Due-Bills Presented
“How much owest thou unto my Lord?” — Luke xvi., 5.
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WHEN the first of next January comes, you will take an account of stock, and you will bring up in a balance-sheet all the values and all the indebtedness. Indeed, often during the year you ask yourself the questions, “What am I worth “How much do I owe Vy You say, “There is so much that I shall have to pay for house-rent; so much for store-rent; so much to meet the interest on that mortgage, lest it be foreclosed; so much to meet that note in the bank, lest it be protested.” I suppose that to-night you could put down on a piece of paper, in five minutes, in round figures, your whole indebtedness to men. And yet how you halt and stumble when the question is put to you to-night, that was pro¬ pounded by the steward to the debtors of his master, “How much owest thou unto my Lord The fact is that we are more bothered about the five hundred dollars that we owe to our neighbors than we are about that insolvency into which we have been plunged to an amount so far beyond the millions, and the billions, and the quadrillions, that there is not room enough on the scroll of the sky for the archangel to put the figures.
When, in 1857, the banks went down, insurance companies went down, and mercantile establishments went down, there was a great panic. But how stolid our in-
* Preached on the evening of Dedication day.
difference when the great truth is announced to-night that the whole earth has suspended payment to God, and that it can not pay one per cent, on a million of dollars! Let us now acknowledge our obligations to God. We do not appreciate their magnitude. The traveler on the Pacific Railroad, going toward California day after day, asks, “Why, where are the Rocky Mountains V ’ The fact is that the train goes up so very gradually for hundreds and hundreds of miles, the traveler does not see the precipices and the rocks that he expected to see; so that when he gets to Sherman, where he is eight or nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, he can not appreciate the fact that he is at so great an altitude. Well, my friends, we have been going on in this path of life, over the mountain of God’s blessing, rising higher and higher, until we are not aware of the great altitude of benediction to which we have been lifted; yet here wTe stand to-night, thousands of feet above the level of that great sea of want and woe upon which millions of our fellow-men are tossed, and we can not appreciate the elevation. Oh! you need to pile the Sierra Nevada and the Wahsatch on the top of the Rocky Mountains to appreciate the meaning of the Psalmist when he says, “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains /”
I want to put on your table to-night the book of God’s account — the book of your indebtedness. Doing business for eternity, my brothers and my sisters, we want to do it with our eyes open. I want you to gather to¬ gether all the things you have ever done for God, and put them in one line, and add them up; and then gather together all the things that God has done for you, put them in one line, and add them up; then subtract the lesser from the greater. Don’t be afraid. The settle¬ ment will be right. If God owes ns, he is rich, and can pay. If we owe God, wTe are honest, and will try to pay.
Oh that we might feel the pressure of the Almighty Spirit of God while we open the arithmetics of eternity, and try to calculate, “How much owest thou unto my Lord?”
You remember one of our services, wThen, during the sermon, a woman in the back part of the house, at the call to the unconverted, came up the aisle and flung her¬ self at the foot of the pulpit, crying for mercy. Oh that to-night we might have the more overwhelming scene of the whole audience bowing down at the feet of Jesus!
How I wTill put on your table these bills of indebted¬ ness. If they are wrong, don’t pay them; reject them. If they are right, say so. The first bill of indebtedness that I put upon your table to-night is the bill for rent. This world is the house that God built for us to live in. He lets it to us already furnished. What a carpet! — the grass interwoven with figure of flowTers. What a ceiling! — the frescoed sky. What tapestried pillars! — the rocks. What a front door! — the flaming sunrise through which the day comes in. What a back door! — the sunset, through which the day goes out. What a chandelier and candelabra! — the sun and stars. What a flour-bin! — the wheat-fields. What chimneys! — Stromboli and Cotopaxi. Ah! the Alhambra and Windsor Castle are but Queenstown shanties compared with this great house that God has put up for us to live in, and the rent is due! Are we ready to pay it?
The next bill I find on our table of indebtedness to God is the bill for board. We have been sitting at
God’s table ten, thirty, fifty, seventy years. Put the board down low — at three dollars per week, and in forty years it is six thousand two hundred and forty dollars. From the apples you ate in the orchard when a boy, to the fruit last night upon your tea-table, it all came out of the same hand. From the horn that called you from the hay-field years ago, to the silver bell that tinkled on your table at noon to-day, you have never known the pang, the sickening horror of having nothing to eat. We pay the butcher, the baker, and the fruit-dealer, but we do not pay that God who makes the food, and who gives us the money with which to buy it. If on Satur¬ day night, or at the end of the month, they with whom we board present the bill, and we do not pa y it, we are put out; but year after year, and for scores of years, have we been permitted to sit at God’s table without paying, and the luxuries are greater now than ever be¬ fore. Every one of you has consumed whole acres of corn, whole flocks of birds, whole droves of sheep, whole herds of cattle. Ah! it has been no cheap thing to feed your appetites for forty years; and do you think it is a mean, unfair, or dishonest thing, when to-night there is put upon your table a bill for board?
The next bill I find upon our table is a bill for clothes. There is but one manufactory of Gobelin tapestry, and that is at Paris, under the control of the government; and the fabrics are woven for royal families only. But in all the earth there are factories going day and night, weaving a more wonderful fabric than royal tapestry for us, the King’s children. The cotton plantation sends us socks. The flax-field sends us linen. The sheep’s wool supplies us cloaks. The sable and the ermine yield us furs. What coats, what hats, what shoes, what mufflers it takes to supply you all your Jife! Put it down low. How much? Two hundred dollars per year? Can you clothe yourself at that rate? Two hundred dollars per year for forty years is eight thousand dollars for clothes sixty years, twelve thousand dollars for clothes.
The next bill I find on our table to-night is for that which we owe God for our families. Where did you get your families from? u God setteth the solitary in families.” Have you a companion who is kind, gentle, sympathetic, helpful — sympathetic with all your joys and sorrows? Was it good luck or the merry sleigh-ride that gave her to you? Ho. Proverbs xix., 14: “A good wife is from the Lord.” Have you children round about your table? Have they eyesight, when so many have been born blind? Have they hearing, when so many have been born deaf? Can they talk and sing, when so many have been born dumb? Have they the use of leg and foot, when so many have been born cripples? Who gave you those glad, healthy, romping children? How much will you take for them? If I should offer you the Kohinoor diamond for one, Chatsworth Park, for an¬ other, and ten millions of dollars for another, you would laugh me to scorn! You would not sell the eldest one, because it is the first-born; you would not sell the youngest one, because it is the youngest and the pet; nor this one, because it is the very image of its father; nor that one, because it looks like its mother; nor this one, be¬ cause it has always been sick, and you especially love it; nor that one, because it is so healthful that you could not think of giving it up. I do not want you to give them up. I only want you, if gold, and diamonds, and all the
earth can not buy them, to think of the magnitude of the question. I ask you, standing in your family group, “How much owest thou unto my Lord?” Ah! he gave them to you. During all those sick nights, when you rocked that young life, or were so anxious you could not sleep, though others watched, that you came in every little while to see how things were going, and hour after hour carried the suffering little one on a pillow, and it did not grow heavy, you found no rest until you were sure it was going to get well — He watched with you and kept your heart from breaking, and answered your prayer.
When you go home to-night you will see your little ones in the nursery — all there save those that Christ has in heaven; and they are yours just as much as they ever were; and when you go up at last, will come out at heaven’s gate shouting, “Father’s come!” “Mother’s come!” Oh ye who have sweet, darling children on earth and in heaven, “Ilow much — how much owest thou unto my Lord f”
The next bill for indebtedness that I find upon the table is the hill for taxes. You have paid the city taxes, the state taxes, the United States taxes, but have you paid God for letting you live in this beautiful city and in this glorious country? Think of the contrast between your own condition and that of those who heard the howling Communists rushing through the Champs Flysees of Paris, their shoes soaked with the blood of women and children. What is this Brooklyn that we live in? Hew York in its better mood, and surrounded with its family. What is this great nation? The most divinely blessed that ever existed. Washington and Jefferson never dreamed of such a land as this has got to be. The Jews were God’s ancient people; Americans are God’s modern people. And we have the advantage over them. They wandered forty years through the desert; we have gone for nigh a hundred years through a garden. God struck one rock for them, and the water came down to slake their thirst; all the rocks of this land are struck to supply our thirst. One flock of quails came down to the Israelites, and they ate, and died; this land is full of quails, and grosbeaks, and robins, and prairie-fowl, and the nation eats and lives. Manna came down in the dew for the Israelites, but if it was not picked right up, it became wormy; God drops the manna down on all the wheat-fields from Pennsylvania to California, and we gather it into the granaries. You may not like the President of the United States; you may not like the governor; you may not like the mayor; but, come now, men of all parties, be frank, and acknowledge that it is a glorious country to live in. You have paid the amount of earthly taxes you owe — the city tax, the state tax, the United States tax, but “how much owest thou unto my Lord?”
The next bill I find on the table is a booh bill. How .much is your Bible worth? Scientific men are trying to show us, through the newspapers and through philosophic papers, that our race is descended from the monkey. But we, who believe in God’s Word, read there that God made man in his own image, and not in the image of a monkey. Get out of my way with your damnable Dar¬ winian theories! Scientific men can not understand the origin of this world. We open our Bibles, and we feel like the Christian Arab, who said to the skeptic, when
asked by him why he believed that there wTas a God, “How do I know that it was a man instead of a camel that went past my tent last night? Why, I* know him by the tracks.” Then, looking over at the setting sun, the Arab said to the skeptic, “Look there! that is not the work of a man; that is the track of a God.” We have all these things revealed in God’s Word. Dear old book! My father loved it. It trembled in my mother’s hand when she was nigh fourscore years old. It has been * under the pillow of three of my brothers when they died. It is a very different book from what it once was to me. I used to take it as a splendid poem, and read it as I read John Milton. I took it up sometimes as a treatise on law, and read it as I did Blackstone. I took it as a fine history, and read it as I did Josephus. Ah! now it is not the poem; it is not the treatise of law; it is not the history. It is simply a family album that I open, and see right before me the face of God, my Father; of Christ, my Savior; of heaven, my eternal home.
As I take up your family Bible to-night, bright with promises, and redolent with boyhood memories, and mighty with principles that are to regenerate the world, I ask you, ye men who are descended from those who fought until they died in their tracks for the defense of. this book; ye sons of the Covenanters, who were hound¬ ed among the Highlands of Scotland; ye sons of men who went on ladders of fire from English soil to heaven for this grand, glorious, triumphant, God-given Book, “IIow muck owest thou unto my Lord f”
There is one more bill of indebtedness laid upon the table, and that is the bill for your redemption. I have been told that the bells in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, never toll save when the king or some member of the royal family dies. The thunders in the dome of heaven never tolled so dolefully as when they rang out to the world the news, “King Jesus is dead!” When a king dies, the whole land is put in black: they shroud the pillars; they put the people in procession; they march to a doleful drum-beat. What shall we do now that our King is dead? Put blackness on the gates of the morning. Let the cathedral organs wail; let the winds sob; let all the generations of men fall in line, and beat a funeral-march of woe! woe! woe! as we go to the grave of our dead King.
In Philadelphia they have a habit, after the coffin is deposited in the grave, of the friends going formally up and standing at the brink of the grave and looking in. So I take you all to-night to look into the grave of our dead King. The lines of care are gone out of his face. The wounds have stopped bleeding. Just lift up that lacerated hand. Lift it up, and then lay it down softly over that awful gash in the left side. He is dead! He is dead!
Eight hundred years after Edward I. was buried, they brought up his body, and they found that he still lay with a crown on his head. More than eighteen hundred years have passed, and I look into the grave of my dead King, and I see not only a crown, but “on his head are many crowns.” And, what is more, he is rising. Yea, he has risen! Ye who came to the grave weeping, go away rejoicing. Let your dirges now change to anthems. He lives! Take off the blackness from the gates of the morning. He lives! Let earth and heaven keep jubilee. He lives! I know that my Redeemer lives. For
whom that battle and that victory? For whom? For you.
I was reading, a day or two ago, about a farmer who was found kneeling at a soldier’s grave near Nashville. Some one came to him and said, “Why do you pay so much attention to this grave? Was your son buried here?” “No,” he said. “During the war, my family
were all sick. I knew not how to leave them. I was drafted. One of my neighbors came over and said, £ I will go for you; I have no family.’ He went off. He was wounded at Chickamauga. He was carried to the hospital and died. And, sir, I have come a great many miles that I might write over his grave these words: ‘Afe died for me.’” Christ wTas our substitute. He wrent forth to fight our battles. He died. Oh! that we might write over his grave to-night, each one of us, uIIe died for me /”
If you were told in another place of a man who had done as much for his country as Christ has done for you and me, you would break forth in long and loud acclaim, and clap your hands, and stamp your feet, to show your enthusiasm. But oh! how few eyes weep wrhen I tell of that cross, where all the sorrows of the past and all the anguish of the future, and the wrath of heaven and the wToes of hell, united to tear the heart of the Son of God; and I cry out to you, “How much owest thou unto my Lord f”
Oh! get some delicate scale that you may weigh His burdens. Get some delicate chalice that you may measure His tears. Listen to the hard breathing of this dying One, whose only crime was that he came to save the world. As I think of the cold nights that fell on him, of the tempests that struck him, of the whips that flayed him, of the insulting hands that slapped him on the cheek, of the mouths that spit upon him; and while you stand there, seeing the blood dripping down, from brow to cheek, from cheek to breast, from breast to knee, from knee to foot, from foot to the ground, I stand amid that red rain of anguish and cry out, “Oh you blood-bought man and woman, how much — how much’owest thou unto my Lord f” There are hundreds of men and women in this house who will respond, “Every thing I owe to him — my time, my talents, my heart — every thing.”
After the battle of Petersburg, in my church in Philadelphia, we received word, just before the service be¬ gan, that there were two or three thousand men wounded, bleeding, without any kind minister of mercy to at¬ tend them. I said to my people, “I won’t make any appeals. There are two or three thousand men bleeding to death in Petersburg. Pass the plate.” What a collection we got! Women took the rings from their fingers and the adornments from their necks, and put them upon the plate. IIow shall we respond to-night, when we hear that our Lord J esus lies bleeding at the gate — bleeding at a hundred wounds — bleeding for us! for us! for us!
I have presented to you to-night these different bills — the bill for house-rent; the bill for board; the bill for clothing; the bill for the family; the bill for taxes; the book bill, and the redemption bill. Will you pay? “Oh yes,” every man says. The only question is, day by day, with this man and woman, “How much?” I can not tell. I simply know that in the olden times, under a dispensation not near so bright as this, they gave one tenth K
to God. Is not our religion worth as much to us? That question I leave to the conscience of every man and wom¬ an in this house.
There are two wTays of paying an indebtedness — to the law and to the creditor. If we owe and do not pay it, what is done? The matter is put into the hands of an attorney; a summons is sent; a declaration is filed; judgment is declared in the case; execution is issued; and the sheriff goes forth and gets on the auction-block, and he cries, “Going! Going! Gone /” The debt is collected by force. Then there is another way of paying a debt. We take up the bill and say, “This bill is due. Here is the money.” The one payment is made cheer¬ fully, the other by the force of the law.
God collects his bills in both ways. There are hundreds of business men, Christian men, in Hew York City, who have gone down, for the simple reason, as I believe, that they did not give to God that wdiich belonged to him. They did not give him any percentage at all, or such a very small percentage that the Lord God collected his own bills by fire, by storm, or by death. Two men I knew very well, some years ago, on the streets of Hew York. They were talking about the matter of benevolence. One said to the other, “You give too much. I will wait until I get a large pile of money, and then I will give.” “Ho,” said the other, “I will give as God prospers me.” Hear the sequel. The former lives in Hew York City to-day, dollarless; the latter gathered two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I believe that the reason why many people are kept poor is because they do not give enough. If a man gives in the right spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Church, he is insured for time and for eternity. The Bank of England is a weak institution compared with the bank that any Christian man can draw upon. That man wTho stands by Christ, Christ will stand by him. Mark that: the man who stands by Christ will find Christ standing by him.
We have to-day rededicated this church. We have reconsecrated it to God, and to the salvation of the mass¬ es. We have more room, and so more responsibility. God help us! One year ago, I said in the pulpit and through the press that a free church could and would be supported. Thousands doubted it. Other thousands laughed. God’s blessing came. In addition to a great many who came here who could give nothing, or but little, there came many of large means and large hearts.
I showed you, in my statement this morning, that the in¬ come of the Church during the past year had exceed¬ ed its outgoes. Let the mouths of derision forever be stopped! The income exceeded the outgoes by fifteen hundred dollars, and that under very disadvantageous circumstances, considering the fact that for three months we had not our machinery fairly organized. The only thing between us and ultimate prosperity has been a floating debt, accrued in the erection of the Tabernacle. * This morning we cleared off three fourths of that debt; to-night we will clear off the rest of it, if God will help the people. My brethren and sisters, one more pull, and away wdth this encumbrance! I have never asked you any thing with so. much earnestness as I ask you now to clear off that debt My body and soul are enlisted in this matter. I want a free church with a free Gospel. We believe that if we give the people an opportunity to
respond in this matter, there will be no need of selling or renting the pews in order to pay the debt. If the great mass of the people of this country are ever to be brought to Christ, it will be only when the churches are thrown wide open and the people are invited to come in. Let those who can give a thousand dollars, or a hundred dollars, for the support of the Gospel, give it. Let those who can give but a dollar, or a penny, give that. God’s blessing sometimes goes with the one penny in more tremendous power than with the ten thousand.
Away with the encumbrance! We can afford to spread the butter a little thinner on the bread, or to wTear our old overcoat one winter longer, if we can get this cause to prosper. Our wives and daughters will postpone the new dress a little longer, for she who was last at the cross and first at the sepulchre will not let Jesus go a-begging now.
Lift up your hands solemnly, and swear by Him that liveth forever and forever that this Church, which at¬ tempts to preach a free Gospel — this Church, which is at war with all sectarianism (and you know that this morning, under Dr. Tyng’s magnificent sermon, under the blast of that great trumpet, the wall of bigotry fell flat down) — a Church whose chief object is to save men for time and to save them for eternity — that such a Church shall not fail if you can help it.
Oh that the doings of this day may bring courage into hundreds of churches in the different cities of our country, that are now watching with great anxiety the success of our experiment; and so all heaven will break forth into singing, and the gates of hell wfill tremble!
[At the close of this sermon the entire floating debt of $21,000 was swept off.]