Poison
2Ki_4:40 : ’93So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out and said, ’91O thou man of God, there is death in the pot.’92 And they could not eat thereof.’94
Elisha had gone down to lecture to the students in the theological seminary at Gilgal. He found the students very hungry, as students are apt to be. It is very seldom the world makes large provision for those who give themselves to intellectual toil. In order that these students may be prepared to hear what Elisha says, he first feeds their hunger. He knew very well it is useless to talk, to preach, to lecture, to argue with hungry men.
So Elisha, recognizing this common-sense principle, which every Christian ought to recognize, sends servants out to get food for these hungry students. They pick up some good, healthful herbs, but they happen to pick up also some coloquintida, a bitter, poisonous, deathful herb. They bring all these herbs, they put them into the boiling pot, they stir them up, and then a portion of this food is brought to the students and their professors. Seated at the table, one of the hungry students begins immediately to eat, and he happens to get hold of some of the coloquintida. He knew it by the taste. He cries out: ’93Poison, poison! O thou man of God, there is death in the pot!’94 Consternation is thrown over the whole group. What a fortunate thing it was that this student so early found the coloquintida in the mixture at the table! You will by reference find the story is precisely as I have mentioned it.
Well, in our day there are great caldrons of sin and death. Coloquintida of mighty temptation is pressed into it. Some dip it out and taste and reject it and live. Others dip it out, taste it, keep on, and die. And it is the business of every minister of religion, and every man who wishes well to the human race, and who wants to keep the world back from its follies and its sufferings, to cry out: ’93Beware! poison, poison! Look out for this caldron! Stand back! Beware!’94
In Florence there is a fresco by Giotto that for many ages was covered up by two thicknesses of whitewash. It is only within a very few years that the artist’92s hand has come and removed that covering, and the fresco comes out as fair and beautiful as it was before. You say it was a great sacrilege thus to cover up a fine fresco. Yes, but it is a sadder thing that the image of God in the human soul should have been covered up and obliterated. The work is beyond any human hand to restore the divine lineaments. Sin has done an awful work in our world. It has gone out through all the ages, it has mixed up a great caldron of trouble and suffering and pain, and the whole race is poisoned’97poisoned in body, poisoned in mind, poisoned in soul. But blessed be God that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the antidote, and where there was sin there shall be pardon, and where there was suffering there shall be comfort, and where there was death there shall be life.
In previous discourses, I persuaded you of the importance of being charitable in judgment of others. At the same time I said to you briefly what now I wish to say with great emphasis, that while we sympathize with the sinner we must denounce the sin, that while we pity the unfortunate we must be vehement against transgression. Sin is a jagged thing that needs to be roughly handled. You have no right to garland it with fine phrases or lustrous rhetoric. You cannot catch a buffalo with a silken lasso.
A group of emigrants settle in a wild region. The next day a wild beast comes down from the mountain and carries off one of the children. The next day a wild beast comes down from the mountain and carries off another child. Forthwith all the neighbors band together, and they go out with torch in one hand and gun in the other to hunt these monsters down, to find their hiding-place, to light up and ransack the caverns, and to destroy the invaders of their houses. So we want now not merely to talk about the sins and the follies of the world; we want to go behind them, back of them. Down into the caverns where they hide we need to go with the torch of God’92s Word in one hand and the sword of God’92s eternal Spirit in the other to hunt out and slay these iniquities in their hiding-places. Or, to come back to the figure suggested by my text, we want to find what are the caldrons of sin and death from which the iniquities of society are dipped out.
In the first place, I remark: that unhappy and undisciplined homes are the caldrons of great iniquity. A good home is deathless in its influence. The parents may be dead. The old homestead may have been sold and it may have gone entirely out of the possession of the family. The house itself may be torn down. The meadow brook that wound in front of it may have changed its course or entirely dried up. The long line of old-fashioned hollyhocks and the ridges and hedges of wild rose may have been graded, and in place thereof there may be now the beauties of modern gardening. The old poplar trees may have cast down their crown of verdure, and they themselves may have gone in the dust. Some day you say, ’93I think I’92ll go and look at the old place.’94 You go and look at the old place; but oh, how changed! Your eyes are full of tears all the time you are walking around the old place. But notwithstanding all the changes in that place, it is holding an influence over you, and will hold an influence over you until you die. The dewdrops that you dashed from the chickweed, as thirty years ago you drove the cattle afield; the fireflies that flashed in your father’92s house on a summer night when the evenings were too short for a candle; the tinged pebbles you gathered into your apron from the margin of the brook; the berries you strung for a necklace, and the daisies you plucked for your hair’97they have all become part of the fibre of your immortal nature. You never get away from it. If you live to ninety years, you will never get away from it.
