Joram, wounded in battle, lies in a hospital at Jezreel. The watchman,
standing in the tower, looks off and sees against the sky horsemen and
chariots.
A messenger is sent out to find who is coming, but he does not return.
Another messenger is sent, but with the same result.
The watchman, standing in the tower, looks off upon the advancing troop,
and gets more and more excited, wondering who are coming. But long before
the cavalcade comes up, the matter is decided.
The watchman can not descry the features of the fast approaching man, but
he exclaims:
“I have found out who he is. The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the
son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”
By the flash of that one sentence we discover Jehu’s character. He came
with such speed not merely because he had an errand to do, but because
he was urged on by a headlong disposition, which had won him the name of
a reckless driver, even among the watchmen. The chariot plunges until
you almost expect the wheels to crash under it, or some of the princely
party to be thrown out, or the horses to become utterly unmanageable. But
he always goes so; and he becomes a type of that class of persons to be
found in all communities, who in worldly and in religious affairs may be
styled reckless drivers.
To this same class belong all those who conduct their worldly affairs
in a headlong way, without any regard to prudence or righteousness. The
minister of Christ does not do his whole duty who does not plainly and
unmistakably bring the Gospel face to face with every style of business
transaction. We have a right, in a Christian manner, to point out those
who, year by year, are jeopardizing not only their welfare, but the
interests of many others, by reckless driving.
As a hackman, having lost control of a flying span, is apt to crash
into other vehicles, until the property and lives of a whole street are
endangered, so a man driving his worldly calling with such loose reins
that, after a while, it will not answer his voice or hand, puts in peril
the commercial interests of scores or hundreds.
There are today in our midst many of our best citizens who have come down
from affluence into straitened circumstances, because there was a partner
in their firm, or a cashier in their bank, or an agent representing their
house, or one of their largest creditors, who, like Jehu, the son of
Nimshi, was a furious driver.
When I see in the community men with large incomes, but larger outgoes,
rushing into wildest undertakings, their pockets filled with circulars
about gold to be found in Canada and lead in Missouri and fortunes of
all sorts everywhere, launching out in expenditures to be met with the
thousands they expect to make, and with derision dashing across the path
of sober men depending upon their industry and honor for success, I say:
“Here he comes, the son of Nimshi, driving furiously.”
When I see a young man, not content gradually to come to a competency,
careless as to how often he goes upon credit, spending in one night’s
carousal a month’s salary, taking the few hundred dollars given him for
getting a start in the purchase of a regal wardrobe, lazy or ashamed to
work, anxious only for display, regardless of his father’s counsel and
the example of the thousands who, in a short while, have wrecked body,
mind and soul in scheming or dissipation, I say: “Here he comes, the son
of Nimshi, driving furiously.”
When this world gets full power over a man, he might as well be dead. He
is dead! When Sisera came into the house of Jael, she gave him something
to drink, and got him asleep on the floor. Then she took a peg from the
side of her tent, and with a mallet she drove the peg through the brain
of Sisera into the floor. So the world feeds and flatters a man, and when
it has him sound asleep it strikes his life out.