529. From Dungeon to Palace

From Dungeon to Palace

2Ti_4:6 : ’93The time of my departure is at hand.’94

The way out of this world is so blocked up with coffin and hearse and undertaker’92s spade and screwdriver, that the Christian can hardly think as he ought of the most cheerful passage in all his history. We hang black instead of white over the place where the good man gets his last victory. We stand weeping over a heap of chains which the freed soul has shaken off, and we say: ’93Poor man! What a pity it was he had to come to this!’94 Come to what? By the time the people have assembled at the obsequies, that man has been three days so happy that all the joy of earth accumulated would be wretchedness beside it, and he might better weep over you because you have to stay than you weep over him because he has to go. It is a fortunate thing that a good man does not have to wait to see his own obsequies; they would be so discordant with his own experience. If the Israelites should go back to Egypt and mourn over the brickkilns they once left, they would not be any more silly than that Christian who should forsake heaven and come down and mourn because he had to leave this world. Our ideas of the Christian’92s death are morbid and sickly. We look upon it as a dark hole into which a man stumbles when his breath gives out. This whole subject is odorous with varnish and disinfectants, instead of being sweet with mignonette. Paul, in my text, takes that great clod of a word, ’93death,’94 and throws it away, and speaks of his ’93departure’94’97a beautiful, bright, suggestive word; descriptive of every Christian’92s release.

Now, departure implies a starting-place and a place of destination. When Paul left this world, what was the starting-point? It was a scene of great physical distress. It was the Tullianum, the lower dungeon of the Mamertine prison. The top dungeon was bad enough, it having no means of ingress or egress but through an opening in the top. Through that the prisoner was lowered, and through that came all the food and air and light received. It was a terrible place, that upper dungeon; but the Tullianum was the lower dungeon, and that was still more wretched, the only light and the only air coming through the roof, and that roof the floor of the upper dungeon. That was Paul’92s last earthly residence. It was a dungeon just six feet and a half high. It was a doleful place. It had the chill of long centuries of dampness. It was filthy with the long incarcerations of miserable wretches. It was there that Paul spent his last days on earth, and it is there that I see him today, in the fearful dungeon, shivering blue with the cold, waiting for that old overcoat which he had sent for up to Troas, and which they had not yet sent down, notwithstanding he had written for it.

If some skilful surgeon should go into that dungeon where Paul is incarcerated, we might find out what are the prospects of Paul’92s living through the rough imprisonment. In the first place, he is an old man; only two years short of seventy. At that very time, when he most needs the warmth and the sunlight and the fresh air, he is shut out from the sun. What are those scars on his ankles? Why, those were gotten when he was made fast, with his feet in the stocks. Every time he turned, the flesh on his ankles started. What are those scars on his back? You know he was whipped five times, each time getting thirty-nine strokes’97one hundred and ninety-five bruises on the back (count them!) made by the Jews with rods of elm-wood, each one of the one hundred and ninety-five strokes bringing the blood. Look at Paul’92s face and look at his arms. Where did he get those bruises? I think it was when he was struggling ashore amid the shivered timbers of the shipwreck. I see a gash in Paul’92s side. Where did he get that? I think he got that in the tussle with highwaymen, for he had been in peril of robbers, and he had money of his own. He was a mechanic as well as an apostle, and I think the tents he made were as good as his sermons. There is a wanness about Paul’92s looks. What makes that? I think a part of that came from the fact that he was for twenty-four hours on a plank in the Mediterranean Sea, suffering terribly, before he was rescued; for he says positively: ’93I was a night and a day in the deep.’94

O worn-out, emaciated old man! surely you must be melancholy, for no constitution could endure this and be cheerful. But I press my way through the prison until I come up close to where he is, and by the faint light that streams through the opening I see on his face a supernatural joy, and I bow before him and I say: ’93Aged man, how can you keep cheerful amid all this gloom?’94 His voice startles the darkness of the place as he cries out: ’93I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.’94 Hark! what is that shuffling of feet in the upper dungeon? Why, Paul has an invitation to a banquet, and he is going to dine today with the King. Those shuffling feet are the feet of the executioners. They come, and they cry down through the hole of the dungeon: ’93Hurry up, old man; come, now, and get yourself ready!’94 Why, Paul was ready. He had nothing to pack up; he had no baggage to take; he had been ready a good while. I see him rising and straightening out his stiffened limbs, and pushing back his white hair from his creviced forehead, and see him looking up through the hole in the roof of the dungeon into the face of his executioner, and hear him say: ’93I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.’94 Then they lift him out of the dungeon, and they start with him to the place of execution. They say: ’93Hurry along, old man, or you will feel the weight of our spears; hurry along!’94 ’93How far is it,’94 says Paul, ’93we have to travel?’94 ’93Three miles.’94 Three miles is a good way for an old man to travel after he has been whipped, and is crippled with maltreatment. But they soon get to the place of execution’97Acqu’e6 Salvia’97and he is fastened to the pillar of martyrdom. It does not take any strength to tie him fast. He makes no resistance. O Paul! why not strike for your life? You have a great many friends here. With that withered hand just launch the thunderbolt of the people upon those infamous soldiers. No! Paul was not going to interfere with his own coronation. He was too glad to go. I see him looking up in the face of his executioner; and, as the grim official draws the sword, Paul calmly says: ’93I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.’94 But I put my hand over my eyes; I want not to see that last struggle. One sharp, keen stroke, and Paul does go to the banquet, and Paul does dine with the King.

What a transition it was from the malaria of Rome to the finest climate in all the universe, the zone of eternal beauty and health! His ashes were put in the catacombs of Rome, but in one moment the air of heaven bathed from his soul the last ache. From shipwreck, from dungeon, from the biting pain of the elm-wood rods, from the sharp sword of the headsman, he goes into the most brilliant assemblage of heaven, a king among kings, multitudes of the sainthood rushing out and stretching forth hands of welcome; for I do really think that as on the right hand of God is Christ, so on the right hand of Christ is Paul, the second great in heaven.

He changed kings likewise. Before the hour of death, and up to the last moment, he was under Nero, the thick-necked, the cruel-eyed, the filthy-lipped; the sculptured features of that man bringing down to us to this very day the horrible possibilities of his nature, seated as he was amid pictured marbles of Egypt, under a roof adorned with mother-of-pearl, in a dining-room which by machinery was kept whirling day and night with most bewitching magnificence; his horses standing in stalls of solid gold, and the grounds around his palace lighted at night by human victims, who were daubed with tar and pitch and then set on fire to illumine the darkness. That was Paul’92s king. But the next moment he goes into the realm of him whose reign is love and whose courts are paved with love and whose throne is set on pillars of love and whose scepter is adorned with jewels of love and whose palace is lighted with love and whose lifetime is an eternity of love. When Paul was leaving so much on this side the pillar of martyrdom, to gain so much on the other side, do you wonder at the cheerful valedictory of the text: ’93The time of my departure is at hand’94?

Now, why cannot all aged people have the same holy glee as that old man had? Charles I, when he was combing his head, found a gray hair, and he sent it to the queen as a great joke, but old age is really no joke at all. For the last forty years you have been dreading that which ought to have been an exhilaration. You say you fear the struggle at the moment the soul and body part. But millions have endured that moment, and why not we as well? They got through with it, and so can we. Besides this, all medical men agree in saying that there is probably no struggle at all at the last moment’97not so much pain as the prick of a pin’97the seeming signs of distress being altogether involuntary. But you say: ’93It is the uncertainty of the future.’94 Now, child of God, do not play the infidel. After God has filled the Bible, till it can hold no more, with stories of the good things ahead, better not talk of uncertainties.

But you say: ’93I cannot bear to think of parting from friends here.’94 If you are old, you have more friends in heaven than here. Just take the census. Take some large sheet of paper and begin to record the names of those who have emigrated to the other shore; the companions of your school days, your early business associates, the friends of mid-life, and those who more recently went away. Can it be that they have been gone so long you do not care any more about them and you do not want their society? Oh, no! There have been days when you have felt that you could not endure it another moment away from their blessed companionship. They have gone. You say you would not like to bring them back to this world of trouble, even if you had the power. It would not do to trust you. God would not give you the resurrection power. Before to-morrow morning you would be rattling at the gates of the cemetery, crying to the departed: ’93Come back to the cradle where you slept; come back to the hall where you used to play; come back to the table where you used to sit!’94 and there would be a great dethronement in heaven. No, no! God will not trust you with resurrection power; but he compromises the matter, and says: ’93You cannot bring them where you are, but you can go where they are.’94 They are more lovely now than ever. Were they beautiful here, they are more beautiful there. Besides that, it is more healthy there for you than here, aged man; better climate there than these hot summers and cold winters and late springs; better hearing; better eyesight; more tonic in the air; more perfume in the bloom; more sweetness in the song. Do you not sometimes feel, aged man, as though you would like to get your arm and foot free? Do you not feel as though you would like to throw away spectacles and canes and crutches? Would you not like to feel the spring and elasticity and mirth of an eternal boyhood? When the point at which you start from this world is old age, and the point to which you go is eternal juvenescence, aged man, clap your hands at the anticipation, and say, in perfect rapture of soul: ’93The time of my departure is at hand.’94

I remark again, all those ought to feel this joy of the text who have a holy curiosity to know what is beyond this earthly terminus. And who has not any curiosity about it? The apostle John, I suppose, had the most satisfactory view of heaven, and he says: ’93It doth not yet appear what we shall be.’94 It is like looking through a broken telescope: ’93Now we see through a glass darkly.’94 Can you tell me anything about that heavenly place? You ask me a thousand questions about it that I cannot answer. I ask you a thousand questions about it that you cannot answer. And do you wonder that Paul was so glad when martyrdom gave him a chance to go over and make discoveries in that blessed country? I hope some day, by the grace of God, to go over and see for myself; but not now. No well man, no prosperous man, I think, wants to go now. But the time will come, I think, when I shall go over. I want to see what they do there, and I want to see how they do it. I do not want to be looking through ’93the gates ajar’94 forever. I want them to swing wide open. There are ten thousand things I want explained’97about you, about myself, about the government of this world, about God, about everything. We start in a plain path of what we know, and in a minute come up against a high wall of what we do not know. I wonder how it looks over there? Somebody tells me it is like a paved city’97paved with gold; and another man tells me it is like a fountain and it is like a tree and it is like a triumphal procession; and the next man I meet tells me it is all figurative. I really want to know, after the body is resurrected, what they wear and what they eat; and I have an immeasurable curiosity to know what it is and how it is and where it is. Columbus risked his life to find this continent, and shall we shudder to go out on a voyage of discovery which shall reveal a vaster and more brilliant country? John Franklin risked his life to find a passage between icebergs, and shall we dread to find a passage to eternal summer? Men in Switzerland travel up the heights of the Matterhorn with alpenstocks and guides and rockets and ropes, and getting half-way up stumble and fall down in a horribly mangled mass. They just wanted to say they had been on the tops of those high peaks. And shall we fear to go out for the ascent of the eternal hills which start a thousand miles beyond where stop the highest peaks of the Alps, and when in that ascent there is no peril? A man doomed to die stepped on the scaffold, and said in joy: ’93Now, in ten minutes I will know the great secret.’94 One minute after the vital functions ceased, the little child that died last night knows more than Jonathan Edwards or St. Paul himself before he died. Friends, the exit from this world, or death, if you please to call it, to the Christian is glorious explanation. It is demonstration. It is illumination. It is sunburst. It is the opening of all the windows. It is shutting up the catechism of doubt, and the unrolling of all the scrolls of positive and accurate information. Instead of standing at the foot of the ladder and looking up, it is standing at the top of the ladder and looking down. It is the last mystery taken out of botany and geology and astronomy and theology. Oh, will it not be grand to have all questions answered? The perpetually recurring interrogation point changed for the mark of exclamation. All riddles solved. Who will fear to go out on that discovery, when all the questions are to be decided which we have been discussing all our lives? Who shall not clap his hands in the anticipation of that blessed country, if it be no better than through holy curiosity, crying: ’93The time of my departure is at hand’94?

I remark again, we ought to have the joy of the text, because, leaving this world, we move into the best society of the universe. You see a great crowd of people in some street, and you say: ’93Who is passing there? What general, what prince is going up there?’94 Well, I see a great throng in heaven. I say: ’93Who is the focus of all that admiration? Who is the center of that glittering company?’94 It is Jesus, the champion of all worlds, the favorite of all ages. Do you know what is the first question the soul will ask when it comes through the gate of heaven? I think the first question will be: ’93Where is Jesus, the Saviour that pardoned my sin; that carried my sorrows; that fought my battles; that won my victories?’94 O radiant One! how I would like to see thee! Thou of the manger, but without its humiliation; thou of the Cross, but without its pangs; thou of the grave, but without its darkness.

The Bible intimates that we will talk with Jesus in heaven just as a brother talks with a brother. Now, what will you ask him first? I do not know. I can think what I would ask Paul first if I saw him in heaven. I think I would like to hear him describe the storm that came upon the ship when there were two hundred and seventy-five souls on the vessel’97Paul being the only man on board cool enough to describe the storm. There is a fascination about a ship and the sea that I shall never get over, and I think I would like to hear him talk about that first. But when I meet my Lord Jesus Christ, of what shall I first delight to hear him speak? Now I think what it is. I shall first want to hear the tragedy of his last hours, and then Luke’92s account of the crucifixion and Mark’92s account of the crucifixion and John’92s account of the crucifixion will be nothing; while from the living lips of Christ the story shall be told of the gloom that fell, and the devils that arose, and the fact that upon his endurance depended the rescue of a race, and there was darkness in the sky, and there was darkness in the soul, and the pain became more sharp, and the burdens became more heavy, until the scene began to swim away from the dying vision of Christ, and the cursing of the mob came to his ear more faintly, and his hands were fastened to the horizontal piece of the Cross, and his feet were fastened to the perpendicular piece of the Cross, and his head fell forward in a swoon as he uttered the last moan and cried: ’93It is finished!’94 All heaven will stop to listen until the story is done, and every harp will be put down, and every lip closed, and all eyes fixed upon the divine Narrator until the story is done; and then, at the tap of the baton, the eternal orchestra will rouse up; finger on string of harp and lips to the mouth of trumpet, there shall roll forth the oratorio of the Messiah: ’93Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive blessing and riches and honor and glory and power, world without end!’94

What he endured, oh, who can tell,

To save our souls from death and hell!

When there was between Paul and that magnificent personage only the thinness of the sharp edge of the sword of the executioner, do you wonder that he wanted to go? O my Lord Jesus, let one wave of that glory roll over us! Hark! I hear the wedding-bells of heaven ringing now. The marriage of the Lamb has come, and the bride hath made herself ready.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage