The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-07-15
COLUMBIA.
Sunday Morning, July Is, 1865.
Political Preachers.

fnI production, purportlng to be the
"Soiloquy of a Political Preaeher, "
which we commend to the attention
Of our readers. Whether it is fan
ciful sketch or not, the country has
been cursed with number Of it's pro-
totypes for years past, as the intelli-
gent reader, both North and South,
knows to-day to his sorrow.
The writer has drawn a life-like
picture of many of the political
preachers who for many years have
prostituted the pulpits of tho North,
and who, beyond all doubt, through
their constant and persistent fanatical
teachings, contributed, if they did
not, in great measure, originate, the
late terrible civil war, in which hun
dreds of thousands were slain, and
whose spirits will confront these
''false teachers at the bar of God on
''that day for which all other days
we're made"
And why all this perversion of the
holy Office? The writer candidly
gives us the reason, politics paid
better than religion" He wanted
notoriety; private ends and little
money was what he was after; and
makes the shameful confession that
this is american religion rei-
gion that inculcates hate, wrong, dis
cord, envy. war, oppression, &c. And
were we to take the discourses Of
Beecher, Cheever and others of that
stamp, delivered for the last decade,
as fair specimens of the expounders
OF the American Gospel, the asserva-
ton would be undoubtedly true For
years they fed their hocks with no.
thing but intensified defamation
against the Southern people and their
institutions, until they goaded them
to active hostilities against people
who had never wronged them. and
who never asked anything more Of
them than to be let alone in ali mat
ters, socially and politically, which
appertained solely to themselves and
their own interests.
But these preachers have accom-
plished their work; they at last sue
ceeded in letting loose the demon of
civil strife, and our devastated land,
especially in the South, and our sor-
''o'oing land, III every section, make
up the fearful and blackened record
OF the results Of political preaching.
We had hoped that, the guilty end
having been accomplished, and their
boosted work of philanthropy-the
Acknowledgement of the slave-hav-
ing been successfully completed, this
bible of fanaticism, sectional hatred,
war and bloodshed would have been
closed and clasped forever. But we
fear not; there are still indications,
even In the pulpits, that the old feel
ing Of animosity towards the people
of the South still exists. We hope
this will soon come to an end, and
that the principles of true religion
will govern all our people. For this,
let all good people pray, not only on
this holy day, but on every occasion
of prayer
In reading the terrible excoriation
the writer inflicts upon the "so-called
Christians of the North, in the para
graph Immediately preceding the
conclusion. it must be remembered
that the article is not taken from n
Southern paper; it is not the produc-
tion Of disappointed fire-eater, the
groans of ''rebel," or the diatribe
of q ruined Shareholder. It is from
the columns Of journal published
iii State of the great North west,
and from standpoint uninfuenced
by any sectional bias whatever. There
are right-thinking men in every sec
ton Of the Union, who, if they were
rs jealous in cooperation in prose
cutting good works, and as thoroughly
l. 81