TALMAGE

A BLOODY MONSTER

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.

TALMAGE

1832—­1901

A bloody monster[1]

[Footnote 1:  Copyright, 1900, by Louis Klopsch, and reprinted by permission.]

It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.—­Gen. xxxvii., 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 to-day.  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 De Quincey.  One hundred millions are the victims of the betelnut, which has specially blasted the East Indies.  Three hundred millions chew hashish, and Persia, Brazil, and Africa suffer the delirium.  The Tartars employ murowa; the Mexicans, the agave; the people at Guarapo, an intoxicating product taken from sugarcane; while a great multitude, that no man can number, are the votaries of alcohol.  To 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