New-York tribune., 1874-03-07
LESSONS.

cases which. without the addition OF note or
comment, preach sermons to each household
where they are read such as can never De ut
tered from the pulpit. One little fellow, at an
age when no child should be out III Its
mothers care, makes three several attempts
to throw himself into tho river, and finally
succeeds and is taken out dead, "the proof
"beins indisputable that the child, hardly,
"mOre than an infant, was drunk at the time
Another boy, aged fourteen, dies in Brooklyn
after repeated attacks of dellrium tremens.
"The organs Of the body" says the report Oh
the pOst-mortem examinatiOn, "were literally
"decayed from the incessant use of liquor"
His mother was found keeping watch over
his dead body, too drunk to c0mpre-
hend what had happened. Another story,
with touch of pathos in its horror
comes from Philadelphia. man named WOm-
fort kept beer-saloon in the suburbs OF the
city, and one night had remained with some OF
his customers until morning, singing and
drinking. HIS wife, who is represented as
peaceable, gentle woman, and who was daily
expecting the birth of child, came TO the
door as day broke and complained or the
noise, begging her husband to send the men
away whereupon, it is stated, Womfort, with
out reply, drew out a pistol and shot her.
The woman was removed to hospital, where
her child was born, and, finding herself dying,
had her husband brought to her from prison,
bade him farewell affectOnately, and then vol
UNFAIRLY made statement OF his innocence.
Surely, although the lie was spoken in the
very face of DEATH no accusing spirit Will be
lust enough to write it down against her soul
Every man and woman can draw for them
selves the lesson from these facts; 1T would
be idle in us to make sermon OF them,
urging temperance and weakening their mean
ing. They are but repetitions OF the same Old
truths; vice and its swift judgment, and that
blind. half animal, half divine love which
lifts humanity out of all its degradations.
There arc no moro notes in human life than
in O Chinese song; tho same over and over
since the days Of Adam until now But the
beauty and terror and pathOs OF it are fresh
every day. In this country the commonplace
dramas are briefer and more pregnant with
meaning than elsewhere, owing TO our more
vivid, nervous strain of life. A few brlet
periods will suffice to sum up a public mans
career, usually ending in dramatic slgnlh-
cant close which all can understand. The
histories of Tweed, of Fisk, on the one hand,
of Greeley, of Chase, of Lincoln on the other
how abrupt and weighty they are; brief and
breathless with meaning as the sermons or
the old prophets. Human life in more tenn
perate, phlegmatic nations limns itself In
detail; hero we have the tragcal intense
sketching of Fuseli.
1t is noticeable too that it is no modern
philosophic theory of human nature and the
Dunisbments or rewards awaiting 1t that Is
exemplified by these significant cartoons OF
life perpetually passing before us, but the
world-old truths of the Bible, which 1t Is the
fashion lately to pass by with good-humored
indifference as wOrn-out hypothesis of the
problem of life and death. Men are usually
ouite content that their women folks should
90 10 church to hear how David and Solomon
regarded this riddle of living thousands of
wears ago, while they pursue In their libraries
some curious theory of sexual selection or
correlation Of moral forces, until some such
histories as these suddenly write before them,
in words of blood, one of the old texts, with
its homely, unwelcome truth. The sins OF
the father are visited upon the children, to-
day. beyond the fourth generation: the actual
curse of an actual God is on the house OF the
wicked in New-YOrk as in Jerusalem: the
"strapge woman who 6attereth with her
tonguer plies her vocation still, and as surely
os then cher feet lead to death and her paths
"take hold on the grave" for those who follow
her. and for all who inherit her vices with
her blood.
Nor does it need the melodramatic ending
of these public histories to preach such les
sons. Not one of us, taking his own life or
that OF any man known to him, can fail to
find in it-nOt any light on the doctrines of
Pndobaptism or Apostolic succession, per-
haps, but evidence of the moral order that
underlies even ill-doing; the goodness of
God; tho perpetual ever-present chance He
puts before lis to lift our life to higher and
broader levels. There may have been much
evil done to the Christian religion by the
dogmatism and bigotry of some of its teach
ers: the great Master has been wounded in
the house of His friends more deeply than by
the spear of the soldier. But even If all pull
pits were closed and all teachers silent, these
truths of the old fashioned Bible, which our
mothers taught us long ago. would still not
want witness while ono man lives to bring
voluntarily his life to mean or noble ends,
and by that life, unbeliever though he may
chance to be, breaches them.
= ..... 81.
TEN PEN AND THE SWORD.
Gen. Sherman and ex-Gov. Davis Of Texas