Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1900-10-29

1t looks on and yet lets them suffer.
What an altar! What a sacrifice of
mind, body and soul The physical
health of great multitude is flung on
to this sacrifcial altar. They cannot
sleep, and they take choral and NOR
phine and intoXicantS. Some of them
struggle in a nightmare of stocks, and
at l o'clock in the morning suddenly
rise up shouting, "a thousand shares
Of New York Central-oRe hundred and
eight and a 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 &C.
cleSiaStic comes in and reads the fu-
neral service, BLESSED are the dead
who die in the Lord!' Mistake. They
did not Idle in the Lord" the golden
calf kicked them!
The trouble is, when the men sacri-
fee themselves on this altar suggested
in the text they not only sacrifice
themselves, but they sacrifice their
is determined to go to perdition, sup
pose you will have to let him go. But
he puts his wife and children in an
eQuipage that is the amaZement of the
avenues, and the driver lashes the
horses into two whirlwinds, 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 them and shouts to
the luXuriant occupants of the equi-
page, Get outr'' 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 split hoof-the
death dealing hoof Of the golden calf.
Degrading Worship.
Solomon offered in one sacrifice on
one occasion $4,000 oxen and 100000
sheep. But that was a 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 General Havelock in India walked
literally 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 to
the shoulder, flows 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 kneel 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 clink-
ing silver and blinking gold and the
rafting specie of the banks and bro
kerS' shops and the voices of all the eX-
changes. 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 cauldron. Cho-
rus Of voices rejoicing oy what they
have made; chorus of voices Wailing
over what they have lost. This temple
of which 1 speak stands open day and
night, and there is the glittering god
with his four feet on broken hearts,
and there is the smoking altar of sac
rifice, new victims every moment on it,
and there are the kneeling devOtees,
and the doXology of the worship rolls
on, while death stands with moldy and
skeleton arm beating time for the chO-
rus-'More, more, mOre!'
Some people are very much surprised
at tho actions of people in the Stock
Exchange, New York. Indeed it is a
scene sometimes that paralyzes descrip-
ton and is beyond the imagination Of
any one 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 another, and
deafening uproar, until the president of
the exchange strikes with his mallet
four or five times, crying, "Order. or
derr and the astonished spectator goes
out into the fresh air feeling that he
has escaped from pandemonium. What
does it all mean? / will tell you what
it means. The devotees of every heath
en- temple cut themselves to pieces and
yell and gyrate. This vociferation and
gyration Of the Stock Exchange is all
appropriate. This is the worship of the
golden calf.
The Blaze of Gods Wrath.
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 Moses could not have
carried it, I do not know that. But
somehow, perhaps by the assistance
Of his friends. he takes up this golden
calf. which is an Internal insult to