Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 44

"Fake" religion as a business may have a fanciful sound, but there are plenty of men, and women, too, in this day and age who have found it to be an extremely practical, well-paying proposition. The readiness with which a good share of the people are always anxious to receive any new religion, or an old religion revamped in new fashion, makes the road of the charlatan whose trade is the promulgation of a fake religion one strewn with roses and money. Women are principally his victims, although there are plenty of men with a penchant for adopting strange religions, and from them the faker manages to reap a harvest that makes the pay of the average minister look like the earnings of an office boy. While the manner of securing money through the cloak of a false new sect is generally so hidden that the votaries of the cult are never aware of its existence until after their leader is exposed, the main object is never lost sight of by the leader, and the main object is always, "Get the money."

Out of the great mass of religions or NEW THOUGHT sects started each year in this country, it is declared that but extremely few are started with any idea other than that of separating a lot of people from their money. Occasionally there is a man who sincerely believes that he has discovered something new and precious in the way of a religion, and establishes a cult with the motive only to help people according to his own lights. But the mass of the new religions, sun worshipers, psychists, Brahmins, Hindus, theosophists, mystics, etc., are promoted with the same object in view as that of the old negro voodoo doctors—get the money.