The Arrival of Autumn

“The summer is ended.” — Jeremiah viii., 20.

THE text was occasioned by the departure of the glory of the Jews; but read on this first autumnal Sabbath, starts up in my mind more thoughts than the bang of a sportsman’s gun ever routed quails out of the grass. “The summer is ended.”

The soul of the intelligent Christian reflects the natural world from all sides. While there are those who have not enough beauty in their souls to speckle the wing of an insect, nor enough music to drown the buzz of a gadfly, to the intelligent Christian, river-wave, and cloud-bank, and tree-branch, and bird-song, are so many evangelists and apostles with their scroll of light to unwind, and their sermon to preach. He sees a cross in every tree, and Christ in every lily; beholds death descending on a falling leaf, and the resurrection foretold in every bud bursting. The year is to him a great temple of praise, on whose altar, as an offering, spring puts its blossoms, and summer its sheaf of grain, and autumn its branch of fruits; while winter, like a white-bearded priest, stands at the altar praising God with psalm of snow and hail and tempest.

The summer season is the perfection of JLhey ear. The trees are in full foliage. The rose — God’s favorite flower, for he has made nearly five hundred varieties of it — flames with divine beauty. I do not wonder that Nero once paid one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for one wreath of roses with which to adorn his supper-table. The origin of the rose is suggested by the legend which says in the East a holy woman was burned at the stake, and when the executioner put the torch to the wood, it kindled into roses instead of fire, and so the world has had plenty of flowers ever since. Summer is the season of beauty. The world itself is only one drop from the overflowing cup of God’s jo3 All the sweet sounds ever heard are but one tone from the harp of God’s infinite melody. When God made all things, he did not half try. To the work of man there is a wrong side, but there is no wrong side to the carpets which God hath nailed to the earth, or to the curtains he hath hung to the heavens. No thread ever snaps in God’s loom. In your recent wanderings you have seen the beauty of the Lord, and the beauty of the summer.

The summei;us-«fe€)u-aeaso»“exposure. Excursion trains come into collision, and the Waiuasset perishes on the Potomac. The perils of the traveler were illustrated by the conductor on the Mount Washington Eailroad this summer. When on the steepest place of that steepest rail-track in all the earth, a man was frightened, and said to the conductor:” Suppose the locomotive should give out, where would we go to?” “Ah,” said the conductor, “there is a brake at the front of the car.” “But,” said the traveler, ‘’ suppose that should give out, where then would we go to?” Said the conductor, “There is another brake, you see, on the cars.” “But,” said the affrighted passenger, “suppose that also should give way, where then would we go to?” And the conductor replied, significantly, “That depends upon how you have lived.”

294 T^E ABRIVAL OF AUTUMjV.

Summer, a season of exposure! Many yield to the temptation, and eat’ forbidden fruit, the sin of our first parents, and die. Diseases that had their root in some cough of the winter, in the summer put forth the white blossom of death. Malaria floats on the August night air. Every bill of mortality is increased. Epidemics drive out their hundred hearses to Greenwood and Laurel Hill. Old age sinks down from exhaustion under the heat, and Death, like an old Herod, sends the messengers to Bethlehem for the massacre of the infants. In the week that ended last 19th of July, five hundred children died in the city of New York. Summer is a season of exposure as well as a season of harvest and a season of beauty.

But that summer wave of beauty is receding. The sap of the tree is halting in its upward current. The night is fast conquering the day. The populations of our great cities are flying homeward. Crowded rail-trains are full of returning tourists. You and I are buckling on the work of the cooler months. The sports of our recreating days are gone. Summer with fever heats has perished, and to-night we twist a wreath of scarlet sage and china-asters for her brow, and bury her under the scattered rose-leaves, while we beat amidst the woods and by the water-courses this solemn dirge,” The summer is ended r

There are three or four classes of persons of whom the words of my text are descriptive. In the first place, they are appropriate to 4he aged. Those in this audience who are far advanced in years were once just like ourselves. There was a time when they could hardly bridle their exuberance. They laughed, they romped, they shouted, they sang. The world was as bright to them then as it is to us now. Though they are in the October of life now, it was June with them once. They take with placidity things that once would have made them blaze with indignation. Sometimes they may chide us because of our vivacity; but when two or three of the aged get together, I have overheard them talk in the next room about occurrences which make me believe that when they were of our age they were just like us. How fast they did drive! What strong wrestlers they brought to the earth! In what a willful mood they upset the sleigh, to see the victims crawl out of the snow-bank! How many “frolics” there were, and how many “quiltings!” The aged do not talk much to us about these things. They wonder why we are not as cool as they are. Ah! the dear souls forget that July is never as cool as November. Aged Christians used to be a great discouragement to me, when I heard of their great attainments, and viewed my own spiritual backwardness; but now they are great encouragement to me; for since I have found that they were about as I am, I have come to the conclusion that the same things which have favored them will favor me, and I get some hint of what a good man I will be in my ninetieth year.

But the aged feel life going away from them. They stop at the top of the stairs, all out of breath, and say, “I can’t walk up stairs as well as I used to.” They hold the book off on the other side of the light when they read. Their eye is not so quick to catch a sight, nor their ear a sound. Instead of the strong stride with which they once went along the street, they take short steps now, as though about to stop in the journey. Their voice is tremulous, and their hand, that failed not to sen the bullet to the mark, has lost its steadiness. Too feebl even to walk out, on pleasant days the cushioned chair is wheeled to the veranda. The bloom and verdure of their life have drooped. June has melted into Julj. July has fallen back into August. August has cooled into September. “The summer is ended.”

I have noticed that in this climate, in the latter part of October or the first of November, there is a season of beautiful weather called Indian summer. It is the gem of all the year. A haziness is in the atmosphere, but still every thing is pleasant and mild. And so I see before me to-night some who have come to that season. There is a haziness on their vision, I know, but the sweetness of heaven has melted into their soul. I congratulate those who have come to the Indian summer of their life. Their grandchildren climb up on the back of the chair, and run their fingers along the wrinkles which time has for a long while been furrowing there. On sunny afternoons, grandfather goes out in the church-yarc and sees on the tombstones the names, the very names that sixty years ago he wrote on his slate at school. Hg looks down where his children sleep their last sleep, and before the tears have fallen, says, “So much more in heaven!” Patiently he awaits his appointed time, until his life goes out gently as a tide, and the bell tolls him to his last home under the shadow of the church that he loved so long and loved so well. Blessed old age, if it be found in the way of righteousness!

But I remark again, that my text is appropriate for all tJiose whose fortunes have jperished. If a man lose his property attliirfy or-forty years of age, it is only a sharp m THE ARRIVAL OF AUTUMN. 297 “liscipline, generally, by which later he comes to larger ■uccess. It is all folly for a man to sit down in mid-life discouraged. The marshals of Napoleon came to their commander, and said,” We have lost the battle, and we are being cut to pieces.” Napoleon took his watch from his pocket, and said, “It is only two o’clock in the afternoon. You have lost that battle, but we have time enough to win another. Charge upon the foe!” Though the meridian of life has passed with you, and you have been routed in many a conflict, give not up in discouragement. There are victories yet for you to gain. But sometimes monetary disaster comes to a man when there is something in his age, or something in his health, or something in his surroundings, which make him know well that he will never get up again. In 1857 it was estimated that for many years previous to that time, annually, there had been thirty thousand failures in the United States. Many of those persons never recovered from the misfortune. The leaves of worldly prosperity all scat-Jteixd — the day-book, and the ledger, and the money-safe, <and the package of broken securities crying out, “The summer is ended.” But let me give a word of comfort in passing. The sheriff may sell you out of many things, but there are some things of which he can not sell you out. He can not sell out your health. He can not sell out your family. He can not sell out your Bible. He can not sell out your God. He can not sell out your heaven! You have left more than you have lost. A man of large wealth died; two men were talking over his death, and one said to the other, “How much did he leave?’’ The other man thoughtfully replied, ‘’Every dollar r So that if the ghost of Stephen Girard or John

Jacob Astor should come into a retail store on Canal Street, they could not get trusted for ten cents, and would not have money enough to ride in a car on Fulton Avenue! The poets always represent ghosts as walking. I suppose they can not afiford to ride. Death is an auctioneer which sells us out of all our earthly possessions, and there is nothing left when once he drops his hammer of stone on the coffin-lid, crying, “Gone! gone!”

But, sons and daughters of God, mourn not when your property goes. The world is yours, and life is yours, and death is yours, and immortality is yours, and thrones of imperial grandeur are yours, and rivers of gladness are yours, and shining mansions are yours, and God is yours! The eternal God hath sworn it; and every time you doubt it, you charge the King of heaven and earth with perjury. Instead of complaining how hard you have it, go home to-night, take up your Bible full of promises, get down on your knees before God, and thank him for what you have instead of spending so much time in complaining about what you have not.

Again, the words of the text are appropriate to all those who have passed through luxuriant seasons of grace without improvement. I know there are those who do not believe in revivals; but I think that if there had been no revivals there would not have been a single church in England or America to-day. It would have been impossible to withstand the flood of sin and wretchedness; had it not been for those large gatherings, the Church of God could not have maintained its ground. Suppose a foreign despotism should attack our country. Would we be afraid of having men come too plentifully to our standard? No! We would say, “Let”

them come, a million men from the North, a million men from the South, and a million men from the West, and let us go out and fight the foe.” The quicker they come and the vaster the multitude, the gladder would be our huzza. Yet there are Christians who, when they see a sudden re-enforcement in the Church, are afraid. Alas! that they are so unwise. A revival that would bring all the twelve hundred millions of our race into the kingdom of God in one day ought not to frighten any honest Christian. But there are men in the house who have gone through revivals, and been unsaved. There are hundreds of men in this audience before me, to-night, who ought to have been saved in 1857. You felt the throb of that national upheaval. You remember the time — many of you do, at any rate — when the enginehouses were turned into prayer-meetings; when in one day, to one of our ports, there came five vessels with seacaptains, who had been brought to God in the last voyage. Religion broke out of church into places of business and amusement. Christian songs floated into the temple of mammon, while the devotees were counting their golden beads. A company of merchants on Chambers Street, New York, at their own expense, hired Burton’s old theatre, and every day at twelve o’clock the place was filled with men crying after God. The telegrams flashed backward and forward from Fulton Street prayer-meeting, and Jaynes’s Hall, in Philadelphia, “God is here! Fifty souls to-day borne into the kingdom. Seventy -five people stood up for prayers! One hundred souls rejoicing in the Gospel I” Oh, that was the healthiest excitement the world has ever felt since the day of Pentecost. Some of you went through all that, and are not saved. It required more resolution and determination for you not to be saved than, under God, would have made you a Christian. But all that process has hardened your soul. Through all these seasons of revival you have come, and you are to-night living without God, on the way to a death without hope. “The summer is ended!”

Again, the text is appropriate to all those who expire after aivasted life. There are two things that I do not want to bother me in my last hour. The one is, my worldly affairs. I want all those affairs so plain and disentangled that the most ignorant administrator could see what was right at a glance, and there could be no standing around about the office of the surrogate devouring widow’s houses. The other thing I do not want to be bothered about in my last hour, is the safety of my soul. God forbid that I should crowd into that last, feeble, languishing, delirious hour questions enough momentous to swamp an archangel! The saddest thing on earth is a death-bed, with a wasted life standinsf on one side of it, and an overshadowing eternity standing on the other side of it, and no Jesus Christ anywhere in the room. Pull from under my head that pillow stinging with thorns, and put under it the hand of Jesus, on which many of my loved ones have died. Though the pillow may seem to the world as hard as the rock on which Jacob slept, still there will be let down to that Christian death -pillow a ladder reaching into the heaven, an angel on the lowest rung, an angel on the top rung, and an angel on every rung between, so that the soul ascending may mount upward, stepping from wing to winoj into the skies. But the commonest thim? in the world is for a man to die without hope. How we all were stunned when last summer, or last spring, the Atlantic struck a rock near Newfoundland; but hark to the crash of ten thousand immortal shipmates! If you have ever slept in a house on the prairie, where in the morning, without rising from your pillow, you could look off on the landscape, you could see it miles away, clear to the horizon: it is a very bewildering scene. But how much more intense the prospect, when from the last pillow a soul looks back on life, and sees one vast reach of mercies, mercies, mercies unimproved, and then gets upon one elbow, and puts the head on the hand to see beyond all that, but seeing nothing beyond but mercies, mercies, mercies unimproved. The bells of sorrow will toll through all the past, and the years of early life and mid-life wail with a great lamentation. A dying woman, after a life of frivolity, says to me: “Mr. Talmage, do you think that I can be pardoned?” I say, “Oh yes.” Then gathering herself up in the concentred dismay of a departing spirit, she looks at me, and says, “Sir, I know I shall notT Then she looks up as though she hears the click of the hoofs of the pale horse, and her long locks toss on the pillow as she whispers, “The summer is ended.”

