Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1888 — MORAL WORTH. [ARTICLE]

MORAL WORTH.

Character Should be Weighed When Marriage is Proposed, Aa A gain itt the Show of Jewel* and Honan* and Bank Aononnt*—-Wnalth t* Mot Always the Guarantee es Happiness at Boms. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “Marriage for Worldly Success Without Regard to Moril Character.” Text I. Samuel xxv,, 2. “And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep end a thousand goats." Dr. Talmage said: My text introduces us to a drunken bloat of large property. Before the day of safety deposits and government bonds and nationaf banka people had their investment* in flocks and herds, and this man, Nabal, of the text, had much of his possessions in live stock. He came, also, of a distinguished family, and had glorious Caleb for an ancestor. But thus descendant was a sneak, a churl, a sot, and a fool. Now,that was the man whom Abigail, the lovely and gracious and good woman, married—a tube roee planted beside a thistle, a palm branch twined into a wreath of deadly nightshade. Surely that was not one of the matches made* in heaven. We throw up our hands in horror at that wedding. How did she ever consent to link her destinies with such a creature? Well, she no doubt thought that it would be an honor to be associated with an aristocratic family, and no one can despise a great name. Besides this, wealth would come and with it chains of gold and mansions lighted with swinging lamps of aromatic oil and resounding with the cheers of banqueters seated at tables laden with wines from the richest vineyards and fruits from the ripest orchards, and nuts threshed from foreign woods andjneata smoking in platters of gold set on by slaves in bright uniforms. Before she plighted her troth with this dissipated man she sometimes said to herself: “How can I endure him? To be associated for life with such a debauchee I can not and will not!” But then, again, she said to herself: “It is time I was married, and this is a cold world to depend on,and perhaps I might do worse, and may be I will make a sober man out of him, and marriage is a lottery anyhow.” And when one day this representative of a great house presented himself in a parenthesis of sobriety, and with an assumed geniality and gallantry of manner, and with promises of kindness and fidelity and self-abnega-tion, a June morning smiled on a March squall, and the great souled woman surrendered her happkffess to the keeping of this infamous son of fortune whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats.

Good and genial character in aman,is the very first requisite for woman’s happy marriage. Mistake me not as deprecative of worldly prosperites. There is a religious cant that would seem to represent poverty as a virtue and wealth as a crime. I can take you through a thousand mansions where God is as much' worshiped as He ever waa in. a cabin. The Gospel ineuteates the virtues which tend toward wealth. In the millenium we will all dwell in palaces and ride in chariots and Bit at sumptuous banquets and sleep nnder rich embroideries and live four or five hundred years, for, if according to the Bible in those times a child shall diea hundred years old, the average of human life will be at least five centuries. The whole tendency of sin is toward poverty, and the whole tendency of righteousness is toward wealth. Godliness is profitable for the life that now is as well as for that which is to come. No inventory can be made of the picture galleries consecrated to God,and sculpture and of libraries and pillared magnificence, and of park and fountains and gardens in the ownership of good men and women. The two most lordly residences in which I was ever a guest had morning and evening prayers, all the employes present, and all day long there was an air of cheerful piety in the conversation and behavior. Lordßadstock carried the gospel to the Russian nobility, Lord Cavan and Lord Cairns spent their vacation in evangelistic services. Lord Congleton became missionary to Bagdad. And the Christ who was born in an Eastern caravansary has again and again lived in a palace. ' It is a grand thing to have plenty of money and horses that don’t compel yon to fake the dust of every lumbering and lazy vehicle; and books of history that give you a glimpse of all the past; and shelves of poetry to which you may go and ask Milton or Tennyson or Spencer or Tom Moore or Robert Burns to step down and spend an evening with yon; and other shelves to which you may go while you feel disgusted with the shams of the' world, and ask Thackeray to express your chagrin, jor Charles Dickens to expose the Pecksniffianism, or Thomas Carlyle to thunder your indignation; or the other shelves, where the old Gospel writers stand ready to warn and cheer us, while ; they open doors into that city, which is : so bright the noonday sun is abolished. ; There is no virtue in ownieg a horse that takes four minutes to go a mile if I yon can own one that can go in a little over two minutes and a naif; no virtue; in running into the teeth of a northeast wind with thin apparelif you can afford | furs; no virtue in being noor when tmi I can honestly be rich. There are names of men and women that I have only to mention and they suggest not only wealth, but religion and generosity and philanthropy, such as Amos Lawrence, James Lennox. Peter Cooper, William E. Dodge, Shaftesbury, • Miss Wolfe and Mrs. Astor. A recent writer says that of fifty leading business men in one 'of our Eastern cities, and of the fifty leading business men of one of our western cities, three-fourths of them are Christians. The fact is that about ail the brain and business genius is on the side of religion. Infidelity is incipient insanity. All infidels are cranks. Manv of them talk brightly, but you scon find that in their mental machinery their is a perew loose. Wheri they are not lecturing against Christianity hey are fitting in the b?r-rooms squirting tobacco juice, and w hen they getmad- swear feul -»W place is sulphurous. They only talk to

keep their courage up, and at the best will feel like tbe infidel who begged to be bnrie4 with his Christian wife and daughter, and when asked why he wanted such burial replied; “If there be a resurrection of (he good.a* some folks say there will be, mv Christian wite and daughter will somehow get me op and take me along wih them." Men may pretend to despise religion, but they are rank hypocrites. The Bea captain was right when he came up to the village on the seacoast and insisted in paying $lO to the church, although he did not attend himself. Whenaaked his reason, he said that he had been in the habit of carrying cargoes of oysters and clams from that place, and he found since that church was built the people were more honest than they used to be, for before the church was built he often found the load wheti he came to count it a thousand clams short. Yes. Godliness is profitable for both worlds. Moat of the great, honest, permanent worldly successes are by those who rev erence God and the Bible. But what Ido say is that if a man have nothing but social position and financial resources, a puts her happiness by marriage in his hand re-enacts the folly of Abigail when she accepted disagreeable Nabal, “whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats.” If there be a good moral character accompanied by affluent circumstances I congratulate you. If not, let the morning lark fly clear of the rocky mountain eagle. The sacrifice of a woman on the altar of social and financial expectation is cruel and stupendous. I sketch you a scene you have more than once witnessed. A comfortable home with nothing more than ordinary surroundings, but an attractive daughter carefully and From the outside world comes in a man with nothing but money, unless you count profanity and selfishness and fondnesss for champagne and general recklessness as a part of his possession. He has his coat-collar turned up when there is no chill in the a ; r but because it gives him an air of abandon, and eye-glasp, not because he is near-sighted, but because it give a classical appearance, and with an attire somewhat loud, a cane thick enough to be the club of Hercules, and clutched at the middle, his conversation interlarded with French phrases inaccurateiy pronounced and a sweep of manner indicating that he was not horn like most folks, but terrestrially landed. By arts learned of the devil *he insinuates himself into thd affections of the daughter of that Christian nome. Ail the kindred congratulate her on the almost supernatural prospects. Reports come in that the young man is fast in his habits; that he has broken several young hearts, and that he is mean and selfish and cruel. But all this is covered up with the fact that he has several houses in his own name and has large deposits at the bank, and, more than all, has a father worth many hundren thousand dollars, and very feeble in health and may any day drop off, and this the only son, and a round dollar held close to one’s eye is large enough to shut out a great desert, and how much more will several bushe’s of dollars shut out.—: X.

The marriage day comes and goe3. The wedding ring was costly enough and the orange blossoms fragrant enough and the benediction solemn enough and the wedding march stirring enQugh. And the audience shed tears of sympathetic gladness, supposing that the craft containing the two has sailed off on a placid lake, although God Tcnbws that they are launched on a Dead Sea, its waters brackish wit! i tears and ghastly faces of despair floating to the surface and then going down. There they are, the newly-married pair, in their new home. He turns out to be a tyrant. Her will is nothing; his will is every thing. Lavish of money for his own pleasure, ho begrudges her the pennies he pinches out into her trembling palm. Instead of the kind words she left behind in her former home, now there are complaints and fault-findings and curses. He is the master and she the slave. The worst villain on earth is the man who, having captured a woman from her father s house, and after the oath of the marriage alter has been pronounced says, by his manner if not in word?: “I have you now in my power. What can you do? My arm is stronger than yours. My voice is louder than yours. My fortune is greater4han yours. My name is might.W than vonrs Now crouch before me like a dog. Now crawl away "from me like a reptile. You are nothing but a woman, anyhow. Down, you miser able wretch!’ Can halls of mosaic, can long lines of Etruscan bronze, or statuary by Palmer and Powers and Crawford and Chantry and Canova, can gal If ries rich from the pencil of Blerstadt and Church and Kenset and Cole and Cropsev, could flutes played on by an Ole Bull or pianos fingered by a Gottscbalk, or solos warbled by a Sontage, could wardrobes like that of a Marie Antoinette, could jewels like those of a Eugenie make a wife in euch a companionship happy? Imprisoned iu a caatU! H«r gold bracelets are tha chains of a rife long servitude. There is a sword over her every leas', i not like i hat of'Damocles, staying suspended, but dropping through her lacerated heart. Her wardrobe is lull of shrouds for deaths which she dies daily, and she is buried alive, though buried under goraeous unholstery. 'There is* one word tuat t-ounds under the arches and id'Vs along the corridors, and weeps in the falling fountains and echoes in the (.hatting of 'every door and troans in every note of stringed and wind instrument: “Wot! woeT’ The oxenandsheep in olden times brought, *o the Temple of Jupiter to he sacrificed used to be covered with ribbons and flowers—ribbons on the horns and flowers on the neck. But the floral and ribboned decoration did not make the stab of the butcher’s knife less deathful, and all the chandeliers you hang over such a woman, and all the robes with which yon enwrap her, and all the ribbons with which you adorn her, and ail the bewitching charms with which you embank her footsteps, are;the ribbons and flowers of a horrible butchery. ;Ref®.e things are right in this world genteel villains are to be expurged. Instead of being welcomed into genteel society because of the amount of stars and garters, and medals and estates they represent, they ought to be fumigated two or-three years before they are allowed without peril to themselves to put their hand on the door-knob of a moral honse. The time most come wbena masculine eßtraywittbe as repugnant to good society as a feminine

astray, and no coat of arms or family Siblaaunry or epaulet can pass a Loario unchallenged ampog the sanctities of home life. By what law of God or common aenue is an Absalom better than a Delilah, a Don Juan better than a Mesaalina? The brush that painte the one black moat paint the other black. But what a epetacie it was when last summer much of “watering place” society went wild with entnusiasm over an unclean foreign dignitary whose name in both hemispheres is* a avnouj m for profligacy, ana princesses of American society from all parts of the land had him ride in their carriages and sit at their tables, though they knew* him to be a portable lazaretto, a charnel-house of moral putrefaction, his breath a typhoid, his foot that of a satyr and his touch death. Here is an evil that men can not stop, bnt women may. Steep all such out of your parlors; have no recognition for them in the street,,and no more think of allying your life and destiny with theirs than “gales from Araby” would consent to pass the honeymoon with an Egyptian plague. All that money or social position a bad man brings to a woman in marriage is a splendid dispair, a glided horror, a brilliant agony, a prolonged death, and the longer the material union lasts tbe more evident will be the fact that she might better never have been horn. Yet you and I- have been at brilliant weddings where before the feast was over the bridegroom’s tongue was thick and his eyes glassy and his step a stagger aa he clicked glasses with jolly comrades, all going with lightning limited express rate to the fatal crash over the embankment of a ruined life and a lost eternity. Woman, join not your right band with such a right hand. Accept from a one no jewel for finger or ear least that sparkle of precious stone turn out to be the eye of a basilisk, and let not the ring come on the finger of your right hand least that ring turn out to be one link of a chain that will bind you in never-end-ing captivity. In the name of God and heaven and home, in the name of all time and all eternity I forbid the bannsl Consent not to join one of the many regiments of women who have married for worldly success without regard to moral character. If you are ambitious, 0 woman, for noble affiancing, why not marry a King? And to that honor you are invited by the Monarch of heaven and earth, and this day a voice from the skies sounds forth. “As the bridegroom' rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” Let Him put upon thee the ring of this royal marriage. Here is an honor worth reaching after. By repentance and faith you may come into a marriage vyith the Emperor of univesral dominion, and you may be an empress unto God forever, and reign with him in palaces that the centuries can not crumble or cannonades demolish. High worldly marriage is not necessary for woman, or marriage of any kind in order to your happiness. Celibacy has been honored by the best being that ever lived and his greatest apostle, Christ and Paul. What higher honor could single life on earth have? But whai you need, O woman, is to be affianced forever and forever, and the bans of that marriage I am this moment here and now ready to publish. Let the angels of heaved bend from thei* gal leries of light to witness while I pronounce you one—a loving God and a forgiven soul.