THE DAY OF REST. The Age of Swindle. (SERMON BY DR. TALMAGE.)

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 303, 29 September 1888, Page 4

THE DAY OF REST. The Age of Swindle. (SERMON BY DR. TALMAGE. )

" Whose trnst shall bo a spider's web.'! Job Tiii. 14. The two most skilful architects in all the world are the bee and the spider. The one puts up a sugar manufactory, and the other builds a slaughter-house for flies. On a bright summer morning, when the sun comes out and shines upon a spider's web, bedecked with dew, the gossamer structure seems bright enough for a suspension bridge for supernatural beings to cross on. But alas for the poor fly, which, in the latter part of the day, ventures on it, and is caught and dungeoned and destroyed. The fly was informed that it was a free bridge, and would cost nothing, but at the other end of the bridge the toll {paid was its own life. The next day there comes down a strong wind, and away goes the web, and the marauding spider, and the victimised fly. Most cruel as well as most ingenious is the spider. A prisoner in the Bastille, France, had one so trained that at the sound of a violin it every day came for its meal of flies. Job, the author of my text, and the leading scientist of his day, had no doubt watched the voracious process of this one insect; with another, and saw spider and fly swept down with the same broom, or scattered by the same wind. Alas, that the world has so many designing spiders and victimised flies. There has not been a time when the utter and black irresponsibility of many men, having the financial interests of others in charge, has been more evident than in these last few years. The unroofing of banks and disappearance of administrators with the funds of large estates, and the disorder amidst public accounts have made a pestilence of crime, that solemnises every thoughtful man and woman, and leads every philanthropist and Christian to ask : Whatshall be done to stay the plague ? I sometimes ask myself if it wouldnot be better for men making wills to bequeath the property directly to the executors and officers of the court, and appoint the widows and orphans a committee to see that the former got all that did not belong to them. The simple fact is that there are a large number of men sailing yachts, and driving fast horses, and members of expensive club houses, and controlling country seats, who are not worth a dollar if they return to others their just rights. Uuder some sudden reverse they fail, and with afflicted air seem to retire from the world, and seem almost ready for monastic life, when in two or tnree years they blossom out again, having compromised with their creditors ; that is, paid them nothing but regrets. I have watched and noticed that in many of the cases failure is only a stratagem to escape the payment of honest debts and put the world off " the track while they practise a large swindle. There is something woefully wrong in the fact that these things are possible of commission. First of all, I charge the blame on careless.

Indifferent Bank Directors and boards having in charge great financial institutions. It ought not to be possible for a president or cashier or prominent officer of a banking institution to swindle it year after year without detection. I will undertake to say that if these frauds are carried on for two or three years without detection, either the directors are partners in the infamy and pocketed part of the theft, or they are guilty of a culpable neglect of duty, for which God will hold them as responsible as He holds the acknowledged defrauders. What right have prominent business men to allow their names to be published as directors in a financial institution, so that unsophisticated people are thereby induced to deposit their money in the scrip thereof, when they, the published directors, are doing nothing for the safety of the institution ? It is, in my best judgment, a case of

Deception Most Reprehensible. Many people with a surplus of money, not needed for immediate use, although it may be a little further on indispensable, are without friends competent, to advise them, and they are guided solely by the character of the men whose names are associated with the inscitution. When the crash came, and with the overthrow of the banks went the small earnings and limited fortunes of widows and orphans, and the helplessly aged, the directors stood with idiotic stare, and to the inquiry of the frenzied depositors and stockholders who had lost their all, and to the arraignment of an indignant public, had nothing to say except : 'We thought it was all right. We did not know there was anything wrong going on.' It was

Their Duty to Know. They stood in a position which deluded the people with the idea that they •were carefully observant. Calling themselves directors, they did not direct. They had an opportunity of auditing accounts and inspecting books. No time to do so ! then they had no business to accept the position. It seems to be the pride of some moneyed mentobedirectorain a great many institutions, and all they know is whether or not they get their dividends regularly, and their names are used as decoy ducks to bring others near, enough to be made game of. What first of all is needed is that 5,000 bank directors and insurance company directors resign or attend to their business as directors. The business world will continue to be full of fraud

Just as Long as Fraud is So Easy. When you arrest thepresidentand secretary of a bank for an embezzlement carried on for many years, have plenty of sheriffs out the same day to arrest all the directors. , They are guilty either ot neglect or complicity with the evil that has happened. ' Oh,' some one will say, ' better preach the Gospel and let business matters alone.' I reply : *If your Gospel does not inspire common honesty in the dealings of men, the sooner you close up your Gospel and pitch it into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean the better. The recitation of all th c catechisms and creedsever written,and drinking from all the communion chalices that ever glittered in the churches of Christendom, will never save your soul unless your business character corresponds with yourreligious profession. Some of the worst defaulters in America have been members of churches, and they got fat on sermons about heaven, when they most needed to have the puipits r preach that which would either bring them "to repentance or thunder them out of the Holy communion, where their presence was a eacrilege and an infamy. V- We must especially deplore the misfor-«-_tune of banks in various parts of this country, in that they damage the banking institution/, which is the great convenience of sthe century, and indispensable' to commerce „ and the advance of nations. With one hand it blesses 'the lender, and witH 'the other : -\the,borrower.' ( ..* ' i - , " - i i^The'bank was>born of* the' world's', neces-, ; o sitiesraftd/is* venerable -, with • 4/h'e marks & ,bf /thousands ,bf>years.t • Two 1 hundred^ years, -;^fqre'ChriBt'?'the' <: Barik'i : of Gliufm :existed,t bjahld/paid v ltB "depositors tenper "cent., . The ;T*Bank-"of>yenice was established in 1171^ and ,

was of such high credit that its bills were at a premium above coins, which "were frequently clipped ; Bank of Genoa, founded in 1345 ; Bank of Barcelona, 1401 ; Bank of Amsterdam, 1699 ; Bank of Hamburg, founded 1619, its circulation based on great silver bars kept in the vaults ; Bank of England, started by William Patterson in 1642, up to this day managing the stupendous debt of England ; Bankof Scotland, founded in 1695 -, Bank of Ireland, 1783 ; Bank of North America, planned by Robert Morris, 1771, without whose financial help all the bravery of our grandfathers would not have achieved independence. But now, happily, we have

Banks in All Our Cities and Towns, thousands and thousands. On their shoulders are the interests of private individuals and great corporations. In them are the great arteries through which run the currents of the nation's life. They have been the resources of thousands of financiers in days of business exigency. The stand for accommodation, for facility, for individual, State, and national relief. At their head and in their management there is as much interest and moral worth as in any class of men — perhaps more. How nefarious, then, the behaviour of those who bring disrepute upon this venerable institution ! We also deplore the abuse of irusb funds, because they fly in the face of that Divine goodness which seems determined to bless this land. We are having the eighth year of unexampled national harvest. The

Wheat Gamblers get hold of the wheat, and the corn gamblers get hold of the corn. The full tide of God's mercy towards this land is put back by those great dykes of dishonest resistance. When God provides enough food and clothing to feed and apparel this whole nation like princes, the scramble of dishonest men to get more than their share, and get it at all hazards, keeps everything shaking with uncertainty and everybody asking, ' What next ?' Every week makes new revelations. How many more bank presidents and bank cashiers have been speculating with other people's money, and how many more bank directors are in imbecile silence, letting the perfidy go on, the great and patient God only knows ! My opinion is that we have got near the bottom. The wind has been picked from the great biibblc of American speculation. The men who thought that the Judgment Day was at least 5,000 years off, have found it in 1888, 1887, 1886 ; and this nation has been taught that men must keep their hands out of other people's pockets. Great businesses built on borrowed capital have been obliterated, and men who had nothing, lost all they had. I believe we are started on a higher career of prosperity than this land has ever seen, if and if, and if — If the first men, and especially Christian men, will learn never to speculate upon

Borrowed Capital. If you have a mind to take your own money and turn it all into kibes, to fly them over every common in the United States, you do society no wrong, except when you tumble your helpless children into the poorhouse for the public to take care of. But you have no right to take the money of others and turn it into kites. There is one word that has deluded more people into bankruptcy and State prison and perdition than any other word in commercial life, and that is the word borrow ; that one word is responsible for all the defalcations, and embezzlements, and financial consternations of the last twenty years. When executors conclude to speculate with the funds of an estate committed to their charge, they do not purloin, that say

They Only Borrow ; when a banker makes an overdraft upon his institution, he does not commit a theft, he only borrows. When the officer of a company, by flaming advertisement and gilt certificate of stock, gets a 'multitude of country people to put their small earnings into an enterprise for carrying on some undeveloped nothing, he does not fraudulently take their money, he only borrows. When a young man with easy access to his employer's money-drawer, or the confidential clerk by close propinquity to the accountbooks, takes a few dollars for a Wall Street excursion, he expects to put it back ; he will put it all back very soon. Certainly. He only borrows. Why, when you are going to do wrong, pronounce so long a word as borrow, a word of six letters, when you can get a shorter word more descriptive of the reality, a word of only five letters, the word steal ? There are times when we all borrow, and borrow legitimately, and borrow with the Divine blessing,for Christ, in His Sermon on the Mount, enjoins ' from him that would borrow of thee, turn thou not away.' A young man rightly borrows money to get his education. Purchasing a house and not able to pay all down in cash, the purchaser rightly borrows it on mortgage. Crises come in business when it would be wrong for a man not to borrow. But

Never Borrow to Speculate; nofc a dollar, nob a cent, not a farthing - Young men, young men, I warn you by your worldly prospects and the value of your immortal souls, do not do it ! There are breakers distinguished for their shipwrecks, and many a craft has gone to pieces on those rocks ; but I have to tell you that all these are as nothing compared with the long line of breakers which bound the ocean of commercial life north, south, east and west, with the white foam of their despair, and the dirge of their damnation — the breakers of borrow ! If I had only a worldly weapon to use on this subject I would give you the 'fact fresh from the highest authority, that ninety per cent, of those who go into speculation in Wall Street lose all ; but I have a better warning than a worldly warning. Prom the place where men have perished — body, mind, and soul — stand off, stand off ! Abstract pulpit discussion must step aside on this question. Faith and repentance are absolutely necessary, but faith and repentance are no more doctrines of the Bible than

Commercial Integrity. Render to all their dues. Owe no man anything. And while I meantopreach faithand repentance, more and more to preach) them, I do nob mean to spend any time in chasing the Hittites, and Jebusites, and Girgashites of Bible times, when there are so many evils right around us destroying men and women for time _ and eternity. . <The greatest evangelistic preacher the world ever saw, a man who died for his evangelism — the peerless Paul, wrote to the Romans, ' Provide things honest in the sight of all men ;' wrote to the Corinthians, ' Do that which is honest ;' wrote to the Philippians, ' Whatsoever things are- honest ;' wrote to the Hebrews, 'Willing in all things to live honestly.' The Bible says, that faithwithoub works is dead ; which being . literally translated, means that- if yourbusiness life does not correspond with your, prof essionj your religion is a sham and unprofitable. / ; Here is somethings that needs to be .sounded into the- ears of all the young men of America and.other lands, and iterated, it this country/ particularly, :is eVe*r n 't to be,f delivered .from-its.calamites^and pros? jperity is»tabe established and perpetuated. 1

And let.us adjust/jail our; business/ind '-bur , homes by the ; principles of L tKeXGlinstian:|

religion. Our religion ought to mean just as much on Saturday and Monday as on the day between., Our religion ought to first s clean our hearts, and then it ought to olean our lives. Religion is an omnipotent principle, all-controlling, all-conquering. You may get along with something less than that, and you may deceive yourself with it : but you cannot deceive God, and you * cannot deceive the world. The keen business man will put on his spectacles, and he will look clear through to the back of your head, and see whether your religion is a fiction or a fact. And you cannot hide your samples of sugar, or rice, or tea, or coffee if they are false ; you cannot hide them under the cloth of a communion-table. All your prayers go for nothing so long as you misrepresent your banking institution, and in the amount of resources you put down more specie and more fractional currency, and more clearing-house certificates, and more legal-tender notes, and more loans, and more discounts than there really are. and when you give an account of your liabilities you do not mention all the unpaid dividends, and the United States bank notes outstanding, and the individual deposits, and the obligations to other banks and bankers. An authority more scrutinising than that of any bank examiner will go through and through your business. I stand this morning before many who have the custody of trust funds. It is a compliment to you that you have been so intrusted ; but I charge you, in the presence of God and the world, be careful, be as

Careful of the Property of Others as you are careful of your own. Above all, keep your own private account at the bank separate from your account as trustee of an estate, or trustee of an institution. That is the point at which thousands of people i make shipwreck. They get the property of others mixed up with their own property, they put it into investment, and away it all goes, and they cannot return that which they borrowed. Then comes the explosion, and the money market is shaken, and the press denounces, and the church thunders explosion. You have no right to use the property of others, except for their advantage, nor without consent, unless they are minors. If with their consent you invest their property as well as you can, and it is all lost, you are not to blame ; you did the best you could, but do not come into the delusion which has ruined so many men, of thinking because a thing is in their possession, therefore it is theirs. You have a solemn trust from God. Let me say, in the most solemn and emphatic manner to all young men,

Dishonesty will Never Pay. An abbob wanted to buy a piece of ground, and the owner would nob sell it, but the owner finally consented to let it to him until he could raise one crop, and the abbot sowed acorns — a crop of two hundred years ! And I tell you, young man, that the dishonesties which you plant in your heart and life will seem to be very insignificant, but they will grow up until they will overshadow you with horrible darkness, overshadow all time and all eternity. It will nob be a crop for two hundred years, but a crop for everlasting ages. I have also a word of comfort for all who suffer from the malfeasance and dishonesty of others, and every honest man, woman and child does suffer from what goes on in financial scampdom. Society is so bound togebher, that all the misfortunes which good people suffer in bueiness matters come from the misdeeds of others. Bear up under distress, strong in God. He will see you through, though your misfortunes should be centupled. Trust to His appointment. The door will soon open to let you out and let you up. On the maps of the Arctic regions there are two places whose names are remarkable, given, I suppose, by some Polarjexpedition : ' Cape Farewell' and 'Thank God Harbour.' At this last bhe * Polaris' wintered in 1871, and the { Tigress ' in 1873. Some ships have passed the Cape, yet never reached the Harbour. But from what I know of many of you, I have concluded that though your voyage in life may be very rough, run into by icebergs on this side and icebergs on that, you will in due time reach Cape Farewell, and there bid good-bye to all annoyances, and poon after drop anchor in the calm waters of Thank God Harbour — ' Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'