110. A New Census

A New Census

2Sa_18:3 : ’93Thou art worth ten thousand of us.’94

One of the most wondrous characters of his time was David. A red-haired boy, he could shepherd a flock, or carry ’93ten loaves and ten slices of milk cheese to his brothers in the regiment,’94 or with leathern thong, stone loaded, bring down a giant whose armor weighed two hundred weight of metal, or cause a lion which roared at him in rage to roar with pain as he flung it, dying to the roadside, or could marshal a host or rule an empire or thrum a harp so skilfully that it cured Saul’92s dementia’97a harp from whose strings dripped pastorals, elegies, lyrics, triumphal marches, benedictions. Now, this man, a combination of music and heroics, of dithyrambs and battlefields, of country quietudes and statesmanship, is to fit out a military expedition. Four thousand troops, according to Josephus, were sent into the field. The captains were put in command of the companies, and the colonels in command of the regiments, which were disposed into right wing, left wing, and center. General Joab, General Abishai, and General Ittai are to lead these three divisions; but who shall take the field as commander-in-chief? David claims his right as king, and proposes to go to the front. He will lead them in the awful charge, for he has not a cowardly nerve in all his body. He did not propose to have his troops go into perils which he himself would not brave, and the battle-field required as much courage then as now; for the opposing forces must, in order to do any execution at all, come up to within positive reach of saber and spear. But there came up from the troops and from civilians a mighty protest against David’92s taking the field. His life was too important to the nation, If he went down, the empire went down; whereas, if the whole four thousand of the ranks were slain, another army might be marshaled and the defeat turned into victory. The army and the nation practically cried out, ’93No, no! You cannot go to the front. We estimate you as ten thousand men. ’91Thou art worth ten thousand of us!’92’93

That army and that nation, then and there reminded David, and now remind us, of the fact which we forget, or never appreciate at all, that some people are morally or spiritually worth far more than others, and some worth far less. The census and statistics of neighborhoods, of churches, of nations, serve their purpose, but they can never accurately express the real state of things. The practical subject that I want to present is that those who have especial opportunity, especial graces, especial wealth, especial talent, especial eloquence, ought to make up by especial assiduity and consecration for those who have less opportunities and less gifts. You ought to do ten times more for God and human uplifting than those who have only a tenth of your equipments. The rank and the file of the four thousand of the text told the truth when they said, ’93Thou art worth ten thousand of us.’94

In no city of its size are there so many men of talent as are gathered in this capital of the American nation. Some of the States are at times represented by men who have neither talents nor good morals. Their political party compensates them for partisan services by sending them to Congress, or by securing for them positions in the war or navy or pension or printing departments. They were nobodies before they left home, and they are nobodies here. But they are exceptional. All the States of the Union generally send their most talented men, and men of exemplary lives and noble purposes. Some of them have the gifts and qualifications of ten men, of a hundred men’97yea, of a thousand men’97and their constituents could truthfully use the words of my text and say, ’93Thou art worth ten thousand of us.’94

