225. Slaughter of Young Men

Slaughter of Young Men

Pro_7:22 : ’93As an ox to the slaughter.’94

There is nothing in the voice or manner of the butcher to indicate to the ox that there is death ahead. The ox thinks he is going on to a rich pasture-field of clover where all day long he will revel in the herbaceous luxuriance; but after a while the men and the boys close in upon him with sticks and stones and shouting, and drive him through bars and into a doorway where he is fastened, and with well-aimed stroke the ax fells him; and so the anticipation of the redolent pasture-field is completely disappointed. So many a young man has been driven on by temptation to what he thought would be paradisiacal enjoyment; but after a while influences with darker hue and swarthier arm close in upon him, and he finds that instead of making an excursion into a garden, he has been driven ’93as an ox to the slaughter.’94

We are apt to blame young men for being destroyed when we ought to blame the influences that destroy them. Society slaughters a great many young men by the behest, ’93You must keep up appearances; whatever be your salary, you must dress as well as others, you must wine and brandy as many friends, you must smoke as costly cigars, you must give as expensive entertainments, and you must live in as fashionable a boarding-house. If you haven’92t the money, borrow. If you can’92t borrow, make a false entry, or subtract here and there a bill from a bundle of bank-bills; you will only have to make the deception a little while; in a few months, or in a year or two, you can make all right. Nobody will be hurt by it, nobody will be the wiser. You yourself will not be damaged.’94 By that awful process a hundred thousand men have been slaughtered for time and slaughtered for eternity.

Suppose you borrow. There is nothing wrong about borrowing money. There is hardly a man in business but has sometimes borrowed money. Vast estates have been built on a borrowed dollar. But there are two kinds of borrowed money. Money borrowed for the purpose of starting, or keeping up legitimate enterprise and expense, and money borrowed to get that which you can do without. The first is right, the other is wrong. If you have money enough of your own to buy a coat, however plain, and then you borrow money for a dandy’92s outfit, you have taken the first revolution of the wheel down grade. Borrow for the necessities; that may be well. Borrow for the luxuries; that tips your prospects over in the wrong direction.

The Bible distinctly says the borrower is servant of the lender. It is a bad state of things when you have to go down some other street to escape meeting some one whom you owe. If young men knew what is the despotism of being in debt, more of them would keep out of it. What did debt do for Lord Bacon, with a mind towering above the centuries? It induced him to take bribes and convict himself as a criminal before all ages. What did debt do for Walter Scott? Broken-hearted at Abbotsford. Kept him writing until his hand gave out in paralysis to keep the sheriff away from his pictures and statuary. Better for him if he had minded the maxim which he had chiseled over the fireplace at Abbotsford, ’93Waste not, want not.’94 What did debt do for Robert Burns? Drove him to hard drinking and to begging for seven pounds and four shillings to pay for a volunteer’92s uniform. What did debt do for Lord Byron and his mother? She died in a fit of rage from reading the upholsterer’92s bill, at Newstead. William Pitt, with genius enough to control the finances of the English nation, could not control his own finances, and went from one mortification to another, and after death the Parliament voted two hundred thousand dollars to pay the debts of that man who had received thirty thousand dollars salary annually.

The trouble is, my friends, that people do not understand the ethics of going in debt, and that if you purchase goods with no expectation of paying for them, or go into debts which you cannot meet, you steal just so much money. If I go into a grocer’92s store and I buy sugars and coffees and meats, with no capacity to pay for them, and no intention of paying for them, I am more dishonest than if I go into the store, and when the grocer’92s face is turned the other way I fill my pockets with the articles of merchandise and carry off a ham! In the one case I take the merchant’92s time and I take the time of his messenger to transfer the goods to my house, while in the other case I take none of the time of the merchant and I wait upon myself and I transfer the goods without any trouble to him! In other words, a sneak thief is not so bad as a man who contracts for debts he never expects to pay. Yet, in all our cities there are families that move every May-day to get into proximity to other grocers and meat shops and apothecaries. They owe everybody within half a mile of where they now live, and next May they will move into a distant part of the city, finding a new lot of victims. Meanwhile, you, the honest family in the new house, are bothered day by day by the knocking at the door of disappointed bakers and butchers and dry-goods dealers and newspaper carriers, and you are asked where your predecessor is. You do not know. It was arranged, you should not know. Meanwhile, your predecessor has gone to some distant part of the city, and the people who have anything to sell have sent their wagons and stopped there to solicit the ’93valuable’94 custom of the new neighbor, and he, the new neighbor, with great complacency and with an air of affluence, orders the finest steaks and the highest-priced sugars, and the best of the canned fruits and perhaps all the newspapers’97Eagle, Argus, Herald, Sun, Tribune, World and Times! And the debts will keep on accumulating until he gets his goods on the thirtieth of next April in the furniture car.

