The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1877-11-21
H GOLDEN CALF"
The Evils Of Speculation and the DIANA Tor
Riches, as Described by TnlmnRe Mt the
Brooklyn Tabernacle. ~

IkAShCat ~ ~
Brooklyn Tabernacle.
The following extracts from q dis.
course of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage,
of Brooklyn, will be read1with interest /:
Pull aside this curtain and: you
see the golden calf of modern idolatry:
It is not like other idols. made out OF
stocks or stone, but it has an ear so SEN
sitive that it can hear the whispers on
Wall street and Third street and State
street, and the footballs Of the Bank OF
England, and the futter of a French
man heart on the Bourse. It has an
eye 30 keen that it can see the rust on
on the farm of Michigan wheat and the
insect in the Maryland peach-orchard,
and the trampled grain under the hoof
of the Russian war-charger. 1t is 80
mighty hat it swings any way it will
the worlds shipping. It has its foot on
all the merchantmen and the steamers.
It started the American civil war, and.
under God stopped it, and it will decide
the Turko-R Russian contest. One broker
in September. 1859, in New York,
shouted : "One hundred and sixty for
a million |" and the whole continent
shiyered. This golden calf of the text has
its right front foot in New York, its left
front foot in Chicago, its right back foot
in Charleston, its left back foot i'll New
Orleans, and when it shakes itself it
shakes the world. Oh I! this is a mighty
god-the golden calf of the worlds
worship.
But every god must have its temple,
and this golden calf of the text is no ex-
ception. It's temple is vaster than St.
Paul of the English, and st. Peter Of
the Italians, and Alhambra of the Span
ards, and the Parthenon of the Greeks,
and the Mahal Tai of the Hinloos, and
all the other cathedrals put together.
Its pillars are grooved and futed with
gold, and it's ribbed arches are lowering
gold, and it's chandeliers are descending
gold, and its floors are tessellated gold,
and it's vaults are crowded heaps of gold,
and it's spires and domes are soaring
gold, and it's organ pipes are resounding
gold, and it's pedals are tramping god,
and its stops pulled out are flashing gold,
while standing at the head Of the tenn
pie, as the presiding deity, are the hoofs
and shoulders and eyes and ears and
nostrils of the calf of gold.
Further every god must have not
only its temple, but its altar Of sacrifice,
and this golden calf of the text is no ex-
ception. Its altar is not made out of
stone as other affairs, but out Of count
ing-room desks and f~re-proof safes, and
it is a broad, a long, a high altar. The
victims sacrificed on it are the Swartouts,
and the Ketchams, and the Fisks, and
the Tweeds, and ten thousand other
people who are slain before this golden
calf. What does this god care about the
groans and struggles Of the victims be-
fore it? With cold, metallic eye it looks
on and yet lets them suffer. Oh !
heavens and earth, what an altar ! what
a sacrifice of body, mind, andsoul |! The
physical health of a great multitude is
flung on to this sacrifcial altar. They
cannot sleep, and they take chloral and
morphine and into1icants. Some Of
them struggle in a nightmare Of stocks,
and at one o'clock in the morning sud-
denly rise up shouting: ga thousand
shares of New York Central-one hun
dred and eight and a half take it!"'
until the whole family is affrighted, and
they fall back on their pillow and sleep
until they are awakened again by a
"corner in Pacific Mail, or a sudden
"rise" of Rock Island. Their nerves
gone, their digestion gone, their brain
gone, they die. The gowned ecclesiastic
comes in and reads the funeral service /:
"Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord" Mistake. They did not "die
in the Lord;" the golden calf kicked
them! The trouble is, when men sacri-
fee themselves on this altar suggested
in the text. they not only sacrifice them
selves, but they sacrifice their families.
If q man by an i'll course is determined
to 60 to perdition, I suppose you will
have to let him go; but he puts his wife
and children in an equipage that is the
amazement of the avenues, and the
driver lashes the horses into two whirl-
winds, and the spokes fash in the sun,
and the golden headgear of the harness
CLEANS, until a black calamity takes the
bits of the horses and stops them, and
shouts to the luxuriant occupants of the
euuipage: sect out!" They get out.
They get down. That husband and
father flung his family so hard they
never got up. There was the mark on
them for life-the mark of a split hoof-
the death-dealing hoof of the golden
calf.
Solomon offered in one sacrifice, on one
occasion, twenty-five thousand oxen and
one hundred and twenty thousand sheep;
but that was a tame sacrifice compared
with the multitude Of men who are sacri-
fcing themselves on this altar of the
golden calf, and sacrificing their families
with them. sThe soldiers of General Have
lock in India walked literally ankle deep
in the blood of "the house of massacre"
where two hundred women and children
had been slain by the Sepoys; but the
blood around about this altar of the
golden calf flows up to the knee, flows to
the girdle, flows to the shoulder, flows
to the lip. Great God Of heaven and
earth have Mercy! The golden calf has
none. 70"
Still the degrading worship goes on,
and the devotees kneel and kiss the dust,
and count their golden beads, and cross
themselves with the blood of their own
sacrifice. The music rolls on under the
arches ; it is made of blinking silver and
blinking gold, and the rattling specie Of
the banks and brokers' shops, and the
voices Of all the exchanges. The 80
prano Of the worship is carried by the