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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Advocate, 1894-8-30, Page 3"'WORST 0:' ALL CRIMES,' 111 . '1'Atall AGE HAKES "SUICIDE" THE .SUBJECT O19' A TEXT. 'Do Thyself No Harm—The Conscience Needs to be Toned on the Subject of Sarcina -The Preacher Prays for a Christian Life and a Christian Death, BOY. Dr. Talmage, who is now abroad, .leas selected as the subject for his sermon through . the prees the word " Suicide," the texts being Acts xvi., 27-28. "Fie "drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had :fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, sayilig, ' Do thyself no harm,' " Hero i•s a would-be suicide arrested in his deadly attempt. He was a sheriff, and, .according to. the Roman law, a bailiff himself must suitor the punishment duo an escaped prisoner; mad, if the prisoner breaking jail was sentenced to be endun •geoned for three or four years, then the sheriff must be enduingeoned for three or four year's; and, if the prisoner breaking .jail was to have suffered capitalpunish- ment, than the sheriff must stiffer capital punishment.. The sheriff had received especial charge to keep a sharp lookout for Paul and Silas, The government had not had confidence in bolts and bars to keep safe these two clergymen, alio at whom there seemed to be something strange and supernatural. Sure enough, by miraculous power, they are free, and the sheriff, waking out •of a sound sleep, and supposing those ministers have ran away, and. knowing that they were to die for preaching -Christ, and realizing that he must there- fore die, rather than go under the exect- tioner's ax on the morrow and suffer pub - lie disgrace, resolves to precipitate his own decease. But before the sharp, keen, glittering dagger of the sheriff could strike his heart, ono of the unloosened prisoners .arrests the blade by the command, " Do thyself no harm." Its olden time, and when Christianity had not interferred with it, suicide was • considered honorable and a sign of cour- age. Demosthenes poisoned himself when told that Alexander's Ambassador had de- .inancle& the surrender of the Athenian orators. Cato; rather than submit to Julia Caesar, took his own life, and after three times his wounds had been dressed tore them open and perished. Mithri- dates killed himself rather than submit to Pompey, the conqueror. Hannibal de- stroyed his life by poison from his ring, •consider-ing life unbearable. Lyonugus a suicide, Brutus a suicide. After the &lis - aster of Moscow, Napoleon always carried a preparation of opium, and one night his • servant heard. the ex -emperor arise, put something in a glass and drink it, and •soon after the groans aroused all the at- tendants, and it was only through utmost medical skill he was resuscitated from the : stupor of the opiate. Times have changed, and yet the con- science needs to bo toned up on the sub- ject of suicide. Have you seen a paper in the last month that did not announce the passage out of life by one's own behest? Defaulters, alarmed at the idea of expo- sure, quit life precipitately. Merl losing large fortunes go out of the world be- cause they cannot endure earth- ly existence. Frustrated affection, do- mestic infelicity, dyspeptic impatience, .anger, remorse, envy, jealousy, destitu- tion, misanthropy are considered siv - ,tient causes for absconding from this life by Paris green, by laudanum, by belle,- donna, elle-donna, by Othello's dagger, by halter, by leap from the abutment of a bride, by firearms. More cases of " felo de se " in the last two years of the world's ex- istence. The evil is more and more *spreading. A. pulpit not long ago expressed some doubt as to whether there was really any- thing wrong about quitting this life when it became disagreeable, and there are found in respectable circles people apolo- getic for the crime which Paul in the text arrested. I shall show you before I get through that suicide is the worst of all -crimes, and I shall lilt a warning unmis- takable. But in the early part of this -sermon I wish to admit that some of the best Christians that have ever lived have .committed self-destruction, but always in •dementia, and not responsible. I have no snore doubt about their eternal felicity than I have of the Christian who dies in his beet in the delirium of typhoid fever. "While the shock of the catastrophe is very great, I charge all those who have had -Christian friends under cerebral aberra- tion. step off the boundaries of this life, to .have no doubt about their happiness. The dear Lord took them right out of their dazed and frenzied state into perfect safety. How Christ feels towards the in- sane you may know from .the kind way the treated -the demoniac of Gadara and the child lunatic, and the potency with whieh he hushed the tempests either of ,sea or.brain. Scotland, the land prolific of intellect trial giants, had none greater than Hugh .Miller. Great for science and great for 'God. He came of the best Highland blood, and he was a descendant of Donald Roy, a man eminent for his piety and the rare gift of second sight. His attain- ments, climbing up as he did,from the 'quarry and the wall of the stonemason drew forth the astonished admiration of Back -land and Murchison the scientists, and Dr. Chalmers, the theolo ,ian, and held universities spellbound whsle he told thein the story of what he had seen of God in the old red sandstone. That pian did more than any being that ever lived to show that the God of the hills is the God of the Bible, and lie -struck his tuning -fork on the rocks of 'Cromarty, until he brought geology and theology accordant in divine worship. His two books, entitled 'Footprintsof the 'Creator" and the "Testimony of the Rocks," proclaimed the banns of an ever- ftasting marriage between genuine science and revelation, On this latter book he toiled day and night through love of na- ture and love of God, until he could not sleep and his 'brain gave way, and ho was :found dead with a revolver by his side, the cruel instrument having had two bul- lets—one for him and the other' for the „gunsmith who at the coroner's inquest was examining it and fell dead. Have ou anydoubt of the beautification of Hugh iller, after his hot brain hadeoaa- ed throbbing that winter night in his study at Portobello? Among the mightiest • ,nf earth, among the mightiest of heaven. No one ever cloubtec't.the piety of Wil- liam Cowper, the anther of those three 'hymns, "Oh, for a closer walk with God," "What various hindrances we meet," "'!'.here is a fountain :filled with blood," 'William Camper, who shares with Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley the chief ban - ma of •Christian, hymnology, In hypo 0ndria he resolved to take his own life; :incl rode back to his home and that night a man seated on some goods at the very point from whieh he expected to spring threw himself upon hisown knife, but the blade broke, and then he hanged him- self to the ceiling, but the rope parted, No wonder that when God mercifully de- livered him from that awful dementia ho sat.down and wrote that other hyxnnj jus as. memorable God mows In a mysterious wayy'„a, His wonders to perform' He plants his footsteps in the sesta And rides upon the storm, Blind unbelief is surd to erg And scan his. work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And ho will make it plain. While we make this merciful and right - oils allowance in regard to those who Were plunged into mental incoherence, I declare that the man who in the use of his reason, 'by his own act, snaps the bond between his body and his soul, goes straight into perdition. Shall' prove it? Revelation, 21, 8 : "Murderers shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fee and brimstone." You do not believe the New T estamot? Then, en, 1srha1 s, you will believe the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not kill." Do you say all these passages refer to the taking the life of others ? Then I ask you if you aro not as responsible for your own life as for the life of others? God gave you a special trust in your life. He made you the cus- todian of your life as He made you the eustodian of no other life. ; He gave you as weapons with which to defend it two arms to strikeback assailants ; two eyes to'watch for invasion, and a natural love of life which ought ever to be onthe alert. Assassination of others is a mild crime compared with the -assassination of your- self, because in the latter case it is treach- ery to an especial trast; it is the surren- der of a castle you were especially ap- pointed to keep ; it is treason to a natural law, and it is treason to God added to or- dinary murder.1 To show how God in 'the Bible looked! upon this crime, I point. you to the rogues' picture gallery in some parts of the Bible, the pictures of the people who Have com- mitted this unnatural crime. Here is the headless trunk of Saul on the walls of Cathshan: Here is the man who chased little David—ten feet in stature chasing four. Here is the man who consulted a clairvoyance, Witch of Endor. Here is a man who, whipped in battle, instead of surrendering his sword with dignity, as many a roan has clone, asks his servant to slay him, and when the servant declines, then the giant plants the hilt of the sword in the earth, the sharp point stick- ing upward, and he throws his body on it and expires, the cowarcl, the suicide. Here is Ahltophel, the Machiavelli of old- en times, betraying his best friend Daviel in order that he may become prime min- ister of Absalom, and joining that fellow in his attempt at parricide. Not getting what he wanted by change of politics, lie takes a shortcut out of a disgraceful life into the suicide's eternity. There he is, the ingrate ! Bat the hero of this group is Judas Iscariot. Dr. Donne says he was a martyr, and we have in our day apolo- gists for him. And what wonder, in this day when we have a book revealing Aaron Burr as a pattern of virtue, and in this day whon we uncover a statue to George Sand as the benefactress of literature, and in. this day when there aro betrayals of Christ on the part of some of His pretend- ed apostles—a betrayal so blaclf'it makes the infamy of Judas Iscariot white. Yet this man by his own hand hung up for the execration of all the ages, Judas Isca- riot. All the good inen and women of the Bible left to God the decision of their earthly terminus, and they could have said with Job, who had a right to com- mit suicide if any man ever had—what with his destroyed property, and his body all aflame witn insufferable carbuncles, and everything gone from his home ex- cept the chief cause of it, a pestiferous wife, and four garralus people pelting hire with comfortless talk while he sits on. a heap of ashes scratching his scabs with a piece of broken pottery, yet cry- ing out in triumph: "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my, change come." Notwithstanding the Bible is against the evil, and the aversion which it cre- ates by the loathsome and ghastly spec- tacle of those who have hurled themselves out of life, and.notwithstanding Chris- tianity is against it, and the arguments and the useful lives and the illustrious deaths of the disciples, it a fact alarm- ingly patent that suicide is on the in- crease. What is the cause? I charge upon infidelity and Agnosticism this whole thing. If there be no hereafter, or if that hereafter be blissful without refer- ence to how we live and how we die, why not move back the folding floras between this world and the next? And when our existence here becomes troublesome, why not pass right over to Elysium?' Pat this down among your most solemn refloc- tions, and consider it after you go to your homes; there has never been.a case of suicide where the operator was not either demented, and therefore irrespons- ible, or an infidel. 1 challenge all the ages, and I challenge the whole universe. There never has been a case of self- destruction while in full appreciation of his immortality and of the fact that that immortalitywould be glorious or wretched according as he accepted Jesus Christ or rejected him, You say it is busiuess .trouble or you writ, is electrical currents, or it is t]iis, or it is that, or it is the other thing. Why not go clear back .my friend, and ac- knowledge that in the teaching of infidel- ity which practically says, `"If you don't like this lifer get out of ft, and. you will land either in annihilation, where there are no notes to pay, no persecutions to suffer, no gout to torment, or you will land where there will be everything glorious and nothing to pay for it." In- fidelity always has been . apologetic for self -immolation. After Tom Paine's "Age of Reason" was published and wide- ly read there was a marked iinerease of self. -slaughter. A man in London heard Mr. Ower de- liver his infidel lecture on Socialism and went home and sat clown and wrote these words "Jesus Christ is one of the weak- est characters in history and the Bible is the greatest possible deception," and then shot himself. David lams wrote these words: "It would be no erime for me to divert the Nile or the Danube from its natural bad. Where then, can be the calms in my diverting a few drops of blood from their ordinary channel?" And having written the essay,, he loaned it' to a friend; the friend. road it, wrote a letter of thanks and than shot himself, Appendix to the same book. BRousseatt, Voltaire Gibbon Mortaigo.e under certain circumstances wore apolo- getie for self -immolation: Infidelity puts up no bar to people's rushing out from this world into the 'next. They teach us it does not make any difference how you Tao hero or go out of this world—you will land either in an oblivious nowhere or a glorious somewhere, And infidelity holds the upper end of the rope for the suicide and aims the pistol with whieh a man blows his brains out, and mixes the stryehnine for the last swallow. If in- fidelity could carry the day and persuade the majority of people that it does not make any difference how you go out of the world you will laud safely, the rivers would be so all of corpses the ferry boats would be impeded in their progress, and the crack of a suicide's pistol would be no more alarming than the rumble of a street car. •T have sometimes heard it discussed whether the great dramatist was a Chris- tian or not, I do not know, but I know that he considered appreciation of a fattire existence the mightiosi hindrance to self- destruction: • For who would bear the whips and scorns 'of e, Tho oppressor's wrong, the prond man's eon - tamely, . The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of aloe,and the spurns That patient merit of te unworthy takes When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels boar, To grunt arid sweat under a weary life But that the dread of something after death— The undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveler returns—puzzles the will. Would'God that the coroners would be brave in. rendering the right verdict, and when in the case of irresponsibility they say, " While this man was demented lie took his life ;" in the other ease say, "Having read infidel hooka ,and attended infidel lectures, which obliterated from this man's mind all appreciation of any- thing like future retribution, he commit- ted self -slaughter ! "d Ah. ! Infidelity, stand up and take thy sentence! In the presence of God and. angels and men, stand up, thou monster, thy lip blasted by blasphemy, thy eheek scarred with list, they breath foul with corruption of the ages! Stand. up Satyr, filthy goat, buz and of the nations, leper of the centuries ! Stand up, thon monster Infidelity. Part mail, part panther, part reptile, part dragoon stand up and take thy sentence ! Thy . rands are. red' with the blood in which thou bast washed, thy. feet crimson. with the human gore through which thou hast waded, stand up and take thy sentence ! Down with thee to the pit and sup on the sobs andgroans of families thou has blasted, and roll on the bed of knives which thou hast sharpened for others, and let thy music be the everlast- ing miserere of those whom thou. hast damned! Ibrancl the forehead. of Tnficlel- ity with all the crimes of self -immolation of the last century on the part of those who bad. their reason. My friends, if ever you live through its abrasions and its molestations should seem to be unbearable, and you are tempted to quit it by your own behest, do not con- sider yourselves as worse than others. Christ himself was tempted to cast himself from the roof of the temple 1 but as He resisted, so resist ye. Christ came to medicine all our wounds. In your trouble prescribe life instead of death. People who have had. it worse than you will ever have it have gone songful on their way. Remember that God keeps the chronology of your life withas much precision as chronology keeps the chronology of nations, your death as well as your birth, your grave as well as your cradle. Why was it that at midnight, just at midnight, the destroying angel struck the plow that set the Israelites free from bondage? The four hundred and thirty years were up at twelve o'clock that night. The four hundred and thirty years were not up at eleven, and one o'clock would have been tardy anal too late. The four hundred and thirty years went up at twelve o'clock, and the destroying angel struck the blow and Isrel was free. • And God knows just the hour when it is time to lead you tip from earthly bondage. By His grace make not the worst of things, but the best of them. If you must take the pills do not chew them. Your ever- lasting rewards will accord with your earthly perturbations, just as Cain gave to Agrippa a chain of gold just as heavy as had been his chain of iron. For your asking, you may have the same grace as was given to the Italian martyr, Algerias, who, down in the darkest of dungeons, dated his letter from " the delectable orchard of the Leonine prison." And remember that this brief life of ours is surrounded by a rim, and a very thin but very important rim, and close up to that rim is a great eternity, and you had better keep out of it until God breaks that rim and separates this from. that. To get rid. of the sorrows of earth, do not rush into greater sorrows. To get rid of a swarm of summer insects, leap not into a jungle of Bengal tigers. There is a sorrowless world, and it is so radiant that the noonday sun is only the lowest doorstep, and the aurora that lights up otu northern heavens, confounding astronomers as to what it can be, is the waving of the banners of the procession come to take the conquerors home from ehurch militant to church triumphant, and you and I have ten thousand reasons for wanting to go there, but we will never get there either by self -immolation or im- psnitency. All oar sins slain by; the Christ who came to do that thing, we want to go in at just the time divinely ar- ranged, and from a coach divinely spread, and then the clang of the sepulchral gates behind us will be overpowered by the clang of the opening:o 1 the solid pearl before us. 0 Gocl, whatever others niay choose, give ms a Christian's life, a Christian's death, a Christian's burial, a' Christian's immortality. A. VERY SUDDEN DROP. "I see," said the grocer thoughtlessly,' for he had forgotten that the man with the ginger beard was sitting behind. the ,. drop- pedstove, � see that the temperature1 pec. twenty degrees in fifteen minutes down in Texas the other day." "1 1 don't call that nothing," said the roan with the ginger beard. "I remem- ber when they was a party of us eampin' up in the. Black Hills that the tempera- ture drappecl so sudden that one of the armies in the outfit, which was in the act of kiekin', was caught and. frozethat way, an.' stood with his heels in the air two clays. We had a thermometer along, but the cussed thing went back on us, so I can't ozzactly say jist how much of a (trap it was." ' " Oh yes," said the school teacher, "it is a well-known fact that at a tempera- ture o:f about forty degrees below zero the mercury freezes and hence cannot regis- ter." a a. That wasn't it at all, young man," said the man with the ginger beard, with fine scorn. "The darn inercury dtiap• ped so quickthat it iilacle it rod hof and beet - ed the glass." The Irian from :Potato Creek began td snicker, but the man with thein ger it beard stopped his mirth with a stony . gIaro . MISCELLANEOUS READING ORATE AS WELL AS f*AY. Reading For Leisure Moments for Old and Young, Intoristing and Proflta bre.. M,y ].Neighbor. My nsighbdownor farwas a widder, an' she lied a run - An' her cows an' pigs an' chickens done a, mighty lot o' harm To my fields ajinin', an' I stood it quite awhile, Till I wouldn't be imposed on in no rich kind o' style. • So I loherokodoord my very maddest ez I walked up.to , Tili slienp lookedthoitoor, ep at me smilin', while a-washin' An' hbler ehackeeksesniwasht ; red es roses an' her hair; es I forgot to sold an' sass her, for she scorned so sweet an' bright. But my hand was to the plow now, an' it wouldn't never do To forher shget thoeem depredations jes' by lookin.' at , So I gMathers, redBrown,' up r - anger, an' I said : "Now, m An' my tone put out her eyes' light, an' the lashes they fell down. But I ain't onto nosay man for foolin',. an' I went right How htoerns pigsofhayet all my melons. an' her sows `et ; How her chickens scratched my corn out, an' I wouldn't have it so. Giffin' harder all the time, likeyamadman will, you know. • Then the widder she looked up, with a teardrop on her cheek; An' a tonssomothin' in her throat that wouldn't let her speak, But she sobbed, an' cried out, in a kind o' teary , That alieall hodalone. no one to help her, an' was poor au' An' my hand was off the plow then, an' a -reach - in' out fur kern, I lied learnt a sudden lesson thatI never though t ' I'd learn. Well, my scoidin' was a failure, soein' what I thought to do, • For her pigs an' cows are all here, an' the wid- der's with 'em, too. Days Gone By. 0,the days gone by ! 0, the days gone by ! Te apple in the orchard and the pathway through the rye; The chirrup of the robin and the whistle of the quail, As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale; When the bloom was on the clover and the blue was in the sky, And my happy heart brimmed over in the days gone by. In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honeysuckle's tangles, where the water lilies dippped And the ripple of the river lipped the moss along the brink, Where the placid -eyed and lazy -footed tattle carne to drink, And the tiltingsnipe stood fearless of the truant's wayward cry, And the splashing of the swimmer in the i days gone by. 0 the days gone by 1 0, the days gone by The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the e�yyes The childrsh faith in fairies and Aladdin's magic ring, The simple, soul -reposing, glad belief in every- thing, When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, In the olden, golden glory of ,the days gone by. NOT FOR A QUARTER, The Old Tian Wanted More for Chang- ing His Grandsons' Names. Old man Sam was sitting one morning in front of his cabin enjoying the warmth of the sun, While his two little grandsons played about his feet. Just then the young sons of his former master, who were visiting in the neigh- borhoocl, strolled up to have a chat with Sam. After talking with him a while they handed him a bag of tobacco and a handful of cigars, and were about to leave when they observed the children, and one of them asked whose they were. "Derv's my gran'sons, Mimy's boys," replied Sam. A sudden thought seemed to come to him as he looked at the young men, and a crafty look crept over his face as he added : "Day's named after you an' Mars' An- drew, Mars' Milton,, 'cause cley's twins, jos' like you is." The brothers commented on the fine looks of the children and their wonderful difference in size, for awing. "One twin ginorally is bigger'n t'er one," explained. Sam. The young men smiled and gave each child a quarter as they left. They had scarcely turned the corner of the cabin when they saw, through a crack, Sant take the coins from the children, look at them, and with a grunt of disap- pointmeut at what he considered a small return of his artifice, drop them in his own pocket. "Ninny," he called to his daughter, standing in the door, "you call dem chil- lens Sam an' Jake, same ez you always done. Dey ain't no two-bit ehillen. Hit's wutli er dollar to change day names, an' I had to make 'em twins, too." A Valuable Chattel. In the old times in South Carolina, liv- ed a planter whom we shall call Col. Gon- zales, because that is as near his name as is necessary for this chronicle, and he had in his possession a house servant of great usefulness, who shall be called Uncle Isaac. Uncle Isaac was born and raised in the house, and he was as rank an artis- toerat as any scion of the proudest family in the state. Bach summer the old colonel went north, leaving the place and all the slaves in charge of an overseer, upon whom Uncle Isaac looked with all the scorn one of his class had for "poor white trash," whatever their position might be. So strong was his reptingance to the over seer that as soon as the master left the place Uncle Isaac was wont to take to the woods, and, during the absence of his master, enact the role of runaway slave, preferring that risk to remaining un.dor control of the despised overseer. When. the master returned in the fall, the first person to greet him was Uncle Isaac. The colonel had been advised of this sinniner eccentricity of Uncle Isaac's, and on one of the occasions of effusive welcome home by the oldservant it occurred to him to administer fitting rebuke, " Stop that, you black reseal," he com- manded. right in the midst of Uncle Isaac's most flowery speech. '"I want to know why you run away every time I leave home and stay away all summer?" Unele Isaac was taken aback, but soon recovered. "Deed, Ma's Izunnol," he ex- plained, "Ise done done dat to putteck yo' property, sah. You don't spec' Ise painter stay rotor' limb, an' gib dot obah- seeab achance at yo' property, sah, to do as he please wicl hit an' cleprciate its value, sah. ; does yer, sah?" The colonel know of Unelo Isaac's feel- ing toward rho overseer, and he knew the overseer had no lnoro ,love for the old man, so he accepted the explanation and said liq more about it. Thousands of Young and Middle 404 Men are annually swept to a premature grave through early indiscretion and later sxcessee. Self abuse and Constitutional Blood Diseases have ruined and wreaked the lite of many aromieing young man. Tuve you S any of the following Symptoms: Nervous and. Despondent; Tired in Morning" ido Arabi - Soil,' Memory Poor; Essay Fatigued; l?.xcitable and Irritable: Eyes Blur• Pimples the Face; Dreams and Drains at Night; Restless; Haggar Looking; Blotehes;