Will You Be Missed? - 1 Samuel 20:18

Sermon by Russell H. Conwell
Sunday Evening, May 28, 1916
Grace Baptist Church

My text this evening is in the 20th Chapter of First Samuel, the 18th verse:

"Then Jonathan said to David: Tomorrow is the noon moon: and thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty."

The reason why David was missed is something that is worthy of the attention of every man and woman. It contains a great truth.

A man is known by the company he don't keep; and he is also known by the things he don't do. We often speak of the converse of that statement, but we do not emphasize this.

Now David was missed because he was hated by bad men. This was to his credit, to the honor of his position as a young man. He left his home and all hopes of future promotion when he had the promise that he should be made the head of the nation, that he should be made King. But he left it all. It is a great thing, young men and women, to be hated by bad men. Woe unto you when all men speak well of you. Woe unto you when you have no enemies, because no man can be right without sometimes crossing the track of those who are wrong.

David was hated by the politicians; by those wild and savage, those brutal and barbarous tribes along the shores of the Mediterranean. He was hated by them all, for they had tried to rob him, they had tried to murder his people; and no one is injured so much as he who injures another. No man hates a transgressor so much as the transgressor hates his victim. Palestine hated all Israel and all the Jews, and especially hated this young man. To be hated by bad men is a great accomplishment for a young man.

George B. Angell started the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and he loved the beasts of the field, and the dogs and the cats, and the horses, and he seemed to have a sympathy for them beyond anything I have ever seen; and very frequently in my law office I was called upon to represent the Society when people were arrested for brutal treatment of their animals—and George B. Angell was the most hated man in Boston. And after he had carried on that campaign for about ten years he was despised by all the people who had been arrested, and by their friends, and he was feared by all those who did not take care of their animals, and he was in the disfavor of a certain class of people whom he had offended. One day Wendell Phillips, in introducing him on a public occasion to speak for the Society, said: "Those who love animals and defend them cannot be defended by animals, but they are attacked by men; and let it be said to Brother Angell's credit that he has more enemies in Boston than any other man I know, and all those enemies are among the worst classes of the city." What a great credit it was to say that of George B. Angell.

It has not been ten years since Anthony Comstock carried on his great campaign in the city of New York against obscene literature, and the low, and the wicked, and the vile of that great city hated Anthony Comstock, and his views were held up to contumely and insult, and he was often mobbed on the streets. Yet what was it to him to be mobbed for a cause such as he represented!

A short time ago Detective Burns was the most unpopular man in the whole country, because he arrested so many men under various circumstances, and all their friends and all parties connected with them were deeply prejudiced against him; and it took Detective Burns years to overcome those enemies which have arisen against him among the criminal classes of this country.

Time was when Washington was so unpopular that there was open talk about impeaching him as President of the United States. He was accused by politicians as a mere schemer, a man whose word could not be trusted; a man who misused public funds. And yet the men who accused him, when you study the history of their lives, you will find, were a wicked, low class; many of them ended in the penitentiary, and some of them murdered other people, as was the case with Aaron Burr. George Washington was hated, and it is to his honor that we speak of it. He was hated by bad men.

I remember Lincoln's unpopularity at a time when he was endeavoring to make compromises with the Southern States in order to settle the war; when he was in favor of extreme forbearance, and the people of the North as well as of the South seemed to be opposed to that merciful measure; and Lincoln then hardly dared go down the street for fear of a mob attacking him.

On these Memorial Days, when we especially bring to mind characters like that of Abraham Lincoln, let us learn the great truth that he who is hated of bad men will be honored of God.

I remember walking over the fields in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, and seeing the homestead of Lucy Stone Blackwell, that great woman advocate of women's rights and that advocate of liberty of every kind for men and women, and it brought to my mind how strangely Christ used that girl in West Brookfield. She was a person of high and noble impulses, of pure mind, of culture and intellect, and she behaved herself like a lady almost at every point. But she did a very unladylike thing—so the local people there thought. There was a colored boy who worked around the railroad station at West Brookfield, and while a boy had his arm crippled and he went out to pick berries, and the white boys and girls also went out into the berry field, and the white boys began to pelt this colored boy with stones and sticks, and little Lucy Stone Blackwell, though small then, saw the injustice of the attack by the wicked white boys upon this defenseless, crippled colored boy and she went out with a pail half full of berries and smashed it over the head of one of the white boys about to throw a stone. From that day on to the end of her life she was honored by America as one of the most lovely of women. I spoke this morning of Lucretia Mott, and she was one of the most loved of women. She gained attention everywhere and the respect even of the worst classes of people; but Lucy Stone Blackwell had the enmity of people because of her fierce, open, brave attacks against all things that were wrong, and an illustration that comes to my mind is found in the love letter which her husband before their marriage wrote to her mother, and in that letter Mr. Blackwell said:

"I love her for the enemies that she has made."

I remember hearing, not long ago, of a boy before the Sherman House in Chicago some years ago. He was the only child of a widow, and he was obliged to earn his living by selling papers. But he was greatly disliked by the other newsboys because he went to evening school to learn something and they did not, and he attracted the other newsboys' jealousy for that reason. Another reason why he was disliked was that he often spoke of his mother. The boys made sport of him for being a "mother's boy" and of being tied to his mother's apron strings.  Sometimes they invited him to smoke, then they asked him to play craps. But he would not do either. Because he would not do any of those things that newsboys so often do which are wrong he was disliked by them, and they would not speak to him. When he became Miss Willard's stenographer he was disliked, because he determined in that office to be the very best stenographer in the place. He was so accurate, he was so careful, he was so conscientious and worked often so long after hours that he became very unpopular. All the other stenographers would leave promptly at 5 o'clock, but he would often stay until half past five, and was assailed before the labor unions. He was so faithful, doing his duty to the full, that he became very unpopular. When he was in college he was at the head of the class because he always had his lessons thoroughly prepared. He was often referred to as  authority when any questions between professor and students arose, and he has been for years the head of the State University of West Virginia. He has been known as the youngest of all our college presidents.

But David was missed not only because he had done his work well and because wicked men were against him, but he was missed because he had so many people dependent upon him.

J. H. Patterson, of the National Cash Register Company. of Dayton, Ohio, made himself at one time the most unpopular of men by trying to do good. When he started in business he started out with the purpose of employing many people; he determined to be of more use to his employes than to simply give them wages. So one day he desired to clean up that section of Dayton near his factory, and he went around personally and called on the people, asking them if they would not clean up their front yards and back yards, in order that the town might be more sanitary. Some of them complied with his wishes and others said it was none of his business, and were offended. But he determined to bring them to time. He secured a photographer to go around the places where the fences were down and the gate was hanging on one hinge and where the rubbish was scattered around the yard, and took a picture of each one of those places and exhibited the pictures as a disgrace to the city of Dayton. It made him exceedingly unpopular for the time; and if you will go to that great factory, one of the largest on earth, supporting so many families, sending so many children to school, supporting so many churches in the worship of God, you will find there the spirit of the love of mankind which Mr. Patterson put into it.

When a man enters any political undertaking he must expect to have enemies. You cannot be mayor of a city without having enemies; because for every office you will have many people applying. Consequently, you will have 559 disappointed out of every 560 applicants. Where you keep one friend to whom you gave the position, you will have 559 enemies among those who were disappointed in not getting the place. The President of the United States has that difficulty to contend with from those who seek office, both in his own party and by those of the opposing party. He who goes into any public office must make up his mind that he is going to meet with strong, unjust opposition; he must expect it, must be prepared to contend with it and contend with it in a reasonable fraternal way.

Religious undertakings, the reforms for the good of the people in the uplift of their worship, have immediately met with criticism, for all forms of opposition arise in religious work. There is no time when men seem to be so willing to deceive, and lie, and steal, and even murder, as in religious bigotry. Nothing is more bitter, without going back to the days of the inquisition, than the superstitious disagreement over some unimportant question.

David was especially missed because so many people depended on him. What a beautiful picture to see husband and father going away from home in the morning, taking his dinner pail, standing at the door, bidding the child good-bye, leaving his advice and his kiss, turning down the street, and then to watch them looking after him. They are going to miss him all day. They will anxiously wait until evening time comes to hear his returning footsteps and see his face. They will come to the front hall to meet him when he comes home, because they have missed him. Oh, man or woman, is there no one to miss you after you go away from home? If there is no one on hand to welcome you when you come home in the evening, to welcome you with a kiss of love when you enter the door, your fate is a sad one. How sweet a thing it is to be missed, and what a duty it is to our Christ and to God that we should live that life from which we will be missed. Oh, the bread winners of the world, who go out to work for their families—their wives and their children! When death comes to them, and the coffin is carried to the cemetery, and the family returns to the darkness of that home, oh, how he is missed! Yet, if we die, and are not missed, we have no claim to eternal life.

There were many dependent upon David, and the ambition of his life in the hope to be a ruler was that he might have power to gather around him many men and their families of the nation dependent upon him.

I have been very much interested in the life of Sir Thomas Lipton. He is known best, perhaps, in this country by the fact that he contended for the cup in the great yacht races in New York. But Sir Thomas Lipton's early ambition was to be an employer of other people. Am I addressing young men now with life before you, not over 35 years of age, who are working for some one else, complaining about your wages and about the poor position you occupy ? You should be an employer! There are many people who are employers now who had less opportunity than you have had, and you should not be in your situation tonight—you should be an employer. Sir Thomas Lipton is said to have been a young man in the city of New York who came over from Scotland to seek his fortune. He sought for work. Lord, pity the man who has struggled for weeks for work and has found it not! Nearly 16 years of age, he stood there on John street, in New York, in front of a little grocery store. He had no means to go in and buy the bread he saw in that window; he was so tired that his limbs would no longer carry him, and he sat down in front of that store, homeless, friendless, out of work. The good man, seeing him there as he closed his store, gave him a piece of bread. He walked away and sat outside all night. But on that night he said, "Lord, give me the opportunity to furnish poor men with work!" The ambition came to him then and there. God must have put him through that experience for some purpose; God must have put it into his mind to help the men who were out of work, and God's providence led him back to Glasgow, where his father assisted him somewhat, and where he worked very late and long in a little grocery store in that city. His desire was to employ people. He had such a passion for it that his father hardly dared trust him to carry on the business, for fear of his paying away all his money to the people he employed. But he was wise enough and careful enough to recognize the fact that he must take care of his own capital if he is going to employ more men. He opened one store after another, never making any large profits for himself; but now he has stores in all parts of the world. He owns a great tea plant in Ceylon, and he has owned, they tell me, the very store before which he stood on that dark night, hungry and wanting something to do. He is one of the wealthiest men of the world, yet he employed all his capital all the time for the further enlargement of his business with the desire ever to employ as many men as possible.

Leland Stanford, who endowed the great Leland Stanford University in California, is another illustration of this thought of David. He was born, I think, in New York, and was living in Vermont when he conceived the idea that he would like to give employment to all the school boys who went home with him. He went to his father and urged the father to employ those boys, and his father said to him: "If you want to employ those bright boys, I will give you a chance to do so yourself. I wish to have this piece of land cleared of timber so that I can cultivate it; I will give you the lumber and you may sell it, and you may bring to aid you all the boys you choose, only they must know that I am not responsible for their wages." Those young men began to clear that ground. They cut 1800 ties for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. He employed seventeen of the boys, and they worked together like grown men. He cleared only $18.50. But that was the foundation of his great wealth. For a little later than that he went to California, and there he adopted the same plan; so that whenever the poor miners came to the city and wanted work he tried to furnish all these poor fellows with work. He realized that the great need in their city life was something to do. That work was enlarged until he had 4000 men under his employ; and when the time came that California must be kept in the National Union or go to the Southern Confederacy, congress voted to aid in building the Pacific railroads. He saw the opportunity to employ a great many people on that railroad, and it was on the 10th of May, 1869, that he stood at the junction of the Central Pacific Railroad, out at Ogden, where they gave him one spike of gold, another one of silver and another one of iron, representing the Three States centering at that point, and he drove down the last three spikes of that great connection between the East and the West. What a great privilege it was for him to return home, having given constant employment to 50,000 people. It did his heart good, and brought considerable profit to himself. It enabled him to give a million of dollars to endow the Leland Stanford University.

It was in Wilbraham, Mass., where my brother and I had to live in the attic of an old, unfurnished farm house, with the rafters of the roof all bare and with only a gable window at one end of the house. When we went there to "board ourselves" we had a little stove, on which we had to cook our own cornmeal, and we found it necessary to have a table. The good old man who owned the place said there was a rough old table in the garret we might have. We brought out the old table, which consisted of one board on three legs, and when we sat down for the first time to eat our cornmeal my brother noticed the name of Charles Pratt carved upon that table. It appeared that Charles Pratt had boarded at the same place when he went to school there, boarded in the same attic. When I was called upon to address the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, a few weeks ago, I went into the hall where hangs the picture of Charles Pratt, the great benefactor of Brooklyn. I was standing before it, and there was a sketch of his biography. He had only one year of education at Wilbraham Academy. How it connected the threads of history back to "Charles Pratt" in that old attic! He could only afford to go to school one year. He went to the library in Boston and there studied evenings such books as he could get; and he secured a very thorough education, after all. But he had a passion for employing men. He wanted to employ the boys and girls, and it was such a passion with him that he sought for places where he had no interest to secure employment for them, and he employed personally as manv people as he could in connection with his own grocery business in Watertown. Mass. Afterward he went into the production of oil and became one of the millionaires of that day, and established the Pratt Institute, in order to give all the people the advantage of a practical education. They are doing there now for Brooklyn what the Temple University is doing for Philadelphia. As I stood there and looked on that portrait, I thought how Philadelphia also was indebted to Charles Pratt for employment of its people in five of the great industries today in which he took much stock in order to furnish men with work.

Charles Pratt, when he died, was greatly missed. The city of Brooklyn went into deepest mourning; on the street corners they whispered his name; over 6000 of his employes stopped work for the day and wore crepe upon their arms. He was greatly honored and loved, because he furnished people with work, and was one of the greatest philanthropists of the world.

David, in the third place, and about this I spoke last Sunday night, was missed because he was "sincerely loved." Oh, how Jonathan loved him! Loved him with a sublimer affection than a woman. He was greatly beloved by men and honored by them for what he had already done, and more for the promise of what he was to be. Even Jonathan told him, in the chapter I have just read, that he was to be King, and Jonathan was willing to take a second place.

I stood one day in that great palace where William of Orange was assassinated. Few statesmen or warriors were ever so adored. The people of Netherlands, when William of Orange was killed, were so filled with woe, they missed him so sadly, they loved him so much, that they could not work. The historian of the Siege of Leyden said that for days the people could not work; that they wept and could not eat—they missed their loved prince of Orange so much. He had led them through great religious trials and persecutions. He had guided them with kindness, tenderness and unselfishness, and he was consequently missed beyond any citizen of that great Netherland nation. No citizen of the world, except Abraham Lincoln, was ever missed like William of Orange.

I sat on a platform in a town in New Jersey the other day with Mr. Cattell, who order to get into that line, pass that coffin ham Lincoln in Independence Square, Philadelphia, and stood there all night, in and look upon the face of the martyred President. I stood by that coffin before it reached Philadelphia, when it was opened in Washington. Men came up to that coffin with trembling hands, and when they looked upon the face of that great man they burst into tears and loud wails—men and women fainted, filled with grief because of the loss of "Old Abe," "Father Abraham," the true leader of the whole nation, loved in the South as well as in the North, because he was so just and reasonable to the South. Dying as he did, at the time he did, he was wept for in almost every Northern home and in every Southern home. If they did not weep, they treated his memory with profound respect.

Oh, to be missed! It is one of the great blessings of life to come to the end of it and to be so loved that one will be deeply missed. Why do I speak of this life of David? Because it is a great illustration from the Old Testament of what Christ teaches in the New. It brings out the life of the benefactor, the one who has helped his fellowmen—the life of him who lives not for self, but for others. It teaches that he who lives that life wins the favor of Almighty God.

I want to say it with more emphasis than I said it last week, especially to the young men and women: Will you be missed for your goodness? Will you be missed by those who are dependent upon you for your help? By those who love you? If you were taken away tomorrow, how much would you be missed? If you say you would be but little missed, then turn your mind to greater things. Determine to be of more service under God, and for Jesus Christ's sake live that life that will in the years to come unroll and develop into that fullness, so that when you die people will weep; when you die people will stand still and long be sad.

Oh, to live in this life so that you will be missed when you are gone, for the very fact that you are missed will carry your influence on through the ages. Christ, when that the memory of Him remains in mighty power, increasing in power through the ages. That kind of life is the life that counts for this world as well as for the He left this world, was missed—so missed life to come.