The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1889-03-21
TALMAGE's SERMON.
The Necessity of the Sabbath in
Carrying Out Gods Plans.
It is Not of Necessity Day Devoid OF
Pleasures, But Man May Not VIO-
late It's SanctitY with Con-
tinued Impunity.


bath" His text was:
And cali the Sabbath a delght.-Isaiah
lyiii. Ia.
There is an element of gloom striking
through all false religions. Paganism is
a brood of horrors. The god of Con-
fucius frowned upon it's victims with
blind fate. Mohammedanism promises
nothing to those exhausted with sin in
this world, but an eternity Of the same
passional indulgences. But God in
tended that our religion should have the
grand characteristic of cheerfulness. st.
Paul struck the keynote when he said:
"Rejoice evermore. and again | say, re-
joice." This religion has no spikes for
the feet; it has no hooks for the shoulder;
1t has no long. privileges to take, it has no
funeral pyres upon which to leap, it has
no juggernauts before which to fall. It's
good cheer is symbolized in the Bible by
the brightness of waters and the redo
lence of 5ilies, and the sweetness of
music, and the hilarities of banquet. A
choir of seraphim chanted at it's induc-
ton, and pealing trumpet, and waving
palm, and tapping wings of archangel,
are to celebrate its triumphs. It began
its chief mission with the shout: s'Glory
W 0OQ III tAAC utSuCSts anu IL WILL ClOS0
its earthly mission with the ascription:
s'Halleiujah, the Lord God omnipotent
reignethln
But men have said that our religion is
not cheerful, because we have such a
deleful Sabbath. They say: "You can
have your religious assemblages, and
your long faces, and your shifting cant,
and your Psalm books, and your Bible.
Give us the Sunday excursion, and the
convivial laughter. We have so much joy
that we want to spread it all over the sew
en- days of the week, and you shall not
have one of our days of worldly satisfac-
ton for religious dolefulness." want to
show these men--if there are any such in
this house this morning-that they are
under great delusion, and that God in
tended the fifty-two Sundays of the year
to be hung up like bells in a tower, beat
ing perpetual chime of joy and glory
and salvation and Heaven; for want to
carry out the idea Of the text, ''and call
the Sabbath delight"
remark, in the first place, we are to
find in this day the joy Of healthy repose.
In this democratic country we all have to
work-some with hands, some with brains,
some with foot. If there is in all this
house hand that has not, during the past
year, been stretched forth to some kind of
toll, let it be lifted. Not one, not one.
You sell the goods. You teach the school.
You doctor in the sick room. You prac-
tice at the bar. You edit a newspaper.
You tan the hides. You preach the Cos
pei. You mend the shoes. You sit at the
shuttle. You carry the hod of bricks up
the ladder on the wall. And the one occu-
patton is as honorable as the other, pro-
vided God calls you to it. l care not what
you do, If you only do it well. But when
Saturday night comes you are jaded and
worn.
The hand can not so skillfully manufact
ure; the eye can not see so well; the
brain is not SO clear; the judgment is not
so we'll balanced. A prominent manufact-
urer told me that he could see a differ
ence between the goods which went out Of
bis establishment on Saturday from the
goods that went out on Monday. He said:
They were very different indeed. Those
that were made in the former part of the
week, because of the rest that had been
previously given, were better than those
that were made in the latter part of the
week, when the men were tired out" The
Sabbath comes, and it battles the sore
ness from the limbs, quiets the agitated
brain and puts out the fires of anxiety
hat have been burning all the week. Our
bodies are seven-day clocks, and unless
IN the seventh day they are wound up
hey run down into the grave.
The Sabbath was intended as a savings
oank. Into it we are to gather the re-
sources upon which we are to draw all the
week. That man who breaks the Sabbath
-obs his own nerve, his own muscle. his
own brain. his own bone. He dips up the
vine of his own life and throws it away,
He who breaks the Lords day gives a
mortgage to disease and death upon his
entire physical estate, and at the most
unexpected moment that mortgage will
be foreclosed and the soul elected from
the premises. Every gland, and pore, and
cell, and finger mail demands the seventh
day for repose. The respiration of the
lungs, the throbs of the pulse in the wrist,
the motion of the bone in its socket de-
clare: Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy" There are thousands of
men who have had their lives dashed out
against the golden gates Of the Sabbath.
A prominent London merchant testifies
that thirty years ago he went to London.
He says: 81 have during that time watched
minutely, and have noticed that the men
who went to business on the Lords day
or opened their counting houses have,
without single exception, come to fall
ure.a A prominent Christian merchant
in Boston says: 81 find it don't pay to
work on Sunday. When l was a boy I
noticed out on Long Wharf there were
merchants who loaded their vessels on the
Sabbath day, keeping their men busy from
morning till night, and it is my observa-
ton that they themselves came to moth
ing-these merchants-and their children
came to nothing. Itdoesn't pay" he says,
Ito work on the Sabbath"
Iappeal to your observation. Where
are the men who, twenty years ago, were
Sabbath breakers, and who have been
Sabbath breakers ever since? Without a
single exception, you will. tell me, they
have come either TO financial or moral
beggary. defy you to point out single
exception, and you can take the whole
world for your field. 1t has either been a
financial or moral defaleation in every
instance. Six hundred and forty physi-
clans in London petition in Parliament,
saying: I've must have the Sabbath
obeyed. We can not have health in this
city and IN this nation unless the Sabbath
is Observed Those in our own country
have given evidence on the same side,