The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-03-06
IN THE PULPIT.
Althea Briggs Stryker Follows
Mrs. Leases Lead.
breaches a Sermon in a Wash
ingtOn Church.
1T WAS A CRITICISM
OF the Present Mercenary Ten
denotes in America.
Kansas Representatives in Fa-
vOr Of Annual Clerks.

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WASHINGTON, March 6.-AIthea Briggs
Stryker of Great Bend, Kansas, who is
doing work for the Populist newspaper
union in Washington, has branched out
into other lines. Like Mrs. Lease she
has sought the pulpit in order to arraign
the evils of this day and generation as
she sees them.
In the Peoples church in this city she
delivered a discourse in which she
criticised the mercenary tendency of
America.
Mrs. Stryker is not ashamed of the
west, although she registered at the Ho-
tel Oxford from New York, and throws
ashton: "The men of the east are retro
grading; they are becoming fortune
hunters and lovers of ease. There is not
a fiber of true Americanism which
should not rebel against this"
Mrs. Stryker's subject proper was "The
Religion of Natural Law" She took her
text from John x:10. 81 am come that
they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly."
"Man with all his progress and civili-
zation has ever failed to catch the true
meaning of Christ's words as repeated by
the apostle" said Mrs. Stryker. 'The
Jews themselves looked for a very diff
prophesied, and men of our day look too
far beyond these words to apply them to
present conditions.
"There is not word which ever fell
from the lips of Christ but what carries
with it this same idea. He revealed to
US little or nothing of what the future
state would be. Said He: AS we SOW
SO shall we reap Christ was not cruci-
fed on account of his spiritual doctrines,
as the Jews understood them. but be-
cause in its practice he shocked the de-
cadent and aesthetic taste of tho time.
Civilization 80 had become SO
hollow that it could not endure
the advent of natural law. When Christ
drove the money changers out of the
temple, when He protected the unclean
woman, when he bent His ear to the
thief on the cross, He gave examples of
the gospel of love- He came that they
might have life, but the Jews did not
want life.
"In the struggles of man from the be-
ginning there has been ever the protest
of natural law against legalized power.
Only after nations have been overrun
with rivers of blood and the wall of
broken hearts has echoed through the
land has man been able to rise to some
thing better than he had before. Each
struggle was against some form Of
slavery, some distortion of natural law,
successful, has always been the estab-
lishment OF some form of political or
moral liberty"
Mrs. Stryker referred to the ten talents
which were to be used and rewarded.
"The American nation," she declared,
seems to be using and rewarding but
one talent-that of money, Like the
mama in the wilderness, when the Is
raelites tried to hoard it. all that is not
used rusts and becomes worthless We
boast more millionaires in this country
than other nations can muster, vet for
every one of these count a thousand pau
pers. Our streets and alleys are thronged
with the homeless and the hungry, who
live day after day from hand to mouth
Ours is a civilization that is beginning to
decay. We do not practice the religion of
natural law. The wealthy from their idle
ness and indulgence of self are beginning e
| to decay, to lose that stamina and sturdy
manhood and WomanhOod of our
sires. Coming from the west, l notice
| this IN the east more than one who lives
| here. The men of the east are retrograd-
| ing; they are becoming fortune hunt
| ers and lovers of ease. There is not a
| fiber of true Americanism that should
| not re bel against this.
Had we the spirit of our forefathers
| we should rise and right these things.
| Yet we continue to bind our children
| with burdens that are too heavy for US to
bear ourselves. Our sons and daughters
will have to labor their lives long to
| pay, not our debts, but the interest on
| them"
Yet the speaker saw in the far future
better time, when man should have
| solved by his inventions such problems
as that of labor and capital, and would be
| free.