Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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\ \ \ i /KEY. DR. TALMAGE. THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN* DAY SERMON. Suttfect: "A Plague of Infidelity." - Text: "Let God be true, but every man a Bar.—Romans iii., 4. * That is if God says one thing and the whole human race says the opposite, Paul would accept the Divine veracity. But there are many in our time who have dared arraign the Almighty for falsehood. Infidelity is not only a plague, but it is the mother of plagues It seems from what we hear on all sides that the Christian religion is a huge blun der; that the Mosaic account of the creation is an absurdity large enough to throw all nations into rollicking guffaw; that Adam and Eve never existed; that the ancient flood and Noah’s ark were impossibilities; that there never was a miracle; that the Bible is the friend of cruelty, of murder, of from lid to lid is a fable, a cruelty, a hum bug, a sham, a lie; that the martyrs who died for its truth were miserable dupes; that the church of Jesus Christ is properly gazetted as a fool; that when Thomas Carlyle, the skeptic, said, M The Bible is a noble book,” he was dropping into imbecility; that when Theodore Parker declared in Music hall, Boston, “Never a boy or girl in all Christendom but was profited ny that great book,” he was be coming very weak minded; that it is some thing to bring a blush to the cheek of •very patriot that John Adams, the father of American independence, declared, “The Bible is the best book in all the world;” and that lion hearted Andrew Jackson turned into a sniveling coward when he said, “That boo??, sir, is the rock on which our re- S ublic rests;” and that Daniel Webster ab- icated the throne of his intellectual power and resigned his logic, and from being the great expounder of the constitution and the great lawyer of his age turned into an idiot when he said, “My heart assures and reas sures me that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality: From the time that at my mother’s feet or on my father’s knee I first learned to lisp versee from the sacred writings they have been my daily study and vigilant contemplation, and if there is any thing in my style or thought to be command ed the credit is due to my kind parents in in stilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures;” aud that William H. Seward, the diplomatist of the century, only showed his puerility when he declared, “The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever growing influences of the Bible;” and that it is wisest for us to take that book from the throng in the affections of uncounted multitudes and put it under our feet, to be trampled upon by hatred and hissing contempt; and that your old father was hoodwinked and cajoled and cheated and befooled when he leaned on this as a staff after his hair grew gray, and his hands were tremulous, and his steps shortened as he came up to the verge of the grave; and that your mother sat with a pack of lies on her lap while reading of the better country, and of the ending of all her aches and pains, and reunion not only with those of you who stood around her, but with the children she had buried with infinite heart ache, so that she could read no more until she took off her spectacles and wiped from them the heavy mist of many tears. Alas! that for forty and fifty years they should have walked under this delusion and had it under their pillow when they lay a-dying in the back room, and asked that some words from the vile page might be cut upon the toVfibstone under the shadow of the old country meeting house where they sleep to-day waiting for a resurrection tlf&t will never come. f This book, having deceived them, and hav ing deceived the mighty intellects of the allowec i'a- lart larger, mightier, vaster, more stupendous intellects. And so out with the book from the court room, where it is used in the screenn- isation of testimony. Out witiarfB|& un der the foundation of Out with it from the ther ' all the. and here Is a tincture of derision. Tickle the skeleton of death with a repartee! Make the King of Terrors cackle! For all the agonies of afl the ages a joke! Millions of people willing with uplifted hands toward heaven to affirm that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is full of consolation for them, and yet infidel ity proposes to take it away, giving nothing, absolutely nothing, except fun. Is thereany greater height or depth or length or breadth or immensity of meanness in all God’s uni verse? Infidelity is a religion of “Don’t know.” Is there a God? Don’t know! Is the soti immortal? Don’t know! If we should meet each other in the future world will we recog nize each other? Don’t know! A religion of “don’t know” for the religion of “I know,” “I know in whom I have believed.” “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Infi delity proposes to substitute a religion of awful negatives for onr religion of glorious positives, showing right before us a world of reunion and ecstacy and high companionship and glorious worship aud stupendous vic tory, the mightiest joy of earth not high enough to reach to the base of the Himalaya of uplifted splendor awaiting all those who on wing of Christian faith will soar toward it. Have you heard of the conspiracy to put out all the lighthouses on the coast? Do you know that on a certain night of next month, Eddystone lighthouse, Bell Rock lighthouse. Sherryvore lighthouse, Montauk lighthouse, Hatteras lighthouse. New London light house, Barnegat lighthouse, and the 640 lighthouses on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts are to be extinguished? “Oh,” you say, “what will become of the ship on that ‘ ' of t night? What will be the fate olt the one million sailors following tbe sea? What will be the doom of the millions of passengers? Who will arise to put down such a conspir acy?” Every man, woman and child in America and the world. But that is only a fable. That is what infidelity is trying to do—put out all the lighthouses on the coast of eternity, letting the soul go up the “Nar rows” of death igith no light, no comfort, no peace—all that coast covered with the black-- ness of darkness. Instead of the great light house, a glowworm of wit, a firefly of jocos- i$y. Which do jou Jike thg batter. O vor- ffger lor otermiy, tbs firefly or tne nghfc- house? What a mission infidelity has started on! The extinguishment of lighthouses, the breaking up of lifeboats, the dismissal of all the pilots, the turning of the inscription on your child’s grave into a farce and a lie. Walter Scott’s “Old Mortality," chisel in hand, went through the land to cut out into plainer letters the half obliterated inscrip tions on the tombstones, and it was a beau tiful mission; but infidelity spends its time with hammer and chisel trying to cut out from the tombstones of your dead all the story of resurrection and heaven. It is the iconoclast of every village graveyard and of every city cemetery and of Westminster Ab bey. Instead of Christian cbnsolation for the dying, a freezing sneer. Instead of prayer a grimace. Instead of Paul’s triumphant defiance of death, a going out you know not where, to stop you know not when, to do you know not what. That is in fidelity. Furthermore: I cannot be an infidel, be cause of the ialse charges infidelity is all the time making against the Bible. Perhaps tbe slander that has made the most impression and that some Christians have not been in telligent enough to deny is that the Bible favors polygamy. Does the God of tho Bible uphold polygamy, or did He? How many wives did God make for Adam? He made one wife. Does not your common sense tell you when God started the marriage institu tion He started it as He wanted it to con tinue? If God had favored polygamy He could have created for Adam five wives or ten wives or twenty wives just as easily as He made one. At the very first of the Bible God shows Himself in favor of monogamy and antago nistic to polygamy. Genesis it, 24, “There fore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” Not his wives, but his wife. How many wives did God spare for Noah in the ark? Two and two the birds; two and two ttie cattle; two and two the lions; two and two the human race. If the God of the Bible had favored a multiplicity of wives He would have spared a plurality of wives. When God first launched the human race He gave Adam one wife. At the second launching of the human race He spares for Noah one wife, for Ham .one wife, for 8hem one wife, for dents and with especial honor and high favor, leaning on the arm of inspiration, one who is the joy and pride of any home so rarely fortunate as to have one, an old Christian grandmother. Grandmother Lois. Who has more worshipers to-day than any being that ever lived on earth except Jesus Christ? Mary. For what purpose did Christ perform His first miracle open earth? To relieve the embarrassment of a womanly bousekeeoer at the falling abort of a beverage. Why did Christ break up the silence of the tomb, and tear off the shroud, and rip up the rocks? It was to stop the bereavement of tbe two Bethany sisters. For whose comfort was Christ most anxious in the hour of dying excruciation? For a woman, an old woman, a wrinkle faced woman, a woman who in other days had held Him in her arms, His first friend. His last friend, as it is very apt to be. His mothnr. All the pathos of the ages compressed into one utterance, “Behold thy mother.” Does the Bible antagonize woman? If the Bible is so antagonistic to woman, how do you account for the difference in woman’s condition in China and Central Africa, and her condition in England and America? There is no difference except that which the Bible makes. In lands where there is no Bible she is hitched like a beast of bur den to the plows, she carries the hod, she sub mits to indescribable indignities. She must be kept in a private apartment, and if she come forth she must be carefully hooded and religiously veiled as though it were a shame to be a woman. Do you not know that the very first thing the Bible does when it comes into a new country is to strike off the shackles of woman’s serfdom? O woman, where are your chains to-day ? Hold up both your arms and let us see yorr handcuffs. Oh, we see the handcuffs. They are bracelets of gold bestowed by husbandly or fatherly or brotherly or sisterly or lovely affection. Un* loosen the warm robe from your neck, O woman, and let us see the yoke of your bond age. Oh, I find the yoke a carcenetof silver, or a string of carnelians, or a cluster of pearls, that must gall you very much. How bad you must all have it. Since you put the Bible on your stand in the sitting room, has the Bible been to you, O woman, a curse or a blessing? Why is it that a woman when she is troubled will go to her worst enemy, the Bible? Why do you not go for comfort to some of the great infidel books. Spinoza's “Ethics," or Hume’s “Natural History of Religion,” or Paine’s “Age of Reason, ’ or any one of the 230 volumes of Voltaire? No, the silly deluded woman persists in hanging about our Bible verses, “Let not your heart be troubled,” “All things work together for good, ’ “Weeping may endure for a night," “I am the resurrection,” “Peace, be still.” Furthermore, rather than invite I resist this plague of infidelity because it has wrought no positive good for the world and is always a hindrance. I ask you to mention the name of tbe merciful and the education al institutions which infidelity founded and is supporting, and has supported all the way through—institutions pronounced against God and the Christian religion, and yet pro nounce! in behalf of suffering humanity. What are the names of them? Certainly not the United States Christian commi Jon, or the sanitary commission, for Christian George H. Stuart was the President of the one, and Christian Henry W. Bellows was tba President of the other. Where are the asylums and merciful in stitutions founded by infidelity and sup ported by infidelity, pronounced against God and the Bible, and yet doing work for the alleviation of suffering? Infidelity is so very load in its braggadocio it must have some to mention. Certainly, if you come to speak of educational institutions it is not Yale, it is not Harvard, it is not Princeton, it is not Middletown, it is not Cambridge or Oxford, it is not any institution from which a diploma would not be a disgrace. Do you point to the German universities as excep tions? I have to tell you that all the German universities to-day are under positive Christian influences, except the University of Heidelburg, where the ruffianly students cut and maul and mangle and murder each other as a matter of pride instead of infamy. Do you mention Girard College, Philadelphia, as an exception, that college established by the will of Mr. Girard which forbade re ligious instruction and the entrance of clergymen within its gatJs. My reply is that I lived for seven years near that college and I knew many of its professors to bo Christian instructors, and no better Christian influences jure to be found in any college than fitianity. it There stands iva done, ris* side, from Kevelatibn toward Genesis, and In ail their way they i will not find a single chapter or a single verse out of place. That will be tbe first time we can afford to do witnont the Bible. What will be theJJte of the book ot Gen esis, descriptive of this world was made, when the world is /Proved? What will be the nse of the pr^ J&cies when they are all fulfilled? What be the use of the evangelistic or Paulino description of Jesus Christ when we see Him face to face? ^hat w ill be the use of His photograph when we have met Him in glory? What will be the use of the book of Revelation, standing as you will with your foot on the glassy sea, and your band on tbe ringing harp, and your forehead chaploted with eternal coronation, amid the amethystine and twelve gated glories of heaven? The emerald dashing its green against the beryl, and the beryl dash ing its bine against the sapphire, and the sapphire throwing its lij;ht on the jacinth, and the jacinth dashing its fire against the chrysoprasns, and you and I standing in the clories of ten thousand Junseta, - TEMPEIANCE. Lrm.E TOMMY TTTTLKMOCSE. Little Tommy Tittlemouse Lives in a little house. Though in a big house once lived ha But the big house went for beer. And so he’s living here. Where few are all the comforts one can see. But the littie house will soon Find its way to the saloon. As the devil and the keeper gleeful gria» Then the keeper’ll turn about Aud kick poor Tommy out. And the poorhouse, then, will have to take him in. —-J. M. Scott, in Temperance Banner EITOLAND'S DRINK-BILL. In a letter to the London Times Dr. Dawson Burns has placed in array a few plain un garnished tacts which constitute a hideous blot upon English boasted progress and en lightenment. Last year, he states, the peo ple in the United Kingdom spent one hun dred and thirty-nine million sterling, or £3 13s. per head, on intoxicating liquors. This is an increase of seven million over the drink bill of lljSB. This vast sum equals one- twelfth of the estimated income of ail per sons in the United Kingdom; it is eleven times the capital of all the industrial and provident societies and—most sadly signifi cant of all—nearly eight times the expend! ture of all the Christian churches tor all purposes. DESTROYING THEIR STOltACHS. A New York physician, whose name is not given, says, through the New York Sun, that many men, who think they are too busy to eat lunch at mid-day, and therefore resort to alcoholic drinks as a substitute, are doing the worst possible for their stomachs; that “Alcoholic stimulants are the worst thing in the world for an empty stomach, finally causing catarrh of the stomach, interfering with the secretions of the liver, and destroy ing the ability to assimilate food.” When men come to him in that condition he takes away the whisky or other alcoholics at once, and prescribes hot milk r an<i vichy. Where cold milk or solid food would be re jected by the enfeebled stomach, the hot milk, with one-third vichy, will be retained, and many under this treatment have been reclaimed. TEMPERANCE TOWNS. The multiplication of temperance towns, made so by conditions of their charters or their deeds, is an encouraging factor in the temperance problem. Such towns are now scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, object lessons whose effectiveness is en hanced in most cases by financial success. An old friend in California writes enthusi astically of the John Brown Colony, Fresno County, another Its founders incorpora t on of liquor manufi gambling aqH or broil nate sites foA^ij ing for library and pH they can well: tojirain Ul ci,, Unio in cerises. FOR THE HOUSEWIFE. A SICK-ROOM BOON. Ttie spice poultice is a growing favorite in the sick-room. It is pleas ant to use and easily made. Mix to gether, dry, one heaping toaspoonful each of ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves and flour. Moisten with hot water until of proper consistency to spread. Double and heat a piece of old cotton, spread the plaster on it and cover with cheese clolh. When cold moisten with brandy or whiskey a nd reheat. — [New York Journal. STAR MAT. The star mats are pretty and not hard to knit. Take four knitting neeflles, cast three stitches on each of the three needles, then tie just as you would in beginning r, stocking. Knit two plain rounds, then widen every stitch all around, then knit one plain round, then widen every two stitches all around, then one plain round, then widen every three stitches all around, then a plain round. Continue in this way until you have thirteen stitches between. Knit one plain round each time after widening, then widen and narrow, and widen again, knit two plain rounds, widen and narrow, widen and narrow again, then widen, knit two plain rounds. Keep on in this way until the star is complete, adding one more widened stitch every two rounds, theu bind off. — [Prairie Farmer. MANAGEMENT OF A KITCHEN STOVE. There is nothing in the whole range of the kitchen in which many other wise sensible women show so much stupidity as in the management of a kitchen stove. They seem to think that making a fire is a game of chance. They seldom investigate dampers or look into the matter of drafts scientifi cally, else they might teach their ser vants to manage them, aud thus save themselves an endless amount of petty worry. The writer knew a bright woman who once sold an expensive range at a sacrifice, because “it smoked when the lire was kindled.” Trivial investigation of the stove showed that the principal damper was sealed up with soot aud had evidently never been used in the three years dur ing which the stove had been in use. If the first owner had inspected the stove, as the second did, when it be gan to smoke to see if the smoke had free escape to the smokepipe, she .have found this damper. The ■to the kitchen because escape left was BAKER & CONFECTIONER. AND DEALER IN BBY SOOBS, SHOES, NOTIONS AND GROCERIES, AT ROCK BOTTOM PRICES. TOBACCO AND CIGARS in Great Variety. Toys, Fireworks, etc., in Stock. Laurens Street and Park Avenue, Aiken, S. C. The Waverly House, C. T. ALFORD, Proprietor. In tlie Bend of liiiifij- Street, CHARLESTON, S. C. and Comfortable F RATES, $2.50 PER DAY. . H. O. T. S T. HARRY OATES & CO., 831 BROAD STREET, -A_UG-TXST-A-, GEORGIA. AGENTS FOR THE WORLD-RENOWNED Wilcox & White Organs. -ALSO THE- A. B. Chase, Behr Bros., Peek & Son and Lester ipi^isros- SHEET MUSIC ONLY IO CENTS PER COPY. Send, for* Catalog-vie. $3000 A Y E A R ! I unde*tnki? to hftrflj • teacb auy Galrly iutclKfrrnt p* rsou utu> e*n read aod write. at*d aftwr imNructioo, wiU work indu Low to earn Tfcree Tfc«*iaMd Year in their own JocNUttesgvhrrwerthey Bve.I will alao furntj the actuation or empCoyrucrvLa* which you oaniwrn rhaLamotaj No numefr for me tuifofl* Mwaceraforaa above. ~ ‘ " learned. I deatce but owe woafcer fi'O^n have taw^lx and provide namber, who are taaBng over a Jpara and 1*41 partkud&r* ERfSKL. Addra** «t one<L E. C\ AllERST, Box. 4290, A«affta*ta, Mattel?, c c.