1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 205 



without morality ; but with them the religious has nothing to 

 do with the moral character. The pirate committing murder 

 on the high seas, and taken red-handed, refuses to eat meat 

 on Friday and thus imperil his soul, even while his hands 

 are yet wet with his brother's blood. The robber strips you 

 to the skin, takes everything you possess, maltreats and 

 threatens you with death, and then calmly ejaculates as he 

 leaves you, " May God save you, my lamb, if in danger. I 

 give you into His keeping." 



No one is ever supposed to be the less covetous, the less 

 a cheat, a gambler, a liar, a defrauder, a robber, a murderer, 

 because he prays. Nothing is farther from his own thoughts 

 or the thoughts of the bystanders, than that his prayers 

 should exert any transforming influence upon his own char- 

 acter. And why should they? For when they have busi- 

 ness to transact with their neighbors on temporal matters 

 they use a language which all can understand, but whenever 

 they have any business with their Maker about their eternal 

 interests it is always done in a language they do not under- 

 stand. Outwardly pious and sincere, inwardly they are 

 whited sepulchres and full of dead men's bones. The 

 traveler in the highway, the artisan in his shop, the mer- 

 chant in the bazaar, the lounger in the cafe, when the hour 

 for prayer arrives, hastens to spread his little carpet on the 

 ground and goes through the required formula. But he is 

 keenly alive all the time to whatever is going on about him, 

 and when his pious ejaculations are ended, will be found to 

 have lost not an iota of anything that may have been said 

 during his temporary fit of piety. If a professional story- 

 teller has been amusing the crowd with some entertaining 

 tale while he was praying, he will be found not to have lost 

 the point of the story, or the pith of any joke. The writer 

 of the article entitled " Baron Hirsch's Railway in Turkey " 

 tells the following story : A peasant one day sent in all 

 haste for an American missionary to come and pray for him. 

 Not a little surprised at the unusual request, the missionary 

 went, and .the peasant remarked, " Your prayers are more 

 efficacious than those of our priests." The missionary was 

 somewhat surprised at this, and after modestly murmuring 

 something concerning faith, was preparing to comply with 



