The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1896-07-04
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Principal Causes OF Success
and Failure Ia Life.
Intemperance and Incidence Two Prima
Causes of Non-Success-The ar eat
est Successes Achieved by
God-Fearins Men.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage preached a
sermon on the causes of success and
failure in life before his Washington
congregation, taking for his text:
Aen shall clap their hands at him and shall
hiss him out Of his place.-Job xxvli,, -
This allusion seems 60 be dramatic.
The Bible more than once makes such
illusions Paul says: "We are made
a theater or spectacle to angels and to
men," 1t is evident from the text that
Some of the habits of theater-goers
were known In Jobs time, because he
describes an actor Kissed off the stage.
The iDpersonator comes on the boards
and, either through lack of study of
the part he is to take or happiness or
other incapacity, the audience is of.
Tended, and expresses it's disapproba.
ton and disgust by kissing. Men
clap their hands at him and shall hiss
him out of his place."
My text suggests that each one of
as is put on the stage Of this world to
take some part. What hardship and
suffering and discipline great actors
have undergone year after year that
they might be perfected In their parts,
you have often read. But we, put on
the stage of this life to represent
charity and faith and humility and
faith and elpfulness-whatli little prep
aration we have made, although we
have three galleries of spectators,
earth and Heaven aud HE'LL Have
we not been more attentive to the
part taken by others than to the part
taken BY Ourselves, and, while we
needed 20 be looking at home and con.
ce1tfating on our own duty, we have
been criticising the other performers,
and saying, "That was too high" or
too low" or too tame" or ''too
demonstrative," while we ourselves
were making a dead failure and pre-.
pairing to be ANONYMOUSLY Kissed off
tho stage? Each one IL assigned a
place; no supernumeraries hanging
around the drama of life to take this
or that or the other part, as they may
be called upon. No one can take our
place. Neither can we put off our
character; no change of apparel can
make us anyone else than that which
we eternally are.
J Many make failure of their part in
the drama of life through dissipation.
They have enough intellectual equip
ment and good address and geniality
unbounded. But they have a wine
closet that contains all the forces for
their social and business and moral
overthrow. So far back as the year
959 King Edgar of England made
law that the drinking cups should
have pins fastened at certain point
In the side, SO that the indulger might
be reminded to stop before he got to
the bottom. But there are no pins
projecting from the side of the mod
ern wine cup or beer mug, and the
first point at which millions stop is
at the gravelly bottom of their own
grave. DIR. Sax, of France, has
discovered something which all
drinkers ought to know. He has
found out that alcohol, In every shape,
whether of wine or brandy or beer,
contains parasitic life called bacillus
potumaniae. BY powerful micro
scope these living things are discov-
cred, and when you take strong drink
you take them into the stomach and
into your blood, and getting into the
crimson canals of life, they go into
every tissue of your body, and your
entire organism is taken possession of
by these noxious infnitesimals. When
in delirium tremens man sees every
form of reptilian life, 1t seems it is
only these parasites of the brain
in exaggerated size. 1t is not a
hallucination that the victim is
suffering from. He only sees In the
room what is actually crawling and
rioting in his own brain. Every time
you take strong drink you swallow
these maggots, and every time the inn
biber of alcohol in any shape feels
vertigo or rheumatism or nausea 1t is
only the jubilee Of these maggots.
Efforts are being made for the dis
covery of some germicide that can
kill the parasites of alcoholism, but
the only thing that will ever extir-
pate them is abstinence from alcohol
and teetotal abstinence, to which 1
would before God swear all these
young men and old.
America is fruitful country, and we
raise large crops of wheat and corn
and oats, but the largest crop we raise
in this country is the crop of drunk
ards. With sickle made out of the
sharp edges of the broken glass Of
bottles and demijohns they are cut
down, and there are whole swathes Of
them, whole winrows of them, and it
takes all the hospitals and peniten-
tiaries and graveyards and cemeteries
to hold this harvest of hell. Some Of
you are going down under this evil,
and the never-dying worm Of alcohol
ism has wound around you one Of its
coils, and by next New Years day it
will have another coil around You, and
IT viii after awhile put coil around
your tongue and coil around your
brain aud a coil around your lung
and coil around your foot and a coil
around your heart and some day this
nover-dying worm will with one spring
tighten all the coils at once, and in
the last twist of that awful convolu-
ton you will cry out: "Oh, my God!"
and be gone. The greatest of drama
list In the tragedy of Tho Tempest"
sent staggering across the stage
"Stephano," the drunken butler; but
across the stage of human life strong
drink sends kingly and queenly and
princely natures staggering forward