407. In Stirrups to Jericho

In Stirrups to Jericho

Luk_10:30 : ’93A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.’94

It is the morning of December 5, in Jerusalem, and we take stirrups for the road along which the wayfarer of old fell among thieves, who left him wounded and half dead. Job’92s picture of the horse in the Orient as having neck ’93clothed with thunder’94 is not true of most horses now in Palestine. There is no thunder on their neck, though there is some lightning in their heels. Poorly fed and unmercifully whacked, they sometimes retaliate. To Americans and English, who are accustomed to guide horses by the bridle, these horses of the Orient, guided only by foot and voice, make equestrianism an uncertainty, and the pull on the bridle that you intend for slowing up of the pace may be mistaken for a hint that you want to out-gallop the wind, or wheel in swift circles like the hawk. But they can climb steeps and descend precipices with skilled foot, and the one I chose for our journey in Palestine shall have the praise of going for weeks without one stumbling step, amid rocky steeps where an ordinary horse would not for an hour maintain sure-footedness. There were eighteen of our party, and twenty-two beasts of burden carried our camp equipment. We are led by an Arab sheik, with his black Nubian servant carrying a loaded gun in full sight; but it is the fact that this sheik represents the Turkish Government which assures the safety of the caravan.

We cross the Jehoshaphat Valley which, if it had not been memorable in history and were only now discovered, would excite the admiration of all who look upon it. It is like the gorges of the Yosemite, or the chasms of the Yellowstone Park. The sides of this Jehoshaphat Valley are tunneled with graves and overlooked by Jerusalem walls’97an eternity of depths overshadowed by an eternity of architecture. Within sight of Mount Olivet and Gethsemane, and with the heavens and the earth full of sunshine, we start out on the very road mentioned in the text when it says: ’93A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.’94 No road that I ever saw was so well constructed for brigandage’97deep gulleys, sharp turns, caves on both sides. There are fifty places on this road where a highwayman might surprise and overpower an unarmed pilgrim. His cry for help, his shriek of pain, his death groan would be answered only by the echoes. On this road today we met groups of men who, judging from their countenances, have in their veins the blood of many generations of banditti. Josephus says that Herod at one time discharged from the service of the temple forty thousand men and that the great part of them became robbers. So late as 1820, Sir Frederick Henniker, an English tourist, was attacked on this very road from Jerusalem to Jericho and shot and almost slain. There has never been any scarcity of bandits along the road we travel. With the fresh memory of some recent violence in their minds, Christ tells the people of the good Samaritan who came along that way and took care of a poor fellow that had been set upon by villainous Arabs and robbed and pounded and cut. We encamped for lunch that noon close by an old stone building, said to be the tavern where the scene spoken of in the Bible culminated. Tumbled in the dust and ghastly with wounds, the victim of this highway robbery lay on the roadside. There were twelve thousand priests living at Jericho and they had to go to Jerusalem to officiate at the Temple. And one of these ministers of religion, I suppose, was on his way to the Temple service, and he is startled as he sees this bleeding victim in the road. ’93Oh,’94 he says, ’93here is a man who has been attacked by thieves. Why don’92t you go home?’94 says the minister. The man in a comatose state makes no answer, or, with a half-dazed look, puts his wounded hand to his gashed forehead and drawls out ’93What?’94 ’93Well,’94 says the minister, ’93I must hurry on to my duties at Jerusalem. I have to kill a lamb and two pigeons in sacrifice today. I cannot spend any more time with this unfortunate. I guess somebody else will take care of him. But this is one of the things that cannot be helped, anyhow. Beside that, my business is with souls and not with bodies. Good morning! When you get well enough to sit up, I will be glad to see you at the Temple.’94 And the minister curves his way out toward the overhanging sides of the road and passes. You hypocrite! One of the chief offices of religion is to heal wounds. You might have done here a kindness that would have been more acceptable to God than all the incense that will smoke up from your censer for the next three weeks, and you missed the chance. Go your way execrated by the centuries!

