The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-06-11
STRAwS.

A northern congregational preacher,
a man of scholarship, has fired off a
gun thai is heard all around the land.
He opposes marriage vows and thinks
after a trial that man and woman
should separate if they did not like the
arrangement. He is not good enough
to even be a Mormon as they do hold
on to their many wives. He is in New
Jersey. 1t is stated hat this Professor
job D. Heron left the wife he married
in early youth and she obtained a di-
vorce from him on the ground Of cruel
desertion. He left her to look out for
herself, although she had four children.
The woman he o. as a wife last week
approves of his views in regard to mar
riage and all other matter. This bad
fellow is what is called "a social re-
former" He deserves the ball and
chain in a work-gang.
We nave long had a poor opinion of
s-ensationalism in the pulpit. 1t is graf
flying to see that it is being raked in
many states and by people in many
churches. Bishop Leonard, of the
Episcopal diocese in Ohio, recently de-
nounced this excrescence very severely
in his annual charge to his clergy. We
copy a paragraph that shows western
ers are like southerners of sense. This
Bishop says:
81 Inn constrained to think that the
plain men and women of today are like
their progenitors and ancestors; that
they want Christ for the feesing of
their souls. Our people tell me that
they do not desire politics, civic ques-
tons, social themes, ethical theories
tlemen who know but little of what
they are talking. EarneSt
men inform me that they want religion
and not rubbish on Sundays. They
want the doctrine of the soul, the help
full instruction of the perfect man,
Jesus Christ, for their spiritual uplift-
ing"
When we see o easy people are
b~amboozzled and how ready are many
persons to run after new doctrines,
strange and startling views, and absur-
ed promises, we are carried back to
Pagan Athens in st Paurs day, when
the great Apostle found the able Gull
tured Greeks spending their time
sin telling or hearing some new thing"
With the preaching of the Gospel for
more than eighteen hundred years has
the human race changed? There are
and have been through these centuries
truly pious, holy, ~consecrated, faithful
Christians but the world now is quite
like it has been. The ablest of Metho
dist editors. Rev. DR.. J.. w. Buckley,
says in his great weekly, the New York
Christian Advocate:
Fanatics of the worst type can sue
coed as we'll today as they did in the
dark ages. The elements of human
nature on which fanaticism feeds, es-
cially religious and medical fanaticism,
are those upon which true religion
rests. They are, indeed, the very ele-
mentS which make lovers, poets, ora
tors, seerS, n idealistS of every kind.
Personality under all forms of religion,
true and false, has ruled far more pow
erfully than the ideas p~ropagated by
the acknowledged head of the move
ment. Such men operate by means of
the. same elements of power which stir
up strikers to go contrary to common
sense. Unless they violate law, fana-
tics may be allowed to remain uncheck-
ed, enthroned, and dominant among
tnelr followers When, as
did the Mormcns, they propose to in
wade n destroy the
foundation Of society, and substitute
the harem for the family, they must be
pursued by law as it exists, or by spe-
cial laws made to limit sphere of the
baleful fires which they light up in the
human intellect, and which they try to
substitute for the steady light Of a re-
ligion which conserves order, domestici-
ty, social conference, and Individual
sanity"
That is good reading for this entire
country, Madness, fanaticism, low
appeals, sordid standard, degrading in
f1uences are at work to undermine So
ciety. to destroy free institutions, to
turn religion into a farce. and to sub
stitute the Gospel of Love and Mercy
for the Gospel Of Wealth.