ally give out. He has pawned
his watch. His health is failing him. His credit perishes. He is too
poor to stay in the city, and he is too poor to pay his way home to
the country. Down! down! Why do the low fellows of the city now stick
to him so closely? Is it to help him back to a moral and spiritual
life? Oh, no! I will tell you why they stay; they are the Philistines
stripping the slain.

Do not look where I point, but yonder stands a man who once had a
beautiful home in this city. His house had elegant furniture, his
children were beautifully clad, his name was synonymous with honor and
usefulness; but evil habit knocked at his front door, knocked at his
back door, knocked at his parlor door, knocked at his bedroom door.
Where is the piano? Sold to pay the rent. Where is the hat-rack? Sold
to meet the butcher's bill. Where are the carpets? Sold to get bread.
Where is the wardrobe? Sold to get rum. Where are the daughters?
Working their fingers off in trying to keep the family together.
Worse and worse, until everything is gone. Who is that going up the
front steps of that house? That is a creditor, hoping to find some
chair or bed that has not been levied upon. Who are those two
gentlemen now going up the front steps? The one is a constable, the
other is the sheriff. Why do they go there? The unfortunate is morally
dead, socially dead, financially dead. Why do they go there? I will
tell you why the creditors, and the constables, and the sheriffs go
there. They are, some on their own account, and some on account of the
law, stripping the slain.

An ex-member of Congress, one of the most eloquent men that ever stood
in the House of Representatives, said in his last moments: "This is
the end. I am dying--dying on a borrowed bed, covered by a borrowed
sheet, in a house built by public charity. Bury me under that tree in
the middle of the field, where I shall not be crowded, for I have been
crowded all my life." Where were the jolly politicians and the
dissipating comrades who had been with him, laughing at his jokes,
applauding his eloquence, and plunging him into sin? They have left.
Why? His money is gone, his reputation is gone, his wit is gone, his
clothes are gone, everything is gone. Why should they stay any longer?
They have completed their work. They have stripped the slain.

There is another way, however, of doing that same work. Here is a man
who, through his sin, is prostrate. He acknowledges that he has d