Where wuz the great sperit of Love and Charity that said—“Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more”? Wuz God there?
Didn’t I remember that in this very meetin’-house they got up a fair to help raise money for some charity connected with it, and one of the little girls kicked higher than any Bowery girl? Wuz it a-startin’ that child on the broad road that takes hold on death? Wuz we worshippin’ a idol of Expediency—doing evil that good might come?
There wuz poor ones in that very meetin’-house, achin’ hearts sufferin’ for food and clothin’ almost, and rich, comfortable ones who went by on the other side and sot in their places and prayed for the poor, with their cold forms and hungry eyes watchin’ ’em vainly as they prayed, hopin’ for the help they did not get.
Wuz we hyppocrites? Did we bow at the altar of selfishness?
Truly no Eastern idol wuz any more snub-nosed and ugly than this one.
I wuz overcome with horrow when I thought it all over, and sez I—“I guess I won’t take you there right away; we’ll think on’t a spell first.”
For I happened to think, too, that our good, plain old preacher, Elder Minkley, wuzn’t a-goin’ to preach there Sunday, anyway, but a famous sensational preacher, that some of the rich members wanted to call. Yes, many hed turned away from the good gospel sermons of that man of God, Elder Minkley, and wanted a change.
Wuz it a windy, sensational God set up in our pulpit? I felt guilty as a dog, for I too had criticised that good old Elder’s plain speakin’.
Al Faizi had sot me to thinkin’, and while I wuz a-meditatin’ his calm voice went on—
“I came to a city not far away; there I saw some words you had written. I felt that you, too, desired the truth. I have come to ask you if you have found it—if you have found in this land the place where Love and Justice reign, and to ask you where it is, that I, too, may worship there, and teach the truth to my people.”