“The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this,—that
whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, flax,
or grass, God sends beetles, bugs, aphides, heat, rain, and
mildew, to blast his designs.
“This has the _ring_ of Cain when his sacrifice was
rejected. That primeval sinner vented his anger towards God
on his holy brother. Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger
towards the real cause of his mildewed crops, by charging
the innocent instruments in their Maker’s hand. If this is
not blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr. Beecher is, we
have read his words amiss.
“PURITAN.”
I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me that every crop that
I have ever attempted to raise has had swarms of “messengers” sent
upon it. But, until now, I never suspected that God sent them, in any
other sense than that in which he sends diseases, famines, tyrants,
literary “Puritans,” and all other evils which afflict humanity.
But what is to be done about this matter? If it be “blasphemy” to
speak against bugs, it can be little short of sacrilege to smash them.
Here have I been, in the blindness of unrepented depravity,
slaughtering millions of “the messengers of God” called aphides! I
have ruthlessly slain those other angelic “messengers” called
mosquitoes, who came singing to me with misplaced confidence. I have
even railed at fleas, and spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone
further: on a sultry summer’s day, after dinner, I have turned out of
my room every one of those “messengers of God” which wicked boys call
flies—every one but one, I mean; and, just as the sounds grew faint
and sight dim, and I was sinking into that entrancing experience, the
first virgin moments of slumber, an affectionate fly settled on my
nose, ran down to kiss my lips, and, like a traveler on a new
continent, set about exploring my whole face. Instead of greeting this
“messenger” divine as “Puritan” would, I confess to a lively vexation.
And if speaking of flies in a very disrespectful manner is
blasphemous, I must confess to the charge!
But soberly, Mr. Bonner, is it not pitiable to have among us men
pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into discredit by such
hopeless stupidity?
In the velocipede rinks, besides those for speed, premiums are offered
to the men who can ride the _slowest_. “Puritan” should enter himself.
If anybody can go slower, he must be a marvel of torpidity.