Dr. Munhall's Message

The following sermon is by L. W. Munhall, M. A., D. D. (Evangelist), Philadelphia. It is much abridged and the illustrations, which are quite numerous, are all omitted. It has always been delivered to audiences composed wholly of men — mostly young men. It was first delivered in 1872. It has been delivered 269 times, never twice exactly alike, but always following the same outlines and treatment. His audiences ranged from 150 to 8,600, with an average of nearly 1,800. The sermon has never been given without conversions being immediately secured, ranging from 7 to 529, and averaging considerably more than 100 per service, or an aggregate of about 30,000 souls. The time taken in its delivery has never been less than an hour.

DR. L. W. MUNHALL.

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” Eccl. 11:9.

Man is a free moral agent. He can do right or wrong, can go to Heaven or Hell, as he pleases. If his mind is fully set to do wrong, God will not coerce him into doing that which is right. If he is determined to go to Hell, God will not compel him to go to Heaven. God always respects man’s deliberate choice. As He said to His ancient people; “I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live,” and just so does He leave the welfare and destiny of all men in their own keeping. In view of the tremendous issues of life, our responsibility, gentlemen, becomes as weighty as Eternity.

While God tells us, in effect, to do as we please, He yet reminds us that He is Sovereign and Judge, and that we are accountable beings, and must, therefore, answer to Him for all we say and do in this life. Make your own choice, gentlemen, but do not forget that there is judgment here and hereafter for it all. If you always have this inexorable fact in mind, no doubt you will ever choose the right and the good. Such is the teaching of my text.

What are the ways of your heart?

I. Some one of you may have set his heart on getting rich. If you mean to get your money honestly and use it wisely it is a proper and laudable ambition, and I hope you may get $100,000,000. But, if you propose to get your money by dishonest and rascally methods, I hope you may spend your days in the alms-house, rather. You see I am your friend and well-wisher; for money dishonestly gotten will always prove a curse to the man who gets it thus, and his children after him. In these days of intense commercial activity, and mad rush after wealth, with the almost innumerable grab-bag, getrich-quick schemes that are constantly making seductive appeals to the young man ambitious to be rich, one needs to be cautious and careful, or he will soon find himself violating the Golden Rule. But if you have resolved to be rich even if it is at the expense of honor and conscience, go ahead and do as you please, God will not compel you to do otherwise; but there will be judgment for you, here and hereafter. Never forget it.

2. Some one of you may have set his heart on having what he calls a good time. It is a queer notion some men have of what is a good time. I have known a young man to riot around town all night, full of whiskey and the devil, squandering his hard earned money, ruining his physical and intellectual health, his reputation and character, breaking his mother’s heart and getting his head broken and pretty generally done for, and call that having a good time. You are at liberty to pursue such a course; and if you have resolved upon it God will not interfere; but there will be judgment for you here and hereafter. Never forget it.

What is the sight of your eyes?

I. God’s Word says “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it goeth down smoothly; at last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”

One cannot buy a glass of honestly distilled whiskey in the United States. When I was a boy the man who kept the country store usually kept a little brown jug under his counter, in which he kept what he called “O be joyful.” He distilled it himself from rye and corn. If a man purchased more than a dollar’s worth of goods, he was invited to take a drink. If he took more than he could well carry it made him foolish and silly. But men in their hurry to be rich found they could make whiskey easier and cheaper by the aid of drugs. If a man gets more of the kind they now make than he can carry, he becomes a fiend incarnate and wants to kill somebody. This is the explanation for the alarming increase of crime in the country, — it is the poison in the whiskey. There never was a case of hog-cholera in the country until they began using drugs in whiskey making. The poison gets into the mash; it is fed to the hogs and they get the cholera. If you, gentlemen, think you can put into your stomachs with safety to yourselves, that which will give the cholera to hogs, of course you are at liberty to do so, but if you do, I think you are not very bright and wise.

