Jeremiah 4:19-26 My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart makes a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because you have heard… ! — "The alarm of war." A dreadful alarm; one that conjures up horrors and miseries that can scarcely be too deeply coloured. It sends a shudder through the system to think of the wealth of faculty and of resource that is expended over the problem how men can most effectually blow up and slay their fellows, and spread ruin and devastation upon the earth. Strip the thing of all the plumage of romance; look at it in its naked literalness, and it is simply horrible. That is true, too true, undeniably true. But let us learn a lesson. What capacities of heroism, of lofty patriotism, of courageous and unstinting self-sacrifice are called forth by the sound of the trumpet! Well, if only this potency of action, this burning enthusiasm, could be transferred to the Holy War that we are called to wage — ay, what then? Who are the real world heroes? An Alexander, a Napoleon? No, not the wakeful conquerors whose path has been as the whirlwind, but the men and women of whom the world often heard little, for the world does not know its best benefactors — the men and women who have broken the chains of the slave; who have lifted the poor from the dunghill; who have spoken the word of truth for which the soul of man was waiting; who have helped their kind to nobler and higher life; and all and only for God and for humanity. To them the statues and the monuments should be reared, and the canvas animated, and the laurel entwined. They are your leaders, O Christian people. Their fight is your fight, and it is His fight who is the Captain of our salvation. If I were to say to you in regard to this highest and noblest warfare, as Marshal Blanco said to the Cuban Spaniards, "Do you swear to follow in this fight?" would you reply "Yes, we do"? I suppose you would. But just pause. Have you ever parted with a single comfort, with an enjoyment, with something that you feel to be good, if not necessary for your well-being; a something to which you are quite entitled; to secure an unselfish end; to better some cause; to get more into the inner place of human soul; to spread the knowledge of God's Christ and of your Father's kingdom in our world? Oh, that as we raise the vision of one kind of war that is blistered all over with mourning, lamentation, and woe, oh, that there might rise upon our souls the vision of that other war that has no such blisters, that is written all over with the characters of true, noble, glorious life or death! Oh, that this vision might take some shape and some consistency and some solidarity within us. There is no life that is worth anything that is not a fighting life. God made us to fight; He set us in the world to fight. The enemy is around us, before us, without us, aye, and within us. I ask, who of you are ready, humbly, reflecting, but earnestly, to lift up your hand to Him, your risen Lord, who is beckoning you, and say, "By Thy help, Lord, I will. Here am I. I have been but a laggard; I have been content to fight in the rear. Take me on to the van, and let me have some worthy part with Thee in this great holy war. Here am I, Prince of Peace, send me." (J. M. Lang, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. |
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