The Monitor-register., 1897-08-20


Life-Dangers of the Wine Cup-Christ
the Friend of Struggling Humanity.
NEW YORK, Aug. 15.-Dr. Talmage
in his sermon for today shows how run
ming into hopeless debts and skepticism
have undone young men in town and
country. The text is Proverbs vii, %,
GAS an OK to the slaughter. p"
There is nothing in the voice or man
ner of the butcher to indicate to the OK
that there is death ahead. The OK thinks
he is going on to rich pasture field 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 doorway, where he is fas-
tened, and with we'll aimed stroke the
AK fells him, and so the anticipation of
the redolent pasture field is completely
disappointed. So many a 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 in
stead of making an excursion into a
garden he has been driven "as an OK to
the slaughter.
Society to Blame.
We are apt to blame young men for
being destroyed when we ought to
blame the influences that destroy them.
Society slaughters great many young
men by the behest: "You must keep up
appearances. Whatever be your salary,
you must dress as well as others, you
must give wine and brandy to as many
friends, you must smoke as costly cigars,
you must give as expensive entertain
ments and you must live in as fashion
able boarding house. If you haven't
the money, borrow, If you can't bor-
row, make false entry Or subtract here
and there bill from bundle of bank
bills. You will only have to make the
deception little while. In few
months or in a year Or two you can
make all right. Nobody will be hurt by
it, nobody will be the wiser. You your
self will not be damaged. By that aw-
full process 100, 600 men have been
slaughtered for time and slaughtered
for eternity.
Suppose you borrow. There is moth
ing wrong about borrowing money
There is hardly man who has not
sometimes borrowed money. Vast es-
tates have been built on borrowed
dollar. But there are two kinds of Dor
rowed money, money borrowed for the
purpose of starting or keeping up legiti-
mate enterprise and expense and money
borrowed to get that which you can dc
without. 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 dan
dy's outfit, you have taken the first rev.
olution of the wheel down grade. Bor-
row for the necessities; that may be
well. Borrow for the Injuries; that
tips your prospects over in the wrong
direction.
The Bible distinctly says the borrow
er is servant of the lender. 1t is a bad
state CT things when you have to go
down some other street to escape meet
ing some one whom you owe. If young
men knew what is the despotism of be-
ing III debt, more Of them would keep
out of it. What did debt do for Lord
Bacon. with a mind towering above the
centuries? 1t induced him to take brides
and convict himself as criminal be-
fore all ages. What did debt do for
Walter Scott, broken hearted at Abbots-
ford? Kept him writing until his hand
gave out i'll paralysis to keep the sheriff
away from his pictures and statuary
Better for him if he had minded the
maxim which he had chiseled over the
fireplace at Abbotsford, .Waste not.
want not. :"
Going In Debt.
The trouble is, my friends, that peo-
pie do net understand the ethics of 90
Ing Ill debt, and that if you purchase
goods with no expectation of paying for
them, Or go into debts which you can
not meet, you steal just so much money
Ii go into a grocer's store and l buy
sugars and ccffees and meats with no
capacity to pay for them, and no inten-
tlon OF paying for them, am more dis
honest than if go into the store, and
when the grocer's face is turned the
other way fill my pockets with the
articles of merchandise and carry off a
ham. In the one case l take the mer-
chant s time, and take the time of his
messenger to transfer the goods to my
house, while in the other case | take
none of the time of the merchant, and
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 debts he never
expects to pay.
Yet in all our cities there are fami-
lies who move every May day to get
into proximity to other grocers and
meatshops and apothecaries They owe
everybody within half mile of where
they now live, and next May they will
move into distant part of the city,
hhdlng new lot of victims Mean
while you, the honest family in the new
house, are bothered day by day by the
knocking at the door of disappointed
bakers and butchers and dry goods deal
ers 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 anything to sell have sent their
wagons and stopped there to solicit the
valuable" custom of the new neigh
Dor, and he, the new neighbor, with
great complacency and an air of affiu-
ence, 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 keen
ON accommodating until he gets his goods
ON the Both Of next April in the furni-
ture cart.
No wonder that so many of our mer-
chants fail in business. They are swim
died into bankruptcy by these wander
ing Arabs, these nomads of city life.
They cheat the grocer out of the green
apples which make them sick, the ply
stefan who attends them during their
distress and the undertaken who fits
them out for departure from the neigh
borhood where they owe everybody
when they pay the debt Of nature, the
only debt they ever do pay.
Commercial Ethics.
Now our young men are coming up
in this depraved state of commercial
ethics, and l am sohcitous about them.
l want to warn them against being
slaughtered on the sharp edges of debt
You want many things you have not,
my young friends. You shall have them
il You have patience and honesty and
industry. Certain lines of conduct al
ways lead out to certain successes
There is law which controls even