The Abominations of Modern Society Part 13

Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses G.o.d's indignation. The Bible reiterates, in paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after chapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphemers are accursed now, and are to be forever miserable. There is no iniquity that has been so often visited with the immediate curse of G.o.d.

At New Brunswick, a young man was standing on the railroad track blaspheming. The cars pa.s.sed, and he was found on the track with his tongue cut out. People could not understand how, with comparatively little bruising of the rest of his body, his tongue could have been cut out. Not long ago, in Chicago, a man told a falsehood, and said that he hoped, if what he said was not true, G.o.d would strike him dead. He instantly fell. There was no longer any pulse. There was no reason for his death, except that he asked G.o.d to strike him dead, and G.o.d did it. In Scotland a club was formed, in which the members competed as to which could use the most horrid oaths. The man who succeeded best in the infamy was made president of the club. His tongue began to swell. It protruded from his mouth. He could not draw it in. He died within three days. Physicians were astounded. There was nothing like it in all the books. What was the matter with him? _He cursed G.o.d, and died!_ Near Catskill, N.Y., during a thunder-storm, a group of men were standing in a blacksmith-shop. There came a crash of thunder, and the men were startled. One man said that he was not afraid; and he made a wager that he dared go out in front of the shop, while the lightnings were flying, and dare the Almighty. He went out; shook his fist at the heavens, crying, "Strike, if you dare!"

Instantly a thunder-bolt struck him. He was dead. He cursed G.o.d, and died!

G.o.d will not abide this sin. He will not let it escape. There is a kind of manifold paper by which a man may, with a heavy pencil, write upon a dozen sheets at once--the writing going down through all the sheets. So every oath and blasphemy goes through, and is written indelibly on every leaf of G.o.d's remembrance. Ah! how much our Father bears! Can you make an estimate of how many blasphemies will roll up from the streets and saloons of our cities to-night? If you go out and look up you cannot see them. There will be no trail of fire on the sky. But the air is full of them. The name of Christ is not so often spoken in wors.h.i.+p as in derision. G.o.d will be cursed to-night by hundreds of lips. The grog-shops will curse him. The houses of shame will curse him. Five Points will curse him. Bedford street will curse him. Chestnut street will curse him. Madison square will curse him.

Beacon street will curse him. Every street in all our cities will curse him.

This blasphemy is an abomination that no words of mine can describe.

And G.o.d hears it. They curse His name. They curse his Sabbath. They curse his Bible. They curse his people. They curse his Only Begotten Son. Yes; they swear by the name of Jesus! It makes my hair rise, and my flesh creep, and my blood chill, and my breath catch, and my foot halt.

Dionysius had a cave where men were incarcerated. At the top of the cave was an aperture to which he could put his ear, and could hear every sigh, every groan, every word of the inmates. This world is so arranged that all its voices go up to heaven. G.o.d puts down his ear and hears every word of praise offered, and every word of blasphemy spoken.

Our cities must come to judgment. All these oaths must be answered for. They die on the air, but they have an eternal echo. Listen for the echo. It rolls back from the ages to come. Listen:--"_All blasphemers shall have their place in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone_." Some have thought that a lost soul in the future world will do that which it was most p.r.o.ne to do in this world. If so, then think of a man blaspheming G.o.d through all eternity!

This habit grows upon a man, until at last it pushes him off forever.

I saw a man die with an oath between his teeth. Voltaire rose from his dying pillow, and, supposing that he saw Christ in the room, cried out, "Crush the wretch!" A celebrated officer during the last war fell mortally wounded, and the only word he sent to his wife was: "Tell her I fought like h.e.l.l!"

There are thousands of men who are having all their moral nature pulled down by the fiery fingers of this habit. At last, pinched, shrivelled, and consumed, they will get down on their beds to die, and at the step of the doctor in the hall, or the shutting of the front door, they will start up, thinking they hear the sepulchral gates creak open.

Who is this G.o.d that you should maltreat his name? Has he been haunting you, starving you, or freezing you all your life? No! He is your Father, patient and loving. He rocked your cradle with blessings, from the time you were born. He clothes you now, and always has clothed you. You never had a sickness but he was sorry for you. He has brooded over you with wings of love. He has tried to press you to his heart of kindness and compa.s.sion. He wants to forgive you. He wants to help you. He wants to make you happy. He watched last night over your pillow while you slept. He will watch to-night. He was your father's G.o.d, and your mother's. He has housed them safe from the blast, and he wants to shelter you. Do you trifle with his name? Do you smite him in the face? Do you thrust him back by your imprecations?

Who is this Jesus Christ that I hear men swearing by? Who is he? Some destroyer, that they so treat his name? What foul thing hath he done, that our great cities speak his name in thousand-voiced jeer and contempt? Who is he? A Lamb, whose blood simmered in the fires of sacrifice, to save you. A Brother, who put down his crown of glory that you might take it up. For many years he has been striving, night and day, to win your affections. There is nothing in heaven that he is not willing to give you. He came with blistered feet and streaming eyes, with aching head and broken heart to relieve you. On the craft of a doomed humanity he pushed out into the sea, to pick you off the rock. Who will ever again malign his name? Is there a hand that will ever again be lifted to wound him? If so, let that hand, blood-dipped, be lifted now. Which one of my readers will ever again utter his sacred name in imprecation? If any, now let them speak. Not one! Not one!

One summer among the New England hills there was an evening memorable for storm and darkness. The clouds, which had been all day gathering, at last unlimbered their batteries. The Housatonic, that flows in silence save as the paddles of pleasure-parties rattle in the row-lock, was lashed into foam and its waves staggered, not knowing where to lay themselves. The hills jarred at the rumbling of G.o.d's chariots. Blinding sheets of rain drove the cattle to the bars, and beat against the window-pane as if to dash it in. The corn-fields crouched in the fury, and the ripened grain-fields threw their crowns of gold at the feet of the storm-king. After the night shut in, it was a double night. Its black mantle was rent with the lightnings, and into its locks were twisted the leaves of uprooted oaks, and shreds of canvas torn from the masts of the beached s.h.i.+pping. It was such a night as makes you thank G.o.d for shelter, and bids you open the door to let in even the spaniel howling outside with the terror. We went to sleep under the full blast of heaven's great orchestra, and the forests with uplifted voice, in choiring hosts that filled all the side of the mountains, praising the Lord.

We waked not until the fingers of the sunny morn touched our eyelids.

We looked out and. Housatonic slept as quiet as a baby's dream.

Pillars of white cloud set up along the heavens looked like the castles of the blest, built for hierarchs of heaven on the beach of the azure sea. The trees sparkled as though there had been some great grief in heaven, and each leaf had been G.o.d-appointed to catch an angel's tear. It seemed as if G.o.d our Father had looked down upon earth, his wayward child, and stooped to her tear-wet cheek, and kissed it.

Even so will the darkness of our country's crime and suffering be lifted. G.o.d will roll back the night of storm, and bring in the morning of joy. Its golden light will gild the city spire, and strike the forests of Maine, and tinge the masts of Mobile; and with one end resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other on the Pacific coast, G.o.d will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting covenant that the land shall never again be deluged with crime.

LIES: WHITE AND BLACK.

There are ten thousand ways of telling a lie. A man's entire life may be a falsehood, while with his lips he may not once directly falsify.

There are those who state what is positively untrue, but afterwards say, "may be," softly. These departures from the truth are called "white lies;" but there is really no such thing as a white lie. The whitest lie that was ever told was as black as perdition. No inventory of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this gigantic abomination. There are men, high in Church and State, actually useful, self-denying, and honest in many things, who, upon certain subjects, and in certain spheres, are not at all to be depended upon for veracity. Indeed, there are mult.i.tudes of men who have their notions of truthfulness so thoroughly perverted, that they do not know when they _are_ lying. With many it is a cultivated sin; with some it seems a natural infirmity. I have known people who seemed to have been born liars. The falsehoods of their lives extended from cradle to grave.

Prevarication, misrepresentation, and dishonesty of speech appeared in their first utterances and was as natural to them as any of their infantile diseases, and was a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. But many have been placed in circ.u.mstances where this tendency has day by day, and hour by hour, been called to larger development. They have gone from attainment to attainment, and from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, until they have become regularly graduated liars.

The air of the city is filled with falsehoods. They hang pendent from the chandeliers of our finest residences; they crowd the shelves of some of our merchant princes; they fill the side-walk from curb-stone to brown-stone facing. They cl.u.s.ter around the mechanic's hammer, and blossom from the end of the merchant's yard-stick, and sit in the doors of churches. Some call them "fiction." Some style them "fabrication." You might say that they were subterfuge, disguise, delusion, romance, evasion, pretence, fable, deception, misrepresentation; but, as I am ignorant of anything to be gained by the hiding of a G.o.d-defying outrage under a lexicographer's blanket, I shall chiefly call them what my father taught me to call them--_lies_.

I shall divide them into agricultural, mercantile, mechanical, and ecclesiastical lies; leaving those that are professional, social, and political for some other chapter.

First, then, I will speak of those that are more particularly _agricultural_. There is something in the perpetual presence of natural objects to make a man pure. The trees never issue "false stock." Wheat-fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out in the night, not paying for the place they have occupied. Corn shocks never make false a.s.signments. Mountain brooks are always "current."

The gold on the grain is never counterfeit. The sunrise never flaunts in false colors. The dew sports only genuine diamonds.

Taking farmers as a cla.s.s, I believe they are truthful, and fair in dealing, and kind-hearted. But the regions surrounding our cities do not always send this sort of men to our markets. Day by day there creak through our streets, and about the market-houses, farm wagons that have not an honest spoke in their wheels, or a truthful rivet from tongue to tail-board. During the last few years there have been times when domestic economy has foundered on the farmer's firkin.

Neither high taxes, nor the high price of dry-goods, nor the exorbitancy of labor, could excuse much that the city has witnessed in the behavior of the yeomanry. By the quiet firesides of Westchester and Bucks counties I hope there may be seasons of deep reflection and hearty repentance.

Rural districts are accustomed to rail at great cities as given up to fraud and every form of unrighteousness; but our cities do not absorb all the abominations. Our citizens have learned the importance of not always trusting to the size and style of apples in the top of a farmer's barrel, as an indication of what may be found farther down.

Many of our people are accustomed to watch to see how correctly a bushel of beets is measured; and there are not many honest milk-cans.

Deceptions do not all cl.u.s.ter around city halls. When our cities sit down and weep over their sins, all the surrounding counties ought to come in and weep with them.

There is often hostility on the part of producers against traders, as though the man who raises the corn were necessarily more honorable than the grain dealer, who pours it into his mammoth bin. There ought to be no such hostility. The occupation of one is as necessary as that of the other. Yet producers often think it no wrong to s.n.a.t.c.h away from the trader; and they say to the bargain-maker, "You get your money easy." Do they get it easy? Let those who in the quiet field and barn get their living exchange places with those who stand to-day amid the excitements of commercial life, and see if they find it so very easy. While the farmer goes to sleep with the a.s.surance that his corn and barley will be growing all the night, moment by moment adding to his revenue, the merchant tries to go to sleep, conscious that that moment his cargo may be broken on the rocks, or damaged by the wave that sweeps clear across the hurricane deck; or that the gold gamblers may, that very hour, be plotting some monetary revolution, or the burglars be prying open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or his landlord raising the rent, or the fires kindling on the block that contains all his estate. _Easy!_ is it? G.o.d help the merchants! It is hard to have the palms of the hand blistered with out-door work; but a more dreadful process when, through mercantile anxieties, the brain is consumed!

In the next place we notice _mercantile_ lies, those before the counter and behind the counter. I will not attempt to specify the different forms of commercial falsehood. There are merchants who excuse themselves for deviation from truthfulness because of what they call commercial custom. In other words, the multiplication and universality of a sin turns it into a virtue. There have been large fortunes gathered where there was not one drop of unrequited toil in the wine; not one spark of bad temper flas.h.i.+ng from the bronze bracket; not one drop of needle-woman's heart-blood in the crimson plush; while there are other great establishments in which there is not one door-k.n.o.b, not one brick, not one trinket, not one thread of lace, but has upon it the mark of dishonor. What wonder if, some day, a hand of toil that had been wrung, and worn out, and blistered until the skin came off, should be placed against the elegant wall-paper, leaving its mark of blood,--four fingers and a thumb; or that, some day, walking the halls, there should be a voice accosting the occupant, saying, _Six cents for making a s.h.i.+rt_; and, flying the room, another voice should say, _Twelve cents for an army blanket_; and the man should try to sleep at night, but ever and anon be aroused, until, getting up on one elbow, he should shriek out, _Who's there?_

There are thousands of fortunes made in commercial spheres that are throughout righteous. G.o.d will let his favor rest upon every scroll, every pictured wall, every traceried window; and the joy that flashes from the lights, and showers from the music, and dances in the children's quick feet, pattering through the hall, will utter the congratulation of men and the approval of G.o.d.

A merchant can, to the last item, be thoroughly honest. There is never any need of falsehood. Yet how many will, day by day, hour by hour, utter what they _know_ to be wrong. You say that you are selling at less than cost. If so, then it is right to say it. But did that thing cost you less than what you ask for it? If not, then you have lied.

You say that article cost you twenty-five dollars. Did it? If so, then all right. If it did not, then you have lied. Suppose you are a purchaser. You are "beating down" the goods. You say that that article, for which five dollars is charged, is not worth more than four. Is it worth no more than four dollars? Then all right. If it be worth more, and, for the sake of getting it for less than its value, you wilfully depreciate it, you have lied. _You_ may call it a sharp trade. The recording angel writes it down on the ponderous tomes of eternity--"Mr. So and So, merchant on Water street, or in Eighth street, or in State street; or Mrs. So and So, keeping house on Beacon street, or on Madison avenue, or Rittenhouse square, told one lie." You may consider it insignificant, because relating to an insignificant purchase. You would despise the man who would falsify in regard to some great matter, in which the city or the whole country was concerned; but this is only a box of b.u.t.tons, or a row of pins, or a case of needles. Be not deceived. The article purchased may be so small you can put it in your vest pocket, but the sin was bigger than the Pyramids, and the echo of the dishonor will reverberate through all the mountains of eternity.

You throw out on your counter some specimens of handkerchiefs. Your customer asks, "Is that all silk? no cotton in it?" You answer, "It is all silk." Was it all silk? If so, all right. But was it partly cotton? Then you have lied. Moreover, you lost by the falsehood. The customer, though he may live at Lynn, or Doylestown, or Poughkeepsie, will find out that you defrauded him, and next spring, when he again comes shopping, he will look at your sign and say: "I will not try there. That is the place where I got that handkerchief." So that, by that one dishonest bargain, you picked your own pocket and insulted the Almighty.

Would you dare to make an estimate of how many falsehoods in trade were yesterday told by hardware men, and clothiers, and fruit-dealers, and dry-goods establishments, and importers, and jewellers, and lumbermen, and coal-merchants, and stationers, and tobacconists? Lies about saddles, about buckles, about ribbons, about carpets, about gloves, about coats, about shoes, about hats, about watches, about carriages, about books,--about everything. In the name of the Lord Almighty, I arraign commercial falsehoods as one of the greatest of abominations in city and town.

In the next place, I notice _mechanical_ lies. There is no cla.s.s of men who administer more to the welfare of the city than artisans. To their hand we must look for the building that shelters us, for the garments that clothe us, for the car that carries us. They wield a widespread influence. There is much derision of what is called "_muscular Christianity_;" but in the latter day of the world's prosperity, I think that the Christian will be muscular. We have the right to expect of those stalwart men of toil the highest possible integrity. Many of them answer all our expectations, and stand at the front of religious and philanthropic enterprises. But this cla.s.s, like the others that I have named, has in it those who lack in the element of veracity. They cannot all be trusted. In times when the demand for labor is great, it is impossible to meet the demands of the public, or do work with that promptness and perfection that would at other times be possible. But there are mechanics whose word cannot be trusted at any time. No man has a right to promise more work than he can do.

There are mechanics who say that they will come Monday, but they do not come until Wednesday. You put work in their hands that they tell you shall be completed in ten days, but it is thirty. There have been houses built of which it might be said that every nail driven, every foot of plastering put on, every yard of pipe laid, every s.h.i.+ngle hammered, every brick mortared, could tell of falsehood connected therewith. There are men attempting to do ten or fifteen pieces of work who have not the time or strength to do more than five or six pieces; but by promises never fulfilled keep all the undertakings within their own grasp. This is what they call _"nursing" the job_.

How much wrong to his soul and insult to G.o.d a mechanic would save, if he promised only so much as he expected to be able to do. Society has no right to ask of you impossibilities.

You cannot always calculate correctly, and you may fail because you cannot get the help that you antic.i.p.ate. But now I am speaking of the wilful making of promises that you know you cannot keep. Did you say that that shoe should be mended, that coat repaired, those brick laid, that harness sewed, that door grained, that spout fixed, or that window glazed, by Sat.u.r.day, knowing that you would neither be able to do it yourself nor get any one else to do it? Then, before G.o.d and man, you are a liar. You may say that it makes no particular difference, and that if you had told the truth you would have lost the job, and that people expect to be disappointed. But that excuse will not answer. There is a voice of thunder rolling among the drills, and planes, and shoe-lasts, and shears, which says: "All liars shall have their place in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone."

I next notice _ecclesiastical_ lies; that is, falsehoods told for the purpose of advancing churches and sects, or for the purpose of depleting them. There is no use in asking many a Calvinist what an Arminian believes, for he will be apt to tell you that the Arminian believes that a man can convert himself; or to ask the Arminian what the Calvinist believes, for he will tell you that the Calvinist believes that G.o.d made some men just to d.a.m.n them. There is no need of asking a pedo-Baptist what a Baptist believes, for he will be apt to say that the Baptist believes immersion to be positively necessary to salvation. It is almost impossible for one denomination of Christians, without prejudice or misrepresentation, to state the sentiment of an opposing sect. If a man hates Presbyterians, and you ask him what Presbyterians believe, he will tell you that they believe that there are infants in h.e.l.l a span long.

It is strange also how individual churches will sometimes make misstatements about other individual churches. It is especially so in regard to falsehoods told with reference to prosperous enterprises.

As long as a church is feeble, and the singing is discordant, and the minister, through the poverty of the church, must go with threadbare coat, and here and there a wors.h.i.+pper sits in the end of a pew having all the seat to himself, religious sympathizers of other churches will say, "What a pity!" But, let a great day of prosperity come, and even ministers of the gospel, who ought to be rejoiced at the largeness and extent of the work, denounce, and misrepresent, and falsify,--starting the suspicion, in regard to themselves, that the reason they do not like the corn is because it is not ground in their own mill.

How long before we shall learn to be fair in our religious criticisms!

The keenest jealousies on earth are church jealousies. The field of Christian work is so large that there is no need that our hoe-handles. .h.i.t.

May G.o.d extirpate from the world ecclesiastical lies, commercial lies, mechanical lies, and agricultural lies, and make every man, the world over, to speak truth with his neighbor!

A GOOD TIME COMING.

As on some bitter cold night, while thres.h.i.+ng our hands about to keep our thumbs from freezing, we have looked up and seen the northern lights blazing along the sky, the windows of heaven illumined at the news of some great victory, so from beyond this bitter night of abomination a brightness strikes through from the other side.

I have thought that it would be well, in these chapters on the sins of the times, to lift before you a vision of what our cities will be when the work of good men shall have been concluded and our population redeemed. I doubt not that sometimes men have shut this book, thinking that the gigantic wrongs we depict may never be discomfited. Lest you be utterly disheartened, I will show you that we fight in a war in which we will be completely victorious. This is to be no drawn battle; for, when it is done, the result will not be disputed by a man on earth, or an angel in heaven, or a devil in h.e.l.l. We shall have captured every one of the strongholds of darkness. You and I will live to see the day when gambling-h.e.l.ls will be changed into places of Christian merchandise, and houses of sin swept and garnished for the residence of the purest home circles.

Beethoven was deaf, and could not hear the airs he composed; but when the song of universal disenthralment arises, and white Circa.s.sian stands up by the side of black Ethiopian, and tropical groves wave to the Lebanon cedars, we shall, standing somewhere, know it and see it, and hear it. If gone from earth, we will be allowed to come out on the hills and look.

We do not talk about impossibilities. We do not propose a medicine about which we have to say that it will "kill or cure." For this balm that oozes from the tree of heaven will inevitably cure.