Soon afterward a Levite came upon the scene. The Levites looked after the music of the Temple, and waited upon the priests, and provided the supplies of the Temple. The Levite passing along this road where we are today, took a look at the mass of bruises and laceration in the middle of the road. ’93My! my!’94 says the Levite, ’93this man is awfully hurt and he ought to be helped. But my business is to sing in the choir at the Temple. If I am not there, no one will carry my part. Beside that, there may not be enough frankincense for the censers, and the wine or oil may have given out, and what a fearful balk in the service that would make. Then one of the priests might get his breastplate on crooked. But it seems too bad to leave this man in this condition. Perhaps I had better try to staunch this bleeding and give him a little stimulant. But, no! The ceremony at Jerusalem is of more importance than taking care of the wounds of a man who will probably soon be dead anyhow. This highway robbery ought to be stopped, for it hinders us Levites on our way up to the Temple. There, I have lost five minutes already! Go along, you beast!’94 he shouts, as he strikes his heels into the sides of the animal carrying him, and the dust rising from the road hides the hard-hearted official.

But a third person is coming along this road. You cannot expect him to do anything by way of alleviation, because he and the wounded man belong to different nations, which have abominated each other for centuries. The wounded man is an Israelite, and the stranger now coming on this scene of suffering is a Samaritan. They belong to nations which hated each other with an objurgation and malediction diabolic. They had opposition temples, one on Mount Gerizim and the other on Mount Moriah, and I guess this Samaritan when he comes up will give the fallen Israelite another clip and say: ’93Good for you! I will just finish the work these bandits began, and give you one more kick that will put you out of your misery. And here is a rag of your coat that they did not steal, and I will take that. What! Do you dare to appeal to me for mercy? Hush up! Why, how many times have you spat on Samaritans and cursed them? You would have no dealings with the Samaritans. Well, this Samaritan will have no dealing with you. Then, too, your ancestors worshiped at Jerusalem when they ought to have worshiped at Gerizim. Now take that! and that! and that!’94 will say the Samaritan as he pounds the fallen Israelite.

No; the Samaritan rides up to the scene of suffering, gets off the beast and steps down and looks into the face of the wounded man and says: ’93This poor fellow does not belong to my nation, and our ancestors worshiped in different places, but he is a man, and that makes us brothers. God pity him, as I do!’94 And he gets down on his knees and begins to examine his wounds and straighten out his limbs to see if any of his bones are broken, and says: ’93My dear fellow, cheer up; you need have no more care about yourself, for I am going to take care of you. Let me feel your pulse! Let me listen to your breathing! I have in these bottles two liquids that will help you. The one is oil, and that will soothe the pain of these wounds; the other is wine, and your pulse is feeble and you feel faint, and that will stimulate you. Now I must get you to the nearest tavern.’94 ’93Oh, no,’94 says the man; ’93I cannot walk; let me stay here and die.’94 ’93Nonsense!’94 says the Samaritan. ’93You are not going to die, I am going to put you on this beast, and I will hold you on till I get you to a place where you can have a soft mattress and an easy pillow.’94

Now the Samaritan has got the wounded man on his feet, and with much tugging and lifting, puts him on the beast; for it is astonishing how strong the spirit of kindness will make one, as you have seen a mother after three weeks of sleepless watching of her boy, down with scarlet fever, lift that half-grown boy, heavier than herself, from couch to lounge. And so this sympathetic Samaritan has, unaided, put the wounded man in the saddle, and at slow pace the extemporized ambulance is moving toward the tavern. ’93You feel better now, I think,’94 says the Samaritan to the Hebrew. ’93Yes,’94 he says, ’93I do feel better.’94 ’93Hallo, you landlord! help me carry this man in and make him comfortable.’94 That night the Samaritan sat up with the Jew, giving him water whenever he felt thirsty and turning his pillow when it got hot, and in the morning, before the Samaritan started on his journey, he said: ’93Landlord, now I am obliged to go. Take good care of this man and I will be along here soon again and pay you for all you do for him. Meanwhile here is something to meet present expenses.’94 The ’93two pence’94 he gave the landlord sounds small, but it was as much as ten dollars here and now, considering what it would there and then buy of food and lodging.

As on that December noon we sat under the shadow of the tavern where this scene of mercy had occurred, and just having passed along the road where the tragedy had happened, I could plainly see that Bible story re-enacted, and I said aloud to our group under the tent: ’93One drop of practical Christianity is worth more than a temple full of ecclesiasticism; and that good Samaritan had more religion in five minutes than that minister and that Levite had in a lifetime. The most accursed thing on earth is national prejudice, and I bless God that I live in America, where Gentile and Jew, Protestant and Catholic, can live together without quarrel, and where, in the great national crucible, the different sects and tribes and peoples are being molded into a great brotherhood. I bless God that the question which the lawyer flung at Christ, and which brought forth this incident of the good Samaritan, ’91Who is my neighbor?’92 is bringing forth the answer, ’91My neighbor is the first man I meet in trouble,’92 and a wound close at hand calls louder than a temple seventeen miles off, though it be the most glorious ever built and though it covers nineteen acres.’94

I saw in London the vast procession which one bleak day in January moved to St. Paul’92s Cathedral at the burial of that Christian hero, Lord Napier. The day after, at Hawarden, in conversation on various themes, I asked Mr. Gladstone if he did not think that many who were under the shadows of false religions might not nevertheless be at heart really Christian. Mr. Gladstone replied: ’93Yes; my old friend Lord Napier, who was yesterday buried, after he returned from his Abyssinian campaign, visited us here at Hawarden and walking in this park where we are now walking, he told me a very beautiful incident. He said: ’91After the war in Africa was over, we were on the march, and we had a soldier with a broken leg who was not strong enough to go along with us, and we did not dare to leave him to be taken care of by savages, but we found we were compelled to leave him. We went into the house of a woman who was said to be a very kind woman, though of the race of savages, and we said: ’93Here is a sick man, and if you will take care of him till he gets well we will pay you very largely.’94 Then we offered her five times that which would ordinarily be offered, hoping by the excess of pay to secure for him great kindness. The woman replied: ’93I will not take care of him for the money you offer. I do not want your money. But leave him here, and I will take care of him for the love of God.’94 Mr. Gladstone turned to me and said: ’93Dr. Talmage, don’92t you think that though she belonged to a race of savages, that was pure religion?’94 And I answered: ’93I do; I do.’94 May God multiply all the world over the number of good Samaritans!

In Philadelphia a young woman was dying. She was a wreck. Sunken into the depths of depravity, there was no lower depth for her to reach. Word came to the midnight mission that she was dying in a haunt of iniquity near-by. Who would go to tell her of the Christ of Mary Magdalene? This one refused, and that one refused, saying: ’93I dare not go there.’94 A Christian woman, her white locks typical of her purity of soul, said: ’93I will go, and I will go now.’94 She went and sat down by the dying girl, and told of the Christ who came to seek and save that which was lost. First to the forlorn one came the tears of repentance, and then the smile as though she had begun to hope for the pardon of him who came to save to the uttermost. Then, just before she breathed her last, she said to the angel of mercy bending over her pillow: ’93Would you kiss me?’94 ’93I will,’94 said the Christian woman, as she put upon her cheek the last salutation before in the heavenly world, I think, God gave her the welcoming kiss. That was religion! Yes; that was religion. Good Samaritans along every street, and along every road, as well as this one on the road to Jericho.

But our procession of sightseers is again in line, and here we pass through a deep ravine, and I ask the dragoman: ’93David, what place do you call this?’94 and he replied: ’93This is the brook Cherith, where Elijah was fed by the ravens.’94 And in that answer he overthrew my lifelong notions of the place where Elijah was waited on by the black servants of the sky. A brook to me had meant a slight depression of ground, and a stream fordable, and perhaps fifteen feet wide. But here was a chasm that an earthquake must have scooped out with its biggest shovel or split with its mightiest battle-ax. Six hundred feet deep is it, and the brook Cherith is a river, which when in full force, is a silver wedge, splitting the mountains into precipices. The feathered descendants of Elijah’92s ravens still wing their way across this ravine, but are not like the crows we supposed them to be. They are as large as eagles, and one of them could carry in its beak and clinched claws at once enough food for a half-dozen Elijahs. No thanks to the ravens; they are carnivorous and would rather have picked out the eyes of Elijah’97whom they found at the mouth of his cave on the side of Cherith, waiting for his breakfast, having drunk his morning beverage from the rushing stream beneath’97than have been his butlers and purveyors. But God compelled them, as he always has compelled and always will compel black and cruel and overshadowing providences, to carry help to his children, if they only have faith enough to catch the blessing as it drops from the seeming adversity’97the greatest blessing always coming not with white wings but black wings. Black wings of conviction bringing pardon to the sinner. Black wings of crucifixion over Calvary, bringing redemption for the world. Black wings of American Revolution, bringing free institutions to a continent. Black wings of American Civil War, bringing unification and solidarity to the republic. Black wings of the Judgment Day bringing resurrection to an entombed human race. And in the last day, when all your life and mine will be summed up, we will find that the greatest blessing we ever received came on the wings of the black ravens of disaster. Bless God for trouble! Bless God for sickness! Bless God for persecution! Bless God for poverty! You never heard of any man or woman of great use to the world who had not had lots of trouble. The diamond must be cut. The wheat must be threshed. The black ravens must fly. Who are these nearest the throne? ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.’94

But look! Look what at four o’92clock in the afternoon bursts upon our vision’97the plain of Jericho and the valley of Jordan and the Dead Sea. We have come to a place where the horses not so much walk as slide upon their haunches, and we all dismount, for the steep descent is simply terrific; though a princess of Wallachia, who fell here and was dangerously injured, after recovery spent a large amount of money in trying to make the road passable. Down and down! till we saw the white tents pitched for us by our muleteers amid the ruins of ancient Jericho, which fell at the sound of poor music played on ’93ram’92s horn,’94 that ancient instrument which, taken from the head of the leader of the flock of sheep, is perforated and prepared to be fingered by the musical performer, and blown upon when pressed to the lips. As in another sermon, I have fully described that scene, I will only say that every day, for seven days, the ministers of religion went around the city of Jericho, blowing upon those ram’92s horns, and on the seventh day, without the roll of a war-chariot, or the stroke of a catapult, or the swing of a ballista, crash! crash! crash! went the walls of that magnificent capital. On the evening of December the sixth we walked amid the brick and mortar of that shattered city, and I said to myself: All this done by poor music blest of God, for it was not a harp or a flute, or a clapping cymbal, or an organ played, at the sound of which the city surrendered to destruction; but a rude instrument, making rude music, blest of God to the demolition of that wicked place which had defied the Almighty. And I said, if all this was by the blessing of God on poor music, what mightier things could be done by the blessing of God on good music, skilful music, Gospel music. If all the good that has been done by music were subtracted from the world, I believe three-fourths of its religion would be gone. The lullabies of mothers which keep sounding on, though the lips that sang them forty years ago became ashes; the old hymns in log-cabin churches, and country meeting-houses, and psalms in Rouse’92s version in Scotch kirks; the anthem in English cathedrals; the roll of organs that will never let Handel or Haydn or Beethoven die; the thrum of harps; the sweep of the bow across bass viols; the song of Sabbath schools storming the heavens; the doxology of great assemblages’97why, a thousand Jerichos of sin have by them all been brought down.

Seated by the warmth of our camp-fires that evening of December 6th, amid the bricks and debris of Jericho, and thinking what poor music has done, and what mightier things could be accomplished by the blessings of God on good music, I said to myself: Ministers have been doing a grand work, and sermons have been blessed, but would it not be well for us to put more emphasis on music? Oh, for a campaign of Old Hundreds! Oh, for a dashing cavalry charge of Coronations! Oh, for an army of Antiochs and St. Martins and Ariels! Oh, for enough orchestral batons lifted to marshal all nations! As Jericho was surrounded by poor music for seven days and was conquered, so let our earth be surrounded seven days by good Gospel music, and the round planet will all be taken for God. Not a wall of opposition, not a throne of tyranny, not a palace of sin, not an enterprise of unrighteousness could stand the mighty throb of such atmospheric pulsation. Music! It sounded at the laying of Creation’92s cornerstone when the morning stars sang together. Music! It will be the last reverberation, when the archangel’92s trumpet shall wake the dead. Music! Let its full power be now tested to comfort and bless and arouse and save.

While our evening meal is being prepared in the tents, we walk out for a moment to the ’93Fountain of Elisha,’94 the one into which the prophet threw the salt, because the waters were poisonous and bitter, and lo! they became sweet and healthy; and ever since, with gurgle and laughter, they have rushed down the hill and leaped from the rocks, the only cheerful object in all that region being these waters.

Now on this plain of Jericho the sun is setting, making the mountains look like balustrades and battlements of amber and maroon and gold; and the moon, just above the crest, seems to be a window of heaven, through which immortals might be looking down upon the scene. Three Arabs as watchmen sit beside the camp-fire at the door of my tent, their low conversation in a strange language all night long a soothing rather than an interruption. I had a dream that night never to be forgotten, that dream amid the complete ruins of Jericho. Its past grandeur returned, and I saw the city as it was when Mark Antony gave it to Cleopatra, and Herod bought it from her. And I heard the hoofs of its swift steeds, and the rumbling of its chariots, and the shouts of excited spectators in its amphitheatre. And there was white marble amid green groves of palm and balsam; cold stone warmed with sculptured foliage; hard pillars cut into soft lace; Iliads and Odysseys in granite; basalt, jet as the night, mounted by carbuncle flaming as the morning; upholstery dyed as though dipped in the blood of battlefields; robes encrusted with diamond; mosaics white as sea-foam flashed on by auroras; gaieties which the sun saw by day, rivaled by revels the moon saw by night; blasphemy built against the sky; ceilings stellar as the midnight heavens; grandeurs turreted, archivolted and intercolumnar; wickedness so appalling that vocabulary fails, and we must make an adjective and call it Herodic.

The region round about the city walls seemed to me white with cotton such as Thenius describes as once growing there, and sweet with sugar-cane, and luscious with orange and figs and pomegranates, and redolent with such flora as can only grow where a tropical sun kisses the earth. And the hour came back to me when in the midst of all that splendor Herod died, commanding his sister Salome, immediately after his death, to secure the assassination of all the chief Jews whom he had brought to the city, and shut up in a circus for that purpose; and the news came to the audience in the theatre as some one took the stage and announced to the excited multitude: ’93Herod is dead! Herod is dead!’94 Then, in my dream, all the pomp of Jericho vanished and gloom was added to gloom, and desolation to desolation, and woe to woe, until, perhaps, the rippling waters of the Fountain of Elisha suggesting it’97as sounds will sometimes give direction to a dream’97I thought that the waters of Christ’92s salvation and the fountains ’93open for sin and uncleanness,’94 were rolling through that plain and rolling across that continent, and rolling around the earth, until on each side of their banks all the thorns became flowers, and all the deserts gardens, and all the hovels mansions, and all the funerals bridal processions, and all the blood of war was turned into dahlias, and all the groans became anthems, and Dante’92s ’93Inferno’94 became Dante’92s ’93Paradiso,’94 and ’93Paradise Lost’94 was submerged by ’93Paradise Regained,’94 and tears became crystals, and cruel swords came out of foundries glistening plowshares, and, in my dream, at the blast of a trumpet the prostrated walls of Jericho rose again. And some one told me that as these walls in Joshua’92s time, at the sounding trumpet of doom, went down, now at the sounding trumpet of the Gospel they came up again. And I thought a man appeared at the door of my tent, and I said: ’93Who are you and from whence have you come?’94 and he said: ’93I am the Samaritan you heard of at the tavern on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, as taking care of the man who fell among thieves, and I have just come from healing the last wound of the last unfortunate in all the earth.’94 And I rose from my pillow in the tent to greet him, and my dream broke, and I realized it was only a dream; but a dream which shall become a glorious reality as surely as God is true and Christ’92s Gospel is the world’92s catholicon.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage