The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1889-04-11
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Now, how is this wholesale slaugh-
ter to be stopped2 There is not a per-
son In the house but is interested in
that question. Young man, arm your
self. The object of my sermon is to
put weapon in each of your hands
for your own defense. Wait not for
Young Mems Christian associations to
protect you, or churches to protect
you. Appealing to God for help, take
care of yourself.
First, have a room somewhere that
you can call your own. Whether it
be the back parlor of a fashionable
boarding house, or room in the fourth
story of cheap lodging, care not
Only have that one room your for
tress. Let not the dissipator or un-
clean step over the threshold. II they
come up the long fight of stairs and
knock at the door, meet them face to
face and kindly yet firmly refuse them
admittance. Have few family por-
traits on the wall, if you brought them
with you from your country home
Have Bible on the stand. If you can
afford it and you can play on one,
have an instrument of music-harp or
flute, or cornet, or melodeon, or violin,
or piano. Every morning before you
leave that room, pray. Every night
after you come home in that room,
pray. Make that room your Gibral-
tar, your Sebastopol, your Mount
Zion. Let no bad book or newspaper
come into that room, any more than
you would allow a cobra to coil on
your table.
Take care of yourself. Nobody else
not come up two or three or four
flights of stairs; your help will come
through the roof, down from heaven,
from that God who in the six thousand
years of the worlds history never be-
trayed young man who tried to be
good and a Christian. Let me say in
regard to your adverse worldly circum-
stances, in passing, that you are on
level now with those who are finally
to succeed. Mark my words, young
man, and think of it thirty years from
now. You will find that those who
thirty years from now are the million
aires of this country, who are the ora
tors of the country, who are the poets
of the country, who are the strong
merchants of the country, who are the
great philanthropists of the country
rnightiest in church and state-are this
morning on level with you, not an
inch above, and you in straitened cir
cumStanceS now.
EVERY MAN HAS A NATURAL EQUIPMENT.
Herschel earned his living by play
ing violin at parties, and in the in
terstices of the play he would go out
and look up at the midnight heavens,
the fields of his immortal conquests.
George Stephenson rose from being the
foreman in a colliery to be the most
renowned of the worlds engineers. No
outfit, no capital to start With Young
man, go down to the Mercantile IL
brary and get some books and read of
what wonderful mechanism God gave
you in your hand, in your foot, in
your eye, III your ear, and then ask
some doctor to take you into the dis
secting room and illustrate to you
what you have read about, and never
again commit the blasphemy of say
ing you have no capital to start with.
Equippedl Why, the poorest young
man in this house is equipped as only
the God of the whole universe could
afford to equip him. Then his body
"a very poor affair compared with his
wonderful sa)ul-oh, that is what
makes me solicitous. ] am not SO
much anxious about you, young man,
as l am anxious about you because
you have much to risk and lose or
gain.
There is no class of persons that SO
stir my sympathies as young men in
great cities. Not quite enough salary
to live ON, and all the temptations that
come from that deficit. Invited on all
hands 10 drink, and their exhausted
nervous system seeming to demand
stimulus Their religion caricatured
by the most of the clerks in the store
and most of the operatives in the fac
tory The rapids of temptation and
| forty miles the hour, and he in frail
boat headed up stream, with nothing
but broken oar to work with. Unless
Almighty God help them they will go
under.
All! when told you to take care Of
yourself you misunderstood me if you
| thought | meant you are to depend
upon human resolution, which may
be dissolved in the foam of the wine
cup, or may be blown out with the
| first gust of temptation. Here Is the
| helmet, the sword of Lord God Al
mighty Clothe yourself i'll that pan
| oply and you shall not be put to con
fusion Sin pays well neither in this
| world nor the next, but right thinking
and right believing and right acting
will take you iii safety through this
life and in transport through the next.
never shall forget a prayer ] heard
a young man make some fifteen years
ago. 1t was a very short prayer, but
| it was a tremendous prayer: "Oh Lord,
| help us. We find it so very easy to do
wrong and so hard to do right. Lord,
help us" That prayer, / warrant you,
reached the ear of God, and reached
| hundred men who have found out
a thousand young men, perhaps, who
have found out that very thing. 1t is
so very easy to do wrong, and SO hard
to do right.
/ got letter, only one paragraph of
which [ shall read: Having moved
around somewhat l have run across
| many young men of intelligence,
ardent strivers after that will-o'-the-
| wisp, fortune, and of one of these /
would speak. He was a young Eng
lishman of twenty-three or four years,
who came To New York, where he had
acquaintances, with barely sufficient
to keep him a couple of weeks. He
had been tenderly reared; perhaps /
should say too tenderly, and was not
used to earning his living, and found
it extremely difficult to get any posi-
ton that he was capable of filling.
After many vain efforts in this direc-
ton he found himself on Sunday even
| ing in Brooklyn, near your church,
| with about three dollars left of his
small capital. Providence seemed to
| lead him to your door, and he de-
| termined to GO in and hear you.
"He told me his going to hear you
that night was undoubtedly the turn
ing point in his life, for when he
went into your church he felt des-
perate, but while listening to your
| discourse his better nature got the
mastery. / truly believe from what
| this Young man told me that your
sounding the depths of his heart that
night alone brought him back to his
| God whom he was so near leaving.
TAKE THE RIGHT ROAD AND KEEP TO 1T.
The echo. that is, of multltudes in
the house / am not preaching an
abstraction, but great reality. Oh!
friendless young man, OH prodigal
young man, OH broken hearted
young man, discouraged young man,
wounded young man, / commend you
to Christ this day. the best friend a
man eyer had. He meets You this