The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1892-01-20
TIMELY WARNING.
A New Years Sermon by Rev. T.
Dewitt Talmage.
He breaches from the Omincus Words Of
Jeremiah, "This Year Thou Shalt
Die'-People Advised to Get
Ready for Eternity be-
fore 1t Is Too
Late.


yeer thou shalt die''-Jeremiah xviii,
l6 The sermon follows:
Jeremiah, accustomed to saying bold
things, addresses Hananiah in these
words. They prove true In sixty days
Hananiah had departed this life.
This is the first Sabbath of the year.
1t is time for review and for anticipa-
ton. A man must be agenius at stupid
ity who does not think now. The old
year died in giving birth to the new, as
the life of Jane Seymour, the English
queen, departed when that of her son,
Edward VI, dawned The old year
was queen, The new shall be king.
The grave of the one and the cradle OF
the other are side by side. We can
hardly guess what the child will be. 1t
is only two days old, but prophesy for
it an eventful future. Year of mirth
and madness! Year of pageant and
confagration! 1t will laugh; it will
sing, it will groan; it will die.
Is it not time for earnest thought?
The congratulations have been given.
The Christmas trees have been taken
down, or have well-nigh cast their
fruit The friends who came for the
holidays have gone in the rail-train.
While we are looking forward to an
other twelve months of intense activi-
ties, the text breaks upon us like a
bursting thunderhead: This year thou
shalt die!'
The text will probably prove true of
some of u.s. The probability is aug
mented by the fact that all of us who
are over thirty-fve years of age have
gone beyond the average of human life.
The note is more than due. 1t is only
by sufferance that it is not collected.
We are like the debtor who is taking
the ''three days grace" of the banks.
Our race started with nine hundred
years for lifetime. We read of but
one antediluvian youth whose early
death disappointed the hopes of his par
ents by his dying at seven hundred and
seventy-seven years of age. The world
then may have been ahead of what it is
now, for men had so long time in
which to study, and invent and plan.
If an artist or a philosopher has forty
years for work, he makes great achieve
ments; but what must the artists and
philosophers have done who had nine
| hundred years before them? In the
nearly two thousand years before the
flood, considering the longevity of the
inha bitants there may have been near
ly as many people as there are now.
| The flood was not freshet, that
washed few people off plank, but a
| disaster that may have swept away a
thousand million. If the Atlantic
Ocean, by a lurch of the earth tonight,
| should drown the other hemisphere,
leaving about as many beings as could
be got in one or two ocean steamers, it
would give you an idea of what the an
cient flood was
At that time God started the race
with shorter allowance of life. The
nine hundred years were hewn down,
until, in the time of Vespasian, a cen
sus was taken, and only one hundred
and twenty-four persons were found
one hundred years old, and three or
four persons one hundred and forty
years old. Now man who has come
to one hundred years of age is a curios-
| ity, and we go miles to see him. The
vast majority of the race pass off be-
fore twenty years. To every apple
there are five blossoms that never get
to be apples. In the country church
the sexton rings the bell rapidly until
almost through, and then tolls it. For
a while the bell of our life rings right
merrily; but with some of you the bell
has begun to toll, and the adaptness of
the text to you is more and more prob
able. This year thou shalt die"
The character of our occupations adds
to the.proba bility. Those who are in
the professions are undergoing sap
ping of the brain and nerve founda-
tons Literary men in this country are
driven with whip and spur to their top.
most speed. Not one brain worker out
of hundred observes any moderation.
There is something so stimulating in
our climate that, if John Brown, the
essayist of Edinburgh had lived here
he would have troken down at thirty.
Ave instead of fifty-five, and Charles
Dickens would have dropped at forty.
There is something in all our oc'
equations which predisposes to dis.
ease. If we be stout, to disorders
ranging from fever to apoplexy. II
we be frail, to diseases ranging from
consumption to paralysis Printers
rarely reach fifty years. Watch-maSers
in making the time for Others, shorten
their own. Chemists breathe death in
their laboratories, and potters absorb
paralysis. Painters fall under their
own brush. Foundrymen take death in
with the filings Shoemakers pound
away their own lives on the last. Over
driven merchants measure off their own
lives with the yardsticl1. Millers grind
their own lives with the grist. Masons
dig their graves with the troweL And
in all our occupations and professions
there are the elements of peril
Rapid climatic changes threaten ouI
lives BY reason of the violent fits oI
the thermometer, within two days we
live both in the arctic and tropic. The
warm south wind finds us with our fur.
On. The wintry blast cuts through oul
thin apparel The hoof, the wheel, the
firearms, the assassin, wait their chance
70 put upon us their quietus l an
nounce it as an imposibility that three
hundred and sixty-fve days should pas:
and leave us all as we now are. IL
what direction to shoot the arrow
lrno1u NOT aud 80 shnnt Ii n n ar,t,,re