Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1888 — CURSE GOD AND YE DIE. [ARTICLE]

CURSE GOD AND YE DIE.

Profanity tbe Great Carse of the Christian World. God'll Natno Blasphemed All Over the Land—A Vile Habit Which Grows and Strengthen* With 1.1 to— Avoid It in Youth » if Yen Would Always be Free. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Text, Job ii., 7, 8 and 9: “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole Of his foot unto his Crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withgl; and he sat down among the ashes. Then said nis wife unto him: ‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die.\” Blasphemy is all abroad. You hear it in every direction. The drayman swearing at his cart, the sewii g girl imprecating the tangled skein, the accountant cursing the long line of troublesome figures. Swearing at the store, swearing in the loft, swearing in tbecellar, swearing on the street,swearing in the factory. Children swear. Men swear. Women swear! Swearing from the rongh calling on the Almighty in the low restaurant, clear up to the reckless “Oh. Lord!” of a glittering drawing room; and the one is as much blasphemy as the other. There are times when we must cry out to the Lord by reason ot our physical tgrny or our mental distress, and that is only throwing out our weak hand toward the strong arm of a father. It was no profanity when James A. Garfield, shot in the Washington Depot, cried out: “My God, what does thismean?” There is no profanity in calling out upon God in the day of trouble, in the day of darkness, in the day of physical anguish, in the day of bereavement 1 but I am speaking now of the trivialitv and of tbe recklessness with which the name of God is sometimes managed. The whole land is cursed with it. A gentleman coming from the far West sat in the car dav after day behind two person's who were indulging in profanity, and he made up his mind that he would make a record of their profanities, and at the end of two days sevtr.il sheets of paper were covered with these imprecations, and at the close of their journey he handed the manuscript to one of the persons in front of him. “Is it possible,” said the man. “that we have uttered so many profanities the last few days? v “It is,” replied the gentleman. “Then,” said the man who had taken the manuscript, “I will never swearagain.” But it is a comparatively unimportant thing if a man makes a record of our improprieties of speech. The more memorable consideration is that every improper word, every oath nttered, has a record in the book of God’s remembrance,and that the day will come when all our crimes of speech, if unrepented of, will be our condemnation. I shall not to-day deaf in I hate abstractions. lam going to have a plain talk with you, my brother, about a habit that you admit to be wrong. The habit grows in the community from the fact that young people think it manly to swear. Little children, hardly able to walk straight; yet have enough distinctness of utterance to let you know that they are damning their own souls, or damning the souls of others. It is an awful thing the first time the little feet are lifted to have them set down on the burning pavement of hell! Between sixteen and twenty years ot age there ii apt to come a time when a young man is as much ashamed of not being able to swear gracefully as he is of the dizziness of his first cigar. He has his hat, his boot and his coat of the right pattern, and now. if he can only swear without awkwardness and as well as his comrades, hebelives he is in the fashion. There are young men who aalk in an atmosphere of imprecation —oaths on the ir lips,under their tongues, nestling in their shock of hair. They abitain from it in the elegant drawing-room, but the street and the c’ub-house ring with their profanities. They have no regard for God, although they have great respiet for the ladies! My young brother, there is no manliness in that. The most ungcntlemanly thing a man can do is to swear. Fathers foster this great crime. There are parents who are very cautious not to swear in the presence of their children; in a moment of sudden they look around to see if the children are present when they indulge in this habit Do you not know, 0 father, that the child is aware of the fact that you swear? He overheard you in the next room, or some one has informed him of your habit. He is practicing now. In ten years he will Swear as well as you do. Dp not. 0 father, be under tbe delusion that you may swear and your son not know it' It is an awful thing to start the hal it in a family—the father to be profane, and then to have, the echo of his examp'e come back from other generations; so that generations after generations curse the Lord, The crime is also fostered by master mechanics, boss carpenters, those who are at the head of men in hat factories, and in dock-yards, and at the head of great business eatablishmen's. When you go down to look at the work of the srano’.ding, and yo t find it is not done right, what do you say? It is not proving, is it? The employer sweare—his employe is tempted to swear. The man says: “I don’t kuowwhy my employ er, worth $50,000 or SIOO,OOO have any luxury I should be denied limply because lam poor. Because I am poor and dependent ona day’s wages haven’t I as much right to swear as he has with li3 large income?” Employers swear, and that makes •so many employes swear. The habit also comes from infirmity of temper. There are a good many people who, when they are at peace, have righteousness of speech, but when angered they blaze with imprecation. Perhaps all tbe rset of the year tney talk in right language, but now they pour out the fury cf a whole year.in one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. I knew of a man who excused himself for the habit, saying: “I only swear once in a great while. I must do that just to clear myself ent.” The habit comes also fom the profile, use of bywerda. The tranri sou from abyword, which may be perfectly harmless, to imprecation and profanity, is not a vety large trar sition. ltjs “mv stare!” and “mercy on me!” and “good

gracious!" and “by George!” and "by Jov»!” and you go on with that a . little while, and then you swear. These words; perfectly harmlers in themselves, are next door toimprecation and blasphemy. A profuse use of by, words always ends in profanity. The habit is creeping up into the highest styles ot soce’.y. Women have no patience with flat and unvarnished profanity. Juey will order aman out of the parlor indulging in blasphemy, and yet you will sometmes find them with fairy fan to the lip, and under chandeliers which bring no flush to their cheek, taking on their lips the holitst of names in utter trivilaity. Why, my friends, the Eng ith language is comprehensive and capable of expressing all shapes of feeling and every degree of energy. Are ycu happy? Noah Webster will give., you ten thousand words with which to express your exhilaration. Are you righteously indignant? There are whola armories in the vocabulary—righteous vocabulary—whole armies of denunciation, and scorn, and sarcasm, and irony, and caricatore, and wroth. You express yourself against some meanness or hypocrisv in all the oaths that ever.smoked up from the pit, and I will come right on after you and give a thousand-fol 1 more emphasis of denunciation to the same meanness and the same hipocrisy in words across which no slime has ever trailed, and into which the fires of hell have never shot their forked tongues—the pure, the innocent, God-honored Anglo Saxon, in which Milton sang, and John Runyan dreamed, and Bhakespere dramatized. There is no excuse for profanity when we have such a magnificent languagesuch a flow of good words, potent words, mighty words, words just to suit every crisis and every case. Whatever be the cause of it profanity is on the increase, and ifyoudonotknowit.it h because your ears have been hardened by the din of imprecations so that you are not stirred and moved as you ought to be, by profanities in these cities which are enough to bring a hurricane oi fire like that which consumed Sodom. Do you know that this trivial use of God’s name results in perjury? Do you know that people who taxe the name of God on their lips in recklessness and thoughtlessness are fostering the crime of perjury? Make the name of God a foot ball in the community and it has no power when in Ccurt-roonj, and in Legislative Assembly it is employed in solemn adjuration! See the way sometimts they administer tbe oath: “S’help you God—kisa the book! Smuggling,, which ,s always a violation of the oath, becomes in some circles a grand joke. You say to a man: “How is it possible for you to sell these geods so very cheap? I can’t understand it.” “Ah!” he replies, with a twinkle in the eye: “The Custom House tariff of these goods isn’t as much as itmight be.” An oath does not mean as much as it would were the name of God usedin reverence and in solemnity. Why is it that so often jurors render unaccountable verdicts, and Judges give unaccountable charges, and useless railroad schemes pass in our State Capitols, and there are most unjust changes made in tariffs—tariff lifted from one thing and put upon anothei? W hat is an oath? Anything solemn? Anything that calls upon the Almighty? Anything that mfirks an event in a man’s history? Oh, no! It is kicking the book! There is no habit, I tell you plainly—and I talk to hundreds and thousands cf men to-day who will thank me for mv utterance—l tell you, my brother—l talk to you not professionally but just as one brother talks to another on some very important theme—--1 tell you there is no habit that so depletes a man’s nature as the habit of profanity. You might as well try to raise vineyards and orchards on the sides of belching Stromboli as to raise anything good on a heart f om which there pours out the scoria of profanity. You may swear yourself down; you can not swear yourself up. When the Mohammedan finds a piece of paper he can not read he puts it aside very cautiously, for fear the name of God may be on it. That is one extreme. We go to the other. Now what is the cure of this habit? It is a mighty habit. Men have struggled fOr years to get over it. There are men in this house of God who would give half their fortune to get rid of it. An aged man was in the delirium of a fever. He had for many years lived a most upright life, and was honored in all the community, but when he came into the delirium of this fever he was full of imprecation and profanity, and they could not understand it. After he came to his right reason be explained it. He said: “When I was a young man I was very profane. I conquered the habit, but I had to struggle ail through life. You haven’t for forty years heard me say an improper word, but it has been an awful struggle. The tiger is chained, but he is alive yet.” If you would get rid nf this habit, I wan’t you, my friends, to dwell uoon the uselessness of it. Did a vclley of oaths ever start a load? Did they ever extirpate meaness from a customer? Did they ever collect a bad debt? Did. they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop the twinge of the rheumatism? Did they everhelp you forward one step in the right direction? Come, now, tell me, ye who have had the most experience in this habit, how much have you made out of it? Five thousand dollars in all your life? No. One thousand? No. One hundred? No. One dollar? No. One cent? No. If the habit be so utterly useless, away with it. But you say: “I have struggled to overcome the habit a long while, and I have not been successful.” You strugfled in your own' strength, my brother. f ever a man wants God, it is in such a crisis of his history. God alone by His grace can emancipate you from that trouble. Call upon him day and night that you may be delivered from this crime. Remember also in the cure of this habit that it arouses God’s indignation. The Bible reiterates from chapter to chapter, and verse after verse, the fact that it is accursed for his life, and that it makes a man miserable for eternity. There is not a sin in all the catalogue that is so often peremptorily and suddenly punished in this world as the sin of profanity. There is not a city or a village but can give an illustration of a man struck down at the moment of imprecation. A couple of years ago,briefly referring to this in a sermon, I gave some instances in which God had struck swearers dead at tbe monent of their profanity. That sermon brought to me from many parts of this land and other lands statements of similar cases of instantaneous visitation from God upon blasphemers. My opinion is that such cases occur somewhere every day, bnt

for various reasons they are not reported. In Scotland a club assembled every week for purposes of wickedness, and there was a competition as to which could used the most horrid oath, and the man who succeeded was to be made President of the club. The competition went on. A man uttered an oath which confounded all his comrades, and he wa<* made President of the club. His tongue began to swell, and it protruded from the mouth, and be could not draw it in, and tie died, and tbe physicians said: “This is tbe strangest thing we' ever saw, we never saw any account in tbe books like unto it; we can’t understand it.” I understand it. He cursed God and died.

At Catskill, N. Y.,a group of men stood in blacksmith’s shop during a violent thunderstorm. There came a crash of thunder and some of the men trem bled. One man said: “Why, I don’t see what you are afraid of. lam not afraid to go out in front of the shop and defy the Almighty, lam not afraid of lightning.” And he laid a wager on the subject, and be wentout, ana he shook his fist at the heavens, crying; “Strike, if you dare!” and instantly he f 11 undei the bolt. What destroyed him? Any mystery about it? Ob, no. He cursed God and died. Oh. my brother, God will not allow this sin to go 1 unpunished. There are styles of writing with manifold sheets, so that a man writing on one leaf writes clear through ten, fifteen or twenty sheets, and so every profanity we utter goes right down through the leaves of the. book of God’s remembrance. It is no exceptional sin. Do yoh suppose you could count the profanities of last week—the profanities* of the office, store, shop, factory? They cursed God, they cursed His Word, they cursed His only begotten Bon. L-’sten! Listen! “All blasphemers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” And if, accord ing to thb theory of some, a .man commits in the next world the sins which he committed in this world—if unpardoned, unregenerated—think of a man going on cursing in the name of God to all eternity! • Who is this God whose name you are using in swearing? WhoisjHe? Is He a tyrant? Has He pursued you all your life long? Has he starved you, frozen you, tyranized over you? No. He his loved you, he has Sheltered you. He watched you lest night, He will watch you to-night He wants to love yon, wants to help you, wants to save you, wants to comfort you. He was your father’s God and your mother’s God. He has boused them from tbe blast, and He wants to shelter you. Will you suit in his face by an imprecation? Will you ever thrust him back by an oath? Who is this Jesus whose nanr.e I heard in the imprecation? Has be pursued ycu all yonr life long? What vile thing has He done to you that you should so dishonor His name? Why, He was the Lamb whose blood simmered in the fires of sacrifice for you. He is the brother that took off His crown that you might put it on. He has pursued you all your life with mercy'. He wants you to love. Him, wants you to serve Him. He comes with streaming eyes and broken heart and blistered feet to save you. On the craft of our doomed humanity He pushes out into the sea to take off the wreck. Where is the hand that will be lifted in imprecation again? Let that hand, now blood-lipped, be lifted that I may see it. Not one. Where is the voice that will ever be uttered in dishonoring the name of that Christ? Let it speak now. Not one. Not one. Oh, I am glad to know that all these vices of the community and these crimes of our city will be gone. Society is going to, be bettered. The world by the power of Christ’s Gospel, is going to be saved, and this crime, this iniquity, and all the other iniquities will vanish before the rising of the Bun of Righteousness upon the nation. So we go forth; and stretch out the band of prayer and Christian effort over these dark, boiling waters of crime and sin. “Aba! aha!” say the deriding world. But wait. The winds of the divine help will begin to blow; the way will be ; clear for the great army of Christian philanthropists; the glittering treasures of the world’s beneficence will line the path of our feet; and to the other shore we will be greeted with the clash of all heaven’s cymba’s; while those who resist and deride and nu ramus will fall under the sea, and there will be nothing left of them but here and there, cast high and dry upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a chariot, and, thrust out from the surf, the breathless nostrils of a riderless charger.