The Republican journal., 1900-10-18
stood in such a list? They would not
have been in it at all. 1t is impossible

W tIlluA VI ISAIAH OF Hosea surviving 10
popularity. 1t is impossible to think Of
Elijah and jeremiah making 'parisl
calls in fashionable circles and slipping
afternoon tea with the elite. 1t is also
impossible to think of them as ''uuiet
parish priests" living in narrow seclu
sion while the great human world out
side goes on in the throes of selfshness.
They were statesmen as well as preach
erS; patriots as we'll as orators; reform
erS as well as teachers; social agitators
as well as spiritual advisers
Take Amos as a typical example,
poor herdsman living among a people
that had been oppressed for genera
lions. The wealth of his nation was
concentrated in the hands of few
who lived in extravagant luxury, lying
upon beds of ivory drinking wine
from golden vessels" eating the ''fat-
lings from the tlocks," while those who
attended the t1Ocks SubSiSted on roots
and dried sycamore fruit. So cheap
was industrial labor that 'the righteous
were sold for piece Of silver and the
poor for pair of shoes" So monstrous
was the avarice of the plutocracy that
they are described as painting after
the dust that gathers on the hatless
heads of the poor" So greedy in ex-
tortion were they that they exacted
even the bed-clothing of the poor debt
or as security. So low was mercantile
honor that the merchants bought by
the ''sheker' and sold by the "ephah;"
i.e., they ''deaconed'' their weights and
measures to subserve the ends of I'M
holy gain. In the midst of such condi-
tons came this stern preacher. He ap-
pealed to the public conscience: ''Woe
| n in
He warned his nation of the inevitable
ruin certain to follow such conditions.
He denounced in bold language political
injustice, social caste, and religious
shams. Il hate your feast days; l de-
spise your burnt offerings"
Is there not need of preachers of
such type in this age? The questions
that face the American people to-day
are practically the same as those that
| faced the Hebrew people under the
reign of the plutocratic kings. Had the
American preacher always been as true
to the public welfare as those Hebrew
| preachers were, modern Christianity
would have never locked hands with
| the oppressors of men, and the ship of
State would not have drifted into the
dangerous waters in which it drifts to-
day. Would it not be well for young
men entering the Christian ministry to
drink deep of the spirit of these proph-
cts, and from them learn how better to
deal with the issues of the day? John
Quincy Adams once told class of
young lawyers to put the Virginia de
| bates under their pillows at night. 1t
would make them better lawyers, said
he. Would it not be well for young
preachers to place under their pillows
the religious speeches of the prophets?
| The times call for new type of preach
or perhaps it is not reformation so
much as formation that is needed: not
the patching up of the 'old vine
| SKINS but the forming of ''new Wine
skins that will expand with the new
ideas of the age.
| The preacher should be a statesman:
at least. he should know enough about
the questions of the State to be able to
| make dignitied and unbiased appeal
for higher type of Christian citizen
ship. While the pulpit is not the place
for partlzan politics. yet it is the place
where the public conscience should be
aroused against political evils No
sane person would advocate a union of
Church and State in this country, but
| there should be a mingling of religion
and politics of the true kind This
would give to the pulpit a power it
does not WELD to-day. 1t would be no
experiment; it has been tested in his
tory. Professor Moses Colt Taylor. in
! his History of the American Revolu-
ton" says: st PROFESSIONALLY the most
/ vital of the survivals of the spoken elo-
| quence of the Revolutionary age is in
| the form of political discourses from
few chiefs of Revolutionary pulpits."
1t was a preacher, the Rev Jonathan
| Mayhem, whom Robert Treat Paine
called ''the father of civil liberty in
Massachusetts, y Another preacher,
the Rev. stephen johnson, is said to
! have been the first American to dis
cover the unconstitutionality of the
Stamp Act From the pulpit he arous-
ed sentiment against it that resulted
| i'll its repeal. The voices of Theodore
| Parker and Henry Ward Beecher rang
out from the pulpit against slavery in
tones of prophetic thunder. The cry,
ut is a political issuen' could not
| silence Them
The preacher should be an agitator.
His cry should be Woe unto you that
are at ease in Zion.' This may not al
ways be pleasant duty. As Carlyle
says: "Doubtless it were finer could we
go along always in the way of music: be
tanned and taught by our poets, as the
rude creatures were by their Orpheus of
old; or if peaceable priests, reforming
from day to day would always suffice us"
| But this is not sufficient. There must
| be bold men. hard men, strong men,
who refuse to cry peace when there is
no peace; men who would not spare even
| for peace's sake; men ready to remove
the Instructions that time leaves in the
path of progress: men not afraid to use
moral dynamite beneath the rocks of
prejudice and the dry roots of conserva-
tism. Itwould be pleasanter, of course,
| to prescribe oils and salves as palliatives
for social evils; but any quack apothe-
, cary could do this. The surgeons knife
must go to the roots of the cancer in the
! body polite, however much it hurts the
| hypocrites and demagogues who hang to
the body.
| tNever on customs oiled grooves
The world to a higher level moves,
! But CRATES and grinds in friction hard
On granite boulder and tlinty shard''
| The preacher should be an apostle of
industrial freedom, and the enemy of
oppression in whatever form it appears
That this is not always the case is too
| true A few wears ago cOmnanv of