Now, that motto on the coin is an overstatement. Those
Congressmen had no right to commit this whole country to a theological
doctrine. But since they did, Congress ought to state what our creed
should be.
There was never a nation in the world that put its whole trust in God.
It is a statement made on insufficient evidence. Leaving out the
gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in
God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement.
If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the
bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would
put their trust in the Health Board of the City of New York.
I read in the papers within the last day or two of a poor young girl who
they said was a leper. Did the people in that populous section of the
country where she was--did they put their trust in God? The girl was
afflicted with the leprosy, a disease which cannot be communicated from
one person to another.
Yet, instead of putting their trust in God, they harried that poor
creature, shelterless and friendless, from place to place, exactly as
they did in the Middle Ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that
people could be warned of their approach and avoid them.
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