The Lamp
“Thy word is a larap.” — Psalm cxix., 105.
FROM six o’clock last evening until six o’clock this morning darkness rested on our part of the earth, and every few hours there rolls a wave of natural night all over the nations. With lamps, and chandeliers, and torches, and lanterns, we try to drive out the uiglit from houses, and churches, and stores, and shops. He who invents a new kind of a light invents his own fortune and the fortune of his children. But there is a nio;ht of sin and suffering and shame which needs another kind of illumination. Ancient philosophy made a lamp, but it was a dead failure, and the people kept ci’ying out, “Give us a light! give us a light!” After a while prophet and. evangelist and apostle made a lamp. A coal from heaven struck it into a blaze, and uncounted multitudes of people, with an open Bible before them, cry out in rapture and in love, “Thy word is a lamp.”
When, a few years ago, there was a great accident in Hartley Colliery, in England, and two hundred persons lost their lives, the Queen telegraphed down to the scene of disaster, “Can we give you any help? Will you be able to get the men out? How many are lost? Give my sympathy to all the bereft.” What consolation it was to the families who stood amidst the consternation and the terror that the throne of England throbbed in sympathy with their disaster! But I have to tell you to-day a more glorious truth, and that is, from the throne of God the King of heaven and earth telegraphs down through this Bible into the dungeons of our sin and suffering a message of pardon, of love, of sjanpathy, of comfort, of eternal life. Like some light -house on high jDromontory, blessed by ships passing through, darkness and storm, so on the heights of God’s love and grace there flames forth a light upon the great sea of man’s wretchedness and of God’s providence, so that angels on their way earthward, and ransomed spirits on their way heavenward, and devils on their way iiellward, pass through its flash, crying, “Thy word is a lamp.”
You have four or five Bibles in your house — perhaps ten, perhaps twenty. They are such common property you do not appreciate them. If you had only one Bible, and for that you had paid five hundred dollars (the price that was paid in olden time for a copy of the Scriptures), then you would more thoroughly appreciate it, I was once a colporteur for a few months in a vacation, and I came into a home of destitution. I saw a woman there eighty-five years of age, and I said to her, “May I give you a Bible?” “Oh,” she replied, “a Bible would be of no use to me. I can’t see to read. I used to read, but for twenty years I haven’t been able to read a word.” I pulled out of my sachel one of the copies of the Psalms of David and the New Testament in great, large, round type, and I said, “Now, put on your spectacles and see if you can’t read this.” She wiped her spectacles and put them on. “Oh yes,” she said; “why, I can see, after all! I am very thankful to you. Why, yes, I see it: ‘I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my — ‘Oh yes, I can read it, I can read it!” I wish that God to-day would make the Bible as new and fresh to us as it was to her.
I want to show you that the Bible is a lamp — a parlorlamp, a street-lamp, a store-lamp, a church-lamp, a sepulchral lamp.
In parlors all aflash with gas-light and gleaming mirror, and blazing chandelier and candelabra, there may be Egyptian darkness; while in some plain room which a frugal hand has spread with hospitality and I’cfincment, this one lamp may cast a glow that makes it a fit place for heavenly coronations. We invoke no shadow to fall upon the hilarities of life. We would not have every song a dirge, and every picture a martyrdom, and every stej) a funeral pace. God’s lapip, hung in the parlor, would chill no joy, would rend no harmony, would check no innocent laughter. On the contrary, it would bring out brighter colors in the picture; it would expose new gracefulness in the curtain; it would unroll new wreaths from the carpet; it would strike new music from the harp; it would throw new polish into the manners; it would kindle with light, borrowed from the very throne of God, all the refinements of society. Oh that the Christ who was born in a barn would come to our parlor! We need his hand to sift the parlor music. We need his taste to assort the parlor literature. We need his voice to conduct the parlor conversation. We are apt to think of religion as being a rude, blundering thing, not fit to put its foot upon Axminster, or its clownish hands on beautiful adornments, or lift its voice amidst the artistic and refined; so, while we have Jesus in the nursery when we teach our children to pray, and Jesus in the dining-hall when we ask his blessing upon our food, and Jesus in the sittinsr-room when we have family praj’ers, it is a simple fact that from ten thousand Christian homes in this country Christ is from one end of the year to the other shut out of the parlor. Oh that housekeepers understood that the grace of God is the greatest accomplishment, and that no seat is too luxuriant for religion to sit in, and no arch too grand for religion to walk under, and no circle too brilliant for religion to move in! If Christianity at last is to walk up the streets of heaven with seraphim and archangel, it is good enough to go anywhere where you go or where I shall go. To purify the heart, to cleanse the life, to culture the taste, to expurgate all hypocrisy and falsehood and sham, we must have the Bible in the parlor. When Christian people come to spend an evening, they talk about the weather, and they talk about the scandal, and they talk about the crops, and they talk about the markets; but they do not talk about God and Christ and heaven. The thing we most want to-day in all our jDarlors is the lamp of the Bible.
Still further, the Bible is the streei-lamj). When night comes down on the city, crime goes forth to its worst achievements. Not only to show honest citizens where to walk, but to hinder the burglar, and assassin, and highwayman, and pickpocket, we must have artificial lights all over the city. I remember what consternation there was in Philadelphia when one night the gas-works were out of order, and the whole city sat in darkness. Between eleven o’clock at night and three o’clock in the morning, in the dark and unlighted places of the town, crime has its holiday. If the lamp-lighter ceased his work for one week, the town would rot. But there is a darkness beyond all power of gas-light. What is the use of policestation and almshouse and watchman’s club, if there be no moral and religious influence to sanction the law and to purify the executive, and to hang over legal enactment the fear of God and an enlightened public opinion. When in a city crime runs rampant, and virtue is at a discount, and jails are full, and churches are empty-, and the nights are hideous with the howl and the whoop of drunkards, and the saloons boil over with scum, and public officials think more of a bribe than they do of their own conscience, and when great tides of wickedness set down the streets — the first want of such a city as that is the street-lamp of the Bible. Did you ever stand in a church-tower and look down upon a city at night? It is overwhelming. But you feel that beneath all that brilliancy of gas-light there is a surging sea of want and suffering and woe. History says that Dionysius had a great cave built for his prisoners, lie was a cruel man, and be used to go to the top of the cave, put his ear to the opening and listen, and the groans and the sighings of the prisoners came up into his ear and made music for him. God stands at the head of our world, but for a different purpose and with a different heart. He puts his ear to the dungeon, and every sigh comes up stirring his sympathies, and every groan wounding his heart; and he listens and listens all night long. There is but one lamp that can throw light into the dungeon where the prisoner groans, into the hovel where the beggar pines, into the cellar where the drunkard M^allows, into the alley where the libertine putrefies, into the madhouse where the maniac raves. Travelers in Africa tell us that they have seen serpents — a vast number of them — coiled together, and piled up in horrid fold above horrid fold; and then they would hear hundreds of them hissing at once, and the sight and the sound were appalling and unbearable. But if you should take the wickedness of our best of cities, and bring it all together in one place, and pile it up fold above fold, it would be a hissing horror and ghastliness that no human eye could look at without being blasted, and no human ear could hear without being stunned.
Now, how will all these scenes of iniquity in our cities be overcome? They will not be overcome until the church and the school and a Christian printing-press kindle all around about us God’s street-lamp of the Bible. Send the Bible down that filthy alley, if you would have it cleansed. Send it against those decanters, if you would have them smashed. Send it against those chains, if you would have them broken. Send it through all the ignorance of the city, if you would have it illumined as by a flash from heaven’s morning. The Bible can do it, will do it. Gather all the ignorance and the wickedness and the vice of our cities in one great pile — Alps above Alps, Pyrenees above Pyrenees, Himalaya above Himalaya — and then give one little New Testament full swing against the side of that mountain, and down it would come, Alps after Alps, Pyrenees after Pyrenees, Himalaya after Himalaya. What is the difference between New York and Pekin? What is the difference between London and Madras? What is the difference between Edinburgh and Canton? No difference, save that which the Bible makes, 0 city missionary! O philanthropist! O Christian! ‘go everywhere, and kindle up these great street-lamps of the Gospel; and our city, purified and cleansed, will proclaim what the Psalmist so long ago declared, “Thy word is a lamp.”
I know there are people who suppose that the vice of our cities is going to conquer the virtue of the people. I
29-i THE LAMP.
do not believe it. Let error and vice run, if you only let truth run along with them. Urged on by skeptic’s shout and transcendentalist’s spur, let error run! God’s angels of wrath are in hot pursuit, and, quicker than eagle’s beak clutcheth out a hawk’s heart, God’s vengeance will tear it to pieces. Let it run, if you only let God’s AVord run along wnth it.
Still further, the Bible is the best siore-lamp. Blessed is the merchant who under its glow reads his ledger, and transacts his business, and pockets bis gains, and suffers his losses. It may be well to have a fine sky-liglit, to have a magnificent glass show-window, by night to have bronzed brackets spouting fire in a very palace of merchandise; but if you have not this eternal lamp, you had better quit keeping store. What is the reason so many who started in merchandise, with good principles and fair prospects and honorable intentions, have become gamblers, and defrauders, and knaves, and desperadoes, and liars, and thieves? They did not have the right kind of a store-lamp. Why is it, in our day, merchandise is smitten with uncertainty, and three-fourths of the- business of our great cities is only one huge species of gambling, and society is upturned by false assignments, and two-third acts, and repudiations, and imperiled trust-funds, and fraudulent certificates of stock, and wild schemes in railroads without any track, and banks without any capital, and cities without any houses, and joint-stock companies without any conscience? And why are ten thousand of our business men ridden with a nightmare enough to crush Hercules and Prometheus? It is the want of a right kind of store-lamp. What ruined the merchant princes of Tyre, that great city of fairs and bazaars and palaces; her vessels of trade, with cedar masts and embroidered sails and ivory benches, driven by fierce blasts on Northern waters, and then dropping down on glassy Indian seas; bringing wine from Helbon, and chariot cloths from Dedan, and gold and spices from Eahmah, and emerald and agate from Syria; her waters foaming with innumerable keels; her store-houses bursting with the treasures of all nations — that queen of cities, on a throne of ivory and ebony, under a crown of gold, and pearl, and diamond, and carbuncle, and chrysoprase? The want of a right kind of store-lamp. If the principles of religion had ruled in her trade, do you suppose that dry-rot would have sunk the ships, and that vermin would have eaten up her robes, and that God’s mills would have ground up the agate, and that fishermen would dry their nets on the rocks which once were aquake with the roar and tread of a great metropolis? Oh, what thrones have fiillen, what monuments have crumbled, what fleets have sunk, what statues have been defaced, what bai’barisms have been created, what civilization retarded, what nations damned, all for the want of the right kind of a store-lamp!
Men of business! take your Bibles with you to-morrow morning. Place them in your store or shop. Do not be ashamed if any body at noon finds you reading the Scriptures. It is safe always to do business by their teachings. There was a young man in a store in Boston, standing behind the counter, selling goods. A gentleman came in, and asked for some Middlesex cloths, “Oh,” said the young man, “we haven’t any Middlesex cloths, but here is something just as good.” “No,” replied the gentleman, “I don’t want them;” and he passed out. The head man of the firm came down to the young man, and said, “What did that man want?’’ “He wanted Middlesex cloths,” replied the young man. “Why didn’t you tell him they were Middlesex cloths?” “Because they were not, sir.” “Then, you can take your hat and leave.” The youngman took his hat and left. He went into merchandise in Cincinnati, went on up till he became a merchant prince, and not more eminent for wealth than for piety. God will never let a young man suffer for doing right. Full justice may not be done him in this world; but in the last day, before an assembled universe, it will be found out whether or not they were Middlesex cloths.
Still further, the Bible is the best churcli-lamp. I care not how many chandeliers there may be in a church, how many brilliant lights there may be, the Word of God is the best church-lamp. Oh, is there any thing more beautiful than an audience gathered on the Sabbath for Christian worship? There may be no dazzle of theatric assemblage, there may be no glitter of foot -lights, there may be no allegoric images blossoming from pit to dome; but there is something in the place and in the occasion that makes it supernatural. In the light of this lamp I see your faces kindle with a great joy. Glorious church-lamp, this Bible 1 Luther found it in the cloister at Erfurt, and he lifted it until the monasteries and cathedrals of Germany, and Italy”, and France, and England, and the world saw its illumination. It shone under the trap -doors. It looked behind the curtains. It shone under the breastplate of sacerdotal authority; and in the mosques of Turkey, and in the pagodas of India, and in the ice huts of Greenland, and in the mud hovels of Africa, and in the temples of China, God’s regenerated children, in musical Tamil, and sweet Italian, and nasal Chinese, and harsh Choctaw, cried out, “Thy word is a lamp.” It throws its light on the pulpit.
making a bulwark of truth; on the baptismal cup, until its waters glitter like the crystals of heaven. It strikes penitence into the prayers and gladness into the thanksgiving. It changes into a church John Bunyan’s prison, and Covenanter’s cave, and Calvin’s castle, and Huss’s stake, and Hugh M’Kail’s scaffold of martyrdom. Zwinglius carried it into Switzerland, and John Wickfield into England, and John Knox into Scotland, and Jehudi Ashmun into Africa.
Begone, ye scoffers! Down to the lowest pit, ye emissaries of darkness! for by the throne of an omnipotent judgment I declare it that all iniquity shall fall, and all bondage be broken, and all wounds be healed, and all darkness be dispelled, when God’s truth shall go forth “as a lamp that burneth.” We want no sappers or miners to level the wall; we want no axemen or engineers to prepare the way; we want no glittering steel or booming gun or howling Ilotchkiss shell to get us the victory, for the mountains are full of horses and chariots of fire. Hallelujah! for the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not wonder that the stranger who sat the other day beside me in the rail-car reading his Bible, after he had concluded his ‘reading, closed it, and kissed it, and put it in his pocket. There have been times when you did the same. When all else failed you, it was so bright, it was so loving, it was so sympathetic a book that you, too, kissed it.
Still further, the Bible is a semlchral lamp. You know that the ancient Egyptians used to keep lights burning in the tombs of their dead. These lights were kept up for scores, even hundreds, of years. Friends would come from generation to generation and put oil in the lamps, and it was considered a disaster if those lamps went out. You and I will some day go down into the house of the dead. Some have looked upon it as an unknown land, and, when they have thought of it, their knees have knocked together and their hearts fainted. There were whole generations of men that had no comfort about death, no view of the eternal world; and whenever they brought their friends and put them away into the dust, they said, without any alleviation, “This is horrid! this is horrid!” And it was. The grave is the deepest, ghastliest pit that a man ever looks into, unless the lamp of God’s word flashes into it. For whole ages men thought that the sepulchre was a den where a great monster gorged himself on human carcasses. ‘!I will put an end to that,” said Jesus of Nazareth; “I will with mine own voice go down and make darkness flee;” and as he stepped out from the gate of heaven, all the grave-yards of earth cried, “Come! come!” And he came down, bringing a great many beautiful lights; and above this babe’s grave he hung a light, and over this mother’s tomb he hung a light, and over this wife’s grave he hung a light, and over all the sleeping- places of the Christian dead he hung a light. Then he uttered his voice, and it ran along under the ground from city to city, and along under the sea from continent to continent, until mausoleum and sarcophagus and sepulchre throbbed with the joy: “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” And now, if Greenwood and Laurel Hill and Mount Auburn could break their beautiful silence and should speak, their lips of bronze and granite would break forth in the strains of my text, “Thy word is a lamp.”
O ye bruised souls! 0 ye who have been cutting yourselves among the tombs! 0 ye wbo have been sowing seed for the resurrection-clay! 0 ye of the broken heart! I come out to-day and put into your hand this glorious Gospel lamp. It will throw a glow of consolation over your bereft spirit. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
Kabbi Mier went off from home to be gone a few days, and left two beautiful boys. While he was gone, the two lads died. Rabbi Mier returned, not knowing that any thing had happened. His Christian wife knew he would be overcome with grief, and she met him at the door and said to him, “JMy husband, I once had two beautiful jewels loaned to me. I had them for a little while. And, do you know, while 3’ou were gone the owner came for them. Ought I to have given them?” “Of course,” said Rabbi Mier, “you ought to have given them up; you say they were only loaned.” Then she called her husband to the side-room, and removed the cloth that covered the dead children. After Rabbi Mier had for a few moments given way to his grief, he rose up and said, “Now I know what you meant by the borrowed jewels. ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away Blessed be the name of the Lord.’” And so Rabbi Mier was comforted.
Let this sepulchral light gild all the graves of your dead. May this lamp of the text be set in all your parlors, in all your streets, in all your stores, in all your churches, in all your sepulchres! Amen.