arrived in California they never made it known that they had ever been clergymen. Some entered a course of systematic swindling which lasted for years, during the whole of which they never ceased to parade their cloth. They were ministers of the Lord, incapable of iniquity, and so their blackest sins they covered with robes of white.
Finding preaching in the interior unpopular and unprofitable, some became miners; but as a rule they did not take kindly to work. Their theology had instructed them that although the Lord might pay his servants poorly, yet he did usually pay them something; and that lucre alone was in their estimation sanctified which came without labor. They were the Lord's, as indeed was the country, the gold, the corn, and the wine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. Their instructors had told them that three years' reading theology had made them different from other men; that God loved them better for it, and would do more for them than for those who had been all this time digging potatoes, or doing something useful. It is the most pernicious and ruinous doctrine in the world.
Yes, they were different from other men, different by reason alone of their holy teachings, their holy professions and protestations; so different, that the business man would immediately suspect one who should utter the name of Christ in connection with a moneyed transaction.
Some, on reaching California, sunk their reverend titles and turned gamblers. Here they saw at once that the parade of their profession would not pay, that piety and prayers in a game of poker would be suspicious of aces and kings tucked away in sleeves or other saintly receptacles. So scores went down into the depths, and never after saw the light; often changing their names so that their friends should never aiJ:ain hear of them.
But by far the greater number refused to throw away the holy appellations which had cost their pa
