The Russellville Democrat., 1889-03-21
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The "Wrong Uses of Money" and
 the Danger Therein.
The Sin of the Hour the Diversion oi Money From It's Legitimate Uses to Channels of Corrupt, Dishonest
 and Vicious Expenditures.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, in . recent Iermon at the Brooklyn I..vvrnacle, took | for his subiec. the ''Wrong Uses of Money,r from which he evolved the fol- | lowing pointed discourse. His text was ::
 They that will be rich fall into temptation and snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and per dition.-GL Timothy, vii. 9l
 That is the Niagara Falls, over which rush a multitude of souls, namely, the de- termination to have money anyhow, right or wrong. Tell me how man gets his money and what he does with it, and will tell you his character and what will be his destiny in this world and the next. propose to speak this morning about some of the ruinous modes of getting money.
 We recently passed through a National election, in which it has been estimated that thirty million dollars were expend- ed. I think about twenty million dollars or 1t were spent in out and -out bribery. Both parties raised all they could for this purpose. But that was only on a large scale what has been done on a smaller scale for fifty years and in all depart ments.
 Politics, from being the science of good government, has often been bedraggled into the synonym for trueulency and turpitude. A monster sin, plausible, po- | tent, pestiferous, has gone forth to do its dreadful work in all ages. Its two hands are rotten with leprosy. 1t keeps its right hand hidden in a deep pocket. The left hand is clenched, and with it's ichorous knuckle it taps at the door of the courtroom, the legislative hall, the Con- gress and the Parliament. The door swings open and the monster enters and glides through the aisle of the council chamber as softly as a slippered page, and then it takes it's right hand from it's deep pocket and offers it to judge or legis. lator. If that hand be taken and the palm of the intruder crosses the palm of the official, the leprosy crosses from palm to palm in round blotch, round as a gold eagle, and the virus spreads, and the doom is fixed and the victim perishes. Let bribery, accursed of God and man, stand up for trial.
 The Bible arraigns it again and again. Samuel says of his two sons who became judges 'They took bribes and perverted judgment" David says of some of his pursuers: "Their right hand is full of bribes." Amos says of some men in his day: "They take bribe and turn aside the poor in the gate" Eliphaz foretells the crushing blows of Gods indignation, declaring: Fire shall consume the tab ernacles of bribery"
 "Oh," says some one, "there's no need of talking against bribery by promise or by dollars, because every man has his price," do not believe it. Even heathen- ism and the Dark Ages have furnished specimens of incorruptibility. A cadi of Smyrna had a case brought before him on trial. A man gave him five hundred ducats in bribery. The case came on. The briber had many witnesses. The poor man on the other had no witnesses. At the close of the case the cadi said:
 ''This poor man has no witnesses, he thinks; I shall produce in his behalf five hundred witnesses against the other side"
 And then pulling out the bag of ducats from under thS ottoman, he dashed it down at the feet of the briber. saying:
 q give my decision against you"
 Epaminondas, offered bribe, said:
 ''I will do this thing if it be right, and if 1t be wrong all your goods can not per suade me-"
 Fabricius, of the Roman Senate, was offered bribe by Pyrrhus of Macedon. Fabricius answered.:
 
 Roman people; you keep your riches and will keep my poverty and reputation"
 The President of the American Con- gross, during the American revolution, General Reed, was offered ten thousand guineas by foreign commissioners if he would betray this country. He replied:
 'Gentlemen, am very poor man, but tell your King he is not rich enough to buy me-"
 But why go so far, when you and I, if we move in honorable society, know men and women who by all the concentrated force of earth and he'll could not be bribed. They would no more be bribed than you would think of tempting an angel of light to exchange Heaven for the pit. To offer bribe is villainy, but it is a very poor compliment to the man to whom it is offered.
 have not much faith in those people who go about bragging how much they could get if they would only sell out. Those women who claim that they are very often insulted need to understand that there is something in their carriage to invite insult There are men at AL bany and at Harrisburg and at Washing ton who would no more be approached by a bribe than pirate boat with few cut lasses would dare to attack British man -of-war with two banks of guns on each side loaded to the touch hole. They are incorruptible men, and they are the few men who are to save the city and save the land. Meanwhile, my ad- vice is to all people to keep out of politics unless you are invulnerable to this style of temptations. Indeed, if you are naturally stong, you need religious buttressing. Nothing but the grace of God can sustain our public men and make them what we wish. I wish that there might come an old-fashioned revival of religion, that it might break out in Con- gross and in the Legislatures and bring many of the leading Republicans and Democrats down on the anxious seat of repentance. That day will come or some- thing better, for the Bible declares that kings and queens shall become nursing fathers and mothers to the church, and if the greater in authority, then certainly the less.
 My charge, also, to parents is, remem- Der that this evil of bribery often begins in the home circle and in the nursery. Do not bribe your children. Teach them to do that which is right and not because of ten cents or the orange you will give them. There is great difference between rewarding virture and making the profits thereof the impeding motive. That man who is honest merely because honesty is the best policy" is already moral bankrupt.
 My charge is to you, in all departments of life, steer clear of bribery, all of you. Every man aud woman at some time will be tempted to do wrong for compensation. The bribe may not be offered in money. It may be offered in social position. Let us remember that there is day coming when the most secret transaction of pri- yate life and of public life will come up for public apprehension. We can not bribe death, we can not bribe sickness, we can not bribe the grave, we can not bribe the judgments of that God who thunders