Again, the text is appropriate to all those loho wahe up iiijL^iScomfited eternity. I know there are those who say,” It doht make any difference how we live or what we believe. We will come out at the golden gate. They are all there together in glory — the Pauls and the Xeros, and the Abraham Lincolns and the John Wilkes Booths, the Eobespierres and the men who were destroyed by the guillotine, and the Court of Charles I. and

Louis XYI. — all together in glory. If I thought it were true that, whatever our belief or behavior in this world, we would go safely, I would preach that. It is a great deal pleasanter to offer congratulation than to offer warning. But that Bible tells us differently, and our own sense of what is right utters an overwhelming negative. Do you believe that your sister and your mother, who lived Christian lives and died holy deaths, are now in a world in the companionship of all the unrepentant libertines and debauchees that went out last year from Baxter Street? My soul abhors the idea. Let me say, if your belief leads you to that, so that you really do think that your Christian mother and your Christian sister are in such society, I want to tell you mine are not! mine are not!

No! No! The good must go up, and the bad must go down. I want no Bible to tell me that truth. There is something within my heart that says it is not possible that a man whose life has been all rotten can, in the future world, without repentance, be associated with men who have been consecrated to Christ. What does the Bible say? It says that “As we sow we shall reap.” It says, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal.” Does that look as though they were coming out at the same place? “And there was a great gulf fixed.” “And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.” If a man rejects the Bible I am not surprised that he believes any thing, or refuses to believe any thing; but how a man can believe in that Bible, and yet believe that all the good and all the unrepentant will go to the same place, I can not understand. Ah! you may ask me strange questions.

YoQ may say, “Are the heathen lost?” I reply, God has not given us supervisal of the heathen. I simplyknow this, that if your soul and mine have had an offer of life from Christ the Lord, and reject it, and continue to reject it, we must go to the bad place, and not come out of it. I am not now discussing the state of the heathen, but discussing the state of my soul and yours.

ISTow suppose a man goes out from Brooklyn, a city in which there are as many religious advantages as in any city under the sun, and suppose he wakes up in a discomfited eternity — how will he feel? Having become a serf of darkness, how will he feel when he thinks that he might have been a prince of light? There are no words of lamentation sufficient to express that sorrow. You can take the whole group of sad words — pain, pang, convulsion, excruciation, torment, agony, woe — and they come short of the reality. The summer of gracious opportunity is all gone. The last clock has struck. The last bell rung. The last call has been rejected. Then looking up to a heaven that it can never reach, and looking down to a ruin it must always inhabit, and shivering with the chill of an unending horror, the soul will wring its hands and cry, “The summer is ended!”

I am glad that that hour of doom has not struck for any body here; and I mean to-night to launch a life-boat large enough to take off all the passengers. Shove off, my lads, and pull for the wreck! What is the use of dying, when the ten thousand voices of heaven cry, Live! live! Oh, there is enough mercy in the heart of my Lord Jesus Christ, in the flash of an instant, to take all this audience into the peace and the hope of the Gospel I If I point you out the peril, it is only because I want to tell you of the way of escape. Say! bondmen of sin and death, will you be free? Men and women bought out of eternal serfdom by your own Brother’s blood, will you accept emancipation? The Lord Jesus waits for you. He stands on two torn feet, spreading out two mangled hands, with which He would press you to His broken heart; while heaven bends over, watching and waiting to see whether you will now repent and believe, lest the night drop, and the last chance of mercy be gone, and the door be shut, and the harvest is past, and the summer is ended.