The Russellville Democrat., 1889-03-28
TALMAGE's SERMON.
"rhe Moonlight Ride' of Nehemiah
 Discoursed Upon.
Affection for the Church Among True worshippers only Second to that for Home-The Satisfying Innu-
 ence of Christian Labor.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, in recent sermon at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, took for his subject "The Moonlight Rideo of Nehemiah. His text was:
 Then went up in the night by the brook and viewed the wall and turned back and entered by the gate Of the valley, and so returned. - Nehemiah, H., IS.
 A dead city is more suggestive than 6 living one-past Rome than living Rome
 ruins rather than newly-frescoed ca- thedral. But the best time to visit ruin is by moonlight The Coliseum is far more fascinating to the traveller after sundown than before. You may stand by daylight amid the monastic ruins of Mel rose Abbey, and study shafted oriel and rosetted stone and mullion, but they throw their strongest witchery by moon- light. Some of you remember what the enchanter of Scotland said in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel:"
 wouldst thou view fair Melrose aright,
 Go visit it by the pale moonlight.
 Washington Irving describes the Anda- iasian moonlight upon the Alhambra ruins as amounting to enohantment. My text presents you Jerusalem in ruins. The tower down. The gates down. The walls down. Every thing down. Nehe- miah on horseback, by moonlight looking upon the ruins. While he rides, there are some friends on foot going with him, for they do not want the many horses to disturb the suspicious of the people. These people do not know the secret of Nehemiah's heart, but they are going as a sort of body guard. I hear the click ing hoofs of the horse on which Nehemiah rides as he guides it this way and that, into this gate and out of that, winding through that gate amid the debris of once great Je- rusalem. Now the horse comes to a dead halt at the tumbled masonry where he can not pass. Now he shies of at the charred timbers. Now he comes along where the water under the moonlight flashes from the mouth of the brazen dragon after which the gate was named. Heavy hearted Nehemiah! riding in and out, now by his old home desolated, now by the defaced temple, now amid the scars of the city that had gone down under battering ram and confagration. The escorting party knows not what Nehemiah means. Is he getting crazyf Have his owo personal sorrows, added to the sorrows u the nation, unbalanced his intellecti
 
 Nehemiah on horseback rides through the fish gate, by the tower of the furnaces, by the Kings pool, by the dragon well, in and out in and out until the midnight ride is completed, and Nehemiah dis mounts from his horse, and to the amazed and confounded and incredulous body guard declares the dead secret of his heart 1 when he says: Come, now, let us build Jerusalem" "What, Nehemiah, have you any money?" "No.n Have you any i kingly authority?" "No." Have you any eloquence?" "No." Yet that mid night, moonlight ride of Nehemiah TO- suited in the glorious rebuilding of the | City of Jerusalem. The people knew not l how the thing was to be done, but 1 with great enthusiasm they cried out, "Let us rise up now and build the city" Some people laughed and said it could not be done. Some people were infuriate and offered physical violence, saying the thing should not be done. But the work men went right on, standing on the wall, trowel in one hand, sword in the other, until the work was gloriously completed. At that very time, in Greece, Xenophon was writing history; and Plato was making philosophy, and Demosthenes was rattling his rhetorical thunder, but all of them together did not do so much for the world as this midnight, moonlight ride of praying, courageous, homesick, close- mouthed Nehemiah.
 My subject first inpresses me with the idea what an intense thing is church af- l lection. Seize the bridle of that horse and stop Nehemiah. Why are you risking l your life here in the nightg Your horse l will stumble over these ruins and fall on l of | life. No; Nehemiah will not stop. He at 1 last tells us the whole story. He lets us know he was an exile in far distant land, and he was a servant, cup bearer in the ! palace of Artaxerxes Longimanus. and one day, while he was handing the cup 1 of wine to the King, the King said to him: What is the matter with 1 you! You are not sick. 1 know you must have some great trouble. What is the matter with yous" Then he told the l King how that beloved Jerusalem was | broken down; how that his fathers tomb 1 had been desecrated; how that the tenn 1 pie had been dishonored and defaced; | how that the walls were scattered and l broken. "Well," says King Artaxerxes, "what do you want?" 'Well," said the cup bearer Nehemiah, "I want to go home. I want to 'fx up the grave of my | father. l want to restore the beauty of the temple. I want to rebuild the masonry of the city wall. Besides, l want pass | ports so that I shall not be hindored l in my journey. And besides that" ] as you will find in the context 'I want an order on the man who keeps your forest for just so much timber as I may need for the rebuilding of the city" How long shall you be gone?" said the King. The time of absence is ar- ranged. In hot haste this seeming 'ad- yenturer comes to Jerusalem, and in my ! text we find him on horseback in the midnight, riding around the ruins. It is l through the spectacles of this scene that we discover the ardent attachment of | Nehemiah for sacred Jerusalem, which in all ages has been the type of the Church of God, our Jerusalem which we love just as much as Nehemiah loved his Jerusa- | lem.
 The fact is that you love the Church of God so much that there is no spot on earth so sacred, unless it is your own freside. | The church has been to you so much com | fort and illumination that there is nothing ! that makes you so irate as to have 1t talked | against. If there have been times when ] you have been carried into captivity by | sickness, you longed for the church, our 1 holy Jerusalem, just as much as Nehe- miah longed for his Jerusalem, and the first day you came out you came to the house of the Lord. When the temple was in ruins as ours was years ago, like Nehemiah, you walked around and looked at it. and in the moonlight you stood listening if you could not hear the voice of the dead organ, the psalm of the expired Sabbaths. What Jerusalem was to Nehemiah the Church of God is to you. Skeptics l and infidels may scoff at the Church as an obsolete affair, as a relic of the dark ages, as convention of goody- -goody people, but all the impression they have ever made on your mind against the Church Of God is absolutely nothing. You would make more sacrifices for it to- day than for any other institution and if