The intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1887-1891, 1889-04-13
EVIL INFLUENCES.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the
Temptations of Young Men.
The EVIL of Reckless Borrowing-A Picture
of City Life-The Day of Reckoning
Sure to Come-How to Remedy
the Evil.

sermon at st. Louis tool for his subject
"The Slaughter" and his text, Proverbs
vii. 81: "As an OK to the slaughter" He
said:
There is nothing in the voice or in
the manner of the butcher to indicate
to the OK that there is death ahead.
The OK thinks he is going on to a rich
pasture field OF clover, where all day long
he will revel in the herbaceous luxuri-
ance; but after awhile the men and the
boys close in upon him with sticks and
stones and shouting, and drive him
through bars and into a doorway, where
he is fastened, and with a we'll aimed
stroke the axe fells him; and so the an
ticipation of the redolent pasture field Is
completely disappointed. So many a
young man has been driven on by tempta-
ton to what he thought would be para
disaical enjoyment; but after awhile in-
huences with darker hue and swarthier
arm close in upon him, and he finds that
instead of making an excursion into a
garden he has been driven las an OK to
the slaughter"
First-We are apt to blame young men
for being destroyed when we ought to
blame the influences that destroy them.
Society s~laughters a great many young
men by the behest: "You must keep up
appearances; whatever be your salary
you must dress as well as others, you
must wine and brandy as many friends,
you must smoke as costly cigars, you must
give as expensive entertainments, and you
must live in as fashionable n boarding
house. II you haven the money, borrow.
IL you can't borrow Make false entry, or
subtract here and there a bill from a bum
die of bank bills; you will only have to
unaRa tho 6aeantinu n littla yyhila. in a few
months, or in a year or two, o can make
all right. Nobody will be hurt by It; no.
body will be the wiser. You yourself will
not be damaged" By that awful process
o hundr thousand men have been
slaughtered for time and slaughtered for
eternity.
Suppose you borrow money. There is
nothing wrong about borrowing money.
There Is hardly q man in the house but
has sometimes borrowed money. Vast es-
tates have been built on a borrowed dollar.
But there are two kinds of borrowed
money. Money borrowed for the purpose
Of starting or keeping u plegitimate enter
prise and expense, and money borrowed
to get that which you can do without.
The first is right; the other is wrong. II
you have money enough of your W to
buy q coat, however plain, and then you
DOrrOW money lOT u uhnuy OubhO you
have taken the first revolution Of the
wheel down grade. Borrow for the lux
uries-that tips our prospects over in the
wrong direction.
The Bible distinctly says the borrower
Is servant of the lender. 1t is a bad state
of things when you have to go down some
other street to escape meeting some one
whom You owe. Ifyoung men knew what
Is the despotism of being in debt more of
them would keep out of it.
The trouble is, my friends, the people do
not understand the ethics of going in debt,
and hat II o purchase goods with no
expectation of paying for them, or go into
debts which you can not meet, you steal
just SO much money. IL go into n gro
GERS store and / buy sugars and coffees
and meats with no capacity to pay for
them and no intention of paying for them,
I am more dishonest than If l go into the
store, and when the grocer's face is turned
the other way, 1 fill my pockets with the
articles of merchandise and carry of a
ham.
Yet in all our cities there are families
that move every May day to get into prox-
unity to other grocers and meatshops and
a~pothecaries. They owe everybody within
half a mile of where they now live, and
next May they will move into a distant
part Of the city, finding a new lot Of vic
Tins Meanwhile you, the honest family
In the new house, are bothered day by day
by the knocking at the door of disap-
pointed bakers and butchers and dry
goods dealers and newspaper carriers, and
you are asked where your predecessor is.
You do not know. 1t was arranged you
should not know. Meanwhile your pre-
decessor has gone to some distant part of
the city, and the people who have any
thing to sell have sent their wagons and
stopped there to solicit the valuable"
custom of the new neighbor, and he, the
new neighbor, with great complacency
end with an air Of affluence, orders the
finest steal and the highest priced sugars,
and the best of the canned fruits, and per-
haps, all the newspapers. And the debts
will keep on accommodating until he gets
his goods OF April 30 in the furniture cart.
Now, let me say, IL there are n such in
the house, IL you have anyregard for your
own convenience, you had better remove
to some greatly distant part of the city.
It Is too bad that, having had all the
trouble of consuming the goods, you
should also nave the trouble of being
dunnedi And let ms say that if you find
thatthis pictures your photograph, instead
of being in church you ought to be In the
penitentiary. No wonder that SO many of
our merchants fail in business. They are
swfndled into bankruptcy by these wan
dering Arabs, these nomads of city life.
Now our young men are coming up in
this depraved state Of commercial ethics,
and / am solicitous about them. l want
to warn them against being slaughtered
on the sharp edges of debt. You want
many things you have not, my young
friends. You shall have them IL you have
patience and honesty and industry. Ger
tain ines of conduct always lead out to
certain successes.
There Is q law which controls even
things that seem ~haphazard. l a been
told by those who have observed that 1t Is
possible to calculate just how many letters
will be sent to the dead letter office every
year through misdirection; that it Is pos
sible to calculate just how many letters
will be detained for lack of postage stampt
through the forgetfulness of the senders,
and that IL Is possible to tell just how
many people will fall in the street by
slipping on IN orange peel. In Other
words, there are no accidents. The most
insignificant event you ever heard of Ii
the link between two eternities - the
eternity of the past and the eternity Of the
future. Head the right way, young man,
n you will come on of the right goal.
Bring me n young man and tell me
what his physical health is. and what his
mental caliber, and what his habits, and
will tell you what will lie his destiny for
this world and the destiny for the world
to come, and / will make five inaccurate
p~rophesies out of five hundred. All this
makes me solicitous In regard to young
men. and / want In make them narvous 10
regard to the construction of ~unpayable
debts. / give you a paragraph of my own
experience:
My first settlement as pastor was in a
village. My salary was $500 and a par
sonage. The amount seemed enormou to
me. / said to myself: WHAT all this for
one year?" I was afraid of getting world
ly under SO much prosperity Iresolved
60 invite the congregation to my house in
groups of twenty five each. We began,
and as they were the best congregation in
all the world, and we felt that nothing
wa too good for them we piled all the
Injuries on the table. never completed
the undertaking. At the end of six
months I was in financial despair.
found what every young man finds in
time to save himself or too late, that you
must measure the size of n mans body be-
fore you begin to cut the cloth for his
coat.
When a young man wilfully and Of
choice, having the comforts Of life, goes
into the contraction of unpaynble debts he
knows not into what he goes. The credit
ors get after the debtor; the PACK OF
hounds in full cry and alas! for the rein
deer. They jingle his doorbell before he
gets up In the morning, they jingle his