Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1894 — TAKE KEER OF YERS'EF [ARTICLE]

TAKE KEER OF YERS'EF

Vhe Spreading Evil of Suicide the Worst of Crimes. r and Self-Destruction Go Hand >ud—Dr. Talmage's Serro--. *br the Press. » o-i j Rev. Dr. Talmage, who is now ibroad, selected as the subject for last Sunday’s sermon through the press the word ‘‘Suicide,” the text being Acts xvi, 27, 28: "He drew jut his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying. Do hvself no harm.” Here is a would-be suicide arrested in his deadly attempt. He was a sheriff, and according to the Roman law a bailiff himself must suffer the punishment due an escaped prisoner, and if the prisoner oreaking jail was sentenced to be sndungeoned for three or four years then the sheriff must be endungeoned for three or four years, and if the prisoner breaking jail was to have suffered capital punishment then the sheriff must suffer capital punishment. The sheriff had received especial charge to keep a sharp lookout for Paul and Silas. The government lad not had confidence in bolts and jars to keep safe these two elergynen, about whom there seemed to ae something strange and supernatural.

Sure enough, by miraculous power lhey are free, and the sheriff, wakng out of a sound sleep, and supjosing these ministers have run way, and fcwwing that they were ;o die for preaching Christ, and realizing that he must die, rather ;han go under the executioner's ax >n the morrow and suffer public disgrace, resolves to precipitate his pwmdecease. But before the sharp, reen, glittering dagger of the sherff could strike his heart one of the inloosened prisoners arrests the jlade by the command, “Do thyself io harm.”

Times have changed, and yet the American conscience needs to be ;oned up to the subject of suicide, clave you seen a paper in the last nonth that did not announce the lassage out of life by one’s own belest? Defaulters, alarmed at the dea of exposure, quit life precipi;ately. Men losing large fortunes ’O out of the world because they can lot endure earthly existence. Frusirated affection, domestic infelicity, lyspeptic impatience, anger, envy, •emorse, jealousy, destitution, misinthropy, are considered sufficient :auses for absconding from this life )y paris green, by laudanum, by beladonna, by Othello’s dagger, by halier, by leap from the abutment of a iridge, by firearms. More cases of ‘felo de se” in the last two years of ;he world's existence. The evil is nore and more spreading. Scotland, the land prolific of intelectual giants, had none grander than Hugh Miller, great for science and jreat for God. He came of the best Highland blood, and he was a descendant of Donald Roy, a man emilent for his piety and the rare gift if second sight. His attainments, ilimbing up as he did from the quar•y and the wall of the stonemason, irew forth the astonished admiration if Buckland and Murchison,- the scientists, and Dr. Chalmers, the ;heologian, and held universities spellbound while he told them what le had seen of God in the old red sandstone.

That man did more than any man lhat ever lived to show the God of ;he hills in the God of the Bible, and ie struck his tuning fork on the •ocks of Cromarty until he brought >eology and theology accordant in iivine worship. His two books, entitled “Footprints of the Creator” ind the “Testimony of the Rocks," jroclaimed the bans of an everlasting narriage between genuine science ind revelation. On this latter book ie toiled day and night through love )f nature and love of God until he jould not sleep, until his brain gave way. and he was found dead with a revolver by his side, the cruel instrunent having had two bullets —one 'or him and the other for the eunimith, who. at the coroner’s inquest, was examining it and fell dead. Have you any doubt of the beatification of Hugh Miller after his hot jrain had»ceased throbbing that winter night in his study at Portebello? While we make this merciful and righteous 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 jwn act snaps the bond between his body and soul goes straight into perdition. Shall I prove it? Revelations xxi, 8: “Murderers shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” Revelations xxii, 15: “Without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and -murderers." You do not believe the New Testament? Then perhaps you believe the ten commandments. “Thou shalt not kill.” Do

you say all these passages refer to the taking of the life of others? Then I ask you if you are not as responsible for your own. life as for the life of others? God gave you a special trust in your life. 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 committed this unnatural crime. Here is the headless trunk of Saul on the walls of Bathshan. Here is the man who chased little David —ten feet in stature chasing four. Here is the man

who consulted a clairvoyant of Endor. Here is the man who, whipped in battle, instead of surrendering his with dignity, as many a man has done, asks his servant to slay him, and when the servant declines then the servant plants the hilt of his sword in the earth, the point sticking upward, and he throws his body on it and expires, the coward, the suicide! Here is Ahithopel, the Machiavelli of olden times, betraying* his best friend, David, in order that he may become prime minister of Absalom and joining that fellow in his attempt at parricide. Not getting what he wanted by politics he takes a short cut otit of a disgraced life into the suicide’s eternity. There he is, the ingrate! Here is Abimeleeh, practically a suicide. He is with an army bombarding a tower, when a woman in the tower takes a grindstone from its place and drops it upon his head and with what life he has left in a cracked skull he commands his armor bearer, “Draw thy sword and slay me, least men -say a woman slew me.” There is his post-mortem photograph in the book of Samuel. But the hero of this group is Judas Tscariot. Dr. Donne says he was a martyr, and we have in our day apologists 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 when we uncover a statue to George Sand as a benefactress of literature, and this day when there are betrayals of Christ on the part of some of His pretended apostles—a betrayal so black it makes the infamy of Judas Iscariot white! Yet this man by his own hand hung up for the execration of all the a re',ludas IfcariotY You say it is business troubles, or you say it is electrical currents, or it is this, or it is that, or it is the ' other thing. Why not go clear back, my friend, and acknowledge that in every case it is the abdication of reason or the teaching of infidelity, which practically says, “If you don’t like this life get out of it.” 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. Infidelity always has been apologetic for selfimmolation. After Tom Paine’s “Age of Reason” was published and widely read there was a marked increase of self-slaughter.

A man in London heard Mr. Owen deliver his infidel lecture on “Socialism” and went home and sat down and wrote these words: “Jesus Christ is one of the weakest characters in history, and the Bible is the greatest possible deception,” and then shot himself. David Hume wrote these words: “It would be no crime for me to divert the Nile or the Danube from its natural bed. Where, then, can be the crime 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 read it, wrote a letter of thanks and admiration and then shot himself.” Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, Mon - taigne, under certain circumstances, were apologetic 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 live here or go out of this world, you will land either in an oblivious nowhere or a glorious somewhere. Ah! infidelity, stand up and take thy sentence! In the presence of God and angels and men, stand up, thou monster, thy lip blasted with blasphemy, thy cheek scarred with hist, thy breath foul with corruption of the Stand up, satyr, filthy goat, buzzard of the nations, leper of the centuries! Stand up, thou monster infidelity! Part man, part panther, part reptile, part dragon, stand up and take thy sentence! Thy hands red with the blood in which thou hast 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 and groans of the families thou hast blasted, and roll on the bed of knives which thou hast sharpened for others, and let thy music be the everlasting miserere of those whom thou hast damned! 1 brand the foreheal of infidelity with all the crimes of self-immolation for the last century on the part of those who had their reason.

My friends, if ever your life through its abrasions and its molestations should seem to be unbearable, and you are tempted to quit it by your own behest, do not consider youself as worse than others. Christ himself was tempted to cast himself from the roof of the temple, but as he resisted so resist ye. Christ came to medicine all our wounds. In your trouble I 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 ket?ps the chronology of your life with as much precision, your death as well as your birth, your grave as well as your cradleWhy was it that at midnight, just at midnight, the destroying angel struck the blow that set the Isrealites free from bondage? The 430 years were up at 12 o’clock that night. The 430 years were not up at 11, and 1 o’clock would have been too lat£ The 430 years were up at 12 o’clock, and the recording angel struck the blow, and Israel was free. And God knows just the hour when it is time to lead you up 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 everlasting

reward will accord with your earthly perturbations, just as Caius gave to Agrippa a chain of gold as heavy as had been his chain of iron. For your asking you may have the same grace that was given to the Italian martyr, Algerius, who, down in the darkest of dungeons, dated his letter from “the delectable orchard of the Leonine prison.” 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 our 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 church militant to church triumphant, and you and I have 10,000 reasons for wanting to go there, but we will never get there either by self immolation or impenitency. All oui* sins are slain by the Christ who came to do that thing, we want to go in at just the time divinely arranged and from a couch divinely spread, and then the clang of the opening of the solid pearl before us. O God, whatever others may choose, give me a Christian’s life, a Christian’s death, a Christian’s burial, a Christian’s immortality.