New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1888-10-24
AGAINST SUICIDE.
Self Destruction one Of the Worst
Crimes--But Suicides if Crazy,
May Get to Heaven.

MAY UeG TO HeaYens
BROOKLYN, N. z, Oct. 14.-At the Taber-
nacle this morning, the Rev. T. Dewitt Tai
mage, D. D., took for his text Acts Ii, Is
and 26:
He drew out his sword, and would have
killed himself, supposing that the prisoners
had been fed. But Paul cried with a loud
voice, saying DO thyself harm.','
The sermon was as follows:
Here is would-be suicide arrested in his
deadly attempt. He was sheriff, and ac-
cording to the Roman law, baliff himself
must suffer the punishment due an escaped
prisoner; and if the prisoner breaking Jail
was sentenced to be endungeoned for
three or four years; and if the pris-
oner breaking Jail was to have sui.
fered capital punishment, then the sheriff
must suffer capital punishment The sheriff
had received especial charge to keep sharp
lookout for Paul and Silas. The government
had not had confidence in bolts and bars to
keep safe these two clergymen, about whom
there seemed to be something strange and
supernatural.
Sure enough by miraculous power, they
are free, and the sheriff, waking out of a
sound sleep, and supposing these ministers
have run away, and knowing that they were
to die for preaching Christ, and realizing
that he must therefore die, rather than 90
under the executioner' AK on the morrow and
suffer public disgrace, resolves to precipitate
his own decease. But before the sharp, keen,
his heart, one of the unloosened prisoners ar
rests the blade by the command: ssDo thy
self no harm.
In olden time and where Christianity had
Got interfered with it, suicide was considered
honorable and sign OF courage Demos
themes poisoned himself when told that Alex
ander's ambassador had demanded the. sur
render OF the Athenian orators. Isocrates
killed himself rather than surrender to Philip
OF Macedon. Cato, rather than submit to
Julius Cesar, took his own life, and after
three times his wounds had been dressed tore
them open and persisted. Mithridates killed
himself rather than submit to Pompey, the
conqueror. Hannibal destroyed his life by
poison from his ring, considering life unbear-
able. Lycurgus suicide. Brutus a suicide.
After the disaster at Moscow, Napoleon
always carried with him preparation of
opium, and one night his servant heard the
Emperor arise, put something in glass and
drink it, and soon after the groans aroused
all the attendants, and it was only through
utmost medical skill he was resuscitated from
the stupor of the opiate.
Times have changed, and yet the American
conscience needs to be toned up on the SUBJ
Iect OF suicide. Have you seen paper in the
last month that did not announce the pas
sage out of life by ones own behest? De-
faulters, alarmed at the idea of exposure,
quit life precipitately. Men losing large for
tunes go out of the world because they can
not endure earthly existence. Frustrated
affection, domestic infelicity, dyspeptic i'm
patience, anger, remorse, envy, jealousy,
restitution, misanthropy are considered suf-
hclent causes for absconding THISTLE by paris
green, by laudnum, by belladonna, by Othel-
los dagger, by halter by leapfrom the abut-
ment OF bridge, by firearms. More cases of
felo de Sc in the last two years than any
two years of the worlds existence and more
IN the last month thanin any II months.
The evil is more and more spreading.
A pulpit not long ago expressed some
doubt as 20 whether there was really any,
thing wrong about quitting this life when it
became disagrecable, and there are found in
respectable circles people apologetic for the
crime which Paul in the text arrested. I
shall show you before get through that
suicide is the worst of all crimes, and shall
lift warning unmistakable. But in the
early part of this sermon / wish to admit
that some of the best Christians that have
ever lived have committed self obstruction,
but always in 'dementia, and not responsible.
have no more doubt about their eternal
felicity than have of the Christian who
dies in the deirium of typhoid fever While
the shock of the catastrophe is very great,
charge all those who have had Christian
friends under cerebral alteration step off
the boundaries OF this life, to have no doubt
about their happiness. The dear Lord took
them right out of their dazed and frenzied
state into perfect safety. How Christ feels
toward the insane you may know from the
kind way he treated the demoniac of Gadara,
and the child lunatic, and the potency with
which he hushed tempests either of sea or
BRAIN
Scotland, the land prolific of intellectual
giants, had none grander than Hugh Miller
Great for science and great for God. He
came of the best Highland blood, and was a
defendant of Donald Roy man eminent
for piety and the rare gift of second sight,
His attachments, climbing up as he did from
the quarry and the wall of the stone mason,
drew forth the astonished admiration of
auckland and Murchison, the scientists,
and DR.. Chalmers the theologian, and held
universities spellbound while he told them
the story Of what he had seen of God in the
old red sandstone
That man did more than any other being
that ever lived to show that the God of the
hills is the God of the Bible, and he struck his
tuning fork on the rocks of Cromarty until
he brought geology and theology accordant
in divine worship. His two books, entitled
Footprints of the Creator" and the "Testi-
mony of the Rocks, = proclaimed the bans of
an everlasting marriage between genuine
science and revelation. On this latter book
he toiled day and night through love of ma
ture and love ofGod, until he could not sleep,
and his brain gave way, and he was found
dead with a revo Oliver by his side, the cruel in
strument having had two bulets-one for
him and the other for the gunsmith who at
the coroner's inquest was examining it and
fell dead. Have you any doubt of the beati-
fcation of Hugh Miller, after his hot brain
had ceased throbbing that winSry night in
his study at P ortobello? Among the might
lest of earth, among the mightiest of heaven.
No one doubted the piety of William Cow
per, the author of those three great hymns.
"Oh. for a Closer Walk with God What
Various Hindranees We Meet" ssThere Is q
Fountain Filled with Blood" William Cow
per, who shares with Isaac Watts and
Charles Wesley the theft honor of Christian
hymnology. In hypochondria he resolved
to take his own life, and rode to the river
Thames, but found q man seated on some
goods at the very point which he, ex-
pected to spring and rode back to his home