Consolation, September 7, 1938
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Contents
The Degradation of the Name of Horace Bushnell 3
The Letter to the Pope 6
New England 11
The New Government 12
Reason for Forsaking Religion 12
How Clergy Rule Niagara Falls 12
Ohio and Kentucky 15
Counsel by J. F. Rutherford
Religion 17
Spain 18
Under the Totalitarian Flag 20
U. S. Representation at Washington 20
Watch Tower Calls Shaughnessy's Bluff 22
West Indies and Central America 24
South America 25
Five Cents a Day for Food 26
Yoghurt; by an Enthusiastic Armenian 26
By Trail and Stream and Garden Path—Little Houses 27
British Comment
"Blind Leaders of the Blind" 28
The Douay Bible 28
Roman Catholics and the Scriptures 29
The Alhambra—Cover Design 31
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Appetizers
Badly Tangled Sioux City Doctor
A Sioux City (Iowa) doctor telegraphed his senator in Washington:
Haven't read farm control law in its entirety. . . . We can't help wondering if farmer is allotted one calf and cow has twins, whether law specifies that the officials shoot a calf, the cow, the farmer or the bull.
The senator (Senator Gillette) rose to the occasion and wired back what the doctor should have known in the first place: that the proper course would be to shoot the farmer's senator. Some people do have to have everything explained to them, don't they?
In a Rural School
■ In a rural school in Columbus county, North Carolina, a teacher noticed a boy with a cud of tobacco in his mouth; she made him empty his mouth and give up the plug of tobacco he had in his coat pocket. The next day she received a letter from his mother reading as follows:
Dere Madum: I hear tell that you taken Johnie's terbacco from him. If you wants some terbacco let me know and I'll fetch some to you but pleze don't bother my Johnie's terbacco.
"Tickets No Good!"
■ A lady was having difficulty in teaching her new Chinese servant how to receive calling cards. The lady went outside and entered her own front door, giving the Chinaman a card.
The next day two lady callers presented their cards. Comparing them with that of his mistress, the Chinaman replied:
"Tickets no good. Can't come in."—Labor.
How He Got the Money
■ A subscriber explains that the way he got the money to pay for his subscription was that the wolf that came to his door had pups in his kitchen, and he sold the pups and so got the money. For telling this he gets 365 days' indulgence for being the best prevaricator in seventeen states.
Three-Year-Old Wisdom
■ A three-year-old citizen of Texas, learning that his father was being transferred to a post down east, was heard to close his evening prayer:
Good-bye, dear God, I am moving to New Jersey.
CONSOLATION
"And in His name shall the nations hope."—Matthew 12:21, A. R. V.
Volume XIX Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, September 7, 1938 Number 495
The Degradation of the Name of Horace Bushnell
WOULD you believe it that if Horace Bushnell, Hartford’s most distinguished citizen, returned to the city he did so much to beautify, he would be denied the right to give a lecture on the Kingdom of God in the Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall on terms that he could accept? See the rental agreement (since canceled because of the absurd, impossible terms of the four paragraphs marked “x”) which appears on this page.
To appreciate this degradation of Mr. Bushnell’s name you should know something about this remarkable lawyer, teacher, editor, traveler, writer and speaker, one of the most capable men of his time. He lived 1802-1876, was at one time editor of the well-known New York Journal of Commerce, was the first president of the University of California, and was offered the presidency of Middlebury College. His principal activity in life was as pastor of the old (Congregational) North Church, now the Park Church, of Hartford, during the years 1833-1859.
When he resigned because of ill health the congregation gave him a purse of $10,000 cash (a large sum for those days), indicating the high esteem in which he was held. In his last sermon he said:
My dear people I cannot have again; they are mine no more; but it will be something, if I may, to die among them and be finally lodged, as a resurrection guest, in the dust of a city whose people I have loved.
It is reasonably inferred from this that Horace Bushnell believed the words of the psalmist that when a man dies “his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4); believed the words of the prophet Isaiah (26:19), “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust”; believed the Savior of men, that all the dead are in their graves and that they shall ‘hear his voice, and come forth’ (John 5:28, 29), for, if there be no resurrection of the dead “then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.”—1 Corinthians 15:18.
Bushnell Made Hartford
One might say that Bushnell was a credit to Hartford, but that would not be putting it strong enough. He was one of the first great city planners and the work which he did made Hartford a delightful city to live in and to pass through. At a critical time he went before the city fathers with an elaborate plan showing what the city should do to grow wisely and well. The plan was adopted, maps and all; for Bushnell was a natural civil engineer. Thirteen years before there was a railroad to the Pacific coast he went through by stage and mapped out almost the exact route of the first transcontinental line.
RENTAL AGREEMENT
Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall
Hartford, Connecticut
The Management of the Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall hereby confirms, subject to the terms of this agreement, the rental of its main auditorium to the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society for a convention on the dates of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 9, 10 and 11, 1938.
In consideration of a rental fee of one thousand, ninety-five dollars ($1095) the Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall, as lessor, will provide for this convention the necessary maintenance service and usual stage labor, and the use of its amplification system for the reception of messages by wire from London to the convention, via American Telephone & Telegraph Company on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, September 10 and 11, respectively.
The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, as lessee, agrees to the following terms:
Upon signing this lease the lessee will pay to the lessor a deposit of three hundred ninety-five dollars ($395) to be credited on the rental figure mentioned above.
(x) On or before Thursday, September 8, 1938, the lessee will make payment to the lessor of the balance of seven hundred dollars ($700).
(x) After each session of the convention the lessee will be responsible for picking up all programs and papers left in and around the auditorium.
(x) There shall be no distribution, mailing, publication or radio broadcast of any advertisement of the convention by the lessee or any of its agents or members unless the lessee shall have secured the lessor’s written approval of such advertising material.
(x) The lessee agrees that the aforementioned advertising material, whether distributed publicly or to the audiences of the convention, shall contain no statement which might be construed as an attack, direct or implied, upon any religious faith, creed or organization.
