Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1888 — “USES OF STRATAGEM.” [ARTICLE]

“USES OF STRATAGEM.”

STRATEGY AS APPLIED TO CHRISTIAN TACTICS.

lUti-ent t« Oftrn Nrve.iwry t > Bring About a Vlcroi y—The Siiffe** of the Cannot It * stayed Though It Ha* Felltn Hack Many 1 lined. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached to the 13th Reg. N. V. State National Guards/ encamped at IVekskill, Sunday. Subject; “Uses of Stratagem.” Text, Joshua viU.,'7, “Then ye shall ripe up from the ambush, and seize upon the city.” Aftef briefly reviewing the scene and incidents of the text he saidr la'sson the first. There is such a thing as victorious retreat. Joshua’s falling hack was the first chapter of his successful besiegement.' And there are times in your life when the best thing you can do is to run. You were once the victim of strong drink. The demijohn and tile decanter were your fierce foes. They came down upon you with , greater fury than the men of Ai upon the men of Joshua. Your only safety is to get away from them. Your dissipating companions will come around vou for your overthrow. Run for your life! Fall back! Fall back from the drinking saloon. Fall back from the wine party Your flight is your advance. Your retreat is your victory. There is a saloon on the next street that hits almost been the ruin of your soul. Then why do you go along that street? Why do you hot pass through some other street, 0 rather than bv the place of your calamity? A spoonful of brandy,* taken for medicinal purposes bv a man who, twenty yeiys before, had been reformed from drunkeness, hurled into inebriety and the grave one of the best friends I ever had. Your retreat is your victory. Here is a converted infidel. He is so strong now in his faith in the gospel he says he can read anything. What are you reading? Bolingbroke? Andrew Jackson Davis’ (tracts? Tyndall’s Glasgow University address? Drop them and run. You will be an infidel before you die unless you quit that. These then of Ai will bg. .too much for you. Turn your back upon the rank and file of unbelief. Fly before they cut you with their sword and transfix you with their javelins.

There are people who have been well-nigh ruined because they risked a fool hardy expedition in the presence of mighty and overwhelming temptations and the men of Ai made a morning meal of them. So, also, there is such a thing as victorious retreat in the religious world. Thousands of times the Kingdom of Christ has seemed to fall back. When the blood ot the Scotch Covenanters gave a deeper dye to the heather of the Highlands, when the Yaufiois of France chose extermination rather than make an unchristian summer, when on St. Bartholomew’s Day mounted assassins rode through the streets of Paris, crying. “Kill! Blood-letting is good in August! Kill! Death to the Huguenots! Kill!” when Lady Jane Grey’s head rolled from the executioner’s block, when Calvin was imprisoned in the castle, when John Knox died for the truth; when John Bunvan lay rotting in Bedford Jail, saying: “If Ood will help me, and my physical life continues, I will stay here until the moss grows on mv eyebrows rather than give up my faith, 5 ’ and the days of retreat for the Church were days of victory. The Pilgrim fathers fell back from the other side of the sea to Plymouth Rock, but now are marshaling a continent for the Christianization of the world. The Church of Christ falling back from Piedmont, falling back from Rue St. Jacques, falling back from Bt. Deni's/ falling back from Wurtemburg castles, falling back from the Brussels market place, vet all the time triumphing, Notwithstanding all the shocking reverses which the Church of Christ sutlers, what do we see to-day? Three thousand missionaries of the cross on heathen f round, sixty thousand ministers of esus Christ in this land; at least two hundred millions of Christians on,-!he earth. All Nations to-day kindlingSh a blaze of revival. But there is a more marked illustration of victorious retreat in the life of our Joshua, the Jesus of the ages. First falling back from an appalling height to ■an appalling depth, falling from celestial hills to terrestrial valleys, from throne to manger; yet that did not seem to splice Him'as a retreat. Falling back still further from Bethlehem to Nazareth, to Jerusalem, back from Jerusalem to Golgotha, back from Golgotha to the mausoleum in the rock, back down over the precipices of perdition until He walked amid the caverns of the eternal captives and drank of the wine of the wrath of Almighty God amid the Ahabs and Jezebels and the Belshazzars. O men of the pulpit and men of the pew, Christ’s descent from heaven to earth does not measure half the distance. It was from glory to perdition. He descended into hell. All the records of earthly retreat are as nothing compared with this falling back. Santa Anna, with the fragment of his army, flying over the plateaux of Mexico, qud Napoleon and his army retreating from Moscow into the a wful snows of Russia, are not worthy to be mentioned with this retreat, when all the powers of darkness seem to be pursuing Christ as lie fell back, until the body of Him who came to do such wonderful things lay pulseless and stripped. Methinks that the city, of Ai wan not no emptied of itr inhabitants when they went to pursue Joshua as perdition was emptied of devils when they started for the pursuit of Christ, and He* fell back, and back, > down lower, down lower, chasm below ; chasm, pit below pit, until he seemed to strike the bottom of and scorn and torture. OKI the long," 1 loud, jubilant shout of hell at the defeat oLthe Lord God Almighty! .Ad. . V

But let not the powers of darkness rejoice quite so soon. IH> you hear that disturbance in the tomb of Arimathea? I hear the shebt rending! What means .that stone hurled down the side of the hill? Who ife this coming out? Push this open sunlight. O. it is our Let Him come out: He comes torth; and starts for the city. He takes the spear of the Roman guard, and points that way. Church militant marches up on one side, and the church triumphant -marches down on the other side. And the powers" df dark ness,' being raTight between these ranks of celestial and terrestrial valon-nothing fe~fefrofTheni7 save just enough to illustrate the direful overthrow of hell and our Joshua's eternal victory. On his head be all the crowns. In tliahand-heali thescepters.At His feet be all the human heart; and here, Lord, is one of them.

lx“ason the second; The triumph of the wicked is short. Did you ever see an army in a panic. There is nothing sq uncontrollable. If you had stood at Long Bridge, Washington; durjng the opening of our sad civil war, you would know what At is to see an army run. And when these men of Ai looked Out and saw those men of Joshua in a stampede, they expected easy work. They would scatter tliepi as the equinox the .leaves. <►, the gleeful ami jubilant descent of the men of Ai upon the men' Joshua! But their exhilaration was brief, for the tide of battle turned and' these quondam conqueorrs left their miserable carcasses in the wilderness of Bethaven. So it always is. The triumph of the wicked is short. You make S2O,IKK) at the gaming table. Do you expect to keep it? You will die in the Poor-house; You made a fortune by iniquitous traffic.’ Do you expect to keep it? Your money will scatter, or it will stay long enough to curse your children after you are dead. Call over the roll of bad men, who prospered and see how short was their prosperity. For a while, like the men of Ai, they went from conquest to conquest, but’after a while disaster rolled back upon them, and they were divided into three parts: misfortune took their property, the. grave took their body, and the lost world took their soul.* I am always interested in the building of theaters and the building of dissipating saloons. I like to have them built of the best granite and have the rooms made large and to have the pillars made very firm. God is going to conquer them, and they w ill be turned into asylums and art galleries and churches. The stores in 'which fraudulent men do business, the splent did banking institutions where the President ancLcashier put all their property in their wive’s hands, and then fail for $200,000, all these institutions are to become the places where honest Christian men do business.

How long will it take vour bovs to get through your ill-gotten gains? Thewicked dp not live out half their days. Far awhile they swagger and strut and make a great splash in the newspapers, but after awhile it all dwindles down into a brief paragraph: “Died suddenly, July 22, 1888, at thirty-five years of age. Relatives and friends of the family are invited to attend the funeral on Wednesday, at 2 o’clock, from his late residence on Madison Square. Interment at Greenwood.” Some of them jumped off the docks. Some of them took prussic acid. Some of them fell under the snap of a derringer -pistol. Some of them spent their last days in a lunatic asylum. Where are William Tweed and* his associates? Where are Ketcliam and Swartwout, absconding swindlers? Where is James Fisk, the libertine? Where is John Wilkes Booth, the assassin? and all*the other misdemeanants? The wicked do not live out half their days, Disembogue, O, world of darkness! Come up, Hildebrand and Henry 11. and Robespierre, and with blistering and blaspheming and ashen lips hiss out: “The triumph of the wicked is short.” Alas for the men of Ai when Joshua stretches out his spear toward the city! Lesson the third. How much may be accomplished by lying in ambush for opportunities. Are you hypercritical of Joshua’s maneuver? Do you say that it was cheating for him to take the city by ambuscade? Was it wrong for Washington to kindle camp-fires on New* Jersey Heights, giving the impression to the opposing force that a '*reat army was encamped there when there was none at all? I answer, if the war was right then Joshua was right in his stratagem. He violated no ’flag of truce. He broke no treaty, but by a lawful ambuscade captured the city of Ai. Oh, that we all knew how to lie in ambush for opportunities to serve God. The best of our opportunities do not lie on the surface, but are secreted; by tact, ,bv stratagem, and by Christian ambuscade you may take almost any castle of sin for Christ. Come up toward men with a regular besiegement of argument and you will be defeated; but just wait until the door of their hearts is set ajar, or they are off their guard, or their severe caution is away from home, and then drop in on them from a Christian ambuscade. There lias heeh many-a ■ man—up—to -bischin in scientific portfolios which proved that there was no Christ and no Divine revelation—his pen a cimetar flung into the heart" of theological opponents, who, nevertheless, has been discomfited and captured for God by some little three-year-old child, who lias got up and put her snowy arms around his sinewy neck and asked some simple question about God and heaven. - Oh, make a flank movement; steal a march on the devil; cheat that man into heaven! A five-dollar treatise that will stand all the laws of homeleties may fail to do that which a penny tract of Christian entreaty may •' accomplish. Oh, for more Christians in ambuscade, not lying in idleness, but waiting until just the right time comes! Do not talk to a man about the vanity of this world on the day when he has bought. something at “twelve,” and is going to sell it at “fifteen.” But talk to him about the vanity of the world on the day when he has bought something at “fifteen” and is compelled to sell it at “twelve. 7 Do not rub a man’s disposition the wrong way. Do not take the imperative mood when the subjunctive mood will do just as well. Do not talk in perfervid style to a phlegmatic, nor try to tickle a torrid temperament with an icicle. You can take any Ttian for CTirisT ff "you know how to get at him.“- Do not send word to him that to-morrow at ten o’clock you iiropose to open your batteries upon* lim, but come on him by a skillful, persevering. God-directed ambuscade. Lesson the fourth: The importance of taking good aim. There is Joshua, but how are those people in ambush up yonder to know when they are to drop on the city, and how are these men around Joshua to know when they are to stop their flight and advance? There must be some signal to Stop the one division and to start the other. Joshua, with a spear on which were ordinarilyhung the colors of battle, ppints to ware! -theTafyi He~Stands in such a conspieuous position, and theie ia so much of Abe morning light dripping from that spear-tip, that all around the horizon they see iL' It was a? much as to say: “There is the city. Take it. Take it now. Roll down from the West. Surge .up. front the North;—lf is our, the city of Ai. God knows and we know that a hothihg simply because we do not take good aim. Nobody knows, and we do not know ourselves, ’which point we want to take, when we ought to make -np- ©OT-mmd»what Godwitt have us to do, and point our spear in that direction and then hurl onr body, mind, soul,

time, eternity at that one target. In our pulpits, and " pews, and Sunday-school and prayer-meetings, we want to. get a reputation for saying pretty thingß, and so we point our spear toward the flowers; or we want a reputatiofi for saying sublime things, anu we point our sjiear toward the stars; or we want to get a reputation for historical knowledge, and we point our-spear toward the past; or we want to get a reputation for great liberality, so we swing our spear all around, and it striker? all points of the horizon, and you can make out of it whatever you please; while there is the old world, proud, rebellious and armed against all righteousness; and, instead of pursuit, we ought to turn around, plant our foot jn the strength of the eternal God, lift the old cross and point in it the direction of the worhl’s conquest till the redeemed of earth, marching up from one side and the glorified of heaven marching down from the other side, the last battlement of sin is compelled to swing out the streamers of Emanuel. Oh Church of God, take aim and conquer. I have heard it sgid, “Look out for a man who has one idea;he is irresistible.” I say, “Look out for the man who has one idfca, and that a determination for soul-saving.” I believe God would strike me dead if I dared to point the spear in any other direction. Oh, for some of the courage and enthusiasm of Joshua! He flung two armies from the tip of that spear. It is sinful for us to rest, unless it is to get stronger muscle and fresher brain and purer heart for God’s work. I feel on my head the hands of Christ in a nefv ordination. jDo you not feel the same omnipotent pressure? There is a work for all pf us. Oh, that we might stand up sire by side and point the spear toward the city! It ought to be taken. It will be taken. Our cities are drifting off toward loose religion, or what is tehned “liberal Christianity,” which is so liberal that it gives up all the cardinal doctrines of the' Bible, so liberal that it surrenders the rectitude of the throne of the Almighty. That is liberalitp with a vengeance. Let us decide upon which we, as Christian men, have 1 to do, and, in the strength of God, go to work and do it.