Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-09-22
DIR. TALMAGE ON SUICIDE.
A SERMON WHICH ELECTRIFIED
BROOKLYN YESTERDAY.

The Text Taken from Acts xvii, % and
2S-Self- Destruction Looked Upon as
Courageous in the Olden TImc-NOw
One of the Blacklist of Grimes.
BROOKLYN, Sept. 21.-The opening
hymn at the Brooklyn Tabernacle to-day
was:
sour God, our help In ages past,
Our hope for years to come"
DR.. Talmage expOun ded the 11th chap
ter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
preached on ''The Cause of Suicide" tax
ing his text from Acts xvi, q and 2S:
"He drew out his sword and would have
killed himself, sUpposing that the prison
ers had fed, but Paul cried with loud
voice, DO thyself no harmv" DR.. Tai
mage spoke as follows
Here is a would be suicide arrested in his
deadly attempt. He is a sheriff having pris
Oners IN charge. According to the Roman
law the bailiff had to suffer the punishment
that was due any culprlt escaping. and If the
prisoner breaking jail was to have been en-
dungeoned three or four years, then the keep
er must lie endungeoned three or four years,
and if the prisoner escaping was to have luf-
fered capital punishment then the keeper
must suffer capital punishment. The Sheriff
had received unusual charge to keep close
thing strange and supernatural about them,
and the government had not much confidence
in bolts and bars to hold fast these two incar
cerated clergymen, and now, sure enough,
they are loOsed by miraculous power, and as
they were to die for the crime of preaching
Christ the Sheriff supposed he would have to
die, and rather than go under the execution
er's ak on the morrow, and suffer public dis
grace, he would precipitate his own decease.
But the sharp, keen, cruel dagger which the
sheriff was aiming at his own heart halts at
the command of one of the snlOOsed prisoners:
"DO thyseH no harmW
In olden time, and where Christianity had
not interfered with it, suicide was popular
and considered a sign of courage. Demos
themes poisoned himself when AleXander's
ambassador demanded that the Athenian
orators be surrendered. IsOcrates, the ora
tor, starved himself TO death rather than sur
render to Philip of Macedon. Cato slew him.
self rather than submit to Caesar, and after
the wounds had been dressed three times Cato
tore them open and died. Mithr1dates pOis
Oned himself to escape Pompey, the con-
queror. Hannibal killed himself with poison,
which he always carried in a ring, because he
thought life unbearable. i curgus a suicide;
Brutus a suicide. Empedocles ended his life
by jumping into the crater of Mount Etna.
Zeno, the great philosopher, at rs years of age,
passing out OF a school, fell and put finger
out of joint, and. because Of the accident,
hanged himself. After his Moscow retreat,
Napoleon always carried a preparation of
opium for self-destructiOn, and his servant
one night heard him rise and put something
into glass and drink it, and soon after there
followed groans that awakened all his at
tendants, and it took utmost medical skill to
resusctate him from the stupOr of the opiate.
So the crime goes down through the ages,
and modern society needs some tOning-up on
the subject of suicide. You can't take up
newspaper without seeing the account of a
passage ont of life by ones own hand. De-
faulters, alarmed at the prospect of exposure
quit life thus precipitately. Men losing for
tunes end a life that they think not worth
living. Frustrated affection, domestic ills,
dyspeptic impatience, remorse, envy, grief.
destltutiOn and mlsanthrOpy are considered
sufficient cause for abscOnding from this
world by Paris green, by belladonna, 10y laU-
danum, by leap off an abutment, by Othello's
dagger, by rope, by firearms. Never SO many
cases of teJO de Sc in any two years as in the
last two years. The criPe is becoming COM
mon by the day. A pulpit not long ago eX-
pressed doubt as to whether there was really
anything wrong in ending ones life when 1t
becomes too disagreeable. And there are
strewn through the community, among re-
spectacle people, apolOglsts for the deed that
the Apostle in the text arrested shall show
that il is the worst possible crime, and will
lift against it a warning unmistakable.
At the opening of my sermon letme say that
some of the best Christian people who have
ever lived have committed suicide, but they
did so in dementia, and therefore were ire
snonsibe | would have no more doubt about
their immediate entrance upon eternal happi-
ness than have about those who die In their
beds in the delirium of q typhoid fever.
While the shock of the catastrophe is greater
than in ordinary demise, charge those whose
Christian friends have in cerebral alteration
stepped off the boundaries of this life 10 have
no fear about their destiny. The dear Lord
took them out OF their daZed and frenZed
state into perfect safety. If you want to
know how Christ feels toward the insane see
his treatment of the demOnIacs of GOdara and
I. e child lunatic, and the potency with which
He hushed tempests, whether of water or
brain.
Among all the grand and glorious men of
Scotland, the land prolific of intellectual
sNrfn ncrrQT dor hQa mol
Miller. Great in science and great for God.
He came from the best High and blood, and
was descendant of Donald Roy. memorable
for plety and for the rare gltt OF second sight.
His attanments, climbing up as he did from
quarry and stOne-masOn's wall, drew forth
the amazed admiration of Buckland and
Murchison, the scientists, and Chalmers, the
theologian. and held universities spell bound
as he told them what he had seen of God in
the Old Red Sandstone. He did more than
any man that ever lived to show that the God
of the hills is the God of the Bible; striking
his tuning-f fork on the rocks of CrOmarty un-
til Geology and Theology lifted their voices in
the same psalm of worship; his books, entitled
"The Footprints of the Creator" and ''The
Testimony of the Rocks " tanning the
banns of an eternal marriage between science
and revelation. He tOiled on this last book
day and night, from love OF nature and
love of God, until sleep was impossi-
BILE, and his brain gave way, and he
was found dead with revolver by his side,
the cruel instrument that had two bullets.
3
who afterward fell dead while examining it.
Can any one doubt the beatificatiOn of Hugh
Miller when his hot BRAN ceased to throb that
winter night in his study at Porto Bello?
Among the mightiest or earth, among the
mightiest of heaven.
No one ever doubted the piety of William
Cowper, author of "Oh, for closer walk with
God!'' . I here is a fountain filed with blood"
What various hindrances we meet" Will
liam Cowper, who, with Isaac Watts and
Charles Wesley, wears the chief honOrs OF the
huYa In hVpOPhOnHPia
CoWper resolved on self f-destructiOn, rode to
the Thames river for this purpose, but found
a If an seated upon some goods on tne bank
from which the sacred poet expected TO
spring, and so returned to his house, and that
night lay on the blade of knife, which broke,
and then Suspended himself with rope, which
parted. No wonder when he got out of his
abnormal condition he wrote that other hymn:
''God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform"
But while we make all this merciful and
righteous allowance for those Christian peo-
pie who have been plunged IN state of men
tai incOherenoe, declare that he who, while
in the possession of his reasoning faculties,
by his own hand Intentionally snaps the bond
between body and soul, goes straight into per-
ditiOn. Shall | prove 1t? Revelation XXI, s:
''Murderers shall have their part IN the lake
that burneth with fire and birthstone" Rev
elation xii, Is: "Without are dogs and sor-
cererB and whoremongers and murderers."
Don't believe in the New Testament? Per
haps, then, you believe in the ten com
mandments: Thou shalt not kill.o
Do you say all these refer
to the taking Of the life OF others? | ask. is
not a man as much responsible in regard to
his own life as the life of others? Your life is
committed to your especial care. You are its
custodian as you are the custodian of no other
life. God has given you means for its defense
arms with which to strike back assailants ewes
with which to watch invaders, and a natural
love of life that wasaintended always to be on
the alert. Assassination of others is a mild
crime as compared with the assassination OF
yourself. because IN this last case you are
treasurers of an especial trust, and you sur
render a castle you were especially bound to
protect. 1t is high treason against natural
law and high treason to God added to murder
That God is against self-immOlatiOn show
you rOgues' gallery in the hi lie, the pic
lures put there as warning to all men against
this unnatural deed. There hangs the head
less trunk of Saul on the walls of Bethshan
This is the great big coward who tried to Xiii
little David; ten feet of stature chasing four
This is the man who consulted with the clair
vOyant, the witch Of Endor, Completely
whipped in battle instead of surrenderipp his
sword with dignity as hundreds of heroes
have done, he asks his servant to kill him.
and, the servant declining, the giant plants
the hilt of his sword in the ground. and turns
the sharpened point of it up, and filings him
self upon it. And there his picture hangs in
the rOgues' gallery of miscreants. There also
is Ahithophel. the Macciavelli of Bible times.
He betrayed David in prospect of being prime
minister to Absalom, and ioined thai fellow
in his attempt at patricde WhittronheIis
change of politics not securing him what he
wanted, he took a short cut out of a dispraced
life into a suicides eternity, and in First sam
uel you nave MS post mortem photograph.
Tonder, also. is Abimelech, practically a self
murderer. While he was bombarding a tower
q woman took grlndstOne from its place and
dropped 1t upon his head, leaving just enough
lne IN ms cracker skull to say to his armor-
bearer: "Draw thy sword and slay me, that
saw not q slew him