The Brookhaven leader., 1889-04-18
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
A Discourse on the Pitfalls and Dan.
gers that Beset Young Men.
The Influences of Society and Their Ten
dencv to Beget Extravagance-Debta
and Dishonesty the sequel-Re-
iiglon the Only Anchor.

The following sermon by Rev. T. De-
Witt Talmage is directed particularly to
the young men Of our great cities. 1t was
predicated on the text:
AS an OK TO the slaughter.-Proberbs VIII, 81.
There Is nothing In the voice or manner
OF the butcher to indicate to the OK that
there is death ahead. The OK thinks he is
going on to q rich pasture deld Of clover,
| where all day long he will revel In the
herbaceous luxuriance; 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 q door
way. where he is fastened, and, with q
we'll aimed stroke, the axe fells him; and
so the anticipation of the redolent pasture
heId is completely disappointed. So
many young man has been driven on
by temptation to what he thought would
be paradisiacal enjoyment; but after
awhile influences with darker hue and
swarthier arm close in upon him, and he
finds that instead OF making an incursion
into garden he has been driven "as an
OK to the slaughter"
l. We are apt to blame young men for
being destroyed when we ought to blame
the influences that destroy them. Society
slaughters a great many young men by
the behest: you must keep up appear.
ances;" 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 a boarding.
house. II you haven't the money, Dor.
row. IL you can't borrow make false
entry, or subtract here and there bill
from a bundle. of bank bills, you will only
have to make the deception little while;
IN few months, or in year or two, you
can make all right. Nobody will be hurt
by it; nobody will be the wiser. You
yourself will no. be damaged" By that
awful process a hundred thousand men
have been slaughtered for time and
slaughtered for eternity.
Suppose you borrow. There Is nothing
wrong about borrowing money. There is
hardly a man in the house but has some.
times borrowed money. Vast estates
have been built on a borrowed dollar.
But there are two kinds of borrowed
money. Money borrowed for the pur-
pose Of starting or keeping up legitimate
enterprise and expense, and money bor-
rowed to get that which you can do with.
out. The first is right, the other Is wrong.
If you have money enough of your own to
buy coat, however plain, and then you
borrow money for u dandy's outfit, you
have taken the first revolution of the wheel
down grade. Borrow for the necessities;
that may be we'll. Borrow for the lux
uries; that tips your prospects over in the
wrong direction.
The Bible distinctly says the borrower
Is servant of the lender. 1t is bad state
of things when you have to go down some
other street to escare meeting some one
whom you owe. If young men knew what
Is the despotism of being in debt, more of
them would keep out of it. What did debt
do for Lord Bacon. with mind towering
above the centuriesS 1t induced him to
take brlbes and convict himself as a GRIM
inal before oil ages. What did debt do
for Walter Scott? Broken hearted at
Abbottsfordl Kept him writing until his
hand gave out in paralysis, to keep the
sheriff away from his pictures and statu-
airy. Better for him if he had minded the
maxim which he had chiseled over the fire.
place at Abbottsford: "Waste not, want
not"
The trouble Is, my friends, the people
do not understand the ethics OF going in
debt, and that IL you purchase goods with
no expectation Of paying for them, or go
into debts which you can not meet, you
just steal so much money. If go into a
grocer's store, and l buy sugars and cof-
fees and meats, with no capacity to pay
for them and no intention of paying for
them, am more dishonest than if l go
into the store, and when the grocer's face
Is turned the other way fill my pockets
with articles Of merchandise and carry
off ham. In the one case | take the
merchants time, and / take the time of
his messenger to transfer the goods to
my house, while in the other case l take
none of the time of the merchant, and l
wait upon myself, and l transfer the
goods without any trouble to him. In
other words, sneak thief is not so bad
as man who contracts for debts he never
expects to pay.
Yet in all our cities there are families
that move every May day to get into prox-
unity to other grocers, and meat shops,
and apothecaries. They owe every body
within half mile of where they now live,
and next May they will move into dis
tant part of the city, finding new lot of
victims. Meanwhile you, the honest fam
lily 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
predecessor 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
and with an air of affluence, orders the
finest steaks, and the highest-priced
sugars, and the best of the canned fruits,
and, perhaps, all the newspapers. And
the debts will keep on accumuiating until
he gets his goods on the 3Oth OF next Aprli
on the furniture cart.
Now let me say, If there are any such
persons in the house, II you have any re-
gard for your own convenience you had
better remove to some greatly distant
part of the city. 1t is too bad that, hav-
ing had all the trouble in cons 1ming the
goods, YOU should also have the trouble
of being dunned. And let me say that II
YOU find this picture your own photo
graph. instead of being in church you
ought to be in the penitentiary. No Won
der that so many of our merchants fail in
business. They are swindled into bank
ruptcy by these wandering Arabs, these
nomads of city life. They cheat the gro
Ger out of the green apples which made
them sick, the physician who attends
their distress, and the undertaken who
Ats them out for departure from the
neiehborhood where they owe every body
H. 1ohf ~ the