Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-03-26
BOHEMIA ON SUNDAY.
Sunday has come.

Sunday has come.
Bohemians usually hold it the worst of
punishments to go to church, and an ortho.
dox sermon a torture ~Torquemada lost much
in not knowing, as a final means of extort-
ing confession.
But in the Queen City, they think they
have a Bohemian clergyman, and in the best
sense perhaps they have; for he is, though
heterodox, a sincere, earnest, hopeful, gifted
man.
Persecution and Misrepresentation have
not crushed, and can not crush him.
He is the advocate of free thought, of pro-
gressive mind, of enlightened reason, of
universal justice, of humanity against efIete
creeds and irrational dogmas.
He not only breaches, but he practices
and every day makes it his solemn duty to
administer to the wants, temporal and spir.
itual, of the needy whom he knows.
Liberal in his views and free from all
manner of asceticism, because convinced that
man was created for such happiness as he
can find, and such innocent pleasure as he
can enjoy, he never allows selfshness to
usuIp the place. OF principle.
A reformer is he in the truest sense.
Not a mere theorist, but a worker, brave
and energetic one who goes where he hears
of distress; who lifts his fallen brother, the
drunkard, from the gutter all covered with
mire, and when freed from the madness of
liquor, labors to show him the better way.
He does not fear infection from the poor
woman who is more sinned against than
shining, the wretched outcast society shuns
and churches close their doors upon; but he
is willing, as Jesus did, to take her by the
hand, and say, SISTER, go and sin no more"
His ear is ever open to the groan of agony,
and his hand and spirit answer to every call
of charity.
If to be such is to be a Bohemian, would
all ministers might don the insignia of the
order, and learn something of the proper
spirit of Christianity.
How such a change would benefit religion;
how soon piety would then become a syno.
nym for humanity, instead of a mere form,
a sober mantle hiding a dead heart and an
obnoxious creedl
There is the plain place Of worship of the
Bohemian clergyman.
The doors are open; the pews are free.
Poverty is not excluded thence, though
the wealthy and the highly cultivated are.
among his congregation.
He speaks to and for all.
Every heart is his brothers heart; every
soul is precious and immortal in the sight of
God.
They who sit beneath his ~eloqusnce are
proof of the power of his sincerity and his
freedom.
One finds the uneducated laborer there
who has begun to think; the gray-haired
deist who has not believed, but who has
acted; the gentle and delicate girl whose
soul is gushing with love and poetry the
capitalist who still has a heart; the msr-
liant who remembers his early nature at
least once a week; the politician who is
drawn by a magnetic influence to one he
declares sincere the aged woman who dare
believe God better than he is described the
romantic youth to WHOM goodness is shown
as the brightest chivalry aud the purest
poetry that has yet been sung.
All the good Of Bohemia gravitates
thither, and goes away the better for the
high and generous teachings it has received.
THE INNER LIFE OF BOHEMIA.
We might follow Bohemia through days
and nights, through months and years. but
its essence remains the same; its outward
resemblance only varying.
We should find in it some evil, but much
Of good.
We should see the Bohemian who tonight
roars out a b~acchanalian song in the drowsy
watchmAn's ear, hard at work Tomorrow