Christian Hand-Shaking
“Give me thy hand!” — 2 Kings x., 15.
EIIU had been making an exterminating assault upon
the idolatry of his day, and Jehonadab comes out to offer him congratulation. They meet half way; and one exclaims to the other, in all the ardor of friendly recognition, “Give me thy hand /”
The mode of salutation is different in different countries. In some lands they kneel before the visitor. In some, fall on their faces; in others they stand upright and give a slight bend to the neck. But when two persons, believing in the same thing, and working for the same object, and trusting in the same God, and hoping for the same heaven, come face to face, look each other in the eye, and cross palms wdth a tight grip, and shake hands, that is human equality and Christian brother¬ hood. I fall down before no man in obeisance; I gaze down upon no man in arrogance; but, looking into the face of friend and foe, I am ready to exclaim, in the words’ of Jehu to Jehonadab, “Give me thy hand!”
There has been too great a distance between pulpit and pew — -a great gulf fixed. The heart of the preacher and the heart of the hearer have not struck each other in pulsation. We come down out of our studies, where we have had a grand time with Archbishop Leighton and Jeremy Taylor, and the people come up out of their
* Preached on return from Europe. stores, and shops, and homes, and we have known too little of each other. The distance has been so great that our arms are not long enough. Nothing would be more preposterous than for a preacher to stand at an elevation of five or six feet, and behind a barricade four feet through, crying, “Give me thy hand /” Daniel Webster said that one of the best evidences of the divinity of our holy religion was the fact that it had lived, notwithstanding the clumsy architecture of the pulpit.
Men use common sense in every thing but in religion. The counselor at the bar stands before the jury with his person unhid; but when the teacher of religion comes out to talk to the people on a plain platform, without any desk before him, Christians quote the Psalmist, and say, “The Lord hath no pleasure in the legs of a man.” When one merchant wishes to talk to another merchant, he does not say, “Wait until I can get behind this dry-goods box.” But you wrap us in gowns, and lay us out in white cravats, and hide us behind boards, as though we were a separate race, and a minister were useful just in proportion as you cover him up, and as though we be¬ longed to a different order of beings, instead of being sinners like yourselves, and beggars at the door of mercy. We have used the Gospel as though it were a “swamp-angel gun” that could shoot six miles, instead of reaching up into God’s armory and taking the two-edged sword, and with it going down among men, striking down their sins, hip and thigh, with great slaughter.
Come, now, and let us get near to each other in a plain, loving, Christian talk. My brother! my sister! my child! “Give me thy hand!”
I. Let us join hands in Christian welcome. Three
months ago we left each other at Sandy Hook. It was a bright day when we wTent out, but sad wTas the parting. To-day we meet again. The summer situ, that carried off so many of our fellow-citizens, did not smite you. The rail-train rushed from the track, but you clamber¬ ed out, unhurt, from the wreck. Some of you were sick, and nigh unto death, but God gave skill to the doctors, and healing power to the medicine. God watched you here, and took care of me traveling in other lands. Was there ever any one with so kind a heart as our Father? What good care he does take of us! What pleasant sleep by night! What wholesome food by day! What decent apparel we have on! I think you have never heard your children cry for bread when there was no flour in the house. Aged man! who has watched you these seventy years, so that you can now look back and say, “I have been young, and now am I old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread?”. Mary, my little child, who made, preserves, and redeemed you? Young man! who can you depend upon when all else fails? You need not answer me, for I know that there are thanksgivings now going up from all parts of this house. Gathering up the memories of what God has done for me, I come out to meet you; and you, gathering up the memories of what God has done for yon, come out to meet me; and in warm, hearty, Christian welcome, we cry, each to each, “Give me thy hand /” Bless the Lord, O my soul! May my every thought be gratitude, and my every word thanksgiving! Living, I will praise him! Hying, I will charge my children, with the laying on of my faltering hands, never to forget the Lord, and to cover the plain slab that marks my grave with, “Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever.”
II. Again: Let us cross hands in congratulation. We all felt that we must have a new church. We threw out the Gospel net on the right side of the ship, and we found it too small to hold the fish. We wanted an architect who, untratnmeled by frigid ecclesiastical notions, could give us a building which would gather the people in a circle about the pulpit, as friends and neighbors gathering around a fireplace. The work is done. It suits us well. And you know that if a man’s wife is comely in his eyes, it matters not much if all others think her uncomely. Some have called the building “Talmage’s Theatre,” and by like gracious nomenclature. But I look upon it merely as a great net to catch souls. We have no chandelier that cost a thousand dollars; we have no windows that it took a year to paint with a gorgon, or cherub like fat-boy in scanty clothes; we have no upholstery that makes the rainbows ashamed of themselve*s; we have spent no two hundred thousand dollars in gewgaws. I wanted a place where, for the remaining years of my life, I could stand before my fellow-men, and, without any hinderance, without any conventionalities, tell them the best story that was ever told — how that my Lord Jesus has such a great, wide heart, he wants all the world to come and lodge in it. I have found a great many kind friends, but Jesus is the best. He understands me so well, and has such a way of put¬ ting up with my frailties, and has promised to do so much for me when all other loved ones swim away from my vision, and I can no more laugh with them over their joys or cry with them over their sorrows. And E 2
now that the building is done, and untrammeled by the pew-rental system which has cursed the Church of God for the last fifty years, we can invite all men, whatever the flushness or the emptiness of their pockets, to come in. I feel that I would like to go round in this room, and, in congratulation for what God hath wrought, cry out, to young and old, to rich and poor, “Give me thy hand!”
A few days ago, on a mule’s back, we went climbing up to see the Mer de Glace, a frozen Niagara in Switzer¬ land. The river has been caught on its way down through the mountain gorge and turned into solid ice.
God stood in the gap one day, and cried “Back! back!” to the waters, and they halted. It seemed as though they had looked up to the awful steep, and crouched back white with terror. Nothing but Omnipotence could have taken them by their crystal bit and hurled them back on their haunches. Magnificent are they, but merciless! A Russian slipped between its glaciers. He held on with the tips of his fingers, and cried for help; he held on until his fingers were frozen, but the ice made no answer, and he perished. What did the ice care? Oh! the conventionalities of the Church are imposing and beautiful, but it is the magnificence of ice. The world, in its want and agony, hangs on to them and cries out for help, but no rescue comes, and they drop off and die while this ceremonial frigidity stands between the mountain of the law and the mountain of the cross — an ecclesiastical Mer de Glace.
III. Again: Let us join hands of Christian sympathy. There are some hand-shakings that you never forget. You were in trouble. A friend came into the house; he said not a word, but there was something in the presslire of his hand that brought life, and invigoration, and strength to your soul. What did he do? Nothing. He only shook hands. In trial we need sympathy. If six men put their shoulders under one burden, each man only has one sixth part of the burden to bear. If a group of friends come around us in times of trial, the weight of the affliction is divided among iis all. Now there are men and women here to-night who have had trouble enough to kill them. While I speak there is a man yonder who has a sharp pain cutting down through his body until he can hardly keep from crying outright. There is a woman who has a home trouble preying on her soul. You wonder that, though on her wedding-day, five years ago, she was so fair, now there are so many wrinkles on her face and such black lines under her eyes. She will not tell it; she would rather die than tell it. There is a young man who was kicked out of a store because he wTould not lie for his employer. Here once was a perfect home circle — father, mother, children, and grandparents. How many of them are left? Not one; their heart-strings have snapped. If the graves of the earth could be placed side by side, you could walk on them, stepping from grave-hillock to grave-hillock all around the world. It seems as if, when trouble gets at a man, it can not let him alone. Sorrows are like sheep — they go in fiocks; like partridges — they go in coveys; like deer — in herds; like fish — in shoals. Was there ever a man who had only one pain at a time? No; there were six. Or one abuse at a time? No; there were twenty slanderers. Or one loss? No; there were thirty disasters.
Standing by the smoke-stack of the Cuba while there
was what the sailprs call a “big lump of a sea,” as the waves struck her the ship seemed stunned, as an ox is stunned by a butcher’s bludgeon, or on the cliff of a wave seemed poised, light as a brown-thresher on the branch of a willow, I said to one of the officers, “What do you think ever became of the City of Boston V’ He answered, “I have sailed in the same latitude where that vessel wTent, and I do not think the icebergs struck her; but the waves sometimes go in threes; and if three waves strike a ship in quick succession, there is but little hope for the ship. I think one wave struck her and knocked in the bows, and another, that filled the hatches, and the next sunji her.”
So I have noticed that troubles sometimes go in three surges — sickness, poverty, and bereavement dashing upon the soul; and then there is an awful shipwreck!
Oh! when a man has trouble, he needs friends. When a man loses property, he needs all those of his acquaintances who have lost property to come in with their sympathy. When bereavement comes to a household, it is a comfort to have others who have been bereaved come in and sympathize. Give me thy hand a minute, and let us have a good talk about our troubles. God is not going to let you go under. He wTill explain, after a while, so satisfactorily that it will take an eternity to express your admiration of his wisdom. You often talk about God as your. Father. I know something better than that: God is a Mother. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” With some troubles you never think of going to your father. His hand is too hard; his word too rough. You go to your mother. O the tenderness of the divine sympathy!
In an Episcopal church in Chamouni I saw in a
hymn-book these words:
“My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from home, in life’s rough way,
Oh! teach me from my heart to say,
Thy will be done!
“If thou shouldst call me to resign
What most I prize — it ne’er was mine —
I only yield thee what was thine:
Thy will be done!
“Renew my soul from day to day;
Blend it with thine, and take away
All that now makes it hard to say
Thy will be done!
“Then, when on earth I breathe no more
The prayer, oft mixed with tears before,
I’ll sing upon the happier shore,
Thy will be done!”
We shall, after a while, have done chewing these bitter herbs, and wTill then sit down at the King’s banquet.
When a panorama is to pass before an audience, the artist darkens the room in which they sit, so that the picture may be more fully seen; so God darkens our place on earth, puts out this light, and that light, and the other light, that then he may pass before our souls the splendors and glories of the better land. The darkness here augments the light there.
IV. Again: Let us join hands in a bargain. You know that when men make a contract they shake hands over it. In a pledge for more prayer and work, give me thy hand! We did not build this house for a dormitory in which to sleep, but as an armory, where we are to get our weapons scoured and sharpened. Some of you Christians have been wasting your life in an aimless warfare,
doing more harm than good, instead of drawing “bead” sight over a barrel that never misses the mark. I had rather go into this conflict with a company of one hundred of God’s picked men, than with a whole battalion of Christians who are afraid of getting their feet wet, and who are chiefly anxious about their rations.
Away, all of you drones! out of this hive! One half of our churches are stuck in the mud because of three or four professors of religion who are dead, and whose car¬ casses are laid in the way of all good enterprises. My wTay is every once in a while to preach a sermon so hot and heavy that they can not stand it, and then they go out to bore somebody else.
Rouse up, men and women of God! There* never wTas such inducement to work. We have enough machinery under God to do it all. What we want is more men and women to direct the machinery.
Newspaper men, wheel your presses into line! Men of science, set your batteries for the defense of the truth! Church of God, march on! march on!
What meanest thou, O coward! that thou betray est thy Lord? See! see! The hosts of heaven and hell mingle in the fight. Up with the siege-guns! Unlim¬ ber the field-pieces! The Lord of Hosts is with us; and already methinks I hear the shout, “Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” In the words of Samuel Rutherford, “O for an empty hell and a full heaven!”
Well, my friends, it is pleasant to-night to join hands in welcome, and congratulation, and sympathy, and pledge; but, oh! the grander hand -shaking when our work is all done!
It was not until eleven o’clock last night that this building was completed. The workmen went home with glad hearts, thinking that the building wTas done, and well done. But, oh! the grander joy when the structure of our earthly work is all accomplished! It is pleasant to shake hands to-day, but how grander the greeting when we meet our friends on the other bank! It is a long while since we have seen them. They went out pale and weak, and the good-by broke our hearts; but not so certain the coming of next spring’s flowers, or the dawn of to-morrow’s sun, as that our loved ones in Christ shall come again. John will be there; Paul will be there; Payson will be there; fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters will be there. And hear it, all ye harps of heaven, Jesus will be there!
What a reunion! What a heavenly handshaking! What a congratulation of patriarch with patriarch, and apostle with apostle, and martyr with martyr! And as we pass up from the darkness of earth into that blissful light, the angels of God will bend over to help us over the battlements; and the Church triumphant, with robed arm swung out, will cry to Church militant, u Give me thy hand!”