The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-07-17
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TALMACE ON HARD TINES.
He breaches a Sermon on Comfort For
Business Men.

The Struggle For Riches an Unend~
ing One From Years Opening to
Years Ending.
Brooklyn, July 16.-Rev. DR. Talmage
has selected as his subject for to-day, q
topic Of the greatest interest and timeli-
ness, viz: Comfort for Business Men"
the text being Isaiah 40: 2: Speak ye
comfortably to Jerusalem"
What an awful six weeks in commercial
circles The crashing Of banks from San
Francisco to New York, and from ocean
to ocean. The complete uncertainty that
has halted all styles Of business for three
months, and the pressure of the money
market for the last year have put all bar
gain-makers at their wits end Some Of
the best men in the land have faltered;
men whose hearts are enlisted in every
good work; and whose hands
have blessed every great charity.
The Church of God can afford to
extend to them her sympathies and
plead before heaven with all availing
prayer. The schools such men have es-
tablished, the churches they have built,
the asylums and beueicent institutions
they have fostered, will be their eulogy
long after their banking Institutions are
forgotten, Such men can never fail.
They have their treasures in banks that
never break and will be milliOraires for
ever. The stringency of the money mar
ket, | am glad to say, begins to relax.
May the wisdom of Almighty God come
down upon our national legislature at
their Convening next month in Washing
ton, and such results be reached as shall
restore confidence and revive trade and
multiply properties! Yet, not only now
IN tbf tf,,,o pF fyapgia1 ltrt oil
through life our active business people
have a struggle and think it will be ap-
propriate and useful for me to talk about
their trials and try TO offer some curative
prescriptions.
In the first place l have to remark that
a great many OF our business men feel
ruinous trials and temptations coming to
them from small and limited capital in
business. II is everywhere understood
that it takes now three or four times as
much to do business well. as once IL did.
Once, a few hundred dollars were turned
into goods-the merchant would be his
own store sweeper, his own salesman,
his own bookkeeper; he would manage
all the affairs himselfsand everything
would be net profit. Wonderful changes
have come; costly apparatus, extensive
advertising, exorbitant store rents, heavy
taxation, expensive agencies are only
parts of the demand made upon our COM
mercial men; and when they have found
themselves in such circumstances with
small capital, they have sometimes been
tempted to run against the rocks Of moral
and financial destruction This tempta-
tion of limited capital has ruined men
in two ways. Sometimes they have
shrunk down under the temptation. They
have yielded the battle before the first
shot was fired. At the first hard gun
they surrendered Their knees knocked
together at the fall Of the auctioneer's
hammer They blanchcd at the financial
peril. They did not understand that
there is such thing as heroism in mer-
chandise, and that there are Waterloos OF
the counter, and that man can fight no
braver battle with the sword than he can
with the yardstick. Their souls melted
in them because sugars were up when
they wanted to buy, and down when they
wanted to sell, and unstable goods were
on the shelf, and bad debts in their
ledger The gloom of their countenances
oVershadOwed even their dry goods
and groceries. Dependency coming
from limited capital, blasted
them. Others have felt it in
different way. They have said ''Here
l have been trudging along. have been
trying to be honest all these years. find
il is Of no use. Now it is make or break"
The small craft that could have stood the
stream, IS put out beyond the lighthouse,
on the great sea of speculation. Stocks
are the dice with which he CANDLES. He
bought for q few dollars vast tracts Of
western land Some man at the east liy-
ing on a fat homestead, meets this gam
bier of fortune, and is persuaded to trade
off his estate here, for lots in a western
city with large avenues, and costly pail
aces and lake steamers smoking at
the wharves, and rail trains coming
down with lightning speed from every di-
rection. There it is all on paperl The
CITY has never been built, nor the rail-
roads constructed, but everything points
that way, and the thing will be done as
sure as you live And that is the process by
which many have been tempted, through
limitation of capital into labyrinthS
from which they could not be extricated. L
would not want to chain honest enter
prise. / would not want to block up any Of
the avenues for honst accumulation that
open before young men. On the contrary,
/ would like to cheer them on and rejoice
when they reach the goal but when there
are such multitudes of men going to ruin
for this life and the life that is to come,
through wrong notions OF what are
lawful spheres of enterprise, it is the
duty of the ministers of religion, and the
friends Of all young men, to utter plain,
emphatic, unmistakable protest. These
are the influences that drown men In deS-
truction and perdition.
Again, q great many of our business
men are tempted to Over-anXiety and care.
You know that nearly all commercial
businesses are oyer-done in this day.
Smitten with the love of quick gain, our
cities are crowded with men resolved to
be rich at all hazards. They do not care
how money comes. Our best merchants
are thrown into competition with men of
more means and less conscience, and il
an opportunity of accumulation be neg
lected one hour, some one else picks it
up. From January to December the
struggle goes on. Night gives no quiet
to limbs tossing in restlessness, nor to a
brain that will not stop thinking. The
dreams are narrowed by imaginary loss
and flushed with imaginary gains. Even
the Sabbath cannot dam back the tide of
anxiety; for this wave of worldliness
dashes clear over the churches, and
leaves its foam on Bibles and prayer
books Men who are living on salaries,
or by the culture of the soil, cannot
understand the wear and tear of body
and mind to which our merchants are
subjected, when they do not know but
that their livelihood and their business
honor are dependent upon the uncertain
ties of the next hour This excitement
of the brain, this corroding care of the
heart, this strain of effort that exhausts
the spirit sends a great many of our
best men, in mid-life, into the