207. Across Mount Lebanon

Across Mount Lebanon

Psa_104:16 : ’93The cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted.’94

In our journey we change stirrup for wheel. It is four o’92clock in the morning, at Damascus, Syria, and we are among the lanterns of the hostelry, waiting for the stage to start. A Mohammedan in high life is putting his three wives on board within an apartment by themselves, and our party occupy the main apartment of one of the most uncomfortable vehicles in which mortals were ever jammed and half-strangulated. But we must not let the discomforts annul or disparage the opportunities. We are rolling on and out and up the mountains of Lebanon, their forehead under a crown of snow, which coronet the fingers of the hottest summer cannot cast down. We are ascending heights around which is garlanded much of the finest poesy of the Scriptures, and are rising toward the mightiest dominion that botany ever recognized, reigned over by the most imperial tree that ever swayed a leafy scepter’97the Lebanon cedar, a tree eulogized in my text as having grown from a nut put into the ground by God himself, and no human hand had anything to do with its planting: ’93The cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted.’94

The average height of this mountain is seven thousand feet, but in one place it lifts its head to an altitude of ten thousand. No higher than six thousand feet can vegetation exist, but below that line, at the right season, are vineyards and orchards and olive groves and flowers that dash the mountain side with a very carnage of color and fill the air with aromatics that Hosea, the prophet, and Solomon, the king, celebrated as ’93the smell of Lebanon.’94 At a height of six thousand feet is a grove of cedars, the only descendants of those vast forests from which Solomon cut his timber for the temple at Jerusalem, and where at one time there were one hundred thousand axmen hewing out the beams from which great palaces were constructed. But this nation of trees has, by human iconoclasm, been massacred until only a small group is left. This race of giants is nearly extinct, but I have no doubt that some of these were here when Hiram, King of Tyre, ordered the assassination of those cedars of Lebanon which the Lord planted. From the multitude of uses to which it may be put and the employment of it in the Scriptures, the cedar is the divine favorite. When the plains, to be seen from the window of this stage in which we ride today, are parched under summer heats, and not a grass-blade survives the fervidity, this tree stands in luxuriance, defying the summer sun. And when the storms of winter terrify the earth, and hurl the rocks in avalanche down this mountain side, this tree grapples the hurricane of snow in triumph, and leaves the spent fury at its feet. From sixty to eighty feet high are they, the horizontal branches of great sweep with their burden of leaves, needle-shaped, the top of the tree pyramidal, a throne of foliage on which might and splendor and glory sit. But so continuously has the extermination of trees gone on that, for the most part, the mountains of Lebanon are bare of foliage; while, I am sorry to say, the earth in all lands is being likewise denuded.

The ax is slaying the forests all around the earth. To stop the slaughter, God opened the coal mines of England and Scotland and America and the world, practically saying by that: ’93Here is fuel; as far as possible, let my trees alone.’94 And by opening for the human race the great quarries of granite, and showing the human family how to make brick, God is practically saying: ’93Here is building material; let my trees alone.’94 We had better stop the axes among the Adirondacks. We had better stop the axes in all our forests, as it would have been better for Syria if the axes had long ago been stopped among the mountains of Lebanon. To punish us for our reckless assault on the forests, we have the disordered seasons; now the drouths, because the uplifting arms of the trees do not pray for rain, their presence, according to all scientists, disposing the descent of the showers; and then we have the cyclones and the hurricanes multiplied in number and velocity, because there is nothing to prevent their awful sweep. Plant the trees in your parks, that the weary may rest under them; plant them along your streets, that up through the branches passers-by may see the God who first made the trees and then made man to look at them; plant them along the brooks, that under them children may play; plant them in your gardens, that, as in Eden, the Lord may walk there in the cool of the day; plant them in cemeteries, their shade like a mourner’92s veil, and their leaves sounding like the rustle of the wings of the departed. Let Arbor Day, or the day for the planting of trees, recognized by the Legislatures of many of the States, be observed by all our people, and the next one hundred years do as much in planting these leafy glories of God as the last one hundred years have accomplished in their destruction. When, not long before his death, I saw on the banks of the Hudson in his glazed cap, riding on horseback, George P. Morris, the great song writer of America, I found him grandly emotional, and I could understand how he wrote: ’93Woodman, spare that tree!’94 the verses of which many of us have felt like quoting in belligerent spirit when, under the stroke of some one without sense or reason, we saw a beautiful tree prostrated:

Woodman, spare that tree!

Touch not a single bough!

In youth it sheltered me,

And I’92ll protect it now.

Twas my forefather’92s hand

That placed it near his cot;

There, woodman, let it stand,

Thy ax shall harm it not.

My heartstrings round thee cling,

Close as thy bark, old friend!

Here shall the wild bird sing,

And still thy branches bend,

Old tree! The storm still brave!

