Many clergymen have told me how their hearts have bled for the victims
of social injustice; how in anguish they have wept over the piteous
cries for help uttered by their dying brothers and sisters in Jesus
Christ; how, bursting with indignation, they have longed to strike a
blow against the brutality that crushes Christ's little ones in order
to grind from their bones and blood colossal and unnatural fortunes.
But they said, "We must conceal our tears and swallow our indignation,
though it chokes us. We dare not speak out--we could neither destroy
the tyrant nor save the victims. We would only succeed in dragging down
our own wives and little ones into that dark stream of poverty, from
which those who have once fallen in can never hope to rise. First of
all, we must live--and then do what little we can to temper the reign
of injustice and oppression. The overthrow and destruction of this
system of injustice rests upon the shoulders of God and the common
people."
I would ask the workmen of the country who are rapidly leaving the
churches not to judge the clergy harshly, because the majority are dumb
in your behalf and because a few openly and blatantly champion the
cause of the oppressors.
But I must also ask you to place no confidence in their testimony in
this political trial, for their lips often utter words their hearts
fain would withhold, and they often pray for success to the banner for
which they cannot fight.
Let us not condemn them because they are bound with chains of
dependence, but let us rather include them among those whom we shall
liberate when we establish a POLITICAL SYSTEM WHICH SHALL SET ALL MEN
FREE.
In the case of "The American People versus the Money Lending and
Bondholding Class," we find that the long, flowing garb of the
ministerial witness, that at first inspired our confidence in his
testimony, because of the holy office it suggested, is made of the
very cloth, a part of the plunder, the disapperance of which is the
basis of the present trial. The testimony of such a witness, cajoled,
terrorized, and a sharer in the booty taken, is also without value.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE COLLEGE AUTHORITIES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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