323. Windows Toward Jerusalem

Windows Toward Jerusalem

Dan_6:10 : ’93His windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem.’94

The scoundrelly princes of Persia, urged on by political jealousy against Daniel, have succeeded in getting a law passed that whosoever prays to God shall he put under the paw and teeth of the lions, who are lashing themselves in rage and hunger up and down the stone cage, or putting their lower jaw on the ground, bellowing till the earth trembles. But the leonine threat did not hinder the devotions of Daniel, the Coeur-de-Lion of the ages. His foes might as well make a law that the sun should not draw water, or that the south wind should not sweep across a garden of magnolias, or that God should be abolished. They could not scare this man with the red-hot furnaces, and they cannot now scare him with the lions. As soon as Daniel hears of this enactment he leaves his office of Secretary of State, with its upholstery of crimson and gold, and comes down the white marble steps and goes to his own house. He opens his window and puts the shutters back and pulls the curtain aside, so that he can look toward the sacred city of Jerusalem, and then he prays.

I suppose the people in the street gathered under and before his window, and said: ’93Just see that man defying the law; he ought to be arrested.’94 And the constabulary of the city rush to the police headquarters and report that Daniel is on his knees at the wide-open window. ’93You are my prisoner,’94 says the officer of the law, dropping a heavy hand on the shoulder of the kneeling Daniel. As the constables open the door of the cavern to thrust in their prisoner, they see the glaring eyes of the monsters. But Daniel becomes the first lion-tamer, and they lick his hand and fawn at his feet, and that night he sleeps with the shaggy mane of a wild beast for his pillow, while the king that night, sleepless in the palace, has on him the paw and teeth of a lion he cannot tame’97the lion of an accusing conscience.

What a picture it would be for some artist’97Darius, in the early dusk of morning, not waiting for footman or chariot, hastening to the den, all flushed and nervous and in deshabille, and looking through the crevices of the cage to see what had be come of his prime minister! ’93What, no sound!’94 he says: ’93Daniel is surely devoured, and the lions are sleeping after their horrid meal, the bones of the poor man scattered across the floor of the cavern.’94 With trembling voice Darius calls out, ’93Daniel!’94 No answer, for the prophet is yet in profound slumber. But a lion, more easily awakened, advances, and, with hot breath blown through the crevice, seems angrily to demand the cause of this interruption, and then another wild beast lifts his mane from under Daniel’92s head, and the prophet, waking up, comes forth to report himself all unhurt and well.

But our text shows us at Daniel’92s window open toward Jerusalem. Why in that direction open? Jerusalem was his native land, and all the pomp of his Babylonish successes could not make him forget it. He came there from Jerusalem at eighteen years of age, and he never revisited it, though he lived to be eighty-five years. Yet when he wanted to arouse the deepest emotions and grandest aspirations of his heart he had his window open toward his native Jerusalem. There are many of you today who understand that without any exposition.

This is getting to be a nation of foreigners. They have come into all occupations and professions. They sit in all churches. It may be twenty years ago since you got your naturalization papers, and you may be thoroughly Americanized, but you cannot forget the land of your birth, and your warmest sympathies go out toward it. Your windows are open toward Jerusalem. Your father and mother are buried there. It may have been a very humble home in which you were born, but your memory often plays around it, and you hope some day to go and see it’97the hill, the tree, the brook, the house, the place so sacred, the door from which you started off with parental blessing to make your own way in the world; and God only knows how sometimes you have longed to see the familiar places of your childhood and how in awful crises of life you would like to have caught a glimpse of the old wrinkled face that bent over you as you lay on the gentle lap twenty or forty or fifty years ago. You may have on this side the sea risen in fortune and, like Daniel, have become great and may have come into prosperities which you never could have reached if you had stayed there; and you may have many windows to your house’97bay windows and skylight windows, and windows of conservatory and windows on all sides’97but you have at least one window open toward Jerusalem.

When the foreign steamer comes to the wharf you see the long line of sailors, with shouldered mail-bags, coming down the planks, carrying as many letters as you might suppose would be enough for a year’92s correspondence, and this repeated again and again during the week. Multitudes of them are letters from home; and at all the post-offices of the land people will go to the window and anxiously ask for them, hundreds of thousands of persons finding that window of foreign mails the open window toward Jerusalem, Messages that say: ’93When are you coming home to see us? Brother has gone into the army. Sister is dead. Father and mother are getting very feeble. We are having a great struggle to get on here. Would you advise us to come to you, or will you come to us? All join in love, and hope to meet you, if not in this world, then in a better. Good-by!’94

In all these cities, and amid the flowering western prairies, and on the slopes of the Pacific, and amid the Sierras, and on the banks of the lagoon, and on the ranches of Texas, there is an uncounted multitude who, this hour, stand and sit and kneel with their windows open toward Jerusalem. Some of them played on the heather of the Scottish hills. Some of them were driven out by Irish famine. Some of them in early life drilled in the German army. Some of them were accustomed at Lyons or Marseilles or Paris to see on the street Victor Hugo or Gambetta. Some chased the chamois among the Alpine precipices. Some plucked the ripe clusters from Italian vineyard. Some lifted their faces under the midnight sun of Norway. It is no dishonor to our land that they remember the place of their nativity. Miscreants would they be if, while they have some of their windows open to take in the free air of America and the sunlight of an atmosphere which no kingly despot has ever breathed, they forgot sometime to open the windows toward Jerusalem.

You have the example of the heroic Daniel of my text for keeping early memories fresh. Forget not the old folks at home. Write often, and if you have surplus of means and they a deficit, make practical contribution, and rejoice that America is bound to all the world by ties of sanguinity as is no other nation. Who can doubt but it is appointed for the evangelization of all lands? What a stirring, melting, Gospelizing theory that all the doors of other nations are open towards us, while our windows are open toward them!

But Daniel, in the text, kept this port-hole of his domestic fortress unclosed because Jerusalem was the capital of sacred influences. There had smoked the sacrifice. There was the Holy of Holies. There was the Ark of the Covenant. There stood the temple. We are all tempted to keep our windows open on the opposite side, toward the world, that we may see and hear and appropriate its advantages. What does the world say? What does the world think? What does the world do? Worshipers of the world instead of worshipers of God. Windows open toward Babylon. Windows open toward Corinth. Windows open toward Athens. Windows open toward Sodom. Windows open toward the flats, instead of windows open toward the hills. Sad mistake, for this world as a god is like something I once saw in the museum of Strasburg, Germany: the figure of a virgin in wood and iron. The victim in olden time was brought there, and this figure would open its arms to receive him, and once enfolded the figure closed with a hundred knives and lances upon him, and then afterward let him drop one hundred and eighty feet sheer down. So the world first embraces its idolaters, then closes upon them with many tortures, and then lets them drop forever down. The highest honor the world could confer was to make a man Roman emperor; but out of sixty-three emperors it allowed only six to die peacefully in their beds. The dominion of this world over multitudes is illustrated by the names of coins of many countries. They have their pieces of money, which they call sovereigns, crowns and half crowns, Napoleons and Fredericks and double Fredericks, and ducats, and Isabellinos’97all of which names mean not so much usefulness as dominion. The most of our windows open toward the exchange, toward the salon of fashion, toward the god of this world. In olden times the length of the English yard was fixed by the length of the arm of King Henry I, and we are apt to measure things by a variable standard and by the human arm, which, in the great crises of life, can give us no help. We need, like Daniel, to open our windows toward God and religion.

But, mark you, that good lion-tamer is not standing at the window, but kneeling, while he looks out. Most photographs are taken of those in standing or sitting posture. I now remember but one picture of a man kneeling, and that was David Livingstone, who in the cause of God and civilization sacrificed himself; and in the heart of Africa his servant, Majwara, found him in the tent, kneeling by the light of a candle, stuck on the top of a box, his head in his hands upon the pillow, and dead on his knees. But here is a great lion-tamer, living under the dash of the light, and his hair disheveled of the breeze, praying. The fact is, that a man can see farther on his knees than standing on tiptoe. Jerusalem was about five hundred and fifty statute miles from Babylon, and the vast Arabian Desert shifted its sands between them. Yet through that open window Daniel saw Jerusalem, saw all between it, saw beyond, saw time, saw eternity, saw earth, and saw heaven. Would you like to see the way through your sins to pardon, through your troubles to comfort, through temptation to rescue, through dire sickness to immortal health, through night to day, through things terrestrial to things celestial? You will not see them till you take Daniel’92s posture. No cap of bone to the joints of the fingers, no cap of bone to the joints of the elbow, but cap of bone to the knees, made so because the God of the body was the God of the Soul, an especial provision for those who want to pray, and physiological structure joins with spiritual necessity in bidding us pray and pray and pray.

In olden time, the Earl of Westmoreland said he had no need to pray, because he had enough pious tenants on his estate to pray for him; but all the prayers of the Church universal amount to nothing unless, like Daniel, we pray for ourselves. O men and women! bounded on one side by Shadrach’92s red-hot furnace, and the other side by devouring lions, learn the secret of courage and deliverance by looking at that Babylonish window open toward the southwest! ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93that is the direction of the Arabian Desert!’94 Yes; but on the other side of the desert is God, is Christ, is Jerusalem, is heaven. The Brussels lace is superior to all other lace, so beautiful, so multiform, so expensive’97four hundred francs a pound. All the world seeks it. Do you know how it is made? The spinning is done in a dark room, the only light admitted through a small aperture, and that light falling directly on the pattern. So the finest specimens of Christian character I have ever seen, or ever expect to see, are those to be found in lives of all whose windows have been darkened by bereavement and misfortune save one; but under that one window of prayer the interlacing of divine workmanship went on until it was fit to deck a throne’97a celestial embroidery which angels admired and God approved.

But it is another Jerusalem toward which we now need to open our windows. The exiled evangelist of Ephesus saw it one day, as the surf of the Icarian sea foamed and splashed over the boulders at his feet; and his vision reminded me of a wedding day when the bride by sister and maid was having garlands twisted for her hair and jewels strung for her neck, just before she puts her betrothed hand into the hand of her affianced: ’93I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’94 Toward that bridal Jerusalem are our windows opened? We would do well to think more of heaven. It is not a mere annex of earth. It is not a desolate outpost. As Jerusalem was the capital of Judah and Babylon the capital of the Babylonian monarchy, and as London is the capital of Great Britain and Washington the capital of our own republic, the New Jerusalem is the capital of the universe. The King lives there, and the royal family of the redeemed have their palaces there, and there is a Congress of many nations and the Parliament of all the worlds. Yea, as Daniel had kindred in Jerusalem of whom he often thought, though he had left home when a very young man; perhaps father and mother and brothers and sisters still living, and was homesick to see them, and they belonged to the high circles of royalty, Daniel himself having royal blood in his veins’97so we have in the New Jerusalem a great many kindred, and we are sometimes homesick to see them, and they are all princes and princesses, in them the blood imperial; and we do well to keep our windows open toward their eternal residence. It is a joy for us to believe that while we are interested in them they are interested in us. Much thought of heaven makes one heavenly. The airs that blow through that open window are charged with life, and sweep up to us aromas from gardens that never wither, under skies that never cloud, in a spring-tide that never terminates. Compared with it, all other heavens are dead failures. Homer’92s heaven was an elysium which he describes as a plain at the end of the earth or beneath, with no snow nor rainfall, and the sun never goes down, and Rhadamanthus, the justest of men, rules. Hesiod’92s heaven is what he calls ’93the islands of the blest,’94 in the midst of the ocean, three times a year blooming with most exquisite flowers, and the air tinted with purple, while games and music and horse-races occupy the time. The Scandinavian’92s heaven was the hall of Walhalla, where the god Odin gave unending wine suppers to earthly heroes and heroines. The Mohammedan’92s heaven passes its disciples in over the bridge Al-Sirat, which is finer than a hair and sharper than a sword, and then they are let loose into a riot of everlasting sensuality. The American aborigines look forward to a heaven of illimitable hunting-ground, partridge and deer and wild duck more than plentiful, the hounds never off the scent, and the guns never missing fire. But the geographer has followed the earth ’91round, and found no Homer’92s elysium. Voyagers have traversed the deep in all directions, and found no Hesiod’92s islands of the blest. The Mohammedan’92s celestial debauchery and the Indian’92s eternal hunting-ground for vast multitudes have no charm. But here rolls in the Bible heaven. No more sea’97that is, no wide separation. No more night’97that is, no insomnia. No more tears’97that is, no heart-break. No more pain’97that is, dismissal of lancet and bitter draught and miasma, and banishment of neuralgias and catalepsies and consumptions. All colors in the wall except gloomy black; all the music in the major-key, because celebrative and jubilant. River crystalline, gate crystalline, and skies crystalline, because everything is clear and without doubt. White robes, and that means sin-lessness. Vials full of odors, and that means pure regalement of the senses. Rainbow, and that means the storm is over. Marriage supper, and that means gladdest festivity. Twelve manner of fruits, and that means luscious and unending variety. Harp, trumpet, grand march, anthem, amen and hallelujah in the same orchestra. Choral meeting solo, and overture meeting antiphone, and strophe joining dithyramb, as they roll into the ocean of doxologies. And you and I may have all that, and have it forever through Christ, if we will let him with the blood of one wounded hand rub out our sin, and with the other wounded hand swing open the shining portals.

Day and night keep your window open toward that Jerusalem. Sing about it. Pray about it. Think about it. Talk about it. Dream about it. Do not be inconsolable about your friends who have gone into it. Do not worry if something in your heart indicates that you are not far off from its ecstasies. Do not think that when a Christian dies he stops, for he goes on. Before him open all the rooms of heaven; and as no room in your house is too good for your children, so all the rooms of all the palaces of the heavenly Jerusalem will be free to God’92s children, and even the throne-room will not be denied, and you may run up the steps of the throne, and put your hand on the side of the throne, and sit down beside the King according to the promise, ’93To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.’94

But you cannot go in except as conquerors. Many years ago the Turks and Christians were in battle, and the Christians were defeated, and with their commander, Stephen, fled toward a fortress where the mother of this commander was staying. When she saw her son and his army in disgraceful retreat, she had the gates of the fortress rolled shut, and then from the top of the battlement cried to her son, ’93You cannot enter here except as conqueror!’94 Then Stephen rallied his forces and resumed the battle and gained the day, twenty thousand driving back two hundred thousand. For those who are defeated in the battle with sin and death and hell, nothing but shame and contempt; but for those who gain the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, the gates of the New Jerusalem will swing wide in welcome, and there shall be an abundant entrance into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord, toward which you do well to keep your windows open.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage