The record-union., 1895-04-22
LESSONS OF THE LATE TRAGEDIES.
Strongly Brought Out by Rev. W. H.
Baugh,
his Sermon Last Night on the Butch
cry of Blanche Lamont and
Minnie Williams.

Rev. W. Il. Baugh. pastor of the Four
teenth-street Presbyterian Church, de-
ivered sermon last evening on the re-
cent double tragedy in San Francisco.
The announcement of the subject served
to fill the church with people. Mr.. Baugh
selected as his text l Samuel, iv., q first
clause: "And she named the child Icha-
bod" The last and principal word in
my text, said the speaker. Interpreted
means, "there is no glory" or 1.-The glory
is departed" and is a sad, melancholy
inscription to be indelibly stamped on
the brow of any living human being.
Phineas' wife, OF Hebrew historical
fame, is not the only parent whose mater
nal heart has been crushed by the sud
den departure of all earthly hope of filial
glory from the person of cherished son.
My text finds q further and emphatic
Interpretation in the two atrocious two
fold crimes recently committed within
the sacred walls of the Emmanuel Church
in San Francisco.
The awful tragedy is unparalleled in all
the inhuman deeds and black crimes in
history of civilization. IchdbOd! 1CHA-
BOD! ICHABOD! Thrice an Ichabod!
The glory is departed, departed, de-
parted
The recent crime referred TO in this ad-
dress Will long stand in our memory and
imagination like some huge, diabol-
lcal monstrosity, which belongs TO a
cruel, barbarous and not to even the
so-called Christian age of advanced
civilization; nor Is the atroclty
of the crime softened in the least from the
fact that we never have seen and do not
now see anywhere on this globe fully
civilized people.
Whoever unearths the motives and
passions of the impious perpetrator Of
these heart-sickening crimes traces out
the lnnermost workings OF hellish soul.
II we OF the present day are to contribute
somewhat to the welfare of the future gen.
erations, in religious development, we
must strive to understand the complex
relations oflife and thought, of passion
and motive, of interest and action which
belong TO abnormal as well as the I'M
proved and approved state of human So
ciety, that we may correct or overcome
the vices and euormities Of the belluine
nature of human life.
a terse writer of psychological sub
jects has suggestively pointed out
that: whoever proposes to dis
courage vice to vindicate religion,
morality and social order, against their
adveTSaries, must unvel crime in all its
deformity and place it before the eyes of
men in its colossal magnitude"
For purposes like these we trace the
crime Of this brute, belonging to the genus
homo and the species demon, just as one
follows MiIton's Satan with shuddering
wonder through painless realms of black
chaos.
In studying this crime we should not
omit the striking anomaly of apparent
oOmmendable qualities varlously pointed
Of ha
character of this fend, which are not al
together wanting in the most vicious. We
take notice, l say, of these, and point
them out, just as if we were giving wsrn-
ing against the stealthy tiger. We would
not fail to take notice of his bright, beau
tlfulIy marked skin, lest in doing so the
ferociousness of the treacherous animal
would be recognized too late.
Such was the polluter and murderer of
the two pure, innocent, helpless young
women, who lost their lives within the
sacred walls Of Christian church in San
Francisco.
he was polite devil, polished fiend
and a hideOus monster, that to be
dreaded needs but to be seen. ;" and, like
Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust" is
an unclean brute, adorned in the livery
OF perfect gentleman, whose tongue is
as oily and smooth as a poetical muse,
but to whom, as he confesses. Blood is
british nature is like Jack the Rake
who covets every sweet favor for himself,
and fancies that there is neither honor nor
favor which is not to be had for the pluck
ing"
Like Satan, "who fashioneth himself
into an angel OF light" he went oil and
DID as Francis, the son OF Maximilian,
the Count Won Moor in SchiIler's drama
of The Robbers" when he ''waded up"
TO his very ears in mortal sin," and see
ing how far the shore lay behind him. he
ALSO saw that 1t was madness to try to
swim back" bat always is at the point
where be realizes keeniy that no pleasure
satisfies him and no happiness contents
him.
The further fact that the accused muir
derer has been described as being a close,
earnest student of his chosen profession
and as having an intense thirst for
knowledge and an unsatished desire to
demonstrate his theoretical knowledge
by experiment with the surgeons
knife, not only does not soften the enor-
nifty of his crime. but aggravates the de-
merits and should intensity the punish
ment, seeing his knowledge was not for
pure ends but only love for it, for base
ana unworthy purposes, which. when
accomplished, plainly show the morbid
misology at the bottom oft.
Whoever has gone so far as TO quicken
his understanding and increase his
knowledge at the expense of the soul and
moral culture, 70 such an one, forsooth,
nothing is holy, for to him sacred things
have become unholy; deity and human
lty are alike matters Of indifference,
while heaven and earth are ciphers. For
the living he has no respect, and for the
dead no concern.
Though it may be claimed, and for
argument admitted, that this wretch, de-
PRAYED as he is, may bear IN some sense
ln - Fa a ls,,i
which it is pleaded lays some claims upon
our leniency toward the criminal, yet let
il be faithfully remem bered that the
greater the capacity bestowed upon q
human being, and the larger the oppor-
tunlties for their Improvement and en-
largemeut, the greater and more enor-
nous, the more reprehenslble and in
dictable becomes his misapplication and
abuse of them.
Out of such compleXity and aggrega-
ton OF possible motives, passions and
paradoXical Manifestations of human
traits OF character, ex hi biting in the same
person and at the same time qualities
that draw out our respect and approval
and provoke our deepest adherence and
lOathing; out of such a tangled mass of
psychological contradictions it IS difficult
to draw only pertinent and salient les
sons. But here are some that present
themselves to your speakers mind, de-
duced from the Emmanuel Church TRACE
dies
l. First it is evident on the one hand
that the general leavened condition of So
clety at large is not the direct medium Of
the moral salvation OF the individual of
that society; the leavened church will not
save the unleavened individual. Society
never has been, is not now, q saving in
stitution.
1t has been the dream of the anti
Christian opumist that some day and