luaccess3 o0:f        v R il..
1ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS
IN THE
KING DOM OF EVIL.
BY
A. S. KEDZIE,
PASTOR OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHUCRtH IN DEXTER, MICHIGAN.
BOSTON:
CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY.
1873.




ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS,
34 SCHOOL STREET, BOSTON.




TO
TWO NA. ESAKES,
WtHO IN THE OTHER LEARNED PROFESSIONS
HAVE SHOWN THAT
LIFE CAN BE AN ELEMENT OF SUCCESS
IN THE
KINGDOM OF CHRIST,
TllIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR.








PREFA CE.
IT is thought the following discussion can find fit place
in the present state of religious inquiry, and may help to
a clearer view of the contest which fills so largely past
ages and the present. No one can understand society in
the particulars and aggregate of its action till he finds it a
strife between opposite moral forces; nor till then can
understand the meaning of history.
What is here offered only starts an inquiry which the
Christian thinker will push further. Attempt is made to
handle only the more obvious and proximate Elements of
Sin's Success.  Others, as efficient, lie not far off: as,
Hierarchism, Political Corruption, lMaterialism, Secret
Organizations, Corrupt Literature, Weak Tone of the
Moral Convictions expressed in Civil Law, and the
Antagonism held between Capital and Labor. Of these,
the Author has not treated because incompetent to do so
to his satisfaction, and because thereby unable to keep
the discussion within desired limits.
The standpoint is historic, not prophetic. Evil is held
to have such Success as history and the present condition
of society certify, - only partial, because weak compared
with opposing strength, yet terrible hitherto and now.
This meagre review of Sin's forces and modes gives no
full view of the contest; nor can this be had till sight is
gained By the Elements of Final and Triumphant Success
found in the Kingdom of Christ, some thoughts on which
will be offered as soon as the press of other duties permits.
A. S. K.
DOWAGIAC, MICHIGAN, January, 1873.








CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
STATEMENT OF THE CASE.                        9
CHAPTER II.
THE SITUATION..                   16
CHAPTER III.
STIFLED CONVICTION OF IMMOlRTALITY..       25
CHAPTER IV.
MINIFACTION OF SIN...                           31
CHAPTER V.
PROVINCE CLAIMED BY SIN.....  E.,  43
CHAPTER VI.
SIN RESPECTABLE IN ITS SHOW..                       53
CHAPTER tIIL.
CONCEALMENTS OF SIN....                        63
CHAPTER VIII.
SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINATION...      75
CIIAPTER IX.
PERVERTED MENTAL ACTION.  88




viii                  CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
MISCONCEIVED UNNATURALNESS OF RELIGION..  d  100
CHAPTER XI.
DENIAL OF EITERNAL lRETRIBUTION....            113
CHAPTER XII.
DENIAL OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS...          126
CHAPTER XIII.
DOMINANCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS..            141
CHAPTER XIV.
INADEQUATE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL.....        153
CHAPTER XV.
PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD....           164
CHAPTER XVI.
F URY OF THE PASSIONS........          76
CHAPTER XVII.
THE POWER OF TALI.191
CHAPTER XVIII.
LEVELS REACHED OR NOT........  204
CHAPTER XIX.
IDOLATRY OF GENIUS......  218
CHAPTER XX.
PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHARACTER.                      233




SUCCESS OF EVIL.
CH-APTER  I.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE.
CCEPTING Moral Evil as a fact, we inquire into
its success hitherto. The origin of Evil, so long
debated, is perhaps as well understood as it can be,
till studied amid the disclosures of a future state.
Passing that by, we take the situation as we find it,
and raise the question, Why Evil, against reason and
revelation, against the best welfare of soul and society, should come to a success so respectable? Even
apart from its bearing on the destiny of the soul,
simply as a fact of society, Evil in its extent and
success hitherto is worthy of profoundest study.
The destructive tendencies of Moral Evil, its oppugnance to all that reason affirms and revelation discloses as good, may be readily seen in every show
Evil makes of itself. Religion pronounces what experience has clearly demonstrated: that the duty is
also the interest of men; that both for the individual and for society, it is better to be just, honorable,
and benevolent, than to be unjust, base, and cruel;
that the laws of God are the only modes of gaining
highest welfare; that it is folly to sacrifice an endless
future of good for present gratifications which leave
2




10              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
a sting of regret. It is easy to show that no man
should subject the high aspirations of his soul to low
passions and gross animalism; and men from  the
first, through all generations and lands, should have
striven for the highest nobility in intelligence and
virtue.
When we turn away from these grand possibilities
lying before men, and look at the record of history,
or at the present state of the world, the extent of
Evil overwhelms the mind with wonder and sadness.
To get any intelligent and profound conviction of the
sinfulness of the world, fills the mind with dread and
horror. qWhy do not the nations arrest their mad
folly, cover themselves with sackcloth, and mourn
for the miseries they have brought upon themselves?
Who can look upon the wave of guilt rolling down
through the ages and deluging the earth to-day,
bearing to all lands and homes the wretchedness inflicted by selfishness, hatred, ambition, avarice, intemperance, libertinism, war, slavery, and their long
list of crimes, and not, in anguish of heart, groan
out, This is dreadful? Then, if he shall make closer
inspection, searching into the interior experience of
men for all nzanifold diversities and shadings of guilt
and sorrow, what intensity of language can utter his
convictions!
He has no eyes who does not see this misery; no
heart who does not weep over it. If such can be
found, there sin shows its completest work, which is
the completest wreck. If worse were done with humanity, what else could it be than to have sin raoge
and ravage as now?




STAT EMaENT OF THE CASE.          11
Were Evil found only inll some obscure corner of
the earth, where frigid clime and niggard nature had
pinched man with their sorest stress, or where ignorance had kept in concealment the grand possibilities
of human nature, or only in some particular age in
which it had stood out as an anomaly beyond all
reach of solution, it might have passed as a simple
nmarvel. But it has overspread the earth, in Christian lands and heathen, in extrenmest climes, and
where man finds best conditions for development.
It has occupied all the spaces of history, even where
clearest light has shone and highest civilization been
reached.  Even when culture hides the grossness of
sin, it is only to give it new fascination, power, and
prevalence in highest levels of society.  It pervades
society as an atmosphere, surging like a storm around
ail homes, everywhere scattering misery and keeping
alive wretchedness. It wastes like a demon, letting
Xno heart escape its sting, and multiplying its thrusts
with the days, till all hearts ache and all eyes weep.
Down through all ages, abroad in all lands, so it has
been an At is to-day.
There may be said to be a Kingdom of Evil, as
there is a Kingcldom of Righteousness: each opposed
to the other; each organized and in contest for
ascendency.  So in this world: how much further,
it matters not at present.  The Kingdom of Righteousness is organized in the Divine Sovereignty at its
head, in its laws of morals, mind, and matter, in the
church, and all just institutions of society.  In history are seen its organized procedures. So the Kingdom of Evil, in its historical record and witnessed




12              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
working, is best understood by supposing a similar
organization, less perfect, since its very principles forbid wise administration and true loyalty. It has no
great truths or sweet affinities to bind men together
in constancy and fellowship.
Yet such a vast aggregation of bad minds, however false to each other, having similar aims, come
illto modes of action which are an organized method,
an institute. Nothing can be done so generally and
continuously without falling into an organizing method. Knowledge and skill gained by long experience
give efficiency in wrong as in right. If, thereby, some
revolters against the Divine Rule, of such transcendent genius and reckless apostacy as to dare rivalship
with God, though often supplanted by intrigue of
others, should nevertheless perpetuate an administration under one dynasty or another, imbue others
with their spirit, inspire methods of wrong action,
or merely provoke imitation in evil, it would necessarily involve an organization, not only as necessary
to its ends, but because organized methods could not
be excluded.
Evil, as it works in this world, affords illustration.
When tyrants get into power, possible even in
democracies; when stock-jobbers override all principles of commercial integrity; when leaders of
fashion give new impulse, larger expenditure, and a
fresh abandonment to spendthrift ways, by capriciously changing the costumes of society, its style of
living, and ways of amusement; or, in a particular
community, some gain influence, inaugurate new
methods of corruption, and set many in a drift to




STATEMENT OF THE CASE.          13
ruin, - they act upon a method which shows organization, even if not consciously planned. Such efficiency is shown, such wrong sway given to public
morals, as bespeaks strength.  Things are done,
ends accomplished, that lie beyond the reach of individual effort. The modes they inaugurate become an
institute of society.
The Scriptures give warrant for what we would
infer from observation. The principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual
wickedness in high places, against which the Kingdom of Righteousness wrestles in warfare; the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh
in the children of disobedience, whatever more they
may be, indicate a malign force and agency, whose
directness of aim, so long continued, necessarily involves an organization, however often disrupted as
to personal administration by intestine disloyalty.
The Kingdom of Evil has not yet had full hearing.
However possible at any time its subjects may be put
to writhing under conviction of their wrong, yet
respite of condemnation is also possible, as human
experience in sin shows. Such are the delusions of
sin, that resort may be had even to justification.
And in this we can conceive that autonomy
without law may be the principle of that Kingdom;
that in revolt against Divine Rule, they advocate
and defend the right of each to follow his own will,
even to the extent of a disintegrating individualism.
If this should seem to take away the foundation of
organization, it befits the inconsistencies of sin to
disown the application of its own principles, and if




14'SUCCESS OF E VIL.
power can be grasped, to maintain organization by
the severities of tyranny. But however held together, it is in the nature of the KIingdom of Evil to
organize. If there be no personal chieftain at its
head, no allegiance, loyalty, or order in Evil, yet
even autonomic anarchy must have modes of action,
varied, yet only to be repeated and thereby becoming a method. The fixed array of bad minds necessarily holds them to methods that are organic.
Whatever Omnipotence might do in cle.aring the
universe of all resistance, such use of his power
seems not to be God's method. H1e treats his creatures according to the natures he has given them.
For dead matter he has physical force; animals he
handles by imperious instincts; but moral beings,
made to be governed by truth, to be ruled by right,
to be won by love, to be warned by the preannounced consequences of revolt, and made to have
fellowship of thought and feeling with himself, he
addresses as standing on that high level. He gives
them autonomy under law, refuses to push them
with compulsions, but handles them with a gentleness
that would make them great.  And when the bad
have reached eternal confirmation in character, as all
moral beings must, it may be one of the necessary
pains of their hell that he will not let them drop
from this high dignity.
Constituted of such elements, imbued with such a
spirit, and organized on such principles, clearly the
Kingdom of Evil should have dragged from the beginning and have come to a speedy and ignominious
failure. In whatever world found, it is an unpar



STATE3IENT OF TIlE CASf:           15
donable impertinence., In opposition to truth and
right, against reason and conscience, opposed to best
welfare both of soul and society, perverting all highest powers in man; but, most of all, disputing the
legitimacy of God's Rule, contemning his justice,
rejecting his love, trying his patience, grieving his
heart, and crucifying his Son; such a Kingdom of
Evil not only should not be, but, existing fr'om the
first, should have proved an abortion, and not even
come to any conspicuousness of failure.  And when
great enough to be in llF'bpposition to God's Kingdom of Righteousness, its management by finite minds
should have doomed it to sure and speedy overthrow.
Never did results so disappoint expectation.  Instead of abortive failure, the Kingdom  of Evil has
come to a success not only respectable, but as nigh
perfect as the infirmity of finiteness permits to anything it touches.  If, in the record of history, any
success is to be found, it is in the growth and sway
of this Kingdom.  Not even the Kingdom of Righteousness makes show of such success.  Its greater
success is yet in promise and prophecy.  vWhatever
faith may see in the deeper under-currents of history,
the plainest things upon its record are the doings
and triumphs of the Kingdom of Evil. Here we see
movi-ng the masses of Earth's population; their
intensified activities; their interest, occupancy, and
complete absorption.  YWhen the Epic of Evil comes
to be written in quantities, numbers, and achievements, history will furnish material for showing a suecess greater than the human mind has yet conceived.




CHAPTER II.
THE SITUATION.
AN has the power of non-consent.  It does not
therefore impugn the omnipotence and benevolence of God that sin exists. Certainly, God desires
no such result. It is against his will, against every
attribute of his infinitely pure and beneficent character. He has created moral and accountable souls,
incident to the peril of sin through non-consent, rather
than create only material things to be governed and
run as machines under the law of absolute force, or
to make merely animals to be handled by imperious
instincts.  Himself an intelligent and moral being,
it would be no sufficient pleasure to him to have
merely a kingdom of matter, though the worlds move
in harmony inconceivably beautiful, or to rule only a
brute creation.
He has created beings that can have fellowship of
thought and feeling with himself, capable of moral
and intellectual reciprocities. If from this high level
they fall, he may still have it, as an end sought, to
bring them under the sway of such principles, on
through such an experience, as will finally clear them
from the dominion and damage of sin, if they will




THE SITUA TIOCY.            17
only consent; without which, from the nature of the
case, it would be impossible.
Not the final completion of God's plan, but the
present situation, is now the matter for study. Sin
embodied in sinners, personated in so many fallen
beings, has become a tremendous power, pervading
society, corrupting it, blending and bewildering the
minds of men, practically an organized force, a Kingdom of Evil opposed to the Kingdom of Christ. To
maintain this opposition, to open some chance of success, what fashioning of our surroundings might we
naturally and reasonably expect the forces of Evil
would inaugurate and maintain? Before taking up
that question, let us stay a little to fix in mind some
conviction of the personality of sin,- to many a
mere abstraction, if not a myth.
There is something tremendously real in this Kingdom of Sin, seen geographically or historically. All
the world's most prominent affairs, its outward and
visible concerns, sin has shaped and handled through
all the ages of history. To-day, sin in the main holds
them in possession the world over. Here and there
a rare Christian man is found, who has brought all
his affairs into the Kingdom of Christ. Not his
heart alone, but his entire powers; not his Sabbaths,
but his week-days also; not his religious observances,
but as totally his daily toil, - he holds and handles
for Christ. Maintaining his abode or removing elsewhere, the whole line of business he shall follow, its
method and extent, his action in social life, everything with him is determined by a conscious and intelligent reference to the bearing it will have on his




18               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
personal piety, the religious welfare of his family,
the success of the church, and the salvation of the
world.  But the world knows not such men, and may
be even incredulous as to their existence, - counting
a description of such characters a fiction of fancy.
The men of the world are in no level where they
can see r Christians; so their denials are natural
enough.' Even when admitted to be legitimate and
normal characters, how few they seem, — wellnigh
lost beyond discovery in the vast aggregate of humanity; in any assemblage, how few; in how mainy,
none at all!
The great bulk of humanity belongs to the Kingdom of Sin.  These are they who transact the vast
aggregate of the world's business, lhold its capital,
prosecute its enterprises, push its adventures, incite
its industries, fill its offices, and control its government. It is with these interests that the newspapers
are filled.  These  enterprises occupy the world's
incessant talk. Far away into forests, deep down
into mines, abroad on the oceans, or mid steam and
smoke and din  of factories, these interests are
pushed. Over broad territories, along the valleys,
up the hill-sides into the interior of the mountains,
and far off into the depth of the sea, with insane
eagerness and crazy fanaticism the enterprises of selfish and sinful greed are pushed.  A sad spectacle!
grandest show of folly! — relieved of sadness, to
those who feel it, only by the mitigating conviction
of final overrulement to the true ends of humanity
and God!
MHen go eagerly into these enterprises of gain and




THfE SITUA TIONM.            19
into these schemes of ambition as into pursuit of
pleasure.  Ener;gy is stimulated, time used; what
else would be weariness and a burden brings gratification.  Curiosity is whetted, thought is quickened,
ingenuity put to task, evolution of risks watched
with eager interest, hopes brighten and fade to
brighten again, success comes within reach, and victories are gained.  Ilow satisfactory! Life within
such bounds seems to them full-orbed.
And they not merely rest satisfied in these ways
of worldly delight, content to have all their powers
put to such use, and putting to such use all things
within their control; but they refuse to be turned
out of their ways, to be lifted to any other level,
even if countenanced by the company of entire humanity.  They would not have all the world wake
up to-morrow Christian, - as earnestly and devoted
Christian as the holiest ever were.  They would feel
awkward, unassured, uncertain how matters would
turn; what success they would liklely reach. No,
they want aifairs to go in their wonted ways.  They
have a use for the world and humanity as they now
find them.  Their plans are adjusted to the present
state of affairs. Present conditions meet their wants.
How many, for example, live by the pride of others!
Take out of commerce what simply ministers to
pride; shut up all manufactories which supply such
material; turn adrift the artisans thus employed;
withdraw the capital thus invested; and how would
the world's affairs be deranged! Many live by tihe
world's passions and lusts.  Trake simply two, intemperance and licentiousness, still leaving' a large




20              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
list. In gratification of these two, how much capital
and how many persons find employment! Crush out
intemperance and licentiousness to-day, and in what
deranged state would the world's affairs be found on
the morrow!
With what cruel determination is the love of gain
prosecuted.  If helpless operatives are in body
crushed down to the level next above starvation,
and their minds to a still lower level; if the lives of
men are imperilled by insecure railroads, dangerous
factories or steamers, or in coal mines with only one
entrance; if the construction of a Panama railroad
within set time costs many lives to the mile, - what
matter? ask these men intent on gain. And the
same questions they ask, if their ways of gain bring
all the ruin which gambling, intemperance, and harlotry can work.
Take the lust of power, political and ecclesiastical,
as recorded in history. If, by impressment to fill
the ranks of armies, families are separated; if battles
leave the ground strewed with dead and dying; if
countries are desolated, cities sacked; if starvation
and plague follow in the train, - what matter? if the
throne of empire is only reached! What if men are
imprisoned for their faith, put to the rack, or burned
at the stake? so that hierarchy can hold sway!
Sin a myth? The kingdom  of sin a chimera?
What more tremendously real and more portentous of
evil can be found?  In such a kingdom every sinner
is a citizen, thoroughly loyal to its principles, determined that its policy shall not be interfered with,
that its enterprises shall go on and its power be main



THE SITUATIO~V.              21
tained.  They have put all their investments into
it, bound all interests to it.  Nothing would so stir
their wrath, or provoke them to such resistance, as an
array of Christian influences, threatening a speedy
overthrow of the Kingdom of Evil. It would outdo
the ten persecutions paganism  brought against the
early Christian church.
There is more in the Kingdom of Evil than the
extent of its business and the hostility of its spirit.
No full sense can be got of its reality without looking at its organic completeness. Were it disintegrated
bulk, it would present stout resistance, like an impassable snow-drift to a railway train. But it has
correlations, affiliations, and adhesions that give it
strength.  It has an unscrupulous coherence, is not
troubled with being particular, but accepts whatever
will debauch and ruin men, whether by little or much.
Custom has established methods in the conduct of
business, pervading all its ranges, yet clearly seen to
be in the interests of sin. The world expects to
violate its own rules of conduct.  Usage gives sin
respectability. Custom gives strength, as drill does
to an army. The wonted ways of the world are an
organizing force in the Kingdom of Evil.
As in business so in social life. Its customs open
ways of tampering with temperance, veracity, and
virtue; so come drunkenness, embezzlement, and
seduction. Fashion, another organizing element in
society, helps in the same way. Stated in abstract
generality, this in look amounts to little. Could we
gather up the published and unpublished illustrations
found in any month's history, see the instances of




22              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
ruin by intemperance, by frauds, by blighted affections, and seductions, for which the way was prepared
by the fashions and customs of society, it would be
obvious how these had become elements of organization in the Kingdom of Evil.  Tricks, deceits, knaveries in business, cheats in manufacture and deal are
excused because of custom. Affections are tampered
with in social life, purity sullied, the imagination
corrupted, passions inflamed, and the young ruined
by customs of intercourse, by fashions in dress, by
talk, demeanor, flirtations, late hours, promiscuous
assemblies in ball-rooms, and in ways too numerous
for recital.  In these what sin has not found excuse?
Further on there is more.  Methods devised and
customs adopted in politics to give utterance to public sentiment, as in the caucus system, are perverted
by neglect of some and chicanery of others to personal ambition and party corruption.  So in legislatures, and even in courts of justice, defences of
liberty and right are made to shield crimes and set
criminals free. Wrong claims rights in this world,
and even respectability.  In civil and social life it
has taken possession of custom.  The usages of politics, jurisprudence, commerce, manufactures, and of
trade, the fashions of social life and its modes of intercourse, have been appropriated by the Kingdom of
Evil in accomplishing its ends. Herein it has an
organic completeness, without which it would have
only the weakness to which it is entitled.
Such is that Kingdom of Evil, which is in possession of the world, and justifies its right of possession
by long, inheritance. A Kingdom of Evil it is, which




THEE SITUATION.             23
could not have been excluded, save by a necessity
which would have excluded the opposing Kingdom
of Righteousness, by remanding us to the control of
absolute force, as are the nmaterialities of nature.  A
Kingdom of Evil it is, organized, resistant, consenting to no encroachment, and restricted from universal
prevalence only by the oppbsing Kingdom of Christ.
The question arises, How comes this Kingdom of
Evil to such success? Existing under the disadvantage of being against reason, conscience, justice, and
righteousness, against all that conserves, blesses, and
beautifies society, against all that exalts and ennobles
the soul; opposed to all the securities of business,
to the growth of substantial prosperity, and to tranquillity under civil law; militant against the soul's
eternal welfare; in conflict with God's Kingdom of
Righteousness, joy, peace, and salvation, —how comes
the Kingdom of Evil to a success so respectable and
pervasive? In other words, put to organizing such a
kingdom, what elements would one incorporate in it
to give it success?
It would be a cheap answer to say, Secure the fall
of our race into sin, and the success of the Kingdom
of Evil is secured. We wish to carry this discussion
to a remove from this central point, to bring it nearer
to the consciousness and experience of men. Indeed,
the question is not, how men came into their present
position,- whether by the fall of our first parents, or
by sinning in some former and forgotten state of existence, - nor what their degree of debasement. All
questions, as to how the Kingdom of Evil came to be,
are passed by. We simply inquire as to the facts of




24             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
actual history. We look into our surroundings to
find sedatives by which men are made content with
the life, and stimulants by which they are prompted
to the courses they pursue. We inquire for the
elements of success in the Kingdom of Evil.




CHAPTER  III.
STIFLED CONVICTION OF IMMORTALITY.
NE element of success would be incorporated in
the Kingdom of Evil by banishing a practical
and controlling faith in a future state of existence.
Let the horizon of life shut down close around us;
so that, beyond the circumference of this world and
the goal of the grave, there was nothing with which
we had to do; that the matters of practical concern
with us lie within such narrow boundary, and few
forces of God's Kingdom of Righteousness, none of
its saving influences, would reach us. In such unbelief as to the future state we would be in best.
condition to take readily to all the incentives aiaEd
indulgences sin might offer.
If this great party, this malign, portentous, and.
tremendously real Kingdom of Sin, that plies, so
strenuous an oppOsition to the Kingdom of God,.
could only succeed in banishing all practical belief
in immortality, men would be in a state of ready
acceptance to all the proposals of sin that did not
involve immediate danger.  And minds uacctustomed to any outlook upon immortality woufld be
blinded to the remoter perils of sin that come in thi.s~
3




26              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
life. These they cannot see, unless they look far
enough into the soul's history to gain some vision of
immortality.
But this denial or even obliviousness of a future
state is not easily gained. To beget it, earnest longings have to be quenched and noble ambitions smitten down. No one, at all aware of the capacities of
the soul, would consent to annihilation.  The sick
child that could not consent to die, because he
wanted to see the days and know how the things
go on, uttered an infantile feeling, whose maturity
demands immortality. Sin can secure an imbrutement that shall quench high aspirations and the ambition to make the most of one's self. Souls can be
narrowed, dwarfed, and let down to so low a level
as to care only for what the senses use. H-eld in
such conditions, no longing will be felt, no ambitions
raised, stirring their hopes to take hold on immnortality.
To have the conviction of immortality stifled, more
than such debasement is needfull. There needs to be
a forgetfulness of the most obvious facts of our condition. The changes through which we here pass
foretoken just so grand an issue.  Comparing the
helplessness of our infancy with the vigor of our maturity, we find it a law of human life that we pass
through continuous changes, each constituting some
new and richer development. Not more different
from its callow state is the full-fledged bird, or the
butterfly from the chrysalis, than mature age from
infancy. Immortality only completes former progress.  The strong probability of such an issue must




STIFLED CYONVICfTION OF IIMMORTALITY.    27
be broken down before we can reach unbelief in a
future state.
In like manner, all the arguments for immortality
would have to be laid aside, doing violence not less
to reason than to revelation. Curiosity, a hunger
for knowledge, a desire to make the most of one's
self, the divine instinct of immortality must be suppressed, and mall degrade himself to the brute level,
to banish belief in a future life.  This is difficult of
accomplishment, since, outside of revelation, there is
so broad and firml a foundation for belief in a future
state; all the more difficult, since there is a grand
inspiration in the belief, which has much to do with
every-day life.
Were we to look at the warrant there is for this
belief, and at the place it is to fill in the main design and minutim of a man's life, we would say that
he could not forget this transcendent fact of' his condition, surely not for a day; that an ever-present
conviction of it would run through his daily history,
at least that it would have advisement with him at
every turn in life.  Considering the make of the
soul, its history, surroundings, and prospects, it is
difficult to see how a belief in immortality could be
pushed aside or made inoperative.
Yet just this is to be done, if the Kingdom  of
Evil reach any success, make any room for itself, and
work with any efficiency.  In organizing a Kingdom
of Evil for the ruin of souls and to stand militant
against God's Kingdom of Salvation, a first and chief
thing will be to stifle the conviction of immortality,
so that it shall have no practical influence in the




28             JSUCCESS OF EVIL.
plans and procedures of life. This is necessary to a
thoroughly organized Kingdom of Evil. If, every
day, men had a deep conviction, that close at hand
lies an immortal state which they were soon to enter,
to find it what foregone life had made it; with such
a clear outlook upon immortality, the enchantment
of sin would be broken; there would be no room for
the play of its incentives, no thirst for its stimulants, n10 chance for the arousal of its terrible passions, and no possibility for a day's forgetfulness of
the soul's welfare.
But the Kingdom of Evil is in no such jeopardy.
Somehow, in ways utterly inexplicable, yet surely,
the sense of immortality is deadened, the conviction
of a future state stifled. This is a fact of the human
condition open to any one's observation.  Men who
by process of argument can readily be brought to
affirm their undisputed belief in a future state, live
through days and weeks without any thought of it.
Such an one can go to the sanctuary and not say,
Soon I shall be through with this; soon have in open
vision the things I here so dimly see. Memorable
days of the year, anniversaries of birth may come,
and he not say to himself, Soon for me these will
pass, and I go on to my eternal manhood. He may
rise up from a bed of sickness, without thinking that
sometime soon a very different result will ensue.
He may watch a thousand sunsets without saying,
Soon and surely the sun of my life will set. A thousand sunrisings may gladden his vision, and he not
think to say, Some morning, soon, the light of an
eternal day will shine around me. He lays plans




STIFLED CONVICTION OF IMMORTALITY.    29
without the conviction that others must complete
them, and begins enterprises without thought that
other hands must finish them when his lose their
skill.
So we find it along the marts of business, in shops
and stores, on the streets, and in the.homes of men.
This is the world in which they live, without thought
or care for any other. The vast mass of minds is
sunk too low to gain any so grand and inspiring an
outlook. With the vast majority of men the sense
of a future state is dead, the conviction of immortality stifled. Not a whisper of it in talk, not a thought
of it in mind, nor a sense of it in the heart.
All this is not against the Bible merely, nor against
the well-grounded convictions of nature, but against
the oft-repeated witness of death. A man looks upon
a neighbor's face in the coffin, without thought that
the same or other neighbors will thus look upon his
coffined remains. He helps lay a friend's body away
tenderly in the tomb with no sense of the fact that
the same service will soon be done for him. In the
ha ds of men he can miss the dead without inquiring, How soon shall I be missed?  Of those who die
of disease, adult life is seldom reached without some
predisposition to the disease which will close their
earthly career. It may make unmistakable show of
itself, as the agent of that coming transformation,
and yet this premonitory suffering be traced to no
issue. For years of life he travels in close companionship, perhaps in conflict, with his final conqueror,
without thought of the result.
Nor against instinct of nature merely, or fact of




30              SUCCUESS OF E VII.
observation, is this delusion, this strange oblivion to
the most momentous fact of the human condition;
but equally is it against the most ennobling and entrancing  inspiration that can stir a man. That the
mystery of life is soon to be explained to him, he
soon to be free from the body, al  spirit, with a universe to range in, soon to greet foregone friends and
to see the Divine One, -if these grand realities, or
possibilities, are not the most entrancing inspirations and stir not the noblest aspirations, what can he
be than a brute, unless he be a stone?
Wisely organized is this Kingdom  of Evil, with
means adjusted to ends. It makes not only possible,
but sure, the ruin it seeks.  What might be counted
impracticable, to seduce souls from loyalty to God
and make them reckless of best welfare, it can do.
The forces that control it have gathered up the wisdom of long ages and the skill of wide experience.
They have taken possession of business, of pleasure,
of all schemes of ambition and all enterprises of life,
and have held these so persistently and closely before
men, that they gain no practical insight into life's
meaning, nor any outlook upon life's results. So
they stumble on, hoodwinked, to whatever is entrancing or terrible in the near-by immortality.
Assuredly, with direct conduciveness to its end,
works this Kingdom of Evil, shielding men from
alarms, cutting off the most entrancing views of life,
and suppressing the most quickening inspirations.
Any system less thlan this would be nothing.  Take
away this one cheat, give all men a clear and daily
outlook upon immortality, and at the end of a brief
campaign the Kingdom of Evil would fall.




CHAPTER IV.
THE MINIFACTION OF SIN.
T is conceivable that a man may have a profound
respect for the Devil, using that term  either as
representing a malign personage, or as personifying
the Powers of Evil. We can have a respect for what
we do not approve. It may not even make a successful
appeal to our admiration.  In war, an enemy, though
engaged in a wrong cause and defending false principles, may nevertheless show a heroism, intrepidity,
and fortitude, that command our respect.  Let enthusiasm call out large armies, which leave behind
all the comforts of home, subject themselves to the
hardships of camp life, to all the fatigues of march,
pass bravely into battle, and there manfully strive for
victory, not yielding till many a field is lost,- their
deep convictions and daring courage command our
respect.
In. the war of the Rebellion, the Southern States
assembled armies of such gigantic proportions, they
sacrificed so much, held out so persistently against
superior forces, were so undaunted ihl defeat, and
extricated themselves so often from what threatened
to be a total overthrow, that for their skill and




32             SUCCESS OF BEIL.
bravery, at least, they commanded the respect of the
world, and even of the North.
There is a greater Rebellion than that which our
arms overthrew in bringing to naught the Southern
Confederacy,- a Rebellion founded on more destructive principles and maintained against greater odds.
In its contests physical force is not in place, else
Omnipotence would speedily crush it. The adherents of each contesting party are held to allegiance
only by choice, and can be brought over to the opposite side only by choice. It is a contest for moral
ascendency.
The final issue has not come. We have waked
into being in time to see the contest go on. In the
history of the universe this is the era of war. The
Kingdom of Righteousness and the Kingdom of Evil
are in  conflict for ascendency over every soul
throughout the world. How much larger the field
of conflict, we know not. This is the sublimest
thing going on in the world; the most comprehensive, for it includes all things. Nothing is, nothing
transpires, but as a part of this contest. Every man
has his place in one of these kingdoms or the other.
If it is not so in conscious intent, it is nevertheless
so in fact. This contest is the grandest thing of historic record.
In such conditions, what might we expect to find?
WVle inquire further for elements of success in the
Kingdom of Evil. To stifle the conviction of immortality, might seem enough; yet there is more. No
one nor a few elements of success fully meet the
case. A Kingdom so thoroughly organized, of such




THE NIINVIFACT1ON OF SIN.         33
wide sweep and far-reaching aims, can depend on no
one element of success.  What else might we expect
to find?
The Minifaction of Sin. Let sin be held as a
trifle; let the distinction between holiness and sin,
between sinful and Christian life, be coniupinded, tso
that a man feels there is no difference bAetween Christians and sinners, except that the former are a little
more circumspect, if not hypocritical, and that man
is established in the Kingdom of Evil. Multiply
this, till an entire community is befogged in this
blunder, and in that community the Kingdom of Evil
is a success. Simply as a prudent economy in commercial and social relations, as a wiser policy for
this life, men may forbid certain things and require
others.  So come commercial and social virtues.
These may be chiefly to do well by themselves in this
life. All this may be made, though very inconsistently, to harmonize with a denial of the difference
between holiness and sin.
To deny this distinction, and for this to minify
sin, to hold it as a trifle, is not easily done. Conscience is against it. That voice of God in the soul,
whenever heard, proclaims an eternal and irreconcilable difference between holiness and sin.  Reason
consents not to such confounding of moral judgments.
It affirms, not only that all significant conduct is
either holy or sinful, right or wrong, but that the
highest culmination of moral activity - the greatest
thing a man can do -is a righteous or sinful act.
Herein are the real and positive things of life.
The witnessed things of life, its current history,




34              SUCCESS OF EV1L.
deny and protest against this disposition to count sin
a trifle.  Take any well-defined instance of it: for
example, follow through the history of intemperance,
see all its sights of wretchedness, hear all its sounds
of woe, weep over its miseries, tremble at its guilt,
nauseate at its disgusts, be in horror at its cruelties,
indignant at its wrongs, and vengeful at its crimes;
and what is found in it?  Nothing criminal, nothing
revolting, cruel, horrible, or wretched, save as sin is
in it.  Take the one element of sin out of it, and
there would be left no sufferings, no wrongs, cruelties, bestialities, or demonism.
Go from the freedom of society, this liberty of
self-management, from the cheer of homes and the
sweet affinities of fellowship, down to the restraints
and repellancies of a penitentiary; and what makes
the difference?  Only sin, and the consequent handling men are compelled to give it.  Sin can make
any what these convicts are. Take the best men
known, and the worst; and what makes the difference? Only sin. That worst man may have sinned
not merely against God's moral law, but also against
all laws for the training of mind, the mnanagement of
the body, and the conservation of the social order;
but as the worst man. he is only the man fullest of
sin.
We all know something of war, - some by actual
participation, all by reading and the anxieties we
have felt.  We know what hardships are met, what
sufferings, yea, agonies, are endured on the march,
in camp, on battle-field, in hospital, in Libby Prisons
and Andersonvilles.  In all these, what is the mat



THE MILIFACTION OF SIN.         35
ter?  Only sin. Take away wrong, sin acted out,
and all these sufferings, cruelties, agonies, and horrors vanish.
WVe have not forgotten slavery; it cost us too
much for that. What cruelties were endured, agonies peddled out, by men who went from one plantation to another to inflict lashes on those whose
unsubdued humanity kept them  in revolt against
oppression; separation of families into returnless
exile; ignorance which no education was permitted
to relieve; hungerings of heart that must not be
fed! Sin did all this.
Turning from sin as an organic force in society, to
study it in individuals, its nature is found the same,
and it is seen as difficult to be counted a trifle.  A
young man, the son of doting parents, at cost of
much parental sacrifice, has qualified himself for business by a long, thorough, and expensive education.
Loving hearts bore privation and hardship that he
might go into the world's commercial marts competent to transact any intricate and responsible business. At length, leaving home with all fondest
hopes centred upon him, he takes a responsible
position in some mercantile house or bank, where
large sums of money pass through his hands. For a
while he meets the expectations of his employers and
the hopes of his parents. But unknown to them he
has fallen into evil company. A festive gathering of
associates introduces wine and cards. For want of
excitement they play for the supper. Heavier gambling comes naturally enough. His gambling debts
cannot be paid without drawing salary which he ha)




36             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
not yet earned. Soon he needs the lost salary and
larger advances than he can earn; so he makes false
entries on the ledger, and covers them with forged
checks, which he vainly hopes to take up before
they fall due or meet detection. The picture need
not be drawn out in detail. It is familiar to readers
of newspapers. Discovery is made; detection lays
its hand upon him; he is pronounced a felon and
sent to prison. All his bright hopes, that ran so far
into the future, end in the darkness and gloom of the
cell. In parents' hearts joy and hope are turned to
grief and despair: a grief whose burden they must
bear through life; a despair which only the hope of
heaven can mitigate. Dishonesty did all this; and
all the matter with dishonesty is, that it is sin.
What brighter or more beautiful gem has society
than a gifted and highly-cultivated daughter, blushing into all the beauties of young maidenhood? And
yet with what melancholy frequence has such an one,
after long solicitation, given her too trustful love
to a man that was not only seductive, but a seducer;
who decoyed her to a house of assignation, only to
thrust her into a degradation from which her own
outraged feelings and the cruel verdict of society
never permit her to rise. In the few years that
mark her run to an early grave, what ages of woe are
crowded, as she thinks what might have been! And
the desolation of the home she has left no one can
know till the destroyer comes to his. What wrought
such ruin, brought such blight, turned so much
sweetness into gall, so much hope into despair?  Sin
did it. Nothing else could.




THE MINIFACTION OF SIN.          37
A man is pronounced by the court a murderer.
If he escape the gallows, it is only to pine away his
life in solitary confinement; and no outsider can
conceive the agony involved in that. But he cannot
take all the curse of his crime into that cell. Part -
0, how much! -is borne by that wife who testified
so bravely for him, and who wept so sorrowfully on
his shoulder when the verdict was given. What
came into that house and sent that husband to such
a doom, and that broken-hearted wife to go forth and
find what the world has in store for a murderer's
wife?  Sin did it. Only sin could.
Take intemperance, gambling, adultery, murder,
and the long list of crimes: see what they can do in
wasting the fortunes, blasting the prospects, and
crushing the hopes of individuals and their families:
see what such crimes can do in society. More still;
imagine, if possible, all the wretchedness and ruin
they could effect, if unrestrained by law or gospel:
and even then, gathering up all the world's woe, it
will be found no adequate measure of the magnitude
of sin. It reaches deeper than the understanding
can fathom, further than the imagination can conceive.
Hurts and the keenest stings come not from crimes
alone, but from  sins which the civil law cannot
touch. There is wrong and its consequent suffering
in many a home; but all the instruments of civil law
are too coarse and bungling to bring rectification or
relief. A word, a look, even tones of voice, have
stung deeper, left in the heart a heavier press of
agony, than ever misfortune could. Frivolity, neg



38              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
lect, even heedlessness, have sent pain into the heart,
to live there as long as it will beat.
Take the one fact of disappointment.  " He is not
the husband my heart took him for. 0, what might
have been!"  "She is not the wife my mind had
pictured, and my heart had craved. Now too late! "
This son has not met the high hopes cherished through
all the years of his growth.  This daughter, so tenderly nourished, has proved a viper.  This friend,
leaned upon so confidently, has pierced hand and
side.  So disappointments come, that embitter life in
all its after flow.  And the main element in all such
disappointments can be traced to sin. Pain never
stullng, sorrow never crushed, disappointment never
smote, save as sin gave them power.
And wherein is the power of sin?  Only in its
being consented to, accepted as a law of life, mode
of conduct, or principle of action. It may be intelligently and persistently maintained; it may be only
blindly and heedlessly permitted.  But if, in fact, it
be a law of conduct, as with the unrenewed sinner,
then all possibilities of sin come within range and
reach of that sinner. Let his own will, prompted by
his misconceived interests, counselled by his love of
gratification, swayed by his passions, without regard
to God's authority or the soul's welfare, be the rule
of his conduct; then, at length, in favoring conditions, under press of requisite temptation, any sin he
can commit.  He is on the way to sins from which
he would now shrink with horror. All most horrible
crimes, all most damning sins, lie in the way he is
going. Perhaps he denies this, and repels it as a




THE MINIFACTION OF SIN.           39
slander. It may not seem pertinent to say that he
does not know himself; but it is enough to say that
he has not wisely read the newspapers.
The restraints of law, the power of social moralities, pride of self-respect, regard for family and
friends, sense of safety, ambition for success, the
conservative power of good habits, and many like
restraints, bar him from  crimes, keep him in the
ways of good repute, and even lead him in a path
which in places runs close by the Christian's. He
may even have the pArt and fairness of Christian
guise.  But society is daily demonstrating how
wealk these restraints are; how readily sin can lead
a man to break through all such barriers, and plunge
into deepest crimes. Frequently the community is
shocked by men breaking through all restraints, and
letting the sin that inflamed their hearts and festered
within, urge them to most horrible crimes. Position
in society, domestic relations, self-respect, former
habits of morality, voice of conscience, fear of God,
and dread of consequences were nothing.
In face of this, all Powers of Evil, certainly the incarnated, insist that sin is a trifle. Were this delusion
fully exposed; were the magnitude of sin, the way
it works, and the lengths to which it can lead, fully
understood and deeply felt, it would raise an alarm,
stir fears, lead on to struggles which would give
souls deliverence from its power, bring them  into
the liberty of the gospel, and quickly overthrow the
Kingdomn of Evil.
But this must not be. All Powers of Evil, from
Satan downwards, cry out against it. No such prop



40              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
osition could carry the vote of this world. No such
revolution in its affairs will the world permit. Were
the Powers of Evil to consent, it would foreclose the
"conflict of the ages," bring to ripe maturity the
plan which God is leading on to completeness so
surely. Alas! so slowly, so slowly, only because
the revolution must come, if at all, by consent of
individual souls.
To guard against such speedy overthrow; to forestall the ruin which the higher Powers of Evil may
know is coming, but which their pride, their unbelief,
and their ambition keep concealed even from their
own eyes; to put off yet longer the crushing disaster
that must come to this rebellion in the final triumph
of righteousness; to maintain yet longer at work this
vast enginery of sin,- the Powers of the Kingdom
of Evil, right here, raise a contest, and dispute the
magnitude of sin, the way, certainty, and disaster of
its working.
Secretly, they know sin's power, the certainty with
which it works, its disaster, and the astounding
excesses to which it can go. Secretly, they gloat over
its magnitude, and even pride themselves in having
so great a venture in hand. But to admit this would
be only to invite overthrow.  So the magnitude, certainty, disaster, and excesses of sin must be denied
at all hazards. All the working forces of the Kingdom of Evil, all apostate spirits of other worlds, all
fallen men of this, who have got far enough along to
take in the real genius of sin, deny its magnitude,
certainty, disaster, and excess.
So we find it. Every sinner is deluding himself




1MI. NIFA CTION OF SIN.           41
with the conviction that sin is n't much; only a peccadillo; no reason at all for the loss of the soul and
its imprisonment in hell.  Violation of good manners would trouble them  more.  If sin shows itself
in ome ludicrous shape, they can laugh at it just
as heartily as though there was no sin in it.  If it
brings some immediate pleasure, they accept it as
rejoicingly as though there were no damning curse
in it.  If it yields present ease, and begets carelessness of consequences, they rejoice in freedom  from
alarm.  If a thousand dollars can be made by telling
a lie, they ask, What harm  is the lie?  If a fortune
can be made by a life of rascality, who will stop for
the rascality?  Denial of sin's magnitude, certainty,
disaster, and excess, is an element of success in the
Kingdom of Evil.
This denial is extensively made, is even characteristic of our times.  It not only crops out here and
there, but underlies much of our readable literature.
Popular writers attribute what of sin they admit to
ignorance, bad digestion, malformations, and untoward surroundings; whatever else there is, they
regard as a necessary disadvantage of our finiteness.
Therefore, so far as it can be cured in this world,
their remedies are education, hygiene, social and political reforms, - mere palliatives of sin's curse, but no,
radical cure of the disease.
Under such narrow and feeble views, the facts of
history  and the condition of humanity  cannot be
understood; and, worse still, no right and heroic
living is possible.  Eliminate the Biblical idea of sin
from the mind, and no radical revolutiotn    of moral
4




42              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
character will transpire; no repentance; no prayerfulness; no earnest conflicts with sin; no alliance of
heart with Christ, and no ascent to the level of the
heavenly life. All that is likely to be done is a feeble attempt at reform, which will leave the KIBingdom
of Evil abundant room and success.




CHAPTER V.
PROVINCE CLAIMED BY SIN.
"1HE Roman Catholic church through much of its
history has sought to manage the bestowal and
confer the repute of sainthood. Only to martyrs,
and such as were eminent in monastic sanctity, has
that church given the repute of saintliness, and generally long after their death. The papal church has
fashioned the world's convictions in this matter, and
modified the current forms of expression. Many call
saints only those whom that church has put on the
calendar. Here is a somewhat noteworthy fact, that
the convictions of the people in the church and out
of it, on the subject of sainthood, have been shaped
as they would not have been by the ideas and language
of the New Testament. Some are called saints without any proof of their saintliness; others not, though
believed to be already such before the throne of
God.
This is cited in illustration of other things of its
sort. It is not the only blunder we have received
traditionally.  If such blunders are possible, how
often may they have been repeated?  Without attempting to set any boundary to this field of deceit,




44               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
I shall seek to show that there is at least one other
in which prevalent convictions are as far from known
fact as in the matter of sainthood; namely, a gross
traditionary misconception, in the minds both of
Christians and sinners, as to the province of religion;
whereby it is made to consist in Godward acts of the
soul, in devotional exercises and sanctuary services,
especially on Sabbath days.
This is fostered by the conscious experience of
adult conversions.  The prominent thing before the
mind of the convert is right adjustment of soul with
God.  He has found himself a sinner against God,
condemned by God's law, in need of God's pardon,
and to be saved, if at all, by God's grace.  In entering upon the Christian life, his repentance is towards
God; at the throne of grace he makes plea for pardon; and the joy that comes is the assurance of the
divine favor.  What change in human relations this
may require is a matter of subsequent, if not secondary, thought.
Indeed, taking the whole history of Christianity,
the same general order of thought may be found running thronugh it. The monasticism which marked the
early  ages of Christian history was a method in
which the soul  exercised itself in its Godward relatlions.  Retirement to cave or. convent was that the
soul might lose itself in the rapt meditations of a
divinely contemplative spirit.  In such seclusion to
spend years in holy meditation and in the commaunion
of prayer, was emphatically a religious life.  This
view of the Christian life, a scholastic monasticisim,
can be traced in nearly all the centuries of Christian
history previous to the Reformation.




PRO VINCE CLAIMED BY SIN.            45
In later times, religion, more than before, has gonii
forth into the world with enlightenment and relief.
It has undertaken to reconstruct society. Into marts
of trade, with principles of equity; into courts, with
principles of enlightened jurisprudence; into the
political arena, with the doctrines of justice and
freedom; and into halls of legislation, with constitutional law, — Christianity has gone, demanding in all
these wider room and freer action for herself, yet in
all this never overlooking the fact that the foundation
of all betterment in society is the regeneration of
individual souls.
Yet there is found, in the church and out, the forenamed fact, a general, perhaps somewhat unexamined
impression, that religion is chiefly, if not exclusively,
a matter between each soul and God. In looking for
confirmation of this statement, it is fitting' to leave out
all those who have such meagre views of religion as
to make it a mere morality, merely a prudent policy
for the wise, quiet, and safe ordering of this life. A
religion that can do no more; that has no power to
restore a fallen soul, not even discrimination to recognize it as a fallen soul; no power to adjust it into
lost relations, to revolutionize and inspire it with a
higher life than its own, to give it an outlook upon
immortality and a use for the universe, -is not a
religion worthy of the name, nor of which note is
now taken.
As disclosed by God, as illustrated in the life of
Christ, and as set forth in writings inspired by the
Holy Ghost, also as involved in its essential principles, there is no level of society, no range of life,




46               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
no place where a right thing call be done, or a wrong,
which is not within the province of religion. It
refuses restriction within any narrower range.  The
habitat of religin idin ces every condition of humanity.  Term-time in the school of Christ includes
every hour of life. In all places, at all times, something can be accomplished in the religious culture of
the soul; for this end there are no wastes, no desert
spots in life.
Yet careful inquiry is not at a loss to find Christians who hold the Sabbath as the Lord's, other days
their own.  Worship in all its forms they count " religious services "; while the services, the activities,
that fill up the main bulk of life, are called business,
and are thought to be quite devoid of any religious
character, - as usually they are. Money given in
charity or for religious institutions is held as sacred.
The rest is secular.  Business, property, and politics
lie outside of religion.   If, by pressure, religious
truth is made to push over into this realm, fronm some
it meets with prompt resent; by others heard respectfully, but with a silent protest and with a determined
rejection of the enceroachment, - divorcing their business from  their religion, in their religion serving
God and in business themselves.  They are religious
occasionally, - in spots.
Were they to study out some intelligent and defensible views in the matter, and write them  down for
guidance, they would, no doubt, come to very orthodox conclusi'ons, perhaps exhibit a very different
life.  But this is what few of them ever do; in consequence, they keep a broad line of separation between




PRO VINCE CLA IMED BY SINT        47
religion and business.  When any interest of the
Redeemer's Kingdom comes with claims for service
or money, with how many the first instinctive movement of thought and feeling is denial, out of which
they must be very carefully persuaded.  Something
more is needed than a full statement of the case with
its warrants of wisdom. Perhaps, for final success,
a low and unmanly sentiment has to be appealed to,
besides handling their morbid, worldly feelings with
great care, and themselves with great consideration.
It is very easy to conceive how differently matters
would go if they permitted their religion a wide and
free sweep over its legitimate province. Then would
they have within the field of their thoughts a contrivance, care, and interest for every welfare of the
church and for every aspect of Christ's kingdom.
They would be on inquiry to find opportunities for
charitable expenditure and Christian investment. All
interests of Christ's church at home and of his kingdom abroad would be a part of their business, to be
taken into account, planned and provided for. Thus
would their lives have a wider sweep, loftier aims,
and a healthful spontaneity; and themselves an ennoblement of which they never dreamed.
It is neither slur nor slander to affirm, that in the
average conviction of unconverted men, religion is a
matter of time and places. They expect to see something of it on the Sabbath, but not on other days;
at church, but not on the street; at worship, but not
at work.  Some utterly deny that it should make
any show of itself in politics. They look not for it
in business, in the use and control of property, in




.48               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
manaagement of the tongue, in the affinities that have
play in social life, in the courtesies that sweeten
society, in the silently-done charity, in self-denial for
others' good, nor in wrong taken unresentfully. Their
blinded minds see religion only at church; and even
had they greater spiritual discernment, they might
not in mlany cases find it elsewhere, nor always there.
It were easy to show this to be a gross misconception.  Let ally one study the character of God, conceive what his moral government involves; let one
look at the nature of the soul, at its powers of thought
and feelilng, its capacity for action, suffering, and enjoyment, its fallen state, what its restoration involves,
how truth as a law of life can shape the soul and love
transform it; let one see the soul, in the discipline
of Christian life, putting forth its powers in a drill of
heavenly exercises, fitting for the activities of inmortality, playing  out influences which, purposely or
unconsciously, reflect the image of God and transform other souls into his likeness; let one see that
just this enters into all varieties of intelligent Christian life, in all conditions, at all times, on all occasions and in all employment; and religion is readily
seen to be, not a thing done, but a life lived, as various as life can be, and as continuous as life must be.
But the aim. is not to controvert this conviction,
nor inveigh against it, only to consider the fact of its
prevalence, in the church and out.  Consequences
come of it; the most obvious of which, as broad as
the fact itself, is that so much of life is shut away
from the sphere and reach of religion. Business, travel, pleasure, social life, its affinities and repellancies,




PRO VINCE CLAIMED BY SINKr.         49
domestic life, its principles and spirit, are made to lie
outside of the reach and beyond the permitted con-.
trol of religion.
How it came so, it is difficult to tell.  It is not so
with some other religions.  In India, we find a religion that regulates all smallest particulars of life.
Its touch is constant, its power felt every hour.  It
regulates food and drink, prescribes a code of regulations for social intercourse that are minute and authoritative; in fine, it forbids and commands at every
turn in daily life.  True, it is a religion of ceremonies, makes slaves of its adherents, leaving no room
for the liberty that makes loving sacrifice, trains the
soul to no nobility, and gives it neither breadth, volume, nor high aspiration. Yet it makes itself an everpresent power over the soul.  Between the Brahminism of India, and Christianity as it lies in the
conception of the multitude, this difference is as noteworthy as any: that Brahminism  touches the soul
of its adherent with a constant power; while Christianity, as so generally misconceived, is a religion of
timnes and places, confined within narrow bounds, leaving long reaches and wide domains of life beyond its
permitted sway.
Here the Kingdoml of Evil finds another element
of success: conceiving that Kingdom. merely as including the aggregate  of unconverted adults now
inhabiting the earth, what have they in hand? Nearly
the entire business of the world, something more important, in their esteem, than the churches are ever
likely to do.  They cannot dispute that Christian
imen  have also a hand in business; the best men in




50              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
every trade and occupation, yea, sometimes the ruling spirits and controlling power in monetary and
commercial centres, and doing well their part in all
ramifications of business.  But it is worldly business; even Christians count it so, and often draw
contrasts between secular employments and religion
in a way that leaves the entire realm of business as
belonging' to the world; and by that they mean the
Kilngdom of Evil as distinguished from the Kingdom
of Christ.
To give the matter a worse look, some Christians
conduct business on no higher principles and for no
loftier aims than do men of the worldl. Some drive
as hard a bargain, shave as close, and come just as
near to downright dishonesty, as can the world's
sharpest knave.  And when by such, or any means,
a fortune has been gathered, the uses some make of
it in gratifying pride, in making life luxurious, and
in the spendthrift ways of fashionable wateringplaces, give business a still more worldly aspect.
The talk of men helps the impression that the
whole department of business belongs to the Kingdom of Evil. Some of them, even though in the
church, disclose a state of mind just as feverishly anxious to get rich as any poor sinner that had no trust
in a Heavenly Father.' Their hearts go after covetousness; they rejoice over gains and prospects of
enrichment just as though there was nothing better
in this life. And so the impression gets broadly and
deeply made from  Monday morning till Saturday
night, as all the year's Sabbaths cannot efface, that
business is worldliness, with no process of God-serv



PROVINCE CLAIMED BY SINA           51
ing in it.  And worldliness is the KIingdom of Evil.
So that Kingdom is made strong by the broad room
it occupies.
To make itself still broader and firmer in position,
it has claimed for itself exclusive possession of the
realm of politics. This, to be sure, has been denied
and protested against; men have affirmed that there
is a way of doing right and servingi God in politics.
This is not generally admitted, but strenuously resisted. This matter is not now brought up for dis
cussion. It is met with neither admission nor denial;
but is held up simply as a fact, maintained by so many,
that the province of religion covers not the field of
politics.
In this restriction of the province of religion,shutting it out from the world's business and from
its politics; shutting it out also, as could readily
be shown, from  the whole round of the world's
pleasures, -we see the province which Sin arrogates
to itself, covering wellnigh the whole field of human
activity.  Thus we come to see more clearly than
before, why this Kingdom  of Evil, which at first
seemed to have in it only elements of failure, comes
to have success, finds room for itself, a magnitude
and even dignity that begins to command our respect.
When we come to consider the capital invested,
the vast multitude of men employed, their skilled
power, their trained minds, their long experience,
their capacity of execution, their assiduous application, what invention has found out, how system has
arranged all arts, gathered up raw products, adjusted
the machinery of manufacture, and established com



52              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
merce,- all for the realization of ouP(iond product,
wealth; when we see, in protecting anihd festering all
this, that politics, with its tariffs, its banks, its laws,
its courts, its diplomacy, and its usages, open all fair
and sometimes unfair ways to bring surer and larger
wealth; when, too, we see, especially in cities, at
fashionable watering-places, and at the National Capitol, how pleasure with her intoxicants urges on the
devotees of Mammon to push all economies, industries, and even knaveries, that she may spend with
more reckless prodigality, - we see in the Kingdom
of Evil very promising elements of success.
If business and politics and pleasure belong exclusively to the Kingdom of Evil, as is claimed by many
men, and even conceded by some Christians who
keep their religion within such narrow bounds that
it has nothing to do save at church and on Sundays, - then, though the Kingdom of Evil be against
reason, conscience, and all best powers in man,
against all longings and aspirations that ally the
soul to God and reach out to immortality, yet that
Kingdom of Evil has elements of power and progress which explain its unmerited and otherwise unaccountable success.




CHAPTER VI.
SIN RESPECTABLE IN ITS SHOW.
AS we take into consideration the souls standing
under the moral government of God, get any
true apprehension of its capacities and inherent necessities, and then look off on its near-by immortality,
we readily pronounce the soul's welfare, its religious
interests, the most important concern of life. In this
respect no one can fail to see, that, by as much as the
soul is more than the body, eternity than time, by so
much  must eternal concerns transcend temporal.
Once admit the soul's immortality, its amenability to
God, that character here formed settles eternal destiny, and upon these premises one can prove, past
all gainsaying, that soul-welfare is the first, foremost,
and highest interest of life; that nothing has permanent value, if it fail to help in this; that men living
in habitual neglect of the soul, failing to secure its
emancipation from  sin through God's regenerating
grace, and failing to put the soul through a discipline
clearly seen to fit it for heavenly society, can be
proved fools, in the broadest, most emphatic, and
solermn use of that word.
This is a primary truth of relig'ion, and not less ot




54              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
common-sense.  Talie the most successful of these
men, as the world would measure success; men who
have gathered the largest fortunes, surrounded themselves with all ministries of ease and means of enjoy-.
ment which cultivated taste could select, or money
purchase; or, if their ambition run in a different line,
take men who have gained the heights of political
life; lay such, suddenly, and in the maturity of life,
upon a bed of sickness, from which they know, to
their full convincement, the grave is the only escape;
and if they accept the plainest facts of religion, they
must pronounce their past course the most egregious
folly they could commit.,
If life is for anything, it is for ends found in immortality.  If the education and training of human
powers are of any use, the highest of those uses must
be in the soul's eternal manhood.  The culture of the
imagination, the development of reason, the training
of thought, the regulation of the temper, the discipline of the heart, the cultivation of the affections,
going on to the close of life, must find their highest
ranges of use in that life to which this is introductory.
Any other conclusion unsettles all our convictions of
proportion, fitness, and value.
These are simple doctrines of religion; no less are
they profound truths of philosophy. If the soul is
for anything worthy of its powers; if God's creations
are for any purpose worthy of their magnitude and
skill; if the arguments of history are to have any
worthy conclusion; if God's moral government is to
inaugurate and maintain any state worthy of its principles and processes, or even of the inconceivable




SIN' RESPECTABLE IN ITS SHOW.         55
myriads of its subjects,- then these consummations
must lie further on, in the impending immortality;
they are not found in this life.
It becomes, then, the readiest, because a resistless
step of logic, that the years of life spent in no intelligent preparation for that immortality, are wasted
years. If to occupy life in what is clearly seen to
be only a transient interest, be not folly, what is?
To occupy powers capable of handling all highest
truths and greatest concerns in the universe, to bu-y
these with what in a few years will be nothing, —what
language has terms to measure and set forth such
folly?  This conclusion is resistless.  No process of'
reasoning can overthrow it.  It cannot be unsettled
or disturbed in the least, except by denials that set
everything afloat, that leave no certainties of fact or
stabilities of truth on which the soul can rest.  We
accept the Bible view of life, and its relations to
immortality, as the only explanation worthy of our
conditions and powers.  We see no way of escape
from  these conclusions, but by denials which throw
all things out of connection, and make the world the
hopeless ward of an insane asylum. So it seems to
us, in the quiet hours of profound meditation.
But when men come to look at this subject from
their places of business, themselves clad in the substantial garments of toil, with the zeal of worldliness
in their hearts; when their interest in the enterprises
of trade and toil is quickened as success requires;
vwhen they feel the pressure of accumulated work, the
need of enlargement in this direction and that, with
the incitement of sure reward and large gains, -




56               SUCCESS OF EVII,.
then what a different train of thought will occupy the
mind; how close and real and substantial will seem
all these enterprises of business! now they have to
do with life's foremost and valuable realities; and
how dim  and distant seem the matters they had in
mind dluring their hours of meditation! The magnitude of business interests give them  a respectability and consideration which the Kingdom of Evil
assumes to itself and makes an element of success.
The argument assumes, for its fullest presentation,
an enumleration, a summin-up of all business values.  But this would lead to figures beyond definite
comprehension.  The misconception that puts all
business beyond the province of religion, puts all the
capital invested in farms, town and city lots, buildings, manufactories, railroads, steamers, ships of
commerce, mlerchandise, securities, and banking, into
the use of the Kingdom of Evil, as belonging to it.
Under this false yet general view, let one stand where
he can have a bird's-eye view of the world's business,
as seen in a Western grain and  lumber emporium,
and note the impression it makes on his mind; let
him see the rush and hear the roar of teams, carting
in and out, as commerce demands; look down upon
long ranges of deep and high warehouses, filled with
products of all climes; steamers, propellers, and other
craft sailing out and into the harbor, freighted with'wealth; a thousand cars arriving daily, some from
Atlantic, some from  Pacific coast; others departing
to such far-off destination, all freighted with produce
and merchandise, whose value utterly bewilders the
mind.  Following these streams of wealth as they




SIXV RESPECTABLE IN ITS SHOW.      57
sweep eastward to some commercial emporium, let
him see them  dashing, like maddened waters upon
counter streams, as they sweep in from foreign lands,
the one to find way to places of home consumption,
the other to ports across the ocean.
Then, from such a general observation, let him go
down and stand for an hour in some wholesale house,
and see the amount and value of goods daily received
and sold; or at the counter of some bank, and note
the average of exchanges between paying and receiving tellers; and then remember that all along these
streets are miles of such wholesale and banking
houses, and he will have a confused and bewildered
idea of the immense quantities and vast capital occupied in the world's business. Business summing up
such vast aggregates, handling such heavy capital,
occupying so many hands and best trained minds in
the country, even if it is all outside religion, as is
claimed by many and conceded by some, nevertheless commands respect for its intricacy and gigantic
proportions.
And the men engaged in it feel that they are doing
the real business of this world and this life. To them
what the world is for is to have such things done.
The world emerged from its old geologic ages and
keeps swinging along its orbit for just this use. The
years come that they may be filled with such transactions. Using time, money, and all powers of mind in
such occupations, men feel that they are putting
things to their right use, and filling out for themselves a life fullest orbed. This view gets impressed
on the minds of men who have higher and broader
5




58                SUCCESS OF EVIL.
views, but who cannot resist the dominant spirit of
the age.*
We may argue against it; deny that religion is
shut up in suc:h narrow  province; affirm  that its
sphere reaches wherever right things can be done, or
wrong; that all business is to be only a method of
God-serving; that it is to be undertaken and prosecuted on such principles, in such a spirit, and with
such aims, that it shall consciously be a religion,
confirming the soul in Christian obedience, dignifying life, and refreshing the heart as would a season of
worship.  But the extent to which we hear Christians complain of the untoward influence of business
on their religion, the divorce and antagonism in
which they are held, show how largely they have
failed to accept business as a sphere of religion. And
so all the respectability that comes frotm the vast
aggregate and heavy capital of the world's business,
is put to the credit of the Kingdom of Evil.  In such
service a man feels that he is making something of
himself; that herein he finds his true worth and dig* In illustration, a clergyman called on his parishioner, by
previous arrangement, for his donation to an important fund.
Finding him engaged in business, he apologized for his intrusion
and offered to withdraw, just as though it was any intrusion to
come, by previous appointment, into a Christian man's office,
on business pertaining to the advancement of the Redeemer's
Kingdom. The parishioner accepted the courtesy as befitting
the dignity of wealth, and presented his check for a large
amount. We are concerned only in the air of the thing, the
understanding, the felt conviction, which forced itself upon men
who knew better, that religion must come to business in very
humble attitude, and, like a poor relation, offer apology for the
trusion.




SI1N RESPECTABLE IN ITS SHOEW       59
nity. It sometimes troubles him, that his is a life
of sin; but religion is.so distant, shut up in such
narrow province of mere worship, so indefinite as
compared with the palpable realities of business,
that the latter, to the exclusion of religion, gains his
thoughts, absorbs his heart, and incorporates his life
into the Kingdom of Evil. The readily seen and
appreciated  substantialness of business, its vast
amounts and consequent respectability, help that
Kingdom to success.
Take another of the world's great concerns,- war.
What splendors attach to the movement of an army,
the encampment, a review of troops, the evolutions
of artillery, the march to battle, the grandeur of the
conflict, and the exultation in victory. Any sight of
these leaves it no matter of wonder that so much
glory  attaches to military life.  When we read
graphic accounts - knowing them to be tame beside
the reality - of battles that gave this nation union,
freedom, and peace, we feel to have had part in so
great a struggle was to make to make those years of life
memorable.  War prosecuted in defence of national
life and solidarity has abundant justifications. Upon
it God's blessing has been invoked and bestowed.
Yet what guilt is theirs who stir up the strifes of
war. Take any war, a campaign, or even a single
battle, Gettysburg or Sedan; see the loss of life,
sufferings of the wounded, the grief that comes to so
many homes, to stay so long; and none can doubt
the guilt of those who "let slip the dogs of war."
Yet, without question of its justification, always
readily found, to have had part in war, to have




60              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
shown bravery, to have won battles, to have risen to
command, to have become the proud commlnander of
an army, - how much more is this, in common estimation, than to have become a truly Christian man?
to be called a general or commodore, than simply
a Christian brother? War for aggression, conquest,
or oppression clearly belongs to the Kingdom of Evil.
Yet when there attaches to war all the guilt that
can, how magnificent an affair it still can be! How
intoxicating the power it puts on man! How exciting its chances! With what absorbing interest its
campaigns unfold! To have had part in these, to
have been in high command, how much more is
thus offered to many, than all that can be found in
the whole round of a religious life and its eternal
issues!
So take politics. We admit the possibility and
the rare fact, that one can be a political man for ends
that are pre-eminently right and Christian. Of such,
instances can be found that match any patriotism or
heroism  in the world's history. On the political
arena, our own country and others are not wanting
in noble specimens of humanity. But take political
life in its more frequent aspect, where each man's
endeavor is determined chiefly and obviously by personal ambition, —the party and its principles succeeding as well under another's leadership,- take
just that run of politics which belongs to the Kingdom of Evil, wwhose personal ambition is stimulated
by popularity, office, salary, power, and perquisites,
how exciting and alluring the chances opened to ambition! For success, what will not be endured? To




SIN RESPECTABLE IN ITS SHOW.       61
gain the high ends of ambition, to have office and
power, how much more real, substantial, and satisfactory than anything religion can  offer,. to
go to Congress worthier of effort than to go to
heaven!
Glance at one thing more,- pleasure; and at only
one of its many scenes. For pleasure and gayety a
man takes his family to a fashionable watering-place.
He may rent a cottage for $1,000 to $5,000. Variations of dress, style of carriage and team, attendance
of servants, mode of living, and round of dissipation
must correspond. So at an expense of $10,000 or
more, a few months of pleasure come and go with
all their variations, excitements, and intoxicating
delights. The ride, the sail, the surf-bathing, the
gossip with newly-arrived friends, the flutter of new
fashions, the evening party, the dance, perhaps gambling also; put to no necessity of counting cost, how
intoxicating a few such weeks to lovers of pleasure!
How many rush to such places that they may have
company with the gay spendthrifts of what is called
"fashionable life "! To how many this is more than
religion can offer!
To be rich, or to be Christian; to have high command in military life, or to be Christian; to have
office and power in politics, or to be Christian; to
have the luxury of pleasure at Saratoga, Nahant, or
Long Branch, or to be Christian: put to the choice
of only one, how many would choose something else
than to be Christians? So the Kingdom of Evil, by
its own claims, partly by consent of those who know
better, has taken possession of business, war, poli



62              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
tics, and pleasure, - made these great concerns of
worldliness so attractive, so respectable, given them
such dignity, and thus sway, over the minds of
men, that they are grand elements of success in the
Kingdom of Evil,




CHAPTER VII.
CONCEALMENTS OF SIN.
THINGS look differently from different points of
observation. It is so with a landscape, conduct,
and the whole drift of historical events. The Northern aspect and the Southern of our late war were very
different. From one point of vision the wonder is
that the Kingdom of Evil finds any success. It is so
at variance'with highest welfare in the long run; so
peremptorily forbids a man to make the most of himself; throws him out of adjustment with God andc
the universe; makes so little of his powers and opportunities; puts him into such disturbances and discords; embroils him in so many difficulties; can
awaken such terrible fears; fret him with so many
exasperations, and in the end brings him to such remediless ruin, - that, judging simply from the nature
of the case, one would think that the Kingdom of Evil,
at the beginning, and all through its history, would
have dragged, fallen behind, and never come to any
respectable success. It has all elements of failure,
as seen in one aspect; and if in the history of any
soul, or world, the Kingdom of Evil had proved an
utter abortion, very good reasons could have been
given.




64  SSUCCESS OF EVIL.
Looking at it from another point of vision makes
quite a difference. Let the sense of immortality be
deadened, as with so many, so that, though a hereafter of conscious existence be held theoretically,
there shall practically, day after day, be maintained
an utter forgetfulness of the proximity and certainty
of the grand events coming; also, in face of all the
terrible things it is doing, let sin be counted a trifle,
the difference between Christian and sinner denied;
let religion be shut up to the narrow province of
religious observances and sacred times, leaving the
attractive and frequented spaces of life aloof from its
claim and power; let sin be made respectable in
the attractive show it makes in business, war, politics, and pleasure, and reasons begin to appear why
the Kingdom  of Evil may have success. This is
further explained by the fact that guilt is concealed
by the attractiveness and profit of sin.
The moral repugnance of sin is concealed by the
attractions thrown around it.  On popular streets in
cities and at fashionable watering-places are opened
drinking and gambling houses. One whose idea of
such places is formed by what is found where society
is only dead enough to ferment moderate corruption,
can have no conception of the attractive gorgeousness
in which sin can be arrayed. Looking at such a
temple of vice, even as seen from the street, noting
the grandeur of its architectural proportions, its
richness of adornment, its palatial rooms and luxurious furniture, - seen through the glass frontage, it
might seem a fit abode of angels, rather than demons.
While, in view of their use, they are fitly called




CONC~EALMENrTS OF Slr.          65
" gambling hells," they might, in view of their structure and adornment, not inappropriately be called
gambling heavens.
Not only is there ready supply for every appetite
and passion, something to meet and delight every
sense, but let the senses, by long indulgence, become
preternaturally delicate and quick to detect and enjoy
all nicest shades of quality in gourmandism, and
there is supply for any appetite, however capricious or expensive. If one prides himself in being
a connoisseur in liquids, and demands; at fabulous
cost, wines brought from far and preserved through
long years, his appetite can be gratified; that in this
his pretence of palate-skill is met by pretence as to
the origin and age of the wines furnished, only shows
what an equal match shams can make.
Not only every sense of the body, but powers of
mind, are met with gratification. Does a cultivated
taste demand superbly furnished apartments, adorned
with costly works of art, multiplied by massive mirrors? All this can be found in rooms luxuriously
furnished, magnificently draped, brilliantly lighted,
and supplied with costly paintings, statuary, and
other artistic ministries of delight.  Seldom  has
refined taste, inspired by love of family and home,
with wealth at command, been able to gather into
any princely residence appliances for gratification,
ministries to ease, and instruments of delight, found
in some of these temples of vice and ruin.
The managers of these establishments, though
brutal when necessary, can show an easy and courtly
politeness.  They are men of intelligence, travel,




66              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
and wide social range. They know the ways of the
world, can meet highest classes on their own level,
and prove agreeable company to any most cultivated.
And even the waiters show an obsequiousness which
leads a man, capable of such inflation, to feel himself
on a higher level than he had supposed within his
reach. If a man could meet the bills, could quiet conscience, hush all voices of reason, stifle all longing for
the greater things of which the soul is capable, if he
could only forget God, immortality, and all grand
realities of life, how pleasant to while away an evenifig, and many of them, in such an establishment!
How beautiful sin can be I How entirely call its attractions conceal its guilt and danger!
In such establishments, by their polite and courtly
managers, men are made drunkards, gambled out of
their fortunes, and then turned out of those palaces
of luxury, elegance, and adornment, some insane with
drunkenness, others crazed by loss of fortune, and
often ready for suicide.  Such ruin comes every
week to some. Fondest hopes, brightest prospects,
noblest powers, and grand possibilities are smitten
down, elegantly to be sure, but swiftly and with fell
certainty. This ruin, once wrought, sweeps away in
underground channels seldom seen by the public
eye. That fair temple of vice and ruin stands as
alluring and tempting to coming victims, as it did to
those who have been sacrificed and are gone. Its
embellishments conceal, perhaps adorn, the sins they
are made to serve. How beautiful and bewitching,
enshrined in what glories so ruthless, a sin as gamb



CONCEALMENTS OF SIVN.           67
ling can be. With such helps the Kingdom  of Evil
must have some success.
For like end, but by different methods, the same
thing is done in the theatre. Higher powers of mind
are appealed to and lower passions. The adornments:
of the theatre are more flashy and tawdry; but in the
histrionic art, addressing itself, as it can, to some of
the noblest powers of the mind, the charm of stage
scenery, the brilliancy of the assembly, the lights, the
gayety and music, the central attraction and accompaniments, give the theatre a fascination over varied
classes of mind. Those who cannot be won by severe
exhibitions of the histrionic art in its higher ranges,
can be drawn by the buffoonery of the comedy, balletdancing, and by what more there is further on and
lower down, stirring the vilest sensualities, with nearby opportunities of gratification.  0, how brilliant
and gay vice can be! And, too, so near at hand, indulgences for every lust that burns, and every passion
that rages in corrupt humanity!  All these are presented with an air of respectability, with attractions
and an outside look of decency that hide the sin and
give it success.
By still another method the same thing is done in
the ball-room, where the comparatively pure submit
to a handling they would instinctively resent outside
of the dance; where delicacy loses its bloom; and
what lies further on, beyond that, it would be sad to
say or even think. This sin of " lovers of pleasure
more than lovers of God " is concealed by the festivity of the scene, the flash of lights, the attraction of
company, the gayety of the music, and the splendor




68,      SUCCESS OF EVIL.
of attire. As a marked instance of the latter, the
newspapers report that a lady at Washington lately
promenaded in a ball-room, bearing upon her person
clothing and ornaments valued at $75,000. Embellished in what adornments pride can be! How gay
extravagance can appear!  What attracting guise
vanity can put on!
Sin is the original cause of all disaster in the universe, of all discord among nations, of all wretchedness in families, and of all ruin to souls. It calln even
send its desolations down upon the materialities of
nature. Such is its drift and power; but to those
who cannot see this, so at war is it to every sense of
welfare and security, so opposed to man's best powers in their noblest ranges of action, that one would
think sin, by its own nature, barred the way to success. But when we see how it is concealed by the
attractions thrown around it, how fascinating its
guise, how  captivating its indulgences, and how
respectable its practice, we find there are reasons
for its unmerited success.
So, again, sin is concealed under the cover of its
immediate profit. Why, there are men who, for one
fair snatch at the wealth that lady bore along in her
promenade through a Washington ball-room, — for
one fair snatch with both hands, - would be willing
she should immediately sink through the grave to
hell. How small are the sums, as told in the newspapers and proved in court, which can blind a man
to the guilt of murder, and hide from the perpetrator
all sense of its magnitude. A few dollars have done
that.




CONCEALMENTS OF SIN.           69
What is a lie,  a lie as plain, positive, emphatic,
and well constructed as a lie could be,- in comparison with some small profit? How, in the esteem of
many, is its guilt concealed by a cent more per yard,
per pound, per bushel; by a dime more per ton, or
a dollar more per acre? Some would not entertain
the question for a moment, but would tell the lie with
the quickness and ease of instinct.
A drinking and billiard saloon is opened. No very
great fortune can be made at it, - not more than in
some useful handicraft. For the sake of profit so
small, a man will be willing to imperil the morals of
youth and men with gray hairs, seducing them to
laziness, gambling, and intemperance. He lives in an
atmosphere of low thought, breathes vulgarity and
consents to it, partly because he never conceived that
the world had anything purer. To his vision sin is
concealed, its profits hide its enormity from his sight;
and to his mind it is the least conceivable objection to
any act or course, to say it is wrong.
On that memorable Friday, when gold ran up to
such giddy heights in New York, and gambling in
gold raged with such maniacal force, the newspapers
say a western man telegraphed his broker in Wall
Street to buy him gold to a certain amount, which was
done. Later he telegraphed his broker to sell and
remit the proceeds. The gain was $28,000. With
that sum before his eyes, how could he see the guilt
of gambling? Many on that day, able to issue such
orders, put their property in peril, as did that western man, and lost, losing large fortunes and turning
themselves out of valuable homesteads. And many,




70              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
unable to issue such orders, wished they had the
power.  Speedy gains concealed the guilt of gainmbling, and all that side of desolatian and ruin which
lies opposite to its gains, brought by luck as modified
by skill of knavery. Forgetting its false principles,
its lack of legitimate productiveness, its side of loss
and ruin, and looking only at some notable instance
of gain, how many let its speedy gains hide entirely
its guilt.
Even where there is a professed conformity to the
legitimate principles of business, the respectability of
sin hides the wrong it may come handy to commit.'
Defrauding creditors, failing rich, where the rascality
is so neatly done that officers of the law find no
chance to rip up the fraud, a cheating in which the
ingenuity or covetousness outwits all the wisdom of
legislation,- how often thus the gain and the sharpness of the trickery conceal the guilt from the eyes
of the actors, and even from others who should have
clearer vision.
The use of third parties as innocent purchasers,
lack of legal proof by deft concealment, limitations
of time taken advantage of, and other weak points
which show our laws to be of human origin, have
been the turning-points of amassment and success in
the history of many a fortune. And the large gains
thus made sure, while without the security and honor
of honestly-gained wealth, hide from the possessors
the guilt which should make them uneasy in their
gains. The stain of guilt is on many a fortune; but
what care the owners if the respectability and power
of their possessions enable them to, carry themselves




CONCEALMENTS OF SIN.            71
bravely before men? For present power and position
conscience can be hushed, human rebuke and even
eternal retributions can be braved.
Sin is concealed, too, by the insignificance of the
acts in which it is sometimes illustrated. When the
cheat amounts only to a few cents; when the wrong
works damage to some insignificant personage; when
the lie wrought only an inconvenience; when failure
in the contract brought only small loss; when the
uncharitableness involved only temporary suffering;
the sin is hidden by the insignificance of the results.
To have care for such peccadilloes seems like holding
conscience under bonds of fastidiousness.
There is no fixed zero point, as with thermometers.
It is a sliding-scale. Every sin seems small, if only
a little larger than one usually commits, even when
his ordinary sins are crimes at which most would
shudder. With slight uneasiness, some commit sins
that would sorely wound the conscience of others.
The murderous blow that enables the robber to carry
out his plans is so slight a departure from his ordinary conduct that it gives him no uneasiness. Habit
and familiarity help in the same line.  A long indulged sin has all thought of guilt dropped out of
it. Only when it works some unusual disturbance,
or brings some unwonted damage, will its character
as sin arrest the notice of the perpetrator.  So, even,
the natural laws of mental action help to hide sin,
and give the Kingdom of Evil success.
Sin is concealed by not being seen in its perfected
fruit, only in its flower.  The full harvest of woe is
not seen in its beauteous flower. The murderer saw




72              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
no guilt of blood in the lust of gain he nourished.
He was intoxicated with the power of wealth. For
its increase he was barred by no knavery, and so
the way was opened for the guilt of blood, no sight
of which did he see in his early-nursed passion for
gain. What drunkenness does a young man see in
his pleasant tippling?  By the way he is entering
others have gone; he is enchanted with the festivities that led them to ruin. The hilarious gayety of
companionable drinking is all he can see. He has
not gone far enough in corrupting his physical system with the disease of drunkenness to find in his
bodily condition any urgent call for intoxicants. He
is in pursuit only of merriment, and cares only to
meet the misconceived demands of social festivity;
so he sees not the woes of intemperance and its kindred vices that lie further on. Even when he has
gone further and finds in his physical state reason
for a resort to the cup, a little easement of disagreeable sensations is all that he looks for. He sees
only the flower. What time will bring, what lies
further on, - the wretchedness and ruin of drunkenness,-are totally concealed from his sight. All the
ways that grow so devious and end at last in vice and
crime, verge off from the path of rectitude by such
imperceptible degrees, that the divergence is not
detected. Ordinary forecast takes in no such distant
results. But there is a crowding in that direction;
the movement may be unsteady and Virregular; it
may be terribly swift; but if no retractive movement be begun, the end will be reache& and found to
be ruin.




COLVCEALMENTS OF SIN.            73
Concealment of sin is an element of success in the
Kingdom of Evil. To the subjects of that Kingdom
the horizon of life shuts down close by; the results
of conduct, lying beyond the boundary of this life,
appear little to them, less controlling over conduct
than the weather, of less importance than the business of to-morrow.  Business that exceeds not five
dollars per day, pleasures that might not be thouoht
possible of engaging the thoughts of any above the
age of childhood, conceal, day after day, through years,
the central realities and verities of life.  These verities are not the considerations by which their plans
are shaped, in which their powers find stimulus, by
which feelings are regulated and all convictions modified. In concealment from these verities sin works
and so finds success.
And yetthis concealment is no easy matter. Society
in all its forms of organization seems as if constructed
on purpose to keep sin from dropping out of notice.
It is a force working in society, against which, on all
sides, men must defend themselves by a constant
warfare. Nevertheless, sin works in concealment; is
counted a trifle by how many otherwise intelligent
men; is hidden by the adornments wherewith it is
garnished by its immediate profits, by the petty acts
in which it is illustrated, the homceopathic doses in
which it is offered; by being seen in incipient growths
and not in full fruitage; and by the respectability of
its success.
And this is a fruitful element of success in the
Kingdom of Evil. Sin kept in concealment, counted
only a trifle, who will hold it the central object and
6




74              SUCCESS OF,EVIL.
highest aim of life to make war against a hidden
trifle? Who will shape his plans and adjust himself to
the discipline of life, to work himself free from sin's
power? And who will raise any earnest cry to God
for deliverance?  So sin comes to be a controlling
power in many a business, an impulse in many a heart,
a crystallizing force in many a family, and a dominant
spirit in society.




CHAPTER VIII.
SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINATION.
OST persons are puzzled in trying to conceive
the experience of a royal personage, as Queen
Victoria.  There is a difference in queens, as seen in
contrasting the reigning Queen of England and the
exiled Queen of Spain. But take such a queen as
Victoria, one who has failed in no function of queenhood, how different her outlook upon life from that
of her average subjects! Beneath her is a political
and social order, both vast and intricate, in all its
layers and relations so adjusted and constructed that
she may be its head, a kingdom that she may wear a
crown.
It would bother one to enumerate even in thoughlt
all the materials and constituent parts of a nation;
but all these, to remotest colony and humblest official,
have reference to her. Born to such an inheritance 
coming into peaceable possession of it while in the
bloom of maidenhood; taking for her help the husband of her choice; holding unquestioned possession
of her throne for a long life-time, and expecting to
leave it as the undisputed possession of her descendants, - here is a life, in outward conditions, as wide
as possible fiom the average of her subjects.




76              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
Yet, when we tear off the outward husk, forget
the external show, conditions, and circumstances ot
her life, and come to the inward reality of personal
history, we find the commonness of human experience standing out in marked prominence.  As a
maiden, woman, wife, mother, and widow, Queen
Victoria has thoughts, convictions, emotions, longings, fears, anxieties, hopes, sorrows, and rejoicings,
common to every other maiden, woman, wife, mother,
and widow, tinged to some different color, shaped to
some different form, yet the same substantially.
So in the less marked extremes found in this country, the mall who combines in his own person and
condition greatest wealth, broadest views, richest
culture, and most generous spirit, contrasted with
some poorest, narrowest, and ignorantest man, —
the differences strike the mind first, and are all that
some can see. They are prominent and palpable,
showing themselves in habitation, dress, manners,
gait, occupation, in style of language, range of
thought, and in every exhibition which the two
make of themselves every hour of the day, Even
exchange of home and dress could not hide the
most marked differences.
Passing from the outward and looking at the inward experience of these two men, the differences
begin to fade away and their similarities become more
prominent. Hunger and cold pinch each. The refreshment of sleep comes as gratefully to the one as to
the other. Success and failure help and hinder each
alike. To each the truths of mathematics and morals
speak the same language. Conscience speaks in the




SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINATION.          77
same tones.  The kindness of love, the inspiration of
hope, the depressinent of fear, the pressure of anxiety, and the weight of sorrow lay equal hand on both.
Each finds difficulties as hard to surmount, life's struggles as full of strains.  Taking the substantial contents of their lives, what is offered to them through
the senses, what is done by the involuntary action of
the mind, by impulse of social feeling, the similarities of human nature overcount the differences; and
despite the latter we say: "A man's a mall for a'
that."
Where this doctrine of man's wholeness prevails,
civil law helps to keep the essential similarity in
view. In some States it took a man and $250 to vote;
ordinarily, a man can do it without help of property,
and, since the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment,
without any question as to complexion'. So, if a man
is murdered, the law does not stop to inquire whether
he was rich or poor, learned or ignorant, white or
black.  It is enough that he was a man.  Or, if one
be guilty of crime, his station in life, his natural gifts,
his acquired powers, or his neglect to make more of
himself, avail nothing in a court of justice. "Equality before the law " gives each his chance.  The chief
things in this equality are the divine bestownments, as
in essential powers of body and mind, materials necessary to living, conditions for activity, a fair chance
at life's work; in what men are made to be originally,
and in what is offered to their acceptance, are found
their main similarities.  From this somewhat varied,
yet common level, they start.
When, now, we come to turn this whole matter




78              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
round and look at it on the other side, when we come
to see how men have modified their original powers,
how they have taken what was offered them through
nature and society, the uses to which they have put
themselves, their opportunities and surroundings;
then their similarities begin to fade away; prominent
characteristics andl differences come into view. Even
the civil law, which tried to hold all men to an equality in its presence, begins to esteem and handle them
very differently.  Some it lets go free through life,
choosing their own abode, occupation, and associates,
careful only to protect them in their enjoyment of
essential rights.  Others it suddenly arrests in their
enjoyments and pursuits, calls them to account, puts
them under bonds, amerces them, or hurries them off
to prison, there to stay for years, perhaps for life;
and the law counts itself competent to hurry a man
out of life by a sudden and violent death.
But where this may not be, whatever the convicted
murderer's desire to walk forth on the broad earth
among men, to breathe the free air of heaven and look
up into its star-lit dome; however restless his craving to put body and mind into the work and struggle
of life; however earnest his longing to keep himself
in the affinities and attractions of social life, and in
the endearment of domestic relations, -he must enter
into that dungeon where he may hear the roar of life
around him, but from which he may never come forth,
till Death turns jailer.  Those powers of body and
mind which made him ache for the struggle and toil
of life, must lie in rusting disuse, sinking to idiocy
or fretting themselves into insanity; those impulses




SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINA TION~.      79
of social and domestic life must be denied all manifestation and reciprocity, till the heart shall become
as dead and cold as the idiotic mind, or as frenzied
as the maniac's. Even the civil law counts itself justified in giving men such treatment.
Although social life cannot go to such extremes,
it is even more critical in detecting differences among
men, and has more emphatic ways of pronouncing its
convictions. Society throws up invisible yet formidable barriers which certain may not pass. Families
in the same neighborhood have as little to do with
each other as if separated by a Babel-confusion
of tongues; though living on the same street, yet as
far separated as intervening miles could make them:
" So near and yet so far." Where society has become
intensely organized, large expenditures have been
made and much snubbing endured in the attempt to
gain a higher grade of social life. The attempt of
the suddenly rich to pass themselves into circles of
better culture, and the rebuff they meet upon exposure of their uncouth manners, their bad grammar,
and stolid ignorance, have formed ready themes for
-wuit and ridicule.
Passing the artificial distinctions which wealth
builds up, more substantial laws of separation are
found. One of these is diversity of culture.  There
are men whose range of thought is so much above
another's that they have little in common, scarcely
touch beyond the theme of weather. What works
equally well in maintaining separationslis a jealous
sensitiveness, fearing any exposure of thought or sentiment, lest it should betray ignorance or weakness,




80               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
and so wound self-vanity.  Suspicion works separation.  One sees some betterment of condition or culture in others, and in his lack of magnanimity thinks
such better men have the same supercilious pride he
would feel, and so holds himself aloof, as if contact
would bring him under contempt of this imagin:ary
pride.
Passing all separations coming from  diversity of
natural powers, education, position, and from the use
one has made of outward opportunities and social
surroundings, we come upon the deepest and broadest differences; and ithese are found in moral character.  Here are differences which even the civil law
recognizes and can measure with its coarse instrumeuts. It aims to sift out from among the people all
lawless and criminal men. All differences, even the
greatest, it cannot notice. It arrests and brings to
punishment only men convicted of moral turpitude
as violators of civil law.
v The characteristic qualities of manhood come not
from outward condition, not from surroundings nor
from original gifts. For moral character is the highest and most definitive quality of manhood.  "Not
that which enters into a man defileth," or ennobleth
him.  Not gifts of natural endowment, not original
powers, genius, position, inheritance, or bestowment;
not what is offered to him, but what comes fiom him;
not what he takes, but what he gives, determines his
moral character.  It is manufiactured in him, and is
known only' as he gives it out.
This process of manufacture is constantly going
on.  One takes certain definite laws of conduct, as




SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINA TION.         81
to enjoy himself, to do as he pleases, to act as present
interest or impulse requires, or as is most accordant
with the spirit and tone of surrounding  society; another takes, as principles of conduct, the law of God,
the law of right, the law of love.  One has certain
aims, as, to enjoy life, to increase his wealth, to
gratify his ambition; another has, as his aim, to
secure God's favor and renewing grace, and thus the
salvation of his soul.  One walks after the flesh;
another after the spirit.  One lives wholly for what
is in this world; another for the grand things of immortality.  One separates his soul from  God; another allies his soul to God.  And so the cardinal
distinction of sinner and Christiain arises, running its
line of demarcation through society, to spiritual
discernment the greatest difference among men.
HEere are two sorts.  There are more.  Not more
varied are human faces than human souls. Souls are
as varied as are human condition, experience, and the
ways these are taken; for these fashion souls.  On
the same level and even in the same family condition
varies, and experience more, since it is varied by the
way condition is taken. No parent can train any two
children exactly alike.  Shades of temperament,
tones of disposition, require different handling. And
what is alike in treatment is taken in a different way,
and so brings a varied product of character; no two
alike, more than foregone and  fashioiM'  experience..4
The same thing is repeated in adult life.  Here
condition varies even more than in childhood.  If
seemingly, in general, the same, it is made differ



82               SUCCESS OF F VIL.
ent by variety of disposition.  Thus condition, to all
appearance the same, contents one and frets another,
making that similar condition very dissimilar.  Temaperament, disposition, health, connections, pressure
and direction of ambition, one's tact and culture,
make conditions of life different, even if before they
had been adjusted to nicest similarity.  Even in conditions so alike as to afford no discoverable difference,
some most fortuitous circumstance, a casual remark,
some impression of nature, or any most trifling event
may turn the stream  of life in one direction or
another, settle it into some rut of habit, making
life and soul a changed product.  Turning thus from
condition to the way it is taken, to each one's action,
responsive to truth, providence, reason, conscience,
surroundings, and associations, considering all that is
comprised in experience, we find causes of diversity
adequate to account for all differences; even if it be
proved that, with souls as with faces, there is only
one of a sort.
The differences among men, and especially those
pertaining to moral character, are not found simply
by the curious and inquisitive.  The action of society
brings them out.  Every man is constantly publishing himself. Even if he be secretive, he must publish that fact.  The attractions of life lead men to
betray themselves; and when these fail, its frictions
wear off the varnish and show the grain of a man's
disposition.  And so comes the humiliating fact, that
men generally are better understood than they suppose.  This holds true of all nicest shades of difference, and much more, of that greatest difference




SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINVATION.         83
found between Christian and sinner, whenever acquaintance discloses character.
Many are blind in discerning character, giving the
theme no study.  Then, too, sinful and Christian
characters in this life are in a embryotic state, yet to
come to mature development; still, even under these
difficulties, their differences stands out prominently in
the convictions of discerning men.  This is the most
marked separation runninog through society.  And it
would seem as if God had ordered all the conditions
and appointments of life so as to keep it perpetually
in sight.  Each man is compelled habitually to run
to the court of conscience with points for adjudication, and then afford illustration.  Perpetually, as
time comes, comes the question, how to use it.  The
strong enginery of life will not let a man stand still;
yet he cannot stir without giving shape or confirmation to moral character.  Wants press him to a perpetual doing, and that involves a constant drill in
moralities.  Men are brought into such relations of
business, into such affinities of friendship, into such
ties of domestic life, that to be is to do, and to do is
to give character nearer perfection in sin or holiness.
Competition in business, contest in rivalship, conflict
of interests, which bring, such a close set-to of strurggle, put character into shape and showthis or that.
sinful or Christian.  No day goes by, hardly an
hour, in which demonstrations are not made, visible
to each one's consciousness, and more visible to
others than is comfortable to self-respect.
In consequence, here and there, in beautiful consistency and with cheering light, shines the grace of




84               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
humility, or resignation, or peace, charity, purity,
the heavenly-mindedness of genuine sainthood, in
all sorts of homes, from highest to humblest.  Here
and there can be seen inflexibility of principle, bravery of faith, dignity of Christian balance, — all these
amid provocations that fret and craze others out of
their proprieties.
And then sin, not to be behind in anything, must
publish itself, even if thereby it publish its shame,
according  to God's everlasting decree.  Its shame is
too common, its sounds too familiar to need description.  The world is full of it.  It would seem that
pride, if not manly self-respect, would lead the sinner to be more modest with his attainments.  But in
the level where he stands, in the associates he gathers, in the assemblages to which he resorts, in the
spirit he indulges, and in the bearing he carries towards
others, he is putting into conspicuousness the sinfulness, and not less the shame, of his character.  The
ordinary appointments of life marshal men out into
segregation. Who go to the sanctuary, and who to the
saloon; who to the prayer-meeting and who to the
gamingo hall; who worship on the Sabbath, and wvho
lride out for pleasure; who find recreation in the
sanctities of home, and who among the promiscuous
characters in a public ball-room, - these are well understood.  Society is very frank with her disclosures.
Men have hardly pride enough to win self-respect.
Then there is always some great question on hand,
half moral, half political, or purely moral; or some
great enterprise of progress, here and there touchingl
the welfare of society, helping to establish truth, or




SPIRITUAL IDXISCRIMINYA TION.       85
give the gospel wider sweep; and these questions no
sooner get to the heat of debate, than men arrange
themselves on this side or that, as if on purpose to
announce their moral characters.
Now, in the face of all these distinctions, differences so broad, visible, and palpable, shown up in
such variety, placed in such wide separation, and held
up so persistently to the gaze of all men, the Kingdom of Evil, in its very genius and spirit, by varied
and constant inculcation, is producing in the minds
of its subjects the conviction, that all men stand
about on a level, -some better in some respects,
others in others; that all have about an equally fair
chance and about equal success; they are on differcnt levels, have different aims, but get along equally
well - for them; all in the same boat, andl may
expect, at last, like treatment and compassion from
the same pitying God.
This is the indiscriminating generality of a lazy
universalism.  No breadth of view, no keen ilusiht,
no deep convictions; but a shiftless, shirking  generalization, that overlooks all differences and lumps all
sorts together.  Having the free air in common,
partaking of nature's bounties together, having like
wants, powers, and impulses, these men of generalities take such outward and material facts of condition to foretoken like treatment all the way through.
They forget that moral government has to do with
moral character; and that moral character comes not
from what is offered to man, but from the way he
takes it, from the response he makes to all God's
disclosures and dealings.




86              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
This element of power and prevalence in the Kingdom of Evil is not at all, or at least less, a conviction
affirmed by reason and sanctioned by conscience,
than a vague impression, an unsifted feeling, that refuses to be confronted by truth, or to give itself into
the handling of argument.  And just for this reason
it has greater power and sway. It prevails with that
large class, the heedless, men who feel safe enough,
resting on a guess that matters will come out right in
the end.
Let this conviction, or, if it have not warrant
enough to be a conviction, this feeling have sway,
and how easy matters will go.  Some care mlay be
necessary to keep from conflict with the civil law, to.
preserve reputation and good standing in society;
but, aside from this, what a free-and-easy life a man
can live. No severe discipline, no struggles for betterment, no war against impulses, no restraint upon
appetite, no bridle on the tongue, no crucifixion of
lusts, no longings for a higher life, no prayer for deliverance, no attempt at rescue, backed up by conflicts and crowned with victories; hardly a heedless
concern for present or future. Under such regimen,
how surely will a man run down; how safely included
in the Kingdom of Evil. He stands in a bog that has
no reactive ground from which he can begin ascent.
The Kingdom of Evil is so much a success, up and
down the ages and the world over, because in the
minds of indiscriminating men the feeling prevails
that all are about alike, and may expect like treatment
from the All-Merciful. This feeling is in opposition
to what is most visible and multiplied in society. It




SPIRITUAL INDISCRIMINATION.           87
disintegrates moral government and character, and
fuses all convictions into a blind guess.  Yet men let
that feeling have sway. It fashions their lives, keeps
them aloof from all struggles for salvation, and proves
itself an essential and prolific element of success in
the Kingdom of Evil.
Sin, taken in all its length and breadth, in its
height and depth, in its history and results, is the
most stupendous cheat with which the human mind
ever had to do.  Taking up either its principles or
projects, its methods or results, it would seem an
easy task for reason to prove, that from the start it
should be a failure, as it will be in the long run;
since what is eternally and infinitely fit will become
real.  But the end is not yet.  So, against all antecedent probabilities, seemingly certainties of failure,
the Kingdom of Evil has come to respectable success,
at least in this world; not in some eras or countries,
but the world over, and through all history.  And
this fiact, though without justifications, is not without
reasons.




CHAPTER IX.
PERVERTED MENTAL ACTION.
TPON the ocean, on the land, on hill-top and valley, field and forest, wherever the light shines,
every ray is true to the law of its motion. Light
and shade, shine and shadow, everywhere present
themselves just as the laws of light require. If conditions of refraction exist, the rays are refracted
without ally stubbornness or exception. In its reflection every ray is mathematically exact. Angles of
incidence and reflection preserve their equality in all
cases, even if infinite in number. If conditions of
polarization exist, then light is polarized. Light
asks for no humoring, has no waywardness to be
overcome by persuasion; over longest distances
there is no lagging behind; unwatched, it follows its
law, as if under the gaze of a thousand philosophers.
Into eyes of beast, bird, and insect it photographs
pictures with the same exquisite perfection as into
human eyes. And it serves the eyes of ignorantest
men with the same care and nicety as if they had
given years to studying the laws of light.
So, taking any other power in nature, it would be
found to prove itself true to the law of its action in




PERVERTED MENTAL ACTION.           89
all cases.  From the growth of tiniest plant to the
motion of a planet wheeling round the sun, nowhere
a blunder. Diseased action there is, because disease
has come to be one of the forces of nature which has
its law of action; and these, unarrested, it follows
with fell certainty.  But refusal is nowhere found in
the realm of nature; amid all her voices there is not
heard -" I won't."
When, however, we come up to the level of moral
beings, we begin to hear dissent uttered in emphatic
tones. And the rebellion, here started, is so great
a disturbance that it must carry damage into all its
surroundings.  It mars what might be thought remote from its influence, as seen in the wreck indulgence of passion brings to the body.  Iuch more
would we expect it to mar what is nearer, the mental
powers.  Comparatively few minds, even under the
discipline of education and the training of logic, act
with precision and comprehensiveness, both in the
matters they handle and in what they refuse.  Most
minds have slid away into various approximations to
insanity, or are in stages of only partial recovery
therefrom.
Had thought the precision and certainty of light
in its action, all minds might not come to the same
conclusion in matters taken up for study, because
of different antecedents or from  occupying diverse
points of observation. A road travelled in one
direction, looks very different upon retracement.
But travelling  the same road, though in opposite
directions, two persons can talk intelligently of its
scenes and way-marks.  And life does not present
7




90               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
stand-points so wide apart that the parallax of any,
and especially trans-mundane objects, amounts to
much.
Yet how diverse the modes of thought and opposite the views held on almost any subject.  Take any
art of livelihood, any mode of business, any department of philosophy, aesthetics, or politics; why, from
the same premises, do men come to such different
conclusions?   Why does not the "mechanism  of
thought" act with the precision and certainty of
light?  Then, when we come to the highest of all
themes, religion, we find widest diversities.  How
much these are increased by the moral' states of the
thinkers, cannot be definitely told. These bring their
ag-gravation, no doubt; but perverted mental action
has its influence here, as in business, as in arts, philosoplhy, esthetics, and politics.  And when religion
is taken in hand, the Kingdom of Evil finds an element of success in perverted mental action.
It is in confirmation of this that men do not hold
religion to be the highest theme open for study and
as including man's true welfare.  It can be proved
to be just this; yet what proportion of men hold it
in such esteem?  If it has the warrant of reasons,
why do not all thus hold it?  In this age of material
improvement, how, for success in business, is consideration of religion put aside?  Not merely are religion an:d business held in antagonism  as conflicting
interests, but business is put in ascendency and reli.(,ln held subordinate.  Justification is sought for
neglectding   any interest of religion, or violation of
solemn vows by one plea, -" I was busy," or, " Busi



PERVERTED MENTAL -ACTION.          9 
ness prevented."  Success in business, in accordance
with the moralities of religion or in contravention ot
them, is held paramount to all claims of religion by
so many, that the Kingdom of Evil finds an element
of success in the perverted way of thinking now current.
This idolatry of business was not always dominant
as now. Time was when men were afflicted with no
such craze of worldliness.  Once, men were interested in the study of philosophy.  Never in times of
speculation has business, or politics in presidential
canvass, taken such possession of the minds of men,
as questions of philosophy have. Time was when a
whole city cared most "to hear some new thing."
Such questions occupied the thinking of the age.
Under banners of philosophy, parties were marshalled. Men congregated to hear lectures on philosophy, as now to transact business in chambers of
commerce. Men went abroad to study questions of
philosophy, as now to carry out some scheme of commerce or railroad enterprise. The great men of
those times were not "railroad kings," millionnaires,
nor merchant princes, but men of letters and philosophy.
In another age chivalry was the great thing, and
gave the age its ruling bent. Humanity in all its
specimens was measured and weighed by the chivalrous spirit found in each. Wealth was nothing, even
learning nothing, save as that wealth was consecrated
to chivalry, and that learning gave the chivalrous
spirit a more gallant tone. This was not the amusement of the dissipated few who were above the hard




92               SUCCESS OF EVIL.
necessity of work; but, like fashion, it took possession of society in all its ianges, just as the material
progress of this age keeps all poorest men toiling and
sweatingo for betterment of fortune.
Even religion has been the great absorbing interest
of an age.  Men were thougcht of, not as rich or poor,
but as acdhering to this religion or that.  Not territorial enlargement of kingdom, not a favoring balance
of trade, not monopoly of commerce, but establishment of this religion or that, was what arrested attention and occupied discussion in royal cabinets. What
was schemed for by kings, and striven for by nobles,
was discussed by the people.  Never has business
and material betterment in this age shown itself more
dominant and all-pervading, than in some former age
has religion; less, however, as a law of life, than
as a scheme of doctrines, and still more as a state
policy. It was the politics of the age, ruling the
thoughts, making itself the burden of all chief discussions, and even the rallying cry of battle.
That was long before there came this present craze
of worldliness under which we now suffer, and which
some think as a perpetual infirmity under which the
race has suffered in all its ages.  The human mind
will not always follow one bent. Varieties of fashion
are attempts at escape from  the dulness of a treadwheel round.  Present greed for gain has not always
been, will not always be, the ruling passion.  Some
have reached freedom from it, even now.  That it is
now the ruling passion, cannot be denied. To develop the resources of the world, and especially of this
New World, of all waste lands and waste forces, has




PERVERTED MENTAL ACTION.           93
place in the great schemes God is carrying on. But
this strain will not always last. It will give place to
the better things for which it is providing. While
it lasts, it is not strange, that, to minds perverted in
their action and helped to no enlargement by faith,
business should be held in conflict with religion, and
paramount to it; and that thus the whole subject of
religion should be overlooked by the many suffering
under constricted mental action; nor that hereby the
Kingdom of Evil finds success.
But to those who give religion any thought, vicious
ways of thinking give the Kingdom of Evil further
elements of success, by misconceiving the very nature
of religion. One would expect, that in its essential
nature, it would be found a very simple matter. It
is not simply for the learned, the wise, for men who
have leisure to study and speculate on high themes
and abstruse subjects. It is also for men who must
maintain a daily fight against starvation, who have
stomachs that cannot be neglected, and skins that
must be protected against weather.  It is for men
whose minds have never been liberalized by study,
who have no gifts for nice distinctions; for men who
cannot give exact definitions, and are not versed in
profound thought.
What, then, would we expect religion to be, unless
God meant to tantalize us with it? A very simple
matter, coming within comprehension of unlettered
men, capable of being grasped by men unused to
subtleties of nice distinctions and abstruse speculations, and even by children. It is only a right life
instead of a wrong life. All men live a life; every




94              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
one is compelled to know how to do that; and religion is only a life rightly lived.  As a life, it takes
in all the contents of life, demanding them to be
right and fitting to the relations sustained.
The senses show man in his relations to his fellows.
Religion, then, must involve a rightly-lived life in
all relations to them. Here come into play all the
graces and moralities arising from loving his neighbor as himself.  In these relations he acted before,
it may be with a supreme regard to himself. But
loving his neighbor as himself, he will do unto others
as he would have them do to him; and so one whole
table of the divine law is obediently fulfilled. What
is simpler to conceive than this changed mode of
life?  He keeps at work the powers whose use has
filled up his life so far, only he uses them in a different way, under another principle, and with a new
spirit.
While the natural powers show man in his relations to his fellows, faith shows him in his relations
to God. He is still to live a life; religion only
requires that it be rightly lived in Godward as in
other relations.  And what do existing relations to
God require? Simply that he accept God as revealed,
the Creator and Supreme Ruler, the Redeemer and
Saviour of men; trust him as the Redeemer, love him
as the Saviour, and obey him as the Supreme Ruler.
This involves repentance for sin, faith in the atonement for sin, a humble and prayerful Christian life.
Religion in practice is simply to accept the situation,
to take the facts as they are, and live accordingly.
Taking our surroundings as they are, comprehending




PER VERTED MENTAL ACGTIO1N.          ~
truly  the  soul's relations, estimating  rightly its
powers, and putting them to fittest use, religion
becomes the most fitting and reasonable life a man
can live.
Yet on 1no subject are the minds of men more befiogged.  This comes, in part, from lack of thought,
and from  a blindness which sinll somehow begets.
However intelligently the gospel has been preached
to men in the years of their former history, when
they come to see their sinfulness, to apprehend their
danger, and seek to enter the way of salvation, the
ordinary inquiry is, " What shall I do to be saved?"
That a pagan jailer in Philippi, who had never heard
a sermon, sshould make such inquiry, is not strange;
but that it should be the standing inquiry of men
accustomed to hearing the gospel, shows either a
strange lack of thought, or a blindness of mind, which
sin in its universally damaging power brings upon the
purely mental activity.
Misconceptiolns in religion come in part from wrong
instruction; but that is only to trace the difficulty
back one step, where aoain we find the mind working
abnormally, falling into perverted habits of thought
as it comes to handle religion.  So is it in the larger
half of the nominally Christian church; where religionl is not a life lived, as the word of God and the
nature of the case clearly show it to be, but a work
done, opus operaturn; and once done, even supererogative, a basis for indulgences; so much religion
accumulated, just as well-spent toil is so much capitald
created.
Clearly where such misconceptions prevail as to the




96              SUCCESS OF E VIL.
nature of religion, the Kingdom of Evil will find in
such errors an element of success.  The opposing
interest to the Kingdom of Evil is the Kingdom  of
Christ.  Nothing limits or restrains the one, except
the other.  In the Kingdom of Christ, religion is a
life rightly lived by the soul, that soul's right action
in all manward and Godward relations, that soul's
right use of its powers, a personal quality.  That
perverted mental action which misconceives the nature of religion, which makes it a work done, capable of accumulation by religious acts, as capital is by
ilndustry, finds no use for itself in the King'dom of
Christ, belongs to the Kingdom of Evil, and in that:Kingdom is a large element of success. For there
are millions on the earth who hold this misconception, represented in that Ecumenical Council at Rome,
plotting to hold the world to the ideas current in the
Dark Ages. Theologically, organically, and numerically, here is a large element of success in the Kingdom of Evil; indeed, no inconsiderable part of that
Kingdom, as organized in the world, is to be found
in that hierarchy, under which a perverted mental
action holds religion to be a work done.  To this
view we are reluctantly compelled by the known
character of the papal church, without denying that
it contains many Christian  people, and without
opening debate as to what that church may yet
become.
Misconceptions of the nature of religion mjgy be
expected whenever the mind is perverted in its action, and that is wherever sin is working its damage.
Not as a life rightly lived in all Godward and man



PER VERJTED MENTAL ACTION.          97
ward relations, but as a work done, religion is held
by many an adherent of Protestantism.  Perhaps in
every Protestant congregation, and without close
search, men can be found who have hope of final salvation, yet are without any intelligent view of what
constitutes religion, and poor success in reducing to
practice what religious convictions they hold. It is
plain to others, if not to their own dull minds and
dluller consciences, that they have failed to enthrone
the first principles of religion to authority in their
minds.  They keep on the level of ordinary moralities with such success as those sinners have who go
in good society.  As to anything characteristically
religious, it is entirely wanting, beyond a few religious observances, as to go to church with the ordinary
regularity of fair-weather attendants, and supporting
the inStitutions of religion in a way whose meagreness and dilatoriness give sore trial to others' patience.
Beyond the proprieties of ordinary morality, they
find one other proof of Christian character, lying
away remotely in the history of former years, when
conscience was stirred, fears aroused, and feelings
excited in a way quite unusual.  In this general disturbance on the subject of religion, they opened not
their hearts to God's regenerating grace, and repentance did not turn them into the ways of Christian
living. Felt unworthiness led to no trust in the Redeemer, loyalty of heart to no consecration of themselves to God and his services. They found no adjustment to a prayerful, humble, and Christian way
of living, no adoption of gospel principles as a law




98              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
of life, no opening of the heart to the indwelling of
God's Spirit, and, in consequence, no joy and peace
in believing.
At length their convictions wore off, their fears
subsided, their excitement died away, and, under
much mental confusion, they followed others in joining the church. Instead of making good their Christian profession, they are found living on the same
principles, for the same ends, and in the same spirit
as before. Essentially they are the same in character; yet they have had an experience on the subject
of religion, which they counted becoming religious.
They imagine religion to be a fact in their history, a
thing done, though hardly amounting to any supererogation, and to this they come for comfort when the
well-warranted fear arises, that life gives no characteristic proof of piety.
In our churches are to be found such men; by
their profession they shield themselves from that
address of the gospel which befits sinners. They rely
upon an historical experience, which their dull and
perversely-acting minds have never analyzed to see
that it was not an experience of God's regenerating
grace.  So they have a religion, not lived as a
life, but held historically; a thing done, like the
prayers and penances of the papist, and of as little
value.
By such confusion of thought and perverseness of
mental action, men come to misapprehend the nature
of religion.  What is so simple and plain that matny
a child comprehends it and reduces it to practice in
beautiful consistency, is totally misapprehended by




PERVERTED MENTAL ACTION.          99
many, and by some consigned to the region of the
unknown.  Perverted mental action, working congenially with the corrupt heart, makes room for this
misconception and gives it power. Clearly, men
entertaining it will be safely included in the Kingdom
of Evil. Let all minds come into such perverted
ways of acting, then there is no room among men
for the Kingdom of Christ, and the Kingdomr of Evil
will reach highest success.




CHAPTER X.
MISCONCEIVED UNNATURALNESS OF RELIGION.
HE Kingdom of Evil finds an element of success
in the misconceived unnaturalness of religion.
It involves the question: What is the true measure
of man?  Some conceive man to be ruled by selfishness, controlled by personal ambition, frenzied by
passion, full of abominable lusts and appetites. If
this be the just measure of man, - this, and nothing
more, - then nothing could be more unnatural to him
than religion. It is irreconcilably and eternally at
war with man as thus described. If it gains any ascendency over him, it is to the extirpation or control
of every passion and lust. Not strange, therefore,
that some look upon religion as a system of unnatural constraint, consented to, if at all, only from fear
of worse disaster in the coming hereafter.
Many thus misestimate religion. Accepted as a
law of life, it would lay a check, if not a positive prohibition, upon the chosen delights of their life. The
free, easy, and congenial ways in which life' runs
would be broken up, habits revolutionized, affinities
destroyed, and the entire drift of life set into a channel which, so far as. known, looks difficult and unin



IN-NATURALN,KSS OF RELIGION.       101
viting.  What conscience has already said to them
has been in no pleasant tone, nor upon any welcome
theme.  Even the voice of reason has been fiull of
rebuke.  And the word of God, whenever consulted,
has been replete with admonitions full of disturbances. Now, to commit self to reason, conscience, and
the word of God as the chief advisers and authoritative directors of life, has no one element of attraction.
They are confirmed in this by the testimony of
Christians. True, these Christians sometimes speak
of joyful hopes, evidently based upon a superstition
as to what the future contains.  What they say of
present joys and the conscious experience of blessedness, comes evidently from. a self-wroulght fanaticism.
But these are not the burden of their utterances.
They tell of fears, conflicts, and failures to realize their
impracticable ideal.  With these come self-condemnations and self-torments.  The few and faint approvals of conscience are overborne by its terrible denouncemnents.  They bewail oftener than bless themselves.  By the weight of their testimony, they have
chosen a comfortless lot, where fear and anguish are
their nearest neighbors.
Men holding this view of life and Christian experience, confirm themselves in their convictions by
that expression of the apostle, "If in this life only we
have hope, we are of all men most miserable." From
which they infer that if there is any good in religion,
it is not to be found in this life, but in some future
state, concerning which they ask, Who knows?
Even if a little out of the order of thought, it will
help on the discussion to inquire how Paul came to




102             SUCCESS OF ElVIL.
say this. From other parts of his writings we know
how he esteemed the wealth, pleasures, and honors of
this world. HIe counted them as nothing for the joy
and hope he had in Christ. He had tried the world
under the most favorable circumstances admissible in
his age. More than most men he was able to grasp
its advantages and enjoy its benefits.
In the light which revealed Christ to him, all exposure was made of the littleness and meagreness of
this world as a portion to satisfy man. By that light
there was revealed to him the profound depths of the
human heart. He found that the mind had a grasp,
a breadth and height of reach, a capacity which nothing but the Infinite and Eternal could fill. He found
within himself not only a use for all the contents of
the universe, but a need for all there is in God himself. Convinced of the inadequacy of what the world
has to offer as a satisfying portion of the soul; having found in the hopes and foretastes of gospel blessedness that which could excite every power of the
mind to highest activity; that which could stir the
emotions to their profoundest depths; that which
opens to thought loftiest range and widest sweep;
that which could call out the soul's utmost, love and
devotions; that which enabled the soul to find its true
place and normal condition in the surrounding universe and under the moral government of God; its
faith taking hold on God and securing all the practical benefits of infinite wisdom and infinite power;
the troubled conscience finding in an atoning Saviour such perfect peace, "that the thunders of the
law become an anthem of righteousness"; the divine




UNNATURALNESS OF RELIGION.        103
love in Christ meeting the soul ill terms of reciprocal
appeal and response, and hope taking possession of
all the contents of a good and grand immortality;
ther to have all this stricken from the heart, as death
of hope in Christ involved, this would leave the
apostle consciously far more miserable, pitiable, than
the sinner who had never discovered the profound
wants of his soul, nor the emptiness of the world as
the soul's portion.
It was not because his heroism had been tried by
persecution; not because he held himself to any
drudgery that was not self-ennobling, nor because
he had so long foregone earthly pleasures; but because in the rays which shone around him from the
throne of God he had seen the depths of his own
heart, taken measures of his capacities, and had come
upon an intelligent conviction that this world, with
all its varied contents, could not fill the depths of his
heart nor occupy the capacities of his soul.
In that light, which a hope in Christ shed around
him, Paul discovered longings, felt stirred within
him a consciousness of power, had excited an activity of thought; more than all, felt a capacity of love
to be given and received; all of which demanded the
infinite and eternal, and demanded right adjustment
with God through an atoning Saviour.  Shut away
from all this, as the loss of hope in Christ involved,
no more could he come back and build a restingplace for his soul with the perishable materials of this
world, t make him gods and find them clay"; no
longer in hearts already stricken with death, and'
worse still, corrupted by sin, could he find objects to




104             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
call out his love, nor fountains of that return love,
which, as a bath of refreshment, he needed to have
around himn forever.
There is another measure of man than that which
they apply who pronounce religion an unnatural and
cheerless constraint; a measure which recognizes him
as endowed with reason, conscience, and immortality;
a spirit capable of divine inspirationis, a subject of
God's moral government, having, a reach of mind and
depth of heart which have use for all contents of the
universe and all perfections of God.  Till thus seen,
man is not seen aright. His reason must find a God,a God of such perfections as are revealed in the Scriptures. Beyond all second causes he finds room for a
Great First Cause, a Self-existent and Eternal Jehovah.  The more man fathoms the depths of his own
heart, the loftier the height and the wider the sweep
of his thoughts, whether among the materia]ities of
nature, the records of history, or the depths of philosophy; the more comprehensively he comes to
understand society, government, humanity, and the
possibilities of the future, so much the more pressingly does he feel the need of just such a God as
rules on high, and who ought to be, if he is not; for
who else call give any hopeful outcome to what is
goi'On on?
Equally, there should be a law of infinite righteousness; nothing less than the perfect character
which meets that law can satisfy man's reason.  He
may fail, all around him and through all ranges of
history he may find only failures to reach the character demanded by that law; still, with nothing less




UNIA TURALNESS OF' RELIGION.         105
call reason be content. Even despair of success cannot justify him in abandoning the attempt.  Such is
his present condition, and reason affirms that so it
will be eternally.
Reason mtnay. never have anticipated the Plan of
Rescue revealed in the gospel; but it is found fitted
to all deepest wants in man, to highest capacity and
intensest longings.  Only by denial of his relations
and surroundings, by ignorance of his wants and
capacities, call the gospel seem  abnormal.  It is in
felt adjustment to man's conscious wants and anticipated necessities.
So far from being unnatural, artificial, and forced,
the Christian life is normal, fitted to man's powers,
adjusted to his capacities, and consonant with his
highest longings.  On the other hand, if there is a
constricted, unnatural, shallow, delusive, and unmanly
life to be found in the world, - a life, that leaves man's
grandest powers undeveloped, his deepest emotions
unregulated, his strongest impulses ungoverned, his
truest humanity uneducated, and his noblest energies
slumbering in him, - that life must be found withitn
the Kingdom of Evil.  In all that is said and done
to entice nren from that Kingdom, it is not to bring
them  under unnatural constraint, but to emancipate
them into their truest freedom; not to starve mind
or heart, but to feed them with angels' food; not to
sadden a life, now sorrowful enough, but to give true
and eternal joy.  The end, and not less the means,
can be justified.  This is not theory; it has historical
verification.  Human experience thus far has not
been for nothing.  Some things have been settled,
8




106             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
and among them this, - that the gospel supply fully
meets the human want.
No human mind can comprehend the varieties of
the human condition. We have general terms, which
mark certain obvious and salient points of that condition; rich or poor, virtuous or vicious, honorable
or degraded, civilized or savage; these are general
terms, without precision and definiteness.  Under
each is a wide diversity. We sort men in lots, and
have terms of description only for the class. We fail
to get the grand product of variety, unless we take
each individual as a factor, making account of natural
endowments, opportunities, culture, incentives, temperament, experience, and resultant character.
Yet to all this variety the gospel addresses itself,
comes to each as just the help needed. No manl has
risen so high, sunk so low, or wandered so far out of
the ordinary human condition, as to be beyond the
reach of the gospel. No man has filled his heart so full
with the schemes and success of ambition, with the
toils and rewards of industry, with the longings and
requitements of human love, with study and mastery
of science, as not to have in his heart ample room for
the gospel. Men have been endowed with the richest
gifts of genius and talent; have had all culture of
science and art; been helped by health, wealth, and
favoring providences; have started from  levels in
society whence they could quickest reach the heights
of success; yet, as they have taken measure of their
capacities, heard all voices of want crying out of
their hearts, and looked into the possibilities of the
future, they  have confessed there was ioorn in




UNVLVATURALNESS OF RELIGION.       107
their hearts for the gospel's work and the gospel's
reward.
So, at the other extreme of the human condition.
If he be a man of failure and untoward fate, when
the deranged machinery of life has brought its heaviest crush upon him, not so has his heart been filled
with grief and gloom, care and concern, distrust and
despair, fears and forebodings, that no room could
be found for the gospel. Take the most pitable
wretch, fouud in lowest depths because fallen from
high position. Beginning to fall, let foe and former
friend help him  downward.  Let treachery betray
him, poverty starve him, and false friends turn him
adrift homeless. Let every calamity stick fast to
him, every misfortune hedge him about, and every
disaster bring its crush upon him, till this modern
Job shall curse the clay of his birth.  More yet, by
far, take away from him the heroism of integrity, the
inspiration of uprightness; weaken him with the consciousaess of moral degradation; crush him with a
sense of guilt; let every horrid fear beleaguer him,
remorse sting him, and coming retribution appall him.
Such men there have been.  Can the gospel do
anything for them?  Into such hearts the gospel has
come, removing the sense of guilt by the assurance
of pardon, dissipating the fear of retribution, the
love of Christ filling the heart as no human love ever
did. Though such a man could not recover the good
repute he has lost, the friends he has alienated, the
possessions he has squandered, and the health he
has sacrificecl, - yet, in the depth of his poverty, in
outcast loneliness, amid tortures of disease, yea, in




108              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
prison and chains wherewith violations of civil law
have bound him, he has sung a sweeter song, been
filled with truer and richer joy, than has the world's
favorite.
Between these extremes, among all classes, from
the man of highest success to the man of remediless
failure, all who have come to anlly just apprehension
of their powers and capacities and wants, have found
need and room in their hearts for the worsk and reward,,f the gospel, as much as any of highest success
or worst failure; for the need of religion grows not
out of the accidental conditions, but out of the essential nature of humanity.
The Creator of man is the Author of the gospel;
and he has instituted between them  an adaptation
both comprehensive and mlinute.  In man there is no
longing, hope, weakness, or fear, which the gospel
does not meet; no power, of which it does not make
the most.  In the gospel there is nothing wanting,
nothing superfluous; for it there is no substitute.
It deals with man, not simply as an individual, but
puts him into society; permits all affinities of worldly interest and social endearments to cluster around
him; and in these gives such wisdom to his intelligence, such restraint to his passions, such incentive
to his powers, and such tone to his spirit, as to make
possible to him the highest good.
History gives warrant for what is here affirmed.
Through the ages and to-dclay, the gospel is doing
just the work humanity needs.  None are beyond its
reach; none exempt from its claims; none independent of its help.  In illustration: From humblest




UNNATURALNESS OF RELIGION.        109
condition of life, by rapid yet legitimate steps, aided
by the genius of American civilization, a man went
upward, till he stood at the head of this nation. By
the helm he stood in the stormiest passage of our history. Never were hands so full, mind so occupied,
or heart so burdened with weighty cares.'T would
seem that his occupation was use enough for one soul.
Every interest of the nation, in urgent and tumultuous throng, like centring waves on ocean rock, beat
about that Presidential Mansion. Swift couriers came
and went; messages forth and back on wings of lioht
ning. The decision of battle, the issue of campaigns,
the fate of millions, the solidarity of the Unlion, and
even the life of the nation were involved.
Was not that use enough for one man?  Could not
such occupation push aside God's claims on his personal love and obedience for four years? Could not
such absorbing interests and weighty cares so fill
every capacity of thought and feeling, as to make
that heart forget its need of forgiveness through the
blood of Christ, its use for a hope of heaven? No,
no. There was room in that occupied heart for the
gospel, need for all its work, want for all its reward.
Away from the perplexities of state, away from the
anxieties of war, the hand of a sick and dyingo boy
led that father into another world of thought and
feeling,- not a new world to that habitual attendant
at the sanctuary, that diligent student of the word of
God, that man of deep and earnest thought. There
he gave and took what bound his heart to Christ in
the exalted hope of a Christian man.
To-day, in meanest abodes, where poverty yields




110             SUCCE^SS OF EVIL.
its full fruitage of wretchedness, where starvation
makes cheeks pale and lips thin, where the chill of
night keeps nigh at hand the coldness of death; in
homes where worldly cheer has not smiled for many
a month, where disease has weakened the arm that
brought them bread; in homes through whose window death and famine look in famniliarly, disputing
which shall enter first, —in such homes may be found
Christian patience, a joy and cheer that hushes all
repinings; may be heard voices of prayer that utter
many a sentence of praise; may be found hearts that
throb quick in responsive love to HIim whose death
opened the way to the many mansions he now makes
ready; may be seen eyes made brilliant in hope of
the glory to be revealed, -in such homes may be
found a dying mother, leaving little ones, whose cry
of sorrow hunger has made weak, giving them to
her trusted husband, and all to her trusted Father
in heaven, longing to stay and comfort her husband
and train her children for heaven, yet longing to
depart, counting life's bitter experience a joy, since it
has brought her to a death-bed where angels wait,
and made her home of wretchedness an entrance-room
to the heavenly mansions.
The light of day that exqrcises the' dream  of
darkness," the protection that gives peace by day and
safety by night, the cool water that quenches the
thirst of fevered lips, the loaf that staves off starvation, the store laid up that hushes all fear of want,
the culture that lets into all God's world of truth
and beauty, human love given so lavishly and its
sweet requitement, — room and want for these, not




UNTIn.ATURALNATESS OF RELIGION.    111
more than for rectified standing under God's moral
government, hope of forgiveness through Christ,
peace of conscience, the  a;  of believing, and an
intelligent hope of heaven.
There is nothing superfluous in God's universe.
Every soul can use its contents, needs its range, to
live in its eternal light of truth and beauty. There
is capacity in every soul for all Christian graces, an
answering thrill for every fear, hope and joy that
centres in the Infinite and Eternal, room for all contents of the gospel, need of its comfort in the years of
life and in the hour of dying, need of its guidance
through life and amid the possibilities of the future,
need that it hush the distractions and quell the disturbances of sin by reconciliation with God through
Christ, need of the personal sympathy and love of
Jesus.  In no soul has this need been more pressing
than it can be in any, than it must be, if life end not
in failure.  If there is anything fitting, natural, and
normal to the soul, it is the religion of Jesus Christ.
Yet to many -0, how many I —a Christian life
seems a forced state, unnatural to all the genuine play
of the soul's powers, a constraint upon its readiest
action, its deepest emotions, and highest aspirations.
Still, if, upon advisement of Him who has control of
affairs in this universe, religion is seen to be necessary to eternal welfare, it can be maintained, borne,
endured, met like hard-earned and ill-spared payments on an insurance policy,- yet it is to them an
artificial and forced constraint. When proposition
for entrance upon a religious life comes squarely before them, they look forward to it as painfully unnat



112             ISUCCESS OF EVIL.
ural, to whose duties they could adjust their lives
only with manifest awkwardness, under whose influence life would have a frigid mechanical aspect,
not merely dull and dreary iu negations, but positively irksome with its constraints. This "nconceived
unnaturalness of religion, so largely prevalent, is,
beyond debate or need of showing, a fruitful element
of success in the Kingdom of Evil.




CHAPTER XI.
DENIAL OF ETERNAL RETRIBUTION.
THERE is a sense of justice in the human mind.
It may be said to be constitutional, innate. This
has been denied. As well deny that speech is innate
because the child cannot talk. That may properly be
said to be innate or constitutional, whose rudimentary
germs are found in us, sure to come to maturity and
power with normal growth. Early and always justice
shows itself, when the mind comes to mature action,
and even before. Let wrong be done to a child, and
in the resent awakened an impulsive and crude sense
of justice is expressed. As the mind approaches
maturity, the sense of vindictive resent abates, turbidness subsides, and the sense of justice gets cleared
of all base and foreign ingredients.
That in this sense of justice there is not necessarily
any feeling of resent, is evident from the fact, that
its voice is equally imperative when wrong is done
to others. We see advantage taken of the weak and
helpless by the strong, of the innocent by the artful,
and we instinctively demand justice between the parties; vindication and, if possible, restitution for the
wronged, punishment for the aggressor, even though




114             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
we have no personal interest in the transaction. Wre
demand justice, not from fear that if wrongs go unredressed there will come to be a corrupt state of
society, or that oppressors will become bold and overbearing, and we suffer in consequence; but we demand
justice to satisfy our present and innate sense of what
is right.
This sense of justice enters into the structure of
society, just as the law of gravity enters into our way
of handling material things.  If a building, constructed without reference to the law of gravity,
would come to ruin, not less would society without
the law of justice.  Yet it is something more than a
wise prudence in guarding a~gainst damage in the
social and civil relations of life.  Without reference
to advantage or pleasure, every rightly acting mind
demands that justice be done.  Even the heathen
could say, "Fiat justitia, ruat ccelum."  Even against
self comes this pronouncement of justice.  Having
done wrong, it may be to our advantage in manifold
ways for justice not to interfere; it may promote our
immediate pleasure for justice not to hurl retribution
upon us; yet we feel we deserve it.  And till justice
has adjusted the wrong, we feel that the matter is not
finished.  Men have even sought courts of justice
and charged themselves with capital crimes, rather
than bear about the guilt of unavenged wrong.
If, however, the fitting penalty is fearful in degree,
as the death penalty for murder, men whose humanitarianism  is in the ascendant and whose sense of
justice is dull, may recoil from inflicting it.  Others,
of tenderer sympathy and duller sense of justice, may




DENIAL OF ETERNAL RETRIBUTION.        115
refuse to sentence the murderer to imprisonment for
life.  Men, in other respects whole, are incomplete
in their sense of justice, as others are in their sense
of the merciful or the beautiful.  Such incomplete,
abnormal men abound in society; indeed, the difficulty is to find one not marred by some defect.  If
a man disposed to do justice finds himself to recoil from inflicting the penalty, he may go back to
reconsider the crime, to take measure of its maguitude, not to inflame his vengeful feeling, but that his
sence of justice may come to healthful tone.  This
done, the penalty affirmed, as befitting the crime, can
be inflicted with a steady hand. If there be failure
here, it is because compassion has weakened the sense
of justice.
Justice is a necessary element in all forms of society. Take society in its simplest conceivable form,
two men living on an otherwise'uninhabited island;
justice would need to be there with her adjustment
of mutual and individual rights.  She demands room
in the family, the church, in voluntary associations,
in incorporated communities, in the state and nation.
The larger the social combination, the more intricate
its relations and the greater the magnitude of its interests; so much more the need that justice have the
handling of its affairs.
In the moral government of God it is readily seen
that justice and righteousness must be the foundation of his throne. What organization so vast, what
relations so intricate, what interests of such magnitude! Considering either the perfections of God, or
the necessities of his government, we expect here to




116             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
find justice perfect in degree and unfailing in its certainties.  While history gives us only hints of this
fact, revelation sets it before us with distinct emphasis. If shown that it finds not simply here and there
an illustration, but that it runs through every intricacy of relation, it wakes no surprise. Indeed, such
pervasion of justice meets the demands of reason.
WVe even dare to say that God's moral government
has no right to be, unless founded on justice., Infinite and eternal wrong has no right to rule. No
emphasis of denial can abate our conviction, that
justice, infinite and eternal, must and does have room
and sway in the moral government of God.
Ill that government, who but its Divine Ruler
can manage its administration?  What eye, save the
omniscient one, can see the consequences of conduct,
or trace where wrong will end?  None but God can
fix the penalty befitting wrong. He alone can measure its guilt, comprehend its principles and spirit,
its exhibitions and effects.  Into the spirit of the
sinner God looks, finding what would overturn his
throne of righteousness, but for the restraint of impotence. In the consequences of sin God sees ruined
souls, yea, a ruined universe, but for the restraints
under which he holds sin. Whether it approve itself
to our short-sighted wisdom or not, God has fixed
the penalty of sin. If it approve itself to our wisdom, well for us; but if not, it should awaken no
surprise; for we have not come up to his point of
vision, nor gained his sweep of thought. He has
done it without our help and will execute it without
ourhinderance. Here we find the stabilities of justice.




DENIAL OF ETERNAL RETRIBUTION.         117
In the administration of his government, progress
must be made, results nmlst be reached; to finite
minds contingencies must give place to certainties.
So God has mlade the doings of this life to issue in
character.  [low long the series in which such doings
and results are only single steps of advance, no finlite
mind can tell.  To something greater, the progress
we see may be only what the revolution of the earth
onl its axis is to its sweep around the sun.  But be it
only a step in an infinite series, or the final product of
all history, character is formed by the doings of this
life.  So much we can see, even if only the segment
of a circle which we cannot trace.
With consent or without, every man must put himself into drill.  Some fashion or fixture he gives to
moral character by every act. And act he must. In
this rush of life he cannot stand in immovable stolidity. The constant appeals made to him he cannot meet
with an indifferent non-committalism.  Wants will'
draw, necessities impel, whatever pbi'it they involve.
And this is what we see men buslest at.  Alone or
in company, in sickness or health, at home or abroad,
in success or failure, the one thing men are busiest
at, what they never cease from, during all the hours
of conscions existence, is drill in character.  By
action and non-action, in consent and refusal, in what
they receive and reject, by use and misuse, they are
giving form or confirmation, tone and touch, to moral
character. It may be without plan or purpose, it may
be against fixed determination; still they must ceaselessly work at this stint. What is prosecuted so untiringly will at length bring some definite result. It may




118             SUCCESS OF E VIL.
be an occasion of joy or sorrow.  It will be somrething
positive.  Character comes in such incomprehensible
variety, that we may not always be able to detect its
definitive traits, - may not have discernment to sort
each with its kind; but the all-seeing eye of God will
make no mistake in the fiinal assortment. Indeed, each
may affiliate with his own as by instinct.  Only with
his own sort will the righteous have any fellowship.
Only with the reprobate will the finally impenitent
seek companionship.  Fearful as such a doom may
be, still less will they be attracted to the holy. Even
in this life they give distinct intimation of preference
for anything than fellowship with the godliest.
To the righteous and sinful character God has
affixed consequences that are eternal. The biblical
teaching on this we give only in summary.  To each
he has assigned a condition whose duration is expressed in the same terms. Hell is as permanently
built as heaven.  A condition of wretchedness must
expect to continue as long as the sinful state out of
which it grows. Men are seen to be sinners till death
takes them in hand. The presumption is, as divine
revelation teaches, that moral character continues in
the next-life, as formed here, with the addition of confirmation and progress. All arguments, showing that
God will in some future stage of history rid the universe of sin because of its oppupnance to his character, are as pertinent to show that he would never
have permitted its introduction.  For this we know
not his reasons, and so cannot affirm that those reasons
will abate. The reasons for its permitted introduction may be equally reasons for its permitted continuanlce.




DEYIAL OF ETERNAL RETRIBUTION.        119
If men will sin, they consent to its preadvised
results.  These may be very inadequately apprehended.  They are as much beyond the reach of human comprehension as is sin, their cause. Just such
infinite quantities are in man's handling, and he hesitates not at the responsibility.  He lays his hand on
the shaping of character and the fashioning of eternal destiny as carelessly as though it were the amusement of an hour; and ceaselessly is he busy at it.
When, however, we come to any proximate view
of the consequences of sin, as seen in its wonted
results in this life, or as seen by faith in the divine
declarations as to what is coming hereafter, the mind
is appalled with their magnitude and terribleness,
and even seeks to rid itself of the fearful impression
by denial. Let one go through the wards of a penitentiary, note carefully the conditions of those incarcerated there, trace them back to former life, see the
station in society they occupied, their domestic affiliations, notice what powers of mind are held in restraint, withering in disuse, perhaps becoming palsied
with idiocy or frenzied with insanity, and he may
instinctively say, this is too terrible.  Counselled
simply by sympathy for the imprisoned, if he might,
he would quickly unbar their prison doors.
But let him look at the matter on the other side,
trace out the history of their crimes, burglary, arson,
robbery, counterfeiting, seduction, murder, not in the
generality which their names present, but in the particulars and aggravations of wrong, injustice, and cruelty
which each presents; let him notice that those crimes
were b the unwitting impulse of some heedless mo



120             sUCCEss OF EVIL.
ment, not the distraction of some quick and sore
temptation, but the last fatal plunge in some long
career of unrighteousness and even of lawlessness; let
him note the fairness of their trial and the righteousness of the law under which they were condemned;
then will he see how all the joys of life, the securities of home, the value of reputation, the pleasures
of firaternity, the conditions of progress, the possibilities of high attainment, and the solidarity of society, would be swept away if such laws were not
enforced, and such crimes were rampant.  Taking
counsel of justice, the completeness of benevolence,
and not takiong counsel merely of sympathy; rather,
giving the sympathies their true range, and caring
wisely for all human interests, and for all law-abiding citizens, who outside of prisons are pursuing their
lawful occupations without infringement of others'
rights; and he will find abundant reasons why those
prison doors should remain securely fastened.  Hard
as the lot of its inmates may be, instead of dimiinishing, he would add to the securities of their prison,
and, if need be, re-enact the laws that condemned
them.
All this is on our level and within reach of our
comprehension.  These crimes against the security
of property, against the peace of society, the value
of reputation, and the sanctity of life, we can understand.  We see how far they would go, what
damage they would work.  We know what is necessary for their restraint, and feel not only justified,
but even impelled by all highest considerations, to
put such crimes under penalties proportioned to the




DE2NIAL OF ETER.NAL RETRIBUTION.       121
magnitude of the interests against which they make
war.  This is justice, and we cannot consent that it
should abdicate its rule.
When now we lift this whole matter up to the level
of God's miioral  government, we are compelled  to
confess that it passes beyond the reach of our comprehension.  IIow fLar sin- may go, where evil will
end, -we cannot tell.  The welfare of the universe is
as far beyond the reach of our comprehension as its
mnagnitude is beyond the power of our measurement.
WVe can conceive that all highest interests of the universe may rest upon the security of God's throne;
that in the real and seen righteousness of his character is there any stability to the universe or any safety
to its inhabitants. We see, therefore,that his character
and government must be in eternal and infinite opposition to sin in all its forms, degrees, and manifestations.  The interests he has in charg'e require this.
IHe is a God of infinite responsibilities.  MWhatever
may be necessary for the protection of these interests,
to keep lawlessness from ascendency, and misrule
from anarchical devastation, this must be, whatever
else is, or is not...t is not submitted to our approval what penalties
shall sanction God's law, what eternal consequences
he has attached to sin, or what doom he has assigned
to the finally incorrigible sinner.  From what little
we know of sin, as it shows itself in this life, we are
justified in the conviction  that its consequences
hereafter will be bitter, wretched, terrible, past all
comprehension of our thoughts.   As we might
expect, so God's word affirms them to be, summlon9




122             SUCCESS OF' EVL.,
ing all forms of known suffering to depict their misery, making it yet more terrible by the added announcement that it will be eternal.
There is no truth of God's word, however plain,
positive, and repeated, which has not met denial.
Distempered by sin, the mlind can meet with denial
any demonstrated truth of reli gion or any instinctive
conviction of moral consciousness. This is the plague
of sin; so, when the eternal consequences of sin meet
denial, that truth only fares as other truths of God's
word have.  Unable to comprehend the enormity of
guilt, to measure the malgnitude of sin, to conceive
the vast and varied interests of God's moral government, such denial of the eternal consequences of sin
is only what might be expected.  And it is made,
sometimes by peremptory denial of penalties, sometimes by affirming   that the penalty is found in the
disrepute and disasters immediately consequent.
Theire is still another view to be taken.  God is
greater than anything he has done, more than anything he has made.  Even the universe does not
measure him, nor its interests balance his.  Sin is
against God, wars upon Him, instigates rebellion
against his government, plots his overthrow, and baut
for the restraint of impotence would realize its ends.
To take in the measure of sin, then, the mind must
comprehend what would be done by the realized
intent of sin, by its reaching the success at which it
aims; what God's dethronement and universal anarchy mean.  This is beyond the grasp of human
thought; equally so is sin.
If, then, God assigns a penalty to sin that stag



DENIArL OF EtERNVAL RETRIBUTIOX.       123
gers the faith of unbelievinfg minds, it should be no
wonder.'hey have no conception of the nmagllitudces
concerned. Not always revolted state of heart, oftentimes constriicted  r1nge of thought, leal to denial of
the eternal consceqences of sin.  If men deny the
plain revea1lments of God's word, and the deep longings of their souls, by consenting to alnnihilation, to
rid themselves of the conviction that the penalties of
sin are eternial, it harmLonizes with the blindness and
perversity which sin induces.  Yet such denial is
made, sometimes held and advocated as an article of
belief.  Even a religion is made of it, and a religious
sect is orglanized upon that denial as a characteristic
and central article of belief.  That denomination has
churches, a ministry, and literature.  They make
themselves known and heard chiefly in denial of the
eternal penalties of sin.  This they do without comprehendiDng the drift of sin, without being able to
take measure of its ma-gnitude, —as no finite mind can,
without understandingf its intent or estimating its
enormity. This they do in denial of the perfect justice
of benevolence and often by minifying sin, as though
what has flooded the world with woe, and cost God
the death of his Son, would be a trifle.
This denial has not always such daring.  Often it
exists only as a vague an(l unexamined feelinog, refusing to be confronted by reason, to put itself into the
handling of argument, or to accept with docility the
teachings of God's word.  Allnd yet it has positiveness to mould the convictions and give tone to feeling.  Hereby a man is placed in a very different
attitude towards God, his word, his government, and




124             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
the future.  He takes not a meaning from the word
of God, but imposes one upon it. So let there be a
firilly settled conviction, or a vague, yet pervelksive
feelillg, that mitters will come out right in the end;
that when the incitements to sin found in this life
shall pass, selfishness and sin will somehow die out;
that God's justice will abdicate its authority and " let
by-gones be by-gones"; thereby God, his governnlelt, and tVhe future, are made something very differeut to such a man.
-Ile is in a false relation to the realities by which
he is surrounded.  IHe endangers his soul; not more
could he endanger his body by denying the fact of
gravitation.  Realities become unreal to his mind,
idle fictions are the basis of his calculations, and he
builds the hope of eternal welfare on a foundation of
sand.
Here we come upon another element of success in
the Kingdom of Evil, -this denial of the eternal consequences of sin, a denial, either in announced and
defended convictions, or in vague and unexamined
feelings, of the eternal penalty which God attaches
to sin. Let this denial exist in the mind, either as a
tenet of belief, or as a mere sentiment of the feelings, and how safely is such a manl included in the
Kingdom of Evil. Other and higher reasons there
are why men should abandon the Kingdom of Evil
and enter the Kingdom of Christ; but so low is the
level to which most have fallen, that these are neither
apprehended nor appreciated. The life of sin, which
comes so handy, gives no token of coming retribution, and so miljes no alarm.  In sin he sees no




DENIAL OF ETERNAL RETRIBUTION.    125
danger.  His moral energies are in no array against
it, further than the proprieties of life require.  He
calls himself to no conflict for victory over it. To
it he sees no penalty affixed, save perhaps the disrepute, damage, and discomforts found in this life, which
he has already learned to brave and bear. So he
utters no cry to God for mercy, softens his heart in
no repentance, feels no need of a redeeming Saviour,
opens his heart to no regenerating and sanctifying
spirit.  Safely is he in the Kingdom of Evil.
Put to devising a Kingdom of Evil and ruin, opposed to Christ's Kingdom  of Righteousness and
salvation, charged with introducing into it such elements as would give it respectable success, this one
element would be essential, if not sufficient. Fear
is as legitimate a motive as hope, but let a denial of
the consequences of sin become universal, and what
alarm could stir the fears, or what promise excite
hope?
Not only could siuch a denial be an element of success in the Kingdlom of Evil, but such it is in reality. It is not merely a possibility, but a fact; and
the success which it gives to the Kingdom of Evil
is equally a fact. Of this terrible fact, illustration
can be found in every community, and in all times
hitherto.




CHAPTER XII.
DENIAL OF DIVINE FORGIVE~NESS.
A   FLAW  in a diamond, or a fleck ill an. emerald,
abates its value, though such defect might not
be noticed in coarser stones.  The soul is such a
hijghland beautiful creation as to be beyond appreciation of the coarse judgments fornled under sin.
What mnars it is counted a trifle, as fitly the mote
that inflames the eye and destroys the sigllt.  Some
never found in the soul a capacity for all knowledge,
a need of faith reaching beyond outmost bounds of
knowlecdgc; never found in the soul ain appreciation
of all most beautiful and sublimest things that can
be; never found in the soul a use for immortality,
for all contents of the universe and all perfections of
God.  Such find no capacity in the soul for reciprocal thought and affection with minds of loftiest
range, still less of concurrence in thought and emotion with the Infinite Jehovah.
Naturally, thcrefore, they minify sin, and see not
that it folbids the soul, so grand a destiny.  When
the gospel represents the soul as in a lost condition,
they withhold assent.  They deny the need of God's
interetrence with a scheme of salvation; they pass




DEAtIAL OF DIVINE FOIZIVENESS.         127
by the earnest endeavors and strenuous colflicts
necessary to recovery out of the snare of sin.  Or if
shut up to something of this, as the way of reaching
betterment and success in this life, they deny the
need of any radical revolution of moral character,
or of any so intlangible a thing as divine help; and
so utter nlo cry for it in prayer.  They seek betterIment - salvation, they would hardly call it -  under
law, but not by grace.
No such general drift, no such quickened interest
have thoughtful minds found, as now, in studying
"the reign of law."  Some view of the sphere and
authority of lawu, even most superficial students of
nature find.  This is among the first lessons of
infancy.  Fuller instruction conmes with all subsequent experience.  If any success is reached, man
is compelled to heed the laws which so irrevocably
determine his conditions  and  surroundings.  To
some study and recognition of law he is forced by
necessities which he cannot escape.  He learns, because compelled under threat of disaster and failure.
But more tractable students are found.  Profit
offers its incentives.  There is wealth in these secret
laws of nature.  Alining here pays as well as in
auriferous imountains.  The hidden forces of nature
can be utilized for betterment of the human condition, both to meet grossest and most imperative
Wants, also to beautify and adorn.  And wants reach
as high as this.  Not alone in provision storel a1nd.
clothing shop are huma.n wants met, but as really in
stores of art, knowledge, and beauty.  So entrance
is gained into secret cabinets of nature.  Wide




128              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
range is here offered and accepted.  Retort and
crucible are put to use.  Tnquiry and experiment
exhaust their patience, only to rest and try again.
Earth's secret stores are pryed into, her witnesses put
to closest cross-questioning, so as to gain some more
facile way, quicker result, larger and surler reward.
But nature has, if fewer, yet more devout students. They search not for profit, but for truth.
To them what is true is greatest and richest.  Not
for enlargement and certainty of profit, not for betterment and beautifying of outward condition, not
to meet the demand of pride, nor even the cry for
help.  They wait and watch all secret entrances they
can find into nature's mysteries.  They try all her
locks and bars, and could they find nature off her
guard, they would not hesitate at burglary.  If
nature draws a veil over her distant works, they
will wait, patiently sitting out the night; or go on
long pilgrimages to better posts of observation.  If
nature is slow in somne of her processes, they will
wait upon her moods, and give her all the time she
asks.  If she is particular about quantities and temperatures, these shall be graduated to infinitesimal
measurement.  But all her tricks of combination and
resolution, the way she spins and weaves her threads
of light, their composition, as they stream from sun
and more distant star; how she tones her voices,
utters and echoes her sounds; how she turns motion
to heat and back again; what equivalents she has
established; what the multiples of her combinations;
indeed, whatever is true must be known.  Notbhing
so far, so great, so hidden, so microscopic, but it




DENIA4L OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS.       129
must submit to the handling of analysis.  Hindered
by no awe, or more reverent for knowing more,
these men of science push their researches into
nature's arcana, and if they can, into whatever mystery she has, back to protoplasm, and would gladly
subject life itself to analysis.
So far as they go, throughout the entire range of
their discovery, they find the reign of law.  The
further they go into nature's temple, they find, not
deeper gloom, but more delicate shades of light and
cross-light, laws more intricate and subtle, yet universal, differences of result traceable to differences
of combination, or seeming exceptions, the working
of a higher law. Law reigns with absolute supremacy through all the wide range of God's works which
the senses can explore.  Even when the senses call
to their aid instruments of research, which most ingenious and nicest art can furnish, so as to take up
smallest atoms, or subject to criticism objects hidden
away in stellar regions, the senses find the worlds
of materi:lity under law.
What expectation does this create, when we come
to that higher realm of God's works where thought,
conscience, and moral affections have their action?
Here also we look for law, and here we find it enthroned in power.  As, in the material worlds we
found not the principles of hydrostatics governing
the motion of light, nor the laws of chemical combination ruling the reverberations of sound; but everything under the sway of laws adapted to its nature:
so in God's higher realm of mind and soul we expect
to find laws fitted for government in moral action.




130               SUccESS OF E' VIL.
Thought has its laws not less than sound; conscience
not less than light; moral affections not less than
chemical combinations.  Gravity holds the worlds
together with a pressure not more constant than that
which moral obligation brings upon souls.
Only under law can life have any meaning, the
soul an intelligent history; only under law can conduct have significance, or character take shape; only
under law can aims be prosecuted, purposes be realized, or ellds reached.  In the nmoratl department of
God's works, law is not less necessary, nor less imperative in its authority, if things that are find any
worthy use or even justification.
In the realm of materiality, the reign of law, holdin, the order of nature to its wonted course, realizes
only an endless series of reproductions, mere treadwheel motion.  The forces of nature keep their own
level, can rise no higher.  Outside of this ceaseless
round the laws of the material world contemplate no
advance and effect no progress.  They act as well as
they ever have, do as well as they ever can.  They
offer us the samle help as they did to nations of
remotest antiquity, and will offer no more to most distant generations of the future.  In this no consummation is' reached, no purpose served, except continuance and multiplication, which gives existence no
justification.  The mind demands something more,
if its capacities are ever met.  Only in the unrest of
progress can the mind find rest.
History responds to this demand, and affirms a
progress.  In the arts, in government, in civilization,
and in all institutions of society, which are facts as




DENIAL OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS.          131
stubborn as nature can produce, progress is seen.
History testifies to this advancement on every page of
her record; and did not this progress show itself reaching into the future with more comprehensive plans,
the highest incentives to action would be wanting.
Upon historical warrant, from  the nature of mind,
and to meet the demands of humanity, we look
for laws in the moral department of God's works,
adapted to the na:tures they are to handle.  These
are beings unsatisfied without progress and endowed
with the power of non-consent, a power found in no
range below mtan.  With this non-consent'put into
execution, the conditions of life are changled.  Laws
there still are, even more thanm before; now, not only
a law of righteousness and life, but also a law of sin
and death; and given a place, accepted,. lnot less
surely will the law of sin and death work out its
results, than would the law of righllteousness and life
had it remained in sole authority.  Enthroned in
power, consented to, there is a fearful certainty in
the law of sin and death.
The laws of the material world can be observed,
thus keeping ourselves within the lines of safety and
welfare, or they can be braved, and we rush into
various perils.  So of the laws ordained for the government of our moral nature.  The possibility of
violating them  has become a terrible fact.  Every
intelligent, self-conscious being of our race has violated the laws of God's moral government. The, only
exception the world has known bespeaks itself Divine.
All laws, ruling among the nmaterialities of:nature,
tire foundt invariable in their action.  They insist




132             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
upon bringing in their consequences.  These may be
trifling or terrible, yet they are not to be overlooked,
— none so trifling  as to be neglected; none so
terrible as on that account to fail of infliction.
On the higher level of moral action, does not law
insist with equal pertinacity upon all its consequences?  If a wounded arm give pain, will not a
wounded conscience?  Derangecd secretions bring
disease; will not perverted affections mar the health
of the soul? If its sure working and inevitable consequences indicate the value of the law and the worth
of the interests it defends, we may look for certainty
in the action of moral as of natural law.
Diseased action in the body brings suffering, and
that suffering is chronic if its cause be chronic. The
painful, labored gasping for breath does not restore
the congested lungs to normal action.  Pain does
not mend the fractured bone.  So, while passion
rules, while the mind grovels in animalism, and selfishness perverts the affections, the sufferings that
come in consequence will not neutralize and correct
the perverted action of the moral powers.  So long
sin, so long suffering.
To what, then, are we shut up? Under the law
of sin and death we clearly are by nature.  Is there
possible to us only such a destiny as sin will bring?
Must violated law rule our future with its terrible
certainties? To this some consent, reconciling themselves to it by minifying the consequences of sin.
What cannot be endured they hope will be abated
by the Divine Mercifulness.  They hold it to be even
a matter of honesty with God, that he should bring




D.LN~IAL OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS.      133
on every sinner the exact consequences of violating
the law. This is only another illustration, to their
minds, of the imperative reign of law; and it is to
them  a matter beyond dispute, that whatever consequences law assigns must come. Their deliverance
from the consequences of sin is simply an endurance
of them.  Into the iiron hand of such a hard necessity
they give themselves.  They are made content with
this prospect, only because they see no other results
of sin than the immediate damage and disrepute it
works. Sin has its immediate inconveniences. Angry
emotions disturb the peace of mind.  Resents entertained embitter the feelings and give a disagreeable
fit of moroseness. All such violations of moral law,
even if confined to the heart, inflict pain and do a
worse damage by blunting the sensibilities.  Wrong
once done, remorse must be felt, till conscience is
deadened; and this, not because we are fools, but
because we are men. And these evil consequences
come with the certainty on which law always insists.
Then, if utterance be given to hate, and curses be
profanely invoked, the disrepute of it brings a recoil
of shame, and bitter self-chiding does he get for
having made a fool of himself; and these he bears as
the penalty of his wrong. His abated self-respect,
and the consciousness of his disrepute in the esteem
of others, are stings that remind him of his violations
of law. If his hate has gone forth in the infliction
of wrong, then retaliation smites back, or the wrong
is avenged in the courts, and smarting under the
retaliative blow, mulct by the court, or sent to prison,
he meets a penalty which he counts the exact meas



134             SSUCCES$S OF J;VTL.
ure of his guilt.  If pride has swelled to ridiculous
proportions, or his ambition has overleaped itself, so
that he is made a laughing-stock, in this chagrin he
suffers, perhaps keenly, and counts that the penalty.
If covetousness has got the mastery of him, enticing
him  to expose property to dangerous risk for the
chanee of larger or quicker gains, and what lhe calls
hluck be against him, the loss he meets he may take
as the penalty of his covetousness,-  more likely,:
only as a. rebuke of his folly in inicurrinog risks.
When:t man has made himself a slave of avarice,
breakinl  down his health by hard work, and has at
fifty years of age undermined a constitution that
should have kept him hale twenty years longer; when
unregulfated appetite and injudicious feeding, accompanied either with sloth on the one hand, or overtaxed energy on the other, have brought upon him
the dyspeptic torments of a guilty stomach; or, when
riotous livingf and  intempe(rance have thrown him
into an earthly hell of delirium treeizens, — in all such
cases the sufferers find the sure operation of law, and
probably collt their sufferings the adequate penalty
of their sin.  Counting these physical, personal,
social, and temporary consequences of sin its fit penalty, finding in sin no guilt but what can thus be
measured, and regarding  these, by the imperative
reign of law, unavoidable, their philosophy shuts
them up to a consenlting    endurance of consequences,
which they retard  adequate penalties.  Thus the
matter is rectified.  By suffering, they count themselves to have atoned for their guilt.  The affair is
adjusted, and they stand on the ground of recovered




DENIAL OF DIVIrTE FORGIVENESS.         135
righteousness.  They feel no need of a gospel, no
needl of an atoning Saviourl; see no rooml for pardon.
Indeed, they hold that even-handed justice, perpendicular honesty, forbids pardon, and ilsists llpon the
penalty, which the unobstructed reig'n of law brings.
Some have thoulght this out as their theology, others hold it vaguely.  Yet it has takcn cleep hold of
their feelings.  They are governed by it, are shut
away fiom the gospel by it, giving no earlest heed
to what is reve.aled to them  as a way of salvation.
That great central fact in history, the Incarnation of
Christ and the Redemptionl he wrought out, is nothing to them. They find no room for it in their hearts.
They make no confession of sin, offer no plea for
pardon, utter no cry for help, and gird themselves to
no struggle for deliverance from  the poxer of sin.
illere is an element of success in the Kingdom  of
Evil.
There are immediate and unavoidable consequences
of sin.  They are not its penalty, do not measure
its guilt.  When such consequences have been endured, whether they pass with the hour that chronicled the sin, or ran on through. all future years of
life, -these results, passing, leave not the soul in
moral standing and quality such as before.  The man
thoroughly cured of deliritum  tremens, in his bodily
state, in his tastes, appetites, habits, associates, estiimates, in any way by which his quality can be tested
and measured, is a very different sort froml the man
who never made any approach to that terrible abyss.
The endured consequences, penalty as he counts it,
and what he calls his recovered righteousness, place




136              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
him not back at his first starting-point; that he can
never reach again till history shall undo her record.
Sin is not only subjective but objective.  If wrong
be done, the aggressor arrested, condemned ill court,
and sent to prison, he may bear the rude penalty
which civil law attaches to his crime; but therein he
bears not the penalty of his sin, nor makes adjustment of matters back into the order which his sin
disrupted.  The house he burned, the men he crippled, the virtue he sacrificed, the prosperity he
ruined, the life he took, are not restored, even if he
abides in the prison till the grave be ready for him.
Man canll do wrongs which he can never right.  The
adjustment he canl make and his recovered righteousness,- the one is as unreal as the other.
The temporal consequences of sin are not its penalty, because of disproportion.  Judged by its temporal consequences, a sin often costs less than a
blunder.  A  mistake, where the parties supposed
they exercised due care, br'ings two railroad trains
into collision; property is wrecked, men crippled
for life, others hurried out of the world, leaving
wives widows and children fatherless.  How costly
a blunder can be! Wrearied with long watching at
the bedside, the mind, under some paralysis of fear,
or stupor of drowsiness, tries to rally its attention to
the care and responsibility of giving medicine.. He
thinks he has roused himself to needful care, but
memory or attention fails, he gives the wrong medicine, which makes sure the advent of death.  It was
only a mistake; but how much more than some siis,
in immediate disaster, a blunder costs.  If inmeasured




DENSIAL OF DlViNE FOJrGlVEELSS.        137
by temporal consequences, how much more are some
mistakes than some sills; how much more they mnar
the peace, order, and welfaire of life; how much
more fearful the anguish, more terrible the suffering
they bring upon a community, than do sonle sins.
And yet blunders, mistakes, do not ruin souls, even
if they dest7roy life.  Only sin ruins souls.
If such be sin, if morlal law reigns as impCertively
as the laws governilng matter, and if consequences
conie as surely in the range of moral government as
on the level of material forces; if' the penally of sin
is in proportion to its enormity, as both reason and
revelation affirm; if the guilt of sin is to find measure in the penalty, and so trantscends all that can be
contained in this life; if the penalty, even when its
duration occupies eternity, works no adjustment of
the wrong the soul has done, and so bring's not the
soul back to any recovered righteousness, then how
terrible the condition of any sinful soul.
Is recovery possible?  Or whatever possession the
Kinygdom of Evil gains, must it be held irrevocably?
Recovered innocence is impossible to the sinful soul.
A  right act does not neutralize a wrong one, and
restore the soul to its former state.  The murderer,
who afterwards saves a life from impending destruction, does not cease to be a murderer in fact or law.
Once entering the way of sin, then, under the reign
of law, is not the way of return effectually barred?
So nature affirms, and law.  Through all alges, over
all continents and islands, we look in vain for anly
movement of humtnity realizing  a recovered righteousness. Under no incentives of nature, by none of




138             SUCCEss OF EVIL.
its impulses, will the natural heart move in that direction, even when pushed by the bitterest consequences
of sin.  And while the soul is in the mire of guilt,
by the reign of law it is hedged about with consequences which make the unsought way of return
more impassable.
But there is a Power higher than nature, higher
than man, higher than law. He who made nature
and man and law, while he carnot annul the verities
of history, can modify the resultant effects, can
arrest the fashioning power of the past, and give the
soul a different future.  In doing this, as a governmental procedure, he finds justification in a divinely
wrouglht atonement.  He can break the dominant
power of sin in the soul.  The everlasting reasons
for righteousness, the infinite urgencies whic:h an
interminable filture presents, and the sway of a
divine impulse, can reconstruct a soul and regenerate
it into a new life.
Law still reigns, but the conditions of its action
are changed.  Incentives to evil are abated; incen
tives to righteousness are augmented.  As in winter,
so when summer comes, law reigns.  Where were
the coldness and rigor of death, are the warmth, the
beauty, and vigor of life.  Law has not abated its
imperativeness; yet under changed conditions, law,
in its absolute reign, gives summer, with its life,
beauty, and fruitage where before were only the
sterility and death of winter.
The gospel can bring the soul into God's summer.
When the beams of the Sun of Righteousness shine
into the heart, there is a relenting, as in the thaw of




DENIAL  OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS.         139
spring; tears of repentance begin to flow, obedience
germinates, hope blossoms, trust in  the Saviour
gives the blossom of life, and the inspiration of the
Almighty fructifies the soul.  This changed condition brings around the soul, even under the reign of
law, incentives to which, before, it had been dead,
and leads it to purposes to which, before, it had
been averse.  New conditions of life exist.  There
are new  relations  Godward, manward, and  all
-around; and things before impossible, now come
freely, naturally, and normally in the historical life
of the renewed soul.
If, now, it be a fundamental law, that God treats
things according to their nature, then that renewed
soul will receive very different handling, because
of its very different nature.   If forgiveness, fully
arr'estingT the penalty of sinl, be bestowed, and the
assurance of it begotten in the soul; if now that soul
draw neaer to God in prayer, in fellowship, and the
sweet reciprocity of love, instead of beingl shy of
God as before; if now self-seekiiLng, before so doinnant as to make the soul ugly in its selfishness, give
place to a careful regrrd and just apprecilation of
the rights and welfare of others; if now rancge be
given to thoudhlts, feell(s, longlngsl, andl purposes,
reaching out to the emnlrace of the infinite and the
eternal; if the realities of fitith are the range of the
soul's life, and love the controlling principle, -  and
under the gospel all these may be, - then that highest
law of God's Kingdorn, illustrated in every field of
human knowledge, that he treat everythinig according to its nature, comes in and secures for the soull
an entirely different destiny,




140              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
HIere is the work of God's gospel.  By it souls
are brought out from the law of sin and death, into
the law  of spirit and life.  These laws reign as
before; but the regenerated man has passed from
the deadly power of the law of sin, and come under
the quickening power of the law of life.  In his
changed character God can treat him differently, not
in violation of the supremacy of law, but in accordance with the law that all things be treated according
to their character.  This is the divinely-originated
and divinely-inaugurated scheme of salvation, including in it forces that regenerate and sanctify the
soul, and a pardon that arrests the penalty of sin.
Such a gospel is the great and blessed fact testified
to by thousands in every age of Christian history.
This is the vital principle in that Kingdom of Christ,
which has been set up in this world, the only antagonist to the Kingdom of Evil.
But this, men will not accept.  Blinded as to the
nature of sin and the reach of its penalty, attaching
to sin no penalty save the immediate and inconvenient consequences that follow close upon the heels of
transgression, they accept such disasters as the full
penalty of sin, and count that penalty sure of infliction under the imperative reign of law. They find
no room for the gospel, see not the higher laws of
God's Kingdom, and have no comprehension of the
reach of his love. So they are safely included in
the Kingdom  of Evil, and that Kingdom  finds an
element of success in denying that the Son of Man
hath power on earth to forgive sin.




CHAPTER XIII.
DOMINANCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS.
IT stands to reason that all interests are to have
place and consideration, are to secure endeavor
and co-operattion, according to their importance. All
the interests of the Kingdom  of Evil are such as
foretoken for it failure and ruin.  Yet just contrary
to what all rightly-acting minds would have supposed, instead of coming to the failure and extinguishment it deserves, it has come to a pervasive
power, so far readily called success. This fact
needs to be borne in mind throughout this discussion.
The Kingdorl of Christ, opposed to the Kingdom
of Evil, has use for all human powers and agencies.
So rich has the Divine Ingenuity made life to be,
that all the individual powers and legitimate organizations of social life have place and use in the Kingdom of Christ. Its claims harmonize with all things
that have a right to be, can make these subservient
to its ends and put them to their highest use.  It
sanctifies to its aims every human relation, gives
exercise to every power, and direction to every desire.  It has a place for the individual, use for all




142              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
that he can do or become; a place for the family in
tall its ways of fashioning character, and a place for
all social relations in the sway they have over conduct
and destiny.  Here is room  for personal influence
and example, for the exercise of personal gifts and
graces, and for all the industries of Christian endeavor.  Here is room  for the family and state as
divinely ordained, and for all the voluntary associations which Christian ingenuity can devise and justify.
Among the institutions which the Kingdom  of
Christ has devised and perpetuated, and by which,
so far as human efforts help, it gains advancement,
are public worship and the preaching of the gospel
on the Sabbath.  Herein men have their attention
directly called to the salvation of the soul from  the
dominion of sin.  Herein are presented views of life,
of the soul's relations, of the grand contents of the
ftiture, very different from those usually held before
the mind in ordinary life.  Herein are presented
considerations very  different from  those  which
usually sway men.  Herein the mind is led to an
outlook upon all greatest things within its survey.
What is true and right, infinite and eternal, that with
which the mind has mainly to do, the substantial business of life, transcending all else with which the
mlind can meddle, -is here presented in ways most
favorable for candid and persuasive consideration.
Among organized institutions the church stands
pre-eminent, as the chief agency for establishing and
extending the Kingdom  of Christ; and of all her
methods of action, Sa'bbatic worship and the preaching
of the gospel are the chief. The organization of the




DOINsVA Y.CE OF SOCIAL ISTITUTIONS.    143
church, and the institution of the ministry, were for
that end.  In theory such was the design, and in history such has beeln the practical working of the forces
divinely organized in the Christian church.  Where
these forces have had unrestrained action, they have
proved their wisdom.
Whatever, then, hinders attendance  upon  the
preaching of the word anld the worship of God in the
sanctuary on the Sabbath, is an element of success in
the Kingdom of Evil.  It may be dull preaching,
poor singing, an uninviting sanctuary, the lack of
prompt, habitual, and interested attendance of church
members; but whatever secures only desultory attendance, and leaves lar(ge classes in every community in non-attendance, proves itself an element of
success in the Kingdom of Evil.
And here comes up a remarkable fiact, worthy of
serious study, -the difference in attendance upon
divine worship among the Protestant and  Papal
churches of this country.  As a rule, all Papists
attend church, ordinarily with regularity.  If it must
be in poor clothing, at unseasonable hours, or on
days given of God for labor; these are to be no hinderance.  If long distances have to be travelled, in
modes of conveyance thtat are wearisome, if' prompt
payment of church dues be demanded, these are to
be no hinderance.
Hlow it it, now, among Protestants?  Many never
go to church at all. Mien who have looked into statistics on this subject, affirm that a large part, if not
a majority of Protestants, do not attend church as a
habit; that only a smlll percentum attend habitually.




144             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
Indeed, the Protestant church edifices now stanlding would hold only a small part of the Protestants
in the land.  These churches mtay be near, within
half an hour's walk or an hour's ride, to reach them,
costing only the relaxation which every healthy man
needs; the seats may be free to all who will occupy
them; members of the church may stand at the door
and give hearty welcome to all; yet the attendance,
however large in the aggregate, is meagre in comnparison with the whole Protestant population.  As
in some churches, there may be no dues to pay.
While all Papists, even poorest servant-girls, paly
their dues, there are probably in every Protestant
congregation to be occasionally found men who
dress well, live well, and in ordinary affairs mean to
pay their way, but who attend church in their irregllar way, year after year, without paying a dollar to
meet the varied expenses of the sanctuary. Others
would be welcome, if they would only come.  And
then in many communities there are no sanctuaries,
wide reaches of country, well settled, yet with no
house of God inviting attendance.
Why this difference in Protestant and Papal attendance upon worship?  No one or two reasons are
sufficient.  Certain causes govern in some communities; others, elsewhere.  Prominent among them
these may be found:1. In this matter Papists have pushed a truth
into an extreme that has made it an erroneous superstition.  Made to act through the senses, it is true
that our senses can aid us in worship.  The visible
and felt presence of others in a sanctuary hallowed




DOMINANCE OF SOCAL INSTITUTIONS.    145
by sacred associations, bowing with us in the same
confessions and supplications, uniting with us audibly
in the same songs of praise, knowing them to be
thrilled, humbled, and exalted by the same truths
that stir our hearts, - all these give a power and impressiveness to the preaching impossible elsewhere.
There is an impression of the truth, a sense of divine
things, an appreciation of the gospel, which can be
got only in a sanctuary filled with devout worshippers.  No secret worship, no private meditation, can
stir the soul, quicken its emotional graces, and lift
the heart heavenward, as is possible in a large assembly of worshippers.
This is not a peculiarity of our religious nature.
It is so on all levels of life.  The highest enthusiasm
in any common interest, and the loftiest patriotism,
are called forth when large bodies of men are moved
by a common appeal.  There'is power in the exercises in which large numbers participate.  This is
not the entire warrant, but it enters into the reasons
for public worship and the preaching of the word in
the salnctuary.
lHere is enough to justify the use of places consecrated to public worship.  Papists have pushed the
use of sanctuaries to the extreme of a superstition,
by affirming that certain religious acts, as under the
Old Testament Dispensation, though singly per-,formued by an individual, have a power, validity, and
worth because done, or when done, in the church;
at least that their power, validity, and worth are
greatly increased when performed in a consecrated
sanctuary.  So they flock to the church to do these




146             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
things, and to get other things done for them by the
priest.
2. Here comes another reason why Papists are
held to church attendance as Protestants are not.
To them their minister is a priest.  He can do for
them what they cannot do for themselves. These,
to he most efficacious, must be done in church.  And
as, in their view, these are necessary, if not to salvation, at least to Christian burial, by considerations
which their minds keenly appreciate, as also through
the power of the confessional, they are held to
church attendance as Protestants are not.
3. Then, again, Papists are not ofilnded by any
contrasts presented by wealth and poverty.  They
accept the condition in which they were born. If
they are poor, if they are servants, they accept the
situation.  As they are, they are willing  to appear.
They make no idle pretence to what they are not.
No poorest or shabbiest of them take offence at the
presence of the rich in gay clothing, even if they
take not a little consequence to themselves for belonging to such a congregation.  Poverty bars them
not from  church.  They are not troublled with the
ambition that inflames the Protestant world.  They
have not that upward reach of the Protestant mind
that makes each ambitious of all that any has, or has
done.  With Protestants, each must be the peer of
any.  The exalted condition aspired after is not in
moral character, not in personal culture, but in visible condition, generally advertised in dress.  So if
at church they cannot make show of equality with
the average, their Protestant pride will protest




DOMINANCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS.   147
against chturch attendance.  This is humiliating,
because true.
In whatever the Papal devotee may fail, it will not
be in attendance at church. Even Italian brigand
or Spanish freebooter, familiar with robbery and
even murder, is careful not to be remniss in going to
church or observing saints' days. So of the poor;
if they must clothe themselves from  scantiest wardrobe, they permit not pride to take offence, and suffer not themselves to be detained from church by
any arguments pride may urge. Let one take his
stand at the doors of any Papal church or splendid
cathedral; while he sees wealth enter with costly
robes and gay adornments, poverty follows without
hesitation.  Here "the rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them  all."  It
would seem - and may we not hope - that they go
to present themselves before the Lord, fully advised that the Lord looketh on the heart and not on
outward appearance. Whatever may be said to his
discredit, past all dispute it must be admitted that
the Papist is a faithful church attendant, each in
such garb as befits his means. If he might worship
more intelligently, scarcely could his worship be
paid more habitually, even if more devoutly.
Looking  into the churches of Protestantism, or
rather about them, we find a marked contrast, not
simply in the fact that so many stay away from church,
but also in the forces that bar them from attendance.
The facts and the way they come are plain enough.
Churches are built so costly in structure and
adornment, that the poor can have no assignable




148             SUCCcESS OF EVIL.
portion, often no place, in them. To get the funds
necessary to erect a church elegant enough to meet
their taste, the church members must secure the aid
of wealthy sinners, who also have a taste to be gratified in its design and details; and for their investment they want a specific return inl a pew, to be held
as private property, subjedt to the general use designated. This makes the cost of pews too great for
ownership by the poor. Even if some ineligible pews
are set aside for their free use, they are not accepted,
because it would be an acknowledgment of poverty,
of commercial inferiority, which, even if true, they
care not to acknowledge at church or on the Sabbath.
But why not as well there and then, as on the
street and during  the days of the week?  Just because in such conditions they do not acknowledge it.
Capital is not master more than labor.  Indeed,
labor rules capital as often as reversely; lays down
laws for capital as often as capital for labor. In all
places of business, and through all the days of the
week, labor stands as firm in its dignity, as independent in its freedom, as capital can.  And if there
comes a contest, victories are not all on one side.
A few free seats in a church whose-eligible pews
are held by the rich, or even a free gallery, must
fail, not only because inadequate, offering seats for
only one in a hundred; but more surely must fail,
because on the Sabbath, the laborer's daly of freedom,
and into the Divine Presence, it brings the distinct
notification of commercial inferiority, and that means,
also, social inferiority, if not vassalage, -a notification which capital would not dare to whisper on




DOMINANCE OF SOCIAL INVSTI UTIONSV.    149
week-days and in places of business, where labor can
maintain its dignity in conscious equality.  In aristocratic countries, where there are four or five distinct layers of society, pew  ownership may do for
those who can afford it, and a few free seats for the
poor may succeed; but not inll this land of freedom
and equality.
Trammelled by this vicious system, yet uneasy
because of its virtual exclusion of the poor from
God's sanctuary, some seek to rectify the matter by
building mission chapels for the poor, retailing  the
costly sanctuary, with its ornate embellishments, as
fitting their more elegant tastes, their more refined
society, and their more exquisite worship. Many will
go on- a journey, but not to heaven, in second-class
cars.  Cheap places in which the poor may worship,
without disturbing the rich in their elegant and
costly churches, will never, in this country, correct
the Protestant habit of neglecting the sanctuary.
The true principles of church building - churches
large enough to afford seats to all the families within
reach and not otherwise provided for; such seats
free from personal ownership, taxed only for necessary expenses; or, better still, for half that amount,
the balance to be raised by voluntary contribution -
have not had extensive illustration in this country,
but must, or this Protestant habit of neglecting the
sanctuary will never be broken up.
There is growing out, as an excrescence of our
culture in this age, a certain exquisiteness of religious
life.  Ritualism is one extreme of it.  But it is confined to no denomination.  It is a failing of human.




1,50             SUCCESS OF EVIl.
nature at a certain stage of development.  It requires
that all the appointments of the sanctuary should
have the nicety and finical adornment of a parlor;
that tihe exercises of worship be conducted  with
courtly precision; that every movement of the minister be with Chesterfieldian propriety; that sermnon
and prayer be in purest Addisonian rhetoric; that
the music be operatic, even if an unintelligible jargon
to many, and that it be rendered by a few distressingly-cultivated voices.
Religion becomes a mantter of eclat, or is nothing.
Unusual ceremlonial in the church secures large and
prompt attendance.  Men are eager to hear titled
diognitaries, and are early on hand to witness any
imnposing array that shall captivate the senses.  The
esthetic element is made to predominate over the
moral.  The church is a Sunday theatre; its exercises
an entertainment; decorum the chief gra.ce; the senitimental xvill do; the sensational takes best; most
pertinent truth, stupidest of all.
When matters of taste, no longer the mere adornment and fitting drapery of a high and earnest life,
become central and are the chief thing of thought and
aim, they occupy a place which dera.nges the order
of life, giving chief importance to what is only incidental.  Under the reign of this spirit, costly adornments of the sanctuary and a style of dress among
church attendants prevail, putting to shame all who
have more pride than grace, and barring them  from
the house of God.  If in the census of the United
States last taken, the questioni had been put: How
many times, durinlg the p-ast year, have you stayed at




DOIMINAINCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTION'S.    151
home from church because you "had nothing' fit to
wear"? - true answers would give surprise.
It is an easy matter to prove that these are not justifying reasons for staying away from  church.  But
this is not a matter that gives itself into the handling
of argument.  It is not a matter of reason, lbut of
feeling.  If reason should lead, the feelings would
not follow. Prove to such men, that they thereby
affirm the body to be less than raiment, and the soul
less than either; they may disown this degrading
estimate of their manhood and of the soul's dignity;
still, pride will not go to church except on terms of
equality. The cost of our churches, the style of
dress in our Christian congregations, and the reacting
pride of those who will not attend church in conditions uncomfortable to their equanimity, are elements
of success in the Kingdom  of Evil, working for its
increase and strength at the very point where the
Kingdom  of Christ puts forth its most aggressive
action,- the public worship of God and the preaching of his word.
Here is a dominance of social over religious institutions.  When the usages of social life require one
thing, and religious obligation another, the former
prevail.  This involves whaLt the mind is very promrpt
to deny, if stated in the abstract, - that man is more
than God, social laws paramount to diviniie ordinances.  Let the obligation of social hospitality
solicit one to stay home fromn church or the prayermeeting, and the sacramentally sworn vow is broken,
under requirements of social courtesy.  This shows
a hollowness and nervelessness of religious life, a




152              SUCCESS Oil EFIL.
lack of power, which puts sinners beyond the reach
of the t:hurch.  The sinews of its strenglth are cut.
Spiritual life is environed and encrusted with a counteracting social life.
Nor is this confined to personal service and the
use of time.  It is seen in the use of money.  The
usages of social life demand money for adornment
and style of living beyond the requirement of fitness.
These call, with mally, be met only by rigid restraint
of expenditure in church enterprises and benevolent
contributions. Charities are withheld that pride may
ba gratified. Social institutions dominate over the religious, thereby strengthening the Kingdom of Evil.
The contest for ascendency betweenl the Kingdom
of Christ and the Kingdom of Evil is not fought outt
ill the great reforms and revolutions in which nations
engage; it is not carried on simply by the great
movements which absorb the attention and enlist the
endeavors of Christian denominations; nor by the
advances which  education and civilization make,
even though the Christian life act and utter itself in
all these. The contest covers all lengths and breadths
of life, reaches to its widest compass, and enters into
its sm'allest particulars.   By all w'ays in which
thought, feeling, and purpose express themselves, in
all ways by which sway is exerted by mind over
mind, by everything giving tone to feeling, reach
to thought, guide to conduct, and shape to character,
this contest is carried on. Largely has the Kingdom
of Evil made social institutions an element of its success, even at points where their legitimate use would
be wholly in the interests of Christ's Kinogdoim.




CHAPTER XIV.
INADEQUATE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL.
N  this world all great interests have advocacy.
At first thought, only what is good, right, fit,
beautiful, and beneficent would be expected to be
uplheld by argument and commended to observance
by earnest pleading. The simplicity that expects
only what is befitting will meet with many a surprise. What is immediately profitable, let it be as
wronlg as possible, will have advocacy.  Slavery has
rejoiced in many an able and well-constructed argument, earnestly pleaded and masterly handled. Polygamy has earnest advocates, not only among men,
but — strangest of all-among women.  If none
have been found to urge intemperance as a duty
which every man owed to himself, yet all the customs, arts, and appliances which lead to it, and to
nothing  else, have been defended as respectable.
Even houses of prostitution have been defended as
necessary evils.
If vices so gross and harmful have found advocacy, much more would we expect the Kingdom of
Evil, which includes with these other things less
exposed to reprobation, might have, if not formal
11




154              SUCCESS OP Er't7i
advocacy and set arguments of defence, at least
apologies, drawn in the name of formas of good,
assumed by it oftentimes.
Evil as well as Good, Wrong as well as Right, has
its philosophy. The Kingdom  of Evil, as well as
the Kingdom of Christ, has data for a philosophy.
It has facts, causes, antecedents, consequences, incentives, appeals, rewards, all the data necessary for
a complete and practical philosophy of Evil.  It has
powers of moving men in all the ways of their activity.  It can exercise the reason, arouse the imlagination, excite the fancy, appeal to the judgment, tax
prudence, bring all passions into play, and give the
conscience enough to do.  It can stir hopes, awaken
fears, and indeed give some scope to all natural
powers in man.
A system  so comprehensive and distributive has
vast ranges for thought, can find exercise for allny
talent, and open wide fields for all varieties  of
genius. To put things to their wrong uses will try
ingenuity not less than to put them  to their right
uses.  To systematize the Kingdom  of Evil will
test the powers of talent and genius not less than
to  systematize the Kingdom  of Good.  Fully to
educe all the powers of Evil so as to make the most
of them, will require as much thought, experiments
as varied, as much empiricism, and as earnest persistency, as to educe the powers of Good.  Here, in
this Kingdom of Evil, there is room for bulkiest
literature.  It is in proof of the world's modesty,
or its downright dishonesty, or else of an instinctive
reverence for the Good, that all the world's thinking,




INADEQUATE PRILOSOPHIY OF EVIL.    155
and the literature it has begot, really in the interest
of the Kingdom of Evil, is not so labelled.
The many in the Kingdonm of Evil stay not in it
upon warrant furnished by any Philosophy of Evil,
formally drawn out and clearly stated. And yet it
seems to them  that they have reasons for their
course. They have graduated into life on so low a
level, that they have no conception of the wealth of
knowledge afforded them  even by material things.
Some acquaintance with the laws and properties of
matter they are compelled to have, as a condition of
physical livelihood. Even more than this they seek
by an instinctive hunger for knowledge.  But even
men who have devoted their best powers and a long
life in the search, have not explored all the mysteries of nature, even in one department, still less
the sciences thus illustrated.  Coming up from the
level of material things, how vast the range of knowledge which covers the action of mind in all its powers, relations,  and affections!  Here is room for
study, which none have fully explored. In such
narrow range as most men occupy, no comprehensive
Philosophy of Evil has been constructed, justifying
the Kingdom of Evil and warranting adhesion to it.
For such adhesion men have thought out few justifications. Of mind, as capabl)e of exploring all facts
of nature and of comprehending all laws of science,
art, society, and government, they have no true estimate.  They see not the range and reach of its
powers.  Correspondingly meagre must be their
Philosophy of Evil, and its principles of conduct
without justification.




156              SUCCEJSs OF EVIL.
But there is more than this.  Beyond what can
be  known with  scientific  exactness, beyond  all
bounds of knowledge, the mind can go on wings of
faith.  Belief is as normal and necessary to the
mind as is knowledge.  What is believed is as
true, and may be as blessed, to the mind, as what
is known.  The soul that only knows, and never
believes, has as meagre a life, is as far from full andcl
healthy development, as unfitted to give its powers
exercise, as disqualified for filling its relations, as
wouldl be a soul that only believes and never knows.
Superstition is no falser a guide than skepticism. It
is as legitimnate for the mind by faith to take hold
of the Infinite and Eternal, of Divine Existence and
Authority, and of the verities of spiritual and immortal life, as by the senses to take hold of material
things.  A Philosophy of Evil that has no reference
to the infinite and eternal verities of God and Religion, fails to justify the life it would authorize.
There  is another direction in which to  look.
Things are getting done, and history is chronicling
her record, which she permits no sacrilegious hand
to expunge or even modify. SomethingD is going on.
Things have been, are, and will be done.  There is
a drift and direction in the movement of humanity.
The p ast is not for nothing; the fuiture is to Y-e
something more than a repetition of the presrnt.
God has a hand in affairs, pushing, them on.  A s was
to be expected, he has, in history, made disclosure
of what man needed to know; has done what is
necessary, that manl might make the most of himself
and reach the highest exaltation.   This includes'In~~~~~~~l~ I1~UI~




INADEQUATE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL.        157
recovery from the fall into sin, the re-enthronement
of reason, peace of conscience, the joy of believing,
hope of immortality, allegiance to the revealed principles of the Divine Government, adjustment to
right place in the universe, and recovery into the
Divine Fellowship.  The Philosophy of Evil, that
has no such range for man, that passes by the facts
of history, making no account of the past, and that
accepts not the only future which can issue from
such a past, is ill fitted to handle the present, in
attempting either to determine its aims or to direct
its methods.
WVith all its studies inll that direction, the world
has failed to develop and systematize any adequate or
even comprehensive Philosophy of Evil.  And considering how much it must include, the failure is not
surprising.  Only a few principles of conduct has it
laid down, and these are neither fundamental nor of
universal acceptance.  Indeed, a statement of its
principles in language, to a mind intelligent in the
Philosophy of Goocl, as found in the KIingdom  of
Christ, would carry their own refutation.  iWithout
stopping to show how inadequately the Philosophy
of Evil covers the ground to be held by a true Philosophy of Life, consideration will be given only to
two of its principles, taking those of most general
acceptance.
1.  That material and sensuous good is to be
sought rather than spiritual good; the welfare of the
body rather than the welfare of the soul; the pleasures of this life rather than the joys of immuortality.
Such are the aims set forth by the Kingdom of Evil.'""~ ~" "~ "''~'~'^'U  J ~"  ""




158             SUCCESS OF E VIL.
This is fundamental in its Philosophy. Not merely
to the Christian, but to any sanely acting mind, its
statement secures its rejection. It involves disproportions abhorrent to any such mind. Yet this principle is accepted and sways the vast majority of men.
Honestly and fairly stated, these are the ends they
pursue.  They do not accept this as a, statement of
their aims, but they cannot deny them to be the very
aims they seek. And from such seeking they cannot
be dissuaded. The Kingdom of Evil is a Kingdom
of Darkness, and here its darkness is densest, hiding
from  men any.just and comprehensive view of the
aims they seek.
This admits of thorough scrutiny.  If the aims
pursued by sinners have not been fairly stated, the
fact can be shown. On any level of society, in any
kind of business, let inquiry be made of all sinners,
and reduced to simplest statement, they will be compelled to subscribe to it in the form already given;
and to affirm, that, whatever ought to be, practically,
in the aim of their lives, they seek material and sensuous good, the welfare of the body rather than the
welfare of the soul, the pleasures of this life rather
than the joys of immortality.  Candor and intelligence will compel this admission.
It is only occasionally that such admission is made.
One of England's boldest men of science, with the
characteristic honesty of a philosophic mind, adopted
and defended as true a German epigram, which
made the human aim to be, " To get food, to beget
children, and to feed them as best one can."  The
highest good which an English king wished for his




INADEQUATE PHILOSOPIHY OF EVIL.       159
subjects,  as, that " every one had a chicken in the
pot." All such make the aim of man to be much like
the brutes, whose highest good is to be well fed and
sleek; just as though "man could be groomed into
blessedness."
2.  Another principle in the Philosophy of Evil
is, to get, rather than to give.  Manl took a hint Of
this from his mother's breast.  Hle found within him
a most imperious stomach, and that hunger kept
its appointments with pertinacious strictness.  In a
world where life is a forced state, hardly safe when
ill constant defence, wants pressing upon himi every
hour, and passions oftener and even harder, he must
have power.  This he sets down as a first aim.  This
he finds in wealth, social posltion, and  political
standing.  These, therefore, are to be sought, one
or all. By these helps he would have his welfare in
his own control.  He would  provide for every
extremity that could extort from  him  a prayer o
God or a cry to man.
And just this is what men are busy at.  Stop all
that is done for this end, and what abatement would
the world's greed, if not its industries, suffer; how
hushed would be its voices.  Industries demnanded
by the stern appointments of want, by claims of love,
and the urgencies of progress, are something; but
when the lust for power has withdrawn its forces,
there will be strange vacancies and silences in many
places of business.
And yet how vain is this endeavor.  How sweeter
the peace, calmer the trust, and safer the dependence
which faith in God can give! For whenl man reaches




160             SUCCESS OF EVL.
all the power that wealth, social position, and political preferment can give, any hour and at any place,
he can be brought into straits that will extort from
him most urgent prayers.  So mighty are the forces
that have the handling of man, that his safety can
never be in his own self-controlled power.
Such men never can understand the men who live
a life of faith, whose trust in God gives them peace,
be the possibilities of the future what they may; can
never appreciate the men whose aim is, not to get,
but to give; to enlighten ignorance, to soften grief,
to lift humanity to higher levels, to insert pe:ce and
good-will into hunman society, to lead the soul to
Christ and ally it to God.  Christianity can point to
thousands of men in every age and country and in all
grades of society, who have done the best they
can for these ends, who with their gifts and opportunities have shown the same spirit that ruled the
apostles.
They give up prospects of distinction and power,
sacrifice ease and wealth, endure hardships and privations, make their lives a total failure according to
the wisdom of this world; yet with an overmastering
love they bless this world, as much of it, and as
richly, as they can.
If, now, the Philosophy of the Kingdom of Evil is
so false, as seen in the two of its principles considered, how comes that Kingdom to such success? The
minds of men being in falsehood, what is false has
power with them, as though it were true. Living in
the sensible they come to believe only in what the
senses can detect.  The overmastering of the senses




INADEQUATE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL.       161
holds them in imprisonment. In the finite they find
no reflection of the Infinite.  And the mind that has
never found the Infinite and Eternal, the man who in
his weakness, wants, capacities, and aspirations has
found no need of the Infinite and Eternal, who can
stand and look above him and before him, and utter
no cry to the Infinite and Eternal; such a man finds
in the temporal and finite all the greatness and grandeur he can appreciate, rests in the finite and temporal, is satisfied with what the temporal and finite
bring, is stirred by no fears, and excited by no
hopes, that reach beyond the finite and temporal.
Shut in such narrow bounds, shut away from the
Infinite God, finding not in the near-by immortality
the eternal issues of this life, any illusion or delusion
can sway the minds of such men. No most trifling
fact, no lowest aim, no meanest motive, no basest
desire, no sheerest caprice, no falsest principle in
the Kingdom of Evil is there, that has not had sway
with such men.  Sunk to so low a level, where all
grandest aims, all highest truths, all noblest incentives fail to reach them, human powers will not on
that account cease to act. If their relations to the
Infinite God and to the eternal issues of life call not
out their highest efforts and noblest endeavors, yet
will they act, perhaps as industriously, certainly
more impetuously, under the incentives which the
Kingdom of Evil presents.
In such conditions - and such are the conditions
in which life, with most, ordinarily passes - men are
prepared to yield to the advocacy which the Kingdo(m of Evil fails not to secure.  The urgent reasons




162             SUCCESS OF E VIL.
which pride, ease, independence, and power present
for the accumulation of wealth, and the display of it
in personal adornment, style of living, and spendthrift indulgences; the reasons which ambition urges
for gaining place and power by any means that will
accomplish the end; the reasons which perverted
customs and depraved habits offer for indulging in
debauchery, intemperance, and the whole round of
passional gratifications; the reasons which dishonesty and laziness give for not earning  an honest
livelihood; or, rather, for trusting to the risk~ of
gambling, the tricks of deceit, and to the dangers
of counterfeiting, burglary, and forgery; the reasons which lust offers for gratification at cost of
virtue and family endearments; the reasons which
false honor and revenge give for duelling and murder; in fine, all reasons which pride and avarice,
ambition and passion, vice and crime, so garrulously
and vehemently urge for all indulgences in sin, have
power and prevalence with men on so low a level
that they have to do only with the finite and temporal as presented through the senses.  So it must
be till they rise up to a controlling apprehension of
the Infinite and Eternal. They are where all these
incentives of sin reach them and ply them with their
fearful urgencies. Their faith refuses to accept the
higher realities of life, by which their course might
be shaped so differently.  This is the most terrible
fact in their condition. All these reasons enter into
the Philosophy of Evil; and, inadequate as they may
be, are laws of conduct to those who are in the
Kingdom of Evil.




IYADEQUATE PHILOSOPHY OF1 EVIL.      163
The success of that Kiingdom is no matter of surprise to those who see what is put within man's
reach by the Philosophy of Evil, while manl is on the
low level of a purely worldly life. Being on that
level, men are held in the Kingdom  of Evil by its
Philosophy of Evil, whose inadequacy just fits their
incompleteness.
With humanity in its present condition, living so
largely in the level of the senses, accepting only
such views of life as the natural powers apprehend,
faith persistently refusing to accept the relations
which the soul sustains to the Infinite and Eternal,
matters could not well be different from xvhat they
now are; and the Kingdom  of Evil might be expected to have its present and. very respectable
success o




CHAPTER XV.
PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD.
VAKING  a sinful life, noting in what narrow
range of thought it is confined, what a blind
fanaticism, yea, insanity, sin is, we begin to see,
not that there is any reasonableness in sin, but that
there are reasons why souls thus blinded, bewildered,
and diseased, should act according to their perverted
nature.  There is this sort of legitimacy in the success
of the Kingdom of Evil.
In looking for further causes of this success, we
call readily imagine, that if there should be in man's
heart a disbelief in the personal character and positive sovereignty of God, it would be all element of
success in this Kingdom.  In the very idea of the
opposing Kingldom of Righteousness, God is the central power and supreme head. It is for him and by
him. He is its life and strength.  In idea, the Kingdom of Righteousness could be nothing; in history
i is nothing, save as God is in it.  In the Kingdom
of Righteousness, God is not some pantheistic abstraction, not the personation of some cosmical law,
but a personal Being, positive a Sovereign, self-moved,
autocratic, having every attribute of personality,




PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD.        165
the Fountain of all authority, the Administrator of
all law,- this or nothing.
Now if from the Kingdom of Righteousness God
be excluded, the Fountain, Head, Soul, Life, and
Power of that Kingdom gone, there is nothing left;
and ample room is made for the Kingdom  of Evil.
Relations exist, wants are felt, forces impel, progress
is demanded, ends must be reached; and if there be
no God with his Kintgdom of Righteousness reciprocal to these facts and adapted to the found condition
of humanity, then there is a void in the universe
which the Kingdom of Evil may occupy, but cannot
fill- and that Kingdom will be restrained in its suecess only through the limitations imposed by its own
self-destructiveness.
If front any mind God is shut away as the personal
Sovereign of the universe, such a godless man ma-y
respect other men of higher genius, richer culture,
and broader experience; but conscious of his own
self-government, and feeling in his pride capable of
becoming, in certain conditions, what any are, he
makes himself his own ruler, self-ruled in all things,
so far as the interests of society permit. Escaped
from the rule of God, he easily rids himnself of all
other spiritual and demoniac forces, as mere figments
of superstition.  In such conditions all forces of evil
have their play upon him without restraint, and all
ways of evil are open to him without resistance.  If
disbelief shuts him away from the recognized and
felt sovereignty of a personal God, his culture, tastes,
and pursuits may keep him on one level or another;
but in all grades of his standing  his autocracy holds




166              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
him firmly in the Kingdom of Evil, - not b)y definition, but in essential fact, and beyond dispute.  So
far as he is concerned that Kingdom is a success, and
the multiplication of such augments its success.
There are two different processes by which men
come to a disbelief in the positive rule of a personal
God; the intellectual and passional.  These often
shade into each other; since men, oftener than they
are aware, are moved in their thinking by deep, yet
undetected, currents of sin.  Correspondingly there
are two classes of unbelievers in the personality of
God, - the few, who have thought out some reasons,
and established themselves upon some grounds for
this disbelief; and the many, who, counselled by
their own lusts, find such disbelief necessary to their
comfort.
1. Failing to detect in man, in society, and in the
system  of things existing in this world, their necessary incompleteness, men have taken offence at the
crudeness, disproportions, discomforts, and antagonisms that abound. They with ready confidence pronounce these impossible in a system inaugurated and
governed by a God of infinite wisdom, goodness, and
power.  The details of their argument, with its specification of instances, need no recital, even if there
were room for them.  Perverted minds repeat them
from age to age, as if they had fnever met with sufficient answer; and thereby they confirm  themselves
in disbelief in the positive rule of a personal God.
If a law of progress runs through the history of
each individual and through society, then on this side
of highest possible attainment some incompleteness




PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD.         1 67
must necessarily be found.  From  what level this
progress shall start, how fast and far it shall go, are
questions no finite mind can settle.  Progress we
instinctively demand, not merely to escape present
discomforts, but as a law of our being, in lack of
which life would be clogged with the dullest insipidity. Without progress, all life, short of infinite
perfection, would be cursed with an insupportable
dullness.  In no conceived condition  could any
remain satisfied three years.
There is yet more to account for what incompleteness is to be found in this world. It fitly represents to us our sin.  Described to us only by definition, set forth only  in verbal description, or
even seen by reason and felt by conscience, no adequate view of sill could we get.  It is a disturbing
force, a terrible reality, perverting  every heart,
derangLging every mind, and marring every soul.  It
cannot be kept from  making show  of itself, from
exciting antagonisms, from creating disturbances and
working ruin.  By all these methods it reveals its
nature, as we need it should, and accounts for whatever gives offence in the moral and other states of
the -world.  Only sin is the matter.
Under the disturbance of sin no mind comes to
normal action. Corrupted by lusts, made furious by
passions, the mind seethes in the turbulence of its
own bad state.  Refusing the guidance of truth, any
aberration is possible.  Only that disturbance and
perversion of moral action which now abounds could
be expected.  The vagaries of error, the fanaticism
of superstition, and the credulities of modern " spiritism," are in place.




168              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
Then society, like the mind, lies close to, and
takes shape from, this perverted moral action, that
is going on everywhere.  So arise conflicts of interest, misapprehensions, frictions, possibly a war of
each with all.  Sin accounts for all this derangement
of society.  Nothing else can.  If, now, outside of
the immediate province of sin, a mirroring condition
of things be instituted, which shall faithfully or in
any degree reflect sin back to us, so that its ugliness,
bitterness, ferocity, and essential ruin be seen in the
materials of nature, in the events of history, and in
the condition of society, it is only what we might
expect under the rule of a fair-dealing God. It meets
a waint in our condition, to be gratefully accepted,
despite all its sufferings.  If sin, then all worst
things must have a place in society and history.
By this fact of sin, and the incompleteness with
which progress has to do,- and if these be not facts
there are no facts, -all that gives offence to the
sceptic, the disproportions, incompletensss, antagonisms, and disasters find a legitimate place in a system in which sin has so much to do.  Room for God
is still left in this system, and what ampler room
beycnd, no finite mind can tell, much less deny.  No
fact yet found denies the positive rule of a personal
God.  Given sin and progress, his rule accounts for
all that is; nothing else can.
Yet here are men brave in making denial of God's
personal rule in the affairs of the universe,- a bravery they show which can withstand all strongest
arguments of reason, all demands of highest thought,
and all most earnest.cries of deepest feeling,, — a




PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD.       169
bravery which will never yield, save to the manifested and conquering life of Christ in humanity. So
come denials of God in nature, in history, and in the
revelations of his word. So come deism, pantheism,
and atheism; or, in place of God are put nature,
reason, cosmical law, and protoplasmic forces; any
finite thing that can bewilder and puzzle us in place
of the Infinite Jehovah that rules on high, so impossible is it to find any satisfying substitute for God.
Men who put themselves under the rule of such
no-gods, generally feel competent of handling themselves and ruling their own destiny. What lies
beyond their own control they accept as an unavoidable risk. Explore as deep as they will into nature,
till they find God, they have to do only with the
outside of things; till they find God, they know not
what is the highest reach of thought, which is faith,
nor the deepest feeling of the heart, which is religious devotion. Yet such denials are made by some
minds of high culture. Some, disgusted with shams
found among adherents of religion, or horrified with
evils found in the world, and not having sufficient
breadth of view to find place for these in the system
containing them, deny that God has anything to do
with this system; and not being able to see very
clearly what else he has to do, they deny his personality and rule. Others, of more introspective turn,
put the Divine Existence into the region of the
unknown and unknowable, affirming that "the reality existing behind all appearances is and ever must
be unknown."  While yet others, curious in the
study of the material world, have found wonders,
12




170             SUCCEP:SS OF EVIL.
which, though only nearer stepping-stones to God,
have so occupied their thoughts that their undevout
hearts reach not to Him who is above all things.
So on different levels, and even in circles of high
culture, there are denials of the personality and rule
of God, which bring the Kingdom of Evil no small
success.
2. Only a few have thought out a denial of the
personality and sovereignty of Jehovah; the many
who are " without God in the world," whose lives are
not controlled by faith in the authority of a personal
God, come into their condition by another process
and in very different ways.
With some it is by constriction of thought.  They
see things around them in the material world, but
look not beyond their most outward show.  The
innumerable curious things adapted to excite their
wonder and start their thoughts on lines of inquiry
that reach Godward, pass before their minds without arresting attention. The stones and earth upon
which they tread, by their curious forms and structure, ask them to inquire what God was doing during the long geologic ages. If the query arises, they
dismiss it as an idle speculation having no reference
to the practical concerns of life. In all the wondrous
things of vegetable and animal life, they look for no
revelation of Divine Wisdom. At every step, and in
every object, some token is given of God's wisdom,
power, and goodness; but these stir no curiosity and
awaken no inquiry. At night they look up to the
stars, wondering what the morrow's weather will
be, perhaps with a dull and confused sense of their




'PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOI).       171
distance, or with no thought a.t {ll; seldom with
thought of Him whose creative fiat called them forth,
and whose power keeps them wheeling so exactly in
their orbits.
The earth is densely populated with such. thoughtless men.  They have to do only with the near-by
outside of nature.  Having outlived the curiosity of
their early life, they accept what their untutored
senses discover, as the world in which they live, and
raise no inquiry as to what is above or beyond.
They put things to the uses demanded by this life;
skilled in the routine of business, they may even be
successfull in it, so as to be known as men of wealth,
and, therefore, of influence; may gain position in
society, and even be counted by some as its ornaments.  And yet, in ignorance of the world around
themn, in the constriction of their thoughts, in the
narrowness of their views, and in their blindness to
the revelations of God on every hand, they are about
as low down in the scale of humanity as any can get
and maintain ordinary respectability.  The grandest
things about them they have no eyes to see; and the
greatest thing to which they are coming is the emphatic pronouncement of their own folly.
Others come to a practical denial of God's personalt authority, by the dulness and torpidity of their
moral feelings.  Whatever their natural temperament may be, morally they are lymphatic.  So dull
are they, that only sorest remorse can arouse them;
so pachydermatous, that only heaviest stroke of affliction can awaken the conviction of needing something
money cannot buy.  Some are stolid, besti~al, satis



17 2            SUCCESS OF EVIL.
filed with being well fed. In the clamor of worldliness, all voices and outcries of their souls are
drowned. To the wants of the body they gave their
first thoughts, and they have cared for nothing since.
Such dull men walk the earth in crowds, lifted up
by no great thoughts, quickened by no high truths,
thrilled by no deep emotions, and inspired by no
earnest longings. Sometimes it flashes upon their
minds that they are in sin; but they are used to
that. With no clear view of their capacities, not
knowing what is possible to them in endurance and
enjoyment, nor to what achievement they can reach,
troubled by no keen sense of sin's guilt and consequences, their mollusk life seems comfortablle enough
to them; they drone away its days asking for nothing
better. Or if anything more is. d.ved, it is only
some betterment of earthly condition, to be served
by further increase of wealth.
On all lower levels of life, shoals of such men
can be found. They keep themselves acquainted
with neiAghborhood affairs, knowing only as nmuch of
what is going on in the world as can be gathered
from a weekly newspaper, carelessly read; by force
of necessity made acquainted with some art of livelihood, they devote every energy to making money.
This occupies all their thoughts, shapes all their
plans, and engrosses what dull capacity of feeling
they have. Everywhere one can run against such
men; they abound in all thoroughfares.  It is sometimes curious to stop and study to see to what a
small measure a man may be dwarfed, and to what
dull stolidity he may be reduced.




PIRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD.       173
Till, better than such, one has some apprehension
of the reach possible to human thought, has sounded
the depths of his heart, felt the bitterness of sin,
longed to be free from its curse, and has looked with
the anxiety of a personal concern into the possibilities
of the future; till then, he feels no need of a God;
and whatever his creed, lives in practical disbelief
of God's personal sovereignty.  That with such the
Kingdom of Evil should be a success, need be no
matter of debate or wonder.
There is another class of men equally determined
in their disbelief of a personlll God.  They are not
men of dull thought and sluggish feelings, but of
strong and deep passions.  Some passion has gained
mastery over them, and holds them in complete subjection. They comprehend clearly the situation. They
see that, if there be at the head of affairs in this universe a Divine and Holy Sovereign, as they sometimes
fear, then the passion to whose indulgence they have
sold themselves, is forbidden by his law, and must
in the end incur its penalty, which means utter and
eternal ruin.  What course they will take is a question which often comes up, sometimes when they are
not troubled with any deep sense of its consequences,
sometimes when passion rages, fascinating them with
the pleasure of indulgence, when the lure easily ensnares them.  But even when a more thoughtful
time comes, with its clearer view of the peril of indulgence, and with a more decisive utterance of conscience, then habit comes in with its reinforcement,
and passion again gets ascendency.
Disturbed by perhaps a traditional belief in a per



174              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
sonal God and by remorse of conscience, the delight
of their passional enjoyments is marred.  The belief
or even thought of such a God sternly forbidding
their passional indulgence, prolongs and makes terrible the conflict.  This cannot be endured; will not
be, long.  But passion will not cease its clamor; so
belief in such a God is questioned, debated, doubted,
and finally denied, though not without many misgivings.  This may not be by any formal and self-conscions process. The deceived heart keeps in concealment the weak logic of reaching such a conclusion.
It is a conscious self-deception, that will not hear
scrutiny for fear of exposure.  No candid inquiry is
instituted, no arTuments examined, no one of all the
weighty reasons foir believing, in God are set aside,
no clear and  candid judgment is obtained; but
counsel is taken of passion; and as in olden time,
the miserable "fool sayeth in his heart, there is
no God."
Of all deniers of a personal God, this class is, perhaps, the largest.  Men deny this doctrine, - a doctrine first, not less in philosophy than in religion;
few by any honestly instituted inquiry and rigid process of ratiocination; more because, dull of thought,
they have not appreciated the reasons that have carried conviction to the best minds of the race; some
because so torpid in their sensibilities that they have
no apprehension of the deep wants of the heart,
which God only can meet; most because driven by
some passion, some impulse of ambition, or greed of
gain, fiom which they will not be persuaded, and
which they cannot follow in their way, while hold



PRACTICAL DISBELIEF IN GOD.      175
ing a practical belief in God. These are the godless
men, met day by day. They peremptorily refuse a
belief that would check them in their chosen way.
What support these give to the Kingdom of Evil
needs no elaborate showing. Every one, making
such denial, whether by formal arguments or by
unexamined impulse of heart, belongs to the Kingdom of Evil, and counts in that vast number whose
multitude makes the success of that Kingdom. Of
such character and in such vast numbers, whatever
else they bring to that Kingdom, they give it an outs
ward, visible, and numerical success.




CHAPT ER XVI.
FURY OF THE PASSIONS.
W ERE the passions of human nature modest in
their demeanor and moderate in their incentives, they would be only a weak force in the Kingdom. of Evil. Such signs of weakness would invite
attack and secure overthrow. Of a different sort are
the passions that have the handling of men. There
is a violence and fury in them so imperious and impetuous, that they drive men headlong to ruin. They
stand round about the Kingdom of Evil, like an
invincible guard, to bar any escape. They pervade
all lengths and breadths of that Kingdom with their
machinations, and by ruthlessly dominating over men,
become an element of success.
The imperiousness of their rule, their terrible
fury, and the dominion which thereby the Kingdom
of Evil- gets over men, can be fitly set forth in no
general terms. The practical working of one passion
after another must be taken up, to see the elements
of success they are to the Kingdom of Evil. In the
limits assigned, the entire family of the passions cannot be depicted, nor a full portraiture be drawn of
any. Only a few of the more destructive will be




FUR Y OF. 7IE PASSIONS.         177
presented; and in this we turn from what they might
be supposed, from the nature of the case, to do in
their moderate or intense action, to a simple inlquiry
for fact.  How in actual life do these passions handle
men?
Take that prevalent and familiar passion, drunkenness. Let one recall what he has seen of its violence,
witnessed of its fury, or the more he has read of its
destructiveness upon all that is necessary to complete
manhood and integrity of soul.  So destructive in
its ravage, that we are at no loss for facts; so prevalent, that we know not where to begin. Not even
all its specimen varieties can be presented in our
limits.
Taken in its beginning and in moderate power, it
leads a young man into carousal.  The next morning
his physical wretchedness, and the sense of shame for
the fool he has made of himself, lead him, if not to
forswear all further indulgence, at least to a fixed
purpose of holding it in moderation. Alas, poor
fellow! he knows not the spirit and resources of the
foe he has encountered.  To other and more degrading indulgences is he led, as if the demlon, intemperance, had a hook in his nose. Then his shame
becomes more poignant and his resolves more vigorous, but as vain.  A sense of danger may be aroused.
He may set himself about to be an outcast from the
fellowship'of associates, to fall short of all the noble
ambitions of manhood, to have his name bandied
about as a drunken sot, to be left to herd with the
lowest and vilest, and to get the wild and ruinous
delirium of intoxication in exchange for the rational




178             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
joys of life,- no matter, there is fury enough in
drunkenness to compel all that, despite his weak
protest or purpose.
Take now a man who has mortgaged himself to all
nmanly ways by the responsibilities of domestic relations. His wife's alarm and his children's shame at
first discovery of his intoxication, rein him up to an
attitude of defence against this foe. He would hide
it from his children, and protests to his wife that
never again will he go to such lengths. But moderate drinking takes the key-stone from the arch on
which his hopes rest, and out of the ruin he staggers
a drunken man. He sees business neglected, property slipping away, prosperity gone, home cheerless
and desolate, himself sinking lower in the esteem of
others and in conscious degradation; his wife as sad
as the destruction of all her fond hopes could make
her, that keener anguish may enter his soul; his
children ashamed of him, so that they would gladly
disown him.'All this may be, not for a day, but
gathering force and intensity through long years of
sorrow, of seen and felt ruin; and the future gives
promise of nothings better, of no change but for the
worse; and yet, vow and writhe and struggle as he
will, drunkenness with imperious rule holds him
firmly in its grasp.
Intemperance has tried its hand with a man still
better fortified. In addition to domestic ties, he
may be honored with public trusts. Responsible
duties of office, pledged faith to constituents, and all
schemes of political ambition may bid him  break
loose from the hold of intemperance; this may be




FURY OF THE PASSIONS.           179
demanded by an indignant constituency and promised in the hearing of the nation; but what cares
the demon of intemperance for that? It can march
him into most public places, into halls of Congress,
and there, in sight of all the people and representatives of other nations, compel him to make a fool of
himself, degrade his name, shame his constituents,
and pollute his office.
The demon of intemperance has taken in hand
men of genius and culture, men of finest organization, and admired for their gifts; and from  the
artist's studio, the poet's study, the scholar's library,
the lawyer's office, the judge's bench, the professor's
chair, and the minister's pulpit, he has let the occupants down through the mire of drunkenness, to poorhouse, insane asylum, or penitentiary, and finally to
a drunkard's grave.  It was not easily done. Men
of such gifts and culture feel degradation as no
others can. Stoutly they resist, inch by inch contest the ground, arouse themselves by the sense of
personal peril, stiffen themselves by their hard and
well-earned repute, strengthen themselves by the
trust which up-looking souls repose in them; then,
turning away from  personal relations, they have
looked over the field of study, to the research of
which they had given life, but which intemperance
forbids them further to explore; and then away to
Him, the God of all truth, whose light had been the
sun of their intellectual world, now fading, and from
their minds passing away into an envelope of perfect
darkness.  In horror at their condition and prospect,
they cry out with anguish for deliverai2ce, and,strug



180.            SUCCESS OF EVIL.
gle as men only can when more than life is in peril.
But what of all that?  Intemperance can lead them
back to their cups, down to a lower degradation,
only to find a lower still. What wrestlings there
have been on this arena! fitly represented by the
fabled priest and his sons with the enveloping serpents, by those struggles adequately represented
only in their fatal termination. Before the utmost
fury of this passion, how feeble the resistance of a
merely human force!
Then, as if to show how wanton and reckless it
could be in the expenditure of its power, intemperance has taken hold of woman, endowed with rare
gifts and high culture, guarded by all defences of
civilization outwardly and refinement inwardly, made
stronger still by her repugnance to animalism, her
quick sense of propriety and purity, and her high
spiritual tone. But like any cheapest woman, she
must come to the low level to which intemperance
beckons her, The contest that thrills her delicate
organism wastes too furiously to be long.  Sharp
and decisive is the battle. She cannot consent to
abdicate her womanhood, to be disrobed of her
purity, to be clothed in shame, to be brought as low
and made as vile as humanity can be; but the demon
of intemperance can goad her on, and crush her
down to a level as much lower as before she was
higher. Let such a passion rage and raven and
ravage, and the Kingdom  of Evil need not despair
of success.
And its prevalence harmonizes well with its power.
Its statistics arefrightful to one coming freshly to a




FURY OF THE PASSIONS.            181
knowledge of them.  It alone would seem an adequate motor-power in the Kingdom  of Evil.  Its
success is made sure in the spirit, principles, and
number of those who are under the power of intemperance, toying with it, or engaged in promoting it.
But if drunkenness be king of passions, it has its
court and a large retinue of attendants.  Lust, debauchery, profanity, recklessness, idleness, and the
long list of spendthrift and corrupting vices come in
its train. These organized forces and strong defences
of that Kingdom are in all parts of the land. Wherever habitations become numerous and society dense
enough to *fester any corruption, there the working
of this passion and these attendant vices are found,
destroying all that is fair aned of good repute in
society.  WThen a trans-continental railroad opens
new and vast regions to settlement, grog-shops, hells
of gambling and harlotry are in  advance of the
church and school-house.  There is enterprise as
well as success in the Kingdom of: Evil.
But intemperance is not alone.  There is fury in
lust.  It involves the loss of all that makes life desirable, brings shame, vilest degradation, induces
most horrible disease, holds in its brief fitture whatever human hearts can dread, and lrings the grave
within reach of a few years, to say nothing of what
lies beyond.  And yet its fury drives on rough-shod.
It may involve perfidy to the most sacred entrustment man ever received from woman, plighted love,
the charge of a trustful soul, the safe-keeping of the
heart's happiness.  All these it can dash down into
remediless ruin.  The honor implied, when she tem



182              SUCCESS OF E'VIL.
porarily entrusted her person to his safe-keeping
for a walk or a ride, goes for nothing.  False vows
may gain his end; but if not, if there be opposed
the indignation of offended modesty, tender pleadings, such beseeching as only greatest peril calls out,
and she resist by force to the last endurance, - the
fury of lust can break down all resistance, deterred
by not one of the terrible things that must follow.
And to get rid of the least of these, he has smitten
his victim down in death, that she may not tell of
his guilt.  From abroad the land, often is the fact
of such outrage brought to us in the chronicle of the
press.
Not merely thus impetuous is the fiury of this passion.  It can be cool and deliberate, if that be the
price of gratification.  Introduction, acquaintance,
intimacy, friendship, love, plighted faith, solermnest
vows, are approaches that mtay have taken months,
only to gain the power to ruin.  And if that ruin
involve the bedimming of a gem, the fall of a star
from heaven, a life of anguish, and to a wide circle
such sorrow as death never brought, the fury of this
lust is competent to all that.
It can approach a woman consecrated to another
at the altar of marriage.  With siren voice it can
charm her silly ear, fill somre of the vacancies in her
heart with distrust of her husband, offer grateful pity
for imagined wrongs, pave the way by fondling,
seduce the heart, and then pollute the person. It
may involve the separation of husband and wife, the
ruin of a family, liability to legal arrest, or greater
liability to a husband's vengeance: no matter; the




FURY OF TIlE PASSIONS.          183
fury of this passion takes no account of risks or
vengeance or guilt. What years of anguish follow,
it stops not to count. Just such flry is there in this
lust, which enters so many hearts as to be an element of success in the Kingdom of Evil.
The fury of passion is seen in the retaliative blow
of hot anger or deliberate revenge. Incensed by
wrong, real or imagined, how quick such blows have
come, how fatal they have been. Hot dispute over,
it may be, a trifle; differences which a few calm
words could have adjusted, have stirred quick resent
and nerved murderous blows: the whole within the
limit of an hour; the guilt, if not remorse, to darken
all the rest of life.
In former times it curbed itself to the regulation
of the duelling code, nursing itself to the strength
and intensity of more deliberate vengeance. If before such fury former friend fall, a wife be written
widow, and children fatherless; if penalty of civil
law be incurred, or the slayer wander forth under
the stigma of Cain, - no matter; vengeance takes no
account of consequences.  When its fury has been
spent and its victim smitten down in death, how terrible the stroke of remorse that comes.  The duellist
has dropped his murderous pistol, rushed to his victim, implored life to stay, and sought to stanch the
blood his vengeance made flow. Poignant regret,
bitter remorse, self-cursing, are of no avail now.
These, passion in its blind fury refused to see. It
saw nothing but vengeance, quick and fell,
But if hot anger and quick blows must not be, the
fury of hate can be cool and calculating; can forecast




184             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
a plan of vengeance and take time- sometimes
years -for its execution.  Stealthily the net is
spread.  He entices his victim into the snare, even
by cajolement if necessary. The gratification of his
imperious hate is the central purpose of his current
life; that it is by means so terrible as murder,
only gives the business an importance that fills his
thoughts and taxes his powers. To compass this
murder, he makes every other purpose subordinate
and every plan subservient.  Fear of consequences
to himself, the possibility of detection, and the penalty of the law make him pause, perhaps exhibit
such eccentricities as to entitle him, upon arrest, to
the plea of insanity; but his unrelenting hate will
not stop. He nerves it to greater strength by recount of his wrongs and their aggravation. Then
he reviews his scheme of revenge, charges his prudence to make it sure that every step be covered up,
and every clew to discovery be hidden; as if, with
so great a disturbance in mind, he could preserve
his powers in balance, forecast all the exigencies that
might arise, or bring nature into league with his
cri me.
Then, when the deed is done and vengeance spent,
he trembles at his guilt and holds himself to the
imperious duty of concealing it. Even his assumed
naturalness seems awkward; he chides his mental
disquietude, fearing lest the conduct it prompts and
the look it gives, will show his guilt. Then when
he remembers that gases will float the body to the
surface, that fire will not consume bones, that blood
stains so deeply, and that human blood will not be




FURY OF THE PASSIO~NS.            185
confounded with any other; already he feels the
grasp of arrest and hears the verdict -   Guilty, as
charged in the indictment."  But the fury of hate
and revenge can blind his fears again.
Through the years and to-day such vengeful hate
festers in some hearts, such schemes of murder
brew.  The daily papers report them  as accomplished.  If the success of the Iingdom of Evil is
helped by crimes, clearly there are in human nature
passions so furious and critnes so fearfuil as to leave
that success in no dispute.
Another passion that has fury in it, is gambling.
The excitement of risk has a fatscination; there is
curiosity to know how things will turn.  When this
is enhanced by hope of gain and fear of loss, another
element of intensity is added.  But the game also
affords some play for skill.  Delicacy of touch,
steadiness of nerve, certainty of aim, balance of
mind, quickness of calculation, and tenacity' of memory, are of use, may be put to utmost task.  When
these powers have been so drilled as to give easy
mastery over presuming novices, plucking  theln
readily, then the gambler will match himself with
others of like skill.  Then come into play the excitement of risk, prospect of heavy gain or loss, and
the contest of rivalship in skill, which, in certain
lines, tax human powers to their utmost.  In these
lie the overmastering' fury of this passion.
And such is this fury, that men have exposed to
the risks of gambling, not simply funds which they
conld sttafely withdraw friom business, but their necessarLy capital, stock in trade, real estate, all labori13




186              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
ously-gained earning's, their last dollar, necessaries
for family comfort and decency, and then the garments on their own persons.  And then, reduced to
beggary, with not a dollar more of cash or credit,
by suicide they have gone front the gambler's hell to
alnother.
Even so terrible a passion has a side worthy only
of ridicule, as has all sin because of its essential
magniers.  Let the young men of a city or village,
too stupid to be brilliant in anything, whose gayety
is only boisterousness, who get out of their dclulness
of thought and feeling only when half drunk, meet
to gamble as well as they know how; and in their
bets; in their awkward playing and disputes about
it, the flatness of the whole affair, like stupid men
playing dolminos,- almost too silly to be wicked,is so worthy only of ridicule, that, were this all, little
would need be said against gambling.
But gambling takes on forms worthy of such
repute as fashion gives.  The large amounts of
money that pass from hand to hand, the magnificence of the hall in which its deeds are done, the
splendor of the rooms in which its ruins are wrought,
the intensity of mental action brought into play,
rather put to work, men so cool and even complaisant
without, yet having such heats within, - the ruin of
fortune and the wreck of moral character show both
the respectability and the fury of this passion, and as
well how it helps the Kinlgdom of Evil to success.
Another passion whose fury enlists for the success
of the Kingdom of Evil, is Ambition. What schemes
of conquest it has pushed, what wars of subjugation




FUR Y OF TIHE PASSIONS.          187
it has carried on, what thrones it has overturned,
what nationalities it has blotted out, for what long
ages it has held back civilization and the gospel,
the history and condition of many countries can
testify.
To such exercise of this passion many are not
prone, or had they gifts equal thereto, the lack of
opportunity keeps them safe. But ambition has less
conspicuous theatres of action.  On all levels of life,
it finds opportunity to brace up weak points in the
Kingdom  of Evil.  To an ambition for position in
society, persons have sacrificed all that was noble
and genuine in personal character.  Truth, simplicity, honor, integrity of character, and usefulness of
life gone, that they may follow ill the ways of fashionable folly and dissipation.  To maintain a corresponding style of life, and ape the silly ways of
fashion, they have incurred debts past all payment,
descended to tricks and finesse that would shame an
honest man.  That such short-lived folly must run
a speedy race and come to an ignominious fall,
checks not its fury.  Elegant mansions dot the land,
which over-ambitious builders have been compelled
to vacate, leaving them  to men of better prudence,
and leaving them to stand as monuments of their
foolish ambition.  Every such illustration of ambitious pride and folly helps the Kingdom of Evil.
Saddest instances are to be found in matters of
less conspicuousness.  Ambition for dress and finery
takes possession of a woman's mind.  Such ambition, if gratified, gives no proof of personal virtues
or noble qualities of mind, as the richly-attired har



188             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
lot shows; clearly it is not to gratify a pure taste,
for that involves simplicity and fitness to condition.
Yet instances abound, in which women, and some
young men, expend all they can earn in the adornment of their persons.  No fear of coming want, or
any best use of money, can divert a dollar from outward adornment.  The greed of this passion sometimes exceeds the earnings of industry.  When
credit fails, women have taken to shop-lifting.  And
such ascendency has this passion gained over some,
that, married or unmarried, they have prostituted
their own persons to gain the means of adorning
them; no matter how vile inwardly, if only gay in
outward adornment.  So they help the Kingdom of
Evil to success.
One other passion deserves mention for its fury,
Avarice.  There is method in its madness.  It has
reasons.  The future is so pregnant with wants;
these may be so many and urgent, that their unknown
possibilities appall the mind.  These wants, in the
shape they take to many minds, can be met with
money.
This passion will lead mlen to deny themselves any
rational enjoyment of life, to refuse their children
the mental food furnished by books, papers, mnalgazines, music, and art; to deny them adequate ediucation and any knowledge of the world by travel;
sonie to refuse their children a fair chance to hear
the gospel.   Manifold are the starvations which
avarice imposes.  Then to what perils it will lead
men to subject themselves.  Manly are found broken
down in middle life by tasks avarice laid on them.




F'UR Y OF T2-E PASSIONS.          189
In distant regions, in unknown lands, in sickness
away from relief, in dangerous employments, in storm,
in flood, in peril of starvation, in liability to accident,
death is braved.  Men will go to death's door and
hell's gateway for gold.  Richer, if they die for it!
Inexpressibly mean this passion can make men.
Some will sell any friendship, if retaining costs money
or losing it brings gain; fail in all the kindly relations and gracious offices of social life; subject themselves to the contempt of all rightly-acting minds,the sentence must stand incomplete, for languasge
fails to express the unqualified meanness of an avaricious, miserly man.
How wicked this passion can make men, the world
knows too well.  Men will lie, cheat, steal, rob, murder, and ruin soul as well as body, to make money.
How many would laugh one in the face, if he assigned
the wickedness of their course as a reason for givingl
up their successful way of making money.  Human
ingenuity may be taxed to contrive an act so wicked
that some men will not be willing to mlake money
thereby; and of which all would say, -  evidently
profitable, but too wicked.  If profitable, it will be
adopted, though as wicked as possible.  Such is the
fury of Avarice, as history has shown, and as is seen
to-day.
Not one can deny the fact of these passions, nor
their fury.  It befits sin to show itself thus.  Such
malignant forces are in the very genius of sin.  So
they are at work in society, one here and another
there, swelling and festering human hearts to all
extent sometimes reputable, sometimes disreputable,




190              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
destroying peace, sullying repute, damaging temporal welfare, degrading the soul from its true level,
forbidding it a normal life, and constructing a past
which can issue only in ruin eternal and remediless.
These passions in their fury induce iniquities, vices,
crimes, and guilt; alnd these are capital and power
in the Kingdom of Evil.
Besides, they raise the average temperature of
passions throughout society.  They create ain atmosphere of evil which every man must breathe.  No
man can disown his surroundings and keep himself
fiom  their influence.  The enormous wickedness
which these passions daily perpetrate augment the
moral distemperature of society.  The known Avorking of these terrible and furious passions countenance
their repetition, encourage more modest passions and
less pretentious iniquities.  Thereby they become a
fruitful element of success in the Kingdom of Evil.




CHAPTER: XVII.
THE POWER OF TALK.
CFAHAT of which the heart is fullest is sometimes
kept closest.  Love may give the heart its
quickest throbs, and the the tongue refuse to speak of it,
even to most intimate friends. It may take fullest
possession of every thought and feeling; may be an
ever-present gladness and give hues of brightness to
all aspects of the future, and yet the lips refuse to
whisper it, even in secret. So, some scheme of ambition, pleasure, wealth, study, or usefulness may
occupy the wakino thoughts and give shape to dreams,
not for brief times, but for months and years; yet,
while in design and awaiting full maturity, the tongue
may speak of anything more freely than of that.
This, however, is illustrated only by those who
have command of their lips and mastery of their
tongues. Some are incontinent, and cannot hold anything capable of utterance in words. If anything be
in them, it must come out by leakage at the mouth.
They will talk, even when they have nothing to say.
Others are unnaturally and provokingly reticent,Yes and No their main utterances.  They have this
show of wisdom; they are choice in their words.




192              SUCCExSS OF EV'VI.
Talk and thouoght are often in such disproportion
as paper money bears to specie, - ruinous inflation,
redeemable at very low percentage.  The words of
some are wo0lth their face; others, not the air it took
to give them articulation.
The world is very outspoken, and there is meaning
in its talk.  What is the world talking about?  At
its places of concourse and along its ways of travel
is heard a ceaseless babble of talk, and in earnest
tones; but on what themes?  It will raise no dispute to affirln  that the grea.t b)urden of all this talk is
worldliness.  What should the world do but talk of
its own affairs?  Not long will one listen to a knot
of men without hearing the words, dollar, per cent.
Modes of investment, hinds of business, the crops,
state of the markets, plans of work, prospects of gain,
schemes of pleasure, tokens of success or failure, all
the manifold shapes and aspects these can take are
talked over exhaustively and exhatlstingly.   The
news, the weatther, accidents, the war, improvements
going on, the fashions current and coming, the last
wedding and the next, -how naturally these are
taken up by most tongues.
The world's newspapers show the drift of its tualk.
News from  abroad, posture of contending armies,
attitude of surrounding nations, price of gold and
grain, acts of congress and cabinet, elections held
or in prospect, excursions, curiosities of the census,
fires, murders, robberies, divorces, confidence games,
races, storms, floods, all these goings-on get into the
papers, because these are what men want to read
about and then talk about.  Secular papers contain




THE POW-ER OF TALK.            193
religious news, because they must keep up with the
times, and tell what is going on. A missionary convention gets reported, and a murder trial, for the
same reason.  Vice sometimes gets rebuked, and
common moralities secure advocacy. This may be
grateful to the conductors of the press, or may not.
If demanded by the Christianized state of society,
the press can be valiant for righteousness. Yet even
this, and putting the telegraph to religious uses, is
counted by many as an impertinence; as though sin
had a pre-empted right to all ways of utterance.
Hush all the babble of sin, stop the world's talk
about schemes of worldliness, its cry for gain, clamor
for passion, gossip of fashion, and all personal detraction, and what silence there would be! Could all the
profanity, g'umbling, and indecent talk be hushed,
the world would be much quieter than now.
The style of the world's talk make it an element
of success in the Kingdom of Evil. In places of
business, on the street, at home, around the table, in
the parlor, the style of talk indulged is such as one
might expect, if it were known, as past all doubt,
that the world and its inhabitants were to continue
as now for ages. If it would take a thousand years
for the men of this generation to find their graves,
if beyond the grave there was nothing that could
arouse a fear or excite a hope, the present non-religious or anti-religious style of the world's talk would
not excite surprise.
But beyond dispute, or doubt of any sane mind,
there is coming in the history of each one a most revolutionary experience; an absolute separation from




194              SUCCESS OF EAIL.
all the business, relations, and affinities of this life;
an entrance upon a condition as different, possibly
as much better, or as much worse, as the human
mind can conceive.  Take those who count this true,
and living on intimate terms with them for months
and years, we find not in their conversation the remotest allusion to the most stupendous certainty
awaiting them. Does not this raise a doubt of
the sincerity of their faith, or the sanity of their
minds?
All men know that the transformation of death
awaits them, that that transformation will cut them
off from  all the business, relations, and affinities of
life, and that, separated from the body, they will be
ushered into very different conditions of life.  To
this aspect of the fuiture no sane mind presents a
denial or doubt. Positively to deny or sincerely to
doubt the fact of death and the transformation it
works in the conditions of existence, would excite
the derision we feel for folly, or the pity we have for
insanity.
Yet to such folly, if not insanity, the drift of the
world's talk carries men.  If all the inhabitants of
the land had met in convention to determine how
most effectually to banish from their minds the fact
of their nmortality and the Godward relations of the
soul, so that these should have no power in directing
thought, giving tone to feeling, or shape to conduct;
by no method could it have been so surely as by inaugurating the present style of the world's talk.  If
this illusion be broken up by the death of one of their
fellows, they accept the fact, since they must, and




THE POWER OF TALK.             195
hush briefly, or sink to quieter tone their worldly
talk; but as soon as they can give him  burial,
thought, feeling, and thetalk thereby diverted swing
back into former forgetfulness of such an event as
awaiting them in the near-by future.  No repetitions
can bring them to a truer view of life, or break the
strange spell under which they live.
What holds them in a position justified only by
folly or insanity?  If not done, it is helped by the
world's talk.  Ceaselessly it calls attention to this
scheme of worldliness, or that method of gain; to
this enterprise of ambition, or that plan of pleasure;
holding the mind to a vision so restricted that death
in the background is not seen. It is as if each had
bound themselves to banish all thought of dying and
of the soul's Godward relations from their own and
every other mind.
The level to which the world's talk holds the mind
gives it no range which takes in God, immortality,
salvation, or any other great reality of religion. This
general announcement, though received without dispute, fails *to carry to the mind the terrible fact it
contains.  It will take some hard thinking, truly, to
conceive how terribly the mind is wronged by being
shut up in such seclusion.  To be cut off from the
things with which it has mainly to do; shut away
from the avenues through which its highest dignity
and welfare can be reached; kept from that range of
thought in which alone its highest powers and richest gifts find exercise; shut away from those supplies which only can meet its ineradicable wants; to
unsphere the soul and let it rush to ruin; to keep




196              SUCCESS OF EVIL.
the soul from the best it can be, fiom the highest it
can reach, and the richest it can enjoy, -this is what
is done; out of all this the soul is talked by the
world's talk.
Go where one will, into homes, on the streets,
along thoroughfares of travel, in  cars, steamers,
hotels, fashionable wateringc-places, through marts of
trade, social circles, and to the very doors of the
sanctuary and what will he hear save the babble of
worldlirness, sinking oftener to profanity and obscenity, than rising to any grasp of the highest and
grandest things with which the mind has to do? All
this is around every soul liko a mephitic atmosphere,
an inbreathed pestilence, palsying  the powers and
narrowing the range of thought, also benumbing the
sensibilities of the heart.
The world's talk is possessed of the devil, never
demoniac more so.  Had Satan put his ingenuity to
contriving a way of making the world's talk an element of success in the KEingdom. of Evil, how could
it have been done better than now?  And of this we
would be the more deeply impressed, could we pass
from the general character and pervasive power of
the world's talk to a detailed consideration of its
different forms. If we could take up for examination the main elements of the world's talk, the greedy
avarice, the restless ambition, the low animalism, the
daring profanity, the prurient obscenity, the ill-con~
cealed falsehoods, the incitements to lawless pleasure, the stinging scorn, the vengeful hate, the spirit
of caste, the benumbing hilarity, the reckless indifference to life's sober realities, all of which find large




TIHE PO WER OF TALK.           197
occupancy in the world's talk,-not only see these,
but also their effects on certain temperaments, proclivities, and conditions of mind; could we thus stop
and examine minutely what is going on through sway
of the world's talk, we should have a more inlpressive sense of the element of success it is in the
Kingdom  of Evil.
Many a sceptical argument has put away all fear
of God fromn the minds of young men; advocacy of
pleasure and tppeals to pride, with the deceit of
flatteries, have opened the way of ruin to many a
young woman: obscene stories have tainted many a
mind with corruption; tricks of gain and crafty success, told to those ambitious for wealth, fostered
their umammonismn and incited them to lawless ways
of gain.  The more we look into its details, the
more obviously an element of success in the Kingdomn of Evil will the world's talk be foundl.
The great bulk of talk with some religious people
is on the same level, its voice in the same key.
They are not less men for being Christians.  They
have the same wants, responsibilities, and work as
other men. Living in a physical body, they must
give it heed, lay their plans, push their industries,
enter into competition, hold their place, and make
room for themselves in the world's affairs.  They
cannot do this in dumb silence.  So, much of their
talk must be like that of any sensible man of the
world. None have a better right to such use of
their tongues.  It matters not what position they
hold in the church, they cannot abdicate their manhood, nor resign its responsibilities.  They must eat




198              SUCCESS OF' E VL.
and drink, be clothed and housed, must love, and
provide for their loved ones.  For this they must be
in the world's work and the world's talk.  To what
deeper significance and higher level this talk may
reach with cultivated Christians, will be considered
further on.
Into this necessary talk on life's affairs, some cannot adjust religious conversation naturally, gracefully, nor comfortably.  Their uncultivated and unharmonized consciences are often troubled by the
almost unbroken worldliness of their talk.  They
make an awkward dash out of it into what they
count religious conversation, sometimes by adopting
the phrases of religious cant, as profitless as the
worldliest talk. They have no idea of fitness or
gracefuil turns in conversation, and so lug in religion
by main force, in violation of all laws governing
association of thought. To such, nothing is religious
conversation that does not include an examination
into the orthodoxy of one's creed, or the moralities
of his life. So they put him into the confessional,
subject him  to examination and cross-examination,
tear open, if they can, all secrets of heart and life,
and would be best satisfied had they some chemical
power of analyzing the moral constituents of the
soul.  Like rebel surgeons amputating the limbs of
Federal soldiers, they care nothing for suffering or
consequences; they want to exercise their gifts, and
their tonlgles give sorer wounds than surgeon's knife.
Their minds are too coarse to detect the religious
brutality they inflict.  Their tongues sting as suddenly and hurtfully as a scorpion's.  H-lere and there




THE POWER OF TALK.             199
society is infested with these religious wasps, and
happy is he who can escape their sting.
Offsetting these are the cowardly deferential. They
have an egregious sense of proprieties.  They never
turn conversation into a religious channel without
offering an apology for it,-  generally needful for
their awkward way of doing it.  They seldom offend,
prevented by their enormous modesty.  They see a
Christian brother in peril, evidently infatuated with
some worldly ambition, some appetite or lust, - the
proprieties of his Christian walk and the stabilities
of his moral character giving way without his seeming to know it. A faithful, tender, loving statement
of the case to him, presenting this fact and that truth
to quicken conscience, arouse fear, excite hope, and
to gird up his laxities with Christian firmness, would
save that soul from  devious wandering and the
church from disrepute.  But such faithfulness is too
much for their weak modesty; so they suffer sin
upon a brother, and there come years of backsliding
that might have been saved by an hour's Christian
talk.
Of the two classes outlined, not fully portrayed,
the first disturb the current of the world's talk only
to make it muddier; the other lets it flow on, however lethean or tumultuously destructive it mlay be,
and neither hinder the world's talk from helping the
Kingdom of Evil to success.
Unwilling to be shut up to this, one may inquire:
How can he guide his way amid these currents and
counter-currents of talk, so as to gain some straightforwardness and dignified use of speech?  His feel



200             SUCCESS OF EV1L..
ing is not to help the Kingdom  of Evil by the use
of a sentence or syllable.  How not to do this?
The end is within reach, yet under no single and
simple rule.  He will have to participate in a great
deal of just such talk as the men of the world use.
He may keep it clean from the foulness which the
evil mix into their talk; may keep his speech far
above the profanity, obscenity, mammonism, firothy
hilarity, vapid jocoseness, and personal cletraction
which enter so largely into the world's talk; but
while he is in the body, he mulst have a hand in the
world's business and a share in its talk.  He must
breathe the air that is around him, though not the
purest.  Yet this does not deny him  the right of
using disinfectants.  The protest of silence or of
open rebuke may afford him the only escape fiom
helping the Kingdom of Evil.
So far as he participates in the world's talk, he will
quite likely be misunderstood.  The range of speech
covers a broad zone.  He nmay be well up in it,
others low cldown, while many cannot see the difference.  Some have never found out the d3ifferent
meanings the same sentence may have.  These are
beyond the detection of grammar or rhetoric; no
analysis of the words can reach them.  O-ne recites
the simplest fact after his morning salutation to a
neighbor; for example, that a violent storm  raged
during the night; assenting, both are counted as having said the same thing. It looks like simple and
easy talk on level of worldly affairs; this and nothing
more.  Yet thouTLh both met in using the samle sentence, their minds could not be much further apart.




Tl'L POWER OF TALK.           201
In it the one saw damage to his crops, delay of work,
disruption of plans, and curtailment of profit. The
sentence uttered finds his mind drifting in a sea of
worldliness, buffeting waves of selfishness, and grumbling at God's appointments of weather.  The mind
of the other approaches the faict mentioned on another
side entirely. In using that sentence he saw nature
refreshed, the air purified, conditions created more
favorable to health, and the sentence stirs his heart
with gratitude to a Heavenly Father.
At the next turn of the conversation the sickness
of a neighbor may be mentioned.  That sentence
tells one of work not done, or likely to be; of payments not made, and of losses thereby incurred.
Such are the meanings with which that sentence is
freighted to his mind. His thoughts move on a level
which takes in a view of affairs that is worldly without mitigation. The mind of the other in the sentence used finds a very different meaning: he sees a
soul trembling on the verge of another world, hunting after evidences of salvation; repentance renewing
its work, faith clinging to Christ, and a family standing under the shadow of a great sorrow. With all
these that sentence comes laden to his mind; a simple sentence, yet bearing to two minds meanings and
a train of thoughts so different.
So we may run through all admissible talk about
the world's affairs; and from mention made of any
object of nature, of national, historical, personal,
phenomenal, political, commercial, criminal, social,
and other affairs, persons may meet in using the
same sentence; but it is like the point of juncture
14




202             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
between two spheres, - their thoughts are in orbits
entirely different.  To one it is worldly talk, having
no other meaning; to the other it has been eminently
religious.  On such different levels minds live, which
nevertheless touch each other in that broad zone
which bounds talk on this world's affairs.  To one it
is simple worldliness, without remotest recognition
of anything beyond gain or pleasure.  To the other,
all this world's affairs, thus talked about, stand
related, as really they are, to God, soul-discipline,
and the eternal issues of life.  Such different meanings have Christian and worldly talk on a common
theme, and even in using the same sentence.
The conversation of every thoughtful Christian,
let it begin where it will, tends inward and upward.
From bleakest fact, most ordinary event, and worldliest subject, there is a natural and ready approach
to matters which interest the soul in its highest and
Godward relations.  All natural turns in conversation may lead off in this direction.  Under salnctified
association of thought, and the open-heartedness of a
truly Christian life, the drift of talk flows naturally
into channels that reach the broad ocean of religious
truth, whose further shores touch the climes of immortality.
A soul truly alive to the grandest things of life,
quickened by the inspirations of the gospel, runs
through all talk of most outward affairs a vein of
religious thought and feeling, ready at fit turns in
conversation to flow forth in expression; just as we
might expect of one living in fellowship with the
Father and the Son, and, as his hopes hold him, on




THE POWER OFT TALK.            203
the verge of heaven. But shut all this away; hide
from thought life's grandest realities; let the soul be
blinded to its noblest capacities and highest relations,
and all talk on this world's affairs will be the worldliest possible, - barren, shallow, as wellnigh meaningless as possible, even though having in use the
moulds, forms, and images of the highest truths.
Such is the world's talk, - tethered to material
things, reaching to no depth of the heart's meaning,
to no height of the soul's aspirations, dealing in platitudes that give the thoughts no inspiration.  Trivial and shallow are the things which custom lets the
world talk about.  Religious thought finds scant
welcome; even when talk runs dry, awkwardest
silence rather thln this.  Holding minds to such
narrow range, upon such low levels, shutting them
away firom inmost and deepest things of life, away
from the Infinite and Eternal, which only can meet
the soul's wants and  powers, the world's talk,
ceaselessly doing this, can be only an element of
success in the Kingdom of Evil.




CHAPTER XVIII.
LEVELS REACHED OR NOT.
COME live in a level country, where in no direcL tion they can see farther than to the fringe of
forests that girdle them round on every side. These
lie within a mile or two; beyond, they see only the
clouds or the sky. Tame ocean view would bring
the relief of giving the eye a wider sweep. On all
sides the sky shuts clown close around, and the horizon in all its circumference measures less than a
dozen miles.
The rest of the township lies out of sight. Only
a few farms in the county come under range of
vision. The State spreads out all around, as the
geography tells, but the eye cannot see the amplitude of its territory.  Farther on, what sweeps of
continent there are, reaching from ocean to ocean,
from the perpetual verdure of the tropics to the everlasting snows of polar regions. If imagination can
reach so far, the eye can follow only a mile or two.
The trees standing there hide all beyond. By read
ing or travel it may not be a terra incognita, but
is a terra occulta.
We sometimes chafe at this restricted vision. It




LEVELS REAzCED OR NOT.          205
stifles us. The small, tiresome, and almost changeless picture, seen three hundred and sixty-five days
every year, becomes a blank to the wearied eye. If
some one builds a new house, one good that comes
of it is, that it gives variety to the dull picture. It
would be a relief if some houses and barns would
burn up; but as this would not be convenient to the
owners, to change the scene and get larger vision,
one can almost master his timidity enough to go up
in a balloon at the risk of his precious neck.
There are other conditions of life. To some it is
a relief to be buried far down in a valley, into which
the sun does not peep till a late hour of the morning,
early in the. afternoon hidinDg from sight behind a
mountain range, though long before sunset; on the
lofty sides and high battlements of the opposite
mountain they see his sheen slowly retreating to the
mountain-top, accessible to nothing else, save the
winds and snows. They have something distant to
look at, something  beyond reach, a step towards the
Infinite.
But there is something better than this. We can
climb the mountains.  Going up the hill-side windings, we come to outlooks whence the circle in
which before we lived, and which bounds our earthly
interests, looks scarcely bigger than a garden. Higher
up we go, finding how much larger is the earth than
the world in which we lived. Winding around the
mountain-sides, the vista, on this hand and that,
opens in wider perspective. Here and there - not
less than a dozen of them - are villages. We see
the shimmer of their white and the outlines of their




206             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
church spires. Farther away can be seen the smoke
of the city. The thread of river and mirror of lake
are distinctly marked, and the varieties of green
and brown and blue add beauty to the picture.
Going to greater heights, we pass the region of
clouds, and for a while look off only on billows of
fog. Their contortions and heavings tell us that the
wind has taken thenl in hand, is dashing cloud
against cloud, and far below our ullbroken sunshine
is drenching the earth with rain. The elemental
strife soon ceases; the clouds tumble about and float
away; and then to the eye comes a vision of grandeur and beauty.  On beyond the villages we had
counted, and the lakes beyond hill and valley, rise
the mountains, one behind another, in the blue distance; while at one side of the range, and ftarther on,
we see the ocean and catch the flash of its waves.
One comes down from that mountain-top a wiser
man.  The earth has grown in his respect. It
reaches farther than his fancy had gone. Life is
more to him than before.  He feels stimulated to an
endeavor and conscious of a power. that never
stirred him before. On that mountain-top, life and
all things have met a transfiguration.
There is more varied scenery than such topography
presents; deeper valleys, higher mountains, more
restricted  and ampler vision.  Life has levels,
ranges, outlooks, and reaches of perspective more
various than earth's surface presents. Differences
between men, in the range of their thoughts and in
the scope of their aims, reach so far away towards the
Infinite, as to be beyond ordinary comprehension.




LEVELS REACHED OR NOT.           207
It is difficult to tell how cheap and coarse the food
on which the vitality and apparent health of the
body can be maintained; more difficult to tell how
restricted the range of thought, how cold and lowgraded the impulses, that shall keep the mind in
action apparently healthy.  Doomed to solitary confinemenlt during, life, if through some small loop-hole
he could have watch of a few rods of street, it might
save a man's mind from idiocy.  So little as could
thus be gathered, constitutes the mental food on
which some are nourished, with scarcely no relish
given it by any condiment of domestic affection.
And grown up to such stature of manhood as they
have been able to reach, at street corners, under
hotel porch, with others of like powers, in gossip of
neighborhood affairs, or in stories kept fiolm being:
vapid even to their own dull linids only by being
salacious, they find the highest reach of their thinking and the highest elevation of their social life.
Books and papers such as "Dime Novels," "Police.Gazettes," and love-story magazines, come to them
with exciting relish and refreshment.  On so low a
level are somne, that they find a quickeninlg in that
style of literature.'he low levels of thought and feeling on which so
many live help the Kingdomn of Evil to success.
Numerictally, the largest portion of the adherents of
that Kingdom, live on such low levels and within
such restrictions, that they get no outlook upon the
realities around them.  Their horizon shuts down
close around.  They see to the line of surrounding
forests.  Within is the world of their life; beyond




208             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
is, to them, the unknown.  Within such restrictions,
they are likely to remain in the Kingdom of Evil.
It is worth while to come to some just notions of
the restrictions under which some live. Let any one
recall the men of the world whom  he knows best,
the style of their coilversation, the topics in talking
about which they seem to have the freest play of
their powers and to do themselves most credit.
Wahat will be found their range of themes?  The
weather, the crops, under-draining, politics, current
news, trade, investments, improvements, and all the
varieties of secular interests; these are not indifferent affairs, of which they make mention incidentally.
On these topics they find their highest elevation of
thought.  Here they know the most and come to the
best display of their powers. If here they cannot
give entertainment and win respect, they must fail
of it.  The white day in their year is the county fair,
or some occasion in which the materialities of nature
are the topics of chief interest.  Beyond these they
cannot see, so close around them shuts the horizon
of their life.
Instead of living in such a marsh, some gain the
advantage of living in a valley bounded with lofty
mountains, whose peaks, so distant and far above
them, seem like steps heavenward. In their seclusion from the general field of literature, science, art,
philosophy, history, and theology, they have, nevertheless, taken in some one line of study, related to
their calling, or towards which in some casual way
they got an impulse.  This line of study they follow
till lost in its correlations, thereby as inaccessitble as




LEVELS REAUCHED OR NOT.          209
the mountain heights girding their valleys and lost
in the heavenward direction.  To them  how much
grander a thing is life, that it contains this line of
study, perhaps of discovery, original, at least to
them.  They are on a track that leads upward, Godward. From the hill-side windings of their path they
can see afar off.  They have vision of things that lie,
far beyond every-day interests, and the ends reached
by toil and business.  They get sight of things, dim
and in the far distance, which meet wants of mind;
things that will be in demand after death has cut the
soul loose from earthly moorings.  Evenl if by nightfall they must come back to their home in the valley,
it is something,, to them much, that they have been
so far up the hill-side, and had an outlook reachingc
so far away beyond the round of every-day thoughts.
They lie down at night with the conscious dilgnfity of
beingo more than they had thought, and dreajm of possibilities not reached, nor even sought before. They
have had a transfiguration, even if dim and shadowy.
Just such differences there are. Some men, like
herons and other waders, live along marshes, in
scenes dull with fell and fog, in a dank atmosphere,
which the sunshine could onlv make sweltering. To,get their food, build their nests, and rear their
youlg, - that is all.  Others, like the eaygle, soar to
nlmountain-tops.  They look far down on those wading
in morasses.  They see far beyond  the  widest
vision of those who toil only for earthly good.  All
that the senses can get, measure, and rejoice in, lies
within what they see to be only a hand-breadth of
the scene covered by their vision.




210             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
In close proximity live the men whose vision has
such different range. They walk the same streets,
live in adjacent houses, and sit in the same sanctuary.
The difference may make no show of itself in outward
vocation. Alike they prosecute the industries of
life, join in its amusements, meet its temporal responsibilities, and with like strictness may practise
its moralities. To any judgment which the eye can
form, they live about on the same level. And yet no
highest mountain-top is so far above lowest morass.
To the one class, life, the world,,and universe, so far
as they can put these to use, are for ends which every
day and year demand. Beyond their earthly sojourn,
and the inaugYuration of their children into some
respectable calling, they have no thought or care.
What lies outside this narrow range is nothing to
them.
Is this a vilification of humanity?  The appeal is
made to facts lying within any one's inspection. Let
him sharpen his wits and know what is going on
around him. Let him gain the confidence of the
most intelligent worldling within range of his acquaintance; see to what all his plans drive, what he
would count success, what to him would be reasonable and richest reward. Let him  sit down in a
group of such men, or take any way of getting the
level and range of their talk and the reach of their
aims, and we submit the case to the verdict that
shall be made. Meet the wants that clamor through
the senses, quiet the fear that this supply may fail
them in coming years, and most of them would rest
in perfect content.  Some of them have an ambition




LEVELS REACHED OR iNOT.          211
for some betterment; but money enough can secure
that.  Some have a slight uneasiness of curiosity;
this can be put to rest by any intelligent and well-read
man, or by waiting a few years to see how afitirs will
turn in this world. Such levels of society are densely
populated.
Do all live in such fens and fogs? Do such quagmires overspread the world?  Are there no uplands,
no mountain-tops, with purer air and wider vision?
It cannot be supposed that minds such as ours, capable of such reach of thought,  and even of excess in
feeling, should be held to the limits of such tame
insipidity.  Nor so is it. For all within there are
objects without; color, form, and perspective, actual
and possible, to delight the eye forever; melody and
harmony, actual and possible, to ravish the ear perpetually; facts and truths, enough to tire the mind,
could it ever tire.  There is, in fulness never to be
exhausted, what is worthiest of faith and trust and
love.  This is no desert universe.  Starting on any
stream, one needs only to follow it far enough to
come to a fountain of infinite supply.  All around
lies the infinite, before the eternal. Long before one
has searched out what is within reach, instead of sighing in fear of destitution, his longing will be for an
eye and ear skilled by better culture; for a mind to
know more accurately and comprehensively; for a
heart to trust and love and adore more worthily of
the occasion, and for powers adequately trained to
meet the opportunity.  Straightened in himself, -
that's the greatest difficulty.
Men are not all fools.  Some are finding out what




212             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
is within reach in this universe, what is possible in
the fiuture, what scope there is for the soul's powers;
how satisfyingly the mind can feast on truth, and
how ravishingly the heart can believe, trust, love, and
adore. Some have come upon the uplands; some
are. climbing the hill-sides.'Far below lie the fens
and fogs, where live the ignorant, the passionate, the
brutish, and the worldly. To these upclimbing souls
there is afforded so pure an air and so wide a vision,
that they begin to see things in God's true perspective.
They see how small and trifling are the things which buy
worldly mene; whose plans, occupying their thouchsi;
whose schemes, engrossing' their hearts; whose
toils, filling all the days with struggles and weariness; whose highest joys, beguiling them to ruin,
are delusive, fleeting, only wave-crests, if not sooner
engulfed, quickly to break on the shore.  What
worldlings dignify under the name of business may be
overruled to contribute somewhat to the progress of
society and the furtherance of God's plans; but in
the design of worldly men, held simply to what they
mean by it, there is not a single element in it of use
or dignity, worthy of the soul's powers, relations,
and opportunities; it meets only current expenses
of travel through the world, in its different styles.
Christian men mean something more by it.  To
them, the chief value is in the training afforded to
souls, and in the help it gives to humanity and the
gospel. To the same uses God holds it.  But take
the business of the world, as worldly men hold it, in
their spirit, with their aims, and for their purposes;
give it all the dignity its magnitude can claim, rep



LEVELS REACHED OR NVOT.         213
resented in the vast amounts of its traffic, in the sums
of all its investments, and in the total or all its industries; then, carry it all into the light of the eternal
world and into the presence of God, and what will
worldly men say it amounts to?  Thus seen, it is
safe to leave the estimate to their intelligence and
candor.
What is fact, can be found out; what is real,
can be seen true; and what is true, can be known.
There are men who do not have to go through the
experience of ruin to find out what is ruinous. On
level with fen and enveloped in fog, some may not
see far. But men have climbed up from marsh to
mountain. In the pure air and wide outlook of hilltop, they look down upon the eager scrambling of
worldly men, distracted even out of the dull dignity
of flocks at pasture, fevered with lusts, crazed in
their low ambitions, and blinded to the uses of life.
Where this distraction of worldliness begins, where
it will end, and what it will amount to, is visible
enough; and there are men in such high outlook
that they can see it.
If not actually, one can in imagination take a
stand where he can look down upon worldliness in
its intensest action, the seething life of a city, and
watch there till a whole generation has done its work
and passed away. Could he have watched with
omniscient eye, have seen all that was done and kept
strict account of what was accomplished by men
moved only by the common impulses of worldliness,
except in having such worldly enterprises overruled
in the interests of the gospel and in preparing a




214             SUCCESS OF E VIL.
better future for humanity, - ends not at all within
their aim, - his verdict would be that that generation of men, thus watched, mighllt as well not have
been.
And just the littleness there is in their purposed
aims canll be seen. Myriads of clear-eyed and farseeing Christians have the whole scope and range of
worldliness directly under their vision. They are in
position to see its utmost boundaries. They can
say concerning it: Only this; nothing more. And
as they pursue their hill-side windings, they do somethiing more than so negative a thing as minifying
worldliness. They find something positive in the
range of vision which faith gives them.  [No, Reader, I will not excuse you, nor admit that I am
departinpg from the sober realities of life. I hold
you to the duty of bearing me company.] For
knowledge is not more normal to the hmnan mind,
nor based upon more absolute warrant, than is faith.
Taklinog the mind in all its modes of action and moods
of feeling, not more fitting and necessary to its full
life and development is knowledge than faith. Not
more does the soul need to know than to believe.
The methods of faith are legitimate.  No nicely constructed telescope is better fitted to the eye than
faith to the soul. No astronomical almanac more
exact than the data which faith accepts; no laws of
light more exact than the laws which come into the
handling of faith. More normal use is not got by
the eye in seeing than by the soul in believing.
The believing soul. is the only soul that puts its powers to fitting use, that accepts the situation as it is,




LEVELS REACHED OR NOT.          215
and adjusts itself into existing relations.  The man
that believes nothing, stands as far below his proper
level as the man that knows nothing.
And souls there are, living in surrounding homes,
met daily on the streets, that have such outlook as
faith gives them.  They have access to mountaintops, to some Pisgah whence they can overlook the
promised land. The range of their vision is telescopic.  Away beyond  utmost reach of worldly
plans, away beyond what shrewdest men of business
ever schemed, the vision of intelligent Christian
faith reaches.  There are men, not wiser than others
in this world's affairs, perhaps less successful in its
business, whose thoughts are daily familiar and their
hearts daily quickened with what lies further away
and higher up than plans of worldliness or schemes
of ambition ever reached.  If mountain-top gives
clearer and ampler vision than can be had on level
with fen and amidst fog,, much more does the faith
of humblest Christian take in what utmost grasp of
worldliness cannot reach.
Snch altitudes are not gained by balloon ascent,
nor by mountain climbing, however much may thus
be suTggested.  Abatement of that intense worldliness which holds the mind to such narrow range so
persistently, will help a little. Instructed reason
and intelligent thought can see far enough to find
the utmost bounds of worldly schemes; can see
where they must end; call see in what restrictions
a soul must be, shut up within the narrow  range
traversed by men of the world, and can see what
infinite possibilities lie beyond.  But further on,




216             SUCCESS OF E VIL.
beyond the range of worldly plans, beyond utmost
scope of the senses, beyond the restrictions in which
life is here held, in those regions beyond the grave,
which the imagination can fill with such opposite
possibilities, there and then what is to be found can
be discovered only by faith. What so distant in the
future, what so far away, as to be beyond the telescopic vision of faith?  Whatever concerns the soul
must be within reach of ultimate discovery.  Faith
finds all forces, all existences, constituting the universe, or presiding over its destiny, and leads the
soul into adjustment with these.  Such is the range
and work of faith; such the mount of vision on
which the believing  stand.  Beyond the field of
knowledge, beyond  the realm  of reason, faith
searches; in the light of God's truth and upon warrant of God's word, it makes discovery of whatever
concerns the soul in the hereafter and the beyond.
Not only does the soul gain a mount of vision
having such wide survey, but finds itself in fellowship with apostles, prophets, and the Son of God.
A cloud of such great glory overshadows the believer
that he says: " It is good to be here."  Here would
he build tabernacles and make his abode.  Here he
beholds all things in God's true perspective. Now
he sees the business of the world, all the affinities
and responsibilities of life, in their true relation.
What all things are for, their agency in disciplining
the soul, the contribution they make to hunman salvation, the overthrow of the Kingdom of Evil and the
establishment of the Kingdom  of Righteousness,
become intelligible to the believer, while upon




LEVELS REACHIED OR NOT.        217
that mount of transfiguration to which faith lifts
him.
Some, 0, how many! never come upon any mount
of transfiguration, into the brightness of no divine
truth, into the glory of no divine revealment, and
into the joy of no divine fellowship. What their
senses certify, what they find out by processes of
knowledge, -with these they have to do; what lies
beyond is to them a blank. They have no world
save that which comes to them through the senses; 
to them there are no forces or beings except such as
they can measure and count by their methods of
knowledge. They see not to the boundary of the
morass in which they live; cannot penetrate the ifo
in which they are enveloped. When ambition, by the
luck of fortune, helps them upon some bog above the
general level, they alternate their complacent pride
with pity for perhaps some commercially unfortunate
Christian, who, nevertheless, lives in a world of
truth, beauty, and blessedness of which they never
dreamed.
Count those who live in fogs and fens, in the morass of mere worldliness, whose utmost bounds of
thought and reach of aim lie not beyond business;
count those who have never come upon any mountaintop view of life, and who never went up upon any
mount of transfifguration, and the success of the
Kingdom of Evil will; be no matter of surprise.
15




CHAPTER XIX.
IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.
ETWEEN the Kingdom of Evil and the King.dtom of Righteousness the matter of obstinate and
irreconcilable dispute is, What are the conditions
of highest good and welfare?  In the Kingdom of
Righteousness these are affirmed to be justice, truth,
love, sincerity, faithfulness, purity, and all other
right principles and holy affections found in the organization of God's moral government, and adherent
in his character.  Such is the make of the soul, such
its wants and powers, such its reason and conscience;
that only when character is based on these fundamental principles of God's moral government, and shaped
by them, are highest good and welfare reached.
Profoundest study of the soul reveals this more clearly, and widest research makes it more indisputable.
Passing from the study of an individual soul to
society, or to souls in their relations, these principles
are seen to harmonize every interest, call out every
power, meet every want, and secure highest welfare
to each and all.  Under the sway of these principles
no weakest can be down-trodden, no poorest starved,
none wronged; the capacity of each, on all levels, is




ID OLATRY OF GENIUS.            219
fuilly met.  Under acceptance of these principles of
God's moral government all this must be; otherwise,
utterly impossible.
To this the Kingdclom of Evil demurs.  It takes no
flat-footed stand of honesty, affirming that wrong is
right; sin, the safest guide; autonomy, better than
law.  There is a befoolment impossible, even to
blinded men.  So matters are taken up at a remove
from such a centre.  Mammonism is only prudence
wisely looking out for the future; restless ambition
is only making the most of one's self; so good taste
stops not short of pride; desire for food and drink
runs to animalism and debauchery, and love to licentiousness; so troop in the whole array of the world's
sins, vices, and crimes, each under leadership of some
justification, and maintaining very remote relations
to some virtue.  Principles of action, aims of pursuit,
modes of conduct, and fashion of character are justified, if possible, by some plausibility, chosen and
stuck to any way; all of which are against the righteousness, justice, truth, love, purity, and faithfulness,
enjoined under the moral government of God; and
equally against the highest welfare of the soul, and
the best ordering of society.  A totally different outlook of life is gained; a totally different judgment of
man's normal character is formed; a totally different
view is held of his relations; a totally different estimate of the wants and powers of the soul is maintained; and a totally different forecasting of the
future is indulged, from  what would  be, under
acceptance of the facts and truths of God's moral
government.




220             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
That man is a sinner is denied; he is only suffering
under ignorance, lack of culture, and from unftavor-,able surroundings. What is abnormal, is accounted
for by bad digestion, mal-formed brain, inheritance
of vicious temperament, defective training, and untoward example.  Sin, if admitted, is minified, and
held capable of management under hygiene and skilful moralities.  So no room is left for the gospel,
with its scheme of redemption; no nneed of rgeleneration and sanctification by a divine power.  With
emphasis is denial made of any such destiny and
allotment of souls as is affirmed in Divine Revelation.
The strictest in the Kingdom of Evil allow only such
allotment hereafter as is now made by the general
judgment of society. To shut men of wealth out of
heaven, they say, will never do. If reminded of
the grinding oppressions and corrupt practices by
which that wealth has been gained, and of the oppressive ways in which it has been used, consent is
readily got that some rich men should go to hell; but
surely not the rich that are also respectable. Society
pays court to such here, and, forsooth, must there.
To none does this class of thinkers, in their selfcaring ways, pay more respect than to men of genius,
men who by their inborn gifts have risen high.in the
world's esteem, and have written their names indelibly on the world's memory.  Not to make room for
all such in heaven, is their sufficient condemnation of
the gospel.
This Idolatry of Genius is an element of success
in the Kingdom of Evil.  It is representative of a
way of thinkinking pervading all the heights, if not all




IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.           221
the ranges of that Kingdom, in flat contradiction, and
in irreconcilable opposition, to all that is affirmed in
the Kingdom of Righteousness.  It demands a reconstruction of religious systems, insisting that something more, and else, than moral character shall be
taken into account, in determining  the eternal issues
of life; that judgment at the final assize shall be held
as society now holds it; that heaven shall be open to
all who have access to good society here.
This looks fair to human eyes; for there is something exalted in genius. It gives one a sense of
comfort and dignity to belong to a race in which are
men and women of such towering genius as the world
has known. In their attainments and achievements
we see what reach human thouyghts can have; how
great a soul can be. The men who have opened to
us the higher ranges of science, explored the outlying fields of astronomy, discovered a planet by the
subtleties of mathematics, told us of the materials
which enter into the combustion of sun and more distant star, let us into the mysteries of the microscopic
world, spoken to us of the laws and forms of life in
ocean beds, read to us from rocky tablets the legends
of geologic revolutions in ages lying far beyond the
chronologist's record; the men who have harnessed
for man's use the most subtle and potent agencies ot
nature, opened ways for speech through ocean beds,
and ways for travel across continents, surmounting
all barriers of desert and mountain; the men who
have risen to command and authority in the army and
nation, guiding the one to victory and the other to
safety, when destruction to both seemed impending;




222             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
the men who, when and where such things were possible, have built up a dynasty, holding the reins of
power through many generations, and by their word
bringing peace or war; the men and women who, in
poetry, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and
adjacent realms of art, have brought us ideals of
beauty, harmony, order, and proportion; those who
have fathomed for us the profoundest depths of philosoplhy and the deepest mysteries of faith, shaping
the world's thinking for ages; and, too, the men and
women, who by creations of their genius have touched
the world's heart, made it weep over the down-trodden, stirred through the nation, and beyond, a pity
that would not rest till the cry for justice was lost in
the shout of emancipation; men and women who in
fiction have presented the highest ideals into which
human  character can be wrought, attracting the
world's,attention, fascinating its admiration; and
most of all, softening the world's heart towards God's
poor; if these may not go to heaven, who may?
Such question comes to us from  the Kingdom of
Evil, now because so respectable as to challenge
admiration.  And the question is backed up with the
more defiant oneu: What will your heaven be without
them?  The case is stated in its strength, because to
nmany minds there is strength in it,-felt all the more
as a list of the world's geniuses is taken up, their
names read off, and their achievements for humanity
recalled. Here, three things require attention.
1. Not all men of genius are shut out of the Kingdom of Righteousness, and, therefore, not out of
heaven. For otherwise, Religion consists with the




IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.           223
highest genius. Not only is it an added glory, but
essential to the highest reach of genius. For what
has genius to do, or ever has done, than to handle the
realities of fact, thought, and feeling? And these in
their highest forms and broadest relations are included
in religion, which is only the fitting adjustment of
the soul to these just named realities. No reality of
fact, thought, and feeling can be understood in isolation, only in its surroundings and relations.  God
left out of account, no fact of nature or history, no
thought of mind or feeling of heart, can be fully understood.  He who knows not God, knows not anything as it can be known. Whatever Dickens - and
the same may be said of many another genius - may
have been as a maln, as a writer he was not religious 
he took not in what was truest and grandest concerning humanity. When his genius soared to its greatest
height, it only showed how much greater he might
have been, if he had only studied human character
and society from that point in which he would have
seen them in their relations to God. We admire his
genius only to lament that it had such narrow range.
Had he studied society in the height, breadth, and
depth of religious thought and feeling, there would
have been added an element of the infinite to the
productions of his genius, which now, conceived in
all their reach, are confined within very narrow
bounds, having to do with man simply as a dweller
on this earth. If he had found a place for the Infinite
and Eternal in his works, they would have reached
such immortality as human restrictions allow.
There is no such element of enlargement or factor




224             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
of multiplication, as religion affords to genius, whatever its sphere. No genius can be what is possible,
without religion. He needs it not merely as the
highest philosophy, in which all things find their culmination, and apart from which they are seen only in
piecemeal; but in his loftiest flight he needs the
inspiration of religious thought and feeling to bring
him into truest appreciation and to fullest mastery of
whatever he essays to handle. The irreligious genius
presents things only in appearance in temporal relations, at best only in isolation; not in their profoundest reality and widest relations; for then would he
have to take all greatest realities of religion into
the field of his thought.  So there is an element of
incompleteness - and that means weakness - in his
works, which leads to the decay and oblivion to
which they are doomed.
This is not bald affirmation; it is the world's vote,
the pronouncement of history. As a class, religious
names have an immortality reached by no other.
These are the names of highest chronology.  "The
sweet Singer of Israel," and the "Apostle to the
Gentiles," were not the only men of genius in their
ages. Yet David and Paul have, to-day, a place in
more hearts, do more to shape the thoughts and feelings of humanity, than ever before, than all their
cotemporary men of genius in the Kingdom of Evil.
Indeed, though known to students, what knows or
cares the world for their cotemporaries?  And this
l.lace David and Paul hold, not simply by their inspiration of God, which the Kingdom of Evil denies,
but, in part, because of their sanctified genius. They




IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.           225
took in the meaning of providence and history; they
saw all things in their relations to the sublime purposes God is working out; they accepted the situation,-man a sinner, Christ a gracious Saviour. Their
genius made them what they were, because it was
inspired by religious faith and sanctified by holy
love. But for this, history would have left them in
the oblivion where rest their cotemporary men of
genius in the Kingdom of Evil, now known, if at
all, only as forming the necessary background in the
scenes of their heroic action, or as flies in amber.
For men of sanctified genius, humanity has prepared and preserves a niche as for no others, because
men were made to be religious. Nothing so normal
as that. The quailing eye of the wrong-doer, the
blush of shame, and the rebuke of conscience tell that
men were not made to sin. Men must be true to
their nature, and cherish carefulest and longest the
works of genius that have brought closest to their
hearts the sublime realities of faith. It is humiliating to take up a biographical dictionary, and see in
what brief paragraphs the world's great men are
disposed of. Little concerning them is of interest
after a few centuries. Admiring the monuments that
preserve their names, men have to inquire who they
were and what they did. Not so with men of genius
that have quickened the world's religious aspirations,
helped its deliverance from sin, and lifted humanity
Godward.
There are men of genius who have not done this,
as the world knows too well; men who have prostituted high gifts of genius to the bewilderment and




226             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
corruption of men; have thrown a fascinating charm
over all ways of evil; given a phosphorescent glare
of brilliancy to foulest corruptions; made vice beautiful; given sin what dignity it could bear, and besmirched virtue as best they could. To give their
names and tell wherein would only justify and intensify this charge. If in the galaxy of sanctified
genius in heaven, such be wanting, it will be all the
more resplendent.
2.  Some simplest truth often settles gravest matters.  No endowment of wit or brilliancy of conversational powers would be the necessary qualification
of an engineer driving the train on which we ride.
Skill in poetic or musical composition commend no
one as a legal adviser. When disease is doing its
work of destruction with our loved ones, we inquire
not for a physician best known for skill in metaphysical casuistry.  No profoundness of erudition in
abstract science would give us confidence in the
leader of an army.  Strength of muscle and athletic
skill are not what we seek in a religious instructor.
All the way through, and in every condition, we
demand attainments that shall give fit qualification.
So genius fits not for heaven. As well admit one
on the bulk of his estate, the height of his stature,
his skill in athletics, or the reach of his longevity.
Fiction and poetry are forms of thought, and, to be
commended or condemned, account must be taken
of their contents. So genius is skill and power, and,
for commendation or condemnation, respect must be
had to what it does.  Genius runs in all directions,
through all ranges of knowledge and art. - It may be




ID OL A TR Y OF GEN'IUS.       2 2 7
in skill of eye, ear, voice, or fingers.  Look at the
bounds of its range; subtlest metaphysical inquiry,
utmost research of science, thorough analysis of
human nature, skill in arts constructive, musical,
poetical, and fictional, in eesthetics, in military affairs
and monetary, down to skill in games, chances,
and horse-flesh.  The world has made boast of its
geniuses in all these departments, and lower. Gather
all these men and women of genius, with their pride
and passion and nervous particularity, into a world
by themselves, with such surroundings as their gifts
require, and what kind of a heaven would it be?
The universe is for something, and so is this life.
And the issues which eternity contains, and which it
alone can contain, are that something.  That highest
end is moral, simply because the moral includes all
things else. The soul to be right morally, religiously, or spiritually, requires exclusion of defect
in all other ranges of its being. Whatever genius
has reached, or has done, only met- the moral requirement in part. These men of genius proved
themselves worthy of the world's admiration by noteworthy development in some single direction, that is
only part in that complete and full-orbed life which
meets the moral requirement.  Genius is only excrescent, partial, and incomplete; and if, as too
often, out of harmony with moral obligation, it is
wanlting in the essentials of highest life, and is unadjusted to the realities and uses of the universe.
God is the greatest reality, - more than he has
made, more than he has done.  Out of harmony with
him, opposed to his moral government, antagonistic




228             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
to the principles of justice, righteousness, love, faith,
purity, and holiness enjoined in his word; in denial
of the gospel's facts, that man is a sinner and Christ
a Saviour; whatever else genius can be, it is lacking
in adjustment to the central and greatest realities of
the universe; and even by the laws of order and fitness it must go with the defective.  Holiness is the
law of heaven, love its pervading spirit, Christ its
central glory, and whatever fails to harmonize with
these cannot have place or fellowship there.
3. Holiness of moral character is the highest type
and measure of man. In God, infinite truth, power,
goodness, purity, wisdom, love, and whatever other
glory or perfection the mind can conceive, find their
exhaustless source and perfect illustration. Highest
development of genius, even if sanctified by loyalty
to God, is only some small approach Godward, on
a low level and within narrow range.    Nearer, my
God, to Thee," is a cry for greatness, the highest a
soul can reach.
It is no arbitrary enactment that opens heaven
only to souls loving God, believing in Christ, repenting of sin, and hungering after righteousness.  Such
accept the situation, themselves lost in sin, and
Christ the only Saviour. In faith they open; their
hearts Godward, and receive what God has to give.
Comprehensively, it is a new life. It recreates the
soul, unites it to God, gives the soul God's thoughts,
principles, spirit, and feelings, and lifts the soul into
fellowship with God in views, aims, and desires.
Here is the germ of a new life, to be unfolded eternally; and in its unfolding will be included all that




ID OLATR Y OF GENIUS.         229
is possible to a soul, - a reach of thought, a comprehension of truth, an appreciation of beauty in all
forms and of harmony in all combinations, a recip
rocation of love, a power of accomplishment, and a
flow of enjoyment, beyond reach of ally genius yet,
or of all combined. The Christian life is the highest any soul can have, for it includes germinally all
a soul can be, do, or enjoy. Rudimentally, the Christian is the highest genius.
Many do not receive this. The men of the world
do not.  We know their blindness too well to expect
it. They take entirely different views. To them,
what is even a respectable and obvious Christian,
compared with any whom the world has learned to
admire as a genius? Yet the world's genius in poetry
may be a libertine; the world's genius in fiction
may shorten his life in intemperate and over-fed animalism; the world's kings may be debauchees.  For
safety the world may have to imprison its greatest
military genius on an ocean island; and the name of
its monetary genius may be a synonyme for rascality.
But men of the world will admire their men of
genius for all that. In comparison, what is the most
indisputable Christian?  with what an air of contempt they behold it, if a Christian is put in comparison with any of their men of genius! And if the
presumption be pressed, how ready are they with
their scorn! Heaven must be opened to their men
of genius, how many soever Christians may have to
vacate.
And yet the simplest, humblest Christian has in
his soul, by virtue of his union with God, and the




230             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
inflowinfg of a divine life, the germ of all angelic
strengtth, beauty, and greatness. He may be trammelled with many an ignorant prejudice, held under
power of narrow views and low habits, may be very
ignorant of the ways of the world, of the facts of nature
and the truths of science.  A4fter learning the way of
gaining a cheap livelihood, he may not know more
than to feed his soul with some simplest truths of
God's word; to draw near to his Saviour in penitent
trust and prayer, and to show his love for man by
acts whose only value lay in their kind intent. Dwarf
him down to smallest pattern of manhood, make him
the butt of ridicule, a standing laughing-stock, utterly
unable to appreciate men of genius; in a spirit of
caste put upon him all the indignities of prejudice
and hate, and leave him to wriggle out of his difficulties as best he call; yet in God's view,- somewhat clearer and broader than that of the men of the
world, —there is in this man's soul capacities far
transcending the gifts of genius, the germ. of powers
equalled only by an angel's. This God sees as clearly
as we can see the oak in the germinate acorn. That
marred and deflected image of Christ, which unspiritualized vision cannot see, Christ can; and more,
he has identified himself with that lowly believer, so
that "inasmuch as ye did it not to him " in his need,
ye did it not to Christ. The nalme of that believer,
standing low in the world's esteem, stands on record
in the Lamb's Book of Life.
" Pursuit of heaven under difficulties," -- the world
may say. Yea, more than that, under impossibilities,
if the way were to be found by his knowledge, the




IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.            231
achievement to be made by his wisdom, and the victory gained by his strength. But for victory, for
completed salvation, he has given himself in perfect
trust and confiding love to the keeping of a Heavenly
Father, who will not leave him to perish, more than
a mother her child with rescue within reach.  It is
no arbitrary appointment, only the natural issue of
things, that heaven's gate should be open to any humblest believer in Christ.
Right with God, right in moral character, harmoniously adjusted into the soul's true relations, accepting what Christ in his plan of salvation has provided
and in his grace has offered, only time, opportunity,
favoring conditions, and the maintained life of God
in the soul, are needed to make that soul right, complete, harmonized, and matured in all the lengths,
breadths, heights, and depths of his being; transcending all reach of genius, soaring with angels to
all heights of knowledge, and entering into fellowship
with God, both in thought and feeling.
Marred to utter spoiling are all who come short of
this.  Not adjusted to God in the way the gospel
provides, they are out of harmony with the eternal
laws and highest uses of the universe, out of adjustment with all its forces, out of conditions of highest
and eternal welfare, and in oppugnance with reason
and conscience-.  The vital elements of soul-life are
wanting, moral recovery and  moral adjustment.
Genius cannot save them; as well expect beauty of
face to ward off disease, or a metaphysical argument
to arrest the work of death.
But, in exact accordance with the blindness and




232             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
bewilderment of sin, the men of the world, in their
idolatry of genius, take no such view of the matter;
they will not brook the idea that men of genius
should fail of entrance into heaven; that they should
fail of whatever goodness and glory the future world
has. To a great majority of unbelieving men, this
would not seem a question of practical importance.
But it accords with their vanity, that each should
count himself a genius by some method of measurement; so they hold the question practical to themselves. At least, they put forth the army of gifted
unbelievers as a forlorn hope, whose success may
gain them entrance. They mean that heaven shall
be open to all who have access to good society here,
and good society is their society. They put forward
the world's men of genius, as if, beyond dispute,
heaven could not do without them; so they-hope
room will be made for all.
They demand a reconstruction of religious systems,
and insist that the judgment of the world shall be
the arbiter of final destiny; that other measures of
judgment than moral character shall be applied;
that the fact of sin shall be ignored; that the need
of redemption and recovery shall not be insisted
upon. This sentiment, so congenial to the human
heart, this feeling, so pervasive in the world, is an
element of success in the Kingdom  of Evil, likely
to entrap many heedless and unwary souls.




CHAPTER XX.
PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHARACTER.
THE Elements of Success in the Kingdom  of
Evil, hitherto considered, are convictions, impulses, and moral disturbances, working general
derangement in society, corrupting its spirit, lowering its tone, and creating a bad atmosphere. Living
in this general distemperature, in such unhealthy
conditions, congenial to latent depravity, all souls
become diseased in their action, whatever their original constitution.
Of these general causes, there are others working
derangement in ways more or less direct, and helping the Kingdom of Evil to success. Having already
overgone the length designed, these are left without
even enumeration, to look briefly into the realm of
personal history and character, without which the
subject gets no full treatment.
As minds take in what they will naturally absorb
of the malign influences before noted, they' not only
hold them in different quantities, but make diverse
selections, according to original bias, or as determined by some event or condition of early life.
These generally give positiveness of character and
16




234             SUCCESS;OF EVIL.
even idiosyncrasies. Few come to adult life without
showing some characteristic perversity, well known
to acquaintances, which is an obstacle in the way of
escape from the Kingdom of Evil, and thus an element of its success.
The variety and shading of these personal peculiarities reach towards the infinite; no two alike, more
than faces. One of a sort is enough. No description, or even enumeration, of them  is possible; yet
they are only varieties and modifications of a few
cardinal perversities, like the varieties of nature from
a few chemical simples.  Consideration can here be
afforded only for some of those seed vices whose outgrowths are so numerous and varied.
Every study of the soul reveals manifold reasons
why all men should be Christians, fully delivered
out of the Kingdom of Evil and safely included in
God's Kingdom  of Righteousness. Reasons, however invalid, there must be, why they are not. These
are obstacles hindering the escape of all those yet in
the IKingdom of Evil. What these hinderances are,
and how valid, as a matter of personal concern, few
inquire. They are unable to give any intelligent
justification of their position, yet they stay in it most
immovably.  Of this, where cannot illustration be
found?  We inquire for those hinderances which bar
escape from the Kingdom of Evil, as found in personal history and character.
1. The sway of some appetite or lust.  That
many are under such control, is painfully evident to
one who has given any study to the condition and
phases of society.  What these appetites and lusts




PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHARACTER.    235
will lead men to do, is utterly incredible to one who
has given no study to their history. In sacrifice
thereto there have been laid on the altar, wealth,
health, position in society, success in life, all that
mlen usually toil and struggle for.  The mind is
wearied and palled with'surprises and astonishments
at the power which lusts and appetites have over
imen; it would seem that, acted out as vices, they
could exhibit no new monstrosity capable of exciting
wonder.
And how safely included in the Kingdim of Evil
are the men over whom they dominate. The level on
which such a man lives, the atmosphere he breathes,
the views of life familiar to him, the companionship
he enjoys, and the aims he seeks, bring him into
affinity and fellowship with evil. In his temper,
modes of thought, and moods of feeling, he invites
no saving influence of the gospel to reach and rectify him. If his aim had been to make his position
in the Kingdom of Evil impregnable, he could not
have done better.  Hedged about, as so many are,
with vices, and dominated over by lusts, they give
the Kingdom of Evil all the success their numbers
can afford.
2. The overg'rowth of some ambition. Many have
such intelligent views of life, such a sense of decency
and self-respect, that they keep themselves aloof and
above vice. The bewilderment of intoxication, the
animalism of debauchery, and the craze of gambling,
have no attractions for them. They are too wary
for spendthrift vices, too prudent for those which are
corrupting, and too self-respectful for those which




236              SUCCESS OF EWvLm
are debasing. These are the decent men that make
up the bulk of society. Yet in just these often is
found the overgrowth of some ambition.  In early
life some incident fired their ambition, that has
grown with their growth.
One has been humiliated with poverty, or has
been brought into some distress thereby.  To escape
from such woes, he has resolved to gain the power
of wealth, not as a means of beneficence, but to
environ himself with power. For this, nothing is
permitted to stand in the way; no hinderance of
moral principle, no better use of his powers, no
courtesy of life, no disrepute, no endangerment of
health, or possibly evaded criminality of law, will he
allow to abate his struggle for wealth.
The pride of another has been touched.  Social
caste has stung him  with its scorn.  From  such
exposure he resolves to escape at any cost.  If to
gain position in what is called' fashionable life," slavi;ng for wealth, hard study, and the severe practice
of accomplishments be necessary, time and effort will
be given to these. In many a school of culture, as
in many a place of business, will be found such aspirants. But if there be no taste or genius for accomplishments, cheaper methods will be adopted.  The
regalia of fashionable dress is put upon the body,
whatever offence be thus given to correct taste. The
furniture and appointments of home must be of latest
style; and old but well-kept furniture, rich in dear
associations of domestic life, must go to auction
rooms and there lose their history.  Worried with
th is strain after appearances, vain of whatever success




PERSONAL EHISTORY AND CHARAGTER.   237
is reached, puffed up with the admiring gaze of the
silly, by the buzz of talk they make in resorts where
fashion airs herself, and perhaps by the gossip of
tattling newspapers, fired with such an ambition,
breathing such an atmosphere, no living inspiration
of the gospel can reach them; and so they give all
the success to the Kingdom of Evil that froth and
frivolity can.
Political ambition, or professional, has inoculated
others with its virus.  To reach the heights of
power, or to be renowned in their calling, men have
sacrificed whatever stood in the way. If they aspired
to be at the head of the nation, to tread the halls of
congress, to hold office in state or county, however
high their ambition, or low, they are in contest for
power. They want elevation, perhaps for mere selfaggrandizement, perhaps to tyrannize over their fellows; for the love of power is congenial to the
natural heart; in a thousand, iouses there is tyranny
enough wasted, which, had it' oncentration, could
devastate the land with wars.
There are men of even balance, whom  no such
ambitions disturb.  Others, of such broad and clear
views of life, of such generous spirit and Christian
principle, that they are free free from the all-devouring
greed of personal ambition; others escape such peril
simply by being drones.  But large nunmbers are left,
who are filled with strong or weak ambitions.  These
put what powers they have to such stretch, nurse in
themselves such egoism, as to keep them aloof from
the gospel, and help the Kingdom of Evil to success.
3. Unsuccessful attempts at being religious. Few




238             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
men come to adult life without having made some
attempt at being religious. It may have been under
very unfavorable circumstances. Antecedent education may not have given them any true or well-defined
conception of the object to be reached. Indeed, so
confused are the minds of many, that they have no
intelligent notion of what it is to be religious; so
blinded are some, that, were they to become Christians, they would not know the fact, nor be able to
tell what had been done in its accomplishment; and
this confusion of thought helps the Kingdom of Evil.
Not knowing what is done in becoming religious,
they have no intelligent conception of the ways and
means of reaching that end; so that, however sincere
their purpose may be, their misapprehension of ways
and means is likely to bar thenm from  any desirable
result. Many undertake to be religious from fear of
consequences, or from pressure of a guilty conscience.
The attempt lacks consideration; is impulsive, and
likely to be misguided.  They do what they see
others do, yet without apprehending their inward
experience, and so fail in the chief thing. They have
the fears which trouble others, have the emotions of
guilt which others describe, and the purposes of
obedience which others express. Borne along in the
tide of feeling in which others participate, they are
willing to do many acts commonly regarded characteristically Christian. Their emotions of fear and
sorrow having subsided, as all emotions will, they
infer that their calmness, instead of being exhaustion,
is some rude form of peace and joy.  With others
they join the church; not that they would have thought




PERSONAL -IISTORiY AND CHARACTER.    239
of so doing from their own wants or felt attractions;
not to make good their professions; not to give proot
of their sincerity, and to put themselves in the way
of an earnest Christian life; but simply because others join the church; and because, being Christians,
they suppose that is the way to do.
Accepting the judgment of the church on the
doubtful question of their piety, they imagine they are
now to move smoothly on in the Christian way.
When the contests of the Christian warfare begin,
when they are set to the disruption of former habits
and mastery of favorite sins, they find that a human
will, even when strengthened by pride of consistency,
is too weak for control of sin. They give way to
former indulgences in evil, and show themselves to be
what all along they had been,- fast in their original
unconversion.  Whether they have gone so far as to
join the church, or had a less pronounced turn at
being religious, they give proof to others, and are
compelled at length to accept it themselves, that the
root of the matter is not in them.
Having passed through such an experience, some
are utterly discouraged, thinking that a Christia'l life
is beyond their reach; others have willingly wronged
their consciences, and are both sore and repugnant at
all approaches of the gospel; others feel that they
have made fools of themselves, and are determined
to guard against like exposure hereafter by keeping
wholly aloof from the gospel.  So they give bulk and
corresponding success to the Iingdom of Evil.
Were all men's biographies published, and the secret history of their hearts brought to light, perhaps




240             SUCCESS OP ETIL.
in every community would be found some who had
made a most unfortunate attempt in being religious.
By their failure they have placed themselves aloof
from Christian influence, in antagonism to the gospel;
perhaps have deliberately made up their minds never
again to attempt a religious life.  They have exhausted  their religious sensibility, blinded their
minds, deadened their consciences, hardened their
hearts, weakened the faith of others in respect to
them, and created a past whose historic influences turn
them away from the Christian path. To them, religion is either impracticable, a delusion, or a matter
of luck and chance, and they are not backward in
uttering their convictions.  Of the elements of success in the Kingdom of Evil, which the numbers and
influence of such are, every church is painfully
aware.
4. Early training in loose morality.  It is difficult
to determine where is the turning-point which practically settles a soul's destiny for salvation or ruin.
In general, it is, consciously and obviously, in the
experience of conversion, or in the soul's last rejection of God's offered mercy.  Ordinarily, it is when
a soul purposely relies on the mercy of God in Christ
Jesus, or chooses to take the risk of not doing so;
it is when a soul decides to be an obedient, or
an incorrigibly rebellious subject of God's moral
government.
But when that question consciously comes up for
settlement under the pressure of truth and the striving of God's Spirit, how it shall issue may practically have been determined long before, yea, in early




PERSONAL HISTORY AND GHARACTER.    241
life, in some conflict of the child with parental
authority.  How the mind will act under the pressure of religious obligation, how loyal it will be to
truth, how sensitive and authoritative conscience will
be, these are matters often settled in early life; and
when once settled, determine, at least go far to
settle, the action of the soul, when it takes up for
settlement, as a law of life, the question of loyalty
or disloyalty to God.
Let a child be trained into loose moralities, into
ways that violate conscience, that make his mind dishonest to truth, disloyal to obligation, and apart
from the evil habits thus begotten, which fence his
way of return to righteousness, his habits of mind,
the whole run of his moral nature contributes to the
success of the Kingdom of Evil.
When we look into the current life of children and
youth, see how many of them devoid of religious
culture are not held by their parents even to such
moralities as are necessary for the comfort of the
family; how imperious wilfulness, not yet tempered
by reason and reflection, sways them as passion or
pleasure dictates, and how loose are the moralities
into which they grow, we find painful augury that
the success to which the Kingdom  of Evil has
reached is likely to be continued in the next generation.
5. The power of habit. It is a familiar thing in
the experience of all adults, that they have fallen
into modes of thought, feeling, speech, and conduct
that are characteristic. The gait of some tell who
they are, when too distant to discern  the face.




242             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
Methods of thought reveal authorship. Tones and
inflections of voice, even out of natural pitch, reveal
the speaker in the dark. Moral conduct gets into
the same fixed and positive ways. Thus fashioned
and hardened under long experience in sin, this
rigidity of habit becomes almost an insuperable bar
to religious life. If overcome so far as to enter the
Christian way, how often is the young Christian
found running in the grooves of his former life. He
is not less pained than surprised at the oath which
his lips utter so instinctively, at the imperiousness
of his resents, and at the congeniality with which he
drops into his former habits of sin.
To one who knows the power of habit by any
attempt at revolution, it stands before him as one ot
the obstacles to entrance on a religious life that it
will require changes, to be opposed at every step by
the obstinacy of habit. The uncomfortableness of
disturbing these habits, doubts about success in it,
and the disrepute of failure, hold many a man fast
in the Kingdom of Evil. The longer he stays, every
added year gives greater rigidity to habits and environs him  more completely in their power, so that
this obstinacy of habit gives stability to the success
the Kingdom of Evil has gained.
6. Misapprehended or false testimony of church
members. Some who have made no attempt at
being religious, and so come to no failure in it,
have had an experience equally disastrous, though
not so destructive of personal integrity. They have
been deceived by the misapprehended or false testimony of church members. This testimony may have




PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHARACTER.    243
seemed false to their minds, merely because they
misapprehended its facts and spirit. All that was
said and done by the Christian witness, they have
not known. Its essential spirit and meaning they
have not caught. They have not submitted the testimony to cross-examination. What seemed unchristian and weakened their faith in religion, would have
had an entirely different aspect, could they have
known all about the facts, the witness, and especially
the inside of his life. Or the testimony may have
been positively false; given either by a hypocrite, or
by one who at length proves himself a real Christian,
though in the matter in hand acting  ignorantly,
under the bias of prejudice, or in a state of lamentable declension.  Wide extremes in moods and
frames of feeling, the sway of diverse principles,
entertainment of very different views, and exposure
to widely various influences, are common to all men.
From these the Christian is not exempt.  Such extremes are in human nature, in the run of life, and
religion does not immediately exclude them.
So both by the hypocrite and imperfect Christian,
sometimes by an entire church, wrongs have been
done, wrongs in the matter of reputation, requiring
the testimony of years of faithful living to secure
rectification; wrongs in the matter of property,
amounting sometimes to an oppression of the weak
and defenceless; wrongs that have despoiled the
widow of home and the fatherless of inheritance;
wrongs that have blasted  reputation, that have
crushed hopes, sacrificed virtue, separated husband
and wife, broken up families, and sent the injured to




244             SUCCESS OF EVIL.
a speedy grave. These wrongs have been committed
by those who stood representatives, perhaps public
advocates, of religion. And while their inflicted suffering continues, or even a remembrance of it, the
false dilemma in which the sufferers and their friends
have permitted themselves to be placed, is, - either
that religion allowed such things, or else is a delusion, in not having power to prevent them.
Such wrongs might be expected in a world where
ignorance and misconception, both of facts and motives, prevail, and where sin works so freely. And
the consequent misapprehensions we may expect in
the Kinlgdomn of Evil. And thousands there are today, whom the sufferance of such wrongs, real or
imaginary, has maddened against the Christian religion in a way beyond probable pacification. They
hold religion, its Sabbaths, its professors, its ministers, its worshipping assemblies, and its sacraments,
in fancied contempt and positive hatred. They have
barred all escape for themselves from the Kingdom
of Evil. Scarcely immoralities and foulest vices
could place them further from the Kingdom of Righteousness. That to the Kingdom of Evil such should
be an element of success is no matter of dispute or
surprise.
7. Then a large number are blinded as to the
nature and necessity of religion. There is no high
and grand theme, capable of taxing all highest powers of mind and touching all deepest feelings of
heart, to a true and full knowledge of which men
come by instinct and without study. Such a matter
is religion. And although to all sincere and rightly



PERSONAL HISTORY AAND CHARACTER.    245
acting minds intent upon being true to themselves
in the hirghest relations of life, the substant;al verities of religion are within reach, yet such minds are
few. By the many, religion is not understood in its
nature and necessity, because they give it no candid
and earnest study. Banishing from their minds the
infinite realities that are around them, looking not
upward to what is above them, nor forward to what
is before them, forgetting all highest relations and
deepest wants of the soul, they can, in ordinary conditions, live very comfortable lives without religion;
so they give it little thought and less study.
Upon few minds come not some shading of this
darkness. In its penumbra, if not in its densest
shadow, can be found men of high culture and
women of great brilliancy. This fact is a part of
sin's curse, - its cause in part. If the Kingdom of
Evil is to have success, here we might expect to
find one element of it.
It would confuse to detail all these facts of personal history and character which give success to the
Kingdom  of Evil.  By some evil companionship,
casually formed and soon ripened into maturity, one
and another is held fast in the Kingdom of Evil.
Manifold debasing pleasures, vast array of demoralizing art, floods of corrupting literature, - 0, the
world is full of the enginery of evil!
8. Mention will be made of one other fact of
personal character, - obstinacy of will. It is difficult for some men to get their own consent to any
change in their thoughts, feelings, plans, or conduct,
however urgent the reasons. They have no grace




246             suUCCESS OF EVI~L.
of pliancy. The cast-iron rigidity of their wills
holds them fast to the evil into which they first were
moulded.  Only by refusion and remoulding can
they be changed.  They hold on to a course, simply
because they have set their faces in. that direction,
even after they see the folly of it. A determination
once formed, they count as so much capital invested;
and if the speculation be clearly seen unprofitable,
they hold it as a matter of honesty with themselves
to carry it through and take the consequences. They
may as well be left to their course, for persuasion is
as vain as if expended on the law of gravity. Pity
they could not have been started right, then might
the world have seen the perfect steadfastness of uprightness.
But starting in the wrong way, their immovable
obstinacy gives stability to the Kingdom of Evil.
They came into that Kingdom  by inheritance; and
though far from its deep corruptions and wild fanaticisms, though living in the moralities that border
the.,adjacent Kingdom of Righteousness, they cannot
be induced either to abandon the Kingcdom of Evil,
or to enter more heartily into its spirit and design,
simply because they never permit themselves to be
persuaded out of their course. No one knows the
rigidity of an obstinate will, unless he has expended
all the arguments of the gospel, and all the tender
anxieties of a Christian heart, in the vain attempt to
turn such an one to Christ. In this he gets a meaning of the word impossible never before conceived.
Once converted, these men make their obstinacy of
will, somewhat softened, an element of strength in




PERSOVNAL HISTORY AND CHARACTER.    247
their Christian firmness.  Otherwise they are muniments of the Kingdom of Evil, giving stability to its
success.
Some obstacles or other, often more than one, hinder escape from the kingdom of Evil in the case of
vast multitudes. What thus hinders escape is a matter of such grave concern, that, judging from the
importance of the matter, every sinner would be supposed to know and fully appreciate what holds him
so resistlessly in subordination to the Kingdom of
Evil.  Seemingly, this he would find out, simply
from the curiosity every man is entitled to have concerning himself.  Yet the Kingdom of Evil is seldom
disturbed by any such investigations.
Some of these, or like hinderances, keep the vast
majority of men, hitherto, from being Christians. It
may be the enormous development of some appetite,
or lust; the dominant ascendency of some ambition,
as for riches, power, fashion, or pleasure; some unsuccessful attempt at being religious; early training
in loose morality; the power of habit; misapprehension of false testimony of church members; blindness
as to the nature and necessity of religion; obstinacy
of will, or other like obstacles not considered in this
chapter. Hinderances there are of great force, since
they hold men so firmly against reasons whose validity and importance they cannot deny.  There is'
ample warrant for that curiosity about themselves,
which shall lead them to find exactly and measure
accurately the obstacles that fence them into the
Kingdom of Evil, and out of the Kingdom of Christ
and its great salvation.




248             SUCCLSS OF EVIL.
These reasons, which keep men from  the way of
salvation, and the before considered elements of success in the Kingdom of Evil, awaken an inexpressible
sadness in every rightly-acting mind, only to be
deepened by others not taken into view. To combat
these reasons, when attempted, has been wholly incidental to their full presentation.  The aim has been
to study the facts of the condition, and to find, as best
we could, why the Kingdom of Evil, against reason,
revelation, conscience, all highest powers in man,
all deepest wants of the heart, and against best
welfare of society, has a success found nowhere else.
The reasons given, though no justification, show how
such success has come, and suggest some ways of
combating it.