Blogotional

In our continuing series looking at the great "world's" created by Jack Kirby, we return this date to The New Gods as published by DC Comics. Unlike Asgard, which focused exclusively on the good guys with the bad guys just popping in, The New Gods was conveniently, and interestingly divided between good and evil

The evil world Apokolips, carried with it the fact that all chidren of consequence were taken from the parents and raised in a orphanage by Granny Goodness. As ugly as she was mean, Granny, in that never ending way things go in evil places, served the ruler of Apokolips, Darkseid, by creating his people for him, but she also had delusions of one day taking the throne herself. Granny Goodness was a real piece of work.

As you can see in some of the frames here, she was not afraid to mix it up when needed, but she preferred to work through surrogates, as all the truly powerful do. Some of her "children" have overcome her evil training and joined the good guys, but she continues her efforts to conquer both the world of the New Gods and Earth - sometimes for herself and sometimes for Darkseid.

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In the pantheon of great religious art, this is a first for me. Bruce Reyes-Chow puts up a picture of a Lego recreation of the Martin Luther nailing the 95 Thesis and links to Lego blogs and other such religious imagery.

What a world we live in. Do you think centuries from now stuff like this will tour the world's museums? Is this to be taken seriously, or is this just silly fun?

My answer is both.

I looked a few days ago at the fact that being creative is reflecting God's image in us. It is an act of worship and it is good. The problem is, when we create, we feel the need for audience. We want others to appreciate our creation.

Often times we do not get such audience and we feel bitter and abandoned - hurt. Why?

Sometimes we grow belligerent in our attempts to create audience. We tell people there are good and bad ways to conduct worship, right and wrong songs. We argue endlessly about the value of liturgy, and we seem to do so on the basis of what the audience will appreciate, instead of the reason for the activity to begin with. Why?

Let me ask you this - Did God have an audience when He created the universe? Nope - He did it to please Himself. So, if our creative activity is to reflect God's creative activity why do we need an audience.

What's more, we have an audience, it is an audience of one, but it is the audience that matters most. It is He whose creative activity we seek to emulate. And like your parents when you were a child, He is pleased by your efforts far more than the results.

The bottom line is this - creation is the thing, it is a means of tapping into our "imageness." Audience is a sometimes and relatively unimportant by-product. We need to learn to be creative without the need for audience.

Reaching people for Jesus is important, but it is different than being creative - we are not creative for that end, we are creative simply to be more like our Lord.

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The following exchanges are taken from transcripts of 911 calls.

Caller: "I'd like to make a unanimous complaint, so don't use my name."

Caller: "I'm reporting a deer on the road. I almost hit it."
Call-taker: "Is the deer alive?"
Caller: "Oh, no, it's run over. Many, many cars. Again and again,
and - OH NO!!! NOT AGAIN!"

Caller: "Am I talking to a real person, or this a recording?"

Caller: "We might (cough) need the fire department here (cough)."

Caller: "Is it okay for a civilian to take a person to the hospital, or does the ambulance have to do it?"

Caller: (irate) "That's 'W' as in Williams and 'Y' as in why."

Caller (on realising the police are on the way): "Get the keg outta here, dude!"

Caller: "He's not breathing!"
Call-taker: "Can you get the phone close to him?
Caller: "WHY? You want to hear he's not breathing, too?"

Call-taker: "Does she have any weapons?"
Caller: "Well, she has real long finger nails."

Call-taker: "We'll need a description of him."
Caller: "He's a lawyer."

Caller: "No, she just didn't fall...I helped her!"

Complaint about a stolen mailbox:
Call-taker: "What is your address?"
Caller: "It's gone."

Caller: "I'm scared, I just got a Ouija board for my birthday, and now there's writing on my wall and I can't get it off...
...this thing is going back to K-Mart first thing in the morning!

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...or I HATE CHURCH POLITICS

MMI reports on a controversy inside the Missouri Baptist Convention concerning teaching regarding alcohol.

Pastor Kevin Larson of Karis Community Church in downtown Columbia just lost $6,000 in funding from the Missouri Baptist Convention because he won’t forbid his church’s members from drinking an occasional beer. At its December meeting, the executive board of the Missouri Baptist Convention voted 28-10, according to the Baptist Press, to cut funding for all Acts 29-affiliated churches in Missouri. Acts 29 is a church planting, or starting, network based in Seattle. The motion came from Denny Marr, minister of education at Calvary Baptist Church in Republic, in response to what Marr thought was an abuse of "Christian liberty" by some Acts 29-affiliated churches, one of which is Karis Community Church.

Now, bear in mind that just yesterday we looked at sex scandal inside the SBC. So we have a really interesting picture emerging here. The Baptists apparently are willing to tackle the evil of an occasional beer, but there is "little they can do" about sexual abuse committed by their clergy. And we wonder why the world wants to call us liars and hypocrites.

Maybe I should not talk, I am not Baptist, but it is the biggest Protestant denomination in the country and every time someone hears I am a Christian they assume I am like this bunch of legalistic, butt-covering yahoos. OK, the usual disclaimer. I know many wonderful Baptists, good people whose hearts, minds, and lives are in the right place.

A less usual disclaimer. My church has it's fair share of bad stuff too, but right now, my church is shrinking so fast it cannot make a headline if it tries. Like it or not the Baptists and Catholics are largely the public face of Christianity in this nation. The Catholics understand that and are working to be true to it....

The independent nature of Baptist congregations and therefore the lack of serious hierarchical polity seems to be a very central issue in all this. Accountability structures matter and they are the reasons it is going to take a direct command from the Holy Spirit to move me into an independent congregational church setting.

I always come back to the same place - it is time to get serious and start building disciples. let me make this as simple as possible. In church government settings like the Baptists it is up to the congregations to provide accountability to the staffs. As long as we approach church as a provide services to the masses business instead of a build up disciples of Christ effort, the staff is going to hold sway, and this kind of crap is going to prevail.

If we build up people as disciples, people that will truly exercise the accountability, then and only then will things get better. So to all those good-hearted, well-being Baptist friends I disclaimed a few paragraphs ago - GET BUSY!!!

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MMI looks at sex abuse in the SBC

The SBC Executive Committee is studying a motion referred from the convention last June regarding the feasibility of a database of clergy offenders, but leaders insist in public statements there is little the denomination can do beyond providing resources to the 44,000 autonomous churches that voluntarily align with the nation’s second-largest faith group behind Roman Catholics.

SBC President Frank Page told a Tennessee newspaper in May there are instances of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches, just like there are in all public institutions. “I do not believe we have a systemic problem,” the pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., told The Tennessean. Page speculated the SBC was being singled out as a possible target for lawsuits.

What I read here is the SBC playing defense against litigation instead of offense to root out the abusers and offense to aid the victims. Any denomination which claims there is "little" they can do about a problem like this and at the same time claims to be targeted for litigation based on that which they can do "little" about is trying to have thing both ways. The bottom line is that any institution the size of the SBC is going to have a statistically significant level of this stuff and to deny it is simply to put your head in the sand.

I admit that the SBC structure is such that they do not have the institutional systems to deal with something like this, but to effectively look the other way instead of move to solve the problem and help the victims is definitely NOT WJWD.

Sadly, the church is going to be "infiltrated" by sin in a very serious manner. It is inevitable and unavoidable. The measure of the church IS NOT the avoidance of scandal, but how it deals with scandal.

I am going to say that again because I think it is so important. The church, any church, will suffer scandal from time-to-time. We are a collection of sinners and we live in the already, not yet. Until Christ comes again it is going to happen. The measure of being faithful servants to Christ and His kingdom is not in "containing" the scandal, but in handling it forthrightly, openly, and compassionately. I want to propose some simply guidelines for a church to handle scandal.

1) If there is any credible evidence whatsoever of scandal, particularly sexual or financial, the ministry of the individuals involved must be immediately suspended. Remember, we believe in original sin, that implies a presumption of guilt not innocence. At this stage, efforts should be made to control the nature of the accusations from being widely known, but we cannot afford to leave a potential miscreant in a position like this, they had their presumption of innocence when they got the job.

2) Lawyers be damned. Forgive my french here, but a lawyer's goal is to avoid the appearance of guilt. Again, we believe in original sin, guilt is a forgone conclusion, it is only a question of "guilty of what.". Frankly, if the church suffers financially because we failed to have sufficient control of a miscreant then we deserve it.

3) The victim is not the enemy, even if the accusation is baseless and false. If someone claims such falsely then something has happened at the hands of the church where they have been grievously injured on some other level. Only in very, very few instances is this sort of thing charged purely as a deep-pockets scam. And again, as people that seek to bring God's peace and healing to the world, we need to minister, not ostracize.

The bottom line is this, as Christians we believe in confession, repentance, and forgiveness - grace. We do not believe in defending ourselves, we believe in giving and humility, even unto death.

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BHT links to a post comparing and contrasting protestant and Catholic views of the Chief End Of Man. Here's the meat:

The Catholic Catechism notes that "sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him" (ibid., 387). I find this idea that there can be no love when there is no freedom simple and persuasive. If this idea and the Catholic view of the chief end of man are right, then of course man has free will.

If God's glorification requires receiving love from His (predestinated) elect creatures, and if there can be no love without freedom, then the Shorter Catechism's First Q&A is at loggerheads with Calvinism's double-election teaching. In other words, if His glory requires love, and love requires freedom, then our living out this Great Predestinated Drama will fail to meet our chief end.

The vagaries of free will and Calvinism is difficult and not where I want to go. I am not sure that the self-negation is quite what is presented here.

However, having said that, I, like the author, I find the Catholic understanding very compelling. To me the real question is, "What am I to do about that?" Am I to reject my deeply held Calvinism whole-hog, convert to Catholicism and start putting statues of the saints around? Of course not. Do I have to reject the Catholic understanding I find so compelling? I don't think so.

Where are the rules written that say I have to hold everything associated with a specific theological or denominational label? I grow increasingly weary of the label wars in faith. Whether it is the theological battles between charismatics and cessassionists or the politico-religious battles surrounding the candidacy of Mitt Romney.

In my experience, no group or ideology has a monopoly on truth. Truth is a large thing, it involves ideas and lives and behavior. Proper theology in a reprobate is a lie because it has failed to change his behavior. We often forget this.

What are we doing to put the lie to the tenants of our label? And in holdng our label so strongly, what are we doing to lose the pieces of truth hiding behind other labels?

God indeed created us to be free people. Maybe we ought start using that to generate love both towards Him, but towards each other.

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Ralph Wood, writing at First Things reviews a book on Chesterton and Tolkien that sounds remarkable. The central thesis of the book is that though both men appeared stuck in antiquity, both addressed modernity with great relevance and insight.

That is a theme I have hammered on this blog several time. I fail to understand our culture, and especially our church culture's, demand for the "new." So many problems have been solved and yet we insist on trying to solve them again, and usually making a botch of it, since we disregard the millennia of work that has gone into the problem before us.

But this strikes at the heart of matters:

Our problem, Milbank [ed note: author of the book under review] makes clear, is not that we perceive too much but too little. Our perceptions (and thus our creations) are limited because our fallen and finite imaginations cannot grasp the surplus of light that pervades all created being—hence Tolkien’s and Chesterton’s literally fantastic attempts to hint and gesture at agencies so unknowable that they reveal God’s own inaccessibility. “Similitudes drawn from things farthest away from God,” Milbank quotes Dionysus the Pseudo-Areopagite as saying, “form within us a truer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or think of Him.” Thus do we encounter Treebeard, the huge dendroidal Ent who has a face that belongs (in Tolkien’s words) “to a large Man-like, almost Troll-like figure, at least fourteen [feet] high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck.” He also has seven toes on his gargantuan feet, and his “sweeping grey beard [is] bushy, almost twiggy at the roots, thin and mossy at the ends.” He seems alien in the extreme. Yet Treebeard not only rescues Merry and Pippin from the orcs, but also engages them with his penetrating eyes. Like trees in many folktales, he also speaks to them as well, albeit with the arboreal sluggishness of a slow-growing, slow-moving creature.

As readers we are able to experience Treebeard at two levels: On the one hand, he is patently an aesthetic invention, a fictional creature. Both Chesterton and Tolkien constantly draw attention to the created character of their work, reminding us that it belongs to secondary and not primarily reality: it is a constructed thing to be enjoyed as such. Yet having encountered this fantastic tree with human features, readers can no longer look upon real trees as mere objects meant only for our manipulation. On the contrary, we can now envision all trees as analogical actualities, as transcendent symbols that participate in the reality that they signify, as having likenesses to us despite their differences from us, and thus as linking natural things with both human and divine things—and perhaps also with things demonic. It is not a long leap, for instance, from Treebeard to the trees in the Garden of Eden

I fear that pull quote to an extent because threatens over-zealous environmentalism - too many people would read that and try to ban wood from their lives. Forgetting, or course that Treebeard tended the forest for proper use, but I don't really want to get into that just now.

But fear of over-reaction reflects the problem with modernity in general and that is the over-embrace. Modern mechanics and science and technology are not a problem in and of themselves, but they do tend to squeeze the imagination out of us, if we let them. We do tend to begin to view our God in the most mechanistic of ways. God is a being not a machine. He is a someone, not a set of principles or a force.

God's someone-ness is reflected in His cretivity, and our image of God is reflected in our cretivity.

I would like to encourage me readers to do three thingss:

1) Read some old books. Chesterton would be a good place to start, I am amazed how many people have not read him, but what about Augustine (Where did Calvin get it from?)

2) Read some fiction. Good fiction, creative fiction, not the tripe that is written rapidly to fill the market, but the good stuff, classics.

3) Make something. If you are like me you have no artistic talent, and anybody that tried to read my failed attempt at fiction knows that I lack non-fiction writing ability as well. But that does not mean I cannot make something. I have made machines, I just need to learn the same attitude in creation of a machine that the artist holds in creation of art. Maybe it is as simple as redecorate a room.

The idea here is to discover a bit of God by imitation, and to discover your proper place before God by discovering the place of your creation before you.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Thomas De Witt Talmage was born at Bound Brook, N. J., in 1832. For many years he preached to large and enthusiastic congregations at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. At one time six hundred newspapers regularly printed his sermons. He was a man of great vitality, optimistic by nature, and particularly popular with young people. His voice was rather high and unmusical, but his distinct enunciation and earnestness of manner gave a peculiar attraction to his pulpit oratory. His rhetoric has been criticized for floridness and sensationalism, but his word pictures held multitudes of people spellbound as in the presence of a master. He died in 1901.


It is say son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him – Gen, 37:33

Joseph’s brethren dipt their brother’s coat in goat’s blood, and then brought the dabbled garment to their father, cheating him with the idea that a ferocious animal had slain him, and thus hiding their infamous behavior. But there is no deception about that which we hold up to your observation today. A monster such as never ranged African thicket or Hindustan jungle hath tracked this land, and with bloody maw hath strewn the continent with the mangled carcasses of whole generations; and there are tens of thousands of fathers and mothers who could hold up the garment of their slain boy, truthfully exclaiming, “It is my son‘s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.” There has, in all ages and climes, been a tendency to the improper use of stimulants. Noah took to strong drink. By this vice, Alexander the Conqueror was conquered. The Romans at their feasts fell off their seats with intoxication. Four hundred millions of our race are opium-eaters. India, Turkey, and China have groaned with the desolation; and by it have been quenched such lights as Halley and Dc Quincey. One hundred millions are the victims of the betel-nut, which has specially blasted the East Indies. Three hundred millions chew hashish, and Persia, Bra’)l, and Africa suffer the de¬lirium. The Tartars employ murowa; the Mexicans, the agave; the people at Guarapo, an intoxicating product taken from sugar-cane; while a great multitude, that no man can number, are the votaries of alcohol. Te it they bow. Under it they are trampled. In its trenches they fall. On its ghastly holocaust they burn. Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and could they come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering putrefaction? What heart could endure the groan of agony? Drunkenness! Does it not jingle the burglar’s key? Does it not whet the assassin’s knife? Does it not cock the highwayman’s pistol? Does it not wave the incendiary’s torch? Has it not sent the physician reeling into the sick-room; and the minister with his tongue thick into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very top of his fame, fall a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be married to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at the very hour the bride was decking herself for the altar; and did he not die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, in a hospital? Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls with which to build a pyramid to his own honor. He got the skulls, and built the pyramid. But if the bones of all those who have fallen as a prey to dissipation could be piled up, it would make a vaster pyramid. Who will gird himself for the journey and try with me to scale this mountain of the dead - going up miles high on human carcasses to find still other peaks far above, mountain above mountain white with the bleached bones of drunkards?

The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum traffic. To many of our people, the best day of the week is the worst. Bakers must keep their shops closed on the Sabbath. It is dangerous to have loaves of bread going out on Sunday. The shoe store is closed: severe penalty will attack the man who sells boots on the Sabbath. But down with the window-shutters of the grog-shops. Our laws shall confer particular honor upon the rum-traffickers. All other trades must stand aside for these. Let our citizens who have disgraced themselves by trading in clothing and hosiery and hardware and lumber and coal take off their hats to the rum-seller, elected to particular honor. It is unsafe for any other class of men to be allowed license for Sunday work. But swing out your signs, and open your doors, 0 ye traffickers in the peace of families and in the souls of immortal men. Let the corks fly and the beer foam and the rum go tearing down the half-consumed throat of the inebriate. God does not see! Does He? Judgment will never come! Will it?

It may be that God is determined to let drunkenness triumph, and the husbands and sons of thousands of our best families be destroyed by this vice, in order that our people, amazed and indignant, may rise up and demand the extermination of this municipal crime. There is a way of driving down the hoops of a barrel so tight that they break. We have, in this country, at various times, tried to regulate this evil by a tax on whisky. You might as well try to regulate the Asiatic cholera or the smallpox by taxation. The men who distill liquors are, for the most part, unscrupulous; and the higher the tax, the more inducement to illicit distillation. Oh! the folly of trying to restrain an evil by government tariff! If every gallon of whisky made - if every flask of wine produced, should be taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be enough to pay for the tears it has wrung from the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the blood it has dashed on the Christian Church, nor for the catastrophe of the millions it has destroyed for ever.

I sketch two houses in one street. The first is bright as home can be. The father comes at nightfall, and the children run out to meet him. Bountiful evening meal! Gratulation and sympathy and laughter! Music in the parlor! Fine pictures on the wall! Costly books on the table! Well-clad household Plenty of everything to make home happy!

House the second! Piano sold yesterday by the sheriff! Wife’s furs at pawnbroker’s shop! Clock gone! Daughter’s jewelry sold to get flour! Carpets gone off the floor! Daughters in faded and patched dresses! Wife sewing for the stores! Little child with an ugly wound on her face, struck by an angry blow! Deep shadow of wretchedness falling in every room! Doorbell rings! Little children hide! Daughters turn pale! Wife holds her breath! Blundering step in the hail! Door opens! Fiend, brandishing his fist, cries, “Out! out! What are you doing here?” Did I call this house second? No; it is the same house. Rum transformed it. Rum embruted the man. Rum sold the shawl. Rum tore up the carpets. Rum shook his fist. Rum desolated the hearth. Rum changed that paradise into a hell.

I sketch two men that you know very well. The first graduated from one of our literary institutions. His father, mother, brothers and sisters were present to see him graduate. They heard the applauding thunders that greeted his speech. They saw the bouquets tossed to his feet. They saw the degree conferred and the diploma given. He never looked so well. Everybody said, “What a noble brow! What a fine eye! What graceful manners! What brilliant prospects!”

Man the second: Lies in the station-house. The doctor has just been sent for to bind up the gashes received in a fight. His hair is matted and makes him look like a wild beast. His lip is bloody and cut. Who is thin battered and bruised wretch that was picked up by the police and carried in drunk and foul and bleeding? Did I call him man the second? He is man the first! Rum transformed him. Rum destroyed his prospects. Rum disappointed parental expectation. Rum withered those garlands of commencement day. Rum cut his lip. Rum dashed out his manhood. Rum, accurst rum!

This foul thing gives one swing to its scythe, and our best merchants fall; their stores are sold, and they sink into dishonored graves. Again it swings its scythe, and some of our physicians fall into suffering that their wisest prescriptions cannot cure. Again it swings its scythe, and ministers of the gospel fail from the heights of Zion, with long resound¬ing crash of ruin and shame. Some of your own households have already been shaken. Perhaps you can hardly admit it; but where was your son last night? Where was he Friday night? Where was he Thursday night? Wednesday night? Tuesday night? Monday night? Nay, have not some of you in your own bodies felt the power of this habit? You think that you could stop? Are you sure you could? Go on a little further, and I am sure you cannot. I think, if some of you should try to break away, you would find a chain on the right wrist, and one on the left; one on the right foot, and another on the left. This serpent does not begin to hurt until it has wound ‘round and ‘round. Then it begins to tighten and strangle and crush until the bones crack and the blood trickles and the eyes start from their sockets, and the mangled wretch cries. “0 God! 0 God! help! help!” But it is too late; and not even the fires of wo can melt the chain when once it is fully fastened.

I have shown you the evil beast. The ques¬tion is, who will hunt him down, and how shall we shoot him? I answer, first, by getting our children right on this subject. Let them grow up with an utter aversion to strong drink. Take care bow you administer it even as medicine. If you must give it to them and you find that they have a natural love for it, as some have, put in a glass of it some horrid stuff, and make it utterly nauseous. Teach them, as faithfully as you do the truths of the Bible, that rum is a fiend. Take theta to the almshouse, and show them the wreck and ruin it works. Walk with them into the homes that have been scourged by it. If a drunkard hath fallen into a ditch, take them right up where they can see his face, bruised, savage, and swollen, and say, “Look, my son. Rum did that!” Looking out of your window at some one who, intoxicated to madness, goes through the street, brandishing his fist, blaspheming God, a howling, defying, shout¬ing, reeling, raving, and foaming maniac, say to your son, “Look; that man was once a child like you.” As you go by the grog-shop let them know that that is the place where men are slain and their wives made paupers and their children slaves. Hold out to your children warnings, all rewards, all counsels, lest in after-days they break your heart and curse your gray hairs. A man laughed at my father for his scrupulous temperance principles, and said: “I am more liberal than you. I always give my children the sugar in the glass after we have been taking a drink.” Three of his sons have died drunkards, and the fourth is imbecile through intemperate habits.

Again, we will grapple this evil by voting only for sober men. How many men are there who can rise above the feelings of partizan¬ship, and demand that our officials shall be sober men? I maintain that the question of sobriety is higher than the question of availability; and that, however eminent a man‘s services may be, if he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit for any office in the gift of a Christian people. Our laws will be no better than the men who make them. Spend a few days at Harrisburg or Albany or Washington and you will find out why, upon these subjects, it is impossible to get righteous enactments.

Again, we will war upon this evil by organized societies. The friends of the rum traffic have banded together; annually issue their circulars; raise fabulous sums of money to advance their interests; and by grips, passwords, signs, and strategems, set at defiance public morals. Let us confront them with organizations just as secret, and, if need be, with grips and passwords and signs, maintain our position. There is no need that our beneficent societies tell all their plans. I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the carrying on of this conflict. I wish to God we could lay under the wine-casks a train which, once ig¬nited, would shake the earth with the explosion of this monstrous iniquity!

Again, we will try the power of the pledge. There are thousands of men who have been saved by putting their names to such a document. I know it is laughed at; but there are some men who, having once promised a thing, do it. “Some have broken the pledge.” Yes; they were liars. But all men are not liars. I do not say that it is the duty of all persons to make such signature; but I do say that it would be the salvation of many of you. The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can never be estimated. At this hand four millions of people took the pledge, and multitudes in Ireland, England, Scotland, and America, have kept it till this day. The pledge signed has been to thousands the proclamation of emancipation.

Again, we expect great things from asylums for inebriates. They have already done a glorious work. I think that we are coming at last to treat inebriation as it ought to be treated, namely, as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure, but nevertheless a disease. Once fastened upon a man, sermons will not cure him, temperance lectures will not eradicate it; religious tracts will not remove it; the Gospel of Christ will not arrest it. Once under the power of this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on; and, if the foaming glass were on the other side of perdition, he would wade through the fires of hell to get it. A young man in prison had such a strong thirst for intoxicating liquors that he had cut off his hand at the wrist, called for a bowl of brandy in order to stop the bleeding, thrust his wrist into the bowl, and then drank the contents. Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between a man and his cups. Clear the track for him. Away with the children! he would tread their life out. Away with the wife! he would dash her to death. Away with the cross! he would run it down. Away with the Bible! he would tear it up for the winds. Away with heaven! he considers it worthless as a straw. “Give me the drink! Give it to me! Tho the hands of blood pass up the bowl, and the soul trembles over the pit - the drink! Give it to me! Tho it be pale with tears; tho the froth of everlasting anguish float on the foam - give it to me! I drink to my wife’s wo to my children’s rags; to my eternal banishment from God and hope and heaven! Give it to me! the drink!”

Again, we will contend against these evils by trying to persuade the respectable classes of society to the banishment of alcoholic beverages. You who move in elegant and refined associations; you who drink the best liquors; you who never drink until you lose your bal¬ance, let us look at each other in the face on this subject. You have, under God, in your power the redemption of this land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars and wine-closets of the beverage, and then come out and give us your band, your vote, your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and I will promise three things: first, that you will find unspeakable happiness in having done your duty; secondly, you will probably save somebody - perhaps your own child; thirdly, you will not, in your last hour, have a regret that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be. As long as you make drinking respectable, drinking cus¬toms will prevail, and the plowshare of death, drawn by terrible disasters, will go on turning up this whole continent, from end to end, with the long, deep, awful furrow of drunk¬ards’ graves.

This rum fiend would like to go and bang up a skeleton in your beautiful house, so that, when you opened the front door to go in, you would see it in the hail; and when you sat at your table you would see it -hanging from the wall; and, when you opened your bedroom you would find it stretched upon your pillow; and, waking at night, you would feel its cold hand passing over your face and pinching at your heart. There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful curse. it throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it that silenced Sheridan, the English orator, and shattered the golden scepter with which he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless babble? What was it that swamped the noble spirit of one of the heroes of the last war, until, in a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck of a Western steamer, and was drowned. There was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He was one of the most classic orators of the century. People wondered why a man of so pure a heart and so excellent a life should have such a sad countenance always. They knew not that his wife was a sot.

I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to quit the path of death! Oh! what a change it would make in your home! Do you see how everything there is being desolated? Would you not like to bring back joy to your wife‘s heart, and have your children come out to meet you with as much confidence as once they showed? Would you not like to rekindle the home-lights that long ago were extinguished? It is not too late to change. It may not entirely obliterate from your soul the memory of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor smooth out from your anxious brow the wrinkles which trouble has plowed. It may not call back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done; for perhaps in those awful moments you struck her! It may not take from your memory the bitter thoughts connected with some little grave. But it is not too late to save yourself, and secure for God and your family the remainder of your fast-going life.

But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. I may address one who may not have quite made up his mind. Let your better nature speak out. You take one side or other in war against drunkenness. Have you the courage to put your foot down right, and say to your companions and friends, “I will never drink intoxicating liquor in all my life; nor will I countenance the habit in others”? Have nothing to do with strong drink. It has turned the earth into a place of skulls, and has stood opening the gate to a lost world to let in its victims; until now the door swings no more upon its hinges, but, day and night, stands wide open to let in the agonized procession of doomed men.

Do I address one whose regular work in life is to administer to this appetite? For God’s sake get out of that business! If a wo be pronounced upon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how many woes must be hanging over the man who does this every day and every hour of the day!

Do not think that because human government may license you that therefore God licenses you. I am surprized to hear men say that they respect the “original package” decision by which the Supreme Court of the United States allows rum to be taken into States like Kansas, which decided against the sale of intoxicants. I have no respect for a wrong decision, I care not who makes it; the three judges of the Supreme Court who gave minority report against that decision were right, and the chief justice was wrong. The right of a State to defend itself against the rum traffic will yet be demonstrated, the Supreme Court notwithstanding. Higher than the judicial bench at Washington is the throne of the Lord God Almighty. No enactment, national, State, or municipal, can give you the right to carry on a business whose effect is destruction.

God knows better than you do yourself the number of drinks you have poured down. You keep a list; but a more accurate list has been kept than yours. You may call it Burgundy, Bourbon, cognac, Heidsieck, sour mash, or beer. God calls it “strong drink.” Whether you sell it in low oyster-cellars or behind the polished counter of a first-class hotel, the divine curse is upon you. I tell you plainly that you will meet your customers one day when there will be no counter between you. When your work is done on earth, and you enter the reward of your business, all the souls of the men whom you have destroyed will crowd around you, and pour their bitterness into your cup. They will show you their wounds and say, “You made them”; and point to their unquenchable thirst and say, “You kindled it”; and rattle their chain and say, “You forged it.” Then their united groans will smite your ear; and with the hands out of which you once picked the sixpences and the dimes they will push you off the verge of great precipices; while rolling up from beneath, and breaking away among the crags of death, will thunder, “Wo to him that giveth his neighbor drink!”

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