The Doom of the Defrauder, Libertine, and Assassin
“He shall be buried with the burial of an ass.” — Jeremiah xxii., 19.
EFIOIAKIM sat for ten years on a throne. Plenty
of gold — plenty of sycophants — plenty of chariots. When he rode, I think he rode with four horses; and when he wore diamonds, I think he wore them as big as a walnut. If there had been a railroad so early in the history of the world, he would have stolen it. He wallowed in sin until a sudden change in public affairs, and then he died in shame* and was kicked out of public contempt: “Buried with the burial of an ass.”
After a life of private or public iniquity, a man’s death is not deplored. The obsequies may be pretentious — there may be flags, and wreaths, and catafalques, and military processions; but the world feels that a nuisance has been abated; he is cast forth by reason of the scorn and contempt of men; and figuratively, if not literally, he is “buried with the burial of an ass.”
Urged by recent events, I address young men to-night upon the romance of crime, and I want to show them that, though crime may be gilded and fascinating, the end is ruin here and damnation hereafter.
I. There is the romance of fraud. The heroes of this country are fast getting to be those who have most skill in swallowing “trust-funds,” banks, stocks, and moneyed institutions. Our young men are dazzled by the quick success, and. say, “That is the way to do it. He was a country peddler a few years ago, now see what a gorgeous turn-out!” Theft on Wall Street is measured by a different standard from that which takes its spoils through Rat Alley. He who steals a vest from a second-hand clothing-store gets a ride in the city van with¬ out the opportunity of looking out of the window, but he who swallows a moneyed institution astonishes Central Park with his equipage.
By a kind of irresistible instruction, our young men learn that the poorest way to get money is to earn it. “What!” says the young man of flaunting cravat to the young man of humble apparel, “you only get eight hundred dollars a year! Why, that would hardly keep me in pin money! I spend five thousand dollars a year.” “Where do you get it?” “Oh, stocks, enterprises, and all that kind of thing, you know.” The plain young man has hard work to pay his board-bill; has to wear a coat after it is out of fashion; denies himself all luxuries. After a while he gets tired, and goes to flaunting cravat, and says, “Tell us how you get into these enterprises.” The plain young man soon learns. Although he has quitted the store or shop where he used to work, and seems to be mostly idle, yet he soon dresses better, trades off his old silver watch for a gold one with a splendid chain, sets his hat a little farther over. on one side of his head, and smokes better cigars, and more of them. He has his hand in. And if for three or four years he can escape the penitentiary, he is not far off from being introduced to the Tweeds and the Carnochans, or has something to do with the docks, or harbors, or pavements, or the inspection of the public buildings. O
And after lie has got as far as that, he is safe for perdition. A man has to travel some distance up before he gets into the romance of crime. The man who is caught and incarcerated is in the prosaic period. If the sheriffs and constables had given him a chance to learn the business, he would have stolen as wTell as any body. If he could not have stolen a railroad, he could, at least, have mastered a load of pig-iron.
I thank God when fortunes thus gathered go to smash. They are plague-struck, and blast a nation. I like to have them go to pieces in such a wreck that they can never again be gathered up. I like to have them made loathsome and an insufferable stench, so that honest young men may take warning.
If God should put suddenly into money, or its representative, the power to return to its rightful owner, there is not a bank or a safety deposit that would not have its sides blown out; and parchments would rip, and gold would shoot, and mortgages would rend, and beggars would get horses, and stock-gamblers wTould go to the almshouse. How much dishonesty in the making of in¬ voices, and in oaths at the Custom House, and in plastering of labels, and in the filching of customers of rival houses, and in false samples, and in the making and breaking of contracts! Hundreds of young men are be¬ ing indoctrinated in the idea that money must be had quickly, and that the larger the scale on which they take it, the more admirable the smartness and legerdemain. A young man of Hew York stood behind the counter selling silks to a lady. After the sale had been made, he said to the. customer, “I see a slight flaw in that silk.” The lady recognized it, and did not conclude the purchase. The head man of the firm saw the transaction, and wrote to the father of the young man in the country, saying, “Come down and take your boy home; he will never make a merchant.” The father came down in excitement to see what his boy had been doing. The employer said, “Your son actually stood at the counter the other day and pointed out a flaw in one of our silks, so that we lost the sale of the goods.” The father said, “If that is all my boy has done, I am proud of him, and I would not have him stay five minutes more under your bad influence. John, take your hat and come home and away they started.
The pressure on our young men in town to-day is awful. Hundreds of them are going down under it for time and for eternity. Others are nobly enduring the pressure. May God help them!
The public mind is utterly poisoned and diseased on the subject of rfioney-making, and no wonder that God spoke in thunder last week, not only to Hew York, but to all the cities of the world, saying, “Look out how you get your money. By the hand of death or judgment it shall be wrenched from your grasp. If you get riches by fraud, you will leave them in the midst of your days, and at the end you shall be a fool.”
What shall be the eternal destiny of such a man? I leave you to guess. I make you the jury to say what shall be the doom of that Wall Street defrauder who, after the most gigantic dishonesties that were ever practiced on this planet, died without one seeming word of repentance or of prayer — in his will giving away the spoils of the most unprecedented thefts without saying in that will, “These are the moneys I got by crime, and
316 TEE doom of tee defra uder,
are the plea for my eternal condemnation.” One minute after a man goes up to judgment, how many steam¬ boats does he own? How many shares of stock in Erie Hailway? How many opera-houses? Hone! The poor hoy with a penny in his pocket, who stands on the street-corner as the funeral pageant of the dead cheat passes along, has more money in his pocket than the man who, a few days before, boasted that all the country was afraid of him.
II. Next, I speak of the romance of libertinism. Society has severest retribution for the impurity that lurks about the cellars and alleys of the city. It cries out against it. It hurls the indignation of the law at it. But society becomes more lenient as impurity rises toward affluence and high social position, until, finally, it is silent, or disposed to palliate. Where is the judge, or the sheriff, or the police, who dare arraign for indecency the wealthy villain? May he not walk the streets, and ride the parks, and sail the steamers, flaunting his vices in the eyes of the pure? Does not the vile hag of uncleanness look out from tapestried window, and walk richest car¬ pet, and rustle finest silk, and roll in most sumptuous carriage? but where is the law to take these brazen wretch¬ es of “high life” and put their faces in the iron frame of the State Prison window %
It seems as if modern society were hastening back to¬ ward the days of Herculaneum and Pompeii, which sculptured their vileness on pillar and temple wall, until nothing but the lava of a burning mountain could hide the immensity of the crime.
At what time the Lord God shall begin to purge our cities I know not, nor whether it shall be by flood, or by fire, or by hurricane; but I do not believe the holy God will stand it much longer. I think that the thunderbolts of his indignation are hissing hot, and that when he rises up to scourge these crimes, against which he hath uttered more bitter curses than against any other, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah will be found to have been more tolerable than that of our modern cities, which knew better, but showed disposition to do worse.
Would God that the romance which flings its fascinations over the bestialities of high life might be gone! Let it be known that uncleanness on Madison Square is as damnable in the sight of God as the uncleanness of the Five Points. Whether it has canopied couch of eider¬ down, or sleep amid the putridity of the low tenement-house, four families in a room, God’s consuming vengeance is after it. “All adulterers and whoremongers shall have their place in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.” It is hell on earth.. It is hell in eternity.
Ever and anon we stand aghast at some exposure of splendid libertinism, as God hurls it upon the public gaze.. Such a life ends either in violence or murder, and we hear in the hotel hall or boarding-house parlor the crack of a pistol — a libertine shot by a libertine — or the crime puts its victim into the lazar-house, and lets him horribly die there. “He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, until the dart strike through his liver.” “As a bird hasteneth to a snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.” “She hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her.”
III. Next, I speak of the romance of assassination.
THE DOOM OF THE DEFRAUDER,,
God gives life, and lie only lias a right to take it away; and that man wdio assumes this divine prerogative has touched the last depth of crime. Society is alert for certain forms of murder. If a citizen, on his way home at night, is waylaid and slain of a robber, we are all anxious for his arraignment and execution. For garroting, or the beating out of life with a club, or axe, or slungshot, the law has a quick spring and a heavy stroke. But let a man come to wealth or social pretension, and then attempt to avenge his wrongs by aiming a pistol at the head or heart of another, and immediately there are sympathies aroused; and the lawyers plead, and the la¬ dies weep, and the juries are bribed, and the judge halts; a new trial is granted, and the case is postponed for witnesses that never come; and after a number of months in prison, the door is opened and the. murderer is out. I call this the romance of assassination.
If capital punishment be right, then let the life of the polished murderer go with the life of the ignorant and vulgar assassin. Let there be no partiality of hemp, no aristocracy of the gallows. We are, in our cities, on the march back toward that state of barbarism where every man is judge, jury, and executive officer — a state of society in which that man has the supremacy who has the sharpest knife, and strongest arm, and stealthiest revenge, and quickest spring.
He who willfully and in hate takes the life of another is a murderer, I care not wThat the provocation or what the circumstances. A jury may clear him amid the plaudits of the court-room; or the President may send him as an embassador to Spain; or modern literature may gild the crime until it looks like courage and heroism; nevertheless, in God’s eye, murder is murder, and the judgment day will so pronounce it.
My advice to all young men is to sell their pistols, and take the knife out of the top of their cane, and depend on God and their own stout arm for defense. A man who does not feel himself safe without deadly weapons is in the wrong kind of association and companionship, and you had better get out of it; for the probability is that either they will kill you or you will kill them — which latter thing, for your soul in eternity, will be the greatest disaster of the two; for “no murderer hath eternal life /” and in the future life there is no romance of assassination.
To the young men of this country there comes a stout warning from recent events. Within the past few days, as never before within our remembrance, the old Bible words ring out on the ear: “Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.” “The bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half his days.”
What an unclean nest it was over there in Hew York! Both of the chief actors were defrauders and adulterers. Many of the sympathizers were partners with them in crime. All the circumstances were appalling, horrid, and overwhelming. The comedy and the farce at wdiich the nation laughed, became the tragedy that made the nation shudder.
Oh young man, take not the manners, and customs, and habits of what is wrongly called “high life” for your example. Do not think sin is less to be hated be¬ cause it is epauleted and adorned. The brown-stone front can no more keep back the judgments of God than
THE DOOM OF THE DEFRAUDED,
can the cellar door. Behold how God blows up the magnificent wickedness of high places!
There may be some here who are venturing out into sin. The marks of pollution are already upon them. At Long Branch or Cape May, some summer day, you may have stood on the beach, and seen a man go down into the breakers to bathe. He went out farther and farther, until you became anxious about him. You wondered if he could swim. You shouted to him, as he advanced in the water, “Come back! come back! You will be lost! you will be lost l” He turned around, waved his hand, and shouted “Ho danger,” and still went on, until, after a while, a wave, with great under¬ tow, swept him out — his corpse the next day washed up on the beach. So I see young men going down into the waves of sin — deeper and deeper, farther from God, and farther; and I stand on the beach to-night, and cry the warning: “Come back! come back! You will be lost! you will be lost!” Some, not heeding the warning, will jeer at the alarm and go ahead, till, after a while, the wave of God’s indignation will sweep them off, and sweep them down forever.
There may be some here wTho have ventured into sin¬ ful courses who would like to return. You came in here to-night discouraged, and feel that there is but little hope. I will tell you of a daughter who went from home into the paths of sin. After many months of wandering she resolved one night to go home to her mother’s house. It was after midnight when she arrived at the house. She supposed that the door would be locked; but, putting her hand on the latch, the door opened. She asked her mother why it was that the door, after midnight, was unlocked. Said the mother, “That door has never been locked since you went away. I have given orders that, by day and night, it should be unfast¬ ened, for I was sure that you would come back, and when you came I did not want you to be hindered a minute.” So I have to tell you that the door of God’s mercy is ever unlocked. By day and by night it stands open for your coming. Though your sins were as scar¬ let, they shall be as snow; though they were red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Though you may be polluted with all crimes, and smitten of all leprosies, and fired by the most depraved passions, and have not heard the Gospel invitation for twenty years, you may have set upon your brow, hot with infamous practices and besweated with exhaustive indulgences, the flashing coronet of a Savior’s forgiveness.
Who is it that cometh yonder? Methinks I know his steps. Methinks before this I have seen the rags. Look, all ye people of God! Out of all the windows of heaven let the angels watch! A prodigal returning! Let us go out and meet him. Welcome back again to thy long-forsaken home and to thy long-forsaken God. The dead is alive again! The lost is found!
“Pleased with the news, the saints below
In songs their tongues employ;
Beyond the sky the tidings go,
And heaven is filled with joy.
“Nor angels can their joy contain,
But kindle with new fire;
The sinner lost is found! they sing,
And strike the sounding lyre.”
O 2