News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-12-07
A WARNING FROM ST. PAUL.
THE CURSE OF ILL-GOTTEN WEALTH.
Rev. Robert COIIyer on the Danger OF Specu-
IatiOn-A Warning TO Young Men,

his text from l. Thessalonlans, w., Ii,
12-'" And that We study to be quiet and
to do your own business, and to work
with your own hands as we commanded
YOU: that We may walk honestly toward
them that are without, and that ye may
have lack of nothing. There was, when
this was written, the preacher said,
spirit of speculation rife among the Peo-
pie of Thessaly and the Apostle Paul
saw that they were more given up to
dreaming than to working. There was
too much talk about the celestial city
and about its wealth and its treasures,
and not enough endeavor to win the
right of entry there. The people were
irving to win and discover new roads and
short cuts to wealth, and in the mean
time Paul saw that the true manhood and
the true Christianity was rapidly evapor-
ating out of them. So he warned them
in words plain and to the point that the
way to prosperity, and to happiness and
to godliness was for each man to do his
appointed work, to contribute something
to the general good, and so win the right
to take something from society and the
world. The world owes no man living,
but it offers to each man a chance to
make an honest living, to enjoy all that
can naturally be partaken of, and more
than that no one man Will demand.
The warning which St. Paul uttered
had, the preacher thought, special APP
plication in this day and generation. 1t
was an era of speculation, and gilt-edged
stocks were more talked about, more
fought about and more thought about
than the manhood which comes from a
successful career, whether the career be
the humble one of q handicraftsman or
the more responsible one of director of
great works. Men think Of the celestial
city only as a place where the gold lies
so near the surface that there is no need
of digging for it where corner lots near
the throne must be good holdings and
where there is to be eternal succession of
good things without the necessity of any
work to enjoy them. Men are wildly
seeking to reach the one goal of wealth
by some by-way rather than the high
way of work We are drifting on and on
toward a crash. There is no talk of the
values of things, but of the prices which
may may be obtained. A man doubles
his stock by some legerdemain of the
printing press and then wonders to wake
up some morning and find out that he
has, after all, only diluted his previous
wealth, and that as he has done nothing
to merit reward, that he has earned
nothing substantial. Men whom we
thought first-class suddenly find the
Penitentiary door opening before them.
They were shams, and are but getting
their deserts. Men who were princes of
wealth turn out to be really beggars.
They had contributed nothing to the
world, and when their borrowed plumage
was stripped off them only the gaunt
skeleton of real poverty was found.
Gods laws are not to be disobeyed with
IMMUNITY. The righteous are never for
saken, nor are His seed found begging
bread, nor, on the other hand, are the
ungodly and the undeserving long per-
mitted to enjoy that which they have not
earned. You will recall a score of shin
ing contradictions to this law All they
are only seeming anomalies. Wait, and
in Gods good time the cycle of retribu-
ton will sweep them from your sight
and the power of the law of Heaven made
manifest.
There is tendency to drift on to the
very antithesis of communism; it is not
something for every man, but everything
for some men. The fabric is rotten and
it must come down. And, again, the
words of Scripture come to pass, that
there is lack of nothing when you do |
your own business and work with your
own hands. If you are a baker or a
preacher, a doctor or q blacksmith, at
tend to your own business and let specu-
lation alone. There Is comfort in money |
honestly earned and well spent, but none
in the gains that come from turn of |
stocks, from some manipulation by which |
you get the better of your fellows, and |
that they could have robbed you as you |
rob them is no justification. 1t does
notmake your enjoyment of the |
money the greater to know that if you
had not got it by hook and crook that
somebody else would have gotten it so.
Gods command through His apostles
and His disciples is directed to each of
you individually, and each one in his own
right and in his own person will be held |
to an account for the purity of that man
hood which it should be his highest aim
to cultivate.
In concluding, DR.. Collyer said he was
moved to preach a sermon ON such topic |
and to use plain words, that young men
may be warned in time. There is room |
enough for all and competence for each |
one that may seek it, but there are, as
as well, many glittering pits of de-
cit, where there is a seeming substance,
but really only bartering of manhood |
and wOmanhood for a bauble There |
were fine clothes and soiled manhood. |
jeweled hands and blackened hearts. and
the clothes and the Jewels which could
be seen of men represented all that there
was of value about their wearers. They
were the veneering to a mass of deceit |
and corruption, and God looked down !
deep enough to see all that there was of |
man or woman, no matter how finely he |
or she looked on the outside. He knew |
the generous giver who felt pride in
comforting the afflicted and the sordid |
seeker after notoriety, who gave the drip
pings of his wealth and was not easy
until the fact had been blazoned out in
the newspapers. God is not deceived 10y
trappings, and for the devil they are the
withes by which he binds his victims and !
and drags them down to perdition.
Wealth got in honest channels is obedi-
ence to Gods laws and spent i'll further
ing His kingdom, raises man to heaven,
but snatched in the Whirlpool of specula-
ton, wrested from less fortunate ones in
the battle of life it is weight which
brushes out ones manhood, and with that |
gone there is nothing worth living for
and nothing to look forward to in dying.
A PrOphesy.
In 1869 the late Matt H. Carpenter
predicted that not many years would
elapse before there would be practical
ly but one telegraph company in the