Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1892 — THE GOLDEN CALF. [ARTICLE]

THE GOLDEN CALF.

Thb Sioux Indians hare opened their ghost dance and intimate ai yearning tor some white blood. Had this desire seized them some four centuries ago. the prosperity of • the country might have been jeopard* axed, but ft* matters now stand the dance can go on without creating serious alarm. ~ < A baldheaded expert informs the waiting world that Micro aro nine kinds of baldness. This gentleman would take front rank as an alarmist were it not that there are a thousand and one remedies for each and every kind of baldness known of man. They range from sage tea to a Parisian wig, and than this no wider range can be conceived. England is building eight enor. mous ironclads, at a cost of Dearly $5,000,000 each. One of them, The Royal Sovereign, will cost much more than any of her seven sisters, because she is being hurried on for sea, as the London World observes, “after a fashion never known before, at an unprecedented cost in the matter of wages and overtime.” Theidea is to test The Royal Sovereign thoroughly, so that if she Corn a out to have any serious defects in either structure, armamet, or machinery, advantage may be taken of the experience gained to correct these mistakes, when practicable, in the other seven. People who think that the United States is spending money too rapidly for a navy, should notice what other countries are doing. In their present unpleasantness in Dahomey, the French, us in Algeria and Senegal, dispose their marching column, when the enemy is near, in the form of a square. They have no flanks exposed to the attack, and they regard this ‘feature of their tactics as one of tho most elective measures to prevent surprise and insure victory. It was by thus deploying their forces that they overcame the armies of Satnory and Alimadu; and while the poorly-armed natives inflict small loss upon the French, the latter are always able with their shells and raDid firing of guns to kill many of their opponents. In the present war the Dahomevans have, on every occasion, attacked the French with vigor, but when they have found that their charges, irresistible against a native foe, have bad no effect in breaking the square of the French, from which a deadly tire was pouring, they have soon retreated. It is at this point of tho battle that the French bring into service tho cavalry which they took with them up the Wheme river. They prevent the enemy from reforming, and inflict severe punishment upon the fleeing natives. It is probable that we shall soon hear of the complete triumph of the French arms in their present campaign. Question: “It was said in Sunday’s Sun that preachers must cut their sermons short, land that the Scriptural reports of tho Apostle Paui’s sermons show that ho never preached long sermons, the reports of which were cut, or coudensed, or, as modern reporters say, ‘blue pen. oilled,’ by the editor of the Acts?’ Answer: We cannot believ that the reports of Paul’s sermons, as given in the Acts of tho Apostles, were cut, even under the guidauce of inspiration. There is every reason to believe that these sermons were reported in full, just as Paul preached them. They are well rounded, all of them. The argument is orderly aid complete, in each of them. There is no break iu the line of discourse any where. Every sermon is a master piece. Take the sermon which was preached to the Jews in Antioch, or that which was preached to the Greeks in Athens, or any of tho ether sermons which Paul preached iu the course of his life, as reported iu the New Testament; it will be seen that no blue pepciller ever cut the report thereof; it will be seen that we have the whole of the sermon in etfery case. Whether he preached to Jews or to Pagans, or to Chris, tiaug, he always made his sermons short. We have no report of any sermon of bis that lasted for a half hour, or even for a quarter of ati hour; aad we are disposed to surmise that do serqton of his ever took more than ten minutes in its delivery. Few of our modern preachers would bke to make their sermons as short the Apostle, Paul’s; yet Paul preached more effectively than any long winded preacher who has lived since his Umsc’ -Nsw York Sun.

Dr. Talmage Finds Many Lessons in Aaron’s Bovine. !. . 0 rbt> Had Worship ot Gold ha* Caused Millions to Suffer In Aaron'a Time - and Now. The Rev. Dr. Talmage preached in Brooklyn last Sunday. Text: Exodus Peoph will have a god of some kind and they preferoneof theirown making. Here -come the Israelites, breaking; off their golden ear rings, the mea as well as the women, for in those tines they were masculine as well asieminine decorations. Where did they get these beautiful gold ear rings, doming as they did from the desert? Oh, they “borrowed” them from tbje Egyptians when they left Egypt. These earrings are piled up into a pyramid of glittering beauty. “Any adore ear rings to bring?" says Aaron. None. Fire is kindled, the ear rings are melted and poured into a mold, not of an eagle or a war chirger b(ft of a calf; the gold cools off, the mold is taken away, and the idol is set upon its four legs. An ajltar is built in front of the shioingicalf. Then the people throw Qp their arms and gyrate and shriek and dancp mightily and worship. Moses has been six weeks on Mount Sinai, ajnd he comes back and hears the howling and s£es the dancing of the golden calf fanatics, and lie loses his patience, and be takes the two plates of stone on which were written the Ten Commandments and flings them so hard against a rock that they split ail to pieces. When a man gets mad he is very apt to break all the Ten Commandments. Moses rushes in and takes this calf god and throws it into a hot fire until it is melted all out of shape and then pulverizes it—not by the modern appliance of nitro-muriatie acid, but b\ r the ancient appliance of niter or by the old fashioned file. He makes for the people a moat nauseating draft. He takes this pulverized golden calf and throws it in the only brook which is accessible, and the people are compelled to drink of that brook or not drink at all. But they did net drink all the glittering stuff thrown on the surface. Some of it flows on down the surface of the brook to the river, and then flows on down the river to the sea, jand the sea takes it up and bears it to the mouth of all the and when the tides set back the remains of this golden calf are carried up into the Hudson, and the East river, and the Thames and the Clyde, and the Tiber, and men go out and they skim the glittering surface, &nd they bring it ashore, and they mhke another golden calf, and California and Australia break off their golden earrings to augment the pile, and in the fires of financial excitement and struggle all these things are meited together, and while we stand looking and wondering what will come of it, lo! we find that the golden calf of Iraelitish worship has become the golden calf of European and American worship. T shall describe to you the god spoken of in tho text, his temple, his altar of sacrifice, the music that is made in his temple, and then the final breaking up of the whole con-gregation-of idolaters. Put aside this curtain, and you she the*golden calf of modern idblar- ' try. It is not, like other idols, made of stocks or stones, but it has an ear so sensitive that „it can hear the whispers on Wall street and Third street and State street, and the footfalls in the Bank of England, and the flutter of a Frenchman’s heart on the Bourse. It has an eye so keen that it can see the rust on the farm of Michigan wheat, and the insect in the Maryland peach orchard, and the trampled grain under the hoof of the Rus ian war charger. It is so mighty that it swings any wav it will the world’s shippiug. It has its foot on all the merchantmen and the steamers. It started the American civil war, and under God stopped it. and it decided the TurkoKussian contest. One broker in September, 186'). shouted “One hundred and sixty for a million!” and the whole continent shivered. This golden calf of the text has its right front foot in New York, its left front foot in Chicago, its right back foot in Charleston, its left back foot jn New Orleans, and when it shakes itself it shakes the world. Oh, this is a mighty God—the golden calf of the world’s worship! But every Cod must have its temple, and this golden calf of the temple is no exception. Its temple is vaster than St. Paul s of the English, and St. Peter's of the Italians, and the Alhambra of the Spaniards, and the Parthenon of the Greeks, and the Taj Mahal of the Hindoos, and all the other cathedrals put together. Its pillars are grooved and fluted with gold, and its ribbed arches are hovering gold, and its chandeliers are descending gold, and its floors are tesselated gold, and its vaults are crowded heaps of gold, and its spires and domes are soaring gold, and its organ pipes are rasounding gold, and its pedals are tramping gold, and its stops pulled out are flashing gold, while standing at the head of the temple, as the presiding deity, are the hoqfs and snoulders and eyes and ears and nostrils of the calf of gold. Further, every god must have not only its .temple, but its altar of sqc--rifloe, and "this golden of the text is no exception. Its altar is not made out of stone, as other altars, but out of counting room desks and fireproof safes, ana it is a broad, a long, a high altar. The victims sac--rifteei #n it •reiußumerttblo, What

does this god care about the groans ! and struggle? of the victims before it! With cold, metallic eye it looks on and yet lets them suffer. Oh, heaven and earth, what an altar! What a sacrifice of body, mind and soul i The physical health of a great multitude is flung on this saerificial altar I They can not sleep, and they , take chloral and morphine and intoxicants. Some of them struggle in a nightmarp of stocks, and at one o’clock in tho morning suddenly rise op shouting, “ A thousand shares of railroad stock —one hundred and eight and a half; t-ake it! ” until the whole family is affrighted, and the speculators fall hack on their pillows and sleep until they are awakened again by a “ corner T ’ or a sudden “ rise something else. Their nerves gone, their digestion gone, their brain gone—they die. The clergyman comes in and reads the funeral service, ;t Blessed are the’dead who die in the Lord. ” Mistake. The did not “die in the Lord”—tho golden calf kicked them ! The trouble is when men sacrifice themselves on this alter suggested in the text they not only sacrifice themselves, but they sacrifice their families. If a man by an ill course is determined to go to perdition, I suppose you have to let him go; but he puts his wife and children iq an equipage that is the amazement of the avenues, and the driver lashes the horses into two whirlwinds, and the spokes flash in the sun, and the golden headgear of the harness gleams, until Black Calamity takes the bits of the horses and stops them, and shouts to the luxurious occupants of the equipage, “Get out!” They get out. They get down. That husband and father flung his family so hai-d they never got up again. There was the mark on them for life—the mark of a split hoof—the death dealing mark of the golden calf. Solomon offered in one sacrifice, on one occasion, twenty-two thousand oxen and one hnndred and twenty thousand sheep, but that was a tame sacrifice compared with the multitude of men who are sacrificing themselves on this alter of the golden calf, and sacrificing their families with them. Still the degrading warship goes on, and the devotees kneel and kiss the dust, and count their golden beads, and cross themselves with the blood of their own sacrifice. The music roils on under the arches; it is made of clinking silver and clinking gold and the rattling specie of the banks and brokers’ shops and the voices of all the exchanges. The soprano of the worship is curried by the timid voices of men who have tust begun to speculate, while the deep bass rolls out from those who for ten years of annuity have beeu doubly damned. Chorus of voices re oicing over wbat they have made. Chorus of voices wailing over what they have lost. The temple of which I speak stands open day and night, and there is the glittering god with his four feet on broken hearts, aud there is the smoking altar of sacrifice, new victims every moment on it, aud there are the kneeling devotees, and the doxology of the worship rolls on, while death stands with moldy and skeleton arm beating time for the chorus—“ More! more! more!” But ray text suggests that this worship mast bg-frrofrgn ’’apras-the-behavior of Moses in my text indicated. There are those who say.that this golden calf spoken of in my text was hollow, and merely plated with gold; otherwise, they say, -Moses could not have carried it. I do not know that, but somehow, perhaps by the assistance of his friends, he takes up this golden calf, which is an insult to God and man, and casts it into the fire, and it is melte l, and then it comes out and is cooled off, and by some chemical appliance, or by an old-fashioned hie, it is pulver - ized and thrown into the brook, and as a punishment the people are compelled to drink the nauseating stuff. So, my hearers, you may depend upon it that God will burn and he will grind to pieces the golden calf of modern idolatry, and he will compel the people in their agony to drink it. If not before, it will be'soon the last. day. I kuow not where the fire will begin, whether at the Battery or Central Park, whether at Brooklyn bridge or at Bash wick, whether at Shoreditch, London or West End, but it will be a very hot blaze. All tho Government securities of the United States and Great Britain will curl up in the first blast. All the moneysafes and depositing vauits-wilUnelt under the first touch. The sea will burn like tinder, and the . shipping will be abandoned forever. Tho melted gold in the broker's window will burst through the melted window glass and into the street, but the flying population will not stop to scoop it up. The cry of ‘Fire!’ from the moan* tain will be answered by the cry of •Fire!’ in the plain. The conflagration will burn out from the continent toward the sea. and then burn in from the sea toward the land. New York and London with one cut of the red scythe of destruction will go down. Twenty-five thousand miles of conflagration! The earth will wrap itself rouadand round in shroud of flame and lie down to perish.*' What then will become of your golden calf? Who then so poor as to worship itV Atelted or betwedb the upper and the nether millstone of falling mountains ground to powder. Dagon down. Moloch down. Juggernaut down. Golden calf down. But.jny friends, everv day is a day of judgment, and Bod is all tho time grinding to ptwes the golden calf. Merchants of Brooklyn and New York and London. what is the oharaoteriaUo of this tuna ia wbioh

we 1 ive ? “ Had, ” you say. Prafes-' sional men, What is the characteristic of the times in which we live? “ Bad, ” you say. Though I should be in a minority of oue, I venture the opinion that these are the best times we have had, for the reason that God is teaching the. world as never before that old fashioned honesty is the only thing that withstand. We have learned as never before that forgeries will not pay ; that the spendiug of fifty thousand dollars on country seats and a palatial city residence, when there are only thirty thousand dollars income, will not' pay ; that the appropriation of trust funds to our own private speculation will Dot pay. The golden calf of our day, like the one of the text, is very apt to be made out of borrowed gold. Israelites of the text borrowed the ear rings of the Egyptians and then melted them into a god. That is the way the golden calf is made nowadays. A great many housekeepers, not paying for the articles they get, borrow of the groe?r. and the baker, and the butcher, and the dry goods seller. Then the retailer borrows of the wholesale dealer, Then the wholesale dealer borrows of the capitalist, and we borrow and oorrow and borrow until the community is divided into two classes —those who borrow and those who are borrowed of—and after awhile the capitalist wants his money and he rushes upon the wholesale dealer, and the wholesale dealer wants his money and he rushes upon the retailer, and tho retailer wants his money and he rushes upon the consumer, and We all go down together. There is many a man in this day who rides in a carriage and owes the blacksmith for the tire, and the wheelwright for the wheel, and , the trimmer for the curtain, and the driver for unpaid wages, and tho harness maker for the bridle, and the furrier for the robe, while from the tip of the carriage tongue clear back to the tip of the shawl fluttering out of the back of tho vehicle everywhere is paid for by notes that have been three times renewed. It is this temptation to burrow and borrow and borrow that keeps the people everlastingly praying to the golden calf for help, and just at the minute they expect the help tire golden calf treads on them. The judgments of God, like Moses in the text will rush in and break up this worship; and 1 say. let the work go on until every man shall learn to speak truth with his neighbor, and those whof make engagements shall feel themselves bound to keep them, and when a man who will not repent of his business iniquity, but goes on wishing to satiate his cannibal appe - tite by devouring widows’ houses, shall by tho law of the laud be compelled to exchange his mansion for Sing Sing. Let the golden calf perish.