The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1881-06-04


slaughtered? Many Of them are a:
their fathers or mothers house, broken
down in health and morals, waiting to
die. Others are in Greenwood, or
rather their bodies are, for their souls
went on to retribution. Not very bril-
liant prospects in the next world for
young men who in this world had good
health TO start with, and good educa-
ton and good example set them, and
a good opportunity opening before
them, but who put all their jewels in
one box and dropped it into the sea.
Now, how shall the slaughter of
young men he stopped? Young men,
arm yourselvesl My one object in
this sermon is to put weapon in each
of your hands for self-defense. Don't
wait for churches or Young Mems
Christion Associations to protect you.
BY the help of God, take care of your
selves. First, have room somewhere,
whether in the back parlor of fash
ionable clearinghouse or in the fourth
story of cheap lodging. Idon't care.
Make that room one of your fortresses.
Let no dissipated or unclean man cross
that Threshold. If such persons come
to the door. tell them courteously it
will be impossible for you to admit
them. Hang few family pictures on
your wall, if you have them. Put a
Bible on the stand. If you can afford
a musical instrument, and can play on
one, have it there-harp or flute or
concertina or cornet or melodeon OF
piano. Pray before you start off in the
morning. Pray when you come back
at night. Have few choice friends,
better than yourself, whom you can
occasionally invite to come there.
Make that room your Gibraltar, your
Sebastopol, your Mount Zion. Letno
bad book or newspaper come in any
more than you would have a cobra
coiled under your table. Begin to-day.
No one else will take care of you.
Take care of yourself. Your help will
not come up your three or four flights
of stairs, but down through the roof
down from heaven; down from the
God who, in The 5000 years of the
worlds existence, has never betrayed
a young man trying to be good and
Christian. AS TO your adverse world
lv circumstances, remember you are
on a level with most people who will
finally succeed. Those who start at
the top are apt ia go to the foot. You
start at the foot, and may go to the
top. Herschell made his living by
playing a violin at parties, but in the
interstices of the playing he went
out to look at the midnight heavens.
the field on which he made his i'm
mortal conquests. Quentin Matsys, as
a Woodworking blacksmith, sought
the hand of a painters daughter and
was refused. But not disheartened
he sought to excel as painter and
succeeded. and so won the hand of art
and the hand of the painters daugh-
ter. George Stephenson, from being
the foreman of a colliery, came to be
the most famous of the worlds engin-
GERS. Almost all those who died al
the top were born at the foot. Nc
capital to start with? Go to Mer-
chantile Library and get some books
and read up what wonderful me-
chanism You have in your right hand
and your foot and your eye and your
ear, and then ask some doctor to take
you into a dissecting room for the
illustration of what you have read
and never again be guilty of the
blasphemy of saying, you have no cap
ital to start with. Equipped as no
one but the Creator of the Universe
could afford to equip you. But al
this mechanism of the body is squalid
as compared with your more wonder
full soul. This makes me the more
selicitous. Ny anxiety Is not because
you have so little to do with, but be-
cause you have
so MUCH TO RISK AND LOSE.
There is no class of people that SC
excite my sympathy as young men III
great cities-nOt quite enough salary
to live on, and all the temptations that
come from the deficit; invited on all
hands to drink, while their exhausted
nervous system seems to demand
stimulants. Their religious principles
are caricatured by most of the clerks
i'm the store or operatives in the factO-
ry. The rapids of temptation and
death are sweeping against them al
the rate of forty miles an hour, and
they in a boat trying to head NJ
stream, and only one broken oar tC
work with. Unless Almighty God
help them, they must all go under.
When / said, protect yourselves,
proposed for you nothing so weak as
mere human resolution, which may
dissolve in the foam of the wine-cup,
or be blown out in the first gusts OF
temptation. But here are the helmet
shield and sword of the Omnipotent,
all offered. This moment clOthe your
self with this panoply. Sin pays nei-
Their for this world or the next, while
right thinking, right believing, rig hi
acting, win take you in safety through
this life, and in prosperity through
the next
Last Sabbath, at the close Of my SER
mon, / saw the gold watch of the
wOrld-renowned and much lamented
violinist, Ole Bull. He died last sum-
mer in his island home off the coast OF
Norway. He wound up his watch day
by day during his illness, saying to his
companion: II want to wind it as long
as | can, and then you wind it and
keep it going till it gets to my friend
DR.. Doremus, in New York, and then
he must keep it wound up till his life
is done, and the watch passes to his
young son, my especial favorite.,
Then the great musician, who as nc
other artist, had often made the violin
speak, and sing, and weep, and laugh
and triumph-for as he drew the bow
across the strings it seemed as il
earth and heaven must shiver in de-
lighted sympathy-that man, in sight
of his instruments of music, and in a
room looking off upon the sea, closed
his eyes in death. While all the
world was mourning at his departure
sixteen crowded steamers formed in
line of funeral procession to take his
body to the mainland. Fifty thousand
of his countrymen were gathered III
the amphitheater of the hills to hear
the eulogium; and as the great orator
Of the day, with stentorian voice, be-