Connecticut western news., 1899-02-09

TeSpOuuS WlIu your TellSlOuS pIOl6SSlOu Some of the worst scoundrels in Ameri- ca have been members of churches, and they got fat on sermons about heaven when they most needed to have the pulpits preach that which would either bring them to repentance or thunder them ont of the holy communions where their presence was sacrilege and an infamy.
 The Abuse of Sacred Trust.
 We must especially deplore the mis- fortunes of banks in various parts of this country in that they damage the banking institution, which is the great convenience of the centuries and indis- pensable to commerce and the advance of nations. With one hand it blesses the lender, and with the other it blesses the borrower. On their shoulders are the interests of private individuals and great corporations. In them are the great arteries through which run the currents of the nation s life. They have been the resources of the thousands of financiers in days of business exigency. They stand for accommodation, for fa- cility, for individual, state and national relief At their head and in their man. agement there are as much interest and moral worth as in any class of men, per haps more. How nefarious, then, the behavior of those who bring disrepute upon this venerable, benignant and God honored institution.
 We also deplore abuse of trust funds because the abusers fly in the face of divine goodness which seems determined to bless this land. We are having a se- ries of unexampled national harvests. The wheat gamblers get hold of the wheat, and the corn gamblers get hold of the corn. The full tide of Gods mercy toward this land is put back by those great dikes of dishonest resist ance When God provides enough food and clothing to feed and apparel this whole nation. like princes, the scramble of dishonest men to get more than their share, and get it at all hazards, keeps everything shaking with uncertainty and every body asking What nextf" Every week makes new revelations. How many more bank presidents and bank cashiers have been speculating with other peoples money, and how many more bank directors are in imbe- cile silence, letting the perfdy go on, the great and patient God only knows My opinion is that we have got near the bottom. The wind has been pricked from the great bubble of American spec ulation. The men who thought that the judgment day was at least 5, 900 years off found it in 1898 or 1897 or 1896. And this nation has been taught that men must keep their hands out of other peoples pockets. Great businesses built on borrowed capital have been obliter ated, and men who had nothing have lost all they had. I believe we are start ed on higher career of prosperity than this land has ever seen, if, and if, and if
 Caution to Spectators.
 If the first men, and especially Chris tian men, will learn never to speculate upon borrowed capital-if you have a mind to take your own money and turn it all into kites, to fly them over every common in the United States, you do society no wrong, except when you tumble your helpless children into the poorhouse for the public to take care of. But you have no right to take the mon- ey of others and turn it into kites. There is one word that has deluded more people into bankruptcy and state prison and ruin than any other word in commercial life, and that is the word borrow. That one word is responsible for all the defalcations and embezzle- ments and financial transformations of the last 20 years. When executors con clude to speculate with the funds C., an estate committed to their charge, they do not purloin; they say they only bor- row. When banker makes an ever draft upon his institution, he does not commit theft he only borrows.
 When the officer of a company by flaming advertisement in some religious papers and gilt certificate of stock gets q multitude of country people to put. their small earnings into an enterprise for carrying on some undeveloped noth- ing he does not fraudulently take their money he only borrows When young man with easy access to his employers money drawer or the confidential clerk by close propinquity to the account books takes few dollars for Wall street excursion, he expects to put it back. He will put it all back. He will put it all back very soon. He only bor- rows Why, when you are going to do wrong, pronounce so long word as borrow, word of six letters, when you can get shorter word more descriptive of the reality, word of only five let ters, the word stealf
 There are times when we all borrow and borrow legitimately and borrow with the divine blessing, for Christ in his Sermon on the Mount enjoins, From him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" A young man rightly borrows money to get his edu- cation. Purchasing a house and not able to pay all down in cash, the pur- chaser rightly borrows 1t on mortgage. Crises come in business, when it would be wrong for man not to borrow But l roll this warning through all these aisles, over the backs of all these pews, never borrow to speculate-not a dol lar, not cent, not farthing. Young men, warn you by your worldly pros poets and the value of your immortal souls, do not do it. There are breakers for their shipwrecks-the Hanways, the Needles, the Baskets, the Douvers, the Anderlos, the Skerries- and many craft has gone to pieces on those rocks, but have to tell you that all the Hanways and the Needles and the Baskets and the Skerries are as nothing compared with the long liHe of breakers which bound the ocean of life north, south, east and west, with the white foam of their de- spair and the dirge of their damnation, the breakers of borrow.
 Faith and Repentance Necessary.
 If l had only worldly weapon to use on this subject. would give you the fact, fresh from the highest author ty, that 90 per cent of those who go