The Beef Trust or the Standard Oil is not the worst menace in the trust line. What when men, form trusts, tyrannizing and iron-handed, controlling God's truth, so that none under their power can get the word of life except as it passes through their hands? They have done that, and are doing it. They will let you have truth, some truth, but it must bear their stamp and trade mark, and be limited, qualified, and sometimes adulterated according to the peculiar "orthodoxy" of the combine. They keep their customers cowed; they cow one another.

      In passing through Colorado, my train stopped at a small town, and a swarm of boys came, crying out, "Cherries; ten a bag! Ten a bag!" Now, the "bag" looked like it might hold a dozen or so of cherries. They did not sell hardly one bag. When they stood discussing I stepped out on the platform and said: "Boys, that's outrageous--you know that so few cherries are not worth ten cents. You must be fair, and 'live and let live.' If you try to make exorbitant profits, you will be losers in the end. If you put the price down to five cents, it will still give you a fair profit, and you will sell more. No reasonable man likes to be robbed, even of one nickel. I will take a bag for a nickel, and probably a good many others would." The boys looked guilty and half-minded to give in. The question was who would give in first. Probably all were anxious to sell at a nickel (for that would have evidently paid them well enough), but each one was afraid of the rest. One little fellow dared to [77] advance on the proposition. "Say you'll take one for a nickel?" I told him I would. He hesitated, took a sack from his basket, half held it out to me, the others looking on with queer expression, and looking at one another. Just then one of the boys cried, "Scab, Jack!" And quickly Jack put the sack back into the basket, and turned away saying, "You're too cheap for me."

      I have thought about that little scene often since. Those boys had an understanding, a combine, and had one another mutually cowed. How often that is done in larger spheres of life--even (I might say especially) in spiritual spheres. You have seen men convinced of the truth, and afraid to acknowledge it. Afraid of what? Afraid of their comrades, fellow-members of the spiritual combine. And they perhaps equally anxious to accept the truth, but each one afraid of the rest; yea, and each one ready to wall up his eyes and utter pious anathemas upon the head of him who should first dare to follow his conviction. Strange, power of a combine--and hard to tell where the power is located! You may say that it is vested in the people that compose it and manage it--but each one of them may feel the bondage and be anxious to escape, but where is the hero who will burst the fetters and face the meanness and weakness of those whom he is emancipating? It would be interesting to read the deeper thoughts of some assembly that have met for mutual fortification. How many have doubts as to the strict truths of a tenet they are loudly contending for, even to the very leader himself! If they would just speak out their real heart, perhaps they would all be found like-minded on some higher and nobler conception of truth. But, no! The leader can not afford it, partly because of his reputation, partly because he is afraid to put notions into the head of the flock and turn them away from the good, beaten path; whereas of the [78] rest each trembles at the thought of being stigmatized as heterodox or unsound by his fellows. So they talk much and loud, and condemn the heretics, and call one another orthodox, and instead of being true to the light they see, they choose darkness, comforting themselves in one another and in the crowd, all because of sheer moral cowardice.

      There is no way of escape from such bondage, except through the Word of God. You must lay aside all that preoccupies your heart and your mind, and go straight to God's Word. There listen, there learn, and obey, no matter where it may lead. For shall any middle-man and manufacturer come between you and the Fountain? What man has more right to the pure and whole truth than you? What man has authority to limit you to such and such portions and interpretations of it? Must you howl with the wolves? Is the name of being "orthodox," "straight," "sound," and whatever else they call it, more to be coveted than sincerity and truth? As for being with the crowd and the multitude--can that help you? Nay, you are alone. Alone you will be judged. What others believe and call true can not affect your individual responsibility before God. You must know your own way, must hear with your own ears, must see must believe. No man may lord it over your heart and with your own eyes. No man dictate to you what you conscience. No threats or smiles, commendation or condemnation, honored prejudices, granted tenets, popular voices, must influence you. Nothing is true but the truth. Before I can accept any it must stand the test of truth to my mind. But if you follow that principle, you will have occasion to face enemies and say, as Luther once said, "Here I stand--God help me! I can not do otherwise."--"Christian Leader and The Way."

      April 4, 1905. [79]

[TAG 77-79]