The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1888-08-29
Startling Sermon by the Bishop O1
London.

The following sermon is clipped
from an exchange. We cannot af-
firm that it was preached, but hesitate
not to say it ought to have been
preached not only in Westminster
Abbey but everywhere, and often:
Text-"Go to now, ye rich men,
weep and howl for your miseries that
shall come upon you. Behold the hire
of the laborers who have reaped
down your fields, which is of you kept
back by fraud, crieth; and the cries
Of them which have reaped are enter
ed into the ears of the Lord of Sab
bath. Ye have lived in pleasure on
the earth and been wanton: We have
nourished your hearts as in day OF
slaughter. Ye have condemned and
killed the just, and he doth not resist
you."-James 5: 1856.
FELLOW CITIzENs-The text which
I have just read you, and from which
I shall preach the last sermon as bish-
op that shall ever deliver from this
pulpit, is one which is probably as un-
familiar to you comfortable well-to-do
people as it is familiar to all those who
since it was originally penned have
toiled and suffered for humanity.
Although it is read sometimes in the
ordinary course of our church service,
yet, judging by your conduct, your
ears have been deaf to its terrible de-
nunciations. From the days when l
was an humble curate until now,
had large and varied experience OF
cathedrals, churches, preachers and
sermons, I have never yet heard a
discourse based on these words. and I
cannot learn from any of my brother
bishops or priests that they have used
them, or heard them so used.
I can see by your uneasy demeanor
that you are asking yourselves why,
on this Christmast day, when in &C
cordance with custom, I should be
preaching smooth things to you, l
should be mad enough to offend your
delicate susceptibilities by quoting
the saying of one of the common peo-
ple-words written eighteen centuries
ago-which might have done very
we'll then, but which cannot possibly
be applied to you and your class to-
day; you who come here, clad in pur.
pie and fine linen, who, some of you,
live in kings houses, who fare deli
cately every day, and who consider
that you have fulfilled every moral
obligation when you have dropped a
coin in the collection box, before you
step into your carriages to be driven
to your luxurious home. 1t is because
I believe that not only James, but
Jesus Christ Himself, if He could
stand in my place to-day would hurl
these words at you with force and a
passion of which we, in the nine
teenth century, have but lite concep-
ton. Not as a bishop, but asa man,
Irepeat them to you, hardly hoping
that they may touch your hearts, but
more, asa justification for my new
and strange position.
For years I have been one of you.
NV home has been not where Christ's
home was, with the masses, but with
classes. I have an abundance of this
worlds goods. I have been a digni-
tary of church which is the church
Of the rich, and not the church of the
poor. Without protest I have mix
ed in society with men and women
whom Christ would have denounced
as bitterly as He denounced the
scribes and Pharisees. In the house
of lords have sat silently side by side
with whoremongers and and adulter-
ers, and silently have welcomed as
my personal friends highborn women
some of whom no decent working
man would allow his wife or daughter
to associate.
have seen among you, spreading
like canker, the lust of the flesh and
the pride of life, and instead of reprov-
ing you, as Christ would have done,
I have taken refuge in generalities,
and have not dared to denounce your
individual sins. All this time there
has been going on around me, in this
huge city and throughout the land,
the surging, toiling life of humanity
the sorrow, the suffering, the poverty,
the disease, the sin and the shame
which I realized but dimly, as some
thing altogether apart from my own
existence, but for which, I at last see
clearly, you and have been up to the
present time, mostly to blame. We
and our class have kept back by fraud
the hire of the laborers who have reap
ed our fields, we have lived in pleas
ure on the earth and been wanton, we
have nourished our own hearts
while we have starved the bodies of
those to whom we owe the yery bread