hell-fire article just as they had
found it. They had all subscribed to it, and it "hadn't hurt them."

"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that none of you believe in
eternal punishment, and yet you are going to force every man, woman,
and child who joins your church to solemnly swear before God that they
do believe in it?" There was a great silence. "Yes, that's exactly
what's what," one man said.

This incident illustrates the seared, calloused, surfeited condition
of the average mind in the churches. It is glutted with sham, and
atrophied by the reiteration of high-sounding but meaningless, pious
phrases.

I managed to persuade them to so amend their by-laws that children
baptized into the church became by that act church members. They did
not know that by that amendment they were setting aside two-thirds of
their creed, because they didn't know the creed.

One of my sermons at the Jubilee attracted the attention of Philo S.
Bennett, a New York tea merchant, who made his home in New Haven. We
became very close friends. One day Mr. Bennett and Mr. W.J. Bryan
called at the parsonage. I happened to be out at the time, but dined
with them that evening. Next morning a church member, who was a sort
of cat's-paw for the rich men, called at the parsonage and informed me
of the "disgust" of the leading members. "They won't stand for it!" he
said vehemently.

When I spoke at the city hall they catalogued me as a Socialist, and
when Mr. Bryan called, they moved me into the "free and unlimited
coinage of silver" column. By "they," I mean four or five men--men of
means, who absolutely ruled the church. The deacons had nothing to
say, the church had as little. "The Society" was the thing. The
"Society" in a Congregational church is a sort of secular adjunct
charged with the duty of providing the material essentials. Their word
is law, the only law. In their estimation business and religion could
not be mixed, nor could things of the church be permitted to interfere
in politics. The purchase of an alderman was to them as legitimate as
the purchase of a cow. Some of them laughed as they told me of buying
an election in the borough. It was a great joke to them. They were
patriotic, very loudly patriotic, and their special hobby was "the
majesty of the law."

I was to be punished for that water company affair, and a man was
selected to administer the punishment. I had brought this man into the
church; I had created a church