The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1889-06-27
THE PHARISAICAL PURITAN.
The unclaimed Of Heaven amt the
Unowned Of Hell.

Unowned Of Hell.
The following from the pen of Mai.
VIM. A. Hearne, one of the editors of
the Wilmington Messenger, is one of
the severest denunciations we ever
read of any class of people:
From the moment the Puritan
struck solid ground at Plymouth Rock
he became restless to ram something
or other down his neighbor's throat,
or apply the lash of his understanding
to the conscience of his fellow and it
mattered little to him whether it was
a red hot iron tor the tongue of the
Quaker, or the cowhide for the backs
of witches or Baptist preachers, which
ever should be the offending class for
the time being. Not content within
the limit of their own bailiwick,
they struck out to force their ideas
along with the spread of civilization
over the continent, and there is not a
locality from Maine to Mexico, in
which the nasal twang of the ideal
Yankee, pitched to the high key of
Puritanic super morality, has not been
heard. There is not neighborhood
with whose affairs they have not
sought to intermeddle. They organ.
lied to despoil US of our property, and
contributed money to arm Southern
slaves, and sent along their emissaries
to incite the negroes to murder the
families Of their masters in bed at
midnight. They pushed their agita-
RI onf,
with the torch of the incendiary,
burned peaceful and unprotected
homes, stole and destroyed the ward
robes of defenceless women and carried
off the clothes of helpless babes. In
this very neighborhood, in sight of the
steeples of Goldsboro, the great exem-
plar of the love of God, the immacu-
late teacher of morality, and personif-
cation of all the christian graces, COM
mitted Gin the name of God and NOR
ality) outrages and crimes as base and
black as embellish the courts of hell.
The ideal puritan whose pride is to
point to the name of his ancestor on
the passenger list of the Mayfower, is
not a desirable sort of fellow to follow.
He finds new idea at every turn of
the road, and invariably invokes
law of compulsion to enforce every
proposition. It has been the business
of the old Puritan to prescribe and
prohibit, from the day he set foot on
these shores. He prescribes his own
opinion and prohibits everybody else
And he would go on, from one prohib-
itory policy to another, until he had
encompassed the whole field of human
and prohibited everything
under Gods sun that did not harmo-
nize with his own narrow notions. He
prohibited the peaceful and innocent
children of New England forests from
enjoying the possessions he found
them with. He prohibited any name
or form Of religion but his own; and
his instrument of prohibition was al
ways effective, whether, as in the case
of the Quakers, he employed the red
hot iron to bore their tongues, or in
that of Baptist Roger Williams, the
edict of banishment to the lonely
woods of Rhode Island. His prohibi-
tory code of "Blue Laws" constitute a
chapter Of the most merciless and in
famous proceedings in the annals of
American history, and should con-
stantly and always be read, and thor
oughly remembered by every child of
American parents.
We do not love the Puritan. We
want nothing more in common with
him than we can help. We cannot
admire his style, or endure his man.
ners. We know that throug hout the
long run of his breed he has been a
liar, cheat and fraud; a hypocrite,
coward and scoundrel; a psalm-sing
ing, canting, snivelling, unwholesome
creature of the devil; a narrow-mind
ed, fiendish, merciless, demon in hu
man form; the unclaimed Of Heaven
and the unowned Of hell.