The
horrors which blanched the face of Christendom were but the bloody
harvest of fields sown by society, by cultured men and women, by speech,
and book, and press, by professions and politics, nay, by the pulpit
itself, and the men who there make God's truth a lie,--garbling or
denying the inspired declaration that "He has made of one blood all
people to dwell upon the face of the earth"; and that he, the All-Just
and Merciful One, "is no respecter of persons."
This riot, begun ostensibly to oppose the enforcement of a single law,
developed itself into a burning and pillaging assault upon the homes and
property of peaceful citizens. To realize this, it was only necessary to
walk the streets, if that were possible, through those days of riot and
conflagration, observe the materials gathered into the vast, moving
multitudes, and scrutinize the faces of those of whom they were
composed,--deformed, idiotic, drunken, imbecile, poverty-stricken;
seamed with every line which wretchedness could draw or vicious habits
and associations delve. To walk these streets and look upon these faces
was like a fearful witnessing in perspective of the last day, when the
secrets of life, more loathsome than those of death, shall be laid bare
in all their hideous deformity and ghastly shame.
The knowledge of these people and their deeds was sufficient to create a
paralysis of fear, even where they were not seen.
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