Cradle of the Twentieth Century
1Ch_12:32 : ’93The children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.’94
Great tribe, that tribe of Issachar. When Joab took the census, there were one hundred and forty-five thousand six hundred of them. Before the almanac was born, through astrological study, they knew from stellar conjunctions all about the seasons of the year. Before agriculture became an art, they were skilled in the raising of crops. Before politics became a science, they knew the temper of nations; and whenever they marched, either for pleasure or war, they marched under a threecolored flag’97topaz, sardine, and carbuncle. But the chief characteristic of that tribe of Issachar was that they understood the times. They were not like the political and moral incompetents of our day, who are trying to guide 1899 by the theories of 1829. They looked at the divine indications in their own particular century. So we ought to understand the times; not the times when America was thirteen colonies, huddled together along the Atlantic coast, but the times when the nation dips one hand in the ocean on one side the continent, and the other hand in the ocean on the other side the continent; times which put New York Narrows and the Golden Gate of the Pacific within one flash of electric telegraphy; times when God is as directly, as positively, as solemnly, as tremendously addressing us through the daily newspaper and the quick revolution of events, as he ever addressed the ancients, or addresses us through the Holy Scriptures. The voice of God in Providence is as important as the voice of God in typology; for in our own day we have had our Sinais with thunders of the Almighty, and Calvaries of sacrifice, and Gethsemanes that sweat great drops of blood, and Olivets of ascension, and Mount Pisgahs of far-reaching vision. The Lord who rounded this world six thousand years ago, and sent his Son to redeem it near nineteen hundred years ago, has yet much to do with this radiant but agonized planet. May God make us like the children of Issachar, ’93which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.’94
The grave of this century will soon be dug. The cradle of another century will soon be rocked. There is something moving this way out of the eternities, something that thrills me, blanches me, appalls me, exhilarates me, enraptures me. It will wreathe the orange blossoms for millions of weddings. It will beat the dirge for millions of obsequies. It will carry the gilded banners of brightest mornings, and the black flags of darkest midnights. The world will play the Grand March of its heroes, and sound the Rogue’92s March of its cowards. Other processions may halt or break down or fall back, but the procession led by that leader moves steadily on, and will soon be here. It will preside over coronations and dethronements. I hail it! I bless it! I welcome it! the twentieth century of the Christian era.
What may we expect of it? and how shall we prepare for it? are the momentous questions I propose to discuss. As in families, human nativity is anticipated by all sanctity and kindliness and solemnity and care and hopefulness, so ought we prayerfully, hopefully, industriously, confidently to prepare for the advent of a new century. The nineteenth century must not treat the twentieth on its arrival as the eighteenth century treated the nineteenth. Our century inherited the wreck of revolutions and the superstitions of ages. Around its cradle stood the armed assassins of old-world tyrannies; the ’93Reign of Terror,’94 bequeathing its horrors; Robespierre, plotting his diabolism; the Jacobin Club, with its wholesale massacre; the guillotine, chopping its beheadments. The ground quaking with the great guns of Marengo, Wagram, and Badajos. All Europe in convulsion. Asia in comparative quiet, but the quietness of death. Africa in the clutches of the slave trade. American savages in full cry, their scalping knives lifted. The exhausted and poverty-struck people of America sweating under the debt of three hundred million dollars, which the Revolutionary war had left them. Washington just gone into the long sleep at Mount Vernon, and the nation in bereavement, Aaron Burr, the champion libertine, becoming soon after the Vice-President. The government of the United States only an experiment, most of the philosophers and statesmen and governments of the earth prophesying it would be a disgraceful failure. No poor foundling laid at night on the cold steps of a mansion, to be picked up in the morning, was poorer off than this century at its nativity. The United States Government had taken only twelve steps on its journey, its Constitution having been formed in 1789, and most of the nations of the earth laughed at our Government in its first attempts to walk alone.
The birthday of our nineteenth century occurred in the time of war. Our small United States navy, under Captain Truxton, commanding the frigate Constitution, was in collision with the French frigates La Vengeance and L’92Insurgente, and the first infant cries of this century were drowned in the roar of naval battle. And political strife on this continent was the hottest, the parties rending each other with pantherine rage. The birthday present of this nineteenth century was vituperation, public unrest, threat of national demolition, and horrors national and international. I adjure you, let not the twentieth century be met in that awful way, but with all brightness of temporal and religious prospects.
First, let us put upon the cradle of the new century a new map of the world. The old map was black with too many barbarisms, and red with too many slaughters, and pale with too many sufferings. Let us see to it that on that map, so far as possible, our country from ocean to ocean is a Christianized continent’97schools, colleges, churches, and good homes in long line from ocean beach to ocean beach. On that map Cuba must be free. Porto Rico must be free. The archipelago of the Philippines must be free. With those islands thoroughly under our protectorate, for the first time our missionaries in China will be safe. The atrocities imposed on those good men and women in the so-called Flowery Kingdom will never be resumed, for our guns will be too near Hongkong to allow the massacre of missionary settlements.
On that map must be put the Isthmian Canal, begun if not completed. No long voyages around Cape Horn for the world’92s merchandise, but short and cheap communication by water instead of expensive communication by rail-train, and more millions will be added to our national wealth and the world’92s betterment than I have capacity to calculate.
On that map it must be made evident that America is to be the world’92s civilizer and evangelizer. Free from the national religions of Europe on the one side, and from the superstitions of Asia on the other side, it will have facilities for the work that no other continent can possibly possess. As near as I can tell, by the laying on of the hands of the Lord Almighty, this continent has been ordained for that work. This is the only country in the world where all religions are on the same platform, and the people have free selection for themselves without any detriment. When we present to the other continents this assortment of religions and give them unhindered choice, we have no doubt of their selecting this religion of mercy and kindness and good will and temporal and eternal rescue. Hear it! America is to take this world for God!
On the map which we will put on the cradle of the new century, we must have, very soon, a railroad bridge across Bering Strait, those thirty-six miles of water, not deep, and they are spotted with islands capable of holding the piers of a great bridge. And what with America and Asia thus connected, and Siberian railway, and a railroad now projected for the length of Africa and Palestine and Persia and India and China and Burmah intersected with railroad tracks, all of which will be done before the new century is grown up, the way will be open to the quick civilization and evangelization of the whole world. The old map we used to study in our boyhood days is dusty, and on the top shelf, or amid the rubbish of the garret; and so will the present map of the world, however gilded and beautifully bound, be treated, and an entirely new map will be nut into the infantile hand of the coming century.
The work of this century has been to get ready. All the earth is now free to the Gospel except two little spots, one in Asia and one in Africa, while at the beginning of the century there stood the Chinese wall and there flamed the fires and there glittered the swords that forbade entrance to many islands and large reaches of continent. Bornesian cruelties and Fiji Island cannibalism have given way, and all the gates of all the continents are swung open with a clang that has been a positive and glorious invitation for Christianity to enter. Telegraph, telephone, and phonograph are to be consecrated to Gospel dissemination, and instead of the voice that gains the attention of a few hundred or a few thousand people within the church walls, the telegraph will thrill the glad tidings and the telephone will utter them to many millions. Oh, the infinite advantage that the twentieth century has over what the nineteenth century had at the starting!
In preparation for this coming century, we have time to give some decisive strokes at the seven or eight great evils that curse the world. It would be an assault and battery upon the coming century by this century if we allowed the full blow of present evils to fall upon the future. We ought somehow to cripple or minify some of these abominations. Alcoholism is today triumphant, and are we to let the all-devouring monster that has throttled this century seize upon the next without first having filled his accursed hide with stinging arrows enough to weaken and stagger him? We have wasted about twenty-five years. How so? While we have been waiting for the law of the land to prohibit intoxicants we have done little to quench the thirst of appetite in the palate and tongue of a whole generation. Where are the public and enthusiastic meetings that used to be held thirty years ago for the one purpose of persuading the young and middle-aged and old that strong drink is poisonous and damning? When will we learn that we must educate public opinion up to a prohibitory law, or such a law will not be passed, or if passed, will not be executed? God grant that all State and National Legislatures may build up against this evil a wall which will be an impassable wall, shutting out the alcoholic abomination. But while we wait for that, let us, in our homes, in our schools and our churches, and on our platforms and in our newspapers, persuade the people to stop taking alcoholic stimulant unless prescribed by physicians, and then persuade physicians not to prescribe it if in all the dominions of therapeutics there may be found some other remedy. Seven or eight years ago, on the anniversary platform of the National Temperance Society, in New York, I deplored the fact that we had left politics to do that which moral suasion only could do, and said on that occasion: ’93If some poor drunkard, wandering along this street to-night, should see the lights kindled by this brilliant assemblage, and should come in, and, finding the character of the meeting, should ask for a temperance pledge, that he might sign it and begin a new career, I do not believe there is in all this house a temperance pledge, and you would have to take out a torn letter-envelope or a loose scrap of paper for the inebriate’92s signature.’94 I found out afterward that there was one such temperance pledge in the audience, but only one that I could hear of. Do not leave to politics that which can be done now in ten thousand reformatory meetings all over the country. The two great political parties, Republican and Democratic, will put a prohibitory plank in the platform the same day that Satan joins the church and turns perdition into a camp-meeting. Both parties want the votes of the traffickers in liquid death, and if you wait for the ballot-box to do the work, first you will have local option, and then you will have high license, and then a first-rate law passed, to be revoked by the next Legislature.
Oh, save the young man of today, and greet the coming century with a tidal-wave of national redemption! Do not put upon the cradle of the twentieth century a mountain of demijohns and beer barrels and rum jugs, and put to its infant lips wretchedness, disease, murder, and abandonment in solution. Ay, reform that army of inebriates. ’93Ah,’94 you say, ’93it cannot be done.’94 That shows that you will be of no use in the work. ’93O ye of little faith.’94 Away back in early times, President Davies, of Princeton College, one day found a man in utter despair because of the thrall of strong drink. The president said to him: ’93Sir, be of good cheer; you can be saved. Sign the pledge.’94 ’93Ah,’94 said the despairing victim, ’93I have often signed the pledge, but I have always broken my pledge.’94 ’93But,’94 said the president, ’93I will be your strength to keep the pledge. I will be your friend, and, with a loving arm around you, will hold you up. When your appetite burns, and you feel that you must gratify it, come to my house; sit down with me in the study, or with the family in the parlor, and I will be a shield to you. All that I can do for you with my books, my sympathy, my experience, my society, my love, my money, I will do. You shall forget your appetite and master it.’94 A look of hope glowed on the poor man’92s face, and he replied: ’93Sir, will you do all that?’94 ’93Surely I will.’94 ’93Then I will overcome.’94 He signed the pledge and kept it. That plan of President Davies which saved one man, tried on a large scale, will save a million men.
Alexander the Great made an imperial banquet at Babylon, and though he had been drinking the health of guests all one night and all next day, the second night he had twenty guests, and he drank the health of each separately. Then calling for the cup of Hercules, the giant’97a monster cup’97he filled and drained it twice, to show his endurance; but, as he finished the last draught from the cup of Hercules, the giant, he dropped in a fit, from which he never recovered. Alexander, who had conquered Sardis, and conquered Halicarnassus, and conquered Asia, and conquered the world, could not conquer himself; and there is a threatening peril that this good land of ours, having conquered all with whom it has ever gone into battle, may yet be overthrown by the cup of the giant evil of the land’97that Hercules of infamy, strong drink. Do not let the staggering and bloated and embruted host of drunkards go into the next century looking for insane asylums and almshouses and delirium tremens and dishonored graves.
Another thing we must get fixed is a national law concerning divorce. William E. Gladstone asked me, while walking in his grounds at Hawarden: ’93Do you not think that your country is in peril from wrong notions of divorce?’94 And before I had time to answer he said: ’93The only good law of divorce that you have in America is the law in South Carolina.’94 The fact is that instead of State laws on this subject, we need a national law passed by the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives, and plainly interpreted by the Supreme Court of the country. There are thousands of married people who are unhappy, and they ought never to have been wedded. They were deceived or they were reckless or they were fools or they were caught by a dimple or hung by a curl or married in joke or expected a fortune and it did not come or good habits turned to brutality, and hence the domestic wreck. But make divorce less easy and you make the human race more cautious about entering upon lifetime alliance. Let people understand that marriage is not an accommodation train that will let you leave almost anywhere, but a through train, and then they will not step on the train unless they expect to go clear through to the last depot. One brave man rising amid the white marble of Capitol Hill, could offer a resolution upon the subject of divorce that would keep out of the next century much of the free-loveism and dissoluteness which have cursed this century.
Another thing that we need to get fixed up before the clock shall strike twelve on that night of centennial transition is the expulsion of war by the power of arbitration. We ought to have, and I hope soon will have, what might be called ’93a jury of nations,’94 which shall render verdict on all controverted international questions. The Peace Conference has discussed it and all civilized nations are ready for it. Great Britain with a standing army of two hundred and ten thousand men, France with a standing army of five hundred and eighty thousand men, Germany with a standing army of six hundred thousand men, Russia with a standing army of nine hundred thousand men. Europe with standing armies of about three and a half million men, the United States proposing a standing army of one hundred thousand men. What a glorious idea, that of disarmament! What an emancipation of nations and centuries! The Czar of Russia proposed it in world-resounding manifesto. Disarmament 1 What an inspiring and heaven-descended thought! In some quarters the Czar’92s manifesto was treated with derision, and we were told that he was not in earnest when he made it. I know personally that he did mean it. Six years ago he expressed to me the same theory in his palace at Peterhof, he then being on the way to the throne, not yet having reached it. His father, Alexander III, then on the throne, expressed to me in his palace the same sentiments of peace, and his wife, the then Empress, with tears in her eyes, said, in reply to my remark, ’93Your Majesty, there will never be another great war between Christian nations,’94 ’93Ah! I hope there never will be. If there should ever be another great war I am sure it will not start from this palace.’94
What a boon to the world if Russia and Germany and England and France and the United States could safely disband all their standing armies and dismantle their fortresses and spike their guns! What uncounted millions of dollars would be saved, and, more than that, what a complete cessation of human slaughter! What an improvement of the morals of nations! What an adoption of that higher and better manifesto which was set to music and let down from the midnight heavens of Bethlehem ages ago! The world must yet come to this. Why not make it the peroration of the nineteenth century? Are we going to make a present to the twentieth century of reeking hospitals and dying armies and hemispheric graveyards? Do you want the hoofs of other cavalry horses on the breasts of fallen men? Do you want other harvest fields gullied with wheels of gun-carriages? Do you want the sky glaring with conflagration of other homesteads? Ah! this nineteenth century has seen enough of war. Make the determination that no other century shall be blasted with it.
During the first half of this century we expended eight million dollars to educate the Indians, and four hundred millions to kill them. According to a reliable statistician, during this century we have had the Crimean war, which slew seven hundred and eighty-five thousand, and cost one billion seven hundred million dollars; and our American Civil War, which slew million men, North and South, and cost nine billions of dollars, digging a grave trench from Barnegat lighthouse, New Jersey, to ’93Lone Mountain’94 cemetery at San Francisco. And you must add to these the Zulu war and the Austro-Prussian war and the Danish war and the Italian war, the Franco-Prussian war, China-Japan, 1812-15 Napoleonic war, and the Americo-Spanish war. What a record for this boasted nineteenth century! It makes all Pandemonium chuckle. It has called out all the realms of Diabolus in grand parade, Satan reviewing them from platform of fire, as the demons, in companies and regiments and brigades, have passed with banners of fire and riding on horses of fire, keeping step to the roll of the grand march of hell. In the name of the God of nations, let the scroll of blood be rolled up and put upon the shelf, never to be taken down. And by the middle of next century let the sword and the carbine and the bombshell become curiosities in a museum, about which your grandchildren shall ask questions, wondering what those instruments were ever used for; but let no one dare tell them, but keep it from them an everlasting secret, lest they too much despise our nineteenth century and curse the memory of their ancestors.
Will it not be grand if, on the first day of the twentieth century, the Last Will and Testament of the Nineteenth Century shall be opened and it shall be found to read: ’93In the name of God, amen. I, the dying century do make this my last will and testament. I give and bequeath to my heir, the twentieth century, peace of nations; swords, which I direct to be beaten into plowshares, and spears, which must be turned into pruning hooks; armories, to be changed into schoolhouses, and fortresses, to be rebuilt into churches; and I order that greater honors be put on those who save life than upon those who destroy it. And, if amid the universal peace now attained, the nations which, like Turkey, do not stop their cruelties, let the other nations, banded together, extemporize a police force to wipe those countries off the map of nations as a wet sponge wipes from a boy’92s slate at school a hard sum in arithmetic. This last will I sign and seal and deliver on the thirty-first day of December, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred, all the civilized nations of earth and all the glorified nations of heaven witnessing.’94
But what we do as individuals, as churches, as nations, as continents, we must do very soon, if we want the transition from century to century to be a worthy transition; for I hear the trumpets of the approaching century and the clattering hoofs of the host it leads on.
For historical reminiscence there is no street in all the world like Pennsylvania Avenue. Champs Elysees of Paris is more brilliant; Princess Street, Edinburgh, more picturesque; Unter den Linden, Berlin, more richly foliaged; Piccadilly Street, London, more populous; Nevsky Prospekt, of St. Petersburg, stands for more years; the Corso of Rome is lined with more antiquities’97but for an intelligent and patriotic American, yonder avenue has no equal for suggestiveness. The other night, while thinking of this subject, as to the way in which we ought to meet the new century, so near at hand, I fell into a sort of dreamy state, in which the chronology of events seemed obliterated, and I saw on Pennsylvania Avenue two processions, which seemed to meet each other as this century goes out and another comes in. As near as I could tell in that dreamy state, it was the last night of the century, and I saw the spirits of the mighties in American history passing down the marble steps of the Capitol on yonder hill and moving through that memorable Pennsylvania Avenue. There they come, the departed members of the Supreme Court of our nation, led on by Chief Justice Marshall. There come the distinguished men of our National Legislature, in which are Webster and Clay and Benton and Calhoun and Preston and Corwin and Edward Everett, and John Quincy Adams and Samuel L. Southard and Rufus Choate and others’97some great for statesmanship, others great for wit, others great for eloquence, others great for courage. They pass on through the avenue immortal for those who in past times trod it. Yonder I see the funeral pageants of senators and three Presidents! Banners draped in gloom, tossing black plumes following tossing black plumes. Catafalques, each drawn by eight white horses, while minute-guns boom. Yonder a nation in tears follows the victims of the exploded Princeton, the slain Secretaries of State and Navy.
Presidential inaugural processions, accompanied by vanished music that has returned, the lips again on flutes and cornets long ago rusted, but now repolished, and I hear the beating drums, which silent for many years are again sounded, greeted by the huzza of hundreds of thousands of voices. Many decades hushed, but again resonant. Regiments of the army of the American Revolution followed by regiments of the army of 1812 and regiments of the army of 1861. They have come up from the encampments in the tomb to take part in this great parade in honor of the century on this night passing away. From the windows on both sides’97windows upholstered again, as in those olden days’97the pomp and fashion of the National Capital looking out upon the passing spectacle. There Marquis de Lafayette passes, escorted by the chief men of the land, who have been authorized to welcome him in behalf of a nation which he helped to set free. On through that avenue pass the throngs toward the Presidential residence, where, to greet them, come out on the platform built to review the passing century Washington and the Adamses and Jefferson and Madison and Monroe and Lincoln.
As that long and brilliant procession, vanished, but now a resurrected and remarshaled host, passes before that reviewing stand, I see another procession coming from the opposite direction to meet this. They are the President, the senators, the legislators, the judges, the philanthropists, the deliverers of the twentieth century. They come up from the schools, the churches, the farms, the cities, the homesteads of the continent. Their cradles were rocked on the banks of the Alabama and the St. Lawrence and the Oregon and the Androscoggin and the Potomac and the Hudson. They have just as firm a tread, just as well-built a brow, just as great a brain, just as noble a heart, just as high a purpose, just as sublime a courage, passing in procession one way through that avenue as the other procession passing the other way. Yea, the men coming out of the twentieth century in some respects surpass those coming out of the nineteenth century, for they have had better advantage, and will have grander opportunity, and will take part in higher achievements of civilization and Christianity.
What a meeting on this midnight twelve o’92clock, the two processions of the mighties of two centuries! Uncover all heads and bow reverently in prayer. Thank God for the good done by the procession coming out of the past, and pray to God for good to be done by the procession coming out of the future. But halt, both processions! Halt! Halt! Break ranks! Back to your thrones, ye mighties of the nineteenth century, and enjoy the reward of your fidelity! Back to your homes, your Congressional chairs, your judicial benches, your Presidential mansions, your editorial rooms, your stupendous responsibilities, and do the work for the twentieth century! Farewell and tears for the one procession! Hail and welcome to the other procession!
It has been a custom in all Christian lands for people to keep watch-night as an old year goes out and a new year comes in. People assemble in churches about ten o’92clock of that last night of the old year, and they have prayers and songs and sermons and congratulations until the hands of the church clock almost reach the figure twelve, and then all bow in silent prayer; and the scene is mightily impressive, until the clock in the tower of the church, or the clock in the tower of the city hall, strikes twelve, and then all rise and sing with smiling face and jubilant voice the grand doxology, and there is a shaking of hands all around. But what a wonderful watch-night the world is soon to celebrate! This century will depart at twelve o’92clock of the thirty-first of December, of the year 1900. What a night that will be, whether starlit or moonlit or dark with tempest. It will be such a night as you and I never saw. Those who watched the coming in of the nineteenth century, long ago went to their pillows of dust. Here and there one will see the new century arrive who saw this century enter, yet they were too infantile to appreciate the arrival. But on the watch-night of which I speak, in all neighborhoods and towns and cities and continents audiences will assemble and bow in prayer, waiting for the last breath of the dying century, and when the clock shall strike twelve, there will be a solemnity and an overwhelming awe such as has not been felt for a hundred years; and then all the people will arise and chant the welcome of a new century of joy and sorrow, of triumph and defeat, of happiness and woe, and neighborhood will shake hands with neighborhood, and church with church, and city with city, and continent with continent, and hemisphere with hemisphere, and earth with heaven, at the stupendous departure and the majestic arrival. May we all see the solemnities and join in the songs and shake hands in the congratulations of that watch-night; or, if between this and that any of us should be off and away, may we be inhabitants of that land where ’93a thousand years are as one day,’94 and in the presence of that angel spoken of in the Apocalypse, who at the end of the world will, standing with one foot on the sea and the other foot on the land, ’93swear by him that liveth forever and ever, that time shall be no longer.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage