Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-10-15
BY BISHOP
w. 4. GAMBLER

ty in order to save the community
from disgrace and Generalization;
and no good man should stand off
in Indifference because he is absorbed
in business, or because he fails to
find everything exactly to his liking
in every particular.
There is on old proVerb that the
best is often the enemy of the
good which means that impatient
idealists often sacrifice the good and
serve the bad because they can not
have all their ideals fully realized.
This explains in a great measure
by good people so often divide in
pposing notorious and scandalous
nen in city elections.
Sometimes good people are be-
guiled through their religious senti-
ments even. Some years ago | was
spending some time with a very good
man in city on the Ohio river at
a time when a municipal campaign
was pending there. To my great
surprise / found him supporting
man who had been notorious for his
licentious living, and / ventured to
express in courteous terms my sur
prise. He said. The poor fellow is
repentant for all his former sins
giving him a chance again" l said
I, too. believed in forgiving peni-
tent people, but that giving a man
an office was something more than
pardon and quite a different thing
from forgiveness and that / doubted
the penitence of a man who made
the profession of repentance a plank
I'M his platform on which to get
into political place. But my friend
persisted in supporting the bad man
who was trying to float into power
by the lachrimality of a spurious
repentance A little while after
wards my misguided friends Reni-
tent politician was overwhelmed
with disgrace. and then he wondered
that he had been so easily deceived
by professions of penitence. Ny
friends course was a blunder into
which he was. betrayed by a good
impulse coupled with a false and
sentimental notion of the christian
doctrine of forgiveness. In his. un-
suspecting and child-like confidence
he forgot that old couplet which
says: .
THE devil was sick, and the devil
a saint would be,
a saint was he.'
In dealing with personal offenses
we cannot'be too forbearing towards
dur fellow men; but public office
may not safely be conferred as a
mark of our forgiveness for past
sins, even where there is no room to
question the sincerity of the peni-
tence protested. Public office is a
public trust which is not to be be-
owed on personal grounds at all,
but solely with reference to the pub
lie good; and the elevation to high
and honorable position of a man
who has lived scandalously can
never be for the public good.
rhe indispensable quality of a
public servant is that he shall not
be man wanting in the fundament-
al principles of morality. Other
qualities he may lack and the want
of them will not be fatal to him;
but no other qualifications whatso-
ever can atone for the want of
moral character in a public official.
A city or a commonwealth can not
honour the vicious without paying a
premium on vice and putting virtue
at a discount, and that no communi-
ty can afford. We can not safely
every household within it's limits
under the government of a man VINO
dishonours his own home and
Dreakc down the moral defense of
society.