Morning Appeal

In our new nation, which has not rolled long enough down the stream of time, to wear off all its rough edges and sharp points, perhaps one of the most offensive and mischievous of all our crudities is the popular and sensational preacher.

All orthodox sects agree that we have had no miracles since the days of the apostles, but these fellows would make us believe that the days of miracles are never to cease, and that each is a miracle in himself—not a "miracle of grace" but a regular out and out phenomenon.

And as a general thing they are not to blame, except so far as they are hypocrites. A young man with any tolerable talent or personal graces, who enters the ministry, takes, to our mind, one of the most trying steps within the reach of any man. He is made the target for the unmarried, young and old; a pet, by light headed matrons, and a prey to fulsome flattery, worked slippers, Turkish wrappers, smoking caps and pen wipers, and if he does not soon begin to think himself the most popular and talented man alive, and scan his mirror oftener than his heart: he's a "miracle of grace" and no question.

One of the most popular and talented men in the Episcopal Church, Rev. Phillips Brooks, we know to have been compelled to change his rooms so often to keep away from annoying visits that he was compelled to abandon a splendid parish and accept one in Boston at a very much reduced salary. But all men are not Phillips Brookses.

Where flattery failed to touch his religious nature, and turn his head, it has thousands of victims, to the disgrace of a sacred calling, and the ruin of many a bright intellect. It is sufficient to point out such a clerical coquette as Talmage, such bubbles as Moody—bubbles stirred up by some revival tempest, where many a man has drifted into a current accidentally and floated along without either will or power of his own.

The Tennents and Mathers and Brainerds, and Wesleys; whose lives and labors have come down to us surrounded by such grand halos, did not belong to the class of the Beechers and Talmages and Spurgeons and the general revival spawn which has made the pulpit of the last quarter century, simply a rostrum, "where men display to congregations wide, devotions every grace, except the heart," what kind of religion is likely to spring from such cultivation? what kind of seed are such men likely to sow?

Their honied words and distorted phrases, and flashy rhetoric must be caught by the "pen of the ready writer" as they drop from their sacred lips: and spread out in the broad pages of a journal be scattered over the land as though they were the leaves that are for the healing of the nations. It is a mercenary dodge; but popular men must have money, and cannot afford to waste their brains for naught.

Is it any wonder we have doubters and scoffers, and open infidelity or that there is no "vision" in the land in our days; and that thinking men, whose instincts are religious, too often fall into a general neglect of all observance of the commonest forms, or any pretensions to piety.

There is a heavy curse in store for these men who are putting christianity "to an open shame." Everything looks to the fulfillment of the prophesy: "The Lord will bring again the captivity of Zion."

The time was when a Jew was the choice roast for an Auto da fe, and his money bag legitimate prey for needy rulers; when the gaberdine marked the humiliation of his race, and he was confined to certain quarters. All that is changed. He sits in our legislative halls, officers our armies and navies; wears the ermine, and directs diplomacy. Witness Beaconsfield, the great premier, De Young the great organizer, and friend of the people, and Fred Hart, the mogul of the Stock Report, and then ask Ingersoll to step to the front and deny the truth of the prophesy.