Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

an urgent message. dr. TALMAGE’S WORDS OF COUNSEL TO YOUNG MEN. Paint* Owl ike Dnn«era Whieh Await VawaryVeat—Warna Awnlnst Drink la*. Gnnzblin* and Va th Fifty Hab its—Get Close to God. (Copyright. U*. cratkmT 10811 Pre “ A **°7 WASHINGTON, Dec. 18.—This arousing and practical sermon by Dr. Talmage will reach many hearts and be an especial in-* apication to those who are now starting in, There wha ho snow on the board of the prophet of my text, and no erow's feet had left their mark near his eyes. Zechariah was a young man, and in a day dream he saw and heard two angels talking about the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. One of these angels desires that young Zechariah should be Well informed about the rebuilding of that city, its circumfer ence and the height of its walls, and he says to the other angel, “Bun, speak to this young Do not walk, but run, for the message is urgent and Imminent. So every young man needs to have imme diate advioe about the dimensions, the height and the circumference of that which under God he is to build—nan-ely, bls own character and destiny. No alow or laggard pace will do. A little farther on and coun sel will be of no advantage. Swift footed must be the practical and important sug gestions, or they might as well never bo made at all. Bun at the pace of five miles the hour and speak to that young man. Bun, before this year of 1898 is ended. Bun, before this century is closed. Run, before his character is inexorably decided for two worlds, this world and the next How many of us have found out by long and bitter experience-things that we ought to have been told before we were 25 years of age 1 Now I propose to tell you some things which if you will seriously and prayerfully observe will make you master of the situation in which you aro now placed and master of every situation in which you ever will be placed. And in order that my subject may be climacteric I begin on the outside edge of that advice, which will be more and more important as the subject unfolds. Now, if you would be master of the situa tion do not expend money before you get it. Haw many young men irretrievably mortgage their future because of resources that are quite sure to be theirs. Have the money either in your hand or in a safety deposit or in a bank or in a United States bond before you make purchases or go into expensive enterprises or hitch a spank ing team to a glittering turnout or con tract for the building of a mansion on the Potomac or the Hudson. Do not depend on an inheritance from your father or un cle. The old man may live on a good deal longer than you expect, and the day of your enforced payment may come before the day Os his decease. You cannot depend upon rheumatism or heart failure or senil ity to do its work. Longevity is so won derfully improved that you cannot depend upon people dying whan you think they ought to. They live to be septuagenarians or detogenanaiwor nonagenarians or even centenarians, and meanwhile their heirs go into bankruptcy, or, tempted to forgery or misappropriation of trust funds or wa tering of railroad or mining stock, go into the penitentiary. Neither had you better spread yourself out because of the 15 or 20 Sir cent you expect from an investment. Ost of the 15 or 20 per cent investments are apt to pay nothing save the privilege of being assessed to meet the obligations of the company in the affairs of which you get involved. Better get 3 S per cent from a government bond than be promised 15 per cent from a dividend which will never be declared or paid only once or twice, so as to tempt you deeper in before the grand smash up and you receive, instead of a payment of dividends, a letter from the president and secretary of the company saying they are very sorry. Save a Llttfe Money. If you have to wait a year or five years or ten years pr most of your lifetime, then you had better wait rather than spend money you expect to get. Then after you get it do not spend it all. Never spend a dollar pntil you have 50 cents that you do not sptfad. In the government service in this city how many splendid women who are the daughters of men who spent all they got and then sneaked out of life to leave their daughters penniless, to be look ed after by some kind senator or other friend who might solicit for them a posi tion on small salary, but enough to keep them from starvation and the poorhousel Such men do not die; they abscond. I cannot understand how such spendthrift and reckless and improvident men dare at their decease appear at the door of heaven seeking admission when they have left their families in the tophet of want and mendicancy. Such men do not deserve a throne and a harp and a mansion, but an everlasting poorhouse. From no disap- F Anted or disgruntled state of mind do give this counsel, for life has been to me a glad surprise, as it has been to most people a disappointment. I expected noth ing of advantage or opportunity, and so everything has been to me a matter of pleased, amazement, but I have seen so