Social dynamite

Front matter

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Preface

Dr. Talmage, in many respects, stands at the head of American pulpit orators, and none excel him in dramatic force. He is one of the few who dares lift his voice against the wickedness of modern society wherever found, sparing neither friend nor foe, rich nor poor. In a clarion voice he sounds a note of warning, and designates the only way to escape the pits of darkness and social and moral ruin.

A fearless antagonist to all forms of sin ; he cares more for cleaving a helmet than for showing the jewels on the handle of his weapon. Blows are what he gives. He does not know how to soften a denunciation or kid-glove a lie, cheat or sham. Strong in imagination, happy in word-painting, he arrays the most common truths in all the freshness of new discoveries, and all the glow of living reality. To this is added a quick insight into human nature, and the foibles, vices and iniquities of the present day. The Gospel is presented by him as the only remedy for human corruption. In all he says and does he is swayed by an over-mastering Christian earnestness.

America is given a proud place among the nations of the earth ; at the same time things are pointed outer-

which, if they are not suppressed, will bring disaster,

upon the country. Municipal law, it is shown, will

IV PREFACE.

be a dead letter, and political reform impossible, so long as Christains are apathetic and politically negligent, and fail to aid those in authority by personally urging reform and standing by it in the name of Christ. This work contains nearly fifty chapters, on as many different subjects ; they are, from beginning to end, of peculiar interest to every American, and stamped with the extraordinary individuality of this remarkable man. Every page burns with an eloquent entreaty for a better and purer life, and possesses an intense, soul-absorbing interest to all who desire the advancement and higher development of the human race.

Contents

PREFACE HI.

BIOGKAPHY.

Dr. Talmage's Birthplace — His Parents — Traits of Each — The "Weekly Prayer-Meeting — DeWitt's Boyhood — A Professional Career Desired — Preparation for College — His Alma Mater — Meritorious Graduation — A Christian at Twenty — Enters a Theological Seminary — His Early Pastoral Life — At Belleville, N. J. — At Syracuse, N. Y. — At Philadelphia — Moves to Brooklyn — Church Architecture Eevolutionized — The New Structure— As a Lecturer — His Qualities — A Visit to England — Immense Enthusiasm — The World's Criticism — How Ministers Are Lied About — A Description of Dr. Talmage as an Orator — His Voice — His Power — Judgment of His Generation — The Penalty of Being a Leader 25

Chapter I. Two Highways

It was Monday at a country depot. Two young men are to take the cars for the city. Father brought them in a wagon with two trunks. The evening before at the old home was a sad time. The neighbors had gathered in to say good-by. Indeed, all the Sunday afternoon there had been a strolling that way from adjoining farms, for it was generally known that the two boys the next morning were going to the city to live, and the whole neighborhood was interested, some hoping they would do well and others, without saying anything, hoping for them a city failure, talking over the matter the neighbors would interlard conversation about the wheat crop of last summer, and the apple crop yet to be gathered, with remarks about the the city prospects of Edward and Nicholas, for those were the names of the two young men — Edward 17, and Nicholas 19; but Edward, although two years younger, being a little quicker to learn, knew as much as Nicholas. They were both brown-faced and hearty, and had gone through all the

YOUTH.

What will the boy become?

Sitting on the fence

TWO HIGHWAYS.

INDUSTRY AND STUDY.

curriculum of hearty sports, by which muscle is developed and the chest filled out.

Father and mother on Monday morning had both resolved to go to the depot with the boys, but the mother at the last moment backed out, and she said that somehow she felt quite weak that morning, and had no appetite for a day or two, and so concluded to say good-by at the front door of the old place; where she went and what she did after the wagon left I leave other mothers to guess.

The breakfast things stood almost till noon before they were cleared away.

But little was said on the way to the railroad station. As the locomotive whistle was heard coming around the curve, the father put out his hand — somewhat knotted at the knuckles and one of the joints stiffened years ago by a wound from a scythe — and said: "Good-by, Edward; good-by, Nicholas. Take good care of yourselves, and write as soon as you get there, and let us know how they treat you. Your mother will be anxious to hear. "

Landed in the city, they sought out with considerable inquiry of policemen on street corners and questioning of cardrivers the two commercial establishments to which they were destined, so far apart that thereafter they seldom saw each other, for it is astonishing how far apart two persons can be in a large city, especially if their habits are different. Practically a hundred miles from Bowling Green to Canal street, or from Atlantic avenue to Fulton.