The mother of Missionary Swartz threw light on the brow of the dusky savages to whom he preached thirty years after she was dead. The mother of Lord Byron, through her baleful disposition, followed him to the ends of the earth, and stretched a gloom into ’93Childe Harold’94 and ’93Don Juan’94 and hovered in darkness over the lonely grave at Missolonghi. There is a hand that holds me that long ago turned to, dust.
Rascally and scoundrelly people for the most part come from iniquitous homes, from undisciplined homes. Parents harsh and cruel on the one hand, or on the other hand wickedly loose in their government, are raising up a generation of vipers. A home where scolding and fretfulness are dominant is blood relation to the gallows and the penitentiary! Petulance is a serpent that crawls up into the family nursery sometimes and crushes everything. Why, there are parents who even make religion disgusting to their children. They scold them for not loving Christ. They have an exasperating way of doing their duty. The house is full of the war-whoop of contention, and from such a place husband and sons go out to die.
Is there a Hagar leading away Ishmael into the desert to be smitten of the thirst and parched of the sand? In the solemn birth-hour a voice fell to thee from the throne of God, saying: ’93Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. At even-time, when the angels of God hover over that home, do they hear the children lisping the name of Jesus? Traveler for eternity, your little ones gathered under your robes, are you leading them on the right road, or are you taking them out on the dangerous winding bridle-path off which their inexperienced feet may slip, and up which comes the howling of the wolf and the sound of loosened ledge and tumbling avalanche? Blessed is the family altar in which the Christian mother rocks the Christian child. Blessed is the song the little ones sing at nightfall when sleep is closing the eyes and loosening the hand from the toy on the pillow. Blessed is that mother whose every heart-throb is a prayer for her children’92s welfare. The world grows old and the stars will cease to illuminate it and the waters to refresh it and the mountains to guard it and the heavens to overspan it and its long story of sin and shame and glory and triumph will soon turn to ashes; but influences that started in the early home roll on and roll up through all eternity’97blooming in all the joy, waving in all the triumph, exulting in all the son, or shrinking back into all the darkness. Father, mother, which way are you leading your children?
A house took fire and the owner was very careful to get all his furniture out. He got all his books out and he got all his pictures out and he got all his valuable papers out, but he forgot to ask, until it was too late, ’93Are my children safe?’94 Oh, when the earth shall melt with fervent heat and the mountains shall blaze and the seas shall blaze and the earth shall blaze, will your children be safe?
Unhappy and undisciplined homes are the source of much of the wretchedness and sin of the world.
I know there are exceptions sometimes. From a bright and beautiful Christian home a husband or a son will go out down in sin. Oh, how long you had that boy in your prayers! He does not know how many sleepless nights you have spent over him. He does not understand how many tears you have shed for his waywardness. Oh, it is hard, after you have toiled for a child, and given him every advantage and every kindness, to have him pay you back in ingratitude! As one Sabbath morning a father came to the foot of the pulpit as I stepped out of it, and said: ’93O my son, my son, my son!’94 There is many a young man proud of his mother, who would strike into the dust any man who would insult her, who is at this moment himself, by his evil-doing and his bad habits, sharpening a dagger to plunge through that mother’92s heart. A telegram brought in from afar. He went bloated and scarred into the room and he stood by the lifeless form of his mother. Her hair gray; it had turned gray in sorrow. Those eyes had wept floods of tears over his wandering. That still white hand had done him many a kindness and had written many a loving invitation and good counsel. He had broken her old heart. He came into the room and threw himself on the casket and he sobbed outright: ’93Mother, mother!’94 But those lips that had kissed him in infancy and uttered so many kind words spake not; they were sealed. Rather than have such a memory come on my soul, I would prefer to have roll over on me the Alps and the Himalayas.
But while sometimes there are sons who turn out very badly coming from good homes, I want to tell you for your encouragement it is a great exception. A scoffer asked an old doctor of divinity: ’93You believe in the Bible?’94 He replied: ’93Of course I do.’94 ’93You believe that passage, ’91Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it?’92’93 ’93Of course I do.’94 ’93Well,’94 said the scoffer, ’93doctor, how then do you harmonize that with the behavior of your bad boy Bill?’94 The old doctor of divinity, a professor in one of the colleges, said to the scoffer: ’93You don’92t put the emphasis on the right word; you put the emphasis on the right word and it’92s all right. ’91Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Bill isn’92t old yet!’94 Sure enough, God kept his promise, and the wandering son came to his father’92s God and lived many years of eminent Christian character and died in the glorious hope of the Gospel and is with his eminent father in heaven now. O ye who have wandering sons, they are not old yet! Notwithstanding all this, we must admit that an unhappy and undisciplined home is the poisonous caldron from which a vast multitude drink their death.
I remark that another caldron of iniquity is an indolent life. All the rail-trains down the Hudson river yesterday, all the rail-trains on the Pennsylvania route, all the trains on the Long Island road brought to these cities young men to begin commercial life. Some of them are here this morning, I doubt not. Do you know what one of your great temptations is going to be? It is the example of indolent people in our cities. They are in all our cities. They dress better than some who are industrious. They have access to all places of amusement’97plenty of money, and yet idle. They hang around our great hotels’97the Pierrepont House, the Fifth Avenue, the Brunswick, the Astoria, the Waldorf’97all our beautiful hotels, you find them around there any day’97men who do nothing, never earn anything, yet well-dressed, having plenty. Why should I work? Why should you work? Why drudge and toil in bank and shop and office, or on the scaffolding or by the anvil, when these men get along so well and do not work? Some of them hang around the City Halls of our great cities, toothpick in their mouth, waiting for some crumb to fall from the officeholder’92s table. Some of them hang around the City Hall for the city van bringing criminals from the station-houses. They stand there and gloat over it’97really enjoy the disgrace and suffering of those poor creatures as they get out of the city van and go into the courts. Where do these idling spectators get their money? That is what you ask. That is what I ask. Only four ways of getting money’97only four: by inheritance, by earning it, by begging it, by stealing it; and there are many among us who get their living not by inheritance, nor by earning it, nor by begging it. I do not like to take the responsibility of saying how they get it! Now, these men are a constant temptation. Why should I toil and wear myself out in the bank or the office or the store or the shop or the factory? These men have nothing to do. They get along a great deal better. And that is the temptation under which a great many young men fall. They begin to consort with these men, these idlers, and they go down the same awful steeps. The number of men in our cities who are trying to get their living by their wits and by sleight-of-hand is all the time increasing.
A New York merchant saw a young man, one of his clerks, in half disguise, going into a very low place of amusement. The merchant said to himself: ’93I must look out for that clerk; he is going in bad company and going in bad places; I must look out for him.’94 A few months passed on, and one morning the merchant entered his store, and this clerk of whom I have been speaking came up in assumed consternation, and said: ’93Oh, sir, the store has been on fire; I have put out the fire, but there are a great many goods lost; we have had a great crowd of people coming and going.’94 Then the merchant took the clerk by the collar, and said: ’93I have had enough of this; you cannot deceive me; where are those goods that you stole?’94 The young man instantly confessed his villainy.
Oh, the numbers of people in these great cities who are trying to get their living not honestly! And they are a mighty temptation to the industrious young man who cannot understand it. While these others have it so easy they have it so hard. Horatius of olden time was told that he could have just as much ground as he could plow around with a yoke of oxen in one day. He hooked up the oxen to the plow, and he cut a very large circle and plowed until he came to the same point where he started, and all that property was his. But I have to tell you today that just so much financial, just so much moral, just so much spiritual possession you will have as you compass with your own industries, and just so much as from the morning of your life to the evening of your life you can plow around with your own hard work. ’93Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.’94 One of the most awful caldrons of death today is an indolent life. Thank God for work.
Once more I remark, that the dramshop is a great caldron of iniquity in our time. Anacharsis said that the vine bore three grapes: the first was Pleasure, the next was Drunkenness, and the next Misery. Every saloon above ground or under ground is a fountain of iniquity. It may have a license and it may go along quite respectably for a while, but after a while the cover will fall off and the color of the iniquity will be displayed. ’93Oh,’94 says some one, ’93you ought to be easier on such a traffic as that when it pays such a large revenue to the government, and helps support your schools and your great institutions of mercy.’94 And then I think of what William E. Gladstone said’97I think it was the first time he was Chancellor of the Exchequer’97when men engaged in the ruinous traffic came to him and said their business ought to have more consideration from the fact that it paid such a large revenue to the English Government. Mr. Gladstone said: ’93Gentlemen, don’92t worry yourselves about the revenue; give me thirty millions of sober people, and we’92ll have revenue enough and a surplus.’94 We might in this country’97this traffic perished’97have less revenue, but we would have more happy homes, and we would have more peace, and we would have fewer people to support in the penitentiary, and there would be tens of thousands of men who are now on the road to hell who would start on the road for heaven.
But the financial ruin is a very small part of it. This iniquity of which I speak takes everything that is sacred out of the family, everything that is holy in religion, everything that is infinite in the soul, and tramples it under foot. The marriage-day has come. The twain are at the altar. Lights flash. Music sounds. Gay feet go up and down the drawing-room. Did ever a vessel launch on such a bright and beautiful sea? The scene changes. Dingy garret. No fire. On a broken chair a sorrowful wife. Last hope gone. Poor, forsaken, trodden under foot, she knows all the sorrows of being a drunkard’92s wife. ’93Oh,’94 she says, ’93he was the kindest man that ever lived; he was so noble; he was so good! God never made a grander man than he was, but the drink did it; the drink did it!’94 Some day she will press her hands against her temples, and cry: ’93Oh, my brain, my brain!’94 or she will go out on the abutment of the bridge some moonlight night, and look down on the glassy surface and wonder if under that glassy surface there is not some place of rest for a broken heart.
A young man, through the intercession of metropolitan friends, gets a place in a bank or store. He is going to leave his country home. That morning, they are up early in the old homestead. The trunk is on the wagon. Mother says: ’93My son, I put a Bible in the trunk; I hope you will read it often.’94 She wipes the tears away with her apron. ’93Oh,’94 he says, ’93come, don’92t you be worried; I know how to take care of myself. Don’92t be worried about me.’94 The father says: ’93My son, be a good boy and write home often; your mother will be anxious to hear from you.’94 Crack! goes the whip, and over the hills goes the wagon. Five years have passed on, and a dissipated life has done its work for that young man. There is a hearse coming up in front of the old homestead. The young men of the neighborhood who have stayed on the farm come in and say: ’93Is it possible? Why, he doesn’92t look natural, does he? Is that the fair brow we used to know? is that the healthy cheek we used to know? It can’92t be possible that is he.’94 The parents stand looking at the gash in the forehead from which the life oozed out, and they lift their hands, and say: ’93O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom; would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son.’94
Lorenzo de Medici was very sick, and some of his superstitious friends thought if they could dissolve a certain number of pearls in a cup and then he would drink them, it would cure him of the disease. So they went around and they gathered up all the beautiful pearls they could find, and they dissolved them in a cup, and the sick man drank them. It was an expensive draught. But I tell you of a more expensive draught than that. Drunkenness puts into its cup the pearl of physical health, the pearl of domestic happiness, the pearl of respectability, the pearl of Christian hope, the pearl of an everlasting heaven, and presses it to the hot lips.
The dramshop is the gate of hell. The trouble is they do not put up the right kind of a sign. They have a great many different kinds of signs now on places where strong drink is sold. One is called the ’93restaurant,’94 and another is called the ’93saloon,’94 and another is called the ’93hotel,’94 and another is called the ’93wine-cellar,’94 and another is called the ’93sample-room.’94 What a name to give one of those places! A ’93sample-room’94! I saw a man on the steps of one of those ’93sample-rooms’94 the other day, dead drunk. I said to myself: ’93I suppose that is a sample!’94
’93Oh,’94 says some man, ’93I am kind, I am indulgent to my family, I am right in many respects, I am very generous, and I have too grand and generous a moral nature to be overthrown in that way.’94 Let me say that the persons who are in the most peril have the largest hearts, the best education, the brightest prospects. This sin chooses the fattest lambs for its sacrifice. The brightest garlands are by this carbuncled hand of drunkenness torn off the brow of the poet and the orator. Charles Lamb, answer! Thomas Marshall, answer! Sheridan, the English orator, answer! Edgar A. Poe, answer!
Oh, come and look over into it while I draw off the cover’97hang over it and look down into it, and see the seething, boiling, loathsome, smoking, agonizing, blaspheming hell of the drunkard. Young man, be master of your appetites and passions. There are many young men of fair prospects. Put your trust in the Lord God, and all is well. But you will be tempted. Perhaps you may this moment be addressed on the first Sabbath of your coming to the great city, and I give you this brotherly counsel. I speak not in a perfunctory way. I speak an an older brother talks to a younger brother. I put my hand on your shoulder and commend you to Jesus Christ, who himself was a young man and died while yet a young man, and has sympathy for all young men. Oh, be master, by the grace of God, of your appetites and passions!
I close with a peroration. Ministers and speakers are very apt to close with a peroration, and they generally roll up some grand imagery to express what they have to say. I close with a peroration mightier than was ever uttered by mere human lips. Two quotations. The first is: ’93Who hath woe? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it moveth aright in the cup, for at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.’94 This is the other quotation. Make up your mind as to which is the more impressive. I think the last is the mightier: ’93Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk thou in the sight of thine own eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage