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TALMAGE-.
THE GREAT BROOKLYN
PREACHER.
Brooklyn, Jan. 7.—It seemed appropri-^
ate that Dr. Talmage should preach this
permon after his personal contribution of
3,000 pounds of meat and 2,000 loaves of
bread to the poor who gathered shivering
in the cold around the bakery and meat
store of Brooklyn, where the food was dis
tributed without tickets and no recom
mendation required except hunger. The
text was Matthew xxvi, 11, “Ye have the
poor always with you.”
Who said that? The Christ who never
owned anything during his earthly stay.
His cradle and his grave were borrowed.
Every fig he ate was from some one else’s
tree. Every drop of water he drank was
from some one else’s well. To pay his per
sonal tax, which was very small, only 81*^
cents, he had to perform a miracle and
make a fish pay it. All the heights and
depths and lengths and breadths of poverty
Christ measured in his earthly experience,
and when he comes to speak of destitution,
he always speaks sympathetically, and
what he said then is as true now, “Ye have
the poor always with you.”
For 6,000 years the bread question has
been the active and absorbing question.
Witness the people crowding up to Joseph’s
storehouse in Egypt. Witness the famine
in Samaria and Jerusalem. Witness the
7,000 hungry people for whom Christ mul
tiplied the loaves. Witness the uncounted
millions of people now living who, I be
lieve, have never yet had one full meal of
healthful and nutritious food in all their
lives. Think of the 354 great famines in
England. Think of the 25,000 people under
the hoof of hunger year before last in
Russia.
The failure of the Nile to overflow for
seven years in the eleventh century left
those regions depopulated. Plague of in
sects in England. Plague of rats in Ma
dras presidency. Plague of mice in Essex.
Plague of locusts in China. Plague of
grasshoppers in America. Devastation
wrought by drought, by deluge, by frost,
by war, by hurricane, by earthquake, by
comets flying too near the earth, by change
in the management of national finances, by
baleful causes innumerable. I proceed to
give you three or four reasons why my text
is markedly and graphically true in this
year 1894.
THE TARIFF CONTROVF.ESY.
The first reason we have always the poor
with us is because of the perpetual over
hauling of the tariff question, or, as I shall
call it, the tariflic controversy. There is a
need for such a word, and so I take the re
sponsibility of manufacturing it. There are
millions of people who are expecting that
the present congress of the United States
will do something one way or the other to
end this discussion. But it will never end.
When I was 5 years of age, I remember
hearing my father and his neighbors in ve
hement discussion of this very question. It
was high tariff or low tariff or no tariff at
all. When your great-grandchild dies at 90
years of age, it will probably be from over
exertion in discussing the tariff.
On the day the world is destroyed there
will be three men standing on the postoffice
steps—one a high tariff man, another a low
tariff man, and the other a free trade
man—each one red in the face from excited
argument on this subject. Other ques
tions may get quieted—the Mormon ques
tion, the silver question, the pension ques
tion, the civil service question. All ques
tions of annexation may come to peaceful
settlement by the annexation of islands
two weeks’ voyage away and the heat of
their volcanoes conveyed through pipes ur
der the sea made useful in warming ou
continent, or annexation of the moon, d<
throning the queen of night, who is sa’d t
be dissolute, and bringing the lunar popt
lations under the influence of our free ii
stitutious; yea, all other questions, na
tional and international, may be settled-
but this tariflic question, never.
It will not only never be settled, but i
can never be moderately quiet for more tha
three years at a time, each party gettin
into power taking one of the four years t
fix it up, and then the next party will fix i
down. Our finances cannot get well b<
cause of too many doctors. It is with sici
tions as with sick individuals. Here i
man terribly disordered as to his bodj
doctor is called in, and he administers i
Irifuge, a spoonful every hour. But re
covery is post poned, and the anxious friend
the suisnsry south.
call in another doctor, and he says, “What
this patient needs is blood letting; now roll
jjp your sleeve,” and the lancet flashes.
But still recovery is postponed, and a home
opathic doctor is called in, and he admin
isters some small pellets and says, All
the patient wants is rest.”
