The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1891-03-26

ingr To these gay men life is thrill
and an excitement. They stare at
other people, and in turn are
stared ut. The watch-chain jingles.
The cup foams. The cheeks flush. The
eyes flash. The midnight hears their
guffaw. They swagger. They jostle
decent men off the sidewalk. They take
the name of God in vain. They parody
the hymn they learned at their mothers
knee; and to all pictures of coming dis
aster they cry out: "Who cares?" and
to the counsel of some Christian friend:
"Who are you?" Passing along the
street some night you hear shrek in
grogshop, the rattle of the watch.
mans club, the rush of the police. What
is the matter now? Oh, this reckless
young man has been killed in grog-
shop fight. Carry him homo to his
fathers house. Parents will come down
and wash his wounds, and close his eyes
in death: They forgive him all he ever
did, although he can not in his silence
ask it. The prodigal has got home at
last. Mother will go to her little gar
den and get the sweetest flowers and
twist them into chaplet for the silent
heart of the wayward boy, and push
back from the bloated brow the long
locks that were once her pride. And
the air will be rent with agony. The
great dramatist says: "How sharper
than serpent's tooth it is to have q
thankless child"
I go further, and say those are un-
christian amusements which become
the chief business of mans life. Life
is an earnest thing. Whether we were
born in a palace or hovel; whether we
are affiucnt or pinched, we have to
work. If you do not sweat with toll,
you will sweat from disease. You have
soul that is to be transhgured amidst
the pomp of a Judgment day; and after
the sea has sung its last chant, and the
mountain shall have come down in an
| avalanche of rock, you will live and
think and act, high on a th1 one where
seraphs sing, or deep in a dungeon
| where demons howl. In world where
| there is so much to do for yourselves,
| and SO much TO do for others, God pity
that man who has nothing to do.
Your sports are merely means to an
end. They are alleviations and helps.
The arm of toll is the only arm strong
enough to bring up the bucket out OF
the deep well of pleasure. Amusement
is only the bower where business and
philanthropy rest while on their way to
| stirring achievements. Amusements
are merely the vines that grow about
| the anvil of toll, and the blossoming of
hammers. Alas for the man who spends
his life in laboriously doing nothing, his
days in looking up lounging places and
| loungers, his nights in seeking out some
gas-lighted foolery! The man who
| always has on his sporting jacket, ready
| to hunt for the game in the mountain or
| fish in the brook, with no time to pray,
| or work, or read, is not SO well off as
| the greyhound that runs by his side, or
the fly bait with which he whips the
| stream.
| know how to play. If God had intended
us to do nothing but laugh He would
not have given us shoulders with which
| to lift, and hands with which to work,
and brains with which to think. The
amusements of life are merely the
orchestra playing while the great
tragedy of life plunges through it's five
acts-infancy, childhood, manhood old
age and death. Then exit the last
earthly opportunity. Enter the over
whelming realities of an eternal world!
I go further, and say that all those
| amusements are wrong which lead into
bad company. If vou go to any place
| where you have to associate with the
Incorporate, with the unclean, with the
abandoned, however well they may be
dressed, in the name of God quit it.
They will despoil your nature. They
will undermine your moral character.
They will drop you when you are de-
stroyed They will give not one cent
you are dead. They will weep not one
tear at your burial They will chuckle
over your damnation.
saw wayward husband standing
at the death-bed of his Christian wife,
and l saw her point to a ring on her fin
ger, and heard her say to her husband
''Do you see that ring?" He replied:
eyes, see it." "Well," said she, edo
you remember who put it there?"
"Yes," said he, 81 put it there's" and all
the past seemed to rush upon him. By
the memory of that day, when, in
the presence of men and angels you
promised to be faithful in Joy and sor-
row, and in sickness and health; by
the memory of those pleasant hours
when you sat together in your new
home talking of a bright future; by the
cradle and the joyful hour when one life
was spared and another given; by that
sick-bed, when the little one lifted up
the hands and called for help, and you
knew he must die, and he put one arm
around each of your necks and brought
you very near together in that dying
kiss; by the little grave in Greenwood
that you n ever think of without a rush of
tears; by the family Bible, where,
amidst stories of heavenly love, is the
brief but inexpensive record of births
and deaths; by the neglects of the pas,
and by the agonies of the future; but a
Judgment day, when husbands and
wives, parents and children, in immor-
tai groups, will stand to be caught up
in shining array, or to shrink down
into darkness; by all that, beg you to
give to home your best affections.
All, my friends, there is an hour COM
ing when our past life will probably
pass before us in review. 1t will be our
last hour. If from our death pillow we
have to look back and see a life spent in
sinful amusement, there will be dart
that will strike through. our soul
sharper than the dagger with
which Virglnius slew her child.