The comments upon this made by the New York Evening Post are so to the point, and conclusive, that we quote them in full. The Post says:
“Well, now, this being so, why did Wanamaker and Quay, when they had finished their noble work, burn their books and accounts? Missionary, tract, and Bible societies for mutual improvement and for aid to home study, lyceums and lecturing associations, not to speak of charitable and philanthropic associations, do not, after six months of unusual activity, commit all their papers, vouchers, and books of accounts to the flames. No such thing is ever thought of in Wanamaker’s Bethel Sunday-school. Why, then, was it done by the Advisory Committee? Religious and educational organizations, such as the Advisory Committee seems to have been, on the contrary, when they have raised a large sum of money and spent it in worthy ways are usually eager to preserve and spread the record of it, that others coming after them may be encouraged to do likewise. In fact, the more one reflects on the Wanamaker-Quay holocaust, the more mysterious it seems.”
This election of a chief magistrate, that shook the great republic from centre to circumference, was but a continuation of the corrupt system that began some years since, and is known to the public as that of “addition, division, and silence.”
This condition of the polls is no menace to our government. That period is gone. It is a loss of all. The ballot is the foundation corner-stone of the entire political fabric. Its passage to the hands of corrupt dealers is simply ruin. We may not realize this, but we do realize the contempt into which it has fallen. When the new President swings along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to be inaugurated, upon the side of his 236 carriage should be printed what history with its cold, unbiased fingers will put to record:
| “Bo’t for Two Millions of Dollars.” |
THE PULPIT CULT.
In the days of our Saviour the rich man of Jerusalem would, on a Sabbath morning, bathe and anoint his body, and putting on fine linen and wearing-apparel, move in a dignified fashion to the synagogue, feeling that he was serving God by making God respectable in the eyes of men.
The proneness of poor human nature to lose in the mere form that for which the form was created to serve is the same throughout the world, and through all the ages, evolution to the contrary notwithstanding. As our physical being is, and has been, and will ever be about the same, our spiritual suffers little change. When Adam and Eve, leaving the garden of Eden, encountered the typhoid fever, that dread disease had the same symptoms, made the same progress to death or recovery, that puzzles the physicians to-day. That horrible but curious growth we call cancer was the same six thousand years ago that it is in this nineteenth century. The sicknesses of the soul are the same in all climes and in the presence of all creeds.
Said a witty ordained infidel who preached the salvation of unbelief many years at London, on visiting a business men’s prayer meeting: “Our merchants may not be Jews in their dealings, but they are certainly Hebrews in their prayers.”
The form has survived the substance. We have retained the customs and phraseology, while losing the meaning. As the rich men of Jerusalem who on the Sabbath thronged the Temple and were solemnly earnest in their prayers, returned to their cheating the day after, so we give unto God one-seventh part of our time and devote the rest to the practices of Satan. We are full of wrath and disgust at the Sunday-school cashier who appropriates the money of other people and, unable longer to conceal his thefts, flees to Canada. This is unjust. The poor man was not less pious than his president or his directors who neglected their duties and in many cases shared in the luxury. His crime was not in what he did, but in being caught at it before he could carry out his intent to replace the funds from his successful speculations. He saw in the leaders of his little congregation in the Lord, millionaires who had made all they possessed through fraud, and why should he, with the best intentions, not accumulate a modest competence through the same means? He heard nothing to the contrary from the pulpit. The eloquent divine told, in winning words, of the righteousness of right and the sinfulness of sin, but the illustrations were all, or nearly all, two thousand years old, and the words were the words of Isaiah and the prophets. To denounce the sins of to-day in “the vulgar tongue” would be to offend the millionaires of the congregation and lessen the salary of the worthy divine.