Persecutions and Blessings.
REV. T. D. TALMAGE being requested, by letter, to explain why persecutions are in the list of blessings which Christ promised in Mark. 10:30, replies, in part, as follows: In answering the letter in my hand, I say that persecution may be a blessing by testing our earnestness. A man may think himself in earnest when it is a mere hobby he is riding; and when the hobby balks, he gets off and goes home. Let a man start out, and find those who promised to help proving tricky and his motives maligned, he will give it up unless he be in earnest. It is easy to be a soldier in time of peace. We had many brave captains and colonels and majors before the war began; but at Big Bethel, when the battle opened, how the fellows did run! If men are not in earnest in Christian conflict, they may make a good show for a while; but, attacked and pursued, they show the white flag, and surrender. Persecution, if sanctified, makes one humble. Success has a tendency to brag; and so God lets it be jeered at. The man says: “I endowed that college! I started that school! I built that church! Is not this great Babylon that I have built?” And God turns Nebuchadnezzar out to eat grass like an ox. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven!” Another advantage in persecution is, it lets us know how much of the bad is still left in us. What a mild Christian he was when everybody praised him! Now he runs against the sharp edge of sarcasm and opposition, and he is full of fight. He feels more like swearing than praying. He runs about in great excitement, talking over all the mean things he knows about those who oppose him—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, scorn for scorn, personality for personality; and the demons of malice and revenge and hate, with racket and explosion, keep Fourth of July in his heart. After a while he wakes up, and finds he is all wrong; and he cools down, and has a long list of hard speeches and unjust deeds to repent of, and learns as never before, his weakness before God. Persecution brings us into sympathy with Christ. What deed or word of his life was not misrepresented? They said that he was a sot, a traitor, a blasphemer, a disturber of the peace. They got up a sham trial, and kept on until matters culminated in his death. He answered not. Struck, he struck not back. The reason you don’t demolish your enemy is because you can’t. He had all power in Heaven and on earth, yet was as a sheep before her shearers. Oh! thou despised One of the Cross, show us how to bear the scoffs and criticisms of the world! If Christ will answer that prayer, then we will be able to know why in the 10th chapter of Mark he announced persecution as the very climax of all the blessings we can possibly receive on earth for Christian work and self-denial. Though it be a crown of fire, the first breath of Heaven will put out the flame, and leave nothing but the gold, and that all the brighter for the heat. Pearls are found in the shell in the deep sea; but the shell is opened by the knife of the pearl-diver, and the pearl drops out. The richest blessings are hidden and inclosed, and it sometimes takes the sharp knife of persecution to bring out the pearl of great price. Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven!