2 Chronicles 2:17-18

And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel.

Naturalisation of foreigners

I. A good government will tend to make a country attractive to foreigners.

II. Foreigners thus attracted are amenable to the laws of the state.

III. Thus protected, they may contribute materially to the enrichment of a state by the importation of foreign industries. Silk-weavers of Spitalfields.

V. Be kind to strangers. (Bibical Museum.)

Strangers in the city

I. Strangers in a city are in danger from the temptation to explore the underground life of the community. I believe that three-fourths of the young men of our cities are ruined for the simple reason that they went to look at iniquity. In 1794, during the Reign of Terror in Paris, there were people who, to hide from their persecutors, got into the sewers under the city, and went on mile after mile amid the stifling atmosphere, poisoned and exhausted, coming out after a while at the river Seine, where they washed and breathed again the pure air. But, alas! that so many men who attempt to explore underground New York life never come to a river Seine, where they can wash, and they die horribly in the sewers. I stand on a mountain of Colorado, six thousand feet high. There is a man standing beneath me who says, “I see a peculiar shelving to this rock,” and he bends towards it. I say, “Stop, you will fall.” He says, “No danger; I have a steady hand and foot, and see a peculiar kind of moss.” I say, “Stand back”; but he says, “I am not afraid”; and he bends farther and farther, and after a while his head whirls and his feet slip--and the eagles know not that it is the macerated flesh of a man they are picking at, but it is. So I have seen men come to the very verge of the life of this city, and they look away down in it. They say, “Don’t be cowardly. Let us go down.” They look farther and farther. I warn them to stand back; but Satan comes behind them, and while they are swinging over the verge, pushes them off. People say they were naturally bad. They were not? They were engaged in exploration. No man can afford to sail so near the coast of eternal fire for the purpose of discovering how hot it is. Stand off from that exploration. If you are a good swimmer, and you see a man drowning, leap for him and bring him ashore; but if you are merely going to jump in to see him drown, stand back.

II. Strangers in a city are in danger from the temptation to desecrate the Sabbath. There is not one in ten who knows how to keep the Lord’s day when he is away from home and absent from all Christian influences.

III. Strangers in a city are not safe without Christian restraint. (T. De Witt Talmage.).