Baltimore Evening Sun (12 January 1914): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

From the record of the arrest of Dr. Rose L. Sullivan in this morning’s Sunpaper:

“Where was you when the fire broke out?” asked [Detective] Kratz.


The new school of absolutely literal reporting!


A DAILY THOUGHT.
Do more than help the poor in their poverty, help them out of it.—Benjamin Franklin.


Meanwhile, the syndics of the Pentz Society are organizing a juvenile auxiliary to be called the Boy Snouts.—Adv.


Dispatch from the war correspondent in the City Hall:

Mayor Preston is at work upon the annual message to the City Council.


Lay on, Tartuffe! Don’t spare the high, astounding terms! Beware lest the public get the notion that the Sunpaper hath scared thee! Prove that t’ain’t so!


Opening dithyrambs from “Derringforth,” by the Hon. Frank A. Munsey:


Respectfully referred to that anonymous correspondent who maintains that there is a beyond-Munsey, a better-than-Munsey.


Do not despair, gents! We are coming! Every town on the Ea


stern Shore will have its mirrored kaif by March 1.--Liquor Ring Adv.


Tiring, at last, of the vice crusade, despite its insidious fascination, the estimable Maryland Suffrage News makes a grand flop, in its current issue, to the no-less absorbing science of theology. The first victim of its Higher Criticism is Paul of Tarsus, who is flayed in two separate articles for his famous advice to the female “saints which are at Ephesus.” (Eph., v, 22-24):


The theologians employed by the Suffrage News to demolish Paul are the Rev. Dr. Eugene E. Stevens, of Chevy Chase, Md., and the Rev. Dr. O. R. Washburn, apparently of Baltimore. The counts in their indictment of him are four in number, to wit:

  1. “The reason why Paul said that man was the head of the woman was that Paul was not a married man.”
  2. “Paul got his opinion of women from the aristocracy of Rome—those who crucified Jesus, scourgeed and killed His friends and gave Nero divi


    ne honors.”
  3. “Paul was a Roman citizen. The subjugation of women was necessary to the realization of Christianity as the state church.”
  4. “Emmanuel Swedenborg, the great Swedish philosopher and theologian, teaches that Paul’s epistles, as well as some other books of the Christian Bible, are not part of the Inspired Word of God.”


Connoisseurs will make note, with special interest, of counts 2 and 4. In the former one encounters the entirely novel doctrine that the Crucifixion was ordered by the Roman aristocracy. A diligent student of theology for many years, and the daily associate of theologians, I yet find this doctrine entirely new to me. And in count 4 one beholds the affecting spectacle of the suffragettes going over to Swedenborgianism en masse, as many of them have hitherto gone over to Bergsonism, anti-vivisection, the Montessori method and the short ballot.

But if it be true, as the Rev. Dr. Swedenborg argued, that the Pauline epistles are not authentic records, then what becomes of the Acts of the Apostles, in which the inspiration of Paul is specifically maintained (e.g. Acts, ix, 6, 29; xii, 9; xv, 41)? And if Acts goes by the board, then what becomes of the Book of Luke, which was written by the same hand and is full of Pauline ideas? It will be extremely interesting to hear from the Rev. Drs. Stevens and Washburn on these points. Again, it will be interesting to hear from the latter how Ephesians, v, 22-24 can be antagonistic to true Christianity if, as he says, “the teachings of JEsus as to women did not set aside the ancient customs of Israel as to women.” Does the learned gentleman argue that women voted and played politics in Isreal? If so, how does he explain away Proverbs, xix, 13, 14; ix, 13, 15, and xi, 22?


Come, come, gents: be fair about it! Give us Home Rule, and let us keep our own money. Certainly you don’t want us to pay your rent for you!


Moral news note in this morning’s Sunpaper:

“Cuffing up” and other terms of punishment have been abolished at the Maryland House of Correction, and hereafter disorderly prisoners will be deprived of seeing moving pictures provided for the good prisoners.


Oh, the triumphs of penalogy! Oh, the blest boons and usufructs of the uplift!


The Hon. S. M. Wood, the editor of the sagacious Democratic Telegram, has placed in my hands satisfactory evidence that he is authentically one of God’s creatures, and not merely a new nom de plume of the Hon. George Arnold Frick. I accordingly welcome him to membership in the sublime company of public journalists, and bathe him gladly with fraternal unguents. May he make a fortune out of the Telegram, as the Hon. Mr. Frick did before him, and may he follow his predecessor likewise to the abattoirs of legislation of Annapolis!


From the estimable New York Commercial of January 2:

The report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue for October, 1913, gives the beer sales far that month as 5,456,808 barrels, as compared to 5,265,085 barrels for October, 1912, being an increase of 191,719 barrels, or 8.64 per cent.


During the same period the Anti-Saloon League “closed” 12,000 saloons!