Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-01-28
SINS OF PESSlMISM.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE OEPLORES THE
MODERN TENDENCY.

There Is no Place In the Life Of a Chris
thar, For Gloomy observation-disclosures
ing Incident of Observation-Disclosures of
Christianity.
NEW YoRK, Jan. 27.-When Rev. DR..
Talmage came upon the stage in the
Academy of Music this afternoon, he
found before him an audience such as IS
seldom seen in any public building IN
America The vast space was crowded
from auditorium to tOpmOst gallery and
the aisles and corridors literally block
ed, while many thousands who had come
to hear him preach crowded Fourteenth
street and Irving place, unable to gain
admission. He took for his suSject 1.-The
Dangers of Pessimism. D the text selected
being Psalm cxvi, II, 81 said in my
haste, All men are liars.
Swindled, betrayed, prosecuted David,
in paroxysm Of petulance and rage,
thus insuItod the human race. David
himself faIsifed when he said, "All
men are liars" He apologies and says
he was unusually provoked, and that he
was hasty when he hurled such univer-
sal denunciation 81 said in my haste, "
and so Oh. It was in him only a mOmen-
tary triumph OF pessimism. There is
ever and anon, and never moro than
now, disposition abroad to distrust ev
erybody, and because some bank en-
ployees defraud to distrust all bank en-
ployees and because some police officers
have taken brides to believe that all
policemen take brides, and because di-
vorce cases are in the court to believe
that most, if not all, marriage relations
are unhappy.
There are men who seem rapidly COM
ing to adopt this creed: All men are
liars, scoundrels, thieves, ibertines.
When q new case of perfidy comes to the
surface, these people clap their hands in
gIee. It gives piquancy to their break
fast if the morning newspaper d1scloses
a new exposure or a new arrest. They
grow fat on vernin. They join the devils
in hell in iubilation over recreancy and
pollution. If some one arrested is proved
innocent, it is to them disappointment.
They would rather believe evil than
good. They are vultures, preferring car
rion They would like to be on a COM
mittee to find something wrong. They
wish that as eyeglasses have been in
vented to improve the sight, and ear
trumpets have been invented to help the
hearing, q corresponding instrument
might be invented for the nose, to bring
nearer malodor.
Evils of Cynicisn.
Pessimism says Of the church, ''The
majority Of the members are hypocrites,
although it is no temporal advantage to
be member of the church, and there
fore there is no temptation to hypoc-
risy'' Pessimism says that the influence
of newspapers is only bad, and that they
are corrupting the world, when the fact
is that they are the mightiest agency
for the arrest of crime and the spread
of intelligence, and the printing press,
secular and religious, is setting the ma
tions free The whole tendency of things
is toward cynicism, and the gospel Of
Smashup We excuse David Of the text
for a paroxysm OF disgust, because he
apologies for it to all the centuries, but
it is a deplorabIe fact that many have
taken the attitude of perpetual distrust
and mathematician. There are, we
nust admit, deplorablo facts. and we
would not hide or minify them. We are
not much encouraged to find that the
great work Of official reform i'll New
Y ork city begins by a proposition to the
liquor dealers to break the law by keep
ing their saloons open on Sunday from
2 in the afternoon to IL at night
Never since America was discovered
has there been a worse insult to sobriety
and decency and religion than that prop
osition That proposition is equal to say
ing: ''Let law and order and religion
have a chance on Sunday forenoons, but
Sunday afternoons open all the gates to
gin and alcohol and Schiedam schnapps
and sour mash and Jersey lightning,
and the variegated swill of brewerles
and drunkenness and crime. COnsecrate
the first half of the Sunday to God and
the last half to the devil Let the chill
dren on their way to Sunday schools IN
New York at 3 o'clock in the afternoon
meet the alcoholism that does more than
all other causes combined to rob chill
dren of their fathers and mothers and
strew the land with helpless orphanage
Surely strong drink can kill enough peo-
pie and destroy enough families and
sufficiently crowd the almshouses and
penitentiaries in six days Of the week
without giving it an extra half day for
pauperism and assassination.
Power of Good.
: Although we are not very jubilant
over municipal reform that opens the
exercises by a doxology to rum, we have
full faith in God and in the gospel
which will yet sink all iniquity as the
Atlantic ocean melts flake of snow.
What we want, and what l believe we
will have, is a great religious awaken
spo tbat will rnOra1jzA and ChriStianiZa
our great populations and make them
superior to temptations whether unlaw-
full or legalized. So l see no cause for
disheartenment. Pessimism is a sin, and
those who yield to it cripple themselves