Recovery still postponed, the family say
that such small pellets cannot amount to
much anyhow, and an allopathic doctor is j
called in, and he saya, “XV hat this patient ;
wants is calomel and jalap. ” Recovery still j
postponed, a hydropathic doctor ia called j
in, and he says: “What this patient wanta
is hot and cold baths, and he must have
them right away. Turn on the faucet and
get ready the shower- baths.” Recovery
still postponed, an eclectic doctor is called
in, and he brings all the school* to bear
upon the poor sufferer, and the patient,
after a brave struggle for life, expires.
What killed him? Too many doctors. And j
j that is what is killing our national finances, j
My personal friends, Cleveland and Har
rison and Carlisle and McKinley and Sher
man, as talented and lovely and spendid
men as walk the earth, all good doctors,
but their treatment of our languishing
finances is so different that neither treat
ment has a full opportunity, and under the
constant changes it is simply wonderful
that the nation still lives. The tariff ques
tion will never be settled, because of the
fact, which I have never heard any one
recognize, but nevertheless the fact, that
high tariff is best for some people and free
trade is best for others.
This tariflic controversy keeps business
struck through with uncertainty, and that
uncertainty results in poverty and wretch
edness for a vast multitude of people. If
th« eternal gab on this subject could have
been fashioned into loaves of bread, there
would not be a hungry man or woman or
child on all the planet. To the end of time
the words of the text will be kept true by
the tariflic controversy—“Ye have the poor
always with you.”
THE CAUSE ALCOHOLIC.
Another cause of perpetual poverty is the
cause alcoholic. The victim does not last
long. He soon crouches into the drunkard’s
grave. But what about his wife and chil
dren? She takes in washing, when she can
get it, or goes out working on small wages,
because sorrow and privation have left her
incapacitated to do a strong woman’s work.
The children are thin blooded and gaunt
and pale and weak, standing around in
sold rx>ms, or pitching pennieson the street
corner, and munching a slice of unbuttered
bread when they can get it, sworn at by
passers by because they do not get out of
the way, kicked onward toward manhood
or womanhood, for which they have no
preparation except a depraved appetite and
frail constitution, candidates for almshouse
and penitentiary.
Whatever other causes of poverty may
fail, the saloon may be depended on to fur
nish an ever increasing throng of paupers.
Oh, ye grogshops of Brooklyn and New
York and of all the cities! Ye mouths
of hell! when will ye cease to craunch and
devour? There is no danger of this liquor
business failing. All other styles of busi
ness at times fail. Dry goods stores go
under. Hardware stores go under. Gro
cery stores go under. Harness makers fail,
druggists fail, bankers fail, butchers fail,
bakers fail, confectioners fail, but the
liquor dealers never. It is the only secure
business I know of. Why the permanence
of the alcoholic trade? Because, in the
first place, the men in that business, if
tight up for money, only have to put into
large quantities of water more strychnine
and logwood and nux vomica and vitriol
and other congenial concomitants for
adulteration.
One quart of the real genuine pande
moniac elixir will do to mix up with sev
eral gallons of milder damnation. Besides
that, these dealers can depend on an in
crease of demand on the part of their cus
tomers. The more of that stuff they drink
the thirstier they are. Hard times, which
stop other businesses, only increase that
business, for men go there to drown their
troubles. They take the spirits down to
keep their spirits up. There is an inclined
plane down which alcoholism slides its vic
tims. Claret, champagne, port, cognac,
whisky, Toni and Jerry, sour mash, on and
down until it is a sort of mixture of kero
sene oil, turpentine, toadstools, swill, es
sence of the horse blankets and general
nastiness.
With its red sword of flame that liquor
power marshals its procession, and they
move on in ranks long enough to girdle the
earth, and the procession is headed by the
nose blotched, nerve shattered, rheum eyed,
lip bloated, soul scorched inebriates, fol
lowed by the women, who, though brought
up in comfortable homes, now go limping
past with aches and pains and pallor and
hunger and woe, followed by their chil
dren, barefoot, uncombed, freezing, and
with a wretchedness of time and eternity
seemingly compressed in their agonized fea
tures. “Forward, march!” cries the liquor
business to that army without banners.
Keep that influence moving on, and you
will have the poor always with you. Re
port comes from one of the cities, where the
majority of the inhabitants are out of work
and dependent on charity, yet last year
they spent more in that city for rum than
they did for clothing and groceries.
THE SPIRIT OF IMPROVIDENCE.
Another warranty that my text will
prove true in the perpetual poverty of the
world is the wicked spirit of improvidence.
A vast number of people have such small
incomes that they cannot lay by in savings
bank or life insurance 1 cent a year. It
takes every farthing they can earn to spread
the table, and clothe the family, and edu
cate the children, and if you .blame such
people for improvidence you enact a cruelty.
On such a salary as many clerks and em
ployees and many ministers of religion live,
and on such wages as many workmen re
ceive, they cannot in 20 years lay up 20 cents.
But you know and I know many who have
competent incomes and could provide some
what for the future who live up to every
dollar, and when they die their children go
to the poorhouse or on the street.
By the time the wife gets the husband
buried she is in debt to the undertaker and
gravedigger for that which she can never
pay. While the man lived he had his wine
parties and fairly stunk with tobacco and
then expired, leaving his family upon the
charities of the world. Do not send for me
to come and conduct the obsequies and read
over such a carcass the beautiful liturgy,
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,”
for instead of that I will turn over the
leaves of the Bible to First Timothy, fifth
chapter, eighteenth verse, where it says,
“If any provide not for his own, and espe
cially for those of his own house, he hath
denied the faith, and is worse than an in
fidel,” or I will turn to Jeremiah, twenty-
second chapter, nineteenth verse, where it
says, “He shall be buried with the burial
of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the
gates of Jerusalem.”
I cannot imagine any more unfair or
meaner thing than for a man to get his sins
pardoned at the last minute, and then goto
heaven and live in a mansion, and go riding
about in a golden chariot over the golden
streets, while his wife and children, whom
he might have provided for, are begging for
cold victuals at the basement door of an
earthly city. It seems to me there ought to
be a poorhouse somewhere on the outskirts
of heaven, where those guilty of such im
providence should be kept for awhile on
thin soup and gristle, instead of sitting
down at the king’s banquet. It is said that
the church is a divine institution and I be
lieve it.
Just as certainly are the savings banks
and the life insurance companies divine in
stitutions. As out of evil good often comes,
so out of the doctrine of probabilities, cal
culated by Professor Hugens and Professor
Pascal for games of chance, came the calcu
lation of the probabilities of human life as
used by life insurance companies, and no
business on earth is more stable or honor
able, and no mightier mercy for the human
race has been born since Christ was born.
Bored beyond endurance for my signature of
papers of all sorts, there is one style of paper
that I always sign with a feeling of glad
ness and triumph, and that is a paper which
the life insurance company requires from
the clergyman after a decease in his congre
gation, in order to the payment of the pol
icy to the bereft household.
I always write my name then so they can
read it. I cannot help but say to myself:
“Good for that man to have looked after
his wife and children after earthly depar
ture. May he have one of the best seats in
heaven!” Young man! The day before or
the day after you get married, go to a life
insurance company of established reputa
tion and get the medical examiner to put
the stethoscope to your lungs and his ear
close up to your heart, with your vest off,
and have signed, sealed and delivered to
you a document that will, in the case of
your sudden departure, make for that love
ly girl the difference between a queen and
a pauper.
I have known men who have had an in
come of 83,000, 84,000, 85,000 a year who did
not leave 1 farthing to the surviving house
hold. Now, that man’s death is a defalca
tion, an outrage, a swindle. Pie did not die;
he absconded. There are 100,000 people in
America today a-hungered through the sin
of improvidence. “But,” say some, “my
income is so small I cannot afford to pay
the premium on a life insurance.” Are you
aure about that? If you are sure, then you
have a right to depend on the promise in
Jeremiah xlix, 11: “Leave thy fatherless
children. I will preserve them alive, and let
thy widows trust in me.” But, if you are
able to, remember you have no right to ask
God to do for your household that which
you can do for them yourself.
For the benefit of those young men, ex
cuse a practical personality. Beginning
my life’s work on the munificent salary of
8800 a year and a parsonage, and whCTTthe
call was placed in my hands I did not know
how in the world I would ever be able to
spend that amount of money, and I re
member indulging in a devout wish that I
might not be led into worldliness and prodi
gality by such an overplus of resources, and
at a time when articles of food and cloth
ing were higher than they are now, I felt it
a religious duty to get my life insured, and
I presented myself at an office of one of the
great companies, and I stood pale and nerv
ous lest the medical examiner might have
to declare that I had consumption and
heart disease and a half dozen mortal ail
ments, but when I got the document, which
I have yet in full force, I felt a sense of
manliness and confidence and quietude and
re-enforcement, which is a good thing for
any young man to have.
For the lack of that feeling there are
thousands of men today in Greenwood and
Laurel Hill and MountjAuburn who might
as well have been alive and well and sup
porting their families. They got a little
sick, and they were so worried about what
would become of their households in case
of their demise that their agitations over
came the skill of the physicians and they
died for fear of dying. I have for many
years been such an ardent advocate of life
insurance, and my sermon on “The Crime
of Not Insuring” has been so long used
on both sides of the sea by the chief life
insurance companies that some people have
supposed that I received monetary com
pensation for what I have said and written.
Not a penny.
I will give any man a hundred dollars for
every penny I have received from any life
insurance company. What I have said and
written on the subject has resulted from
the conviction that these institutions are a
benediction to the human race. But alas!
for the widespread improvidence! You are
now in your charities helping to support the
families of men who had more income than
you now have, or ever have had, or ever
will have, and you can depend on the im
providence of many for the truth of my text
in all times and in all places—“Ye have the
poor always with you.”
HUMAN INCAPACITY.
Another fact that you may depend upon
for perpetual poverty is the - incapacity of
many to achieve a livelihood. You can go
through any community and find good peo
ple, with more than usual mental caliber,
who never have been able to support them
selves and their households. Th«y are a
mystery to us, and we say, “I do not know
what is the matter of them, but there is a
screw loose somewhere.” Some of these
persons have more brain than thousands
who make a splendid success. Some are
too sanguine of temperament, and they see
bargains where there are none. A common
minnow is to them a goldfish, and a quail
a flamingo, and a blind mule on a towpath
a Bucephalus. They buy when things are
highest and sell -when things are lowest.
Some one tells them of city lots out west,
where the foundation of the first house-hag
not yet been laid. They say, “What an op
portunity!” and -they put down tbe hard
cash for an ornamented deed for 10 lots un
der water. They hear of a new silver mine
opened in Nevada, and they say, “What a
chancel” and they take the little money
they have in the savings bank and pay it out
for as beautiful a certificate of mining
stock as was ever printed, and the only
thing they will ever get out of the invest
ment is the aforesaid illuminated litho
graph. They are always on the verge of
milllonairedom and are sometimes worried
as to whom they shall bequeath their excess
of fortune.
They invest in aerial machines or new in
ventions in perpetual motion, and they suc
ceed in what mathematicians think impos
sible, the squaring of a circle, for they do
everything on the square and win the whole
circle of disappointment. They are good,
honest, brilliant failures. They die poor,
and leave nothing to their families but a
model of some invention that would not
work and whole portfolios of diagrams of
things impossible. I cannot help but like
them, because they are so cheerful with
great expectations. But their children are
a bequest to the bureau of city charities.
Others administer to the crop of the
world’s misfortune by being too unsus
pecting. Honest themselves, they believe
all others are honest. They are fleeced
and scalped and vivisected by the sharpers
in all styles of business, and cheated out of
everything between cradle and grave, and
those two exceptions only because they
have nothing to do in buying either of
them. Others are retained for misfortune
by inopportune sickness. Just as that
lawyer was to make the plea that would
have put him among the strong men of the
profession, neuralgia stung him. Just as
that physician was to prove his skill in an
epidemic, his own poor health imprisoned
him. Just as that merchant must be at
the store for some decisive and introductory
bargain, he sits with a rheumatic joint on
a pillow, the room redolent with liniment.
What an overwhelming statistic would
be the story of men and women and chil
dren impoverished by sicknesses! Then the
cyclones. Then the Mississippi and Ohio
freshets. Then the stopping of factories.
Then the curculios among the peach trees.
Then the insectile devastation of potato
patches and wheat fields. Then the epi
zootics among the horses and the hollow
horn among the herds. Then the rains
that drown out everything and the
droughts that burn up half a continent.
Then the orange groves die under the white
teeth of the hoar frost. Then the coal
strikes and the iron strikes and the me
chanics’ strikes, which all strike labor
harder than they strike capital. Then the
yellow fever at Brunswick and Jackson
ville and Shreveport. Then the cholera at
the Narrows, threatening to land in New
York. Then the Charleston earthquake.
Then the Johnstown flood. Then hurricanes
sweeping from Caribbean sea to Newfound
land. Then there are the great monopolies
that gully the earth with their oppressions.
Then there are the necessities of buying
coal by the scuttle instead of the ton, and
flour by the pound instead of the barrel,
and so the injustices are multiplied. In
the wake of all these are overwhelming
illustrations of the truth of my text, “Ye
have the poor always with you.”
AN OLD INSURANCE COMPANY.
Remem ber a fact that no one empha
sizes a fact, nevertheless, upon which I
want to put the weight of an eternity of
tonnage—that the best way of insuring
yourself and your children and your grand
children against poverty and all other trou
bles is by helping others. I am an agent of
the oldest insurance company that was ever
established. It is near 3,000 years old. It
has the advantage of all the other plans of
insurance whole life policy, endowment,
joint life and survivorship policies, ascend
ing and descending scales of premium and
tontine, and it pays up while you live and
it pays up after you are dead.
Every cent you give in a Christian spirit
to a poor man or woman, every shoe you
give to a bare foot, every stick of wood or
lump of coal you give to a fireless hearth,
every drop of medicine you . <_•' >
invalid, every star of hope you make'to
shine over unfortunate maternity, every
mitten you knit for cold fingers, is a pay
ment on the premium of that policy, "i
hand about 500,000,000 policies to all who will
go forth and aid the unfortunate. There
are only two -)r three lines in this policy of
life insurance Ps. xli, 1: “Blessed is he
that considereth the poor. The Lord will
deliver him in time of trouble.”
Other life insurance companies may fail
but this Celestial Life Insurance company
never. The Lord God Almighty is at the
head of it, and all the angels of heaven are
m its board of direction, and its assets are
all worlds, and all the charitable of earth
and heaven are the beneficiaries “o "
says some one, “I do not like atom! ^ Ut ’”
icy so well, and that which youofb,-" Po1 '
like a tontine and to be ehieflv • ™ or8
life.” “Blessed is he that conaideirw*
poor. The Lord will deliver him in' t n h *
trouble.” u la tlIn eol
. J on P refer tI; e old fashioned ml
icy of life insurance, which is -
after death, you can be no-
not paid till
you can be accomm.
That will be given you in the dav ( -
ment, and will be banded you by'the rS
hand, the pierced hand, of our Lov i ] > ^
self, and all you do in the right snjW fo"
J'etook
the poor is payment on the premium off-J
lue insurance policy. I read you a tvlS
graph of that policy: “Thensh-dl the Kin
say unto them on his right hand ‘Ccme v
blessed of my Father, for I was’ hu igerS
and ye gave me meat, I was thirst! and v,
gave, medrink, I was a stranger and
me in, naked and ye clothed me.
In various colors of ink other life i nsur
ance policies are written. This one I ] nv j
just shown you is written in only one kind
of ink, and that red ink—the blood of the
cross. Blessed be God—that is a “paid ur
policy.” Paid for by the pangs of the Sou
of God, and ail we add to it in the wavoj
our own good deeds will augment the sum
of eternal felicities. Yes, the time will
come when the banks of largest capita]
stock will all go down, and the fire in Sur .
ance companies will all go down, and the
life insurance companies will all go down
In tbe last great earthquake all the cities
will be prostrated, and as a consequence all
banks will forever suspend payment.
In the last conflagration the fire insur
ance companies of the world will fail, fex
how could they make appraisement of the
loss on a universal fire? Then all the in-
habitants of the round world will surren
der their mortal existence, and how could
life insurance companies pay for depopu
lated hemispheres? But our celestial life
insurance will not be harmed by that con
tinental wreck, or that hemispheric acci
dent, or that planetary catastrophe.
Blow it out like a candle—the noondaj
sun! Tear it down like worn out upholsterj
—the last sunset! Toss it from God’s lingei
like a dewdrop from the anther of a watei
lily—the ocean! Scatter them like thistle
down before a schoolboy’s breath — the
worlds! That will not disturb the omnipo
tence, or the composure, or the sympathy,
or tbe love of that Christ who said it once
on earth, and will say it again in heaven to
all those who have been helpful to the
downtrodden and t he cold, and the hungry,
and the houseless, and the lost, “Inasmuch
as ye did it to them, ye did to me.”
Get year lias
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