Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1892-05-26

places. When the religious arlStocracy,
the great high church people, the
Pharisees, came out to hear him, they
supposed that he would feel compl-
mented. They imagined that he would
recognize in fitting manner their con-
descending kindness; that he would
repay them by telling them that they
were too holy and too exalted to be
touched by the common people, and
the unwashed and uncircumcised sin
ners gathered there but they were
sorely disappointed. Seeing their pride,
insincerity and hypocrisy; knowing
how they we're attempting to conceal
by robe of sanctity the dishonesty
and sensuality of their lives, he assail-
ed them with a fury that was simply
appalling. "Ye generation of vipers
Who hath warned you to flee from the
wrath to come? And think not to say
within yourselves, we have Abraham to
our father; for l say unto you, that
God is able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham"
The veriest coward and time-server
that has stolen the livery of heaven to
serve the devil in, can rebuke the sins
and the vices of the poor and the OBJ
scure in his community; but to face
the jewellers in mansions, the wearers
of soft raiment, the social and religious
aristocracy, who claim a monopoly of
responsibility, refinement and virtue,
and tell them their sins and their shams
and paint the horrors of the pit into
which they are sliding, is task which
requires the faith, courage and strength
of spiritual athlete
John the Baptist was Christian
radical. To say that of any man is to
pay the very highest tribute to his
Christian character. He "laid the AK
at the root of the tree" saying, every
tree that bringeth not forth good fruit,
shall be hewn down and cast into the
fire" One time he would arraign
whole classes of men, uncover their ini-
quities and foretell their doom at 9th
er times he would designate an indi-
vidual sinner, unmask him and hold up
his deeds of darkness to public repro
baton and scorn.
Inspired by the consciousness that
he was the mouth-piece of the living
God and regardless of the consequences
to himself, he dared to confront Herod
the King, who had Roman legions at
his back, and solemnly rebuked him for
his adulterous and incestuous connec-
ton with the wife of his own living
brother.
If man is inherently great, God will
not let him die until he has some OPP
portunity to show it. No man
is truly great who is selfish, envious,
jealous. No man is truly great who is
without tenderness, modesty and hui
mility. No intelligent reader of the
new Testament will deny that John had
all these gentler virtues, and that in
preeminent degree.
Soon afterwards the end came. 1t
was tragic, bloody, horrible; and yet
for him it was glorious. Committing
his soul for the last time into the
hands of his heavenly Father, without
tremor, supremely calm in the assur-
ance that death for him would be only
transition from gloom to glory, he re-
ceived the murderous blow which sew
cred his head from his body. While
the crimson tide of life spread over
that dungeon floor, and the poor, ghost
ly, CORY head, was borne in vessel to
Herod's palace, his freed spirit, I'M
harmed, peaceful, radiant, triumphant,
sped upward to it's eternal dwelling
place, in the sheltering bosom of God.
Farewell, great prophet! You leave
us laden with the benedictions of our
grateful hearts. Thy blood is an i'm
perishable seed from which, in every
age, heroes and martyrs shall spring.
The echoes of that voice crying in the
wilderness, "Prepare We the way of the
Lord" shall live until this wilderness
world has become the kingdom of
Christ.
Friends, if there be any among
us who approximate, in any good de-
gree, the lofty ideal to which have di-
rected your thoughts, honor them, love
them, magnify them, crown them, for
they are the hope of your country and
of the world.
If pure gospel is to be preached if
spiritual religion is to be preserved !; if
the macadamized bigotry of modern
pharisaism is to be overturned and
debauching and villainy breeding inf
deity of Ingersoll and his satellites is
to be smitten with paralysis and death;
if communism, socialism, free-loveism
and all their kindred deviltries are to
be uprooted from American soil; if this
disgraceful travesty upon Democratic
government is ever stopped; if the bal
lot-box stuffing, the false registration
and the bribery that are now practiced
under the eyes, and with the approval
of men who claim to be patriots and
Christians are ever abolished if the
despotism of monopoly and privileged
classes is ever to be overthrown, if we
are ever to repeal those infamous reve-
nue. laws which are golden girdles for
the rich, but CALLING shackels for the
poor if the power of the whisky ring
is ever broken, so that man can be
elected to city council without taking
an oath of fealty to the bar-keepers-
if the church of the living God is ever
to be cleansed Of the def1lements, and
made worthy to be called the Bride of
Christi these reforms are possible,
they are made possible only through
the devotion of the few, who are domi-
mated by the same spirit and purposes
which made John the Baptist the
matchless man and the peerless proph-
ct that he was.