094. Rocks of Trouble

Rocks of Trouble

1Sa_14:4 : ’93There was a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side.’94

The cruel army of the Philistines must be taken and scattered. There is just one man accompanied by his body-guard to do that thing. Jonathan is the hero of the scene. I know that David cracked the skull of the giant with a pebble well slung, and that three hundred Gideonites scattered ten thousand Amalekites by the crash of broken crockery; but here is a more wonderful conflict. Yonder are the Philistines on the rocks. Here is Jonathan with his body-guard in the valley. On the one side is a rock called Bozez; on the other side is a rock called Seneh. These two rocks were as famous in olden times as in modern times are Plymouth Rock and Gibraltar. They were precipitous, unscalable and sharp. Between these two rocks Jonathan must make his ascent. The day comes for the scaling of the height. Jonathan on his hands and feet begins the ascent. With strain, and slip, and bruise, I suppose, but still on and up, first goes Jonathan and then goes his body-guard; Bozez on the one side, Seneh on the other side.

After a sharp tug and push and clinging I see the head of Jonathan above the hole in the mountain, and then I see the head of the body-guard above the hole in the mountain and there is a challenge and a fight and a supernatural consternation. These two men, Jonathan and his body-guard, drive back and drive down the Philistines over the rocks and open a campaign which demolishes the enemies of Israel. I suppose that the overhanging and overshadowing rocks on either side did not balk or dishearten Jonathan or his body-guard, but only roused and filled them with enthusiasm as they went up. ’93There was a sharp rock on the one side and a sharp rock on the other side.’94

My friends, you have been, or are now, some of you, in this crisis of the text. If a man meet one trouble he can go through it. He gathers all his energies, concentrates them upon one point, and in the strength of God, or by his own natural determination, goes through it. But the man who has trouble to the right of him and trouble to the left of him is to be pitied. Did either trouble come alone he might endure it, but two troubles, two disasters, two overshadowing misfortunes, are Bozez and Seneh. God pity him. There is a sharp rock on the one side and a sharp rock on the other side.

In this crisis of the text is that man whose fortune and health fail at the same time. Nine-tenths of all our merchants capsize in business before they come to forty-five years of age. There is some collision in commercial circles and they stop payment. It seems as if every man must put his name on the back of a note before he learns what a fool a man is who risks all his own property on the prospect that some man will tell the truth. It seems as if a man must have a large amount of unsalable goods on his own shelf before he learns how much easier it is to buy than to sell. It seems as if every man must be completely burned out before he learns the importance of always keeping fully insured. It seems as if every man must be wrecked in a financial tempest before he learns to keep things snug in case of a sudden euroclydon.

When the calamity does come it is awful. The man goes home in despair and he tells his family, ’93We’92ll have to go to the poorhouse.’94 He takes a dolorous view of everything. It seems as if he never could rise. But a little time passes and he says: ’93Why, I am not so badly off after all; I have my family left.’94 Before the Lord turned Adam out of Paradise he gave him Eve, so that when he lost Paradise he could stand it.

Permit one who has read but few novels in all his life and who has not a great deal of romance in his composition to say that if when a man’92s fortunes fail he has a good wife, a good Christian wife, he ought not to be despondent. ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93that only increases the embarrassment, since you have her also to take care of.’94 You are an ingrate, for the woman as often supports the man as the man supports the woman. The man may bring all the dollars, but the woman generally brings the courage and the faith in God.

Well, this man of whom I am speaking looks around and he finds his family is left, and he rallies, and the light comes to his eyes and the smile to his face and the courage to his heart. In two years he is quite over it. He makes his financial calamity the first chapter in a new era of prosperity. He met that one trouble’97conquered it. He sat down for a little while under the grim shadow of the rock Bozez, yet he soon rose and began, like Jonathan, to climb.

But how often it is that physical ailment comes with financial embarrassment. When the fortune failed it broke the man’92s spirit. His nerves were shattered, his brain was stunned. I can show you hundreds of men in New York whose fortune and health failed at the same time. They came prematurely to the walking-staff. Their hand trembled with incipient paralysis. They never saw a well day since the hour when they called their creditors together for a compromise. If such men are impatient and peculiar and irritable, excuse them. They had two troubles, either one of which they could have met successfully. If, when the health went, the fortune had been retained it would not have been so bad. The man could have secured the very best medical advice and he could have had the very best medical attendance, and a long line of carriages would have stopped at the front door to inquire as to his welfare. But poverty on the one side and sickness on the other are Bozez and Seneh, and they interlock their shadows and drop them on the poor man’92s way. God help him! ’93There is a sharp rock on the one side and a sharp rock on the other side.’94

Now, what is such a man to do? In the name of Almighty God, I will tell him what to do. Do as Jonathan did’97climb; climb up into the sunlight of God’92s favor and consolation. I can go through the churches and show you the men who lost fortune and health at the same time, and yet who sing all day and dream of heaven all night. If you have any idea that sound digestion and steady nerves and clear eyesight and good hearing and plenty of friends are necessary to make a man happy, you have miscalculated. I suppose that these overhanging rocks only made Jonathan scramble the harder and the faster to get up and out into the sunlight, and this combined shadow of invalidism and financial embarrassment has often sent a man up the quicker into the sunlight of God’92s favor and the noonday of his glorious promises.

It is a difficult thing for a man to feel his dependence upon God with ten thousand dollars in the bank and fifty thousand dollars in government securities, and a block of stores and three ships. ’93Well,’94 the man says to himself, ’93it is silly for me to pray, ’91Give me this day my daily bread’92 when my pantry is full and the canals from the West are crowded with bread-stuffs destined for my storehouses.’94 O, my friends, if the combined misfortunes and disasters of life have made you climb up into the arms of a sympathetic and compassionate God, through all eternity you will bless him that in this world there was a sharp rock on the one side and a sharp rock on the other side.

Again, that man is in the crisis of the text who has home troubles and outside persecution at the same time. The world treats a man well just as long as it pays best to treat him well. As long as it can manufacture success out of his bone and brain and muscle it favors him. The world fattens the horse it wants to drive. But let a man see it his duty to cross the track of the world, then every bush is full of horns and tusks thrust at him. They will belittle him. They will caricature him. They will call his generosity self-aggrandizement, and they will call his piety sanctimoniousness. The very worst persecution will sometime come upon him from those who profess to be Christians.

John Milton, great and good John Milton, so forgot himself as to pray in so many words that his enemies might be eternally thrown down into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, and be the undermost and most dejected and the lowest down vassals of perdition! And Martin Luther so far forgot himself as to say in regard to his theological opponents: ’93Put them in whatever sauce you please, roasted or fried or baked or stewed or boiled or hashed, they are nothing but asses!’94 Ah, my friends, if John Milton and Martin Luther could come down to such scurrility, what may you not expect from less elevated opponents?

Now, the world sometimes takes after them, the newspapers take after them, public opinion takes after them, and the unfortunate man is lied about until all the dictionary of Billingsgate is exhausted on him. You often see a man whom you know to be good and pure and honest set upon by the world and mauled by whole communities, while vicious men take on a supercilious air in condemnation of him; as though Lord Jeffrey should write an essay on gentleness, or Henry VIII talk about purity, or Herod take to blessing little children.

Now a certain amount of persecution rouses a man’92s defiance, stirs his blood for magnificent battle, and makes him fifty times more a man than he would have been without the persecution. So it was with the great reformer when he said: ’93I will not be put down; I will be heard.’94 And so it was with Millard, the preacher, in the time of Louis XI. When Louis XI sent word to him that unless he stopped preaching in that style he would throw him into the river, he replied: ’93Tell the king that I will reach heaven sooner by water than he will reach it by fast horses.’94 A certain amount of persecution is a tonic and an inspiration, but too much of it and too long-continued becomes the rock of Bozez, throwing a dark shadow over a man’92s life. What is he to do, then? Go home, you say. Good advice that. That is just the place for a man to go when the world abuses him. Go home. Blessed be God for our quiet and sympathetic homes.

But there is many a man who has the reputation of having a home when he has none. Through unthinkingness or precipitation there are many matches made that ought never to have been made. An officiating priest cannot alone unite a couple. The Lord Almighty must proclaim banns. There is many a home in which there is no sympathy and no happiness and no good cheer. The clamor of the battle may not have been heard outside, but God knows, notwithstanding all the playing of the ’93Wedding March’94 and all the odor of the orange blossoms and the benediction of the officiating pastor, there has been no marriage.

Sometimes men have awakened to find on one side of them the rock of persecution and on the other side the rock of domestic infelicity. What shall such a one do? Do as Jonathan did’97climb. Get up into the heights of God’92s consolation, from which he may look down in triumph upon outside persecution and home trouble. While good and great John Wesley was being silenced by the magistrates and having his name written on the board fences of London in doggerel, at that very time his wife was making him as miserable as she could’97acting as though she were possessed with the devil, as I suppose she was; never doing him a kindness until the day she ran away, so that he wrote in his diary these words: ’93I did not forsake her; I have not dismissed her; I will not recall her.’94 Planting one foot upon outside persecution and the other foot upon home trouble, John Wesley climbed up into the heights of Christian joy, and after preaching forty thousand sermons and traveling two hundred and seventy-six thousand miles, reached the heights of heaven, though in this world he had it hard enough’97’94a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side.’94

Again, that woman stands in the crisis of the text who has bereavement and a struggle for livelihood at the same time. Ah, it is a hard thing for a woman to make an honest living even when her heart is not troubled, and she has a fair cheek and the magnetism of an exquisite presence. But now the husband or the father is dead. The expenses of the obsequies have absorbed all that was left in the savings bank; and wan and wasted with weeping and watching she goes forth’97a grave, a hearse, a coffin behind her’97to contend for her existence and the existence of her children.

When I see such a battle as that open I shut my eyes at the ghastliness of the spectacle. Men sit with embroidered slippers and write heartless essays about women’92s wages; but that question is made up of tears and blood and there is more blood than tears. Oh, give women free access to all the realms where she can get a livelihood, from the telegraph office to the pulpit. Let men’92s wages be cut down before hers are cut down. Men have iron in their souls and can stand it. Make the way free to her of the broken heart. May God put into my hand the cold, bitter cup of privation and give me nothing but a windowless hut for shelter for many years, rather than that after I am dead there should go out from my home into the pitiless world a woman’92s arm to fight the Gettysburg, the Austerlitz, the Waterloo of life for bread. And yet how many women there are seated between the rock of bereavement on the one side and the rock of destitution on the other, Bozez and Seneh interlocking their shadow and dropping them upon her miserable way. ’93There is a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side.’94 What are such to do? Somehow, let them climb up into the heights of the promise: ’93Leave thy fatherless children; I will preserve them alive, and let thy widows trust in me.’94 Or get up into the heights of that other glorious promise: ’93The Lord preserveth the stranger and relieveth the widow and the fatherless.’94 O ye sewing women on starving wages! O ye widows turned out from a once beautiful home! O ye female teachers kept on niggardly stipend! O ye despairing women seeking in vain for work, wandering along the docks and thinking to throw yourselves into the river at night! O ye women of aching sides and weak nerves and short breath and broken heart! You need something more than human sympathy. You need the sympathy of God. Climb up into his arms; he knows it all and he loves you more than father or mother or husband ever could or ever did; and instead of sitting down wringing your hands in despair you had better begin to climb. There are heights of consolation for you, though now ’93there is a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side.’94

Again, that man is in the crisis of the text who has a wasted life on the one side and an unillumined eternity on the other. Though a man may all his life have cultivated deliberation and self-poise, if he gets into that position all his self-possession is gone. There are all the wrong thoughts of his existence, all the wrong words, all the wrong deeds’97strata above strata, gigantic, ponderous, overshadowing. That rock I call Bozez. On the other side are all the retributions of the future, the thrones of judgment, the eternal ages, angry with his long defiance, piled up, concentrated, accumulated wrath. That rock I call Seneh.

Between these two rocks Lord Byron perished, and Alcibiades perished, and Herod perished, and ten thousand times ten thousand have perished. O man immortal, man redeemed, man blood-bought, climb up out of those shadows! Climb up by the way of the cross! Have your wasted life forgiven; have your eternal life secured. Just take one look to the past and see what it has been and take one look to the future and see what it threatens to be. You can afford to lose your health, you can afford to lose your property, you can afford to lose your reputation, but you cannot afford to lose your soul. That bright, gleaming, glorious, precious, eternal possession you must carry aloft in the day when the earth burns up and the heavens burst. O God, help that man to save his soul.

You see from my subject that when a man goes into the safety and peace of the Gospel he does not demean himself. There is nothing in religion that leads to unmanliness. The Gospel of Jesus Christ only asks you to climb as Jonathan did’97climb toward God, climb toward heaven, climb into the sunshine of God’92s favor. To become a Christian is not to go meanly down; it is to come gloriously up’97up into the communion of saints, up into the peace that passeth all understanding, up into the companionship of angels. He lives up; he dies up.

Oh, then, accept the wholesale invitation which I make to all people! Come up from between your invalidism and financial embarrassments. Come up from between your home trouble and your outside persecution. Come up from between your bereavements and your destitution. Come up from between a wasted life and an unillumined eternity. Like Jonathan climb with all your might instead of sitting down to wring your hands in the shadow and in the darkness’97’94a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage