“Who knoweth whether
thou art come to the kingdom for such a
time as this?” ESTHER
i.
Esther the beautiful was the wife
of Ahasuerus the abominable. The time had come
for her to present a petition to her infamous husband
in behalf of the Jewish nation, to which she had once
belonged. She was afraid to undertake the work,
lest she should lose her own life; but her uncle,
Mordecai, who had brought her up, encouraged her with
the suggestion that probably she had been raised up
of God for that peculiar mission. “Who
knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such
a time as this?” Esther had her God-appointed
work; you and I have ours. It is my business
to tell you what style of men and women you ought
to be in order that you meet the demand of the age
in which God has cast your lot. If you have come
expecting to hear abstractions discussed, or dry technicalities
of religion glorified, you have come to the wrong
church; but if you really would like to know what this
age has a right to expect of you as Christian men and
women, then I am ready in the Lord’s name to
look you in the face. When two armies have rushed
into battle the officers of either army do not want
a philosophical discussion about the chemical properties
of human blood or the nature of gunpowder; they want
some one to man the batteries and swab out the guns.
And now, when all the forces of light and darkness,
of heaven and hell, have plunged into the fight, it
is no time to give ourselves to the definitions and
formulas and technicalities and conventionalities
of religion.
What we want is practical, earnest,
concentrated, enthusiastic, and triumphant help.
I. In the first place, in order to
meet the special demand of this age, you need to be
an unmistakably aggressive Christian. Of half-and-half
Christians we do not want any more. The Church
of Jesus Christ will be better without ten thousand
of them. They are the chief obstacle to the Church’s
advancement. I am speaking of another kind of
Christian. All the appliances for your becoming
an earnest Christian are at your hand, and there is
a straight path for you into the broad daylight of
God’s forgiveness. You may have come into
this Tabernacle the bondsmen of the world, and yet
before you go out of these doors you may become princes
of the Lord God Almighty. You remember what excitement
there was in this country, years ago, when the Prince
of Wales came here how the people rushed
out by hundreds of thousands to see him. Why?
Because they expected that some day he would sit upon
the throne of England. But what was all that honor
compared with the honor to which God calls you to
be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; yea, to
be queens and kings unto God? “They shall
reign with Him forever and forever.”
But, my friends, you need to be aggressive
Christians, and not like those persons who spend their
lives in hugging their Christian graces and wondering
why they do not make any progress. How much robustness
of health would a man have if he hid himself in a dark
closet? A great deal of the piety of the day
is too exclusive. It hides itself. It needs
more fresh air, more out-door exercise. There
are many Christians who are giving their entire life
to self-examination. They are feeling their pulses
to see what is the condition of their spiritual health.
How long would a man have robust physical health if
he kept all the days and weeks and months and years
of his life feeling his pulse instead of going out
into active, earnest, every-day work?
I was once amid the wonderful, bewitching
cactus growths of North Carolina. I never was
more bewildered with the beauty of flowers, and yet
when I would take up one of these cactuses and pull
the leaves apart, the beauty was all gone. You
could hardly tell that it had ever been a flower.
And there are a great many Christian people in this
day just pulling apart their Christian experiences
to see what there is in them, and there is nothing
left in them. This style of self-examination
is a damage instead of an advantage to their Christian
character. I remember when I was a boy I used
to have a small piece in the garden that I called
my own, and I planted corn there, and every few days
I would pull it up to see how fast it was growing.
Now, there are a great many Christian people in this
day whose self-examination merely amounts to the pulling
up of that which they only yesterday or the day before
planted.
O my friends! if you want to have
a stalwart Christian character, plant it right out
of doors in the great field of Christian usefulness,
and though storms may come upon it, and though the
hot sun of trial may try to consume it, it will thrive
until it becomes a great tree, in which the fowls
of heaven may have their habitation. I have no
patience with these flower-pot Christians. They
keep themselves under shelter, and all their Christian
experience in a small, exclusive circle, when they
ought to plant it in the great garden of the Lord,
so that the whole atmosphere could be aromatic with
their Christian usefulness. What we want in the
Church of God is more brawn of piety.
The century plant is wonderfully suggestive
and wonderfully beautiful, but I never look at it
without thinking of its parsimony. It lets whole
generations go by before it puts forth one blossom;
so I have really more heartfelt admiration when I
see the dewy tears in the blue eyes of the violets,
for they come every spring. My Christian friends,
time is going by so rapidly that we can not afford
to be idle.
A recent statistician says that human
life now has an average of only thirty-two years.
From these thirty-two years you must subtract all
the time you take for sleep and the taking of food
and recreation; that will leave you about sixteen
years. From those sixteen years you must subtract
all the time that you are necessarily engaged in the
earning of a livelihood; that will leave you about
eight years. From those eight years you must
take all the days and weeks and months all
the length of time that is passed in childhood and
sickness, leaving you about one year in which to work
for God. Oh, my soul, wake up! How darest
thou sleep in harvest-time and with so few hours in
which to reap? So that I state it as a simple
fact that all the time that the vast majority of you
will have for the exclusive service of God will be
less than one year!
“But,” says some man,
“I liberally support the Gospel, and the church
is open and the Gospel is preached: all the spiritual
advantages are spread before men, and if they want
to be saved, let them come to be saved; I have discharged
all my responsibility.” Ah! is that the
Master’s spirit? Is there not an old Book
somewhere that commands us to go out into the highways
and the hedges and compel the people to come in?
What would have become of you and me if Christ had
not come down off the hills of heaven, and if He had
not come through the door of the Bethlehem caravansary,
and if He had not with the crushed hand of the crucifixion
knocked at the iron gate of the sepulcher of our spiritual
death, crying, “Lazarus, come forth”?
Oh, my Christian friends, this is no time for inertia,
when all the forces of darkness seem to be in full
blast; when steam printing-presses are publishing
infidel tracts; when express railroad trains are carrying
messengers of sin; when fast clippers are laden with
opium and rum; when the night-air of our cities is
polluted with the laughter that breaks up from the
ten thousand saloons of dissipation and abandonment;
when the fires of the second death already are kindled
in the cheeks of some who, only a little while ago,
were incorrupt. Oh, never since the curse fell
upon the earth has there been a time when it was such
an unwise, such a cruel, such an awful thing for the
Church to sleep! The great audiences are not
gathered in the Christian churches; the great audiences
are gathered in temples of sin tears of
unutterable woe their baptism, the blood of crushed
hearts the awful wine of their sacrament, blasphemies
their litany, and the groans of the lost world the
organ dirge of their worship.
II. Again, if you want to be
qualified to meet the duties which this age demands
of you, you must on the one hand avoid reckless iconoclasm,
and on the other hand not stick too much to things
because they are old. The air is full of new
plans, new projects, new theories of government, new
theologies, and I am amazed to see how so many Christians
want only novelty in order to recommend a thing to
their confidence; and so they vacillate and swing
to and fro, and they are useless, and they are unhappy.
New plans secular, ethical, philosophical,
religious, cisatlantic, transatlantic long
enough to make a line reaching from the German universities
to Great Salt Lake City. Ah, my brother, do not
take hold of a thing merely because it is new.
Try it by the realities of a Judgment Day.
But, on the other hand, do not adhere
to any thing merely because it is old. There
is not a single enterprise of the Church or the world
but has sometimes been scoffed at. There was a
time when men derided even Bible societies; and when
a few young men met near a hay-stack in Massachusetts
and organized the first missionary society ever organized
in this country, there went laughter and ridicule all
around the Christian Church. They said the undertaking
was preposterous. And so also the work of Jesus
Christ was assailed. People cried out, “Who
ever heard of such theories of ethics and government?
Who ever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus
has?” Ezekiel had talked of mysterious wings
and wheels. Here came a man from Capernaum and
Gennesaret, and he drew his illustration from the lakes,
from the sand, from the ravine, from the lilies, from
the corn-stalks. How the Pharisees scoffed!
How Herod derided! How Caiaphas hissed! And
this Jesus they plucked by the beard, and they spat
in his face, and they called him “this fellow!”
All the great enterprises in and out of the Church
have at times been scoffed at, and there have been
a great multitude who have thought that the chariot
of God’s truth would fall to pieces if it once
got out of the old rut.
And so there are those who have no
patience with anything like improvement in church
architecture, or with anything like good, hearty,
earnest church singing, and they deride any form of
religious discussion which goes down walking among
every-day men rather than that which makes an excursion
on rhetorical stilts. Oh, that the Church of
God would wake up to an adaptability of work!
We must admit the simple fact that the churches of
Jesus Christ in this day do not reach the great masses.
There are fifty thousand people in Edinburgh who never
hear the Gospel. There are one million people
in London who never hear the Gospel. There are
at least three hundred thousand souls in the city
of Brooklyn who come not under the immediate ministrations
of Christ’s truth; and the Church of God in this
day, instead of being a place full of living epistles,
read and known of all men, is more like a “dead-letter”
post-office.
“But,” say the people,
“the world is going to be converted; you must
be patient; the kingdoms of this world are to become
the kingdoms of Christ,” Never, unless the Church
of Jesus Christ puts on more speed and energy.
Instead of the Church converting the world, the world
is converting the Church. Here is a great fortress.
How shall it be taken? An army comes and sits
around about it, cuts off the supplies, and says:
“Now we will just wait until from exhaustion
and starvation they will have to give up.”
Weeks and months, and perhaps a year, pass along,
and finally the fortress surrenders through that starvation
and exhaustion. But, my friends, the fortresses
of sin are never to be taken in that way. If
they are taken for God it will be by storm; you will
have to bring up the great siege guns of the Gospel
to the very wall and wheel the flying artillery into
line, and when the armed infantry of heaven shall
confront the battlements you will have to give the
quick command, “Forward! Charge!”
Ah, my friends, there is work for
you to do and for me to do in order to this grand
accomplishment! Here is my pulpit, and I preach
in it. Your pulpit is the bank. Your pulpit
is the store. Your pulpit is the editorial chair.
Your pulpit is the anvil. Your pulpit is the house
scaffolding. Your pulpit is the mechanic’s
shop. I may stand in this place and, through
cowardice or through self-seeking, may keep back the
word I ought to utter; while you, with sleeve rolled
up and brow besweated with toil, may utter the word
that will jar the foundations of heaven with the shout
of a great victory. Oh, that this morning this
whole audience might feel that the Lord Almighty was
putting upon them the hands of ordination. I
tell you, every one, go forth and preach this gospel.
You have as much right to preach as I have, or as
any man has. Only find out the pulpit where God
will have you preach, and there preach.
Hedley Vicars was a wicked man in
the English army. The grace of God came to him.
He became an earnest and eminent Christian. They
scoffed at him, and said: “You are a hypocrite;
you are as bad as ever you were.” Still
he kept his faith in Christ, and after awhile, finding
that they could not turn him aside by calling him a
hypocrite, they said to him: “Oh, you are
nothing but a Methodist.” That did not
disturb him. He went on performing his Christian
duty until he had formed all his troop into a Bible-class,
and the whole encampment was shaken with the presence
of God. So Havelock went into the heathen temple
in India while the English army was there, and put
a candle into the hand of each of the heathen gods
that stood around in the heathen temple, and by the
light of those candles, held up by the idols, General
Havelock preached righteousness, temperance, and judgment
to come. And who will say, on earth or in Heaven,
that Havelock had not the right to preach?
In the minister’s house where
I prepared for college, there was a man who worked,
by the name of Peter Croy. He could neither read
nor write, but he was a man of God. Often theologians
would stop in the house grave theologians and
at family prayers Peter Croy would be called upon
to lead; and all those wise men sat around, wonder-struck
at his religious efficiency. When he prayed he
reached up and seemed to take hold of the very throne
of the Almighty, and he talked with God until the
very heavens were bowed down into the sitting-room.
Oh, if I were dying I would rather have plain Peter
Croy kneel by my bedside and commend my immortal spirit
to God than the greatest archbishop, arrayed in costly
canonicals. Go preach this Gospel. You say
you are not licensed. In the name of the Lord
Almighty, this morning, I license you. Go preach
this Gospel preach it in the Sabbath-schools,
in the prayer-meetings, in the highways, in the hedges.
Woe be unto you if you preach it not.
III. I remark, again, that in
order to be qualified to meet your duty in this particular
age you want unbounded faith in the triumph of the
truth and the overthrow of wickedness. How dare
the Christian Church ever get discouraged? Have
we not the Lord Almighty on our side? How long
did it take God to slay the hosts of Sennacherib or
burn Sodom or shake down Jericho? How long will
it take God, when He once arises in His strength,
to overthrow all the forces of iniquity? Between
this time and that there may be long seasons of darkness the
chariot-wheels of God’s Gospel may seem to drag
heavily; but here is the promise, and yonder is the
throne; and when Omniscience has lost its eyesight,
and Omnipotence falls back impotent, and Jéhovah is
driven from His throne, then the Church of Jesus Christ
can afford to be despondent, but never until then.
Despots may plan and armies may march, and the congresses
of the nations may seem to think they are adjusting
all the affairs of the world, but the mighty men of
the earth are only the dust of the chariot-wheels
of God’s providence.
I think that before the sun of this
century shall set the last tyranny will fall, and
with a splendor of demonstration that shall be the
astonishment of the universe God will set forth the
brightness and pomp and glory and perpetuity of His
eternal government. Out of the starry flags and
the emblazoned insignia of this world God will make
a path for His own triumph, and, returning from universal
conquest, He will sit down, the grandest, strongest,
highest throne of earth His footstool.
“Then shall all nations’
song ascend
To Thee, our Ruler, Father,
Friend,
Till heaven’s high arch
resounds again
With ‘Peace on earth,
good will to men.’”
I preach this sermon because I want
to encourage all Christian workers in every possible
department. Hosts of the living God, march on!
march on! His Spirit will bless you. His
shield will defend you. His sword will strike
for you. March on! march on! The despotism
will fall, and paganism will burn its idols, and Mohammedanism
will give up its false prophet, and Judaism will confess
the true Messiah, and the great walls of superstition
will come down in thunder and wreck at the long, loud
blast of the Gospel trumpet. March on! march on!
The besiegement will soon be ended. Only a few
more steps on the long way; only a few more sturdy
blows; only a few more battle cries, then God will
put the laurel upon your brow, and from the living
fountains of heaven will bathe off the sweat and the
heat and the dust of the conflict. March on!
march on! For you the time for work will soon
be passed, and amid the outflashings of the judgment
throne, and the trumpeting of resurrection angels,
and the upheaving of a world of graves, and the hosanna
and the groaning of the saved and the lost, we shall
be rewarded for our faithfulness or punished for our
stupidity. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
from everlasting to everlasting, and let the whole
earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen.