The Midnight Horseman
Neh_2:15 : ’93Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so returned.’94
A dead city is always more suggestive than a living city: ancient Rome than modern Rome; a ruin rather than newly frescoed building. But the best time to visit a ruin is by moonlight. The Colosseum is far more fascinating to the traveler after sundown than before. You may stand by daylight amid the monastic ruins of Melrose Abbey, and study shaft and oriel, rosetted stone and mullion; but they throw their strongest witchery by moonlight. Some of you remember what the celebrated poet of Scotland said in the ’93Lay of the Last Minstrel’94:
If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight.
Washington Irving describes the Andalusian moonlight upon the Alhambra ruins as amounting to an enchantment.
My text presents you Jerusalem in ruins; the tower down, the gates down, the walls down’97everything down: Nehemiah, on horseback, by moonlight, looking upon the ruins. While he rides, there are some friends on foot going with him, for they do not want the many horses to disturb the suspicions of the people. These people do not know the secret of Nehemiah’92s heart, but they are going as a sort of bodyguard. I hear the clicking hoofs of the horse on which Nehemiah rides, as he guides it this way and that, into this gate and out of that gate, winding through amid the debris of once-great Jerusalem.
Now the horse comes to a dead halt at the tumbled masonry, where he cannot pass. Now he shies off at the charred timbers. Now he comes along where the water under the moonlight flashes from the mouth of the brazen dragon after which the gate was named. Heavy-hearted Nehemiah! Riding in and out, now by his old home desolated, now by the burned temple, now amid the great stones of the city that had gone down under the battering-ram and conflagration. The escorting party know not what Nehemiah means. Is he getting crazy? Have his own personal sorrows, added to the sorrows of the nation, unbalanced his intellect? Still the midnight exploration goes on. Nehemiah, on horseback, rides through the fish gate, by the tower of the furnaces, by the king’92s pool, by the dragon well, in and out, in and out, until the midnight ride is completed, and Nehemiah dismounts from his horse, and to the amazed and confounded and incredulous bodyguard declares the deep secret of his heart when he says: ’93Come, now, let us build Jerusalem.’94 ’93What, Nehemiah, have you any money?’94 ’93No.’94 ’93Have you any kingly authority?’94 ’93No.’94 ’93Have you any eloquence?’94 ’93No.’94 Yet that midnight moonlight ride of Nehemiah resulted in the glorious rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem.
The people knew not how the thing was to be done, but with great enthusiasm they cried out: ’93Let us rise up now and build the city.’94 Some people laughed and said it could not be done. Some people were infuriated and offered physical violence and said the thing should not be done. But the workmen went right on, standing on the wall, trowel in one hand, sword in the other, until the work was gloriously completed. At that very time, in Greece, Xenophon was writing a history and Plato was making philosophy and Demosthenes was uttering his rhetorical thunder; but all of them together did not do as much for the world as this midnight moonlight ride of praying, courageous, homesick, close-mouthed Nehemiah.
My subject first impresses me with the idea what an intense thing is attachment to the house of God. Seize the bridle of that horse and stop Nehemiah. Why are you risking your life here in the night? Your horse will stumble over these ruins and fall on you. Stop this useless exposure of your life. No! Nehemiah will not stop. He at last tells us the whole story. He lets us know he was an exile in a far-distant land, and he was a servant, a cupbearer, in the palace of Artaxerxes Longimanus, and one day, while he was handing the cup of wine to the king, the king said to him: ’93What is the matter with you, Nehemiah? You are not ill. I know you must have some great trouble. What is the matter with you?’94 Then he told the king how beloved Jerusalem was broken down; how his father’92s tomb had been desecrated; how the temple had been dishonored and burned; how the walls were all scattered and broken. ’93Well,’94 says King Artaxerxes, ’93what do you want?’94 ’93O king,’94 said the cupbearer Nehemiah, ’93I want to go home. I want to repair the grave of my father. I want to restore the beauty of the temple. I want to rebuild the masonry of the city wall. Besides, I want passports so that I shall not be hindered in my journey. And besides that (as you will find in the context), I want an order on the man who keeps your forest for just so much lumber as I may need for the rebuilding of the city.’94 ’93How long shall you be gone?’94 said the king. The time for absence is arranged. ’93Good-by,’94 said the king and queen, who that day was sitting beside him in the palace. ’93Good-by,’94 said Nehemiah.
In hot haste this seeming adventurer comes to Jerusalem, and in my text we find him on horseback, in the midnight, riding around the ruins. It is through the spectacles of this scene that we discover the ardent attachment of Nehemiah for that sacred Jerusalem, which in all ages has been the type of the Church of God; our Jerusalem, which we love just as much as Nehemiah loved his Jerusalem.
The fact is that you love the house of God so much that there is no spot on earth so sacred unless it be your own fireside. The Church has been to you so much comfort and illumination that there is nothing that makes you so irate as to have it talked against. If there have been times when you have been carried into captivity by sickness, you longed for the Church, the holy Jerusalem, just as much as Nehemiah longed for his Jerusalem, and the first day you came out of doors you came to the house of the Lord.
What Jerusalem was to Nehemiah, the house of God is to you. Skeptics and infidels may scoff at the Church as an obsolete affair, as a relic of the dark ages, as a convention of goody-goody people; but all the impression they have ever made on your mind against the Church of God is absolutely nothing. You would make more sacrifices for it today than for any other institution, and if it were needful you would die in its defense. There are thousands of people who would, with Isaac Watts, say in regard to it:
Zion’92s a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world’92s wild wilderness.
Or you can take the better words of the kingly poet as he said: ’93If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.’94 You understand in your own experience the pathos, the homesickness, the courage, the holy enthusiasm of Nehemiah in his midnight moonlight ride around the ruins of his beloved Jerusalem.
Again, my text impresses me with the fact that before reconstruction there must be an exploration of ruins. Why was not Nehemiah asleep in bed? Why was not his horse stabled in the midnight? Let the police of the city arrest this midnight rider, out on some mischief. No. Nehemiah is going to rebuild the city, and he is making the preliminary exploration. In at this gate, out at that gate; east, west, north, south. By the fish gate; by the dragon well; by the tower of the furnaces. All through the ruins. The ruins must be explored before the work of reconstruction can begin.
The reason that so many people in this day, apparently converted, do not remain converted, is because they did not first explore the ruin of their own heart. The reason that there are so many professed Christians who in this day lie and forge and steal and commit adultery and go to the penitentiary, is because they do not first learn the ruin of their own heart. They have not found out that ’93the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’94 They had an idea that they were almost right, and they built religion as a sort of extension, as an ornamental cupola. There was a superstructure of religion built on a substratum of unrepented sins. The trouble with a good deal of modern theology is that, instead of building on the right foundation, it builds on the debris of an unregenerated nature. They attempt to rebuild Jerusalem before, in the midnight of conviction, they have seen the ghastliness of the ruin. They have such a poor foundation for their religion that the first northeast storm of temptation blows it down. I have no faith in a man’92s conversion if he is not converted in the old-fashioned way’97John Bunyan’92s way, John Wesley’92s way, John Calvin’92s way, Paul’92s way, Christ’92s way, God’92s way. A dentist said to me: ’93Does that hurt?’94 I replied: ’93Of course it hurts. It is in your business as in my profession’97we have to hurt before we can help; we have to explore and dig away before we can put in the gold.’94 You will never understand redemption until you understand ruin. A man tells me that some one is a member of the Church. It makes no impression on my mind at all. I simply want to know whether he was converted in the old-fashioned way, or whether he was converted in the new-fashioned way. If he was converted in the old-fashioned way he will stand. If he was converted in the new-fashioned way he will not stand. That is all there is about it.
A man comes to me to talk about religion. The first question I ask him is: ’93Do you feel yourself to be a sinner?’94 If he says: ’93Well, I’97yes,’94 the hesitancy makes me feel that that man wants a ride on Nehemiah’92s horse by midnight through the ruins’97in at the gate of his affections, out at the gate of his will, by the dragon well; and before he has got through with that midnight ride he will drop the reins on the horse’92s neck, and he will with his right hand smite on his heart, and will say, ’93God be merciful to me a sinner!’94 and before he has stabled his horse he will take his feet out of the stirrups, and he will slide down on the ground, and he will kneel, crying: ’93Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions; for I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me.’94
You see this is not a complimentary Gospel. That is what makes some people so incensed. It comes to a man of a million dollars, and impenitent in his sins, and says, ’93You are a pauper.’94 It comes to a woman of fairest cheek, who has never repented, and says, ’93You are a leper.’94 It comes to a man priding himself on his independence, and says, ’93You are bound hand and foot of the devil.’94 It comes to our entire race and says, ’93You are a ruin, a ghastly ruin, and illimitable ruin, and, unless the grace of God rebuild you, an everlasting ruin.’94 Satan sometimes says to me; ’93Why do you not preach that truth? Why don’92t you preach a Gospel with no repentance in it? Why don’92t you flatter men’92s hearts so that you make them feel all right? Why don’92t you preach a humanitarian Gospel, with no repentance in it, saying nothing about the ruin, talking all the time about the redemption? Instead of preaching to five thousand, you might preach to twenty thousand; for there would be four times as many who would come to hear a popular truth as to hear an unpopular truth, and you have voice enough to make them hear.’94 I say: ’93Get thee behind me, Satan.’94 I would rather lead five thousand souls into heaven than twenty thousand into hell. The redemption of the Gospel is a perfect farce if there is no ruin. ’93The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.’94 ’93If any one, though he be an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel than this,’94 says the apostle, ’93let him be accursed.’94
Again, my subject gives me a specimen of busy and triumphant sadness. If there was any man in the world who had a right to despair and give up everything as lost, it was Nehemiah. You say, ’93He was cupbearer in the palace of Shushan, and it was a grand place.’94 So it was. The hall of that palace was two hundred feet square, and the roof hovered over thirty-six marble pillars, each pillar sixty feet high; and the intense blue of the sky and the deep green of the forest foliage and the white of the driven snow all hung trembling in the upholstery. But you know very well that fine architecture will not put down homesickness. Yet Nehemiah did not give up. Then when you see him going among these desolated streets, and by these dismantled towers, and by the torn-up grave of his father, you would suppose that he would have been disheartened, and that he would have dismounted from his horse and gone to his room and said: ’93Woe is me! My father’92s grave is torn up. The temple is dishonored. The walls are broken down. I have no money with which to rebuild. I wish I had never been born. I wish I was dead.’94
Not so, said Nehemiah. Although he had a grief so intense that it excited the commiseration of his king; yet that penniless, expatriated Nehemiah rouses himself up to rebuild the city. He gets his permission of absence; he gets his passports; he hastens away to Jerusalem. By night, on horseback, he rides through the ruins; he overcomes the most ferocious opposition; he arouses the piety and patriotism of the people, and in less than two months’97namely, in fifty-two days’97Jerusalem was rebuilt. That’92s what I call busy and triumphant sadness.
Now, the whole temptation is with you, when you have trouble, to do just the opposite of the behavior of Nehemiah, and that is to give up. You say, ’93I have lost my child, and can never smile again.’94 You say, ’93I have lost my property, and I never can repair my fortunes.’94 You say, ’93I have fallen into sin, and I never can start again for a new life.’94 If Satan can make you form that resolution, and make you keep it, he has ruined you. Trouble is not sent to crush you, but to arouse you, to animate you, to propel you. The blacksmith does not thrust the iron into the forge and then blow away with the bellows and then bring the hot iron out on the anvil and beat with stroke after stroke to ruin the iron, but to prepare it for a better use. Oh, that the Lord God of Nehemiah would rouse up all brokenhearted people to rebuild!
Whipped, betrayed, shipwrecked, imprisoned, Paul went right on. The Italian martyr, Algerius, sits in his dungeon writing a letter, and he dates it ’93From the delectable orchard of the Leonine Prison.’94 That is what I call triumphant sadness. I knew a mother who buried her babe on Friday, and on the Sabbath appeared in the house of God and said: ’93Give me a class; give me a Sabbath-school class. I have no child now left me, and I would like to have a class of little children. Give me real poor children. Give me a class off the back street.’94 That, I say, is beautiful. That is triumphant sadness.
At three o’92clock on next Sunday afternoon, in a beautiful parlor in Philadelphia’97a parlor pictured and statuetted’97there will be from ten to twenty destitute children of the street. It has been so every Sabbath afternoon at three o’92clock for many years. These destitute children receive religious instruction, concluding with cakes and sandwiches. How do I know that that has been going on for many years? I know it in this way: that was the first home in Philadelphia where I was called to comfort a great sorrow. They had a splendid boy, and he had been drowned at Long Branch. The father and mother almost idolized the boy, and the sob and shriek of that father and mother as they hung over the coffin resound in my ears today. There seemed to be no use of praying, for when I knelt down to pray, the outcry in the room drowned out all the prayer. But the Lord comforted that sorrow. They did not forget their trouble. If you should go into Laurel Hill Cemetery you would find a monument with the word ’93Walter’94 inscribed upon it, and a wreath of fresh flowers around the name. I think there has not been an hour in all these years, winter or summer, when there was not a wreath of fresh flowers around Walter’92s name. But the Christian mother who sends those flowers there, having no child left, on Sabbath afternoons mothers ten or twenty of the lost ones of the street. That is beautiful. That is what I call busy and triumphant sadness.
Here is a man who has lost his property. He does not go to hard drinking. He does not destroy his own life. He comes and says: ’93Harness me for Christian work. My money is gone. I have no treasures on earth; I want treasures in heaven. I have a voice and a heart to serve God.’94 You say that that man has failed. He has not failed; he has triumphed. Oh, I wish I could persuade all the people who have any kind of trouble to never give up! I wish they would look at the midnight rider of the text, and that the four hoofs of that beast on which Nehemiah rode might cut to pieces all your discouragements and hardships and trials. Do not give up! Who is going to give up when on the bosom of God he can have all his troubles hushed? Give up! Never think of giving up.
Are you borne down with poverty? A little child was found holding her dead mother’92s hand in the darkness of a tenement-house, and some one coming in, the little girl looked up, while holding her dead mother’92s hand, and said: ’93Oh, I do wish that God had made more light for poor folks!’94 ’93My dear, God will be your light; God will be your shelter; God will be your home.’94 Are you borne down with the bereavements of life? Is the house lonely, now that the child is gone? Do not give up. Think of what the old sexton said when the minister asked him why he lavished so much care on the little graves in the cemetery’97so much more care than on the larger graves’97and the old sexton said: ’93Sir, you know that ’91of such is the kingdom of heaven,’92 and I think the Saviour is pleased when he sees so much white clover growing around these little graves.’94 But when the minister pressed the old sexton for a more satisfactory answer, the old sexton said: ’93Sir, about these larger graves, I don’92t know who are the Lord’92s saints and who are not; but you know, sir, it is clean different with the bairns.’94 Oh, if you have had that keen, tender, indescribable sorrow that comes from the loss of a child, do not give up! The old sexton was right. It is all well with the bairns.
Or, if you have sinned, if you have sinned grievously’97sinned until you have been cast out by the Church, sinned until you have been cast out by society’97do not give up. One like unto the Son of God comes to you, saying: ’93Go and sin no more,’94 while he cries out to your assailants: ’93Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at her.’94 Oh, there is no reason why any one, by reason of any trouble or any sin, should give up! Are you a foreigner and in a strange land? Nehemiah was in exile. Are you penniless? Nehemiah was poor. Are you homesick? Nehemiah was homesick. Are you brokenhearted? Nehemiah was brokenhearted. But just see him in the text, riding along by the desecrated grave of his father, and by the dragon well, and through the fish gate, and by the king’92s pool, in and out, in and out, the moonlight falling on the broken masonry, which throws a long shadow at which the horse shies; and at the same time that moonlight kindling up the features of this man till you see not only the mark of sad reminiscence, but the courage, the hope, the enthusiasm of a man who knows that Jerusalem will be rebuilt. I pick you up today, out of your sin and out of your sorrow, and I put you against the warm heart of Christ. ’93The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage