Crumbs Under the Table

“But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, 0 woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. — Matthew xv., 26-28.

IT was a Sabbatb afternoon in the Belleville parsonage. I had been trying for two years to preach, but to me the Christian life had been nothing but a straggle. I sat down at the table, took up my Bible, and asked for divine illumination, and it poured like sunlight upon my soul through the story of the Syrophenician woman.

This woman was a mother, and she had an afflicted daughter. The child had a virulent, exasperating, convulsive disease, called the possession of the devil. The mother was just like other mothers; she had no peace as long as her child was sick. She was a Gentile, and the Jews had such a perfect contempt for the Gentiles that they called them dogs. Nevertheless, she comes to Christ, and asks his help in her family troubles. Christ makes no answer. The people are afraid there is going to be a “scene” there, and they try to get the woman, out of Christ’s presence; but he forbids her expulsion. Then she falls down and repeats her request. Christ, to rally her earnestness, and to make his mercy finally more conspicuous, addresses her, saying, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread” — that is, the salvation appointed for the Jews — “and cast it to dogs” — the Gentiles. Christ did not mean to characterize that woman as a dog. That would have been most unlike him, who from the cross said, “Behold thy mother.” His whole life so gentle and so loving, he could not have given it out as his opinion that that was what she ought to be called; but he was only employing the ordinary parlance of the Jews in regard to the Gentiles. Yet that mother was not to be put off, pleading as she was for the life of her daughter; she was not to be rebuffed, she was not to be discouraged. She says, “Yea, Lord, I acknowledge I am a Gentile dog, but I remember that even the dogs have some privileges, and when the door is open they slink in and they crawl under the table, and when the bread or the meat sifts through the cracks of the table, or falls off* the edge of it, they pick it up, and the master of the house is not angry with them. I don’t ask for a big loaf; I don’t ask even for a big slice; I only ask for that which drops down through the chinks of the table — the dogs’ portion. It is the crumbs I am after.” Christ felt the wit and the earnestness and the stratagem and the faith of that woman. He turns upon her, and says, “You have conquered me; your daughter is well now. Go home, mother; but before you get there she will come down, skipping out to meet you.”

There I see the mother going. She feels twenty years younger — getting on in life, but she goes with a half-run. Amidst an outburst of hysterical laughter and tears they meet. The mother breaks down every time she tries to tell it; the daughter with cheeks as rosy as before she fell in the first fit; the doctors of the village prophesying that the cure will not last, because it was not accord* ing to their prescription. But I read in the oldest medical journal of the world, “The daughter was made whole from that very hour.”

In the first place, I learn from my subject that sin treats us like a dog — not as dogs are now treated. Landseer, in his pictures, makes princes of all the canine family. You sometimes find the kennel lined and cushioned. The St. Bernard dogs are admired all the woi’ld over. There is one of them wnth a collar on his neck inscribed with the names of twenty-five persons whose lives he saved from the snow. The sagacity and faithfulness and kindness of the dog have conquered the respect of the world. He dashes from the ship’s deck to save the life of the man overboard. He rushes into the wild surf and brings ashore the exhausted bather. With his wai’m tongue he licks into life the freezing wayfarer. From the Liffy Bridge a child fell into the water. A dog stood on the bridge and saw it fall, and leaped after the child as it came to the surface, and seizing it gently but firmly, brought it ashore. A gentleman stood on the bridge, looking down at it, and said, “How very sagacious that dog is — how very kind and faithfull’’ But he was thrilled through when he saw it was his own child that had been saved. There is no way in which you can so deeply offend a hunter as by maltreating his hounds. The finest picture in the room of Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, the celebrated author, is a picture of “Rab,” the dog immortal. Walter Scott sang his praise. The mastiff, lying, toothless, and blind, and lame, on the door-mat, is the pet of the whole household.

But it was not so in the time of Christ, nor is it so in the East to-day. That whole land is filled with mean curs; they are foul and vermin-covered and snarly, and the most significant thing that a Jew could say about a Gentile, in the way of depicting hatred, was to call him a dog./ It seems as if the sagacity of the dog were not discovered in those days. Job gives him a kick in his thirtieth chapter. Abishai said, in regard to David, “Shall this dead dog curse the king?” Goliath said to David, “Am I a dog, that thou comest out against me with stones?” Hazael, wishing to depict his hatred for some kind of sin, said, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?” Paul, writing to the Philippians, tried to set forth the danger of consorting with certain persons, and said, “Beware of dogs.” John, in Revelation, describing the fact that the abandoned and the dissolute and the sinful shall finally be thrust out of heaven, says, “Without are dogs.” This I say to show you what intense hatred the Jew of olden time had against the Gentile. You must all admit that it must have been a positively sinful hatred, and so through my subject, the first lesson I learn is that sin treats us like a dog. It may flatter you for a while; it may caress you for a while; but no Eastern traveler ever more mercilessly beat a whelp in the streets of Beirut or Damascus than sin will beat you and me if it gets a chance. “The way of the transgressor is hard.”

Sill is a scarification of the soul. Sin comes to the young man. It says, “Take a game of cards — it won’t hurt you. Besides that, it is the way men make their fortune.” It is only a small stake. See how easy it is. The young man plays and wins a horse and carriage and a house — wins a fortune! “See how easy it is,” says sin; “it don’t cost you any thing! Look at those young men who stick to their salaries, away down at the foot of the ladder, while you are in great prosperity.” The young man is encouraged. He goes on, and plays larger and larger; the tide turns against him; he loses the horse, loses the carriage, loses the house, loses the fortune. Crack! goes the sheriff’s mallet on the last household valuable. Down lower and lower the man falls, until he pitches pennies for a drink, or clutches for devils that trample him in wild delirium. “The way of the transgressor is hard.”

Sin comes to a young man and says, “Take this glass — it won’t hurt you. It has a very fine flavor. Take a glass in the morning; it will be an appetizer. Take a glass at noon; it will aid digestion. Take a glass at night; it will make you sleep well.” You are in a glow, while others are chilly. How bright it makes the eye — how elastic it makes the step! One day you meet him, and you say, “What are you doing here at noon? I thought you were at business.” “Oh, I lost my place.” “Lost your place?” God have mercy upon the young man when, through misdemeanor, he loses his place! Every temptation in hell takes after hmi. Hoppled and handcuffed, at thirty years of age, by evil habit! Save that young man; he is on the express train that stops not until it tumbles over the embankment of perdition. “The way of the transgressor is hard.”

Sin comes to a young man, and sas, “Take a dollar out of your employer’s drawer; he won’t miss it; you can put it back after a -while. Take another! take another! Don’t you see how easy it is? Hundreds of dollars added to your salary in a year!” One day the police knock at the door, and say, “I want you.’* “What!” “I want you.” Discovery has come; disgrace, imprisonment, loss of the soul. “The way of the transgressor is hard.”

But you need not look through the wicket of the prison to learn this, and to find the frozen feet, and the bruised brow, and to hear the coughing lungs, resulting from crime. Every man has found out in his own experience that “The way of the transgressor is hard.” Sin demeans us, sin is cruel, sin is desperate — it lacerates, it mauls the soul, it chains you like a dog, it drives you out like a dog, it throws refuse to you like a dog, it whips you with innumerable stripes like a dog. There is a legend abroad, of some one of whom it was foretold that she would die of a serpent’s bite. The father, to keep her away from that, built a castle far out in the sea. He said no serpent could crawl there; but one day a boat came under the castle, and the daughter saw grapes in it, and, letting down a rope, she got the grapes, and was eating them, when she found a serpent entwined in the clusters. It stung her, and she died. Sin may seem luscious and ripe, and to have all the wealth of the vineyard, but at the last “it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” Oh, have nothing to do with its approaches. It promises you a robe; it will cover you with rags. It offers you a chalice of luxurious beverage; it will fill you with wormwood. It promises you a throne; it will drive you into a kennel.

Again, my subject shows you Jesus with Ms hack turned. That woman came to him and said, “Lord, spare the life of my child; it will not cost you any thing.” Jesus turns his back. He throws positive discouragement upon her petition. Jesus stood with his lace to blind Bartimeus, and the foaming demoniac, and the limping paralytic, and the sea when he hushed it, and the grave when he broke it; but now he turns his back. I asked an artist, a day or two ago, if he ever saw a representation of Jesus Christ with his back turned. He said, no. And it is a fact that you may go through all the picture-galleries of London and Dresden and Kome and Florence and Naples, and you will find Christ with full-face and profile, but never with his back turned. Yet here, in this passage, he turned away from the woman. And so, some of you have come at times and found Jesus with his face away from you. Here is somebody who is striving to be a Christian. He has cried to God for mercy, and he has been in as much anxiety about his soul as that Syrophenician woman was about her dauohter. He has come to Christ and said, “Lord, look this way.” No answer. He said, “Lord Jesus Christ, look this way. I come with a soul sin-sick. Look this way.” What did Christ say? “You are a sinner, you are a vile sinner, you are a condemned sinner, you are a dying sinner. Do you expect all the glories of heaven to be given to one as wayward as you have been?” But do not be discouraged, oh seeking soul! put down the pack of thy sins at Jesus’s feet anyhow. If his face is turned away from thee, then put down thy pack of sins at his heel. Then, if perchance he step backward, he will full over it into thine outstretched arms, oh waiting sinner! Jesus will turn his face at the right time. Remember that mercy postponed is mercy augmented. If the waters of thy soul come to flood-tide, they will break away the dam. If the arrowhead be drawn clear back to the bow, it is only that it may be projected further. If Christ turn his back to thee, it is only that the dawn on his face may be more effulgent. Oh, what are a few days or hours of darkness and struggle compared with the eternal illumination! What were the five minutes in which this Syrophenician woman stood in bitterness behind Jesus, compared with the eighteen hundred years in which she has rejoiced before him? Courage, oh sorrowing soul! “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Many a man has put his hand over his shoulder to find the cross, and lo! it was gone; but in bringing his hand back again, he has struck the crown on his head, radiant with pardon and glory. I see horses dashing down the street. They draw a chariot. Who is in it? A man with a bandage over his mouth, and his head wnipped in folds. Who is it? Naaman, the leper. He drives up in front of the place where the prophet lives. The charioteer cries, “Whoa! Whoa!” They stop there. They wait for the prophet to come out. He does not come. He merely sends word, “Go wash in the Jordan, and thou shalt be healed.” And so we come for Christ’s mercy. That mercy may not have appeared as we expected, but let us be willing to take it at any time and in any way it shall come. Blessed are all they who put their trust in him.

Again, I see in my subject Jesus conquered by a human soul. That woman said, “Take this disease away from my daughter.” Christ responded to her, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to dogs.” Then she roused her soul into an acuteness of expression seldom equaled by poet or painter, or orator or satirist, when she said, “Yea, Lord, but even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then he turned, and flung pardon and healing and help into her soul with the words, “0 woman! great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.” I have talked to you sometimes of Jesus, the conqueror. Listen now about Jesus, the conquered. You have seen him on the white horse of victory, all heaven following him on white horses, in his right hand the drawn sword of universal dominion; the moon under his feet, the stars his tiara; the sun only the rocket shot up in the signal - service of his great host; burning worlds only the bonfires of his victory. But now see him surrender — faith, humility, and prayer triumphant.

There are some things which are impossible for Christ: he can not break his oath; he can not despise the humble; he can not resist the cry of faith. Heaven sheathes its sword. It seems as if the prayer of the Syrophenician woman has conquered Omnipotence. The cavaliy troop that John saw coming down the hills of heaven fall back. Behold the victories of prayer! History tells us of Queen Caroline, who, in 1820, tried to get into Westminster Abbey, at the coronation of George lY., her offended husband. With six shining bays, and in a carriage of state, she rode up to the door. She tried this door; no admittance. She tried another door; they demanded tickets. She came to another door, and said, “Surely you will not keep out your queen;” but they said, “We have no orders for your admittance.” So she mounted her carriage and rode away in derision. Let me say that the attempt to get into the temple of Christ’s mercy will be fruitless if we come with pride and come in pomp. We can not ride through the gates in state — we can not come with plumes or pretension. Eichlyrobed Qaeen Caroline failed at Westminster Abbey with George lY.; but the Syrophenician woman of the text, at the door of Christ’s mercy, succeeded with the Lord of earth and heaven. She wanted only the crumbs — she is invited to sit up as a banqueter. Bitter Valley Forge comes before victorious Yorktown. The kingdom of heaven is large enough when you get into it, but the gate is so low that you can not come in save on your knees. 0 man! 0 woman out of Christ 1 push your way this day into that kingdom. With earnest, importunate, confident, persistent prayer conquer all the obstacles in your way. I suppose that the people who were standing around about the woman and around about Christ said, “Don’t bother Jesus with that matter. You can’t make any impression on him. He has no medicine. If the doctors of the village can’t cure your daughter, Christ can’t do it; besides that, you can see, from his looks, that he don’t care any thing for you.” The woman knew better. With prayer she seized Christ, and with omnipotent cure Christ seized the invalid, and “she was made whole from that very hour.” Oh, bring the diseases of your body, bring the diseases of your soul, to Christ I If his face be turned away from you, keep on until he shall turn his face to you. Persevere, implore, beseech, agonize, and conquer.

Why, my friends, you talk as though there were a greater amount of perseverance to be used in the matter of becoming a Christian than in any thing else. Let me say, you have five hundred times in your life exerted more perseverance and put forth more determination than would have made you a Christian. You put it out in worldly directions. If you had taken a thousandth part of your worldly earnestness, and with it gone toward Christ, you would have found him. How men seek for the wealth of this world! Is any man utterly discouraged if he does not make a fortune this year? Does he not keep on trying and trying? Who here, especially among the young, has given up the idea of getting at least a competency? Not one. And yet how treasures do fall out by the way! I was reading, a day or two ago, of the fact that in 1861 there were in this country failures in business amounting to two hundred millions of dollars, and that in 1857 there were failures in this country amounting to two hundred and ninety-seven millions of dollars. Yet who stopped seeking after money? Let me tell you that if you had sought with one-half of the earnestness after Christ and eternal treasures which characterized your search for earthly perishables, you would long ago have had the joy and peace of the Gospel. So it is with the honors of the world. How men push out their energies in that direction, and toil and drudge, and yet how little they are worth after they are gotten! How mightily it was illustrated in the history of William the Conqueror. The world bowed down before him, and yet, when he came to die, the rabble rushed into the room and stole the pictures, and actually stole the last shred of clothing off the corpse of William the Conqueror. And then, when they came to bury him in the chancel of the church, a man stood up with a strong protest that actually staggered back the pall-bearers and procession, and inquired why such a miserable carcass as that should be let down into the church chancel? All the world honoring him a little while before — now all the glorj departed! But the failure of the world’s honors have not discouraged you; you have pushed on after them. When I see that one-half of that energy put out in the direction of the Lord Jesus Christ would have brought you into the peace and the life of the Gospel, I do not ask you to exert any more energy in the divine direction than you do in the worldly direction, but just as much. Strive to enter into the straight gate. Take the kingdom of heaven by violence. Come up to Christ as this Syrophenician woman did, and refuse to be put off, and pray, and pray, and pray again, until he shall turn his face of benediction and mercy upon you.

Are you sitting here this morning unmoved while your last opportunity of salvation is going away from you? Spring is coming. Do you see the ice going out of the river? You see the snow melting. Soon the voice of the turtle will be heard in the land. Are there any signs that the winter is breaking up in your soul? Is the only sound there that of the bittern, and the owl of the night, and the petrel crying through the everlasting storm? When I think of the perils that hang around those who have not secured the pardon of the Gospel, I feel that I must leave the platform and take you by the shoulder, and cry out in your ear, as the angel did to Lot, “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.” I know that the critics sometimes say I am too importunate in pleading with men about their souls; but how can I observe formali- * ties and oratorical proprieties when I see sitting before me thousands within a short time of hell or heaven?

Will you be like the Syrophenician woman upon whom Christ turned his back? Oh, he will not turn it for five minutes. But from those who finally reject him Christ will tarn away; and no entreaty, no cry for mercy, no groaning will win his favor. The harvest will be past, and the summer ended, and the day of grace gone forever! Can that be all true, or is this a fable? Am I merely imagining it? Will there be no great ordeal when you and I, my brethren, must stand naked and hear our doom — Christ saying to some on that day, “Come, ye blessed” — that invitation chiming like the very bells of heaven? Will there be a cry, “Depart, ye cursed?’’ Coming from the study of the Bible this morning into your presence, I feel overwhelmed by these truths, and I cry out, If the Lord be God, follow him. Make up your mind whether the Bible is right or not. If it is wrong, quit these assemblages; they do not amount to any thing. If the Bible is wrong, stop praying; it does not amount to any thing. But if it is all truth, if I am an immortal man, and yet a dying man, if this body must soon perish, and then my soul rise up into the presence of Almighty God, and stand before him in judgment, oh let me appreciate it, and let me act upon it! By the crushed heart of the Son of God, by the flaming throne of heaven, by the raging furnaces of hell, fly for thy life! “Let the wicked forsake his way.” I do not ask what sins you have committed. I do not come with a partial Gospel. I do not say, “This man may receive the Gospel, and for that man there will be no mercy.” I tell you Christ’s arm of mercy is stretched out for enough to take in all this audience, saying, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” Did you ever have a better offer than that? — pardon for all jour sins, comfort for all your trouble, shelter in all your temptations, peace when you die, and joy forever. And all “without money and without price.” May that Almighty Spirit, without which the heart stays hard, and all Christian entreaty is unavailing — may that Spirit this morning set before you the stupendous issue of this hour. Oh, eternity! where shall I spend it? Where will you spend it? Oh, eternity! Joys that will never fade! sorrows that never end! — which shall be mine? Which shall be yours?