North Carolina Newspapers

REV. DR TALMAGR The Eminent New York Divine's Snn day Sermon. Subject: "Word Tfith Young Men." In his audiences at the Xew York Academy of Music Dr. Talmage meets many hundreds of young men from different parte of the Union, and representing almost every calling and profession in life. To them ne specially addressed this discourse, the subject being "Words With Young Men." . Fayette, O. Reverend Sir We, the undersigned, being ' earnest readers of your sermons, especially request that yon use as a snbject for some one of your future sermons "Advice to Young Men." " Yours respectfully, H. 3. Miixott. Charles T. Bcbebt. F. O. Millott. M. E. Elder. J. L. Shibwood. ? 8. J. Altmax. Those six young men. I suppose, reprersnt innumerable young men who are about un dertaking the battle of life, and who have more interrogation points in their mind than any printer's case ever contained, or prin ter's fingers ever set up. But few people who have passed fifty years of age are capa ble of giving advice to young men. Too many begin their counsel by forgetting they ever "were young men themselves. November snows do not understand May rime -blossom week. The east wind never did understand ( the south wind. Autumnal goldenrod makes a poor fist at lecturing about early violets. Generally, after a man has rheumatism in his right foot he is not competent to discuss juvenile elasticity. Not one man out of a hundred can enlist and keep the attention of the young after there is a bald spot on the cranium. I attended a large meeting in Philadelphia assembled to discuss how the Young Men's Christian Association of that city might be made more attractive for young people, when a man arose and made some suggestions with f uch lugubrious tone of voice and a manner that seemed to deplore that everything was going to ruin, when an old friend of mine, at seventy-five years, as young in feeling a? tiny one at twentyarose and said,- "That good brother who has just addressed you will excuse me for saying that a young man would no sooner go and spend an evening among such funereal tones of voice and funereal ideas of religion which that brother seems to have adopted than he would go and epend the evening in Laurel Hill Cemetery." And yet these young men of Ohio and all young men have a right to ask those who have had many opportunities of studying this world and the next world to give help ful suggestion as to what theories of life one ought to adopt and what dangers he ought to shun. Attention, young men. First, get your soul right. You see, that Is the most valuable part of you. It is the most important room in your house. It is the parlor of your entire nature. Put the best pictures on its walls. Put the best music under its arches. . It is important to have the kitchen right, and the dining room right, and the cellar right, and all the other rooms of your nature right; but. oh! the parlor of the soul! Be particular about the guests who enter it. Shut its doors in the faces of those who would despoil and pollute it. There are princes and kings who would like to come into it, while there are assassins who would like to come out from behind its curtains, and with silent foot attempt the desperate and murderous. Let the King come in. lie is now at the door. Let me be usher to an nounce His arrival, and introduce the King of this world, the King of all worlds, the King eternal, immortal, invisible. Make room. Stand back. Clear the wav. Bow, kneel, ship the King. Have Him onc for your guest, and it does not make much difference who comes or goes. Would you have a warrantee against moral disaster and eurety of a uoble career.' R?ad at least one ohapter of the Bible on your knees everyday of your life. " Word the next: nave your body right. "How are you?" I often say wtten I meet a friend of mine in Brooklyu. He is over sev enty, and alert . and vigorous, and very (rominent in the law. His answer is, "I am Iving on the capital of a well spent youth." On the contrary, there- are hundreds of thousands of good people who are suffering the results of early sins.. The grace of God gives one a new heart, but not a new body. David, the Psalmist had to cry out, "Be member not the sins of my 'youth." Let a young man make his body a wine closet, or rum jug, or a whisky cask, or a beer barrel, ' and smoke poisoned cigarettes until his hand trembles, and he is black under the eyes, and his cheeks fall in, and then at Borne church seek and find -religion; yet all the praying he can do will not hinder the physical consequences of natural law frac tured. You six young men of Ohio and all the young men, take care of your eyes, those windows of the soul. Take care of your ears, and listen to nothing that depraves. Take care of your lips, and see that they utter no profanities. Take care of your nerves by enough sleep and avoiding un healthy excitements, and by taking out door exercise, whether by bull or skate or horseback, lawn tennis or echilaratihg bi cycle, if you sit upright and do not join that throng of several hundred tho osands who by the wheel are cultivating Crooked back3 and cramped chests and deformed bodies, rapidly coming down toward all fours, and the attitude of the beasts that perish. Anything that bends body, mind or soul to the earth la unhealthy. Oh, it is a grand thing to be well, but do not depend on pharmacy and the doctors to make you well. Stay well. Bead John Todd's Manual and Coombs's Physio logy and everything you can lay your hands on about mastication and digestion and assim ilation. Where you find one healf-hy man or woman, you find fifty half dead. ' From my own experience I cau testify that, being a disciple of the gymnasium, many a time just before going to the parallel bars and punching bags and puliies and weights, I thought sat an was about taking possession of society and the church and the world, but after one hour of climbing and Lifting" and pulling I felt like hastening home so as to be there when the millennium set in. Take a good stout run every day. I find in that habit, which I have kept up since at eighteen years I read the aforesaid Todd's Manual, more recuperation than in anything else. Those six men of Ohio will need all possible nerve and all possible eyesight and all possible muscular development before they get through the terrific struggle of this life. Word the next: Take care of your intel lect, 'Here comes the flood of novelettes, ninety-nine out of a hundred belittling to every one that opens them. Here come de praved newspapers, submerging good and elevated American journalism. Here comes a whole perdition of printed abomination, dumped on the breakfast table and tea table and parlor table. Take at least one good newspaper with able editorial and reporters columns' mostly occupied with helpful in telligence, announcing marriages and deaths and reformatory and religious assemblages, and charities bestowed, and the doings of good people, and giving bat little pla?e t nasty divorce cases, and stories of crime, which, like cobras, sting thosi that tou?h them. Oh, for more nssrspapers that put virtue in what j is called great primer type and vice in nonpareil or agate! You. have all seen the ph Dtograpaer's nega tive. He took a picture from it ten or t went v years ago. You ask him now for a picture from that same negative. He opens the great chest containing black negatives of" 1885 or 1875, and he reproduces the picture. Young men, your memory i3 made up of the negatives of an immortal photography. All that you see or hear goes into your soul to make pictures for the future. You will have with you till the judgment day the negatives of all the bad pictures you have ever looked at, and of all the debauched scenes you have read about, Show me the newspapers you take and the books you read, and I will tell you what are your prospects for well being in this life, and what will be your residence a million years after the star on which we now live shall have dropped out of the constellation. I never travel on Sunriav unless it be a case of neeessiryOT mercy. But last autumn I wa in India in a city plague struck. By the hundreds the people were down with fearful illness. We went to the apothecary's to get some pre ventitive of the fever, and the nlace was crowded with invalids, and we bad no confi dence in the, preventive we purchased from the Hindoos. The mail train was to start Sabbath evening. I said. "Frank. I think the Lord will excuse us if we get out of this place with the "first" train." and we took it. not feeling.f utte comfortable till we were hundreds of miles away. I felt we were right In flying from the plague. Well, the air in many of our cities is struck through with a wnrsfl Til o oni a th a t1 a mi a rt onmmt ari l damnable literature. Get awav -from u as soon as possible. It has already ruined the bodies, minds and souls of a multitude which, If s'ood in solid column, wonid reach from New York Battery to Golden Horn. The plague! The plague! Word the next: Never go to any nla"? where you would be ashamed to die. Adont that plan and you will never go to any pvil amusement nor be found in compromising surroundings. How many startling chso: within the pat few years of ma calle 1 sud; denly out of this world, and the nwsnnr'",3 surprised us wheh they mentioned th roa' ity and the companionship. To nut it on the least Important ground, you ought not to go to any such forbidden place, because if you denart this life in such circumstances you put officiating ministers in great emharrass rant. You know that some of the minister? believ that all who leave this life , go straight to heaven, however they have act ed in this worll, or whatever they have believed- To get you through from such surroundings is an important ttieologtcai un dertaking. One of the most arduous and besweating efforts of that kind that 1 ever knew of wa" at the obsequies of a min who wa3 found dead in a snowbank with his rum jug close beside him. But the minister did the work of haopv transference a well as possible, although it did seem p little inap propriate when h read: "Blesied are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labors, and their works do . follow them." If you have no mercy unou you'-sflf have mercy unon the minister who mav be called to officiate after your demise. Die at home, or in some vlace of honest busine. or where the laughter is clean, or amid com panionships pure and elevating. BemembT that any place we go to mav become our starting point forthe next world. When we enter the harbor of heavo. and the officer of light comes aboard, let U3 be able to show that our clearing papers were date 1 at thf right port. ' Word the next: , As soon a? you can. by in dustry and economy, have a home of yoar own. What do I mean by a home? I maTi two room3 and ths blessing of God on both of them; one room for slumber, one for fool, its preparation and the partaking thereof. Mark you. I would like you to have a hom with thirty rooms, all upholstered. ri"turei and statuetted. but I am putting it down at the minimum. A husband and wife who can not be hapDy with a hom3 made up of two rooms would not be happy in heaven if they got there. He who wins and keeps the affec tion of a good practical woman has don gloriously. What do I mean bv a good woman? I mean one who loved God before she loved you. What do I mean by a practi cal woman? I mean one who can help you to earn a living, for a tima comes in almost every man's life when he 13 flung of hard nis- r fortune, ana ran ao not .. ncnvuus mg amuu'i m-7 uira about how sne had it before you mar ried her. The simple reason why thou sands of men never get on in the world is because they married nonentities and never got over it. The only thing that J ob's wife proposed for his boils was a warm poultice-of profanity, saying. "Curse God and die." It adds to our admiration of John Wesley the manner in which he conquered domestic unhappiness. His wife had slan dered him all over England until, standing In his pulpit in City Road chaoel. he com plained to the people saying, "I have been charged with every crime in the catalogue except drunkenness;" when his wife arose in the ba?k part of the church and said "John. vou know you were drunk last night" "Then Wesley exclaimed, "Thank God, the catalogue is complete." When a man marries he marries for heaven or hell, and It is more so when a woman marries. You six young man in Fayette, Ohio, had better look out. Word the next: Do not rata yourself too high. Better rate yourself too low. Lf you rate yourself too iow the world will say, "Come up." If you rate yourself too high the world will say, "Come down.'' It is a bad thing when a man gets so exaggerated an idea of himself as did Earl of Buchan, whose speech Ballantyne, the Edinburgh printer, could not set up for publication because he had not enough capital Fs among his type. Rimember that the world got along without yo.i near 6003 years before you were born, and unless some meteor collides with us, ot some internal explosion occurs, the world will probably last several thousand yeara after you are dead. Word the next: Do not postpone too long doing something decided for God, humanity and yourself. The greatest things have been done before forty years of age. Pascal 'at sixteen years of age, Grotius at seventeen, Rjmulus at twenty, Pitt at twenty-two, Whitefi'eld at twenty-four, Bonaparte at twenty-seven. Ignatius Loyola at thirty. Raphael at thirty-seven, had made the world feel their virtue or their vice, and the big gest strokes you will probably make for the truth or against the truth will be before you reach the meridiam of life. Do not wait for something.to turn up. Go to work and turn it up. There is no such thing as good luck. No man that