THE GREATEST SERMONS
are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent, consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of G.o.d"s truth.
A group of rough men were a.s.sembled at a tavern one night. It came on toward morning--one or two o"clock. One man boasted that it did not make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we"ll go along with you.
So much shall be wagered. We"ll bet so much that when you go home and make such a demand she will resist it." So they went along at two or three o"clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened, and the man said to his wife, "Get us a supper." She said, "What shall I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they provided, and about three or four o"clock in the morning they sat down at the table--the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian wife--when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all this, broke into tears, and said: "I can"t stand this. Oh, what a wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the faith and hope of the Gospel.
A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord Almighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A sailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something had happened, and the sailors cried, "What"s the matter?" He said,
"MY MOTHER"S PRAYERS
haunt me like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated Christian home influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There are men here to-day who have maintained their integrity, not because they were any better naturally than some other people, but because there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into African jungles, they may fly to the earth"s end, they cannot go so far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.
I stand before women this morning who have the eternal salvation of their husbands in their right hand. On the marriage-day you took an oath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until death did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but after that parting at the door of the grave, will it be an eternal separation? Is there any such thing as
AN IMMORTAL MARRIAGE,
making the flowers that grow on the top of the sepulchre brighter than the garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma?
Yes; I stand here as a priest of the most high G.o.d to proclaim the banns of an immortal union for all those who join hands in the grace of Christ. O woman, is your husband, your father, your son away from G.o.d? The Lord demands their redemption at your hands. There are prayers for you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give, there are examples for you to make; and I say now, this morning, as Paul said to the Corinthian woman: "What knowest thou, O woman, but thou canst save thy husband?"
A man was dying, and he said to his wife: "Rebecca, you wouldn"t let me have family prayers, and you laughed about all that, and you got me away into worldliness; and now I am going to die, and my fate is sealed, and you are
THE CAUSE OF MY RUIN."
O woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband? Are there not some here who have kindly influences at home--are there not some here who have wandered far away from G.o.d, who can remember the Christian influences in their early home? Do not despise those influences, my brother. If you die without Christ, what will you do with your mother"s prayers, with your wife"s importunities, with your sister"s entreaties? What will you do with the letters they used to write to you, with the memory of those days when they attended you so kindly in times of sickness? Oh, if there be but just one strand holding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like, this morning, to take hold of that strand and pull you to the beach.
For the sake of your wife"s G.o.d, for the sake of your mother"s G.o.d, for the sake of your daughter"s G.o.d, for the sake of your sister"s G.o.d, come this day and be saved.
V. Lastly, I wish to say that one of the specific rights of women is, through the grace of Christ, finally
TO REACH HEAVEN.
Oh, what a mult.i.tude of women in heaven! Mary, Christ"s mother, in heaven; Elizabeth Fry in heaven; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven; the mother of Augustine in heaven; the Countess of Huntingdon--who sold her splendid jewels to build chapels--in heaven; while a great many others, who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little, have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the gla.s.s broken out, and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the "house of many mansions!" No more st.i.tching until twelve o"clock at night, no more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show it was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten frames. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering steps. No more rough blows across the temples. No more sharp, keen, bitter curse.
Some of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil and struggle and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your door fighting back the wolf with your own hand red with carnage. But G.o.d has a crown for you.
I want you to realize, this morning, that He is now making it, and whenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that crown, whenever you have a pang of body or soul He puts another gem in that crown, until, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for another splendor, and G.o.d will say to His angel, "The crown is done; let her up that she may wear it." And as the Lord of Righteousness puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, "Who is she?"
and Christ will say, "I will tell you who she is. She is the one that came up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb."
A BANQUET.
And then G.o.d will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the princ.i.p.alities of heaven to sit at the feast; and the tables will blush with the best cl.u.s.ters from the vineyards of G.o.d, and crimson with the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life; and water from the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the old harpers of heaven will sit there making music with their harps; and Christ will point you out amid the celebrities of heaven, saying, "She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified together." And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace, will break forth with congratulation, "Hail! hail!" And there will be handwritings on the wall--not such as struck the Persian n.o.blemen with horror, but fire-tipped fingers writing in blazing capitals of light and love and victory: "G.o.d hath wiped away all tears from all faces!"
THE OLD FOLKS" VISIT.
"I will go and see him before I die."--GEN. 45:28.
Jacob had long since pa.s.sed the hundred year mile-stone. In those times people were distinguished for longevity. In the centuries after persons lived to great age. Galen, the most celebrated physician of his time, took so little of his own medicine, that he lived to one hundred and forty years. A man of undoubted veracity on the witness-stand in England swore that he remembered an event one hundred and fifty years before. Lord Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut three sets of teeth, and died at one hundred and forty years. Joseph Crele, of Pennsylvania, lived one hundred and forty years. In 1857 a book was printed containing the names of thirty-seven person who lived one hundred and forty years, and the names of eleven persons who lived one hundred and fifty years.
Among the grand old people of whom we have record was Jacob, the shepherd of the text. But he had
A BAD LOT OF BOYS.
They were jealous and ambitious and every way unprincipled. Joseph, however, seemed to be an exception; but he had been gone many years, and the probability was that he was dead. As sometimes now in a house you will find kept at the table a vacant chair, a plate, a knife, a fork, for some deceased member of the family, so Jacob kept in his heart a place for his beloved Joseph. There sits the old man, the flock of one hundred and forty years in their flight having alighted long enough to leave the marks of their claw on forehead and cheek and temple. His long beard snows down over his chest. His eyes are somewhat dim, and he can see further when they are closed than when they are open, for he can see clear back into the time when beautiful Rachel, his wife, was living, and his children shook the Oriental abode with their merriment.
The centenarian is sitting dreaming over the past when he hears a wagon rumbling to the front door. He gets up and goes to the door to see who has arrived, and his long absent sons from Egypt come in and announce to him that Joseph instead of being dead is living in an Egyptian palace, with all the invest.i.ture of prime minister, next to the king in the mightiest empire of all the world!
THE NEWS WAS TOO SUDDEN
and too glad for the old man, and his cheeks whiten, and he has a dazed look, and his staff falls out of his hand, and he would have dropped had not the sons caught him and led him to a lounge and put cold water on his face, and fanned him a little.
In that half delirium the old man mumbles something about his son Joseph. He says: "You do not mean Joseph, do you? my dear son who has been dead so long. You don"t mean Joseph, do you?" But after they had fully resuscitated him, and the news was confirmed, the tears begin the winding way down the cross roads of the wrinkles, and the sunken lips of the old man quiver, and he brings his bent fingers together as he says: "Joseph is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die."
It did not take the old man a great while to get ready, I warrant you.
He put on the best clothes that the shepherd"s wardrobe could afford.
He got into the wagon, and though the aged are cautious and like to ride slow, the wagon did not get along fast enough for this old man; and when the wagon with the old man met Joseph"s chariot coming down to meet him, and Joseph got out of the chariot and got into the wagon and threw his arms around his father"s neck, it was an ant.i.thesis of
ROYALTY AND RUSTICITY,
of simplicity and pomp, of filial affection and paternal love, which leaves us so much in doubt about whether we had better laugh or cry, that we do both. So Jacob kept the resolution of the text: "I will go and see him before I die." And if our friends the reporters would like to have an appropriate t.i.tle for this sermon, they might call it "The Old Folks" Visit."
What a strong and unfailing thing is parental attachment! Was it not almost time for Jacob to forget Joseph? The hot suns of many summers had blazed on the heath; the river Nile had overflowed and receded, overflowed and receded again and again; the seed had been sown and the harvests reaped; stars rose and set; years of plenty and years of famine had pa.s.sed on; but the love of Jacob for Joseph in my text is overwhelmingly dramatic. Oh, that is a cord that is not snapped, though pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired the parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and now they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the childish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are fresh to-day, in spite of the pa.s.sage of a half century. Joseph was as fresh in Jacob"s memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the boy had disappeared from the old homestead. I found in our family record the story of an infant that had died fifty years before, and I said to my parents: "What is this record, and what does it mean?"
Their chief answer was a long deep sigh. It was yet to them
A VERY TENDER SORROW.
What does that all mean? Why, it means our children departed are ours yet, and that cord of attachment reaching across the years will hold us until it brings us together in the palace, as Jacob and Joseph were brought together. That is one thing that makes old people die happy.
They realize it is reunion with those from whom they have long been separated.
I am often asked as pastor--and every pastor is asked the question--"Will my children be
CHILDREN IN HEAVEN,
and forever children?" Well, there was no doubt a great change in Joseph from the time Jacob lost him, and the time when Jacob found him--between the boy seventeen years of age and the man in midlife, his forehead developed with a great business estate; but Jacob was glad to get back Joseph anyhow, and it did not make much difference to the old man whether the boy looked older, or looked younger. And it will be enough joy for that parent if he can get back that son, that daughter, at the gate of heaven, whether the departed loved one shall come a cherub or in full-grown angelhood. There must be a change wrought by that celestial climate and by those supernal years, but it will only be from loveliness to more loveliness, and from health to more radiant health. O parent, as you think of the darling panting and white in membranous croup, I want you to know it will be gloriously bettered in that land where there has never been a death and where all the inhabitants will live on in the great future as long as G.o.d!
Joseph was Joseph notwithstanding the palace, and your child will be your child notwithstanding all the raining splendors of everlasting noon. What