'Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be
gathered together.'--MATT. xxiv. 28.
This grim parable has, of course, a strong Eastern colouring. It is
best appreciated by dwellers in those lands. They tell us that no
sooner is some sickly animal dead, or some piece of carrion thrown
out by the way, than the vultures--for the eagle does not prey upon
carrion--appear. There may not have been one visible a moment before
in the hot blue sky, but, taught by scent or by sight that their
banquet is prepared, they come flocking from all corners of the
heavens, a hideous crowd round their hideous meal, fighting with
flapping wings and tearing it with their strong talons. And so, says
Christ, wherever there is a rotting, dead society, a carcase
hopelessly corrupt and evil, down upon it, as if drawn by some
unerring attraction, will come the angels, the vultures of the
divine judgment.
The words of my text were spoken, according to the version of them
in Luke's Gospel, in answer to a question from the disciples. Our
Lord had been discoursing, in very solemn words, which, starting
from the historical event of the impending fall of Jerusalem, had
gradually passed into a description of the greater event of His
second coming. And all these solemn warnings had stirred nothing
deeper in the bosoms of the disciples than a tepid and idle
curiosity which expressed itself in the one almost irrelevant
question, 'Where, Lord?' He answers--Not here, not there, but
everywhere where there is a carcase. The great event which is
referred to in our Lord's solemn words is a future judgment, which
is to be universal. But the words are not exhausted in their
reference to that event. There have been many 'comings of the Lord,'
many 'days of the Lord,' which on a smaller scale have embodied the
same principles as are to be displayed in world-wide splendour and
awfulness at the last.
I. The first thing, then, in these most true and solemn words is
this, that they are to us a revelation of a law which operates with
unerring certainty through all the course of the world's history.
We cannot tell, but God can, when evil has become incurable; or
when, in the language of my text, the mass of any community has
become a carcase. There may be flickerings of life, all unseen by
our eyes, or there may be death, all unsuspected by our shallow
vision. So long as there is a possibility of amendment, 'sentence
against an evil work is not executed speedily'; and God dams back,
as it were, the flow of His retributive judgment, 'not willing that
any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the
truth.' But when He sees that all is vain, that no longer is
restoration or recovery possible, then He lets loose the flood; or,
in the language of my text, when the thing has become a carcase,
then the vultures, God's scavengers, come and clear it away from off
the face of the earth.
Now that is the law that has been working from the beginning,
working as well in regard to the long delays as in regard to the
swift execution. There is another metaphor, in the Old Testament,
that puts the same idea in a very striking form. It speaks about
God's 'awakening,' as if His judgment slumbered. All round that dial
the hand goes creeping, creeping, creeping slowly, but when it comes
to the appointed line, then the bell strikes. And so years and
centuries go by, all chance of recovery departs, and then the crash!
The ice palace, built upon the frozen blocks, stands for a while,
but when the spring thaws come, it breaks up.
Let me remind you of some instances and illustrations. Take that
story which people stumble over in the early part of the Old
Testament revelation--the sweeping away of those Canaanitish nations
whose hideous immoralities had turned the land into a perfect sty of
abominations. There they had been wallowing, and God's Spirit, which
strives with men ever and always, had been striving with them, we
know not for how long, but when the time came at which, according to
the grim metaphor of the Old Testament, 'the measure of their
iniquity was full,' then He hurled upon them the fierce hosts out of
the desert, and in a whirlwind of fire and sword swept them off the
face of the earth.
Take another illustration. These very people, who had been the
executioners of divine judgment, settled in the land, fell into the
snare--and you know the story. The captivities of Israel and Judah
were other illustrations of the same thing. The fall of Jerusalem,
to which our Lord pointed in the solemn context of these words, was
another. For millenniums God had been pleading with them, sending
His prophets, rising early and sending, saying, 'Oh, do not do this
abominable thing which I hate!' 'And last of all He sent His Son.'
Christ being rejected, God had shot His last bolt. He had no more
that He could do. Christ being refused, the nation's doom was fixed
and sealed, and down came the eagles of Rome, again God's scavengers,
to sweep away the nation on which had been lavished such wealth of
divine love, but which had now come to be a rotting abomination,
and to this day remains in a living death, a miraculously preserved
monument of God's Judgments.
Take another illustration how, once more, the executants of the law
fall under its power. That nation which crushed the feeble resources
of Judaea, as a giant might crush a mosquito in his grasp, in its
turn became honeycombed with abominations and immoralities; and then
down from the frozen north came the fierce Gothic tribes over the
Roman territory. One of their captains called himself the 'Scourge
of God,' and he was right. Another swooping down of the vultures
flashed from the blue heavens, and the carrion was torn to fragments
by their strong beaks.
Take one more illustration--that French Revolution at the end of the
eighteenth century. The fathers sowed the wind, and the children
reaped the whirlwind. Generations of heartless luxury, selfishness,
carelessness of the cry of the poor, immoral separation of class
from class, and all the sins which a ruling caste could commit
against a subject people, had prepared for the convulsion. Then, in
a carnival of blood and deluges of fire and sulphur, the rotten
thing was swept off the face of the earth, and the world breathed
more freely for its destruction.
Take another illustration, through which many of us have lived. The
bitter legacy of negro slavery that England gave to her giant son
across the Atlantic, which blasted and sucked the strength out of
that great republic, went down amidst universal execration. It took
centuries for the corpse to be ready, but when the vultures came
they made quick work of it.
And so, as I say, all over the world, and from the beginning of
time, with delays according to the possibilities of restoration and
recovery which the divine eye discerns, this law is working. Verily
there is a God that judgeth in the earth. 'The wheels of God grind
slowly, but they grind exceeding small.' 'Wheresoever the carcase
is, there will the eagles be gathered together.'
And has the law exhausted its force? Are there going to be no more
applications of it? Are there no European societies at this day that
in their godlessness and social iniquities are hurrying fast to the
condition of carrion? Look around us--drunkenness, sensual
immorality, commercial dishonesty, senseless luxury amongst the
rich, heartless indifference to the wail of the poor, godlessness
over all classes and ranks of the community. Surely, surely, if the
body politic be not dead, it is sick nigh unto death. And I, for my
part, have little hesitation in saying that as far as one can see,
European society is driving as fast as it can, with its godlessness
and immorality, to such another 'day of the Lord' as these words of
my text suggest. Let us see to it that we do our little part to be
the 'salt of the earth' which shall keep it from rotting, and so
drive away the vultures of judgment.
II. But let me turn to another point. We have here a law which is to
have a far more tremendous accomplishment in the future.
There have been many comings of the Lord, many days of the Lord,
when, as Isaiah says in his magnificent vision of one such, 'the
loftiness of man has been bowed down, and the haughtiness of man
made low, and the Lord alone exalted in that day when He arises to
shake terribly the earth. And all these 'days of the Lord' are
prophecies, and distinctly point to a future 'day' when the same
principles which have been disclosed as working on a small scale in
them, shall be manifested in full embodiment. These 'days of the
Lord' proclaim '_the_ day of the Lord.' In the prophecies both
of the Old and New Testaments that universal future judgment is seen
glimmering through the descriptions of the nearer partial judgments.
So interpreters are puzzled to say at what point in a prophecy the
transition is made from the smaller to the greater. The prophecies
are like the diagrams in treatises on perspective, in which
diverging lines are drawn from the eye, enclosing a square or other
figure, and which, as they recede further from the point of view,
enclose a figure, the same in shape but of greater dimensions. There
is a historical event foretold, the fall of Jerusalem. It is close
up to the eyes of the disciples, and is comparatively small. Carry
out the lines that touch its corners and define its shape, and upon
the far distant curtain of the dim future there is thrown a like
figure immensely larger, the coming of Jesus Christ to judge the
world. All these little premonitions and foretastes and anticipatory
specimens point onwards to the assured termination of the world's
history in that great and solemn day, when all men shall be gathered
before Christ's throne, and He shall judge all nations--judge you
and me amongst the rest. That future judgment is distinctly a part
of the Christian revelation. Jesus Christ is to come in bodily form
as He went away. All men are to be judged by Him. That judgment is
to be the destruction of opposing forces, the sweeping away of the
carrion of moral evil.
It is therefore distinctly a part of the message that is to be
preached by us, under penalty of the awful condemnation pronounced
on the watchman who seeth the sword coming and gives no warning. It
is not becoming to make such a solemn message the opportunity for
pictorial rhetoric, which vulgarises its greatness and weakens its
power. But it is worse than an offence against taste; it is
unfaithfulness to the preaching which God bids us, treason to our
King, and cruelty to our hearers, to suppress the warning--'The day
of the Lord cometh.' There are many temptations to put it in the
background. Many of you do not want that kind of preaching. You want
the gentle side of divine revelation. You say to us in fact, though
not in words. 'Prophesy to us smooth things. Tell us about the
infinite love which wraps all mankind in its embrace. Speak to us of
the Father God, who "hateth nothing that He hath made." Magnify the
mercy and gentleness and tenderness of Christ. Do not say anything
about that other side. It is not in accordance with the tendencies
of modern thought.'
So much the worse, then, for the tendencies of modern thought. I
yield to no man in the ardour of my belief that the centre of all
revelation is the revelation of a God of infinite love, but I cannot
forget that there is such a thing as 'the terror of the Lord,' and I
dare not disguise my conviction that no preaching sounds every
string in the manifold harp of God's truth, which does not strike
that solemn note of warning of judgment to come.
Such suppression is unfaithfulness. Surely, if we preachers believe
that tremendous truth, we are bound to speak. It is cruel kindness
to be silent. If a traveller is about to plunge into some gloomy
jungle infested by wild beasts, he is a friend who sits by the
wayside to warn him of his danger. Surely you would not call a
signalman unfeeling because he held out a red lamp when he knew that
just round the curve beyond his cabin the rails were up, and that
any train that reached the place would go over in horrid ruin.
Surely that preaching is not justly charged with harshness which
rings out the wholesome proclamation of a day of judgment, when we
shall each give account of ourselves to the divine-human Judge.
Such suppression weakens the power of the Gospel, which is the
proclamation of deliverance, not only from the power, but also from
the future retribution of sin. In such a maimed gospel there is but
an enfeebled meaning given to that idea of deliverance. And though
the thing that breaks the heart and draws men to God is not terror,
but love, the terror must often be evoked in order to lead to love.
It is only 'judgment to come' which will make Felix tremble, and
though his trembling may pass away, and he be none the nearer the
kingdom, there will never any good be done to him unless he does
tremble. So, for all these reasons, all faithful preaching of
Christ's Gospel must include the proclamation of Christ as Judge.
But, if I should be unfaithful, if I did not preach this truth, what
shall we call you if you turn away from it? You would not think it a
wise thing of the engine-driver to shut his eyes if the red lamp
were shown, and to go along at full speed and to pay no heed to
that? Do you think it would be right for a Christian minister to
lock his lips and never say, 'There is a judgment to come'? And do
you think it is wise of you not to think of that, and to shape your
conduct accordingly?
Oh, dear friends! I do not doubt that the centre of all divine
revelation is the love of God, nor do I doubt that incomparably the
highest representation of the power of Christ's Gospel is that it
draws men away from the love and the practice of evil, and makes
them pure and holy. But that is not all. There is not only the
practice and the power of sin to be fought against, but there is the
penalty of sin to be taken into account; and as sure as you are
living, and as sure as there is a God above us, so sure is it that
there is a Day of Judgment, when 'He will judge the world in
righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained.' The believing of
that is not salvation, but the belief of that seems to me to be
indispensable for any vigorous grasp of the delivering love of God
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
III. And so the last thing that I have to say is that this is a law
which need never touch you, nor you know anything about but by the
hearing of the ear.
It is told us that we may escape it. When Paul reasoned of
righteousness, and temperance, and judgment to come, his hearer
trembled as he listened, but there was an end. But the true effect
of this message is the effect that Paul himself attached to it when
he said in the hearing of Athenian wisdom, 'God hath commanded all
men everywhere _to repent_, because He hath appointed a day in
the which He will judge the world in righteousness.' Judgment
faithfully preached is the preparation for preaching that 'there is
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.' If we trust in
that great Saviour, we shall be quickened from the death of sin, and
so shall not be food for the vultures of judgment. Can these corpses
live? Can this eating putrescence, which burrows its foul way
through our souls, be sweetened? Is there any antiseptic for it?
Yes, blessed be God, and the hand whose touch healed the leper will
heal us, and 'our flesh will come again as the flesh of a little
child.' Christ has bared His breast to the divine judgments against
sin, and if by faith we shelter ourselves in Him, we shall never
know the terrors of that awful day.
Be sure that judgment to come is no mere figure dressed up to
frighten children, nor the product of blind superstition, but that
it is the inevitable issue of the righteousness of the All-ruling
God. You and I and all the sons of men have to face it. 'Herein is
our love made perfect, that we may have boldness before Him in the
Day of Judgment.' Betake yourselves, as poor sinful creatures who
know something of the corruption of your own hearts, to that dear
Christ who has died on the Cross for you, and all that is obnoxious
to the divine judgments will, by His transforming life breathed into
you, be taken out of your hearts; and when that 'day of the Lord'
shall dawn, you, trusting in the sacrifice of Him who is your Judge,
will 'have a song as when a holy solemnity is kept.' Take Christ for
your Saviour, and then, when the vultures of judgment, with their
mighty black pinions, are wheeling and circling in the sky, ready to
pounce upon their prey, He will gather you 'as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings,' and beneath their shadow you will be
safe.