St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-11
The Libertines, Usurers, Infamous Quaoks,
Legal Oharlatans and World-Grab-
bing Monsters
Who Live In Paradises of Beauty and
Luxury and Have Funerals Of
Great Pomp;
Brilliant Scoundrelism That Inhabits
Castles of Sin Equipped and
Bedazzled With Wealth,
VIII Finally Be Arraigned at the
Grand Ass1ze Where Eternal
Justice Shall Rule.
Talnlage,s Sermon.

Special to the Globe.
BROOKLYN, N. Y, May 10.-Six thou
sand people, as usual, thrOnged the pews,
the aiSles, the corridors and the adJoined
parlOrs of the immense audience room OF the
Brooklyn Tabernacle this morning. DR..
Talmage read passages of the Scripture in
which good and bad characters were set OIL
in vivid contrast, and gave out the hymn
'sArm of the Lord, awake! awake!
Put ON thy strength, the nations shake"
The subject discussed was, "Why does
God permit Satan and sin to exist, when at
one blow He might annihilate them?"
The text was Job xxi, Z: Wherefore
do the wicked live?" Following is the SER
mon:
Poor Job! with tusl1s with stings, with
hoofs, all the misfortunes of life came on
him at once. Bankruptcy, bereavements,
standardization, eruptive disease so lrrlsat-
ing that he had to reinforce his ten flnger
nails with piece of earthenware to scratch
himself withal His wife took the diagnosis
of his complaint and prescribed for him
profanity. She thought he would feel bet
ter if between the paroXysmS OF pain and
grief he would swear a little. For each
boil plaster of objurgatiOn. Probably no
man was ever more tempted to take this
BAD ADVICE
than was Job when at last his three eXas-
perating friends, Eliphag, Bildad and
Zophar, came to comfort him, saying in
substance: ''YOu old sinner, this serves
you right. All this is because you are a
hypocrite. What sight you are. God has
chastised you for your wickedness." Ihe
disfgured invalid lifts his swollen eyellds
and puts down the piece of broken saucer
with which he had been rubbing his arms,
and tells his garrulous group of friends that
it is often the wicked who have the best
health and the most prosperity, and in this
connection hurls the question which every
man and woman that ever existed has at
some conjunction of events asked, ''Why DO
the wicked live?"
They build up fortunes that overshadoW
the earth and cOnfOund all the life lnsrr-
ance tables on the subject of longevity
some of them dying octogenarians or per-
haps nonagenarians or possibly centena-
rians. Ahab in the palace and NabOth In
the cabin. Unclean Herod on the throne
and Paul, the consecrated, twisting ropes
for tent-making. Manasseh, the worst OF
all the kings of Juda, lived the longest.
While the general rule is that the wicked
do not live out half their days, there are
instances where they live to great age IN
paradises of beauty and luxury, and die
with whole college of physicians expend-
ing its skill in the attempt for further pro-
longation and then have funeral with cas-
ket under mountains Of Gala lily and pro-
eession with all the
FINEST EQUIPAGE OF THE CITY
flashing and jingling into line, taking the
poor angle worm of the dust out to its hole
in the ground with pomp that might
make the passing spirit from some other
world think that the archangel Michael was
dead. Go up among the great residences OF
our cities and read the door plates and see
how many of them hold the names Of men
mighty for commercial OF social iniquity.
Vampires of the nineteenth century! Cor
CONS of the ages! Every wheel of their
carriage is Juggernaut wet with the blood
of those sacrificed to their avarice and evil
design. Men who are like Caligula, who
wished that all people were in one neck
that he might cut it off with one blow. Oh,
the slain! the slain! What procession of
libertines, of usurers, of. Infamous quacks,
of legal charlatans, of wOrld-grabbing mon
sters! What apostles OF despoilation!
What demons incarnate! Thousands Of
men who have concentered all their ener-
gies of body, mind and soul into one pro-
longed and ever-itensified and unrelenting
effort to sacrifice and blast and consume the
world. do not blame you for asking the
quivering, throbbing, burning, resounding,
appalling question of the text: ''Why do
the wicked live?"
First they live to demonstrate beyond
controversy the long-suffering patience Of
God. You rouse up and say, Il will not
stand it any longer" but perhaps you are
compelled to stand it. God, with all the
batteries of omnipotente
LOADED WITH THUNDERBoLTs,
stands it century after century Some
times have no doubt an angel comes up
and begs that he may unlimber the bat
teries, crying, ''Now is the time to strike"
mo" says God; ''wait year; wait twenty
years; wait a century; wait 500 years."
What God does is not so wonderful as what
he does not do. He has enough reserve
corps to sweep from the earth Mormonism,
Mohammedanism and paganism in one day.
He could take all the frauds Of New York
city on the west side of Broadway and in an
hour pitch them into the Hudson, and all
the frauds of New York on the east side of
Broadway and in an hour pitch them into
the East river. He understands the COM
bination lock OF every dishonest money safe
in Chrstendom and could blow it up
quicker than by any earthly explosive.
Written all over the earth from east to west
and from north to south and all over his
tory are the words, divine patience, divine
forbearance, divine ng-suffering. 1t is a
wonder to me that God did not burn up the
4 n o,11 44o,,4 IL, Il.
through immenSity, its aeroliteS dropping
into other worlds and kept in their museums
as specimens of defunct planet PEOPLE
why do the wicked live? To make the over
throw of sin more climacteric. They must
pile up their mischief very high so that
whole communities may see it, very high
so that
ALL CONTINENTS
may see it, very high SO that all the world
may see it. The higher it rises the harder
of Righteousness. Sin is not to be permitted
to sneak out of the world in silence.
1t is not merely to resign and quit. 1t is
not a case to go by default because no one
appears against it. 1t is to be arraigned
| handcuffed, put in prisoners box. con-
demnd by the verdict of all the good and
gibbetted so high that if one foot of the
gibbet stood on Mount Washington and the
other on the Himalayas it would not be
any more conspicuous.
About fifteen years ago we had an Illus
trious instance of how God lets man go on
only to make his undoing the more impress
sive as a moral lesson. First an honest
chairmaker, then alderman, then member
of congress, then supervisor of the city.
then school commissioner, then state sena-
tor, then commissioner of the department
of public works. On and up, stealing
thousands of dollars here and thousands Of
dollars there, swindling on the largest scale
of malfeasance ever witnessed in this coun-
try, so that the new city court house of
New York is a monument of municipal
crime. having cost more than the canitoitat