412. Points of Compass

Points of Compass

Luk_13:29 : ’93They shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down.’94

The man who wrote this was at one time a practising physician; at another time a talented painter; at another time a powerful preacher; at another time a reporter’97an inspired reporter. God bless and help and inspire all reporters! From their pens drops the health or poison of nations. The name of this reporter was Lucanus; for short he was called Luke; and in my text, although stenography had not yet been born, he reports part of a sermon of Christ which in one paragraph bowls the round world into the light of the millennium. ’93They shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south and shall sit down.’94 Nothing more interested me in my recent journey around the world than to see the ship-captain about noon, whether on the Pacific or the Indian or Bengal or Mediterranean or Red Sea looking through a nautical instrument to find just where we were sailing; and it is well to know that though the captain tells you there are thirty-two points of division of the compass-card in the mariner’92s compass, there are only four cardinal points, and my text hails them, the north, the south, the east, the west. So I spread out before us the map of the world to see the extent of the Gospel campaign The hardest part of the field to be taken is the North, because our Gospel is an emotional Gospel, and the nations of the far North are a cold-blooded race. They dwell amid icebergs and eternal snows, and everlasting winter. Greenlanders, Laplanders, Icelanders, Siberians. Their vehicle is the sledge drawn by reindeer. Their apparel the thickest furs at all seasons. Their existence a lifetime battle with the cold. The winter charges upon them with swords of icicle, and strikes them with bullets of hail and pounds them with battering-rams of glacier. But already the huts of the Arctic hear the songs of Divine worship Already the snows fall on open New Testaments. Already the warmth of the Sun of Righteousness begins to be felt through the bodies and minds and souls of the Hyperboreans. Down from Nova Zembla; down from Spitzbergen Seas; down from the Land of the Midnight Sun; down from the palaces of crystal; down over realms of ice and over dominions of snow and through hurricanes of sleet, Christ’92s disciples are coming from the North. The inhabitants of Hudson’92s Bay are gathering to the Cross. The Church Missionary Society in those polar climes has been grandly successful in establishing twenty-four Gospel stations, and over twelve thousand natives have believed and been baptized. The Moravians have kindled the light of the Gospel all up and down Labrador. The Danish Mission has gathered disciples from among the shivering inhabitants of Greenland. William Duncan preaches the Gospel up in the chill latitudes of Columbia, delivering one sermon nine times in the same day to as many different tribes who listen and then go forth to build schoolhouses and churches. Alaska, called at its annexation William H. Seward’92s folly, turns out to be William H. Seward’92s triumph, and it is hearing the voice of God through the American missionaries’97men and women as defiant of Arctic hardships as the old Scottish chief who, when camping out in a winter’92s night, knocked from under his son’92s head a pillow of snow, saying that such indulgence in luxury would weaken and disgrace the clan. The Jeannette went down in latitude seventy-seven, while De Long and his freezing and dying men stood watching it from the crumbling and crackling polar pack; but the old ship of the Gospel sails as unhurt in latitude seventy-seven as in our own forty degrees, and the one-starred flag floats above the topgallants in Baffin’92s Bay and Hudson’92s Strait and Melville Sound. The heroism of Polar expedition, which has made the names of Sebastian Cabot and Scoresby and Schwatka and Henry Hudson immortal, is to be eclipsed by the prowess of the men and women who, amid the frosts of highest latitudes, are this moment taking the upper shores of Europe, Asia and America for God. Scientists have never been able to agree as to what is the aurora borealis, or northern lights. I can tell them. It is the banner of victory for Christ spread out in the northern night heavens. Partially fulfilled already the prophecy of my text, to be completely fulfilled in the near future: ’93They shall come from the north.’94

But my text takes in the opposite point of the compass. The far South has through high temperature, temptations to lethargy and indolence and hot blood, which tend toward multiform evil. We have through my text got the North in, notwithstanding its frosts; and the same text brings in the South, notwithstanding its torridity. The fields of cati, the orange groves, and the thickest of magnolia are to be surrendered to the Lord Almighty. The South! That means Mexico, and all the regions that William H. Prescott and Lord Kingsborough made familiar in literature; Mexico in strange dialect of the Aztecs; Mexico, conquered; by Hernando Cortez, to be more gloriously conquered; Mexico, with its capital more than seven thousand feet above the sea level, looking down upon the entrancement of lake and valley and plain; Mexico, the home of nations yet to be born’97all for Christ. The South! That means Africa, which David Livingstone consecrated to God when he died on his knees in his tent of exploration. Already about seven hundred and fifty thousand converts to Christianity in Africa. The South! That means all the islands strewn by Omnipotent hand through tropical seas. Malayan Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and other islands more numerous than you can imagine unless you have voyaged around the world. The South! That means Java for God; Sumatra for God; Borneo for God; Brazil and Patagonia for God.

A ship was wrecked near one of the South Pacific islands and two lifeboats put out for shore, but those who arrived in the first boat were clubbed to death by the cannibals, and the other boat put back and was somehow saved. Years passed on, and one of that very crew was wrecked again with others on the same rocks. Crawling up on the shore, they proposed to hide from the cannibals in one of the caverns, but mounting the rocks they saw a church, and cried out: ’93We are saved! A church A church!’94 The South! That means Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador and Bolivia. The South! That means the torrid zone, with all its bloom and all its fruitage and all its exuberance; the redolence of illimitable gardens; the music of boundless groves; the lands, the seas that night by night look up to the Southern Cross, which in stars transfigures the midnight heaven as you look up at it all the way from the Sandwich Islands to Australia. ’93They shall come from the south.’94

But I must not forget that my text takes in another cardinal point of the compass. It takes in the east. I have to report that in a journey around the world there is nothing so much impresses one as the fact that the missionaries divinely blessed are taking the world for God. The horrible war between Japan and China has left the last wall of opposition flat in the dust. War is barbarism always and everywhere. We held up our hands in amazement at the massacre at Port Arthur, as though Christian nations could never go into such diabolism. We forget Fort Pillow! We forget the fact that during our war both North and South rejoiced when there were ten thousand more wounded and slain on the opposite side. War, whether in China or the United States, is agony and woe. But one good result has come from the Japanese-Chinese conflict. Those regions are more open to civilization and Christianity than ever before. When Missionary Carey put before an assembly of ministers at Northampton, England, his project for the evangelization of India, they laughed him out of the house. From Calcutta, on the east of India, to Bombay, on the west, there is not a neighborhood but directly or indirectly feels the Gospel power. The Juggernaut, which did its awful work for centuries, some time ago was brought out from the place where it had for forty years been kept under shed as a curiosity, and there was no one reverentially to greet it. About three million of Christian souls in India are the advance guard that will lead on the two hundred and fifty millions. The Christians of Amoy and Pekin and Canton are the advance-guard that will lead the three hundred and forty millions of China. ’93They shall come from the east.’94 The last mosque of Mohammedanism will be turned into a Christian church. The last Buddhist temple will become a fortress of light. The last idol of Hinduism will be pitched into the fire. The Christ who came from the East will yet bring all the East with him. Of course, there are formidable obstacles to be overcome, and great ordeals must be passed through before the consummation: as witness the Armenians under the butchery of the Turk. May that throne on the banks of the Bosphorus soon crumble! The time has already come when the United States Government and Great Britain and Germany ought to voice the indignation of all civilized nations. While it is not requisite that arms be sent there to avenge the wholesale massacre of Armenians, it is requisite that by cable under the seas and by protest that shall thrill the wires from Washington and London and Berlin to Constantinople, the nations anathematize the diabolism for which the Sultan of Turkey is responsible. Mohammedanism is a curse whether in Turkey or New York! ’93They shall come from the east!’94 And they will come at the call of the loveliest and grandest and best men and women of all time. I mean the missionaries. Dissolute Americans and Englishman who have gone to Calcutta and Bombay and Canton to make their fortunes defame the missionaries because the holy lives and the pure households of those missionaries are a constant rebuke to the American and English libertines stopping there, but the men and women of God there stationed go on gloriously with their work; people just as good and self-denying as was Missionary Moffat, who, when asked to write in an album, wrote these words:

My album is in savage breasts,

Where passion reigns and darkness rests

Without one ray of light.

To write the name of Jesus there;

To point to worlds both bright and fair;

And see the pagan bow in prayer,

Is all my soul’92s delight.

In all those regions are men and women with the consecration of Melville B. Cox, who, embarking for the missionary work in Africa, said to a fellow-student: ’93If I die in Africa, come and write my epitaph.’94 ’93What shall I write for your epitaph?’94 said the student. ’93Write,’94 said he, ’93these words: ’91Let a thousand fall before Africa be given up.’92’93

There is another point of the compass that my text includes. ’91They shall come from the west.’94 That means America redeemed. Everything between Atlantic and Pacific oceans to be brought within the circle of holiness and rapture. Will it be done by worldly reform or evangelism? Will it be law or Gospel? I am glad that a wave of reform has swept across this land, and all the cities are feeling the advantage of the mighty movement. Let the good work go on until the last municipal evil is extirpated. About fifteen years ago the distinguished editor of a New York daily newspaper said to me in his editorial room: ’93You ministers talk about evils of which you know nothing. Why don’92t you go with the officers of the law and explore for yourself, so that when you preach against sin you can speak from what you have seen with your own eyes?’94 I said: ’93I will.’94 And in company with a commissioner of police and a captain of police and two elders of my church, I explored the dens and hiding-places of all varieties of crime in New York, and preached a series of sermons warning young men, and setting forth the work that must be done lest the judgments of God whelm this city with more awful submergement than the volcanic deluge that buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. I received, as nearly as I can remember, several hundred columns of newspaper abuse for undertaking that exploration. Editorials of denunciation, double-leaded, and with captions in conspicuous type, entitled ’93The Fall of Talmage,’94 or ’93Talmage Makes the Mistake of His Life,’94 or ’93Down With Talmage,’94 but I still live and am in full sympathy with all movements for municipal purification. But a movement which ends with crime exposed and law executed stops half-way. Nay, it stops long before it gets half-way. The law never yet saved anybody; never yet changed anybody. Break up all the houses of iniquity in this city, and you only send the occupants to other cities. Break down all the panders to vice in New York; and while it changes their worldly fortunes, it does not change their heart or life. The greatest want in New York today is the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to change the heart and the life, and uplift the tone of moral sentiment, and make men do right, not because they are afraid of Ludlow Street Jail or Sing Sing, but because they love God and hate unrighteousness. I have never heard, nor have you heard, of anything except the Gospel that proposes to regenerate the heart, and by the influence of that regenerated heart, rectify the life. Execute the law, most certainly; but preach the Gospel by all means’97in churches, in theaters, in homes, in prisons, on the land and on the sea. The Gospel is the only power that can revolutionize society and save the world. All else is half-and-half work, and will not last. In New York it has allowed men who got by police bribery their thousands and tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars, to go scot free; while some who were merely the cat’92s-paws and agents of bribery are struck with the lightnings of the law. It reminds me of a scene in Philadelphia when I was living there. A poor woman had been arrested and tried and imprisoned for selling molasses candy on Sunday. Other lawbreakers had been allowed to go undisturbed, and the grog-shops were open on the Lord’92s Day; and the law, with its hands behind its back, walked up and down the streets declining to molest many of the offenders; but we all rose up in our righteous indignation, and, calling upon all powers, visible and invisible, to help us, we declared that though the heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday.

A few weeks ago, after I had preached in one of the churches in this city, a man staggered up on the pulpit stairs maudlin drunk, saying: ’93I am one of the reformers that was elected to high office at the last election.’94 I got rid of that ’93great reformer’94 as soon as I could, but I did not get rid of the impression that a man like that would cure the abominations of New York about as soon as smallpox would cure typhoid fever, or a buzz-saw would render Haydn’92s ’93Creation.’94 Politics in all our cities has become so corrupt that the only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is that each is worse than the other. But what nothing else in the universe can do, the Gospel can and will accomplish. ’93They shall come from the west,’94 and for that purpose the evangelistic batteries are planted all along the Pacific coast, as they are planted all along the Atlantic coast. All the prairies, all the mountains, all the valleys, all the cities are under more or less Gospel influence; and when we get enough faith and consecration for the work, this whole American continent will cry out for God. ’93They shall come from the west.’94

The work is not so difficult as many suppose. You say, ’93There are the foreign populations.’94 Yes; but many of them are Hollanders, and they were brought up to love and worship God, and it will take but little to persuade the Hollanders to adopt the religion of their forefathers. Then there are among these foreigners so many of the Scotch. They or their ancestors heard Thomas Chalmers thunder and Robert McCheyne pray. The breath of God so often swept through the heather of the Highlands, and the voice of God has so often sounded through the Trossachs, and they all know how to sing Dundee; so that they will not have often to be invited to accept the God of John Knox and Bothwell Bridge. Then there are among these foreigners so many of the English. They inherited the same language as we inherited’97the English, in which Southey sang and Henry Melville Gospelized and Oliver Cromwell prorogued Parliament and Wellington commanded his eager hosts. Among these foreigners are the Swiss, and they were rocked in a cradle under the shadow of the Alps, that cathedral of the Almighty in which all the elements’97snow and hail and tempest and hurricane’97worship. Among these foreigners are a vast host of Germans, and they feel centuries afterward the power of that unparalleled spirit who shook the earth when he trod it and the heavens when he prayed’97Martin Luther! From all nations our foreign populations have come, and they are homesick, far away from the place of their childhood and the graves of their ancestors, and our glorious religion presented to them aright will meet their needs, and fill their souls, and kindle their enthusiasm. They shall come from amid the wheat sheaves of Dakota, and from the ore beds of Wyoming, and from the silver mines of Nevada, and from the golden gulches of Colorado, and from the banks of the Platte and the Oregon and the Sacramento and the Columbia. ’93They shall come from the west.’94

