The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-09-23
HELATEsTFAsHION IN CLERGYMEN.

He believes that religion is not the
gloomy and formal thing that it is made
out to be in the seminaries. In semina-
ries, pale, knock-kneed young men, with
| long hair, hollow chests and bad diges-
lions, eat Graham crackers, and read
Jonathan Edwards, and practice the
| writing of elaborate sermons, and never
take walk, and are afraid of horse,
and wear black coats, and blush pain
| fully when young women look at them.
No; religion is a cheerful thing. So
he wears a mustache. He says nothing
forbids the devoutest follower of Christ
to keep his liver in good order; and
that, If fast trotter conduces to that
effect, why he shall get one. He holds
that the weaker brethren are very weak,
if they think his glass of wine is worse
for him than their strong coffee is for
them. Why should not a sinner set
forth to his fellow sinners the infinite
merits of the Savior without tying up
his neck in white muslin? So he val
iantly turns down his shirt collar; and
his conservative deacons are lucky if he
does not not wear necktie of some light
shade, and smoke cigars in the outskirts
of the village.
When he meets the infidel tailor, he
does not pass by him with an air of
mingled pain and rebuke, which causes
the ill-tempered little scoundrel to BIAS
pheme more hideously than ever, and to
bawi to his sad-eyed wife, believer
yoked with an unbeliever, that there
goes another of her internal hypocrite
parsons. On the contrary, he stops ge-
nially at the shop window: goes fur
Their in pointing out errors in our YER
sion of the Scriptures than Tom Paine
himself, the tailor's favorite author has
hi fot- 70 n l-ac ha
little blasphemer think to himself, Well,
anyhow this amt one of your hollow
chested croakers like old Smith, or
young Skimp, or that Merkes; points
out, then, that through this and that and
a thousand more errors may be alleged
by the scoffer, and freely admitted by
the believer, the eternal truths of the
Bible are still as near the tailor's soul,
and of as tremendous importance to it,
as ever; gives the tailor's son lesson
in boxing; leaves the tailor in the shop,
and, going into the back parlor, prays
with the tailor's wife-not dry, set
prayer like Skimp's, but heartfelt talk
with his Father, which the tailor hears
through the door; and he comes out,
gets a light for his cigar from the inf
dePs pipe, recommends him to procure
such and such brand of tobacco, and
goes away leaving Skepticus badly stag
gered, and on the high road to Sunday,
clean shirts and surreptitious attend
ance at evening meetings"
The live man in the ministry never
breaches he talks. Christ is not to
him an abstraction, he says, but his
flesh-and-blood brother, who loves to be
addressed Familiarity. So, when preach
ing and praying, he is not averse to a
little slang-provided it is not of the
kind called Sermonese. What harm is
there in joke from the pulpit? In
short, the new Timothy is usually
young gentleman with more blood than
brains; with more ability to talk fluent
ly than capacity for thinking; about as
spiritual-minded as a stock broker, and
not so well hammered; as learned as a
magazine writer; as witty as sOpho-
more as noisy as a stump-speaker; as
displeasing a person to anybody who
likes spiritual and moral teachers to be
of clear heads and clean hearts as any
person that can well be conceived of.