But the people are more largely given to beer drinking. I also believe you can not buy one glass of honestly made, malt, hop-brewed beer in the United States. Here are sufficient reasons for so thinking: First, there are not enough hops raised in the United States to make the beer that is drank in New York City alone. We are exporting almost as many hops as we are importing. Second, from indisputable evidence in my possession, I know that while the output of beer is rapidly increasing the use of malt is quite as rapidly decreasing. Third, the brewer, the jobber and the saloon keeper all get rich fast, and the beer is sold at a nickel a schooner. I know as well as I can know anything that not one man can get rich selling beer at that price, if it is made out of hops and malt, honestly. No, what is called lager-beer is nothing but slop. Now then, gentlemen, if you wish to make slop-pails of your stomachs, you are at liberty to do so. But in view of the fact that the stomach is the work-shop of the body, and the center of the nervous organism, I submit that it will be to your advantage not to misuse it after this fashion.

It is said that quite 100,000 persons die of alcohol every year in the United States. If this is approximately true, what a blighting and withering curse it is! Surely “it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.” But I am inclined to think that far more than this great number fall victims to this damnable and damning traffic. There are two distinctive temperaments among men, /. e., the sanguine and the lymphatic. Alcohol never digests or assimilates. No matter in what form it is taken into the stomach, it passes through the chyme and the chyle into the blood. In the case of the man of the sanguine temperament, it goes to his head, and becoming thereby top-heavy, he reels wdien he tries to walk, and clucks like an old hen when he attempts to talk. When this man dies, it is known of what he died, because he could not conceal it. But in the case of the man of a lymphatic temperament it is otherwise. When the alcohol gets into his blood it goes to the liver. He’s the man of whom it is said “He carries his whiskey.” This is so because the liver is “midship” as sailors say. He can drink all day and walk a chalk line home. But he drops off suddenly, and they say it was heart-failure or apoplexy. INIost of the people who know him believe this, because they never saw him drinking or drunk. But if you will cut him open and uncover his liver, it will appear like the bottom of an iron-monger’s shoe; he has died of what the physicians call “Hob-nail liver” — alcohol on the liver. Now then, gentlemen, you can squander your money for drink, disgrace yourselves, superinduce premature physical and mental decay, go down to an untimely and dishonored grave, and to a drunkard’s Hell if you so wish it; but surely such a course is unwise and wicked. Remember there will be a judgment here and hereafter. Never forget it.

2. Job said, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; * * * pQj. it js a fi-g tigi consumeth unto destruction, and would root out all mine increase.”

The eye is the doorway to the seat of the passions. If, like Job, we covenant not to look upon anything that suggests an unclean or evil thought, our lives and minds will be pure and beautiful. If we give license to our eyes, our thoughts and lives will be impure, vulgar and lewd. For, if our passions arc aroused they are easily enticed by Satan into sin. Licentiousness “is a fire that will consume unto destruction.” I knew a young man who. when he reached his majority, had $50,cx)0 in the bank subject to his check, and real estate worth as much more. He did not “make a covenant with his eyes.’ His passions were aroused and he went to the house of her whose “steps take hold on Hell.” In less than five years his money and property were gone and he was a physical wreck, I knew another young man who did not “make a covenant with his eyes.” He was lead into secret sin. He was an alumnus of a prominent University. He had begun the practice of law. One day in his office he put a pistol to his head and fired. The bullet did not penetrate his head, but circled it under the scalp. He told the physician who was summoned, of hfs sinful practices and said “They have become so loathsome to me that I do not want to live longer.” This is the story of one-half the suicides committed, as it is likewise an explanation for three-fourths of the idiocy and imbecility in the world to-day. It truly “is a fire that consumeth unto destruction.” But not only this but it also “would root out all mine increase.” God’s law declares that He visits “the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of them that hate me.” This is physiologically demonstrable. The descendants of a man who has indulged in licentious practices deteriorate until the “third or fourth generations,” which will be found to be sterile. There will be no fifth generation for such a man. This is the story of the nations of antiquity. Brush back the dust of centuries and read. When they were virtuous they increased in numbers, in strength and possessions.

