The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-07-28
TALMAGE's SERMON.
Honesty the Best Commercial Policy
Overanxiety and Care to be Avoid
ed-The Soul More vaIua-
bic than Money.

Rev. r. Dewitt Talmage selected as
the subject of a sermon delivered in
the Brooklyn tabernacle, apropos of
the unsettled state of business affairs,
Comfort for Business Men," the text
being:
Speak ye comfortably TO Jerusalem--Isaiah
XII. 2
What an awful six weeks in CONNER
cial circlesl 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 the months and the
pressure of the money market for the
last year have put all bargain-malxers
at their wits end. Some of the best
men in the land have falthred; 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 be-
fore Heaven with all awaiting prayer.
/ The schools such men have es-
tablished, the churches they have
built, the asylums and beneficent in
situations they have fostered, will be
their eulogy long after their banking
institutions are forgotten. Such men
can never fail They have their treas
lres in banks that never break, and
will be millionaires forever. The strin-
gency of the money market, am glad
to say. begins to relax. May the wis
dom of Almighty God come down upon
our national legislature at their con-
/ sr,I nd
such results be reached as shall restore
confidence, and revive trade, and null
tiply prosperitiesl Yet, not only now
in the time of financial disaster, but
all through life our active business peo-
pie have a struggle, and think it will
be appropriate and useful for me to
talk about their trials and try to offer
some curative prescriptions.
In the first place. have to remark
that a great many of our business men
feel ruinous trials and temptations
coming to them from small and linn
tied capital in business. 1t is every
where understood that it takes now
three or four times as much to do bust
ness well as once it did. Once a few
hundred dollars were turned into
goods-the merchant would be his
own store sweeper, his own salesman,
his own boolx-xeeper; he would man
age all the affairs himself, and every
thing would be net profit. Wonderful
changes have come; costly apparatus.
extensive advertising, exorbitant store
rents, heavy taxation, expensive agen-
cies, are only parts of the demand made
upon our commercial 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 finan-
cial destruction. This temptatio of
limited capital has ruinen men in
two ways. Sometimes they have
shrunk down under the tempta-
ton. 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
blanched at the financial peril. They
did not understand that there is such
thing as heroism in merchandise, and
that there are Waterloos of the coun-
ter, and that man can fight no Drawer
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
countenance overshadowed even their
dry goods and groceries. Dependency,
coming from limited capital, blasted
them. Others have felt it in differ
emit way. They have said: Here
II have been trudging along.
1 have been trying to be hon.
est all these years. l find it is
of no use. Now it is make or break. )"
The small craft that could have stood
the stream is put out beyond the light
house, on the great sea of speculation.
Stocks are the dice with which he
CANDLES. He bought for few dollars
vast tracts of western land. Some man
at the east, living on fat homestead,
meets this ga mbler of fortune and is
persuaded to trade off his estate here
for lots in a western city with large
avenues, and costly palaces, and lake
steamers smoking at the wharves, and
rail trains coming down with light
ming speed from every direction. There
it is all on paperl The city has never
been built, nor the railroads con-
structed, 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. ! would
not want to chain honest enterprise.
/ would not want to block up any of
the avenues for honest accumulation
that open before ycung 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 minis
ters of religion, and the friends of all
young men, to utter plain, emphatic,
unmistakable protest. These are the
influences that drown men in destruc-
ton and perdition.
Again, great many of our business
men are tempted to over anxiety and
care. You know that nearly all com
mercial businesses are overdone 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 oppor-
tunity of accumulation be neglected
1 - h1,,~ ~~vr,n rra alSa nirlrG IN nm