Clergy Call for Public Debate

As the circulation of C. T. Russell’s writings quickly escalated into tens of millions of copies in many languages, the Catholic and Protestant clergy could not easily ignore what he was saying. Angered by the exposure of their teachings as unscriptural, and frustrated by the loss of members, many of the clergy used their pulpits to denounce Russell’s writings. They commanded their flocks not to accept literature distributed by the Bible Students. A number of them sought to induce public officials to put a stop to this work. In some places in the United States—among them Tampa, Florida; Rock Island, Illinois; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Scranton, Pennsylvania—they supervised public burning of books written by Russell.

Some of the clergy felt the need to destroy Russell’s influence by exposing him in public debate. Near the headquarters of his activity, a group of clergymen endorsed as their spokesman Dr. E. L. Eaton, pastor of the North Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. In 1903 he proposed a public debate, and Brother Russell accepted the invitation.

Six propositions were set forth, as follows: Brother Russell affirmed, but Dr. Eaton denied, that the souls of the dead are unconscious; that the “second coming” of Christ precedes the Millennium and that the purpose of both his “second coming” and the Millennium is the blessing of all the families of the earth; also that only the saints of the “Gospel age” share in the first resurrection but that vast multitudes will have opportunity for salvation by the subsequent resurrection. Dr. Eaton affirmed, but Brother Russell denied, that there would be no probation after death for anyone; that all who are saved will enter heaven; and that the incorrigibly wicked will be subjected to eternal suffering. A series of six debates on these propositions were held, each debate before a packed house at Carnegie Hall in Allegheny in 1903.

What was behind that challenge to debate? Viewing the matter from a historical perspective, Albert Vandenberg later wrote: “The debates were conducted with a minister from a different Protestant denomination acting as the moderator during each discussion. In addition, ministers from various area churches sat on the speaker’s platform with the Reverend Eaton, allegedly to provide him with textual and moral support. . . . That even an unofficial alliance of Protestant clergymen could be formed signified that they feared Russell’s potential to convert members of their denominations.”—“Charles Taze Russell: Pittsburgh Prophet, 1879-1909,” published in The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, January 1986, p. 14.

Such debates were relatively few. They did not yield the results that the alliance of clergymen desired. Some of Dr. Eaton’s own congregation, impressed by what they heard during the series of debates in 1903, left his church and chose to associate with the Bible Students. Even a clergyman who was present acknowledged that Russell had ‘turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.’ Nevertheless, Brother Russell himself felt that the cause of truth could be better served by use of time and effort for activities other than debates.

The clergy did not give up their attack. When Brother Russell spoke in Dublin, Ireland, and Otley, Yorkshire, England, they planted men in the audience to shout objections and false charges against Russell personally. Brother Russell deftly handled those situations, always relying on the Bible as authority for his replies.

Protestant clergymen, regardless of denomination, were associated in what is known as the Evangelical Alliance. Their representatives in many lands agitated against Russell and those who distributed his literature. In Texas (U.S.A.), as an example, the Bible Students found that every preacher, even in the smallest towns and rural districts, was equipped with the same set of false charges against Russell and the same distortions of what he taught.

However, these attacks against Russell sometimes had results that the clergy did not anticipate. In New Brunswick, Canada, when a preacher used his pulpit for a derogatory sermon about Russell, there was a man in the audience who had personally read literature written by Brother Russell. He was disgusted when the preacher resorted to deliberate falsehoods. About the middle of the sermon, the man stood up, took his wife by the hand, and called to his seven daughters who sang in the choir: “Come on, girls, we are going home.” All nine walked out, and the minister watched as the man who had built the church and was the financial mainstay of the congregation departed. The congregation soon fell apart, and the preacher left.

Resorting to Ridicule and Slander

In their desperate efforts to kill the influence of C. T. Russell and his associates, the clergy belittled the claim that he was a Christian minister. For similar reasons, the Jewish religious leaders in the first century treated the apostles Peter and John as “men unlettered and ordinary.”—Acts 4:13.

Brother Russell had not graduated from one of Christendom’s theological schools. But he boldly said: “We challenge [the clergy] to prove that they ever had a Divine ordination or that they ever think of it. They merely think of a sectarian ordination, or authorization, each from his own sect or party. . . . God’s ordination, or authorization, of any man to preach is by the impartation of the Holy Spirit to him. Whoever has received the Holy Spirit has received the power and authority to teach and to preach in the name of God. Whoever has not received the Holy Spirit has no Divine authority or sanction to his preaching.”—Isa. 61:1, 2.

In order to impugn his reputation, some of the clergy preached and published gross falsehoods about him. One that they frequently employed—and still do—involves the marital situation of Brother Russell. The impression that they have sought to convey is that Russell was immoral. What are the facts?

In 1879, Charles Taze Russell married Maria Frances Ackley. They had a good relationship for 13 years. Then flattery of Maria and appeals to pride on her part by others began to undermine that relationship; but when their objective became clear, she seemed to regain her balance. After a former associate had spread falsehoods about Brother Russell, she even asked her husband’s permission to visit a number of congregations to answer the charges, since it had been alleged that he mistreated her. However, the fine reception she was given on that trip in 1894 evidently contributed to a gradual change in her opinion of herself. She sought to secure for herself a stronger voice in directing what would appear in the Watch Tower.a When she realized that nothing that she wrote would be published unless her husband, the editor of the magazine, agreed with its contents (on the basis of its consistency with the Scriptures), she became greatly disturbed. He put forth earnest effort to help her, but in November 1897 she left him. Nevertheless, he provided her with a place to live and means of maintenance. Years later, after court proceedings that had been initiated by her in 1903, she was awarded, in 1908, a judgment, not of absolute divorce, but of divorce from bed and board, with alimony.

Having failed to force her husband to acquiesce to her demands, she put forth great effort after she left him to bring his name into disrepute. In 1903 she published a tract filled, not with Scriptural truths, but with gross misrepresentations of Brother Russell. She sought to enlist ministers of various denominations to distribute them where the Bible Students were holding special meetings. To their credit not many at that time were willing to be used in that way. However, other clergymen since then have shown a different spirit.

Earlier, Maria Russell had condemned, verbally and in writing, those who charged Brother Russell with the sort of misconduct that she herself now alleged. Using certain unsubstantiated statements made during court proceedings in 1906 (and which statements were struck from the record by order of the court), some religious opposers of Brother Russell have published charges designed to make it appear that he was an immoral man and hence unfit to be a minister of God. However, the court record is clear that such charges are false. Her own lawyer asked Mrs. Russell whether she believed her husband was guilty of adultery. She answered: “No.” It is also noteworthy that when a committee of Christian elders listened to Mrs. Russell’s charges against her husband in 1897, she made no mention of the things that she later stated in court in order to persuade the jury that a divorce should be granted, though these alleged incidents occurred prior to that meeting.

Nine years after Mrs. Russell first brought the case to court, Judge James Macfarlane wrote a letter of reply to a man who was seeking a copy of the court record so that one of his associates could expose Russell. The judge frankly told him that what he wanted would be a waste of time and money. His letter stated: “The ground for her application and of the decree entered upon the verdict of the jury was ‘indignities’ and not adultery and the testimony, as I understand, does not show that Russell was living ‘an adulterous life with a co-respondent.’ In fact there was no co-respondent.”

Maria Russell’s own belated acknowledgment came at the time of Brother Russell’s funeral at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh in 1916. Wearing a veil, she walked down the aisle to the casket and laid there a bunch of lilies of the valley. Attached to them was a ribbon bearing the words, “To My Beloved Husband.”

It is evident that the clergy have used the same sort of tactics that were employed by their first-century counterparts. Back then, they endeavored to kill Jesus’ reputation by charging that he ate with sinners and that he himself was a sinner and a blasphemer. (Matt. 9:11; John 9:16-24; 10:33-37) Such charges did not change the truth about Jesus, but they did expose those who resorted to such slander—and they expose those who resort to like tactics today—as having as their spiritual father the Devil, which name means “Slanderer.”—John 8:44.

Seizing on War Fever to Achieve Their Aims

With the nationalistic fever that swept the world during the first world war, a new weapon was found for use against the Bible Students. The enmity of Protestant and Roman Catholic religious leaders could be expressed behind a front of patriotism. They took advantage of wartime hysteria to brand the Bible Students as seditious—the same charge that was leveled against Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul by the religious leaders of first-century Jerusalem. (Luke 23:2, 4; Acts 24:1, 5) Of course, for the clergy to make such a charge, they themselves had to be active champions of the war effort, but that did not seem to bother most of them, even though it meant sending young men out to kill members of their own religion in another land.

It was in July 1917, after Russell’s death, that the Watch Tower Society released the book The Finished Mystery, a commentary on Revelation and Ezekiel as well as The Song of Solomon. That book roundly exposed the hypocrisy of Christendom’s clergy! It was given extensive distribution in a relatively short time. Late in December 1917 and early in 1918, the Bible Students in the United States and Canada also undertook the distribution of 10,000,000 copies of a fiery message in the tract The Bible Students Monthly. This four-page tabloid-sized tract was entitled “The Fall of Babylon,” and it bore the subtitle “Why Christendom Must Now Suffer—The Final Outcome.” It identified Catholic and Protestant religious organizations together as modern-day Babylon, which soon must fall. In support of what was said, it reproduced from The Finished Mystery commentary on prophecies expressing divine judgment against “Mystic Babylon.” On the back page was a graphic cartoon that showed a wall crumbling. Massive stones from the wall bore such labels as “Doctrine of the Trinity (‘3 X 1 = 1’),” “Immortality of the Soul,” “Eternal Torment Theory,” “Protestantism—creeds, clergy, etc.,” “Romanism—popes, cardinals, etc., etc.”—and all of them were falling.

The clergy were furious at such exposure, just as the Jewish clergy had been when Jesus exposed their hypocrisy. (Matt. 23:1-39; 26:3, 4) In Canada the clergy reacted quickly. In January 1918, upwards of 600 Canadian clergymen signed a petition calling on the government to suppress the publications of the International Bible Students Association. As reported in the Winnipeg Evening Tribune, after Charles G. Paterson, pastor of St. Stephen’s Church in Winnipeg, denounced from his pulpit The Bible Students Monthly, which contained the article “The Fall of Babylon,” Attorney General Johnson got in touch with him to obtain a copy. Shortly thereafter, on February 12, 1918, a Canadian government decree made it a crime punishable by fine and imprisonment to have in one’s possession either the book The Finished Mystery or the tract shown above.

That same month, on February 24, Brother Rutherford, the newly elected president of the Watch Tower Society, spoke in the United States at Temple Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. His subject was a startling one: “The World Has Ended—Millions Now Living May Never Die.” In setting forth evidence that the world as known till that time really had ended in 1914, he pointed to the war then in progress, along with accompanying famine, and identified it as part of the sign foretold by Jesus. (Matt. 24:3-8) Then he focused attention on the clergy, saying:

“As a class, according to the scriptures, the clergymen are the most reprehensible men on earth for the great war that is now afflicting mankind. For 1,500 years they have taught the people the satanic doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule. They have mixed politics and religion, church and state; have proved disloyal to their God-given privilege of proclaiming the message of Messiah’s kingdom, and have given themselves over to encouraging the rulers to believe that the king reigns by divine right, and therefore whatsoever he does is right.” Showing the result of this, he said: “Ambitious kings of Europe armed for war, because they desired to grab the territory of the other peoples; and the clergy patted them on the back and said: ‘Go to it, you can do no wrong; whatsoever you do is all right.’” But it was not only the European clergy that were doing it, and the preachers in America knew it.

An extensive report of this lecture was published the next day in the Los Angeles Morning Tribune. The clergy were so angered that the ministerial association held a meeting that very day and sent their president to the managers of the newspaper to make known their intense displeasure. Following this, there was a period of constant harassment of the offices of the Watch Tower Society by members of the government’s intelligence bureau.

During this period of nationalistic fervor, a conference of clergymen was held in Philadelphia, in the United States, at which a resolution was adopted calling for revision of the Espionage Act so that alleged violators could be tried by court-martial and subjected to the death penalty. John Lord O’Brian, special assistant to the attorney general for war work, was selected to present the matter to the Senate. The president of the United States did not permit that bill to become law. But Major-General James Franklin Bell, of the U.S. Army, in the heat of anger divulged to J. F. Rutherford and W. E. Van Amburgh what had occurred at the conference and the intent to use that bill against the officers of the Watch Tower Society.

Official U.S. government files show that at least from February 21, 1918, onward, John Lord O’Brian was personally involved in efforts to build a case against the Bible Students. The Congressional Record of April 24 and May 4 contains memos from John Lord O’Brian in which he argued strongly that if the law allowed for utterance of “what is true, with good motives, and for justifiable ends,” as stated in the so-called France Amendment to the Espionage Act and as had been endorsed by the U.S. Senate, he could not successfully prosecute the Bible Students.

In Worcester, Massachusetts, “Rev.” B. F. Wyland further exploited the war fever by asserting that the Bible Students were carrying on propaganda for the enemy. He published an article in the Daily Telegram in which he declared: “One of your patriotic duties that confronts you as citizens is the suppression of the International Bible Students Association, with headquarters in Brooklyn. They have, under the guise of religion, been carrying on German propaganda in Worcester by selling their book, ‘The Finished Mystery.’” He bluntly told the authorities it was their duty to arrest the Bible Students and prevent them from holding further meetings.

The spring and summer of 1918 witnessed widespread persecution of the Bible Students, both in North America and in Europe. Among the instigators were clergymen of Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and other churches. Bible literature was seized by officers without a search warrant, and many of the Bible Students were thrown into jail. Others were chased by mobs, beaten, whipped, tarred and feathered, or had their ribs broken or their heads cut. Some were permanently maimed. Christian men and women were held in jail without charge or without trial. Over one hundred specific instances of such outrageous treatment were reported in The Golden Age of September 29, 1920.

Charged With Espionage

The crowning blow came on May 7, 1918, when federal warrants were issued in the United States for the arrest of J. F. Rutherford, the president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, and his closest associates.

The previous day, in Brooklyn, New York, two indictments had been filed against Brother Rutherford and his associates. If the desired results did not come from one case, the other indictment could have been pursued. The first indictment, which laid charges against the greater number of individuals, included four counts: Two charged them with conspiring to violate the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917; and two counts charged them with attempting to carry out their illegal plans or actually doing so. It was alleged that they were conspiring to cause insubordination and refusal of duty in the armed forces of the United States and that they were conspiring to obstruct the recruiting and enlisting of men for such service when the nation was at war, also that they had attempted to do or had actually done both of these things. The indictment made particular mention of publication and distribution of the book The Finished Mystery. The second indictment construed the sending of a check to Europe (which was to be used in the work of Bible education in Germany) to be inimical to the interests of the United States. When the defendants were taken to court, it was the first indictment, the one with four counts, that was pursued.

Yet another indictment of C. J. Woodworth and J. F. Rutherford under the Espionage Act was at that time pending in Scranton, Pennsylvania. But, according to a letter from John Lord O’Brian dated May 20, 1918, members of the Department of Justice feared that U.S. District Judge Witmer, before whom the case would be tried, would not agree with their use of the Espionage Act to suppress the activity of men who, because of sincere religious convictions, said things that others might construe as antiwar propaganda. So the Justice Department held the Scranton case in abeyance, pending the outcome of the one in Brooklyn. The government also managed the situation so that Judge Harland B. Howe, from Vermont, whom John Lord O’Brian knew agreed with his viewpoint on such matters, would sit as judge in the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The case went to trial on June 5, with Isaac R. Oeland and Charles J. Buchner, a Roman Catholic, as prosecutors. During the trial, as Brother Rutherford observed, Catholic priests frequently conferred with Buchner and Oeland.

As the case proceeded, it was shown that the officers of the Society and the compilers of the book had no intent to interfere with the country’s war effort. Evidence presented during the trial showed that plans for the writing of the book—indeed, the writing of most of the manuscript—had occurred before the United States declared war (on April 6, 1917) and that the original contract for publication had been signed before the United States had passed the law (on June 15) that they were said to have violated.

The prosecution highlighted additions to the book made during April and June of 1917, in the course of processing the copy and reading the proofs. These included a quotation from John Haynes Holmes, a clergyman who had forcefully declared that the war was a violation of Christianity. As indicated by one of the defense attorneys, that clergyman’s comments, published under the title A Statement to My People on the Eve of War, was still on sale in the United States at the time of the trial. Neither the clergyman nor the publisher was on trial for it. But it was the Bible Students who referred to his sermon who were held liable for the sentiments expressed in it.

The book did not tell men of the world that they had no right to engage in war. But, in explanation of prophecy, it did quote excerpts from issues of The Watch Tower of 1915 to show the inconsistency of clergymen who professed to be ministers of Christ but who were acting as recruiting agents for nations at war.

When it had been learned that the government objected to the book, Brother Rutherford had immediately sent a telegram to the printer to stop producing it, and at the same time, a representative of the Society had been dispatched to the intelligence section of the U.S. Army to find out what their objection was. When it was learned that because of the war then in progress, pages 247-53 of the book were viewed as objectionable, the Society directed that those pages be cut out of all copies of the book before they were offered to the public. And when the government notified district attorneys that further distribution would be a violation of the Espionage Act (although the government declined to express an opinion to the Society on the book in its altered form), the Society directed that all public distribution of the book be suspended.

Why Such Severe Punishment?

Regardless of all of this, on June 20, 1918, the jury returned a verdict finding each of the defendants guilty on each count of the indictment. The next day, sevenb of them were sentenced to four terms of 20 years each, to be served concurrently. On July 10, the eighthc was sentenced to four concurrent terms of 10 years. How severe were those sentences? In a note to the attorney general on March 12, 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson acknowledged that “the terms of imprisonment are clearly excessive.” In fact, the man who fired the shots at Sarajevo that killed the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—which incident triggered the events that plunged the nations into World War I—had not been given a more severe sentence. His sentence was 20 years in prison—not four terms of 20 years, as in the case of the Bible Students!

What was the motivation behind the imposing of such severe prison terms on the Bible Students? Judge Harland B. Howe declared: “In the opinion of the Court, the religious propaganda which these defendants have vigorously advocated and spread throughout the nation as well as among our allies, is a greater danger than a division of the German Army. . . . A person preaching religion usually has much influence, and if he is sincere, he is all the more effective. This aggravates rather than mitigates the wrong they have done. Therefore, as the only prudent thing to do with such persons, the Court has concluded that the punishment should be severe.” It is also noteworthy, however, that before passing sentence, Judge Howe said that statements made by attorneys for the defendants had called into question and treated severely not only the law officers of the government but “all the ministers throughout the land.”

The decision was immediately appealed to the U.S. circuit court of appeals. But bail pending the hearing of that appeal was arbitrarily refused by Judge Howe,d and on July 4, before a third and final appeal for bail could be heard, the first seven brothers were hastily moved to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. Thereafter, it was demonstrated that there were 130 procedural errors in that highly prejudiced trial. Months of work went into the preparation of required papers for an appeal hearing. Meanwhile, the war ended. On February 19, 1919, the eight brothers in prison sent an appeal for executive clemency to Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States. Other letters urging the release of the brothers were sent by numerous citizens to the newly appointed attorney general. Then, on March 1, 1919, in reply to an inquiry from the attorney general, Judge Howe recommended “immediate commutation” of the sentences. While this would have reduced the sentences, it would also have had the effect of affirming the guilt of the defendants. Before this could be done, the attorneys for the brothers had a court order served on the U.S. attorney that brought the case before the appeals court.

Nine months after Rutherford and his associates were sentenced—and with the war past—on March 21, 1919, the appeals court ordered bail for all eight defendants, and on March 26, they were released in Brooklyn on bail of $10,000 each. On May 14, 1919, the U.S. circuit court of appeals in New York ruled: “The defendants in this case did not have the temperate and impartial trial to which they were entitled, and for that reason the judgment is reversed.” The case was remanded for a new trial. However, on May 5, 1920, after the defendants had appeared in court, on call, five times, the government’s attorney, in open court in Brooklyn, announced withdrawal of the prosecution.e Why? As revealed in correspondence preserved in the U.S. National Archives, the Department of Justice feared that if the issues were presented to an unbiased jury, with the war hysteria gone, the case would be lost. U.S. attorney L. W. Ross stated in a letter to the attorney general: “It would be better, I think, for our relations with the public, if we should on our own initiative” state that the case would be pressed no further.

On the same day, May 5, 1920, the alternate indictment that had been filed in May 1918 against J. F. Rutherford and four of his associates was also dismissed.

Who Really Instigated It?

Was all of this really instigated by the clergy? John Lord O’Brian denied it. But the facts were well-known by those who lived at that time. On March 22, 1919, Appeal to Reason, a newspaper published at Girard, Kansas, protested: “Followers of Pastor Russell, Pursued by Malice of ‘Orthodox’ Clergy, Were Convicted and Jailed Without Bail, Though They Made Every Effort That Was Possible to Comply with the Provisions of Espionage Law. . . . We declare that, regardless of whether or not the Espionage Act was technically constitutional or ethically justifiable, these followers of Pastor Russell were wrongfully convicted under its provisions. An open-minded study of the evidence will speedily convince any one that these men not only had no intention of violating the law, but that they did not violate it.”

Years later, in the book Preachers Present Arms, Dr. Ray Abrams observed: “It is significant that so many clergymen took an aggressive part in trying to get rid of the Russellites [as the Bible Students were derogatorily labeled]. Long-lived religious quarrels and hatreds, which did not receive any consideration in the courts in time of peace, now found their way into the courtroom under the spell of war-time hysteria.” He also stated: “An analysis of the whole case leads to the conclusion that the churches and the clergy were originally behind the movement to stamp out the Russellites.”—Pp. 183-5.

However, the end of the war did not bring an end to persecution of the Bible Students. It simply opened a new era of it.

Priests Put Pressure on the Police

With the war past, other issues were stirred up by the clergy in order to stop, if at all possible, the activity of the Bible Students. In Catholic Bavaria and other parts of Germany, numerous arrests were instigated in the 1920’s under peddling laws. But when the cases came into the appeal courts, the judges usually sided with the Bible Students. Finally, after the courts had been deluged with thousands of such cases, the Ministry of the Interior issued a circular in 1930 to all police officials telling them to stop initiating legal action against the Bible Students under the peddling laws. Thus, for a short time, pressure from this source subsided, and Jehovah’s Witnesses carried on their activity on an extraordinary scale in the German field.

[Box on page 655]

The Clergy Show Their Feelings

Reactions of religious periodicals to the sentencing of J. F. Rutherford and his associates in 1918 are noteworthy:

◆ “The Christian Register”: “What the Government here strikes at with deadly directness is the assumption that religious ideas, however crazy and pernicious, may be propagated with impunity. It is an old fallacy, and hitherto we have been entirely too careless about it. . . . It looks like the end of Russellism.”

◆ “The Western Recorder,” a Baptist publication, said: “It is a matter of small surprise that the head of this cantankerous cult should be incarcerated in one of the retreats for recalcitrants. . . . The really perplexing problem in this connection is whether the defendants should have been sent to an insane asylum or a penitentiary.”

◆ “The Fortnightly Review” drew attention to the comment in the New York “Evening Post,” which said: “We trust that teachers of religion everywhere will take notice of this judge’s opinion that teaching any religion save that which is absolutely in accord with statute laws is a grave crime which is intensified if, being a minister of the gospel, you should still happen to be sincere.”

◆ “The Continent” disparagingly styled the defendants as “followers of the late ‘Pastor’ Russell” and distorted their beliefs by saying that they contended “that all but sinners should be exempted from fighting the German kaiser.” It claimed that according to the attorney general in Washington, “the Italian government sometime ago complained to the United States that Rutherford and his associates . . . had circulated in the Italian armies a quantity of antiwar propaganda.”

◆ A week later “The Christian Century” published most of the above item verbatim, showing that they were in full agreement.

◆ The Catholic magazine “Truth” briefly reported the sentence imposed and then expressed the feelings of its editors, saying: “The literature of this association fairly reeks with virulent attacks on the Catholic Church and her priesthood.” Endeavoring to pin the “sedition” label on any who might publicly disagree with the Catholic Church, it added: “It is becoming more and more evident that the spirit of intolerance is closely allied to that of sedition.”

◆ Dr. Ray Abrams, in his book “Preachers Present Arms,” observed: “When the news of the twenty-year sentences reached the editors of the religious press, practically every one of these publications, great and small, rejoiced over the event. I have been unable to discover any words of sympathy in any of the orthodox religious journals.”