The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 22, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 3, 1897 Page: 1 of 16

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YOL. XVI., NO. 22.
DALLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, JUNE 3,1897.
*1 PER ANNUM
Pious Frauds.
-4
From the Railway Times we reproduce
the following reflection on a class of para-
sites who have been no small factor in
keeping the toiling millions sf Ciod's
children in bondage to plutocracy. I hat
there are many God serving men engaged
in the work of the ministry we do not
doubt, but as a class, and especially in
the large city churches, these strictures
aptly apply. Read this article carefully
and we feel you will agree with much that
the writer states:
A deep, broad reverence for truth,
coupled with a strong, undying love for
humanity, constitutes the principal ele-
ment of religion. Aside from these all
else is emotionalism and does not con-
tain any potentialities for good. Lip ser-
vice, nt matter how profound or solemn,
counts for nothing unless it is accom-
panied with noble actions. The edifice
embellished with all the trappings of art
—frescoeing, carving, gilding, and up-
holstering—may be consecrated to God,
but He seldom or never enters such mag-
nificent toys; His chief abode is in the
soul of an honest, intelligent and pure-
minded being. Stained glass windows,
anthems, doxologies and incense have no
more weight in the hand of God than the
smallest indivisible particle of matter.
There is no grander music to the Su-
preme Intelligence than the prattling of
babes and the minstrelsy of birds, and no
softer incense than the breath of flowers!
Priestly robes, long faces and automatic
ceremonials are detestible in the sight of
the Living God. Lip service, the rustle
of silks and the fluttering of fans may be
fashionable, but they lack the first ele-
ment of "righteousness." Fine, sonorous,
deep-sounding articulations may please
the ear and tickle the sense of the music-
al but never awaken the conscience of
the understanding! The world has been
deluged with the fine rounded periods of
the "cloth," and thousands of "sacred
edifices" point their golden fingers to the
sky, but can it be truthfully said that the
human race is better for all this wasted
energy and grand display? Do' the mills
of greed and tyanny grind slower because
the world is constantly reverberating with
the enunciating of "sacred words"?
What city of golden spires can boast of
one solitary exemplar of Christ?
The sum and substance of nearly all
the religion of the present day is refined
noise. This never did nor ever will light-
en human woes. It may temporarily
soothe the feverish conscience of a de-
gentm!* people, but it cannot remove its
savagery and lust Everything under the
sun is vain unless it materially improves,
directly or indirectly, the condition of
the human race. The brief measure of
time allotted to every human being ought
to be too sacred to be trifled away listen-
to the absurd insincerity of the average
preacher. Nine out of every ten are
simply professional jaw-smiths plying
their vocation for lucre. The size of the
salary concerns them more than the sal-
vation of immortal souls. "Creature
comforts" with them is the "main
chance.''
Such impious pretenders cannot be
too severely held up to public scorn! The
myriads of golden moments these crea-
tures waste, before their egotistic mirrors,
is perfectly astounding. They, of all
men, ought to understand that Christ in-
tended to establish God's kingdom now,
upon earth, not after the resurrection—
ten million years hence. "Love thy neigh-
bor as *v yself' ought to constitute. the bulk
of their sermonizing! What does a groan-
ing and despairing world want with jus-
tice—after it is "dead and gone?" What
doctrine is better and sounder than hon-
esty? Can a man be honest who teaches
the "single gold standard?" Can his
soul be linked to heaven when his fingers
slide into his neighbor's pocketbook? An
honest man is worth more than all the
crowned ruffians ever born." Honesty
is the saving grace the world needs to-
day!—Not water wafers and words. A
little more square dealing than we have
and 1 will venture to predict that less sin
will be the result If the voice of the
church had been raised against rent,
profit and usury—mongering, at their
very inception, no doubt that the ¿teater
portion of human deviltry and diabolism
would have disappeared with the remov-
al of their greatest agencies.
We read in Holy Writ that the primi-
tive Christians held property in common.
Why? Because it was honest Any man
grabbing more property than he can earn
or consume is decidedly theivish. Fine
brains and a fat pocketbook is just an-
other way of giving the sharpest pick
pocket the greater reward. Moderate
thrift and industry cannot earn from God's
bounties much more than the satisfaction
of temporal wants, and how can a single
individual amass great wealth but at the
expense of the whole people. The primi-
tive Christians were simply aware of the
fact that the lifehood of every useful mem-
ber of society was as valuable as any oth-
er member' sf and that property in com-
mon according to each individual's need,
was the only dispensation consonant with
justice and humanity. What right has
any man to exact tribute from a com-
munity that clothes and feeds him while
his hands are nestled in reposeful idle-
ness. Because nature has given him a
more subtle brain than his brothers, must
the latter play Esau and the former Ja-
cob? The poor, sweat-stained drudge
whose hands have sown and reaped the
harvests of the field and garden that feeds
the world is entitled to the greatest share
of the world's goods, but alas he receives
the least And the numerous brood of
side-whiskered chatterboxes who parade
as ministers of the gospel seldom see this
through their golden spectacles. If they
could what a different world this would
be!
If they would only see the simple truth
as Christ saw it and taught it, and not al-
ways preoccupy their minds with the
' 'loaves and fishes, honesty would not be
so; scarce a commodity. If religion means
anything, it means doing right not say-
ing Solemn things. And in this doing,
we must be guided by the keystone of
Christ's moral code, "do unto others as
you would have them do to you." A man
cannot be a true Christian and live in a
palace while his neighbor is attempting
to dwell in a hovel. Yet many of our
sideburned clericals live in veritable cas-
tles in teriored as finely as Dives'. "I
have not a place to lay my head" was
very good coming from the lips of the
Scourger of money mongers, but how
strange and outlandish it would sound
falling from the turkey and wine breath
of one of our dapper gentlemen taking
a siesta in his cool palatial manse.
"Pure religion and undefiled before
God the Father is this: "To visit the fa-
therless and widows in their affliction
and keep thyself unspotted from the
world." Writing flowery ear-pleasing
rhetoric is the pure and undefiled busi-
ness of the average members of the
"cloth." I have repeatedly heard these
apologies of Christianity, in speaking of
millionaires, to mention them as "God's
stewards." As if the Creator took espe-
cial delight in robbing the masses to
make a few contemptibly small-minded
parasites bloated with fabulous wealth.
Fancy the Lord making a Pullman one
of his stewards—a man who has starved
his employes into the pitiful abandon of
shipwrecked mariners. Or, say a Rocke-
feller—a man that has driven thousands
of people into bankruptcy and ruin,
"stewards!" That is the way the side-
whiskered fellows fix things with God.
There is such an air of saintliness about
these donors of college and library lar*
gesses that one almost fancies that he
can see a radiant nimbus flickering over
each of their respective brows. "Stew-
ards!' Stealing the wealth of the world
and lavishing it upon Bradley-Martin
banquets and masquerade balls!
If these effeminate mumblers of mys-
teries believe that worshiping God con-
sists in unraveling a certain set of pet
phrases Sunday after Sunday, what deliri-
ous imaginations they must have!
Preaching patience to those who have al-
ready endured distractions, disappoint-
ments, humiliations, slavish toils and de-
formities enough to atone for the sins of
ten generations! The green meadows,
the shadowy groves, the refreshing
brooks, the pearly canopy—these are
God's habitations, and not the sepulchral
din of the "sacred edifice!" The true
worship of God does not consist in flat-
tery, but in loving and admiring his sub-
lime handiwork. The waving of chalice
symbols, incense pots, crucifixes and the
grinding o'it of dead languages may tickle
the savage tastes of an ignoramus, but it
must be horribly nauseating to the Su-
preme Intelligence!
God's presence is not locked up within
golden-edged prayer-books, nor did he
give any set of men the monopoly of Mis
power. The Almighty dwells in deeds,
not words; in the activities and operations
of nature, not in the solemnities of artifi-
cial din. God's manifested will toman-
kind is written indelibly upon every ele-
ment of the universe and cannot be pos-
sibly misconstrued if we but choose His
infallible guide to lead us—experience.
******
Fancy that these things can save
who are already bloated to bursting with
egotistic buncombe. All tficjr solemn
nothings, signs, mysteries, hocus pocus
mutterings, would not save a flea from
drowning, and the world does not grow
one whit the wiser and better by this idi-
otic tomfoolery. All this solemn hum-
buggery is part ' f the play of the plutoc-
racy, and God's kingdom will never be es-
tablished upon earth through such an ab-
surd instrumentality. The establishment
of justice and equal opportunities to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, will
not come through disparaging God's high-
est handiwork—man—by calling him a
totally depraved creature.
No man who willingly suffers the out-
rages and torments of the damned in this
life and placidly shoulders these unbear-
able inflictions upon his children, can
with any degree of certainty expect to
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