And, woodman, leave the spot;

While I’92ve a hand to save,

Thy ax shall harm it not.

As we ride along on these mountains of Lebanon, we bethink how its cedars spread their branches, and breathe their aroma, and cast their shadows all through the Bible. Solomon discoursed about them in his botanical works, when he spoke of trees ’93from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.’94 The Psalmist says: ’93The righteous shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon,’94 and in one of his magnificent doxologies calls on the cedars to praise the Lord. And Solomon says the countenance of Christ is excellent as the cedars, and Isaiah declares: ’93The day of the Lord shall be upon all the cedars of Lebanon.’94 And Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Amos and Zephaniah and Zechariah weave its foliage into their sublimest utterances.

As we ride over Lebanon today there is a howling wind sweeping past and a dash of rain, all the better enabling us to appreciate that description of a tempest, which, no doubt, was suggested by what David had seen with his own eyes among these heights; for, as a soldier, he carried his wars clear up to Damascus, and such a poet as he, I warrant, spent many a day on Lebanon. And perhaps while he was seated on this very rock against which our carriage jolts, he wrote that wonderful description of a thunder-storm: ’93The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn. The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire.’94 As the lion is the monarch of the fields, and behemoth the monarch of the waters, the cedar is the monarch of the trees. I think one reason why it is so glorified all up and down the Bible is because we need more of its characteristics in our religious life. We have too much of the willow, and are easily bent this way or that; too much of the aspen, and we tremble under every zephyr of assault; too much of the bramble-tree, and our sharp points sting and wound; but not enough of the cedar, wide-branched and heaven-aspiring and tempest-grappling. But the reason these cedars stand so well is that they are deep-rooted. They run their anchors down into the caverns of the mountain and fasten to the very foundations of the earth, and twist around and clinch themselves on the other side of the deepest layer of rock they can reach. And that is the difference between Christians who stand and Christians who fall. It is the difference between a superficial character and one that has clutched its roots deep down around and under the Rock of Ages.

One of the Lebanon cedars was examined by a scientist, and from its concentric circles it was found to be thirty-five hundred years old and still standing. So there is such a thing as everlasting strength, and such a stanchness of Christian character that all time and all eternity, instead of being its demolition, shall be its opportunity. Not such are those vacillating Christians who are so pious on Sunday that they have no religion left for the week-day. As the anaconda gorges itself with food, and then seems for a long while to lie utterly insensible, so there are men who will on Sunday get such a religious surfeit that the rest of the week they seem completely dead to all religious emotion. They weep in church under a charity sermon, but if on Monday a subject of want presents itself at the door, the beggar’92s safety will depend entirely on quick limbs and an unobstructed stairway. It takes all the grace they can get to keep them from committing assault and battery on those intruders who come with pale faces and stories of distress and subscription papers. The reason that God planted these cedars in the Bible was to suggest to us that we ought, in our religious character, to be deep like the cedar, high like the cedar, broad-branched as the cedar. A traveler measured the spread of the boughs of one of these trees, and found it one hundred and eleven feet from branch tip to branch tip; and I have seen cedars of Christian character that through their prayers and charities put out one branch to the uttermost parts of America, and another branch to the uttermost parts of Asia, and these wide-branched Christians will keep on multiplying until all the earth is overshadowed with mercy.

But, mark you, these cedars of Lebanon could not grow if planted in mild climates and in soft air and in carefully watered gardens. They must have the gymnasium of the midnight hurricane to develop their arms. They must play the athlete with a thousand winters before their feet are rightly planted, and their foreheads rightly lifted, and their arms rightly muscled. And if there be any other way for developing strong Christian character except by storms of trouble, I never heard of it. Call the roll of martyrs, call the roll of the prophets, call the roll of the Apostles, and see which of them had an easy time of it. Which of these cedars grew in the warm valley? Not one of them. Honeysuckles thrive best on the south side of the house, but cedars in a Syrian whirlwind. Men and women, ye who hear this or read this, instead of your grumbling because you have it hard, thank God that you are in just the best school for making heroes and heroines. It is true both for this world and the next. Rock that baby in a cradle cushioned and canopied; graduate him from that into a costly high chair and give him a gold spoon; send him to school wrapped in furs enough for an Arctic explorer; send him through a college where, because his father is rich, he will not have to study in order to get a diploma; start him in a profession where he begins with an office, the floor covered with Axminster, and a library of books in Russian leather or morocco, and an armchair upholstered like a throne, and an embroidered ottoman upon which to put his twelve-dollar gaiters; and then lay upon his table the best ivory cigar-holder you can import from Brussels, and have standing outside his door a prancing span that won the prize at the horse fair, and leave him estate enough to make him independent of all struggles’97and what will become of him? If he do not die early of inanition or dissipation, he will live a useless life and die an unlamented death and go into a fool’92s eternity.

What has been the history of most of the great cedars in merchandise, in art, in law, in medicine, in statesmanship, in Christian usefulness? First we hear: ’93John, get up and milk the cows; it’92s late; it’92s half-past five o’92clock in the morning. Split an armful of wood on your way out, so that we can build the fires for breakfast. Put your bare feet on the cold oilcloth, and break the ice in your pitcher before you can wash. Yes; it has been snowing and drifting again last night, and we will have to break the roads.’94 Then we see the boy’92s educational advantages: a long oak plank without any back to it, in country schoolhouse, and stove throwing out more smoke than heat. After that, a pressing on from one hardship to another. After a while, a position on salary or wages just enough to keep life, but keep it at its lowest ebb. Starting in occupation or business with prosperous men trying to fight you back at every step. But after a good while, fairly on your feet, and your opportunities widening; then by some sudden turn you are triumphant. You are master of the situation, and defiant of all earth and hell. A Lebanon cedar! John Milton on his way up to the throne of the world’92s sacred poesy must sell his copyright of Paradise Lost for seventy-two dollars in three payments. William Shakespeare on his way up to be acknowledged the greatest dramatist of all ages must hold horses at the door of the London theatre for a sixpence. Homer must struggle through total blindness to immortality. John Bunyan must cheer himself on the way up by making a flute out of his prison stool, and Canova, the sculptor, must toil on through orphanage, modeling a lion in butter before he could cut his statues in marble. The great Stephenson must watch cows in the field for a few pennies and then become a stoker, and afterward mend clocks, before he puts the locomotive on its track and calls forth plaudits from parliaments and medals from kings. Abel Stevens is picked up a neglected child of the street, and rises through his consecrated genius to be one of the most illustrious clergymen and historians of the century. Bishop Janes, of the same church, in boyhood, worked his passage from Ireland to America and up to a usefulness where, in the bishopric, he was second to no one who ever adorned it. While in banishment Xenophon wrote his Anabasis,and Thucydides his History of the Peloponnesian War,and Victor Hugo must be exiled for many years to the island of Guernsey before he can come to that height in the affections of his countrymen that crowds the Champs Elysees and the adjoining boulevards with one million mourners as his hearse rolls down to the Church of the Madeleine. Oh, it is a tough old world, and it will keep you back and keep you down and keep you under as long as it can. Hail, sons and daughters of the fire!

Stand, as the anvil when the stroke

Of stalwart men falls fierce and fast.

Storms but more deeply root the oak

Whose brawny arms embrace the blast.

Stand like an anvil; noise and heat

Are born of earth and die with time;

The soul, like God, its source and seat,

Is solemn, still, serene, sublime.

Thirty years from now the foremost men in all occupations and professions will be those who are this hour in awful struggle of early life, many of them without five dollars to their name. So in spiritual life, it takes a course of bereavements, persecutions, sicknesses and losses to develop stalwart Christian character. I got a letter a few days ago, saying: ’93I have hardly seen a well day since I was born, and I could not write my own name until I was fifty years of age, and I am very poor; but I am, by the grace of God, the happiest man in Chicago.’94 The Bible speaks of the snows of Lebanon. The deepest snow ever seen in America would be insignificant compared with the mildest winter of snows on those Lebanon mountains. The cedars catch a skyful of crystals on their brows and on their long arms and bend not. Piled up in great hefts are those snows, enough to crush other trees to the ground, splitting the branches from the trunk and leaving them rent and torn, never to rise. But what do these cedars care for these snows on Lebanon? They look up to the winter skies and say: ’93Snow on! Empty the white heavens upon us, and when this storm is passed, let other processions of tempest try to bury us in their fury. We have for five hundred winters been accustomed to this, and for the next five hundred winters we will cheerfully take all you have to send, for that is the way we develop our strength, and that is the way we serve God, and teach all ages how to endure and conquer.’94 So I say: good cheer to all people who are snowed under. Put your faith in God and you will come out gloriously. Others may be stunted growths, or weak junipers on the lower levels of spirituality, but you are going to be Lebanon cedars. At last it will be said of such as you: ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’94

But while crossing over these mountains of Lebanon, I bethink myself of what an exciting scene it must be when one of the cedars does fall. It does not go down like other trees with a slight crackle that hardly makes the woodman look up or a hawk flutter from a neighboring bough. When a cedar falls it is the great event in the calendar of the mountains. The axmen fly; the wild beasts slink to their dens; the partridges swoop to the valley for escape; the neighboring trees go down under the awful weight of the descending monarch; the rocks are moved out of their places and the earth trembles, as from miles around all the ravines send back their sympathetic echoes. Crash! Crash! Crash! So when the great cedars of worldly or Christian influence fall, it is something terrific. Within the past few years how many mighty and overtopping men have gone down. There seems now to be an epidemic of moral disaster. The moral world, the religious world, the political world, the commercial world, are quaking with the fall of Lebanon cedars. It is awful. We are compelled to cry out with Zechariah, the prophet: ’93Howl, fir-tree, for the cedar is fallen.’94 Some of the smaller trees are glad of it. When some great dealer in stocks goes down, the small dealers clap their hands and say: ’93Good for him.’94 When a great political leader goes down, the small politicians clap their hands and say: ’93Just as I expected.’94 When a great minister of religion falls, many little ministers laugh up their sleeves and think themselves somehow advantaged. Ah, beloved brethren, no one makes anything out of moral shipwrecks. Not a willow by the rivers of Damascus, not a sycamore on the plains of Jericho, not an olive-tree in all Palestine, is helped by the fall of a Lebanon cedar. Better weep and pray and tremble, and listen to Paul’92s advice to the Galatians when he says: ’93Considering thyself lest thou also be tempted.’94 No man is safe until he is dead, unless he be divinely protected.

A greater thinker than Lord Francis Bacon the world never saw. He changed the world’92s mode of thinking for all time. His Novum Organum was a miracle of literature. With thirty-eight thousand dollars salary, and estates worth millions, and from the highest judicial bench of the world, he went down under the power of bribery, and confessed his crime and was sentenced to the Tower to reap the scorn of centuries. ’93Howl, fir-tree, for the cedar is fallen.’94 Warren Hastings, rising until he became Governor-General of India, and the envy of the chief public men of his day, plunges into cruelties against the barbaric people he had been sent to rule, until his name is chiefly associated with the criminal trial in Westminster Hall, where upon him came the anathemas of Sheridan, Fox, Edmund Burke, the English nation, and all time. ’93Howl, fir-tree, for the cedar is fallen.’94 As eminent instances of moral disaster are found in our own land and in our own time, instances that I do not recite lest I wound the feelings of those now alive to mourn the shipwreck. Let your indignation against the fallen turn to pity. A judge in one of our American courts gives this experience: ’93In a respectable, but poor family, a daughter was getting a musical education. She needed one more course of lessons to complete that education. The father’92s means were exhausted, and so great was his anxiety to help his daughter that he feloniously took some money from his employer, and going home to his daughter, said: ’93There is the money to complete your musical education.’94 The wife and mother suspected something wrong, and obtained from her husband the whole story, and that night went around with her husband to the merchant’92s house and surrendered the whole amount of the money and asked forgiveness. Forgiveness was denied, and the man was arrested. The judge, knowing all the circumstances, and that the money had all been returned, suggested to the merchant he had better let the matter drop for the sake of the wife and the daughter. No! he would not let it drop, but did all he could to make the case conspicuous and blasting. The judge says that afterwards that same inexorable merchant was before him for breaking the law of the land. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways. Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall. Not exultation, but tears, when a cedar is fallen. Yet there is one cedar of Lebanon that always has and always will overtop all others. It is the Christ whom Ezekiel describes as a goodly cedar, and says: ’93Under it shall come all fowl of every wing.’94 Make your nest in that great cedar; then let the storms beat and the earth rock, time end, and eternity begin, all shall be well.

In my journey up and down Palestine and Syria nothing more impressed me than the trees’97the terebinths, the sycamores, the tamarisks, the oleanders, the mulberries, the olives, the myrtles, the palms, the cedars’97all of them explanatory of so much of the Scriptures. And the time is coming when, through an improved arboriculture, the round world shall be circumferenced, engirdled, embosomed, emparadised in shade trees and fruit trees and flower trees. Isaiah declares in one place: ’93The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it,’94 and in another place, ’93All the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree.’94 Oh, grandest arborescence of all time. Begin! Begin!

I am so glad that the Holy Land of heaven, like the Holy Land of Palestine and Syria, is a great place for trees; an orchard of them, a grove of them, a forest of them. St. John saw them along the streets and on both sides of the river, and every month they yielded a great crop of fruit. You know what an imposing appearance trees give to a city on earth; but how it exalts my idea of heaven when St. John describes the city on high as having its streets and its rivers lined with them! Oh, the trees! the trees! The jasper walls, the fountains, the temples were not enough. There would have been something wanting yet. So to complete all that pomp and splendor, I behold the out-branching trees of life! Not like those stripped trees now around us, which, like banished minstrels, through the long winter night utter their dolorous lament, or in the blast moan like lost spirits wandering up and down the gale; but trees whose leaf shall never wither. Whether you walk on the banks of the river, you will be under trees; or by the homes of martyrs, under trees; or by the heavenly temple, under trees; or along the Palace of the King immortal, under trees. ’93Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life.’94 Stonewall Jackson’92s dying utterance was beautifully suggestive: ’93Let us cross over and lie down under the trees.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage