065. Corn in Place of Manna

Corn in Place of Manna

Jos_5:12 : ’93And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.’94

Only those who have had something to do with the commissariat of an army know what a job it is to feed and clothe five or six hundred thousand men. Well, there is such a host as that marching across the desert. They are cut off from all army supplies. There are no rail-trains bringing down food or blankets. Shall they all perish? No. The Lord comes from heaven to the rescue, and he touches the shoes and the coats which in a year or two would have been worn to rags and tatters, and they become storm-proof and time-proof, so that, after forty years of wearing, the coats and the shoes are as good as new. Besides that, every morning there is a shower of bread, not sour and soggy, for the rising of that bread is made in heaven, and celestial fingers have mixed it, and rolled it into balls, light, flaky, and sweet, as though they were the crumbs thrown out from a heavenly banquet. Two batches of bread made every day in the upper mansion’97one for those who sit at the table with the King, and the other for the marching Israelites in the wilderness. I do not very much pity the Israelites for the fact that they had only manna to eat. It was, I suppose, the best food ever provided. I know that the ravens brought food to Elijah; but I should not so well have liked those black waiters. Rather would I have the fare that came down every morning in buckets of dew’97clean, sweet, God-provided edibles. But now the Israelites have taken their last bit of it in their fingers, and put the last delicate morsel of it to their lips. They look out, and there is no manna. Why this cessation of heavenly supply? It was because the Israelites had arrived in Canaan, and they smelled the breath of the harvest-fields, and the crowded barns of the country were thrown open to them. All the inhabitants had fled, and in the name of the Lord of Hosts the Israelites took possession of everything. Well, the threshing-floor is cleared, the corn is scattered over it, the oxen are brought around in lazy and perpetual circuit until the corn is trampled loose; then it is winnowed with a fan, and it is ground and it is baked, and, lo! there is enough bread for all the wornout host. ’93And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.’94 From among the mummies of Egypt and Canaan have been brought grains of corn, exactly like our Indian corn, and recently planted, they have produced the same kind of corn, with which we are familiar. So I am not sure which kind of grain my text refers to, but all the same is the meaning. Relief in emergency.

The bisection of this subject leads me, first, to speak of especial relief for especial emergency; and, secondly, of the old corn of the Gospel for ordinary circumstances.

If these Israelites crossing the wilderness had not received bread from the heavenly bakeries, there would, first, have been a long line of dead children half buried in the sand; then, there would have been a long line of dead women waiting for the jackals; then, there would have been a long line of dead men unburied, because there would have been no one to bury them. It would have been told in the history of the world that a great company of good people started out from Egypt for Canaan, and were never heard of, as thoroughly lost in the wilderness of sand as the City of Boston and the President were lost in the wilderness of waters. What use was it to them that there was plenty of corn in Canaan, or plenty of corn in Egypt? What they wanted was something to eat right there, where there was not so much as a grass-blade. In other words, an especial supply for an especial emergency. That is what some of you want. The ordinary comfort, the ordinary direction, the ordinary counsel, do not seem to meet your case. There are those who feel that they must have an omnipotent and immediate supply, and you shall have it.

Is it pain and physical distress through which you must go? Does not Jesus know all about pain? Did he not suffer it in the most sensitive part of head and hand and foot? He has a mixture of comfort, one drop of which shall cure the worst paroxysm. It is the same grace that soothed Robert Hall when, after writhing on the carpet in physical tortures, he cried out: ’93Oh! I suffered terribly, but I didn’92t cry out while I was suffering, did I? Did I cry out?’94 There is no such nurse as Jesus’97his hand the gentlest, his foot the lightest, his arm the strongest. For especial pang especial help. Is it approaching sorrow? Is it long, shadowing bereavement that you know is coming, because the breath is short, and the voice is faint, and the cheek is pale? Have you been calculating your capacity or incapacity to endure widowhood or childlessness or a disbanded home, and cried: ’93I cannot endure it!’94 Oh, worried soul, you will wake up amidst all your troubles, and find around about you the sweet consolation of the Gospel as thickly strewed as was the manna around about the Israelitish encampment! Especial solace for especial distress. Or is it a trouble past, yet present? A silent nursery? A vacant chair opposite you at the table? A musing upon a broken family circle never again to be re-united? A choking sense of loneliness? A blot of grief so large that it extinguishes the light of the sun, and puts out the bloom of flower, and makes you reckless as to whether you live or die? Especial comfort for that especial trial. Your appetite has failed for everything else. Oh, try a little of this wilderness manna: ’93I will never leave thee, I will never forsake thee.’94 ’93Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.’94 ’93Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.’94 Or is it the grief of a dissipated companion? There are those here who have it, so I am not speaking in the abstract, but to the point. You have not whispered it, perhaps, to your most intimate friend; but you see your home going away gradually from you, and unless things change soon it will be entirely destroyed. Your grief was well depicted by a woman, presiding at a woman’92s meeting in Ohio, when her intoxicated husband staggered up to the platform, to her overwhelming mortification and the disturbance of the audience, and she pulled a protruding bottle from her husband’92s pocket, and held it up before the audience, and cried out: ’93There is the cause of my woe! There are the tears and the life-blood of a drunkard’92s wife!’94 And then, looking up to heaven, she said: ’93How long, O Lord! how long?’94 and then, looking down to the audience, cried: ’93Do you wonder I feel strongly on this subject? Sisters, will you help me?’94 And hundreds of voices responded: ’93Yes, yes, we will help you.’94 You stand, some of you, in such tragedy today. You cannot even ask him to stop drinking. It makes him cross, and he tells you to mind your own business. Is there any relief in such a case? Not such as is found in the rigmarole of comfort ordinarily given in such cases. But there is a relief that drops in manna from the throne of God. Oh, lift up your lacerated soul in prayer, and you will get omnipotent comfort! I do not know in what words the soothing influence may come, but I know that for especial grief there is especial deliverance. I give you two or three passages; try them on; take that which best fits your soul: ’93Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.’94 ’93All things work together for good to those who love God.’94 ’93Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’94 I know there are those who, when they try to comfort people, always bring the same stale sentiment about the usefulness of trial. Instead of bringing up a new plaster for a new wound, and fresh manna for fresh hunger, they rummage their haversack to find some crumb of old consolation, when from horizon to horizon the ground is white with the new-fallen manna of God’92s help not five minutes old!

But after fourteen thousand six hundred consecutive days of falling manna’97Sundays excepted’97the manna ceased. Some of them were glad of it. You know they had complained to their leader, and wondered that they had to eat manna instead of onions. Now the fare is changed. Those people in that wandering army under forty years of age had never seen a cornfield, and now, when they hear the leaves rustling and see the tassels waving and the billows of green flowing over the plain as the wind touched them, it must have been a new and lively sensation. ’93Corn!’94 cried the old man, as he opened an ear. ’93Corn!’94 cried the children, as they counted the shining grains. ’93Corn!’94 shouted the vanguard of the host, as they burst open the granaries of the affrighted population, the granaries that had been left in the possession of the victorious Israelites. Then the fire was kindled, and the ears of corn were thrust into it, and, fresh and crisp and tender, were devoured of the hungry victors; and bread was prepared, and many things that can be made out of flour regaled the appetites that had been sharpened by the long march. ’93And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.’94

Blessed be God, we stand in just such a field today, the luxuriant grain coming above the girdle, the air full of the odors of the ripe old corn of the Gospel Canaan. ’93Oh!’94 you say, ’93the fare is too plain.’94 Then I remember you will soon get tired of a fanciful diet. While I was in Paris, I liked for a while the rare and exquisite cookery; but I soon wished I was home again, and had the plain fare of my native land. So it is a fact that we soon weary of the sirups and the custards and the whipped foam of fanciful religionists, and we cry: ’93Give us plain bread made out of the old corn of the Gospel Canaan.’94 This is the only food that can quell the soul’92s hunger.

There are men here who hardly know what is the matter with them. They have tried to get together a fortune and larger account at the bank, and to make investments yielding larger percentages. They are trying to satisfy their soul with a diet of mortgages and stocks. There are others here who try to get famous, and have succeeded to a greater or less extent; and they have been trying to satisfy their soul with the chopped food of magazines and newspapers. All these men are no more happy now than before they made the first thousand dollars; no more happy now than when for the first time they saw their names favorably mentioned. They cannot analyze or define their feelings; but I will tell them what is the matter’97they are hungry for the old corn of the Gospel. That you must have, or be pinched, and wan, and wasted, and hollow-eyed, and shriveled up with an eternity of famine.

The infidel scientists of this day are offering us a different kind of soul food; but they are, of all men, the most miserable. I have known some of them; but I never knew one of them who came within a thousand miles of being happy. The great John Stuart Mill provided for himself a new kind of porridge; but yet, when he comes to die, he acknowledges that his philosophy never gave him any comfort in days of bereavement, and in a roundabout way he admits that his life was a failure. So it is with all infidel scientists. They are trying to live on telescopes and crucibles and protoplasms, and they charge us with cant, not realizing that there is no such intolerable cant in all the world as this perpetual talk we are hearing about ’93positive philosophy,’94 and ’93the absolute,’94 and ’93the great to be,’94 and ’93the everlasting no,’94 and ’93the higher unity,’94 and ’93the latent potentialities,’94 and ’93the cathedral of the immensities.’94 I have been translating what these men have been writing, and I have been translating what they have been doing, and I will tell you what it all means’97it means that they want to kill God! And my only wonder is that God has not killed them. I have, in other days, tasted of their confections, and I come back and tell you today that there is no nutriment or life or health in anything but the bread made out of the old corn of the Gospel. What do I mean by that? I mean that Christ is the bread of life, and taking him, you live and live forever.

But, you say, corn is of but little practical use unless it is threshed and ground and baked. I answer, this Gospel corn has gone through that process. When on Calvary all the hoofs of human scorn came down on the heart of Christ, and all the flails of Satanic fury beat him long and fast, was not the corn threshed? When the mills of God’92s indignation against sin caught Christ between the upper and nether rollers, was not the corn ground? When Jesus descended into hell, and the flames of the lost world wrapped him all about, was not the corn baked? Oh, yes! Christ is ready; his pardon all ready; his peace all ready; everything ready in Christ. Are you ready for him?

You say, ’93That is such a simple Gospel!’94 I know it is. You say you thought religion was a strange mixture of elaborate compounds. No; it is so plain that any abecedarian may understand it. In its simplicity is its power. If you could, this morning, realize that Christ died to save from sin and death and hell not only your minister and your neighbor and your father and your child, but you, it would make this hour like the judgment-day for agitations, and, no longer able to keep your seat, you would leap up, crying, ’93For me! for me!’94 God grant that you, my brother, may see this Gospel with your own eyes, and hear it with your own ears, and feel with your own heart that you are a lost soul, but that Christ comes for your extrication. Can you not take that truth and digest it, and make it a part of your immortal life? It is only bread.

You have noticed that invalids cannot take all kinds of food. The food that will do for one will not do for another. There are kinds of food which will produce, in cases of invalidism, very speedy death. But you have noticed that all persons, however weak they may be, can take bread. Oh, soul sick with sin, invalid in your transgressions, I think this Gospel will agree with you! I think if you cannot take anything else, you can take this. Lost’97found! Sunken’97raised! Condemned’97pardoned! Cast out’97invited in! That is the old corn of the Gospel.

You have often seen a wheel with spokes of different colors, and when the wheel was rapidly turned all the colors blended into a rainbow of exquisite beauty. I wish I could, today, take the peace and the life and the joy and the glory of Christ, and turn them before your soul with such speed and such strength that you would be enchanted with the revolving splendors of that name which is above every name’97the name written once with tears of exile and in blood of martyrdom, but written now in burnished crown and lifted sceptre and archangelic throne.

There is another characteristic about bread, and that is, you never get tired of it. There are people here seventy years of age who find it just as appropriate for their appetite as they did when, in boyhood, their mother cut a slice of it clear around the loaf. You have not got tired of bread, and that is a characteristic of the Gospel. Old Christian man, are you tired of Jesus? If so, let us take his name out of our Bible and let us with pen and ink erase that name wherever we see it. Let us cast it out of our hymnology, and let ’93There is a Fountain’94 and ’93Rock of Ages’94 go into forgetfulness. Let us tear down the communion-table where we celebrate his love. Let us dash down the baptismal bowl where we were consecrated to him. Let us hurl Jesus from our heart, and ask some other hero to come in. Could you do it? The years of your past life, aged man, would utter a protest against it, and the graves of your Christian dead would charge you with being an ingrate, and your little grandchildren would say, ’93Grandfather, don’92t do that. Jesus is the one to whom we say our prayers at night, and who is to open heaven when we die. Grandfather, don’92t do that.’94 Tired of Jesus? The Burgundy rose you pluck from the garden is not so fresh and fair and beautiful. Tired of Jesus? As well get weary of the spring morning, and the voices of the mountain runnel, and the quiet of your own home, and the gladness of your own children. Jesus is bread, and the appetite for that is never obliterated.

I notice, in regard to this article of food, you take it three times a day. It is on your table morning, noon and night; and if it is forgotten, you say, ’93Where is the bread?’94 Just so certainly you need Jesus three times a day. Oh, do not start out without him; do not dare to go out of the front door; do not dare to go off the front steps, without having first communed with him! Before noon there may be perils that will destroy body, mind and soul forever. You cannot afford to do without him. You will, during the day, be amidst sharp hoofs and swift wheels and dangerous scaffoldings, threatening the body, and traps for the soul that have taken some who are more wily than you. When they launch a ship they break against the side of it a bottle of wine. That is a sort of superstition among sailors. But oh, on the launching of every day, that we might strike against it at least one earnest prayer for divine protection! That would not be superstition; that would be Christian. Then at the apex of the day, at the tiptop of the hours, equidistant from morning and night, look three ways. Look backward to the forenoon; look ahead to the afternoon; look up to that Saviour who presides over all. You want bread at noon. You may find no place in which to kneel amidst the cotton bales and the tierces of rice; but if Jonah could find room to pray in the whale’92s belly, most certainly you will never be in such a crowded place that you cannot pray. Bread at noon! When the evening hour comes, and your head is buzzing with the day’92s engagements, and your whole nature is sore from the abrasion of rough life, and you see a great many duties you have neglected, then commune with Christ, asking his pardon, thanking him for his love. That would be a queer evening repast at which there was no bread.

This is the nutriment and life of the plain Gospel that I recommend you. I do not know how some of our ministers make it so intricate and elaborate and mystifying a thing. It seems as if they had a sort of mongrelism in religion’97part humanitarianism, part spiritualism, part nothingarianism; and sometimes you think they are building their temple out of the ’93Rock of Ages,’94 but you find there is no rock in it at all. It is stucco. The Gospel is plain. It is bread. There are no fogs hovering over this river of life. All the fogs hover over the marsh of human speculation. If you cannot tell, when you hear a man preach whether or not he believes in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, it is because he does not believe in it. If, when you hear a man preach, you cannot tell whether or not he believes that sin is inborn, it is because he does not think it is congenital. If, when you hear a man talk in pulpit or prayer-meeting, you cannot make up your mind whether or not he believes in regeneration, it is because he does not believe in it. If, when you hear a man speak on religious themes, you cannot make up your mind whether or not he thinks the righteous and the wicked will come out at the same place, then it is because he really believes that their destinies are conterminous. Do not talk to me about a man being doubtful about the doctrines of grace. He is not doubtful to me at all. Bread is bread, and I know it the moment I see it. I had a cornfield which I cultivated with my own hand. I did not ask once in all the summer, ’93Is this corn?’94 I did not hunt up The Agriculturist to get a picture of corn. I was born in sight of a cornfield, and I know all about it. When these Israelites came to Canaan and looked off upon the fields, the cry was, ’93Corn! corn!’94 And if a man has once tasted of this heavenly bread, he knows it right away. He can tell this corn of the Gospel Canaan from ’93the chaff which the wind driveth away.’94 I bless God so many have found this Gospel corn. It is the bread of which if a man eat he shall never hunger. I set the gladness of your soul to the tunes of ’93Ariel’94 and ’93Antioch.’94 I ring the wedding-bells, for Christ and your soul are married, and there is no power on earth or in hell to get out letters of divorcement.

But alas for the famine-struck! Enough corn, yet it seems you have no sickle to cut it, no mill to grind it, no fire to bake it, no appetite to eat it. Starving to death, when the plain is golden with a magnificent harvest! I rode some thirteen miles to see the Alexander, a large steamship that was beached near Southampton, Long Island. It was a splendid vessel. As I walked up and down the decks and in the cabins, I said, ’93What a pity that this vessel should go to pieces, or be lying here idle!’94 The coast-wreckers had spent thirty thousand dollars trying to get her off, and they succeeded once; but she came back again to the old place. While I was walking on deck, every part of the vessel trembled with the beating of the surf on one side. Since then I heard that that vessel, which was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, was sold for three thousand five hundred, and knocked to pieces. They had given up the idea of getting her to sail again. How suggestive all that is to me! There are those here who are aground in religious things. Once you started for heaven, but you are now aground. Several times it was thought you had started again heavenward, but you soon got back to the old place, and there is not much prospect you will ever reach the harbors of the blessed. God’92s wreckers, I fear, will pronounce you a hopeless case. Beached for eternity! And then it will be written in heaven concerning some one that he was invited to be saved, but refused the offer, and starved to death within sight of the fields and granaries full of the Old Corn of Canaan.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage