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 Presented by W<£.\^ .CAx-VV\vAT-~Yo'Ws 
 
 BX 6333 .D59 1889 
 Dixon, Thomas, 1864-1946. 
 Living problems in religion 
 and social science 
 
Living Problems 
 
 Religion and Social Science 
 
 ^/BV 
 
 TPIOMAS DIXON, Jr., M.A., 
 
 I'ASTOK OK THE TWENTV-THIKD STREET liAPTlST CHI'RCM, NEW YORK CITY! 
 LATE OK THE Ul'DI.EY SI'REET CHTRCH, BOSTON. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES T. D I L L I xN G H A M 
 
 (SUCCESSOR TO LEE, SHEPARU & DILLINGHAM) 
 
 Nos. 71S AND 720 Broadway 
 
 i38q 
 
Copyright, 18S9, 
 By THOMAS DIXON, Jr. 
 
 AH Kie^kis Jieserz'eif. 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 THE PUBLISHERS' Pf.lKTlKG COMPANY, 
 
 157-169 WILLIAM STREET, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
^pcdijcatcd 
 
 TO MY WIFE, 
 
 IN WHOSE DEAR PERSON THE DAY-DREAMS AND IDEALS OF 
 MY BOYHOOD 
 
 LIVE AS THE SWEETEST REALITIES OF MANHOOD, 
 
 THE INSPIRATION OF WHOSE LOVE, 
 
 AS THE VOICE OF GOD. 
 
 CALLED ME 
 
 FROM THE VALLEY OF THE WORLD's AMBITIONS 
 
 TO THE HEIGHTS OF NOBLER AIMS, 
 
 UNTO HER, WITH TENDEREST LOVE, THIS BOOK I BRING, 
 
 A SHEAF FROM THE FIRST FRUITS OF THAT 
 BETTER LIFE. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 These condensed sermons and addresses 
 are given to the public, with the hope and 
 prayer that they may prove as helpful to a 
 wide circle of readers as they seem to have 
 been to those who first heard them delivered 
 extempore. The treatment I have tried to 
 make fresh and suggestive, rather than pro- 
 found, or exhaustive. I owe much to the great 
 thinkers of ancient and modern times; but 
 what I have used from them, I trust has first 
 passed through, and become a part of, my 
 own heart and life. The addresses on cur 
 rent questions of Social Science were delivered 
 before mass meetings in Boston and New 
 
 York. 
 
 T. D., Jr. 
 
 New York, Oct. lo, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Mission of the Church, . . . i 
 
 2. The Minister's Sphere, ... 27 
 
 3. Man vs. Fate, ...... 50 
 
 4. The Question of Hell, . 71 
 
 5. Miracles and Robert Elsmere; The 
 
 Presumption Against a Miracle, . . 8^ 
 
 6. Miracles and Robert Elsmere ; The 
 
 Question of Evidence, ... 97 
 
 7. The Mystery OF Pain, . . .no 
 
 8. Progress, . . . . . .129 
 
 9. Playing the Fool; Or, the Problem of 
 
 Folly, 144 
 
 10. What is Love ? . . . . . 158 
 
 11. The Temperance Problem, . . . 167 
 
 12. Jesuitism, . . . . . .189 
 
 13. The School War, 211 
 
 14. The Southern Question, . . . 244 
 
LIVING PROBLEMS 
 In Religion and Social Science. 
 
 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.— John, 
 
 XX. 21 
 
 The last act of our Master on earth was 
 thus to lay the mantle of his mission on our 
 shoulders. Sublime honor it is, and yet one 
 freighted with sublimer responsibility. 
 
 Christ says to the Church : " You are the in- 
 struments of my will— the medium through 
 which I shall operate on the world. My work 
 is your work. What I came into the world to 
 do I leave unto you to complete. My mission 
 is your mission." To understand our own 
 work, then, we turn, for a moment to the Mas- 
 ter's life and learn the import of His mission. 
 We will take these definitions from His own 
 lips. I take several of the principal ones given 
 
2 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 in the record. In John, xii. 47: "I came not 
 to judge the world, but to save the worlds In 
 Luke, xix. 10: "The Son of Man came to seek 
 and to save that which was lost." In Mark, 
 ii. 17: "I caine not to call the righteous, but the 
 sinners." In Matthew, xx. 28: "The Son of 
 Man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister." 
 
 You observe in these definitions certain nega- 
 tive facts. Let us first remove these negatives 
 in order that we may give a clear conception 
 of the positive elements of our mission. John 
 and Mark say: " Came not \.o Judge the world," 
 " jiot to call the righteous." That is, Christ 
 says: "My work is constructive rather than 
 destructive. I am the way, the truth and the 
 life, but I do not sit in harsh, censorious judg- 
 ment on your acceptance or rejection of me. 
 The Father is now judge. I am not come to 
 judge, but to save." So he says to us: Judge 
 not, but preach, proclaim, work, for the night 
 is coming. As the Father was then the judge 
 — not Christ — so Christ is now the judge, while 
 we are to fill his former place. And if he did 
 
THE AflSSIOAT OF THE CHURCH. 3 
 
 not come to call the righteous, it is impossible 
 that his Church should be a ferryboat specially 
 chartered to take a specified number of the 
 fortunate elect from this world to the next. 
 Nor is it a special car chartered for the special 
 purpose of transporting the saints to heaven 
 without contamination from the world. Yet, 
 simple as is this lesson, it seems to be one of 
 the hardest for our churches to learn. Yes, 
 all of us, from the little mission church up to 
 the great stone pile on the corner of the 
 avenue, we are more or less impregnated with 
 the idea that we are here to get rather than to 
 give. That we are here to collect, to hoard 
 up all the good we can out of the world, rather 
 than to give out to struggling, dying sinners 
 health and warmth and light and life and 
 strength and love — that we may make the 
 world brighter and gladder because we are 
 here. 
 
 Again, says Matthew : " The Son of Man 
 came not to be ministered unto, but to minis- 
 ter." And yet the majority of us think we 
 are here to be ministered unto. Here is some- 
 
4 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 body who brings a letter to the church and 
 joins, and in a month or two is ready to go 
 elsewhere. What is the matter ? " Well, I 
 came to the church two months ago, and no- 
 body has been to see us, no one has shown us 
 any attention — any consideration at all! " So 
 you want to go ? Well, may joy go with you 
 and peace reign behind you, for if you came 
 into the church to receive attention, to be 
 petted, to be ministered unto, the sooner you 
 go the better for you and the better for the 
 church of Christ. These are the sort of people 
 who make up the adJicrcnts of a church. " How 
 many adherents have you ? " we sometimes 
 hear asked. The Lord save the church from 
 adherents! All that is necessary to sink a 
 ship — any ship — the mightiest Cunarder that 
 ploughs the waves — is to allow a sufficient 
 number of adherents to become attached to 
 her sides. Very little barnacles they may be, 
 but enough of them will sink her as surely as 
 if you had cut a hole in her bottom. 
 
 Then how many of our dear, good church 
 members think that we are here to be fed simply. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 5 
 
 Their religion consists in beiyig fed. And they 
 want it done just right, too. They want the 
 napkin adjusted about their Sunday clothes, 
 and then the milk administered with a spoon 
 — condensed milk, too, all cream and fresh. 
 They want it just so warm and no warmer — 
 not hot; just so cool — not cold. But I imag- 
 ine I hear some good old patriarch in Israel 
 saying: "So, so, my young brother; but 
 don't the Master say to you, ' Feed my 
 sheep?'" Ah, yes. He does exactly! And 
 how do you feed a sheep? When you feed a 
 sheep do you back him up in a cushioned stall, 
 carefully seat him, put a napkin about his neck, 
 and feed him on milk with a spoon ? I never 
 saw it after that fashion. No. The shepherd 
 took his flock out in the open fields, carpeted 
 with rich grasses; on the hillsides and moun- 
 tain tops, where they browsed on the budding 
 shrubbery, so that sufficient exercise is taken 
 to properly digest and assimilate what is eaten. 
 So should the pastor lead his flock to this great 
 Book. Here are broad, rich fields and smiling 
 meadows, through which runs the laughing 
 
6 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 brook; yonder lies the long range of hills, and 
 yonder lies the mountain crag, whose summits 
 the eye of man cannot measure, for they are 
 lost amid the azure blue of heaven, while below 
 lie green pastures beside still and beautiful 
 waters. Here is food in abundance; take and 
 eat. 
 
 Having thus set aside these negative ele- 
 ments, we come to the positive ones in the 
 Master's and our own mission. The remain- 
 ing elements in these definitions can all be 
 condensed into a single positive proposition, 
 to which let us address ourselves. What, 
 then, is the positive mission of the Master, and, 
 therefore, our mission? "77/^ Son of Man 
 came to seek and to save that which is lost — to 
 save the zvorldr 
 
 I. The first element — The Son of Man came to 
 seek, Alas, how often we forget this. Most of 
 us seem to think our active duty is done when 
 we have built a church, paid for it, opened its 
 doors and invited the lost to come by writing 
 a sign over the door and an advertisement in 
 the paper. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 7 
 
 Let us see what the Master says: A certain 
 man made a great feast and issued the pro- 
 clamation, Come, for all things are now ready. 
 But they began to make excuses. One had 
 bought a field, the other a yoke of oxen, and 
 another had married ; and there were empty 
 seats at the supper. Then, said the Master to 
 the servants, " Go out quickly into the streets 
 and lanes of the city and bring in hither the 
 poor, and maimed and blind." And they said, 
 " It is done, Lord, and yet there is room." 
 Then go out into the highways and hedges and 
 constrain them to come in that my house may 
 be filled. 
 
 Are there ever vacant seats in this church 
 on the Lord's Day? Then it is your fault. 
 Hear the voice of Jesus crying. Go out into the 
 highways and hedges and constrain them to 
 come in ! I care not how beautiful the house, 
 how soft the cushions in the pews, it is not 
 pleasing unto God unless those seats are filled 
 with throbbing human hearts. And you, the 
 rank and file of the church, are responsible if 
 it is so, for this commission was given to the 
 
8 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 rank and file, the common priesthood of be- 
 lievers. 
 
 Constructed on some modern ideas of church 
 work how would the parable of the lost sheep 
 read ? Somewhat thus : And a certain man, 
 when he found that some of his sheep were 
 lost, went out near the wilderness and built a 
 handsome sheep shelter, and on the door wrote 
 the sign, " Any lost sheep straying near this 
 wilderness hard by, if he will present his cre- 
 dentials, and give good references to the com- 
 mittee in charge, will be admitted to shelter 
 after due deliberation and examination and 
 consultations." Did the Master say this ? 
 No ! But the shepherd went out on the moun- 
 tains wild and bare, 
 
 " And although the road was rough and steep. 
 
 He goes to the desert to find the sheep, 
 
 But none of the ransomed ever knew 
 
 How dark was the night that the Lord passed through 
 
 Ere He found His sheep that was lost. 
 
 Out in the desert He heard its cry. 
 
 Sick and helpless and ready to die. 
 ' Lord, whence are those blood drops all the way. 
 
 That mark out the mountain's track? ' 
 
 They were shed for one who had gone astray 
 
 Ere the Shepherd could bring him back. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 9 
 
 But all through the mountains thunder-riven, 
 
 And up from the rocky steep. 
 
 There arose a cry to the gates of Heaven, 
 ' Rejoice ! for I have found my sheep ! ' 
 
 And the angels echo round the throne, 
 'Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own ! ' " 
 
 Such was his divine mission — such is yours. 
 The Son of Man came to seek that which was 
 lost ! " As the Father hath sent me even so 
 send I you." Remember that Christ spoke 
 that sentence not to the twelve apostles simply, 
 but to all the disciples assembled — to the whole 
 church, \.o yoii. Do not think that you can do 
 this work by proxy. Some people think that 
 they hire a minister to do their duties to God. 
 It cannot be done, my friend. You cannot dele- 
 gate your own personal duties to some one 
 else. I cannot perform the duties of the least 
 child in my church. Each one must give an 
 account of himself unto God. I have my work, 
 and you have yours. 
 
 II. The second element — ^^And to save that 
 which is lost.'" Yes, it would be a pity to bring 
 them in from the highways and hedges and from 
 the mountains, and then let them perish, let 
 
lo LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 them starve. So this church of Christ is to be 
 a savhig church. And to have this saving 
 quahty it must be a praying cJmrch, whose 
 members know how to bring their burdens, their 
 joys, their sorrows to the Lord, and tell all life's 
 stories to Him; in whose hearts and lives the 
 Holy Spirit dwells because they are ready to 
 receive the Spirit ; a church that answers its 
 own prayers as far as human power can go, and 
 then asks God in faith to do the rest, and He 
 does. He never does anything we can do our- 
 selves. 
 
 When Christ stood before the grave of Laz- 
 arus he commanded those men to roll the stone 
 away! Why did he not roll it himself by su- 
 pernatural power? Because it could be done by 
 natural power. Then he called forth the dead 
 and said, "Loose the grave clothes;" again 
 commanding that man do that which need not 
 call forth supernatural effort. So the Lord 
 never answered the prayer of the old sinner 
 who prayed that He would feed the poor, when 
 his own corn crib was bursting with grain and 
 he would not give a nubbin. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 1 1 
 
 The saving church is always the sacrificing 
 church — ready to sacrifice money and manhood. 
 Money! God is not poor. The wealth of the 
 universe is His. Not because of His poverty or 
 weakness does He command us to give, but for 
 our own benefit, because it is a sweet privilege. 
 
 A poor widow lay dying the other day in 
 one of the back streets of one of our great 
 cities. The only soul near was her little 
 ragged boy, and as he gazed into the dying 
 face, she said, " Do not be afraid, my boy, God 
 will take care of you ! " Two days later that 
 boy, who had not tasted food in all that time, 
 stood shivering and gazingappealingly into the 
 faces of the throng that hurried by. He asked 
 a gentleman for a penny, told him his sad story, 
 took him by the hand and led him down into 
 the squalid home where the dead body lay on 
 a pile of rags. The gentleman took the boy 
 home, adopted him and cared for him as his 
 own. God had cared for him, but He had hon- 
 ored that man by making him a co-worker in 
 a divine mission. So does He honor us with 
 the privilege of giving. 
 
12 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 The man who refuses to give to the cause of 
 Christ is not a Christian. He need not tell me 
 about his religion — he has none. A man who 
 has faith in God will invest in God. A man 
 who is converted is ready to help on the work. 
 What would you think if a man were drowning 
 out in the river, and you should set out in your 
 boat to rescue him, and, pulling with might 
 and main, reach him in time to lift him in the 
 boat and save him. Then suppose you say to 
 him, " I am tired and weak from the heavy 
 struggle. Will you please take an oar and 
 help as we pull for the shore ? " And the man 
 says, " Excuse me. I thought this was a free 
 salvation. You put me in this boat, now I'll 
 let you row me ashore ! " What ought you to 
 do with such a man ? What could you do ex- 
 cept seize him by the nape of the neck and the 
 heels and plunge him as near the bottom as 
 you could ? Save such a man ? How could 
 you ? Nothing there to save! 
 
 But money is not the only thing or the most 
 important thing we are called on to give. 
 Money, after all, is easy to get, but the thing 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 13 
 
 that counts and that God demands above all 
 things else is your manhood and womanhood, 
 your individuality, yourself, your living, throb- 
 bing personality. I know a man worth a mill- 
 ion who at the beginning of the year draws his 
 check for a thousand dollars, hands it to his 
 church treasurer and says : " Take this, do what 
 you please with it — but don't trouble me any 
 more this year about anything!" I tell you, 
 my friend, God does not want your money in 
 that way. He wants yoii! Your time, your 
 care, your personality. 
 
 And then the saving church is one that 
 knows how to use the Word. This Word is the 
 great weapon given you by which the world is 
 to be conquered. If you do not know how to 
 wield it how can you dare enter? Two fools 
 met near Paris recently and fought a duel. 
 Suppose one of them had known nothing of 
 the use of the sword, you would have pro- 
 nounced him mad ! Do you know how to use 
 tlie sword ? Do you know how to parry a blow 
 with it ? Do you know its temper, its capac- 
 ity 1 Do you know how to strike } How to 
 
14 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 defend yourself, and how to thrust its glitter- 
 ing blade into the marrow of the foe ? To be 
 a saving church we must know something of 
 this. 
 
 III. The third element — what is to be saved 
 — That which is lost. " The Son of Man came 
 to seek and to save that which is lost." What 
 is lost? What an atmosphere of horror clings 
 to that word " lost," to its accent, intonation, 
 every letter! The human heart leaps in pity 
 and terror at the sound. Lost! 
 
 A few years ago the news was flashed over 
 the wires to the uttermost limits of the earth 
 that a little, curly-haired boy named Charlie 
 Ross was lost! And a world was thrilled with 
 horror at the thought! Oh, how many loving 
 mothers woke in the morning, looked into the 
 faces of their own dear little ones, while a tear 
 filled the eye as they thought of that desolate 
 home! How eagerly we read the papers, 
 watching and waiting for some news from the 
 lost one. Lost! Each letter drips with con- 
 densed horror! What is lost ? Lost — a world! 
 Swinging somewhere in space between the 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 15 
 
 planets Venus and Mars — lost a world ! Not 
 simply one boy or girl, but millions of bright- 
 eyed boys and girls, noble boys and girls, noble 
 men and women, lost, wandering in the wilder- 
 ness of sin, exposed to a thousand dangers of 
 body and soul; out in the deserts, bleak and 
 bare; on mountain crags, wild and trackless; 
 sick and helpless and ready to die! O God, 
 can Thy children be indifferent to such a mis- 
 sion! How the thought should thrill the soul 
 with divine heroism I Can any man slumber 
 with such a work upon him ? But how are we 
 to save the world ? 
 
 If it is to be done the slumbering power of 
 our churches must be developed. The whole 
 church must be up and doing — not simply the 
 little church within the church. There is 
 always an old guard in every church, on which 
 the pastor can always depend, and they gen- 
 erally do nearly everything, but if this mighty 
 work is to be accomplished it is to be done by 
 the rank and file all bearing their part in the 
 conflict. How long would it take the Baptist 
 churches alone to take the world for Christ if 
 
l6 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 each one of us who profess His name should 
 bring one new soul into the kingdom each 
 year — a little thing to do— just bring one soul 
 to Christ in a whole year. And yet, if we 
 could only do that, the Baptist churches alone 
 could take this world for Christ in less than 
 nine years — yes, every continent of earth, every 
 island of the seas, every nation, every tongue, 
 every tribe that inhabits the globe! Yet, how 
 few of us do this ? Oh, how many church 
 members we have who are buried beneath 
 cushioned pews and gilded walls; buried be- 
 neath stone and cement and glittering spires; 
 buried! and buried alive! Oh, the crime of it! 
 If this work is to be done we must realize, 
 too, that Christianity is revolutionary and 
 means war, and work. You have entered upon 
 a tremendous conflict! The very mission of 
 your belief is as terrible as an army with ban- 
 ners. You should go forth to this battle armed 
 and all in trim, with head erect and eye fixed 
 upon the foe. Go with the conscious tread of 
 a conscious conqueror knowing that the Lord 
 of heaven and earth is at your right hand. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. I? 
 
 This Christian warfare can never be waged 
 successfully on the hospital idea. What army 
 ever achieved victory that made its hospital 
 the foremost portion of its work. Suppose 
 Gen. Grant, during those last days of terrific 
 carnage, had said to his army of 200,ooo men, 
 " I detail the flower of this army to hospital 
 service. We have 10,000 men who have the 
 measles and the mumps, and several thousand 
 wounded. We will now nurse them before 
 any more fighting is done. I will spend my 
 time tying up stubbed toes and picking splin- 
 ters out of men s fingers! Charge on the hos- 
 pitals!" Had you run the Northern army 
 on that principle it would have taken Lee just 
 about ten days to have dictated terms of peace 
 from the White House steps. 
 
 Some of us think that the church is built 
 for purposes of defence simply. The church 
 is no fort behind which shivering cowards are 
 to crouch. It is not built for defensive but 
 aggressive warfare. 
 
 During the battle of Manassas, it is said that 
 an officer passing over the field found a sub- 
 
1 8 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 ordinate crouching behind a haystack trem- 
 bling from head to foot. Coming up to the 
 spot, he asked : " What sort of a place is that 
 for you, sir ? " When he was greeted with the 
 eager reply, " Do — why, do you really think 
 the bullets can come through ? " In the thought 
 of personal safety the poor coward had lost 
 the conception of the very object of his com- 
 mission. Sometimes weak-kneed Christians 
 come to me with the question, " Do you think I 
 am safe ? Do you think the bullets can come 
 through ? " What ? come through the church 
 wall ? No, I do not tliink anything about it. 
 I knozv it ! The devil can get you off this 
 front seat just as easily as from the back one 
 — can take you out of the pulpit just as easily 
 as off the door steps. 
 
 To accomplish such a mission means work 
 as well as war — hard work, some of it dirty 
 work. I know some Christians, though, who 
 are the nicest sort of people, but they do not 
 want to soil their hands with the rough work. 
 Oh, those dainty hands! Lord help us. 
 Crows, here we live spending our time smooth- 
 
THE MISSIOM OF THE CHURCH. 1 9 
 
 ing our dark feathers. Crows, we know we 
 are, and yet expect to some day suddenly 
 blossom out in heaven in the shape of night- 
 ingales and astonish the celestial hosts with 
 our wonderful voices. The choir will cease its 
 divine melody, while one angel looks at the 
 other and exclaims, " What is that? " I am 
 afraid Christians are not translated into heaven 
 by that process. 
 
 I am afraid something is the matter if we 
 are too nice to do the Lord's work! For there 
 was a day when Christ, the King of kings, and 
 Lord of lords, descended from the royal throne 
 of the Heavens, laid aside His diadem that 
 outshone the sun, laid aside the jeweled sceptre 
 of the universe, and came down to this wicked 
 old world, — down through all grades of society 
 He came, from the highest to the lowliest, shed- 
 ding joy and light and life as He came. He 
 stooped to save even the lowest wretch — yes 
 down in the lowest depths of life's darkest and 
 meanest prison cell He came, and then reached 
 out His hand to the guilty, tattered wretch 
 who lay there and said : " My Brother, I have 
 
20 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 come all the way from heaven to earth to save 
 you ! " 
 
 What sort of church would we have if these 
 principles were carried out ? 
 
 1. Such a church would be liberal. A mean, 
 stingy man couldn't stay in it. There would 
 be much bustle and stir, energy and power — 
 in short, too much life. It would shatter his 
 nerves. He never could stand it. He would 
 have nervous prostration. He would leave so 
 easily you wouldn't know he had gone. He 
 would fold his tent like an Arab and silently 
 steal away! 
 
 2. Such a church would be united always, 
 standing shoulder to shoulder with a single 
 grand thought ever before them, and moving 
 toward that end in a solid phalanx. Such 
 unity, too, would be genuine. Not such a 
 unity as an old deacon once affirmed of his 
 church. They had been distracted by terrible 
 factions and divisions. His friend asked him 
 one day: "Well, deacon, how are you getting 
 on, now?" "Well, we are united at last." 
 "Is it possible. How did it come about?" 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 2 1 
 
 " Frozen ! frozen through from top to bottom, 
 solid as a rock." No, not such a unity as that, 
 but a union such as is made by laying one 
 piece of red-hot iron on another, and striking 
 across the anvil until welded as one piece that 
 will stand the suns of summer, the winds and 
 snows of a thousand winters 
 
 3. Such a church, too, would be a joyous one. 
 It would not be filled with moping, shivering, 
 doubting Christians. Have you a joyous re- 
 ligion, my friend ? If not, go bring some lost 
 sinner into the fold and taste and see that the 
 Lord is good. I have not been in the service 
 long, but nothing can rob me of the joy of 
 some of its hours. I remember one night, when 
 I first entered the work, and was preaching 
 in Raleigh, there came into the inquiry room 
 after the sermon an old man of about sixty. 
 He was a stranger to me, and apparently to 
 everybody else but an elderly gentleman who 
 accompanied him. He seemed in the greatest 
 distress imaginable. I began to talk with him 
 and try to show him the way of life. He 
 groaned and turned from side to side as though 
 
22 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 he were choking or smothering. At last he 
 exclaimed, " O my young friend, I've been 
 working on this problem forty years and I 
 can't see it ! " " Well," I said, " you have been 
 working on it forty years, and it's too hard a 
 problem — you can't work it out. Suppose, 
 now, you give it all to Christ, and let Him work 
 it out for you." I turned and left him and 
 had not walked five steps before he leaped up 
 with a shout that made the very building ring 
 as he fell on the neck of his old friend and 
 cried like a child for very joy. I can see him 
 yet, with the great tears rolling down his fur- 
 rowed cheeks, his gray locks streaming back 
 from his upturned face, that seemed lit by the 
 light of heaven. He went out from that room 
 into the darkness of the night, and I never 
 saw him again ; but no power on earth can rob 
 me of the joy of that hour or its memory, for 
 I expect to meet him some day within the 
 golden gates. 
 
 Christian friends, will you not consecrate 
 yourselves to this glorious work ? There is a 
 work for you. Be up and doing. Ah, you 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 23 
 
 say you are weak and timid and unfit for the 
 Master's service. Not so! Your very weak- 
 ness and helplessness God makes the instru- 
 ment through which He will display His power 
 and majesty. Besides you are not too weak — 
 the smallest child, the feeblest old woman has 
 her work. 
 
 An old negro washerwoman was walking 
 along the railroad track near Louisville, Ky., 
 one morning just after daybreak going to her 
 day's work, when just in front of her, she ob- 
 served the bridge that spanned a deep ravine 
 had burned away in the night. The rails only 
 remained stretching treacherously across the 
 gulf. She remembered that the early express 
 was about due, and with all haste started back 
 to the little station a mile away to give the 
 alarm. She had not gone more than a few 
 hundred yards before she heard the roar of the 
 coming train, and in a moment more the great 
 engine swept round the curve just in front of 
 her. She tried to tear her apron from her waist 
 for a signal — the string seemed never so strong 
 and stubborn as then, but at last she tore it 
 
24 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 loose and waved it frantically, determined to 
 stand on that track and die or stop the train. 
 At last she was seen, the engine reversed and 
 brought to a stand only a few feet from her. 
 The engineer thrust his head out the cab, and 
 cried, " Well, old woman, are you crazy — what's 
 the matter ? " " Oh, sah, de bridge is all burned 
 down, 'deed it is, sah, — you'll be lost if you go 
 on ! " The engineer leaped from his cab, and 
 the passengers from the cars, and there before 
 them saw the awful death they had barely es- 
 caped. Friend embraced friend, and mothers 
 fell upon the necks of children as they realized 
 their great deliverance. The old woman, as 
 she saw their tears and joy, began to dance 
 and shout for joy herself. They drew near 
 her and offered her their money and jewelry, 
 but she refused to touch a thing, saying she 
 was afraid it would take her joy away for 
 what she had been able to do, and went her 
 way, with a light heart, to her day's work. 
 You can do at least as much as that old woman. 
 Down the track of life there comes thundering 
 toward you some reckless man or woman. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 25 
 
 You see the bridge is down, and the gulf yawns 
 before them. They do not see it perhaps — at 
 least you can stand on that track and with the 
 blood-stained banner of Christ flag the coming 
 train ! 
 
 You may be weak and timid, but remember 
 that success does not depend on your weak- 
 ness or strength, but on God! A little child 
 by touching a screw can in an instant flood a 
 great building with the glare of an electric 
 blaze. But what makes the light ? The child ? 
 No. But there is at the central station a great 
 dynamo, perhaps of 500 horse power, that 
 sends from its throbbing heart the pulsing fire 
 throughout the length and breadth of the city. 
 
 When the excavations at Hell Gate were 
 completed after years of work, and the dyna- 
 mite all in place and everything in readiness, 
 it is said the engineer in charge called his little 
 bright-eyed daughter to the table in his office 
 and told her to explode the great mine. The 
 tiny finger sought the black button, a gentle 
 pressure and Manhattan Island trembled at 
 the terrific shock, as the great boulders rose 
 
26 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 and lifted heavenward a mountain of foam- 
 capped water. 
 
 So the tiny hand of a child, though weak and 
 feeble, uplifted to God in prayer, touches the 
 dynamo of the universe and may bring an an- 
 swer that shakes the earth. God help us to 
 remember Thy power and our duty! 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE, 27 
 
 THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 
 
 "Whom we proclaim, admonishing and teaching every 
 man in all wisdom." — Col. i. 28. 
 
 The so-called " sacredness " of the office has 
 never and never will oppress me. I am worth 
 just as much as a minister as I am as a man, 
 and no more. I weigh just as much as my 
 heart and brain and personality weigh when 
 put into the scales and weighed — not an ounce 
 more, not an ounce less. The letters REV 
 that men put before my name add nothing to 
 its weight. They mean nothing; they are 
 nothing. If it were possible to put that title 
 into a concrete particle and place it under a 
 microscope that magnified a million diameters, 
 the eye of man could never find it, if given 
 eternity in which to look for it. It seems to 
 me that Beecher is surely right when he main- 
 tains that here manhood only counts. My 
 office is sacred, but sacred because my man- 
 
28 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 hood is sacred. If I am mean and small and 
 stingy and vicious, the sacredness of the ofifice 
 I hold in no wise furnishes a refuge for my 
 weaknesses. If there is a deacon or a humble 
 member of this church who has a bigger heart, 
 a bigger brain and a greater personality than 
 the pastor, then he is a more sacred man than 
 I am, and is entitled by the divine right of that 
 manhood to waeld a greater influence than I 
 can wield. 
 
 But let us go simply to the text for the true 
 definition of the scope and function of the 
 Christian minister. 
 
 Whom. — We have in this first word, " whom," 
 outlined the scope of the ofifice. We see at 
 once from the personal pronoun the very ob- 
 vious fact that the substance of the message to 
 be delivered through the minister is not a creed 
 or fine-spun philosophy, but a person — the per- 
 sonality of Christ the Son of God, the Saviour 
 of mankind. A life, then, we have, embodying 
 the divine revelation ; and we do not search 
 for it in any mysterious system of metaphysics, 
 but in the depths of the life thus revealed. 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 29 
 
 We are to preach, then, the personality of 
 Jesus Christ — His life, His death, His resurrec- 
 tion, and all that clusters around Him. Now, 
 it is precisely the purpose of the whole epistle 
 to the Colossians to set forth this marvellous 
 personality in its completeness, its fulness, its 
 all-sufificient power. The church at Colossae 
 had become befogged in the fine-spun theories 
 of would-be philosophers in their attempts to 
 bridge the chasm between the material and 
 the spiritual. They had peopled earth and 
 heaven with their mysterious beings, semi- 
 angelic, half spirit, half matter. Paul now 
 comes and with the hand of a master brushes 
 these useless creatures aside, and boldly sets 
 forth Christ as the connecting link between 
 matter and spirit, earth and heaven; Christ 
 the way from earth to heaven ; Christ in the 
 light of his divine-human personality, filling 
 the universe, material and immaterial; Christ, 
 all and in all, whether of things on the earth, 
 above the earth, or beneath it. Such is Paul's 
 conception. He sees this wonderful person- 
 ality encircling the world, touching the per- 
 
30 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 sonality of man at every possible point of 
 contact, and reaching up until He fills all heaven 
 and touches the personality of God at every 
 possible point of contact. To preach Christ, 
 therefore, is to preach that which concerns all 
 things, human and divine. 
 
 We. — Whom does Paul include in this plural 
 pronoun ? Evidently those humble Christians, 
 whoever they were, who had carried the Gos- 
 pel to Colossas. He does not arrogate to him- 
 self any special prerogatives or privileges be- 
 cause of his office, but simply places himself 
 on the same level with those less distinguished 
 followers of the Master who had first carried 
 the glad tidings to the Colossians. Unques- 
 tionably, Paul seems here to have had a clear 
 conception of the common priesthood of be- 
 lievers, and does not make any pretensions to 
 the office of a papal legate, cardinal, or bishop. 
 He speaks with authority — the authority of 
 one who knows the mysteries of the glories of 
 supreme truth ; but does not claim to have any 
 special patent on that truth. If, when men 
 say the ministry should not interfere in public 
 
THE MmiSTER'S SPHERE. 3 1 
 
 affairs, they mean a class clergy, an aristocracy, 
 an ecclesiastical hierarchy, bound by common 
 oaths for the advancement of their own ends, 
 I, of course, agree at once; but not upon the 
 ground of the sacredness of their office, but 
 on the ground that they are a dangerous nuis- 
 ance to the common weal of a nation of free 
 men. 
 
 Proclaim. — This w 0x6. proclaim introduces 
 us to the first division of the definition of the 
 function of the minister. He is to proclaim, 
 to utter, to tell out a message. Not mumble 
 mysterious ceremonies, go through idiotic 
 services in an unknown tongue; not to offer 
 sacrifices, masses, mummeries, or give utter- 
 ance to vague whisperings in dark corners; but 
 to openly proclaim a great message, before all 
 men and under all circumstances. My heart 
 has always said amen to Prof. Phelps's hearty 
 exhortation to his students, when he says: 
 "Preach; let other men govern. Preach; let 
 other men organize. Preach; let other men 
 raise funds and look after denominational af- 
 fairs. Preach ; let other men hunt up heresies 
 
32 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 and do the theological quibbling. Preach ; 
 let other men ferret out scandals and try cleri- 
 cal delinquents. Preach ; let other men solve 
 the problems of perpetual motion, of which 
 church history is full. Then, make a straight 
 path between your study and your pulpit, on 
 which the grass shall never grow." To pro- 
 claim, then, with tongue and life this message, 
 is the first function of the true minister of 
 Christ. This is the work of the messenger. 
 The boy who brings me the telegram has no 
 right to alter, add to, or subtract from it. So 
 with him who utters the fundamental truths of 
 this message. These truths are simple, plain 
 and yet ample for all needs. But is the min- 
 ister simply a telegraph boy, and does his duty 
 cease with the delivery of this simple message ? 
 If so, Paul should have closed his sentence 
 with this word " proclaim." This he does not 
 do, and we take it that in what follows he will 
 further qualify and define the duties of the 
 office, as we find he does. 
 
 The next words, "admonishing and TEACH- 
 ING," open a new field of action. This work 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. ZZ 
 
 of admonition and teaching is one of trans- 
 cendent importance and is a vast expansion of 
 the work of proclamation. 
 
 In the first place, a man who faithfully ad- 
 monishes must be a man utterly fearless of 
 mortal or devil ; one was does not hesitate to 
 tell those about him whether they are right or 
 wrong, and that too in monosyllabic English, 
 and without any attempt primarily to please 
 the subject warned. Says Paul : "Am I still 
 pleasing men ? If I were still pleasing men, I 
 would not be the servant of Christ ? " If there 
 is a man, woman or child in this church whom 
 I am trying personally in my ministry to 
 please, I don't know who it is. No minister 
 of Christ has a right to attempt to please any 
 man or set of men. The preacher who should 
 attempt this would be a fool on general princi- 
 ples, for the simple reason that it is impossible 
 to please man. 
 
 And then the word admonish blends the 
 Old Testament conception of the watchman : 
 " I have set watchmen on thy walls, O Jerusa- 
 lem, and they shall never hold their peace, day 
 3 
 
34 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 or night!" The watchman is one who ad- 
 monishes. He is watching, warning, and giv- 
 ing the proper signals to those over whom he 
 is set as guardian ; he should be sleepless, vig- 
 ilant, with an ear attuned to every sound, and 
 an eye whose keen vision sweeps the whole 
 horizon from hour to hour. I know a good 
 woman who recently said: " I had rather a 
 child of mine would be a hod-carrier than a 
 clergyman!" The statement struck me as an 
 interesting one. I was curious to know what 
 her conception of a clergyman was. And in 
 a subsequent conversation with her, I think I 
 caught her conception of an ideal minister. 
 She was describing one whom she had once 
 known and very much admired. The closing 
 characterization of her sacred hero was that 
 " he was such a good man! " And she tenderly 
 and reverently accented the word good with 
 lengthened sweetness long drawn out. That 
 was her notion of an ideal minister. I felt like 
 asking her in haste, " Has he made his will ? 
 He will die soon — he cannot be long for this 
 world ! " Alas, he had been dead some time. 
 
THE MINISTERS SPHERE. 35 
 
 When a minister has reached the period that 
 such an expression accurately describes his 
 life and work, it is time for him to go — he is 
 too good to live here in this rickety old world 
 of sin and devilment. For a goody-good 
 preacher I have always entertained only pity 
 and contempt. What a sublime calling, in- 
 deed, to go up and down in this world, patting 
 everybody on the back with — " It's all right, 
 everything's all right, everybody's all right, 
 you're all right — the devil's all right ! " Yes. 
 I think I had rather my boy would go back to 
 the old farm in North Carolina and grub 
 stumps, maul rails, hoe corn, and plough a 
 mule as did his father once, than be such a man 
 — he would be doing more for his country, his 
 God and the human race. 
 
 Paul was not a goody-good preacher. He 
 generally raised a row in the towns he entered. 
 They beat, they put him in prison. The enraged 
 citizens seized him by the throat, dragged and 
 pounded him up before the magistrates with the 
 accusing exclamation : " These men who have 
 turned the world upside down have come hither 
 
36 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 also! " and they demanded their immediate ex- 
 pulsion. They desired to kick him because he 
 had turned things upside down. If he had been 
 a "good " man only, they would have had no 
 objection to him, simply because be would 
 have amounted to nothing. Nor was Christ, 
 though He was the impersonation of love, in 
 any sense of the word a goody-good preacher. 
 He came not to bring peace but a sword; but, 
 the blade He wielded was the surgeon's knife, 
 not the cimetar of the Saracen. When He 
 stood before the scribes and Pharisees, He did 
 not give them honeyed words. They were 
 made very clearly to understand that they 
 were hypocrites and scoundrels. He did not 
 once mince matters with them. Hear Him: 
 " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, 
 which outwardy appear beautiful, but inwardly 
 are foul of dead men's bones, and of all un- 
 cleanness." Christ never hesitated to faith- 
 fully admonish, when admonition was necessary. 
 He did not tell them certainly that they were 
 all right, everything and everybody all right. 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 37 
 
 There are many people in this world who ob- 
 ject to this last phase of the preacher's work. 
 
 Here is a man who objects to being taught, 
 because, as he says, he is an expert in his own 
 business; and, therefore, knows more about it 
 than any impertinent parson in the country. 
 " What do you know about my business ? " he 
 indignantly asks, " Have I not spent a lifetime 
 in it ? How dare you interfere Avith your im- 
 pudent criticism ? " So says the skipper to 
 Paul when reminded of the fact that he ought 
 not to have loosed from Crete. I imagine I 
 can hear that captain say: "What do you 
 know about navigation, you miserable land 
 lubber ? " Now, the words Paul uttered were 
 in nowise impertinent. He did not say: "You 
 have no sense in the management of this boat! 
 That sail is not set right!" He merely said : 
 " You ought not to have started on this jour- 
 ney at such a time." He did not sit in judg- 
 ment upon the technique of navigation, but 
 simply gave an opinion of its relation to the 
 world without — a matter of which he may 
 have been a better judge than the captain, as 
 
38 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 subsequent events showed in fact that he was, 
 for the result was they were wrecked and he 
 had to take charge of the whole thing. 
 
 Here is a young Napoleon on the stock ex- 
 change, starting on the road that leads to Sing 
 Sing. I warn him that he is gambling. Hear 
 his indignant reply : " Gambling, indeed! What 
 do you know about stocks and bonds ? What 
 do you know about this great business in which 
 I am engaged ? What do you know, you 
 sacred fool, about commerce or the mechanism 
 of exchange ? " I reply, not much, perhaps. 
 I don't need to know much about the mechan- 
 ism of exchange in order to know the differ- 
 ence between an honest man and a thief or a 
 gambler! To judge the technique of your 
 trade, I have neither time nor inclination, but I 
 do have the right, and I take the time, to judge 
 of the relation of your business to the world 
 of morals, and here I do claim to be even a 
 better judge than you, for I at least am dis- 
 interested. Men complain sometimes that the 
 preacher is too personal. That is just what I 
 am here for. I am nothing, if not personal. 
 
THE MIXISTER'S SPHERE. 39 
 
 I always try to level the old musket so as to 
 hit something. I never shoot blank cartridges, 
 and if I do not hit somebody every fire, it is 
 not because I do not try. Why should I stand 
 up here and shoot at nothing from Sunday to 
 Sunday ? No ! I propose to shoot at you in 
 every relation of life, and you need not try to 
 dodge amid the technicalities of your trades 
 and shake at me your yard sticks, your ham- 
 mers, or bank books. J. H. Mills, while editor 
 of the Biblical Recorder in Raleigh, gave in his 
 paper a severe criticism of an amateur musical 
 performance, which so enraged the director of 
 that eventful night's work that he retorted to 
 the criticism in a heated public card, and 
 wound up his tirade with the taunt, " It was 
 better than you could have done! " To which 
 the unruffled editor replied: "Granted. Your 
 remark is true, but irrelevant. Any hen in 
 this country can lay an egg. I cannot per- 
 form that feat ; but I fearlessly maintain that 
 I am still a better judge of eggs than every 
 hen in North Carolina." The answer was com- 
 plete. 
 
4° LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 I do not know the process of preparing beef 
 steak, but I do know a good piece of steak 
 when I see it and taste it, I do not under- 
 stand the process of making flour, but I do 
 know good bread when I see it. I do not un- 
 derstand the process of cooking, but I know a 
 good dinner when I get to it. And I do not 
 hesitate to inform my cook if it is not right. 
 I do not know all the mysteries of banking 
 and currency, but I do know the difference 
 between honesty and dishonesty. Christ had 
 never read Adam Smith, or Ricardo, or J. S. 
 Mill, or even Aristotle and Plato. He did 
 not know necessarily about the mechanism of 
 exchange, but he did know enough to over- 
 turn the tables of the money changers in the 
 temple and drive them from its sacred pre- 
 cincts. 
 
 Here is a politician, well fed, large in cir- 
 cumference, red nose, and luminous eyes, and 
 loud breath. He has credentials of scores of 
 delegates to a convention in his unhallowed 
 pocket and obtained them by fraud. He 
 manipulates things to suit himself, panders in 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 4 1 
 
 his platform utterances to the lowest and vilest 
 element of our life, and coolly demands that I 
 vote for his man and his principles, and 
 threatens to forever cast out of the synagogue 
 all heretics who refuse to obey his supreme 
 will. I say to him, you are a villain, sir! He 
 replies with lofty scorn for my inexperience 
 and ignorance. " What do you know about 
 politics ? What do you know about caucuses 
 and conventions ? What do you know about 
 the machinery by which this great govern- 
 ment is run ? " Well, I don't know a great deal 
 about caucuses, primaries, conventions and 
 legislative bodies, but I do know a thief and a 
 cut-throat when I see him. And I have the 
 right to stand before him and his misdeeds. 
 
 Then there is a large class who delight to 
 hear abstract truth uttered, but who shy at a 
 personal application ; and one of their pet cant 
 phrases is " I want to hear the GOSPEL." That 
 is, they want to hear a theoretical Christianity 
 preached, and make the application to some 
 other fellow at their leisure. They swallow as 
 a sweet beverage the abstract, but fight like a 
 
42 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 child over medicine at the concrete. They 
 shut their teeth and refuse to take it, and the 
 first opportunity shout, " I want you to preach 
 Christ!" They want the fundamentals pro- 
 claimed, but not applied. They will weep 
 with you while you tell them of the one little 
 ewe lamb, but when you say, " David, thou 
 art the man ! " they are sad. They wrap the 
 drapery of a freezing dignity about them and 
 retire, and send you word indirectly through 
 a friend that they want to hear the " Gospel 
 preached." 
 
 It has been well said that the gospel is the 
 multiplication table of the science of religion. 
 Here is our professor in mathematics. The 
 class reaches this table. The professor says : 
 " Well, gentlemen, we have reached the multi- 
 plication table this morning — it is a marvellous 
 table, it is the key to the whole kingdom of 
 mathematics. It never changes — it is always 
 true. It is the same yesterday, to-day and 
 forever. Each given proposition is the imper- 
 sonation of an eternal truth. So marvellously 
 true is this table that I have decided that we 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 43 
 
 will repeat it forever. We will not try to go 
 beyond this — we will simply repeat it forever." 
 Of course that professor would lose his po- 
 sition, and so do a good many preachers, for 
 about the same reason, I fear. As we press 
 the multiplication table into the realm of alge- 
 bra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and ap- 
 plied mathematics, so is the gospel of Christ 
 to be pressed into every phase of human life, 
 and its eternal standards of truth and right 
 applied to all developments of human thought 
 and conduct. I know an old deacon of a Bap- 
 tist church who seriously objects to applied 
 mathematics in the pulpit. He is worth about 
 $30,000, and gives fifty cents a year to his 
 church, and loans his pastor money at eight 
 per cent interest. If his pastor preaches a 
 sermon on giving, it lands the old man in the 
 middle of a spell of sickness. He can squeeze 
 a dollar so tight till it feels like a dime. He 
 never tires hearing you tell how ten times ten 
 make a hundred — that is glorious, sweet to 
 him. But when you say ten dimes make a 
 dollar, and a dollar is your share of the bur- 
 
44 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 den, my brother, you hurt his feelings. His 
 countenance falls ten degrees below zero, and 
 the sorrow of his countenance makes you wish 
 you had not said anything. He is hurt. He 
 turns in his mind to the choir and asks them 
 to please sing, and there is just one song to 
 which his wounded spirit turns, and that is, 
 "I'm glad salvation's free!" He wants the 
 whole chorus to come in on that word free; 
 He wants to hear the bass, tenor, soprano, and 
 alto just there, together with all the wind and 
 stringed instruments. Just there he wants the 
 cymbals, drum, and bass viols to come in, and 
 the trombone man to let out his horn full 
 length ! 
 
 I know another member of the church, who 
 is always sighing and crying for the " pure 
 gospel." He drinks. He keeps a demijohn 
 at home under the bed all the time, and takes 
 it when he feels like it. Let his pastor preach 
 on temperance, and you will hear from him ! 
 You will hear his voice crying in the land for 
 the " pure gospel." That is, he wants to sit 
 up in the amen corner, fold his arms and watch 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 45 
 
 his pastor make the fur fly; but he does not 
 want to furnish any of the fur. He wants to 
 see it fly off common sinners, while his own 
 grows long and silken and fine as he feeds on 
 the "pure gospel." 
 
 I, of course, agree that the gospel is the 
 thing to preach, but we are to remember that 
 this gospel encircles the material universe, 
 touching man at every possible point of con- 
 tact, and fills all heaven with its glories. As 
 a minister of this glorious gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, it is my right and duty to take my sur- 
 veyor's compass and chain out into the fields 
 of the world's activities, survey by the unerr- 
 ing magnet the pathway man marks out for 
 himself, and tell him whether it is straight or 
 crooked, whether it is narrow and mean, or 
 whether it is broad and generous. It is my 
 work to drop the plumb line of God's truth 
 down over the foundations of your character, 
 and by my applied sacred mathematics to tell 
 you whether it is square or crooked. By far 
 the most important function of my work is 
 this application of fundamental gospel truth 
 
46 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 to your every-day life and character. I have 
 no right to preach anything with which the 
 gospel is not concerned. In what is the gos- 
 pel concerned ? Anything and everything 
 that is either right or wrong. Then, is there 
 a single thought or deed possible to man with 
 which this gospel has nothing to do ? I have 
 yet to hear of the principle, deed, or thought 
 to which this gospel cannot apply. Surely, 
 then, we are not to be goody-goodies. What is 
 Paul's form of congratulation as he closes his 
 life work ? Docs he say: " Thank God, I have 
 never made an enemy; I have always been 
 modest and gentle and kept within my 
 sphere?" No! But hear the language of the 
 veteran soldier : " I have fought a good fight ! " 
 So is it my duty to fight a good fight, and not 
 to sugar-coat the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil ! 
 
 Such a work, therefore, as is here out- 
 lined is also necessarily preventive in its char- 
 acter, for the watchman who warns is one 
 who gives the danger signal at its first ap- 
 proach. I bought a copy of an evening paper 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 47 
 
 the other day, as I returned home, and the 
 first thing upon which my eye fell was a dis- 
 patch from Providence saying that a drunken 
 brute had gone home and demanded of his 
 wife two dollars of her hard earnings, that he 
 might return to the grog-shop and complete 
 his drunk. This she refused, and thereupon, 
 with the ferocity of a beast, he fell upon her 
 and beat her to death ; and, as she lay dying, 
 she turned to her child and said: " My boy, 
 run for Father Finnigan, quick!" Father 
 Finnigan hastened to come ; but she died 
 before he reached the house, to go through his 
 ceremonies over her dead body. Now, there 
 are those who think that Father Finnigan's 
 duty began and ended with his ceremonies 
 over that body, but, as for me, I demand a re- 
 ligion that begins its work before the autopsy, 
 or not at all. If I cannot come into the 
 house before the undertaker, then I will not 
 come at all; I will quit the business. 
 
 I look around me aiid see the devil mount 
 the driver's box of our national life. I see 
 him draw the reins over the arched necks of 
 
48 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the political steeds harnessed to the national 
 chariot. Each horse acknowledges the grip 
 of the master. He lifts high those reins and 
 brings down his lash on the bare backs of his 
 high-tempered brutes. Forward they dash, 
 obedient to his command. Madly onward 
 they plunge, as the lash descends again and 
 again. On, on they leap over throngs of help- 
 less men, women and children. Their bodies 
 are ground beneath the wheels and iron hoofs. 
 Hear their sighs, groans, and shrieks as their 
 blood in dark pools stains the pavements! 
 Dismayed at the horrible sight, I cry aloud : 
 " My God, cannot something be done ? " 
 About that time, I hear the squeaking voice 
 of some little preacher as he hastens to say: 
 " No, you can't do anything! Nothing can be 
 done! You must stand out of the way, or 
 you will get run over yourself. Besides, man, 
 it would be out of place for you to attempt to 
 do anything. You are specially set apart! 
 Think of that! Just think of the cut of your 
 coat ! Think of the style of your collar ! " In 
 reply, I feel like crying: "Silence! You keep 
 
THE MINISTER'S SPHERE. 49 
 
 me from my thoughts. If that is all you have 
 to say, let Nature's stillness be the only re- 
 quiem of the dead that lie around us, I never 
 wear a collar that chokes me. When my collar 
 gets so high and stiff as to form an impassable 
 barrier between me and the cause of humanity 
 and God, then I will cut my collar down ; and 
 if it can't be cut down, I must take it off — 
 I will not wear a collar — I will go out of the 
 business." 
 
 A hard work it is often to wound that you 
 may heal, to slay that life may be given ; but 
 it is the crowning glory of a life to be called 
 of God to such a work. 
 
 4 
 
5° LIVING PROBLEMS, 
 
 MAN vs. FATE. 
 
 So then each one of us shall give an account of himself unto 
 God. — Rom. xiv. 12. 
 
 Christianity is yet burdened with the leg- 
 acy of pagan theology. The astrology of the 
 Chaldeans is still a potent force in too many 
 lives. The Greek and Roman Fates wove 
 their accursed threads not only into the web of 
 ancient life, but through literature, philosophy, 
 and religion, those three old hags are still 
 spinning, weaving, and cutting the tangled 
 threads of human destiny. Christ came and 
 found the world trembling lest they frown. 
 We are not yet freed from their despotism, 
 though in the teaching of Christ we have the 
 dignity and glory of the individual soul fully 
 revealed. 
 
 I once heard such a fatalistic sermon by a 
 Christian minister. He magnified the sover- 
 eignty of God until the part that man played 
 
MAN- VS. FATE. 51 
 
 in salvation was less than nothing, that is, it 
 was antagonistic rather than cooperative. He 
 justified his position by assuming that before 
 the foundation of the world, some such scene 
 as this occurred: — Let us imagine the council 
 chamber of eternity to be M. Pasteur's office 
 in Paris. The anteroom you find full of the 
 victims of hydrophobia — they come from the 
 four quarters of the globe— the peasant, bitten 
 by the mad wolf in the wilds of Siberia, ladies 
 from London snapped by their pets, victims of 
 the vagrant cur sulking along street and high- 
 way, children from free America— men, women, 
 children, huddled together, all fleeing from the 
 same hideous nightmare, all starting in their 
 beds at night choking and smothering with the 
 same horrible thought! Pasteur enters, sur- 
 veys the scene, and says, " I believe I will save 
 only five of you. The rest can go, I might 
 treat you if I would, but I choose not to do so. 
 I will save these five for no special reason, ex- 
 cept my own good pleasure, the rest of you 
 need not say a word. My decree is fixed. I 
 never change. You need not ask me to save 
 
5^ LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 you." And with slow step and backward-glanc- 
 ing eyes, with breaking and broken hearts, the 
 sad procession files out — they are lost amid 
 the turmoil of the world, sighing, groaning, 
 raving, dying without hope ! What a travesty 
 on the name of God! Upon His love, justice, 
 mercy — upon every attribute of divine nature! 
 Perish the thought ! I know not, nor want to 
 know, such a God ! No such God lives in the 
 Bible. Plainly and clearly are we taught hu- 
 man responsibility — so plainly that there is no 
 such thing as escaping it. For salvation is 
 proclaimed universal and conditional. " Come 
 unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden 
 and I will give you rest." " God so loved tJie 
 tvorld, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth should not perish." 
 " God is no respecter of persons, but in every 
 nation he that worketh righteousness is ac- 
 cepted of him." " He is the propitiation for 
 our sins and not for our sins only but for the 
 sins of the whole world." "Ask, and ye shall 
 receive, knock and it shall be opened." "W/w- 
 soever will, let him take of the water of life 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 53 
 
 freely." The invitation is world wide. Salva- 
 tion is offered as a free gift. But it must be 
 accepted to be efficacious. It will not be 
 forced on any one. Compliance with this 
 condition lies solely within the power of the 
 human will. 
 
 The agnostic argument will not avail to re- 
 lieve us of this responsibility. No man in a 
 Christian land can say : " I do not know whether 
 there is a God, or a Heaven or a Hell. I have 
 no such knowledge and am therefore excused 
 from any responsibility in the matter." Such 
 ignorance does not excuse, because the means 
 of positive knowledge is within grasp. For in 
 John vii. 17, we find, " If any man willeth to do 
 his will, he shall KNOW of the teaching whether 
 it be of God." Here is the simple experi- 
 mental test. Any man who wants to know, 
 can know by making a practical test of religion, 
 of Christ. God has thus pledged himself to 
 give light to every soul that submits to His will 
 and asks for light. I have never seen it fail. 
 If it ever does fail, then the New Testament is 
 a failure. I met a man in an after meeting 
 
54 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 one night who had not accepted the invitation 
 to confess faith in Christ. I asked him why, 
 and when pressed he replied, "Well, the truth 
 is, I don't know whether there is any God. I 
 have my doubts." I asked if he was willing to 
 receive the light if God would give it. He said 
 he was. I told him to take his Bible when he 
 went home, read the Third Chapter of John, 
 kneel and pray this simple prayer, " Lord, my 
 will is thine, reveal thyself unto me, show me 
 the truth, give me light ! " He refused at 
 first, but finally promised. That night he did 
 as he promised, and the next evening he was 
 the first man to leap to his feet to testify to 
 his faith in Christ. I baptized him a few weeks 
 later and he is now an earnest, consistent 
 Christian. If you do not knotv, it is simply 
 because you do not zvant to know ! 
 
 Is it not true, then, as our text implies, that 
 in the last analysis every man is alone person- 
 ally responsible for his life and his character, 
 the crystallization of life ? 
 
 Could we make any other power responsi- 
 ble ? 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 55 
 
 There are only three forces that operate on 
 human life and character — the human will, or 
 the creating and governing power within man, 
 the force of circumstances or environment, and 
 supernatural power, or God the Creator of all. 
 If we could therefore shift responsibility upon 
 environment or upon God, we easily escape. 
 Let us see if it can be done. 
 
 I. Man is the creature of circumstances, 
 does he not then cease to be a free agent? 
 Hardly. For we must remember that truth 
 is a bird with two wings. Clip either, and the 
 bird comes down. It may be true that man is 
 the creature of circumstances, but it is equally 
 true that he is the master of circumstances. 
 
 I would not underestimate the part played 
 by circumstance or environment in human life. 
 This part is a most important one. The char- 
 acter of animals is largely determined by their 
 habitat. The polar bear gives witness to the 
 fact that the realm of everlasting snow has set 
 its seal upon his hide and become a part of his 
 very being. The Bengal tiger borrows his 
 stripes from the variegated jungle in which he 
 
56 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 prowls. Climate, we know, has ever made its 
 imprint on character, whether in animals or 
 men. The philosopher understands this princi- 
 ple when he devotes himself to the study of 
 Sociology, or the environment of man. So the 
 Christian understands its value, when he comes 
 out from among wicked companions and in- 
 fluences and unites himself with those who love 
 God and truth and righteousness. 
 
 Yet this principle is after all a secondary 
 one when applied to man. Man is distin- 
 guished from the mere animal by being re- 
 sponsible for the results of his habitat, or 
 environment, on character; because he has 
 the power to choose his own surroundings, to 
 change his environment as often as he sees 
 fit. If he does not change from that which 
 is evil, when he has the power, he becomes 
 solely responsible for the evil results that 
 follow. 
 
 Besides, man has shown in the past that he 
 can master circumstances if he will ; that he 
 can transform, make, and unmake his surround- 
 ings. To believe a thing impossible is to make 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 57 
 
 it impossible, but when man chooses to elimi- 
 nate the word " impossible " from his dictionary, 
 he begins to work miracles. I remember the 
 first time that I ever went through the moun- 
 tains of North Carolina, the nearer I ap- 
 proached the higher and more impassable the 
 Blue Ridge seemed to loom up before me, 
 until at last the great dark cliff seemed to 
 stand directly in the pathway and say, " Thus 
 far shalt thou come, and no farther ! " But 
 pressing on and on, I found the turnpike 
 gracefully wound around the cliff and passed 
 out upon the other side. So do men make 
 possible the impossible in everyday life, by 
 simply saying, " I will ! " and at the utter- 
 ance of these words mountains become mole 
 hills. 
 
 Men say they can't, when they can, if they 
 will. In the war with Mexico a company of 
 Texans were captured, and marched at double 
 quick speed for twenty-four hours, and at the 
 dawn of the second day they were nearly dead 
 from fatigue and exhaustion, and could go no 
 further, but when the order was issued to shoot 
 
5 8 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 all who dropped by the wayside, they started 
 off at a lively gait and kept it up all day. 
 
 Alexander H. Stephens was a little paralytic 
 — a life-long invalid. How could such a man 
 achieve success in the rough ?nd tumble arena 
 of American politics ? Yet he did. That big 
 invalid's chair was a part of the Nation's 
 furniture at Washington for a generation. 
 Weak and feeble in body, racked with many 
 an ache and pain, yet to the day of his death 
 the crook of his finger was power. Men knew 
 that back of the pale face, shrivelled hand, and 
 dwarfed body that lay so lightly in that chair, 
 there was caged the spirit of a lion, and all 
 who knew him, loved, feared, or respected 
 him. He mastered circumstances. 
 
 When Wm. Lloyd Garrison started his cru- 
 sade against slavery, circumstances were all 
 against him and his cause. He was hooted 
 and hissed in Boston. His very life was 
 threatened. Yet he simply said, " Here I take 
 my stand. I will not extenuate. I will not 
 excuse. I will not retreat one single inch — and 
 I will be heard ! " And he was heard ! In the 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 59 
 
 thunder of artillery that shook the world, he 
 was heard ! Amid the carnage of those four 
 years of blood and death, he was heard ! In 
 the shout of four millions of slaves made free- 
 men in a day he was heard ! He made cir- 
 cumstances—made and unmade the men and 
 measures of generations. 
 
 His physicians told Douglas Jerrold that he 
 was dying. The old man started at the an- 
 nouncement, lifted himself on his elbow, and 
 exclaimed, " What, man, die and leave these 
 little ones helpless! I cannot. I will not 
 die!" He lived three years longer. His in- 
 domitable will had grasped Death by the 
 throat and hold him at arm's length three 
 years. Upon the other hand we see the con- 
 trast in the man who did not bring his will to 
 bear on circumstances, in a soldier who was sen- 
 tenced to be shot. He was placed beside the 
 open grave with the guard drawn up in front. 
 The order was countermanded at the last mo- 
 ment, and blank cartridges substituted for the 
 balls The guard fired, and to the surprise of 
 all the man dropped dead. Not a paper wad 
 
6o LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 even had touched him, but he died — because he 
 thought he was dead. He had loosed his grip 
 on his will power. 
 
 We can all remember times in our own lives 
 when we stood face to face with some crisis, 
 and realized with startling vividness our indi- 
 vidual responsibility — realized it by an intuition 
 swift and unerring, and that always stood con- 
 firmed by the sternest logic. I shall never for- 
 get such a time in my own life. It was in my 
 early college days. I had begun to pin my 
 faith to fate. I had my star. My heart was 
 set on several prizes. Instead of hard work, 
 I mused and dreamed and consulted the Sybil- 
 line books. All was propitious. Success was 
 sure. I saw the new moon a hand's breadth 
 above the eastern horizon unobscured by leaf 
 or twig. The zephyrs whispered to the leaves 
 and told of success — the stars all proclaimed 
 it. Shall I ever forget that night in June, when 
 with fallen crest, I walked out of the brilliantly 
 lighted hall, with that awful decision of the 
 judges ringing in my ears! I found that the 
 stars had been talking about another man, and 
 
Man vs. fate. 6i 
 
 the zephyrs had whispered about another fel- 
 low entirely, and the moon had proven false to 
 all her vows ! I lay down on the grass beneath 
 the kindly shadow of a spreading oak, and 
 cooled of? for an hour. That night all the 
 idiocy of fate and fatalism, signs and wonders, 
 oozed out of my body and passed of? harm- 
 lessly into the earth. I had an interview with 
 myself, took stock, and wound up with the 
 resolution to work seventeen hours a day next 
 year. I did, and was never afterward troubled 
 with the moon, or the stars, or the zephyrs. 
 
 Even where man cannot change his environ- 
 ment, and when it is fixed, dark and cruel, he 
 is yet master of the situation. He is endowed 
 with a faculty by which he can transform dark- 
 ness into light, and can make even the terror 
 of his surroundings tributary to the glory of 
 his character. The most wonderful bird in the 
 Antilles is a little humming bird. He revels in 
 those gleaming solitudes of tropical nature, 
 where danger lurks on every side, among the 
 most venomous insects, and among the most 
 mournful plants whose very shade kills. He 
 
02 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 darts amid the foliage of the deadly manchi- 
 neal tree and builds his nest among its poison- 
 ous boughs. He boldly crops and eats the 
 fruits of this fearful tree, thrusts his long beak 
 down into the depths of this venomous flower 
 and draws forth the pigments with which he 
 paints his crest the rich vermilion, and the 
 sinister green with which he gives the metallic 
 lustre to his triumphant wings, and from their 
 burning poison acids derives his shrill cry and 
 the everlasting agitation of his angry moments. 
 What this bird does with poison, man has been 
 able to do with poverty, jails, cruelty, persecu- 
 tion, and torture. As this bird transmutes 
 poison into life and beauty, so man has taken 
 the direst elements of life, and made character 
 glorious therewith. Milton's blindness revealed 
 to the world a Paradise Lost. A Bedford jail 
 gave us Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress ! 
 
 Circumstances, then, have not mastered men 
 when the human will has asserted its power. 
 
 II. God made man. Is not God then re- 
 sponsible for man's worthlessness ? Hardly. 
 God did make man, but man makes himself 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 63 
 
 also. Character is all there is to man that is 
 worth possessing, and God does not make 
 man's character by any direct creative act. 
 Character is the product of the human will. 
 Will power God gave to man, and this is the 
 instrument with which man makes himself. 
 
 It is useless and senseless to whine about the 
 existence of evil. God does not permit evil. He 
 cannot help it. Having endowed man with a 
 free will, or the power of choice — there could 
 be no alternative — evil was a necessity of this 
 the highest possible creation from the divine 
 hand. To have removed the possibility of evil 
 would have been to destroy the power of 
 choice, and hence, to have destroyed man. 
 That is, he would have been simply a brute, or 
 an automaton — not a man. Evil is, therefore, 
 a necessary incident to the creation of man ; 
 and to charge God with the existence of evil is 
 to charge him with the crime of creating man. 
 Shadow is an incident of sunlight. We do not 
 charge the sun with the responsibility of the 
 shadow. Neither do we charge the existence 
 of evil as a crime against the Godhead. This 
 
64 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 world would not be better, but infinitely worse 
 without evil, since to remove evil would be to 
 remove the possibility of good. 
 
 Good is the result of choice. A moral agent 
 must be free. The very word tnoral carries with 
 it the absolute necessity of freedom. This free- 
 dom is found in the power of choice. Will is 
 the power of choice. Every will, therefore, is a 
 perfect will. Choice is absolute. We either 
 choose, or do not choose. He, who has not 
 the power of choice, is not a man — he is de- 
 prived of the essential function of manhood, or 
 moral agency. The words " strong " and 
 "weak," therefore, cannot be correctly applied 
 to will in its essence. 
 
 But could not God have made man so that 
 he could not sin? Yes, God did make many 
 animals incapable of sin, but we call them 
 monkeys, horses, cows, and such like, not 
 men. But could not God have so con- 
 structed man that sin would have been im- 
 possible ? Yes, but he would have thus made 
 good equally impossible. He might have 
 prevented slander by creating man without a 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 65 
 
 tongue, but such a man could not have sun"- 
 songs in praise of his Creator. You can pre- 
 vent a frolicsome boy from mischief by tying 
 him hand and foot, but you cannot send him 
 on an errand of mercy while thus tied — he is 
 equally incapable of good. 
 
 The power, then, freely to do, or not to 
 do that which is right, is essential to the 
 existence of moral quality in any action. For 
 God to have removed the possibility of evil 
 would have been to destroy the power of 
 choice, which is the distinguishing feature of 
 free moral agency, or manhood. Let me 
 repeat and emphasize this point. There can 
 be no such thing as moral quality asserted 
 of an action unless the power of choice was 
 exercised by the agent. 
 
 To illustrate this : Some years ago a heavy 
 passenger train was slowly puffing its way up 
 the steeps of the Alleghanies. The great engine 
 panted as if its strength were failing. The track 
 was little more than a shelf cut in the rocks, 
 wath a cliff upon one side, and the precipice 
 below. The scene was one of wondrous 
 5 
 
66 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 beauty, and while the passengers were enrapt 
 with the sublime views that ever and anon- 
 burst upon them, suddenly the whistle of the 
 engine uttered its sharp cry for down brakes. 
 The brakesmen sprang to their posts and ap- 
 plied all their strength to obey the call. What 
 had happened, or was about to happen, no 
 one knew. With nervous questioning, people 
 thrust their heads out the windows, or rushed 
 to the platforms. The sharp eye of the en- 
 gineer had seen an av/ful peril — a train of mov- 
 ing freight cars descending the mountain side 
 upon his track ! For a moment it was in plain 
 sight dashing around a curve — no engine, no 
 brakesmen, no sign of life. A collision seemed 
 inevitable. The loss of life would be simply 
 horrible ! What should he do ? He thought 
 of a hundred things all in a moment, but none 
 seemed practicable save one, and that he in- 
 stantly decided to try. " Down brakes " he 
 whistled. " Free the engine from the train ! " 
 he shouted to the fireman. In a moment it 
 was done. " Now jump for your life ! " The 
 fireman leaped and scrambled to his feet again. 
 
MAiV VS. FATE. 67 
 
 " Now fight the battle for us ! " exclaimed the 
 engineer as he opened the throttle valve and 
 sprang from the steps. Freed from its load, 
 the iron monster darted up the mountain side 
 alone to meet the coming foe ! A long gray 
 streak of smoke marked the way as with the 
 speed of the wind it dashed around curve and 
 cliff and on to the mortal combat ! Meanwhile 
 down the track in full sight came the wild cars 
 at a speed so fearful that, as they rounded the 
 curves the wheels rose from the track and came 
 down with a resounding crash. Then with a 
 mighty tiger-like rage, they flew at each other ! 
 The crash shook the hills ! A roaring cloud 
 of steam burst into the air, and then the shat- 
 tered cars, a grinding, crackling mass, rose 
 higher, higher, higher until it quivered and 
 tottered for a moment at its base, reeled and 
 went thundering down the embankment in the 
 ravine below. The grateful passengers draw 
 near. There were the splintered ties, the 
 deep ugly furrows in the road-bed, the broken 
 rails and the nameless fragments of an utter 
 wreck. The gallant engine was a hopeless 
 
68 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 ruin. There it lay like some noble wounded 
 animal, with its iron ribs broken and crushed, 
 its brass lungs burst, and its great heart torn 
 out ! It had fought a battle in which hundreds 
 of lives and untold interests were at stake, and 
 had won. It had died that men might live ! 
 And yet, that grateful throng never even in- 
 quired the name of the engine. They reared 
 no monument to its memory there. And why ? 
 Because the engine had no power of choice. 
 It was compelled to do what it did, hence no 
 moral quality could be attributed to the deed, 
 though similar in character to the supreme 
 tragedy on Calvary itself ! But with tears of 
 joy and gratitude they blessed the engineer' 
 whose quick wit, daring plan, and instant exe- 
 cution had saved them from death. He was 
 the hero of the hour — because he had the power 
 to do, or not to do, what he did. We cannot, 
 then, make God responsible for our sins or 
 worthlessness. 
 
 The conclusion is overwhelming that upon 
 every man's head rests his own blood. Men 
 who profess a belief in fate, in destiny, who 
 
MAN VS. FATE. 69 
 
 reach any success, always comply with all the 
 conditions of the sternest success. Napoleon 
 Bonaparte had his star, his fate, his destiny, — 
 but he worked nineteen hours a day and slept 
 five ! He believed in fate — but he was fate ! 
 he believed in himself ! Fate is the God of a 
 fool! 
 
 Every thinking man recognizes that truth. 
 Go with me a moment back into your life — 
 down memory's halls. Let us turn aside into 
 those secret chambers. You do not want to 
 go in ? Why not ? If you are not responsible 
 for any of it, it is all right. You could not 
 help it ! You hesitate ; you know that in those 
 rooms there are the ghosts of dead hopes, lost 
 capacities, noble aspirations, and dark spirits 
 flapping from out their condor wings invisible 
 woe ! You know that these walls are all hung 
 with tapestry wrought by your own fingers ; 
 know, too, that the shuttle of no fool's fate 
 ever shot athwart those tangled threads. You 
 spun them, wove them, hung them — they are 
 all your own ! 
 
 No, God will not lasso you and drag you 
 
7© LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 into heaven. He will not bind you hand and 
 foot against your will and carry you captive 
 into the courts of glory ! He lets down at 
 your hands the rope of salvation by faith. He 
 will not lash you to it by force. You must 
 first seize it and swing off ! 
 
 The law of the land, statutory and common, 
 is above the individual. He is ruled by it, 
 and cannot violate it — yet he has the right to 
 dispose of himself and of his property as he 
 pleases. He makes his will, and if the signa- 
 ture to that will is genuine, it becomes the law 
 of the land, and the highest tribunal of justice 
 cannot, dare not, set it aside ! So do you in 
 the royal chamber of your soul write your will, 
 and dispose of an immortal soul and its immor- 
 tal future. The law of God is above you, and 
 rules you, but your will becomes the law of 
 God ! Heaven's highest court admits to pro- 
 bate that will unquestioned. 
 
THE 2UESTI0N OF HELL, 7^ 
 
 THE QUESTION OF HELL. 
 
 " The soul that sinneth it shall die." — Ez. xviil. 20. 
 " And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the 
 righteous into eternal life." — Matt. xxv. 46. 
 
 Says a distinguished infidel : '' I honestly 
 believe that the doctrine of hell was born in 
 the glittering eyes of snakes that run in fright- 
 ful coils watching for their prey. I believe it 
 was born in the yelping and howling and growl- 
 ing and snarling of wild beasts. I believe it 
 was born in the grin of hyenas and in the ma- 
 licious chatter of depraved apes. I despise it, 
 I defy it, and I hate it." So do I, but the fact 
 that I despise, defy, and hate it, has nothing to 
 do with the bald question of its existence. The 
 glittering eyes of snakes, the growling and 
 snarling of wild beasts, the grin of hyenas and 
 chatter of depraved apes, are horrible facts in 
 nature; but the horror with which we regard 
 them can in nowise blot out the facts; and it 
 
72 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 is simply childish nonsense to go into hysterics 
 over the horrors, and think that thereby we 
 may discredit the facts. I hate hell, and for 
 that very reason must I be careful lest I un- 
 derestimate its realities. 
 
 The religion that consists in a desperate at- 
 tempt to escape hell and squeeze into heaven 
 is a poor religion — so is the one that seeks to 
 frighten folks into being good by a bloody 
 picture of torment. Yet the religion that con- 
 sists in wind and exclamation points on hell, 
 and savage attacks on orthodoxy, offering the 
 hungry human heart nothing in its stead, is 
 poorer still, is infinitely meaner, is utterly con- 
 temptible I 
 
 I do not believe in Dante's Inferno — the 
 Bible does not contain it; I do not believe 
 necessarily in a hell of literal fire and brim- 
 stone, any more than I believe in a heaven that 
 is a square walled city with gold brick pave- 
 ments. The inspired writers exhausted the 
 resources of human language in the effort to 
 convey the idea of heaven's glory and of hell's 
 woe. I may be all wrong in my conceptions 
 
THE QUESTION OF HELL. 73 
 
 of heaven, but its joy and glory will be none 
 the less real for that reason. Orthodox con- 
 ceptions of hell maybe all more or less wrong, 
 but its horror and misery will be none the less 
 real for that reason. But the question as to 
 the materialism of the future life has nothing 
 to do with the discussion of the question in 
 hand. The point of discussion now before us 
 is a very simple one. Does Hell exist ? There 
 is an impression abroad in the minds of many 
 that we have to-day a new theology that has 
 annihilated hell. No graver mistake could be 
 made. Unitarianism and Universalism main- 
 tain the existence of an awful hell. The so- 
 called New Theology does not touch the ques- 
 tion of its existence, but merely puts the query : 
 " Will not those who have not heard the Gospel 
 here, hear it after death and have another 
 chance of escape ? " It remains for an atheism 
 that borders upon insanity alone to enter an 
 absolute denial. And yet it is curious to note 
 how many sensible people are tricked with 
 such puny sentimentalism. Can such a denial 
 be maintained for a moment within the bounds 
 
74 LIVING rROLLEMS. 
 
 of human reason, to say nothing of revelation ? 
 It can not. We look about us and are con- 
 fronted on every hand with facts that over- 
 whelm us with the conviction of its reality. 
 Appalled at its horror we walk round about 
 this awful fact of eternity and try in vain to 
 escape. It stands confirmed " by the nature 
 of the mind of God, by the moral forces of the 
 universe, by the prophetic menace of the 
 human conscience, and by the analogies of all 
 law." So that we are forced to believe that : 
 
 Hell is not a dogma, born in the hnagination 
 of cunning priests and used to terrorize child- 
 hood and coerce manhood into submission ; 
 not a dogma, but a necessity, the saddest, stern- 
 est necessity of the universe. 
 
 I. It is a necessity of Immortality. He who 
 believes in the immortality of the soul must 
 believe in hell. Whatever may be said as to 
 the abstract question of immortality, it remains 
 a fact that in spite of all doubts and fears we 
 do believe in man's immortality. This belief 
 is a part of us — woven and interwoven into the 
 consciousness of personality itself, and is in- 
 
THE QUESTION OF HELL. 75 
 
 separable from our being, to say nothing of its 
 confirmation in divine revelation. The human 
 soul instinctively cries: "Believe in material- 
 ism if you will, but I am immortal, and my be- 
 lief is as much higher and nobler than yours, 
 as is the eagle, whose proud wing beats the air 
 as he mounts toward the sun, higher than the 
 toad that lives upon the vapors of a cellar." 
 
 Then, if you believe in immortality you must 
 believe in hell. After death we must all go 
 somewhere. We cannot all go to the same 
 place. Certainly we cannot all go to heaven. 
 To thousands, heaven would be worse than 
 hell. I know some people who, when they 
 reach the other shore and find no hell, would 
 make one in short order. And if you put them 
 off into a section of heaven, they would trans- 
 form it into a hell upon arrival. The old story 
 of the men in the wrong boat admirably illus- 
 trates this truth. They were rushing to the 
 shore to catch their boats. One was chartered 
 for a prize fight, the other for a Methodist 
 camp-meeting excursion. As the whistles 
 sounded the prize fighter rushed on the camp 
 
76 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 meeting boat, and the Methodist leaped on the 
 deck among the prize-ring thugs. When they 
 had started, the good brother with his Bible 
 under his arm began to look for his friends, 
 but could find only groups of profane, villain- 
 ous-looking men, cursing, drinking, and play- 
 ing cards. With tears he told the captain of 
 his mistake and begged to be put off. It was 
 a hell to him. The prize fighter wandered 
 about the other boat and could find only groups 
 of joyous men and women singing sweet songs, 
 reading the Bible, and talking about religion. 
 He sought in vain for something to drink, for 
 congenial companionship. He, too, sought 
 the captain, and, cursing the whole establish- 
 ment, offered all the money he had to be put 
 off anywhere — on a desert island — on a rock 
 — anywhere that he might escape those songs 
 and such companionship. It was a hell of tor- 
 ment to him. 
 
 Here is a man whose soul is going down, 
 down, down, into deeper depths of infamy 
 from day to day. He dies. Will his soul cease 
 to descend and begin to ascend — yea, turn in 
 
THE QUESTION OF HELL. 77 
 
 its downward flight and leap into heaven ? 
 Can the stone dropped from the pinnacle, 
 pause of itself in the descent, and, turning, re- 
 mount to greater heights ? Death is a mere 
 physical incident. Can a physical incident 
 work such a moral transformation ? No, we 
 say it is absurd. A mere physical change does 
 not work a moral revolution. Souls, then, that 
 are descending at death, are expected to con- 
 tinue that descent. Souls that are ascending 
 at death may expect to rise to greater heights. 
 
 11. It is a necessity of Law. Philosophers, 
 great and small, have ceased to maintain that 
 this world was born of chance, or that it is run 
 by chance. The spirit of the age bows before 
 the universal reign of law. Law reigns su- 
 preme in the physical and moral worlds. Chaos 
 no longer broods over Nature. We have come 
 to make nature and law almost interchangeable 
 terms. We realize that Nature acts with fear- 
 ful uniformity. God and man may forgive, 
 but Nature never. The name of Vengeance, of 
 Nemesis, is Nature! 
 
 So must the moral universe be subject to 
 
78 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the reign of law. There is no such thing as 
 law without penalty. Penalty is a part of the 
 very definition of law itself. Law that is vio- 
 lated with impunity ceases to be law. Nature's 
 laws violated wreck vengeance on the violator. 
 Moral law wilfully and persistently violated 
 must impose its penalty or cease to exist. 
 That penalty is hell. If there is no hell there 
 is no such thing as moral law, which no sane 
 man can maintain. Is there no justice for the 
 past? Has there been and will there be no 
 adjustment of the wrongs of the ages ? Will 
 the dismantled cities, crumbled empires, en- 
 slaved nations, lost tribes, and dead races cry in 
 vain for justice ? Will the cry of the weak, of 
 the oppressed, of the wronged, of the down- 
 trodden, in the past, the present, the future, 
 forever ascend and find no ear to hear, and no 
 heart to pity ? If chaos rules the moral world, 
 yes, — if law, then a thousand times, no ! 
 
 III. It is a necessity of Love. " God is love." 
 It is curious to note the uses men have tried 
 to make of this sublime revelation. There is a 
 class of sentimentalists that play forever on 
 
THE QUESTION OF HELL, 79 
 
 this one string. They reject the plain teaching 
 of the Bible on the punishment of the wicked. 
 They seek to destroy all sensible theories of 
 inspiration — in fact they absolutely reject the 
 Bible, and yet in the next breath, proclaim a 
 universal pardon for the race, because, " God 
 is love ! " Where did they learn that God is 
 love ? They did not learn it in their own souls, 
 for an avenging conscience is there telling of 
 righteousness and judgment. They did not 
 learn it in the book of Nature. Nature is 
 cruel and pitiless. That revelation can be 
 found nowhere in the universe save within the 
 lids of the Bible, and this Book of books they 
 have spurned. Their hope of eternal life rests 
 upon the sentence, " God is love," Vv^hich can 
 be found only in His Book, where alongside 
 this declaration, the way of eternal life is 
 marked out and made so plain that a wayfar- 
 ing man, though a fool, need not err therein, 
 and the penalty of hell hurled against those 
 who wilfully reject this way. 
 
 Even an Ingersoll hopes! "In the night of 
 death hope sees a star, and listening love hears 
 
8o LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the rustle of a wing," he says ; and yet forgets 
 that the star he sees is the Star of Bethlehem, 
 and the rustle of the wing he hears, is the rus- 
 tle of the angel's wing o'er the broken sepul- 
 chre! 
 
 God is love; but love is just. Justice is the 
 foundation of love. Love that is unjust, ceases 
 to be love and becomes a mere maudlin senti- 
 mentalism. The Bible does not teach that all 
 who sin are to receive the same punishment — 
 to be pitchforked into a burning cauldron and 
 stirred up together. It teaches that some shall 
 be beaten with few stripes, others with many, 
 and that this punishment will vary m propor- 
 tion to the light each has had. 
 
 The judge who loves his people and loves 
 his country, must always be just. When Web- 
 ster, the murderer of Parkman, was brought be- 
 fore Judge Shaw to be sentenced for his atro- 
 cious deed, he stood face to face wath his old 
 friend and schoolmate. The judge, as he gazed 
 upon him, was overwhelmed by the memory 
 of those years of companionship and love, and 
 while the great tears rolled down his cheeks. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HELL. 8 1 
 
 he pronounced sentence of death. Was that 
 sentence inconsistent with the highest love of 
 humanity ? Was it right, or wrong ? If right, 
 then it was subhme in its righteousness. If 
 wrong, then it was infinitely damnable. 
 
 God is love, and because of this very fact 
 there must be a hell. If God is love, those who 
 know God, must know love ; therefore those 
 who do not love cannot go to God, They 
 must go somewhere, and where they go is hell. 
 
 In East Boston a short time ago a man 
 named Tom Rowland took his loaded revolver, 
 went into his wife's room, and seized by the 
 throat her whom he had promised to cherish, 
 to tenderly care for, and love, and sent two 
 bullets crashing through her bosom. As she 
 lay at his feet upon the floor dying, weltering 
 in her blood, the love of woman rose trium- 
 phant o'er the awful wrong, and looking up 
 she feebly said : " Kneel down here, Tom, and 
 let me tell you how I forgive you ! " His only 
 answer was to curse and kick her as she ex- 
 pired. He then turned and sent a bullet 
 
 through his own brain and fell dead. Where 
 6 
 
82 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 did that infernal brute go ? He died with 
 curses lodged in his clinched teeth, with the 
 scowl of hell upon his brow, with every drop 
 of his foul blood boiling and hissing with eter- 
 nal hate! God is Love. He was the incarnate 
 fiend of Hate ! where did he go ? 
 
 I hate hell, but it is an awful fact. As a fact 
 it confronts us. As a fact it must be met. If 
 I could bridge hell with doubt I would gladly 
 do it. I would rear a mountain where the 
 chasm now yawns! I cannot understand all 
 the dark mysteries of that world of woe. The 
 traveller bends o'er the unspeaking precipice 
 and drops a stone to sound its depths. He 
 listens to hear the thud in the valley below. 
 No sound returns. Only dead silence reigns. 
 He drops another, and listens and hears only 
 the throb of his own heart. So I approach 
 this unspeaking precipice. I try in vain to 
 sound its depths. There comes no response, 
 save that in the deep of its black gloom I see 
 written in letters of fire, woe! WOE! " 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 83 
 
 MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 The Presumption Against a Miracle. 
 
 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I 
 do them, though ye believe not me, believe the works. — 
 John x., 37, 38. 
 
 The age in which we live is a stirring one. 
 It is an age of stern questioning. All things 
 are being cast into the crucible and tried by a 
 fire seven times hotter than usual. I am glad 
 of it. I am glad I live in this age. I like it. 
 I rejoice in the widespread interest mani- 
 fested in such a book as " Robert Elsmere." 
 Out of such conflicts always come life and 
 growth. I am not afraid Truth will suffer. 
 Conflict only burnishes the shield and sharpens 
 the sword of Truth, and she comes forth 
 brighter and more radiant than ever. I do not 
 nurse my creed as a tender babe, jealous of every 
 wind. If my creed cannot take care of itself it 
 will have to suffer, that is all. If I am wrong 
 
§4 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 I want to know it, and the sooner I know it 
 the better. 
 
 The purpose of this book is to ehminate the 
 supernatural from our reHgion, or, in other 
 words, to destroy Christ in order to preserve 
 Christianity. 
 
 The book is founded on a supposition that 
 is not a fact, namely, that there is an over- 
 whelming presumption against the possibility 
 of a miracle, so overwhelming that the ordinary 
 laws of evidence will not hold good to try the 
 case. This is a purely gratuitous supposition 
 and can be easily proven to be false. 
 
 A miracle is defined to be " an event or an 
 occurrence which cannot be explained by any 
 known law of nature; a deviation from the es- 
 tablished laws of nature." 
 
 Is there, then, an overwhelming presumption 
 against the possibility of a miracle ? 
 
 I. Certainly the uniformity of nature cannot 
 be legitimately used to prove that a miracle may 
 not occur. It is very common now, however, to 
 have this fallacy presented as an all-sufficient 
 argument. In fact, this seems now to be the 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 85 
 
 principal stock in trade of our so-called scien- 
 tific free-thinkers. 
 
 This is an old conflict, and the ground of 
 battle has shifted with every age. Celsus, 
 Porphyry, Julian, and Hierocles, the great in- 
 fidels of the first three or four centuries, each 
 attacked the miracles of Christ, but each on 
 grounds so antagonistic as to destroy the force 
 of their work as a whole. From Hierocles to 
 Spinoza and Mill it was popular with the windy 
 philosophers of that age to dogmatically assert 
 that a miracle was impossible, and that, there- 
 fore, no amount of evidence could establish 
 one. The philosophy of Spinoza and Mill 
 placed a quietus on this sort of idiocy, and now 
 our philosophic gymnasts are cutting somer- 
 saults over the continuity of natural law or the 
 uniformity of nature. 
 
 The universal postulate of science is the as- 
 sumption that nature will be found to be uni- 
 form. This postulate is the boundary line of 
 the outermost horizon of the scientific world. 
 Of that which does not conform to the known 
 laws of nature, science can give no information, 
 
S6 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 because outside of its realm. Science, then, 
 as such, can never acknowledge a miracle, can 
 never prove a miracle or disprove one. Sci- 
 ence can only admit that, so far as the evidence 
 goes, an event has happened which lies outside 
 its province. The fact that the alleged mira- 
 cle breaks the observed uniformity of nature 
 could never destroy the grounds of its credi- 
 bility, unless we maintain the absurd position 
 that all the ultimate secrets of the universe are 
 contained within the province of the now known 
 laws of nature. 
 
 The uniformity of nature is merely an as- 
 sumption based on a number of observations. 
 If the miracle be true, then uniformity, in that 
 far, could not be asserted. 
 
 Therefore, to plead the uniformity of nature 
 against the possibility of a miracle is simply to 
 beg the question. The issue is, " Was the uni- 
 formity broken ? " To assert " No, it was not 
 broken, because nature is observed to be uni- 
 form," is to walk forever in the lost man's cir- 
 cle, to come back each time to the place from 
 which we started, and to prove or disprove 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 87 
 
 nothing. For if the evidence establish the fact 
 of the miracle, the alleged uniformity ceases to 
 be a fact, and we must look for a new law or a 
 higher law. It is an impossibility, therefore, 
 that science can now raise an overwhelming 
 presumption against the occurrence of a mira- 
 cle. 
 
 It has become popular nowadays with a 
 certain class of people to crown the scientist 
 with a halo of infallibility, and to accept as an 
 established fact that what he does not know is 
 not worth knowing. I believe in science, I de- 
 fer to it, I love it; but the realm of science is 
 as yet a very small one, and man may know 
 and does know many things that are not sci- 
 entific. Within his province I acknowledge 
 the right of the scientist to speak with author- 
 ity. Here, say, is a man who devotes all his 
 life to the study of the anatomy of a gnat. He 
 has caught gnats, harnessed gnats, trained 
 gnats. He has butchered gnats, dissected them, 
 roasted, fried, and parboiled them. He has 
 particularly and generally analyzed gnats. On 
 the subject of gnats I agree at once that he is 
 
88 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 an authority, an expert gnatist. But he is not 
 satisfied to stay within his domain. He longs 
 to make wild generalizations from small pre- 
 mises. He leaps upon the lecture platform, 
 strikes a dramatic attitude, and exclaims: 
 "Behold! I see a gnat on yonder mountain, 
 miles away!" This would not be so bad, but 
 when he solemnly swears he cannot see the 
 mountain, we beg here to draw the line! 
 
 Besides this, within his realm the scientist is 
 still a man liable to be mistaken. Mr. Bobart, 
 the director of a scientific garden at Oxford, 
 it is said, found in the museum one day a dead 
 rat. He took this rat, split its head, feet, and 
 tail, drawing them in a peculiar way, and 
 pressed and dried it. When in proper condi- 
 tion, he submitted it to a group of scientists 
 for classification. They labored for days over 
 the puzzling problem, and at length made their 
 report, declaring the specimen to be a dragon! 
 They wrote learned essays and even poems 
 about this surviving example of a long-lost 
 species. A rat ! A cat would have known 
 better. No, we cannot yet accept the dogma 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 89 
 
 of scientific infallibility even within the limits 
 of science proper. 
 
 But religion has no real quarrel with science 
 over miracles. The scientist must believe in 
 miracles, else the domain of science itself be- 
 comes a hopeless riddle. Indeed, so far from 
 the scientist being able to eliminate miracles 
 from the universe, he takes the student by 
 the hand, leads him up face to face with a 
 miracle, and leaves him there. 
 
 Even granting, for the sake of argument, 
 that evolution is an established scientific fact, 
 the working hypothesis of the theory of evo- 
 lution involves three miracles. 
 
 First, the transformation of dead matter into 
 life. Spontaneous generation is a bubble long 
 since exploded. No respectable scientist holds 
 that life spontaneously grew from death. Life 
 comes only from life. Who supplied the first 
 spark of life ? No man has ever yet bridged 
 the chasm that separates dead matter from 
 live matter. The chasm yawns, as deep, as 
 dark, as unfathomable as ever. From its in- 
 finite depths man has ever heard but one 
 
90 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 voice — the voice of Almighty God, Creator of 
 Heaven and Earth ! Here, then, is the great 
 miracle of the ages. We know that dead 
 matter has become live matter, and that some 
 power " which cannot be explained by any 
 known law of nature; a deviation from the 
 established laws of nature," caused this trans- 
 formation. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Huxley and 
 all the hosts of science, lead us here and stand 
 dumb before this miracle of miracles. " How 
 did it happen ? ' cries the world. They reply 
 in a whisper: " First Cause! " "Force!" They 
 have renamed God, and call him " First 
 Cause ; " they have renamed the supernatural, 
 and call it " Force." That is, they have reached 
 the precipice, the outermost limits of the world 
 of science. To make their ov/n laws intelligi- 
 ble they must believe in a higher law, and yet 
 they content themselves by juggling with 
 words ! 
 
 Again, the supposed transformation of the 
 vegetable into the animal has never yet been 
 explained. How the cabbage-head became a 
 monkey is yet an unsolved riddle. " It cannot 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 9^ 
 be explained by any known law of nature; " it 
 certainly is " a deviation from the established 
 laws of nature." Here, then, science leads us 
 up to a second miracle, and the man who be- 
 lieves in the theory of evolution must accept it. 
 And then how the brute became a man is yet 
 a mystery. How the monkey became a Shake- 
 speare is an unsolved riddle. How the whin- 
 ing brute became the proud, erect, God-hke 
 man, with a heart that throbs with the joys 
 and sorrows of ages, past, present, and future, 
 " cannot be explained by any known law of 
 nature." This consciousness of personality; 
 this throbbing, immortal soul that yearns for 
 the eternal and infinite, whence come they? 
 Here, then, we are confronted by a third mira- 
 cle. How, then, can science raise any presump- 
 tion against the occurrence of a miracle, to say 
 nothing of an overwhelming presumption 
 against its possibility! 
 
 H. Every rational man is every day a witness 
 to the occurrence of a miracle within the bounds 
 of his own personal consciousness. Every sane 
 man is conscious of the exercise of a free will. 
 
92 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 The actions of a free will " cannot be explained 
 by any known law of nature." They are " a 
 deviation from all the known laws of nature.'* 
 Science can never hope to reduce all phenom- 
 ena to absolute unity, so long as a whole class 
 of observed phenomena, mainly all those that 
 belong to the action of the human will, are to 
 be excluded from its postulate of invariable 
 sequence. So far as science is concerned the 
 human will is a miracle. Can science, there- 
 fore, prove that there is no such thing as will ? 
 The human will every day interferes with the 
 law of nature's uniformity. If a human will 
 can thus interfere with the law of uniformity, 
 as every child knows that it does, is it not more 
 than probable that behind some phenomena 
 may lurk the interference of some other will 
 higher than man's ? In the human will, we are 
 confronted with a fourth miracle. 
 
 III. The experience of millions of reliable 
 witnesses testifies to the occurrence of another 
 miracle, namely, the transformation of the 
 natural man into the spiritual man — conver- 
 sion. The conversion of a man from sin and 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 93 
 
 selfishness to love and holiness, from the things 
 he delighted in to those that he hated, is a 
 mystery that " cannot be explained by any 
 known law of nature." How the desperado is 
 transformed into the saint we do not know, 
 but we do know that the way in which it is 
 done is " a deviation from the known laws of 
 nature." Take the case of Rowdy Brown, as 
 related by Dr. Pierson. He was one of the 
 noted toughs of lower New York. He was a 
 large, strong, bold fellow, who united the bru- 
 tality of a savage with the ferocity of a wild 
 beast. Passing a man who was seated on the 
 forecastle of a Liverpool packet quietly read- 
 ing his Bible, Brown, in pure malice, kicked 
 him so violently in the mouth as to knock out 
 his teeth; and this ruffian had killed men in 
 California. Hearing of the conversion of one 
 of his sailor-mates at the Water Street Mission, 
 he swore that he would go down there, and if 
 that fellow should get up to talk, he would 
 force open his jaws and empty a bottle of whis- 
 key down his throat. He went with his bottle. 
 But there was a power there on whose resist- 
 
94 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 ance to his devilish plot he had not counted. 
 While waiting for his time to come he became 
 strangely moved himself; a new sensation, a 
 violent trembling overmastered him. He 
 could not even flee ; the crowd was too dense, 
 and his strength was gone. By the time his 
 old chum was giving his testimony, Rowdy 
 Brown was ready to faint ; and when, at the 
 close of the testimonies, inquirers were invited 
 to come forward, he startled the whole com- 
 pany by dropping on his knees and crying, 
 'Pray for me!' The excitement was intense. 
 He yelled and groaned for mercy, while his 
 awakened conscience rocked and racked even 
 his huge frame. Two nights of tempest passed 
 before he heard the voice that speaks the soul 
 into calm. But when he did get peace, he 
 leaped from bed at midnight and roused the 
 whole house with his shouts of praise. Rowdy 
 Brown no sooner found Christ than he found 
 work for Christ. In his intense passion to 
 save men he would actually pick up bodily and 
 carry some sailor to the mission and set down 
 the astonished man on the anxious-seat, and 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 95 
 
 then plead and pray with him till the heat of 
 his own ardor and fervor melted him into sub- 
 mission to Christ. 
 
 Whence came this new power in the life of 
 this desperado ? The miracle of conversion 
 alone explains it. 
 
 What else can explain the self-sacrifice and 
 devotion of a thousand Christian lives you have 
 known ? We are told that a Greek architect 
 was commissioned by a Roman emperor to 
 build a great colosseum. He was told that suc- 
 cess in the plans meant for him fame and for- 
 tune. The plans were perfected, the building 
 erected, and the Emperor was charmed with 
 the work. On the day of the grand opening 
 the Emperor rose before the multitude and 
 pronounced all honor upon the architect. To 
 celebrate the occasion he ordered Christians to 
 be brought forth from their prisons and fed to 
 hungry lions and tigers. When the shouts 
 over the bloody scene had died away, in one 
 of the galleries the Greek architect arose and 
 shouted until the vast assemblage heard : " I, 
 too, am a Christian ! " They seized him and 
 
9^ LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 threw him into the arena and his body was torn 
 into shreds! There must have been a marvel- 
 lous change somewhere in the character of 
 that Greek— some power other than human 
 must have lifted him from his seat of honor 
 that day! 
 
 Yes, in the conversion of a soul we are face 
 to face with a fifth miracle. 
 
 The facts in the case, then, are that experi- 
 ence testifies to a m.iracle every day for nearly 
 2,000 years in the conversion of a soul. Per- 
 sonal consciousness testifies to a miracle in the 
 human will every day since the morning of 
 creation, when man first said: " I will." Sci- 
 ence leads us up to at least three miracles. A 
 miracle, then, has certainly happened some- 
 where, and if a miracle has ever occurred any- 
 where it may occur everywhere. How, then, 
 can there be any presumption against the pos- 
 sibility of a miracle? 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 97 
 
 MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 The Question of Evidence. 
 
 " I and the Father are one." — John, x. 30. 
 
 We have seen in the first examination of 
 this subject that there is no overwhelming prob- 
 abiHty against the occurrence of a miracle. 
 The ordinary laws of evidence, therefore, are 
 all that we need to try the case. But the key 
 argument which apparently overturns the 
 faith of our hero is Wendover's new theory of 
 testimony. His theory is that testimony is a 
 science that has only reached a condition of 
 order and credibility in modern times; that 
 early witnesses being unacquainted with this 
 science did not know how to testify scientifi- 
 cally, and, therefore, lied. That expert, or 
 scientific testimony alone is to be believed. 
 At first glance this theory may seem reasona- 
 ble. At a second glance it is obviously absurd. 
 At a third glance it becomes nothing short of 
 7 
 
98 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 a monstrosity. According to such a theory, 
 Plutarch, Caesar, Tacitus, Xenophon, and Her- 
 odotus, are not credible witnesses, because for- 
 sooth they did not live in our day. According 
 to such a theory, we would crucify Xenophon 
 and crown Zola, the modern apostle of putre- 
 faction; we would outlaw Plutarch, and can- 
 nonize IngersoU as a teacher of men! How 
 utterly absurd ! The truth is " expert " testi- 
 mony may be the most utterly worthless testi- 
 mony given in any court of justice, or inquiry. 
 Put two experts on the witness stand repre- 
 senting different sides of the same case and ask 
 them for information about the same thing. 
 When they have finished, the court is usually 
 overwhelmed by an impenetrable fog of lies. 
 The simple man who does not know how to 
 tell a lie, is the most credible witness. The 
 author only saves Wendover, the character 
 who advances this theory, from utter contempt 
 by intimating that he is the product of a streak 
 of hereditary insanity. And yet this theory, 
 with insanity as its apology, is allowed to an- 
 nihilate Elsmere's religion without a struggle. 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 99 
 
 The next main argument is likewise based 
 on assumptions that cannot be established by 
 the facts of history. We are told that the age 
 in which Christ wrought was an age of mira- 
 cles and wonders. That the air was teeming 
 with them. That no great man appeared whose 
 name was not surrounded by such a halo, and 
 that the people held the simplest child-like 
 faith in the supernatural. This is not true. 
 The age was a superstitious one ; but it was 
 far from being an age of simple faith. It was, 
 on the other hand, an age characterized by the 
 decay of all faiths. The temples of Greece 
 and Rome were deserted. " Stoicism had be- 
 come a rock. Epicureanism was wallowing in 
 filth." Infidelity, atheism, and scepticism were 
 everywhere rampant. And o'er the crumb- 
 ling ruins of the religions of the ancient worlds, 
 Pilate peers into the face of Jesus and asks, 
 " What is truth? " And did the air teem with 
 miracles?" If so, why were none wrought in 
 the childhood of Christ? If so, how could such 
 a man as John the Baptist sweep like a cy- 
 clone over the country and yet it should be 
 
loO LIVING PROBLEMS, 
 
 recorded of him by both friend and foe, "John 
 wrought no miracles." 
 
 The question then arises, What is the evi- 
 dence in hand ? We have historic documents, 
 whose genuineness is not questioned, which 
 contain the direct testimony of Jesus Christ 
 and His disciples to the fact of these miracles. 
 We must accept this testimony, provided the 
 remaining body of their testimony is found 
 consistent with truth, and the character of 
 the witnesses can stand the severest test. A 
 witness stands or falls upon the whole of that 
 to which he testifies, and that whole must al- 
 ways rest upon character for a foundation. Tes- 
 timony that is thus consistent and harmonious 
 as a whole, given by one whose character is 
 unimpeachable, must be accepted as the truth 
 by all fair-minded men. 
 
 Unity and character, therefore, are the two 
 elements of credibility in personal testimony. 
 
 It requires no argument to prove that the 
 body of Christian doctrine set forth by Christ 
 in person and through His disciples is uni- 
 form and consistent. It stands confirmed by 
 
MIR A CLES A XD ROBER T ELSMERE. i o I 
 
 the testimony of more than eighteen cent- 
 uries. 
 
 What, then, is to be said of the character 
 of the witnesses ? Let us take the central 
 figure, Christ himself. 
 
 On examination we find the known facts in 
 the life of Christ present us with a character 
 of spotless purity and a personality absolutely 
 unique; indeed the supreme miracle of history, 
 a miracle that makes more than probable, yea, 
 proves all the other miracles of the gospels. 
 
 I. All men, believers and unbelievers, unite 
 in testifying to His goodness, to His perfection 
 — that He was the highest and holiest, and 
 noblest man this world ever saw. 
 
 n. He never worked or claimed to work a 
 miracle for show. They were always wrought 
 naturally in the course of His ministry. They 
 were the natural outflow of the divine life 
 within Him. They were prophetic and sym- 
 bolic of a world's salvation, and were conceived 
 and animated by the noblest purpose. He did 
 not peep and mutter in the dark, use incanta- 
 tions, or jugglery. He unstopped the ears of 
 
I02 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the deaf, and the world turns to Him to hear 
 the words of eternal life. He opens the eyes 
 of the blind that man might not stumble ; cures 
 the sick, feeds the hungry for pity's sake; stills 
 the sea to calm the fears of those who loved 
 Him; raises the dead, that He may wipe the 
 tears from the eyes of those who weep. These 
 miracles were as clearly not the product of a 
 superstitious age, as that modern jugglery and 
 necromancy are not the product of the gospels. 
 
 He declared that He did these works by di- 
 vine power. He declared that He was the ful- 
 filment of prophecy and law — the promised 
 Messiah. 
 
 He declared that He was God. " I and the 
 Father are one." He spoke with authority and 
 not as the scribes. 
 
 He was either insane, an impostor, or Jesus, 
 the Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the 
 world. No man has ever claimed that He was 
 insane. Friend and foe agree that He was 
 good, that He was upright, that He was the 
 truest and noblest man who ever lived. If He 
 was a true man, then He could not be an im- 
 
MIR A CLES A ND R OBER T EL SMERE. 1 03 
 
 poster. The conclusion is overwhelming, then, 
 that He was what He claimed to be. 
 
 HI. His character is a miracle that proves 
 His claims, and He is Himself His own vindi- 
 cation. Think of it for a moment. All great 
 men do suggest still with their greatness, nar- 
 row individuality. Watt suggests the inventor. 
 Napoleon the warrior, Pitt the statesman; but 
 Christ was the Son of man — the highest ex- 
 pression of the universal genius of humanity 
 — this, too, in spite of His birth. The Greek 
 has his national characteristics and weaknesses 
 so the Roman, and the Carthaginian. The 
 Jew was of all men most pronounced in his 
 race prejudices and characteristics. The world 
 has forgotten that Christ was a Jew. There 
 was in Him the mysterious and perfect balance 
 of severity and gentleness, of purity and yet 
 the power to mingle with the impure. His 
 purity was not of the human sort, for He at- 
 tracted instead of repelling the impure. His 
 magnanimity and self-denial were god-like. 
 He first taught the world to love an enemy, and 
 His sweet voice in the agonies of Calvary yet 
 
I04 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 startles the world as He exclaims: "Father, 
 forgive them, they know not what they do!" 
 Such a character has never before or since be- 
 longed to mere man. He must have been 
 more than man. 
 
 IV. History has established the truth of His 
 claims; for the supernatural can be the only 
 possible solution of the results that have fol- 
 lowed His life and death. Circumstantial evi- 
 dence thus adds its weight to an invincible 
 personal testimony. 
 
 We remember that He was born of obscure 
 parentage in a little village in Judea. He was 
 born in poverty and obscurity, and was never 
 given the advantages of an education. His 
 ministry only lasted about three years, and He 
 was crucified in disgrace at the age of thirty- 
 three. And yet Mr. Lecky, the historian, testi- 
 fies that the love mankind has borne Him has 
 been one of the wonders of all generations. 
 Yes, men have loved Him with a love so tri- 
 umphant that they have walked bare-footed 
 and blind-folded over burning ploughshares 
 for His name's sake. They have gazed into 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 105 
 
 the eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, and 
 with joy exclaimed, " Lord I am wheat to be 
 ground for thee!" They have died in crack- 
 ling flames with songs of triumph and glory on 
 their lips! 
 
 Lecky further testifies that this power has 
 acted on all ages, nations, and temperaments, 
 and has ever been the highest incentive to 
 practical virtue known to the world; that it 
 has marched victorious through the centuries 
 of trial and struggle, and that the Church of 
 Christ, when it has become degenerate and 
 corrupt, has ever shown within itself the power 
 of regeneration and new Ifie. 
 
 Only thirty-three years did this obscure 
 workingman from Nazareth live. His active 
 period of work was only three years, and yet 
 these three years are the pivot on which turns 
 the history and destiny of the world. Reared 
 in proverty and obscurity, with no rank or 
 title, and no great man as His friend, hated, 
 driven out and crucified in disgrace by His peo- 
 ple — and yet He sways the world ! The very 
 calendar of time is His. The morning of crea- 
 
I06 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 tion is forgotten in the joy and glory of the 
 day on which the shepherds heard the words, 
 " Peace on earth, good-will toward men I " 
 Kings baptize their children in His name. 
 Cathedrals, poems in marble, rise to His honor 
 and glory, while He receives the grateful hom- 
 age of millions! The story of all the nations, 
 that have not heard His voice can be told in a 
 footnote on a single page of history! The 
 nations of the earth are His inheritance ! How 
 could these things be recorded of mere man ? 
 The only natural solution is the supernatural 
 ■ — yea, the only possible solution of such a life 
 must be the supernatural. 
 
 V. Most convincing of all — He is now, to- 
 day, the living Saviour for millions. Eighteen 
 centuries have passed away. All personal 
 mementoes of His life have perished long since. 
 His birth place. Calvary, and the sepulchre we 
 cannot find, and yet countless hosts to-day ex- 
 claim : "Whom having not seen we love!" 
 He is the unseen presence that fills and thrills 
 their lives with faith, hope, and love. During 
 one of Napoleon's wars, a soldier was under 
 
MIR A CLES A ND ROBER T ELSMERE. 1 07 
 
 the surgeon's knife. The blade was cutting 
 near the heart, when the sufferer looked up 
 and said: " If you cut a little deeper, surgeon, 
 you will find the Emperor! " There are scores 
 of men and women before me now, who so 
 love Jesus, that if you should cut their hearts 
 out, you would find Him there ! 
 
 He is our refuge and strength, our hiding 
 place in time of trouble and distress. Soc- 
 rates, it is said, had a dream. He dreamed, 
 that Plato as a young dove took refuge in his 
 bosom among the folds of his tunic, until his 
 wings were grown and feathers all full fledged. 
 And then he rose, and soared away higher and 
 higher, until lost in the azure blue of heaven! 
 This dream has been the sweetest reality for 
 those who have loved Christ. Thousands have 
 sung "Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy 
 bosom fly!" In His bosom they have nestled 
 till the storms of life have passed, and then on 
 untiring wings have mounted to purer worlds 
 on high! 
 
 As they have rested in His bosom, they have 
 felt the caressing touch of His loving hand, 
 
lo8 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 and there is no other touch like it! During 
 the Civil War, there lay in one of the hospitals 
 a young soldier, in a dangerous condition. In 
 his delirium he called and called for his 
 mother. She was summoned by telegraph. 
 When she arrived the surgeon in charge said 
 to her: "You cannot go in now, madam, the 
 shock of your arrival I fear would be immedi- 
 ately fatal." So she stood at the doorway, 
 watching and listening. She heard him groan, 
 and with tears begged that she might go silently 
 and take the place of the nurse by his side, 
 promising not to speak or make herself known. 
 She went. He lay with his face to the wall. 
 He groaned again in pain, and the instincts of 
 the loving mother overleaped all caution. She 
 bent over and tenderly placed her hand on his 
 fevered brow. Instantly he exclaimed with a 
 sigh: " Oh, Nurse, how like my mother's touch 
 was that! " We know Him because we have 
 felt His touch, and no other hand is like His! 
 
 What think ye then of Christ ? He is the 
 supreme miracle of history. He authenticates 
 Himself. The only natural and possible solu- 
 
MIRACLES AND ROBERT ELSMERE. 109 
 
 tion of His life and personality is the super- 
 natural. You cannot separate His miracles 
 from his personality, they are a part of Him, 
 and He was the truth! There is, it seems to 
 me, no middle ground. He was either a gigan- 
 tic fraud, or the incarnation of truth. You 
 viust crown Him or crucify Him! His witness 
 to miracles stands confirmed by His personal 
 testimony, consistent, a unit, and based on a 
 spotless character, and by the mystery of His 
 personality (inexplicable unless divine) in its 
 triumphant march through the centuries! 
 
no LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 
 
 " My soul is weary of my life. . . . I will say unto God, 
 . . . show me wherefore thou contendest with me ? " — Job x. 
 
 I, 2. 
 
 A YEAR or two ago a brutal murder was com- 
 mitted in a hotel in St. Louis. The murderer 
 fled across the continent and put the Pacific 
 Ocean between him and his deed. It seems 
 that he all but escaped. He thought that he 
 had escaped, but he had not. The strong arm 
 of the law reached across the sea and dragged 
 him back to justice — to a murderer's cell and 
 a murderer's scaffold, and Maxwell paid with 
 a broken neck the penalty of his sin. Sin and 
 suffering, pain as penalty, terms so often linked 
 together in human history! Law violated, 
 vengeance and penalty follow as the necessary 
 sequence. 
 
 That is a simple problem. It confronts you 
 upon every hand. The child that tries to play 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. HI 
 
 with the blaze of fire, soon learns that it will 
 not do. Nature's law violated always strikes 
 back, be that law physical or moral. All that 
 is necessary for a man to fully comprehend the 
 fact is to simply open his eyes, and if he has 
 any sense — certainly if he exercise reason, he 
 must see it — and yet how many do not see it. 
 
 Now it is not to this phase of suffering 
 we are brought by our study of Job; but 
 we stand before the man of integrity who 
 has suffered. And the book of Job, that tells 
 this story, is perhaps the most unique piece of 
 literature, sacred or profane, extant. Where 
 is the scene founded ? Some scholars say in 
 Idumea ; others say in the great Arabian Desert 
 region, and still others fix it in Mesopotamia. 
 It has ho place. It was written for all places. 
 When did Job live ? What is the date of this 
 book ? Some say long before Abraham. 
 Others maintain that it was after Abraham, 
 and some say it was written by an inspired 
 poet in Solomon's day. It has no time— no 
 date — it was written peculiarly for all times. 
 Who wrote it ? One says Job wrote it, another 
 
112 LI VING PROBLEMS. 
 
 says, Elihu was its author, and others say 
 Moses, and some a poet of later years. It has 
 no author save God, so far as human knowl- 
 edge extends. No place, its locality the world ; 
 no date, its time, all times; its author, God! 
 It stands forth in the dim twilight of human 
 history, the dramatic revelation of the scene 
 wherein God meets the creature and begins to 
 instruct him in the first letters of the alphabet 
 of life. The problem that confronted Job as 
 he thus staggered beneath the providence of 
 God is the problem before us. 
 
 What is, then, this higher mission of pain ? 
 
 Passing by the innumerable inferences and 
 lessons that have been drawn and truthfully 
 drawn from the teachings of this book, we ob- 
 serve in perfect outline three answers to this 
 vital question Job would ask of God. As the 
 curtain rises and falls, and scene succeeds 
 scene in rapid succession, we see the old pa- 
 triarch beivildered, enlightened, and croivncd. 
 Or to slightly change the figure, we see him 
 broken up, emptied, and then filled. We take 
 it, therefore, that it must have been the pur- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 1 13 
 
 pose of God to thus bewilder, enlighten and 
 crown, to thus break, empty, and fill. 
 
 I. We see him first bewildered. All his con- 
 ceptions of life utterly broken — a complete 
 wreck. Job's position had been one eminently 
 satisfactory to himself. We see the picture 
 of an ideal Eastern home. He had been a 
 model man in many respects, upright and 
 honorable, industrious and wise, and because 
 of this had accumulated a vast fortune. We 
 have every reason to believe that he was well 
 satisfied with himself and began to feel that 
 he had about mastered most of the ultimate 
 secrets of life. He had reached the period of 
 self-congratulation and satisfaction. His sons 
 and daughters held their feasts in celebration 
 of their prosperity every night, and over the 
 revelry of each feast the old patriarch threw 
 the mantle of a father's prayers. 
 
 But in the midst of these days of piety and 
 prosperity, Job is suddenly stricken by a storm 
 of adversity. In a single day all his property 
 is swept away and his children killed. He 
 still holds fast to his old faith, and comforts 
 
1 1 4 LIVING PR OBLEMS. 
 
 himself with the grim philosophy: "Naked 
 came I out of my mother's womb, and naked 
 shall I return thither: the Lord gave and the 
 Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of 
 the Lord." But adversity touched him again. 
 This time his body was prostrated, each nerve 
 torn open and made the pathway on which the 
 scorching feet of pain travelled to his inmost 
 soul, and at last, all his old conceptions of life 
 are utterly wrecked. In anguish he curses the 
 day he was born and prays that it may be 
 blotted from the calendar of time. In poverty 
 and sickness, feeling that God and man were 
 against him, he is led captive to despair. 
 
 He becomes a pessimist, and we cannot won- 
 der that he does with the light he had. Viewed 
 from a purely human point of view, the cap- 
 tivity of the world to sorrow is overwhelming 
 to the mind of man. We seem to be captive 
 to blind forces of unrelenting cruelty. 
 
 Nature around us smiles, threatens, curses, 
 and commands, but never weeps. She rises in 
 a thousand forms of beauty and sublimity and 
 receives men's homage, but never stoops to 
 
THE MYST&kV OP PAIM. 1 15 
 
 sympathize with a sinning, stumbling child. 
 She knows no sympathy. She has no ear for 
 prayer, no heart to pity, no arm to save. She 
 acts with fearful uniformity through laws as 
 stern as fate, as inexorable as death, as merci- 
 less as hell. 
 
 The terror-stricken sailor climbs into the 
 rigging of his doomed ship and cries in vain 
 for mercy to the wind that shrieks in demoniac 
 glee through the cordage about him. The 
 wind does not care, the waves do not hear. 
 
 The victim who trembles in the grasp of an 
 earthquake need not pray to mother earth, 
 her only response is an open grave that yawns 
 to be filled, while from the depths of her 
 bowels comes the roar as of a hungry, mad- 
 dened lion. The storm king in remorseless 
 fury pauses not for cry, or groan, or tear, or 
 prayer. The pestilence at whose subtle touch 
 thousands fall, laughs at man's calamity. A 
 single frost might stay the bloody work and 
 bind again the blessed seals that held in man- 
 acles the monster's hands. The frost does not 
 come. No! Mother's hearts lie still! More 
 
Il6 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 lives must yet be drained! And for many a 
 morning still the rumble of that dreaded cart 
 must be heard as at early dawn its driver cries, 
 " Bring out your dead ! Bring out your dead ! " 
 Nature does not care. Over all the bloody 
 fields of our Civil War Nature never shed a 
 tear. The grass grows only the richer for the 
 blood that was shed. Nature only smiled the 
 brighter from the nutriment of such rare food. 
 
 The sunlight steals through the window of 
 the sick-room and lights it, but falls on the 
 dung-heap with just as glad a smile, and plays 
 on the burnished cofifin lid of the dead with 
 just as merry a twinkle. The sun does not 
 care. 
 
 The water slowly rises along that fatal dam 
 on the South Fork, higher, higher, higher, add- 
 ing every inch ton on ton of pressure against 
 man's weak masonry. Not one jot or tittle of 
 her rights did Nature suspend. Every pound 
 of hydraulic pressure to which she was entitled 
 she remorselessly demanded, until at last with 
 millions of tons gathered in her arms she leaped 
 upon the puny structure, crushed it like a toy, 
 
THE MYSTERY OF TAIN. II? 
 
 and with the roar of a Niagara plunged down 
 the mountain gorge on her wild mission of 
 death! Shriek and groan rend the air! She 
 does not heed, but lest any should escape, 
 lights up the awful scene with conflagration 
 piled upon the seething flood. No, nature did 
 not care! 
 
 The view of the flight of woe through time 
 is even more fearful. When we think that 
 half the human race die in infancy; when we 
 remember how delicately and exquisitely the 
 human heart is strung to love, and that beside 
 each one of those little graves two hearts have 
 beat in anguish, and that this scene is repeated 
 by unnumbered thousands with each wave of 
 humanity that breaks on the shores of time, 
 the thought is appalling! We hear the race 
 through all the ages of the past, marching, 
 tramp! tramp! tramp! to the music of sighs 
 and tears! And the throb of that mufifled 
 music is overwhelming to the soul! 
 
 If this were all I know of human life, I 
 would say too, with Job, Roll up the accursed 
 scroll, seal it forever and hurl it into oblivion! 
 
1 1 8 LI VING PROBLEMS. 
 
 I will have none of it ! But the heart of man 
 has ever refused to be content with such a 
 view, and in this bewilderment of despair the 
 soul instinctively cries to God for light. So 
 does Job. He seeks God's face. " Oh, that I 
 knew where I might find Him, that I might 
 come to His very seat." 
 
 n. In answer to this cry for light, God 
 comes to enlighten. The process of enlighten- 
 ment is first an emptying process. Job must 
 be emptied of self and self-importance before 
 there is room for God to come in. " Who is 
 this that darkeneth counsel by words without 
 knowledge ? " says God. " Where wast thou 
 when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who 
 determined the measure thereof, if thou know- 
 est? Or who stretched the line upon it? Where- 
 upon were the foundations thereof fastened? 
 Or who laid the corner stone thereof: when 
 the morning stars sang together, and all the 
 sons of God shouted for joy ? Or who shut 
 up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as 
 if it had issued out of the womb; when I made 
 the cloud the garment thereof and thick dark- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 119 
 
 ness a swaddling band for it, and prescribed 
 for it my decree, and set bars and doors, and 
 said, Hitherto shall thou come, and no further; 
 and here shall thy proud waves be stayed ? " 
 We do not wonder that Job must exclaim in 
 answer, " Behold, I am of small account ! " 
 This was important knowledge for the patriarch 
 — knowledge in which he had hitherto been 
 sadly deficient. 
 
 God now reveals to him a new meaning to 
 life, and puts into his mouth a new prayer in 
 harmony with that new view. Job had been a 
 man of prayer; but of family prayer. His 
 horizon was limited to his own acres, and 
 broad though they were, his world was a very 
 small one, and his prayer a weak and poor one 
 — a prayer of about the import of our old man 
 who prayed, " Lord bless me and my wafe, my 
 son John and his wife, w^e four and no more. 
 Amen ! " So Job had prayed for his sons and 
 their wives and his daughters and sons-in-law. 
 God instructed him now to pray for his friends, 
 or more correctly speaking, his tormentors. 
 Thereupon we are told, "And the Lord turned 
 
I20 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the captivity of Job when he prayed for his 
 friends." The world was larger now than his 
 own plantation, and his heart and life were 
 larger because they saw a larger world. 
 
 There sits a broken-hearted mother beside 
 her dead. She rocks herself to-and-fro, and 
 talks about the little bright-faced girl that lies 
 cold in death. She says it was all she had. 
 She tells how the little thing had just begun 
 to say " mamma " so sweetly, and through the 
 big, hot tears she looks up and says. "Oh, 
 what have I done that God should punish me 
 so ? " Nothing, perhaps, my sister. God may 
 not be punishing you, but enlarging your heart, 
 and giving to life a deeper, sweeter meaning. 
 Your life was no larger than that cradle; there 
 was but one child in the world for you ; but 
 now the world will be a much broader one and 
 every little urchin you pass on the street cor- 
 ner will be kin to you ! 
 
 III. We next see Job crowned. "And the 
 Lord turned the captivity of Job when he 
 prayed for his friends — AND GAVE HIM TWICE 
 AS MUCH AS HE HAD BEFORE," — "fourteen 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 1 21 
 
 thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and 
 a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she- 
 asses." 
 
 Enlarged capacity is necessary to enlarged 
 wealth. To receive a blessing there must be 
 room. Any man is poor who lacks the capac- 
 ity to receive wealth, and you cannot make him 
 rich until you dig him out, and make room for 
 it. There are some men you cannot make rich 
 — they have no place to put it. There are 
 many poor millionaires. You might give them 
 the wealth of Croesus — they would be poor still 
 — and they would live a mean, and narrow, 
 cold and selfish life. The Duke of Brunswick 
 possessed his millions, but lived the life of a 
 dog, in a miserable kennel he built, in which 
 he dwelt, keeping watch day and night over 
 his money and jewels. Says Jeffers: "He 
 keeps his diamonds in a thick wall, his bed is 
 placed against it, that no burglar may break in 
 without killing, or at least waking him. He 
 has but one window in his bed room, and the 
 sash is of stoutest iron. A case of a dozen six 
 barrelled revolvers, loaded, lies on a table 
 
122 LI VING PROBLEMS. 
 
 within reach of his bed." Could any one be 
 fool enough to think such a man is rich? The 
 nameless cur that prowls through street and 
 highway in search of bread is richer in all that 
 makes life worth the having! 
 
 Why did not God give Job this great num- 
 ber of sheep and camels and oxen and asses in 
 the beginning? He certainly had plenty. The 
 Lord was not short of oxen or asses. He 
 never has been — doubtless never will be. Why 
 then did He not give them to Job ? Simply 
 because the patriarch had no capacity to re- 
 ceive so much wealth. He was too small a 
 man. It was necessary for God to take the 
 pick-axe of sorrow and dig out his heart! And 
 when this was done, He poured in the greater 
 blessing. We truly say that there is no full 
 man who had not tasted sorrow's cup, for he 
 who has known no sorrow is apt to be filled 
 with the consciousness of his own good for- 
 tune and to have little room for anything else. 
 
 " Most wretched men are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 They learn in suffering, what they teach in song." 
 
 So does God enlarge the capacities of the 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 123 
 
 individual and the nation sometimes. I love 
 to think that God is thus to bless my own fair 
 South-land. Out of the sorrow and anguish 
 of the sad past, out of its darkness and gloom, 
 out of its wreck and ruin, there is rising to-day 
 a South richer and fairer than even the dream 
 of the old ! So that in tears of joy I can ex- 
 claim with Father Ryan : 
 
 "Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb. 
 There's a grandeur in graves, there's a glory in gloom; 
 For out of the gloom future brightness is born. 
 As after the darkness looms the sunrise of morn! " 
 
 We see the light of a life apparently go out 
 in the darkness of the night of sorrow, but on 
 the morrow rise again brighter for every tear 
 that has been shed. The shrub cut to the very 
 root, will still put forth a fresher, rarer shoot 
 on which will blossom flowers of sweeter per- 
 fume than the old. Even the Master was 
 made " perfect through suffering " we are told, 
 and so we can truly sing " In the cross of Christ 
 we glory! " 
 
 So we must conclude that chance and acci- 
 dent do not rule the world, though a class of 
 
124 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 professed thinkers used to maintain that chance 
 was the author of the world and its sole despot. 
 But when people examined that philosophy 
 they found that it would be hard to run any 
 sort of a world on that principle. Because if 
 chance rules, the sun may rise to-morrow 
 morning or it may, not — altogether owing to 
 whether it does or not. If a man jumps across 
 the gutter he may land on the other side or he 
 may go spinning and plunging through space till 
 he strikes the moon. Horses may be born 
 with one leg, or two legs, or maybe three, or 
 possibly four. When this was all exploded, 
 these same men began to cut somersaults over 
 the eternal fixedness of nature, her unchang- 
 ing laws — maintaining that everything outside 
 of this is mere chance, that the good suffer 
 and the evil likewise. But we learn here that 
 God is looking on from the beginning to the 
 end. Every motion made by Job is seen of 
 God. Every breath that he breathes is noted, 
 every word that he speaks heard. God walks 
 near him, watches and listens, and at the proper 
 time speaks His message. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAW. 125 
 
 We ought, therefore, to be better able to 
 endure pain, knowing that God walks by our 
 side. A surgeon had a dangerous operation 
 to perform upon a child. He told the father: 
 " I cannot perform the operation unless that 
 boy's whole soul shall brace him up through it. 
 You must explain it to him and get his full 
 and free consent or he will die under the op- 
 eration. The father went in and as best he 
 could told the child and asked if he could en- 
 dure it. With blanched face and trembling 
 lips the little fellow looked up and replied : 
 " Yes, Father, I can, if you will stand by me 
 and hold my hand." And he did. And as 
 the glittering steel, with caustic, sicking touch 
 severed nerve, muscle, sinew, and flesh the 
 brave little heart never faltered. So should 
 you remember that a loving Father holds your 
 hand in the darkest hour of woe, and that 
 strength and health come out of the pain of 
 that operation. 
 
 We learn, too, that God never strikes a 
 child in anger, but always in love, and through 
 the pain leads up to higher good. Such indeed 
 
126 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 is the universal symbolism of pain as expressed 
 in various forms of the thought of the world, 
 and in the work of nature, for through the 
 agonies of maternity life is ushered into the 
 world. When a common man is to be elevated 
 to the dignity of knighthood, he receives three 
 heavy strokes of the sword. Such is the 
 thought that is interwoven in the rites, cere- 
 monies, and initiatory observances of your 
 various lodges, fraternities, and secret societies. 
 This great truth is a real part of the higher 
 and purer thought of the world to-day. 
 
 As I said in the beginning, I speak of the 
 pain that falls upon the good as thus being 
 educational. God does hate sin and does pun- 
 ish it here and hereafter by merciless pain. 
 But I need not dwell upon this — you see it 
 everywhere. Look into the judgment halls of 
 sin, where God, man, and nature pronounce 
 sentence upon the sinner. " Lazar-houses reek- 
 ing with putrefaction and death, hospitals and 
 asylums swarming with maniacs, whose cells 
 echo with sigh, and shriek, and groan — dun- 
 geons, cages, and grated cells where guilt rots 
 
THE MYSTEkY OF PAIN. I2f 
 
 and raves, these, all these, and more, are but the 
 feeble echoes of the truth ' Sin reigns unto 
 Death!'" 
 
 But we have here the higher mission of 
 pain. It is hard to understand it all some- 
 times—there is din and roar and confusion as 
 we look about us, but we know that harmony 
 is the great end. If you should go down town 
 into one of the organ factories, you would hear 
 the grating of ponderous machinery, the din 
 and crash and roar of hammer and plane and 
 saw, as out of the rude wood and steel and 
 brass were being wrought the various pieces of 
 the instrument. And after we think every 
 thing is finished, there is still no music. Mr. 
 Beecher, in describing the placing of the organ 
 in Plymouth Church, says that when in its 
 place, and you saw that every piece had b-een 
 skilfully and carefully adjusted there was still 
 no music, though every part was perfectly 
 made, though every part was perfectly fitted. 
 But the master of music comes with his tuning 
 instrument, sounds his key-note and touches 
 one of those pipes to see where it stands. Off 
 
128 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 it goes, howling and shrieking in the wrong 
 direction, but he brings it down, down, until it 
 rings in perfect harmony with his note. He 
 touches another and that one goes howling 
 and bellowing off at right angles from its true 
 course, and back he brings that, until it 
 breathes in solemn accord with the other. He 
 touches another and that leaps off in the op- 
 posite direction screaming and shriekiag in wild 
 discord, and back, back, back, like a whipped 
 child, he brings it. And so with every key. 
 At last when all are tuned, and magic hands 
 sweep those keys, there rises and swells the 
 volume of music — sweet and rich and clear and 
 full, until ceiling, wall, and floor, arch and cor- 
 nice and moulding quiver and echo with its 
 wondrous melody! So does God sometimes 
 educate His child and so is He fashioning the 
 world. Lord, help us, though with aching 
 hearts and tear-dimmed eyes, to look up 
 through the tears and see Thy smiling face ! 
 
PROGRESS. 129 
 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 " One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, 
 and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press 
 on toward the goal." — Phil, iii., 13. 
 
 Of all the Apostles, Paul attained the sub- 
 Hmest heights of Christian life. He had 
 greater capacities to begin with, perhaps, 
 and he bent all the energies of his great soul 
 to the end to which he had consecrated him- 
 self. In this sentence he gives us the key 
 that unlocks the secret of his success. He was 
 the greatest of the apostles, and, therefore, this 
 maxim of his life must be ever rich with meaning 
 to the true believer. He counted not that he 
 had ever attained perfection, but he was press- 
 ing on toward the goal. Do you aspire to 
 noble attainments in Christian life? Then 
 this inspired record will be pregnant with 
 meaning for you. 
 
 I. The first principle enumerated here in 
 9 
 
130 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 Paul's maxim of progress, is found in the first 
 clause of the text, " ONE THING I DO." 
 
 Concentration of purpose is absolutely nec- 
 essary to success here or anywhere. The man 
 who would be successful in the races laid aside 
 every weight that might beset him, and gave 
 every energy of soul and body to the race on 
 which he had entered. 
 
 The jack-of-all-trades is good at none. A 
 man cannot serve God and Mammon. A man 
 cannot have two masters. He must love or 
 hate one of them. We cannot carry Christ in 
 one hand, and the w^orld, the flesh, and the devil 
 in the other. The man who tries to sit down in 
 two chairs at the same time, sits down on the 
 floor. The man who gives two hours a week 
 to the Lord, and six days and twenty-two hours 
 to the service of the world or the devil, need not 
 be surprised if he find himself growing worldly 
 or even vicious. Success in any business or 
 walk of life requires singleness of purpose. 
 
 The men who succeed are men of one idea. 
 A young working man was one day bathing in 
 the river Clyde. His eye caught the view of a 
 
PJiOGRESS. 131 
 
 beautiful hill overlooking the river valley. He 
 thought what a grand thing it would be to 
 have a home on that hill. He determined 
 then and there to make that the one aim of his 
 life. He did, and pressed eagerly forward in 
 the race with his eye fixed on the goal. A 
 magnificent residence now crowns that hill and 
 overlooks the beautiful valley. The owner of 
 the Clyde steamship line is the master of that 
 mansion, the young working man of years ago. 
 A poor German boy once read of the siege of 
 Troy, and determined to find the ruins of that 
 ancient city that had perished 3,000 years ago. 
 Through poverty and slavish toil he never for- 
 got his vow. He procured books and learned 
 seven languages. He became a merchant and 
 made a fortune, and at last started eastward 
 on his expedition. For long, long years he 
 continued the search, and then startled the 
 world with the great discovery. From the 
 palace of the Trojan King, he brought trea- 
 sures of gold, silver, and bronze, that had lain 
 covered with sand for 3,000 years, and exhib- 
 ited them to Europe. Scholars of all the 
 
132 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 world are debtors to Dr. Schliemann. Single- 
 ness of purpose was the secret of success. A 
 fixed purpose we must have to master the 
 ebbing and flowing tides of human life. 
 
 II. Oblivion of the past is the second princi- 
 ple of this maxim. " FORGETTING THE THINGS 
 THAT ARE BEHIND." The racer who is striv- 
 ing for the mastery cannot afford to look back 
 over his shoulder. He must leave the past 
 behind. i. Past blessings and achievements 
 must be left. Paul's career had been a mar- 
 vellous one — full of great achievements. He 
 might with pardonable pride have contented 
 himself with what he had done, and laid claim 
 to the crown of sanctified perfection. Well 
 might he have paused at this period of his life 
 and reviewed the past. Doubtless the vision 
 of the past did rise before him— the prisons 
 through which he had gone, the uproar at 
 Ephesus, the earthquake at Philippi, violence 
 at Jerusalem, trials with the churches, chains 
 at Cjesarea, shipwrecks, and stripes, — while be- 
 fore him passed the forms of Gallio, Felix, 
 Festus, and Agrippa — yet he does not sit down 
 
PROGRESS. 133 
 
 and rake up the still glowing embers of so glo- 
 rious a past, but even in old age turns his face 
 toward the light of the future for strength and 
 inspiration. Paul knew that Christianity is 
 not a condition of passive bliss, but a throb- 
 bing life, and that self-satisfaction is the fore- 
 runner of stagnation and death. 
 
 Congratulation and self-satisfaction beget 
 traditionalism, and traditionalism begets big- 
 otry. The Pharisees were once the aggressive 
 reformers of their age, but satisfied with their 
 achievements they drifted into traditionalism 
 and then into a bigotry that could imbue its 
 hands in the blood of the Son of God without 
 a blush or a tear. Such is the danger of 
 blindly hugging the past. Of this is born that 
 conservatism which seeks to limit the horizon 
 of the human soul within the bounds of per- 
 sonal or ancestral experience, and has ever 
 been one of the mightiest foes with which 
 truth has been called to contend. It was so in 
 Christ's day. Tradition was the most con- 
 stant, the most persistent, the most dogged, 
 the most utterly devilish opposition the Mas- 
 
134 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 ter encountered. It openly attacked Him on 
 every hand, or silently repulsed His teachings. 
 Even the Samaritan woman He finds armed 
 with the ancestral bludgeon. "Art thou greater 
 than our father, Jacob ? " " Our Fathers wor- 
 shipped in this mountain ! " It was this spirit 
 that nailed Him to the cross and mocked His 
 anguish on Calvary's dark mount. It has ever 
 been so in human history. Progress has al- 
 ways been made by a life and death and strug- 
 gle with tradition and bigotry. It was tradi- 
 tion that in France held the tiers e'tat by the 
 throat, until the maddened giant in a fit of 
 frenzy broke the grip and baptized the nation 
 in blood. It was tradition that burned Bruno, 
 stretched Galileo on the rack, danced a war 
 dance around the fires of a thousand martyrs, 
 and told William Gary, the apostle of modern 
 missions, to sit down. 
 
 It is so to-day. The traditional ideas that 
 dominate some of our churches form the great- 
 est stumbling blocks in the way of aggressive 
 Christianity. Why do we not make progress 
 in the Lord's work as we should ? Not be- 
 
PROGRESS. 135 
 
 cause of ignorance — this is the most enHght- 
 ened age the world ever saw. Not because of 
 the increasing power of wickedness — the world 
 is better than it ever was. Not because of ag- 
 gressive infidelity — there is more faith to-day 
 than ever, and the religion of Christ is just as 
 comforting, just as sweet, just as strong as 
 ever for the human heart. What, then, is the 
 matter ? Evidently there is a failure some- 
 where to adjust ourselves to the conditions 
 and necessities of the life about us. " Can't 
 we do this ? " cries some wide-awake voice. 
 " Well, hem ! we never have done anything 
 like that here ! " says Tradition. That settles 
 it, of course! What never has been, never will 
 be, and what has been, will ever continue! 
 How many churches have we to-day that are 
 thus bed-ridden with ancestral rheumatism ! 
 The dear brethren sit down within the solemn 
 walls, rake up the ashes of a once successful 
 past, and shiver over it while the multitude 
 without rush by the door, unmindful of its ex- 
 istence, laughing, joking, sinning, dying! 
 2. The mistakes and sins of the past are to 
 
136 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 be left. Our mistakes we are to use, but not 
 as millstones with which to drown ourselves. 
 Napoleon was the most successful general who 
 ever lived. It is said that he made more mis- 
 takes than any great general who ever lived. 
 But his genius consisted in the rapidity with 
 which he retrieved a mistake, and the certainty 
 with which he avoided its repetition. The 
 man who drops a glass bottle on the pavement 
 would be considered a lunatic, if he should get 
 down in the dirt, carefully collect the broken 
 pieces, put them in his bosom, and hug them 
 there until the jagged points should pierce and 
 tear his flesh. Yet many a man does this in 
 life every day. 
 
 You have sinned. Yes, I know, but you 
 should not stumble over these sins, Christian 
 friend, into others. God says, " I will cover 
 your iniquity," " I will blot out your trans- 
 gressions," *' Go, and sin no more." 
 
 Peter sinned most grievously. He lied out- 
 rageously. He cursed and swore, and publicly 
 denied the best friend he ever knew, his Lord 
 and Master. But notice Christ's way of deal- 
 
PROGRESS. 137 
 
 ing with this sinner. Meeting the poor humil- 
 iated disciple after the resurrection, not a sin- 
 gle harsh word does He utter, but asking three 
 times for a declaration of his love — once for 
 each denial — His command was, " Go now and 
 feed my sheep." Put your feet upon those 
 sins, and more humble and true for this deep 
 experience, go forth to teach others! And 
 what a glorious sermon Peter preached after 
 that on the day of Pentecost ! 
 
 Upon the other hand, Judas sinned, but no 
 more grievously than Peter. The mistake he 
 made was that he did not return to the injured 
 Master and ask for pardon. He turned and 
 looked in upon himself, and remorse over- 
 whelmed him. There could have been no 
 other result. Could Judas have turned his 
 back upon his sin, and his face toward Calvary, 
 and ascending that hill bowed at the foot of 
 the cross and cried, " Master, forgive ! " we 
 must all believe that He who said to the thief 
 by His side, " This day thou shalt be with me 
 in Paradise ; " that He who, gazing on His tor- 
 mentors, exclaimed, " Father forgive them, 
 
138 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 they know not what they do ! " would have 
 said to Judas, "'Go, child, in peace and tell a 
 sinful world of my love for sinners! " 
 
 Paul had sinned grievously in his life. He 
 had seen Stephen die, consenting to his death. 
 He had kindled the fires of persecution 
 throughout the land, devasted hundreds of 
 homes and made a thousand hearts ache. 
 But he did not allow his dark record to over- 
 shadow his life. He left that at the foot of 
 the cross and pressed forward. 
 
 Shall we cower at the ghost of consistency? 
 Shall the sinner, conscious of his sin, continue 
 in the same path, because overwhelmed with 
 that consciousness ? I have sinned, and made 
 many a sad blunder in my own life — shall I 
 give up the fight ? No! But putting my feet 
 on those sins I shall use them as stepping 
 stones on which to mount to a higher, purer 
 life, and the knowledge of those dark hours I 
 shall use as a club with which to beat out the 
 brains of the Devil in future conflicts. 
 
 HI. "Stretching forward to the 
 
 THINGS WHICH ARE BEFORE " is the third 
 
PROGRESS. 139 
 
 principle of our maxim. This is one of the 
 distinguishing principles of Christianity. A 
 lonely old prisoner is Paul— life all behind 
 him, nothing before but death at the tyrant's 
 hand. The world sees nothing to press forward 
 to, yet he sees the invisible, and with eager 
 footstep presses forward to the throb of un- 
 heard music, and the waving of unseen ban- 
 ners. Such is the power of faith, to make a 
 desert blossom as a garden, and people the 
 darkness of a dungeon with hosts of angels. 
 So is the Christian thus in harmony with that 
 higher universal language of creation— on- 
 ward ! The river murmurs it, the wind sighs 
 it, the stars proclaim it in the tem.ple of the 
 heavens. Such is the spirit of the ages — the 
 genius of the universe. These are the foot- 
 prints of God, who walked with Enoch and 
 has gone on before! 
 
 It is not only the privilege, but the duty of 
 the Christian, then, to remember in the present 
 that there is a future, and fix his eye upon it. 
 It is the future, after all, that redeems the 
 present fror« contempt. 
 
140 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 I love to pause in the midst of the din and 
 roar of sorrow, that comes from Nature's great 
 tread-mill and listen to the music of a future, 
 whose throbbing harmony will not be broken 
 by shriek or groan, or sigh, or cry of despair! 
 It gives me nerve to fight the battle of to-day. 
 I look around me and see wrong triumphing 
 over right, I hear the cry of the weak and the 
 helpless as they are crushed by the strong, I 
 walk amid the thousands who crowd our 
 streets, and see written in their faces in great 
 dark lines, sorrow and sin, poverty and misery, 
 wretchedness and woe, while they jostle and 
 crowd and trample each other to death. I 
 love to think that the future holds another aee 
 with a life richer and purer, an age of peace 
 and of righteousness. 
 
 Last summer I took an insurance policy to 
 run until fifty years of age. The date of its 
 maturity was 1914. What a strange date, I 
 thought. What marvellous changes will be 
 wrought in our civilization within those 
 twenty-five years ! And as the vision of that 
 new world rose before me, I could but ex- 
 
PHOGRESS. 141 
 
 claim, " O God, that I may see the marvels 
 of Thy salvation here wrought out ! " I can 
 endure the present with a glimpse of a sweeter 
 future. 
 
 There are days in our individual experiences 
 when we are to remember that there is a 
 future. Sometimes one of those dark days will 
 come, when the darkness of hell itself seems 
 to settle all over life, and devils come with 
 grin and leer to pound our aching bodies into 
 an iron casket ! Yes, we must eagerly press 
 forward then. We must look up steadily at 
 the clouds and by-and-by as they drift we will 
 see a star. A great ship was crossing the sea 
 and had been in clouds and darkness continu- 
 ously for four days. The captain was out on 
 deck anxiously watching to catch a glimpse of 
 some heavenly body from which to take his 
 reckoning. There was a rift in the cloud, a 
 star gleamed through for a moment and then 
 was lost again. But in that moment his quick 
 eye had caught the bearing registered by that 
 beam of light and he knew just where he was. 
 He was lost before — now all was well. The 
 
142 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 star had disappeared behind the clouds, but he 
 had taken his bearings and asked no more. 
 He steered with unerring accuracy and reached 
 his harbor. So in the darkest night if we look 
 we are sure to see the gleam of a star that will 
 give guidance to our lives, strength and assur- 
 ance to our hearts. 
 
 Let nothing crush you, then, to-day — tune 
 your ear to music unheard by common ears. 
 You remember the Scotch lassie attached to a 
 Highland regiment in India, who languished 
 on a bed of sickness within the besieged for- 
 tress, where all were ready to perish from hun- 
 ger and exhaustion. She was weak and fever- 
 ish, but her ear was keen and heart hopeful. 
 She startled them all on one gloomy day by 
 rising on her elbow and exclaiming: " I hear 
 'em — they're a coomin' ! " "Hear what, my 
 child ? " they said, " The bagpipes o'er the 
 hills — they're a coomin' — they're a coomin' ! " 
 They told her no, that she was feverish and 
 mistaken. But presently some one thought 
 they heard, and then at last they all heard the 
 music echoing o'er the distant hills and then 
 
PROGRESS. 143 
 
 the banners of the army could be seen, and 
 salvation was at hand. Oh, for this gift that 
 enables us to see the invisible and to hear the 
 inaudible! 
 
 Friends, is your purpose in life fixed and 
 single ? Have you shaken off the spell of the 
 past ? 
 
 Are you pressing forward to that which is 
 before ? 
 
 Is the future full of hope, and do you eagerly 
 press forward to it ? Or do you approach it 
 cringing, staggering, driven by the remorseless 
 hand of time ? 
 
144 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 PLAYING THE FOOL, OR THE 
 PROBLEM OF FOLLY. 
 
 " Behold I have played the fool." — i Sam. 26-21. 
 
 How to keep men from playing the fool is a 
 problem over which saints and sages have 
 thought and wept in all ages. It is a great 
 mistake to suppose that because we can boast 
 of an intellect that our chief staple is intellect. 
 One half of man at least is heart, one-fourth 
 at least fool, and in the remaining fourth intel- 
 lect plays a part of more or less prominence. 
 This large streak of fool runs through the whole 
 race, has been running since the days of Adam, 
 and will doubtless continue yet for some time. 
 
 Diogenes found it in his day. It is said this 
 quaint old philosopher was once earnestly dis- 
 coursing on the beauties of virtue, and one by 
 one his listeners began to desert him, where- 
 upon he ceased his discourse and burst forth 
 
PLAYING THE FOOL. 145 
 
 into a ribald song. The people hastened to 
 return and soon a vast throng stood listening 
 with open mouths. The philosopher turning 
 upon them exclaimed : " Behold the assem- 
 blage of fools! " That same experience might 
 be duplicated to-day on a much larger scale. 
 
 There are various degrees of folly, from the 
 laughable foible to the highest crime. It is 
 not of the innocent foible I wish to speak now. 
 There goes the mild young dude, at whom 
 people wink and smile as he passes. To his 
 mind all the world runs to a centre, like the 
 spokes of a wagon wheel, and he is that centre. 
 People laugh, but then he is young and will 
 grow, and so we pass such folly by. 
 
 But in the case of Saul we meet with a dif- 
 ferent species. Saul had no right to be a fool. 
 Folly in him was no longer folly, but became 
 crime. He was the Lord's anointed. He had 
 been called from a humble sphere to wield the 
 sceptre of an empire. Upon his shoulders 
 rested the burden of a kingdom. He was the 
 chosen leader and guide of hosts. So when 
 
 we see him plunging into a career of domi- 
 10 
 
146 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 neering pride, conceit, and sin, there can be no 
 excuse for such folly. 
 
 Let us make a brief study of Saul's career. 
 How did he most conspicuously play the 
 fool? 
 
 I. He made a fatal overestimate of his own 
 strength. The first great victory Saul achieved 
 seemed to have turned his head. Shortly after 
 he was called to be king, as he was driving his 
 herd home from the field, he received news 
 that the Ammonites, under king Nahash, had 
 laid siege to Jabesh-gilead, and that the people 
 were in dire distress and implored his aid. 
 Instantly he slew a yoke of oxen, hewed them 
 in pieces, and sent this bloody war-token 
 through all the tribes. Three hundred thou- 
 sand of Israel and thirty thousand of Judah 
 answered the summons, and assembling at 
 Bezek, after a swift night's march they burst 
 upon the Ammonites in the early morning and 
 defeated them with enormous loss. 
 
 This victory rallied the nation around Saul as 
 one man. But the consequence was that Saul 
 became puffed up with the idea of his own great- 
 
PLAYIXG THE FOOL. 147 
 
 ness, and a short time after this we find him hid- 
 ing among the caves around Gilgal with only a 
 handful of half-hearted followers. God leaves 
 him to himself, for He cannot use a man who 
 is puffed up with the consciousness of his own 
 power. Says Paul, " when I am weak then I 
 am strong," because God's " strength is made 
 perfect in weakness." Conscious weakness is 
 the basis of the mightiest faith. Conscious 
 power is a menace to all faith. Peter seeing 
 Christ walk upon the water, walks also. But 
 no sooner had the consciousness of this power 
 filled his soul than he began to sink. I have 
 no doubt that Peter as he began, elated at his 
 success, exclaimed in heart, " Oh, ye weak dis- 
 ciples of little faith, observe me now!" He 
 continued to sink until conscious of his own 
 weakness he cried, " Lord, save or I perish! " 
 
 Conscious weakness is the frame of mind 
 God chooses to use with greatest power. The 
 channels are all empty then, and nothing in- 
 terrupts the flow of divine force. Peter again 
 conscious of his strength exclaims: "Others 
 may leave thee. Master, but I will stand true 
 
148 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 unto death! " A little while afterward we see 
 him in the court cursing and swearing and 
 denying that he ever knew Jesus. But after 
 those days of bitter weeping, in deepest humil- 
 ity, he hears the voice of Jesus, uttering no 
 rebuke, but saying: "Go now and feed my 
 sheep," and he went forth clothed in another 
 strength than his own, and on the day of Pen- 
 tecost, he preached the sermon under which 
 three thousand were converted. 
 
 Knowledge of our weakness makes the 
 Father above bend down in love and power. 
 So does weakness rule strength. There sits 
 upon my knee at evening time a laughing, 
 bright-eyed boy. He is utterly weak and help- 
 less so far as taking care of himself is con- 
 cerned. He does not help me to make a liv- 
 ing. He has always been a care and expense. 
 But I love him, and the very weakness of his 
 tiny little hand rules all the strength of my 
 life! So do men rule God. The cry of the 
 weak for help He always hears. The boasts of 
 the strong in no wise appeal to His omnipo- 
 tence. 
 
PLAYING THE FOOL. 149 
 
 Left thus to himself and fighting a losing 
 war, Saul refuses to genuinely repent of his 
 sins, and return to God's ways. He plunges 
 still further into a career of monumental con- 
 ceit that ends in madness and suicide. He 
 thinks he can circumvent Providence. He 
 thinks he can cheat almighty God. Samuel, 
 the prophet had told him plainly that for his 
 sins the crown should pass from his head to 
 a stranger. But he refused to take this mes- 
 sage from the Lord as final. He set himself 
 about to remove David his successor, whom 
 God had chosen and anointed. He mused 
 after this fashion, doubtless: " I have sinned, I 
 know, but I am not a common man, and I do 
 not propose to reap the consequences of that 
 sin. Men ordinarily do so reap, but I will not. 
 I am a king, seated on the throne, a giant in 
 physical strength, and I can remove this pigmy 
 who dares to aspire to the throne. I was born 
 under a lucky star and I shall not be thus 
 snuffed out." In pursuit of this fool's resolve, 
 on two occasions his life is spared by David, 
 and at last he awakes to his true position, and 
 
150 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 gives utterance to the words of the text, which 
 form a fitting epitaph for his tomb. 
 
 Alas, the world to-day is full of such fools — 
 men who think they can cheat God ; that they 
 can sow tares and reap wheat ; that they 
 can sow nightshade and reap morning-glories. 
 They know that other men have failed, but 
 then they are cunning, shrewd, brilliant fel- 
 lows. They were born under lucky stars. 
 They always were lucky. And so they think 
 to lead a double life, and cheat God and the 
 world. Outwardly they will have a whitewash 
 coat of morality, but deep beneath the surface 
 their heart's blood will circulate. There every 
 nerve shall tingle with life's sweetest forbidden 
 pleasures. There they shall really live — a life 
 deep and capacious, of license and licentious- 
 ness! The pathway of human life is literally 
 strewn with the skeletons of such fools, and 
 still the myriad hosts rush on where these have 
 fallen! 
 
 See the devotees of lust as they crowd to 
 that door around whose steps bleach the bones 
 of thousands! They heed it not. On they 
 
PLAYING THE FOOL. 151 
 
 go to a fool's grave, while thousands more 
 crowd to take their places. The crown prince 
 of an empire in our own time tried this game 
 of double play. What had he to fear? 
 Wealthy, petted, the heir to a throne; and yet 
 this man died the other day in shame and dis- 
 grace, died the death of a miserable dog. 
 Rudolph, Crown Prince of Austria, was his 
 name. I do not marvel that Austria mourns 
 in sackcloth and ashes! Men must sow what 
 they reap. 
 
 The man who begins his career of drink 
 enters the broad highway on either side of 
 which have been dumped the reeking bodies 
 of the dead until the road lies twixt two moun- 
 tains of putrid clay, and the awful stench 
 breeds pestilence for a nation ! And still on 
 they go, cursing, crowding, jostling each other 
 for precedence in the lines that press on to 
 death and hell ! 
 
 There goes a young man into a gambling 
 den — food for sharks! He has heard of the 
 danger; yes, but he is a " lucky boy." He was 
 born when the signs were right, he says. A 
 
152 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 young fly sails around the room and sees a 
 spider's web. He pauses to examine. " Why," 
 says he, " there is nothing very dangerous 
 about this! There seem to be handsome, 
 nicely-carpeted apartments in there. I have 
 heard much of the danger, but I don't see it. 
 I've even heard an old green-bottle fly describe 
 it with terror — but my opinion is that he was 
 a coward. I believe I'll go in!" He goes in. 
 There is a faint little buzz, and then you see 
 his legs and wings pitched out the door, while 
 the spider merely picks his teeth, crosses his 
 legs, and waits for the next fool. 
 
 A young rabbit hopped into a garden one 
 day in which a nice bed of cabbage was neatly 
 inclosed in a wire net. He looked at the cab- 
 bage and he looked at the net. He had heard 
 of the danger of traps and nets, but this did 
 not look dangerous — especially when he caught 
 sight of the luscious cabbage within. So he 
 slipped inside and began to eat. The more he 
 ate the better he liked it. He stayed all night. 
 He ate cabbage all next day, and smacked his 
 lips and wondered what a dunce he had been 
 
PLA YING THE FOOL. 153 
 
 not to have eaten cabbage before. He stayed 
 all week— two weeks— three weeks— and then 
 thought he would run back to the old place 
 and see how things looked. But when he went 
 to go out he found that he had grown to be a 
 large-sized rabbit and that the hole he came in 
 at had not grown any. So he did not get out. 
 The owner of the garden came in that day, 
 saw him, seized him by the neck, took him to 
 the kitchen, and chopped his head off. 
 
 Such is the end of a fool. 
 
 " Be not deceived, God is not mocked," — lit- 
 erally, you cannot turn up your nose at God— 
 " whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
 reap." 
 
 II. The folly of Saul was conspicuous too in 
 the fact that he always failed in the proper 
 exercise of foresight— he seemed to use only 
 what might be called his " hind-sight." The 
 text gives a fair sample of his conduct. He 
 says, " Behold, I have played the fool I " He 
 never seemed to be able to grasp the idea that 
 he was about to play the fool and stop in 
 time. His philosophy was always retrospec- 
 
154 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 tive. It is said that there is a race of people 
 gifted only with " hind-sight," and that when 
 they want to go forward they must turn around 
 and go backward. Saul seems to have been 
 the forerunner of this race. 
 
 What a sad thing it is that men can be 
 brought to see their folly only by looking 
 backward after some tragic exhibition of it. 
 Such are the men who put off repentance to 
 their death bed, the hour most utterly unfit 
 for repentance, of all the hours of life from the 
 m.oment of birth to the expiring gasp. The 
 saddest sight I ever saw was a man trying to 
 rejDent on a death bed ! I pray to be spared 
 many such sights. All in confusion — the phy- 
 sicians there, the loved ones weeping in terror, 
 angels and devils hovering near, eternal life 
 or death quivering in the balance — oh ! infinite 
 fool, such a man ! 
 
 Such is the man who neglects his pet sin 
 until it has mastered and crushed him. It is 
 said an Englishman once took a young tiger 
 from the jungles of India to his home in Lon- 
 don and raised it as a pet. It grew rapidly, 
 
PLA VING THE FOOL. 155 
 
 and the big brindle thing followed him about 
 the streets to the terror of all who saw him. 
 People remonstrated with him, telling him of 
 the danger to himself and others. He replied, 
 " Oh, there is no danger, I have raised him 
 from a little cub. He has never tasted blood, 
 and so is as gentle as a cat." One day the 
 master fell asleep on the lounge and the pet 
 sat by licking his hand. The tongue of the 
 tiger is like the teeth of a file, and as the tongue 
 passed rapidly over the hand at last the outer 
 skin was broken, and then each stroke came 
 nearer and nearer to the blood until a little 
 blood-vessel was broken and a few drops of 
 blood were lapped upon the tongue of the 
 brute. Instantly all the fires of his wild 
 nature were kindled, and in a moment the pet 
 was transformed into the wild beast of the 
 Indian forest. Leaping back and crouching 
 close to the floor, his great eyes glowing like 
 balls of fire, his tail waving slowly to and fro, 
 he prepared to spring upon the throat of his 
 victim. At this moment, strangely enough, the 
 man woke, and realizing his awful danger, 
 
156 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 silently drew his revolver and sent a bullet 
 through the vitals of the tiger. He barely 
 escaped with his life, and more than once re- 
 flected on his stupendous folly. So do men 
 nurse their pet sins until destroyed by them ! 
 Saul was preeminent in such folly. He never 
 saw a hole until he fell in it. He never saw a 
 ditch until he was up to his chin in it. He 
 never saw a precipice until a mangled heap at 
 the bottom he turned to see from whence he 
 had fallen. And the generation of Saul is not 
 yet extinct. 
 
 Such a man was he who toiled a lifetime 
 and won a fortune, and putting his fortune all 
 into an enormous diamond, belted it about his 
 body and sailed for his native land. On board 
 the ship he exhibited his diamond in season 
 and out of season. He was wont to amuse 
 himself by tossing it high up in the air and 
 catching it, while the gaping crowd looked on 
 in wonder at his audacious folly. They begged 
 him to stop, but he persisted the more. He 
 drew near the ship's edge with it and in pure 
 wantonness tossed it up there. Higher and 
 
PLAYWG THE POOL. 157 
 
 higher he threw it, each time catching it 
 with perfect accuracy. Higher than ever he 
 threw it and caught it. Again he threw it, 
 when, linxJi! went the great ship to one side, 
 and down into the depths of the sea like a 
 loosed beam of light darted the precious 
 stone! With pale cheeks and choking heart 
 back from the bulwarks the fool staggered 
 a miserable pauper! So I see men stand on 
 the edge of a precipice and in pure wanton- 
 ness toss up their immortal soul, gambling 
 with the devil ! As the precious treasure 
 flashes through the sunlight of God's word, its 
 pure quality and enormous value are revealed. 
 Dying men and women, why should you be 
 guilty of such madness! 
 
 Such are they who utter those sad words, 
 " It might have been ! " Such are they who ex- 
 claim, " O God, roll back thy universe and 
 give me yesterday ! " And the only answer 
 that returns is the sad echo of their own wail- 
 ing voice! 
 
15^ LIVING PROBLEMS, 
 
 WHAT IS LOVE? 
 
 " This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." 
 1 John, 5-3. 
 
 The grandest conception of deity ever at- 
 tained by heathen mind perhaps was the Phi- 
 dian Jupiter. It was wrought of ivory and 
 gold, a carved figure, seated upon a throne 
 with majestic air, holding in its left hand a 
 statue of victory and in its right the sceptre of 
 empire. Says a great preacher in describing it : 
 " So vast was this extraordinary work, that 
 sitting in the chair of state, it towered forty 
 feet in height. Into no other figure and face 
 had art ever thrown such astonishing majesty. 
 Men made pilgrimages to see it, and he was 
 counted unfortunate who died without seeing 
 the Phidian Jupiter. And when on festival 
 days the priests drew back the purple curtain, 
 the vast statue, white as snow and yellow as 
 gold, shone forth with such amazing lustre that 
 
tVHAT IS LOVE? 159 
 
 the crowd were subdued to tears." And yet 
 no heart throbbed there. No light flashed in 
 those eyes. Great as was this conception, it 
 was far below the Hebrew's idea of God. " In 
 no carved stone, ivory or gold did he ever seek 
 to express the majesty of Jehovah. The 
 morning light was but the golden fringe of his 
 garments. His slightest look they called the 
 lightning. His lowest tones were the sonorous 
 bolts of the resounding storms." 
 
 Greater still than all these conceptions, is 
 the simple declaration of the New Testament, 
 " God is love ! " 
 
 And yet withm the scope of this magnificent 
 conception, within this vast empire of infinite 
 love, we poor mortals somehow lose our way 
 at times. We embrace curious definitions of 
 love, especially of our love toward God. Re- 
 joicing in the liberty of love we too often 
 bound into the license of mere sentimentalism. 
 Let us listen for a moment to John, the great 
 apostle of love, who leaned his head on the 
 Saviour's breast and drew the veil from the 
 secrets of his inmost heart. We live in an era 
 
i6o LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 of preaching when it is popular to exhalt 
 love. I rejoice in that fact. But let us be 
 sure we understand what love is. 
 
 " This is the love of God, that we keep his 
 commandments." 
 
 I. Love, then, is no mere blissfulness of feel- 
 ing. It is oneness of will with the beloved. 
 
 Says Christ, " If a man love me, he will keep 
 my words." " He that hath my command- 
 ments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth 
 me." Two people cannot love each other 
 whose wills clash. The conflict of will pre- 
 cludes the beginnings of love, and will destroy 
 love that is begun. Two people whose wills 
 forever clash cannot live together in peace. 
 
 But love not only agrees with the expressed 
 will of the beloved, that is, it not only obeys 
 the commands, but runs before, and hastens to 
 anticipate the desires of the loved one. Says 
 the true husband, " What would please her; 
 what can I do for her ; what can I give her that 
 will make her heart beat with greatest joy ? " 
 
 II. Obedience, then, is the sure evidence of 
 love. " Hereby do we know that we know 
 
WHAT IS LOVE? l6l 
 
 him, if we keep his commandments. He that 
 saith I know him, and keepeth not his com- 
 mandments, is a liar and the truth is not in 
 him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him 
 verily is the love of God perfected; hereby 
 know we, that we are in him. He that saith 
 he abideth in him ought also to walk as he 
 walked." 
 
 We know that the patriot loves his country 
 because he obeys his country's call. When 
 the bugle's shrill cry called him to do and die 
 for the flag, he came, and when the comm.and 
 was given to charge, he walked over dead 
 men's bodies and on into the very jaws of 
 death. The man who says, " I love my coun- 
 try " and yet refuses to obey his country's call, 
 lies. 
 
 The child who says, "I love my mother!" 
 and yet with a wilful toss of the head refuses 
 to obey that mother's voice, does not love. 
 He who says " I love God," and yet refuses, 
 or neglects to obey his simplest commands, de- 
 ceives himself. He does not know what love 
 
 is. Obedience always accompanies and is the 
 II 
 
1 62 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 evidence of love. " This is the love of God 
 that we keep his commandments." 
 
 Do you love Christ ? If so, two commands 
 you will hasten to obey — to confess that love 
 and to follow Him. " Every one, therefore, 
 who shall confess me before men, him will I 
 confess before my Father." '' With the heart 
 man believeth unto righteousness and with the 
 mouth confession is made unto salvation." If 
 a man love Christ he will " deny himself, take 
 up his cross and follow." There are some 
 people who are trying to squeeze into heaven 
 doing just as little as they possibly can. They 
 are never baptized because they think they 
 can squeeze in without it. " The thief on the 
 cross was not baptized," they say. They are 
 well up on the thief on the cross and lug in 
 that solitary example of such a salvation in 
 season and out of season. But alas, they for- 
 get that he was a dying thief — they are living 
 thieves. He stole from men — they try to rob 
 God, and the difference is one of infinite im- 
 portance. 
 
 The law of agency holds the agent responsi- 
 
WHAT IS LOVE? 163 
 
 ble not only for what he does, but also for 
 what he might do. So does God who has in- 
 trusted to our care the priceless value of an 
 immortal soul. He holds no man responsible 
 for that which is impossible ; He holds us ac- 
 countable only for what we can do, but up to 
 the full measure of possibility. 
 
 Let no one deceive himself. Ecstatic emo- 
 tion is not religion. We must not lay too 
 much stress upon " feeling." Feelings are un- 
 reliable. Sad indeed must be the Christian 
 life of him whose faith rises and falls with the 
 fluctuations of his feelings. Mere feeling is 
 affected by a thousand things, that have 
 nought to do with true religion. The weather 
 may be the cause of joyous or sad feelings. I 
 heard the son of a cobbler in my native village 
 give his Christian experience. In his descrip- 
 tion of his conversion the preacher asked him : 
 " Well, Peter, how did you feel ? " He replied, 
 " I felt right soft ! " He did feel a little soft, 
 and that was all there was to it. He did not 
 hold out. Religion does not consist in " feel- 
 ing soft." Obedience is the evidence of love. 
 
1 64 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 Let the creed crank be not deceived. He 
 may be orthodox and yet be lost. He may 
 hold the five points of Calvinism and yet go to 
 hell. A man may know the Bible so well that 
 he could thrust a pin through its leaves and 
 tell you what word on each page was punc- 
 tured by it and yet know nothing of saving 
 faith. The devils believe. It is not what a 
 man believes or knows with his brain that 
 saves. It is what he believes with his heart. 
 " With the heart man believeth unto righteous- 
 ness," " Under whose preaching were you 
 converted," was asked of an applicant for 
 baptism. " Under nobody's preaching," he 
 replied. "Under my mother's practising!" 
 No questions need be asked about the genu- 
 ineness of her religion. 
 
 '' I love God and my neighbor, and this is the 
 fulfilment of all the law," says a man. If he 
 does love God with all his soul and his neigh- 
 bor as himself he surely will be saved. But 
 he must not forget that love toward God im- 
 plies implicit obedience to His commands. 
 Have these commands been obeyed ? Has he 
 
WHAT IS LOVE? 165 
 
 accepted Christ ? Is he walking in obedience 
 to His commands ? If not, then his love is a 
 mere hollow pretence. " This is the love of 
 God, that we keep his commandments." 
 Pharnaces while still a rebel sent a diadem to 
 Caesar. Caesar, declining, sent the reply, " Your 
 obedience first, and then your gifts." A man 
 in open rebellion against God need make no 
 pretensions to love. 
 
 The hypocrisy of the man who cries, '' I am 
 a philanthropist, but I'm opposed to hospi- 
 tals! " is only too patent. 
 
 What would you think of the man who cries : 
 " I love my country, but I can't give any of 
 my time to it, and cannot afford to expose 
 myself for the flag— some other man must do 
 that ! Whenever there is a love-feast, count 
 me in, but if there is a fight, I have an engage- 
 ment elsewhere." Such a patriot would be be- 
 neath the contempt of a respectable dog who 
 claimed any attachment for his native heath. 
 
 Love always, then, manifests itself in oneness 
 of will and obedience. Blissfulness of feeling, 
 morbid emotion, and extravagant language, 
 
l66 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 may be the effervescence of a fervid love, but 
 they give no assurance of its existence, for 
 they can flow just as violently from a weak 
 sentimentalism. The case of Lord Bulwer 
 bears witness to this. His so-called love let- 
 ters to Lady Bulwer attain the climax of 
 idiocy. Thus begins and ends one of these 
 letters: "My Dearest and Kindest And Most 
 Bootiful Poodle :^Me went down to the House 
 of Lords, etc. 
 
 " Good-by, my darling, my angel, my life, 
 
 my Poodle, 
 
 Oo own Puppy." 
 
 Do you wonder that a few years after mar- 
 riage that man was found rushing upon his 
 wife with a carving knife ? As he sprang 
 toward her with the drawn blade she ex- 
 claimed, " For God's sake, Edward, take care 
 what you are about ! " Whereat he dropped 
 the knife, and with the ferocity of a tiger 
 sprang upon her and bit a hole in her cheek. 
 
 No, love is not mere blissfulness of feeling. 
 This is the love of God that our wills be one 
 with His, that we keep His commandments. 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 167 
 
 THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 
 
 Within the memory of a generation marvel- 
 lous progress has been made in temperance 
 work. The moral tone of the community has 
 been lifted to mountain heights as compared 
 with the status of forty years ago. Scarcely 
 longer ago than that, in one of the old thirteen 
 States, at a social gathering of Baptist preach- 
 ers, it is said that the brethren imbibed so 
 freely that it was impossible to close the even- 
 ing's deliberation with prayer. In an adjoin- 
 ing State about the same time, at a Methodist 
 Conference, a resolution was introduced to the 
 effect that it was the opinion of the conference 
 that a minister should not be allowed to sell 
 ardent spirits. The resolution was voted down 
 by an overwhelming majority. What a con- 
 trast with the present attitude of these 
 churches! 
 
 In view of the progress that has been made, 
 
1 68 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 there is only hope and inspiration in the future. 
 I beHeve that twenty-five years from to-day 
 there will not be an open legalized saloon on 
 American soil from the frozen seas of Alaska 
 to the orange groves of Florida, from Maine 
 to the Rio Grande, and from sea to sea! 
 
 But the time has passed for mere sentiment 
 on the subject, for doggerel poetry and lofty 
 abstractions. The hour demands action — per- 
 sistent, systematic, remorseless, aggressive, 
 along all lines, religions, social, and legal. For 
 with all our progress, the total consumption 
 of alcoholic liquors has yet increased. Be- 
 tween the forces of civilization and the forces 
 of intemperance there is an irrepressible con- 
 flict. They cannot both survive the struggle 
 of another quarter of a century. One must 
 go down. 
 
 I. The hour demands action along religious 
 lines. The temperance movement of this age 
 is a religious movement, and the principles 
 that underlie it are the fundamental principles 
 of Christianity. Men have said the church 
 has nothing to do with this question. If a 
 
THE TEMPERAXCE PROBLEM. 169 
 
 giant evil can grow up thus in our midst, slay- 
 ing its thousands and tens of thousands, laying 
 its impious hands with debauching touch on 
 the ballot and the legislator, hurling defiance 
 in the face of society and the church, crushing 
 the hearts and homes of the weak and helpless, 
 —if the church has nothing to do with all this 
 in God's name, what are we here for ? 
 
 Every church should be in itself a great 
 temperance organization, whose pastor gives 
 forth no uncertain sound on the subject. This 
 day is rapidly approaching. The minister of 
 the gospel who does not now preach temper- 
 ance is a rare bird, and he is getting rarer. 
 You see him only now and then. You see him 
 seated on the bare limb of some dead tree, 
 chattering about the good old times of the 
 dark ages. He will soon be so rare that you 
 will find him only in the cage of a dime mu- 
 seum. God speed the day ! 
 
 There are still a few good brethren, too, 
 who have fallen behind the procession, because 
 they have pinned themselves to some crotchet 
 or other, and out of pure stubbornness, or fear 
 
lyo LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 of inconsistency, do not investigate and turn. 
 It may be a little embarrassing, but, brother, 
 it is better to change if you are wrong. To 
 all such I would commend for study the sin- 
 cerity of Brother Franks of North Carolina. 
 It is said that he went into the pulpit of his 
 country church one day, and in the midst of 
 his services discovered that he had put on his 
 stockings wrong side out. He at once paused, 
 and began to take off his shoes to put things 
 right. A brother sitting by said : 
 
 " Brother Franks, don't pull off your shoes 
 here before the congregation ! " 
 
 " Yes, I will," replied Brother Franks ;" when- 
 ever I find that I am wrong, tJicn and there I 
 turn." And he turned! After all, if vitally 
 wrong, is it not better to turn, even if it is 
 somewhat embarrassing ? 
 
 II. The hour demands action along social 
 lines. The temperance movement is likewise 
 a lofty social movement. In our intense fight 
 against the thing, we must not lose sight of the 
 principle of the thing. The foundation of suc- 
 cessful temperance reform is educational. It 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 17 1 
 
 is time that we fixed on a firm basis in our 
 social relations, the truth that intemperance is 
 not a jolly weakness, or a phyiscal disease, but 
 a crime. We have passed the period of apolo- 
 getics, and are in the realm of eternal axioms. 
 
 Drunkenness is pronounced a crime by the 
 law of God. " No drunkard shall inherit " thun- 
 ders His Word! It is pronounced a crime by 
 the science of medicine. Attempts to treat 
 drunkenness as a physical disease have been 
 conspicuous only as failures. 
 
 It is pronounced a crime by the civil law. 
 Divorce is granted for this cause upon the 
 theory of criminality. Drunkenness cannot be 
 pleaded in a court of justice in explanation or 
 extenuation of any crime, because one crime 
 cannot be pleaded in justification of another. 
 So is the man arrested who is found drunk 
 upon the streets. 
 
 This law, written by the hand of God and 
 echoed by science and civil law, must be trans- 
 lated into our social vernacular. Woman, the 
 reigning sovereign of polite society, can have 
 much to do with this work. It should be en- 
 
172 LIVING PROBLEMS, 
 
 forced in the parlor and the dining room. Es- 
 pecially should it be enforced at the marriage 
 altar. Would you marry a criminal, my dear 
 young girl ? She shudders at the idea. But 
 if a man who gets drunk comes along and is 
 good looking, she marries him to reform him! 
 O climax of idiocy! Yes, there he goes. He 
 was kicked out of a dry-goods store. The 
 proprietor came to him one morning after a 
 debauch, and said: " Young man, this is a bus- 
 iness establishment. We have no room for 
 such cattle as you here. There is the door!" 
 He was employed by a railroad company, but 
 on discovering his habits, they kicked him out 
 there. The conductor of a street car kicked 
 him off and would not let him ride. Kicked 
 out of business, kicked off the public highway, 
 kicked out everywhere — but about this time 
 some girl who never saw him before, and not 
 akin to him, opens her arms and says: " Come 
 to my arms, my own stricken dear ! " And he 
 comes! He always comes. He has been wait- 
 ing to come for some time. In the ecstasies of 
 mere moonshine sentiment she exclaims: "O 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 173 
 
 darling, I could live with you on bread and 
 water!" And he chimes in, "me too!" — but 
 with the mental reservation that if she can 
 furnish the bread, he will shufifle around and 
 try to get up a little water! Then they join 
 hands and down, down, down to a hell of pov- 
 erty and woe side by side they go ! Oh, the 
 pity of it ! 
 
 We should teach the young to shun the cup 
 as they would shun arsenic or strychnine. We 
 should teach them the awful danger of the 
 drink habit and the drink appetite. But it 
 seems to me care should be taken lest we 
 overdo the idea of appetite. There are very 
 few people who acquire an appetite from one 
 drink. Appetite is not the result of the first 
 drink, but of the five hundredth rather. It is 
 the result of unrebuked and unpunished per- 
 sistence in the crime of intemperance. We 
 should teach a lofty contempt for drinkers and 
 drinking. I have seen young men who made 
 great pretensions to the ravages of an insatiate 
 appetite for alcohol, who simply lied in such 
 pretensions. They drink as an excuse for 
 
174 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 utter worthlessness, while the world patheti- 
 cally attributes it all to appetite. Without 
 hereditary taint the human stomach will never 
 cry for the infernal stuff until you first soak 
 and rub it in the sewer. 
 
 I shall never forget my first drink. I was 
 sea sick for the first time. I had retired to 
 my stateroom and was wrestling with the 
 enemy. My friend with a remedy called and 
 advised. He said the thing to do was to go 
 down to the bar and get a cocktail. At first I 
 declined. Finally, I decided to go. With as 
 much dignity as I could summon, for I did 
 not want to appear green, I walked up to the 
 bar and called for a cocktail. The barkeeper 
 stared at me and asked : " Gin, or whiskey ? " 
 This was a problem I had never met before, I 
 did not know it was made two ways. I pon- 
 dered. It seemed to me that " whiskey " 
 sounded very raw and vigorous, vulgar and 
 formidable, while " gin " sounded short and 
 simple and upon the whole struck me as the 
 much milder term. I told him to make it gin. 
 He made it gin. I took it. I do not remem- 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 175 
 
 ber everything that immediately followed, but 
 as I look back now, it seemed to me that I 
 had swallowed a glass of red-hot molten cast 
 iron. And when it struck bottom it seemed 
 to crystallize in the shape of a steam saw-mill 
 with a circular buzz saw making a thousand 
 revolutions a minute! I did my best, but I 
 could not hold it down sixty seconds ! I have 
 heard of people eating fish-hooks and axe- 
 handles, chewing matches and scrap-iron ; and 
 as for me you may give me fish-hooks and axe- 
 handles for breakfast, scrap iron for dinner and 
 matches for supper, — but I draw the line at 
 gin! If my physician thinks that the interior 
 of my anatomy needs blasting out, let him 
 load me up with powder, with gun-cotton, 
 with dynamite — I draw the line at gin! A 
 healthy boy will never convince me that he 
 starts out with an appetite for such stuff ! 
 
 III. The hour demands action along legal 
 lines. We have made much progress in tem- 
 perance education, but the drink traffic under 
 the fostering influences of excise laws seems to 
 have grown in power for evil from day to day. 
 
176 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 Here we find progress in the wrong direction 
 except in two or three States, where the 
 saloon has been aboHshed. 
 
 A man was released from Sing Sing the 
 other day who had been confined there thirty- 
 three years. The progress of the world in 
 those years is a constant source of amazement 
 to him. He walks the streets of New York, a 
 feeble old man now, and can scarcely recog- 
 nize the great metropolis with its three millions 
 of people as the town he left thirty-three years 
 ago. Within that time, the nation has been 
 baptized in blood, and millions of slaves made 
 freemen. Kingdoms have risen and fallen. 
 The map of Europe has been made over again. 
 The hum of a thousand new industries, and 
 the flash of the electric light speak of a new 
 age and a new civilization. In one thing he 
 found no improvement. In the year 1855 in a 
 drunken brawl in a saloon he had killed a man. 
 With a shudder of horror he saw the same red 
 lights of the saloon throwing their hellish glare 
 acro€s the pathway of his broken life ! He 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. I77 
 
 finds it even more difficult now than in 1855 
 to get beyond the range of the saloon ! 
 
 There are those who say this is none of my 
 business. Well, in one sense it is not. But in 
 another it is. Coming into the city the other 
 day from the seashore, as our train dashed by 
 a village crossing, it suddenly gave a sharp 
 lurch and quickly came to a halt. In a mo- 
 ment more we were rapidly backing up to the 
 station. I looked out and saw a great crowd 
 gathering. With the others I rushed to the 
 spot and saw on the stones beside the track 
 the mangled body of a little nine-year-old girl. 
 The bloody trunk lay upon one side of the 
 rails and the ghastly head upon the other. 
 The limbs and muscles were still spasmodically 
 moving in the agonies of death. In a moment 
 or two our whistle sounded and we were again 
 rattling on toward the city. As our train 
 pulled out, the mother came upon the scene, 
 and above all other sounds rang her wild cry 
 of despair! I heard it above the roar and rat- 
 tle of engine and cars and I can hear it yet! 
 
 It was strictly none of my business. It was 
 12 
 
178 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 not my child. But it was my privilege to 
 weep ! I had the right to look away out the 
 window at the leaden sky and with that broken- 
 hearted mother to cry! Yes, in a higher sense 
 it was my business. The cry of suffering 
 humanity is always the trumpet call of God! 
 If we love God and our fellow-men we must 
 respond to that call. And I shall ever con- 
 sider it my duty to use my influence to abol- 
 ish grade-crossings, remembering that bloody 
 scene. 
 
 I am told that the remedy I must apply is 
 moral suasion. I believe in moral suasion, but 
 I believe in the exercise of common sense as 
 to when it should be applied. A man passing 
 a jungle is attacked by a ferocious tiger. His 
 arm is being crushed between the jaws of the 
 brute. Nerve and muscle and artery and bone 
 are being ground between those teeth as he 
 drinks the rich life blood. What must the 
 traveller do now ? Use moral suasion on the 
 beast ? Must he stroke him gently on the 
 head with his disengaged hand and say in 
 soothing tones, " Come, let me reason with 
 
THE TEMPERA A^CE PROBLEM. 1)9 
 
 you, tiger; I appeal to your judgment, that it 
 is unfair and unkind and wrong for you to 
 chew my arm in that style!" Should he do 
 this ? And at the same time should his fellow- 
 traveller who stands by, draw near and use all 
 his powers of persuasion to convince his 
 stricken friend that it is altogether unseemly 
 to allow himself to be eaten up in such a man- 
 ner ? Is this what we mean by moral suasion ? 
 
 In our present situation we have need of 
 another method first. The stricken traveller 
 draws his knife and plunges it to the hilt into 
 the body of the brute that attacks him, and 
 this prepares the way for the application of 
 gentler methods later. So we need legal sua- 
 sion first, to be supplemented by moral sua- 
 sion. 
 
 The open saloon I challenge as a wild beast, 
 that still prowls with blood-stained claws and 
 teeth along the highways of the nineteenth 
 century. It has no mission save to murder and 
 destroy that which is good, true, and beautiful 
 in our life. 
 
 I arraign and indict the open saloon before 
 
l8o LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the court of public conscience, in the name of 
 God and humanity, as the arch fiend and 
 chronic criminal of modern civilization. In 
 my bill of indictment there are five counts 
 against the accused, either one of which is suf- 
 ficient to condemn him to penal servitude in a 
 warmer climate than this forever. 
 
 First — The open saloon is the manufacturer 
 of criminals, and therefore cannot be legal- 
 ized, save by an act of suicide on the part of 
 the state. Drunkenness is a crime. If a 
 policeman finds a man on the street, whose 
 breath is loud and knees weak, does he rub 
 him with St. Jacob's Oil for rheumatism ? No, 
 he whacks him over the head with a billy, 
 thrusts him into a cart and dumps him into 
 the station house for a season of rest. Is it 
 right for the state to punish the drunkard, and 
 at the same time offer a premium to those 
 who make him drunk and kick him out into 
 the street to stagger and mutter and carica- 
 ture a man till arrested ? 
 
 A short time ago it was declared by one of 
 our daily papers that Police Justice Welde 
 
THE TEMPERAXCE PROBLEM. iSl 
 
 was also the owner of a saloon. The press 
 went into hysterics over the announcement. 
 How outrageous, that a man should make his 
 fellow drunk at night, pocket the proceeds, and 
 in the morning sentence him to the Island for 
 getting drunk over his bar to which he had 
 been lured! Truly such would be a most 
 scandalous situation. But strange it is, that 
 it does not occur to people that this is pre- 
 cisely the case with the whole license system. 
 Police Justice Welde does not sit on the judge's 
 bench as an individual. He is the representa- 
 tive of the sovereign State of New York. His 
 individuality has nothing to do with his judi- 
 cial duties. He is not known as an individual, 
 nor is he allowed to know individuals in his 
 ofificial duties. He simply represents the State. 
 Likewise the saloon-keeper on the corner does 
 not sell as an individual. He is the represen- 
 tative of the State, and can only sell when he 
 shows his commission — delegating from the 
 State the authority to ofificially and legally 
 act as its representative. He is merely the 
 creature of the State, the general treasury re- 
 
102 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 ceiving the profits of the business jointly with 
 him. It in nowise changes the situation when 
 you make the same individual the owner of 
 the bar and the judge on the bench — for in 
 both cases it is the State that acts. The prin- 
 ciple remains the same. But why did people 
 hold up their hands in holy horror at this in- 
 cident ? Because it was a concrete illustration 
 of the basal principle of the license system, 
 which has been hitherto overlooked, but in 
 this case stood out in all its hideous deformity. 
 The meaning of it all is that at heart the peo- 
 ple are right, and when they once really do 
 understand the true inwardness of the license 
 business, there is already enough righteous 
 dynamite under it to blow it back into the 
 dark ages where it belongs! God speed the 
 day! 
 
 Second — The open saloon is the rendezvous 
 of criminals — criminals against government 
 and outlaws from society. It is the home of 
 red-handed anarchy. There are five or six 
 Sunday-schools in Chicago in which Anarchists 
 teach their children the gospel according to 
 
THE TEMPERA A'CE PROBLEM. 183 
 
 John Most and the devil. Where are those 
 schools held ? In the saloons. No other roof 
 would give shelter to such a devilish brood. 
 The saloon is the school into which our foreign 
 population is first dragged, and taught to 
 curse religion, the Bible, God, the Sabbath, 
 home, and all law. It is the open slaughter 
 pen in which are butchered shame, manhood, 
 honor, ambition, love. Is it right to legalize 
 such an institution, or offer a premium for its 
 management ? You may say we cannot make 
 men religious or sober by legislation. Per- 
 haps so ; but in God's name I protest against 
 making them drunk by legislation. If you 
 cannot make a man sober by law, then in the 
 sacred name of law, give no more legal per- 
 mits to make them drunk. 
 
 Third — The open saloon forces on the mar- 
 ket at least forty per cent more liquors than 
 the appetite of the public, even in its present 
 degenerate condition, could consume without 
 its allurements. It has been asserted again 
 and again by the liquor trade that more is sold 
 under prohibition than license, and this, their 
 
1 84 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 own statement, they invariably prove to be a 
 lie by their frantic efforts to defeat prohibition 
 and secure its repeal whenever enacted. This 
 assertion, I remember, was made last year in 
 Raleigh, N. C, by Northern liquor dealers, who 
 were there with their money and agents, bely- 
 ing their words by paying $5 a head for votes 
 for license. When the first saloon was opened, 
 after two years of prohibition, men enough 
 could not be placed behind the bar to accom- 
 modate the customers. Three carloads of 
 liquors, it is said, were consumed within thirty- 
 five hours, showing that the supply had not 
 been equal to the demand. 
 
 Senator Ingalls, speaking of the results in 
 Kansas of prohibition, says in the Forum for 
 August, 1889: 
 
 " But the habit of drinking is dying out. 
 Temptation being removed from the young 
 and the infirm, they have been fortified and 
 redeemed. The liquor-seller, being proscribed, 
 is an outlaw, and his vocation is disreputable. 
 Drinking being stigmatized, is out of fashion 
 and the consumption of intoxicants has enor- 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 185 
 
 mously decreased. Intelligent and conserva- 
 tive observers estimate the reduction at ninety 
 per cent; it cannot be less than seventy-five." 
 Fourth — Public sentiment can never be edu- 
 cated in true temperance sentiment v/hile the 
 saloon is open and protected by the law. The 
 liquor business is too respectable by far, these 
 people are too often received into society in 
 which good and true people mingle, and are 
 even received by the Roman Catholic church, 
 and in exceptional instances some others. 
 How the whiskey men groan that prohibition 
 drives the whole business to low-down chan- 
 nels — that mean low-down men are then en- 
 gaged in it. Exactly so ; and that is just what 
 we want. I want to see mean men only en- 
 gaged in it. The meaner a man is, the better 
 qualified a man is for the business anyway. 
 We want to drive it into the back alleys, 
 cellars, and dark holes, where only the desper- 
 ate and devilish will sneak to get it. Less re- 
 spectable indeed ! We want to make it bite 
 the dust and crawl in the dirt, mud, and filth. 
 Make it crawl, crawl, crawl in the ditch, in the 
 
1 86 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 gutter, in the sewer, and on into hell where it 
 belongs ! 
 
 Fifth — It is asserted that under prohibition 
 any man can get drunk that wants to — well, 
 I any fool knows that^ — but I charge the open 
 I saloon with giving this poison to thousands 
 who don't want it. We cannot protect those 
 who want it, and will have it — we can save 
 those who don't want it, and yet now have it 
 thrust under their nose. You can save the 
 honest workingman, who at eventide must 
 v/alk by those open doors through which float 
 the sounds of music and revelry that entice 
 him in. You can save the noble young from 
 the allurements of such legalized resorts, made 
 bright and attractive with tinsel and obscenity 
 in print and picture. To carry no-license is 
 not the end of temperance work; it is but the 
 beginning of the fight for the mastery of the 
 young mind and life : it is the silencing of the 
 battery of the enemy, and the opening of our 
 own — the beginning of a victorious ending! 
 Can we be indifferent to such a work ? 
 
 Will we ever succeed in closino; the saloons ? 
 
THE TEMPERANCE PROBLEM. 187 
 
 Let no man who loves God and humanity for 
 a moment despair. We are as sure to succeed 
 as that God lives, and that truth and right will 
 prevail. Prohibition has recently been de- 
 feated in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
 Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. But these 
 defeats are in reality victories. The saloon is 
 simply piling up wrath against the day of 
 Avrath. The vast majority of the voters of 
 America are to-day opposed to the saloon. It 
 will only take a few more years for the high 
 license idea to fizzle out. In the hearts of 
 many good people this high license blunder is 
 yet firmly fixed. But they will see clearly by- 
 and-by, and then — ^the flood comes! The 
 saloon power has succeeded, just now, in 
 damming the flow of prohibition waters. They 
 have placed another layer on the dam in Penn- 
 sylvania, when the waters were about to break 
 over — so they did in Massachusetts, and in 
 New Hampshire, and in Rhode Island. But 
 every inch higher they raise that dam only post- 
 pones for a while the more awful destruction 
 that is sure to come. Behind the dam the 
 
l88 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 water is slowly and noiselessly rising. Back 
 up on the mountains, whose streams, pure and 
 sparkling, pour their treasures into the valley, 
 I hear the roll of distant thunder — it is the ris- 
 ing heart-beat of long-suffering humanity! 
 Higher and higher those waters are climbing, 
 adding ton on ton of hydraulic pressure. That 
 dam is not solid. It is built of mud and filth 
 and rubbish. It has been repaired, again and 
 again in times of emergency, by stufifing glass 
 bottles, newspapers, and greenbacks into the 
 cracks. In the centre there is nothing solid — 
 nothing that can withstand the mighty pres- 
 sure of those climbing waters. By-and-by a 
 storm of righteous indignation will sweep the 
 nation, and every rivulet on hill and mounta-in- 
 side will come plunging down into the valley a 
 roaring torrent ! And then the flood ! Every 
 saloon is built below that dam. And there 
 will not be one left to tell the story of their 
 fall! God speed the day! 
 
JESUITISM. 189 
 
 JESUITISM. 
 
 I ABHOR denominational bickerings. I be- 
 lieve in religious liberty— the right of every 
 man to worship God according to the dictates 
 of his own conscience. This is one of the fun- 
 damental principles of Americanism. Jesuit- 
 ism, however, is the negation of Americanism. 
 Jesuitism means imperialism. Americanism 
 means freedom. Jesuitism means the uncon- 
 ditional slavery of the individual to the ma- 
 chine. Americanism means the highest liberty 
 of the individual. Jesuitism not only enslaves 
 its own subjects, but seeks to throttle all who 
 do not bow to its supremacy. For this reason 
 I hate it. 
 
 This so-called Society of Jesus is not strictly 
 a religious order, it is social and political in 
 its foundation and purposes, and merely uses 
 religion as one of the weapons with which to 
 
19<^ LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 accomplish its ends. Secrecy is one of the 
 cardinal principles of the order, deceit and 
 hypocrisy among its favorite devices, for which 
 ample apology is made in its codes. They 
 are an organized band of conspirators, under 
 the most thorough discipline and complete 
 organization ever conceived by the mind of 
 man. They believe in higher education, and 
 have been, and are, the chief teachers of the 
 Roman Catholic church. They have ever 
 been animated by the highest ambitions. 
 They once furnished the world with many of 
 its most illustrious heroes and martyrs. They 
 are made of stern material. They are terribly 
 in earnest. The Jesuit is to-day supreme in 
 the councils of Rome. He educates the priest- 
 hood and young manhood of the American 
 Catholics. He is the supreme dictator of the 
 methods of education adopted by this church. 
 His principles are now promulgated by the 
 Pope from the Vatican as the voice of God. 
 
 By reason of its growing power and influ- 
 ence in America, Jesuitism, it seems to me, is a 
 menace to our country — a menace to individ- 
 
JESUITISM. 191 
 
 ual liberty, religious liberty, and the freedom of 
 the whole people. 
 
 I. I say this, first, because of the HISTORY 
 OF THE Order. 
 
 From the Reformation, with Martin Luther 
 as its leader, dates the birth of modern thought. 
 The mind of man lay chained in the dungeons 
 of ecclesiasticism. The Reformation set mind 
 free, and man began to think. Here freedom 
 was born. But the great wave of this revo- 
 lution that swept like a cyclone over a part 
 of Europe, produced also a counter wave in 
 the Latin nations near by. While a Luther 
 was born to Germany, Spain produced a 
 Loyola. Loyola was the negation of Luther. 
 Luther's life was given to freeing the world 
 from the domination of the errors of the Dark 
 Ages, and the dominion of the Pope. Loyola's 
 life was given to the undoing of Luther's 
 work, the reestablishment of the absolute 
 despotism, spiritual and temporal, of the Pope. 
 Loyola was a general in the Spanish army. 
 The order he founded was one run upon the 
 sternest principles of military discipline, the 
 
192 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 complete merging of the individual into the 
 machine. Absolute obedience to one supreme 
 commander was the fundamental principle. 
 His command, right or wrong, was to be 
 obeyed as the voice of God. 
 
 His success was phenomenal. In a short 
 time he was at the head of the most powerful 
 organization in the world. He rescued France, 
 Spain, Portugal, and Austria from the grasp 
 of the Reformation. It has been well said that 
 Luther moved Europe by ideas which eman- 
 cipated the millions, and set in motion a pro- 
 gress which is the glory of our age ; Loyola 
 invented a machine which arrested this pro- 
 gress, and drove the Catholic world back again 
 into the superstitions and despotisms of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 The success of Jesuitism was due to the 
 extraordinary virtues, abilities, and zeal of the 
 early Jesuits and their wonderful machinery. 
 After the first period of sacrifice and success, 
 followed the period of power and wealth, and 
 consequent corruption, in which the first 
 ripened fruit was gathered from the tree which 
 
JESUITISM. 193 
 
 Loyola had planted. Their ambitions knew 
 no bounds. Slaves themselves to one supreme 
 will, they sought to enslave the world they 
 had conquered. Their principles at once 
 clashed with all civil power, whose rights 
 they refused to recognize, denying all allegi- 
 ence to any state. For political reasons they 
 were, therefore, expelled from Portugal in 
 1759; from Spain in 1767; from France in 
 1764; and finally in 1773 the society was dis- 
 solved by Pope Clement XIV., upon the united 
 petition of all the Catholic nations of Christen- 
 dom. But in 1814, Pope Pius VII. concluded 
 that Clement had made a mistake (both of 
 them infallible, however), and so he restored 
 the order to its ancient foundations. The 
 reason why Pius restored the order was a very 
 simple one, Jesuitism had swallowed Roman 
 Catholicism, and to oppose Jesuitism was to 
 cut his own throat. Again they began opera- 
 tions, and again it became necessary to expel 
 ' them from the principal nations of Europe. 
 They vv-ere expelled from Switzerland in 1847; 
 from Spain in 1868; from Germany in 1872; 
 13 
 
194 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 and from France in 1880. Westward the star 
 of empire takes its course, and these exiled 
 priests have thronged to the shores of free 
 America, and are here scheming and dreaming 
 of new kingdoms and conquests. They are 
 doing to-day, what they always have been 
 doing, what they always must be doing, 
 plotting and scheming, plotting and scheming 
 to stop the progress of civilization, and en- 
 slave mankind, until all bow and kiss the big 
 toe of some feeble old Italian, who has the 
 effrontery to call himself infallible and the 
 vicegerent of God on earth ! 
 
 II. Because of their principles and doctrines, 
 the Jesuits are a menace to our country. 
 Where thef-e is the highest development of 
 liberty, there is always a danger of a counter- 
 current, a reaction — so is Jesuitism the coun- 
 ter-current of Americanism. 
 
 I. These men are politically against our in- 
 stitutions, and can never be amalgamated with 
 our people. They are the serfs of a foreign 
 feudal lord. They are the slaves of a foreign 
 master. They take a solemn oath to put 
 
JESUITISM. 195 
 
 themselves in the hands of their superior com- 
 mander as a corpse, with no will or thought of 
 their own. Each one, among other things in 
 his oath, swears: "I do renounce and disown 
 any allegiance as due to any heretical King, 
 Prince, or State named Protestant, or obedi- 
 ence to any of their inferior magistrates or 
 officers." 
 
 2. Their fundamental political doctrine is 
 that the Church (Roman Catholic) is above the 
 State, which is nothing short of high treason. 
 This is the corner stone of their educational 
 and religious system. In 1870 they forced on 
 the Romish church the dogma of the Pope's 
 infallibility — an error that has had an over- 
 whelming influence in shaping the policy of 
 the church. To show their triumph I quote 
 some recent declarations from the highest 
 Catholic authorities. 
 
 Bishop Gilmour in his Lenten Letter, March, 
 1873, said : " Nationalities must be subordinate 
 to religion, and we must learn that we are 
 Catholics first and citizens next. God is 
 above man, and the church above the state." 
 
196 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 Cardinal Manning put the following sen- 
 tences in the mouth of the Pope : " I acknowl- 
 edge no civil power; I am the subject of no 
 prince; and I claim more than this. I claim 
 to be the supreme judge and director of the 
 consciences of men ; of the peasant that tills 
 the fields, and of the prince that sits upon the 
 throne ; of the household that lives in the 
 shade of privacy, and the legislator that makes 
 laws for kingdoms; I am the sole, last, su- 
 preme judge of what is right and wrong." He 
 also says: "Moreover, we declare, afifirm, de- 
 fine, and pronounce it to be necessary to sal- 
 vation for every human creature to be subject 
 to the Roman Pontiff." Of the utter degra- 
 dation of reason, and the stifling of conscience 
 the teaching of Cardinal Bellarmine affords a 
 good example: "If the Pope should err by 
 enjoining vices or forbidding virtues, the 
 CJinrcJi would be obliged to believe vices to be good 
 and virtues bad, unless it would sin against 
 conscience." 
 
 3. The doctrines of Jesuitism are subversive 
 of true morality and destructive of the very 
 
JESUITISM. 197 
 
 foundations of character. I can only quote a 
 few of these doctrines as illustrations. The 
 Parliament of Paris on March 5th, 1762, in a de- 
 cree against the Jesuits drew up the following 
 indictment which has never been successfully 
 questioned: 
 
 " These doctrines, the consequence of which 
 would destroy natural law, that rule of moral- 
 ity which God himself has implated in the 
 hearts of men, and, consequently, would break 
 all the ties of civil society, in authorizing theft, 
 lying, perjury, the most criminal impurity, 
 and generally all passions and all crimes, by 
 the teaching of secret compensation, of equiv- 
 ocation, of mental restrictions, of probabilism 
 and philosophical sin ; destroy all feelings of 
 humanity among men, in authorizing homicide 
 and parricide, annihilate royal authority, etc." 
 
 We must remember that this was the official 
 utterance of a Roman Catholic nation through 
 its Parliament assembled. An examination of 
 their doctrines as taught to-day, shows the 
 fact that they are substantial!}' the same doc- 
 trines taught in 1762. See "THE DOCTRINES 
 OF THE Jesuits," published by B. F. Brad- 
 bury & Co., Boston, Mass., which is a translation 
 of the works of Father Gury, S. J., Professor 
 
198 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 of Moral Theology in the College Romain of 
 France. 
 
 Hear Father Gury on the celebrated doc- 
 trine of mental reservation : 
 
 "A culprit interrogated judicially, or not 
 lawfully by the judge, may answer that he 
 has done nothing, meaning ' about which you 
 have the right to question me,' or, ' that I am 
 obliged to avow.' 
 
 This mode of restriction may be used by all 
 public functionaries questioned on things con- 
 fided to their discretion ; or secretaries, am- 
 bassadors, generals, magistrates, lawyers, phy- 
 sicians and all those who have reasons to hide 
 some truth relative to their charge. 
 
 You must keep a conjided SQcrci, even if you 
 are questioned about it by a superior, a judge, 
 etc. You must answer them: " I do not know 
 anything about it," because that knowledge is 
 for you absolutely as if it did not exist ; and 
 thus should the secret be confided expressly 
 or tacitly." (" Treatise on the Seventh and 
 Tenth Precepts of the Decalogue," Articles 
 443, 444, 472.) 
 
JESUITISM. 199 
 
 As to stealing we have this : 
 
 "Question. Must one always be considered 
 guilty of theft when he takes the property of 
 his neighbor?" How simply God's word an- 
 swers : " Thou shalt not steal ! " But hear the 
 Jesuit's answer! "It may happen that the 
 one from whom the property is stolen has no 
 right to be opposed to the theft: which takes 
 place, for instance, when the one who takes 
 what belongs to his neighbor is in extreme 
 need ; and when he takes only what he badly 
 needs ; or zvJien he takes it secretly, as a covipcn- 
 sation, not being able to secure in a different 
 way what is owed him by right of justice." 
 Under such teaching we need not wonder that 
 servants should " compensate " themselves se- 
 cretly at their employer's expense. 
 
 III. The Jesuit is a menace to our country 
 because of what he is now doing the world 
 over — and what they mean to do in America 
 in particular. They lead the Catholic church 
 in its aggressions upon the liberties of man- 
 kind in all nations. Every Cardinal, arch- 
 bishop and bishop of the Catholic church now 
 
200 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 takes an oath of allegiance to the Pope, in 
 which occur the following words: "Heretics, 
 schismatics, and rebels to our said lord (the 
 Pope), or his aforesaid successors, I will to my 
 utmost persecute and oppose." Rome is tol- 
 erant in America simply because she is not 
 yet strong enough to be intolerant. 
 
 Says Bishop O'Connor: " Religious liberty 
 is merely endured until the opposite can be 
 carried into effect without peril to the Catho- 
 lic world." TJie Catholic Review ?>^y?,: "Pro- 
 testantism, of every form, has not, and never 
 can have, any right where Catholicity is tri- 
 umphant." The Archbishop of St. Louis once 
 said : " Heresy and unbelief are crimes ; and in 
 Christian countries, as in Italy and Spain, for 
 instance, where all the people are Catholics, 
 and where the Catholic religion is an essential 
 part of the law of the land, they are punished 
 as other crimes." 
 
 Another Catholic writer of high authority, 
 much petted at Rome, Mr. Louis Veuillot, 
 puts it in a nutshell thus: 
 
 " When there is a Protestant majority we 
 
JESUITISM. 20 1 
 
 claim religious liberty, because such is their 
 principle; but when we are in majority we re- 
 fuse it, because that is ours." 
 
 In accordance with these principles we see 
 a Protestant minister arraigned in Spain last 
 year for the crime of denying that the image 
 of the " Virgen de los Dolores " had any power 
 to heal diseases. Hear the sentence of the 
 court. 
 
 " For this sacrilege of ' comparing,' as the 
 court says, the sacred image of the Virgen 
 de los Dolores with the manger of the horse of 
 the priest, and attributing the same virtue to 
 this miserable object as to that, by which the 
 greatest scorn is thrown upon the zvorsJiip of 
 the holy images, etc., Pastor Vila is condemned 
 to two years, four months and one day of 
 imprisonment; to pay a fine of two hundred 
 and ^ity pesetas ($50), and the costs of court." 
 
 We turn to Mexico and hear President Diaz 
 thus address the last Congress : 
 
 " This progress has indeed been praiseworthy 
 because of the determined opposition of the 
 Catholic clergy, sworn enemies of all civiliza- 
 
202 LH'IXG PROBLEM S. 
 
 tion, who have always tried to stop the intel- 
 lectual flight of free peoples." Further on he 
 said : 
 
 " The Catholic clergy of Mexico, united in 
 fatal concubinage with a faction of unworthy 
 Mexicans, have thrice betrayed their country. 
 In each case their crime was generously for- 
 given, though not forgotten by the republic. 
 First, in the glorious days when independence 
 was won, the traitorous clergy, forming alli- 
 ance with the nation's conquerors and using 
 excommunion as a weapon, hindered for eleven 
 years the attainment of liberty. A second 
 time, during the celebrated period of reform, 
 the clergy joined the country's enemies. A 
 third time traitorous, in the French usurpa- 
 tion, they helped set up a foreign monarchy 
 on Mexican soil." 
 
 What are they doing in America ? Building 
 colleges, schools, and churches, pulling politi- 
 cal wires in the cities, the States, the nation, 
 and crushing the last spark of free thought 
 that may linger in the breasts of their Ameri- 
 can priesthood. Father Lambert, of Waterloo, 
 
JESUITISM. 203 
 
 N. Y., was driven to Rome, and driven back 
 in disgrace, simply because he dared to think. 
 Dr. McGlynn, was driven out of his church, 
 excommunicated, and cursed, simply because 
 he was guilty of a little thought outside the 
 beaten tracks of theological and ecclesiastical 
 dogmas. He was informed that he had no right 
 to think for himself; and for pitying the woes 
 of humanity, and for advocating what seemed 
 to him a remedy, he was crushed by the ma- 
 chine. He was too big a man to be annihil- 
 ated by such a process, however. The ma- 
 chine has lost his power, and freedom has 
 gained a new champion. 
 
 Cardinal Gibbons reads us a lession in catJio- 
 licity by calling on freemen of the nineteenth 
 century to curse Giordano Bruno for daring to 
 be a philosopher, for daring to think, when 
 forbidden by the machine of the Middle Ages 
 to do so. He says it is a crime and outrage 
 that Bruno's friends should dare to build a 
 monument to his memory on the spot where 
 he was burned to death by order of Rome. 
 Poor Bruno has been dead nearly three hvuv 
 
204 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 dred years, and yet the Cardinal, who poses 
 now as the champion of liberty, calls on free 
 American citizens to curse his memory and his 
 followers who yet survive. So does the Cardi- 
 nal thus indorse his brutal murder. Truly 
 Rome does not seem to change on some points 
 at least! Does the Cardinal mean to imply by 
 his tirade against Bruno and his friends that 
 he would dare to re-enact that horrible tragedy 
 on American soil if he had the power? 
 
 Does Cardinal Gibbons, the highest and 
 most liberal representative of the Romish ma- 
 chine, believe in religious liberty ? Let us 
 turn to his book and see. We turn to page 
 264 and read his definition: "A man enjoys 
 religions liberty when he possesses the free 
 right of worshipping God according to the dic- 
 tates of a RIGHT conscience, and of practising 
 a form of religion most in accordance with his 
 duties to God." A " right " conscience, as he 
 elsewhere shows, is a Roman Catholic con- 
 science, and the only " form of religion most in 
 accordance with duty to God " he shows else- 
 where to be the Roman Catholic religion. 
 
JESUITISM 205 
 
 Strictly within the bounds of that definition 
 he could re-enact the horrors of the reign of 
 Alva in the Netherlands, repeat the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew, reorganize the Spanish 
 Inquisition, rekindle the martyrs' fires, and 
 again sing a Te Demii over it all ! The Cardi- 
 nal boasts that Lord Baltimore, a Roman 
 Catholic, granted religious liberty to Maryland. 
 Perhaps he did. But in that far he failed to 
 be a good Romanist according to this defini- 
 tion. If Baltimore did champion religious lib- 
 erty, he did not learn his lesson from such a 
 teacher as the Cardinal, and he granted this 
 liberty, not by reason of, but in spite of, his 
 religion, if we are to judge by such authorities. 
 We need not wonder, then, that a short time 
 ago, in Maryland, a young girl was arrested at 
 the dictation of a priest and dragged before a 
 civil magistrate, whose only crime consisted in 
 the fact that she had professed conversion and 
 joined a Baptist church. In spite of all that 
 could be done for her defence, through the 
 machinations of this priest and a- drunken 
 father, she was sentenced to a term of penal 
 
2o6 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 servitude in a Catholic reformatory. And this 
 happened in the city of Baltimore beneath the 
 shadow of the Cardinal's palace! Times seem 
 to have changed since the days of his Lordship, 
 the founder of the colony! 
 
 A talented young Southerner, a citizen now 
 of New York City and a member of the most 
 powerful political organization in the metrop- 
 olis, told me voluntarily the other day, that 
 the more he saw of the management of the 
 politics of New York, the more clearly he saw 
 the hand of the Jesuit, and the more he trem- 
 bled for the future of the Republic. 
 
 Their great university is located at the cap- 
 ital of the nation solely for political reasons. 
 They have their hands with more or less power 
 on every great daily newspaper in the United 
 States. They know that America holds the 
 destiny of the world and they mean to conquer 
 America. Does any man think that the hier- 
 archy has grown more liberal in modern times, 
 and that the liberties of mankind could be 
 safely intrusted in their hands? If so, let him 
 read the encyclical that was sent to America 
 
j^sr/T/sj/. 207 
 
 last year from Leo XIII., the present Pope. 
 This letter was received as the voice of God. 
 It was reprinted in a Baltimore paper and a 
 leading Protestant minister of the city openly 
 challenged Cardinal Gibbons to give an explan- 
 ation of it that would harmonize it with our 
 Constitution! The Cardinal did not respond. 
 And why ? Because there was no possible ex- 
 planation to be given. Its whole spirit and 
 letter is the very negative of our fundamental 
 laws — the denial of the principles on which 
 our Republic is built. The subject of this en- 
 cyclical, strange to say, is " Human Libert}-." 
 Now as to civil liberty, here is a part of what 
 the Pope says : 
 
 " For, once granted that man is firmly per- 
 suaded of his own supremacy, it follows that 
 the efficient cause of the unity of civil society 
 is to be sought, not in any principle exterior 
 or superior to man, but simply in the free-will 
 of individuals ; that the power of the state is 
 from the people only; and that, just as every 
 man's individual reason is his only rule of life, 
 so the collective reason of the community 
 
2o8 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 should be the supreme guide in the manage- 
 ment of public affairs. Hence the doctrine of 
 the supremacy of the majority, and that the 
 majority is the source of all law and authority. 
 But, from what has been said, it is clear that 
 all this is in contradiction to reason." 
 
 As to liberty of speech we hav^e this revela- 
 tion : " From this it follows, that greatly op- 
 posed to reason, and tending absolutely to 
 pervert men's minds, is that liberty of which 
 we speak, in so far as it claims for itself the 
 right of teaching what it pleases — a liberty 
 which cannot be granted by the state with- 
 out failing in its duty. And the more so, be- 
 cause the authority of the teacher has great 
 weight with his hearers, who can rarely decide 
 for themselves as to the truth or falsehood of 
 the instruction given to them." . . . "To this 
 society, the Church, He intrusted all the truths 
 which He had taught, that it might keep and 
 guard them, and with lawful authority explain 
 them; and at the same time He commanded 
 all nations to hear the voice of the Church, as 
 if it were His own, threatening those who 
 
JESUITISM. 209 
 
 would not with everlasting perdition." . . . 
 " In faith and in the teaching of morality, God 
 made the Church a partaker of His divine 
 authority, and through His divine help she 
 cannot be deceived. She is therefore the 
 greatest and most safe teacher of mankind, 
 with inviolable right to teach thera." 
 
 That is to say, he would if he could, and will 
 as soon as he can, close every Protestant 
 churc4i, silence every Protestant preacher, and 
 compel every member to accept the teachings 
 of the Romish church. And this should be 
 done by the strong arm of the law. Hear him : 
 
 " False doctrines, than which no mental 
 plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the 
 heart, should be diligently repressed by public 
 authority lest they insidiously work the ruin of 
 the state." 
 
 And in his summary, lest he should be mis- 
 understood by some careless reader, the Pope 
 reaffirms his position in language whose mean- 
 ing cannot be mistaken : 
 
 " From what has been said, it follows that it 
 is in no way lawful to demand, to defend, or 
 H 
 
2iO LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of 
 speech, of writing, or of religion, as if they 
 were so many rights which nature had given 
 to man." 
 
 Let us remember that this letter does not 
 bear the date of the Dark Ages, though each 
 words drips with the congealed ignorance, ar- 
 rogance, and bigotry of the darkest of the 
 Dark Ages — no, my countrymen, it is dated 
 Rome, A.D. 1888, 
 
 The learned De Tocqueville, from Catholic 
 France, predicts, in his great book on America, 
 that if the American Republic ever falls it will 
 be at the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy. 
 Certainly if they believe such stuff as this we 
 have quoted to be the voice of God, it will be 
 well to maintain an eternal watch over the 
 liberties we have won through so much blood. 
 I do not fear the result of any conflict that 
 may come, but it is time our people were be- 
 ginning to open their eyes to the fact that it 
 is cominsf. 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. ill 
 
 THE SCHOOL WAR. 
 
 The Boston Herald relates the fact that Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold was struck by the demo- 
 cratic government of the reading-room when 
 he was in Boston. He came in one day and 
 saw a little barefooted newsboy sitting in one 
 of the best chairs of the reading-room, enjoy- 
 ing himself apparently for dear life. The 
 great essayist was completely astounded. 
 *' Do you let barefooted boys in this reading- 
 room ? " he asked. " You would never see 
 such a sight as that in Europe. I do not be- 
 lieve there is a reading-room in all Europe in 
 which that boy, dressed as he is, would enter." 
 Then Mr. Arnold went over to the boy, en- 
 gaged him in conversation, and found that he 
 was reading the " Life of Washington," and that 
 he was a young gentleman of decidedly anti- 
 British tendencies, and for his age remarkably 
 well informed. 
 
212 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 Mr. Arnold remained talking with the young- 
 ster for some time, and, as he came back to 
 the desk, the great Englishman said : " I do 
 not think I have been so impressed with any- 
 thing else that I have seen since arriving in 
 this country as I am now with meeting this 
 barefooted boy in this reading-room. What a 
 tribute to democratic institutions it is to say 
 that instead of sending that boy out to wander 
 alone in the streets, they permit him to come 
 in here and excite his youthful imagination 
 by reading such a book as the " Life of Wash- 
 ington" ! The reading of that one book may 
 change the whole course of that boy's life, and 
 may be the means of making him a useful, 
 honorable, worthy citizen of this great coun- 
 try. It is, I tell you, a sight that impresses a 
 European not accustomed to your democratic 
 ways." 
 
 Mr. Arnold here touched the secret of our 
 power. America has long been the wonder of 
 modern times to Europeans. How we have 
 attained such heights of power and glory as a 
 nation, with a mob government as they call it ; 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 213 
 
 how the Republic has stood the strain of over 
 a hundred years, the shock of the bloodiest 
 civil war in the records of the world, and is to- 
 day the mightiest nation of earth, is to them a 
 constant source of amazement. The secret of 
 it is, our fathers built the Republic on free boys 
 and free brains ! 
 
 Against this system of broad republican 
 education the Romish hierarchy has made a 
 most deadly assault. Our American system of 
 free schools they have sworn to destroy, and 
 to never sleep so long as there shall remain 
 one stone upon another to its very founda- 
 tions. Understand me, I say the hierarchy, 
 the Romish machine, has made this assault. 
 This war on our public schools was not inaug- 
 urated by the Roman Catholic citizens of 
 America. On the other hand it was forced on 
 them against their will by the men who set 
 themselves up as the supreme directors of the 
 consciences of men. The ecclesiastical ma- 
 chine has seized the American Catholic people ^_y^ 
 by the throat, pried their mouths open, and 
 are trying to ram their sectarian school system 
 
214 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 down their throats! They have used their 
 church organization to form a gigantic con- 
 spiracy to this end, that covers the length and 
 breadth of our country. 
 
 To accomplish their purposes two methods 
 of attack are used. First, to withdraw all 
 Roman Catholic children from the public 
 schools, and place them in sectarian parochial 
 schools under the immediate control of priests, 
 nuns, and monks, and then to demand a divi- 
 sion of the public school fund for the support 
 of these so-called educational establishments. 
 Second, when this cannot be done, or until it 
 is done, they attempt to control by manipula- 
 tions of various sorts the management of our 
 public schools, mutilating text-books to suit 
 their tastes, eliminating entirely obnoxious 
 histories and other books, and controlling the 
 appointment of teachers. In these secret as- 
 saults they seek to weaken the hold of the 
 public school on the hearts of the people, and 
 to defeat the purpose of its existence, which is 
 to give a full, free, broad, liberal education. 
 To this end, therefore, they attack the public 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 215 
 
 schools because the King James version of the 
 Bible was read at its opening — saying that this 
 is a Protestant Bible and makes the schools 
 sectarian. They have succeeded in many 
 places in banishing the Bible from the public 
 schools, and no sooner was this accomplished 
 than they turn and denounce anew these 
 schools because they are "secular," "godless," 
 "infidel!" Showing that their purpose from 
 the beginning has been to destroy not to re- 
 form the public school. This issue about the 
 reading of the King James Bible is a side 
 skirmish they have engaged in, to merely hide 
 the real point of conflict. The friends of free 
 education must not be deceived by it. We can 
 afford to yield this issue without a struggle, 
 for the purpose of our public school is not to 
 teach religion — the state has no right to teach 
 religion of any sort — and we have no right to 
 force our version of the Bible upon the child 
 of the Jew or Catholic who helps support these 
 public state schools. The hue and cry about 
 our schools being godless and infidel, because 
 the Bible is not read at the opening, is the 
 
2l6 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 merest tomfoolery! As Prof. Fisher has point- 
 edly said, we cannot call a bank a " godless " 
 or an " infidel " institution because it does not 
 open each morning with a chapter from the 
 Bible. Religion must be taught at home and 
 at church if it is to reach the heart and life. I 
 went to a private school in childhood that 
 made a specialty of religion. We read copi- 
 ously from the Bible and repeated the ten 
 commandments backward and forward. The 
 result on my childish mind was merely the 
 confusion of real religion with its outward 
 forms and the growth in my heart of a con- 
 tempt for it all. For my own part, I have 
 always felt that such tampering with sacred 
 things was a dangerous experiment. The his- 
 tory of nations whose public-school system has 
 been sectarian has overwhelmingly confirmed 
 in me this conviction. Dr. W. T. Harris, on 
 this point, has well said : 
 
 " The utmost care should be taken to sur- 
 round religious instruction with the proper 
 atmosphere. The time and place should be 
 made to assist instead of distracting the relig- 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 217 
 
 ious impression. With regard to the example 
 of Germany, Austria, and other states, that 
 place religious lessons on the regular school 
 programme so many hours in a week, I boldly 
 appeal to the experience of all who have in- 
 spected the results of such teaching, and in- 
 quire whether they do not confirm the theo- 
 retical conclusions here deduced. Do not the 
 pupils, well taught in secular studies, learn to 
 hold in contempt the contents of religious 
 lessons ? Do they not bring their critical in- 
 tellects to bear on the dogmas, and become 
 sceptical of all religious truths ? Is not the 
 Germany of to-day the most sceptical of all 
 peoples? Is not its educated class famous for 
 its ' free thinking,' so called ? Then there is 
 France, where the church had its own way 
 with religious instruction until recently. Is 
 there another class of people in the world so 
 abounding in atheism as the French educated 
 class ? In other countries where religion is 
 taught in the schools, does not the authorita- 
 tive and dogmatic method of religion do much 
 to render inefficient the instruction in the sec- 
 
2t8 living rROBLEMS. 
 
 ular studies ? Is not this apt to be the case in 
 parochial schools ? " 
 
 So also they have sought to control school 
 boards and dictate the management of the 
 public system. In Bcston last year I had the 
 honor to be a member of the Committee of 
 One Hundred who managed the campaign for 
 free ed<ucation in that city. We found upon 
 investigation that the school board, which had 
 control of all the common schools of the city, 
 Primary, Grammar, Latin, High, and Normal, 
 was composed of twelve Catholics, eleven Pro- 
 testants and one Jew; that all the important 
 sub-committees v.-ithin this board were con- 
 trolled by a Catholic majority; that the com- 
 mittee on the nomination of teachers was 
 composed of four Catholics and one Protest- 
 ant ; that this whole board was being prac- 
 tically managed by a coterie of Jesuit priests, 
 who examined and passed upon the text-books 
 that should be used; that at their dictation 
 several standard books had been removed 
 from the schools without a word ; that again 
 and ag-ain had competent Protestant teachers 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 219 
 
 been removed without cause and incompetent 
 Catholic teachers put in their places, and in- 
 struction sent to the superintendents that if 
 complaints were made they would lose their 
 positions. When Mr. Travis was removed 
 from his chair of history, and Swinton's Out- 
 lines thrown out of the schools at the com- 
 mand of a priest by this servile board, is it any 
 wonder that it precipitated a storm of public 
 indignation that overturned the city govern- 
 ment and reorganized that board ? Scores of 
 patriotic Catholic citizens voted the ticket of 
 the Committee of One Hundred, and there are 
 scores of such men in every city who will be 
 found the champions of our free schools against 
 all enemies. 
 
 But the method on which the hierarchy lay 
 most stress and depend most for ultimate vic- 
 tory, is the first mentioned, this second one 
 being merely tributary to the main object — 
 namely to build a system of sectarian schools 
 with the public fund now used in the mainten- 
 ance of our free schools. This purpose is now 
 at last boldly asserted by the hierarchy and is 
 
220 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 being pushed with remorseless persistency. 
 Not a legislature meets at Albany that is not 
 besieged by those who seek to divide the school 
 fund for sectarian purposes. Sometimes the 
 bill introduced bears one name, sometimes an- 
 other — it is always the same old Trojan horse 
 with this assassin of the free schools concealed 
 within. It is asserted that the State of New 
 York through its Assembly has already been 
 robbed of over twelve million dollars of the 
 people's money that has been given to secta- 
 rian institutions. That we may understand 
 clearly the purpose of the Romish hierarchy 
 in this matter, let us consult their authorities. 
 
 The Catholic World for October, 1889, has its 
 leading article on this subject, entitled "A 
 Canadian Example." The whole purpose of 
 the article is to show that the only solution to 
 our school question is the division of the school 
 fund on a sectarian basis. 
 
 The Catholic Revtciv of August 25th has the 
 following pointer on the public-school ques- 
 tion: 
 
 " The parochial school has come to stay. 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 22 1 
 
 And it means one day, without infringing on 
 the public school in any way, to have the sup- 
 port of the State." 
 
 Says the Freeman s Journal, a Roman Cath- 
 olic paper, in a recent issue: "This is why 
 Catholics ask that the State let them educate 
 their own children in their own way, with their 
 own share of the school tax." 
 
 The Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph, insolently 
 and exultingly shouts, " It will be a glorious 
 day for the Catholics in this country when 
 under the blows of justice (?) and morality (?) 
 our school system shall be shivered to 
 pieces." 
 
 The Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor 
 Capel, according to a newspaper report of a 
 conversation, which was widely circulated and 
 never contradicted, said, " The time is not far 
 away when the Roman Catholics, at the order 
 of the Pope, will refuse to pay their school 
 tax, and will send bullets to the breasts of the 
 government agents, rather than pay it." 
 "The order can come any day from Rome." 
 " It will come as quickly as the click of the 
 
224 LIVINC PROBLEMS. 
 
 trigger, and it will be obeyed, of course, as 
 coming from God Almighty himself." 
 
 The question is, Can we, as free Americans; 
 can we, as Protestants; can we, as patriotic 
 Catholic citizens, ever agree to those demands 
 of the hierarchy ? 
 
 I. I say we cannot, first, because these de- 
 mands are based on false principles that attack 
 the very foundations of our liberties and free 
 institutions. These demands are based on the 
 assertion that the Church (Roman Catholic) is 
 above the State, and has the supreme and sole 
 right to educate ; that the priest is the supreme 
 master of the citizen. This idea of ecclesias- 
 tical supremacy is simply centuries out of 
 date. It comes to us from the gloom of the 
 Dark Ages smelling of the dust and mould of 
 an oblivion into which the progress of man- 
 kind has long since kicked it. A Catholic 
 bishop recently expressed this idea very tersely 
 in reply to a committee from the parish who 
 waited on him to ask if certain reforms within 
 that parish could be carried out provided a 
 majority of the members favored it. The 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 223 
 
 bishop, drew himself up indignantly, glared at 
 his questioner a moment, and replied: "I am 
 the majority. Sir! " 
 
 The hierarchy in this fight pretend to cham- 
 pion the " rights " of parents — that the parent 
 should not be coerced into sending the child 
 to the public school. They mean rather that 
 they demand the sole right to dictate to the 
 parent what shall be done with the child. Do 
 they allow any choice to a parent as to where 
 the child shall go when withdrawn from the 
 public schools ? No, they say to the parent, 
 " If you do not send your child to the paro- 
 chial school, I will hurl against you the curse 
 of the church, and deny you the right to sleep 
 in ' consecrated ' ground." Again and again 
 have they used excommunion as a weapon 
 with which to coerce public-spirited parents 
 into submission. An Irishman who patronized 
 the public schools of Charlestown, Boston, was 
 so threatened by his priest. He consulted one 
 of the school board as to what he should do. 
 The gentleman advised him that he was a free 
 American citizen and that he had the right to 
 
2 24 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 do as he pleased. He continued to disobey 
 the priest. He called again on this gentleman 
 in a dilemma for advice. He said the priest 
 told him if he did not send his child to the 
 parochial school he would turn him into a 
 rat! The gentleman laughed and advised Pat 
 to let his Reverence try the experiment. 
 Soon afterward he saw the Irishman, and 
 asked him how he was getting on. Pat re- 
 pled : " Oi'me right, Sor, as yit ! We still sind 
 to the school — and oi told me old o'oman to 
 kape a sharp look out, and if she saw a tail a 
 growin', to kill the cat!" It is not the right 
 of the parent the priest thus seeks to protect, 
 but the right of the machine to dictate to the 
 parent. 
 
 II. We cannot agree to these demands, be- 
 cause these parochial schools are not being 
 built primarily for the purpose of giving an 
 adequate education for the masses, but are 
 being built for the first purpose of destroying 
 our free educational system. 
 
 Let us consult Catholic authorities and see 
 if this is not the case. An American, who was 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 225 
 
 in Rome on one occasion, was astonished at 
 the appalling ignorance of the people of Italy. 
 Being an American, he was fool enough to be- 
 lieve in universal education, so he sought 
 Cardinal Antonelli, the Papal Secretary of 
 State, and asked him for an explanation of the 
 situation. In the Cardinal's reply he said that 
 he " thought it better that the children should 
 grow up in ignorance than be educated in such 
 a system of schools as the State of Massachu- 
 setts supports ; that the essential part of edu- 
 cation was the catechism ; and while arithme- 
 tic and geography and other similar studies 
 might be useful, they were not essential." 
 (////. Rev., vol. 8, p. 293.) 
 
 The catechism the essential part of an edu- 
 cation ! And this from the Vatican, the head- 
 quarters of the parochial system ! Dr.McGlynn, 
 who claims to be still a good Catholic in prin- 
 ciple, says on this point : 
 
 " The extraordinary zeal manifested for get- 
 ting up these sectarian schools and institutions 
 is, first of all, prompted by jealousy and rivalry 
 of our public schools and institutions, and by 
 15 
 
2 26 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the desire to keep children and other bene- 
 ficiaries from the latter; and, secondly, by the 
 desire to make employment for and give com- 
 fortable homes to the rapidly-increasing hosts 
 of monks and nuns who make so-called educa- 
 tion and so-called charity their regular busi- 
 ness, for which a very common experience 
 shows that they have but little qualification 
 beyond their professional stamp and garb. It 
 is not risking much to say that if there were 
 no public schools there would be very few 
 parochial schools, and the Catholic children, 
 for all the churchmen would do for them, 
 would grow up in brutish ignorance of letters; 
 and a commonplace of churchmen here would 
 be the doctrine taught by the Jesuits in Italy, 
 in their periodical magazine, the Civita Catto- 
 lica, that the people do not need to learn to 
 read ; that all they need is bread and the cate- 
 chism, the latter of which they could manage 
 to know something of even without knowing 
 how to read." 
 
 Victor Hugo, in his famous speech in opposi- 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 227 
 
 tion to Jesuit control of the education of 
 France, uses these burning words: 
 
 "You claim the liberty of teaching. Stop; 
 be sincere; let us understand the liberty you 
 claim. It is the liberty of not teaching. You 
 wish us to give you the people to instruct. 
 Very well. Let us see your pupils. Let us 
 see those you have produced. What have you 
 done for Italy ? What have you done for 
 Spain ? For centuries you have kept in your 
 hands, at your discretion, in your school, these 
 two great nations, illustrious among the illus- 
 trious. What have you done for them ? I 
 shall tell you. 
 
 " Italy, which taught mankind to read, now 
 knows not how to read. Yes ! Italy is, of all 
 the States of Europe, that where the smallest 
 number know how to read. 
 
 " Spain, magnificently endowed Spain, which 
 received from the Romans her first civiliza- 
 tion; from the Arab her second civilization; 
 ■from Providence, in spite of you, a world — 
 America — Spain, thanks to you, rests under a 
 
228 LIVING PROBLEM::,. 
 
 yoke of stupor, which is a yoke of degradation 
 and decay. Spain has lost the secret power it 
 obtained from the Romans, the genius of art 
 it had from the Arabs, the world (of America) 
 it had from God ; and in exchange for all that 
 you have made it lose, it has received from 
 you the INQUISITION; the Inquisition, which 
 certain of your party try to-day to re-establish ; 
 which has burned on the funeral pile millions 
 of men ; the Inquisition, which disinterred the 
 dead to burn them as heretics; w^iich declared 
 the children of heretics infamous and incapa- 
 ble of any public honors, excepting only those 
 who shall have denounced their fathers. . . . 
 
 " This is what you have done for two great 
 nations. What do you wish to do for France? 
 Stop! you have just come from Rome! I 
 congratulate you ; you have had fine success 
 there; you have come from gagging the 
 Roman people, and now you wish to gag the 
 French people, . . . Take care! France is a 
 lion, and is alive." We may Likewise add to 
 meddling enemies of our schools, '* Take care! 
 America is a lion, and is alive ! " 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 229 
 
 As a climax of consistency, look now at the 
 sentence I quoted from the Catholic Review^ of 
 August 25th : " Means one day, without infring- 
 ing^on the pubhc school in any way, to have 
 the support of the State ! " Could mortal man 
 conceive of a more monstrous absurdity! 
 " Have the support of the State "-without in- 
 fringing on the public school in any way! To 
 the mixture of simplicity and cheek composing 
 that sentence I can remember but one parallel, 
 and that is the case of the county commission- 
 ers who resolved to build a new jail. They 
 resolved, " ist, to build a new jail ; 2d, to build 
 it out of the bricks used in the old one; 3d 
 to keep the prisoners in the old one while they 
 built the new one; 4th to build the new one 
 on the site where the old one now stands!" 
 To have capped the climax of asininity they 
 should have added as a f^nal clause "without 
 infringing on the old building in any way." 
 Such a resolution thus concluded would have 
 furnished a worthy companion piece to be 
 framed and hung up in a museum alongside 
 
230 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 this marvellous proposition from the Catholic 
 Review ! 
 
 III. We cannot agree to these demands be- 
 cause the sectarian parochial school is narrow 
 and bigoted, fosters class distinctions and 
 hatreds, is anti-republican, and its standard of 
 instruction is infinitely inferior to that of the 
 public schools. 
 
 We have the best Catholic authority for say- 
 ing they are inferior. ThQ Freeman's Journal 
 and Catholic Register for March 12th, 1887, com- 
 plained of the parochial schools, where it said 
 of the pupils: "A smattering of the catechism 
 is supplied to fit them for the duties of life;" 
 and intimatea that the schools were only 
 " apologies, compromises, systemless pre- 
 tences." 
 
 Dr. Orestes A. Brownson, a distinguished 
 Catholic, said of the Roman Catholic schools 
 {Brotvnson s Review) : " They practically fail to 
 recognize human progress. . . . They do not 
 educate their pupils to be at home and at their 
 ease in their own age and country, or train 
 them to be living, thinking, energetic men. . . , 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 231 
 
 They who are educated in our schools seem 
 misplaced and mistimed in the world, as if 
 born and educated for a world that had ceased 
 to exist. . . . The cause of the failure of what 
 we call Catholic education is, in our judgment, 
 in the fact that we educate, not for the pres- 
 ent or the future, but for the past. ... an 
 order of things which the world has left be- 
 hind, for it could be reproduced, if at all, only 
 by a second childhood." 
 
 The Catholic Review, April, 1871, gives to the 
 world this revelation : " We do not indeed 
 prize as highly as some of our countrymen 
 appear to do, the ability to read, write, and 
 cipher. Some men are born to be leaders, and 
 the rest are born to be led. The best ordered 
 and administered state is that in which the 
 few are well educated and lead, and the many 
 are trained to obedience," etc. Is it so! 
 
 And one of the most conclusive reasons why 
 we know these schools to be inferior is that 
 thousands of our most intelligent Catholic 
 citizens defy the hierarchy and continue to 
 patronize the public schools, because they 
 
232 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 know their superiority. It is no small thinfj 
 for a Catholic to defy the governing clergy — 
 it means often social ostracism, hatred, loss of 
 friends and even the means of support. 
 
 It has been truly said, that the purpose of 
 the sectarian parochial school is to make obe- 
 dient Catholics, while the purpose of the pub- 
 lic free school is to make good citizens. Now 
 what is taught in these sectarian schools in 
 many of their favorite text-books is anything 
 but favorable to the production of a good citi- 
 zen. It is often false and injurious in the highest 
 degree to the mind and character of the child. 
 They are constantly drilled in bigotry and 
 hatred toward other denominations, with 
 whom they are to live as citizens of a common 
 government. They are taught to hate those 
 they do not understand, and to avoid their 
 presence. Let me quote from the " Catechism 
 of Perseverance " one of their standard books 
 published by T. B. Noonan & Co., of Boston, 
 which has the approval of four bishops. I 
 quote only the two final answers on the lesson 
 in Chapter LIV. 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 233 
 
 " Q. How do you show that Protestantism, 
 or the religion preached by Luther, ZuingHus, 
 Calvin, and Henry VHI., is not the true relig- 
 ion ? 
 
 ''A. In order to show that Protestantism is 
 a false religion, or rather no religion at all, it 
 will be sufficient simply to bear in mind: ist, 
 that it was established by four great libertines; 
 2d, that it owes its origin to the love of honors, 
 covetousness of the goods of others, and the 
 love of sensual pleasures, three things forbid- 
 den by the Gospel; 3d, that it permits you to 
 believe whatever you please and to do what- 
 ever you believe; 4th, that it has caused im- 
 mense evils, deluged Germany, France, Switz- 
 erland, and England with blood ; it leads to 
 impiety, and finally to indifference, the source 
 of all revolutions, past and future. We must, 
 therefore, be on our guard against those who 
 preach it, and cherish a horror for the books 
 which disseminate it. 
 
 " Q. What religion is it that alone has ren- 
 dered men better and alone has civilized them? 
 
 "y^. The only religion which has rendered 
 
234 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 men better and civilized them is the CathoHc 
 religion, to the exclusions of Arians, Mahome- 
 tans, Protestants, and philosophers; the Cath- 
 olic religion, therefore, alone is good, alone 
 divine." 
 
 Bishop Gilmour's " Bible History" is a book 
 very popular in these sectarian schools. Hear 
 what this book says of the reign of the Tudors 
 in England. The career of Bloody Mary is 
 not mentioned at all and the account closes 
 with this paragraph : 
 
 " Catholicity has ever appealed to reason ; 
 Protestantism, like Mohammedanism, to force 
 and violence. In England and Scotland Prot- 
 estantism was forced upon the people by fines, 
 imprisonment, and death; in Germany and 
 Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark and Norway, 
 the same. In America the Puritans acted in 
 like manner." 
 
 Catholicity has ever appealed to reason ! 
 Did Bishop Gilmour never read the edict with 
 which Alva baptized the Netherlands in blood? 
 This edict directed that all Protestants 
 should be executed; the men with the sword, 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 235 
 
 the women to be buried alive, provided they 
 do not persist. That is, if they should recant 
 they would be granted the sweet privilege of 
 such a death — the women to be buried alive 
 and the men to be butchered with the sword! 
 But if they persisted they were to be burned 
 with fire, and in either case all their property 
 should be confiscated. The story of how this 
 edict was executed is one of the most sicken- 
 ing chapters in the story of the human race. 
 During the six years of Alva's reign, his exe- 
 cutioners put to death 18,000 persons, besides 
 the victims in cities captured by his troops and 
 the hosts that fell in battle. Has the Bishop 
 never read of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 the fires of the martyrs, or the Spanish Inqui- 
 sition? I do not say that we are to teach 
 these things in our public schools, but I do say 
 that if the state must pay for instruction on 
 these points, then the truth, the whole truth, 
 and nothing but the truth must be taught! 
 
 Take their most popular geographies, pub- 
 lished by Sadlier, Barclay street. New York, and 
 used in most parochial schools. Let us take 
 
236 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 some three questions from the Lesson on the 
 United States. The answers to these ques- 
 tions are freeh — they are startHng news to 
 most American citizens who thought they had 
 a smattering at least of the history of their 
 country. 
 
 "IV/io were the first explorers of great por- 
 tions of our country ? 
 
 " CathoHc missionaries. 
 
 " Who discovered and explored the upper Mis- 
 sissippi ? 
 
 " Father Marquette, a Jesuit missionary. 
 
 " Where, in many of the States, were the first 
 settlements formed ? 
 
 "Around the humble cross that marked the 
 site of a Catholic mission." (Page 22, Lesson 
 
 xxxn.) 
 
 Mr. Edwin Mead aptly remarks on this les- 
 son : 
 
 " This is the general accownt of the coloni- 
 zation and early history of the United States. 
 And this is a good sample of the proportion 
 of the role assigned to Jesuit missionaries all 
 through these books. You have heard of the 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR 237 
 
 boy who once asked his father, who was for- 
 ever telling of his tremendous exploits at Bull 
 Run and Gettysburg and Cold Harbor, 
 " Father, did anybody help you put down the 
 rebellion ? " The descendant of the New Eng- 
 land Puritans or of other worthies, whom some 
 of us have been in the habit of thinking as 
 standing for something in this American en- 
 terprise, is moved to ask the Jesuit, when he 
 reads of all his accomplishments, in these 
 books, "Did anybody help you found the 
 American republic ? " 
 
 As to New England in particular we have 
 this historic revelation : 
 
 " What was the first settlement in the Nezu 
 England States ? 
 
 " A Jesuit mission on Mount Desert Island 
 (in 1612). 
 
 " By whom zvas this settlement destroyed? 
 
 " By the English. 
 
 " What people made a permanent settlement in 
 Massachusetts in 1620 ? 
 
 " The Pilgrim fathers 
 
 " Who were they ? 
 
238 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 " English Protestants who, being persecuted 
 by their Protestant fellow-countrymen, took 
 refuge in America. 
 
 " How did they act in their nezu home ? 
 
 " They proved very intolerant, and perse- 
 cuted all who dared to worship God in a manner 
 different from that which they had established." 
 
 Shall the public-school fund, levied and 
 raised for the purpose of giving men and 
 women an education that will fit them for the 
 duties of life; shall this fund, the people's 
 money, be devoted to the support of sectarian 
 schools where monks and nuns teach such stuff 
 as this ? When this question is fairly before 
 the American people, the answer will come as 
 the roar of an earthquake to the ears of these 
 meddling priests! Bismarck said that the sad- 
 dest thing he saw in France was not the dead 
 on battle fields, but mutilated and misleading 
 text-books on the tables in Catholic schools. 
 These books are scattered far and wide in 
 these sectarian schools in America, doing their 
 deadly work in the minds of our youth. 
 
 IV. We can never agree to the demands of 
 
THE SCHOOL WAR. 239 
 
 the hierarchy, because their plans successful 
 would destroy our system of education, thus 
 stabbing the Republic to the heart, and reunite 
 Church and State. 
 
 To divide the school fund on a sectarian 
 basis would not be simply a step toward the 
 union of Church and State, it would be the 
 consummation of actual union. Suppose you 
 divide the fund on the per capita basis of the 
 children. Directly into the hands of the ec- 
 clesiastical machine will fall millions of dollars. 
 Does any candid intelligent man believe for a 
 moment those ecclesiastics would devote these 
 enormous sums to educational purposes ? 
 Simply the cost of the board and clothes of 
 the hosts of monks and nuns who teach in 
 these schools would be the extent of their 
 expenditure. It would be inevitable that the 
 money would go directly into the general 
 treasury under the control of the bishop and 
 be used for cJiurcJi purposes ! We have already 
 seen that this fight is not being made because 
 of the zeal of the machine for popular educa- 
 tion. The truth is, the prize for which this 
 
240 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 hierarchy is fighting so desperately, and prom- 
 ises to fight still more desperately, is the con- 
 trol of these munificent sums of money. When 
 they get their hands on it, what will become 
 of the schools ? They will go where they have 
 gone in Italy, in Spain, in Mexico, in South 
 America — to the devil! where they have ever 
 gone when the ecclesiastical machine has been 
 master of popular education, A journal under 
 their control said recently in a three-column 
 article on this subject. " What, then, do Catho- 
 lics want ? Justice, absolutely nothing but jus- 
 tice, equal justice for all." He defines this " jus- 
 tice " to be a division of the school fund on a 
 sectarian basis. This plea of injustice because 
 parents are taxed for public-school purposes 
 whose children go to private schools, I arraign 
 as the climax of ignorance of our institutions 
 and downright selfishness. To say the least, if 
 it be not rebellion, it is a sad exhibition of un- 
 patriotic sentiment. Besides there is not one 
 spark of justice in such a demand. The school 
 tax is not levied for the purpose of giving 
 to the individual paying the tax an equivalent 
 
rilE SCHOOL WAR. 241 
 
 in education in his own family. The school 
 fund is based upon a different principle en- 
 tirely. Test the question and see. There are 
 thousands of old bachelors in this country who 
 are heavily taxed for school purposes. They 
 receive no benefit in return in their immediate 
 families. Then I demand justice for the old 
 bachelors of this country! Divide the school 
 fund! Give each old crusty wretch his share! 
 There are thousands of old maids, too, who are 
 taxed heavily for the support of the schools. 
 Justice for the old maids! Divide the fund! 
 
 There are thousands of childless couples in 
 this country who are taxed heavily to support 
 public schools. They have no children in the 
 schools. Divide the fund ! 
 
 There are thousands of Baptists and Metho- 
 dists and Presbyterians and others who patron- 
 ize private schools exclusively who are taxed 
 for the support of the public schools. " Equal 
 justice for all ! " Divide the fund ! Give each 
 crank a chromo for the maintenance of his 
 crotchet! And let posterity take care of 
 16 
 
242 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 itself! " Posterity! " — what has posterity ever 
 done for tis anyhow! 
 
 Yes, such a man as this was he who refused 
 to assist in the purchase of a new hearse for 
 the village. The committee asked him why. 
 He replied: "Well, I gave ten dollars to buy 
 the old one, and neither I nor my family have 
 ever had the use of it a single time! " 
 
 Such is the supreme selfishness of the man 
 who would divide this fund raised for the com- 
 mon weal — a selfishness so cankerous that it 
 fain would eat up the victim who proclaims it 
 when other food has failed! This money is 
 raised by the state as a life insurance fund. 
 The life of the state rests on universal suffrage. 
 Universal suffrage is a possibility only when 
 supported by an universal education — and no 
 such education has ever been given, or can be 
 given save by the state. 
 
 Prate to me of individual rights here! Care 
 you nothing for the life of this glorious free 
 Republic, the asylum of all nations, the refuge 
 of an oppressed world ? Shall we allow it to 
 
2'HE SCHOOL WAR. 243 
 
 be stabbed to the heart in a mad fight between 
 sectarian brawlers ? 
 
 We have no army, no navy worthy of the 
 name, no frowning ramparts along our coasts 
 to withstand the ironclads of the Old World, 
 and yet we are the mightiest nation of earth — 
 the last nation in all the roll of nations against 
 which a foreign power will dare to draw the 
 sword ! And why ? Because, we have not in- 
 vested in steel guns, granite masonry or brass 
 buttons, but in free boys and free brains! 
 Shall the foundations of this glory be de- 
 stroyed ? Shall we re-enact the dismal fail- 
 ures of the Old World ? The American peo- 
 ple must answer. I have no fear as to what 
 that answer will ultimately be. But it is time 
 now that answer should begin to formulate 
 itself in an overwhelming demand that in the 
 Constitution of the United States and every 
 State of the Union there shall be a clause, 
 specifically forbidding that a single cent of the 
 people's money shall ever be appropriated to 
 sectarian purposes, either under the guise of 
 charity or education. 
 
244 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 THE SOUTHERN QUESTION. 
 
 SOME DIFFICULTIES OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 [An address before the New England Paint 
 and Oil Club at their 44th dinner at the Hotel 
 Thorndike, Boston, as reported by the Bostoji 
 Daily Herald, April 14th, 1889.] 
 
 The 44th dinner of the Paint and Oil Club 
 of New England, at the Thorndike, last even- 
 ing, was attended by about fifty members and 
 a dozen or more guests, among the latter being 
 Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., pastor of the Dudley 
 Street Baptist Church, and formerly a member 
 of the North Carolina Legislature. An enjoy- 
 able reception of half an hour's duration was 
 held in the parlors, after which the company 
 repaired to the banquet hall, where an admira- 
 ble dinner was served. The after-dinner 
 speaking was inaugurated by President Daniel 
 G. Tyler, who, in introducing the principal 
 
THE SOUTHERN QUESTIOX. 245 
 
 guest of the evening, said: "The Southern 
 problem has been an interesting question to 
 all close observers of national affairs since the 
 war. Our guest this evening was born upon 
 the soil of the Old North State, has served in 
 her Legislature and in other posts of trust, 
 and, after living in the North for a number of 
 years, comes to-day to give us the benefit of 
 his experience and thought upon the subject." 
 
 Rev. Mr. Dixon's Speech. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., on being thus pleas- 
 antly presented, spoke substantially as follows: 
 
 What do I mean by " The Southern Ques- 
 tion ? '* Certainly not what the sectional mono- 
 maniac has in mind when he uses the expres- 
 sion. If by " Southern question " you mean 
 the supposed problem of crime, violence, and 
 semi-civilization, as presented in the cock-and- 
 bull stories you hear of the South — then I 
 have no time to discuss such a question, for 
 such a problem exists only in the distorted 
 fancy of ill-informed men. By " Southern 
 question " I mean the sectional question, and 
 
24^ LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 the problem of it is, how can sectionalism be 
 eliminated from our national life, social, eco- 
 nomic, and political ? If this is a union, unity 
 should be the cardinal principle of national 
 life, and sectionalism is a monstrosity. The 
 South and North should stand related to each 
 other, politically and commercially, as the 
 Eastern, Western and Middle States are re- 
 lated. 
 
 What are some of the difficulties that stand 
 in the way of such an obliteration of sectional 
 lines ? I can dwell on but two this afternoon. 
 
 I. Mutual m-isunderstanding. The North 
 does not understand the South. The South 
 does not understand the North. The igno- 
 rance of the average northerner as to the real 
 condition of the South has been to me a con- 
 stant source of amazement. What are the 
 chief causes of these misunderstandings? 
 
 ia) The federal office-holders in the South 
 under Republican admiinistration. The con- 
 crete idea of the North has been presented to 
 the South in the personality of the carpet- 
 baggers, turncoat Democrats, and general rap- 
 
THE SOUTHERN QUESTION. 247 
 
 scalHons who have been honored with office 
 under Republican Presidents, The most po- 
 tent cry ever raised in the South on a national 
 question was "Turn the rascals out." They 
 meant the rascals at home, who used their offi- 
 ces to domineer over and insult the people 
 whom they were placed there to serve. The 
 civil service given the South, exept under 
 Cleveland's administration, has been simply 
 infernal. There have been some good men 
 among them, but they were the exception to 
 the rule. The finest stroke of policy yet made 
 by President Harrison was when he sent home 
 the other day the forlorn groups of chronic 
 office holders and office seekers from South 
 Carolina. Such a policy is a first step toward 
 breaking a solid South. 
 
 {p) Cranks. Hot-headed, ill-advised men, 
 thirsting for a sensation, and determined to 
 make one, plunge into the South for a week 
 or two, and return to the northern platform 
 loaded with wind and exclamation points. 
 They strut, and bellow, and shriek. " What 
 are you going to do about it?" And some- 
 
248 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 times the very elect are deceived by the noise 
 into believing that something ought to be 
 done ! Such a D.D. recently spent a few weeks 
 South. He returned with a pain he knew not 
 where, with the griping sensation as yet un- 
 located, but with a determination to be heard 
 or die. God save the South from her friends! 
 
 (<r) Knaves. There are men who deliber- 
 ately seek to deceive you on such questions. 
 The day before the last election, the Nezv 
 York Tribune contained a long dispatch from 
 Raleigh, N. C, stating that the town was in a 
 state of riot and bloodshed ; that the negroes 
 were being driven from the place, shots were 
 being exchanged and that there was urgent 
 need of troops. Every word, every syllable, 
 every letter, every dot on every i in the article 
 was a lie out of whole cloth, as testified to by 
 the mayor and council, among whom were 
 four distinguished negro politicians. 
 
 [d) Politicians who trade in sectional issues 
 only. The day for those men is rapidly going 
 by. Some of them still remain, North and 
 
THE SOUTHERN QUESTIO.V. 249 
 
 South. Let the rising young men of the na- 
 tion set their feet emphatically on all such. 
 
 {e) Partisan newspapers. It is a sad fact 
 that we have so many newpapers in both sec- 
 tions whose business it seems to be to misrepre- 
 sent each other and everything on the other 
 side. Thousands of our best people read only 
 these papers, and must, of necessity, see every- 
 thing in a distorted light. They create and 
 feed a morbid appetite for sensational and 
 highly exaggerated matter on those questions. 
 I am oftentimes disgusted at the attempt of 
 our independent newspapers to straddle the 
 universe on questions of grave importance to 
 preserve their independence, yet with all their 
 faults I thank God for them. They form to- 
 day the only means of communication between 
 the sections, and, it seems to me, mark an era 
 in the progress of the nation. They have tem- 
 pered the tone of our organs, so that they do 
 not scream and bellow and rattle as of old, but 
 must of necessity now give forth sounds more 
 or less harmonious and reasonable. And the 
 tune grows better as time rolls on. 
 
250 LI VING rR OBLEMS. 
 
 2. The second great difficulty of the ques- 
 tion I mention is, " The negro and his relation 
 to the local governments of the South." The 
 rising generation of the South never knew the 
 negro as a slave and does not hate him be- 
 cause his skin is black. Why, then, do the 
 young men, as well as the old men, stand as a 
 unit in the determination that the negro shall 
 not as yet control the local governments ? 
 Simply because they know he does not repre- 
 sent the wealth, virtue, and intelligence of the 
 community, and because they knov/ that negro 
 supremacy in State or county means bank- 
 ruptcy, ruin, disgrace, and corruption. I have 
 no apologies to offer for the interference with 
 the negro vote that has characterized certain 
 sections of the South in times past. These 
 things are mostly traditions now, and it is my 
 earnest conviction, after living in New York 
 and Boston, that there are as many crimes of 
 one sort and another committed against the 
 ballot in the North as in the South, taking the 
 sections as a whole. But what was the cause 
 then of intimidation and trickery in the South ? 
 
THE SOUTHERN QUESTION. 25 1 
 
 Take North Carolina as an example. Imme- 
 diately on the enfranchisement of the hordes 
 of ignorant slaves, and before the political dis- 
 abilities of the whites were removed, the 
 negroes, under the leadership of adventurers 
 and villains, took possession of the state gov- 
 ernment and the county governments of about 
 forty counties. They wrecked the state gov- 
 ernment in short order, stole everything they 
 could get their hands on, even to the school 
 fund, and the United States land script fund, 
 issued millions of dollars worth of fraudulent 
 bonds, raised what money they could on them 
 and stole that. The governments of these forty 
 counties were even more hopelessly wrecked. 
 The county script was not worth the paper it 
 was written on, and the land was taxed to 
 nearly its full rental value, and land was the 
 only capital the people had. What were the 
 people to do in these forty black counties ? 
 Sell out and leave? They couldn't sell. No- 
 body would buy. Lands worth $20 an acre 
 could not have been sold for fifty cents. They 
 did what you would have done — they took 
 
252 LIVING PROBLEMS. 
 
 possession of their local governments — they 
 had to do it or give up the struggle of life. 
 They violated the Constitution you say? Per- 
 haps they did sometimes. But self-preserva- 
 tion is the first law of nature and antedates 
 the Constitution somewhat. They said it was 
 not right that pauperism and vice and igno- 
 rance should rule wealth and virtue and intelli- 
 gence, and that all the constitutions of the 
 earth couldn't make it right. After all, didn't 
 you teach them the lesson ? A distinguished 
 senator of the North, when driven to the wall 
 by the relentless logic of Calhoun on the Con- 
 stitution, it is said, replied : " The Constitution 
 be d — d ! " The Constitution did stand between 
 the slave and his freedom. You said it was 
 not right, smashed it to atoms and made it 
 over again. I thank you for doing it. You 
 said the Constitution was not divine before the 
 war. Could you expect these Southern men, 
 whose very lives depended on the issue, to 
 accept it as divine after the war ? 
 
 This dark cloud of the possibility of local 
 corruption and bankruptcy and ruin hangs like 
 
THE SOUTHERN QUESTION. 253 
 
 a pall over the South, and makes the white 
 race stand together as a solid unit to-day. 
 The enfranchisement of the negro race turned 
 loose too much power. It forced the Southern 
 people to go into politics rather than into 
 business — their life depended on it. The white 
 Republican party recently organized in Ala- 
 bama is the dream of a fool. The white race 
 cannot divide until the negroes first divide. 
 
 All this I say with the kindliest and tender- 
 est feelings for the negro race. Yes, I say it 
 by the memories of the dear old nurse in 
 whose arms the weary head of my childhood 
 so often found rest, at whose feet I sat and 
 heard the sad story of the life of a slave until 
 I learned to hate slavery as I hate hell. 
 
 What would I give as the solution of the 
 Southern question? Pass the Australian ballot 
 system or a good educational qualification for 
 suffrage in every State in the Union, and it 
 will disfranchise two-thirds of the negroes and 
 one-third of the whites in the South, the terror 
 of negro misrule will disappear, and with it, I 
 believe, sectionalism. 
 
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