The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-11-30

To the Editor OF the Indianapolis Journal

Please accept my thanks for your gentle
loving words in this mornings issue of your
paper concerning the unfortunate Shane
barger case. Rest assured that many others
of your readers, besides myself, approve of
your efforts to ameliorate the sufferings of
our weak natures. The wronged husband who
can do as this one has for the sake of his
dear, helpless family and can look at the life
long services of heretofore devoted wife, is
one of natures true noblemen. Truly can
he say, Forgive us our trespasses as we for
give those that trespass against u.s." is not
this chivalry of infinitely higher grandeur
than the spurious article heretofore prac-
ticed? An army officer may remain gen.
tleman and keep a mistress at the same
time; but let him marry that mistress and
he ceases to be a gentleman, and is therefore
court-martiaed and dismissed Or, a man
finds that another has caused his wife to be
unfaithful to him. The spurious chivalry
or rather society, demands that the wroneed
husband purchase revolver, shoot the man
who has wronged him (no matter how large
or dependent family he may have( divorce
his wife, and forever render his own family
miserable, as was done in the General Sickles
case. One who can so disregard the usages
of society as this man has, whom you spoke
of, is a higher order of mankind than one
often has the pleasure to meet with, and his
actions are really Christ-like. What pity
it is that lovely woman does not cherish a
spirit of forgiveness toward her sex more
than seems to be the practice!
Again, let me thank you for many other
valuable words of warning, especially for
your article a few days ago on the ter
rible curse of gambling in stocks
and grain margins, Doubtless this
hit many of your paying patrons, as it did
many of our influential citizens who con-
tinue to pay for some of the highest-priced
pews in our churches. Please sound the
trumpet loud and long, for we seem to be on
the high road to ruin. Unfortunately, we
take our prosperity nation as an indica-
ton of the divine pleasure and acceptance,
and we indulge in the pleasant fancy that if
we only declare thanksgiving day annual
ly that God is satisfied. Others think that
besides putting on our coin I'm God we
trust it is essential to have His name
in our written constitution, and if we SIM
ply add to this one other essential, viz,
establishing TIE Deum for the whole nation
to sing at once, then will we stand out in bold
relief the nation par excellence in the estima-
ton of Deity. Did not GODS chosen people
do all this and still more, and vet, owing to
their lines not being in accordance with his
laws, were they not given to understand that
their new moons and their sacrifices had be-
come a stencil in his nostrils?
1t is the fashion to cry croaker. and one is
called unpatriotic if he says aught against
our seeming prosperity, and yet the fact re-
mains that we are the most superficial of
Christians We are followers of the Lord
Jesus by name, while in deed we are almost
wholly given up to the practices of the devil.
Nothing but the newness of our country
causes the present seeming prosperity. We
are on volcano-living on the thinnest pos
sible crust. He'll is Immediately beneath,
and we are actually breathing its
mephitic vapors, surprising them to
be of divine origin; but if we
do not arouse quickly from our lethargy we
are gone beyond REDEEM ption. 1t rests with
the newspaper to call a halt to this wide
spread carnival of moral corruption. The
pulpit cannot do it all, owing to the fact that
too many of the congregations fancy they are
Christians who indulge in these practices and
if the preacher dwells too much on the mat
ter he is soon styled little cranky, and he
is called somewhere else Then, on the other
hand, If the preacher is still retained, his
congregation will gradually drop off, one by
one, and he will be left without much of a
church as to numbers. But people will take
the newspaper apd as sure as the sun rises
and SETS if you will go on with similar warm
ings to those which have lately appeared,
you will accomplish much good, and ulti-
mately enlarge the field of your usefulness.
INDEPENDENT