338. Victory for God

Victory for God

Amo_9:13 : ’93Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper.’94

Picture of a tropical clime with a season so prosperous that the harvest reaches clear over to the planting time; and the swarthy husbandman swinging the sickle in the thick grain almost feels the breath of the horses on his shoulders, the horses hitched to the plough preparing for a new crop. ’93Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper.’94 When is that? That is now. That is this day when hardly have you done reaping one harvest than the ploughman is getting ready for another.

I know that infidels and agnostics in phraseology charged with all venom and abuse and caricature have said that Christianity has collapsed, that the Bible is an obsolete book, that the Christian Church is on the retreat. I shall answer that wholesale charge in this my last sermon on infidelity. But I now here declare for the first time what has been the chief motive in the delivery of these discourses against infidelity. It was merely a preparation for what we are now to begin in the way of evangelistic services. I know, as you know, that thorough belief in the Bible as the Word of God is the best influence to waken people up to act in regard to their present and everlasting welfare.

Vast multitudes, I believe, during these sermons have been persuaded that the Bible is a commonsensical book, that it is a reasonable book, that it is an authentic book. Men have told me that while they had been accustomed to receive the New Testament, they had disbelieved the Old Testament, until by the blessing of God they have now come to believe that the Old Testament is just as true as the New.

A man said to me in Cleveland, Ohio, as he tapped me on the shoulder: ’93I want to tell you that my son who was at college, and who was a confirmed infidel, wrote to me a letter which I got this morning, saying that through the arguments you have presented in behalf of the truth of the Bible, he has given up his skepticism and surrendered his heart to God. I thought you would like to hear it.’94 I said: ’93God bless you, that is the best thing I have heard to-night.’94 And so I believe the people are all going to be persuaded that this is God’92s Word.

An Arab guide was leading a French infidel across a desert, and ever and anon the Arab guide would get down in the sand and pray to the Lord. It disgusted the French infidel; and after a while, as the Arab got up from one of his prayers, the infidel said: ’93How do you know there is any God?’94 and the Arab guide said: ’93How do I know that a man and a camel passed along by our tent last night? I know it by the footprints in the sand. And you want to know how I know whether there is any God. Look at that sunset. Is that the footstep of a man?’94 And by a similar process you and I have come to understand that this is the footstep of a God.

Let us see whether the Bible is a last year’92s almanac. Let us see whether the Church of God is in a Bull Run retreat’97muskets, canteens, and haversacks strewing all the way. The great English historian, Sharon Turner, a man of vast learning and of great accuracy’97not a clergyman, but an attorney as well as a historian’97gives these overwhelming statistics in regard to Christianity and in regard to the number of Christians in the different centuries. In the first century, five hundred thousand Christians; in the second century, two million Christians; in the third century, five million Christians; in the fourth century, ten million Christians; in the fifth century, fifteen million Christians; in the sixth century, twenty million Christians; in the seventh century, twenty-four million Christians; in the eighth century, thirty million Christians; in the ninth century, forty million Christians; in the tenth century, fifty million Christians; in the eleventh century, seventy million Christians; in the twelfth century, eighty million Christians; in the thirteenth century, seventy-five million Christians; in the fourteenth century, eighty million Christians; in the fifteenth century, one hundred million Christians; in the sixteenth century, one hundred and twenty-five million Christians; in the seventeenth century, one hundred and fifty-five million Christians; in the eighteenth century, two hundred million Christians’97a decadence, as you observe, in only one century, and more than made up in the following centuries’97while it is the usual computation that there will be, when the record of the nineteenth century is made up, at least four hundred and ninety million Christians.

Poor Christianity! What a pity it has no friends! How lonesome it must be. Who will take it out of the poorhouse? Poor Christianity! Nearly five hundred million of its followers. In a few weeks of one year two million five hundred thousand copies of the New Testament distributed. Why, the earth is like an old castle with twenty gates and a park of artillery ready to thunder down every gate. Lay aside all Christendom and see how heathendom is being surrounded and honey combed and attacked by this all-conquering Gospel. At the beginning of this century there were only one hundred and fifty missionaries; now there are eleven thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine missionaries, and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and fifty-four native helpers and evangelists. At the beginning of this century there were only fifty thousand heathen converts; now there are one million four hundred and forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-one converts from heathendom. There is not a seacoast on the planet but the battery of the Gospel is planted and ready to march on, north, south, east, west.

You all know that the chief work of an army is to plant the batteries. It may take many days to plant the batteries and they may do all the work in ten minutes. These batteries are being planted all along the seacoasts and in all nations. It may take a good while to plant them, and they may do all their work in one day. They will. Nations are to be born in a day. But just come back to Christendom and recognize the fact that during the last ten years as many people have connected themselves with evangelical churches as connected themselves with the churches in the first fifty years of this century. So Christianity is falling back, and the Bible, they say, is becoming an obsolete book!

I go into a court, and wherever I find a judge’92s bench or a clerk’92s desk, I find a Bible. Upon what book could there be uttered the solemnity of an oath? What book is apt to be put in the trunk of the young man as he leaves for city life? The Bible. What shall I find in nine out of every ten homes in our cities? The Bible. In nine out of every ten homes in Christendom? The Bible. Voltaire wrote the prophecy that the Bible in the nineteenth century would become extinct. The century is nearly gone; and as there have been more Bibles published in the latter part of the century than in the former part of the century, do you think the Bible will become extinct before it ends? I have to tell you that the room in which Voltaire wrote that prophecy, not long ago was crowded from floor to ceiling with Bibles for Switzerland.

Suppose the Congress of the United States should pass a law that there should be no more Bibles printed in America, and no more Bibles read. If there are forty million grown people in the United States there would be forty million in an army to put down such a law and defend their right to read the Bible. But suppose the Congress of the United States should make a law against the reading or the publication of any other book, how many people would go out in such a crusade? Could you get forty million people to go out and risk their lives in the defense of Shakespeare’92s tragedies or Gladstone’92s tracts or Macaulay’92s History of England? You know that there are a thousand men who would die in the defense of this book, where there is not more than one man who would die in defense of any other book. You try to insult my common sense by telling me the Bible is fading out from the world. It is the most popular book of the century. How do I know it? I know it just as I know in regard to other books. How many volumes of that book are published? Well, you say, five thousand. How many copies of that book are published? A hundred thousand. Which is the more popular. Why, of course, the one that has a hundred thousand circulation. And if this book has more copies abroad in the world, if there are five times as many Bibles abroad as any other book, does not that show you that the most popular book on the planet today is the Word of God?

’93Oh,’94 say people, ’93the Church is a collection of hypocrites; it is losing its power and is fading out from the world.’94 Is it? A bishop of the Methodist Church told me that that denomination averages a new church every day of the year. In other words, they build three hundred and sixty-five churches in that denomination in a year; and there are at least one thousand new Christian churches built in America every year. Does that look as though the church were fading out, as though it were a defunct institution? Which institution stands nearest the hearts of the people of America today? I do not care in what village or what city or what neighborhood you go. Which institution is it? Is it the post-office? Is is the hotel? Is it the lecturing hall? Ah! you know it is not. You know that the institution which stands nearest to the hearts of the American people is the Christian Church.

You may talk about the Church being a collection of hypocrites, but when the diphtheria sweeps your children off, whom do you send for? The postmaster? the attorney-general? the hotel keeper? alderman? No, you send for a minister of this Bible religion. And if you have not a room in your house for the obsequies, what building do you solicit? Do you say: ’93Give me the finest room in the hotel?’94 Do you say: ’93Give me that theater?’94 Do you say: ’93Give me a place in that public building where I can lay my dead for a little while until we say a prayer over it?’94 No; you say: ’93Give us the house of God.’94 And if there is a song to be sung at the obsequies, what do you want? What does anybody want? The ’93Marseillaise Hymn?’94 ’93God Save the Queen?’94 Our own grand national air? No. They want the hymn with which they sang their old Christian mother into her last sleep, or they want sung the Sabbath-school hymn which their little girl sang the last Sabbath afternoon she was out before she got that awful sickness which broke your heart. I appeal to your common sense. You know the most endearing institution on earth, the most popular institution on earth today, is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. A man is a fool who does not recognize it.

The infidels say: ’93There is great liberty now for infidels; we never had such freedom of platform; infidelity shows its power from the fact that it is everywhere accepted, and it can say what it will.’94 Why, my friends, infidelity is not half so blatant in our day as it was in the days of our fathers. Do you know that in those days there were pronounced infidels in public authority and they could get any political position? Let a man today declare himself an enemy of the Christian religion, and what city wants him for mayor, what State wants him for governor, what nation wants him for president or for king? Let a man openly proclaim himself the foe of our glorious Christianity, and he cannot get a majority of votes in any State, in any city, in any country, in any ward of America.

A noted infidel, years ago, riding in a rail-car in Illinois, said: ’93What has Christianity ever done?’94 An old Christian woman said: ’93It has done one thing, anyhow; it has kept an infidel from being governor of Illinois!’94 As I stood in the side-room of the opera-house at Peoria, Illinois, a prominent gentleman of that city said: ’93I can tell you the secret of that tremendous bitterness against Christianity.’94 Said I: ’93What was it?’94 ’93Why,’94 said he, ’93in this very house there was a great convention to nominate a governor, and there were three or four candidates. At the same time there was, in a church in this city, a Sabbath-school convention, and it happened that one of the men who was in the Sabbath-school convention was also a member of the political convention. In the political convention the name highest on the roll at that time and about to be nominated was the name of the great champion infidel. There was an adjournment between ballots; and in the afternoon, when the nominations were being made, a plain farmer got up and said: ’91Mr. Chairman, that nomination must not be made; the Sunday-schools of Illinois will defeat him.’92 That ended all prospect of his nomination.’94 The Christian religion mightier today than it ever was.

Do you think that such a scene could be enacted now as was enacted in the days of Robespierre, when a shameless woman was elevated to the dignity of a goddess and carried in a golden chair to a cathedral, where incense was burned to her and people bowed down before her as a divine being, she taking the place of the Bible and God; while in the corridor of that cathedral were enacted such scenes of drunkenness and debauchery and obscenity as have never been witnessed? Do you believe such a thing could possibly occur in Christendom today? No. The police of New York or of Paris would swoop upon it. I know infidelity makes a good deal of talk in our day. One infidel can make great excitement, but I will tell you on what principle it is. It is on the principle that if a man jumps overboard from an ocean-liner he makes more excitement than all the five hundred who stay on the deck. But the fact that he jumps overboard does not stop the ship. Does that wreck the five hundred passengers? It makes great excitement when a man jumps from the lecturing platform or from the pulpit into infidelity; but does that keep the Bible or the Church from carrying millions of passengers to the shores of safety?

They say, these men, that science is overcoming religion in our day. They look through the spectacles of the infidel scientists and they say: ’93It is impossible that this book can be true; people are finding it out; the Bible has got to go overboard; science is going to throw it overboard.’94 Do you believe that the Bible account of the origin of life will be overthrown by infidel scientists who have fifty different theories about the origin of life? If they should come up in solid phalanx, all agreeing on one sentiment and one theory, perhaps Christianity might be damaged; but there are not so many differences of opinion inside the Church as outside the Church. Oh! it makes me sick to see these literary fops going along with a copy of Darwin under one arm and a case of transfixed grasshoppers and butterflies under the other arm, telling about the ’93survival of the fittest,’94 and Huxley’92s protoplasm, and the nebular hypothesis.

The fact is that some naturalists, just as soon as they find out the difference between the feelers of a wasp and the horns of a beetle, begin to patronize the Almighty; while Agassiz, glorious Agassiz, who never made any pretensions to being a Christian, rejects the doctrine of evolution, and says: ’93I see that many of the naturalists of our day are adopting facts which do not bear observation, or have not passed under observation.’94 These men warring with each other’97Darwin warring against Lamarck, Wallace warring against Cope, even Herschel denouncing Ferguson. They do not agree about anything. They do not agree on embryology, they do not agree on the gradation of the species. What do they agree on? Herschel writes a whole chapter on the errors of astronomy. Laplace declares that the moon was not put in the right place. He says if it had been put four times further from the earth than it is now, there would be more harmony in the universe; but science comes up just in time to prove that the moon was put in the right place. How many colors woven into the light? Seven, says Isaac Newton. Three, says David Brewster. How high is the Aurora Borealis? Two and a half miles, says Lias. Ninety miles, say other scientists. How far is the sun from the earth? Seventy-six million miles, says de la Caille. Eighty-two million miles, says Humboldt. Ninety million miles, says Henderson. One hundred and four million miles, says Mayer. Only a little difference of twenty-eight million miles! All split up among themselves, not agreeing on anything.

Here these infidel scientists have empaneled themselves as a jury to decide this trial between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant, and after being out for centuries they come in to render their verdict. Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on a verdict? No, no. Then go back for another five hundred years and deliberate and agree on something. There is not a poor miserable wretch in the Tombs court to-morrow who could be condemned by a jury that did not agree on the verdict; and yet you expect us to give up our glorious Christianity to please these men who cannot agree on anything.

The Church of Jesus Christ, instead of falling back, is on the advance. I see the glittering of the swords, I hear the tramping of the troops, I hear the thunderings of parks of artillery. O! my God and Saviour, I thank thee that I have been permitted to see this day’97this day of thy triumph, this day of the confusion of thine enemies. O! Lord God, take thy sword from thy thigh and ride forth to the victory.

I am mightily encouraged because I find among other things that while this Christianity has been bombarded for centuries, infidelity has not destroyed one church or crippled one minister or uprooted one verse of one chapter of all the Bible. If that has been their magnificent record for the centuries that are past, what may we expect for the future? The Church all the time getting the victory, and the shot and shell of her enemies all gone. And then I find another most encouraging thought in the fact that the secular printing-press and the pulpit seem harnessed in the same team for the proclamation of the Gospel. Every Wall Street banker to-morrow in New York, every State Street banker to-morrow in Boston, every Third Street banker to-morrow in Philadelphia, every banker in the United States, and every merchant will have in his pocket a treatise on Christianity, a call to repentance, ten, twenty, or thirty passages of Scripture in the reports of sermons preached throughout these cities and throughout the land today. It will be so in New York, so in Chicago, so in New Orleans, so in Charleston, so in Boston, so in Washington, so in Philadelphia, so everywhere. I know that tract societies are doing a grand and glorious work, but I tell you there is no power on earth equal to the fact that the American printing-press is taking up the sermons which are preached to a few hundred or a few thousand people, on Monday morning and Monday evening, in the morning and evening papers, scattering that truth to the millions. What a thought it is! What an encouragement for every Christian man.

