Ture speakers on platforms have always been allowed some degree of license. The excitement of the moment, the desire to produce a telling effect, the complaint known as a rhetorical diary hea, all combine to force a man to say much more when addressing a crowd than he would do, perchance, if he sere discussing a question amongst a Knot arranging arguments © "pro".-and "con,""".dn paper, in his study.. The témptation.to put superlatives for "positives,: to: substitute always for frequently, and:: the vehement and dogmatic "certainly" for the qualifying and hesitating perhaps, is a very strong temptation, and we must not be severe on those who succumb to its force.
Yet toleration has its limits.. There are statements that it is no use attempting to bear with complacency. "It. is: possible to pepper too highly' for-the most jaded palate.. A little word: three letters not mentioned in ears lite will escape our lips when we heal some terrible overstraining of our powers of endurance. We do not: wish, as our American friends say, "to make' trouble," but really there is no sitting down when certain assertions are made in our hearing, without a loss of self-respect, We may have great admiration for eloquence, we may have -devoted appreciation of Missionary. zeal, but a time comes when we must be the friend of Truth, and Trath alone, and when everything that clashes with this friendship must be sacrificed, Now if we may believe a report published in a recent number of a highly respectable American paper, The New York Tribune, a mise sionary of the name of Gable has recently allowed it to be stated in' his presence, without contradiction, that he has converted the Mikado of Japan. We are careful to. discriminate,..Mr. Gable did not say himself that he had been the means of making the Ruler of Japan a Christian, but he allowed it to be said at a large and. influential public meeting, and he never contra dicted the monstrous assertion. In this case surely silence implies consent. We confess ourselves absolutely, thunder stricken at the monstrous audacity of this affirmation. Gable is the Mun-chanson of missionaries, the Ferdinand Mendez Pinto of Gospellers. For shear unblushing effrontery he has not been matched since Exeter Hall was Exeter Hall.
Our Japanese contemporary is justly and righteously angry with Mr. Gable, and takes the pains to tell us many things about the reverend gentleman's antecedents. He was a shoemaker and a U.S. Marine, we are told. All this makes no difference. We had rather that these details had been left indecent, obscurity. We have before us a state:' ment, and it excites very painful reflect tions. First, why will men attempt to degrade a good cause by falsehood? Is it not the oldest of experiences that we cannot introduce any admixture of fiction into a veracious story without bringing the sacred name of Truth into discredit. Surely the age has outlived "pious frauds." Yet here in the most enlightened city of the Western Republic, we find a religionist palming off on a crowded meeting a notorious and palpable untruth. Should we not sneer at the assumption of the savage, if one
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.