Connecticut western news., 1897-07-01
PRAISE FOR THE BAR
A SERMON OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO YOUNG LAWYERS.

I
 Rev. pr. Talmage Says If He Were on Trial For His Life He Would Prefer a
 Jury of Lawyers to One of cierTymen. ! WASHINGTON, June 27. - Dr. Tal- mage's sermon today has special in- terest for lawyers, and all who expect to be lawyers, and all who are the friends of lawyers. His text is Titus iii, IS, Bring Zenas the lawyer. '
 The profession of the law is here in- troduced, and within two days in the Capital City 3O3 young men joined it, and at this season in various parts of the land other hundreds are taking their diplomas for that illustrious profession, and is it not appropriate that address such young men from moral and reli- gious standpoint, as upon them are now rolling the responsibilities of that call ing represented in the text by Zenas the lawyer?
 We all admire the heroic and rigor- ous side of Paul's nature, as when he stands coolly deliberate on the deck of the cornship while the jack tars of the Mediterranean are covering in the cy- clone; as when he stands undaunted amid the marbles of the palace before thick necked Nero, surrounded with his 12 cruel lictors; as when we find him earning his livelihood with his own needle, sewing haircloth and preaching the gospel in the interstices as when we find him able to take the S9 lashes, every stroke of which fetched the blood, yet continuing in his missionary work; as when we find him, regardless of the consequence to himself, delivering a temperance lecture to Felix, the govern ment inebriate. But sometimes we catch a glimpse of the mild and genial side of Paul's nature. It seems that he had a friend who was a barrister by profession. His name was Zenas, and he wanted to see him. Perhaps he had formed the acquaintance of this lawyer in the courtroom. Perhaps sometimes, when he wanted to ask some question in regard-to Roman law, he went to this Zenas the lawyer. At any rate, he had a warm attachment for the man, and he provides for his comfortable es- cort and entertainment as he writes to Titus, Bring Zenas the lawyer" !"
 This man of my text belonged to profession in which are many ardent supporters of Christ and the gospel, among them Blackstone, the great commen tator on English law, and Will berforce, the emanoipator, and the late Benjamin F. Butler, attorney general of New York, and the late Charles Chauncey, the leader of the Philadel- phia bar, and Chief Justices Marshall and Tenterden and Campbell and Sir Thomas More, who died for the truth on the scaffold, saying to his aghast ex- eoutioner: "Pluck up courage, man, and do your duty. My neck is very short. Be careful, therefore, and do not strike awry."
 Trial of Hastings.
 Among the mightiest pleas that ever have been made by tongue of barrister have been pleas in behalf of the Bible and Christianity, as when Daniel Web- Eser stood in the supreme court at Wash ington pleading in the famous Girard will case, denouncing any attempt to educate the people without giving them at the same time moral sentiment as ''low, ribald and vulgar deism and in- fidelity" as when Samuel l.. Southland of New Jersey, the leader of the forum in his day, stood on the platform at Princeton college commencement advo- eating the literary excellency of the Scriptures; as when Edmund Burke, in the famous trial of Warren Hastings, not only in behalf of the English govern ment, but in behalf of elevated morals, closed his speech in the midst of the most august assemblage ever gathered in Westminster hall by saying: II inn peach Warren Hastings in the name of the house of commons, whose national character he has dishonored; I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights and liberties he has subverted, impeaoh him in the name of human nature, which he has dis graced. In the name of both sexes, and of every rank, and of every station, and of every situation in the world, i'm peach Warren Hastings"
 Yet, notwithstanding all the pleas which that profession has made in be- half of God and the church and the gospel and the rights of man, there has come down through the generations among many people an absurd and wicked prejudice against it. So long ago as in the time of Oliver Cromwell it was decided that lawyers might not enter the parliament house as members, and they were called "gons of Zeruiah. !" h0 T0r 1oh ay,i taph for one of them in these words:
 God works wonders now and then.
 !, Here lies 8 lawyer, an honest manl
 Two hundred years ago treatise was issued with the title, "Doomsday Approaching With Thunder and Light ming For Lawyers. A prominent cler- gyman of the last century wrote in re- gard to that profession these words: "There is society of men among us bred up from their youth in the art of proving, according as they are paid. by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white. For example: If my neighbor has mind to my COW, he hires lawyer to prove that he ought to have my COW from me. must hire another lawyer to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that man should speak for him. self. In pleading they do not dwell upon the merits of the cause, but upon cir cumstances foreign thereto. For in- stance, they do not take the shortest method to know what title my adver- sary has to my COW, but whether the COW be red or black, her horns long or short or the like. After that they ad- joarn the cause from time to time, and in 90 years they come to an issue. This society likewise has peculiar cant or jargon of their own, in which all their laws are written, and these they take especial care to multiply, whereby they have so confounded truth and falsehood that it will take 12 years to decide whether the field left to me by my an-