350 AiNTNUAL REPORT.' 



But not so 1800 years ago. The followers of Christ preached peace, and 

 practiced what they preached — had neither rich nor poor amongst them — 

 all fared alike. They cultivated peace at home and with the world 

 around, so tliat in the midst of the rush and wreck of nations that then 

 transpired, they lived unharmed, alike respected by the victors and the 

 vanquished. Then it was hard for a rich man to enter heaven, he had to 

 sell all and divide with the poor, content to live a common equal. But 

 nowadays Christians retain their wealth, and climb up to heaven another 

 way, and as they ascend the scaling ladders with songs and thanks to God 

 for their full and over-burdened storehouses of acknowledged ill-gotten 

 gains, the poor cry for bread and shiver with cold right under the eaves of 

 their costly churches, and all the relief, old clothes, rancid butter, mouldy 

 cheese, little potatoes, hogs' jowls and shank bones are turned over to 

 the soup hovel to feast the poor on swill and rich men's prayers. The 

 God of Malachi having smelled in the solemn meetings of that day, 

 termed their exercises " dung," and were he to smell in the churches of 

 to-day, he would tell them that their charities were not fit to make dung 

 of. Yet the same song of peace and good will to man to man is being 

 sung to-day that was sung 1800 years ago— commingling as they rise to 

 heaven with the cries of the starving and the groans of murdered Indians 

 and Negroes. 



Evidently the creeds of to-day are not reformers; the morals, the 

 peace and purity of the world is suffering in their keeping. They have 

 had an uninterrupted rule of over 1500 years; their bloody record is 

 before us. their foul prisons and foul dens of chartered vice bedot the 

 land — stinking curses of the race, so that you see stamped in the faces of 

 half the men you meet, rogue or whore-monger, if indeed he is not too 

 drunk to look up. Naught but true principles will do. What created 

 quiet and commanded respect 1800 years ago would have the same power . 

 to-day, if carried out, and to that end let us urge the putting of a large 

 supply of the luxuries of life in the reach of all, and to make the blessing 

 more complete and lasting urge the growing of more and better fruit. 

 For, be it remembered, the earth is stingy or benevolent as we set the 

 example, and that as we give the deserts will bloom, and the waste places 

 with luscious fruit make glad all hearts. But the Arab's horse will only 

 sink us deeper' and curse us more lastingly. 



