The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-11-02

What a sacrifice of mind, body and
soul! The physical health of a great
multitude is flung on to this sacrifcial
altar. They cannot sleep, and they take
chIoral and morphine and intoXicants.
Some of them struggle in nightmare
of stocks and at one o'clock in the
morning suddenly rise up, shouting:
"A thousand shares of New York Cen
tral-1OS%-take it!" until the whole
family is affrighted, and the specula-
tors fall back on their pillow and sleep
until they are awakened again by a
corner" in Pacific Mail or a sudden
rise" of Rock Island. Their nerves
gone, their digestion gone, their brain
gone, they die. The gowned ecclesias-
tic comes in and reads the funeral serv-
ice: BLESSED are they who die in the
Lord!" Mistake. They did not 'die
in the Lord" The golden calf kicked
them!
The trouble is when men sacrifice
themselves on this altar suggested in
the text they not only sacrific them
selves, but they sacrifice their fami-
lies. If man by a wrong course is de-
termined to go to perdition, l suppose
you will have to let him go. But he
puts his wife and children in an equip
age that is the amazement of the av-
enues, and the driver lashes the horses
into two whirlwinds, and the spokes
flash in the sun, and the golden head
gear of the harness CLEANS until black
calamity takes the bits of the horses
and stops them and shouts to the lux
uriant occupants of the equipage:
"Get out!" They get out. They get
down. That husband and father flung
his family so hard they never got up.
There was the mark on them for life
the mark of split hoof-the death
dealing hoof of the golden calf.
Solomon offered in one sacrifice on
one occasion $4,000 oxen and 120, 600
sheep, but that was tame sacrifice
compared with the multitude of men
who are sacrificing themselves on this
altar of the golden calf and sacrificing
their families with them. The soldiers
of Gen. Havelock, in India, walked lit
orally ankle deep in the blood of ''the
house of massacre" where 200 white
women and children had been slain by
the Sepoys, but the blood about this
altar of the golden calf flows up to the
knee, flows up to the girdle, flows up to
the shoulder, flows up to the lip. Great
God of Heaven and earth, have mercy
on those who immediate themselves on
this altar! The golden calf has
none.
Still the degrading worship goes on,
and the devotees kneeI and kiss the
dust and count their golden beads and
cross themselves with the blood of
their own sacrifice. The music rolls
on under the arches. 1t is made of
clinking silver and clinking gold and
the rafting specie of the banks and
brokers' shops and the voices of all the
exchanges. The soprano of the worship
is carried by the timid voices of men
who have just begun to speculate, while
the deep bass rolls out from those
who for ten years have been STEPPED in
the seething caldron. Chorus of
voices rejoicing over what they have
made; chorus of voices wailing over
what they have lost. The temple of
which I speak stands open day and
night, and there is a glittering god
with his four feet on broken hearts,
and there is the smoking altar of sac
rifce, new victims every moment on
it, and there are the kneeling devo-
tees: and the doXology of the worship
rolls on, while death stands with
moldy and skeleton arm beating time
for the chorus-"More, more, more!"
Some people are very much sur
prised at the actions of people in the
stock exchange, New York. Indeed, it
is scene sometimes that paralyzes
description and is beyond the imag-
ination of anyone who has never
looked in. What swapping of finger
and thumb and wild gesticulation and
raving like hyenas and stamping like
buffaloes and swaying to and fro and
jostling and running one upon anoth-
er, and deafening uproar, until the
president of the exchange strikes with
his mallet four or five times, crying:
"Order, order!" and the astonished
spectator goes out into the fresh air
feeling that he has escaped from pan
demonium. What does it all mean?
I will tell you what it means. The
devotees of every heather temple cut
themselves to pieces and yell and
gyrate. This vociferation and gyra-
ton of the stock exchange is all ap-
propriate. This is the worship of the
golden calf.
But my text suggests that this wor-
ship has to be broken up, as the be-
havior of Moses on this occasion indi-
Gated. There are those who say
that this golden calf spoken of in the
text was hollow and merely plated
with gold, otherwise Ioses could not
have carried it, l do not know that,
but somehow, perhaps by the assist
ance of his friends, he takes up thir
golden calf, which is an Internal in
suit to God and man, and throws it
into the fire and it is melted, and then
t comes out and is cooled off, and by
some chemical appliance or by an
file it is pulverized, and
it is thrown into the brook, and as {.
punishment the people are compelled
TO drink the nauseating stuff. So
you may depend upon it that God will
burn and he will grind to pieces the
golden calf of modern idolatry, and
ne will compel the people in their ag
ony to drink it. If not before, it will
De so on the last d2y. 1 know not
where the fire will begin, whether at
he Battery" or Lombard street,
whether at Shoreditch or West End,
ut it will be very hot blaze. All the
government securities of the United
States and Great Britain will curl up
n the first blaze. All the money
,afes and deposit vaults will melt un-
ler the first touch. The sea will burn |
ike tinder, and the shipping will be
Lbandoned forever The melting gold !
n the brokers' window will burst |