The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1895-03-14
DANGERS OF PESSIMISM.
Rev, DR.. Talmage Eloquently Sets
Them Forth.
Tho Prevailing Disposition to Distrust
Everybody Denounced as an Unmiti-
gated Evil-A More Cheerful
IL - View of Things Preferable.

'-. f-s NleW OF IhlHS6 TEcieraDIcs
The following discourse was deliv-
cred by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage in the
New York Academy of music on the
subject: ''rhe Dangers of Pessimism."
1t was based on the text:
said in my haste, all men are liars.-Psalm
cxvi, II.
Swindled, betrayed, prosecuted Da-
vid, in paroxysm of petulance and
rage, thus insulted the human race.
David himself falsifed when he said:
"All men are liars" He apologies
and says he was unusually provoked,
and that he was hasty when he hurled
such universal denunciation. II said
in my haste" "and so on. 1t was in him
only momentary triumph of pessim-
ism. There is ever and anon, and never
more than now, disposition abroad to
distrust everybody, and because some
bank employees defraud to distrust all
bank employees; and because some po-
lice officers have taken bribes; to be-
lieve that all policemen take bribes;
and because divorce cases are in court,
to believe that most, if not all, mar
riage relations are unhappy. There are
men who seem rapidly coming to adopt
this creed: All men are liars, scoun-
drels, thieves, libertines. When a new
case of perfidy comes to the surface,
these people clap their hands in glee.
1t gives piquancy to their breakfast if
the morning newspaper discloses a new
exposure or new arrest. They grow
fat on vermin. They Join the devils
in hell in jubilation over recreancy and
pollution. If some one arrested is
proved innocent, it is to them disap-
pointment. They would rather be-
lieve evil than good. They are vultures,
preferring carrion. They would like
to be on a committee to find some
thing wrong. They wish that as eye
glasses have been invented to improve
the sight, and ear trumpets have been
invented to help the hearing, a corre-
spending instrument might be invent
ed for the nose, to bring nearer
malodOr.
Pessimism says of the church: ''The
majority of the members are hypo-
critics, although it is no temporal ad-
vantage to be member of the church,
and therefore there is no temptation
to Hypocrisy" Pessimism says that
the influence of newspapers is 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 nations free.
The whole tendency of things is to-
ward cynicism, and the gospel of
Smash-up. We excuse David of the
text for paroxysm of disgust, be-
causes he apologies for it to all the
centuries, but it is deplorable fact
that many have taken the attitude
of perpetual disgust and anathema-
tization. There are, we must admit,
deplorable facts, and we would not
hide or minify them. We are not
much encouraged to find that the
great work of reform in New York
city begins by a proposition to the
liquor dealers to break the law by
keeping their saloons open on Sunday
from two in the afternoon to eleven at
night. Never since America was dis
covered has there been worse insult
to sobriety and decency and religion
than that proposition. That PROPOSE
ton is equal to saying: LET law and
order and religion have chance on
Sunday forenoons, but Sunday after
noon open all the gates to
gin and alcohol and Schiedam
schnapps and sour mash and
Jersey lightning and the variegat-
ed swill of breweries, and drunken
ness and crime. Consecrate the first
half of the Sunday to God, and the last
half to the devil. Let the children on
their way to Sunday-schools meet the
alcoholism that does more than all
other causes combined to rob children
of their fathers and mothers, and
strew the land with helpless orphan
age. Surely, strong drink can destroy
enough families, and sufficiently crowd
the aims houses and penitentiaries in
six days of the week, without giving il
an extra half day for pauperism and
assassination.
Although we are not iubilant over a
municipal reform that opens the exer.
SlaCS ny q ooAo1oSy ~ rum VIC udfe
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 I believe we
will have, is a great religious awaken
ing that will moralize and Christian
ize our great populations and make
them superior to temptations, whether
unlawful or legalized. So l see NJ
cause for disheartenment. Pessimism
is sin, and those who yield to it Grip
pie themselves for the war, on one sid,
of which are all the forces of darkness
led on by Apollyon, and on the othel
side of which are all the forces of light
led on by the Omnipotent. I risl
the statement that the vast majority
Of people are doing the best they can
| Nine hundred and ninety-nine out Of :
thousand of the officials of the munici
pal and United States government
are honest. Out of a thousand banl
presidents and cashiers, nine hundred
and ninety-nine are worthy the posi-
| tion they occupy. Out of a thousand