The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1895-02-01
DANGERS OF PESSlMISM.
DR.. Talmage Discourses Upon an
Unmitigated Evil.
An Enemy That Is Creating Much Trouble
I'm the Church as Well as i'm Society,"
A Better View of Life De-
picted.


t. De Witt Talmage took for his sub
ject, 'The Dangers of Pessimism," the
text selected being Psalm cxvi. H.: 81
said in my haste. all men are liars. ,
DR.. Talmage said:
Swindled, betrayed, prosecuted David
in paroxysm of petulance and rage
thus insulted the human race. David
himself falsified when he said, al
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
a momentary triumph of pessimism
There is ever and anon, and never more
than now, disposition abroad to dis
trust everybody, and because some
bank employees defraud, to distrust
all bank employees; and because some
| police officers have taken brides, to
believe 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,
scoundrels, thieves, libertines. When
a new case of perfidy comes to the sur
face, these people clap their hands in
glee. 1t gives piquancy to their break
| fast if the morning newspaper discloses
a new exposure or a new arrest. They
grow fat on vermin. They join the
devils in hell in jubilation over recre-
ancy and pollution. If some one ar
rested is proved innocent, it is to them
disappointment. They would rather
believe evil than good. They are vul-
lures, preferring carrion. They would
like to be on a committee to find some
thing wrong.
Pessimism says of the church: 1.-THE
majority of the members are hypocrites,
although it is no temporal advantage
to be a 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 re-
whole tendency of things is toward
cynicism, and the gospel of Smash-up.
We excuse David of the text for a par
oxysm of disgust, because he apologies
for it to all the centuries, but it is de-
plorable fact that many have taken the
attitude of perpetual disgust and
anathematization. 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 official reform in New York
city begins by a proposition to the
liquor dealers to open on Sunday from
, in the afternoon to IL at night.
Never since America was discovered
has there been a worse insult to sobri-
ETY. and decency and religion than that
proposition. That proposition is equal
to saying: Let law and order and
religion have a chance on Sunday fore
moons, but Sunday afternoon open all
the gates to gin and alcohol and Schie-
dam schnapps and sour mash and Jer
sey lightning and the variegated swill
of breweries and drunkenness and
crime. Consecrate the first half of the
Sunday to God, the last half to the
devil. Let the children on their way
to Sunday schools in New York at 3
o'clock in the afternoon meet the alco-
holism that does more than all other
causes combined to rob children of their
fathers and mothers and strew the
land with helpless orphanage.
Although we are not jubilant over a
municipal reform that opens the exer-
cises 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 believe we
will have, is great religious awaken
ing that will moralize and Christianize
our great populations and make them
superior to temptations, whether I'M
lawful or legalized. So see no cause
for disheartenment. Pessimism is a
sin, and those who yield to it cripple
themselves for the war, on one side of
which are all the forces of darkness,
led on by Apollyon, and on the other
side of which are all the forces of light,
led on by the Omnipotent. risk 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 munich
pal and the United States governments
are honest. Out of thousand bank
presidents and cashiers, nine hundred
and ninety-nine are worthy the posi-
ton they occupy. Out of a thousand
merchants, mechanics and professional
men, nine hundred and ninety-nine are
doing their duty as they understand it.
Out of a thousand engineers, and con-
ductors, and switchmen, nine hundred
and ninety-nine are true to their re-
sponsible positions. 1t is seldom that
people arrive at positions of response
bility until they have been tested over
and over again. If the theory of
the pessimist were accurate, society
would long ago have gone to pieces,
and civilization would have been sub
merged with barbarism, and the wheels
of the centuries would have turned
preston is made that because two men
falsify their bank accounts, these two
wrong-doers are blazoned before the
world, while nothing is said in praise
of the hundreds of bank clerks who
have stood at their desks year in and
year out until their health is well nigh
gone, taking not pins worth of that
which belongs to others for themselves,
though with skillful stroke of pen they
might have enriched themselves, and
built their country seats on the banks
of the Hudson or the Rhine.
1t is mean thing in human nature
that men and Hvnman are NOT rnraised