The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-04-18
|AST0R FATE l HAS LESSON
Rev. C. C. Richmond Again As sails Multi-Millionaire, Even
 After Death at Sea
SAYS ACT OF PROVIDENCE
Noted Philadelphia Divine Scathingly Arraigns Colonel and Men of
 His Type.

Noted Philadelphia Divine Scathingly
 Arraigns Colonel and Men of
 His Type.
 New Haven, April 18-That it was the hand of Providence that sent John Jacob Astor to his death, is the decla- mond, rector of St. John's Episcopal church, of Philadelphia, whose ser- mon last summer, when the betrothal of Col. AstOr and Miss Madeline Force was anonunced, caused a stir through out the country. Rev. MT. Richmond arrived in New Haven two days ago to attend the third annual conference of Alumni and Ministers of Conencti- cut, at the Yale Divinity school.
 Rev. MT. Richmond is a graduate of Yale university and has several friends in this city.
 Our divorce laws are the laughing stock of the whole civilized world and it was for this reason that I preached that sermon,' said Rev. Mr. Rich mond, yesterday. "It provoked in- creased interest in the making of more rational marriage laws.
 ''The church and politics have been interWOvCn. It was against the mOnied life and the ecclesiastical gangs in the churches that I directed my sermons. It is time the church should say some thing about the sensualists of the Astor type. The laws of church and state have been utterly disregarded It is like pantomine.
 ''The death of Col John Jacob Astor at sea, in the going down of the Ei- tanic, breaches a great gospel of God s power to us all. There are forces in life which demand recognition and obedience. Mr. Astor and his crowd of New York and Newport associates have for years paid not the slightest attention to the laws of church or state which have seemed to contra vene their personal pleasures or sen- sual delights
 But you can't defy God all the time. The day of reckoning comes, and comes not in our own way. I am filed with horror at this awful send ing of a man whose recent marriage was stench and hideous disgust to our best American citizenship. In an other world he will pay penance. Without his millions and bereft of his great estate, which yielded him his means for a continuous carousal he will begin a new life. Through toll and struggle he will have a chance to redeem his soul.
 There is a lot more like Astor in New York and in Newport, but the
  edy is to set the moral standards so high that these men will not dare to defy the laws of the country, as these sensualists have done.
 "Astor now goes to his great judg- ment and before God who is not merciful to men who have ruined his children. A great calamity of this kind does not change the moral laws of the universe. After these awful happenings we place a higher valua- tion on human life. This calamity ought to be a lesson to men like As tor. Our sympathy for the dead causes a stiffer moral judgment of the men of high positions and the course they should pursue.
 yesterday, while dining with an editor In this city, I put this question to him:
 Take this lot Of prominent men whose lives were lost and who sud- denly came to an awful end. Will the nation miss them much from stand ard of the moralist? Will they leave untitled places in the halls of moral them?
 "I have great sympathy for the steerage passengers. That is where the great sorrow of the awful acci- dent is brought out.
 '.Isidor Straus will be missed. He was one of the indispensables as was H. B. Harris. but Astor will leave no place thrilled
 "J. Pierpont Morgan was not on the ship and I hope that his escape, after having been galivanting about Europe, will teach him a lesson and make him stay close to his home for while. I wonder if he notices the tonlbs of the martyrs?
 "I praise God that Theodore Roose- ,o:% hot c1 Tn !, !, "a gone down in that crowd, one of the pillars of the universe would have been Shakeni
 "After my sermon had been deliv- cred last summer or the, proposed Astor marriage, Canon Chase came to me and said that it had stirred up the whole church to the magnitude though I received thousands of letters congratulating me on the stand [ had taken
 Bishop Alexander Mckay Smith came out openly against me. He died recently and there are some that say that my sermon against the social snobs had some significance in his aire bishops. He was social snob' He was one of the type that never should have been a bishop"
 ''Tne disaster of this week is sig nificant," says Rev. MT. Richmond Tt happened at time when the monied sinners are travelling about with their illicit fortunes gained out of the American Iaborer. This is ex- actly the case with AStor.
 "I will continue to preach against this evil,' concluded the clergyman. There are commissions in the church just as there are in politics. Men are getting tired of it. Sermons will have to be preached to have great sins stabbed at and great sinners exposed. The exposing of great sinners and sins is preaching the gospel the way it should be preached
 Rev. MT Richmond went on to tell the battle he has been conducting in his city for clean citizenship; how, after his sermons against the evils of the city had been delivered, he had been spied upon by attaches of the city gang; how his character had been threatened and how he had been watched for weeks.
 POINTS OF INTEREST.