The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1909-07-29
OD0R Of ROSE is
PETROLEUM
BISHOP ASSAILS CRUEL
PHILOSOPHY OF YOUNG
ROCKEFELLER.
LASHES CHRISTIANS
"cHURCH DRAWS SKIRTS ASIDE
LEST 1T BE DEFlLED
BY SINNERS"

New York, July 27-"The philoso-
ply that the sacrifice of the inefi-
cient in nature for the perfecting of
a type is justifiable has been applied
with unmitigated consistency to our
economic and industrial development.
A young scion of greed and wealth,
possessed of more dollars than ideas,
not long ago used. this very figure of
the culture of the American Beauty
rose to justify the policy of CONNER
cial assassination which had won him
his millions. 1t was done, too, not
in a commercial office before a board
of directors, but in a Christian
church before a Bible class. l o
der if the Young man had ever read
the gospels which he has supposed
to be teaching? They say that "a
rose by any other name will smell
as sweet To my mind this particu-
lar rose has the odor of crude petro-
leum. But the young man voiced the
accepted philosophy of the CONNER
cial world"
This verbal arrow was aimed at
the head of young John d, Rookie
feller from the pulpit of one of the
most fashionable and wealthy church
es in New York by the Right Rev.
Charles d. Williams, Episcopal bishop
of Michigan, who occupied the pulpit
of st. Bartholomew's Forty-fourth and
Madison venue.
Audience Sits S%pellbound.
The late Cornelius Vanderbilt was
the founder of st. Bartholomew's.
The Vanderbilts are it's most con
%spicuous communicates. None of
them was present, however, when the
eloquent Bishop of Michigan pro-
nounced benedictions against many
of the accepted economic, social al
religious practices of the day. The
congregation was a large one. 1t sat
as if s]pellbound by the preachers
~eloquence or dazed by the holiness
of his attacks.
Bishop Williams did not confine
his assaults to the commercial phil
osophy of the age, but attacked the
church also for it's failure to live up
in a practical way to the teachings
of Christ.
The Bishop had been discussing
the philosophy of Nietsche when he
drove his point home with startling
emphasis by his impersonal reference
to John D.. Rockefeller Jr., whose
Bible class in the Fifth Avenue Bap-
fist church, not far from st. Barthol-
omew's has added to his fame as the
heir and CONSERVATION of the largest
fortune in the world.
Bishop Williams structures on the
shortcomings of the church were
quite as severe as his arraignment
of young Rockefeller. He took the
bold ground that the tendency of the
church now is to monopolize religion,
just as was the case among the Phar-
isees whom Christ excoriated.
Spiritual Luxuries."
Il sometimes fear the church has
lapsed very largely into the position
of the ancient synagogue" declared
the Bishop. She is contented mere
ly with ministering spiritual Injuries
to a caste of the respectable, the con
ventionally good and formally re-
ligious. She gives aims now and
then to hire others to do the work
of saving the human waste for her.
Perhaps she occasionally makes a
sporadic and spasmodic attempt to
conduct a rescue mission.
in the slums of our Eastern cit
les she is. thank God, maintaining
great parish houses which are doing,
the work of Christ in some degree,
practically as social settlements. But
for the most part she holds herself
daintily aloof from the whole prob
lem; she draws her skirts aside lest
they be defiled by the touch of the
publicans and sinners.
she builds magnificent houses of
worship for religious clubs called par
fChnC infn "hfah tho Ar1@, H. ----i
and the outcasts rarely venture. They
feel out of place there. They know
instinctively that they are not want
She maintains beautiful services
for the delectation of her patrons.
She breaches smooth and pleasant
sermons for their e~dification, and
gives direction as to the spiritual cul-
ture Of their individual souls.
"True of Church Elsewhere"
But she confines her ministrations
for the most part to this one moral
casto-the socially respectable, the
conventionally religious. l am not
talking of the church in New York
in particularly. The indictment l
make is true of the church in my own
city of Detroit and in every other city
of the land.
1T is a useful service, doubtless,
to keep the core of society sound and
wholesome. But are we satisfied
with only this? Are we sure, after
all, hat it is Christ's work? If Christ
came to us today might He not have
to go out of our churches as He did
out of the synagogues of old-leave
them to their ministrations to their
clientele and betake Himself
to the slums, the streets and the al
that He might seek and save
which was lost?"