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Animal that refused to Obey. The strong man, val
iant in virtue; the woman, with her babe on her
breast: the maid in the bloom of her youth, with
Love's first sigh fluttering in her half-formed bosom;
the youth, with down like dew on his cheek, and
boyhood's dream before him: the child. with God’s
*
gold still glittering on its fair head : the thin gray
crown of the grandsire and the downy head of the
suckling; upon them all fell the Priest's Stick; and
where high hearts had beat in human breasts was
left a little blood and bones and ashes, until Despair
reached up and wrested the Stick from the hand of
Intolerance. 'Tis a mad world, mv masters: arc
we never to learn save through blood and agony:
Are we to be forever driven bv the Stick? Is it bv
• •
bruising and haltering the fair face of nature we
must hammer out the destiny of the race?
It is strange that we cannot learn that the maul
ing fist of force forever defeats itself.' We had been
as gods if we had learned to rule by love and not
by fear, for love serves of its own graciousness, while
fear destroys. In a world no wider than the width
of the womb whence al] men conn 1 , and the width of
tin 1 grave where all men go. we have yet found room
for the terrible Stick! And it has given us senseless,
soulless, cruel years of strife, with tears and sweat
and shame and sorrow enough to people a dozen
hells: and out of it all we have barely wrung the
knowledge that Force is Father to Fraud. Intoler
ance mother to Iniquity; sense enough to hate our
tyrants, but. not strength enough to overthrow them.
We have made our modern Sticks Respectability
and Orthodoxy; they represent the Church, the
State, the Law, Public Opinion, Society, Customs
and Caste; and our training and inclination lead us
to seize them to Smite the First Animal that refuses
to Obey.
We do not reform, we punish to gratify the
Adamic strain in us; we do not help, we hinder; we
look down, not up; and in consequence, the world
reaps exactly what it sows: tear. want. sin. sorrow
and hunger, and the blood-red flower of all these, An
archy in Law and Morals. There is no effect with
out a cause, and so long as the cause exists the effect,
by the laws of the universe, is sure to follow.
The Dove of Peace will never build her nest
among us while the Stick is likely to break the eggs
under her brooding breast; until we learn by heart
knowledge, not lip service, that in the clear eyes
of Liberty alone shines that high light which can
redeem the world. We have been working too long
on the stupid plan
“That they will take who have the power.
And they will keep—who can"
until too many of us have come to the wrong con
clusion that the Stick is here because it must and
should be here; nothing is. unless we really want it
to be. We are ashamed and afraid to be honest;
THE REASON
for although we realize it may be the best policy,
the payments come high, and honesty in thought and
deed and business and law and church has never
been recognized as collateral.
We have all felt the force of the stick.
But. while we have learned slowly, painfully,
bloodilv. of manv and cruel and hard taskmasters,
driven and hounded, scarred and seamed by many
blows, we have yet, and as it were in spite of our
selves. learned a little of our lesson. We have stead
ily refused to be taught by Love and Reason ; and
God and Nature, silent, inexorable, inscrutable, un
changed and unchangeable, never interfering in that
unalterable law of cause and effect, allowed us to
tread in the path of our own making and be taught
by Force and Fear, with the Stick as tin- sign and
the symbol of our madness.
It may be fl mt great Silent One knows that in
some pause in our upward thorny traveling we shall
halt and ponder for a breathing space, shading our
dazzled eyes to see Love's sunrise flush flu 1 hills
before us: when, transfigured by that light, we shall
change the cross-crowned crozier into the Good
Shepherd's (-rook once more, and the blood-stained
Stick into the rod and the staff of Man's Brother
hood, to sustain him in the Valley of the Shadow.
“In a world where Death is, let us at least be
kind.”
What Christian Scientists Are Thinking.
What is that in the Christian Science Church
that makes it the object of such wide-spread com
ment. favorable or adverse? Mark Twain’s book.
“Cliristain Science,” probably the strongest docu
ment of ridicule and satire from the master of this
art. grew out of it, so have many changed and now
| examplary lives all over this broad, beautiful land.
The writer had recently the case of a hopeless
drunkard who was saved at least for the time being
by the good work of the Christian Science people
of the city of Savannah to come under his observa
tion. It may be. we cannot tell, that he will return
to drink and become as before the hopeless wretch
that he was before finding peace through believing
that his trouble lav in his mind and not in his body.
That all he had to do to relieve himself was to satis
fy his mind that he could respond to the declaration
of God's law, as made known to this age in Science
and Health with key to the Scripture. He apparent
■ h<i.' cl n so and is now in complete control of him
self and declares that he no longer has the craving
appetite for drink that he once had. lie is travel
ing. filling an important and remunerative position
on the road that he had failed to maintain previous
ly on account of his thirst for alcoholic beverages.
He informed the writer that he had in the last five
| years taken three treatments at a well known sani-