Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley have been warmly
debating the story of the swine, the devil and the deep sea.
What an occupation for two of the master spirits of the age!
Is it any wonder that young men, contemplating such
polemics, should turn away from revealed religion
altogether?
Fortunately the religious world is no longer convulsed from
center to circumference by such disputations. The day has
gone by when the whole fabric of the Christian religion
could be shaken to its foundation by the discovery of an
error in biblical chronology, or the impossibility of a large
whale swallowing a small prophet. Gradually the worship of
the Creator is grounding itself on general principles and
Christian apologetics is slowly but surely mounting above
the particularists, spreading & broader opinion, leaving to
the antiquary and the zoilist the inaccuracies and
inconsistencies of tradition.
All friends of the Faith should hasten this movement.
Really, it matters not whether the Gadarenes, whose swine
were drowned, were Jews or Gentiles; whether Christ did or
did not east out devils, raise the dead or cause the blind to
see. It matters not whether Joseph or the Holy Spirit was
his immediate father. Are we not all sons of the Most High
God, and is not the advent of each and all as much a
mystery as though we were begotten without an earthly
father, spoken into existence, or sprang like Minerva from
the brow of Jove? Why should the world stand agaze for
nineteen centuries at one miracle, when sixty, full as great,
as incomprehensible, are happening every minute? If God
is the author of us all, is it more wonderful that He should
create us in one way than in another? Was it necessary
that the All-Father should change the order of
generation to prove His existence, or that Christ should
enter the world in an uncommon manner to establish His
claim to preeminence among the sons of God?
It is altogether immaterial how Christ came into the world.
Sufficient it is for us to know that he came and brought with
him hope for sorrowing millions. That He was of God it
required no preternatural birth, no wondrous miracles to
establish. It was not the healing He brought to the flesh,
but the comfort he administered to the spirit that stamped
him Divine.
Is it possible that in this world of sorrow, sin and death,
where millions are stretching out their hands to Heaven and
praying for a sign that the loved ones who have crossed
the dark river are safe in the bosom of the Great All-Father;
where millions more are going down to death in an agony
of doubt and fear, that Prof. Huxley and Mr. Gladstone--
science and religion--can find no grander work to do than
dispute about the ownership of a herd of swine drowned
nineteen centuries ago? When churchmen decline to
engage in acrimonious disputation regarding non-essentials,
either with non-churchmen or each other; when the
churches no longer insist that this or that dogma must be
observed or accepted as a prerequisite to salvation; when
they study the spirit of revelation more and the letter less;
when they admit that all religions that have brought comfort
to humanity were Divine, and seek light wherever it is to be
found, whether in the Bible or the Vedas, ethnic philosophy
or science the occupation of the Paines and Ingersolls will
be forever gone and religion command the respect of all
mankind.
In union there is strength, in disunion weakness. If this
world is ever to be "christianized" the different
denominations must learn that they are not natural
enemies, but allies,--differently organized corps,
differently uniformed divisions of one great army. Instead
of wasting their strength warring upon each other, in
repelling atheistical assaults upon outworks that are a
source of weakness and should be abandoned, they must
swing into line, shoulder to shoulder, each with its own
particular oriflamme and shibboleth, if it will, and present a
solid front to the common enemy, which is not the doubter
of particular dogmas, but that Evil of which is born sorrow,
shame and death. When the different divisions of the
church which acknowledges Christ as its head, become
mutually supporting and its officers distinguish the real
battle from the hasty firing of frightened pickets, then and
not till then will the banner of Christianity float triumphant
over a world redeemed; then will the fatherhood of God and
brotherhood of Man be known upon the earth.
* * *
GARTERS AND AMEN GROANS.
On one page of the Houston Post for Sunday, December
12, I find several columns devoted to "Our Boys and Girls,"
on the next the following advertisement prominently
displayed by a Houston haberdasher:
"Our Ladies' Garter Department: We can give you an All-
Silk Garter for 50c. with nice buckles with such reading on
them as 'Private Grounds,' 'Stop, Mamma is Coming,'
'Look Quick,' 'Good Night, Call Again,' 'I Am a Warm
Baby,' 'Take Off Your Things,' etc."
The paper contains the usual Sunday morning quota of
church notices, religious news and editorial moralizing--
constituting a delectable olla-podrida calculated to turn the
stomach of a self-respecting yaller dog. Doubtless many
purveyors of garters keep in stock those peculiarly
adapted to the trade of the "tenderloin"; but this is
the first time that I have seen such truck advertised in any
paper permitted to pass through the mails or enter the
homes of respectable people. Imagine a Houston parson
rising from family prayers on Sunday morning and placing
in the hands of his young daughter a "great moral daily"
which sets forth in display type that, for the small sum of
fifty cents, she can secure a pair of silken garters that warn
the great he-world that she's "a warm baby," and bid it
"look quick" at her shapely legs! Think of a modest old
mother in Israel watching the face of her youthful son as he
learns for the first time of garters that invite him to "take off
your things"! Fine Sabbath morning reading that for the so-
called Christian people of Harris county! Such an "ad."
would forever damn even the Nashville Banner, or show
in the feculent columns of the Kansas City Star like a
splotch of soot on the marble face of Raphael's Madonna.
The Police Gazette and Sunday Sun are debarred
from the mails, yet neither ever contained aught one-half so
horrible. We keep the "Decameron" and Daudet's
eroticisms under lock and key; yet they are only
"suggestive," while this is frankly feculent, a brazen bid for
bawdry. Should the ICONOCLAST publish such a thing it
would be promptly denounced from ten thousand pulpits as
a pander to pruriency; yet against the iniquity of the Daily
Chippie Chaser, alias the Houston Post, not one
preacher has raised his voice in protest! Why? Because
the dirty rag does not attack their religious dogma--does not
strike at their bread and butter! The shortest route to the
heart of the average parson is through his pocket--hit him
there and you raise a howl that startles high Heaven. Print
his church notices, report his foolish little sermons, kneel
with him in prayer, slander agnostics and atheists, serve
the ICONOCLAST as the foul yahoos did Gulliver, flip
a plugged nickel into the contribution box, and you may
safely flaunt the patois of the nymph du pave in the fair
face of every honest girl between Cape Cod and the
Golden Gate. And as it is with the average preacher so it
is with the bulk of his parishioners. The Post introduces
the language of the prostitute into the parlors of its patrons.
It boasts a boys' and: girls' club--"The Happyhammers"--of
more than six-hundred members, and to these children it
carries the first knowledge of sexual perversity, gives them
their initial lesson in social sin. Were this the paper's first
offense we might attribute it to the carelessness or stupidity
of a clerk in its counting-room and the incompetence of its
business; manager; but it is an old, a shameless, a
persistent sinner against all life's decencies and proprieties.
Its "personal column" was for years the most revolting
thing known to yaller journalism. Its counting-room was an
assignation post-office. The paper was the recognized
organ of "Happy Hollow," the Hell's Half Acre of Houston.
It was a pander to all the worst passions that run riot in the
"tenderloin," a procurer of young girls to glut the lust of
godless libertines. Its sign was the ligniyoni, its ideal the
almighty dollar. Through its feculent columns Muckle-
mouthed Meg and Doll Tearsheet made assignations with
forks-of-the-creeks fools, while blear-eyed bummers and
rotten-livered rounders requested respectable women to
meet them at unfrequented places and wear camp-meeting
lingerie. The ICONOCLAST compelled its unrespected
contemporary to purify its "personal column"--and this
service to society has never been forgiven by the bench-
legged hydrocephalous grand panjandrum of that paper.
The Post next proceeded to publish a directory of
Houston's red-light district, giving names and addresses of
the "madames," the number of their "boarders" and the
condition of the merchandise thrown upon the
market. All that was necessary to make the Post's
Bawdy-house Guide complete was the addition of rate-
cards. On that little bit of journalistic "enterprise" the
ICONOCLAST put a kibosh also, much to the satisfaction of
every decent family in Harris county. Now the fecular sheet
has found a new road to infamy--is advertising garters fit
only to adorn the crummy underpinning of negro prostitutes.
It does seem that the Post will do anything for a dollar--
except be decent. Owing to the mental perversity of its
management, respectability is for it impossible. It is a
social leper, a journalistic pariah. It is devoid of political
principle as a thieving tomcat of conscience. It has no
more stability than a bad smell in a simoon. It has deified
and damned every statesman by turn. It has been on
every possible side of every public question, and wept bitter
tears of regret because further change of policy were
impossible. It is a perfect maelstrom of misinformation, the
avatar of impudence, the incarnation of infamy--a social
cesspool whose malodor spreads contagion like the rank
breath of the gila-monster or the shade of a upas tree. Yet
its editor, I am told, aspires to the lieutenant-governorship
of Texas. Verily, he's "got his gall." He will indeed be "a
warm baby" if elevated to that inconsiderable office and
permitted to monkey with the scepter while the governor is
doing the elegant elsewhere. Texas may certainly consider
herself fortunate if he does not pawn the fasces of power
and blow in the proceeds of the erstwhile John Bell's variety
joint. Should he do so, he will probably be permitted to
"take off his things." The Post "ad." is worse than that
of holy John Wanamaker, who once announced in the
Philadelphia papers that "Parisian thoughts are sewn in our
underwear." With such lingerie I should imagine that "call
again" garters would be the proper caper. Such a
combination would suggest the patent medicine certificate
of the happy husband who joyfully testified that "My wife
was so nervous that I could not sleep with her, but after
taking two bottles of your remarkable, etc., she has so far
recovered that anybody can sleep with her." Just what
effect the "Parisian thought" underwear of holy John
Wanamaker had upon the preeminently respectable people
of Philadelphia I shall not assume to say, but I should
consider such goods contraband of war when found on a
Sunday-school bargain counter. Imagine the result of
introducing "Parisian thoughts" into the unbleached muslin
lingerie of a lot of single-standard-of-morals old maids!
There's really no telling for what Harrison's professional
Sunday school superintendent is responsible. He's a rank
conspirator against the Seventh Commandment. The
Post should be abated as an incorrigible nuisance--it is a
standing menace to the morality of the community. It has
never been a legitimate journal. Its chief sources of
revenue have been fake voting contests and unclean
"ads." that range in sphacelation from abortion pills to
garters for prostitutes. What this country seems to need is
a press censorship. The second-rate newspapers are
mistaking liberty for license. The dogma that public opinion
can be depended upon to correct the evil is an "iridescent
dream"--the public will stand almost anything so long as its
religious theses and political confessions of faith are let
alone. Men claiming to be quasi-decent, if not altogether
respectable, will carry home day after day and suffer to be
read by their young daughters such a paper as the Houston
Post--with its "w. y. o. d.," and "take off your things"
advertisements, its puffs of abortion pills and syphilitic
panaceas--who would have a conniption fit and fall in it
should a copy of Bob Ingersoll's eloquent lecture on
Abraham Lincoln creep into their library. The stench
of such a paper creeps abroad like the malodor of a cloaca,
beslimes the senses like the noxious exhalations of an
open sewer. How in God's name men can be found so
debased as to work on such a sheet is beyond my
comprehension. I once undertook to hold down its editorial
page; but soon "got sore at myself," cursed everything
connected therewith, from the pink-haired president of the
company to the peewee business manager, got out, purified
myself and have been sick at the stomach ever since.
Should a man lay a copy of the foul sheet on my parlor
table, I'd blow his head off with a shotgun. All that I now
see of the paper is the clippings sent me by disgusted
Houstonians, and I take those out behind the barn to read--
then bury them lest they poison the hogs. I regard my
temporary connection with the sheet much as Jean Valjean
must his tramp through the Parisian sewers. It is a ten-
legged nightmare, an infamy that I can never outlive. I
strove manfully to make the foul thing respectable, but the
Augean stables proved too much for my pitchfork. I
managed to occasionally inject into the sphacelated sheet a
quasi-intelligent idea, to disguise its feculence with a breath
of sentiment that by contrast seemed an air from Araby the
blest; but the stupid ignorance and dollar-worshiping of the
management soon dragged it back into the noisome depths
of hopeless nescience and subter-brutish degradation.
Poor old Houston! A morning newspaper should be a city's
crown of glory, an intellectual Aurora ushering in the new-
born day; but in Houston's case her chief newspaper is a
sorrow's crown of sorrow, her inexpungeable badge of
shame.