Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1894-08-16

three great hymns, "Oh, for closer
walk with God" What various him
ORANGES we meet" There is foun-
Cowper, who shares with Isaac Watts
and Charles Wesley the chief honors
of Christian hymnology. In hypochon-
dria he resolved to take his own life
and rode to the river Thames, but
found a man seated on some goods
at the very point from which he eX-
pected to spring, and rode back to his
home, and that night threw himself
upon his own knife, but the blade
broke, and then he hanged himself to
the ceiling, but the rope parted. No
wonder that when God mercifully de-
livered him from that awful dement, tia
he sat down and wrote that other
hymn just as memora BILE:
God moves in mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footstep in the seS,
And rides upon the storm.
Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.
While we make this merciful and
righteous allowance in regard to those
who were plunged into mental inco-
herence, / declare that the man who
in the use of his reason, by his own
act, snaps the bond between his body
and his soul, goes staight into per-
dition. Shall prove it? Revelation
21: viii: "Murderers shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with
fire and birthstone. Revelation 90:
XIV: Without are dogs, and sorcerers
and whoremongers, and murderers. y
You do not believe the New Testament?
Then, perhaps. you believe the Ten
commandments: Thou shalt not
kill" Do you say all these passages
refer to the taking of the life OF
others9 Then l ask you if you are
not as responsible for your own life
as for the life of others? GOD gave
you special trust in your life. lie
made you the custodian of your life rs
he made you the custodian of no
other life. He gave you as weapons
with which to defend it two arms, to
strike back assailants, two eyes to
watch for invasion, and a natural love
of life which ought ever to be on the
alert Assassination CT others is a
mild crime compared with the assassi-
nation of yourself, because in the lat
ter case it is treachery to an especial
trust, it is the surrender of castle
you were especially appointed to keep,
it is treason to q natural law and it is
treason to God added to ordinary
murder.
Notwithstanding the Bible is against
this evil, and the aversion which it
creates by the loathsome and CHASTITY
spectacle of those who have hurled
themselves out of life, and notwith-
standing Christianity is against it,
and the arguments and the useful
lives and the illustrious deaths of its
disciples, it is fact alarmingly patent
| that suicide is on the increase
intidelitv and agnosticism this whole
thing. If there be no hereafter, or if
that hereafter be blissful with
out reference to how we live
and how we die, why not move
back the folding doors between this
world and the next? And when our
existence here becomes troublesome,
why not pass right over into Ely SUM?
Put this down among your most
solemn reflections and consider it
after you go to your homes; there has
never been a case of suicide where the
operator was not either demon ted and
therefore irresponsible, or an infideL
challenge all the ages and l chal-
lenge the whole universe. There
never has been case of self-destruc-
ton while in full appreciation of his
Immortality and of the fact that that
Immortality would be glorious or
wretched according as he accepted
Jesus Christ or rejected him.
You say it is business trou ble or
you say it is electrical currents, or it
is this, or it is that. or it is the other
thing. Why not go clear back my
friend and acknowledge that in every
case it is the abdication of reason or
the teaching of infidelity which prac.
tically says, IF you don't like this
life, get out of it, and you will land
either in humiliation, where there
are no notes to pay, no prosecutions
to suffer, no govt to torment or you
will land where there will be every.
thing glorious and nothing to pay for
it." Infidelity always has been apollo
getic for self-immolation. After Tom
Paine's age of Reason" was pub,
lished and widely read there was a
marked increase of self. slaughter
Would God that the coroners would
be brave in rendering the right YER
dict, and when in the case of ire
sponsibility they say, "While this
man was demented he took his life, -
in the other case say, Having read
infdel books and attended infidel
lectures, which obliterated from this
mans mind all appreciation of any
thing like future retribution he COM
mitted self-slaughtern"
All! Infdelity, stand up and take
thy sentence! In the presence of God
and angels and men. stand up, thou
monster, thy lip blasted With bias
phemy. thy cheek SCARED with lust,
thy breath foul with the corruption
of the ages! Stand up Satyr, fl