D 524 .F47 Copy 1 ri FALLEN GATES WILLIAM H. FISHBURN (Price Ten Cents) The Fallen Gates of Civilization --^•><:> By RE\^ WILLIAM H. FISH BURN, D.D. -oOo- A Sermon Delivered in West Adams Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles, California, May 19, 1918 <^ Published by order of the Session. The Fallen Gates Of Civilization Neh. 2:13, "I went out by night and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire." How the ancient Hebrew did love Jerusa- lem, the Holy City ! He fell on his face in rap- ture when he beheld, standing on a mountain top, his temple, a vision of gold and marble, reflecting the first flash of the morning sun from its shining pinnacles! ''Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, the City of the Great King," sang the opening chorus in Solomon's Temple three thousand years ago; and the antiphonal chorus, led by the silver trumpets, sent back the answering song: "Let Mount Zion rejoice ! Let the daughters of Judah be glad !" For hundreds of years, for nearly five hun- dred years, the historians say, the city of Jeru- salem grew great and rich, and the glorious temple stood there on its hilltop saluting the morning sun. Vast wealth accumulated. Tar- gets of beaten gold hung massively on palace walls. There were chests filled with jewels of price. There were treasures of ivory. Silver was as plentiful as stones in the city streets. Jerusalem was a prize. It was crammed with rich booty. It was tempting to the greedy eyes of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. It was a city to be looted. It was a storehouse to be pillaged. And Nebuchadnezzar came upon it with his strong army. He besieged it. He conquered it. He filled his wagons with the wealth of it. He beat down its twenty Gates with his battering rams. He broke down its walls of stone. He burnt with fire its temple, its pal- aces, its mansions, its homes, its houses of merchandise. He found a city of beauty. He left it flat- tened down to the ground, — a smoking ruin. He put its people in chains and carried them away as captives. This Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was the Great Red Hun of thousands of years ago, the pre-historic Hun, — and his soldiers were the Huns of Old Testament times, murdering, pillaging, looting, ravishing, burning, destroy- ing, enslaving, — turning fine silk into sack- cloth, turning beauty into ashes. For fifty-two years after this fiend-man had wrought his will upon it, Jerusalem remained a ruin. Then a Temple was built to take the place of Solomon's Temple. The Temple stood in the midst of broken walls and fallen gates for seventy years, and then Nehemiah came, Nehemiah, the man with a vision, Nehemiah, the man of dauntless courage, — and inspired the people to rebuild the broken walls and to lift up the fallen gates. It was an evil day for Jerusalem when her walls were broken doAvn because the broken walls made her defenseless before her enemies. But there are some separating walls that ought to be broken down, that ought to be removed forever, and that must inevitably be removed before our civilization can become truly, '*A Parliament of Man, a Federation of the World." We of the United States can never again 4 think of ourselves as a walled-in people, as a separate people living here in our own quiet corner of the earth and looking out for no- body but ourselves. The walls between the great Republics, America, France, England, Belgium, Italy, China have gone to pieces and the nations that believe in "governments of the people, by the people and for the people" are beginning to see each other eye to eye and face to face as a great Brotherhood. It will be a good thing when the wall be- tween labor and capital shall be broken down to be built up never again. It will be a good thing when the wall be- tween religious sects which, down in the bot- tom of their hearts, believe in the same God, in the same Holy Spirit, in the same Christ, shall be broken down, shall be ground into fine dust, shall be blown away by God's great purifying winds — and every believer in our Lord shall be to every other believer in our Lord Jesus as a brother unto brother. The walls that separate believer from be- liever are becoming so thin and transparent that bye and bye a child will be able to over- throw them with its little hand. These walls are not defenses but menaces. They hinder more than they help. But the walls about Jerusalem were neces- sary. They were a defense. They prevented the wolves from devouring the sheep. And it was a good day for Jerusalem when Nehemiah came and awakened the people to rebuild the walls and to set up the fallen gates. There is no doubt that when Nebuchadnez- zar came down upon Jerusalem with his hosts of armed men, the citizens asked, "Why does God permit this? If God is God why is our 5 repose disturbed ? Why is our pleasant dream shattered? Why doesn't God interfere?" They asked those questions just as tens of hundreds of people are asking today: '*Why doesn't God stop the war?" **Why does He permit these monstrous wrongs to go on?" **Is there any reason for this war?" "Is there any God at all?" "Did it just happen?" Now, sirs, if you are in any doubt about the existence of God, you'd better get that doubt out of your mind ; and if you think this war came upon our world without any reason, you'd better get that thought out of your mind. God is looking on at this war and sorrow- ing. And there is a reason for it, a