The Philadelphia Inquirer - Monday, April 8, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
CHURCH SENSATIONS.
Preacher Denchfield Condemns
Riches and Anarchy-Provoking
Trusts and
Corporations.
In a sermon on "Conversion in a strange place," Rev. L. J. Denchfield, at the Eleventh Baptist Church, was one preacher at least who referred to Oscar Wilde. It was by way of illustration of the "rottenness that comes of riches." Zaccheus’ conversion, Luke, xix, was the subject of the sermon. Zaccheus was a renegade from his race, "a tax collector, which his race abhorred, a lost sheep, a publican, very rich, just such a man as an Automatic Telephone stock-grabbing Councilman." Here the preacher said: "I do not think that there is any particular sin in being rich, and yet in hearing of the cry of the widows and orphans I can hardly see how a rich man can be respected. I believe the time is coming when a man's being very rich will expose him to the discipline of the church. It is certainly a sin for any Christian to die rich. ‘How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of heaven, and it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.'
"You well know how closely riches are associated with every form of evil. Money is the root of all evil. Think over all the very rich men and you will see that their hands are either red with the blood shed by conquerors, as in Europe, or wet with the tears of widows and orphans, as in the case of the anarchy-provoking corporations of America, that make it nearly impossible for any young man to get a hold of the first rung of the ladder leading to independent fortune." Then he rang in the rottenness of Oscar Wilde and spoke of the riches of Zaccheus, "gained by bribery and extortion;" but this Zaccheus being a short man who couldn't see through the throng, climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus. He cited other instances of "conversion in strange places." The singing of the Imperial Quartette of colored men from Chicago, with a roaring startling basso profundo in the number, created a musical sensation in the church.