With such opportunity are they augmenting their usefulness in every possible direction? Many of them are, some of them are not. It is a stupendous thing to have power’97political power, social power, official power. It has often been printed and often quoted as one of the wise sayings of the ancients, ’93Knowledge is power.’94 Yet it may as certainly be power for evil as for good. The lightning express rail-train has power for good, if it is on the track, but horrible power for disaster if it leaves the track and plunges down the embankment. The ocean-steamer has power for good, sailing in right direction and in safe waters and under good helmsman and wide-awake watchman on the lookout, but indescribable power for evil if under full headway it strikes the breakers. As steam-power or electricity or water forces may be stored in boilers, in dynamos, in reservoirs, to be employed all over a town or city; so God sometimes puts in one man enough faith to supply thousands of men with courage. If a man happens to be thus endowed, let him realize his opportunity and improve it. At this time millions of men are a-tremble lest this nation make a mistake and enter upon some policy of government for the islands of the sea that will cause the republic to founder. God will give to a few men on both sides of this question faith and courage for all the rest. There are two false positions many are now taking, false as false can be. The one is that if we decline to take under full charge Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines, we make a declination that will be disastrous to our nation, and other nations will take control of those archipelagoes and rule them, and perhaps to our humiliation and destruction. The other theory is that if we take possession of those once Spanish colonies, we invite foreign interference, and enter upon a career that will finally be the demolition of this government. Both positions are immeasurable mistakes. God has set apart this continent for free government and the triumphs of Christianity, and we may take either the first or the second course without ruin. We may say to those islands, ’93We do not want you, but we have set you free; now stay free, while we see that the Spanish panther never again puts its paw on your neck.’94 Or we may invite the annexation of Cuba and Porto Rico, and say to the Philippines, ’93Get ready, by education and good morals, for free government, and at the right time you shall be one of our territories, on the way to be one of our States.’94 God is on the side of the right, and by earnest imploration for divine guidance on the part of this nation we will be led to do the right. We are on the brink of nothing. There is no frightful crisis. This train of Republican and Democratic institutions is a through train, and all we want is to have the engineer and the brakeman and the conductor attend to their business and the passengers keep their places. We want men in this nation with faith enough for all. We want here and there a David worth ten thousand men.

A vast majority of men have no surplus of confidence for others and hardly enough confidence for themselves. They go through life saying depressing things and doing depressing things. They chill prayer-meetings, discourage charitable institutions, injure commerce, and kill churches. They blow out the lights when they ought to be kindling them. They hover around a dull fire on their own hearth, and take up so much room that no one can catch the least caloric; instead of stirring the hearth into a blaze, the crackle of whose back-log would invite the whole neighborhood to come in to feel the abounding warmth and see the transfiguration of the faces. As we all have to guess a great deal about the future, let us guess something good, for it will be more encouraging, and the guess will be just as apt to come true. What a lot of ingrates the Lord has at his table! People who have had three meals a day for fifty years, and yet they fear that they will soon have to rattle their knife and fork on an empty dinner-plate. How many have had, winter and spring and summer and fall, clothing for sixty years, but expect an empty wardrobe shortly! How many have lived under free institutions all their days, but fear that the United States may be telescoped in some foreign collision! Oh, but the taxes have gone up! Yes, but thank God, it is easier, with money, to pay the taxes, now that they are up, than it was without money, to pay the taxes when they were down. We want a few men who have faith in God and that mighty future which holds several things, among them a millennium. Columbanus said to his friend, ’93Deicolus, why are you always smiling?’94 The reply was, ’93Because no one can take my God from me!’94 We want more men to feel that they have a mission to cheer others, and to draw up the corners of people’92s mouths which have a long while been drawn down; more Davids who can shepherd whole flocks of bright hopes, and can play a harp of encouragement, and strike down a Goliath of despair, and of whom we can say, ’93Thou art worth ten thousand of us.’94

The regiments mobilized for the defense of the throne of Israel were right in protesting against David’92s exposure of his life at the front. Had he been pierced of an arrow, or cloven down with a battle-ax, or fatally flung from snorting war-charger, what a disaster for the throne of Israel! Absalom, his son, was a low fellow, and unfit to reign; his two chief characteristics were his handsome face and his long hair’97so long, that when he had it cut, that which was scissored off, weighed ’93two hundred shekels, after the king’92s weight,’94 and when a man has nothing but a handsome face and an exuberance of hair, there is not much of him. The capture or slaying of David would have been a calamity irreparable. Unnecessary exposure would have been a crime for David, as it is a crime for you.

Some people think it is a bright thing to put themselves in unnecessary peril. They like to walk up to the edge of a precipice and look off, defying vertigo, or go among contagions, when they can be of no use but to demonstrate their own bravado, or with glee drive horses which are only harnessed whirlwinds, or see how close they can walk in front of a trolley car without being crushed, or spring on a rail-train after it has started, or leap off a rail-train before it has stopped. Their life is a series of narrow escapes, careless of what predicament their family would suffer at their sudden taking off, or of the misfortune that might come to their business partners, or the complete failure of their life-work, if a coroner’92s jury must be called in to decide the character of their exit. They do not take into consideration what their life is worth to others. Taken off through such recklessness, they go criminals. I warrant that you will die soon enough, without coaxing and bantering casualty to see if it can launch you into the next world.

In nine cases out of ten, the fatalities every day reported, are not the fault of engineers or brakemen or conductors or cab-drivers, but of the stupidity and recklessness of people at street or railroad crossing. They would like to have the Chicago limited express train, with three hundred passengers and advertised to arrive at a certain hour in a certain city, slow up to let them get two minutes sooner to their destination. You have no right to put your life in peril, unless by such exposure something is to be gained for others. What imbecility in thousands of Americans during our recent Americo-Spanish war’97disappointed because the surrender came so soon, and they could not have the advantage of being shot at San Juan hill, or brought down with the yellow fever, and carried on a litter to transports that were already so many floating lazarettos’97instead of thanking God that they got no nearer to the slaughter than Tampa or Chattanooga, or the encampment at their own State capital, to become mad at the Government, and mad at God, because they could not get to the front in time to join the four thousand corpses that are now being transported from the tropics to the national cemeteries of the United States! Exposure and daring are admirable when duty calls, but keep out of peril when nothing practical and useful is to be gained for your family or your country or your God.

Now, here is another important point: as there are so many people in the world who amount to little or nothing, you ought to augment yourself, and if not able, like David, to be worth ten thousand times more than others, you can command God’92s re-enforcing grace to make yourself worth four times or three times or twice as much as some others. Pray twice as much, read twice as much, give twice as much, go to church twice as much. Instead of spending your time finding fault with others, substitute your superior fidelity for their dereliction and default. In any church there are ten members worth all the other thousand. In every great business firm there is one man worth the other three partners. In every legislative hall, State or national, there are five men worth all the other fifty or hundred. Take the suggestion of my text and augment yourself. Make your one talent do the work of two, or your five talents do the work of ten, or your ten talents do the work of twenty. Multiply your words of encouragement. Multiply the number of boosts you can give to those who are trying to climb. Instead of being one man in a battalion, by your faith in God and consecration, be a whole regiment. I like the question of a general of a small army, when some one was counting the number of officers and soldiers of the opposing forces, and the small number of their own army, and the general cried out in indignation, ’93How many do you count me?’94 David was ten thousand men. You ought to be at least two men in this battle for God and righteousness.

The daily papers say that my old friend Jeremiah C. Lanphier, of New York, is dead at ninety years of age. But they are mistaken. That man can never die. He will live as long as heaven lives. He was the father of vitalized, vivified and arousing prayer-meetings. He established the noonday Fulton Street prayer-meeting, famous throughout Christendom, and more honored of God than any devotional meeting since the world began. He introduced the little bell on the prayer-meeting table which always tapped when prayers were too prolix, or exhortations too long-winded. Finding that many business men are from twelve noon to one o’92clock at comparative leisure, he announced that at twelve o’92clock of the twenty-third of September, 1857, there would begin a prayer-meeting of one hour in the small upper room of the Reformed church, on Fulton Street, New York. Lanphier went to that room at twelve o’92clock, and sat alone. At half-past twelve a man entered, and others came until there were six worshipers present. The meeting on the following Wednesday numbered twenty, and the next week forty. Then the meeting became too large for the room, and it was taken into the main auditorium, and for over forty years that service has been the religious center of Christendom. Requests for prayer from all parts of the earth have come there, and the prayers offered been answered sometimes with a resound that was heard throughout Christendom. Hundreds of thousands of souls have stepped into that Bethesda and been healed. That meeting started the great revival of 1857, in which it is estimated five hundred thousand souls were converted. When Monday morning, December 26, 1898, Jeremiah C. Lanphier’92s soul ascended, I think he was met at the gate of heaven by a welcoming throng as mighty as that which has greeted any admitted soul for five centuries.

When the consul-general came in his official rowboat to take us off our great steamer in the harbor of Constantinople, there were many things I wanted to see in that city of multiform enchantments, but most of all I was anxious to see that architectural charm of the ages, the Saint Sophia’97once a church, but now a mosque. I do not wonder that when Lamartine saw it he thanked God, and Pouqueville felt himself lifted into some other world. What pillars of porphyry and walls of malachite and hovering arches and galleries which seemed to have alighted from heaven instead of being built up from earth! But after all, I cannot forget that it is a destroyed church, and that one day that building, which had been dedicated to God, was transferred to that religion which has Mohammed for its prophet. One day, centuries ago, a hundred thousand people had fled between its walls from the devastating war of the Turk, but all in vain, for Mohammed II, on horseback and followed by infuriate mobs, rode into that church, the hoofs clattering on the sacred floors, while the conqueror shouted the victory of superstition and invoked Allah, the god of Arabs and Turks, to accept the stupendous pile in dedication. What a desecration, and what worldwide despair! But that which the nations now most need is a hero, a leader, a champion, an incarnated God, to turn all the mosques of superstition and all the basilicas of sin into temples of righteousness, and to rededicate this world, so long given up to wickedness and sin, to the God who in the beginning pronounced it very good. Such a hero, such a leader, such a champion, such an incarnated God we have. He comes riding in upon the white horse of eternal victory, and we can, in more exalted sense than that which the soldiers of David felt, cry out, ’93Thou art worth ten thousand of us.’94

The world has had other conquerors, yet they subdued only a nation or a continent; but here is one who is to be a conqueror of hemispheres. Other physicians have cured sufferings, but here is a doctor who gave sight to those who were born blind, and without surgery straightened the crooked back, and changed the numbness of paralysis into warm circulation, and who will yet extirpate all the ailments of the world. There have been other merciful hearts all up and down through the ages, but here is one who loves us with an everlasting love, and whose mercy antedates the birth of the first mountain, and the wash of the first sea, and the radiance of the first aurora, and the chant of the morning stars at the creation, and who will continue after the last rock has melted in the final conflagration, and Atlantic and Pacific oceans have rolled out of their beds, and the last night shall have folded up its shadow, and our Lord shall have cried out in the same words that sounded through the night of John’92s banishment on Patmos, ’93I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.’94 Then all the mightiest of heaven will gather around the incarnated God whom I preach, each one saying it for himself, but altogether uttering it in mighty chorus, ’93Thou Son of David, thou Son of Mary, thou Son of God, thou art worth ten thousand of us!’94

But I must not close without commending to you this wonderful Christ here and now as your pardon for all sin and your solace for all grief and your triumph in all struggle. Down at Norfolk, Virginia, a gentleman was telling me of one of our warships in Cuban waters. Before it left a Northern harbor, some Christian ladies at much expense and with fine taste, bought and furnished for that war-vessel a pulpit, from which the chaplain might read the service and preach, while on shipboard. The pulpit was made in the shape of a cross, and it was beautifully damasked and tasseled. The ship got into the battle before Santiago, and the vessels of the enemy began to sink, and their crews were struggling in the waters, when, from this ship I speak of, the officers and sailors began to throw over chairs, planks, tables, to help the drowning save themselves. After a while everything movable had been thrown overboard, except the pulpit in the shape of a cross. After objection by some that it was too beautiful and valuable to be cast into the waters, the cross was dropped into the sea. One of the drowning men seized it, but let go, and another seized it, and the shout went from many on deck to those struggling in the waves, ’93Cling to the cross! Cling to the cross!’94 Several of the drowning took the advice and held on until they were rescued and brought in safety to deck and ashore and home; and I say to all the souls today sinking in sin and sorrow, now swept this way and now that: though the guns of temptation and disaster may splinter and knock from under you all other standing, and everything else goes down, take hold the Cross and cling to it for your present and everlasting safety. Cling to the Cross! for he who died upon it will save to the uttermost, and he is so good and so lovely and so mighty that he is worth infinitely more than ten thousand of us.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage