The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-08-20
4 TALK TO YOUNG MEN.
DIR. TALMAGE ON TIRE EVILS OF
GOING IN DEBT.
Destructive Influences Of Society-Keepinc
Up ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ,of City
Life-Dangers OF the Vino Cup-Chrisl
the Friend Of Stfaggling Humanity.

Up ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS sO1 City
Life-Dangers Of the Vino ~Cup-Christ
the Friend OF Struggling Humanity.
DIR. Talmage in his sermon for today
shows how running into hopeless debts
and skepticism have undone young
men in town and country. The text is
Proverbs vii, %, A an OK to the
slaughter"
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 a 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 a doorway, where
he is fastened, and with we'll aimed
stroke the ak fells him, and so the an
ticipation Of the redolent pasture field
is completely disappointed. So many
a young man has been driven on by
the 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 instead 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 hat destroy them.
Society slaughters a great many young
men by the behest: "You must keep
up appearances. Whatever be your
salary, you must dress as we'll as
others, you give wine and brandy
to as many friends, you must smoke
as costly cigars, you must Civ as ex-
nensive entertainments and you must
live in as fashionable a boarding house.
If you haven't the money borrow. If
you can't borrow make a false entry
or subtract here and there a bill from
a bundle of bank bills. You will only
have to make the deception a little
while. In a few months or in a year
or two you can make all right. No
body will be hurt by it, nobody will be
the wiser. You yourself will not be
damaged" By that awful process
100, 900 men have been slaughtered for
time and slaughtered for eternity.
Suppose you borrow. There is moth
ing wrong about borrowing money.
There is hardly a man who has not
sometimes borrowed money. Vast es-
tates have been built on a borrowed
dollar. But there are two kinds Of
borrowed money, money borrowed for
the purpose of starting or keeping up
legitimate enterprise and expense n
money borrowed to get that which you
can do without. The first is right, the
other is wrong. If you nave money
enough Of your own to buy a coat,
however plain, and then you borrow
money for a dandy's outfit, you have
taken the first revOlutiO of the wheel
down grade. Borrow for the neceSsi-
ties; hat may be well. Borrow for the
luxuries: that tips your prospects over
in the wrong direction.
The Bible distinctly says the Dor
rover is servant of the lender. 1t is a
bad state of things when you have to
go down some other street to escap
meeting some one whom you we. If
young men knew what is the despotism
of being in 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 a
criminal before all ages. What did
debt do for Walter Scott, broken
hearted at Abbotsford? Kept him
writing until his hand gave out in pa
ralysis to keep the sheriff away from
his pictures and s%tatuary. Better for
him if he had minded the maxim
which he had chiseled over the fire
place at Abbotsford, Waste not, want
not"
GOING IN DEBT
The rOuble is, my friends, that peo-
pie do not understand the ethics of 60
ing in debt, n that if you purchase
goods with no expectation of paying for
them, or go into debts which you can
not meet,yo steal just so much money.
If [ go into a grOcer's store and l buy
sugars and coffees and meats with no
capacity to pay for them, and no in
tention of paying for them, 1 am more
dishonest than if I go into the same
store, and when the grocer's face is
turned the other way I fill my pockets
with the articles of merchandise and
carry off a ham,. In the one case I
take the merchants time, and I take
the time of his messenger to transfer
the goods to my house, while in the
other case I take none of the time of
the merchant, and I wait upon myself,
and I transfer the goods without any
trouble to him. In other words, a
sneak thief is not so bad as a 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 n
m~eatshops and apothecaries. They
owe everybody within half a mile of
where they now live, and next May
tllC WI hilo -" SNoA P"AS VI
the city, finding a new lot of victims.
Meanwhile you, the honest family in
the new house, are bothered day by
day by the knocking at the door Of dis
appointed bakers and butchers and dry
goods dealers and newspaper carriers,
and you are asked where your prede-
cessor is. You do not know. 1t was
arranged you should not know. Mean
while 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 So
licit the valuable" custom of the new
neighbor, and he, the new neighbor,
with great c~omplacency and an air of
afluence, 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
keep on accommodating until he gets his
goods on the 3Oth of next April in the
furniture cart.