559. America for God

America for God

Rev_13:11 : ’93And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb and he spake as a dragon.’94

Is America mentioned in the Bible? Learned and consecrated men, who have studied the inspired books of Daniel and Revelation more than I have, and understand them better, agree in saying that the leopard mentioned in the Bible meant Grecia, and the bear meant Medo-Persia, and the lion meant Babylon, and the beast of the text coming up out of the earth with two horns like a lamb, and the voice of a dragon means our country; because, among other reasons, it seemed to come up out of the earth when Columbus discovered it, and it has been for the most part at peace, like a lamb, unless assaulted by foreign foe, in which case it has had two horns strong and sharp, and the voice of a dragon loud enough to make all nations hear the roar of its indignation. Is it reasonable to suppose that God would leave out from the prophecies of his Book this whole Western Hemisphere? No, no! ’93I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.’94 Germany for scholarship. England for manufactories. France for manners. Egypt for antiquities. Italy for pictures. But America for God!

I start with the cheering thought that the most popular book on earth today is the Bible, the most popular institution on earth today is the church, and the most popular name on earth today is Jesus. From this audience hundreds of men and women would, if need be, march out and die for him. Am I too confident in saying ’93America for God?’94 If the Lord will help me I will show the strength and extent of the long line of fortresses to be taken, and give you my reasons for saying it can be done and will be done. Let us decide, in this battle for God, whether we are at Bull Run or at Gettysburg. There is a Fourth of Julyish way of bragging about this country, and the most tired and plucked bird that ever flew through the heavens is the American eagle; so much so that Mr. Gladstone said to me facetiously, at Hawarden: ’93I hear that the fish in your American lakes are so large that, when one of them is taken out, the entire lake is perceptibly lowered; and at a dinner given in Paris an American offered for a sentiment: ’93Here is to the United States’97bounded on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by the procession of the equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment.’94 The effect of such grandiloquence is to discredit the real facts which are so tremendous they need no garnishing. The worst thing to do in any campaign, military or religious, is to underestimate an enemy, and I will have no part in such attempt at belittlement. Indeed, the obstacles in the way are so multitudinous and vast that were it not for promised supernatural aid we would now surrender.

This land to be taken for God, according to Hassel, the statistician, has fourteen million two hundred and nineteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven square miles, a width and a length that none but the Omniscient can appreciate. Four Europes put together and capable of holding and feeding, as it will hold and feed, according to Atkinson, the statistician, if the world continues in existence and does not run afoul of some other world or get consumed by the fires already burning in the cellars of the planet’97capable, I say, of holding and feeding more than one billion of inhabitants. For you must remember it must be held for God as well as taken for God, and the last five hundred million inhabitants must not be allowed to swamp the religion of the first five hundred million. Not much use in taking the fortress if we cannot hold it. It must be held until the Archangel’92s trumpet bids living and dead arise from this foundering planet.

You must remember it is only about seven o’92clock in the morning of our nation’92s life. Great cities are to flash and roar among what are called the ’93Bad Lands’94 of the Dakotas and the great ’93Columbia Plains’94 of Washington State, and that on which we put our schoolboy fingers on the map and spelled out as the ’93Great American Desert,’94 is, through systematic and consummating irrigation, to bloom like Chatsworth Park and be made more productive than those regions dependent upon uncertain and spasmodic rainfall. All those regions, as well as these regions already cultivated, to be inhabited! That was a sublime thing said by Henry Clay, while crossing the Alleghany Mountains, and he was waiting for the stage horses to be rested, as he stood on a rock, arms folded, looking off into the valley, and some one said to him: ’93Mr. Clay, what are you thinking about?’94 He replied, ’93I am listening to the on-coming tramp of the future generations of America.’94 Have you laid your home missionary scheme on such an infinitude of scale? If the work of bringing one soul to God is so great, can a thousand million be captured? In this country, already planted and to be overcome, Paganism has built its altar to Brahma, and the Chinese are already burning incense in their temples, and Mohammedanism, drunk with the red wine of human blood in Armenia, is trying to get a foothold here, and from the minarets of her mosques will yet mumble her blasphemies, saying, ’93Allah is great, and Mohammed is his prophet.’94 Then there are the vaster multitudes with no religion at all. They worship no God, they live with no consolation, and they die with no hope. No star of peace points down to the manger in which they are born, and no prayer is uttered over the grave into which they sink. Then there is Alcoholism, its piled-up demijohns and beer barrels, and hogsheads of fiery death, a barricade high and long as the Alleghanies and Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, pouring forth day and night their ammunition of wretchedness and woe. When a German wants to take a drink he takes beer. When an Englishman wants to take a drink he takes ale. When a Scotchman wants to take a drink he takes whisky. But when an American wants to take a drink he takes anything he can lay his hands on.

Plenty of statistics to tell how much money is spent in this country for rum, and how many drunkards die, but who will give us the statistics of how many hearts are crushed under the heel of this worst demon of the centuries? How many hopes blasted? How many children turned out on the world, accursed with the stigma of a debauched ancestry? Until the worm of the distillery becomes the worm that never dies, and the smoke of the heated wine vats becomes the smoke of the torment that ascendeth up forever and ever, Alcoholism, swearing’97not with hand uplifted toward heaven, for from that direction it can get no help, but with right hand stretched down toward perdition from which it came up’97swearing that it will not cease as long as there are any homesteads to despoil, any magnificent men and women to destroy, any immortal souls to damn, any more nations to balk, any more civilizations to extinguish.

Then there is what in America we call Anarchism, in France Communism, and in Russia Nihilism’97the three names for one and the same thing’97and having but two doctrines in its creed: first, there is no God; second, there shall be no rights of property. One of their chief journals printed this sentiment: ’93Dynamite can be made out of the dead bodies of capitalists, as well as out of hogs.’94 One of the leaders of Communism left inscribed on his prison wall, where he had been justly incarcerated, these words: ’93When once you are dead, there is an end of everything; therefore, ye scoundrels, grab whatever you can’97only don’92t let yourselves be grabbed. Amen!’94 There are in this country hundreds of thousands of these lazy scoundrels. Honest men deplore it when they cannot get work, but those of whom I speak will not do work when they can get it. I tried to employ one who asked me for money. I said, ’93Down in my cellar I have some wood to saw, and I will pay you for it.’94 For a little while I heard the saw going, and then I heard it no more. I went downstairs and found the wood, but the workman had disappeared, taking for company both buck and saw. Anarchism, Communism and Nihilism mean, ’93Too wicked to acknowledge God, and too lazy to earn a living,’94 and among the mightiest obstacles to be overcome are those organized elements of domestic, social, and political ruin.

There also are the fastnesses of infidelity and atheism and fraud and political corruption and multiform, hydra-headed, million-armed abominations all over the land. While the mightiest agencies for righteousness on earth are good and healthful newspapers and good and healthful books, and our chief dependence for intelligence and Christian achievement is upon them, what word among the more than one hundred thousand words in our vocabulary can describe the work of that archangel of mischief, a corrupt literature? What man, attempting anything for God and humanity, has escaped a stroke of its filthy wing? What good cause has escaped its hinderment? What other obstacle in all the land so appalling? But I cannot name more than one-half the battlements, the bastions, the intrenchments, the redoubts, the fortifications to be stormed and overcome if this country is ever taken for God. The statistics are so awful that if we had nothing but the multiplication table and the arithmetic, the attempt to evangelize America would be an absurdity higher than the Tower of Babel before it dropped on the plain of Shinar.

Where are the drilled troops to march against those fortifications as long as the continent? Where are the batteries that can be unlimbered against these walls? Where are the guns of large enough calibre to storm these gates? Well, let us look around and see, first of all, who is our Leader and will be our Leader until the work is done. Garibaldi, with a thousand Italians, could do more than another commander with ten thousand Italians. General Sherman, on one side, and Stonewall Jackson on the other, each with ten thousand troops, could do more than some other generals with twenty thousand troops apiece. The rough boat in which Washington crossed the icy Delaware with a few half-frozen troops was mightier than the ship of war that, during the American Revolution came through the Narrows, a gun at each porthole, and sunk in Hell Gate.

