It is not that ministers are unawares of the prevalence of black and ghastly crimes, but that they dare not speak openly against them. Too many are contaminated with evil and involved in guilt for the preacher to voice with impunity the truths which burn in his soul. He knows only too well that if he dares assert his manhood and exercises the prerogative of Christ's minister, the retribution will be swift and terrible, viz: ejectment from his pastorate!
MURDER
How ominous is the silence concerning murder. And yet the land is swarming with crimson-handed murderers and murderesses. Many of them are members of our "best churches" and move in the most select society. Some of them read with animation the responses in church service and repeat the Lord's Prayer with the greatest gusto. A few—not many, we devoutly trust—talk about "sanctification." Poor, deluded, hoodwinked souls! they are blinded by Satan. Their hands are red with blood, and their hearts are black as hell. Were they to ever approach the heaven of which they sanctimoniously prate, they would be met at the gate with the curse of murdered infants who never saw the light.
INFANTICIDE
If there is a pitiable sight in all God's great universe, if there is a scene over which angels shed tears and demons shriek laughter, it is an old cruel-eyed mother, who has seared her conscience and sinned away all noble womanliness and blasted her own soul, whispering into the unsoiled ears of her daughter the way in which to murder her own offspring; and if there is a hot hell, such a mother will make her bed in it.
POODLE-DOGS.
The duties and cares of maternity are too irksome, and so the women who might be the mothers of John Wesleys and Fenelons and Metchers and Inskips and Cookmans are petting poodle-dogs and rat-terriers.
THE VITRIOL OF WRATH.
How many preachers dare speak in clarion tones what religion and science concur in asserting concerning vice? But know ye by these presents, all of Adam's race, that what depraved humanity pronounces all right and harmless, the Almighty God who whirls the worlds will corrode and scald with the burning vitriol of His wrath, and woe! woe! woe! to the man or woman with whom is found sin.