Eternity in the heart, and other sermons

Front matter

JBBBBBBSm

■ I

■Hi

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Eternity in the Heart, - - 9

II. The First Christian Triumvirate, 35

I. Eternity In The Heart

PRAYER.

WE thank God that He has required so much of us: He has' not dealt with us as if we were incompetent, but He has dealt with us as if we were greatly competent for greatest things. The things God asks of us ennoble us: He wants us to love Him; He zvants us to love the world; He wants us to plow the world's fields, and dig the world's gardens; He wants us to plant seeds and plow them; He wants us to gather in harvests and thresh them; He wants us to walk, not like children of the darkness nor the night, but like children of the light and of the day. We are folks that belong to the day-dawns, — that is what He has told us. Our candles are lighted by the stars and the sun as well. He has asked us to go on the Highway of Holiness, and keep to it; He has assumed that we had wisdom, and that we had discretion, and great powers. He has told us we were houses for God to live in.

O God, Thou art the lifter-up of our head. How can we be pusillanimous and base when we are God's dwelling places! How dare we be foul and depraved if God wants to come in and dwell in the best room of our life!

We thank Thee for the way Thou hast talked of us; — for the high things Thou hast commanded of us; for the hard yoke Thou hast put on us; for the severity of the labor Thou hast given us. We are not complaining, we io Eternity in the Heart.

are giving glory to God that He thinks we can do hard things, and that we are competent for God's big business. O Lord, this morning, make us see what sort of folks zve are if we should measure up to the importunings of God's Spirit: and may everybody's life awake this morning to see how God would have it live and behave. We arc God's grozvn-up people. We are God's artisans and plowmen. We are God's lawyers and clerks. We are God's people, set to God's big business. May we. execute wisely and persistently, with sweet fidelity, with holy charity, and with deep humility, because we see who God is J and knozv zvho we are.

O God, sweeten our breath; exalt our purpose; make divine our activities by the breath we breathe and the zvater we drink, and the bread we take, and the vocation we labor at— by EVERYTHING.

Thou Great God, who girdest the soul as Thou dost gird the world by zones of stars and glories of infinite night, gird us round with God so that we shall feel as we go into the battle with tightened girdle at our loins, that God is our strength and makes war with us.

Make this a good day to us and to everybody. Bless people that are a long way off on the sea, and give them good sailing; let them feel that they are sailing toward the harbor where God is the life and the anchorage.

Bless people in dark lands, — O Holy Spirit, talk to them through Thy Gospel, and if they have it not, speak to them without the scabbard of the Gospel and show them Thy great broad sword.

Bless people who are in prisons, even though they have the shackles of their crime upon them, the Lord loosen the prisoners from the handcuffs of their iniquity, and let them out into the daylight of the large liberty because they shall be sons and daughters of the Great God.

Bless all people in hospitals, whose days are painful

Eternity in the Heart. ii

and whose nights are darker than the dark skies unlighted by the stars; whose cheeks are Hushed with fever; whose heads are aching with wild, spasmodic achings, — bless folks in hospitals.

Bless shut-in folks. Bless people who would like to be in God's house and can not find the way. Bless people who would walk God's path, but whose feet are tired, and they can not. Make the way to God shorter than the way to Church.

Bring us along our journey, a good way to-day, O God. Shine in our faces so that we shall know it is Sunday morning to the heart; and afterwhile, bring us up the steep hill, inside the open gate, and out on to the lawn of Heaven, where morning brightens, and the wind is fresh as from off the sea, and where CHRIST shall meet us, Amen,

"He hath set eternity in their heart." — Eccl. iii, n. (Revised Version — Margin.)

There are some Scriptures whose environment needs to be known, lest the meaning be either misapprehended or misrepresented, Some texts are like barnacles on the sea rocks ; if you wrench them away, you shall not be able to comprehend the life which they are. But this Scripture I read in your hearing this morning is as self-sufficient as a star; it needs no prelude, no postlude; you do not need to know whence I fetched it. As a matter of courtesy and custom I read you where the Scripture was found, but it is of no consequence. You do not need to know the soil out of which it sprung; you do not need to know the sky under which it shone — it is not consequential. When I read you "He hath set eternity in their heart/' everybody who knows anything knows there is but one body who could have eternities to set in anybody's heart. There is only one personality that deals in eternities ; all the rest of us traffic in times. We deal with minutes, we watch the second-hand move upon the dial of the watch, we count the hours that pulse betwixt the cradle and the grave. We deal in years; we do not even deal in centuries. Our calendar is the almanac, one year at once, and many of us never live to see December, who touched our feet upon the pathways of January.

It is time we deal in. But there is one Body somewhere — I will not answer where at this moment—but there is one Body somewhere who plays with time as if it were a bubble floating in the sky. There is one body somewhere, and His name is God, and He inhabiteth eternity, and deals with it as if it were an inconsequential thing. You don't need to ask who this "He" is. You do not need the answer — you understand — you can not misconceive. We do not need to be told who does some things. When I read in this Book, which has more of the magnificent and inscrutable truths than all of the literatures of all the earth, when I read in this Book that "He inhabiteth eternity," I know who that is. There is only one body who has eternity for a dwelling-house, and that body is God. When I read that "He holdeth the winds in His fists," I know there is only one who has hands that may, with thumb and finger, grab the winds by the throat and choke their howling trumpetings still. I know. I do not need to be told, when I read "He toucheth the mountains, and they smoke," I know there is only one body whose fingers bring the electric spark and set the mountains on fire. I know. When I read "He calleth the stars by name," I know who it is; I do not need to have anybody tell me. There is only one body that knoweth the stars in their nights, and knoweth the names they ought to bear, and the names they do bear — one body, only one. When I read that "He holdeth the ocean waters in his hand," I understand that there is but one chalice in the universe capacious enough to hold the turbulent, tumultuous sea. When I read, "Who loved me, and gave Himself for me," I know without anybody telling me, who this "who" is. There is only one who gave Himself that He might fetch me out of sin to God. There are some things so selfevident that even a superfoolish man would understand at the outset when the thing was mentioned, who it was that did these things. And when I read you "He hath set eternity in their heart," everybody knows this He is God.

Now, the strange thing, I take it, is this, that when the King James translators gave this passage they read it thus: "He hath set the world in their heart." Do you know why they missed it? Do you know why they underestimated it? I think we know. Because the truth was too big for them. It broke their backs under the load, and they thought a thing that made their bones fairly crack, — they thought that thing must be untrue. And do you know, men and women, that one of the greatest credentials of truth is man's unbelief, not man's belief! The greater the truth the less does it seem natural. I am told that God came and dwelt with man, and in him. The meaning is so supernal and so vast of girth, so supreme in altitude, so star-lit on its summit, so sunny on its sides, so great a truth — yet, why? Why, because it is no kindergarten truth; because it is no little figure in arithmetic. It is a part of the intricate mathematics of the Almighty God. The little things I can grasp, but the Cyclopean things bewilder me with their shocks and surprises; and the sudden shooting of the lights is upon my eyes until my eye-balls blister, and I put my fingers to them, and say, "This is not daylight, but death." Some things are too great.

And when the old translators — and they were great men, those old King James folk; they carried the lexicon of the English language in their bosom as no one has since the English language was constructed-; they knew more of the music of the English speech than the great Milton. But there were some things they could not do. You must not blame them. You must not blame a child because he is not a man grown; give him a chance, and he will be. You must not blame a child because he can only speak in monosyllables. Time will come, by and by, when he will speak in polysyllables. You must not blame these men when they show shocked surprise that somehow the Scripture meant "eternity in the heart," and drew back from its approach, and did not dare to venture upon its broad meaning.

Have you not noticed that children will go bathing in the brook, but are scared at the great plunging ocean? It is because the ocean is so big and adventurous, and so wide, and so deep ; because behind every billow is the shudder of the vast ocean ?

And you must not think it strange that a child should be scared of the great water, and that a man or woman grown should be afraid of the briny, dripping hands of the great sea. And you must not think to blame these men if in their looking divine thoughts in the face, they were abashed by them, and started back affrighted, and said, "He hath put the world in their heart."

Some things you can not see unless you climb up to them. You must build observatories to see the stars, and you must let the centuries build observatories from where other and divinest thoughts can be seen. And so these men did the best they could; and it was no small thing to mark down in pale ink upon the scroll "He hath put the world in their heart." That is a big thing. Many of us do not know that. We can keep our own house in our heart, but are so little we can not do more than that. Our wife, our husband, our children, our folks, — and then we shut up in our secretiveness and exclusiveness, and we shut the world out, and say "this is the earth." Why don't you break your fences down and walk out of doors? Then, there are some people who keep their village community in their hearts. They praise with sweet laudations — and I love to hear people praise the ground that bore them, the hedge-rows under which they walked, and the brook where they have made love with a lover I am glad to hear them praise those places, — but to think the world is our village ! they can hold the village, but they can get no further; they are limited.

And then, there are people who can get Rhode Island in their heart, but they can not get Kansas, and they can not hold Texas. They can hold those little principalities in America — they can get those little plots of ground into their heart, but the great stretches they can not understand. They deluge their heart with a commonwealth.

It is the world God has put in the heart, not a village, not a cradle, not a graveyard, — though all of these things belong to a proper consecration of anybody's heart, — not a village, not a house with all the rooms sacred with the breath of prayer, not a commonwealth with all its history and its soil marked with heroes' blood, but the world. Some people let their nationality shut them in. There are Englishmen who think the world is complete in the roll call of their nation, and there are Americans who think America is the last frontier of the world. But God is bigger than that. When He builds a man, He does not build him only to be a family man, — though he means him for that, thank God. A man to whom the cry of a child is not sweeter than music, and the man to whom a woman's face, kiss, and smile are not beautiful, is not a man ; and the woman who would not rather feel her baby's chubby arms go slipping close around her neck than hear the plaudits of the earth, is not a woman. This is good, but, mark you, God meant men's lives to be this and more, this and more.

I understand what you mean by talking about a Secretary of State for America, but I think I would not get it in my head what it means to be a Secretary of State for the world. I know what it means to be Minister to Germany, but I do not know that I would be able to speak out in meeting what it means to be Minister to the Earth. And these big words Jesus taught were those you and I would have given grudgingly, and with a sort of penuriousness would have felt them slip from our fingers. Jesus taught them out loud, and said these great words, and they have been throbbing up and down our souls ever since trying to get a pathway in our hearts all these years. The world idea — that is the big idea.

There are some people who think if they admire Napoleon they ought to go and say their prayers, and say "the Lord forgive us our trespasses." It is no sin to admire Napoleon. Why? Because he was a man with the world idea, who stood in France and reached out and wanted to hook his fingers on the earth, and he reached his hand eastward and westward, northward and southward, and wanted to get it on the earth; and the great world idea fascinated everybody who has a soul, and who admired Napoleon because he had appealed to their imagination.

The reason why Rome for twenty centuries cast its spell over the Europe, as Prospero cast his spell over the sea and men wrecked upon his coast, is because it was a world domain and stretched forth its hand to the planet. The world idea is big; and I want you to observe that when those King James translators said, "He hath set the world in their heart," they pronounced a great word. It came to pass the Revisers saw the truth, but did not write it down. They said, "Such riches are too vast, this is a treasure-house too magnificent." And they said in the Book, "He hath set the world in their heart," and, like a woman does, put the great truth in a postscript and on the margin said, "He hath set eternity in their heart." There was only one who dared to speak the great words with solemn sedateness, with marvelous fluency, and Jesus talked about mighty things. He was used to eternities.

Well, now, sisters, brothers, what is man's mark — what is the thing that is his glory and constitutes his consequence? I would answer thus: He is the one thing here that has the possession of eternity. God has not set eternity in any animal's heart ; and God has set eternity in every man's heart. That is man's glory, and that is man's wonder. Some try to define man, and say man is the laughing animal; and the gift of laughter is God's gift. If you have forgotten laughter, why do you not go back and learn the art afresh? I thank God that never since Christianity began to be propagated and man began to think and live, never has it been seen so clearly that the gift of humor is the gift of the sublime God. Man is a laughing animal ; but he is not only that. Man is defined to be a talking animal, and so he is, — and some of them talk a great deal more than their share, and there ought to be some statute of limitation to their remarks. Man is a talking animal, — I do not deny that, but that is not his symbol. He is a laughing animal and a speaking animal. And man, we are told, is a thinking animal, — and that is quite right, he is a thinker. There are things which are so great that when you look at them it is as if you were overwhelmed by a sudden flood, but by and by you come to look at them and begin to ponder over them, and their meaning comes upon you. People say man is the moral animal, and that is right, — man is the only moral creature. And we are told that man is a prayinganimal; and that is quite right. Man is the one animal that has an altar and knows a cross when he sees it, and is able to lift his troubled, pleading hands up to God. That is quite right, but that is not man's mark. What is man's mark which includes all these ? Why, here — God has set eternity in their heart — that is it. Man is the creature of eternities. All other things are short lived — he alone is long lived. All other things are plunging forward toward the grave, drawing with wearied and belated steps to the end of his journey, the graveyard, and man is the one personality that, by and by, will go across the path of death. He belongs not to time, but to eternity. God has set eternity in his heart. That is his glory, that is his menace, if you will; that is the thing which amazes him when he thinks upon it. Man is fated with eternal estate and has eternity in his bosom. Man flies higher than eagles dare to soar. The eagle finds an arrow jagging at its heart, and, with fluttering wings and home-sick cries, stops, then tries again and can not rise, and drops, as Matthew Arnold says, "a heap of fluttering feathers," but man goes where eagles dizzy with the height ; he lives when eagles feel the tug of death, and die. Man is the eternal personality, he hath eternity in his heart. The mark of eternity upon anything makes that thing august.

Do you know why men read Carlyle yet? It is because Carlyle had the shadow of eternity upon him. You can read Sarter Resartus, you can read of the French Revolution, you can read the life of Oliver Cromwell, and in all is the sense of eternity.

Do you know what makes Milton the prince of the poetic world? Because he was a man that did not dabble in time, but dwelt where eternities marched around him.

Do you know the reason why Ruskin is a man who has impressed his personality upon mankind for so long is because he knew that time was waste, and eternity was the one fastness where the soul might dwell forever.

Anything that eternity touches becomes sublime. Do you know why death is sublime ? Do you know why a dead beggar, lying rigid upon the street, is more magnificent than a living king, with all his splendor? Do you know why it is? Because eternity has come and said, " I^et me enlighten his eyes," that is why.

Do you know one of the most noble and pathetic passages in literature is where Mrs. Quickly tells of how in the death of Sir John Falstaff he fumbles with the sheet and then calls out, "God, God, God," and so Jack Falstaff for once, and only once in all his career, was great ; it was when he was in death, and all his paltriness and all his littleness and all his mad unreason are gone and he is lying there, stark, with never a quip on his lips and never calling for a drink, — no vaunting, no wickedness, — lying there, dead; and the angel of death, with wings folded across his bosom looking him in the face.

Saw you not the dead man, and do you not know that all his littleness has slipped from him. I have known bad men in their day, and saw them die, and somehow I could scarcely believe they had been bad. It was the shadow of eternity on their faces. Whenever eternity comes to anybody's life it makes that life symbolical, glorious.

Do you know why the Bible is the one Book, after all they have done with it and for it, after all subtractions and additions, — do you know why the Bible is the wonder of all books ? It is this, because the Bible is the only book that treats of eternity. It is the one book whose solemn music talks about eternal years; it is the one book that looks toward the sky-line of the soul; it is the one book that is not looking - backward, but is always marching on, and that is the reason why the book can never be a book of to-day, but of to-day and to-morrow. It is talking about the only thing" that is worthy, the vast personality to whom this name has been given — the book of eternity. And do you know the reason why Jesus, more and more, apart from other things he says, and does, God's great Son, still hold the supremacy among the sons of men, and will hold it forever, because he appeals to the instincts of the human heart. We are eternal folks.

Do you think if Jacob, long dead, were to come back among us, he would not know the world to which he came. But I will say this, if Jacob came here and saw lovers wooing he would understand that. Why, he would remember when first he beheld Rachel, and the love he bore her, and how seven years were briefer than seven brief days, he loved her so. Love is one of the eternal blessings of the heart. God hath set eternal secrets in the soul, and you can not rub or scrape one poor figure in this sum out of your heart, you can not extinguish the great mark, mankind's divine life of soul. He was

Etsrnity in the Heart. 25

a lover, and would know the lovers at the marriage altar — he would know every one of them, and would beg the privilege of kissing the woman on the lips once, all for the remembrance he had of Rachel.

Do you think that if Abraham came into our century he would know us, our new garments, our new hospitality, our this, and our that? He would not; but if he saw a father fondling a son, — a man with an Isaac on his knee, he would say, "This is the same old world." If he saw a man holding his lad by the hand and going churchward, if he saw a woman kissing her little lad on the forehead and on the lips and on the cheek, and taking him by the chin and saying, "Kiss me once more, my son," he would feel at home. If he saw a woman being mother to a baby and kissing it awake or asleep, — a woman will kiss a baby asleep, and it is the sweetest slumber that ever came to tired eyes — and when she has kissed the babe asleep she thinks she can keep it asleep by kissing it. But if Abraham were here he would know the world by that sign.

Do you think if Moses came to this service this morning he would know our tabernacle? No. Would he not look for the ark of the covenant? Would he see it? No. He would look for all the paraphernalia* but when this preacher, from this far off home, kneeled down and twisted his hands together and closed his eyes and looked out and saw God, and said, "Thou, who lovest us," do you not think Moses would feel at home? And he would not ask for the ark and would not inquire for the tabernacle, but would say, "I thank Thee that Thou art here, and though I am a stranger in a strange land, I am at home." It is the glory of eternal life. That is the reason why women dare venture to do things for humanity, because humanity, however near to bankruptcy, has eternity planted in the heart. And the reason why man can be so wicked is because man can be so great, and the reason man has run so far backward is because he can run so far forward; and the reason man's hands are so dangerous are because they are so magnificent in possible achievement. And the cry of a little child — God will stop work any moment to hear a baby cry — What makes the child cry ? Answer, it hath eternity in its heart. Why can a man love? He hath eternity in his heart. Why can a man grow graces, and a woman virtues? Eternity is in her heart. Why can people be courageous and strong? Answer, eternity is in the heart. Why can people sorrow, yet why are graves an eternal song? The answer is. there is eternity in the heart. What is the reason a woman never forgets her dead son ? What is the reason a man never ceases to think on his dead daughter? What is the reason a daughter never ceases to think upon her father ? What is the reason you can hear your father's voice yet, and when I speak his name you can see his face, and his arms are open and his breast is ready and his welcome is so wide and his kisses are so sweet ? What is the reason you remember your father, and his love comes to your life and looks you in the eyes, and your sorrow comes to you afresh and the tears fairly blind you? What is the reason some of you women weep upon your pillow by night, and say, "O, Father, if you were here." What is the reason some of you men here, with your mother gone so many years that, honestly, you saw the other day how time was scraping her name from her gravestone — what is the reason you men are hungry for a sight of her yet ? What is the reason you would run ten thousand years and never stop to catch breath if you could see her once? "He hath set eternity in their heart." We never stop loving, thank God, and we never stop sorrowing, thank God — only, God softens our sorrow, as he softens day light into the dusk and takes the glory out of the sky and leaves onlv dim reminiscences of glory flecking the clouds.

and the twilight is here and the lamps of night are lit, one by one, and then it is so restful and quiet; so God softens our sorrows and sufferings and makes even our heart breaks among our possessions. And I do not speak at random this morning, when I say a graveyard is good to have and is a good bit of land to possess. There are a thousand things worse than graveyards, one is when we have no love for folks that are gone. We love folks because He hath set eternity in our hearts.

It was this week, Friday, a woman whose son had suddenly died, drowned in a stream nigh by, wrote me with tear splashes all across the page, and said, "May be you heard" — and I can hear the broken voice of her while she would try to say the thing she wrote — and she said, "May be you heard about my boy, and he is gone, — and he was my only son." She was a widow — that was it — he was all she had. She used to say, as she looked at him with such sweet glistening in her woman's eyes, and put her hand on his arm with a sweet caress, she used to say to me, "This is my son." She knew I knew her son, but she always introduced him. Why did she? She liked the job, it was in her heart to do it, and she always said, "This is my son, Dr. Quayle," and I said, "I know him;" and the next time she would say, "This is my son," and I would say, "I am glad to see your son." And now her son is gone, and she wrote with broken speech and the tears dripping down the page, saying, "I wish you would tell me if you think when I come into heaven I shall see him." O, that was pitiful. And I sat down and wrote, "when you come where your Christ is, you will know him." Do you think, beloved, for a minute that God Almighty would put eternity in a woman's heart, with her vast propensities and her short possibility of life — do you think that God would give a woman a baby and when it got so sick the woman could not keep it any more, and Christ would hold it in His bosom until she came to take it from Him — do you think Christ would give a woman a baby and having kept it so long, the woman would not know it was her baby when she came to the kingdom of Christ? "He hath set eternity in their heart." It is eternity in the heart with life and love; it is eternity that makes trouble so glorious ; it is eternity that makes peril not tragic; it is eternity that makes old folks fabulous in beauty; it is eternity. "He hath set eternity in their heart."