Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1892-05-20
THE DUMB DEVIL.
YOU MUST KEEP AN EYE OPEN
FOR HIM,
Or Else, Says DIR. Talmage, You VIII
Suffer the Consequences-A Memora-
bio Sunday Sermon In Tabernacle
Pulpit, Brooklyn.

DtlOT5 mtui Inc tcAI SclcCtou WIS
Mark o: 25, "Thou dumb and deaf spirit, ]
charge thee come out Of him."
Here was case of great domestic
anguish. The son of the household
was possessed of an evil spirit which,
among other things, paralyzed his
tongue and made him speechless.
When the influence was on the patient,
he could not say word-articulation
was impossible. The spirit that capt
ured this member of the household
was dumb spirit-so- called by Christ
"a spirit abroad to-day aid as lively
and potent as in New Testament times.
! Yet in all the realms of sermonology,
cannot find a discourse concerning this
dumb devil which Christ charged upon
in my text, saying: ''Come ont OF
him."
There has been much destructive SUI
perstition broad in the world concern.
ing possession by evil spirits. Under
the form of belief in witchcraft, this
delusion swept the continents. Persons
were supposed to be possessed with
some evil spirit, which made them a BILE
| W oSobAOJ cehSio. IL WIG
century, in Geneva, 1900 persons were
burned to death as witches. In one
neighborhood of France l,00D persons
were burned. In two centuries 200, 0OC
persons were slain as witches. Sc
mighty was the delusion that it in
cluded among it's victims some of the
greatest intellects of all time, such
as Chief Justice Matthew Hale and
Sir Edward Coke, and such re-
nowned ministers of religion as Cot
ton Mather, one of whose books, Ben
jamin Franklin said, shaped his life
and Richard Baxter, aud Archbishop
Cranmer, and Martin Luther; and,
among writers and philosophers, Lord
Bacon. That belief, which has become
the laughing stock of all sensible peo-
pie, counted its disciples among the
wisest and best people of Sweden, Ger
many, England, France, Spain and
New England. But, while we reject
witchcraft, any man who believes the
bible must believe that there are dia-
bolical agencies abroad in the world.
While there are ministering spirits to
, bless, there are internal spirits to him
der, to poison and to destroy. Christ
was speaking to spiritual existence,
when, standing before the afflicted one
of the text, he said, "Thou dupa's AMI
deaf spirit, come ont of him."
Against this dumb devil of the text,
put'you on your guard. Do you think
that this agent of evil has put his
blight on those who, by omission of the
vocal organs, have lad the golden
gates of speech bolted and barred.
Among those who have never spoken a
word are the most gracious and lovely
and talented souls that were ever in
carnated. The chaplains of the
asylums for the dumb can tell you en-
chanting stories Of those, who never
called the name of father of mother or
and prayerful souls will never, in this
world. speak the name of God or Christ.
Many deaf mute have seen with the
angel of intelligence seated at the win
dow of the eye, who never came forth
from the door of the mouth. What
a miracle of loneliness and knowledge
was Laura Bridgman of New Hamp-
shire, not only without faculty of
speech, but without hearing and with
out sight, all these faculties removed
by sickness when two years of age,
yet, becoming wonder at needle
work, at the piano, at the sewing ma
chine, and an intelligent student of the
~ -co,,rI,-. II.
pliers, who came from all parts of the
J world to study the phenomenon.
Thanks to Christianity for what it has
done for the amelioration Of the copdi-
ton of the deaf and the dumb. Back
in the ages, they were put to death as
having no right, with such paucity of
| equipment, to live, and for centuries
they were classed among the idiotic
and unsafe. But in the sixteent tn
century, came Pedro Ponce, the
Spanish monk; and in the seventeenth
century came Juan Pablo Bonet,
another Spanish monk, with dactylol-
ogy or the finger alphabet; and in our
wood and Drs. Mitchell and Ackerly
and Peet and Gallaudet, who have given
to amounted thousands of those whose
tongues were forever silent, the power
to spell out on the air by manual
alphabet their thoughts about this
world and their hopes for the next.
There has been apotheosization OF
silence. Some one has said silence is
golden, and sometimes the greatest
triumph is to keep your mouth shut.
But sometimes silence is a crime and
the direct result of the baleful influence
of the dumb devil of our text. There
is hardly a man or woman in this house
to-day who has not been present on
some occasion when the Christian re-
ligion became a target for raillery.
Perhaps il was over in the store some
day when there was not much going
on and the clerks were In a group; OF
it was in the factory at the noon spell;
or IL was out on the farm under the
trees while you were resting; or it was
in the club-room; or it was in social
circle; or it was in the street on the
way home from business; or
1t was some occasion which
you remember without my describing
it Some one got the laugh on the