But what will they do after they come? Here is something gloriously consolatory that you have never noticed: ’93They shall come from the east, and the west, and the north, and the south, and shall sit down.’94 Oh, this is a tired world! The most of people are kept on the tun all their lifetime. Business keeps them on the run. Trouble keeps them on the run. Rivalries of life keep them on the run. They are running from disaster. They are running for reward. And those who run the fastest and run the longest seem best to succeed. But my text suggests a restful posture for all God’92s children, for all those who for a lifetime have been on the run. ’93They shall sit down!’94 Why run any longer? When a man gets heaven, what more can he get? ’93They shall sit down.’94 Not alone, but in picked companionship of the universe. Not embarrassed, though a seraph should sit down on one side of you, and an archangel on the other.

There is that mother who through all the years of infancy and childhood was kept running amid sick trundlebeds, now to shake up the pillow of that flaxen-head, and now to give a drink to those parched lips, and now to hush the frightened dream of a little one; and when there was one less of the children because the great Lover of children had lifted one out of the croup into the easy breathing of celestial atmosphere, the mother putting all the more anxious care on those who were left; so weary of arm and foot and back and head; so often crying out, ’93I am so tired! I am so tired!’94 Her work done, she shall sit down. And that business man for thirty, forty, fifty years has kept on the run, not urged by selfishness, but for the purpose of achieving a competence for the household. On the run from store to store, or from factory to factory; meeting this loss, and discovering that inaccuracy, and suffering betrayal or disappointment; nevermore to be cheated or perplexed or exasperated, he shall sit down. Not in a great armchair of heaven, for the rockers of such a chair would imply one’92s need of soothing, of changing to easy posture, or semi-invalidism; but a throne, solid as eternity and radiant as the morning after a night of storm. ’93They shall sit down.’94

I notice that the most of the departments of toil require an erect attitude. There are the thousands of girls behind counters, many such persons through the inhumanity of employers compelled to stand, even when, because of lack of customers, there is no need that they stand. Then there are all the carpenters and the stone-masons and the blacksmiths and the farmers and the engineers and the ticket agents and the conductors. In most trades, in most occupations, they must stand. But ahead of all those who love and serve the Lord is a resting-place, a complete relaxation of fatigued muscle, something cushioned and upholstered and embroidered, with the very ease of heaven. ’93They shall sit down.’94 Rest from toil. Rest from pain. Rest from persecution. Rest from uncertainty. Beautiful, joyous, transporting, everlasting rest! O men and women of the frozen North and the blooming South and from the realms of the rising or setting sun, through Christ get your sins forgiven and start for the place where you may at last sit down in blissful recovery from the fatigues of earth, while there roll over you the raptures of heaven. Many of you have had such a rough tussle in this world that if your faculties were not perfect in heaven you would sometimes forget yourself and say: ’93It is time for me to start on that journey;’94 or ’93It must be time for me to count out the drops of that medicine;’94 or ’93I wonder what new attack there is on me through the newspapers;’94 or ’93Do you think I will save anything of those crops from the grasshoppers or the locusts or the droughts;’94 or ’93I wonder how much I have lost in that last bargain;’94 or ’93I must hurry lest I miss the train.’94 No, no! The last volume of direful earthly experiences will be finished. Yea, the last chapter, the last paragraph, the last sentence, the last Frederick the Great, notwithstanding the mighty dominion over which he reigned, was so depressed at times he could not speak without crying, and carried a small bottle of quick poison with which to end his misery when he could stand it no longer. But I give you this small vial of Gospel anodyne, one drop of which, not hurting either body or soul, ought to soothe all unrest, and put your pulses into an eternal calm. ’93They shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and the south, and shall sit down.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage