’Twill drive away your melancholy.
A wonderful thing is the Andover creed,
Put it aside for the hour of need!”
The Hellfire Business.—This expression is homely English, and such language is best in describing horrible realities. The managers of the American Board (sturdy champions of hell) have been compelled by public opinion to let Mr. Hume go back to India as a missionary, though he will not agree to send all the heathen to hell. To keep up their dignity, however, they represented Mr. Hume as having backed down, and compelled him to show that he had not. Since passing Mr. Hume they have refused to allow Mr. Morse to go on the same terms, because he will not insist on the absolute certainty that the heathen are all in hell. The Boston Herald says the Board’s moral obliquity is a puzzle to honest people.
Rev. Sam Jones and Boston Theology.—The Herald says: “Brother Sam Jones and Brother Sam Small do chiefly limit themselves to the simple things of the gospel, and have less theology to the square inch than the average of ministers, as Brother Sam Jones would express it. But they are hardly fitted for this field, we should say.”
Perhaps the following extracts from Rev. Samuel’s sermons explain his relations to Boston. Before an audience of 7,500 he said, “There are 100,000 people in twenty different states praying that I may succeed in arousing Boston to a sense of her moral and spiritual degradation.
“I love to live in the world, but not to be troubled with creeds. I know I am on dangerous ground here in Boston when I am on creeds, for a fellow could get up a fight here on that question quicker than he could on stealing.”
“Whiskey is the worst enemy God or man ever had, and the best friend the devil ever had.”
“We have got sentiment enough to put whiskey out of Boston.”
“You have enough church members in Boston to vote the whiskey out of Boston any morning before breakfast.”