Worcester morning daily spy., 1898-03-14
SPIRIT OF EVIL.
How 1t Enters and Possesses
Citadels of Righteousness.
Rev. Or. Merriman DepIores the License
of Some NeWspapers-Wrong Tenden-
eies in Athletics and Abuse of
the Lords Day.

At Central Church Sunday morning
DR.. Merriman preached upon perverting
the grace of God. In the course of the
sermon DR.. Merriman made a scathing
denunciation of that class of newspapers
which, to use the preachers own words,
''are perfectly shameless in their lying,
their disregard of every consideration of
fairness, their use of every device to
fan the spirit of strife" The text was
taken from the epistle of Jude, the words
being Turning the grace of God into
lasciviousness." Dr. Merriman said in
part:
The vice Of changing the divinest es-
sence of the gospel into poison has at
tached to the church from the begin
ming In one form or another it has dog
| ged the footsteps of Christianity and the
/ Christian community from the first day
until now. The higher, more refined,
more costly the thing upon which this
/ evil instinct of metamorphosis seizes,
! the more terrible the viciousness that is
1 bred, the more disastrous it's conse-
! QuenceS.
| 1t is to be observed that as the church
! advances in knowledge and complexity
/ Of teaching and organization, and as
| civilized society becomes more diversi-
I fed, highly organized and subtle in it's
1 functions and relations, the temptation
and the opportunity for this turning of
! good into evil, this wrestling of truth for
the purposes of error, this transforma-
! ton of light into darkness, of grace into
4 license, become much stronger and more
ample. Precisely the things which, with
great cost, we have elaborately devised
and set up as the very citadelS of right
eousness, are, before we know it, deftly
entered and changed by the spirit of evil
into arsenals of depravity, until some
times the popular mind becomes hope
lessly confused in its moral judgments
and knows not what to condemn and
what to approve.
| 1t is notorious how, in politics, for eX-
ample, exactly the devices which were
! originally contrived to protect the peo-
pie in the expression of their will, and
to preserve their interests, have in many
cases been by designing men metamor-
phosed into most effective agencies for
the promotion of their own greedy
schemes, for the defiance of law, and the
defeat of the real intents of the people.
! To such an extent are base purposes
| concealed under the assumption of ap-
! parently pure motives, and under the
! forms of pure government, with the
| latent object of debasng that govern
]
dence in civic legislation and admins
tration is seriously weakened. There are
such evidences of secret trading and
underhand management to promote per-
sonal advantages, there is such subtle
j handling of the voter as amounts to
/ bribery without bearing it's name, that
1 on every hand it is apparent that the
grace of liberty is being turned into
4 bondage
Take business. I always hesitate to
speak with any degree of positiveness
here, for I have not the requisite infor
nation and experience. But is it not
true, that while the facilities for the adj
vantageous transaction of vast business
| operations have enormously increased in
our time in every direction, those facili-
ties have also become the instruments.
! in many cases, of injustice, of immoral
practices, of widely extended and re-
fined expressions of opportunity for the
conduct, on the part of apparently re-
spectacle not to say Christian men, of
| overreaching and extortion, of bribery
and corrupt dealing, under forms of
| usage, if not of legality? In this way
| there is often seen a painful obscura-
| ton of the elementary principles of
morality and a soaring over of the popu-
lar conscience which is ominous.
| One of the saddest and most terrible
examples of the workings of this evil
principle by which the grace of God is
| turned into baseness, an example which
/ is especially prominent just now, is the
abuse of the printing press Since the
dawn of the printers art invention has
gone on, improving it's machinery, until
now printing with every form of beau
| tiful, fantastic or gruesome Illustrations,
and bearing every sort of message from
| the oracle of God to the Yilest concoc-
| tions of Satan, can be made, in broad
stream, at almost railroad speed, to pour
from cylinder presses, and the printed
page has become so common as to be
trodden in the mire of the street, much
of it being dirtier and more worthless
/ than that same mire.
| 1t was thought at one time that the
printing press would become 4 supreme
agency of the kingdom of God. But it
was long ago seen that printing was far
from being an unmixed blessing. And
now the doubt is expressed in some
I quarters whether it may not be an
agency of greater evil than good. Ger
tainly it is one of those instrumental
/ ties in which this terrible principle of
/ perversion has found most baleful ex-
| ercise. Mankind cannot free itself from
a certain strange reverence for the
! printed page. 1t takes considerable eX-
4 perience and balance of Judgment to re-
/ alize that what the newspaper says is
perhaps more often untrue than true.
1 mercenary, reckless, vulgar and vicious
i press daily exerts upon the mass of the
4 people is enormous. 1t feeds the lowest
/ appetites and passions by falSing togeth-
| er and spreading out in disgusting and
exaggerated detail all the worst happen
| ings and aspects of society. 1t puts the
meanest construction upon every event
| 1t insinuates that bad motives control
good men and good institutions. 1t stim-
ulates crime by brutal pictures and more
! brutal descriptions. 1t promotes disobe-
dience to and contempt for law by taxi
ing the part of the lawbreaker.
At a time such as we are now passing
| through when our relations with a for
eign nation are of the most critical de-
scription, when the gravest interests OF
capital, of national aonor, of justice, OF
| liberty, of human life, may be put in
jeopardy by rash move on the part of
the public administration, and when the
sober part of the nation is trying to ex-
hibit patience and sanity there are
| haWked upon our streets and sold daily
multitudes of newspapers that are per-
fectly shameless in their lying, their dis
regard of every consideration Of fair
ness, their use of every device to fan
the spirit of strife. With uheir staring
! headlines and exciting pictures they
play upon the naturally patriotic feel
1ngs of the people, and seek to turn it
into blind, unreasoning rage.
The sacred liberty of speech and of
printing-the long and costly achieve
ment Of thousands Of the purest and
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