But wait till we get all the letters written from prominent men who have been cured.
It is announced in the papers that Colonel Ingersoll, the dollar-a-ticket infidel, has struck it rich in a silver mine, and is now worth a million dollars. Here is another evidence of the goodness of God. Ingersoll has treated God with the greatest contempt, called him all the names he could think of, called him a liar, a heartless wretch, and stood on a stump and dared God to knock a chip off his shoulder, and instead of God's letting him have one below the belt and knocking seven kinds of cold victuals out of him, God gives him a pointer on a silver mine, and the infidel rakes in a cool million, and laughs in his sleeve, while thousands of poor workers in the vineyard are depending for a livelihood on collections that pan out more gun wads and brass pants buttons to the ton of ore than they do silver.
This may be all right, and we hope it is, and we don't want to give any advice on anybody else's business, but it would please Christians a good deal better to see that bold man taken by the slack of the pants and lifted into the poor house, while the silver he has had fall to him was distributed among the charitable societies, mission schools and churches, so a minister could get his salary and buy a new pair of trousers to replace those that he has worn the knees out of kneeling down on the rough floor to pray.
It is mighty poor consolation to the ladies of a church society to give sociables, ice creameries, strawberry festivals and all kinds of things to raise money to buy a carpet for a church or lecture room, and wash their own dishes than hear that some infidel who is around the country calling God a pirate and horse thief, at a dollar a head, to full houses, has miraculously struck a million dollar silver mine.
To the toiling minister who prays without ceasing, and eats codfish and buys clothes at a second hand store, it looks pretty rough to see Bob Ingersoll steered onto a million dollar silver mine. But it may be all right, and we presume it is. Maybe God has got the hook in Bob's mouth, and is letting him play around the way a fisherman does a black bass, and when he thinks he is running the whole business, and flops around and scares the other fish, it is possible Bob may be reeled in, and he will find himself on the bottom of the boat with a finger and thumb in his gills, and a big boot on his paunch, and he will be compelled to disgorge the hook and the bait and all, and he will lay there and try to flop out of the boat, and wonder what kind of a game that is being played on him.