237. Astray: How to Get Back

Astray: How to Get Back

Pro_23:35 : ’93When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.’94

With an insight into human nature such as no other man ever reached, Solomon, in my text, sketches the mental operations of one who, having stepped aside from the path of rectitude, desires to return. With a wish for something better, he said: ’93When shall I awake? When shall I come out of this horrid nightmare of iniquity?’94 But, seized upon by uneradicated habit, and forced down hill by his passions, he cries out: ’93I will seek it yet again. I will try it once more.’94

Our libraries are adorned with an elegant literature addressed to young men, pointing out to them all the dangers and perils of life’97complete maps of the voyage, showing all the rocks, the quicksands, the shoals. But suppose a man has already made shipwreck; suppose he is already off the track; suppose he has already gone astray, how is he to get back? That is a case comparatively untouched. I propose to address myself this morning to such. There are those who, with every passion of their agonized soul, are ready to hear such a discussion. They compare themselves with what they were ten years ago, and cry out against the bondage in which they are incarcerated. Now, if there be any who come with an earnest purpose, yet feeling they are beyond the pale of Christian sympathy, and that the sermon can hardly be expected to address them, then, at this moment, I give them my right hand, and call them brother. Look up. There is glorious and triumphant hope for you yet. I sound the trumpet of Gospel deliverance. The Church is ready to spread a banquet at your return, and the hierarchs of heaven to fall into line of bannered procession at the news of your emancipation. So far as God may help me, I propose to show what are the obstacles to your return, and then how you are to surmount those obstacles.

The first difficulty in the way of your return is the force of moral gravitation. Just as there is a natural law which brings down to the earth anything you throw into the air, so there is a corresponding moral gravitation. In other words, it is easier to go down than it is to go up; it is easier to do wrong than it is to do right. Call to mind the comrades of your boyhood days’97some of them good, some of them bad’97which most affected you? Call to mind the anecdotes that you have heard in the last five or ten years’97some of them are pure and some of them impure. Which the more easily sticks to your memory? During the years of your life you have formed certain courses of conduct’97some of them good, some of them bad. To which style of habit did you the more easily yield? Ah, my friends, we have to take but a moment of self-inspection to find out that there is in all our souls a force of moral gravitation! But that gravitation may be resisted. Just as you may pick up from the earth something and hold it in your hand toward heaven, just so, by the power of God’92s grace, a soul fallen may be lifted toward peace, toward pardon, toward heaven. Force of moral gravitation in every one of us, but power in God’92s grace to overcome that force.

The next thing in the way of your return is the power of evil habit. I know there are those who say it is very easy for them to give up evil habits. I do not believe them. Here is a man given to intoxication. He knows it is disgracing his family, destroying his property, ruining him, body, mind, and soul. If that man, being an intelligent man, and loving his family, could easily give up that habit, would he not do so? The fact that he does not give it up proves it is hard to give it up. It is a very easy thing to sail down stream, the tide carrying you with great force; but suppose you turn the boat up stream, is it so easy then to row it? As long as we yield to the evil inclinations in our hearts, and to our bad habits, we are sailing down stream; but the moment we try to turn, we put our boat in the rapids just above Niagara, and try to row up stream. Take a man given to the habit of using tobacco, as most of you do, and let him resolve to stop, and he finds it very difficult. Many years ago I quitted that habit, and I would as soon dare to put my right hand in the fire as to indulge in it. Why? Because it was such a terrific struggle to get over it. Now, let a man be advised by his physician to give up the use of tobacco and he stops its use. He goes around not knowing what to do with himself. He cannot add up a line of figures. He cannot sleep nights. It seems as if the world had turned upside down. He feels his business is going to ruin. Where he was kind and obliging, he is scolding and fretful. The composure that characterized him has given way to a fretful restlessness, and he has become a complete fidget. What power is it that has rolled a wave of woe over the earth and shaken a portent in the heavens? He has tried to stop smoking or chewing! After a while he says: ’93I am going to do as I please. The doctor does not understand my case. I am going back to my old habit.’94 And he returns. Everything assumes its usual composure. His business seems to brighten. The world becomes an attractive place to live in. His children, seeing the difference, hail the return of their father’92s genial disposition. What wave of color has dashed blue into the sky and greenness into the mountain foliage and the glow of sapphire into the sunset? What enchantment has lifted a world of beauty and joy on his soul? He has gone back to tobacco!

The fact is, as we all know in our own experience, that habit is a taskmaster; as long as we obey it, it does not chastise us; but let us resist and we find we are to be lashed with scorpion-whips and bound with ship-cable, and thrown into the track of bone-breaking Juggernauts! Suppose a man after five or ten or twenty years of evil-doing, resolves to do right? Why, all the forces of darkness are allied against him. He cannot sleep nights; he gets down on his knees in the midnight and cries: ’93God help me!’94 he bites his lip; he grinds his teeth; he clenches his fist in a determination to keep his purpose; he dare not look at the bottles in the window of a wine store. It was one long, bitter, exhaustive, hand-to-hand fight with inflamed, tantalizing, and merciless habit. When he thinks he is entirely free, the old inclinations pounce upon him like a pack of hounds with their muzzles tearing away at the flanks of one poor reindeer. In Paris there is a sculptured representation of Bacchus, the god of revelry. He is riding on a panther at full leap. Oh, how suggestive! Let every one who is speeding on bad ways understand he is not riding a docile and well-broken steed, but he is riding a monster, wild and bloodthirsty, going at a death-leap.

I have also to say that if a man wants to return from evil practices, society repulses him. The prodigal, wishing to return, takes some member of a Christian association by the hand, or tries to. The Christian young man looks at him, looks at the faded apparel and the marks of dissipation, and instead of giving him a warm grip of the hand, offers him the tip-end of the long fingers of the left hand, which is equal to striking a man in the face. Oh, how few Christian people understand how much Gospel there is in a good, honest hand-shaking! Sometimes, when you have felt the need of encouragement, and some Christian man has taken you heartily by the hand, have you not felt thrilling through every fibre of your body, mind, and soul an encouragement that was just what you needed? You do not know anything at all about this, unless you have learned that when a man tries to return from evil courses of conduct he runs against repulsions innumerable. We say of some man, he lives a block or two from the church or half a mile from the church. There are people in our crowded cities who live a thousand miles from church. Vast deserts of indifference between them and the house of God. The fact is, we must keep our respectability, though thousands and tens of thousands perish. Christ sat with publicans and sinners. But if there come to the house of God a man with marks of dissipation upon him, people almost throw up their hands in horror, as much as to say, ’93Is it not shocking?’94 How these dainty, fastidious Christians in all our churches are going to get into heaven I do not know, unless they have an especial train of cars, cushioned and upholstered, each one a car to himself! They cannot go with the great herd of publicans and sinners. Oh, ye, who curl your lip of scorn at the fallen, I tell you plainly, if you had been surrounded by the same influences, instead of sitting today amid the cultured and the refined and the Christian, you would have been a crouching wretch in stable or ditch, covered with filth and abomination! It is not because you are naturally any better, but because the mercy of God has protected you. Who are you that, brought up in Christian circles, and watched by Christian parentage, you should be so hard on the fallen?

I think men, also, are often hindered from return by the fact that churches are too anxious about their membership and too anxious about their denomination, and they rush out when they see a man about to give up his sin and return to God and ask him how he is going to be baptized, whether by sprinkling or immersion, and what kind of church he is going to join. It is a poor time to talk about Presbyterian catechisms and Episcopal liturgies and Methodist love-feasts and Baptist immersions to a man that is coming out of the darkness of sin into the glorious light of the Gospel. Why, it reminds me of a man drowning in the sea, and a lifeboat puts out for him, and the man in the boat says to the man in the water: ’93Now, if I get you ashore, are you going to live in my street?’94 First get him ashore, and then talk about the non-essentials of religion. Who cares what church he joins, if he only joins Christ and starts for heaven? Oh, you ought to have, my brother, an illumined face and a hearty grip for every one that tries to turn from his evil way! Take hold of the same book with him, though his dissipations shake the book, remembering that he that converteth a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins.

Now, I have shown you these obstacles because I want you to understand I know all the difficulties in the way; but I am now to tell you how Hannibal may scale the Alps, and how the shackles may be un-riveted, and how the paths of virtue forsaken may be regained. First of all, my brother, throw yourself on God. Go to him frankly and earnestly and tell him these habits you have, and ask him, if there is any help in all the resources of omnipotent love, to give it to you. Do not go with the long rigmarole which some people call prayer, made up of ’93ohs’94 and ’93ahs’94 and ’93forever and forever amens!’94 Go to God and cry for help! help! help! and if you cannot cry for help just look and live. I remember in the war I was at Antietam. I went into the hospital after the battle, and I said to a man: ’93Where are you hurt?’94 He made no answer, but held up his arm, swollen and splintered. I saw where he was hurt. The simple fact is, when a man has a wounded soul, all he has to do is to hold it up before a sympathetic Lord and get it healed. It does not take any long prayer. Just hold up the wound. It is no small thing when a man is nervous and weak and exhausted, coming from his evil ways, to feel that God puts two omnipotent arms around about him and says: ’93Young man, I will stand by you! The mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but I will never fail you.’94 And then, as the soul thinks the news is too good to be true, and cannot believe it, and looks up in God’92s face, God lifts his right hand and takes an oath, an affidavit, saying: ’93As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.’94

Blessed be God for such a Gospel as this! ’93Cut the slices thin,’94 said the wife to the husband, ’93or there will not be enough to go all around for the children; cut the slices thin.’94 Blessed be God there is a full loaf for every one that wants it; bread enough and to spare. No thin slices at the Lord’92s table. I remember when the Master Street Hospital, in Philadelphia, was opened during the Civil War, a telegram came, saying: ’93There will be three hundred wounded men tonight; be ready to take care of them;’94 and from my church there went in some twenty or thirty men and women to look after these poor wounded fellows. As they came, some from one part of the land, some from another, no one asked whether this man was from Oregon or from Massachusetts or from Minnesota or from New York. There was a wounded soldier, and the only question was how to take off the rags most gently and put on the bandage and administer the cordial. And when a soul comes to God, he does not ask where you came from or what your ancestry was. Healing for all your wounds. Pardon for all your guilt. Comfort for all your troubles.

