02.34. Cutting Loose From Earth
Chapter 34 CUTTING LOOSE FROM EARTH. This old world has a tremendous way of holding people’s bodies on its surface, and of binding the thoughts, affections and aspirations here as well. It is a mistake to think that Death breaks this strange power. The reluctance of the sinner to leave earth and time is one of the proofs that a certain binding terrestrial law has not been annulled. This orb of clay is the only one the sinner knows anything about, and he leaves it with dread and unwillingness. He had rather a thousand times stay. He goes by the compulsion that is in dissolution. He leaves as did the mandrake, shrieking, when pulled from the ground. He carries the love of this planet away with him in his heart. To break the awful power of this globe, and to make it so that it is easy and pleasant to go, is the work of divine grace in the redemption of Jesus Christ.
It is noticeable in a balloon, that to make it leave the earth, and float in the skies, it has to be filled with a substance that must be more than a match for the attraction of gravitation, and for the heavy detaining atmosphere which belongs to this world. In addition to this, certain cords and ropes that bind and hold down the sky machine must be severed; otherwise the inflated silk bag pants, heaves and surges like a thing of life, and, all in vain, as it remains connected with and fettered to the ground. When the last fastening is cut, the balloon rushes into the heavens. So in breaking this world’s power over our souls, God plants in us a new life and love, and we at once feel the skyward pulling in us, and that we have something within us better, purer and stronger than earth itself. But in the face of this fact, we become sensible of certain life cords that in the form of human relations and conditions hold us with a marvellous grip to this planet. To remove the soul suddenly from its abode here, with all these attachments and connections at their strongest and best, would be to make the hour of death awful and frightful indeed. It would be like tearing up an oak without having previously cut a single root. It would be the wrenching of the balloon from its stakes before a solitary rope had been severed.
One object of the divine providence, the faithful dealing of God with the soul, is to so bring about, or permit things to happen, that the numerous ties which bind us so effectually and willingly to earth may be cut one by one, so that when the hour of departure to the skies arrives, the going may be an easy, willing and glad one.
We have seen so many of these old-time bonds and links broken in some lives, that the solitary cord of duty alone seemed to keep them in our midst. And they appeared to be hungrily waiting for that one remaining fastening to be slipped from the stake, so that they could soar heavenward and homeward. Such people carry a far-away look in their eyes. The sky seems to be outpulling the earth. The cords that bind us to this globe of ours, run in many directions, and are found fastened in numerous places, from the home fireside, and social circle, down to the attachment for a locality, a piece of land, or a bit of sea and sky. One’s love, friendship, trust, business, habits of life, and hope itself furnish the strongest influences to hold and keep a being contentedly or expectantly here in an existence of trial, temptation and sorrow. The future alone, with its unknown possibilities, has held many a man to earth who otherwise would have plunged into the grave and eternity.
Truly men are bound closely indeed to this little ball of matter only eight thousand miles thick, and destined at that to a complete overthrow and destruction. But the grace and power of God, and the flight of Time bringing with it the sad, sore experiences of life, can cut every tie of the already heaven-inflated spirit, and cause it to sweep with relief and gladness into the invisible and eternal.
One severance in life is that which inevitably takes place in the passing away of early hopes and expectations. The fancies with which we start life are not facts. Air Castles are beautiful to look upon, but we cannot live in them. The charming edifice of the imagination was nothing but fog and cloud, and the cool north wind of a matter of fact world made the gorgeous mental structure tumble to pieces or melt away without a vestige left behind. With this disillusion, one of the first binding charms of earth loses its hold on the soul. A second sundering blow is the cooling and death of certain ardent friendships.
Here no actual wrong has been inflicted, but people simply drop you. Their affections are transferred to other persons and objects. No matter how much philosophy or religion may be in the heart of the forsaken, yet such a happening is found to stab to the quick, and somehow by the wound and consequent suffering, the world sheers off and seems to have a looser hold upon the individual. A third sore experience is the betrayal of confidence. To a person who has a proper conception of honor, a confidence reposed in him or her, can not be betrayed without perfidy. The breathing of private griefs and affairs into the ear of a trusted friend, should be kept inviolate, no matter what changes should take place between the confider and the one receiving it. The trust was in its very nature sacred, and eternal. A person who obtains the confidences of another in the unsuspecting intimacy of friendship, and with altered feelings of other years, reveals that which was reposed in him and in his honor, has committed a moral crime before which Perjury itself could lift up its head in conscious superior integrity and dignity. Such an act has the characteristics of the spy, and in all nations the spy is hung. Such a person obtains information through disguises and falsehood, and the judgment by common consent of the world on such conduct is death.
There are people who read this chapter who have adversaries today who were friends in other months or years. These enemies have ruthlessly stabbed them with the divulgence of heart and life histories which they secured moment by moment, and word by word in the bright, cloudless days of unsuspecting friendship. These same maligned people have as startling facts in their possession reflecting on their present foes who were once their friends, and yet never even have the temptation to give to the public matters of their private, domestic, and business life. The reason is that they cannot take such a mean revenge. They cannot do a dishonorable thing. They cannot violate the confidence of friendship, even when that friendship is past. They cannot be a spy.
Nevertheless when the stab is given in the betrayal of trust, one of the strongest ropes is cut that binds the soul to this world. A positive promise was broken. A sacred confidence was abused. A secret which had been given to another in perfect faith was repeated to a third party, or given to an unfeeling and misunderstanding world. My, how the balloon swings and pulls and tugs skyward, after one of these gross violations of love and honor; and how the soul fastens a deeper, longer gaze upon Him who was denied and betrayed by friends and disciples; but who never Himself was unfaithful and untrue to another. A fourth effective discipline of life is found in the lack of appreciation.
It is wonderful how the soul thrives like a sun plant in the light of good will and sympathy. rule is that men and women, like vegetation, do better under sunlight than frost. The home with its genial, loving fireside is better for spiritual improvement and development than the penitentiary with the dark cell. So there are many whose gifts and finest qualities have first been benumbed, and then driven into a Siberian retirement, who under other conditions could and would have made the best members and citizens of our social circles and communities.
"Poor little Gerty," the evening star used to seem to say to the beaten, sobbing, neglected, misunderstood child as she lay watching it from her window in the garret. And poor little Gerty it is to many others in this weary world, who in the absence of earthly sympathy and kindness, are driven for comfort to the heavens, and especially to Him who is the King of that country. A fifth blow is felt in ingratitude.
Scarcely any stab goes deeper in the heart than to have kindness met with unkindness, benefits with injury, and a life of sacrifice with the most cold-blooded ungratefulness.
We are confident from years of observation that it is not the devoted husband who makes the same kind of wife; or vice versa. Nor is it the sacrificing father and mother who are rewarded with appreciative, grateful, obedient children. We have known of parents who denied themselves actual necessaries, were insufficiently clothed, and often went hungry to give their sons and daughters comforts, pleasures, education and even accomplishments, and were regarded with neglect, slight, disobedience and utter thanklessness.
We have seen parents who had worked like slaves and pack horses for the good of their households, come to an old age where they were ignored, treated with contempt, elbowed aside, and all but pushed into the cemetery where they were finally only too glad to go. The Bible says of this kind of ingratitude, that it is sharper than a serpent’s tooth. And it is a tooth that cuts in two the thickest of cords which bind one to home and earth, and the balloon fairly surges to be gone. A sixth trial which we take time just to mention, is that of bereavement.
How empty the world looks when certain ones we loved take their flight into the heavens.
There are many millions of people still left who line the highway, and throng the streets, but very lonely feels the earth after some mounds and hillocks appear in the cemetery, whose sod covers the silent forms of those who were everything in this life to us.
Somehow the balloon strains very hard upon the ropes after that, and the days and hours are counted when the signal shall be given, and the lingerer upon the shores of Time shall rush away as upon wings of light to rejoin the company that has preceded him months and years before. The writer knew one of the most gifted preachers of the South, who, when seventy years of age, would take his walking cane and walk out to the cemetery, two miles away from the city. Here he would spend most of the day among the tombs and graves of his household and many of his old-time associates and companions. One day his daughter said to him, "Father, why do you go out so often to the cemetery?" With a gush of tears to his eyes he replied, "I have more friends, my daughter, out there, than I have here in town." The soul was pulling away even then towards the sky. and yet as a child, we had seen him in the glory of his manhood, in the zenith of his matchless pulpit power, with his name spoken in praise and admiration by thousands, while multitudes hung enraptured on his words, and counted it an honor just to touch his hand. At this time he was not only young, handsome, eloquent, gifted and wealthy, but with friends by the hundred, and admirers by the thousand. How he must have loved this earth. How firmly he must have been bound to it. But as the years went by, the cords of the balloon were cut.
Every kind of trial and loss and sorrow came into his life. Enemies as well as false friends did their work. Money took wings. Children died. The house got empty. A great company preceded him to the graveyard. By and by he wanted to go. Then he longed to go. One day the last cord was cut, and with a glad cry his soul flashed its way out of his body, and the heavens received him out of sight forever.
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