The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1903-02-22

Chicago, February 15-1n this sermon
the preacher deals with the widely pre-
valent vice of running into debt as re-
suit of social and domestic extravaganza
and false standard of living and arraigns
willful debt as the cause of manifold mis-
cries. The text is Romans xiii s. Owe
no man anything"
One day a famous scholastic clergy
man was talking to a noted practical
preacher. How is it said he, that
you can collect such audiences to hear
you preach? I have one of the best pri-
vate libraries in the world. 1 spend at
least ten hours day IN my study with
my books, and yet the people prefer to
hear you preach instead of me. They
want to hear your sermons, although
YOU do not work a third as hard upon
them as | do. Half of your days are
spent in calling and in wandering about
the streets and in the stores" All"
answered the practical minister to his
scholastic FRIEND 'the difference between
us is that you read books, while ! study
the stuff out of which books are made.
You breathe the atmosphere of musty
tonnes; l, by. close association, study the
hearts of the men and women with whom
| come in contact You translate cpl
taphs of dead men; / analyze the trou-
bles and temptations and sins of living
men; | sit with them at the table; I go
with them into their stores; then, when
l begin to discuss their trials and temp
tations, they naturally want to come and
hear me preach
Paul was a practical minister and not
one for mere intellectual attainments.
His rostrum was more often the rope
makers bench than the synagogue's pull
pit AS a practical gospel physician he
in my text today diagnosies one of the
most distressing moral diseases of the
human race. He saw that the men and
women of his time were living beyond
their means and struggling in the quick
sand of debt just as many people are do
ing in the twentieth century; therefore
he gave in his Roman epistle the same
advice that Horace Greeley once wrote
Never run into debt. Hunger, cold
rags, hard work. suspicion, unjust re-
proach, are disagreeable, but debt is m
finitely worse than them all Avoid pc
euniary obligations as you would a pesti-
lenee or famine. If you have not more
than fifty cents and can get no more for
week, buy peck of corn, parch it
and live on it rather than owe any man
a dollar. 'Owe no man anything That
means in John Randolphs interpretat ton
of the philosophers stone, pay as you
go. That means that if you have no
money with which to satisfy your per-
sonal desires then let them he unsatisfled.
Allow no creditor rs a jailor to rivet Il
heavy ircn ball of financial obligation to
your limbs. Do not buy a feathered
singer unless at the same time you have
money enough to purchase a cage In
which to let your songster abide.
Debt the Offspring of Pride.
Debt IS generally the offspring of pride.
The bare necessaries of life are very
small. Nearly every man can make
enough money to provide for these ne
cessaries if he will only work hard, do
F, his best and not waste his income oil
useless extrava gances. Henry Ward
| Beecher once made the declaration at a
man could feed himself and wife ana
family of growing children upon S1.50 per
week. For making this statement Mr..
Beecher was sharply arraigned by thou
sands of critics. Many newspaper edi-
torials affirmed that the Plymouth pas
| tor was advocating the reduction of the
| laborers- salaries. to twenty-five cents a
| day. He was not attempt ne any such
thing. What Mr.. Beecher fried to prove
was this: The bare necessaries of life
are very small; therefore most people can
provide for their actual needs IL they
| will only be energetic and at the same
| time be frugal.
But this frugality, in many cases, pride
will not permit them to practice. Pride,
with the smiling supercilious face and
! bediamond finger usually comes to the
| young mans home with such insinuatins
words as these: MY friend you have
no right to rear your family as you are
| doing. You should not allow your wife
! to stand behind a counter or to live in
| the back room of the store with her two
| babies, as your mother once 4. This Is
a different age from that in which your
| father started out. If you do not lei
| your children grow up in a respectable
neighborhood and go to refined and ex-
pensive private schools, then their youth
| full associations will be bad, and refined
| people will have nothing to do witt
| them. So the young man who was max
! ing an humble Income and was thf
| highroad to ultimate financial success
| hires private home on the boulevard
lie moves his family away from the
neighborhood of his store. He hires s
clerk to do the work formerly done by his
wife while he himself is visiting the
wholesale departments. The income
! small before, becomes less and less; tho
expenses of the family sustenance ar;
doubled and quadrupled; a haunted. wor.
ried, anxious look comes over the youne
mans face. Instead of their being a bal
| ance in the bank. now there is a deficit
! instead of the wholesale stores allowing
| the young man all the credit he wishes
| they now begin to push him, and one daN
Debt the offspring of Pride calls at tho
store to see how the young man is getting
along, but instead of Debt now coming