Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1898 — ALLURING AS HONEY. [ARTICLE]

ALLURING AS HONEY.

Rev. dr. talmage on traps For the unwary. ilic Honeybee and Its Work —Temptation that Is Delicious anil Attractive, but Damaging and Destructive— Ambrosia and Nectar for the Soul. Our Washington Pulpit. Dr. Talmage here starts with an oriental scene, from which he draws practical lessons as to the allurements which entrap the unwary, and the discourse will put many on their guard. The text is I. Samuel xiv., 43, “I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand, and, 10, I must die.” The' honey tJCerfsj a- mast ingenious architect, a Christopher Wren amolig insects, geometer drawing hexagons and pentagons, a freebooter robbing the fields of pollen and aroma, wondrous creature of God whose biography, written by Huffier and Swammerdam, is an enchantment for any lover of nature. Virgil celebrat-r ed the bee in his fable of Aristaeus, and Moses and Samuel and David and Solomon and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and St. John used the delicacies of bee manufacture as a Bible symbol. A miracle of formation is the bee. Five eyes, two tongues, the outer having a sheath of protection, hairs on all sides of its tiny body to brush up the particles of flowers, its flight so straight that all the world knows of the ;bee line. The honeycomb is a palace such as no one but God could plan and the honey bee construct; its cells sometimes a dormitory and sometimes a storehouse and sometimes a cemetery. These Svinged toilers first make eight strips of wax by their antennae, which arc to them hammer and chisel and square and plumb line, fashion them for use. Two and two these workers shape the wall. If an'accident happens, they put up buttresses of extra beams to remedy the damage. When about the year 1770 an insect before unknown in the nighttime attacked, thb bee hives all over Europe and the men .who owned them were in vain trying to plan something to keep out the invader that was the terror of the bee hives of the' continent, it was found that everywhere the bees had arranged for their own pro-' tection and built before their honeycombs an especial wall of wax, with portholes through which the bees might go to and fro,' but not large enough to admit the winged combatant, called the Sphinx atropos. Do you know that the swarming of the bees is divinely• directed? The mother 'bee starts for a new home, and because of this the other bees of the hive get into an excitement which raises the heat of the hive some four degrees, and they must die unless they leave their heated apartments, and they follow the mother bee-anil alight on the branch of a tree, and cling to each other and Jiolil on until a committee of two or three bees has explored the region and found»the hollow of a tree or rock not far off from a stream of water, and they here set up a new colony and ply their aromatic industries and give themselves to the of the saccharine ediLle. ButVko can tell the chemistry of that mixture of sweetness, part of it the .very life of the bee and part of it the life of the fields?

Plenty of this luscious product was hanging in the woods of Bethaven ditving the time of Saul and Jonathan. Their army was in pursuit of an enemy that by God's command must be exterminated. The soldiery were positively forbidden to stop to eat anything until the work was done. If they disobeyed, they were accursed. Coming through the woods they found a place where the bees had been busy—a great honey manufactory. Honey gathered in the hollow of the trees until it had overflowed upon the ground in great profusion of sweetness. All the army obeyed orders and touched it not save Jonathan, and he, not knowing the military order about abstinence, dipped the end of a stick he had in his hand into the candied liquid, and as yellow and tempting it glowed on the end of the stick he put it to his mouth and ate the honey. Judgment fell upon him and but for special intervention he would have been slain. In my text Jonathan announces his awful mistake, “I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand, and, 10, I must die.” Alas, what multitudes of ineoplo in all ages have been damaged by forbidden hpney, by which I mean temptation, delicious and attractive, but damaging and destructive! Corrupt literature, fascinating but deathful, comes in this category. Where one good, hoiifst, healthful book is read now there is a hundred made up of rhetorical trash consumed with avidity. When the boys on the cars come through with a pile of publications, look over the titles and notice that nine out of ten of the books are injurious. All the way from here to Chicago or New Orleans notice that objectionable books dominate. Taste for pure literature is poisoned by this scum of the publishing house. Every book in which sin triumphs over virtue, or in which a glamour is thrown over dissipation, or which leaves you at its last line with less respect for the marriage institution and less abhorrence for the paramour is a’ depression of your own moral cimrnctor. The bookbinder)’ may be attractive, nnd the plot dramatic and startling, ami the style of writing sweet as the honey that Jonathan took up with his rod, but your best interests forbid it, your moral safety forbids it, your God forbids it, nnd one taste of it may lend to such bad results that you tuny have to say at the close of the experiment or at the close of a ntisiinproved lifetime, “I did but taste n little honey with the rod thut was in my hand, and, to, I must die.” Corrupt literature is doing more to-day fcor the disruption of domestic use than any otlnr cause. Elopements, marital intrigues, sly correspondence, fictitious names given at postoflice windows, clandestine meetings in parks, nnd nt ferrygates, and jn hotel parlors, nnd conjugal perjuries are among the ruinous results. When u woman young or old gets her bend thoroughly stuffed with the modern novel, she is in nppallfng peril. But some one will say, “The heroes are so adroitly knavish, and the heroines so bewiteldngly untrue, nnd the turn of the story so ex’quiaiie and all the l bincti'n so enraptufing, I cannot quit them;” My brother, my sister, you ertn find Styles of literature just ns charming that will elevate and purify nnd ennoble a while they please. The devil does Hot own all the honey. There is a wealth of, good books coining forth from our publishing houses that leave ho cteusc for the choice of that whicb is debattehiijg to body, mind

and soul. Go to some intelligent man or woman and ask for a list of books that will ho strengthening to your mental and moral condition. Life, is so short and your time for improvement so abbreviated that you cannot afford to, fill up with husks and cinders anil debris. ' In the interstices of business, that young man is reading that which will prepare him. to be a merchant prince, and that young woman is filling her mind with an intelligence that will yet eitljer make her the chief attraction of a good man's home or give her an independence of character that will qualify her to build her own home and maintain it in happiness that requires no augmentation from any of our rougher sex. That young man or young woman can, by the right literary and moral improvement of the spare ten minutes here or there every day, rise head and shoulders in prosperity and character and influence above the loungers who read nothing, or read, that which bedwarfs. See all,the forests of good Amorii-aji literature dripping with honey. Why pick up the honeycombs that have in them the fiery bees- which will sting you with an eternal poison while you taste.it? One book may for you or me decide everything for this world and the next. It was a turning point with me wlnui in n bookstore in Syracuse one day I picked up a book called “The Beauties of Buskin.” It was only a book of extracts, but it, was all pure honey, and I was not satisfied until I purchased all his works, at that time expensive beyond an easy,capacity to own them, and with what delight I went through reading his “Seven Lamps of Architecture” and his “Stones of Venice” it is impossible for me to describe except by saying that it gave me a rapture for good books and an everlasting disgust for decrepit or immoral books that will last me while my life lasts. All around the church and the world to-day there arc busy hives of intelligence occupied by authors and authoresses from whose pens drip a distillation which is the very nectar of heaven, and why will you thrust your rod of inquisitiveness into the deathful saccharine of perdition? Stimulating liquids also come into the category -of temptation delicious, hut ileathful. You say, “I cannot bear the taste of intoxicating liquor, and how any man can like it is to me an amazement.” Well, then, it is no credit to you 'that you do not take it. Do uot brag about your total abstinence, because it is not from any principle that you reject alcoholism, but for the reason that you reject certain styles of food—you simply don’t like the tas.te of them. But multitudes of people have a natural fondness for all kinds of intoxicants. They like it so much that it makes them smack their lips to look at it. They are dyspeptic, and they like to aid digestion; or they are annoyed by insomnia, and they take it to produce sleep; or they are troubled, anil they take it to make them oblivions; or they feel happy, and they must celebrate their hilarity. They begin with mint julep sucked through two straws on the Long Branch piazza and end in the ditch, taking from a jug a liquid half kerosene and half whisky. They not only like it, but it is an all consuming passion of body, mind and soul, and after awhile have it they will, though one wine glass of it should cost the temporal and eternal destruction of themselves and all their families and the whole human race. They would say, “I am sorry it is going to cost me and my family arid all the world’s population so very much, hut here it goes to my lips, and now let it roll over my parched tongue and down my heated throat, the sweetest and most inspiring, the most delicious draft' that ever thrilled a human frame.” To cure the .habit before ft comes to its last stages various plans were tried in olden times. This plan was recommended in the books: When a man wanted to reform, lie put shot or bullets into the cup or glass ■of strong drink —one additional shot or bullet each day that displaced so much liquor. Bullet after bullet added day by day, of course the liquor became less and less until the bullets would entirely fill up the glass, and there was no room for the liquid, and by that time it was said the inebriate would he cured. Whether any one ever was cured in that way I know uot, but by long experiment it is found that the only way is to stop short off, and when a man does that he needs God to help him, and there have been more cases than you can count when God has so helped the man that ho loft off the drink forever, and. I could count a score of them, some of them pillars in the house of Goil.

One would suppose that men would take warning from some of the ominous names given to the intoxicants and stand off from the devastating influence. You have noticed, for instance, that some of tlie restaurants are called The Shades, typical of the fact that it puts a man’s reputation in the shade, and his morals in the shade, anil his prosperity in the shade, and his wife ami children in the shade, and his immortal destiny in the shade. Now, I find on some of the liquor signs in nil our cities the words “Old Crow,” mightily suggestive of the carcass and the filthy raven that swoops upon it. “old Crow!” Aleii and women without numbers slain of rum, bpt unburied, and this evil is peeking ut their glazed eyes, and peeking at their bloated elieek, and peeking at their destroyed manhood and womanhood, thrusting beak and claw into the mortal remains pf whut was once gloriously alive, but now morally dead. “Old Crow!" But, alas, how ninny take no warning! They make me think of Caesar on his way to assassination, Touring nothing, though his statue in the hail crashed into fragments at his feet and « scroll containing the names of, the conspirators was thrust into his hands, yet walking right on to meet the dagger that was to take ltis life. This infatuation of strong drink is so mighty in many a man that, though his fortunes are crashing, and ltis health is crashing, and his domestic interests are crashing, and we hand him a long scroll containing the names of perils that Awnit-hiiu, lie goes straight on to physical and mental and moral assassination. In proportion as any style of alcohol is pleasant to your taste and stimulating to your nerves and for a time delightful to all youryiliysienl and mental constitution is tin* jierll aw ful. "Remember Jonathan and the forbidden honey in tlie woods at Ret haven. Furthermore, the gamester’s indulgence must be put in the list of temptations delicious but destructive. You who have crossed the ocean many times have noticed that always one of the best rooms ans, front morning until late at flight, been given up to gambling practices. I heard of men who went on board with enough for n European excursion who lauded without mon6y to get their baggage up to the hotcL or railroad station. To many there Is a complete fascination

in games of hazard of the risking of money on possibilities. It seems‘as natural for them to bet as to eat. Indeed the hunger for food is often overpowered by the hunger for wagers. It is absurd for those of Us, who have never felt tfie fascination of the wager to speak slightingly of the* temptation. It has slain a multitude of intellectual anil moral giants, men and women stronger than you or I. Down under its power went glorious Oliver Goldsmith, and Gibbon, the famo.uk historian, and Charles Fox, the renowned statesman, and in olden times Senators of the United States, who used to be as regularly at the gambling house all night as they were in the halls of legislation by day. Oh, the tragedies of the faro table! I know persons who began with a slight stake in a ladies’ parlor and ended with the suicide’s pistol at Monte Carlo. They played’with the square pieces of bciue with black marks on them, not knowing that Satan was playing for their boras at the same time, and whs sure to sweep all flic stakes off on his side of the table. StatftjjLegislatures have again and again sanctioned the mighty evil by passing laws in defense of race tracks, and maqy young men have lost all their wages at such so-called “meetings.” Every man who voted for such infamous hills has. on his hands and forehead the blood of these” souls.

But in this connection, some young converts say to me: “Is it right to play cards? Is there any harm in a game •of whist or euchre?” Well, I know good men who play whist and euchre and other styles of games without any wagers. I had a friend who played cards with his wife and children and then at the close said, "Come, now, lot us have prayers.” 1 will not. judge o.ther men’s consciences, but I tell you that cards, are in my mind so associated wijli the temporal and spiritual ruin of splendid young men that 1 would as soon say to. my family, “Gome, let us have a game of cards,” as I would go into a menagerie and say, “Come, lot us have a game of rattlesnakes,” or into a cemetery and sitting dowp by a marble slab say to the grave diggers, “Come, let us have a game at skulls.” Conscientious young ladies.are silently saying, “Do you think card playing will do us any harm?” Perhaps not, but liow will you feel if in the great day of eternity, when we are asked to give an account of our influence, some nian should say: “I was introduced to games of chance in the year 1898 at your house, and I went on from that sport to something more exciting, and went on down until I lost my business, and lost my morals, and lost my sOul, and these chains that you see on my wrists and feet are the chains of a gamester’s doom, and I am on my way to a gambler’s hell.” Honey at the start, eternal catastrophe at the last.

Stock gambling comes into the same catalogue. It must be very exhilarating to go into the market and depositing a small sum of money run tlie chance of taking out a fortune. Alany men are doing nil honest’ 1 and safe business in the stock market and you are an ignoramus if you do not know that it is just as legitimate to deal in stocks as it is to ileal in coffee or sugar or flour. But nearly all the outsiders who go there on a financial excursion lose all. The old spiders eat up the unsuspecting flies. I hail ft friend who put his hand on his hip pocket and said in substance, “I have there the value of $250,090.” His home is to-day penniless. What was the matter? Stock gijfubling. Of the vast majority who are victimized you hear uot one word. One great stock firm goes down and whole columns of newspapers discuss their fraud or their disaster, anil we are presented with their features and their biography. But where one such famous firm sinks 500 unknown men sink with them. The great steamer goes down and all the little boats are swallowed in the same engulfment. Gambling is gambling, whether, in stocks or breadstuff's or (lice or race horse betting. Exhilaration at the start, but a raving brain and a shattered nervous system anil a sacrificed property and a destroyed soul at the last. Young men, buy no lottery tickets, purchase no prfze packages, bet on no baseball games or yacht racing, have no faith in luck, answer no mysterious circulars proposing great income for small investment, drive away the buzzards that hover around our hotels trying to entrap strangers. Go out and make an honest living. Have God on your side and lie a candidate for heaven. Remember nil the paths of sin are banked with flowers at the start, and there a.re plenty of helpful hands to fetch the gay cl larger to your door and hold the stirrup while you mount. But, farther on the hope plunges to the bit in a slough inextricable. The best honey is not likeAlmt -Wtiieli Jonathan took on the end <n the rod and brought to his lips, but that which God puts on tlie banqueting table of mercy, at which wo are all invited to sit. I was reading of a boy among the mountains of Switzerland ascending a dangerous place with liis father and the guides. The boy stopped on the edge of the cliff and said, "There is a flower I mean to get.” “Come away from there,” said the father, "You will fall off.” "No,” said he, “I must get that beautiful [lower.”’ And the guides rushed toward him to pull him hack when, just ns they heard him say, “1 almost have it," hi 1 fell 2,(MM) feet. Birds of prey were seen a few days after circling through tlie air and lowering gradually to the place where the corpse lay. Why seek flowers off the edge of a precipice when you can walk knee deep amid tinfull blooms of the very paradise of God? ■When a man may sit at the king’s banquet, why will he go down the steps and contend for* the refuse and hones of a’ hound’s kennel? "Sweeter than* honey and the hnneyeoin.b," says Duvid, is the truth of God. ’“With honey out of the rock would I have satisfied thee," says God to thqjreereiuit. Here is honey gathered from tlie blossoms of trees of life, and with a rjal made out of tin* wood of the cross I dip it up for all your souls. “The Lord knoweth the way of tin* righteous; but the Way of the ungodly shall perish." Beware of the forbidden honey! Gopyright, IMts.

It'.bllciil Stylt*. For once consider I Ik* Rlblr uot .ns n |g>llgious liook, 1 >tit as u manual of utility or professional preje a ration nn(l 'profosilouaf use for si Journalist. There Is, perhaps, no liook whose stylo Is morn suggestive nml Instruotivo, from which you learn more directly that sublime simplicity which never exaggerates, which recount* the greatest events with solemnity, of course, hut Without sentimentality or afTis tutidn, iitfhe which you open \yith such confidence ntld la.V iVswn with such reverence.—Her. W. F. Irwin, rresbyterlan, Chicago, 111. .* • - -