It is specifically agreed that the premises of the Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall shall not be used by the lessee as a center for the public distribution of material to advertise the convention or the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society.
It is also agreed by the lessee that no speaker, addressing any session of the convention during the three-days period covered by this rental agreement, shall make any statement which might be construed as an attack, direct or implied, upon any religious faith, creed or organization.
The lessee further agrees that in the event of the violation of any of the foregoing terms, this contract shall automatically be void, and the total sum of money paid to the date of such violation by the lessee to the lessor shall be forfeited forthwith to the lessor without further recourse by the lessee.
Signed at Hartford, Conn. this 7th day of August, 1938.
William H. Mortensen
(Accepted for the Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall, Lessor.)
Ray J. Richards
(Accepted for the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Lessee.)
Witness Albert W. Curtis
Witness Ray J. Richards
--Concerning his work in laying out Hartford, a writer in the Courant said:
Who has done more than Dr. Bushnell to make our city the admiration of the passing traveller as well as the delight of those who have it for their home? The park which fitly bears his name is only a conspicuous instance of what he has been doing for the beautifying of the city these many years. How many buildings, public and private, are the better for his wise suggestions! How many builders have profited by his mechanical skill and artistic sense!
What a strange thing it would be if this man, returning from the grave, could not speak in the memorial which bears his name! Others could speak there. Jesuits have spoken there; atheists have spoken there; Socialists have spoken there. Indeed, it was the boast of the Courant, at the close of the first season (1929-1930), that more than eighty organizations made use of it, including a plumbers' convention, a recital of Hindu heathen poetry, a Negro drama, a variety of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Christian Science meetings.
Yet Horace Bushnell, eight years afterwards, could not get the use of the auditorium which bears his name, either to preach the kingdom of God as Jesus commanded or to proclaim to the world the very truths Bushnell himself uttered in the nineteenth century, and which are as true today as they were the day he uttered them.
It is observed in passing that the charges for use of the hall are what the traffic will bear, $100 to $150 a day for churches, but (for those who are, as Bushnell was, mentally alive and therefore suspected of "heresy") up to $400 a day if there is a reasonable chance of obtaining it. The contract reproduced in miniature indicates that a reduction from $400 a day to $365 a day was to have been obtained by using the auditorium for three consecutive days, for proclaiming the Kingdom of God as the one and only hope of the world.
Belief in the Kingdom of God
Although, as shown in this article, and as admitted by the Bushnell Memorial management, Horace Bushnell would not be permitted to teach in the Bushnell auditorium the things which he freely taught in the old North Church, yet he knew from the Scriptures that God's kingdom is to reign right here on earth, and not off somewhere in the blue sky, and did not hesitate to say so. Take, for instance, this statement and compare it with some of the inane, pointless expressions now made by a clergy that do not believe the Scriptures at all, but are merely using them as a screen for carrying on the most disgraceful racket in the world. Bushnell said then what the Bushnell Memorial management would not permit him to say now:
We shall flow together, most likely, with an ardor of brotherhood now inconceivable. The roadways will be rivers of men, crowding downwards on the centres of appointed fellowship, and the assemblies gathered will not be satisfied with anthems that are not as waves of the sea. And so again it will be, when the immense imposture of the Popehood goes down. When that priesthood and all priesthood goes down, letting God's army of believers forth into the enlarged liberties of his kingdom, it will be the new grand birth-day morning of Christian brotherhood.
There were numerous attempts to suppress Bushnell's logic and to curb his tongue even while he lived, but they all failed. He was too much of a man to stand for it. There was no Bushnell Memorial management, false to his memory, to make the old North Church subservient to the Congregational Association with which it was connected, so the North Church pulled out and went it alone.
The Bushnell Memorial management have a great surprise in store for them when Bushnell gets back on the job.
Belief in World-wide Hookups
Not only did Horace Bushnell believe in the kingdom of God as a coming fact (which fact Jehovah's witnesses declare a present reality and now contesting with the Devil for supremacy—and are fighting every inch of the way for their unquestioned rights to make such declaration), but he believed that a time would come when there would be just such world-wide hookups as that of September 10 and 11, 1938, when Judge Rutherford, from the Royal Albert Hall in London, will (besides radio service) address more than fifty cities at one time, in both hemispheres.
In Bushnell's day the telegraph was in its infancy, but already bore promise of the present time when all the world is now connected by wires. Who can fail to admire the faith of a man that could say, as he did: Who can say what uses may yet be served in assemblies by these courier threads of wire in the long grand future before us? If Holiness to the Lord is to be written on the bells of the horses, why not on these wires, which are so much closer to intelligence? We know very little, as yet, what is to come of these and such like instrumentations. God no doubt has some very grand chapters of advance to be revealed in their religious uses such as our slow-going imaginations are not likely at once to overtake.
It seems hard to think of such a man's being excluded from the use of Bushnell Memorial Hall by the Bushnell Memorial management merely because he was ahead of the times in which he lived. But wonderful are the ways of those who have wishbones instead of backbones, and mistake the combined snores of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Christian Scientists, atheists and Hindus as substitutes for the sweet harmony which Horace Bushnell steadfastly believed would come some happy day.
In anticipation of the days that would sometime come, Horace Bushnell did not hesitate to accept and adopt the principle enunciated by Voltaire:
I may not believe one word of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It is too bad that a man of such breadth of mind would not be allowed to use the Bushnell Memorial named after him. But Darrow the atheist used it.
