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sood andjbad sport.
' R TALMAGE’S SERMON ABOUT THE
AMUSEMENTS OF THE HOUR.
wh en the * u “ d O,d «**“* 8®““°“ W “
Called Vorth *® Amuee the Wicked of
G»«e - «*• Chrtrti»n Who Recreatee
Deadly "Good Time.-
£p yriaM, XtfonY 10 ™ Press A “°'
Washington, June 19.—From an un
ggual standpoint Dr. Talmage in this
discourse discusses amusements and ap
plies tests by which they may be known
as good or bad. The text is Judges xvi,
2 5 t “And it came to pass, when their
hearts were merry, that they said, Call
for Samson, that he may make us sport.
And they called for Samson out of the
prison house, and he made them sport ’ ’
V There were 8,000 people assembled in
the temple of Dagon. They had come
to make sport of eyeless Samson. They
w ere a ll ready for the entertainment
They began td clap and pound, imp'i
for the amusement to begin, and
they cried: “Fetch him Out! Fetch him
on t!’’ Yonder I see the blind old giant
coming, led by the hand of a child into
the very midst of the temple. At his
first appearance there goes up a shout of
laughter and derision. The blind old
giant pretends he is tired and wants to
rest himself against the pillars of the
house, so he says to the lad who leads
him, “Bring me where the main pillars
are. ” The lad does so. Then the strong
man puts his hands on one of the pil
lars, and, with the mightiest push that
mortal ever made, throws himself for
ward until the whole house comes down
jn thunderous crash, grinding the audi
ence like grapes ip a wine press. “And
io it came to pass, when their hearts
were merry, that they said, Call for
Samson, that he may make us sport.
And they called for Samson out of the
prison house, and he made them sport. ’’
In other words, there are amusements
that are destructive and bringdown dis
aster and death upon the heads of those
who practice them. While they laugh
and cheer they die. The 8,000 who per
ished that day in Gaza are nothing com
pared with the tens of thousands who
have been destroyed, body, mind and
soul, by bad amusements and by good
amusements carried to excess.
In my sermons you must have noticed
that I have no sympathy with ecclesias
tical straitjackets, or with that whole
sale denunciation of amusements to
which many are pledged. I believe the
church of God has made a tremendous
mistake in trying to suppress the sport
fulness of youth and drive out from men
their love of amusement If God ever
implanted anything in us, he implanted
this desire. But instead of / providing
for this demand of our fiature the church
of God has for the main part ignored it.
As in a riot the mayor plants a battery
at the end of the street and has it fired
off, so that everything is cut down that
happens to stand in the range, the good
as well as the bad, so there are men in
the church who plant their batteries of
condemnation and fire away indiscrimi
nately. Everything is condemned. They
' talk as if they would like to have our
youth dress in blue uniform, like the
children of an orphan asylum, and
march down the path of life to the tune
of the dead march in "Saul. ** They
hate a blue sash, or a rosebud in the
hair, or a tasseled gaiter, and think a
man almost ready for the lunatic asy
lum who utters a conundrum.
Young Men’s Christian associations
of the country are doing a glorious
work. They have fine reading rooms,
and all the influences are of the best
kind, and are now adding gymnasiums
and bowling alleys, where, without any
evil surroundings, our young men may
get physical as well as spiritual im
provement We are dwindling away to
a narrow chested, weak armed, feeble
voiced race, when God calls us to a
work in which he wants physical as
well as spiritual athletes. I would to
God that the time might soon come
when in all our colleges and theological
seminaries, as at Princeton, a gymna
sium shall be established. We spend
seven years of hard study in preparation
for the ministry and come out with
bronchitis and dyspepsia and liver com
plaint, and then crawl up into the pul
pit, and the people say, “Doesn’t he look
heavenly!** because he looks sickly.
Let the church of God direct rather
than attempt to suppress the desire for
amusement. The best men that the
world ever knew have had their sports.
William Wilberforce trundled hoop
with his children. Martin Luther helped
dress the Christmas tree. Ministershave
pitched quoits, philanthropists have
gone a-skating, prime ministers have,
played ball.
Our communities are filled with men
and women who have in their souls un
measured resources for sportfulness and
frolic. Show me a man who never
, lights up with sportfulness and has no
sympathy with the recreations of oth
ers, and I will shew you a man who is
a stumbling block to the kingdom of
God. Such men are caricatures of reli
gion. They lead young people to think
that a man is good in proportion as he
groans and frowns and looks sallow,
tod that the height of a man’s Chris
tian stature is in proportion to the
length of his face. I would trade off 500
«uch men for one bright faced, radiant
Christian on whose face are the words,
“Rejoice evermore!” Every morning
his cheerful face he preaches 50 ser
“h^ 8 - I will go further and say that
1 have no confidence in a man who
a religion of his gloomy looks.
*hst kind of a man always turns out
gfr- I would not want him for the
treasurer of an orphan asylum. The or
■ Phans would suffer.
Among 40 people whom I received
“fio the church at one communion there
; only one applicant of whose piety
**•B suspicious. He had the longest
j “tory to tell, had seen the most visions
1 gave an so wonderful
* a * Gie other applicants were dis-
couraged. I was not surprised the year
after to learn that ho had run off with
the funds of the bank with which he
was connected. Who is this black angel
that you call religion—wings black,
feet black, feathers black? Our religion
is a bright angel—feet bright, eyes
bright, wings bright—taking her place
in the soul. She pulls a rope that
reaches to the skies and sets all the
bells of heaven a-ohiming. There are
some persons who, when talking to a
minister, always feel it politic to look
lugubrious. Go forth, O people, to
your lawful amusement! God means
you to be happy. But when there are so
many sources of innocent pleasure, why
tamper with anything that is dangerous
and polluting? Why stop our ears to a
heaven full of songsters to listen to the
hiss of a dragon? Why turn back from
the mountain side, all a-bloom with wild
flowers and a-dash with the nimble tor
rents, and with blistered feet attempt
to climb the hot sides of Cotopaxi?
Now, all opera houses, theaters, bowl
ing alleys, skating rinks and all styles
of amusement, good and bad, I put on
trial 'today and judge of them by cer
tain cardinal principles. First, you
may judge of any amusement by its
healthful result or by its baneful reac
tion. There are people who seem made
up of hard facts. They are a combina
tion of multiplication tables and statis
tics. If you show them an exquisite pic
ture, they will begin to discuss the pig
ments involved in the coloring; if you
show them a beautiful rose, they will
submit it to a botanical analysis, which
is only the post mortem examination of
a flower. They never do anything more
than feebly smile. There are no great
tides of feeling surging up from the
depth of their soul in billow after bil
low of reverberating laughter. They
seem as if nature had built them by
contract and made a bungling job out
of it. But, blessed be God, there are
people in the world who have bright
faces and whose life is a song, an an
them, a paean of victory. Even their
troubles are like the vines that crawl
up the side of a great tower on the
top of which the sunlight sits and
the soft airs of summer hold perpetual
oarnival. They are the people you like
to have come to your hpuse; they are
the people I like to have come to my
house. Now it is these exhilarant and
sympathetic and warm hearted people
that are most tempted to pernicious
amusements. In proportion as a ship is
swift it wants a helmsman; in
proportion as a horse is gay it wants a
strong driver, and these people of ex r
überant nature will do well to look at
the reaction of all their amusements. If
an amusement sends you home at night
nervous so you cannot sleep, and you
rise in the morning, not because you
are slept out, but because your duty
drags you from .your slumbprs, you
have been where you ought not to have
been. There are amusements that send
a man next day to his work bloodshot,
yawning, stupid, nauseated and they
are wrong kinds of amusements. There
are entertainments that give a man dis
gust with the drudgery of life, with
tools because they are not swords, with
working aprons because they are not
robes, witly'cattle because they are not
infuriated bulls of the arena. If any
amusement sends you home longing for
a life of romance and thrilling adven
ture, love that takes poison and shoots
itself, moonlight adventures and hair
breadth escapes, you may depend upon
it that you are the sacrificed victim of
unsanctified pleasure. Our recreations
are intended to build us up, and if they
pull us down as to our moral or as
to our you may come
to the conclusion that they are obnox
ious.
Still further, those amusements are
wrong which lead into expenditure be
yond your means. Money spent in recre
ation is not thrown away. It is all folly
for us to come from a place of amuse
ment feeling that we have wasted our
money and time. You may by it have
made an investment worth more than
the transaction that yielded you SIOO
or SI,OOO. But how many properties
have been riddled by costly amuse
ments? The table has been robbed to
pay the club. The champagne has
cheated the children’s wardrobe. The
carousing party has burned up the boy’s
primer. The tablecloth of the corner
saloon is in debt to the wife’s faded
dress—excursions that in a day make a
tour around a whole month’s wages;
ladies whose lifetime business it is to
"go shopping” have their counterpart
in uneducated children, bankruptcies
that shocMthe money market and appall
the church and that send drunkenness
staggering across the riohly figured car
pet of the mansion and dashing into the
mirror and drowning out the carol of
music with the whooping of bloated
sons come home to break their old
mother’s heart. When men go into
amusements that the£ cannot afford,
they first borrow what they cannot
earn, and then they steal what they
cannot borrow. First they go into em
barrassment and then into theft, and
when a man gets as fy on as that he
does not stop short of the penitentiary.
There is not a prison in the land where,
there are not victims of unsanctified
amusements. How often I have had
parents come to me and ask me to go
and beg their boy off from the conse
quence of crimes that he had committed
against his employer—the taking of
funds out of the employer’s till or the
disarrangement of the accounts. Why,
he had salary enough to pay all lawful
expenditure, but not enough salary to
meet his sinful amusements. And again
and again I have gone and implored for
the young man—sometimes, alas, the
petition unavailing!
How brightly the path of unrestrain
ed amuserSnt opens! The young man
says: "Now lam off for a good time.
Never mind economy. I’ll get money
somehow. What a fine road! What a
beautiful day for a ridel Crack the
whip, and over the turnpike! Come,
boys, fill high your glasses I Drink!
Long life, health, plenty of rides just
like this!” Hardworking men hear the
clatter of the hoofs and look up and say:
"Why, I wonder where those fellows
get their money from. We have to toil
and drudge. They do nothing ” To
these gay men life is a thrill and an ex
citement. They stare at other people
and in turn are stared at The watch
chain jingha The cup foams. The
cheeks flush. The eyes flash. The mid
night hears their guffaw. They swag
ger. They jostle decent men off the side
walk. They take the name of God in
vain. They parody the hymn they
learned at their mother’s knee, and to.
all pictures of coming disaster they cry
out, "Who cares!” and to the counsel
of some Christian friend, "Who are
you?” Passing along the street some
night you hear a shriek in a grogshop,
the rattle of the watchman’s club, the
rush of the police. What is the matter
now? Oh, this reckless young man has
been killed in a grogshop fight Carry
him home to his father’s house. Parents
will come down and wash his wounds
and close his eyes in death. They for
give him all he ever did, though he can
not in silence ask it The prodigal has
got home at last Mother will go to her
little garden and get the sweetest flow
ers and twist them into a chaplet for
the silent heart of the wayward boy and
push back from the bloated brow the
long locks that were once her pride.
And the air will be rent with the fa
ther’s cry, “Oh; my son, my eon, my
poor son; would God I had died for
thee, oh, my son, my son!”
You may judge of amusements by
their effect upon physical health. The
need of many good people is physical
recuperation. There are Christian men
who write hard things against their im
mortal souls when there is nothing the
matter with them but an incompetent
liver. There are Christian people who
seem to think that it is a good sign to
be poorly, and because Richard Baxter
and Robert Hall were invalids they
think that by the same sickness they
may s come to the same grandeur of char
acter. I want to tell Christian people
that God will hold you responsible for
your invalidism if it is your own fault
and when through right exercise and
prudence you might be athletic and
well. The effect of the body upon the
soul you acknowledge. Put a man of
mild disposition upon the animal diet
of which the Indian partakes, and in a
little while his blood will change its
chemical proportiona It will become
like unto the blood of the lion or the
tiger or the bear, while his disposition
will change and become fierce, cruel
and unrelenting. The body has a pow
erful effect upon the soul. There are
people whose ideas of heaven are all
shut out with clouds of tobacco smoke.
There are people who dare to shatter
the physical vase in which God
jewel of eternity. There are men with
great hearts and intellects in bodies
worn out by their own neglects. Mag
nificent machinery capable of propelling
a great Etruria across the Atlantic, yet
fastened in a rickety North river pro
peller. Physical development which' 1
merely shows itself in a fabulous 'lift
ing or in perilous rope walking or in
pugilistic encounter excites only our
contempt, but we confess to great ad
miration for the man who has a great
soul in an athletic body, every nerve,
muscle and bone of which is consecrated
to right uses. Oh, it seems to me out
rageous that men through neglect should
allow their physical health to go down
beyond repair, spending the rest of their
life not in some great enterprise for
God and the world, but in studying
what is the best thing to take for dys
pepsia. A ship which ought with all
sails set man at his post to be
carrying a rich cargo for eternity, em
ploying all its men in stopping up leak
ages. When you may through some of
the popular and healthful recreations of
our time work off your spleen and your
querulousness and one-half of your
physical and mental ailments, do not
turn your back from such a grand med
icament.
Again, judge of the places of amuse
ment by the companionship into which
they put you. If you belong to an or
ganization where you have to associate
with the intemperate, with the un
clean, with 'the abandoned, however
well they may be dressed, in the name
of God quit it They will despoil your
nature. They will undermine your
moral character. They will drop you
when you are destroyed. They will not
give one cent to support your children
when you are dead. They will weep
not one tear at your burial They will
chuckle over your damnation. But the
day comes when the men who have ex
erted evil influence upon their fellows
will be brought to judgment Scene, the
last day. Stage, the rocking earth. En
ter dukes, lords, kings, beggars, clowna
No sword No tinsel. No crown. For
footlights, the kindling flames of a
world For orchestra, the trumpets
that wake the dead For gallery, the
clouds' filled with angel spectators. For
applause, the clapping floods of the sea.
For curtains, the heavens rolled togeth
er as a scroll. For tragedy, the doom of
the destroyed For farce, the effort
to serve the world and God at the
same time. For the last scene of the
fifth act, the tramp of nations across
the stage—some to the right, others to
the left.
Again, any amusement that gives you
a distaste for domestic life is bad How
many bright domestic circles have been
broken up by sinful amusements? The
father went off, the mother went off,
the child went off. There are all aroupd
us the fragments of blasted" households.
Oh, if you have wandered away, I
would like to charm you back by the
sound of that one word, "home!” Do
you not know that you [gave but little
more time to give to domestic welfare?
Do you not see, father, that your chil
dren are soon to go out into the world
and all the influence for good you are
to have over them you must have now?
Death will break in on your con jugal
relations, and alas if you have to stand
over the grave of one who perished from
your neglect!
I saw a wayward husband standing at
the deathbed of his Christian wife, and
I saw her point to a ring on her finger
and heard her say to her husband, "Do
you see that ring?” He replied, “ Yea,
I see it” "Well*” said the, "do you
remember who put it there?” "Yea,”
said he, "I put it there.” And all the
past seemed to rush upon him. By the
memory of that day, when in the pres
ence of men and angels you promised to
be faithful in joy And sorrow and in
sickness and in health; by the memory
ts those pleasant hours when you sat to
gether in your new house talking of a
bright future; by the cradle and the ex
cited hour when one life was spared and
another given; by that sickbed, when
the little one lifted up the hands and
called for help and you knew be must
die, and he put one arm around each of
your necks and brought you very near
together in that dying kiss; by the lit
tle grave in tho cemetery that yon
never thing of without a rush of tears;
by the family Bible, where in its stories
of heavenly love is the brief but express
ive record of births and deaths; by the
neglects of the past and by the agonies
of the future; by a judgment day when
husbands and wives, parents and chil
dren, in immortal groups will stand to
be caught up in shining array or to
shrink down into darkness—by all that,
I beg you to give to home your best at •
factions. I look in your eyes today, and
I ask you the question that Gehazi ask
ed of the Shunammite: "Is it well with
thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it
well with thy child?” God grant that
it may be everlastingly welll
Let me say to all young men your
style of amusement will decide your
eternal destiny. One night I saw a
young man at a street corner evidently
doubting as to which direction he had
better take. He had his hat lifted high
enough so you could see he had an in
telligent forehead. He had a stout
chest; he had a robust development
Splendid young man. Cultured young
man. Honored young man. Why did
he stop there while so many were going
np and down? The fact is that every
man has a good angel and a bad an
gel contending for the mastery of his
spirit. And there was a good angel
and a bad angel struggling with that
young man’s soul at the corner of the
street.
“Come with me,” said the good an
gel, "I will take you home. I will
spread my wing over your pathway. I
will lovingly escort you all through
life. I will bless every cup you drink
out of, every couch you rest on, every
doorway you enter. I will consecrate
your tears when you weep, your sweat
when you toil, and at the last .1 will
hand over your grave into the hand of
the bright angel of a Christian resur
rection. In answer to your father’s pe
tition and your mother’s prayer I have
been sent of the Lord out of heaven to
be your guardian spirit Come with
me, ” said the good angel in a voice of
unearthly symphony. It was music like
that which drops from a lute of heaven
when a seraph breathes on it. “Na
not” mid the bad. angel, “come with
me. I have something better to offer.
Tho wines I pour ate from chalices of
bewitching carousal. The dance Plead
is over floor tessellated with unrestrain
ed indulgences. There is no God to
frown on the temples of sin where I
worship. The skies are Italian. The
paths I tread are through meadows
daisied and primrosed. Come with
me.” The young man hesitated ata
time when hesitation was ruin, and the
bad angel smote the good angel until it
departed, spreading wings through the
starlight upward and away, until a
door flashed open in the sky and forever
the wings vanished. That was the turn
ing point in that young man’s history,
for, the good angel flown, he hesitated
no longer, but started on a pathway
which is beautiful at the opening, but
blasted at the last.
The bad angel, leading the way,
opened gate after gate, and at each gate
tho road became rougher and the sky
more lurid, and, what was peculiar, as
the gate slammed shut it came to with
a jar that indicated that it would never
open. Passed each portal, there was a
grinding of locks and a shoving of
bolts, and the scenery on either side the
road changed from- gardens to - deserts,
and the June air became a catting De
cember blast, and the bright wings of
the bad angel turned to sackcloth, and
the eyes of light became hollow with
hopeless grief, and the fountains, that
at the start had tossed wine, poured
forth bubbling tears and foaming blood,
and on the right side of the read there
was a serpent, and the man said to the
bad angel, “What is that serpent?” and
the answer was, "That is the serpent
of stinging remorse. ” On the left side
of the road there was a lion, and the
man asked the badangel, “What is that
lion?” and the answer was, “That is
the lion of all devouring despair. ” A
vulture flew through the sky, and the
man asked the bad angel, “What is
that vulture?” and the answer was,
"That is the vulture waiting for the
carcasses of the slain.” And then the
man began to try to pull off of him the
folds of‘something that had wound him
round and round, and he said to the bad
angel, "What is it that twists me in
this awful convolwtion?” and the an
swer was, "That is the worm that never
dies, ” and then.the man said to the bad
angel: “What does all this mean? I
trusted in what you said at the comer
of the street that night. I trusted it all,
and why have you thus deceived me?”
Then the last deception fell off the
charmer, and it* said: "I was sent forth
from the pit td destroy ycjr soul. I
watched my chance for many a long
year. When you hesitated that nightjon
the street, I gained my triumph. Now
you are here. Ha, ha! You are here
Come, now, let us fill these two chalises
of fire and drink together to darkness
find woe and death. Hail, hail!” Oh,
young man, will the good angel sent
forth by Christ or the bad angel sent
forth by sin get the victory over your
soul? Their wings are interlocked this
moment above you, contending for your
destiny, as above the Apennines eagle
and condor fight midsky. This hojr
piay decide your destiny. God help you.
Tb hesitate is to die.
AN OPEN LETTER
To MOTHERS. ■
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EXCLUSIVE USE OF THE WORD “CASTORIA,” AND
M PITCHER’S CASTORIA,” AS OUR TRADE MARK.
J t DR. SAMUEL PITCHER, (f Hyannis, Massachusetts,
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This is the original “PITCHER’S CASTORIA, ’’ which has been
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President. # *
March 8,1897. .p.
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