Newman, John P.
Christianity Triumphant

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CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
By JT. P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D.
The trinmphs of Christianity— what a theme for an able and eloquent writer
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CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.

ITS DEFENSIVE AND AGGEESSIVE
VICTORIES.

BY
JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D.

1, AS.AS.,

NEW YORK:
FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers,
10 and 12 Dey Street,
1884,

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS,
In the Omce of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Achievements of Christianity,  5
CHAPTER II.
Infidelity an Inglorious Failure, . . . . 17
CHAPTER HI.
The Criminality of Infidelity,  32
CHAPTER IV.
Great Christians vs. Great Infidels, .... 43
CHAPTER V.
The Elevation of Woman,  60
CHAPTER VI.
Home Life of the Republic  73
CHAPTER VII.
Impure Literature,  88
CHAPTER VIII.
Gamblers and Gambling,  100
CHAPTER IX.
Magnanimity of Self-Denial,  110
CHAPTER X.
Commercial Integrity,  124

CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.

CHAPTER I.
ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. •
Never before in the history of the Church have the
assaults upon Christianity been more learned, more per
sistent, more malignant, than in the last decade. And
these assaults were without apology. They had not the
poor apology of the French atheists, whose atheism was
a reaction from the corruption and tyranny of Roman
ism. They were without the excuse of the English
deists, whose deism was the outcome of the immoralities
of the Church and the State in the reign of Charles II.
Ten years ago, when Christianity was filling Christian
lands with 'her divine beneficence ; when the clergy
were pious, learned, and zealous ; when the laity were
devout, liberal, and abundant in their charities — then,
without a reasonable provocation, but from sheer hatred
of the truth and malignity against Christ and His
Church, the infidels of Europe and America combined
to overthrow. the most intelligent and benevolent relig
ion known to mankind. But these assaults have been
as impotent and unsuccessful as would be an attempt to
dam Niagara with a straw, or to check the march of a
cyclone with a thread of gossamer. Out of the smoke

0 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
and fire of the terrible battle the Church has emerged in
triumph, and to-day she appears fairer, stronger, and
more determined than ever in the past.
Let us recount her glorious victories.
She has achieved the triumph of a brilliant and suc
cessful defence. Had the assault upon Fort Sumter
continued to the present time, and had the defence been
equal to the attack, could not the Government of the
United States, in the face of Europe and of all the
world, rightfully claim a substantial victory ? It has
been even so with the Church of Jesus Christ. Her
Fort Sumter remains untaken, and the flag of the Cross
floats victoriously from her parapets. This bold and
brazen attack upon Christianity has caused no apparent
disaffection in the Church, and no perceptible secession
from her ranks. Churches have not been sold, nor
closed, nor abandoned ; but, instead, houses of worship
have been erected, at the rate of nine per day, during all
these terrible years ; and little less than 28,000 temples
of piety have been consecrated to Christian worship in
the United States during the last decade. This is more
than a defence ; it is a glorious advance.
The attendance on the preaching of the Gospel is
larger now than ever before. A recent canvass of the
churches in St. Louis on a bright Sabbath morning, and
a corresponding canvass of the beer-gardens, theatres,
and other places of amusement on that day, developed
this astounding fact : that while only 8000 persons were
found in all those places of amusement, not less than
92,000 attended the house of God. This extraordinary
and gratifying fact is certified to by one of the leading
journals of the Queen City of the West, whose editor
instituted the investigation. Twice during the past sea
son, when it was my fortune to preach at Saratoga, that

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 7
summer city of Fashion, on each occasion the place of
worship was filled to overflowing ; and other beloved
clergymen who officiated in that city were similarly
favored with crowded congregations. When at the
Katterskill, on the majestic mountains of the Hudson,
out of three hundred, guests at the hotel, two hundred
and fifty attended morning service. At Ocean Grove,
not less than ten thousand persons were present at divine
service at each meeting during the series of ten days.
The demand for. new churches was never greater than at
the present time. Of this fact our own Metropolitan
City furnishes ample proof. The American people
everywhere are more zealous and liberal than ever in
rearing altars to the worship of the true and living God,
and all this notwithstanding the violent assaults by the
infidel foe.
The people of this country continue to express their
faith in the lessons of wisdom, the examples of purity,
and the deeds of charity, embraced in Christianity, by
sending their children to the Sabbath-school. The
childhood of the Republic is taught to receive the Bible
as the Word of God. Nine millions of children, under
the instruction of over a million of officers and teachers,
compose the strength of the Sunday-school in America.
Parents thus express an abiding confidence in the relig
ion of our Lord, and demand for their offspring a relig
ious education. They have been heedless of the bitter
tirade of objection, of misrepresentation, and of abuse
on the part of the foes of our holy religion. Surely^the
parentage of our country is on the side of Christ ; and,
whether time or false, the Christian religion is the foun
dation of their faith and practice.
Never before were Christian ministers in greater de
mand, Tnere is no surplus. The common complaint is

8 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
that ministers are scarce. The people are more than
willing to employ men to teach them the precepts of
Jesus. Eighty thousand Christian teachers are thus em
ployed by the American people ; and, if the average
salary were five hundred dollars each, the aggregate sum
of forty millions of dollars is strongly expressive of the
faith and willingness of those who employ them. While
it is true that some of them are inefficient, from lack of
natural endowments, or acquirements, or devotion, and
that not a few of them might be more successful in other
employments, yet the rank and file of the ministry are
godly, devoted, and learned men ; and all this notwith
standing the infidel cry that clergymen are hirelings and
the priests of superstition and error. But the church-
going people of this land are not thus convinced.
More religious journals are published and read than
ever before, and more religious books are now sold than
at any previous period. The publications of one relig
ious house, in the year 1881, aggregated in amount more
than a million of dollars. In the last thirteen years that
publishing establishment issued more than seven millions
of volumes, and received over half a million of dollars
for periodicals. The receipts of our religious publica
tion houses in ten years — 1870-80 — were nearly forty-
three millions of dollars. One Sunday-school paper —
the Teacher's Journal — has an annual subscription of
123,000 copies, and the Sunday -School Advocate can
boast of 200,000 subscribers. The demand is for books
— for religious books. A people must be judged by its
literature, and by this judgment we are willing that the
present status of Christianity shall be adjudged. All the
power of science, of literature, of eloquence, of poetry,
and of philosophy, has been brought to bear against the
Book of books. ' The Bible has been the objective point

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 9
of assault. How to destroy the faith of the people in
that venerable volume — how to convince them that its
histories are unreliable, that its prophets were madmen,
that its poets were fools, that its apostles were supersti
tious propagandists, and that its believers were dupss —
has been the cherished purpose and plan of infidelity.
Has it succeeded ? What is the result ? Let us appeal
to facts and figures.
The annual report of the British and Foreign Bible
Society presents, in one view, the immensity of the cir
culation of the Scriptures going on m all parts of the
habitable globe. This one society has issued, during
the past year, of Bibles, Testaments, and portions of
each, nearly 10,000 a day, a total of 2,938,000 ; and
from its organization, 93,053,000. Add to this the
Hibernian Society's issues, 65,675 ; the issues of the
National Society of Scotland, 468,775 ; and those of the
American Bible Society, 1,524,773 ; and we have a total
issue for the past year, by four great societies, of 4,989,-
224 copies. To this must be added the issues of many
smaller societies, of private enterprise, and the vast mul
titude of the Revised New Testaments, if we would com
pass the work of publishing the Scriptures as recorded
in 1881 and 1882. This is simply prodigious, falling not
much short of six and a half or seven million copies.
But we do not get the full significance of this work till
we follow the colporteurs of a great society like this into
every nook and corner of the habitable globe — about
three hundred scattered through Europe, and two hun
dred in the regions beyond. And to this still must be
added similar agencies of many other societies. For
example : in India the Vernacular Education Society
has 158— eighteen more than the British and Foreign
Bible Society. And yet again the wonder grows when

10 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
we find that the Scriptures are published in two hundred
and fifty languages or dialects, in three hundred and
forty-five versions, more than four fifths of which have
been prepared since the society was organized in 1804.
So, the assertion we sometimes hear, that the Bible is
losing its hold upon the people, is the emanation of shal
low minds totally ignorant of the real facts in the case.
Do yon say that these copies of the Bible were given
away ? It appears by the report of the American Bible
Society that during the past year its receipts from the
sale of Bibles and Testaments amounted to more than
half a million of dollars. The people still buy the
Bible !
We may judge of the faith and sincerity of any age
by the amount of money annually given to the support
of divine worship. Where people give intelligently and
deliberately, it is fair to conclude that their heart is in
the cause. Take a few facts : The Presbyterian Church,
North and South, with 800,000 communicants, gave, in
the year 1882, ten and a half millions of dollars. One
branch of the Methodist Church — that known as the
Methodist Episcopal — gave, in 1882, as its voluntary
offerings for the support of religion, over seventeen mill
ions of dollars. And this is the amount annually given.
The rebgious denominations in the United States gave,
for home and foreign missions, in the last ten years,
fifty-six millions of dollars ; and in the last twenty
years, for missions — home and foreign — and for religious
books, one hundred and sixty-three millions of dollars.
This is significant ; it is expressive of an abiding faith ;
it illustrates the strength of the religious convictions of
the people of this great country. And Christian Eng
land can boast a bke honorable record. Sixty-three
English benevolent societies received, last year, twelve-

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 11
millions of dollars, and disbursed the same for the pro
mulgation of the faith.
Let us turn our attention for a moment to the acces
sions to the churches during these last ten years of mag
nificent defence. From the proud boasts of infidels one
would suppose that accessions had ceased. Look at some
of these boasts :
" A general collapse of religious faith is at hand."
" The break between modern thought and intelligent
faith has come."
" A moral interregnum is at hand."
" Spirituality is declining in the churches."
" Christianity is outgrown by the population."
Are these statements confirmed by facts ? More than
four millions of persons have been received into the
Church of Christ in the last decade. And look for a
moment at the Christian population of the world. In
1876 that population was three hundred and ninety-four
millions. Four years thereafter it was four hundred and
ten millions — an increase of sixteen millions. In the
last eighty years it increased more than in the eighteen
centuries previous to the year 1800. The increase was
two hundred and ten millions. Since the Great Awak
ening, under Wesley and Whitefield and Edwards, it has
gained two hundred and thirty millions ; and that in a
little over a century and a half. In 1830 the popula
tions under Christian governments were three hundred
and eighty millions ; now they are more than seven hun
dred millions — an increase of over three hundred mill
ions in fifty years. And this glorious showing is in the
face of the most bitter and persistent opposition ever
known, while the Church was compelled to act on the
defensive. Can infidelity, with all its boastings, make a corre-

12 ' CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
sponding showing ? How many temples has it reared %
Has it dedicated one ? In all this great metropolis, of a
million and a half of intelligent people, can it boast of a
solitary regular convocation ? It once had a shrine here,
but that has disappeared from the face of the commu
nity. It once had a temple in Boston, but it fell under
the sheriff's hammer. How many journals does it main
tain ? Can it point to one influential paper ? And what
of its literature ? Has it publishing houses of which it
might be proud ? The books which it has printed, are
they not a drug in the market ? And what of its annual
¦ gatherings ? Once a year the unbelievers assemble to
give vent to their long pent-up grief that the world is
still following Christ. This year they assembled at
Rochester. Let us look into that convention. What a
gathering ! There was the dreamer of the impossible ;
the enthusiast, with more vim than means ; the insane —
just a little off, you know ; the long-haired man and the
short-haired woman — just to spite St. Paul ; there was
the woman who wants to be a man and the man who
wants to be a woman, and whose elegant language is,
" Why didn't chance make us tother than we are ?"
there was that craven, cadaverous curiosity-monger,
whose very face is an interrogation point, and whose
undying question is, " What's up ?" there was the man
with two establishments in a decent community, and
who swears at the Saviour because He said that " In the
beginning it was not so ;" there were the free-lovers,
who want the freedom of the brutes without their
orderly instincts ; there were the lackadaisical sentimen
talists, whose only immortality is in a grandson, and
whose only divinity is humanity ; and there was the
would-be scientist, who proudly boasted that through

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 13
his noble veins flows the best blood of the orang-outang
race. Such was the convention. Some one has com
pared it to Noah's Ark. No, Noah would not have ad
mitted such a menagerie to his ark.
Would you have another view of the brilliant and
successful defence made by the Church during the last
decade ? Let us review twelve significant facts.
1. The cry of the infidels has.been, " Moses must go. "
Enthroned upon the summit of Sinai, amid supernatural
displays of power and glory, he has swayed his sceptre
of history and of law over the greatest and fairest nations
of the globe. This was too much for infidel hate and
pride. Moses must come down from his pre-eminence,
and sit in the dust at their feet. They denied the cor
rectness of his story of Creation, of his divisions of time,
of God's successive, creative acts, and of the isolated
creation of man. But such has been the vigorous de
fence of Moses on the part of the Church that infidelity
has , furnished no satisfactory substitute for the Mosaic
account of Creation. The astronomy of Galileo has
been substituted and accepted for that of, the old Ptole
maic notion of the heavens. Newton's theory of light
has given place to that taught by Fresnel and Clark.
Substitutes are not new things in the world of science.
That which commends itself to the higher reason and to
the truer thought of the scientific world, notwithstanding
the venerableness of existing theories, is accepted as the-
law of authoritative analyses. But not so in this case.
We are as far, if not farther, from accepting the un
believer's scientific interpretation of Creation in opposi
tion to Moses, as ever in the past.
2. And these learned unbelievers differ among them
selves, Evolutionists demand a period of time so vast

14 CHRISTIANITY. TRIUMPHANT.
as not to be . warranted by the latest deductions of
geology. Science is pitted against science, and facts are
arrayed against facts.
3. As many eminent scientists stand by Moses as those
who are against him. There is contention in the coun
cils of the enemy ; there is confusion in their ranks.
The battle waxes hot, and the signs of the times are that
the Christian scientists will emerge victorious from the
fight. 4. No university of eminent repute in Europe or
America has changed its curriculum and excluded Moses.
When Harvard and Tale, and Oxford and Cambridge
change, then let the world change its opinion on this
point. They hold to Moses. If, here and there, a pro
fessor is in opposition, he is not strong enough to pro
duce a revolution.
5. The great scientific conventions, and the academies
of science, have not given their unanimous verdict
against Moses. If they do not cling to him, at least
they hesitate to speak against him.
6. More books, with weightier arguments, have been
published for Moses than against him.
7. Not a single theological seminary, or college, or
university, under the control of the Protestant, Greek,
or Catholic Church, has changed ; but they all still hold
to Moses.
8. The Church stands firm in all her pulpits, in all her
Sunday-schools, in all her literature, on the side of
Moses. 9. Ninety-nine per cent of her educated laymen con
tinue to accept the story of Creation as given by Moses
and the one hundredth is against him out of sheer
oddity. Were the ninety-nine to change their views he
would then change his, and swear by Moses.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 15
10. The enemy has been compelled to make conces
sions. Whatever was the origin of man's body, two
things have been conceded : that, after the production
of that body, there was something superadded thereunto
which we call the soul, and that all life comes from
antecedent life.
11. The Church comes forth from the fight with im
mense spoils. She is an immeasurable gainer. Geol
ogy, chemistry, and biology confirm Bible statements.
And, in the accepted fact that in the ape there is some
thing of the man ; that in the bird there is something, of
the ape ; that in the reptile there is something of the
bird ; that in the fish there is something of the reptile ;
and that in the lowest organic form there is something of
the next higher grade of organism, there is illustration
in proof of the unity of creation — one God made them
all. Where now are the men who said, " Moses must
go"? Let us thank them for the aid unwittingly ren
dered to our cause.
We have also won a victory on the glorious battle-field
of man's immortality. The unbeliever sought to cheat
mankind out of the hope of heaven ; but men continue
to believe in, and dream on of a blissful immortality.
In all this great city only one man of any note refused
Christian burial, and he "A poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more." ft
Men still wish a Christian minister to recite over their
dead bodies those immortal lines : "I am the resurrec
tion and the life. " Never were there so many spiritual
ists as now, whose supreme faith in a future and conscious
state of existence is a sublime fact. All the arguments

1(5 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
against immortality have been met, and not a few of
them turned against the foe. To illustrate : If mind is
a molecule, if a molecule is indivisible then mind is in
destructible. Let us thank them even for such facts.
12. Quickened to duty by those recent attacks and by
the necessities of the hour, the Church is now leading in
original discoveries. In the future the Church is to be
the scientific world, and Jesus of Nazareth will be
crowned the greatest of scientists. Such has been the
magnificent defence of the Church in the last decade.

CHAPTER II.
INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE.
Infidelity has failed to hold its own. Let us take a
definite period. Let us take the last hundred years.
This is fair. We can appeal to historic records. . What
is the expression of that century, as stated by friend and
foe ? As we have said, it is the proud boast of the infi
delity of to-day that " Christianity is outgrown by the
population," and that " Spirituality is declining in the
churches." Are these statements confirmed by facts?
No doubt some are a little off, some doubters have been
honest, some sceptics have been made. It would be sur
prising were it otherwise. But does this difference of
opinion amount to a revolution ? Has Christianity lost
any of its vital power ? Instead, has infidelity held its
own during- the last century ? Let us appeal to facts and
figures. What was the condition of Christian faith, of religious
devotion, and of public morals in this country a century
ago ? French atheism and English deism had flooded
the continents with the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau,
and Paine, and in thirteen years— from 1817 to 1830 —
six millions of volumes were sold or given away.
A reaction had taken place against the Church, which
had been allied with political oppression. Men had
failed to distinguish between Christianity, which is
divine, and the Church, which is human. On the con
tinent of Europe there was a universal shout for liberty.

18 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
That European shout found an echo in America, but it
was a response against a perverted church rather than
against the most benevolent religion known to mankind.
The founders of this Republic were not against Chris
tianity, but against a political church. I must here
enter my solemn protest against the violence done to
history and to those illustrious men when it is asserted
that all of them were unbelievers. Jefferson and Frank
lin are quoted as such, but the liistoric records prove the
assertion false. I herewith give a copy of an autograph
letter from Thomas Jefferson, the original of which I
have seen. It was addressed to a lad who had been
named after the immortal sage of Monticello :
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Grotjan.
" Your affectionate mother requests that I would address to you
as a namesake something which might have a favorable influence
on the course of life you have to run. Few words are necessary,
with go_od dispositions on your part. Adore God, reverence and
cherish jour parents, love your neighbor as yourself, and your
country more than life. Be just, be true, murmur not at the ways
of Providence ; and the life into which you have entered will be
the passage to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. Ami if to the
dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every
action of your life will come under my regard.
" Farewell.
"Monticello, Jan. 10, '24."
And here is a copy of an autograph letter from
Andrew Jackson on the same subject :
" Although requested by Mr. Grotjan, yet I can add nothing to
the admirable advice given to his son by that virtuous patriot and
enlightened statesman, Thomas Jefferson. The precious relic
which he sent to the young child contains the purest morality and
inculcates the noblest sentiments. I can only recommend a rigid
adherence to them. They will carry him through life safelv and

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 19
respectably ; and what is far better, they will carry him through
death triumphantly ; and we may humbly trust they will secure
to all who in principle and practice adopt them, that crown of
immortality described in the Holy Scriptures. ' ' Andrew Jackson.
"Philadelphia, June 9, 1833."
Nor is it true that Benjamin Franklin can be numbered
among the unbelievers. In the Constitutional Conven
tion of 1787, when differences of opinion were rife, it
was Franklin who introduced a motion for daily prayers,
and supported that motion by the following powerful
remarks :
" In the beginning of the contest with England, when we were
sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the
divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard; and they were
graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle
must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Provi
dence in our favor. To this kind Providence we owe this happy
opportunity in peace for the means of establishing our future
national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend,
or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance t I have lived,
sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs
I see of this truth : that God governs in the affairs of men. And,
if a sparrow cannot fall- to the ground without His notice, is it
probable that our empire can rise without His aid ? We have been
assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ' Except the Lord build
the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this ;
and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall suc
ceed in this political building no better than the builders of
Babel ; we shall.be divided by our little partial, local interests ;
our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall beconje a
reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And, what is
worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance,
despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave
it to chance, war, and conquest. I therefore beg leave to mov**,
that henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and
its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every

20 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
morning before we proceed to business ; and one or more of the
clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service."
Franklin is sometimes quoted as the patron of Paine's
infidelity, but the following letter, which appears in
Sparks' "Life and Works of Benjamin Franklin," vol.
x. p. 281, shows how false is the aspersion :
" Dear Sir : I. have read your manuscript with some attention.
By the argument it contains against a particular Providence,
though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the founda
tions of all religion. For, without the belief in a Providence that
takes cognizance of, guards and guides, and may favor particular
persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear His dis
pleasure or to pray for His protection. I will not enter into any
discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At
present I shall only give you my opinion, that though your rea
sonings are subtle, and may prevail with some readers, yet you
will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of man
kind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece
will be a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to
you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits
in his own face.
" But were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be
done by it ? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life
without the assistance afforded by religon, you having a clear per
ception of the advantages of virtue and the disadvantages of
vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to resist
common temptations. But think how great a portion of man
kind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of
inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need
of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support
their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes
habitual, which is the great point of its security.
"And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to
your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you
now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excel
lent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and there
by obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For amono-

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 21
us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth to be
raised into the company of men should prove his manhood by
beating his mother.
" I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the
tiger, "but to bum this piece before it is seen by any other person ;
whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by
the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of
regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what
would they be without it? I intend this letter itself as a proof of
my friendship, and thereby add no professions to it, but subscribe
myself, Yours, "B. Franklin."
Tet it is true that there were many powerful and con
spicuous infidels in the early days of the Republic ; and
Thomas Paine was the head and front of this offending.
Largely through his influence infidelity gained the mas
tery. Infidel clubs, called Illummati, were organized,
and were the centre of infidel opinions. Dr. Dorches
ter, in his splendid work on " The Problem of Religious
Progress," p. 182, quotes this description of one of
those infidel clubs :
" They claimed the right to indulge, in lasciviousness, and to
recreate themselves as their propensities and appetites should dic
tate. Those who composed this association," says the writer,
"were my neighbors; some of them were my schoolmates. I
knew them well, both before and after they became members. vI
marked their conduct, and saw and know their ends. Their num
ber was about twenty men and seven females. ... Of these,
some were shot ; some hung ; some drowned ; two destroyed
themselves by intemperance, one of whom was eaten by dogs,
and the other by hogs ;( one committed suicide ; one fell from
his horse and was killed ; and one was struck with an axe and
bled to death  Joshua Miller was a teacher of infi
delity, and was shot off a stolen horse by Colonel J. Woodhull.
N. Miller, his brother, was shot off a log while he was playing at
cards on first-day morning, by Zebed June, in a scouting party

22 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
for robbers. Benjamin Kelley was shot off his horse by a boy,
the son of the murdered, for the murder of one Clarke ; he lay
above ground until the crows picked bis bones. J. Smith com
mitted suicide by stabbing himself while he was imprisoned for
crime. W. Smith was shot by B. Thorpe and others for robbery.
S. T. betrayed his own confidential friend for five dollars ; his
friend was hung, and himself afterward was shot by D. Lancaster ;
said to be an accident. I heard the report of the gun and saw
the blood. J. A. was shot by Michael Coleman, for robbing
Abimel Young, in the very act. J. V. was shot by a company of
militia. J. D., in one of his drunken fits, lay out, and was
chilled to death. J. B. was hanged for stealing a horse.' T. M.
was shot by a Continental guard for not coming to when hailed
by the guard. C. S. was hung for the murder of Major Nathaniel
Strong. J. Smith and J. Vervellon were hung for robbing John
Sackett. B. K. was hung for stealing clothes. One other indi
vidual, hung for murder. N. B. was drowned, after he and J. B.
had been confined for stealing a large ox sent to General Wash
ington, as a present, by a friend. W. T. and W. H. were drowned.
C. C. hung himself. T. F., Jr., was shot by order of a court-
martial, for desertion. A. S. was struck with an axe and bled to
death. F. S\ fell from his horse and was killed. W. Clark
drank himself to death ; he was eaten by the hogs before his
bones were found, and they were known by his clothing. He
was once a member of respectable standing in the Presbyterian
Church. While he remained with them, and regarded their rules
and regulations, he was exemplary, industrious, sober, and re
spectable ; and not until he became an infidel did he become a
vagabond. His bones, clothing, and jug were found in a corn
field belonging to John Coffee, and they were buried without a
coffin. J. A,, Sr., died in the woods, his rum-jug by his side.
He was not found until a dog brought home one of his legs,
which was identified by the stocking. His bones had been picked
by animals. J. H., the last I shall mention in connection with
that gang, died in a drunken fit. . . .
"The conduct of the females who associated with this gang
was such as to illustrate its practical effects upon them. I shall
only say that not one of them could or would pretend to know
who were the fathers of their offspring. Perhaps hell itself could
not produce more disgusting objects than were some of them."

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 23
Speaking of the_ progress of infidelity in those days,
Chancellor Kent — the greatest of American jurists — in
his conversation with Governor Clinton, makes this
record : "In my younger days there were very few pro
fessional men that were not infidels ; or they were so far
inclined to infidelity that they could not be called
believers in the truth of the Bible."
In his "Old Churches and Families of Virginia,"
Bishop Meade remarks : "I can truly say that in every
educated young man in Virginia whom I met, I ex
pected to find a sceptic, If not an avowed unbeliever.' '
Lyman Beecher, in his Autobiography, asserts :,
" The boys who dressed flax in the barn read Tom
Paine, and believed him."
Dr. Timothy Dwight's description of that period is
sadly true :
" Striplings, scarcely fledged, suddenly found that the world
had been involved in general darkness through the long succes
sion of preceding ages, and that the light of wisdom had just
begun to dawn upon the human race. All the science, all the in
formation, that had been acquired before the last thirty or forty
years stood, in their view, for nothing. Experience they boldly
proclaimed a plodding instructress, who taught in manners, mor
als, and government, nothing but Abcedarian lessons, fitted only
for children. Religion they discovered, on the one hand, to be a
vision of dotards and nurses ; and, on the other, a system of
fraud and trick, imposed by priestcraft, for base purposes, upon
the ignorant multitude. Revelation was found to be without
authority or evidence, and moral obligation a cobweb, which
might indeed entangle flies, but by which creatures of stronger
wing nobly disdain to be confined. The world, thcy'conoluded
to have been probably eternal, and matter the only existence.
Man, they determined, sprang, like a mushroom, out of the earth
by a chemical process ; and the power of thinking, choice, and
motivity were merely the result of" elective affinities. . . .
From France, Germany, and Great Britainthe dregs of infidelity

24 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
were vomited upon us. From the ' System de la Nature ' and the
' Philosophical Dictionary ' down to the ' Political Justice ' of
Godwin and the ' Age of Reason,' the whole mass of pollution
was emptied upon this country. The last two publications flowed
in upon us as a deluge. An enormous edition of the ' Age of
Reason ' was published in France and sent over to America, to be
sold at a few pence per copy, and, where it could not be sold, to
be given away."
In the Pastoral Letter issued in 1798 by the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, the tocsin of
alarm was sounded, and this earnest expostulation was
made :
" When formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe
threaten destruction to morals and religion ; when scenes of dev
astation and bloodshed, unexampled in the history of modern
nations, have convulsed the world ; and when our own country is
threatened with similar calamities, insensibility in us would be
stupidity ; silence would be criminal. . . . We desire to
direct your awakened attention toward that bursting storm,
which threatens to sweep before it the religious principles, insti
tutions, and morals of our people. We are filled with deep con
cern and awful dread, while we announce it as our conviction that
the eternal God has a controversy with our nation, and is about
to visit us in his sore displeasure. . . . We perceive with
pain and fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious "
principle and practice among our fellow-citizens ; a great depart
ure from the faith and simple purity of manners for which our
fathers were remarkable ; a visible and prevailing impiety and
contempt for the laws and institutions of religion ; and an abound
ing infidelity, which, in many instances, tends to atheism itself."
In this alarming condition of things they say :
" A dissolution of religious society seems to be threatened by
the supineness and inattention of many ministers and professors
of Christianity."
" Formality and deadness, not to say hypocrisy, a contempt for
vital godliness and the spirit of fervent piety, a desertion of the

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 25
ordinances, or a cold and unprofitable attendance upon them,
visibly pervaded every part of the Church."
1 " The profligacy and corruption of public morals have advanced
with a progress proportioned to our declension in religion. Pro-
faneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and
every species of debauchery and loose indulgence, greatly
abound." And what must have been the condition of public
morals when Jefferson could say of the Press : " Noth
ing now is believed which is seen in the newspapers.
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that
polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misap
prehension is known only to those who are in a condi
tion to confront facts within their knowledge with the
lies of the day."
This is an index finger. This illustrates how infidel
ity had seized the Press— that mighty engine of public
opinion. But contrast the present with the past. Who
will not say there has been a wonderful improvement ?
To the honor of the Metropolitan Press of this great city,
let it be said that, during the recent infidel convention
at Rochester, all our great daily journals not only con
demned the purpose of the convention, but showed how
futile must be all such attempts to overthrow the divine
religion which had gained the good-will and assent of
the people of our country.
One hundred years ago duelling was a national vice,.
and a duellist was elected Vice-President of the United
States. Could such a candidate be elected in our day ?
Has not the Christian public sentiment of this country
placed the duello under the ban of public condemnation ?
Then, profanity, intemperance, and Sabbath desecration
held high carnival, while now all respectable citizens
hold these vices in utter reprobation.

26 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
Infidelity had permeated the American colleges, and a
hundred years ago unbelief was rife therein. Tale was
pervaded with scepticism, and in 1745 not five of her
students were members of the Church. Students of the
Senior Class felt proud to be called " Voltaire," " Did
erot," "D'Alembert," "Rousseau," "Robespierre,"
and "Danton." Princeton College was no better.
William and Mary College was called a hot-bed of in
fidelity. Transylvania University, in Kentucky, found
ed by the Presbyterians, was captured by the infidels.
Now 'behold' the change in the college, life of this Re
public ! Christianity has secured and retains a hold
upon the intellect and culture of our age and nation.
In fifty years— from 1830 to 1880 — the students in
Christian colleges increased twice as much, relatively,
as did the population of the country. Prior to 1800
there were twelve denominational and eight non-denom
inational colleges. In 1878 there were three hundred
and twelve of the first class and sixty-four of the second
class — a clear gain of three hundred as against fifty-six.
Of the sixty-four non-denominational institutions,
twenty-three were State universities, and more than half
of them are to-day under the direction of Christian
divines. As an expression of the Christian sentiment of
this country, and of the fact that the religion of Jesus
has not lost the control of higher education, it is a statis
tical fact that the property of the denominational col
leges is valued at sixty -nine millions of dollars, while that
of the non-denominational colleges is only twenty-one
millions. Sixty-nine millions for Christian education !
In the last seven years, Princeton has received through
President McCosh one million four hundred thousand
dollars in endowments.
In the last thirty years there were 31,000 students in

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 27
our colleges, of whom 25,000 were in Christian institu
tions. In 1880, out of 12,000 college students in sixty-
five colleges, over 6000 were church members. By a
recent canvass it was ascertained that out of 1400
Harvard graduates who had left that venerable institu
tion within the last ten years, only two were sceptics-r
one an atheist and one an agnostic — which means a
know-nothing. Where are the infidel colleges ? The unbelievers
have wealth and intelligence, but they have not had
either the heart, or the benevolence, or the conviction,
to consecrate a solitary college in the interest of their un
belief. They boast that science is the radical enemy of
the religion of Jesus, and yet they have been unwilling
to consecrate their wealth to accomplish the end ! " Te
shall know them by their fruits."
Without intending the least reflection upon those
noble people who are members of what are known as
Liberal churches, yet, to illustrate the positive growth
of evangelical religion in these States, let us turn to the
increase of Evangelical churches over those devoted to
Liberal doctrines. Eighty years ago, in and around
Boston, and within a radius of ten miles, there were 23
Liberal churches and 18 Evangelical churches. Now,
while there are there 81 of the former, there are 287 of
the latter.
Infidelity has failed to organize noble charities.
Under whose control are the great charities of the world
— organized, systematic, munificently endowed ? Are
they not associated with Christian denominations 1
Christians lead in all these Godlike charities — for the.
blind, the deaf, the dumb, the insane, the idiotic, the
paralytic, the inebriate, the widow and the orphan.
Let infidelity wave all her banners, let her display her

28 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
victories, and what do they amount to ? The unbe
lievers boast of their benevolence ; that the milk of
human kindness flows through their veins ; that they are
the open enemies of superstition and ignorant idolatry ;
that they seek to emancipate the common intellect, to
arouse the conscience, to respond to justice ; they assert
the brotherhood of man and the rights of all individuals ;
they pretend, in short, to seek the elevation of the race.
But how many infidel missionaries have gone abroad to
enlighten their pagan brethren ? What have they done
for China, Japan, and India ? From their ardent pro
fessions of philanthropy, one would suppose that they
would organize a band of heroic missionaries and send
them wherever idolatry degrades and wherever supersti
tion prevails. This is their duty ; this is their profession.
But instead of promoting virtue, they have propagated
vice. They have flooded those pagan lands with obscene
literature and obscene pictures. They have founded no
schools of learning, nor houses of mercy, to elevate and
bless their pagan brethren. But Christian men conse
crate their millions for the conversion of the world.
Heroic men and women, taking their lives in their
hands, have gone into the very heart of the Dark Conti
nent, have stood amid the eternal snows of the Hima
layas, have endured the burning sun of the equator— have
wandered wherever the human heart palpitates and the
human soul aspires — to throw the light of a benevolent
truth upon the pathway of those walking in darkness and
in the shadow of death.
Infidelity has failed to reform the vicious, and to save
the fallen. How many drunkards have the infidels re
formed, and how many fallen women have they res
cued ? How many neglected children have they gather
ed into houses of mercy ? How many Jerry McAuley

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 29
Missions have they organized ? When a sojourner in
London I heard the testimony of the converted pugilist
Bendigo. He said : " This is my third visit to the city.
The first time I came, it was to whip Deaf Burke, and 1
whipped him. The second time I came, it was to whip
Ben Caunt, and I whipped him. This time I come to
whip the Devil, and I expect to whip him. W henJ was a
miserable, debased drunkard, a Wesleyan revivalist came
to Nottingham, where I lived, and I was induced to hear
him preach. His first sermon was on the betrayal of
Jesus by Judas and the ruffians of Jerusalem. When
he described how those Jerusalem ruffians were pitching
on that pure and innocent man, I felt that I would like
to be there and clean them all out. The second sermon
I heard was on the conversion of Saul the Tartar, and
then I thought that if Jesus could save a Tartar' He
could save ine. He did save me, and here I am to-day
to testify to His saving power." How many Bendigos
has infidelity thus saved ? This man is only one of a
million rescued every year and brought into honest and
industrious Christian citizenship. And it is a fact not
to be gainsaid that, notwithstanding the pomp and blus
ter of infidelity, it has furnished no self-sufficient and
satisfactory substitute for Christianity. Infidelity has
the torch to burn and destroy, but not the hammer and
the trowel to build.
Infidelity has failed to answer the great arguments for
Christianity. Miracles and prophecies still challenge
contradiction. The unbelievers must first plough up
and utterly obliterate the ruins of Egypt, of Babylon*,
of Nineveh, of Sidon, of Tyre, and of Jerusalem, before
they can destroy the proof that comes from the lips of
the holy prophets. Time and again, times without
number, the objector's arguments have been answered ;

30 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
and to-day he is thrown upon the defensive and feels
compelled to adopt Christian nomenclature to express
his agnostic sentiments.
Viewed in the light of these facts, infidelity must be
pronounced an inglorious failure.
It is not pretended that great changes have not taken
place in the beliefs of mankind, especially as to dogmas.
These changes, however, came not from the outside, but
from the inside of the Church, and the purification of
theology is not the putrefaction of Christianity.
Great changes in the statement of Truth have been
made, but not in the fundamental truths themselves.
There has been a liberation from arbitrary systems of
teaching, but the essential truths abide, and mankind
dings to them as dearer than life. Dr. Dorchester says :
" Striking to the core, we find them still cherished by the
churches. Take the great working doctrines of Christianity, strip
off the husks, and state them in their simple forms : there is a
personal Deity ; God is a sovereign ; He is a being of infinite per
fections ; He is the ultimate source of life and being ; a mysteri
ous Threeness, so distinct as to justify the use of three distinct
names and the personal pronouns, is united in the oneness of the
Godhead ; the Bible is the divinely inspired book ; it is so in
spired as to be the authoritative rule of faith and practice ; the
soul is immaterial and immortal ; man is accountable to God ; he
is so depraved and weak as to need a Saviour ; he must be spirit
ually changed in order to rise into harmony with holiness ; what
ever education or culture may do, the Holy Spirit is the efficient
agent in effecting this change; supreme Deity was embodied in
the personage Christ Jesus ; the death of Christ and His resurrec
tion is the sole basis of pardon and ground of hope for sinners ;
the effects of faith in Christ are the love of God shed abroad in
the heart and a new life ; Christ will personally come the second
time ; He will raise the dead ; there will be a day of future gen
eral judgment, and a state of fixedness of character involving
endless retribution and reward in the future world. These vital

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 31
centres of the doctrines of Christianity are held, with little dis
sent, by all the denominations of evangelical Protestantism. The
exceptions are exceedingly rare among men capable of construct
ing a system, and there is no prospect of a change in these essen
tial elements. Christianity is losing nothing of its inherent
original self — only that which human imperfection, subtlety, and
folly have attached to it, trammelling and falsifying it."
I am satisfied, from a long observation of men who
try to be unbelievers, that, underlying their unbelief,
there is a latent conviction that, after all, Christianity
may be true. On his death-bed an infidel requested to
be buried by the side of his Christian wife and daughter,
and when asked why, his response was, " If there be a
resurrection bf the righteous, they will get me up some
how or other, and take me with them." This little in
cident reveals the heart, tells the story of the longings of
an immortal soul, and voices a common humanity.

CHAPTER III.
THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY.
Nineteen centuries ago the infidels of Jerusalem com
mitted the highest crime known to the Universe. Hav
ing rejected all His teachings, all His miracles, all His
virtues, they crucified the Son of God. History repeats
itself in the infidels of New Tork, for they crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an
open shame. ¦
The voice of warning comes thundering down the
centuries. The impious imprecation of the murderers
of Calvary has been realized. Cursed, scathed, scat
tered, they have been crushed and trampled beneath the
heel of an unfeeling world. As it was madness in them
to invoke the curse upon themselves, so it was barbarity
to seek to entail it upon their posterity. Ostrich-like,
they were hardened against their young. "His blood
be upon us and upon our children," was an imprecation
as audacious as it was reckless.
What happened once will occur again. The rejection
of Christ now is the wild forfeiture of all the blessings
which He bestows upon individuals, families, and
nations. The law of cause and effect holds in morals as
in physics. Results are inevitable. All that is grand
in our civilization, all that is beneficent in our ethics,
all that is saving in the Gospel, appeals to modern infi^
delity not to invoke His blood upon us. Nay, more :
unborn childhood utters that appeal.

THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 33
That which weakens man's moral power to resist vice
is a crime against society. To do that is to be at least
accessory to the crime. It prepares the way for its com
mission. Vice is destructive of all that we hold dear. Vice is
destructive of life, property, chastity, patriotism, and
happiness. The power to resist temptation to vice is a variable
force, which may be increased to the maximum — God ;
or decreased to the minimum — the Devil. That force
may be reduced to nothing, either by the annihilation of
the distinction between vice or virtue ; or, by familiarity
with vice ; or, by destroying the conviction of the exist
ence of a personal God, whp has the power, and who
will enforce His laws.
Call conscience what you please, it may be cultivated
or neglected. There are three prime factors in an edur
cated conscience : belief in a personal God, reverence
for His laws, and dread of His displeasure. God is the
supreme reason of virtue. Men may plead the eternal
fitness, the greatest good, but back of these is Q<$d, the
Creator, Proprietor, and Sovereign of all things.
Because He has a proprietorship in man, He claims the
right to dictate his conduct. No God, no authority for
virtue ; no God, no standard for virtue ; no God, no
definition of virtue ; no God, no virtue. Without
Him virtue is but an expediency, a social compact, a
human stipulation to be enforced or broken at will.
Virtue must be under the dominion of law, must be*
the expression of the legislative will of the Creator,
whose right it is to command, whose power is poteBt
to execute. To deny this is to place virtue under the
dominion of the passions. There must be authority
somewhere to say what virtue is ; to demand of man,

34 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
" Thou shalt." If I may not appropriate the property
of another, I must know the authority of Him who says,
" Thou shalt not steal." If I may not falsify truth, I
must know by what authority it is said, " Thou shalt not
lie." There must be reverence for His laws and respect for
His person, character, and authority. Hear His restrain
ing power : " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom." That is reverence for His will touching
human conduct ; and in this respect there is a dread of
His displeasure. He is capable of displeasure, which
He manifests by the execution of the penalties of His
violated law. Like Hope and Love, Fear is a natural
passion of the soul. By what power can you deter
men from vice and crime ? By the dread of the dis
pleasure of good men. That displeasure is the result of
their religious education. Do you plead the beneficence
of public morals ? That comes from the order and con
stitution of nature, whose author is God. Men may
believe in that beneficence, but we have the present as
more powerful than the future. Now teach them that
future, both in this life and in the life to come, that in
both worlds they will meet their God, and virtue will
ensue from that belief. By what power are the danger
ous classes in New Tork held in check ? There are
social elements here which await the tocsin of revolt ¦
but those elements are held in check by the conviction
that somewhere in this city is a force equal to the main
tenance of law and order. Destroy that conviction and
New Tork would be in the hands of the mob. Con
vince the people that there is no God, and all that is vile
and injurious would set at defiance all the claims of high
morality. Modern infidelity is an impious assertion that there is

THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 35
no power in the universe to punish vice. This dimin
ishes the moral force of man to resist evil ; for crime
loses its character in a community by prevalence and as
similation. Bigamy is a virtue in Utah, and will be in
New Tork, if infidelity prevails.
Infidelity subverts the very foundation of morals and
elevates expediency to the dignity of law. All men are
equals. Without God as its authoritative reason, moral
ity is but a social compact ; so that man will be virtuous
or vicious as his passions incline. Are you willing to ac
cept this alternative .? Do you plead the beneficence of
public morals ? But where there is no God and no
future, men will be governed by the present. Some
times vice subserves present interests, as when a lie
would save from martyrdom, or duplicity would save a
citizen from poverty, or deception in trade would secure
a fortune. But teach men their responsibility to their
Creator, and that after this brief life they will stand be
fore their Judge, and this very faith will transform
them into men with the spirit and character of Moses,
who had respect unto the recompense of reward. Re
wards and punishments, administered by an infinite
Being, appeal to the higher and better instincts of our
nature. Just in proportion as men fail to practise the
moral precepts of Christianity, crime increases in the
land. Now consider the destructive effect of unbelief upon
Government, Commerce, and Home.
Government.— The manifold blessings of govern
ment to civilized society are conceded. The stability of
government is either in a moral sentiment, or in a stand
ing army. Force is necessary, and it is either moral or
physical. It is God or a bayonet, the Bible or a Gat-
ling gun, a pulpit or a rifle. If the force necessary to

3G_ CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT,
maintain government is physical, it is either military or
legislative. In this country it is not military, as we
have a standing army of less than twenty-five thousand
men to a population of over fifty millions of people ;
and some persons believe that the millennium is so near
that our regular army should be disbanded. Our' police,
in this city of a million and a half of people, is less than
three thousand ; and yet, in this great metropolis life,
property and reputation are secure. The statesman at
tributes the stability and prosperity of society to the
genius and power of law. He assumes that, inasmuch as
vice flows from ignorance and poverty, virtue will issue
from knowledge and competency ; these from public jus
tice, and public justice from an administration of govern
ment which is wise and liberal, but strong to execute and
severe to punish. Tet all history is in proof that, while
law may dictate, may guide, may conserve, it cannot
prevent crime nor reform the vicious. This twofold
power does not inhere in law, or in its penalties. Vice
and virtue lie beyond the reach and scope of law,
whether human or divine. All forms of government
have failed to suppress vice and develop virtue. Under
the worst forms of government the best, men have lived
— as the apostles under the Neros, the Waldenses under
the Pontiffs, the Puritans under the Stuarts ; and under
the best forms of government the worst men have lived
— as drunkards, murderers and traitors. Vice and virtue
are independent of government. The statesman forgets
that he has to deal with individuality, that he can oper
ate only from without, whereas the evil lies within.
Man is not a block of marble to yield to the chisel of the
sculptor, but is a living force which resists external con
tact. Moral corruption precedes political ruin. The
love of luxury, the love of wealth, and the love of power

THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 37
have been the destroying angels of the republics of earth.
Moral sentiment lies back of constitutions, back of laws,
back of administration. The political conscience which
conserves the commonwealth comes from a religious edu
cation. D'.Alembert has said there are two things
which can reach the top of the pyramid of liberty—
" the eagle and the reptile" — the eagle of Virtue and
the reptile of Vice.
Let us judge of the future by the past. What was the
effect of the wanton destruction of belief in a personal
God — the supreme reason of virtue — in the time of the
French Revolution ? In the years 1792-93 France passed
through all those social and political conditions such as
centralization, despotism, revolution, anarchy, and crime.
In the venerable Cathedral of Notre Dame, in the year
1793, the atheists of Paris made their public profession
of atheism, and commemorated tho act by the corona
tion of a painted harlot as the Goddess of Reason.
Philosophers and demagogues, encyclopedists and pam
phleteers, princes and subalterns, banded and leagued
together to give organic structure to vice, and to elevate
unbelief to the dignity of a virtue. What followed ?
Anarchy took the place of government ; men of letters
were proscribed and banished ; patriots were murdered
or exiled ; churches were sacked, and their altars pol
luted ; licentiousness held high carnival in the invaded
homes of the first families of France ; murder stalked
abroad at high noon ; the streets of that beautiful capital
ran with human blood, and 14,000 persons were slain in
the massacre of September ; and in that savage slaughter
lovely womanhood was despised. The amiable princess
Lamballe was dragged, hideously mutilated, through
the streets ; the saintly Madame Elizabeth, in whom pity
struggled with maiden shame, was compelled to bow her

38 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
head to the fatal axe, and the heroic Madame Roland
went to the scaffold exclaiming, " Liberty, O what
crimes are committed in thy name !" The inhuman
butchers marched in ghastly procession, carrying on
spikes the heads of their decapitated victims, and as
tney marched they shouted, " Hang the merchants."
In their atheistic fury the murderers changed the signifi
cance of words. Moderation meant treason ; severity,
patriotic devotion ; atrocious cruelty, irregular justice ;
and, in the hour of riot and drunken delirium, out of
that alembic of hell came forth all the infernal spirits of
criminal infidelity.
Commerce. — The spirit that gives birth to such a hell
ish brood against government is no less destructive of
the commercial prosperity of a country. Integrity is
indispensable to successful commerce and trade.
Honesty, in the employer and in the employe, is an
absolute necessity. Business men must have confidence
in each other. And let it be said to the honor of Chris
tian virtue in our country, that, out of 25,000 men em
ployed in banking, only one in a thousand proves dishon
est in a year. Honesty is not a lost art. And to the
honor of the Christian ministry let it be recorded that,
out of 80,000 clergymen in America, not twelve failures
in morals occur in a year. Christianity is on the side of
honesty and faith. The royal precept is, " Be diligent
in business, serving the Lord."
But the best principle infidelity has to offer to the
commercial world is that " Honesty is the best policy."
Nothing more, nothing higher ; you are to be honest, not
because it is right and duty, but because it is politic.
The infidels offer the commercial world Policy for that
divine precept, "Thou shalt not steal." They base
commercial integrity on Policy ; Christians base it on

THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 39
Conscience. I appeal to the men of business : Were you
about to employ a young man, which .of two young men
would you select— an atheist, whose favorite companion
authors are Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paine ; or he whose
model is Christ, and whose chosen companion authors
are Paley, Addison, and. Washington Irving ? I appeal
to you, merchants and bankers : Were you to write
over the door of your store or your counting-house,
" There is no God,"
and " Death is an Eternal Sleep,"
in whom could you confide, and who would confide in
you ? And what further would follow ? There would
be no abhorrence of vice in either buyer or seller ; the
most potent incentive to virtue would be removed, and
communism would demand your property. I do not say
that every infidel is a communist, but I do say that every
communist is an infidel. Honesty is duty, and Chris
tianity makes it such.
Home. — If unbelief is so disastrous to government and
commerce, what are its blighting effects upon the house
holds of our land ? Home is the centre of happiness.
For this the father toils, for this the mother prays. It
is the inspiration of industry. Men and women who lose
sight of domestic happiness are bereft of all that is noble.
Home is the pivot of all that is beneficent in the State
and salutary in the Church. As is the home, so is the
Church and the nation. The family is the oldest of hu
man institutions. The dearest relation on earth is that
of husband and wife, and the strongest bond of that
union is love. Parental care and filial affection are ele
ments of a happy home.

40 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
But, with a ruthless hand, infidelity strikes at the root
of domestic bliss. It confers freedom on husband and
wife, to find companionship in others by mutual con
sent, or by divorce. It inverts the eternal order of
things. Instead of that holy passion known as love,
which prefers one out of the many, the freethinker of
to-day teaches benevolence to the whole human species,
and love for no one in particular. He melts with ten
derness for all mankind, and then sends his children to
the hospital for foundlings. I do not say that all free
thinkers are free-lovers, but it is true that all free- lovers
are freethinkers, and they constitute the majority of
unbelievers. Look at the authors they read. Rousseau,
who offered to his Maker a polluted life ; Chesterfield,
whose salacious letters are repellent, and Bennett, who
suffered incarceration for circulating through the mails
his obscene literature — these are their favorite authors.
It is infidelity which demands that the marriage cere
mony shall be stripped of every religious element, and
reduced to a civil rite, and that social affinities shall be
the rule of action.
But Christianity teaches that the eternal order of
nature is first the family and then the race ; individual
attachment between husband and wife, parent and child,
and then to do good to all men ; jurisdiction and control
over the private affections, so that their indulgence shall
not be detrimental to the home, nor destructive of the
family tie. It is to our homes that Christ comes with
His tenderest consolation. But infidelity would rob us
of those consolations, and has nothing adequate to offer
in return. Take these figures, as the highest commen
dation of Christian homes : In the families of 35 minis
ters there were 141 children, 15 years and over • in that
number there were 89 professors of religion, 15 pious

THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 41
but not church members, 19 ministers, 33 upright citi
zens, and only 4 intemperate sons. In 172 Christian
families there were 796 children, 15 years old and over,
450 of whom were professed Christians, 46 pious but not
church members, 17 ministers, 284 reputable citizens
without church connection, and only sixteen addicted to
intemperance. - Can infidelity, out of 207 families, where
in are 937 children of that age, make a showing so repu
table and honorable-as this ?
Infidelity is robbery, inasmuch as it takes from man
that which is honorable in itself, and offers as a substi
tute that which has no compensating power. The
wanton destruction of an imaginary good, when harmless
in itself, should not be permitted without a reasonable
substitute. If Christ is an imaginary being, but the most
perfect, beneficent, and lovely known to man, no attempt
should be made to destroy our admiration and Jove for
Him. Let me dwell in the presence of that glorious
ideal. Let me bathe my spirit in the atmosphere that
surrounds His memory. Let me be changed from glory
to glory into His beautiful image.
If prayer is an imaginary solace to me in life's darkest
hour, when communion with no othei* being would bring
comfort to my heart, let me linger undisturbed at the
Throne of Mercy and fancy that my complaint enters the
ear of a Father divine, and- that in answer thereto He
breathes sweet peace upon my spirit. If God is an im
aginary being, yet to me the Creator and Preserver of
all things, the Supreme Ruler of Nature, in whose good^
ness and power I may trust, whose commands I am to
obey, whose frown I am to dread, whose smile I am to
covet, do not take Him from me, do not prove that He
does not exist, do not tell me that I know Him not, but
let me dream that He is. Are angels a fancy ? There

42 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
is a legend among the Irish peasants that, when a little
child laughs in its sleep, the angels are whispering to it.
It is a harmless legend, and he who proves it false,
without furnishing a better substitute, commits robbery
against childhood. Is the peaceful triumph that comes
to the dying saint an imagination ? Let him not be un
deceived ; let his departing soul mount on the wings of
hope, and let the last accents of time be those of triumph
to surviving friends. Is heaven a dream where the dead
of earth are awaiting us, where pleasure never wears a
fringe of woe, where youth is immortal, where happiness
is eternal ? Let me dream of such a heaven. He is_a
robber against my individual rights who takes from me
that which imparts so much strength and consolation
without giving me a reasonable substitute.
But Christianity is not an imaginary good. It is a
sublime reality. All the proofs of high-born conscious
ness, all the deductions of the highest reason, all the de
cisions of the calmest judgment, all the experience and
observation of the ages, are in proof that Christianity is
a sublime reality. What substitute have infidels to
offer ? For God, a molecule ; for Christ, Voltaire ; for
the consolations of Grace, human philosophy.
Suppose the unbeliever could accomplish his mighty
work of destruction — the Cross trampled upon, the relig
ion of Christ everywhere proscribed, churches demol
ished, Bibles burned, ministers banished, the Sabbath
abolished and faith destroyed, what advantages will
accrue to our country and to ourselves from the ex
change ? Absolutely none.

CHAPTER IV.
GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS.
It is fair to judge of a system by its practical results.
For, in this age, we ask what is the beneficence or the
malevolence of any system of religious truth, or of any
form of religious worship. It is proper to inquire into
the character of the disciples it has produced. The
question is, Are they made better by the conformity of
their lives to certain rules of conduct ? Or, Are they
made worse by their beliefs ? I am willing, at all times
and under all circumstances, to have Christianity judged
by the character and influence of the disciples which
Christianity produces. So, on the other hand, I must
jljdge of infidelity by the character and influence of the
disciples which infidelity produces. "Te shall know
them by their fruits."
On a Sabbath night, in the Academy of Music, in the
city of New Tork, three thousand men and a few women
each paid a dollar admission to hear their Maker cursed
and their Saviour ridiculed. The speaker was com
petent to the task. For a man could ridicule his mother,
if he1 were mean enough to do it. This man found the
buffoonery of infidelity profitable and clutched the m
"thirty pieces of silver." It was a brazen attempt to
show that the glory of our civilization is due to impiety.
Six well-known infidels were eulogized as the greatest
reformers and benefactors.
It has. been common to contrast the best infidels with

44 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
the worst Christians. There is neither logic nor fairness
in that. But, to be logical and consistent, let us com
pare the worst Christians with the worst infidels, and the
best infidels with the best Christians.
I shall pass in reverent silence the " glorious company
of the apostles," the " goodly fellowship of the proph
ets," and the " noble army of martyrs," and call to the
front those great men whose faith and practice have
made illustrious the last three hundred years. I shall
place in conspicuous juxtaposition six eminent Christians
against the six eminent infidels :
Washington vs. Julian.
Luther vs. Voltaire.
Newton vs. Spinoza.
Bacon vs. Diderot.
Chalmers vs. Hume.
Wesley vs. Paine.
Let us take Julian, the emperor, philosopher, soldier,
and pontiff of the Pagans, who is the boast of the infidel
world. I admit that his administration of the Roman
Empire was marvellous, and that he fairly won the title
of philosopher ; so that he comes down to us in history
not only with the imperial purple on his shoulders and
the royal diadem on his brow, but also crowned with the
laurel chaplet of philosophic honor. But analyze his
character. Say all you can in his favor, yet the loftiest
eulogies will not cover his crimes. He was an ino-rate •
he was an apostate ; he was a hypocrite. He had been
preserved from massacre, cared for as an orphan ten
derly educated, invested with the title of Csesar and
appointed to command the army of Gaul by his royal
uncle, Constantius. But he conspired and rebelled

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 45
against that uncle, permitted the soldiers to proclaim him
emperor and to call him Augustus under a pretended
sign from Jupiter, and then he hastened to seize the
throne of the empire. He prided himself on his tem^
perance, chastity, and clemency, but in person was as
filthy as a Hindoo fakir. He apostatized from Chris
tianity, and became the pontiff of the Pagan divinities.
It is Gibbon who says that for ten years Julian played
the hypocrite in assisting at Christian festivals, and then
burning incense to Jupiter and Mars. And this he did
to secure the popular favor of both Christians and
Pagans. He offered sacrifices to the gods, believed in
magic, and was superstitious to a crime. Ho issued an
edict for religious toleration, and then banished Athana-
sius, destroyed those noble treatises which had been pre
pared in defence ef Christianity, excluded Christians
from all civil offices, from being teachers in the public
schools, changed their name to " Nazarenes" by a royal
edict, permitted their persecution, and then laughed at
their complaints. He transferred the revenues of Chris
tian churches to heathen priests, abolished Christian
schools, and compelled Christians to build Pagan tem
ples. From being a Christian, he became a Pagan, and
sought to restore all the superstitions of Pagan worship.
What permanent good has he been to mankind ? Is he
a benefactor who should be held up as a model for
American youth ?
Over against Julian the apostate we place the immor
tal Washington. He had all the temperance, chastity,
and elemency of Julian, without his vices. His moral
character was without a stain. His manly virtues blend
ed into harmony like the colors in the Noaehian rain
bow. His intellect was clear and sound. He, too, was
offered a crown by his soldiers, but he reiected it as a

46 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
crime against the sacred cause for which he fought. The
benedictions of a grateful people are the crown of his
glory. His modesty, justice, and self-control were mar
vellous. He left the impress of his statesmanship upon
our National Constitution. As a warrior, he fought for
the liberty of all men ; and to-day his name is hailed
with acclamations of gratitude and delight wherever
men struggle for freedom.
And iu this connection I may say that it is a crime
against history to assert that Jefferson and Franklin were
brazen infidels.
As the author of the Declaration of Independence,
Jefferson therein thrice reverently mentions the Creator
as the "God of Nature," as the "Supreme Judge of
the world," and as " Providence," wherein our fathers
firmly trusted for "protection." That Declaration was
the basis of our Constitution, and there is nothing in the
latter not found in substance in the former. Jefferson
was absent from the country when the Federal Constitu
tion was drafted and adopted, and when he saw it he
opposed it. In 1784 Congress appointed him Minister
Plenipotentiary to act with Franklin and Adams in nego
tiating treaties of commerce and amity with foreign
powers ; and in 1785 he succeeded Franklin as Resident
Minister at Paris, and did not return to America until
September, 1789, reaching Virginia soon after the elec
tion of Washington as first President of the United
States. The Federal Constitution, then recently adopt
ed, did not meet his approval. He declared that he did
not know whether the good or bad predominated ; but
subsequently he thought more favorably of it. It was
not Jefferson who excluded the name of God from the
Constitution. Jefferson had placed that holy name in
the Declaration of Independence. That was recognition

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 47
enough. Our fathers wisely framed for us a government
which is non-religious, but not irreligious. It is non-
religious, in that it does not interfere, directly or indi
rectly, in the faith or worship of the citizen. It is not
irreligious, because it recognizes God in His sovereignty
as Creator, as Judge, and heavenly Benefactor. God
does not want His name written on parchments,, but on
the hearts of His people. The name of God was written
all over the Jewish commonwealth, and such was the
pretended reverence for one form of His adorable name,
that its utterance was forbidden ; yet the Jews crucified
the Son of God. The name of Christ was inscribed on
every part of the Roman Empire under Constantine the
Great and the Roman Pontiffs. Tet that vast empire,
both political and ecclesiastical, has disappeared from the
face of the earth. His precious name was emblazoned
everywhere in France under the empire ; and if France
did not go to the devil, the devil went to France.
Nor was Franklin a brazen infidel. If he and Jeffer
son had their doubts, their glorious acts bespeak their
faith. Voltaire, the brilliant Frenchman, whose eminent tal
ents and ripe scholarship all acknowledge, lived from
1694 to 1778. He was a charming writer ; he wrote
poetry, history, dramas, philosophy, and romance. He
was the companion of kings and the favorite of the great.
But his writings are against private virtue and public
morality. His " Pucelle " is one continued sneer at
virtue, which he made the subject of contempt and
ribald laughter, and many parts of it are polluted with
the grossest obscenities. Was he a patriot, the foe of
tyrants ? Did he sometimes sympathize with the op
pressed, and sometimes befriend the helpless ? Was he
the enemy of the Jesuits, whom he lampooned with

48 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
bitter irony ? Did he favor religious toleration and
weaken the power of Romanism ? But he did only what
thousands had done before him. And in all that he ever
Wrote he gave the world no new thought and threw no
new light on the great problems of humanity. His
name to-day is powerless for good. His self-esteem was
inordinate, and his vanity knew no bounds. He was the
clown of literature. He confounded a perverted Church
with a divine Christianity, and sought the ruin of both.
His private life was a scandal, even to his own corrupt
age. When secretary to the Marquis Chateauneuf, at
the Hague, in the United Provinces, he ruined the
young daughter of Madame du Noyer, and was com
pelled to fly the Hague to escape the fury of an enraged
mother. When he fled from Paris to escape the officers
of the law, he found a retreat in Cirey, on the borders
of Lorraine, where he was kindly received by M. Chate-
let, whose hospitality he violated by a liaison with the
wife of his host, the famous Madame Chatelet, and which
continued while she lived, during sixteen years, and that,
too, while her husband was yet alive. And he boasted
that he was the favorite of Madame Pompadour before
she became the favorite of Louis XV. Is he a man to
be held up as a model to the young men of America ?
It was boastfully said that "he had done more for
human liberty than any other man who had ever lived."
What has he done ? He precipitated the bloodiest revo
lution on record, which left France and all Europe in a
tenfold worse condition. Did he oppose Romanism ?
He did only what had been done by mightier men.
Three hundred and seventy years before his day, Wiclif
was a martyr to religious liberty. Three hundred and
twenty-one years prior to his time, Huss had died for
the truth. Two hundred and forty years before the

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 49
time of Voltaire, Savonarola offered himself as a sacrifice
on the altar of freedom. These are the apostles of relig
ious liberty. Who ever heard of an infidel dying a
martyr ? Infidels do not like a warm climate, either in
this world or in the world to come.
Two hundred years before Voltaire's day Luther took
up arms against the Church arid the empire. He ap
peared when ignorance fell like a pall of death upon the
nations of mediaeval times ; when degrading superstition
had enkindled the wildest fanaticism and created the
most terrific alarm ; when the degeneracy of the age had
turned the earth into a moral lazaretto ; when priests
were letterless and popes oppressors. Ascending the
moral heavens like a flaming meteor, he dispelled the
gloom of a night of a thousand years, and with the key
seen in the visions of Patmos he unlocked the spiritual
dungeons of the nations of the earth. With the self-
rebance and heroism, the learning and piety, of a true
reformer, he preached the divine gospel. His burning
words ^ell upon the ear of astonished Europe, startling
as the boom of a thousand cannon. Leo X. trembled on
his throne, and the Reformation moved forward resist
less as the march of a whirlwind. Had not Luther bved
I could not have given such free expression to these
sentiments as I have here ; for Luther, and not Voltaire,
must be esteemed the great apostle of religious liberty.
Spinoza, the pantheist, a Jew, was born in 1632. His
intellect was brilliant, but the conclusion of all his rea
soning was pantheism. His bold assertion was, " What
ever is, is God." He was a dreamer. His was a life of
meditation spent in search of absolute principles, from
which he hoped to deduce the character of the Universe,
pf God, and of man. But what great truth has Spinoza
given to the world ? In what sense can he be esteemed

50 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
a benefactor ? Why should we enshrine him in the
gratitude of our hearts ?
In contrast with him I place Sir Isaac Newton, the
devout and the imperishable. Born in 1642, ten years
after Spinoza, Newton was a careful student, of nature,
and became her confidant and high-priest. Do you ask
what Christian Newton did for his race ? He discovered
the "differential calculus, ," or method of fluxions. He
made known the great law of universal gravitation, which
Laplace pronounced "pre-eminent above all other pro
ductions of the human intellect." Of his transcendent
power it is difficult to speak in terms of adequate admi
ration. Unlike Spinoza, Newton's great discoveries led
him to a personal God, whose revealed will he gladly
obeyed. In Parliament and out, under James II., he
was the brave defender of civil and religious liberty.
Spinoza led mankind into midnight ; Newton led the
world into midday.
What great service has Diderot rendered human
liberty, that he should be paraded as an apostle of hu
manity ? He was a talented and industrious writer, who
vainly sought to compass all human knowledge, but who
lacked both judgment and taste. His fame rests on his
" Encyclopedic, ou Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences,
des Arts, et des Metiers," in which he was assisted by
D'Alembert, Voltaire, D'Holbach, and others. The
covert object of this work was to teach infidelity under
the guise of the advancement of knowledge, and to pre
pare the way for the French Revolution, which dissolved
society and reddened the streets of Paris with human
blood. He polluted the youthful mind of France by
indecent novels. And his published correspondence
with Voltaire and Grimm gives a gloomy picture of
French morals. His private life was in keeping there-

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 51
with. He abandoned his lawful wife, and formed an
attachment, first with Madame Prieusieux, a fifth-rate
scribbler, and then with Mile. Voland, a woman of no
repute. Such is the apostle of free thought presented
to American society as a model of morality. But what
great, imperishable thought has Diderot given to man
kind ? Does he boast of the French Revolution as the
monument of his renown ? That is a monument of
blood, and as infamous as the pyramids of human skulls
reared at Bagdad by Tamerlane — Timur the Lame.
But rising above him in glory is Francis Bacon, a liv
ing encyclopaedia of fundamental principles, of great
practical suggestions, and of philosophy the most benefi
cent. He was born in 1561, and died in 1626. He is
the greatest benefactor in the republic of letters. The
glory of his mind was his understanding, which, in its
minuteness and vastness, was like the tent in story :.
" Fold it, and it seemed a toy in the hand of a lady ;
spread it, and the armies of the Sultan might repose be
neath its shade. " He called a halt to the philosophers
of his day, and turned the corner in the march of learn
ing. His inductive philosophy opened a new era in sci
ence, and his " Novum Organum Scientiarum" unlocked
the secrets of nature. The chief end of his methods and
researches was the well-being of society. To-day he
stands among the greatest benefactors of mankind. As
Macaulay says : " Lord Bacon laid the foundation of the
edifice of learning broad and firm. Observation and ex
periment, facts and principles, common-sense and human
happiness, utility and progress, were the magical words
of his creed. His philosophy was humane in object and
progressive in principle. He laid the foundation on
which others were to rear the glorious superstructure of
our own day. He predicted 'a new era ; others discc-v-

52 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT^,
ered it. He pointed to the road ; others have travelled
it. The ' Atlantis ' of Bacon is being realized, and the
house of Solomon is now inhabited." It would be a
difficult task to recount the beneficial results of ancient
wisdom ; but if we ask what are the fruits of the Baco
nian philosophy, we remind you of the answer of Eng
land's greatest historian: "The philosophy of Bacon
has lengthened life ; it has mitigated pain ; it has given
new securities to the mariner ; it has furnished new arms
to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries
with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it has
guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to
earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of
the day ; it has extended the range of the human vision ;
it has multiplied the power of the human muscle ; it has
accelerated motion ; it has annihilated distance ; it has
facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly
offices, all despatch of business ; it has enabled man to
descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to
penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth,
to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without
horses/ and the ocean in ships which sail against the
wind : these are a part of its fruits, and of its first-fruits,
for it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never
attained it, which is never perfect. Its law is progress ;
a point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day,
and will be its starting-point to-morrow.' '
Let us now place side by side two Scotchmen, David
Hume and Thomas Chalmers, and see which is the true
benefactor of his race ? Living from 1711 to 1776
Hume was a great metaphysician and a vigorous writer.
But he was a sceptic from early manhood, and chose for
his life-work the mission of " Destroyer of Human Be
lief." His great object was to destroy the basis of all

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 53
certainty respecting God, man, and nature, and to prove
that Doubt is the sole inheritance of our race. He ex
alted reason, and falsely assumed that personal experi
ence is the test of all religious bebef. He called in
question the testimony of the reliability of the senses,
which underlies the whole system of the physical
sciences. He assumed that it was more probable that
twelve men without motive and against all worldly con
siderations would unite in a lie, than that Christ rose
from the dead. He thus sought to create and perpetuate
universal scepticism in morals and religion. By his phi
losophy he • threw doubt over all history by depreciating
the value of human testimony. He stands before us
to-day as the brazen iconoclast, seeking the destruction
of faith, which is the bond of domestic, commercial, and
religious life. So bitter was he in his infidelity, that he
became the apologist of Charles I., the calumniator of
Cromwell, and the traducer of the Puritans ; but addi
tional light has shown that as an historian he was biased,
and is not trustworthy. He had no sympathy with the
rebgious element in our nature, and sought to leave the
world in the uncertainties of unbelief. " Can we esteem
him a benefactor ? Shall we crown him with glory ? Is
he to be numbered among the apostles of freedom ?
But his countryman, Thomas Chalmers, awakens de-.
light wherever his name is pronounced. Clear in intel
lect and ripe in scholarship, his contributions to the ad
vancement of the physical sciences, his discourses on
commercial integrity, and his efforts as a practical phi- «
lanthropist render him the friend and favorite of his
race; He was the defender of religious freedom, and
was the first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland.
It was not Hume, but it was Chalmers, who, by his
Christian philanthropy, transformed the worst portion

54 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
of Edinburgh into an earthly paradise of safety, purity,
and industry.
Now let us place over against each other Paine and
Wesley. Both were Engbshmen, both lived in this
country, both have exerted an influence on our national
life. Which is the benefactor ? Wesley was born in
1703 ; Paine was born in 1737.
Paine, a soldier of fortune, was an Englishman, an
American, a Frenchman, as revolution and fortune
promised the largest reward. He was a patriot of the
type of the " Wandering Jew." He is remembered in
our national history because of the eminence of his bad
ness. His notoriety is due to the boldness of his infidel
ity, which has thrown a historical glamour about his
name. He is remembered just as are Judas and Andre
and Arnold. His infidelity placed him in bold contrast
with the Christian fathers of our Republic. And were
it not for this he would to-day be forgotten, as are hun-.
dreds of others identified with our Revolution. He was
a vigorous writer, but gave to the world no new and
beneficent thought. His " Rights of Man," written as
a reply to Burke's " Reflections on the French Revolu
tion," is but a restatement of other men's thoughts, and
his " Age Of Reason" is but a rehash of the sayings of
earlier infidels, and has not the merit of a new idea, but
has the demerit of ignorance and obscenity. What has
been the effect of his fife and works ? What great
charity did he establish ? What beneficent truth did he
originate ? What great deed merits for him the grati
tude of a nation ? He was rewarded by the country far
beyond his merits, and spent what he received in a disso
lute old age. Js'he.a model for the young men of
America ?
But in sublime contrast; let us recall the character, the

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 55
life, and the elevating influence of Wesley, the ripe
scholar, the great organizer, the fruitful writer, a true
philanthropist, the amiable Christian. Paine died in
1809 ; Wesley died in 1791. Behold the results of their
influence upon the character of this country. Gather
together in some hippodrome, all the infidels, all the
free-lovers, all the communists, with an outside crowd of
all who wish Christianity false, vwho despise the marriage
tie, who pour contempt on law and order, who demand
license instead of liberty, and you have the spiritual
progeny which Paine has begotten. On the other -hand,
follow the sun in his golden course through the heavens,
and wherever he shines there are the followers of Wesley
in schools of learning, houses of mercy, halls of justice,
marts of commerce, temples of piety, educating the
ignorant, feeding the hungry, reforming the drunkard,
lifting up the fallen, cheering the disconsolate, giving
permanence to order, energy to law, dignity to pubbc
sentiment, stabibty to government, value to property,
morality and piety to the people. Let the ten mill
ions of Wesley's followers in this country,- pious, cult
ured, wealthy, tell the benevolence of his life and
character. Do you wish to push the contrast further ? I accept
the challenge. What has infidelity done for the world ?
Has it an object ? It is to destroy. It is nullification,
repudiation, secession. It is the base attempt to throw
off all obligation, to renounce all authority, contemn all
law. Its advocates are called "freethinkers," who set
themselves up as the infallible judges of truth, receiving
only what they can comprehend, and only what suits
their taste. Their standard of judgment, root and
branch, fruit and flower, is supreme selfishness ; their
pretended object is the rescue" of mankind from the fear

56 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
of error and the melancholy of superstition ; lo deliver
the world from the power of -priestcraft, the burden of
worship, and devotion paid to Jesus. This is a formida
ble pretence, but it is a pretence without a foundation.
In Protestant Christianity the Christian is without fear,
and free from melancholy ; his devotion is a debght, and
piety is a sublime reality ; its ministers are learned and
devout, while Christ is God over all, and blessed for
ever more. The infidel would pluck the crown from the
Redeemer's brow, abolish the Sabbath, hush the chiming
of the church-going bells, fire our sanctuaries, break
down our altars, burn our Bibles, exile, our pastors, over
throw civil government, abrogate the holy rite of mar
riage, annihilate the distinction between vice and virtue,
open wide the floodgates of vice, plunge the world into
the grave of despair, and consign humanity to the dun
geons of the damned. We have nothing-trj4iope from
infidelity, but everything to dread.
But how divinely different is the object of [Christian
ity ! She comes to us bke a pleasant-formed singel with
her lessons of wisdom, her calls to virtue, jand* her re
wards to piety. Like the king's daughter, all her gar
ments smell of myrrh ; bke a beacon-light on some
dangerous coast, she guides the mariner to a friendly
port ; like a good Samaritan, she hfts^ihe wounded of
earth and bears them to the inns of salvation ; like the
good physician, at her touch disease is dispelled and
death paralyzed ; like the angel of plenty, from whose
footfalls rise harvest-fields waving their golden grain,
she is the giver of every good and perfect gift. She
dissipates ignorance and enlightens the mind ; she abol
ishes violence and creates love ; she destroys sin and in
duces righteousness ; she mitigates sorrow and awakens
joy ; she conquers death and opens heaven to the blest.

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 57
What has infidelity accomplished for mankind ? What
public virtue has it promoted ? What science or art has
it originated ? What great charity has it established ?
What war has it averted ? What system of idolatry has
it subverted ? How many slaves has it liberated ? How
many inebriates has it reclaimed ? How many fallen
women has it restored ? How many souls has it re
deemed ? Whose death-bed has it cheered? Whose
broken heart has it consoled ?
I protest against infidelity, by the rosy hands of child-
hood clasped in prayer morning and night ; by the ten
derness and purity of womanhood ; by the strength and
aspirations of manhood.
Is prayer a delusion ? I am content. Is the ministry
of angels a fancy ? Let me beheve they kiss my cheek,
and fan my weary brow with their wings of strength.
Is immortality a dream ? Let me dream on. Is Christ
but human ? Let me pay Him the homage of a devout
heart. Is heaven but an imagination ? Let me bathe
my spirit in its glorious anticipations. Do I wander ?
It is in fields of bght. Do I go astray ? It is with -the
great and good of all ages.
Do" you ask me what Christianity has done for our
race ? All the original discoveries in science, all the
original inventions in art, are the work of Christian
men. Infidels have made subordinate contributions
thereunto, but they have not reached the grandeur of
originality. Whatever is beneficent in every department
of life may be traced directly to the great Christian mas
ters of thought, to the great Christian masters of revela
tion, to the great Christian masters of charity, among
mankind. It was the Christian Telemachus who was
instrumental in abolishing the gladiatorial combats in
Rome. He entered the arena of the grand old Cob-

58 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
seum, which stands to-day as a magnificent monument
of his Christian heroism, and threw himself between the
two combatants, and though he fell a martyr, yet the
fobowing day the emperor issued an edict forever abol
ishing gladiatorial combats in Rome. It was the Chris
tian Copernicus who gave us the true system of the stars.
It was the Christian Gutenberg who gave to the world
the art of printing, and the first book issued from the
press was the Bible. It was the Christian Watt who
gave to commerce steam as a motor power. It was the
Christian Morse who gave us the telegraph, which has
enabled us to transform land and sea into whispering
galleries, so that thought is omnipresent. It was the
Christian Howard, who inaugurated organized charity.
It was the Christian Wilberf orce who abobsbed slavery
in the British possessions, and after him the Christian
Lincoln who abolished slavery in this country, and thus
prepared the way for the other nations of Christendom
to wipe out this inhuman curse from the escutcheon of
national power and glory.
Infidels, wave your banners, bring on your victors,
recount your triumphs, and for every victory I wib
name a hundred ; for every infidel who has done any
thing for mankind, I will marshal a thousand Christian
men and women from their thrones in glory, bearing
their palms of victory.
Who, then, would be an unbebever, in the face of
history, in the face of these tremendous facts, in the face
of the immorality of these men who are held up to us as
the pioneers and expounders of infidelity ? Who would
not rather be associated with the great and good of all
ages ? Who would not ascend on pinions of creative
genius with such a poet as Milton, and sing with the
morning stars ? Who would not soar with such a spirit

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 59
as Sir Isaac" Newton through the regions ,of everlasting
light ? Who would not penetrate the inner arcana of the
universe with Francis Bacon and behold the secrets of
the cosmos as revealed by his wondrous intellect ? Who'
would not robe himself in the raiment of charity, and
follow the footsteps of such a benefactor as Thomas
Chalmers, going about doing good ? Nay, who would
-not proudly claim companionship with William Wilber-
force and Abraham Lincoln in _striking off the last
.manacle from the forms of our fellow-beings who had
been enslaved ?

CHAPTER V.
THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN.
How true and yet how strange it is that from time
immemorial one half of the human race has been pro
scribed ; that woman, so essential to its perpetuity, has
been burdened with civil, and, I may say, religious dis
abilities, and degraded by social customs. This fact is
the result of prejudice, which may be traced to many
sources. There is no other reasonable explanation of
such an unfortunate condition of things. But as Chris
tianity becomes potential in the world, this prejudice
gives way ; these legal, social, and religious disabilities
arc removed, and woman is rising to her true intellectual
and moral position in the world. This marvebous revo
lution has been wrought by and through the Bible.
The Jewish is the only ancient rebgion that was op
posed to this proscription, and Christianity is the only
modern religion that gives proper recognition to the
rights of woman. The question therefore is, What has
Christianity done for woman ? The assertion is boldly
made by unbelievers that woman's high social position
in this country is due to her freedom from religious
restraint. Let us decide this question by an appeal to
historic facts. Let us see what was the condition of
woman under Roman law, under early Teutonic sway,
and under the oldest and best religions of the East ¦ and
then wherein has her condition been improved by Chris
tianity.

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 61
Let us take woman under Roman law. She had no
voice in the government of the family. The father was
the sole centre of authority. The children were not
esteemed in the family of the mother, but in that of the
father. The husband bad supreme power over his wife's
property. All that she had became his. By her mar
riage she lost all family rights, and could bequeath noth
ing to her own relatives. The Roman law esteemed her
as a sister to her own children, and the adopted daughter
of her husband. She was not his equal. He had over
her the power of life and death. When accused of cer
tain offences a court was convened, composed of her rela
tives, at which the husband presided, and which could
inflict upon her the severest penalties. What was the
reason for this degradation ? Gaius said it was because
of her " levity of mind." Cicero said it, was because of
her "infirmity of purpose." This- is worse than non
sense ; it is a crime. For there is no proof that woman
has less strength of purpose and less gravity of mind
than man.
Poets, orators, and satirists gave expression to the pro
found contempt of woman in her moral and intellectual
aspect. Even the calm philosopher, Seneca, character
izes woman as a foobsh, wild creature, incapable of self-
control. Roman marriage, in its consummation and in its disso
lution, illustrated woman's sad condition. She married
a master who had over her absolute control. Against
this absolute control there came a reaction in favor of
woman, under the name of "free marriage," through
which the wife held property, observed her family .con
nections, and worshipped her own gods ; but this change
led to the most appalling frequency of divorce. Noble-
born women reckoned their years by the number of their

62 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
husbands. Juvenal mentions a woman who had eight
husbands in five years. Martial was provoked to say,
" She who marries so often marries not at all." Tertul-
ban represents divorce as the end of Roman marriage.
Cicero repudiated his first wife Terentia to escape his
creditors, by giving them the dower of his new wife,
Pubblia, whom he in turn repudiated.
Such was the social and legal condition of woman
under the most magnificent civilization outside of Christ
endom, under a national bfe which created that juris
prudence which Justinian embodied in his Pandects, and
which underlies, in its general principles, the civibzation
of the world. In a country where law was the boast of
the people and the admiration of mankind, we might
reasonably look for such a protection of the rights of
woman a3 to reflect glory upon the age. But in vain do
we search the legal records of the " Mistress of the
World " for such a fact.
Now, what did Christianity do for woman through the
modification of the Roman law ? As soon as the religion
of our Lord gained control in that empire, it created a
new conception of woman's true position. Recall the
wonderful changes made under Constantine, in the
fourth century, and under Justinian in the sixth. By
those changes the husband's absolute power was broken,
the tutelage of woman was abolished, and she had rights
in property. This was the beginning of the personal
independence of woman, which is the glory of modern
law and custom, and which has culminated in our pres
ent legislation.
To accomplish this Christianity had a desperate strug
gle. She had to contend against old customs and in
veterate habits, but she triumphed. How splendid are
these words of Justinian: "We enact, then, that all

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 63
persons, so far as they can, should preserve chastity,
which alone is able to present their souls with confidence
before God."
There were three powerful causes which operated to
elevate wOman under Christianity.. She became a recog
nized factor in the Church ; she was among the most
heroic of the blessed confessors who died at the stake, or
in the arena of the Cobseum for the love of Christ ; and
the discipline in the early Church not only protected the
sanctity of marriage, but recognized woman as the equal
of man. How many illustrious names appear in history
reflecting the exalted character of woman under the dis
pensation of the New Testament ! It. was Priscilla, more
than any other human being, who laid the foundations
of the Christian Church in Rome ; and the magnificent
basilica of St. Peter's, instead of being a monument to
Julius II. and Leo X., or to Michael Angelo or Raphael,
is the enduring monument of the Christian woman,
Priscilla.. And who does not remember Phoebe, that
Grecian Christian lady who was the despatch-bearer of
the inspired Epistles by St. Paul to the churches of
Greece ? And who does not recall St. Helena, the
mother of Constantine the Great, and her eminent de
votion to Christianity ? It is to the enduring honor of
Constantine that when be came to the throne he restored
his mother to public favor and power. Constantius, his
father, had repudiated her for Theodora, but the restora
tion of St. Helena was the noble expression of filial love
under the power, of a new religion. And it should be
remembered that it was St. Helena who made a journey
to the Holy Land, and rescued the Cave of the Nativity,
and over it placed the splendid basilica which remains to
this day ; that it was St. Helena who discovered the
supposed tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, and over it reared

64 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
what is now known, and will be known in all the ages to
come, as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And who
does not recall Paula, that Roman princess who accom
panied St. Jerome to Palestine and distributed her ample
fortune in charities and devotions ? These are the
jewels in the crown of our Lord. These are the proofs
of what Christianity has done for woman.
And what was the condition of woman under the old
Teutonic tribes ? True, she was revered, she was
esteemed a prophetess in times of national peril ; her
virtue was estimated as priceless. The historian, Taci
tus, never wearies in pronouncing eulogies upon the
many virtues of the German wife and mother.
Tet it is an historic fact that among the Teutonic
tribes polygamy was not unknown ; that the husband
could be an absolute tyrant ; that he could put out the
eyes and break the limbs of an unhappy wife.
In Teutonic marriages the woman was purchased bke
any other piece of property. She was a maiden to her
lord, sat at his feet during his meals, and was the slave
of his whims. A Teutonic tutelage gave the husband
the right to sell, to punish, and to kib the wife of his
bosom. Happily for the world, Christianity permeated those
Teutonic tribes before they were altogether corrupted
by contact with the low Roman and Grecian civiliza
tions. The religion of our Lord preserved whatever was
good and modified whatever was evil. It threw its
muniments of power around woman's priceless virtue ;
it preserved the reverence in which she had been held ;
nor did it detract from the confidence which the public
placed in her in times of great and impending peril.
More than this : it substituted monogamy for polygamy •
it broke the absolute tyranny of the husband ; it rescued

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 65
Woman from the public shambles and made her the equal
and happy companion of her husband. And nowhere
to-day outside of England is home such a subbme fact as
in Germany. There and here the German husband and
father is seen with the wife and mother and their chil
dren on all festive occasions. Do you. tell me that with
them he spends his time in beer -gardens ? It is true.
But this is better than the custom in this country for the
polished American to leave wife and children at home
and spend his nights amid the conviviabty and gambling
of a club-house.
And what is the condition of woman under the old
religions of the East ? Let us go to Japan, China, and
India. Let us take woman there in her best estate,
under the great religious teachers whose names are so
honored in this country by certain persons. The great
Confucius considered a woman no better than a slave,
and as difficult to manage. " Ten daughters do not
equal one son," he said. Here are some of his maxims :
" When young she must obey her father and elder
brother ; when married she must obey her husband ;
when a widow she must obey her son. She must not
marry a second time. She must never issue orders to
those outside of her home. Her chief business is to
prepare wine and food. She must not be known for
good or evil beyond the threshold of her own apart
ments. She must not attend a funeral beyond the limits
of her own State. She must not come to any conclusion
on her own debberation. There are five women who
should not be taken in marriage : the daughter of a
rebel, the daughter of a disorderly father, the daughter
of parents whose grandchildren are criminals, the daugh
ter of a leper, and a daughter who. has lost her father
and elder brother."

66 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
Confucius gave these seven reasons to justify a man
when he wanted to divorce his wife : "If she be child
less ; if she be unfaithful to her bridal vows ; if she be
jealous of the clothes of other women or of her husband ;
if she be dishonest ; if she be sickly ; if she disobey her
mother-in-law ; if she talk too much." How is that for
high civibzation ? While in China you cannot buy a
boy at any price, you can get a girl for a dime. The
infanticide of girls in China and India is a common
thing. In some provinces more than one third of the
infant girls are annually murdered.
The great Buddha was not more favorable to women.
He taught the monstrous notion of the transmigration of
souls, and the only hope for woman was that she might
turn to be a man some time or other ; and the burden of
the prayer of a Buddhistic woman is that she may be a
man in the next world in good circumstances.
Nor does the famous Brahmin do better for woman.
She is not permitted to read the holy Veda nor to offer
prayer. She is soulless without man. The Shastas
teach : She must revere her husband as she would a
god. When in his presence she must keep her eyes
upon him to receive his commands. When he speaks
she must be quiet. If she speaks unkindly to him she
must be divorced without delay, and when he is dead she
must burn on his funeral pyre.
Nor did Mohammed hold woman in higher esteem.
The Arabs say : "Women are the whips of the devil.
Trust neither a king, nor a horse, nor a woman." In
the Koran it is taught : " Men shall have the pre-emi
nence above women. " When a son is born to a Moslem
his neighbors congratulate him, but when a daughter is
born to him he goes into the bazaars to receive the con
dolence of his friends.

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 67
When a son is born,
He- sleeps on a bed,
He is clothed in robes,
He plays with gems,
His ery is princely loud ;
But when a daughter is born,
She sleeps on the'g'round,
She is clothed with a wrapper.
She plays with a tile,
She is incapable either of evil or good ;
It is hers only to think of preparing wine and food,
And not giving any occasion of grief to her parents.
Now, by way of contrast, let us turn. to the Bible.
What is its idea of woman ? She is man's equal. Her
creation is as honorable as that of man. She was made
to be his companion. The Arabs have a legend that be
fore Eve's creation man was a perfect humanity, possess
ing strength, dignity, and courage, grace, gentleness,
and beauty, but that after the mysterious rib was ex
tracted man lost the grace, the gentleness, and the
beauty, so that a man without a wife is only half a man.
In the Ten Commandments the Lord demands equal
ity : " Honor thy father and thy mother." AB of the
Mosaie laws were essentially protective of woman. As
a legislator Moses had to eontend against polygamy, both
simultaneous and successive, against concubinage and
easy divorce, which were only too common. Through
out the East this social disorder was universal. Hence
the courage of his legislation. His laws of marriage
were at once preventive and protective. The Jewish
law followed the girl into her apprenticeship, when she
was compelled to support an indigent father, and it pro
vided for her release at a given time, and protected her
in her betrothal. It provided for the preservation of
her family inheritance and the rights of her widowhood.

68 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
And all the divorce laws enacted by Moses were in the
interest- of woman.
And what is the New Testament idea of marriage ?
It must be seriously considered. It must be loyally ob
served. " It is a bond for life and death, which must
be endured to sustain it. Purity and fidelity are de
manded of both parties, and its final dissolution is 'justi
fied by only one cause.
And how sublime the moral courage displayed by
Christ in His elevation of woman against the social
prejudices of His age ! He recognized women among
His followers. He made companions of them, as in
Bethany. He treated them with tenderness and healed
them with His power. He was brave enough to defend
them against the assaults of their partners in crime. He
remembered His mother when He was on the Cross. He
sent a woman on the most important mission ever com
mitted to a human being — to proclaim His triumphant
resurrection. He restored marriage to its original state
of purity. He recalled the beginning, when the first
marriage was celebrated amid the fragrant bowers of
Eden by Jehovah, the great High Priest. He opposed
both kinds of polygamy — simultaneous and progressive.
He declared that marriage is a state rather than an act,
an institution rather than a law. He said marriage is
not a convenience, nor a business transaction, nor a per
sonal contract merely. He said it is not a civil rite, but
a rebgious institution. He declared it was ordained by
the Almighty ; hence neither an accident, nor a human
device, nor a civil arrangement. He referred to the
creation of the male and the female, to the equality of
the sexes, to the care that childhood needed, and then
threw around it the sanctity of religion.
Marriage has a threefold design : companionship,

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 69
multipbcation, and happiness. Its purity is demanded
by the divine law. The relations of husband and wife
are prescribed by inspiration. The duties of parents and
children are defined, and iamily worship is required.
Hence marriage is not a civil rite. It should originate
in the Church, and be dissolved, if dissolved at all, by-'
the State. All honor to the State of New Tork for her
marriage laws ; but New Tork has erred in one thing :
in the celebration of marriage by those other than the
ministers of religion. An eminent lawyer of my con
gregation has been gracious enough to furnish me a
transcript of the laws of our State touching these points :
" For the purpose of being registered and authenticated ac
cording .to the provisions of the title, marriages shall be solem
nized only by the following persons :.
" 1. Ministers of the gospel and priests of every denomination.
" 2. Judges of the county courts and justices of the peace.
" 3. The mayor, recorders, and aldermen of cities."
Think of the solemnization of marriage by a New
Tork alderman — by one whose brogue is still upon his
lips ; a New Tork alderman, whose shillalah is his
crosier, solemnizing the holy rites of marriage !
St. Paul has been violently assailed because of his sup
posed degradation of woman. But woman has never
had a truer and a nobler' defender of her rights than he.
In the fifth chapter of Ephesians he discourses at length
upon the mutual and reciprocal duties of husband and,
wife : " Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also
loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.' ' " Wives,
submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the
Lord." " So- ought men to love their wives as their
own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for
no- man ever hated his own flesh, but honoreth and cher-

70 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
isheth it, even as the Lord the Church." There is an
apparent harshness in the difference of these commands ;
yet the woman's task is easier than the man's, and
withal carefully guarded. It is eminently proper that
there should be one rubng will in a family, which by
Cdivine appointment is man's. Of old it was said :
" Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and be shall rule
over thee." But this submission is not a cringing servi
tude, a servile obedience to a lordly husband ; but a
recognition of his headship of the family, a gentle
acquiescence in his decisions, a calm and dignified re
spect paid him who bears the image of God and whose
representative he is. In this the Bible goes on the sup
position of what man should be, and not what he is ; and
were he as he should be no pure and noble-minded
woman would hesitate to render him this respect. But
lest he should prove a tyrant she is to submit "as unto the
Lord, that is according to His law. Tet there is a limit
to man's authority. He cannot compel her to do wrong.
He may be profligate, but he cannot compel her to fol
low his example. He may be an infidel, but he cannot
compel her to deny the Lord. He is bound to respect
ner rights of conscience and her feelings. He cannot
compel her to neglect her filial duties, nor to disregard
her own happiness. These are her reserved rights, not
surrendered by the marriage contract. And what are
the corresponding duties of the husband ? " Husbands,
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church
and gave himself for it. " This is all that woman's heart
can wish. Love implies two things : to take delight in
a person, and to render that person happy. And how
much should a husband love his wife ? "As Christ loved
the Church, and gave Himself for it." The husband is
to sacrifice himself for his wife if necessary.

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 71
Such is the noble exhibition of the relative duties of
husband and wife by St. Paul.
Our Lord pronounced judgment upon the social and
domestic vices of His age, and sought the elevation of
woman by declaring the indissolubleness of the marriage
tie except for one cause. He did not recognize incom
patibility of temper, or insanity, or fickleness of choice,
as justifiable causes of divorce. He knew the necessity
of giving permanence to marriage. He knew that other
causes might justify a separation, as where the husband
is brutal, or intemperate, or fails to support his family ;
but He does not give the right to remarry. And how
essential and grand this truth ! If marriage is not per
manent, what will be the effect upon the childhood of
the Republic ? If marriage is a mere contract, to be
dissolved at the pleasure of the parties, then farewell to
home ! It was Judge Story; that eminent jurist, who
said, "Marriage appears to be something more than a
mere contract. It is rather to be deemed an institution
of society, founded upon the consent and contract of the
parties ; and in this view it has some peculiarities in its
nature, character, operation, and extent of obligation,
different from what belongs to ordinary contracts."
The reason that would justify the dissolution of marriage
at the will of the parties would also justify the violation
of aU other obligations. Here is the greatest danger to
society. Two things are needed in this country — namely, the
enactment of a national marriage law and of a national
law of divorce. The laws on these questions should be
not diverse and local, but uniform and universal. Give
us these and we will rescue home from the danger that
now threatens it. Let us see to it that this subject is
taken into consideration by the chief legislative body of

72 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
this country ; for while hitherto the States have claimed
as reserved rights the right to legislate on marriage and
on divorce, it appears to me that these questions are
radical in the welfare of the Republic, and that they
rightfully belong to national legislation. And there is
another thing that is imperatively demanded by the
sanctity and permanence of marriage — namely, that the
Territorial Government of Utah shall be abolished, and
the administration of the affairs of that Territory placed
under the direct control of the General Government,
with authority in the President to appoint the officers,
as is the case in the District of Columbia. The next
bloody battle that will be fought in this country will be
fought west of the Missouri River, with those fanatical,
deluded foreigners who have no love for our institutions,
when they become strong enough in numbers and in
military power to again defy the Government of the
United States. Let us take time by the forelock, crush
out this iniquity, and obbterate this stain from the
escutcheon of the Republic.
The American woman nearly occupies the position
which Christianity seems to assign her. Her individ
uality is a recognized fact. She is a leader in all the
great moral reforms of the day. She is the equal of-
man in personal rights. She has opportunities for de
velopment to qualify herself for all honorable positions.
Woman should be a Christian. All her influence
should be on the side of Christ. The great struggle of
Christianity has been to rescue her from her degrada^
tion, and to elevate her to her true position ; and it
would only be gratitude on her part to accept the Lord
as her personal Redeemer.

CHAPTER VI.
HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC.
There are three immutable things in this world —
the Family, the Church and the State. Older than the
Apostles, older than the Prophets, older than the Patri
archs is the family. Its divine origin is coeval with the
race. It goes back to the beginning, when the first
marriage ceremony was performed by the Almighty, the
Great High Priest, amid the fragrant flowers of Eden.
It was the crowning act of creation. It has descended
to us through all the ages ; it has existed in all nations,
under all phases of civibzation ; it is the glory of Chris
tendom, and the inspiration of humanity universal.
The divine division of the human race is not into indi
viduals, but into families. The inspired genealogies are
records of separate households, in each of which was
named the first-born son ; and so St. Luke has traced the
genealogy of Christ from Joseph to Adam, and from
Adam to God.
Paley has well said that " in the family are the rudi
ments of an empire." Had he been a republican, he
would have said that " in the family are the rudiments
of a republic." By divine appointment the father was
the head of the family, the priest of the household. As
the descendants of Adam multiplied, and the number of '
families increased, they assembled together as a people
and offered.their devotions to the living God. This was
the origin of the Church.. The right to rule and the

74 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
duty to obey were inherent in the household, and for
purposes of protection these two fundamental principles
of government were in due time transferred to the ag
gregation of families, which form the State. As the
Creator is more than the creature, the fountain more
than the stream, the seed more than the plant, so the
family is more than the Church, and more than the
State. For these flow out of the family ; and when the
Church is scattered, when the State is dissolved, the
family will remain — the unbroken bond of humanity,
the enduring memorial of Eden.
What is home in its manifold relations? In its sim
plest sense, home is a place of abode. As such, it may
be a place adorned with ab the elegance that art can
create, and all the luxury which wealth can procure ;
where the walls are adorned with pictures from the pen
cils of the old masters, and the niches are filled, and the
pedestals crowned, by the mute but elegant marbles from
the chisels of : famous sculptors ; where by day the light
streams through curtains of rarest lace, and by night
falls softly from golden chandebers ; where fountains
send up their sparkling waters, and murmur their
perennial music ; where plants from every clime fib the
conservatory with their beauty and fragrance ; where
birds from the tropics delight the eye with their gor
geous plumage, and enchant the ear with their ravishing
song ; and where the fruits of every zone, and the deb-
cacies of each revolving season, tempt the appetite and
delight the taste.
Or, home may be a place where happiness waits on
¦ honest industry ; where comfort springs from compe
tency rather than from affluence and luxury ; where
father and mother are the trees of the family garden,
and meny children are the birds that sweetly sing in the

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 75
branches thereof ; where there are no sudden transitions
from wealth to poverty or from poverty to wealth, but
where the intebigent, industrious classes, which con
stitute the bone and sinew of the Republic, the support
and strength of Church and State, have their abode;
where the Bible spreads its banquet of wisdom and love,
where prayer pours the desires and aspirations of the,
heart into the ear of the Eternal, airdwhexe praise wafts
on high the gratitude of the soul ; where tranquibity
abides, where contentment dwells, and where love reigns
supreme. Or, home may be a place where wretchedness and
want hold their ghastly revels ; where bare floors, broken
furniture, scanty fare, hard beds, and tattered garments
are the symbols of distress ; where the face never smiles
but in the idiotic laugh of the drunken carousal ; where
love is consumed by perpetual hate ; where parents are
living examples of total depravity, and their children,
born in sin and cradled in crime, are brought up for hell.
To one or other of these homes all men belong. As
we stand in the marts of commerce, or in the great thor
oughfares of the metropolis, and behold the surging tide
of humanity as it robs along its daily channels, we are
startled with the thought that all these retire at night to
one or other of those three homes ; and then we have a
sleeping city. What is more impressive than a sleeping
city — where eyes and ears are closed, and lips are silent j
—that strange symbol of death, a sleeping city ! And .,
with the morning comes the waking, and the multitude
issues forth to its daily round of activity, the embodi
ment of the abode, to vitabze and ennoble, or to vitiate
and disgrace society. Who can contemplate these facts
without realizing that home is the most powerful factor
in our civilized life ?

76 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
Home is also the scene of the dearest ties of earth. It
is the scene of wedded love — that new-born love which
is more than the love of David and Jonathan, more than
the love of Damon and Pythias — wherein two bodies, two
souls, and two lives are blended into one ; wherein a new
affection has been created by mutual choice and mutual
preference, and around which revolve the most beautiful
relations of humanity-. The great fundamental principle
of our religious faith is love ; and is there on earth any
scene more expressive of that essential principle than the
ceremony at the marriage altar ? For a woman — young,
tender, beautiful, buoyant with bright anticipations of
the future — to leave father and mother and give her
body, her soul, and her bf e to the one man of her choice
— this is love's sweet surrender. For a man — strong,
brave, noble, full of high resolve and great endeavor— to
bnk his destiny with that of the one woman of his choice
— this is love's precious victory. And for these two to
take each other, for better or worse, in sickness or
health, in poverty or wealth, in honor or reproach, to
the exclusion of all others, the fortunes of the one to be
those of the other, even until death — this is love's blessed
union. It is not the love of parent and child, but the
love of husband and wife, that symbolizes the mutual
and reciprocal affection between Christ and His Church.
Around this oldest of human institutions God has
thrown the most solemn and impressive sanctions.
Home is not only the scene of wedded love, but also the
scene of mutual and reciprocal relations. And what are
these relations — what are the obligations, the rights and
the muniments of marriage ?
The obbgations are threefold : Voluntary, Monog
amous, and Indissoluble.
The first -of these obbgations springs from choice.

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 77
There should be no coercion, but always a calm, intelli
gent, debberate choice, not instigated by passion, not
created by love of position, not induced by a desire for
wealth, but rather a deliberate preference on the part of
each, and the mutual acceptance of each other. And
therefore as a minister of rebgion I declare that love
must be the inspiration of the choice ; and while par
ents should always have due regard to the social circle
into which their son or daughter ought to marry, yet
the social position should be held subordinate to the
supreme object of marriage — namely, the union of two
wedded hearts. Romance, as well as history, is full of
those terrible marriages wherein coercion has played the
most important part, wherein love has been subordinated
to the lucre that perishes, to the passion that consumes,
to the honors that fade away ; and she must be an insane
mother who will lead to the bridal altar a daughter who
is young, tender, innocent, unsuspecting, and unite her
to some Old rotten carcass of a man simply because he
has wealth and social, position.
The second of these obbgations is monogamous — the
union of two persons to the exclusion of the third.
" Let every man have his own wife and every woman
her own husband. " A third party is not to be consid
ered for a moment. There is to be no rival in any sense
to share the affection of the man or the woman. He is
to be supreme in her heart ; she is to "be supreme in his.
There can be no third party without hell ensuing. And
those citizens of this great metropobs who think that they
can have a second estabbsbment, and that in secret, and
at the same time maintain the purity of wedded love, the
integrity and dignity~of married bfe, will come at last to
the feabzation of the fact that they have sown to the
wind and reaped the whirlwind. If there is anything

78 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
that should be denounced from the pulpit in plain, un
equivocal, and withering language, it is this presumption
on the part of men who have risen to affluence that they
can trample upon the sacred rights of marriage by dupli
cating their domestic relations, which is a crime against
the theory of marriage, a crime against wife and chil
dren. Such a man should be reprobated, repudiated, ex
orcised. As Jesus Christ cast out the devils of old, so
such a man should be cast out of decent society.
The third of these obligations is that the union is
indissoluble. It is a union for life. " Until death doth
us part' ' is the solemn vow taken by those who stand at
the marriage altar. " What God hath joined together,
let no man put asunder." There is but one cause that
will justify the breaking of the bond of marriage with
the right to remarry ; and he who dissolves the bond of
matrimony and remarries without that justifying cause
is a criminal before God and society. There may be
justifiable separation for other causes, but not the right
to remarry.
And now, from the obligations let us turn to the
rights. What are the rights flowing out of this fountain
of human love ? They are threefold — namely, Author
ity, Protection, and Reciprocity.
The question of inferiority does not inhere in the
command of submission of the wife to the husband, but
rather it is a question of authority. Our rulers are not
necessarily our superiors. Under our form of govern
ment every man is equal to every other man before the
law. We are all peers of the realm. But for the pur
poses of government it is necessary that authority should
be vested somewhere. Hence certain citizens, our
rulers, are invested with authority. So, for reasons best
known to Himself, God has made the husband the depos-

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 79
itary of domestic authority. But this authority does not
imply the right to arbitrarily command the wife to do
this or that. Rather, it relates to the support, happi
ness, and general control of the household. There should
be no assumption of superiority on the part of the hus
band. The sacred writers do not assert that the husband
is the superior of the wife. In acknowledging him as
the head of the household she does not surrender her
equality. Neither is the superior of the other ; the
question of equality is not mooted ; but authority and--
obedience are beautifully blended, in harmony with the
design of the Almighty.
While the husband is invested with this authority, the
wife is entitled to protection. He is to be her defender,
the defender of her life, her health, her reputation, and
her family. He is to be her provider, the provider of
her home, her food, her raiment, and whatever will ren
der her happy in her person and happy in her home-life.
But, sad to say, sometimes this natural relation is
reversed. I have seen a tree, once majestic, but now
decayed, rotten to the core, ready to fall, a melancholy
•shadow, as it were, of its former strength, and yet I
have seen the ivy cbng to it, and cover its hollow, rotten
sides, as though its strength and growth were unim
paired. So it has been the sad but beautiful mission of
some wives to cling to degenerated husbands to the last.
And if there is heroism outside of heaven, if there is
well- won eulogy to be pronounced on earth, it belongs
to that self-sacrificing, self-abnegating woman who
clings, as a faithful wife, to that rotten, disgraceful hus
band who has outraged ab the noble attributes of man
hood. The third of these rights is reciprocity. There is to
be a body for a body, a soul for a soul, a life for a life ;

80 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
there is to be mutual and reciprocal relations, in every
particular, in the highest degree and to the last ex
tremity. And what are the muniments which the Almighty has
thrown around this venerable institution ? Its inno-
cency, its honorableness, and the sanctions of law. All
those who hie themselves to nunneries and monasteries,
looking upon marriage as unworthy of their piety, forget
what a terrible and unwarranted reflection they are cast
ing upon the first institution created by the Almighty,
which comes down to us venerable with time and sur
rounded with the sanction of the Creator. So, around
this blessed institution are the sanctions of divine law,
prescribing its duties, defining its relations, and offering
promises which are the inspiration of those who enter
the holy estate of wedded love.
Home is not only the place of abode, but it is the
school of childhood. It is the model-room of life.
Time with its cares may crowd out of our daily life the
memories of childhood, yet its impressions will abide.
Geologists can take us to sandstone formations reaching
backward into the incalculable past, and there show us on
what was once the bed of an ocean the marks of a ripple,
the memorial of some small wave, and the marks of the
rain-drop that fell on those plastic shores, and .which the
sun and the wind have perpetuated for our eyes to
behold. So the ripples and rain-drops of tender child
hood remain on the seashore of our life. It is a grand
thought that the majority of Christians are from Chris
tian homes. It is not true that the children of religious
parents are worse than those of the irreligious. It were
in flat contradiction of the laws of human nature it
would confound all the laws of psychology, were it so.
And that old slander that the parson's children are the

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 81
worst in the parish is not a fact, as is proved by authen
tic statistics.
The history of great men is the history of great
mothers. Byron's mother was proud, ilb tempered, and
violent ; behold her son ! Napoleon's mother was beau
tiful, energetic, and ambitious ; and her son said of her,
" It was my mother who first inspired me with a desire
to be great." Sir Walter Scott's mother was a lover of
poetry and painting"; no marvel that her son is the
greatest of Scotia's bards. Patrick Henry's mother was
remarkable for her conversational powers ; and her son is
the American Demosthenes. Washington's mother was
pure, true and pious ; and her illustrious son exemplifies
her virtues. John Quincy Adams's mother was distin
guished for intebigence and piety ; and her son said, " I
owe all that I am to my mother." The mother of John
Wesley was extraordinary for her intellectuality, piety,
and executive ability; and she is justly called "the
mother of Methodism." Benjamin West, that distin
guished artist, ascribed bis renown to a mother's kiss.
When a youth he sketched his baby sister asleep in her
cradle. In that rough outline his mother saw the evi
dence of genius, and in her maternal pride she kissed her
son. In after life West was wont to say, " That kiss
made me an artist." A mother's impressions have a
resurrection in second childhood. Doctor Nott, so long
president of Union College, relapsed into second child
hood, and when restless he was easily quieted to sleep by^
Watts's cradle hymn,
" Hush my babe, lie still and slumber."
The last time he conducted family worship he forgot
himself, and concluded with the, web-known bnes begin
ning,

82 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
" Now I lay me down to sleep."
I do not wonder that Robert Hall said, " The family is
the seminary of the social affections and the cradle of
sensibility, where the first elements are acquired of that
tenderness and humanity which cement mankind to
gether, and were they entirely extinguished the whole
fabric of social institutions would be dissolved."
From Christian homes come forth the saints of the
Church. Recall Samuel and Jeremiah, and John the
Baptist, who were sanctified from their birth. Good
King Josiah knew the Lord when but eight years old.
Timothy knew the Scriptures from a child. Polycarp
died at the age of ninety-five, and had served the Lord
eighty-six years ; hence he was but nine when con
verted. Baxter embraced the Saviour when a youth,
Jonathan Edwards at the age of seven, Isaac Watts at
nine, Matthew Henry at eleven, and Robert Hall at
twelve. I do not wonder that the famous statesmen of ab
nations, as Draco, and Lycurgus, and Solon, and Napo
leon, and Washington, gave attention io childhood. How
precious the influence of mother ! There is no velvet so
soft as a mother's lap, no rose so sweet as a mother's
cheek, no music so charming as a mother's voice.
What are the duties that we owe to our home life ?
They are three : Amiability, Contentment, and Devotion.
Society is a masquerade. Few persons appear abroad
as they appear in the bosom of their family. When in
society, the best of us are conscious of restraint ; we
measure our words and guard our actions. The proud
assume an air of humility ; the ambitious appear content ;
the passionate seem calm ; the petulant, patient ; the
selfish, liberal ; the austere, gentle and yielding. We

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 83
do this from a desire for the good opinions of others.
There is a restraining inspiration which springs from the
presence of society. But amid the impenetrable secrecy
of the household the maskers lay aside their disguise.
There the "holy are holy, and the filthy are filthy."
There nature is seen as it is. .The motive to disguise has
ceased to operate. The polished man in society is at
home the uncouth husband and rough father. The sweet
and elegant lady in company is the brawling wife and the
scolding mother in the midst of her family. The amiable
brother and gentle sister abroad are disagreeable and
unkind to each other in the family circle.
But there are those -who appear best at home. Care
less about the empty plaudits of others, they are happiest
when surrounded with the lOved ones at home. There
they shine as stars of the first magnitude, while in pro
miscuous assemblies their steady light is lost in the daz
zle of fashion, or obscured by the mist of the unnatural
excitement of others. '
The family is the best place on earth for a man to sit
in judgment on himself. It is next to the bar of God.
There he sees himself as he will appear at the last day.
We form false judgments of our character outside. Our
friends flatter, us ; they tell us we are beautiful ; that
we are amiable, and kind, and gentle, and loving. But
it is false, and no one knows its falsity better than our
selves. It is, therefore, in the household where the
judgment of the last day begins, and we are in the pres
ence of the invisible Judge.
Religion enables us to display the "best traits of char
acter amid the sanctities of the family. Some persons
choose home to give vent to their spleen and to manifest
their discontent. Rather do so where no one thinks
enough -of you to feel badly about it. If you have to

84 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
thunder, do it away from the homestead ; but when you
enter the dear old house, have a calm there bke the calm
of heaven. Remember there is one at home that can be
made to suffer as no one else in this wide world. If you
have but one smile, save it for your wife. Every man
should ' look well to the place of his death. He should
be surrounded in his dying hours with associations, that
will recall the most pleasant recobections.
Next to amiabibty comes contentment. What a world
of meaning there is in that old song,
" Home, home — sweet, sweet home !
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
Doubtless society has its claims upon us, and common
courtesy requires that we should exchange the ordinary
civilities of bfe and mingle socially with our friends.
There are outside amusements, refined and intelligent,
which we may enjoy. But there are no enjoyments on
earth which should be preferred exclusively to those of
home. What a sham life is that where the domestic cir
cle is nightly abandoned for places of popular amuse
ment !
To make home attractive is the highest triumph of
woman. Wnat woman is there who wo.uld not prefer
the honor of Washington's mother to the glory of Queen
Elizabeth ? She is to render home happy by physical
comforts and by books, by music, by flowers, by delight
ful conversation, by the sweetness of her spirit and the
gentleness of her deportment. Here is the true sphere
" of woman's influence. Not on thrones, not in legisla
tive halls, not in short clothes, but at home. The guar
dian of infancy, the instructor of childhood, the com
panion of youth, the partner of manhood, the comforter
of old age, is woman. Here let her diminish sorrow by

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 85
her sympathy, heighten joy by her gayety, soothe by her
tenderness, dignify by her intelligence, and elevate by
her devotion. This is woman's part ; it is man's to
seek his highest happiness in such a home. And every
true man would be proud of such a home, and with
Goldsmith sing :
" In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs — and God has given my share —
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amid these humble bowers to lay me down ;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting, by repose ;
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amid the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening-group to draw,
And tell of all I felt and all I saw ;
And, as a hare, whom hound and horns pursue,
Pants to the place f roia whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return — and die at home at last."
And home should be made intensely religious. Tou
may display the best traits of character in the family ;
you may be content with the refined and less excitable
enjoyments of the household ; yet without religion the
family will be as a splendidly furnished parlor on a mid
winter's day, without a. fire to cheer and comfort.
Family religion consists of two elements — the pervad
ing spirit and the offering of devotion. The difference
between the one and the other is too marked. There is ^
such a difference between the prayers of acts and the *
prayers of lips. We should learn to distinguish devotion
and godliness. The proud Pharisee offered his devotions,
but had not godliness enough to justify him at home.
The dominant spirit in the family circle should be re-
bgion ; nor should it be antagonized by the love of

86 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
wealth, or of display, by a desire to outdo, to outdress,
to outshine others.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the prayers you
offer morning and evening around your family altar
make up family religion. Let us look to the influence
that shall permeate and refine every temper, that shall
give a holy fervency to every word that is uttered. And
yet I do not intend to ignore family devotion ; I intend
to insist upon it. Alas for the house in which no prayer
is heard ; where the blessings of a kind Providence are
bestowed, where the benedictions of the Almighty are
showered upon the right hand and upon the left, and yet
no voice of gratitude ascends to Him for these blessings !
It seems to me that these unsheltered houses are like
those of the Egyptians when the Israelites were about
to be delivered. Tou remember the angel passed
through Egypt, and whenever be came to a house on the
door-post of which was the blood of the paschal lamb,
the angel passed by, but when he came to a house not
marked with the saving blood, the first-born of that
house was slain. If the destroying angel should pass
through our great city, how many famibes would be
found unsheltered by prayer ?
Family devotion flows, from necessity, out of the very
constitution of the household. God is the author and
sustainer of the family, the proprietor and benefactor
thereof. Therefore His existence should be recognized
and His goodness acknowledged in the family. The
Bible is full of impressive examples. Jehovah revealed
His secret touching the destruction of Sodom to Abra
ham, to whom He paid the compbment, " I know him,
that he will command his children and his household
after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do
justice and judgment." Thrice each day Daniel offered

HOME, LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 87
prayer in his own house in the city of Babylon. Paul
said of Timothy, " From a youth thou hast known the
Scriptures." And of Cornelius, the centurion, it is said
that he " feared God with all his house."
How restraining are the gracious influences of family
religion upon parents and children, and how precious
these influences will be in the years to come ! " Thy
children shall rise up and call thee blessed." Do you
say there is no positive command for family prayer ? Is
there a positive command to eat, or to take medicine, or
to build churches, or that woman should commune and
be baptized ? Do you plead inability ? Do you com
plain of press of other duties ? Is your plea the want of
confidence ? Better by far so live that your children
shall rise up and call you blessed.

CHAPTER VII.
IMPURE LITERATURE.
Christianity is the guardian of childhood. Touth is
the chosen time to seek the Lord. " Remember now
thy Creator in the days of thy youth," " Train up a
child in the way he should go," is the voice from the
Old dispensation ; and the voice from the New dispen
sation is, ' ' Te fathers, provoke not your children to
wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord. ' ' The most beautiful act in the bf e of
Christ is when He took young children in His arms and
blessed them. And why all this tender interest in
childhood ? As is the child, so will be the man. How
vast the possibilities of childhood ! In Rome there are
two pictures painted by the same artist and representing
the same person. One is the delineation of innocence,
and the other that of guilt. The artist had seen a bttle
child in all the beauty of pristine purity, and drew its
charming features on the canvas. Tears afterward in
the streets of Rome he beheld a man with dishevelled
hair and haggard countenance and tattered garments—
the impersonation of crime. That man was once that
lovely child. One of our saddest reflections is that aU
the criminals in our penitentiaries, all the Magdalehs who
have gone astray from the paths of virtue, were once in
nocent and beautiful children on the bosom of maternity.
And it is among our most joyous reflections that all the
men and women who have risen to distinction, who fill

IMPURE LITERATURE. 89
positions of trust and honor, who are ornaments in
society and pillars in the Church of God,, were once little
children. Hence, who can wonder that so much of Holy
Scripture is devoted to the proper training and develop-
meflt of the childhood of our race ?
What are some of the weighty reasons why due atten
tion should be given to the books our children read ?
The young mind is on the alert to know, for its sur
roundings are new and novel. All that is familiar and
old to us, is new and strange to children. The little
child is a traveller in a new world. Some of you can
recall the first time you visited foreign lands. What
curiosity was excited ! How novel everything appeared !
How many were the questions you asked ! To the citi^
zens of those distant lands, who had grown familiar with
the scenes surrounding them, they had little or no
novelty ; but to you, as a stranger and a traveller, every
palace, and venerable church, and sacred shrine, aud
moss-clad tower, and famous battle-field, and scene of
some wondrous deed' that illuminates the page of history,
was full of novelty and interest.
In this respect the child is' not unlike yourself. The
world of nature, familiar to you, is strange to the child,
and excites its curiosity and wonder. The sun, that has
shed its golden light upon our earth for sixty centuries ;
the moon, that has silvered earth and ocean since the
Creation ; the stars, that have jewelled the firmament
since long before the wise men followed the Star of
Bethlehem ; the thunder, and the lightning, and the
tornado, and the beautiful rainbow — these are among
theN many things in nature with which we are familiar,
but which are new and marvellous to childhood. The
prayer of childhood is, " Tell me a story." This infant
appeal is not so much for amusement as for information ;

90 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
for the young mind is hungry to know, and finds pleas-.
ure in knowledge.
Mind must have material for thought. Both body
and mind have growth. Food and knowledge are anal
ogous ; food for the body, thought for the mind. As
the body would perish without nourishment, so the mind
would languish without intelligence. Mind is a field,
wherein wib grow either weeds .or grains. Mind is a
studio, wherein wib be found forms of beauty or ob
jects of deformity. Mind is a builder, and the habita-'
tion that it rears will be either a palace or a hovel.
What the mulberry-leaves are to the silkworm, which
feeds upon them, so is thought to the mind. Mind
must have thought, whether good or bad. The com
panionship of thought is as real as the companionship
of men. Should we exercise care in the choice of those
with whom we associate,, because of their influence in
moulding our characters and guiding our destiny ? So
we should watch over the character of the thoughts
with which we hold constant communion.
There are three sources of thought— namely, Obser
vation, Reflection, and Communication. The last
should be subdivided into Conversation and Books.
Our first mental impressions are received through the
senses — through eye, and ear, and lip, and nerve. Out
of these impressions the imagination weaves new forms
of mental being, and by its magic power of combina
tion it creates the new out of the old. The furniture
of the mind comes largely from conversation, but books
are the material for reflection. They stimulate thought.
Thought is the parent of power. It moulds the man,
and gives direction to his life. It has the sweep and
sway of power that belongs neither to the sword nor to
the sceptre. Take two great contemporaries, one a

IMPURE LITERATURE. 91
philosopher and the other a warrior, one the master and
the other the pupil ; and behold the difference ! Alex
ander the Great carried his victorious banner to the very
banks "of the Indus, but his empire has faded from the
vision of mankind. Aristotle carried his victorious
banner into aU the realms of knowledge, and to-day he
sways his mental sceptre over the opinions of the civil
ized world.
What shab the thought of childhood be ? What shall
the books of childhood be ? There is intimate compan
ionship in books. Show me a man's books, and I will
show you the man himself.
And what is the relative effect of good and of bad
books upon their respective readers ? Take the criminal
classes of our great city, especially those between the
ages of seven and twenty, and you will find that the
majority of them have been under the influence of im
pure literature. Out of 3813 inmates of our Houses of
Refuge, between the ages, of sixteen and seventeen,
nearly all who could read were readers of dime novels.
Seven eighths of all the inmates of our Juvenile -Asy
lum were under the same baneful influence. Jesse
Pomeroy confessed that, before he committed his hor-.
rid crime, he had read not less than sixty dime novels.
Who was not lately startled by the story of the son of a
Mississippi judge who was found guilty of murder ? In
his sunny South, amid his beautiful savannahs, he had
read the stories' of criminal adventures, and his parents
had not disapproved of this kind of literature. He was 1
thrilled with a desire for freedom; he fled from the
parental roof ; he plunged into Mexico ; he returned to
Texas, and thence to New England, where the once inno
cent, manly, and fascinating youth, corrupted by impure
fiction, .committed the greatest crime known to the law..

92 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
The New Tork Sun of November 12th, 1883, pub
lished the following :
HE READ DIME NOVELS,
AND ORGANIZED A SOCIETY THAT ISSUED DEATH-WABRANTS TO
ITS ENEMIES.
Cleveland, November 11. — Bertie Gaylord, aged fourteen
years, is missing from his home in this city. His parents live in
Arlington Street, an aristocratic quarter. The lad disappeared a
week ago, taking with him two revolvers. His departure was the
direct result of reading cheap literature. An examination of the
papers left behind him shows that about four weeks ago he organ
ized a secret society called the " Society of the Silver Skulls."
It had a membership of about ten boys, whose ages ranged from
eleven to fifteen years. Their meetings and initiatory ceremonies
were held in a barn on Arlington Street. The following is the
oath each candidate had to take before he became a member. It
is in the handwriting of young Gaylord :
" Cursed be friendship. Cursed be fathers, mothers, sisters,
brothers. May the offspring of ourselves canker, blister, and
decay upon its dying mother's breast ; may the blood of each
breed pestiferous plagues ; may the hair of each fall from his
head, the teeth crumble in his jaws, the brain rot in his skull, the
eyes canker and fall from their sockets, and the fingers grow
palsied if we ever betray the secrets of the Skulls. So do you
swear. Death to our enemies. Life to the Skulls."
Jason Caskey is a young lad who in some way incurred the dis
pleasure of "The Skulls." Two weeks ago his ' death-warrant
was sent to him. It is written in red ink to signify blood. At
the top of the paper is a grinning skull and cross-bones, and
directly below it is a bloody hand, with the woTd " Death" writ
ten in it. Underneath is the following :
"Jason Caskey: One month from to-night, November 2d, if
you do not join us, you will receive your death-warrant, and two
days from then your death. By order of The Skulls."
Take the statistics of youthful criminals in the city of
New Tork for six months. How startling are the

IMPURE LITERATURE. 93*
facts ! Their ages were from seven to twenty : Nineteen
committed murder, 50 attempted murder, 100 were
guilty of burglary, 32 of highway robbery, 35 of
grand larceny and 93 of larceny ; 19 were drunkards,
16 were suicides, 12 attempted suicide, 11 were mur
dered, while others were guilty of train-wrecking, of
arson, of forgery, of counterfeiting, of picking pockets,
of manslaughter, of conspiracy to kill, of mail robbery,
and of mabcious mischief — in all 441 youthful crimi
nals. Now let us turn our attention 'to some of these im
pure publications, and to the extent of their circulation.
It is said that there are six hundred thousand copies of
story papers for the young published weekly in the city
of New Tork. Three of our metropolitan publishers
have issued 670 different trashy story-books and periodi
cals. Let us look over the contents of one of these
weekly papers, " A Story Paper." How attractive to
the young ! Here are some of the contents of a single
number :
" A conspiracy against a school-girl."
" One girl hired to personate a rich girl, and marry a
villain in her stead. " ,
" A beautiful girl, by lying deceit, seeks to captivate
one whom she loves."
" Six assaults upon an officer while resisting arrests."
" A conspiracy against an officer to prevent the ar
rest of a criminal."
" A man murdered by masked burglars."
" A woman who died in New Tork comes to life in
Italy." " Two attempted assassinations."
" One confidence operator at work to swindle a
stranger."

94 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
" An assault on the highway."
" A hired assassin."
" One babe stolen to substitute for another."
" One case of clandestine correspondence, and meet
ings between a girl and her lover."
" A girl running away at night marries to hide her
shame." And then, as a compensation :
" A sermon from a celebrated Brooklyn divine."
As though a Brooklyn sermon could save any man,
better than any other sermon. Two columns of a ser
mon, to offset thirty-four columns of diabolical trash,
designed to corrupt the childhood of the Republic.
And as to the author, what must be the moral turpi
tude, the utter filthiness, of the mind of man or woman
through which is weekly filtered such mental putrefac
tion ? Do not tell me of sources of rotten fens, or mala*
rious marshes ; there is nothing on earth that can com
pare to the detestable filthiness of the mind of such an
author. But let us turn to what claims to be a more respect
able source of literature— namely, our daily papers, our
metropolitan journals, owned by respectable and church-
going citizens, and edited by scholarly gentlemen, with
whom it is always a pleasure to meet. Tet what a ban
quet of crimes do they serve up to us every morning !
Murder, theft, arson, abduction, adultery, divorce. It
were enough to say that one brute had killed another ;
that a wretch had violated his marriage vows ; that a
man, bereft of honor and virtue, had committed depre
dations upon the property of another. But the mere
statement of facts seems not to be sufficient. The de
tails are given by an artist's hand. Reporters are schol
ars ; they are university men ; they are nothing unless

IMPURE LITERATURE. 95
they are artists ; they must give the details of crime in
sensational descriptions. The effect of all this is to gild
crime, to induce a recklessness of life, to cheapen female
virtue, to inspire the young with a desire to be a hero
in crime. Tour children read these papers. They
could not learn more of crime were they the associates
of the criminals themselves. Indeed* it were far better
for them to be the associates of such criminals, for then
they would see the hideousness of vice, of a criminal
life, in the debauched physique, in the bloody encoun
ters, and in the scenes which follow. But now their
thoughts become their criminal companions, and the
glamour of romance is thrown around these terrible
deeds. In your intense business life you read what is neces
sary for your information of passing events, and leave
these papers to fall into the hands of your children.
What they read becomes the subject of conversation
with their school and street companions, and thus a new
edition of the story of the crime is issued.
When will public opinion demand a reformation in
American journalism to exclude whatever is offensive to
refined taste and corrupting to the sensibilities of the
young? _
Now let us turn our attention to the dime novel. I
do not object to fiction as the vehicle of entertainment
and instruction. Fiction is truth taught through the im
agination. Individuals are brought into such relative
positions as to develop sentiment and passion. How
great the pleasure given by a work of pure fiction
Wherein the highest order of genius is displayed in the
conception of the plot, in the arrangement of the inci
dents, and in the development of the story up to the de
nouement, but never violating the actuabties of human

96 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
life ! Who does not recall the pleasure of reading Scott,
and Thackeray, and Dickens ? Who has not been fired
with indignation, and excited with merriment, as he has
read the satirists and humorists of the past and of the
present ? Bunyan wrote fiction. There is fiction in the
Bible. Some of the parables of our Lord are supposi
tions, the creations of His divine imagination to illustrate
what might be.
Some saints may be quaking under the assertion that
their pastor believes in fiction. If so, let them quake
until they are rid of their bigotry, and can rise to the
appreciation of this class of literature, which has been so
potent in the vindication of truth.
But there is a difference between the novel and novel
reading. One is the style of instruction, and the other
may be a mental habit. The habitual novel-reader sur
renders his mind and life to fiction which dwarfs the
mind, which is a perpetual appeal to the emotions, and
which leads to levity of life, levity of motive, levity of
feeling. The habitual novel reader abandons himself to
the wild play of the imagination, dwells on beautiful
forms never realized, does violence to the relation of the
emotions to conduct, and violates the law of means to
ends. "Ignorance is bliss." There should -not be a
doubt of this proposition ; and an uninformed mind is
preferable to one that has become a monstrosity through
the reading of fiction.
And what is the duty of parents in the intellectual
training of their children ? To study the trend of their
minds, and to furnish them with proper books — books of
love, of romance, of adventure, of sport, of fun. Do
not dose them with stupid religious books. Keep from
them the sensational novel, which inflames the imagina
tion. Keep from them the stories of criminals who are

IMPURE LITERATURE. 97
idealized into heroes. Keep from them the record of
sympathetic jurors weeping over some magdalen. As
there are evils of the intellect which should be avoided,
so there are amusements of the intellect which should be
furnished ; for such amusements are the antidote of
criminal indulgence.
There is nothing in the whole realm of even the best
fiction that is more interesting and exciting than the
adventures of explorers, the scenes of foreign travel, the
abstract truths of science, brought down to the compre
hension of the common mind and delineated with genu
ine enchantment. What intellectual pleasure there is
to be found in poetry, whether epic or pastoral, whether
sacred or secular ! Nothing in romance is more thrill
ing, whether to child or man, than the histories of
nations written by modern scholars. What splendid
books have been produced on every department of nat
ure — on the habits of animals, on the characteristics of
flowers, on the peculiarities of trees ! It only requires a
little attention on the part of parents to furnish their
children with books which wib at once entertain and in
struct. Because of the baneful influence on childhood of cer
tain vicious books, parents should converse with their
children on topics which, from a mistaken modesty, are
usuaby avoided. Children will soon learn the nature of
these topics. Their imagination will throw a false light
upon the forbidden subject, and that light will be inten
sified by bad books. The father should make a com
panion of his son, and the mother should make a com
panion of her daughter. Whatever is natural is pure.
Those things which we esteem the secrets of nature
should be subjects of familiar conversation between par
ents and children. Let me speak calmly and plainly.

98 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
There is one vice that is sapping the very life of the
Republic. It is most prevalent among our youth of
both sexes. If we may rely upon the testimony of
physicians and upon medical books, if certain diseases
are tell-tales, wasting the constitution and bringing on
premature death, then there can be no question of the
prevalence of this vice. Parents are greatly to blame
for this. The children are ignorant of the wrong-doing.
They experience the temporary pleasure, but are in
nocent of the guilt. The impure bterature of the
period ministers to this vice. It as clandestinely sent to
our institutions of learning ; and to such an extent was
this the case in one New England female college that
its president was compelled to adopt the rule that no
pupil should be allowed to receive anything by mail-^-
whether book, or paper, or letter — until the contents of
the same had been examined. Do you say this is a del
icate subject ? That does but half express it. It is a
momentous subject. It involves the childhood of the
Republic. Our great American admiral, Farragut, was
saved by the conversation of his father. When the son
was ten years old he had contracted vicious and vitiating
habits. He was his father's cabin-boy: As a wise and
prudent parent, the father conversed with his son on the
evil influence of the habits which he had contracted, and
then and there, in his father's cabin, and under the old
flag of the nation, the boy made a series of resolves
which led to a noble life, and gave to the Repubbc the
greatest of admirals.
Above all, parents should make the study of the Bible
a joyous task. To the ordinary child that holy Book is
surrounded with an overpowering solemnity. Its very
presence is made to inspire a feeling of dread, and the
child approaches it with a sense of fear. All this is

IMPURE LITERATURE. 99
wrong. The study of the Sacred Scriptures should be
made a joyous duty. The charming parables, the wise
proverbs, the romantic story of Joseph, the interesting
and eventful life of David, the fascinating narratives of
Bethlehem, and Bethany, and Nazareth, and the gala-
day life of our Lord, who came as a bridegroom — these
and similar subjects should be made attractive to the
plastic, inquiring minds of the youth of our land.

CHAPTER VIII.
GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING.
Gambling is an ancient vice. All the authentic his
tories, all the reliable traditions, are in proof of its uni
versality, and that, from time immemorial, it has been
co-extensive with the abode and business of man. The
Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians gambled.
Under the Empire and under the Repubbc, the evil ex
isted to such an extent among the Romans that legisla
tion was a necessity. In the best days of the Greeks, in
the Golden Age of Pericles, the evil prevailed through
out the Grecian Confederation. The present is like the
past. From the emperor to the coolie, the Chinese are
a natiorr of gamblers. This social vice is prevalent in
Japan and India and Persia. It is rife among the
Turks. When saibngup the Persian Gulf, I saw a com
pany of Mohammedan pilgrims en route to some sacred
shrine, and they divided the twenty-four hours of the
day, between prayers and games. When they did not
pray, they gambled. Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany,
and France have been compelled to bring the power of
law against this ruinous evil. Prior to the unification of
Germany, not a few -of the petty states were supported
from revenues derived from licensed gambling establish
ments. England is no exception. According to Veck-
man, " The first lottery was proposed in the years 1567
and 1568, and, held at the west door of St. Paul's
Cathedral, was drawn day and night from the 11th of
January, 1569, to the 6th of May the same year. It

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 101
contained 400,000 tickets at ten shillings each. The
prizes consisted partly of money and partly of silver
plate and other articles. The net profit was to be em
ployed in improving the English harbors. In 1746 a
loan of £3,000,000 was raised on 4 per cent annuities,
and a lottery of 50,000 tickets at £10 each ; and in
1747, £1,000,000 was raised by the sale of 100,000
tickets, the prizes in wHieh were funded in perpetual
annuities at the rate of 4 per cent per annum. During
the same century the Government constantly availed it
self of this means to raise money for various publiG
works, of which the British Museum and Westminster
Bridge are web-known examples." But by an act in
1823 lotteries were rendered _ illegal. Nor are Ameri
cans .strangers to this vice. In some of the States a
revenue is derived from licensed gambling saloons.
The Territory of Montana is a sad example. In Ken
tucky and Louisiana lotteries are under the protection of
the commonwealth, and now the Postmaster- General of
the United States is forbidding the circulation of the
printed advertisements of these lotteries through the
mails. This social vice appeals to all classes for correc
tion. It appeals to every employer, it appeals to every
parent, it appeals with unwonted force to the wives and
mothers of the Republic.
What is gambling, and what are its evils ?
Gambling is an abuse of an innocent pastime. Some
one has said that vice is the excess of virtue. That
which is innocent in itself becomes, a crime by excessive
use. All nations have their games of recreation and
pleasure. A nation without games is a nation of idiots.
The people should have their pastimes. But it is a sad
commentary upon the depravity of humanity that inno
cent pleasures are degraded into destroying evils.

102 CHRISTIANITY -TRIUMPHANT.
It may not be easy to define the sin of gambling.
The word belongs to that family of words "games and
gaming," and in its origin means sport, fun. For want
of a better term we call it a social vice, because of the
evils which flow therefrom to society.
Gambling is the staking of property to win or to lose
on mere hazard. It is not gain for gain. It ignores the
law of equivalents. It is something for nothing.
All industry, all trade, all legitimate business, isbased
on the law of something for something. What does the
winner give in exchange for the money he takes ?
Nothing. A man has a right to give his property, and
he receives a reward for the same in the consciousness of
a kindness done ; but in gambbng he does not intend
to give his money. The winner does not intend to give
an equivalent in return. Gambling is robbery by
mutual consent.
Gambling is the enemy of healthful and manly laDor.
It means money without work. Its chief maxim is,
" Take care of yourself ; sacrifice others." Do you say
the gambler works ? So does the bank robber. How im
mense the skill, the patience, and the effort of him who
robs a bank ! But it is a criminal work. It is an effort
condemned by public opinion and just laws. Do you say
the gambler displays skill ? Tes, but his is not the hon
orable skill of the pilot who guides his ship in a danger
ous sea ; nor of the lawyer who applies constitutional
and statutory law in the intricacies of a case involving
life or property or reputation ; it is not the skifl of the
artist in the production of works of art to refine public
taste and adorn the face of society ; it is not the skill of
the merchant in the wise management of trade ; it is not
the skill of the banker in the appbcation of the princi
ples of finance ; it is not the skill of the statesman who

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 103
applies political economy to the welfare of the people ;
it is not the skill of the physician who studies to cure
disease and to put a heart beneath the ribs of death ; but
it is the skill that sets at defiance all the laws of honor
able labor. It is the development of a cunning to lie
and cheat and rob.
I do not say that gambling is atheism, but I declare
that it is contrary to the established laws of nature.
Chance is the god of the gambler. He constantly ap
peals to the very uncertain and variable law of chance.
Some mathematicians have sought to ascertain and for
mulate the law of chance, and they assert : "If you
throw the dice it is thirty to one against your turning up
a particular number, and one hundred to one against
your repeating the same throw three times running ;
and so on in an augmenting ratio. Tou take the box
and throw ; at the first cast, up comes an unlucky num
ber that beggars you." Tou have no right to expose
your property on such a tremendous margin of thirty to
one, and of one hundred to one. There is certainty in
agriculture ; there is certainty in commerce ; there is
certainty in manufacture. God has ordained laws of
honest industry, but these do not operate on such an im
mense margin. Do you tell me there is hazard in every
thing ? True ; but not to the same extent as in this.
Men may be deceived in bargains which they make, in
their investments, in their transactions ; but in all these
there is a reasonable certainty of return. I do not say
that gambling is confined to cards and dice.
The principles of gambling are sometimes acted upon
where there is neither wager nor play. Some men gam
ble with capital instead of cards, and take the chances.
They throw their immense financial strength in favor of
depression or of inflation, and hope thereby to win.

104 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
Some gamble with the capital of others in reckless spec
ulation. Some gamble with false capital, which is a be
and a cheat. It is a mere fancy ; it has no existence or
representation. It is a name without fame. Some gam
ble with ballots instead of dice, and the action of legis
latures is influenced thereby. It is a statement made
before one of our courts that one railroad company, in
the State of New Tork, paid $60,000 one year, and
$205,000 another year, to obtain legislation ; and it was
obtained. It is a duty of legislators to enact laws for
the benefit of the people without bribes or money cor
ruption. But these large sums were paid to rob the
commonwealth. Some men are too saintly to touch
a card or throw a dice, yet they will risk the property of
widows and orphans in an amount or kind of busi
ness for which their own resources are unequal. I
would rather take the chances of a professional gambler
at the bar of God than the chances of one of these
saintly scoundrels who gamble with the money of
widows and orphans. Public prejudice has segregated
one branch of business in New Tork and pronounced its
withering condemnation on it. One street is held up as
the resort of gamblers and robbers. I am not the de
fender of Wall Street, but I would as soon take my
chances for heaven from Wall Street as from Broadway,
from a stock broker's office as from some banking-
houses, or the headquarters of certain railway magnates.
There are members of the Stock Exchange as honorable
and honest as are any members of the venerable Cham
ber of Commerce of our great metropobs. It is quite
true there are two classes of persons who frequent Wall
Street who are a disgrace to honorable. men : those who
seek to depress certain stocks or other securities by de
stroying confidence in particular individuals, or in the

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 105
value of the properties themselves, and then take advan
tage of such depression to accumulate a sudden fortune ;
and those who seek the same end by the unnatural and
unhealthy inflation of stocks and other properties, and
thus come into possession of ill-gotten gains. Such men
are not only gamblers, but they should be classed as
criminals before the law. A citizen has the right to pur
chase stock out and out ; but it is an appeal to chance,
it is downright gambling, to put up a margin and then
either to seek, by personal means, the depression or in
flation of such stock, or to take the chances on their rise
or fall. This is gambling ; it is. an appeal to chance ; it
is one hundred to one. Many a man has put up his only
thousand dollars as a margin and lost, and then whined
in the ear of Providence over the misfortune that befell
him. Gambling is an injurious excitement without compen
sation and consolation. The gambler has hope, but it is
not an anchor. It is an unmanageable sail that bears him
upon the rocks. It is an excitement that consumes but
never recreates. It does not promote health or happi
ness. The loser has no compensation. When the
merchant loses, from circumstances beyond his control,
be has the consolation of knowing that he did his duty.
He has regret, but no remorse. He has the sympathy
of others, and needs not their pity. God gives him con
solation ; he needs no pardon. The young man who lost
$150,000 at cards could not say, " I did my best, and
Providence sent me adversity."' He has remorse, not
regret. He may claim our pity, not bur sympathy.
When all that the merchant had is lost, his character is
safe. When the gambler has lost his all, that include^
bis character.
What a strange fascination there is in gambling !

106 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
What a spell it throws over the imagination ! No ser
pent ever charmed a bird with greater power, no fowler
ever set a snare from which it was so difficult to escape.
Why ? Gambling is an appeal to the pride of skill, to
the love of superiority, to the heroism of our nature,
and, above all, to gain without work. We all have seen
some man under this strange fascination. It is mightier
than other forms of delusion. We have seen an hon
ored father and husband under the fascination of a
strange woman — beautiful, artful, enticing. He re
solves not to yield ; his conscience is against yielding ;
he recalls his happy home, the wife of his bosom and
the children of his loins, but the strange woman leads
him astray. We have seen some great, imperial spirit
under the charm of intoxication. Resolutions are made,
vows are recorded, efforts are put forth ; in a moment
of holy revenge the evil is consigned to the lowest hell,
but the man has been charmed. We have seen the
novel reader in a revery, wherein the imagination has
been peopled with forms of fancy, in which the actuali
ties of life are disregarded and nature is perverted.
With these is the fascination of gambling. Ab the
better nature of the man is at times aroused against it.
He resolves and resolves again ; he promises wife and
children, the angels and his God, but he is under the in
fluence of an entrancing power. Who does not recall
with pity that young and brilliant lawyer, who had led
to the bridal altar one of the fairest daughters of the
land, whose happiness' lay in the embrace of a future
bke an ocean of pearls and diamonds, but who became
addicted to this entrancing vice ? The habit bad fast
ened upon him, its hooks of steel had entered his very
soul. On a certain night he lost heavily. He then
staked his splendid mansion, the patrimony from an

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 107
honored father. The home was lost. In despair he left
that heb of hells ; the night air touched his temples, but
could not chill to the death this charm of charmers. He
said there was one hope left ; he would return. The
gamblers looked amazed at his reappearance. As his
last stake— all that he had left in the world on which he
hoped to recover all that he had lost — he staked his
coach and horses. The game was played ; again he
lost. Leading the winner to the street, and pointing to
him, he said to the coachman, " Here is your master ;"
and then, in a despair that knew no relief, a homeless,
indigent wretch, he walked the streets of the silent,
sleeping city ; he looked at the stars of his childhood,
but they brought him no relief ; he lingered beneath the
light of the street lamp, which only revealed a counte
nance of despair ; he pressed his temples and cursed the
day of his birth.
Gambling leads to the most heartless associations. It
is proper to note the distinction between the professional
and the non-professional gamblers. The latter are per
sons engaged in legitimate business, who gamble for pas
time, or money, or both. All that I have said thus far
against this .vice I apply to the practice of these non
professionals. It is an abuse of an innocent pastime ; it
ignores the law of equivalents ; it tempts from lawful
labor ; it is a homage paid at the shrine of chance ; it is
an injurious excitement ; it ends in remorse.
Non-professional gambling is the feeder of the pro
fessional. Every private house wherein persons play for
money is a recruiting office of the gambling hell, to fill
the ranks of the professional gamblers. There is a
direct path that leads from the one to the other. Ask
that young man who lost so heavily at Saratoga last sum
mer where he acquired the propensity for gambling, and

108 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
he will tell you, "In the private residence of  ,"
wherein wealth abounds and beauty smiles. Why not
have your games for recreation without the hazard of a
dollar ?
Why should parents complain when their sons are
ruined ? Were I a dramatist I would write a drama of
five acts. First : A young man in a private house, at
cards, where beauty smiles and wealth abures. Second :
In a hotel, where gentlemen meet, where the game is
played for the refreshments of the hour, and where con
science is quieted by the soothing assurance that it is
only pastime. Third : A gambling bell, where the pro
fessionals do congregate, where the attention to the
game is intense, where self -consciousness reigns supreme,
where fortunes are won and lost. Fourth : A den of
thieves, from which decency and honor have departed,
where dishonesty holds high carnival, where depreda
tions on the property of honest citizens are organized,
where murder is planned. Fifth : A gallows, on which
hangs the form of that once young and splendid man.
It is the last game ; he loses aU.
Let us now look at the professional gamblers. Let us
go in fancy to the place where they do congregate. We
do not expect to find angels there, except fallen ones ;
nor saints, except those who have outlived their useful
ness ; nor church members, except hypocrites. What
is the average morabty of the gambling fraternity ?
Who are the men found in those resorts ? There is the
cynic, who sneers at virtue ; the polished debauchee, a
modern Chesterfield ; the " swell," who is attractive by
his flashing manners ; and the selfish man, bereft of all
sensibility, who will take the last dpllar, and then turn
the loser out into the cold, world.
Gambling is not an isolated vice ; it is attended with

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 109
a.whole retinue of evils. The sparkbng wine-cup passes
from lip to lip ; inebriety, is certain to follow ; intoxica
tion is a necessary inspiration ; the " strange woman" is
companion to gamblers— she whose steps take hold on
death and heb. There is a direct road from the gam
bbng hell to the penitentiary. Nearly all the embezzle
ments of which banking clerks have been convicted may
be traced to gambbng. This social vice disquabfies for
all the duties of life. . It rums the mechanic, the lawyer,
the physician, the statesman. It is the desolation of
home itself.
And what are the remedies ? Let the Pulpit lift up
its voice of warning. Let clergymen appreciate the ter
rible evil in all its bearings. Let them press home upon
the conscience of the people the great moralities of re
ligion. Let the Press keep the public informed of the
dangers to which society is exposed, and especially of
the derebction of the pobce, whose business it is to sup
press these places which entice the young men of our
city. And let parents, by precept and example, from
childhood to youtbhood, from youthhood to manhood,
throw around their sons and daughters those gracious in
fluences which will make home the supreme charm of
human life.

CHAPTER IX.
MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENT AT,.
" If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no
flesh while the world standeth." Such is the noble sen
timent of the noblest of men. Some of the Corinthian
bebevers had been converted to Christianity from idol
atry ; others from Judaism. The Jews abhorred what
ever had been offered in worship to an idol ; but the
Gentiles had not been thus educated. Some of the latter
had eaten of the meat which had been offered to an idol,
and having been instructed that an idol is nothing,
thought it no harm to eat the sacrificial meat. But there
were other Gentile converts who had not been so far en-
bghtened, and, not knowing the superior education of
their brethren, were in danger of being led astray by
their example. St. Paul appeals to the f ormer in behalf
of the latter. He concedes that an idol is nothing ; that
meat offered thereto in worship is not thereby necessarily
defiled ; that to eat thereof was not sin per se y but
because the eating thereof was a bad example, and
tended to the spiritual injury of those for whom Christ
died, he therefore appealed to them to desist from the
practice. It was an appeal to Christian magnanimity,
to philanthropy, to self-denial. Himself the example of
self-denial to all, in the fulness of his own great soul he
assures them, in the words already quoted: "If meat
make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the
world standeth."

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. HI
This incident in apostolic history suggests the present
line of thought on the subject of temperance. I pro
pose to appeal to the magnanimity of the better classes
in society to discontinue the moderate use of wines and
liquors, for the benefit of those who are in danger of
becoming confirmed inebriates. And in making this ap
peal, 1 propose to make certain concessions, to consider
the efficaciousness of this proposed self-denial, and then
to enforce the duty by a variety of motives.
I think we may concede three things. First, that
wines and liquors have their legitimate uses: I do not
say that they are indispensable, and have no substitute ;
but it may be safely affirmed that they may be used
beneficially. I am sure that every unbiassed man wib
feel with me bound to concede this much, and hence
those ultra views, consigning wines and liquors to perdi
tion, placing them under the ban of the Almighty and
of society, cannot find favor with calm .and reflecting
men. Were this the place, I could establish the fact,
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there are two kinds
of wine designated in the Bible. This distinction would
relieve from all embarrassment the Lord Jesus Christ,
by whose power
" The modest water, awed by power divine,
Confessed its God, and blushing turned to wine,"
and also relieve other Biblical characters and many pas
sages of Scripture from misapprehension, by showing the
distinction between the good wine and bad, as recorded
in the Bible. It is the utmost folly for any man to at
tempt to explain away certain passages of Scripture on
any other hypothesis than the one just mentioned.
Secondly, we are bound to concede that the man who
drinks wine and liquor moderately is not a drunkard as

112 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
denounced in the Holy Scriptures. By no fair interpre
tation "of language, by no proper use of ideas, can such a
man be brought under the ban of drunkenness as de
scribed in that passage, "No drunkard shall enter the
kingdom of heaven." Evidently scriptural drunken
ness implies a rubng passion, a degrading slavery, and a
power that has gained the mastery, which is superior to
the man himself.
In the next place, 1 think we are bound to concede
that all moderate drinkers do not become confirmed ine
briates. Tou and I can recall persons who, through a
series of many years, have been moderate drinkers, and
yet are not confirmed drunkards. The reason may be
found in their physical organism, which is not suscepti-.
ble to such influence in their case as in that of other per
sons. They may drink as much per day without apparent
injury as those who are sensibly affected by the same or
even by a less quantity. One inhalation of chloroform
will put one man to sleep, while the same quantity will
set another man wild. The difference is found in the
difference of organic susceptibility. Hence some men
may drink and not become confirmed in habits of ine
briation, because of the pecubarity of their organism.
That they are not drunkards is no credit to them ; it is
to be placed to the credit of their temperament, for
that which does not intoxicate them would and does in
toxicate others. Therefore, no argument in favor of the
free use of liquors can be drawn from those men who,
in despite, as it were, of nature, thus practise moderate
drinking through a long series of years. Let us, there
fore, remove this old sophistry, and make this point
plain and emphatic, and give the credit to nature and
not to man.
With these concessions freely admitted, let us now pass

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 113
to consider the question : Were the better classes of
society to discontinue the moderate use of wines and
bquors, would that tend to diminish the habit and evils
of intemperance ? If so, how ?
It would be the expression of apprehension that con
firmed inebriety might f obow. It would be the tocsin
of alarm. It would imply danger ahead. It would be
the reassertion of two facts — viz., that all confirmed
drunkards were once moderate drinkers, and that all
moderate drinkers may become confirmed inebriates.
Hence comes the law that absolute safety is in total ab
stinence. There is safety in that for all. This would
be an example and a warning.
It would render the trade in wines and liquors, in
cluding the manufacture and sale^-wholesale and retail
— of the same, less profitable, and lead to its abandon
ment. I suppose it is true that the larger profits of the
trade are derived from the sale of such wines and liquors
as are used by the higher classes of society ; that the
proprietors of our splendid saloons and hotel barrooms
derive a larger profit from fancy drinks than from
" whiskey straight. " The logical effect of the discon
tinuance of the use of such drinks by such persons would
be the closing up of nine tenths of all our fancy saloons
and hotel barrooms. This, in turn, would affect the
wholesale trade, and this the manufacturer ; and cutting
off the supply of drunkards from the ranks of moderate
drinkers and rendering the article of intoxication itself
Scarce, the end would be gained, and intemperance
would soon cease to exist. Many a man engages in the
wholesale and retail business of selbng liquor, not so
much from the love of liquor as from his cupidity.
And just as soon as these citizens find that their busi^
ness has ceased to be profitable, they will abandon it and

114 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
go into something else. If these are facts, are we not
justified in the assertion that a grave responsibibty for
the evils of intemperance rests upon the moderate
drinker and upon those who indulge in fancy drinks ?
Were the higher classes of society to discontinue the
moderate use of wines and liquors, the effect would be
to render the custom of drinking unfashionable. Fash
ion is only another term for public sentiment. Ac
knowledged evils are tolerated by common consent.
Public sentiment is the energy of law. There were laws
against duelling prior to the duel between Hamilton and
Burr, but for lack of public sentiment they were dead.
The death of Hamilton, however, changed the public
sentiment, and the duellist is now considered a barbari
an. Fashion is at once a master and a monster : a mas
ter in the supremacy of power, a monster in the cruelties
inflicted upon mankind. What and how we eat, our
style of dress, the construction of our dwellings, our
modes of travel, are all governed by fashion. Fashions
rarely come up. They almost always go down, till, in
the last modified form, they touch the bottom of society.
Extravagance in the rich begets extravagance in the
poor. Many a clerk has ended his days in the peniten
tiary because he lived beyond his means. Many a
daughter has forsaken the God of her youth, and gone
with her whose ways take hold on death, because she
coveted the pleasures of dress. What we want, there
fore, is to render the custom of drinking unfashionable,
so that those in the lower grades of life will not think
that they are out of the world if they do not imbibe from
the intoxicating cup. For the lower classes of society
have just reason to complain that the custom has been
set them in high places.
Then the plan I propose involves another thought. It

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. H5
would increase the power to persuade. Example is the
inspiration of persuasion. The bfe of Christ is of more
value to the world than His teachings. Without His
lofty, symmetrical character ; without His life of unpar
alleled purity and benevolence, His most wise and most
beautiful lessons would be to mankind "as sounding
brass and a tinkling cymbal." Here is a father on
whose dinner-table the wine sparkles ; he seeks to re
form an inebriated son. He pleads, he argues, he prays ;
but ab his arguments are paralyzed by his own moderate
drinking. " Physician, heal thyself," is the son's with
ering reply. The wise must educate the ignorant ; the
strong must strengthen the weak ; and only the pure can
save the guilty. " What is good for the father is good
for the son," is a satisfactory argument for the latter's
use. The persuasive power of example is the grqatest.
The pledge, societies, asylums, and law are proper, but
impotent without it.
But against this, our personal bberty may be urged as
a vabd objection. Personal bberty is a natural right,
and the freedom to exercise it is one of the noblest
achievements of the age. Each man has a right to him
self ; to the results of his mental and physical labors ; to
eat and drink and rest ; to pursue happiness. All this
should be conceded, and is. Tet there is not in all this
universe absolute liberty. The highest form of personal
liberty is bounded by the law of limitation. Tou can
grow only so high. You can eat only so much. Tou
can sleep only so long. Conceding this, may we not in
quire whether there is not another law of limitation or a
further limitation to this personal liberty — the law of
Christian self-denial which has its formal expression in
the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye even so to them : for this is.

116 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
the law and the prophets" ? And the same thought is
expressed in those words of Paul to the Romans :
" Let not your good be evil spoken of." Doubtless, too
much is often demanded of Christian men. The world
is hawk-eyed. It is rigorously exacting. Tet it is
better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. There are many
things innocent in themselves, but the true man prefers
to sacrifice them — to deny himself that which, though in
itself innocent, may be abused by others, and thus inno
cent pleasures be converted into criminal passions. Tou
and I have each a fast horse ; we are on the same road,
and try the speed of our respective animals, whatever
it may be — 2.50 or 2.20. There is nothing wrong in
that per se. Those horses were made by the Creator
for fleetness, and what is more delightful than to ride
behind one of those noble creatures ? But young men ob
serve us on the road ; they propose to try their fast
horses, and, in addition to the trial, bet a hundred dol
lars on the result. They transfer their habits from the
road to the race-course, and we see before them the
gambler's end. Self-denial, philanthropy, magnanimi
ty, should induce us to forego our pleasure for the good
of the others. The same thing is true in regard to
games of chance. There is nothing wrong per se in
our playing a game of cards. But the habit may become
an example to others who will abuse it. Doubtless you
and I could behold some tragedian or comedian on the
stage in some of the grand creations of the Bard of
Avon, and there would be no sin in it per se, for God
made Shakespeare and gave him his marvebous genius ;
and may not the day come when men may behold these
things without deleterious results ? But take the asso
ciations of the drama ; the associations of those con
nected with it, and their influence upon society, and the

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 117
good man foregoes the pleasure that he may save others
from consequences that may be traced to the drama. It
is a higher pleasure to know that by our self-denial we
have saved others from sin and death than to enjoy the
pleasures of which we have denied ourselves. Perhaps
the noblest question a man can put to himself is, " How-
may I .suffer and thereby save others ?" and he only has
reached the true humanity who can answer that question
by deeds of philanthropy and self-sacrifice.
But let us look at the motives which should induce us
to this self-denial. Let us remember that nothing great
or good is accomplished in any department of life with
out the practice of self-denial. Enter yon college, where
are two young men of equal endowments and equal
promise. Impatient of college restraint, preferring the
song, the dance, the race, one lags in his studies, and
with difficulty receives his diploma. The other is rarely
seen where wit sparkles, beauty glows, or fashion shines.
Pale, thoughtful, studious, his clear eye is dreamy ;
visions of the future rise before him. Charmed with
the languages, he hopes one day to speak in other
tongues, in which great men speak, in which great
thoughts are found ; or before him are long tables of
figures, and he is now competing with the older mathe
maticians for the prize of honor. Or, like Bacon, he
has marked out for himself a new course of scientific in
vestigation. This is the difference between Bonaparte
and Washington ; between Frederick the Great and
John Hpward ; between Chesterfield and -Sir Philip
Sidney. Our forefathers were British freemen. They
could have lived in comparative ease and freedom, but
they preferred to deny themselves wealth and ease that
tbey might achieve for us a better civilization.
The Son of God enjoyed a glory with the Father

118 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
before the world was. Enthroned in glory, worshipped
by angels, the Ruler of the universe, He might have re
mained amid the beatitudes of Paradise. But He laid
aside His crown ; He withdrew from the society of
angels ; He came to earth " a man of sorrows and ac
quainted with grief," to save a lost world. " For ye
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though
He was rich, yet, for your sakes, He became poor, that
ye through His poverty might be rich."
Take the whole history of the world from Adam to
this day, and whatever has been attained that is beauti
ful in art, beneficent in science, salutary in law, noble in
charity, Godbke in rebgion,_has been achieved by self-
denial. Is the sparkling wine so sweet and the animat
ing draught so fascinating that you cannot abandon them
to save millions from the drunkard's woes ? Tou should
be prompted to this duty of self-denial by the safety of
yourself and your family. Some of you may drink
moderately through a long series of years and not
become confirmed inebriates. Tou may be exceptional
cases, but from your ranks wib go the majorities to swell
the vast army of drunkards.
The great massacre in Damascus, in 1860, in which
hundreds were slain and millions of property destroyed,
had its origin in the quarrel of two schoolboys, one a
Mohammedan, the other a Christian. The great fire
which a few years since reduced to ashes the finest por
tion of Portland had its origin in the careless discharge
of a firecracker thrown from the hand of a boy. Total
abstinence is the only safety of some — the sure safety of
all. Every career of crime had its starting-point in
some small offence, and then the career widened and
lengthened like the Mississippi. Every drunkard can
retrace his life of sin and shame back to the first glass.

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 119
According to Grecian mythology, Jupiter commanded
Vulcan to make a beautiful woman, who was dressed by
Minerva, adorned with charms by Venus, and endowed
with a deceitful mind by Mercury. In her hand she ¦
held a casket, beautiful without, but within were all the
miseries of mankind. When admitted among men she
opened that fatal box, and forthwith stalked abroad, by
day as well as by night, all the maladies and woes which
now curse the human race. The first glass is Pandora's
casket, beautiful to look upon, ,but within are health
in ruins ; hopes destroyed ; affections crushed ; prayer
silenced ; grief sitting on the vacant seats of paternal
care, of filial piety, of brotherly love, of maternal devo
tion ; crimes of. every name and hue, from broken vows
to ghastly murders ; home deserted ; prisons whose hor
rid doors open inward ; poverty and vice, twin companr
_ ions ; shattered forms ; tormented souls ; a cheerless
grave ; a burning hell ; a dishonored bf e ; an offended
God. Where is woe ? where is sorrow ? where are conten
tions ? where are babblings ? where are wounds without
cause ? where is redness of eyes ? In the first glass !
O parents ! O children ! touch not the first glass !
Be induced to this self-denialby the happiness which
will accrue thereby to society at large. We shall infer
the happiness by contemplating the misery. Shall we
cab to our aid the sublime science of numbers in form
ing our estimate of this misery ? Statisticians, whose
learning and research command our confidence, inform us
that in the United States there are not less than 133,000
places bcensed to sell intoxicating liquors, employing
390,000 persons. And if to this number we add those
engaged in the manufacture and wholesale traffic, the
total number wib reach 570,000 persons, or one man to

120 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
every 75 inhabitants. But the whole number of clergy
men and teachers in our land engaged in the benevolent.
work of religion and education is only 150,000, or about
one fourth the above number. It is estimated that the
total cost of intoxicating bquors used each year in our
country is $700,000,000, to which must be added $40,-
000,000 for criminals, while the entire clergy of the
country does not cost $30,000,000. It is estimated that
every year intemperance sends to prison 100,000 per
sons, reduces 200,000 children to worse than orphanage,
adds 600,000 to the long list of drunkards, and sends
60,000 citizens to premature graves. It is also estimated
that while fewer women drink than men, yet a larger
proportion of those who do drink become habitual
drunkards. In New Tork, within the last ten years,
put of 133,000 persons arrested for intoxication, 66,000
.were women ! Alas for a woman drunkard ! How our
thoughts are roused to pity and our words to complaint
when we think what might have been the result to us if
our mother, our wife, our daughter, our sister had gone
in the paths of intoxication ! Could I speak to women
high in social position to-day, and speak plainly, I would
speak with earnest emphasis. To me it is absolutely ap
palling as I mingle in society, to see with what readiness
those who are worthily called ladies — caUed so from their
virtue, their intebigence, their education, their acknowl
edged refinement — drink the sparkling champagne when
" it stirreth itself in the cup."
O women ! will you not lift your hands to heaven to
day, and swear that never in the future shall the spark
ling wine touch your lips ; never again shab your ex
ample be against total abstinence ?
Intemperance is the scourge of the world. There is
no evil written in the long catalogue of moral and politi-

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 121
cal woes attended with more harm to individuals or
to society than inebriation. Profanity, larceny, lying,
murder, are the offspring of intemperance. To substan
tiate this no elaborate argument is necessary ; for .the
records of our . penitentiaries, the inscription on the soli
tary prison wall written by the pen of time and the ink
of tears, and the pauper's grave, are all proofs in sup
port of the allegation, O inebriation ! thou habit of
foby, thou hast dimmed the brilbant genius of the legis
lator, philosopher, and orator, sealed the mouth of
heaven-commissioned ambassadors, torn the royal diadem
from the monarch's brow, and robbed the chieftain of
his hard-won laurels.
But it would be more tolerable if the evils resulting
from this pernicious habit were confined to the drunkard
himself. Tet it is not so ; for the lovely and intelligent
women of our land are the victims of his misery. They
drink in secret the cup of sorrow to its dregs ; and,
while we commiserate the condition of the unhappy
man, let us bft the curtain and behold the disconsolate,
weeping, heart-broken wife. Perhaps he won her in
the morning of life, when the bloom of youth, health,
and sobriety glowed upon his cheek, and the light of
genius animated his bewitching countenance. They
went to the altar with hearts of tenderness and love.
Heaven smiled upon the union. Hope sat, like a bird of
auspicious omen, high in the green leaves of fancy, and
poured into her bosom the sweet harmony of a terres
trial elysium. But her husband, in an unsuspected hour,
forgets his bridal pledge. The sparkbng bowl of friend
ship steals upon the hours of domestic enjoyment ; his
noble nature yields to the bright eyes of the charmer ;
and, alas, he becomes, step by step, a daily drunkard.
What scenes follow ? Night after night finds him in the

122 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
midst of his family brimful with spirits, and passions ;
his wife meets him with a trembling hand, an aching
heart, and a tearful eye ; his dear children retreat from
corner to corner as if an evil spirit had made its appear
ance ; and even his faithful dog skulks away with the
growl of anticipated blows. The bttle homestead
becomes the theatre of family broils and angry blows,
and neither his wife nor his children are secure from the
fury of his drunken madness. Where the sacred anthem
should bear aloft the sweet music of the family, the wild
song of the drunkard is chanted to the impious orgies of
vice. Where the grateful breath of prayer like incense
should waft to heaven their wants and woes, he pours
forth a torrent of curses upon their devoted heads.
Where the holy Bible should spread its banquet of wis
dom and love, he opens the tablets of a heart on which
are written the history of wretchedness and woe.
Who does not shudder at this mournful picture of des
olation and ruin ? But mark the condition of his wife ;
the cries of her half-clad, starving children ring in her
ears daily, and the hectic flush of premature death dries
up her briny tears as they trickle down her cheeks ; her
heart is a little city of ruins — hope, pride, fortune, and
happiness, all have departed ; and even while she binds
up his wounds, his gross ingratitude sends keenest pangs
to her heart. While she sheds tears of sympathy over
his wayward conduct, his cruel treatment freezes them
into ice-drops before they reach his bosom. While she
would entwine her affections around him as the virgin
bowers enfold the sturdy oak, his swebing anger and
feverish passions snap the gentle cords and spurn her
proffered tenderness. But still the doting wife grasps
the hand that withers her hopes of earthly happiness, and
leans tenderly upon that cheek that consumes the sweet-

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 123
ness of her yoUth, her health, her beauty. But why are
these things so ? Why this self-ruin and self-degrada
tion ? Why this prodigality and penury ? Why this
personal and domestic suffering and misery ? I answer
these interrogations calmly. Intemperance is supported
and perpetuated by fashion and law. Fashion — crimi
nal, nefarious, diabolical fashion — sanctions with its un
known power moderate drinking. In this. cold world
whatever is fashionable is right. No matter how inju
rious to health, corrupting to morals, or molesting to
society the practice may be, if it is only fashionable, it
is all right. It is. fashionable to drink that social glass ;
hence, people think they must drink. But let the world
remember that in our splendid saloons and fashionable
circles the inebriate's career begins, and that Bacchus
manufactures drunkards out of moderate drinkers.
This is but a mere outline of the picture of the great
scourge, which picture, in the fulness of awful detail,
God alone can paint. What, then, is the logical, philo
sophical conclusion, founded on truth and common-
sense ? It is this : That the race Can be saved from
these woes by the self-denial of the higher classes of
society ; that total abstinence is the safety of all ;
that, while^some who moderately drink may escape in
ebriety, yet total abstinence will be not only the safe
guard of them, but the safeguard of all. Then, in senti
ment with that glorious man, St. Paul, let us say, " If
wine make my brother to offend, I will drink no wine
while the world standeth." Doing this, you may be
imitators of Him who, though He was rich, became poor,
that we through His poverty might be made rich.
God awaits your decision. Recall the self-denial of
Christ for the benefit of mankind, then follow His ex
ample.

CHAPTER X.
COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY.
The duties of Christianity are twofold : ethical and
devotional. The former prescribe the relations between
man and man, such as bberty, justice, property, reputa
tion, veracity, chastity, citizenship ; the latter include
ab those relations which exist between God and man,
and comprehend reverence for His name, love for His
person, and obedience to His laws. It is one of the
blunders and crimes of our day to divorce the ethical
from the devotional. Men enter their sanctuaries on the
Sabbath day, and are conspicuous for their devoutness,
while in the every-day concerns of life they studiously
ignore those great moralities which underlie all accept
able worship to Almighty God. While we are bound to
rejoice in many well-known examples of commercial in
tegrity, we must deplore the prevalence of business dis
honesty. There is an evident want of appreciation of the sacred-
ness of property'. We esteem life sacred, and the mur
derer is hounded ; we esteem reputation sacred, and the
libeller is imprisoned ; we esteem family honor sacred,
and the traducer thereof is held up to public reprobation.
Why should we not esteem the rights of property as
sacred ? There is a dulness either in the intellect or in
the conscience touching this matter. Men who stand
the guardian of all other human rights invade this right
with the recklessness of a bandit. The controlling ques-

COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 125
tion of the day is not, " How can I make money ?" —
that is honest and honorable — but, " How can I get that
man's money?" Let us, therefore, seek to enlighten
the public mind and intone the public conscience to a
severer appreciation of man's natural right to property.
What is the foundation of this right ? Each man is
an individuabty. He possesses a body, which connects
him with the physical universe, and that universe is
modified to supply his wants. He is dependent upon it
— upon its air, its sun, the products of its soil — for the
continuance of his existence. He is a part of that uni
verse, and has a right to what he can extract from it by
the exercise of his natural powers. He has a right to
the wealth of the sea, of the air and of the earth, to so
much of it as is necessary to his existence and happiness.
He is thrown upon his own resources ; he must sink or
swim, he must live or die. This is his physical estate,
and any invasion therein is a crime against the order of
nature. Man possesses an intellect, and the exclusive right to
the products thereof. He may investigate nature and
publish his conclusions, he may entertain mankind by the
productions of his imagination, he may lift the burden
of toil from the shoulders of humanity by scientific dis
coveries or by useful inventions, in all of which he has
a prescriptive right. As there is this physical and in-
tebectual wealth, so there is the wealth of character,
spiritual attainment, which may be injured by perversion
and solicitation of evil. Every man has a right to him^
self, to what he is, to what he acquires, to what he-pro
duces ; the result is what men call property. Society
recognizes these property rights. By the law of nations
the first discoverer of a country is esteemed the rightful
possessor thereof. The first inventor of an art is ac-

126 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
corded the right to exercise the same to his own profit,
and he who fashions a piece of gold into some excellent
image has increased his right therein by virtue of his
skill. Around this right, divine and human law throws
its awful sanctions. From His throne Jehovah has said,
" Thou shalt not steal." He treats this right as a thing
acknowledged, directs His precepts against every act
violative of the same, and against the temper of mind
from which such violence proceeded. In harmony
therewith human governments, among their first acts,
protect this individual right in wealth, and treat the
offender as guilty of a wrong, and punish him accord
ingly. Upon the recognition of this right depend the exist
ence and progress of society. Ignore this right, and no
man would labor for more than is sufficient for his indi
vidual sustenance, inasmuch as he would have no more
right than any other man to the surplus. There would
be then no accumulation, no provision for the future, no
means by which improvements could be made. There
would be no noble cities, no elegant structures, no im
proved means of travel, no advanced and refined civili
zation. It is therefore a question which involves a dis
tinction between the savage and the barbarian. A
nation of thieves would be a nation of barbarians. The
triumph of Christianity would be an impossibility. Sur
plus wealth is indispensable to high civilization, and he ¦
who offends against this natural right of property is an
offender against the progress of society.
What are some of the more common violations of
this right ? Violence, deception, treachery. Property
taken without the consent of the owner is theft. This
is done by the individual robber, and by oppressive gov
ernments in the form of unjust taxation. This violence

COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 1,27
done to private property by legislative bodies is a crying
shame. Let us open our eyes to the fact. If govern
ments have no soul, it is our duty to put a soul into
them. But what are the business deceptions' of our day?
The intense competition in trade is doubtless the most
powerful temptation to deceive. He who presents
wrong motives to me for the purposes of gain, or need
lessly excites my fears, or inspires in me false hopes, or
inflames my vanity, or tempts me to avarice, does vio
lence to my right of property.
A broker on 'Change who causes false information to
be circulated for the purpose of raising or depressing the
price of securities, or the price of gold, and reaps profits
from that deep rascality, is a criminal against honesty.
He who gives publicity to the report that a given bank is.
on the verge of insolvency in order to depress its stock,
and then: purchases all that is thrown upon the market,
and he who gives currency to reports that some rotten
financial institution is solvent and flourishing, and then
sells out his holdings, is alike a criminal against prop-.
erty ; and to all such men God says, " Thou shalt not
steal." When, in the day of plenty, the shrewd, un
scrupulous speculator, by well-laid plans, monopobzes an
article of food to create an artificial scarcity, and thus
raises the price while the supply is abundant, and by so
doing causes the poor man to pay one hundred per cent
more for his food than the natural law of supply and de
mand requires, he is a robber of the poor as well as an
offender against the acknowledged principles of com
mercial integrity. A property-holder who has a fine
residence which, by facts in his possession, he knows
will soon fall in value, either by the tendency of the
better class of citizens to another part of the city, or

128 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
because a canal will soon be constructed, or' a railroad
built, or a building for some objectionable . purpose be
erected near that residence — if he hides these facts and
induces another person to purchase his mansion, he is not
doing as he would be done by. If it is said that this
practice is universal, that if we do not do it others will,
and thus the evil will remain, I answer that the plea is
offered in justification of one of the most wicked of
transactions. No matter what others may do, we know
better, and therefore we should not follow their bad ex
ample. But if the seller has no right to misrepresent the
quality of his wares, if he should not overpraise his
goods or excite the vanity of the buyer in order to lead
him to purchase them, neither should the buyer under
rate them in order to get them for less than their value.
The buyer may be not less a cheat than the seller.
Solomon has described this creature thus : " 'Tis
naught, 'tis naught, saith the buyer, but when he has
gone his way, then he boasteth." Between a rascally
seller and a rascally buyer there is simply a test of per
sonal sharpness.
Society is held together by the golden bands of mutual
confidence. Men must have faith in each other's integ
rity. It is the principle which holds together man and
wife, parent and child, employer and employe, friend
and friend, the government and the governed. Mutual
confidence underlies all business transactions. High
honor is no less necessary to commercial life than it is a
moral duty. Human nature never appears to better ad
vantage than when men prove true and honorable amid
the multiform temptations of commercial life. There
are times when a person is in such circumstances as to
compel him to intrust his property to another, and for

COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY; 129
that other to imperil that property in speculation is a
wanton betrayal of the trust reposed in him. There
is a sacredness connected with this intrusted property
peculiar to itself. Not long since ten thousand dollars
were deposited in the hands of the treasurer of a charita
ble institution subject to the draft of its proper officers.
In a moment of temptation that treasurer invested the
amount in a business transaction ; he failed, and the
money was lost. What was the ground of his justifica
tion ? What apology did he make ? What plea did he
offer ? That he did not intend to rob the needy. But
his intention had nothing to do with it. Underlying the
question of intention was his avarice and the betrayal of
a sacred trust. Men in our banking institutions guilty
of embezzlement — the appropriation of intrusted funds
in speculation — plead the purity of their intention ; but
God does not judge men according to their intentions ;
rather, He judges them according to their characters, out
of which intentions flow, as effects from causes.
The highest form of trust and honoris displayed by
society in selecting citizens to administer the affairs Of
civil government, and when that trust is betrayed for
purposes of personal gain, and that honor is tarnished by
official corruption, the offence assumes a deeper dye and
the criminality a greater turpitude. What can be a sad
der spectacle than for a man sitting in God's place on
the tribunal of justice, and receiving a bribe with which
to blind his eyes and pervert his judgment ? Or for a
legislator, chosen to make laws for a people, to be a
party to corrupt legislation in order to enrich himself at
the expense of the public welfare ? Or for an executive
or clerical officer to appropriate to his own uses that
which a too-confiding people have intrusted to his hon
esty and honor ? As we rise in the scale of moral re-

130 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
sponsibility from the midnight burglar, the murderous
highwayman, the cunning trickery of the merchant and
the buyer, the treacherous friend and the crafty specula
tor to the pubbc officer who holds high position in the
administration 'of government, we are bound to attach
greater guilt to the dishonest acts of the latter. There
are moral elements that enter into this kind of dishonesty
which invest the offence with a criminality that does not
attach to the dishonest acts of a private, citizen ; for to
dishonesty there is added hypocrisy ; the official is not
what he assumes to be — namely, the faithful steward of
the commonwealth. Under the robes of office there is a
duplicity which merits pubbc execration. He moves in
society with the apostobc exterior of Judas, but upon bis
soul are the finger-spots of the thirty pieces of silver.
To his duplicity he adds treachery. As the custodian of
the people's interests, he has betrayed the pubbc confi
dence, and proved unworthy the high trust committed to
his keeping. And to his other offences he adds the
crime of perjury. The oath of office is invested with all
the attributes of religious devotion. God has been cabed
upon to witness to the promise of his fidebty, but his
solemn oath has been disregarded, as his honor has been
tarnished, by his official corruption. Finally, to ab
these overt acts of dishonesty and hypocrisy and perjury
he adds the evil influence of his example as a leader of
public immorabty. " The wicked walk on every side
when the vilest men are exalted." When it is Ms per
sonal interest so to do, the dishonest pubbc officer will
oppose all measures for the moral improvement of
society ; he will command his minions to tempt others,
and through them he will extend his contaminating in
fluence and continue his vile and venal work.
And what are some of the prevalent causes leading to

¦ COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 131
• business dishonesty ? Extravagance, corrupt public sen
timent, inordinate love of wealth. The love of pomp
and show is excessive as it is pernicious in this country.
The vain desire to be considered rich is shown in partici
pation in those pleasures which only the affluent can
afford. Fashionable society remorselessly rejects ab
butterflies which have lost their brilliant colors. Either
to gratify a natural love for display or to indulge a desire
to mingle in fashionable society, many- a man has cheat
ed his business, by transferring his means to theatres,
race-courses, and costly entertainments. This dispropor
tion between income and legitimate expenses brings on a
crisis. The victim must be honest, live within his
means, and abandon his social rank, or be dishonest and
maintain . his position in fashionable society. Which
shall he choose — honesty with its mortifying social ex
clusion, or gayety purchased by dishonesty ? In such a
moment some men shrink from the gulf, appalled at the
dishonor which awaits them, but to too many, high life,
with all its fraud, is paradise. It is paradise for the
present only, for it is followed by a purga'tory of pubbc
shame and mental anguish.
Take that man" of extravagant pleasures. He has
reached a crisis. How can he pay the drafts upon him ?
Two ways open to him : crime or brilliant speculation.
Choosing the former, he stands guilty of embezzlement
or forgery. Choosing . the latter, his mind wanders in
dreams of gain, and golden visions arise before him.
He recalls the brilliant success of others ; he is enchant
ed by the glittering hope ; he ventures, and all is lost.
Tet he cannot be driven from society ; he must flourish
among the gay and festive ; in some feverish moment,
vibrating between conscience and avarice, he staggers to
a compromise ; he cannot steal, he will only borrow —

132 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
not openly, not from his employers, not from his fellow-
men, but from the vault ; he enters into a league with
that vault, he makes a companion of it, he swears it to
eternal secrecy, he whispers to it, "Vault, be thou my
confidant ;" he resolves to restore the money before de
tection can ensue, and to reap the profits. Failing in his
first attempt, he is led on, step by step, into a maze of
compbcations ; false entries are made, perjured oaths
are sworn, false papers are filed. He is cabed prosper
ous, he flourishes, he thinks himself safe, but he has em
barked on a sea over which sweep perpetual storms. At
length the day of discovery comes ; his guilty dreams
have long forsaken him, the dumb vault speaks as if
with a thousand tongues ; his guilt confronts him, his
doom is sealed, and he ends his miserable Jife either
suddenly by suicide, or untimely by a prolonged exist
ence of shame and infamy.
Closely abied with these evils is a corrupt pubbc sen
timent. Society scourges the thief of Necessity, but
pities the thief of Fashion ; the man who steals a loaf of
bread to feed his starving family is sent to jail, but the
man who is successful in bold, dishonorable speculation,
by which others have been wronged, is caressed by
society. There are men whose every thought is vile,
whose every impulse is vicious, who have grown gray in
the accumulation of ib-gotten gains, but who are wel
come wherever they choose to enter society.
Why is official dishonesty considered less disreputable
than dishonesty in private life ? A public man guilty of
many flagrant sins is treated with consideration, whereas
a private individual, who perhaps is less guilty, is shunned
as a pestilential criminal. Does the dignity of his office
cover the pubbc man like a cloak ? Does his office of
trust and power commend him to our respect ? Do we

COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 133
dread his displeasure ? Do his eminent abilities awaken
our admiration ? Does his good fortune in having been
chosen by the people command our consideration ?
Rather is it not because the public conscience is de
praved ? Is it not true that all we demand of a public
man is to reflect the public conscience ? If herise above
it be is denounced ; if he fab below it he is condemned.
To what extent is this official corruption due to a cor
rupt public sentiment ? When we see the tricks of the
petty merchant and his customer, the grasping avarice
of the capitabst, the bold, overreaching schemes of the
speculator, the crushing monopoly of banking, insurance,
and railroad companies, the incessant, gigantic struggle
of many men everywhere for the gold that perishes, may
we not expeet this spirit to penetrate the body politic ?
And when those who are called the foremost citizens
beleaguer halls of state and national legislation for the
passage of bills and offer inducements to legislators to
vote for their measures, the tempter is worse than the
tempted. When people rolling in wealth, accumulating
thousands and hundreds of thousands a year, will require
men of more ability to serve them as public officers for
a pittance so smaU that a first-class clerk in commercial
circles would despise, it is no marvel that the cupidity of
such should work corruption in public life. Let the
fountain purify itself , and the streams will be pure. Let
the people raise the standard of morals, and then demand
publie men to follow their example. May we not hope
that the day of reform has come, when all good men
everywhere will tighten the bands of pubbc honesty and
intone the conscience to a severer morality ? If this is
not done, the midnight of our ruin is at hand.
But underlying business dishonesty is a deeper cause,
found in man's inherent love of wealth. " The love of

134 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
money is the root of all evil." The strife of the world
to-day is for wealth, and to reach the goal men do not
strive lawfuby. In the attainment of riches professedly
good men do as they would not be done by. This
thought absorbs their waking hours and fills the visions
of their night. When foiled, they overreach ; when
disappointed, they become unscrupulous ; when brought
to the verge of ruin, they meditate crimes against man
and sins against God. The strife in American society
to-day is not for wisdom, nor for fame, but for wealth.
It is not true that Americans love money for the sake of
money. They love it for the pride and circumstance of
fortune, for the power that it produces over men and
nations, for the vanity that it gratifies in magnifying
their personal importance. But let us remember that
the great Master has proposed a sum which has never
yet been solved : " What shab it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose his own soul ?" A single soul
will outweigh a universe. Let us erect a pair of scales.
In one side place " the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,"
"the barbaric pearls and gold" of the East, the jewels
of Golconda, the spices of Ceylon, the treasures of El
Dorado, the possessions of Croesus, the jewebed crown of
Alexander, the buried treasures of the deep — nay, the
title-deeds of sun and moon and stars ; and in the other
side place one deathless soul, made in the image of God,
redeemed by His Son and winged for immortality ; and
behold, the beam changes — one soul outweighs a uni
verse !
We have seen what a magnificent defence Christianity
has made against the machinations of her enemies, from
the infidels of Jerusalem to the idolaters of Rome, the
atheists of France, the iconoclasts of Germany, the evolu-

COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 135"
tionists of England, and the agnostics of America. We
have seen the failure of infidelity to consummate its
crime against humanity, by its brazen assaidts upon the
genius of government, which combines the majesty of
law with the immutability of justice ; upon commercial
integrity, which is the parent of industry and the soul of
business ; upon the chastity of .woman, which implies
the modesty of maidenhood and the sanctity of mar
riage ;¦ upon the happiness of home, which is the foun
tain of love and the nursery of nations ; upon the im
mortality of the soul, which is the mainspring of virtue
and the inspiration of existence ; upon the omnipotence
of God, who is the Author of all things and the Sover
eign of the universe. We have seen the failure of infi-
debty to originate invention, to lead discovery, to civil
ize the savage, to reform the vicious, to estabbsh order,
to conserve society, to find a saving substitute for the
Faith which it repudiates, or to render an equivalent of
that love divine which melts the human heart and saves
the human soul, while it still remains a mystery to the
greatest human intebect.
Conversely, we have seen Christianity triumphant not
merely in her defence against infidel assaults, but mainly
in the onward movement of her mission to redeem the
world. We have seen — foreshadowed by the prophets,
guided by the Star of Bethlehem, led by the living
Christ, aided by apostles and evangebsts, illuminated by
the bves of saints, consecrated by the blood of martyrs,
cheered by the ministry of angels^we have seen that
the course of Christianity along the highway of the cen
turies has been one triumphal march of universal human
. progress. We have seen her grand achievements in the
building of churches by all evangelical denominations;
in the accessions to their congregations and commuhi-

136 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT.
cants ; in the demand for ministers and their devotion to
their duties ; in the training of the children in the Sab
bath-schools ; in the circulation of religious books and
periodicals, chiefly of the Bible, with its milbons of
copies in a multitude of languages ; in the support of
home and foreign missions ; in the number and influence
of educational institutions ; in the founding of public
charities, including asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the
blind, the insane, and the inebriate ; in the great dis
coveries in every field of human research, from new
countries to new principles ; in the wonderful achieve
ments of inventive genius ; in the harmonious operations
of bberty and law ; -in- international abiances. to prevent
barbarities ; in the elevation and influence of woman ;
in the abobtion of slavery ; in the marvebous increase of
the Christian populations of the world, which now num
ber more than seven hundred milbons.
We see Christianity triumphant all along the line of
the battle-field of life. She waves her banners, they are
of b'ght, they are of love ; she names her victories, they
are over evil, they are all of peace ; she claims . her
trophies, they are sinners saved, they are souls redeem
ed ; she crowns her heroes, they are the good of earth,
they are saints in Paradise. But she does not rest upon
her laurels, reposing in contented contemplation of her
well- won victories ; she is keenly conscious of how truly
activity is a law of life ; she is still advancing over other
fields of conquest toward the final fulfilment of her
destiny— the evangelization of the world.

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the set is completed by the delivery of Volume VTJ.
From the Urge number of hearty commendations of this import
ant work, we give the following to indicate the value set upon the
eame by
EMINENT THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS.
Philip Schaff, i?.D., the Eminent , tical work of the age on the Psalter is
Commentator and the President of the 'The Treasury of David,' by Charles H
American Bible Revision Committee, I Spurgeon. It is full of the force and
¦ays: " The most important and prac- I genius of this celebrated preacher, and
(ovee.)
tg-Th* above maris wiU it sent l? mail, postage paid, on receipt of thefrite.

PUBUCATWNS OF FUNK d WA&NALLS, NEW YORK.

rich In selections from the entire range
of literature."
Wlliam ffl. Taylor, D.D.,
New York says: ' In the exposition or
the heart 'Ihe TREASuity of David' is
sui generis, rich- in experience and pw
eminently devotional. The exposition
is aiwa s fresh. To the preacher it is '
especially suggestive."
John Hall, D.D., New ifovk,
says: ''There are two questions that
must interest every expositor of the
Divine Word. What does a particular
passage mean, and to what use is it to
be applied in public teaching? In the
department of the latter Mr. Spur
geon's great work on the Psalms is
without an equal. Eminently practical
in his own teaching, he has collected in
these volumes the best thoughts of the
best minds on the Psalter, and espe
cially of that great body.ldosely grouped
together as the Puritan divines. I am
heartily glad that by arrangements,
satisfactory to all concerned, tie Messrs.
Funk & W» -j nalla are to bring mis great
work within the reach of ministers
everywhere, as the English edition is
necessarily expensive. I wish the
highest success to the enterprise."
William Ormlston, T).X>. , New
Tork, says: " I consider ' The Tbeasury
of David' a work of surpassing excel
lence, of inestimable value to every stu
dent of the Vsalter. It will prove a
standard work on the Psalms for all
time. The instructive introductions,
the racy original expositions, the
numerous quaint Illustrations gath
ered from wide and varied fields, and
the suggestive sermonio hints, render
the volumes invaluable to all preachers,
and indispensable to every minister's
library. All who delight in reading the
Psaldjs — and what Christian does not?
— will prize .this work. It is a rich
cyclopaedia of the literature of tnose
ancient odes."
Then. 1.. Cuyler, D.D.. Brook
lyn, says: " I have used Mr. Spurgeon's
'The Tbeastjby of David' for three
years, and found it worthy of its name.
Whoso goeth in there will find * rich
spoils.' At both my visits to Mr. S. he
spoke with much enthusiasm of this
undertaking as one of his favorite
methods of enriching himself and
ethers." Jesse B. Thomas, D.D ., Brook
lyn, says: " I have the highest concep

tion of the sterling worth of all Mr.
Spurgeon's publications, and I incline
to regard his Tbeasubi of David' as
having received more of his loving
labor than any other. I regard its
publication at a lower price as a great
service to American Bible Students."
New Tork Observer says: " A
neb compendium of suggestive com
ment upon the richest devotional
poetry ever given to mankind. '
The Congregationalism., Eos-
ton, says: " As a devout and spiritually
suggestive work, it is meeting with
the warmest approval and receiving
the hearty commendation of the most
distinguished divines."
United Presbyterian, Pitts
burg, Pa., says: " It is unapproached
as a commentary on the Psalms. It is
of equal value to ministers and lay
men — a quality that works of the kind
rarely possess."
North American, Philadelphia,
Pa.: says: "Win find a place in the
library of every minister who knows
how to appreciate a good thing."
New York Independent says:
" He has ransacked evangelical litera-
ture.and conies forth, like Jessica from
her father's house, 'gilded with
ducats' and rich plunder in the shape
of good and helpful quotations.'
Sew York Tribune says! "For
the great majority of readers who seek
in the Psalms those practical lessons'
in which they are so rich, and those
wonderful interpretations of heart- life
and expression of emotion in which
they anticipate the New Testament, we
know of no book like this, nor as good.
It is literally a ' Treasury.' "
S. S. Times sa^s: "Mr. Spurgeon's
style is simple, direct and perspicuous,
often reminding one of the matchless
prose of Bunyan."
Western Christian Advocate,
Cincinnati, O ., Bays: " The price is ex
tremely moderate for so large and im
portant a work. * * * We have ex
amined this volume with care, and we
are greatly pleased with the plan of
execution." Christian Herald says: "Con
tains more felicitous illustrations,
more, valuable sermonie hints, than can
be found in all other works on the
same book put together."

JI&* The above vxtrks will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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