Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/82

 These ordinary tests of our daily conduct are quite enough to enable us to decide whether we are or are not of the faith. If we are not, we should cease to "sham" that we are. It will be far better for all those with whom we are brought in contact. For, thank God, there exist thousands of very real "Christians"—("by their fruits ye shall know them"), doing unostentatious good everywhere, rescuing the lost, aiding the poor, comforting the sick, and helping the world to grow happier and better. They may be called Jews, or Baptists, Papists, or Buddhists,—but I hold them all as "Christians" if they perform those good deeds and live those good lives which are acceptable to Christ,—while many church-going hypocrites called "Christians" whose social existence is a scandal, whose dissipations, gross immoralities and pernicious example of living are open dangers to the whole community, do not deserve even such a complimentary term as "pagan" applied to them. For the pagans—aye, the earliest savages, believed in Something higher than themselves,—but these sort of people believe in nothing but the necessity of getting what they want at all costs, and are mere human cancers of evil, breeding infection and pestilence. And it is particularly incumbent on the clergy of all denominations at the present juncture to sift Themselves as to their calling and election while sifting others,—to ask Themselves whether they may not be in a great measure to blame for much of the infamy which reeks from our great cities—for much of the apathy and indifference to that bitter poverty, that neglected suffering which often gives birth to Anarchy,—for much of the open atheism