Now, let me say, if there are any such persons in the house this morning, if you have any regard for your own conscience you had better move to some greatly distant part of the city. If, for instance you live in South Brooklyn, move to the Eastern District or Greenpoint; or if you live in the central part of Brooklyn, move to New York or Jersey City! It is too bad that, having had all the trouble of consuming the goods, you should also have the trouble of being dunned! And let me say if you find that this pictures your own photograph, instead of being in church you ought to be in the penitentiary! No wonder that so many of our merchants fail in business. They are swindled into bankruptcy by these wandering Arabs, these Nomads of city life. They cheat the grocer out of the green apples which make them sick, the physician who attends them during their distress, and the undertaker who fits them out for departure from the neighborhood where they owe everybody when they pay the debt of nature, the only debt they ever do pay! Now our young men are coming up in this depraved state of commercial ethics, and I am solicitous about them. I want to warn them against being slaughtered on the sharp edges of debt. You want many things you have not, my young friends. You shall have them if you have patience and honesty and industry. Certain lines of conduct always lead out to certain successes. There is a law which controls even those things that seem haphazard. I have been told by those who have observed that it is possible to calculate just how many letters will be sent to the Dead-letter Office every year through misdirection; that it is possible to calculate just how many letters will be detained for lack of postage-stamps through the forgetfulness of the senders, and that it is possible to tell just how many people will fall in the streets by slipping on an orange peel. In other words, there are no accidents. The most insignificant event you ever heard of is the link between two eternities’97the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future. Head the right way, young man, and you will come out at the right goal.

Bring me a young man and tell me what his physical health is, and what his mental calibre, and what his habits, and I will tell you what will be his destiny for this world and his destiny for the world to come and I will not make five inaccurate prophecies out of the five hundred. All this makes me solicitous in regard to young men, and I want to make them nervous in regard to the contraction of unpayable debts. I give you a paragraph from my own experience.

My first settlement as pastor was in a village. My salary was eight hundred dollars and a parsonage. The amount seemed enormous to me. I said to myself: ’93What! all this for one year?’94 I was afraid of getting worldly under so much prosperity! I resolved to invite all the congregation to my house in groups of twenty-five each. We began, and as they were the best congregation in all the world, and we felt nothing was too good for them, we piled all the luxuries on the table. I never completed the undertaking. At the end of six months I was in financial despair. I found that we not only had not the surplus of luxuries, but we had a struggle to get the necessaries, and I learned what every young man learns in time to save himself, or too late, that you must measure the size of a man’92s body before you begin to cut the cloth for his coat.

When a young man wilfully and of choice, having the comforts of life, goes into the contraction of unpayable debts, he knows not into what he goes. The creditors get after the debtor, the pack of hounds in full cry, and alas! for the reindeer. They jingle his doorbell before he gets up in the morning; they jingle his doorbell after he has gone to bed at night. They meet him as he comes off his front steps. They send him a postal-card, or a letter, in curtest style, telling him to pay up. They attach his goods. They want cash, or a note at thirty days, or a note on demand. They call him a knave. They say he lies. They want him disciplined at the church. They want him turned out of the bank. They come at him from this side and from that side and from before and from behind and from above and from beneath, and he is insulted and gibbeted and sued and dunned and sworn at, until he gets the nervous dyspepsia, gets neuralgia, gets liver complaint, gets heart disease, gets convulsive disorder, gets consumption.

Now he is dead, and you say: ’93Of course they will let him alone.’94 Oh, no! Now they are watchful to see whether there are any unnecessary expenses at the obsequies, to see whether there is any useless handle on the casket to see whether there is any surplus plait on the shroud, to see whether the hearse is costly or cheap, to see whether the flowers sent to the casket have been bought by the family or donated, to see in whose name the deed to the grave is made out. Then they ransack the bereft household, the books, the pictures, the carpets, the chairs, the sofa, the piano, the mattresses, the pillow on which he died. Cursed be debt! For the sake of your own happiness, for the sake of your good morals, for the sake of your immortal soul, for God’92s sake, young man, as far as possible, keep out of it.

But I think more young men are slaughtered through irreligion. Take away a young man’92s religion and you make him the prey of evil. We all know that the Bible is the only perfect system of morals. Now, if you want to destroy the young man’92s morals, take his Bible away. How will you do that? Well, you will caricature his reverence for the Scriptures, you will take all those incidents of the Bible which can be made mirth of’97Jonah’92s whale, Samson’92s foxes, Adam’92s rib’97then you will caricature eccentric Christians or inconsistent Christians; then you will pass off as your own all those hackneyed arguments against Christianity which are as old as Tom Paine, as old as Voltaire, as old as sin. Now, you have captured his Bible, and you have taken his strongest fortress; the way is comparatively clear, and all the gates of his soul are set open in invitation to the sins of earth and the sorrows of death, that they may come in and drive the stake for their encampment.

A steamer fifteen hundred miles from shore with broken rudder and lost compass, and hulk leaking fifty gallons the hour, is better off than a young man when you have robbed him of his Bible. Have you ever noticed how despicably mean it is to take away the world’92s Bible without proposing a substitute? It is meaner than to come to a sick man and steal his medicine, meaner than to come to a pauper and steal his crust, meaner than to come to a poor man and burn his house down. It is the worst of all larcenies to steal the Bible which has been medicine and food and eternal home to so many. What a generous and magnanimous business infidelity has gone into! This splitting up of life-boats, and taking away of fire-escapes, and extinguishing of lighthouses. I come out and I say to such people: ’93What are you doing all this for?’94 ’93Oh!’94 they say, ’93just for fun.’94 It is such fun to see Christians try to hold on to their Bibles! Many of them have lost loved ones, and have been told that there is a resurrection, and it is such fun to tell them there will be no resurrection! Many of them have believed that Christ came to carry the burdens and to heal the wounds of the world, and it is such fun to tell them they will have to be their own saviour! Think of the meanest thing you ever heard of; then go down a thousand feet underneath it, and you will find yourself at the top of a stairs a hundred miles long; go to the bottom of the stairs, and you will find a ladder a thousand miles long; then go to the foot of the ladder and look off a precipice half as far as from here to China, and you will find the headquarters of the meanness that would rob this world of its only comfort in life, its only peace in death, and its only hope for immortality. Slaughter a young man’92s faith in God, and there is not much more left to slaughter.

Now what has become of the slaughtered? Well, some of them are in their father’92s or mother’92s house, broken down in health, waiting to die; others are in the hospital, others are in Greenwood, or, rather their bodies are, for their souls have gone on to retribution. Not much prospect for a young man who started life with good health and good education and a Christian example set him, and opportunity of usefulness, who gathered all his treasures and put them in one box, and then dropped it into the sea.

Now, how is this wholesale slaughter to be stopped? There is not a person in the house but is interested in that question. Young man, arm yourself. The object of my sermon this morning is to put a weapon in each of your hands for your own defense. Wait not for Young Men’92s Christian Associations to protect you, or churches to protect you. Appealing to God for help, take care of yourself.

First, have a room somewhere that you can call your own. Whether it be the back parlor of a fashionable boarding-house, or a room in the fourth story of a cheap lodging, I care not. Only have that one room your fortress. Let not the dissipater or unclean step over the threshold. If they come up the long flight of stairs and knock at the door, meet them face to face and kindly yet firmly refuse them admittance. Have a few family portraits on the wall, if you brought them with you from your country home. Have a Bible on the stand. If you can afford it and you can play on one, have an instrument of music’97harp or flute or cornet or melodeon or violin or piano. Every morning before you leave that room, pray. Every night after you come home in that room, pray. Make that room your Gibraltar, your Sebastopol, your Mount Zion. Let no bad book or newspaper come into that room any more than you would allow a cobra to coil on your table.

Take care of yourself. Nobody else will take care of you. Your help will not come up two or three or four flights of stairs; your help will come through the roof, down from heaven, from that God who in the six thousand years of the world’92s history never betrayed a young man who tried to be good and a Christian. Let me say in regard to your adverse worldly circumstances, in passing, that you are on a level now with those who are finally to succeed. Mark my words, young man, and think of it thirty years from now. You will find that those who thirty years from now are the millionaires of this country, who are the orators of the country, who are the poets of the country, who are the strong merchants of the country, who are the great philanthropists of the country’97mightiest in Church and State’97are this morning on a level with you, not an inch above, and you in straitened circumstances now.

Herschel earned his living by playing a violin at parties, and in the interstices of the play he would go out and look up at the midnight heavens, the fields of his immortal conquests. George Stephenson rose from being the foreman in a colliery to be the most renowned of the world’92s engineers. And these men who are to succeed, are on your level now. I speak to those who are complaining of their straitened and hard circumstances. Those who are at the top at your age, nine out of ten of them will come down. No outfit, no capital to start with! young man, go down to Mercantile Library and get some books and read of what wonderful mechanism God gave you in your hand, in your foot, in your eye, in your ear, and then ask some doctor to take you into the dissecting room and illustrate to you what you have read about, and never again commit the blasphemy of saying you have no capital to start with. Equipped! Why, the poorest young man in this house is equipped as only the God of the whole universe could afford to equip him. Then his wonderful soul’97oh! that is what makes me solicitous. I am not so much anxious about you, young man, because you have so little to do with, as I am anxious about you because you have so much to risk, and lose or gain.

There is no class of persons that so stir my sympathies as young men in great cities. Not quite enough salary to live on, and all the temptations that come from that deficit. Invited on all hands to drink, and their exhausted nervous system seeming to demand stimulus. Their religion caricatured by the most of the clerks in the store, and most of the operatives in the factory. The rapids of temptation and death rushing against that young man forty miles the hour, and he in a frail boat headed up stream, with nothing but a broken oar to work with. Unless Almighty God help them they will go under.

Ah! when I told you to take care of yourself you misunderstood me if you thought I meant you are to depend upon human resolution, which may be dissolved in the foam of the wine cup, or may be blown out with the first gust of temptation. Here is the helmet, and the sword of the Lord Almighty. Clothe yourself in that panoply, and you shall not be put to confusion. Sin pays well neither in this world nor the next, but right thinking, and right believing, and right acting will take you in safety through this life and in transport through the next.

I never shall forget a prayer I heard a young man make some fifteen years ago. It was a very short prayer, but it was a tremendous prayer: ’93Oh, Lord! help us. We find it so very easy to do wrong and so hard to do right, Lord help us.’94 That prayer, I warrant you, reached the ear of God, and reached his heart. And there are in this house a hundred men who have found out’97a thousand young men, perhaps, who have found out that very thing. It is so very easy to do wrong, and so hard to do right.

I got a letter last night, only one paragraph of which I shall read:

Having moved around somewhat, I have run across many young men of intelligence, ardent strivers after that will-o’92-the-wisp’97fortune’97and of one of these I would speak. He was a young Englishman of twenty-three or four years, who came to New York, where he had no acquaintances, with barely sufficient to keep him a couple of weeks. He had been tenderly reared, perhaps I should say too tenderly, and was not used to earning his living, and found it extremely difficult to get any position that he was capable of filling. After many vain efforts in this direction he found himself on a Sunday evening in Brooklyn, near your church, with about three dollars left of his small capital. Providence seemed to lead him to your door, and he determined to go in and hear you. He told me his going to heat you that night was undoubtedly the turning point in his life, for when he went into your church he felt desperate, but while listening to your discourse his better nature got the mastery. I truly believe from what this young man told me that your sounding the depths of his heart that night alone brought him back to his God whom he was so near leaving.

The echo that is of multitudes in all our great cities. I am not preaching an abstraction, but a great reality. O friendless young man! O prodigal young man! O broken-hearted young man! discouraged young man, wounded young man! I com-mend to you Christ this day, the best friend a man ever had. He meets you this morning. You have come here for this blessing. Despise not that emotion rising in your soul; it is divinely lifted. Look into the face of Christ. Lift one prayer to your father’92s God, to your mother’92s God, and this morning get the pardoning blessing. Now, while I speak, you are at the forks of the road, and this is the right road and that is the wrong road and I see you start on the right road.

Last Sabbath morning, at the close of the service, I saw a gold watch of the world-renowned and deeply-lamented violinist, Ole Bull. You remember he died last summer in his island home off the coast of Norway. That gold watch he had wound up day after day through his last illness, and then he said to his companion, ’93Now, I want to wind this watch as long as I can, and then when I am gone I want you to keep it wound up until it gets to my friend, Dr. Doremus, in New York, and then he will keep it wound up until his life is done, and then I want the watch to go to his young son, my especial favorite.’94 The great musician who more than any other artist had made the violin speak and sing and weep and laugh and triumph’97for it seemed when he drew the bow across the strings as if all earth and heaven shivered in delighted sympathy’97the great musician, in a room looking off upon the sea, and surrounded by his favorite instruments of music, closed his eyes in death. While all the world was mourning at his departure, sixteen crowded steamers fell into line of funeral procession to carry his body to the mainland. There were fifty thousand of his countrymen gathered in an amphitheatre of the hills waiting to hear the eulogium, and it was said when the great orator of the day with stentorian voice began to speak, the fifty thousand people on the hillsides burst into tears. That was the close of a life that had done so much to make the world happy. But I have to tell you, young man, if you live right and die right, that was a tame scene compared with that which will greet you when from the galleries of heaven the one hundred and forty and four thousand shall accord with Christ in saying: ’93Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’94 And the influences that on earth you put in motion will go down from generation to generation, the influences you wound up handed to your children, and their influences wound up and handed to their children, until watch and clock are no more needed to mark the progress, because time itself shall be no longer.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage