027. Corn-Crib of Egypt

Corn-Crib of Egypt

Gen_43:3 : ’93Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you.’94

This summer, having crossed eighteen of the States, north, south, east and west, I have to report the mightiest harvests that this country or any other country ever reaped. If the grain gamblers do not somehow wreck these harvests, we are about to enter upon the grandest scene of prosperity that America has ever witnessed. But while this is so in our own country, on the other side of the Atlantic there are nations threatened with famine, and the most dismal cry that is ever heard will I fear be uttered, the cry for bread. I pray God that the contrast between our prosperity and their want may not be as sharp as in the lands referred to by my text. There was nothing to eat. Plenty of corn in Egypt, but ghastly famine in Canaan. The cattle moaning in the stall. Men, women and children awfully white with hunger. Not the failing of one crop for one summer, but the failing of all the crops for seven years. A nation dying for lack of that which is so common on your table, and so little appreciated; the product of harvest field and grist-mill and oven; the price of sweat and anxiety and struggle’97bread! Jacob, the father, has the last report from the flour-bin, and he finds that everything is out; and he says to his sons: ’93Boys, hook up the wagons and start for Egypt, and get us something to eat.’94 The fact was, there was a great corn-crib in Egypt. The people of Egypt have been largely taxed in all ages, at the present time paying between seventy and eighty per cent. of their products to the government. No wonder in that time they had a large corn-crib, and it was full. To that crib they came from the regions round about’97those who were famished’97some paying for corn in money; when the money was exhausted paying in sheep and cattle and horses and camels, and when they were exhausted selling their own bodies and their families into slavery.

The morning for starting out on the crusade for bread has arrived. Jacob gets his family up very early. But before the elder sons start they say something that makes him tremble with emotion from head to foot, and burst into tears. The fact was, that these elder sons had once before been in Egypt to get corn, and they had been treated somewhat roughly, the lord of the corn-crib supplying them with corn, but saying at the close of the interview: ’93Now, you need not come back here for any more corn unless you bring something better than money’97even your younger brother Benjamin.’94 Ah! Benjamin’97that very name was suggestive of all tenderness. The mother had died at the birth of that son’97a spirit coming and another spirit going’97and the very thought of parting with Benjamin must have been a heart-break. The keeper of this corn-crib, nevertheless, says to these older sons: ’93There is no need of your coming here any more for corn unless you bring Benjamin, your father’92s darling.’94 Now Jacob and his family very much needed bread, but what a struggle it would be to give up their son. The Orientals are very demonstrative in their grief, and I hear the bewailing of the father as these older sons keep reiterating in his ears the announcement of the Egyptian lord: ’93Ye shall not see my face unless your brother be with you.’94 ’93Why did you tell them you had a brother?’94 said the old man, complaining and chiding them. ’93Why, father,’94 they said, ’93he asked us all about our family, and we had no idea he would make any such demand upon us as he has made.’94 ’93No use of asking me,’94 said the father, ’93I cannot, I will not, give up Benjamin.’94 The fact was that the old man had lost children; and when there has been bereavement in a household, and a child taken, it makes the other children in the household more precious. So the day for departure was adjourned and adjourned and adjourned. Still the horrors of the famine increased and louder moaned the cattle and wider open cracked the earth, and more pallid became the cheeks, until Jacob, in despair, cried out to his sons, ’93Take Benjamin and be off.’94 The older sons tried to cheer up their father. They said: ’93We have strong arms and a stout heart, and no harm will come to Benjamin. We’92ll see that he gets back again.’94 ’93Farewell!’94 said the young men to the father, in a tone of assumed good cheer. ’93F-a-r-e-w-e-l-l!’94 said the old man; for that word has more quavers in it when pronounced by the aged than by the young.

Well, the bread party’97the bread embassy’97drives up in front of the corn-crib of Egypt. These corn-cribs are filled with wheat and barley and corn in the husk, for those who have traveled in Canaan and Egypt know that there is corn there corresponding with our Indian maize. Huzza! the journey is ended. The travelers are introduced into the palace. They are worn and bedusted of the way, and servants come in with a basin of water in one hand and a towel in the other, and kneel down before these newly arrived travelers, washing off the dust of the way. The butchers and poulterers ana caterers of the prime minister prepared the repast. The lord of the corn-crib, who is also the prime minister, comes down to these arrived travelers and says: ’93Dine with me today. How is your father? Is this Benjamin, the younger brother whose presence I demanded?’94

The guests are seated in small groups, two or three at a table, the food on a tray; all the luxuries from the imperial gardens and orchards and aquariums and aviaries are brought there, and are filling chalice and platter. Now is the time for this prime minister, if he has a grudge against Benjamin, to show it. Will he kill him now that he has him in his hands? Oh no! This lord of the corn-crib is seated at his own table and he looks over to the table of his guests, and he sends a portion to each of them, but sends a larger portion to Benjamin, or as the Bible quaintly puts it, ’93Benjamin’92s mess was five times so much as any of theirs.’94 Be quick and send word back with the swiftest camel to Canaan to old Jacob, that ’93Benjamin is well; all is well; he is faring sumptuously; the Egyptian lord did not mean murder and death; but he meant deliverance and life when he announced to us on that day: ’91Ye shall not see my face unless your brother be with you.’92’93

Well, my friends, this world is famine-struck of sin. It does not yield a single crop of solid satisfaction. It is dying. It is hunger-bitten. The fact that it does not, cannot, feed a man’92s heart was well illustrated in the life of the English comedian. All the world honored him’97did everything for him that the world could do. He was applauded in England and applauded in the United States. He roused up nations into laughter. He had no equal. And yet, although many people supposed him entirely happy, and that this world was completely satiating his soul, he sits down and writes:

’93I never in my life put on a new hat, that it did not rain and ruin it. I never went out in a shabby coat because it was raining and thought all who had the choice would keep in-doors, that the sun did not burst forth in its strength and bring out with it all the butterflies of fashion whom I knew and who knew me. I never consented to accept a part I hated, out of kindness to another, that I did not get hissed by the public and cut by the writer. I could not take a drive for a few minutes with Terry without being overturned and having my elbow-bone broken, though my friend got off unharmed. I could not make a covenant with Arnold, which I thought was to make my fortune without making his instead, than in an incredible space of time’97I think thirteen months’97I earned for him twenty thousand pounds, and for myself one. I am persuaded that if I were to set up as a baker, every one in my neighborhood would leave off eating bread.’94

That was the lament of the world’92s comedian and joker. All unhappy. The world did everything for Lord Byron that it could do, and yet in his last moment he asks a friend to come and sit down by him and read, as most appropriate to his case, the story of ’93The Bleeding Heart.’94 Torrigiano, the sculptor, executed, after months of care and carving, ’93Madonna and the Child.’94 The royal family came in and admired it. Everybody that looked at it was in ecstasy; but one day, after all that toil, and all that admiration, because he did not get as much compensation for his work as he had expected, he took a mallet and dashed the exquisite sculpture into atoms. The world is poor compensation, poor satisfaction, poor solace. Famine, famine in all the earth; not for seven years, but for six thousand. But, blessed be God, there is a great corn-crib. The Lord built it. It is in another land. It is a large place. An angel once measured it, and as far as I can calculate it in our phrase, that corn-crib is fifteen hundred miles long and fifteen hundred broad, and fifteen hundred high; and it is full. Food for all nations. ’93Oh!’94 say the people, ’93we will start right away and get this supply for our soul.’94 But stop a moment; for from the keeper of that corn-crib there comes this word, saying: ’93You shall not see my face except your brother be with you.’94 In other words, there is no such thing as getting from heaven pardon and comfort and eternal life unless we bring with us our Divine Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. Coming without him we shall fail before we reach the corn-crib, and our bodies shall be a portion for the jackals of the wilderness; but coming with the Divine Jesus, all the granaries of heaven will swing open before our soul, and abundance shall be given us. We shall be invited to sit in the palace of the King and at the table; and while the Lord of heaven is apportioning from his own table to other tables he will not forget us; and then and there it will be found that our Benjamin’92s mess is larger than all the others, for so it ought to be. ’93Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive blessing, and riches, and honor, and glory, and power.’94

I want to make three points. Every frank and common-sense man will acknowledge himself to be a sinner. What are you going to do with your sins? Have them pardoned, you say. How? Through the mercy of God. What do you mean by the mercy of God? Is it the letting down of a bar for the admission of all, without respect to character? Be not deceived. I see a soul coming up to the gate of mercy and knocking at the corn-crib of heavenly supply; and a voice from within says: ’93Are you alone?’94 The sinner replies: ’93All alone.’94 The voice from within says, ’93You shall not see my pardoning face unless your Divine Brother, the Lord Jesus, be with you.’94 Oh! that is the point at which so many are discomfited. There is no mercy from God except through Jesus Christ. Coming with him we are accepted. Coming without him, we are rejected. Peter put it right in his great sermon before the high priests, when he thundered forth: ’93Neither is there salvation in any other. There is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved.’94 O anxious sinner! O dying sinner! O lost sinner! all you have got to do is to have this Divine Benjamin along with you. Side by side, coming to the gate, all the storehouses of heaven will swing open before your anxious soul. Am I right in calling Jesus Benjamin? Oh, yes! Rachel lived only long enough to give a name to that child, and with a dying kiss she called him Benoni. Afterward Jacob changed his name, and he called him Benjamin. The meaning of the name she gave was ’93Son of my Pain.’94 The meaning of the name the father gave was ’93Son of my Right Hand.’94 And was not Christ the Son of pain? All the sorrows of Rachel in that hour, when she gave her child over into the hands of strangers were nothing compared with the struggle of God when he gave up his only Son. The Omnipotent God in a birth-throe! And was not Christ appropriately called ’93Son of the Right Hand?’94 Did not Stephen look into heaven and see him standing at the right hand of God? And does not Paul speak of him as standing at the right hand of God, making intercession for us? O Benjamin’97Jesus! Son of pain! Son of victory! The deepest emotions of our souls ought to be stirred at the sound of that nomenclature. In your prayers plead his tears, his sufferings, his sorrows and his death. If you refuse to do it, all the corn-cribs and the palaces of heaven will be bolted and barred against your soul, and a voice from the throne shall stun you with the announcement: ’93You shall not see my face except your Brother be with you.’94

My text also suggests the reason why so many people do not get any real comfort. You meet ten people; nine of them are in need of some kind of condolence. There is something in their health or in their circumstances or in their domestic condition that demands sympathy. And yet the most of the world’92s sympathy amounts to absolutely nothing. People go to the wrong crib, or they go in the wrong way. When the plague was in Rome, a great many years ago, there were eighty men who chanted themselves to death with the litanies of Gregory the Great’97literally chanted themselves to death, and yet it did not stop the plague. And all the music of this world cannot halt the plague of the human heart. I come to some one whose ailments are chronic, and I say: ’93In heaven you will never be sick.’94 That does not give you much comfort. What you want is a soothing power for your present distress. Lost children, have you? I come to you and tell you that in ten years perhaps you will meet those loved ones before the throne of God. Yet there is but little condolence in that. One day is a year without them, and ten years is a small eternity. What you want is a sympathy now’97present help. I come to those of you who have lost dear friends, and say: ’93Try to forget them. Do not keep the departed always in your mind.’94 How can you forget them when every figure in the carpet and every book and every picture and every room calls out their name. Suppose I come to you and say by way of condolence: ’93God is wise.’94 ’93Oh!’94 you say, ’93that gives me no help.’94 Suppose I come to you and say: ’93God, from all eternity, has arranged this trouble.’94 ’93Ah!’94 you say, ’93that does me no good.’94 Then I say, ’93With the swift feet of prayer go direct to the corn-crib for a heavenly supply.’94 You go. You say, ’93Lord, help me; Lord, comfort me.’94 But no help yet. No comfort yet. It is all dark. What is the matter? I have found. You ought to go to God and say, ’93Here, O Lord, are the wounds of my soul, and I bring with me the wounded Jesus. Let his wounds pay for my wounds, his bereavements for my bereavements, his loneliness for my loneliness, his heart-break for my heart-break. O God! for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ’97the God, the man, the Benjamin, the brother’97deliver my agonized soul. O Jesus of the weary foot! ease my fatigue. O Jesus of the aching head! heal my aching head. O Jesus of the Bethany sisters! roll away the stone from the door of our grave.’94 That is the kind of prayer that brings help.

