But the dividends stop. What is the matter? Instead of the advertisement which covered a whole column of the newspapers, there comes a modest little notice that "a special meeting of the stockholders will be held for the purpose of transacting business of importance." Perhaps it may be to assess the stockholders for the purpose of keeping the little land they have, if they have any. Or it may be for the election of a new group of officers, for the present incumbents do not want to be always before the public. They are modest men. They believe in rotation of office. They cannot consent any longer to serve. Where have they gone to? They are busy putting up a princely mansion at Long Branch, Germantown, or Chelsea. They have served their day and generation, and have gone to their flocks and herds. Where is the Church of God, that she allows in her membership such gigantic abominations? Were the thirty pieces of silver that Judas received denounced as unfit, and shall the Church of God have nothing to say about this price of blood? Is sin to be excused because it is as high as heaven, or deep as hell? The man who allows his name to be used as president or director in connection with an enterprise that he knows is to result in the sale of twenty thousand shares of an undeveloped nothing--God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and in the last day show him to all the universe--a brazen-faced gambler. His house will be accursed. God's anathemas will flash in the chandelier, and rattle in the swift hoofs of his silver-bitted grays; and the day of fire will see him willing to leap into a burning oil-well to hide himself from the face of the Lamb. The hundred thousand dollars gotten in unrighteousness will not be enough to build a barricade against the advance of the divine judgments.
Think of the elder in a church who, from the oil regions, sends an exciting telegram, so that one man buys a large amount of stock at twelve, on Wednesday. The next day it is put on the stock-board at six. The enterprising man, who sold it at twelve, goes out to buy one of the grandest estates within ten miles of the city. The man who bought it goes into the dust; and the secret gets out that the exciting telegram sent by the elder arose, not from any oil actually discovered, but because in boring they had found a magnificent odor of oil.