SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7371, 4 July 1885, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

BT REV. DR. TALMAGE,

THE GATES OF HELL.

" The satea of hell shall not prevail against it."— Matt. xvi. IS. You know about the gates of Heaven. You have often heard them preached about. There are three to each point of the compass. On the north, three gates; on the south, threo gates ; on the east, three gates ; on tho west, threo gates ; and each gate is a solid pearl. Oh, gate of Heaven, may we all get into it! But who shall describe the gates of hell spoken of in my text ? These gates aro burnished until they sparkle and gliston in the gaslight. They are mighty, and sot in sockets of deep and dreadful masonry. They are high, so that those who are in may not clambur over and get out. They are heavy, but they swing easily in to lot those go in who are to be destroyed. I remuuiber, when the Franco-German War was going on, that I stood one day in Paris looking at the gates of the Tuilcries, and I was so absorbed in the sculpturing at the top of tha gates, the masonry, and the bronze* that I forgot myself, and aftor awhile, looking down, I saw that there were ollicers of tho law scrutinising me, suppoaing, no doubt, I was a German, and looking at those gates for adverse purposes. Bui", my friends, we shall not stand looking at the (nitsido of tho gates of hell. I intend to tell you of both sides, and I shall tell you what tiioso gatca are made of. With the hammer of God'a truth I shall pound on the brazen panels, and with tho lantern of God's tnith I shall flash a light upon the shining hinges. i. <J<ite tho lirst: impure literature. Anthony Comsfcock seized twenty tons of bad booUs, plates and lotter-prfss, and when Professor Cochran, of tho Polytechnic Institute, poured tho destructive aoids on those plates, they smoked in tho righteous annihilation. And yet a great deal of the "bad literature of the day is not gripped of tho law. It is strewn in your parlours ; it ia in your libraries. Some of your children read it at night after they have retired, tho gas-burner as near a3 possible to their pillow. Much of this literaturo goes under the title ot scientific information. A bookagent with one of these infernal books, over with scientific nomenclature, went into a hotel aud sold in one day a hundred copies, and sold thorn all to women ! It is appalling that men ant) women who can get, through their family physician, all the useful information they may need, and without any contamination, should wade chin deep through such accureed literature under the pica of yettiutr useful knowledge, :\ud that printing-presse3, hoping to be called decent, should lend themselves to this infamy. Fathers an'.l mothers, be not deceived by tho titlo, " nieclieul works." Niac-tentha of those books cotno hot from the lost world, though they may have on them the names of tkd; publishing houses of New Vork aud Philadelphia. Then there is all the novelette literature of the day flung over tho land by the million. ISo one —mark this—no one systematically reads the average novelette of thin day and keeps either integrity or virtue. The most of these novelettes aru written by broken-down literary men for small compensation, on tho principle that, having failed in literature elevated and pure, they hopo to succeed in the tainted aud nasty. Oh, this is a wide gate of hell ! Every panel is made ont of a bad book or newspaper. Every hingo is the ioterjoined type of a corrupt printing-press. Every bolt or lock of that gate is made out of the plate o< an unclean pictorial. In other words, there are a million n'ou and women in the Uuited States to-day raadiDg themselves into hell! When in your own beautiful city a prosperous family fell iuto ruins through the misdeeds of one of its members, tho amazed mother said to the officer of tbe law, " Why, I never supposed there was anything wrong. 1 never thought there could be anything wrong." Then ehe sat weeping in silence for some time, and said, "Oh, I have got it now ! I know, I know ! I found in her bureau after she went away a bad book. That's what slew her !"

These leprous booksellers have gathered up the catalogues of all the male and female seminaries in the United Mates, catalogues containing tho names and the residences of all the students, and circulars of death are sent to every one, without any exception. Can you imagine anythiug more dreadful ? There is not a young person, male or female, or an old person, who has not had offered to him or her a bad book or a bad picture. Scour your house to rind out whether there are any of these adders coiled on your parlonr centre table, or coiled amid the toilet-set on the dressing-caso. 1 adjure you before the sun goes down to explore your family libraries with an inexorable ecrutiny. Remember that ono bad book or bad picture may do the work for eternity. I want to arouso all your suspicions about novelettes. I want to put you on the watch against everything that may seem like surreptitious correspondence through the post ofh'co. I want you to understand that impure literature is one of the broadest, highest, mightiest gates of tho lost. 11. Gate the second : tho dissolute dance. You shall not divert me to the general subject of danciug. Whatever you may think about the parlour dance, or the methodic motion of tao body to sounds of music in the family or the social circle, I am not now discussing that question. 1 want you to uuite with me ttiia morning in recognising tho fact that thero is a dissolute dauco. You know of what I apeak. It is seen not only in the low haunts of death, but in elegant mansions. It is the first step to eternal ruin for a great multitude of both sexes.

You know, my friends, what postures and attitudes and figures are suggested of thi dovil. They who glide into the dissolute dance glide over an inclined plane, and the dance is swifter and swifter, wilder and wilder, until, with the speed of lightning, they whirl off tho edges of a decent life into a Hery future. This gate of hell swings across the Axminster of many a fine parlour and across the ball-room of the summer watering-place. \'ou have no right, my mother, my sister, you have no right to take an attitude to the sound of music which would be unbecoming in tho absence of music. J II. Gate the third: indiscreet apparel. The attire of woman for the last four or five years has been beautiful and graceful beyond anything I have known ; but there are those that will always carry that which is right into tho extraordinary and indiscreet. 1 oharge Christian women neither by style of <'r<!HB nor adjustment of apparol to become ailniinistrative of evil. I'crhaps none else will dare to tell you, so I will tell you that there are multitudes of men who owo their eternal damnation to the boldness of womanly attire. Show me the fashion-plates of any age between this and the time of Louis the Sixteenth, of France, and Henry tho Eighth, of England, and I will tell you the type of morals or immorals of that ago or that year. No exception to it. Modest apparel indicates a righteous people ; immodest apparel always indicates a contaminated and depraved society. You wonder that the city of Tyre was destroyed with such a terrible destruction. Have you over eeeu the iashion-plate of Tyre ? I will show it to you: "Moreover, the Lord saitb, because the (laughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet, in that i>l ay the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet and their cauls, and their round tirea like the moon, the rings and nose-jewels, the changeable suites of apparel, and tho mantles, and tho wimples, and the crisping pins" (Isaiah iii. 16-22). That is the fashion-plate of ancient Tyro. And do you wonder that God in His indignation blotted out the city ? IV. Gate the fourth : alcoholic beverages. All the scenes of wickedness are under the enchantment of the wine-cup. That is what the waitresses carry on the platter. That is what glows on the table. That is what shines in illuminated gardens. That is what flushes the cheeks of the patrons who come in. That is what staggers the step of the patrons as they go out. Oh, the wine-Qup is the pattern of impurity ! The officers of the law tell us that nearly all the men who go into the shambles of death go intoxicated. The mental and the spiritual abolished that the brute may triumph. Tell me that a young man drinks, and I know the whole story. If he becomes a captivo of the wine-cup, he will become a captive of all other vices, only give him time. No one ever knows drunkenness alone. That is a carrion-crow that goes in a flock, and, when you see that beak ahead,

