222. The Voices of the Street

The Voices of the Street

Pro_1:20 : ’93Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets.’94

We are all ready to listen to the voices of nature’97the voices of the mountains, the voices of the sea, the voices of the storm, the voices of the stars. As in some of the cathedrals in Europe there is an organ at each end of the building, and the one instrument responds musically to the other, so in the great cathedral of nature day responds to day and night to night and flower to flower and star to star, in the great harmonies of the universe.

The springtime is an evangelist in blossoms preaching of God’92s love; and the winter is a prophet, white-bearded, denouncing woe against our sins. We are all ready to listen to the voices of nature, but how few of us learn anything from the voices of the noisy and the dusty street! You go to your offices and your mechanism and your merchandise, and you come back again, and often with how different a heart you pass through the streets! Are there no things for us to learn from these pavements over which we pass? Are there no tufts of truth growing up between these cobblestones, beaten with the feet of toil and pain and pleasure’97the slow tread of age and the quick step of childhood? Ay, there are great harvests to be reaped, and now I thrust in the sickle because the harvest is ripe. ’93Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets.’94

In the first place, the street impresses me with the fact that this life is a scene of toil and struggle. By ten o’92clock of every day the city is jarring with wheels and shuffling with feet and humming with voices and covered with the breath of smoke-stacks and a-rush with traffickers. Once in a while, you find a man going along with folded arms and with leisurely steps, as though he had nothing to do; but for the most part, as you find men going down these streets on the way to business, there is anxiety in their faces, as though they had some errand which must be executed at the first possible moment. You are jostled by those who have bargains to make and notes to sell. Up this ladder with a hod of bricks, out of this bank with a roll of bills, on this dray with a load of goods, digging a cellar or shingling a roof or shoeing a horse or building a wall or mending a watch or binding a book, industry, with her thousand arms and thousand eyes and thousand feet, goes on singing her song of work! work! work! while the mills drum it, and the steam whistles fife it.

All this is not because men love toil. Some one has remarked: ’93Every man is as lazy as he can afford to be.’94 But it is because necessity, with stern brow and with uplifted whip, stands over you, ready, whenever you relax your toil, to make your shoulders sting with the lash. Can it be that, passing up and down these streets on your way to work and business, you do not learn anything of the world’92s toil and anxiety and struggle?

Oh, how many throbbing hearts, how many eyes on the watch, how many miles traveled, how many burdens carried, how many losses suffered, how many battles fought, how many victories gained, how many defeats suffered, how many exasperations endured! What losses, what hunger, what wretchedness, what pallor, what disease, what agony, what despair!

Sometimes I have stopped at the corner of the street as the multitudes went hither and thither, and it has seemed to be a great pantomime, and, as I looked upon it, my heart broke. This great tide of human life that goes down the street is a river tossed and turned aside, and dashed ahead and driven back, beautiful in its confusion, and confused in its beauty. In the carpeted aisles of the forest, in the woods from which the eternal shadow is never lifted, on the shore of the sea over whose iron coast tosses the tangled foam, sprinkling the cracked cliffs with a baptism of whirlwind and tempest, is the best place to study God; but in the rushing, swarming, raving street is the best place to study man.

Going down to your place of business, and coming home again, I charge you look about, see these signs of poverty, of wretchedness, of hunger, of sin, of bereavement; and as you go through the streets, and come back through the streets, gather up in the arms of your prayers all the sorrows, all the losses, all the sufferings, all the bereavements of those whom you pass, and present them in prayer before an all-sympathetic God.

Then in the great day of eternity there will be thousands of persons with whom you, in this world, never exchanged one word, who will rise up and call you blessed, and there will be a thousand fingers pointed at you in heaven, saying: ’93That is the man, that is the woman, who helped me when I was hungry and sick and wandering and lost and heart-broken’97that is the man, that is the woman.’94

Again, the street impresses me with the fact that all classes and conditions of society must commingle. We sometimes culture a wicked exclusiveness. Intellect despises ignorance. Refinement will have nothing to do with boorishness. Gloves hate the sunburned hand, and the high forehead despises the flat head, and the trim hedgerow will have nothing to do with the wild copse wood, and Athens hates Nazareth. This ought not so to be. The astronomer must come down from his starry revelry, and help us in our navigation. The surgeon must come away from his study of the human organism, and set our broken bones. The chemist must come away from his laboratory, where he has been studying analyses and syntheses, and help us to understand the nature of the soils. I bless God that all classes of people are compelled to meet on the street. The glittering coach-wheel clashes against the scavenger’92s cart. Fine robes run against the pedler’92s pack. Robust health meets wan sickness. Honesty confronts fraud. Every class of people meets every other class. Impudence and modesty, pride and humility, purity. and depravity, frankness and hypocrisy meet in the same block, in the same street, in the same city. Solomon referred to this when he said: ’93The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is maker of them all.’94 I like this democratic principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which recognizes the fact that we stand before God on one and the same platform. Do not take on any airs; whatever position you have gained in society, you are nothing but a man, nothing but a woman, born of the same parents, regenerated by the same Spirit, cleansed in the same blood, to lie down in the same dust, to come up in the same resurrection. It is high time that we all acknowledged, not only the fatherhood of God, but the brotherhood of man.

Again, the street impresses me with the fact that it is a very hard thing for a man to keep his heart right and to get to heaven. Infinite temptations spring upon us from these places of public concourse. Amid so much affluence, how much temptation to covetousness and to be discontented with our humble lot! Amid so many opportunities for overreaching, what temptation to extortion! Amid so much display, what temptation to vanity! Amid so many saloons of strong drink, what allurement to dissipation! In the maelstroms and hell-gates of the street, how many make quick and eternal shipwreck!

If a man-of-war comes back from battle and is towed into the navy-yard we go down to look at the splintered spars, and count the bullet-holes, and look with patriotic admiration on the flag that floated in victory from the masthead. But that man is more of a curiosity who has gone through thirty years of the sharpshooting of business life, and yet sails on victor over the temptations of the street. Oh, how many have gone down under the pressure, leaving not so much as a patch of a canvas to tell where they perished! They never had any peace. Their dishonesties kept tolling in their ears. If I had an ax, and could split open the beams of that fine house, perhaps I would find in the very heart of it a skeleton. In his very best wine there is a smack of poor man’92s sweat. Oh, is it strange that, when a man has devoured widows’92 houses, he is disturbed with indigestion? All the forces of nature are against him. The floods are ready to drown him and the earthquakes to swallow him and the fires to consume him and the lightnings to smite him, but in the day when the crowns of heaven are distributed, some of the brightest of them will be given to those men who were faithful to God and faithful to the souls of others amid the marts of business, proving themselves the heroes of the street. Mighty were their temptations, mighty was their deliverance, and mighty shall be their triumph.

Again, the street impresses me with the fact that life is full of pretension and sham. What subterfuge, what double-dealing, what two-facedness! Do all the people who wish you good morning really hope for you a happy day? Do all the people who shake hands love each other? Are all those anxious about your health who inquire concerning it? Do all want to see you who ask you to call? Does all the world know half as much as it pretends to know? Is there not many a wretched stock of goods with a brilliant show-window? Passing up and down these streets to your business and your work, are you not impressed with the fact that society is hollow, and that there are subterfuges and pretensions?

Oh, how many there are who swagger and strut, and how few people who are natural and walk! While fops simper and fools chuckle and simpletons giggle, how few people are natural and laugh! The courtezan and the libertine go down the street in beautiful apparel, while within the heart there are volcanoes of passion consuming their life away. I say these things not to create in you incredulity or misanthropy, nor do I forget there are thousands of people a great deal better than they seem; but I do not think any man is prepared for the conflict of this life until he knows this particular peril. Ehud comes pretending to pay his tax to King Eglon, and, while he stands in front of the king, stabs him through with a dagger, until the haft went in after the blade. Goergei betrayed Hungary. Judas kissed Christ.

Again, the street impresses me with the fact that it is a great field for Christian charity. There are hunger and suffering and want and wretchedness in the country; but these evils chiefly congregate in our great cities. On every street crime prowls and drunkenness staggers and shame winks and pauperism thrusts out its hand asking for alms. Here want is most squalid and hunger is most lean. A Christian man going along a street in New York, saw a poor lad, and stopped and said: ’93My boy, do you know how to read and write?’94 The boy made no answer. The man asked the question twice and thrice: ’93Can you read and write?’94 And then the boy answered, with a tear plashing on the back of his hand, and he said in defiance: ’93No, sir; I can’92t read nor write neither. God, sir, don’92t want me to read and write. Didn’92t he take away my father so long ago I never remembered to have seen him? and haven’92t I had to go along the streets to get things to fetch home to eat for the folks? and didn’92t I, as soon as I could carry a basket, have to go out and pick up cinders, and never had no schooling, sir? God don’92t want me to read, sir; I can’92t read nor write neither.’94

Oh, these poor wanderers! They have no chance. Born in degradation, as they get up from their hands and knees to walk, they take their first step on the road to despair. Let us go forth in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue them. Let us ministers not be afraid of soiling our black clothes while we go down on that mission. While we are tying an elaborate knot in our cravat, or while we are in the study rounding off some period rhetorically, we might be saving a soul from death, and hiding a multitude of sins.

Christian laymen I go out on this work. If you are not willing to go forth yourself, then give of your means; and if you are too lazy to go, and if you are too stingy to help, then get out of the way, and hide yourself in the dens and caves of the earth, lest, when Christ’92s chariot comes along, the horses’92 hoofs trample you into the mire. Beware lest the thousands of the destitute of your city, in the last great day, rise up and curse your stupidity and your neglect. Lift them up! One cold winter’92s day, as a Christian man was going along the Battery, New York, he saw a little girl seated at the gate, shivering in the cold. He said to her: ’93My child, what do you sit there for this cold day?’94 ’93Oh,’94 she replied, ’93I am waiting’97I am waiting for somebody to come and take care of me.’94 ’93Why,’94 said the man, ’93what makes you think that anybody will come and take care of you?’94 ’93Oh,’94 she said, ’93my mother died last week, and I was crying very much, and she said: ’91Don’92t cry, my dear; though I am going, and your father is gone, the Lord will send somebody to take care of you.’92 My mother never told a lie; she said some one would come and take care of me, and I am waiting for them to come.’94 Oh, yes; they are waiting for you. Men who have dollars, men who have influence, men of churches, men of great hearts, gather them in, gather them in. It is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones should perish.

Lastly, the street impresses me with the fact that all the people are looking forward. I see expectancy written on almost every face I meet on the streets. Where you find a thousand people walking straight on, you only find one man stopping and looking back. The fact is, God made us all to look ahead, because we are immortal. In this tramp of the multitude on the streets, I hear the tramp of a great host marching for eternity. Beyond the office, the store, the shop, the street, there is a world populous and tremendous. Through God’92s grace, may you reach that blessed place. A great throng fills those boulevards, and the streets are a-rush with the chariots of conquerors. The inhabitants go up and down, but they never weep and they never toil. A river flows through that city, with rounded and luxuriant banks; and trees of life, laden with everlasting fruitage, bend their branches to dip the crystal. No plumed hearse rattles over that pavement, for they are never sick. With immortal health glowing in every vein, they know not how to die. Those towers of strength, those palaces of beauty, gleam in the light of a sun that never sets. Oh, heaven! beautiful heaven! heaven, where our friends are! They take no census in that city, for it is inhabited by ’93a multitude which no man can number.’94 Rank above rank, host above host, gallery above gallery, sweeping all around the heavens. Thousands of thousands, millions of millions, quadrillions of quadrillions, quintillions of quintillions. Blessed are they who enter in through the gate into that city.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage