015. Midnight Exploration

Midnight Exploration

Fourth Night

Gen_14:10 : ’93And the vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits.’94

About six months ago, a gentleman in Augusta, Georgia, wrote me asking me to preach from this text, and the time has come for the subject. The neck of and army had been broken by falling into these half-hidden slime-pits. How deep they were or how vile or how hard to get out of, we are not told; but the whole scene is so far distant in the past that we have not half as much interest in this statement of the text as we have in the announcement that our American cities are full of slime-pits, and tens of thousands of people are falling in them night by night. Recently, in the name of God, I explored some of these slime-pits. Why did I do so? In April last, seated in the editorial rooms of one of the chief daily newspapers of New York, the editor said to me: ’93Mr. Talmage, you clergymen are at great disadvantage when you come to battle iniquity, for you do not know what you are talking about, and we laymen are aware of the fact if you would like to make a personal investigation, I will see that you shall get the highest official escort.’94 I thanked him, accepted the invitation, and told him that this autumn I would begin the tour. The fact was that I had for a long time wanted to say some words of warning and invitation to the young men of this country, and I felt if my course of sermons was preceded by a tour of this sort I should not only be better acquainted with the subject, but I should have the whole country for an audience; and it has been a deliberate plan of my ministry, whenever I am going to try to do anything especial for God or humanity or the church, to do it in such a way that the devil will always advertise it free, gratis, for nothing! That was the reason I gave two weeks’92 previous notice of my pulpit intentions. The result has been satisfactory.

Standing within those purlieus of death, under the conduct of the police and in their company, I was as much surprised at the people whom I missed as at the people whom I saw. I saw bankers there, and brokers there, and merchants there, and men of all classes and occupations who have leisure, there; but there was one class of persons that I missed. I looked for them all up and down the galleries, and amid the illumined gardens, and all up and down the staircases of death. I saw not one of them. I mean the hard-working classes, the laboring classes, of our great cities. You tell me they could not afford to go there. They could. Entrance, twenty-five cents. They could have gone there if they had a mind to; but the simple fact is that hard work is a friend to good morals. The men who toil from early morn until late at night are tired out when they go home and want to sit down and rest, or to saunter out with their families along the street, or to pass into some quiet place of amusement where they will not be ashamed to take wife or daughter. The busy populations of these cities are the moral populations. I observed on the night of our exploration that the places of dissipation are chiefly supported by the men who go to business at nine and ten o’92clock in the morning and get through at three and four in the afternoon. They have plenty of time to go to destruction in, and plenty of money to buy a through ticket on the Grand Trunk Railroad to perdition, stopping at no station until they get to the eternal smash-up! Those are the fortunate and divinely-blessed young men who have to breakfast early and take supper late, and have the entire interregnum filled up with work that blisters the hands, and makes the legs ache and the brain weary. There is no chance for the morals of that young man who has plenty of money and no occupation. You may go through all our great cities and you will not find one young man of that kind who has not already achieved his ruin, or who is not on the way thereto at the rate of sixty miles the hour. Those are not the favored and divinely-blessed young men who come and go as they will, and who have their pocket-case full of the best cigars, and who dine at Delmonico’92s, and who dress in the latest fashion, their garments a little tighter or looser or broader striped than others, their mustaches twisted with stiffer cosmetic, and their hat set farthest over on the right ear, and who have boots fitting the foot with exquisite torture, and who have handkerchief soaked with musk and patchouli and white rose and new-mown hay and ’93balm of a thousand flowers;’94 but those are the fortunate young men who have to work hard for a living. Give a young man plenty of wines, and plenty of cigars, and plenty of fine horses, and Satan has no anxiety about that man’92s coming out at his place. He ceases to watch him, only giving directions about his reception when he shall arrive at the end of the journey. If, on the night of our exploration, I had called the roll of all the laboring men of these cities, I would have received no answer, for the simple reason they were not there to answer. I was not more surprised at the people whom I saw there than I was surprised at the people whom I missed. O man! if you have an occupation by which you are wearied every night of your life, thank God, for it is the mightiest preservative against evil.

But by that time the clock of old Trinity Church was striking one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve’97midnight! And with the police and two elders of my church we sat down at the table in the galleries and looked off upon the vortex of death. The music in full blast; the dance in wildest whirl; the wine foaming to the lip of the glass. Midnight on earth is mid-noon in hell. All the demons of the pit were at that moment holding high carnival. The blue calcium light suggested the burning brimstone of the pit. Seated there, at that hour, in that awful place, you ask me, as I have frequently been asked: ’93What were the emotions that went through your heart?’94 And I shall give the rest of my morning’92s sermon to telling you how I felt.

First of all, an overwhelming sense of pity, deeper than I have felt at death-bed or railroad disaster. Why were we there as Christian explorers, while those lost souls were there as participators? If they had enjoyed the same healthful and Christian surroundings which we have had all our days, and we had been thrown amid the contaminations which have destroyed them, the case would have been the reverse, and they would have been the spectators and we the actors in that awful tragedy of the damned.

As I sat there I could not keep back the tears’97tears of gratitude to God for his protecting grace’97tears of compassion for those who had fallen so low. The difference in moral navigation had been the difference in the way the wind blew. The wind of temptation drove them on the rocks. The wind of God’92s mercy drove us out on a fair sea. There are men and women so merciless in their criticism of the fallen that you might think that God had made them in an especial mold, and that they have no capacity for evil; and yet if they had been subjected to the same allurements, instead of stopping at the uptown haunts of iniquity, they would at this hour have been wallowing amid the horrors of Arch Block or shrieking with delirium tremens in the cell of a police station. Instead of boasting over your purity and your integrity and your sobriety, you had better be thanking God for his grace, lest some time the Lord should let you loose and you find out how much better you naturally are than others. I will take the best-tempered man in this house, the most honest man in this city, and I will venture the opinion in regard to him that, surround him with all the adequate circumstances of temptation, and the Lord let him loose, he would become a thief, a gambler, a sot, a rake, a wharf-rat. Instead of boasting over our superiority, and over the fact that there is no capacity in us for evil, I would rather have for my epitaph that one word which Duncan Matthewson, the Scotch evangelist, ordered chiseled on his tombstone, the name, and the one word, ’93Kept.’94

Again, seated in that gallery of death, and looking out on the maelstrom of iniquity, I thought to myself: ’93There! that young man was once the pride of the city home. Paternal care watched him; maternal love bent over him; sisterly affection surrounded him. He was once taken to the altar and consecrated in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; but he went away. This very moment, I thought to myself, ’93there are hearts aching for that young man’92s return. Father and mother are sitting up for him.’94 You say: ’93He has a night-key, and he can get in without their help. Why do not those parents go sound to sleep?’94 What! Is there any sleep for parents who suspect a son is drifting up and down amid the dissipations of a great city? They may weep, they may pray, they may wring their hands, but sleep they cannot. Ah! they have done and suffered too much for that boy to give him up now. They turn up the light and look at the photograph of him when he was young and untempted. They stand at the window to see if he is coming up the street. They hear the watchman’92s step, but no sound of returning boy. I felt that night as if I could put my hand on the shoulder of that young man, and, with a voice that would sound all through those temples of sin, say to him: ’93Go home, young man; your father is waiting for you. Your mother is waiting for you. God is waiting for you. All heaven is waiting for you. Go home! By the tears wept over your waywardness, by the prayers offered for your salvation, by the midnight watching over you when you had scarlet fever and diphtheria, by the blood of the Son of God, by the Judgment Day when you must answer for what you have been doing here tonight, go home!’94 But I did not say this, lest it interfere with my work, and I waited to get on this platform, where, perhaps, instead of saving one young man, God helping me, I might save a thousand young men; and the cry of alarm which I suppressed that night, I let loose today in the hearing of this people.

Seated in that gallery of death, and looking off upon the destruction, I bethought myself also: ’93These are the fragments of broken homes.’94 A home is a complete thing, and if one member of it wander off, then the home is broken. And sitting there, I said: ’93Here they are, broken family altars, broken wedding-rings, broken vows, broken anticipations, broken hearts.’94 And, as I looked off, the dance became wilder and more unrestrained, until it seemed as if the floor broke through and the revelers were plunged into a depth from which they might never rise, and all these broken families came around the brink and seemed to cry out: ’93Come back, father! Come back, my son! Come back, my daughter! Come back, my sister!’94 But no voices returned, and the sound of the feet of the dancers grew fainter and fainter, and stopped, and there was thick darkness. And I said: ’93What does all this mean?’94 And there came up a great hiss of whispering voices, saying: ’93This is the second death!’94

But seated there that night, looking off upon that scene of death, I bethought myself also: ’93This is only a miserable copy of European dissipations.’94 In London they have what they call the Argyle, the Aquarium, the Strand, the beer-gardens, and a thousand places of infamy, and it seems to be the ambition of bad people in this country to copy those foreign dissipations. Toadyism when it bows to foreign pretense and to foreign equipage and to foreign title is despicable; but toadyism is more despicable when it bows to foreign vice. Why, you might as well steal a pillow-case from a smallpox hospital or the shovels from a scavenger’92s cart or the coffin of a leper, as to make theft of these foreign plagues. If you want to destroy the people, have some originality of destruction; have an American trap to catch the bodies and souls of men, instead of infringing on the patented inventions of European iniquity.

Seated there that night, I also felt that if the good people of our cities knew what was going on in these haunts of iniquity, they would endure it no longer. The foundations of city life are rotten with iniquity, and if the foundations give way the whole structure must crumble. If iniquity progresses in the next one hundred years in the same ratio that it has progressed in the century now closing, there will not be a vestige of moral or religious influence left. It is only a question of subtraction and addition. If the people knew how the virus is spreading they would stop it. I think the time has come for action. Revolution is what we want; and that revolution would begin to-morrow, if the moral and Christian people of our cities knew of the fires that slumber beneath them. Once in a while a glorious city missionary or reformer like Mr. Brace or Mr. Van Meter tells to a well-dressed audience in church the troubles that lie under our roaring metropolis, and the conventional churchgoer gives his five dollars for bread, or gives his fifty dollars to help support a ragged school, and then goes home feeling that the work is done. My friends, the work will not be accomplished until by the force of public opinion the officers of the law shall be compelled to execute the law. We are told that the twenty-five hundred police of New York cannot put down the five or six hundred dens of infamy, to say nothing of the gambling-houses and the unlicensed grog-shops. I reply, swear me in as a special police captain, and give me two hundred police for two nights, and I would break up all the leading haunts of iniquity in these two cities, and arrest all their leaders and send such consternation in the smaller places that they would shut up of themselves! I do not think I should be afraid of lawsuits for damages for false imprisonment. What we want in these cities is a Stonewall Jackson’92s raid through all the places of iniquity. I was persuaded by what I saw on that night of my exploration that the keepers of all these haunts of iniquity are as afraid as they are of death of the police star and the police club and the police revolver. Hence, I declare that the existence of these abominations are to be charged either to police cowardice or to police complicity.

At the close of our journey that night, we got in the carriage, and we came out on Broadway, and as we came down the street everything seemed silent save the clattering hoofs and the wheels of our own conveyance. Looking down the long line of gaslights, the pavement seemed very solitary. The great sea of metropolitan life had ebbed, leaving a dry beach! New York asleep! No! no! Burglary wide awake. Libertinism wide awake. Murder wide awake. Ten thousand city iniquities wide awake. The click of the decanters in the worst hours of the debauch. The harvest of death full. Eternal woe the reaper.

What is that? Trinity clock striking, one’97two. ’93Good night,’94 said the officers of the law, and I responded ’93Good night,’94 for they had been very kind and very generous and very helpful to us. ’93Good night.’94 And yet, was there ever an adjective more misapplied? Good night! Why, there was no expletive enough scarred and blasted to describe that night. Black night. Forsaken night. Night of man’92s wickedness and woman’92s overthrow. Night of awful neglect on the part of those who might help but do not. For many of those whom we had been watching, everlasting night. No hope. No rescue. No God. Black night of darkness forever. As far off as hell is from heaven was that night distant from being a good night. Oh! My friends, what are you going to do in this matter? Punish the people? That is not my theory. Prevent the people, warn the people, hinder the people before they go down. The first philanthropist this country ever knew was Edward Livingston, and he wrote these remarkable words in 1833:

’93As prevention in the diseases of the body is less painful, less expensive, and more efficacious than the most skilful cure; so in the moral maladies of society, to arrest the vicious before the profligacy assumes the shape of crime, to take away from the poor the cause or pretense of relieving themselves by fraud or theft, to reform them by education, and make their own industry contribute to their support, although difficult and expensive, will be found more effectual in the suppression of offenses, and more economical than the best organized system of punishment.’94

I have only opened the door of this great subject with which I hope to stir the cities. I have begun, and, God helping me, I will go through. Whoever else may be crowded or kept standing or kept outside the doors, I charge the trustees and the ushers of this church that they give full elbow-room to all these journalists, since each one is another church five times, or ten times, or twenty times larger than this august assemblage, and it is by the printing-press that the Gospel of the Son of God is to be yet preached to all the world. May the blessing of the Lord God come down upon all the editors and all the reporters and all the compositors and all the proof-readers and all the typesetters!

But, my friends, before the iniquities of our cities are eradicated, my tongue may be silent in death, and many who are here this morning may have gone so far in sin they cannot get back. You have sometimes been walking on the banks of a river, and you have seen a man struggling in the water, and you have thrown off your coat and leaped in for the rescue. So this morning I throw off the robe of pulpit conventionality, and I plunge in for your drowning soul. I have no cross words for you. I have only indignation for those who would destroy you. I am glad God has not put in my hand any one of the thunderbolts of his power, lest I might be tempted to hurl it at those who are plotting your ruin. I do not give you the tip end of the long fingers of the left hand, but I take your hand, hot with the fever of indulgences and trembling with last night’92s debauch, into both my hands, and give the heartiest grip of invitation and welcome. ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93you would not shake hands with me if you met me.’94 I would. Try me at the foot of the platform and see if I will not. I have sometimes said that I would like to die with my hand in the hand of my family and my kindred; but I revoke that wish this morning, and say I would like to die with my hand in the hand of a returning sinner, when, with God’92s help, I am trying to pull him up into the glorious liberty of the Gospel. I would like that to be my last work on earth.

O my brother, come back! Do you know that God made Richard Baxters and John Bunyans and John Newtons out of such as you are? Come back, and wash in the deep fountain of a Saviour’92s mercy. I do not give you a cup or a chalice or a pitcher with a limited supply to effect your ablutions. I point you to the five oceans of God’92s mercy. Oh, that the Atlantic and Pacific surges of divine forgiveness might roll over your soul! I do not say to you, as we said to the officers of the law when we left them on Broadway, ’93Good-night.’94 Oh, no! But, as the glorious sun of God’92s forgiveness rides on toward the mid-heavens ready to submerge you in warmth and light and love, I bid you ’93Good-morning!’94 Morning of peace for all your troubles. Morning of liberation for all your incarcerations. Morning of resurrection for your soul buried in sin. Good morning! Morning for the resuscitated household that has been waiting for your return. Morning for the cradle and the crib already disgraced with being that of a drunkard’92s child. Morning for the daughter who has trudged off to hard work because you did not take care of home. Morning for the wife who at forty or fifty years has the wrinkled face and the stooped shoulder and the white hair. Morning for one. Morning for all. Good morning! In God’92s name, good morning.

In our last dreadful war the Federals and the Confederates were encamped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, and one morning the brass band of the Northern troops played the national air, and all the Northern troops cheered and cheered. Then on the opposite side of the Rappahannock the brass band of the Confederates played ’93My Maryland’94 and ’93Dixie,’94 and then all the Southern troops cheered and cheered. But after awhile one of the bands struck up ’93Home, Sweet Home,’94 and the band on the opposite side of the river took up the strain, and when the tune was done the Confederates and the Federals all together united, as the tears rolled down the cheeks, in one great huzza! Well, my friends, heaven comes very near today. It is only a stream that divides us’97the narrow stream of death’97and the voices there and the voices here seem to commingle, and we join trumpets and hosannas and hallelujahs, and the chorus of the united song of earth and heaven is, ’93’91Home, Sweet Home.’94 Home of bright domestic circle on earth. Home of forgiveness in the great heart of God. Home of eternal rest in heaven.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage