GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



643 



frequent church regularly are more ready to 

 cheat than good Christians." I did not mean 

 to say exactly that, friend D. What I did say 

 was this: " If I wanted a good man for an im- 

 portant place, and wanted somebody I could 

 trust when I was not in sight at all, I should, 

 other things being equal, greatly prefer a man 

 who attends church regularly, and who takes 

 some part in the Sunday-school, weekly prayer- 

 meetings," etc. You see, I was giving my own 

 experience. If your experience is so different 

 from mine, I am sorry. In the closing words of 

 your first paragraph are the words, " good 

 Christians." Friend D.. is it not true that the 

 whole difference between you and me may be 

 summed up in this? You consider Christians 

 hypocrites. I believe them to be honest in 

 their profession. The good Christian stands 

 before the world and stands before men taking 

 a sacred obligation to be honest and pure and 

 temperate, etc. You pay me a great compli- 

 ment by calling me a business Christian. I 

 do believe that Christianity should be a busi- 

 ness. A Christian man is like a bank. He 

 stands before the world prepared to live up to 

 his profession. A bank stands before the world 

 agreeing to make good its promises to pay, etc. 

 When the bank fails to pay hard cash, accord- 

 ing to the promise, it fails, and becomes a by- 

 word and a reproach. When the Christian lets 

 Satan lead him astray by dishonesty and im- 

 purity or intemperance, he becomes a reproach 

 and a disgrace to the cause. There are cer- 

 tainly some good men among Christians. If 

 they are all hypocrites, the state of affairs 

 would be like a nation where the money was 

 all counterfeit. 



I wish you would give me the names of the 

 two young men who were discharged on ac- 

 count of dishonesty, and were regular members 

 of the church: or, better still, just lend them 

 this journal, and tell them to write me an 

 explanation. Please excuse me. friend D., if I 

 can not help thinking that there is some mis- 

 understanding, or that you are a little too hard 

 on them. I am exceedingly glad that the rest 

 of your men are honest, even if they do not go 

 to church. Yes. I do desire you to name the 

 two ministers of the gospel, but do not do it in 

 public. Give me their names privately, or. as I 

 said before, show them this journal, to remind 

 them of what a serious and grave thing it is to 

 dishonor, by their business methods, the sacred 

 cause to which they have given their lives.* 

 Ministers are no doubt sometimes slandered; 

 but I myself do not believe they are very often 

 slandered unless they are at least somewhat to 

 blame. If one should make a business of hunt- 

 ing up all the ministers of the United States 

 who have yielded to temptation, and denied 

 their Savior, as even Peter did. no doubt it 

 would make a good-sized book; but remember, 

 dear friend, our country is a large one. There 

 are three or four ministers in every little town, 

 besides many more scattered throughout all the 

 rural districts. They are sprinkled like salt 

 throughout all this vast wide country. You 

 know Christians have been called the salt of 

 the earth; and my experience has made me 

 think they are really the salt of the earth, not- 

 withstanding these exceptional cases you have 

 mentioned. Ministers are human. A good 

 many of them are poorly paid, and some of 

 them, I am sorry to say, ought never to have 

 been in the ministry. Unprincipled men of 

 education and ability frecjuently take up the 

 ministry for sr-lfish ends. It would be strange 

 if some did not. In this case they are not 

 Christians at all, but simply h]i])ocrltes. Pretty 

 soon they are found out, and they give up their 

 profession, or they are put out of it, and go 

 back to where they belong. This book you 



mention would, no doubt, contain the names of 

 all of these. Why, the temptation is tremen- 

 dous to manage to get into the pulpit in order 

 to further some scheme to defraud. I knew of 

 a "patent-right man" who called himself a 

 minister, and actually preached a pretty fair 

 sermon in one of our churches. He stayed here 

 several weeks, and accordingly won the confi- 

 dence of the people; and when he had got quite 

 a lot of money he "lit out" for a new field. 

 Such cases will, of course, go into that book. 

 Then there are now and then instances of 

 where a good man — a man who has, perhaps, 

 preached faithfully for, may be, several years. 

 Once in a great while we find such a man who, 

 in an unguarded moment, yields to temptation. 

 Down he goes, shaking community, filling the 

 papers with scandal, dishonoring the cause of 

 Christianity, and spoiling the faith of, perhaps, 

 good people as well as bad. But when we con- 

 sider the number of ministers of the gospel 

 there are in the United States. I think the 1700 

 crimes you say are mentioned in that book do 

 not make a big percentage, after all. But how 

 does it render the teachings of Christ obnoxious 

 to you, even if these men were false? You 

 should consider the men and not the gospel. 

 They were not bad hcrnuse the gospel taught 

 them to be so, but hi spite of it. 



Friend D., please remember that I have for 

 years visited, talked with, and got acquainted 

 with all the inmates of our county jail. More 

 than that, I have visited prisons in other places 

 in my travels. I have made this matter of 

 crime in our land a deep study. When I spoke 

 about a man acting the way he is " built." I 

 had the inmates of our jails in mind, and I was 

 thinking of the many times new criminals try 

 to excuse themselves by saying they could not 

 help it. An intemperate man tells me that his 

 father drank before him, therefore he inherited 

 an appetite that he can not resist. He is hxiilt 

 that way, therefore he is not to blame; and 

 criminals excuse themselves for all sorts of 

 crimes in that same way. Now. the Christian 

 religion teaches us, as you are well aware, that, 

 even though a man has inherited appptites and 

 passions, there is help for him. He can bi." re- 

 constructed, emancipated, " built over " again, 

 and may God be praised that thisi§ indeed true. 

 Why, old friend, you need not be surprised to see 

 me full of energy and enthusiasm and faith in 



* Most of our readers are already aware that we 

 have for years sent goods right along to ministers 

 without pay, and without even consulting Dun or 

 Bradstreet. All we want to know is, that he is a 

 minister of tiie gospel, and preaching regularly to a 

 parish of people. Sometimes the clerks remon- 

 strate; but I tell them to keep on until we find a 

 minister who does not pay his debts. This has l)een 

 our oust(>m for years, and we have not lost any 

 thing yet. A few days ago we had an order for 

 celery-plants. Our customer said that, if we had a 

 certain kind he wanted, we might send them along 

 also C. O. D. "No. no," said I; "do not send them 

 C. O. D. Don't you see he is a minister ? " But the 

 clerk objected, saying, " But he says we are to send 

 them C. O. D., and he will be quite willing to take 

 them in that way." But I objected again. " It will 

 cost him some money e.\tra to have them sent C. O. 

 D., and we certainly do not wisli to i)ut a minister 

 of the gospel to needless expense. He will surely 

 pay for whatever he ordisrs." 



During the > ears that have passed since this has 

 been our custom I have been a few times obliged 

 to write to them that, if they failed lo make good 

 thtnr promises, they would be the first to break the 

 fair record that their calling has so far given us; 

 and as ministers, like other people, are often be- 

 hindhand, and have sickness, we have sometimes 

 been oliliged to wait on them. Now, I can not tell 

 you how this record would compare with that of 

 the free-thinkers; but I should be very glad indeed 

 to know that this latter class are olsn jjrompt and 

 upright in all business deals. 



