189. Dark Sayings On a Harp

Dark Sayings On a Harp

Psa_49:4 : ’93I will open my dark saying upon the harp.’94

The world is full of the inexplicable, the impassable, the unfathomable, the insurmountable. We cannot go three steps in any direction without coming up against a hard wall of mystery, riddles, paradoxes, profundities, labyrinths, problems that we cannot solve, hieroglyphics that we cannot decipher, anagrams we cannot spell out, sphinxes that will not speak. For that reason, David in my text proposed to take up some of these sombre and dark things, and try to set them to sweet music. ’93I will open my dark sayings on a harp.’94 So I look off upon society and find people in unhappy conjunction of circumstances, and they do not know what it means, and they have a right to ask, Why is this? Why is that? and I think I will be doing a good work by trying to explain some of these strange things and make you more content with your lot, and I shall only be answering questions that have often been asked me, or that we have all asked ourselves, while I try to set these mysteries to music, and open dark sayings on a harp.

Interrogation the first: Why does God take out of this world those who are useful and whom we cannot spare, and leave alive and in good health so many who are only a nuisance or positive injury to the world? I thought I would begin with the very toughest of all the seeming inscrutables. Many of the most useful men and women die at thirty or forty years of age, while you often find useless people alive at sixty and seventy and eighty. John Careless wrote to Bradford, who was soon to be put to death, saying: ’93Why doth God suffer me, and such other caterpillars to live, that can do nothing but consume the alms of the Church, and take away so many worthy workmen in the Lord’92s vineyard?’94 Similar questions are often asked. Here are two men. The one is a noble character and a Christian man; he chooses for a lifetime companion one who has been tenderly reared, and she is worthy of him and he is worthy of her; as merchant, or farmer, or professional man, or mechanic, or artist, he toils to educate and rear his children; he is succeeding, but he has not yet established for his family a full competency; he seems absolutely indispensable to that household; but one day, before he has paid off the mortgage on his house, he is coming home through a strong northeast wind, and a chill strikes through him, and four days of pneumonia end his earthly career, and the wife and children go into a struggle for shelter and food. His next-door neighbor is a man who, though strong and well, lets his wife support him; he is round at the grocery store, or some general loafing-place in the evenings, while his wife sews; his boys are imitating his example, and lounge and swagger and swear; all the use that man is in that house is to rave because the coffee is cold when he comes to a late breakfast, or to say cutting things about his wife’92s looks, when he furnishes nothing for her wardrobe. The best thing that could happen to that family would be that man’92s funeral; but he declines to die; he lives on and on and on. So we have all noticed that many of the useful are early cut off, while the parasites have great vital tenacity.

I take up this dark saying on my harp, and give three or four thrums on the string in the way of surmising and hopeful guess. Perhaps the useful man was taken out of the world because he and his family were so constructed that they could not have endured some great prosperity that might have been just ahead, and they all together have gone down in the vortex of worldliness which every year swallows up ten thousand households. And so he went while he was humble and consecrated, and they were by the severities of life kept close to Christ, and fitted for usefulness here and high seats in heaven, and when they meet at last before the throne, they will acknowledge that, though the furnace was hot, it purified them, and prepared them for an eternal career of glory and reward for which no other kind of life could have fitted them. On the other hand, the useless man lived on to fifty, or sixty, or seventy years, because all the ease he ever can have he must have in this world, and you ought not, therefore, begrudge him his earthly longevity. In all the ages there has not a single loafer ever entered heaven. There is no place for him there to hang around. Not even in the temples, for they are full of vigorous, alert, and rapturous worship. Not on the river bank, for that is the place where the conquerors recline. Not in the gates, because there are multitudes entering, and we are told that at each of the twelve gates there is an angel, and that celestial guard would not allow the place to be blocked up with idlers. If the good and useful go early, rejoice for them that they have so soon got through with human life, which at best is a struggle. And if the useless and the bad stay, rejoice that they may be out in the world’92s fresh air a good many years before their final incarceration. Interrogation the second: Why do so many people have so much trouble; sickness, bankruptcy, persecution, the three black vultures sometimes putting their fierce beaks into one set of jangled nerves? I think now of a good friend I once had. He was a consecrated Christian man, an elder in the church, and as polished a Christian gentleman as ever walked Broadway. First, his general health gave out and he hobbled around on a cane, an old man at forty. After a while paralysis struck him. Having by poor health been compelled suddenly to quit business, he lost what property he had. Then his beautiful daughter died; then a son became hopelessly demented. Another son, splendid of mind and commanding of presence, resolved that he would take care of his father’92s household; but, under the swoop of yellow fever at Fernandina, Florida, he suddenly expired. So you know good men and women who have had enough troubles, you think, to crush fifty people. No worldly philosophy could take such a trouble and set it to music, or play it on violin or flute. So I open that dark saying on a Gospel harp.

You wonder that very consecrated people have trouble? Did you ever know any very consecrated man or woman who had not had great trouble? Never! It was through their troubles sanctified that they were made very good. If you find anywhere in this city a man who has now, and always has had, perfect health, and never lost a child, and has always been popular, and never had business struggle or misfortune, who is distinguished for goodness, pull your wire for a telegraph messenger boy, and send me word, and I will drop everything and go right away to look at him. There never has been a man like that, and never will be. Who are those arrogant, self-conceited creatures who move about without sympathy for others, and who think more of a St. Bernard dog, or an Alderney cow, or a South-down sheep, or a Berkshire pig, than a man? They never had any trouble, or the trouble was never sanctified. Who are those men who listen with moist eye as you tell them of suffering, and who have a pathos in their voice, and a kindness in their manner, and an excuse or an alleviation for those gone astray? They are the men who have graduated at the Royal Academy of Trouble, and they have the diploma written in wrinkles on their own countenances. My! my! What heartaches they had! What tears they have wept! What injustice they have suffered! The mightiest influence for purification and salvation is trouble. No diamond fit for a crown until it is cut. No wheat fit for bread till it is ground. There are only three things that can break off a chain’97a hammer, a file, or a fire; and trouble is all three of them. The greatest writers, orators, and reformers get much of their force from trouble. What gave to Washington Irving that exquisite tenderness and pathos which will make his books favorites while the English language continues to be written and spoken? An early heartbreak, that he never once mentioned; and when, thirty years after the death of Matilda Hoffman, who was to have been his bride, her father picked up a piece of embroidery and said, ’93That is a piece of poor Matilda’92s workmanship,’94 Washington Irving sank from hilarity into silence and walked away. Out of that lifetime grief the great author dipped his pen’92s mightiest reinforcement. ’93Calvin’92s Institutes of Religion,’94 than which a more powerful book was never written by human hand, was begun by the author at twenty-five years of age, because of the persecution by Francis, King of France. Faraday toiled for all time on a salary of eighty pounds a year and candles. As every brick of the wall of Babylon was stamped with the letter N, standing for Nebuchadnezzar, so every part of the temple of Christian achievement is stamped with the letter T, standing for trouble.

When in England a man is honored with knighthood, he is struck with the flat of the sword. But those who have come to knighthood in the Kingdom of God were first struck, not with the flat of the sword, but with the keen edge of the scimeter. To build his greatness of character, Paul could not have spared one lash, one prison, one stoning, one anathema, one poisonous viper from the hand, one shipwreck.

What is true of individuals is true of nations. The horrors of the American Revolution gave this country this side of the Mississippi River to independence, and the conflict between England and France gave the most of this country west of the Mississippi to the United States. France owned it, but Napoleon, fearing that England would take it, practically made a present of it to the United States’97for he received only fifteen million dollars for Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and the Indian Territory. Out of the fire of the American Revolution came this country east of the Mississippi, out of the European war came that west of the Mississippi river. The British Empire rose to its present overtowering grandeur through gunpowder plot, and Guy Fawkes’92 conspiracy, and Northampton insurrection, and Walter Raleigh’92s beheading, and Bacon’92s bribery, and Cromwell’92s dissolution of parliament, and the battles of Edge Hill, and Grantham, and Newberry, and Marston Moor, and Naseby, and Dunbar, and Sedgemoor, and execution of Charles the First, and London plague, and London fire, and Ryehouse plot, and the vicissitudes of centuries.

So the earth itself, before it could become an appropriate and beautiful residence for the human family, had, according to geology, to be washed by universal deluge, and scorched and made incandescent by universal fires, and pounded by sledge-hammer of icebergs, and wrenched by earthquakes that split continents, and shaken by volcanoes that tossed mountains, and passed through the catastrophes of thousands of years before Paradise became possible, and the groves could shake out their green banners, and the first garden pour its carnage of color between the Gihon and the Hiddekel. Trouble is a good thing for the rocks, a good thing for nations, as well as a good thing for individuals. So when you push against me with a sharp interrogation point, Why do the good suffer? I open the dark saying on a harp, and, though I can neither play an organ, nor cornet, nor hautboy, nor bugle, nor clarionet, I have taken some lessons on the Gospel harp, and if you would like to hear me I will play you these: ’93All things work together for good to those who love God.’94 ’93Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.’94 ’93Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’94

What a sweet thing is a harp, and I wonder not that in Wales, the country of my ancestors, the harp has become the national instrument, and that they have festivals where great prizes are offered in the competition between harp and harp; or that weird Sebastian Erard was much of his time bent over this chorded and vibrating triangle, and was not satisfied until he had given it a compass of six octaves, from E to E with all the semi-tones; or that when King Saul was demented, the son of Jesse came before him, and putting his fingers among the charmed strings of the harp, played the devil out of the crazed monarch; or that in heaven there shall be harpers harping with their harps. So you will not blame me for opening the dark saying on the Gospel harp:

Your Harps, Ye Trembling Saints,

Down From the Willows Take;

Loud to the Praise of Love Divine

Bid Every String Awake!

Interrogation third: Why did the good God let sin or trouble come into the world when he might have kept them out? My reply is, he had a good reason. He had reasons that he has never given us. He had reasons which he could no more make us understand in our finite state than the father, starting out on some great and elaborate enterprise could make the two-year-old child in its armed chair comprehend it. One reason for the admission of sin and trouble was to demonstrate what grandeur of character may be achieved on earth by conquering evil. Had there been no evil to conquer and no trouble to console, then this universe would never have known an Abraham or a Moses or a Joshua or an Ezekiel or a Paul or a Christ or a Washington or a John Howard, and a million victories which have been gained by the consecrated spirits of all ages would never have been gained. Had there been no battle, there would have been no victory. Nine-tenths of the anthems of heaven would never have been sung. Heaven could never have been a thousandth part of the heaven that it is. I will not say that I am glad that sin and sorrow did enter, but I do say that I am glad that after God has given all his reasons to an assembled universe, he will be more honored than if sin and sorrow had never en-tered, and that the unfallen celestials will be outdone, and will put down their trumpets to listen, and it will be in heaven when those who have conquered sin and sorrow shall enter, as it would be in a small singing school on earth, if Thalberg and Gottschalk and Wagner and Beethoven and Rheinberger and Schumann should all at once enter. The immortals that have been chanting ten thousand years before the throne will say, as they close their librettos: ’93Oh, if we could only sing like that!’94 But God will say to those who have never fallen, and consequently have not been redeemed, ’93You must be silent now; you have not the qualification for this anthem,’94 so they sit with closed lips and folded hands, and sinners saved by grace take up the harmony, for the Bible says ’93no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth.’94

A great prima donna, who can now do anything with her voice, told me that when she first started in music her teacher in Berlin told her she could be a good singer, but a certain note she could never reach. ’93And then,’94 she said, ’93I went to work and studied and practiced for years until I did reach it. But the song of the sinner redeemed, the Bible says, the exalted harmonists who have never sinned, could not reach and never will reach. Would you like to hear me in a very poor way play a snatch of that tune? I can give you only one bar of the music on this Gospel harp: ’93Unto him that hath loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and hath made us kings and priests unto God and the Lamb, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever, Amen.’94 ’93But before leaving this interrogatory, Why God let sin come into the world? let me say that great battles seem to be nothing but suffering and outrage at the time of their occurrence, yet after they have been a long while past we can see that it was better for them to have been fought, namely, Salamis, Inkermann, Toulouse, Arbela, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Blenheim, Lexington, Sedan. So now that the great battles against sin and suffering are going on we can see mostly that which is deplorable. But twenty thousand years from now, standing in glory, we shall appreciate that heaven is better off than if the battle of this world’92s sin and suffering had never been projected.

But now I come nearer home and put a dark saying on the Gospel harp, a style of question that is asked a million times every year. Interrogation the fourth: Why do I have it so hard, while others have it so easy? or, Why do I have so much difficulty in getting a livelihood while others go around with a full portemonnaie? or, Why must I wear these plain clothes, while others have to push hard to get their wardrobes closed, so crowded are they with brilliant attire? or, Why should I have to work so hard while others have three hundred and sixty-five holidays every year? They are all practically one question. I answer them by saying, it is because the Lord has his favorites, and he puts extra discipline upon you, and extra trial, because he has for you extra glory, extra enthronement, and extra felicities. That is no guess of mine, but a divine say-so: ’93Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.’94 ’93Well,’94 says some one, ’93I would rather have a little less in heaven and a little more here. Discount my heavenly robe ten per cent. and let me now put it on a fur-lined overcoat; put me in a less gorgeous room of the house of many mansions and let me have a house here in a better neighborhood.’94 No, no; God is not going to rob heaven, which is to be your residence for nine hun-dred quadrillion of years, to fix up your earthly abode, which you will occupy at most for less than a century, and where you may perhaps stay only ten years longer, or only one year, or perhaps a month more. Now you had better cheerfully let God have his way, for, you see, he has been taking care of folks for nearly six thousand years, and knows how to do it, and can see what is best for you, better than you can yourself. Do not think you are too insignificant to be divinely cared for. It was said that Diana, the goddess, could not be present to keep her temple at Ephesus from burning because she was attending upon the birth of him who was to be Alexander the Great. But I tell you that your God and my God is so great in small things as well as large things, that he could attend the cradle of a babe, and at the same time the burning of a world.

And God will make it all right with you, and there is one song that you will sing every hour your first ten years in heaven, and the refrain of that song will be: ’93I am so glad God did not let me have it my own way!’94 Your case will be all fixed up in heaven, and there will be such a reversal of conditions that we can hardly find each other for some time. Some of us who have lived in first-rate houses here, and in first-rate neighborhoods, will be found, because of our lukewarmness of earthly service, living on one of the back streets of the celestial city, and clear down at the end of it at No. 808, or 909, or 1505, while some who had unattractive earthly abodes, and a cramped one at that, will, in the heavenly city, be in a house fronting the Royal plaza, right by the imperial fountain, or on the heights overlooking the River of Life, the chariots of salvation halting at your door, while those visit you who are more than conquerors, and those who are kings and queens unto God forever. You, my brother, and you, my sister, who have it so hard here, will have it so fine and grand there that you will hardly know yourself, and will feel disposed to dispute your own identity, and the first time I see you there I will cry out: ’93Did not I tell you so when you sat down there in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and looked incredulous because you thought it too good to be true?’94 And you will answer: ’93You were right, the half was not told me!’94 So I open your dark saying of despondency and complaint on my Gospel harp, and give you just one bar of music, for I do not pretend to be much of a player: ’93The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’94 But, I must confess, I am a little perplexed how some of you good Christians are going to get through the gate, because there will be so many there to greet you, and they will all want to shake hands at once, and will all want the first kiss. They will have heard that you are coming, and they will all press around to welcome you, and will want you to say whether you know them after being so long parted.

Amid the tussle and romp of reunion I tell you whose hand of welcome you had better first clasp, and whose cheek is entitled to the first kiss. It is the hand and the cheek of him without whom you would never have got there at all, the Lord Jesus, the darling of the skies, as he cries out, ’93I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and the fires could not burn it, and the floods could not drown it.’94 Then you, my dear people, having no more use for my poor harp, on which I used to open your dark sayings, and whose chords sometimes snapped, despoiling the symphony, you will take down your own harps from the willows that grow by the eternal water courses, and play to-gether those celestial airs, some of the names of which are entitled, ’93The King in His Beauty,’94 ’93The Land that was Far Off,’94 ’93Jerusalem the Golden,’94 ’93Home Again,’94 ’93The Grand March of God,’94 ’93The Life Everlasting.’94 And as the last dark curtain of mystery is forever lifted, it will be as though all the oratorios that were ever heard had been rolled into one, and ’93Israel in Egypt,’94 and ’93Jephthah’92s Daughter,’94 and Beethoven’92s ’93Overture in C,’94 and Ritter’92s first ’93Sonata in D minor,’94 and the ’93Creation,’94 and the ’93Messiah’94 had been blown from the lips of one trumpet, or been invoked by the sweep of one bow, or had dropped from the vibrating chords of one harp.

But here I must slow up lest, in trying to solve mysteries, I add to the mystery that we have often wondered at; namely, Why preachers should keep on after all the hearers are tired. So I gather up into one great armful all the whys and hows and wherefores of your life and mine, which we have not had time or the ability to answer, and write on them the words, ’93Adjourned to eternity.’94 I rejoice that we do not understand all things now, for if we did, what would we learn in heaven? If we knew it all down here in the freshman and sophomore class, what would be the use of our going up to stand amid the juniors and the seniors? If we could put down one leg of the compass, and with the other sweep a circle clear around all the inscrutables, if we could lift our little steelyards, and weigh the throne of the Omnipotent, if we could with our seven-day clock measure eternity, what would be left for heavenly revelation? So I move that we cheerfully adjourn what is now beyond our comprehension; and as, according to Rollin, the historian, Alexander the Great, having obtained the gold casket in which Darius had kept his rare perfume, used that aromatic casket thereafter to keep his favorite copy of Homer in, and called the book, therefore, the ’93Edition of the Casket,’94 and at night put the casket and his sword under his pillow; so I put, this day, into the perfumed casket of your richest affections and hopes this promise, worth more than anything Homer ever wrote, or sword ever conquered: ’93What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter,’94 and that I call the ’93Edition Celestial.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage