315. The World’s Fair

The World’92s Fair

Eze_27:12 : ’93They traded in thy fairs.’94

Fairs may be for the sale of goods, or for the exhibition of goods on a small scale or a large scale, for county or city, for one nation or for all nations. My text brings us to the fairs of ancient Tyre, a city that is now extinct. Part of the city was on an island, and part on the mainland. Alexander, the conqueror, was much embarrassed when he found so much of the city was on an island, for he had no ships, But his military genius was not to be balked. Having marched his army to the beach, he ordered them to tear up the city on the mainland and throw it into the water, and build a causeway two hundred feet wide to the island. So they took that part of the city which was on the mainland, and with it built a causeway of timber and brick and stone, on which his army marched to the capture of that part of the city which was on the island, as though a hostile army should put Brooklyn into the East river, and over it march to the capture of New York. That Tyrian causeway of ruins which Alexander’92s army built is still there, and by alluvial deposits has permanently united the island to the mainland, so that it is no longer an island but a promontory. The sand’97the greatest of all undertakers for burying cities, having covered up for the most part Baalbec and Palmyra and Thebes and Memphis and Carthage and Babylon and Luxor and Jericho’97the sand, so small and yet so mighty, is now gradually giving rites of sepulture to what was left of Tyre. But, oh, what a magnificent city it once was! Mistress of the sea! Queen of international commerce! All nations casting their crowns at her feet! Where we have in our sailing vessels benches of wood, she had benches of ivory. Where we have for our masts of ships sails of coarse canvas, she had sails of richest embroidery.

The chapter from which my text is taken, after enumerating the richest countries in all the world, says of Tyre: ’93They traded in thy fairs.’94 Look in upon a World’92s Fair at Tyre. Ezekiel leads us through one department, and it is a horse fair. Underfed and overdriven for ages, the horses of today give you no idea of the splendid animals which, rearing and plunging and snorting and neighing, were brought down over the plank of the ships, and led into the World’92s Fair at Tyre, until Ezekiel, who was a minister of religion, and not supposed to know much about horses, cried out in admiration: ’93They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses.’94 Here in another department of that World’92s Fair at Tyre, led on by Ezekiel, the prophet, we find everything all ablaze with precious stones. Like petrified snow are the corals; like fragments of fallen sky are the sapphires; and here is agate a-blush with all colors. What is that aroma we inhale? It is from the chests of cedar which we open, and find them filled with all styles of fabric. But the aromatics increase as we pass down this lane of enchantment, and here are cassia and frankincense and balm. Led on by Ezekiel, the prophet, we come to an agricultural fair with a display of wheat from Minnith and Pannag, rich as that of our modern Dakota or Michigan. And here is a mineralogical fair, with specimens of iron and silver and tin and lead and gold. But halt! for here is purple, Tyrian purple, all tints and shades, deep almost unto the black, and bright almost unto the blue; waiting for kings and queens to order it made into robes for coronation-day; purple, not like that which is now made from the orchilla weed, but the extinct purple, the lost purple, which the ancients knew how to make out of the gasteropod mollusks of the Mediterranean. Look at those casks of wine from Helbon! See those snowbanks of wool from the back of sheep that once pastured in Gilead! Oh, the bewildering riches and variety of that world’92s fair at Tyre!

But the world has copied those Bible-mentioned fairs in all succeeding ages, and it has had its Louis VI fair at Dagobert, and Henry I fair on St. Bartholomew’92s day, and Hungarian fairs at Pesth and Easter fairs at Leipsic and the Scotch fairs at Perth (bright was the day when I was at one of them), and afterward came the London World’92s Fair and the New York World’92s Fair and the Vienna World’92s Fair and the Parisian World’92s Fair, and in commemoration of the discovery of America in 1492, there will be held in this country in 1892 a World’92s Fair that shall eclipse all preceding national expositions. I say, God speed the movement! Surely the event commemorated is worthy of all the architecture and music and pyrotechnics and eloquence and stupendous planning and monetary expenditure and congressional appropriations which the most sanguine Christian patriot has ever dreamed of. Was any voyage that the world ever heard of crowned with such an arrival as that of Columbus and his men? After they had been encouraged for the last few days by flight of land birds, and floating branches of red berries, and while Columbus was down in the cabin studying the sea-chart, Martin Pinzon, standing on deck, and looking to the southwest, cried: ’93Land! land! land!’94 And ’93Gloria in Excelsis’94 was sung in raining tears on all the three ships of the expedition. Most appropriate and patriotic and Christian will be a commemorative World’92s Fair in America in 1892. Leaving to others the discussion as to the site of such exposition’97and I wonder not that some five or six of our cities are struggling to have it, for it will give to any city to which it is assigned an impulse of prosperity for a hundred years’97I say, leaving to others the selection of the particular locality to be thus honored, I want to say some things from the point of Christian patriotism which ought to be said, and the earlier the better, that we get thousands of people talking in the right direction, and that will make healthful public opinion. I beg you to consider prayerfully what I feel called upon of God as an American citizen and as a preacher of righteousness to utter.

My first suggestion is that it is not wise, as certainly it is not Christian, to continue this wide and persistent attempt of American cities to belittle and depreciate other cities. It has been going on for years, but now the spirit seems to culminate in this discussion as to where the World’92s Fair shall be held, a style of discussion which has a tendency to injure the success of the fair as a great moral and patriotic enterprise, after the locality has been decided upon. There is such a thing as healthful rivalry between cities, but you will bear me out in saying that there can be no good to come from the uncanny things said about each other by New York and Chicago, by Chicago and St. Louis, by St. Paul and Minneapolis, by Tacoma and Seattle, and all through the States by almost every two proximate cities. All cities, like individuals, have their virtues and their vices. All our American cities should be our exultation. What churches! What public libraries! What asylums of mercy! What academies of music! What mighty men in law and medicine and art and scholarship! What schools and colleges and universities! What women radiant and gracious, and an improvement on all the generations of women since Eve! What philanthropists who do not feel satisfied with their own charities until they get into the hundreds of thousands and millions! What ’93God’92s acres’94 for the dead, gardens of beauty and palaces of marble for those who sleep the last sleep! Now stop your slander of American cities. Do you say they are the centres of crime and political corruption? Please admit the fact that they are the centres of intelligence and generosity, and the mightiest patrons of architecture and sculpture and painting and music and reservoirs of religious influence for all the continent. It will be well for the country districts to cease talking against the cities, and it will be well for the city of one locality to stop talking against the cities of other localities. New York will not get the World’92s Fair by deprecating Chicago, nor Chicago by bombarding New York.

Another suggestion concerning the coming exposition: Let not the materialistic and monetary idea overpower the moral and religious. During that exposition, the first time in all their lives, there will be thousands of people from other lands who will see a country without a state religion. Let us, by an increased harmony among all denominations of religion, impress other nationalities, as they come here that year, with the superior advantage of having all denominations alike in the sight of government. All the rulers and chief men of Europe belong to the state religion, whatever it may be. Although our last two Presidents have been Presbyterians, the previous one was an Episcopalian; and the two previous, Methodists; and going further back in that line of Presidents, we find Martin Van Buren a Dutch Reformed, and John Quincy Adams a Unitarian; and a man’92s religion in this country is neither hindrance nor advantage in the matter of political elevation. All Europe needs that. All the world needs that. A man’92s religion is something between himself and his God, and it must not, directly or indirectly, be interfered with.

Furthermore, during that exposition, Christian civilization will confront barbarism. We shall have a greater opportunity to make an evangelizing impression upon foreign nationalities than would otherwise be afforded us in a quarter of a century. Let the churches of the city where the exposition is held be open every day, and prayers be offered and sermons preached and doxologies sung. In the less than three years between this and that world’92s convocation, let us get a baptism of the Holy Ghost, so that the six months of that World’92s Fair shall be fifty Pentecosts in one, and instead of three thousand converted, as in the former Pentecost, hundreds of thousands will be converted. You must remember that the Pentecost mentioned in the Bible occurred when there was no printing-press, no books, no Christian pamphlets, no religious newspapers, and yet the influence was tremendous. How many nationalities were touched? The account says: ’93Parthians and Medes and Elamites,’94 that is, people from the eastern countries; ’93Phrygia and Pamphylia,’94 that is, the western countries; ’93Cyrene and strangers of Rome, Cretes, and Arabians,’94 that is, the southern countries; but they were all moved by the mighty spectacle. Instead of the sixteen or eighteen tribes of people reported at that Pentecost, all the chief nations of Europe and Asia, North and South America, will be represented at our World’92s Fair in 1892, and a Pentecost here, and then, would mean the salvation of the world.

But, you say, we may have at that fair the people of all lands, and all the machinery for Gospelization, the religious printing-presses and the churches, but all that would not make a Pentecost; we must have God. Well, you can have him. Has he not been graciously waiting? and nothing stands in the way but our own unbelief and indolence and sin. May God break down the barriers! The grandest opportunity for the evangelization of all nations since Jesus Christ died on the cross will be the World’92s Exposition of 1892. God may take us out of the harvest-field before that, but let it be known throughout Christendom that that year, between May and November, will be the mountain of Christian advantage, the Alpine and Himalayan height of opportunity overtopping all others for salvation. Instead of the slow process of having to send the Gospel to other lands by our own American missionaries, who have difficult toil in acquiring the foreign language, and then must contend with foreign prejudices, what a grand thing to have able and influential foreigners converted during their visit in America, and then have them return to their native lands with the glorious tidings. Oh, for an overwhelming work of grace for the year 1892, beginning in the autumn of 1889!

Another opportunity, if our public men see it’97and it is the duty of pulpit and printing-press to help them to see it’97will be the calling at that time and place of a great peace congress for all nations. The convention of representatives from the governments of North and South America, now at Washington, is only a type of what we may have on a vast and worldwide scale at the International Exposition of 1892. By one stroke the gorgon of war might be slain and buried so deep that neither trumpet of human dispute or of archangel’92s blowing could resurrect it. When the last Napoleon called such a congress of nations many did not respond, and those that did respond gathered wondering what trap that wily destroyer of the French republic and the builder of a French monarchy might spring on them. But what if the most popular government on earth’97I mean the United States Government’97should practically say to all nations: On the American continent, in 1892, we will hold a World’92s Fair, and all nations will send to it specimens of their products, their manufactures, and their arts, and we invite all the governments of Europe, Asia, and Africa to send representatives to a peace convention that shall be held at the same time and place, and establish an international arbitration commission to whom shall be referred all controversies between nation and nation, their decision to be final, and so all nations would be relieved from the expense of standing armies and naval equipment, war having been made an everlasting impossibility. All the nations of the earth worth consideration would come to it’97mighty men of England and Germany and France and Russia, and all the other great nationalities’97Bismarck, who worships the Lord of Hosts; and Gladstone, who worships the God of Peace; and Boulanger, who worships himself. The fact is that the nations are sick of drinking out of chalices made out of human skulls filled with blood.

The United States Government is the only government in the whole world that could successfully call such a congress. Suppose France should call it, Germany would not come; or Germany call it, France would not come; or England should call it, nations long jealous of her overshadowing power in Europe would not come. America, in favor with all nationalities, standing out independent and alone, is the spot, and 1892 will be the time. May it please the President of the United States, may it please the Secretary of State, may it please the Cabinet, may it please the Senate and House of Representatives, may it please the printing-presses and the churches and the people who lift up and put down our American rulers!

To them I make this timely and solemn and Christian appeal. Do you not think people die fast enough without this wholesale butchery of war? Do you not think that we can trust to pneumonias and consumptions and apoplexies and palsies and yellow fevers and Asiatic choleras the work of killing them fast enough? Do you not think the greedy, wide-open jaws of the grave out to be satisfied if filled by natural causes with hundreds of thousands of corpses a year? Do you not think we can do something better with men than to dash their life out against casements or blow them into fragments by torpedoes, or send them out into the world, where they need all their faculties, footless, armless, eyeless? Do you not think that women might be appointed to an easier place than the edge of a grave-trench to wring their pale hands and weep out their eyesight in widowhood and childlessness? Why, the last glory has gone out of war. which we all admire’97namely courage’97for a man which we all admire’97namely, courage’97for a man had to stand at the hilt of his sword when the point pierced the foe, and while he was slaying another the other might slay him; or it was bayonet charge. But now it is cool or deliberate murder, and clear out at sea a bombshell can be hurled miles away into a city, or while thousands of private soldiers, who have no interest in the contest, for they were conscripted, are losing their lives, their general may sit smoking one of the best Havana cigars after a dinner of quail on toast. It may be well enough for graduating students of colleges on Commencement Day to orate about the poetry of war, but do not talk about the poetry of war to the men of the Federal or Confederate armies who were at the front, or to some of us who, as members of the Christian Commission, saw the ghastly hospitals at Antietam and Hagerstown. Ah! you may worship the Lord of Hosts, I worship the ’93God of Peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep.’94 War is an accursed monster, and it was born in the lowest cavern of perdition, and I pray that it may speedily descend to the place from which it arose, its last sword and shield and musket rattling on the bottom of the red-hot marl of hell. Let there be called a peace convention for 1892, with delegates sent by all the decent governments of Christendom, and while they are in session, if you should some night go out and look into the sky above the exposition buildings, you may find that the old gallery of crystal, that was taken down after the Bethlehem anthem of eighteen centuries ago was sung out, is rebuilt again in the clouds, and the same angelic singers are returned with the same librettos of light to chant ’93Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men.’94

Again, I suggest, in regard to the World’92s Fair, that, while appropriate places are prepared for all foreign exhibits, we make no room for the importation of foreign vices. America has enough of its own, and we need no new instalments of that kind. A World’92s Fair will bring all kinds of people, good and bad. The good we must prepare to welcome, the bad we must prepare to shun. The attempt will again be made in 1892, as in 1876, to break up our American Sabbath. That attempt was made at the Philadelphia Centennial, but was defeated. The American Sabbath is the best-kept Sabbath on earth. We do not want it broken down, and substituted in the place thereof the Brussels Sabbath, the Vienna Sabbath, the St. Petersburg Sabbath, or any of the foreign Sabbaths at all. I think the Lord is more than generous in asking only fifty-two days out of the three hundred and sixty-five for his service. You let the Sabbath go, and with it will go your Bible, and after that your liberties, and your children, or your grandchildren will be here in America under a despotism as bad as in those lands where they turn the Lord’92s Day into wassail and frolic.

Among those who come there will be, as at other expositions, lordly people who will bring their vices with them. Among the dukes and duchesses and princes and princesses of other lands are some of the best men and women of all the earth. Remember Earl of Kintore, Lord Cairns and Lord Shaftesbury. But there is a snobbery and flunkeyism in American society that runs after a grandee, a duke, a lord, or a prince, though he may be a walking lazaretto and his breath a plague. It makes the fortune of some of our queens of society to dance one cotillion with one of these princely lepers. Some people cannot get their hat off quick enough when they see such a foreign lord approaching, and they do not care for the mire into which they drop their knees as they bow to worship. Let no splendor of pedigree or any pomp and paraphernalia of circumstance make him attractive. There is only one set of Ten Commandments that I ever heard of, and no class of men or women in all the world are excused from obedience to those laws written by finger of lightning on the granite surface of Mount Sinai. Surely we have enough American vices without making any drafts upon European vices for 1892.

By this sermon I would have the nation made aware of its opportunity and get ready to improve it, and of some perils and get ready to combat them. I rejoice to believe that the advantages will overtop everything in that World’92s Fair. What an introduction to each other of communities, of states, of republics, of empires, of zones, of hemispheres! What doors of information will be swung wide open for the boys and girls now on the threshold! What national and international education! What crowning of industry with sheaves of grains, and what imperial robing of her with embroidered fabrics! What scientific apparatus! What telescopes for the infinitude above and microscopes for the infinitude beneath, and instruments to put nature to the torture until she tells her last secret! What a display of the munificence of the God who has grown enough wheat to make a loaf of good bread large enough for the human race, and enough cotton to stocking every foot, and enough timber to shelter every head, making it manifest that it is not God’92s fault, but either man’92s oppression or indolence or dissipation if there be any without supply.

Under the arches of the chief building of that exposition let capital and labor, too long estranged, at last be married, each taking the hand of each in pledge of eternal fidelity, while representatives of all nations stand round rejoicing at the nuptials, and saying: ’93What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.’94 Then shall the threnody of the needlewoman no longer be heard:

Work, work, work!

Till the brain begins to swim;

Work, work, work!

Till the eyes are heavy and dim.

Seam and gusset and band,

Band and gusset and seam,

Till over the buttons I fall asleep,

And sew them on in a dream.

Oh, Christian America! Make ready for the grandest exposition ever seen under the sun! Have Bibles enough bound. Have churches enough established. Have scientific halls enough endowed. Have printing-presses enough set up. Have revivals of religion enough in full blast. I believe you will. ’93Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage