Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1900-11-07
SERMON
Rev. Or. CaIlllact

keV. Ur. (di1nd s.
Subject: The Golden Calf of Modern IDOL
airy The Spirit of Greed Destroys
Those Who Are in Its Grasp - Money
Got Wrongfully is Curse.
GCopyright 1901
WASHINGTON, D. C.-In this discourse
DIR. Talmage shows how the spirit of
greed destroys when it takes possession
of a man and that money got in wrong
ways is a curse; text, Exodus xxxli, 20,
And he took the calf which they had
made and burnt it in the fire and ground
it to powder and strewed it upon the
water and made the children of Israel
irink of it. y.
and they prefer one of their own making.
Here CO the Israeites, breaking off
their golden earrings, the men as well as
the women, for iii those times there was
masculine as well as feminine decoration.
Where al they get these beautiful gold
earrings, coming up; as they did, from the
desert? Oh, they borrowed them OF the
Egyptians when they left Egypt. These
earrings are piled up into a pyramid of
glittering beauty. ANY more earrings
to bring?" says Aaron. None. Fire is
kindled, the earrings are melted and pour
ed into a mold not of an eagle or war
charger, but of a silly calf the gold cools
down, the mold is taken away, and the
idol is set up on its four legs. An altar
is built in front y the shining calf. Then
the peol throw no their arms and gy
rate and iek and dance vigorously and
worship
Moses has been six weeks on Mount
Sinai, and he comes back and hears the
bowling sees the dancing of these
golden calf fanatics, and he loses his pa
tience, and he takes the two plates of
stone on which were written the Ten Com
mandments and filings them SO hard
against rock that they split all to pieces,
When a man gets angry, he is apt to
break all the Ten Commandments. Moses
rushea IN. and he takes this calf god and
throws 1t into hot fire until it Is melted
all out of shape and then pulverizes it
not by the modern appliance of nitro mu-
riatic acId, but by the ancient appliance of
inter or by the old fashioned file. He stirs
for the people a most nauseatIng draft.
He takes this pulverized golden calf I'D
throws it in the only brook which is ac-
cessible, and the people are compelled to
drink of that brook or not drink at all.
But they did not drink all the glittering
stuff thrown on the surface. Some of 1t
flows on down the surface of the brook to
the river and then flows on down the river
to the sea, and the sea takes it up and
bears it to the mouth of all the rivers, and
when the tides set back the remains of
this golden calf are carried up into the
Potomac and the Hudson and the Thames
and the Clyde and the Tiber. And men
go out and they skim the glittering sur
face and they bring it ashore and they
make another golden calf. and California
and Australia break off their golden car
rings to augment the pile, and in the fires
of financial excitement and strugg z all
these things are melted together and
while we stand looking and wondering
what will come OF it, 10, we find that the
golden calf OF Israelitish worship has be
come the golden calf of European and
American worship.
Pull aside this curtain, and you see the
golden calf of modern idolatry. 1t is not,
like other idols, made out OF stocks or
stone, but it has an ear so sensitive that 1T
can hear the whispers on Wall street and
Third street and State street. and the
footballs in the Bank of England and the
hutter of a Frenchmans heart on the
bourse. 1t has eye so keen that 1t can
see the rust on the farm of Michigan
wheat and the insect in the Maryland
peach orchard and the trampled grain un-
der the hoof of the Russian war charger.
1t is so mighty that 1t swings any way it
will the worlds shipping. 1t has its foot
on all the merchantmen and the steam
ers. 1t started the American Civil War
and under God stopped it, and it decided
the Turko- Russian contest. One broker
in September. 1869, in New York, shouted,
Zone hundred and sixty for a million?'
and the whole continent shivered. The
golden calf of the text has, as far Amer
lea is concerned, its right front foot in
New York, its left front foot in Chicago.
its right back foot in Charleston, its left
back foot in New Orleans, and when it
shakes itself it shakes the world. Oh. this
is a mighty god-the golden calf of the
worlds worship!
But every god must have its temple, and
this golden calf of the text is no excep-
ton. Its temple is vaster than st. Paul's
Cathedral in England, and st. Peters in
Italy, and the Alhambra of the Spaniards,
and the Parthenon of the Greeks, and the
Tai Mahal of the Hindoos, and all the
cathedrals put together. Its pillars are
grooved and fluted with gold, and its
ribbed arches are lowering gold, and its
chandeliers are descending gold, and its
floors are tesselated gold, and its vaults
are crowded heaps of gold and its spirss
and domes are soaring gold, and its organ
pipes are resounding gold, and its pedals
are tramping gold, and its stops pulled ont
are flashing gold. while, standing at the
head of the temple, as the presiding diety.
are the hoofs and shoulders and eyes and
ears and nostrils of the calf of gold.
Further, every god must have not only
its temple, but its altar of sacrifice, and
this golden calf of the text is no exception.
Its altar is not made out of stone as other
affairs, but out OF counting room desks
and fireproof safes, and it is a broad, a
long, a high altar. The victims sacrificed
on it are the Swartouts and the ketchams
and the Fisks and ten thousand other
people who are slain before this golden
calf.
What does this god care about the
groans and struggles of the victims before
it: With cold, metallic eye, it looks on
and yet lets them suffer. What an altar.
What a sacrifice of mind, body and soul,
The physical health of a great multitude
is flung on to this sacrificial altar. They
cannot sleep, and they take choral and
morphine and intoxicants.
Some of them struggle in a nightmare of
stocks, and at / o'clock in the morning
suddenly rise up shouting: A thousand
shares of New York Central-one hun
dred and eight and half, take it,'-until
the whole family is affrighted. and the
spectators fall back on their pillows 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
ecclesiastic comes in and reads the funer-
al service, Blessed are the dead who die
in the Lord" Mistake. They did not
'die in the Lord" the golden calf kicked
them.
The trouble is. when the men sacrifice
themselves on this altar suggested in the
text they not only sacrifice themselves,
but they sacrifice their families.
If a man by a wrong course is determ
ined TO go to perdition, | suppose you
will have to let him go. But he puts his
wife and children in an equipage that is
the amazement of the averrles, and the
driver lashes the horses into two whirl
winds. and the spokes flash in the sun and
the golden headgear of the harness CLEANS
until black calamity takes the bits of the
horses and stops then, and shouts to the
luxuriant 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 a