The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1895-07-19
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Warning to the Overworked and
Worried Business Man.
The Trials of Limited CapitaI-Dangers of
the Mad Rush for WeaIth-The
Neglect of Home and
Family.

soiourning in the west, selected the
following sermon for publication this
week. The subject is: Business
Troubles, being based on the text:
These were thy merchants In all sorts of
things.-Ezekiel xvii, "a
We are at the opening door of re-
turning national prosperity. The com
ing crops, the establishment of pub
| lie confidence, and, above all, the
blessing of God. Will turn in upon all
sections of America the widest, great
est prosperity this country has ever
SEEN But that door of successes is
not yet fully open, and thousands of
business men are yet suffering from
| the distressing times through which
we have been passing.
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 established,
the churches they have built, the
Gsylums and benefcent 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
millionaires forever. But ] thought
it would be appropriate, to-day, and
useful, for me to talk about the trials
and temptations of our business men,
and try to offer some curative pre-
scriptions.
In the first place, l have to remark
that great many of our business men
feel ruinous trials and temptations
coming to them from small and limit
ed capital in business. 1t is every
where understood that it takes now
three or four times as much to do
business 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 bookkeeper; he would manage all
the affairs himself, and 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 de-
mand made upon our commercial
men; and when they have found
themselves in such circumstances
with small capital, they have some
times been tempted to run against the
rocks of moral and financial destruc-
ton This temptation of limited cap
ital has ruined men in two ways.
Sometimes they have shrunk down un-
der the temptation. They have yield
ed the battle be fore the first shot was
fired. At the first hard dun they sur
rendered. Their knees knocked to-
gether at the fall of the auctioneer's
hammer They blanched at the fnan
cial peril. They did not understand
that there is such thing as heroism
in merchandise, and that there are
Waterloos of the counter. and that
man can fight no braver battle
with the sword than he can
with the yard-stick. Their souls
melted in them because sugars
were up when thev 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 over |
shadowed 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 trudg |
ing along. | have been trying to be
honest all these years, ! find it is 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.
He borrows a few thousand dollars |
from friends who dare not refuse him, |
and he goes bartering on a |
large scale. He reasons in |
this way: Perhaps may |
succeed, and if l don't l will be no |
worse off than I am now, for one hun
dred thousand taken from nothing, |
nothing remains" 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 |
a fat homestead, meets this gambler |
of fortune, and is persuaded to trade |
off his estate for lots in western city |
with large avenues, and costly palaces,
and lake steamboats, smoking at the |
wharves, and rail-trains coming down
with lightning speed from every direc-
ton. There it is all on paperl
The city has never been built,
nor the railroads constructed,
but everything points that way,
and the thing will be done as sure as
YOU live. Well, the man goes on,
stopping at no fraud or outrage. In
his splendid equipage he dashes past,
while the honest Iaborer looks up, and
wipes the sweat from his brow, and
saws: "I wonder where that man got
all his money" After awhile the bub-
bic bursts. Creditors rush in. The1aw
clutches. but finds nothing in its grasp.
The men who were swindled say: Il
don't know ROW could have ever been
deceived by that man." and the pictori-
ais. in handsome wood cuts, set forth
the hero who in ten years had genius
enough to fail for one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars!
And that is the process by which
many have been tempted through linn
itation of capital 10 rush into laby-
rinths from which they could not be
extracted ] would not want to block
up any of the avenues for honest ac-
emulation 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 muItltudes 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. 1t Il
ths duty of the Church Of 0ed, aHd the