Belief in Public Schools
Because he had both a brain and a mouth, and believed in using both in the defense of liberty, Horace Bushnell, on March 25, 1853, in a discourse delivered in the old North Church, Hartford, had something to say about the attempts of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy to break up the American school system. The text that was used was Leviticus 24:22, "Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God." That discourse, in its entirety, is commended to the Bushnell Memorial management, which has two complete sets of Bushnell's works under lock and key in the building ostensibly erected to his honor and now maintained to his dishonor. If alive Horace Bushnell would not now be permitted to deliver that address in the Bushnell Memorial Hall; for it would be made to appear offensive to the Jesuits, who may freely set forth in that building the very opposite of what Bushnell believed. A few paragraphs give some of his essential thoughts on this now vital, throbbing American issue, which the Bushnell Memorial management desires kept out of sight:
I seriously doubt whether any system of popular government can stand the shock, for any length of time, of that fierce animosity that is certain to be gendered where the children are trained up wholly in their classes, and never brought together to feel, understand, appreciate, and respect each other, on the common footing of merit and of native talent, in a common school. Falling back thus on the test of merit and of native force, at an early period of life, moderates immensely their valuation of mere conventionalities and of the accidents of fortune, and puts them in a way of deference that is genuine as well as necessary to their common peace in the state. Common schools are nurseries thus of a free republic; private schools, of factions, cabals, agrarian laws, and contests of force. Therefore, I say, we must have common schools; they are American, indispensable to our American institutions, and must not be yielded for any consideration smaller than the price of our liberties.
Let the Catholic children, for example, be driven out of our schools by unjust trespasses on their religion, or be withdrawn for mere pretexts that have no foundation, and just there commences a training in religious antipathies bitter as the grave. Never brought close enough to know each other, the children, subject to the great well-known principle that whatever is unknown is magnified by the darkness it is under, have all their prejudices and repugnances magnified a thousand fold. They grow up in the conviction that there is nothing but evil in each other, and close to that lies the inference that they are right in doing what evil to each other they please.
I do then take the ground, and upon this I insist, as the true American ground, that we are to have common schools, and never to give them up for any purpose, or in obedience to any demand whatever; never to give them up, either by formal surrender, or by implication, as by a distribution of moneys to ecclesiastical and sectarian schools. The state cannot distribute funds, in this manner, without renouncing even a first principle of our American institutions, and becoming the supporter of a sect in religion. It may as well support the priests of a church, as support the schools of a church, separated from other schools, for the very purpose of being subjected to the priests.
It can safely be said that Horace Bushnell was one of the old-style honest-to-goodness American patriots, not one of the modern variety that is willing to barter away the priceless gifts of liberty and manhood for the sake of kissing the ring of Judas Redivivus and his confreres and receiving his imaginary titles and honors just for a day.
It is too bad that Bushnell could not deliver that sermon in the Bushnell Memorial building, but he just couldn't; that is all. Ask the management.
The Priests of Belgium
In the summer of 1845 Bushnell visited Europe and used his brain, as well as his eyes and nose, and subsequently his pen, to tell what he thought about public worship as conducted in Belgium at that time. The letter he wrote at that time is published, beginning at page 124 of Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell. Here is one paragraph. Read it:
The two most striking objects in Belgium—two that are seen in perpetual proximity and hideous contrast—are the magnificent churches or cathedrals and the profligate-looking priests. It is not the religious traveller only, looking at objects through the medium of a refined spiritual perception, who makes the observation. The contrast meets the eye like that of light and darkness. One is scarcely ever out of sight of some grand cathedral, never out of sight of the priesthood, who meet him by the roadside, in the rail-cars, at every crossing of the streets, revealing by a certain sensual air and greasy look the loss of that virtue which it is their office to maintain. Never shall I forget the soul-sickness that I suffered, for example, in the great cathedral at Antwerp, watching the confessor's boxes;—on one side an ingenuous-looking boy, or simple, conscientious-looking woman; on the other, a red-faced, sensual son of Eli, in his dirty habiliments, receiving the whisper of a guilty mind, and the simple story, perhaps of the struggles with evil, those struggles which to the mind of God are the purest incense that ever rises from the world of mortals. I was present, too, on the Sabbath, when the vast area of that magnificent edifice was filled with worshippers. I saw the gorgeous rites transacted before the images. I saw the multitude famishing for lack of knowledge in the service of an unknown tongue, and I was able still,—in the grandeur of the place and the assemblage, the magnificence of the rites, the cadence of the response and the swell of the anthem, to extract by a little spiritual alchemy, the food of worship, to bring into play some great and powerful, and I trust, good emotions. But when I saw, near to the close of the service, the ghostly procession winding through the crowd by my side, the central figure of which was as bloated, sin-worn, sorry-looking a miscreant as I ever beheld, walking in a cloud of incense, and trying to draw an air of sanctimony upon features that refused to be sanctified, my heart sank within me; feeling was gone, worship was ended. I had no alchemy left that could distil another drop of dew or raise another flame of emotion.
If he were alive, Horace Bushnell could not enter the Bushnell Memorial building, stand on its rostrum, and read that entire letter to an audience. The Bushnell Memorial management would not permit it. But the statements were true then and are equally true in a thousand other places in the world to this day. Why try to cover up the truth? Bushnell was merely proving that liberty and cleanliness is better than superstition and dirt, but the Bushnell Memorial management has not progressed that far as yet. It prefers to wallow in the muck.
From Belgium Bushnell went leisurely on to Italy, where he spent several months. In that period he saw the pope several times, spent much time wandering through the gorgeous palaces of the Vatican, and took careful note of conditions then prevailing in the city of Rome and the adjacent Papal States then under the direct administration of Pope Gregory XVI as Vatican City State is now under the direct administration of Pope Pius XI.
On his return to England he wrote Gregory XVI at considerable length, and the letter made such a hit with the people of his day that it was translated into Italian and distributed well over Italy and other places on the planet. That letter could not be read today in the Bushnell Memorial Hall; the Bushnell Memorial management would not permit it, and so admit. Space does not permit reproduction of much of it, but those who believe in keeping silent in the face of such charges are in the same class with the Hierarchy that placed Mr. Bushnell's letter in the Index Expurgatorius, denounced it as seditious (because they could not answer it) and called upon all toe-kissing police to suppress its distribution and arrest its distributors. Consider:
The Letter to the Pope
We believe that the time for using church penalties in place of Christian arguments, dungeons instead of doctrine, has gone by; that a better day has come, one that better suits the rational and merciful spirit of Christianity. We combine, therefore, to express our grief at the dishonor you reflect upon religion by suppressing longer the freedom of religious faith and argument among your subjects. We believe that England and the United States have only yielded to first principles, in allowing your teachers the utmost freedom of doctrine within their borders; and that you, in imposing a rigid silence upon our teachers in the Roman States, violate the same first principles, and that in a manner that is arrogant and offensive, as well as a bitter violation of our Christian rights. In one word, we ask of you to yield us and your subjects religious liberty, that is, to renounce force as an instrument of religion, that is, to give up a kind of slavery as much more cruel than any other, as immortality is dearer than the body, as much more impious as it is closer upon the rights of God.
And first of all, I must protest against the dishonor you do to religion, by the kind of civil government you maintain, in connection with your spiritual office. It is, to say the least, a very extraordinary thing that you, who call yourself a minister and even vicar of Christ, should become just that royal person, or king, he dared not consent to be. This, however, you are, and if so, the responsibility is on you; a responsibility measured not by the extent of your power only, but more by the sacredness of your pretensions. You assume to be the head of the Christian church, and a large part of the world have so little knowledge of any other form of religion, as really to suppose that you are the veritable representation of Christianity itself. And yet you have the credit, everywhere, of presiding over the worst government in Christendom! To the traveller passing through your states, nothing wears a look of thrift and happiness: no sign of improvement meets the eye, which is not refuted by signs of decay and deterioration. As the dismal campagna, once a region of fertility and teeming with life, circles Rome with silence and desolation, so in a political sense, everything about you that partakes the nature of hope, of social beauty and public progress, is withered away in the malignant atmosphere of your priestly despotism.
The World's Worst Government
Your ministers, all absolute, have yet no definite sphere of action, and are held to no responsibility. In their decrees, they perpetually contradict each other and you, encroaching too upon the tribunals of justice in contrary ways, as these do, in their turn, upon the jurisdiction and decisions one of another. Obedience is confused and baffled; and wrong surrounded by so many rival functions, which ought to be its avengers, is obliged to buy its redress at so dear a price, that the public remedy is often worse and more cruel than the private injury. For with few exceptions, every centre of power is the seat of some cabal; and creatures, male and female, glide about the precincts, who are able, by the base and criminal secrets in their keeping, or, perhaps, by terms of partnership well understood, to open or shut at will the gates of favor. Innocence is no protection; for your criminal trials are secret, and have the character of all works of darkness. If a man has property, there is really no chance for him but to run the gauntlet boldly, and escape with what he can, or else to worm his way through by bribery. To exhibit talent, out of the priesthood, is suspicious and dangerous; spies are put upon watch for a reward, and exile most assuredly is near at hand. Your ambitious and greedy priesthood have engrossed, not only the churches and the monasteries, but the spheres of education, the courts of law and all the higher magistracies; even the minister of war must be a prelate. Every nutritive and stimulating hope is thus taken away from the youth. No avenue to advancement is left open save through the humble door of ecclesiastical dependence; a fact which discourages every magnanimous struggle, and turns all the currents of ambition into the channels of hypocrisy, the meanest of sins. Never shall I forget the sad look of a brilliant, accomplished youth when he said: "Sir, there is no hope for us here; the priests have taken everything away from us."
Physical industry or labor, being naturally the most defenceless of all interests, sinks, of course, to a depression most hopeless and sorrowful of all. Then, lest misery should heave the sigh of impatience, or woe give vent to the unlicensed groan, you quarter on your impoverished and dispirited States an army of soldiers large enough to keep the peace of an empire. Next you add another army of ecclesiastics, out of all proportion with their resources, and I should hope even with their sins, (at Rome one to every twenty-eight of the people,) and these subsist, of course, by dead consumption too, and as a public burden. And then, as if earth could not yield ministers of exaction enough, you quarter on them also a third army of saints, who are the worst and most terrible scourge of all; inasmuch as they come down to chain the hands of industry one day in three of the working days of the year. Possibly your people might bear up and thrive under your terrestrial exactions, but when heaven comes down to mock them, the struggle is unequal. What people bereft of a whole third part of their industry, what people having all habits of industry broken up, and turned into the street, as every observer knows your people are on the saints' days, thus to spend a third part of their time in compulsory idleness, could long retain a vestige of thrift or virtuous economy?
Miseries of Priest-dominated Homes
To complete the misery of this picture, we have only to add that you have blasted the homes of your people, and made them dry of comfort; for it is here that the oppressed of other nations are ever able to mitigate the bitterness of their sorrows, by the freedom of domestic love and sympathy. Your confessors are continually at work, as your agents of police, hunting after the symptoms of discontent; busied everywhere, in scenting out, if possible, even the uneasy thoughts of misery. Often have I heard it boasted at Rome that your confessors make such admirable police! You have a confessor between every wife and her husband, and between both and their children; so that if one lisps a free thought, or vents a sigh at the table, the story, he knows, will be wormed out of some one in the family; and then if he escapes the prison, he must try what it is to wear out, by penance, the dissatisfaction he sought to ease by expression. They must keep their secrets, therefore, to themselves, they must not trust each other. There is no freedom at the hearth, the table is a gathering of spies, and the last relish of earthly comfort heaven gives to soothe the misery of oppression is taken away.
I saw it established, not long ago, by a curious collation of statistics from the several states of Italy, though the document is not now within my reach, that the deficiency of exports in the several states, the want of education, the severity of the public burdens, the number of crimes and of illegitimate births, is just in proportion to the number of ecclesiastics! Rome, the spiritual city, the metropolis of the Church of God, having the greatest number of ecclesiastics, is worst and basest of all. God grant you the Christian sensibility to weep over a fact so humiliating.
Strange Business for Peter
I look in vain for some scene of fatherly benignity, where you take your children to your arms in freedom, and receive their filial demonstrations. The nearest approach to it I have discovered is, when you are seen borne through the air above them, waving your blessing. But when this pageant is over, you slink away into the recesses of the Vatican, like some Eastern despot, with sentinels to guard your sleep; and if a revolution should break out before morning, you have a postern key under your pillow, and a covered gallery of masonry strung through the air, a half mile in length, through which you may slip into the fort of St. Angelo, and take refuge behind the artillery!
Between you and your priests, it is a thing perfectly well understood that your religion is not intellectual. To act on men through truth, to address their understandings, to sanctify them through the truth, is not your plan. You are as cautious to limit knowledge as you are to give it, and you consciously appeal to superstition as often as to reason.
You come as ministers of light, but secretly afraid of light, and more careful to measure it than to give it. This I say is not concealed from yourselves; you know that you are putting your church into a false position, though to save it; you wish it were not necessary; you are secretly ashamed of it: the penalty is to come.
It is also a favorite representation of your office, that you are the lineal successor of St. Peter. It is not within my object to deny that you are. I only say, that if you are the successor of St. Peter, there is certainly much for you to do, a large reform to make in order to fully justify your claim of successorship. Until then, it must savor too much of irony. I saw your three magnificent palaces, seats of regal majesty which the most splendid monarch in the richest and most populous empire of Europe might envy. I remembered that the money which sustains this royal ostentation is wrung out of a small state and a poverty-stricken people, who have also to support the splendors of the cardinals, and the golden liveries that flame about the gates of the Vatican,—did I see, in this, the unambitious manners, and the tender ministry of the fisherman of Galilee? I turned to his words. I found him saying: “Feed the flock of God.” Do you call this feeding the flock?
The Sistine Choir
Nor will your worship in the Sistine chapel any better assimilate you to your supposed predecessor and the manner of his time. Woman can not enter there; the wife of Peter himself could not enter, save behind a screen, lest her presence should disturb the flow of your sanctified emotions. No profane laic can enter save in a dress coat. The judgment of the world is artistically transacted over your altar, that you may not forget, I suppose, at your altar the judgment of the world. Sitting on your throne, as the successor of the fisherman of Galilee, your august person and the altar of the Lord are censed again and again with the common honors of worship. The cardinals float about you in stately trailings and gyrations to pay you their homage, and kiss your golden phylacteries; and your slipper receives the humbler homage of those who can stoop lower. What now could Peter make of this? What part of this pageant, what single item, do you imagine ever to have been seen in the churches of the apostles? Meantime I will now dispatch with a question another item of the scene, which I have not yet named. When the anthem rose, which was to lift our soul to God, my ear was caught by notes of a strange quality,—not the voice of woman, not of man. I turned my eye to the little gallery opposite where I stood, and, through the open work of the front, I spied the scrawny, sorrowful-looking faces of the poor beings whom you have damned to a fall even out of nature, to serve the luxury of your worship. Merciful God! Is this Christianity, the religion of him who came to exalt the poor and restore God’s image in man? That hour of disgust and indignation I shall never forget. And I declare to you here, the only place in which I can do it, that if there be a God in heaven who hears your anthems in the Sistine chapel, the voices of these desecrated beings will go up, not as praise, but as cries for redress and vengeance. This cruelty is an insult to Christ, which we could not pardon in a harem; what then is it in a sanctuary of worship? Above all, what as an instrument of worship?
What Would Bushnell Now Say?
If the writer of the foregoing devastating attack on the Hierarchy’s head were to return to Hartford today he would be tremendously surprised at some recent occurrences in Connecticut. He would find his name greatly honored through a beautiful park and a building erected to his memory. He would find books written about him and his works; but if he attempted to spread his gospel of truth he would find himself violating the law. As he again trod the streets of his beloved city and learned of the present condition of affairs he would be amazed and confounded, and would be righteously indignant over the atrocities recently committed in the name of law and order in the state.
Jehovah's witnesses are doing today some of the things Horace G. Bushnell did a century ago. They are presenting the gospel to the people, and with it go the exposure and condemnation of that which is false. This includes the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of Authority, which Bushnell fought so valiantly. But in his day the Hierarchy did not have an inquisitional machine operating in this 'land of the free and the brave'. Bushnell wasn't arrested. His clear and fearless exposure of religious hypocrisy made the false prophets squirm and gnash their teeth, but beyond railing at him and attempting to suppress his writings they could do nothing. What would he say in view of the present situation?
Some Unholy Atrocities
Since the first of January, 1938, over two hundred of Jehovah's witnesses have been subjected to arrest and incarceration in the state. Why? Because, like Horace G. Bushnell, they told some of the unpleasant truths concerning the Catholic religious and political machine. Had Bushnell this year wandered through the courts and police stations of Connecticut as he did through the Vatican at Rome he would have seen many strange and wondrous acts. He would have observed judges committing Christians to jail without evidence and without cause. He would have seen and heard police officers, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and enforce the law with impartiality, bringing Jehovah's witnesses to the jails in mass lots, and then answering priestly telephone inquiries with, "Yes, Father, we have them here." He would have seen and heard a Knights of Columbus dignitary telling a Connecticut mayor to censor Christian literature, and heard the mayor say in reply, "No attack on religion will be permitted in Bristol," which reply was followed by a malicious and vicious attack on Christianity in medieval form.
He would have seen a judge sitting on the bench condemn a printed statement telling of the political and inquisitional activities of the Hierarchy as "obscene and immoral". And when one of Jehovah's witnesses wrote a letter to officials in Hartford condemning this modern inquisition he likewise was placed under arrest and fined twenty-five dollars.
Some Unholy Contradictions
Consistency is a great virtue. The just and righteous man will be consistent in his acts. The wicked man cannot be consistent. The Connecticut inquisition against Jehovah's witnesses is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. To arrest Jehovah's witnesses in carload lots is an easy matter. When "Father" says the word the deed is accomplished. But when an irate religionist attacks one of Jehovah's witnesses and damages personal property without cause it is so very difficult to secure redress. The police are not interested; the prosecutor is too busy; and the judge just cannot do anything about it. When Jehovah's witnesses are arrested the press of Connecticut emblazon it with headlines on the front page. When a courageous state's attorney defies the inquisition and refuses to prosecute over a hundred of such cases the papers are either silent, or put a couple of lines in an obscure corner where it will not be read. When Jehovah's witnesses publish the truth about the Catholic "purgatory" racket they are thrown into jail for distributing "offensive literature". But when in its "Forum" The Catholic Transcript falsely and offensively vilified and abused Jehovah's witnesses nothing was done about it. (See page 10.)
All of these things have been observed by Connecticut people in recent months. Were Horace G. Bushnell alive and walking the streets of Hartford today his soul would be filled with righteous indignation over the suppression of free speech and free worship. The men who claim to honor and uphold his memory would undoubtedly receive from his pen treatment similar to that given to the foreign potentate in Rome many years ago.
Do all residents of the Nutmeg State approve and endorse this medieval degradation of state government and the name of a good man? Answer: No. Then it's time for them to wake up and stop the tail from wagging the dog.
New England
Forests or Floods
◆ It is an ironical fact that the experts attribute both kinds of disaster—the dust storm and the flood—to the same underlying cause: erosion of top soil, the plowing up of grass to plant crops which do not bind the soil or hold the moisture, and the destruction of forest trees. The remedy is the same in all cases: to take marginal land out of cultivation, and to plant trees and grasses, which will hold the soil together, absorb moisture, and give it out slowly instead of letting it run off with a rush.
The deforestation of so large a part of New England, especially about the headwaters of the principal streams, is an important contributing factor in the flood problem. With the forest restored we should have spring freshets but not spring floods. Trees create a deep forest mold which is like blotting paper in its power to hold moisture. Winter's snow melts much more slowly on forest floors than in open fields, under the influence of the first warm suns of spring. Without the forests the reverse is true. The spring thaws are sudden, the run-off quick, the result disastrous.
Then in summer the springs fail and the brooks dry up because there is no deep forest "water-table" to carry through the dry season.
The poet was much wiser than he knew when he wrote,
"Poems are made by fools like me;
But only God can make a tree."
—Hanford B. Porter, Connecticut.
Conscription of Conscience
◆ If the state can conscript the conscience of its people it has progressed far in the direction of totalitarianism. Jehovah's witnesses have the truth on their side when they see in flag salutes, oaths of loyalty and military service even for the objectors, a dangerous idolatry which threatens the true worship of God. —Reverend S. H. Fritchman, Bangor, Maine.
Sudden Deaths in Massachusetts Asylums
◆ Whether or not you have friends or relatives in Massachusetts insane asylums you will be interested to know that 424 patients died from other than natural causes in the ten years from 1926 to 1936 and that in the year 1937 there were 118 such sudden deaths. Of these, 29 were suicides, and 73 died from fractures, many caused by fellow patients.
Facing Facts in Shelton
◆ Taking advantage of the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Alma Lovell, Jehovah's witness, Griffin, Georgia, that freedom of the press includes and implies pamphlets and the right of distribution of the same, the city of Shelton, Connecticut, was faced with the question of permitting a labor organization to make such a distribution or adopting the motto of the police chief of Stratford, "I don't give a damn about the Supreme Court. I'm boss of this town."
The question came up for decision of City Attorney John B. Dillon, and he wisely and properly said to the mayor:
If we insist on enforcing our ordinance, they'll just bring a lawyer in here, have the Supreme Court ruling read out in court, and make fools of us all.
The mayor was wise enough to bow to the inevitable, and told the labor organizers that they could go ahead and exercise their legal rights without interference by the city.
A Fish with False Teeth
◆ Now if somebody said that a fish had been found that had a set of false teeth, you would be surprised; you might even think the narrator was lying. But the story from Boston is even worse than that. It tells of a fisherman's sneezing and losing his upper teeth, worth $30. Two days later the same vessel, fishing in the same section, caught a ten-pound cod and found the teeth in the cod's belly. Now is that a lie or what?
Ordered to Attend Church
◆ A Norwalk, Connecticut, man mistook himself for a pickle works and acted as foolish as men do under such circumstances. Neighbors complained, and he was arrested, fined $20, and ordered to attend church for six months. The inebriate gentleman insisted that he would rather pay more money in fines and forego the church punishment.
Jews Lining Up
◆ "Your Holiness, the Jews of the world stand ready to join with any force which will arise to lead our civilization back to sane thinking. A great figure is needed as a rallying point around which may gather all elements of religion, faith, democracy."—Jewish Advocate, Boston, Mass.
RIGHTEOUS RULER
THE NEW GOVERNMENT
Reason for Forsaking Religion
Members and Officers of the Church of my former Association:
To me the Bible has now become a new book, made clear and harmonious by my reading Watch Tower publications explaining it. I have learned more about Jehovah, His name, His Word, and His purpose to soon establish His kingdom on this earth, than I thought was possible for a human creature to know. I find now that the Scriptures clearly teach
(1) that Jehovah is the only true God, is from everlasting to everlasting, the Maker of heaven and earth and the Giver of life to His creatures; that the Logos was the beginning of His creation, and His active agent in the creation of all things; that the Logos is now the Lord Jesus Christ in glory, clothed with all power in heaven and earth, and the Chief Executive Officer of Jehovah;
(2) that God created the earth for man, created perfect man for the earth and placed him upon it; that man willfully disobeyed God’s law and was sentenced to death; that by reason of Adam’s wrong act all men are born sinners and without the right to life;
(3) that Jesus was made human, and the man Jesus suffered death in order to produce the ransom or redemptive price for mankind; that God raised up Jesus divine and exalted Him to heaven above every creature and above every name and clothed Him with all power and authority;
(4) that Jehovah’s organization is called Zion, and that Christ Jesus is the Chief Officer thereof and is the rightful King of the world; that the anointed and faithful followers of Christ Jesus are children of Zion, members of Jehovah’s organization, and are His witnesses whose duty and privilege it is to testify to the supremacy of Jehovah, declare His purposes toward mankind as expressed in the Bible, and to bear the fruits of the kingdom before all who will hear;
(5) that the world has ended, and the Lord Jesus Christ has been placed by Jehovah upon His throne of authority, has ousted Satan from heaven, and is proceeding to the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth;
(6) that the relief and blessings of the peoples of earth can come only by and through Jehovah’s kingdom under Christ, which has now begun; that the Lord’s next great act is the destruction of Satan’s organization and the establishment of righteousness in the earth, and that under the Kingdom all those who will obey its righteous laws shall live on earth forever.
Within the confines of a letter, I could not hope to give you the details. They have been so graphically and convincingly presented in the aforementioned publications that I cannot think of a better way of introducing you to a real understanding and solution of all human difficulties than by urging you to read this remarkable literature.
I now see why in all the countries of “Christendom”, so called, Jehovah’s witnesses alone are bringing to the attention of the people the only hope of the world, which is God’s kingdom, for which Jesus taught His followers to pray.
If my name appears on any of your church records, kindly remove it at once. The Scriptures declare that the names of the members of the true church of Christ are written in heaven. I ask no letter of dismissal.
Faithfully, one of Jehovah’s witnesses.
How Clergy Rule Niagara Falls
◆ Thundering Niagara, if it could speak as a man, could tell the world what follows here—of how the police, the courts and the press of the Falls city do the bidding of ecclesiastics.
On February 21, 1938, one of Jehovah’s witnesses (Mary O. Guthrie) visited the city’s residents, carrying to them Bible literature and a portable phonograph with which she played for them short Bible talks. Among many homes she visited was that of the pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of St. John de La Salle, the self-designated “Reverend” also known as Maurice O’Shea. While at the convent next door, a nun entered and rudely ordered her to leave. Mrs. Guthrie did so, without any objection. Later she was arrested and accused of ‘peddling books without a license’.
Efficient, indeed, are the Niagara Falls police if they track down and arrest harmful offenders and hardened criminals as promptly and skillfully as they comply with demands of Roman Catholic dignitaries.
In court, the woman's accusers suddenly realized that they had no evidence on which to convict her. Under such circumstances, the reasonable, honorable and proper course would be to dismiss the case and apologize to the defendant for her unlawful detention. Did that suit the persecutors? No, the inquisition machine had been started; it must be kept going. One who visits the home of a Catholic priest to preach the gospel of God's kingdom must be punished, as a horrible example to others. The police obligingly and swiftly changed the charge to "disorderly conduct", and then made a flying trip to the convent to secure attendance of the housekeeper as chief witness for the inquisition.
To the court, then, a trumped-up case was presented and, with aid of personal counsel of the self-styled "Reverend" (Maurice O'Shea), Mrs. Guthrie was "convicted".
All of this was done because she was presenting to the people a message of Biblical truth which exposes religious frauds and shocks the priestly susceptibilities.
In the public interest, the Niagara Falls Gazette was given opportunity to publish the facts. The editor flatly declined to do so.
A prominent columnist (Heywood Broun) is reported to have said that every editor in New York lives in mortal fear of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Evidently the editor of the Niagara Falls Gazette is one of that weak-kneed cult. They would rather see innocent, harmless persons convicted and religious intolerance flourish than to give deserved publicity to the misdoings of ecclesiastical racketeers.
Why Not Answer?
If the message presented for public enlightenment by Jehovah's witnesses is considered false by the priests, why do they not answer it? Why do they not accept the challenge by Judge Rutherford to debate the issues concerning which they accuse Jehovah's witnesses?
But that isn't the clergy manner. They prefer to go back to medieval "principles" of suppression of "opponents". They choose to follow the traditional path of archaic bigotry, to gag the critic and the dissenter by enlisting the aid of the strong arm of "the law".
Centuries ago the Roman Catholic Hierarchy brazenly sanctioned and directed murder by sword, fire and stake, the strangulation cord, or stoning, for persons labeled by the Hierarchy's inquisitors as "heretics". Says The Catholic Encyclopedia:
"Heretics may be not only excommunicated but also justly put to death."—Vol. XIV, pages 767, 768.
This heroic device to silence "unruly talkers" is "by its divine nature irrepealable and has never been revoked", continues, substantially, the same Encyclopedia. It yet remains intact on the "Church" statute books and would, undoubtedly, be used today against Jehovah's witnesses at Niagara Falls and elsewhere were it not for the fact that "due to changed conditions, it has fallen into abeyance" (meaning reluctant disuse), as the same Encyclopedia that expounds the Hierarchy's "principles" and practices further gracefully confesses:
"Toleration came in only when faith went out; lenient measures [such as jailing in place of killing] were resorted to ONLY WHERE THE POWER TO APPLY MORE SEVERE MEASURES WAS WANTING."—Vol. VII, page 262.
In similar strain, eminent spokesmen of the Hierarchy now express its aims and describe methods 'rightly' usable to achieve those aims. For example, the present superior-general (John B. Harney) of the Hierarchy's religious society of "Missionary Jesuits" (sometimes called "Paulist Fathers") states:
"I do not doubt, if they were strong enough, that the Catholic people would hinder, even by death if necessary, the spread of such errors through the people. And I say rightly so."
Additionally, the Hierarchy's chief American mouthpiece, Dennis Dougherty, cardinal-archbishop of Philadelphia, threatened publicly, in writing, to "take further and more drastic action, if the broadcasting of Judge Rutherford is permitted to continue".
Why Such Cruel Threats?
Enemies and Cure, two of the latest publications Jehovah's witnesses provide to all thoughtful persons, contain startling, comforting and provable facts that the representatives of the Hierarchy and other religionists dare not recognize or answer.
On the contrary, those ecclesiastical would-be "fuehrers" and their bigoted supporters prefer trying to stop the mouths of all who now publish and distribute anything that uncovers and exposes iniquities and frauds of religionists high and low, and informs honest people of their God-given rights.
For information of every honest person who receives a copy of this statement, Jehovah's witnesses offer the reminder that Niagara Falls and other New York communities are not the only places where such vicious and un-American attempts to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of the press have been instigated by agents of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. During the past ten years, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and other states, several thousand of these God-fearing men, women and children have been ruthlessly arrested, prosecuted, convicted, thrown into filthy prison cells and dungeons, and otherwise maltreated at the behest of the Hierarchy's henchmen.
AWAKE, fair-minded Americans! Let honest persons of good will bestir themselves, calmly consider the FACTS, and firmly resist further encroachment upon their God-given rights and liberties by studying the Word of God and ignoring would-be dictators garbed in gorgeous ecclesiastical vestments! —Portion of a statement by one of Jehovah's witnesses, placed in the hands of every citizen of Niagara Falls, N. Y.
Big Business in Radio
◆ Broadcasting, a radio magazine, in reporting the financial earnings of the four major networks, offers some intensely interesting figures. The first seven months of the depression year 1938 show these combined networks with an earning of $42,440,323. In view of the fact that radio is a God-given medium of communication it is significant that God's message of Truth published by Jehovah's witnesses has been conspicuously absent from these networks. All persons of good will, however, will be glad to know that there is one radio station on earth, not in the ring of commerce, that is devoted exclusively to broadcasting the good news concerning God's kingdom. Since Jehovah's kingdom is the only hope of mankind, the Watchtower station WBBR, in Brooklyn, New York, is truly serving its listeners in a more valuable manner than the imposing figures above would indicate commercial radio is doing. When radio honors God it is properly utilized. When that consideration is absent the result must be demoralizing and injurious to the public. No agency that excludes the proclamation of the Truth can render real service in the public interest.
Sadness and Gloom in Cresskill
◆ "Jehovah's witnesses are coming to town and there is nothing the town fathers can do to stop them, Mayor Theodore J. Brassel told the Cresskill Council last night."
This from the Bergen Evening Record of May 5, 1938. Cresskill is another town that foolishly thought it could suppress exposure of religion by means of a pamphlet muzzle and bridle. Its ordinance, a prohibitory one, and only a year old, is now ready for final interment, and great is the sadness and sorrow of the town bosses. Cheer up, boys. You'll enjoy fresh air, too, after you get used to it.
Too Much Religion in Elgin
◆ Myron M. Lehman, mayor of Elgin, Illinois, was given a free copy of the Lovell decision, and responded with a written statement that Elgin had forty-seven churches and that he hoped Jehovah's witnesses would not bother them. He also claimed that Elgin people had a right to worship as they pleased, and seemed to have the funny notion that a call by Jehovah's witnesses with the gospel message interfered with that right. Anyway, the mayor and his forty-seven churches ought to take immediate steps to educate their policemen in the rudiments of Christianity, and common decency.
Mike Televiak, pioneer, has been interfered with four times in the course of a month in this city of churches and free worship. On the last occasion Mike was given this kind of religious gospel by an officer: "You had better take my address right now, because when you call at my home I'll break that phonograph machine to one thousand pieces. I hope some day you run into a man as big as yourself and he beats hell out of you." If the forty-seven churches and the mayor of Elgin cannot raise police officers to a higher level of civilization than here manifested they had better turn the job over to someone else.
(To be continued) ◆ Ohio and Kentucky
Doom: Confronts Us
History repeats itself. Today our country is practically in the position of the old Roman empire at the height of its glory and the beginning of its decline. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the rich, who in turn have transformed them into large farms or large estates, thus depriving a million farmers of a livelihood, and forcing them to go to our crowded cities seeking employment, eventually to join our ever-increasing relief hordes.
Around each city may be seen large stretches of unworked and weed-grown fields owned by large real estate interests, while the potential farmer waits his turn in a long relief line. This destruction of the small farms that dotted our country has swelled the number of unemployed, while wealth and luxury are enjoyed only by the few. As a republic, our country is doomed. It is the beginning of the end.—A. P. Cragle, in Cleveland News.
The Ohio Gang
◆ The Ohio Gang seem to have one ambition, shared alike by those now in office and by Warren Harding and the Forty Thieves of the Teapot Dome era. There was a time when statesmen regarded their offices as public trusts, but not now. The following is a reproduction of a slip handed to WPA workers in Ohio. The worker was expected to sign and to get signers and to boost for re-election of Mr. Davey, now holding the office of governor of Ohio. The same scheme is being worked shamelessly in other states. It is in effect a bribery and intimidation of workers and voters, in full bloom in all its glory in Germany and coming into America as fast as it can come.
MEMBERSHIP
MARTIN L. DAVEY FOR GOVERNOR CLUB
One Who Becomes Member Please Sign
Believing as I do in the ability, honesty, humaneness, progressivism, fairness and impartiality of Martin L. Davey, which he has demonstrated in such an outstanding manner as the Governor of all the people, I am happy to promise to vote for Governor Davey in the August primary and the November election.
Signed
Address
Town
Encouraging Ohio WPA workers to vote right and so keep their jobs
Baptized Only Once
◆ Kentucky Baptists generally believe one immersion enough for a layman but the clergy should be baptized at least twice, and so the General Association stopped payment of $31,000 intended for the Georgetown (Kentucky) College until it has decided whether the president of the college, Reverend Doctor Henry Noble Sherwood, has been baptized enough to justify them in parting with all that money. What a panic they would be in if they found that none ever were baptized at all, no matter how many times they were immersed, unless, at some definite point in their history, they had unconditionally given themselves to the Lord, to be used, alive or dead, as He wills, and absolutely content to go to heaven, or stay on earth, if that would most vindicate His holy name.
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