.Stack nnex JU 74U K79 19U4 SOME ISMS OF TO-DAY KRAUSKOPP x Some Isms of To-Day RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D. AUTHOR OF A RAHHI'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY, EVOLUTION AND JUDAISM, THE JEWS AND MOORS IN SPAIN, THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN, ETC., ETC. OSCAR KLONOWEK, PHILADELPHIA. 1904. Stack Annex HHO CONTENTS. PAGE EGOISM, i ALTRUISM, ii PESSIMISM 21 OPTIMISM 31 REALISM, 43 IDEALISM 55 DOWIEISM, 65 MYSTICISM, 77 TRADE-UNIONISM 89 Jama of SJa- I EGOISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BBFORB THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENBSETH ISRAEL, BY RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF. D. D. Philadelphia, Feb. aist, iqo4. Text : "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." PROVBRBS xxxni, 7. SCRIPTURAL LESSON : EXODUS, xxxn. Few stories in the Bible are more beautiful than the one we have read this morning. One is at a loss to tell what to admire the most, whether its poetry, or its dar- Mo868 , hold on hl , ing, or its moral. Its hero, pleading and argu- people due to un- ing with God in behalf of his rebellious people, 8elfishne "- wholly unmindful of the personal advantage held out to him, so aroused the poetic fire of Heine as to move him to say, that, on that mountain-top, God seemed but a reflection of the greatness of Moses. I quite forgive the poet his seeming blasphemy, for I quite share his admiration of Moses. And I believe that the two of us but echo the admiration evinced by the original writer of this episode. I do not for one moment think that the bard, who first conceived this story, meant his hearers to believe that he was describing an actual scene between God and Moses. He but intended it to serve as a poetic setting for his great picture, that of the self- sacrificing devotion of Moses to his people, a devotion that not even in- gratitude nor rebellion could uproot, a devotion for which he had surrendered his home and his country, the association of the great and learned, the opportunity of possibly ascending the throne of Egypt; a devotion for which, in return, he asked no honor, no tribute for himself, no throne, no title for his children, no monument, not even a tomb to his memory after his death. Great as was his leadership, great as were his powers as lawgiver, I believe it was his unselfishness, the en- tire want of egoism in his nature, that, more than everything else, gave him his hold on his people, and enabled him to per- form those marvellous deeds, that have secured for him a fore- most niche in the temple of the world's immortals. This same unselfishness it was, this same utter want of egoism, that gave the founder of Christianity the marvellous hold he has had, and still has, on millions of peo- P les ' Beautiful as were the teachings of Jesus, there was nothing new in them. They were the daily lessons in the Judaean schools and synagogues of his time. Neither his sermon on the mount, nor his parables, nor his cures, created the new faith. It was the story of his self- abnegation, his descent to the lowly, his sympathy with the sorrowing and heavy-laden, his answering sigh with sigh, and tear with tear, his daring and surrendering his very life to free his people from the Roman yoke, this it was that awakened a responsive chord in the hearts of the people, that made them believe in his message, and follow in his footsteps. And the same self-abnegation it was that made Buddha the founder of the largest faith on earth. Cradled had he been in luxury. The throne of a mighty empire al$0tha Bud f dha. had awai ted his ascent. Millions of people had prostrated themselves before his presence. But he had seen their misery, the cruelty of the caste-system, the oppression of the rich, and the suffering of the poor. And he donned the garb of beggars, shared their bed and board, com- forted and healed and enlightened the sick and ignorant and needy. This it was, and not his doctrine, that made him the Light of Asia. To-morrow, a grateful American people will celebrate the natal day of Washington. More than a century and a quarter have passed since he performed those deeds of Unse | fishnes8 key valor that have made his name illustrious among of Washington's the warriors of the earth. But it was neither his c valorous deeds nor his brilliant victories that have hallowed his name to the American heart. Brave men fought valiantly before his day, and have fought valiantly since. Greater battles than any that Washington fought, were fought and won during the Civil .War. It is even a fact that he lost more battles than he won. And it is likewise a fact that Presidents have since his day met and conquered crises such as never tried the sagacity of the father of our country. His hold on the American people is due more to his conquest of self than to his conquest of the enemy, more to his rulership over his ambition than to his rulership over his people. For his peo- ple's sake he had surrendered what might have been a life of ease. For his people's sake he bore the greatest burden, and suffered the direst hardships. Never a thought of self pro- faned his mind; never an ambition, apart from the glory of his people, desecrated his heart. And when triumph came, and his name resounded in songs of praise around the world, and a Nation worshipped at his feet, his interests of self were merged more than ever in his nation's good. Unto the end, continued he, as John H. Ingham sang: "Humble in triumph, temperate in power Not striking, like the Corsican, to tower To heaven, nor, like great Philip's greater son, To win the world, and weep for the world's unwon." We turn from Washington to Benedict Arnold. What a difference in our feelings toward the two! How the one awakens our awe, and the other our contempt! And yet the two were friends at one time, and comrades in the war of independence. What soldier braver in that war than Benedict Arnold ? What com- mander more victorious ? Whose services more honored by Congress ? What officer more appreciated and more befriended by Washington ? But there came the day that tested the metal of the two, it found the one gold, the other dross; the one a self-sacri- ficing lover of his country, the other a lover of himself alone, a base egoist. There came the day, that discovered that he, who could scale forts, and route fleets, and put armies to the edge of the sword, could not curb the lusts of the flesh; could not master the thirst for power, the greed for gain. There came that black day that found the hero of Ticonderoga a villainous traitor. And the two separated the one to mount to the stars; the other to sink into the bottomless pit. Thus it is that base selfishness makes traitors traitor 1 Pat ' f patriots, cowards of conquerors, enemies pf friends. We are hard on Benedict Arnold, and deservedly so. We would, if we could, change his name from BENEDICT, the blessed, to MALEDICT, the accursed. But, at times, when I 'FI *:lj , IT usually tempted, would scan closely some of the doings of men, and some of the motives that actuate them, I wonder how manj- of them, if equally probed, would not equally re- veal themselves as dross, and, if equally tempted, would not prove themselves equally traitorous ? How many do not reveal themselves to the scrutinizing eye of God as base egoist, lov- ing self alone, rendering it base and slavish service, catering to every lust of flesh, breaking pledge to wife or husband, spurning duty to parent or child, violating the trusting love of innocence, proving faithless to friend and fellowmen, so that lust may be glutted with pleasure, or that greed may be grati- fied with gain ? Egoism is the mote in the eye of most of us, the curse that trails us in the mire, all our days. There are few of us in whom self-preservation, the most powerful of Egoism mote in &n QUr instincts is not turne d into OUr chief sill. eyes ot most. Obeying the instinct to promote our own best good, we lose sight of the truth that the purpose of self-pre- servation is but to enable us the better to preserve the good of our fellowmen. It is our duty, for instance, to shield and promote our own health, so that we may not be incapacitated from doing our share of the work of society, nor fall a bur- Legitimate seif-in- den to our fellowmen, by unproductively con- terest beneficial surning what they produce, by requiring their and service for our care, by preventing their contributing their full quota to the good of all. It is our duty to strive for a compe- tency, so that we may supply our and our family's physical and mental and moral needs, and thereby enhance the general use- fulness and happiness of society. It is our duty to make our- selves vigorous, agreeable, attractive, so as to promote desir- able and healthy marriage, thereby strengthening society and contributing to its self -perpetuation, which next to self-preserva- tion, is the highest instinct of human nature. It is our duty to husband our means, so that we do not, by indiscriminate charity, encourage beggar}' and idleness, so that we do not, by reckless expenditure, render ourselves liable to some day needing charity ourselves, so that, by dissipation, we do not inflict upon posterity a debilitated and dependent progeny, so that, by extravagance, we do not set a pernicious example to those who cannot afford luxuries, inciting them to discontent and rebellion, or to imitation by the aid of vice and crime. No fault is, therefore, to be found with legitimate self-inter- est, seeing that on it depends the present and L Injurious when future good of society. It is never from pro- self-interest perly advancing our own welfare that society passes into selfish- suffers. The injury is done when self-interest passes into base selfishness. When man seeks his own good at the cost of another's good; when a man believes that his own self has prior claims to all that is best in the world, and that, therefore, rightly or wrongly, it must be seized or coveted by him; when man makes of self an idol, and bows to no other god; when a man considers as nothing the loss or pain or shame of another, so long as it serves his own gain or fame or pleasure; when self-interest so blinds the eye, so deafens the ear, so contracts the heart, as to lose all regard for, all in- terest in, all sympathy with, one's fellowmeu, present and future, then it is that egoism is a curse, and as fatal to the bast interests of the individual as it is to the best progress of society. And of those who are under this curse the world is full. They may disguise it, they rnay even parade it under the form of virtue, piety, philanthropy, patriotism, but world fun of such he nim is ahvays ll)e same , they are always egoism. dominated by the greed to have and to hold, to possess and to enjoy, even though another lose by their pos- sessing or suffer by their enjoying. It manifests itself early in life, and often does not surren- der its hold till the hour of death. Some years ago, a lady died in this city, the texture of whose whole ?ou e r n of e " d ea r tt $ *"' life was S P U " of the threads of egoism. She had no other interest than self; lived for none other than self; engaged in nothing else save in the pursuit of self-gratification. On her death-bed she designated the dress and jewels in which she desired to be laid out, ordered that her cheeks be painted, that she be so laid in the coffin as to pre- sent a profile and look her best, and that the open grave be lined with double violets. Truly, her besetting sin followed her into the grave. The love of self forsook her not, not even in the shadow of the judgment seat. Even of her insensate corpse her egoism was fonder than of some worthy cause, that might have benefitted by the money wasted on her coffin and grave. The saddest thought of her dying hour was her being obliged to leave to others the estate she had inherited from others, and, therefore, she took with her into the grave, and spent on stone on top of it, as much as she possibly could. This specie of egoism is generally the culmination of a selfishness that is rooted in earliest infancy. I have seen enough of selfishness implanted in the nurser\ r Begins in infancy. to last several lite-times. And where there are any omissions in that direction, am- ple amends arc made in the school. The very place in which self should be curbed and trained, in which sel- fi shuess should be weeded out, root and all, and a proper sense of oneness of the human family, and the commonness of its interests, implanted, is often made a hotbed for the growing of the rankest greeds for honors and dis- tinctions, not in the interest of knowledge, but to gratify the thirst of outshining some other pupil, or humbling some other family. There are mothers who drive their daughters to strain- ing their minds and bodies beyond their physical powers, weak- ening them for life, and all to gratify a parental egoism of seeing their daughters distinguished at this or that higher insti- tution of learning. With a start in egoism such as this, one is little suprised at its bountiful harvests later on. What is so-called fashion- able society but a vast mass of rancid egoism! Look at its youg women, thousands of them, blessed with hands, hearts and heads, young and vigorous, empowered by nature and education to assist in the uplift of the human family, look at them, wasting their pre- cious time on pampering their egoism, spending, half their time in bed, the other half on dress, entertainment, extrava- gance, for which others must pay in slavish toil, in righteously or unrighteously gotten gold. Not many squares away from them sit their sisters in attic rooms or sweatshops, toiling and moiling within the environs of miser}', early and late, for the pittance to keep body and soul together, or to procure the crust of bread for the whole family, often driven to lives of shame for the want of that very crust. And here are young society women racking their brains for new ways of extrava- gant waste, often expending on a single entertainment what would keep half of our army of white slaves in bread for a month, never moved by the thought that it is largely the labor of the poor that makes possible the extravagance of the rich, and that the unemployed rich have duties other than the grat- ification of selfish appetites. And there is your society bachelor, one of the worst species of egoism of the present day. He enjoys every advantage which the institution of family life contributes to civil- ization. And yet is he a drone, living of the The efl is b m ac I elor stores of honey to which he refuses to add his 8 part. God, in his wisdom, has divided the sexes equally in number. Some young woman, who has been created for him, waits in vain for him. Refusing to make her his mate, she is denied her sacred right to matrimony. She is probably driven into the marts of life to compete with man for her subsistence. Often the selfishness of bachelors drive her to a life infinitely worse than this. It is, alas, only too true, that the egoism of bachelordom has darkened more homes, has unfitted more char- acters, has created more lives of shame than any other evil of the present day. And there is )^our fashionable society matron. She has her husband and her family; she has her home and her friends; she has all her reasonable needs supplied. But societ^matron ^ ier e gi sln is n t yet satisfied. There is some one who has or is what she has not or is not yet. And so, money, that might be employed in somewhat lessen- ing the inequalities and needs of society, must be sacrificed that the greeds of selfishness be satisfied. What matters it to her that the innocently poor walk in rags, as long as she has her ermine and her sable! What concern is it of hers that helpless infants freeze for the want of coal, as long as she is bejeweled with precious stones! What matters it to her that consumption ravages some overworked and underfed laborer's home, as long as she can spend her winter in Florida, and her summers abroad! For her there exists but self; of the exist- ence of others she has knowledge only in so far as they min- ister to her selfishness. And there is your business man, enjoying an income that supplies all his reasonable wants, with enough to lay by against reverses of fortune, warned by exhaustion of unes.men head and heart that [t is hi g hest time for him to proceed at a slower pace, yet racing on, and in his mad rush trampling down honor and honesty, friend and foe, cornering markets, driving up prices, grinding down wages, lengthening hours of labor, solely to eclipse a rival, to down a competitor, thereby to gratify the greeds of egoism. And there are your professional men. What hatreds and detractions and back-bitings among them! What exhibitions of envies and jealousies among those men, from whom, by reason of their education and their position in society, better things are expected! And what are their grievances ? For the most part, nothing but offended egoism. Some one's practice or salary is larger, some one's fame is wider known, some one's company is more desired, some one's efforts are better appreciated. And thus no end of evil is done, because one cannot see another enjoy what he himself would like to have, nor see another share a success, an honor, a popularity in which he alone would shine. And what shall we say of the egoism of politicians and diplomats ? Who can enumerate the curses they have brought on society and on nations, the strifes they have engendered, the wars they have waged, the c ' a e n fl s ism f po '" havocs they have wrought, not in the interest of civilization, but for the gratification of the lust of power and of the greed of gain. What was back of the Civil War but egoism? What was back of the Franco- Prussian war, of the Russian-Turkish war, of the Spanish-American war but egoism ? What is back of the war now waging off the coasts of Manchuria and Korea but the basest selfishness on the part of Russia. Not content with a population of 130,000,000, a population almost twice the size of ours, and three times that of France or Germany, not content with a territory that stretches across two continents, she would have more and more, no matter how many thousands must shed their heart's blood, no matter how many tens of thousands must suffer ex- cruciating tortures, no matter how many hundreds of thou- sands must be orphaned and widowed and bereaved, for the gratification of that greed. We may record, year by year, ever newer and ever better achievements in the sciences and arts and industries, and yet, we will progress but little, as long as the brute within us continues untamed. The wild beast is concerned in self alone, and it is savage be- cause wholly selfish. Who loves but self alone cannot love another, and the self-centered is the enemy of man. Who 10 avails himself of the benefits of the labors of infinite millions of people, without contributing anything in return, is a para- site and a thief. Who would have all for self, in the belief that thus alone would he be happy, is a madman. He seeks happiness along a road on which it has never yet been found. The conquerors and Croesuses of ancient and modern times have sought in vain for it along that road. They who have found it had other goals in view. They labored for the happi- ness of their fellowmen, and found their own therein. They strove for the good of all, and found therein their own good. Sam? 3fimjs of Sfa- II ALTRUISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BEFORE THE REFORM CONGREGATION &ENESETH ISRAEL, BY RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPP, D. D. Philadelphia, Feb. 28th, 1004. Text : "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." I,EVIT. xix, 18. SCRIPTURAL I.ESSON : GENESIS, xiv. Many years have passed since I have read the Arabian Nights. I have read much since, and have forgotten much of what I have read. But there are a few of these ... ,1-1.1 1- j ^1 A poor woman. Arabian tales that have lingered among the fondest memories of my childhood. One of these is the story that is told of Khalif Omar and a poor woman. One night, so the story runs, Omar set forth, in the company of his vizier, to see how his people fared. In the outskirts of a town, he noticed a burning fire. Drawing near it, he saw a woman boiling some water, and at her side were two little children groaning piteously. ' ' What dost thou here, in the open field, and in the cold night," Omar asked. And she answered, " I am boiling some roots for my children, who are perishing of cold and hunger. Our misery is great, but for it Allah will surely some day ask a reckoning of Omar, the Khalif." The Khalif, who was in disguise, was much moved, and he said to her " Dost thou think, O woman, that Omar knows of thy wretchedness, seeing that he does not Ho|ds Khaljf re relieve it?" To which she answered: "Where- spon$:bie for her fore, then, is Omar the Khalif, if he be unaware mi8ery> of the misery of his people?" The Khalif made no reply, but hastily departed, returned to his palace, and from his abundant stores drew forth a large sack of flour and a jar of sheep fat, and asked , . . . i. 1 i_- 1-n.. ' . , - Khalif relieves her. his vizier to help him m lifting these upon his iar back. But the officer said: "Suffer that I carry them upon my back, O Commander of the Faithful." To which Omar replied, "Wilt thou also bear the weight of my sins on the Day of the Resurrection ?' ' They retraced their journey to the poor woman, the Khalif bent low under the burden on his back. And when he arrived at the fire, he prepared the food with his own hand, quickened the fire with his own breath, and with his own breath he also cooled the steaming food, so that the three hungry mouths might the speedier be fed. And when they had their fill, he went away, leaving them the remainder of the flour and the fat. On his homeward journey he said to his vizier: "The fire I have seen to-night has lighted also the darkness of my heart. The poor woman has spoken wiser words " t ^ ian an y m y counsellors have ever spoken. ' Wherefore is Omar the Khalif, if he be una- ware of the misery of his people ?' ' The part of the story that touched me most in my child- hood days was that which told of the great Omar bent low under his burden, and of his preparing with * ' ^ s own ^ an( ^ tne fd for the poor woman and her children. I was fairly moved to tears at the contemplation of the scene of so great a ruler so humbling himself before so poor a woman. I have since grown in years, and I trust also in wisdom. I am now moved much more by what that poor woman said than by what that rich monarch did. And I 110W comprehend, as I did not then, the force of the Khalif 's words: " Wherefore is Omar Khalif, if he be unaware of the misery of his people?" I understand now why he was so deeply affected by them. Their truth lighted into his heart. Why was he a monarch, if not to pro- tect his people ? For what purpose did his government exist, if not to safeguard the rights of his subjects ? Was not his realm the sufferer by such sufferings; was it not in danger, if such sufferings were unjust? Whether his subjects were thereafter the better protected and the happier by reason of this incident, I do not know. 13 But I do know that many of our political ills state responslble would cease, if those, who are entrusted with for wrongs of so- responsible office, our emperors and kings, presi- c e ^' dents and legislators, governors and mayors, magistrates and lower officers, were to ask themselves: " Wherefore do I hold office, if I am unaware of the misery of my people? Wherefore has government been formed, wherefore have peo- ple banded themselves together into a nation, state or muni- cipality, wherefore have they surrendered many of their indi- vidual liberties, if not, in return, to enjoy the protection and aid of those who are put in authority over them?" And I also know that most of our social and economical ills would cease, if each of us were to ask himself: " Where- fore am I a human being, if I am unaware of the misery of my fellow-beings? Wherefore do br th " I live in civilized society, and enjoy the benefits of civilization, if I am unaware that beings, like unto myself, heirs of the same privileges, children of the same God, mem- bers of the same family, are suffering some of them for the want of food, some of them for the want of opportunity for physical and moral and intellectual health, some of them for the want of liberty and justice." I know that most of our ills would cease, if we would forsake the standard by which our selfishness has all too long guided its course, the standard which made of Cain a fratricide, the standard that dins into our ears " I am not my brother's keeper. It is no concern of mine whether my neighbor suffer or prosper, whether he starve or live in plenty, whether he be oppressed or enjoy freedom, whether he be without schooling or enjoy the benefits of education." I know that the millenium would not be far dis- tant, if we could convert our egoism into altruism, and say to ourselves: " I am my brother's keeper, even as he is keeper of me. His interests are as sacred to me as mine are to him. Whatever profits or injures him profits or injures me. If I neglect him, I neglect myself; if I do him good, I benefit myself. If he be allowed to grow up ignorant and to become criminal, I lessen my safety, and impose burdens upon myself for the maintenance of penal and corrective institutions and police protection. If he be allowed to spread physical and moral 14 disease, I expose myself and mine to his contagion. In his curse all are cursed; in his blessing all are blessed." I know that there are those who, upon hearing this will say: "What new-fangled doctrine is this alttuism, this Altruism regarded concerning oneself about the affairs of others? a new-fangled doc- I have more than I can do to look after my own interests, let others look after their own. If others suffer or do not prosper, the fault or misfortune is theirs, not mine; and it is for them, and not for me, to look to the remedy. This is some more nonsensical twaddle of unpractical preachers, who are everlastingly talking of things they do not understand, and trying to remedy things that cannot be remedied." I admit, the word alttuism is of recent date. But its in- vention is not chargeable to the pulpit. It was coined by the philosopher Comte, and was made popularly cur- AS old as mater reut j n ^ voca b u i ary o f philosophical language by the greatest of all modern philosophers, Her- bert Spencer, who expounded it in his Data of Ethics, and enthusiastically championed it in his subsequent ethical teach- ings. And both, Comte and Spencer, would have smiled, had they been told that they had foisted a new-fangled doctrine upon the world. There is not a virtue that is older than al- truism, neither is there a blessing of civilization enjoyed to- day that is not due to it! It is but the name that is new; the practice of it commenced when the first mother sacrificed self for others, gave life of her life, substance of her substance, strength of her strength, for her children and children's chil- dren, merging her individuality in others, seeking nothing for herself, finding her happiness in the happiness of her family, and her reward in their physical and moral well-being. And the teaching of it as a duty for all men to follow be- gan when the Bible entered upon its mission of humanizing its teachin the ^ ae ain ' raa l H1 man - Were you to ask what one special mission of ethical message, greater than any other, the Jew sent out into a brutal and selfish world thousands of years ago, I would unhesitatingly answer: the message of altruism. And were you to ask for what one teaching, more than any other, the Jew will one day receive his well deserved 15 meed of praise, I would as unhesitatingly answer: the teaching of altruism. There is no ethical duty in the whole Bible more often and more strongly emphasized than that of furthering the good of our fellowmen. It is the virtue preached and practiced in our Scripture lesson of to day, Abraham freeing the captives, refusing com- pensation for his risk and cost and labor, on the The chief trait of ground that he had but done his human duty, Biblii:al and Ta| - . mudic heroes. even as he himself would have wanted to be done by in equal need. It is the preaching and practice of Moses. Altruism makes him cast his lot with a slave-people, and brings him into the presence of Pharaoh. It is the key- note of his Ten Commandments, of his entire moral code, reaching its climax in the teaching "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Altruism is the fundamental teaching of all the prophets. Their one unending cry is: " Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us all, why then should one man act treacherously against another? If others wrong thee dost thou not feel the pain, and if thou art hungry, is not bread sweet to thee, and if thou art naked are not clothes welcome ? Therefore, let thy brother in need have what thou wouldst de- sire to have in need. Even if he be thine enemy, and he be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink; and if he be wronged, see that justice be done to him, for thus alone shalt thou have peace, and thus alone will it be well with thee." And altruism is the constant preaching and practice of Jesus, reaching its climax in the golden rule: " Do unto others as thou wouldst have others do unto thee." And in a yet more pronounced degree is it the teaching of the Talmud, reaching its climax in Hillel's celebrated maxim: " What is hateful unto thee, that do not unto another." So we see, that we are not dealing with a new-fangled doctrine, when we speak of altruism. It is an old, old doc- trine, but the trouble is that, though very old, Though a|trui8m and though it has been preached and practiced old, it is still un- by our wisest men, it is still unlearned. Our ' eyes are still too blind to enable us to see that we never labor for self so much as when we labor for the good of others. 16 What even some of the lower animals have learned, we, who title ourselves as belonging to the higher animal kingdom, are too stupid to grasp. Read Maeterlink's 77?^ jjf e O f the B ee. Study the revelation the bee- hive makes of the ideal organization, of co-ope- rative labor, each striving for all, all accumulating for each, no exclusive privileges granted, no exceptions made, no idler tolerated, the drone killed off and cast out of the hive, all laboring, not for the present alone, but for the future as well, storing up rich treasures of food, so that the new generation finds rich and ample supplies, even though the old generation be no more. Read his philosophical reflections in that book, his frequent contrasts between the methods of man and those of the bee, his observations on the infinite superiority of the latter's altruism over the former. " What being more fitted," he asks, "by reason and destiny than man to organize the ideal society, and yet what blunder he makes of it! . . . Note the equality of labor and of its benefits in the hive, and the inequalities in human society, the earth's surface painfully and insufficiently cultivated by two or three tenths of the whole population, another tenth absolutely idle, usurping the larger share of the products of this first labor, and the remain- ing six or seven-tenths condemned to a life of perpetual half- hunger, ceaselessly exhausting themselves in strange and sterile efforts, whereby not they but the idle alone shall profit." vSee the provisions, and the self-abnegation within the bee-hive for the benefit of a vigorous and prolific progeny, and contrast this with the dissipations in society, thousands not unmindful of the inexorable law of heredity, not unmind- ful that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children and children's children in utter selfishness, in utter disregard of the suffering and misery they heap upon their posterity, exhausting their vitality, and transmitting unto their descend- ants enervated and diseased constitutions, corrupted tastes, sterile minds, vicious habits. The innocent must suffer for the guilty, because there is not enough of altruism to sacrifice present fleeting pleasure for lasting future good. 17 Humiliating as it is, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that if even but a small part of the justice that rules the bee- hive were to rule society, we would hear infi- nitely less of inequality, and infinitely less of suffering and wrong. Except the very young and the very old, no one would be permitted to enjoy of the accumulated products of labor, who had not contributed his proportionate share thereto; and, conversely, no one would be denied his proportionate share of the accumulated products of labor, who had done his proportionate share of the work. With one stroke, this bee-philosophy would overthrow that cruel injustice that permits tens of thousands of idlers to live on the fat of the laud, to enjoy the richest , , , ...... . , r Would prevent and best that civilization affords, to waste for- drones fattening tunes on luxuries and extravagances, while those f nd workers starv- who produce the means must slave from dawn to dusk, must clothe in rags, live in hovels, and endure "a perpetual half-hunger" all their life. By this starving out of the idlers and wasters; of them who unproductively consume of what they have not produced, the Mrs. Bradley-Martins and their ilk, we would have ample food for all, and less slavery for millions, less slums and tenements, less disease and pauperism, less crime and vice, less aim-houses and peniten- tiaries, less hospitals and orphanages. And when shall we do this? Just as soon as we shall learn to understand the real meaning of possession, just as soon as we shall understand that what we own Have not yet learn- we but hold in stewardship for the benefit of all, ed "Caning of that as countless thousands have labored to make possible what we possess, so must countless thousands share with us the benefits that it yields. What one thing is there to-day of which we can say it is all our own handiwork ? Millions have toiled on the little educatioi) you and I possess. For the liberty and peace you and I enjoy, tens of thousands have fought and suffered and died. The health that blesses your home and your city has been made possible by ten thousand students in sanitary science. On the break- fast which you enjoyed this morning, a thousand hands have i8 labored, the wheat was raised in Dakota, the oat-meal in Min- nesota, the butter in New Jersey, the coffee in Java, the tea in China, the eggs and milk in Pennsylvania, the salt in New York, the pepper in Brazil, the sugar in Louisiana, the meat in Illinois, the fish in Maine, the potatoes in Ohio, the orange in California, the banana in Florida, the knives and forks were made in Connecticut, the dishes in Massachusetts, the table and chairs in Michigan, the linen in Ireland. For the prosperity you enjoy, a million of hands and minds have toiled, during a thousand years, in a score of lands. The ore of which the article is made which you manufacture, other hands have mined, by means of tools which again other hands have made. The machineries which manufacture your article, other minds have designed, and other hands have constructed. The railroad or ship, which transports the article to all parts of the land, other minds have invented, and other hands have built. Have you, therefore, no obligation toward your fellow- beings? Shall you reap the reward of other men's toil, and other men have no share in it ? L,ast spring, I called on a rich manufacturer of this city, for a subscription to a higher seat of learning. He refused, on the ground, that he did not believe in higher The egoism of self- education that he himself had never had more made men. than a common school education, and he could not see why others needed more. I was amazed at the daring of his argument. A hundred factors and more, that had con- tributed toward making that man's fortune, were the products of scholarship. Graduates of higher schools had designed his building, his engines, his elevators, his telephone, his elec- trical appliances, and what not, and yet would that man not support higher education, because he himself had never en- joyed any. During that same canvass, another party refused a sub- scription, on the ground that no one gave him anything, and lie did not see why he needed to give anything Their ingratitude. to anybody, \\hat a text for a sermon! No one gave him anything! He buys a newspaper for a penny, and believes he pays its full value. He rides to the suburbs for a nickel or to New York for a couple of dollars, and be- 19 lieves lie pays full value. He pays a few paltry dollars in taxes, and believes he pays for all the school-education his children receive, and for the police- and fire- and health-protec- tion he enjoys. I shall not speak of those numerous persons who refused on the ground that they could not afford it, albeit that they and their families spend their summers at the sea side, or on the mountain top, or abroad, and are frequently seen at the theatres, operas, and fashionable restaurants, decked out in the finest and costliest. But I shall speak of that one, who gave as reason for refusing that he did his full duty by his fellowmen by contributing to the charities. " And do you contribute nothing toward pre- venting the need of charity?" I asked. The man stared at me, either thinking that I made sport of him, or that I was stark mad. Oh, these charity contributions! What a multitude of sins they cover, indeed! By sins of omission and commission men help to bring on, on the one side, the A|trujsm prevents wretched condition of the poor, their exhaustion need of remedial and congestion and consumption, their filth and chanty> vice and crime, and, on the other side, they try to cure this virulent disease of society by applying a few charity plasters here and there. What if Holland had attempted to put a plaster here, and a plaster there to keep out the ocean tides that roll down her low-lying shores! By erecting powerful dikes, and watching them with eagle's eyes, and repairing in- stantly the slightest damage, has she kept out her most dan- gerous foe, and has saved herself from being engulfed. What if we had kept out the floods of pauperism as Holland barred out the ocean tides! What if our altruism had raised a wall of protection around our needy classes, and had guarded it as Holland guards her dikes, and repaired even the slightest damage as soon as discovered! What if we had prevented their congestion, by wisely scattering them; and their filthy environments, by giving them healthy homes; and their phys- ical exhaustion, by employing them in invigorating labor; and their moral degeneracy, by supplying their moral and spiritual wants; and their perpetual half-hunger, by giving 20 them sufficient food ! How many thousands of lives might we not have rescued! ' How many hundreds of thousands of dol- lars might we not have saved! Ah, yes, we have yet to learn that altruism is profitable, and as much to him from whom it comes, as to him toward in being just to whom it is extended. As only the best social others, we are just order can make possible our best advance, so, if but for self-interest, the creation of the best social order must be our higher end. As we find our truest joy when others enjoy with us, so do we find our truest prosperity when others prosper with us. Whatever heightens the .strength of society decreases our weakness; whatever lessens its want and vice and crime heightens the peace of our homes, and the safety of our families. Of every dollar we spend on the pro- motion of the good of others, we expend ninety-nine cents on ourselves. Nothing pays, in the long run, so large a dividend as being just, and seeing that justice is done toward others, and upholding the agencies for the ministration of justice. Once we shall have the true love of man in our hearts, it will show itself also in the words of our mouth, in the deeds of our hand, in the aspirations of our soul. Egoism will then change to altruism. The love of self will lose and find itself in the peace and happiness of all. 3amfl flf Sta- in PESSIMISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BEFORE THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, BY RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D. Philadelphia, March 6th, 1404. Text : "Joy is withered away from the sons of men." JOEL i, 12. SCRIPTURAL WESSON : ECCLESIASTES, in. If there is one fault greater than any other that human flesh is heir to, it is the fault of making sweeping generaliza- tions. The whole generally suffers for the part. The sins of the individual are visited upon his family, creed or nationality. Some Irishman drinks, some German is vulgar, a Frenchman deceives, a Cath- olic is bigoted, a Jew is loud, and the generalization is made that all Irishmen drink, all Germans are vulgar, all French- men deceive, all Catholics are bigoted, all Jews are loud, and in the ' ' want ' ' columns of your newspapers you read that none of these people need apply. Some employer oppresses his laborers, some laborer takes advantage of his employer, some preacher belies his preaching, and you are sure to hear or read that all employers are oppressors, all laborers rogues, all preachers hypocrites. There is little remembrance of the Irishmen who fought for the preservation of our Union; of the 22 Germans and Frenchmen whose volunteer service in the War of the Revolution helped to gain our Independence; of Catho- lics and Jews whose brain and industry enrich our Nation; of employers and employees who promote each others' good; of preachers whose lives are consecrated to the elevation of society. Perhaps we ought not to complain, seeing that God Him- self is subjected to similar sweeping generalizations. Ac- cording to the plaint of many, God has made a dismal failure of His creation. Life is worse than a mistake, it is a crime. There is not a day that is worth its living, not an hour that is not full of trials and tribulations. The sound of weeping is louder than the sound of laughter, and the days of storm far more numerous than the hours of sunshine. God indulges in nothing so much as in afflicting his people, and nothing delights Him more than looking upon the misery of them, whom, without their will, He has brought into this vale of sorrows. This pessimistic view of God's rulership over this earth is by no means a newly acquired habit. It has come down to us with many another absurd and pernicious be- H fl e ion miSm '" r9 " lief of the P ast At one time > ifc constituted al- most all that there was of religion. To hold to the belief that this earth was under the curse of an angry God constituted true piety; to deny it meant heresy, and often brought death. What is much of the theology that has been spun from, or that has been woven into the texture of the New Testa- ment but a form of pessimism ? Because Eve ate of the for- bidden fruit, all her descendants are under the wrath of God, a wrath which not even the blood of His only begotten Son has been able to appease, a wrath which can be atoned only by slaying the flesh and by mortifying the senses, by closing eye and ear to all that is beautiful and joyous, by adopting a life of asceticism and celibacy, by spurning every earthly in- terest and concentrating every concern upon the life to come. To our credit, however, be it said, that pessimistic reli- gion is on the wane. Light and life, song and sunshine have 23 entered the church, and have driven out much of the graveyard gloom that once prevailed there. The Old Testament conception of "serving God with joy," of " appearing before Him with gladness," "of praising Him with the trumpet and the harp, with the timbrel and the cymbal" is reasserting itself. But in the same proportion as pessimism is driven out of theology, it is increasing its hold on those arrayed against religion. Schopenhauer is their god, and Nietz- But strengthening sche his greatest prophet. Their disciples and amon 9 "nbeiiev- apostles and devotees are encountered every- where. In one of the sublimest regions of the Alps, where the glory of God and the beauty of His handiwork seemed almost to speak to man, I came across a gentleman poring over a volume entitled " Aphorisms From the Writings of Schopen- hauer." While reading, aboard the steamer, a volume of Nietzsche's writings, which I had picked up abroad for the purpose of discovering the spell he exercises upon large num- bers of the reading public, I was accosted by a supercilious fellow passenger, with the words: " Ah, so you, too, are one of us!" " What do you mean by being ' one of us' ?" I asked, to which he replied: " A Nitzscheite, one of those who recog- nize that God and the belief in God have made a failure of this earthly life, one of those who are honest enough to think and to say that man is more than God, more than religion or law, that he is his own God, his own law, his own right." " No" said I, " I am not one of you. 'I am not yet ready to go to the madhouse, whither Nitzsche went, and where he ended." As yet. the number of those who go to the extremes of Nietzsche are small, in comparison with those who do homage to his master. Schopenhauer fairly rules the Schopenhauer mind of Europe. Its literature, press, drama, rules mind of Eu- its politics, its industrial world, its higher and rope- lower society seern permeated with pessimism. The chief writers of Scandinavia, France, Russia write it; the chief play-wrights of Germany, Italy, Spain enact it. In certain 24 quarters it has become a cult, and almost religious honors are shown to the memory of its chief oracle. Let us hear Schopenhauer's message to the world, and examine the foundations upon which its wide-spread and fast- growing popularity is reared. His all-embrac- 8 pessimism. * n doctrine is: This is the worst possible world. There is nothing but evil. Happiness is a chimera; suffering alone is a reality. The misery which abounds everywhere, and the obvious imperfections of earth's highest product, man, make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being. L,ife is but a disappoint- ment and a cheat; man but a shipwrecked sailor, struggling with might and main to keep himself from drowning, only to sink at last; or this earth is a penitentiary, where the con- demned of some other life suffer the penalties for their former crimes. It would be far more appropriate to address man as " My Fellow- Sufferer" than as '" My Dear Sir." The brute has in every way the advantage over man. It is spared the fear of to-morrow's cares or pains, and the remembrance of past sorrows and disappointments and failures. The nearer a man is to the brute, the more stupid and obtuse a man is, the greater is his advantage over the man of culture; unattainable ideals do not haunt him, and he is spared painful disillusions. Culture only makes man more susceptible to pain, only makes him see all the clearer the follies and wrongs and cruelties of life, only makes him sympathize with the sorrows of others, thereby adding yet more sorrow to his own. Of what use is cherishing ideals, seeing that their attainment is impossible, or that they are but bubbles when attained. Even love is but a delusion, and woman a snare, and he that hates woman most spares himself infinite evil. Man's worst enemy is his fellow- man. Might constitutes right. The many must slave and starve that the few may rule and ruin. The rich oppress the poor; the poor hate the rich. The great despise the small; the small envy the great. As wild beasts are kept apart by means of iron cages so are men held from falling upon each other by means of police force, armaments, and criminal law. 25 The best thing that can be said of life is Finis, "it is fin- ished;" the only cure for all its ills is a universal holocaust of suicide. Thus spake and philosophized Schopenhauer, the head of the school of pessimism, and thus speak and write his thou- sands of followers. But, the curious thing about it is this, only the fewest of them, like their master, really believe what they preach, and practice what they profess. A more notoriously inconsistent philosopher than Schopen- hauer has probably never lived. No man complains more bit- terly of man's ill treatment of his fellovvmen than he, and yet few men attack their critics as ferociously as he. No man emphasizes more strongly than he that the true toiler for the good of man must not look for reward, yet few men are as eager for recognition, as hungry for fame and honor, as savage and melancholy when ignored, as he. He denounces vanity, and yet speaks with ecstasy of his system of philosophy, declares Hegel and Schleiermacher charlatans, compared with him, mentions with pride a certain person buying his portrait, "in order to place it in a kind of chapel, like the image of a saint." He preaches stoicism, and lives the life of an epicure. He de- nounces the lusts of the flesh, and freely indulges them. He speaks of the filthiness of lucre, and in his avariciousness robs even his mother and sister. He insults women and warns against love, yet goes into a fit of madness because his offer of marriage is refused. He preaches the gospel of suicide, and yet lives his seventy-two years, desires to round out a cen- tury, is in constant fear of death, hastens from Naples in fear of small-pox; from Verona, in fear of poison being mixed with his snuff; from Berlin, in fear of cholera; is afraid to shave himself, in fear of cutting himself with the razor; is afraid to drink from any but his own glass, in fear of conta- gious disease. He teaches resignation and pity, yet selfish- ness is his ruling passion. He is utterly indifferent to the sorrows of his fellowmen, is wholly lacking in sympathy and love. He rails at the tyranny of authority, at the right of 26 might and numbers, yet speaks of patriotism as ".the passion of fools, and the most foolish of passions," arrays himself against the people by aiding the soldiers, and to these and to his dog he leaves his property. Nothing can be clearer than that the pessimism of Schopen- hauer was woven of threads of madness, egoism, conceit, mental and stomachal dyspepsia. And of these Some pessinvsm threads has been spun much of the pes- due to dyspepsia. simism I have met with in life. What a scold Carlyle was! In his eyes, nothing was right in the generation in which he lived. It was "barren and brainless, soulless and faithless." His favorite simile for his contemporaries was that of " apes chattering on the shores of the Dead Sea." And yet, that very age contributed more toward the uplift of man than did a dozen ages preceding it. And had you enjoyed the confidence of Mrs. Carlyle, she would probably have told you how often the prescriber for others needed a good dose of his own medicine. And should you care to know the cause of this Carlylian pessimism, you need but consult his biographer Froude, and he will tell you that it was clue to a bad case of chronic dyspepsia. You remember Kmerson's saying that when a man's bile is in good working order, he is a Unitarian, but when out of order he is a Calvanist, and a Calvanist is about as bad a species of pessimist as you will find, except it be a reform- hating Jewish pseudo-orthodox. There are a lot of biles out of order, and their disorder is responsible for a lot of mischief. I know a man of great ability, but whose heart is diseased by a too plenteous secretion of bile. His tongue is more venom- ous than that of a viper, his thrust deeper than that of sword. Taken to task, one day, for the cruelty of his tongue, he said to the offended: " Had you inherited as bad a liver as mine, you would be as bitter as I." He poses as a paragon; forever lashing others for lacking virtues which he does not possess, and for possessing traits which he does not lack; believing nothing, yet accusing others of unbelief; observing nothing, yet charging others with laxity; openly violating orthodox 27 customs and laws, even the orthodox Sabbath, yet bewailing the unorthodoxy of the age, and asking others to strengthen the religion which by him is "more honored in the breach than the observance." And I know of a band of men, some of them confessed unbelievers, some of them totally indifferent to the claims of the synagogue, who make it their orthodox duty to have their fling, every now and then, at those, Som * to e . nv ' ous egotism or failure. who minister, according to their lights, to the religious needs of their community, at those who teach the young and the old, comfort and strengthen the sorrowing and suffering, bring back those that have strayed away, implant in the hearts of thousands a love of God and a love of man. The pessimism of these people, wherever it is not a case of Carlylian dyspepsia, is generally Schopenhauerian egotism, con- ceit or failure. Whenever you encounter a severe case of pes- simism, you will generally find back of it a hypochondriac or a malcontent, a misfit or a failure, some disappointed climber, some envious egotist, some one whose brain is overworked or whose nerves are overstrained, some one in whom bile takes the place of brain, and spleen the place of milk of human kindness, someone whose eyes as well as stomach, whose mind as well as mouth, need a thorough anti-septic wash. If I cannot go all the way with Alexander Pope in his teaching "Whatever is, is right," I certainly would have to be blind or mad, before I could subscribe to pes- simism's gospel, "Whatever is, is wrong." Of There is much evil but more good. course, there is much that is wrong in this world, and I am not quite sure whether an absolutely wrongless world would be a very desirable place for such as you and I to live in. The sprouting of our wings would have to make consid- erable headway, before you and I could be considered fit to live as angels among angels. But, while conscious of much that is wrong, why should we increase it by shutting our eyes to the abundance of good that surges about us ? It is true, there is much enmity between man and man, wars are waged; innocent blood is shed; suffering is inflicted, 28 capital and labor stand arrayed against each other with gauntleted hands, but does that justify us in making the sweeping generalization that only evil obtains between man and man ? What of the noble deeds of philanthropy, of the magnificent institutions of benevo- lence, of the devotion and self-sacrifice of sisters of mercy, of nurses on the battlefield! What of the Florence Nightingales, the Father Damiens! What of our Toynbee Halls, our Hull Houses, our College Settlements, our Juvenile Aid Societies, our Old Folks Homes! What of the Drexel Institutes, the Cornell Universities, the Cocoran Art Galleries, the Carnegie Libraries! It is true, there is corruption in politics; offices are bought; voters are bribed. What of such men as Congressman Shafroth, of Colorado, who voluntarily surrenders his seat Honesty outweighs discovering that voles had been fraudently corruption. J cast in his favor! What of such Senators as Hoar of Massachusetts, nearly thirty years a member of the Senate, and yet a poor man! It is true, there is pain, in this world. Does this justify the sweeping generalization that a devil and not a God rules this earth ? What of our golden harvests, our Happiness out- f ra g rant flowers, our winged choristers, our weighs pain. limpid springs! Are there not a thousand smiles for every sigh, a thousand laughters for ever}- tear, a thou- sand zephyrs for every blast of storm! Do not a thousand thanksgivings wing their flight every night, for every curse that is hissed. Do not ten thousand men start out every morning on work of righteousness for every one that sneaks along the devious way of crime! It is true, others possess much more of earthly goods than 3'ou or I; it is true, some of us have no more than the mere necessities of life. But it does not yet follow that we are, therefore, miserable, that we may not, with all our little, have a happiness of our own, which all the treasure of the world cannot purchase. It is true, higher culture has made us more susceptible to pain and commiseration, but it has also enabled us to conquer no end of ills that once cursed human existence. 29 It is true, there is oppression and persecution and extrava- gance, but it is also true we are nearer the brotherhood of man than we have ever been before. We are t 1 11 1-1 The human out- not going back. Moral as well as physical evo- weighstheanimal . lution is forward and upward. The golden age lies in front of us; the age of the brute is in the rear. Where are those slaveries and tyrannies that blackened former ages! Where are the debaucheries and extravagances that once scan- dalized such courts as those of Louis XIV and XV, of Charles II of England, and Catherine of Russia! Where are the bigotries that once kept the Torquemadas and the Catherine de Medicis busy with burning and butchering people! No, there is no occasion for pessimism; on the contrary, there is much ground for congratulation. The world is grad- ually growing better, and I believe it would im- Easler to find fault prove much faster, if we had less croaking grum- than to live fault- biers, and more active co-laborers in the rearing of our earthly paradise. How much easier it is to cry that the world is all wrong than to help making it right! How much easier it is to throw stones than to lay stones! How much easier to pick flaws than to live faultlessly! How much easier to see the mote in others' eyes than to pluck the beam from our own! There is no difficulty in finding evil, when you look for it, and if you look long enough, you will find even more than you expected to find. It was thus that Hamlet started to look for evil. It was not long before " at r c ^ watch ' harm he saw ghosts; not long before he found time "out of joint;" not long before his own mind was out of joint; not long before a mother, a betrothed, a friend, himself, and yet others, paid with their lives for the folly of looking only for evil in a world full of good. There are mysteries, of course, but we can trust to God to solve them, in His own time, and in His own way. Enough, if we solve what is given us to solve, and do Doing good leaves what is given us to do. With such work on little time for find - ing evil, hand, there is little time left for looking for things to grumble about, nor sufficient leisure for advocating 30 or contemplating suicide. When Faust found himself with nothing to do but to brood, the poison-cup was near his lips. When the Easter chant recalled him to life and duty and faith, when the angel chorus bade him "to burst his prison and to break his gloom," he put down the fatal draught, and ended with building dikes to keep out the sea, with draining marshy plains and stagnant pools, with turning over to the millions fertile fields for active toil, by whJch to sustain themselves and with which to bless mankind. Jama of ofa-iag. IV OPTIMISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BEFORE THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, BY RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D. Philadelphia, March isth, 1004. Text : "The I if the tru th were the poor a bless- known, it would probably be found, that many more dusty and dark-colored glasses are worn by the rich than by the poor. Hope is a better friend to the poor than wealth is to the rich. The darkness of the poor is very apt to be illumined by the hope of a brighter day dawning; their burden is very apt to be lightened by the faith that ulti- mately all will be shown to have been for the best. If the } oor have but little chance for pleasure, they have generally enough of wisdom to make the most of the least. My rounds among the rich and poor, assure me that the laughter of the rich seldom equals in joyousness that of the poor. They who have much of the good of this world often have little of the s P irit of apprecia- tioii. The sated mouth is hard to please; and 33 the filled purse is difficult to content. They whose lot is cast on the sunniest heights, often see the sun rise and set along the darkest horizon. There is always something or another to dread, some rainy day to fear, some calamity to anticipate. A gentleman, being complimented, one day, upon the ele- gance and completeness of his new home, remarked that a serious mistake had been made in its construction, that he did not know how he would ever get a coffin down the narrow stairway. And I have been told of a lady, who has just com- pleted a magnificent new home, in which, among no end of sanitary equipments, one room has been fitted up as a little pharmacy, and the floor and ceiling and windows and walls of another room have been constructed to answer the purposes of an operating room, in case of emergency. She prides herself on her wisdom in looking ahead, and in being prepared for all kinds of sicknesses and all sorts of operations. Think of having an operating room under one's roof, and hoping to live happily all the days of one's life! Would not a little private sanitary cemetery within the conservator}' of that home be quite an addition ? Think of the pleasure, upon visiting that home, to be taken into the conservatory, and to have the grave of an old bachelor-uncle pointed out here, or of a maiden- aunt there, or of a pet dog or canary bird yonder! In giving you, on the one side, a picture of Mrs. Wiggs, and in citing on the other side, the case of the man complain- ing of having built his stairway too narrow for Optimism sses a coffin, and the case or the woman ornamenting bright sides in her new home with a private pharmacy and a everything and everybody. private operating-room, I have given you, at the same time, a picture of optimism and pessimism. One sees the bright side, even of the darkest; the other the dark side, even of the brighest. In Mrs. Wiggs, we have one of those characters' who bring sunshine into their own lives and into the lives of others, by holding fast to the belief that this is the be.st possible world and that over it rules the best possi- ble God; that trials and tribulations subserve a higher purpose than man can fathom; that even the worst happenings are in- struments for good, if interpreted and accepted aright; that there is no cloud, and be it never so dark, but that its other 34 side is sun-illumined, and no sunset, and be it never so gloomy, but that there is somewhere a roseate sunrise; that there is no character, and be it never so bad, but that there is a good trait somewhere, in short, one of those who believes that "In the mud and scum of things Something always, always sings." But you might say, that the contrast I draw between optimistic Mrs. Wiggs, on the one side, and the pessimistic man and woman, on the other side, is unfair, inasmuch as these are taken from life, while the other is a product of fancy. You might say, that characters like Mrs. Wiggs exist only in fiction, that they are impossible in a world such as ours, where sorrows and sufferings, wrongs and wants, make it difficult to believe that all things are for the best and that there is good in everything. As to the first objection, let me say that there was never a character drawn so true to life as that of Mrs. Wiggs. I Mrs wiq s' optim- h ave en her often, and have often felt the warm ism drawn from clasp of her hand, and my heart has often been thrilled by the sunshine of her disposition. I have heard her sing, even though sorrows tried their best to choke her voice; and I have seen her smile, at times, when even sympathizing friends could not restrain their tears. I have seen her faith unshaken though others disbelieved or doubted. I have seen her give to others when she had not enough for herself, and have heard her, when remonstrated with, reply that God, who had provided for her in the past, would also provide for her in the future. I have heard her "praise God from whom all blessings flow," when about all the blessings she could call her own was a nature overflowing with faith, hope and cheer. As to the second objection, that of the unreasonableness of being asked to lojlc only for bright sides in a world full of darkness, and to find only good in a world full of There is an op'.im- -i i , ,> 1 i *.i ism that is evil evl *' * et me sa ^' tnat n Olle as ' cs ^' OU to c * this. You would be doing wrong, if you did. There is a form of optimism that is as pernicious as the worst species of pessimism. There is an optimism that paralyzes all growth and all endeavor; that makes idlers and cowards of men; that 35 leaves the righting of wrongs to chance or to Providence, when it should be rooted out by personal, heroic effort; that tolerates the false or the corrupt or the absurd rather than, by exposure or agitation or attack, ruffle people's mind, or dis- turb people's faith, or bring persecution or ruin upon oneself. What, if Moses or Luther, Washington or Lincoln, Darwin or Wise had contented themselves with being satisfied with exist- ing things, with leaving well enough alone? There are times when a healthy pessimism is not only laudable but also imperative. When truth has to be spoken where falsehood works evil, when justice is to be done where injustice flourishes, when virtue ism is to be defended where vice is triumphant, when liberty is to be championed where tyranny rules, it is worse than cowardice, it is crime, to condone or perpetuate the wrong by mouthing some such phrases as "whatever is, is right," "all is for the best," "better to endure the wrong than to suffer for the right." The true optimism has little in common with the kind we have just depicted. True optimism is of the heroic sort, of the kind of which Mrs. Wiggs is a type. It has the courage not to fume at the unalterable, nor to Jg U r '| C ptimism is fret where fretting is of no avail. It has the courage to be grateful even for little, and to look cheerfully forward to the dawn, even in the darkest night. If the clouds are dark, and their color beyond its power of changing, it looks for a silver lining or a golden strand somewhere, and generally finds it. If the storms howl and defeat its every attempt at silencing them, it tries to drown them under the voice of song, and generally succeeds. If the heart is be- reaved of love, it seeks to fill the void with other loves. If it discovers flaws which it cannot remedy, it looks all the harder for virtues, or labors all the stronger on cultivating them. If cruelly deceived by man, it clings all the stronger to its faith in the goodness of mankind. If baffled by adverse fates, it trusts all the firmer in the wisdom and dispensations of Provi- dence. And such optimism can easily be cultivated, and w 7 ell merits cultivation, for nothing yields to life so bountiful a 36 True optimism de- harvest of good as the faculty of seeing the serving of cuitiva- bright side of things, of believing the good things of people, and of making the best of the worst. Show me the true optimist, and I'll show you one of the hap- piest of men. Show me the true optimist, and I'll show you one who loves all that is loveable, and who is loved by all whose love is worth having, in whose company there is cheer and joy, who is sought out by the cheerful and joyful, who with little means puts more into life and gets more out of it than many another with colossal fortunes and far-reaching fame. Show me the true optimist, and I will show } T OU the man whose heart is full of song, whose tongue is full of hu- man kindness, whose eye not even the direst misery can blind to the goodness and beauty of things. What man saw more of the mud and scum of things than Gorky, and what man saw more of the beauty and goodness beneath it than he ? Listen to his own state- Gorky sees good t ..j f j d f j n among lowest. of life, where darkness and terror reign, where man is half beast, and life is only a fight for bread. It flows sluggishly there in dark streams, but even there, gleam pearls of courage, of intelligence, of heroism. liven there, beauty and love exist. Wherever man is found there, too, good is found, in tiny particles and in invisible roots, at times, but still it is there. All these roots will not perish; some will grow and flourish and will put forth fruits of life and love." And what man tried harder to cure Emerson of his per- sistent optimism than Carlyle, and what man made a more dismal failure of it? The one looked at the Emerson seesgood w throngh smo ked glasses, and saw nothing everywhere. in it that was bright; the other's eyes were bright, and his glasses clear and clean, and lie saw a world full of beauty. Where the one could not admit the sunshine, the other could not "leave the clear sky out of the landscape." The Scotch philosopher resolved one day to cure his American friend of his optimism. "I took him," writes Carlyle, "to the lowest parts of London, and showed him all that was go- ing on there. This done, 1 turned to him. saying: 'And noo, man, d'ye believe in the deevil noo?' 'Oh, no,' he replied; 37 ' all these people seem to me only parts of the great machine, and, on the whole, I think they are doing their work very sat- isfactorily!' Then, continues Carlyle, I took him down to the House of Commons, there I showed him ae chiel getting up after anither and leeing and leeing. And I turned to him and said: 'And noo, man, d'ye believe in the deevil noo ?' He made me, however, just the same answer as before, and I then gave him up in despair." Men, such as Emerson and Carlyle, often bring their re- spective temperaments with them into life, and the one proba- bly deserves as little our praise as the other de- Some born with serves our censure. There are people who bring optimistic temper- their rose-colored spectacles with them; their merit lies in keeping them clear of dust. A little grandchild, one day, entered the room of her grandmother, who had been buried a few clays before. Noticing "granny's" spectacles, she said: "Why, granny has left her glasses behind, and she will not be able to see the pretty things of heaven." There are people who have left behind their spectacles upon coining here, and they cannot see half or any of the pretty things of this earth. But, it is with optimism as it is with greatness, as " some are born great," and as "others achieve greatness," so are some born optimistic, and others acquire the habit of seeing the bright side of things. Of b the many pretty sights I saw in Hamburg, not the least was an old tub, crowded with growing plants, fas- tened by means of an iron hoop to a third or fourth story window of an old, tumble-down house near the harbor. It was more than flowers that I saw at that window. I saw a piece of optimism there, and I felt quite sure that bright and fragrant flowers were growing in hearts and minds back of that attic window. Another instance of people cultivating the art of looking for bright things in life was presented to Doctor Con well and myself, on our visit to Copenhagen, where we noticed quite a number of the window panes of the poorer homes painted with flowers. The poor in that cold, northern climate probably find it difficult to keep flowers alive in winter. Yet, they will not be deprived of the sight of the beautiful. 38 They will have the light filter into their rooms, colored with the green and red and golden, and so they make art do what nature denies. There are many ways of cultivating the habit of seeing the bright side of things, and of making the best of the worst. Health a means of The first and foremost among these is the pro- developing opJm- motion of good health. Sickness and optimism rarely go together. Where you find disease there you generally find the pessimist. It is natural for the mind, affected by suffering, or overworked, to be morbid, to imagine and fear the worst. Where there is a healthy flow of blood, where lungs are filled with pure air, where there is plentiful exercise, where there is neither exhaustion nor dissipation, where the digestion is good, where mental and physical labor wisely alternates with rest, where the weekly Sabbath is sacredly devoted to physical and mental and spiritual recrea- tion, there you will generally find the cheerful temperament, the disposition to look at the world through rose-colored spectacles. What if we were, the first thing in the morning, to step before a looking-glass, and looking squarely at the fellow therein, ask him " How do 3*011 feel this morning, and how are you going to feel this evening ? In what spirit did you rise this morning, and what will be your mood to-day ? Have you put on your smoked or your rose-colored glasses, and, if the latter, have you thoroughly cleaned them of all dust?" And if he makes a cross and crabid face, and has a tired look, and has worry sitting on his brow, he is ready for a bad case of pessimism, and you must prescribe for him at once. Tell him, he must worry less, for worry kills the joy of life. Tell him to slave less, for, even though its profit be fortunes, there is no happiness in the fortunes of slavery. Tell him to take time for his meals, and for walking to and from his home, for, whatever time he steals of his meals and exercise, he will have to repay tenfold in the amount of time he will ultimately lose by sickness. Tell him to smile more, to sing more, to open his eyes and ears more to the beauties about him, to think kindlier of his fellowmen and of his fate. Tell him to take that prescription once every morning, thirty days in the month, 39 and twelve months in the year, and he will develop into as fine a specimen of optimist as ever you saw in all your life. Industry is another means of developing optimism. There are a lot of people in this world who see no good because they do no good. They spend their days in idleness. Werk another Their lives have neither aim nor purpose. Their means of deveiop- appetites are sated and cloyed. They have had N optimism, nearly everything, therefore are they satisfied with nothing. Women, especially society women, constitute a large part of that class, and their pessimism is responsible for no end of ills. Such women need nothing so much as work, healthy work, work that shall keep hand and heart and head nobly busy. Try the work-cure treatment on such diseased members of society, and they will have no need of rest-cures. Put a scrubbing-brush into their hand, place them in front of the wash-tub and the kitchen-range and the cradle, and you will effect more cures than do your high-priced specialists in your high-priced private hospitals, and you will introduce into homes more cheer and happiness and good will to the square inch than can now be found to the square acre. Another means of developing optimism is fostering a spirit of wise contentment. This is the special need of those " have nots" who are always envious of the Contentment haves. Ihese need to learn, more than any- another means of thing else, that "having" and "enjoying" are developing optim- ism, not interchangeable terms, that as uneasy rests the head that wears the crown," so uneasy walks and rests the body that is laden with fortune or with fame. It was Socrates who said that, whenever he sees a fine display in a show-window, it pleases him to note how many things there are in this world he can do without. We need some of that Socratic spirit, that will enable us to see that the having much means much care and much worriment, of all of which those, who have little, are relieved. There is an old Latin adage that is well worth remembering: " Happy is not he who has what he desires, but who desires not what he has not " I know of a young lady who is fairly bubbling over with good nature. Though of excellent mind and heart, and though trained to provide for herself, she is not considered eligible to 40 so-called society, because there a father's financial ranking generally counts, not a daughter's excellence of mind and soul. And yet, she is not in the least envious of the life from which she is shut out. She rather pities those who must dress and feed and parade and entertain and be entertained as com- manded. She would not exchange her freedom for their slavery, her simple and natural gaity for the hypocrisies of fashionable society. She earns her living in one of the noblest callings in life; her leisure time she employs partly in seeking pleasure, partly with her books and music, parti} 7 on work of benevolence. Fortunate that man who obtains the hand and heart of such a woman! The optimism of her maidenhood will be the charm of her wifehood, and the glory of her motherhood. Where her cheery spirit will hold sway, there will be an empire of happiness. Yet another means there is for developing optimism, and that is cultivating a due sense of appreciation of past and present blessings. In one of my former homes, Apprecia'ion another means of there lived a little woman, who enjoyed quite a developing opiim- ] oca ] reputation for having remarked one day, that she had no time to pray for things she had not, she was kept so busy thanking God for what she has and for what she has had. What floods of optimism would wash this world clean of pessimism, if it had this old woman's spirit of thankfulness! Straining our eye: for envious glimpses of what we have not, we are blind to the countless blessings that are ours. We have eyes to see the glories of God. We have ears to hear the voices of those who love us. We have tongues to speak kindly words to those in need of words of comfort. We have brains to think, hearts to feel, souls to aspire. The sun shines for us; the rain falls for us; the har- vest ripens for us; the flower blooms for us; the bird sings for us; for us sunrise and sunset and rainbows deck themselves in their most glorious raiment. How much more thankful than we that patient was, who folded his hands one day, and said " How good the I/orcl is to let the sun shine through my win- dows!" Or that poor little boy, who sleeping in an attic room, one winter night, with but a board for his cover, turned to his mother, and asked: " What do poor boys do in such a night as this, who have no boards with which to cover themselves ?" And of one more means for developing a habit of seeing the bright side of things I must speak, and that is the culiva- tion of a spirit of trust in the wisdom of God's Fajth another dispensation. Supported by the staff of faith, means of develop- many a pilgrim has crossed in safety the abyss lnfl P timisrn - of pessimism and despair. They who look up, while the tears are trickling down, transplant a piece of heaven into their hearts. They, who resignedly bow their heads under the bur- den of their trials, as flowers bend their head under the storm, shall in the returning sunshine, here or yonder, look all the brighter and fresher for their purification. They who in the darkest night look trustfully forward to the coming dawn, lessen the sorrows of the present, and, in the present, have a foretaste of the joys that are to come. Jams 0f V REALISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BBFOKE THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, Br RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF. D. D. Philadelphia, March soth, igoi. Text : " Who may ascend unto the hill of the Lord, and who may stand in His holy place? He that is clean of hands, and pure in heart ; that lifteth not up his soul unto falsehood." PSALM xxiv, 3-4. SCRIPTURAL LESSON : ISAIAH LV. Upon being told that this Sunday's discourse, in our pres- ent series of "Some Isms of To-Day, " would be entitled Realism, a friend of mine remarked, " I want to O idmanin of re- hear that discourse, for I am a Realist." " No," aiist: a practical I said, "you are not," and I knew whereof I man> spoke. I know him to be a man to whom life means more than merely toiling and moiling for gold, than eating or drink- ing or worrying or racing for a number of years, to perish in the end as perishes the beast. I know him to be a man of deep affections, of generous impulses, of religious inclinations, a man capable of self-sacrifice, a believer in the true and the good and the beautiful, and a promoter of the same. To him, the realist is the practical man; the man whose feet are upon the ground, whose eyes are directed to the object in front of him and not to the clouds, who generally achieves something because he labors for it, and does not dream of it. The only difference between us is, probably, one of defini- tion. His conception of realism is the German understanding of the word, in which language it has conveved, ... Modern realism: till recent times, the meaning or the practical in vitiated taste, sor- edncation and in life. He probably does not know * d aim > m "y greed, of the men who, in these days, call themselves realists, naturalists, who have invaded literature, drama, art, 44 politics, religion and morality; the writers and artists, who boast that they exhibit the literal reality, the unvarnished truth of things, and who represent the most revolting charac- ters, scenes and events, idealizing, beautifying nothing, con- cealing not even what is most offensive to good taste and good morals, teaching that beauty must be sacrificed to truth, the ideal to the real, the poetic to the prosaic. My friend has probably no acquaintance with the men who, styling them- selves realists, teach that the spider and the toad, the weed and the thorn, have a larger place on earth than the canary or the swan, than the rose or the violet, and are therefore en- titled to larger consideration; that the earth is fuller of the depraved, the vicious, the criminal, than of heroes and saints, and the truth is better served by presenting these, in all their hideousness, nudity, obscenity, viciousness, than picturing the others with their halos and laurels. He has probably not heard of the men who, by their lives and writings, teach that " natural right " is higher than " legal right," "natural love " preferable to ' ' artificial love, ' ' that life is a bubble, puffed out of nothing and bursting into nothing, that there is nothing back of the cradle and nothing in front of the coffin, that he acts wisest who gets most of the only realities that are worth hav- ing in life: gold and all the pleasure that gold will buy. Nothing can be clearer, therefore, than that my friend is as little in harmony with this conception of realism as I am opposed to his understanding of the term realist. t!C wea!h I believe as much as he in the practical man, in the man who achieves by reason of conscientious and persevering labor. I do not belong to that class, if that class really exists, that shudders at the thought of wealth, as if it were something wicked, something to be shunned. Money may be made to serve the highest ends, and he who spurns it or neglects it thwarts his own best good. As an end in itself, none)- is nothing, as a means it may be everything. It may mean education, health, wholesome food, respectable environ- ment, skilled medical service, comfort, travel, cultivation of science, music, art and literature. It may mean independence, benevolence, freedom from financial worry, a peaceful old age, Money is the lever that lifts humanity out of barbarism, and 45 the propeller that moves civilization forward and upward. Banish money, and the healthful desire and the noble use of it, and the retrogression of society will commence. Banish the money-makers, and you banish at the same time your inven- tors and educators, your artists and benefactors. There is nothing against which I would warn a youth as much as against poverty. As many men are ruined by the lack of money as by the love of it. Poverty is a , . , . . . Poverty a hardship. hardship; want is a cruel taskmaster. It cripples powers; it stifles talents. For every one that triumphs over it, a hundred succumb. It contracts the meaning of life, con- demns it to a constant grind and ceaseless toil, to habitation among filth, to association with the unclean, the uncultured, the unmoral. It poisons the happiness of childhood, saps the strength of manhood, opens the almshouse or infirmary in old age, and relinquishes its hold on its victim only in the potter's field. All this and much more may be said in favor of wealth and against poverty. But there is a love of wealth that is to be eschewed even more than the severest poverty. Unfortunately, realism has invaded the realm of Obiection J mere money-getting. legitimate wealth-acquisition, and has, in thou- sands of cases, made it the sole end of existence, the on I} 7 reality worth striving for, the only purpose for which God has created the heavens and the earth, and for which he has endowed man with his marvellous faculties. In a thousand cases, realism closes the eye to every beauty, save the yellow of gold; and the ear to every sound, save the jingle of coin; and the heart to every interest, save money-getting. All the poetry and idealism and higher aspirations of life are shut out to its devo- tees. No birds sing for them. No flowers bloom for them. For them the sky is never blue nor the landscapes ever golden. For them the poet, the musician, the artist, has no existence. Religion has no meaning to them; their God is locked within their safes. No suffering of the sick and poor moves them; no appeal for the betterment of their fellowmen wakens their response. Commandments are broken; laws are circumvented; goods are misrepresented; accounts are falsified; advantage is taken of the helpless; injustice is done. Every move in life 4 6 is weighed and measured and calculated by the standard of wealth. Companions are chosen for their purse riches, not for their riches of heart and mind. Men stand eminent in finan- cial circles and are courted by fashionable society, who are uncouth, vulgar, illiterate and characterless, and who would be dropped as a red hot coal is dropped a day after the loss of their fortune. Worth is estimated by bank account, not by character. Careers are chosen for sons with a view of mak- ing money-getters of them, even though nature have fitted them for some other callings fully as noble and amply renu- merative for all the necessities of life. Oh, the misfits which one encounters daily among the sons of the rich! Oh, the thousands that are annually sacrificed to Mammon, because of parents' belief that only a mtsfitTof sons' 58 money-making career is practical and profitable, that all other careers point toward the poor- house! Thousands are languishing behind counters, to-day, or are stooping over ledgers and day-books, who ought to have been working at j-ome trade, as they might have done, had fate "blessed them with parents more concerned about their sons' natural fitness than in their own money-greed. There was a prominent eye specialist in Cincinnati, who, when a lad, had to obtain I>r. Wise's intercession with his father, before he was permitted to exchange the clothing store for a college. His father's strenuous argument was " there is more money in clothing than in the professions." I know of a brilliant young man, who is regarded, by his family, a dreamer and by others, a failure, because he has chosen to enrich mankind by the wealth of his mind rather than enrich himself. I know of one who is to-day at the head of a conservatory of music, whose father tried his best to make a failure of him as a travelling salesman; and of another, I know, who is to-day eking out an existence as a misfit salesman, whose father, in my presence, threatened to break the violin over his head, if he would once more speak of making music his profession. Telling some gentlemen, the other day, that a son of a wealthy merchant is about to enter the National Farm School, I was asked in aston- ishment, "Is there anything wrong;, with the boy ?" A rich man's son studying practical and scientific agriculture, for the 47 purpose of later carrying on agricultural operations, is looked upon as something so absurd, so unprofitable as to give rise to a question concerning the boy's sanity of mind or body. Had a father had his way, Franklin would have become a money- making tallow-chandler, never one of the makers of our Nation; Tenn)'son, L,owell, Samuel Johnson, L,essing, Gam- betta, would never have become prides of their respective nations. This intense realism, this looking solely to the financially practical and profitable, counts its victims among daughters as well as among sons. Matrimonial alliances are Realism forces considered and calculated, in far too many homes, daughters into un- almost entirely from the financial point of view. holy alliances> The rich match is the great match. Where Croesus woos, there is little chance for Romeo. The eyes that are so keen to the latter 's small means are totally blind to the other's large vices. He knows the art of money-making, and that covers a multitude of sins. No matter what his past life has been, or what his present health or present habits are, so long as he is rich. There is little consideration of a daughter's ideals, culture, refinement, or of her rightful expectations in a hus- band to whom she is to give her virgin heart and soul and all. If he has little or no character, he has money, and has the knack of making more, and can keep a wife in elegance. That makes marriage legitimate and commendable. Such is real- ism's view of marriage in all its hideous plainness, and to it a realistic society says Amen! I recently read a touching story, one of the most pathetic I have read for some time, written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It told of a poor student who had been befriended by a rich family and by them enabled to finish his university studies. Pie proved himself worthy of their kind- ness, graduated with highest honors, and the entire faculty predicted for him a brilliant future. He hastened to his bene- factors to inform them of his good fortune, in gratitude for all they had done for him, and also in the hope that his richly promising career would incline them to look favorably upon the attachment that had sprung up in his heart for their daughter. He was called " a base iugrate " for having dared to lift his eye to their daughter, and was turned out of doors. His hard study prior to his graduation, and the severe shock to his nerves and heart at the treatment of his benefactors, threw him upon a protracted and painful sick-bed. His pro- fessors and their wives vied with one another in nursing him. None of his benefactor's family came near him. In his de- lirium but one thought was uppermost: it was all a mistake, his benefactors had not refused him their daughter, they knew that he would give her an honorable name and a happy future. He recovered only to learn that during his sickness his bene- factor's family had gone to Italy, where the daughter had married a titled roue. An honorable man with a brilliant future was rejected for a title with a disreputable man at- tached to it. A heroic battle is being fought in one of our homes, this very day. It is a fight between a daughter's idealism and a parent's realism. Who will win ? Or will the price of the victory be a broken heart ? It is in much of modern literature, more especially in fiction, where realism sows the seeds that ripen such perverted views of marriage and such false standards of Holism debases Hf h ^ men tioned. When one con- the novel. J siders the inestimable power for good the novel has exercised, and still can exercise in the education of the people, he cannot but bewail its modern decadence. Next to the Bible and the sermon, the novel has proba- bly done more than any other agency in speaking to the heart, . in informing the mind, in holding up a mirror to The novel turned ** * from a power for the SOlll. WllO of US Call tell llOW much of OU1" characters have not been moulded by the heroes of the creation of Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, George Kliot, Auerbach, Victor Hugo, Howells, James Lane Allen, and of other writers of equal worth ? Man}- of us might trace our clearest conception of right and duty to the reading of some good work of fiction. Many of us have there found our straightest way to God, our shortest path to reformation. Never have parents and preachers warned against the seduc- tions of sins as effectively as has the legitimate novel. Where the pulpit dare not speak, where parents will not or cannot 49 speak, where friends feel not free to speak, it has spoken, often just in time, and often with blessed results. But, of late, there has come a change over the spirit of the novel. Desire of notoriety or of gain, eagerness to out- shine the thousand-and-one novelists of to-day, To a power for evil. has driven writers to paroxysms of sensational- ism and vulgarity, for which respectability is claimed under the name of realism or nahwalism. From a healthful, fertiliz- ing channel, it has been turned into a noxious sewer. The sane and healthy view of life no longer attracts the writer, neither is it made attractive for the reader. It is too puerile, too ideal, too romantic. The realism that gives a distorted view of life by selecting abnormal types, the realism that knows no shame, no blush, that flashes its lurid searchlights into the most secret and most sacred relationships, that strips every veil from modesty, and batters down every screen in front of decenc)', the realism that dives into the ce.sspools filled with the effluvia of the morgue, of the divorce-court, of the den or dive or madhouse this constitutes a large part of the fiction that is sent out, under great blare of trumpet, in edi- tions of hundreds of thousands of copies, and that are read by people, young and old, who regard themselves intellectu- ally superior for their having emancipated themselves from the goody goody fiction of their mothers and grandmothers. As might well have been expected, as is the novel so the drama is sure to be. Bach is an expression of the same ten- dency of the age. The one is fiction in prose, the other fiction in action. And of the two, the R "'Xio dllS.. realistic drama is much the worse. It makes up by greater intensity for what it suffers by condensation. What- ever might escape the eye of the novel reader, the forcefulness of realistic acting stamps vividly and lastingly upon the mind of the spectator. Like the novel, the drama is being perverted from one of the wholesomest means of public education to one of the most corrupt. Plays that at one time sent people to their homes wiser and better than when they left. that taught far more forcibly than school or church that virtue is its own reward, that sin ultimately meets 50 with its desert, that justice rules and that the guilty never go unpunished, have been driven off the stage, and their place taken by the drama of realism, that guises itself under the name of Problem Play without ever solving the problem, that in reality seems to have for its sole object the drawing of the largest audiences by the unholiest of means. In these plays, there is ever a rebellion against traditional morality, an overriding of scriptural authority, a defiance of law and pub- lic opinion, a contempt for the ordinary restraints and tastes and decencies. L,et me give you a specimen of its repulsive- ness. In Gerhard Hauptmann's play "Die Weber" (The Weavers) we have presented to us the following scene: A poor weaver, who has not touched meat for two years, asks a comrade not having the heart to do it himself to kill a pretty little dog which had run up to him, and his wife roasts it for him. He cannot control his craving, and begins dipping into the saucepan almost before the meat is done. His stomach, however, cannot bear the dainty, and to his great despair he is forced to reject it. Woman in the drama is forever forsaking her natural place. She is forever stretching forth her hand after forbid- den fruit, the eating of which can only effect her fall and put a blight upon civilized society. Man is forever clamoring for the right to love where he will, and not where he should, the right to spurn the holiest of ties for the basest of reasons. Vice is fairly flaunted in the face of the spectator in these plays, and every dramatic art is employed, first, to overcome his aversion and scruples, then, to win his pity and sympath}', and, finally, his approval. The courtesan and the roue are glorified. The death head of sin is garlanded. The pollution of ihe dive is rose-watered. The mind is intoxicated by emotional and sensational acting. The demarcation line be- tween right and wrong is blurred. Criminal object lessons are given how virtue may be trapped, how honesty may be tempted, how innocence may be betrayed, how law and justice may be foiled. Yet another territory of popular education realism has in- vaded. The press is going the way of the novel and the drama, and its conquest is a harder blow to civil- ization than that of the other two, for, while we could do without the novel and drama, we can- not well do without the press. Our interests in our fellow- kind have deepened and widened. We must know of the doings of one another. We must have a public tribunal for righting our wrongs, for correcting our errors, for disseminat- ing our views, for exchanging our opinions, for advocating our principles, for championing our rights. A free and a legitimate press wields a power for good such as not all the universities, courts and churches in the land have exercised. The twenty-six letters of the alphabet have, in the press, spelled half of our modern blessings into existence. A legitimate newspaper is our public arena, our safety valve, our public conscience. The fear of exposure at the public pillory of the press, of being stared at by tens of thousands of eyes through the columns of the newspaper, keeps countless multitudes on the path of rectitude. The black ink of the newspaper has probably washed more souls clean than has all the holy water of all the churches. But the black ink of the newspaper is turning yellow, and this yellow ink is soiling more characters than any other cor- rupting agency of which I have knowledge. Perverted into evil. Wherever the yellow journal has acquired gigan- tic power, it uses it with all the brutality of the giant. To ap- pease its thirst for ever greater power, for ever vaster circula- tion, for ever larger gain, it prints most what is most unfit to print, and when fact and truth are wanting, the deficiency is readily supplied by fabrication. It caters to the lowest appe- tites. It revels in blackmail and exposure. It glories in head- lines the loudness of which almost make the blind to see and the deaf to hear. It dishes up the most sensational morsels. It invades the most private sanctuaries, and drags into the public glare the holiest secrets. It blackens the whitest char- acters, and whitens the blackest. Its pen is ever ready for the assassin's thrust; its columns ever open to the scandal-monger, to the stock-manipulator, to the lobbyist, to the political boss. 52 Speaking of political bosses, where has realism committed greater ravages than in the politics of the present day ? Where is the hand wider open than in politics, bartering awa y P rin ciples, conviction, liberty, right, jus- tice, an3*thing, so long as it gratifies the thirst for power or gain. Unlike Pharaoh's seven lean cows, poli- ticians enter upon their office very lean, and leave it very fat. Far from following the doctrine of Pericles, that it is better that the individual suffer than that the State should lose, they believe in their own gain, no matter if it be at the loss of the State. What wonder that politics should have acquired the meaning of "a powerfully organized system of thievery!" What wonder that enormous sums of money should be levied on office-holders or office-seekers, on contractors, or on others, who have profitable franchises or favors to retain or to secure! What wonder that politics should be in the clutches of the "Boss," the man who, as Mr. Bryce described him, "has grown up in an atmosphere of oaths and cocktails, whose ideas of honor and purity are as strange to him as ideas about the nature of the currency, to whom politics is merely a means for getting and securing places!" What wonder that our municipal government should be overrun by an army of pot- house politicians, who do the dirty work of politics, who shield dives and dens, who protect law-breakers in the interest of law-makers! What wonder that our national conscience and our sense of patriotism should become weakened under the treachery of those pledged to uphold the integrity of the city, state or nation, and that our Government of and by and for the people, for which our fathers fought and died, and which we inherited as a sacred heirloom, should be bequeathed to our children with the blight of realism upon it! And yet, I believe that realism has run its race. Intoxi- cated by its success in social and political life, in the novel, drama and press, it has ventured into the realm Realism attacks r 1- 1^1 * -11 i reii- : on ol re hgiou, and there its rapid advance has met its first, signal check. Within man's Holy of Holies it planted its Mag, bearing the inscription: "There is no God! There is no accounting yonder, and no accounting here, if one be but shrewd enough! The Bible is but a piece 53 of Asiatic superstition!" Men stood horror-stricken at its in- solence and blasphemy, and, on recovering themselves, cried a Halt! loud enough even for realism to become alarmed. The reaction set in when the novel began to disseminate the gospel of godlessness; when the drama began to rant that conscience is but a nursery bugaboo; when the press began to preach that its power is to be feared more than that of God; when poli- ticians, like Senator Ingalls, dared to proclaim that the Deca- logue and the Golden Rule have no place in politics. Like many a former ism, realism received its blow, when it sought to lay violent hands on religion. When men were bidden to turn churches into houses of pleasure, it gradually dawned upon them, that it would " 8 met not be long before schools and libraries and art galleries and conservatories would be turned into barracks and armories. When men were asked to extinguish the lights that pointed the way to the peaceful harbors of life, they re- called the objections that were raised by the wreckers of Florida to the erection of light-houses along the dangerous coral-reefs. When men were told that the highest duty of life was merely to eat and drink and be merry, they recalled the question and answer of vShakespeare: ''What is man If his chief good, and market of his time, Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more." And the answer means a gradual cleansing of social and political life, a gradual purification of novel, drama and press, a gradual return from realism to idealism. Jtema 0f VI IDEALISM A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BKFOKE THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, BY RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D. Philadelphia, April 3d, iqo4. Text : " Man doth not live by bread only." DEUT. vni. 3. SCRIPTURAL WESSON : ISAIAH, Chapter xi. It is mere chance, yet a happy one, that the succession of discourses, in our present series on Some Isms of To-Day, brings Idealism to this day. What theme is more Pascovei , and Eas . fitting for the Passover Festival and the Easter ter ceiebrata hero- Sunday ! What are both these sacred seasons but ism of idealism ' Idealism's proudest contribution to civilization! What is the purpose of the solemn and festive observance of these days but that the events and heroism which they commemorate, might kindle noble ideals in our hearts, and inspire imitation of the illustrious examples they set! With the story of the Passover and Easter fresh in our minds, the subject of idealism, that otherwise might have been quite difficult for discussion, becomes com- [dea | ist n t a fa paratively easy. In general, idealism is not a vorite at present favorite theme with present-day audiences. The time ' American prides himself on his practicality. The idealist is held to be the theorist, the dreamer, the visionary, the self- deluded crank. It is the practical man that commands admiration in these days, more especially the man who is eminently successful by reason of his practicality. This is the age in The practlcal man which Wall Street rules, in which the Stock the favorite of to- Exchange is dictator over the minds of people, day ' in which the latest quotations on cotton, corn or iron, are 56 wider disseminated than quotations from the latest book, poem or sermon; in which the rise of the Leiters and the Sully s is louder heralded than the advent of a new star in the world of letters or art or religion; in which the goings and comings of the Carnegies and Schwabs are more minutely chronicled in' the public press than the sayings and doings of the world's educators and reformers. The exemplars set before youth are the Goulds and the Elkins, the men who started with nothing and died multi-millionaires; the ideals are no longer the heroes and martyrs who started poor and died worse than poor, died in the wilderness like Moses, or on the cross like Jesus, or on the scaffold like Rabbi Akiba, John Huss, Savanarola, Giordano Bruno. There is no denial that, from the standpoint of the prac- tical man, the men whom I have named, and others like them, True idealists have been failures. There is no denial that have been dream- many of the prophets of old ate the bread of ers and failures. ai fli ct i on f or the i r hero i c daring for mankind's good, that reformers sacrificed their own liberty in freeing others from slavery, that heroes poured out their heart's blood to save the lives of others. There is no denial that Lessing died so poor that friends had to make up a purse to defray the funeral expenses, and that Mozart, the composer of fourteen Operas, seventeen Symphonies and dozens of Cantatas and Serenades, about eight hundred compositions in all, was buried in a Potter's field, and to this day sleeps in an unknown grave, which not even the grave digger could point out to the widow a month after her husband's death. There is no denial that ignorance and insolence and ridicule pursued Columbus before his discovery of America, and that poverty, malice, imprison- ment, indignities of all sorts hounded him into the grave. There is no denial that Dante was innocently condemned to be burnt alive, and that he had to descend into an exile's grave unpitied and unhonored; and that bitter persecution harassed the days of Milton's prime of life, and that his declining years were darkened by poverty more than b)^ blindness. And yet, I ask you, would you not this day, exchange their failure for your success ? Would you not rather be a 57 Moses, dying in the wilderness, a Jesus suffering And ^ t on the cross, a Socrates draining the poison-cup, greatest sue- than even the most prosperous of practical men ? cesses of hlsto|i y- Would you have willingly consented to their change from idealism to realism, had you lived in their day, and had you then had a knowledge of the infinite good they were to exercise in the progress of man ? Or do you think that, could they live their lives over again, they would exchange their idealism for the more profitable life of the realist ? With all their fail- ures, have they not proven the greatest successes recorded in history? With all their failures, are not our lives richer, fuller, better, for the truths they taught, for the light they shed, for the work they did ? With all their failures, had not their labors a recompense such as the success of even the most profitable career cannot equal ? What is the reward of mere gold compared with their glorious vision of ultimate triumph ? Had not Moses his vision of the promised land ? Did not Jesus walk the via ctucis, sustained by the conviction that the path of mankind will some day be the smoother for his walk- ing it with brow lacerated by Roman torture, with back scourged by the Roman tyrant, with body bowed low by the weight of the cross, on which the cruel Roman was but to transfigure the patriot of Israel into the idol of mankind ? The very nature of idealism prevents its devotees from seeing their ideals realized in their own time. The greater the ideal the further it must of necessity lie, and |dea|| impoS8 , ble the more difficult and the slower must its real- of immediate real- ization be. No sooner does fulfilment crown one ization> part of it than a dozen newer and higher vistas open to the view. Our standard of excellence rises with the rise of our mentality and spirituality and achievements. No true artist or author or reformer has ever actualized the vision of his ideal. The nearer he seems to approach it the further it flees from him. The story is told of a great artist being discovered one day sitting in tears in front of a painting he had just com- pleted. The friend, surprised to find him in tears, said cheer- ingly to him, " What do these tears mean, Man? This is the greatest painting you ever turned out? The Artist responded, ' ' This is the first time in life that I am satisfied with a work 58 of mine, and I weep because of the satisfaction. Whenever an Artist begins to be satisfied with his work, his decline has begun." How much more, therefore, does the nature of idealism prevent the realist from seeing in the idealist anything but a dreamer and a visionary, one who is everlast- "^^ talkin g of tllin S s which no one sees, which never come to pass, or the possibility of which can scarcely be conceived. It was no doubt hard for a Pharaoh to grasp the thought that freedom is a people's inalienable right when he drove Moses from his presence as a dreamer. Yet he saw the dream crystallizing into reality at the shores of the Red Sea. It was no doubt hard for Pontius Pilate to grasp the thought that right is greater than might, and God more powerful than Csesar when he nailed the patriot of Nazareth upon the cross as a visionary and a dangerous agitator. Yet the idealist of Judea conquered realistic Rome. What men call dreams are often but realities in progress; what they ridicule as visions are but facts slowly taking form. There has never been a reality that has not precedes' thTreai. emer g ed from a one-time ideality; never a fact that has not first been a fancy in some one's mind. Idealism crossed the unknown deep before Columbus set sail. Idealism traversed the Atlantic before the Pilgrim Fathers set their faces westward. Idealism rang liberty throughout the land before the memorable Fourth of July of 1776. Idealism freed the slave before President Lincoln issued his emancipation edict. The sun's progress is no less a reality when the first faint rays of dawn shoot above the horizon than when his fiery beams dart from the zenith at noon. The ideal- 'ahLd'oThistime" ist is bllt ahead of his time. He stands upon elevated ground, and catches glimpses of the ap- proaching dawn while around him all is still buried in dark- ness. He has the prophetic eye; he has the magnified vision; he sees lights and truths that others cannot see, and has reve- lations of things that others cannot even conceive. His sole offense lies in his telling what he sees and hears, his demand- ing what must and shall be, his opposing, all alone, what, in 59 due time, will be driven out by the mad shout of the millions. He is called the dreamer, the visionary, the idealist, the en- thusiast, for telling of what is destined to become the most practical thing on earth. On my study wall hangs a copy of Barabino's Painting "Columbus at the University of Sala- manca." It tells a pathetic story. A Commission of that celebrated seat of learning had sat in judgment upon Colum- bus' claim, that, by sailing westward, a shorter route to India than was then known, might be discovered. The learned faculty had declared his proposition and his evidences mon- strously absurd, Columbus sits disheartened upon a bench. The learned professors, cardinals and Bishops file past, casting mocking glances at him, some of them tapping their forehead to indi- cate that there was but one road open to the would-be discov- erer of new routes "The road to the mad-house." It was thus that wise-acres spoke of Gutenberg, when he pro- posed duplicating manuscripts by means of a printing-press. It was thus they spoke when Stephenson proposed his loco- motive, Fulton his steamboat, Morse his telegraph, Marconi his wireless telegraphy. Idealists are often our greatest realists, so-called cranks often our wisest men. It is they who make the unknown known, the unseen visible, the impossible possi- ble. It is they who dream into reality steam, Dreamer8 often WIG6SI 3W3KG. electricity and the thousand other inventions and discoveries that bless civilization. It is they who plant bright and fragrant flowers among the thorns and thistles, and make the waste and wilderness blossom like the rose. It is they who right our wrongs, who heal our sores, who ease our bur- dens, who soften our asperities It is they who feed our heart-hunger, and quench our sole-thirst. It is they who teach that man does not live by bread alone, that life does not mean toiling so many hours for the purpose of feeding the stomach so many times a day. The prophets of old were but speakers, Shakespeare and Goethe were but writers, Michael Angelo and Raphael were but painters, Beethoven and Mendelssohn but composers, yet, idealists though they were, what practical merchant or manufacturer or capitalist has wielded the influence upon civilization that they have wielded, or has blessed mankind as they. What man more ridiculed than Galileo, when he told that our earth and its sister planets revolve around the sun ? Professors of Universities refused even to look through the telescope he had invented. They were too practical to waste their time on a fool. The only cure for such blasphemers and madmen as he was the Inquisi- tion. What man more ridiculed than Schlieman when he proposed to prove that ancient Troy was a reality and not a myth, by unearthing it? What man more set upon as a mad- man, than Palissy when in his effort to produce white enamel he was unpractical enough to burn, for the want of wood and money, even the little furniture of his poverty-stricken home ? Time has shown that it is often the ridiculed and persecuted crank who turns the wheels of progress, that it is the "hot- headed" enthusiast who keeps the heart of mankind from freezing, and who makes it possible for this old world of ours to rejuvenate itself every little while. And time has also shown that that is the greatest people that counts the largest number of idealists. The truest pride of a nation is not its busy marts, its filled gran- progress i of world j j crowded harbors, but its poets and due to idealism. * philosophers, its scientists and inventors, its apostles of sweetness and light, its reformers and martyrs. The culture of Germany is not a result of the victories of Frederick the Great or of William I. but of its universities. Oxford has clone more for the British people than the Bank of England. The T^ouvre has done more for France than have the trades-people of the Boulevards of Paris. Much as Wall vStreet may mean to our country, Harvard or Yale or Princeton mean infinitely more. Much as Market or Chestnut Street may contribute to the wealth of our city, our richest treasure flows from the University of Pennsylvania. It was not the commerce of Boston or Newport or Philadelphia but the ideal- ism of the Pilgrim Fathers that laid the foundation to our prosperity. It was not the wealth of Solomon, nor the power of Herod but the spirituality of the prophets of Israel that has humanized half of mankind. It is not to the practical men of 6i ancient Greece, but to Homer and Hesiod, to Phidias and Praxiteles, to Plato and Aristotle, to whom the world is in- debted for half its beauty and half its light. I wish some Carnegie might rise in our midst, and open in our beautiful Fairmount Park an Avenue of Fame ', a prome- nade ornamented with dozens of statues of the Avenue of Fame world's greatest men. to serve as inspiration to lined with statues our young, as "sermons in stone" as to the kind c of life to lead, if one would live blessedly unto the end of time. And were yours the right to name the men whose statues should ornament such an Avenue of fame, whom would you select ? Would it be your great realists, your great, practical money-getters ? Would you not rather name the great poets and dramatists and novelists, the great architects and sculptors and painters and musicians, the great religious founders and reformers and martyrs, the great philosophers and preachers and moralists, the great historians and statesmen and orators, the great scientists, inventors and philanthropists all, all idealists, man}' of them ridiculed and denounced and persecuted in their day, as dreamers and idlers and visionaries, as agita- tors, rebels and traitors. I know of nothing that is as much needed as an infusion of idealism into the intense materialism of the present day. The poison of our realism needs neutralizing. |nfusion of jdea| _ We are idolizing material success. We are \vor- ism needed into shipping money-kings. We are raising the bank- "'i"t " book to the sacredness of the Bible. We are placing money- success on pedestals so high that it fairly eclipses every other achievement. While abroad last Summer, I was asked by a gentleman, what cities I had visited. Among others I mentioned Weimar. "Weimar, Weimar, why what is that? " asked the gentleman. I told him that it was the capitol of Saxony-Weimar. " Anything of interest to be seen there? " asked he. "Yes," I answered, "a Cemetery, more especially a certain tomb." An amused smile spread over the face of the gentleman at that excentricity of mine that leads me into Cemeteries and to tombs, when I might see the gay sights of the gay capitols of Europe. I observed that I w r as talking to a materialist, to one w r hose pocket had grown 62 much faster than his brain, when I told him that I had made a pilgrimage to the city that Goethe and Schiller had made one of the most celebrated in the world of letters, and that it was one of the most sacred moments of my life, when I stooped at the coffins in which these stars of the literary world slept in immortality's sleep, side by side, and that I prized the leaf taken from the wreath deposited upon their coffins by the hand of an Emperor more highly than the precious diamond he had purchased in a celebrated Parisian shop. I am not one of those who lives in the clouds. I do not depreciate the value of the practical and the material. I know we need the plow as well as the pen, and the 8 trowel as wel1 as the Palette, and the hammer * as well as the baton. I know that the trader and the mechanic have their place in the econom)' of civiliza- tion as much as the poet and the philosopher. I know the value of money in the progress of society, as a means of pro- moting education, of developing industries, of stimulating enterprises of discovery, invention and public improvement. I know that without money the inventive genius of an Edison would be greatly crippled, if not wholly stifled. But I protest against those standards that debase life to mere money-grubbing. I would redeem men from their self- its value debased enslavement. I would emancipate them from if exclusively pur- their treadmill existence. I would break their fetters and lead them forth to where the vistas are wide, to where there is a sky overhead, to where the flowers grow at their feet, to where the birds sing, and the stars twinkle their messages from the unseen spheres, and where the mind may hold communion with the majesty of God. I would consecrate them to noble ideals, and make these the goals of their moral and spiritual and intellectual endeavor. And this I would do without interfering with their material pursuits. I would merely idealize the real. I would have every man add to the real an ideal as an avocation. I would have him weave threads of sweetness and light, of noble endeavor, of lofty aspirations, into the texture of his daily life. No life is complete that has not some ideal to cherish, lie whose eye is so blind that in a society such as ours he 63 cannot see a wrong that needs righting or a good worth striving for, lives but an animal life; his spiritual life is undeveloped or dead. Voltaire said of Rousseau's doctrine that he preached the return to animalism so eloquently that he almost persuaded men to go on all fours. That witticism well applies to some men I know. They might just as well have been beasts of burden, camels trudging through the joyless, dangerous, scorching desert, laden down with treasures for others to enjoy. What charm, what pleasant diversion the cultivation and pursuit of some noble ideal might give to the monotony and drudgery of their lives ! What if he who labors Blessings of ideals ten or twelve or sixteen hours a day were to devote one hour, or but half or quarter of an hour each day to the planting of some little flower in the desert of his life, to the furthering of some deserving object, to aiding some worthy cause, to drinking in some ennobling knowledge, to saying some cheering word. Many hearts ache; many feet stumble; much wrong is done. What if each of us were to devote a few minutes time, to drying even but a single tear, to bringing even but a single smile into faces that have well-nigh forgotten the meaning of laughter! We are conscious of many failings of our own. We hurt the feelings of others, often our dearest, by our ill tempers, by our selfishness and exactions, by our want of consideration, by our domineering tone, by our rash- ness and bluntness. We are envious of the successes of others. We are slaves to base lusts. What if we were to devote a little time daily to introspection, to plucking out even a single one of those noxious weeds that poison our lives and the lives of others! There is so much knowledge in the world of which we are ignorant, and which we might easily know; so much beauty within easy reach, which we have not seen. What if each of us were to devote but a little time daily to passing from our stupefying ignorance into region:; where the starved mind may be nourished with wholesome food, and the beauty-thirsting eye may light upon what is pleasant to behold and sweet to remember! Our libraries are filled with the stories of hundreds of illustrious men, whose lowly origin, bitter struggles and proud achievements, are an inspiration to the soul. What if we 6 4 would make it a solemn duty to devote but one hour a week to acquainting ourselves with the stories of such lives, and use them as guide-posts to point the way we should go, if we would mount the heights. A certain man owned a strip of land that reached out into the ocean whose briny breath prevented vegetation. After repeated failures, he built around it a closely- woven screen, which sifted the air, strained out the saline particles, collected thick incrustations of salt on the outside and ripened rich vegetation within. Idealism builds such a protecting screen around our souls, keeps the blighting salt without, and fosters within, the blossoms of balmy spring and the golden fruit of genial summer. And once the seed of idealism is rooted, cold cannot chill its enthusiasm; blight cannot stunt its growth; palace-luxuries cannot corrupt it, nor prison-walls crush it. Moses . tr ' Umph ' Kven though compelled to flee, even though obliged to lead a shepherd's life in the wilderness, the ideal burns and burns in Moses, and will not cease burning. And out of the flame of his enthusiasm there rises again and again the mandate: "Get thee into Egypt and deliver thy people." And though a thousand voices tell why he should not go, louder and louder rises the cry of the oppressed till the idealist changes the shepherd's crook for the reformer's staff, and wins the world's first and greatest victory for political and religious liberty. Though small the hope of coping successfully with almighty Rome, forth goes the idealist of Nazareth, kindles enthusiasm Led to victorious a11 the way down to Judea, fearlessly enters Jeru- martyrdom of salem, the stronghold of the oppressor, and even though he fails, the crown of thorns which the cruel Roman places on his head, in mockery of the would-be- king of Israel, is a prouder insignia of regal glory than is all the power in the hand of the Procurator of Rome. To idealists success is nothing; noble endeavor is all. In what they aspire to be or do lies their comfort. It is never in failure in a noble cause wherein defeat lies; defeat lies in base persistence in the low and selfish and sordid. Even in the mere cherishing of an ideal lies the seed of present joy, nestles the blossom of future fruit. of VII DOWIEISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BKFOKE THB REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, BY RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D. Philadelphia, April loth, 1004. Text : " His mouth is full of cursing and fraud .... under his tongue is mis- chief and iniquity." PSALM x, 7. SCRIPTURAL WESSON : I KINGS xxi. It was a strange host, that which invaded New York in October last. From the city of Chicago it came, three thou- sand strong, for the purpose of converting the wicked metropolis of the land into a Holy Zion. At its head came its picturesque leader, armed with a plenteous supply of titles: Elijah the Third; John, the Baptist, the Second; John Alexander Dowie, the First, the Prophet, Latter-Day Messiah, Divine Healer, Messenger of the Covenant, Grand Overseer of the Christian Catholic Church of Zion. ' And stranger still was the attack which the Restoration Host of Zion made on the wickedness of Gath. In large num- bers the people flocked into spacious Madison Square Garden, many of them no doubt to scoff, but, unlike the scoffers of Goldsmith's Deserted Village, they did not remain to pray. They came to see a crusade, and found a burlesque; they came to hear the effusions of a prophet, and listened to the billings- gate of a fishwife. An event so out of the usual as this, and a personality so strange as that of Dowie, require more than a moment's thought and an unceremonious dismissal. Who and what is Dowie ? Are his claims warranted, or * h ' is he an impostor or an egomaniac or a paranoeac ? 66 What divine messenger proclaimed him Messiah ? What heav- enly portents announced the coining of this Restorer? What marvellous cures has he wrought to be titled Divine Healer ? What wonderful revelations has he made to win for him- self not only the faith but also the worldly goods of his thou- sands of followers ? John Alexander Dowie is a native of Edinburgh. His childhood was spent in Scotland; his j^outh in the mercantile His childhood world of Australia, during its boom, where he youth and no doubt acquired the methods that characterize CALL '" all his divine healing enterprises. For some reason, he exchanged his business career for theology, per- haps because he even then perceived that credulous church people, more especially hysterical women, can easier be fleeced than shrewd business men. He entered upon independent evangelical work, where his bizarre eloquence and magnetic personality soon won for him reputation and following. One night, he claims, there burst upon him, as if in a vision, the full force of the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark: " He that be- lieveth and is baptized shall be saved In my name shall they cast out devils. . . . They shall lay hands on the sick, and the}' shall recover." A voice within told him that he was the Elijah, whose return was foretold in the clos- ing verses of the Book of Malachi, and to make a practical test of this inspiration, he laid his hands on his wife's head, prayed, cured her of headache and, as has been wittingly said, proceeded forthwith to lay hands on everybody and every- thing, and to such an extent, that he is to-day reputed to be owner of a snug fortune. His rise to notoriety and wealth was rapid. He organized an International Divine Healing Association with himself as c- aniz" DIVINE President. With shrewd business sense, he es- KEALirjG ASSO- tablished his headquarters at Chicago, during the year of the World's Fair. He soon became one of its chief attractions, and was kept busy day and night, effecting or promising cures, aided by an army of missionaries, propagandists, deacons, disciples. Printing presses were kept going day and night, turning out his publication, entitled " Leaves of Healing," containing thrilling accounts of mirac- 6 7 ulous cures effected, and photographs and testimonials of hun- dreds of the cured. Our own Munyon is great, yet not even he is fit " to loose the latchet of the shoes ' ' of the greatest of all patent medicine advertisers, Elijah III. Again and again he came in conflict with the police authorities, courting arrest, on the one side, for advertising purposes, and claiming immu- nity, on the other side, on the ground that his was a religious movement. The Fair over, he established himself in the heart of Chicago, where he acquired property stretching over six blocks, all of which he needed for his various divine heal- Establishes the ing establishments. There was the Zion church, Christian Catholic Church of Zion. the Zion hospital, the Zion bank, the Zion col- lege, the Zion school, the Zion hotel, the Zion printing-house, the Zion store. His next move was the establishment, amid great flare of trumpets, of the Christian Catholic Church of Zion, with himself as General Overseer over everybody and everything that could in any way contribute to its financial welfare. All property, stock and finances were vested in his name, he giving personal notes and promising interest on all monies advanced. His next move was renting the vast Auditorium theatre of Chicago for holding Sunday afternoon services. More picturesque services than these have proba- Conduc!s femark . bly never been held in the United States. There able services at were imposing processions; there was the choir Audltorlum theatr * of five hundred in white; there were "the seventies," in black cap and gown; there were the uniformed and robed Zion guards, all moving and marching in a manner that would have done credit to the best of French ballet-masters; and with himself, robed in flowing garb of black and white, as the centre of attraction, and aided by the hysteria of his followers, he produced an effect which swayed and mesmerized the thou- sands that thronged to his services, and which enormously en- riched the coffers of the bank of Zion. His next move was the establishment of Zion City. He purchased a tract of six thousand acres of land, some forty miles north of Chicago, at a cost of one and Founds Zion City. a quarter million of dollars, which money was 68 again advanced by his followers, and to whom, in apprecia- tion, he sold dwelling lots at enormous profits. And upon that tract of land he built homes, factories, hotels, stores, and an elaborate divine healing plant, around a magnificent church. His alluring advertisements of bargains in homes and bargains in health, his promise of from 8 to 12 per cent interest annu- ally on investments in Zion City, and yet other attractions, such as the exclusion of the saloon, dancing-halls, theatre, disreputable characters, tempted the pious, and in a short time the community of Zion City counted some twelve thousand souls. Gradually mutterings of distrust became audible. Elijah III began to appear in the eyes of some of his dupes as a charlatan. Fears began to rise among the inves- Sedan ^ors as to the safety of their money. There was a suspicion that beneath the pomp and show much crookedness lay concealed, and much quackery beneath the trumpeted, miraculous cures. Elijah III was not slow to hear and understand the significance of these mutterings. Something had to be done and quickly, to check the waning of his influence. He must perform some dazzling feat, and re- establish himself in all his pristine glory in the faith of his people. He must conquer New York as he had conquered Chicago, and, with the credulous of New York as his prize, the world would be his. Such, as you probably remember, was the reasoning of that other impostor, Napoleon III. He too, observing the dis- satisfaction of France, felt that something had to be done by him to dazzle the glory-loving French. And so he declared war against Prussia but, instead of humbling Bismarck and elevating himself, he only prepared his Sedan. And such a Sedan Howie prepared for himseif in New York. In vain were the pompous processions, in vain the exhibition of " tro- phies " of converts cured by miracle crosses made of hot- water bags, medicine-bottles arranged to spell the word "drugs," decorations composed of discarded rosaries. In vain were the public testimonials of marvellous cures effected, one woman testifying that she had " broken three vertebrae of the backbone of her spine," and had been cured by one or two prayers of the divine healer, another had ' ' ten cancers in her side" cured in three days, while another, in addition to a " tumorous cancer ' ' had ' ' a sort of misery all over that doctors couldn't tell what it was, and all swelled up." In vain was his abuse of newspapers, and his display of tem- per. He was hissed and jeered and driven as a mounte- bank off the stage, out of Madison Square Garden, out of New York, back to Australia probably to the obscurity whence he started. I know that my judgment of Dowie is severe, but I also know that it is not a hasty judgment. I have watched and studied the man and his movements for some time, and, even with the most charitable inclinations, I ^ r ve . s himself a CfLIaCK* could not have judged otherwise than I have. I believe him to be a self-centered egoist, a shrewd business man, a born organizer, one who is conscious of his magnetic powers, especially over hysterical women, one who is fond of displaying himself theatrically, aud of making use of sensa- tional novelties and supernatural pretension for the purpose of appeasing his inordinate vanity, and amassing great power and great wealth. Yet, it is possible that I may be speaking to believers in his divine powers, who may ask, and with good reason: " Why may he not be a prophet ? Have there not been ,-v,.. His claim to being prophets beiore? Why may he not be Elijah.'' prop het "Elijah." Do not the Scriptures prophesy the return of the " divine healer" examined. seer of Carmel, the adversary of Ahab and Jeze- bel ? Why may he not be a divine healer ? Do not the Scrip- tures tell of miraculous cures wrought by Elijah, by Jesus, by the Apostles, and others?" Such questions are quite right, only the answer to them, to be satisfactory, would require more time than is allotted to a Sunday morning discourse. The answers, more- over, to be satisfactorily intelligent, would require as a prerequisite on the part of the hearer consid- erable knowledge of higher Bible criticism. He must know that it is a generally accepted truth to-day among Bible students that the Bible has its facts and fancies, its histories and legends, as might well be expected of a literature as old 70 as the Scriptures, and covering so vast a stretch of time as that over which it extends. Its occurrences passed for centu- ries through the mouth of tradition, and, when finally com- mitted to writing, were often quite unlike what they were when they first happened. The more popular the hero, the more were his doings and sayings subject to ornamenta- tion by poets and story-tellers. The further back we go in literature, the more we find the heroes aureoled with the super- natural. How prone we are even this day to give free rein to fancy when speaking or thinking of our popular idols! How prone we are to idealize our parents and teachers, our heroes and reformers, when time has somewhat faded the vividness of reality? How much of what is told of Napoleon, of Wash- ington, of Lincoln is apocryphal ? The prophets of the Bible were God-inspired men, but their powers were never more than human. They were Teaching of Bible speakers, writers, agitators, reformers, but never concerning pro- professional wonder-workers. In their early stages they somewhat shared the ecstatic nature of the seers and soothsayers of the surrounding nations. But from that stage they speedily passed into men of profound acumen and spiritual insight; men of remarkable indepen- dence and heroic courage; men who served their God more than their king, and loved their country better than them- selves; men who denounced the wickedness of mightiest kings or most powerful hierarchies to their very face; men, who, reading the signs of the times and reasoning upon their logi- cal consequences, never failed their people, when the nation was to be protected against dangerous political alliances or against moral or idolatrous corruptions; men, w T ho, when their public message was delivered or their public work done, returned to their mountain cave, or to their plow or vineyard or flock, and, clad in the crudest garments, living on the simplest food, they spent their days in honest toil, and their leisure in contemplation or dreaming of that blessed age, when a world- wide brotherhood of man would worship amid universal peace and love the One God of Righteousness. Contrast one of these unworldly prophets of old with Uowic, the canny Scotchman of our day, contrast one of these public consciences of old, gaunt, rustic, stern, Bjbljca| prophet emaciated, his long, wild hair descending upon and Dowie con- naked, brawny shoulder, attired in mantle of trasted - sheep-skin or hair-cloth, contrast him with Dowie, slick, portly, weighing some two hundred and fifty pounds, travel- ling in drawing-rooms of Pullman cars, owning his equipage, occupying choicest suites in choicest hotels, living on the fat of the land, exhibiting himself in showy wardrobes, constantly raking in the shekels, and counting several millions of them as his own, and if, after such a comparison, you are still a believer in the prophetism of Dowie, may God help your credulity. What of the second question, ' ' Why may he not be Elijah ? Do not the Scriptures prophesy the return of Elijah, the Tish- bite?" So also do the legends prophesy the re- turn of Charlemagne, Barbarossa, King Arthur, and a dozen other popular heroes. So did the ancients prophesy the return of the sun-gods Apollo, Adonis, Osiris, and others, in the spring of the year. In the Scrip- tural narrative of the life and deeds of Elijah we have a curi- ous blending of a popular hero and of an ancient sun-god. The prophet's mighty personality and heroic achievements had seized upon the fancy of the people, and had clustered about him no end of legends. They could not think of him as dead. Like the sun-gods of the heathens, he ascended in his fiery chariot, and, like them, lie would return in the spring-tide of Israel's reviving glory, \vith freedom on his wings, with mes- sianic seed in his hand. What was first a mere legend of the story-teller, became later a figure of speech with the poet, and finally, during the storm and stress period of Israel's history, a favorite belief. As such it flourished in the clays of John, the Baptist, the people hailing the hermit of the Jordan as the Elijah, who had returned to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. The world-redeeming Messiah, however, having failed to come, John Alexander Dowie, he of foul tongue, and of un- controllable temper, undertook, in the goodness of his heart, to prepare the way, for the third Elljah "^J^. and last time, for the coming of the Messiah, for the coming of the meek and gentle, of the patient and for- 7 2 bearing, for him who returns good for evil, and blesses them that curse. What a farce to mention Elijah and Dowie in the same breath! Picture to yourselves the former braving the mighty Ahab and the wicked Jezebel, running like the wind in front of the king's chariot, and not letting go till dire vengeance had overtaken the royal house for its cruel mur- ders and outrages, and then picture to yourselves Dowie, carefully barbered and perfumed, with patent-leather shoes and French kid gloves, with broad cloth of latest cut on his back, puffing, under the weight of his two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and fat, in front of some magnate's carriage, bidding him return his ill-gotten gain. Might not the lesser magnate say to the greater " What thou wouldst have me do, that do thou first?" As to the third question "Why may Dowie not be a divine healer ? Do not the Scriptures tell of miraculous cures Teaching of wrought by Elijah, Jesus, the apostles, and science concern- others?" That cures are effected every day ing Faith-cure. w i t i lout physicians and drugs, with and without prayers, we know. Nature is a greater miracle-worker than any prophet of whom we have ever heard or read. It has wrought infinitely more cures, and better cures, than physi- cians have ever dreamed. Many diseases are self-limited, and, under ordinary circumstances, if the patient be cheered and encouraged, health will return. When the blood of the child is filled with the diptheria toxin, nature sets itself to work to create the anti-toxin. If the child's vitality preced- ing' the attack be normal, nature's medicine will conquer the diptheretic poison. Imagination plays a great part in certain diseases. We kno\v that healthy people have worried themselves into sick- ness, by being repeatedly told by diverse people, Faitii-c-jres ef- hoax, that they looked ill. Even so have fected by mothers. J certain ill persons been cheered and soothed and prayed into health. How many miraculous cures have not mothers wrought in nurseries! How many children's ailments have not been chased from the cradle's side by a mother's soothing stroke of hand or loving embrace, by a mother's cheering word or affectionate kiss or fervent prayer! How 73 many fretful, painful hours have not been lulled and rocked into oblivion by a mother's sweet lullaby! And what has been and is the proud achievement of mothers, has been and is the miracle of ministers. The world is full of patients suffering from mental strain, c ... ralln-CurCS *! from over-wrought imagination, from hallucina- fected by minis- tion and delusion, from shock and fear. It is to ters< these that the spiritual minister is a physician for the soul, cheering them into hope, and courage and healthful activity, by the gentle touch and tone of sympathy, by the sweet promise of a better day coming, by the confidence in God and in prayer restored. Ministers of God, who are beloved, and who are believed in for their kindness and sincerity, and revered for their spirituality, have effected cures such as have baffled skilled physicians, cures such as are recorded of Scriptural heroes, cures which have stimulated paralyzed nerve-centres and blood-centres, which have revived drooping spirits, reanimated suspended functions, made the crooked straight, the weak strong, the diseased healthy. Hence there is nothing miraculous in Bowie's "miracle- cures," nor anything strange in having been especially success- ful with certain kinds of hysteria patients. And, Nothjng superna . for having thus benefited hundreds of patients, turai in Dowie's we would have had nothing but praise, had he contented himself with the truth, and had he attributed his cures to well-known psychic phenomena. But, when he condemns the whole of medical science, and when he brands all physicians as menials of the devil, and all drugs as poison, when he offers his Chris- A quack when of- tian Catholic Church of Zion, with himself as f er s self and pray- Chief of Staff, as cure-all for all diseases, he for- eras substitute for medical science feits every claim to serious consideration. When he would have us believe that the eternal and immutable laws of nature can be set aside by a prayer of his, by but a " laying on " of his hand, when lie would have us believe that the deadly bacilli of tuberculosis, yellow fever, scarlet-fever, malaria, typhoid, diptheria, small-pox, can be driven out of the human system at his mere command, we know that we are deal- ing with a quack. He publishes testimonials such as this: 74 I fell off a horse, and broke a bone, my right leg swelled and festered and would not heal; physicians advised an operation, but mother would not consent; disease spread to other parts of my body, and affected all my joints; was taken to the Divine Healer; he prayed with me and I walked away cured; or when he publishes a testimonial of equal tenor of a cure of pneumonia, appendicitis, inflammatory rheumatism. Again he publishes, in great detail, the case of a young man, very ill for years, operated upon at a hospital in Chicago, given up by the surgeons, taken in the hospital ambulance to Bowie's house, the ambulance consuming four hours on the journey, lest the patient die on the way by reason of fast driving, car- ried tip-stairs, cured by prayer in three minutes, walking down- stairs by himself and partaking af a hearty dinner at Bowie's table. P\irtherhe publishes a letter such as this, received from Summit, South Bakotah, " Bear Overseer-at-Large: I am glad that God has furnished His people a place of refuge to go to or to write to in time of trouble. ~M.y horse seemed to get better from the time I sent the letter requesting you to pray for him. I believe he is just as sound as he was before he was sick. I owe God all the glory, and thank you for your prayers," (Leaves of Healing, Sept. 21, 1901). When he spreads broadcast such testimonials as these, it seems that the authorities ought to step in, and check the mischief which they are sure to do. There is an increasing number of patients refusing or be- ing denied medical aid in serious illness, suffering agonies be- Si'ch trci-e-v ^ ore succum bing to death on account of having dangerous and their cases submitted to Bowieism instead of treat- ment by some skilled physician. It was but re- cently that we read of a young woman suffering with gastritis, crying for the aid of a physician, but his services refused by her mother on the ground that ' ' God would be angry at such a man- ifestation of distrust." Friends of the girl at last succeeded in forcing a physician into the house. It was too late; the girl died. Manslaughter was committed in denying to the patient the benefits of medical care, and, in the light of the spread of this I'aith-cure quackery, the legislatures of each state ought to make denial or refusal of medical aid, when wanted and 75 needed, a penal offense. If our authorities have a right to hold penally responsible every man who prescribes medicine without possessing a diploma from a recognized medical col- lege, they have no less a right to hold those penally responsible who undertake to treat dangerous maladies by prayers, incanta- tions, laying on of hands, or other means of modern witchcraft. There is a phase of Dowieism that is ludicrous; there is how- ever another phase of it that is a most dangerous form of quackery. There is one question that has not yet been answered: What makes such a phenomenon as Dowieism possible in an age that is as permeated with science as ours. His sfrong fo||ow- The question is a large one, and well merits sep- ing traceable to arate treatment. We shall, therefore, devote our MYSTICISM - next discourse to a discussion of the subject of Mysticism, which lies at the root of many of those aberrations that for- ever lead men into unexplored regions, which loosen the bands of reason and give unrestricted s\vay to the emotions and the imaginations. of VIII MYSTICISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BEFORE THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, BT RABBI JOSEPH KRAXJSKOPF, D. D. Philadelphia, April i7th, iqo4. Text : " The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God ; but the things that are revealed belong unto us." DEUT. xxix, 29. SCRIPTURAL WESSON : EZEKIEL xxxvii, 1-14. A busy place is the city of Chicago. Its marts and squares and streets fairly pant with the race of life. Hourly, hundreds of trains rush breathlessly to its gates Chjcago teemjng from the remotest parts of the laud; and daily with twentieth cen- the broad waters of Lake Michigan carry to its ury splrlt ' shores mighty vessels, laden with produce of the North and West. The spirit of the twentieth century moves over the metropolis of the West as moved ' ' the spirit of God over the' face of the waters" at the beginning of time. Scarcely a sign of the old is observable there. Its shops and factories are of the newest, its schools and universities of the latest, its teachers and preachers, of the most progressive. Vast as is our land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the blustery North to the sunny South, it knows of no better illustration of the wide-awake, enterprising, prosperous American spirit than is afforded by the city of Chicago. And yet, that very city, as we saw in our discourse of Sunday last, was the centre of Dowie's activities during the past ten years. In that city thousands crowded, to worship at the feet of one who styled himself nr * of Do "' - 1 - ItllMn. Elijah III, John the Baptist II, the Prophet, the Latter-Day Messiah, the Divine Healer. In that city thousands came to the Divine Healing establishment to be 78 cured, by prayer and by "laying on" of hands, of diseases pronounced incurable by able physicians, and went away with loud acclaims of the Divine Healer. In that city thousands invested almost their all to further the various schemes of the Latter-day Messiah, and to-day they wonder whether he or any of their money in his possession will ever return to them. Many have been mystified by that strange mental phe- nomenon that Chicago presented to the world during the past decade. Many have been at a loss to recon- cile its intense materialism with its blind credul- ity, its modernness with its musty medisevalism. And some have ventured upon explanations, have charged it to the spirit of adventure and humbug, more especially to the illiteracy that is supposed to predominate in the West. Some have claimed that such a movement as that of Dowie would be impossible in the East, and, in proof, have cited his recent ig- nominious rout in New York. The explanation, however, has explained nothing. On the contrary, it has but deepened the mystery. For, if Dow- ieism be attributable to Western illiteracy, what what of Eastern of t | ie recru( j escence o f mediaeval mysticism in mysticism ? the conservative and cultured East? Boston, the so-called hub of American culture, is honey-combed with the strangest sorts of fads. The most outlandish societies, holding the most outlandish creeds, have their headquarters there: Bahaism, Esoteric Buddhism, Theosophy, Occult Science, Astral Science, Christian Science, Electral Therapeutics, Psycho-Therapeutics, and whatever else their names may be. Mrs. Eddy is of the East, and her new gospel of Christian Science went forth into the world from the New England Slates, whence also came the founder of Mormonism. The city of New York recently built a Christian Science church, at a cost of a million dollars, and it was Boston that, upon completing its Mother Christian Science Church, offered the deed of the same to Mrs. Eddy, graven on a solid golden scroll. In our own city, Henry Seybert, an enthusiastic be- liever in spiritualism, bequeathed the sum of one hundred thoiisand dollars, for the purpose of having the truths of modern spiritualism investigated, of which he had been made 79 positive by diverse table-movings and table-rappings, and by spirit-appearances within cabinets of mediums. A Dowieite church was founded in this city on Sunday last with two hun- dred members. We marvel at the credulity of the West that permits itself to be tricked and fleeced by a canny Scotchman. What of the Eastern folks that were tricked and fleeced Madame B | avats . by Madame Blavatsky ? Is not the story of this ky's hypnotization Russian adventuress yet more remarkable than of the East that of Dowie, considering the superior class of people she succeeded in mystifying? Marrying at seventeen, she deserted her husband soon after marriage, and roamed as an adven- turess through the world. When she reappeared, she came freighted with a mystic jargon, borrowed from Indian adepts, Tibetan priests, Egyptian thaumaturgists, and from American Indian medicine-men, and with it she awed the credulous and hypnotized the emotional. She held seances, in which she had revelations from the yonder world through the agency of spirits, who made their presence manifest by all sorts of rap- pings on pots, pans, beds, tables, chairs, and what not. By means of such seances, she captured the belief of thousands, among them a personage no less distinguished than Col. Olcott, with whose aid she founded the Theosophical Society of New York. She migrated with her convert to India, where she es- tablished a shrine, within which she performed marvellous deeds of clairvoyance, answering all sorts of questions and revealing all sorts of secrets. Theosophical societies sprang up everywhere, and almost divine honors were shown Madame Blavatsky as " Priestess of Isis." But gradually trouble arose. Confederates published to the world the tricks by which she worked her miracles. Driven at last to confession by exposure, the following has been given as her statement: "What is one to do, when in order to rule men it is necessary to deceive them ; when their very stupidity invites trickery, for almost invariably the more simple, the more silly, and the more gross the phenomenon, the more likely it is to succeed ?"* Prof. Joseph Jastrow, " Fact and Fable in Psychology." 8o And what shall we say or think of the remarkable power that Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science has acquired over Eastern What of Mrs. Ed- folks ? Here is a movement but thirty-eight dy's Christian vears o ld, and yet it counts to-day over a million Science ? followers, numbers more than seven hundred churches, and lays claim to having cured, by faith, some two millions of patients, not only of nervous troubles but also of fatal fevers, cancers and contagions. Its tenets are contained in a book, entitled " Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures'' written by Mrs. Eddy, professedly under divine inspiration, and of Its Bible. which book she has sold some 295,000 copies. Of its religious creed we shall not speak. The American people respect every religion and assure religious liberty to all. But we have a right to speak of its sanitary teaching, for that affects the public health. Mrs. Eddy characterizes physicians as false teachers. She charges them with relying on drugs instead of on faith, with treating diseases when what is termed "disease " its sanitary teach- has nQ existence There is no matter, she claims, all is mind, and, there being no matter, there can be no material or bodily ailing. Physical disease is a mental ailment, she says, and prescribing medicine for it is as absurd as prescribing for a blush. When patients locate diseases, such as pneumonia, cancer, consumption, colic, fractured bone, dislocated joint, in different parts of the body, they suffer from delusion. The disease exists in the imagination of the mind. Cure the mind, and you have cured the disease. "We weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have small-pox because others have it; but mortal mind, not matter contains and carries the infection." " You say a boil is painful; but that is impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests your belief in pain, through inflammation and swelling, and you call this belief a boil. Now, administer mentally to your patient a high attenu- ation of truth on this subject, and it will soon cure the boil." Healing, she says, may be accomplished by the most ignorant person, without the slightest knowledge of anatomy, provided the heart is sufficiently pure, and faith sufficiently fervent. 8i "I have always advised my people," she says, "not to read works in advocacy of a materialistic treatment of disease, be- cause they becloud the science of metaphysical healing." A Christian Scientist never gives medicine, never recommends hygiene. Anatomy, physiology, treatises on health are but promoters of disease. " If exposure to a draught of air while in a state of perspiration is followed by chills, dry cough, in- fluenza, congestive symptoms in the lungs, or hints of inflam- matory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy is safe and sure. If you are a Christian Scientist, such symptoms will not follow from the exposure." "Bathing and rubbing to alter the secretions or remove unhealthy exhalation from the cuticle receive a useful rebuke from Christian healing. " " The daily ablution of an infant is not more natural or necessary than to take a fresh fish out of water and cover it with dirt once a day, that it may thrive better in its natural element." Exer- cise, according to Christian Science, is of no value. " Because the muscle of the blacksmith's arm is strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise did it. ... The trip hammer is not increased in size by exercise; why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron ?" " To prevent disease or cure it mentally let spirit destroy the dream of sense." "If you wish to heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue with the patient (mentally, not audibly) that he has no disease." " Mentally insist that health is the everlasting fact, and sick- ness the temporal falsity." "My publications alone heal more sickness than an unconscientious student can begin to reach." "I am never mistaken in my scientific diagnosis of disease." " Outside of Christian Science all is vague and hypothetical, the opposite of Truth." " Outside of Christian Science all is error." Such are some of the teachings of Christian Science, and these its founder and well-nigh worshipped prophetess teaches with a disdain of logic, and with a disregard of ... Its perniciousneis. empirical science that would have been exceed- ingly ludicrous, were not the consequences often exceedingly disastrous. While it is true, that, according to well-known physical and psychical laws, pointed out in our last discourse, 82 many patients are cured by it of nervous disorders, even of certain organic and functional troubles, hundreds of others have been made to suffer excruciating tortures, and have been hurried into untimely graves, because medical aid was refused by them or denied them. Patients have suffered agonies, to whom the administration of anaesthetics might have brought relief; patients have been crippled for life, whom a slight and needed operation might have made well and sound. Conta- gious disease has been permitted to spread, and to reap rich harvests of death, because of Christian Science's teaching that small-pox, for instance, is a mere delusion of the mind and not an infectious disease of the body. I have read of a patient, who had lost his eye-sight by reason of a cataract, which cataract dozens of hysterical women had tried in vain to "pray " away or to " think " away, but which the knife of a skilled oculist might easily have removed in a few seconds. Were a rabid dog to bury his teeth into your flesh, you would be expected, as a Christian Scientist, to believe that poison can never attack a believing mind, and think no more about it. Were you, however, to proceed to have the wound cauterized, or were you to proceed for treatment to some Pasteur Insti- tute, you would be denounced as an unbeliever. Were you to meet with a railroad accident, and lie pinned under the wreck- age, your duty, as a Christian Scientist, would simply be to be- lieve that there is no wreck, that no heavy timbers crush your body nor raging flames burn you alive, and every move on your part to free yourself, and every cry for help, would be wasted effort and want of faith, and but an encouragement to the mischievous medical profession. Medical science has well-nigh conquered pain, has well- nigh stayed the ravages of plagues and epidemics and conta- gions that in former ages decimated the popula- tion of the earth > Jt has vastly diminished the pro- tracted sicknesses of former days; it has taught us how to guard against illness, and how to increase our hap- piness and usefulness; it has rid us of much of the tyrannous superstitions and whichcrafts and priestcrafts, which the fear and pain of disease inflicted upon our ancestors, and, in re- turn for all this good, it is called " evil " by people who call 83 themselves Christian Scientists, probably because they know as little of Christianity as they know of Science. I want to be chivalrous toward Mrs. Eddy, and charitable enough to believe that she is an ecstatic mystic, a self-deluded pietist, and that she knows just enough of science and Scriptures to prove the truth of the old scriptures" adage " a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." disproved by Scrip- Otherwise, I cannot see how she could ever have written her book on " Science and Health," or have pretended to have furnished the key to a proper interpretation of the Scriptures, when the Bible itself speaks of medicines, com- manded and prescribed, and of cures effected by them. Moses enjoins a sanitary code; he secludes and treats the leper; he prohibits the eating of animals that had died of disease. Isaiah treats King Hezekiah in his sickness. Ezekiel speaks of a tree whose fruit is good for food and whose leaves are good for healing. We read of the balm of Gilead. "A merry heart doth good like medicine," says the author of the Book of Proverbs. Medicinal effects of spirituous liquors are known. The Samaritan anoints with oil and wine the wound of the man attacked by thieves. Jesus speaks of the sick that need a physi- cian. When he cures without medicine, it is when medicine is not wanted, as is done by physicians now. When he drives out evil spirits, he but expels spectres of the imagination, and when he awakens patients out of trances, or makes the blind to see and the lame to walk, it is his awe-inspiring pres- ence, the hypnotic power of the revered, that vitalizes and en- ergizes and soothes nervous disorders. To return to Mrs, Eddy, if a mystic she be, she is not one of the ordinary type. Her head may be in the clouds, but her feet are on solid ground. She knows how to write a selling book, at $3.15 a copy, at a time when whatever is mystic is seized upon with avidity by large numbers of people. She is earthly enough to copy-right her creed, and knows how to do a profitable busi- ness with souvenir spoons. She knows how to impress and awe, how to create around her residence, at Concord, N. H. a sort of spiritual court, how to keep her votaries at arm's length so as not to hold herself too cheap. She is alert to take ad- 8 4 vantage of every ' ' miracle ' ' wrought by her sect, and knows the art of silence, when failure follows attempts of Christian Science cures. But, with all the semi-divinity that hedges her in, and with all her success, she is quite modest and sane, compared with many of the other mystics, and other systems of A " d ' "drugless healing" that infest the East.' Pro- h s ts bably attracted by the financial success of Dowie, or the homage shown to Mrs. Eddy, there have sprung up a host of "divine" or "psychic" healers. There is the Mind Curist, the Viticulturist, the Phrenopathist, the Esoteric Vibra- tionist, the Psychic Scientist. There is the Metaphysical Healer, the Astrological Health Guide. There is the Medical Clairvoyant, who, by " concentrated introspection," can reveal the hidden better than the X-ray or the newly discovered radium. There are healers, who cure disease by focusing " magnetic atmospheric rays " upon their patients, using them- selves as lenses. There are those, who radiate healing rays from themselves to the remotest parts of the world, even as the sun sends rays of light and warmth to the ends of the earth. And it goes without saying that a goodly fee is paid for such miracle-cures, and a goodly price for the literature containing the "divinely revealed truths." I believe, I have said sufficiently to have prompted long before this the question: "How is it that such ecstasies or aberrations or eccentricities or deceptions find so J ' ity St 'ruis ^ ar S e anc ^ so credulous a following in an age as permeated with science as ours?" Would you know the answer, ask your physician, your lawyer, your drug- gist, ask some professor of psychology or logic, some scientist or alienist, and let them tell you of the credulity of people. Let them tell you how full the world is still of people to whom logic and science prove nothing, to whom the exception abro- gates instead of proves the rule, to whom pot- and pan-rap- pings in dark and secret cabinets convey more revelations than scientific tests and proofs in the broad day-light of laboratories. There are minds that are as insensible of certain truths as there are eyes that are insensible of certain colors. There are 85 congenital brain diseases as there are congenital , . , . , , , . , . , The more impossl nip diseases, that need straightening by some bie a creed the Prof. Lorenz. There are minds that are as ore- more believed in by ,. . . mystics. disposed to mysticisms as there are systems predisposed to consumption and cancer. There are minds that are as fascinated by mysticism as the bird is charmed by the serpent's fatal eye. There are minds that are driven by disease or bereavement, off the beaten paths of knowledge into dark and crooked by-ways, which often lead into the abysses of madness. The mind, in such morbid, pathological states, says with Tertullian of old " Credo, quia impossibile" " 1 'believe, because it is impossible" or with St. Theresa "the more it seems impossible the more I believe it. ' ' And as there are ages that have leanings toward certain mental strivings, one age for discovery, another age for colo- nization, another for founding new religions, M|nd jn certain another for conquest or revolution, another for ages prone to mys- poetry or science, so are there ages that have ' leanings toward mysticism. The causes contributive to mak- ing certain ages prone to mysticism are many and various. It may arise from protracted persecutions and wars, and from the fears and sufferings they call forth, as was the case in Judea at the time of Christ. It may be produced by intensified and disappointed hero-worship, as was the case among the early Christians. It may be produced by the disintegration of nation or creed, as was the case in Rome, in the days of its decline and fall. It may be produced by the prohibition of reason and by the fears of the torture of the inquisition, as was the case during the Dark-Ages. It may be produced by the mind having become sterile by long and strenuous use and abuse, as was the case in the days of the Kabbalists, or by the body having become exhausted under the strain of misery and oppression, or enervated under the excess of luxury and riotousness, or under the reaction of non-satisfying unbelief, as was the case in France, after the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV, after the Reign of Terror, after the rise and fall of the Napoleons, or in the days of Cagliostro and Mesmer, or as is the case in France in these days of its nervous unrest and moral degeneracy. 86 There is yet another characteristic of mysticism. As there are physical diseases that are epidemic so are there men- tal disorders that are contagious. There are Mysticism In cer- . i . -i > i tain ages epidemic times when mysticism becomes a mania and when the sight and sound of it affect even the strongest minds. We recall the Witch Mania that raged dur- ing the Middle-Ages, up to comparatively recent times, and that was shared in by even the most learned men. We recall the beliefs in personal devils, shared in by even so strong a char- acter as Martin Luther. We recall the Dancing Mania of the Middle-Ages, when men, women and children forsook their shops and houses by the thousands, and danced themselves into religious frenzies, till their delirious brains saw all sorts of visions, and made all sorts of prophecies. We recall the Children's Crusade Mania, started in 1212 by a shepherd boy, who believed himself commanded by God to conquer the Holy Land, and who spread the hallucination till 30,000 children followed him to death or slavery. We recall the Flagellant Mania of the same century, which marched thousands upon thousands of deluded fanatics over half of Europe, from town to town, bare to the waist, their faces hidden, chanting dirges, constantly scourging themselves with knotted ropes, with sharp stones or thorns, with iron-pointed sticks, and atoning for their sins by burning synagogues and massacring Jews. This review of some of the mysticism of the past, and of some of the causes that gave rise to them, helps us to account for some of the mysticism of our own day. We find Ours such an age. the contnbutive causes much the same as they were in the past. There are many who have been living under high pressure, who suffer to-day from physical break-down and nervous disorders, and, as the weakened physical system is sus- ceptible to every disease that comes along, so does the exhausted mind become a ready victim to whatever mental malady presents itself. Many suffer from mental lassitude, a consequence of the high tension under which they or their fathers have lived. They have lost the power of critical and independent thought. They want others to do their thinking; they want believing made easy, and the more sensational and the more highly sea- 87 soned it is the better they like it. Their minds cannot stand intellectual strain ; they skim through the newspaper and mag- azine, especially the pictorial sort; they have not the power of endurance to read a serious work. A Shakespearian play bores them; their mind can stand no heavier tax than opera bouffe, comedy, or the racy, realistic drama. The strain under which they have lived has snapped the cable that held them fast to the immovable anchor of rational faith, and so they are drift- ing everywhich way, ready to be caught by every new current that comes along. Others suffer from the reaction caused by the disappoint- ments of science. Spencer and Darwin, Haeckel and Huxley had led them to expect wonderful revelations. They had hoped to see the unknown made known at last, and the invis- ible visible. They had hoped to be finally told of the yester- day of life and of the to-morrow of death. They had hoped to stand at last face to face with the human soul, and see the curtain pulled aside that had concealed God from mortal view. The eternal mysteries, however, have refused to give up their secrets, and, no longer possessing the mental vigor or the physical strength to wrestle with these problems as did their fathers of old, disease, trials, bereavements find them less ready to yield to the inevitable and more willing to fly to any mystic or quack who professes to hold the key to the eter- nal mysteries and to possess the elixir of spiritual or mental or physical health. One thing only will deliver us from the blight of mystic- ism that is settling on present-day society: a return to the simple modes of life, a return to plain-living and Rest and a change high thinking, a return to the days when life had of life a cure for a higher meaning than racing and slaving for money, only to be wasted on soul-ruining luxuries and on body-destroying dissipations. We are physically exhausted. We have worked our brain-fields so hard and so long under artificial stimulants, that they are beginning to be overrun with weeds and thorns. The vitality of the nation has been drained. That professor was about right, who, on being consulted by a patient coining to Germany from our shores, asked : ' ' Are you Americans all sick ?" We have probably more physicians and 88 hospitals, public and private, than all of Europe combined, and most of our sickness is of the sort that can be cured without drugs. We need rest, we need strength, we need virility, we need nerves and sinews. Like the bones in the valley of Ezekiel's vision, we need the breath of God to give us new life. We need the conviction that for mortal mind it is enough to busy itself with the knowable. " The secret things belong unto Jehovah, our God; but the things that are revealed be- long to us." of IX TRADE-UNIONISM. A SUNDAY DISCOURSE BEFORE THE REFORM CONGREGATION KENESETH ISRAEL, BT RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, D. D. Philadelphia, April 24th, iqo4. Text: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." LEVITICUS xix, 18. SCRIPTURAL SELECTION: EXODUS xxm, 1-12; DEUTERONOMY xxiv, 10-24. We must leave it to demagogues or to pre-election poli- ticians to deliver themselves of fulsome panegyrics on the dignity of labor, and on the blessings conferred Value of labor too upon society by the laboring man. It would but well known for be wasting your time and mine to speak of what p is one of the best known and best appreciated truths of human knowledge. Moreover, it would be but singing our own praises were we to speak of all that labor has done in the promotion of civilization, for, are not you and I laborers, and most of us hard laborers, and have not many of us been hard laborers nearly all our lives ? And more than w r aste of time it were to enter upon a learned disquisition on capital and labor, to speak wisely on the co-partnership between the two, on their mutuality of interests, to show, with much ado, how capital and labor are but as the two blades of a pair of scissors, each useless without the other, facts so w y ell known and so profoundly appreciated by people of intelligence, that to speak of them to you were but to insult your intellect. And an indignity to the pulpit it were to mouth sancti- moniously of religion's protectorate over the poor and oppressed. They know little of religion who have not yet Relation of religion learned that the amelioration of the lot of the to labor too well poor and the protection of the rights of the weak known to r ei uire restatement. have constituted, from the nrst, the special mis- sion of religion. They know little of religion who do not know 90 that the poor are the special charge of the Bible, the special concern of the Mosaic legislation, of the ministrations of the prophets, of the labors of the preacher of Nazareth, a truth well recognized by Mr. John Mitchell, the President of the United Mine Workers of America, when, at the commencement of the troubles between the anthracite coal operators and the miners, two years ago, he sought to ward off the imminent strike by proposing that " a committee composed of Archbishop Ireland, Bishop Potter, and one other person whom these two may select, be authorized to make an investigation into the wages and conditions of the miners, and if they decide that the average annual wages received are sufficient to enable them to live, maintain and educate their families in a manner con- formable to established American standards and consistent with American citizenship, the miners agree to withdraw their claims for higher wages and more equitable conditions of em- ployment." And an equal waste of time it were, to enter upon a dis- cussion on the benefits of capital to civilized society, and on the necessity of its protection, for every railroad Benefits of capital too well known to that traverses our continent, every ship that plows require re- ^ e deep, every factory and mill, every forge and emphasis. . furnace, every university and library, every school and art-gallery, every invention that lessens the hard- ship of labor, and every comfort that hightens the joy of life, speaks of the blessings of capital with a wisdom and an elo- quence such as even the most learned writer on economics or the most eloquent orator cannot reach. Starting, therefore, with axiomatic truths of economics as our basis, it is to be hoped that, if anything be said in the development of our discourse which may seem Criticism of capital ,,, and labor not to be harsh either to capital or labor, it is not to be charged to igno- charged to ignorance of the subject, to pre- rance or prejudice. ... . . judice or to partiality. And that something is to be said must be evident even to the superficial observer. There exists a state of war between A state of war be- capital and labor. There is bitter conflict in tween capital and some quarters; there is menacing hostility in others. Employer and employee stand arrayed against each other with gauntleted hands. Strong leagues are compacted; open and secret alliances are formed. Hostile campaigns are carried on in trade-papers and on platforms; bitter incriminations and recriminations are published in lurid type. Pictorial art is resorted to to inflame the mind. Capital is represented as a Moloch, growing fat on the heart's blood of the poor; and labor is shown as an anarchist whose sole aim is the crushing of the labor-giver. The two, that in the economic household are as closely bound together as are husband and wife in domestic life, and that should live peace- fully side by side, promoting each others good and furthering the highest ends of society, are engaged in a bitter struggle, and a victory by the one or the other is heralded as exultingly as Japan or Russia publish theirs. The cause of the contention between the two, the Man- churia between capital and labor, is largely Trade- Unionism. As in the case of Japan and Russia, each believes Trade-union that it has right on its side, and, listening to the cause of conten- story of each, the uninformed is at a loss to tell * why there should be the slightest contention between the two. Turn to Mr. John Mitchel's recent book entitled '''Organ- ized Labor,'" and you read: " Labor unions are for the work- man, but against no one. They are not hostile Trade-union's to employers, not inimical to the interests of the statement. general public There is no necessary hostility between labor and capital. Neither can do without the other The interest of the one is the interest of the other, and tilt- prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the other Trade-unionism has justified its existence by good works and high purposes. At one time viewed with suspicion by work- man and employer alike, it has gained the affections of the one and the enlightened esteem of the other. ... It has improved the relations between the employer and employed The labor union is a great, beneficent, democratic institution, not all-good, not all- wise, not all-powerful, but with the generous virtues and enthusiastic faults of youth The trade agreement makes for peace in the industrial world."* * Preface, pp. ix-xi. 92 Turn to the book entitled "Some Ethical Phases of the Labor Question,'" by Carroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of The employers' Labor, and after reading of the miseries and statement, hardships of labor, prior to the introduction of the modern factory system, made possible by capital, you hear his verdict: "Better morals, better sanitary conditions, better health, better wages, these are the practical results of the factory system as compared with that which preceded it."* You inquire of heads of large industrial establishments, and they tell you of the well-equipped, sanitary shops and factories and mills, of the many provisions that have been made to lessen the drudgery of toil by means of labor-saving machinery, of the comforts that have been introduced, such as lunch- rooms, wash-rooms, reading-rooms, and the like; of the im- proved dwellings that are furnished to employees, and of the opportunity that is afforded them for mental and moral and physical culture. You question some recently arrived laborers, and they tell you of the starvation wages they received in the old world, of the starvation food on which they subsisted, of the long hours of labor that were required of them, of the miserable homes in which they lived, of the hard labor that was exacted of their wives, even of their children, to enable their families to eke out an existence. After listening to such highly colored accounts of the attitude of employer and employee toward each other, what statements could be more natural than to conclude that the contradicted. mos t harmonious relationship exists between the two? But we have heard also the other story. We know that employers deny the professions of peacefulness made by the trades unions, and employees declare that they see no sign of the good-will pretended by employers, that they pay in toil, twice and thrice over for whatever little they get. The one side claims that trade-unionism has but the enslavement and ruination of capital for its goal, or, at best, that its object is, as President Eliot of Harvard University expressed it, "to work as few hours as possible, to produce as little as possible during that time, and to receive as much as possible for the * Chap, in, p. 131. 93 service given." The other side declares that the Money Trust and the Operators' Combines exist solely for the purpose of crushing every labor union and of stamping out every right and liberty of the laboring man. If the latter claim be indeed the aim of employers, they will never succeed. The progress of evolution is forward and upward. The slave rose into the serf, the serf . Labor cannot be into the free man, and no trust and no combine, degraded into serf- nor all of the trusts combined, will ever succeed dom ' in degrading the American laboring-man back again into slavery, or even into serfdom. The recognition of his rights, has been purchased at too dear a price to be surrendered with- out a bitter struggle. There is certainly no gainsaying that laboring-men have a legal and a moral right to organize unions for self -protection and self-improvement. There was a time when |_ a t)or has the master and man worked side by side at the loom r 'fl ht to organize, or at the shoemaker's bench or in the wagon-shop, and when the employee had no difficulty to reach the ear of the employer, for the righting of wrongs, for the lessening of hours or for the increase of wages. But, modern expansion of industries has created new conditions and presents new problems. The individual is lost in the corporation; the owner is replaced by foremen, bosses, managers, superintendents, directors. Capital deals in representative capacity, and labor is obliged to do the same. It must have its representative to pro- tect its rights. It is with the same end in view that Labor ||ke ca , ta we organize Government. Individuals combine must act in repre- ancl select a councilman to represent them in sentatlve capacity, municipal government; a legislator in state government; a congressman in national government. Union and representa- tion are American principles; they are the very foundation of our liberties, and must have sacred recognition by every free- dom-loving American. It is well for employers to heed the counsel given in the Report submitted to the Government by the Commission, that was appointed by President Roosevelt, two years Labor organization ago, to adjust the anthracite coal strike, which approved by Coal Strike Commission Commission consisted of seven men. whose ina- 94 partiality, whose grasp of the labor problem, and whose general wisdom are unquestioned. ' 'The claim of the worker, ' ' says their Report, "that he has the same right to join with his fellows in forming an organization, through which to be represented, that the stockholder of the corporation has to join others in forming the corporation, and to be represented by its directors and other officers, seems to be thoroughly well founded, not only in ethics but under economic considerations. "Some employers say to their employees: 'We do not object to your joining the union, but we will not recognize And its recogni- y ur union nor deal with it as representing you.' tion counselled by If the union is to be rendered impotent, and its usefulness is to be nullified by refusing to permit it to perform the functions for which it is created, and for which alone it exists, permission to join it may well be con- sidered as a privilege of doubtful value. Trade-unionism is rapidly becoming a matter of business, and that employer who fails to give the same careful attention to the question of his relation to his labor or his employees, which he gives to the other factors which enter into the conduct of his business, makes a mistake, which sooner or later he will be obliged to correct. In this, as in other things, it is much better to start right than to make mistakes in starting, which necessitate returning to correct them. Experience shows that the more full the recognition given to a trades union, the more business- like and responsible it becomes. Through dealing with busi- ness men in business matters, its more intelligent, conservative, and responsible members come to the front and gain general control and direction of its affairs. If the energy of the em- ployer is directed to discouragement and repression of the union, he need not be surprised if the more radically inclined members are the ones most frequently heard."* Next to the right of representative union, laboring men are entitled to an adequate share of the profits of labor. It is certainly uniust that the lion's share should fall Labor entitled to J > adequate share of to capital, while labor, the equal producer of it, should be obliged to content itself with the * Bulletin oi the Department of Labor, No. 46, May 1903, p. 489. 95 pickings; that the one, from the profits of capital, should be enabled to riot in luxurj 7 and to revel in extravagance, while the other, from the product of labor, should be barely able to keep body and soul together. And next to the right of adequate wages, the laborer has a right to reasonable hours of work. It is wrong to place human flesh in competition with steam and , . Tr , . , . .... Labor entitled to machinery. If modern industrial life cannot reasonable hours, leave to the laborer the privilege of breaking off and to * et otner his day's task whenever he chooses, the laborer in return must be guaranteed no longer hours of toil than is consistent with the needs of health, with the obligations toward his family, with the duties he owes to his self-improve- ment. Moreover, the laborer has rights to be protected against being " blacklisted," when exercising his inalienable privilege of selling his labor to whomsoever he chooses. When seeking employment, he has the right not to be discriminated against for being a member of a trades-union. He has the right of uniting with his fellow-laborers in peacefully quitting work, if his demand for higher wages or lesser hours, or his request for righting certain real or imaginary wrongs be not complied with. All these rights the laborer has, and all these rights every loyal American and lover of humanity sacredly honors. But when the trades-union passes beyond these . . ... Labor, however, rights, and invades the territory of the employer, has no right to in- when it arrogates to itself the right to run the vade employer's territory employer s business, the right to dictate to the employer whom he may and may not employ, how much wages he may and may not pay, from whom he may and may not buy, and to whom he may and may not sell, how many hours he may and may not work, how many machines he may run, and at what speed, how many apprentices he may and may not employ, when it undertakes to cripple the employer's industry by calling out its men, because of sympathy with other strikers, or, because of his employing non-union men, by boycotting his wares, by sending out its pickets to way-lay non-union men, and to force them by intimidation or violence either to leave work or to join the union, it is then that the 9 6 trades-union becomes an organized tyrasny, and the union- man a despot. It is then that a state of war exists between employer and employee, and that, in retaliation, capital resorts to drastic measures that are no less reprehensible. That the laborer has rights which the employer is bound to respect, we have already seen. He has the right to dispose Must respect of his labor, which is his capital, as he pleases. rights of employer jje has the right to leave his employer and his as wants employer respect rights of work if neither of them suit him. He has the labor - right to leave his employer if no longer satisfied with wages or hours of work, and sell his labor in the market in which it commands the highest price. But the right which he respects when it touches him, he must no less respect when it touches others. He must grant to employer the same right to engage or to discharge whomsoever he pleases, to work as many hours as his needs require, to buy from or to sell to whomsoever he desires. In a free country like ours, it is a fundamental principle that every man is entitled to full, legal control over what is his own. It has well been said, "corporate capital to-day owns its ship or engine or factory, minus the right to control or administer them. Organized labor owns itself plus the right to administer the factory or the mine or the locomotive of the capitalist," to which might be added: plus the right to own or to terrorize those who, for reasons of their own, have not joined the organization, and who seek to fill the places voluntarily vacated by union-men. I will grant that it is irritating to see men ready to take the place vacated because of insufficient pay, or because of too many hours of work, or because of some other Has right to per- suasion but not to grievance, and I can see every reason why such lawlessness. people should be peaceably reasoned with, and, if possible, made to join the union. But, to set upon such men, when argument fails, to assail them, to endanger their lives, to persecute their families and those that have relations with them, yea, even to burn or dynamite their homes, or to club or shoot them to death and not only them but also officers of the law, delegated by the city or the State to protect them in the lawful discharge of their rights such proceedure is a 97 degree of lawlessness nothing short of anarchy, and demands the most condign penalty of the law. It is lawlessness, says the Anthracite Coal Strike Com- mission, when a trade-union regards itself above the authority of the law of the land, and makes rules and regu- The )aw i e8sne88 , lations in contravention thereof. It is lawless- intimidation and ness, when a trades-union constitutes itself a vlolence - governing agency, and claims authority "to control those who have refused to join its ranks and to consent to its government, and to deny to them the personal liberties which are guaran- teed to every citizen by the constitution and laws of the land. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, ' ' No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." It is lawlessness to bring privations and sufferings upon an in- offending community because of a want of a commodity which non-union-men are ready to furnish, but which union-men will not permit under the threat of violence. It is lawlessness to boycott the produce of a manufacturer who has incurred the ill-will of a trades-union, and to extend the anathema to every trader who handles such boycotted goods, even to consumers who pur- The chase them. It is not an inapt comparison to liken the boycott to the ecclesiastical ban. As there was no more cruel weapon during the Dark- and Middle-Ages than the ban to bring refractory individuals to the feet of the church, so does the modern industrial world know of no more cruel weapon than the boycott, used by the trades-union to bring under its yoke employers, who persist in the belief that they have a right to manage their own affairs. The Anthracite Coal Strike Commission speakes of it in its Report as " a con- spiracy at common law, and merits and should receive the pun- ishment due to such a crime. ' ' They cite examples of a few coal-region boycotts. ' ' A young school mistress of intelligence, character, and attain- ments, was boycotted, her dismissal from employ- Examples of bo . ment compelled, for no other reason than that a cott cited by Com- brother, not living in her immediate family, chose m ss on< to work contrary to the wishes and will of the striking miners. A lad, about fifteen years old, employed in a drug store, was 9 8 discharged, owing to threats made to his employer by a dele- gation of the strikers, on behalf of their organization, for the reason that his father had chosen to return to work before the strike was ended. In several instances tradesmen were threat- ened with a boycott that is, that all connected with the strikers would withhold from them their custom, and persuade others to do so, if they continued to furnish the necessaries of life to the families of certain workmen, who had come under the ban of the displeasure of the striking organization."* To these examples cited by the Coal Strike Commission, the following instance might be added: A general strike was declared at the Lincoln Iron Works of Rutland, pie cited 8 Vt. because of the Company's refusal to comply with certain demands made by certain of their em- ployees. Continuing to operate with such men as chose to re- main, the firm was subjected to outrageous treatment. Every effort was made by the union to crush the firm. The plant was surrounded by pickets. Entrance and exit were exceedingly dangerous. The trade was warned away under the threat of per- sonal injury, and under like threats purchasers were compelled to cancel their orders, or to refuse to accept them when deliv- ered. To quote from the official statement, ' ' Committees visited hotels and boarding houses, and by intimidations prevented our men from getting boarded or a place to live, so that we have been obliged to fit up boarding-houses, and surround them with a high fence and provide police-protection. Tradesmen have been warned by the union not to sell goods to our present workmen. Barbers have been threatened if they shave them. Grocers have been threatened with boycott if they sell provi- sions to the boarding-houses where our employees stay. Bakers have been importuned to refuse to supply bread. Workmen of other trades have been warned not to do work for us. This boycotting and annoyance of innocent storekeepers and trades- men is unjust, unmanly, un-American. . . . We have endea- vored to treat our employees justly and fairly, and we believe that the majority of those who have left our employ would testify to-day to that effect. We have always paid our bills * Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 46, May 1903, pp. 502-503. 99 promptly, and have not missed a pay roll in more tlian twenty years. We believe that we should be permitted to manage our own business, and to employ whom we choose, and that those who wish to work for us have the right to do so, not- withstanding the demands of the Union that all workmen must join their ranks and obey their mandates or starve." But union-men may say: ' 'Take from us the boycott against employers, and the coercion of non-union men, and what is the union good for, and what weapon is left c c 1.4. 4/u r "What good of for us to nght the power and aggressiveness of laber-union with- corporate capital ?' ' out boycott or co- To which we would reply: All is left to the union; nothing is taken from it except its lawlessness. Labor unions are mighty factors for good when kept within the con- fines of the law, and ministered in the American Labor-uninn can spirit of liberty for all. If capital is grasping-, be a mighty factor t f / -r 1 for good. as, alas, it otten is, if employers are aibitrary and unreasonable, as, no doubt, they often are, the union can deal with them by other means than lawlessness. What folly greater than resorting to violence, when back of the rights of labor stands the greatest power on earth, Public Opinion, by far the largest part of adult human kind are wage-earning laboring people. Let the union do the blessed work that is its sphere to do. Let it educate public opinion. Let it provide for the exist- ence of Commissions of Conciliation, and for permanent Boards of Arbitration. Let the union * h n a J labor ' uniOB educate its own men to the American conception of fairness, and to the American mode of peaceably disposing of difficulties. Let the union rid itself of professional agita- tors, and of unscrupulous leaders of the Samuel J. Parks stripe, now in Sing Sing prison. Let the union study economic questions, and investigate conditions of the labor markets, and do its own thinking. Let the union strive to better the laboring- man's condition, but not by ruinous and demoralizing strikes. Not in trying to do the least possible work for the largest pos- sible wage, but in earning the largest possible wage, consist- ent with the demands of health and culture, lies the salvation of the American working-man, lies the possibility of the American IOO market maintaining its efficiency and supremacy. Let the union encourage wise distribution of labor, thus preventing overcrowding, and underbidding of price for the limited labor in the market. Let the union lessen the pressure on the labor market, and its consequent reduction of wages, by encourag- ing a return to the soil, where there is abundant of work, and good wages, and good health for the millions. And let capital learn to be just. Let it honor itself by honoring labor, and promote its own best good by promoting the welfare of the laboring-man. There are What capital must many thingg that are more profitable to capital than profits. Justice is one of them, honesty is another, considerate-ness is a third, sympathy is a fourth. There are a few quotations that capital can better afford to re- member than market- or stock-quotations, two of them from the Old Testament, one of them from the New Testament. One of them reads; " Thou shaljt not steal." The other reads: " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The third reads: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto von. even so do ve also unto them." A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play By RABBI JOS. KRAUSKOPF, D. D. A handsome edition in OCTAVO FORM, of the entire series of RABBI JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF'S DISCOURSES on the above subject. The subject is one of absorbing interest, ably and exhaustively treated, and the work has a distinct literary value. With an introduction by the author. As a piece of book -making, it is all that good paper, good print, good bind- ing can make it. Price $1.25. Postage 10 Cents. EDWARD STERN & CO., PUBLISHERS, PHILADELPHIA. For Sale by OSCAR KLONOWER, 1435 Euclid Avenue, Philadelphia. SOME OPINIONS. From the Author of the " History of Universal Literature," Dr. Gustav Karpeles: I regard a translation of it into German as exceedingly necessary. We have no work in German literature which points out the dif- ference between Jew and Christian from a modern point of view so critically as you do in your book. From Dr. B. Felsenthal : Coming from the clear mind and warm heart of one who masters his subject, written in a popular, yet elevated and elevating lan- guage, it will, no doubt, contribute very much to implant into the hearts of its Jewish readers new love for Judaism, and into the hearts of its non-Jewish readers esteem and appreciation of a people and of a religion which many of them were used to look upon with prejudice, often with contempt. Rev. E. P. Dinsmore, Minister of the Second Uni- tarian Church, writes : The frame of mind in which the reading of the book left me is one of indignation at the perpetuation of a falsehood against the Jew- ish people which has wrought such cruel suffering, and its retention upon the pulpits dedicated to Truth. Claude G. Montefiore writes In "Tht Jewish Quarterly Review." London. Dr. Krauskopf puts his own case strongly; he speaks out in no uncertain voice (and well he mav) about the calumnies and bitter per- secutions from which the Jews have suffered and are suffering, but for himself good will, forbearance and brotherly love are his watch- words; these are the qualities which he de- sires to see prevail and it is to advance their cause that his book was written. One of the most excellent things of Dr. Krauskopf's book is the clear and ingenious way in which the author weaves his New Testament criticisms and his capital descrip- tions of the play together. In the first five sermons we are never allowed to forget that we are listening to some one who has been to Oberammergau, and that his immediate pur- pose is to give us a description, as well as im- pressions of what he actually saw and heard. It is no mere dry criticism therefore which the preacher gives us; no mere assertions of what he conceives the course of events to have actually been, but while these criticisms and assertions are in a sense the real object of the whole book, they are apparently sub- ordinated to the impressions and descriptions. The total result makes very good reading and leaves a pleasing effect upon the mind. The Hon. Andrew D. White, United States Ambas- sador to Germany, writes : The fairness and liberality of your treat- ment of the whole subject, as well as the beautiful garb you have given the thoughts, ought to commend the work to every think- ing man and woman, whether Jew or Gentile. From " The Philadelphia Press." Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf's well-known abil- ities as a preacher and writer, a scholar and a man of sincere thought and high intellec- tion, naturally would tend to make anything he might write on some great religious cere- mony interesting, and a distinct contribution to the matter in hand. But when he ap- proaches such a subject as the Passion Play at Oberammergau from the intense emotional standpoint of one who sees his race maligned in gross caricature, his discussion and descrip- tion take on a keener tone, and possess an additional value as a sort of human docu- ment. John E. Roberts, Pastor of the Free Church, Kansas City, Mo., writes: I wish every Christian in the world could read that book. Every one that is intelligent and amenable to reason would want to devote every remaining energy to the making of amends to that great people whom to execrate and despise has been the paramount duty of Christians for centuries. Israel Abrahams, Editor of the "Jewish Chron- icle," London, writes : Dr. Krauskopf is always entertaining, here he is bold as well. . . . His manner is respectful though strong, he is suave though uncompromising. Dr. Krauskopf pleases the historian as well as the theologian. He analyzes the story of the Gospels scene by scene, and fearlessly exposes their incredibility, the lack of his- toric evidence for them. He is particularly good about the trial of Jesus. From "The Jewish Messenger." Dr. Krauskopf writes courageously and to the point. His words are for both communi- ties and teach a needed lesson to Jew and non-Jew. The one will rise from the perusal of the book with more reverence for his religion and his ancestors; the other with more appreciation of the Jewish creed and knowledge of Jewish history. It is a book adapted to remove prejudices and instil a clearer understanding of the rise of Christian traditions. SOME: OPINIONS. From " Book News." Dr. Krauskopf has given to the world a work of great literary value. The intellectual force of his arguments, the eloquence of the plea for his people, the strength and power as well as the beauty and grace in which he has couched his opinions, and the boldness with which he has set forth his doctrines and challenged the world to disprove them, all show him to be a man of giant intellectual power, and also of admirable literary skill, so that even the strongest theological opposer, even the intensest hater of the Jews, must give due admiration and respect to the genius of this patriotic representative of the Hebrew people. From the "American Israelite," Cincinnati. The author's evident desire to free himself from all bias, entitle him to respect, and his utterances to calm consideration. His book is, to say the least, an extremely interesting contribution to current literature, and is well worth reading. The style is clear and simple, arid needs no technical training for compre- hension by the average layman. From the "American Hebrew," New York. .... The inconsistencies of the historians, the inaccuracies of which they are guilty, assuming them to have secured their infor- mation first hand, are exposed with much skill and vigor of utterance Commend- ation is due the author for the clearness and fearlessness with which he states his position. From "The Philadelphia Times." Of Jesus, the man, the Rabbi speaks with the greatest reverence. The Jew is proud of Jesus, as he is of other illustrious men of his race. He believes that he honors Jesus more by denying His divinity than by affirming it. The writer has made excellent use of the historical data at his command to controvert the errors of nineteen centuries. From "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums." .... The book deserves dissemination in the widest circles. It does not incite, it does not injure. By means of its simple, yet logical demonstration of that great injustice which, owing to a false apprehension and presentation of the life of Jesus by the Christian world of thought, has been inflicted upon the Jewish people fot nineteen hundred years, the book gives a vigorous call for justice. From "The North American," Philadelphia. There is a calm certainty in his grasp of the sources of Christian and Hebrew theological knowledge which leads one to trust one's sell to his guidance in this respect much more readily than that of the ordinary polemic; and the tone of absolute sincerity throughout his work is not to be mistaken. From the "New York Times" Saturday Review. .... It brings a new view and suggests a new thought. . . . Both manner and method are earnest and logical. From the "Jewish Ledger," New Orleans. .... Asa distinct literary treat, aside from its lair presentation of a legend that is mag- nificently interpreted by the Bavarian peas- picuous place m the library of every home, W. T. Stead, Editor of the London " Review of Reviews,'' writes : Permit me to express my thanks to you for the tribute which you pay to the Jew, who, more than all the rest of your nation put to- gether, succeeded in inspiring the heart of man with the aspirations after a reign of iiiral justice and love, to which the great prophets of your race first gave clear and articulate expression. From an Address Delivered b> the Rev. Benjamin Fay Kills, Oakland. Ca!. : .... lie seems to me kinder to the memory oi je.siis than the writers of the Gospels. From the ' Hebrew Standard," New York. !>r. Krauslcopf not only gives a faithful, accurate and impartial description of the historical drama, its scene and characters, but also his ov,-n care fully formed conclusions cm the much-mooted question of the Cruci- fixion Rabbi Krauskopf's latest con- tribution to American Jewish literature may be recommended most highly to even" lay reader who \vi-hes to know and understand Ihe verdict of historv. From ''The World," New York. We believe that few readers of his book, Jewish or Gentile, will fail to feel that he has succeeded in throwing light on the subject, and quieting rather than hardening asperities due to variance of beliefs. Superintendent of Schools of Yolo County, Cal., Mr. T. Goin, writes : It is a book that does its author great credit. It portrays a great mind and profound schol- arship, and will doubtless be read by all scholars with great interest. This book is well calculated to dispel prejudice and super- stitions of long standing. A Letter from Dr. Isaac Funk, of Funk & Wag- nails Co. : In your book I henr the heart-cry wrung from a great people that has suffered untold wrongs, awful cruelty, and injustice done in the name of Him whose life and words are to me the sweetest memory of all the past malice, cruelty, avarice, superstition, fanati- cism all masquerading under the name of Jesus, for all these centuries struck these cruel blows. From the Hon. Simon Wolf: Its merits as a literary production reflect credit on your scholarship, your broad-gauged review of the salient points, and elevates the Jew and his faith into those regions that compel recognition. A 000222014 3 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles Thl. book i, DUE on the la.t date .tamped below. STAC*