515. The Wrestlers

The Wrestlers

Eph_6:12 : ’93We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’94

Squeamishness and fastidiousness were never charged against Paul’92s rhetoric. In the war against evil he took the first weapon he could lay his hand on. For illustration, he employed the theater, the arena, the foot-race, and there was nothing in the Isthmian game, with its wreath of pine leaves; or a Pythian game, with its wreath of laurel and palm; or Nemean game, with its wreath of parsley; or any Roman circus, but he felt he had a right to put it in sermon or epistle, and you are not surprised that in my text he calls upon a wrestling bout for suggestiveness! Plutarch says that wrestling is the most artistic and cunning of athletic games. We must make a wide difference between pugilism, the lowest of spectacles, and wrestling, which is an effort in sport to put down another on floor or ground, and we, all of us, indulged in it in our boyhood days, if we were healthful and plucky. The ancient wrestlers were first bathed in oil, and then sprinkled with sand. The third throw decided the victory, and many a man who went down in the first throw or second throw, in the third throw was on top, and his opponent under. The Romans did not like this game very much, for it was not savage enough, no blows or kicks being allowed in the game. They preferred the foot of hungry panther on the breast of fallen martyr.

In wrestling, the opponents would bow in apparent suavity, advance face to face, put down both feet solidly, take each other by the arms, and push each other backward and forward until the work began in real earnest, and there were contortions and strangulations and violent strokes of the foot of one contestant against the foot of the other, tripping him up, or with struggle that threatened apoplexy or death, the defeated fell, and the shouts of the spectators greeted the victor. I suppose Paul had seen some such contest, and it reminded him of the struggle of truth with error, and the struggle of heavenly forces against Apolyonic powers, and he dictates my text to an amanuensis’97for all his letters, save the one to Philemon, seem to have been dictated’97and as the amanuensis goes on with his work, I hear the groan and laugh and shout of earthly and celestial belligerents: ’93We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’94

I notice that, as these wrestlers advanced to throw each other, they bowed one to the other. It was a civility, not only in Grecian and Roman games, but in later day, in all the wrestling bouts at Clerkenwell, England, and in the famous wrestling match during the reign of Henry VIII, in St. Giles’92 Field, between men of Westminster and people of London. However rough a twist and hard a pull each wrestler contemplated giving his opponent, they approached each other with politeness and suavity. So, today, the wrestlers still salute each other as they approach for the contest. The genuflexions, the affability, the courtesy in nowise hinder the decisiveness of the contest. Well, Paul, I see what you mean. In this awful struggle between right and wrong, we must not forget to be gentlemen and ladies. Affability never hinders, but always helps. You are powerless as soon as you get mad. Do not call rumsellers murderers. Do not call infidels fools. Do not call higher critics reprobates. Do not call all card-players and theatre-goers children of the devil. Do not say that the dance breaks through into hell. Do not deal in vituperation and billingsgate and contempt and adjectives dynamitic. The other side can beat us at that. Their dictionaries have more objurgation and brimstone.

We are in the strength of God to throw flat on its back every abomination that curses the earth, but let us approach our mighty antagonist with suavity. Hercules, son of Jupiter and Alcemena, will by a prelude of smiles be helped rather than damaged for the performance of his ’93twelve labors.’94 Let us be as wisely strategic in religious circles as attorneys in courtrooms, who are complimentary to each other in the opening remarks, before they come into legal struggle such as that which left James T. Brady or David Paul Brown triumphant or defeated. People who get into a rage in reformatory work accomplish nothing but the depletion of their own nervous system. There is such a thing as having a gun so hot at the touch-hole that it explodes, killing the one that sets it off. There are some reformatory meetings to which I always decline to go and take part, because they are apt to become demonstrations of bad temper. I never like to hear a man swear, even though he swear on the right side. The very Paul who in my text employed in illustration the wrestling match, behaved on a memorable occasion as we ought to behave. The translators of the Bible made an unintentional mistake when they represented Paul as insulting the people of Athens by telling them they were superstitious. Instead of charging them with ignorance, the original indicates he complimented them by suggesting that they were very religious; but as they confessed that there were some things they did not understand about God, he proposed to say some things concerning him, beginning where they had left off. The same Paul, who said in one place, ’93Be courteous,’94 and who had noticed the bow preceding the wrestling match, here exercises suavities before he proceeds practically to throw down the rocky side of the Acropolis the whole Parthenon of idolatries, Minerva and Jupiter smashed up with the rest of them. In this holy war, polished rifles will do more execution than blunderbusses. Let our wrestlers bow as they go into the struggle which will leave all perdition under and all heaven on top.

Remember, also, that these wrestlers went through severe and continuous course of preparation for their work. They were put upon such diet as would best develop their muscle. As Paul says, ’93Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.’94 The wrestlers were put under complete discipline’97bathing, gymnastics, struggle in sport with each other to develop strength and give quickness to dodge of head and trip of foot; stooping to lift each other off the ground; suddenly rushing forward; suddenly pulling backward; putting the left foot behind the other’92s right foot, and getting his opponent off his balance; hard training for days and weeks and months, so that when they met it was giant clutching giant. And, if we do not want ourselves to be thrown in this wrestle with the sin and error of the world, we had better get ready by Christian discipline, by holy self-denial, by constant practice, by submitting to divine supervisal and direction. Do not begrudge the time and the money for that young man who is in preparation for the ministry, spending two years in grammar school and four years in college and three years in theological seminary. I know that nine years are a big slice to take off a man’92s active life, but if you realized the height and strength of the archangels of evil in our time with which that young man is going to wrestle, you would not think nine years of preparation were too much. An uneducated ministry was excusable in other days, but not in this time, equipped with schools and colleges. A man who wrote me the other day a letter asking advice, as he felt called to preach the Gospel, began the word ’93God’94 with a small ’93g.’94 That kind of a man is not called to preach the Gospel. Illiterate men, preaching the Gospel, quote for their own encouragement the scriptural passage, ’93Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.’94 Yes! He will fill it with wind. Preparation for this wrestling is absolutely necessary. Many years ago two of our American clergymen, on the platform of Brigham Young’92s tabernacle at Salt Lake City, Utah, gained the victory because they had so long been skillful wrestlers for God. Otherwise Brigham Young, who was himself a giant in some things, would have metaphorically thrown them out of the window. Get ready in Bible classes. Get ready in Christian Endeavor meetings. Get ready by giving testimony in obscure places, before giving testimony in conspicuous places.

Your going around with a Bagster’92s Bible with flaps at the edges, under your arm, does not qualify you for the work of an evangelist. In this day of profuse gab, remember that it is not merely capacity to talk, but the fact that you have something to say, that is going to fit you for the struggle into which you are to go with a smile on your face and illumination on your brow, but out of which you will not come until all your physical and mental and moral and religious energies have been taxed to the utmost, and you have not a nerve left or a thought unexpended or a prayer unsaid or a sympathy unwept. In this struggle between Right and Wrong accept no challenge on platform or in newspaper unless you are prepared. Do not misapply the story of Goliath the Great and David the Little. David had been practising with a sling on dogs and wolves and bandits, and a thousand times had he swirled a stone around his head before he aimed at the forehead of the giant and tumbled him backward, otherwise the big foot of Goliath would almost have covered up the crushed form of the son of Jesse.

Notice, also, that the success of a wrestler depended on his having his feet well planted before he grappled his opponent. Much depends upon the way the wrestler stands. Standing on an uncertain piece of ground, or bearing all his weight on right foot or all his weight on left foot, he is not ready. A slight cuff of his antagonist will capsize him. A stroke of the heel of the other wrestler will trip him. And in this struggle for God and righteousness, as well as for our own souls, we want our feet firmly planted in the Gospel’97both feet on the Rock of Ages. It will not do to believe the Bible in spots, or think some of it true and some of it untrue. You must make up your mind that the story of the Garden of Eden is an allegory, and the Epistle of James spurious, and that the miracles of Christ can be accounted for on natural grounds, without any belief in the supernatural, and the first time you are interlocked in a wrestle with sin and Satan you will go under and your feet will be higher than your head. It will not do to have one foot on a rock and the other on the sand. The old Book would long ago have gone to pieces if it had been vulnerable. But of the millions of Bibles that have been printed within the last twenty-five years, not one chapter has been omitted, and the omission of one chapter would have been the cause of the rejection of the whole edition. Alas! for those who while trying to prove that Jonah was never swallowed of a whale, themselves get swallowed of the whale of unbelief, which digests but never ejects its victims. The inspiration of the Bible is not more certain than the preservation of the Bible in its present condition. After so many centuries of assault on the Book, would it not be a matter of economy, to say the least’97economy of brain and economy of stationery and economy of printers’92 ink’97if the batteries now assailing the Book would change their aim and be trained against some other books, and the world shown that Walter Scott did not write ’93The Lady of the Lake,’94 nor Homer ’93The Iliad,’94 nor Virgil ’93The Gregorics,’94 nor Thomas Moore ’93Lalla Rookh,’94 or that Washington’92s ’93Farewell Address’94 was written by Thomas Paine, and that the War of the American Revolution never occurred. That attempt would be quite as successful as this long-timed attack anti-Biblical, and then it would be new. Keep out of this wrestling bout with the ignorance and the wretchedness of the world unless you feel that both feet are planted in the eternal verities of the Book of Almighty God!

