p. 90 | SUICIDE IN PARIS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 13, 1877

SUICIDE IN PARIS.

All that wealth, art, luxury, sensuality, and thoughtless gayety can do for a city has been done for Paris. It is famed for its beauty, taste, and godlessness. The religion that has prevailed there has kept the Bible from the people; and the infidelity that has raged there has caused the streets to flow with human gore. A nation without a Bible has exhibited to the world the horrors of Saint Bartholomew’s Eve, the butcheries of the Reign of Terror, and the conflagrations of la Commune. When Napoleon was First Consul, it is stated that an Englishman in Paris desired to obtain a copy of the French Bible. He applied to various Parisian book-sellers, but there was not one copy to be found for sale in the city.

Surely such a city as this might be a good place to test the beauty of infidel theories which are afloat in the world. They have been tested there, and what is the result?

Says the American Cultivator, in an article on self-murder: “Statistical science is abolishing all our long-conceived notions of light-heartedness and gayety, as applied to the French nation. Notwithstanding the beautiful climate and country, and a material prosperity which astonishes the rest of the world, still the population of France remains stationary, the deaths, by one means or another, fully equaling the births. One startling reason of this is that suicide is so frequent throughout the land, especially in populous districts. No other city in the world can show such remarkable statistics relating to self-murder as can Paris. The means employed are various, the waters of the Seine and the fumes of charcoal being most frequently resorted to; but there is one mode of suicide which is almost unique, and, so far as we know, peculiar to the Parisians. The strange means of snatching death from the Maker’s hands is not by poison, drowning, the dagger, or the pistol, but by a flying leap into eternity.”

“For instance, official statistics show that one hundred and twenty-seven individuals have thrown themselves from the summit of the Column of Vendome, which rears itself nearly a hundred and fifty feet in the air, from the center of the Place Vendome. Our readers will remember that this lofty structure was destroyed during the mad reign of the Commune, but it has since been restored. From the Column of July, situated in the Place de la Bastille, rearing its lofty proportions over one hundred and fifty feet heavenward, forty-nine individuals have leaped to destruction. Strange must have been the infatuation of those desperate people as they stood upon the lofty pinnacle, beside the gilded figure of the Genius of Liberty, for a moment, before they hurled themselves into space. Of course the actuating cause in almost every instance must have been different; no two persons are stimulated by the same purposes.

“Another place in Paris rendered memorable in a similar manner is the Arc de Triomphe, at the upper end of the Champs Elysees. From its lofty height thirty-one individuals have hurled themselves into the jaws of death. This triumphal arch is situated upon the highest grounds in Paris, and is the finest and largest structure of the kind in the world. But of all the lofty heights from which the suicides of the French capital have leaped to certain destruction, the famous tower of Notre Dame takes precedence. Here an official record has been kept since the commencement of the last century, and it exhibits the fact that seven hundred and sixty-seven desperate human beings have thrown away their lives by leaping from the sky-reaching tower to the pavement below. Forty suicides per month is no unusual average in Paris from one year to another.”

Whoever is “without God” is also “without hope in the world.” And a city or a nation without Christ, without the Bible, without Sabbaths, or worship, or prayers, or songs of praise, will have lurid clouds above it, volcanic fires beneath, and mingled

with its periodic upheavals and convulsions will be the wails of despairing souls who, hopeless of the life that is to come, will throw away the “promise of the life that now is.”

“My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments; for length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.” Prov. 3:1.—The Armory.