The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1892-06-30
THE SLOTHFUL MAN.
Rev. T. Dewitt Ta-mage Gives
Common Sense Lesson.
Incidence, lis Causes and Effects Por-
trayed-A Moral Disease that Needs
Heroic Treatment for Its
Eradication.


cred by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage in the
Brooklyn tabernacle, from the text:
The slothful man roasteth not that which he
took in hunting.-Prov. xii, %.
David, and jeremiah, and Ezekiel,
and Micah and Solomon of the text
showed that some time they had been
out on hunting expedition. Spears,
lances, swords and nets were employed
in this service. A deep pitfall would
be digged. In the center of it there
was some raised ground with a pole on
which a lamb would be fastened and
the wild beast, not seeing the pitfall,
but only seeing the lamb, would plunge
for its prey and dash down, itself cap
tured. Birds were caught in gins, or
pierced with arrows. The hunters in
olden time had two missions, one to
clear the land of ferocious beasts, and
the other to obtain meat for themselves
and their families. The occupation and
habit of hunters are favorite Bible
simile. David said he was hunted by
his enemy like a partridge upon the
mountain. My text is hunting scene.
A sportsman arrayed in a garb APP
propriate to the wild chase lets slip the
blood-thirsty hounds from their ken
nels, and mounting his feet horse with
q halloo and yell of the greyhound
pack. They are off and away, through
brake and dell, over marsh and moor,
across chasmS where misstep would
hurl horse and rider to death, plunging
into mire up to the launches or into
70 hn h +1a
game is tracked by dripping foam and
blood, and the antlers crack on the rocks,
and the hunter has just time to be in
at the death. Yet, after all the haste
and pe~ils of the chase, my text repre-
sents this sportsman as being too indo-
lent to dress the game and prepare it
for food. He let's it lie in the doorvard
of his home and become portion for
vermin and birds of prey. Thus, by
one master-stroke, Solomon gives pic
ture of laziness when he says: 1.-The
slothful man rOasteth not that which
he took in hunting" The most of hunt
ers have the game they shot or en-
trapped cooked the same evening or the
next day, but not so with this laggard
of the text. Too lazy to rip off the hide.
Too lazy to lsindle the fire and put the
gridiron on the Goals.
The first picture I ever bought was
an engraving of Thorwaldsen's eau
tumn." The cluster of grapes are ripe
on the vine of the homestead, and the
! returned hounds, painting from the
= chase, are lying on the door SILL and
! the hunter is unshouldering the game.
while the housewife is about to take
portion of it and prepareit for the even
4 ing meal. Unlike the person of the text,
she was enough Industrious to roast
that which had been taken in hunting.
But the world has had many a speci-
men since Solomon's time of those
whose lassitude and improvidence and
absurdity were depicted in my text.
The most of those who have made a
dead failure of life can look back and see
a time when great opportunity opened
but they did not know it. They were
not as wise as George Stephenson, ''the
father of railways" who, when at six
teen years. of age he received an ap-
pointment to work at a pumping en-
CINE for twelve shilling week, cried
out: Now | am made man for life. :"
God gives to most men at least one
good opportunity. A Grecian general
was met by group of beggars, and he
said to them: eff you want beasts to
pillow your land 1 will lend you some.
If you want land l will give you some.
If you want seed to SOW your land
will see that you get it. But will en-
courage none in idleness" So God pivcs
to most people an opportunity of ex-
trication from depressed circumstances.
AS If to create in us hatred for indo-
lence, God has made those animals
which are sluggish to appear loath-
some in our eyes, while those which are
fleet and active he has clothed with at
Effectiveness. The tortoise, the sloth.
snail, the crocodile repel us, while the
deer and the gazelle are as pleasing as
they are fleet, and from the swift wings
of innumerable birds God has spared no
purple or gold or jet or crimson or
snowy whiteness. Besides all this the
Bible is constantly assaulting the vice
of laziness Solomon seems to order
the idler out of his sight as being be-
yond all human instruction when he
consider her ways and be wise" And
Paul seems to drive him up from his
dining table before he gets through
with the first course of food with the
assertion: ''If any will not work,
neither shall he eat"
Now, what are the causes of laziness
and what are its evil results? I knew a
man who was never up to time 1t
seemed impossible for him to ever meet
an engagement. When he was to be
married he missed the train. His watch
seemed to take on the habits of its
owr,er, and was always too slow. He
had constitutional lethargy, for which
he did not seem responsible. So indo-
1ence often arises from the natural tenn
permanent. ! do not know but that
there is a constitutional tendency to
this vice IN every man. However active
you may generally be, have you not on
some warm spring day felt touch of
this feeling on you, although you
may have shaken it off as YOU
would reptile? But some are so
powerfully tempted to this by
their bodily constitution that ali the