"TAINTED MONEY" FOR RELIGION.
What a Prominent Secular Journal Says.
THE Argonaut, of July 3, referring to Mr. Albert Shaw's defence of the reception of Mr. Rockefeller's gift to missions, remarks: But we regret to say that Mr. Shaw is not alone in finding excuses for the church for its acceptance of the tainted money of Rockefeller and men of his type. The Rev. Dr. Broadus, as we read in the Raleigh Biblical Recorder, is of the opinion that Rockefeller's "simple piety and humility are as marvelous as his great prosperity," and his money ought not to be refused by the church. The Rev. J. Wesley Sullivan, of Philadelphia, sweetly says that "Mr. Rockefeller has lived too close to his religion to have obtained money in any sinister way. It is sadly unjust even to pause before accepting these church gifts." The Rev. A. N. Wheeler recently introduced a resolution before the North Indiana Baptist Association affirming that Rockefeller was never "either directly or indirectly connected with conduct that is out of line with the highest morality." What a vast impassable gulf is there between such views as these of "Christianity" and those upon the righteousness of Him who scourged the money-changers from the temple and set the gift of the widow's mite, above all that were cast into the treasury, albeit "many that were rich cast in much?" What churchly avarice is it that blinds these ministers of God to the fact (which every candid reader of Miss Tarbell's arraignment of Rockefeller in McClure's must admit) that he is a sanctimonious hypocrite, a crafty lawbreaker, the very type of man of whom the Scripture speaks as "devourers of widows' houses," and who, "for a pretence make long prayers?" "These," says Scripture, "shall receive the greater damnation." But to-day the church crawls servilely upon its knees before them, shamefully begging alms, and calling them "Christian!" "Things have changed," says an interior journal, "since Christ scourged the money-changers from the temple, and to-day there is so little difference between the church and the world that to whip the money-changer out would be to destroy modern religion." Is it true? Has the church, sold itself utterly to mammon? Are the scribes and pharisees in its high places? We have some slight respect for a plain, ordinary highwayman who frankly robs, but none at all for those sanctimonious rascals who try to bribe their way into heaven with paltry fractions of the money they have stolen. Like Dr. Patton, of Princeton, we "hate to see a cold-blooded right-living rascal who has his $400,000,000 and can teach Sunday-school regularly and drive his hard bargain every week, always keeping just within range of the law," and like Dr. Patton, also, we think Rockefeller "lucky not to be in jail." And as for the argument of many stately clergymen that the thing to do is to take Rockefeller's money but preach against him—it is an infamous suggestion. Take the gift with one hand and strike the giver with the other—could baseness further go than that! Let the clerical waverers of this tainted money question ponder this passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew: "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful to put them in the treasury, because it is the price of blood." The money of John D. Rockefeller is stained black with blood and rusted red with the tears of the children of the poor. Let the church touch it not, for thereby it is defiled beyond all purification.