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The Juvenile Revival; 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR 
 MOVEMENT. 
 
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 By THOMAS CHALMERS, Ph.D., 
 
 Pastor of the Church of Christ, Brooklyn, N. TL 
 Author of ''•Alexander Campbell in Scotland." 
 
 WITH M INTRODUCTION BY FRANCIS E. CLARK, D. D. 
 
 " Like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth 
 forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither." 
 
 St. Louis: 
 CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 1893. 
 
 &*€{ 
 
 ^■CUK 
 
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 Copyrighted, 1893, by 
 Christian Publishing Company. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction . . . . .5 
 
 I. The Soil . . . . 7 
 
 II. The Season . . . 29 
 
 III. The Seed .... 49 
 
 IY. The Blade . . . . 73 
 
 Y. The Ear .... 97 
 
 VI. The Full Corn ... . .117 
 C3) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 So far as I have been able to examine the 
 advance sheets of this volume, I am glad to 
 heartily express my appreciation of its usefulness 
 and unique value. The Society of Christian En- 
 deavor is very often looked at from the practical 
 standpoint, and its actual workings from all sides 
 have been examined, criticised, defended, and 
 for the most part cordially commended, by pas- 
 tors and Christian people in all parts of the coun- 
 try. The time has now come, as it seems to me, 
 for more careful examination of the philosophical 
 principles which underlie the movement. Any 
 such organization, which in eleven years has 
 made its way around the world, and numbers 
 among its members nearly a million and a half 
 young people, must have some springs of vitality 
 which do not always bubble to the surface. There 
 must be some underlying principles on which 
 
 such a movement rests. It cannot be accounted 
 (5) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for by the gush of youthful enthusiasm. Every 
 religious uprising in the history of the world has 
 had such principles, and though they have not 
 always, been clearly apprehended at the begin- 
 ning, and though the practical necessities have 
 largely overshadowed the philosophical princi- 
 ples on which the movement was based, these 
 principles nevertheless exist. So it is witfh the 
 Society of Christian Endeavor, and it is well that 
 from the standpoint of an active pastor, who 
 knows experimentally what the society is, what 
 its aims, purposes, methods and tendencies are, 
 such a volume should be written. The philoso- 
 phy then becomes something more than mere 
 theory. A priori reasoning is balanced by practi- 
 cal experience, and the experience confirms and 
 is confirmed by the underlying philosophy. 
 Many will doubtless be interested by such a pre- 
 sentation of the case who might distrust the 
 merely practical exhibit of the working of a sin- 
 gle society. I believe the volume is calculated to 
 do much good, and I wish it every success in 
 advancing the cause the author has so warmly at 
 heart, and which he has here so wisely espoused 
 
 and commended. 
 
 Francis E. Clark. 
 Boston, Mass., 
 
THE SOIL. 
 
 " It was planted in a goodly soil by great waters, that it 
 might bring forth branches, and that it might bear fruit, 
 that it might be a goodly vine."— Ezekiel. 
 
 "I hail the young life of our day in religion." 
 
 —Dr. McCosh. 
 
 " Ce qui maitrise le plus fortement ces jeunes intelligen- 
 ces, c'est l'instinct de la relation entre less choses et des 
 racines profondes qu'elles out dans Pinvisible; c'est le sen- 
 timent de la solidarite entre les hommes, le besoin de 
 s'associer a cette universelle vibration humaine qui est 
 l'electricite latente du monde moral."— Vogue's Regards. 
 
I. 
 
 THE SOIL. 
 
 A spiritual plant that has grown in but 
 -**• little more than a decade from a sin - 
 gle sprout until its young but giant 
 branches bear the bursting buds of more 
 than a million souls, must have been for- 
 tunate, not alone in its planting and cul- 
 ture, but in the good ground from which 
 it sprang. Its fresh and luxuriant vegeta- 
 tion gives evidence as much of the fer- 
 tility of the soil, as its own structure gives 
 of its species. The soil into which the 
 seed of Christian Endeavor was cast must 
 have been of rich quality. That soil is 
 youthful religious enthusiasm. It is the 
 first and most important objective condi- 
 tion in the marvelous spread of the Chris- 
 tian Endeavor idea. But this suscepti- 
 bility to religious impression among the 
 young has always existed. From the dav 
 (9) 
 
10 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 that Cain and Abel, the first young men, 
 sacrificed to Jehovah of the first fruits of 
 their industry and devotion, no element 
 in human nature has been more evident 
 than juvenile religious enthusiasm — the 
 soil of Christian Endeavor. But the idea 
 or the seed which was planted in this soil 
 has been but recently generated. It 
 sprang up when the conditions and ele- 
 ments united to produce the germination. 
 The time had come when this young en- 
 thusiasm should be turned into a newer 
 and purer channel to enrich and irrigate 
 more promising fields in the broad area of 
 the life of the young. Juvenile enthusi- 
 asm may then either be compared to the 
 soil, which has existed from the founda- 
 tion of the world, or the waters which 
 fertilize; the Christian Endeavor idea, 
 either to the seed which grows from the 
 soil, or the channel which gives direction 
 to the stream. The philosophy of the 
 Christian Endeavor phenomenon cannot 
 be comprehended fully without a prelim- 
 inary study of the characteristics and pos- 
 sibilities of the young mind, as actually 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 11 
 
 shown in a glance over the history of past 
 movements. The revolutions and con- 
 vulsions of history, the combined results 
 of which have given us our present struct- 
 ure of society, have been, almost without 
 exception, inspired by the zeal and carried 
 onward by the activity of our young men. 
 In the military, political, literary, scien- 
 tific and religious departments of life, it 
 is the burning, restless spirit of youth 
 which has torn down national walls, 
 amalgamated races, crossed the Alps, re- 
 constructed theology, revolutionized soci- 
 ety, literature and science, and then in its 
 unsatisfied and insatiable fire it has wept 
 over the ruins of conquered worlds for 
 other worlds of activity. From Alexan- 
 der the Great, who led the Macedonian 
 army at the age of seventeen, to Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, who was the greatest general 
 in Europe at the age of twenty-six, the 
 chief warriors of the world were young 
 men; from the boyish Augustus Caesar, 
 whose wise constructive statesmanship 
 made his reign the memorable Golden 
 Era of Rome, to the younger Pitt, who 
 
12 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 was Europe's shrewdest statesman when 
 but twenty-five years old, youth has made 
 its activity no less felt in politics than in 
 war. Calvin laid the basis for the theo- 
 logic thought of more than half the Prot- 
 estant world when at the age of twenty- 
 five he wrote his Institutes; and it may 
 not be irreverent to remember that the 
 Man of Nazareth was but little more than 
 a youth when he said "It is finished" to 
 a life that has changed the face of hu- 
 manity and given us a new heaven and a 
 new earth. In our own day the greatest 
 religious movements have begun and 
 grown into power among the young. The 
 Evangelical movement of the eighteenth 
 century, and the Tractarian movement of 
 our own century, had each its origin in 
 the religious fervor of Oxford students. 
 Martin Luther was but thirty-four years 
 old when the signal for the beginning of 
 the Protestant revulsion was sounded by 
 the hammer that nailed the ninety-five 
 theses on the door of the Castle-church in 
 Wittenberg. John Huss was under forty 
 and Savonarola under forty-six when they 
 
THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 13 
 
 died as martyrs to their religious princi- 
 ples after lives full of labors. 
 
 We often hear it said that young people 
 are by nature not religious. Nothing can 
 be farther from the truth. What is that 
 pure, disinterested, fervent honesty, the 
 only normal condition of youth; that 
 chivalric devotion to reason and right; 
 that faithfulness to truth as seen, which 
 often breaks over the boundaries of 
 parental theology, even at the cost of dis- 
 inheritance, that pleads the interests of 
 an unpopular cause and disregards the 
 jeers of unsympathetic multitudes — what 
 is that but religion? It may grow restless 
 and fall asleep under an abstruse discus- 
 sion on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; 
 it may smile at the oddities of ritualism; 
 it may never have read a written sermon, 
 or made a formal prayer, or carefully 
 studied a Scripture passage, but this is no 
 ground for inferring that youth is lacking 
 in religious sentiment. It is the very 
 warmth of the religious nature, its de- 
 mand for a living ideal, that rebels against 
 the cold and dry elements in church life. 
 
14 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 What shall we call that openness of mind 
 to new revelations of truth ; that suscep- 
 tibility to conviction ; that headlong pur- 
 suit of what is real, which never mercena- 
 rily counts the cost, but goes forward as 
 if moved by the spirit — what is that but 
 religion? These are the characteristics of 
 religion, and they are the characteristics 
 of youth. Youth has always been relig- 
 ious, but the juvenile religious element 
 has seldom been recognized or under- 
 stood, and there has therefore been but 
 little provision for its cultivation, and its 
 surplus force and vitality have been 
 wasted for want of proper channels in 
 which to exert themselves, and even when 
 channels have been provided, they have 
 often been so narrow and shallow that 
 they could not bear the cargoes of a rich 
 and full life. Youth must have legitimate 
 service in which to expend its force, or it 
 will expend itself in its own dissipation or 
 in outside destruction. It is like the oxy- 
 gen which, if received into the lungs, re- 
 pairs, warms and vitalizes the system; but 
 if it is shut out, the body dies, and the 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 15 
 
 same oxygen employs itself in its disinte- 
 gration. 
 
 Lectures to young men, in which the 
 best and most prof usive advice has been 
 given of what not to do and what to 
 avoid, from the days of Solomon to the 
 last volumes issued from the press, have 
 been well nigh fruitless. We cannot won- 
 der, when the young men of every age 
 have been overwhelmed with moraliza- 
 tions— ''Don't do this!" " Don't go 
 there! " "Don't associate with such! " — 
 that they have answered in despair, "In 
 the name of Grod, what shall we do, where 
 shall we go, and with whom shall we asso- 
 ciate? " When Shakespeare's Henry IV. 
 is represented by Falstaff as speaking 
 those kind words of reproof to his son, 
 " Harry, I do not only marvel where thou 
 spendest thy time, but also how thou art 
 accompanied; for though the camomile 
 the more it is trodden on the faster it 
 grows, yet youth the more it is wasted the 
 sooner it wears," he gave good parental 
 counsel, but the effect of the rebuke 
 alone would drive the youth into despair 
 
16 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 and further profligacy. It was negative 
 truth. But when the activity of war was 
 offered him, this dissipated youth rose 
 
 " From the ground like feathered Mercury," 
 
 and, in the hottest of th^ battle, slew the 
 gallant leader of the Northern rebellion, 
 and when the king begged him to leave 
 the field on account of his wound, it was 
 that same youthful ardor, which a few 
 days before was wasted in drunkenness 
 and revelry, that made the valorous re- 
 sponse: 
 
 " God forbid a shallow scratch should 
 drive the Prince of Wales from such a 
 field as this, where stained nobility lies 
 trodden on, and rebels' arms triumph in 
 massacres! " Youth longs for noble and 
 legitimate activity, but the flow of its en- 
 thusiasm cannot be dammed without dis- 
 aster. Once upon a time an industrious 
 farmer, through whose small but well 
 planted farm a river ran, took it into his 
 head to increase the area of his arable 
 land; so he dammed the river just outside 
 the boundary fence. On the following 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 17 
 
 morning when he went out, he found that 
 the waters had kept on flowing as before 
 from above, and had flooded and ruined 
 his crops on the lowlands. He removed 
 the dam, and in the course of time built a 
 flour-mill on the banks of the river, and 
 'the great waterwheel drove the machin- 
 ery. His neighbors from miles away 
 brought their grain to his mill, and he 
 grew into great wealth. The water could 
 not be held back, but it would grind his 
 grain, saw his lumber, carry his cargo, and 
 quench his thirst. So it is with youth. 
 
 We may as well, then, lay down as a 
 proposition at once that youth cannot be 
 silenced while it is youth. Take its 
 vivacity away, and it is no longer youth. 
 Someone suggests, "Discipline it! " But 
 the trouble is too often that the disciplin- 
 ing process is a destroying, a death-deal- 
 ing process. Disciplined youth is usually 
 as unpromising of fruit as the frost-bitten 
 bud. The broken spirit, the downcast 
 eye, the pallid complexion, the fallen 
 countenance, the slow and regular gait, 
 
 the nervous lack of self-confidence — these 
 
 2 
 
18 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 are too often the traces of discipline. It 
 is the bounding step, the sparkling luster 
 of the eye, the quick and willing motion 
 that we want. In the words of Tennyson : 
 
 " 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
 And life not death for which we pant- 
 More life and fuller that we want," 
 
 "Spare not the rod" is a good word, and 
 should be taken literally. As far as the 
 rod is concerned, it does not need sparing. 
 It may be burned or broken with but little 
 loss to human happiness; but the child 
 should be spared. It is, of course, much 
 easier for parents to handle their children 
 summarily according to "rules laid 
 down," than to trouble themselves with 
 studying sympathetically the nature of 
 the child's soul and surroundings, but is 
 it not the human way? No doubt many 
 will object to a condescension of parent to 
 child as compromising parental dignity, 
 but what is parental dignity? Is it that 
 cold, hard, lofty separation of father from 
 son which has often deprived youth of 
 one of its greatest natural blessings? 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 19 
 
 While we are talking about the rights of 
 man, woman's rights, the rights of labor 
 and capital, and States' rights, we should 
 not forget that there is also sucha doc- 
 trine as juvenile rights, and if the young 
 are to be instructed by the old, it should 
 also be remembered that the old may 
 learn much from the young, and this even 
 in religious matters. Is it not "out of 
 the mouths of babes and sucklings" that 
 divine praise finds its most perfect ex- 
 pression? 
 
 But a very natural inquiry would be if 
 youth should be let run wild and go down 
 to ruin? There certainly is no need that 
 youth should go wild. That is the oppo- 
 site error — the falsehood carried about by 
 the emissaries of Satan, who have 
 preached from Adam's time that there is 
 a certain merit in the eating of forbidden 
 fruit, and that free men should live under 
 no restraint. There is no reason why any 
 young man, though perfectly free, should 
 sow tares or wild oats. Those tares are 
 more ruinous to the soil of youth and sap 
 from it more of its fertility and power 
 
20 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 than the growth of the grain of legiti- 
 mate activity. That philosophy is corrupt 
 and vicious beyond toleration which ac- 
 cords to young men their youthful years 
 for dissipation and dissolution, and no 
 young man who has the courage of man- 
 hood or even ordinary prudence or fore- 
 sight will accept such a proffer. To be 
 sure, the soil will grow something. If no 
 good seed is sown, rank weeds and pois- 
 onous herbs will find their way there, if it 
 has any fertility ; and if it has no fertility 
 at all, it is as useless to the world as the 
 Sahara desert. A man who can be a first 
 class sinner can be something better. 
 The soil that will grow weeds in healthy 
 quantities is a promising piece of land. 
 When our farmers go out West to take 
 up government land and settle there, they 
 avoid the dry, desert patches where there 
 is neither tree, shrub nor weed — nothing 
 but the clear, white drifting sand, — and 
 lay claim to the rougher ground, where 
 weeds in abundance grow. It took " the 
 Chief of Sinners" to make the Chief of 
 the Apostles. And yet I know just such 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 21 
 
 talk as this often exercises a pernicious 
 influence on the very characters we are 
 trying to help. The street tough who 
 hears it will tip his dented hat further on 
 one side, and, with his hands in his side 
 pockets, he will walk down street with a 
 still more self-conscious swagger. He 
 will drink an extra glass and make a big- 
 ger stake at the gambling-table. He will 
 swear a louder oath, and make bolder al- 
 lusion to the lady that passes by the dry 
 goods box on which he sits. He will 
 take it that there is merit in depravity. 
 He will not compare himself to a crude, 
 uncultivated patch of land overrun with 
 malodorous fireweeds, troublesome this- 
 tles and exasperating briers. Yet, wild 
 as it is, the ground has promise, but if it 
 remains always in its native uncultivated 
 state, it matters little whether it has or 
 has not promise. So with the sinner, his 
 very sinfulness, which gives promise of 
 something better and worthier after his 
 reformation, makes him, as a sinner, con- 
 temptible and disgusting. 
 
 Man will not be idle. He will serve 
 
22 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 either God or Mammon. Nor have we 
 discharged our whole duty when we say: 
 " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," 
 because church life is oftentimes such 
 that the young man, with his limited re- 
 ligious experience, can see no other ser- 
 vice but that of Mammon. There must 
 be a choice before the young man can 
 choose. Mammon has all his wares on 
 exhibition. The gilded saloon, with its 
 odorous and tempting liquors, cards, dice 
 and billiard-tables meets him at every 
 corner. The dazzling theatre, with its 
 throng of frivolous and careless attend- 
 ants, its insinuatingly immoral plays and 
 ' ' varieties, ' ? and sensational costumes 
 calls out loudly through its advertise- 
 ments in flaming pictures on wagons, 
 buildings, fences, and bulletin boards for 
 the young man's bid. The great majority 
 of the depraved have not chosen sin from 
 preference. They have chosen it from 
 necessity, because church life was either 
 practically out of their reach, or so crys- 
 tallized and cold that it possessed no 
 charms for them. The preaching has 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 23 
 
 been abstract, and the prayer and social 
 meetings have been insipid and uninter- 
 esting, and instead of being greeted by 
 young people of their own age when they 
 appear within the church, they have been 
 recognized and addressed only by the eld- 
 ers or the old ladies. They have been nat- 
 urally shy and backward, just as they were 
 the first evening they spent in the loud 
 and jolly saloon company, but the latter 
 companionship soon put them at their 
 ease. In a recent article in the Forum 
 on the " Impending Paganism in New 
 England," the following picture of the 
 church life in a little New England town 
 is given: "The strongest churches are 
 the Universalist, with its membership of 
 thirteen women, and one man, and the 
 Congregational, with its membership of 
 twenty-seven women and four men. 
 There is hardly a representative man in 
 these four churches, though the Masonic 
 lodge gathers from this and neighboring 
 towns its hundred members." The fault 
 is not in the soil but in its cultivation. 
 I repeat that the young are religious, 
 
24 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 and any form of religion justifies itself in 
 proportion as it appeals to the juvenile re- 
 ligious sense . And with or without any rec- 
 ognized form of religion, the young mind 
 will cling to fundamental religious prin- 
 ciples. It is through the youth of France 
 that the recent much-spoken-of Neo- 
 Christian Movement is giving its greatest 
 promise. M. Vogue, as already quoted, 
 says that " that which strongly holds 
 these young minds is the instinct of the 
 correspondence between material things 
 and the profound invisible principles 
 which underlie them; it is the feeling of 
 community between men, the need of so- 
 ciety according to that universal human 
 vibration which is the latent electricity of 
 the moral world." This exhibits the very 
 spirit of the Christian religion, and it 
 comes as an unintentional and powerful 
 argument for its adaptability to the hu- 
 man race. These young minds which 
 had .inherited a prejudice to Christianity 
 from the infidel philosophy of the pre- 
 ceding generation, have, by a circuitous 
 journey, impelled by their own innate im- 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 25 
 
 pulses, and guided by their own reason, 
 unconsciously returned to the underlying 
 principles of the Christian faith. This is 
 the kind of a movement needed in 
 France. The editor of one of our Amer- 
 ican magazines sends up a lamentation 
 over the comparative barrenness of our 
 own land in such spiritual growths: 
 "The feeling of the serious American," 
 says he, " as he drops the record of this 
 wonderful spiritualization of thought in 
 France, this new birth of a nation, and 
 he turns his thought home, is a feeling of 
 sadness. There is no movement akin to 
 this in our intellectual life." There is 
 no such movement because no such move- 
 ment is demanded in American life. But 
 have we not a movement? — such a one as 
 we need? — a movement against material- 
 ism to a higher spiritual and religious 
 life? And is it not also among our 
 young? 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding its natural sensi- 
 tiveness to religious impressions and its 
 spiritual fervency, youth is inclined to 
 skepticism. But this very skepticism re- 
 
26 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 suits from its restless, anxious search for 
 the Absolute Truth. It is a reaching up- 
 ward of the young soul toward the un- 
 known God. It is suspicious of the 
 means offered it by which to find Him. 
 It impatiently pushes them aside. But it 
 soon wearies in seeking for the " un- 
 searchable," and either sinks back in 
 gloomy despair, or finds God in the tra- 
 ditional faith. May our elders be consid- 
 erate with the skepticism of youth. It is 
 a healthy enough sign. 
 
 " There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 Indifferentism is never skeptical. It 
 willingly acquiesces in all the articles of 
 the creeds to save being troubled. The 
 skeptical mind is the mind that is 
 troubled. It seeks the solution of its 
 problems. Let it become active and alive 
 and it will find all the solution it needs. 
 " If any man will do his will," said Je- 
 sus, " he shall know of the doctrine, 
 whether it be of God, or whether I speak 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 27 
 
 of myself." The soil was fertile and 
 ready for the seed which was sown. 
 
 In the next chapter we shall speak of 
 the season of planting. 
 
II. 
 
 THE SEASON. 
 
 "To everything there is a season, and a time to every pur- 
 pose under the heaven."— Ecclesiastes. 
 
 * When they see the hours ripe on earth."— Shakespeare, 
 (29) 
 
THE SEASON. 
 
 Tt is still more important that the seed 
 * be planted in the right season than 
 that the soil be of the best quality. The 
 moistened atmosphere, the vivifying sun, 
 and the warm showers must all contribute 
 their fostering forces to the germinating 
 seed. It will matter little how rich and 
 well cultivated the soil may be, if the seed 
 is not sown in the proper season. This 
 century came in with manifestations of 
 great spiritual quickening in this country. 
 Social and religious activity ran high 
 throughout the world. It was the keen 
 mind of Schiller which perceived that 
 
 "An epoch important has with the century risen." 
 
 Every part of this country had its relig- 
 ious agitation of some kind; in New Eng- 
 (31) 
 
32 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 land the Unitarian reaction brought an 
 old theological controversy to a head and 
 break; in Kentucky the Great Revival, 
 the shouts of whose camp-meeting ecsta- 
 sies were caught up and echoed through 
 the forests of many a pioneer State, pro- 
 foundly influenced the religious life of the 
 whole country, "increasing," according 
 to Dr. B. B. Tyler, "the membership of 
 the Presbyterian Church twofold, the 
 Congregational Church twofold, the Bap- 
 tist Church threefold, and the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church as much as sevenfold;" 
 and in the regions of the Ohio and Mis- 
 sissippi valleys, religious thought was 
 agitated to such an extent that the plea 
 for a return to the non-sectarian Chris- 
 tianity of the New Testament, as advo- 
 cated by Alexander Campbell, was re- 
 ceived in the brief space of a quarter of a 
 century by between two and three hun- 
 dred thousand people. But in all these 
 convulsions the controversies were of a 
 doctrinal character, and sect feeling was 
 accordingly intense and exclusive. To be 
 sound in the faith was of far greater con- 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 33 
 
 sequence than to be fervent in spirit in 
 the service of God. Fraternal charity 
 and Christian forbearance were graciously 
 and nobly accorded to him who was weak 
 in the flesh. A moral error was easily 
 forgiven, but there was no kind of for- 
 bearance for doctrinal error. Heresy was 
 inexcusable. This condition of religious 
 America kept growing more and more in- 
 tense until the outbreak of the Civil War, 
 and the reaction against it which was then 
 imminent was only staved off by that 
 great national conflict, which drew the 
 best energies of a generation from other 
 channels to the solution and settlement 
 of one all-absorbing political and social 
 problem. A true picture of the state of 
 American church life in 1852 is thus given 
 by a discriminating and philosophic mind: 
 "We live in a sectarian and conse- 
 quently in a controversial age. Chris- 
 tianity, as it is called, has degenerated 
 into a speculative science, and therefore 
 into innumerable forms of opinionism. 
 Theories instead of facts, speculations in- 
 stead of faith, forms and ceremonies in- 
 
34 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 stead of a new life, and a profession of 
 godliness without its vitality and poiver, 
 are now and have long been the charac- 
 teristics of the Christian profession." * 
 
 In these doctrinal controversies which 
 were the weight of pulpit discourses, the 
 burden of the religious journals, and even 
 the theme of prayer-meeting talks and 
 Sunday-school teachings, it is not to be 
 supposed that the young could take much 
 interest. Only by periodic revivals of 
 feverish excitement were the churches 
 replenished at all. The great bulk of the 
 young men remained outside the church, 
 and the depth of depravity and sin to 
 which the life of the youth sank is sadly 
 shown by the large number of lectures to 
 young men which were delivered, pub- 
 lished and distributed in those years. t 
 And the social life of the churches was 
 
 * Alexander Campbell in an address before the 
 Bible Union. 
 
 t Henry Ward Beecher's Lectures to Young 3Ie?i, 
 published in a little western town in 1845, while 
 he was but an obscure preacher, ran through an 
 edition of three thousand copies in less than one 
 year. 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 35 
 
 not attractive enough to hold the young, 
 even when in protracted "seasons of re- 
 ligion" large numbers of them, in re- 
 sponse to their naturally religious im- 
 pulses had entered the Christian life. 
 The frequent use of the unhappy appella- 
 tion of "backslider" in their ecclesias- 
 tical phraseology is suggestive of the 
 gloomy and pathetic state of religious life 
 in those days. The Sunday-school was in 
 quite vigorous operation, but there was 
 no link which joined it to the church. 
 There came a time in the life of every 
 youth when he considered himself too big 
 for the Sunday-school, and not yet old 
 enough to acquiesce in the sober regime 
 of the full-fledged Christian. There was 
 a wide desert through which the waters of 
 Christianity and church life had to run, 
 and there was considerable leakage away 
 into the sands of sin and indifference. It 
 was a time in which the words of Byron 
 might have found response in the breast 
 of the thoughtful young : 
 
 "Alas ! our young affections run to waste, 
 Or water but the desert." 
 
36 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 The Young Men's Christian Association 
 was then in existence, but it was not vig- 
 orous or efficient; and even if it had been, 
 so far as its peculiar mission is concerned, 
 it would not have bridged the gulf. It 
 was a great and worthy organization which 
 grew out of the social needs of Christian 
 young men who are away from the influ- 
 ences of their home church and associa- 
 tions, or who are in need of Christian 
 companionship and life 'in a good, moral 
 atmosphere. There was a deeper need 
 than this — it was the need of an influence 
 that would make the Christian life begin 
 at the mother's knee and continue until it 
 reached the grave. As Dr. Clark says: 
 "There is no reason why any child of 
 Christian parents should wander off into 
 the ways of sin and become befouled and 
 smirched in the ways of the world before 
 he can seek the purity of the kingdom of 
 God." Many people had said, and more 
 had thought something of that same kind 
 before, and yet children of Christian par- 
 ents kept slipping away until in many fam- 
 ilies but the father and mother were pro- 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 37 
 
 fessed church members, even after their 
 children were grown to manhood and 
 womanhood. That something was wanted 
 was very plain. And this want found ex- 
 pression in numerous societies of young 
 people which were organized in wide- 
 awake churches, and needed in thousands 
 more. But, for the most part, the results 
 of these efforts seemed to be only tran- 
 sient — they had not such a combination of 
 elements as to make them permanent and 
 strong. In short, the want was felt, but 
 imperfectly expressed, until it found a 
 lucid interpretation in one of the greatest 
 organized movements of this century. 
 
 " Deep wishes in the heart that be, 
 Are blossoms of necessity.''' 
 
 As we have seen, the Civil War opened 
 a valve of action for that surplus youth- 
 ful energy which was otherwise either 
 wasting itself or accumulating for a de- 
 structive explosion. And the two million 
 young men who offered themselves on the 
 altar of Mars in devotion to their respect- 
 ive factions, present a melancholy con- 
 
38 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 trast to the two million young people, 
 who, in the various Juvenile Christian 
 organizations, are offering themselves in 
 a nobler and living sacrifice on the altar 
 of the God of true honor and righteous- 
 ness. In the heat of that great conflict 
 no such movement as this could have suc- 
 ceeded. It was not the planting season 
 for the Christian Endeavor seed. Relig- 
 ious and intellectual movements are re- 
 served for the leisure and quiet of peace. 
 It was many years after the war before 
 the public mind could resume, with any 
 kind of real and earnest vigor, the sus- 
 pended non-political matters. A new 
 generation has come upon the stage of 
 American life. The old abstract discus- 
 sions of religious questions have returned. 
 Theology, such as it is, has come back for 
 its accustomed attention. This age is pro- 
 lific in theologians, destructive and con- 
 structive. We have the theological novel 
 now where we had the tale of politics and 
 humanity a half century ago. ''Robert 
 Elsmere " has taken the place on our 
 shelves of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Emi- 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 39 
 
 nent divines are talking of the evolution 
 of Christian theology in pulpits which a 
 quarter of a century ago thundered against 
 human slavery, while the religious differ- 
 ences are not now denominational, but 
 theological — no longer a quarrel between 
 the sects, but a war between the conserva- 
 tive and radical schools of all the sects. 
 The fight is becoming a hot one, and for 
 many it is of absorbing interest, and yet 
 the great bulk of our youth cannot be ex- 
 pected to take any real and vital interest 
 in the conflict. But they must not be neg- 
 lected while these discussions are going 
 on. Indeed, it is in such seasons as these 
 that they should receive most attention, 
 for if any break is to come (and these are 
 portentous times, if we are to believe our 
 prophets) our only hope is in the staying 
 powers of our youth. There are times 
 when the ropes of faith become loosened 
 by the very dryness of the atmosphere; 
 when theology is troubled and its trum- 
 pet gives an uncertain sound. In such 
 seasons as these, there is great danger 
 that in the shaking up of our doctrines 
 
40 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 our spiritual life be lost, and in the gen- 
 eral landslide of faith the foundations of 
 our moral and social life be undermined; 
 for, as Leslie Stephen says, " there is a 
 correlation between the creeds of society 
 and its political and social organization ; " 
 and if a creed is to be revised, or even die, 
 we want to be prepared to cling still to 
 our sacred and eternal principles of moral 
 and social order. If in such seasons of 
 disturbance and convulsion there is no 
 great idea, no noble sentiment, that can 
 come forward and inspire a high and dis- 
 interested enthusiasm, society, unable to 
 reconstruct itself with the pace of disin- 
 tegration, sinks back into moral exhaus- 
 tion or indifference. So it was with 
 France at the transition from the Old 
 Regime to the New, and the youthful 
 force, energy and power that has in 
 France been lost to the world in a cen- 
 tury which should have utilized it in a 
 thousand ways and multiplied it a thous- 
 and fold only the eternal years will 
 reveal. France is physically dying. Her 
 population decreases with the passing 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 41 
 
 away of each decade. Her rural districts, 
 according to M. Taine, are fast relapsing 
 into paganism. Her vitality has been 
 poured out upon the sands. Her show of 
 health is but the hectic flush of fever. 
 She stood 
 
 " Between two worlds, one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born." 
 
 Says Canon Westcott in his Social As- 
 pects of Christianity, "There are periods 
 in the history of the Church — the history 
 of the spiritual growth of humanity — 
 which are at once an end and a begin- 
 ning. . . . Unexpected forces reveal 
 themselves and unexpected evils make 
 themselves felt. Such periods are periods 
 of intense, disordered, passionate feeling, 
 men's hearts failing them for fear and for 
 expectation of the things which are coming 
 on the ivorld" This decade is such a 
 period, and the Juvenile Revival has come 
 as a Grod-send — like the white canvas of a 
 sail to a vessel in distress, like the rope 
 that is grasped by the drowning man. It 
 is to the breaking up of this century what 
 
42 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 the great work of Francis of Assisi was 
 to the period of the Renaissance, a com- 
 parison which we shall give fuller consid- 
 eration to in another chapter. 
 
 Another reason that makes this the 
 growing season for the Christian Endeavor 
 organization and life is that this age is 
 (strangely enough) both mechanical and 
 spiritual. The first half of this century 
 was a time of organizations of all kinds 
 and for all purposes. People ran wild 
 with the penchant for organization. 
 Channing humorously refers to this in a 
 discourse delivered in "1829: "It may be 
 said, without much exaggeration, that 
 everything is done now by societies. . . . 
 You can scarecly name an object for which 
 some institution has not been formed. 
 Would men spread one set of opinions 
 and crush another? They make a society. 
 Would they improve the Penal Code or 
 relieve poor debtors? They make socie- 
 ties. Would they encourage agriculture, 
 or manufactures, or science? They make 
 societies. Would one class encourage 
 horse-racing, and another discourage trav- 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 43 
 
 eling on Sunday? They make societies." 
 Though there is nothing so cold, lifeless 
 and uninspiring as the mechanical details 
 and burdens of organization, the multi- 
 plication of these societies has been the 
 outward sign of the inner life, spirit and 
 earnestness of the age. They were the 
 imperfect and cold expressions without, 
 of a warm heart within. Our complex 
 and extensive life made organization and 
 division of labor the two great social and 
 ecclesiastical, as well as economic, neces- 
 sities. Even benevolence, which of all 
 things should come spontaneously from 
 the heart, finds its most satisfactory ser- 
 vice in forms of organized and associated 
 charities. Organization has always been 
 the cold and rugged outer wall. To ex- 
 tremely spiritual and spontaneous natures 
 it has been a melancholy necessity. There 
 is no magnetism in organized order. It is 
 rather repellant than attractive. The sys- 
 tematic man is not the man we feel drawn 
 to, but, as Emerson says, "We love char- 
 acters in proportion as they are impulsive 
 and spontaneous." In these last two de- 
 
44 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 cades, thought and taste are becoming 
 more spiritual. A half century ago a 
 crabbed, unlovely dyspeptic, provided he 
 had a powerful intellect, might have half 
 the English-speaking world thronging at 
 his heels, but to-day the men we follow 
 are the men whom we can love. To-day 
 the preachers whose pulpits we throng 
 are men of fervent natures — warm- 
 hearted human beings, — not disembodied 
 intellects. The pulpit favorites of this 
 generation have been such men as 
 Beecher and Brooks. The favorites of a 
 few generations ago were such men as 
 Edwards and Chalmers. The good old 
 times are returning when the dry eye of 
 stoicism is no longer the necessary sign of 
 manhood. Spirituality is more popular 
 in this generation than intellectuality. 
 
 It was the union, then, of organization 
 and spirituality, so that the latter vivifies 
 the former, and the former's sole purpose 
 is to serve the interests of the latter, that 
 has met the wants of this age with pecu- 
 liar adaptability and force. In the Chris- 
 tian Endeavor movement, organization 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 45 
 
 has lost its repulsive ugliness by the light 
 of a higher spiritual life which beamed 
 through it. That the season was right 
 and ready for the very seed that was 
 planted, is seen in the fact that nearly 
 every detail of the Christian Endeavor 
 organization, as now supported by a mill- 
 ion and a half people, remains substan- 
 tially the same as in the original society. 
 The starting of this society was one of 
 the happy accidents that so frequently 
 occur in human history. The man who 
 planted the seed could not possibly have 
 foreseen what it would grow to. And it 
 is that very circumstance that makes the 
 movement, and the men to whom we are 
 indebted for it, great. It is not a scheme 
 that has been " pushed," but it is a seed 
 which being dropped into the right soil at 
 the right season has grown in spite of 
 everything, until it has become a great 
 tree with wide-spreading, sheltering 
 branches. All truly great things are 
 accidents. " There is less intention in 
 history," says Emerson, "than weascribe 
 to it." No man or company of men can 
 
46 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 direct the current of history. Great men 
 have been great because " their success 
 lay in their parallelism to the course of 
 thought, which found in them an unob- 
 structed channel." Great ideas inspire 
 great movements because they satisfy felt 
 but indefinable longings, arouse latent 
 energy, or speak the word which draws 
 from a thousand throats the shout, 
 "That's the idea! That's the idea!" 
 But in dwelling on the Christian Endeav- 
 or idea we are infringing on territory 
 which belongs to the theme of our next 
 chapter — the seed. We are merely trying 
 to show that there had to come a time 
 when we were ready for the seed, as in the 
 history of events there is a season pre- 
 pared for the coming of every great idea. 
 Three centuries before the coming of our 
 Lord, the world was preparing for him. 
 All that time the Roman cohorts were 
 busy hushing the warring nations through- 
 out the earth for the advent of the 
 Prince of Peace, and Greek learning and 
 language, like a soft carpet, were spread 
 over the face of the earth. The ring of 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 47 
 
 the closing doors of the Temple of Janus 
 was heard throughout the world and quiet 
 reigned. The eyes of all were turned 
 toward the East when the Sun of Right- 
 eousness arose above those sacred plains. 
 Man was waiting for his Saviour, and the 
 happy shout, " Unto us this day a King is 
 born — a Captain of our Salvation," — 
 which first reverberated among Judean 
 hills has been the cry of every age for nine- 
 teen hundred years. It struck the popu- 
 lar chord ; it interpreted the longing of the 
 human heart ; it gave man life. All other 
 movements, however great, can be no more 
 than miniatures of that greatest of all. 
 And they are only great when they reflect 
 the influence of that one, as the moon 
 reflects the solar light. The flood of 
 divine light then shed' upon the world is 
 sufficient for our richest, highest and com- 
 pletest illumination, until the dawn of the 
 Everlasting Dav. To appropriate that 
 light more and more as the years and cen- 
 turies pass, until it has transformed the 
 tissue of our being, should be the end of 
 
48 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 every human movement, for Christ truly 
 came that we might have life and that we 
 might have it more abundantly. 
 
III. 
 
 THE SEED. 
 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a grain of mustard 
 seed which a man took and sowed in his field."— Jesus. 
 
 " The stirring of the soil gives a chance for the growth of 
 new seeds of thought."— Leslie Stephen. 
 4 C49) 
 
III. 
 
 THE SEED. 
 
 TJaving taken a brief glance of the two 
 * * preliminary objective conditions of 
 the growth of Christian Endeavor, we 
 are prepared to study the subjective ele- 
 ments whose combination in the Christian 
 Endeavor scheme has given it the imme- 
 diate sympathy, concurrence and confi- 
 dence of the Christian youth of all de- 
 nominations. The importance of the soil 
 and the season is only relative. It is de- 
 termined by the quality of the seed. The 
 soil will not sustain us, and Autumn will 
 bring us no fruits if the seed has not 
 been sown in the spring time. Soil and 
 season are but external conditions, lifeless 
 circumstances, depending for their bless- 
 ings to humanity upon the germs of life 
 
 which they nourish. The seed is the liv- 
 (51). 
 
52 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 ing germ which, by its operations on the 
 soil and the season, supports our lives. 
 It is the influence which binds us to out- 
 ward nature. It is the regenerating prin- 
 ciple which works, unseen, the marvelous 
 evolutions and changes in the vegetable 
 kingdom, as the eternal Logos, which is the 
 seed of God's kingdom, is producing 
 changes and evolutions in human life. 
 
 The movement of thought is slowly for- 
 ward. She constructs institutions as they 
 are needed, and mercilessly tears them 
 down when their purpose has been served. 
 She reconstructs them when the change 
 of her position demands it, or leaves 
 them standing as landmarks to show the 
 course of her journey. When she has 
 need of any work along her highway of 
 progress she calls for it, and servants 
 from the roadside hedges appear to do 
 her bidding. Prophets, generals, kings, 
 reformers, all men of all talents, tenden- 
 cies and professions, have answered to 
 her call. Impediments have been thrown 
 across her pathway, but she has ordered 
 them removed — and they have gone. 
 
THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 53 
 
 Fences have been built to change the di- 
 rection of her motion and lead her off 
 into narrow byways, but the fences have 
 been levelled at her feet, and she has 
 marched triumphantly onward. Alluring 
 voices have called her to stop and turn 
 backward, and she has seemed at times to 
 halt and listen, but it has only been to 
 resume her journey with greater vigor. 
 Heavy weights have been thrown across 
 her shoulders, but they have only in- 
 creased her momentum. She is the in- 
 visible congregation, pressing onward to 
 her union with her Lord. She is the 
 Divine Life at work in humanity — God 
 in the human soul. Her progress has 
 been often clouded but never suspended. 
 Her road led through a darkened wilder- 
 ness. The mires and sloughs were about 
 her and before her. The heavy rain 
 stained and drenched her garments. The 
 fiery eyes of savage beasts glared threat- 
 eningly upon her. Only now and then a 
 prophetic flash of lightning from heaven 
 illuminated the way a few feet before her 
 — then again all was dense blackness. 
 
54 THE JUVEXILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 Her bitter wail pierced every corner of 
 the forest. She called for a Deliverer. 
 She called for Him in the Hebrew tongue 
 as her Messiah. She called for Him 
 in the Greek tongue as her Logos, or En- 
 lightener. She called for Him in the 
 Soman tongue as her Lord and Leader. 
 He heard her cry and came to show her 
 the true way. He left her His lamp to 
 be a guide unto her path and a light unto 
 her feet. She called for Luther, and he 
 obeyed her. Calvin, Knox, Wesley, all 
 have done her service. When she has 
 called for reformations, the church has 
 been broken and reconstructed. When 
 she has called for revolutions, nations 
 have trembled, political earthquakes have 
 followed, and governments have been 
 swallowed up, or brought to light. She 
 has cultivated the soil where the seeds of 
 human growths should be cast, and when 
 the planting season has come, she has 
 called for the seed and it has been 
 sown. This general trend of thought and 
 life is the omnipotent and irresistible 
 Zeit- Geist — the Time-Spirit — and all 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 55 
 
 minor movements have philosophic sig- 
 nificance only as they are studied in their 
 relation to this general forward move- 
 ment, which, aided or hindered by exter- 
 nal influences, has brought human life 
 from the uncultivated garden of its crea- 
 tion to the civilization that adorns the 
 threshold of the twentieth century. No 
 social, political, or religious movement or 
 agitation of any kind has ever occurred 
 that has not been in some degree the re- 
 sultant of some of the aggregated influ- 
 ences of this common trend; and on the 
 other hand, the influence of every move- 
 ment and agitation will be felt when the 
 grand total is made up in the end of time. 
 They are all contributing their forces to 
 the general flow of human society. 
 Sooner or later all the streams of influ- 
 ence unite themselves to the one univer- 
 sal current, and the current is affected by 
 it. In the centuries of the crusades 
 Oriental and Occidental life interchanged 
 influences, and both East and West have 
 felt the effects of the meeting, and always 
 will. In the early part of this century 
 
56 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 the discovery of the sacred literature of 
 the Eastern religions, through the me- 
 dium of an ancient hut new-found lan- 
 guage, gave a new impetus to European 
 thought; and influences which sprang 
 from Indian philosophers three thousand 
 years ago, and which no one two hundred 
 years since would have thought could 
 ever get beyond the Euphrates on ^the 
 West or the Islands of Japan on the 
 East, are now deeply stirring many cen- 
 ters of thought in Western civilization; 
 while the forces of our ideas and the in- 
 fluences of our achievements— elements 
 which had their birth in classic Athens, 
 civil Eome, or the wilds of a German for- 
 est two thousand years ago, are irresisti- 
 bly working their way into all currents of 
 Oriental life, vivifying and transforming 
 petrified nations by the introduction of a 
 more potent and active leaven. Our li- 
 braries are being flooded with the sacred 
 books of the East, and societies of The- 
 osophy and esoteric Buddhisfri are spring- 
 ing up in the chief cities of Europe and 
 America; while Christian ideas are taking 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 57 
 
 hold, with a much firmer grasp, of the 
 Eastern mind. Ideas, like men, must 
 bide their time. A naked idea may be 
 born in one man's mind and he may 
 preach it eloquently, fervently and confi- 
 dently, but if no one else can understand 
 it, or sympathize with him, he is regarded 
 only as a crazy man or fanatic; he is 
 thrown into a dungeon or burned at the 
 stake, crowned with thorns and crucified, 
 or driven from his country, and his idea 
 seems to perish with him. But as time 
 goes on, the same idea may be born in 
 the mind of another man, and he preaches 
 it, no more eloquently nor confidently 
 than the first, but it gains adherents. It 
 falls like a spark in the dry tinder. 
 Thousands become his followers. What 
 is the reason for it? The reason is not in 
 the man, nor the idea itself; but in the 
 agreement and coincidence of the forces 
 and influences which make up and con- 
 trol universal life. • Forces which have 
 been latent, or only operating in a few 
 minds, suddenly by some wave of popular 
 influence are washed out in view of the 
 
58 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 public gaze and become popular jewels. 
 Christian Endeavor is simply one of the 
 popular jewels of this generation. 
 
 Men sometimes sneer at what they call 
 " waves of popular excitement," and 
 great movements which have profoundly 
 influenced society in their century and 
 generation they sneeringly call "mere 
 effervescences of passing enthusiasm." 
 Such sneering is both unscholarly and 
 egotistical. It is unscholarly and unphil- 
 osophical because it fails to catch the 
 note of power that every movement must 
 have before it can strike the popular chord, 
 and if it seems to have struck the popular 
 chord, we show an extreme of egotism 
 when we deny that there is music in the 
 strain for other ears, merely because our 
 own have not caught it, or condemn the 
 soul that has drawn inspiration from what 
 might strike us as discord. Such sneer- 
 ing is also blind, so far as past human life 
 is concerned, and if it has studied history 
 at all, it has not studied it scientifically. 
 All human progress has been by what may 
 be called waves of popular excitement, or 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 59 
 
 evanescent glows of enthusiasm ; and it is 
 the highest compliment that can be paid 
 a great idea, to say that it has been able 
 to be the inspiration of these same waves 
 of popular enthusiasm, and to so direct 
 them that they may serve their generation 
 until their force has spent itself. And no 
 man or movement ever served a passing 
 generation and did not in that service 
 bless all coming ages. All gloomy and 
 unhappy pessimism would pass away if we 
 threw ourselves into sympathy with the 
 potent ideas of our times. Christianity 
 was itself a growth of popular enthusiasm 
 when it began, and no Greek or Roman 
 philosopher or historian would have 
 called it anything else. But it was an en- 
 thusiasm for a divine ideal — it was an 
 abiding enthusiasm. It had its germ from 
 God, and its roots were planted deep in 
 the soil of the human soul. But every 
 idea is a blessing, when its tilne comes, by 
 its own innate worth. What, then, are 
 the subjective elements in the Christian 
 Endeavor seed which enable us to account 
 for its power? 
 
60 THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 
 
 Christian Endeavor is a Protestant 
 movement. Protestantism has all to gain 
 from it. It supplies needs which had been 
 felt only in Protestant churches. It feeds 
 and satisfies the devotional hunger of the 
 young which the mystic and symbolic wor- 
 ship of the Roman Church quiets and stu- 
 pefies. The emphasis which Protestant- 
 ism placed upon faith alone naturally 
 resulted in defining the true nature and 
 objects of faith in any number of differ- 
 ent ways. In Protestant religion, there- 
 fore, theology became the predominating 
 feature. It has been speculative and 
 fluctuating, for faith, the object of its 
 constant attention, has been ever-chang- 
 ing. It has made little of the aesthetic 
 phase of religious worship, and the doc- 
 trine of works has been but secondarily 
 considered. The Oxford movement was 
 a reaction against it on aesthetic grounds. 
 It went to work restoring the cathedrals 
 and reintroducing the elaborate ritualism 
 of the Mediaeval Church. It was a mor- 
 bid but a natural reaction. It was inevit- 
 able, but it has contributed no positive 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 61 
 
 nor permanent blessing to humanity. 
 The Christian Endeavor idea is both devo- 
 tional and practical. While not in any 
 way underestimating faith, the theme of 
 its vigorous life has been works. It looks 
 out upon a mundane existence and gives 
 to it a religious aspect. It is systematic 
 and business-like. It is natural that in 
 its reaction from dogmatic Christianity it 
 should make much of practical Christian- 
 ity. It does not trouble itself about the 
 theological question, "What must I be- 
 lieve?" but it starts with the question of 
 Paul, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
 do? " and in apostolic fervor it sets about 
 reproducing Paul's life of active service. 
 The great reactions of the present century 
 have been doctrinal (or anti-doctrinal) in 
 character; they have been negative or 
 protesting movements, carrying out the 
 spirit of Protestantism until it has almost 
 become distasteful. Christian Endeavor 
 is a reaction against the spirit of these re- 
 actions, and also the spirit which resisted 
 them. These reactions were analytic in 
 their general operation. They discovered 
 
62 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 new mines of truth and did good service 
 in their day, but so deep had they gone in 
 the analyses of their special differences 
 that sectarian barriers had been heaped 
 to great heights. Christian Endeavor is 
 synthetic and catholic. It sounds the sig- 
 nal for the coming up out of the pits to 
 mingle again in one common company. 
 Twenty-five years aga when two Christians 
 met, the first question which they mutu- 
 ally interchanged was, " Of what denomi- 
 nation are you? " But to-day when Chris- 
 tian Endeavorers meet — whether they are 
 Baptists, Presbyterians, or Congregation- 
 alists — they forget for the time that they 
 are anything more than Christians. And 
 that man now who insists upon ringing the 
 changes on doctrinal points, and pounding 
 away on sectarian distinctions, soon finds 
 himself without an audience. This whole 
 movement is a keen and clear broadside 
 against sectarian narrowness. This note 
 of universality lias been quickly caught up 
 by the pulpit, which is always in the van 
 of every good work, and in the great 
 Christian Endeavor Conventions, Meth- 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 63 
 
 odist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Disci- 
 ple, are found sitting harmoniously in the 
 same seats, while their respective pastors 
 on the platform are vying with each other 
 to see who can say the nicest things of the 
 new drift. The first element, then, in the 
 seed itself which has given it its marvel- 
 ously rapid and extensive growth, is its 
 synthetic and catholic spirit, as opposed 
 to the analytic and narrow spirit. 
 
 The Christian Endeavor idea takes hold 
 of the sense of conscientiousness, which is 
 one of the most sensitive moral elements 
 in juvenile life. Its aim is not to culti- 
 vate this conscientiousness, but it assumes 
 it to exist and utilizes it. The conscience, 
 or the sense of duty within us, comprises 
 the chief part of the capital upon which 
 the business of the Christian life is begun, 
 and he who makes his sense of duty a 
 thing too sacred to be harnessed and used, 
 robs his practical life of its most valuable 
 support. When the conscience revolted 
 in the Protestant Reformation, it pulled 
 away from everything characterized as 
 Roman Catholic with such vigor that 
 
64 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 when the fetters broke, its inertia landed 
 it on the extreme opposite ground. The 
 freedom of the conscience was then recov- 
 ered for all time. No power on earth will 
 ever again enchain it. It is God who has 
 wrought its liberation. It now believes 
 what it chooses, rejects what it chooses, 
 promises what it chooses. It has a right 
 to be free, but the question which Chris- 
 tian Endeavor asks is, "Has it a right to 
 be idle?" I knew a shiftless man in the 
 country. He lived in a little rented log 
 house, for which he was supposed to pay 
 $2.00 per month. He had a wife and 
 family. He was able-bodied and strong. 
 He cherished as an inalienable boon the 
 freedom of an American citizen. He 
 worked when it pleased him, which was 
 not often, and loafed the rest of the time. 
 When he worked at all he did only what 
 pleased him, for he was a free man. He 
 would never consent to labor under the 
 orders of another, for he was a free man. 
 Month after month of the summer passed, 
 and the harvests were calling for laborers, 
 but he was not in the working business. 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 65 
 
 He tinkered around his own house, be- 
 cause there he could be a free man. The 
 shades and winds of autumn came, and 
 the gorgeous-tinted leaves began to fall. 
 The sound of rustling sheaves of corn, the 
 clink of the hoes in the potatoe-field, and 
 the melancholy quack of passing flocks of 
 geese on their way to southern climates — 
 all warned him of the approach of winter. 
 But he still continued hugging his shad- 
 owy phantpm — liberty. The cold blasts 
 of winter came. The snow lay two feet 
 deep. His children, half clothed, huddled 
 about the broken stove. The wood-box 
 was almost empty. The wind howled dis- 
 mally without, and whistled through tho 
 cracks of the walls and doors, carrying 
 streaks of snow across the floor. His 
 wife, in a storm of rage, announces the 
 unwelcome news that the cupboard is 
 empty. She calls him a good-for-nothing 
 wretch — worthless and negligent — and he 
 cannot gainsay her word. He puts on his 
 cap, draws it down over his ears, looks 
 out of the window at the driving storm, 
 shivers at the view, and goes out. He 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 calls on his nearest neighbor, and after 
 sitting by the fire for two hours, talking 
 about politics from the Revolution down, 
 and how the boys in blue whipped the 
 rebs at Gettysburg and Appommatox and 
 Shiloh, he makes known his errand — he 
 would like to borrow a few pounds of 
 pork, and a little flour, and perhaps a lit- 
 tle blackstrap molasses. But his frugal 
 neighbor knows him, and he has neither 
 pork, flour nor molasses to lend. So our 
 friend goes on to the next neighbor, thus 
 making the rounds of the neighborhood 
 and returning in the evening with the 
 scanty proceeds of his borrowing expedi- 
 tion to a starving family. He is free, but 
 he starves on his freedom, because his 
 freedom is idleness. So I have known it 
 to be with some young Christians. 
 "Come," it is said to them, "will you 
 promise this?" "No, I won't make any 
 promise. I will do it if it comes conven- 
 ient, but I shan't make any promise; I am 
 not going to bind myself. I shan't sign 
 any pledge. I won't commit myself to 
 anything. I'll do what I can, and I don't 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 67 
 
 need to sign a pledge or contract, or make 
 a promise. I want to hold my conscience 
 free." This is the type of character 
 which Christian Endeavor has had to deal 
 with. As a movement, then, it. means the 
 inculcation of new principles of religious 
 action. The Protestant doctrine of the 
 freedom of the conscience has developed 
 in many cases into the doctrine of per- 
 sonal irresponsibility, or the idleness of 
 the conscience. This taking hold of the 
 conscience — the sense of duty — and util- 
 izing it in a religious vow or pledge, is 
 bringing back into the service of religion 
 an element in human nature which prima- 
 rily belongs to it. "Religion," says Kant, 
 "(as subjective) consists in our recogniz- 
 ing all our duties as Divine Command- 
 ments." That the Roman Church abused 
 monastic vows in the Middle Ages is said 
 by Christian Endeavor to be a puerile rea- 
 son for our objecting forever to vows alto- 
 gether. At any rate, the chief good 
 which the Roman Church was enabled in 
 former ages to accomplish came largely 
 through her svstem of vows. That some 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 of her vows are abominable does not con- 
 demn the principle, and it is full time 
 that Protestants should begin to recover 
 from that individuating tendency which, 
 carried to an extreme, will bear the fruits 
 of unbridled anarchy — anarchy that even 
 now begins to threaten the destruction of 
 those vows and pledges w T hich are the 
 basis of our moral and social order. The 
 Christian Endeavor pledge is one of the 
 strong features of the movement, and 
 gives to it a peculiar significance. Other 
 religious movements have presented 
 creeds, either written or unwritten — an 
 enumeration of things to be believed or 
 denied — in which case they have all crys- 
 tallized into denominations and been 
 added to the number of sects. Christian 
 Endeavor, instead of a creed, presents a 
 pledge. Assuming that the possibilities 
 of faith have been well-nigh exhausted, 
 she takes up her abode w T ith her opposite 
 neighbor, faithfulness. The reasonable 
 hope has been expressed that the pledge 
 of Christian Endeavor will do for the 
 glory of religion among the youth of the 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 69 
 
 twentieth century what the knightly vow 
 did for the glory of Chivalry among the 
 youth in former centuries. 
 
 The Christian Endeavor idea is positive 
 in spirit. It takes up its ground in affir- 
 mation, not in negation. What it can not 
 affirm it takes no trouble to deny. Its 
 tone is rather that of the New Testament 
 than that of the Old. The Ten Com- 
 mandments are largely prohibitions — 
 "Thou shall not." The Sermon on the 
 Mount is a beatitude upon those who are 
 merciful, meek, pure in heart, peace- 
 makers; upon those who, instead of con- 
 cealing their light under a bushel, bring 
 it out that it may shine before men — it is 
 positive. This is the great distinction 
 between the religion of Jesus and those of 
 Buddha, Confucius and others. Buddha 
 said: "The extinction of desire is the 
 real self-conquest. To be fixed in spir- 
 itual contemplation is to conquer the 
 power of evil." Jesus said: "He that 
 doeth the will of the Father in heaven — 
 he shall know the doctrine. He that 
 doeth my commandments, he it is that 
 
70 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 loveth me." Buddha, in a striking par- 
 allelism to the Decalogue, says: * "Ten 
 things are evil: murder, theft, lust, are 
 evils of the body; evasion, slander, lying, 
 flattery, of the speech; envy, anger, de- 
 lusion, of the thought. Thou must not 
 kill, nor steal, nor commit adultery, nor 
 lie, nor be drunken. Avoid dancing, 
 theatres, high seats, covetousness, costly 
 dresses and perfumes." Jesus sums all 
 this up in a positive form when he says: 
 "This is my commandment, that ye love 
 one another. These things have I spoken 
 unto you that my joy might remain in 
 you and that your joy might be full." 
 Confucius said in his general law of life : 
 "Never do unto others what you would 
 not want done to yourself." This ex- 
 presses negatively what the Golden Rule 
 presents positively — ' ' Do unto others 
 what you would have them do unto you." 
 One may sit inactive in his seat and obey 
 Confucius; one cannot remain inactive 
 and obey Jesus. The negative spirit be- 
 
 * The fort3'-two sections Sutra. 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 71 
 
 longs to the oriental mind; the positive 
 spirit to the Occidental mind. The theme 
 of Buddhism is renunciation, of Chris- 
 tianity, life. But the theology of the last 
 few centuries has rather tended to obscure 
 and belittle personal service as bearing 
 no weight in the scheme of religion. Man 
 has been rather thrown back upon nega- 
 tive ground as possessing no worth in 
 himself. Eesolutions for the control of 
 conduct have abounded in restrictions — 
 pleasures to avoid and things to refrain 
 from doing. To such an extent was this 
 tendency carried that self-suppression, a 
 negative virtue of it, if a virtue at all, be- 
 came the dominating law of life — an end 
 in itself. As it was wittily said, the ex- 
 treme Puritanism opposed cock-fighting 
 and bull-baiting less because they caused 
 animals pain than that they afforded man 
 pleasure, and oftentimes sports that were 
 innocent and harmless were more emphat- 
 ically condemned than practices which re- 
 sulted in both degradation and misery. 
 But this negative conduct of life was 
 never popular, and could not, by the very 
 
72 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 constitution of the wide-awake, up-and- 
 doing temperament of the European 
 stock, long hold. It might, by the help 
 of favoring circumstances, cling to a gen- 
 eration or two, but when the native ele- 
 ment returns again which sees not the 
 conditions that produced the negation of 
 a century past, it must go. Christian 
 Endeavor therefore also celebrates a re- 
 suscitation or rejuvenation of the posi- 
 tive element in religion. It substitutes 
 obligations for restrictions; not a nega- 
 tive rule is given; every item of the pledge 
 is positive. The bringing in of this posi- 
 tive element into the religious life of the 
 young bars much of the skepticism natu- 
 ral to youth or deprives it of its season- 
 ing, for skepticism is operative only in 
 negation. With this brief study of the 
 elementary principles in the Christian 
 Endeavor idea — the germ of life in the 
 seed, we shall more intelligently appre- 
 ciate and sympathetically follow the phe- 
 nomena of the movement — the growth of 
 the blade. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE BLADE. 
 
 (73) 
 
IV. 
 
 THE BLADE. 
 
 T"*he Christian Endeavor movement can 
 * not at present be further than the 
 first stage of its development. As it ap- 
 pears to us now, it manifests only the 
 phenomena of a tender but promising 
 blade. In an analysis of the idea we 
 have also observed the favorable circum- 
 stances which surround it. Now the 
 plant itself has been growing before our 
 eyes for more than ten years. Now when 
 we speak of the Christian Endeavor move- 
 ment we include all minor and denomin- 
 ational organizations among the young 
 which have re-expressed the Christian 
 Endeavor thought, reproducing under 
 other names its element of strength, save 
 
 perhaps its catholic and synthetic spirit. 
 
 (75) 
 
76 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 The fact that the idea has been widely 
 plagiarized and its general organization 
 and methods successfully imitated gives 
 extra emphasis to its importance as a 
 potent influence of the times. By the 
 Juvenile Revival, then, I mean the general 
 infusion of young life into the activity of 
 the church in these recent years. And as 
 Christian Endeavor is the exponent of 
 this Juvenile Revival we make it the rep- 
 resentative subject of our study. What 
 the Christian Endeavor Movement is to 
 this era, other movements have been to 
 former eras, and we can fully appreciate 
 its place in the religious thought and life 
 of this decade only when we range it in 
 line with the great movements of a simi- 
 lar character in other ages. The close of 
 the nineteenth century presents some 
 striking points of resemblance to the close 
 of the thirteenth. Both are seasons of 
 almost universal peace preceded by almost 
 universal war. Both are seasons of wide- 
 spread religious awakening and interest. 
 Both celebrate a revival of Christian ac- 
 tivities together with a renaissance in the 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 77 
 
 one case of art and literature, and in the 
 other of commercial enterprise and intel- 
 lectual life. The former period is about 
 three hundred years after the completion 
 of Europe's Christianization. The latter 
 is about three hundred years after the 
 completion of Europe's re-Christianiza- 
 tion in the Protestant Revival. A more 
 detailed picture of the close of the thir- 
 teenth century will bring out this com- 
 parison more fully and enable us to ap- 
 preciate better the strength or weakness 
 of our own. 
 
 For two hundred years preceding the 
 crusade period the church had no Chris- 
 tian activity to offer the scores of tribes 
 and nations which she had Christianized. 
 She had promised them conquest in the 
 hours of battle, and when they returned 
 triumphant from the field, confident that 
 the Christian's God had given them the 
 victory, they received the baptism of the 
 church and offered her their swords to be 
 consecrated to her service, for they knew 
 no service but the service of the sword. 
 Thus they turned their new-found zeal 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 against the heathen sheltered in the wilds 
 beyond the confines of Christendom, un- 
 til all Europe was brought, more or less 
 by violence, into spiritual communion of 
 the church. But for tw T o hundred years 
 after the completion of this great work 
 the sword had no fire of religious enthusi- 
 asm behind it — the sacred touch of the 
 church could no longer give it edge. For 
 two long centuries there was a general 
 restless sense of religious inactivity. The 
 poor Jews suffered then, and it was an 
 unfortunate time for the heretic. Relig- 
 ious indifference naturally followed this 
 universal .idleness, and diversion and rec- 
 reation from the monotonous inactivity, 
 which the church seemed careless or un- 
 able to fill up, were found in bitter and 
 prolonged warfare between feudal lords 
 and rival royal houses. The long pent-up 
 force found a welcome outlet in the cru- 
 sades, and the preaching of one religious 
 enthusiast was sufficient to raise all 
 Europe to arms, the flame even spread- 
 ing to the hearts of the children, who on 
 the banks of the Rhine assembled a vast 
 
THE JUYEXILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 army of their number and marched south- 
 ward to the Mediterranean, perishing by 
 thousands and being carried off on the 
 way, until when they arrived at the sea, 
 only a fraction of their original number 
 remained to sail for the IJoly Land. 
 Such a holy enthusiasm as that expended 
 in the crusades, had it been directed in 
 legitimate pursuits would have given a 
 different shade to the darkness of the 
 centuries which followed. It is a pathetic 
 picture. Poor, misguided man ! filled with 
 a holy zeal, burning with desire to serve 
 his Savior with the highest service that he 
 knows, with the crimson cross upon his 
 breast, the stamp of religious fervor on 
 his brow, the shout of "Deus vult! — God 
 willeth it!" on his lips, dying on the 
 parched or malarial plains of an uncon- 
 genial clime, under an unfriendly sun, or 
 laying down his life before the cimeter of 
 the Saracen within sight of the white 
 sepulcher of his Lord, resigning all with 
 the faith of the martyr Stephen, whose 
 last words he utters with his dying 
 breath, — "Lord Jesus, receive my spir- 
 
80 THE JTJVENIL E BE VIVAL . 
 
 it " — in all this there is something pathet- 
 ically sublime! Thus misery untold, 
 sorrow and bloodshed unrecorded, were 
 wrought by a Christian zeal which, other- 
 wise directed, might have made us infi- 
 nitely better, happier and more intelligent 
 to-day. But as it was, the first, or the 
 eleventh century crusade, ended in gen- 
 eral failure and disaster ; and as it does not 
 require much of a set-back to cool a sud- 
 den and passing ardor, so the first crusade 
 was followed by a period of extreme cold- 
 ness and dissatisfaction with the church, 
 which was itself affected by the general 
 disappointed. Heresies multiplied ; moral 
 and religious torpor followed the disaster 
 of the first crusade. Crime became gen- 
 eral and society demoralized. Politics, 
 which bore the natural fruit of a Machi- 
 avelli a few years later, was devoid of 
 every sentiment which was not selfish and 
 utilitarian. The condition of the church 
 is thus vividly painted by Gieseler : 
 
 " While the system of ecclesiastical 
 doctrines, with its progressive develop- 
 ment, was enclosing the reason with bonds 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 81 
 
 ever narrowing, while at the same time 
 the means of salvation were more and 
 more losing their spiritual character and 
 their moral power by the one-sided specu- 
 lations of schoolmen, and also sinking to 
 a lifeless mechanism in their administra- 
 tion; lastly, while this tortuous Church 
 system, despairing of any spiritual influ- 
 ence, was endeavoring to win recognition 
 for itself by continual acts of external 
 aggression; it could not but be that the 
 rebellions against the Church which in 
 earlier times came forward one by one 
 should now be growing more numerous 
 and more powerful." In the southern 
 part of France and the northern part of 
 Italy the Cathari, a devout and intelli- 
 gent sect, spread widely and rapidly dur- 
 ing the twelfth century, and toward the 
 close of the century (1170) the Wal- 
 denses arose. Discarding speculative en- 
 thusiasm, they " aimed to realize again 
 apostolic Christianity and all its inward 
 devotion." The Scriptures were their 
 text-book, and so zealously and intelli- 
 gently did they search them that they 
 
82 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 were led far away from the ecclesiasticism 
 of their day. So popular were their plea 
 and their methods of preaching, and so 
 simple their mode of worship, that the 
 Waldensian heresy was received as a res- 
 urrection of the ancient Gospel. Thous- 
 ands of the pious and intelligent among 
 the common people, the gentry, and even 
 the nobility heard it gladly. Rome be- 
 came alarmed and thundered. But the 
 simple folk, strengthened by their scrip- 
 tural faith, replied that "they should 
 obey God rather than man." Such an 
 exasperating reply wrought their exter- 
 mination. They might have answered 
 the Jewish hierarchy thus, and been " set 
 at liberty," but they had no business to 
 speak in such style to the Pope of Rome. 
 In his simple and popular methods of 
 preaching, and going among the poor and 
 lowly, Peter Waldo gave the suggestion 
 and furnished the impetus to the greatest 
 benefactor of the Dark Ages — St. Fran- 
 cis of Assisi— who, in a movement com- 
 posed of three orders, founded upon a 
 vow, not unlike the Christian Endeavor 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 83 
 
 pledge, illuminated a path of Christian 
 service, the like of which had not before 
 been seen since the close of the Apostolic 
 era — a movement the influence of which 
 we feel to-day. We cannot pass on with- 
 out observing that a general appeal for a 
 return to the simplicity of the apostolic 
 faith and methods in religion has been 
 usually followed by such general and live- 
 ly interest in genuine and practical Chris- 
 tianity as the Franciscan and Christian 
 Endeavor movements. Francis appro- 
 priated the elements of strength which 
 he saw the Waldensian teaching pos- 
 sessed, without antagonizing the Church. 
 He rather used them for her benefit in 
 leading her on to a life of Christian ac- 
 tivity such as she had not known before. 
 In the nineteenth century the plea for a 
 return to the simple Christianity of the 
 New Testament has been more popular 
 and potent than ever before in the history 
 of Protestantism. The work of the Hal- 
 danes in Scotland, of the Disciples in 
 America, whose marvelous growth has in 
 less than seventy-five years carried their 
 
84 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 missionaries and Church to all parts of 
 the globe ; to say nothing of the various 
 other movements, such as the Christian 
 Connection in this country and the Bible 
 Christians in England, having the same 
 purpose before them, — all this is evidence 
 enough of the truth of this assertion. 
 Now the Christian Endeavor movement 
 appropriates and combines the most 
 practical and popular elements of these 
 other movements, not to antagonize the 
 existing forms of sectarianism, but to 
 adapt them to the wants of sectarianism 
 in such a way as to lead it to a more 
 united and therefore a higher and richer 
 life. What the Franciscan movement 
 was to the thirteenth century, Christian 
 Endeavor is to the nineteenth. 
 
 Let us draw this parallel still further. 
 The close of the thirteenth century was 
 the active period of the Renaissance. 
 All the nations of Europe were awaken- 
 ing to a new life. Vernacular literature 
 was rising over the ruins of the classics. 
 The common people from the Mediter- 
 ranean to the British Isles were growing 
 
THE JUVENILIS REVIVAL. 85 
 
 into the consciousness of a common life. 
 In Italy they had their Boccaccio; in 
 England their Chaucer. They spoke in 
 different languages, but both alike ad- 
 dressed their hearers in their vernacular 
 tongues, and the tales that they told had 
 the same foundations. Art, commerce 
 and literature flourished on the shores of 
 the Mediterranean; and in the North, 
 colleges of eager students, numbered by 
 thousands, listened to bold and learned 
 professors. A grand and exciting age it 
 was. The cords of life were drawn to 
 high tension. But the danger to true re- 
 ligion and therefore to morality is always 
 greatest in nervous times. "There was 
 a terribly dark side to the age," says 
 Canon Westcott. "The leprosy which 
 was then the terror and scourge of the 
 towns was the symbol of evils greater and 
 more subtle which were eating into the 
 heart of society. The Kingdom of God 
 was on the point of becoming a kingdom 
 of the world. The splendid churches 
 which serve for the inspiration of modern 
 art were too often built by extortion. 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 Religion was materialized both in its 
 creed and its worship. Ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction was invading the w T hole 
 sphere of life. The very consolations of 
 faith were being degraded into a luxury 
 for the wealthy. The poor — the poor, on 
 whom Christ pronounced his first bene- 
 diction,— were in danger of being forgot- 
 ten. 
 
 "But the Spirit of Christ was not left 
 without a witness. Preachers arose on 
 many sides who vindicated for the King- 
 dom of God the claim to righteousness 
 and peace and joy. For the most part 
 their work was transitory because it was 
 destructive, but one among them, Francis 
 of Assisi, spoke in life so that his work 
 can never cease to move." 
 
 To the Franciscan movement, more 
 than to any other influence, is due the 
 credit of having tided the Christian re- 
 ligion through the rapids of the Renais- 
 sance. As then understood, it hardly 
 seemed worthy to survive the general re- 
 construction of things, but when the life 
 and character of the humble Man of Naz- 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 areth were again brought into touch with 
 human life in all its relations by a sacri- 
 fice, devotion and spirituality which re- 
 vealed to man a new glory in himself, 
 Christianity again endeared itself to hu- 
 manity with a still firmer attachment. It 
 is these surprising revelations of the 
 potency of our religion that dumbfound 
 and scatter her assailants. The specula- 
 tions and apologetics of the schoolmen 
 could never have arrested the disintegra- 
 tion which had set in. But when a new 
 power showed itself in a great organiza- 
 tion of earnest men and women who dis- 
 persed themselves among the poor, al- 
 leviated their suffering, shared their pov- 
 erty, preached to them the Gospel and 
 despised the very things which were then 
 the common craze — material wealth and 
 learning — the disintegration ceased and 
 the repair began, for it was an infusion of 
 fresh young blood into the arteries of a 
 dying church. 
 
 Our present period is a repetition of 
 much in the picture that we have drawn. 
 It is a critical age. We cannot expect 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 that the claim of sacredness is to shield a 
 written page from the scrutiny of criti- 
 cism. Criticism is in the air. That it is 
 breathed in with every inspiration is the 
 fault of no one. Examination of evi- 
 dences is the spirit of the time. The 
 higher critics are not to be hushed as chil- 
 dren that are about to make some im- 
 proper disclosure. They will speak out, 
 and it is right they should, if they have 
 any new truth to offer. If Moses really is 
 not the author of the Pentateuch, we feel 
 no horror in being correctly informed. 
 Some claim that we have all the light now 
 on that subject that we can have, and that 
 opening the window will let in no more. 
 Others claim that it will. Open* the win- 
 dow, then, and if any light enters we are 
 so much the gainers thereby; but if it is 
 darker without than within, we have lost 
 nothing. Apologetics and scholastic the- 
 ology will do no more now than they did 
 in the thirteenth century. Neither will 
 orthodox scolding amount to much. The 
 critic will only become the bolder; the 
 heretic the more numerous; the scoffer 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 89 
 
 will scoff the louder, and through it all 
 the sinner will sin the harder. But they 
 are all beginning to stand still in wonder- 
 ing astonishment at the marvelous spec- 
 tacle of more than a million youth who 
 are alive with a fervent evangelical spirit. 
 Youth who were religiously either dead 
 or torpid spring up from the soil in a 
 mighty army as if by magic. From the 
 preacher yi his study and the editor in his 
 sanctum, to the gambler at his table or 
 the drunkard in the saloon — all are talk- 
 ing about it. The Christian Endeavor 
 conventions eclipse in number, earnest- 
 ness, and even enthusiasm, the political 
 conventions, and their mass-meetings are 
 seldom failures, rain or shine. Composed 
 of young people from a score of different 
 denominations, the most perfect harmony 
 prevails throughout the organization, and 
 discord seldom enters even into the com- 
 mittees. It has come as a new revelation 
 of the power of spiritual Christianity at a 
 time when her enemies were particularly 
 confident in their assertions that she was 
 really but little more now than a lifeless 
 
90 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 carcass. They are hushed at its sight. 
 That Christianity has yet a germ of life in 
 it is proved by the vigorous blade that has 
 grown up right before their eyes, and in- 
 fidelity must own its prophecies falsified 
 once more. David Hume on his death- 
 bed disavowed any fear of death, but re- 
 gretted that he could not live a few more 
 years that he might behold the downfall 
 of Christianity, that vast system of super- 
 stition against which he had employed the 
 power of a gigantic intellect. It was a 
 kind provision of Providence which did 
 not permit him a view two hundred years 
 intd the future, for his pretty delusion of 
 the near collapse of the Christian religion 
 would have been rudely torn from him, 
 and he would have sunk back upon his 
 pillow in* despair at the # prospect. No 
 philosopher of his century so influenced 
 English thought as he. And, cherished as 
 his memory is by the thinking world, his 
 conclusion concerning Christianity w T ill 
 not be received. And this one fact infi- 
 nitely increases our respect for the power 
 of the Christian faith. Many in these 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 91 
 
 late years have reproduced Hume's proph- 
 ecies of the approaching death of our re- 
 ligion. But this great Juvenile Revival 
 has come as an opportune contradiction 
 of their hopes — to guarantee the safety 
 for a few* generations more of the Ark of 
 the Covenant. 
 
 The Franciscan order was also a lay in- 
 stitution. This was largely the secret of 
 its power. Francis himself never received 
 episcopal ordination. His rule was to 
 the Franciscan movement what the pledge 
 is to Christian Endeavor. The former 
 is chiefly negative; the latter is posi- 
 tive. The former required the renuncia- 
 tion of all ill-gotten gains; abstinence 
 from aggressive war and litigation; the 
 avoidance of elegant dress and amuse- 
 ments. It also required meeting from 
 time to time for worship and works of de- 
 votion. It was the negative principle in 
 the Franciscan order that caused its de- 
 cline almost immediately after the death 
 of its founder. It did not take into suffi- 
 cient account the element of individuality, 
 as one of the essential facts of life. 
 
92 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 Francis tried to destroy it. He once 
 commanded that a rebellious brother 
 should be buried, and when the earth had 
 been thrown over him, he stooped down 
 and asked, "Art thou dead, brother? Art 
 thou dead?" "Yes," replied the poor 
 fellow, "I am dead now." "Arise, then," 
 said Francis, "I will have dead men for 
 my followers — not living." All this is 
 good enough in its place — the complete 
 surrender of self — but it is only a prepara- 
 tory step to something better and higher. 
 When the pious young man came to Jesus, 
 the first thing commanded him was the 
 renunciation of riches, the goods on 
 which his heart was set — self, in reality; 
 but this was only preliminary to his taking 
 up his cross and following his Master. 
 All the Mediaeval orders made too much 
 of renunciation and not enough of life. 
 It was the ascetic tendency which was the 
 cause of their downfall. Looking over 
 their ruins, then, it is gratifying to ob- 
 serve that none of that ascetic tendency 9 
 the germ of disintegration, is found in 
 Christian Endeavor. It was not to take 
 
THE JUVEX1LE BEVIVAL. 93 
 
 life from us that Jesus came, but to give 
 us life, and that more abundantly. Chris- 
 tian Endeavor, then, so far as this char- 
 acteristic is concerned, has no fears of 
 decay. Other seeds of disease it may con- 
 tain which we cannot discern, but it will 
 not die of the same disease of which the 
 Franciscan movement died. 
 
 Another point of resemblance between 
 these two phenomena of religious history 
 is that both are eminently spiritual, and 
 both disavow any interest in intellectual 
 speculations. Francis would have noth- 
 ing to do with learning. The Franciscan 
 interest in scholastics began only after his 
 death and with the decline of the move- 
 ment. Dr. Clark has wisely and emphat- 
 ically expressed himself on this matter: 
 "It cannot be insisted on too strongly 
 that the Society of Christian Endeavor is 
 first and last and always a religious 
 society. It has social and other features, 
 but it is neither a social nor literary 
 society." It has been as a spiritual move- 
 ment that it has succeeded. As an educa- 
 tional enterprise it would have done 
 
94 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 but little. The mental education of our 
 youth is very well looked after; it is the 
 hunger of their souls that needs satisfy- 
 ing, and the success which yet awaits 
 Christian Endeavor will be received only 
 as it remains a spiritual force. " Spiritual 
 life," says John Alzog, "even in the 
 worst seasons, never entirely dies out in 
 the church. When wants are felt new 
 orders spring into life and supply them, 
 and fresh energies are put into action." 
 It is to supply a spiritual want that Chris- 
 tian Endeavor has sprung into life, and 
 when it ceases to supply that want its 
 mission will have ended, it will be con- 
 signed to the chambers of the past, and 
 something else will arise to take its place. 
 There are many other movements in the 
 history of the church with which Chris- 
 tian Endeavor might be profitably com- 
 pared, but none that bear out the resem- 
 blance so minutely as the Franciscan. In 
 1119 nine young knights at Jerusalem 
 constituted themselves into an ecclesias- 
 tical order, and took a vow of service to 
 the church. This was the origin of the 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 95 
 
 orders of Knighthood which gave a relig- 
 ious aspect to war and chivalry, and 
 opened a field of activity for the fervor of 
 religious youth. Christian Endeavor pos- 
 sesses the chivalric devotion of the 
 Knightly orders, without their brutality 
 and licentiousness. 
 
 In 1384, Gerard Groot, of Deventer, 
 Holland, established an independent asso- 
 ciation which in its practical and devo- 
 tional life presents many points of simi- 
 larity to Christian Endeavor. It was 
 composed of both clergy and laity, and 
 was called the Clergy and Brethren of the 
 Common Life. The members were young 
 men who "endeavored to promote Chris- 
 tian piety among themselves and others, 
 and worked for their end by fixed devo- 
 tional exercises to which every one had 
 free access." It rapidly spread through- 
 out the Netherlands and Northern Ger- 
 many. Its resemblance to the Young 
 Men's Christian Association is still more 
 striking. There has, for many reasons 
 which may appear obvious enough, been 
 no general movement of Protestantism 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 with which Christian Endeavor can be 
 compared, for, with the exception of the 
 Sunday-school and the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, there have been no 
 organized ideas that could break over 
 denominational wails. Religious move- 
 ments in Protestantism have nearly all 
 been separative or sectarian. Christian 
 Endeavor is aggregative, and therefore 
 stands alone. It is not but a tender 
 blade. The soil, the season, the sunlight 
 have favored it. No insect seems to have 
 touched it. What fruit it will bear in its 
 maturity we shall leave to the fancy of 
 another chapter. 
 
V. 
 THE EAR. 
 
 1 Then the ear "—Jesus. 
 
 " Respect the promise of youth. The plant may stop at 
 the blade without flowering; at the flower without fruit- 
 ing." — Confucius. 
 
 7 (97) 
 
V. 
 THE EAR. 
 
 T Titherto we have been traveling on the 
 * * solid ground of the past, the pres- 
 ent, the known. We must in this chapter 
 spread our wings upon the ether of the 
 future, the unknown. We have nothing 
 now to deal in but pure surmise and con- 
 jecture. But the field of surmise and 
 conjecture is often more fascinating and 
 fruitful than the field of fact. Our eyes 
 are made for looking forward. The pres- 
 ent does not seem to be enough for us to 
 live in. The chief activity of life is in 
 that which is prospective; while our re- 
 pose is in retrospect. There is a calm, a 
 quiet, a restfulness in past memories. 
 They may bring us sadness, but they al- 
 ways bring us rest. It is like looking 
 (99) 
 
100 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 down the winding and rugged path of the 
 mountain side up which we have climbed. 
 But there is a nervous, exciting uncer- 
 tainty about the future, that awakes us 
 into the region of wondering expectancy, 
 that gives us a feeling opposite from 
 repose. 
 
 Ci 0, that a man might know 
 The end of this day's business ere it come !" 
 
 is our constant and impatient prayer as 
 with troubled brows we try to peer into 
 the darkness of the future. It is like look- 
 ing far up before us on the mountain-side 
 over which we are to clamber, to discern 
 the clouded summit. The past is dreamy; 
 to indulge in its recollections affects us as 
 a narcotic. The future is exciting; it 
 affects us as a stimulant. Like the poor, 
 little, unfortunate cuckoo, man is ever 
 crying, " What will become of me? What 
 will become of me? " Bat the future has 
 more to offer us than gloomy forebodings. 
 It is an inexhaustible storehouse of the 
 treasures of the Infinite. What the future 
 is to us depends upon the color of our 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 101 
 
 minds. If they are bright, sunshiny and 
 hopeful, the future is our chief source of 
 joy, for Hope smiles over ruin and deso- 
 lation, and even "lights her torch at 
 Nature's funeral pile." But to the mind 
 of a somber and melancholy hue, the 
 future is like the dreaded darkness of the 
 night, filled with prowling beasts and un- 
 canny terrors. 
 
 But personal hopes and fears shall not 
 concern us here. As wave upon wave of 
 influence comes rolling upon us, driving 
 us hither and thither, but with a general 
 forward movement — finding ourselves no 
 two moments in the same spot — the stand- 
 ing question of human life is as to "where 
 we are and whither we are tending." That 
 question never grows antiquated, for the 
 point from which it is viewed is ever 
 changing. We are either hopeful or wary 
 or suspicious of every tendency. We 
 speculate on the natural results of a thing, 
 whether it is likely to do good or evil. 
 We hopefully engage in enterprises for 
 years without receiving any return for our 
 service, because of the promise they give 
 
102 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 forth. What will be the fruits of Chris- 
 tian Endeavor? 
 
 Religious life has already been greatly 
 quickened and enlarged by the influence 
 of Christian Endeavor, but what we have 
 received is not even an earnest of the 
 harvest yet to be. In this chapter we 
 shall consider some of the real results 
 that are sure to come in less than a gen- 
 eration from this one decade of Christian 
 Endeavor. The first practical result will 
 be political. In a republic -democratic 
 country like America, politics is king. 
 From the little boy in dresses who shouts 
 for his candidate before he can speak his 
 own name, to the octogenarian who cast 
 his first vote for Andrew Jackson, politics 
 is all. It is the rule among us that all the 
 time and attention which we can expend 
 outside of the pursuit of our livelihood are 
 devoted to politics. Religion has suf- 
 fered, literature has suffered, general cul- 
 ture has suffered from this all-absorbing 
 subject that demands and receives the 
 bulk of our leisure. Christian Endeavor 
 has been able to draw the attention of 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 103 
 
 youth from the fascination of political 
 and national matters to religious themes, 
 and it is high time that the stringent 
 pressure of politics on the juvenile mind 
 should be relieved and replaced by a health- 
 ier and less dangerous force. American 
 politics is in danger of becoming a system 
 of wire-pulling, unscrupulous chicanery 
 and unshamed dishonesty. An honest old 
 man in politics may occasionally be found, 
 but the younger instalment of politicians 
 are for the most part a set of cunning ma- 
 nipulators. It is the legitimate fruit of the 
 influences of a generation back, when the 
 President's chair in glittering colors was 
 held before the easily corrupted imagin- 
 ation of every school-boy; when to be 
 member of congress, governor of a State, 
 mayor of a city, or sheriff of a county was 
 the noblest kind of incentive offered to 
 juvenile industry. This teaching is now 
 making itself felt in the wild and con- 
 scienceless scramble for the richest prizes 
 and the highest seats. From teachers, 
 books and newspapers came the old and 
 oft-repeated story of how Lincoln, Grant 
 
104 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 and Garfield, from humble log cabins, 
 found their way to the White House. 
 Our childish fancy was filled with the 
 thoughts of the presidency as the end and 
 aim of life. The dome of the Capitol 
 haunted us in the daytime, and in our 
 dreams we were driven in four-horse open 
 carriages, bowing blandly, hat in hand, to 
 the thronging masses on either side, 
 through which the marshals of the day 
 made room for our advance — with the 
 mayor and the city officials in the rear. 
 We declaimed, a la Daniel Webster, from 
 bowery platforms, and held spell-bound 
 by our matchless but imaginary eloquence 
 the broad acres of mouth-open multitudes. 
 It was my aim to sit in the President's 
 chair, and then, Napoleonic coup d' etat, 
 convert the republic into a mighty empire 
 to be mine and my heirs' forever. My 
 object was so solely the presidency that if 
 my parents or anybody else wanted me to 
 do anything, my first thought was, will it 
 help me on in my race for the White 
 House? How well do I remember of my 
 father holding me on his knee and trying 
 
THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 105 
 
 to remove from my mind that horrible de- 
 lusion, and telling me of a certain Henry 
 Clay, a great statesman, who said "he'd 
 rather be right than be a president." 
 And I remember I thought, what a fool 
 that man must be! And the delusion 
 never did completely leave me until I be- 
 came old enough to look about me and see 
 that there were ten million boys in the 
 United States, all scrambling for the same 
 office, and it was so clear to my mind that 
 we couldn't all sit in the president's chair, 
 with any sort of comfort, that I concluded 
 to retire to private life. But even yet the 
 old flame revives sometimes and, in a 
 heated presidential campaign or nominat- 
 ing convention, I feel like coming forward 
 and presenting myself as a dark horse, or 
 permitting some friend to state that I will 
 sacrifice my personal wishes at the altar of 
 the party's interests and have consented 
 to take the field. 
 
 I would not have been thus personal did 
 I not think that my own experience has 
 been that of the majority of American 
 boys. Let us hold the words of two poets 
 
106 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 before the eyes of our youth as a motto 
 safe and inspiring: 
 
 "An honest man 's the noblest work of God." 
 
 To be a man is more than to be simply 
 president, senator or general. The title 
 of Jesus Christ which he most loved and- 
 which crowned him with the greatest 
 glory was Son of Man. He was not the 
 son of a king, nor the son of Rome, 
 Greece nor Judea, but the simple and 
 therefore sublime and perfect Man ! 
 
 Politics is immensely attractive to the 
 young, for the young are hero worshipers, 
 and nothing like politics supplies the ju- 
 venile fancy with heroes. But to make 
 heroes of even the best of men is danger- 
 ous. For in imitating them we are more 
 likely to reproduce their faults than their 
 virtues. Much greater is the danger in 
 politics where so few men are worthy ob- 
 jects of that adoration and whole-souled 
 allegiance which the fervent young heart 
 will pay to some person. The man who 
 can carry out a shrewd piece of political 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 107 
 
 engineering to a successful issue will al- 
 ways be a fascinating personage to the 
 young men who are idle spectators of the 
 machinery of politics, but for all our 
 boys to turn shrewd political tricksters 
 would make this country a generation 
 hence altogether too mean to live in. 
 Boys will be what their ideals make them. 
 We are rejoiced then to see that the 
 young people of America are beginning 
 to turn their eyes from the skirmishing 
 grounds of politics, where treachery, rob- 
 bery and general knavery become fami- 
 liar sights to them, to the greater battle 
 between sin and righteousness, where they 
 may gather around the standard of One 
 whom they may safely make their Ideal, 
 of One who for nineteen centuries has 
 been the inspiration and elevation of hu- 
 manity, the glory of our race. If we be- 
 come what our ideals make us, we may 
 expect something nobler, grander and 
 more manly in the political life of a gen- 
 eration ahead than we see in that of to- 
 day. God introduced to the world in 
 Jesus of Nazareth an ideal picture of 
 
108 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 humanity. It was the crowning glory of 
 the divine life in man. The enthusiastic 
 devotion and imitation which that picture 
 inspires are worth more to us than all the 
 learning of Greece, the civic glory of 
 Rome and the commerce of England; for 
 the religion of Christ has raised up from 
 among the barbarians of the North, men 
 more learned than the Greeks; the dis- 
 cipline and order of Rome have been far 
 excelled; and the commerce of our na- 
 tion now infinitely surpasses that of the 
 whole ancient world. We do not need to 
 state our belief that all this is due to the 
 influence of the Christ-life in Europe, for 
 it is sufficient even to know that these 
 marvelous results have not been impossi- 
 ble under the influence of that Life. 
 Politically, then, and nationally, we have 
 much to hope from the return of the 
 Christian religion to a claim upon the 
 hearts of the young. Let Jesus, our 
 ideal Man and our Savior, be the theme 
 of the young, and the world is safe. If 
 " Christ for the World " is the motto of 
 our lives the world is not likely to suffer. 
 
THE JUVENILE BE VITAL. 109 
 
 The first blessing, then, to which we call 
 attention to result from Christian En- 
 deavor will be political and national in 
 character. But a blessing which is sim- 
 ply of a national nature should not satis- 
 fy the Christian. It seems narrow and 
 small for us to consider such things from 
 a political standpoint, and if Christian 
 Endeavor has nothing more by w r hich to 
 commend itself to us, it is not worthy of 
 all that has been said in its favor. But 
 here is where it opens itself out to us in 
 its broader view. It is cosmopolitan in 
 spirit. 
 
 From a cosmopolitan and humanitarian 
 point of view there is considerable reason 
 to fear from the national sentiment, as it 
 seems to be manifesting itself in these 
 days. When any sentiment which is not 
 wide enough to take in all men becomes a 
 controlling sentiment there is always dan- 
 ger. The love of some men extends only 
 to the bounds of their nation. They love 
 their country and will die for her,but would 
 rejoice in the humiliation of another. 
 They will march through fire and slaught- 
 
110 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 er under the flaunting Stars and Stripes, 
 but the banner which another man loves 
 they would tear to shreds. They grow 
 white with indignation and call for arms 
 when they read of the Baltimore massa- 
 cre in Valparaiso, but when they are 
 asked about the New Orleans massacre 
 they express only a calm regret or find 
 refuge in making explanations. They de- 
 claim with heart-thrilling feeling those 
 patriotic words of Scott, 
 
 " Breathes there a man with soul so dead," et(% 
 
 But they would stumble if they attempted 
 to quote our Lord's commission to his 
 Apostles, sending them into all the ivorld 
 to preach the gospel to every creature. 
 They can put more spirit into the singing 
 of the "Star-Spangled Banner" than 
 into "Praise God, from whom all Bless- 
 ings Flow." Such men we call patriotic 
 men. We glorify their names. We raise 
 monuments in their honor. We inscribe 
 poems to commemorate their deeds. We 
 fill the pages of history with records of 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. Ill 
 
 their lives and performances. Eight and 
 just though all these plaudits may be, is 
 there not a grander sentiment than even 
 that of patriotism — a sentiment that is 
 not confined to national boundaries — a 
 sentiment that takes in every child of 
 God in its all-embracing love for human- 
 ity? It is the cosmopolitan or humani- 
 tarian sentiment caught from the heart of 
 Jesus Christ, who cherished neither sec- 
 tarian prejudices, national partialities 
 nor special sympathies, but whose sym- 
 pathy was universal, boundless as God, 
 and free. Why should my brother on 
 the other side of the national line be less 
 entitled to my fraternal love than the 
 brother on this? Is not patriotism a sec- 
 tional feeling spread out over a broader 
 territory? It is a noble sentiment, for 
 any sentiment which is broader than self- 
 ishness is noble, but it is not so noble as 
 that of philanthropy. John Howard was 
 a better and greater man than Lord Nel- 
 son, and Jesus was greater than Alexan- 
 der. Sectarian bigotry is love extended 
 to the limits of a sect. Partisanship is 
 
112 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 love extended to the limits of a party. 
 Patriotism is love extended to the bound- 
 aries of a nation. The broader it grows 
 the grander it becomes. Christianity is 
 love universal; it takes in God and man. 
 The threatening danger to Europe to- 
 day is the intensifying of the national 
 feeling. The national armies are growing 
 stronger as patriotism grows hotter. In- 
 ternational commerce and travel break 
 down no national walls. The Prussian 
 and the Frenchman, the Briton and the 
 Russian scan each other's motions now 
 with greater suspicion than ever before, 
 while all Europe listens in breathless 
 silence for the distant rumble of ap- 
 proaching war. Let this pent-up national 
 feeling and energy continue to rise until 
 the floodgates give way, and a torrent like 
 that which swept down the Conemaugh 
 Valley will deluge the nations of Europe. 
 This fear of war is not mere "news- 
 paper talk." It is the talk also of cool- 
 headed philosophers. Ernest Lavisse, 
 professor at the Sorbonne, in a work pub- 
 lished a short time ago, says that " the 
 
THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 113 
 
 expectation of war is one of the principal 
 phenomena of our present civilization. 
 It manifests itself in the system of armed 
 peace. Formerly peace wore only demi- 
 armor; to-day it is armed from head to 
 foot. Without any effort, by a tap of 
 the telegraph, after some puffs of loco- 
 motives, there is a war; and w x hat a terri- 
 ble war ! . . . The feeling that a few 
 dawns may suffice to illumine the desper- 
 ate conflict and the death of a fatherland 
 weighs heavily upon Europe. There are 
 countries in which the cruel cry vae victis 
 is ready to burst forth from men's 
 breasts."* That something should -be 
 done is plain, and whatever is done must 
 come through the welding influence of 
 Christianity. The chief mission of our 
 religion on earth is to supplant selfish, 
 narrow and sectional sentiments with a 
 broad human sympathy. Early Chris- 
 tianity extinguished the flame of sectional 
 and national feeling and substituted for 
 
 * Vue Generale de V Histoire Politique de V 
 Europe. 
 
114 THE JUVENILE BEVIYAL. 
 
 it a wide human fellowship and love. So 
 potent was this cosmopolitan spirit in the 
 early Church that even the inflexible ex- 
 clusiveness of the Jew with its inborn 
 prejudices was laid aside under the vision 
 of that heavenly truth that " God is no 
 respecter of persons." The barriers of 
 nationality gave way before it and in 
 Christ there was neither Jew nor Greek. 
 The vast imperial power of Rome, which 
 held the world in prison chains and 
 strengthened her own nationality by ex- 
 terminating other nationalities, enervat- 
 ing and destroying humanity from Car- 
 thage to Britain, began to crumble and 
 decay under the oxygen of the Christian 
 faith. Christianity must be universal in 
 spirit or its essence is gone. The Church 
 can become neither Greek, Roman nor 
 Anglican without becoming at the same 
 time unchristian. Its greatest service to 
 humanity, as such, is lost when it becomes 
 nationalized or specialized in any way. 
 Its death knell as a Christian Church was 
 rung when Constantine succeeded in ap- 
 propriating it to the support of the Em- 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 115 
 
 pire. Christian Endeavor has taken hold 
 of the essence of Christianity again, and 
 this has made it at once unsectarian and 
 cosmopolitan. It is as much at home 
 under the Union Jack as under the Stars 
 and Stripes. Dr. Clark's missionary tour 
 around the world is but an outward ex- 
 pression of the inner spirit which governs 
 the movement. The feeling of this age 
 is humanitarian and cosmopolitan. This 
 is shown in the great love in which such 
 preachers as Channing and Beecher are 
 held. The right word now spoken 
 which will embody this feeling in a tangi- 
 ble form will do a glorious philanthropic 
 service. That word is found in the Chris- 
 tian motto of the Endeavor organization. 
 " One is your Master, even Christ, and all 
 ye are brethren." 
 
 Another one of the fruits which the 
 next generation will enjoy from Christian 
 Endeavor will be an invigorated church 
 life. If the present indications count for 
 much, the problem of the unchurched 
 masses will then be practically solved. 
 Church energy will not be so likely to be 
 
116 THE JUVENILE BEVIVAL. 
 
 expended in denominational competition, 
 but it will go where it can supply the 
 greatest needs. Already the young peo- 
 ple of the Christian Endeavor Societies of 
 many churches are doing missionary work, 
 preaching the gospel to those not situated 
 so as to attend regular Sunday services. 
 They are building churches even in many 
 towns and cities where there is greatest 
 want of Christian teaching. 
 
 We have here mentioned but a few of 
 the practical or social fruits which we are 
 likely to enjoy as the result of this move- 
 ment — its blessing to general human soci- 
 ety in bringing man nearer to his brother, 
 and binding them into a stronger and 
 more delightful union, and by weakening 
 some of the evil elements in the social 
 and political department of life. If the 
 effects we have prophesied come, we shall 
 have no reason to be surprised; but if 
 they do not come, it will be a case of 
 "the blade stopping at the flower without 
 fruiting." 
 
VI. 
 
 THE FULL CORN. 
 
 ■* Then the full corn in the ear."— Jesus. 
 
 1 Unto the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ." 
 
 — Paul, 
 (117) 
 
VI. 
 THE FULL CORN. 
 
 Tt would be too much for us now to pre- 
 * diet what will be the fullest and ripest 
 fruits to fall from the Christian Endeavor 
 tree in the times that are yet to be. It 
 promises much, but with our limited 
 knowledge of the laws of cause and effect 
 we cannot know that its promises will be 
 fulfilled. Our greatest hopes in Christian 
 Endeavor will not be realized if it has 
 nothing for us beyond a purification of 
 national life and a widening of the hu- 
 manitarian sentiments. As has been said 
 already, its purpose is primarily and dis- 
 tinctly religious. Its mission is to bring 
 out the possibilities of the human soul in 
 all its beauty and perfection of develop- 
 ment. It is an expression of dissatisfac- 
 
 (119) 
 
120 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 tion with the philosophy of the earthly, 
 and a longing again for the things that 
 are heavenly, eternal, and that fade not 
 away. It is the return of the spirit for 
 its share of attention. It is not satis- 
 fied with railroads, and telegraphs, and 
 real estate, and dry goods, and groceries. 
 It has no quarrel with these things, but 
 it calls for something more. It calls 
 for faith, for hope, for love, for truth, 
 for righteousness. In short, it is a cry for 
 God. As the infant who wanders away 
 from its mother and is lost in the forest, 
 though the harmonies and beauties of 
 nature are singing in its ears and danc- 
 ing in its eyes, it is not contented and will 
 not be comforted. The very flowers 
 whose gorgeous hues would have been its 
 delight, had its little hand been clasped 
 in that of its mother, are a mockery to 
 it in her absence. There is no melody 
 in the songs of the birds without its 
 mother. You may offer it rattles and 
 candies and pictures in vain. It wants 
 its mother. It appreciates these things 
 in its mother's presence but not in her 
 
THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 121 
 
 absence. We children of the Infinite 
 Father are very much like the little in- 
 fant. We delight in factories and farms, 
 in books and colleges, in canals and steam- 
 ships while we are in sight of our God, 
 but the moment we have wandered far- 
 ther away than we intended and are 
 brought suddenly to realize that we are 
 alone in the world, we then leave wealth 
 and family and fame and all, and cry out 
 for God. Nothing then short of God will 
 satisfy us. This is the cause of all the 
 pathetic pictures of religious fanaticism 
 painted on the pages of our race's his- 
 tory. The heathen mother who casts her 
 child in the flames beneath the out- 
 stretched arms of her deity; the grim 
 Druid priest whetting his knife under the 
 broad branches of the sacred oak for 
 human sacrifice: the gloomy crusades; 
 the howling and dancing dervishes; — all 
 these and many more nearer us are sad 
 illustrations of the human heart, having 
 lost sight of God, seeking by fanatical ex- 
 travagances to find him again. An era of 
 religious activity is the logical consequent 
 
122 THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 
 
 of an era of indifference to spiritual 
 things. The farther away a people have 
 wandered from God and into materialism 
 the more violent will be the cries and 
 struggles to find him when the reaction 
 sets in. A nation that would avoid the 
 perils of religious fanaticism should avoid 
 the extreme of spiritual indifference. 
 Whoever, therefore, would preserve a 
 calm, even and peaceful national relig- 
 ious temper, will rejoice that the threat- 
 ening materialistic tendencies have been 
 opportunely arrested by a calm but fer- 
 vent and intense religious feeling that has 
 taken possession of the generation which 
 will be responsible for the to-morrow of 
 the race. The spiritual losses we have 
 sustained in the deaths of nearly all our 
 great poet-philosophers and preachers 
 must be compensated for. The loss of 
 our Emersons and Carlyles, our Tenny- 
 sons and Brownings, our Longfellows, 
 Lowells and Whittiers, our Beechers, 
 Spurgeons and Brookses, has been a tre- 
 mendous spiritual drain on the race, and 
 we can ill afford to do without them at 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 123 
 
 this time. We are losing our Emersons 
 and getting Edisons instead. How long 
 we could keep up such a trade would be 
 hard to tell. Even now the question is 
 being asked by the practical mind, What 
 good is philosophy? Of what practical 
 value are literature and dead languages? 
 How does a study of Homer, Milton or 
 Shakespeare enable one to make any bet- 
 ter living — except as he intends to teach 
 those things? These are some of the 
 questions now commonly asked which 
 show how completely materialistic con- 
 siderations are beginning to control our 
 thinking and acting. The tendency which 
 they reveal is a pernicious one. 
 
 The next questions to be asked will be, 
 Of what practical value are culture and 
 virtue? Indeed, too scrupulous consci- 
 entiousness is oftentimes unprofitable in 
 business and politics. To lie possesses a 
 commercial value. What use have w^e for 
 religion? This view of things has crept 
 into the church. How may I make 
 church membership a means of advance- 
 ment, of prosperity to me? How may I 
 
124 THE JUVEXILE REVIVAL. 
 
 turn my prayers and my long face and my 
 Aniens and my Sabbath street-carried 
 Bible into' dollars and cents? Do we un- 
 derstand, therefore, that when religion 
 comes to possess no commercial value it 
 is to be abandoned? Then we will come 
 to ask, What profit is there in love — love 
 for father and mother, for brother and 
 sister, for wife and children?' We can 
 easily see that this tendency carried out 
 to its logical issue would land man again 
 among the brutes. This is a retrogres- 
 sion. Instead of falling backward toward 
 the protozoa, we should press on to the 
 continuance and completion of the evolu- 
 tionary process, until we come in the 
 unity of faith and the knowledge of God's 
 Son unto that perfect manhood, unto the 
 fullness of the measure of the stature of 
 Christ. The Christian Endeavor move- 
 ment is, therefore, a refreshing sign of 
 our present spiritual vitality. 
 
 The one Convention held in New York 
 City in 1892 is an event for future histo- 
 rians of American life to study. It was 
 an epoch in the history of our nation. It 
 
THE JUVENILE REVIVAL. 125 
 
 calmed the fears of the thinking minds 
 that were alarmed for the spiritual future 
 of the race. It quieted the loud claims of 
 the enemies of our faith that Christianity 
 was losing its hold on the people. Alto- 
 gether it gave quite a new coloring to the 
 general condition of things. It was one 
 of these needed surprises that come now 
 and then as regenerating influences to a 
 nation. In accordance with this event 
 many have been compelled to readjust 
 and modify their philosophy of things. 
 
 The highest and best results of this 
 wonderful movement will be to fill up the 
 mould of humanity — to lead man closer to 
 his God, the fountain of all that is divine 
 in man — 
 
 " That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-off divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
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