Would You Live Life Over Again?
Job_2:4 : ’93All that a man hath will he give for his life.’94
That is untrue. The Lord did not say it, but Satan said it to the Lord when the evil one wanted Job still more afflicted. The record is: ’93So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils.’94 And Satan has been the author of all eruptive disease since then, and he hopes by poisoning the blood to poison the soul. But the result of the diabolical experiment which left Job victor proved the falsity of the Satanic remark’97’94All that a man hath will he give for his life.’94 Many a captain who has stood on the bridge of the steamer till his passengers got off and he drowned; many an engineer who has kept his hand on the throttle-valve or his foot on the brake until the most of the train was saved, while he went down to death through the open drawbridge; many a fireman who plunged into a blazing house to get a sleeping child out, sacrificing his life in the attempt; and thousands of martyrs who submitted to fiery stake and knife of massacre and headsman’92s ax and guillotine rather than surrender principle, prove that in many a case my text was not true when it says, ’93All that a man hath will he give for his life.’94
But Satan’92s falsehood was built on a truth. Life is very precious, and if we would not give up all, there are many things we would surrender rather than surrender it. We see how precious life is from the fact that we do everything to prolong it. Hence all sanitary regulations, all study of hygiene, all fear of draughts, all waterproofs, all doctors, all medicines, all struggle in crisis of accident. An admiral of the British navy was court-martialed for turning his ship around in time of danger, and so damaging the ship. It was proved against him. But when his time came to be heard he said: ’93Gentlemen, I did turn the ship around, and admit that it was damaged, but do you want to know why I turned it? There was a man overboard, and I wanted to save him, and I did save him, and I consider the life of one sailor worth all the vessels of the British navy.’94 No wonder he was vindicated. Life is indeed very precious. Yea, there are those who deem life so precious they would like to repeat it, they would like to try it again. They would like to go back from seventy to sixty, from sixty to fifty, from fifty to forty, from forty to thirty, from thirty to twenty. I propose for very practical and useful purposes, as will appear before I get through, to discuss the question we have all asked of others, and others have again and again asked of us, Would you like to live your life over again?
The fact is that no intelligent and right feeling man is satisfied with his past life. We have all made so many mistakes, stumbled into so many blunders, said so many things that ought not to have been said, and done so many things that ought not to have been done, that we can suggest at least ninety-five per cent. of improvement. Now would it not be grand if the good Lord would say to you: ’93You can go back and try it over again. I will by a word turn your hair to brown or black or golden, and smooth all the wrinkles out of your temple and cheek, and take the bend out of your shoulders, and extirpate the stiffness from the joint and the rheumatic twinge from the foot, and you shall be twenty-one years of age and just what you were when you reached that point before.’94 If the proposition were made I think many thousands would accept it.
That feeling caused the ancient search for what was called the Fountain of Youth, the waters of which, when taken, would turn the hair of the octogenarian into the curly locks of a boy, and however old a person might be who drank at that fountain he would be young again. The island was said to belong to the group of the Bahamas, but lay far out in the ocean. The great Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon, fellow-voyager with Columbus, I have no doubt felt that if he could discover that Fountain of Youth he would do as much as his friend had done in discovering America. So he put out in 1512 from Porto Rico and cruised about among the Bahamas in search of that fountain. I am glad he did not find it. There is no such fountain. But if there were, and its waters were bottled up and sent abroad at a thousand dollars a bottle, the demand would be greater than the supply; and many a man who has come through a life of uselessness, and perhaps sin, to old age would be shaking up the potent liquid, and if he were directed to take only a teaspoonful after each meal would be so anxious to make sure work he would take a tablespoonful, and if directed to take a tablespoonful would take a glassful.
But some of you would have to go back further than to twenty-one years of age to make a fair start, for there are many who manage to get all wrong before that period. Yea, in order to get a fair start some would have to go back to the father and mother and get them corrected; yea, to the grandfather and grandmother and have their life corrected, for some of you are suffering from bad hereditary influences which started a hundred years ago. Well, if your grandfather lived his life over again, and your father lived his life over again, and you lived your life over again, what a cluttered-up place this world would be’97a place filled with miserable attempts at repairs. I begin to think that it is better for each generation to have only one chance, and then for them to pass off and give another generation a chance.
Beside that, if we were permitted to live life over again, it would be a stale and stupid experience. The zest and spur and enthusiasm of life come from the fact that we have never been along this road before, and everything is new, and we are alert for what may appear at the next turn of the road. Suppose you, a man in mid-life or old age, were, with your present feelings and large attainments, put back into the thirties or the twenties or into the teens, what a nuisance you would be to others, and what an unhappiness to yourself! Your contemporaries would not want you, and you would not want them. Things that in your previous journey of life stirred your healthful ambition, or gave you pleasurable surprise, or led you into happy interrogation, would only call forth from you a disgusted ’93Oh, pshaw!’94 You would be blas’e9 at thirty, and a misanthrope at forty, and unendurable at fifty. The most inane and stupid thing imaginable would be a second journey of life. It is amusing to hear people say: ’93I would like to live my life over again, if I could take my present experience and knowledge of things back with me and begin under those improved auspices.’94 Why, what an uninteresting boy you would be with your present attainments in a child’92s mind. No one would want such a boy around the house; a philosopher at twenty, a scientist at fifteen, an arch’e6ologist at ten, and a domestic nuisance all the time. An oak crowded into an acorn. A Rocky Mountain eagle thrust back into the egg-shell from which it was hatched.
Beside that, if you took life over again, you would have to take its deep sadnesses over again. Would you want to try again the griefs and the heartbreaks and the bereavements through which you have gone? What a mercy that we shall never be called to suffer them again! We may have others bad enough, but those old ones never again. Would you want to go through the process of losing your father again or your mother again or your companion in life again or your child again?
If you were permitted to stop at the sixtieth milestone or the fiftieth milestone or the fortieth milestone and retrace your steps to the twentieth, your experience would be something like mine one day last November in Italy. I walked through a great city with a friend and two guides, and there were in all the city only four persons and they were those of our own group. We went up and down the streets, we entered the houses, the museums, the temples, the theaters. We examined the wonderful pictures on the walls and the most exquisite mosaics on the floors. In the streets were the deep-worn ruts of wagons, but not a wagon in the city. On the front steps of mansions the word ’93Welcome,’94 in Latin, but no human being to greet us. The only bodies of any of the citizens that we saw were petrified and in the museum at the gates. Of the thirty-five thousand people who once lived in those homes and worshiped in those temples and clapped in those theatres, not one left! For sixteen hundred years that city of Pompeii had been buried before modern exploration scooped out of it the lava of Vesuvius. Well, he who should be permitted to return on the pathway of his earthly life and live it over again would find as lonely and sad a pilgrimage. It would be an exploration of the dead past. The old schoolhouse, the old church, the old home, the old play-ground either gone or occupied by others, and for you more depressing than was our Pompeian visit in November.
Beside that, would you want to risk the temptations of life over again? From the fact that you are here I conclude that, though in many respects your life may have been unfortunate and unconsecrated, you have got on so far tolerably well, if nothing more than tolerably. As for myself, though my life has been far from being as consecrated as I would like to have had it, I would not want to try it over again, lest next time I would do worse. Why, just look at the temptations we have all passed through, and just look at the multitudes who have gone completely under! Just call over the roll of your schoolmates and college-mates, the clerks who were with you in the same store or bank, or the operatives in the same factory, with just as good prospects as you, who have come to complete mishap. Some young man that told you that he was going to be a millionaire, and own the fastest trotters on the world’92s race-courses, and retire by the time he was thirty-five years of age, you do not hear from for many years, and know nothing about him until some day he comes into your store and asks for five cents to get a mug of beer.
You, the good mother of a household, and all your children rising up to call you blessed, can remember when you were quite jealous of the belle of the village, who was so transcendently fair and popular. But while you have these two honorable and queenly names of wife and mother, she became a poor waif of the street, and went into the blackness of darkness forever. Live life over again? Why, if many of those who are now respectable were permitted to experiment, the next journey would be demolition. You got through, as Job says, by the skin of the teeth. Next time you might not get through at all. Satan would say: ’93I know him now better than I did before, and have for fifty years been studying his weaknesses, and I will weave a stronger web of circumstances to catch him next time.’94 And Satan would concenter his forces on this one man, and the last state of that man would be worse than the first. My friends, our faces are in the right direction. Better go forward than backward, even if we had the choice. The greatest disaster I can think of would be for you to return to boyhood in 1899. Oh, if life were a smooth Luzerne or Cayuga lake, I would like to get into a yacht and sail over it, not once, but twice’97yea, a thousand times. But life is an uncertain sea, and some of the ships crash on the icebergs of cold indifference, and some take fire of evil passion, and some lose their bearings and run into the Skerries, and some are never heard of. Surely on such a treacherous sea as that one voyage is enough.
Besides all this, do you know, if you could have your wish and live life over again it would put you so much further from reunion with your friends in heaven? If you are in the noon of life, or the evening of life, you are not very far from the golden gate at which you are to meet your transported and emparadised loved ones. You are now, let us say, twenty years or ten years or one year off from celestial conjunction. Now, suppose you went back in your earthly life thirty years or forty years or fifty years, what an awful postponement of the time of reunion! It would be as though you were going to San Francisco to a great banquet, and you got to Oakland, four or five miles this side of it, and then came back to the East to get a better start; as though you were going to England to be crowned, and having come in sight of the mountains of Wales you put back to Sandy Hook in order to make a better voyage. The further on you get in life, if a Christian, the nearer you are to the renewal of broken-up companionship. No; the wheel of time turns in the right direction, and it is well it turns so fast. Three hundred and sixty-five revolutions in a year and forward, rather than three hundred and sixty-five revolutions in a year and backward.
But hear ye! hear ye! while I tell you how you may practically live your life over again and be all the better for it. You may put into the remaining years of your life all you have learned of wisdom in your past life. You may make the coming ten years worth the preceding forty or fifty years. When a man says he would like to live his life over again because he would do so much better, and yet goes right on living as he has always lived, do you not see he stultifies himself? He proves that if he could go back he would do almost the same as he has done.
If a man eat green apples some Wednesday in cholera time and is thrown into fearful cramps, and says on Thursday: ’93I wish I had been more prudent in my diet; oh, if I could live Wednesday over again!’94 and then on Friday eat apples just as green, he proves that it would have been no advantage for him to live Wednesday over again. And if we, deploring our past life, and with the idea of improvement, long for an opportunity to try it over again, yet go on making the same mistakes, and committing the same sins, we only demonstrate that the repetition of our existence would afford no improvement. It was green apples before, and it would be green apples over again.
As soon as a ship captain strikes a rock in the lake or sea he reports it, and a buoy is swung over that reef, and mariners henceforth stand off from that rock. And all our mistakes in the past ought to be buoys, warning us to keep in the right channel. There is no excuse for us if we split on the same rock where we split before. Going along the sidewalk at night where excavations are being made, we frequently see a lantern on a framework, and we turn aside, for that lantern says, keep out of this hole. And all along the pathway of life lanterns are set as warnings, and by the time we come to mid-life we ought to know where it is safe to walk, and where it is unsafe.
Beside that, we have all these years been learning how to be useful, and in the, next decade we ought to accomplish more for God and the church and the world than in any previous four decades. The best way to atone for past indolence or past transgression is by future assiduity. Yet you often find Christian men who were not converted until they were forty or fifty, as old age comes on, saying: ’93Well, my work is about done, and it is time for me to rest.’94 They gave forty years of their life to Satan and the world, a little fragment of their life to God, and now they want to rest. Whether that belongs to comedy or tragedy I say not. The man who gave one-half of his earthly existence to the world, and of the remaining two quarters one to Christian work and the other to rest, would not, I suppose, get a very brilliant reception in heaven. If there are any dried leaves in heaven, they would be appropriate for his garland; or if there is any throne with broken steps, it would be appropriate for his coronation; or any harp with relaxed string, it would be appropriate for his fingering. My brother, you give nine-tenths of your life to sin and Satan and then get converted, and then rest a while in sanctified laziness, and then go up to get your heavenly reward, and I warrant it will not take the cashier of the royal banking house a great while to count out to you all your dues. He will not ask you whether you will have it in bills of large denomination or small. I would like to put one sentence of my sermon in Italics, and have it underscored, and three exclamation points at the end of the sentence, and that sentence is this: As we cannot live our lives over again, the nearest we can come to atoning for the past is by redoubled holiness and industry in the future.
’91Tis worth a wise man’92s past of life,
’91Tis worth a thousand years of strife,
If thou canst lessen but by one,
The countless ills beneath the sun.
If this rail-train of life has been detained and switched off and is far behind the time-table, the engineer for the rest of the way must put on more pressure of steam and go a mile a minute in order to arrive at the right time and place, under the approval of conductor and directors.
As I supposed it would be, there are multitudes of young people interested in this sermon on whom the subject has acted with the force of a galvanic battery. Without my saying a word to them they have soliloquized, saying: ’93As one cannot live his life over again, and I can make only one trip, I must look out and make no mistakes; I have but one chance, and I must make the most of it.’94 My young friends, I am glad you made this application of the sermon yourself. When a minister toward the close of his sermon says, ’93Now a few words by way of application,’94 people begin to look around for their hats and get their arm through one sleeve of their overcoats, and the sermonic application is a failure. I am glad you have made your own application and that you are resolved, like a Quaker of whom I read years ago, who, in substance, said: ’93I shall be along this path of life but once, and so I must do all the kindness I can and all the good I can.’94 My hearers, the mistakes of youth can never be corrected. Time gone is gone forever. An opportunity passed the thousandth part of a second has by one leap reached the other side of a great eternity. In the autumn when the birds migrate you look up and see the sky black with wings and the flocks stretching out into many leagues of air, and so today I look up and see two large wings in full sweep. They are the wings of the flying year. That is followed by a flock of three hundred and sixty-five, and they are the flying days. Each of the flying days is followed by twenty-four, and they are the flying hours, and each of these is followed by sixty, and these are the flying minutes. Where did this great flock start from? Eternity past. Where are they bound? Eternity to come. You might as well go a-gunning for the quails that whistled last year in the meadows, or the robins that last year caroled in the sky, as to try to fetch down and bag one of the past opportunities of your life. Do not say, ’93I will lounge now and make it up afterward.’94 Young men and boys, you cannot make it up. My observation is that those who in youth sowed wild oats, to the end of their short life sowed wild oats, and that those who start sowing Genesee wheat always sow Genesee wheat.
And then the reaping of the harvests is so different. There is grandfather now. He has lived to old age because his habits have been good. His eyesight for this world has got somewhat dim, but his eyesight for heaven is radiant. His hearing is not so acute as it once was, and he must bend clear over to hear what his little grandchild says when she asks him what he has brought for her. But he easily catches the music descending from supernal spheres. Men passing in the streets take off their hats in reverence, and women say, ’93What a good old man he is!’94 Seventy or eighty years, all for God and for making this world happy. Splendid! Glorious! Magnificent! He will have hard work getting into heaven, because those whom he helped to get there will fill up and crowd the gates, to tell him how glad they are at his coming, until he says: ’93Please to stand back a little till I pass through and cast my crown at the feet of him whom, having not seen, I love.’94 I do not know what you call that. I call it the harvest of Genesee wheat.
Out yonder is a man very old at forty years of age, at a time when he ought to be buoyant as the morning. He got bad habits on him very early, and those habits have become worse. He is a man on fire’97on fire with alcoholism, on fire with all evil habits; out with the world and the world out with him. Down, and falling deeper. His swollen hands in his threadbare pockets and his eyes fixed on the ground, he passes through the street, and the quick step of an innocent child, or the strong step of a young man, or the roll of a prosperous carriage maddens him, and he curses society and he curses God. Fallen sick, with no resources, he is carried to the almshouse. A loathsome spectacle, he lies all day long waiting for dissolution, or in the night rises on his cot and fights apparitions of what he might have been and of what he will be. He started life with as good a prospect as any man on the American continent, but there he is, a bloated carcass, waiting for the shovels of public charity to put him five feet under earth. He has only reaped what he sowed. Harvest of wild oats! ’93There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof is death.’94
Young man, as you cannot live life over again, however you may long to do so, be sure to have your one life right. Perhaps these words may reach some young man who has gone away from home and perhaps under some little spite or evil persuasion of another, and his parents know not where he is. My son, go home! Do not go to sea! Do not go tonight where you may be tempted to go. Go home! Your father will be glad to see you; and your mother’97I need not tell you how she feels. How I would like to make your parents a present of their wayward boy, repentant and in his right mind. I would like to write them a letter, and you to carry the letter, saying: ’93By the blessing of God on my sermon I introduce to you one whom you have never seen before, for he has become a new creature in Christ Jesus.’94 My boy! go home and put your tired head on the bosom that nursed you so tenderly in your childhood years.
A young Scotchman was in battle taken captive by a band of Indians, and he learned their language and adopted their habits. Years passed on, but the old Indian chieftain never forgot that he had in his possession a young man who did not belong to him. Well, one day this tribe of Indians came in sight of the Scotch regiments from whom this young man had been captured, and the old Indian chieftain said: ’93I lost my son in battle and I know how a father feels at the loss of a son. Do you think your father is yet alive?’94 The young man said: ’93I am the only son of my father, and I hope he is still alive.’94 Then said the Indian chieftain: ’93Because of the loss of my son this world is a desert. You go free. Return to your countrymen. Revisit your father, that he may rejoice when he sees the sun rise in the morning and the trees blossom in the spring.’94 So I say to you, young man, captive of waywardness and sin: Your father is waiting for you. Your mother is waiting for you. Your sisters are waiting for you. God is waiting for you. Go home! Go home!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage