STRIPPING THE SLAINS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XII, Issue 4295, 19 August 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

STRIPPING THE SLAINS.

BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE,. D.D. "And it camo to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to atrip the slain, that they fonnd Saul and his three sons fallen' In Mount Gilboa."—l Sam., acixi. 8, Some of you were at South Mountain, or < Shiloli, or Ball's Bluff, or Gettysburg, and I j aßkyou if there is any sadder sight than a battle-field after the guns have Btopped firing ? I walked across the field of Antietam just after tho conflict. The scene was so sickening I shall not describe it. Every valuable thing had been taken from the bodies of the dead, for thero are always vultures hovering over and around about an army, and they pick up the watches, and tho .memorandum books, and the letters,' and the daguerreotypes, and the hats, and the ,coats,, applying them to their, own uses. The dead make no resistance. So there are always camp followers going on and after an army, as when Scott went down into Mexico, as when Napoleon marched up toward Moscow, as when Von Moltke" went to Sedan. There is a similar scene in my text. Saul and his army had been horribly cut to pieces. Mount Gilboa was ghastly with the dead. On the morrow the stragglers came on to the field, and they lifted thelachet of the helmet from under the chin of the dead, and they picked up the swords and bent thcra on their knee to test tho temper of the metal, and they opened the wallets and counted tho coin. Saul lay dead along the ground, eight or nine feet in length, and 1 suppose the cowardly Philistines, to shew their bravery, LEAI'EI> UPON THE TRUNK OF HIS CARCASE, and jeered at the fallen slain, and whistled through the mouth of the helmet. Before night, those cormorants had taken everything valuable from the field: "And it camc to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that the found Saul and his three sons fallen in Mount Gilboa." Before I get through to night, I will shew you that the same process is going on all tho I world over, and every day, and that when men have fallen, Satan and the world, so far from pitying them or helping them, go to work remorselessly to take what little is left, thus stripping the slain.

There arc tons of thousand of young men every year coming from the country to our great citics. They como with brave hearts and grand expectations. They think they will be Rufus Clioates in the law, or Drapers in chemistry, or A. T. Stewarts in merchandise. The country lads sit down in the village grocery, with their feet on the iron rod around the red-hot stove, in the evening, talking over the prospects of the young man who has cone off to tho city. Two or threo of them think that perhaps he may get along very well and succeed, but the most of them prophecy failure ; for it is very hard to think that those whom we knew in boyhood will ever make any stir in the world. But our young man has a line position in a dry-goods store. Tho : month is over. He gets his wages. He is not to have so much money belonging to himself. . He is a little excited, and does. not exactly know what to do with it, and he spends jit in some places where he ought not. Soon there come up new companions and acquaintances from' the bar-rooms and tho saloons ot the city. Soon that young man begins to w»ver in tho battle of temptation, and soon his soul goes down. In a few months, or a few years, he has fallen. He is morally dead. Ho is a mere corpse of what he onuq waa. -Tho harpies of sin snuff up the taint and come on the field. His garments gradually give out. He has pawned his watch. His- health is failing him. His credit perishes. He is too poor to stay in this city, and ho is too poor to pay his way home to the countiy, .Down ! down I Why do the low fellows of the city now stick to him so .closely;? Is it to help J him back to a moral and spiritual life ?. O, no. I I will tell you why they stay ; they are'the Philistines stripping the slain. 7 Do not look where X point, but yonder stands a man who once had a beautiful home in this city. His house had elegant fnrniturey hitf children were beautifully clad, his .name was synonymous with honour and usefulness ; but ; EVIL lIABIT KNOCKED AT lIIS FRONT DOOR, knocked at his back door, knocked at'his parlour door, knocked at his bed-room'door. Where is the piano?- Sold to pay the! rent. Where is the hat• rack 1 Sold to'meat the butcher's bill. Where are the Carpets ? j Sold to get bread. Where is the wardrobo ?, Sold to get rum. Yv here ore the daughters?' Working their lingers off in trying to keep the family together. Worfe and worse, until everything is gone. Who is that going up the front steps of that house ? That is a creditor, hoping to find some chair or bed that has not been levied upon. Who are those two gentlemen now going up thd front, steps? The one is a constable, the other is tho sheriff. Why do they go there? ' The unfortunate is morally dead, socially; dead, financially dead. Why do they go th<a-c 1 I will tell you why the creditors,, and the constables, and the sheriffs go there. ( They I are, someon.their own account, and some oa l' account of the law, stripping tho slain.' • I

: An. ex-member.,<)f Congress, - one: of the most .eloquent afen that ever stood in the House of Representatives, said in his last moments : . "This is the end. lam dying —dying on a borrowed bed, covered by a borrowed sheet, iu a house built by public charity. Bury me under that tree in the middle of the field,. where I shall not be crowded, for I have been crowded all my life." •' Where were the jolly politicans and the dissipating comrades who had been with him, laughing at his jokes, applauding his eloquence, and plunging him into sin ? They havo left. Why ? His money is gone, his reputation is gone, his wit is gone, his clothes are gone, everything is gone.. Why should they stay any longer 1 They have completed their work. They have stripped the slain. There is another way, however, of doing that same work. Here is a man who, through his sin, is prostrate. He acknowledges that ho has done wrong. Now is the time for you to go to that man and Bay : '' Thousands of people have been as far astray as you are and got Dack." Now is the time for yon to go to that man, and tell him of the omnipotent grace of God that is sufficient for any poor soul. Now is the time to go to tell him how swearing John Bunyan, through the grace of God, afterwards came to the celestial city. Now is the time to go to that man and tell him how profligate Newton came, through conversion, to bo a world-renowned preacher of righteousness. Now is tho time to tell that man that multitudes who have been pounded with all tho flails of sin, and DRAGGED' THROUGH AtL ME SEWERS OJ

POLLUTION, . . at last have risen to positive dominion of moral power. You do not tell hini that, do you ? No. You say to him : " Ix>an you money? No. You are down, ion will have to go to the dogs. Lend you a shilling ? I would not lend you two pence to keep you from tho gallows. You are debauched. Get out of my sight now. Down ; you will have to stay down." And thus those bruised adu battered men are sometimes accosted by those who ought to them up. Thus tho last vestige of hope is taken from them. Thus those who ought to go and lift and save them are guilty of stripping tho slain. The point I want to make is this: sin ia hard, cruel, and merciless. Instead of helping a man up it helps him down; and when, like Saul and his comrades, you lie on the field, it will come and steal your sword, and helmet,' and shield, leaving you to the jackal and the crow. But the world and Satan do not do all their work with the outcast and abandoned. A respectable, impenitent man comes to die. He is flat on his back. He could not get up if the house were on fire. Adroitest medical Bkill and gentlest nursing have been a faOure. He has/come to his last hour. What does Satan do for such a man ? Why ho fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable, and harrowing things in his life. He says : "Do you remember those chances you had for heaven, and missed them ? Do you remember all those lapses in condnct! Do you remember all those opprobrious words, and thoughts, and actions! Don't remember them, eh ? I'll makoVyou remember them."'- And then ho takes : all tho past arid empties it on that death-bed, as the mail bags are emptied on the post-office floor. The man is sick. He cannot get away from them. Then the man says to Satan: "You have deceived me. You told me that all would be well. ' You said there' would be no trouble at the last. You told me if I did so and so you would do so and so. Now you corner me, and hedge me up, and submerge me in everything eviL" " Ha! ha!" says Satan, " I was only fooling you. It is mirth for me to see you suffer. 1 have been for thirty years plotting to get you just "where you are. It is hard for you now—it will be worse for you after awhile. It pleases me. Lie still, sir. Don't flinch or shudder. Come now, I will tear off from you the last rag of expectation. I will rend away from your . soul tho last hope. I will leave you bare for tho beating of the storm. It is my business to strip the slain." While men are in robust health, and their digestion is good, and their nerves are strong, they think their physical strength will get them safely through the last exigency. ' They say it is only cowardly women who are afraid at tho last, and cry out for GoiL "Wait till I come to die. I will shew you. You won't hear me pray, nor call ! for a minister, nor want a chapter read me j from the Bible." But After the man has been three weeks in a sick room his nerves ' are not so steady, and his worldly compaj nions are not anywhere near to eheer him j ii|>, and he is persuaded that he must quit } HIS riIYSICAi COURAGE IS ALL GONE. : Ho jumps at the fall of a tea-spoon in a sauccr. He shwers at the idea of going away. Ho says : " Wife, I don't think my infidelity is going to take me through. For God's sake don't bring up the children to do as I have done. If you feel like it, I wish ' you would read a verse or two out of Fannie's | Sabbath-Bchool hymn-book or New Testament." But Satan breaks in, and says : " You have always thought religion trash and a lie ; don't give up at tho last. Besides that, you cannot, in the hour you havo to live, get off on that track. Dio as you lived. With my great black wings I shut out that i light. Die in darkness. I rend away from i you that last vestige of hope. It is my business to strip the slain." . A man who had rejected Christianity, and j thought it all trash, came to die. Ho was in j tho sweat of a great agony, and his wife said : " Wehadbetterhavesomeprayer." "Mary, not a breath of that," he said. "The lightI est word of prayer would roll back on me like rocks on a drowning man. I have come to the hour of test. I had a chance, and I forfeited it. I believed in a liar, and he has left me in the larch. Mary, bring mo Tom Paine, that book that I swore by and lived by, and pitch it in the fire, and let it burn and burn as I myself shall soon burn." And then, with the foam on his lip, and his hands tossing wildly in the air, he cried out: " Blackness of darkness ! O, my God, too late 1" And the spirits of darkness whistled up from the depth, and wheeled around and around him, stripping the slain. Sin is & luxury now; it is exhilaration now ;it is victory now. But after awhile it is collision ;it is defeat; It is extermination ; it is jaekalism ;it is robbing the dead; it is stripping the slain.

Give it up, to-night; give it up. O, how ■you have been cheated on, my brother, from one thing to another. All theso years youhave been under an "evil mastery that you understood not. What hare your companions done for you ? What have they done for your health! Nearly ruined it by car<iratraL What have they done for your fortune?' Almost scattered it by spendthrift behaviour. What have they done for your- reputation? Almost' ruined it with good men. What have they done for your immortal soul? Almost insured its over-' .throw,. .You are hastening on toward the consummation of all that is sad. To-night ! you stop and think, ' but it - is only for a moment, and then you will tramp on,' and at the close of this service you. will go out, and the question will be: "How did you like the sermon ?" and one man will say : " I liked it very well," and another man will say:. / "i didn't likr it at all;" but neither of the answers will touch the tremendous fact that, if impenitent, you are gojng at eighteen knots an hour towards • shipwreck ! Yea, you are in a battle where you will fall, and while your surviving relatives will take your remaining estate, and the cemetery will take your body, the mea- . sengers of darkness will take your soul, and come and go about you for the next ten million years, stripping the slain. Many, are crying out: "I admit;l am sMn, I admit it." On what battle-field, my brothers?' By what weapon ? " Polluted imagination," says one . man; " Intoxicating liquor," says another man ; " My own' hard 'heart," says another man. Do you r«ijiiel.tMs ?' Then I come'to tell. yoji that thV omnipotent Christ is ready 16 walk across

this battle-field, and revive, and resuscitate, ' and resurrect your dead soul. Let Him take your hand, and rub away tho numbness; your head, and bathe off the aching; your heart, and stop its wild throb.' He brought Lazarus to life; He brought Jairus's daughter to life ; He brought the young man of Nam to life, and these are three proofs anyhow that He can bring you to life. When the Philistines came down on the field, they stepped between the corpses, and they rolled over the dead, and they took away everything that was valuable; and so it was with the people that followed after our army at Chancellorsville, and at Pittsburg Landing, and at Stone River, and at Atlanta, stripping the slain ; but the Northern and Southern women—God bless them— came on the field with basins, and pads, and towels, and lint, and cordials, and Christian encouragement; and tlie poor fellows tnafc lay there lifted up their arms and said : "O, how good that does feel since you dressed itand others looked up and said : "O, how you make me think of my motherand others said: "Tell the folks at home I died thinking about them ; and another looked up and said : " Miss, won't you sing.mo a verse of ' Homo, Sweet Home before I die ?" And then the tatoo was sounded, and the hats were off, and the service was read : " I am the resurrection and the life and'in honour of the departed the muskets are loaded, and the command given : " Take aim—fire !" And there was a shingle set up at the head of tho grave with tne epitaph of Lieutenant in tho Fourteenth Massachusetts Regulars," or " Captain in tho Fifteenth Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers." And so tonight, across this great field of moral and spiritual battle, tho angels of God come walking among the slain, and there are voices of comfort, and voices of hope, and voices of resurrection, and voices of heaven. O, the slain ! the slain ! Christ is ready to give life to the dead. He will make the deaf ear to hear, tho blind eye to see, the pulseless heart to beat* and the damp walls of'

YOUR SPIRITIMIL, CIL4-RNEL HOUSE will crash into ruin at Lis cry :" Come forth !" I verily believe there are souls in this house who are now dead in sin, who in half on hour will Ke alive for ever... 'there was a thrilling dream, a glorious dream — you may have heard of it. Ezekiel closed his eyes, and he saw two' mountains,: and a. valley between the mountains. That valley looked, as though thero had been a great battle there, and a whole army had been slain, and they had beenunburied; and the beat of the,land,: and the. vultures coming there, : soon- the bones wore exposed to the sun, and they looked' like thousands of snow drifts oil through tho valley. Frightful spectacle! The bleaching, skeletons oE a host! Bat Ezekiel still kept his eyes shut; andlo, there wore four currents of wind that struck that battle-Held, nnd when those four currents of wind met, the, the' bones began to rattle; and the foot came to the ankle, and.the hand came to the wrist, and the jaws clashed' together, and tho spinal column gathered np the ganglions and nervous fibre, and all the valley wriggled, and writhed, and throbbed, and rocked, and rose up. Thero, a man coming to life. There, a., hundred . men. There, a thousaud; and. all falling into line, waiting for the Bhout of their commander. I Ton thousand bleached skeletons springing up into ten thousand ; warriors . panting for the fray. 1 hope that instead of being a dream it nmy be a prophecy of what we shall see here to-night. Let this north wall be one of the mouutains, and the south wall be taken for another of the mountains, and let all the aisles and the pews be the valley between, for . thero are thousands here to-night without one pulsation of spiritual life. X look off in one direction, and they are dead. I look off in another direction, and they are dead. Who will bring them to lite ? Who shall rouse them up ? If X should halloo at the tap of my voice I could not wake them. Wait a moment ? Listen ! Thero is a rustling. I There is a gale from heaven. It comes from | the north, and from the south, and from the east, and from the west. It shuts us in. It blows upon the alain. There, a soul begins to move in spiritual life ; there, ten souls ; there, a scoro of souls ; there, a hundred souls. Tho nostril throbbing in Divine respiration,' the hands lifted as thongh to take hold of heaven, the tongue moving as in prayer and adoration. Life ! immortal life coming into the slain. Ten men for God —fifty—a hundred—a regiment—an army for God. O, that wo might liavo such a scene her to night. In Ezekiel's words, and in almost a frenzy of prayer, I cry: "Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe npon tho slain." You will have to surrender your heart tonight to God. YOU CANNOT TAKE TIIE RESPONSIBILITY of fighting agaiust the Spirit in this crisis which will dccide whether you are to go to heaven or to hell—to join the hallelujahs of the'saved, or the lamentations of the lost. You must pray. You must repent. You must this night fling your sinful soul on the pardoning mercy of God. You must. I Bee your resolution against God giving woy. Your determination wavering. I break through the breach in the wall and follow up tho advantage gained, hoping to rout your last opposition to Christ, and to moke you "ground arms" at the feet of the Divine Conqueror. 0, you must! Yon must J The moon does' not ask tho tides of the Atlantic ocean to rise. It only stoops down with two great hands of light, tho one at the European beach, and the other at the American beach, and then lifts the great laver of molten silver. And God, it seems to me, is now going to lift this audience to newness of life., Do you not feel the swellings of the great oceanic tides of Divine mercy ? My heart is in anguish to have you saved. For this I pray, and preach, and long, glad to be called a fool for Christ's sake, and your salvation. Some one replies, "Dear me, Ido wish I could have these matters arranged with my. God. I want to bo saved. God knows I want to be saved ; but you stand there talking about this matter and you don't show me how." My dear brother, the work has all: been done. Christ did it with His own , torn "hand, and lacerated foot, and bleeding side. Ho took your place, and died your death, if you will only believe it, only accept Him as your substitute. "But," you say, "how am Ilto get up that feeling?" I reply, the Holy Spirit is ready to help you up to that feeling, if you will only aak Him here and now.

What an amazing pity that any man should go from this .house unblessed, when. such a large blessing .is offered him at less cost than you would pay for. a pin—" without money and without price." I have driven down tonight with the Lord's ambulance to the battle-field where your soul lies exposed to the darkness and the storm, and I want to lift you in; and drivo off witli you towards heaven. O, Christians,. by your prayers help to lift these ' wounded souls into the ambulance. . God forbid that any should be left on the field, and that at last, eternal sorrow, aiid remorse, and despair,. should como up .around .their soul like tho bandit I'Jiiliatines to tho field of Gilboa, stripping the slain.