DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON. SUNDAY'S DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED DIVINE. Subject: "Pleasure* of Llfe'VOaj No Sym pathy With the Wliolesa'e Denuncia tion of AmuieinenM—G ortons Work of the Y. 31. C. A. TEXT: "And it came to pass, when ihelr hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that be may make us sport. Aud they called for Samson out of the prison house and he made them sport."— Judges 16:25. There were three thousand people assem bled in the Temple of Dagon. They had come to make sport of eyeless Samson. They were all ready for the entertainment. They began to clap and pound, impatient for"the amusement to begin, and they cried, "Fetch him out! Fetch him out!" Yonder I see the blind old giant coming, led by the hand of a child into the very midst of the temple. At his first appear ance there goesup a shout of laughter and derision. The blind old giant pretends he is tired and wants to rest himself against the pillars of the house, so he says to the lad who leads him, "Bring mo where the main pillars are." The lad does so. Then the strong man puts his hands on one of the pillars, and, with the mightiest push that mortal ever made, throws himself for ward until the whole hbuse comes down in thunderous crash, grinding the audience like grapes in a wine-press. "Aud so it came to pass when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison-house; and he made them sport." In other words there are amusements that are destructive and bring down disaster and death upon thy heads of those who practice them. While they laugh and cheer, they die. The three thousand who perished that day In Gaza are nothing compared to the tens of thou sands who have been destroyed body, mind and soul by bad amusements and good amusements carried to excess. In my sermons you must have noticed that I have no sympathy with ecclesiasti cal strait-jackets, or with that wholesale denunciation of amusements to which many are pledged. I believe the Church of Ood has made a tremendous mistake in trying to suppress the sportfulness of youth and drive out from men their love of amuse ment. If God ever Implanted anything in us He implanted this desire. But instead of providing for this demaud of our nature, the Church of Ood has for the main part ignored it. As in a riot the Mayor plunts a battery at the end of the street and has it lired off, so that everything is cut down that happens to staud in tlie range, the good as well as the bad, so there are men i:i the church who plant the batteries ol' condemnation and fire away indiscrimin ately. Everything is condemned. They talk as if they would like to have our youth dress in blue uniform like tlie children of an orphan asylum, and march down the path of life to the tune of the Dead March in Saul. They hate a blue sash, or a rose bud in the hair, or a tasseled gaiter, aud think a roan almost ready for a lunatic asylum who utters a conundrum. Young Men's Christian Associations of j the country are doing a glorious work. ] They have line reading rooms, and all tlie influences are of the best kind, and are now adding gymnasiums and bowling al leys. where, without any evil surroundings, our young men may get physical as well as spiritual improvement. We are dwindling away to a narrow-chested, weak-armed, feeble-voiced race, when Ood calls us to a work in which he wants physical as well ns spiritual athletes. I would to Ood that the time might soon come when in all our colleges and theological seminaries, as at Princeton, a gymnasium shall be estab lished. We spend seven years of hard study in preparation for the ministry, and come out with bronchitis and dyspepsia and liver complaint, and then crawiup into the pulpit, and the people say, "Doesn't he look heavenlyl" because he looks sickly. Let the Church of Ood direct, rather than attempt to suppress, the desire for amuse ment. The best men that the world ever knew have had their sports. William Wil berforce trundled hoop with his children, Martin Luther helped dress the Christmas tree. Ministers have pitched quoits, phil anthropists have gone a-skatiug, prime ministers have played ball. Our communities are filled with men and women who have in their souls unmeas ured resources for sportfulness and frolic. Show me a man who never lights up with sportfulness and hasno sympathy with the recreations of others, and I will show you a man who is a stumbling block to the Kingdom of God. Such men are caricatures of religion. They lead young people to think that a man is good in proportion as be groans and frowns and looks sallow,and that the height of a man's Christiau stature is in proportion to the length of his face. I would trade off five huudred such men for one bright-faced, radiant Christian on whose face are the words, "liejoice ever more!" Every morning by his cheerful face lie preaches fifty sermons. I will go further and say that I have no confidence in a man who makes a religion of his gloomy looks. That kind of a man always turns out badly. I would not want him for the treasurer of nn orphan asylum. The orphans would suffer. Among forty people whom I received Into the church at one communion, there was oniy one applicant of whose piety I was suspicious. He had the longest story to tell; had seen the most visions, and gave an experience so wonderful that all the other applicants were discouraged. 1 was not surprised the year after to learn that he had runoff with the funds of the bank with which he was connected. Who is this black angel that you call religion—wings black, feet black, feathers black? Our re ligion is a bright angel—feet bright, eyes bright, wings bright, taking her place in the soul. She pulls u rope that reaches to the skies and sets all the bells of heaven a-chimiug. There are some persons who, when talking ton minister, always feel it politic to look lugubrious. Go'fortli, O people, to your lawful amusement. God means you to be happy. But, when there are many sources of innocent pleasure, why tamper with anything that is danger ous and polluting? Why stop our ears to a heaven full of songsters to listen to the hiss of a dragon? Why turn back from the mountain-side nil abloom with wild flowers and adash with tho nimble tor rents, and with blistered feet nttempt to climb the hot sides of Cotopaxi? Now, all opera houses, theatres, bowling alleys, skating rinks and all styles of amusements, good and bad, I put on trial to-day and judge of them by certain car dinal principles. First, you judge of any amusement by its heathful result or by its beneficial reaction. There are people who seem made up of hard facts. Tfiey are a combination of multiplication tables and statistics. If you show them an exquisite picture they will begin to discuss the pig ments involved in the coloring; if you show them a beautiful rose, they will submit it to a botanical analysis, which is only the postmortem examination of a flower. They never do anything more than feebly smile. There are no great tides of feeling surging up from the depth of their soul in billow after billow of reverberating laugh ter. They seem as if nature had built them by contract and made a bungling job out of it. But, blessed be God, there ure people in the world who have bright faces and whose life is a song, an anthem, a pa-an of victory. Even their troubles are like the vines that crawl up the side of a great tower on the top of which the sun light sits and the soft airs of summer hold perpetual carnival. They are the people you like to have come to your house; they are the people I like to have come to my house. Now, it is these exhilarant and sympathetic and warm-hearted people that are most tempted to pernicious amuse ments. In proportion as a ship is swift it wants a strong helmsman; In proportion as a liorse is (ray It wants a strong driver; and these people of exuberant nature will do well to look at the reaction of all their amusements. If an amusement sends you home at night nervous so you cannot sleep, and you rise in the iporning, not because vou are slept out, but because your duty iirngs you from your slumbers, you have been whore you ought not to have been. There are amusements that send a man next day to ht« work bloodshot, yawning, stupfd, nauseated, and they are wrong kinds of amusements. There are entertain ments that give a man disgust with the drudgery of life, with tools because they are not swords, with working aprons be cause they are not robes, with cattle because they are not Infuriated bulls of the arena. If any amusement sends you home longing for a life of romance and thrilling adven ture, love that takes poison and shoots It self, moonlight adventures and hair breadths escapes, you may depend upon it that you are the sacrificed victim of un sanctilled pleasure. Our recreations (ire intended to build us up, and if they pull us down as to our moral or as to our physical strength, you may come to the conclusion that thev are obnoxious. Still further: Those amusoments are wrong which lead into expenditure beyond your means. Money spent in recreation is not thrown away, it Is all folly for us to come from a place of amusement feeling that we have wasted our money and time. You may by it have made an investment worth more than the transaction that yielded you a hundred or a thousand dol lars. But how many properties have been riddled by costly amusement? The table has beeu robbed to pay the club. The champagne has cheated the children's wardrobe. The carousing pnrty has burned up the boy's primer. The table cloth of the corner saloon is in debt to the wife's faded dress. Excursions that in a itay make a tour around a whole month's wages; ladies whose lifetime business it is tc "go shop ping,"'have their counterpart in uneduca ted children, bankruptcies that shock the money market and appall the church, and that send drunkenness staggering across the richly figured carpet of the mansion and dashing into the mirror, and drowning out the carol of music with the wiiooping of bloated sons come home to break their old mother's heart, when men go into amuse ments that they cannot afford, they first borrow what they cannot earn, and then they steal what they cannot borrow. Fir.-t they go into embarrassment and then into theft, and when a man gets as far on as that ho does not stop short of the peniten tiary. There is not a prison in the land where there are not victims of unsanctifled amusements. How often I have had par ents come to me and ask mo togo and beg their boy off from the consequence of crimes that he had committed against his employer-jthe taking of funds out of the employer's till, or the disarrangement of accounts! Why, he had salary enough to pay all lawful expenditure, but not enough salary to meet his sinful emusemeuts. And again and again I have gone and im plored for the young man—sometimes, alas! the petition unavailing. How brightly the path of unrestrained amusement opens! The young man says: "Now lam of! for a good time. Never mind economy; I'll get money somehow. What a fine road! What a beautiful day for a ride! Crack the whip and over the turnpike! Come,boys, fill high your glasses! Drink! Long life, health, plenty of rides just like this!" Hard-working men hear the clatter of the hoofs and look up and say, "Why, I wonder where those fellows get their money from. We have to toil and drudge. Thoy do nothing." To these gay men life is a thrill ami nn excitement. They stare at other people and in turn are stared at. The watch-chain jingles. The cup foams. The cheeks flusn, the eyes flash. The midnight hears their guffaw. They swagger. They jostle decent men off the sidewalk. They take the name of God in vain. They parody the hymn they learned at their mother's knee; and to oil pictures of coming disaster they cry out: "Who cares!" and to the counsel of some Christian friend, "Who are you?" Passing along the street some night you hear a shriek in a grog-shop, the rattle of the watchman's club, the rush of the police. What is the matter now? Oh, this reckless young man lias been killed in a grog-shop fight. Carry him home to his father's house. Parent? will come down nnd wash iiis wounds and close his eyes in death. They forgive him all he did, though he cannot in his silence ask it. The prodigal has got home at last. Mother will goto her little garden aud get the sweetest flowers and twist them into a chaplet for the silent heart of the wayward boy and push back from the bloated brow the long locks that were once her pride. And the air will be rent with the father's cry: "Oh, my son, my son, my poor son; would God I had dieil for thee, oh, my son, my son!" You may judge of amusements by their effect upon physical health. The need of many good people la physical recupera tion. There are Christian men who write hards things against their Immortal souls when there Is nothing the matter with them except an inoompeteut liver. There are Christian people who seem to think it is a Rood sign to be poorly, and because Richard Baxter and Robert Hali were in valids they think by the same sickness they may come to the same grandeur of charac ter. X want to tell Christlau people that God will hold you responsible for >'our In validism if it is your own fault, and when through right exercise nnd prudence you might be athletic and well. The effect of the body upon the soul you acknowledge. Put a man of mild disposition upon the an imal diet of whioh the Indian partakes, and in a little while his blood will change its chemical proportions. It will become like unto the blood of the lion or the tiger or the bear, while his disposition will change and become fierce, cruel nnd unrelenting. The body hns a powerful effect upon the soul. There are people whose Ideas of Heaven are all shut out with clouds of to bacco smoke. There are people who dare to shatter the physical vase in whiah God put the jewel of eternity. There are men with great hearts and intellects in bodies worn out by tbeir own neglects. Magnificent machinery capable of propelling the great Etruria ncross the Atlantic, yet fastened In a rickety North River propeller. Physical development which merely shows itself In a fabulous lifting, or in perilous rope walk ing, or in pugilistic encounter, excites only our contempt, but wo confess to great admiration for a man who has a great soul in an athletic body, every nerve, muscle aud bone of which is consecrated to right uses. Ob, it seems to me outrageous that men through neglect should uilow their physical health togo down beyond repair, spending tho rest of their lives not in some great enterprise for God and the world, but In studying what is the best tiling to take for dyspepsia. A ship which ought with all sails sot and every man at his post to lie carrying a rich cargo for eternity employing all its men in stopping up leak ages! When you may through soma of the popular and healthful recreations of our time work off your spleen and your quer ulousness nnd one-half of your physical and mental ailments, do not turn back from such a grand medicament. Again, judge of the places of amusement by the companionship into which they put you. If you belong to an organization where you have to associate with the in temperate, with the unclean, with the abandoned, howgver well they may bo dressed, In the name of God quit It. They will despoil your nature. Tbey will under mine your moral character. They will drop you when you are destroyed. They will not give one cent to support your children wheu you are dead. They will weep not one tear at your burial. They will chuckle over your damnation. But the day comes when the men who have exerted evil influ ence upon their fellows will be brought to judgment. Scene: tho last day. Stage: the rocking earth. Enter dukes, lords, kings, beggars, clowns. No sword. No tinsel. No crown. For footlights, tte kindling flames of a world. For orchestra the trumpets that wake the dead. For gallery, the clouds filled with angel spec tators. For applause, the clapping floods of the sea. For curtains, the leaves rolled together as a scroll. For tragedy, the doom of the destroyed. For farce, the effort to serve the world and God at the same time. For the last scene of the nfth aot, the tramp of nations across the stage—some to the right, others to the left. Again, anv amusement that gives you a distaste for domestic life is bad. How many bright domestic circles have been broken up by sinful amusements? The father went off, the mother went off, the child went off. There are nil around us the fragments of blasted households. Oh! If you have wan dered awav, I would like to charm you back by the sound of that one word, "Home." Do you not know that you have but little moro time to give to 'domestic welfare? Do you not see, father, that your children are soon togo out into the world, and all the Influence for good you are to have over them you must have now? Death will break In on vour conjugal relations, and, alas! if you have to stand over the grave of cne who perished from your neg lect! Let mo say to alt young men, your style of amusement will decide your eternal destiny. One night I saw a young man at a street corner evidently doubting as to which direction he had better take. He had his hat lifted nigh enough so you could see he had an intelligent forehead. He had a stout chest; he had a robust de velopment. Splendid young man. Cultured young man. Honored young man. Why did he stop there while so many were go ing up and down? The fact is "that every man has a good angel and a bad angel contending for the mastery of his spirit. And there was a good angel and a bad angel struggling with that young man's soul at the corner of the street. "Come with me," said the good angel, "I will take you homo. I will spread my wing over your pathway. I will lovingly escort you all through life. I will bless every cup you drink out of, every couch vou rest on, every doorway you enter. I will conse crate your tears wheu you weep, your sweat when you toll, and at tho last I will hand over vour grave into the hand of the bright augel of a Christian resurrec tion. In answer to your father's petition and your mother's prayer I have beeu sent of the Lord out of Heaven to bo your guar dian spirit. Come with me!" said the good angel, In a voice of unearthly symphony. It was music like that which drops from a lute of Heaven when a seraph breathes on It. "No, no," said the bad angel, "come with me; I have something better to offer; tho wines I pour are from chalices of be witching carousal; the dance I lead is over floor tessellated with unrestrained indul gences; there is no God to frown on the temples of sin where I worship. The skies lire Italian. The paths I tread are through meadows daisied and primrosed; come with with me." The young man hesitated at a time when hesitation was ruin, and the bad angel smote tho good angel until It de parted, spreading wings through the starlight upward and awav, until a door flashed ouen iu the sky and forever the wings vanished. That was the turning point in that young man's history; for the good angel flown, he hesitated no logger, but started on a pathway which is beauti ful at tho opening, but blasted at the last. The bad angel, leading the way, opened gate after gate, and at each gate the road became rougher and the «ky moro lurid, and, what was peculiar, as the gate slammed shut it name to with a jur that indicated that it would never open. Passed each portal, there was a grinding of locks and a shoving of bolts; and the scenery on either side the road changed from gardens to deserts, and the June air became a cut ting December blast, ami the bright wing« of the bad nngel turned to sackcloth and the eyes of the light became hollow with hopeless grief, and the fountains, that at the start had tossed wine, ' poured forth bubbling tears and foaming blood, and on tho right side of the road there was a serpent, and the man said to the bad angel, "What is that serpent?" and the answer was, "That is the serpent of sting ing remorse." On the left side of the road there was a lion, and the man asked tho bad augel, "What is that Hon?" and the answer was. "That U tho lion of ail-devour ing despair." A vulture flew through til* skv, and the man asked the bad angel, "Wha? Is that vulture?" and the answer was, "That fs the vulture waiting for the carcasses of the slain." And then the man began to try to pull off of him tho folds of something that had wound him round and round, and he said to the bail angel, "What Is it that twists me in this awful convolution?" aud the answer was, "That is the worm that never dies!" and then the man said to the bad angel, "What does all this mean? I trusted in what vou said at tho corner of the street that night: I trusted it all, and wily have you thus deceived me?" Then the last deception fell off the char mer, audit said: "I was sent forth from the pit to destroy your soul; I watched my chance for many a long year; when you hesitated that night on the street I gained my triumph; and now you nro here. Ha! ha! You. are here. Come, now, let us 1111 these two chalices of lire and drink to gether to darkness and woe and death. Hail! hail!" Oh. young man, will the good angel sent forth by Christ, or the bad angel sent forth by sin, get the victory over your soul? Their wings are Interlocked "this moment above you, contending for your destiny, as above the Appeuniues eagle and condor light mid-sky. This hour may de cide your destiny. God help youi To hesitate is to diel ENORMOUS WHEAT CROP, Unless the Conditions Change Between Now and Harvest Time. The Government returns of the growing wheat crop, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, announce a total area sown to wheat of 43,000,000 acres and a condition for spring wheat on June 1 of 100.9, and for winter wheat on the same date of 90.8. The con dition of oats on June 1 was stated at 98, the condition of rye at 97, and the condition of barley at 78.8. Wheat's showing is a remarkable one, and if the present promise could be main tained until harvest the result would be a "record." J. C. Brown, statistician of the Now York Produce Exchange, calculated that the figures indicate a total wheat crop of 087,300,000 bushels—36o,Boo,ooobushels of winter wheat und 270.600',000 bushels of spring wheat. The record wheat crop of the country heretofore has been 611,780,000 bushels in 1891, preceding the good trade year of 1892. The wheat crop of 1897 was 530,149,000 bushels and of 1896, 427,684,000 bushels. As stated by the Department of Agricul ture the preliminary returns of the spring wheat acreage, with the two Dakotns in particular subject to revision, Indicate a total area seeded of 16,800,000 acres, which, added to nn area in winter wheat of 26,200,- 000 acres, makes a total wheat area of 43,000,000 acres, or about 3,500,- 000 aeres more than last year. There was an increase of 8 percent, in Minnesota, 22 in lowa, 10 in Nebraska, 11 in North Dakota, Biu South Dakota, 5 in Oregon und 20 in Washington. The average con dition of winter wheat—9o.B is to be com pared with 78.5 nt the corresponding date last year and 81.6, the average for the last ten years. The principal averages are: New York, 98; Pennsylvania, 96: Maryland, 98; Tennessee, 93; Kentuckv, 99; Ohio, 87; Mich igan, 97; Indiana, 95; Missouri, 96; Kansas, 104, and California, 33. The average condition of spring wheat— 100.9—is almost, if not entirely, unpre cedented. It compares with 89.6 on June 1, 1897, aud 92.5, the average for the past ten years. Nearly all the States of princi pal production report a condition exceed ing that indicative of a full normal crop. North Dakota reporting 104; South Dakota, 103; Nebraska, 105-; lowa, 102; Minnesota, 100; Oregon, 101, and Washington, 97. To Insure Cattle. The Swiss canton of Berne will adopt nn official system of insurance for the 276,409 head of cattle in the canton. Vxe maxi mum value of a cow is estimated at tl6o. 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