Baltimore Evening Sun (14 August 1913): 6.

Battle-cry of the snouters and archangels:

Cherchez la femme!

A DAILY THOUGHT. The truth is always safe, and nothing else is safe.--Max Müller.

Want-ad in the estimable Sunpaper of this morning.

WANTED--Thoroughly reliable and energetic persons who are willing to render gratuitous, confidential assistance evenings in connection with an important philanthropic undertaking. State age and qualifications. F 509, Sun office. A12-6t

What, can it be that the vice crusaders are sending out a call for help? Or the pluplious Lord’s Day Alliance, that greatest of sporting clubs?

The Hon. Mr. Levister, in an effort to bolster up his bad case, defends the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s pianissimo secrecy by quoting from Matthew vi, 2 and 3: “When thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have the glory of men * * * But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” But the Hon. Mr. Anderson “did” no alms, not personally, not at his own expense. What he actually did was to tempt a whole hierarchy of simple-minded and penurious men to deceive and loot the friends who trusted and revered them. In the very same chapter of Matthew, verse 13 (ominous number!), the Hon. Mr. Levister will find a clear statement of the Christian attitude toward such nefarious tempting: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That is to say, deliver us from bad company, bad suggestions and bad examples. Deliver us from the Hon. William H. Anderson!

The Hon. Mr. Levister’s attempt to picture the Anti-Saloon League campmeeting at Columbus as a battle in a holy war is inept, absurd and disingenuous. The Hon. Mr. Anderson held out no such idea to the presbyters that he sought to lure into his net. He said nothing about a battle, with its attendant risks, hazardz and discomforts. What he did hint at was a pleasant holiday, a pious bust, a high old time, with the red lemonade flowing from a thousand bungs, and peanuts all over the floor of the tabernacle, and fried chicken sizzling in the cook-tent. In brief, he tempted the rev. gents with the lusts of the flesh. He talked to them about Columbus as one might talk to a small boy about the circus. He sought to inflame their latent paganism by his subtle suggestions of a free loaf, his cunning presentation of the concept of dalliance. And he didn’t give a thought to the congregations that would be left shepherdless in their absence, and exposed to all the trickeries of the Devil.

What has Holy Writ to say of such doings? Its voice and authority, you may be sure, are wholly against them. What has Paul to say to Titus against these who are “foolish, disobedient and deceived” and who seek “divers lusts and pleasures”? (In the same chapter he denounces “brawlers”!). What has Simon Peter to say (2 Peter, ii) of those who “count it a pleasure to riot in the day time” and “sport themselves with their own deceivings”? What has he to say of those who “beguile unstable souls” and have hearts “exercised with covetous practices”? Of those that speak “great swelling words of vanity” and “allure through the lusts of the flesh”? And in Job, back in the Old Testament, is there praise or blame for the man who “conceives mischief and brings forth vanity” and whose “belly prepareth deceit”?

The Old Testament, indeed, is full of denunciations of chicanery, and there is no exception of the “benevolent” variety. We are told in Leviticus, vi, 2, for example, that the man who “hath deceived his neighbor” is guilty of “a soul sin,” and in Proverbs xxvi, 19, we learn that the same offender is “as a man who casteth firebrands, arrows and death,” and as “one who taketh a dog by the ears,” even though he plead in his defense, “Am not I in sport?” And in Jeremiah, xxii, 8, there is the solemn warning, so apt in the present case, in view of the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s claim to supernatural authority: “Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you.” To which I add Revelations, xvi, 13, and pass on: “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.”

Let the Hon. Mr. Levister, laying aside all worldly vanities, take his Bible into his private studio, and there give it a careful reading. He will be surprised to learn, I daresay, that it contains no approbation of the Anti-Saloon League, that it does not counsel a licentious spirit in the clergy, that it affords no support to the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s assumption of the archangelic character and prerogatives. On the contrary, he will find that it stands firmly opposed to all much disingeniousness and buncombe. Its plea is not for grasping, but for renunciation. Its ideal man is not the loud gladiator of virtue, eager for the spotlight and the emolument, but the modest and simple-minded pastor, devoting himself whole-heartedly to the cure of souls.

Since the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld announced his candidacy for the Legislature in the First ward, 56 girl babies down there have been named Olive, Towelia, Margarine, Castile and Vaseline in honor of him.–Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Vote for Aftfeld and cold cream! Watch Bob come back!

Now that Col. Jacobus Hook is in Munich and the Hon. Wilbur F. Coyle is in Nova Scotia, the Hon. Max Ways is acting president of the City Hall Scalp Club.