Our Cities

“Saltpetre sulphur and charcoal are each one non-explosive, but brought together they make gunpowder. Neither ignorance nor vice is revolutionary iahe?i quite comfortable, fior is wretchedness, when controlled by intelligence and conscience. But ignorance, vice and wretchedness, combined, co/istitute social dynamite of which the city slum. is a magazine awaiting only a casual spark to durst into terrijic destruction,

Strong.

“And when he drew nigh, he saw
the city, aftd wept over itr Luke
ig: 41.

The history of cities is the history of the world. The word city occurs in the Bible 262 times, and, if all references to Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Sidon, Rome, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Jerusalem were taken from the book, it would reduce its size by nearly one-half. Cities are truly the “nerve centers and storm centers of the world.” Every city is a great heart, throbbing with life and sending out good blood or bad through its thousand arteries of activity. To save the cities is to save the world.

The text tells us that Jesus drew near to the

city of Jerusalem. He did much of his work

there. It was cosmopolitan in its population.

People from every nation under heaven, as we

see from the list at Pentecost, were in the habit

of visiting this great city. We, the followers

of Christ, should draw near the city. It is said,

117 all the world is moving to town. Our great cities are increasing with wonderful rapidity. But people can live in the city without being very near it. The merchant may know the way from his house to the street car, and from the street car to his store. He goes to church on Sunday, and to a few other places during the week, but he may be as far removed from the great surging life of the city with its sin and struggle, as if he lived a thousand miles distant.

Men of wealth should come near to the poverty of the alleys, and learn how the other half live, and men of toil should come as near as you can to the wealthy abodes on the avenue and realize that riches have their burdens, and that men of money need sympathy. Oh, if we could just get nearer together in this great city, there would be a fraternity of humanity. If we knew more of each other, there would be less ill-will and hard speech.

Jesus beheld the city. We think of his crossing the brow of Olivet, and seeing the domes of the city looming up before him in the distance. If we had been with him, we might have had only this external view. But he saw the whole city. Not a thing on its streets, or in its houses was hid from his view. He saw its sin, its suffering, its joy, its sorrow, its wealth, its poverty, indeed everything that the eye of the Omniscient God could penetrate was open to his view.

As Jesus draws near and beholds the city of to-day, what does he see?

First of all, he sees the best type of Christianity and the worse type of infidelity. The religion that stands the fire-test of the city is pure gold. There is a kind of country religion that will not bear transportation into city life. There are hundreds of men in New York who were useful as deacons, trustees, Sunday-school teachers, in the old country church, but now they are worthless. They have become ecclesiastical sponges. They drift around sucking in a little here and there, trying to get as much as they can for nothing.

And yet the type of religion in the country church is just what the city needs, — faith before it is slimed over by infidelity, prayer that pleads the promises without the waver of doubt, praise that rises from simple honest hearts unto God the giver of all, a religion fresh as the grass of spring, and sweet as the perfume of the flowers of the field. That sort of religion is just what the dusty, rattling, bustling city needs. Young man from the country, hold on to it, prize it above gold, cultivate it in your room, and seek the church where you find it is fostered.

But there is a religion from the country which the city can afford to do without.

People who are very pious at home when they come to the great city frequently feel free to attend the theater, and, as they say, “see the world.” The country cousin entices city young people into places to which they would not think of going, but for the desire to please their friends. A man from the South said to a pastor in Baltimore: “How do you get along with these worldly Christians in the city?” The pastor replied, “My friend, when did you go to the theater last?” He had to confess that he had been the night before, and was in the habit of going at least once every time he came from his country home to the city. “Yes,” continued the pastor, “And that is the evil we city pastors have to contend against. There are twenty-five members of my church, born and raised in Baltimore, who never went to the theater in their lives. They know the evil of it; they were taught by pious parents to shun it, but you country people come here and tempt them to violate their consciences in order to gratify you.”

It ought to be said also that there is a type of city religion which will not bear transportation. A pastor in the Adirondack Mountains told me that his church was greatly demoralized every summer by the influence of Christians from the city. At the summer place they indulge in things that he preached against. Some

of his young people thought him old-fogylsh. These progressive Christians from the city attracted their attention, and turned them from the simple spiritual life to a mixed life of worldliness and church-going.

But after we have said all that ought to be said about the sham religion of the city, there is here the highest type of faith, self-sacrifice, devotion to truth, sympathy with suffering humanity, in a word, love for God and man, and, under the stress of great temptation, there is developed the finest type of Christian character in the world.

Again, Jesus would see the best institutions and the worst. Here are scores of organizations for the betterment of the people, hundreds of churches pointing with their spires to heaven, with a large percentage of their membership true and tried, seeking to do good in the world. Here are organizations for helping the newsboy, the bootblack, the orphan, the sick, the wandering, the criminal. Every department of sin and suffering has called forth circles of earnest men and women who are pledged and organized to contend against its ravages. There is more giving as well as better living in these great cities than anywhere else on the globe. But side by side with these good institutions are the combined forces of evil. The liquor traffic is an octopus with its slimy tentacle upon everything good. Gambling is rampant, the streets are full of mantraps. Joseph Parker declares that the Stock Exchange is the bottomless pit of London. There are Christian men on the Stock Exchange who do legitimate business, but most of them are gamblers seeking to get something for nothing.

Club life is a growing menace to the home. The lodge is becoming the foe of the church. When a young man comes to the city, there are scores of forces which at once pull him downward, to one force that draws him upward. He lives in a bleak boarding-house, in a little room without fire, while Christian homes are closed against him because they do not know him. The saloon, however, asks no questions, invites him in, gives him a comfortable seat, and makes him feel at home. If the mother in the country knew some mother in the city, and would write to her about the boy in the boarding-house, the motherhood of the city would respond and seek him out. But harlotry does not wait for an invitation. Those “whose feet take hold on hell” are after him at once; the Siren song entices, and when the boy comes back to spend the holidays in his country home, the mother notices a change. He has ceased to be the simple-hearted, trustful, pure boy that he was. If the wrecks of character made in this great city during the past ten years could be made visible and piled up on the streets, it would take the Street Cleaning Department a month to remove the debris; all traffic would be stopped, while the air would be fetid with the malodors of lost characters.

Jesus, as he beheld the city, was moved to tears. The word “wept” does not mean that he shed tears silently as he did at the grave of Lazarus. It means to shriek or to wail. As the city with its agony came before him, it broke his heart, his wail of agony mingled with the hosannas of the crowd, and hushed them into silence. If we could see to-day what he saw then, and what he sees now, our hearts, though harder than his, might wail out their agony.

The politician sees in the crowd that throng our streets so many voters, the merchant sees so many customers, Jesus sees so many immortal souls with capacity for infinite development or degradation. How does the crowd affect you? Are you indifferent to it? Then you are not akin to “the Son of man” whose heart was big enough to take in all classes of people. While Jesus looked at the crowd, he spoke in faithfulness a fearful truth. He said, You have lost your opportunity, you refuse to accept the things which belong to your peace, but now they are hid from your eyes. “The days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

For all that we know he is speaking these very words of New York, Chicago, and other great cities. He has given them the Sabbath, the day of rest and peace. Do they despise it? Are they not planning to desecrate it more and more? As I crossed Brooklyn Bridge last Sunday, and heard the clang of hammers while a greedy corporation was desecrating God’s day that they may fill their pockets with gold, I thought I could hear these prophetic words from the Son of man. And as I read the accounts of large appropriations made to public works from the license of the liquor traffic, I hear the words of the prophet, “Woe to him that establisheth a city with iniquity.” It might help us to walk amid the ruins of Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre and Sidon, with Bible in hand, reading the doom of those cities who refused to honor God. I am no alarmist, but I believe that the God of righteousness reigns, and the city that forgets him, refusing to submit to his law, will sooner or later meet the doom of the disobedient.

But Jesus was not content simply to weep and warn, he set about remedying the evil. He went into the temple and drove out all those who made it a den of thieves. And while we look about us at existing evils, we are not to spend our time in fruitless tears, or bitter denunciation; we should do something, and the first thing that needs to be done is a thorough cleansing of the church of God. Men who are saints on Sunday and devils during the week ought to be cast out. They are more apt to repent after they have felt the whip of scourges driving them from the temple of purity, than if they were kept in for the sake of their money or influence. If Jesus were here with his whip of scourges, he would drive out the millionaire who attends eccelesiastical conventions and makes big speeches, while he lives in adultery; he would drive out the man who teaches in the Sunday-school and swears at his clerks during the week; he would drive out the man who praises God as he sings from his well bound book on Sabbath morning, and during the week pollutes the air with the fumes of rum which he has taken with convivial friends over the saloon counter. He would drive out the woman who comes to church on Sunday to show her finery, and spends the week debauching the young by teaching them to gamble in progressive euchre parties. In a word, he would drive out all men and women who are simply whitewashed without being washed white. “Let judgment begin at the house of God.”

I believe that the real church of Christ was never better and purer than it is to-day, the church within the church that walk with God and do his will. The good is growing better, while the bad is growing worse, on the principle that the gospel is the savor of death unto death or of life unto life. There is more light now in the world than ever before, and those who resist it are made worse under the process. I am not railing against the church of Jesus, but I do contend that thieves, gamblers, adulterers, and corrupters of youth should, if they will not repent, be driven from the courts of God’s temple, and, when they are out, honest people will come in.

Jesus continued to teach daily in the city. The saloon is at work day and night; the harlot is always on the watch; these mantraps are set every hour. Shall Christians be content to open their churches for a pleasant service only once or twice a week, while the servants of the Devil are at their nefarious business every day? We need a revival of seven days’ religion, not less of Sunday worship, but more of week-day work for Christ. The McAll Mission had never been heard of as a success if it had not preached the gospel every day in the halls of Paris. The Salvation Army has done a mighty work by keeping at it all the time.

While we work with Christ for the salvation of the cities of earth, let us remember he is preparing for us a city. He said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” and we learn that heaven is a redeemed municipality. The imagery of the Bible is suggestive of purity, — streets of gold, gates of pearls, walls of Jasper; “It has, no need of the sun, for the Lamb is the light thereof.” The time is coming when there will be in the universe one great city, and one other place which has no characteristics of city life. Heaven has streets; hell is represented as a lake of fire, tempest-tossed. There is no order there. Sin is anarchy. We have the choice between the city of order and light and the place of disorder and darkness:

“Choose I must, and soon must choose
Holiness, or heaven lose;
While what heaven loves, I hate,
Shut for me is heaven’s gate.

“Endless sin means endless woe;
Into endless sin I go,
If my soul, from reason rent,
Takes from sin its final bent.

“As the stream its channel grooves,
And within that channel moves,
So doth habit’s deepest tide
Groove its bed, and there abide.

“Light obeyed increaseth light,
Light resisted bringeth night;
Who shall give me will to choose,
If the love of light I lose?

“Speed, my soul; this instant yield;
Let the Light its scepter wield,
While thy God prolongeth grace.
Haste thee toward his holy face 1