The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1898-07-20
TAIN SERMON,
SUlciDEWAS SUSJECTOFEM
lNENT DlVlNES SERMON.

Sane Man Who Suicides is Traitor
to God. lnfideIity Cause Of Self
Slaughter. Enter Eternity
Through Gods Command.
This sermon of DR.. Talmage which
we send out today seems startIlnS!y
appropriate to this theme when 50 many
are leaving this life by their own hand,
an evil about which all reasonable peo-
pie are agreed: text Acts XVI, y, DO
thyself no harm.
Here is a would be suicide arrested
in his deadly attempt. He was Il sheriff
and. accordingly to the Roman law, a
balif himself must suffer the punish
ment due an escaped prisoner, and if
the prisoner breaking jail was sent
enced to be endungeoned for three or
four years then the sheriff must be en-
dungeoned for three or four Years. and
if the prisoner breaking jail was to
have suffered capital punishment then
the sheriff must suffer capital punish
ment. The sheriff had received espec-
ial charge to keep a sharp lookout for
Paul and Silas. The government had
not much confidence in bolts and bars
to keep safe these two clergymen, about
whom there seemed to be something
strange and supernatural. Sure enough:
by miraculous power, they are free, and
the sheriff. waking out Of a sound sleep
and supposing these ministers have run
away and knowing that they were to
die for preaching Christ and realizing
that he must therefore die, rather than
90 under the executioners ak on the
morrow and suffer public disgrace re-
solves to precipitate his own decease.
But before the sharp, keen, glitterlns
dagger Of the sheriff could strike his
heart one of the unloosened prisoners
arrests the blade By the command, DO
thyself no harm.
In olden times and where Christian
ity had not interfered with it suicide
was considered honorable and sign OF
courage. Demosthenes poisoned him
self when told that Alexanders embas-
sador had demanded the surrender OF
the Athenian orators. lsocrates killed
himself rather than surrender to Philip
Of Macedon. Cato, rather than submit
to Julius Caesar, took his own life, and
three times after his wounds had been
dressed tore them open and perished.
Mithridates killed himself rather than
submit to Pompey, the conQueror.
Hannibal destroyed his life by poison
from his ring, considering life unbeara-
bic. Lycurgus suicide, Brutus sui
eide. After the disaster of Moscow Ma
poleon always carried with him a prep
aration of poison, and one night his
servant heard the ex-emperor arise, put
something in glass and drink it, and
soon after the groans aroused all the
attendants, and it was only through ut
most medical skill that he was resusci-
tated. Times have changed, and yet
the American conscience needs to be
toned up on the subject of suicide.
Have you seen q paper IN the last
month that did not announce the pass
age out Of life by ones own behest?
Defaulters, alarmed at the idea of ex-
posure, quit life precipitately. Men
losing large fortunes go out OF the world
because they cannot endure earthly ex-
istence. Frustrated affection, domestic
infelicity, dyspeptic impatienee, anger,
remorse, envy, jealousy, destitution E,
misanthropy; are considered sufficient
causes for absconding from this life by
paris green, by laudanum, by belladon-
ma, by Othello's dagger, by halter. by
leap from the abutment Of a bridge, by
firearms. More cases of felo de Sc IN
the last two years than any two years
Of the worlds existence, and more IN
the last month than in any II months.
The evil is more and more spreading.
Scotland, the land prolific Of intel
lectual giants, had none grander than
Hugh Miller, great for science and
great for God. He was an elder in St.
Johns Presbyterian church. He came
Of the best highland blood and was a
descendant of Donald Roy, man en-
inent for piety and the rare gift Of sec
cnd sight. His attainments, climbing
up as he did from the quarry and the
wall of the stonemason, drew forth the
astonished admiration of Buckland and
Murchison, the scientists, and DR..
Chalmers, the theologian, and held UNI
versities spellbound while he told them
the story of what ne had seen OF God
in ''The Old Red Sandstone That
man did more than any other being
that ever lived to show that the God of
the hills is the God oe the Bible, and
he struck his tuning fork on the rocks
of Cromarty until he brought geology
and theology accordant in divine wor-
ship. His two books, entitled Foot
prints of the Creator and The Testi-
mony of the Rocks, proclaimed the
banns of an everlasting marriage be-
tween genuine science and revelation.
On this latter book he toiled day and
night, through love of nature and love
of God, until he could not sleep and
his brain gave way, and he was found
dead with revolver by his side, the
cruel instrument having had two bull
lets-one for him and the other for the
gunsmith who at the coroner's inquest
was examining it and fell dead. Have
you any doubt of the beatifcation of
Hugh Miller after his hot brain had
ceased throbbing that winter night in
his study at Portobello? Among the
mightiest of earth, among the mightlest
of heaven.
No one doubted the piety Of William
Cowper, the author of those three great
hymns, 20 For a Closer Walk With
God, ;" What Various Hindrances We
Meet, There is Fountain Filled
With Blood od'-William Cowper, who
shares with Isaac Watts and Charles
Wesley the chief honors of Christian
hymnology. In hypochondria he re-
solved To take his own life and rode to