The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1901-08-01
fALlMAGE'S SERMON.
DISCOVER NOT A |sEcRET TO
ANOTHER"

Keeping Ones Own Counsel - People
Should Learn to Say Nothing of Others
That Is Not of Good Inport-Prov-
srbs XIV: 0.
Copyright, 1901, Louis Klopsch, N. "
Washington, July 28.-A practical
question which is asked in most
houses, and for many years, is here
asked by DR.. Talmage and answered;
text, Proverbs XIV, 9, Discover not a
secret to another"
1t appears that in Solomon's time,
as in all subsequent periods of the
world, there were people too much dis
posed to tell all they knew. 1t was
blab, blab, blab; physicians revealing
the case of their patients, lawyers ex-
posing the private affairs of their eli
ents, neighbors advertising the faults
of the next door resident, pretended
friends betraying condolences.
One-half of the trouble of every COM
munity comes from the fact that so
many people have not the capacity to
keep their mouths shut. When I hear
something disparaging of you, my first
duty is not to tell you, but if tell you
what somebody has said against you
and then go out and tell everybody
else what told you, and they go out
and tell others what 1 told them that
lstold you. and we all go out, some to
hunt up the originator of the story
ana others to hunt it down. we shall
get the whole community talking
about what you did not do, and there
VIII be as many scalps taken as though
pand OF Modocs had swept upon a
helpless village. We have two ears,
but only one tongue, physiological
suggestion that we ought to hear a
good deal more than we tell. Let us
join conspiracy that we will tell each
other all the good and nothing of the
III, and then there will not be such
awful need of sermons on Solomon's
words, Discover not a secret to an
other"
Solomon had a very large domestic
circle. In his earlier days he had very
confused notions about monogamy and
polygamy, and his multitudinous asso-
clates in the matrimonial state kept
him too we'll informed as to what was
going on in Jerusalem. They gathered
up all the privacies and poured them
into his ear, and his family became a
sorosis or female debating society Of
700, discussing day after day all the
difficulties between husbands and
wives, between employers and en-
ployes, between rulers and subjects.
until Solomon, in my text, deplores
volubility about affairs that do not
belong to us and extols the virtue Of
secretiveness.
OutbrarchIngs of Sympathy.
You sometimes see man with no
outbranchings of sympathy. His ma
ture is cold and hard, like ships
mast ice glazed, which the most agile
sailor could never climb. Others have
thousand roots and a thousand
branches. Innumerable tendrils climb
their hearts and blossom all the way
up, and the fowls of heaven sing in the
branches. In consequence of this ten
dency we find men coming together in
tribes. in communities, in churches; in
societies. Some gather together to Gull
ttIate the arts, some to plan for the
welfare Of the state, some to discuss
religious themes, some to kindle their
mirth, some to advance their craft.
So oofiua it1, io J;,,;5 Ia
into associations of artists, of mer-
chants, Of bool1binders, of carpenters,
of masons, of plasterers, Of ship
wrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out
against it? Then you cry out against
a tendency divinely implanted. Your
TRADES would accomplish no more than
if you should preach to a busy ant
hill a long sermon against secret So
cieties.
Here we find the oft discussed ques-
ton whether associations that do their
work with closed doors and admit their
members by passwords and greet each
other with secret grip are right or
wrong. I answer that it depends en-
tirely on the nature of the object for
which they meet. Is it to pass the
hours in revelry, wassail, blasphemy
and obscene talk or to plot trouble to
the state or to debauch the innocent,
then I say, with an emphasis that no
man can mistake. No! But is the
object the defense of the rights of any
class against oppression, the improve
ment of the mind, the enlargement of
the heart, the advancement of art, the
defense Of the government, the extir-
patton of crime or the kindling of a
pure hearted sociality, then I say, with
just as much emphasis, Yes!
Secret Societies.
There are secret societies in our col
leges that have letters of the Greek al
phabet for their nomenclature, and
their members are at the very front in
scholarship and irreproachable in NOR
ais, while there are others the scene
of carousal, and they gamble, and they
drink, and they graduate knowing
hundred times more about sin than
they do of geometry and Sophocles.
In other words, secret societies, like
individuals, are good or bad, are the
means of moral health or of temporal
and eternal damnation. All good peo-
pie recognize the vice of slandering an
individual, but many do not see the sin
OF slandering an organization. There
are old secret societies in this and
OCher countries some of them CEN