Autumnal Salutation
2Ki_4:26 : ’93Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child?’94
The forms of salutation are as different as the nationalities. An Egyptian meeting an Egyptian in that hot land has for salutation, ’93Do you sweat copiously?’94 A Chinaman meeting a Chinaman in his native country has for salutation, ’93Have you eaten your rice?’94 A Frenchman meeting a Frenchman in his native country has for salutation, ’93How do you carry yourself?’94 An American meeting an American has for salutation, ’93How do you do today?’94 In some lands they shake hands. In others they drop on one knee. In others they put the right hand in the sleeve of the left, almost every nation having its own peculiar form of salutation. Well, in the text was the ordinary mode.
A home in Shunem had been blessed with just one child, and that child went out into the harvest-field and got sunstruck, and putting his hands to his temples he cried out: ’93My head, my head!’94 and expired before noon. The mother, instead of preparing the child for sepulture, starts out to meet Elisha, the prophet. After a while she comes up. Elisha sees her, and he says to his servant Gehazi: ’93I wonder what is the matter with that Shunammite woman? Go out and meet her.’94 Gehazi, the servant, starts, and he comes up to this woman, and he cries out: ’93What is the matter? Are any of you sick? Has anything happened? Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?’94 Gehazi, in asking these questions of this woman, expressed an anxiety in regard to her personal health; and when I meet you now, after the severe months of the summer have passed and sicknesses have been abroad in different parts of the land, and many of you have been amid perils of rail-train and steamer, it seems to me that the question that Gehazi asked of the woman of Shunem is as appropriate for me to ask this morning of my beloved people when I cry out: ’93Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?’94
There is hardly a family that has not, in some of its members, been afflicted with some kind of physical disorder; but by the ministry of mother or wife or friend or medical attendant the disease was balked, and you are in the house of God today, while Greenwood and Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill have added mightily to their silent populations. Through days or weeks some of you have breathed the tonic of the mountain air, and the tides of health have come into some of your pulses with the rising tides of the sea. There is more color in your cheek, there is more fire in your eye, there is more nerve in your purpose, there is more capacity in your nature to serve God; but we all know that is not the case with many. As God looks down upon these great cities, through the beautiful streets and the dark alleys, oh, how many consumings and wastings away of disease! They rest not day nor night. The two fans swinging on each side the couch cannot bring relief. The cup is put to the crackling lip, but the thirst rages on. The hot pillow is turned, but the fever burns. The balsam is taken, but the cough exasperates. The tonic is applied, but the strength still fails. Groan passing through the street is swallowed of other groans and pain shrieks to pain and hospital calls upon hospital, and from all the great cities of our land there is heard to-day’97 whether you hear it or not’97the wailing of a great agony. It is not, therefore, a trivial question, but one of momentous interest, when I propound it this morning and say to you personally: ’93Is it well with thee?’94
We run so many risks; we have so little foresight; we violate so many laws of nature; there are so many elements of destruction in breath, in wave, in cloud, in sea, it is a matter worthy of indestructible record if this morning, after all the exposures of the summer, you can answer these interrogatories of my text in the affirmative and put your hand on brain or lung or heart and say: ’93It is well.’94 Oh, it is a glorious thing to be well’97to have free foot and clear eye and easy digestion and alert ear and stout muscle. Strong men and women, have you thanked God for your health? If not, go and listen to the cry of those who in the morning say: ’93Would God it were night,’94 and in the night say, ’93Would God it were morning.’94 If you are seated in the house of God today in comfortable health, let your soul go out toward the throne of mercy while you say within yourselves: ’93It is well.’94
But my subject goes still further, and it indicates that Gehazi was not only anxious in regard to the personal welfare of this woman of Shunem, but he was anxious in regard to the comfort of her whole family. Standing here today, looking into your friendly faces, I am anxious to know not only how you fare personally, but how it is with your household. There was a time when you were wrapped up in yourself. The question was, ’93My health,’94 ’93My well-being,’94 ’93Where shall I go?’94 ’93What shall I do?’94 ’93What will happen to me?’94 That is changed now, and your life is wrapped up in the life of others. Your soul is more vulnerable than it used to be. God has set you in a family, and there are influences all around about you, circling and widening and widening out. It may have been many years ago, but not far enough back to make you forget when you took the oath of conjugal fidelity. One in hope and one in affection, you have walked up the path of life to this hour. God has put many blessings in that conjugal cup; and while sometimes you walked under the clouds and through the woods, and have halted at the brink of a grave where your hearts both broke at once, you this day ought to send up one long, loud, exhilarant song to the God who chose your habitation and gave you such pleasant surroundings. Perhaps you have thought it was merely a chance walk or a chance call or a chance look or a sudden impulse that conjoined your two destinies. Ah, no! It was under the control of that God who, in the presence of Abraham’92s servant, brought Rachel with a pitcher to the well, showing her whose wife she should be. Has that early love faded out, or is it a Christian benediction? Have the kindly offices, the offices of gentleness, become more rare now that the light has gone from the eye, and the hair is getting a little gray’97snow on the raven’92s wing? As you get further off from that time when you took the vows amid the flowers and the music and the blithe hearts and the congratulatory assembly, and you come on to the time when that tender link will be broken against the marble slab, and between you shall open the rift of a grave’97as you go further on in that journey, are you less careful for each other’92s welfare and less patient with each other’92s foibles? Has the caress become silly because so long the honeymoon has passed? Will there be a mound after a while growing a harvest of nettles and nightshade, snake-infested, devil-haunted? Your larger house, your brighter associations, your greater prosperities, my brother, my sister, cannot atone for the lack of that kindness which characterized you when you started life together! Then the tallow candle flickering on the homely stand was brighter to you than the light of a chandelier in an emperor’92s palace, and the evening meal to which you came wearily from work’97and there was one at the other end of the table’97had more attraction for you than the banquet where attendants lift the lids from smoking viands to the sound of well-drilled orchestra. Oh, is it well with thy husband? Is it well with thy wife?
