Newspaper Page Text
/Al Jl Bdr ♦
■ ■ I I I ® <W
wMSL b vil ® B m 3sr fei iH or IMI H W Mf 0/ gj J §<;i
/ */'£*’ "»i'"'xS's4 ’■'' * ■
Vol. 14, No. 3
IT " " ■
I If You Were a Preacher, Would You Do This Way? |
you look out upon the field of life, you
see the Middle-man occupying a promi
nent place, and often a most useful one.
The merchant is the middle-man between
the manufacturer and the consumer: the rail
road is the middle-man between shipper and
consignee: “the butcher, the baker, and the
candle-stick maker” are all middle-men.
In a sense, the lawyer is a middle-man,
doing for his client that which the client can
not so well do for himself.
If you are as smart as Mrs. Felton you can
go into the court-house and win your own
cases, as she does, but there are not many
Mrs. Feltons.
So it is with the doctor: he is nothing but
a middle-man, for if you can cure yourself
without him, that’s your privilege; but, as a
rule, we place the doctor between us and the
disease, and leave them to fight it out.
Frequently, the sick man—if he had lived
and had had another chance —would have
preferred the physic himself; but then you
never can tell.
The editor is a middle-man: he is supposed
to represent the community and to voice its
opinions; and that’s why a real, sure enough
editor always refers to himself as “we.”
Perhaps, you never understood why an
ordinary mortal, in charge of a paper, alludes
to himself as “we” and our" —after the fashion
of kings and queens: but you’ll know now
why it is: it’s because that John Henry Jones,
after becoming an editor, regards himself as
The Prussian Drill-Sergeant in the U. S. Army.
AST week, the City of New York was
thrown into a state of excitement by the
news of a young man, not of age, who had
incurred the high displeasure of a military
martinet, named Hines, and who, at the order
of Hines, had been seized, stretched out upon
a wheel, and lashed to it, with his arms and
legs spread as far apart as they could be
pulled.
In this excruciating position, the boy was
fastened, for four hours.
Any law for it? None.
Any trial by court-martial, or otherwise?
None.
The order of the irritated officer was
enough. He acted as witness, judge, and
executive.
He was the whole thing.
He was Authority, embodied, irresistible,
arbitrary, brutal.
Tn other words, he was the American edi
tion of the Prussian drill-sergeant.
No wonder this medieval and European tor
ture of the American volunteer, excited a com
motion in New York.
If a mere boy, a volunteer, can be sum
marily treated in so inhuman a manner, by
mere order of the officer, what may the con
scripted man expect, when the new law goes
into operation?
Col. Hines is probably no worse than the
average man; but if there is any one thing
Thomson, Ga., Thursday, January 18, 1917
the journalistic voice of the people.
Quite often, it’s a very weak voice, subject
to queer variations, and sometimes to quite
mysteriously far-away political and corpora
tion hypnotism, but still it is the royal voice
of the community, and the feeble editor is
“we.”
But the preacher, also—be it reverently
spoken! is a middle-man: he stands in front
of the layman, as a guide; and, in a certain,
sense, between the congregation and the Al
mighty.
The Roman Catholics go much farther on
this line than we do, for, to the average
Catholic, the priest is the personal representa
tive of God.
In the eyes of the Catholic, the priest can
not sin, and has the power to pardon sin:
necessarily therefore the priest is the very
door-keeper of Heaven, and has the authority
to say who shall enter.
We Protestants do not go that far, but we
go a good ways.
Generally, we leave it to the preacher to
find out what’s in the Bible, and to tell us
what it means. If the preacher in the pulpit
tells us that God wants us to do this, that,
and the other, we never rise to say, “’Taint
so!”
If we did, there’d be a riot, and we’d get
thrown out of the window, and the next
grand-jury would indict us for disturbing
public worship.
The good preacher does a noble work: he
that all of us ought to know, it is, that the
average man cannot be trusted with too much
power.
He wouldn’t be human, if he did not abuse
it.
We have seen the oppressiveness and
cruelty of arbitrary power, as displayed in
every field of human activity.
Give the Boss too much power at the Con
vict Camp, and he whips the helpless convict
to death —as was most brutally done near
Savannah a few weeks ago.
Give the Boss of the mine, or the coal-field,
too much power, and he drives the workers
to desperation, riot, and murder.
Give the Floor-walker in the Department
store too much power, and he will abuse it,
to debase the girls whose jobs depend on him.
Give a jpoliitical Boss too much power,
and he will prostitute it, to whoever will pay
him the best price; and then, when some
younger man aspires to the Boss-ship, and
waxes too strong for him, he will gather up
his millions and retire—say to Ireland —to
enjoy his loot.
Give a Military Boss too much power, and
he will do as Von Bissing did in Belgium—-
order a woman shot (after she had nursed
German wounded) because she had helped
three or four English boys to escape back
home to their mothers.
It won’t do to give men too much power,
consoles the sorrowful; he befriends the
friendless; he visits the sick; he cheers up
the old folks, and he has kind words for the
young.
His light shines upon the community, and
everybody loves him: he gives time to thought
and research, when you are engaged in your
daily toil; and then, when Sunday comes, he
can benefit you by discoursing upon the sub
jects of his thoughts and researches.
His idea of religion is, that it elevates
what’s best in a human creature, making him
or her, more patient, forbearing, compassion
ate, charitable and good-hearted.
He believes that Christianity is not real,
unless it leads to being right, living right,
promoting right, defending it, and advanc
ing it.
Such is the preacher that all of us admire,
listen to, and learn from: we give him the
warm welcome when he comes among us, and
we are sorry when he has to leave.
But if you were a preacher, would you do
any of these things?
(1.) Would you take advantage of the
pulpit to abuse a public man whose works
you had never read, and whose position you
only knew by hearsay?
Wouldn’t you be fair enough to see for
yourself what the man had been saying and
doing, before you got up in church and de
nounced him?
( CONTINUED ON PAGE FOUR.)
and our whole system of government was
framed on that idea.
The Executive used to be the King, and the
King was often a tyrant: therefore our
Fathers put a check upon our Executive, so
that he could not abuse the presidential
power.
The Judicial and Legislative branches of
government have also been known to become
usurpatory and oppressive: hence, in our sys
tem, each of the three Departments is a check
upon the others.
No one of them is superior to the others:
they are all three co-ordinate.
judge Lambdin said, during my trial, that
in some respects the U. S. judiciary is the
superior of the other two depratments.
He was mistaken. The U. S. Judiciary, at
an early period, usurped the power to
nullify legislative and executive action: but
Congress and the President can, at any time,
expel the Judiciary from that usurped posi
tion.
In fact, a bill is now pending in Congress
to do that very thing, and I hope it will
pass.
Not only did our Fathers guard each gov
ernmental department against the others, but
guarded the citizen against all three.
The States insisted upon those early
Amendments to the U. S. Constitution which
(continued on page five.)
Price, Five Cents