Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1894 — THE CURSE OF BIGOTRY [ARTICLE]

THE CURSE OF BIGOTRY

The Evils of Intolerance and Sec “ tarianisin. All Christians Can Stand on a Broad Gospel Platform—Dr. Talmage’s Sermon for the Press. The Rev. Dr. Talmage, who is now in Australia, whence he will shortly sail for Ceylon and India, selected as the subject for last Sunday’s sermon through the press “Communion of Saints,” the text chosen being Judges xii, 6: “Then said they unto him, say now shibboleth, and he said sibboleth, for he could riot frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him at the passages of Jordan.” Do you notice the difference, of pronunciation between shibboleth and sibboleth? A very small and unimportan t difference you say. And yet that difference was the difference between life and death for a great many people. The Lord’s people, Gilead and Ephriam, got into a great fight, and Ephriam was worsted, and on the retreat came to the fords of the river Jordon to cross. Order was given that all Ephraimites coming there be slain. But how could it be found out who were Ephriamites? They were detected by their pronunciation. Shibboleth was a word that stood for river. The Ephriamites Lad a brogue of their own, and when they tried to say “shibboleth” always left out the sound of the “h.” When it was asked that they say shibboleth, they said sibboleth and were slain. “Then said they unto him, say now shibboleth and he said sibboleth, for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him at the passages of Jordan.” The church of God is divided into a great number of denominations. Time would fail me to tell of the Calvinists, and the Armenians, and the Dunkards, and the Shakers, and the Quakers, and the Methodists, and the Baptists, and the Lutherans, and the Episcopalians, and the Congregationalists, and the Presbyterians, and the Spiritualists, and a score of other denominations of religionists, some of them founded by very good men, some of them founded by very egotistic men, some of them founded by very bad men. But as I demand for myself liberty of conscience I must give that same liberty to every other man, remembering that he no more differs from me than I differ from him. I advocate the largest liberty in all religious belief and form of worship. In art, in politics, In morals and in religion let there be no gag law, no moving of the previous question, no persecution, no intolerance.

I propose to speak to you of sectarianism, its origin, its evils and its cures. There Tire those who would make us think that this monster, with horns and hoofs, is religion. I shall trace it to its hiding place and drag it out of the caverns of darkness and rip off its hide. But I want to make a distinction between bigotry and a lawful fondness for peculiar religious belief and forms of worship. I have no admiration for a nothingarian. In tracing out the religion of sectarianism or bigotry I find that a great deal of it* comes from wrong education in the home circle. There are parents who do not think it wrong to caricature and jeer the peculiar forms of religion in the world and denounce other sects and other denominations. It is very often the case that that kind of education acts opposite to what was expected, and the children grow up after awhile, go and see for themselves, and looking in those churches and finding that the people are good there, and they love God and keep his commandments, by natural reaction they go and join those very churches. I could mention the names of prominent ministers of the gospel who spent their whole lives in bombarding other denominations who lived to see their children preach the gospel in those very denominations. But it is often the case that bigotry starts in a household and the subject of it never recovers. There are tens of thousand of bigots ten years old.

Look out for the man who sees only one side of a religious truth. Look out for the man who never walks around about these great theories of God and eternity and the dead. He will be a bigot inevitably —the man who only sees on® sid.e. There is no man more to be pitied than he who has in his head just one idea—no more, no less. More light, iess sectarianism. There is nothing that will so scon kill bigotry as sunshine. Another great damage done by the sectarianism and bigotry of the church is that it disgusts people with the Christian religion. Now, my friends, the church of God was never intended for a w-ar barrack. People are bfraid of a riot. You go down the street and you see an excitement and missiles flying through the air, and you hear the shock of firearms. Do you,the peaceful and industrious citizen, go through that street? Oh, no, you will say, ‘Til go around the block.” Now. men come and look upon this narrow path to heavep and sometimes see the ecclesiastical they say: “Well. I guess I'll take the broad road. There is so much sharpshooting on the narrow road I guess I’ll try the broad road!” Again, bigotry and sectarianism o great damage in the fact that they hinder the triumph of the gospel. Ob, how much wasted ammu-

nition, how many men of splendid intellect have given their whole life to controversial disputes, wEen, if they had given their life to something practical, they (might have been vastly useful! Suppose^,while I speak, there were a common enemy coming up the bay, and all the forts about the harbor began to fire into each other —you would cry out: “National suicide! Why don’t those forts blaze away in one direction, and that against the common enemy?” And yeti sometimes see in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ a strange thing going on—church against church, minister against minister, denomination against denomination, firing away into their own fort, or the fort which ought to be on the same side, instead of concentrating their energy and giving one mighty and everlasting volley against the navies of darkness riding up through the bay! Besides that, if you want to build up any denomination, you will never build it up by trying to pull some other down. Intolerence never put anything down. How much has intolerance accomplished, for instance, against the Methodist church? For long years her ministry were forbidden the pulpits of Great Britain. Why was it that so many of them preached in the fields? Simply because they could get in the churches. And the name of the church was given in derision and as a sarcasm. The critics of the church said: ‘ ‘They have no order; they have no method in their worship,” and the critics therefore in irony called them “Methodists.” lam told that in Astor library, New York, kept as curiosities, there are 707 books and pamphlets against methodism. Did intolerance stop that church? No. It is either first or second amid the denominations of Christendom. ——

What did intolerance accomplish against the Baptist church? If laughing, scorn and tirade could have destroyed the church, it would not have today a disciple left. The Baptists were hurled out of Boston in olden times. Those who sympathized with them were imprisoned, and when a petition was offered asking leniency in their behalf all the men who signed it were indicted. Has intolerance stopped the Baptist church? The last statistics in regard to it showed 25,000 churches and 3,000,000 communicants. In England a law was made against the Jew. England thrust back the Jew and thrust down the Jew and declared that no Jew should hold official position. What came of it? Were the Jews destroyed? Was their religion overthrown? No. Who became prime minister of England? Who was next to the throne? Who was higher than the throne because he was counselor and adviser? Disraeli, a Jew. But now, my friends, having shown you the origin of bigotry or sectarianism, and having shown you the damage it does, I want to briefly show you how we are to war against this terrible evil, and I think we ought to begin our war by realizing our own weakness and our imperfections. If we make so many mistakes in the common affairs of life, is it not possible that we may make mistakes in regard to our religious affairs? Shall we take a man by the throat or by the collar because he can not see religious truths just as we do? In the light of eternity it will be found out, I think, there was something wrong in all our creeds and something right in all our creeds. But since we may make mistakes in regard to things of the world do not let us be so egotistic and so puffed up as to have an idea that we can not make any mistake in regard to religious theories. And then I think we will do a great deal to overthrow the sectarianism from our heart and the sectarianism from the world by chiefly enlarging in those things in which we agree rather than those on which we differ.

Moreover, we may also overthrow the feeling of severe sectarianism by joining. -Other denominations in Christian work. I like when the springtime comes and the anniversary occasions begin and all denominations come upon the same platform. That overthrows sectarianism. In the Young Men’s Christian Associations, in the Bible Society, in the Tract Society, in the Foreign Missionary Society, shoulder to shoulder all denominations. Perhaps I might forcefully illustrate this truth by calling your attention to an incident which took place about twenty years ago. One Monday morning about 2 o’clock, while her 900 passengers were sound .asleep in their berths dreaming of home, the steamer~XTTanticTrs§hM" into Mars Head. Five hundred souls in ten minutes landed in eternity 1 Oh, what a scene! Agonized men and women running up and down the gangways and clutching for the rigging, and the plunge of the helpless steamer and the clapping of the hands of the merciless 1 sea over the ; drowning and the dead threw two continents into terror. But this brave quartermaster pushing out with the life lin§ until he gets to the rock, and see these gathering up the shipwrecked and taking them into the cabins and wrapping them in flannels snug and warm, and see that minister of the gospel, with three other men, getting into a lifeboat and pushing our for the wreck, pulling away across the surf and pulling away until they saved one more man and then getting back with him to the shore. Can these men|ever forget their companionship in peril, companionship in struggle, companionship in awful catastrophe and rescue? Never! Never! In whatever part of the earth I they meet, they will be friends when

they mention the story of that night when the Atlantic struck Mars Head. Well, my friends, our world has gone into a worse shipwreck. Sin drove it on the rocks. The Old ship has lurched and tossed in the tempests of 6,000 years. Out with the life line! I do riot carewhat nation carries it. Out with lifeboat! I do not care what denomination rows it. Side by side, in the memory of common hardships and common trials and common prayers and common tears, let us be brothers forever. We must be. One army of the living God, To His command we bow. Part of the host have crossed the flood, And part are crossing now. And I expect to see the day when all denominations of Christians shall join hands around the cross of Christ and recite the creed: “I believe in God, the Father* Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, and in the-communion of saints, and life everlasting. Amen!” -