But my subject takes a step further. You know that almost every house has the blessing of childhood. Indeed, this blessing seems to be given in great profusion in proportion as other blessings are denied. There are thousands of homes in which the only light is in the child’92s eye and the only music in the children’92s footsteps. You almost pity the poor man because he has so many little ones in his cot. Talk to him about its being a pity! Ask him which one of the flaxen-headed pets he would spare from the household. Why, that one has its mother’92s eyes and another its father’92s mouth and another the different points of all the family, and all of these peculiarities commending them to the parental heart. Not one could be spared. On a Western steamboat a philanthropic and generous gentleman walking the deck saw a man and his two children, and they were all covered with the marks of great poverty and destitution. This kind-hearted gentleman said to this man: ’93I think I will adopt one of your children; I will take one of your children, and I will make him heir to my estate. It seems to me you are very poor, and I would like to have one of these little ones.’94 ’93What,’94 said the man, ’93you want to cut off my right arm, you want to pluck out my heart from the roots! If there is any man in all the world poorer than I am, God pity him; but you cannot have one of these children; I cannot spare one.’94 In all the largest flocks of children, where is there one lamb that we could afford to spare? The welfare of your children has become a study with some of you’97what to teach them, what example to set before them, how to curb that impetuosity, how to fire that sluggishness, how to control that evil proclivity, how to meet the duties you owe your little ones. ’93Is it well with the child?’94 Sometimes you get discouraged. Just at the time when you think you have extirpated the last evil proclivity, the old habit breaks out in a new place, and though you say it to no one else, you say to yourself: ’93I wonder if anybody else has such trouble with their children as I have!’94 Now, every Christian man has a right to take a hopeful view of his children! Evil in childhood is not the precursor of coming ruin. When you were their age you were no better; and if common report in regard to some of you is true, you were worse! God’92s blessings hover over the heads of the righteous, and though children may go wrong, and their behavior may be ruinous, the God of Jacob will bless the lads. Many a Christian parent, after long years of praying and watching and struggling and despairing in regard to a child has left him a vagabond, but by the rivers of heaven and under the arches of eternal salvation has after a while celebrated the return of that prodigal and held high jubilee in celestial palaces because that, after all, after all, after all, it was well with the child. O Christian parent, whatever you do for your children or neglect to do, do not neglect their eternal salvation! Do not make the mistake of that family who, when their house was on fire, secured all the household goods, but forgot to ask, until too late, ’93Are the children safe?’94 Oh, what terrific neglect! When the elements shall melt with fervent heat and the world shall burn, will your children be safe?
But my subject takes a step further, and I am permitted, in carrying out the idea that hovers above the text and is suggested by the text, to ask you this morning how it is with the old people that have come to spend their last days in your house, O man! O woman! Do you give them a room on the fourth story? Do you make them eat at the second table? Have you as much patience with the weaknesses of their second childhood as they had patience with the follies of your first? Smooth the steps for those aged feet, for they will soon stop on the way. Do you not notice that the step is getting shorter and shorter? Plough not the old face with any more wrinkles; trouble and care have marked it full enough. Put not on those stooping shoulders any more burdens; they stoop now by carrying the burdens of your early waywardness. Shakespeare put it with great power when he said:
How sharper than a serpent’92s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
And the inspired writer puts it with still more force when he says: ’93The eye that mocketh at its father and refuseth to obey its mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.’94 How is it with the old folks? How have they got through the summer? Is there greater pallor on the cheek? Is the cough more persistent? Are they still alive? Is it well with thy father? Is it well with thy mother?
But my subject goes one step further, and makes inquiry as to your spiritual welfare. A man may be sound in body, and he may have luxuriant investments, and have high social position; and yet, instead of being well with them, there may be everlasting diseases wasting his soul, and awfully and overwhelmingly it may be ill with him. All those estates will go out of your hands, all these friends will vanish from your earthly association; but God has planted in you a light which will burn on after the last ember of a consuming world is trampled out and extinguished.
There is a life that always lives,
There is a death that never dies.
Considering the fact that you are so invested and that eternity presses on toward you and that soon your naked soul will step out and up into the presence of the eternal God in judgment, ought not the question of my text resound through the deepest depths of your immortal nature while I cry out: ’93Is it well with thy soul?’94 You know all about the Christly sacrifice, and you know the hope that was kindled for our world from the wood of the cross, and you know that the tears of Christ poured until they made a fountain, and that from that fountain there runs forth a river so deep that all the armies of earth may wash in it, and on its banks all the empires of heaven may sing. Are your sins pardoned? Are your sorrows comforted? Is your soul saved? Is it well with thee for time? Will it be well with thee for eternity?
Now, there may be many who are disposed to complain. Hardships have come upon them, and losses, and perhaps especial griefs have come upon them this summer, and they are more disposed to answer the question of the text in the negative. So I draw a contrast: Brooklyn’97Charleston! Oh, when you think of the sorrows of that city, cannot you thank God for your homes? Cannot you thank God for your privileges? Cannot you thank God for the quiet of this holy Sabbath; while in that city millionaire and beggar crouch together in the open parks? I have been accustomed to create gratitude in my soul by going down among those who have not a comfortable home and who have not comfortable surroundings; and today compare your condition with the condition of the fifty thousand affrighted people in that sad city. Some said: ’93We live in a land that will never be disturbed; such volcanic forces cannot strike us, and even if sometimes on the Pacific coast there are disturbances, not on the Atlantic coast.’94 Then God comes in this last week and he shakes the whole continent. It is felt in San Francisco and it is felt in New York. God is shaking terribly the nations, and it seems to me there is a lesson which this pulpit and every pulpit ought to interpret for the people. God is teaching America, and he is teaching all nations, that this world is a poor foundation on which to build. We thought if we had everything insured in the fire insurance companies all would be well. Where are the insurance companies that could help that Charleston calamity? God is thundering from the heavens: ’93Build on the rock, the Rock of Ages.’94 Build on the eternal God. That is the foundation that never can be shaken. Do not build on this earth. Set not your affections on things on earth.
And yet the painter worships his picture and the architect worships his building and the merchant worships his enterprise and we cling to this world; but it is a very poor portion. Isaac Newton’92s dog, ’93Spot,’94 destroys in a little while the manuscript that it took him many years to produce. A worm in the hulk of the vessel sinks the ship that was the pride of its builder. A child’92s hand effaces a painting that was to be immortal. A piece of costly sculpture, the work of genius, is dropped, and the grandest arches and the stanchest pyramids and the mightiest cities must come down. The time will come when Charleston and Chicago and New Orleans and Brooklyn and New York and Boston and London and Paris and Vienna and St. Petersburg and Peking and Canton will be caught in what St. John, in the book of Revelation, calls ’93a great earthquake.’94 The world is a poor foundation on which to build. If the American people do not learn that lesson, it will be bad for them.
But it seems to me there comes a lesson of obligation to those suffering people. There is not a city on this continent, it seems to me, that has so many reasons for calling for the sympathy of the country today. Just think of it! Have you counted up the scourges that have come upon that city? First, the scourge of war, then in a few years the scourge of fire, then in a few years the scourge of cholera, last year the scourge of cyclone, and now the scourge of earthquake. And the people do not want ’93God-bless-you’92s.’94 All our prayers will not amount to anything unless accompanied by positive benefaction. The pleading hands come up from the debris of that fallen city, saying: ’93We are hungry, give us bread; we are homeless, give us shelter; we are sick, give us cordials.’94 Palsied will be the ear that will not hear, and palsied will be the hand that will not help. I stand here today to plead for the hundreds of households that have been despoiled of their living. I plead in behalf of homes there, and some of us have enjoyed their hospitalities. I plead in behalf of children whose fathers have perished under the fallen walls. I plead in behalf of women whose hour of anguish has come, and there is no pillow and there is no roof. Ay, I plead in behalf of him who said: ’93Inasmuch as ye did it to these, ye did it to me.’94 I know you will not turn your back upon this suffering. Let the officers of the church, as they go through these aisles, go slowly, remembering the amount they gather will decide whether some groaning men and women shall live or die. By so much as we expect mercy from the Lord in the last day, let us have mercy for others. O thou self-denying One of Gethsemane, drop upon us thy spirit!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage