to what drill and practise ought not we to subject ourselves in order to become spiritual archers and ’93mighty hunters before the Lord!’94 But let me say, you will never work any better than you pray. The old archers took the bow, put one end of it down beside the foot, elevated the other end, and it was the rule that the bow should be just as long as the archer was high; if it were just that length, then he would go into the battle with confidence. Let me say that your power to project good in the world will correspond exactly to your own spiritual stature. In other words, the first thing, in preparation for Christian work, is personal consecration.

Oh! for a closer walk with God,

A calm and heavenly frame,

A light to shine upon the road

That leads me to the Lamb.

I am sure that there are some here who, at some time, have been hit by the Gospel arrow. You felt the wound of that conviction, and you plunged into the world deeper; just as the stag, when the hounds are after it, plunges into Schroon Lake, expecting in that way to escape. Jesus Christ is on your track today, impenitent man! not in wrath, but in mercy. O ye chased and panting souls! here is the stream of God’92s mercy and salvation, where you may cool your thirst. Stop that chase of sin today. By the red fountain that leaped from the heart of my Lord, I bid you stop. There is mercy for you’97mercy that pardons; mercy that heals; everlasting mercy. Is there fn all this house any one who can refuse the offer that comes from the heart of the dying Son of God?

There is in a forest in Germany a place called the ’93Deer Leap,’94 two crags about eighteen yards apart, between a fearful chasm. This is called the ’93Deer Leap’94 because once a hunter was on the track of a deer; it came to one of these crags; there was no escape for it from the pursuit of the hunter, and in utter despair it gathered itself up, and in the death agony attempted to jump across. Of course it fell, and was dashed on the rocks far beneath. Here is a path to heaven. It is plain; it is safe. Jesus marks it out for every man to walk in. But here is a man who says: ’93I won’92t walk in that path; I will take my own way.’94 He comes on up until he confronts the chasm that divides his soul from heaven. Now his last hour has come, and he resolves that he will leap that chasm from the heights of earth to the heights of heaven. Stand back, now, and give him full swing, for no soul ever did that successfully. Let him try. Jump! Jump! He misses the mark, and he goes down, depth below depth, ’93destroyed without remedy.’94 Men! angels! devils! what shall we call that place of awful catastrophe? Let it be known forever as ’93The Sinner’92s Death Leap.’94

It is said that when Charlemagne’92s host was overpowered by three armies of the Saracens in the Pass of Roncesvalles, his warrior, Roland, in terrible earnestness, seized a trumpet, and blew it with such terrific strength that the opposing army reeled back with terror; but at the third blast of the trumpet it broke in two. I see your soul fiercely assailed by all the powers of earth and hell. I put the trumpet of the Gospel to my lips, and I blow it three times. Blast the first’97’94Whosoever will, let him come.’94 Blast the second’97’94Seek ye the Lord while he may be found.’94 Blast the third’97’94Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.’94 Does not the host of your sins fall back? But the trumpet does not, like that of Roland, break in two. As it was handed down to us from the lips of our fathers, we hand it down to the lips of our children, and tell them to sound it when we are dead, that all the generations of men may know that our God is a pardoning God, a sympathetic God, a loving God; and that more to him than the anthems of heaven, more to him than the throne on which he sits, more to him than are the temples of celestial worship, is the joy of seeing the wanderer putting his hand on the door-latch of his Father’92s house. Hear it, all ye nations! Bread for the worst hunger; medicine for the worst sickness; light for the thickest darkness; harbor from the worst storm.

Dr. Prime, in his book of wonderful interest, entitled Around the World, describes a tomb in India of marvelous architecture. Twenty thousand men were twenty-two years in erecting that and the buildings around it. Standing at that tomb, if you speak or sing, after you have ceased you hear the echo coming from a height of one hundred and fifty feet. It is not like other echoes. The sound is drawn out in sweet prolongation, as though the angels of God were chanting on the wing.

How many souls here today, in the tomb of sin, will lift up the voice of penitence and prayer? If now they would cry unto God, the echo would drop from afar’97not struck from the marble cupola of an earthly mausoleum, but sounding back from the warm heart of angels flying with the news; for there is joy among the angels over one sinner that repenteth.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage