Year: 1871




We mean by this revolution in the broad sense


OF progress and Improvement, and not in the


narrow sense of local disturbances or bloody


outbreaks and by conservatism not merely the
effort to preserve order, but the resistance to


progress or innovation of any kind, the sup
preston of the aspirations Of the laboring


masses and maintaining the status quo Of old


and existing political and social institutions.


On the side Of progress or revolution are
the working classes and the disfranchised Of
all countries, with great number of the
advanced thinkers of the age. These


are largely represented at present
by the International the workingmen's
unions and other similar combinations, which


have loomed up lately as dreaded power to
those who oppose them. On the side of con-
servatism are the monarchs aristocracies,
most of the great capitalists, shoddy paroe-
mas, the fashionable butterflies of great cities,
the Church hierarchy and nearly all the
preachers of the different religious sects mill
| tary chiefs and the old fossil statesmen and
| politicians who live in the past. These are the
hosts arrayed in desperate conflict to deter
mine the political and social future of man
| kind.


| One of the parties, at least, in this conflict,
has mistaken its mission-one which has de-
parted from the fundamental principle of its
faith, and upon which rests the heaviest
responsibility mean the Church. Not only
the Roman Catholic Church, but all the sects
| or divisions of the so-caled Church of Christ
None of these sects are in sympathy with
| the laboring masses or with the lib
eral movements of the age. Their con-
| duct toward the mass of the working
people is very much like that Of the Jewish
hierarchy, the very religious Pharisees and
the rulers in Judea to those poor workingmen-
! to Jesus, the carpenters son, and the fisher
men-who founded the Christian religion
They have made religion SO genteel and fash
ionable-so much thing of state, form and
luxury-that the poor cannot enter, or, at
| best, cen only enter at the back door. The
gorgeous priests, the richly paid and luxu-
riousy fed preachers, and their dainty con-
gregations, clothed in silk, seated on velvet
cushions and locked in their pews from vulgar


contact, forget that to the poor the Gospel
was preached-forget that the men who first
preached the Gospel were poor men, who lived,
and barely lived, by the daily labor Of their
hands. Like the pious Pharisees Of old, they
preach submission and humility to the poor
while they revel in luxury and bestow their
attentions on those who live luxuriously.
Entering any of the churches in these times
yes, any of our American or New York
churches-and looking at the congregations,
one might conclude that religion was made
only for the rich, aud that the poor have no
lot or portion in it,


How, then, can we expect the preachers to
sympathize with the masses in their efforts to
rise In the social scale-to acquire political
rights, or to improve their condition? They
talk enough about equality in heaven, about
the reward for suffering hereafter, and the ne
cessity of patience and submission to the
starving or to those who can barely exist by
the most exhausting toll but that is the extent
of their charity. They give this cheap advice
but will not attempt to raise one of the bur-
dens of the people even with their fingers
Yet they are ever ready to denounce the suf-
fering poor who, chatting sorely under aflc-
tion or disabilities organize to demand relief.
In any great struggle for liberty or reform the
churches are almost always against the
people and with their oppressors. We
do not mean here the Roman Catholic
Church alone-which claims to be the
only true Church, though that is the most pow
erful and has most adherents In the civilized
world-but the Episcopal Church, the Method
ist, the Presbyterian, Independent and others
as well. Some, it is true, are more liberal and
have more equalizing or democratic ten
dency than others, but all court the wealthy |
and neglect the poor. There may be more |
excuse for the Catholic Church than for the |
rest, because the head of that claims to be a |
monarch and to rule by divine right, because
its hierarchy is an aristocracy, and because it |
is based on the principle of absolute obedi-
ence. There is none for the Protestant
Churches, which profess to be liberal and pro-
gressive, and to follow more closely the lowly
Jesus and His poor disciples.


The consequence of this standing aoof from
the working masses, of want of sympathy
"i'" '"SnA 4" 'hoh hoVemoutS W rise III
the social and political scale, and of becom-
ing the allies of oppressors, is to drive the
people into infidelity, to desperation and
bloody revolutions and to endanger
the established rights of property. This was
seen in the conduct Of the late Paris Commune.
The people have not learned to distinguish
between what Is real Christianity and that
which ~ proiessed by the clergy, who help to
oppress them and keep them in ignorance
and they say we will have no such God and
no such Saviour as our oppressors or their
allies call upon. Much as the character and
objects Of the Paris Commune, the Interna-
tonal and the workngmen's unions have
been misrepresented, there is no denying the
fact that a great many Of the memhers reject