309. Midnight Exploration

Midnight Exploration

First Night

Eze_8:8-10 : ’93Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things and abominable beasts.’94

So this minister of religion, Ezekiel, was commanded to explore the sin of his day. He was not to stand outside the door guessing what it was, but was to go in and see for himself. He did not in vision say: ’93O Lord, I do not want to go in; I dare not go in; if I go in I might be criticised; O Lord, please let me off.’94 When God told Ezekiel to go in he went in, ’93and saw; and behold all manner of creeping things and abominable beasts.’94 I, as a minister of religion, felt I had a divine commission to explore the iniquities of our cities. I did not ask counsel of my session or my presbytery or of the newspapers, but, asking the companionship of three prominent police officials and two of the elders of my church, I unrolled my commission, and it said: ’93Son of man, dig into the wall; and when I had digged into the wall, behold a door; and he said, Go in and see the wicked abominations that are done here; and I went in, and saw, and behold!’94

Brought up in the country and surrounded by much parental care, I had not until this autumn seen the haunts of iniquity. By the grace of God defended, I had never sowed any ’93wild oats.’94 I had somehow been able to tell from various sources something about the iniquities of the great cities, and to preach against them; but I saw, in the destruction of a great multitude of the people, that there must be an infatuation and a temptation that had never been spoken about, and I said, ’93I will explore.’94 I saw tens of thousands of men going down, and if there had been a spiritual percussion answering to the physical percussion, the whole air would have been full of the rumble and roar of the demolition; and this moment, if we should pause in our service, we would hear the crash, crash! Just as in the sickly season you sometimes hear the bell at the gate of a cemetery ringing almost incessantly, so I found that the bell at the gate of the cemetery where lost souls are buried was tolling by day and tolling by night. I said, ’93I will explore.’94 I went as a physician goes into a smallpox hospital, or a fever lazaretto, to see what practical and useful information I might get. That would be a foolish doctor who would stand outside the door of an invalid writing a Latin prescription. When the lecturer in a medical college is done with his lecture he takes the students into the dissecting room, and he shows them the reality. I am here this morning to report a plague, and to tell you how sin corrupts the body and befouls the mind and ruins the soul.

’93Oh,’94 say you, ’93are you not afraid that in consequence of your exploration of the iniquities of the city other persons may make exploration and do themselves damage?’94 I reply: ’93If, in company with the Commissioner of Police, and the Inspector of Police, and the Captain of Police, and the company of two Christian gentlemen, and not with the spirit of curiosity, but that you may see sin in order the better to combat it, then, in the name of the eternal God, go! But, if not, then stay away.’94 Wellington, standing in the battle of Waterloo when the bullets were buzzing around his head, saw a civilian on the field. He said to him: ’93Sir, what are you doing here? Be off!’94 ’93Why,’94 replied the civilian, ’93there is no more danger here for me than there is for you.’94 Then Wellington flushed up and said: ’93God and my country demand that I be here, but you have no errand here.’94 Now, I, as an officer in the army of Jesus Christ, went on this exploration, and on to this battlefield. If you bear a like commission, go; if not, stay away.

But you say, ’93Do you not think that somehow your description of these places will induce people to go and see for themselves?’94 I answer: Yes; just as much as the description of the yellow fever at Granada would induce people to go down there and get the pestilence. It was told us there were hardly enough people alive to bury the dead, and I am going to tell you a story in these Sabbath morning sermons of places where they are all dead or dying. And I shall not gild iniquities. I shall play a dirge and not an anthem; and while I shall not put faintest blush on fairest cheek, I will kindle the cheeks of many a man into a conflagration, and I will make his ears tingle. But you say, ’93Do you not know that the papers are criticising you for the position you take?’94 I say, Yes; and do you know how I feel about it? There is no man who is more indebted to the newspaper press than I am. My business is to preach the truth, and the wider the audience the newspaper press gives me, the wider my field is. As the secular and religious press of the United States and the Canadas, and of England and Ireland and Scotland, and Australia and New Zealand are giving me every week millions of souls for an audience, I say I am indebted to the press, anyhow. Go on! To the day of my death I cannot pay them what I owe them. So slash away, gentlemen. The more, the merrier. If there is anything I despise, it is a dull time. Brisk criticism is a coarse Turkish towel, with which every public man needs every day to be rubbed down, in order to keep healthful circulation. Give my love to all the secular and religious editors, and full permission to run their steel pens clear through my sermons, from introduction to application.

It was ten o’92clock of a calm, clear starlight night when the carriage rolled with us from the bright part of the city down into the region where gambling and crime and death hold high carnival. When I speak of houses of dissipation, I do not refer to one sin, or five sins, but to all sins. As the horses halted, and, escorted by the officers of the law, we went in, we moved into a world of which I was as practically ignorant as though it had swung as far off from us as Mercury is from Saturn. No shout of revelry, no guffaw of laughter, but comparative silence. Not many signs of death, but the dead were there. As I moved through this place I said, ’93This is the home of lost souls.’94 It was a Dante’92s Inferno; nothing to stir the mirth, but many things to fill the eyes with tears of pity. Ah! there were moral corpses. There were corpses on the stairway, corpses in the gallery, corpses in the gardens. Leper met leper, but no bandaged mouth kept back the breath. I felt that I was sitting on the iron coast against which Euroclydon had driven a hundred dismasted hulks’97every moment more blackened hulks rolling in. And while I stood and waited for the going down of the storm and the lull of the sea, I bethought myself, this is an everlasting storm, and these billows always rage, and on each carcass that strewed the beach already had alighted a vulture’97the long-beaked, filthy vulture of unending despair’97now picking into the corruption, and now on the black wing wiping the blood of a soul! No lark, no robin, no chaffinch; but vultures, vultures, vultures! The scene reminded me of an incident that had occurred a few weeks previously in Pennsylvania, where a naturalist had received from a friend a deadly serpent, and he put it in a bottle and stood it in his studio, and one evening, while in the studio with his daughter, a bat flew in at the window, extinguished the light, struck the bottle containing the deadly serpent, and in a few moments there was a shriek from the daughter, and in a few hours she was dead. She had been bitten of the serpent. Amid these haunts of death, in that midnight exploration I saw that there were lions and eagles and doves for insignia; but I thought to myself how inappropriate. Better the insignia of an adder and a First of all, I have to report, as a result of this midnight exploration, that all the pulpit rhetoric about the costly magnificence of the haunts of iniquity is apocryphal. We were shown what was called the costliest and most magnificent specimen. I had often heard that the walls were adorned with masterpieces; that the fountains were bewitching in the gaslight; that the music was like the touch of a Thalberg or a Gottschalk; that the upholstery was imperial; that the furniture in some places was like the throne-room of the Tuileries. It is all false. Masterpieces! There was not a painting worth five dollars apart from the frame. Great daubs of color that no intelligent mechanic would put on his wall. A cross-breed between a chromo and a splash of poor paint! Music! Some of the homeliest creatures I ever saw squawked discord, accompanied by pianos out of tune! Upholstery! Two characteristics’97red and cheap. You have heard so much about the wonderful lights’97blue and green and yellow and orange flashing across the dancers and the gay groups. Seventy-five cents’92 worth of chemicals would produce all that in one night. Tinsel, gewgaws, tawdriness, frippery, seemingly much of it bought at a second-hand furniture store and never paid for! For the most part, the inhabitants were repulsive. Here and there a soul on whom God had put the crown of beauty, but nothing comparable with the Christian loveliness and purity which you may see any pleasant afternoon on any of the thoroughfares of our great cities. Young man, you are a stark fool if you go to those places of dissipation with the idea that you will see pictures and hear music and see beautiful and gracious countenances. From Thomas’92s or Dodworth’92s or Gilmore’92s band, in ten minutes you will hear more harmony than in a whole year of the racket and bang of the cheap orchestras of the dissolute. Come to me, and I will give you a letter of introduction to any one of the five hundred homes in Brooklyn and New York where you will see finer pictures and hear more beautiful music’97music and pictures compared with which there is nothing worth speaking of in those houses of dissipation. Sin, however pretentious, is almost always poor. Mirrors, divans, Chickering grand she cannot keep. The sheriff is after it with uplifted mallet, ready for the vendue. ’93Going! going! gone!’94

I noticed in all the haunts of dissipation that there was an attempt at music, however poor. The door swung open and shut to music; they stepped to music, they danced to music, they attempted nothing without music; and I said to myself, ’93If such inferior music has such power, and drum and fife and orchestra are enlisted in the service of the devil, what multi-potent power there must be in music! and is it not high time that in all our churches and reform associations we tested how much charm there is in it to bring men off the wrong road to the right road?’94 Twenty times that night I said within myself, ’93If poor music is so powerful in a bad direction, why cannot good music be made almost omnipotent in a good direction?’94 Oh, my friends, we want to drive men into the kingdom of God with a musical staff. We want to shut off the path of death with a musical bar. We want to snatch all the musical instruments from the service of the devil, and with organ and cornet and bass viol and piano and orchestra praise the Lord. Oh, holy bewilderment! Let us send such men as Philip Phillips, the Christian vocalist, all around the world, and Arbuckle, the cornetist, with his ’93Robin Adair’94 set to Christian words, and George Morgan, with his Hallelujah Chorus, and ten thousand Christian men with uplifted hosannas to capture this whole earth for God. We have had enough minor strains in the church; give us major strains. We have had enough dead marches in the church; play us those tunes which are played when an army is on a dead run to overtake an enemy. Give us the double-quick. We are in full gallop of cavalry charge. Forward, the whole line!

Many a man who is unmoved by Christian argument surrenders to a Christian song. Many a man under the power of Christian music has had a change take place in his soul and in his life equal to that which took place in the life of a man in Scotland who for fifteen years had been a drunkard. Coming home late at night, as he touched the doorsill his wife trembled at his coming. Telling the story afterward, she said: ’93I didn’92t dare go to bed, lest he violently drag me forth. When he came home there was only about a half-inch of the candle left in the socket. When he entered he said: ’91Where are the children?’92 and I said: ’91They are up-stairs in bed.’92 He said: ’91Go and fetch them,’92 and I went up and I knelt down and I prayed God to defend me and my children from their cruel father. And then I brought them down. He took up the eldest in his arms and kissed her and said: ’91My dear lass, the Lord hath sent thee a father home tonight.’92 And so he did with the second, and then he took up the third of the children and said: ’91My dear boy, the Lord hath sent thee home a father tonight.’92 And then he took up the babe and said: ’91My darling babe, the Lord hath sent thee home a father tonight.’92 And then he put his arm around me and kissed me, and said: ’91My dear lass, the Lord hath sent thee home a husband tonight.’92 Why, sir, I had na heard anything like that for fourteen years. And he prayed and he was comforted, and my soul was restored, for I didn’92t live as I ought to have lived, close to God. My trouble had broken me down.’94 Oh, for such a transformation in some of the homes of our cities today! By holy conspiracy, in the last song of the morning, let us sweep every prodigal into the kingdom of our God. O ye chanters above Bethlehem! come and hover this morning and give us a snatch of the old tune about ’93good will to men.’94

But I have also to report of that midnight exploration, that I saw something that amazed me more than I can tell. I do not want to tell it, for it will take pain to many hearts far away, and I cannot comfort them. But I must tell it. In all these haunts of iniquity I found young men with the ruddy color of country health on their cheek, evidently just come to town for business, having obtained employment in our stores and shops and offices. They had helped gather the summer grain. There they were in haunts of iniquity, the look on their cheek which is never on the cheek except when there has been hard work on the farm and in the open air. Here were these young men who had heard how gaily a boat dances on the edge of a maelstrom, and they were venturing. O God! will a few weeks do such an awful work for a young man? O Lord! hast thou forgotten what occurred when they knelt at the family altar that morning when that young man came away, and how father’92s voice trembled in the prayer, and mother and sister sobbed as they knelt on the floor? I saw that young man when he first confronted evil. I saw it was his first night there. I saw on him a defiant look, as much as to say: ’93I am mightier than sin.’94 Then I saw him consult with iniquity. Then I saw him waver and doubt. Then I saw going over his countenance the shadow of sad reflections, and I knew from his looks there was a powerful memory stirring his soul. I think there was a whisper going out from the gaudy upholstery, saying, ’93My son, go home.’94 I think there was a hand stretched out from under the curtains’97a hand tremulous with anxiety, a hand that had been worn with work, a hand partly wrinkled with age, that seemed to beckon him away, and so goodness and sin seemed to struggle in that young man’92s soul; but sin triumphed, and he surrendered to darkness and to death’97an ox to the slaughter.

Oh, my soul! is this the end of all the good advice? Is this the end of all the prayers that have been made? Have the clusters of the country vineyard been thrown into this great wine-press where Despair and Anguish and Death trample, and the vintage is a vintage of blood? I do not feel so sorry for that young man who, brought up in city life, knows beforehand what are all the surrounding temptations; but God pity the country lad, unsuspecting and easily betrayed. O young man from the farmhouse among the hills, what have your parents done that you should do this against them? Why are you bent on killing with trouble her who gave you birth? Look at her fingers’97what makes them so distorted? Working for you. Do you prefer to that honest old face the berouged cheek of sin? Write home to-morrow morning by the first mail, cursing your mother’92s white hair, cursing her stooped shoulder, cursing her old armchair, cursing the cradle in which she rocked you. ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93I can’92t, I can’92t!’94 You are doing it already. There is something on your hands, on your forehead, on your feet. It is red. What is it? The blood of a mother’92s broken heart! When you were threshing the harvest apples from that tree at the corner of the field last summer, did you think you would ever come to this? Did you think that the sharp sickle of death would cut you down so soon? If I thought I could break the infatuation I would come down from the pulpit and throw my arms around you and beg you to stop.

Perhaps I am a little more sympathetic with such because I was a country lad. It was not until I was fifteen years of age that I saw a great city. I remember how stupendous New York looked as I arrived at Cortlandt Ferry. And now that I look back and remember that I had a nature all awake to hilarities and amusements, it is a wonder that I escaped. I was saying this to a gentleman in New York a few days ago, and he said: ’93Ah! sir, I guess there were some prayers hovering about.’94 When I see a young man coming from the tame life of the country and going down in the city ruin, I am not surprised. My only surprise is that any escape, considering the allurements. I was a few days ago on the St. Lawrence river, and I said to the captain: ’93What a swift stream this is.’94 ’93Oh!’94 he replied, ’93seventy-five miles from here it is ten times swifter. Why, we have to employ an Indian pilot, and we give him a thousand dollars for his summer’92s work, just to conduct our boats through between the rocks and the islands, so swift are the rapids.’94 Well, my friend, every man that comes into New York and Brooklyn life comes into the rapids, and the only question is whether he shall have safe or unsafe pilotage.

Young man, your bad habits will be reported at the homestead. You cannot hide them. There are people who love to carry bad news, and there will be some officious old gossip who will wend her infernal steps toward the old homestead, and she will sit down, and, after she has a while wriggled in the chair, she will say to your old parents: ’93Do you know your son drinks?’94 Then your parents will get white about the lips, and your mother will ask to have the door set a little open for the fresh air; and before that old gossip leaves the place she will have told your parents all about the places where you are accustomed to go. Then your mother will come out, and she will sit down on the step where you used to play, and she will cry and cry. Then she will be sick, and the gig of the country doctor will come up the country lane, and the horse will be tied at the swing-gate; and the prescription will fail, and she will get worse and worse, and in her delirium she will talk about nothing but you. Then the farmers will come to the funeral, and tie the horses at the rail-fence about the house, and they will talk about what ailed the one that died, and one will say it was intermittent fever, and another will say it was congestion, and another will say it was premature old age; but it will be neither intermittent, nor congestion, nor old age. In the ponderous book of Almighty God it will be recorded for everlasting ages to read that you killed her. Our language is very fertile in describing different kinds of crime. Slaying a man is homicide. Slaying a brother is fratricide. Slaying a father is parricide. Slaying a mother is matricide. It takes two words to describe your crime’97parricide and matricide.

I must leave to other Sabbath mornings the unrolling of the scroll which I have this morning only laid on your table. We have come only to the vestibule of the subject. I have been treating of generals. I shall come to particulars. I have not told you of all the kinds of people I saw in the haunts of iniquity. Before I get through with these sermons I will answer the question everywhere asked of me, why does municipal authority allow these haunts of iniquity?

I will show all the obstacles in the way. Sirs, before I get through with this course of Sabbath morning sermons, by the help of the eternal God, I will save ten thousand men! And in the execution of this mission I defy all earth and hell.

But I was going to tell you of an incident. I said to the officer: ’93Well, let us go; I am tired of this scene;’94 and as we passed out of the haunts of iniquity into the fresh air, a soul passed in. What a face that was! Sorrow only half covered up with an assumed joy. It was a woman’92s face. I saw the tragedy as plainly as on the page of a book. You know that there is such a thing as somnambulism, or walking in one’92s sleep. Well, in a fatal somnambulism, a soul started off from her father’92s house. It was very dark, and her feet were cut of the rocks; but on she went until she came to the verge of a chasm, and she began to descend from boulder to boulder down over the rattling shelving’97for you know while walking in sleep people will go where they dare not go when awake. Farther on down, and farther, where no owl of the night or hawk of the day would venture. On down until she touched the depth of the chasm. Then, in walking sleep, she began to ascend the other side of the chasm, rock above rock, as the roe boundeth. Without having her head to swim with the awful steep, she scaled the height. No eye but the sleepless eye of God watched her as she went down one side the chasm and came up the other side the chasm. It was an August night, and a storm was gathering, and a loud burst of thunder awoke her from her somnambulism, and she said: ’93Whither shall I fly?’94 and with an affrighted eye she looked back upon the chasm she had crossed, and she looked in front, and there was a deeper chasm before her. She said: ’93What shall I do? Must I die here?’94 And as she bent over the one chasm, she heard the sighing of the past; and as she bent over the other chasm, she heard the portent of the future. Then she sat down on the granite crag, and cried: ’93Oh, for my father’92s house! Oh, for the cottage, where I might die amid embowering honeysuckles! Oh, the past! Oh, the future! O father! O mother! O God!’94 But the storm that had been gathering culminated, and wrote with fingers of lightning on the sky just above the horizon: ’93The way of the transgressor is hard.’94 And then thunder-peal after thunder-peal uttered it: ’93Which forsaketh the guide of her youth and forgetteth the covenant of her God. Destroyed without remedy!’94 And the cavern behind echoed it: ’93Destroyed without remedy!’94 And the chasm before echoed it: ’93Destroyed without remedy!’94 There she perished, her cut and bleeding feet on the edge of one chasm, her long locks washed of the storm dripping over the other chasm.

But by this time our carriage had reached the curbstone at my dwelling, and I awoke, and behold it was a dream!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage