The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-07-19
sntnn Amone the FashionahIs Churcles.


known to exist between oil and water. When
cold weather, balls, routs Germans and cham
payne suppers are in the ascendant fashion
able conventicles, with fashionably paid and
| gotten up parsons to gracefully ego through
| the motions in fashionably upholstered pull
pits and affairs, piety, like an exotic in green
house, 6ourishes magnifcently. In the ''sea-
SON. it is daintily disseminated in the daintest
language to dainty audiences, who ego to
church because it is the thing" languid in
| mind and exhausted in body from the excuses
OF the week; for even fashionable piety' is
not countenanced on the six profane days. as
it then becomes ''bore' to everybody except
| dowagers who are accustomed to roughing it.
Fashionable religion during the winter sol
stice is in its glory. 1t is then very proper
but when, in the procession of the seasons,
the grass appears, it gradually begins to retire
from the public mind; and on Sirius mounting
the zenith and epidemics becoming possible,
it, with the parsons surplice and the elegantly
| appointed pews, is done up in brown linen and
put away, while the ''worshippers" close
and effeotually clasp their prayer and hymn
books don their travelling dresses, take French
leave OF the metropolis, and for the sins of the
winter in which they did those things they
ought not to have done and left undone the
things they ought to have done, make peni-
tential pilgrimages to Saratoga, Newport, the
lakes and other resorts, where they ideally
array their persons in sackcloth (Of satin and
| lin ,nI oh (ne.,
themselves and thus recuperate for another
season of naughtiness and piety in the sinful
city
OF course the parsons follow their hocks It
is their profession to be pious, and they must
need make journeys like Bunyan's Christian,
through many temptations, that their Charges
may be saved from the wrath to come And
here it Is where the great enemy of mankind
steps in and makes captive of souls Some of
the demi- shiOnable cOnventicles do not en-
tirely close their doors in the summer months
The denis, we must do them the credit of
saying, keep church during the ifty-two Sun
days in the year but while the regulars are in
Europe in Che mountains fishing for trout, or
at Saratoga drinking water (of course), sort
Of Bohemian substitute, with very loose ortho-
dox notions, is installed in the place of each.
These pious Bohemans, like those who hang to
the skirts of the press, are all tempted of
Satan to lead the remnants of the fold-com-
PEELED either by poverty or business to remain
in town-astray by teaching false doctrines, by
introducing ideas not in consonance with the
regularly laid down articles under which every
well appointed church starts on it's voyage for
the boun of Jordan.
Some of these Bohemian clergymen, being
out of regular situations. aud of course
anxious to I'LL acceptably' the desks of
paying congregations. are exceedingly ear
nest in their convictions, and if cholera
yellow fever OF other contagious disease RACES,
labor faithfully among the stricken, and so get
their names in the papers. But the chief error
which atflicts the Bohemian of the press cir
cumven:s the Bohemian of the pulpit. They
will both steal ideas-the one from the English
lay classics, the other from the works of the
fine old sermonizers of the sixteenth and pre-
ceding centuries. Thus, without originality
chow can poor parson be original
and have no regular charge?). our reverend
Bohemian of a Sunday morning with the Their
mometer at eighty-six in the shade, presents a
discourse which, lingually speaking, is a
splendid specimen of literary patchwork, and
on listening to which the congregation begin
to draw ugly comparisons between the sub
stitute and the regular pastor, and always to
the disadvantage of the latter, who has grown
too lazy to plagarize. These get wicked ideas
in their heads They desire change of shep
herds. A row is the result, followed by pos
sible split in the congregation, at all of which
Satan grins significantly; for well he knows
that unless these watch aud pray without ces
sation he will get his finger. and eventually his
scheming brain, into the seething mess of ha
tired and all uncharitablcness which Of neces-
sty follows, to the certain downfall of fashiOna
bio piety, to the personal profit of his own and
his servant, the Bohemian parson.
Now, the moral of all this is, stay at home,
go to prayers regularly, remember the poor
with meekness Of spirit, patronize the Park
and its concerts, and so live, winter and sum
mer, that even Satan himself will be tempted to
return to his allegiance and drink the mineral
waters as beverage more agreeable to his
palate than birthstone champagne.
"Old Thad" on "Bloatcd speculators''-
Greeley struck Dumb.
We referred yesterday to the opinions Of
''Old Thad Stevens" on the redemption Of the
five-twenties as substantially the views of Mr..
Pendleton, but the emphatic declarations Of
the radical leader of the House in the debate
in that body on Friday last on the Funding
bill are entitled to some special notice. They
question in favor Of the payment Of the prin-
cpal Of the fve-twenties in legal tenders.
This, said Mr.. Stevens, is the law ''as all
understood 1t when the law was enacted; just
! "a Il xas exnlained ON the floor a dozen times