Yet how many of you are getting no help at all, for the reason that there is in your soul, perhaps, a secret trouble. You may never have mentioned it to a single human ear, or you may have mentioned it to some one who is now gone away, and that great sorrow is still in your soul. After Washington Irving was dead, they found a little box that contained a braid of hair and a miniature, and the name of Matilda Hoffman and a memorandum of her death, and a remark something like this: ’93The world after that was a blank to me. I went into the country, but found no peace in solitude. I tried to go into society, but I found no peace in society. There has been a horror hanging over me by night and by day, and I am afraid to be alone.’94 How many unuttered troubles! No human ear has ever heard the sorrow. O troubled soul! I want to tell you that there is one salve that can cure the wounds of the heart, and that is the salve made out of the tears of a sympathetic Jesus. And yet some of you will not take this solace; and you try chloral and you try morphine and you try strong drink and you try change of scene and you try new business associations and anything and everything rather than take the Divine companionship and sympathy suggested by the words of my text when it says, ’93You shall not see my face again unless your brother be with you.’94 Oh! that you might understand something of the height and depth and length and breadth and immensity and infinity of God’92s eternal consolations.

I go further, and find in my subject a hint as to the way heaven opens to the departing spirit. We are told that heaven has twelve gates, and some people infer from that fact that all the people will go in without reference to their past life; but what is the use of having a gate that is not sometimes to be shut? The swinging of a gate implies that our entrance into heaven is conditional. It is not a monetary condition. If we come to the door of an exquisite concert, we are not surprised that we must pay a fee, for we know that fine earthly music is expensive, but all the oratorios of heaven cost nothing. Heaven pays nothing for its music. It is all free. There is nothing to be paid at the door for entrance; but the condition of getting into heaven is our bringing our Divine Benjamin along with us. Do you notice how often dying people call upon Jesus? It is the usual prayer offered’97the prayer offered more than all the other prayers put together’97’94 Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’94 One of our congregation, when asked in the closing moments of his life, ’93Do you know us?’94 said: ’93Oh, yes, I know you. God bless you. Good-by. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;’94 and he was gone. Oh yes, in the closing moments of our life we must have a Christ to call upon. If Jacob’92s sons had gone toward Egypt, and had gone with the very finest equipage, and had not taken Benjamin along with them, and to the question they should have been obliged to answer: ’93Sir, we did not bring him, as father could not let him go; we did not want to be bothered with him,’94 a voice from within would have said: ’93Go away from us. You shall not have any of this supply. You shall not see my face because your brother is not with you.’94 And if we come up toward the door of heaven at last, though we come from all luxuriance and brilliancy of surroundings, and knock for admittance, and it is found that Christ is not with us, the police of heaven will beat us back from the bread-house, saying: ’93Depart, I never knew you.’94 If Jacob’92s sons, coming toward Egypt, had lost everything on the way; if they had expended their last shekel; if they had come up utterly exhausted to the corn-cribs of Egypt, and it had been found that Benjamin was with them, all the storehouses would have swung open before them. And so, though by fatal casualty we may be ushered into the eternal world; though we may be weak and exhausted by protracted sickness’97if, in that last moment, we can only just stagger and faint and fall into the gate of heaven’97it seems that all the corn-cribs of heaven will open for our need and all the palaces will open for our reception; and the Lord of that place, seated at his table, and all the angels of God seated at their table, and the martyrs seated at their table, and all our glorified kindred seated at our table, the king shall pass a portion from his table to ours, and then, while we think of that fact that it was Jesus who started us on the road, and Jesus who kept us on the way, and Jesus who at last gained admittance for our soul, we shall be glad if he has seen of the travail of his soul and been satisfied, and not be at all jealous if it be found that our Divine Benjamin’92s mess is five times larger than all the rest. Hail! anointed of the Lord. Thou art worthy.

My friends, you see it is either Christ or famine. If there were two banquets spread, and to one of them only, you might go, you might stand and think for a good while as to which invitation you had better accept; but here it is feasting or starvation. If it were a choice between oratorios, you might say: ’93I prefer the ’91Creation,’92’93 or ’93I prefer the ’91Messiah.’92’93 But here it is a choice between eternal harmony and everlasting discord. Oh! will you live or die? Will you start for the Egyptian corn-crib, or will you perish amid the empty barns of the Canaanitish famine? ’93Ye shall not see my face except your brother be with you.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage