097. Harp and Javelin

Harp and Javelin

1Sa_18:10-11 : ’93And David played with his hand as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul’92s hand. And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.’94

What a spectacle for all ages! Saul, a giant, and David, an undersize. An unfortunate war-ballad had been composed and sung eulogizing David above Saul. That song threw Saul into a paroxysm of rage, which brought on one of his old spells of insanity, to which he had been subject. If one is disposed to some physical ailments and he get real mad, it is very apt to bring on one of his old attacks. Saul is a raving maniac and he goes to imitating the false prophets or sibyls, who kicked and gesticulated wildly when they pretended to be foretelling events. Whatever the physicians of the royal staff may have prescribed for the disordered king, I know not, but David prescribed music. Having keyed up the harp, his fingers began to pull the music from the vibrated strings. Thrum! Thrum! Thrum! No use. The king will not listen to the exquisite cadences. He lets fly a javelin, expecting to pin the minstrel to the wall, but David dodged the weapon, and kept on, for he was confident that he could, as before, subdue Saul’92s bad spirit by music. Again the javelin is flung and David dodges it and departs. What a contrast! Roseate David with a harp and enraged Saul with a javelin. Who would not rather play the one than fling the other? But that was not the only time in the world’92s history that harp and javelin met. Where their birthplace was, I cannot declare. It is said that the lyre was first suggested by the tight drawing of the sinews of a tortoise across its shell, and that the flute was first suggested by the blowing of the wind across a bed of reeds, and that the ratio of musical intervals was first suggested to Pythagoras by the different hammers on the anvil of the smithy, but the harp seems to me to have dropped out of the sky and the javelin to have been thrown up from the pit. The oldest stringed instrument of the world is the harp. Jubal sounded his harp in the book of Genesis. David played many of his Psalms on the harp while he sang them. The captives in Babylon hung their harps on the willows. Josephus celebrated the invention of the ten-stringed harp. Timotheus, the Milesian, was imprisoned for adding the twelfth string to the harp, because too much luxury of sound might enervate the people. Egyptian harps, Scottish harps, Welsh harps, Irish harps, have been celebrated. What an inspired triangle! Everlasting honors to Sebastian Erard, who, by pedals invented, called the foot as well as the hand to the harp. When the harpsichord maker for whom he worked discharged him for his genius, the employer not wanting to be eclipsed by his subordinate, Erard had to suffer from the same passion of jealousy in his employer, as threw Saul in my text into the fit during which he flung the javelin at the harpist. The harp is almost human, as you find when you put your finger on is pulse. Other instruments have louder voice, and may be better for a battle charge, but what exquisite sweetness slumbers between the harp strings, waking at the first touch of the tips of the fingers. It can weep. It can plead. It can soothe. It can pray. The flute is more mellow, the trumpet is more startling, the organ is more majestic, the cymbals are more festive, the drum is more resounding, but the harp has a richness of its own, and will continue its mission through all time, and then take part in celestial symphonies, for St. John says he heard in heaven the harps of God.

But the javelin of my text is just as old. It is about five feet and a half long, with wooden handle and steel point, keen and sharp. But it belongs to the great family of death-dealers, and is brother to sword and spear and bayonet, and first cousin to all the implements that wound and slay. It has cut its way through the ages. It was old when Saul, in the scene of my text, tried to harpoon David. It has gashed the earth with grave trenches. Its keen tip is reddened with the blood of American wars, English wars, German wars, Russian wars, French wars, Crusader wars, and wars of all nations and of all ages. The structure of the javelin shows what it was made for. The plowshare is sharp, but aimed to cut the earth in preparation for harvests. The lightning rod is sharp, but aimed to disarm the lightnings and secure safety. The ax is sharp, but aimed to fell forests and clear the way for human habitation. The knife is sharp, but aimed to cut bread for sustenance. But the javelin is sharp only to open human arteries and extinguish human eyesight and take human life and fill the earth with the cries of orphanage and widowhood and childlessness. Oh, I am so glad that my text brings them so close together that we can see the contrast between the harp and javelin. The one to soothe, the other to hurt; the one to save, the other to destroy; the one divine, the other diabolic; the one to play, the other to hurl; the one in David’92s skilful hand, the other in Saul’92s wrathful clutch. May God speed the harp, may God grind into dulness the sharp edge of the javelin.

Now what does all this make you think of? It suggests to me music as a medicine for physical and mental disorders. David took hold of the musical instrument which he best knew how to play and evoked from it sounds which were for King Saul’92s diversion and medicament. But, you say, the treatment in this case was a failure. Why was it a failure? Saul refused to take the medicine. A whole apothecary shop of curative drugs will do nothing toward healing your illnesses if you refuse to take the medicine. It was not the fault of David’92s prescription, but the fault of Saul’92s obstinacy. David, one of the wonders of ages, stands before us in the text administering music for nervous disorder and cerebral disturbance. And David was right. Music is the mightiest force in all therapeutics. Its results may not be seen as suddenly as other forms of cure, but it is just as wonderful. You will never know how much suffering and sorrow music has assuaged and healed. A soldier in the United States army said that on the days the regimental band played near the hospitals all the sick and wounded revived, and men who were so lame they could not walk before, got up and went out and sat in the sunshine, and those so dispirited that they never expected to get home began to pack their baggage and ask about time-tables on steamboat and rail-train. Theodosius, the Emperor, wrathful at the behavior of the people of Antioch, who, on some sudden provocation, tore down the statues of emperor and empress, resolved severely to punish them, but the bishop, knowing that the emperor had a group of boys sing to him while eating at the table, taught the boys a plaintive song in which the people lamented their bad behavior, and the king, under the pathos of the music, cried out: ’93The city of Antioch is forgiven.’94 The rage of Achilles was assuaged by a harp. Asclepi-ades swayed rebellious multitudes by a harp. After the battle of Yorktown, when a musician was to suffer amputation, and before the days of an’e6sthetics, the wounded artist called for a musical instrument and lost not a note during the forty minutes of amputation. Filippo Palma, the great musician, confronted by an angry creditor, played so enchantingly before him that the creditor forgave the debt and gave the debtor ten guineas more to appease other creditors. An eminent physician of olden time contended (of course, carrying our theory too far) that all ailments of the world could be cured by music. The medical journals never report their recoveries by this mode. But in what twilight hour has many a saint of God solaced a heartache with a hymn hummed or sung or played! Jerome of Prague sang while burning at the stake. Over what keys of piano or organ consolation has walked. Yea, in church one hymn has rolled peace over a thousand of the worried, perplexed and agonized. While there are hymns and tunes ready for the jubilant, there is a rich hymnology for the suffering ’93Naomi’94 and ’93Eventide’94 and ’93Autumn Leaves’94 and ’93Come, ye disconsolate,’94 and whole portfolios and librettos of tears set to music. All the wonderful triumphs of surgery, and all the new modes of successful treatment of physical and mental disorders are discussed in medical conventions and spread abroad in medical books, and it is high time that some of the millions of souls that have been medicated by music, vocal and instrumental, let the world know what power there is in sweet sound, whether rolling from lip or leaping from tightened chord or ascending from ivory key. Music is a universal language. At the foot of the Tower of Babel language was split into fragments never to be again put together, but one thing was not hurt, and that is music, and it is the same all the world over. One summer in Russia at a watering-place, we were greeted as we entered a great auditorium, which was filled with thousands of Russians, whose language I could not understand any more than they could understand mine. But after the grand band had, out of compliment to us, played our two great American airs, I stepped on the platform and said to the bandmaster, ’93Russian air! Russian air!’94 and then he tapped with his baton on the music rack, and with a splendor and majesty of power that almost made us quail, the full band poured forth their national anthem. They understood our American music, and we understood their Russian music. It is a universal language and so good for universal cure. I should not wonder if in the Day of Judgment it should be found out that more souls have been saved by music than by preaching. I should not wonder if, out of the one hundred and forty thousand ransomed souls that John foresaw before the throne of God, at least one hundred and thirty thousand have been saved by sweet song. Why does not the Church on earth take the hint? Heaven is the great musical center of the universe, the place of doxologies and trumpets and harps; and, in preparation for that place we ought to make more of music on earth. A band of music at Waterloo played the retreat of the Forty-second Highlanders back to their places, and sacred music has returned many a faltering host of God into the Christian conflict with as much determination and dash as Tennyson’92s ’93Six Hundred.’94 Who can tell what has been accomplished by Charles Wesley’92s seven thousand hymns, or by the congregational singing of his time, which could be heard two miles off? When my dear friend, Dio Lewis (gone to rest all too soon), conducted a campaign against drunkenness at the West, and marshaled thousands of the noblest women of the land in that magnificent campaign, and whole neighborhoods and villages and cities shut up their grog-shops, do you know the chief weapon used? It was the song:

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee.

They sang it at the door of hundreds of liquor saloons which had been open for years, and either at the first charge of the campaign or the second the saloon shut up. At the first verse of ’93Nearer, my God, to Thee,’94 the liquor dealers laughed; at the second verse they looked solemn; at the third verse they began to cry; and at the fourth verse they got down on their knees. You say they opened their saloons again. Yes, some of them did. But it is a great thing to have hell shut up if only for a week. Give full swing to a good Gospel hymn and it would take the whole world for God!

But when in my text I see Saul declining this medicine of rhythm and cadence and actually hurling a javelin at the heart of David, the harpist, I bethink myself of the fact that sin would like to kill sacred music. We are not told what tune David was playing on the harp that day, but from the character of the man we know it was not a crazy madrigal or a senseless ditty or a sweep of strings suggestive of the melodrama, but elevated music, God-given music, inspired music, religious music, a whole heaven of it encamped under a harp-string. No wonder that wicked Saul hated it and could not abide the sound, and with all his might hurled an instrument of death at it. I know there are styles of music that sin admires, and you hear it as you pass the casino or the dance hall, and the devil has stolen most of the fiddles’97though I am glad the Ole Bulls have snatched up the charmed strings from their desecration’97but it is a fact that sin has a javelin for sacred sounds. In many churches the javelin of criticism has killed the music, javelin flung from organ loft or from adjoining pew of the supersensitive. Saul’92s javelin aimed at David’92s harp. Thousands of people so afraid they may not sing scientifically, they will not sing at all, or sing with such low tone that no one hears them. In many a church the javelin of criticism has crippled the harp of worship. If Satan could silence all the Sunday-school songs and the hymns of Christian worship, he would gain his greatest achievement. When the millenial song shall rise (and it is being made ready) there will be such a roll of voices, such a concentred power of stringed and wind instruments, such majesty, such unanimity, such continental and hemispheric and planetary acclamation, that it will be impossible to know where earth stops and heaven begins. Roll on, roll in, roll up, thou millenial harmony!

See also in my subject a rejected opportunity of revenge. Why did not David pick up Saul’92s javelin and hurl it back again? David had a skilful arm. He demonstrated on another occasion he could wield a sling, and he could have easily picked up that javelin, aimed it at Saul, the would-be-assassin, and left the foaming and demented monster as lifeless under the javelin as he had left Goliath under a sling. O David, now is your chance. No, no! Men and women with power of tongue or pen or hand to reply to an embittered antagonist, better imitate David, and let the javelin lie at your feet and keep the harp in your hand. Do not strike back. Do not play the game of tit-for-tat. Gibbon, in his history, tells of Bajazet, the great Moslem general, who was brought a captive to the tent of Timur. He had attempted the massacre of Timur and his men. Timur said to him: ’93Had you vanquished us, I am not ignorant of the fate which you reserved for myself and my troops, but I disdain to retaliate. Your life and honor are secure, and I shall express my gratitude to God by my clemency to man.’94 Beautiful! Revenge on Christian’92s tongue or pen or hand is inapt, and more damage to the one who employs it than the one against whom it is employed. What! A javelin hurled at you and fallen at your feet, and you not hurl it back again? Yes. I have tried the plan. I learned it from my father and have practised it all my life, and it works well, and by the help of God and javelins not picked up I have conquered nearly all my foes, and preached funeral sermons in honor of most of them. The best thing you can do with a javelin hurled at you is to let it lie where it dropped, or hang it up in your museum as a curiosity. The deepest wound made by a javelin is not by the sharp edge, but at the dull end of the handle to him who wields it. I leave it to you to say which got the best of that fight in the palace’97Saul or David.

See also in my subject that the fact that a man sometimes dodges is not against his courage. My text says that when Saul assailed him, ’93David avoided out of his presence twice,’94 that is, when the javelin was flung, he stepped out of its direction or bent this way or that; in other words, he dodged. But all those who have read the life of David know that he was not lacking in prowess. David had faults, but cowardice was not one of them. When David, the little man, went out to meet the giant, who was, I guess, about ten feet high, it was a big undertaking, and the inequalities of the struggle were so great that it struck the giant’92s idea of the ludicrous, and he suggested to the little fellow that he would make a fine dinner for a buzzard or a jackal: ’93Come to me and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.’94 When David went out to meet that giant and conquered him, he demonstrated, as he did on other occasions, his courage. But I am so glad that when Saul flung that javelin, David dodged it, or the chief work of his life would never have been done. What a lesson this is to those who go into useless danger and expose their lives or their reputations or their usefulness unnecessarily. When duty demands, go ahead, though all earth and hell oppose. Budge not one inch from the right position. But when nothing is involved, step back or step aside. Why stand in the way of perils that you can avoid? Go not into quixotic battles to fight wind-mills. You will be of more use to the world and the Church as an active Christian man than as a target for javelins. There are Christians always in a fight. If they go into churches they fight there. If they go into presbyteries or conferences or consociations they fight there. My advice to you is, if nothing is to be gained for God or the truth, stand out of the way of the javelins. As recorded, ’93David avoided out of his presence twice.’94 Washington was as mighty in his retreats as in his advances. His army would several times have been destroyed if he had not dodged. He dodged on Long Island, he dodged on New Jersey Heights. Lincoln on his way to inauguration at Washington was waited for by assassins, but he took another train and dodged the desperadoes. We have high example of the fact that sometimes a man will serve God best by disappearing from this or that place, this or that environment. A mob brought Christ to the top of the rocks back of Nazareth. They did not like his preaching and they proposed to hurl him down the precipice. But while they were getting ready for the massacre, Christ darted into the crowd, and amid the confusion escaped to Capernaum, and continued exorcising devils and cooling fevers and filling fish-nets and giving healthy circulation of blood to paralysis, and curing dementia, and turning corpses into living men and women, and doing his chief work. What a good thing he dodged the crowd on the rocks of Nazareth! Likewise at Jerusalem one day, while he was sauntering up and down in Solomon’92s Porch waiting for an opportunity to say kind words or do a useful deed, the people proposed to pay him for his self-sacrifices by stoning him to death, but the record is, ’93He escaped out of their hands.’94

See also in my subject the unreasonable attitude of javelin toward harp. What had that harp in David’92s hand done to the javelin in. Saul’92s hand? Had the vibrating strings of the one hurt the keen edge of the other? Was there an old grudge between the two families of sweet sound and sharp cut? Had the triangle ever insulted the polished shaft? Why the deadly aim of the destroying weapon against the instrument of soothing, calming, healing sound? Well, I will answer that if you will tell me why the hostility of so many to the Gospel, why the virulent attacks against the Christian religion, why the angry antipathy of so many to the most genial, most inviting, most salutary influence under all the heavens? Why will men give their lives to writing and speaking and warring against Christ and the Gospel? Why the javelin of the world’92s hatred and rage against the harp of heavenly love? You know and I know men who get wrathfully red in the face and foaming at the mouth and use the gesture of the clenched fist and put down their feet with indignant emphasis and invoke all sarcasm and irony and vituperation and scorn and spite at the Christian religion. What has the Christian religion done that it should be so assailed? Whom hath it bitten and left with hydrophobiac virus in their veins that it should sometimes be chased as though it were a maddened canine? To head off and trip up and push down and corner our religion was the dominant thought in the life of David Hume and Voltaire and Shaftesbury, and even the Earl of Rochester, until one day in a princely house, in which they blasphemously put God on trial, and the Earl of Rochester was the attorney against God and religion and received the applause of the whole company, when suddenly the Earl was struck under conviction, and cried: ’93Good God, that a man who walks uprightly, who sees the wonderful works of God and has the use of his senses and reason, should use them in defying his Creator! I wish I had been a crawling leper in a ditch rather than have acted toward God as I have done.’94 Javelin of wit, javelin of irony, javelin of scurrility, javelin of sophistry, javelin of human and diabolic hostility have been flying for hundreds of years, and are flying now. But aimed at what? At something that has come to devastate the world? At something that slays nations? At something that would maul and trample under foot and excruciate and crush the human race? No, aimed at the Gospel harp. Harp on which prophets played with somewhat lingering and uncertain fingers, but harp on which apostles played with sublime certainty, and martyrs played while their fingers were on fire. Harp that was dripping with the blood of the Christ, out of whose heartstrings the harp was chorded and from whose dying groan the strings were keyed. Oh, gospel harp! All thy nerves a-tremble with stories of self-sacrifice. Harp thrummed by fingers long ago turned to dust. Harp that made heaven listen and will yet make all the earth hear. Harp that sounded pardon to my sinful soul and peace over the grave where my dead sleep. Harp that will lead the chant of the blood-washed throng redeemed around the throne. May a javelin slay me before I fling a javelin at that. Harp which it seems almost too sacred for me to touch, and so I call down from their thrones those who used to finger it, and ask them to touch it now. ’93Come down, William Cowper, and run your fingers over the strings of this harp.’94 He says, ’93I will,’94 and he plays:

There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’92s veins.

’93Come down, Charles Wesley, and touch the strings.’94 He says, ’93I will,’94 and he plays:

Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to thy bosom fly.

’93Come down, Augustus Toplady, and sweep your fingers across this Gospel harp.’94 He says, ’93I will,’94 and he plays:

Rock of ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee.

’93Come down, Isaac Watts, and take this harp.’94 He says, ’93I will,’94 and he plays:

Alas I and did my Saviour bleed,

And did my Sovereign die.

’93P. P. Bliss, come down, and thrum this Gospel harp.’94 He says, ’93I will,’94 and he plays:

Hallelujah, ’91tis done,

I believe on the Son.

Ineffable harp! Transporting harp! Harp of earth! Harp of heaven! Harp saintly and seraphic! Harp of God! Oh, I like the idea of that old monument in the ancient church at Ullard, near Kilkenny, Ireland. The sculpture on that monument, though chiseled more than a thousand years ago, as appropriate today as then, the sculpture representing a harp upon a cross. That is where I hang it now; that is where you had better hang it. Let the javelin be forever buried, the sharp edge down, but hang the harp upon the cross.

And now upon our souls let the harps of heaven rain music, and as, when the sun’92s rays fall aslant in Switzerland, at the approach of eventide, and the shepherd among the Alps puts the horn to his lips and blows a blast, and says, ’93Glory be to God,’94 and all, the shepherds on the Alpine heights or down in the deep valleys respond with other blast of horns, saying, ’93Glory be to God,’94 and then all the shepherds uncover their heads and kneel in worship, and after a few moments of silence some shepherd rises from his knees and blows another blast of the horn, and says, ’93Thanks be to God,’94 and all through the mountains the response comes from other shepherds, ’93Thanks be to God;’94 so this moment let all the valleys of earth respond to the hills of heaven with sounds of glory and thanks, and let it be harp of earthly worship to harp of heavenly worship, and the words of St. John in the Apocalypse be fulfilled: ’93I heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters and as the voice of a great thunder, and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage