The Dying Century
2Ki_20:1 : ’93Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.’94
No alarm bell do I ring in the utterance of this text, for in the healthy glow of your countenances I find cause only for cheerful prophecy; but I shall apply the text’97as spoken in the ear of Hezekiah, prostrate with a bad carbuncle’97to the nineteenth century, now closing. My theme is ’93The Dying Century.’94 I discuss it at an hour when our National Legislature is assembling, some of the members now here present, and others will arrive by the midnight trains, and tomorrow morning, from the North, South, East, and West, all the public conveyances coming this way will bring important additions of public men; so that when tomorrow, at high noon, the gavels of Senate and House of Representatives shall lift and fall, the destinies of this nation’97and through it the destinies of all nations struggling to be free’97will be put on solemn and tremendous trial. Amid such intensifying circumstances I stand by the venerable Century, and address it in the words of my text, ’93Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.’94
Eternity is too big a subject for us to understand. Some one has said it is a great clock, that says ’93Tick’94 in one century, and ’93Tack’94 in another. But we can better understand Old Time, who has many children, and they are the centuries, and many grandchildren, and they are the years. With the dying Nineteenth Century we shall have a plain talk, telling him some of the good things he has done, and then telling him some of the things he ought to adjust before he quits this sphere and passes out to join the eternities. We generally wait until people are dead before we say much in praise of them. Funeral eulogium is generally very pathetic and eloquent with things that ought to have been said years before. We put on cold tombstones what we ought to have put in the warm ears of the living. We curse Charles Sumner while he is living, and cudgel him into spinal meningitis, and wait until, in the rooms where I lived for a year, he puts his hand on his heart and cries ’93Oh!’94 and is gone; and then we make long procession in his honor, stopping long enough to allow the dead Senator to lie in state in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, and halting at Boston State House, where not long before, damnatory resolutions had been passed in regard to him, and then move on, amid the tolling bells and the boom of minute-guns, until we bury him at Mount Auburn and cover him with flowers five feet deep. What a pity he could not have been awake at his own funeral, to hear the gratitude of the nation! What a pity that one green leaf could not have been taken from each one of the mortuary garlands and put upon his table while he was yet alive at the Arlington! What a pity that out of the great choirs who chanted at his obsequies, one little girl, dressed in. white, might not have sung to his living ear a complimentary solo! The post-mortem expression contradicted the ante-mortem. The nation could not have spoken the truth both times about Charles Sumner. Was it before or after his decease it lied?
No such injustice shall be inflicted upon this venerable Nineteenth Century. Before he goes we recite in his hearing some of the good things he has accomplished. What an addition to the world’92s intelligence he has made! Look at the old schoolhouse, with the snow sifting through the roof and the filthy tin cup hanging over the water-pail in the corner, and the little victims on the long benches without backs, and the illiterate schoolmaster, with his hickory gad; and then look at our modern palaces of free schools, under men and women cultured and refined to the highest excellence, so that, whereas in our childhood we had to be whipped to go to school, children now cry when they cannot go. Thank you, venerable Century, while at the same time we thank God. What an addition to the world’92s inventions! Within our century the cotton gin. The agricultural machines, for planting, reaping, and threshing. The telegraph. The phonograph, capable of preserving a human voice from generation to generation. The typewriter, that rescues the world from worse and worse penmanship. And stenography, capturing from the lips of the swiftest speaker more than two hundred words a minute. Never was I so amazed at the facilities of our time as when, a few days ago, I telegraphed from Washington to New York a long and elaborate manuscript, and a few minutes after, to show its accuracy, it was read to me through the long-distance telephone, and it was exact down to the last semicolon and comma. What hath God wrought!
Oh, I am so glad I was not born sooner. Instead of the tallow candle, the electric light. Instead of the writhings of the surgeon’92s table, God-given an’e6sthetics, under the power of which the whole physical organism is explored by sharpest instrument, without giving so much pain as the taking of a splinter from under a child’92s finger-nail. Instead of the lumbering stage-coach, the limited express train. And there is the spectroscope of Fraunhofer, by which our modern scientist feels the pulse of other worlds throbbing with light. Jenner’92s arrest by inoculation of one of the world’92s worst plagues. Doctor Keeley’92s emancipation for inebriety. Intimation that the virus of maddened canine and cancer and consumption are yet to be balked by magnificent medical treatment. The eye sight of the doctor sharpened till he can look through thick flesh and find the hiding-place of the bullet. What advancement in geology, or the catechism of the mountains; chemistry, or the catechism of the elements; astronomy, or the catechism of the stars; electrology, or the catechism of the lightnings. What advancement in music: at the beginning of this century, confining itself, so far as the great masses of the people were concerned, to a few airs drawn out on accordion or massacred on church bass viol; now enchantingly dropping from thousands of fingers in Handel’92s Concerto in B flat, or Guilmant’92s Sonata in D minor.
Thanks to you, O Century! before you die, for the asylums of mercy you have founded’97the blind seeing with their fingers, the deaf hearing by the motion of your lips, the born imbecile by skilful object-lesson lifted to moderate intelligence. Thanks to this century for the improved condition of most nations. The reason that Napoleon made such a successful sweep across Europe at the beginning of the century was that most of the thrones of Europe were occupied either by imbeciles or profligates. But most of the thrones of Europe are today occupied by kings and queens competent. France a republic, Switzerland a republic, and about fifty free constitutions, I am told, in Europe. Twenty million serfs of Russia manumitted. On this Western continent I can call the roll of many republics’97Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Uruguay, Honduras, New Granada, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chili, Argentine Republic, Brazil. The once straggling village of Washington to which the United States Government moved, its entire baggage and equipment packed up in seven boxes which got lost in the woods near this place, now the architectural glory of the continent and admiration of the world.
The money power, so much denounced and often justly criticised, has covered this continent with universities, and free libraries, and asylums of mercy. The newspaper press which, at the beginning of the century was an ink-roller, moved by hand over one sheet of paper at a time, has become the miraculous manufacturer of four or five or six hundred thousand sheets for one daily newspaper’92s issue. Within your memory, O dying Century! has been the genesis of nearly all the great institutions evangelistic. At London Tavern, March 7th, 1802, British and Foreign Bible Society was born. In 1816, American Bible Society was born. In 1824, American Sunday School Union was born. In 1810, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which has put its saving hand on every nation of the round earth, was born at a haystack in Massachusetts. The National Temperance Society, the Women’92s Temperance Society, and all the other temperance movements, born in this century. Africa, hidden to other centuries, by exploration in this century has been put at the feet of civilization, to be occupied by commerce and Christianity. The Chinese wall, once an impassable barrier, now is a useless pile of stone and brick. Our American nation, at the opening of this century only a slice of land along the Atlantic coast, now the whole continent in possession of our schools and churches and missionary stations. Sermons and religious intelligence which in other times, if noticed at all by the newspaper press, were allowed only a paragraph of three or four lines, now find the columns of the secular press in all the cities thrown wide open, and every week for twenty-six years without the omission of a single week, I have been permitted to preach one entire Gospel sermon through the newspaper press. I thank God for this great opportunity.
Glorious Old Century! You shall not be entombed until we have, face to face, extolled you. You were rocked in a rough cradle, and the inheritance you received was for the most part poverty and struggle and hardships and poorly covered graves and heroes and heroines of whom the world had not been worthy and atheism and military despotism and the wreck of the French revolution. You inherited the influences that resulted in Aaron Burr’92s treason and another war with England and Battle of Lake Erie and Indian savagery and Lundy’92s Lane and Dartmoor massacre and dissention, bitter and wild beyond measurement, and African slavery, which was yet to cost a national hemorrhage of four awful years and a million precious lives. Yes, dear Old Century, you had an awful start, and you have done more than well, considering your parentage and your early environment. It is a wonder you did not turn out to be the vagabond century of all time. You had a bad mother and a bad grandmother. Some of the preceding centuries were not fit to live in,’97their morals were so bad, their fashions so outrageous, their ignorance so dense, their inhumanity so terrific. O dying Nineteenth Century! before you go we take this opportunity of telling you that you are the best and the mightiest of all the centuries of the Christian era, except the first, which gave us the Christ, and you rival that century in the fact that you, more than all the other centuries put together, are giving the Christ to all the world. One hundred and twelve thousand dollars at one meeting, contributed for the world’92s evangelization. Look at what you have done, O thou abused and depreciated Century! All the Pacific isles, barred and bolted against the Gospel when you began to reign, now all open, and some of them more Christianized than America. No more, as once written over the church doors in Cape Colony, ’93Dogs and Hottentots not admitted.’94 The late Mr. Darwin contributing twenty-five dollars to the Southern Missionary Society. Cannibalism driven off the face of the earth. The gates of all nations wide open for the Gospel entrance when the church shall give up its intellectual dandyism, and quit fooling with higher criticism, and plunge into the work, as at a life-saving station the crew pull out with the life-boat to take the sailors off a ship going to pieces in the Skerries. I thank you, old and dying Century; all heaven thanks you, and surely all the nations of the earth ought to thank you. I put before your eyes, soon to be dim for the last sleep, the facts tremendous. I take your wrinkled old hand and shake it in congratulation. I bathe your fevered brow, and freshen your parched lips from the fountains of eternal victory.
But my text suggests that there are some things that this century ought to do before it leaves us. ’93Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.’94 We ought rot to let this century go before two or three things are set in order. For one thing there is this quarrel between labor and capital. The nineteenth century inherited it from the eighteenth century, but do not let this nineteenth century bequeath it to the twentieth. ’93What we want,’94 says labor, ’93to set us right is more strikes and more vigorous work with torch and dynamite.’94 ’93What we want,’94 says capital, ’93is a tighter grip on the working classes and compulsion to take what wages we choose to pay, without reference to their needs.’94 Both wrong as sin. Both defiant. Until the Day of Judgment no settlement of the quarrel, if you leave it to British, Russian, or American politics. The religion of Jesus Christ ought to come in within the next few years and take the hand of capital and employee and say, ’93You have tried everything else, and failed; now try the Gospel of kindness.’94 No more oppression and no more strikes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will sweeten this acerbity, or it will go on to the end of time, and the fires that burn the world up will crackle in the ears of wrathful prosperity and indignant toil while their hands are still clutching at each other’92s throats. Before this century sighs its last breath I would that swarthy labor and easy opulence would come up and let the Carpenter of Nazareth join their hands in pledge of everlasting kindness and peace. When men and women are dying they are apt to divide among their children mementoes, and one is given a watch and another a vase and another a picture and another a robe. Let this veteran Century, before it dies, hand over to the human race, with an impressiveness that shall last forever, that old family keepsake, the golden keepsake which nearly nineteen hundred years ago was handed down from the black rock of the Mount of Beatitudes: ’93Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’94
Another thing that needs to be set in order before the veteran Century quits us, is a more thorough and all-embracing plan for the world’92s gardenization. We have been trying to save the world from the top, and it cannot be done that way. It has got to be saved from the bottom. The Church ought to be only a West Point to drill soldiers for outside battle. What if a military academy should keep its students from age to age in the mess-room and the barracks? No, no! They are wanted at Montezuma and Chapultepec and South Mountain and Missionary Ridge; and the church is no place for a Christian to stay very long. He is wanted at the front. He is needed in the desperate charge of taking the parapets. The last great battle for God is not to be fought on the campus of a college or the lawn of a church. It is to be fought at Missionary Ridge. What is the providential meaning? A great evangelist recently suggested that the evening services in all the churches be turned into the most popular style of evangelistic meetings for outsiders. Surely that is an experiment worth making. If that does not succeed, then it does seem to me all the churches which cannot secure sufficient evening audiences, ought to shut up their buildings at night and go where the people are, and invite them to come to the Gospel banquet.
Let the Christian souls, bountifully fed in the morning, go forth in the afternoon and evening to feed the multitudes of outsiders starving for the bread of which if a man eat he shall never again hunger. Among those clear down in the depths of poverty and misery, the Gospel would make more rapid conquest than among those who know so much and have so much that God cannot teach or help them. In those lower depths are many splendid fellows in the rough, like the shoeblack a reporter saw near New York City Hall. He asked a boy to black his boots. The boy came up to his work provokingly slow, and had just begun when a large boy shoved him aside and began the work, and the reporter reproved him as being a bully, and the boy replied: ’93Oh, that’92s all right. I am going to do it for ’91im. You see he’92s been sick in the hospital more’92n a month; so us boys turn in and give ’91im a lift.’94 ’93Do all the boys help him?’94 asked the reporter. ’93Yes, sir; when they ain’92t got no job themselves and Jim gets one, they turn in and help ’91im, for he ain’92t strong yet, you see.’94 ’93How much percentage does he give you?’94 said the reporter. The boy replied, ’93I don’92t keep none of it. I ain’92t no such sneak as that. All the boys give up what they git on his job. I’92d like to catch any feller sneaking on a sick boy, I would.’94 The reporter gave him a twenty-five-cent piece, and said, ’93You keep ten cents for youself, and give the rest to Jim.’94 ’93Can’92t do it, sir; it’92s his customer. Here, Jim.’94 Did such big souls as that strew all the lower depths of the cities, and get them converted to God, this would be the last full century of the world’92s sin, and but little work of evangelization would be left for the next century. Before this century expires, let there be a combined effort to save the great cities of America and Great Britain, and all Europe, and of all Christendom.
What an awful thing it would be for you, O dying Century, to bequeath to the coming century, as yet innocent and unscarred with a single sin or burdened with a single sorrow, the blasphemy, the lawlessness, the atheism, the profligacy, and the woes of great cities still unevangelized! Nearly all the centuries closed with something tremendous. Why may not this century close in the salvation of America? I do not know whether our theological friends, who have studied the subject more than I have, are right or wrong when they say Christ will come in person to set up his kingdom in this world; but though we would be overwhelmed with our unworthiness, I would like to see Christ descend from heaven in one of the clouds of this morning, and planting his feet on this earth, which he came centuries ago to save, declare his reign of love and mercy and salvation on earth begun. And what more appropriate place’97I say it reverentially’97for such a divine landing than the capital of a continent never cursed by the tyrannies and superstitions of the old world?
What has this dying Nineteenth Century to tell us before he goes? We all love to hear septuagenarians, octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians talk. We gather around the armchair and listen till it is far on into the night, and never weary of hearing their experiences. But Lord Lyndhurst, at eighty-eight years of age, pouring into the ears of the House of Lords, in a four-hours’92 address, the experiences of a lifetime, and Apollonius, at a hundred years of age, recounting his travels to thrilled listeners, and Charles Macklin, at one hundred and seven years of age, absorbing the attention of his hearers, and Ralph Farnham, of our country, at one hundred and seven years, telling the Prince of Wales the story of Bunker Hill, can create no such interest as this dying centenarian, if he will only speak.
Tell us, O Nineteenth Century! before you go, in a score of sentences, some of the things you have heard and seen. The veteran turns upon us and says: ’93I saw Thomas Jefferson ride in from Monticello, and on yonder hill take the oath of the Presidential office. I saw yonder Capitol ablaze with war’92s incendiarism. I saw the puff of the first steam-engine in America. I heard the thunders of Waterloo, of Sebastopol and Sedan and Gettysburg. I was present at all the coronations of the kings and queens and emperors and empresses now in the world’92s palaces. I have seen two billows roll across this continent and from ocean to ocean’97a billow of revival joy in 1857, and a billow of blood in 1864. I have seen four generations of the human race march across this world and disappear. I saw their cradles rocked and their graves dug. I have heard the wedding bells and the death knells of near a hundred years. I have clapped my hands for millions of joys and wrung them in millions of agonies. I saw Macready and Edwin Forrest act, and Edwin Payson pray. I heard the first chime of Longfellow’92s rhythms, and before any one else saw them, I read the first line of Bancroft’92s History, and the first verse of Bryant’92s ’91Thanatopsis,’92 and the first word of Victor Hugo’92s almost supernatural romance. I heard the music of all the grand marches and the lament of all the requiems that for nigh ten decades made the cathedral windows shake. I have witnessed more moral and spiritual victories than all of my predecessors put together. For all you who hear or read this valedictory, I have kindled all the domestic firesides by which you ever sat, and roused all the halloos and roundelays and merriments you have ever heard, and unrolled all the glorious sunrises and all the pictured sunsets and starry banners of the midnight heavens that you have ever gazed at.
’93But before I go, take this admonition and benediction of a dying Century. The longest life, like mine, must close. Opportunities gone never come back, as I could prove from nigh a hundred years of observation. The eternity that will soon take me will soon take you. The wicked live not out half their days, as I have seen in ten thousand instances. The only influence for making the world happy is an influence that I, the Nineteenth Century, inherited from the first century of the Christian Era’97the Christ of all the centuries. Be not deceived by the fact that I have lived so long, for a century is a large wheel that turns a hundred smaller wheels, which are the years; and each one of these years turns three hundred and sixty-five smaller wheels, which are the days; and each one of the three hundred and sixty-five days turns twenty-four smaller wheels, which are the hours; and each one of those twenty-four hours turns sixty smaller wheels, which are the minutes; and those sixty minutes turn still smaller wheels, which are the seconds. And all of this vast machinery is in perpetual motion, and pushes us on and on toward the great eternity whose doors will, at twelve o’92clock of the winter night between the year 1900 and the year 1901, open before me, the dying Century. I quote from the three inscriptions over the three doors of the Cathedral of Milan. Over one door, amid a wreath of sculptured roses, I read: ’91All that which pleases us is but for a moment.’92 Over another door, around a sculptured cross, I read: ’91All that which troubles us is but for a moment.’92 But over the central door I read: ’91That only is important which is eternal.’92 Oh, Eternity! Eternity! Eternity!
As the Nineteenth Century was born while the face of this nation was yet wet with tears because of the fatal horseback ride that Washington took, out here at Mt. Vernon, through a December snowstorm, so I wish the next century might be born at a time when the face of this nation shall be wet with the tears of joy at the literal or spiritual arrival of the Great Deliverer of Nations, of whom St. John wrote with apocalyptic pen: ’93And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage