SECOND EPISTLE OF THE " APOSTLE." TO MY BRETHREN OF THE SECTARIAN PRESS, GREETING:

It rejoiceth my heart to note that most of ye have heeded my advice and purged your columns of unclean advertisements. Since the rebuke administered to you some months ago-more in sorrow than in anger-I have seen but few advertisements of syphilitic nostrums, lost manhood restorers and abortion recipes in the sectarian press of the South, and I give thanks to God that I have been the humble means of bringing my brethren at least within the purlieus of common decency, even if they have not yet reached the white-walled citadel of morality. Some of you have not thanked me for pulling you from the devil's fleshpots, but will doubtless do so when ye learn that it pays better to serve the Lord in spirit and in truth than to render him lip-service while taking the shekels of the emissaries of Hell for proclaiming to young women that they may sin in safety if provided with "Pennyroyal pills," to young men that Hell's Half-Acre has no terrors for those who keep" Big G " constantly on hand. Playing cathartic to the religious press is no delectable task; but the true reformer goes not about attired in white vest and big chrysanthemum boutonniere; he dons a pair of buckskin mits, puts a clothespin on his nose and grabs a shovel, à la Hercules cleansing the Augean Stables. Some of ye have made unkind and even unChristian remarks anent my missionary labors; but nothing can disturb the sacred joy with which I contemplate the expurgated Baptist Standard and Dr. Hayden's Holy Fake since they took their iconoclastic medicine. Now if I can but persuade you, my brethren, to devote a little more energy to championing the cause of Christ and less to the reproduction of pitiful

puffs of yourselves, I will feel that I have not lived and labored in vain. To paraphrase "Brick " Pomeroy:

A little taffy now and then

Is relished by the best of men.

Still it gives me a chronic heartache in the region of the abdomen to see papers professedly devoted to the cause of the meek and lowly Man of Galilee, reproducing with wild acclaim every foolish compliment paid them by half-wit subscribers or hand-press "exchanges." If pride goeth before a fall, sectarian editors should either stick to the plowed ground or sandwich themselves between a brace of featherbeds. Think of a self-respecting lawyer putting on his sign every compliment he may receive! Why, the very gamins would " guy" him. And should not a religious editor exhibit as much modesty, as much manly self-respect as the average attorney-at-law? I prithee, brethren, avoid this bad habit, which provokes the ungodly to indulge in ribald remarks. Of course we can expect nothing better of the Bungville Bugle, the Houston Post and other Smart Alec publications engineered by aspiring amateurs. They get a puff so seldom that when a small gob of taffy does come their way they can scarce be blamed for rolling it as a sweet morsel under their tongues and making frantic bids for more by slobbering over everything in sight. Intellectual, as well as physical infants, have an inordinate appetite for sweetmeats, but grown people relish a different diet. We who serve the Lord-for so much per annum cash in advance-should set the worldlings a good example. That's what we're here for. Christ did more for mankind every year of his ministry than all of us put together. He healed the sick, made the blind to see and raised the dead; but if he ever attracted the attention of the populace by an exuberant cackle over a compliment paid him, no record

of that pitiful touch of vanity, of human weakness, has come down to us. There's an old French axiom to the effect that "Good wine needs no bush." And a good periodical needs no guide to point out its excellence—it speaks for itself. It may be well enough for servants, quack doctors and snide publications to frame their "certificates of good character" and put them on exhibition; but what must we think of that Christian editor who climbs to the housetop and toots his horn to attract the attention of the multitude-who cries aloud with the unction of a pickaninny calling attention to his first pair o' bedticking breeches, "Behold what Tom, Dick and Harry say of my editorial on Humility; look ye what the Billville Broad-ax and the Jimtown Jabberwak think of the Weekly Sanctificationist." Brethren, ye make me all aweary with your brass-band variety o' goodness. Please apply the soft pedal to yourselves and let the Lord find out what valuable servants he's got without quite so much typographical aid. Yours in Christ,

***

THE "APOSTLE."

IS CIVILIZATION A SHAM?

Is civilization a curse? Government a fraud? Religion a lie?

Tell me, thou smiling optimist, boasting thyself "heir of all the Ages, and foremost in the files of Time," where are those multifarious blessings so loudly proclaimed, so sacredly promised in their name? Is it true that in nations most civilized, "best governed," most thoroughly "christianized" the people are happiest, find most of sweetness of life, least of corroding care and that heartache and hope deferred which shrivels the soul like a green leaf swept by fierce Harmattan winds?

Contrast the Europe of to-day with the Europe of Hengist and Horsa; Alfred, King of Wessex, or Charlemagne, the pride of the Franks. Place all its voluptuous courts and tinseled crowns; its philosophies and philosophisms, parliaments and polemics; its cringing paupers and industrial peons; its wisdom as of the immortal gods and ignorance as of the dull, dumb beasts; its wasteful wealth and woeful want; its magnificence and misery side by side with that earlier Europe, when few were rich, but none feared hunger's maddening pangs; when every man rallied to a chief of his own choosing; when the straightened forehead of the fool feared show itself in the council chamber and only the leonine led the lion-hearted in the forum or the field.

Here in America we boast-with or without reasonthat we have the best government ever established by man -have made the most rapid progress ever witnessed by the world; but are the American people happier, better, truer, braver than before that first hoarse scream of the eagle, as it fell like a many-forked thunderbolt from the troubled sky, bedewing a thousand miles of coast with the blood of brethren? Do the people of this Western World find life sweeter, better worth the living in the last quarter of the nineteenth century than they did in the first quarter of the eighteenth? No! in God's great name, no! Our boasted progress is but a mighty agitation of that great ocean of humanity which sends the lighter particles to the top as froth and foam, there to catch the prismatic colors of the sun, while the great mass surges sullen beneath, the only hope of each particular particle that it too may become foam and float to the sunny surface of that dark, troubled sea.

Progress! Our boasted progress is turning God's great world into a machine; making men but mannikins, who dance, not of their own volition, but because the showman pulls the strings; who work and play, fetch and carry, cut fantastic capers before high Heaven-even think, speak or blow each other into eternity according to laws which they did not make, cannot alter.

Time was when a man's conscience was his guide, his good sword his court of last resort. Perhaps he was then a "barbarian"; but he was at least a responsible entity, the architect of his own fortunes, the molder of his own destiny. He relied upon his own judgment, his strong arm and his dauntless heart, for he was in very truth a freeman. Now, after so many centuries of progress, so-called, his individuality is blended in the Society, his responsibility is lost in the State, and for freedom there is bestowed upon him by solemn enactment the inalienable right to do whatsoever a stupid or vicious majority prescribes—or be hanged! We have now reached that point in our "onward march of Progress" where an American Sovereign" can own a dog, brew a bucket of beer, shout hallelujah, lose his money on a horse race, purchase a pound of putty, correct his child, get a shirt laundered, till his field, get married or buried only by and with the consent of a majority of his fellow "Sovereigns!"

Verily it is truth the poet sings, that "knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers!" Also that the "individual withers, and the World is more and more,"-is becoming a vast iron-machine in which the soul is stunted, the heart shriveled, and that God-like entity, man, is made but part and parcel of a great engine that is rolling with headlong speed-whither?