The consequences of sin in Christian preaching highlight the inevitable destruction and alienation that follow disobedience to God’s law. Sin leads to ruin not only spiritually but also in practical life, as selfishness, greed, and wrong choices bring harm and loss (Galatians 6:7-8; Romans 6:23). Illustrations often use images of ruin, reaping a whirlwind, and the collapse of prosperity to convey these truths.
Most crimes and social evils stem from excessive drinking, says Lord Chief Justice Hale.
Lord Chief Justice Hale once remarked, "The places of judication, which I have long held in this kingdom, have given me an opportunity to observe the original cause of most of the enormities that have been committed for the space of nearly twenty years; and by a due observation, I have found that, if the murders and manslaughters, the burglaries and robberies, the riots and tumults, the adulteries, and other great enormities that have happened in that time, were divided into five parts, four of them have been the issues and product of excessive drinking, or of tavern and ale-house meetings." The proportion is little less in our own country at the present time.
# 233. Domestic and Social Wretchedness.
A drunken quarrel leads to a deadly duel, causing a young man's tragic death.
A company of young men in New Orleans, once assembled around the wine table, for the purpose of enjoying the "feast of reason and the flow of soul." One of the party, who was a mere novice in drinking, while flushed with wine, in an unguarded moment made use of expressions at which one of this social party of friends took exceptions, an altercation ensued, and the offended party gave a peremptory challenge to the young man above alluded to. According to a custom handed down to us from the Goths, Huns, Vandals and Teutones, called the code of honor, he was induced to accept. In the morning, when reason had resumed her seat, he found himself in a dreadful situation—duty would have prompted him not to have gone to what is miscalled the "field of honor," but a morbid state of public opinion prompted him to meet his challenger, who was a practised duelist: they met, and this young man fell a victim to a ruthless custom at the first fire. He was borne home mortally wounded to his widowed mother—for he was her only son—and died the following day.
Hardened men were struck mute with grief, and shed tears at his untimely fate; and if men so unused to feel could thus be moved, what must have been the anguish of a mother, when she saw her son borne home in the agonies of death, and who had left her in all the buoyancy of youth, to join in a party of professed friends!!
He was the only prop and stay of her declining years. All her hopes and affections were centred in him, and as she gazed upon his manly form during a brief struggle with the "King of Terrors," it seemed as if her heart would break.
The lonely widow followed to the silent tomb the victim of a barbarous custom, who met his death by going to partake of a social glass at a WINE PARTY.
A once admired woman falls into ruin and death through indulgence in alcohol and opium.
Mrs. S— was once the most admired of all the ladies in her village. She could sing the sweetest, play the prettiest, talk the most enchantingly, dress the most fashionably of all who moved in the gay circles. Her husband was a man of industry, who doted upon her, was anxious at the least depression of spirits, and allowed her every indulgence. When the temperance reform commenced, he was anxious to sign the pledge; but she said it was "well enough for the vulgar, but for people in genteel life it would never do; they could neither go into parties, nor give parties. Besides," said she, "how can I ever sing or dance without one or two glasses of wine to give me a spring?" Time rolled on, when the inquiry began to be made, What is the matter with the beautiful Mrs. S—? On the sidewalk, she was seen to reel to and fro, and in her parties she was now as silly as she was once enchanting. At church, especially in the afternoon of a Sunday, no sermon could keep up her eyelids.
Her poor husband saw the change. He devised every method to keep liquor from her, but all in vain. He soon died of vexation and a broken heart.
She now gave herself up to brandy and opium; and with a handsome property, no resort was too low, no indulgence too disgusting. For the last two years of her life, few saw her, except as she was stealing away, in the twilight of evening, with a cloak on her head, to the very lowest grog-shops, to fill her bottle. One day her neighbors heard that she was dying. Three respectable women came in to see her, and found her senseless and stupid, just surrendering her lost soul into the hands of her
Maker. How awful the scene! If there are any young females who read this, let them be admonished to beware of the exhilarating glass—beware of that pronounced most innocent, "sparkling champagne."
Intemperance leads to tragic consequences, including a child's suicide and a father's relapse.
A writer in the Vermont Chronicle relates the following as a fact that he learned from good authority: "I wish I was dead," said a little boy one day to his mother. "Why?" asked his kind mother. "Why, the boys all pester me so about father, and I don't want to go again, in the night, to the store after him." His mother talked to him, but thought he did not feel in earnest about it. But one day, when she had returned from a visit, she inquired for the children, and found all but this boy.
She looked, she called, but no answer.
She went to the barn as it was just growing dark. She opened the door, and there, in one corner, was her little sensitive boy hanging by the neck. She burst into tears. "Oh my son, my son, is it you?"
She felt his cold hands, and he was dead. And at the funeral, his father promised to drink no more rum: "I have for ever done." A long time he kept his promise. One day, however, Deacon P. was in the store; and
Deacon P. was a good man; he drank but little. He asked for some brandy.
And while he drank it, he saw that same man who had been a drunkard looking at him; and he saw too that he was very uneasy; he walked about;
he sat down. Again he would go to the door as if going away. He was in silent thought. At length he went to the counter and asked for a little brandy:
"I may drink a little as well as Deacon
P." He did drink, and became a confirmed drunkard again.
# 234. Fatal Accidents, Untimely and Awful
Deaths.
A habitual drinker suffers a mysterious, fatal burning, illustrating intemperance's deadly effects.
Dr. Peter Schofield, of Upper
Canada, gives the following case; a terrible monition to all drunkards. A young man of about 25 years of age, had been an habitual drinker for many years. I saw him about nine o'clock in the evening on which it happened.
He was then, as usual, not drunk but full of liquor. About eleven the same evening I was called to see him. I found him literally roasted from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He was found in a blacksmith's shop just across the way from where he had been. The owner all of a sudden discovered an extensive light in his shop, as though the whole building was in one general flame. He ran with the greatest precipitancy, and on flinging open the door, found a man standing erect in the midst of a widely-extended, silver-colored blaze, bearing, as he described it, exactly the appearance of the wick of a burning candle, in the midst of its own flame. He seized him by the shoulder and jerked him to the door, upon which the flame was instantly extinguished.
There was no fire in the shop, neither was there any possibility of fire having been communicated to him from any external source. It was purely a case of spontaneous ignition. A general sloughing came on; and his flesh was consumed or removed in the dressing leaving the bones and a few of the larger blood-vessels standing. The blood, nevertheless, rallied around the heart and maintained the vital spark to the thirteenth day, when he died; not only the most loathsome, ill-featured and dreadful picture that was ever presented to human view, but his shrieks, his cries and lamentations were enough to rena a heart of adamant. He complained of no pain of body; his flesh was gone.
He said he was suffering the torments of hell; that he was just upon its threstoold, and should soon enter its dismal caverns; and in this frame of mind he gave up the ghost.
In all such cases, Prof. Silliman remarks, the entire body becoming saturated with alcohol, absorbed into all its issues, becomes highly inflammable, as indicated by the vapor which reeks from the breath and lungs of a drunkard; this vapor, doubtless highly alconolic, may take fire, and then the body slowly consume.
A shipwreck caused by a drunken crew shows intemperance's deadly consequences.
This ship, carrying 36 men, sailed from
Aberdeen, in Scotland, on a fine morning in May, with the fairest prospect of good weather and a prosperous voyage.
About 11 o'clock the wind arose from the east, and swept over the sea with overwhelming violence. In about an hour she was seen standing in, but under such a press of sail as, considering the gale, astonished all on shore. But on she came, now bounding on the top of the sea, and then almost ingulled in the foaming cavern. The harbor of Aberdeen is exposed to the east, and formed by a pier on one side, and a breakwater on the other, and so narrow at the entrance as not to admit two large ships abreast. All saw that something was wrong on board. One attempt was made to shorten sail, but the ship was then within a cable's length of the shore, and urged on with an impetuosity which no human power could withstand. The wives and families of the men who were thus hastening to death had assembled near the pier; but all stood in silent horror, broke in a moment by the cry, "she's lost!" as the vessel, lashed on by the tempest, passed to the outer side of the breakwater, and struck with awful violence between two black rugged rocks.
The cries of the victims were most horrible. The dreadful crisis had come, and they were lost indeed. A few brave men on shore endeavored to man the life boat, and take it round the breakwater, but it was unavailing. One heavy sea rolling over the wreck for a moment concealed her, and when the people looked again she was gone! Her crew and timbers were hurled against the rocks, and with the exception of one man, who was washed up and lodged on a projecting edge, none escaped of the 36 who had that morning left the shore in health and spirits. From the man who was saved, the melancholy truth was learnt that the crew were all intoxicated, and could not manage the vessel.
Intoxication of a ship's crew leads to disaster and loss of life.
The Rev. Mr. Scoresby, preacher to seamen in Liverpool, was for many years the master of a whale ship in the northern seas. He relates the following fact, of which he was an eye-witness. It is given in his own words.
"A collier brig was stranded on the Yorkshire coast, and I had occasion to assist in the distressing service of rescuing a part of the crew by drawing them up a vertical cliff, two or three hundred feet in altitude, by means of a very small rope, the only material at hand. The first two men who caught hold of the rope were hauled safely up to the top; but the next, after being drawn to a considerable height, slipped his hold and fell; and with the fourth and last who ventured upon this only chance of life, the rope gave way, and he also was plunged into the foaming breakers beneath. Immediately afterwards the vessel broke up, and the remnant of the ill-fated crew perished before our eyes. What now was the cause of this heart-rending event? Was it stress of weather, or a contrary wind, or unavoidable accident? No such thing. It was the entire want of moral conduct in the crew. Every sailor, to a man, was in a state of intoxication! The helm was intrusted to a boy ignorant of the coast. He ran the vessel upon the rock at Whitby, and one-half of the miserable dissipated crew awoke to consciousness in eternity.
# 235. The Intemperate Reformed.
Drunkenness among leaders caused critical defeats in the American Revolution.
Benedict Arnold, the traitor who attempted to betray his country, was a rum-seller and a drunkard. Three of the most important defeats of the American army, during the Revolution, were sustained by men who died drunkards. Had a sober crew been on board the Chesapeake, the brave Lawrence would never have had to say to his men, "Don't give up the ship."
Delirium tremens from drunkenness causes terrifying hallucinations and danger.
The delirium tremens is one of the most awful effects of intemperance. Says Mr. Bishop, of New Haven, "I had been for three weeks beastly drunk. One of my first recollections is that I was forced into my own house. I remonstrated, and was told that I had endeavored to kill a neighbor. As soon as I found an opportunity, I seized a gun and rushed out with the intention of shooting my friend. I was immediately disarmed and forced back into the house. My mind was then seized with a frenzy. I stood in the centre of the room. I thought I heard my old companions without whispering together about appointing a committee to call on me. I refused to see them. It seemed to me they were coming to murder me, and I cried out in the greatest terror. I was then secured and placed in bed. The physician stood at the head of the bed and several of his students were with him. He told me I must be still. They were going to perform an operation. I did not like the appearance of things. The students hung up wires all about the room. I saw them talking with my wife and telling her she had better give her consent. They prepared a machine to flay me alive, and began to cut my flesh with saws, pull off my skin in strings and hang them upon the wires. Then it seemed to me a cage full of wild beasts were let loose upon me. Now a tiger was ready to pounce upon me. At one moment I thought my breast was full of animals. I asked a young man to drag them out, which he did; and every time he drew one out, a horrid sensation of faintness came over me. At length I discovered that all these horrid sensations of sawing and flaying, &c., were occasioned by efforts to wake me up.
I am sometimes asked whether the illusions of the delirium tremens are not always distressing. They are not. At one time I had about five hours of perfect happiness. The asparagus bush which was used to brush off the flies, seemed to me exceedingly beautiful. It was full of the birds of Paradise, and my ears were enraptured with the most delightful music.
But in general the illusion is of the most horrid character. At one time I thought my companions were assaulting me with hooks, which they endeavored to strike into my flesh. I stood on the defence in the centre of the room for seven hours, fighting with all my might until the sweat from my body stood in puddles on the floor. On another occasion I thought my watchers were endeavoring to murder me. I sprang from my bed and ran out, my pulse 170 a minute, and I was brought to death's door. For 18 days I endured the utmost horror of mind. Three times my case was given over as hopeless."
237. J
A youth's fall into sin and despair led to suicide despite Christian upbringing.
The Rev. John Owen, the eloquent advocate of the Bible Society, after advertising, in a sermon to the young, to the peaceful death of a little girl, mentions the awful end of a youth who had been seduced from the paths of virtue by wicked associates.
Scarcely, says he, had the turf been spread over the mortal remains of this young disciple, when the ground was opened to receive another of our youth, who, awful to relate, had raised his arm, and that with too fatal success, against the precious, the invaluable deposit of his own life. This deluded youth had received the benefit of a Christian education in one of our schools of gratuitous instruction; and, like the happy subject who preceded him into eternity, had been carefully lectured in the house of God on matters which concerned his salvation. But a removal from school to employment was to him, as it unhappily is to too many of our youth, the signal for renouncing his attendance upon the ordinances of religion. The consequence was such as might naturally be apprehended. He fell into the snare of evil company, and became licentious, profligate, and abandoned. Diseased, disgraced, despondent, without any cordial from religious hope, any support in Christian resignation, he yielded to the temptation of the destroyer, and completed the measure of his sin, his misery, and his dishonor, by an act of deliberate suicide.
### 247. LOVE, E
A miser's avarice led to his death in want despite great wealth.
In December, 1790, died at Paris, literally of want, Mr. Ostervald, a well-known banker. This man felt the violence of the disease of avarice (for surely it is rather a disease than a passion of the mind) so strongly that, within a few days of his death, no importunities could induce him to buy a few pounds of meat, for the purpose of making a little soup for him. "'Tis true,' said he, 'I should not dislike the soup, but I have no appetite for the meat; what, then, is to become of that?' At the time that he refused this nourishment, for fear of being obliged to give away two or three pounds of meat, there was tied round his neck a silken bag which contained 800 assignats of 1000 livres each. At his outset in life he drank a pint of beer, which served him for supper, every night at a house much frequented, from which he carried home all the bottle corks he could come at: of these, in the course of eight years, he had collected as many as sold for 12 louis d'ors; a sum that laid the foundation of his fortune, the superstructure of which was rapidly raised by his uncommon success in stock-jobbing. He died possessed of 125,000l. sterling.
A miser's greed made him imitate a dog to guard his buried wealth cheaply.
A Russian merchant, who was so immensely rich that on one occasion he lent the Empress Catharine the Second a million of rubles, used to live in a small, obscure room at St. Petersburg, with scarcely any fire, furniture, or attendants, though his house was larger than many palaces. He buried his money in casks in the cellar, and was so great a miser that he barely allowed himself the common necessaries of life. He placed his principal security in a large dog of singular fierceness, which used to protect the premises by barking nearly the whole of the night. At length the dog died; when the master, either impelled by his avarice from buying another dog, or fearing that he might not meet with one that he could so well depend on, adopted the singular method of performing the canine service himself, by going his rounds every evening, and barking as well and as loud as he could, in imitation of his faithful sentinel.
Greed leads a man to hide wealth and die alone, showing sin's destructive consequences.
In the year 1762, an extraordinary instance of avarice and peculation occurred in France. M. Foscue, one of the farmers-general of the province of Languedoc, had amassed an immense fortune by grinding the faces of the poor, and by every means, however base and cruel, that could increase his ill-gotten store. This man was ordered by the government to advance a considerable sum of money, but excused himself from complying with the order on the plea of poverty. Fearing, however, that some of the inhabitants of the province, among whom he was very unpopular, would give information to the contrary, and his house be in consequence searched, he determined to hide his money in a way which might elude examination. He dug in his wine-cellar a cave, large and deep, into which he descended by a ladder; at the entrance of which was a spring lock, which, on shutting the door, would fasten of itself. Soon after this M. Foscue disappeared. Diligent search was made for him; the ponds were dragged; and every imaginable method taken to find him, but in vain. A few months after the house was sold; and the workmen beginning to repair it, they discovered a door in the cellar, with a key in the lock. The owner ordered it to be opened, and on going down, they discovered M. F. lying dead on the ground, with a candlestick near him; and on a farther search, they found the vast wealth he had amassed. It was supposed, that when he went into his cave, the door, by some accident, shut after him; and thus, being out of the call of any person, he perished for want of food, and had even gnawed the flesh off both his arms for subsistence.
Such was the wretched end of this oppressive miser, who died in the midst of the immense treasure he had collected, which he neither enjoyed himself, nor would bestow on others. How worthless are the riches of the world if improperly used! What is their value without the favor of God accompanying them?
NEED OF MISSIONS.
268. Ignorance of the Heathen.
Revenge leads to tragic consequences and ongoing torment beyond death.
A quarrel having arisen between two brothers and a man named Gowrie, the emissaries of Gowrie entered the house of the brothers, in their absence, and carried off forty rupees. On their return, they were informed of the theft by their mother. They immediately led her out to an adjacent rivulet, and one of them severed his mother's head from her body, with the professed view, as entertained by both parent and sons, that the mother's spirit, excited by the beating of a drum during forty days, might for ever haunt, torment, and pursue to death Gowrie and the others concerned with him. The last words pronounced by the mother were, that she would blast Gowrie and those connected with him. Nor is this a solitary case of desperate revenge.
# 274. Cannibalism.
A minor injury leads to death, illustrating how past sins can cause unforeseen consequences.
A gentleman who was very ill, sending for Dr. Lake, of England, told him that he found he must die, and gave him the following account of the cause of his death. He had, about a fortnight before, been riding over Hounslow-heath, where several boys were playing at cricket. One of them, striking the ball, hit him just on the toe with it, looked him in the face, and ran away. His toe pained him extremely. As soon as he came to Brentford, he sent for a surgeon, who was for cutting it off. But unwilling to suffer that, he went on to London. When he arrived there, he immediately called another surgeon to examine it, who told him his foot must be cut off. But neither would he hear of this; and so, before the next day, the mortification seized his leg, and in a day or two more struck up into his body. Dr. Lake asked him, whether he knew the boy that struck the ball? He answered, "About ten years ago, I was riding over Hounslow-heath, where an old man ran by my horse's side, begged me to relieve him, and said he was almost famished. I bade him be gone. He kept up with me still; upon which I threatened to beat him. Finding that he took no notice of this, I drew my sword, and with one blow killed him. A boy about four years old, who was with him, screamed out, 'His father was killed!' His face I perfectly remember. That boy it was who struck the ball against me, which is the cause of my death."
Sin leads to desperate crimes and guilty conscience that cannot be silenced.
Jarvis Mutcham was pay-sergeant in a regiment, where he was so highly esteemed as a steady and accurate man, that he was permitted opportunity to embezzle a considerable part of the money lodged in his hands for the pay of soldiers, bounty of recruits, then a large sum, and other charges, which fell within his duty. He was summoned to join his regiment from a town where he had been on the recruiting service, and this, perhaps, under some shade of suspicion. Mutcham perceived discovery was at hand, and would have deserted, had it not been for the presence of a little drummer lad, who was the only one of his party appointed to attend him. In the desperation of his crime, he resolved to murder the poor boy, and avail himself of some balance of money to make his escape. He meditated this wickedness the more readily, that the drummer, he thought, had been put as a spy on him.
He perpetrated his crime, and, changing his dress after the deed was done, made a long walk across the country to an inn on the Portsmouth road, where he halted, and went to bed, desiring to be called when the first Portsmouth coach came. The waiter summoned him accordingly; but long after remembered, that when he shook the guest by the shoulder, his first words as he awoke were, "I did not kill him." Mutcham went to the seaport by the coach, and instantly entered as an able-bodied landsman or marine, I know not which.
His sobriety and attention to duty gained him the same good opinion of the officers, in his new service, which he had enjoyed in the army. He was afloat for several years, and behaved remarkably well in several actions. At length, the vessel came into Plymouth, was paid off, and some of the crew, among whom was Jarvis Mutcham, were dismissed as too old for service. He and another seaman resolved to walk to town, and took the route by Salisbury.
It was when within two or three miles of that celebrated city, that they were overtaken by a tempest, so sudden, and accompanied with such vivid lightning, and thunder so fearfully loud, that the obdurate conscience of the old sinner began to be awakened. He expressed more terror than seemed natural for one who was familiar with the war of clements, and began to look and talk so wildly, that his companion became aware that something more than usual was the matter. At length, Mutcham complained to his companion that the stones rose from the road and flew after him. He desired the man to walk on the other side of the road of the highway, to see if they would follow him when he was alone. The sailor complied, and Jarvis Mutcham complained that the stones still flew after him, and did not pursue the other. "But what is worse," he added, coming up to his companion, and whispering, with a tone of mystery and fear, "who is that little drummer boy, and what business has he to follow us so closely?" "I can see no one," answered the seaman. "What! not see that little boy with the bloody pantaloons!" exclaimed the secret murderer, so much to the terror of his comrade, that he conjured him, if he had any thing on his mind to make a clear conscience, as far as confession could do it. The criminal fetched a deep groan, and declared he was unable longer to endure the life he had led for years. He then confessed the murder of the drummer; and added, that as a considerable reward had been offered, he wished his companion to deliver him up to the magistrates of Salisbury, as he would desire a shipmate to profit by his fate, which he was now convinced was inevitable. Having overcome his friend's objections to this mode of proceeding, Jarvis Mutcham was surrendered to justice accordingly, and made a full confession of his guilt. But before the trial the love of life returned. The prisoner denied his confession, and pleaded not guilty. By this time full evidence had been procured from other quarters. Witnesses appeared from his former regiment to prove his identity with the murderer and deserter, and the waiter remembered the ominous words which he had spoken, when he awoke him to join the Portsmouth coach. Jarvis Mutcham was found guilty, and executed. When his last chance of life was over, he returned to his confession, and with his dying breath averred, and
289. M
Sinful actions can bring tragic consequences even upon one's own family.
A seafaring man called at a village on the coast of Normandy, and asked for a supper and a bed; the landlord and lady were elderly people, and apparently poor. He entered into a conversation with them, invited them to partake of his cheer, asked many questions about them and their family, and particularly of a son who had gone to sea when a boy, and whom they had long given over as dead. The landlady showed him to his room, and when she quitted him, he put a purse of gold into her hand, and desired her to take care of it till morning, pressing her affectionately by the hand. She returned to her husband, and showed the accursed gold; for its sake they determined to murder the traveler in his sleep, which they accomplished, and buried the body.
Early in the morning came two or three relations, and asked, in a joyful tone, for the traveler who arrived the night before. The old people seemed greatly confused, but said he had risen early and gone away. "It is your own son," said they, "who has lately returned to France, to bless your old age, and he resolved to lodge with you, one night, unknown, and then judge of your conduct to wayfaring mariners"—
Language is incapable of describing the horror of the murderers, when they learned that they had dyed their hands in the blood of their long lost child. They confessed their crime, the body was found, and the murderers expiated their offence with their lives.
# MUSIC.
notes dance and leap, as it were, from my pen: and since God has given me a cheerful heart, it will be pardoned me that I serve him with a cheerful spirit."
A dying woman regrets a life focused on vanity instead of preparing for eternity.
BED.—A young lady, about twenty years of age, had been born to a rich inheritance, and was the only child of parents who were exceedingly fond of her. Nothing was spared to complete her education, as a lady of fashion. As she grew up she answered all her mother's hopes in making a display in the fashionable world. But the hour of sickness came—it was a dreadful hour, for it was the termination of all her hopes. The minister was called in. He talked of death, judgment, and eternity. She had never heard such language addressed to her, and she trembled. In her dying hour, she called for some of her fine clothes. When they were brought, she looked up to her mother, and said, "These have ruined me. You never told me I must die. You taught me that my errand into this world was to be gay and dressy, and to enjoy the vanities of life. What could you mean? You knew I must die and go to judgment. You never told me to read the Bible, or to go to church, unless to make a display of some new finery. Mother, you have ruined me. Take them away, and keep them as a remembrance of your sin, and my sad end." She died in a few moments after.
# 338. Profanity Sinful.
Profanity leads to judgment, warning of the eternal consequences of sinful speech.
A minister traveling in a stage coach, had the mortification of being shut up for the night with a naval officer, who was much addicted to swearing. At length the conversation turned on the topic of the day, the Boulogne flotilla; when the officer observed, "If one of our ships meet with them, 'she will send them all to the devil.'" "There is a great deal of propriety, sir," said the minister, "in your observation; for as it is probable there are many profane swearers on board the French ships, should these men die in their sins, they will certainly go to the devil."
Neglecting the Sabbath often leads to a downward path of sin and ruin.
A gentleman in England, who was in the habit, for more than twenty years, of daily visiting convicts, states that, almost universally, when brought to a sense of their condition, they lamented their neglect of the Sabbath, and pointed to their violation of it as the principal cause of their ruin. That prepared them for, and led them on, step by step, to the commission of other crimes, and finally to the commission of that which brought them to the prison, and often to the gallows. He has letters almost innumerable, he says, from others, proving the same thing, and that they considered the violation of the Sabbath the great cause of their ruin. He has attended three hundred and fifty at the place of execution, when they were put to death for their crimes. And nine out of ten who were brought to a sense of their condition attributed the greater part of their departure from God to their neglect of the Sabbath.
Prisoners commonly attribute their crimes to Sabbath violation as a root cause.
A gentleman, who was conversant with prisoners for more than thirty years, stated, that he found in all his experience, both with regard to those who had been capitally convicted and those who had not, that they referred to the violation of the Sabbath as the chief cause of their crimes; and that this has been confirmed by all the opportunities he has had of examining prisoners. Not that this has been the only cause of crime; but, like the use of intoxicating liquors, it has greatly increased public and private immorality, and been the means, in a multitude of cases, of premature death.
Most criminals were Sabbath-breakers, linking Sabbath neglect to moral downfall.
A gentleman, who has had charge of more than one hundred thousand prisoners, and has taken special pains to ascertain the causes of their crimes says, that he does not recollect a single case of capital offence where the party had not been a Sabbath-breaker. And in many cases they assured him that Sabbath-breaking was the first step in their downward course. Indeed, he says, with reference to prisoners of all classes, nineteen out of twenty have neglected the Sabbath and other ordinances of religion. And he has often met with prisoners about to expiate their crimes by an ignominious death, who earnestly enforced upon the survivors the necessity of an observance of the Sabbath, and ascribed their own course of iniquity to a non-observance of that day.
Says the keeper of one of the largest prisons, "Nine-tenths of our inmates are those who did not value the Sabbath, and were not in the habit of attending public worship."
Few prisoners had kept the Sabbath, showing its neglect correlates with crime.
Of twelve hundred and thirty-two convicts who had been committed to the Auburn State Prison previously to the year 1838, four hundred and forty-seven had been watermen, either boatmen or sailors—men who, to a great extent, had been kept at work on the Sabbath, and thus deprived of the rest and privileges of that day. Of those twelve hundred and thirty-two convicts, only twenty-six had conscientiously kept the Sabbath.
Most inmates habitually violated the Sabbath and neglected public worship.
Of one hundred men admitted to the Massachusetts State Prison in one year, eighty-nine had lived in habitual violation of the Sabbath and neglect of public worship.
Many condemned criminals blame their ruin on forsaking God's house and Sabbath rest.
GATE.—In the evening, says a writer in an English Magazine, I stepped into St. Sepulchre's, Snow-hill. Dr. Rudge, a preacher of some note in the metropolis, is evening lecturer here; and we had a sermon from him in behalf of a parochial charity, by which fifty-one poor boys of the parish are supported and educated. He took occasion to remark, that his official situation (as chaplain to Newgate) often led him to hear the confessions of malefactors, under sentence of death; and that in almost every instance, they ascribed their ruin to their desertion of the house of God, and the violation of the day of rest.
### 184. Various Evils.
Working on the Sabbath leads to failure and loss, as observed by merchants.
BREAKERS.—The following fact, communicated by a respectable merchant of New-York, is well worthy of notice:—"I have particularly observed," says the gentleman, "that those merchants in New-York who have kept their counting-rooms open on the Sabbath day, during my residence there (twenty-five years), have failed without exception."
In another part of the country an old man remarked, "I can recollect more than fifty years; but I cannot recollect a case of a man, in this town, who was accustomed to work on the Sabbath, who did not fail or lose his property before he died."
Small profits from sin cause great social and financial harm to many innocent people.
A grocer in Clinton County, New-York, sold a drunkard a pint of new rum according to law, and made two red cents clear profit. The drunkard shot his son-in-law while intoxicated; and his apprehension, confinement in jail, execution, &c., cost the county more than one thousand dollars, which temperate men had to earn by the sweat of their brows! What say you, tax-payers, are you willing to pay a thousand dollars to enable the grog-seller to make two red cents!
Selling alcohol for small gain leads to tragic loss of life and innocent victims.
About the 1st of July, 1843, an Indian, one of those half-civilized, rum-loving creatures who abound in the West, stepped out of Cataraugus County into the State of Pennsylvania, where, it seems, men are sold indulgences to sin, as well as in the Empire State; and then filled his pocket-bottle with real "red-eye," and the seller of the poison made two red cents clear profit. While under its maddening influence, he went into a farmer's house near by, with whom he was totally unacquainted, and murdered a mother and five children—all that comprised
426. 421 before our prayer meetings were joined by the professors of military and civil engineering, the professors of mineralogy and chemistry, and the instructor of artillery, and as many as seventeen cadets.
Victory in war can bring little reward compared to the cost of human bloodshed.
The Duke of Marlborough observing a soldier leaning pensively on the butt-end of his musket, just after victory had declared itself in favor of the British arms at the battle of Blenheim, accosted him thus: "Why so pensive, my friend, after so glorious a victory?" "It may be glorious," replied the brave fellow, "but I am thinking that all the human blood I have spilled this day has only earned me fourpence."
Sinful drunkenness led to tragic death and destruction of a family.
A young lawyer won and married a beautiful bride; all that heart could well wish was theirs. In a few years the husband began to ply the sparkling glass and against the pleadings of his wife and friends he pushed on his downward way. One fierce winter night he staggered home through the deep snow, and found his invalid wife in a cold room trying to keep her two babies warm. The drunken husband swore he would soon have it warm enough. It was midnight, the elements without were raging, and the drunken man was raving within. How he fired the house was not known; he was probably too drunk to know himself. The flames, fanned by the wind, drove out the wife with her babes to face that awful winter night. Soon becoming exhausted with her helpless babes clinging to her, the mother sank down into the snow. The house was reduced to ashes. In the morning, the now sobered author of this ruin, accompanied by his parents, searched among the snowdrifts for the lost ones. At length, wrapped in a spotless winding sheet of snow they were found. “White as marble the lovely features of the mother disclosed frozen tears on her cheeks, while the forms of her babes were clasped in her arms.
Small things can accumulate to cause great harm or even death.
A vessel will sink if filled with drops of water or grains of sand. Fine flakes of snow, so light in themselves singly, if they gather over the sleepy wayfarer, will put out his life; if they drift they can bury whole houses and the dwellers.
Sin enslaves even those who vow to resist it, showing its powerful grip.
A drunkard had promised his dying wife that he would never drink another glass, unless from her hand; but the craving for it was so strong that at night he crept into the room where her dead body lay, placed a glass of liquor into her lifeless hand and raised it to his lips. Thus men, asleep under the stupefying influence of sin, become slaves.
Forgiveness does not remove all earthly consequences of sin.
Although God forgave the sins of Jacob and David, and the other Old Testament saints, yet there were certain consequences of their sins which those saints had to suffer after they were forgiven.
If a man gets drunk and goes out and breaks his leg, so that it must be amputated, God will forgive him if he asks it, but he will have to hop around on one leg all his life. A man may sow thistle-seed with grain-seed in a moment of pique against his master, and the master may forgive him, but the man will have to reap the thistles with the grain.
Sinful habits entangle and destroy like weeds, overpowering a struggling conscience.
The surgeon of a regiment in India relates the following incident:—"A soldier rushed into the tent, to inform me that one of his comrades was drowning in a pond close by, and nobody could attempt to save him in consequence of the dense weeds which covered the surface. On repairing to the spot, we found the poor fellow in his last struggle, manfully attempting to extricate himself from the meshes of rope-like grass that encircled his body; but, to all appearance, the more he laboured to escape, the more firmly they became coiled round his limbs. At last he sank, and the floating plants closed in, and left not a trace of the disaster. After some delay, a raft was made, and we put off to the spot, and sinking a pole some twelve feet, a native dived, holding on by the stake, and brought the body to the surface. I shall never forget the expression of the dead man's face—the clenched teeth, and fearful distortion of the countenance, while coils of long trailing weeds clung round his body and limbs, the muscles of which stood out stiff and rigid, whilst his hands grasped thick masses, showing how bravely he had struggled for life." This heart-rending picture is a terribly accurate representation of a man with a conscience alarmed by remorse, struggling with his sinful habits, but finding them too strong for him. Divine grace can save the wretch from his unhappy condition, but if he be destitute of that, his remorseful agonies will but make him more hopelessly the slave of his passions. Laocoon, in vain endeavouring to tear off the serpents' coils from himself and children, aptly portrays the long-enslaved sinner contending with sin in his own strength. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"
Self-righteous sinners trust in false refuges that cannot prevent their destruction.
When the lofty spire of Old St. Paul's was destroyed by lightning, there were many superstitious persons who were amazed beyond measure at the calamity, for in the cross there had long been deposited relics of certain saints, which were counted fully sufficient to avert all danger of tempests. With what amazement will ignorant, self-righteous sinners see their own destruction come upon them, notwithstanding all the refuges of lies in which they trusted.
Uncontrolled appetite can trap and destroy, like a snake stuck by its own greed.
To be slain by appetite is a common fate with men, as it was with this serpent:
A boa-constrictor woke up hungry from a three months’ nap and caught a rabbit, which he bolted whole in the usual way. This did not satisfy the cravings of his capacious stomach, and so he went a-field in search of further victuals, and presently came to a rail fence, which he essayed to get through. But the lump caused by the defunct tho undigested bunny stopt him, like a knot in a rope, when his head and a few feet only of his body had passed between the rails. Lying in this attitude, he caught and swallowed another rabbit which had incautiously ventured within his narrow sphere of action. Now, what was the state of affairs? He could neither go ahead nor astern through the fence, being jammed by his fore-and-aft inside passengers, and in this embarrassing position he was slain with ease.
The way into sin is easy, but the way out is blocked by harsh barriers.
In the West, the farmer’s boy makes a trap for prairie-chickens and wild turkeys. Looking toward the corn, the bird pushes against the tiny wooden bar that yields for admittance. But having gotten in, the gate will not push out.
When it is too late, the youth who has played false, finds that the way into sin was easy, and the way out hard. Strange that there should not be a single barrier in the downward path, but that when the transgressor turns to retrace his steps that red-hot iron barriers are in the path!
— N. D. HILLIS
Alcohol abuse destroys health and hinders healing, worsening life's struggles.
I was at a hospital when an ambulance came tearing to the door, with a man whose leg was crusht from mid-thigh down. He was placed upon the operating table, restless and moaning. “Oh, doctor,” he said, “will it kill me?” and the good, blunt man of science answered, “No; not the leg, but the beer may do you up.” And it did. The limb was removed quickly and skilfully, but the clean aseptic cut had really no chance to heal, because the general physical degradation of beer no surgeon’s knife can amputate. When life and death grip one another, beer stabs life in the back.
— JOHN G. WOOLLEY
Some sins are influenced by uncontrollable circumstances, lessening personal blame.
One of the strangest stories of false imprisonment comes from France. A woman was sentenced to imprisonment for life for having caused the death of her husband and brother. The three had lived together at Malaunay, near Rouen, in a cottage. The lower part of it was used as a shop. When the woman was sent to prison, other people occupied the shop, but the new tenants suffered, the man from fainting fits, his wife from nausea, from which she died. Another couple tried their fortune, but they, too, were overcome by the “spell of the accurst place,” as they supposed. They were subject to fainting and loss of memory. At last a scientific examination of the premises was made. Then it was found that adjoining the shop was a lime-kiln. In a wall dividing it from the cottage were many fissures, so that whenever lime was burned monoxide of carbon escaped into the inn. This was the secret of the deaths for which the woman was suffering. She was brought out of prison after six years of servitude.
While we should not put the blame for our sins on circumstances, we should remember that much which we condemn as sin would, if we understood it, be excused as due to circumstances that involve no blame.
One sin makes a person guilty of breaking the whole law, illustrating total accountability.
Paul’s doctrine, that he who offends in one point is guilty of the whole law, is illustrated in this anecdote:
A notary public was convicted of forgery and sentenced to be hanged; and being asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed, remarked that it was very hard that he should be hanged just for one line, considering the thousands of harmless sheets he had written in the course of his life. (Text.)--CROAKE JAMES, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
Knocking down the first pin causes all others to fall, illustrating consequences of sin.
Mr. Justice Burroughs, of the Common Pleas, used to resort to the use of proverbs and parables in dealing with the juries. One day at _nisi prius_, much talk was made about a consequential issue in the case. He began to explain it to the jury thus: “Gentlemen of the jury, you have been told that the first is a consequential issue. Now, perhaps, you do not know what a consequential issue means; but I dare say you understand nine-pins. Well, then, if you deliver your bowl so as to strike the front pin in a particular direction, down go the rest. Just so it is with these counts. Knock down the first, and all the rest will go to the ground; that’s what we call a consequential issue. (Text.)--CROAKE JAMES, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
A girl unknowingly disrupts telegraph lines, showing unnoticed consequences of actions.
