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.