Page 6 Advertisements Column 1

Evening Star, Issue 7307, 3 September 1887, Page 6 (Supplement)

When Shall I Awake ?

DR TALMAGE ON THE ROUGH PATH OF THE RETURNING PRODIGAL. “When shall I awake? 1 Will seek it yet again.’ Prov. xxiii., 35. With an insight into human nature such as no other man ever reached, Solomon, in my text, sketches the mental operations of ono who, having stepped aside from the path of rectitude, desires to return, With a wish for something better, he said ; “ When shall I awake ? When shall I come out of this horrid nightmare of iniquity ?” But, seized upon by uneradicated habit, and forced downhill by his passions, he cries out “ I will seek it yet again. I will try it once more.” Our libraries are adorned with an elegant literature addressed to young men, pointing out to them all the dangers and perils of life—complete maps of the voyage, showing all the rocks, the quicksands, the shoals. But suppose a man has already made shipwreck; suppose he is already off the track ; suppose he has already gone astray—how is he to get back ? The first difficulty in the way of your return is the force of moral gravitation. Call to mind the comrades of your boyhood days —some of them good, some of them bad—which most affected you ? Call to mind the anecdotes that you have heard in the last five or ten years—some of them are pure and some of them impure. Which the more easily stick to your memory ? During the years of your life you have formed certain courses of conduct—some of them good, some of them had. To which style of habit did you more easily yield ? Ah, friends, wo have to take but a moment of self-inspection to find out that there is in all our souls a force of moral gravitation ! But that gravitation may be resisted. Just as you may pick up from the earth something and hold it in your band towards heaven, just so, by the power of God’s grace, a soul fallen may be lifted toward peace, toward pardon, toward heaven. The next thing in the way of your return istheyowerof evil habit. Suppose a man after five, or ten, or twenty years of evil doing, resolves to do right ? Why, all the forces of darkness are allied against him. He cannot sleep at nights. _He gets down on his knees in the midnight, and cries “ God help mo !” He bites his lip. He grinds his teeth. He clenches his fists in a determination to keep his purpose. Ho dare not look at tho bottles in the window of a wine-store. It was one long, bitter, exhaustive, hand-to-hand fight with inflamed, tantalising, and merciless habit. When he thinks he Is entirely free, the old inclinations pounce upon him like a pack of hounds with their muzzles tearing away at the flanks of one poor reindeer. In Paris there is a sculptured representation of Bacchus, the god of revelry. He is riding on a panther at full leap. Oh, how suggestive 1 Let everyone who is speeding on lad ways understand that he is not riding a docile and well-broken steed, hut that he is riding a monster, wild and blood-thirsty, going at a death-leap. I have also to say that if a man wants to return from evil practices society repulses him. Desiring to reform, he says; “Now, I will shake off my old associates, and I will find Christian companionship.” And he appears at the church door some Sabbath day, aod the usher greets him with a look,