sufficient reason for it. When you get home, read the second chap- ter of Jeremiah if you want to know the rea- son why Jerusalem was pillaged, her temple destroyed, her walls torn down, her gates broken, her people enslaved. Here are the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the chapter, — "Be ye astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be ye horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have committed two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters ; and they have hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." And verse 19 reads : "Thine own wicked- ness shall correct thee, and thine own sins shall rebuke thee." Read the chapter at home and think about it, and you will be sure, jut as I am sure, that it is not God who is smiting us with a scourge, but that our own sins, our own remissnesses, national sins and personal sins, are smiting us in this war with a whiplash that draws blood. 6 Don't you imagine for a moment that this war is an accident. Don't you imagine for a moment that God has forgotten us. God is pitying us. God is trying to compel us to set up again in their places the Gates that are broken down, the Fallen Gates of Civilization. Don't you imagine for a moment that God is going to let the world go on to destruction. This war is designed to save it from destruc- tion, to save it from destroying itself, to turn it back from the slippery incline down which it has been rushing at a great speed for many a year. Do you believe that men can go on age after age and defiantly break the good and holy laws that are written in this dear Book and never be called before the bar of jutice and never be made to pay the penalty? Do you believe that our own America that men are dying for, and that you would be willing to die for and I would be willing to die for,- — do you believe that our America is able to lift up clean white hands, and that it would be found guiltless before God? Is there no sin in America that needs to be scourged out of America? Are not there some Fallen Gates in America that need to be lifted up and repaired ? Has not the Gate of Reverence fallen in America, reverence for God's Name, reverence for God's Book, reverence for God's command- ments, reverence for God's house, reverence for God's Day? Has not the Gate of Justice fallen down? Is not Justice flaunted in her own temples? Does not a slobbering, maudlin sympathy set free bad men and bad women as if there were no laws written in our statute books? Has not the Gate of the Family Altar Fallen? Who is thinking about Family Prayer? Who feels nowadays that Family Prayer is the biggest, sweetest thing in family life? Are not there liberal religions, so-called, that have pushed away the old Cross with its Gospel of blood and suffering and pain, that have put the mania-to-be-well in place of the Cross of Jesus, and that would be ready to blast the Rock of Ages from its everlasting foundations and crumble it to powder? Listen, sirs, to the audible speech of men and women in the open marketplaces if you would know whether sacred things are held in veneration ; whether there is a real fear of God before the eyes of a multitude of man- kind ; whether decency is regarded ; whether old age is respected ; whether God's name is reverenced ! We have erred and strayed from God's ways like lost sheep and we need to be brought back. God loves us and He is going to bring us back. The life we are living here was never meant to be smooth and easy. It is meant to forge character on the anvil of hardship, sometimes on the anvil of burning pain. Let us confess it, my people, we have tried to get away from discipline. We have tried to thrust God and religion out of our lives and to let go of ourselves and have our own way. We have grown effeminate. We desire softness. We wish for pampering and cosset- ting and indulging and petting. We have lapsed into softness. So did the people of the Great Monarchies. So did they of Greece. So did they of Rome. And those nations were blotted out of the books. We need to learn hardness, discipline, obe- dience. Professor William Lyon Phelps has a fine essay on "Courtesy" in which he says, "Military training teaches obedience, a quality that our youth sorely need to acquire ; we need to learn politeness. No other nation has neg- lected politeness as we have done." I want to say something about military training as a means whereby we may learn politeness and obedience ; whereby we may get rid of our fiabbiness, spiritual fiabbiness, mental fiabbiness, physical fiabbiness ; where- by we may learn to endure hardness, to take our punishment standing up, to be strong- hearted, to be unafraid. The school of war has its value as a maker of Christian manhood. It is not only a maker of soldiers for our armies. When you look at what war-training has already done for our young men, you cannot help giving praise to war-training. War-training lifts up stooped shoulders, pushes out a flattened chest, gives a spring to the step and a look of unquailing manliness to the eye. Unless we are ready to let our civilization go headlong into bankruptcy, we must have military training. Personally I believe in uni- versal military training. If we had adopted universal military training three and one-half years ago we could put an arm across the seas today and take Prussia by the throat and strangle her to death. Those who say: "T didn't raise my boy to be a soldier" ought to be asked, "What did you raise him to be? Did you raise him to be a mollycoddle?" I believe every boy ought to be taught the manly art of self-defense. I believe every boy ought to learn at what point the trigger is placed on a rifle, how to take aim at a mark and how to hit the mark he aims at. There is a line Biblical authority for mili- tary training. There was good red blood in the veins of King David when he wrote that battle-song in the 144th Psalm : "Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight." The Scottish Presbyterians have made a church hymn of that Psalm and they sing it with en- thusiasm, and that may account for the grim steadiness of the Scottish soldier's aim and the splendid virility of his onslaught. -In our lesson the fallen walls were rebuilt and the gates were lifted up and put back on their hinges. The walls of our civilization are broken and many of the Gates of our civiliza- tion are fallen, but every broken wall is going to be rebuilt and every fallen Gate is going to be restored to its place. Our soldiers who are gone to Europe and who are going to Europe are going as builders. They are going to build up the broken walls and to lift up the fallen gates. Is everybody in America standing back of our soldiers? Is everybody in America doing everything to cheer our soldiers? Is every- body in America doing everything within his power and her power to win the war and to destroy the Hun ? On the contrary there are many who, openly or secretly, are doing their utmost to hinder the winning of the war and the destroying of the Hun. Nehemiah in our lesson paid small attention to the hinderers outside the walls, but he gave some attention to the hinderers on the inside. He had his hinderers and also he had his way of hindering them from hindering. You must read between the lines to know what Nehe- miah did with the hinderer. The hinderer 10 never hindered anybody else after Nehemiah gave him one treatment. Amongst the hinderers who would paralyze the President's hands if they could, who would make this war a colossal failure if they could, who would put the iron yoke of Prussia on your neck and mine if they could, I would name an array of evil and disloyal persons, — alien enemies, profiteers, alien grumblers, I. \V. W.'s, slackers, spies, pacifists, cowards, brewers, saloons, bootleggers, those human coyotes who corrupt the soldier; and along with them I would mention agitators who make inflammatory and malicious speeches, newspapers that think evil and disloyalty in their hearts and print carefully camouflaged evil and disloyalty in their editorial lines, and that ought to be suppressed and suppressed without delay. Our national government has been patient, miraculously patient with these hinderers. They would not be permitted in Hunland. Let anyone in Germany obstruct, and that one will speedily find himself shut up in jail or stand- ing with his back against a stone wall. The Atchison Globe says, "In Germany there are practically no spies. Why? Because they shoot them ; and it doesn't make any differ- ence whether they wear trousers or petti- coats." There are other hinderers, — persons who im- agine that they are optimists, who will tell you they are certain the war will be over by the 15th of next month; pessimists, who break your heart with mournful wailing about the power of the Hun and the total impossibility of beating him. They worry and worry and worry. One of them was found the other day after a splendid Allied victory with his head 11 bent down, worrying. His companion asked him what he was worrying out and he replied : "I'm worrying about what I'm going to be able to worry about after the war is over and there's nothing left to worry about/' There is another group of hinderers that it would not be fair nor right to leave unmen- tioned, and they are to be found amongst our United States Senators and Congressmen who let things go all to sixes and sevens until some calamity is impending, and then make frothy speeches and ofifer fatuous resolutions, and beg excitedly for the opening of a series of "investigations" to find out why things hap- pened just the way they happened. I suppose you will admit that our present Congress is not composed entirely of strong and great men. There are few of them who would be worth painting by an artist, though I imagine a number of them might be the bet- ter for a little white-washing. Thinking of and speaking of the hindered is not a pleasant task, but thinking of and speak- ing of the Helper is a pleasant task, and thanks be to God, in the setting up of the Fallen Gates the Helpers are far, far in the majority. There are thousands upon thou- sands, there are millions upon millions, who are willing Helpers. They are to be found in every section of society. In our lesson of today it is written, "The nobles put not their necks to the work of the Lord." Our nobles today have put their necks in the yoke of military service. This is not a rich man's war; it is not a poor man's war. Both the rich and the poor of America, both the rich and the poor of the Allied Powers are in it, and in it up to the neck. The very flower of England's men went to 12 France the first year of the war, and the vast majority of them are there now, sleeping un- der the sod, between the Channel and the Vosges. "More than a million of Frenchmen and Englishmen," says Mr. James M. Beck, **are sleeping their last sleep in the now for- ever sacred soil of France." Everyone ought to feel the hurt of this war. Some of us are shut out of actual participation in it by infirmity, by age, — but all of us may be helpers. There are some who are shut out of actual participation by cowardice. But there are some cowards who know they are cow- ards and who pray God to give them courage. We were told quite recently of a young man in Pennsylvania who had straw-colored hair, and who requested the prayers of the pastor and people, in order that he might become red- headed. He had heard that red-heads were brave fighters and he was praying the Lord to give him red hair so that he might go forth and fight the Kaiser. He wanted to be a helper. We are living, sirs, in the time of testing, the times that try what sort of stuflt we are made of. We are passing through the period of blood and iron. Talk will not win the war ; sermons will not win the war; but money will greatly contribute to the winning of the war. We have been asked for money. We are go- ing to be asked for more money, and then af- ter that for more money, and as long as our dear boys are "over there" we are going to be asked to give money. The "Boy Scouts" are helping by button- holing us to buy War Saving Stamps. At the Malabar Street School, last week, the chil- dren went out, 250 strong, and paraded 13 through their school district, and sang war- time songs like this: "Sing a song of war-time, a country full of camps; Fifty million patriots buying Saving Stamps. See the pennies flowing in a golden stream To keep the soldiers going and to smash the Kaiser's dream." A man over age cannot be drafted to lick the Kaiser, but he can lick a Thrift Stamp, which is along the same line. The Dallas News says, "A patch on your trousers may be regarded as a thrift stamp." Tomorrow will start the week of the Red Cross Drive for one hundred millions of money. Our lesson tells us that the women helped in the work of lifting up the Fallen Gates. **Shallum, the ruler of the half part of Jerusalem, repaired his portion, he and his daughters. These blessed women, who are working in the Red Cross and for the Red Cross are real women. They do not belong to the clinging vine, coddling, sick-minded class of women. They are clear-headed, forward-looking, bal- anced-minded women, — women who are not afraid of danger or of death. The first ladies of the land, together with the second ladies of the land and all the other ladies of the land are serving, — are knitting, sewing, rolling bandages, making garments, nursing the wounded and the sick, — are doing their bit towards forwarding the work of the Red Cross. Titled English women are driv- ing plows and harrows ; are acting as chauf- feurs. It was told in one of our public prints that Lord Hargraves jumped into a motor-car in London and said to the woman chauffeur, 14 "Drive me to Dorchester House." The chauf- feur said, "All right. Get in." Lord Har- graves said: "I'm accustomed to being ad- dressed as 'My Lord.'" "All right," replied the driver, "you get in. I am accustomed to being addressed as 'My Lady.' " She was his social equal. The Red Cross will get its one hundred mil- lions, Los Angeles will raise its apportionment of three-quarters of a million. No one with a heart will turn away this appeal of the noblest work in the world. A letter came to me from Mr. George S. Fowler, the Executive Secretary of the Red Cross, with these words: "It would require volumes to tell you all that the Red Cross has accomplished,— the lives saved, the suffering assuaged, the starving fed, the homeless shel- tered, the heart-broken comforted." Let me impress it upon you today that the suffering peoples of Europe are looking to America for relief. They have a right to turn their pain-stricken faces towards us. They have a vast claim on America,— the claim of having fought America's battles with the Hun, and having protected America from the rav- ages of the Hun for nearly three years. One of the pamphlets sent out calls the Red Cross "The Army behind the Army," and as- sures us that so great is the work and the de- mands made upon them that "Our giving must shake us to the very foundations." "We must give more than we are able." "You have bought Liberty Bonds," says the pamphlet, "and War Saving Stamps, and have already contributed all you can spare to the Red Cross, but you must give, give, give,— give more and more, because if you're not suffer- 15 ing, you're not giving." ''Don't think of your giving as a sacrifice. Think of it as a privi- lege." ''When you give you are fighting as surely as if you had a gun in your hand. This is not benevolence, it is War. Your act is Valor." The Red Cross is helping millions. "It is gathering in the poor little children, wasted waifs of the war-swept area." "It is main- taining the Red Cross Canteen, that Hail Fel- low of a saddened world." Do thy share ! Do thy share ! Give as thou art able to give. You will be helping in lift- ing up the Fallen Gates of our Civilization. You will be helping to bring the war to a tri- umphant close. "Over the din of battle, over the cannon's rattle, Over the strident voices of men and their dying groans, I hear the falling of Thrones." *'Out of the wild disorder that spreads from border to border, I see a new world rising from ashes of an- cient towns ; And the Rulers wear no crowns." FrM Timet Society Print. 74A Crocker St., Los Anffcles, Cal., U. S. A. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 547 589 P *