The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1888-09-20


chain means not only adernment and
royalty of nature, but sometimes cap
tivity. And supposethere are those In
that sense deliberately and .persistently
making chain. Now here is young
man of good physical health, good man.
ners and good education. How shall he
put together enough links to make
chain for the down hill road? 1 will
give him some directions First let
HIM smoke. If he cannot stand
cigars let him try cigarettes. think
cigarettes viii help him on this road
little more rapidly because the doctors
say there is more poison in them, and SO
he will be helped along faster, and I have
the more confidence IN proposing this
because about fifty of the first young
men of Brooklyn during the last year
were, according to the doctors reports,
wines first, or ale or lager, and gradually
he will be able to take something stronger
and as all styles of strong drink are more
and more adulterated, his progress will
be facilitated. With the old time drinks
a man seldom got delirium tremens be-
fore 80 or 40 years of age; now he can
get the madness by the time he
is 18. Let him play cards, enough
money put up always to add
interest to the game. If the father and
mother wifi-play with him that viii help
by way OF countenancing the habit. And
it will be such pleasant thing to think
over in the day of Judgment when the
parents give account for the elevated
manner in which they have reared their
children. Every pleasant Sunday after
noon take carriage ride and stop at the
hotels on either side the road for Sab
beth refreshments. Do not let the
old fogy prejudices against Sabbath
breaking dominate you. Have a
membership in some club where
libertines go and tell about their
victorious sins, and laugh as load az any
of them in derision of those who belong
to the same sex as your sister and mother
Pitch your Bible overheard as old fash
ioned and fit only for women and chill
dren. Read all the magazine articles that
put Christianity at disadvantage, and go
to hear all the lectures that malign Christ.
who, they say, instead of being the
Mighty One he pretended to be, was an
imposter sand the irnplanter of a great
delusion. Go, at first out of curiosity, to
see all the houses of dissipation and then
go because you have felt the thran of
their fascination. Getting along spleA-
didly nowi
Let me see what further can I suggest
in that direction. Become more defiant
of all decency, more loud mouthed in your
atheism, more thoroughly alcoholized,
r. IL. - I.
do well enough for games of chance in
ladies' parhor, put up something worthy,
put up more, put UP all you have. Well
donel You have succeeded. You have
made chain-the tobacco habit one link.
the rum habit one link, the impure club
another link, in1idelity another4ink, Sab
bath desecraticn another link, unclean-
ness another link, and altogether they
make chain. And so there is q chain
on your hand and chain on your foot
and chain on your tongue and q
chain on your eye and a chain
on your brain and a chain ON your
property and chain on your soul. Some
day you wake up and you say: 81 am
tired of this, and l am going to get loose
from this shackle" You pound away
| with the hammer Of good resolution, but
cannot break the thrall Your friends
join you i'll conspiracy of help, but fall
exhausted in the unavailing attempt.
Now You begin, and with the writhing
of LAGOON, to try to break away, and
the muscles are distended, and the great
beads of perspiration dot your forehead,
and the eyes stand out from the sockets,
and with all the concentered energies Of
body, mind and soul you attempt to get
loose, but have only made the chain sink
deeper. All the devils that encamp in the
wine flask and the rum jug and the de-
canter-for each one has devil of its own
come out and sit around you and chat
! ter. In some midnight you spring from
your couch and cry: Il am fast. o God,
/ let me loose Dye powers of darkness, let
me loose! Father and mother and broth
ers and sisters, help me to get loose!'
And you turn your prayer to blasphenly
and then your blasphemy INTO prayer,
and to all the din and uproar there is
| played an accompaniment, not an accom-
panient by key and pedal, but the .ac-
compartment is rattle and the rattle is
that of chain. For five years, for ten
years, for twenty years, you have been
making chain.
But here I take step higher ami tell
you there is power that can break any
chain, chain of body, chain Of mind,
/ chain of soul. Tho fetters that the
hammer of the Gospel have broken
off, if piled together, would make a
mountain. The captives whom Christ
has set free, if stood side by side, would
make an army. Quicker than ship
chandler's furnace ever melted cable,
quicker than q key ever unlocked hand
cuff, quicker than the bayonets of revo-
1ution pried open the Bastile, you may
be liberated and made free son OF a
free daughter of God. You have only
to choose between serfdom and emanci-
patton, between a chain and coronet,
between Satan and God. Make up your
mind and make it up quick. When the
king of Sparta had crossed the Hellespont
and was about to march through Thrace,
he sent word to the people in the differ
cnt regions asking them whether he
should march through their countries as
a friend or an enemy. BY all means as
friend" answered most of the regions:
but the king of Macedon replied: Il will
take time to consider it. ;" ''Then, said
the king Of Sparta, 'let him consider it,
but meantime we Inarch--we march. y
So Christ, our King, gives us our choice
between his friendship and his frovn,
and many of us have long been consider
ing what we had better do; but mean.
time he marches on, and our opportuni
ties are marching by. And we shall bt
the loving subjects of his reign or the
victims of our own obduracy. So 1 urge
you to precipitancy rather than slow de
liberation, and | write all over you
soul the words of Christ saw inscribed
on the monument of Princess Elizabetl
in the Isle of Wight, the words to which
her index finger pointed in the oper
Bible when she was found dead in he
bed after a lifetime of trouble: ''Comt
unto me, all ye who are weary ant
heavy laden, and will give you rest.
Is there drunkard here? Yoi1 may, b,
the Saviour's grace, havo that fire o
thirst utterly extinguished. Is there
defrauder heyea You may be made