The Bossier banner., 1892-03-10
THE END MUST COME.
Rev. 4. Dewitt TaImage's fTew
Years Talk to His Flock.
The Begin ming of Another Year Timo
for Earnest Thought and Earnest
Nork-Are You Ready Ii
Called This Year?

Inc 1Ol{OW1nR new fedr ulScOurse
twas delivered by Rev. T. Dewitt Tai
mage in the Brooklyn tabernacle, the
text being;
This year shalt thou die.-Jeremiah, xviii,
I6.
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 the time for review and for antici-
patton. A man must be Il genius at
stupidity who does not think now. The
old year died in giving birth to the new,
as the life of Jane Seymour, the En-
glish queen, departed when that of her
son, Edward VI, dawned. The old
year was a queen. The new shall be a
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 il 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 are 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 us. The probability is aug
mented by the fact that all of us who
are over thirty-fve years of age have
gone beyoud the average of human life.
The note is more than due. 1t is only
by sufferance that it is not collected.
We are like debtor who is taking the
three days grace" of the banks. Our
race started with nine hundred years
for a lifetime. We read of but one
antediluvian youth whose early death
disappointed the hopes of his parents
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 a
time in which to study, and invent and
plan. If an artist or II philosopher has
forty years for work, he makes great
achievements; but what must the art
lists and philosophers have done who
had nine hundred years before them?
In the nearly two thousand years be-
fore the flood, considering the longevity
of the inhabitants, there may haze
been nearly as many people as there
are now. The flood was not a freshet,
that washed a few people off plank,
but disaster that may have swept
away thousand million. If the At
lantic ocean, by a lurch of the earth
tonight, should drown this hemisphere,
and the Pacific ocean, by sudden
lurch of the earth, 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 ancient flood
was.
At that time God started the race
with shorter allowance of life The
nine hundred years were cut down un-
til, in the time of Vespasian, census
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 curiosity, and
we go miles to see him. The vast ma
jority of the race pass off before 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 awhile the bell
of our life rings right merrily; but with
some of you the bell has begun to toll,
and the adaptedness of the text to you
is more and more probable: This wear
thou shalt die"
The character of our occupations adds
to the probability. Those who are in
the professions are undergoing a sap
ping OF the brain and nerve founda-
tions. Literary men in this country
are driven with whip and spur to their
topmost speed Not one brain-worlser
out of hundred observes any modera-
tion. There is something so stimulat-
ing in our climate that, if John Brown,
the essayist of Edinburgh, had lived
here, he would have broken down at
thirty-five instead of fifty-five, and
Charles Dickens would have dropped at
forty. There is something, in all our
occupations which predisposes to dis
ease. IT we be stout, to disorders
ranging from fevers to apoplexy. If
we be frail, to diseases ranging from
consumption to paralysis Printers
rarely reach fifty years. Watch-mak-
ers. in marking 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 yard.stick.
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 our
lives. BY reason of the violent fits of
the thermometer, within two days we
y