A little girl in Kansas has recently given the telegraph companies a vast amount of trouble in a peculiar way. Her daily duty was to herd a large drove of cattle on a range through which passed the telegraph lines. For weeks, some hours nearly every day, these lines absolutely failed to work, and the trouble seemed to be in the vicinity of where this girl herded her father’s cattle; but it was a long time before they discovered the cause. Finally, they found out that in order to get a better view of the herd the girl had driven railroad-spikes into a telegraph-pole, and whenever she got weary watching the cattle from the ground she would climb the pole and seat herself on a board across the wires and watch her herd from that lofty station. Whenever the board happened to be damp it destroyed the electric current and cut off all telegraphic communication between Denver and Kansas City. (Text.)
— LOUIS ALBERT BANKS
Hidden dangers like contaminated water can bring sudden death despite visible enemies.
For the soldier in the far-away Philippines, death lurks in many places. Perhaps it is the enemy in the open, or the shot from the thicket, or the assassin’s knife in the dark. These are not the deadliest foes, however. The cholera is everywhere. Man can guard against the one, but he falls a victim to the other. Not long since a certain constabulary officer had met the enemy and defeated them. Before he reached camp on the return march, however, disease laid hold upon him for its own. Ere he reached the camp he was dead. In trying to explain that sudden demise, a companion of the march said:
When we stopt at shacks on the roadside and asked for water it was furnished us in a coconut shell with the native’s thumb dipt in and the water so muddy one could not see the bottom, but down it went with some jest about a cool death.
The thumb of the native, dipt in the shell of water, brought death to the drinker. There is another sort of cup in which lurks the serpent of death--the wine cup.
Ignoring warnings and courting danger leads to inevitable disaster.
A few years ago a tenderfoot went out West looking for grizzly. He was all togged out in the newest style of hunting-suit, and dawned like an incredible vision, on the astonished inhabitants west of the Missouri. He asked them where he could find a grizzly, and they told him reverently that at a certain place not far from there grizzlies were numerous and would come if you whistled. Light-heartedly he took his way to the place indicated and two days later they buried his mangled remains in the local cemetery. Over his innocent young head they erected a tombstone whereon they rudely carved this epitaph:
“He whistled for the grizzly, and the grizzly came.”
Small things like germs can cause more destruction than large, obvious forces.
The size of a thing is not always the measure of its destructiveness. We look at a big battleship and exclaim what a huge instrument of destruction. Yet the tiny germ called the tubercle bacillus is so small that it is said that 900 can find room on the point of a small sewing-needle, and these germs destroy more lives each year than the mightiest warship could possibly do in action.
Small sins secretly destroy character and community like bee-moths ruin a beehive.
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Sins and faults gradually ruin character, once they begin to ravage, as the bee-moths ruin the hive of bees:
Death and destruction of the community follow in the train of the bee-moth. From the eggs hatch little sixteen-footed grubs that keep well hidden in the cracks, only venturing out to feed on the wax of the comb nearest them. As they grow they need more and more wax, but they protect themselves while getting it by spinning a silken web which prevents the bees from getting at them. Wherever they go they spin silken lines and little webs until, if several bee-moths have managed to lay their eggs in the hive and several hundred of their voracious wax-eating grubs are spinning tough silken lines and webs through all the corridors and rooms of the bees’ house, the household duties get so difficult to carry on that the bee community begins to dwindle; the unfed young die in their cells, the indoor workers starve, and the breakdown of the whole hive occurs.--VERNON L. KELLOGG, “Insect Stories.”
Many tiny sins sap the life of character like aphids drain the sap of corn roots.
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Character, like corn, may be destroyed, not by the assault of a single great evil, but by many minute sins and faults. Vernon L. Kellogg writes thus of corn-root aphids:
I forget how many millions of bushels of corn were raised in the State of Illinois last year, but there were very many. And that means thousands and thousands of acres of corn-fields. Now in all these corn-fields there live certain tiny soft-bodied insects called corn-root aphids. Their food is the sap of the growing corn-plants, which they suck from the roots. Altho each corn-root aphid is only about one-twentieth of an inch long and one-twenty-fifth of an inch wide, and has a sucking-beak simply microscopic in size, yet there are so many millions of these little insects, all with their microscopic little beaks stuck into the corn-roots, and all the time drinking, drinking the sap, which is the life-blood of the corn-plants, that they do a great deal of injury to the corn-fields of Illinois and cause a great loss in money to the farmers.--“Insect Stories.”
Dishonest theft can require more effort and risk than honest labor.
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Henry Ward Beecher tells a story of a man in the Canadian backwoods, who, during the summer months, had procured a stock of fuel sufficient for the winter. This man had a neighbor who was very indolent, and not very honest, and who, having neglected to provide against the winter storms, was mean enough to avail himself of his neighbor’s supplies without the latter’s permission or knowledge. Mr. Beecher states that it was found, on computation, that the thief had actually spent more time in watching for opportunities to steal, and labored more arduously to remove the wood (to say nothing of the risk and penalty of detection), than the man who in open daylight, and by honest means, had gathered it.
Surrendering a right can lead to permanent loss and regret.
A right once surrendered may be lost forever.
A story is told by the Kermanjis of Persia of how the jackals came to inhabit the desert. In olden days the jackals were the domesticated pets of Kerman, while the dogs dwelt among the ruins outside the city walls. The wily dogs asked the noble jackals if they would not exchange places for just three days, in order that the invalids among the dogs might recover their strength and health, at the same time enlarging upon the beauties of the desert life. The generous jackals consented. But when the stipulated period expired the dogs declined to yield their place, saying, “No, thank you, we prefer to stay where we are, and do not wish ever to return to the desert.” So the outwitted jackals went howling away, and have been wailing nightly ever since.
