The morning news., 1894-08-13
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 il plain

]
| his reason, by his own act, snaps the bond
between his body and his soul. goes
straight into perditiOn. Shall ] prove il
Revelation 21 s. .Murderers shall have
| their part in the lake which burueth with
fire and birthstone" Revelation 22:I5:
Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and
whoremOngers, and murderers. 80 You
do not believe the New Testament2 Then,
perhaps, you believe the ten command
ments: Thou shalt not kill" Do
you say all these passages refer to the
talking of the life Of others Then I ask
YOU If you are not as respOusIbl Bile for your
own life as for the life of others? God
gave you a special trust in your life He
made you the custodian of your life as he
made you the custodian of no other life.
He gave you as weapons with which TO
defend it two arms to strike back assail-
ants, two eyes to watch for invasion. and
a natural love of life which ought ever to
be on the alert. Assassination of others
is mild crime compared with the assas-
sination Of yourself, because in the latter
case it is treachery to an especial trust, it
is the surrender of a castle you were
especially appointed to keep, Il is treason
10 a natural law and it is treason to God
added to ordinary murder
To show how God in the Bible looked
upon this crime, point you 10 the rOgues'
picture gallery in some parts of the Bible,
the pictures Of the people who have com
mitted this unnatural crime Here is the
headless trunk of Saul on the walls of
Bathshan. Here is the man who chased
little David - ten feet in stature
chasing four. Here is the man who
consulted a clairvoyant, Witch of
Endor. Here is a man who, whipped
in battle instead of surrendering his
sword with dignity, as many a man
has done, asks his servant to slay him /;
and when the servant declines, then the
giant plants the hilt of the sword in the
earth, the sharp point sticking upward,
and he throws his body on it and expires
the coward, the suicide. Here is Ahitho-
pei. the Machiavelli Of olden times, be-
traying his best friend, David, in order
that he may become prime minister of
Absalom, and joining that fellow in his
attempt at parricIde Not getting what
he wanted by change of politics, he takes
a short cut out of a 'disgraced life into
the suicides eternity. There he is, the
migrate
Here is Abimelech, practically a sui
eide. He is with an army, bonn harding a
tower, when a woman in the tower takes
a grindstone from its place and drops it
upon his head, and with what life he has
left in a cracked skull he commands his
armorbearer, Draw thy sword and slay
me, lest men say woman slew me"
There is his post-mortem photograph in
the book of Samuel But the hero of this
group is Judas Iscariot. DR.. Dome saws
he was martyr, and we have in our day
apologists for him. And what wonder,
in this day when we have a book reveal
ing Aaron Burr as a pattern of virtue,
and in this day when we uncover a statue
to George Sand as the benefactress of
literature, and in this day when there
are betrayals of Christ on the part of
some of his pretended apostles-a betrayal
so black IT makes the infamy of Judas
Iscariot white Yet this man by his own
hand hung up for the execration of all
the ages, Judas lscariot.
All the good men and women Of the Bi-
Bile left to God the decision of their
earthly terminus, and they could have
said with Job, who had right to commit
suicide If any man every ha2-what with
his destroyed property and, his body all
atame with insufferable carbuncles, and
everything gone from his home except the
chief curse of it, pestiferous wife, and
four garrulous people pelting him with
comfortless talk while he sits on a heap of
ashes scratching his scabs with a piece of
broken pottery, yet crying out in triumph
IAN the days of my appointed time will
/ wait till my change come"
Notwithstanding the Bible is against
this evil, and the aversion which it Gre
SDGCLd-
Gle Of those who have hurled themselves
out of life. and Notwithstanding Christi
anity is against it, and the arguments and
the useful lives and the illustrious deaths
of its disciples, it is a fact alarmingly
patent that suicide is on the increase
What is the Cause' l charge upon inf
deity and agnosticism this whole thing
If there be no hereafter, or if that here
after be blissful without reference to how
VIA 11Nynn md h1tu y.
back the folding doors between this world
and the next2 And when our exist
ence here becomes troublesome, why lot
pass ri ght over into Elysium? Put this
down among your most solemn reflections,
and consider it after you 20 to YOUR
homes; there has never been a case of
suicide where the operator was not either
demented, and therefore irresponsible, or
an infdel. l challenge all the ages, and
challenge the whole universe. There
never has been a case of self-destructlon
while in full appreciation of his immor-
tality and of the fact that that immor-
tality would be glorious or wretched ac-
cording as he accepted Jesus Christ or
rejected him.
You say it is business trouble, 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 aC-
knowledge that in every case it is the
abdication of reason or the teaching of
infidelity (Which practically 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 per.
secutions to suffer, no gout TO torment,
or you will land where there will be
everything glorious and nothing to pay
for it. Infidelity always has been apollo.
getic for self-immolation. After Tom
Paine's Age of Reason" was published
and widely read there was a marked in.
| crease of self-slaughter.
A man in London heard Mr.. Owen
! deliver his infdel lecture on socialism.
! and went home and sat down and wrote
! these words: Jesus Christ is one OF the
| weakest characters in history and the
| Bible is the greatest possible deception, "
and then shot himself. David Hume
wrote these words: 1T would be no crime
| for me to divert the Nile or the Danube
| from its natural bed. Where, then. can
be the crime IN my diverting a few drops
of blood from their ordinary channel l''
| And, having written the essay, he loaned
it to a friend: the friend read it. wrote a
letter of thanks and admiration, and then
shot himself. Appendix to the same
book.
Rousseau, Noltaire, Gibbon, Montaicne
under certain circumstances, were apollo.
getic for self-immolation. Infdelity puts
up no bar TO peoples rushing out from this
world into the next They teach us il
does not make any difference how you