Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-30
posing schools and smite the enemies of truth
hip and thigh with great slaughter. But


|
HE BEGAN TO TAMPER
with brilliant free thinking. Modern theories
of the soul threw over him their Establishments.
Skepticism was the Delilah that shore his locks
of, and all the Philistines of doubt and dark
ness and despair were upon him. He died in a
very prison of unbelief, his eyes out.
i Far back in the country ydistricts-JusI wnere,
1 purposely omit to say-there was born one
whose fame will last as long as American in
stitutions His name was the terror of all
| enemies of free government. He stood, the
| admired of millions; the nation uncovered in
| his presence and when he spoke senates sat
breathless under his spell. The plotters against
good government attempted to bind him with
| green withes and weave his locks in web, yet
| he walked forth from the enthrallment not
| knowing he had burst bond. But from the
| wine cup there arose a destroying spirit that
came forth to capture hissoul. He drank until
his eyes grew dim and his knees knocked to-
gether and his strength failed him. Exhausted
| with lifelong dissipations, he went home to die.
| Ministers pronounced eloquent eulogiums, and
| poets sung, and painters sketched, and sculp-
| tors ch1seled the majestic form into marble,
| and the world wept. but everywhere it was
known that it was strong drink that came like
| the infamous Delilah and his locks were shorn.
From the Island of Corsica there started
forth a nature charged with unparalleled ener-
| gies to make thrones tremhle and convulse the
| earth. Piedmont, Naples. Bavaria, Germany,
Italy Austria and England rose up to crush the
Bastiles burst open. The earth groaned with
| the agonies of Rivoli, Austerlitz, Saragossa
and Eylau. Five million men slain in his wars,
Crowns were showered at his feet, and king
| doms hoisted triumphal arches to let him pass
under, and Europe was lighted up at the con-
| fagration Of consuming cities. He could
almost have made causeway of human bones
between Lisbon and Moscow.
NAPoLEoN's CoNoUERoR.
No power short of omnipotent God could
arrest him. But out of the ocean Of human
blood there arose a spirit in which the con-
queror found more than match. The very
ambition that had rocked the world was now
to be his destroyer. 1t grasped for too much,
and in its effort lost all. He reached up after
the scepter of universal dominion, but slipped
and fell back into desolation and banishment.
The American ship. damaged of the storm, to-
day puts up in st. Helena, and the crew go up
to see the spot where the French exile expired
in loneliness and disgrace, the mightiest of all
Samsons shorn of his locks by ambition, that
most merciless of all Delilahs.
have not time to enumerate. Evil associa-
tions. sudden successes. spendthrift habits,
miserly proclivities and dissipation are the
names of some of the shears with which men
are every day made powetless. They have
strewn the earth with the carcasses of giants
and filed the great prison house with destroy ed
Samsons. who sit grinding the mills of despair,
their locks shorn and their eyes put out If
parents only knew to what temptations their
children were subjected they would be more |
earnest in their prayers and more careful about |
their example No young man escapes having |
the pathway of SIN pictured in bright colors |
before him. |
The first time ever saw a city-it was the |
city of Philadelphia was mere lad. 1 |
stopped at hotel, and remember in the even |
tide corrupt man piled me with his internal |
art. He saw was green. He wanted to show |
me
THE SIGHTS OF THE TOWN.
He painted the path of sin until it looked like |
emerald; but 1 was afraid of him. l showed |
back from the basilisk. 1 made up my mind |
he was basilisk l remember how he reeled |
his chair round in front of me and with a con- |
centrated and diabolical effort attempted to de-
stroy my soul; but there were good angels in |
the air that night. 1t was no good resolution /
on my part, but it was the all encompassing |
grace of good God that delivered me. Be- |
ware! beware! o young man!
There is a way that seemeth right unto /
man, but the end thereof is death. If all the /
victims of an impure life in all lands and ages |
host vaster than that which Xerxes led across /
the Hellespont than Timour led across India,
than William the Conqueror led across Eng |
land, than Abou-Bekr led across Syria; and if |
they could be stretched out in single file across
this continent, think the vanguard of the host |
would stand on the beach of the Pacific while |
yet tn. rear guard stood on the beach of the
Atlantic.
1 say this not because 1 expect to reclaim
any one that Las gone astray in this fearful |
path, but because want to utter warning for |
those who still maintain their integrity. The |
cases of reclamation of those who have given |
themselves fully up to an impure life are so |
few, probably you do not know one of them. 1 |
have seen a good many start out on that road. |
How many have I seen come back? Not one
that now think of. 1t seems as if the spell of |
death is on them and no human voice or
the voice of God can break the spell. Their
feet are hoppled, their wrists are handcuffed. |
They have around them
A GIRDLE OF REPTILES
buched at the waist, fastening them to an iron
doom; every time they breathe the forked
tongues strike them and they strain to break
away until the tendons' snap and the blood ex-
udes; and amid their contortions they cry out:
'Take me back to my fathers house. Where
is mother? Take me home. Take me homer
do stand before man to-day the locks of
whose strength are being tOyed with, let me
tell you to escape lest the shears of destruction
take your moral and your spiritual integrity.
Do you not see your sandals beginning to curl
on that red-hot path? This day in the name of
Almighty God tear off the beautifying veil
and the embroidered mantle of this old hag of
iniquity, and show you the ulcers and the
bloody ichor and the cancered lips and the
parting joints and the macerated limbs and the |
wriggling putrefcation, and cry out. oh, hoT-
ror of horrorsi In the stiffness of this Sabbath |
hour lift warning. Remember it is much
easier to form bad habits than to get clear of
them; in one minute of time you may get into
a sin from which all eternity cannot get you
out.
oh, that the voice of Gods truth might
drown the voice of DeliIah. Come into the
ways of pleasantness and the paths of peace,
and by the grace of pardoning God start for
thrones of honor and dominion upon which you
may reign, rather than travel the road to a
dungeon where the destroyed grind in the
mills of despair, their locks shorn and their
eyes out.