Then you have noticed, if you have talked with people on the subject, that they are getting dissatisfied with philosophy and science as a matter of comfort. They say it does not amount to anything when you have a dead child in the house. They tell you when they were sick and the door of the future seemed opening, the only comfort they could find was in the Gospel. People are having demonstrated all over the land that science and philosophy cannot solace the trouble and woes of the world, and they want some other religion; and they are taking Christianity, the only sympathetic religion that ever came into the world. You just take your scientific consolation into that room where a mother has lost her child. Try in that case your splendid doctrine of the ’93survival of the fittest.’94 Tell her that child died because it was not worth as much as the other children. That is your ’93survival of the fittest.’94 Just try your transcendentalism and your philosophy and your science on that widowed soul, and tell her it was a geological necessity that her companion should be taken away from her, just as in the course of the world’92s history the megatherium had to pass out of existence; and then you go on in your scientific consolation until you get to the sublime fact that fifty million years from now we ourselves may be scientific specimens on a geological shelf, petrified specimens of an extinct human race. And after you have got all through with your consolation, if the poor afflicted soul is not crazed by it, I will send forth the plainest Christian we have, and with one-half hour of prayer and reading of Scripture promises, the tears will be wiped away, and the house from basement to cupola will be flooded with the calmness of an Indian summer sunset. There is where I see the triumph of Christianity. People are dissatisfied with everything else. They want God. They want Jesus Christ.

In this trial that has been going on between Infidelity and Christianity, we have only called one witness. He testified in behalf of Infidelity. We have shown that his testimony was not worthy of being received. We showed it was founded on ignorance geological, ignorance chemical, ignorance astronomical, ignorance geographical. We had one witness on the stand. I put the others on the stand now. I put on the Church on earth and all the Church in Heaven. Not fifty, not a thousand, not a million, but all of the Church on earth and all the redeemed in Heaven. Whose testimony is worth the most?

You tell me a new President of the United States was inaugurated on a certain fourth of March. How do I know it? You tell me there were twenty thousand persons who distinctly heard his inaugural address. I deny both. I deny that he was inaugurated. I deny that his inaugural address was delivered. You ask why? I did not see it; I did not hear it. But you say that there were twenty thousand persons who did see and hear him. Now here are some men who say they have never seen Christ crowned in the heart, and they do not believe it is ever done. There is a group of men who say they have never heard the voice of Christ; they have never heard the voice of God. They do not believe it was ever heard’97that anything like it ever occurred. I point to twenty, a hundred thousand or a million people who say: ’93Christ was crowned in our hearts’92 affection, we have seen him and felt him in our soul, and we have heard his voice; we have heard it in storm and darkness; we have heard it again and again.’94 Whose testimony will you take? these men, the unbelievers of earth, who say they have not heard the voice of Christ, have not seen the coronation; or will you take the thousands and tens of thousands of Christians who testify of what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears.

You say morphia puts one to sleep. You say in time of sickness it is very useful. I deny it. Morphia never puts anybody to sleep; it never alleviates pain. You ask why I say that. I have never tried it; I never took it. I deny that morphia is soothing to the nerves, or brings quietude in times of sickness. I deny that morphia ever put anybody to sleep; but here are twenty persons who say they have all felt the soothing effects of morphine prescribed by a physician. Whose testimony will you take? Those who took the medicine, or my testimony, I never having taken the medicine. Here is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an anodyne for all trouble, the mightiest medicine that ever came down to earth. Here is a man who says: ’93I don’92t believe in it; there is no power in it.’94 Here are other people who say: ’93We have found out its power and know its soothing influence; it has cured us.’94 Whose testimony will you take in regard to this healing medicine?

Young man, do not be ashamed to be a friend of the Bible. Do not put your thumb in your vest, as young men sometimes do, and swagger about, talking of the glorious light of the nineteenth century, and of there being no need of a Bible. They have the light of nature in India and China and in all the dark places of the earth. Did you ever hear that the light of nature gave them comfort for their trouble? They have lancets to cut and juggernauts to crush, but no comfort. Ah! my friends, you had better stop your skepticism and come back to the most sympathetic and consolatory religion that ever blest the earth.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage