Page:Why colored people in Philadelphia are excluded from the street cars.djvu/13

 clergy of this city have spoken, either from pulpit or platform, in reprobation of this gross wrong; and if there are cases in which saying nothing is committing sin, this would seem to be one of them. But fair and reasonable men are tired of hearing clergymen berated for not doing that which, if they would still remain clergymen, they cannot do. It is easy and safe for a pastor to lay before his people a certain set of what may be called sins by common consent, such as over-worldliness, inattention to religion and the like. One portion of his hearers meekly bows to this reproof, and the remainder tacitly accepts it without argument. But when he earnestly calls on them to give up some darling sin, which they hug to their bosoms because they do not admit that it is such, his relations to them are apt, at once, to become such as were those of St, Paul to the beasts of Ephesus. And to expect a pastor fiercely to throttle each living, vigorous, but unconfessed, if not unconscious sin of his people, as it comes up, for $400 a year, (the average clerical pay, it is said, of the wealthiest sect in this State,) and then to lose this small stipend, which he is likely to do by dismissal, as the result of the conflict, is asking more than a fair day's work for less than a fair day's wages. Here and there may be found a man who can afford to enter into this fight. One, rich in natural gifts, holds his hearers by the power of personal magnetism, while he pours into their ears a torrent of unwelcome truths, to which they listen, like the Wedding Guest, because they "cannot choose but hear," and then, not a few go away, like an awakened medium, uninfluenced by them. Another, whose voice neither denouncement nor desertion can silence, or make falter, because its words are but the imperative utterances of a great heart ever flowing in full tide, with good will to man, simply as man, always finds fit audience though few. But these are exceptions, and though courage might add to them, the great body of our clergymen must preach what their people are not unwilling to hear, or cease to earn bread for their families as clergymen. And this is the true reason of their silence, or hesitating speech, on such proposed reforms as, at the time, have found but small acceptance; and as men and things go, this reason is sufficient. Their grave fault is that they keep it shut up in that dark, back cell of the heart, to which men