many mon ruined for time and eternity by going into expenditure, with nothing to depend upon except anticipation, that if I bad power to put all warnings into one ciftp of thunder I would with that star tling vehemence say to all young men what John Randolph said in yonder senate chamber as be stretched his long finger out toward some senatorial opponent and with shrill voice cried out, “Gentlemen, pay as you go!” * Do no* say you have no chance, but re member Isaac Newton, the greatest as tronomer of his day, once peddling cab bages *he street, and Martin Luther Singing On the public square for any pen nies that he might pick up, and John Bunyan mending kettles, and the late Judge Bradley of the United States su preme court, who was the son of a char coal burner, and Turner, the painter, who was the eon of a barber, and Lord Clive, who sgved India to England, shipped by his fattier to Madras as a useless boy whom he wanted to get rid of, and Prideaux, the, world renowned scholar and theo logian, scouring pots and pans to work his way through college, and the mother of the late William E. Dodge, the philan thropist and magnificent man, keeping a thread and needle store, and Peter Cooper, who worked o-i small wages in a glue fac tory, living to give |500,000 for the found ing of an Institute that has already edu cated thousands of the poor sons and daughters of America, and Bowditch, the scientist, beginning his useful learning and affluent career by reading the books that had bean driven ashore from a ship wreck at Salem. There is, young man, a great financial or literary or moral or re ligious suoaess awaiting you if you only know how to go up and take I*. Then take it or get ready to take it. The mightier the opposition the grander the triumph when you have conquered. There is a flower in Siberia that blooms [only in January, the severest month of that cold riUn.Ma. It is a etar shaped flower and covered with glistening specks that look like diamonds. A Russian took some of the seed, of that flower to St Petere burg and planted them, and they grew, tho °old€st day of January they pushed back the snow and ice and bunt into full bioom. They called it the “snow flower,” and it makes me think of those whom the world tries to freeze out and snow under, but who in the strength of God push through and up and out and Hoorn In the hardest weather of the world’s cold treatment, starred and ra diant with a teuuty given only to those who find Hfe a struggle and turn it into a victory < Anger Is Unhealthy. " Again, if you would master the situa tion, when angry do not utter a word or write a letter, but before you speak a word or write a word sing a verso of some hymn in a tune arranged in minor gey and having, no staccato passages. If very angty, sing two verses. If in a positive rage, sing three verees. First of all, the unhealthiest thing on earth is to get mad. It jangles the nerves, enlarges the spleen and sets the heart into a wild thumping. Many a man and many a woman has in time of such mental and physical agita tion dropped dead. Not only that, but it makes enemies out of friends, and makes enemies more virulent, and anger is par tial or consummate suicide. Great attor neys, understanding this, have often won their cause by willfully throwing the op posing counsel into a rage. There is one man you m ust manage or one woman you must control in order to please God and make life a success and that la yourself. There are drawbridges to every castle by which you may keep out of your nature foreign foes, but no man has a defense against himself unless it be a divine de fense. .Out of the millions of the human race there is only one person who can do you permanent and everlasting harm, and that is the being that walks under your own hat and in your own shoes. The hardest realm that you will ever have to govern is the realm between your scalp and heel The most dangerous cargo a ship can carry is dynamite, and the most perilous thing tn one’s nature is an ex plosive temper. If your nature is hope lessly Irascible and tempestuous, then dramatize placidity. If the ship is on fire and you cannot extinguish the flames, at any rate keep down the hatches. When at some injustice inflicted upon you or some insult offered or some wrong done, the best thing for you to say is to say nothing, apd the best thing for you to write is to write nothing. If the meanness done you is unbearable, or you must express your self or die, then I commend a plan that I have once or twice successfully adopted. Take a sheet of paper. Date it at your home or office. Then put the wrongdoer's name at the head of the letter page, with out any'prefix of “colonel” or suffix of •*D. D.,’’ and begin with no term of eour tesy, but a bold and abrupt “sir." Then follow it with m statement of the wrong he has done you red of the indignation you. havo felt, Puttoto it the strongest terms of execration yen ean employ with out being profane. Sign your name to the redhot epistle. Fold it. Envelop it. Direct it plainly to the man who has done you wrong. Carry the letter a week or two weeks, if need bo, and then destroy it. In God’s name, destroy it! I like what Abraham Lincoln said to one of his cabinet officers. That cabinet officer had been belied and misrepresented until in a fury he wrote a letter of arraign ments to his enemy and in tersest possible phraseology told him what he thought of him. The chbinet officer read it to Mr. Lincoln and asked him how he liked it Mr. Lincoln replied: “It is splendid for sarcasm and scorn. I never heard any thing more complete in that direction. But do you think you can afford to send it?” That calm and wise and Christian interrogation of the president stopped the letter, and it was never sent. Young man, before you get far on in life, unless you are to be an exception among men, you will be wronged, you will be misinterpret ed, you will be outraged. All your sense of justice will be in conflagration. Let me kpr w how you meet that firstgreat of fense urd I will tell you whether your life is to be a triumph or a failure. You see, equipoise at such a time means so many things. It means self control. It means a capacity to foresee results. It means a confidence in your own integrity. It means a faith in the Lord God that he will see you through. Don’t Be Suspicious. Again, if you would be master of the situation put the best interpretation on the character and behavior of others. Do not be looking for hypocrites in churches, or thieving among domestic servants, or swindlers among business men, or mal feasance in office. There is much in life to make men suspicious of others, and when that characteristic of suspicion be comes dominant a man has secured his own unhappiness, l and he has become an offense in all circles, religious, commer cial and political. The man who moves for a committee of investigation is gener ally a moral derelict The man who goes with his nostrils inflated, trying to discov er something malodorous, is not a man, but a sleuthhound. The world is full of nice people, generous people, people who are doing their best —good husbands, good wives, goad fathers, good mothers, good officers of the law, good judges, good gov ernors, good state and national legisla tors, good rulers. Does some man growl out, “That has not been my experience, and I think just the opposite!” Well, my brother, I am sorry for your afflictive cir cumstances, and that you had an unfor tunate ancestry, and that you have kept such bad company and had such discourag ing environment. I notice that after a man has been making a violent tirade against his fellow men he is on his way down, and if he live long enough he will be asking you for a quarter of a dollar to get a drink or a night’s lodging. Behave yourself well, O young man, and you will find life a pleasant thing to live, and the world full of friends, and God’s bene diction everywhere about you. Avoid GamMta*. Again, if you would be mnster of the situation, expect nothing from good luck or haphazard or gaming adventures. In this time, when it is estimated that gam bling exchanges money to the amount of about 180,000,000 a day, this remark may be useful. There come times in many a man’s life when he hopes to get some thing for which be does not give an equivalent, and there are 50 kinds of gambling. Stand aloof from all of them. Understand that the gambling spirit la a disease, and the more successful you are the more certain you are to go right on to your own rain. Having made his thou sands, why does not the gambler stop and make a safe investment of what he has Itinofand spend the rart of Ms Hfe I* I uiet or lees hazardous style of occupation! he- reason is he cannot stop. Masking Ht death ever cures a confirmed gmakhto i:r Keeley's gold cure rescues the drum ard, and there aro anti tobacco prepara tions that will arrest the victim of nioo tlno, and religion can save any one exoopt a gambler. The fact is he is Irresponsible. Having got the habit in him, he is no jioro responsible for keeping on than a man falling from the roof of a four story bouse can stop at the window of the sec end story. Here and there you may find an instance where a gambler has been re posted or reports himself as being ognvert ad, but in that oase the man was not fully under the heel of the passion. The real gambler Is a through passenger to death and perdition. The only use in referring to him is in the way of prevention? He began by taking chances on a bookcase or a sewing machine at a church fair and ended by getting a few pennlesrfor his last valuable in a pawnbroker’s shop. The only man who gambles successfully is the man who loses so fearfully a* the start that he is disgusted and quits. Let him win at the start and win again, and it means farewell to home and heaven. Most merciless of all habits! Horace Walpole says that a man dropped down at the door of a clubhouse in Lon don and was carried in, and the gamblers began to bet whether he was dead or not, and when it was proposed to bleed him for his recovery the gamblers objected that it would affect the fairness of the bet. What noble men they must have been! But more and more ladles are becoming gamblers. They bet at the races and have prizes in social groups which are nothing but the stakes of gambling. A good way for a lady to got into the gamester's habit is by beginning with “progressiveeuchre.” That opens the door in a fashionable way. In one of our great cities invitations were sent out for such a meeting at the card ta bles. The guests entered, and sat down and began. After awhile the excitement ran high, and the lady who was the host ess fainted and fell under the table. The guests arose, but some one said: “Don’t touch the bell! Let us finish the game. She would hpve done so herself and would wish us, if she spoke.” The game went on for 80 minutes longer, and then a phy sician was called. After examination oi the case it was found that the lady bad been dead 20 minutes. As the guests lift their hands in surprise I exclaim in regard to them, What delicate and refined and angelic womanhood I. Today, Wot Tomorrow. Again, if you would be master of the situation, never adjourn until tomorrow what you can do today. The difference between happy and inspiring work and wearying and exhausting and dispiriting work is the difference between work be hind you and work before you. But al ways wait until you feel like It, wait un til clrrcumstances are more propitious, wait till next week or wait till next year, and the probability is the work will b< only half done or never done at all. Pori ponemont is the curse of a vast population. After awhile all the things that ought tc have been done previously will rush in upon you, and, it being too much for youi brain and nerves, you will be a fit subject for paralysis or nervous prostration. How many battles have been lost because the general did not strike quick enough, and the enemy had full time to gather re-en forcement! You intend some time tc write that important letter. You intend some time to make that business call. You intend some time to finish that book. You intend some time to preach that sermon. Where is some time! What is some time! Does it walk or does it float about youi Will it happen to come! Not Sometime is never. There are no stragglers in the days and months and years. If one day should refuse to keep step and become a straggler, it would wreck the universe. Promptness! Upto time! Today! Now! You will get only what you win. There are accidents, like the printer’s mistake which caused Louis Napoleon tc be called “Napoleon III.” A Parisian editor at the time that Louis Napoleon by base strategy turned the republic into a monarchy wrote in derision the word “Na poleon,” followed by three exclamation points. These exclamation points the printer mistook for the letter “I” three times written, and hence he was called “Napoleon III.” But promotions by ac cident are not to be depended on. Depend on getting nothing except that which un der God by your own industry and good sense you achieve. That was a good maxim of olden time, “Get thy spindle and dis taff ready, and God will send thee flax.” Especially do our young men need to gel ready, as within the past few months th< world has unfolded before them opportune tlas such as we never dreamed would com< so soon. Putting aside the political ques tion as to what ought to be done Witt Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines, the whole world for the first time is open, and the question now is, what our young met will do with the world. China, the riches! of all lands for metals and with 500,000, 000 of people, is made our neighbor, and the commerce of the United States is to lx quadrupled in the life of the present gen oration, and what advantages commera advantages mechanism and art and lit erature and the professions. The Ameri can plow, the American hammer, thi American pen, the \American printing press, the American bargain counter, an soon to have their opportunity in every is land of the sea and every continent. Yount men! You need to be wiser, braver, bet ter men than we have ever been to meet the crisis. Religion Necessary. Again, if you would be master of th< situation, and I name it last because it h the most important, for you know thai which is last mentioned is apt to be best remembered, I charge you get into youi heart and life, your conversation and youi manners, your body, mind and soul, the near 6,000-year-old religion of the Bible. Why so! Because the large majority ol people quit this life before 25 years of age, and the possibility is that if you do no! take possession of this religion, and re ligion does not take possession of yoc while you are young, you will netoe some into alliance. Mrs. McKinley, the mothei of our president, said to me at the Whitt House, “I am living on borrowed time for lam over 80 years of ago.” My replj to her was the reply I make to you, “All those who are over 25 yean of age are Br ing on borrowed time, sinto the majeritj of people go out of the world before fit years of age.” Heraclitus, according to Plato, said thai no man bathes twice in the same river But, suppose you live to beoctogenqrians, do you not seo that postponement is an awful waste of nerve and muscle one brain? What is the use of your pulltag I heavy load all your life when you can hav< two of the white horses that St. John saw in heaven harnessed to your load? Sup pose you have a great mill wheel to turn. You can put that mill wheel where it will be turned by a mill race of water one fool deep, poured by a small brook, or you oax put it along the deep and swift St. Law ToUao. hitoK Will wUI halMlMdl the mill racD voiih oi water every or time. Are yon going to run year life by the shallow drippings of earthly influence or by the rolling rivers of oinnipotentpowtet Are you going to undertake the work of life with nothing but your own brain or arm or With your own brain and arm backed up by all the terrestrial and all the celestial forces of the Almighty? I make as great an offer as was ever mode by man I offer you God. He tells me to make that point blank propositon. If you want them, you can hoxe them on your Wide fob the essmest asking—omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence! Can you imagine a greater contrast than a young man undertaking life alone—life, with all Its oonfrontmenta of temptation and ob stacle—and a young scan undertaking life with every wing of angel and every thun derbolt of heaven pledged for his defense and advancement—the difference between a young man alone and a young man be friended by the Maker and Upholder of the universe! The battle of life is ep se vere that no young man qpn afford to de cline any help, and the mightiest help is God. One night in the year 1741 Count Lessock went to escort the Princess Eliza beth of Russia to a throne which was then unoccupied. She halted, she hesitated, she wondered whether alio bad bote er go to the palaoe and mount the throne of all the RuMlae. Then Count Leeeock drew on a paper two sketches, the one of herself and the count in disgrace and on the scaf fold and the other of herself on a throne amid huzzaing subjects. When shgsaw plainly that she must make a choice, she chose the throne. I put before the young men of Washington and the young men of America the choice between overthrow and enthronement. You may have what you wIU. WiU you be the slave of passion and sin and death or a conqueror em palaced! The Spanish proverb was right when it said, “The road of By and By leads to the town of Never.” Get Close to God. More young men would take this ad vantage which I speak of if they did not have the notion that religion puts one into depressing process. They have heard, for instance, the absurd preachment, “You ought to live every day as though it were your lost.” Such a lachrymose man I would not want anywhere around me. On the contrary, you ought to live as though you were going to live a great white in this world and to live forever to the next world. There is no smell of varnish of coffin lids in our genuine religion. Get in right relation with God through Jesus Christ, and you need not bother yourself the rest of your life for two minutes about your death or about your funeral. Here is a manly religion, one that will extirpate from your nature all that ought to be ex tirpated and irradiate it with every virtue and make it glow with every anticipation. Neither would I have you adopt that other absurd preachment, that the things of this world are of little Importance as compared with the next world. On the contrary, yon cannot sufficiently appreci ate the Importance of this world, for it de cides your next world. You might as well despise a schoolhouse because it is not a university. In the schoolhouse we prepare for the university. If this world is of such little importance, I do not think the first born and the last born of heaven would have spent 83 years down here to redeem Do not postpone to the fifties or even the forties of your life that which you can be and do in the twenties or thirties. If you -do not amount to much before 40 years of age, you will never amount to much. Jef ferson wrote the Declaration of American Independence at 88 years of age. William Pitt was prime minister of England at 24. Raphael's great paintings were all finished before he was 87 years of age. Cortes wss 81 when he overcame Mexico. Qrotius was attorney general at 24. Gustavus Adolphus expired at 88. At 27 Calvin pub lished his immortal “Institutes.” Alex ander the Great died at 87, and lesser men get armed for the chief good or evil of their lives before they reach thelf midlife. Start Rl*ht. Young man, start right, and the only way to start right is to put yourself into companionship with the best friend a young man ever had—Christ the Lord. He will give you equipoise amid the rock ing of life's uncertainties. He will sup port you in day of loss. He will direct you when you eome to the forks of the road and know not which road to take. He will guide you in your home life, if you are wise enough to have a home of your own. If you live oa to great pros perity, he will show you how to manage a fortune. If your earthly projects fail and you are put in financial straits, he will see to it that that is the best condition for your soul, and the discipline and the hard ship will make you more and more of a man. If you live on to old age, he will make the evening twilight as bright as and perhaps brighter than was the morn ing twilight, and when your work on earth is done the gates of a better world will open on expansions and enthrone ments and felicities which St. John de scribes sometimes as orchards, sometimes as shaded streets and sometimes as a crys talline river and sometimes as an orchestra with mighty instruments, blown on by lips cherublo or thrtimmed by fingers seraphic, and inhabitants always tsarlees and songful and resplendent, so that the mightiest calamity of the universe is the portion of that one who falls to enter it Young man, seek only elevating and improving companionship. Do not let the last scion of a noble family, a fellow with a big name, but bad habits, for he drinks and swears and is dissolute, take your arm to walk down the street or spend an evening with you, either at your room or his room. Remember that sin is the most expensive thing in God's universe. I have read that Sir Brasil, the knight, tired out with the chase had a falcon on his wrist, as they did in days of falconry, when with hawks or falcons they went forth to bring down partridges or grouse or pigeons, and, being very thirsty, came to a stream struggling from a rook, and, releasing the falcon from his wrist, he took the bugle which he carried, and, stopping the mouth piece of his bugle with a tuft of moss, he put this extemporised cup under the water which came down drop by drop from the rock until the cup was full and then lifted it to drink, when the falcon he had re leased with sudden swoop dashed the cup from his hand. By the same process he filled the cup again >nd was about to drink when the falcon by another swoop dashed down the cup. Enraged at this in solence and violence of the bird, he cried, “I will wring thy neck if thou does* that again.” But, having filled the cup a third time and trying to drink, a third time the falcon dashed it down. Then Sir Brasil with his fist struck the bird, which flut tered and loofcsd lovingly and reproach fully at him and dropped dead. Then Sir Brasil, looking up to the top of the rock whence dripped the water, saw a great green serpent coiled fold above fold, the venom from his mouth dropping into that from whieh Sir Brasil had filled hie cop. Then axslaimed the kniebt. ‘ ‘ What a hind thfeg ftwMfor thetatom to drab town •BMpO IMM ” M> SOW MR MB BO MMB esrtalnly waters that refresh than wateM that poison. This momsat then are thoa rends st youag men, unwittingly and not knowing what they do, taking into their that old stepant, th» deril, and tbs tore Os God's Spirit tn kindly warning dashes down the cup, but again it to filled and again dashed down red again fiUed and M»ln dashed down. Why not tarn away and slake your thirst at the dear, bright, psrennlaklMmtata that tarelre ton the Book of Ages, a fountain bq wide and so deep thftt >ll tbo IniißbiMbiitß of corth Mid all f hrawin mag? stoop flown 1 CASTOR IA fIRMWiiMB—IIIIIBI Illi I ■III— Th© Kind Yea Have Always Bought, and which has been tn use for over 30 years, has borne the signature of . ' r.' - J an< * lUM> Wdetender his per- sonal Supervision since its inftmey. Allow no ono to deceive you In thia. All Counterfeits, Imitations and Substitutes are but Ex periments that trifle with and endanger the health or Intents and Children—Experlrace against Experiment. What is CASTORIA Castoria is a substitute for Castor Oil, Paregoric, Drops and Soothing Syrups. It is Harmless and Pleasant. It contains neither Opium, Morphine nor other Narcotic Rubstancc. Its age is its guarantee. It destroys Worms and allays Feverishness. It cures Diairiioea and Wind Colic. It relieves Teething Troubles, cures Conatipatiou and Flatulency. It assimilates the Food, regulates the Stomach and Bowels, giving healthy and natural sleep. The Children’s Panacea—The Mother’s Friend. CINUINS CASTORIA ALWAYS The Kind You Have Always Bought In Use For Over 30 Years. —GET YOUH — JOB PRINTING DONE A.T 1 v< The Morning Call Office. ■’ - ±!^—sag-—B , ’ ' ,? 3 * u. i .jaM We have Just supplied our Job Office with a complete line of BtatiiMMrt kinds and can get up, on short notice, anything wanted in the way or LETTER READS, BILL HEADS 1 STATEMENTS, IRCULARS, - •" ENVELOPES, NOTES, MORTGAGES, PROGRAMS :: H JARDS, POSTERS DODGERS, MW MR, Wr trrry Ue best Ine of ENVELOPES tot Jlhnd 3 this trade. | Aa aUracdvt POSTER cf aay sise can be iwued on short notice Our pricea for work of all kinds will compare fkrorably with poee obtained yob any office in the state. When yon want Job printing of any dirt rip lien ■ . . . ■ call Satisfaction guaranteeu. / ".-W J. P. &S B. Sawtell. I ■** “ DIALECT. MMM WtaStowritiUtaira. Foe tee eomoxA people's tfacus** And the crore but peassat wee* Should be written as It's hosed. Wiss or foolleh, tt *tto teSA w-t -s-h-m w rev-re tw yre« Witt sews spooeh he orusterattan tires •terra reMNoesmdttSe&etg Whteh la staey er to ehyms Is a record of the timo, Vital, frmh and St to bo