THE PATHFINDER,

A JOURNAL

OF

PURE THEISM AND RELIGIOUS

FREETHOUGHT.

CONDUCTED BY

P. W. PERFITT.

VOLUME V.

NEW SERIES; VOLUME I.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY M. PATTIE, 31, PATERNOSTER ROW,

AND

GEORGE GLAISHER, 470, NEW OXFORD STREET,

PRINTED BY WILLIAM OSTELL, HART STREET, BLOOMSBURY.

CONTENTS.

6

THE CHURCH AND THE BRIMSTONE BUSINESS. The laws of fashion strike much deeper root than ordinary men are accustomed to believe. Many imagine that it is merely a matter of dress, dinner, and dancing—a sort of God which presides over the adornments and amusements of life; but having nothing to do with either business or religion. This is a

popular error ' for the sceptre of fashion is wielded over the counter and the desk quite as successfully as in the ball-rooms of the West End. There is as much done according to the fashion in Cheapside as in Regent Street, the only difference being, that in the former case it is called by another name. In religion, also, fashion exerts its authority, sometimes in connection with the dress of the worshippers, and at others as determining the form and spirit of the discourses. Is there not a fashionable religious cravat so spotlessly white, and so elegantly tied ? The truly spiritual' always wear them, but seldom succeed in getting them on without praying for the washerwoman. Are not the wearers quite as particular about the style of bow and the arrangement of the ends, as the attendants of Almack's are about the arrangement of their head-furniture. How oft it happens that a 'spiritual 'young man’ is late at church through not not having been able to get his cravat tied! Here, however, we confess to the weakness of never being able to look upon those pious neckcloths without mentally inquiring which was engaged the longest before the glass--the Reverend Timothy Sleek of Little Zion, or John Bowlegs the footman. The neck-gear of both is elegantly arranged, but probably the footman, assisted by Betty the housemaid, beats the divine in the rapid movement of his fingers.

It is not to that, however, we desire now to draw the attention of our readers, but to the power of fashion in determining the kind of doctrine which is to be preached. In our young days it was a rule among the clergy to deal largely in brimstone. Their sermons, invariably had the brimstone odour, and what they lacked in argument they made up in pictorial effects, which, for their power to influence the hearers depended largely on burning brimstone. The preacher that did not, and would not trade in this commodity, soon found his establishment deserted, for when hearers had an appetite for it there was the certainty of their going to those divinity shops in which it was supplied. But all at once, and in a very remarkable manner, which no one has yet fully Vol. V, New SERIES, VOL. I.

B