When they became great they became sensual and then began to decline in physical and mental energy, until they reached a point where they were unable to successfully resist the encroachments and onslaughts of their ruder and more virtuous neighbors; and they ceased to be. Gentlemen, you had far better trifle with a wire with 50,000 voltage upon it, than to fall into licentious practices. “It is a fire that consumeth unto destruction, and would root out all my increase.” But you are at liberty to do as you please. You can drop the reins on the neck of your lust and ride like Jehu Hellward; God will not compel you to be virtuous; but if you are so unwise, remember, there will be judgment here and hereafter. Never forget it.

Let us now turn this around and consider the matter under discussion from another point of view.

First. You are ambitious to be rich. You remember that I wished you well, if you intended to get your money honestly and use it wisely. But do not forget there are some things worth infinitely more than all sordid wealth; do not barter these for gold. For instance, “A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.” (Psa. 37: 16.) “A conscience void of oflPense toward God and toward men” (Acts 24: 16) is of priceless value. Able to look God-ward and know you are obeying His holy laws, and any man in the face and able to truthfully say, “I have done by you as I would be done by,” — this is worth more to a man than all earthly possessions.

Again — “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor than silver and gold.” (Prov. 22: I.) When my father died he left me never a penny nor a foot of land; but he left mc that which has been worth more to me than all money and property, viz.; the heritage of a clean, manly, honorable. Christian name and life. I have never seen the time nor place I was ashamed to acknowledge that David Munhall was my father. Be careful of your good name. It is of priceless worth.

Also — Jesus said: “But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven,” etc. (Matt. 6: 20). My brother, if you live to be eighty years old and then die, you will have lived only 29,220 days, or 701,280 hours. So the longest life is very brief. I submit, gentlemen, that it is every way better to live these days of our earthly sojourn in poverty, with a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men, preserving unsullied our good name, and then for all Eternity enjoy the inexhaustible riches and unfading glories of the heavenly life, than at the sacrifice of conscience and a good name become a millionaire many times over, and then be banished from the presence of the Holy One into outer darkness where “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Second. Mere earthly pleasures are necessarily unsatisfying. They may, for the time, seem to satisfy; but, too often, alas! indulgence in them is followed by regret and heartache. But when a man is reconciled to God, and has His presence to go with him, His unfailing blessing to rest upon him, then he can understand what the Psahiiist meant when he said “How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.” As the rivers pour their floods ceaselessly to the sea, so the pleasures God will give to the obedient soul, shall be all satisfying and constant. ‘’The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich; and he addeth no sorrow with it.” (Prov. 10:22.) At the last earthly pleasures can have nothing to offer us that we desire or need. But to those who love and obey God there are the all-satisfying pleasures here, and concerning the other life we know in God’s “presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psa. 16: 11.)

Third. The Psalmist prayed “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” The Apostle Paul gave expression to the same thought when he prayed “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,” etc. (Eph. 1: 17-23.)

Our sins have separated and estranged us from

God. God has “made peace through the blood of

his Cross, by him to reconcile all things unto

himself.” But our “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” are reckoned as certain elements in the procuring cause of our reconciliation and salvation as the atoning work accomplished by the Son of God upon Golgotha’s Cross. If, therefore, gentlemen, you will repent and believe you will “have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” and may, while living here, enjoy unhindered fellowship with God, the Father Almighty, and then dwell with Him forever amid the ineffable delights of the Heavenlies.

Young gentlemen, as I look into your faces knowing what are the temptations that beset you, and the problems of life and the tremendous issues involved, I say, you need God on your side in order that life may be pure, noble and heroic; that it may be a success; that it may be worth living; to say nothing of the hereafter. I therefore, by the sublimest considerations man can possibly consider, exhort you to now open your minds, hearts and lives to the truth as it is in our Lord Jesus Christ, and get right with God.

Dr. Munhall always concludes this discourse by relating the story of his conversion, and telling of some of his subsequent experiences.