CHRISTIANITY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM PRALL, S.T. D., PH. D 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, DETROIT, MICH. 
 
 NEW-YORK 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 1895 
 
 >
 
 Copyright, 1895, 
 
 by 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER.
 
 TO THE 
 
 KEY. JAMES EANKINE, D.D., 
 EECTOR OF THE DE LANCET DIVINITY SCHOOL, 
 
 GENEVA, N. Y., 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH AFFECTIONATE REGARD.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE following sermons, with one exception, 
 were written for and preached to my parishion- 
 ers in St. John's Church, Detroit. Some of them 
 have appeared in full or in part in the Church- 
 man, in the Detroit Free Press, and in other 
 journals. I have been asked so often for copies 
 that I have determined to put the sermons in 
 permanent shape and form. I do this for the 
 gratification of my parishioners, and also with 
 a hope that what I have said on the subjects 
 treated may incite others to speak on them. At 
 best I have only touched upon the hem of sev- 
 eral things. There is much more that can much 
 better be said on Civic Christianity. It does 
 not seem to me that it is necessary to mention 
 the sources whence I have gotten a phrase or an 
 idea; nor is it possible to do so. As these ser- 
 mons were prepared under constant pressure 
 of the administration of a parish, and without 
 thought, at the time of the preparation of the ma- 
 jority of them, of publication, the sources were
 
 vi PBEFACE. 
 
 not noted. I wish, however, to make an ac- 
 knowledgment to the Eev. Hugh Price Hughes, 
 of London, England, for some thoughts in my 
 sermon " Christ and the Multitudes." 
 
 W.P. 
 
 ST. JOHN'S KECTORY, DETROIT, 
 January, 1895.
 
 COKTEKTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE MARKS OP THE MESSIAH 1 
 
 II. CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES 20 
 
 III. THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES 34 
 
 IV. THE EDUCATION OP THE YOUNG 49 
 
 V. THE PREVENTION OP CRIME AND THE REFORMATION 
 
 OF CRIMINALS 69 
 
 VI. "COMMON HONESTY" 89 
 
 VII. THE SIN OP GOSSIP 106 
 
 VIII. GOOD CITIZENSHIP 120 
 
 IX. GOOD GOVERNMENT 137 
 
 X. THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE Low SALOON 157 
 
 XI. THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OP DIFFICULTIES 178 
 
 XII. No VISION, No PEOPLE , 192
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH.* 
 
 " Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again 
 those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their 
 sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
 hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 
 preached to them." MATT. xi. 4, 5. 
 
 THIS is the message that Jesus sent to John 
 when the Baptist sent his disciples to inquire 
 whether He were the Messiah or not. It seems 
 strange, at first sight, that John should have 
 made any inquiries of Jesus, in view of such 
 proof as he had had that Jesus was indeed the 
 Christ, the Son of God, on that day when Jesus 
 came to be baptized of him in Jordan; yet a 
 moment's reflection will show us that, simple as 
 the Baptist was in his views of life, it would be 
 but natural for him to expect another than Jesus 
 to come. He would naturally, I say, associate 
 the Messiah with the Israelitish dream of the 
 Messianic kingdom. It is true of us all, we are 
 
 * Preached before the graduating class of Hobart College, 1892. 
 
 1
 
 2 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 never far away from the thought of our times. 
 John's question, too, was that which can always 
 be asked always, I mean, with propriety. It 
 was the open question, "Art thou He that should 
 come, or do we look for another?" It showed 
 no prejudice. 
 
 And what were the proofs, the marks of the 
 Messiah, to which Jesus pointed 1 What things, 
 in other words, were they which distinguished 
 the new from the old Adam ? How simple they 
 are! Not some vague portents, not some as- 
 tounding wonders, not some esoteric doctrines, 
 but what? Some simple acts of mercy: "The 
 blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the 
 lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are 
 raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached 
 to them." These are all ; and yet, simple as they 
 are, what a difference do they mark between the 
 old and the new way of living ! How significant 
 are they of the whole history of Christianity! 
 The doing of good to poor, diseased humanity ; 
 the pointing to a life beyond the grave; the 
 showing to the toiling, suffering poor that the 
 good tidings of salvation are for them as well as 
 for the handful of rich and powerful who usurped 
 all the opportunities and possessions of life in
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. 3 
 
 the ancient world all this was to draw a line of 
 demarcation between unregenerate and regen- 
 erate humanity, between the classical and Chris- 
 tian civilizations, as clear as the line of the equa- 
 tor is drawn. And mark, just as, although the 
 line of the equator is drawn upon the earth, we 
 pass insensibly from one hemisphere to the other, 
 so do we pass imperceptibly from the old civil- 
 ization into the new. It is only gradually that 
 things change. 
 
 The answer of our Lord to the Baptist is two- 
 fold. He bids John's disciples tell him of His 
 works and of His words ; but His works and His 
 words were directed to one single end : the doing 
 of good to mankind, and especially to the un- 
 fortunate sons of men. Yet those who witnessed 
 the things that Jesus spoke of, i.e., His works 
 and His words of mercy, must have seen that His 
 miraculous powers were circumscribed in this 
 sphere of action. He did not make all the blind 
 to see, all the deaf to hear, all the lame to walk, 
 He did not cleanse all the lepers, He did not raise 
 all the dead, He did not preach the gospel to all 
 the poor : how can you account for this ? Why, 
 easily enough ! Jesus did not come to do all the 
 work of all humanity. He came to show man-
 
 4 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 kind the way to do the works of man for men. 
 He set us all our tasks to do. He started the 
 world along the way of a better civilization, but 
 He only started it. 
 
 Do you not perceive that what Christ did was 
 to change the centre of ethics ! Previous to His 
 coming the centre of ethics had been self; he 
 made it others. He sent self revolving around 
 others; others should no more revolve around 
 self. And just as when Copernicus discovered 
 that the centre of our system is not the earth, 
 but the sun, the earth did not stop, but went on 
 its way rejoicing, so was it when Christ changed 
 the centre of ethics. His followers have gone 
 along their way His way but oh, what a change 
 there has been in their conception of themselves, 
 of others ! It was but a simple thing that the 
 Messiah did ; yes, but see how far-reaching it is 
 in its results ; and it will reach ever farther and 
 farther, like the change from the Ptolemaic to 
 the Copernican system, down the avenues of 
 time into eternity, unto God. 
 
 And so we perceive that Christ, when He died, 
 finished His work, but He left work for all men 
 to do a work to humanize mankind ; that would 
 make it better, both actively and reflectively.
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. 5 
 
 For this is the perfection of the work done for 
 others: we help them, and we help ourselves in 
 helping them ; for we can do good to others only 
 through our love for them ; and the more we love 
 them the more are we possessed of love; the 
 more closely do we make ourselves resemble His 
 image, in which we were created. 
 
 My friends, have you ever fully perceived the 
 meaning of the summary that Christ made of the 
 law and the prophets ? I ask because I am only 
 just beginning to realize its meaning myself. 
 This summary that Christ made is as bold as it 
 i s transcendental. No mere human teacher would 
 ever have ventured to reduce all religion to two 
 simple statements ; and especially would no mere 
 human teacher have ventured to place man's duty 
 to love and to serve his fellows on an equality 
 with his duty to love and to serve his God. And 
 yet this is just what Christ did in His words, even 
 as He showed by His works. Aye, more ; He, as 
 the Son of God, showed men that the works of 
 God are the works of man. Was He not both 1 
 He showed us that to love God was to love man. 
 
 Listen to a resume of all the law and of all the 
 prophets: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
 
 6 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 all thy mind. This is the first and great com- 
 mandment. And the second is like unto it (of 
 like import), Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." You see, then, why it was that Jesus 
 points out to John's disciples that the blind see, 
 the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, and the 
 poor have the gospel preached to them. It was 
 necessary that men should see by Christ's example 
 who their neighbors are ; how it is that they should 
 love them. You see it all ! The second Adam, 
 the Messiah, showed John's disciples that his 
 gospel was not something simply for the cultured 
 and leisured a philosophy, a theology but that 
 it was a way of life for men ; the doing of acts of 
 mercy to the unfortunate, the showing unto the 
 poor of the world that God's love is over them 
 equally, as man's love should go out to them. 
 
 We perceive, then, why it is that the gospel 
 should be especially for the poor ; but let us ask 
 ourselves, What is poverty? I have in a mea- 
 sure answered the question ; but I think we can 
 give a technical answer by saying that poverty 
 is deprivation, and that it is synonymous with 
 human imperfection. Man, we must believe, 
 when he was created in God's image, was made 
 to be strong ; but when sin came, and the seeds
 
 THE MAEKS OF THE MESSIAH. 7 
 
 of death through sin, he became weak. To a 
 certain extent all men are poor, i.e., they are not 
 as strong as they ought to be ; but on this thought 
 I do not wish to dwell. By the side of those 
 whom, relatively, we call strong, there are the 
 positively weak ; and these, deprived as they are 
 of their relative powers, are poor. 
 
 You perceive what I mean : it is the blind and 
 the deaf and the lame and the diseased who are 
 in the first instance poor; and these it is who, 
 not being able to contend with the strong for 
 the possessions of the earth, become poorer and 
 poorer; who, unless they are relieved by the 
 strong, sink at last into misery; "the destruc- 
 tion of the poor" becomes in very deed "their 
 poverty." 
 
 Why, it is patent to all, the life of mankind 
 on the earth is a life of struggle with nature. 
 And this we perceive, not only when we look 
 into God's written records, but when we look 
 into the unwritten records of the rocks. "Re- 
 plenish the earth, and subdue it," was God's first 
 command to man. It is just in proportion as 
 man subdues the earth and wrests from it its 
 treasures, that he develops his strength, that he 
 becomes civilized, that he secures the necessary
 
 g CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 comforts of life. But all men are not equally 
 fitted for a struggle with the earth ; all men are 
 not equally fitted for a struggle with one another ; 
 all have not the gift of acquisition, and many 
 who have are too poor to obtain the opportunities 
 of exercising this gift. The strong in body and 
 in mind enter in, and they elbow out the weak. 
 Aye, so greedy are they that they scarcely leave 
 to the weak, the poor, the gleanings of the earth's 
 fair fields. It is true they often consent, after 
 they have obtained the lion's share of the good 
 things of the world, to make some short division 
 of their possessions to those who have not the 
 gift of acquisition ; but as a usual thing it is only 
 to those who minister to their comforts or to 
 their pride; it is rarely to the poor, except only 
 in so far as the love of God and of man con- 
 strains them. 
 
 And note, it is precisely on this account that 
 the laws of inheritance were made, i.e., that the 
 strong made rules to protect inheritance. In 
 case of their deaths, what would their weak 
 women and children do if they had to struggle 
 for existence! How soon would they be num- 
 bered among the poor! Now, there is enough 
 of the good things of the earth for all, and more
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. 9 
 
 than enough; but the strong take more than 
 their share aye, in many cases they take all 
 and the poor get only what is doled out to them, 
 or what the state, with its stronger hand, forces 
 the strong to give up by means of taxation. Do 
 not think that this is exaggeration. Look into 
 the history of the poor laws of England. We 
 are apt to think that these laws were passed be- 
 cause of kindness, of charity; but the truth is, 
 they were passed by the pressure of necessity. 
 After the monasteries had been sequestered, and 
 the common lands had been fenced in by the 
 strong, the weak would have died of starvation 
 unless these laws had been enacted. ,4^3 so 
 greatly had the strong oppressed the weak that 
 it was made a felony to appropriate the things 
 that nature provided on the earth the game and 
 the fish. The gleaning of the fields was unheard 
 of. The poor we shall always have with us, but 
 surely there is no necessity for the abject poor. 
 O beloved! have you ever stopped to think 
 what this word "poverty* means? I am not 
 speaking now of the poverty of respectability 
 though that is hard enough to bear but of the 
 poverty of wasted life ; of the failure of aspira- 
 tions; of degradation. Do you ever think that
 
 10 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 there are many who, weak in the power of ac- 
 quisition by reason of some physical or mental 
 infirmity, or weak through sickness or through 
 another's misfortune, have often energies that 
 might have been spent in making life beautiful, 
 which must be exerted in making it barely sup- 
 portable ; many who have capacities for pleasure 
 that would have sought rightful vent, which have 
 often been turned into the ways of wantonness? 
 I speak to you of want, of ignorance, of shame, 
 of crime. God only knows the temptations of 
 the poor. 
 
 And this this state of affairs seems to be a 
 component part of our boasted nineteenth-cen- 
 tury civilization. I was struck and you cannot 
 but be struck with the recent encyclical of the 
 Pope ; and I quote his words, because the Pope, 
 whatever may be the errors of the Eonian Church, 
 speaks for one half of Western Christendom: 
 I " All agree and there can be no question what- 
 ever that some remedy must be found, and 
 quickly found, for the misery and wretchedness 
 which press so heavily at this moment on the 
 large majority of the very poor. ... By degrees 
 it has come to pass that working-men have been 
 given over, isolated and defenseless, to the cal-
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. H 
 
 lousness of employers and the greed of unre- 
 strained competition. The evil has been in- 
 creased by rapacious usury. . . . And to this 
 must be added the custom of working by con- 
 tract, and the concentration of so many branches 
 of trade in the hands of a few individuals, so 
 that a small number of very rich men have been 
 able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke 
 little better than slavery itself." 
 
 But what are we going to do about this state 
 of affairs! "We cannot cure it by making poor 
 laws, we cannot regulate it by doling out food 
 and clothing; these means have been tried, and 
 have failed. Laws which would strike at the 
 bottom of the evil would be of use if they could 
 be put in force. The doling out of alms must be 
 resorted to in especial cases; but what are we 
 going to do about this state of affairs 1 
 
 First, however, let me say that it would be 
 impossible to understand Christ's work on earth 
 unless we perceived that He came not to do all 
 the work of humanity ; unless we perceived that 
 He came to show mankind what work it had to 
 do. You see what is meant: Christ laid down 
 general rules for the government of conduct ; but 
 these rules, though general, are applicable to each
 
 12 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 individual man. It is for the individually strong 
 men and women to act when there is wrong and 
 injustice done. It is for them to help and pro- 
 tect the individually weak. 
 
 But mark, I do not mean that the individu- 
 ally strong men and women should merely seek 
 out in the streets of their city some abject cases 
 of poverty and care for them, but that they should 
 have a care for all those with whom they come 
 in daily contact. And if all the individually 
 strong would do this the present state of affairs 
 would speedily change. We would have the poor 
 with us, but they would be only the poor of mis- 
 fortune or of ineradicable wickedness. The mis- 
 ery which presses so heavily upon the masses of 
 the poor would disappear like darkness at the 
 approach of light. 
 
 But how are we to set to work to remedy this 
 state of affairs? Well, in the first place, some- 
 thing can be done by legislation. Sanitary laws 
 can be enacted and enforced; the relations of 
 landlord and tenant can be revised and modified ; 
 the liquor traffic can be disciplined and regu- 
 lated; speculation in food can be prohibited; 
 traffic-rates can be equalized for all shippers; 
 taxation can be imposed on the unearned in-
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. l;j 
 
 crement in lauds but all these things will be 
 useless unless we get individual men and women 
 to consent that they are right ; unless we make 
 them, as individuals, to endeavor to carry them 
 into effect. 
 
 And thus we see that we must appeal to the 
 individual conscience. You see what I mean: 
 we must show men what it was that Christ did. 
 We must show them how He helped the individ- 
 uals who came to Him; how He changed the 
 centre of ethics, and made others, not self, the 
 pivot of His system of that system which all 
 men pronounce to be the greatest marvel of the 
 life of .the soul of man. And you will find that 
 men will generally agree to this, i.e., that altruism 
 and not egoism is the best rule of conduct. The 
 trouble will be to get them to practise it as a 
 rule, and not to regard it as a theory. 
 
 Ah ! my friends, do you not see ? Would to 
 God that all men would see that there is in pov- 
 erty an opportunity for the strong to do the work 
 of regeneration ; that the law of the new man is 
 the law of help to men, even as it is the law of 
 God ! Christ showed us this, but He showed us 
 more than this. He showed us that through the 
 working out of this great law the strong get a
 
 14 CIVIC CHKISTIANITY. 
 
 trainiiig in character that makes them like unto 
 God ! God does not care so much about specu- 
 lations about Himself. It is good to have a lib- 
 eral philosophy, a right theology; but our in- 
 tellectual grasp of truth apart from the fact that 
 God is, and that He is three Persons, has not 
 much to do with the development of our higher 
 life. What we should be is that which we be- 
 come in the practical works of mercy toward our 
 fellow-men. 
 
 Every institution that is founded to care for 
 the unfortunate is the work of Christ. It is 
 His gospel for the poor, preached practically. 
 Homes, hospitals, asylums, reformatories all 
 are products of a Christian civilization. We 
 must never forget that it was Christ's clergy, 
 who first established them. Though they have, 
 many of them, been divorced from the Church, 
 they flourish nowhere outside of the light of 
 Christ ; for all take their rise in the parable of 
 the good Samaritan in the life of Him who 
 went about doing good. 
 
 But these things are not sufficient. After all, 
 those who give to these institutions are but few 
 in number ; nor can the gifts of money compare 
 with the gift of service. Do we not perceive this
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. 15 
 
 in Christ! Indeed, many there are who give 
 money to purchase from their consciences an im- 
 munity from service. When will the strong 
 learn that it is 
 
 " Not what we give, but what we share 
 For the gift without the giver is bare " 
 
 that has stamped upon it the marks of the 
 Messiah, that is the only coin which will pass 
 current in His kingdom I 
 
 You see what I mean : you must take a real, 
 an active interest in the poor. You must make 
 them to feel that you do not treat them from an 
 arm's length; that you do not regard them as 
 inferiors, as recipients merely of your discarded 
 clothing and surplus wealth. Do not misunder- 
 stand me; I have the greatest admiration for 
 those who give willingly, for those who regard 
 their wealth as a bounty of God, and themselves 
 as His stewards ; but I say frankly, as I under- 
 stand the marks of the Messiah, to give money 
 alone is not sufficient ; it does not fill out the full 
 measure of the royal law. 
 
 My friends, do you not read the signs of the 
 times ! On all sides the toiling, struggling poor 
 make demands that the political economists, 
 when they settled their theory of capital, labor,
 
 16 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 and the wage fund, never dreamed of. Who 
 will say that the poor have not a right to the 
 things that they declare are necessary in order 
 that they may develop like men? Who is there 
 that does not hope that they may be advanced 
 all along the line of comfort, of culture, of Chris- 
 tianity? And the advance will come it must 
 come ; but how ? Surely not by the adoption of 
 any radical program -such as that of Karl Marx, 
 nor by the unfolding of any pusillanimous Utopia 
 j such as that of Edward Bellamy ; but by the re- 
 ' generation of the mass of the weak individual 
 men and women, through the personal help of the 
 strong, through the preaching' of the gospel by 
 deed as well as by word. Society cannot be re- 
 modeled by laws, unless, indeed, the laws are 
 written in the hearts of men. The laws of Moses 
 never really directed the actions of the Israelites ; 
 they were external to them and were written 
 upon stones. But the rules of Christ can direct 
 our actions, because they are internal to us and 
 are written upon our hearts, i.e., they are written 
 there if we honor and love Him as God and as 
 Man. 
 
 As Christian men, then, take hold of the real 
 questions of the day the social questions; a
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. 1J 
 
 hundred demand solution. They meet our eyes 
 in every newspaper, in every magazine. They 
 cry out to us from every mill and tenement and 
 saloon. There is the question of the rescue of 
 young children from premature toil and degrad- 
 ing surroundings. There is the question of their 
 education, physical, intellectual, moral, and re- 
 ligious. There is the question of the suppression 
 of the social vices of intemperance, gambling, 
 vagrancy, and another that need not be named. 
 There is the question of the relief of the unem- 
 ployed and of the scantily paid employed. There 
 is the whole great question of capital and labor, 
 interest and wages. There is a series of ques- 
 tions concerning the sanitary conditions of tene- 
 ments, of workshops ; of the securing of Sunday 
 and of shorter hours of labor to the poor. Then 
 there is a whole series of questions concerning 
 the reform of the primary meeting, of the caucus, 
 the ballot ; the suppression of bribery ; the secur- 
 ing of a good civil service and a fair judiciary. 
 And there are those most interesting and press- 
 ing questions of the prevention of crime and 
 the reformation of criminals. To these I might 
 add others for example, the treatment of the 
 insane, an equitable mode of taxation, the re-
 
 18 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 striction of immigration, and the like but I 
 forbear. 
 
 And these questions demand solution ; and for 
 their solution they demand study, devotion, and 
 service more than they do money. And they 
 demand these things, not so much in theory 
 (though theorizing is good in its way), but in 
 action. The questions demand that the indi- 
 vidually strong should do as Christ did do the 
 works of mercy for the individually poor of the 
 world. 
 
 And now a word of advice, of counsel, to you, 
 gentlemen of the graduating class of 1892 to 
 you who are about to begin the active work of 
 your lives. Remember that life is understood 
 only as you make others and not yourselves the 
 centre of your thoughts and deeds, even as it is 
 impossible to understand the universe through 
 the Ptolemaic, but only through the Copernican, 
 system; and every human soul is a microcosm, 
 reflecting the macrocosm. If you will do this 
 your lives (no matter what may be the amount 
 of success that the world will accord or withhold 
 from you) will be full and beautiful ; for you will 
 be in the guidance of the new Adam, and not 
 under the law of the old. And in His guidance
 
 THE MARKS OF THE MESSIAH. 19 
 
 you will attain unto something of the perfection 
 that all men recognize to be His. 
 
 But more than this : you will do much of the 
 work of humanity that remains to be done for 
 men. You will help to raise the tone of all so- 
 ciety. You will alleviate many of the dreadful 
 sufferings of mankind. You will become good 
 citizens good Christians ; you will be men.
 
 II. 
 
 CflKIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 
 
 " But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with com- 
 passion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered 
 abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith He unto His 
 disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are 
 few." MATT. ix. 36, 37. 
 
 THE subject of my discourse to-day is Jesus 
 Christ and the multitudes. How did Jesus, in 
 His walks through the cities of Judah and Gal- 
 ilee, act toward the multitudes the masses of 
 men? Let it be understood, first of all, that 
 Jesus Christ was Himself what is called a man 
 of the people a working-man. It must not be 
 understood thereby that He was boorish and un- 
 educated. (It is not necessary to think that any 
 working-man is.) The Jews ever gave great at- 
 tention to the education of the young. At an 
 early age Jesus was found in the temple holding 
 His own with the doctors of the law. We should 
 understand by " working-man " that the occupa- 
 tion of Jesus was that of a man who gains his 
 
 20
 
 CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 21 
 
 livelihood by the use of his hands ; that He was 
 by trade a carpenter. But we should understand 
 more: we should understand that Jesus lived 
 always with and among the people; that He 
 spent His life chiefly in a crowd, near to the 
 men and women of lowly degree. Again and 
 again do we read that the people " pressed upon 
 Him for to touch Him." We are told that " the 
 common people heard Him gladly." We are 
 asked, " Hath any of the rulers or of the Phar- 
 isees believed on Him!" He Himself spoke of 
 the fact of His preaching the gospel to the poor 
 as one of the great proofs of His Messiahship. 
 
 And so we read in the words of our text that 
 " when Jesus saw the multitudes, He was moved 
 with compassion on them." Indeed, it is a re- 
 markable fact that whenever Jesus came into 
 contact with the multitudes face to face, as 
 it were, with them He "had compassion on 
 them." It grieved Him then (it must grieve Him 
 now) to see how much they were left to them- 
 selves ; how much they were scattered abroad ; 
 how out of all touch with the higher classes they 
 were ; how out of all the calculation of the aris- 
 tocracy of the nation. "They were like sheep 
 having no shepherd." They were ready for the
 
 22 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 harvesting into the garner, the Church, but there 
 were no harvesters. 
 
 My friends, never in the history of the Church 
 has there been so great and splendid a promise 
 of a plenteous harvest of the multitudes as there 
 is to-day. Never has the demand been so great 
 for laborers for the harvest. The people the 
 fourth estate, as they were called by the old 
 French economists have now become the first 
 in power in all the enlightened countries of the 
 world. That power, indeed, which was once 
 lodged in a feudal nobility, and which from the 
 nobility passed to the great middle classes, has 
 at last, in the evolution of democracy, come into 
 the hands of the working masses. Democracy is 
 triumphant in America, in Australia, in France. 
 It is making itself to bo heard in Germany and 
 in the British Isles. Like a strong giant, the 
 people have aroused themselves from sleep ; they 
 will be heard ; and who shall withstand the cry 
 of their voice ? Labor, its rights and its wrongs, 
 labor associations and labor parties, meet our 
 eyes and claim our ears in all the publications, 
 from all the platforms of the day. It is true 
 that labor has met with many and sad reverses 
 in its efforts toward emancipation and success;
 
 CHKIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 23 
 
 but these reverses have taught the working-class 
 wholesome lessons, by means of which they have 
 profited so well that, firm, determined, confident, 
 they make their rightful claims to a larger share 
 in the marvelous productions of the age, and no 
 one dare say them nay. It is remarkable with 
 what dignity, sobriety, and fairness the delegates 
 of the labor associations and of the trades-unions 
 discuss their questions in all their conventions, 
 here and abroad. But still more remarkable is 
 the calmness and reasonableness of the news- 
 papers which discuss these labor gatherings. 
 The world is advancing: labor no more looks 
 upon capital as an enemy in itself ; capital sees 
 that labor cannot and does not want it destroyed. 
 We all see that what the masses want is an ad- 
 vance in culture, in education, in the benefits of 
 this most productive age ; and we are, most of 
 us, willing that they should have this advance, 
 for we recognize the justice of it. 
 
 But the question is, How are we going to act 
 toward this new power this new demand ! For 
 there is no use. hiding it from ourselves : socialism 
 in some form or other has come to stay. It has 
 challenged and it has secured the support of all 
 the great publicists and thinkers of the age.
 
 24 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Associations have been formed, or are in the 
 process of formation, on all sides to discuss this 
 great movement, to formulate it, to put its prac- 
 ticable demands in the way of being acted upon. 
 There will not be, in all probability, a general 
 union of production by the means which so- 
 cialists call " collective capital," nor will all rents 
 and interests be abolished; but the avenues of 
 trade and the great raw staples of food and 
 material will eventually be controlled, if not 
 owned, by the nation. Labor shall no more 
 envy capital and capital shall no more vex labor. 
 There shall come a time in the Church of God 
 when he that doth not work or hath not worked 
 shall not eat ! For God is a worker, and the 
 Son of God and of man is a worker ; who hath a 
 right to live in idleness ! 
 
 Do you not see oh that the working-class 
 might see ! that Jesus Christ is the best friend 
 that they ever had I We of the privileged class 
 may seem to forget this as much as we will, yet 
 there is ever a conscious feeling in our hearts 
 that Jesus was a carpenter, a man of the people ; 
 that He was "moved with compassion" when 
 He came face to face with them. And so when 
 the masses make demands upon us that we
 
 CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 25 
 
 should give up some of our cherished privileges, 
 and reproach us with the fact that though we 
 profess to be like Christ we are utterly unlike 
 Him, we yield; we yield with unwilling hearts, 
 it is true, but we yield we are yielding. My 
 friends, you do not read at all the signs of the 
 times if you do not see the immense strides that 
 the working-men have made are making in 
 power, in position, in dignity. 
 
 And it is just herein that there lies the differ- 
 ence between us and the classical world. The 
 old civilization, with all of its culture and re- 
 finement, failed in this and because of this : that 
 its politicians and thinkers had no compassion 
 on the multitudes. Athens was a democracy of 
 aristocracy ; the whole fabric of the state rested 
 on a mass of struggling, toiling men and women 
 who were bound in chains of slavery. The policy 
 of the Romans was either to flatter and bribe the 
 masses, or else to betray and kill them. Pagan- 
 ism, tied up as it was with slavery, could offer 
 no better way to deal with the multitudes. Let 
 me say right here and I speak out of the experi- 
 ence of two professions that the best excuse 
 that public men aye, and private men too 
 have for their distrust and fear of the common
 
 26 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 people is 'that they do not know them. Indeed, 
 this is, as I take it, the great calamity of the age : 
 v the people of wealth and refinement come too 
 little in contact, in touch, with the people of labor 
 and lowly degree. Why, humanity is humanity, 
 and there is but little difference between men 
 and men, or between women and women, wher- 
 ever you may find them, in whatsoever walks of 
 life. The words of Shylock in the play come to 
 my mind. He speaks of himself as a Jew. Let 
 us speak as he speaks of every and any man : 
 
 " Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, 
 organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? 
 fed with the same food, hurt with the same 
 weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by 
 the same means, warmed and cooled by the same 
 winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you 
 prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do 
 we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? 
 and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? If 
 we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you 
 in that." Alas ! alas ! too often has it been so ! 
 
 There is but little difference, I repeat, between 
 "all sorts and conditions of men," and though 
 wealth may have made a gulf of feeling between 
 the higher and lower classes, the step between
 
 CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 27 
 
 them in this life is a little one in fact, and is often 
 made in a few short years. Indeed, it is just 
 herein that we see the hollowness of the whole 
 thing. And this, as I have already said, is a 
 great calamity : the feeling of pride and vainglory 
 keeps the higher classes away from the masses ; 
 they know little about them, and, as a rule, they 
 do not want to know anything more. You may 
 say that my indictment is too sweeping; well, 
 how many of the common people do you, do 
 each of you, know I How many have you ever 
 called upon! I do not mean how many have 
 you ever visited to give them money and old 
 clothes, but how many have you ever called 
 upon in a neighborly, Christlike way? Not 
 very many, I imagine. Each section of society 
 in the United States desires to keep away from 
 every other section ; so all the joints of the social 
 fabric are open ; when the winds and the floods 
 come, great will be the destruction and the fall 
 thereof. 
 
 But how is it with the employers of labor? 
 Do they come into touch with their workmen ! 
 No, not at all. There was a time in the New 
 England and in the other villages of the land 
 when the employer knew all his "hands" by
 
 28 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 name and had a knowledge of their welfare ; but 
 the mills have grown to such colossal proportions 
 that the master now seems to know none. The 
 men come into contact with their employers on 
 Saturday night when they receive their weekly 
 wages through the window in the office, and 
 this is generally all. No wonder there is often 
 anger and suspicion between the one and the 
 other. 
 
 The classes do not know the masses, nor do 
 the masses know the classes. They do not know 
 how many men there are among the rich and the 
 powerful who regret the present state of affairs ; 
 who long to modify, if not to remedy, it. And 
 so it is that employers have erected libraries, 
 started insurance organizations, established in- 
 firmaries, etc. But all these things are but 
 makeshifts ; they do not stop the gap ; they but 
 bridge it over here and there. The masses will 
 never be contented until they come into actual 
 touch with their brothers of the classes. They 
 know that they are, many of them, brutalized 
 by constant labor, given over to drink and to 
 unholy ways of living ; they want to get out of 
 such ways; they want to walk in the light of 
 the life which they see, or think that they see,
 
 CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 29 
 
 in the paths of the cultured people. All men 
 must have teachers : " the common people heard 
 Christ gladly ; " they would hear us they would 
 gladly hear us too if we were more like Him 
 whom we profess to be our Master. 
 
 And we in our pride and selfishness, given 
 over to covetousness and vainglory surely they 
 could teach us, too, many a lesson of humility 
 and generosity, of contempt for riches and the 
 chief places, if we would but know them. They 
 could show us daily examples of Christ's doctrine 
 that " a man's life doth not consist in the abun- 
 dance of the things which he possesseth." 
 
 Mix, then, with the people; learn to love 
 them and they will learn to love you. If you 
 are a man and not a conventionality, you will 
 find humanity all that is best and excellent in 
 humanity under every roof. And this finding 
 of humanity will make you ashamed of your 
 pride and vainglory, and you will come out of 
 your mixing with the people with an enthusiasm 
 that will make your heart to swell and you your- 
 self to thank God that you too are a man. You 
 will have the joy that Jesus had when He healed 
 the multitudes, when He fed them, when He 
 preached the gospel to the poor. But when you
 
 30 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 mix with the multitudes do not act as if you 
 were a superior being, even though you may be 
 a messenger of God to them. Be not aware of 
 yourself at all; or, if you be aware of yourself, 
 think only that, but for the grace of God toward 
 you, you might have been occupying the lowly 
 place in the social scale that so many of your 
 brothers and sisters occupy. 
 
 One of the most striking features of the age is 
 the coming together of people in especial places 
 the great growth of cities. Here, huddled 
 and massed together on insufficient ground, the 
 masses are neglected; they pay more rent per 
 square foot in their squalor than the wealthiest 
 citizens do in their glory ; and it is the rent that 
 presses so heavily on the poor. Harassed by in- 
 cessant noise, bad air, and sickness, no wonder 
 they have not fine manners. Anxious by reason 
 of want of work, no wonder they just maintain 
 their heads above water. You may say that the 
 poor are improvident, but so are we all. It is 
 the exceptional man who secures and keeps se- 
 cure a competence who insures the well-being 
 of his family after death. But it is difficult for 
 the masses to be provident ; their wages are not 
 great, their work is often uncertain, their rents
 
 CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 31 
 
 are high, and so much of their savings must go to 
 eke out an existence in the " bad times," so much 
 is swallowed up in sickness, that it is almost 
 impossible for them to be provident, unless they 
 are exceptionally fortunate. I have had case 
 after case of distress come to me where sickness, 
 and not improvidence, was its cause. Sickness 
 leads to borrowing, and borrowing makes people 
 to go to the usurers, and these speedily sap all 
 the strength out of the households of the self- 
 respecting, and reduce them to the condition of 
 the helpless poor. 
 
 And then there is that miserable, mean way 
 that the "harpies" have of selling a piece of 
 furniture or a sewing-machine on instalments, 
 the payment of the instalment to depend upon 
 the continuous wages of the head of the house. 
 Alas ! how often is there a strike or a panic or 
 some accident or sickness, and the instalment is 
 not forthcoming, and so the "harpy" enters in 
 and takes away the article, and keeps also the 
 money that has already been paid, in forfeiture ! 
 Oh, the wretched men who "grind the faces of 
 the poor " ; who take from them cent per cent of 
 usury of all that they lend them ! Surely Grod 
 shall render to them some day the measure that
 
 32 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 they have meted. Surely He will not hold us 
 guiltless who suffer such things to be. And 
 how ignorant, how helpless are the people who 
 get into the clutches of these wretches, who, 
 knowing the law and of the ways of the law, 
 spread their traps for them, covering up all their 
 devices ! How can we blame the poor if they 
 lose courage, and, feeling in the bitterness of 
 their souls that their brothers have no care for 
 them, end by caring neither for man nor God ? 
 
 But of poverty in itself I have not wished to 
 speak so much to-day ; I wanted rather to draw 
 your attention to the great danger that there is 
 of a permanent misunderstanding between the 
 classes and the masses, and to point out to you 
 your duty as Christian men and women toward 
 this state of affairs. If each of you should ask 
 me, " What is my duty 1 " I must confess I could 
 not answer you in any detail; but what I can 
 and what I do advise you to do is to put your- 
 self in the place of Christ toward the "multi- 
 tudes" of your fellow-men. You profess that 
 you believe that He is the Word, and that " the 
 Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"; 
 believe, then, in the truth of the Incarnation 
 truly: that the Word dwells in the flesh of all
 
 CHRIST AND THE MULTITUDES. 33 
 
 men; that all men, therefore, are equal in the 
 sight of God ; that with Him there is no respect 
 of persons, that with us there should be none. 
 It all depends the whole of our conduct toward 
 the multitudes depends upon this question: 
 Are we occupying the position of Christ or not ! 
 And if we are we will do our duty without de- 
 lay; we will have no need of words of exhorta- 
 tion, no need of the reports of commissions, no 
 need of charity organizations, but we will mingle 
 with the masses as men with men, and the occa- 
 sion as it arises will show us what to do, and we 
 will do what the occasion requires, if we love 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. For 
 
 "... dearly, dearly hath He loved, 
 
 And we must love Him too, 
 And trust in His redeeming blood, 
 And try His work to do."
 
 III. 
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 
 
 "And the people sought Him, and came unto Him, and stayed 
 Him, that He should not depart from them." LUKE iv. 42. 
 
 IF there is any one fact that is apparent in 
 these days of the end of the nineteenth century 
 in regard to the state of our religion, it is that 
 the masses are not in the churches; that they 
 seem to be, if they are not actually, alienated 
 therefrom. 
 
 Run your eye along Woodward Avenue and 
 count the churches thereupon, and you must 
 see what I mean. The costliest, handsomest 
 churches in Detroit are spread out along this 
 great thoroughfare, or they are not far from 
 it in the parts of the city inhabited chiefly by 
 the rich. Of course you can find in the territory 
 to the right and to the left many church-build- 
 ings; but the chief ones are, as I have said, to 
 be found on Woodward Avenue or on Jefferson 
 Avenue or on Fort Street, or in their immediate 
 vicinities, in the quarters of the rich. 
 
 34
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 35 
 
 Now I do not mean to say that these churches 
 of the wealthy and cultured classes do not min- 
 ister to the lowly and simple people ; on the con- 
 trary, they do so in many ways, and in their mem- 
 bership many plain and unpretentious citizens 
 are to be found. But for the most part they 
 minister to the rich; do you not find this to 
 be so? 
 
 The mechanics and laboring classes in the 
 United States do not go often to church, except 
 as they go to the Eoman Catholic or to some of 
 the Episcopal churches in the largest cities. 
 Even the Methodist denomination, which once 
 held so many of them in its wide embrace, has 
 in some ways latterly lost its hold upon their 
 affections. The Salvation Army has tried to 
 take its place, but it has not altogether suc- 
 ceeded. As I know the plainer classes of men, 
 I know that they do not care for the sort of 
 Christianity which is propagated by the aid of 
 tambourines and cornets and the rest. But let 
 me say in passing, the Salvationists, I am sure, 
 do much good in arresting the attention of men 
 to the essential truths of Christianity. I know 
 that in the great cities like London and New 
 York the churches have sent their missionaries,
 
 36 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 clerical and lay, into the mean and squalid 
 quarters of the poorest of men, and that they 
 have done much good by such agencies as a 
 "Toynbee Hall" and an "Oxford House" and 
 an "East Side House" and a "College Settle- 
 ment"; but, after all, these agencies have not 
 brought back the masses into the fold of the 
 churches; rather have they served to illustrate 
 the truth that the lowest classes are not in them. 
 But I do not so much, to-day, speak of these 
 " sorts and conditions " of men as of the opera- 
 tives and mechanics. 
 
 Now there are two questions which arise in 
 our minds as we are confronted by this state of 
 affairs : first, How do we account for it 1 secondly, 
 What is to be done to remedy it I 
 
 Let us examine the reasons why this state of 
 affairs has come to pass. My belief is that it is 
 caused primarily by the alienation of the so- 
 called higher from the lower classes outside of 
 the churches, which is continued inside of them. 
 As a matter of fact, the separation of these two 
 classes of people has become so great that there 
 is no intercourse to-day between master and ser- 
 vant, employer and employee. There was a time 
 when the employer was but little removed from
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 37 
 
 his employees, and lived among them, knowing 
 most of them personally, able to call them by 
 their names. But it is not so now. The mas- 
 ter in the great business concerns knows none 
 of his servants, or, if he knows them, he knows 
 them simply as so many "hands" which are 
 adjusted to his machines. He lives, usually, 
 far removed from them. And besides, most of 
 the masters to-day are great corporations, of 
 which the stock is owned by a number of irre- 
 sponsible (so far as the operatives are concerned) 
 persons, who care only for dividends. And these 
 stockholders live anywhere and everywhere, 
 wherever their surroundings are most pleasant 
 to themselves. They are often utter strangers 
 to all the rest of those who are interested in the 
 concern, as well to other stockholders as to oper- 
 atives and mechanics. 
 
 Now it is the employer classes the rich 
 rather than the employees the poor who build 
 churches ; and they build them for themselves, 
 in the parts of the cities where they dwell. I 
 will do them justice : they often desire that the 
 masses shall come to their churches (though 
 sometimes they do not even desire this) ; lout it 
 is not to be supposed that they will. Separated
 
 38 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 as the two classes are on week-days in the actual 
 affairs of life, it is a logical outcome of this fact 
 that they will not come together on Sundays. I 
 am speaking now generally to men and women 
 who do not belong to the operative class. Put 
 the question to yourselves: If you should have 
 no intercourse with your richer neighbors during 
 the week would you feel like going to their places 
 of worship for an hour or two on Sundays? 
 " Ah yes ! but," you will say, " if you feel this 
 way, why do you not build churches and main- 
 tain them for yourselves ? " The answer is obvi- 
 ous : " It costs money a great deal of money 
 to build and to maintain churches; we really 
 cannot afford to do this. Even with the rich 
 the churches depend upon the few most wealthy 
 and generous to save them from bankruptcy." 
 " True," you will say, " but we furnish you with 
 mission chapels." " True, you do ; but they are 
 evidences that you, on your part, do not really 
 expect us to come to your churches. And these 
 chapels 1 Well, sometimes we have well-ordered 
 services and sermons that edify, but for the 
 most part of the time we do not. In religious 
 affairs we will be content only with the best." 
 Nor is this the only reason why the masses
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 39 
 
 are alienated from the churches; there is a rea- 
 son far more subtle and pernicious to the cause 
 of Christ. It is the division of Christendom into 
 so many denominations and sects. The minds 
 of the working-people, as a rule, are not prone 
 to fine and fine-spun distinctions. Occupied as 
 they are with earning their daily bread, they 
 have no time to make historical and philo- 
 sophical studies. They cannot help but ask 
 themselves why there are so many denomina- 
 tions bidding for their good will and support. 
 Perhaps they can understand the distinction be- 
 tween the papacy and the Protestant churches, 
 but outside of this I do not believe that there is 
 one in a thousand who knows the reason for the 
 Episcopal or the Presbyterian or the Methodist 
 Church. They say to the educated classes : "You 
 monopolize the churches. Heal your divisions, 
 and then come to us and we will hear you. If you 
 each think that your own way of living Christ's 
 life is the best way, that your own way of think- 
 ing about God is the right way, what is the use 
 of our bothering? You all cannot be right you 
 may all be wrong." And, let us confess it, there 
 is a great deal in this logic of the working popu- 
 lace to make us pause.
 
 40 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 You will notice that I have spoken of the 
 alienation of the masses from the churches, and 
 not from Christianity ; and I have done this in- 
 tentionally, for Christianity and the churches 
 are not identical. Christianity is the subject- 
 matter of the churches' teachings, and the rea- 
 son for their existence; but Christianity is big- 
 ger and broader and better than any church or 
 than all the churches together. One of the great- 
 est evils of the world is that one or another of 
 the churches has tried to monopolize Christian- 
 ity and to make it identical with itself ; but the 
 doctrines of Christ have burst their bounds as 
 perennially as the waters flow forth out of our 
 Great Lakes. If all the churches on the face of 
 the earth were one, Christianity might be said 
 to be identical with it, but not of necessity. If 
 that one church should err in any way it would 
 fall short of the doctrine of our Lord, and be less 
 than His Church. 
 
 The masses are not, I believe, alienated from 
 Christianity. Here and there there are groups 
 of men who, identifying Christianity with the 
 churches, and feeling themselves antagonistic to 
 them, aver that they are agnostics, atheists, in- 
 fidels, anarchists, or what you will. These men,
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 41 
 
 for the most part, are few. The vast majority 
 of the masses turn to Christ, and come to Him 
 and stay upon Him, and so they will do to the 
 end of time. They recognize Him to have been 
 a working-man, as they are themselves; a man 
 acquainted with grief, as they know they must 
 be ; a man upon whom the burden of life pressed 
 with terrific force. It is not the Christ of the 
 evangelists that they cannot love, the Christ who 
 came preaching the " gospel to the poor," whom 
 the common people heard gladly; but it is the 
 Christ of the churches, whom theology and phi- 
 losophy have explained away from the ordinary 
 affairs of life and made a mere abstraction ; 
 whom ecclesiasticism and traditionalism have 
 made a sort of show-figure, stiff with jewels and 
 embroidery. The common people will hear Christ 
 to-day as gladly as they did when He was here 
 on earth, when His preachers come to them, as 
 He came, in lowliness and in simplicity; when 
 His confessors live, as He told them to live, in 
 meekness and in mercy ; when we who are Chris- 
 tians cease to be hypocrites, deceiving ourselves 
 and seeking to deceive others. 
 
 And this we will cease to be when we give up 
 our idols of wealth and of success and of plea-
 
 42 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sure, and live as Christ lived on earth; offering 
 " ourselves our souls and bodies to be a rea- 
 sonable, holy, and living sacrifice" to God and 
 man for the sake of Christ, who saved us and 
 all mankind from the doom of sin. It was said 
 that the Roman augurs, when they examined 
 the entrails of birds to find some omen for doing 
 or not doing something, laughed one another in 
 the face. Frankly, I wonder that we who pro- 
 fess and call ourselves Christians do not often 
 do the same. The fact is that our whole system 
 of living is wrong. We build houses and set up 
 our domestic establishments with a single eye to 
 our own comfort and pleasure, and then we give 
 what is left over if anything is left of our 
 time and service and money to our neighbors; 
 whereas we ought to build our houses and regu- 
 late our lives from the beginning with two eyes 
 one directed to ourselves and our families, and 
 one to our neighbors and theirs; and our time 
 and service and money should be divided into 
 two equal parts. By the term " neighbor " here 
 I mean all the interests that are not our espe- 
 cial interests : the city, the State, and the affairs 
 of men generally religious, moral, intellectual, 
 social. I ask you, Would it not be a nobler way
 
 THE ALIENATION OP THE MASSES. 43 
 
 of living? Would not men all men be hap- 
 pier! Would not all the divisions of Christen- 
 dom, social, political, and ecclesiastical, be shortly 
 put in the way of being healed 1 
 
 And this brings me to the point. The unity 
 of Christendom should not be simply a unity of 
 feeling, but a unity in fact. We must have feel- 
 ing to lead to a union between the churches, but 
 this feeling is not the fact itself. Indeed, there 
 is, as there has always been, a sort of unity in 
 Christendom a unity which has existed in spite 
 of schisms ; a unity of feeling which is founded 
 in a common belief in Christ rather than in 
 Buddha or in Mohammed. And this unity iy 
 real. It is what is called Christian unity apart 
 from church unity. And this unity of feeling 
 has been the safeguard of Christendom. It is 
 manifest in the family, on the street, on the 
 platform, in all the daily concerns of life. The 
 leaders of Christian thought and practice, no 
 matter to what especial church or denomination 
 they may belong, are all animated by the con- 
 viction that Christian morality and belief must 
 be maintained. But with this unity the masses 
 are not content. As they have not much time 
 to think, and to arrange the picture-puzzle that
 
 44 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 has been disarranged by profane hands, they 
 become impatient with all the blocks, and ask 
 that they may be destroyed. These blocks have 
 become veritable stumbling-blocks in their way. 
 Again, the masses have (since the demos has 
 become the ruling power) but little patience 
 with historical impedimenta. Good illustrations 
 of this impatience are seen in the opposition 
 of the people to the House of Lords in Great 
 Britain and to the Senate in the United States, 
 both of which, as at present constituted, have 
 become obsolete, and will have to "go by the 
 board." 
 
 So in the churches the masses care nothing for 
 the old quarrels which started the Presbyterians 
 off at a tangent at Westminster, or made the In- 
 dependents to come to New England to set up 
 their shibboleths. They know that a bishop to- 
 day is not a bugaboo, and they know, too, that 
 he has not, as he ought not to have, any power 
 in civil affairs but that which comes of influence 
 and persuasion to good. On the other hand, 
 they know that the Prayer-book is only good 
 for something as it expresses the hearty desires 
 and aspirations of the people now, and that it is 
 nonsense to make its use obligatory at 'all times,
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 45 
 
 upon all classes and conditions of men. And 
 so of vested choirs and all other ritual obser- 
 vances of whatsoever kind : they are not of the 
 essence of things, and should not be imposed 
 upon people as divine because they were used 
 in the early or in the medieval church. I do not 
 believe that the masses have lost respect and 
 veneration for the ordinances established by the 
 Son of God and of man. He is, as He has always 
 manifested Himself to be, the friend of the peo- 
 ple. They feel that He desires to wash away 
 the sins of the lowliest, that He wills to give His 
 Body and Blood to the poorest. Their great 
 fear is that the professed followers of Christ are 
 not as generous-minded as their Master. 
 
 Again, if there were a church unity the masses 
 feel that there would be churches built for the 
 masses ; that they would not be planted generally 
 in the best quarters of the town, neither would 
 they have the air of "clubs." The American 
 people especially want to feel that the things 
 they use belong to them. I am convinced that 
 a great central church, built on a site where peo- 
 ple most do congregate, with wide-open doors 
 and daily prayers, with a large seating-space, 
 yet with broad aisles, free to all, would, if built
 
 40 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 by Christians of all churches and denominations, 
 and maintained by them with dignity and order, 
 have more to .do with reconciling the masses to 
 the Church of !hrist than any one other thing 
 than many days passed in the discussion of 
 differences, than many hundredweights of pub- 
 lished arguments, advocating divers overtures 
 and platforms. It would be a visible presen- 
 tation of the fact of unity. And in this great 
 church the preaching should be done by the best 
 men of all kinds and orders, clerical and lay, 
 who are believers in the divinity of Christ. 
 
 Ah ! my friends, you will say I have pictured 
 for you an ideal; yet surely not an ideal that 
 cannot be realized. If you have the will to 
 help, if others will have a like will, this ideal 
 could be put into shape and form in a few short 
 years. Think of the wonderful ideal of the peo- 
 ple's aspirations toward beauty and utility that 
 was presented in the " White City " ; and though 
 it has passed away like the great walls and 
 towers of some mighty city of the clouds, it yet 
 remains a fact in the memory of men. But the 
 ideal of which I have spoken the ideal of spirit- 
 uality and religion is not to be built in lath 
 and plaster, but in iron and stone ; and it is to
 
 THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES. 47 
 
 stand as a common House of the hearts and souls 
 of men forever, the witness of our united belief 
 in our one common Master, Jesus the Christ. 
 
 And some such thing as this, my friends, must 
 be done. The classes must be united, even as the 
 separated sects of the Church of Christ must be. 
 Humanity is on its last great trial. One by one 
 it has called forth its reserve forces. First it 
 was the king, then the aristocracy, then the 
 middle classes, that held the reins of power. 
 Now the masses rule. Christianity is the veri- 
 table salt and light of the world ; without it there 
 could have been no moral development of civil- 
 ization, perhaps no development at all. With 
 the loss of it humanity will retrograde and fall 
 back into barbarism. It was the lack of moral 
 standards that was the cause of the disintegra- 
 tion of the ancient empires of the world. We 
 have therefore a duty to perform. We must 
 bring the masses back into the churches into 
 the Church of Christ ; for the Church, and noth- 
 ing less, is the teacher of the doctrines of our 
 Lord. It is to it, and to nothing less, that He 
 has given power to conquer the evils of the 
 world. 
 
 And we can bring the masses into the Church,
 
 48 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I am sure, if we will do two things namely, 
 close up the gap between the classes and the 
 masses, and unite the dissevered sects of Chris- 
 tendom. The work is herculean, but by God's 
 help it cannot fail. Our Lord Himself has said 
 that the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
 His Church ; much less, then, shall the weakness 
 and wickedness of men.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. 
 
 "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard 
 shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion and 
 the failing together; and a little child shall lead them." ISA. 
 xi. 6. 
 
 THEKE is a passage in Professor Drmnmond's 
 " Ascent of Man " which is so expressive of the 
 power and value of childhood that I could not 
 but consider it to be inspired were it not that 
 he evidently had in mind, when he wrote it, the 
 prophecy that I have quoted from the Book of 
 Isaiah. It reads : " Love, then, is no necessary 
 ingredient of the sex relation ; it is not the out- 
 growth of passion. Love is love, and has always 
 been love, and has never been anything lower. 
 Whence, then, came it ? If neither the husband 
 nor the wife bestowed this gift upon the world, 
 who did? It was a little child. Till this ap- 
 peared man's affection was non-existent, woman's 
 was frozen. The man did not love the woman, 
 the woman did not love the man. But one day 
 
 49
 
 50 CIVIC CHEISTIANITY. 
 
 from its mother's very heart, from a shrine which 
 her husb*and never visited nor knew was there, 
 which she herself dared scarce acknowledge, a 
 child drew forth the first fresh bud of a love 
 which was not passion, a love which was not 
 selfish, a love which was an incense from its 
 Maker, and whose fragrance from that hour 
 went forth to sanctify the world." 
 
 And this statement experience confirms. All 
 experience, I say, confirms the fact that the lit- 
 tle child is the great embodiment of the summum 
 bonum of the world; that it is the chief means 
 of its propagation; that it is the best way for 
 the exercise of its power. I have not time, with- 
 the objective points I have in mind, to show you 
 how necessary it was that love in its fullness 
 should come into the world as a little child; 
 how imperative it was that that child should be 
 born of a virgin without taint of passion. I 
 have done this on another occasion. 
 
 First, I desire to draw your attention to the 
 fact that childhood is the glory of Christendom ; 
 that it alone has made peace between the con- 
 flicting feelings and interests of men; that it 
 alone has modified and softened the harshness 
 of the hearts of our rough progenitors, as they
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. 51 
 
 perceived in each child the image of God, who 
 was made flesh, and who came as a little child 
 into the world. 
 
 Secondly, I desire to show you how great is 
 the obligation that rests upon us to protect and 
 educate little children. That this obligation is 
 a primary one we have always known; but I 
 think we have never appreciated the magnitude 
 of it until we learned to see that childhood is the 
 flower of our race, and, since Christ was born, 
 that the education of children is the distinguish- 
 ing mark of civilization. 
 
 Thirdly, and chiefly, I desire to study with you 
 the best ways of protecting and educating little 
 children. But before proceeding to a particular 
 examination of the best ways and methods of 
 protecting and educating children, let me call 
 your attention to the two great laws which gov- 
 ern all growth, and especially the growth of the 
 life of mankind; namely, the law of heredity 
 and the law of environment. Among all the 
 laws that have come into prominence during 
 the past half-century, none is more important 
 than that of heredity. It was, to be sure, recog- 
 nized as a factor in the life of men in all ages ; 
 but just to what degree it was a factor was never
 
 52 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ascertained until recently. It was strange, too, 
 that no one thought of examining the law of 
 heredity scientifically. Many of the Greek trag- 
 edies were founded upon it, and it was promul- 
 gated with terrific emphasis from Sinai in the 
 second commandment of God : " I the Lord thy 
 God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of 
 the fathers upon the children unto the third and 
 fourth generation of -them that hate Me; and 
 showing mercy unto thousands of them that love 
 Me, and keep My commandments." It is evolu- 
 tion that has brought the law of heredity into 
 so great prominence; for evolution works by 
 two factors, namely, by heredity by the things 
 which tend to permanence and by environment 
 by the things which conduce to variation. The 
 characteristic of heredity may be stated in this 
 way: that it produces the past; the character- 
 istic of environment, that it adapts the past to 
 new conditions. 
 
 Now the question arises, Is heredity an irre- 
 sistible force? Must that which is potential in 
 life manifest itself ! And we answer, No, not al- 
 ways; the traits that are hereditary can always 
 be modified; they can often be changed. But 
 there are certain general physical and mental
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. 53 
 
 traits which cannot be changed. For example, 
 a negro will always be a negro, but a Hottentot 
 may be a savage or a Christian gentleman ; and 
 the means of modifying his traits is environ- 
 ment or education. It has been supposed until 
 recently that heredity is always a stronger fac- 
 tor than environment; and this was supposed 
 because, within the limitations I have noted, 
 heredity is the stronger, and therefore appeared 
 to be always dominant; but closer examination 
 of the phenomena of life has shown that, out- 
 side of these limitations, environment is the 
 stronger. Had it not been so there could have 
 been no progress; and progress is the way, the 
 mode of life, of the world. 
 
 Man is a creature of mixed natural biases; 
 there are in him things which tend to good and 
 things which tend to evil. The law of heredity, 
 as science interprets it, avers that there is a ten- 
 dency in the evil as well as in the good to per- 
 petuate itself; and so the great question arises, 
 Can hereditary good be protected and preserved, 
 and hereditary evil be modified and changed! 
 Let us look at some of the evidence on this 
 question. Dugdale, who has written a history 
 of the Jukes family a family of criminals of
 
 54 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 several generations says that "when the organ- 
 ization is not structurally modified (as in idiocy or 
 insanity) or organically weak, and where conduct 
 depends on knowledge of moral obligation, envi- 
 ronment is stronger than heredity." And to the 
 same effect spoke Mr. William M. F. Eound in 
 the Forum for September, 1893. " I have," says 
 he, " seen repeatedly the most virtuous children 
 of the most vicious parents; and, on the other 
 hand, I have known the children of the most 
 virtuous parents to turn out the most hardened 
 criminals and the most troublesome social sub- 
 jects to deal with. . . . Physical conditions likely 
 to promote criminality aside, I believe that the 
 child of the thief, apart from his environment 
 and possible training, starts well-nigh as fairly 
 in the race of life as the child of the average 
 citizen. It is environment and training, not 
 heredity, that give the most favorable condition 
 for the development of the criminal impulse." 
 
 And if for the development of the criminal 
 impulse, why not for the moral ? And this testi- 
 mony of Dugdale and of Eound is confirmed by 
 experience. The Elmira Eeformatory was estab- 
 lished in New York State some eighteen years 
 ago, to take charge of the boys and young men
 
 THE EDUCATION OP THE YOUNG. 55 
 
 who were adjudged to be bad. Its reports show 
 that more than eighty percent, of the young men 
 who were turned out, after an education in things 
 mental, moral, and physical, have become good. 
 And to the same effect is the testimony of the 
 Christian Brothers of Manchester, who have 
 taken upon themselves to reform the street 
 Arabs of that great manufacturing city. They 
 gather up the young, then they form them into 
 boys' brigades, and then they put them in their 
 reformatories and educate them. And they re- 
 port that eighty-seven percent, of these poor, 
 degraded children have been reformed and made 
 into useful, respectable men. And who will tell 
 of the loving labors of the late Charles Loring 
 Brace, of New York, and of good Dr. Barnardo, 
 of London, in rescuing the waifs and strays of 
 these great cities from sin and sickness, and re- 
 forming them into the images of God ! 
 
 But I did not desire to speak upon this, the 
 reforming side of education. I have brought 
 these facts to your minds so that you could see 
 and know its mighty, godlike power. I wish to 
 speak with you upon the best ways and methods 
 of protecting and educating children in general. 
 But before doing this, let me make a resume of
 
 56 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 what I have already said : that the little child is 
 the greatest thing in the world, and that though 
 heredity counts for much in its life, outside of 
 certain traits, education is stronger than it. It 
 is not necessary, I am sure, to point out that the 
 proper time for education is during childhood. 
 
 I cannot enter upon a thorough discussion of 
 all the ways and methods of education ; I have 
 not the time. I have only time to point out to 
 you the lines that it should follow. And it is 
 these lines that we should get into our minds ; 
 for if we do so, all other things as to ways and 
 methods will fall logically into their places in a 
 natural sequence. There is in a child a body 
 and there is a mind, and there are also moral 
 possibilities and religious aspirations. The body 
 and the mind are self-evident ; moral possibilities 
 and religious aspirations are evident only be- 
 cause we have discovered them in ourselves and 
 have heard of them in others. The intellectual 
 apparatus the mind of the child has for many 
 generations received great attention; its moral 
 nature has received some, and so have its re- 
 ligious aspirations; but its physical framework 
 has been completely ignored. Let us look first 
 at this. But before so doing, let me speak to
 
 THE EDUCATION OP THE YOUNG. 57 
 
 you of the horror of our modern industrial sys- 
 tem; of the employment (I ought to say en- 
 slavement) of children in our great stores and 
 factories. When we think of the health and 
 preservation of society alone we ought to de- 
 clare that such a thing ought not to be; and 
 when we think of the dignity and worth of 
 childhood itself we ought to determine that such 
 a thing shall not be. How can the boys and the 
 girls who are set to work at a tender age learn 
 to become and to be intelligent members of the 
 great American commonwealth ! How can they 
 become the strong fathers and mothers of virile 
 offspring? The ignorance and the sickliness of 
 the poor children who grow up in shops and 
 mills and mines are proverbial; and to know 
 that little children who ought to be free to enjoy 
 the bounty of our, and their, Father in heaven 
 are shut up in some big, grimy, oily mill, or 
 poked down in some deep, dark, dingy mine, is 
 enough to make the heart sick. 
 
 I know that it is said (and the saying is, alas ! 
 often true) that it is necessary at times that chil- 
 dren should work, to support their invalided 
 fathers and widowed mothers ; but it ought not 
 to be necessary ; society should find some other
 
 58 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 way to relieve misfortune some way of insur- 
 ance and the like. All the world agrees that 
 part of " pure religion and undefiled before God 
 and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction " ; it agrees to this, at 
 least in theory. It needs but the strong deter- 
 mination of some big-hearted men to make the 
 theory a reality. Anyway, no girl under sixteen 
 and no boy under fifteen should be permitted to 
 work for daily wages. Child labor should be 
 abolished in favor of child education. And at 
 whatever age the young begin to work, it should 
 be always under certain limitations and restric- 
 tions. 
 
 It seems strange that so little has been done 
 to teach the child how to use its bodily frame. 
 For the body of the man, if we may trust the 
 conclusion of the scientific philosophers, is one 
 of the great terminal points in the evolution of 
 nature one, that is, of its greatest works ; yet 
 we, for the most part, regard the body as a 
 mere case for the mind. That it is something 
 far greater it is not necessary to set forth by 
 anatomical detail. Surely if it were not the 
 greatest work of nature the "Word of God would 
 never have been made flesh and dwelt among
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE- YOUNG. 59 
 
 us ! And see how the Word treated the body 
 that is, how He educated it. It is a simple story, 
 simply told. "Is not," it was asked of Him " is 
 not this the carpenter ! " " Is not this the car- 
 penter's son ! " Jesus Christ learned a trade ; He 
 learned to use His hands, the most wonderful 
 pieces of mechanism known to all creation ; the 
 things that distinguish man above all other forms 
 of life, backed as he is by the mighty brain. 
 
 But what do we do for our children ? Do we 
 teach them how to use their hands how to 
 work at a trade? Not often; we teach the girl 
 children sometimes how to sew, and occasion- 
 ally how to do housework, and that not always 
 in the best and most approved ways. The boys, 
 if they are of the wealthy or middle classes, are 
 not taught anything of manual labor, nor are 
 the poor boys taught much thereof. Here and 
 there, in New York and Philadelphia and Bos- 
 ton, trade and working-men's schools have been 
 established. Chicago is about to fall in line, and 
 Indianapolis has done so; but Detroit, beset so 
 much by sentimental charity, bereft so much of 
 practical, has an Industrial School where some 
 modeling and some carving were once taught, 
 but which is, for the most part (or was until
 
 (JO CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 recently), simply a school for indigent children. 
 The Young Men's Christian Association has made 
 a small beginning of a class in manual educa- 
 tion. But the great scheme that was put forth 
 a few years ago to establish a technical school in 
 our city has fallen through. What is the matter 
 with the men and the women of Detroit f "Why 
 will they not stop and think? Trade-schools 
 are the greatest desiderata of the day; and one 
 such school, well equipped, would do more good 
 for the oncoming generation than a hundred re- 
 formatory institutions ; and this, as I have shown, 
 the reformatory institutions demonstrate beyond 
 cavil. The kindergartens make a beginning of 
 teaching children how to use their hands, and 
 our Industrial School has done much to advo- 
 cate and to assist in the establishment of these 
 most useful beginnings of a better system of 
 education; but the kindergartens only make a 
 beginning. It is high time that the public author- 
 ities took them up and added them to the edu- 
 cational curriculum of the city on one end, and 
 at the same time technical schools on the other. 
 But do not let me be understood as advocating 
 manual training simply for the poor for those 
 who must perforce earn their living by their
 
 THE EDUCATION OP THE YOtNG. (Jl 
 
 hands; I advocate it for all the youth of the 
 land. And for two reasons : 
 
 First, because truth and fact can nowhere be 
 learned so easily as in making something that is 
 correct in the concrete; and truth and fact are 
 the bases of morality. It has been ascertained 
 by a clergyman of our church who has inter- 
 ested himself in this great question that whereas 
 many of the graduates of the common schools 
 have been convicted of crime and sent to the 
 penitentiaries, comparatively few of the gradu- 
 ates of the trade-schools have become criminals. 
 
 And some most remarkable testimony has 
 come to me since writing the above, in the Jan- 
 uary number of the Review of Reviews. In an 
 article on the Industrial Christian Alliance of 
 New York, Mr. Millbury, the founder and man- 
 ager of the same, says, speaking of the drift of 
 human debris that comes to the net of the associ- 
 ation for salvation : " Careful individual records 
 are kept, showing : First, that foreigners or sons 
 of foreigners do not predominate. Second, that 
 few men apply for help who have learned a trade ; 
 the prolonged discipline a boy receives in learn- 
 ing a trade compels regular habits, which be- 
 come a bulwark against shiftlessness and the
 
 gO CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 evils that attend it. Third, that the men who 
 demand most deserve least. Fourth, that boys 
 born in the slums become toughs or criminals, 
 but outcast beggars rarely ; their boyhood's fierce 
 fight for existence develops self-reliance. Fifth, 
 that a sorrowfully large proportion have begun 
 life brilliantly, with every advantage of birth 
 and education." 
 
 Secondly, because if all the youth of the land 
 were educated in manual labor there would be a 
 closeness of touch, and consequently a rapproche- 
 ment and more of sympathy, between all sorts 
 and conditions of men ; and labor would be dig- 
 nified. The dread of work that soils the hands 
 and clothing would disappear, and a school of 
 American workmen would arise that would be at 
 once the honor and the safeguard of the nation. 
 How can manual labor appear other than dis- 
 graceful to the rich, when only those who can- 
 not escape it are forced into the ranks of the 
 working-men? Not that manual labor is dis- 
 graceful; but it is disgraceful that young men 
 who are forced to work with their hands are put 
 so often to school in the employment of some 
 rough master, where they receive but little else 
 than kicks and " a pull " now and then at " the
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. 63 
 
 growler," and learn their trade as best they can. 
 No wonder that so many of our workmen receive 
 as much cursing as coin. 
 
 Of the education of the mind it is not neces- 
 sary to speak. Most of the States of the Union 
 have been zealous in developing their systems of 
 mental education; Michigan stands in the very 
 front rank of them, and on the top of her excel- 
 lent common schools is placed the admirable Uni- 
 versity of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, with its hun- 
 dreds of devoted professors and its thousands of 
 hard-working, enthusiastic students. But while 
 we congratulate ourselves on the common schools 
 and the State universities of the land, we must 
 remember that for the most part they help only 
 to create a nimbleness of mind ; and nimbleness 
 of mind means nimbleness in the acquisition of 
 wealth the great idol of the American people. 
 Far more is done for the education of the well- 
 to-do in the higher branches of knowledge than 
 for the education of the masses of the country 
 in the few underlying facts and truths of educa- 
 tion. Indeed, while room is always made for 
 the young in the high schools and universities, 
 they are crowded out by the thousands from 
 the primary schools, and they never have a suf-
 
 64 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ficient number of instructors in the rudiments of 
 knowledge. 
 
 But I must pass on to the moral and religious 
 education of the young to the things that con- 
 cern the preservation as well as the well-being 
 of society. Where do children get their training 
 in morality and religion? At home, of course, 
 some training is given in morals and some in re- 
 ligion, but not much. Children are commanded 
 not to lie, and they are taught "to say their 
 prayers"; and that about sums up the training 
 they receive at home in the greatest things of life. 
 Morality is left for the day-schools to teach, and 
 religion for the Sunday-schools. 
 
 I want, in this connection, to point out to you 
 something that is working great harm to the 
 children of the country, and yet for which no 
 adequate remedy can at present be found. I 
 have reference to the shutting out of religion 
 from the public schools. I cannot enter upon a 
 full discussion of the reasons why this thing has 
 been done, except to say, even as you know, that 
 the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church 
 some thirty years ago averred that the religion 
 taught in the public schools was not fair to their 
 claims, and that the teaching of Christianity by
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. (J5 
 
 public-school teachers ought therefore to cease. 
 "We are a part of the nation," they said; "we 
 pay our share of the taxes; it is not right that 
 instruction should be given in religion in such 
 ways that it hurts us." And the American peo- 
 ple are just; they said, "Well, if this is so, in- 
 struction in religion must cease in our public 
 schools." And so religion the thing of chiefest 
 importance to men is left out of all the hours 
 of teaching during the week, and is crowded into 
 a single hour on Sunday. We do our best in 
 the hour given us ; but how poor our best is is 
 attested by every honest Sunday-school publica- 
 tion in the land. They publish confession after 
 confession of shortcoming and defeat. 
 
 But how about morality! Cannot morality 
 be taught in the public schools ? Not very well. 
 It is a dangerous thing to attempt to teach chil- 
 dren the best ways of living by teaching them a 
 few abstract principles. There must be a prac- 
 tical, a concrete example of morality placed be- 
 fore them, or they will learn only by the intel- 
 lect; and morality is a matter of the heart. 
 And this teaching of morality by example is 
 only in line with the best methods of instruction 
 in other things. Drawing is no more taught by
 
 66 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 saying to a child, " Draw an imaginary straight 
 line; draw so many imaginary curves." It is 
 taught from geometrical blocks and casts. And 
 so botany is not taught to-day by saying that 
 the flowers have such and such stamens, petals, 
 and the rest, but by pointing to the flower, and 
 showing its parts and their utility and function. 
 And if morality is to be taught by example, 
 where shall we go for an example ? To Buddha ? 
 I have a great affection for the " light of India," 
 but I refuse to go for my morality to a man who 
 went away and left his wife and children. Shall 
 I go to Socrates? I like the shaggy old man, 
 but he was a vulgar citizen at the best, and just 
 before his death commanded Crito not to forget 
 the cock he had vowed to ^sculapius. No, no ; 
 we can go nowhere but to Jesus the Christ, and 
 this leads us to religion. 
 
 I claim that morality cannot be taught with- 
 out recourse to religion; without pointing out 
 to scholars that its great rules rest always upon 
 religious sanctions ; and I was astonished, in the 
 course of some reading, to discover that Dr. Felix 
 Adler, of the Society for Ethical Culture, took 
 the same view of the indissoluble association of 
 these two great things. In a note to an article
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG. 67 
 
 written by himself in the Ethical Eecord for 
 July, 1889, he says : " I have confined myself in 
 the above to speaking of moral instruction. Re- 
 ligious instruction is also given in our classes. 
 It consists chiefly of the study of the best spirit- 
 ual literature, ancient and modern, including, of 
 course, the choicest passages from the Old and 
 New Testaments. But it should be remembered 
 that Plato at one end of the line and Emerson 
 at the other are as important in their way as 
 Isaiah and St. Paul. I believe that a first-hand 
 acquaintance with the best spiritual literature of 
 the world is indispensable to a genuine spiritual 
 culture. A series of lectures to the oldest pupils 
 on the practical philosophy of life is designed to 
 conclude a system of religious teaching." And 
 it is precisely to this same effect that Professor 
 George Herbert Palmer wrote in the Forum for 
 January, 1893. I shall not quote from that arti- 
 cle at length ; it is sufficient to say that he main- 
 tains by the most cogent reasoning that not 
 morality, but only ethics can be taught in the 
 public schools ; and to attempt to teach children 
 ethics which is theory without practice 
 which is morality is, says he, " dangerous busi- 
 ness," and has " but the slenderest chance of sue-
 
 6g CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cess." " The idea that a boy's mora education 
 can be fashioned by his teacher in the same way 
 as his education in geography is fantastic." 
 
 My friends, do we not know that children are, 
 above all things, religious? The faith of the 
 little child is proverbial. What a sin it is, then, 
 to keep from them the knowledge of the things 
 that make up so much of their happiness; that 
 cause to spring up in their hearts an apprecia- 
 tion of the greatness and of the glory of the 
 kingdom of heaven! What a shame it is not 
 to teach little children the truths that will make 
 them, as men, to desire to be as children are to 
 be, that is, in a state wherein they feel that they 
 are beloved of, and that they love, their God ! 
 
 And this is the wonder of childhood : all that 
 we teach little children we teach ourselves. They 
 learn and we learn many a lesson, many a task, 
 many an aspiration; but, above all, they learn 
 and we learn love as a fact ; and when it is once 
 so learned it can never be lost, but must inevi- 
 tably transform us and all our nature more and 
 more into the image of Him who came into the 
 world as a little child.
 
 V. 
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME AND THE EEFORMATION 
 OF CRIMINALS.* 
 
 "I was in prison, and ye came unto Me." MATT. xxv. 36. 
 
 I WISH to speak to you to-day upon some ques- 
 tions of penology the reasons why we should 
 interest ourselves in ascertaining, and putting 
 into effect, the best methods that will secure 
 the best results in the prevention of crime and 
 the reformation of criminals. It will be well, 
 perhaps, before entering particularly into our 
 subject, to call to mind the Christian principle 
 which underlies the duty of visiting prisoners 
 and seeking to do them good. 
 
 Christ, as you know, is the Son of man, or, as 
 we may say, the Son of humanity ; and therefore 
 He is part of, and one with, every man that has 
 lived, or does live, or shall ever live in the world. 
 You see, as He is one with God, He is one with 
 all mankind; and so it is that in the great and 
 
 * Preached October, 1893. 
 69
 
 70 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 terrible day when the Son of man shall come 
 with all His holy angels, He identifies Himself 
 with each man that has ever lived. He says to 
 the assembled nations, as He separates the good 
 from the bad, the approved from, the unap- 
 proved: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, in- 
 herit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
 foundation of the world : for I was a hungered, 
 and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye 
 gave Me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took 
 Me in : naked, and ye clothed Me : I was sick, 
 and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came 
 unto Me." 
 
 You perceive that Christ identifies Himself 
 here with every hungry and thirsty and starving 
 and naked and sick man, with every prisoner, 
 who shall ever have been in the world. Ah, 
 wonderful condescension ! How it should teach 
 us to care for, to provide for, to work for, the 
 unfortunate sons of man ! And mark, I do not 
 speak of the rewards that shall be given to those 
 who shall care and provide and work for Christ 
 in the ways He has pointed out. I wish to draw 
 your attention now to the reason why we should 
 do these things, as the principle is laid down 
 in our religion. It is because Jesus Christ our
 
 PKEVENTION OF CEIME. 71 
 
 Saviour has said, " Inasmuch as ye have done it 
 unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye 
 have done it unto Me." 
 
 But there are other reasons (though this is the 
 best, and, as best, sufficient) why we should inter- 
 est ourselves in questions of penology. There 
 is the humanitarian reason. There is the eco- 
 nomic reason. There is the reason that springs 
 out of the necessity of self-preservation and the 
 welfare of society. 
 
 The humanitarian reason is mixed up, of 
 course, with our religion, and will scarcely be 
 disassociated from the teaching of Christ; that 
 is, we learn to love humanity only as we have 
 seen that we ought to do so after the precept 
 and example of the Master of life. Still, men 
 have endeavored to arouse an enthusiasm for 
 erring humanity apart from, the teaching of 
 Christ; and we will let this enthusiasm pass 
 without any discussion of the fact that without 
 Christ's teaching they never would have been 
 able to do so. 
 
 There is a human reason why men should be 
 interested in the reformation of the life and 
 characters of other men ; it is this : because they 
 believe at the bottom of their souls that all men
 
 72 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 are brothers, and, as the Greek poet puts it, "the 
 offspring of God." They believe this out of their 
 inner consciousness, and they are convinced of it 
 through the wonderful story of heredity. Just 
 think of it ! "When we count up we find that in 
 the twentieth generation back of us we have a 
 million of ancestors; and the twentieth genera- 
 tion means simply going back to the twelfth or 
 thirteenth century. .Admitting that when ex- 
 amined critically this computation will be shorn 
 of its proportions by reason of consanguineous 
 marriages, the fact remains that every human 
 being has had within recent times a multitude of 
 ancestors. And when we carry the story back 
 to the beginning of the Christian era, when the 
 world was small and men but few in number, we 
 must see that we all have running in our veins 
 the same blood. Men are brothers in fact as well 
 as in feeling, and the old question that was asked 
 by Cain in the dawn of history is answered now 
 by the affirmation of all we are our brothers' 
 keepers. 
 
 The second reason why we should interest 
 ourselves in the best ways for the reformation 
 of criminals is, as I said, the economic one. 
 "Man," as says Aristotle, "is a social being,"
 
 PREVENTION OF CRIME. 73 
 
 and he must live in a society. He does live in 
 a society. He has really no place in the world 
 outside of society. The society in which man 
 lives is the state. We call the state in North 
 America the United States, but it is a different 
 thing. The United States is the government; 
 the state is the government, the land, the in- 
 habitants, their multitudinous relationships the 
 one to the other, the general social well-being, 
 the particular individual social welfare. 
 
 The state is a whole the whole of all the 
 distinct and separate things and people around 
 and about which its shield is thrown ; and, as it 
 is made up of living men and women and chil- 
 dren, it has life in it ; and, as it has life, it is not 
 an aggregation, but an organism. Now there is 
 such a thing as the general well-being of the 
 state a general health and vitality ; and in this 
 general health and vitality all who are parts of 
 the state should rejoice and participate. 
 
 But suppose there are some parts of the state 
 that are weak and diseased: what then? The 
 general health of the state will suffer, and in the 
 decline of the general health all its members will 
 suffer together. It is as clear as the results of 
 addition and subtraction. But there is another,
 
 74 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 a subreason growing out of the fact that the 
 state is a whole and we but parts of it why 
 we should interest ourselves in the reformation 
 of criminals the reason that touches our pock- 
 ets. It costs an immense amount of money to 
 maintain a strong force of police, sheriffs, and 
 jurors, innumerable police courts, great hotel- 
 like prisons. I shall not resort to statistics; but 
 the cost of all these things, as assessed upon the 
 counties or the state at large, is enormous. How 
 much less it would cost to educate the criminal 
 or the would-become criminal so that he would 
 learn to do good and eschew evil I leave to the 
 statisticians; but you can easily calculate for 
 yourselves that it would be much less. 
 
 The third reason, as I have said, why we 
 should do what we can to prevent crime and to 
 reform criminals springs out of the necessity 
 for self-preservation and the general social well- 
 being. 
 
 I do not think it too much to say that what 
 men desire chiefly is peace the right and privi- 
 lege of living quietly and peacefully in their 
 respective stations without fear of wrong and 
 harm ; and to secure this they know that society 
 must be wholesome and sound. But how can
 
 PREVENTION OF CRIME. 75 
 
 society be wholesome and sound when there is 
 a large criminal class, and a still larger number 
 of men and women bordering upon it, ready to 
 tumble in, ready to break up the basis of society 
 the great number of lowly and simple people 
 upon whom the social pyramid rests I How can 
 society be wholesome and sound when through 
 it all there are men and women who, but for 
 social reasons, would be sent to school to learn 
 by compulsion to live righteously, since they 
 will not learn to do so by their own perverted 
 wills ? Said Mr. William M. F. Eound, secretary 
 of the National Prison Association, in the Forum 
 for September last : " No man has a right to com- 
 plain if burglars enter his second-story windows 
 or blow up his bank safe, or if he be garroted in 
 the street or his name forged to a check, who has 
 not taken his part as a citizen in eradicating 
 this dangerous class." And I say no man has a 
 right to complain if his family, if he himself, is 
 tainted and made bad, who tolerates and covers 
 up the wicked acts and deeds of his associates 
 because they are important in the social world. 
 
 But what is crime in what does it consist? 
 Is it wrong thinking ? No ; though this is un- 
 doubtedly the basis of it. Is it all wrong-doing ?
 
 76 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 No. It is wrong-doing that the state takes cog- 
 nizance of. All offenses punishable by law are 
 criminal. In the general sense that is, in the 
 sense in which I now use it crime includes 
 every offense, from the highest to the lowest, in 
 the grade of offenses both those that are called 
 misdemeanors and those that are called felonies. 
 As a rule, let me say that the laws that define 
 what crimes are are exact. Most crimes are de- 
 fined by statutes, though there are some that are 
 not; these are called crimes under the common 
 law that is, under the law generally recognized 
 in England, and which has continued to be rec- 
 ognized in the United States. 
 
 I am not going into an enumeration of crimes ; 
 it is sufficient to say that the state (and by the 
 state I mean now both the general government 
 of the nation and the especial governments of 
 the individual States) says to its citizens, "Thou 
 shalt not do this, thou shalt do that " for both 
 to do and not to do some things sometimes are 
 criminal ; and the state says, " If you do this, if 
 you do not do that, you shall be punished." 
 
 Let me say that I have no time to-day to speak 
 of criminal procedure that is, of how the law in 
 regard to crime is administered, and especially
 
 PREVENTION OF CEIME. 77 
 
 of how it ought to be administered. We all 
 know we who know anything about it that 
 our present criminal procedure is slow, lax, and 
 inexact; full of loopholes by which the guilty 
 may escape, full of pitfalls into which the inno- 
 cent may stumble. I would like to raise my 
 voice, " trumpet-tongued," demanding a refor- 
 mation of the whole machinery of criminal pro- 
 cedure ; but I must confine myself to my topic : 
 the prevention of crime and the reformation of 
 criminals. Let me say, however, in passing, that 
 the only hope and stay of the community to-day 
 in reference to criminal procedure is the just 
 and upright judge such an one as he* who 
 lately entered into the rest that rernaineth for 
 the people of God. 
 
 Now, when we regard the state and the topic 
 of crime, two questions arise in our minds : first, 
 For what end does the state declare certain acts 
 of commission or of omission to be criminal? 
 and, secondly, Why, if such acts be done or left 
 undone, does the state punish ? The state, as I 
 have said, stands for the well-being of its mem- 
 bers, i.e., its chiefest duty is to see that its mem- 
 
 * The late Hon. George Sedgwick Swift, sometime junior war- 
 den of St. John's Church, Detroit.
 
 78 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 bers have life, peace, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness. All things, therefore, that interfere with 
 these great liberties upon the part of all must be 
 suppressed. And if the question arises upon the 
 part of the individual, "Can I not do as I please 
 with mine own ! " the answer comes, " No ; you 
 can only so use your own as not to hurt an- 
 other." Hurt is here meant in relation to the 
 things the state has declared to be criminal. We 
 are not speaking of morals; yet be it observed 
 that all crimes are based upon moral precepts 
 as their ultimate sanctions. The state, then, de- 
 clares certain acts to be criminal in order to 
 protect society, i.e., men in relation to them- 
 selves and to the state. Yet let me say that 
 though the state says, " Thou shalt not do this, 
 thou shalt do that," the best exponent of the 
 end for which the state exists is not criminal 
 law. Criminal law is in reality a contrary of 
 the exponent. The exponent of the end is found 
 in two words, according as you look at the 
 state from a legal or from a religious stand- 
 point justice, righteousness. And so it is that 
 the state says to her members in the first in- 
 stance, " Live honestly ; " and to live honestly, as 
 says the old Eoman law, is "to hurt no one,
 
 PREVENTION OF CRIME. 79 
 
 and to give each his due." Honeste vivere, nem- 
 inem Icedere, suum cuique tribuere. 
 
 We have seen that the end for which the 
 state exists is the well-being of all its members, 
 and that this is best promoted by the justice 
 and righteousness of all law; then criminal 
 law should be such as will best promote justice 
 and righteousness. Should criminal law, there- 
 fore, be vindictive 1 No ; a thousand times, no ! 
 What should it be, then? It should be rectify- 
 ing, remedial that by which justice and right- 
 eousness shall be promoted ; and by justice I do 
 not mean exact justice, but conformity to right ; 
 and by righteousness I mean that conduct that 
 seeks the highest ideal of living. 
 
 Punishment for crime, then, must, in my 
 opinion, keep justice and righteousness immedi- 
 ately in view ; and to secure these things the ad- 
 judged criminal must not simply be punished; 
 his conscience must be educated he must be 
 made to see the wrongfulness of his deeds, and 
 to try in the future to amend his way of living. 
 He must be made to endeavor to restore what he 
 can to the wronged, and so to regulate his con- 
 duct as to become better and better, until right- 
 eousness is attained. In other words, criminal
 
 gO CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 law should have as its ultimate object remaking 
 and not punishment, though punishment, be it 
 observed, is to be used as a means to secure this 
 object. 
 
 And now let me say a word as to preven- 
 tion of crime; for prevention and reformation 
 are often identical, not in the beginning of the 
 career of a criminal, but after some crime has 
 been committed. How can crimes be prevented 1 
 There are, generally speaking, but two ways: 
 by shutting a criminal up and keeping him 
 from the society of men, or by educating him 
 teaching him the heinotisness of wrong-doing, 
 and putting in his heart the desire and the de- 
 termination to do that which is right. 
 
 Let me divide the topic : 
 
 1. As to the prevention of crime before the 
 man (or the woman or child) has been adjudged 
 a criminal. 
 
 2. As to keeping a criminal shut up and apart 
 from society, and so preventing crime. 
 
 3. As to the reformation of a criminal gener- 
 ally, and so preventing him from committing 
 criminal acts in the future. 
 
 1. As to the first head of my topic, let me say, 
 I believe that all men can be so educated as to
 
 PREVENTION OF CRIME. gl 
 
 hate crime and to keep from it. And I believe 
 that we should educate them your sons and 
 mine, and our neighbor's so that they will flee 
 from the very appearance of evil, like as Lot 
 fled from Sodom. And I believe that it is edu- 
 cation in justice and righteousness that makes 
 us to avoid wrong-doing, rather than hereditary 
 tendencies to goodness. We who are of the edu- 
 cated classes are supposed to inherit our virtues, 
 but it is not so ; we are educated in them and up 
 to them. Says Mr. Eound in another place in 
 the article I have cited: "I wish to put myself 
 on record, after a study of the criminal, and 
 contrary to my previous utterances, as going 
 squarely back to the doctrine of FREE WILL as 
 laid down by our fathers ; and I wish to be un-> 
 derstood distinctly and squarely to hold the doc- 
 trine of moral responsibility as applying to every 
 sane individual; at the same time making all 
 allowances for such physical conditions as may 
 weaken the will, and in some cases destroy it. 
 I do not believe for one moment that crime is 
 a disease, nor by any necessity the result of a 
 disease, though I do believe that it may be the 
 result of disease in some instances. I do not 
 believe that crime and disease are identical, and
 
 82 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I am almost afraid of the analogy between them, 
 lest humanity's heritage of Freedom of the Will 
 be misunderstood." 
 
 The will is free; this God's revelation has 
 taught us, even as the observations of men 
 teach. I cite, in further confirmation of this 
 great principle, the words of Mr. Israel C. Jones, 
 from an article in the New York Observer. Mr. 
 Jones was for many years in charge of the House 
 of Refuge on Randall's Island, New York. "I 
 am able, after an experience of more than forty 
 years with nearly twenty thousand juvenile de- 
 linquents, to indorse Mr. Round's views touch- 
 ing the power of heredity in criminals as a pre- 
 disposing cause to crime. Among this large 
 number of young offenders I can state with 
 entire confidence that not one percent, were 
 children born of criminal parents; and with 
 equal confidence I am able to say that the com- 
 mon cause of their delinquency was found in 
 bad parental training, in bad companionship, 
 and in a lack of wholesome restraint from evil 
 associations and influences. It was this know- 
 ledge that led to the establishing of the House 
 of Refuge nearly three quarters of a century 
 ago."
 
 PEEVENTION OF CKIME. 83 
 
 You see, then, how much responsibility rests 
 upon you upon you and each of you who 
 have brought children into the world; the pre- 
 vention of crime in the first instance is in the 
 hands of parents. They must educate, train, 
 their children in justice and righteousness from 
 generation to generation. And what they neg- 
 lect to do the state must do for them. 
 
 2. As to the second head of niy topic I want 
 to say that I believe that there are certain classes 
 of criminals that should always be incarcerated 
 and kept from preying upon society. There are 
 some so hardened through neglect of their edu- 
 cation that they seem to have lost the power, if 
 not the desire, to do better. And there are some 
 so weak of mind that they have never had a 
 proper desire to do well. It seems to me that 
 the state should in these cases enact a law that, 
 when a man has twice been sentenced for a major 
 crime, or thrice for a petty one, he should be 
 imprisoned for the rest of his life. Again, there 
 are some crimes for which a criminal should be 
 incarcerated for life without hope of pardon, 
 and kept away from the homes of men to wit, 
 murder, arson, and rape. Pardon in these cases 
 should be extended only where new evidence has
 
 84 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 been discovered, and there has been a failure of 
 justice. 
 
 3. As to the reformation of criminals gener- 
 ally, and so preventing them from committing 
 criminal acts in the future, let me say that I 
 have anticipated myself somewhat by showing 
 you that men can be educated so as to have 
 no desire and no will to commit criminal acts, 
 though I admit that experience shows that there 
 are a few who are exceptions to this broad rule. 
 Leaving the exceptions out of consideration, I 
 say that men can be so educated as not to desire 
 to commit crimes; and that when occasionally 
 they lapse into evil, they can be so educated as 
 not to commit crimes again. It is a difficult 
 task to do this after a man has entered the crim- 
 inal class, but it can be done. And this is the 
 objective point of my discourse. 
 
 The States' prisons should not be mere houses 
 of detention, but should be schools not volun- 
 tary, but compulsory schools where the men 
 and the women and the children who have been 
 adjudged to be criminals should be educated, re- 
 formed, by men and women of broad and tender 
 sympathies, and thus lifted out of the class of 
 criminals and made respectable members of soci-
 
 PREVENTION OF CRIME. 5 
 
 ety. The only question for the state for us who 
 are parts of it is, What are the best methods to 
 be employed? I cannot enter fully upon what 
 are the best methods, and discuss them here; I 
 must leave this topic to the men who have made 
 scientific and experimental studies in penology ; 
 but this I can say for upon this all who have 
 given any attention to this great subject have 
 agreed that no adjudged criminal should be sen- 
 tenced for a definite term, but for an indefinite 
 time, the same not to be longer than the longest 
 term permitted by the law for the crime. And I 
 aver that no criminals, except those who belong 
 to the second class I have spoken of, should be 
 incarcerated in a prison, but in a school or re- 
 formatory where they can be taught as speedily 
 as possible the things that make for justice and 
 righteousness, and the things that will enable 
 them to earn a livelihood in some legitimate 
 way; and that as soon as they shall have been 
 taught these things and have given assurance of 
 their reformation, they should be permitted to 
 go forth into the world. I would not have them 
 go forth, however, without some check. They 
 should be released on parole ; and then when the 
 time of parole is ended, be freed forever from
 
 8(J CIV 7 IC CHKISTIANITY. 
 
 all control, unless, indeed, they should commit 
 some crime again. 
 
 Of the means that should be employed in the 
 education of criminals I have no time to speak. 
 If you are interested, send to the Elrnira Re- 
 formatory in the State of New York, and the 
 authorities will send you books and papers that 
 will make your hearts burn with gratitude for 
 the many means that -Christian men have dis- 
 covered to accomplish this end. And the El- 
 mira Reformatory has not been in existence 
 quite seventeen years ; Harvard College has been 
 doing its work for nearly two centuries. 
 
 The Elmira Reformatory was established by a 
 law passed in the year 1875. The main idea is 
 this : When a prisoner shall be adjudged to be a 
 criminal, the court shall sentence him for a time 
 not longer than the longest term fixed as the 
 penalty for the act, and not shorter than the 
 shortest term. The prisoner shall then be com- 
 mitted to the Reformatory at Elmira. Here, 
 after inquiries and examinations made by the 
 superintendent, he is placed in the second or 
 intermediate grade, and it depends upon him- 
 self whether he goes up to the first or down to 
 the third. He is made to understand the rules
 
 PREVENTION OF CRIME. 87 
 
 of behavior, lie is assigned to the class in school 
 fitted to his capacity, and he is put into the 
 workshop that is best adapted to him. He is 
 informed of the maximum time for which he 
 can be detained, and that he can, by perfect con- 
 duct in all three lines of effort, win his release 
 in one year. And this is the great incentive to 
 reform. Constant watch is kept, of course, and 
 the prisoner finds it hard to play false. As he 
 usually begins by trying to do so, he goes rapidly 
 from one grade to another, until at last he set- 
 tles down and gains the highest grade fairly. 
 But to do so is not easy ; he has to be perfect in 
 three things labor, school, and conduct. If he 
 remains perfect in the first grade for six months 
 he may then, in the discretion of the manager, 
 be sent out on parole. But he is not released on 
 parole until a place is found for him. If the 
 paroled continues to behave himself for six 
 months he receives his final discharge; if he 
 backslides he is rearrested and brought back, 
 and must begin over again. The Elmira Refor- 
 matory reports that eighty percent, of its in- 
 mates have gone forth regenerated. 
 
 One word more, and I have done. There is a 
 decision of one of the courts of this State that a
 
 88 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 provision in the constitution of Michigan pre- 
 vents a judge from sentencing a criminal for an 
 indefinite length of time. At the last meeting 
 of the Michigan Political Science Association a 
 committee was appointed (of which I am glad to 
 say I am a member) to petition the legislature to 
 go to work to secure a change in the constitution 
 and laws of the State, so that the courts may 
 sentence criminals for an indefinite time. I ask 
 you, if you are interested in the prevention of 
 crime and the reformation of criminals that is 
 to say, if you are alive to the obligations of 
 your citizenship to do all you can to help to 
 secure this change; to endeavor to abolish the 
 old methods that have prevailed in our prisons, 
 that make them schools, not of virtue, but of 
 iniquity!
 
 VI. 
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 
 
 " A false balance is abomination to the Lord : but a just weight 
 is His delight." PROV. xi. 1. 
 
 SOME time ago the late Mr. Froude, the Eng- 
 lish historian, brought a remarkable indictment 
 against his country, of which the following is the 
 first count: "From the great house in the City 
 of London to the village grocer, the commercial 
 life in England has been saturated with fraud. 
 So deep has it gone that a strictly honest trades- 
 man can hardly hold his own against competi- 
 tion. You can no longer trust that the article 
 that you buy is the thing which it pretends to 
 be. We have false weights, false measures, 
 cheating and shoddy everywhere." 
 
 It seems to me that Mr. Froude overstates his 
 case somewhat, and for this reason : that the vast 
 system of credit by which business is carried on 
 to-day could not be maintained a year unless 
 there was, in spite of the cheating and defraud- 
 ing that goes on, an underlying sense of honesty 
 
 89
 
 90 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 in the hearts of the men of England ; besides 
 which, we know that Mr. Froude was not always 
 accurate in statement ; indeed, that he was some- 
 times led into trouble by the wealth of his rhet- 
 oric. Yet there is, no doubt, good ground for 
 saying that in past years, since competition has 
 become so keen and profits so small, and trusts 
 and combinations have sprung into existence, 
 the common principle of common honesty has 
 lost much of its hold on the practices of men. 
 The old Roman maxim, which is the rule of the 
 common law, caveat emptor " The buyer must 
 take care" is applied with a harshness that 
 was never intended, and which is against sound 
 morality as well as Christian charity. Under it 
 men say that if people are fools enough to pay 
 ten prices for novelties because they are fashion- 
 able, or allow themselves to be deceived by the 
 glitter and show of shoddy, they have a right to 
 fleece them. 
 
 And besides the rivalry of producers and the 
 mean maxim of the law, there has come into 
 play another thing that leads to dishonesty, not 
 only in England, but in the United States yes, 
 in the whole world. It is the desire to get rich 
 very fast, either for the brute power of riches
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 91 
 
 or for the ability to live luxuriously. This is 
 the curse of the age this continual seeking for 
 wealth; this custom of measuring men's worth 
 only by the sum of their worldly possessions; 
 but 
 
 "A man's a man for a' that." 
 
 In the pride of birth there was much room for 
 high and exalted feeling; there is but little in 
 the pride of wealth. Eank to-day is indeed " the 
 guinea's stamp " ; the intrinsic value of the man 
 may be nothing. 
 
 It is precisely this thing that causes us to 
 wink at dishonest methods of business men, 
 when the users of them have become successful ; 
 for, though we may condemn the offenses of 
 the petty tradesmen in using false weights and 
 measures, we condone the great offenses of the 
 big merchants who take by legal, yet by sharp, 
 practices all the profits of the lesser out of the 
 trade they control. Look at the recent transac- 
 tions of the " sugar king " of the Pacific, for in- 
 stance. He took so much of the profits that 
 there should be in the sale of sugar that the 
 poor distributers were often compelled to sell 
 that merchandise at less than its cost. Thus 
 we can scarcely wonder that some unscrupulous
 
 92 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 traders gave short weight. I do not know how 
 it is now with the Sugar Trust in their treatment 
 of the retailers ; but as to their treatment of the 
 public, and especially of the public government, 
 all the world knows it is corrupt. It has been 
 charged that the Sugar Trust entered the Senate 
 of the United States and bought up some of its 
 members, and that charge has never been dis- 
 proved. I am told that this trust has taken more 
 money out of the pockets of the people of some 
 of the States in the West than the combined re- 
 sults of State taxation in those States. 
 
 Men should be satisfied with fair returns on 
 the amount of business that they do ; they should 
 fix no more than a just price on all their goods. 
 I tell you, my friends, that just prices and just 
 wages, simple as they are, will revolutionize all 
 of the present commercial conditions of the 
 world. Men should not only live themselves, 
 but they should let others live. " Leben und 
 leben lassen " should be the rule of trade. It is 
 the intense selfishness of the grasping and pigeon- 
 hearted that stands in the way of honest deal- 
 ing. There are men who will live, and live well, 
 no matter who may go to the wall. 
 
 It is curious how many there are who have dis-
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 93 
 
 honest ways of doing business, yet who feel that 
 it is all right, that " business is business," and 
 that so long as their methods are not forbidden 
 by a strict construction of the law, they do no 
 wrong. These men come often to church, give 
 of their money to support charitable institutions, 
 listen to the commandment "Thou shalt not 
 steal" with self-complacency, and feel that they 
 are very respectable members of society. In the 
 same way it is remarkable how many so-called 
 " respectable " members of society there are who 
 lease their property, or permit it to be leased, for 
 evil and unhallowed purposes. There is many a 
 man who holds himself out as a hater of vice 
 yea, as a reformer of it who will not hesitate 
 to permit his agent to let his store for the pur- 
 poses of a low saloon ; yes, who will not hesitate 
 to permit his agent to lease it for worse purposes 
 still. These men are the whited sepulchres that 
 our Lord spoke of, which indeed appear beauti- 
 ful without, but within are full of dead men's 
 bones. I have often thought, if the men who 
 owned saloon property were compelled to take 
 out the licenses for saloons, the cause of temper- 
 ance would be much advanced. And, indeed, I 
 am convinced that this is the highroad to all re-
 
 ()4 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 form. Property-owners should be held respon- 
 sible for every use to which their property is put. 
 When it is put to an unlawful use they should 
 be brought before some competent court to show 
 cause why they should not be fined. And only 
 when they could clear their skirts of all guilt of 
 knowledge should they be permitted to go free. 
 In every case where a license has been granted 
 to be used on any property, and where there has 
 been an unlawful use, it should be irrevocably 
 revoked as regards that property. 
 
 And so, likewise, it is remarkable how many 
 men there are who prepare articles for the adul- 
 teration of other articles of trade, who think that 
 they are not blameworthy. I am sure I do not 
 see where the difference is between the procurer 
 and the sinner. The tempter is always as bad 
 as, if not worse than, the tempted and fallen. I 
 recollect several years ago talking with a man 
 who had dealt largely in foreign fruit in the 
 market of one of our cities. He said, casually, 
 " How the ways of trade have changed ! Why, 
 years ago we used to throw away all the shells 
 of the cocoanut ; then we were asked to sell them 
 whole, and now we have our own mill to grind 
 them." "Grind cocoanut-shells ! " I said; "and
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." <);, 
 
 what for?" "Oh, for adulteration; we sell the 
 product to several trades, chiefly to the pepper- 
 dealers." This man held his head high, and was 
 a power for good in some ways. I have no doubt 
 that he excused himself with the plea that it 
 was necessary for him to sell these ground-up 
 shells, because thereby he lessened the price of 
 the cocoanut-meat ; and that, if he did not sell 
 his shells, his competitors, who sold theirs, would 
 undersell him in the price of it. But this does 
 not alter the principle of the case : a man, after 
 all, does not have to get rich he need not be a 
 millionaire but he ought to be an honest man. 
 This trader became, through the sale of the 
 ground-up shells, a participant in the fraud of 
 the pepper-dealers ; an accessory, before the fact, 
 to all their false dealings. 
 
 And thus it is, in a thousand ways, men are 
 deficient in the every-day virtue of common 
 honesty; and those who profess to be Chris- 
 tians often give the lie to their profession. Be- 
 sides the examples of dishonest dealings such as 
 I have mentioned, which men have permitted 
 under the head of " commercial morality " (com- 
 mercial immorality, we ought to call it), and 
 which so many of the citizens of the world wink
 
 96 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 at, there are many others that all agree are dis- 
 honest, yet which are so constantly practised 
 by men who ought to blush to think how low 
 they have sunk in the estimation of the just that 
 we have all lost sight of their iniquity. Such 
 admittedly dishonest ways are the watering of 
 stocks, the freezing out of minority shareholders, 
 the making of blanket-mortgages and fraudulent 
 assignments, the wrecking of banks and rail- 
 roads, and the like. These things are so com- 
 mon in the business world that though men ad- 
 mit they are dishonest, yet do they simply shrug 
 their shoulders at them. especially when these 
 ways have gotten wealth for those who have 
 practised them. For my own part, I say frankly 
 that no company ought to be permitted by the 
 law to capitalize its stock for more than its actual 
 assets, fixed and determined by some competent 
 court ; that the issuing of stock for nothing for 
 a patent, perhaps, that has no intrinsic value 
 should be regarded as a crime, when the issuers 
 of that stock "have taken the public in." As 
 regards the freezing out of minorities by major- 
 ities, and the stockholders by the bondholders, 
 how can men who say " Our Father " be guilty 
 of such things ! Who will tell of the vast sums
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 97 
 
 of money that the English investors have lost 
 through the fraudulent management of the rail- 
 ways in the United States alone? As regards 
 the making of blanket-mortgages and false as- 
 signments, it is not necessary to speak; frauds 
 of this kind, when they are given out to the 
 world, are apparent to all. As regards the 
 wrecking of banks and railroads, the men who 
 are guilty of these things should be held to be 
 public enemies, and treated, as such, to long 
 terms in the States' prisons. They should be 
 forever deprived of citizenship. 
 
 There are two phases of commercial life upon 
 which I desire to dwell especially, because they 
 are general in effect, and cast a shadow upon all 
 trade : they are incendiary fires and insolvency. 
 I am told by men engaged in the business of fire- 
 insurance especially in the part of it called ad- 
 justing that the uninitiated have no idea of 
 the extent of the frauds perpetrated by men set- 
 ting fire to their own premises. So far has this 
 species of fraud extended that it has been pro- 
 posed that there should be fire coroners, who 
 will inquire into the origin of fires, as cases of 
 manslaughter are inquired into. Fire is an easy 
 method to get rid of old stock ; it is an easy way
 
 98 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 to get money for goods that were never had in 
 possession. Why, it is astonishing to hear how 
 many people will talk of " a convenient fire." I 
 have heard men say again and again, "Well, 
 what this building wants is a good fire." Some- 
 thing must be done to stamp out both this thing 
 and the sentiment of this thing. 
 
 Of insolvency, it is said by good authority 
 that ninety percent, of- all business men fail at 
 least once in their lives. Of these there are many 
 cases which are the results of misfortune simply, 
 such as these recent hard times ; but the major- 
 ity are the outcome of gross mismanagement, if 
 not of fraud. How few there are who venture 
 out upon the seas of commerce who are mentally 
 and morally equipped for the dangers thereof! 
 How few there are who understand what debit 
 and credit mean ; who understand that no busi- 
 ness can be carried on, under the present condi- 
 tions of trade, without credits, and credits mean 
 corresponding debits ! They take little heed of 
 the fact that it is dishonest to make a debt 
 unless there is a credit, (or, it may be, stock in 
 trade) to back it, and so they speedily run into 
 financial straits and bankruptcy. It is said by 
 Blackstone that "bankruptcy laws are considered
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 99 
 
 as laws calculated for the benefit of trade, and are 
 founded on principles of humanity as well as 
 justice." "But they are cautious of encourag- 
 ing prodigality and extravagance, and therefore 
 they allow the benefit of the laws to none but 
 actual traders, since that set of men are, gener- 
 ally speaking, the only persons liable to acci- 
 dental losses and to an inability of paying their 
 debts without fault of their own." And he 
 adds: "It is to the misfortunes, therefore, of the 
 debtors that the law has given a compassionate 
 remedy, but denied it to their faults." And so it 
 ought to be ; there is no bankruptcy law except 
 the old bankruptcy law of the United States 
 which allows or allowed all sorts of men traders, 
 physicians, lawyers, clergymen, and the rest to 
 take advantage of its provisions. This old law, 
 in my opinion, encouraged speculation. The 
 principle upon which the debtor is bound to 
 conduct himself toward his creditors is pru- 
 dence; and if he has been prudent, if disaster 
 comes, then, and then only, should the trader 
 have the benefit of the law for bankrupts. 
 
 The rules of prudence which are, I think, de- 
 serving of attention in this connection are 
 three ; and they are : First, fitness for the busi-
 
 100 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ness undertaken. The first duty of a man of 
 business is to assure himself that he has capa- 
 city and skill to manage the business in which 
 he is about to engage. How many failures are 
 traceable to personal unfitness ! We cannot tell 
 of them any more than the sands by the seaside 
 can tell of the wrecks that have been thrown 
 up on them. Secondly : the second rule of pru- 
 dence is the reduction- of trade to a minimum of 
 speculation. There are few business men who 
 will admit the soundness of this rule, and yet 
 they often adopt it as a principle of copartner- 
 ship, when they stipulate that neither partner 
 shall "dabble in stocks." The principle, too, is 
 well recognized in the laws of bankruptcy; in 
 our late national act there was a provision that 
 if a debtor lost any part of his property in gam- 
 bling he forfeited his right to a discharge. But 
 business men will say that while outside the 
 limits of their especial business gambling may 
 be wrong, yet inside those limits a certain de- 
 gree of speculation is inevitable. And so it is ; 
 but this very distinction contains an admission 
 that the speculations ought, in good morals, to 
 be confined to the limits of necessity. Third: 
 the third rule of prudence which it is incum-
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 101 
 
 bent upon men to observe is that of careful liv- 
 ing. No man has a right to take so much of the 
 assets out of his business for his living that he 
 thereby jeopardizes the payment of the debts he 
 owes. The obligation of the observance of sim- 
 plicity of living arises from the fact that a man, 
 by contracting debts, takes upon himself the 
 probability of insolvency. 
 
 I cannot say that the non-observance of the 
 first rule of prudence that of not appreciating 
 one's unfitness for any especial business is dis- 
 honest, but surely the non-observance of the 
 second rule that of the avoidance of too much 
 speculation often becomes so; and the non- 
 observance of the third rule that of the obliga- 
 tion of simplicity in living is always dishonest. 
 The man who lives in luxury and extravagance 
 off the credits that others have made to him on 
 the understanding that he will conduct his busi- 
 ness with care, is wanting in the principle of 
 common honesty. Too many men are so want- 
 ing. Ask your bankers, ask your credit agents, 
 whether it is not so. 
 
 But Mr. Froude has another count in his in- 
 dictment that I want to bring to your notice. 
 He says: "Many hundreds of sermons have I
 
 102 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 heard in England many a dissertation on the 
 mysteries of the faith, on the divine mission of 
 the clergy, etc., etc. ; but during all these years, 
 never one sermon that I can recollect on com- 
 mon honesty." The answer is, of course, that, 
 as we speak of the air we breathe as a thing well 
 understood, and but rarely analyze it, so we 
 speak of the eighth commandment and seldom 
 apply it in detail. There are some principles of 
 conduct so well understood that we scarcely do 
 more than speak of them. It is patent to all 
 conscience, like the voice of God from the Mount 
 of Sinai, speaks ever, "Thou shalt not steal." 
 Men know that though, through the errors of 
 thought, they may worship false divinities or no 
 divinities at all ; they know that though, through 
 the passions of the senses, they may be guilty 
 of lust and debauchery, yet that for theft for 
 downright theft they have no excuse. And it 
 is for this reason that a thief bears about him, 
 wherever he goes, a weight of opprobrium that 
 time does not lessen. 
 
 It is not necessary for the Church to preach 
 "common honesty"; that has a sanction in 
 human nature apart from her teachings. You 
 know it has, and that you yourselves ought to
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 103 
 
 practise it by word and by deed. The Church 
 teaches that way of living which will make men 
 just and fair in all their dealings, and then lets 
 their sense of justice and fairness do the work 
 for the redemption of commercial dealings. And 
 this she has always done when she has preached 
 the God and Man Jesus Christ, "the way, the 
 truth, and the life." There is in the person of 
 Christ an unchangeable, universal standard of 
 morality, whether applied in society, in trade, in 
 government, 'or in social relations. In the per- 
 son of Jesus Christ, I say, the world of trade has 
 a standard by which all dealings can be weighed 
 and measured. It is because men have fixed 
 their eyes on expediency and utility on the one 
 hand, and on wealth and success on the other, 
 that they have turned away from the teachings 
 of our Lord. 
 
 The whole trouble may be stated in these 
 words: that trade, in its desire for wealth and 
 success, has become untrue to the law both to 
 the statute law and to the law of conscience. It 
 has repudiated the Christ ! Men have wilfully, 
 knowingly, divided their lives into two parts, the 
 secular and the religious; and they have shut 
 out religion from the part that they call secular.
 
 104 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 "When they shall have admitted religion into 
 their whole lives, and given it full scope every 
 way, then trade will be elevated to the high 
 place it ought to occupy in the estimation of 
 men; for trade commerce is the thing that 
 makes the lives of all men, so far as this world 
 goes, to be worth the living. I see I am sure I 
 see light ahead. A public opinion is in process 
 of formation that will have all business to be 
 based upon sound economics and just morality. 
 It is true that the adulteration of merchandise 
 has not, as yet, in all cases been declared to be 
 immoral; yet there is a tendency in legislation 
 to force manufacturers to brand their goods, 
 and to say exactly what they are. There is a 
 tendency, too, in legislation to rectify the abuses- 
 of corporations, and to make them to live as 
 honest creatures in an honest State. As for the 
 abolition of the rule of caveat emptor, as men 
 shall see that they are brothers they will cease 
 to throw all the responsibility of the bargain 
 upon the buyer, who does not know the goods, 
 and will assume that responsibility themselves. 
 As for incendiary fires, something will be done 
 to correct them by the insurance companies, and 
 by those who have to pay larger premiums than
 
 "COMMON HONESTY." 1Q5 
 
 they otherwise would, in order to enable the com- 
 panies to pay fraudulent losses. 
 
 The great danger, as I see it, is the danger 
 from overspeculation, and from the desire for 
 luxurious and extravagant living at any cost to 
 anybody. I would not have the Church to ap- 
 point committees, as do the Quakers, to visit its 
 members, and to examine and see that they 
 are not speculating too much and living beyond 
 their means; yet I think that the whole con- 
 servative force of the Church and society should 
 be' brought to bear upon the men who recklessly 
 risk the property of others in speculation ; who 
 recklessly eat up the assets which they ought to 
 keep intact to meet the debts that they have 
 contracted. Will you not do your parts in try- 
 ing to bring about a better state of affairs in the 
 trade of the land? It is a result that you are 
 interested in, whether you be rich or poor; be- 
 cause trade is the great factor by which civiliza- 
 tion can be promoted at home, and its borders 
 enlarged abroad, and the life of the nation pre- 
 served and transmitted with vigorous power to 
 the oncoming generations of men.
 
 VII. 
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. 
 
 " The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity : so is the tongue 
 among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth 
 on fire the course of nature ; and it is set on fire of hell." JAMES 
 iii. 6. 
 
 THE ways of the world are curious indeed! 
 We purchase tickets and go to the theatre and 
 hear some great actors present " The School for 
 Scandal"; we laugh and applaud all the hits 
 that are made against envy, hatred, and malice ; 
 we are glad to see Sir Benjamin Backbite and 
 his set discomfited, and innocence triumph; we 
 flatter ourselves that we are not as these patched 
 and powdered and furbelowed men and women 
 of the Georgian period ; yet I have not the slight- 
 est doubt that if the audience could change places 
 with the players, and tell the story of the in- 
 trigues and scandals that are going about among 
 their respective sets, just as amusing a play as 
 that of Sheridan's would be presented, and one 
 infinitely more disheartening. 
 
 106
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. 107 
 
 I suppose that it has always been so. When 
 good St. James of Jerusalem tells us that " the 
 tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity : that it de- 
 fileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the 
 course of nature," he could not have arraigned 
 it more thoroughly. And the same kind of in- 
 dictment we find in all the ancient writings. It 
 is in the third division of the Inferno that Dante 
 has placed the fraudulent both those who make 
 and those who act a lie. Evil-speaking is a vice 
 which seems to accompany civilization. It has 
 been said that " half the world takes pleasure in 
 inventing scandal, and the other half in believing 
 it." It is the savage only that is exempt from 
 this great sin. The North American Indian has 
 a contempt for evil-speaking that we would do 
 well to imitate. 
 
 Now, let me observe at the outset that though 
 we lay much blame upon the tongue for the harm 
 it does, that blame should not be laid so much 
 upon this most useful member of the body, for 
 the tongue only gives expression to the thoughts 
 of the man within. It is with the tongue that 
 we praise G-od, and with it that we speak evil of 
 men. The wise old king has said, "Keep thy 
 heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the is-
 
 108 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sues of life ;" and our Lord has said, " Out of the 
 heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, 
 fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." 
 The heart, I take it, means, in these two texts, the 
 actual temper and disposition of the man. As 
 the man's temper and disposition are, so is the 
 man himself; and he can always be judged by 
 his expressions of word and deed. 
 
 Pursuing the subject a little further, let me 
 point out to you that though man's first sin was 
 disobedience that is, a departing from the divine 
 command the first appearance of evil was the 
 utterance of a lie; and it was a lie by insinua- 
 tion. " Yea," said the serpent, " hath God said, 
 Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ! " 
 "Why, surely it cannot be; He cannot be so 
 mean," is the inference. The woman's answer 
 was straight enough; and then came the lie 
 direct: "Ye shall not surely die" God knows 
 better ; and the woman was persuaded ; and by a 
 lie sin and death came into the world. And so 
 it was that our Lord said, speaking of the devil, 
 "that old serpent, which deceiveth the whole 
 world ; " that " he was a murderer from the begin- 
 ning, and abode not in the truth, because there 
 is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he 
 speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. 109 
 
 father of it." The devil abode not in truth ; it 
 was not the thing he was; he did not think it, 
 speak it, live it, and so he became a liar, and the 
 creator of a lie. A lie is essentially at the bottom 
 of all evil, as evil is a departure from the truth 
 in thought and word and deed. Per contra 
 truth is at the bottom of all goodness. Jesus 
 said, " For this cause came I into the world, that 
 I should bear witness unto the truth." It is a 
 tremendous saying, told on the eve of His cru- 
 cifixion. We must believe that it sums up His 
 work that is, that His work was to make the 
 truth known. Again, He said, " I am the way, 
 the truth, and the life." Now, " the way" is, we 
 can see, really what He is in time ; " the life " is 
 what He is to those who accept Him in time; 
 and " the truth " is what He is essentially. And 
 so it has come about that truth is the great ob- 
 ject of the search of all high souls truth, the 
 eternal basis of reason and emotion, as the same 
 is perceived by the minds and hearts of men. 
 And so, too, it has come about that men know 
 that it is only those who are truthful who are to 
 be revered ; it is only they who can be followed. 
 
 " Thou must be true thyself, 
 
 If thou the truth wouldst teach ; 
 Thy soul must overflow, if thou 
 Another's soul wouldst reach."
 
 HO CIVIC CHEISTIANITY. 
 
 The advice of Polonius to his son is the epit- 
 ome of wisdom. If truth, then, is so much to 
 be valued, how base is a lie ; how mean, how 
 contemptible are those who follow it who 
 speak, who act falsely ! 
 
 Now I do not intend to study with you the 
 untruthfulness of men in all the affairs of life 
 in their family relations, in their business deal- 
 ings ; such a study would take me too far afield. 
 I desire to bring before you simply the evil of 
 speaking untruthfully ; the dreadful sin of gossip 
 and slander. It is everywhere conceded that 
 speech is the great distinguishing mark of the 
 superiority of the human race; yet, when we 
 reflect how much of spite and malice and un- 
 charitableness speech gives utterance to, we can- 
 not help but blush for the use that men make of 
 this great gift. Go into any gathering of men 
 and women no matter where and what do you 
 for the most part hear? Little stories about 
 other men and women. And what do these 
 stories consist of? Let us be candid. They 
 consist for the most part of categories of t the 
 shortcomings, or of the supposed shortcomings, 
 of men and women. Such utterances as these 
 are everywhere heard : " Poor Mrs. So-and-so !
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. HI 
 
 her husband has gone off to New York to amuse 
 himself, and she so ill at home ! " How does the 
 world know but that " poor Mrs. So-and-so " sent 
 her husband to New York because- his presence 
 in the city was required by family affairs? Or 
 some one will say : " Poor Mr. So-and-so ! I do 
 so sympathize with him; it is too bad his wife 
 spends so much on her gowns ! " How does so- 
 ciety know what funds her parents supply her 
 with! But these are mild specimens of the 
 things that gossips say and repeat. To para- 
 phrase the words of St. Paul, "It is a shame 
 even to speak of those things which they say 
 are done of men in secret." Nor is it only the 
 shortcomings, actual and imaginary, of friends 
 and neighbors that are discussed the things for 
 which there may be some probable foundation ; 
 but untruthful things are said about men and 
 women for which there is no groundwork 
 things which, as we say, " are made out of whole 
 cloth." 
 
 In regard to the first class of story-tellers, one 
 would say to the gossips and scandal-mongers, 
 "Judge not after appearance, but judge right- 
 eous judgment ;" or, better, " Judge not, that ye 
 be not judged." It is a dreadful thing to under-
 
 112 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 take to decide as to the conduct of our neighbors 
 when we know so little of the reasons that have 
 led them to take such or such a line of action. 
 In regard to the second class of detractors and 
 calumniators, one would say, "Beware lest ye 
 come into the condemnation of Satan, when ye 
 come before Him who has said to some of the 
 race of mankind, 'Ye are of your father the 
 devil.' " 
 
 Now the first class of evil-speaking people of 
 whom I have spoken are actuated for the most 
 part by no motive at all. They are mere tattlers ; 
 empty-headed, shallow-pated men and women, 
 who gossip and retail slander to make themselves 
 acceptable to people of their kind ; who want to 
 be considered interesting. These do not really 
 intend to injure the people they asperse ; and 
 yet they do injure them. They injure them, 
 sometimes, in the very worst way, for it is in a 
 way from which they cannot, as a rule, be de- 
 fended. There is an appearance of shortcoming, 
 a basis for the slander; and as the people slan- 
 dered know nothing about the story or, if they 
 do, cannot rush about and justify themselves to 
 every man the slander gains ground, and usurps 
 the place of truth.
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. 113 
 
 The second class of detractors and calumni- 
 ators are undoubtedly actuated by despicable 
 motives. They are gangrened by envy and hate. 
 It is a pity to have to confess it. There are 
 some men who cannot bear to hear their neigh- 
 bors praised, so they set themselves to work to 
 invent some story that will lower their heads. 
 These are the people of whom David wrote when 
 he said, "Adders' poison is under their lips." 
 Every word they utter injures, and is intended 
 to do so. Let me say that I do not think that 
 this second class is so large as the first class of 
 heedless, thoughtless slanderers ; nor do I think 
 that their evil-speaking is as dangerous as that 
 of the first class. An absolute untruth is apt to 
 be discovered, and the violence of an attack of 
 envy and hate generally defeats itself. It is 
 when there is an appearance of shortcoming, 
 and the people who animadvert upon it are not 
 considered to be envious, that the world stops 
 and gives ear. The world, bad as it is, repudi- 
 ates the spite and envy of the devilish ; but it 
 gives, oh, such a willing ear to those who simply 
 tell of the foibles of men. 
 
 But besides these two classes of people, there 
 is another that indulges in evil-speaking. It is
 
 114 CIVIC CHEISTIANITY. 
 
 those who simply repeat what they have heard, 
 who take up a story, as it were, at second hand. 
 These are the drums and cymbals of the gossip- 
 ing band. They are just as bad as those who 
 first begin the slander, without having their wit 
 and quick perception. But upon these poor 
 chattering magpies I will not dwell. 
 
 This evil-speaking is one of the most dreadful 
 of all sins. In the first place, it is so because 
 it disseminates lies and supports the tottering 
 strength of the kingdom of Satan. You must 
 remember that the Greek word Sia(3oXo<; meant first 
 slanderer, then devil. In the second place, it is 
 so because it injures a man in the most vital 
 way. You all know the lines : 
 
 " Who steals my purse steals trash 'tis something, nothing ; 
 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands ; 
 But he that niches from me my good name 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
 And makes me poor indeed." 
 
 You must remember, as I have often pointed 
 out to you, that character the attainment of 
 character is the end of all human endeavor ; and 
 in this both religion and philosophy agree. The 
 slandering of men pulls down and destroys that 
 thing which is most precious to them. You 
 may say that it really does not destroy char-
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. H5 
 
 acter, but only the estimation of it in the eyes 
 of others. It is true, primarily, evil-speaking 
 does only hurt the estimation of character and 
 this is bad enough; but too often its secondary 
 effect is to lower the whole tone of the person 
 injured, and to make him to be reckless of his 
 acts ; too often does the destruction of the esti- 
 mation of character lead to the destruction of 
 character itself. There are few men so strong 
 who, when their friends fall off, and they know 
 their characters are injured, have the strength 
 to stand against the world. Besides, the esti- 
 mation of a good man's character is his greatest 
 worldly possession. It is the thing that secures 
 him entrance into society. It is the thing upon 
 which his success in business and in the profes- 
 sions is based. It is that which gives him the 
 greatest sense of happiness in his intercourse 
 with his kind. 
 
 Now you may ask me, Why have you brought 
 this matter of evil-speaking before us for our 
 consideration to-day! For this reason: that, 
 as I have been told repeatedly, plague spots of 
 gossip and scandal have broken out on the fair 
 face of the city of Detroit. For some two years 
 after I came here I heard nothing of such
 
 116 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 things; but one cannot have lived in this town 
 for three or four years and not have heard the 
 most dreadful stories relating to "all sorts and 
 conditions of men." I may say, and you may 
 say, " I do not believe one half of what I hear, 
 and upon this I take my stand ;" but this stand 
 is not sufficient. It is high time that you and I 
 put our feet resolutely upon the story-tellers 
 and said, " Avaunt, and quit my sight ! " 
 
 And let me say to the people of Detroit that 
 if you do not resolutely stamp out the scandals 
 that run like wild-fire through the homes of 
 your city, and choke off the scandal-mongers, 
 you will suffer the fair name of the community 
 to be injured in a way that will cast reflection 
 upon all. I speak of what I know. It is dread- 
 ful to hear the world at large speak of the evil- 
 speaking that is current in Detroit. Besides, if 
 you do not stamp out these scandals, you will 
 by no means escape from accusation yourselves. 
 When so much is said, and so much believed, of 
 others, something evil may easily be said that 
 will be believed of you. I tell you that gossip 
 and slander are like witchcraft they will attack 
 even those who are highest and noblest in a 
 community. But you may say, "I am sure
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. 117 
 
 that some of these stories are true." Well, if 
 they are, it is no reason why you, and such as 
 you, should talk about them. You only make 
 matters worse. But I hope to God that they 
 are not true ! If they are, may the people con- 
 cerned blush for shame to think of the evil they 
 have brought upon this community, as well as 
 upon themselves, and be led to see what is right 
 and endeavor to do it. But how are we to put 
 this pestilence of evil-speaking down? WeD, it 
 is not so easy. 
 
 In the first place, we must cultivate the qual- 
 ity of magnanimity, of big-mindedness the 
 habit of seeing things from a wide and not from 
 a narrow point of view. And there is only one 
 way of becoming magnanimous, and that is to 
 get the love of men in our hearts and the desire 
 to do them good ; and " love is ever long-suffer- 
 ing and kind; love envieth not, is not easily 
 provoked; it thinketh no evil; it rejoiceth not 
 in iniquity, but in the truth." 
 
 In the second place, we must acquire a liberal 
 education; we must become cultured that is, 
 we must have our minds full of the true, the 
 good, and the beautiful thoughts and actions of 
 men, and our hearts full of love toward every
 
 118 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 living soul. We will then be able to converse 
 without talking about our neighbors. Ah, my 
 friends, conversation is the greatest of all the 
 arts of the world; it is so strange that it is so 
 much neglected ! And it is the thing that gives 
 us the greatest pleasure ; for all that we see and 
 read and experience, we see and read and ex- 
 perience so that we may be able to tell our 
 friends thereof. The -point is to be able to do 
 this without entering into personalities, either 
 of others or of our own selves. And with this 
 point we should associate another: the ability 
 to enter into the talk of our friends ; into what 
 they have seen and read and experienced the 
 ability, in other words, to listen. If we will 
 keep these two points in mind that conversa- 
 tion is for the relating of things and for the 
 hearing of things that we and others have seen 
 and read and experienced, and not for the re- 
 lating and hearing of matters concerning our 
 neighbors' actions we will be a long way on 
 the road to become good conversationalists and 
 to avoid evil-speaking. And yet let me observe 
 that if conversation is considered to be merely 
 an art, we will not arrive at any attainment of 
 it. Art, when sought for art's sake, becomes
 
 THE SIN OF GOSSIP. 119 
 
 mannerism, stiff and formal. We should aim 
 simply to please and to be pleased in the ways I 
 have indicated ; and if our hearts are clean, and 
 we have a largeness of spirit, we will succeed 
 without the aid of scandal. 
 
 And thus the tongue will be tamed. The 
 tongue will never be tamed by order nor by any 
 set of rules ; it will be tamed only by the truth- 
 ful heart that is kind; for "out of the abun- 
 dance of the heart the mouth speaketh." And 
 thus it is that each time the tongue utters some 
 low, mean, untruthful thing, it reveals the man 
 within ; and so we see, even as St. James has 
 said, that it not only " setteth on fire the course 
 of nature," but it " defileth the whole body " of 
 him who utters the lie. And this is the con- 
 demnation of the slanderers: they are polluted 
 by their own inventions ; they become the asso- 
 ciates of "sorcerers, and whoremongers, and mur- 
 derers, and idolaters," of those who are shut 
 without the gates of the Holy City of God.
 
 VIII. 
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 "And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the 
 centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man 
 that is a Roman, and uncondemned ? When the centurion heard 
 that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what 
 thou doest ; for this man is a Eoman. Then the chief captain 
 came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman ? He said, 
 Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained 
 I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born." ACTS 
 xxii. 25-28. 
 
 HEREIN, in this drama enacted at Jerusalem, 
 in a city hateful to Rcfme, by a man who had 
 already proclaimed himself to be a Jew of 
 Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, we see the wonderful 
 power of the greatest talisman the world has 
 ever known, civis Romanus sum "I am a 
 Eoman citizen." I do not care to enter upon 
 the inquiry how it was that Saul of Tarsus 
 acquired this great thing, the right of Eoman 
 citizenship. We know that the rights and pow- 
 ers of that citizenship were gradually extended 
 by the Eternal City, first to the states of Italy, 
 and then afterward to other districts through- 
 
 120
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 121 
 
 out the world, in whole or in part. It is prob- 
 able that the father of the Apostle was made a 
 Roman citizen because of some service rendered 
 to Pompey or Antony, or perhaps to Caesar him- 
 self. One thing we know: that Saul, or Paul, 
 as we now call him, acquired this great right by 
 birth. 
 
 I have learned, as I have studied and reflected 
 concerning the affairs of life, to understand that 
 there are no two things alike, and especially 
 that there are no two periods of time so alike in 
 their circumstances that we can say that they 
 resemble each otHer; yet things have often a 
 general likeness, and certain periods of tune 
 have so many things in common that we do not 
 hesitate to compare them. The latest period of 
 the Republic of Rome as it merges into the 
 Empire, and this the second period of the 
 Republic of the United States, have so many 
 things in common that to a cursory examiner it 
 might seem that the younger Republic is going 
 the way of the older. (Let me say, however, in 
 passing, that it is the things that these two 
 periods have not in common that will, I am 
 sure, prevent this denouement.} On all the 
 things common to the early Roman empire and
 
 122 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 to our own Republic I will not dwell. I want to 
 bring before you one thing only this : that the 
 right of Roman citizenship was considered in 
 those old days the greatest dignity in all the 
 world. It made the Romans the peers of the 
 proudest nobles in every land. It gave them 
 the right to stand in the presence of kings. It 
 threw around them a shield that none dared to 
 break down. It made them the rulers in the 
 greatest empire the world had then, as yet, 
 known. And so, to-day, the right of American 
 citizenship makes us the equals of the heirs of 
 all the titles of Europe. It makes us to be able 
 to address every sovereign as of right. It 
 throws around us a protection that the strong- 
 est nations hesitate to disregard. It makes us 
 the rulers in the greatest of all the republics the 
 world has ever known. But here the resem- 
 blance ends. The Roman bore his right of 
 citizenship with dignity, as the highest of all 
 earthly honors; the American bears his right 
 of citizenship with disregard, as a thing that is 
 of little worth. 
 
 My friends, I do not think that the American 
 people understand I am sure that you do not 
 understand that the right of American citizen-
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 123 
 
 ship is the source of most of the political rights 
 of men throughout the world, and that it is the 
 palladium of them all. Can you not see, as you 
 read the history of this century a century 
 fraught with eternal consequences to the rights 
 of men that all peoples of the earth, as they 
 have claimed, and do claim, greater and greater 
 freedom for themselves, have turned their eyes 
 to the great Kepublic, have conformed more and 
 more to the pattern of things that we have here 
 in the United States? Do you not understand 
 that if the political rights of men should be per- 
 mitted to fall to the ground in America they 
 would soon be trampled in the dust by the pro- 
 fane and ambitious in all the countries of the 
 world ? Or is it that the American people that 
 you understand these things, but that you 
 have no care for them! Some men there are, 
 indeed, who have no thought for such things 
 as these; who take no interest in the rights of 
 man; who are not even thankful for the con- 
 ditions of freedom in which they live, by which 
 they have been enabled to advance themselves 
 and their affairs in the body politic; and these 
 men, I am afraid, are on the increase. But 
 there are others, thank God! who are thankful
 
 124 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 for the dignity of American citizenship; who 
 would die for the maintenance of the rights of 
 men ; who praise God each day for the glorious 
 heritage that they enjoy; and these men, I am 
 sure, will overcome the others, because they are 
 positive and the others are negative, and an 
 affirmation is always stronger than a negation. 
 
 Now, let me say that we speak of ourselves 
 as of a sovereign people, and we consider each 
 man to have a share in the great sovereign 
 power of the nation; and this is undoubtedly 
 so. All ultimate power resides with the people 
 as a whole, and with no fraction or a part of 
 them. The unreflecting may say, "I thought 
 that it resided with the majority!" And so it 
 does immediately, but ultimately it resides with 
 the people as a whole; for the majority may 
 change to a minority to-morrow, and the next 
 day to a majority again. The sovereign power 
 resides with the whole people. The majority 
 merely express the wishes of the people, and 
 that expression, for the while, dominates and 
 controls. I think that the American people 
 ought to get this great truth into their minds; 
 and if they do so I am sure that many of the 
 evils which attend upon party fealty will disap-
 
 CtOOt) CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 pear. It is one of the reasons for the abuse of 
 power. Men look upon themselves in connec- 
 tion with their party rather than in relation to 
 their citizenship; and so they desire the pa-rty 
 in power, when that party is not their own, to 
 fail, no matter what may be their and the peo- 
 ple's loss as a whole. The men who are elected 
 to office in the United States, from the highest 
 to the lowest, should learn that they are to serve 
 the people's rather than their party's interests ; 
 and I am sure that for the most part they would 
 rather serve the people than party if it were not 
 for the foolish bellicose attitude of partizans out 
 of office. 
 
 As you and I are parts of the sovereign peo- 
 ple, we share in their great power ; and we share 
 in the power of the sovereign people wherever it 
 exists : in the councils of the nation, in those of 
 the separate States, in those of the counties and 
 towns, in administration, in legislation, in judi- 
 cature, in the police power. The men who oc- 
 cupy the various positions in these separate 
 departments of power occupy them by virtue of 
 the will of the sovereign people, whose servants 
 they are. They occupy them in virtue of your 
 and of my will, expressed conjointly with that
 
 126 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of others ; and they are your and my and others' 
 servants. The government of and in the United 
 States is representative, not because it is the 
 best way, but because it is the only way that can 
 be devised that will work, where so many citi- 
 zens are sovereigns. The whole of the people 
 cannot conveniently direct the administration 
 of affairs; the whole cannot conveniently make 
 the laws ; the whole cannot sit on the benches of 
 the courts ; the whole cannot exercise the power 
 of supervision and control; nor are the whole 
 people always primarily concerned in especial 
 affairs of government. So the whole power is 
 divided up into parts, and these parts into parts 
 again. Each part and part of parts elect and 
 appoint their especial representatives for the 
 many especial purposes of government. Yet 
 behind each part and part of parts the whole 
 people stand. I do not mean to say that the 
 people stand immediately behind the whole and 
 every part in the machinery of government as 
 the same has been devised; but practically the 
 people stand behind all power which is exercised 
 in the land ; and in case of abuse or failure of 
 the use of power by any part, the sovereign 
 people will intervene.
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 127 
 
 It is a glorious right and privilege, this, in 
 which you and I share power in and over 
 sixty-five millions of people. Ah, my friends, 
 what should be our feeling of responsibility to- 
 ward this great thing! Now let me say that 
 the feeling of responsibility we have toward any 
 especial thing must be measured by the impor- 
 tance of the thing itself, and not by the number 
 of people who share in the responsibility; for if 
 it be measured by the number of people who 
 share in the responsibility, where there is a great 
 number, a great many might fall away and no 
 harm be done. If many should fall away from 
 exercising their rights in the sovereign power 
 of the people of the United States, the people 
 would, as a whole, be unable to express them- 
 selves; and it is the expression of the whole 
 people that can determine what is to be done in 
 any given case, the majority, as I have explained, 
 voicing the expression. You have no right, by re- 
 fusing to use your share in the sovereign power 
 of the people, to defraud them out of the ex- 
 pression of your judgment. It is your bounden 
 duty to exercise all the power which you have 
 as a citizen a duty which you owe not only to 
 yourself as a man, but to the people as mankind.
 
 128 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Now I am sure you had in mind, as I said 
 what I have said in regard to our responsibility 
 toward the sovereign power of the people, the 
 duty of all men who have the franchise to vote 
 (I have this in mind, but I have far more than 
 this) ; and you say to yourself, " What is the use 
 of my voting, when the vote of an entirely igno- 
 rant Pole or Hun will have as much value as 
 mine I " That is not the way to look at the 
 matter. If the vote of the Pole or Hun is an 
 ignorant one, you should do your best to neu- 
 tralize it. But more : you should do your best 
 to see that no more such ignorant votes be cast. 
 You and such as you should use your share in 
 the power of the land to see that no votes at all 
 be cast except by those who understand what 
 they are voting for; that intelligence be made 
 everywhere the basis of the right to participate 
 in the sovereign power ; and you should see that 
 this qualification of intelligence be applied as 
 well to the native as to the foreign-born citizens 
 of the United States. 
 
 And do not tell me that this great desideratum 
 cannot be brought about! The American peo- 
 ple are as keenly alive to the tendency of popu- 
 lar opinion as the weather-vanes to the prevail-
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 129 
 
 ing winds. If you and such as you will take the 
 trouble to formulate and make such a demand 
 upon the body politic, that body will respond; 
 and it will see that its representatives in Wash- 
 ington or in Lansing, or wherever they may 
 be, carry out its will by legislation. But mark, 
 legislation will be of no value unless you and 
 such as you see to it that its provisions are 
 carried out. You and such as you must be will- 
 ing to promote the ends of legislation even to 
 the extent of taking office, and especially of tak- 
 ing the minor offices, and seeing that the law is 
 carried out. I read not long ago of a manufac- 
 turing chemist of East London. His fellow-citi- 
 zens desired that he should serve them as a 
 member of some local board. To do so he would 
 have to give up a business which he had made 
 successful. He had made a fortune, and now 
 the question came, Should he go on and acquire 
 more wealth, or was it his duty, as he had ac- 
 quired a competency, to serve the public I He 
 chose to serve the public. "What an example 
 does this set the wealthy men of our own land ! 
 It is a shame a crying shame that men, citi- 
 zens of the United States, not only leave to the 
 ignorant the power to vote, but that they suffer
 
 130 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 them to vote for other ignorant men for so many 
 of the offices in the gift of the people ; that they 
 calmly permit others more ignorant still to carry 
 out (even to nullify) the wishes of' the people ; 
 and so we, sovereigns of the United States, have 
 come to such passivity that we speak of our leg- 
 islatures and of Congress as not being willing to 
 do this or that, when they should be compelled 
 to do as the people will, or be thrown out. And 
 it has come about that as we feel that Congress 
 and the State legislatures do pretty much as 
 they please, or as a body of rascally men hang- 
 ing about them persuade them by threats and 
 promises and money to do, we lose respect for 
 the laws of the land, and when we can we shirk 
 and evade them. I speak out of experience. 
 Once upon a time, when I was a very young 
 man, I was sent to one of the legislatures of one 
 of our States. It was the saddest experience of 
 my life. In and out, circling among the mem- 
 bers of the Senate and Assembly, were hundreds 
 of evil men with wrongful and often nefarious 
 schemes, seeking to secure some legislation in 
 their own or in their party's behalf, at no mat- 
 ter what harm or expense to the people at large. 
 Among all these lobbyists there was scarcely a
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 man who was influenced simply by patriotic mo- 
 tives. If you, the people of the United States, 
 permit the offices of government to be occupied 
 by the ignorant and inexperienced (not to speak 
 of the vicious), you should at least do what you 
 can to uphold them in the right, and not let them 
 become a prey for the ignoble band of lobbyists, 
 who are worse than train- wreckers and bandits. 
 It is a dreadful state of affairs, this to which 
 we have come. The people care but little for 
 their laws. Take the laws of the land as ap- 
 plied to the customs. How many do not think 
 it right to smuggle in a lot of things for the use 
 of themselves and friends, and cheat the govern- 
 ment 1 Take the tax laws as applied to personal 
 property. How many there are who become 
 borrowers at the time the assessment is made, 
 or who buy things that cannot be taxed ! How 
 many, again, leave their actual domiciles the 
 place where their wealth was made, and wherein 
 it is protected and go to some little town and 
 take up their residence there, so that they can 
 escape their just share of the burden of their 
 municipalities ! This thing is done in New York 
 and Boston as well as in Detroit. It is no answer 
 to say that the municipal taxes are greater than
 
 132 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 they ought to be, when this the intelligent class 
 of citizens have the remedy in their own hands. 
 If there are abuses in the government of their 
 cities, let them take hold and reform the same. 
 
 How many men, do you think, if we should 
 have an income tax, will give in a true state- 
 ment of their incomes?* When we had an in- 
 come tax, some thirty years ago, it was the men 
 with fixed and ascertained salaries who paid the 
 larger taxes not the great millionaires. It is 
 shameful this state of affairs, this lack of patri- 
 otism, this unwillingness to suffer somewhat for 
 the good of the whole ; and it all springs out of 
 the selfishness of the intelligent class of the land. 
 They neglect their duties, and give over the con- 
 trol of affairs to ignorance and often to vice, in 
 order that they may have more time to devote 
 to the pursuit of wealth and the pleasures that 
 wealth brings. Then, as a certain amount of 
 injustice is done them (as well as to others, by 
 the way), they sulk, and seek to avoid the con- 
 sequences of their selfishness and folly by ways 
 which, to say the least, are devious. Oh, I am 
 sick and tired of the pusillanimity of these men 
 grumblers and hypocrites ! 
 
 * This sermon was preached May 27, 1894.
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 133 
 
 Occasionally, it is true, men of this class do 
 take some part in some department of the power 
 of the people ; but herein comes the trouble. The 
 men of intelligence, as a rule, enter the arena of 
 politics (as we say) for the purpose of wealth. 
 This is not always true ; but my experience leads 
 me to aver that it is generally true. Their ends 
 are not much elevated above the ends of the rest 
 of the class to which they belong. And then, 
 too, they become ambitious; they want always 
 to be climbing up the political ladder; and so 
 they look more at the rung above them than at 
 the place where they stand and the duties that 
 devolve upon them therefrom. Again, they use 
 their power, often, that they may promote 
 schemes in which they or their friends are inter- 
 ested. Can you blame people that they do not 
 trust them? Let intelligence enter politics for 
 patriotic motives, and I tell you it ivill rule. It 
 is the natural order in the kingdoms of men and 
 of God. 
 
 What I say is that intelligence should enter 
 politics with the simple desire to do good; and 
 when it shall do so fully, the cause of good gov- 
 ernment will be gained. Ah, I say to you, my 
 brethren, arouse yourselves, arouse your fellow-
 
 134 CIVIC CHKISTIANITY. 
 
 men ; and if you cannot arouse them, arouse the 
 women! There are so many things which need 
 correction by legislation. Every periodical you 
 take up speaks to you of them; every journal 
 tells you of some new union or society or associa- 
 tion that has been formed to promote the social 
 amelioration of the people: to put down the 
 sweating system, the low tenement-house, the 
 evil saloon; to prevent the labor of little chil- 
 dren; to enforce a living wage to the lonely 
 woman. There are so many things, too, which 
 need only good administration to reform. The 
 laws are for the most part good enough; the 
 trouble is that they are not carried out. Give 
 over the desire for gain and wealth and pleasure. 
 Look to the first great citizens of this land. 
 These men gained wealth; but they gave not 
 their whole thought to it, but only a part. Their 
 heart's desire was the welfare and honor of their 
 country. 
 
 You may say, " Yes, but all men cannot take 
 office ; some have got to be content with exercis- 
 ing simply their right of suffrage." True, all 
 men cannot take office; but no man should be 
 content simply to exercise his right of suffrage. 
 If all men cannot take office in an honest and
 
 GOOD CITIZENSHIP. 135 
 
 good government, all men can help to formulate 
 and express views and sentiments that will up- 
 hold those who have taken office. And this it 
 is every man's duty to do. Ah, you do not 
 understand the strength of public opinion in the 
 affairs of the country, and yet it is the greatest 
 and chiefest of all powers. It is, indeed, the 
 only power that can keep the ship of state true, 
 pointing ever on her right course, upward and 
 onward. See what public opinion has done here, 
 in this our city, in regard to the High School 
 site ! Public opinion is as much the life of the 
 nation as the Spirit of God is the life of man. 
 By it alone can people be lifted out of the greed 
 of gain ; by it alone can the evils of intemper- 
 ance be eradicated; by it alone can the fetters 
 of selfishness be broken ; by it alone can men be 
 made to see what are their duties to mankind and 
 the state. 
 
 But how shall public opinion be formed ? By 
 your and such as your speech and acts in meet- 
 ings, in private conversation, in the public press, 
 in books. And how shall I get my opinion that 
 will go to make up public opinion? There are 
 many sources. There are papers, books, and ar- 
 ticles innumerable. But the greatest source is
 
 136 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the source whence all these spring the life of 
 Jesus Christ, as applied to the present every-day 
 affairs of men ; applied not in the narrow bigotry 
 of religionism, but in the broad liberty of Him 
 who consorted with all men of all conditions, and 
 who appealed to the best that was in them. 
 
 Arouse ye, oh, arouse ye, ye careless citizens 
 of the land ! Sell not your birthright for a mess 
 of pottage, no matter how good it may taste.
 
 IX. 
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 
 
 "They brought unto Him a penny. And He saith unto them, 
 Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto Him, 
 Cassar's. Then saith He unto them, Render therefore unto Csesar 
 the things which are Cassar's ; and unto God the things that are 
 
 God's." MATT. xxii. 19-21. 
 i 
 
 MY purpose this morning is to speak to you 
 on the most important of all subjects of the day 
 Good Government. 
 
 I spoke to you last spring on Good Citizenship, 
 and incidentally touched on my present subject ; 
 for it is impossible to speak of the one without 
 reference to the other. Yet they are different, 
 even as constitutional law and politics are differ- 
 ent. Constitutional law looks at the state from 
 the standpoint of its form and order; politics 
 looks at the state from the standpoint of its 
 rise and evolution. And so good government 
 has regard to the state from the standpoint of 
 the men who govern ; good citizenship from the 
 standpoint of those who are governed. 
 
 Let me clear the ground for my subject by 
 
 137
 
 138 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 first pointing out to you that there are many 
 theories as to how the state arose; because, as 
 I shall show, our idea of good government de- 
 pends upon the theory we hold as to the way the 
 state came into existence. I cannot enter upon 
 a discussion of all these theories ; it is not neces- 
 sary. It is sufficient to say that, generally speak- 
 ing, four theories have been held, viz., the the- 
 ory of brute power, the theory of contract, the 
 theory of family relationship, the theory of theo- 
 cratic foundation. 
 
 1. The theory of brute power maintains that 
 the state is the work of the conquest of the weak 
 by the strong. It asserts that might makes 
 right. It has a plausible look, and has had many 
 friends, especially among heartless despots and 
 fanatic revolutionists. Yet it is evident that it 
 is not correct, because it regards the state as 
 held together simply by force, and leaves no 
 room for moral relations and responsibilities. 
 If the theory of brute power were correct, then 
 there could be no place for the idea of law com- 
 manding respect outside of its rewards and 
 penalties. 
 
 2. The theory of contract, since Rousseau 
 wrote his " Contrat Social," has been very popu-
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 139 
 
 lar, chiefly in republican countries. It asserts 
 that the state is the free work of a contract 
 entered into by its citizens. This theory has 
 been most pleasing to the little political philoso- 
 phers, because it flatters their feeling of impor- 
 tance, making them to feel that each one of them 
 is a founder of a state, and that that state exists 
 only by his will and consent. The theory would 
 be admirable if all men were devoted to good 
 government, and sought only its ends ; but since 
 all men are not devoted to good government, and 
 seek their own as often as the ends of the state, 
 and yet would, if this theory were correct, have 
 a right to say that the state should not exist but 
 by their will and consent, it works badly; it 
 leads to the dread terror of anarchy. Besides, 
 history tells us that this theory is absurd, for it 
 starts with the premise that men have been as 
 they are now, and we know that our immediate 
 ancestors were uncouth barbarians, and our far- 
 off progenitors more like animals than men. 
 
 3. And so we come to an examination of the 
 third theory that the state arose by reason of 
 family relationship. " The effect of the evidence 
 derived from comparative jurisprudence," says 
 Maine, in "Ancient Law," "is to establish that
 
 140 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 view of the primeval condition of the human 
 race which is known as the Patriarchal Theory." 
 In support of this theory there comes in on the 
 one side the evidence of the Scriptures evi- 
 dence that may be called religious; and on the 
 other side there comes in the evidence of ancient 
 codes evidence that may be called legal. The 
 points in support of this theory which lie on the 
 surface of history, both scriptural and non-scrip- 
 tural, are these : The eldest male parent is abso- 
 lutely supreme in his household. His dominion 
 extends to life and death, and is as unqualified 
 over his children as over his slaves. The flocks 
 and herds of the children are the flocks and herds 
 of the father ; and the possessions of the father, 
 which he holds in a representative rather than 
 in a proprietary character, are equally divided 
 at his death among his descendants, the eldest 
 son receiving merely a double share. 
 
 "Archaic law ... is full in all its provinces 
 of the clearest indications that society in primi- 
 tive times was not what it is assumed to be a 
 collection of individuals ; in fact, and in view of 
 the men who composed it, it was an aggregation 
 of families." And it is in this way that Professor 
 Drummond speaks in the book that we have all
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 
 
 been reading " The Ascent of Man " : " Almost 
 from the very first, indeed, the Family, and not 
 the individual, must have been the unit of Tribal 
 life ; and as Families grew more and more defi- 
 nite, they became the recognized piers of the 
 social structure, and gave a first stability to the 
 race of men." " The Family is not only its [evolu- 
 tion's] greatest creation, but its greatest instru- 
 ment for further creation." 
 
 4. And lastly, a word in regard to the theory 
 of theocratic foundation. I maintain that it is 
 out of the fact that the family is the unit of the 
 state, and not because God can be presumed to 
 have raised single men above the condition of 
 others, and to have given them especial powers, 
 that it can and should be said that all power 
 and authority is of God. I mean that God, who 
 is our Father, and treats men always as living 
 in families, can never be said to have instituted 
 and to have maintained the state, except as it is 
 the expansion of a single family into many cor- 
 related ones, into an organism that is now held 
 together by the family idea ! It is only because 
 of this fact that we can understand the words of 
 St. Paul that seemed to support the authority of 
 vile Nero : " Let every soul be subject unto the
 
 14:2 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 higher powers. For there is no power but of 
 God : the powers that be are ordained of God." 
 
 The state, then, let us accept as proven, rests 
 upon the theory of family relationship ; and let us 
 believe that it is because of this that God is the 
 upholder of the state. If we accept this theory 
 as a fact, we can see at once what should be the 
 conduct of the governors toward the governed ; 
 how they should rega'rd their duties toward 
 them. The great trouble with the present con- 
 dition of affairs is that the governors that is, 
 those who are in the positions of power regard 
 the state as a mass of individuals having no re- 
 lation to one another, and their duty as impera- 
 tive to themselves as to others. And this trouble, 
 I affirm, has arisen greatly through the preva- 
 lence of the contract theory of the rise of a 
 state, which postulates that the state deals with 
 individuals, and not with families. When the 
 people of the United States shall rise to a con- 
 viction that they are one great family, and that 
 the executive power is as a father to them, to 
 look after their interests with paternal care; 
 when they shall decree that the courts of law 
 shall judge according to what is right in a great 
 family ; when they shall impress upon their rep-
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 143 
 
 resentatives the principle of considering all the 
 members of the nation alike, of which if one 
 suffers all shall suffer, then and then only shall 
 we have good government. The governors in 
 the United States always follow the leading of 
 the governed; these last have only to express 
 their will clearly and emphatically, and that will 
 will prevail. 
 
 Let me repeat, the whole trouble with the 
 present state of government in the United States 
 arises through the fact that men regard the in- 
 dividual as the unit of the state, and not the 
 family; consequently the state is treated as an 
 aggregation of individuals, of which some may 
 prosper and some may suffer without loss to the 
 body politic ; consequently, too, the state in its 
 laws and in its life has no consideration for the 
 family, and the many and loving relationships 
 that spring out of the family idea, but only for 
 the individual and his duties. And the indi- 
 vidual, thrust out of a family organism, behaves 
 toward the state and toward its citizens as an 
 Ishmaelite, having a hand against every man. 
 
 Let me now bring my assertion into touch 
 with life, and examine how this theory would 
 work if carried into practice. And first, then,
 
 144 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 let us look at how the theory would work in 
 our cities and towns. In the towns, indeed, the 
 idea of family has never been entirely lost to 
 view, as all the citizens thereof come together 
 from time to time to discuss common affairs. 
 But in the cities the idea has been lost sight of. 
 Cities have grown so large that it is impossible 
 for all of their electors to come together any- 
 where at anyone time; so a system of represen- 
 tation has been adopted. A city has a mayor, 
 who is elected by the whole city at large ; and it 
 has several aldermen, who are elected by pre- 
 cincts or wards. Other officers are often elected, 
 such as school commissioners and judges of the 
 criminal courts. But the municipal power is 
 presumed to be vested in the mayor as the chief 
 executive, and in the board of aldermen as the 
 principal legislative body of the city. 
 
 What I assert is this: the mayor should look 
 upon himself as standing in the place of a father 
 to the city which he governs ; as having no care 
 for party, no ambition for himself, no intention 
 but that of doing his duty as the father of a 
 family. And if men could be elected who would 
 have such a.n ideal of their place and power, 
 much would be done to solve all the hard ques-
 
 GOOD GOVEENMENT. 145 
 
 tious of municipal government. I am sure that 
 the many ways that have been devised of shear- 
 ing the mayor of his prerogatives by the multi- 
 plication of independent boards and commissions 
 would disappear, and thereout would come the 
 unity in municipalities that is so much desired. 
 As it is at present, the mayor of the city and the 
 members of its various boards and commissions 
 seem to be always at cross-purposes. They wage 
 an unending internecine war. I contend that 
 the members of all executive boards and com- 
 missions should be appointed by the mayor 
 without confirmation, and that they should be 
 directly responsible to him, the mayor himself 
 being responsible to the people. 
 
 If the mayor would consider himself to be, 
 and to act as, the chief father of the city, the 
 greatest good would come; and even if the 
 mayor should not consider himself to be simply 
 the father, even then, I aver, it would be far 
 better to put the responsibility for government 
 directly upon him than to divide it up and par- 
 cel it among bureaus and departments. The 
 people should be able to see who is to blame 
 for the maladministration of their affairs, as 
 well as able to give credit for good government.
 
 146 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Some check could be devised, through the board 
 of aldermen and the courts, by which the mayor 
 could be brought to book for wrong-doing. If 
 the mayoralty were exalted to such a position of 
 power and dignity, surely the best citizens could 
 be induced to stand for it that is, when the best 
 people of the community desired them to do so. 
 And these same things can be said of the board 
 of aldermen as of the mayor. All the legislative 
 power of the various other boards and commis- 
 sions should be lodged in their hands, and there- 
 with many other diversified rights and interests 
 that are now scattered under various heads. 
 The office of alderman should be magnified as 
 much as possible, and the aldermen should be 
 taught to feel that they are not " city fathers " 
 only in name, but in fact; and so the best citi- 
 zens would soon be induced to stand for the 
 place of alderman. 
 
 Why, my friends, it is this simple thing that 
 made the people of Holland great this, I say: 
 that all men in power looked upon themselves 
 as standing in the place of fathers to the people, 
 from William the Silent to the simplest burgo- 
 master and schepen in the land. What I aver 
 is this ; that in our cities (outside of the judicial
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 147 
 
 power, which must be lodged in the courts) all 
 power should be vested directly in either the 
 mayor or in the board of aldermen ; and all com- 
 missions and boards, of whatsoever kind, should 
 be their committees and appointees. Now you 
 may say that this is antidemocratic; I deny it. 
 The mayor and the aldermen are to be elected by 
 the people, and they are directly responsible to 
 them. The nearer you get to the people that 
 is, the more immediate the exercise of power is 
 in its relation to the body that confers it the 
 more democratic is the government. The trouble 
 now is that the exercise of power is so cut up 
 and confused that the men who have it do not 
 feel that they are in contact with the people at 
 all; therefore that they are not their creatures 
 and servants. 
 
 To bring about this simple thing would be 
 very easy. There are many good citizens in the 
 land; many men who are capable of giving to 
 the cause of good government and social moral- 
 ity the same devotion that they now give to the 
 cause of money-making. The thing that hinders 
 them and keeps them out of active participation 
 in municipal affairs is the play of party politics, 
 and the knowledge that even if they should be
 
 148 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 elected to some office, they would be almost 
 powerless, and be placed between so many cross- 
 fires of direction that they would inevitably 
 make mistakes. You have but to centralize the 
 direction as I have shown, in the first place; 
 and, in the second, you have to drop out party 
 politics in municipalities ; and the cause of good 
 government is gained. It is utterly ridiculous 
 that because men are Democratic and inclined 
 to free trade, or Republican and inclined to pro- 
 tection, they should therefore find themselves 
 on different sides in regard to the proper man- 
 agement of their respective cities. And the 
 dropping of party politics out of municipalities 
 will not only aid to secure good men for office, 
 but it will do something more : it will weaken 
 the power of the caucus; yes, eventually it will 
 destroy it, for caucuses thrive only when party 
 politics thrive; and caucuses are the curse of 
 the country. Drop party politics out of muni- 
 cipal affairs, and no man would feel himself to 
 be bound by the nomination of a caucus ; even- 
 tually, I believe, no party nominations would be 
 made. 
 
 But I go further, and say that it is just as 
 ridiculous to have party politics in State as in
 
 GOOD GOVEENMENT. 149 
 
 municipal affairs. I was educated a lawyer, as 
 you know, and was once a member of the New 
 Jersey legislature; and I assure you that with 
 the exception of the questions touching office, 
 when elections were to be made on the joint 
 ballot of the Senate and the House, there was 
 no more reason for party politics in the legisla- 
 ture than there is for them in the Territory of 
 Alaska. And I propose a very simple remedy 
 for the eradication of this evil in State legisla- 
 tures; it is this: let the senators of the United 
 States be elected by the people of the several 
 States, and not by their representatives. I know 
 that there are some who affirm that this plan is 
 revolutionary notably Senator Edmunds, in the 
 December * number of the Forum. But what of 
 it I Many other revolutionary things have been 
 done in our government since the Constitution 
 was formed. The reason why I think that this 
 change is desirable is this : At present the man 
 who wants to be senator gets his henchmen to 
 run the caucuses in the various electoral dis- 
 tricts of the State in favor of men favorable to 
 himself. Then he gives a good round contribu- 
 tion to the sum of money raised by partizans to 
 
 * 1894.
 
 150 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 elect these men over their adversaries. Then he 
 and his friends say to their fellow-citizens of 
 their party, " You must vote for the man nomi- 
 nated by our party, for that means one vote 
 more for our party in the election of a senator 
 of the United States." Then (if the men who 
 were nominated and were supported by the sena- 
 torial aspirant be elected to office) he, through 
 his agent, goes to them and says : " I nominated 
 you ; I contributed a sum of money toward your 
 election expenses ; I stirred up the whole party 
 in your favor; you are in duty bound to vote 
 for me for senator." And so a doubje wrong is 
 done: the free representatives of the people do 
 not elect the senators of the United States, as it 
 was intended that they should do when the Con- 
 stitution was formed; and men who ought to 
 have been elected with a simple view to legislat- 
 ing for State affairs are really elected to elect the 
 United States senators ; and the State suffers. 
 
 I shall not attempt, in the short time that is left 
 me, to consider what good government should 
 be in the State and in the general government 
 of the United States. I desire, however, to say 
 one thing, and that the same that I have said in 
 regard to municipal government : that, as much
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 
 
 as possible, there should be a concentration of 
 power and of responsibility, with as close a 
 nexus as can be made between the source and 
 the exercise of power. This simple thing, and a 
 non-partizan civil service, will accomplish much 
 for the great cause we have at heart. 
 
 Let me add one word of advice and admonition 
 to you as governors as well as governed. Do 
 not think that the officers elected by you for 
 various places exercise the whole of the power 
 of the people. They each exercise but a small 
 part of it, in fact, though jointly they exercise a 
 great deal. Still the power of the State that is, 
 the sovereign power is never wholly delegated ; 
 much of it remains always with the people first 
 in the ballot, then in the jury system, then in 
 direct interference, and then in influence. Of the 
 duty of every elector to cast his ballot I shall not 
 speak to-day. I have spoken of this paramount 
 duty on another occasion. Of the duty of every 
 citizen to attend upon the courts, and to take his 
 share of jury duty, I cannot speak too strongly. 
 Who does not know that the jury system of to- 
 day is considered to be a failure! And who 
 does not know that the cause for this failure lies 
 primarily at the door of the intelligent classes?
 
 152 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 They shirk this duty continually, averring that 
 their several businesses are of much' more im- 
 portance than the maintenance of justice and 
 the preservation of the life of the State ; and so, 
 as all men know, a venal, corrupt class of men 
 are drawn on the panels men that can often be 
 tempted to swerve from the right by the bribes 
 of the " jury-fixers." 
 
 It has been alleged during the past month by a 
 well-known member of the Detroit bar that not 
 a single prominent criminal has been convicted 
 and punished here for many years past. "Bad," 
 says he, "as the government of the city of New 
 York is (and apparently there is none worse on 
 the earth), whenever the pursuit of any criminal, 
 whatever his prominence or position, has been 
 earnestly undertaken, he has been driven into 
 the penitentiary; but here in Detroit there is 
 such lax public opinion that juries do not seem 
 willing to convict whenever any show of defense 
 is made." "What is wanted here is simply a will- 
 ingness of the best citizens (if they can be called 
 best) to sacrifice somewhat of their interests for 
 the public good. The example set by the aged 
 Hon. Hamilton Fish, who had served his State 
 and the United States in the highest official posi-
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 153 
 
 tions, yet who never shirked his duty as a juror, 
 should commend itself to all true-hearted Ameri- 
 cans, and shame the selfish men who wriggle 
 out of this great exercise of the power of the 
 people ! 
 
 Of the duty of direct interference of citizens in 
 the government of their country I cannot speak 
 at length, for I should have to enter upon details 
 that would weary you; but let me point out to 
 you that when you have cast your ballot and 
 served upon juries you have not by any means 
 exhausted your power and done your whole duty 
 as a citizen. You should constantly interfere 
 with and correct anything and everything that 
 you see to be wrong. You perceive what I mean. 
 As you are not a part of the government that is, 
 of the machinery of government it will not be 
 your duty to see that right is carried into effect. 
 It will always be your duty to see that right is 
 put in motion to be made effective; and out of 
 this arises a great deal of our present difficulty. 
 Men cast their ballots and go home and say, 
 "Now let the elected look to the condition of the 
 city and State, and do all things that are neces- 
 sary for good government ; the responsibility is 
 upon them." But it is not so ; the responsibility
 
 154 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is upon them to a great extent, but it is upon 
 you too ; and it is because you shirk your share 
 of responsibility that the office-holders so often 
 do as they please. What is wanted is a deter- 
 mination upon the part of all good citizens that 
 the laws shall be carried into effect, and a willing- 
 ness to set the machinery of the laws in motion ; 
 for the laws of the land are, as a rule, good and 
 beneficent. 
 
 And really this is precisely what Dr. Charles 
 Parkhurst did in New York. He saw, even as 
 you can see, that the laws were constantly 
 evaded, and he got evidence to show it. Then 
 he set to work to induce the governing powers 
 in the city to do their duty. He found that 
 they had so long evaded it that they were wast- 
 ing with atrophy. And then came in the Lexow 
 Committee of inquiry into the ways of muni- 
 cipal government in New York. Its revelations 
 of crime and the protection of crime have as- 
 tonished the world. Now suppose you start to 
 work in the same way, and take up something 
 that strikes you as being wrong the flashy pic- 
 tures on the bill-boards throughout Detroit, for 
 instance. You will soon find that you will get 
 so deep in the mud of horrid and obscene pic-
 
 GOOD GOVERNMENT. 155 
 
 tures and literature that you will want to draw 
 back ; but if you and such as you follow up the 
 cue and work it with all your energy, and then 
 get the machinery of government to act, you will 
 do a great thing for the cause of morality, and 
 your duty. And you will have exercised part of 
 the power of your citizenship. 
 
 Lastly, let me speak of the duty of the gov- 
 erned to exercise their influence with the gover- 
 nors. This is something that goes hand in hand 
 with direct interference, but it is not exactly the 
 same thing. It is the force of the denunciation 
 of wrong and of the unceasing support of right 
 exercised in a community. Ah, my friends, how 
 seldom is it exercised! How seldom will men, 
 even when they are leaders in a city or State, 
 stand up for the great principles of morality, 
 when party success or personal preferences come 
 into play ! We have recently had a most glar- 
 ing exhibition of this sort of moral obtuseness in 
 the city of Detroit. I blush to think of it, and 
 I fear for its effect upon the youth of our com- 
 munity. 
 
 One word in conclusion, and I have done. 
 The subjects of good citizenship and good gov- 
 ernment are the prime subjects of thought and
 
 156 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 endeavor throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land. This we all know as we read and lis- 
 ten to the words that come to us from every 
 platform and press. But let me assure you that 
 all the words that will and can be uttered, all the 
 machinery that will and can be devised, will be 
 of no avail, unless there arises in the hearts of 
 the people of the United States a consciousness 
 of shortcoming and a- determination to do their 
 duty, and their whole duty, toward God and 
 man. God grant that such a consciousness and 
 such a determination may arise! God grant 
 that the great Republic may yet have sons and 
 daughters that shall be worthy of her ; that shall 
 not hesitate, if it need be, to protect her life at 
 the sacrifice of their own, much less of a portion 
 of their time and efforts ! For this is all that 
 good government demands of the men and the 
 women who love truth and righteousness: that 
 they devote a fair portion of their time and 
 efforts to the cause of the State.
 
 X. 
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 
 
 " Let us walk honestly, as in the day ; not in rioting and drunk- 
 enness, not in chambering and wantonness." ROM. xiii. 13. 
 
 THEEE are two great heads of the many-headed 
 hydra of evil that threaten the present genera- 
 tion of men, which if they could be cut off and 
 destroyed would relieve the body politic of the 
 fear it has for its ultimate salvation. I allude 
 to the social evil, so called, and the low saloon. 
 We find that they are discussed continually 
 from the platform and in the press, and all 
 sorts of answers are given to the problems how 
 they shall be solved. I do not pretend to be able 
 to give the right answers, yet I think that I may 
 be able to throw some light upon the answers 
 that will help you to understand the questions 
 better, and will induce you to work harder for 
 their solution. 
 
 In the first place, we must understand that 
 both the social evil and the low saloon rest upon 
 things which are not evils per se. It is evident 
 
 157
 
 15S CIVIC CHEISTIANITY. 
 
 that the social evil does not, when it rests upon 
 the common division of life into sex, which divi- 
 sion runs through all nature. And it is equally 
 evident that the low saloon does not, when it 
 rests upon the common desire of men for stimu- 
 lants, which desire received its approbation in the 
 first miracle that was wrought by Christ in the 
 marriage supper at Cana of Galilee, and (I say 
 it with reverence) in the last supper partaken of 
 by Him and His disciples in " the upper cham- 
 ber" in Jerusalem. 
 
 But let me treat each of these two great prob- 
 lems separately ; for though they are so of ten asso- 
 ciated together, they are not alike in character. 
 The association is accidental, and arises out of 
 the fact that the social evil flourishes greatly in 
 low saloons. 
 
 How can the social evil be prevented ? Well, 
 in the first place, let us look at the causes which 
 produce it. What are they 1 ? Ignorance and 
 want. You may say, "Not always." No, not 
 always on the part of men; but on the part of 
 women it is rare that the causes for the evil that 
 destroys them are any other than I have men- 
 tioned ignorance and want. Some few women 
 may be naturally vicious, but not many. And
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 159 
 
 this very viciousness arises greatly out of coarse 
 ignorance allied with horrid want. And what, 
 for the most part, is the cause of ignorance and 
 want ? Low and insufficient wages. 
 
 It is impossible to blink it, my friends : the 
 wages that are paid to working- women except 
 to the very few are radically low, and utterly 
 insufficient to sustain them in decency and re- 
 spectability. I shall not bring before you an 
 array of statistics ; every newspaper and* every 
 magazine of any standing has during the past 
 twenty years presented statistics showing the 
 low rate of wages that are paid to women. 
 
 " It is estimated," says Jacob A. Eiis, in his 
 chapter on the working-girls of New York in 
 " How the Other Half Lives," " that at least one 
 hundred and fifty thousand women and girls 
 earn their own living in New York ; but there is 
 reason to believe that this estimate falls far short 
 of the truth when sufficient account is taken of 
 the large number who are not wholly dependent 
 upon their own labor, while contributing by it to 
 the family's earnings. These alone constitute a 
 large class of the women wage-earners ; and it is 
 characteristic of the situation that the very fact 
 that some need not starve on their wages con-
 
 1(30 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 demns the rest to that fate. The pay they are 
 willing to accept all have to take. What 'the 
 everlasting law of supply and demand,' that 
 serves as such a convenient gag for public indig- 
 nation, has to do with it one learns from obser- 
 vation all along the road of inquiry into these 
 real woman's wrongs. To take the case of the 
 saleswoman for illustration : The investigation of 
 the Working- women's Society disclosed the fact 
 that wages averaging from $2.00 to $4.50 a week 
 were reduced by excessive fines, ' the employers 
 placing a value upon time lost that is not given 
 to services rendered.' . . . The practice prevailed 
 in some stores of dividing the fines between the 
 superintendent and the timekeeper at the end of 
 the year. In one instance they amounted to $3000, 
 ' and the superintendent was heard to charge the 
 timekeeper with not being strict enough in his 
 duties.' 
 
 " Sixty cents is put as the average day's earn- 
 ings of the one hundred and fifty thousand ; but 
 into this computation enters the stylish 'cash- 
 ier's' two dollars a day, as well as the thirty 
 cents of the poor little girl who pulls threads in 
 an East Side factory ; and, if anything, the aver- 
 age is too high. Such as it is, however, it rep-
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 
 
 resents board, rent, clothing, and 'pleasure' to 
 this army of workers. Here is the case of a 
 woman employed in the manufacturing depart- 
 ment of a Broadway house ; it stands for a hun- 
 dred like her own. She averages $3.00 a week ; 
 pays $1.50 for her room ; for her breakfast has 
 a cup of coffee ; lunch she cannot afford ; one 
 meal a day is her allowance." The Working- 
 women's Society reported at a great public meet- 
 ing in New York some three years ago : " It is a 
 known fact that men's wages cannot fall below 
 a limit upon which they can exist, but woman's 
 wages have no limit, since the paths of shame 
 are always open to her. It is simply impossible 
 for any woman to live without assistance on the 
 low salary a saleswoman earns, without depriving 
 herself of real necessities. ... It is inevitable 
 that they must in many instances resort to evil." 
 This, I say, is the great cause of the want that 
 leads to evil insufficient wages. And this is 
 the great cause of the ignorance, too, that does 
 not know how to protect itself; for the young 
 girls of New York and other cities are sent out 
 to work before they have become women and 
 learned of the ways of life and of their duty 
 toward God and man. They are utterly without
 
 162 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 safeguards often, indeed, without any instruc- 
 tion regarding the dangers of yielding to tempta- 
 tion. Girls should be sent to school and kept 
 there at least until they are sixteen years of age ; 
 and in the last years of their school life compe- 
 tent instructors men and women of character, 
 who have taken degrees in medicine and philos- 
 ophy should teach them the things that they 
 ought to know. And in this instruction the 
 beauty of virtue should be dwelt upon, and the 
 hideousness of vice. Vice, stripped of its showy 
 robes and of the mystery with which prudes 
 have surrounded it, would soon lose all attrac- 
 tion for young women. And I believe that if it 
 were so exposed it would soon lose all attraction 
 for young men too. Boys should be instructed 
 even as girls should be, and they should be 
 warned against the devices of the "strange 
 woman, whose feet go down to death; whose 
 steps take hold on hell," and exalted to care for 
 the "virtuous woman, whose price is far above 
 rubies." And above all, they should be taught 
 that their first duty to the race is to shield all 
 women from harm. 
 
 But before we leave the question of insuffi- 
 cient wages, let me say that it is evident that if
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 163 
 
 this is, in the last analysis, the thing which 
 pushes young women along the road to destruc- 
 tion, it is just as much to blame in pushing 
 young men the same way. There is no doubt 
 that, for the most part, if young men could earn 
 enough to support wife and family, they would 
 do so. All men, except the very few perverted, 
 are of a domestic disposition, and have enshrined 
 in their hearts a love of home, in which some 
 woman shall shine as a lamp radiating light and 
 hopefulness, routing darkness and despair. Men 
 are bad enough, but they are not as bad as they 
 are painted. They are as often the victims of 
 evil circumstances as the makers of evil condi- 
 tions. Whatever may be the attitude of the men 
 of the Latin countries toward women, that of 
 the men of America is one of respect and admira- 
 tion. Again, if men were paid higher wages, the 
 ignorance and want of the women who are paid 
 insufficient wages would appeal to their higher 
 nature, and they would respond to every call 
 that was made to protect and care for the vic- 
 tims of evil. We believe that the men whom 
 we call gentlemen respond to every such call. 
 I believe that it is no less true of the men whom 
 we know simply as working-men. I read to you
 
 1(54 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 one of the six additions to the platform of the 
 National Labor Union adopted since 1868 : " Re- 
 solved, That women are entitled to equal pay for 
 equal services with men; that the practice of 
 working women and children ten to fifteen hours 
 a day at starvation prices is brutal in the ex- 
 treme, and subversive to the health, intelligence, 
 and morality of the nation, and demands the in- 
 terposition of law." 
 
 Insufficient wages I regard as the primary 
 cause of the social evil, and ignorance and want 
 as the secondary. Yet there is another cause, 
 which, though it does not produce the evil, 
 tends to aggravate it; and that is the hardness 
 of heart of those who, having never felt the 
 power of these dreadful servants of Satan, have 
 never fallen into this social wrong. It is curi- 
 ous how hard reputable women are on the dis- 
 reputable, and how seldom they will give their 
 erring sisters an opportunity of raising them- 
 selves out of their horrid condition. There are 
 hundreds yes, thousands of women who would 
 gladly leave the dreadful life they lead, if the 
 way of escape were open. I know that there 
 are rescue-houses and the like, but there are not 
 enough of them, nor is there enough interest
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 
 
 taken in them by women generally. I was told 
 not long ago that the guardian of one of the 
 houses of refuge in New York had many more 
 applications for places than could be accommo- 
 dated, and that again and again God's children 
 had begged to be permitted to sleep on a table 
 or in a chair. We should remember that though 
 a woman may be one of the victims of evil, she 
 need not, by any means, be utterly bad; our 
 Lord Himself said, speaking to the proud priests 
 and Pharisees of His day and we who are so 
 satisfied with our righteousness might well take 
 His words to heart "Verily I say unto you, That 
 the publicans and the harlots go into the king- 
 dom of God before you." 
 
 " Then, gently scan your brother man ; 
 Still gentler, sister woman." 
 
 Yes, gently scan your brother man, and gen- 
 tler, sister woman ; " judge not, that ye be not 
 judged." But whatever your judgment be, visit 
 upon the man the same penalty you do upon the 
 woman. I am not an admirer of the books of 
 Mrs. Sarah Grand, but I am sure that the princi- 
 ple she has laid down in "The Heavenly Twins" 
 is right. 
 But what can be done to remedy or narrow
 
 166 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the borders of the social evil apart from the giv- 
 ing of higher wages and of better instruction to 
 young women and young men? Well, I have 
 thought of two things. First, I would advise 
 that all property be held accountable for any 
 and every unlawful use to which it may be put ; 
 and that, when there shall be found upon any 
 premises a house of ill repute, a heavy penalty 
 be imposed upon the property, and, at the same 
 time, the name of the owner, unless he can clear 
 his skirts of all knowledge of wrong, be published 
 in the newspapers at his expense. Secondly, I 
 would advise the formation of a company of 
 female police. They should be recruited from 
 among widows of a mature age, and have the 
 same powers that male policemen have. I would 
 not have them carry weapons, nor would I have 
 them use force on any occasion, but only moral 
 persuasion. When force should be required they 
 should call upon the men for help. I believe 
 that a little company of vigorous, virtuous fe- 
 male police would do more in a few short years 
 to close up bad houses, gambling-dens, and low 
 saloons than all the male members of the police 
 force have done for centuries. And I do not 
 think that this scheme is visionary and wild.
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 
 
 Women have for many years managed the re- 
 form school for women in Massachusetts, and in 
 New York it has been suggested lately, under 
 the reform movement, that a woman should be 
 appointed a member of the Department of Char- 
 ities and Correction. The present mayor of New 
 York, it is said, has expressed himself in favor 
 of the representation of women in the city gov- 
 ernment; and if in the city government and in 
 the Department of Charities and Correction, why 
 not in the Department of Police ! In this connec- 
 tion I desire to call your attention to the fact that 
 one of the greatest contests waged by the labor 
 associations with the constituted authorities was 
 over the question whether women should not be 
 appointed as factory inspectors. Since the time 
 they have been so appointed the very best results 
 have come from their work. 
 
 But I must pass on to an examination of the 
 other great head of the hydra of evil the low 
 saloon. And mark, I speak of the low saloon, 
 and not of the saloon in general ; because I think 
 that a distinction ought to be made between the 
 respectable selling of good liquors, wines, and 
 beer, whether wholesale or retail, and the dis- 
 reputable selling of bad beer and poisonous bev-
 
 1(38 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 erages. Let us be fair: there is no difference 
 between the manufacture and the sale of liquors 
 and other beverages, and there is no difference 
 between the selling of the same by retail and by 
 wholesale. If one of these things be wrong, all 
 are wrong. If one be right, all are right. Nor 
 do I see any difference between him who manu- 
 factures or sells and him who drinks. Now I 
 maintain that the manufacture and sale of in- 
 toxicants are not evils per se, but that they are 
 likely to become so. It is the likelihood of their 
 becoming so that makes us to scan them criti- 
 cally, that makes us to restrict them more than 
 other trades and businesses ; for we must under- 
 stand that all trades and businesses are under 
 some restrictions in every well-regulated com- 
 munity. I know that when I say that I main- 
 tain that the manufacture and sale of stimulat- 
 ing beverages are not evils per se, I may run 
 counter to the conclusions of the Committee of 
 Fifty (of which President Low of Columbia Col- 
 lege is the chairman), which has lately been ap- 
 pointed to study and to report on the liquor 
 problem; but I do not believe that I shall. I 
 take my stand on the common experience and 
 common consensus of men of all generations,
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 
 
 and on the principle of the Church Temperance 
 Societies of England and America, which, though 
 they encourage total abstinence, preach godly 
 temperance. And this stand I take without ap- 
 peal to the acts of our Lord when He was with 
 His friends and disciples, and to the well-known 
 advice that St. Paul gave to St. Timothy. What 
 I aver is that the use of intoxicants easily be- 
 comes an abuse, and that, therefore, the manu- 
 facture and sale thereof should be hedged in and 
 surrounded by every possible safeguard. 
 
 Let us begin with the manufacture. And 
 here, in my opinion, is the point of departure 
 for the reform of the liquor and beer traffic. 
 No manufacture of intoxicants can take place 
 to-day without a license and the payment of 
 certain taxes. And the license and the taxes 
 are right, but they do not go far enough. No 
 manufacture of liquor or beer, or even' of wine, 
 should be permitted except under governmental 
 inspection and regulation; and the first task of 
 the government should not be to get revenue in 
 taxes, but to see to it that the manufacture of 
 intoxicants is done properly and with the least 
 possible probability of harm. Why, it is the 
 present inspection and regulation of distilling
 
 170 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 and brewing that has made the manufacture of 
 whisky and beer respectable in the Dominion of 
 Canada. At the opening of the offices of the 
 firm of Hiram Walker & Sons last autumn, the 
 best and most respectable citizens of Ontario 
 and Michigan were present. I would have the 
 manufacturers of all sorts of intoxicants put up 
 all their products in packages, great and small, 
 which should be delivered with unbroken seals 
 to the retail dealers ; and would permit the mid- 
 dlemen, under like governmental inspection and 
 regulation, to bottle only foreign liquors and 
 wines. A great deal of the present trouble, I 
 am told, comes from the middlemen the rectifi- 
 ers, or, better, falsifiers adulterating the goods 
 that they buy or that are consigned to them, and 
 in the adulteration making them tenfold more 
 deadly than they were. Again, I am sure we 
 will agree that no liquors, wine, or beer should 
 be put on the market by the distiller, brewer, or 
 wine-producer, except such as are absolutely 
 pure and wholesome, and then only at such ail 
 age as will make them best for use ; and from 
 this rule there should be no departure. It is a 
 dangerous thing for men to drink liquors that 
 have just been distiUed ; and it is equally danger-
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 
 
 ous to drink fresh-made beer that has to be got- 
 ten ready for the market by the aid of noxious 
 chemicals. 
 
 But how are the governmental regulations and 
 inspections to be carried out ? Easily enough : by 
 men who have been graduated from the best col- 
 leges and universities in the land, or, better, by 
 men who shall have been graduated from some 
 great agricultural and poly technical school to be 
 established by the general government. The 
 United States has its school for the army at 
 West Point, and that for the navy at Annapolis ; 
 it is high time that it established a school of the 
 sciences in some part of the West. And such a 
 school, let me say in passing, would do a great 
 deal to solve the important question of civil-ser- 
 vice reform. 
 
 But as yet I have only touched upon the 
 manufacture and sale of intoxicants at whole- 
 sale; for let me say, I would keep each branch 
 of the trade as separate and distinct as possible. 
 The manufacturer should be permitted to sell 
 either to the middlemen or to the retailers, but, 
 as I have said, always in sealed packages; and 
 the middlemen should be permitted to sell only 
 to the retailers or to householders, and always in
 
 17*2 WVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 original packages, except in the case of foreign 
 goods. And both the manufacturers and the 
 middlemen should be prohibited, under forfei- 
 ture of their licenses, from having any inter- 
 ests, direct or indirect, in any branch of the busi- 
 ness other than their own. One of the greatest 
 sources of our present trouble is that brewers 
 and distillers and middlemen set up men in 
 trade by lending them money on chattel mort- 
 gages and the like; thus they get control of 
 their businesses and force them to buy their 
 stock, and often more of it than they otherwise 
 would, thus forcing the retailers in turn to en- 
 courage their customers to drink. There are 
 several cities with whose affairs I am familiar, 
 in the East, that are controlled by the brewers 
 and distillers thereof; and I suppose the same 
 is true of some of the cities of the West. The 
 brewers and distillers, by the means of which I 
 have spoken, get control of the low saloons; 
 these low saloons get control of their customers, 
 and conjointly they control the caucuses and 
 party politics. 
 
 Now we come to the question of license, and 
 what shall it be high or low I And the answer 
 must be, it seems to me, high license, but not so
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 173 
 
 high as to act as a stimulus to law-breakers to 
 set up illicit houses. The amount of license 
 should be simply a guaranty that the dealer 
 and the land-owner intend to run their place of 
 business legally and respectably ; and guaranty, 
 and not revenue, should determine the amount 
 to be fixed for the license. And I would have 
 three licenses for the retail trade one for beer, 
 one for wine, and one for liquors and make 
 men take out one, two, or three, and for each 
 pay the required sum and give the proper bond. 
 I would let them run together in some cases, 
 but there should be no confusion. 
 
 The chief means of reform of the retail liquor 
 traffic which I advocate are these : First, general 
 governmental inspection and regulation, the same 
 as for the manufacture and the wholesale trade. 
 When any intoxicants have been tampered with 
 there should be an irrevocable forfeiture of the 
 license. Second, I would have the house licensed 
 as well as the dealer, and for any infraction of the 
 law and the governmental regulations I would 
 have the license revoked both as to the dealer 
 and the landlord. I would have the alleged in- 
 fraction passed upon by a competent court, and 
 its judgment to be as irrevocable as any adjudi-
 
 174 CIVlc CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 cated case. Third, I would have all public places 
 clubs, hotels, saloons, and the rest treated 
 alike, and every place closed punctually at 
 twelve o'clock midnight, and not opened before 
 eight in the morning, and hermetically sealed 
 on Sunday, with the exception of certain clubs, 
 hotels, and restaurants, which should receive 
 especial licenses for the sale of wine and beer 
 only, to be open during certain specified hours 
 in the afternoon or evening. Fourth, I would 
 permit no bar to be set up unless a certain num- 
 ber of tables and chairs were placed in the same 
 room, and provision made for something to eat, 
 as is made in Germany ; and I would permit no 
 flashy displays either inside or outside of any 
 saloon or hotel or club. 
 
 The great aim, as it seems to me, of the law 
 and of public opinion should be to make the 
 saloon as respectable as possible, and not to 
 crush it down by restrictions that will not be 
 followed, and that are born of cant and bigotry. 
 Frankly, I cannot understand why, if rich men 
 can have their clubs and places where they can 
 go and meet their fellows socially, poor men 
 should be debarred from the same sort of places. 
 The poor have no money with which to erect
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 175 
 
 palatial club-houses, and they have no money, 
 if they cannot erect club-houses, to go to the 
 theatre and other fine places of amusement; do 
 not, therefore, let us make their mean places of 
 resort worse than they are. Let us lift them up 
 let us help to lift them up and cease to play 
 the hypocrite. Coffee-houses and such like agen- 
 cies are very good in their way; but I do not 
 believe that there are many whose dainty flesh 
 quivers at the thought of the low saloon who 
 would care to frequent the coffee-houses with 
 their smug air of patronage. The poor man, 
 shut up with a wife, and generally with more 
 children than the rich man is willing to have, in 
 a little narrow house or in a few rooms, must 
 have some place in which he may meet his fel- 
 lows. All places for the sale of intoxicants at 
 retail are alike in character, and should be re- 
 garded alike, and should be considered as alike 
 reputable or disreputable. What is wanted is as 
 much a reform of manners as of the law. Let 
 men rich men and poor men alike learn to 
 conduct themselves temperately in all public- 
 houses and clubs. Let them cease to treat and 
 to be treated. Let them sit down and drink 
 something while they are eating, like civilized
 
 176 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 men; and not stand up and. gulp down a bare 
 drink like a savage. Above all, let them agree, 
 and let them publish this agreement to the world, 
 that for men to drink intoxicants during business 
 hours is a sin, not only against nature and mo- 
 rality, but against common sense and business 
 character. 
 
 One last word in conclusion, and I shall finish. 
 Let me say that no laws, no regulations, will do 
 anything of permanence in eradicating evils the 
 social evil, the low saloon, or any other; such 
 laws and such regulations will serve only to con- 
 trol and restrict them, and they will do this if 
 they are wise and do not run counter to the 
 great rule of common consent. The primary 
 appeal must be made to the heart of every man 
 and woman in the land that they each shall re- 
 solve to live the higher and not the lower life ; 
 that they each shall endeavor to be brave and 
 true and noble, and not cowardly and false and 
 mean. And the secondary appeal must be made 
 to the masses of men and women collectively 
 that they all shall resolve to live for the social 
 order as well as for themselves; that they all 
 shall determine to give somewhat of their time
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL AND THE LOW SALOON. 177 
 
 and efforts for the common good of humanity, 
 at no matter what sacrifice of self. 
 
 And these appeals, need I point out to you, 
 must be based on the one great example of per- 
 fect manhood known to men on the example of 
 Jesus Christ, who partook of the pleasures of life 
 that were innocent, and who denounced those 
 that were wrong ; who feasted in the company of 
 His friends, and who fasted alone with His God ; 
 who was temperate in all things, and whose tem- 
 perance did not degenerate into weakness ; who 
 did not sacrifice Himself in giving up the things 
 that were right, but in never yielding to the 
 things that were wrong.
 
 XI. 
 
 THE CKOSS THE RESOLVENT OF DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 " But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and 
 I unto the world." GAL. vi. 14. 
 
 As we go about from place to place, consort- 
 ing with one or another person, as we pick tip 
 here and there a book and read what this or 
 that author has written, we are struck by the 
 fact that a man's opinions depend, as a rule, 
 upon his standpoint, and that this is his point 
 of view of life. These points are: the old Epi- 
 curean, that which simply looks upon life as a 
 something that affords so many opportunities 
 for pleasure ; the old Stoical, that which regards 
 existence as a dreadful task, and the accidents 
 and incidents of life as so many burdens to be 
 borne ; the new utilitarian, that which looks upon 
 life as a something to be used, and all things 
 that come into it as so many ways of getting 
 on ; and the religious, that which looks upon life 
 as the gift of God, and all the things of it as so 
 
 178
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OF DIFFICULTIES. 179 
 
 many means for the development of character. 
 Yes, right here in this congregation, I am sure 
 that I that any one could, after a short ac- 
 quaintance with the people composing it, divide 
 them into the several classes I have named. 
 There would, to be sure, be some that could not 
 be classified those who are the mere flotsam 
 and jetsam upon the ocean of society; but for 
 the most part, the men and the women who sit 
 before me look either for the pleasures to be 
 had, the burdens to be borne, the things to be 
 utilized, or the ideas and ideals that are God's. 
 
 You may read a thousand books, you may con- 
 verse with a thousand persons, and you will per- 
 ceive that all sorts of questions are asked as to 
 life, its meaning, its value, its aim, its end; and 
 to these questions all sorts of answers will be 
 given. But all these questions and all the 
 answers thereto, I am sure, will be found to 
 have relation to one or the other of the points 
 of view of life of which I have spoken. And 
 how confusing they are, these questions and 
 answers the interminable discussions in regard 
 to life and its issues, great and small! How 
 weary we become of them ! how helpless in face 
 of them all! The money question, the tariff
 
 180 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 question, the tenement question, the labor ques- 
 tion, the immigrant question, the agricultural 
 question, the tramp question, the war question, 
 the Afro- American question, the Roman Catho- 
 lic question, the educational question, the muni- 
 cipal question, the woman question, the geolog- 
 ical question, the descent-of-man question, the 
 inspiration-of-Scripture question, the immortal- 
 ity question, and a host of others that need not 
 be named these and such as these confront us 
 on every side, and they not only ask, but they 
 command, that we shall consider them. We 
 may laugh them in the face and say, " What do 
 I care for you ? You are only so many spectres 
 that men have drawn up by the enchantment of 
 their intellects from a limbo as imaginary as that 
 which Shakespeare places behind the scenes of 
 ' Macbeth.' I shall enjoy my life in spite of you, 
 and drink of all its pleasures ! " Or we may 
 shake our heads and say, "I see you, I cannot 
 help but see you, but, as I cannot solve you, I 
 will bear the burdens you cast upon me as un- 
 complainingly as I can." Or we may shut our 
 eyes and ignore them and say, " I do not want 
 to see you, I will not be bothered with you; 
 what I want is to make the best I can out of my
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OF DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 life in the ways that strike men's admiration and 
 are called successful." Or we may say, "I see 
 you, I think of you, I do not wholly understand 
 you, why you and such things as you should be 
 in the conscious life of humanity, yet somehow 
 I feel that you are necessary for the intellectual 
 and moral development of the race. I will try 
 my best to get at your meaning." Yes, yes, 
 whether we laugh or cry or shrug our shoulders 
 or look at these questions with longing to under- 
 stand them, they and such as they are there; 
 they start up before our eyes on every street, 
 from every newspaper and book that we read. 
 
 My friends, I have thought and pondered upon 
 these questions again and again as I wandered 
 the past summer through the older countries of 
 Europe, conversing with men, viewing their 
 works and reading their books ; and I confess I 
 have been at times much depressed with my in- 
 ability to solve them satisfactorily. But more 
 depressed have I been by the thought that I was 
 placed here as a teacher, and that I must have 
 failed to give you any clear light that would 
 make their solution easier for you. Yet in all 
 my perplexity and regret one thing has stood 
 forth in my consciousness the incarnation of
 
 182 CIVIC CHEIST1ANITY. 
 
 the Son of God, the crucifixion of the Son of 
 man. The cross of Christ seemed to come nearer 
 and nearer to my eyes and to sink deeper and 
 deeper into my soul, and there grew up in me a 
 conviction not of the reason I had so often 
 used, but of the faith I had never felt that the 
 cross is the one thing in all the world that it is 
 necessary for men to know and to understand; 
 that in the knowledge and the understanding 
 of the meaning of Jesus Christ crucified the 
 answers to all the world's hard questions can be 
 given not fully, perhaps, but sufficiently for the 
 daily needs of the life of mankind. 
 
 Yes, I am convinced, as well for myself as for 
 you and all others, that we do not give the 
 proper attention to the central fact of God's 
 revelation of Himself to man in the person of 
 His Son. We let our minds be diverted from 
 the crucifixion that great tragedy of evil, yet 
 victory of love, that event in which all the inter- 
 ests of the world met, by which all the questions 
 of mankind were answered and we fix them 
 upon the things that lie in the shadows of Cal- 
 vary, the things that long ago were put to flight 
 by the outcome of its power. You will under- 
 stand me when I say I am convinced that the
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OF DIFFICULTIES. 1Q3 
 
 cross of Christ solved all the questions that had 
 arisen, or that could possibly arise, in the life of 
 mankind ; all questions of pain, all of pleasure, 
 all of duty, all of godliness. Now we may think 
 that is, some of us may think of this in a 
 general way ; but for the most part men are not 
 convinced of this thing at all, and those who are 
 hold their convictions half-heartedly. What we 
 need what we all need is to stand before the 
 cross of Christ, not as reasoners, but as believers, 
 and as such to contemplate it quietly, calmly, 
 and be still. Then, and only then, will it strike 
 its roots downward and bear its fruit upward, 
 like all life. It is an old axiom, but as true as 
 it is old, that life, as well the spiritual as the 
 natural, is a matter of growth ; and this growth, 
 to be of the highest form and to bear the truest 
 fruit, must be constantly cultivated. 
 
 You may say to me, "Do you not aver too 
 much when you say that the cross of Christ is 
 the resolvent of every difficulty that can arise 
 in the life of mankind f" No, I do not think so. 
 Take any question ; take the general question of 
 pleasure : is it right ! Certainly, in cases where 
 no sacrifice of self is demanded ; but where any 
 sacrifice of self is demanded it is wrong. But
 
 184 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 who shall say when a sacrifice of self is de- 
 manded ? Jesus Christ. But how ? In the life 
 He led that led Him to the cross. Or take a 
 practical question ; take the question of the hous- 
 ing of the poor : how should their tenements be 
 erected and arranged 1 Can we doubt how, when 
 we look at the Saviour on the cross and call to 
 mind the words that He uttered just previous to 
 His passion and death 1 "In My Father's house 
 there are many mansions: if it were not so, I 
 would have told you. I go to prepare a place 
 for you." Surely He did not mean to go to pre- 
 pare a place simply for those who live in great 
 palatial houses ; and if Jesus Christ through His 
 cross and passion went to prepare a place in His 
 Father's house of many mansions for the chil- 
 dren of men, how much more ought we to pre- 
 pare places for them in the many mansions of 
 the cities of the world ! " Woe unto them that 
 join house to house, that lay field to field, till 
 there be no place, that they may be placed alone 
 in the midst of the earth ! " For these, indeed, 
 there may be found no places in the many man- 
 sions of the kingdom of God ! 
 
 Or take, again, the burning question of the day 
 the labor question ; and of it the most difficult
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OP DIFFICULTIES. 185 
 
 of all its many subdivisions, the problem of 
 wages. How shall we ascertain what should be 
 the proportion of the wage-worker in the profit 
 of production ? Let me say that I have consid- 
 ered this question much and long ; I have deter- 
 mined that I would come to some conclusion in 
 regard to it ; but I have never been able to do so 
 as I have looked at the question simply from the 
 standpoint of reason. There is the capitalist, 
 and there is the employer, and there are the em- 
 ployees ; who can say just what proportion they 
 each should have of the return for the work 
 produced by the efforts of all 1 We may declare 
 that each should have a fair return ; but what is 
 fair? The capitalist says, " I risk a great deal;" 
 the employer says, " I manage the whole affair;" 
 the wage-earner says, " I really produce the re- 
 sult." It is in the cross of Christ alone ; it is, I 
 say, in the cross of self-sacrifice alone, that I 
 can see any solution of this most difficult prob- 
 lem. Christ here tells men that they should be 
 willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of 
 their kind. But more: He shows them, as He 
 hangs there and prays for His persecutors, the 
 meaning of the great words He had previously 
 spoken : " Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I
 
 186 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 will have mercy, and not sacrifice." It is not so 
 much the hard sacrifice of the Son of man, 
 rather is it the tender mercy of the Son of God, 
 that we perceive when we look long and steadily 
 at Jesus Christ crucified. And so we learn. 
 and we can learn only in the love that was 
 manifested on the cross of Calvary the truth 
 we seek : that not that proportion of the return 
 for work done by which men may live is right, 
 but rather that proportion by which men may 
 live as men. When capitalists and employers 
 shall look steadily at the cross of Christ they 
 will not be content to give their employees 
 simply a " living wage " ; they will desire to give 
 their brothers manhood wages. 
 
 And mark, it is not so much the reasoning 
 faculty that is brought into play by the contem- 
 plation of the cross ; the mind cannot always ex- 
 plain the belief of the heart, for the heart has 
 reasons of its own that the mind knows not of. 
 In the contemplation of the cross we see its 
 deep significance, and we see that its signifi- 
 cance is broader and deeper and higher than all 
 the thought of men, because its height and depth 
 and width are conterminous with the love of 
 Jesus Christ, and His love is the infinite love of 
 the eternal God.
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OF DIFFICULTIES. 187 
 
 It is in this thought in this transforming, 
 transcending thought that one loses one's self 
 in the contemplation of the Crucified ; but in the 
 losing of one's self one finds one's self again, for 
 one finds God, and it is the finding of God that 
 gives our lives their true meaning and value. 
 And so I am convinced that during the past 
 three or four generations men have been on the 
 wrong roads the roads of deism, of positivism, 
 of materialism and agnosticism ; they have need 
 to get off and to shun these roads as quickly as 
 possible, and walk in the way of Christ the way 
 which led Him to the cross. Has He not said, 
 " Follow Me," " If any man will come after Me, 
 let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
 follow Me " ? Yet mark again, it is not so much 
 the words of Christ that should be in our hearts 
 and minds, it is the cross itself ; and so I am con- 
 vinced that we have- in a measure done wrong, 
 even in the past few years, since we began to 
 study so attentively the Sermon on the Mount 
 and the other discourses of our Lord. Surely we 
 should study them, for they are the life-seeds of 
 the great Sower; but greater than the seeds is 
 the Sower Himself; and greatest is that Sower 
 when He was least in the judgment of wicked 
 men.
 
 188 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 It seems strange to me, when I think of the 
 meaning of the cross of Christ, that for so many 
 years after the Eeformation it should have been 
 held by so many pious souls to be the greatest 
 emblem of superstition. The revolt against eccle- 
 siasticism must, indeed, have been tremendous, 
 when it protested against the highest and best 
 as well as the lowest and worst forms and repre- 
 sentations of the faith I But, thank God ! the ex- 
 treme protest of the Reformed churches is dying 
 out, and with it the change it effected in men's 
 thoughts of religion and religious duty. Calvin 
 and his followers, when they looked away from 
 the cross and the other emblems of the Chris- 
 tian faith, looked into men's hearts ; and so they 
 endeavored to establish a rational basis and 
 philosophy of religion. But religion that is, 
 the revelation of God to man in the person of 
 Christ though it must square with men's reason 
 and present many points of philosophy, rests 
 upon something far deeper and broader than the 
 thought of man; it rests upon the love of God, 
 which may be comprehended by man's thought, 
 but which can never be compassed by it. It is 
 no wonder, then, that when men's ideas of God 
 and His ways began to grow they quickly felt
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OP DIFFICULTIES. 189 
 
 that the cardinal points of the Calvinistic sys- 
 tem predestination, effectual calling, final per- 
 severance, and the atonement for the benefit of 
 a limited number of the elect bound up their 
 intellects as fast and as hard as the shoes of the 
 Chinese the feet of their infant daughters. 
 
 The whole recent revolt against religion is, in 
 my opinion, nothing more than a protest against 
 a man-made theory of what religion must be. 
 I am sure that religious feeling has never been 
 deeper and truer than it is to-day. Never have 
 men been more convinced of the being of God, 
 and of the necessity of knowing Him and of tak- 
 ing Him into their lives ; never have they sought 
 so persistently to base all their actions as well 
 as thoughts upon the eternal law of love. The 
 constant study of the words of Jesus Christ, and 
 the many books that have recently been written 
 thereupon, is a proof of what I say. But a 
 stronger proof is the vast sums of money that 
 have been given to further every cause of Chris- 
 tian love, the many acts of mercy that have been 
 done in Christ's name. What is needed to-day 
 is this: a teaching that will take men's minds 
 away from thinking of themselves in relation to 
 the Godhead, and reverse their point of view a
 
 190 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 teaching that will make them to look upon God 
 and His Son in relation to men; and nothing 
 will aid this so much as the bringing before 
 their eyes of the wonderful emblem of the cross. 
 Therein we see the unlimited mercy of God; 
 therein we know how He loved the world and 
 mankind. In the bruised figure of Him who 
 was and is "very God of very God, begotten, 
 not made"; who came into our world from His 
 own, and was made man for us ; and as such, be- 
 cause He would not answer the foolish questions 
 of men, but showed us the way that leads to the 
 truth which brings with it eternity, was taken 
 by them and nailed on the tree in this figure, 
 I say, we have all the light that is necessary for 
 us to walk in, which will guide our feet and the 
 feet of all mankind into the way of peace. 
 
 Ah ! my friends, I beseech you, fix your eyes 
 on the cross of Christ, and let this be your 
 glory : that the Son of God loved you, and gave 
 Himself for you. Then indeed will you learn the 
 way to live well yourselves, then how to live for 
 others ; for how can you do otherwise than live 
 worthy of Him who loved you even to the death 
 of the cross? How can you do otherwise than 
 love those for whom Christ died, that He might
 
 THE CROSS THE RESOLVENT OF DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 save them, as well as you, from the many forms 
 of sin? And let me say that if you can, even as 
 St. Paul, understand the full meaning of the cross, 
 you will quickly learn to sacrifice the things of 
 the world to your love of God and man ; quickly 
 will the things of the world learn to sacrifice 
 you in which sacrifices you shall become even 
 as your Lord, an embodiment of love, and be fit 
 to live in the smile of the Saviour of the world !
 
 XII. 
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 
 "Where there is no vision, the people perish." PROV. xxix. 18. 
 
 ALL the power, all the capacity of man have 
 been reduced by many of the world's best think- 
 ers to strength and clearness of vision. With 
 these gifts, it is averred, the truly able man is 
 potentially able in all directions, no matter what 
 may be the field wherein they are exerted. This 
 power and this capacity manifest themselves in 
 various ways; but chiefly they take two forms, 
 according as the man concerns himself with 
 things temporal or with things spiritual. To 
 many this thought may seem transcendental 
 and foolish; I do not wish to beg the question 
 by saying that these have no vision. Let us see 
 whether the thought is true or not, and let us 
 for the argument's sake take two examples the 
 example of the building of a house, and the ex- 
 ample of the upbuilding of society. 
 
 How is it in the building of a house? What 
 
 192
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 193 
 
 is the first step taken ? A plan is drawn by an 
 architect. But does he draw it in a haphazard 
 way 1 ? No, he must see the idea before him be- 
 fore he begins his work. He puts it on paper, 
 it is true, but he must be able to see it before he 
 puts it there. He must see the shape, the eleva- 
 tion, the general effect. He puts his idea on 
 paper, but he does this chiefly that there may 
 be no mistakes, and so that others may see his 
 plan. But the architect is not the only person 
 that must see the house before it is erected ; not 
 to speak of the owner, there is the builder. The 
 builder must see what the architect sees. He 
 need not see with the same strength and clear- 
 ness of .vision, to be sure, but he must see the 
 house, or else he cannot build it. But the builder 
 has aids and helps to his vision; he has before 
 his eyes the drawing that the architect a man 
 of stronger and clearer vision has produced. 
 
 And so likewise is it with sub-builders. The 
 master workman assigns to his brethren of the 
 craft of lesser capacity certain portions of the 
 building which they can see, which are in the 
 range of their vision. It is only those who have 
 no strength and clearness of insight at all who 
 carry out the work of building foot by foot, day
 
 194 CIVIC CHEISTIANITY. 
 
 by day. These can see the building only when 
 it is finished; and happy are they if they can 
 see it then. There are many men who look at 
 a building a house, a church who see only 
 bricks and mortar and what they must have 
 cost in time and money. The real beauty of the 
 edifice its graceful lines, its warmth of color, 
 its use, its aim is entirely hid from them. 
 
 And so let us take the example of the upbuild- 
 ing of society. Let us look at the work of an 
 economist and by the work of an economist 
 I mean all the endeavors of those who have 
 wrought upon the structure of society, both 
 those who have essayed to rebuild on the old, as 
 well as those who have essayed to build on new, 
 foundations. And let me say that all the phi- 
 losophers who have not been occupied simply in 
 regarding the working and development of the 
 intellect that is, who have not been simple psy- 
 chologists come under this head of economists. 
 I mean, all the world's philosophers who have not 
 devoted themselves merely to the study of man's 
 power and capacity have had as an end of their 
 endeavors the upbuilding of society. 
 
 Let us see what have been the great forces 
 (humanly speaking) in the construction and re-
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 195 
 
 construction of society. I do not mean, of course, 
 in the production of wealth and of the means of 
 living ; I mean in setting forth the best ways in 
 which men should live and conduct themselves 
 in order that they may attain to their best de- 
 velopment. Surely the great forces have been 
 the men who have had aims above the utilita- 
 rian and expedient ; who saw through the short- 
 comings of the things that were about them, 
 and looked ahead to others that were broader 
 and better. In other words, the great forces in 
 the progress of civil society have been the men 
 who have had strength and clearness of vision ; 
 clearness to see the dangers of the present, 
 strength to urge their brethren to a higher and 
 better way of living. And so it has been : the 
 vision of Plato, the vision of Sir Thomas More, 
 the vision of Rousseau, have been the forces that 
 have opened men's minds to a realizing sense of 
 their own defects ; that have made them to look 
 ahead to, to strive for, better things. 
 
 I have named the visions of these men as 
 types, for to their clearness and strength of in- 
 sight we can trace an immense influence in the 
 upbuilding of society all along the lines of his- 
 tory; but there are hundreds of other men of
 
 196 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 strong and clear vision who have greatly aided 
 society, not only in their own, but in all the 
 days since they lived; who saw through the 
 phenomena into the reality of things, and re- 
 ported the reality to us. Not to go too far 
 back, let us speak of the men of modern times. 
 How much do you think the world would have 
 progressed this past century without the aid of 
 the visions of Wilberforce and Carlyle, of Keble 
 and Kingsley, of Gladstone and Tennyson, in 
 England ; of Guizot and Hugo, of Lamartine and 
 Thiers, of Dupanloup and Gambetta, in France ; 
 of Webster and Seward, of Lowell and Phillips, 
 of Lincoln and Grant, in the United States ? A 
 moment's reflection will show you that neither 
 the social nor the political advancement of our 
 century has owed anything to the men who have 
 concerned themselves simply with the production 
 of material things, but that it owes everything 
 to the wisdom of the men of vision. They have 
 furnished all the best theories of government 
 and society. They have settled the principles 
 of legislation and taxation, the ways of produc- 
 tion and distribution, the laws of war and of in- 
 ternational comity, the aim of the state, and the 
 best way to secure the accomplishment of that
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 
 
 aim in all its manifold forms. And why has 
 this been so ? I think we can say because these 
 and such as these were able to see through the 
 things that surrounded them to see on to a 
 higher and better way of living; and because, 
 too, they were able not only to see, but to make 
 others to see what they saw. And so can we 
 not say that it is literally true that " where there 
 is no vision, the people perish"? An existing 
 state of affairs, with all the abuses which creep 
 into it through man's egoism and self-seeking, 
 would become intolerable unless there were some 
 who could always see out of it a way to a more 
 perfect state. 
 
 And as it has been in the past so is it in the 
 present. On all sides men are arising and de- 
 nouncing the shortcomings of the social and 
 political life of the day. Never before have so 
 many things which seemed so satisfactory to 
 the prosperous and negligent been banned and 
 anathematized. We would almost think, when 
 we read the indictments drawn by thinking men 
 and women against this evil and that, when we 
 hear the reproaches hurled by them against one 
 political party or the other, that every custom 
 and institution of life had fallen into decay and
 
 198 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 chaos ; but a little reflection teaches us that the 
 contrary is true. Decay is a mark of a lack of 
 activity, chaos of a lack of thought ; and activity 
 and thought are the distinguishing marks of our 
 times. No, no; we hear and read of the short- 
 comings of the day because of the fact that 
 there are men and women ever more and more 
 of them who are beginning to look at things 
 steadily and squarely, and who in so looking see 
 when they are wrong. Some there are, indeed, 
 who can only see when things are wrong; but 
 others there are who cannot only see when things 
 are wrong, but how they can be made right. 
 Both the one class and the other do good; but 
 those who can see both when things are wrong 
 and how to make them right have the strength 
 and clearness of vision that stamp them as the 
 benefactors of the race. It has been always so. 
 It was so right here in our own country not many 
 years ago ; it will be so again. The denunciators 
 of the day are like those who denounced the 
 great evil of horrid slavery and the things it 
 bred in its festering sores. Each one did good 
 work in arousing the moral sense of the nation ; 
 but they who did the best were those who looked 
 beyond the institution of slavery to a realiza-
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 199 
 
 tion of the brotherhood of man under a better 
 appreciation of the fatherhood of God. 
 
 The evil of the condition of the masses to-day 
 is analogous to that of the slaves. On all sides 
 the rich are denounced, many rightly, some 
 wrongly; for to-day it is the same as it was in 
 slaveholding times : many rich men sympathize 
 with the low condition of the poor, and try to 
 help them. Some men are coming, some have 
 come, to the front who will be able to see through 
 all our present errors and confusions on to a 
 better state of things, on to a further realization 
 of the brotherhood of man in the kingdom of 
 a wise and loving Father. To their eyes has 
 come, or will come, such a vision as came to the 
 eyes of the men and women of a generation ago, 
 when one arose and prophesied : 
 
 " Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : 
 He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath 
 
 are stored; 
 
 He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword ; 
 His truth is marching on." 
 
 But there are other ways than those I have 
 mentioned in which people would perish if there 
 were no vision. Man is a mixed creature. He 
 does not " live by bread alone " ; he will not, he 
 cannot be content simply by being fed and
 
 200 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 groomed like sleek oxen in the stalls. He de- 
 sires things that entertain him, as well as feed 
 and clothe. The building of a house and the up- 
 building of society, as important as they are, are 
 not sufficient for him. A social being, made for 
 the enjoyment of intercourse with his fellows, he 
 demands the things that make for, that make up, 
 the social side of life. He must have music and 
 painting, poetry and knowledge. It may seem 
 strange to speak of a musician as of one that has 
 a vision ; but surely it is necessary that a com- 
 poser should see into the harmony of his theme ; 
 otherwise what he produces will be simply a 
 jingle of notes, a tune that will end in fatiguing 
 the ears of men. And so of painting ; we might 
 think that this would require, not insight, but 
 sight ; but unless the painter can see beyond and 
 behind his objects, unless he can see through 
 them to the eternal ideal beyond, his paintings 
 are but copies. The vision of the poet is easy 
 to understand ; every work of his tells us of his 
 visions. The poet is a creator, a maker of bright 
 ideals and forms that lead our minds away from 
 the dull clods beneath our feet into the realms of 
 loveliness and perfection. Unless the poet could 
 tell us what he saw we should see nothing.
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 201 
 
 What shall I say of the vision that is requisite 
 to knowledge ? " Surely," the unthoughtf ul will 
 say, " no vision is necessary to the scientific man." 
 Well, I cannot pretend to speak as an authority ; 
 but when the apostle of the sciences, Professor 
 Tyndall, wrote upon the use of the imagination 
 in the development of science, we can see how 
 necessary clearness and strength of vision are 
 for the right acquisition of knowledge. Indeed, 
 a moment's reflection will show us their neces- 
 sity. The imagination must first catch at the 
 truth before the experiments of the naturalist 
 can come in to demonstrate it. Unless men can 
 see behind what they read, they read but words. 
 
 But as yet I have only touched upon my sub- 
 ject. Man does not live by bread alone, nor by 
 the arts and sciences, "but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God." His vision 
 is contented neither with the tangible nor with 
 the intangible objects and interests of the world ; 
 he will look far above and beyond them all into 
 infinity; he would behold the Creator of the 
 things which he sees and imagines that he sees 
 he would see God, and he would see God rul- 
 ing in heaven. And so it has come about that 
 God has vouchsafed to man visions of Himself
 
 202 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 and of His rule. But no man has seen God as 
 He is ; aye, not even great Moses saw Him wholly. 
 "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but 
 then we shall see Him face to face : for now we 
 know in part ; but then shall we know Him even 
 as also we are known." Yet God has vouchsafed 
 to man visions of Himself and of His rule in an 
 especial way in the way of His only begotten 
 Son, through the veil' of the Incarnation. By 
 this great and wonderful likeness, through the 
 .perfect humanity of Christ, can we see God, and 
 know Him as He is, and know, too, how He 
 reigns. 
 
 And thus it was that, by glimpses of this great 
 revelation to be, the prophets of old times, who 
 saw through the phenomena of the things of 
 time, when they told men what they saw of and 
 how they saw the Godhead, foretold them, of the 
 Christ they prophesied of Him. You see what 
 I mean : when God revealed His glory to Moses 
 He covered him with His hand, and he saw but 
 His " back parts " that is, he saw but the things 
 that were non-essential and secondary. It is 
 true that Isaiah tells us that he saw "the Lord 
 sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and 
 His train filled the temple." But this vision of
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 203 
 
 Isaiah, we perceive when we examine it, was but 
 the spiritualization of the temple of Jerusalem. 
 He saw the earthly temple reflected on high in 
 a vision, in which the Shechinah became the 
 triune God seated on His throne. But neither 
 Moses nor Isaiah could tell us what it was they 
 saw of God, even as the Son Himself has told 
 us, "No man hath seen God at any time; the 
 only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
 Father, He hath declared Him." The prophets 
 of old, I say, saw God, and prophesied of Hun, 
 only in the person of His Son. They told the 
 people that they should see "the Sun of right- 
 eousness arise with healing in His wings " ; that 
 " their eyes should see the King in His beauty : 
 that they should behold the land that is very far 
 off." Ah, what a vision of beauty, of righteous- 
 ness, of love, did these holy men give us of God, 
 in the person of His Son ! The vision is all one, 
 but we can divide it into many rays. Let us for 
 our convenience divide it into the three of which 
 I have spoken. Let us look at the vision of our 
 blessed Lord in beauty, in righteousness, and in 
 love. 
 
 And first of the vision of beauty: it is to be 
 remarked that the vision of beauty is the uni-
 
 204 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 versal one, and that it underlies all others. The 
 vision of those who turned their eyes to the 
 external world, to the arts, and to knowledge, 
 soon showed mankind that there was nothing in 
 the world that was perfect. Their experiments 
 showed them, also, that they could not make 
 anything that was perfect neither a stone pyra- 
 mid, nor a wise goddess, nor a perfect social 
 order; that there would always be some defect, 
 some flaw, in their creations. And so they tried 
 to see into the future, and longed for the time 
 when some one should come who would embody 
 in himself this great craving of the soul for the 
 beauty of perfection ; whose way and word and 
 character would be a pattern by which men 
 should walk and think and live, by which all 
 the rough and squalid places of the world should 
 be made clean and smooth and even. And thus 
 it was that they foretold of such an one to come. 
 We have their prophecies recorded in all his- 
 tory, both in sacred and in profane. The poems 
 of Virgil, the oracles of Buddha, the psalms of 
 David, all tell us of the perfect King to be. All 
 made men to see the Beautiful One who was at 
 once the despair and the hope of mankind. 
 But to the people of Israel alone was vouch-
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 205 
 
 safed by God a vision of righteousness. Indeed, 
 apart from Israel, righteousness was unknown to 
 the ancient world. I do not mean to say that 
 the ancients had no idea of justice ; but of jus- 
 tice that was just and true universally, they had 
 none. Neither had they any idea of justice tem- 
 pered with mercy, nor of that mercy that makes 
 for peace, which leads men to holiness, " without 
 which no man shall see the Lord." How won- 
 derful is the vision of Israel ! " Mercy and truth 
 are met together ; righteousness and peace have 
 kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the 
 earth; and righteousness shall look down from 
 heaven." And again, " The work of righteousness 
 shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, 
 quietness and assurance forever." And again, 
 "And this is His name whereby He [that shall 
 come] shall be called, The Lord our Righteous- 
 ness." 
 
 And thus it came about that as the holy men 
 of old saw clearer and clearer into the righteous- 
 ness of God, they saw visions of His love ; they 
 saw those traits of the Son of God that make us 
 to approach Him with reverence and with fear, 
 yet with trust and with hope. I mean they saw 
 the humility, the patience, the long-suffering, the
 
 206 CIVIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 gentleness of our Lord, and told us of them. And 
 this is the heart of Christianity. What would it 
 all amount to the agony, the bloody sweat, the 
 cross, the passion of Christ if we did not see, 
 even as the prophets saw, " searching what, or 
 what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which 
 was in them, did signify," that these things were 
 suffered for us through God's love, that we might 
 see and know God, and understand His rule and 
 dominion ! Ah, beloved, if we should see but a 
 fanatic and an enthusiast in Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and not Him "who in His own self bare our sins 
 in His own body on the tree," and not Him "who 
 went about doing good," and who "preached the 
 gospel to the poor," then would we be of all men 
 most miserable ! Then would there be no vision 
 of beauty and righteousness and love in all the 
 world, but only of sin and wrong and suffering. 
 Then would all our aspirations for better things, 
 all our endeavors to build up society in better 
 ways, be vain, and we but as phantoms thrown 
 against a blind wall. For Christ is the Light of 
 the world, and to Him alone must we go for 
 light on the questions of the day, even as men 
 have gone to Him for light on the questions of 
 the days that are passed. Without His light we
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 207 
 
 would be blind to the shortcomings of our times. 
 We would see no ways by which we could change 
 them and make ready a place for the oncoming 
 of the things of better promise. 
 
 On the other hand, if we can look upon the 
 face of the Son of God and see in it all that the 
 prophets foretold, all that the apostles told, we 
 are of men most happy; for we will not only 
 see how great and comprehensive is God's love 
 toward us, and what it is that He wills for us 
 on earth; we will have some idea, also, of the 
 "things which He hath prepared for those who 
 love Him" in heaven. Happy, yea, blessed is the 
 man if the vision of the love of God shall open 
 to him as he shall 
 
 " Gaze one moment on the Face whose beauty 
 
 Wakes the world's great hymn ; 
 Feel it one unutterable moment 
 
 Bent in love o'er him ; 
 In that look feel heaven, earth, men, and angels 
 
 Distant grow and dim ; 
 In that look feel heaven, earth, men, and angels 
 
 Nearer grow through Him.' 1 
 
 And so the vision of love expands; and we 
 have a glimpse of the wonderful extent of it in 
 the great revelation before which the beloved dis- 
 ciple fell as one that was dead. How transcen-
 
 208 C1VIC CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 dent is the vision of St. John of the new heaven 
 and the new earth ; of the great city, the holy 
 Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God ! 
 
 "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: 
 for the first heaven and the first earth were 
 passed away ; and there was no more sea. And 
 I John saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, com- 
 ing down from God out of heaven, prepared as 
 a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard 
 a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the 
 tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell 
 with them, and they shall be His people, and 
 God Himself shall be with them, and be their 
 God. And God shall wipe away all tears from 
 their eyes; and there shall be no more death, 
 neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be 
 any more pain : for the former things are passed 
 away." 
 
 " And I saw no temple therein : for the Lord 
 God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of 
 it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither 
 of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God 
 did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 
 And the nations of them which are saved shall 
 walk in the light of it: and the kings of the 
 earth do bring their glory and honor into it."
 
 NO VISION, NO PEOPLE. 209 
 
 Beloved, let us pray that we may have the 
 capacity to see and to know these things that 
 we ought to see and to know, so that we may 
 be able to be good and to make others good in 
 our generation ; so that we may be able to help 
 on the race of mankind to the attainment of the 
 good "things which God hath prepared for those 
 who love Him."
 
 31 
 P75; 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482
 
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