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Show A POPULAR SALT LAKE PREACHER. We last week reluctantly called attention to the destructive tendencies of a discourse delivered from the stage of a Salt Lake theatre by the pastor of the First Congregational church, this city. We then promised to supplement our quotations by additional ad-ditional extracts taken from accredited sources, and we now propose to keep our pledge. But before we introduce our authorities we wish to say a word or two on some issues cognate to the subject under treatment. The clergyman, be he Catholic priest or Protestant Protest-ant minister, who aspires to popularity will learn, to his cost, when he has attained the object of his ambition that he is leaning on a broken reed. It is impossible for the faithful minister of God to be a popular man in the accepted sense of the word. The zealous priest or parson, the honest and upright up-right servant of God will win the respect, the approval, ap-proval, the reverence of all honorable men and women, wo-men, but he can never be a popular man with the masses. The world dislikes the ambassador of Christ who would rouse it out of its comfortable sloth that does so well for this world, and who would give in the place of that sloth something, of which in its spiritual darkness the world does not see the want at all. For this reason it is that whenever when-ever we look into church history we find it invariable invar-iable that those who have ever done good in Christianity Chris-tianity those who founded it those who preached its doctrines in their entirety those who repaired and reformed human abuses and sins have been during their lives unpopular characters, while those who opposed them, who tried to drag down and destroy de-stroy have been popular. Witness, in our own day, the popularity of the Ingersolls, the Campbells, the McGlynns, the Swings and the Briggs. When the Rev. Dr. Charles A. Briggs, ruthlessly attacked his own church, the Presbyterian, one of his sympathizers in a burst of enthusiasm exclaimed: "We would die for Dr. Briggs. He is one of those men to whom the church of a coming. generation will build a prophet's proph-et's tomb." In after ages when the Saints have gone to their reward, when we have reaped the fruit of their labors and their self-denial, we honor and reverence them, but whilst they were on earth they were hated and persecuted. The new theology, with which the Congregational pastor is consciously or unconsciously in sympathy, says "No" to this and "Xo" to that. Thoughtful men, however, cannot have confidence in a system that has nothing positive posi-tive about it. They will rather take the risk of believing be-lieving a little too much than invite the danger of denying everything. "I would rather Boswel," said Johnson to his biographer, "be damned if I am to be damned I would rather be damned for believing believ-ing too much than believing too little." And now to our extracts. The Dr. Rameau, who 5s the star character in Ohnet's novel, from which we quote, began by "Clearing away the rubbish to get at great things" and see where he landed. We translate trans-late this striking interview between the doctor's wife and the doctor's friend for the benefit o the Congregational pastor and his admirers. The friend of the family has been, by accident, the unwilling spectator of improper familiarities between the doctor's wife and an acquaintance. He enters and reproaches her, and after dwelling at some length on the moral aspects of the case, he reminds her of the danger her folly has incurred and observes : "What an imprudence, to expose yourself to the observation of any chance visitor, perhaps of a servant! ser-vant! Think that for a blessed chance your hus- band might have come with me! What if it had been he who caught you ? Do you know that he is a man to have killed both of you?" "I know it," she said in a low voice. He turned to her and continued more gently. "Let us consider, my child. Hear me with your heart and your reason, too. You cannot possibly be as greatly in fault as you seem to be. You must have yielded to a momentary fascination. You shall recover yourself and be again what you ought to be. "My husband!" she cried; "he is the cause of it all. It is he who has misled me! He himself is responsible re-sponsible for my fall." "What! your husband? What you say is monstrous." mon-strous." "But it is true, nevertheless. If he, instead of you, were before me, I should say the same, and he could make no answer. How should he make it a crime to yield to a monetary fascination of the senses he who believes in nothing but matter? According to him, human beings are controlled simply sim-ply by animal instincts. He puts them on the same plane with the brutes. What, Ithen. should have stopped me? A sentiment of duty? But that means conscience, and conscience means a soul, and he believes in no such thing. My ears are still full of the laughter he showered on me when I tried poor superstitious thing, as he called me to defend my faith. You yourself have been a witness wit-ness of those senses; you took my part and all you made by it was to be baffled and mocked along with me by his haughty philosophy. "lie has made a pleasure of breaking down every barrier that might have restrained me. The com mandments of my God required of me fidelity and duty; but he insisted there is no God, heaven is empty space. My mother told me from childhood to be good and virtuous in this world, and I should reap reward hereafter; but my husband proved that nothing in us or about us .remains after we die. And with what did he undertake to replace tho consoling faith and salutary fear of which he robbed me? Why, with some vague principals of morality, variable in their nature, since they are the products of winds that change, and easily broken, brok-en, since they are merely human. I repeat it, whatever what-ever crime there may be in what I have done, he is the true criminal. I consider him all the more execrable when I think that I might have been loving, faithful and devoted to him, and that lie has done his utmost to prevent it, and to bring upon up-on me an immense dispair." (Le Docteur Rameau George's Ohnet.) j In the light of recent deplorable events in Og-den, Og-den, this logic ,on the whole, suggests some pregnant preg-nant reflections. If men and women, even with the saving truths taught by our Divine Lord, ringing in their ears, will sometimes go down into misery and foulness, what is likely to be the end of those, beset with the same temptations, with no hell to frighten them, no heaven to allure them and no God to help them? |