Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1846-02-27
IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

IDEA OF ~ CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
The extract below is from a sermon Of
Theodore Parker, of Boston, which bears
thsabove title, and was preached By himself
at his own Installation.
"Hcre are the Needy who ask not so much
your gold, your bread, or your cloth, as they
ask also y72r sympathy, respect and coun-
sci that you assist them to help themselves,
that they may have gold won by their indus
try, not begged ont of your boneyolence. 1t
is Justice more than Charity they ask. Ev-
cry beggar, every pauper, is a reproach to us.
and condemns our civilization. For how has
1t come to us that in Il land of abundance
here arc men, for no fault of their own, born
into want, living in want, and dying in want?
and that while we pretend to a religion which
says all men are brothers! There is a hor-
rid wrong somewhere.
Here too are the Drunkarl, the Criminal,
the Abandoned person sometimes the foes
Of society, but far oftener the victims of So
cicty. Whence come the tenants Of our
almshouses, jlils-the victims of vice in all
our towns? Why, from the lowest rank Of
the people from the poorest and most igno-
rant! Say rather from the most neglected.
and the public sin is confessed and the rem
edy hintel at. What have the Strong been
doing all this while, that the Weak have
come to such 4 state! Let them answer for
themselves.
"Now for all these ought a Christian
church to toll. 1t should be a church of
Good Works-if it is a church of Good
Faith it will be so. Does not Christianity
say TIE STRONG SHOULD HELP THE WEAK !
Does not that mean something 1t once did.
Has the Christian fire faded out from those
words, once SO maryellously bright! Look
round you-in the streets CT your own Bos-
ton! See the Ignorant men and women
with scarce more than the stature of men and
women; boys and girls growing up in igno.
rance and the low civilization which comes
thereof, the Barbarians of Boston. Their
character will one day be a blot and a curse
to The nation-and who is TO blame? Why,
the ablest and best men, who might have had
ii otherwise if they would. Look at the
Poor men often Of small ability, weak by
nature, born into a weak position - therefore
doubly weak men whom the Strong. use for
their purpose, and then cast them of as we
throw away the rind of an orange after we
have drunk its generous Juice. Behold the
Wicked - so we call the weak men that are
publicly caught in the cobweb of the Law;
ask why they became wicked-how we have
aimed to reform them-what we have done
to make them respect themselves, to believe
in Goodness, in Man and God I and then saw
if there is not something for Christian men
to do-something for a Christian church to do!
Every Alms-hOuse in Massachusetts shows
that the churches have not lone their duty,
that the Christians lie Lies when they call
Jesus Master and men Brothers! Every Jail
is a monument-on which it is written in let
tiers of iron that we are still Heathens,-and
the gallows, black aud hideous, the embodi-
ment of Death, the last argument a Chris
tian State offers to the poor wretches it train
ed up to be criminals, it stands there a SIGN
of our infamy, and while it lifts its horfid
arm to crush the life out of some miserable
man-whose blood cries to God against Cain
IN the nineteenth century-it lifts that same
arm as an index of our shame!'