372. Midnight Exploration

Midnight Exploration

Third Night

Mat_16:18 : ’93The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’94

You know about the gates of heaven. You have often heard them preached about. There are three to each point of the compass. On the north, three gates; on the south, three gates; on the east, three gates; on the west, three gates; and each gate is a solid pearl. Oh, gate of heaven, may we all get into it! But who shall describe the gates of hell spoken of in my text? These gates are burnished until they sparkle and glisten in the light. They are mighty, and set in sockets of deep and dreadful masonry. They are high, so that those who are in may not clamber over and get out. They are heavy, but they swing easily in to let those go in who are to be destroyed.

I remember, when the Franco-Prussian War was going on, that I stood one day in Paris looking at the gates of the Tuileries, and I was so absorbed in the sculpturing at the top of the gates’97the masonry and the bronze’97that I forgot myself, and after a while, looking down, I saw that there were officers of the law scrutinizing me, supposing, no doubt, I was a German, and looking at those gates for hostile purposes. But, my friends, we shall not stand looking at the outside of the gates of hell. I intend to tell you of both sides, and I shall tell you what those gates are made of. With the hammer of God’92s truth I shall pound on the brazen panels, and with the lantern of God’92s truth I shall flash a light upon the shining hinges.

Gate the first: Impure Literature. Anthony Comstock seized twenty tons of bad books, plates, and letter-press, and when Professor Cochran, of the Polytechnic Institute, poured the destructive acids on those plates, they smoked in the righteous annihilation. And yet a great deal of the bad literature of the day is not gripped of the law. It is strewn in your parlors; it is in your libraries. Some of your children read it at night after they have retired, the gas-burner swung as near as possible to their pillow. Much of this literature goes under the title of scientific information. A book agent with one of these infernal books, glossed over with scientific nomenclature, went into a hotel and sold in one day a hundred copies, and sold them all to women! It is appalling that men and women who can get, through their family physician, all the useful information they may need, and without any contamination, should wade chin deep through such accursed literature under the plea of getting useful knowledge, and that printing presses, hoping to be called decent, lend themselves to this infamy. Fathers and mothers, be not deceived by the title, ’93Medical Works.’94 Nine-tenths of those books come hot from the lost world, though they may have on them the names of the publishing houses of New York and Philadelphia.

Then, there is all the novelette literature of the day flung over the land by the million. No one’97mark this’97no one systematically reads the average novelette of this day and keeps either integrity or virtue. The most of these novelettes are written by broken-down literary men for small compensation, on the principle that, having failed in literature elevated and pure, they hope to succeed in the tainted and the nasty. Oh, this is a wide gate of hell! Every panel is made out of a bad book or newspaper. Every hinge is the interjoined type of a corrupt printing press. Every bolt or lock of that gate is made out of the plate of an unclean pictorial. In other words, there are a million men and women in the United States today reading themselves into hell! When in your own beautiful city a prosperous family fell into ruins through the misdeeds of one of its members, the amazed mother said to the officer of the law: ’93Why, I never supposed there was anything wrong. I never thought there could be anything wrong.’94 Then she sat weeping in silence for some time, and said: ’93Oh, I have got it now! I know, I know! I found in her bureau after she went away a bad book. That’92s what slew her!’94 These leprous booksellers have gathered up the catalogues of all the male and female seminaries in the United States’97catalogues containing the names and the residences of all the students’97and circulars of death are sent to every one, without any exception. Can you imagine anything more dreadful? There is not a young person, male or female, or an old person, who has not had offered to him or her a bad book or a bad picture. Scour your house to find out whether there are any of these adders coiled on your parlor center-table, or coiled amid the toilet-set on the dressing-case. I adjure you before the sun goes down to explore your family libraries with an inexorable scrutiny. Remember that one bad book or bad picture may do the work for eternity. I want to arouse all your suspicions about novelettes. I want to put you on the watch against everything that may seem like surreptitious correspondence through the post-office. I want you to understand that impure literature is one of the broadest, highest, mightiest gates of the lost.

Gate the second: The Dissolute Dance. You shall not divert me to the general subject of dancing. Whatever you may think about the parlor dance, or the methodic motion of the body to sounds of music in the family or the social circle, I am not now discussing that question. I want you to unite with me in recognizing the fact that there is a dissolute dance. You know of what I speak. It is seen not only in the low haunts of death, but in elegant mansions. It is the first step to eternal ruin for a great multitude of both sexes. You know what postures and attitudes and figures are suggested of the devil. They who glide into the dissolute dance glide over an inclined plane, and the dance is swifter and swifter, wilder and wilder, until, with the speed of lightning, they whirl off the edges of a decent life into a fiery future. This gate of hell swings across the Ax-minster of many a fine parlor and across the ballroom of the summer watering-place. You have no right, my brother, my sister’97you have no right to take an attitude to the sound of music which would be unbecoming in the absence of music.

Gate the third: Indecorous Apparel. The attire of woman for several years past has been beautiful and graceful beyond anything I have known; but there are those that will always carry that which is right into the extraordinary and indiscreet. I charge Christian women neither by style of dress nor adjustment of apparel to become administrative of evil. Perhaps none else will dare to tell you, so I will tell you that there are multitudes of men who owe their eternal damnation to the boldness of womanly attire. Show me the fashion-plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI of France, and Henry VIII of England, and I will tell you the type of morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it. Modest apparel indicates a righteous people. Immodest apparel always indicates a contaminated and depraved society. You wonder that the city of Tyre was destroyed with such a terrible destruction. Have you ever seen the fashion-plate of Jerusalem? I will show it to you: ’93Moreover, the Lord saith, because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet, in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, the rings and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel and the mantles and the wimples and the crisping-pins.’94 That is the fashion-plate of ancient Jerusalem. And do you wonder that God in his indignation blasted that city?

Gate the fourth: Alcoholic Beverage. All the scenes of wickedness are under the enchantment of the wine-cup. That is what the waiters carry on the platter. That is what glows on the table. That is what shines in illuminated gardens. That is what flushes the cheeks of the patrons who come in. That is what staggers the step of the patrons as they go out. Oh, the wine-cup is the patron of impurity! The officers of the law tell us that nearly all the men who go into the shambles of death go in intoxicated, the mental and the spiritual abolished that the brute may triumph. Tell me that a young man drinks, and I know the whole story. If he become a captive of the wine-cup, he will become a captive of all other vices; only give him time. No one ever goes into inebriacy alone. That is a carrion-crow that goes in a flock, and when you see that beak ahead, you may know the other beaks are coming. In other words, the wine-cup unbalances and dethrones one’92s better judgment, and leaves one the prey of all evil appetites that may choose to alight upon his soul. There is not a place of any kind of sin in the United States today that does not find its chief abettor in the chalice of inebriety. There is either a drinking-bar before, or one behind, or one above, or one underneath. The officers of the law have said to me: ’93These people escape legal penalty because they are all licensed to sell liquor.’94 Then I have said to myself: ’93The courts that license the sale of strong drink, license gambling-houses, license libertinism, license disease, license death, license all sufferings, all crimes, all despoliations, all disasters, all murders, all woe. The courts and the Legislatures are swinging wide open this grinding, creaky, stupendous gate of the lost.’94

But you say: ’93You have described these gates of hell and shown us how they swing in to allow the entrance of the doomed. Will you not, please, before you get through the sermon, tell us how these gates may swing out to allow the escape of the penitent?’94 I reply, but very few escape. Of the thousand that go in, nine hundred and ninety-nine perish. Suppose one of these wanderers should knock at your door, would you admit her? Suppose you know where she came from, would you ask her to sit down at your dining-table? Would you ask her to become the governess of your children? Would you introduce her among your own acquaintances? Would you take the responsibility of pulling on the outside of the gate of hell while she pushed on the inside of that gate trying to get out? You would not’97not one of a thousand of you would dare to do it. You write beautiful poetry over her sorrows and weep over her misfortunes, but give her practical help you never will. There is not one person out of a thousand who will. There is not one out of five thousand who has come so near the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ as to dare to help one of these fallen souls.

But you say, ’93Are there no ways of escape for the poor wanderers?’94 Oh, yes; three or four. The one way is the sewing-girl’92s garret, dingy, cold, hunger-blasted. But you say, ’93Is there no other way for her to escape?’94 Oh, yes. Another way is the street that leads to East river, at midnight, the end of the city dock, the moon shining down on the water, making it look so smooth she wonders if it is deep enough. It is. No boatman near enough to hear the plunge. No watchman near enough to pick her out before she sinks the third time. No other way? Yes. By the curve of the Hudson River railroad, at the point where the engineer of the lightning express train cannot see a hundred yards ahead to the form that lies across the track. He may whistle ’93Down brakes,’94 but not soon enough to disappoint the one who seeks her death. But you say, ’93Is not God good, and will he not forgive?’94 Yes; but man will not, woman will not, society will not. The Church of God says it will, but it will not. Our work, then, must be prevention rather than cure. Telling this story today, it is not so much in the hope that I will persuade one who has dashed down a thousand feet over the rocks to crawl up again into life and light, but it is to alarm those who are coming too near the edge. Have you ever listened to hear the lamentation that rings up from those far depths?

Once I Was Pure As the Snow, but I Fell,

Fell Like a Snowflake, From Heaven to Hell;

Fell, to Be Trampled As Filth of the Street,

Fell, to Be Scoffed at and Spit On and Beat.

Pleading and Cursing and Begging To Die,

Selling My Soul to Whoever Would Buy;

Dealing in Shame for a Morsel of Bread,

Hating the Living and Fearing the Dead.

But you say, ’93What can be the practical use of this sermon?’94 I say, much, every way. Those gates of hell are to be prostrated just as certainly as God and the Bible are true, but it will not be done until Christian men and women, quitting their prudery and squeamishness in this matter, rally the whole Christian sentiment of the Church and assail these great evils of society. The Bible utters its denunciation in this direction again and again, and yet the piety of the day is such a namby-pamby sort of thing that you cannot even quote Scripture without making somebody restless. As long as this holy imbecility reigns in the Church of God, sin will laugh you to scorn. I do not know but that before the Church wakes up matters will get worse and worse, and that there will have to be one lamb sacrificed from each of the most carefully guarded folds, and the wave of uncleanness dash to the spire of the village church and the top of the cathedral pillar. Prophets and patriarchs and apostles and evangelists, and Christ himself have thundered against these sins as against no other, and yet there are those who think we ought to take, when we speak of these subjects, a tone apologetic. I put my foot on all the conventional rhetoric on this subject, and I tell you plainly that unless you give up these sins your doom is sealed, and world without end you will be chased by the anathemas of an incensed God. I rally you under the stirring prophecy of the text; I rally you to a besiegement of the gates of hell. We want in this besieging host no soft sentimentalists, but men who are willing to give and take hard knocks. The gates of Gaza were carried off; the gates of Thebes were battered down; the gates of Babylon were destroyed, and the gates of hell are going to be prostrated. The Christianized printing-press will be rolled up as the chief battering-ram. Then there will be a long list of aroused pulpits, which shall be assailing fortresses, and God’92s red-hot truth shall be the flying ammunition of the contest; and the sappers and the miners will lay the train under these foundations of sin, and at just the right time God, who leads on the fray, will cry, ’93Down with the gates!’94 and the explosion beneath will be answered by all the trumpets of God on high, celebrating universal victory.

But there may be among you one wanderer who would like to have a kind word calling homeward, and I cannot close until I have uttered that word. I have told you that society has no mercy. Did I hint, at an earlier point in this subject, that God will have mercy upon any wanderer who would like to come back to the heart of infinite love?

A member of my family told me something like this. Whether she had read it or heard it I know not. It was a cold Christmas night in a farmhouse. Father comes in from the barn, knocks the snow from his shoes, and sits down by the fire. The mother sits at the stand, knitting. She says to him: ’93Do you remember it is the anniversary night?’94 The father is angered. He never wants any allusion to the fact that one had gone away, and the mere suggestion that it was the anniversary of that sad event made him quite rough, although the tears ran down his cheeks. The old house-dog, that had played with the wanderer when she was a child, comes up and puts his head on the old man’92s knee, but he roughly repulses the dog. He wants nothing to remind him of the anniversary day.

A cold winter night in a city church. It is Christmas night. They have been decorating the sanctuary. A lost wanderer of the street, with thin shawl about her, attracted by the warmth and light, comes in and sits near the door. The minister of religion is preaching of him who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and the poor soul by the door said: ’93Why, that must mean me; ’91mercy for the chief of sinners; bruised for our iniquities; wounded for our transgressions.’92’93 The music that night in the sanctuary brought back the old hymn which she used to sing when with father and mother she worshiped God in the village church. The service over, the minister went down the aisle. She said to him, ’93Were those words for me? ’91Wounded for our transgressions.’92 Was that for me?’94 The man of God understood her not. He knew not how to comfort a shipwrecked soul, and he passed on and he passed out. The poor wanderer followed into the street. ’93What are you doing here, Meg?’94 said the police. ’93What are you doing here tonight?’94 ’93Oh,’94 she replied, ’93I was in to warm myself;’94 and then the rattling cough came, and she held to the railing until the paroxysm was over. She passed on down the street, falling from exhaustion; recovering herself again, until after a while she reached the outskirts of the city, and passed on into the country road. It seemed so familiar; she kept on the road, and she saw in the distance a light in the window. Ah! that light had been gleaming there every night since she went away. Along that country road she passed until she came to the garden gate. She opened it and passed up the path where she played in childhood. She came to the steps and looked in at the fire on the hearth. Then she put her fingers to the latch. Oh, if that door had been locked, she would have perished on the threshold, for she was near to death! But that door had not been locked since the time she went away. She pushed open the door. She went in and lay down on the hearth by the fire. The old house-dog growled as he saw her enter, but there was something in the voice he recognized, and he frisked about her until he almost pushed her down in his joy. In the morning the mother came down, and she saw a bundle of rags on the hearth; but when the face was uplifted, she knew it, and it was no more old Meg of the street. Throwing her arms around the returned prodigal, she cried, ’93Oh, Maggie!’94 The child threw her arms around her mother’92s neck, and said, ’93Oh, mother!’94 and while they were embraced a rugged form towered above them. It was the father. The severity all gone out of his face, he stooped and took her up tenderly and carried her to mother’92s room, and laid her down on mother’92s bed, for she was dying. Then the lost one looking up into her mother’92s face, said, ’93’91Wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities!’92 Mother, do you think that means me?’94 ’93Oh, yes, my darling,’94 said the mother. ’93If mother is so glad to get you back, don’92t you think God is glad to get you back?’94 And there she lay dying, and all her dreams and all her prayers were filled with the words, ’93Wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities,’94 until, just before the moment of her departure, her face lighted up, showing the pardon of God had dropped upon her soul. And there she slept away on the bosom of a pardoning Jesus. So the Lord took back one whom the world rejected.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage