Connecticut western news., 1897-01-14

his piano taken into tho midst or a meadow and a bottle of champagne placed on each side of him. The earlier you begin to learn the song of the drunkards the easier it is. but none of you is too old to learn. You can begin at 50 or 60. under prescription of doc tor for aids to digestion or breaking up of infirmities and close life by render ing the song of the drunkards so we'll that all pandemonium will encore the performance and want it again and again.
 Furthermore, the last characteristic of the drunkards' song is SO tremendous that can hardly bring myself to men, tion it. The drunkards' song is con- tinuous song. Once start that tune and you keep it up. You have known hun dred men destroyed of strong drink. You cannot mention five who got fully started on that road and stopped. The grace of God can do anything, but 1t does not do everything. Religion saves some. Temperance societies save some. The Bowery mission saves some. The Central mission saves some. But n hundred thousand who are annually slain by strong drink are not saved at all.
 A Prolonged Song. .
 have been at @ concert which went on for two hours and half, and many people got up and left because it was too long, but 95 per cent of those who are singing the drunkards' song will to the last breath of their lungs and the last beat of thei- hearts keep on render. ing it, and the galleries of earth and heaven and he'll will stay filled with astounded spectators. It is such a con- tinuous and prolonged song that one feels like making the prayer which Q reformed inebriate once made: Al mighty God If 1t be thy will that man should suffer, whatever seemeth good in thy sight impose upon me. Let the bread of atfliction be given me to eat. Take from me the friends of my conf dence. Let the cold hut of poverty be my dwelling place and the wasting hand of disease inflict its painful tor ments. Let me SOW in the whirlwind and reap in the storm. Let those have me in derision who are younger than L Let the passing away of my welfare be like the feeting of a cloud and the shouts of my enemies like the rushing of waters. When I anticipate good, let evil annoy me. When look for light let darkness come upon me Let the terrors of death be ever before me. Do all this, but save me, merciful God, save me from the fate of & drunkardi Amen"
 You see, this sermon is not so much for cure as for prevention. Stop before you start, if you will forgive the sole- cism. The clock of St. Paul's cathedral struck ls ono midnight and so saved the life of a sentinel. The soldier was arrested and tried for falling asleep at bis post one midnight, but he declared that he was awake at midnight, and in proof that he was awake he said that he had heard the unusual occurrence of the clock striking IS instead of 12. He was laughed to scorn and sentenced to death, but three or four persons, hear ing of the case, came up in time to swear that they, too. heard the clock strike 13 that same midnight, and so she mans life was spared. My hearers, if you go on and thoroughly learn the drunkards' song, perhaps in the deep midnight of your soul there may sound something that will yet effect your moral and eternal rescue. But it is a risky perhaps " It is exceptional. Go ahead on that wrong road and the olock will more probably strike the 12 that closes your day of opportunity than that it will strike 13, the sound of your deliveranoe.
 A few Sabbaths ago, on the steps of this church, a man whom I had known in other years confronted me. At the first glance I saw that he was in the fifth and last act of the tragedy of in- temperance. Splendid even in his ruin The same brilliant eye, and the same courtly manners, and the remains of the same intellectual endowments, but a wreck. had seen that craft when it plowed the waters, all sails set and run ming by true compass; wife and chil- dren and friends on board, himself com. nanding in a voyage that he expected would be glorious, putting into prosper ous harbors of earth and at last putting into the harbor of heaven. But now a wreck, lowed along by low appetites. that ever and anon ran him into the breakers-a wreck of body. a wreck of mind, a wreck of soul. "W here is your wife?'' "I do not know" "Where are your children?'' 'I do not know !" "Where is your God?" "I do not know" That man is coming to the last verse of that long cantata, that pro- tracted threnody. that terrific song of the drunkards.
 Turn and Live.
 But if these words should come-for you know the largest audience I reach I never see at all-I say if these words should come, though at the ends of the earth, to any fallen man, let me say to him: Be the exception to the general rule and turn and live while I recall to you a scene in England, where some one said to an inebriate as be was go- ing out of church where there was a great awakening, "Why don't you sign the pledge?" He answered, "I have signed it 90 times and will never sign it again. "Why, then," said the gen. tleman talking to him, "don't you go up and kneel at that altar amid those other penitents?" He took the advice and went and knelt.
 After avvhiIa a littIa p;rI ;p raos