People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1894 — Nothing If Not a Priest. [ARTICLE]

Nothing If Not a Priest.

D”. McGlynn at the Auditorium in Chicago last Friday night said in part: I am nothing if not a priest. The ideal of ny earliest childhood was to dedicate myself to the service of the Most High, and I nave never had the slightest temtation to tear mysell away from the aspirations of my youth. Some of you may have come here out of mere curiosity 10 see a preacher on a p diiical p.dUuim. If the principles for all.ch this party is coni, tiding were the s; me as those o dit.arily confer ded for by the o'd p<> lineal parlies 1 would agree will anyone wuu Should critic.-e limb Iv. ao entirely uu< ol my p.a ■ ' But Uiis is n<>t a mere p nitieu party. It f-t’nd 1 -for soij. j 'Rog higher and nob'er than \ o lino contended lor by mere po.it tciaris loe reogiou wiiuln nie win tiui ado., me to sit stil when I see the great wroiq whi h are being done again ,i, < Jod’s people by others of ins ere ation. 1 was for many a year minis tering before the altar to Chrisi s poor and knew the ills of poverty with which they have to coatend. While I preached to the i of Christ’s mercy 1 was constantly aware of the poverty ana degradation by which they wen. surrounded on all sides.

I have been beseiged by women and children as well as men heggingrae not for bread or evn. money, Out for my assistance ic secure them work that th might earn their bread, ano have been compelled to turn them away empty handed of this right which they regarded as a boon, beeing this terrible con dibion of affairs on all sides I wa.-. compelled to ask myself. Cm this be God’s law that this advance incivi'ization which we call progress must be attended by so much poverty, suffering and degradation? Il is the law of civili Zution that the higher culture shall be at the expense of lhe lives and happiness of the poor, lhe needy, and the oppressed ? If such be tile truth, civilization is a oad and not a good t.iing. My religion would not permit me to believe that this was a law of God. No, the misery and the poverty, the pressing out of human lives, are not the result of God’s law. Know ing these things and feel ing the injustice and iniquity which had been propagated in the name of law. I was impelled in spite of myself to come forth from the pulpit to say to ray brother men who would not come to hear me from the pulpit: ‘Whatever else you do. have no quarrel with the verities revealed by true religion. 1 am glad to he here to-night in behalf of the important essentials of the People’s party platform. The previous and eloquent speaker has told you of the two old parties. Their differences seem to me to be the > differences between tweedledee and tweedledum. I am glad that I shall never have to ask the forgiveness of God for having had amrthiog to do except in the bumble way of a voter, with the aiisiakes which they have made. 1 SB here to demand in the name

of sweet religion, not charity, but justice for man. We are charged with trying to expunge that most important among the commandments: “Thou shall not steal.” We are not here to steal, but to put a stop to stealing. people's rights stolen.

1 am not here to cry out against the stealing of geese when men are stealing the great rights of the common people. The essential principles of the People's party and of the United labor party come nearer to those great principles enunciated in the preamble to our constitution than those enunciated by any other of the parties of the day. Those principles have been declared inalienable and they are because the gift of the Creator. We are essentially equal,because members of one family and children of one father. Take away the great law’ of the golden rule and how hollow human life is; the mere competition of the animal for the necessities which sustain life, a mere brute scramble; instead of the grand principle each man for his brother and God take us all. we have every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

Take away these fundamental laws of justice and what more is natural than the big fish shall eat up the little fish. It is only by assenting the brotherhood of man which rests upon the fatherhood of God that, the workingman. has any standing in this world. In behalf of the toiler and the weak and the oppressed 1 am here to assert these fundamental truths which are based on revealed religion. It is only a century after the I beginning of o»ir country ini which tnese great principles; were enunciated that we find; ourselves breaking the shackles of 4,009,GA) chattel slaves. It I was a great honor and credit to us that we did break the chains [ ofthese-slavessalthough we were! tong in doing it. But there is I another form of slavery which J is more galling than the bungling! ownership of the human being! as a chattel. It is industrial i slavery. that kind of slavery i Which holds the Lolling masses; down to a mere pittance which j will barely keep nody and so ;l I together. "What can we met n 1 by the pursuit of happine • 1 which is guaranteed by our co . stitution if it does not mean tl • freedom to labor, to seek tl e higher life which labor shou I make possible? But as long ; we are composed of bodies : - well as souls, as long as we net !

elbow room in this world, it foi ; lows that we must have equ.l to those natural boons, the ai . the sunlight.in a word, the nat ral fountains which God creab as iris storehouse of nature for the human race. The People’s party in its pla form declares against the givii away of these natural resourc .• to any wan unless he makes ; r adequate return for the priv leges he enjoys. This is the do •- trine of the single tax as enunc. aled by that courageous mt n Henry George Society,civil government, the power to direct, Io build up the power of law to protect the rights and liberties of all come, from God. The immediate deduction from these principles is that all law must be from, of, and by the people for the good of the people, wl.o are God's creatures.