The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1898-07-29
TALMAGES SERMON.

Shertn, and, according to the Roman
law, a bailiff himself must suffer the
punishment due an escaped prisoner:
and II the prisoner breaking Jail was
sentenced to be endungeoned for three
or four years, then the sheriff must be
endungeOned for three o. 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 especial
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
have run away, and knowing hat they
were to die for preaching Christ, and
realizing that he must therefore die,
rather than go under the executioners
ak on the morrow n suffer public dis
grace, resolves to precipitate his own
decease. But before the sharp, keen,
%glittering dagger of the sheriff could
prisoners arrests the blade by the COM
mand, myself no harm"
In olden times, and where Christian
ity had not interfered with it, suicide
was considered honorable and a sign of
courage. Demosthenes poisoned him.
self when told that Alexander's ambas-
sador had demanded the surrender of
the Athenian orators. 1sOcrates killed
himself rather than surrender to Philip
of MacedOn. Cato, rather h submit
to Julius Caesar, too his own life, and
three times after his Wounds had been
dressed, tore them open and persisted.
Mithridates killed himself rather than
submit to Pompey, the %conqueror. Han
nibal destroyed his life by poison from
Lycurgus a suicide, Brutus a suicide.
After the disaster of Moscow, Ma
poleon always carried with him a pre-
paration of poison, and one night his
servant heard the ex-emperor arise, put
something in a 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 resus
citated. Times have changed, and yet
the American conscience needs to be
toned up on the subject of suicide.
lave you seen a paper in the last
month that did not the pas
sage out of life by ones own behest?
Defaulters, alarmed at the idea of ex-
posure, quit life precipitately. Men los
ing large fortunes go out of the world
because they cannot endure earthly ex-
%istence. Frustrated affection, domestic
infelicity, dyspeptic impatience, anger.
remorse, envy, jealousy, restitution,
misanthropy, are considered sufficient
causes for ~absconding from this life by
donna, by Othello's dagger, by halter, by
leap from the abutment of a bridge, by
fire arms. 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 twelve
months. The evil is more n more
spreading.
A pulpit not long ago expressed
some doubt as to whether there was
really anything wrong about quitting
this life when it became disagreeable,
and there are found in respectable cir
cles people apologize for the crime
which Paul in the text arrested. /
shall show o before I get through
that suicide is the worst of all crimes,
and I shall lift a warning unmistaka-
BILE. But in the early part Of this ser
best Christians that have ever lived
have committed self~-destruction, but
always in dementia, n not response
BILE. I " no more doubt about their
eternal felicity than I have of the
Christian who dies in his bed in the
delirium of typhoid fever. While the
shock of the catastrophe is very great,
L AAo p "4A va 49, ~
tan friends under cerebra alteration
step off the boundaries Of this life to
have no doubt about their happiness.
The lear Lord took them right out OF
their dazed and frenzied state into per-
feet safety. How Christ feels toward
the insane you may know from the
way he treated the demoniac of Ga
dara and the child lunatic, and the
potency with which he hushed tenn
pests either of sea or BRAIN.
Scotland, the land prolific of intellec-
tual 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. a man emf
nent for piety and the rare gift of Sec
ond sight. His attainments, climbing
up as he did from the quarry and the
wall of the stonemason, drew forth the
astonished admiration Of auckland and
Murchison, the scientists, and DR..
Chalmers, the theologian, and held
universities s%pellbound While he told
them the story of what he 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 of the bible, M he
struck his tuning fork on the rocks of
Cromarty until he brought geology and
theology accOrdant in divine worship.
His two books, entitled Footprints of
the Creator and 1.-THE Testimony of
the Rocks" proclaimed the banns of an
everlasting marriage between genuine
science and revelation. On this latter
book he toiled day and night, through
love Of nature and O of God, until he
could not sleep and his brain gave way
and he was found dead with a revolver
by his side, the cruel instrument having
had two bullets-one for him and the
other for the gunsmith, who at the cor