The Bossier banner., 1893-11-23
UNSAFE LIFEBOATS."
DR.. Talnage Points Out the Leaky
Crafts,
And Then Refers All to the One Boat
That Is Safe, and Has Room
for All Who Desire to
ibe Saved.

DIR. Talmage took Unsafe Life
boats" as the subject for recent SER
mon at the Brooklyn tabernacle, bas-
ing it on the following text:
Then the soldiers cut of the ropes Of the boat,
and let her fall off.-Acts xvii. 81.
While your faces are yet somewhat
bronzcd by attendance on the interna-
tional boat contest between the Vigi-
liant and the Vallyrie, | address you.
Good things when there is no betting
or dissipation, those outdoor sports.
We want more fresh air and breezineSS
in our tempcraments and our religion.
A stale and slow and lugubrious reli-
gion may have done for other times, yet
will not do for these. But my text
calls our attention to a boat of differ
ent sort, and instead of the Atlantic, it
is the Mediterranean, and instead of not
wind enough, as the crews of the Wig
liant and Valkyrie the other day com
planned, there is too much wind and
the swoop of a Euroclydon. 1 am
not calling your attention so
much to the famous ship on which
Paul was the distinguished passenger,
no one seems 20 notice. For a fort
night the main vessel had been tossed
and driven. For that two weeks, the
account says, the passengers had ''con-
tinucd fasting" l suppose the salt
water, dashing over, had spoiled the
sea biscuit, and the passengers were
seasicl anyhow. The sailors said: st
is no use; this ship must go down." and
they proposed among themselves to
lower the lifeboat and get into it, and
take the chances for reaching shore,
although they pretended they were
going to get over the sides of
the big ship and down into the life
boat only to do sailors duty. That
was not sailor-like, for the sailors that
have known were all intrepid fellows,
and would rather go down with the
ship than do such mean thing as
those Jack Tars of my text attempted.
When on the Mediterranean last June
the Victoria sunk under the ram
of the Camperdown the most ma
jestic thing about that awful
scene was that all the sailors stayed at
their posts doing their duty. As
class all over the world sailors are
valorous, but these sailors of the text
were exceptional and pretended to do
duty while they were really preparing
for fight in the lifeboat. But these
marines on board-sea soldiers
had in special charge a little mis-
sionary who was turning the
world upside down, and when these
marines saw the trick the sailors were
about to play they lifted the cutlasses
from the girdles and chop! chop! went
those cutlasses into the ropes that held
the lifeboat, and splash! it dropped
into the sea. My text describes it:
''The soldiers cut off the ropes of the
boat, and let her fall Off" As that
empty life-boat dropped and was cap
sized on a sea where for two weeks
winds and pillows had been in battle.
think that many on board the main
vessel felt their last hope of ever
reaching home had vanished. In that
tempestuous sea q small boat could not
have lived five minutes.
My subject is "Unsafe Lifeboats." g"
We can not exaggerate the Importance
of the lifeboat. All honor to the mem
ory of Lionel Lukin, the coach builder
of Long Acre, London, who invented
the first lifeboat, and 1 do not blame
him for ordering put upon his tomb
stone in Kent the inscription that you
may still read there:
This Lionel Lukin was the first who
built libeboat, and was the original
inventor of that principle of safety, bv
which many lives and much property
have been preserved from shipwrecll:
and he obtained for it the kings pat
ent in the year 1885,"
Here is splendid new lifeboat called
Theosophy. 1t has only little while
been launched, although some of the
planks are really several thousand
years old, and from n worm-eaten ship,
but they are painted over and look
new. They are really Fatalism and
Pantheism of olden time. But we
must forget that and call them Theos-
ophy. The Grace Darling of this
lifeboat was an oarswoman bv the
name of Madame Blavatsllv, but the
oarswoman is now Annie Besant So
many are getting aboard the boat it
is worthy of examination, both because
of the safety of those who have en-
tered it and because we ourselves are
invited to get in. It's theory is
that everything is God. Horse
and star and tree and man are parts of
God. We have three souls: An ami
NAL soul, human soul, spiritual
soul. The animal soul bee ONES, after
awhile, wandering thing, trying to
express itself through mediums. It
enters beasts, or enters human beinp.
and when you find an effeminate man
1T is because a womans soul has pot
into the man, and when YOU find
musculine woman, it is because a mans
soul has taken possession of woman's
body. If You find woman has be-
come platform speaker and likes
politics, she is possessed by dead
politician, who forty years ago
made the platform quake. The soul
keeps wandering on and on, and NAV
have fifty or innumerable different
forms, and finally is absorbed in God
1t was God at the start and will be
God at the last. Butwho gives the au