Jehu, the Swift Driver
2Ki_9:20 : ’93The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.’94
Joram, wounded in battle, lies in a hospital at Jezreel. The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off and sees against the sky horsemen and chariots. A messenger is sent out to find who is coming, but does not return. Another messenger is sent, but with the same fate. The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off upon the advancing troop, and gets more and more excited, wondering who are coming. But long before the cavalcade comes up, the matter is decided. The watchman cannot descry the features of the approaching man, but exclaims, ’93I have found out who it is; the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.’94
By the flash of that one sentence we discover Jehu’92s character. He came with such speed not merely because he had an errand to do, but because he was urged on by a headlong disposition, which had won him the name of a reckless driver, even among the watchmen. The chariot plunges until you almost expect the wheels to crash under it, or some of the princely party to be thrown out, or the horses to become utterly unmanageable. But he always goes so; and he becomes a type of that class of persons to be found in all communities, who in worldly and in religious affairs may be styled reckless drivers.
To this class belong all those who conduct their worldly affairs in a headlong way, without any regard to prudence or righteousness. You have no right to shut the door of your office or store against the principles of our holy religion. That minister of Christ does not do his whole duty who does not plainly and unmistakably bring the Gospel face to face with every style of business transaction. Many a man sits in his pew on Sunday night, and sings ’93Rock of Ages,’94 and rolls up his eyes very piously, who, on coming out at the close of the service, shuts the pew-door, and says, ’93Good-by, Religion; I will be back next Sunday!’94 A religion that does not work all the week as well as on Sunday, is no religion at all.
We have a right, in a Christian manner, to point out those who, year by year, are jeopardizing not only their welfare, but the interests of others, in reckless driving. As a hackman, having lost control of a flying span, is apt to crash into other vehicles, until the property and lives of a whole street are endangered, so a man driving his worldly calling with such loose reins that, after a while, it will not answer his voice or hand, puts in peril the commercial interests of scores or hundreds. There are today in our midst many of our best citizens who have come from affluence into straitened circumstances because there was a partner in their firm or a cashier in their bank or an agent representing their house or one of their largest creditors, who, like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, was a furious driver.
Against all this it is high time that the Church of God wake up. Who else will expose the wrongs? Not the law! Almost any man can escape that, if he has money enough. Sheriffs, aldermen and police-officers have made it their work to see that no defrauder of means gets too badly hurt. Once in a while, indeed, a swindler is arrested, and if the case be too notoriously flagrant, the culprit is condemned; but the officials having him in charge must take the express train, and get to Sing Sing in briefest time, or the Governor’92s pardon gets there before him. We have feet of lightning when we get on the track of a woman who has stolen a paper of pins, or a freezing man who has abstracted a scuttle of coal; but when we go out in pursuit of some man who has struck down the interests of a hundred, and goes up along the Hudson to build his mansion, the whole city hangs on our skirts, crying, ’93Don’92t you hurt him!’94
It is therefore left to the Church of God to make these things odious and penal. Everybody knows that there stand in the membership of our churches men who devour widow’92s houses, and digest them, and for a pretense make long prayers. There are stock-gamblers who are trustees of churches; in the eldership, those who grind the faces of the poor; and while the church will expel from its membership the drunkard or the libertine, which of our churches has risen up to the courageous point of saying that a defrauder, be he great or little, president of a bank or keeper of a cigar-shop, worth a million or a bankrupt, shall not come unchallenged to our holy communion? The Church of God wants nothing so much today as to be swept out. But an ordinary sweeping will not do the work. It needs to be scrubbed. The time must soon come when the church will see that this great load of obloquy will break her down. If a teamster, passing down the street, dashes heedlessly along and runs down a child, the authorities catch him; but for the reckless commercial drivers, who stop not for the rights of others, and who dash on to make their fortunes over the heads of innocence, virtue and religion’97no chastisements.
Some time ago, in the city of New York, a young man in a jeweler’92s store stood behind the counter offering gold rings to a customer. He said, ’93Those rings are fourteen carats.’94 The lady replied, ’93I want a ring of sixteen carats;’94 and not getting what she wanted, went away. The head man of the firm came and said to the clerk, ’93Why did you not tell her that these rings were sixteen carats?’94 He replied, ’93I cannot deceive anybody.’94 The head man of the firm severely reprimanded him, and said, ’93You never can get along in this way. It is lawful in business to make these little misrepresentations.’94 Who was the young man? A hero! Who was the gentleman representing the firm? He was a deacon in a Brooklyn church!
Meanwhile, this class of defrauders increases’97more during the war than before it; more now than in war-times. In those days of large contracts and convulsions in the gold market and sutlerships in the army, multitudes of men got so in the habit of cheating that they cannot stop. In those days they bought a very splendid house and their roan span, and formed acquaintanceship with the high families on the best square; and means must somehow be obtained to continue in the same style, for keep that house they ought, and drive that roan span they will, and walk the beach at the watering-place with the millionaires they must. Clear the track for these reckless drivers! Firms not worth a dollar dazzling a whole city with their splendor of equipment! Officials having in charge public funds investing them in private speculations! Debts repudiated! Property surreptitiously put out of one’92s hands! Members of our State Legislature with small salaries helped into great extravagances by railroad monopolies. Three-fourths of the country in debt to the other fourth! Fortunes made in three weeks! Honest men derided as imbecile, and as not living up to their privileges. Common council men of our cities, with no salaries, getting rich! All the cities falling into the same line! All our streets, alleys and courts filled with the splashing wheels of reckless drivers!
When I see in the community men with large incomes but larger outgoes, rushing into wildest undertakings, their pockets filled with circulars about gold in the Klondike and lead in Missouri and fortunes everywhere, launching out in expenditures to be met by the thousands they expect to make, with derision dashing across the path of sober men depending upon their industry and honor for success, I say, ’93Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously!’94 When I see a young man, not content gradually to come to a competency, careless as to how often he goes upon credit, spending in one night’92s carousal a month’92s salary, taking the few hundred dollars given him for starting, in the purchase of a regal wardrobe, ashamed to work, anxious only for display, regardless of his father’92s counsel and the example of the thousands who, in a short while, have wrecked body and mind and soul in scheming or dissipation, I say, ’93Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.’94
I would that on the desk of every counting-room, and on the bench of every artisan, there were a Bible; and that by its instruction all business men were regulated, and that they would see that godliness is profitable for the life that now is, as well as for that which is to come; and that business dishonor is a spiritual disaster; and that a man may be the leader of a Methodist class or the trustee of a Baptist church or an ’93example’94 in a Quaker meeting-house or a vestryman in an Episcopal parish or an elder in a Presbyterian church, and yet go to perdition.
Thus far my discourse may not have touched your case, and I consider that sermon a failure which does not strike every one somewhere. I have no desire to escape personal preaching. What is the use of going to church if not to be made better? I never feel satisfied when I sit in church unless the preacher strikes some of my sins and arouses me out of some of my stupidities. Now, you may, in worldly affairs, be cautious, true, honorable and exemplary; but am I not right when I say that all those who are speeding toward eternity without preparation’97flying with the years and the months and the weeks and the days and the moments and the seconds toward an unalterable destiny, yet uncertain as to where they speed, are reckless drivers? What would you think of a stage-driver with six horses and twenty passengers, in the midnight, when it is so dark that you cannot see your hand before your face, dashing at full run over bridges and along by dangerous precipices? Such a man is prudent compared with one who, amidst the perils of this life, dashes on toward an unknown eternity.
If, in driving, you come to the forks of a road, and one goes to the right and the other to the left, you stop and make inquiry as to which road you ought to take. This hour you have come to the forks of a road. Which road will you take? The road to the right is a little rough’97yea, you may find it very rough. It has been much cut up with the hoof-marks of the cavalry of temptation. There are a great many steep hills. You will see where torrents of tribulation have washed the road away. The bones of the martyrs are scattered along the road. I will not deceive you’97some have found it a very rough way; but I tell every hearer to-night that it is the right way. It comes out at the right place. There is a great house at the end of it built for you. As you come up, you will see Christ ready to greet you. At the gate you will find enough of the waters of the Jordan to wash the sweat from your cheek and the aching from your brow and the dust from your feet. Talk about castles of marble and granite! This one is studded with amethyst and chalcedony and pearl. Talk of banqueting! The spoils of the universe are gathered at this table, and all who sit at it are kings and queens.
But, notwithstanding the brilliant terminus of the road, you halt at the forks, because the left-hand road is a great deal smoother; and so some of you will drive in that way. I see multitudes of people who do not even stop at the forks to make inquiry. The coursers behind which they go are panting with the speed, nostrils distended, foam dropping from the bit and whitening the flanks, but still urged on with lash and shout and laughter; the reins undrawn; the embankments unwatched; the speed unnoticed. Alas for the reckless drivers! They may after a while see the peril and seize the reins and lie back with all their might and put on the brakes and cry for help until their hands are numb and their eyes start from their sockets and the breath stops and the heart chills, as over the rocks they plunge, courser and chariot and horsemen tumbling in long-resounding crash of ruin. Some are drawn along by sinful pleasures’97a wild team that ran away with all who have persisted in riding behind them. Once fully under way, no sawing of the bit can stop them. They start at every sudden sight or sound; and where it needs a slow step and great care, they go with bound terrific. Their eyes are aflame with terrors, and their hoofs red with the blood of men whose life they have dashed out; and, what is worse, the drivers scourge them into more furious speed. We come out and tell them of dangers ahead, but with jeers they pass on. The wild team smoke with the speed, and their flying feet strike fire; and the rumbling of swift wheels over rotten bridges that span awful chasms is answered by the rumbling of the heavens: ’93Because I called and ye refused, and stretched out my hands and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh!’94
When this world gets full power over a man, he might as well be dead. He is dead! When Sisera came into the house of Jael, she gave him something to drink, and got him asleep on the floor. Then she took a peg from the side of her tent, and a mallet, and drove the peg through the brain of Sisera into the floor. So the world feeds a man and flatters a man, and when it has him sound asleep, strikes his life out.
The trouble is, that most reckless drivers do not see their peril until it is too late to stop. Young man! go to the almshouse hospital and see the festering, disgusting end of those who have surrendered themselves to sensualities. There is no new place on their body for disease to place another mark. Their nails dropping loose; their limbs rotting off; their nostrils eaten away; their eyes quenched; their breath the odor of a charnel-house’97they writhe in the consuming tortures of a libertine’92s deathbed. Do they like it? Oh, no! If they had the value of the whole universe in one coin, they would cheerfully give it up if they could buy but an hour’92s release from the horrors which this moment hover over the couch, where the tears of their anguish mingle with the bloody ichor that exudes from their ulcers. Young man, before you mount the chariot of sin, go and see the end of those reckless drivers. They once had as fair a cheek as you, and as manly a brow as you, and as stout a heart. They stepped very gradually aside. They read French novels. They looked at bad pictures. They went into contaminating associations. Out of curiosity, and just to see for themselves, they entered the house of sin. They were caught in snares that had captured stronger men than they. Farewell now to all hope of return! Farewell to peace! Farewell to heaven!
Perhaps there are some among you who say: ’93Would God I could stop my bad practises! But I cannot stop. I know that I am on the wrong road, and that I have been a reckless driver; and I try to rein in my swift appetites, yet they will not heed.’94 I tell such that there is an Almighty Hand which can pull back these wild racers. He whose beck the stars answer, and at whose mandate the chariots of heaven come and go, is more than a master for these temptations. Helpless yourself, and unable to guide these wild coursers, give Jesus Christ the reins! Mighty to save unto the uttermost! Better stop now. Some years ago, near Princeton, New Jersey, some young men were skating on a pond around an ’93air-hole,’94 and the ice began to break in. Some of them stopped; but a young man said: ’93I am not afraid! Give us one round more!’94 He swung nearly round, when the ice broke, and not until next day was his lifeless body found. So men go on in sin. They are warned. They expect soon to stop. But they say: ’93Give us one round more!’94 They start, but with wild crash break through into bottomless perdition. Do not risk it any longer. Stop now. God save us from the foolhardiness of the one round more!
I thank God that I have been permitted to tell you which is the right road and which the wrong road. You must take one or the other. I leave you at the forks; choose for yourselves! And may God have mercy upon all reckless drivers!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage