Chapter 8

Another impression was--indeed the impression carried with me all the summer--the thought already suggested, the brotherhood of man. The fact is that the differences are so small between nations that they may be said to be all alike. Though I spent the most of the summer in silence, I spoke a few times and to people of different nations, and how soon I noticed that they were very much alike! If a man knows how to play the piano, it does not make any difference whether he finds it in New Orleans or San Francisco or Boston or St. Petersburg or Moscow or Madras; it has so many keys, and he puts his fingers right on them. And the human heart is a divine instrument, with just so many keys in all cases, and you strike some of them and there is joy, and you strike some of them and there is sorrow. Plied by the same motives, lifted up by the same success, depressed by the same griefs. The cab-men of London have the same characteristics as the cab-men of New York, and are just as modest and retiring. The gold and silver drive Piccadilly and the Boulevards just as they drive Wall Street. If there be a great political excitement in Europe, the Bourse in Paris howls just as loudly as ever did the American gold-room.

The same grief that we saw in our country in 1864 you may find now in the military hospitals of England containing the wounded and sick from the Egyptian wars. The same widowhood and orphanage that sat down in despair after the battles of Shiloh and South Mountain poured their grief in the Shannon and the Clyde and the Dee and the Thames. Oh, ye men and women who know how to pray, never get up from your knees until you have implored God in behalf of the fourteen hundred millions of the race just like yourselves, finding life a tremendous struggle! For who knows but that as the sun to-day draws up drops of water from the Caspian and the Black seas and from the Amazon and the Mississippi, after a while to distill the rain, these very drops on the fields--who knows but that the sun of righteousness may draw up the tears of your sympathy, and then rain them down in distillation of comfort o'er all the world?

Who is that poor man, carried on a stretcher to the Afghan ambulance? He is your brother. If in the Pantheon at Paris you smite your hand against the wall among the tombs of the dead, you will hear a very strange echo coming from all parts of the Pantheon just as soon as you smite the wall. And I suppose it is so arranged that every stroke of sorrow among the tombs of bereavement ought to have loud, long, and oft-repeated echoes of sympathy all around the world. Oh, what a beautiful theory it is--and it is a Christian theory--that Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman, Norwegian, Frenchman, Italian, Russian, are all akin. Of one blood all nations. That is a very beautiful inscription that I saw a few days ago over the door in Edinburgh, the door of the house where John Knox used to live. It is getting somewhat dim now, but there is the inscription, fit for the door of any household--"Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself."

I was also impressed in journeying on the other side the sea with the difference the Bible makes in countries. The two nations of Europe that are the most moral to-day and that have the least crime are Scotland and Wales. They have by statistics, as you might find, fewer thefts, fewer arsons, fewer murders. What is the reason? A bad book can hardly live in Wales. The Bible crowds it out. I was told by one of the first literary men in Wales: "There is not a bad book in the Welsh language." He said: "Bad books come down from London, but they can not live here." It is the Bible that is dominant in Wales. And then in Scotland just open your Bible to give out your text, and there is a rustling all over the house almost startling to an American. What is it? The people opening their Bibles to find the text, looking at the context, picking out the referenced passages, seeing whether you make right quotation. Scotland and Wales Bible-reading people. That accounts for it. A man, a city, a nation that reads God's Word must be virtuous. That Book is the foe of all wrong-doing. What makes Edinburgh better than Constantinople? The Bible.

Oh, I am afraid in America we are allowing the good book to be covered up with other good books! We have our ever-welcome morning and evening newspapers, and we have our good books on all subjects--geological subjects, botanical subjects, physiological subjects, theological subjects--good books, beautiful books, and so many good books that we have not time to read the Bible. Oh, my friends, it is not a matter of very great importance that you have a family Bible on the center-table in your parlor! Better have one pocket New Testament, the passages marked, the leaves turned down, the binding worn smooth with much usage, than fifty pictorial family Bibles too handsome to read! Oh, let us take a whisk-broom and brush the dust off our Bibles! Do you want poetry? Go and hear Job describe the war-horse, or David tell how the mountains skipped like lambs. Do you want logic? Go and hear Paul reason until your brain aches under the spell of his mighty intellect. Do you want history? Go and see Moses put into a few pages stupendous information which Herodotus, Thucydides, and Prescott never preached after. And, above all, if you want to find how a nation struck down by sin can rise to happiness and to heaven, read of that blood which can wash away the pollution of a world. There is one passage in the Bible of vast tonnage: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Oh, may God fill this country with Bibles and help the people to read them!

I was also impressed in my transatlantic journeys with the wonderful power that Christ holds among the nations. The great name in Europe to-day is not Victoria, not Marquis of Salisbury, not William the Emperor, not Bismarck; the great name in Europe to-day is Christ. You find the crucifix on the gate-post, you find it in the hay field, you find it at the entrance of the manor, you find it by the side of the road.

The greatest pictures in all the galleries of Italy, Germany, France, England, and Scotland are Bible pictures. What were the subjects of Raphael's great paintings? "The Transfiguration," "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," "The Charge to Peter," "The Holy Family," "The Massacre of the Innocents," "Moses at the Burning Bush," "The Nativity," "Michael the Archangel," and the four or five exquisite "Madonnas." What are Tintoretto's great pictures? "Fall of Adam," "Cain and Abel," "The Plague of the Fiery Serpent," "Paradise," "Agony in the Garden," "The Temptation," "The Adoration of the Magi," "The Communication," "Baptism," "Massacre of the Innocents," "The Flight into Egypt," "The Crucifixion," "The Madonna." What are Titian's great pictures? "The Flagellation of Christ," "The Supper at Emmaus," "The Death of Abel," "The Assumption," "The Entombment," "Faith," "The Madonna." What are Michael Angelo's great pictures? "The Annunciation," "The Spirits in Prison," "At the feet of Christ," "The Infant Christ," "The Crucifixion," "The Last Judgment." What are Paul Veronese's great pictures? "Queen of Sheba," "The Marriage in Cana," "Magdalen Washing the Feet of Christ," "The Holy Family." Who has not heard of Da Vinci's "Last Supper"? Who has not heard of Turner's "Pools of Solomon"? Who has not heard of Claude's "Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca"? Who has not heard of Dürer's "Dragon of the Apocalypse"? The mightiest picture on this planet is Rubens' "Scourging of Christ." Painter's pencil loves to sketch the face of Christ. Sculptor's chisel loves to present the form of Christ. Organs love to roll forth the sorrows of Christ.

The first time you go to London go into the Doré picture gallery. As I went and sat down before "Christ Descending the Steps of the Prætorium," at the first I was disappointed. I said: "There isn't enough majesty in that countenance, not enough tenderness in that eye;" but as I sat and looked at the picture it grew upon me until I was overwhelmed with its power, and I staggered with emotion as I went out into the fresh air, and said; "Oh, for that Christ I must live, and for that Christ I must be willing to die!" Make that Christ your personal friend, my sister, my brother. You may never go to Milan to see Da Vinci's "Last Supper;" but, better than that, you can have Christ come and sup with you. You may never get to Antwerp to see Rubens' "Descent of Christ from the Cross," but you can have Christ come down from the mountain of His suffering into your heart and abide there forever. Oh, you must have Him! We are all so diseased with sin that we want that which hurts us, and we won't have that which cures us. The best thing for you and for me to do to-day is to get down on our bended knees before God and say: "Oh, Almighty Son of God, I am blind! I want to see. My arms are palsied. I want to take hold of thy cross. Have mercy on me, O Lord Jesus!" Why will you live on husks when you may sit down to this white bread of heaven? Oh, with such a God, and with such a Christ, and with such a Holy Spirit, and with such an immortal nature, wake up!

Once more, I was impressed greatly on the other side the sea with the wonderful triumphs of the Christian religion. The tide is rising, the tide of moral and spiritual prosperity in the world. I think that any man who keeps his eyes open, traveling in foreign lands, will come to that conclusion. More Bibles than ever before, more churches, more consecrated men and women, more people ready to be martyrs now than ever before, if need be; so that instead of there being, as people sometimes say, less spirit of martyrdom now than ever before, I believe where there was once one martyr there would be a thousand martyrs if the fires were kindled--men ready to go through flood and fire for Christ's sake. Oh, the signs are promising! The world is on the way to millennial brightness. All art, all invention, all literature, all commerce will be the Lord's.

These ships that you see going up and down New York harbor are to be brought into the service of God. All those ships I saw at Liverpool, at Southampton, at Glasgow, are to be brought into the service of Christ. What is that passage, "Ships of Tarshish shall bring presents"? That is what it means. Oh, what a goodly fleet when the vessels of the sea come into the service of God! No guns frowning through the port-holes, no pikes hung in the gangway, nothing from cut-water to taffrail to suggest atrocity. Those ships will come from all parts of the seas. Great flocks of ships that never met on the high sea but in wrath, will cry, "Ship ahoy!" and drop down beside each other in calmness, the flags of Emmanuel streaming from the top-gallants. The old slaver, with decks scrubbed and washed and glistened and burnished--the old slaver will wheel into line; and the Chinese junk and the Venetian gondola, and the miners' and the pirates' corvette, will fall into line, equipped, readorned, beautified, only the small craft of this grand flotilla which shall float out for the truth--a flotilla mightier than the armada of Xerxes moving in the pomp and pride of Persian insolence; mightier than the Carthaginian navy rushing with forty thousand oarsmen upon the Roman galleys, the life of nations dashed out against the gunwales.

Rise, O sea! and shine, O heavens! to greet this squadron of light and victory! On the glistening decks are the feet of them that bring good tidings, and songs of heaven float among the rigging. Crowd on all the canvas. Line-of-battle ship and merchantmen wheel into the way. It is noon. Strike eight bells. From all the squadron the sailors' songs arise. "Surely the isles shall wait for thee, and the ships of Tarshish to bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord thy God, and the Holy One of Israel."

A MOMENTOUS QUEST.

"Seek ye the Lord while he may be found."--ISA. lv: 6.

Isaiah stands head and shoulders above the other Old Testament authors in vivid descriptiveness of Christ. Other prophets give an outline of our Saviour's features. Some of them present, as it were, the side face of Christ; others a bust of Christ; but Isaiah gives us the full-length portrait of Christ. Other Scripture writers excel in some things. Ezekiel more weird, David more pathetic, Solomon more epigrammatic, Habakkuk more sublime; but when you want to see Christ coming out from the gates of prophecy in all His grandeur and glory, you involuntarily turn to Isaiah. So that if the prophecies in regard to Christ might be called the "Oratorio of the Messiah," the writing of Isaiah is the "Hallelujah Chorus," where all the batons wave and all the trumpets come in. Isaiah was not a man picked up out of insignificance by inspiration. He was known and honored. Josephus, and Philo, and Sirach extolled him in their writings. What Paul was among the apostles, Isaiah was among the prophets.

My text finds him standing on a mountain of inspiration, looking out into the future, beholding Christ advancing and anxious that all men might know Him; his voice rings down the ages: "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found." "Oh," says some one: "that was for olden times." No, my hearer. If you have traveled in other lands you have taken a circular letter of credit from some banking-house in New York, and in St. Petersburg, or Venice, or Rome, or Antwerp, or Brussels, or Paris; you presented that letter and got financial help immediately. And I want you to understand that the text, instead of being appropriate for one age, or for one land, is a circular letter for all ages and for all lands, and wherever it is presented for help, the help comes: "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."

I come, to-day, with no hair-spun theories of religion, with no nice distinctions, with no elaborate disquisition; but with a plain talk on the matters of personal religion. I feel that the sermon I preach this morning will be the savor of life unto life, or of death unto death. In other words, the Gospel of Christ is a powerful medicine: it either kills or cures. There are those who say: "I would like to become a Christian, I have been waiting a good while for the right kind of influences to come;" and still you are waiting. You are wiser in worldly things than you are in religious things. If you want to get to Albany, you go to the Grand Central Depot, or to the steam-boat wharf, and, having got your ticket, you do not sit down on the wharf or sit in the depot; you get aboard the boat or train. And yet there are men who say they are waiting to get to heaven--waiting, waiting, but not with intelligent waiting, or they would get on board the line of Christian influences that would bear them into the kingdom of God.

Now you know very well that to seek a thing is to search for it with earnest endeavor. If you want to see a certain man in New York, and there is a matter of $10,000 connected with your seeing him, and you can not at first find him, you do not give up the search. You look in the directory, but can not find the name; you go in circles where you think, perhaps, he may mingle, and, having found the part of the city where he lives, but perhaps not knowing the street, you go through street after street, and from block to block, and you keep on searching for weeks and for months.

You say: "It is a matter of $10,000 whether I see him or not." Oh, that men were as persistent in seeking for Christ! Had you one half that persistence you would long ago have found Him who is the joy of the forgiven spirit. We may pay our debts, we may attend church, we may relieve the poor, we may be public benefactors, and yet all our life disobey the text, never seek God, never gain heaven. Oh, that the Spirit of God would help this morning while I try to show you, in carrying out the idea of my text, first, how to seek the Lord, and in the next place, when to seek Him. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."

I remark, in the first place, you are to seek the Lord through earnest and believing prayer. God is not an autocrat or a despot seated on a throne, with His arms resting on brazen lions, and a sentinel pacing up and down at the foot of the throne. God is a father seated in a bower, waiting for His children to come and climb on His knee, and get His kiss and His benediction. Prayer is the cup with which we go to the "fountain of living water," and dip up refreshment for our thirsty soul. Grace does not come to the heart as we set a cask at the corner of the house to catch the rain in the shower. It is a pulley fastened to the throne of God, which we pull, bringing the blessing.

I do not care so much what posture you take in prayer, nor how large an amount of voice you use. You might get down on your face before God, if you did not pray right inwardly, and there would be no response. You might cry at the top of your voice, and unless you had a believing spirit within, your cry would not go further up than the shout of a plow-boy to his oxen. Prayer must be believing, earnest, loving. You are in your house some summer day, and a shower comes up, and a bird, affrighted, darts into the window, and wheels about the room. You seize it. You smooth its ruffled plumage. You feel its fluttering heart. You say, "Poor thing, poor thing!" Now, a prayer goes out of the storm of this world into the window of God's mercy, and He catches it, and He feels its fluttering pulse, and He puts it in His own bosom of affection and safety. Prayer is a warm, ardent, pulsating exercise. It is the electric battery which, touched, thrills to the throne of God! It is the diving-bell in which we go down into the depths of God's mercy and bring up "pearls of great price." There was an instance where prayer made the waves of the Gennesaret solid as Russ pavement. Oh, how many wonderful things prayer has accomplished! Have you ever tried it? In the days when the Scotch Covenanters were persecuted, and the enemies were after them, one of the head men among the Covenanters prayed: "Oh, Lord, we be as dead men unless Thou shalt help us! Oh, Lord, throw the lap of Thy cloak over these poor things!" And instantly a Scotch mist enveloped and hid the persecuted from their persecutors--the promise literally fulfilled: "While they are yet speaking I will hear."

Oh, impenitent soul, have you ever tried the power of prayer? God says: "He is loving, and faithful, and patient." Do you believe that? You are told that Christ came to save sinners. Do you believe that? You are told that all you have to do to get the pardon of the Gospel is to ask for it. Do you believe that? Then come to Him and say: "Oh, Lord! I know Thou canst not lie. Thou hast told me to come for pardon, and I could get it. I come, Lord. Keep Thy promise, and liberate my captive soul."

Oh, that you might have an altar in the parlor, in the kitchen, in the store, in the barn, for Christ will be willing to come again to the manger to hear prayer. He would come in your place of business, as He confronted Matthew, the tax commissioner. If a measure should come before Congress that you thought would ruin the nation, how you would send in petitions and remonstrances! And yet there has been enough sin in your heart to ruin it forever, and you have never remonstrated or petitioned against it. If your physical health failed, and you had the means, you would go and spend the summer in Germany, and the winter in Italy, and you would think it a very cheap outlay if you had to go all round the earth to get back your physical health. Have you made any effort, any expenditure, any exertion for your immortal and spiritual health? No, you have not taken one step.

O that you might now begin to seek after God with earnest prayer. Some of you have been working for years and years for the support of your families. Have you given one half day to the working out of your salvation with fear and trembling? You came here this morning with an earnest purpose, I take it, as I have come hither with an earnest purpose, and we meet face to face, and I tell you, first of all, if you want to find the Lord, you must pray, and pray, and pray.

I remark again, you must seek the Lord through Bible study. The Bible is the newest book in the world. "Oh," you say, "it was made hundreds of years ago, and the learned men of King James translated it hundreds of years ago." I confute that idea by telling you it is not five minutes old, when God, by His blessed Spirit, retranslates it into the heart. If you will, in the seeking of the way of life through Scripture study, implore God's light to fall upon the page, you will find that these promises are not one second old, and that they drop straight from the throne of God into your heart.

There are many people to whom the Bible does not amount to much. If they merely look at the outside beauty, why it will no more lead them to Christ than Washington's farewell address or the Koran of Mohammed or the Shaster of the Hindoos. It is the inward light of God's Word you must get or die. I went up to the church of the Madeleine, in Paris, and looked at the doors which were the most wonderfully constructed I ever saw, and I could have stayed there for a whole week; but I had only a little time, so, having glanced at the wonderful carving on the doors, I passed in and looked at the radiant altars, and the sculptured dome. Alas, that so many stop at the outside door of God's Holy Word, looking at the rhetorical beauties, instead of going in and looking at the altars of sacrifice and the dome of God's mercy and salvation that hovers over penitent and believing souls!

O my friends! if you merely want to study the laws of language, do not go to the Bible. It was not made for that. Take "Howe's Elements of Criticism"--it will be better than the Bible for that. If you want to study metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings of William Hamilton. But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned, and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, search the Scriptures, "for in them ye have eternal life."

When people are anxious about their souls--and there are some such here to-day--there are those who recommend good books. That is all right. But I want to tell you that the Bible is the best book under such circumstances. Baxter wrote "A Call to the Unconverted," but the Bible is the best call to the unconverted. Philip Doddridge wrote "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," but the Bible is the best rise and progress. John Angell James wrote "Advice to the Anxious Inquirer," but the Bible is the best advice to the anxious inquirer.

O, the Bible is the very book you need, anxious and inquiring soul! A dying soldier said to his mate: "Comrade, give me a drop!" The comrade shook up the canteen, and said: "There isn't a drop of water in the canteen." "Oh," said the dying soldier, "that's not what I want; feel in my knapsack for my Bible," and his comrade found the Bible, and read him a few of the gracious promises, and the dying soldier said: "Ah, that's what I want. There isn't anything like the Bible for a dying soldier, is there, my comrade?" O blessed book while we live! Blessed book when we die!