ever lived has had a better time than I have had, yet I never had any good luck. But instead thereof, a kind Providence has crowded my life with mercies. You will never accomplish much as long as you go at your work on the minute you are expected and stop at the first minute it is lawful to quit. The greatly useful and successful men of the next century will be those who began half an hour before they were required and worked at least half an hour after tney might have quit. Unless you are willing sometimes to work twelve hours of the day you will re main on the low level, and your life will be a prolonged humdrum. Word the next: Remember that it is only a small part of our life that we are to pass on earth. Less than your nngar nil compared with your whole body is the life on earth when compared with th i naxt life. I sup pose there are not more than half a dozen people in this world 103 year3 old. But a very few people in any country reach eighty. The majority of tha human raoe expire be fore thirty. Now, what an equipoise in such a consideration. If things go wrong it is only for a little while. Have you not enough moral pluck to stand the jostling, and the injustices, and tha mishaps of the small par enthesis between the two eternities? It is a good thing to ge: ready for the one mile this side the marble slab, but more important to get fixad up forthe interminable miles which stretch out' into the distances beyond the marble siab. A few years ag on the Nashville and New Orleans railroad we were waked up eariy in the mofning, and told we must take carriages for some distance. "Why.'" wd all asked. we soon saw for ourselves while the first four or five of the bridge were up. farther on was a span that had fallen, and we not but shudder at what might have been the possibilities. WThen your rail train starts on a long bridge you want to be sure that the first span of the bridge is all right, but what if farther on there is a span of the bridge that is all wrong; how then? whkt then? In one of the Western cities the freshets had carried away a bridge. and; a man knew that the express train would sodn come along. So he lighted a lantern And started up the track to stop the train. ut before he had got far enough up the track the wind blew out the light of his lantern, and standing in the darkness as tho, train came up he tnrew the lantern into the' loco-n-otive, crying, "Stop! Stop!"' And the warning was in time to halt the train. And if any of you by evil habits are hastening on toward brink or precipice or fallen span, I throw this Gospel lantern at your mad careers Stop! Stop! The end thereof it death! Young man, you are caged now by manv environments, but you will after awhile get your wings out. Some one caged a Rocky Mountain eagle and kept him shut no between the wires until all the spirit and courage had gone out of it. Released one dav from the cage, the eagle seemed to want to return to its former prison. The fact was that the eagle had all gone out of him. He kept his wings down. But after awhile he looked up at the sun. turning his head first this side and then that side, and then spread on? wing and then the othr wing, and began to mount until the hills were far under his feet, and he was out of sight in the emnvrean. My brother, when you leave this life, if by the grace of God you are prepared, vou will come out of the cage or this hindering mor tal ity. and looking up to the heaven! v heights yon will spread wing for immortal night, leaving sun and moon and stars be neath in your ascent to glories that never But that, spans there could - - " '-mm. mm1 nfAnrlAfa ttiAh it Word the next: Fill yourself with bioo raphies of men who di d gloriouslT ia business or occupation or profession via about to choose or hav already chn Going to be a merchant? Read up Pet Cooper and Abbott Lawrence; and Jam Lenox and William E. Dodge and Georn Peabody. See how most of these merchants at the start munched their noonday luncheoj made up of dry bread and a hunk of ch behind a counter or In a storeroom, as the started in a business which brought then ti the too' of influences which enabled them to bless the world with millions of dollars eon. secrated to hospitals and schools and churches and private benefactions, rher neither right hand nor laft hand knewwh the other hand did. Going to be a physician? Read no Harvey and Groi and sir Adam Clarke and James Y. Simpsai the discoverer of chloroform as an anssth! tic, and Leslie Keeley, who. notwithstandlar all the damage done by his incompetent Uni! tators, stands one of the greatest benefactoa of the centuries and all the other might, physicians who have mended broken boneit and enthroned again deposed intellect?, an given their lrves to healing the long, 'dee gash of the world's agony. Going to bi mechanic?! Read u.pthe inventors of sevrini machines and cotton gins and life saving &v paratus. and the men who as architects am1 builders and manufacturers and day laboren have made a life of thirty years in thiscej. tury worth more than the full 100 years 'o! anv other century. You six young men of Ohio, and ail th other young men, instead of wasting you; time on dry essays as to how to do things, go to the biographical alcove of yon: village or city library, and acquaint yon selves wit n men wno. in tne sight of earti and heaven and hell, did the great thina Remember the greatest things are yet to be done. If the Bible b tru or ai I had bet ter put it. since the Bible is" bevond all con troversy true, the greatest battle is yet to be fought, and compared with it Saragossa and Gettysburg and Seden were child's play witl toy pistols.! We even know the nam' of thi battle, though we are not certain as to where it will be fought I refer to Armageddon The greatest discoveries are yet to be made A scientist has recently discovered ii the air something which will yet riwi electricity. I The most of things have nS yet been found out. An explorer has r cently found in the valley of the Nile a whofe fleet of shin hnried Acres aco wherfl nnil'l1 there is no water. Only six out of the 8K grasses have been turned into foo t lik the' potato and the tomato. There are hundrei of other styles of food to be discover! Aerial navigation will yet be made as saf as travel on the solid earth. Canoers aai consumptions and leprosies are to be tran f erred from the catalogue of incurable din ease to the curable. Medical men are no successfully experimenting with modes o! which cannot throw them off to stout consti tutions which are able to throw them ot Worlds like Mars and the moon wiil be wW in hailing distance, and instead of confining our knowledge to their canals and volcanoa they will signal all stvles of intelligence tc us. and wv will signal all style? of intelli-; gence to them. Coming times will class our boasted nine teenth century with the dark age. Unlet the power of go3nelizationthe worldis coin)? to be so improved that the sword and: thej musket of our time will be kept in museums. as now we look at thumbscrews and r.nciens instruments of torture. Oh, what oppor-j tunities vou are eoincr to have, voun? me? all the world over, un ler thirtv. How thank ful vou onehf tn that vw.i wem not bori any soonerj Blessed are the cradles that ad being rocked now. Blessed are the studenti in the freshman class. Blessed those m will yet be: young men when the new centum comes in. in five Or sir vears from now, This wnrhl wa har.llv fit tn livft in in thf eighteenth centurv. I do not see how the ol folks stood it. During this nineteenth centurf the world has by Christianizing and eau tional inflnenoes been AtbiI nn until it dOS very well for temporary residence. Bat tft1 twentieth eentnrw Ah that will beta time to see great sights aid do great a&u- Oh, young men, get ready for the rolling ft of that mightiest and grandest and m glorious eentnrv that the world haMTeM seen! Only five summera more; five autumns more; five winters more: five springs mwjj ana tnen tne ciock oitime win ri death of the old century and the birth oftnn new. 1 do not know what sort oi a down to die; whether it will be starlit anrmAn ... V4.l.A ik. Will drifting or the soft winds will breathe ufR the pillow of the expiring centenarian. mi MrTta will -msnm it-a r-f r CT received from it kindnesses innumerably and they will kisa farewell the aged W wrinkled with so many vicissitudes. J Old nineteenth century of hS burials, of defeats and victories, of n&tiwwj born and nations dead, thy pulses Pr feebler now. will soon stop on tna'.? night of December! But right beside it be the infant century, held up lor ?K-rj Its smooth brow will glow with brigM pectations. I The then more than VprJ 000 inhabitants of the earth will Ph birth and pray for its prosperity. Its jwi will be for a hundred years, and the mop j your life, I think, will be under the .sJ its scepter. I Get ready for it. Have yg heart rightj your nerves right, your d i right, your digestion right. We over to you our commerce, our m.7d our arts and sciences, our profession n pulpits, our inheritance. We lieTc3 you. S& trust you. We VW'M We bless you. And though bj j time you get into the thickest w i have disappeared from earth y