Then, also, I counsel you, if you want to get back, to quit all your bad associations. One unholy intimacy will fill your soul with moral distemper. In all the ages of the Church there has not been an instance where a man kept one evil associate and was reformed. Among the fourteen hundred million of the race not one instance. Give up your bad companions, or give up heaven. It is not ten bad companions that destroy a man, nor five bad companions, nor three bad companions, but one. What chance is there for that young man I saw along the street, four or five young men with him, halting in front of a grog-shop, urging him to go in, he resisting, violently resisting, until after a while they forced him to go in? It was a summer night, and the door was left open, and I saw the process. They held him fast, and they put the cup to his lips, and they forced down the strong drink. What chance is there for such a young man?

I counsel you, also, seek Christian advice. Every Christian man is bound to help you. If you find no other human ear willing to listen to your story of struggle, come to me, and I will, by every sympathy of my heart and every prayer and every toil of my hand, stand beside you in the struggle for reformation; and as I hope to have my own sins forgiven, and hope to be acquitted at the judgment-seat of Christ, I will not betray you. First of all, seek God; then seek Christian counsel. Gather up all the energies of body, mind, and soul; and, appealing to God for success, declare this day everlasting war against all drinking habits, all gaming practices, all houses of sin. Half-and-half work will amount to nothing; it must be a Waterloo. Shrink back now and you are lost. Push on and you are saved. A Spartan general fell at the very moment of victory, but he dipped his finger in his own blood and wrote on a rock near which he was dying: ’93Sparta has conquered.’94 Though your struggle to get rid of sin may seem to be almost a death struggle, you can dip your finger in your own blood and write on the Rock of Ages, ’93Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!’94

What glorious news might these young men send home to their parents in the country these holidays which are coming. The old folks go to the post-office every day or two to see whether there are any letters from you. How anxious they are to hear. You might send them for a holiday present this season a book from one of our best publishing houses, or a complete wardrobe from the importer’92s palace’97it would not please them half so much as the news you might send home tomorrow that you had given your heart to God. I know how it is in the country. The night comes on. The cattle stand under the rack through which burst the trusses of hay. The horses just having frisked up from the meadow at the nightfall, stand knee-deep in the bright straw that invites them to lie down and rest. The perch of the hovel is full of fowl, their feet warm under the feathers. In the old farmhouse at night no candle is lighted, for the flames clap their hands about the great back log, and shake the shadow of the group up and down the wall.

Father and mother sit there for half an hour, saying nothing. I wonder what they are thinking of. After awhile the father breaks the silence and says: ’93Well, I wonder where our boy is in town tonight?’94 and the mother answers: ’93In no bad place, I warrant you; we always could trust him when he was home; and since he has been away there have been so many prayers offered for him, we can trust him still.’94 Then, at eight o’92clock’97for they retire early in the country’97they kneel down and commend you to that God who watches in country and in town, on the land and on the sea.

Some one said to a Grecian general: ’93What was the proudest moment in your life?’94 He thought a moment, and said: ’93The proudest moment in my life was when I sent word home to my parents that I had gained the victory.’94 And the proudest and most brilliant moment in your life will be the moment when you can send word to your parents that you have conquered your evil habits by the grace of God, and become eternal victor. Oh, despise not parental anxiety!

The time will come when you will have neither father nor mother, and you will go around the place where they used to watch you, and find them gone from the house and gone from the field and gone from the neighborhood. Cry as loud for forgiveness as you may over the mound in the churchyard, they will not answer. Dead! Dead! And then you will take out the white lock of hair that was cut from your mother’92s brow just before they buried her, and you will take the cane with which your father used to walk, and you will think and think and wish that you had done just as they wanted you to, and would give the world if you had never thrust a pang through their dear old hearts. God pity the young man who has brought disgrace on his father’92s name! God pity the young man who has broken his mother’92s heart! Better if he had never been born’97better if, in the first hour of his life, instead of being laid against the warm bosom of maternal tenderness, he had been coffined and sepulchred. There is no balm powerful enough to heal the heart of one who has brought parents to a sorrowful grave, and who wanders about through the dismal cemetery, rending the hair and wringing the hands, and crying, ’93Mother! Mother!’94 Oh, that today by all the memories of the past, and by all the hopes of the future, you would yield your heart to God. May your father’92s God and your mother’92s God be your God forever!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage