432. Washington for God

Washington for God

Luk_24:47 : ’93Beginning at Jerusalem.’94

’93There it is,’94 said the driver, and we all instantly and excitedly rose in the carriage to catch the first glimpse of Jerusalem, so long the joy of the whole earth. That city, coroneted with temple and palace and radiant, whether looked up at from the valley of Jehoshaphat or gazed at from adjoining hills, was the capital of a great nation. Clouds of incense had hovered over it. Chariots of kings had rolled through it. Battering-rams of enemies had thundered against it. There Isaiah prophesied, and Jeremiah lamented, and David reigned, and Paul preached, and Christ was martyred. Most interesting city ever built since masonry rung its first trowel, or plumb-line tested its first wall, or royalty swung its first sceptre. What Jerusalem was to the Jewish kingdom, Washington is to our own country’97the capital, the place to which all the tribes come up, the great national heart whose throb sends life or death through the body politic, clear out to the geographical extremities.

What the resurrected Christ said in my text to his disciples, when he ordered them to start on the work of Gospelization, ’93beginning at Jerusalem,’94 it seems to me God says now, in his Providence, to tens of thousands of Christians in this city. Start for the evangelization of America, ’93beginning at Washington.’94 America is going to be taken for God. As surely as God lives, and he is able to do as he says he will, this country will be evangelized from the mouth of the Potomac to the mouth of the Oregon, from the Highlands of Navesink to the Golden Horn, from Baffin’92s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico; and Christ will walk every lake, whether bestormed or placid, and be transfigured on every mountain, and the night skies, whether they hover over groves of magnolia or over Alaskan glacier, shall be filled with angelic overture of ’93Glory to God and goodwill to men.’94 Warned by the doom of nations which declined the mission on which they were sent and perished, I pray that this nation may accept its high work of emancipating the hemispheres.

Again and again does the old Book promise that all the earth shall see the salvation of God, and as the greater includes the lesser, that takes America gloriously in. Can you not see that if America is not taken for God by his consecrated people, it will be taken for Apollyon! The forces engaged on both sides are so tremendous that it cannot be a drawn battle. It is coming, the Armageddon! Either the American Sabbath will perish and this nation be handed over to Herods and Hildebrands and Diocletians and Neros of baleful power; and Alcoholism will reign, seated upon piled-up throne of beer barrels, his mouth foaming with domestic and national curse; and crime will lift its unhindered knife of assassination, and rattle keys of worst burglary, and wave torch of wildest conflagration, and our cities be turned into Sodoms, waiting for Almighty tempests of fire and brimstone, and one tidal wave of abominations will surge across the continent’97or our Sabbaths will take on more sanctity, and the newspapers will become apocalyptic wings of benediction, and penitentiaries will be abandoned for lack of occupants, and holiness and happiness, twin son and daughter of heaven, shall walk through the land, and Christ reign over this nation either in person or by agency so glorious that the whole country will be one clear, resounding echo of heaven. It will be one or the other. By the throne of him who liveth forever and ever, I declare it will be the latter. If the Lord will help me, as he always does’97blessed be his glorious name!’97I will show you how a mighty work of grace begun at Washington would have a tendency to bring the whole continent to God, and before this century closes.

William the Conqueror ordered the curfew, the custom of ringing the bell at midnight, at which all the fires on the hearths were to be banked, and all the lights extinguished, and all the people retire to their pillows. I pray God that the curfew of this century may not be sounded and the fires be banked and the lights extinguished, as the clock strikes the midnight hour that divides the nineteenth century from the twentieth century, until this beloved land, which was to most of us a cradle and which will be to most of us a grave, shall come into the full possession of him who is so glorious that William the Conqueror could not be compared to him, even the One who rideth forth, ’93conquering and to conquer.’94

Why would it be especially advantageous if a mighty work of grace started here, ’93beginning at Washington?’94 First, because this city is on the border between the North and the South. It is neither Northern nor Southern. It commingles the two climates. It brings together the two elements of population. It is not only right, but beautiful, that people should have especial love for the latitude where they were born and brought up. With what loving accentuation the Alabamian speaks of his orange groves! And the man from Massachusetts is sure to let you know that he comes from the land of the Adamses’97Samuel and John and John Quincy. Did you ever know a Virginian or Ohioan whose face did not brighten when he announced himself from the Southern or Northern State of Presidents? If a man does not like his native clime, it is because while he lived there, he did not behave well. Our capital stands where, by its locality and political influence, it stretches forth one hand toward the North and the other toward the South, and if it had another it would be held out to the great West, so that a mighty work of grace starting here would probably be a national awakening. Georgia would clasp the hand of New Hampshire, and Maine the hand of Louisiana, and California the hand of New York, and say: ’93Come, let us go up and worship the God of Nations, the Christ of Golgotha, the Holy Ghost of the pentecostal three thousands.’94 It had often been said that the only way the North and the South could be brought into complete accord, would be to have a war with some foreign nation, in which both sections, marching side by side, should forget everything but the foe to be overcome. Well, so it has proved. The war with Spain has made the sections forget past controversies; but what is needed is a war against unrighteousness, such as a universal religious awakening would declare. What we want is a battle for souls, in which about forty million Northerners and Southerners shall be on the same side, and shoulder to shoulder. In no other city on the continent can such a war be declared so appropriately, for all the other great cities are either Northern or Southern or Western. This is neither, or, rather, it is all.

Again, it would be especially advantageous if a mighty work of grace started here, because more representative men are in Washington than in any other city between the oceans. Of course there are accidents in politics, and occasionally there are men who get into the Senate and House of Representatives and other important places who are fitted for the positions in neither head nor heart; but this is exceptional and more exceptional now than in other days. There is not a drunkard in the National Legislature, although there were times when Kentucky, Virginia, Delaware, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts had men in Senate or House of Representatives who went maudlin and staggering drunk across those high places. Never nobler group of men sat in Senate or House of Representatives than sat there yesterday and will sit there tomorrow, while the highest judiciary, without exception, has now upon its bench men beyond criticism for good morals and mental endowment. So in all departments of official position, with here and there an exception, are today the brainiest men and most honorable men of America. Now, suppose the Holy Ghost power should fall upon our capital city, and these men from all parts of America should suddenly become pronounced for Christ! Do you say the effect would be electrical? More than that, it would be omnipotent! Do you say that such learned and potent men are not wrought upon by religious influence? That shows that you have not observed what has been going on in past years. Commodore Foote, representing the navy; General Grant and Robert E. Lee, representing the Northern and Southern armies; Chief Justice Chase, representing the Supreme Court; the Frelinghuysens, Theodore and Frederick, representing the United States Senate; William Pennington and scores of others, representing the House of Representatives, have surrendered to that Gospel, which will, in this capital of the American nation, if we are faithful in our prayers and exertions, turn into the kingdom of God men of national and international power, their tongues of eloquence becoming the tongues of fire in another Pentecost. There are on yonder hill those who by the grace of God will become John Knoxes, and Chrysostoms, and Fenelons, and Bourdeloues, when once regenerated. There is a delusion I have heard in prayer-meetings, and heard in pulpits, that a soul is a soul’97one soul worth as much as another. I deny it. The soul of a man who can bring a thousand or ten thousand souls into the kingdom of God, is worth a thousand times or ten thousand times more than the soul of a man who can bring no one into the kingdom. A great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in this capital, reaching the chief men of America, would be of more value to earth and heaven than in any other part of the nation, because it would reach all the States, cities, towns, and neighborhoods of the continent. Oh, for the outstretched right arm of God Almighty in the salvation of this capital!

Some of us remember 1857, when, at the close of the worst monetary distress this country has ever felt, compared with which the hard times of the last three years were a boom of prosperity, right on the heels of that complete prostration came an awakening in which five hundred thousand people were converted in different States of the Union. Do you know where one of its chief powers was demonstrated? In Washington. Do you know on what street? This street. Do you know in what church? This church. I picked up an old book a few days ago, and was startled, and thrilled, and enchanted to read these words, written at that time by the Washington correspondent of a New York paper. He wrote: ’93The First Presbyterian Church can scarce contain the people. Requests are daily preferred for an interest in the prayers offered, and the reading of these forms is one of the tenderest and most effective features of the meetings. Particular pains are taken to disclaim and exclude everything like sectarian feeling. General astonishment is felt at the unexpected rapidity with which the work has thus far proceeded, and we are beginning to anticipate the necessity of opening another church.’94 Why, not have that again, and more that that? There are many thousands more of inhabitants now than then. Beside that, since then, the telephone, with its quasi-omnipresence, and the swift cable-car, for assembling the people. I believe that the mightiest revival of religion that this city has ever seen is yet to come, and the earth will tremble from Capitoline Hill to the boundaries on all sides with the footsteps of God as he comes to awaken, and pardon, and save, these great populations. People of Washington, meet us next Thursday night, at half-past seven o’92clock, to pray for this coming of the Holy Ghost’97not for a pentecostal three thousand, that I have referred to, but thirty thousand. Such a fire as that would kindle a light that would be seen from the sledges crunching through the snows of Labrador to the Caribbean Sea, where the whirlwinds are born. Let our cry be that of Habakkuk, the blank verse poet of the Bible: ’93O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.’94 Let the battle-cry be, Washington for God! the United States for God! America for God! the world for God! We are all tired of skirmishing. Let us bring on a general engagement. We are tired of fishing with hook and line. With one sweep of the Gospel net let us take in many thousands. This vast work must begin somewhere. Why not here? Some one must give the rallying cry, why may not I, one of the Lord’92s servants? By providential arrangement, I am every week in sermonic communication with every city, town, and neighborhood of this country, and I now give the watchword to North and South, and East and West. Hear and see it, all people’97this call to a forward movement, this call to repentance and faith, this call to a continental awakening!

This generation will soon be out of sight. Where are the mighty men of the past who trod your Pennsylvania avenue and spake in yonder National Legislature, and decided the stupendous questions of the supreme judicatory? Ask the sleepers in the Congressional Cemetery. Ask the mausoleums all over the land. Their tongues are speechless, their eyes closed, their arms folded, their opportunities gone, their destiny fixed. How soon time prorogues parliaments and adjourns senates and disbands cabinets and empties pulpits and dismisses generations! What we would do, we must do quickly or not at all. I call upon people who cannot come forth from their sick-beds to implore the heavens in our behalf from their midnight pillows, and I call upon the aged who cannot, even by the help of their staff, enter the churches, to spend their last days on earth in supplicating the salvation of this nation, and I call upon all men and women who have been in furnaces of trouble, as was Shadrach, and among lions, as was Daniel, and in dungeons of trouble, as was Jeremiah, to join in the prayer, and let the Church of God everywhere lay hold of the Almighty Arm that moves nations. Then Senators of the United States will announce to the State legislatures that sent them here, and Members of the House of Representatives will report to the Congressional districts that elected them, and the many thousands of men and women now and here engaged in the many departments of national service will write home, telling all sections of the country that the Lord is here, and that he is on the march for the redemption of America. Hallelujah! the Lord is coming! I hear the rumbling of his chariot wheels. I feel on my cheeks the breath of the white horses that draw the Victor! I see the flash of His lanterns through the long night of the world’92s sin and sorrow!

We want in this country, only on a larger scale, that which other centuries have seen of God’92s workings: as in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, when Martin Luther and Philip Melancthon led on; as in the awakening of the seventeenth century, when Bunyan and Flavel, and Baxter led on; as in the awakening of the eighteenth century, when Tennant, and Edwards, and the Wesleys led on; as in the awakening of 1857, led on by Matthew Simpson, the seraphic Methodist, and Bishop MacIlvaine, the Apostolic Episcopalian, and Albert Barnes, the consecrated Presbyterian, and others, just as good, in all demoninations. Oh, will not some of those glorious souls of the past come down and help us? Come down off your thrones, Nettleton and Finney and Daniel Baker and Edward Payson and Truman Osborne and Earle and Knapp and Inskip and Archibald Alexander’97that Alexander the Great of the Christian Churches. Come down! How can you rest up there when the world is dying for lack of the Gospel? Come down and agonize with us in prayer. Come down and help us to preach in our pulpits. Come down and inspire our courage and faith. Heaven can get along without you better than we can. But more than all (and overwhelmed with reverent emotion we ask it), come, thou of the deeply-dyed garments of Bozrah, traveling in the greatness of thy strength, mighty to save! Lord God of Joshua! Let the sun of this century stand still above Gibeon, and the moon above the valley of Ajalon until we can whip out the five kings of hell, tumbling them down the precipices as the other five kings went over the rocks of Bethhoron. Ha! Ha! It will so surely be done that I cannot restrain the laugh of triumph.

From where the seaweed is tossed on the beach by the stormy Atlantic, to the sands laved by the quiet Pacific, this country will be Emmanuel’92s land, the work beginning at Washington, if we have the faith and holy push, and the consecration requisite. First of all, we ministers must get right. That was a startling utterance of Mr. Swinnock, when he said: ’93It is a doleful thing to fall into hell from under the pulpit, but, oh! how dreadful a thing to drop thither out of the pulpit.’94 That was an all-suggestive thing that Paul wrote to the Corinthians: ’93lest by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’94 That was an inspiring motto with which Whitefield sealed all his letters: ’93We seek the stars.’94 Lord God! Wake up all our pulpits, and then it will be as when Venn preached and it was said that men fell before the Word like slacked lime. Let us all, layman and clergyman, to the work. What Washington wants most of all is an old-fashioned revival of religion, but on a vaster scale, so that the world will be compelled to say, as of old, ’93We never saw it on this fashion!’94

But there is a human side as well as a divine side to a revival. Those of us brought up in the country know what is called ’93a raising,’94 the neighbors gathered together to lift the heavy frame for a new house, after the timbers are ready to be put into their places. It is dangerous work, and there are many accidents. The neighbors had gathered for such a raising, and the beams had all been fitted to their places except one, which was very heavy. That one, on the long pikes of the men, had almost reached its place, when something went wrong, and the men could hoist it no higher. But if it did not go in its place it would fall back upon the men who were lifting it. It had already begun to settle back. The boss-carpenter shouted: ’93Lift men or die! All together! Yo’97heave!’94 With mightier push they tried to send the beam to its place, but failed. Still they held on, all the time their strength lessening. The wives, and mothers, and daughters stood in horror looking on. Then the boss-carpenter shouted to the women, ’93Come and help I’94 They came, and womanly arms became the arms of giants, for they were lifting to save the lives of husbands, and fathers, and sons, as well as their own. Then the boss-carpenter mounted one of the beams and shouted: ’93Now! Altogether! Lift or die! Yo’97heave!’94 And with a united effort that almost burst the blood-vessels, the great beam went to its place, and wild cheering was heard. That is the way it sometimes seems in the churches. Temples of righteousness are to be reared, but there is a halt, a stop, a catch somewhere. A few are lifting all they can, but we want more hands at this raising, and more hearts. More Christian men to help, ay, more Christian women to reinforce. If the work fail, it means the death of many souls. All together! Men and women of God! Lift or die! The top-stone must come to its place ’93with shoutings of grace, grace unto it.’94 God is ready to do his part; are we ready to do our part? There is work not only for the knee of prayer, but for the shoulder of upheaval.

I would like to see, this hour, that which I have never seen, but hope to see’97a whole audience saved under one flash of the Eternal Spirit. Before you go out of any of these doors, enter the door of Mercy. Father and mother, come in and bring your children with you. Newly-married folks, consecrate your lifetime to God, and be married for eternity as well as time. Young man, you will want God before you get through this world, and you want him now. Young woman, without God this is a hard world for women. One and all, I lift my voice so that you can hear it, out in the corridors, and on the street, and say, in the words of the Mediterranean ship captain, ’93Call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.’94 Oh, what news to tell, what news to relate to your old father and mother, what news to telegraph to your friends on the other side of the mountains, what news with which to thrill your loved ones in heaven! It was of such news that a man read in a noonday meeting in Philadelphia. He arose, and unrolling a manuscript, read:

Where’92er we meet, you always say

What’92s the news? what’92s the news?

Pray what’92s the order of the day?

What’92s the news? what’92s the news?

Oh! I have got good news to tell;

My Saviour hath done all things well,

And triumphed over death and hell,

That’92s the news! that’92s the news!

The Lamb was slain on Calvary,

That’92s the news! that’92s the news!

To set a world of sinners free,

That’92s the news! that’92s the news!

And now, if any one should say,

What’92s the news? what’92s the news?

Oh, tell him you’92ve begun to pray’97

That’92s the news! that’92s the news!

That you have joined the conquering band,

And now with joy at God’92s command,

You’92re marching to the better land,

That’92s the news! that’92s the new!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage