181. A Helpful Religion

A Helpful Religion

Psa_20:2 : ’93Send thee help from the sanctuary.’94

If you should ask fifty men what the church is, they would give you fifty different answers. One man would say, ’93It is a convention of hypocrites.’94 Another, ’93It is an assembly of people who feel themselves a great deal better than others.’94 Another, ’93It is a place for gossip, where wolverene dispositions devour each other.’94 Another, ’93It is a place for the cultivation of superstition and cant.’94 Another, ’93It is an arsenal where theologians go to get pikes and muskets and shot.’94 Another, ’93It is an art gallery, where men go to admire grand arches and exquisite fresco and musical warble and the Dantesque in gloomy imagery.’94 Another man would say, ’93It is the best place on earth except my own home.’94 ’93If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.’94

Now, whatever the church is, my text tells you what it ought to be’97a great, practical, homely, omnipotent help. ’93Send thee help from the sanctuary.’94 The pew ought to yield restfulness for the body. The color of the upholstery ought to yield pleasure to the eye. The entire service ought to yield strength for the moil and struggle of everyday life. The Sabbath ought to be harnessed to all the six days of the week, drawing them in the right direction. The church ought to be a magnet, visibly and mightily affecting all the homes of the worshipers. Every man gets roughly jostled, gets abused, gets cut, gets insulted, gets slighted, gets exasperated. By the time the Sabbath comes he has an accumulation of six days of annoyance; and that is a starveling church service which has not strength enough to take that accumulated annoyance and hurl it into perdition. The business man sits down in church headachey from the week’92s engagements. Perhaps he wishes he had tarried at home on the lounge with the newspapers and the slippers. That man wants to be cooled off, and graciously diverted. The first wave of the religious service ought to dash clear over the hurricane-decks, and leave him dripping with holy and glad and heavenly emotion. ’93Send thee help from the sanctuary.’94

In the first place, sanctuary help ought to come from the music. A dying woman in England persisted in singing to the last moment. The attendants tried to persuade her to stop, saying it would exhaust her and make the disease worse. She answered, ’93I must sing: I am only practising for the heavenly choir.’94 Music on earth is a rehearsal for music in heaven. If you and I are going to take part in that great orchestra, it is high time that we were stringing and thrumming our harps. They tell us that Thalberg and Gottschalk never would go into a concert until they had first in private rehearsed, although they were such masters of the instrument. And can it be that we expect to take part in the great oratorio of heaven if we do not rehearse here?

But I am not speaking of the next world. Sabbath song ought to set all the week to music. We want not more harmony, not more artistic expression, but more volume in our church music. The English Dissenting churches far surpass our American churches in this respect. An English audience of one thousand people will give more volume of sacred song than an American audience of two thousand people. I do not know what the reason is. You ought to have heard them sing in Surrey Chapel. I had the opportunity of preaching the anniversary’97I think the ninetieth anniversary’97sermon in Rowland Hill’92s old chapel, and when they lifted their voices in sacred song it was simply overwhelming; and then, in the evening of the same day, in Agricultural Hall, thousands of voices lifted in doxology. It was like the voice of many waters and like the voice of mighty thunderings and like the voice of heaven.

The blessing thrilled through all the laboring throng,

And heaven was won by violence of song.

Now, I am no worshiper of noise, but I believe that if our American churches would, with full heartiness of soul and full emphasis of voice, sing the songs of Zion, this part of sacred worship would have tenfold more power than it has now. Why not take this part of the sacred service and lift it to where it ought to be? All the annoyances of life might be drowned out by that sacred song. Do you tell me that it is not fashionable to sing very loudly? Then, I say, away with the fashion. We dam back the great Mississippi of congregational singing, and let a few drops of melody trickle through the dam. I say, take away the dam, and let the billows roar on their way to the oceanic heart of God. Whether it is fashionable to sing loudly or not, let us sing with all possible emphasis.

We hear a great deal of the art of singing, of music as an entertainment, of music as a recreation. It is high time we heard something of music as a help, a practical help. In order to do this, we must have only a few hymns. New tunes and new hymns every Sunday make poor congregational singing. Fifty hymns are enough for fifty years. The Episcopal Church prays the same prayers every Sabbath, year after year and century after century. For that reason they have the hearty responses. Let us take a hint from that fact, and let us sing the same songs Sabbath after Sabbath. Only in that way can we come to the full force of this exercise. Twenty thousand years will not wear out the hymns of William Cowper, Charles Wesley, and Isaac Watts. Suppose, now, each person in an audience has brought all the annoyances of the last three hundred and sixty-five days. Fill the room to the ceiling with sacred song, and you would drown out all those annoyances of the last three hundred and sixty-five days, and you would drown them out forever. Organ and cornet are only to marshal the voice. Let the voice fall into line, and in companies and in regiments by storm take the obduracy and sin of the world. If you cannot sing for yourself, sing for others. By trying to give others good cheer you will bring good cheer to your own heart.

When Londonderry, Ireland, was besieged, many years ago, the people inside the city were famishing, and a vessel came up with provisions, but the vessel ran on the river bank and stuck fast. The enemy went with laughter and derision to board the vessel, when the vessel gave a broadside fire against the enemy, and by the recoil was turned back into the stream, and all was well. Oh, ye who are high and dry on the rocks of melancholy, give a broadside fire of song against your spiritual enemies, and by holy rebound you will come out into the calm waters. If we want to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy. Mythology tells us of Amphion, who played his lyre until the mountains were moved and the walls of Thebes arose; but religion has a mightier story to tell of how Christian song may build whole temples of eternal joy and lift the round earth into sympathy with the skies.

I tarried many nights in London, and I used to hear the small bells of the city strike the hour of night’97one, two, three, four’97and among them the great St. Paul’92s Cathedral would come in to mark the hours, making all the other sounds seem utterly insignificant as with mighty tongue it announced the hour of the night, every stroke an overmastering boom. So it was intended that all the lesser sounds of the world should be drowned out in the mighty sea of congregational song beating against the gates of heaven. Do you know how they mark the hours in heaven? They have no clocks, as they have no candles, but a great pendulum of hallelujah swinging across heaven from eternity to eternity.

Let those refuse to sing

Who never knew our God;

But children of the Heavenly King

Should speak their joys abroad.

Again I remark, that sanctuary help ought to come from the sermon. Of a thousand people in any audience, how many want sympathetic help? Do you guess a hundred? Do you guess five hundred? You have guessed wrong. I will tell you just the proportion. Out of a thousand people in any audience there are just one thousand who need sympathetic help. These young people want it just as much as the old. The old people sometimes seem to think they have a monopoly of the rheumatisms and the neuralgias and the headaches and the physical disorders of the world; but I tell you there are no worse heart-aches than are felt by some of the young people.

I have noticed amid all classes of men that some of the severest battles and the toughest work come before thirty. Therefore, we must have our sermons and our exhortations in prayer-meeting all sympathetic with the young. And so with these people further on in life. What do these doctors and lawyers and merchants and mechanics care about the abstractions of religion? What they want is help to bear the whimsicalities of patients, the browbeating of legal opponents, the unfairness of customers who have plenty of faultfinding for every imperfection of handiwork, but no praise for twenty excellences. What does the brain-racked, hand-blistered man care for Zwingle’92s ’93Doctrine of Original Sin’94 or Augustine’92s ’93Meditations’94? You might as well go to a man who has the pleurisy and put on his side a plaster made out of Doctor Parr’92s ’93Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence.’94

While all of a sermon may not be helpful alike to all, if it be a Christian sermon preached by a Christian man, there will be help for every one somewhere. We go into an apothecary’92s store. We see others being waited on; we do not complain because we do not immediately get the medicine; we know our turn will come after awhile. And so, while all parts of a faithful sermon may not be appropriate to our case, if we wait prayerfully, before the sermon is through we shall have the divine prescription. I say to young men who are going to preach the Gospel: ’93We want in our sermons not more metaphysics, nor more imagination, nor more logic, nor more profundity. What we want in our sermons and Christian exhortations is more sympathy. When Father Taylor preached in the Sailors’92 Bethel at Boston, the Jack tars felt they had help for their duties among the ratlines and the forecastles. When Richard Weaver preached to the operatives in Oldham, England, all the workmen felt they had more grace for the spindles. When Dr. South preached to kings and princes and princesses, all the mighty men and women who heard him received help for their high station.

People will not go to church merely as a matter of duty. There will not next Sabbath be a hundred people in this city who will get up in the morning and say: ’93The Bible says I must go to church; it is my duty to go to church; therefore, I will go to church.’94 The vast multitude of people who go to church go to church because they like it, and the multitude of people who stay away from church stay away because they do not like it. I am not speaking about the way the world ought to be; I am speaking about the way the world is. Taking things as they are, we must make the centripetal force of the church mightier than the centrifugal. We must make our churches magnets to draw the people thereunto, so that a man will feel uneasy if he does not go to church, saying: ’93I wish I had gone this morning. I wonder if I can’92t dress yet and get there in time? It is eleven o’92clock; now they are singing. It is half-past eleven; now they are preaching. I wonder when the folks will be home to tell us what was said, what has been going on?’94 When the impression is confirmed that our churches, by architecture, by music, by sociality, and by sermon, shall be made the most attractive places on earth then we will want twice as many churches as we have now, twice as large’97and then they will not half accommodate the people.

To the young men who are entering the ministry I say: we must put on more force, more energy, and into our religious services more vivacity, if we want the people to come. You look into a church court of any denomination of Christians. First, you will find the men of large common sense and earnest look. The vigor of their minds, the piety of their hearts, the holiness of their lives qualify them for their work. Then you will find in every church court of every denomination a group of men who utterly amaze you with the fact that such semi-imbecility can get any pulpits to preach in! Those are the men who give forlorn statistics about church decadence. Frogs never croak in running water; always in stagnant. But I say to all Christian workers, to all Sunday School teachers, to all evangelists, to all ministers of the Gospel: if we want our Sunday Schools and our prayer-meetings and our churches to gather the people, we must freshen up. The simple fact is, the people are tired of the humdrum of religionists. Religious humdrum is the worst of all humdrum. You say over and over again, ’93Come to Jesus,’94 until the phrase means absolutely nothing. Why do you not tell them a story which will make them come to Jesus in five minutes? You say that all Sunday School teachers and all evangelists and all ministers must bring their illustrations from the Bible. Christ did not when he preached. The most of the Bible was written before Christ’92s time, but where did he get his illustrations? He drew them from the lilies, from the ravens, from salt, from a candle, from a bushel, from long-faced hypocrites, from gnats, from moths, from large gates and small gates, from a camel, from the needle’92s eye, from yeast in the dough of bread, from a mustard seed, from a fishing-net, from debtors and creditors. That is the reason multitudes followed Christ. His illustrations were so easy and so understandable. Therefore, my brother Christian worker, if you and I find two illustrations for a religious subject, and the one is a Bible illustration and the other is outside the Bible, I will take the latter because I want to be like my Master. Looking across to a hill, Christ saw the city of Jerusalem. Talking to the people about the conspicuity of Christian example, he said: ’93The world is looking at you; be careful. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.’94 While he was speaking of the divine care of God’92s children a bird flew past. He said, ’93Behold the ravens.’94 Then looking down into the valley, all covered at that season with flowers, he said, ’93Consider the lilies.’94 What is the use of our going away off in some obscure part of history, or on the other side the earth to get an illustration when the earth and the heavens are full of illustrations? Why should we go away off to get an illustration of the vicarious suffering of Jesus Christ when as near us as Bloomfield, New Jersey, two little children were walking on the rail-track, and a train was coming? But they were on a bridge of trestlework, and the little girl took her brother and let him down through the trestlework as gently as she could toward the water, very carefully and lovingly and cautiously, so that he might not be hurt in the fall, and might be picked up by those who were standing near-by. While doing that the train struck her, and hardly enough of her body was left to gather into a funeral casket. What was that? Vicarious suffering. Like Christ. Pang for others. Woe for others. Suffering for others. Death for others. What is the use of our going away off to find an illustration in past ages, when during the great forest fires in Michigan, a mail-carrier on horseback, riding on, pursued by those flames which had swept over a hundred miles, saw an old man by the roadside, dismounted, helped the old man on the horse, saying: ’93Now whip up and get away’94? The old man got away, but the mail-carrier perished. Just like Christ dismounting from the glories of heaven to put us on the way of deliverance, then falling back into the flames of sacrifice for others. Pang for others. Woe for others. Death for others. Vicarious suffering.

Again I remark, that sanctuary help ought to come through the prayers of all the people. The door of the eternal storehouse is hung on one hinge’97a gold hinge’97the hinge of prayer, and when the whole audience lays hold of that door, it must come open. There are many people spending their first Sabbath after some great bereavement. What will your prayer do for them? How will it help the tomb in that man’92s heart? Here are people who have not been in church before for ten years; what will your prayer do for them by rolling over their soul holy memories? Here are people in crises of awful temptation. They are on the verge of despair or wild blundering or theft or suicide. What will your prayer do for them in the way of giving them strength to resist? Will you be chiefly anxious about the fit of the glove that you put to your forehead while you prayed? Will you be chiefly critical of the rhetoric of the pastor’92s petition? No, no! A thousand people will feel, ’93that prayer is for me,’94 and at every step of the prayer chains ought to drop off, and temples of sin ought to crash into dust, and jubilees of deliverance ought to brandish their trumpets. In most of our churches we have three prayers: the opening prayer, what is called the ’93long prayer,’94 and the closing prayer. There are many people who spend their first prayer in arranging their apparel after entrance, and spend the second prayer, the ’93long prayer,’94 in wishing it were through, and spend the last prayer in preparing to start for home. The most insignificant part of every religious service is the sermon. The more important parts are the Scripture lesson and the prayer. The sermon is only a man talking to a man. The Scripture lesson is God talking to a man. Prayer is man talking to God. Oh, if we understood the grandeur and the pathos of this exercise of prayer, instead of being a dull exercise we would imagine that the room was full of divine and angelic appearances. But the old style of church will not do the work. We might as well now try to take all the passengers from Washington to New York by stage-coach, or all the passengers from Albany to Buffalo by canal-boat, or do all the battling of the world with bow and arrow, as with the old style of church to meet the exigencies of this day. Unless the church in our day will adapt itself to the time, it will become extinct. The people reading newspapers and books all the week, in alert, picturesque and resounding style, will have no patience with Sabbath humdrum. We have no objection to bands and surplice and all the paraphernalia of clerical life; but these things make no impression’97make no more impression on the great masses of the people than the ordinary business suit that you wear on Pennsylvania Avenue or Wall Street. A tailor cannot make a minister. Some of the poorest preachers wear the best clothes; and many a backwoodsman has dismounted from the saddlebags, and in his linen duster preached a sermon that shook earth and heaven with its Christian eloquence. No new Gospel, only the old Gospel in a way suited to the time. No new church, but a church to be the asylum, the inspiration, the practical sympathy, and the eternal help of the people.

But while half the doors of the church are to be set open toward this world, the other half of the doors of the church must be set open toward the next. You and I tarry here only a brief space. We want somebody to teach us how to get out of this life at the right time and in the right way. Some fall out of life, some go stumbling out of life, some go groaning out of life, some go cursing out of life. We want to go singing, rising, rejoicing, triumphing. We want half the doors of the church set in that direction. We want half the prayers that way, half the sermons that way. We want to know how to get ashore from the tumult of this world into the land of everlasting peace. We do not want to stand doubting and shivering when we go away from this world; we want our anticipations aroused to the highest pitch. We want to have the exhilaration of a dying child in England, the father telling me the story. When he said to her, ’93Is the path narrow?’94 she answered, ’93The path is narrow; it is so narrow that I cannot walk arm in arm with Christ, so Jesus goes ahead, and he says, ’91Mary, follow.’92’93 Through the church gates set heavenward how many of your friends and mine have gone? The last time they were out of the house they came to church. The earthly pilgrimage ended at the pillar of public worship, and then they marched out to a bigger and brighter assemblage. Some of them were so old they could not walk without a cane or two crutches; now they have eternal juvenescence. Or they were so young they could not walk except as the maternal hand guided them; now they bound with the hilarities celestial. The last time we saw them they were wasted with malarial or pulmonic disorder; but now they have no fatigue, and no difficulty of respiration in the pure air of heaven. How I wonder when you and I will cross over! Some of you have had about enough of the thumping and flailing of this life. A draught from the fountains of heaven would do you good. Complete release you could stand very well. If you got on the other side, and had permission to come back, you would not come. Though you were invited to come back and join your friends on earth, you would say: ’93No, let me tarry here until they come; I shall not risk going back; if a man reaches heaven he had better stay here.’94 I join hands with you in that uplifted splendor.

When the shore is won at last,

Who will count the billows past?

In Freiburg, Switzerland, there is the trunk of a tree four hundred years old. That tree was planted to commemorate an event. About ten miles from the city the Swiss conquered the Burgundians, and a young man wanted to take the tidings to the city. He took a tree branch and ran with such speed the ten miles that, when he reached the city, waving the tree branch, he had only strength to cry, ’93Victory!’94 and dropped dead. The tree branch that he carried was planted, and it grew to be a great tree twenty feet in circumference, and the remains of it are there to this day. My hearer, when you have fought your last battle with sin and death and hell, and they have been routed in the conflict, it will be a joy worthy of celebration. You will fly to the city and cry, ’93Victory!’94 and drop at the feet of the great King. Then the palm branch of the earthly race will be planted to become the out-branching tree of everlasting rejoicing.

When shall these eyes thy heaven-built walls

And pearly gates behold,

Thy bulwarks with salvation strong,

And streets of shining gold?

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage