Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - What Has Been Done for These People and Their Neighbors Now in America? (Symposium) The Rev. Jesse W. Brooks, Ph. D. (presiding) - The Russian Poles: Mr. Constantine Antoszewski - Chruchianity not Christianity - Poles Have Church Without Bible
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110 What Has Been Done for These People
she was gone I began to talk to him something like this: "You com-
plain about your wife that she is a drunkard, but I see you are help-
ing her. How can you expect that she will stop if you help her? Are
you not sorry for her and for your poor children? When they grow
up will they bless you, or will they curse you? Are you not quarrelling
and fighting when you get drunk?" "Oh, yes, we do," he said, "and
sometime I will kill her, too; I have told her many times that I will do
it; and if they hang me for it, all right let them do it!" Then I began
to plead with the man and to tell him that the worst of all is that no
drunkard shall inherit the Kingdom of God.
"Do you think I am a heathen?" said the man indignantly, and
quickly opened the door to the other room and showed me eight large
images hanging on the walls, to prove to me that he was a Christian.
When I did not agree with him, he showed me a large church across
the street which cost $250,000 and he helped to build it, and belongs to
it. I did not agree with him that this made him a Christian. Then
he showed me his parochial book and that he had paid all his dues;
and when I still doubted his Christianity, he showed me a large cruci-
fix for which he had paid $5.00, in order to convince me that he was
a Christian.
Poles Have Chiu-ch Without Bible
Perhaps some one in the audience will say, "But this is an excep-
tion." But, my friends, this is not an exception, but rather the rule,
and my co-workers who are present can bear me out. How can it be
otherwise? Imagine, if you can, Christianity without the Bible! For-
get all you have learned from the Bible, and then imagine you are
a Christian. Yes, we have to deal with "Christians," who are "hold-
ing a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."
When I came to this country thirty-one years ago, it was difficult
to find a Bible among my people; but now many are supplied with the
Bible, a Testament, or at least a portion of the Scriptures. I do not
know of any other agency than the Chicago Tract Society, under whose
auspices I have been working for over seventeen years, that has ac-
complished so much. We go from house to house and supply the
people with Christian literature, and have personal conversations
with them, and in most cases read to them from the Bible. We go to
every place of business and visit even the saloons, and oh, how many
Bibles we have sold in the saloons! We hold informal meetings wher-
ever we can, in the little kitchen, in a front room or in a back-yard,
and sometimes in halls large and small, or at the noon hour in the
factories. But the most interesting meetings we hold in the open-air
on the street corners in different parts of the city and suburbs. Thus
we reach sometimes five hundred or even a thousand or more. They
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