"And Samson went down to Timnath."--JUDGES xiv: 1.
There are two sides to the character of Samson. The one phase of his
life, if followed into the particulars, would administer to the
grotesque and the mirthful; but there is a phase of his character
fraught with lessons of solemn and eternal import. To these graver
lessons we devote our morning sermon.
This giant no doubt in early life gave evidences of what he was to be.
It is almost always so. There were two Napoleons--the boy Napoleon and
the man Napoleon--but both alike; two Howards--the boy Howard and the
man Howard--but both alike; two Samsons--the boy Samson and the man
Samson--but both alike. This giant was no doubt the hero of the
playground, and nothing could stand before his exhibitions of youthful
prowess. At eighteen years of age he was betrothed to the daughter of
a Philistine. Going down toward Timnath, a lion came out upon him,
and, although this young giant was weaponless, he seized the monster
by the long mane and shook him as a hungry hound shakes a March hare,
and made his bones crack, and left him by the wayside bleeding under
the smiting of his fist and the grinding heft of his heel.
There he stands, looming up above other men, a mountain of flesh, his
arms bunched with muscle that can lift the gate of a city, taking an
attitude defiant of everything. His hair had never been cut, and it
rolled down in seven great plaits over his shoulders, adding to his
bulk, fierceness, and terror. The Philistines want to conquer him, and
therefore they must find out where the secret of his strength lies.
There is a dissolute woman living in the valley of Sorek by the name
of Delilah. They appoint her the agent in the case. The Philistines
are secreted in the same building, and then Delilah goes to work and
coaxes Samson to tell what is the secret of his strength. "Well," he
says, "if you should take seven green withes such as they fasten wild
beasts with and put them around me I should be perfectly powerless."
So she binds him with the seven green withes. Then she claps her hands
and says: "They come--the Philistines!" and he walks out as though
they were no impediment. She coaxes him again, and says: "Now tell me
the secret of this great strength?" and he replies: "If you should
take some ropes that have never been used and tie me with them I
should be just like other men." She ties him with the ropes, claps her
hands, and shouts: "They come--the Philistines!" He walks out as
easily as he did before--not a single obstruction. She coaxes him
again, and he says: "Now, if you should take these seven long plaits
of hair, and by this house-loom weave them into a web, I could not get
away." So the house-loom is rolled up, and the shuttle flies backward
and forward and the long plaits of hair are woven into a web. Then she
claps her hands, and says: "They come--the Philistines!" He walks out
as easily as he did before, dragging a part of the loom with him.
But after awhile she persuades him to tell the truth. He says: "If you
should take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should be
powerless and in the hands of my enemies." Samson sleeps, and that she
may not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in.
You know that the barbers of the East have such a skillful way of
manipulating the head to this very day that, instead of waking up a
sleeping man, they will put a man wide awake sound asleep. I hear the
blades of the shears grinding against each other, and I see the long
locks falling off. The shears or razor accomplishes what green withes
and new ropes and house-loom could not do. Suddenly she claps her
hands, and says: "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!" He rouses up
with a struggle, but his strength is all gone. He is in the hands of
his enemies.
I hear the groan of the giant as they take his eyes out, and then I
see him staggering on in his blindness, feeling his way as he goes on
toward Gaza. The prison door is open, and the giant is thrust in. He
sits down and puts his hands on the mill-crank, which, with exhausting
horizontal motion, goes day after day, week after week, month after
month--work, work, work! The consternation of the world in captivity,
his locks shorn, his eyes punctured, grinding corn in Gaza!
I. First of all, behold in this giant of the text that physical power
is not always an index of moral power. He was a huge man--the lion
found it out, and the three thousand men whom he slew found it out;
yet he was the subject of petty revenges and out-gianted by low
passion. I am far from throwing any discredit upon physical stamina.
There are those who seem to have great admiration for delicacy and
sickliness of constitution. I never could see any glory in weak nerves
or sick headache. Whatever effort in our day is made to make the men
and women more robust should have the favor of every good citizen as
well as of every Christian. Gymnastics may be positively religious.
Good people sometimes ascribe to a wicked heart what they ought to
ascribe to a slow liver. The body and the soul are such near neighbors
that they often catch each other's diseases. Those who never saw a
sick day, and who, like Hercules, show the giant in the cradle, have
more to answer for than those who are the subjects of life-long
infirmities. He who can lift twice as much as you can, and walk twice
as far, and work twice as long, will have a double account to meet in
the judgment.
How often it is that you do not find physical energy indicative of
spiritual power! If a clear head is worth more than one dizzy with
perpetual vertigo--if muscles with the play of health in them are
worth more than those drawn up in chronic "rheumatics"--if an eye
quick to catch passing objects is better than one with vision dim and
uncertain--then God will require of us efficiency just in proportion
to what he has given us. Physical energy ought to be a type of moral
power. We ought to have as good digestion of truth as we have capacity
to assimilate food. Our spiritual hearing ought to be as good as our
physical hearing. Our spiritual taste ought to be as clear as our
tongue. Samsons in body, we ought to be giants in moral power.
But while you find a great many men who realize that they ought to use
their money aright, and use their intelligence aright, how few men you
find aware of the fact that they ought to use their physical organism
aright! With every thump of the heart there is something saying,
"Work! work!" and, lest we should complain that we have no tools to
work with, God gives us our hands and feet, with every knuckle, and
with every joint, and with every muscle saying to us, "Lay hold and do
something."
But how often it is that men with physical strength do not serve
Christ! They are like a ship full manned and full rigged, capable of
vast tonnage, able to endure all stress of weather, yet swinging idly
at the docks, when these men ought to be crossing and recrossing the
great ocean of human suffering and sin with God's supplies of mercy.
How often it is that physical strength is used in doing positive
damage, or in luxurious ease, when, with sleeves rolled up and bronzed
bosom, fearless of the shafts of opposition, it ought to be laying
hold with all its might, and tugging away to lift up this sunken wreck
of a world.
It is a most shameful fact that much of the business of the Church and
of the world must be done by those comparatively invalid. Richard
Baxter, by reason of his diseases, all his days sitting in the door of
the tomb, yet writing more than a hundred volumes, and sending out an
influence for God that will endure as long as the "Saints' Everlasting
Rest." Edward Payson, never knowing a well day, yet how he preached,
and how he wrote, helping thousands of dying souls like himself to
swim in a sea of glory! And Robert M'Cheyne, a walking skeleton, yet
you know what he did in Dundee, and how he shook Scotland with zeal
for God. Philip Doddridge, advised by his friends, because of his
illness, not to enter the ministry, yet you know what he did for the
"rise and progress of religion" in the Church and in the world.
Wilberforce was told by his doctors that he could not live a
fortnight, yet at that very time entering upon philanthropic
enterprises that demanded the greatest endurance and persistence.
Robert Hall, suffering excruciations, so that often in his pulpit
while preaching he would stop and lie down on a sofa, then getting up
again to preach about heaven until the glories of the celestial city
dropped on the multitude, doing more work, perhaps, than almost any
well man in his day.
Oh, how often it is that men with great physical endurance are not as
great in moral and spiritual stature! While there are achievements for
those who are bent all their days with sickness--achievements of
patience, achievements of Christian endurance--I call upon men of
health to-day, men of muscle, men of nerve, men of physical power, to
devote themselves to the Lord. Giants in body, you ought to be giants
in soul.
II. Behold also, in the story of my text, illustration of the fact of
the damage that strength can do if it be misguided. It seems to me
that this man spent a great deal of his time in doing evil--this
Samson of my text. To pay a bet which he had lost by guessing of his
riddle he robs and kills thirty people. He was not only gigantic in
strength, but gigantic in mischief, and a type of those men in all
ages of the world who, powerful in body or mind, or any faculty of
social position or wealth, have used their strength for iniquitous
purposes.
It is not the small, weak men of the day who do the damage. These
small men who go swearing and loafing about your stores and shops and
banking-houses, assailing Christ and the Bible and the Church--they do
not do the damage. They have no influence. They are vermin that you
crush with your foot. But it is the giants of the day, the misguided
giants, giants in physical power, or giants in mental acumen, or
giants in social position, or giants in wealth, who do the damage.
The men with sharp pens that stab religion and throw their poison all
through our literature; the men who use the power of wealth to
sanction iniquity, and bribe justice, and make truth and honor bow to
their golden scepter.
Misguided giants--look out for them! In the middle and the latter part
of the last century no doubt there were thousands of men in Paris and
Edinburgh and London who hated God and blasphemed the name of the
Almighty; but they did but little mischief--they were small men,
insignificant men. Yet there were giants in those days.
Who can calculate the soul-havoc of a Rousseau, going on with a very
enthusiasm of iniquity, with fiery imagination seizing upon all the
impulsive natures of his day? or David Hume, who employed his life as
a spider employs its summer, in spinning out silken webs to trap the
unwary? or Voltaire, the most learned man of his day, marshaling a
great host of skeptics, and leading them out in the dark land of
infidelity? or Gibbon, who showed an uncontrollable grudge against
religion in his history of one of the most fascinating periods of the
world's existence--the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--a book in
which, with all the splendors of his genius, he magnified the errors
of Christian disciples, while, with a sparseness of notice that never
can be forgiven, he treated of the Christian heroes of whom the world
was not worthy?
Oh, men of stout physical health, men of great mental stature, men of
high social position, men of great power of any sort, I want you to
understand your power, and I want you to know that that power devoted
to God will be a crown on earth, to you typical of a crown in heaven;
but misguided, bedraggled in sin, administrative of evil, God will
thunder against you with His condemnation in the day when millionaire
and pauper, master and slave, king and subject, shall stand side by
side in the judgment, and money-bags, and judicial ermine, and royal
robe shall be riven with the lightnings.
Behold also, how a giant may be slain of a woman. Delilah started the
train of circumstances that pulled down the temple of Dagon about
Samson's ears. And tens of thousands of giants have gone down to death
and hell through the same impure fascinations. It seems to me that it
is high time that pulpit and platform and printing-press speak out
against the impurities of modern society. Fastidiousness and Prudery
say: "Better not speak--you will rouse up adverse criticism; you will
make worse what you want to make better; better deal in glittering
generalities; the subject is too delicate for polite ears." But there
comes a voice from heaven overpowering the mincing sentimentalities of
the day, saying: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a
trumpet, and show my people their transgressions and the house of
Jacob their sins."
The trouble is that when people write or speak upon this theme they
are apt to cover it up with the graces of belles-lettres, so that the
crime is made attractive instead of repulsive. Lord Byron in "Don
Juan" adorns this crime until it smiles like a May queen. Michelet,
the great French writer, covers it up with bewitching rhetoric until
it glows like the rising sun, when it ought to be made loathsome as a
small-pox hospital. There are to-day influences abroad which, if
unresisted by the pulpit and the printing-press, will turn New York
and Brooklyn into Sodom and Gomorrah, fit only for the storm of fire
and brimstone that whelmed the cities of the plain.
You who are seated in your Christian homes, compassed by moral and
religious restraints, do not realize the gulf of iniquity that bounds
you on the north and the south and the east and the west. While I
speak there are tens of thousands of men and women going over the
awful plunge of an impure life; and while I cry to God for mercy upon
their souls, I call upon you to marshal in the defense of your homes,
your Church and your nation. There is a banqueting hall that you have
never heard described. You know all about the feast of Ahasuerus,
where a thousand lords sat. You know all about Belshazzar's carousal,
where the blood of the murdered king spurted into the faces of the
banqueters. You may know of the scene of riot and wassail, when there
was set before Esopus one dish of food that cost $400,000. But I speak
now of a different banqueting hall. Its roof is fretted with fire. Its
floor is tesselated with fire. Its chalices are chased with fire. Its
song is a song of fire. Its walls are buttresses of fire. Solomon
refers to it when he says: "Her guests are in the depths of hell."
Our American communities are suffering from the gospel of Free
Loveism, which, fifteen or twenty years ago, was preached on the
platform and in some of the churches of this country. I charge upon
Free Loveism that it has blighted innumerable homes, and that it has
sent innumerable souls to ruin. Free Loveism is bestial; it is
worse--it is infernal! It has furnished this land with about one
thousand divorces annually. In one county in the State of Indiana it
furnished eleven divorces in one day before dinner. It has roused up
elopements, North, South, East, and West. You can hardly take up a
paper but you read of an elopement. As far as I can understand the
doctrine of Free Loveism it is this: That every man ought to have
somebody else's wife, and every wife somebody else's husband. They do
not like our Christian organization of society, and I wish they would
all elope, the wretches of one sex taking the wretches of the other,
and start to-morrow morning for the great Sahara Desert, until the
simoom shall sweep seven feet of sand all over them, and not one
passing caravan for the next five hundred years bring back one
miserable bone of their carcasses! Free Loveism! It is the
double-distilled extract of nux vomica, ratsbane, and adder's tongue.
Never until society goes back to the old Bible, and hears its eulogy
of purity and its anathema of uncleanness--never until then will this
evil be extirpated.
IV. Behold also in this giant of the text and in the giant of our own
century that great physical power must crumble and expire. The Samson
of the text long ago went away. He fought the lion. He fought the
Philistines. He could fight anything, but death was too much for him.
He may have required a longer grave and a broader grave; but the tomb
nevertheless was his terminus.
If, then, we are to be compelled to go out of this world, where are we
to go to? This body and soul must soon part. What shall be the destiny
of the former I know--dust to dust. But what shall be the destiny of
the latter? Shall it rise into the companionship of the white-robed,
whose sins Christ has slain? or will it go down among the unbelieving,
who tried to gain the world and save their souls, but were swindled
out of both? Blessed be God, we have a Champion! He is so styled in
the Bible: A Champion who has conquered death and hell, and he is
ready to fight all our battles from the first to the last. "Who is
this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, mighty to
save?" If we follow in the wake of that Champion death has no power
and the grave no victory. The worst man trusting in Him shall have his
dying pangs alleviated and his future illumined.
V. In the light of this subject I want to call your attention to a
fact which may not have been rightly considered by five men in this
house, and that is the fact that we must be brought into judgment for
the employment of our physical organism. Shoulder, brain, hand,
foot--we must answer in judgment for the use we have made of them.
Have they been used for the elevation of society or for its
depression? In proportion as our arm is strong and our step elastic
will our account at last be intensified. Thousands of sermons are
preached to invalids. I preach this sermon this morning to stout men
and healthful women. We must give to God an account for the right use
of this physical organism.
These invalids have comparatively little to account for, perhaps. They
could not lift twenty pounds. They could not walk half a mile without
sitting down to rest. In the preparation of this subject I have said
to myself, how shall I account to God in judgment for the use of a
body which never knew one moment of real sickness? Rising up in
judgment, standing beside the men and women who had only little
physical energy, and yet consumed that energy in a conflagration of
religious enthusiasm, how will we feel abashed!
Oh, men of the strong arm and the stout heart, what use are you making
of your physical forces? Will you be able to stand the test of that
day when we must answer for the use of every talent, whether it were a
physical energy, or a mental acumen, or a spiritual power?
The day approaches, and I see one who in this world was an invalid,
and as she stands before the throne of God to answer she says, "I was
sick all my days. I had but very little strength, but I did as well as
I could in being kind to those who were more sick and more
suffering." And Christ will say, "Well done, faithful servant."
And then a little child will stand before the throne, and she will
say, "On earth I had a curvature of the spine, and I was very weak,
and I was very sick; but I used to gather flowers out of the wild-wood
and bring them to my sick mother, and she was comforted when she saw
the sweet flowers out of the wild-wood. I didn't do much, but I did
something." And Christ shall say, as He takes her up in His arm and
kisses her, "Well done, well done, faithful servant; enter thou into
the joy of thy Lord."
What, then, will be said to us--we to whom the Lord gave physical
strength and continuous health? Hark! it thunders again. The judgment!
the judgment!
I said to an old Scotch minister, who was one of the best friends I
ever had, "Doctor, did you ever know Robert Pollock, the Scotch poet,
who wrote 'The Course of Time'?" "Oh, yes," he replied, "I knew him
well; I was his classmate." And then the doctor went on to tell me how
that the writing of "The Course of Time" exhausted the health of
Robert Pollock, and he expired. It seems as if no man could have such
a glimpse of the day for which all other days were made as Robert
Pollock had, and long survive that glimpse. In the description of that
day he says, among other things:
"Begin the woe, ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds
And doleful winds wail to the howling hills,
And howling hills mourn to the dismal vales,
And dismal vales sigh to the sorrowing brooks,
And sorrowing brooks weep to the weeping stream,
And weeping stream awake the groaning deep;
Ye heavens, great archway of the universe, put sack-cloth on;
And ocean, robe thyself in garb of widowhood,
And gather all thy waves into a groan, and utter it.
Long, loud, deep, piercing, dolorous, immense.
The occasion asks it, Nature dies, and angels come to lay
her in her grave."
What Robert Pollock saw in poetic dream, you and I will see in
positive reality--the judgment! the judgment!