Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1889 — MYSTERIES OF LIFE. [ARTICLE]

MYSTERIES OF LIFE.

THE WORLD IS FUDL dF THE - MYSTERIOUS Which Cannot Be Solved this Side the Grave—The Reckoning of the Last Days Will Be Just to the Wicked and Good. [, Rev. Dr/vffalmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “Dark Sayings on a Harp.” Text Psalm xlix., 4. He said: The world is full of the inexplicable, the im passable, the unfathomable, the insurmountable. We cannot go three steps in any direction without coming up against a hard wall of mystery, riUdles, paradoxes, profundities,labyrinths, problems that we cannot solve, hieroglyphics that we cannot decipher, anagrams we cannot spell out, sphinxes that will not speak. For that reason, David in my text proposed to take up some of these somber and dark things and try to set them to sweet music: “I will open my dark sayings on a harp.” So I look off upon society and find people in unhappy conjunction of circumstances, and they do not know what it means, -and they have a right to ask, why is this? and why is that? and I think I will be doing a good work by trying to explain some of these strange things and make you more content with your lot, and I shall only be answering questions that have often been asked me, of that we have ail asked ourselves, whilp I try to set these mysteries to music and open my- dark sayings on a harp. Interrogation the first: Why does God take out of this world those who are useful and whom we cannot spare and leave alive and in good health so many who are only a nuisance or a Fositive injury to the world? I thought would begin with the very tougness of all the seeming inscrutables. Many ’of the most useful men and women die at thirty or forty years of age, while you often find useless people alive at sixty and seventy and eighty: Similar questions are oiten asked. Here are two men. The one is a noble character and a Christian man; hfi chooses for lifetime companion one who has been tenoerly reared, and she is worthy"of him ana he is worthy of her; as merchant, or farmer, or professional man, or mechanic, or artist, he toils to educate and rear his children; he is succeeding, but he has not yet established for his family a full competency, he seems absolutely indispensable to that household; but one day before he has ■ paid off the mortgage on his house, he is coming home through a strong northeast wind and a chill strikes through him, and four days of pneumonia ten 1 his earthly career, and the wife and children go into a struggle for shelter and food. His next door neighbor is a man who, though strong and well, lets his wife support him; he id round at the grocery store or some other general loafing place in the evenings while his wife sews; his boys are imitating bis example and lounge and swagger and swear; all the use tfiat man is in that house is to rave because the coffee is cold when he comes to a late breakfast, or to say cutting things about his wife’s looks wtieu he furnishes nothing for her wardrobe. The best thing that could happen to that would be that man’s funeral; but he declines to die; fie lives on ami on and on. So we have all noticed that many of the useful are early cut off, while the parasites of society have great' vital tenacity. I take up this dark saying on my harp and give three or four thrums.on the string in the way qtsurmisipg and hopeful guess. Perhaps thte useful man was taken out of the world because he and his family were so constructed that they could not have endured some great prosperity that might have been just ahead, and they altogether might have gone down in the vortex of worldliiivss which every year swallows up ten thousand households. And so-he went while he was humble and consecrated, and they were by the severities ta life kept clpse to Christ and fitted for usefulness here and high seats in heaven, and when they meet at last before the Throne they will acknowledge .that, though the furnace was hot, it: pm itied them and prepared them for an eternal career of glory and reward forwhica no other kind of life could have fitted th-tn. On the other hand, the useless man lived on to fifty or sixty, or seventy years, because all the ease he ever can have he must have in this world, and you ought not, therefore, begrudge him of his earthly longevity. In ail the ages there has not a single loafer ever entered heaven. There is no place there for him to hang around. Not in the temples, for they are full of the most vigorous, alert and rapturous worship. Not on the river bank, for that is the place ©where the conquerors recline. Not in the gates, because there are multitudes entering, and we are told that at each of the twelve gates there is an angei, and that celestial guard would • not allow the place to be blocked up with idlers. If the good and useful go early, rejoice for them that they have so soon got through with human life, which at best is a struggle. Andi, if the useless and bad stay, rejoice that they maybe out in the world’s fresh air a good many years before their final incarceration. Interrogation the second: Why do so marly good people have so much trouble —sickness, banxrUptcy, persecution, the three black vultures sometimes putting their fierce beaks into one set of jangled neryes? 1 think now of a good friend I once had. He was a consecrated Christian man, an elder in the church and as polished a Christian gentleman as ever walked Broadway. First his general health gave out and he hobbled around on a cane, an old man at forty. • After a while paralysis struck him. Having by poor health been compelled suddenly to quit business, he lost what property he had. Then his beautiful daughter died.** Then a son became hopelessly demented. Another son, splendid of mind and commanding of presence, resolved that he would take care of his father’s household, but under the swoop of yellow fever at Fernandina, Fla., he suddenly expired. 8o you know good men and women who have had enough troubles, you think, to crush fifty people. No worldly philosophy could take such a trouble and set it to muster or play it on a violin or flute or dulcimer or sackbut, but I dare to open that dark saying on a gospel harp. ♦You wonder# that very consecrated people haveStouble? Did you eler know any very consecrated man or s woman who had not had great trouble? • Never It was through their troubles sanctified that they were, made very good. If you

find any where in this city a man who has now and always has had perfect health, and never lost a child, and has always been popular, and never had business struggle or misfortune, who is distinguished for goodness—pull your wire for a telegraph messenger boy and send me word, and I will drop everythingand go right awa/tolook at him. There never has been a man like that, and never wili be. Who are tl ole arrogant, self-conceited creatures who movi about without sympathy for others, and who think more of a St. Bernard dog, or an Alderney cow, or a Southdown sheep, or a Berkshire pig than of a man? They never had any trouble, or the trouble wad never sanctified.' Who are those men who listen with moist eye as you toil (hem of suffering and who haye pathos in thefr voice and a kindnetein their voice and an excuse or an alleviation for those gone astray? They are the men who have graduated at the Royal Academy of Trouble and they have the diploma written in wrinkles on their own Countenances. My! my! What heartaches they had! What tears they have wept! What injustice they have-suffered! The mightiest influence for purification is trouble. No diamond is flt for-A crown until it is cut No wheat fit for bread till it is ground. There are only three things that can break off a chain—a hammer, a file or a fire, and trouble is all three of them. The greatest writers, orators and reformers get much of their fore - from trouble. When in olden time a man was to be honored with knighthood, he was struck with the flat of the sword. Bat those who have come .to the honor of knighthood in tne kingdom of God were first struck, not with the flat of the sword, but with the keen edge of the ci»i-u-r. To build his maziiificeni'e of character, Paul could not have spared one lash, one prison, one stoning, one anathema, one poisonous viper from the hand, one shipwreex. What is true; of individuals is true of nations. The horrors of the American Revolution gave this country this side of the Mississippi River to independence, and the conflict betweeh England and France gave the most of this country west of the Mississippi to the United States. France owned ity but Napoleon, fearing that England would tak-> it, practically fimde a present to the United States—for he received only $15,090,600—0f Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, lowa, Minnesota; Colorado, Dakota. Montana, Wyoming and the Indian Territory. Out of the fire of the American Revolution dame this country east of the Mississippi; out of the European war came that west of the Mississippi River. The British Empire rose to its present overtowering grandeur through gunpowder plot, and Quy Fawkes conspiracy and Northampton insurrection, and Walter Raleigh’s beheading, and Bacon’s bribery, and Cromwell’s dissolution of .Parliament, and the b ttle of Edge Hili. Trouble a good thing for the rocks, a good thing for nations, as well as a good thing for individuals. So when you push against me with a sharp interrogation point, Why do the good suffer? I Open the dark saying of a harp, and, though I can neither play an organ, nor cornet, nor hautboy, nor bugle, nor clarionet, I have taken some lessons on the gospel harp, and if you would like to hear me I will play you these: “All things work together for good to those who love God., Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless' afterward .it yieldeth all possible fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” “Weeping may » endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.” What a sweet thing is a harp; and I wonder not that in Wales, the country of my ancestors, the harp has become the national instrument. * Interrogation third: Why did a good God let sin and trouble come into the world when He might have kept them out? ® My reply is, He had a good reason. He had reasons that He bas never given us. He had reasons which He could no more make us understand -in our finite state than the father starting opt on some great and elaborate enterprise could make the two-year-old child in its armed chair comprehend it. One was to demonstrate what grandeur of character may bb achieved on, earth by conquering evil. Had there been no evil to conquer and no trouble to console, then tnis universe would never have known an Abraham ora Moses or a Joshua or an Ezekiel or a Paul or a Christ or a Washington or a John Milton or a John Howard, and a million victories which have been gained by the consecrated spirito of all ages would never have been’ gained. Had there been no battle there would have been no victory. Nine-tenths of the anthems of heaven weuld never have oeen • sung. Heaven could never have been a thousandth part of the heaven that it is. I will not say that I am glad that sin and sorrow did enter, but I do say that I am glad that after God has given ail his reasons to 'an assembled universe he will be more honored than if sin apd sorrbw had never entered, and that the unfallen celestials will be outdone and will pat down their trumpets to listen, and it will be in heaven when those who have conquered sin and sorrow shall enter, as it would be in a smau I singing school on earth if Thalberg and Gottschalk aud Wagner and Beethoven and Rheinberger ipd Schumann should all at once enter. altwassafd that Diana, the goddess, could not be present to keep her temple at Ephesus from burning because she was attending upon the birth of him who was to be Alexander the Great. But I tell you that your God and my God is so great in small things as well as large things that He could attend the Cradle of a babe and at the same time the burning of a world. And God will make it all right with you, and there is one song that you will sing every hour your first ten years in heaven, and the refrain of the song will be: “I am so glad God did not let me have it my own way.” Your case will be all fixed up in heaven, and there will be such a reversal of conditions that we can hardly find each other for some ' time. Some of us who have lived in first-rate houses here and tin first-rate neighborhoods will be-found because of our lukewarmness Of our earthly service, living on one of the back streets of the celestial city, and clear down at the end of it, at some one who had unattractive earthly abodes, and cramped one at that, will, in the heavenly city, bfe in a house fronting the Royal Plaza, right by the Imperial*fountain, or on the heights overlooking-the River of Life, the char iota of salvation halting at your, door, while those visit you who are more than

conquirors and those who are Kings and Queens unto God forever. You, and you mv sister, who have ft so hard here, will have it so fine and grand there that you hardly know yourself and will feel disposed to dispute your own identity. Amid the tussle and romp of reunion I tell you whose hand of welcome you had better clasp and whose cheek is entitled to the first kiss. It is the hand and cheek of Him without whom you would never have got there at all, tfie Lord Jesus, the darling of the skies, As He cries out, I have loved thee with an everlasting love and the fires cou’d riot burn it and the floods could not drown it.” Then, you, my dear people, having no more use for my poor harp on which I used to open your dark sayings, and whose chords sometime snapped, dispoiling the symphony, you will take down your own harps from the widows that grow by the eternal water-courses and play together {those celestial airs, some of the names of which are entitled, “The King in His Beauty,” “The Land That Was Far Off,” ‘Jerusalem, the Golden,” “Home Again.” Andas the last dark curtain of the mystery is forever lifted it will be as though all the oratorioi that were ever heard had been rolled into one, and “Israel in Egypt” and “Jeptha’s Daughter” and Beethoven’s “Overture in C” and Ritter’s fl st sonata in D minor arid the “Creation” and the “Messiah” nad been blown from the lips of one tr impet or been envoked by the sweep of one bow or had dropped from the vibrating chords of one harp. But here I must slow up, led; in trying to sol ve mysteries I add to the mystery that we have already won ‘ered at — namely, why preachers should keep on after all the nearen are tired?* So I gather up into one great armful all the whys and hows ana wherefores of yoUr life and mine, which we have not had time or the ability to answer, and write on them the words “adjourned to etern ty.” I rejoice that we do not understand all things now for if we did, what would we learn in heaven? If we knew it all down herd in the freshman and sophmore claw, what would be the t use of ottrvgoing up to'stand among the juniors and seniors?