"His windows being open and his chamber toward
Jerusalem."--DAN. vi: 10.
The scoundrelly princes of Persia, urged on by political jealousy
against Daniel, have succeeded in getting a law passed that whosoever
prays to God shall be put under the paws and teeth of the lions, who
are lashing themselves in rage and hunger up and down the stone cage,
or putting their lower jaws on the ground, bellowing till the earth
trembles. But the leonine threat did not hinder the devotion of
Daniel, the Coeur-de-Lion of the ages. His enemies might as well have
a law that the sun should not draw water or that the south wind should
not sweep across a garden of magnolias or that God should be
abolished. They could not scare him with the red-hot furnaces, and
they can not now scare him with the lions. As soon as Daniel hears of
this enactment he leaves his office of Secretary of State, with its
upholstery of crimson and gold, and comes down the white marble steps
and goes to his own house. He opens his window and puts the shutters
back and pulls the curtain aside so that he can look toward the sacred
city of Jerusalem, and then prays.
I suppose the people in the street gathered under and before his
window, and said: "Just see that man defying the law; he ought to be
arrested." And the constabulary of the city rush to the police
head-quarters and report that Daniel is on his knees at the wide-open
window. "You are my prisoner," says the officer of the law, dropping a
heavy hand on the shoulder of the kneeling Daniel. As the constables
open the door of the cavern to thrust in their prisoner, they see the
glaring eyes of the monsters. But Daniel becomes the first lion-tamer,
and they lick his hand and fawn at his feet, and that night he sleeps
with the shaggy mane of a wild beast for his pillow, while the king
that night, sleepless in the palace, has on him the paw and teeth of a
lion he can not tame--the lion of a remorseful conscience.
What a picture it would be for some artist; Darius, in the early dusk
of morning, not waiting for footmen or chariot, hastening to the den,
all flushed and nervous and in dishabille, and looking through the
crevices of the cage to see what had become of his prime-minister!
"What, no sound!" he says: "Daniel is surely devoured, and the lions
are sleeping after their horrid meal, the bones of the poor man
scattered across the floor of the cavern." With trembling voice Darius
calls out, "Daniel!" No answer, for the prophet is yet in profound
slumber. But a lion, more easily awakened, advances, and, with hot
breath blown through the crevice, seems angrily to demand the cause of
this interruption, and then another wild beast lifts his mane from
under Daniel's head, and the prophet, waking up, comes forth to report
himself all unhurt and well.
But our text stands us at Daniel's window, open toward Jerusalem. Why
in that direction open? Jerusalem was his native land, and all the
pomp of his Babylonish successes could not make him forget it. He
came there from Jerusalem at eighteen years of age, and he never
visited it, though he lived to be eighty-five years. Yet, when he
wanted to arouse the deepest emotions and grandest aspirations of his
heart, he had his window open toward his native Jerusalem. There are
many of you to-day who understand that without any exposition. This is
getting to be a nation of foreigners. They have come into all
occupations and professions. They sit in all churches. It may be
twenty years ago since you got your naturalization papers, and you may
be thoroughly Americanized, but you can't forget the land of your
birth, and your warmest sympathies go out toward it. Your windows are
open toward Jerusalem. Your father and mother are buried there. It may
have been a very humble home in which you were born, but your memory
often plays around it, and you hope some day to go and see it--the
hill, the tree, the brook, the house, the place so sacred, the door
from which you started off with parental blessing to make your own way
in the world; and God only knows how sometimes you have longed to see
the familiar places of your childhood, and how in awful crises of life
you would like to have caught a glimpse of the old, wrinkled face that
bent over you as you lay on the gentle lap twenty or forty or fifty
years ago. You may have on this side of the sea risen in fortune, and,
like Daniel, have become great, and may have come into prosperities
which you never could have reached if you had stayed there, and you
may have many windows to your house--bay-windows, and
sky-light-windows, and windows of conservatory, and windows on all
sides--but you have at least one window open toward Jerusalem.
When the foreign steamer comes to the wharf, you see the long line of
sailors, with shouldered mail-bags, coming down the planks, carrying
as many letters as you might suppose would be enough for a year's
correspondence, and this repeated again and again during the week.
Multitudes of them are letters from home, and at all the post-offices
of the land people will go to the window and anxiously ask for them,
hundreds of thousands of persons finding that window of foreign mails
the open window toward Jerusalem. Messages that say: "When are you
coming home to see us? Brother has gone into the army. Sister is dead.
Father and mother are getting very feeble. We are having a great
struggle to get on here. Would you advise us to come to you, or will
you come to us? All join in love, and hope to meet you, if not in this
world, then in a better. Good-bye."
Yes, yes; in all these cities, and amid the flowering western
prairies, and on the slopes of the Pacific, and amid the Sierras, and
on the banks of the lagoon, and on the ranches of Texas there is an
uncounted multitude who, this hour, stand and sit and kneel with their
windows open toward Jerusalem. Some of them played on the heather of
the Scottish hills. Some of them were driven out by Irish famine. Some
of them, in early life, drilled in the German army. Some of them were
accustomed at Lyons or Marseilles or Paris to see on the street Victor
Hugo and Gambetta. Some chased the chamois among the Alpine
precipices. Some plucked the ripe clusters from Italian vineyard.
Some lifted their faces under the midnight sun of Norway. It is no
dishonor to our land that they remember the place of their nativity.
Miscreants would they be if, while they have some of their windows
open to take in the free air of America and the sunlight of an
atmosphere which no kingly despot has ever breathed, they forgot
sometime to open the window toward Jerusalem.
No wonder that the son of the Swiss, when far away from home, hearing
the national air of his country sung, the malady of home-sickness
comes on him so powerfully as to cause his death. You have the example
of the heroic Daniel of my text for keeping early memories fresh.
Forget not the old folks at home. Write often; and, if you have
surplus of means and they are poor, make practical contribution, and
rejoice that America is bound to all the world by ties of sanguinity
as is no other nation. Who can doubt but it is appointed for the
evangelization of other lands? What a stirring, melting, gospelizing
theory that all the doors of other nations are open toward us, while
our windows are open toward them!
But Daniel, in the text, kept this port-hole of his domestic fortress
unclosed because Jerusalem was the capital of sacred influences. There
had smoked the sacrifice. There was the Holy of Holies. There was the
Ark of the Covenant. There stood the temple. We are all tempted to
keep our windows open on the opposite side, toward the world, that we
may see and hear and appropriate its advantages. What does the world
say? What does the world think? What does the world do? Worshipers of
the world instead of worshipers of God. Windows open toward Babylon.
Windows open toward Corinth. Windows open toward Athens. Windows open
toward Sodom. Windows open toward the flats, instead of windows open
toward the hills. Sad mistake, for this world as a god is like
something I saw the other day in the museum of Strasburg, Germany--the
figure of a virgin in wood and iron. The victim in olden time was
brought there, and this figure would open its arms to receive him,
and, once infolded, the figure closed with a hundred knives and lances
upon him, and then let him drop one hundred and eighty feet sheer
down. So the world first embraces its idolaters, then closes upon them
with many tortures, and then lets them drop forever down. The highest
honor the world could confer was to make a man Roman emperor; but, out
of sixty-three emperors, it allowed only six to die peacefully in
their beds.
The dominion of this world over multitudes is illustrated by the names
of coins of many countries. They have their pieces of money which they
call sovereigns and half sovereigns, crowns and half crowns, Napoleons
and half Napoleons, Fredericks and double Fredericks, and ducats, and
Isabellinos, all of which names mean not so much usefulness as
dominion. The most of our windows open toward the exchange, toward the
salon of fashion, toward the god of this world. In olden times the
length of the English yard was fixed by the length of the arm of King
Henry I., and we are apt to measure things by a variable standard and
by the human arm that in the great crises of life can give us no help.
We need, like Daniel, to open our windows toward God and religion.
But, mark you, that good lion-tamer is not standing at the window, but
kneeling, while he looks out. Most photographs are taken of those in
standing or sitting posture. I now remember but one picture of a man
kneeling, and that was David Livingstone, who in the cause of God and
civilization sacrificed himself; and in the heart of Africa his
servant, Majwara, found him in the tent by the light of a candle,
stuck on the top of a box, his head in his hands upon the pillow, and
dead on his knees. But here is a great lion-tamer, living under the
dash of the light, and his hair disheveled of the breeze, praying. The
fact is, that a man can see further on his knees than standing on
tiptoe. Jerusalem was about five hundred and fifty statute miles from
Babylon, and the vast Arabian Desert shifted its sands between them.
Yet through that open window Daniel saw Jerusalem, saw all between it,
saw beyond, saw time, saw eternity, saw earth, and saw heaven. Would
you like to see the way through your sins to pardon, through your
troubles to comfort, through temptation to rescue, through dire
sickness to immortal health, through night to day, through things
terrestrial to things celestial, you will not see them till you take
Daniel's posture. No cap of bone to the joints of the fingers, no cap
of bone to the joints of the elbow, but cap of bone to the knees, made
so because the God of the body was the God of the soul, and especial
provision for those who want to pray, and physiological structure
joins with spiritual necessity in bidding us pray, and pray, and pray.
In olden time the Earl of Westmoreland said he had no need to pray,
because he had enough pious tenants on his estate to pray for him;
but all the prayers of the church universal amount to nothing unless,
like Daniel, we pray for ourselves. Oh, men and women, bounded on one
side by Shadrach's red-hot furnace, and the other side by devouring
lions, learn the secret of courage and deliverance by looking at that
Babylonish window open toward the south-west! "Oh," you say, "that is
the direction of the Arabian Desert!" Yes; but on the other side of
the desert is God, is Christ, is Jerusalem, is heaven.
The Brussels lace is superior to all other lace, so beautiful, so
multiform, so expensive--four hundred francs a pound. All the world
seeks it. Do you know how it is made? The spinning is done in a dark
room, the only light admitted through a small aperture, and that light
falling directly on the pattern. And the finest specimens of Christian
character I have ever seen or ever expect to see are those to be found
in lives all of whose windows have been darkened by bereavement and
misfortune save one, but under that one window of prayer the
interlacing of divine workmanship went on until it was fit to deck a
throne, a celestial embroidery which angels admired and God approved.
But it is another Jerusalem toward which we now need to open our
windows. The exiled evangelist of Ephesus saw it one day as the surf
of the Icarian sea foamed and splashed over the bowlders at his feet,
and his vision reminded me of a wedding-day when the bride by sister
and maid was having garlands twisted for her hair and jewels strung
for her neck just before she puts her betrothed hand into the hand of
her affianced: "I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband." Toward that bridal Jerusalem are our windows opened?
We would do well to think more of heaven. It is not a mere annex of
earth. It is not a desolate outpost. As Jerusalem was the capital of
Judae, and Babylon the capital of the Babylonian monarchy, and London
is the capital of Great Britain, and Washington is the capital of our
own republic, the New Jerusalem is the capital of the universe. The
king lives there, and the royal family of the redeemed have their
palaces there, and there is a congress of many nations and the
parliament of all the worlds. Yea, as Daniel had kindred in Jerusalem
of whom he often thought, though he had left home when a very young
man, perhaps father and mother and brothers and sisters still living,
and was homesick to see them, and they belonged to the high circles of
royalty, Daniel himself having royal blood in his veins, so we have in
the New Jerusalem a great many kindred, and we are sometimes homesick
to see them, and they are all princes and princesses, in them the
blood imperial, and we do well to keep our windows open toward their
eternal residence.
It is a joy for us to believe that while we are interested in them
they are interested in us. Much thought of heaven makes one heavenly.
The airs that blow through that open window are charged with life, and
sweep up to us aromas from gardens that never wither, under skies that
never cloud, in a spring-tide that never terminates. Compared with it
all other heavens are dead failures.
Homer's heaven was an elysium which he describes as a plain at the
end of the earth or beneath, with no snow nor rainfall, and the sun
never goes down, and Rhadamanthus, the justest of men, rules. Hesiod's
heaven is what he calls the islands of the blessed, in the midst of
the ocean, three times a year blooming with most exquisite flowers,
and the air is tinted with purple, while games and music and
horse-races occupy the time. The Scandinavian's heaven was the hall of
Walhalla, where the god Odin gave unending wine-suppers to earthly
heroes and heroines. The Mohammedan's heaven passes its disciples in
over the bridge Al-Sirat, which is finer than a hair and sharper than
a sword, and then they are let loose into a riot of everlasting
sensuality.
The American aborigines look forward to a heaven of illimitable
hunting-ground, partridge and deer and wild duck more than plentiful,
and the hounds never off the scent, and the guns never missing fire.
But the geographer has followed the earth round, and found no Homer's
elysium. Voyagers have traversed the deep in all directions, and found
no Hesiod's islands of the blessed. The Mohammedan's celestial
debauchery and the Indian's eternal hunting-ground for vast multitudes
have no charm. But here rolls in the Bible heaven. No more sea--that
is, no wide separation. No more night--that is, no insomnia. No more
tears--that is, no heart-break. No more pain--that is, dismissal of
lancet and bitter draught and miasma, and banishment of neuralgias and
catalepsies and consumptions. All colors in the wall except gloomy
black; all the music in the major-key, because celebrative and
jubilant. River crystalline, gate crystalline, and skies crystalline,
because everything is clear and without doubt. White robes, and that
means sinlessness. Vials full of odors, and that means pure regalement
of the senses. Rainbow, and that means the storm is over. Marriage
supper, and that means gladdest festivity. Twelve manner of fruits,
and that means luscious and unending variety. Harp, trumpet, grand
march, anthem, amen, and hallelujah in the same orchestra. Choral
meeting solo, and overture meeting antiphon, and strophe joining
dithyramb, as they roll into the ocean of doxologies. And you and I
may have all that, and have it forever through Christ, if we will let
Him with the blood of one wounded hand rub out our sin, and with the
other wounded hand swing open the shining portals.
Day and night keep your window open toward that Jerusalem. Sing about
it. Pray about it. Think about it. Talk about it. Dream about it. Do
not be inconsolable about your friends who have gone into it. Do not
worry if something in your heart indicates that you are not far off
from its ecstasies. Do not think that when a Christian dies he stops,
for he goes on.
An ingenious man has taken the heavenly furlongs as mentioned in
Revelation, and has calculated that there will be in heaven one
hundred rooms sixteen feet square for each ascending soul, though this
world should lose a hundred millions yearly. But all the rooms of
heaven will be ours, for they are family rooms; and as no room in your
house is too good for your children, so all the rooms of all the
palaces of the heavenly Jerusalem will be free to God's children and
even the throne-room will not be denied, and you may run up the steps
of the throne, and put your hand on the side of the throne, and sit
down beside the king according to the promise: "To him that overcometh
will I grant to sit with me in my throne."
But you can not go in except as conquerors. Many years ago the Turks
and Christians were in battle, and the Christians were defeated, and
with their commander Stephen fled toward a fortress where the mother
of this commander was staying. When she saw her son and his army in
disgraceful retreat, she had the gates of the fortress rolled shut,
and then from the top of the battlement cried out to her son, "You can
not enter here except as conqueror!" Then Stephen rallied his forces
and resumed the battle and gained the day, twenty thousand driving
back two hundred thousand. For those who are defeated in the battle
with sin and death and hell nothing but shame and contempt; but for
those who gain the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ the gates of
the New Jerusalem will hoist, and there shall be an abundant entrance
into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord, toward which you do well to
keep your windows open.