you may know the other beaks are coming. In other words, the wine-oup unbalances and dethrones one's better judgment, and leaves one the prey of all evil appetites that may choose to alight upon his aoul. There ia not a place of any kind of sin in the United States to-day that does net find its chief abettor in the chalice of inebriety. There is either a drinking-bar before, or one behind, or one above, or one underneath. The officers of the law have said to me, " Tlieso people escape legal penalty iecause they are all liceneed to sell liquor." Then I have said to myself, "The Courts that license the sale of strong drink license gambling-houses, license libertinism, license disease, license death, license all sufferings, all crimes, all despoilations, all disasters, all murders, all woe. It is the Courts and tho Legislature that are swinging wide open this grinding, creaky, stupendous gate of the lost." But you say, "You have described these gates of hell, and shown how they swing in to allow the entrance of the doomed. Will you not please tell us how these gates may swing out to allow the escape of the penitent ?" I reply, bat very few escape. Of tho thousand that go in, nine hundred and ninety-nine porish. Supposo one of these wanderers should knock at your door, would you admit her ? Suppose you knew where she came from, would you ask her to sit down at your dining-table? Would you ask her to become the governess of your children ? Would you introduce her among your own acquaintances ? Would you take the responsibility of pulling on the outside of the gate of hell while she pushed on the inside of that gate trying to g«t out ? You would not—not one of a thousand of you that would dare to do it. You write beautiful poetry over her sorrows, and weep over her misfortunes, but give, her practical help you never will. There is not one person out of a thousand that will; there is not one out of live thousand that has come so near tho heart of Jesus Christ as to dare to help one of theso fallon souls. But you say, "Are there no ways of escape for the poor wanderers ?" Oh, yes, three or four. Tho oue way is the sewinggirl's garret, dingy, cold, hunger-blasted. But you say, "Is taerc no other way for her to escape?" Oh, yes. Another way is the street that leads to East River, at midnight, the end of the city dock, the moon shining on the water making it look so smooth she woudera if it is deep enough, it id. No boatman near enough to hear the plunge, no watchman near enough to pick her out before she sinks the third time. No other way ? Ye 3. By the curve of the Hudson River Kailroad, at the point where the engineer of the lightning express train cannot see a, hundred yards ahead to the form that lies across tho traok. He may whistle "down brakes," but not soon enough to disappoint the one who seeks her death. But you say, "isn't God good, and won't Ho forgive 2" Yes; but man will not, woman will not, society will not. The Church of Jeaus Chriat says it will not. Our work, then, niunt be prevention rather than cure. Standing here telliug this story to-day, it is not eo much in tho hope that I will persuade one who has dashed down a thouaaud feet over the rocks to crawl up again into life and light, but it is to alarm tho3o who are coming too noar the edge.'. Have you ever listened to hear the lamentation that rings up from, those far depths ? Once I was pure us the snow, but I fell, Kell like a snowflako from Heaven to hell; Fell, to be ttarauled as filth of the B treei, Fell, to be ecoffed at, and spit on, and bent. Pleading, and cursing, and begisinjf to die, Helling my eonl to whoever would buy ; lltaliug in shaino for a morsel of bread, Hitiug the living and fearing the dead.

But you say, " What can be the practical use of this aurmon?" I say, much, every way. Those gates of hell are to be pro"tratoil juat as certainly as God and the Bible arc true, but it will not be done until Christian men aud women, quitting their prudery aud squeamishnesa in this matter, rally the whole Christian sentiment of the Church, and asoail these evils of society. The Biblo utters its denunciation in this direction again and again, and yet the piety of the day is such a namby-pamby aurt of thing that you cannot even quote Scripture without making somebody restless. Aβ long aa this holy imbecility reigns in the Church of God, sin will laugh you to scorn. Ido not know but that before the Church waken up matters will get worse and worse, and that there will have to be one lamb sacrificed from each of the moat carefully-guarded folds, aud the wave of uncleannesss dash to tbe spire of the village church and the top of the cathedral pillar.

Prophets and patriarchs, and apostles and evangelists, and Ohriet Himself, have thundered against these sine as against no other, and yet there are those who think we ought to take, when we speak of these subjects, a tone apologetic. 1 put my foot on all th« conventional rhetoric on this subject, and I tell you plainly that unlesis you give up that sin your doom is sealed, and world without end yo.u will bo chased by the anathemas of God. I rally you under the cheerful prophecy of the text; I rally you to a beeiegement of the gates ot hell. We want in this bedeging host no soft sentimentalists, but men who are willing to give and take hard knocks. The gates of Ghaza were carried off; the gatea of Thebes were battered down ; the gates of Babylon were destroyed ; and the gates of hell are going to be prostrated. The Christianised printing-press will be rolled up as the chief battering-ram. Then there will be a long list of aroueed pulpits, which shall be assailing fortresses, and God's red-hot truth shall be the flying ammunition of the contest; and the sappers and miuers will lay the train under these foundations of sin, and just at the right time God, who leads on the fray, will cry, " Down with the gates !" and the explosion beneath will bo answered by all the trumpets of God on high celebrating universal victory. But there may be in this house one wanderer that would like to have a kind word calling homeward, and I cannot sit down until I have uttered that word. I have told you that society has do mercy. Did I hint, at an earlier poiut in this subject, that God will have mercy upon any wanderer who would like to come back to the heart of infinite love ?

A cold Christmas night in a farm-house. Father conies in from toe barn, knocks the snow from his shoes, and sits down by the fire. The mother sits at the stand knitting. She says to him, "Do you remember it is the anniversary to-night?" The father is angered. He never wants any allusion to the fact that one had gone away, and the mere suggestion that it was the anniversary of that sad event made him quite rough, although the tears ran down his cheeks. The old house-dog, that had played with the wanderer when she wa3 a child, comes up and puts his head on the old man's knee, but he roughly repulses the dog. He wants nothing to remind him of the anniversary day. A cold winter night in a city church. It ia Christmas night. They have decorated the sanctuary. A lost wanderer of the street, with thin shawl about her, attracted by the warmth and light, comes in and aits near the door. The minister is preaching of Him who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and the poor soul by the door said, Why, that must mean me ; • mercy for the chief of dinners bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our transgressions.'" The , music that night in the sanctuary brought back the old hymn which she used to sing when with father and mother she worshipped in the village church. The service over, the minister went down the aisle. She said to him, " Were those words for mo ? ' Wounded for our trangressions.' Was that for me ?" The man of God understood her not. He knew not how to comfort a shipwrecked soul, and he passed on and he passed out. The poor wanderer followed into the street. " What are you doing here, Meg ?" said the police. "What are you doing heretonight?" "Oh," she replied, "I was in to warm myself;" and then the rattling cough came, and she held to the railing until the paroxysm was over. She passed on down the street, falling from exhaustion, recover* ing herself again, until, after a while, she reached the outskirts of the city, and passed on into the country road. It seemed so familiar ; she kept oil the road, and she saw in the distance a light in the window, Ah ! that light had been gleaming there every night since she went away. On that country road she passed until she came to the garden gate. She opened it and passed up the path where she played in childhood. She cams to the steps, and looked in at the fire on the hearth. Then she put her fingers to the latch. Oh, if that door had been locked she would have perished on the threshold, for she was near to death ! But that door had not been locked since the time she went away. She pushed open the door. She went in and lay down on the hearth by the fire. The old house-dog growled as he saw her enter, but there was something in the voice he recognised, and he frisked about

her until he almost pushed her down in hfc joy. In the morning the mother came down, and she saw a bundle of rags on the hearth ; but, when the face was uplifted, she knew it, and it was no more old Meg of the street. Throwing her arme around the returned prodigal, she cried, " Oh, Maggie!" The child threw her arms around her mothers neck, and said, "Oh, mother!" and while they were embraced a rugged form towered above them. It was the father! The severity all gone out of his face, he stooped down and took her up tenderly and earned her to mother's room, and laid her down on mother's bed, for she was dying. Then the lost one, looking up into her mother's face, said, " • Wounded for our transgressions and braised for oar iniquities !' Mother, do you think that means me!" "Oh, yes, my darling," said the mother. "If mother is so glad to get you back, don't you think God is glad to get you back ?" And there she lay dying, and all their dreams and all their prayers were filled with the words, " Wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities," until, just before the moment of her departure, her face lighted up, showing the pardon of God bad dropped on her soul. And there she slept away on the bosom of a pardoning Jeaus. So the Lord took back one whom the world rejected.