The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-07-19
A SERMON ON MONEY.
DR.. Talmage Arraigns Those Who
Live Beyond Their Means.
Causes of Great Financial Disturb
ances Show - Extravaganza the
Cause of Most Declarations
Meeting Ones Obligations.

|
In this discourse DIR. Talmage shows
the causes of the great financial dis
turbances which take place every few
years and arraigns the people who live
beyond their means; text, jeremiah
17:11: LAS the partridge stitch on
eggs and hatchet tn them not, so he that
getteth riches, and not by right, shall
leave them in the midst of his days and
at his end shall be fool"
| Allusion is here made to a well-kno own
fact in natural history. If partridge
or a quail or a robin brood the eggs OF
another species, the young will not
stay with the one that happened to
! brood them, but at the first oppor-
| tunity will assert with their own spe-
cies Those of US who have been
brought up in the country have seen
the dismay of the farmyard hen, hav-
ing brooded aquatic fowls, when after
awhile they tumble into their natural
element, the water. So my text sug-
gests that man may gather under his
wings the property of others, but 1t
will after awhile escape. 1t will leave
the man in a sorry predicament and
make him feel very silly.
What has caused all the black days
of financial disasters for the last 90
years? Some say it is the credit sys-
TEN. Something back of that. Some
say it is the spirit of gambling ever and
anon becoming epidemic. Something
back of that. Some say it is the sud
| dem shrinkage in the value of securi-
ties, which even the most honest and
intelligent men could not have fore
seen. Something back of that. l will
give you the primal cause of all these
disturbances. 1t is the extravaganza
of modern society which impels a man
to spend more money than he can hon
estly make, ard he goes into wild spec
uIation in order to get the means for
-inordinate display, and sometimes the
man is to blame and sometimes his wife
| and oftener both. Five thousand dol
lars income. $4,000, $780, 900 income, is
not enough for a man to keep up the
| style of living he proposes, and there
| fore he steers his bark toward the
maelstrom. Other men have suddenly
snatched up $685. 900 or 100000. Why
not he? The present income of the
man not being large enough, he must
| move heaven and earth and hell to
| catch up with his neighbors. Others
ers have palaitial residence; so must
he.
Extravaganza is the cause of all the
| defalcations of the last 60 years, and if
you will GO through the history of all
the great panics and the great finan-
cial disturbances, no sooner have you
found the story than right back of it
you will find the story of how many
horses the man had, how many car
riages, how many banquets the man
gave-always, and not one exception
for the last 60 years, either directly or
indirectly extravaganza the cause.
Now for the elegances and the re-
fnements and the decorations of life. /
cast my vote. While 1 am considering
this subject a basket of flowers is
handed in-fOwers paradisiacal in
their beauty. White Gala with green
background of begonia. A cluster of
heliotropes nesting in some geranium.
Sepal and perianth bearing on them
the marks of Gods finger. When /
see that basket of flowers, they per-
suade me that God loves beauty and
adornment and decoration. God
might have made the earth so as to
supply the gross demands of sense, but
left it without adornment or attrac-
ton. Instead of the variegated colors
of the seasons the earth might have
worn an unchanging dull brown. The
tree might have put forth its fruit
without the prophecy of leaf or bios
som. Niagara might have come down
in gradual descent without thunder
and winged spray.
Look out of your window any morn
ing after there has been a dew, and
see whether God loves Jewels. Put a
crystal of snow under microscope and
see what God thinks of architecture
God commanded the priest of olden
time to have his robe adorned with a
wreath of gold and the hem of his gar
nent to be embroidered in pomegran-
ates. The earth sleeps and God blank
cts it with the brilliants of the night
sky. The world wakes, and God
washes it from the FURNISHED laver of
the sunrise. So 1 have not much pa
thence with man who talks as though
decoration and adornment and the ele-
gances of life are a sin when they are
Divinely recommended. But there is
a line to be drawn between adornment
and decorations that we can afford
a man crosses that line he becomes
culpable. 1 cannot tell you what is ex-
travagant for you. You cannot tell me
what is eXtravagant for me. What is
right for a queen may be squandering
for a duchess. What may be econom-
zeal for you, a man with larger income,
will be wicked for me, with smaller in
come. There is no iron rule on this
subject. Every man before God and
on his knees must judge what is ex-
travagance, and when a man goes into
expenditures beyond his means he is
extravagant. When a man buys any
thing he cannot pay for, he is extrava-
CANT.
There are families in all our cities
who can hardly pay their rent and who
owe all the merchants in the neighbor
hood and yet have an apparel unfit for
their circumstances and are all the
time sailing so near shore that busi-
ness misfortune or an attack of sick
ness prepares them for pauperism.
Youknowvery well there are thousands
of families in our great cities who stay
in neighborhoods until they have ex-
hausted all their capacity to get
trusted. They stay in the neighbor-