The Forrest City times., 1892-05-20
THE DUMB DEVIL.
YOU MUST KEEP AN EYE OPEN
 FOR HIM,
Or Else, Says Dr. Talmage. You VIII Suffer the Consequences-A Memors- ble Sunday Sermon in Tabernacle Pulpit. Brooklyn

BRooKLYN, N Y.. May IS. is92-In his ser
 mon to-day the Rev. pr Talmage Illustrated,
 in potent and convincing language, the duty in
 cumbent upon christians of embracing every
 opportunity that offers in this life to do good
 and to advance the cause of the kingdom of
 Christ by Q bold acknowledgment of their
 principles before men. The text selected was:
 Mark 9: 25 Thou dumb and deaf spirit
 charge thee come out of him"
 Here was a 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 speeches..
 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 a dumb spirit-so called by Christ "a spirit abroad to-day ard as lively and potent as in New Testament times. Yet in all the realms of sermonology, cannot find discourse concerning this dumb devil which Christ charged upon in my text, saying: Come out oi him"
 There has been much destructive su- perstition abroad 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 able to destroy others. In the Sixteenth century, in Geneva, 1.500 persons were burned to death as witches. In one neighborhood of France ] I,00o persons were burned. In two centuries POO, 900 persons were slain as witches. So mighty was the delusion that it in- cluded among its 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 iamin Franklin said. shaped his life and Richard Baxter aud Archbishop Cranmer. and Martin Luther; and, among writers and philosophers, Lord Bacon. That belief. " hich 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 hin- der. to poison and to destroy. Christ was speaking to spiritual existence, when, standing before the afflicted one of the text, he said, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, come out of him.
 Against this dumb devil of the text, I 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 had the golden gates of speech bolted and barred. Among those who have never spoken 8 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 l called the name of father of mother or | child, and many of the most devout l and prayerful souls will never, in this | world, speak the name of God or Christ. | Many deaf mute have l 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 loveliness 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 a wonder at needle work, at the piano, at the sewing ma
 chine. and an intelligent student of the | Scriptures, and confounding philoso- l phers, who came from all parts of the world to study the phenomenon. | Thanks to Christianity for what it has | done for the amelioration of the condi- | tion of the deaf and the dumb. Back l 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 sixteentI century. came Pedro Ponce. the | Spanish monk; and in the seventeenth century came Juan Pablo Bcnet 1 another Spanish monk, with dacsylol ogy or the finger alphabet; and in on, | own century, we have had John Braid wood and Drs. Mitchell and Ackerly | and Peet and Gallaudet, who have given | to uncounted thousands of those whose | tongues were forever silent, the power | to spell out on the air by manual
 alpha bet their thoughts about this world and their hopes for the next | We rejoice in the brilliant inventions | in behalf of those who were born dumb. One of the most impressive an | diences 1 ever addressed was in the fla,
 West two or three yeare ago-an au | dience of about 600 persons, who had
 never heard sound or spolsena word an interpreter standing beside m, while addressed them l cougratu l lated that audience on two advantages | they had over the most of us-the one
 that they escaped hearing great man, disagreeable things, and, on the otis fact, that they escaped saying thing they were sorry for afterward. Yet after all the aileviations shackle tongue is an appalling limitation. Btu we are not this morning speaking ( congenial mutes. We mean those wh are born with all the facilities ( vocalization, and yet hay, been struc by the evil one mentioned in the te, --the dumb devil to whom Christ calle when he said. Thou dumb and dea spirit 1 charge thee, come out of him ff<l. l. .