p. 179 | DANGER AHEAD!

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1882

DANGER AHEAD!

In that masterly series of fine paintings by Cole, called “The March of Empire,” the third picture represents a nation in the full career of ostentatious splendor and luxury. And this is the fitting prelude to widespread ruin and desolation. The pomp and pride of life go logically before a fall. “The injury of prodigality,” says Confucius, “leads to this, that he who will not economize will have to agonize.” The love of display, unchecked by a rigid sense of propriety and by conscientious principle, is one of the most baneful of human passions.

Are we as a people incurring peculiar risks from a rapidly-growing indulgence in this passion? The thoughtful observer must admit it. When was there ever such a demand in our country as to-day for the most costly and magnificent fabrics—for finest laces, silks, velvets, sealskins, and jewelry of the loudest description? The standard of taste and modesty, which formerly made it lady-like to reserve fineries, and especially diamonds, for the parlor and social circle, has been so lowered as to make it fashionable to parade these things on the street. The long processions of wives and daughters disporting themselves on our avenues of a pleasant day, fairly flash in an endless line of diamonds that, for enormous size and fiery glitter, might excite the envy of the princesses and kings of Europe. Indeed, a diamond merchant recently declared that the purest and, on the average, the largest stones in the world found their market in the United States. It is literally true, he said, that American women wear more precious brilliants than foreign duchesses and baronesses. Our young lady seems striving to rival the East Indian maiden, who professedly carries her entire fortune and dower on her person in the form of pearls, rubies, and other dazzling ornaments.

Nor is this vice of extravagance less conspicuous at fashionable evening entertainments. They are not considered “high-toned” without the rarest dainties of a fancy caterer and the harmonies of a whole orchestra; while the style in dress and the lavish expenditure involved simply beggar description. And the worst of all this is that individuals of small means are, as usual, aping their more fortunate neighbors of large means. In the general desire to keep up appearances and reciprocate hospitalities, thousands have already entered upon the perilous path of living beyond their incomes. Credit begins to take the place of cash. Debt loses its hideous terror; the thought of stern sacrifice to meet every obligation with absolute honesty grows disagreeable, and is banished as much as public sentiment will allow. Thus extravagance leads directly to a debasement of moral character.

“He that is plentiful in expenses of all kinds,” exclaims Francis Bacon, “will hardly be preserved from decay.” And his lordship had reason to bear this testimony out of a most bitter and melancholy experience. Betrayed by his passion for splendid plate, and liveried servants, and regal feasts, he yielded to bribery, and was sentenced to the Tower in disgrace. Many a victim of extravagance is to-day treading, though on a scale less notable, in the footsteps of England’s ruined judge. The secret process of either risking or appropriating other people’s money to support an establishment that outruns one’s own earnings is in many a case well under way, and by and by the explosion will come. There is danger ahead in this reckless fondness for show; danger to private character, danger to manifold virtues that spring out of simplicity of tastes and frugality of life; danger to the spirituality and benevolences of the church; danger to the manhood of the young, whose ambition is allured to a false ideal of existence and fixed upon utterly unworthy objects; danger to public prosperity, since extravagance leads to a wild expansion of the credit system, and that in turn brings financial panic and crash; danger, in short, all around and to everybody! The Bible always inculcates economy, not for the sake of hoarding, but for the sake of owing no man anything, and for the sake of having something with which to relieve the poor and sick while contributing also to send the gospel throughout the earth.—Christian at Work.