Crossing the Bridge before you Come to It.
By T. De Witt Talmage
A SERMON BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE, PUBLISHED IN THE METHODIST. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”—Matt. 6:34. The life of every man, woman, and child, is as closely under the divine care as though such person were the only man, woman, or child. There are no accidents. As there is a law of storms in the natural world, so there is a law of trouble, a law of disaster, a law of misfortune; but the majority of the troubles of life are imaginary, and the most of those anticipated never come. At any rate, there is no cause of complaint against God. See how much he hath done to make thee happy: his sunshine filling the earth with glory, making rainbow for the storm, and halo for the mountain, greenness for the moss, saffron for the cloud, and crystal for the billow, and procession of bannered flame through the opening gates of the morning, chaffinches to sing, rivers to glitter, seas to chant, and springs to blossom, and overpowering all other sounds with its song, and overarching all other splendor with its triumph, covering up all other beauty with its garlands, and outflashing all other thrones with its dominion—deliverance for a lost world through the Great Redeemer. I discourse, this morning, of the sin of borrowing trouble. First: Such a habit of mind and heart is wrong because it puts one into a despondency that ill fits him for duty. I planted two rose-bushes in my garden: the one thrived beautifully, the other perished. I found the dead one on the shady side of the house. Our dispositions, like our plants, need sunshine. Expectancy of repulse is the cause of many secular and religious failures. Fear of bankruptcy has uptorn many a fine business, and sent the man dodging among the note-shavers. Fear of slander and abuse has often invited all the long-beaked vultures of scorn and back-biting. Many of the misfortunes of life, like hyenas, flee if you courageously meet them. How poorly prepared for religious duty is a man who sits down under the gloom of expected misfortune! If he prays, he says: “I do not think I shall be answered.” If he gives, he says: “I expect they will steal the money.” Helen Chalmers told me that her father, Thomas Chalmers, in the darkest hour of the history of the Free Church of Scotland, and when the woes of the land seemed to weigh upon his heart, said to his children, “Come, let us go out and play ball or fly kite,” and the only difficulty in the play was that the children could not keep up with their father. The McCheynes and the Summerfields of the Church who did the most good cultivated sunlight. Away with the horrors! They distill poison; they dig graves; and if they could climb so high, they would drown the rejoicings of Heaven with sobs and wailing. You cannot expect anything but misfortune in the future if you sedulously watch for it. How shall a man catch the right kind of fish if he arranges his line and hook and bait to catch lizards and water-serpents? Hunt for bats and hawks, and bats and hawks you will find. Hunt for robin-redbreasts, and you will find robin-redbreasts. One night an eagle and an owl got into fierce battle. The eagle, unused to the night, was no match for an owl, which is most at home in the darkness, and the king of the air fell helpless; but the morning rose, and with it rose the eagle, and the owls and the night-hawks and the bats came a second time to the combat. Now the eagle, in the sunlight, with a stroke of his talons and a great cry, cleared the air, and his enemies, with torn feathers and splashed with blood, tumbled into the thickets. Ye are the children of light. In the night of despondency, you will have no chance against your enemies that flock up from beneath; but, trusting in God and standing in the sunshine of the promises, you shall “renew your youth like the eagle.” Again: The habit of borrowing trouble is wrong, because it has a tendency to make us overlook present blessing. To slake man's thirst, the rock is cleft, and cool waters leap into his brimming cup. To feed his hunger, the fields bow down with bending wheat; and the cattle come down with full udders from the clover pastures to give him milk; and the orchards yellow and ripen, casting their juicy fruits into his lap. Alas! that amid such exuberance of blessing, man should growl as though he were a soldier on half rations, or a sailor on short allowance; that a man should stand neck-deep in harvests, looking forward to famine; that one should feel the strong pulses of health marching with regular tread through all the avenues of life, and yet tremble at the expected assault of sickness; that a man should sit in his pleasant home, fearful that ruthless want will some day rattle the broken window-sash with tempest, and sweep the coals from the hearth, and pour hunger into the bread-tray; that a man fed by Him who owns all the harvests should expect to starve; that one whom God loves and surrounds with benediction, and attends with angelic escort, and hovers over with more than motherly fondness, should be looking for a heritage of tears! Has God been hard with thee that thou shouldst be foreboding? Has he stinted thy board? Has he covered thee with rags? Has he spread traps for thy feet, and galled thy cup, and rasped thy soul, and wrecked thee with storm, and thundered upon thee with a life full of calamity? If your father or brother come into your bank where gold and silver are lying about, you do not watch them, for you know they are honest; but if an entire stranger come by the safe, you keep your eye on him, for you do not know his designs. So some men treat God; not as a father, but a stranger, and act suspiciously toward him, as though they were afraid he would steal something. It is high time you began to thank God for present blessing. Thank him for your children, happy, buoyant, and bounding. Praise him for your home, with its fountain of song and laughter. Adore him for morning light and evening shadow. Praise him for fresh, cool water, bubbling from the rock, leaping in the cascade, soaring in the mist, falling in the shower, dashing against the rock, and thank him for the grass that cushions the earth, and the clouds that curtain the sky, and the foliage that waves in the forest. Thank him for a Bible to read, and a cross to gaze upon, and a Saviour to deliver. Many Christians think it a bad sign to be jubilant, and their work of self-examination is a hewing down of their brighter experiences. Like a boy with a new jack-knife, hacking everything he comes across, so their self-examination is a religious cutting to pieces of the greenest things they can lay their hands on. They imagine they are doing God's service, when they are going about borrowing trouble, and borrowing it at thirty per cent, which is always a sure precursor of bankruptcy. Again: The habit of borrowing trouble is wrong, because the present is sufficiently taxed with trial. God sees that we all need a certain amount of trouble, and so he apportions it for all the days and years of our life. Alas for the policy of gathering it all up for one day or year! Cruel thing to put upon the back of one camel all the cargo intended for the entire caravan. I never look at my memorandum book to see what engagements and duties are far ahead. Let every week bear its own burdens. The shadows of to-day are thick enough; why implore the presence of other shadows? The cup is already distasteful; why halloo to disasters far distant to come, and wring out more gall into the bitterness? Are we such champions that, having won the belt in former encounters, we can go forth to challenge all the future? Here are business men just able to manage affairs as they now are. They can pay their rent and meet their notes, and manage affairs, as gold now is at 112; but how if it should shoot up to 120, or fall to 105? Go to-morrow and write on your day-book, on your ledger, on your money-safe: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Do not worry about notes that are far from due. Do not pile up on your counting desk the financial anxieties of the next twenty years. The God who has taken care of your worldly occupation, guarding your store from the torch of the incendiary and the key of the burglar, will be as faithful in 1871 as in 1861. God's hand is mightier than the machinations of stock-gamblers, or the plots of political demagogues, or the red right arm of revolution, and the darkness will fly and the storm fall dead at his feet. So there are persons here in feeble health, and they are worried about the future. They make out very well now; but they are bothering themselves about future pleurisies, and rheumatisms, and neuralgias, and fevers. Their eyesight is feeble, and they are worried lest they entirely lose it. Their hearing is indistinct, and they are alarmed lest they become entirely deaf. They felt chilly to-day, and are expecting an attack of typhoid. They have been troubled for weeks with some perplexing malady, and dread becoming life-long invalids. Take care of your health now, and trust God for the future. Be not guilty of the blasphemy of asking him to take care of you while you sleep with your windows tight down, or eat chicken-salad at eleven o'clock at night, or sit down on a cake of ice to cool off. Be prudent, and then be confident. Some of the sickest people have been the most useful. It was so with Payson, who died deaths daily, and Robert Hall, who used to stop in the midst of his sermon, and lie down on the pulpit sofa to rest, and then go on again. Theodore Frelinghuysen had a great horror of dying till the time came, and then went peacefully. Take care of the present, and let the future look out for itself. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Again: The habit of borrowing misfortune is wrong, because it unfits us for it when it actually does come. We cannot always have smooth sailing. Life's path will sometimes tumble among declivities, and mount a steep, and be thorn-pierced. Judas will kiss our cheek, and then sell us for thirty pieces of silver. Human scorn will try to crucify us between two thieves. We will hear the iron gate of the sepulcher creak and grind as it shuts in our kindred. But we cannot get ready for these things by forebodings. They who fight imaginary woes will come out of breath into conflict with the armed disasters of the future. Their ammunition will have been wasted long before they come under the guns of real misfortune. Boys, in attempting to jump a wall, sometimes go so far back in order to get impetus that when they come up they are exhausted; and these long races, in order to get spring enough to vault trouble, bring us up at last to the dreadful reality with our strength gone. Finally: The habit of borrowing trouble is wrong, because it is unbelief. God has promised to take care of us. The Bible blooms with assurances. Your hunger will be fed; your sicknesses will be alleviated; your sorrows will be healed. God will sandal your feet, and shield your heart, and smooth your path, and along by frowning crag and opening grave, sound the voices of victory and good cheer. The summer clouds that seem thunder-charged really carry in their bosom harvests of wheat, and shocks of corn, and vineyards purpling for the wine-press. The wrathful wave will kiss the feet of the great Storm-walker. Our Great Joshua will command, and above your soul the sun of prosperity will stand still. Bleak and wave-struck Patmos shall have apocalyptic vision, and you shall hear the cry of elders, and the sweep of wings, and trumpets of salvation, and the voice of hallelujah unto God forever. Your way may wind along dangerous bridle-paths, and amid wolf's howl and the scream of the vulture, but the way still winds upward till angels guard it, and trees of life overarch it, and thrones line it, and crystalline fountains leap on it, and the pathway ends at gates that are pearl, and streets that are gold, and temples that are always open, and hills that quake with perpetual song, and a city mingling forever Sabbath and jubilee and triumph and coronation. “Let Pleasure chant her syren song,
'Tis not the song for me;
To weeping it will turn ere long,
For this is Heaven's decree.
But there's a song the ransomed sing,
To Jesus their exalted King,
With joyful heart and tongue;
Oh! that's the song for me!” Courage, my brother! The father does not give to his son at school enough money to last him several years, but, as the bills for tuition and board and clothing and books come in, pays them. So God will not give you grace all at once for the future, but will meet all your exigencies as they come. Through earnest prayer, trust him. People ascribe the success of the Cunard line of steamers to business skill, and know not the fact that when that line of steamers first started, Mrs. Cunard, the wife of the proprietor, passed the whole of each day when a steamer sailed in prayer to God for its safety and the success of the line. Put everything in God's hand, and leave it there. Large interest money to pay will soon eat up a farm, a store, an estate, and the interest on borrowed troubles will swamp anybody. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”