Edward, being the youngest, we must look after him first. He never was in so large a store in all his life. Such interminable shelves, such skillful imitation of real men and women to display goods on, such agility of cash boys, such immense stock of goods, and a whole community of em-

TWO HIGHWAYS.

IDLENESS.

ployes ! His head is confused as he seems dropped like a pebble in the great ocean of business life. "Have you seen that greenhorn from the country?" whispers young man to young man.

"He is in such and such a department.

We will have to break him in some night." Edward stands at his new place all day so home- sick that at any moment he could have cried aloud if his pride had not suppressed everything. Here and there a tear he carelessly dashed off as though it were from influenza or a cold in the head. But some of you know how a young man feels when set down in a city of strangers, thereafter to fight his own battles, and no one near by seeming to care whether he lives or dies. The center of a desert, a month's journey to the first settlement, is not much more solitary. But that evening as the hour for closing has come there are two or three young men who sidle up to Edward and ask him how he likes the city, and where he expects to go that night, and if he would like them to show him the sights. He thanks them, and says he shall have to take some evenings for unpacking and making arrangements, as he had just arrived, but says that after awhile he will be glad to accept their company. After spending two or three evenings in his boarding-house room, walking up and down, looking at the bare wall or an old chromo hung there at the time that religious newspapers by such prizes advanced their subscription lists, and after an hour toying with the match-box and ever and anon examining his watch to see if it is time to retire — and it seems that 10 o'clock at night or even. 9 o'clock will never come — he resolves to accept tho chaperoning of his new friends at the store.

The following night they are all out together. Although

TWO HIGHWAYS.

his salary is not large, he is quite flush with pocket money, which the old folks gave him after saving by for some time. He can not be mean, and these friends are doing all this for his pleasure, and so he pays the bills. At the door of places of enchantment his companions can not find the change, and they accidentally fall behind just as the ticket office is approached, or they say they will make it all right, and will themselves pay the next time. Edward, accustomed to farm life or village life, is dazed and enchanted with the glitter of

spectacular sin. Plain and blunt iniquity Edward would have immediately repulsed, but sin accompanied by bewitching orchestra; sin amid gilded pillars and gorgeous upholstery ; sin arrayed in all the attractions that the powers of darkness in combination can arrange to magnetize a young man, is very different from sin in its loathsome and disgusting shape. But after a few nights being very late out, he says: "I must stop. My purse won't stand this. My health won't stand this. My reputation won't stand this." Indeed, one of the business firm one night from his private box, in which he applauded a play, in which attitudes and phraseology occurred, which if taken or uttered in his own parlor would have caused him to shoot or stab the actor on the spot — from this high-priced box sees in a cheaper place the new clerk of his store, and is led to ask questions as to his habits, and wonders how, on the salary the house pays him, he can do as he does. Edward, to recover his physical vigor and his finances, stopped awhile and spent a few more evenings examining the chromo on the wall and counting the matches in the match-box, or goes down into the boarding-house parlor to hear the gossip about the other boarders

HONORED SUCCESS.

TWO HIGHWAYS.

or a discourse on the insufficiency of the table fare considering the price paid — the criticism severe in proportion as the fault-finder pays little or is resolved to leave unceremoniously and pay nothing at all.

" Confound it ! " cried the young man, " I cannot stand this life any longer, and I must go out and see the world." The same young men and others of a now larger acquaintance are ready to escort him. There is never any lack of such guidance. If a man wants to go the whole round of sin he can find plenty to take him, a whole regiment who know the way. But after awhile Edward's money is all gone. He has received his salary again and

again, but it was spent before he fffiSl^l^v'^!^?-?-^ r9^ got it, borrowing a little here and a little there. What shall he do now ? Why, he has seen in his rounds of the gambling tables men who put down a dollar and took up ten, put down a hundred and took up a thousand. Why dissipation.

not he ? To reconstruct his finances he takes a hand and wins; is so pleased he takes another hand and wins; is in a frenzy of delight and takes another hand — and loses all.

When he first came to the city Edward was disposed to keep Sunday in quietness, reading a little and going occasionally to hear a sermon. Now Sunday is a day of carousal. He is so full of intoxicants by 11 o'clock in the day he staggers into one of the licensed rum holes of the city.

Some morning Edward, his breath stenchful with rum, takes his place in the store. He is not fit to be there. He is listless or silly or impertinent or in some way incompetent, and a messenger comes to him and says : " The firm

TWO HIGHWAYS.

desire to see you in their private office." The gentleman in the private office says : ' Edward, we will not need you any more. We owe you a little money for services since we paid you last, and here it is."

' What is the matter ? " says the young man. " I cannot understand this. Have I done anything ? " The reply is : " We do not wish any words with you. Our engagement with each other is ended. " " Out of employment ! " What does that mean to a good young man? It means opportunity to get another and, perhaps, better place. It means opportunity for mental improvement and preparation for higher work. ' Out of employment! ' ; What does that mean to a dissipated young man ? It means a lightning express train on a down grade on the Grand Trunk to perdition. Al Borak was a winged horse, on which Mohammed pretended to have ridden by night from Mecca to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to the seventh heaven with such speed that each step was as far as the eye could reach. A young man out of employment through his dissipations is seated on an Al Borak, riding as fast in the opposite direction.

It is now only five years since Edward came to town.

He used to write home once a week at the longest. He has not written home for three months. " What can be the matter ? " say the old people at home. One Saturday morning the father puts on the best apparel of his wardrobe and goes to the city to find out. "Oh, he has not been here for a long while," say the gentlemen of the firm. "Your son, I am sorry to say, is on the wrong track." The old father goes hunting him from place to place and comes suddenly upon him that night in a place of abandonment. The father says :

HONORED AGE.

TWO HIGHWAYS.

a

My son, come with me. Your mother has sent me to bring you home. I hear you are out of money and good clothes, and you know as long as we live you can have a home. Come right away," he says, putting his hand on the young man's shoulder. In angry tone Edward replies: " Take your hands off me! You mind your own business! I will do as I please ! Take your hands off me or I will strike you down! You go your way and I will go mine! "

That Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning — for it is by this time 2 o'clock in the morning — the father goes to the city home of his son Nicholas, and rings the bell, and rings again, and it seems as if no answer will be given ; but after awhile a window is hoisted and a voice cries : " "Who's there?" "It's me," says the old man. " Why father, is that you ? " In a minute the door is opened and the son says : " What in the world brought you to the city at this hour of the night ? " " Oh! Edward has brought me here. I feared your mother would go stark crazy not hearing from him, and I find out that it is worse with him than I expected. " Yes," says Nicholas, " I had not the heart to write you anything about it. I have tried my best with him and all in vain. But it is after 2 o clock," says Nicholas to his father, " and I will take you to a bed."

On a comfortable couch in that house the old father lies down coaxing sleep for a few hours, but no sleep comes.

Whose house is it? That of his son Nicholas. The fact is that Nicholas, soon after coming to the city, became indispensable to the commercial establishment where he was placed. He knew what few persons know, that in all departments of business and mechanism and art there is a surplus of

WEECK.

people of ordinary application and ordinary diligence; there is a great scarcity and always has heen a great scarcity of people who excel. Plenty of people to do things poorly or tolerably well, hut very few clerks or business men or mechanics who can do splendidly well. Appreciating this, Nicholas had resolved to do so grandly that the business firm could not do without him. Always at his place a little after everybody had gone. As extremely polite to those who decline purchasing as to those who made large purchases. He drank no wine, for he saw it was the empoisonment of multitudes, and when any one asked him to take something he said "No" with the peculiar intonation that meant no. His conversation was always as pure as if his sisters had been listening. He went to no place of amusement where he would be ashamed to die. He never bet or gambled, even at a church fair. When he was at the boarding-house, after he had got all the artistic development he could possibly receive from the chromo on the wall, he began to study that which would help him to promotion — study penmanship, study biographies of successful men; or went forth to places of innocent amusement and to Young Men's Christian Associations, and was not ashamed to be found at a church prayer-meeting. He rose from position to position, and from one salary to another salary.

Only five years in town and yet he has rented his own house or a suite of rooms, not very large, but a home large enough in its happiness to be a type of heaven. In the morning, as the old father, with handkerchief in hand, comes crying down- stairs to the table there are four persons, one for each side ; the young man, and opposite to him the best blessing that a God of infinite goodness can bestow, a good wife; and on another side the high chair filled with dimpled and rollicking glee, that makes the grandfather opposite smile outside while he has a broken heart within.

It was Sabbath, and Nicholas and his father, knowing that there is no place so appropriate for a troubled soul as the house of God, find their way to church. It is communion day, and what is the old man's surprise to see his son pass down the aisle with one of the silver chalices, showing him to be a church official. The fact was that Nicholas, from the start, in city life honored God, and God had honored him. When the first wave of city temptation struck him he had felt the need of divine guidance and divine protection, and in prayer had sought a regenerated heart, and had obtained that mightiest of all armor, that mightiest of all protection, that mightiest of all reinforcements, the multipotent and omnipotent grace of God, and you might as well throw a thistle-down against Gibraltar, expecting to destroy it, as with all the combined temptations of earth and hell try to overthrow a young man who can truthfully say: "God is my refuge and strength."

Come, let us measure Nicholas around the head. As many inches of brain as any other intelligent man. Let us measure him around the heart. It is so large that it takes in all the earth and all the heavens. Measure him around the purse. He has more resources than nine-tenths of those who on that Monday came in on any of the railroads from North, South, East or West. But that Sabbath afternoon, while in the back room Nicholas and his father are talking over any attempt at the reclamation of Edward, there is a ringing of the door- bell and a man with the uniform of a policeman stands there ; and a man with some embarrassment and some halting, and in a roundabout way, says that in a fight; in some low haunt of the city Edward had been hurt. He says to Nicholas: " I heard that he was some relation of yours and thought you ought to know it." " Hurt ? Is he badly hurt ? " " Yes very badly hurt." " Is the wound mortal ?" " Yes; it is mortal. To tell you the whole truth, sir," says the policeman, "although I can hardly bear to tell you, he is dead." " Dead ! " cried Nicholas ; and by this time the whole family are in the hallway. The father says : " Just as I feared. It will kill his mother when she hears of it. Oh, my son, my son ! Would to God I had died for thee. Oh, my son, my son ! " " Wash off the wounds," says Nicholas, " and bring him right here to my house, and let there be all respect and gentleness shown him. It is the least we can do for him."

Oh, what obsequies! The next door neighbors hardly knew what was going on; but Nicholas and the father and mother knew. Out of the Christian and beautiful home of the one brother is carried the dissolute brother. No word of blame uttered. No harsh things said. On a bank of camellias is spelled out the word "Brother." Had the prodigal been true and pure and noble and honorable in life and honorable in death he could not have been carried forth with more tenderness or slept in a more beautiful casket, or been deposited in a more beautiful garden of the dead. Amid the loosened turf the brothers who left the country for city life five years before, now part forever. The last scene of the fifth act of an awful tragedy of human life is ended.

What made the difference between these two young men?

t Jp**- The one depended on himself, the other depended on God. They started from the same home, had the same opportunities of education, arrived in the city on the same day, and if there was any difference, Edward had the advantage, for he was brighter and quicker, and all the neighbors prophesied greater success for him than for Nicholas. But behold and wonder at the tremendous secret.

Nothing in these characters is fictitious except the names. They are in every city, and in every street of every city, and in every country. Not two of them but ten thousand. They are before and round about us, they are invulnerable through religious defense and the blasted of city allurements. Those who shall have longevity in beautiful homes and others who shall have early graves of infamy. All are given the choice of the two characters, the two histories, the two experiences, the two destinies, the two worlds, the two eternities.

Standing with the reader at the forks of the road something makes me think that if I set before him the termini of the two roads he will take the right one. There are many who have not fully made up their minds which road to take. "Come with us! " cry all the voices of righteousness. "Come with us! " cry all the voices of sin.

Now, the trouble is that many make a disgraceful surrender. As we all know, there is an honorable and dignified surrender, as when a small host yields to superior numbers. It is no humiliation for a thousand men to yield to ten thousand. It is better than to keep on when there can be no result except that of massacre. But those who surrender to sin make a surrender when on their side they have enough reserve forces to rout all the armies of Perdition, whether led on by what a demonographer calls Belial, or Beelzebub, or Apollyon, or Abaddon, or Ariel. The disgraceful thing about the surrender at Sedan was, the French handed over 419 field-guns and mitrailleuses, 6,000 horses and 83,000 armed men. And it is base for that man to surrender to sin when all the armaments of almightiness would have wheeled to the front to fight his battle if he had waved one earnest signal. But no! He surrendered body, mind, soul, reputation, home, pedigree, time and eternity, while yet all the prayers of his Christian ancestors were on his side and all the proffered aid — supernal, cherubic, sera|)hic, angelic, deific.

The abdication of Alexander, of Bulgaria, caused a great deal of talk, but what a paltry throne was that from which the unhappy king descended compared with the abdication of that young man, or middle-aged man, or old man, who quits the throne of his opportunity and turns his back upon a heavenly throne, and tramps off into ignominy and everlasting exile ! That is an abdication enough to shake a universe. In Persia they will not have a blind man on the throne, and when a reigning monarch is jealous of some ambitious relative he has his eyes extinguished so that he can not possibly ever come to the throne. And that suggests the difference between the way sin and divine grace take hold of a man. The former blinds him so he may never reach the throne, while the latter illumines the blind that he may receive the coronation.

I have made up my mind that our city life is destroying too many young men. There comes in every September and October a large influx of those between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, and New York and Brooklyn damn at least a thousand of them every year. They are shoveled off and down with no more compunction than that with which a coal-heaver scoops the anthracite into a dark cellar. What with the wine-cup and the gambler's dice, and the scarlet enchantress, no young man, without the grace of God, is safe ten minutes. There is much discussion about which is the worst city of the continent. Some say New York, some say New Orleans, some say Chicago, some say St. Louis. What I have to say is, you can not make much comparison between the infinities, and in all our cities the temptation seems infinite. We keep a great many mills running day and night. No rice-mills or cotton-mills. Not mills of corn or wheat, but mills for grinding up men. Such are all the grog-shops, licensed and unlicensed. Such are all the gambling saloons. Such are all the houses of infamy. And we do all the work according to law, and we turn out a new grist every hour, and grind up warm hearts and clear heads, and the earth about a cider-mill is not more saturated with the beverage than the ground about all these mind-destroying institutions is saturated with the blood of victims. The cry from the cities to the villages and the farm is, "Send us more supply!" " Send us more men and women to put under the wheels." Give us full chance and we would grind up in the municipal mill five hundred a day. We have enough machinery; we have enough men who can run them. Give us more homes to crush; give us more parental hearts to pulverize! Put into the hopper the wardrobes and the family Bibles, and the livelihoods of wives and children. Give us more material for these mighty mills, which are wet with tears and sulphurous with woe, and trembling with the earthquakes of an incensed God, who will, unless our cities repent, cover us up as quick and as deep as in August of the year '79 Vesuvius avalanched Herculaneum.

0, man and woman, ponder the path of thy feet! See which way you are going. Will you have the destiny of Edward or Nicholas? Plutarch tells us that after Csesar was slain and his twenty-three wounds had been displayed to the people, arousing an uncontrollable excitement, and the body of the dead conqueror, according to ancient customs, had been put upon the funeral pile, and the flames arose, people rushed up, took from the blazing mass torches with which they ran through the city, crying the glory of the assassinated ruler, and the shame of his assassinators. On this day, when the five bleeding wounds of Christ your King, are shown to you, and the fires of his earthly suffering blaze before your imagination, take a torch and start heavenward — a torch with light for yourself and light for others ; for the race that starts at the cross ends at the throne. While the twenty-three wounds of Csesar wrought nothing but the consternation of the people, from the five wounds of our Conqueror there flows a transforming power to make all the uncounted millions who will accept it, forever happy and forever free.

Chapter II. Evil Companions

Hardly any young man goes to a place of dissipation alone. Each one is accompanied. No man goes to ruin alone. He always takes some one else with him. " May it please the court," said a convicted criminal, when asked if he had anything to say before sentence of death was passed upon him — -"may it please the court, bad company has been my ruin. I received the blessings of good parents, and, in return, promised to avoid all evil associations. Had I kept my promise, I should have been saved this shame, and been free from the load of guilt that hangs around me like a vulture, threatening to drag me to justice for crimes yet unrevealed. I, who once moved in the first circles of society, and have been the guest of distinguished public men, am lost, and all through bad company."

This is but one of the thousand proofs that the companion of fools shall be destroyed. It is the invariable rule. There is a well man in the wards of a hospital, where there are a hundred people sick with ship fever, and he will not be so apt to take the disease as a good man would be apt to be smitten with moral distemper, if shut up with iniquitous companions. In olden times prisoners were herded together in the same cell, but each one learned the vices of all the culprits, so that, instead of being reformed by incarceration, the day of liberation turned them out upon society beasts not men.