Baxter Springs news. [volume] (Baxter Springs, Kan.) 1882-1919, 1891-03-07
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
SECOND OF THE SERIES ON GREAT
CRIMES. THE EVIL OF DRUNKEN
NESS CONSIDERED.
Tho Worst Work Of the Arch Fiend.

continued to-day the series OF sermons
he commenced last Sunday on the Ten
Plaques OF New York and the Adjacent
Cities" The plague which he places
second on the list is intemperapce, and
on that subject he discoursed this morn
ing in the Academy OF Music, Brooklyn,
and this evening in New York.
The text of the doctors sermon was
taken from Genesis, tx, 20, 81: Noah
pla4ted vineyard: and he drank of the
wine and was drunken"
This Noah did the best and the worst
thing for the world. He built an ark
against the deluge of water, but intro
duced deluge against which the hui
man race has ever since been trying to
build AN ark-the deluge of drunken
ness. In my text we hear his stagger-
ing steps. Shem and Japhet tried TO
cover UP the disgrace, but there he Is.
drunk on wine at time in the history
Of the world when, to say the least,
there was no lack OF water. lnebrla-
ton. having entered the world. has not
retreated. Abigail, the fair and heroic
wife. who saved the flock OF Nabal, her
husband. from confscation by invaders,
goes home at night and finds him so in
toxicated she cannot tell him the story
OF his narrow escape. Uriah came to
see David, and David got him drunk.
and paved the way for the despoliatlon
of household. Even the church bish-
ops needed to be charged to be sober
and not given to too much wine, and so
familiar were people of Bible times with
the staggering and falling motion of the
inebriate. that Iasiah, when he comes
to describe the final dislocation OF
worlds. says: THE earth shall reel to
and fro like drunkard."
Ever since apples and grapes and
wheat grew the world has been tempted
to unhealthful stimulants. But the in
toxicants of the olden time were an in
nocent beverage, d harmless orangeade.
quiet syrup. u peaceful soda water as
compared with the liquors of modern
inebriation. into which madness. and
fury. and gloom. and a fire. and u
suicide. and retribution have mixed
and mingled. Fermentation was always
known. but it was not until thousand
years after Christ that distilla;ion was
invented. While we must confess that
some OF the ancient arts have been lost.
the Christian era is superior to all 9th
ers in the bad eminence of whisEey and
gin and rum. The modern drunk is Il
hundred fold worse than the ancient
drunk. Noah in his intOXication be-
came imbecile. but the victims OF
modern alcoholism have TO struggle
with whole menagelies OF wild beasts
and jungles OF Kissing serpents and
,,ou1; -, nf l,laSnL a,,inc, dc,nonS An
arch tiend arrived in our world, and he
built an invisible cauldron of tempta-
ton. He built that cauldron strong
and stout for all ages and for all nations.
First he squeezed into the cauldron the
juices OF the forbidden fruit of paradise
Then he gathered for it distillation
from the harvest fields and the orchards
of the hemispheres. Then he poured
into this cauldron capsicum, and cop
peras, and murder, and sulphuric acid,
and logwood and deadly nightshade,
and assault and battery, and vitriol, and
opium, and rum, and theft, and potash,
and cochineal. and red carrots, and
poverty, and death and hops. But it
was only dry compound, and it must
be moistened. and ii must be liquefied,
and SO the arch 1iend poured into that
.'auldron the tears of centuries of
.,rphanage and widowhoOd, and he
,oured in the blood of twenty thousand
assassinations. And then the arch
fiend took Il shovel that he had brought
up from the furnaces beneath, and he
put that shovel into this great cauldron
began TO stir, and the cauldron began TO
heave, and rock, and boil, and sputter,
and hiss. and smoke, and the nations
gathered around it with cups and tank
ards and demijohns and kegs, and there
was enough for all, and the 1rch fiend
cried:
''Aha. champion fiend am /. Who
has done more than have for collins
and graveyards and prisons and insane
asyiums, and the populating of the lost
world? And when this cauldron is emp
tied, I'll Jill it again, and I'll stir it
again. and it will smoke again, and that
smoke will join another smOke-the
smoke OF torment that ascendeth for
ever and ever. l drove fifty ships on
the rocks OF Newfoundland and the Skier
ries and the Goodwins, 1 have ruined
more senators than gather this winter
in the national councils, have ruined
more lords than are now gathered in the
house OF peers. The cup out OF which I
ordinarily drink Is a bleached human
skull, and the upholstery Of my palace
Is so rich crimson because it is dyed in
human gore, and the mosaic of my floors
is made up Of the bones Of children
dashed to death by drunken parents,
and my favorite music-sweeter than TIE |
Deum or triumphal march-my favorite |
music is the cry Of daughters turned out |
It midnight on the street because father
aas come home from the carousal, and |
ne 700 voiced shrek of the sinking
Iteamer, because the captain was not
himself when he put the ship on the
wrong course. Champion fend am 1!
/ have kindled more fires, have wrung
out moro agonies, have stretched out
more midnight shadows, / have opened