Notice, also, that in this science of wrestling, to which Paul refers in my text, it was the third throw that decided the contest. A wrestler might be thrown once and thrown twice, but the third time he might recover himself, and, by an unexpected twist of arm or curve of foot, gain the day. Well, that is broad, smiling, unmistakable Gospel. Some whom I address through ear or eye, by voice or printed page, have been thrown in their wrestle with evil habit. Aye! you have been thrown twice; but that does not mean, O worsted soul! that you are thrown forever: I have no authority for saying how many times a man may sin and be forgiven, or how many times he may fall and yet rise again; but I have authority for saying that he may fall four hundred and ninety times, and four hundred and ninety times get up. The Bible declares that God will forgive seventy times seven, and if you will employ the rule of multiplication you will find that seventy times seven is four hundred and ninety. Blessed be God for such a Gospel of high hope and thrilling encouragement and magnificent rescue! A Gospel of lost sheep brought back on Shepherd’92s shoulder, and the prodigals who got into the low work of putting husks into swines’92 troughs brought home to jewelry and banqueting and hilarity that made the rafters ring!

Three sketches of the same man: A happy home, of which he and a lassie taken from a neighbor’92s house are the united head. Years of happiness roll on after years of happiness. Stars pointing down to nativities. And whether announced in greeting or not, every morning was a ’93Good Morning,’94 and every night a ’93Good Night.’94 Christmas trees and May queens, and birthday festivities and Thanksgiving gatherings around loaded tables. But that husband and father forms an unfortunate acquaintance who leads him in circles too convivial, too late-houred, too scandalous. After a while, his money gone and not able to bear his part of the expense, he is gradually shoved out and ignored and pushed away. Now, what a dilapidated home is his! A dissipated life always shows itself in faded window curtains and impoverished wardrobe and dejected surroundings, and in broken palings of the garden fence and the unhinged gate and the dislocated doorbell, and the disappearance of wife and children from scenes among which they shone the brightest and laughed the gladdest. If any man was ever down, that husband and father is down. The fact is, he got into a wrestle with Evil that pushed and pulled and contorted and exhausted him worse than any Olympian game ever treated a Grecian, and he was thrown. Thrown out of prosperity into gloom. Thrown out of good association into bad. Thrown out of health into invalidism. Thrown out of happiness into misery.

But one day, while slinking through one of the back streets, not wishing to be recognized, a good thought crossed his mind, for he has heard of men flung flat rising again. Arriving at his house, he calls his wife in, and shuts the door and says: ’93Mary, I am going to do differently. This is not what I promised you when we were married. You have been very patient with me and have borne everything, although I would have had a right to complain if you had left me and gone home to your father’92s house. It seems to me that once or twice, when I was not myself, I struck you, and several times, I know, I called you hard names. Now I want you to forgive me. I am going to do better, and I want you to help me.’94 ’93Help you?’94 she says; ’93bless your soul! of course I will help you. I knew you didn’92t mean it when you treated me roughly. All that is in the past. Never refer to it again. To-day let us begin anew.’94 Sympathizing friends come around and kind business people help the man to something to do, so that he can again earn a living. The children soon have clothing so that they can go to school. The old songs, which the wife sang years ago, come back to her memory, and she sings them over again at the cradle, or while preparing the noonday meal. Domestic resurrection! He comes home earlier than he used to, and he is glad to spend the evenings playing games with the children or helping them with arithmetic or grammar lessons which are a little too hard.

Time passes on, and some outsider suggests to him that he is not getting as much out of life as he ought, and proposes an occasional visit to scenes of worldliness and dissipation. He consents to go once, find, after much solicitation, twice. Then his old habit comes back. He says he has been belated, and could not get back until midnight. He had to see some western merchant who had arrived and talk of business with him before he got out of town. Kindness and geniality again quit the disposition of that husband and father. The wife’92s heart breaks in a new place. That man goes into a second wrestle with evil habit and is flung, and all hell cackles at the moral defeat. ’93I told you so!’94 say many good people who have no faith in the reformation of a fallen man. ’93I told you so! You made a great fuss about his restored home, but I knew it would not last. You can’92t trust these fellows who have once gone wrong.’94 So with this unfortunate, things get worse and worse, and his family have to give up the house and the last valuable goes to the pawnbroker’92s shop.

But that unfortunate man is sauntering along the street one Sunday night, and he goes up to a church door, and the congregation are singing the second hymn, the one just before sermon, and it is William Cowper’92s glorious hymn:

There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Immanuel’92s veins;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

He goes into the vestibule of the church and stops there, not feeling well enough dressed to go among the worshipers, and he hears the minister say, ’93You will find the words of my text in Luke, the nineteenth chapter and tenth verse: ’91The Son of Man is come to seek and save that which was lost.’92’93 The listener in the vestibule says: ’93If any man was ever lost, I am lost, and the Son of Man came to save that which is lost, and he has found me, and will take me out of this lost condition. Oh, Christ, have mercy on me!’94 The poor man has courage now to enter the main audience room, and he sits down on the first seat by the door, and when at the close of the service the minister comes down the aisle, the man tells his story; and he is encouraged, and invited to come again, and the way is cleared for him for membership in a Christian church, and he feels the omnipotence of what Peter, the Apostle, said when he spoke of those ’93kept by the power of God through faith unto complete salvation.’94 Yet he is to have one more wrestle before he is free from evil habits, and he goes into it, not in his own strength, for that has failed him twice, but in the strength of the Lord God Almighty. The old habit seizes him, and he seizes it, and the wrestlers bend backward and forward, and from side to side, in awful struggle, until the moment comes for his liberation; and with both arms infused with strength from God, he lifts that habit, swings it in the air, and hurls it into the perdition from which it came, and from which it will never again rise. Victory! Victory! through our Lord Jesus Christ! Hear it, all ye wrestlers! It threw him twice, but the third time he threw it; and, by the grace of God, threw it so hard he is as safe now as if he had been ten years in heaven. Oh, I am so glad that Paul in my text suggests the wrestler and the power of the third throw.

But notice that my text suggests that the wrestlers on the other side in the great struggle for the world’92s redemption have all the force of demonology to help them: ’93We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’94 All military men will tell you that there is nothing more unwise than to underestimate an enemy. In estimating what we have to contend with, the most of the reformers do not recognize the biggest opposers. They talk about the Agnosticism and the Atheism and the Materialism and the Nihilism and the Pantheism and the Brahminism and the Mohammedanism as well as the more agile and organized and endowed wickedness of our day. But these are only a part of the hostilities arrayed against God and the best interests of humanity. The invisible hosts are far more numerous than the visible. It is not so much the bottle; it is the demon of the bottle It is not so much the roulette table; it is the demon of the roulette table. It is not so much the act of stock-gambling as it is the demon of stock-gambling. It is the great host of spiritual antagonists led on by Aziel or Lucifer or Beelzebub or Asmodeus or Ahrimanes, or Aladdin, just as you please to call the leader infernalistic. Can you doubt that the human agencies of evil are backed up by Plutonic agencies? If it were only a common war-steed, with panting nostril and flaunting mane and clattering hoof, rushing upon us, perhaps we might clutch him by the bit, and hurl him back upon his haunches, but it is the black horse cavalry of perdition who dash down, and their riders swing swords which, though invisible, cleave individuals and homes and nations. I tell you, Paul was right when he suggested that we wrestle, not with pigmies, but with giants that will overthrow us, unless the Lord Almighty is our coadjutor. Blessed be God that he may now, and further on will have in mightier degree, that divine help!

The time is coming’97I know it will quicken your pulses when I mention it’97when the last mighty evil of the world will be grappled by righteousness and thrown. Which of the great evils will survive all the others I know not, whether war or revenge or fraud or lust or intemperance or gambling or Sabbath desecration. It will not be ’93the survival of the fittest,’94 but the survival of the worst. It will be the evil the most thoroughly entrenched, most completely re-enforced, most patronized by wealth and fashion and pomp, most applauded by all the principalities and powers and rulers of darkness. It will stand, with grim visage, looking down upon the graves of all the other slain abominations’97graves dug by the hot shovels of despair and surmounted by such epitaphiology as this: ’93it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.’94 ’93The wages of sin is death.’94 ’93Her house inclineth unto death and her paths unto the dead.’94 ’93There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof is death.’94 Yes! I imagine we have arrived at the time when we say, Yonder stands the last and only great evil of all the world to be wrestled down. It stands, not only looking upon the graves of all the entombed and epitaphed iniquities of the world, but ever and anon gazing upward in defiance of the heavens and shaking its fist at the Almighty, saying: ’93Nothing can put me down. I have seen all the other enemies of the human race wrestled down and destroyed, but there is no arm or foot, human or angelic or deific, that can throw me. I have ruined whole generations, and I swear by all the thrones of diabolism that I will ruin this generation. Come on, all ye churches and all ye reformatory institutions and all ye legislatures and all ye thrones! I challenge you! I plant my feet on this red-hot rock of the world’92s woe. I stretch forth my arms for the mightiest wrestle any world has ever seen. Come on! Come on!’94 Then righteousness will accept the challenge, and the two mighty wrestlers will grapple, while all the galleries of earth and heaven look down from one side, and all the fiery chasms of perdition look up from the other side. The two wrestlers sway to and fro, and turn this way and that, and now the monster, evil, seems the mightier of the two, and now righteousness seems about to triumph. The prize is worth a struggle, for it is not a chaplet of laurel or palm, but the rescue of a world, and a wreath put on the brow by him who promised, ’93Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown.’94 Three worlds’97earth, heaven and hell’97hold their breath while waiting for the result of this struggle, when, with one mighty swing of an arm muscled with Omnipotence, righteousness hurls the last evil, first to its knees and then on its face, and then rolling off and down, with a crash wilder than that with which Samson hurled the temple of Dagon when he got hold of its two chief pillars, but more like the throwing of Satan out of heaven, as described by John Milton:

Him the Almighty power

Flung headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,

With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition; there to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire,

Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.

Nine times the space that measures day and night

To mortal man, he with his horrid crew

Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,

Confounded, though immortal.

Aye! That suggests a cheering thought, that if all the realms of demonology are on the other side, all the realms of angelology are on our side, among them Gabriel and Michael the Archangel and the Angel of the New Covenant, and they are now talking over the present awful struggle and final glorious triumph; talking amid the alabaster pillars and in the ivory palaces and along the broadways and grand avenues of the great Capital of the Universe, and amid the spray of fountains with rainbows like the ’93rainbow round the throne,’94 and as they take their morning ride in the chariots with white horses bitted with gold, that were seen by John in vision apocalypic, and while waiting in temples for the one hundred and forty and four thousand to chant, accompanied by harpers and trumpeters and thunderings and hallelujahs like the voice of many waters. Yes, all heaven is on our side, and the ’93high places of wickedness’94 spoken of in my text are not so high as the high places of heaven, where there are enough reserve forces, if our earthly forces should be overpowered or in cowardice fall back, to sweep down some morning at daybreak and take all this earth for God before the city clocks could strike ’93twelve’94 for noon. And the Cabinet of Heaven, the most august Cabinet fn the universe, made up of three’97God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost’97are now in session in the King’92s Palace, and they are with us, and they are going to see us through, and they invite us, as soon as we have done our share of the work, to go up and see them, and celebrate the final victory, that is more sure to come than to-morrow’92s sunrise. While I think of it, the Scotch evangelistic hymn comes upon me, and stirs the strong tide of Scotch blood that rolls through my arteries:

It’92s a bonnie, bonnie warl’92 that we’92re livin’92 in the noo’92,

An’92 sunny is the lan’92 that noo we aften traiv’92ll throo;

But in vain we look for something here to which oor hearts may cling,

For its beauty is as naething tae the palace o’92 the King.

We like the gilded summer, wi’92 its merry, merry tread,

An’92 we sigh when hoary winter lays its beauties wi’92 the dead;

For tho’92 bonnie are the snawflakes, an’92 the doon on winter’92s wing,

It’92s fine to ken it daurna touch the palace o’92 the King.

Nae nicht shall be in heaven, an’92 nae desolatin’92 sea,

An’92 nae tyrant hoofs shall trample i’92 the city o’92 the free;

There’92s an everlastin’92 daylicht, an’92 a never-fadin’92 spring,

Where the Lamb is a’92 the glory i’92 the palace o’92 the King.

We see oor freen’92s await us ower yonner at His gate;

Then lat us a’92 be ready, for ye ken it’92s gettin’92 late;

Let oor lamps be brichtly burnin’92; let us raise oor voice an’92 sing,

For sune we’92ll meet, to pairt nae mair, i’92 the palace o’92 the King.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage