Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1894 — A CITY’S INIQUITIES. [ARTICLE]

A CITY’S INIQUITIES.

The Stranger Within the Gates. Goud Advice Frojtn / One Wlia Knows Whereof He Speaks—Or. Talmage’s Sermon, At the Brooklyn, Tabernacle, Sunday, Dr. Tal mage preached to a large audience, from the text, Matthew xxv, 35 —“I was a strauger, and ye took me in.” He said: It is a moral disaster that jocosity has despoiled so many passages of scripture, and my text is one that has suffered by irreverent and misapplied quotation. It shows great poverty of wit and humor when peo~ple~take thr sword of divine truth for a game at fencing or chip off from the Kohinoor diamond of inspiration a sparkle to decorate a fool’s cap. My text is the salutation in the last judgment to be given to those who have shown hospitality and kindness and Christian helpfulness to strangers. There have glided into this house those unknown to others, whose history, if told, would be more thrilling than the deepest tragedy, more exciting than Patti’s song, more bright than a spring morning, more awful than a wintry midnight. If they could stand up here and tell the story of their escapes; and their temptations, and their bereavements, and their, disasters, and their victories, and their defeats, there would be in this house such a com mingling of groans and acclamations as would make the place unendurable. There is a man who, in infancy, lay in a cradle satin lined. Out yonder is a man who was picked up, a foundling, on Boston Common. Here is a man who is coolly observing this religious service, expecting no advantage and caring for no advantage for himself, while yonder is a man who has been for ten years in an awful conflagration of evil habits, and he is a mere cinder Qf a destroyed nature, and he is wondering if there shall be in this service any escape or help for this immortal soul. Meeting you only once perhaps face to face’ I strike hands with you in an earnest talk about your present condition and your eternal well being. St. Paul’s ship at Melita went to pieces where two seas meet, but we stand today at a point where a thousand seas converge, and eternity alone can tell the issue of the hour.

A walk through Broadway at 8 o’clock at night is interesting, educating, fascinating, appalling, exhiliating to tbfe last degree. Stop in front of that theater and see who goes in. Stop at that saloon and see who comes out. See the great tides of life surging backward and forward and beating against the marble of the curbstone and eddying down into the saloons. What is that, mark on the face of that debauchee? It is the hectic flush of eternal death. What is that woman’s laughter? It is the shriek of a tost soul, . Who is that Christian man going along with a vial of anodyne to the dying pauper on Elm street? Who is that belated man on the way to a prayer meeting? Who is that city missionary going to take a box in vvirch to bury a child? W T ho are all these clusters of bright and beautiful faces? They are going to some interesting place of amusement. Who is that man going into the drug store? That is the man who yesterday lost all his fortune on Wall street. He is going in for a dose of belladonna, and before morning it will make no difference to him whether stocks .are up or down. I tell you that Broadway, between 7 and 12 o’clock at night, between the Battery and Central park, is an Austerlitz, a Gettysburg, a Waterloo, where kingdoms are lost or wo i, and three worlds mingle in the strife.

I meet another coming down off the hotel steps, and I say, “Where are you going?” You say, “I am going with a merchant of New York who has promised to show me the underground life of the city. lam his customer, and he is going to oblige me very much.” Stop! A business house that tries to get or keep your custom through such a process as that is not worthy of you. There are business establishments in our cities which have for years been sending to destruction hundreds and thousands of merchants. They have a secret drawer in the counter where money is kept, and the clerk goes and gets it when he wants to take these visitors to the city through the low slums of the place. When one of these western merchants has been dragged by one of those commercial agents through the slums of the city he is not fit to go home. The mere memory of what hehassegn will.be moral pollution. I think you had better let the city missionary and the police attend to the exploration of New York and underground life. You do not go to a small pox hospital for the purpose of exploration. You do not go there, because you are afraid of contagion. About sixteen years ago as a minister of religion I felt I had a divine commission to explore the iniquities of our cities. I did not ask counsel of my session, or my presbytery, or of the newspapers, but asking the companionship of three prominent city police officials and of two of the elders of my church I unrolled my commission and it said: “Son of man, dig into the wall, and when I had digged into the wall behold a dpor/and he said, go. in and see the wicked abominations that are done here, and I went in and saw and behold!”

Just as in the sickly season you sometimes bear the bell at the gate of the cemetery ringing almost in-

cessantly, so I found that the bell at the gate of the cemetery where ruined souls are buried was tolling by day and tolling by night. I said; “I will explore.” I went'as a physician goes into a fever lazaretto; to see what practical and useful- information I might get. That would be a foolish doctor who would stand 1 outside the door of an invalid writing a Latin prescription. When- a lecturer in a medical college is done with his lecture he takes the students into the dissecting room and shows them the reality. 1 went in and saw and came forth to my pulpit port a plague and to tell how sin dissects the body, and dissects the mind and dissects the soul. Now I, as an officer in the army of Jesus Christ, went on that exploration and onto that battlefield. If you bear a like commission, go; if not, stay away. But you say. v ‘Don’t you think that somehow the description of those places induces people to go and see for themselves,?” I answer, yes, just as much as the description of yellow fever in some scourged city would induce people to go down there and get the ’pesti-

some stranger already destroyed. Where is he, that |I may pointedly yet kindly address him? Come back and wash in the deep fountain of a Saviour’s mercy. A young man comes in from the country bragging that nothing can do him any harm. He knows about all the tricks of city life. “Why,” he says, “did not. I receive a circular in the country telling me that somehow they had found out I was a sharp business man, and if I would only send a certain amount of money by mail or express, charges prepaid, they w >uld send a package with which I could make a fortune in two months, but I did not believe it. Mv neighbors did, but I did not. Why, no man could take my money. I Carry it in a pocket inside my vest. No man could take it. No man could cheat me at the faro table. Don’t I know, all about the ‘cue-box’ and the dealer’s box, and the cards stuck together as though they were one, and when to hand my chocks? Oh, they "can’t cheat me. I know what lam about,” while at the same time, that very moment, such men are succumbing to the worst satanic influences in the simple fact that they are going to observe. Now, if a man or woman shall go down into a haunt of iniquity for the purpose of reforming men and women, or for the sake of being able intelligently to warn pecple against such perils; if, as did John Howard or Elizabeth Fry or Thomas Chalmers, they go down among the abandoned for the sake of saving them, then such explorers shall beGod protected, and they will come out better than when they went in. But if you go on this work of exploration merely for the purpose of satisfying a morbid curiosity I will take 20 per cent, off your moral character.

Sabbath morning comes. You wake up in the hotel. You have had a longer sleep than usual. You say: “Where am I?” A thousand miles from home? I have no* family to take to church to-day. My pastor will not expect my presence. T think 1 shall look over my accounts and study my memorandum book. Then I write a few business letters and talk to that merchant who came in on the same train with me.” Stop! You cannot afford to do it. “But,” you say, “I am worth $500,000.” You cannot afford to do it. You say, “I am worth $1,000,000.” You cannot afford to do it. All you gain by breaking the Sabbath you will lose. You will lose one of three things—your intellect, your morals, or your property—and you cannot point in the whole earth to a single exception to this rule. God gives us six days and keeps one for Himself. Now, if we try to get the seventh, He will upset the work of all the other six. I remember going up Mt. Washington, before the railroad had been built, to the Tip-Top house, and the guide would come around to our horses and stop us when we were crossing a very steep and dangerous place, and he would tighten the girth of the horse and straighten the saddle. And I have to tell you that this road of life is so steep and full of peril we must at least one day in seven stop and have the harness of Hfe adjusted and our souls reequipped.

How few men there are who know how to keep the Lord’s day away from home! A great many who are consistent on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or the Alabama, or the Mississippi arq not so consistent when they get so far off as the East river. I repeat —though it is put: ting it, on low ground—you cannot financially afford to break the Lord’s day. It is only another way of tearing up your government securities and putting down the price of goods and blowing up your store. Oh, strangers, welcome to the great city. May you find Christ here, and not any physical or moral danger. Men coming from inland, from distant cities, have found God and found Him in your service. May that be your case to-day. You thought you were brought to this place merely for the purpose of sight-seeing. Perhaps God brought you to this roaring city for the purpose of working out your eternal salvaticfn. Go back to your homes and tell them how we met Christ here—thq loving, patient, pardoning and sympathetic Christ. Who knows but the city which has been the destruction of so many may be your eternal redemption? A good many years ago Edward Stanley, the English commander, with his regiment took a fort. The fort was manned by some 300 Span-

iards. Stanley came close up to the fort, leaving his men, when a Spaniard thrust at him with* spear, intending to destroy his life, but Stanley caught hold of the spear, and the Spaniard, in attempting to jerk the spear away from Stanley, lifted him up into the battlements. No sooner had Stanley taken his position on the battlements than he swung his sword, and Jits whole regiment leaped after him. and the fort was taken. So it may be with you, O stranger. The city influences which have destroyed so many and dashed Them dowh forever shall be the means of lifting you up into the tower. of God’s mercy and strength, your soul more than conqueror through the grace of Him who has promised an especial benediction to those who shall treat you well, saying, “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”