218. Cheer for the Disheartened

Cheer for the Disheartened

Psa_142:4 : ’93No man cared for my soul.’94

David, the rubicund lad, had become the battle-worn warrior. Three thousand armed men in pursuit of him, he had hidden in the cave of Engedi, near the coast of the Dead Sea. Utterly fagged out with the pursuit, as you have often been worn out with the trials of life, he sat down and cried out, ’93No man cared for my soul.’94

If you should fall through a hatchway, or slip from a scaffolding, or drop through a skylight, there would be hundreds of people who would come around and pick up your body and carry it to the home or to the hospital. I saw a great crowd of people in the street, and I asked, ’93What is the matter?’94 and I found out that a poor laboring man had fallen under sunstroke, and all our eyes were filled with tears at the thought of his distracted wife and his desolated home. We are all sympathetic with physical disaster, but how little sympathy for spiritual woes! There are men who have come to mid-life who have never yet been once personally accosted about their eternal welfare. A great sermon dropped into an audience of hundreds or thousands will do its work; but if this world is ever to be brought to God, it will be through little sermons preached by private Christians to an audience of one. The sister’92s letter postmarked at the village; the word uttered in your hearing, half of smiles and half of tears; the religious postscript to a business letter; the card left at the door when you had some kind of trouble; the anxious look of some one across a church aisle while an earnest sermon was being preached, swung you into the kingdom of God.

But there are hundreds of people who will take the word that David used in the past tense and employ it in the present tense, and cry out, ’93No man cares for my soul.’94 You feel as you go out day by day in the tug and jostle of life that it is every man for himself. You can endure the pressure of commercial affairs, and would consider it almost impertinent for any one to ask you whether you are making or losing money. But there have been times when you would have drawn your check for thousand of dollars if some one would only help your soul out of its perplexities. There are questions about your higher destiny that ache and distract and agonize you at times. Let no one suppose, because you are busy all day with hardware or drygoods or groceries or grain, that your thoughts are no longer than your yardstick, and stop at the brass-headed nails of the store counter. You speak but once of religious things, though you think of them a thousand times. They call you a worldling; you are not a worldling. Of course you are industrious and keep busy, but you have had your eyes opened to the realities of the next world. You are not a fool. You know better than any one can tell you that a few years at most will wind up your earthly engagements, and that you will take residence in a distant sphere where all your business adroitness would be a superfluity. You sometimes think till your head aches about great religious subjects. You go down the street with your eyes fixed on the pavement, oblivious of the passing multitudes, your thoughts gone on eternal expedition. You wonder if the Bible is true, how much of it is literal, and how much is figurative; if Christ be God; if there is anything like retribution; if you are immortal; if a resurrection will ever take place; what the occupation of your departed kindred is; what you will be ten thousand years from now. With a cultured placidity of countenance you are on fire with agitations of soul. Oh, this solitary anxiety of your whole lifetime! You have sold goods to or bought them from Christian people for ten years, and they have never whispered one word of spiritual counsel. You have passed up and down the aisles of churches with men who knew that you had no hope of heaven, and they have talked about the weather, and about your physical health, and about everything but that concerning which you most wanted to hear them speak’97namely, your everlasting spirit. Times without number you have felt in your heart, if you have not uttered it with your lips, ’93No man cares for my soul.’94

There have been times when you were especially pliable on the great subject of religion. It was so, for instance, after you had lost your property. You had a great many letters reproaching you for being unfortunate. You showed that there had been a combination of circumstances, and that your insolvency was no fault of yours. Your creditors talked to you as though they would have a hundred cents on a dollar or your life. Protest after protest tumbled in on your desk. Men who used to take your hand with both of theirs and shake it violently, now pass you on the street with an almost imperceptible nod. After six or eight hours of scalding business anxiety you go home, and you shut the door and throw yourself on the sofa, and you feel in a state of despair. You wish that some one would come in and break up the gloom. Everything seems to be against you. The bank against you. Your creditors against you. Your friends, suddenly become critical, against you. All the past against you. All the future against you. You make reproachful outcry. ’93No man cares for my soul.’94

There was another occasion when all the doors of your heart swung open for sacred influences. A bright light went out in your household. Into three or four days there were crowded sickness, death, obsequies. You were so lonely that a hundred people coming into the house did not break up the solitariness. You were almost killed with the domestic calamity. A few formal, perfunctory words of consolation were uttered on the stairs before you went to the grave; but you wanted some one to come and talk over the whole matter, and remind you of the alleviations, and decipher the lessons of the dark bereavement. No one came. Many a time you could not sleep until two or three o’92clock in the morning, and then your sleep was a troubled dream, in which were re-enacted all the scenes of sickness and parting and dissolution. Oh, what days and nights they were! No man seemed to care for your soul.

There was another occasion when your heart was very susceptible. There was a great awakening. There were hundreds of people who pressed into the kingdom of God’97some of them acquaintances, some business associates, yes, perhaps some members of your family were baptized by sprinkling or immersion. Christian people thought of you and they called at your store, but you were out on business. They stopped at your house; you had gone around to spend the evening. They sent a kindly message to you; somehow, by accident, you did not get it. The lifeboat of the Gospel swept through the surf, and everybody seemed to get in but you. Everything seemed to escape you. One touch of personal sympathy would have pushed you into the kingdom of God. When on communion day your friends went in and your sons and daughters went into the church, you buried your face in your handkerchief and sobbed, ’93Why am I left out? Everybody seems to get saved but me. No man cares for my soul.’94

Hearken to a revelation I have to make. It is a startling statement. It will so surprise you that I must prove it as I go on. Instead of this total indifference all about you in regard to your soul, I have to tell you that heaven, earth and hell are after your immortal spirit. Earth to cheat it. Hell to destroy it. Heaven to redeem it. Although you may be a stranger to the Christians in your church, their faces would glow and their hearts would bound if they saw you make one step heavenward. So intricate and far-reaching is this web of sympathy, that I could by one word rouse a great many prayers in your behalf. No one care for your soul! Why, one signal of distress on your part would thrill a Christian audience with holy excitement.

If a boat in any harbor should get in distress, from the men-of-war and from the sloops and from the steamers the flying paddles would pull to the rescue. And if now you would lift one signal of distress, all these voyagers of eternity would bear down toward you and bring you relief. But no. You are like a ship on fire at sea. They keep the hatches down, and the captain is frenzied, and he gives orders that no one hail the passing ships. He says, ’93I shall either land this vessel in Hamburg or on the bottom of the ocean, and I don’92t care which.’94 Yonder is a ship of the White Star Line passing. Yonder one of the American Line. Yonder one of the Cunard Line. Yonder one of the German-Lloyd Line. But they know not there is any calamity happening on that one vessel. Oh, if the captain would only put his trumpet to his lip and cry out, ’93Lower your boats! Bear down this way! We are burning up! Fire! Fire!’94 No, no. No signal is given. If that vessel perishes, having hailed no one, whose fault will it be? Will it be the fault of the ship that hid its calamity, or will it be. the fault of the vessels that, passing on the high seas, would have been glad to furnish relief if it had been only asked? In other words, if you miss heaven it will be your own fault.

No one care for your soul! Why, in all the ages there have been men whose entire business was soul-saving. Munson went down under the knives of the cannibals whom he had come to save, and Robert McCheyne preached himself to death by thirty years of age, and Jehudi Ashman endured all the malarias of the African jungle; and there are hundreds and thousands of Christian men and women now who are praying, toiling, preaching, living, dying to save souls.

No one care for your soul! Have you heard how Christ feels about it? I know it was only five or six miles from Bethlehem to Calvary’97the birthplace and the deathplace of Christ’97but who can tell how many miles it was from the throne to the manger? How many miles down, how many miles back again? The place of his departure was the focus of all splendor and pomp. All the thrones facing his throne. His name the chorus in every song and the inscription on every banner. His landing-place a cattle-pen, malodorous with unwashed brutes, and dogs growling in and out of the stable. Born of a weary mother who had journeyed eighty miles in severe indisposition that she might find the right place for the Lord’92s nativity’97born, not as other princes, under the flash of a chandelier, but under a lantern swung by a rope to the roof of the barn. In that place Christ started to save you. Your name, your face, your time, your eternity, in Christ’92s mind. Sometimes travelling on mule’92s back to escape King Herod’92s massacre, sometimes attempting nervous sleep on the chilly hillside, sometimes earning his breakfast by the carpentry of a plow. In Quarantania the stones of the field, by their shape and color, looking like the loaves of bread, tantalizing his hunger. Yet all the time keeping on after you. With drenched coat treading the surf of Gennesaret. Howled after by a bloodthirsty mob. Denounced as a drunkard. Mourning over a doomed city, while others shouted at the sight of the resplendent towers. All the time coming on and coming on to save you. Indicted as a traitor against government, perjured witnesses swearing their souls away to insure his butchery. Flogged, spit on, slapped in the face, and then hoisted on rough lumber, in the sight of earth and heaven and hell, to purchase your eternal emancipation. From the first infant step to the last step of manhood on the sharp spike of Calvary a journey for you. Oh, how he cared for your soul! By dolorous arithmetic add up the stable, the wintry tempest, the midnight dampness, the abstinence of forty days from food, the brutal Sanhedrin, the heights of Golgotha, across which all the hatreds of earth and all the furies of hell charged with their bayonets, and then dare to say again that no one cares for your soul.

A young man might as well go off from home and give his father and mother no intimation as to where he has gone, and, crossing the seas, sitting down in some foreign country, cold, sick and hungry and lonely, say, ’93My father and mother don’92t care anything about me.’94 Do not care anything about him! Why, that father’92s hair has turned gray since his son went off. He has written to all the consuls in the foreign ports asking about that son. Does not the mother care anything about him? He has broken her heart. She has never smiled since he went away. All day long, and almost all night, she keeps asking, ’93Where is he? Where can he be?’94 He is the first thought in her prayer and the last thought in her prayer’97the first thought in the morning and the last at night. She says, ’93O God, bring back my boy. I must see him again before I die. Where is he? I must see him again before I die.’94 Oh, do not his father and mother care for him? You go away from your heavenly Father, and you think he does not care for you because you will not even read the letters by which he invites you to come back, while all heaven is waiting and waiting and waiting for you to return.

A young man said to his father, ’93I am going off; I will write to you at the end of seven years and tell you where I am.’94 Many years have passed along since that son went away, and for years the father has been going to the depot in the village on the arrival of every train, and when he hears the whistle in the distance he is thrilled with excitement, and he waits until all the passengers have come out, and then he waits until the train has gone clear out of sight again, and then he goes home, hastening back to the next train; and he will be at every train until that son comes back, unless the son waits until the father be dead. But oh, the greater patience of God! He has been waiting for you not seven years, not nine years, but for some of you twenty years, thirty years, forty years, fifty years’97waiting, calling’97waiting, calling, until nothing but omnipotent patience could have endured it. My brother, do not take the sentiment of my text as your sentiment! We do care for your soul.

One Sabbath night years ago in my church in Brooklyn a young man appeared at the end of the platform, and he said to me, ’93I have just come off the sea.’94 I said, ’93When did you arrive?’94 Said he, ’93I came into port this afternoon. I was in a great ’91blow’92 off Cape Hatteras this last week, and I thought that I might as well go to heaven as to hell. I thought the ship would sink; but, sir, I never very seriously thought about my soul until tonight.’94 I said to him, ’93Do you feel that Christ is able and willing to save you?’94 ’93Oh, yes,’94 he replied, ’93I do.’94 ’93Well,’94 I said, ’93now are you willing to come and be saved by him?’94 ’93I am,’94 he said. ’93Well, will you now, in the prayer we are about to offer, give yourself to God for time and eternity?’94 ’93I will,’94 he said. Then we knelt in prayer, and after we had got through praying he told me that the great transformation had taken place. I could not doubt it. He is on the sea now. I do not know what other port he may gain, but I think he will gain the harbor of heaven.

Star of peace, beam o’92er the billow,

Bless the soul that sighs for thee;

Bless the sailor’92s lonely pillow,

Far, far at sea.

It was sudden conversion with him that night. Oh, that it might be sudden conversion with you today! God can save you in one moment as well as he can in a century.

There are sudden deaths, sudden calamities; why not sudden deliverances? God’92s Spirit is infinite in speed. He comes here with omnipotent power, and he is ready here and now, instantaneously and forever, to save your soul. I believe that a multitude of you will come to God. I feel you are coming, and you will bring along your families and your friends with you. They have heard in heaven already of the step you are about to take. The news has been cried along the golden streets, and has rung out from the towers. ’93A soul saved! A soul saved!’94 But there is some one among you who will reject this Gospel. He will stay out of the kingdom of God himself. He will keep his family and his friends out. It is a dreadful thing for a man just to plant himself in the way of life, then keep back his children, keep back his companion in life, keep back his business partners’97refuse to go into heaven himself, and refuse to let others go in.

A young man, at the close of a religious service, was asked to decide the matter of his soul’92s salvation. He said, ’93I will not do it tonight.’94 Well, the Christian man kept talking with him, and he said, ’93I insist that tonight you either take God or reject him.’94 ’93Well,’94 said the young man, ’93if you put it that way, I will reject him. There now, the matter’92s settled.’94 On his way home on horseback, he knew not that a tree had fallen aslant the road, and he was going at full speed, and he struck the obstacle and dropped lifeless. That night his Christian mother heard the riderless horse plunging about the barn, and suspecting that something terrible was the matter, she went out and came to the place where her son lay, and she cried out, ’93O Henry! dead and not a Christian. Oh, my son! my son! dead and not a Christian. O Henry! Henry! dead and not a Christian.’94 God keep us from such a catastrophe.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage