Wanted, A Religion.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 146, 27 August 1872, Page 7

Wanted, A Religion.

We want a religion (says a late American I magazine) that goes into the family, and keeps the husband from being angry when the dinner is late, and keeps the dinner from being late—keeps the wife from fretting when the husband tracks the newly-washed floor with his muddy boots, and makes the husband mindful of the scraper and doormat—keeps the mother patient when the baby is cross, and keeps the baby pleasant, amuses the children as well as instructs them, wins as well as governs—projects the honeymoon into a harvest moon, bearing in its bosom at once the beauty of the tender blossom and the glory of the ripened fruit. We want a religion that bears heavily, not only on the " exceeding sinfulness of sin," but on the exceeding rascality of lying and stealing. A religion that banishes small measures from the counters, small baskets from the stall, pebbles from the cotton bags, clay from the paper, sand from the sugar, chicory from coffee, otter from butter, beet juice from vinegar, alum from bread, strychnine from wine, and water from milk-cans. The religion that is to save the world will not put all the big strawberries at the top, and all the little ones at the bottom, it will not make one half of a pair of boots of good leather and the other half of poor leather, so that the first should redound to the maker's credit, and thu second to his cash. It will not put Jouvin's stamp on Jenkins' kid gloves ; nor make Paris bonnets in the backroom of a Boston milliners shop ; nor let a piece of velvet that professes to measure twenty yards be nipped in the bud at fourteen and a half ; nor the cotton thread spool break to the yard stick fifty of the two hundred of promise that is given to the eye ; nor yard-wide cloth measure less than thirty-six inches from selvedge to selvedge ; nor all-wool delaines and all-linen handkerchiefs, be amalgamated with clandestine cotton ; nor coats made of old rags pressed together be sold to the unsuspecting public tor legal broadcloth. It does not put bricks at live dollars per thousand into chimneys it contracts to build of sevendollar material ; nor smuggle white pine into floors that have paid for hard pine ; nor leave yawning cracks in closets where boards ought to join ; nor daub the ceiling that ought to be smoothly plastered ; and make windowbands with slats that cannot stand the sun, and fastenings that one may look at, but that are on no account to be touched. The religion that is going to sanctify the world pays its debts. It does not consider that forty cents given, is according to the Gospel, though it may be according to law. It looks on a man who has failed in trade, and who continues to live on in luxury, as a thief.