The Bossier banner., 1886-01-21
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
A Discourse on "Winter, and How
to Meet It."
The Designations Incident to the Season
Forcibly Presented and illustrated
A Plea for Abstinence On the
Natal Day of the New Year.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, on his recent
return to Brooklyn from his Western lee
ture tour, chose the above timely topic for
his first Sunday evening discourse, taking
for his text:
Pray ye that your flight be not in the win.
ter.-Mathew xiv, 20.
The inhabitants of the old cities were
here told that they would have to fly for
their lives. Such fight would be painful,
even in the flush of spring time, but super
latively aggravating if in cold weather;
therefore they were told to pray that their
fight be not in the winter. There is some
thing in the winter season that not only
tests our physical endurance but, especial
ly in the city, tries our moral character.
It is the winter months that ruin morally
and forever many of our young men. We
sit in the house on winters night, and
hear the storm raging on the outside and
imagine the helpless crafts driven on the
coast, but if our ears were only good
enough, we could on any winter night
hear the crash of 100 moral shipwrecks.
MANY WIN SdIAC Auoe oCptChiDCt w IO"hS
by the first of March will have been blast
ed. 1t only takes one winter to ruin a
young man. When the long winter even
ings have come many of our young men
will improve them in forming more inti-
mate acquaintance with books, contract
ing higher social friendships and strength
ening and ennobling characters. But not
so with all. I will show you before get
through that at this season of the year
temptations are especially rampant, and
my counsel is, look out how you spend your
winter nights!
. l remark, first, that there is no season of
the year in which vicious allurements are
SO active. In warm weather places of dis
sipation win their tamest triumphs. Peo-
pie do not feel like going in the hot nights
of summer among the blazing gaslights or
breathing the fetid air of assemblages.
The receipts of most grog shops in De-
cember night are three times what they
are in any night in July or August.
doubt not there are larger audiences in the
Casinos in winter than in the summer
weather. Iniquity plies a more profitable
trade. December, January and February
are harvest months for the devil. The
playbills of the low entertainments then
are more charming, the acting is more ex-
quisite, the enthusiasm of the spectators
more bewitching. Many a young man
who makes out to keep right the rest of the
year, capsizes now. When he came to
town in the autumn his eye was bright,
his cheek rosy, his step elastic; but before
spring, as you pass him you will say to
your friend: "What is the matter with
that young man?" The fact is that one
winter of dissipation has done the work of
ruin.
This is the season for parties, and if they
are of the right kind, our social nature is
improved and our spirits are eheered up.
But many of them are not of the right
kind, and our young people night after
night are kept in the whirl Of unhealthy ex-
citement, until their strength fails, and
their spirits are broken down, and their
taste for ordinary life corrupted; and by
the time the spring weather comes they are
In the doctors hands or sleeping in the
cemetery. The certificate of their death is
made out, and the physician, out of regard
for the family, calls tn disease by some
Latin name, when the truth is that they
died of too many parties.
Away with these wine- drinking convivi-
Alities. How dare you, the father of a
household, trifie with the appetites of our
young people? Perhaps out of regard for
the minister or some other weak temper
ance man, you have the decanter in side
room, where, after refreshments, only a
select few are invited; and you come back
with glare in your eye and a stencil in
your breath that show that you have been
out serving the devil.
The excuse which Christian men often
give for this is that it is necessary, after
such late eating, by some sort of stimulant
to help digestion. My plain opinion is
that If a man have no more control over
his appetite than to stuff himself until his
digestive organs refuse to do their office,
he ought not to call himself a man, but
rather to class himself among the beasts
that perish. l take the words of the Lord
Almighty, and cry: "Woe to him that
putteth the bottle to his neighbours lips %
Young men, take it as the counsel of a
friend when bid you be cautious where
you spend your winter evenings. Thank
God that you have lived to see the glad
winter days in which your childhood was
made cheerful by the faces of fathers and
mothers brothers and sisters, some of
whom, alas will never again wish you a
"Happy New Year" or "Merry Christ
mas.n
Let no one tempt you out of your So
briefly. have seen respectable young
men of the best families drunk on
New Years Day. The excuse they
gave for the inebriation was that the
ladies insisted ON their taking it. There
have been instances where the delicate
hand of woman hath kindled a Young
mans taste for strong drink, who, after
many years, when the attractions of that
holiday scene were all forgotten, crouched
in her rags and her desolation and her
woe, under the uplifted hand of the drunk
en- monster who, on that Christmas morn
ing so long ago, took the glass from her
hand. And so the woman stands on the
abutment of the bridge on the moonlit
night wondering if down under the water
there is not some quiet place for a broken
heart. She takes one wild leap-and all is
over!
Oh, mingle not with the harmless bever-
age of your festive scene this poison oil
adders! Mix not with the sugar of the
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