DECEIVING THEIR OWN SOULS.
By Editor
THE following paragraph from Echoes, a paper published in this city, is a sad commentary upon the religion of a certain class of business men who are deceiving themselves with the idea that they are Christians:— It is, alas! only too easy to turn up the seamy side of current Christianity. “Do you know,” said a commercial traveler to me the other day, “that a large number of men on the road are not only tempted but forced to go to the devil by Christian men of high standing? You are surprised, but it is a fact. My own experience is a case in point. Some years ago I was employed as a drummer for a big house, the head of which was not only a church-member but a church officer. And yet he instructed me in almost so many words not to hesitate to get my customers drunk, if I could in that way sell them a big bill of goods. I got many a heavy order by helping my customers to paint the town red, and my Christian employer knew it and cheerfully footed the bills, large as they often were. Instead of rebuking me he praised me for my business ability, until, under his tutelage, I at last became little better than a common drunkard. I began to lose my customers, and then for the first time this good Christian realized what a wicked man I was, and promptly discharged me, with a highly moral lecture on the importance of temperance. It took me five years to reform and rehabilitate myself. Do you, therefore, wonder that I speak bitterly of the professing Christian who forced me to make a drunkard of myself in order to fill his coffers?”