Gospel Archery

’ He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.” — Genesis x., 9.

IN our day hunting is a sport; but in the lands and the times infested of wild beasts, it was a matter of life or death with the people. It was very different from going out on a sunshiny afternoon with a patent breechloader, to shoot reed-birds on the flats, when Pollux and Achilles and Diomedes went out to clear the land of lions and tigers and bears. My text sets forth Nimrod as a hero, when it presents him with broad shoulders and shaggy apparel and sun-browned face, and arm bunched with muscle — “a mighty hunter before the Lord.” I think he used the bow and the arrows with great success, practicing archery.

I have thought if it is such a grand thing and such a brave thing to clear wild beasts out of a country, if it is not a better and braver thing to hunt down and destroy those great evils of society that are stalking the land with fierce eye, and bloody paw, and sharp tusk, and quick spring. I have wondered if there is not such a thing as Gospel archery, by which those who have been flying from the truth may be captured for God and heaven. The Lord Jesus in his sermon used the art of angling for an illustration, when he said, “I will make you fishers of men.” And so I think I have authority for using hunting as an illustration of Gospel truth; and I pray God that there may be m.any a man in this congregation who shall begin to study Gospel archery, of whora it may, after a while, be said, “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.”

How much awkward Christian work there is done in the world! How many good people there are who drive souls away from Christ instead of bringing them to him! All their fingers are thumbs — religious blunderers who upset more than they right. Their gun has a crooked barrel, and kicks as it goes off. They are like a clumsy comrade who goes along with skillful hunters; at the very moment he ought to be most quiet, he is crackling an alder, or falling over a log and frightening away the game. How few Christian people have ever learned the lesson of which I read at the beginning of this service, how that the Lord Jesus Christ at the well went fi-om talking about a cup of water to the most practical religious truths, which won the woman’s soul for God! Jesus in the wilderness was breaking bread to the people. I think it was very good bread; it was very light bread, and the yeast had done its work thoroughly. Christ, after he had broken the bread, said to the people, “Beware of the yeast, or of the leaven of the Pharisees.” So natural a transition it was, and how easily they all understood him! Bat how few Christian people there are who understand how to fasten the truths of God and reliiion to the souls of men! Truman Osborne, one of the evangelists who went through this country some years ago, had a wonderful art in the right direction. He came to niy father’s house one day, and while we were all seated in the room, he said, “Mr. Talmage, are all your children Christians?” Father said, “Yes, all but De Witt.” Then Truman Osborne looked down into the fire-place, and began to tell a story of a storm that came on the mountains, and all the sheep were in the fold; but there was one lamb outside that perished in the storm. Had he looked me m the eve I should have been angered when he told that story; but he looked into the fire-place, and it was so pathetically and beautifully done that I never found any peace until I was sure I was inside the fold, where the other, sheep are.

The archers of olden time-st»di€d — their art. They “were very precise in the matter. The old books gave especial directions as to how an archer should go, and as to what an archer should do. He must stand erect and firm, his left foot a little in advance of the right foot. With his left hand he must take hold of the bow in the middle, and then with the three fingers and the thumb of his right hand he should lay hold the arrow and affix it to the string — so precise was the direction given. But iiow clumsy we are about religious work! How little skill and care we exercise! How often our arrows miss the mark! Oh! that there were lay colleges established in all the towns and cities of our land, where men might learn the art of doing good — studying spiritual archery, and known as “mighty hunters before the Lord!”

In the first place, if you want to be effectual in doing good, you must be very sure of your weapon. There was something very fascinating about the archery of olden times. Perhaps you do not know what they could do with the bow and arrow. Why, the chief battles fought by the English Plantagenets were with the long-bow. They would take the arrow of polished wood, and feather it with the plume of a bird, and then it would fly from the bowstring of plaited silk. The bloody fields of Agincourt, and Solway Moss, and Neville’s Cross heard the loud thrum of the archer’s bowstring. Now, my Christian friends, we have a mightier weapon than that. It is the arrow of the Gospel; it is a sharp arrow; it is a straight arrow; it is feathered from the wing of the dove of God’s Spirit; it flies from a bow made out of the wood of the cross. As far as I can estimate or calculate, it has brought down three hundred millions of souls. Paul knew how to bring the notch of that arrow on to the bowstring, and its whir was heard through the Corinthian theatres, and through the court-room, until the knees of Felix knocked together. It was that arrow that stuck in Luther’s heart when he cried out, “Oh, my sins! Oh, my sins!” If it strike a man in the head, it kills his skepticism; if it strike him in the heel, it will turn his step; if it strike him in the heart, he throws up his hands, as did one of old when wounded in the battle, crying, “O Galilean! thou hnst conquered!”

In the armory of the Earl of Pembroke, there are old corselets which show that the arrow of the English used to go through the breastplate, through the body of the warrior, and out through the backplate. What a symbol of that Gospel which is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and body, and of the joints and marrow! Would to God we had more faith in that Gospel! The humblest man in this house, if he had enough faith in it, could bring a hundred souls to Jesus — perhaps five hundred. Just in proportion as this age seems to believe less and less in it, I believe more and more in it. What are men about that they will not accept their own deliverance? There is nothing proposed bj men that can do any thing like this Gospel. The religion of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the philosophy of icicles; the religion of Theodore Parker was a sirocco of the desert, covering up the soul with dry sand; the religion of Kenan is the romance of believing nothing; the religion of Thomas Carlyle is only a condensed London fog; the religion of the Huxleys and the Spencers is merely a pedestal on which human philosophy sits shivering in the night of the soul, looking up to the stars, offering no help to the nations that crouch and groan at the base. Tell me where there is one man who has rejected that Gospel for another, who is thoroughly satisfied, and helped, and contented in his skepticism, and I will take the car to-morrow and ride five hundred miles to see him. The full power of the Gospel has not yet been touched. As a sportsman throws up his hand and catches the ball flying through the air, just so easily will this Gospel after a while catch this round world flying from its orbit, and bring it back to the heart of Christ. Give it full swing, and it will pardon every sin, heal every wound, cure every trouble, emancipate every slave, and ransom every nation. Ye Christian men and women who go out this afternoon to do Christian work, as you go into the Sunday-schools and the lay-preaching stations, and the penitentiaries, and the asylums, I want you to feel that you bear in your hand a weapon, compared with which the lightning has no speed, and avalanches have no heft, and the thunder-bolts of heaven have no power; it is the arrow of the omnipotent Gospel. Take careful aim! Pull the arrow clear back until the head strikes the bow! Then let it fly. And may the slain of the Lord be many I

90 GOSPEL AliCHEliY.

Again, if you want to be skillful in spiritual archery, you must bunt in unfrequented and secluded places. Why does the hunter go three — or four diyS~^T^4ke,P^ vania forests or over Kaquette Lake into the wilds of the Adirondacks? It is the only way to do. The deer are shy, and one “bang” of the gun clears the forest. From the California stage you see, as you go over the plains, here and there, a coyote trotting along, almost within range of the gun — sometimes quite within range of it. No one cares for that; it is worthless. The good game is hidden and secluded. Every hunter knows that. So many of the souls that will be of most worth for Christ and of most value to the Church are secluded. They do not come in your way. You will have to go where they are. Yonder they are down in that cellar; yonder they are up in that garret — far away from the door of any church; the Gospel arrow has not been pointed at them. The tract distributer and the city missionary sometimes just catch a glimpse of them, as a hunter through the trees gets a momentary- sight of a partridge or roebuck. The trouble is, we are waiting for the game to come to us. We are not good hunters. We are standing on Montague Street and Schermerhorn Street, expecting that the timid antelope will come up and eat out of our hand. We are expecting that the prairie-fowl will light on our church -steeple. It is not their habit. If the Church should wait ten millions of years for the world to come in and be saved, it will wait in vain. The world will not come. What the Church wants now is to lift its feet from damask ottomans, and put them in the stirrups. The Church wants not so much cushions as it wants saddle-bags and arrows. We have got to put aside the gown and the kid-gloves, and put on the hunting -shirt. We want a pulpit on wheels. We have been fishing so long in the brooks that run under the shadow of the Church that the fish know us, and they avoid the hook, and escape as soon as we come to the bank, while yonder is Upper Saranac and Big Tupper’s Lake, where the first swing of the Gospel net would break it for the multitude of the fishes. There is outside work to be done. What is it that I see in the backwoods? It is a tent. The hunters have made a clearing, and camped out. What do they care if they have wet feet, or if they have nothing but a pine branch for a pillow, or for the north-east storm? If a moose in the darkness steps into the lake to drink, they hear it right away. If a loon cry in the midnight, they hear it. So, in the service of God, we have exposed work. We have got to camp out and rough it. We are putting all our care on the forty thousand people in Brooklj-n who, they say, come to church. What are we doing for the three hundred and-’’ sixty thousand that do not come? Have they no souls? Are they sinless, that they need no pardon? Are there no dead in their houses, that they need no comfort? Are they cut off from God, to go into eternity — no wing to bear them, no light to cheer them, no welcome to greet them? I hear to-day, surging up from that lower depth of Brooklyn, a groan that comes through our Christian assemblages and through our beautiful churches; and it blots out all this scene from my eyes to-day, as by the mists of a great Niagara, for the dash and the plunge of these great torrents of life dropping down into the fathomless and thundering abysm of suffering and woe. I sometimes think that just as God blotted out the churches of Thyatira and Corinth andLaodicea because of their sloth and stolidity, he will blot out American and English Christianity, and raise on the ruins a stalwart, wide-awake missionary church that can take the full meaning of that command, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” — a command, you see, punctuated with a throne of heaven and a dungeon of hell.

I remark, further, if you want to succeed in spiritual archery you must have comage. If the hunter stands with trembling hanJ~oF shoulder that flinches with fear, instead of his taking the catamount, the catamount takes him. What would become of the Greenlander if, when out hunting for the bear, he should stand shivering with terror on an iceberg? What would have become of Du Chaillu and Livingstone in the African thicket, with a faint heart and a weak knee? When a panther comes within twenty paces of you, and it has its eye on you, and it has squatted for the fearful spring, “Steady there!” Courage, oh, ye spiritual archers 1 There are great monsters of iniquity prowling all around about the community. Shall we not in the strength of God go forth and combat them? We not only need more heart, but more backbone. What is the Church of God that it should fear to look in the eye any transgression? There is the Bengal tiger of drunkenness that prowls around; and ‘.instead of attacking it, how many of us hide under the *€hurch-pew or the communion-table! There is so much invested in it we are afraid to assault it; millions of dol-GOSrEL ARCHERY. 93

]ars in barrels, in vats, in spigots, in corkscrews, in gin-palaces with marble floors and Italian -top tables, and chased ice -coolers, and in the strychnine, and the logwood, and the tartaric acid, and the mix vomica that go to make up our “pure” American drinks. I looked with wondering eyes on the “Heidelberg tun.” It is the great liquor- vat of Germany, which is said to hold eight hundred hogsheads of wine, and only three times in a hundred years it has been filled. But, as I stood and looked at it, I said to myself, “That is nothing — eight hundred hogsheads. Why, our American vat holds five million two hundred thousand barrels of strong drinks, and we keep two hundred thousand men with nothing to do but to see that it is filled.” Oh! to attack this great monster of Intemperance, and the kindred monsters of fraud and uncleanness, requires you to rally all your Christian courage. Through the press, through the pulpit, through the platform you must assault it. Would to God that all our American Christians would band together, not for crack-brained fanaticism, but for holy Christian reform! I think it was in 1793 that there went out from Luck now, India, under the sovereign, the greatest hunting-party that was ever projected. There were ten thousand armed men in that hunting-party. There were camels, and horses, and elephants. On some princes rode, and royal ladies under exquisite housings, and five hundred coolies waited upon the train, and the desolate places of India were invaded by this excursion, and the rhinoceros, and deer, and elephant fell under the stroke of the sabre and bullet. After a while the party brought back trophies worth fifty thousand rupees, having left the wilderness of India ghastly with the slain bodies of wild beasts. Would to God that, instead of here and there a straggler going out to fight these great monsters of iniquity in our country, the millions of membership of our churches would band together and hew in twain these great crimes that make the land frightful with their roar, and are fattening upon the bodies and souls of immortal men! Who is ready for such a party as that? Who will be a mighty hunter for the Lord?

I remark, again, if you want to be successful in spiritual archery, you need not only to bring (^oi£?2jthegam:e, but brinjtr — I think one of the niostl)eautifal pictures’of Thorwaldsen is his “Autumn.” It represents a sportsman coming home, and standing under a grapevine. He has a staff over his shoulder, and on the other end of that staff are hung a rabbit and a brace of birds. Every hunter brings home the game. No one would think of bringing down a reindeer or whipping up a stream, for trout, and letting them lie in the woods. At even -tide the camp is adorned with the treasures of the forest — beak, and fin, and antler.

If you go out to hunt for immortal souls, not only bring them down under the arrow of the Gospel, but bring them into the Church of God, the grand home and encampment we have pitched this side the skies. Fetch them in; do not let them lie out in the open field. They need our prayers and sympathies and help. That is the meaning of the Church of God — help. Oh, ye hunters for the Lord! not only bring down the game, but bring it in.

If Mithridates liked hunting so well that for seven years he never went indoors, what enthusiasm ought we to have who are hunting for immortal souls! If

Domitian practiced archery until he could stand a boy down in the Koman amphitheatre with a hand out, the fingers apart like that, and then the king could shoot an arrow between the fingers without wounding them, to what drill and what practice ought not we to subject ourselves in order to become spiritual archers and “mighty hunters before the Lord!” But let me say you will never work any better than you pray. The old archers took the bow, put one end of it down beside the foot, elevated the other end, and it was the rule that the bow should be just the size of the archer; if it were just his size, then he would go into the battle with confidence. Let me say that your power to project good in the world will correspond exactly to your own spiritual stature. In other words, the first thing, in preparation for Christian work, is personal consecration.

“Oh for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame,
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb.”

I am sure that there are some here who at some time have been hit by the Gospel arrow. You felt the wound of that conviction, and you plunged into the world deeper; just as the stag, when the hounds are after it, plunges into Scroon Lake, expecting in that way to escape. Jesus Christ is on your track to-day, oh, impenitent man! not in wrath, but in mercy. Oh, ye chased and panting souls! here is the stream of God’s mercy and salvation, where you may cool your thirst! Stop that chase of sin to-day. By the red fountain that leaped from the heart of my Lord, I bid you stop! There is mercy for you — mercy that pardons, mercy that heals, everlasting mercy.

Is there in all this house any one who can refuse the offer that comes from the heart of the dying Son of God? Why, do you know that there are, in the banished world, souls that, for that offer you get to-day, would fling the crown of the universe at your feet, if they possessed it? But they went out on the mountains, the storm took them, and they died.

There is in a forest in Germany a place they call the “deer-leap” — two crags, about eighteen yards apart, between them a fearful chasm. This is called the “deer-leap,” because once a hunter was on the track of a deer; it came to one of these crags; there was no escape for it from the pursuit of the hunter, and in utter despair it gathered itself up, and in the death-agony attempted to jump across. Of course it fell, and was dashed on the rocks flir beneath. Here is a path to heaven. It is plain; it is safe. Jesus marks it out for every man to walk in. But here is a man who says, “I won’t walk in that path; I will take my own way.” He comes on up until he confronts the chasm that divides his soul from heaven. Now his last hour has come, and he resolves that he will leap that chasm, from the heights of earth to the heights of heaven. Stand back now, and give him full swing, for no soul ever did that successfully. Let him try. Jump! jump! He misses the mark, and he goes down, depth below depth, “destroyed without remedy.” Men! angels! devils! what shall we call that place of awful catastrophe? Let it be known forever as the sinner’s death-leap.