Our Leader, like most great leaders, was born in an obscure place, and it was a humble home, about five miles from Jerusalem. Those who were out of doors that night said that there was stellar commotion, and music that came out of the clouds, as though the front door of heaven had been set open, and that the camels heard his first infantile cry. Then he came to the fairest boyhood that mother was ever proud of, and from twelve to thirty years of age was off in India (if traditions there are accurate) and then returned to his native land, and for three years had his pathway surrounded by blind eyes that he illumined, and epileptic patients to whom he gave rubicund health, and tongues that he loosed from silence into song, and those whose funerals he stopped that he might give back to bereaved mothers their only boys, and those whose fevered pulses he had restored into rhythmic throb, and whose paralytic limbs he had warmed into healthful circulation’97pastor at Capernaum, but flaming evangelist everywhere, hushing crying tempests and turning rolling seas into solid sapphire, and, for the rescue of a race, submitted to court-room filled with howling miscreants, and to a martydom at the sight of which the sun fainted and fell back in the heavens, and then treading the clouds homeward, like snowy mountain-peaks, till heaven took him back again, more a favorite than he had ever been. But, coming again, he is on earth now, and the nations are gathering to his standard. Following him were the Scotch covenanters, the Theban legion, the victims of the London Haymarket, the Piedmontese sufferers, the Pilgrim Fathers, the Huguenots, and uncounted multitudes of the past, joined by about four hundred millions of the present, and with the certainty that all nations shall huzzah at his chariot-wheel, he goes forth, the moon under his feet and the stars of heaven for his tiara’97the Mighty Leader, he of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge and Bannockburn, and the One who whelmed Spanish Armada, ’93Coming up from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, traveling in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save,’94 and behind whom we fall into line today and march in the campaign that is to take America for God. Hosanna! Hosanna! Wave all the palm branches! At his feet put down your silver and your gold, as in heaven you will cast before him your coronets.

With such a Leader do you not think we can do it? Say, do you think we can? Why, many ramparts have already been taken. Where is American slavery? Gone, and the South, as heartily as the North, prays ’93Peace to its ashes.’94 Where is bestial polygamy? Gone, by the fiat of the United States Government, urged on by Christian sentiment; and Mormonism, having retreated in 1830 from Fayette, New York, to Kirkland, Ohio, and in 1838 retreated to Missouri, and in 1846 retreated to Salt Lake City, now divorced from its superfluity of wives, will soon retreat into the Pacific, and no basin smaller than an ocean could wash out its pollutions. Its recent attempt to invade Congress aroused the resentment of that body and the indignation of the whole country. Illiteracy going down under the work of Slater and Peabody funds, and the Sabbath-schools of all. the churches of all denominations! Corruption at the ballot-box, by law of registration and other safeguards, made almost impossible! Churches twice as large as the old ones, the enlarged supply to meet the greatly enlarged demand! Great cities, so often mentioned as great obstacles’97the center of crime and the reservoirs of all iniquities’97are to lead in the work of Gospelization. Who give most to home missions, to asylums, to religious education, to all styles of humanitarian and Christian institutions? The cities. From what places did the most relief go at the time of Johnstown flood and Michigan fires and Charleston earthquake and Ohio freshets? From the cities. What place will do more than any other place, by its contribution of Christian men and women and means, in this work of taking America for God? New York city. The way Paris goes, goes France. The way Berlin goes, goes Germany. The way London goes, goes England. The way New York and a couple of other cities go, goes America. May the Eternal God wake us up to the stupendous issue!

Another thing quoted pessimistically is the vast and overtopping fortunes in this country, and they say it means concentrated wealth and luxuriousness and display and moral ruin. It is my observation that it is people who have but limited resources who make the most splurge; and I ask you, who are endowing colleges and theological seminaries? Did you ever hear of Peter Cooper and James Lenox and sainted William E. Dodge and the Lawrences, Amos and Abbott, while I refrain from mentioning living benefactors who, quite as generous and Christian, are at this moment planning what they can do in these days, and in their last will and testament in this campaign that proposes taking America for God? The time is coming’97hasten it, Lord!’97and I think you and I will see it, when, as Joseph, the wealthy Arimathean, gave for the dead Christ a costly mausoleum, the affluent men and women of this country will rise in their strength and build for our King, one Jesus, the throne of this American continent.

Another thing quoted for discouragement, but which I quote for encouragement, is foreign immigration. Now that from the New York Barge Office we turn back by the first steamship the foreign vagabondism, we are getting people, the vast majority of whom come to make an honest living; among them some of the bravest and the best. If you should turn back from this land to Europe the foreign ministers of the Gospel and the foreign attorneys and the foreign merchants and the foreign philanthropists, what a robbery of our pulpits, our court-rooms, our storehouses, and our beneficent institutions, and what a putting back of every monetary, merciful, moral, and religious interest of the land! This commingling here of all nationalities under the blessing of God will produce in seventy-five or one hundred years the most magnificent style of man and woman the world ever saw. They will have the wit of one race, the eloquence of another race, the kindness of another, the generosity of another, the aesthetic taste of another, the high moral character of another; and when that man and woman step forth, their brain and nerve and muscle an intertwining of the fibres of all nationalities, nothing but a new electric photographic apparatus, that can see clear through body, mind and soul, can take of them an adequate picture. But the foreign population of America is less than fifteen per cent. of all our population, and why all this fuss about foreign immigration?

Now what are the weapons by which, under our Omnipotent Leader, the real obstacles in the way of our country’92s evangelization, the ten thousand mile Sebastopols, are to be leveled? The first columbiad, with range enough to sweep from eternity to eternity, is the Bible, millions of its copies going out, millions on millions. Then there are all the Gospel batteries, manned by seventy thousand pastors and home missionaries, over the head of each one of whom is the shield of divine protection, and in the right hand of each one the gleaming, two-edged sword of the Infinite Spirit! Hundreds of thousands of private soldiers for Christ, marching under the one-starred, blood-striped flag of Emmanuel! On our side, the great and mighty theologians of the land, the heavy artillery; and the hundreds of thousands of Christian children, the infantry. They are marching on! Episcopacy, with the sublime roll of its liturgies; Methodism, with its battle-cry of ’93The sword of the Lord and John Wesley;’94 the Baptist Church, with its glorious navy sailing up our Oregons and Sacramentos and Mississippis; and Presbyterianism, moving on with the battle-cry of ’93The sword of the Lord and John Knox.’94 And then, after awhile will come the great tides of revival, sweeping over the land, the five hundred thousand conversions in 1857 eclipsed by the salvation of millions in a day, and the four American armies of the Lord’92s host marching toward each other, the Eastern army marching West, the Western army marching East, the Northern army marching South, the Southern army marching North; shoulder to shoulder! Tramp! tramp! tramp! until they meet mid-continent, having taken America for God!

The thunder of the bombardment is already in the air, and when the last bridge of opposition is taken, and the last portcullis of Satan is lifted, and the last gun spiked, and the last tower dismantled, and the last charger of iniquity shall have been hurled back upon its haunches, what a time of rejoicing! We will see it, not with these eyes, which before that will be closed in blessed sleep, but with strong and better vision, when the Lord once in awhile gives us a vacation among the doxologies to come down and see the dear old land, which I pray may always be the lamb of the text, mild and peaceful, inoffensive; but in case foreign nations assail it, having two horns of army and navy strong enough to hook them back and hook them down, and a voice louder than a dragon, yea, louder than ten thousand thunders, saying to the billows of Asiatic superstition and European arrogance, ’93Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage