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CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 AND CIVIC PRIDE 
 
 BY 
 NEWTON MARSHALL HALL, D.D. 
 
 Minister of the North Congregational Church 
 
 Springfield, Massachusetts 
 
 Member-at-Large of the Springfield Board 
 
 of Education 
 
 Author of *The Bible Story," etc. 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
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 Copyright, 1914 
 Sherman. French 6* Company 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED WIFE 
 
 LOUISE 
 
 WHOSE LIFE IS THE INSPIRATION OF MY LIFE 
 
 This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? 
 Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! 
 . . . That still, despite the distance and the dark, 
 What was, again may be: some interchange 
 Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought. 
 Some benediction anciently thy smile." 
 
 fifid-Cion. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The problems which are the most vital and 
 most interesting to the great mass of our peo- 
 ple are civic problems. National questions are 
 more remote and unreal. Life centers in the 
 city; its governmental functions concern the 
 family, the individual, our own flesh and blood, 
 directly. The education of children, the right- 
 eous administration of the business of the com- 
 munity, communal rights, the preservation of 
 law and order, the housing of the population, 
 the care of the poor, the suppression of vice, 
 the treatment of the alien, the inter-relation of 
 men and women, all these matters and many 
 others come home to us with directness and 
 force. These questions are absorbing the at- 
 tention of very many thoughtful men and 
 women; they are the concern of such great or- 
 ganizations as the National Municipal League 
 and the National Economic League. Much lit- 
 erature is in existence upon the technical and 
 administrative aspects of these problems ; very 
 little has been written upon the moral side. 
 
 Yet these questions are all at bottom, moral 
 questions. They cannot be settled by schemes 
 
PREFACE 
 
 and projects, however well thought out, nor by 
 model city charters, nor by the referendum, nor 
 by any other similar device alone. The final 
 factor is the human factor, the redeemed man in 
 the redeemed city, and no solution is possible 
 which does not take into consideration the 
 teaching of the Master of Men. The sermons 
 contained in this volume were prepared with 
 this belief profoundly in view. They aim to 
 discuss civic questions from the old prophetic 
 standpoint modified by the vision of Jesus as it 
 must be worked out in terms of every day living. 
 At the time they were delivered they were 
 widely quoted by the daily press. And they 
 are now printed upon the insistence on the part 
 of many friends that they will be helpful to 
 others than those to whom they were immedi- 
 ately addressed. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I Civic Righteousness and Civic Pride 1 
 
 II 
 
 America: the Melting Pot . 
 
 16 
 
 III 
 
 Civic Responsibility 
 
 29 
 
 IV 
 
 The Battle against Evil . 
 
 41 
 
 V 
 
 The City of the Blind .... 
 
 53 
 
 VI 
 
 The Public Schools and Civic 
 
 
 
 Righteousness 
 
 66 
 
 VII 
 
 The Ideal Citizenship .... 
 
 81 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Saloon: a Public Nuisance . 
 
 94 
 
 IX 
 
 Civic Rights and Civic Duties . 
 
 108 
 
 X 
 
 The Follies op Civic Adolescence 
 
 121 
 
 XI 
 
 A Righteous Machine .... 
 
 134 
 
 XII 
 
 The City of Friends 
 
 146 
 
 XIII 
 
 The City and the Nation . 
 
 159 
 
 XIV 
 
 Woman and the Ultimate Democ- 
 
 
 
 racy 
 
 171 
 
 XV 
 
 The Cfty of Visions 
 
 184 
 
CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS AND CIVIC 
 PRIDE 1 
 
 " A citizen of no mean city." — Acts 21 : 39. 
 
 In a book which pulses with human interest 
 from cover to cover there is no more intensely 
 dramatic scene than that in which Paul defied 
 the mob in Jerusalem. He is borne by the tide 
 of shouting humanity up the steps of the cas- 
 tle, protected by the soldiers of the imperial 
 guard. There he is questioned by the captain, 
 who asks him if he is not a certain Egyptian 
 outlaw who has been causing trouble in the 
 country districts. Then stands up Paul in his 
 pride and flashes back his royal reply, " I am 
 a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city of Ci- 
 licia, a citizen of no mean city." Yes, he was 
 a Jew, with all the exclusive racial instincts of 
 the Israelite, with an inborn hatred and distrust 
 of all things foreign, a Jew with a peculiar re- 
 ligious mission, and yet there flames out this 
 
 1 Preached on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary 
 of the incorporation of the City of Springfield. 
 1 
 
2 ' CIVIC 'K161ITEOUSNESS 
 
 spirit of civic pride, this glory in the distinc- 
 tively Roman city of his birth. Why was he 
 proud of it? One reason was because the an- 
 cient city of Tarsus was proud of itself. It 
 was a Roman metropolis with all the distinc- 
 tions and privileges which the name implied. 
 It was beautifully situated. The broad River 
 Cyndus, breaking through a cleft in the Taurus 
 Mountains, fell in a white cascade to the plain, 
 and flowed clear and cold from its mountain 
 snows through the city. At evening the people 
 used to gather in their roof gardens on the 
 housetops to watch the setting sun as it turned 
 the snowy summits of the mountain chain into 
 rose and filled the valley with golden mist. But 
 beauty of situation was not the only source of 
 civic pride. Tarsus was a rich and influential 
 centre of trade, and it maintained its impor- 
 tance by the most lavish municipal expenditure, 
 — by what we moderns call enterprise and push. 
 When Paul as a boy wandered down to the 
 wharves to see the sights, and to listen to the 
 sounds of the sailors and the ships, and to 
 breathe that indefinable atmosphere of the sea 
 which is so fascinating to a growing lad, he 
 could not fail to admire those great stone basins 
 and quays which made Tarsus a seaport in 
 spite of the treacherous, shifting sands of the 
 rapid river. The Roman was a great builder 
 and his engineering stood. There was no 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 3 
 
 shoddy about it. A traveller in northern Af- 
 rica told me that he found Roman baths still 
 intact, the blocks of stone so cunningly fitted 
 together that they required no cement. We 
 have yet to equal the engineering of the old Ro- 
 man aqueducts which spanned the valleys with 
 graceful arches and brought an unlimited sup- 
 ply of pure water from the hills for the use of 
 the humblest citizen, playing everywhere in 
 beautiful public fountains, so that in Rome you 
 could not go out of the sound of running wa- 
 ter. In the science of road building we are 
 far behind the Roman, whose military high- 
 ways, stretching to the boundaries of the em- 
 pire, were the railroads of ancient times. In 
 municipal art and architecture we are only just 
 beginning to abandon the grotesque and hide- 
 ous, and to imitate, but only in stone and brick, 
 that glorious beauty which the ancient city re- 
 vealed in marble. All this strength and beauty 
 and genuineness of construction, this power 
 which, however arbitrary it might be, at least 
 wrought with magnificent energy for the good 
 of the people, must have deeply impressed Paul, 
 who loved strength and hated a sham. 
 
 All the sights and sounds which make up the 
 life of a proud city had their effect upon the 
 growing boy. The great bazars with their rich 
 display of goods ; the caravans, coming perhaps 
 from India, laden with spices and bales of curi- 
 
4 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ously woven cloths ; the religious processions 
 filling the streets with sudden splendor; the 
 march of a Roman legion; and above all that 
 indescribable something which makes a city- 
 bred man love the very streets and houses and 
 noises of the city, — all this was in Paul's mind 
 when he said, " I am a citizen of no mean city." 
 
 There is a divine providence in the inevitable 
 drift of humanity cityward. It is a cheap 
 sophistry which says that " God made the coun- 
 try and man made the city." God implanted 
 the instinct which leads men to gather in social 
 groups, as the instinct of the bird leads it to 
 follow the journeying sun. As humanity is 
 constituted, the city is inevitable. The germ 
 of Jerusalem was in the wandering tent of 
 Abraham. The Pilgrim Fathers carried the 
 charters of all the cities of the American conti- 
 nent in the cabin of the " Mayflower." Until 
 you can blot out social desires and communal in- 
 stincts, the gathering of humanity in cities is 
 as inevitable as the recurrence of day and 
 night. 
 
 There is a fascination about the city for 
 many minds which cannot be explained upon 
 sociological grounds. That feeling was per- 
 haps never better expressed than in these words 
 of Charles Lamb: 
 
 " I have passed all my days in London, until I 
 have formed as many and as intense local attach- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 6 
 
 ments as any of your mountaineers can have done 
 with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand 
 and of Fleet Street, the innumerable trades, trades- 
 men, and customers, coaches, wagons, playhouses, 
 . . . the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun 
 shining upon houses and pavements, the jewel 
 shops, the old book stalls, coffeehouses, the steam 
 of soup from kitchens, the pantomimes (London 
 itself a pantomime and a masquerade), all these 
 things work themselves into my mind without the 
 power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights 
 impels me into night walks about her crowded 
 streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand 
 from fulness of joy at so much life." 
 
 The lover of green fields and running brooks 
 may not appreciate this feeling; the colors of 
 the picture may seem rather dingy and dubious, 
 but the fascination of London has existed not 
 only for Lamb, but for Johnson, and Gold- 
 smith, and Dickens, and Thackeray, and a host 
 of England's choicest spirits. 
 
 We are told by political economists that men 
 are governed wholly by utilitarian motives. 
 But men stay in the city to their own obvious 
 disadvantage. The offer of higher wages, bet- 
 ter food, cleaner dwellings, has no effect upon a 
 certain class of city-dwellers. They love the 
 excitement and companionship of the city bet- 
 ter than wide landscapes devoid of houses and 
 men, or charming country roads with birds 
 carolling in the trees, but no electric cars and 
 
6 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 loaded drays and fire-engines. They cannot 
 see how anyone can desire to live in a house 
 without the social opportunities of a fire-es- 
 cape, and the nearest chance of gossip a mile 
 and a half away. Perhaps the time may come 
 when some economic Moses will lead a new exo- 
 dus from the Egypt of the great cities, but for 
 the present we must face the stubborn fact 
 that the attraction of the city is irresistible to 
 great masses of humanity. 
 
 There is, indeed, another side to the question. 
 There are influences entirely rational and legit- 
 imate which lead men to the cities and keep 
 them there. While the country has unques- 
 tionably bred and nourished great men, the city 
 has furnished the field for the exhibition of their 
 talents. The bells of Bow have called, " Turn 
 back, turn back," to more than one Dick Whit- 
 tington, who has become " thrice Lord Mayor 
 of London." Daniel Webster was nothing but 
 a green country barrister as long as he re- 
 mained among his native New Hampshire hills. 
 It was necessary for him to become acclimated 
 as a citizen of Boston before he could enter 
 upon a career of national greatness. 
 
 The desire for superior advantages, — edu- 
 cational, social, religious, commercial, — for all 
 the privileges and opportunities which the 
 larger communities aff^ord, furnishes a strong 
 and perfectly valid incentive to men to seek the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 7 
 
 city. All these influences, combined with mod- 
 ern methods of manufacture and distribution, 
 have resulted in the unprecedented drift to the 
 cities. Country districts are being depopu- 
 lated. The smaller communities are being deci- 
 mated. The marching columns of humanity 
 are converging upon the city. It inevitably 
 follows that the interest in the great drama of 
 human life is also centered in the city. It 
 means that the great battles for human freedom 
 are to be fought out in the city. What has 
 been true of Paris for centuries will be increas- 
 ingly true of all our American cities : the prob- 
 lem of the nation will be the problem of the city. 
 What is true of the greatest cities is also true 
 of other and smaller communities. The cen- 
 trifugal social force which is at work will result 
 in the formation not of suns only, but of plan- 
 etary systems as well. There are many nuclei 
 of attraction, and there will be, during the next 
 half century, hundreds of communities, ranging 
 from Greater New York to cities of ten thou- 
 sand inhabitants, which will be constantly grow- 
 ing at the expense of other communities. They 
 are all of the same general type; they are all 
 under the compulsion of the same stupendous 
 forces ; they are moving toward a common des- 
 tiny. The great fact which cannot be ignored 
 is the fact of the centralization of human life 
 in limited areas. Humanity, rich and poor, 
 
8 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 will continue to hive and swarm in the city. 
 Here is the problem, and we must face it. It is 
 a problem which cannot be eliminated; it must 
 be solved. One aspect is dark, and sinister, 
 and menacing. It may be questioned whether 
 human nature reaches any lower depths of de- 
 pravity in the city than in the country, but 
 wickedness breeds faster by contact, and ap- 
 palling possibilities are open through the multi- 
 plication of the human factor. An isolated 
 criminal is bad enough, but a city tenement 
 house may become a nursery of crime, a hotbed 
 of pestilence, a festering plague-spot of so- 
 cial corruption. The city contains enough ex- 
 plosive material of human passions to wreck 
 the whole social fabric. The tiger is chained to- 
 day. Men are at work. Prosperity is in the 
 air. But let the conditions change. Let loose 
 those demons of hunger and hate; let the bal- 
 ance tip ever so slightly toward discord and 
 anarchy, and the city will become a storm-cen- 
 ter which may threaten destruction and disin- 
 tegration to the whole nation. How are we to 
 counteract the evil tendencies and develop those 
 glorious possibilities which just as surely exist 
 in the life of the city? 
 
 First, by arousing the communal spirit and 
 civic pride} by enlarging the vision, and raising 
 the ideals of every citizen, by opening the eyes 
 of men to the opportunities and privileges of 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 9 
 
 citizenship. If you cannot make men go to 
 the country, then you must bring the beauty 
 and significance of the country into the city, so 
 that the child of the slums may have a vision of 
 green grass and blossoming flowers near its ten- 
 ement; so that the weary laborer may some- 
 times catch the song of birds above the roar of 
 the city streets and refresh his eye by the sight 
 of the waving branches of trees. Open your 
 squares in the city streets ! Tear down your 
 dingy walls ! Let in the light and air ! In the 
 name of the God of sunshine and flowers, give to 
 the people who must toil the beauty for which 
 their souls crave, not at remote distances, but 
 next to the factory and the street. If our 
 American cities are to be more than storehouses 
 for merchandise, more than mere herding places 
 for humanity, they must cultivate civic beauty 
 and civic pride. Self-respect, pride in ideal 
 achievement, is the source of all progress. In 
 order to redeem a man morally, you must first 
 arouse his pride; you must make him sensible 
 that he has a manhood worth saving. The 
 greatness of ancient Athens was based, not 
 upon commercial prosperity, but upon a civic 
 pride which sacrificed wealth, which was con- 
 tent to live in humble, perishable dwellings, in 
 order that glorious piles of marble and radiant 
 statues might symbolize the eternal worth of 
 beauty. The City of the Seven Hills ruled the 
 
10 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 world because it made civic pride the basis of 
 imperial power, because the humblest legionary 
 fighting beneath the eagles of Caesar on the 
 banks of the Rhine or in the* far Eastern des- 
 erts felt the power of the great city at his back. 
 Venice, Star of the Sea, was for generations the 
 centre of culture and trade because civic pride 
 stimulated ambition and kept her inviolate and 
 free. The development of civic pride means 
 a development of the consciousness of unity, 
 the sense of the mutual interdependence of ev- 
 ery citizen, and a consequent development of 
 the principles of democracy. We hear less of 
 the idea that every man's house is a castle in 
 which he may intrench himself from the world 
 and enjoy his individual accumulations, and 
 more of the idea that the city, made resplendent 
 and beautiful by the giving of the many, is 
 every man's kingdom. 
 
 Communal rights are not merely utilitarian. 
 The city must do more than provide pure air 
 and well-paved streets ; it must assist men to 
 create a new and a purer social atmosphere; it 
 must open the intellectual highways over which 
 the humblest and poorest of its children may 
 walk to freedom if they will. If there is a prac- 
 tical necessity which compels men to surrender 
 individual for civic rights in the line of public 
 improvements, then there is a moral necessity 
 which will sooner or later compel men to sur- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 11 
 
 render personal and selfish enjoyment for the 
 intellectual and ethical welfare of the commu- 
 nity. 
 
 Today if a man should say, " I do not use 
 your public improvements and I will not pay 
 for*them," we should reply, " You must pay for 
 them whether you want them or not, for they 
 are for the good of the community of which you 
 are an integral part." We say this today ; to- 
 morrow we shall say, " You must help to pay 
 for everything which will enrich and beautify 
 and enlarge the life of the individual, so that 
 no child born within the limits of this proud 
 city of ours shall lack anything of the highest 
 po'ssible training or anything of the highest 
 possible satisfaction of the nobler instincts of 
 the nature." The power to make that demand 
 and enforce it is one of the greatest triumphs of 
 Christianity. It is not so necessary that you 
 and I should have a comfortable sense of our 
 own piety. Christ need not have died for that ; 
 but to force men to understand the personal 
 obligation of every man to contribute to the 
 enlightenment and freedom and ethical well- 
 being of the whole community, that is a triumph 
 worth the anguish of Calvary. 
 
 When we realize how strong a force is selfish- 
 ness in the world, we wonder how the broader 
 victory for humanity has been won. I believe 
 that the joybells of Heaven rang when the first 
 
la CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 free school and the first free library were es- 
 tablished. Across the front of the public li- 
 brary in Boston are inscribed these words, " To 
 the people of Boston, from the people of Bos- 
 ton." Marvelous the significance of those 
 words — the self-consciousness of a city as- 
 serting itself in visible form ; the enunciation 
 of a principle of giving which does not impover- 
 ish, of a self-sacrifice which is a self-sustain- 
 ment and a self-enrichment. And under those 
 words might well have been carved that other 
 declaration out of which they grew, " I am 
 come that they might have life, and have it more 
 abundantly." 
 
 There is one more element which is necessary 
 to the highest development of the city. Be- 
 neath civic pride must be civic righteousness. 
 You may make a city as beautiful as you please^ 
 — make every street a park, crown it with pub- 
 lic palaces of art and literature and music, — 
 unless righteousness, and sobriety, and the fear 
 of God, and faith in a future, are characteristic 
 of its people, it may become a Circean sty of 
 filth and corruption, and it will be consumed 
 by the fires of its own wickedness. In the days 
 of the Renaissance, Florence witnessed the most 
 glorious revival of art and architecture which 
 the world had seen since the golden age of 
 Greece. But those marvelous creations in- 
 spired by the sublime genius of Michael Angelo, 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 13 
 
 Ghiberti, Giotto, Donatello, Brunelleschi, could 
 not save Florence, — that Florence which ban- 
 ished Dante and burned Savonarola, upon 
 which Michael Angelo turned his back in shame 
 and grief. " And Florence died, too," says a 
 writer ; " for weary centuries lying motionless, 
 with the ' Twilight ' and the ' Dawn ' and the 
 ' Night ' and the ' Day ' watching by her ashes 
 in melancholy splendor." A city's greatness, 
 her continued prosperity and influence, rests 
 upon her faithfulness to the high ideals of right- 
 eousness and honor. To live happily a people 
 must live nobly ; to live nobly a people must 
 live righteously. 
 
 There is great danger today that the growth 
 of civic opportunities shall outstrip the spread 
 of civic righteousness. The mighty problem 
 before us is to lift men up to an appreciation of 
 the privileges of American citizenship, to en- 
 franchise the spirit, to develop in new genera- 
 tions the characteristics of the fathers. I re- 
 cently heard a prominent political leader plead 
 earnestly for the holding of office by citizens of 
 American blood. That does not solve the dif- 
 ficulty. You would not have good government, 
 necessarily, if every mayor's chair in the coun- 
 try should be occupied by a descendant of the 
 Puritans. What we must do is to take the chil- 
 dren of alien birth and foreign tongue, and ed- 
 ucate them in our public schools, and inspire 
 
14 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 them with lofty ideals, and impress them with 
 the principles of private morality and public 
 virtue until they shall be as fit to govern as the 
 native-bom American of bluest blood and long- 
 est lineage. We can have no oligarchy of 
 education and culture in this country. We 
 must all rise or fall together. The Springfield 
 of the future is to be not your Springfield nor 
 my Springfield alone, but the Springfield of the 
 child of Italy and France and Poland as well, 
 and its character will depend upon the faithful- 
 ness with which the obligation to every citizen 
 is met, upon the measure of civic pride and civic 
 righteousness which is attained by all. 
 
 " A citizen of no mean city ! " We can all 
 feel the pride of Paul today in our Springfield. 
 Radiant and beautiful she sits in her ancient 
 seat by her lordly river flowing to the sea. She 
 treasures sacred memories of loyal hearts and 
 heroic service. The blood of her valiant sons 
 has consecrated the battlefields of the nation. 
 Peace and prosperity are within her gates. In- 
 dustry, intelligence, and civic pride character- 
 ize her citizens. Upon her escutcheon there is 
 no blot of shame in all her long history. She 
 stands for education, for breadth of vision, for 
 freedom of thought, for the faith of the fathers, 
 for the constitutional principles of liberty, 
 equality, fraternity. God bless her as she en- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 15 
 
 ters today upon a new era of prosperity and in- 
 fluence ! 
 
 " A blessing through the ages thus 
 Shield all thy roofs and towers; 
 God with the fathers, so with us, 
 Thou darling town of ours ! " 
 
II 
 
 AMERICA: THE MELTING POT^ 
 
 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the 
 mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the 
 top of the m^ountains, and shall be exalted above the 
 hills : and all nations shall floio unto it. — Isaiah 3 : 2. 
 
 The greatest of the prophets dreamed of the 
 age of universal brotherhood, when the barriers 
 between people and people should be broken 
 down, and the nations should fuse and flow to- 
 gether, drawn to Jerusalem by a spiritual grav- 
 itation as strong as that mighty call in obedi- 
 ence to which the rivers flow from the moun- 
 tains to the seas. So far as Jerusalem, the 
 holy city of Israel, is concerned the prophecy 
 will never be fulfilled, but it is being fulfilled in 
 America today, as the peoples of every nation 
 are flowing together in a mighty stream, be- 
 neath the portals of the promised land. There 
 was a time when I felt pessimistic and hopeless 
 about the problem of immigration. I feel so 
 no longer. I do not deny that there are very 
 grave aspects of this problem, that there are 
 
 1 Printed in " Immigration," December, 1913. 
 16 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 17 
 
 serious questions which confront our American 
 cities in relation to the foreign population, but 
 I believe that these problems may all be solved 
 if we have patriotism enough and faith enough. 
 I believe this, because I believe that there has 
 been from the first, a divine providence in the 
 migration of the peoples of the earth to Amer- 
 ica. The same God-given impulse which sent 
 Abraham out of his own city to found a new 
 people, the same impulse which sent the Pil- 
 grim Fathers over the western ocean to lay the 
 foundations of this Republic, has sent the rep- 
 resentatives of all the old races to become in- 
 tegral parts of the brotherhood of humanity 
 which we are creating slowly and painfully, not 
 without sacrifice and tears, in our America. I 
 would not dare to believe otherwise than this. 
 I do not believe that history is merely a blind 
 fumbling with the keys of fate. I believe that 
 God is visibly in it. This is a part of that eter- 
 nal purpose which has run through all the ages. 
 God intended this land which we call ours to be 
 the great school of opportunity for the races. 
 In Milton's splendid phrase it is " the mansion 
 house of liberty," spacious enough, free enough, 
 strong enough for the working out of all God's 
 problems for the human race. Someone may 
 say, " this is only a sentimental fancy, drawn 
 from a false interpretation of an out^own 
 scripture. The facts are that causes purely 
 
18 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 economical and social send the immigrant to 
 America. He comes to better himself. He 
 comes to seek higher wages. He is ignorant, 
 coarse and dirty. He breeds in the slums. He 
 is a source of contagion, moral and physical. 
 He is a peril in the industrial situation. He is 
 an anarchist and a free-thinker, a menace to 
 our free institutions. He should have been 
 kept out of our country. He is here, but what 
 we are to do with him ultimately seems a hope- 
 less problem." 
 
 In reply to such a pessimistic attitude I 
 should say that it is true that the immigrant 
 does come to better himself economically and 
 socially, but God can and does use economic 
 and social forces for the furtherance of his own 
 plans. He can even make the wrath of man to 
 praise him, and out of the horror of war, he 
 accomplishes the long purposes of peace. The 
 immigrant may come to America primarily to 
 earn his bread at a better wage, but in the 
 hearts of thousands there is also a spiritual 
 motive. There is a hunger and thirst for lib- 
 erty, there is the desire for an opportunity not 
 only to earn bread, but to obtain education, en- 
 lightenment, the chance to develop the soul as 
 well as the body. We have been altogether 
 wrong in our idea of the class of immigrants 
 which the Old World has been sending us. 
 These men and women are not as a rule degen- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 19 
 
 erate, any more than the Pilgrim Fathers were 
 degenerate. The immigrant is never of degen- 
 erate stock; for it requires initiative and thrift 
 and courage and faith to hear and to obey the 
 call. God sifts the nations today as he sifted 
 them of old to provide the seed for the planting 
 of the original colonies. Neither are the races 
 from which these people come degenerate. 
 When we stop to think for a moment it re- 
 quires more than American self-assurance to 
 call Italy and Poland and those Slavic princi- 
 palities whose feats at arms are amazing the 
 world today, degenerate. We are receiving the 
 descendants of men and women whose deathless 
 deeds have shaped the history of the world, who 
 have left us an imperishable heritage of litera- 
 ture and art and music. Who are we, and 
 what have we done that we should sneer at those 
 who come to us from the land of Homer and 
 Socrates, from the country of Dante and Vir- 
 gil, and Caesar and Michael Angelo.? and from 
 that suffering, sorrowful race without a coun- 
 try, a race which has given to the world the po- 
 etry of David and the prophecies of Isaiah, in 
 whose mould was cast the features of him we 
 call the Savior of the world. I think that we 
 are beginning to see the folly of our pride and 
 prejudice against the men and women who are 
 coming to our shores, not seeking bread alone, 
 but laden also with the unfulfilled dreams and 
 
20 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 visions of the centuries. The better spirit of 
 America is speaking in lines like these from one 
 of our younger poets : 
 
 " Countrymen, bend and invoke 
 
 Mercy for us blasphemers, 
 For that we spat on the marvellous folk. 
 
 Nations of darers and dreamers. 
 Scions of singers and seers. 
 Our peers and more than our peers; 
 Rabble and refuse we name them 
 And scum of the earth to shame them. 
 Mercy for us of the few, young years. 
 
 Of the culture so callow and crude, 
 
 Of the hands so grasping and rude. 
 The lips so ready with sneers 
 At the sons of our ancient more than peers. 
 Mercy for us who dare despise 
 Men in whose loins our Homer lies. 
 Mothers of men who shall bring to us 
 The glory of Titian, the grandeur of Huss; 
 Children in whose frail arms shall rest 
 Prophets and singers and saints of the West." 
 
 I want to ask you if it is not more than prob- 
 able that the seed of the stock which produced 
 in ancient times the glory and beauty and won- 
 der of the world shall bloom again under the 
 favoring conditions of a free land? It has 
 been rendered unproductive, not infertile, by 
 ages of oppression and ignorance and neglect. 
 Shall it not flower again under our fostering 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 21 
 
 care, beneath the open skies of America? You 
 and I, native born Americans must consider 
 these things. We must have regard not for 
 present conditions which are most deceptive, 
 but for potentialities of power and service on 
 the part of the immigrant in America. Let me 
 quote at this point from that wonderful book, 
 by that wonderful immigrant Mary Antin, who 
 is herself the embodiment of all that is hopeful 
 in this great problem. In speaking of the 
 hardships of her father's life during the past 
 years in America, she says: 
 
 " His history for the period is the history of 
 thousands who come to America like him, with 
 pockets empty, hands untrained to the use of tools, 
 minds cramped by centuries of repression in for- 
 eign lands. Dozens of these men pass under your 
 eyes every day, my American friend, too absorbed 
 in their honest affairs to notice the looks of sus- 
 picion which you cast at them, the repugnance with 
 which you shrink at their touch. You see them 
 shuffle from door to door with a basket of tools or 
 buttons, or bending over the sizzling iron in a base- 
 ment tailor shop, or moving a pushcart from curb to 
 curb, at the command of the burly policeman. The 
 Jew peddler, you say, and dismiss him from your 
 premises and from your thoughts, never dreaming 
 that the sordid drama of his days may have a moral 
 which concerns you. What if the creature with the 
 untidy beard carries in his bosom his citizen pa- 
 pers.'' What if the cross-legged tailor is support- 
 
2^ CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ing a boy in college who is one day going to mend 
 your state constitutions for you? What if the rag- 
 picker's daughters are hastening over the ocean to 
 teach your children in the public schools? Think 
 every time you pass the greasy alien in the street 
 that he was born thousands of years before the 
 oldest native American; and he may have some- 
 thing to communicate to you when you have learned 
 a common language. Remember that in his very 
 physiognomy is a cipher, the key it behooves you 
 to search for most diligently." 
 
 This is a challenge which we of Amer- 
 ica cannot ignore. The alien is here. What 
 are you going to do about it.'' Are you 
 going to hate him, fear him, neglect him, 
 mock him, shun him? Or are you going 
 to realize that he is a human being like your- 
 self, with a history as proud as your own, with 
 dreams and ideals in his breast, with a deep 
 unsatisfied longing for education and oppor- 
 tunity, thirsty for the wells at which you have 
 been privileged to drink deep? Are you going 
 not simply to make a citizen of him, but are you 
 going to try to make a useful and an intelligent 
 citizen? Are you going to draw upon his hid- 
 den and undeveloped resources of power? Are 
 3^ou going to develop his peculiar and individ- 
 ual characteristics in harmony with the spirit 
 of free institutions, in accordance with the 
 genius of America? This is soul-stuff in the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 28 
 
 rough which God has sent us, just as good clay, 
 so far as quality goes, as our own. We are 
 to take it and mould it in accordance with the 
 traditions of freedom and virtue and obedience 
 and reverence and service which have been 
 handed down to us from our fathers. How 
 shall we do it? I have no doubt that every 
 thoughtful person asks that question of himself 
 over and over. The gulf seems so wide to span, 
 these people seem so far apart in our daily 
 lives. No matter how good our intentions 
 may be, there seems to be no possible method 
 of influence and contact. Fortunately for us, 
 providentially I believe, there are certain in- 
 struments of democracy which work automat- 
 ically, without the necessity of personal initia- 
 tive. The one great instrumentality which 
 assimilates and Americanizes the foreign element 
 is the public school. The immigrant who looks 
 to the promised land from the bondage of op- 
 pression, idealizes America. In many respects 
 his dream is destined to a rude awakening. He 
 finds that he must stiU struggle for his daily 
 bread in the fierce competition of our American 
 cities. He finds that he must live in squalid 
 surroundings. He receives scant courtesy and 
 sympathy in his daily contact with life, but the 
 public school never disappoints him. It stands 
 for the opportunity for his children which he 
 has missed. It treats every nationality alike, 
 
24 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 without fear and without favor : without money 
 and without price it dispenses to the poorest 
 that which is more precious than rubies. Let 
 me quote again from Mary Antin: 
 
 " The pubHc school has done its best for us for- 
 eigners and for the country when it has made us 
 into good Americans. I am glad that it is mine to 
 tell you how the miracle was wrought in one case. 
 You should be glad to hear of it, you free-born 
 Americans, for it is the story of the growth of your 
 country: of the flocking of your brothers and sis- 
 ters from the far ends of the earth to the flag you 
 love, of the recruiting of your armies of workers, 
 thinkers and leaders. As I read in school how the 
 patriots planned the Revolution, and the women 
 gave their sons in battle, it dawned on me grad- 
 ually what was meant by my country. The people 
 all desiring noble things, and striving for them to- 
 gether, defying their oppressors, giving their lives 
 for each other — all this it was that made my coun- 
 try. It was not a thing that I understood : I could 
 not go home and tell my sister about it as I told 
 her the other things I learned in school. But I 
 knew one who could say ' my country ' and feel it, 
 as one felt * God ' or myself. My teacher, my 
 schoolmates, George Washington himself could not 
 mean more than I when they said my country after 
 I had once felt it. For the country was for all the 
 citizens and I was a citizen. And when we stood 
 up to sing * America * I shouted the words with all 
 my might. I was very earnest proclaiming to the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 25 
 
 world my love for my new found country. ' I love 
 thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills/ ** 
 
 Not all the children of immigrants can ex- 
 press their feelings so eloquently as this, but in 
 all the miracle is wrought. It is a miracle. 
 Without even consciously striving for it the 
 public school manages along with the teaching 
 of the ordinary branches of knowledge, to per- 
 form a wonder greater than was ever claimed 
 for the touchstone of the alchemist. It takes 
 all these different nationalities gathered from 
 the ends of the earth, and it makes them citi- 
 zens, it gives them the consciousness of citizen- 
 ship, it makes them glow with a patriotism 
 which is often more intense than that of the na- 
 tive born. The former president of Harvard 
 University has made the complaint, that the 
 public school does not do this work fast enough. 
 On the contrary, it does it with surprising, 
 miraculous speed. And this is the most im- 
 portant part of the service which it renders 
 the state. I have often told public school 
 teachers of my own church who are teaching the 
 children of foreigners largely, that there is no 
 work in the world short of that of the foreign 
 missionary so important and significant for hu- 
 man welfare as theirs. I would emphasize that 
 statement publicly. We want teachers who are 
 well trained technically for their scholastic du- 
 
26 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ties, but above and beyond that we want teach- 
 ers with character, men and women who pas- 
 sionately love their country, for to them is en- 
 trusted the sacred duty of moulding the citizen- 
 ship of the republic, to them must be left very 
 largely the task of taking these diverse ele- 
 ments of life, and welding them into a cohesive, 
 homogeneous people imbued with high ideals of 
 knowledge, of righteousness, of patriotism. 
 
 Not far short of the public school, supple- 
 menting and cooperating in the work and in- 
 fluence is the free public library. I never see 
 the statue of the grim old Puritan, as he stands 
 near our public library, with his book beneath 
 his arm, looking down upon the groups of for- 
 eign children with their books beneath their 
 arms, without a thrill of enthusiasm and hope- 
 fulness. For the Book, whether it be the He- 
 brew Scriptures or some other divinely inspired 
 source of knowledge and faith, is the symbol 
 of the unshackled mind, of enlightenment and 
 freedom. 
 
 I realize that I have said very little about 
 the personal or the religious approach in rela- 
 tion to the immigrant problem. Such ap- 
 proach requires great wisdom and tact and pa- 
 tience. There are many opportunities which 
 may be sought out for expression of personal 
 sympathy and courtesy, and fellowship with 
 those of other races. These opportunities 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 27 
 
 come unsought as we mingle together in the cos- 
 mopolitan life of the city. I believe that it is 
 possible to supplement the service of our 
 schools and libraries with evening meetings for 
 social and educational purposes in our school 
 houses. The saddest thing after all, about the 
 situation is the hopelessness of the adult for- 
 eigner whose children will reach the goal, but 
 who has come to America too late to receive the 
 benefits of education, the fulfillment of his 
 ideals and dreams. For him the country ought 
 to devise some extensions of educational and 
 social opportunities in connection with the 
 school system. The opportunity of the church 
 will come more slowly, but it will surely come. 
 It will come in the same direction, along lines 
 of personal interest and sympathy and friend- 
 ship for our alien brethren. 
 
 But the most important thing it seems to me 
 is this. After all, these people must work out 
 their own destinies. We cannot be too pater- 
 nal in our care. That is what they have 
 come to our country to avoid. What they 
 want above all things else is liberty of personal 
 initiative, opportunity in its broadest and fre- 
 est aspect. In the school and in the library 
 we are giving them what they most desire. 
 These institutions express our consciousness in 
 spiritual terms. There is no taint here of 
 commercialism, of self-interest. The city says 
 
28 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 to the immigrant : " You seek work, bread, per- 
 haps a fortune in America ; well, that is a mat- 
 ter which you must work out for yourself. You 
 seek also opportunity, you seek for room 
 in which your souls may grow, you seek the 
 fulfillment of your dreams and visions and 
 ideals, and we open to you freely without dis- 
 crimination, without price, the shining portals 
 of knowledge. The generous hand of the city 
 bestows this largess upon you all. Enter into 
 your inheritance." And we of the older Amer- 
 ica must stand back of this ideal. We must 
 show by the character of our city itself how 
 inestimably we prize our heritage. Our dream 
 is, of one country, a common, united people, 
 strong in the determination to live nobly, to 
 realize our ideals, to build here the new Jeru- 
 salem, the shining city of God. 
 
 " New comers all, from the Eastern seas. 
 Help us incarnate dreams like these; 
 Forget and forgive that we did you wrong. 
 Help us to father a nation, strong 
 In the comradeship of our equal birth. 
 In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth." 
 
Ill 
 
 CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY ^ 
 
 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set upon 
 a hill cannot be hid. Let your light so shine before men 
 that they may see your good works and glorify your 
 father which is in heaven. — Matthew 5 : 14-16. 
 
 The conquest and development of a new con- 
 tinent requires the putting forth of those 
 splendid individualistic qualities of heroism 
 and self-assertion which are incarnated in the 
 pioneer. The pioneer must act wholly upon 
 his own initiative. He must be able to go out 
 into the wilderness with his axe and his rifle 
 and recreate civilization. He must possess 
 courage, industry, patience, skill. He must 
 have the genius of the inventor, he must be his 
 own physician and priest, he must be undaunted 
 by failure, the grim spectres of suffering, of 
 hunger and cold must not terrify him. Within 
 his breast there must be a dynamic force which 
 pushes him on as the engines of the ocean liner 
 force her against tide and current across the 
 sea. 
 
 1 Preached at Mount Holyoke College on Washington's 
 Birthday. 
 
 29 
 
30 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 So great have been the tasks accomplished 
 by the pioneer in the building and preserving 
 of the nation that his qualities have become 
 embodied in the creed of American life. The 
 American child is taught that he must have 
 push, initiative, enterprise. He must " get 
 there," in the vernacular of the street. By 
 what route is immaterial so long as he " ar- 
 rives " with a fortune. He must reach the top 
 of the ladder no matter what becomes of those 
 whom he pushes aside in his upward ascent. He 
 is taught from the beginning, to cultivate and 
 worship the Ego. No matter how many 
 fail he must win. Within limitations these 
 qualities are admirable. The child should be 
 taught to cultivate concentration, persistence, 
 ambition. He should be taught to have faith 
 in himself and high courage, to be undaunted 
 by failure, to laugh at hardship and disaster. 
 But there are certain very grave dangers to the 
 republic which have already resulted and will 
 continue to result from the over emphasis of 
 these admirable characteristics. 
 
 The time comes when the nation passes be- 
 yond the pioneer stage. The roaring city with 
 its myriad-spindled mills, its tides of traffic, 
 its palaces and its hovels, rises on the river bank 
 where the cabin stood lonely in the clearing. 
 The descendant of the man who saw his neigh- 
 bor only once in six months is pushed and jos- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 31 
 
 tied in the hurrying throng. The pioneer was 
 a law unto himself. The citizen of the great 
 city is only one to be considered among one 
 hundred thousand. Each of the one hundred 
 thousand has his own desires, his own needs, he 
 is seeking his own ends, and each is entitled to 
 equal consideration under the great law of de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 The partial failure of our civic life, and that 
 carries with it the failure of democracy, has 
 come largely from the fact that we have carried 
 over the self-assertive, individualistic qualities 
 of the pioneer into the complex life of our 
 American communities. Each individual has 
 been bent, with restless energy upon the devel- 
 opment of his own life and his own fortune, 
 careless of the fact that he owed any duty or 
 responsibility whatever to the community in 
 which he lived. So far as any real helpful- 
 ness or cooperation is concerned many of our 
 most successful business men might have been 
 living in cabins in the wilderness or in old ba- 
 ronial castles of feudal days. 
 
 We are beginning to realize that this is not 
 good citizenship. A person is not a good citi- 
 zen today because he possesses the sterling vir- 
 tues of the pioneer, because he hustles from 
 morning until night, because he is shrewder, or 
 stronger or more unscrupulous than his com- 
 petitor. In the wilderness the strong arm, the 
 
32 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 keen eye and the finger quick upon the trigger, 
 were the distinguishing marks of the successful 
 man, the desirable citizen. You cannot carry 
 over these qualities into the modem community ; 
 or if you do, you will have a civilization which 
 is brutal, coarse, corrupt, with anarchy and 
 revolution looming through the red haze ahead. 
 Social life constantly tends to become more 
 complex. Labor is placed more and more upon 
 the cooperative basis. There must be a buyer 
 as well as a seller and the rights of each must 
 be protected. The trained hand takes the 
 place of the strong arm. Instead of the sub- 
 jugation of the wilderness, the arts must be 
 cultivated. Instead of the straining team and 
 the straight furrow across the virgin prairie, 
 there must be the development of literature and 
 music and painting and architecture. The 
 city is a vast organ with a thousand thousand 
 pipes: it is a breathing body with a net work 
 of interlacing sensitive nerves. Not with 
 rough hand, not with brutal, elemental pas- 
 sions comes the master who will evoke har- 
 mony. The true citizen of the modern city is 
 he who forgets himself, in the larger life about 
 him, who is sensitive to the city's myriad moods 
 and endless wants, its passions and its pain, to 
 its marvellously complicated life which goes on 
 beneath the stars at night and its pall of smoke 
 by day. The good citizen is he who loves the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 33 
 
 city with a passionate devotion, whose heart 
 thrills with a sense of civic pride and a deepen- 
 ing sense of civic responsibility. 
 
 Responsibility! That is the master word 
 of the new citizenship. Here is this marvel- 
 lously complex life which modern conditions 
 have called into being. It is a living organism. 
 It has a soul. Infinite possibilities of joy and 
 sorrow, service and shame are hidden within 
 its future. We have not yet begun to measure 
 these forces or hardly to understand them. It 
 may be that in the shadow lurks tragedy darker 
 than ever Paris saw when her barricades ran 
 red with the blood of revolution. Who shall 
 direct these forces, who shall be responsible for 
 the city,'' Who, if not her citizens, both men 
 and women, and her educated citizens.? Her 
 men and women of training and resourcefulness 
 and power! This sounds like a trite common- 
 place. But is it.'' As a matter of fact such 
 men and women have attended to everything 
 but the communal life. They have been busy 
 with their own affairs, their own homes, their 
 own business and professions and pleasures. 
 There has been very little direct training for 
 citizenship in our colleges. The individualistic 
 standard of excellence has been constantly held 
 up. Students have been urged to perfect them- 
 selves in scholarship, in culture, not that the 
 communal life might be enriched, not that serv- 
 
34 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ice might be rendered to the community, but 
 that the individual life might be richer in knowl- 
 edge and resourcefulness, and success attained 
 in the chosen calling. 
 
 These students have gone forth with no true 
 sense of social responsibility. In the striking 
 words of Jesus, they have not " let their light 
 shine before men." But for what is the city.? 
 What is its true end and aim.'' Is it not, in the 
 providence of God, the place where life shall 
 be better and sweeter and richer and more 
 abundant than elsewhere.? Its functions of 
 government, its schools and its libraries, its 
 closely associated life, are not for selfish and 
 utilitarian ends alone, but to lift men out of 
 ignorance and darkness and bondage to the 
 light of the high privilege of the sons of God. 
 And I say that the humblest school teacher, 
 working with alien children amid the squalid 
 surroundings of the tenement district of a great 
 city, working not simply for her daily bread, 
 but with a holy enthusiasm for her calling, is 
 deserving of a higher place upon the city's roll 
 of fame than the millionaire who draws every- 
 thing in and gives nothing out. 
 
 The city will not develop its own higher life. 
 It will not conduct its own affairs, any more 
 than a great mercantile business will conduct 
 itself. Such affairs demand the expenditure of 
 energy and time, and the sacrifice of personal 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 35 
 
 inclination. If our best citizens have not suf- 
 ficient patriotism to attend to these matters 
 themselves, if they turn them over to the ig- 
 norant, the corrupt, the alien, they must ex- 
 pect, themselves, to suffer. We must realize 
 that more and more the forces of ignorance and 
 vice are massing in the city. The good citi- 
 zen, the educated citizen will have to fight, if he 
 expects to conquer these forces. He must 
 bring all the trained resources at his command 
 to bear upon the situation. He cannot buy 
 good government in the market. He cannot 
 contract for civic righteousness. These and 
 other blessings can come only as we give our 
 own illuminated individualities that the light 
 of truth and honor may shine, and the city 
 may find its redeemed life. There is no other 
 way. This is the sacrifice of self which the 
 city demands. Not the old proud independ- 
 ence and self-assertion, but the humble recog- 
 nition of the fact that in the city life is bound 
 up with life in vital relationships which cannot 
 be denied. The pestilence which stalks through 
 the city at noonday and beckons with ghostly 
 hand at the door of the palace as well as the 
 hovel : — you are responsible for it, oh men and 
 women of wealth and leisure, of the great cities 
 of the earth, because you have not made the 
 slum, the breeding place of plague, impossible! 
 It is because of your denial of the law of re- 
 
36 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 sponsibility, because you have not considered 
 your brother as well as yourself. You must 
 give yourselves. Go into the ancient cities of 
 the world and read on the monuments of bronze 
 and marble how men have given of themselves 
 in the years that are gone; how the giving of 
 personality is inseparably connected with worth 
 and progress and achievement in the city's life. 
 London and Leyden, Calais, Geneva, Venice, 
 Florence, Rome. You cannot think of the 
 proud cities of the earth without thinking of 
 prouder names, from the humble burgher, to 
 Savonarola in his shroud of flame, who have 
 given of themselves, whose very blood has ce- 
 mented the stones which make the foundation 
 of the city's worth. 
 
 In San Francisco, there is a little monument 
 which the earthquake spared and the flames of 
 the holocaust did not scorch. It is the monu- 
 ment erected to the memory of Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, and there have been men in San 
 Francisco, in the days of graft and pillage, 
 who, ashamed with the shame of death of their 
 city's shame, have taken courage as they have 
 passed that memorial, and have remembered 
 that the high ideals of literature and art, of 
 service and sacrifice, are the enduring things, 
 and not the selfish scramble of sordid men for 
 gain and place. 
 
 Responsibility ! not the prayer, " Make me 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 37 
 
 rich O Lord! Make me learned, make me com- 
 fortable in Zion " ; but, " O Lord, what can I 
 do for others more needy than myself! What 
 can I do for the community in which I live ! " 
 Every one should feel toward his own city that 
 sense of longing desire to serve which inspired 
 Browning when he wrote: 
 
 " Nobly, nobly. Cape St. Vincent to the northwest 
 died away. 
 
 Sunset ran one glorious blood-red reeking into 
 Cadiz Bay; 
 
 Bluish 'mid the burning waters full in face Trafal- 
 gar lay: 
 
 In the dimmest northeast distance dawned Gibral- 
 tar grand and gray, 
 
 Here and here did England help me, 
 
 How can I help England, say ! " 
 
 That should be the attitude of every citizen. 
 Not how much can I get out of the city, not 
 how may I actually plunder and rob the city, 
 but how can I help the community? How can 
 I best give, in return for what she has given 
 me, my loyal and loving service.? 
 
 For our highest examples of what such love 
 and loyalty and sense of responsibility mean, 
 we must go back after all, not to the pioneer, 
 not even to the days of Washington, but to 
 those mediaeval cities of England and the Con- 
 tinent whose life we often affect to despise be- 
 
38 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 cause we know so little of it. We must go 
 back to such scenes as attended the building of 
 the cathedral of Chartres, where the men and 
 women harnessed themselves to carts and drew 
 the great blocks of stone which were built into 
 its splendid fa9ade and its soaring pinnacles ; 
 or to the famous church of St. Denis, of which 
 a writer says: 
 
 " A layman was its architect, guilds of lay car- 
 penters and masons raised its walls, guilds of lay 
 sculptors, painters and glass makers adorned them, 
 and the people chiefly paid the cost. Often, men, 
 women, and children together worked with passion- 
 ate enthusiasm upon the structure which was at 
 once the temple of their faith, the sign of their city's 
 greatness, and the hearthstone of their liberties." 
 
 Contrast this spirit with the indifference 
 which the citizens of the modern city show to 
 its adornment, to its permanent glory, yes, even 
 to its moral and spiritual welfare. We talk 
 sometimes of loving our cities, of patriotism 
 and the willingness to sacrifice. But when 
 we moderns in our comfortable homes amid our 
 pleasant surroundings talk of sacrifice, my 
 thoughts go back to that old chronicle which 
 tells of the loyalty of the burgesses of Calais. 
 You remember how, after the year's siege, King 
 Edward offered mercy to the starving city on 
 condition that six of the citizens should give 
 themselves into his hands. " On them," said 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 59 
 
 the stark king, " I will to do my will." 
 " Then," says the old chronicler, " stood up 
 the wealthiest burgess of all. Master Eustache 
 de St. Pierre, and thus he spoke : ' My Mas- 
 ters, great grief and mishap it were for all to 
 leave such a people as this to die by famine or 
 otherwise, and great charity and grace would 
 he win from our Lord who could defend them 
 from dying. For me, I have great hope in the 
 Lord that if I can save this people by my death, 
 I shall have pardon from my faults, wherefore 
 will I be the first of the six, and of my own 
 will put myself barefoot in my shirt and with a 
 halter round my neck in the mercy of King 
 Edward.' After him stood up other five, and 
 they six saved the city, and by the intercession 
 of the good Queen Philippa were themselves 
 saved from the wrath of the king." 
 
 Such, in the old days, was the ideal of civic 
 service. " Not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister " and to give one's very life if need be, 
 a " ransom for many." Such, not a ministry 
 of death, but of more abundant life may be our 
 ministry today as we go forth to the larger 
 service which our age demands, singing the 
 blithe song of the English poet : 
 
 " I will not cease from mental fight. 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 Till we have built Jerusalem, 
 In England's green and pleasant land.'* 
 
40 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 I look forward to the time when the old in- 
 dividualistic conception of life shall pass away, 
 when in every part of our own pleasant land 
 shall be built the new Jerusalem, in which shall 
 be found nothing foul or unclean, no squalor 
 or misery, but love and righteousness and law 
 and order, the shining city of God, the " man- 
 sion house of liberty " in which beauty and 
 utility shall walk hand in hand, where there 
 shall be equal opportunity and equal privilege 
 for every child of God. So, please God, we 
 shall build the city of the new democracy ! To- 
 day it may seem only a dream, but let us not 
 despair. 
 
 " Such visions are of morning, 
 Theirs is no vague forewarning, 
 The dreams that nations dream come true 
 
 And shape the world anew. 
 And down the happy future runs a flood 
 
 Of prophesying light ; 
 It sees an earth no longer stained with blood, 
 Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud 
 
 Of brotherhood and right ! " 
 
IV 
 THE BATTLE AGAINST EVIL 
 
 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in 
 the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of 
 God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of 
 the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, 
 but against principalities and powers, against the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
 ness in high places. — Ephesians 6 : 10-12f. 
 
 The problem of evil has one very discour- 
 aging aspect. It is a new problem with every 
 individual and every generation. In the ma- 
 terial world humanity makes certain definite and 
 positive gains. There are some battles which 
 once fought and won, do not have to be fought 
 over again. There are some gains which are 
 permanent. When the world goes to sleep to- 
 night it will not wake up tomorrow under the 
 painful necessity of rediscovering all that it 
 ever knew of science and art and literature. 
 Libraries and laboratories and schools are 
 permanent depositories of the accumulated 
 wisdom of the world. But you cannot store up 
 righteousness and deal it out in suitable por- 
 tions to those who stand in need of it. The pi- 
 41 
 
42 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 oneer cuts down the forest trees, lets in the 
 light, exterminates the wild beasts, prepares 
 the way for the coming city, and his work does 
 not have to be repeated. The great irrigation 
 dams built in the western country will not have 
 to be rebuilt. The face of nature has been 
 permanently changed. The desert wastes will 
 soon blossom like the rose, fed by unfailing 
 streams from the snows of the everlasting hills. 
 When the waters of the eastern and the western 
 seas are wedded in the Panama Canal it will be 
 a perpetual union. The gigantic task of cut- 
 ting through the isthmus will not have to be re- 
 peated in each succeeding century. But we 
 cannot in the same way make permanent gains 
 in righteousness. We cannot convert a city to 
 holiness and say that work will never have to be 
 done over again. That community will never 
 relapse into sin. The work is done for the 
 ages. The march of civilization drives the 
 wolves from the clearings, but it does not drive 
 the savage wolves of evil and lust from the 
 hearts of men. The old primitive passions 
 break out just as fiercely, with a heat as in- 
 tense and blasting as they did at the dawn of 
 history. 
 
 Here is a family which for generations has 
 been the possessor of wealth and refinement. 
 By no possibility could a member of that fam- 
 ily suddenly revert to the ignorance of a sav- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 43 
 
 age and display at the breakfast table the man- 
 ners of a South Sea Islander. But you may 
 read in your newspaper some morning that a 
 member of that proud and influential family 
 has reverted to the sins of the savage, and has 
 displayed in some vile den the brutal passions 
 of the South Sea Islander. Refined manner 
 and culture may be transmitted with mahogany 
 furniture and ancestral plate from one genera- 
 tion to another, but a pure heart and a clean 
 life is something which every man and woman 
 must acquire by personal eff*ort, by stern con- 
 flict with the primitive foe which assails every 
 soul. Indeed, the conditions of an advanced 
 civilization, instead of making righteousness 
 more simple, complicate the problem. While 
 living grows easier along material lines it grows 
 harder in the moral sphere. This is a matter 
 which we do not often enough consider. We 
 are so absorbed in the work and pleasure of our 
 highly complicated society that we do not con- 
 sider the perils which lurk in the shadow. 
 Somehow they do not seem real to us, they do 
 not concern us. If we are only busy about our 
 aff^airs, if we are only constantly employed with 
 some absorbing interest, we seem to think that 
 nothing more is required of us. We walk in 
 the sunshine of our own prosperity, our own 
 ceaseless activity, and we evade or forget our 
 moral responsibility. 
 
44 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 This is a fair charge against the modern 
 man or woman, and the nominally Christian 
 man or woman. There is terrible danger that 
 we shall substitute mere activity for moral con- 
 sciousness, the routine of business and pleasure 
 for character. Here is a family of the type 
 of which I have spoken ; respectable, moral, and 
 endlessly busy from morning until night. 
 Everything progresses according to the usual 
 routine in a respectable family, until suddenly 
 a hand is stretched up from that under-world 
 which the family has politely ignored and a 
 child is dragged down to disgrace and shame. 
 The highly respectable family loses, for a little 
 time at least, its self-poise. It feels the dis- 
 grace keenly, but it cannot understand why this 
 should come to it. It has come to the members 
 of the family because they were too busy to 
 study the great laws of life under which we live, 
 to consider and measure the forces of evil which 
 are engendered in the life of a modern city, 
 too busy to develop the powers of resistance in 
 the child and give it by training the strength of 
 character required for the conflict. Many 
 business men of today forget that they were 
 brought up in smaller communities, under con- 
 ditions much more strict than those which ex- 
 ist at the present time. They forget the 
 watchful care, the endless patience, the pray- 
 ers, expended upon them. They fail to realize 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 45 
 
 the seductiveness of a great city, the hypnotic 
 influences of the city streets, the effect of their 
 own absorption and indifference upon the im- 
 mature lives of their children. We are all apt 
 to forget that there are active agencies of evil 
 at work constantly in every community. This 
 is what Paul meant in that remarkable sentence 
 of his letter to the Ephesians. " For we wres- 
 tle not against flesh and blood, but against 
 principalities and powers, against the rulers of 
 the darkness of this world, against spiritual 
 wickedness in high places." He was writing to 
 people living under the conditions of a highly 
 organized civilization, in a great city which 
 very much resembled our modern cities ; and he 
 warns the church not only against the power of 
 individual evil arising in the individual nature, 
 but against the great organized forces of evil 
 which grow out of the very association of men 
 together. Humanity engenders evil. It breeds 
 wickedness. There are great unseen forces at 
 work constantly which are poisoning the air, 
 undermining the social order. It is very hard 
 for the respectable man, who is diligent in busi- 
 ness, honest about his affairs, irreproachable 
 in character, to understand this. He minds his 
 own business. He wishes no one any harm, and 
 he cannot understand why all people do not 
 conduct themselves in the same way. He can- 
 not believe that able, unscrupulous men are 
 
46 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 working constantly to do evil, to exploit soci- 
 ety, to coin the souls of men into gain. 
 
 Everywhere the great powers of darkness are 
 at work. Everywhere evil is in action. It is 
 reaching out to attack and destroy virtue. It 
 is organized to do it. The result is expressed 
 not simply in terms of individual wickedness. 
 If such men could be fought and punished, that 
 would be one thing. But as Paul warns, we 
 wrestle not against flesh and blood. Evil is a 
 deadly and pervasive force which corrupts the 
 fountains of virtue and pollutes the springs of 
 innocency at their source. What we need to 
 understand is that there are forces in every 
 community which hold righteousness and honor 
 in contempt, men whose souls are as black as 
 hell. The wickedness which these men do is not 
 confined in little pools of filth and scum ; it en- 
 ters into the arterial life of society, by secret 
 and subtle channels it reaches its victims even 
 when they seem to be in security. We must 
 recognize the fact that the modern city is not 
 simply a place of enlightenment, of opportu- 
 nity, of churches and schools. It is a place of 
 deadly evil, of pitfalls and perils, of corruption 
 and death. It is of no use to ignore these facts. 
 We cannot buy immunity for our children with 
 our money. We cannot safeguard them by 
 education alone. There is no hope that sci- 
 ence will discover the germ of sin and provide 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 47 
 
 against it by inoculation. There is only one 
 way. We must fight it. Paul says, bluntly 
 and plainly, " Put on the whole armour of God 
 that ye may be able to stand against the wiles 
 of the devil." 
 
 It was good advice to the Ephesians. It is 
 good advice today. You cannot reason with a 
 charging tiger. Your culture and education 
 will not save you from the fangs of a hungry 
 wolf. You must fight! Evil is one of the old 
 brood of chaos and might, like the plague and 
 the tiger in the jungle, and the rattlesnake in 
 the thicket. These things must be subdued. 
 We do not know why they are here in the earth, 
 but we know that man cannot live with them, 
 they were never intended to be parlor pets. 
 God told Adam and Eve that they were to sub- 
 due the earth. The formidable forces of na- 
 ture which threaten the life of man must be 
 fought and conquered. , There can be no com- 
 promise. Sin in man's heart and its manifesta- 
 tions in the life of man, is one of the old drag- 
 on's brood which must be fought without com- 
 promise and destroyed. The fight is of course 
 a personal one. 
 
 We must rid our own soul-gardens of weeds 
 and noxious things before we embark upon any 
 crusade for the destruction of the evils of so- 
 ciety. We cannot win this fight against temp- 
 tation and sin without divine help. " Be 
 
48 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 strong in the Lord and in the power of his 
 might." That is a radiant and a splendid com- 
 mand. Our God is a mighty God. No man 
 ever prayed earnestly to him without receiving 
 help. The trouble with us is that we do not 
 half believe in prayer and we do not test it. 
 
 A political fight was going on for the pos- 
 session of a great state. The key to the situa- 
 tion was the unshaken resolution of a Christian 
 young man. An observer writing of the con- 
 flict said: 
 
 " They have sought to attack the opposition at 
 the weakest point and the weakest man. They 
 have brought tremendous pressure to bear upon him. 
 They have taken him up into an exceeding high 
 place and have shown him all the glories of the 
 earth, and promised the treasures thereof if he will 
 fall down and worship. They have approached 
 him on the side of virtue and of vice and have 
 failed, and I will tell you why they have failed. 
 The emissaries of the enemy do not know what it 
 means when men are fighting for principles. I will 
 tell you why this young man to whom I refer has 
 not failed in the supreme hour of test. In the se- 
 crecy of his chamber he has gone down on his knees 
 before his Maker. Over such the corrupt politi- 
 cians of today have no power." 
 
 I wonder what would be the effect if all pro- 
 fessing Christians met their temptations daily 
 in this manner.'^ If, in the struggle for char- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 49 
 
 acter, everyone sought the present help of the 
 Lord God Almighty. If every man in business, 
 in politics, every lawyer and doctor and 
 teacher, should pray earnestly every day: 
 " Lord, help me as I put my armour on. Lord, 
 be with me as I meet men in the arena of life, 
 as I come in contact with its perils and its 
 temptations. Keep my life clean and pure and 
 holy. Guard my soul from sin and my life 
 from evil. Give me an exalted sense of my 
 character and my opportunity. Help me to 
 fight the demons of avarice and lust and selfish- 
 ness. Make me thy knight and give my sword 
 the victory." 
 
 That is the spirit in which we should go 
 every one of us to our task in the battle field of 
 the world. I do not believe in war, in the old 
 barbarous sense. Men cannot slay evil by 
 killing each other. But I believe in war in the 
 moral sense with all my heart. It will be a 
 sad day for the world when we grow so effem- 
 inate that the spirit of opposition to wrong 
 dies out of our hearts, when the readiness to 
 sacrifice which led men to offer their lives on 
 the flaming altar of battle, counting loss but 
 gain, shall give place in their degenerate hearts 
 to the desire to live at ease and to be let alone. 
 
 " In this rubric lo ! the past is lettered, 
 Strike the red words out, we strike the glory: 
 
50 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 Leave the sacred color on the pages. 
 Pages of the past that teach the future. 
 
 On that scripture 
 Yet shall young souls take the oath of service. 
 God end war! But when brute war is ended 
 Yet shall there be many a noble soldier, 
 Many a noble battle worth the winning. 
 Many a hopeless battle worth the losing. 
 
 Life is battle, 
 Life is battle even to the sunset ! " 
 
 Life is battle. Battle for the integrity of 
 our own souls. Battle for the betterment of 
 the age in which we live. Many are the oppor- 
 tunities of service. That brave physician who 
 has just given his fine young life in battle with 
 a grim and terrible disease was as much a sol- 
 dier as any belted knight who ever drew sword, 
 as much a victor as any warrior who ever laid 
 down his life amid the smoke of battle. 
 
 The time will never come when there will not 
 be the necessity for battle, battle in our own 
 souls, battle for the great causes of humanity. 
 Where do we get the spirit of service and sac- 
 rifice, and conflict .f' The world gets it from 
 the Bible, from the example of the Christian 
 church throughout the ages, from the glory 
 which streams from Calvary. We think it a 
 small thing, sometimes, the service of the 
 church of Jesus Christ. It seems to many of 
 us, I doubt not, a prosaic and a formal thing. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 61 
 
 I tell you that your faithfulness to the church, 
 your loyalty to the cause of Jesus Christ, your 
 service, however small and humble, counts in 
 the conflict which goes on ceaselessly with the 
 powers of evil. For the church is the great 
 organized agency which keeps faith alive, which 
 keeps the fighting and achieving spirit alive in 
 the hearts of men. Let the church die, let it 
 be neglected even, and resistance to evil will die 
 also. However humble and obscure your place 
 and your service may seem to be, nevertheless if 
 you are faithful, you are fighting in the ranks 
 of the Redeemer and the victor's crown will be 
 yours. 
 
 Let no one think because I have said that this 
 battle against evil must be renewed with every 
 individual and every generation that it need be 
 or is in any sense a losing battle. While sin 
 flashes out with the same old demonic power in 
 every generation and in every heart, this does 
 not mean that the world belongs to the beast. 
 The world has been redeemed by Jesus Christ 
 and it belongs to God. Your soul belongs to 
 God and not to the devil. 
 
 " This world is Christ's world. Ever since his 
 feet pressed its stony paths, ever since his voice 
 stirred its conscious air and his blessed hands broke 
 its loaves and caressed its lilies the world has be- 
 longed to Him." 
 
52 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 " The world we live in wholly is redeemed. 
 Not man alone, but all that man holds dear. 
 His orchards and his maize, forget-me-nots. 
 And heart's-ease in his garden, and the wild 
 Aerial blossoms of the untamed wood. 
 That makes the savagery so homelike — all 
 Have felt Christ's sweet love watering their 
 
 roots. 
 There are no Gentile oaks, no pagan pines. 
 The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass, 
 The wayside weed is sacred unto him.*' 
 
 Translate the poetry into prose and it means 
 that the powers of light are stronger than the 
 hosts of darkness. If there are principalities 
 and powers of evil and spiritual wickedness in 
 high places there are also legions of angels and 
 principalities and powers of the Kingdom of 
 God. And they are all on our side. There is 
 no such thing as hopelessness in this conflict. 
 It is a matter of psychology, of practical sci- 
 entific observation, that a man cannot get so 
 low in the human scale that the power of 
 Christ's love cannot lift him from the depths 
 of hell to the heights of heaven. Man was not 
 made for hell. He was made a little lower than 
 God and companion of the stars. Let us fight 
 valiantly then for our birthright. Let us come 
 out of our narrow and selfish way of living, 
 and go forth in the strength of God and the 
 power of his might, to the conflict and to vic- 
 tory. 
 
THE CITY OF THE BLIND 
 
 For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only 
 what is near. — II Peter 1:9. 
 
 The ancient city of Chalcedon, situated on 
 
 the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus opposite the 
 
 site of the later city of Byzantium, the modern 
 
 Constantinople, was pronounced by a Greek 
 
 oracle to be the '* city of the blind," because its 
 
 founders, with a beautiful and commanding 
 
 situation just before them, across the narrow 
 
 straits, chose a situation in every way mean, 
 
 inferior, and unsatisfactory. There are few 
 
 cities in the world which have not at one time 
 
 or another deserved this contemptuous epithet. 
 
 When the great fire of 1666 destroyed the old 
 
 city of London, Sir Christopher Wren, perhaps 
 
 the greatest genius in the field of architecture 
 
 the world has ever seen, proposed a noble and 
 
 comprehensive plan for the rebuilding of the 
 
 city. From the great cathedral, which is his 
 
 splendid monument, as a center, broad, splendid 
 
 avenues were to radiate, the great main arteries 
 
 of the city's life. His plan was not only a 
 53 
 
54 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 vision of a beautiful London, but it was thor- 
 oughly business-like and practicable. No 
 owner, he reckoned, would lose a foot of ground, 
 there would be an immense appreciation of 
 property values which would more than pay the 
 cost of construction, the city would be healthier 
 and cleaner. This broad, statesman-like plan 
 was thwarted by the selfishness and blindness 
 of property owners, who feared that in some 
 way their individual interests might suffer. In 
 the words of an old historian, " The only, and 
 as it happened insurmountable Difficulty re- 
 maining, was the Obstinate Averseness on the 
 part of the Citizens to alter their old Properties 
 and to secede from building their Houses again 
 on the old Ground and Foundations." 
 
 Through the dark and narrow and tortuous 
 streets which are the monuments today of that 
 ancient stupidity and obstinacy and blindness, 
 three-quarters of a million of people and a vast 
 tide of business traffic make, six days in the 
 week, a slow and perilous passage. Business is 
 choked and impeded, lives are lost almost daily 
 because of these conditions imposed upon mod- 
 ern London by the selfishness of the past. Lon- 
 don pays the heavy price, a price which can be 
 definitely reckoned in terms of millions of 
 pounds sterling yearly and a great sacrifice of 
 life and limb for the " obstinate averseness " of 
 its citizens to look at anything except that 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 65 
 
 which was near, that which concerned their own 
 individual interests. Old London was a city 
 of the blind. 
 
 This blindness in respect to the larger inter- 
 ests of the community is by no means, however, 
 confined to ancient times. It is to a marked 
 degree characteristic of our own times and our 
 own civilization here in America. A recent edi- 
 torial utterance on this subject reads as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " The American people have not yet mastered 
 the art of looking ahead. They can see, to be sure, 
 next week, next year, or occasionally a decade, but 
 beyond that the problem is lightly left to prosper- 
 ity. As a result, we reap every day the blasted 
 harvest of our own folly. We do not make allow- 
 ance for the growth of the community or the ad- 
 vance of inventive genius. We build always for the 
 present with a small plus sign," 
 
 This states the case none too strongly. As 
 a matter of fact, we often build with a minus 
 sign instead of with even a small plus sign. 
 We build in a way which actually so embar- 
 rasses and impedes the future that our work, 
 poor and shoddy and inadequate, has to be ut- 
 terly destroyed before any advance can be made. 
 We build like the blind, seeing only what is 
 near. We build in wood instead of in stone 
 and we pay the price of our folly in an appal- 
 ling loss by fire. We build all our public utili- 
 
66 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ties, streets, school houses, water systems, sew- 
 ers, on a basis of economy rather than of wise 
 forethought, and we pay the immense price of 
 tearing down and rebuilding. There are few 
 American cities which have not paid three or 
 four times for reconstruction of public utilities, 
 which ought to have been built originally for , 
 the generations and not for the passing day. 
 In all our cities we are struggling with prob- 
 lems which ought never to have come into exist- 
 ence. Our congested and inconvenient public 
 highways, our unlovely and dangerous slums, 
 our inadequate public buildings, are inherit- 
 ances from a past which thought itself wise and 
 prudent and economical, but which was really 
 blind and extravagant, in the heavy burdens 
 which it thoughtlessly laid upon posterity. 
 There are those at the present in every city 
 who would be just as blind and short-sighted in 
 regard to the future. There are always those 
 who vehemently oppose any great public im- 
 provement, any attempt to embark upon a 
 broad and constructive policy of city planning, 
 because of the immediate outlay which is in- 
 volved. These people are like blind moles tun- 
 nelling in the darkness, impelled only by the 
 desire for the gratification of immediate eco- 
 nomic needs, but revealing no consistent plan 
 or purpose in this effort. 
 
 I am aware that the pulpit is not the place 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 67 
 
 for a full discussion of wise and prudent city 
 planning on the material side. It is the place, 
 however, for a consideration of the fundamental 
 moral and ethical aspects which underlie this 
 situation in our modem communities. The 
 right management and government and devel- 
 opment of a city is not simply a business propo- 
 sition. That is where many reformers are mak- 
 ing a mistake. They seem to think that all the 
 gross evils of American municipal government 
 will be overcome if only we can place the city 
 on a strictly business basis. They forget that 
 business as well as politics may become corrupt. 
 The government of a city is essentially a prob- 
 lem in righteousness. Public office in a city 
 is not a matter of allegiance to a party, nor 
 primarily, integrity of business management. 
 It strikes deeper than that. It is a matter of 
 the highest type of moral obligation, of utterly 
 faithful service, not only to the present, but to 
 coming generations. The city is a great en- 
 tity, a great personality, gathering up within 
 itself the needs and the aspirations, the tempta- 
 tions and the sin, the hopes and the fears of all 
 its myriad people. If the problem of right- 
 eousness and just dealing, of mutual rights and 
 obligations between man and man, between 
 neighbor and neighbor is an important, the all- 
 important, religious question, what shall we say 
 of this problem when it relates to all the people 
 
58 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 of a great city in their dealings one with an- 
 other? It is high time that we take these most 
 vitally important questions which relate to the 
 welfare of the whole people out of the arena 
 of so-called practical politics and place them 
 where they belong, in the moral and religious 
 and judicial sphere. Any question which in- 
 volves the rights of others is a moral question 
 to be settled ultimately not by convenience, nor 
 even by judicial procedure, but by the appli- 
 cation of the principles of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, by the eternal principles of brother- 
 hood and love. 
 
 Consider this question then of the right plan- 
 ning and development of the life of the city, 
 even on the material side. The blindness which 
 provides only for the present, which builds upon 
 consideration of expediency only, is a moral 
 blindness. Its failure to make adequate pro- 
 vision for future growth and progress is not 
 only obstinacy and short-sightedness, it is 
 actually a sin. The future has rights which 
 we are bound to respect. We have no moral 
 right to consult our own convenience, our own 
 financial advantage when the community is con- 
 cerned. The old individualism served its pur- 
 pose splendidly when it spoke in the guns of 
 Lexington and Concord. It served its purpose 
 when it secured forever and inalienably on this 
 continent the right of the individual to be con- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 59 
 
 suited and heard in all matters of public con- 
 cern. But individualism in any aggressive and 
 selfish manifestation must give way to the 
 larger considerations of the communal life. 
 The city is not built for the satisfaction of any 
 one individual, to enable him to do business con- 
 veniently, to amass wealth, to live in comfort. 
 The city grows out of the toil and sacrifice of 
 all the people, and all the people should be con- 
 sidered in its planning and in its growth. It 
 is just as important that the operative of the 
 factory should be provided with means of reach- 
 ing his work safely and conveniently and 
 quickly, as that thoroughfares should be con- 
 structed for the rapid transit of the automobile 
 of the millionaire from city to city. The city 
 of the past has been built in accordance with 
 the caprice of the individual, upon a selfish, eco- 
 nomic basis wholly. The result has been a hud- 
 dle of tenements and palaces, of slums and 
 parks, of inconvenient streets, of misplaced 
 public buildings. Private greed and individual 
 indifference have made it the breeding place of 
 pestilence and a sink of moral depravity. It 
 has calmly conveyed death to its people in pol- 
 luted water and poisoned the very air which its 
 children breathe. Such a city is an offence to 
 God and a curse to man. The causes for the 
 failure of adequate city planning go deeper than 
 the elemental selfishness of men. The causes 
 
60 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 may be found in lack of spiritual vision, and in- 
 spired imagination, in the failure of men to 
 measure up to the divine standard which God 
 has set before them. The apostle in our text 
 indicates exactly the state of failure which re- 
 sults in the hideousness and squalor of the city. 
 " He that lacketh these things is blind, seeing 
 only that which is near." Spiritual blindness, 
 moral near-sightedness, lack of prophetic vi- 
 sion, these are the underlying causes of the piti- 
 ful failure which our cities present. Go back 
 to the Old Testament prophecies and you find 
 at once that the dreams of the prophet included 
 not only the moral regeneration of the people, 
 but the transformation of physical conditions. 
 The substance of all prophecy is the working 
 out of God's plan both in the moral and in the 
 material spheres. God expects us to have 
 vision and imagination. His plan in its per- 
 fection and its utility and its beauty lies before 
 us everywhere. It is a plan which is not only 
 perfect in its detail, but progressive in its ac- 
 complishment. It is a plan which is moving 
 on toward its preconceived fulfillment through 
 the ages. When we create anything we are en- 
 gaged in a divine task, and we must perform it 
 with the inspired vision. We have no right to 
 be slovenly, to build for the moment's profit, 
 regardless of the future. We have no right to 
 build that which is an offence to the eye, that 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 61 
 
 which is shoddy in construction, because it is 
 cheaper so to build. What task can be more 
 sublime than the building of a city, a place in 
 which the divine soul of man works out on earth 
 its immortal destiny. Do we realize enough 
 that what we build in the city is the expression 
 of ourselves, by which we shall be infallibly 
 judged by the generations.? We put our char- 
 acters into brick and stone, into our public 
 buildings. What will be the judgment, do you 
 think, of a nobler race than ours, upon many 
 of our American cities.? How many of them 
 contain anything which expresses an imper- 
 ishably sublime and beautiful spirit, which 
 stands for sacrifices and honor and truth and 
 righteousness, and not merely for the dollar? 
 Even our churches in many instances do not ex- 
 press that noble aspiration of David, " I will 
 not give unto the Lord that which cost me noth- 
 ing." They do not stand like the cathedrals of 
 Europe as the ultimate and consummate expres- 
 sion of communal sacrifice and devotion, wit- 
 nessing to the ages the splendor of faith and the 
 glory of service. I wonder if we really have so 
 little sense of civic pride, so little comprehen- 
 sion of the long results of time, so little com- 
 munal honor, that we feel no sense of shame 
 in the adverse judgments, the bitter censure of 
 the coming generations over our failure.? And 
 yet a city may be so splendid, so regal, so 
 
62 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 crowded with the monuments of inspired gen- 
 ius, that it does not suffer even when compared 
 with God's architecture of the everlasting hills. 
 Of the city of Verona Ruskin wrote : 
 
 " There is no necessity felt to dwell on the blue 
 river or the burning hills. The heart and eye have 
 enough to do in the streets of the city itself. They 
 are contented there. Nay, they sometimes turn 
 from the natural scenery, as if too savage and soli- 
 tary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the palace 
 walls which cast their shade upon the streets, and 
 the crowd of towers that rise out of that shadow 
 into the depth of the sky." 
 
 A city which has no pride, no vision, no imag- 
 ination, which sees only that which is near, 
 which is concerned only with the largest returns 
 of capital regardless of the great divine princi- 
 ples of beauty and order, regardless of the best 
 interests of the whole community, that city is 
 a city of the blind. But there is a moral blind- 
 ness deeper yet. It is perfectly true that 
 beauty and orderliness do not make a perfect 
 city, or rather a city may be made glorious in 
 its external aspect through the vision and sac- 
 rifice of one generation only to relapse into 
 moral degradation in the next. Venice, for 
 centuries " a maiden city bright and free," fell 
 at last because of the moral blindness of the 
 people, and the ancient spirit of liberty so 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 63 
 
 strong in the people of Florence was crushed 
 at last, while the palaces and statues erected by 
 the immortal genius of her sons looked down 
 upon the ashes of her former greatness in mel- 
 ancholy splendor. 
 
 A city is blind when the spirit of enterprise 
 and trade overshadows the interests of the mind 
 and of the heart. A city is blind when it fails 
 in any respect in its duty of educating its chil- 
 dren. The city can afford to make any sacri- 
 fice, it can afford to practice economy in any 
 department, rather than withhold a single 
 penny of the sum necessary to make its educa- 
 tional system as perfect as human effort can 
 devise. It is blind unless it exalts to the high- 
 est degree the dignity and the moral worth of 
 the teaching profession, and provides a com- 
 plete training for the poorest child within its 
 borders. 
 
 A city is morally blind which permits evil to 
 go unrebuked and unpunished, which, instead 
 of protecting its children against every form 
 of vice, actually protects vice for the sake of 
 the financial profit. A city is blind which can- 
 not see that there can be no financial return 
 from the licensing of any form of vice which 
 can pay for one single soul which is ruined by 
 that vice. Of all the products of a city, the 
 human product is the most costly, the most 
 precious. All the commerce of a city, the 
 
64 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 product of all its workshops and factories, can- 
 not weigh for a moment in the balance with a 
 single immortal soul. Any city which neglects 
 the human product, while it enlarges its fac- 
 tories and extends its streets, is totally lacking 
 in spiritual vision. 
 
 Finally, that city is blind which neglects the 
 source of moral worth and spiritual power, the 
 church. The church has been at times, itself 
 blind. It has often lamentably failed of car- 
 rying out its divine mission, but it has always 
 been and will always be the source of light and 
 strength and freedom. What is the great 
 temptation of the city.? Not simply that cer- 
 tain of its children shall utterly degrade them- 
 selves in the unspeakable filth of its worst vices. 
 The greatest danger is that life shall become so 
 absorbingly interesting and vital on the ma- 
 terial side, that the children of light, the in- 
 heritors af the great traditions of the fathers, 
 shall lose their faith and their insight and their 
 vision and become spiritually blind, seeing only 
 that which is near, thinking only of the pres- 
 ent, forgetting the obligation of service. 
 
 " No more we build as they who built of old : 
 Stone upon stone, in solemn order set, 
 Prayer upon prayer; the gilded minaret, 
 The sculptured spire, the stern defiant hold, 
 Each slowly reared, to stand while years unfold. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 65 
 
 Then builders knew not haste, nor the keen fret 
 That spurs our toil, but all in patience met. 
 They gave long lives to beauty long foretold. 
 
 We fling across the clouds a fabric sheer. 
 Deep in the earth our hidden pillars drive; 
 
 Lo, an adventure : towers to greet the night ! 
 
 The forces of the lightning and the mere 
 
 Are slaves we conquer that our dreams may 
 thrive ; 
 
 We rest — in wonder — but without delight.". 
 
 That, it seems to me, is a true indictment of 
 the present age. We build wonderful fabrics. 
 We possess the power of the genii of Aladdin's 
 lamp, but we do these marvellous things with- 
 out the true joy of service. We see only that 
 which is near, that which our own hands have 
 built. We lack the patience, the serene joy, 
 the inward satisfaction of those who build not 
 for today, but for the ages. Let us pray, 
 then, that our eyes may be opened to the long 
 results of time as well as to the near. Let us 
 pray for vision, for imagination, for insight, 
 for the prophetic spirit, that we may no longer 
 walk in the darkness but walk in the light of a 
 divine radiance. 
 
VI 
 
 THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND CIVIC 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 For he tcmght them as one having authority, and not 
 as the scribes. — Matt. 7:29. 
 
 Of all the great agencies which are shaping 
 the life of the American commonwealth, no one 
 is of more importance than the public school. 
 I would almost say that it overshadows in its 
 significance all other agencies combined. It is 
 unfortunate, but it is true, that the influence 
 and authority of the American home over the 
 children bom into it has steadily waned. In 
 many homes the child is not much more than a 
 boarder, and an unwelcome and disagreeable 
 one at that. The influence of church and Sun- 
 day school is exerted for an insignificant period 
 of time. We gather the children of Christian 
 people together for a half hour of actual study 
 each week and we call this gathering, with un- 
 conscious humor, a school. It accomplishes 
 wonderful results in view of its limitations, but 
 consider how pitifully inadequate is its time and 
 its opportunity. There remains, then, as the 
 66 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 67 
 
 great formative influence of our national life, 
 dominating, overshadowing all others, the pub- 
 lic school. To this institution we give the ex- 
 clusive control of our children during the larger 
 part of their waking hours. This exclusive in- 
 fluence continues during the most critical and 
 decisive period of life, those unspeakably sig- 
 nificant years of adolescence, in which habits 
 are formed, the hidden tendencies of life devel- 
 oped, and the whole character is moulded as 
 clay in the hands of the potter. I have said 
 that the influence of the city is to be decisive 
 in our national life. What makes the city.^* 
 How is its character formed.'^ By the men 
 and women who live in its homes and engage in 
 its industries and control its government. 
 What is behind the life of the city.? What is 
 the decisive influence which moulds and shapes 
 its citizenship.? On the material side, unques- 
 tionably, the public school. No other influence 
 is half as pervasive, no other institution is half 
 as important, as a factor in citizenship. I be- 
 lieve in the public school with all my heart and 
 soul. I most sincerely honor and respect that 
 great army of talented, devoted, self-sacrificing 
 men and women, who, in the face of many dis- 
 couragements and limitations, often inade- 
 quately and meanly rewarded, in view of the im- 
 portance of the service which they render, are 
 giving their lives to this high calling. No class 
 
68 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 is more deserving of support and sympathy 
 and consideration than the members of this 
 great fraternity. I believe, also, that the pub- 
 lic school stands today as the corner stone of 
 the republic, the conservator of democracy, the 
 crucible in which all nationalities, all classes, 
 are fused into one people, and that a character- 
 istically American people. The assimilation of 
 other races by this republic is one of the mira- 
 cles of history, and the credit is due almost ex- 
 exclusively to the enlightening, uplifting, patri- 
 otic service of the public school. 
 
 But this profound belief in the value and im- 
 portance of the public school should not make 
 us blind to its deficiencies, nor less earnest in 
 our desire to improve in every way possible an 
 admirable system. The public school, like the 
 church or any other great institution, has its 
 defects, and the greatest of these in my opin- 
 ion is this: The objective point to which the 
 whole system is directed, is scientific and not 
 moral. I use the word moral of course in no 
 narrow, restricted sense, but in the broad sig- 
 nificance of the word, in which it stands for 
 those great spiritual entities which are over 
 against the material life of the world. The 
 public school is materialistic in its aim. Its 
 purpose is avowedly to impart information and 
 not primarily to develop character. I do not 
 say for a moment that it never develops char- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 69 
 
 acter, but that is not its avowed object. Its 
 machinery is designed to provide as much in- 
 formation as the average child is able to assimi- 
 late during a given period, and there its re- 
 sponsibility ends. The new importance which 
 is being given to technical, commercial and vo- 
 cational training in response to the demand 
 that education be made practical as well as 
 theoretical, tends to emphasize the purely utili- 
 tarian aim of the public school. The state 
 aims to provide the child with technical infor- 
 mation, with the tools of his trade, and there 
 its responsibility ends. 
 
 This theory of public education is based, I 
 most firmly believe, upon mistaken premises. 
 First, in regard to the content of truth even 
 from the scientific standpoint. The public 
 school system in this country has grown up 
 during that great period of scientific investiga- 
 tion and discovery, which has concerned itself 
 chiefly, if not wholly, with material phenomena. 
 The universe has been reduced to a system, it 
 has been classified and catalogued and arranged, 
 and this work has been of the utmost impor- 
 tance. It is the basis of our modern civilization 
 upon the material side. But we make a fatal 
 mistake, when we come to believe that the data" 
 of science constitute the sum total of desirable 
 and necessary knowledge. The whole vast 
 realm of the spiritual life of humanity lies out- 
 
70 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 side the field of materialistic science, and yet it 
 is just as real and significant as the material 
 phenomena of the universe. The fundamental 
 conceptions of right and wrong, of justice and 
 injustice, of truth and falsehood, do not belong 
 to the field of religious inquiry alone. They 
 find their exemplification in the most practical 
 life of the world : in trade, in politics, in all the 
 great complicated relationships of our civic life. 
 The science which is so short sighted as to leave 
 out the great ethical standards, the actions and 
 reactions of conduct, which confines itself to 
 the material and which ignores the existence of 
 the desires and passions of men in their inter- 
 play upon physical phenomena, is not worthy 
 the name of science. The teaching which care- 
 fully enumerates and describes the bones of the 
 human skeleton and the dead tissues of the 
 body and ignores the acts of the living man, 
 the skeleton clothed with reason and endowed 
 with divine energy for good or evil, is not 
 worthy the name of teaching. Could there be 
 any possible objection to the teaching in our 
 public schools, for example, that the same exact 
 and invariable laws which apply in physics and 
 chemistry apply also in the realm of conduct.? 
 Would the tender religious susceptibilities of 
 any one be hurt if children were taught the fun- 
 damental conceptions of truth and honesty and 
 obedience.'^ When the tables of measures are 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 71 
 
 taught as a part of the necessary equipment 
 of a child, would it be violating any known 
 principle of pedagogy to teach that a false bal- 
 ance is an abomination to the Lord, and also 
 rank injustice to the community as well? 
 
 Are we following any known and successful 
 precedent in thus discriminating between what 
 is purely scientific and what is moral instruc- 
 tion and rejecting the latter? Far from it. 
 I quote from a leading authority : 
 
 *' We have the only great school system the world 
 has ever seen which does not include a definite and 
 formal instruction in religion, with the single ex- 
 ception of France, which relinquished it in 1882, 
 and France has put in the place of its religious in- 
 struction the most systematic and thorough moral 
 and civic instruction which the world has ever seen, 
 and is today working with unflagging zeal to make 
 the moral instruction the most efficient and vital 
 part of its whole curriculum." 
 
 Even France, then, which we are accustomed 
 to regard as wholly materialistic, does not hold 
 to our mistaken theory that the whole content 
 of the truth which the state is under obligation 
 to impart is to be found in scientific data. Ma- 
 terialistic France according to this authority 
 " is working with unflagging zeal to make moral 
 instruction the most eff'ectual and vital part 
 of the whole curriculum." Our own nation, of 
 
72 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 all the countries of the world, without precedent 
 and without any sound scientific basis for its 
 theory, is conducting the dangerous experiment 
 of using a system of instruction which ignores 
 the moral element of life. 
 
 I am not pleading for any system of religious 
 instruction in the public schools, but why on 
 a scientific basis should the Bible be excluded? 
 It is not the property of any sect. It is the 
 great source of the moral and ethical develop- 
 ment of Western civilization. It is the great- 
 est book of the ages. Its influence runs through 
 all our English literature, through all our mod- 
 ern civilization. It is bound up with our his- 
 tory, our art, our speech. If we study the 
 Greek classics and the Greek mythology, why 
 should we reject the prophets of Israel and the 
 Book of Psalms.? Jesus is admittedly the su- 
 preme figure of history. He is not the prop- 
 erty of any sect. We may teach our children 
 the lives of Alexander and Caesar and Napoleon, 
 but we may not teach the child anything of the 
 Prince of Peace, nor study, even without note 
 or comment, the Sermon on the Mount. We 
 have no wish to bring any form of religious con- 
 troversy into the school, but there is much in 
 regard to Jesus, much of the Bible, which is 
 above and beyond controversy, recognized as 
 such by Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gen- 
 tile. It is at least as important as a part of 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 73 
 
 human knowledge, as a study of the habits of 
 butterflies and a precise knowledge of the 
 boundaries of Patagonia. It should be in- 
 cluded in any comprehensive system of educa- 
 tion, because it is as much a part of the sum 
 of human knowledge as the multiplication table. 
 The stream cannot rise higher than its source. 
 If we exclude the Bible and all forms of moral 
 and ethical training from the schools, how can 
 we expect a product expressed in terms of right- 
 eousness and good citizenship.? 
 
 We are in error again, I believe, in our esti- 
 mate of the end and object of education from 
 the personal standpoint. We have made it 
 wholly utilitarian. We fit the child, we say, as 
 completely and as expeditiously as possible 
 for the practical duties of life. There is al- 
 ways a pressure to remove the classics even, 
 from the curriculum, on the ground that they 
 promote culture only, and culture is an ex- 
 pensive luxury which the public school cannot 
 be expected to provide. We are proceeding 
 here again upon a wholly mistaken basis. The 
 ultimate end of education is not simply the ac- 
 quirement of knowledge, but the attainment of 
 knowledge plus character. The moral element 
 cannot be left out of any estimate of person- 
 ality. It is the particular function of the 
 Church, it is true, to teach religion, to regener- 
 ate humanitv, to save men from their sins. 
 
74 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 Does the state dare, however, to demand prac- 
 tically all the child's time during the formative 
 years, teach a colorless mass of knowledge from 
 which even the ethical and moral elements have 
 been extracted, and then turn the product over 
 to the Church for regeneration? The public 
 school should provide a basis, at least, for the 
 moral life. If it does not concern itself about 
 the faith of its citizens, it should be concerned 
 to produce good citizenship. Knowledge alone 
 will not do even that. Take your prize scholar. 
 He comes, we will say, from a home where he 
 has had no moral training whatever. He has a 
 quick and retentive mind, which has satisfacto- 
 rily absorbed a large amount of information — 
 like a sponge. You have, in addition to infor- 
 mation, given him a thorough technical train- 
 ing, so that he graduates a machinist, ready 
 for his trade, and you point with pride to the 
 finished product. But suppose he finds a ma- 
 chine shop dull, and his trade stupid ? Suppose 
 he prefers to exercise his mechanical ability at 
 night with a jimmy and a dark lantern, in ac- 
 quiring the property of other people? The 
 knowledge which you have given him without 
 character, makes him the more formidable foe 
 of society. The more clever a man, the more 
 dangerous knowledge becomes in his unscrupu- 
 lous hands. You would fail sometimes, of 
 course, with all the moral and ethical training 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 75 
 
 you could give, but far less often than you fail 
 now. 
 
 What is the true end and aim of education? 
 Let me give it in the words of Milton from his 
 " Tractate on Education." 
 
 " I call, therefore, a complete and generous edu- 
 cation that which fits a man to perform justly, 
 skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both 
 private and public, of peace and war. In the 
 classics the main skill and ground work will be to 
 temper the pupils with such lectures and explana- 
 tions upon every opportunity as may lead and draw 
 them into willing obedience, inflamed with the study 
 of learning and the admiration of virtue, stirred 
 up with high hopes of living to be brave men and 
 worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all 
 ages." 
 
 Education, in other words, should be de- 
 signed primarily to make men, to produce char- 
 acter, to develop patriotism, virtue, and a high 
 sense of honor. Its results should be measured, 
 not simply in terms of scholarship, of acquire- 
 ment, but in the terms of sweetness and dignity 
 in womanhood, of honor and courage and chiv- 
 alry in manhood. Does our utilitarian system 
 accomplish this? To some extent, and in some 
 instances, thanks to the fine personality of the 
 teachers behind the system, but it is not the re- 
 sult of the system. Does it accomplish it as 
 thoroughly as it is attained in the English 
 
76 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 school and set forth in the familiar lines of 
 Newboldt : 
 
 ** This is the word that year by year 
 While in his place the school is set, 
 Every English boy must hear 
 And none that hears it dare forget: 
 This they all with a joyful mind, 
 Bear through life like a torch aflame, 
 And falling* fling to the host behind. 
 Play up ! play up ! and play the game ! " 
 
 Do our American young men look to the pub- 
 lic school as the Englishmen throughout the 
 Empire look back to Rugby and Harrow and 
 Winchester, as the places where, in addition to 
 knowledge, all high ideals of noble manhood, 
 of courage and faith and honor were inculcated? 
 Do our young men look back to the public 
 school with a reverence which lasts them 
 through life, as the place where faith was stim- 
 ulated, and character broadened, and they were 
 taught to be men and play their part whether 
 in peace or war, whether in trade or politics, 
 with a high sense of patriotism and duty? I 
 think that nearly every one is agreed that the 
 failure, and in many cases it is an abject and 
 pitiful failure, of our civic life is just at this 
 point, in the indifference and lack of courage 
 and patriotism on the part of the citizen. 
 Where does the responsibility for the failure 
 lie? Let me ask instead, if it would not be pos- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 77 
 
 sible to train the children in the public schools 
 definitely for civic service? Would it not be 
 possible to teach them that the faithful per- 
 formance of the fundamental duties of a citizen 
 in a democracy is as important as the daily du- 
 ties of business life? that the avoidance of 
 these duties is an unpatriotic and an unright- 
 eous act? I do not mean a patriotic exercise 
 now and then, but a definite part of that 
 broader training in character which should be 
 an essential part of every system of education. 
 Discipline, obedience, respect for the rights of 
 others, the sense of obligation to the commu- 
 nity, these are at least as important as any 
 technical information which may be imparted. 
 Let me emphasize the fact again, that in the 
 lives of a majority of children the school exer- 
 cises the supreme and decisive authority. Not 
 to recognize the fact that character is the su- 
 preme element in citizenship is simply suicidal. 
 The state rests ultimately upon character. It 
 can have no continued existence except as in- 
 telligence is reinforced by virtue. The first 
 thing that it should teach in self-defence, if for 
 no other reason, is a type of citizenship in which 
 character and the sense of personal obligation 
 are the main factors. 
 
 Until this defect in our system is recognized 
 and these things are definitely and systematic- 
 ally taught, we must rely upon the impartation 
 
78 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 of character by the daily example of the 
 teacher, to supply the deficiency. This is ac- 
 complished by the teacher to an extraordinary 
 degree. The majority of our teachers see the 
 defect clearly and endeavor to remedy it, but 
 this is our good fortune, not the merit of our 
 system. The best teachers have high ideals, 
 the system has not. This fact renders the 
 choice of teachers the most important work of 
 the municipality. The over emphasis of the 
 importance of mental training has led the 
 schools and colleges to make the demand for 
 high scholarship in teachers of first importance. 
 Good scholarship should be required, but char- 
 acter should be of first consideration. I do 
 not care if a man is decorated with all the let- 
 ters of the alphabet, I do not care what his 
 intellectual attainments may be, if he does not 
 possess a character of irreproachable integrity 
 and sincerity and manliness, he has no business 
 to be a teacher in the public schools. A woman 
 may have studied in all the universities of Ger- 
 many. She may be a paragon of information. 
 Unless she possesses in addition a personality 
 which embodies the highest ideals of woman- 
 hood, her place is anywhere but in the public 
 school. I am not implying for a moment that 
 the majority of our teachers do not possess 
 these qualities. They owght to possess these 
 qualities. The interests involved are too im- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 79 
 
 portant, the stake is too high to take chances 
 with anything less. The tendency, however, is 
 to make scholarship and intellectual ability su- 
 preme, and to neglect the more essential ele- 
 ment of character. As a matter of fact, some 
 of the world's greatest teachers have been men 
 and women of only moderate scholastic attain- 
 ment. Personality and not scholarship is the 
 decisive factor. 
 
 Finally, I believe the time must come when 
 the teaching in our public schools will be ideal- 
 istic and not simply utilitarian. Jesus Christ 
 was the greatest teacher the world has ever 
 known. The teaching of the scribes of his day 
 was formal, scholastic, and therefore it was 
 without influence over the individual or the na- 
 tion. The teaching of Jesus possessed the 
 weight of authority, because it aimed at the de- 
 velopment of the whole nature. " I am come 
 that they might have life and have it abundant- 
 ly." " Life is more than meat." " Man does 
 not live by bread alone." Education is 
 more than information, more than the knowl- 
 edge necessary to make a living. Education 
 must minister to the soul as well as to the body. 
 It must be as broad as Herbert's great defini- 
 tion, " The chief business of education is the 
 ethical revelation of the universe." Education 
 includes a revelation of God as well as of mat- 
 ter. It must mould and develop and train the 
 
80 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 whole nature, and not leave the most important 
 part stunted and neglected. Sometime I firmly 
 believe, the state, the city, will recognize this 
 fact. No matter how great your teeming pop- 
 ulation, no matter how extensive and profitable 
 your industries, no matter how complete the in- 
 formation you give the boys and girls who 
 throng your great schools, unless your city is 
 undergirded with righteousness, unless the ris- 
 ing generation is endowed with character, un- 
 less your city is a city of God, and Jesus Christ 
 the final authority behind its knowledge and its 
 power, it will fail and die. For love translated 
 into character is the supreme factor in human 
 life. " Whether there be prophecies, they shall 
 fail : whether there he tongues, they shall cease : 
 whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
 away." But the love of God which passeth 
 understanding, the love of Christ which redeems 
 the world, these are the abiding and the eternal 
 things as they are wrought into the life of man 
 and blossom in faith and service. And these 
 things, the sense of the eternal and the divine 
 behind the phenomena of nature, behind the 
 flying shadow of the material world, must be 
 comprehended somehow, in any system of edu- 
 cation, public or private, which is to answer 
 the supreme end of education, the complete and 
 symmetrical development of a personality made 
 in God's image. 
 
VII 
 
 THE IDEAL CITIZENSHIP 
 
 That ye may he blameless and harmless, the sons of 
 God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and per- 
 verse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world. 
 — Philippians 2: 15. 
 
 The human element is often the last to be 
 considered when we sum up the life of the city. 
 Business and commercial interests always stand 
 first. If the city is growing in population, we 
 call it prosperity and we are satisfied. The 
 question as to whether it is growing in right- 
 eousness, does not much concern us. We con- 
 sider human life in the bulk, men and women as 
 commercial and industrial units, not as indi- 
 viduals. Even the great moral questions are 
 approached in the minds of most men from the 
 utilitarian standpoint. What is the chief con- 
 sideration when the saloon, for example, is 
 brought to the attention of the men of the com- 
 munity on election day.? How many men think, 
 " This is a traffic which is destroying my fellow 
 men, body and soul, and therefore as a broth- 
 erly act, I will oppose it ".? The majority of 
 81 
 
82 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 men think, " The saloon is in some remote way 
 a promoter of trade; to destroy it might injure 
 certain business interests, therefore I will con- 
 tinue it and protect it." 
 
 It is hard for us to realize that it is this hu- 
 man element which is really the effective and 
 important factor in the life of the city. Be- 
 hind every machine there is a man, behind every 
 process of manufacture, behind every phase of 
 construction and transportation, there are men 
 and women, and there would be no city and no 
 commerce, and no tides of travel and trade with- 
 out them. Of what use would be your public 
 schools, your libraries, your civic functions of 
 all kinds if human intelligences were not direct- 
 ing them.? Yet how seldom do we think of this 
 phase of our city life! We think more of the 
 new building than of the life which is to be 
 trained and directed within its walls. We pay 
 more attention to the laying out of streets and 
 parks than to the housing of the poor. We 
 think more of the physical adornment of the 
 city than of the adornment which comes from 
 great and noble character. 
 
 " Rest your self-esteem more in character," 
 said a Greek philosopher of the first century 
 to the citizens of the rich and powerful city of 
 Smyrna, " than in the beauty of your city. 
 Though it is the most beautiful of all cities 
 under the sun and makes the sea its own and 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE SS 
 
 holds the fountain of Zephyrus, yet it is a 
 greater charm to wear a crown of men than a 
 crown of porticoes and pictures and gold be- 
 yond the standard of mankind, for buildings are 
 seen only in their own place, but men are seen 
 everywhere and spoken about everywhere and 
 make their city as vast as the range of coun- 
 tries they can visit." This is as true as the day 
 on which it was spoken. The best advertise- 
 ment of a city is an enlightened citizenship. 
 Let it be known that life is safe within your 
 borders, that law is enforced, that crime is 
 kept in check, that the schools and churches 
 are of the highest order of excellence, that the 
 moral tone of the community is lofty, that men 
 are sensitive to evil and earnestly striving to 
 maintain the highest civic ideals, and you will 
 find men seeking that city out as a place of res- 
 idence and business. 
 
 The time will come, I am convinced, when we 
 shall see the futility and foolishness of the 
 purely commercial standards of life which we 
 have established. We shall see that we simply 
 cannot escape our responsibility. We live too 
 closely together, we come into too intimate con- 
 tact in all the relationships of life, to escape the 
 penalty of carelessness and neglect of civic du- 
 ties. It comes home to us as plainly, perhaps, 
 in the matter of health as in any other aspect. 
 Suppose a disease, a disease we will say hith- 
 
m CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 erto unknown, accompanied by appalling re- 
 sults to human life, originates in unsanitary 
 conditions which the city has neglected. We 
 might possibly, such is our selfishness, look at 
 it with indifference if it attacked the children 
 of the slums alone. But it does not do so. It 
 is no respecter of persons. It knocks at the 
 door of the merchant prince as well as at the 
 portal of the tenement. It seizes in its relent- 
 less grip the children of the rich as well as of 
 the poor. The city pays the penalty. And it 
 is so, also, in the moral life of the community. 
 We are too closely bound together by ties which 
 we did not make and cannot break, to avoid the 
 responsibility here. The moral evil of the com- 
 munity does not remain in the foul pools in 
 which it is bred. A moral miasma arises from 
 those pools, and that evil which we condone 
 for the sake of business, which we have not the 
 courage to destroy because it may affect trade, 
 enters not the poorest homes of the city alone, 
 but the most carefully guarded, and leaves its 
 trail of sorrow and despair behind. You may 
 segregate vice, but you cannot confine the evil 
 influence of the thing to any quarter of the city. 
 When you elect to live in the city because of 
 the advantages which accrue to you in society 
 and trade, you need not think that you can 
 shirk your responsibility, nor that wealth and 
 position will make you immune from its perils. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 85 
 
 You cannot take what the city has to give you 
 and give nothing in return. We shall see this 
 sometimes. We shall realize that we must con- 
 sider the human factor first, because it is the 
 most important. We shall bend our energies 
 then, and spend our money, not only on beauti- 
 ful buildings and gigantic factories, but we 
 shall exert ourselves along the line of the im- 
 provement of moral and social conditions, the 
 betterment of human life, the building of hu- 
 man character. 
 
 When that great hearted teacher of the pub- 
 lic schools. Miss Margaret Maguire, first sug- 
 gested the possibility of a special training for 
 defective children to the rich and powerful mu- 
 nicipality of Philadelphia, which employed her 
 at wholly inadequate wages, the reply came that 
 the city had no money to waste on such experi- 
 ments, which must be conducted, if at all, at her 
 own expense. Every one knows the result of 
 her persistence and self-sacrifice, but it is no 
 credit to the city which had money to waste in 
 graft, in a hundred foolish and unintelligent 
 wa3^s, but none with which to reach down a 
 helping hand to a defective child, made defect- 
 ive, very probably, by the evil conditions under 
 which it came into the world. Sometime we 
 shall know that the poorest, most backward 
 child that walks our streets is worth all the time 
 and money we can expend for its intellectual 
 
86 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 and moral salvation. Never forget that the 
 communal life is no stronger than its weakest 
 link. Neglect of the human element will inev- 
 itably bring its own punishment. Democracy 
 must fail unless it is true democracy, the par- 
 ticipation of the whole and not a part of the cit- 
 izenship in all its activities and all its benefits. 
 Jesus, the greatest exponent of democracy 
 the world has ever seen, phrases it both con- 
 vincingly and poetically in his great command, 
 " Let your light shine." What does that mean ? 
 On Sunday? Does it mean that we are to be 
 so distinct from the world, so pious, that the 
 admiring gaze of the populace shall be turned 
 upon us? Nothing of the kind. He means 
 that there is a light of personality, of power, 
 which God has given to every one of us, and we 
 are to let it shine out of our lives, all the time, 
 on every occasion; in the home, in the school 
 room, in the office, on the street. We are to let 
 the light of service and devotion and love which 
 is in us go out to meet all the problems of soci- 
 ety ; all the demands of the associated life of the 
 community. Democracy, Christianity, mean 
 the same thing. They mean the acceptance of 
 responsibility, the giving of our Christ enlight- 
 ened personalities to the common tasks of hu- 
 manity. They mean that we are not simply to 
 live in the city and enjoy its benefits. We are 
 to feel in return a high sense of loyalty and de- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 87 
 
 votion and pride in all that makes the city. 
 This is not simply a civic duty. It is a re- 
 ligious duty. It should call out the same sense 
 of patriotism which burns in men's hearts in 
 time of war. This feeling of civic patriotism 
 was greater in the ancient days than it is in 
 ours. It found its best expression in the Eph- 
 ebic oath, taken by the youth of Athens when 
 first admitted to the duties of citizenship: 
 
 " We will never bring disgrace to this our city 
 by any act of dishonesty or cowardice, nor ever 
 desert our suffering comrades in the ranks. We 
 will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the 
 city, both alone and with many. We will revere 
 and obey the city's laws and do our best to incite 
 a like respect and reverence in those above us who 
 are prone to annul and set them at nought. We 
 will strive unceasingly to quicken the public sense 
 of civic duty: that thus in all these ways we may 
 transmit this city not less, but greater, better and 
 more beautiful than it was transmitted to us." 
 
 It would be a good thing if our American 
 youth were to take such an oath as this of loy- 
 alty and devotion to the city. Many instead 
 come to look upon the city as an " easy mark," 
 the legitimate prey of the unscrupulous manip- 
 ulation of party politics. How many men who 
 are elected to office in the municipality have in 
 their hearts no motive whatever except that 
 of a high and honorable purpose to serve their 
 
88 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 fellow men, to make the city better and cleaner 
 and more righteous ? How many enter upon of- 
 fice with the interests of no individual or cor- 
 poration to serve, free absolutely to devote 
 themselves impartially to the public interests 
 and those alone? Not many, and that is be- 
 cause we have developed no sense of civic patri- 
 otism and civic righteousness, no sense of mutual 
 responsibility. We look upon the city not as a 
 democracy, a commonalty which we all own, 
 in which we all share, in whose good name and 
 good fortune we are all concerned. The city 
 is looked upon impersonally, as a gigantic cor- 
 poration, to plunder which by cunning and 
 shrewdness is a virtue rather than otherwise. 
 The ward politician looks upon the spoils and 
 perquisites of city politics as his legitimate re- 
 ward. Why is he spending his time and en- 
 ergy if not for what he can get out of it.? 
 What is office for.? What is the city, if not 
 the beneficent source from which all blessings 
 flow, in the form of easy jobs and padded pay- 
 rolls and all the familiar forms of municipal 
 graft ? 
 
 We know perfectly well that in many of our 
 American cities the government is in the hands 
 not of high minded and intelligent and patriotic 
 citizens. We know that it is in the hands of a 
 gang of political workers who are in it frankly, 
 for what is coming to them when the spoils are 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 89 
 
 divided. Witness the shame of the city of Law- 
 rence, whose mayor was taken from the chair 
 of his high office to the county jail for the fla- 
 grant and impudent violations of the very laws 
 which he had sworn to enforce. The conditions 
 will never be any better until the men who are 
 outside this gang, the earnest, intelligent, dis- 
 interested men of the community, awaken to a 
 sense of their duty and their responsibility, un- 
 til these men take at least enough interest in 
 the welfare of their city to go to the caucuses 
 and to the polls on election day. It always 
 seems unpatriotic to some when any compari- 
 sons are m£ide with conditions in other countries 
 unfavorable to America. But every one who 
 knows anything about conditions in England 
 and on the continent knows that they are im- 
 measurably better than with us. Why is it? 
 Because they have developed a sense of civic re- 
 sponsibility. Because they are democratic in 
 the truest sense of the word, and we are oligar- 
 chic. Because we allow our affairs to be man- 
 aged by the few forces, and those few usually 
 not the best, but the worst. In England the 
 best men in the community, and by best I am not 
 drawing any invidious distinction of wealth 
 and class, the best men of all classes and all 
 creeds give their time and their service freely to 
 the interests of the city. There is no political 
 graft in the English municipality. Every man 
 
90 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 is working for the betterment of his city with 
 the same sort of loyal interest and devotion 
 which inspired the Athenian youth when he took 
 the Ephebic oath. When a man enters upon 
 office he ceases to think of himself, of his party, 
 or of his personal friends and relatives. 
 He is simply an Englishman set there to 
 serve his city to the best of his ability 
 with all his heart and soul. And that, I say, 
 is essentially a religious attitude. It must all 
 come back to that finally. The man who does 
 this is letting his light shine not for his own il- 
 lumination, but for others. He is projecting 
 his own personality with the gifts which God 
 has given him into the commercial life. It is 
 a higher attitude than business, higher than 
 patriotism. These will not suffice alone. We 
 say we want our business men to go into poli- 
 tics. We say we want a business administra- 
 tion. I do not know about that wholly. There 
 are some business men whom I would much 
 rather see anywhere than in public office. 
 There are some business methods devised by the 
 devil, and we certainly do not want them ap- 
 plied to public affairs. Patriotism alone will 
 not suffice. There was corruption in Athens 
 in spite of the Ephebic oath. Athens repudi- 
 ated her prophets and slew her gentlest and 
 best. Behind business methods and patriotism, 
 we must have conscience and ideals. We must 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 91 
 
 have men who possess the prophetic vision, 
 whose minds are set on high things. And we 
 must link the vision to the hard, prosaic work 
 of politics. The trouble with us in all our af- 
 fairs is that we have tried carefully to separate 
 faith and works, vision and service; and you 
 cannot do it without disaster. We must get 
 back to the mediaeval idea of a religious faith 
 which penetrates all our daily lives, which en- 
 ters into our business or politics and transforms 
 them, idealizes them and makes them holy. We 
 cannot lead one life of faith and prayer and 
 aspiration, and another of hard, cold, calculat- 
 ing selfishness. We cannot build a beautiful 
 golden shrine for faith and live in a mean hovel 
 of selfishness in our daily work. We cannot 
 have a religious life of the community which 
 preaches and prays on Sunday and lets the city 
 go to the devil on Monday. 
 
 In the fifteenth century there lived in Salis- 
 bury, England, John Halle, a famous merchant 
 of the wool trade and mayor of the city. He 
 adopted as the sign of his business a sacred em- 
 blem, the cross, as a symbol of Christianity, 
 a circle, indicating a belief in eternity, and a 
 triangle, standing for the Trinity, the whole 
 entertwined above the staple, the distinctive 
 mark of his trade. " And I cannot but think," 
 says an old writer as he comments upon this 
 symbol, " that I here recognize a figurative 
 
9a CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 meaning. I cannot divest my mind of the idea 
 that the pious merchant here means to designate 
 that his mercantile transactions are entered into 
 with honest integrity; that he trades beneath 
 the cross; that he is enlisted under the banner 
 of his Saviour ; that he enters into his commer- 
 cial dealings with the good faith of the Chris- 
 tian." 
 
 How many men today trade beneath the 
 cross.'' How many would dare to stamp upon 
 every piece of goods they made the cross and 
 the triangle and the circle, the emblems of serv- 
 ice and sacrifice and the eternal distinctions be- 
 tween right and wrong.? How many men of 
 our modem days are entering politics beneath 
 the cross, resolved to stand for those things 
 and those things only which are true and right- 
 eous and lovely and of good report .'^ How 
 many men enter public service with the same 
 feelings of chivalry and devotion which would 
 send them out to battle if the nation were at- 
 tacked by a foreign foe.? We must recover 
 this spirit in our civic life, in business, in gov- 
 ernment, yes, in the church itself. We are im- 
 mensely clever in our age. We have a great 
 admiration for the man who is smart, who turns 
 the trick, who " delivers the goods," and we are 
 not greatly concerned to inquire how he does it, 
 if he only produces results. Are we clever 
 enough to see that this sort of thing can end 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDI> 93 
 
 only in disaster? Life in its long results is 
 built upon the foundation stones of conscience 
 and righteousness and character, and not on 
 the shifting sands of cleverness and trickery 
 and deceit. We must demand the highest type 
 of men in business, in politics, the ideal citizen- 
 ship ; men who trade and serve beneath the cross, 
 who are actuated not by selfishness but by prin- 
 ciple, who let the light of an exalted character 
 shine for the high service to which they are 
 called. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE SALOON: A PUBLIC NUISANCE 
 
 And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that 
 defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination^ or mak- 
 eth a lie.— Revelation 21 : 27. 
 
 The city is a society of men and women or- 
 ganized for the greatest good of the greatest 
 number. When a person elects to live in a city 
 he surrenders voluntarily certain individual 
 rights. He is not compelled to live in the city, 
 but if he chooses to do so, he must abide by the 
 laws which are made, not for his individual ben- 
 efit but for the good of all. A man's own house 
 is his castle, which may not be invaded under or- 
 dinary circumstances. What a man eats or 
 drinks, what he wears, how he conducts him- 
 self, is his own concern, provided he does noth- 
 ing which disturbs the peace of his neighbors. 
 If, however, he makes himself an offense to his 
 neighbors, if he violates the common law, then 
 his house may be entered and the annoyance 
 suppressed. In the community at large a still 
 greater restraint is placed upon individual lib- 
 erty. A man may do nothing which works det- 
 94 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 96 
 
 riment or harm, or which becomes an offense to 
 his neighbor. Every year the rights of the 
 community as against those of the individual 
 are enlarged. The city sees to it that no busi- 
 ness becomes a source of contagion or a menace 
 to the public health. An unsanitary bake shop 
 may be closed. A manufactory emanating vile 
 odors will not be permitted in proximity to the 
 homes of the people. Regulations may be 
 passed requiring a minimum of smoke from 
 chimneys and locomotives. The milk supply 
 must reach a certain standard of purity and 
 excellence. The sweeping national pure food 
 laws, while not perfect in form nor in execution, 
 have none the less broken down many of the bar- 
 riers which formerly existed between public and 
 private rights. More and more the community 
 stands upon its rights. Steadily it enlarges the 
 boundaries of the realm of public privilege. 
 Every day it has less patience with anything 
 which invades its rights and becomes a public 
 nuisance, a source of danger and offense to all. 
 I maintain that the open saloon is a public 
 nuisance, that it is a source of moral corrup- 
 tion, of social defilement. I maintain that it 
 poisons the sources of public and private vir- 
 tue, that it is hostile to legitimate business in- 
 terests, that it is a standing menace to the 
 health and prosperity of any community. The 
 most dangerous evil of the city today is not po- 
 
96 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 litical corruption, but the source of political 
 corruption, the malignant social agency which 
 we call the saloon. The saloon is a public nui- 
 sance, and on this ground it should be sup- 
 pressed and driven out of every community. 
 
 The saloon is a public nuisance because it is 
 the source of a very large percentage of all 
 the forms of evil in the city. We cannot define 
 exactly what this mysterious force which we call 
 evil is, but we know by experience, by observa- 
 tion, its malignant and destructive power. We 
 know beyond question that it corrupts personal- 
 ity as a powerful acid corrodes and disinte- 
 grates a metal. We know that it is the foe of 
 civilization, that it destroys the constituent or- 
 der of society as well as the personality of the 
 individual. Evil manifests itself outwardly in 
 acts against law and order which we call crime. 
 Crime knows no law, recognizes no authority. 
 It is a destructive force directed against prop- 
 erty, against human life itself. Society at- 
 tempts to safeguard itself against crime in vari- 
 ous ways. It organizes police forces which con- 
 stitute practically an army in times of peace; 
 it builds jails and prisons which are really great 
 military defenses. It must do this, or society 
 would go back into its original elements of sav- 
 agery. In spite of its well disciplined army, 
 in spite of its strong defenses, society faces the 
 fact today that crime is on the increase. You 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 97 
 
 cannot open your newspaper without reading 
 accounts of bold crimes committed both in the 
 city and in the country. This increase in crime 
 is a very serious matter. Those who are ac- 
 quainted with the facts know how narrow is the 
 margin of safety at all times between law and 
 order and anarchy. 
 
 What shall be done.? Shall we go on indefi- 
 nitely increasing police forces and enlarging 
 prisons.'^ Is there not a better way.? The 
 search for the cause of any given phenomenon 
 is the basic principle of all modern scientific dis- 
 covery, of all modern progress. The astron- 
 omer notices that the planets do not exactly fol- 
 low the known law of their motion. He 
 searches for the cause, and maps out exactly 
 the position of the undiscovered planet which 
 alone can account for the variation. All the 
 great inventions are the result of the tracing 
 of observed phenomena to the reason, the cause, 
 which, undiscovered by the untrained eye, al- 
 ways lies behind the outward fact. When an 
 outbreak of fever or plague occurs in a commu- 
 nity, the health authorities immediately begin 
 a careful investigation of the possible sources 
 of contamination. The water and milk sup- 
 plies, garbage, insects ; everything that is in 
 any way suspected is examined by experts to 
 find the source of contagion. Cut off the im- 
 pure water and the typhoid epidemic is con- 
 
98 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 quered. Screen the cisterns and New Orleans 
 is freed from the perpetual menace of yellow 
 fever. Kill the rats, and San Francisco and 
 the whole nation is preserved from the horror of 
 the bubonic plague. Is there any possible rea- 
 son why we should not apply the same scientific 
 principles to the problem of crime.? 
 
 Crime is a phenomenon which must be like all 
 things else, reducible to known laws and princi- 
 ples. Crime is a moral infection. The problem 
 of society is to find its source, and when it is 
 found, to destroy it. What is the source of 
 crime.?' I have never heard any recognized 
 authority dispute the statement that the main 
 source of crime is alcohol and the dispenser of 
 alcohol, the saloon. This is not my opinion, 
 or the opinion of any dogmatist of any school. 
 It is cold, hard, indisputable fact. It is just 
 as inevitable, just as irrefutable as the multipli- 
 cation table or the law of gravitation. It is 
 based upon figures which have been verified 
 time after time, it is based upon the testimony 
 of criminals themselves, of students and keepers 
 of criminals, upon the grim records of prisons 
 and jails. The saloon-keeper himself does not 
 deny it or attempt to deny it. In all the litera- 
 ture published by the saloon interests, you will 
 not find anywhere a denial of the figures pub- 
 lished by the trained experts of the bureaus of 
 statistics; namely, that 84% of the crime of 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 99 
 
 the nation is caused by liquor. Now, if we 
 have discovered the main cause of crime and 
 disorder in the community, why not, according 
 to the procedure of science, proceed to abate 
 it? Why should the community have any more 
 sympathy for the saloon, any more tolerance 
 of it, than it would have for a typhoid-breeding 
 pool of filthy water or for a swarm of deadly 
 mosquitoes or for a nest of rats infected with 
 the bubonic plague? Here is the unquestioned, 
 undoubted source of much of the evil of our 
 cities. Stamp it out then ! Destroy it, in the 
 name of civilization, lest it infect the commu- 
 nity, pollute your own homes and inoculate with 
 vice your own children ! Can the stern logic 
 of the situation be questioned? The saloon is 
 a public nuisance because it is a source, an ad- 
 mited source of moral contagion, the original 
 cause of the major part of the evil and misery 
 of the city. Therefore it should be destroyed. 
 Again, the saloon is a public nuisance, be- 
 cause it is a source of economic loss, both to 
 labor and to capital. Many of the great rail- 
 roads of the country forbid their employees to 
 be seen in a saloon, either on or off duty, under 
 penalty of instant discharge from the service. 
 Since that terrible catastrophe on one of our 
 railroads in the summer of 1912, caused by a 
 drunken engineer who drove his great express 
 locomotive past three signals set against him, 
 
100 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 full speed into the rear of an excursion train, 
 killing or maiming nearly a hundred passengers, 
 the railroads have made still more stringent reg- 
 ulations against the saloon. No employer of 
 labor who is not absolutely blind to his own 
 interests will uphold an institution which de- 
 bauches his workmen and decreases his profits. 
 The margin of profit is too small, to neglect an 
 item of such importance. The evidence is ab- 
 solutely conclusive that alcohol reduces the ef- 
 ficiency of the workman and increases the num- 
 ber of accidents in all forms of industry. 
 
 If the saloon is the foe of Capital, how much 
 more is it the arch-enemy of Labor. The in- 
 telligent workingman sees that he must choose 
 between his appetite and his own interests. If 
 he drinks, he earns less, he is in constant danger 
 of discharge, because all the important con- 
 cerns in the country are demanding sober labor. 
 The young workingman knows that he must 
 choose between a home of his own and the sa- 
 loon. He certainly cannot have both. If he 
 frequents the saloon, he cannot properly clothe 
 and educate his children, he must deprive his 
 family of many of the necessaries and comforts 
 of life. The position of Labor is strongly set 
 forth by the great leader, John Mitchell, who 
 says, " I am against the saloons because they 
 are against my people. On pay day the sa- 
 loon-keepers are like tigers. My men enter 
 
AND CIVIC PMDE* ' ''vfOl 
 
 their resorts with their wages, and often leave 
 them with nothing, and then the wives must 
 pacify the storekeepers for the non-payment of 
 bills, and the family is left practically desti- 
 tute. Our union stands for temperance, and 
 better and more decent men." 
 
 The saloon should be destroyed as a public 
 nuisance because it endangers the public safety 
 through the criminal inefficiency of drunken 
 workmen, and because it reduces the earning 
 power of both labor and capital. 
 
 The only arguments in favor of the saloon 
 are these: 
 
 First, the license fees help to pay the taxes 
 of the city. This is a plea as false as it is spe- 
 cious. The saloon-keeper turns a certain 
 amount of money over to the city, but where 
 does he get it.'' Who pays it? I will tell you 
 who pays it. The mothers and wives and little 
 children of the city pay it. The wife must go 
 without a new dress, the child without shoes, lit- 
 tle children like yours must go cold and hungry 
 to bed in order that you may profit by the 
 license fee. It is paid in blood and tears. The 
 respectable and prosperous citizens of the com- 
 munity cannot afford morally or economically 
 to profit by a few dollars saved in taxes in such 
 a manner. It is not really saved. The saloons 
 are a financial loss to the tax-payer, for the 
 simple and sufficient reason that they make 
 
$6k>' '- CWIC mGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 more expense than they pay in revenue. You 
 are not a gainer by the transaction if a man 
 puts one dollar into your pocket and takes two 
 dollars out. It is an old " Aim flam " game 
 which the saloon has worked on an unsuspect- 
 ing public for many years. The license fees 
 in any city do not begin to pay the increased 
 cost of pauperism and crime which the saloon 
 entails. Add to the burdens of actual taxa- 
 tion the immense sums given by philanthropy 
 to repair the mischief caused to society by the 
 saloon and we shall begin to realize the folly of 
 supposing the saloon to be a source of profit to 
 the city. The tax-payer who votes to main- 
 tain the saloon under the impression that it is 
 wise economy is simply the victim of a confi- 
 dence game which he is not shrewd enough to 
 detect. 
 
 It can be demonstrated beyond any possibil- 
 ity of doubt that the city without the saloon 
 is better, happier, cleaner and more prosper- 
 ous. The saloon impoverishes the country 
 morally, and it also impoverishes it financially. 
 The license fee is a will-o'-the-wisp. It de- 
 ceives the business man with its golden promise 
 and vanishes in the bog of increased pauperism 
 and crime. The saloon is a vampire which 
 sucks the blood of legitimate industry. 
 
 The saloon is not a business: it cannot bo 
 treated by the community upon a business basis. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 103 
 
 It IS a public nuisance and no city is better off 
 financially or in any other way for maintaining 
 a public nuisance. 
 
 But there is another argument which is very 
 commonly used even by people who do not be- 
 lieve in the saloon. If you abolish the saloon, 
 that will not stop drinking, it will only drive the 
 selling of liquor into places of concealment and 
 the cure will be worse than the evil. This it 
 seems to me is the weakest possible argument 
 which could be advanced. Certainly it has no 
 standing on any moral ground; and like the 
 previous argument, it rests upon a fallacy. 
 Prohibition is not the right word to use in this 
 connection. You cannot, in the strictest sense 
 of the word, prohibit any evil. But because 
 we can not prohibit, does it follow that we must 
 license an evil.? The logical application of 
 such a principle would destroy the efficiency 
 of all law and turn the community over to an- 
 archy. We cannot prohibit assault or bur- 
 glary, or arson or murder, or any of the many 
 evils which afflict society. Shall we then license 
 them.'' Suppose you were knocked down in the 
 street, brutally beaten and robbed, and you 
 should discover that your assailant wore a badge 
 which announced that he was Licensed High- 
 wayman No. 47. Then suppose a respectable 
 citizen should come along and you should ve- 
 hemently protest at such a proceeding. Sup- 
 
104 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 pose he should saj then, " My dear sir, calm 
 yourself. We cannot prohibit assault. We 
 had a law on our books, but we found that as- 
 saults continued just the same. So we decided 
 that the best way to regulate this business was 
 to issue licenses. We permit only one high- 
 wayman to every 1000 inhabitants. I assure 
 you that the matter is carefully regulated and 
 kept within reasonable bounds by the police. 
 Surely you would not have irresponsible and un- 
 regulated highwaymen on every street." I sub- 
 mit that the case is parallel. The saloon is an 
 evil. Everybody admits it to be an evil. It 
 is a public nuisance. It makes criminals, pau- 
 pers, imbeciles; it corrupts politics, it pollutes 
 the stream of social and industrial life. We 
 know this. No one disputes it. It cannot 
 wholly be stopped, therefore we say, " Let us 
 license it." Why should we license this evil 
 because we cannot wholly stop it, any more 
 than any other evil? The law has never 
 stopped arson wholly, but we do not turn li- 
 censed incendiaries loose upon a helpless v^em- 
 munity. We cannot safely license any evil. 
 We must pass our laws against it, do our best 
 to stop it, restrain it as far as possible and let 
 it go at that. To license any evil whatsoever 
 is a sin against the fundamental principles of 
 society. It is a cowardly makeshift and some 
 one must pay the price of the evasion. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 106 
 
 In their alarm at the rapid spread of the tem- 
 perance sentiment throughout the nation, the 
 leaders in the liquor business have tried to make 
 the saloon seem more respectable in the matter 
 of the observance of the law. But they have 
 not succeeded. You cannot by any possibility 
 reform the saloon. You cannot make respecta- 
 ble an institution which caters to the lowest 
 and vilest instincts of humanity. If the ter- 
 ror of the jungle, the gaunt, striped incarna- 
 tion of sudden death, the man-eating tiger, 
 should employ some one to paint on his lean 
 and hungry side, " I am Mary's Little Lamb," 
 would any one believe it.'' Would mothers send 
 their children out to play with him? Would 
 the people of the village bid him welcome to 
 their streets .f* No more should we trust the sa- 
 loon when it paints upon its seductive portals, 
 " This is a respectable place of business." Will 
 mothers send their growing boys there, because 
 it advertises a false and lying respectability? 
 Let us have done with such absurdity. Let 
 the saloon stand for what it is in every com- 
 munity. Like the man-eating tiger, it feeds 
 upon the flesh of its victims. It corrupts and 
 destroys the young manhood of the city, it se- 
 duces women, it destroys the happiness of homes, 
 it inflicts suff^ering upon innocent children, it 
 makes righteousness in our city government im- 
 possible. 
 
106 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 Do not say, I beg of you, that men have al- 
 ways been drunken and they always will. . Do 
 not say that the saloon has always existed and 
 it always will. That is a pessimism unworthy 
 of any Christian and unwarranted by the facts. 
 There was a time when every town was unclean, 
 when sewage ran in the streets and houses reeked 
 with filth. There was a time when human life 
 was not safe outside the walled cities. There 
 was a time when the duel was the universal code 
 of honor. There was a time when Christian 
 people said that slavery could never be abol- 
 ished. 
 
 The drink habit is a relic of barbarism. 
 The saloon is an excrescence, a cancer in civ- 
 ilization which must be cut out and destroyed 
 or it will destroy civilization itself. Tt is like 
 an atrophied and diseased organ in the body, 
 of no value and threatening danger perpetually. 
 There can be no compromise in this matter. 
 Sooner or later you must take sides. Let it 
 be for the sacred cause of righteousness and 
 purity and honor. I make the appeal to your 
 consciences. There are matters in this world 
 of God's, which we cannot decide on the basis 
 of money or expediency. And this is the chief 
 of them. The life of your boy, your daugh- 
 ter's honor, are they for sale at any price, in 
 any market place.? This is the supreme peril 
 of modern life. The wolf, ravenous for his 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 107 
 
 prey, waits at the door of every newly-formed 
 home. I appeal to you as Christians, both men 
 and women, as you love your Lord and Master, 
 as you are pledged to work for the salvation of 
 the world, to work and pray unceasingly for 
 the destruction of the most deadly foe of vir- 
 tue and happiness, the curse of modern society, 
 the open, legalized saloon. 
 
IX 
 
 CIVIC RIGHTS AND CIVIC DUTIES 
 
 And whosoever will he chief among' you let him be 
 your servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to ndmster, and to give his life a 
 ransom for many. — Matthew 20:27-28. 
 
 The Bible is a very gracious book. Seldom 
 does it say " Thou shalt, thou shalt not." The 
 word " must " occurs in only a few instances. 
 But through it all runs the gre.::^ appeal to the 
 sense of responsibility and service. W^e are to 
 serve, not because we are compelled to do so. 
 not because we fear the lash of the taskmaster, 
 but because there is no other way in which we 
 can be worthy to be called the sons of God and 
 enter into the glorious liberty which is the her- 
 itage of the sons of God. I wonder how any 
 thoughtful person can imagine that he can live 
 in the city and escape the operation of this law 
 of service. What is a city.? It is not merely 
 an aggregation of warehouses and residences 
 and public buildings. It is a living entity. It 
 is humanity raised to the nth power. No one 
 who has any sensibility at all, can live in a city 
 
 without emotion, without a sense of its tragedy, 
 108 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 109 
 
 its mystery, its pain, and an ever-deepening 
 sense of its divine possibilities for righteousness 
 and power. 
 
 Unfortunately the emphasis of our modem 
 times is too much upon civic rights and too lit- 
 tle upon civic duties and responsibilities. Too 
 often the citizen who pays no taxes, who con- 
 tributes nothing to the common weal, the immi- 
 grant who has just landed from a foreign shore, 
 are insistent in their demands of what they con- 
 sider their rights in the community. The right 
 of protection from lawlessness and fire, the 
 right of free communication by the means of the 
 city streets, the right of free education for any 
 number of children, the right of a hundred priv- 
 ileges and conveniences, all these things the cit- 
 izen has come to regard as his privilege without 
 any return whatever. He does not consider 
 for a moment that these things have cost some- 
 thing, that they represent the toil, the money, 
 the self-sacrifice, the intelligent giving of per- 
 sonality. He simply accepts these things with- 
 out any sense of gratitude or responsibility, as 
 his inalienable right. He would be indignant 
 if he were challenged by the city in this way: 
 " I give you these privileges freely, but what 
 are you going to give me in return ? " But 
 somebody has to give something. Civilization 
 cannot exist except by perpetual giving, per- 
 petual service, perpetual sacrifice. It is high 
 
110 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 time that we talk less of civic rights and more 
 of civic obligations. 
 
 We should teach the children in the public 
 schools constantly, with the utmost emphasis, 
 that we owe the city and the nation something 
 in return for the inestimable rights and privi- 
 leges which are conferred freely upon us. 
 They should not come to think that the schools, 
 the streets, the parks, yes, and even private 
 property in the city, belong to them, and that 
 freedom means license. They should be taught 
 that these things have come by sacrifice, that 
 somebody has paid the price for them. They 
 should be taught to reverence and to love the 
 city, to keep its streets clean and beautiful, to 
 care for its property, to resolve that sometime 
 they will partly repay in service the debt which 
 a life of service would not fully repay. They 
 should be taught the breadth and the splendor 
 of the word " patriotism." They should be 
 taught that it means not simply dying for the 
 country, if the time should come to die, but 
 that it means the infinitely harder duty of 
 living for the country, of a constant energizing 
 of self in service. I do not say that they are 
 not so taught, but this teaching should be em- 
 phasized until civic patriotism becomes a pas- 
 sion, and the feeling that the privileges of the 
 city are inalienable rights is lost in the eager- 
 ness to participate in civic duties. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 111 
 
 One of the most dangerous tendencies of our 
 times is the idea that we can substitute law and 
 machinery for personal service. We must 
 never forget that charters and legislation can 
 never be substitutes for personality. The more 
 complicated the civic machine, the more ur- 
 gently are needed men of ability and character 
 to manipulate it. Suppose by majority vote 
 we should incorporate the Sermon on the 
 Mount into our city charter, we should be to- 
 morrow exactly where we are today. Until we 
 have men who believe the Sermon on the Mount 
 with all their souls and are ready to observe 
 in their lives its last detail we shall make no 
 real progress. There are miles of remedial 
 legislation on our statute books which are 
 merely waste paper. All this is trying to do 
 by law what God requires us to do ourselves. 
 
 I look with the greatest concern upon the 
 tendency to commercialize the government of 
 our city. It sounds very plausible and reason- 
 able at first thought. The city is nothing but 
 a big business. Therefore, all we have to do is 
 to hire a few experts, just as the manufacturer 
 hires the heads of departments to run his busi- 
 ness, and all the vexed problems of municipal 
 government are solved. This conception of the 
 city looks very sane until we come to analyze it. 
 The city conducts certain forms of business, 
 it is true, and such business should be managed 
 
lia CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 honestly and competently, but is the city itself 
 a business? That I deny. The city is a spir- 
 itual entity ; it has a soul. It may be right- 
 eous, it may be evil to the core, quite apart 
 from the honest booh^^f eping of its municipal 
 affairs. What the Lord demanded in Sodom 
 and Gomorrah was righteous men. He de- 
 stroyed the cities of the plain because the souls 
 of those cities were blasted by sin. They might 
 have had an expert at the head of every city 
 department, and still the city might not have 
 had enough soul left to save. Nineveh was 
 saved because it repented in sackcloth and 
 ashes. The modern city needs repentance and 
 righteousness very much more than it needs sci- 
 entific management, though I do not say that 
 it does not need that, too. We must not, how- 
 ever, confuse the two or think for a moment 
 that they are identical. When you do that, 
 you destroy the very fundamental idea of de- 
 mocracy, the principle of self-government, the 
 participation in government by the people 
 themselves. 
 
 Because I believe so profoundly that personal 
 righteousness must be at the basis of all good 
 government, I hold that the most important of 
 all civic duties and responsibilities is the sup- 
 port of that civic institution out of which right- 
 eousness alone can proceed, the church. Men 
 have come to regard the church in the same 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 113 
 
 light in which they regard other civic institu- 
 tions, as a right and not as a duty. There are 
 few people in any community who are actually 
 hostile to the church. They may criticise it 
 freely, usually without any accurate knowledge 
 of what they criticise, but they recognize its 
 value to the city and they accept complacently 
 the service which it renders to them and to their 
 children and to the community at large, with- 
 out any sense of obligation in return. There 
 are many even who were brought up in the 
 church, who know in their hearts what it means 
 to the city, who are aware of the unselfish serv- 
 ice which it renders, who know that it is the 
 only source of spiritual refreshment, the only 
 barrier against the fierce tides of sin, who know 
 all these things, but who are yet indifferent, 
 who fail to do anything for its support. I 
 realize how insistent, how seductive, are the 
 claims of the world at the present time. I real- 
 ize that it means a sacrifice to give up the Sun- 
 day outing, to rise in time to attend the service 
 of the church, to give the money required for its 
 support. To be sure, there have been times 
 when men gave their lives in the arena, when 
 they were burned at the stake for the church. 
 These might be inclined to smile, as they wear 
 their crowns of martyrdom, at the use of the 
 word " sacrifice " to indicate the giving up of a 
 day of pleasure or an hour of sleep. But we 
 
114 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 will let that pass. We will admit that it is a 
 great sacrifice today, amid the many calls of 
 our modern life, to attend church and to sup- 
 port the church. Then I want to ask, — what 
 of it.? It will be a bitter day for the city, for 
 humanity at large, when the word " sacrifice " 
 is erased from our vocabulary. We cannot 
 have anything worth while without making sac- 
 rifices for it. The man who is indifferent to- 
 ward the Father's house, who is tempted to 
 substitute anything, I do not care what it is, 
 for the church, will pay the penalty, as sure as 
 there is a God in the heavens, and the city in 
 which he lives will pay the penalty. 
 
 The civic crown which the poet wore in " In 
 Memoriam " was a " crown of thorns." 
 
 *' I wander 'd from the noisy town, 
 
 I found a wood with thorny boughs; 
 I took the thorns to bind my brows, 
 I wore them like a civic crown: 
 
 I met with scoffs, I met with scorns. 
 From youth and babe and hoary hairs: 
 They called me in the public squares 
 
 The fool that wears the crown of thorns: 
 
 They called me fool, they called me child : 
 
 I found an angel of the night; 
 
 The voice was low, the look was bright; 
 He looked upon my crown and smiled." 
 
AND CIVIC PKIDE 115 
 
 We must learn again that without the crown 
 of thorns there is no victory, without sacrifice 
 there is no salvation. The huge bulk of the 
 city, its masses of population, its smoking fac- 
 tories, all these are a source of weakness, unless 
 the spirit of sacrifice pervades the whole. 
 
 When I think of the perils which threaten the 
 city in our modern times I am not so concerned 
 about the alien. The man I fear is the native- 
 born, with his education and his refinement, with 
 his wealth, earned by the sweat of the alien's 
 brow and used to purchase all the apparatus 
 of pleasure; the man who uses the Lord's day 
 exclusively for his own enjoyment, who turns 
 his back upon the church which his fathers 
 toiled and sacrificed to give to the community ; 
 who treats his obligations, civic and religious, 
 with indifference and contempt. He is the man 
 to fear in our civilization. Upon him will rest 
 the punishment which the Lord God will visit 
 upon our modern cities. He will pay the price, 
 and he will pay it to the last drop of blood. 
 
 Again, on the personal side, the indifference 
 of the rich to civic duties, the selfish exercise 
 of personal rights, the gratification of the 
 senses in extravagance and luxury is one of the 
 most menacing perils of our modern times. 
 What is the cause of the restlessness of labor, 
 what is the cause of the deep-rooted hostility 
 between the classes.? What is the cause of the 
 
116 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ominous outbreaks between capital and labor? 
 It is not simply that men are obliged to work. 
 The normal man is only too glad to work and 
 to work hard for his daily bread. The average 
 man does not envy the rich. The trouble comes 
 through the enormous and reckless waste of 
 the rich in extravagant living. What grinds 
 the poor is the expenditure of the surplus 
 earned by labor for useless luxury in the very 
 face of a desperate and starving people. At a 
 banquet in London recently, sterlets, a kind of 
 small sturgeon, were served. These fish were 
 brought alive from Russia, and dropped alive 
 into the frying pan after the custom of the fine 
 restaurants of Moscow. They cost the giver 
 of the feast $200 apiece, and the entire cost of 
 the banquet was not less than $10,000. At 
 about the same time a poor beggar had thrown 
 himself into the Thames within sight of the 
 great restaurants. Another of the Embank- 
 ment wretches had been a witness of the trag- 
 edy. The following story came out in the ex- 
 amination of the man : 
 
 " His name was Sutherland, and he called him- 
 self a * general laborer.' He said he lived on the 
 Embankment: he slept there because he had no 
 money to pay for lodgings or food. ' Supposing 
 it is cold ? ' they asked him. He said he had to 
 put up with that. * How do you get on for food } * 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 117 
 
 was the coroner's question. Sutherland answered, 
 * I have to trust to Providence for that. If I 
 can't get it I have to go without.' He added that 
 he had been out of work for several weeks. Then 
 he told the story about the drowned man. Honey- 
 ball. At about a quarter to three in the morning 
 Honeyball came and sat next to him on a seat on 
 the Embankment, and complained that he had had 
 much trouble, and nothing whatever to eat on the 
 previous day, and was very hungry. Sutherland 
 knew something about hunger, and — perhaps with 
 an expert's contempt — observed, * Is that the only 
 day you have been without tommy? What about 
 me? I have had none since Wednesday.' Wed- 
 nesday was four days past, and it was true Suther- 
 land had eaten nothing for these four days, be- 
 cause he could not get anything to eat. Honey- 
 ball said that, anyhow, he was getting tired of it, 
 and should not put up with it much longer. He 
 would make a clean job and finish it. Sutherland, 
 with whom misery was commonplace, told him not 
 to talk nonsense; but Honeyball rose from his seat 
 and walked towards the steps of the Temple Pier. 
 Just at that moment a miserable woman who was 
 sitting dozing on one of the seats was taken ill, 
 and Sutherland went over to her. Then he walked 
 towards the steps, and saw Honeyball throw up 
 his arms and take a header into the river and dis- 
 appear. He gave the alarm. Honeyball was 
 eventually taken out dead. At half past five 
 Sutherland went once more in search of work. 
 For his class, he was a respectable man." 
 
118 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 I myself have seen these hideous wretches 
 from the Embankment come up to the Strand 
 in the morning to search the cans of refuse 
 awaiting removal on the sidewalk for a morsel 
 of food. It is indifference to this awful condi- 
 tion of life in a great, proud, Christian capital 
 which makes the trouble. And there will be in- 
 creasing trouble until the rich come to their 
 senses and realize that citizenship imposes du- 
 ties and responsibilities, the evasion of which 
 is a crime against God and humanity. The 
 right to reckless extravagance may be recog- 
 nized today under the law of democracy, but the 
 man who exercises that right in a spirit of in- 
 solent disregard for the sufferings of his fellow- 
 men, is digging the pit whicih will destroy him 
 and his class. 
 
 I am not pessimistic in regard to the future. 
 I believe that the time is not far distant when 
 thousands who are now indifferent to civic and 
 spiritual duty will realize to the full their re- 
 sponsibility. The Church will not stand sim- 
 ply upon the defensive. It will take the of- 
 fensive against those ancient evils, the saloon 
 and the brothel, which men have come to regard 
 through tradition and evil custom as possessing 
 civic rights. We shall learn in time that noth- 
 ing which makes for evil in the community, noth- 
 ing which exercises a corrupting and demoral- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 119 
 
 izing influence, has any rights which the 
 community as a whole is bound to respect. 
 
 There is one mistaken idea against which we 
 must constantly guard. We must cease to un- 
 derestimate the power and importance of the 
 individual in civic aff^airs. Every year great 
 opportunities are lost, great reforms go down 
 to defeat, because individuals say in discourage- 
 ment, " I can do nothing personally. My vote 
 or my influence does not count." The aggre- 
 gate of those who, in indiff^erence and in dis- 
 couragement, do not even exercise the franchise 
 is always sufficient to win any contest for the 
 cause of civic righteousness. Let us not be dis- 
 couraged because progress seems to be slow. 
 That is not the spirit of the great law of service 
 and freedom. Every act of real service ren- 
 dered, whether it be to the beggar in the street, 
 or whether it be a blow struck valiantly against 
 some ancient wrong, leads up to the final tri- 
 umph. Let us work then, patiently and 
 bravely, in the spirit of that fine poem of Sill's, 
 " The Reformer." 
 
 *' Before the monstrous wrong he sits him down, 
 
 One man against a stone- walled city of sin. 
 
 For centuries those walls have been a-building; 
 
 Smooth porphyry they slope, and coldly glass 
 
 The flying storm and wheeling sun. 
 
 No chink, no crevice lets the thinnest arrow in. 
 
laO CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 He fights alone, and from the cloudy ramparts 
 A thousand evil faces grin and jeer at him. 
 Let him lie down and die: What is the right. 
 And where is justice, in a world like this? 
 But by and by earth shakes herself impatient. 
 And down in one great roar of ruin, crash 
 Watch-tower and citadel and battlements. 
 When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier 
 Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly 
 stars." 
 
THE FOLLIES OF CIVIC ADOLESCENCE 
 
 A young man void of understanding. — Proverbs 7:7. 
 
 The period of growth which we call adoles- 
 cence is one which is peculiarly subject to temp- 
 tation and folly. As the author of Proverbs 
 puts it, many young men at this period are 
 " void of understanding." They are lacking 
 in judgment and common-sense. They do and 
 say silly things. They despise the wise counsel 
 of their elders. Evil at this time has a peculiar 
 glamour and attractiveness. The virtues seem 
 old-fashioned and slow. To be " tough," to go 
 in fast company, to drink a little, to be profane, 
 to commit the common vices, seems to them the 
 essence of manliness. I need not say that this 
 is an age of peculiar peril. Many a life is 
 ruined just at this point. It is true that many 
 " sow their wild oats " and settle down into so- 
 ber and successful men. But they must pay 
 the price. The price is an inherent physical 
 and moral weakness which is always a handicap, 
 which brings suffering and sorrow to others as 
 
 well as to themselves, and which is often the 
 121 
 
ISa CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 sad legacy which is handed down to children 
 and to children's children. 
 
 I think we may draw a very close analogy 
 between this critical period in the life of the in- 
 dividual and a similar period in the life of the 
 community. There are hundreds of communi- 
 ties in our country which are passing through 
 the critical stage of adolescence today. It is 
 characteristic, indeed, of the majority of our 
 American cities. The great prosperity of the 
 country has resulted in sudden and unprece- 
 dented growth. The towns are becoming cities, 
 and the smaller cities are very rapidly becoming 
 larger cities. The readjustments which must 
 be made in the social as well as in the individual 
 organism bring in their train peculiar and sub- 
 tle perils. The city is growing up. It is not 
 so many years ago that it had the atmosphere, 
 the consciousness, the propriety of the old-fash- 
 ioned village. Those were days of comparative 
 innocence, of careful restraint, of moral ob- 
 servance. We cannot keep our communities in 
 this stage. We do not want to keep them there. 
 The village had its peculiar disadvantages, its 
 provincialism, its petty vices, just as childhood 
 has its own limitations and vices. Growth is a 
 healthy sign, a sign of life and power. We re- 
 joice in the vigorous expansion of the life of 
 the community, but we must not be blind to the 
 perils of growth. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 123 
 
 There is danger in a lack of civic conscious- 
 ness and pride. Many of the individual faults 
 of the " young man void of understanding " 
 come from a lack of personal dignity. He is 
 almost a man, but he does not put aside child- 
 ish things. He has no vision of the opportuni- 
 ties and responsibilities of manhood. He does 
 foolish things, not so much because his heart is 
 evil, as because he has no sobering sense of what 
 life means. So it is with the communal life of 
 many a growing city. It has no sense of civic 
 responsibility, no broad vision of what a great 
 city should be. It is absorbed in trivial things. 
 It often takes its own government as a joke. 
 It does not consider wisely the needs of the 
 growing community and plan for the distant 
 future. It commits many of the follies of the 
 youth " devoid of understanding." Its policy 
 is not statesmanlike and broad. It considers 
 the claims not of the many but of the few. It 
 " takes care " of its friends, while the larger 
 public suffers. It works along lines of personal 
 interests. Those who " stand in with the ma- 
 chine " receive favors while great public im- 
 provements are neglected. It permits, for 
 example, the public streets to be torn up con- 
 stantly by private companies who inconvenience 
 the public and offer nothing in return. The 
 city gives away the most valuable franchises 
 without restrictions, and then its citizens go 
 
IM CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 into paroxysms of wholly unavailing rage be- 
 cause they are herded into street cars like cattle 
 and subjected to all kinds of inconveniences and 
 extortions. This is the characteristic improvi- 
 dence of adolescence. We smile in our superior 
 wisdom at the naive confidence of the young 
 man Moses in the " Vicar of Wakefield," who 
 exchanged his horse for a gross of green spec- 
 tacles, but his verdant and childlike innocence 
 was as nothing compared with the unsophisti- 
 cated confidence shown by our adolescent cities 
 in parting with priceless rights and privileges 
 without any compensation whatever. When we 
 utter our vain, childish complaints we are sim- 
 ply informed of the exceeding value of patience 
 as a virtue, coupled with an exhortation to 
 " step lively." 
 
 The city commits, like the young man " void 
 of understanding," gross offenses against 
 health, and, like him, it pays the inevitable pen- 
 alty. We allow unscrupulous men to build 
 disease-breeding tenements and then by private 
 charity we attempt to save the victims of tuber- 
 culosis. We spend immense sums of money for 
 water supplies and then permit the nearest 
 farm house to pollute the supply with the deadly 
 germs of typhoid fever. Like the prodigal 
 young man, the city spends its money lavishly, 
 but not wisely. We underpay our most impor- 
 tant and indispensable public servants, the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 125 
 
 teachers of our schools, and allow millions to 
 slip through our fingers into the clutches of 
 greedy and unscrupulous grafters. All these 
 are sins of youth. They bear a striking re- 
 semblance to the faults of the adolescent, " the 
 young man void of understanding." Very 
 much of the striking failure of our modern city 
 life comes, not from conscious wrong-doing, but 
 from the indifference, the lack of responsibility, 
 which is characteristic of youth. 
 
 The city solicitor of Haverhill, Massachu- 
 setts, in recounting the striking success of the 
 commission plan of government, the great sav- 
 ing of the city's money under the new regime, 
 makes this statement : " You will ask, ' How 
 did this happen? Did you have a crowd of 
 grafters who were robbing you ? ' I have never 
 seen anything which I could actually put my fin- 
 ger on in the way of stealing. It was not 
 stolen, it just went, just as any man's money 
 will leak out of his business, and he will assign, 
 if he does not attend to his business or if he has 
 no sort of business management." This de- 
 scribes exactly the average city government in 
 America ; and it is exactly the fault of a lazy, 
 good-natured, spendthrift youth. Give him 
 money and it goes. He does not know exactly 
 where — he just spends it. That is what we 
 have done in our American city governments. 
 We have put them into the hands of the ma- 
 
126 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 chine. And the machine has stood usually, 
 where it has not been actually bad and vicious, 
 for good-natured, shiftless incompetence. 
 "Well," some one may say, "what of it.? 
 What has all this to do with the church, with 
 religion.? " It has this to do with it. God has 
 laid upon us the responsibility of the city, just 
 as he lays upon the father and the mother the 
 responsibility for the growing child. These 
 things of which I have spoken are immoral. 
 It is just as wrong for a community to sin as 
 for an individual to sin. You would not be 
 indifferent if you had a boy " devoid of under- 
 standing," who was growing up to be a great, 
 idle, dissolute, vicious, spendthrift character. 
 You know that the habits of youth become fixed 
 in manhood. You would get down on your 
 knees and pray most fervently to God for the 
 salvation of that child. Did it ever occur to 
 you to pray as earnestly for the salvation of 
 your city.? Habit tends to become fixed in 
 municipal life as well as in individual life. It 
 is almost impossible to throw off the incubus of 
 bad government. There is nothing so hard as 
 to clean up the morals of a city after it has 
 grown up in the habit of evil doing. By a 
 strange kind of perverted psychology, evil 
 comes to seem good, or at least better than any 
 attempt at change. We have always had the 
 saloons, for example, and many good men come 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 1^7 
 
 to think that therefore we must always have 
 them. It is a bad habit fixed by immemorial 
 custom on the community, as the " old man of 
 the sea " was fixed upon the back of Sinbad, 
 until at last we grow resigned and think it inev- 
 itable. That is why this period in the life of 
 every city is so tremendously important. We 
 are forming our municipal habits. The danger 
 is everywhere that we shall form vicious, care- 
 less, extravagant, inartistic, unbusinesslike hab- 
 its. Our mistakes are perpetuated. If you 
 commit an architectural sin in building a pub- 
 lic building your folly is monumental and last- 
 ing. It stares at you and rebukes you when- 
 ever you see it. It is a false and jarring note, 
 and worse than that, it is a perpetual lesson 
 in bad taste to the whole community. So it is 
 with all forms of municipal evil. Dishonesty, 
 carelessness, extravagance, graft, in public life 
 perpetuate themselves. They are a moral les- 
 son which the young men are not slow to learn ; 
 they breed the same sins in business and private 
 life. Municipal dishonesty and immorality are 
 blows at the Church and at Christianity. 
 
 I have tried to show that there is in our young 
 and growing cities a great danger from a lack 
 of civic consciousness and pride. There is no 
 conscious civic dignity, no striving toward the 
 highest ideals of civic worth. The city blun- 
 ders along, like a " youth devoid of understand- 
 
1^8 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ing," making its government a jest, spending 
 its money foolishly, sinning against the great 
 fundamental commandments which underlie in- 
 dividual and public morality. 
 
 In every growing community there is danger 
 which comes from another source, a lack of 
 moral consciousness, a lowering of the standards 
 of righteousness and honor on the individual 
 and social sides of life. In every community 
 which outgrows the village life there comes into 
 being a " fast set." These people have inher- 
 ited, or acquired suddenly, great wealth. Go 
 back a generation or so and you find, perhaps, 
 some immigrant grandfather working in a cor- 
 ner grocery or in a little tannery or grog shop, 
 a man who by patient and unremitting industry 
 laid the foundation of the fortunes which these 
 people now enjoy. They proceed to form 
 themselves into a near-aristocracy, a sham, 
 veneered nobility, an exclusive, snobbish, imi- 
 tation of society. This sham society in its 
 general characteristics resembles strikingly the 
 youth " devoid of understanding." It pos- 
 sesses all the faults and none of the virtues of 
 adolescence. It sneers at the church and all 
 for which the church stands. It despises the 
 old-fashioned virtues of industry, sobriety, tem- 
 perance. This class is very effectively char- 
 acterized by one of the most brilliant of English 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 129 
 
 authoresses, as it appears when it crosses the 
 Atlantic and disports itself on British soil. 
 Marie Corelli says: 
 
 *' In Warwickshire where I reside, and in the 
 neighboring counties around, I could name cer- 
 tain Americans who, if they are not hunting or 
 horse racing, are gambling at bridge all day — 
 who are vulgar, illiterate and arrogant, and who 
 have not the slightest intelligent perception of any- 
 thing under the sun. They measure the world and 
 God himself by a money standard only, and as- 
 sert by their looks and manners their fixed belief 
 that they can buy honor itself for so much cash 
 down. Again, in smart society, as it is euphoni- 
 ously called, one comes across wealthy American 
 women who comport themselves with less consid- 
 eration and tact than domestic servants, whose 
 neglect of the simplest rules of courtesy is so 
 colossal that one blushes for their ignorance. I do 
 not like this sort of people, whether they be Amer- 
 icans or British, and I say so at once with frank- 
 ness and emphasis." 
 
 That this class of people does exist and is an 
 increasing class in all our growing American 
 cities no one can doubt. If these people simply 
 went their own way, gambled and dissipated 
 away their own money, and finally landed as 
 most of them ultimately do, in the divorce court 
 and the court of bankrupts, we might let them 
 
130 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 alone and quietly go our own way to our simple 
 forms of pleasure and our antiquated ideas of 
 morality. Unfortunately, however, these peo- 
 ple form an important and aggressive part of 
 our civic society. They taint the air. They 
 corrupt the youth. Their vicious and extrav- 
 agant habits, like all bad habits, tend to become 
 fixed in our civic life. It is astonishing to find 
 how many people are led away, if not actually 
 into this class, at least into an imitation of 
 their vices and bad manners. There are many 
 foolish women of good family and good breeding 
 who are fascinated by this kind of fast life and 
 are drawn into it as the moth is drawn into the 
 flame of the candle. This class sets up for the 
 community a standard of extravagance in liv- 
 ing which is wholly false and pernicious. The 
 old community ideals of righteousness and 
 economy and sobriety and Sabbath-keeping 
 break down under the attack. Young men 
 with small salaries are led into ajl sorts of dis- 
 honesty in order to " keep up with the proces- 
 sion." Men and women a few years ago could 
 enjoy simple things, they took their pleasures 
 simply, they read books, they had some higher 
 thoughts and aspirations. All this is now 
 voted slow. The church suffers, because the 
 last thing which this set desires to think about 
 is their own souls and the approaching judg- 
 ment. The sins of this class are the sins of the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 131 
 
 " youth devoid of understanding." They bum 
 the candle at both ends. They mistake a cheap 
 and tawdry pleasure for life and its great con- 
 cerns. They squander their God-given re- 
 sources in physical and spiritual dissipation. 
 What would an entire community be like if dom- 
 inated by these false and dangerous standards 
 of life ? Would you want to live in such a com- 
 munity.? Would you want your children to 
 grow up in it.? You could not live in it long, 
 because it would suffer the fate of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah. It would be blasted and shrivelled 
 by the fires of its own evil passions. Do you 
 want these standards to dominate and control 
 the life of the community in which you live.? 
 Then see to it that you take every opportunity 
 to repudiate them. See to it that you are not 
 in any way yourself deceived and tempted by 
 them. See to it that your growing children 
 are brought up upon the old-fashioned virtues 
 of industry and sobriety and the fear of God. 
 The intelligent, respectable Christian people of 
 every community have a great responsibility 
 in this matter. If the city is to be saved from 
 the follies and indiscretions and depravity of a 
 " youth devoid of understanding," then see to 
 it, men and women, that you keep yourselves 
 clean and near to God. Then see to it that 
 your ideals, and not base and destructive tenden- 
 cies prevail. We are to ask ourselves this ques- 
 
im CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 tion: Has the spiritual and intellectual growth 
 of our city, its growth in moral worth, in the 
 things which abide, been commensurate with its 
 growth in population and in wealth? It does 
 not take the keenness of the prophet to discern 
 certain undesirable tendencies which are creep- 
 ing into our political life. Let us beware how 
 we despise the virtues, the honesty, the 
 incorruptibility, the simplicity, of the days 
 which are past. You cannot build perma- 
 nent success upon any other foundation than 
 civic dignity and responsibility and morality. 
 What is a desirable growth for a city.'^ 
 Is it not that it may be a place of safety, 
 where the sanctity of the home is maintained, 
 a place wherein children may grow, aided by 
 educators, stimulated by high ideals, to full 
 and gracious and beautiful maturity, a place 
 in which wealth and power serve the great 
 causes of religion and morality, a place 
 where the people are happy and industrious 
 and prosperous, a place where poverty is 
 without a sting and wealth devoid of ostenta- 
 tion, a place where there is no aristocracy save 
 the aristocracy of worth, a place in which men 
 love God and follow in the footsteps of his Son 
 Jesus Christ, a community which grows nobly, 
 proudly, consciously toward the high ideals of 
 righteousness and faith? If that is your idea 
 of what a city ought to be, then say so, and say 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 133 
 
 so with emphasis. If that is your idea, see 
 that citizens who are worthy are elected to 
 municipal office, that the business of the city 
 may be conducted upon a high plane of service 
 for all and not for a few. If that is your idea 
 pray to Almighty God that he will save your 
 city from the sins of youth and direct in the 
 ways of righteousness and faith, and honor and 
 service. 
 
XI 
 
 A RIGHTEOUS MACHINE 
 
 And he said, "Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I 
 will speak but this once. Peradventure ten shall 6« 
 found there/' And he said, "I will not destroy it for 
 «en/'— Genesis 18:32. 
 
 Ten good men would have saved the city of 
 Sodom from destruction. Ten righteous souls 
 would have been leaven enough to have redeemed 
 the whole great evil mass from the threatening 
 doom. This story should be at once a warning 
 and an inspiration. We are always underesti- 
 mating the power and influence of the righteous 
 minority. We forget that God often uses the 
 most insignificant agencies to accomplish his 
 great ends. The sneer of the pessimist, as old 
 as Tacitus, echoed by Napoleon, " God is on 
 the side of the heaviest battalions," has been 
 proved false over and over again in history. 
 God is on the side of the right, and if the 
 wrong triumphs momentarily, its coming doom 
 is written in heaven and God uses what seem to 
 be the weakest and frailest instruments to bring 
 
 about its ruin. The man who fights alone, the 
 134 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 135 
 
 man with his back against the wall, with right 
 on his side, is the man who makes history. 
 David and his shepherd's sling, the handful of 
 heroes at Thermopylae, Luther at Worms, 
 Thomas a Becket — his blood staining the floor 
 of Canterbury, — Joan of Arc, Garrison in his 
 little printing office ; yes, and the Man of Naza- 
 reth with his crown of thorns and his nail- 
 pierced hands, such are the despised and hum- 
 ble agencies God uses to redeem the world from 
 its selfishness and lead the van of freedom. God 
 calls for the ten righteous men, the valiant, un- 
 daunted, righteous minority, and with them he 
 will redeem and regenerate any community. 
 This is the essential fact which we do not un- 
 derstand. The most discouraging thing about 
 all attempts at social and religious reform is 
 the apathy of the good men of the community. 
 For, mark you, the ten men whom God will use 
 must be valiant souls, not petty creatures; not 
 dead men; not a lot of frightened and silly 
 sheep; not men so timid and conservative that 
 they dare not say that their souls are their 
 own. 
 
 In every community there are not only ten 
 men, but actually a majority of righteous men, 
 but they are so used to being dominated and 
 overpowered by less scrupulous but more cour- 
 ageous men that they count for nothing. 
 What is the attitude of the average man in our 
 
136 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 American cities toward civic affairs? His at- 
 titude is an apathy, an indifference which is ab- 
 solutely appalling. If the Lord should come 
 to him and say, " Are you a righteous man ? 
 Will you be one of ten to stand for the best 
 things in your community, to strike a blow for 
 purity and honor? " he would say — " Well, 
 really, you must excuse me. I am so busy, and 
 it is all cut and dried. It's no use for me to 
 go to the caucus, and I am so busy, really what 
 is the use? Good-day." Would the Lord count 
 him among the ten? I think not. This is the 
 attitude of the average man, too busy, or too 
 indifferent, or too discouraged, or too lazy to 
 take any part in the government of his own city. 
 Why is interest essential? Because we live in a 
 democracy, because our cities are great fami- 
 lies, and they are good or bad as the people 
 make them. Because every man is equally re- 
 sponsible before God for the government of his 
 city. If we are to have righteous cities, there 
 is no method under heaven by which that end 
 may be attained except by the earnest efforts 
 of consecrated and devoted men. What makes 
 a successful business? The energy, the cour- 
 age, the faith, the hard work, which men put 
 into it. If a man came down to his office only 
 once a month, if he said, " What is the use in 
 trying to sell goods anyhow, the other fellow 
 sells more than I do ! " how long would his busi- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 137 
 
 ness last? How much success would he win? 
 It is the man who stays on the job, who is just 
 as interested and enthusiastic at five o'clock in 
 the afternoon as at eight o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, who neglects no detail of organization, who 
 takes an interest in every employee ; — that is 
 the business man who succeeds. 
 
 Now in the city we have a great business, 
 great not only in the economic and commercial 
 aspects, but in its social and moral aspects also. 
 A tremendous social force resides in the city, a 
 force which may destroy life or redeem it. It 
 may, like Sodom, grow so evil, so corrupt, so 
 utterly irremediably bad and vicious that it 
 is finally destroyed in the flames of wrath which 
 its own wickedness has engendered, or it may be 
 the glorious city of God, instinct with power, 
 splendid in service, developing grandly the lives 
 of all its children, shielding them from evil, edu- 
 cating them in all good things, ministering to 
 the sense of beauty, stimulating the best and 
 highest powers, shining like a beacon from its 
 hill top, the joy and inspiration of the whole 
 earth. Such was Jerusalem before it crucified 
 on its accursed hill the Redeemer of all the earth, 
 such was Venice before it was corrupted and 
 weakened by wealth and commercial prosperity, 
 such was Florence before it burned its prophets 
 and exiled its immortal genius, such was Rome 
 before civic depravity and unspeakable wicked- 
 
138 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ness corrupted its ancient virtue and destroyed 
 the courage of its iron legions. 
 
 How hard it is for us to understand that the 
 responsibility rests upon us for the great issues 
 of civic life or death. As never before in his- 
 tory the destiny of the city is in the hands of 
 its average citizen. How does he meet this ob- 
 ligation.'^ He is often not interested enough 
 in his own city and in its important affairs even 
 to vote. I was told of a young man, a gradu- 
 ate of our high school, a member of one of our 
 best families, who, when asked to register, re- 
 plied that he would not take the trouble to 
 register and vote if his own brother were run- 
 ning for office. That man is a traitor to the 
 best interests of his city and of the republic. 
 He ought to be subjected to fine and imprison- 
 ment. But the excuse is offered again, " What 
 is the use, when we are always beaten.?" My 
 answer is, I would go to the caucus and to the 
 polls and cast my vote for what I believe to be 
 the best interests of the community, if I were a 
 minority of one and all the rest of the city stood 
 against me. 
 
 The average man, the good man of the com- 
 munity claims that he stays away from cau- 
 causes because they are manipulated, because 
 some one has cut and dried the action in ad- 
 vance. This is simply an admission that the 
 enemies of good government are wiser and more 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 139 
 
 enterprising than the children of light. We 
 talk with righteous indignation about the evil 
 of machine politics. What we should denounce 
 is not the machine but the type of men who use 
 it. What is a machine ? Simply an instrument 
 by means of which men of vigor and ability get 
 things done. There is nothing wrong in that. 
 There is very much of good. God wants things 
 done, and he uses the great machinery of the 
 universe to get them done. There is no piety 
 in sitting down and waiting because things are 
 not as they should be. There is no virtue in 
 simply denouncing machine politicians because 
 they are more capable and determined and ef- 
 ficient than we are. How do they accomplish 
 their ends? By efficient organization. There 
 is no patent on organization. Why not organ- 
 ize the forces of righteousness as eff^ectively as 
 the forces of evil are organized ? Why not have 
 a righteous machine? And just as good a 
 machine as the unrighteous possess. It simply 
 means consecrated energy. It means the do- 
 ing, without money or hope of reward, the same 
 things which the practical politician does with 
 the material reward in view. If righteous men 
 are unwilling to do that, if they are so deter- 
 mined upon apathy and indiff^erence that they 
 will give no time or money, nor deny themselves 
 leisure and amusement for the cause of right- 
 eousness in civic affairs, why let us say so, and 
 
140 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 turn the city over to our masters, the selfish 
 and ambitious men who are willing to put in the 
 time and the energy. It must be made a mat- 
 ter of patriotism. Are we such degenerate sons 
 of the men who gave their blood freely that the 
 nation might live that we are unwilling to do 
 anything today? It must be made a matter of 
 religious conviction and faith. What higher 
 cause can there be than the growth of the com- 
 munity in righteousness and honor and power? 
 We pass away, but the city lives on, bearing 
 the name we give it, of honor or of shame. The 
 fate of the generations is bound up in it. The 
 great experiment of human destiny is being tried 
 here. Can a Christian civilization survive? Is 
 it possible for the forces of honor and sacrifice 
 and brotherliness to conquer the force of self- 
 ishness and good? It is Christ against the 
 brute. It is evolution against the pull of the 
 beast. But what, practically, can be done? 
 The average man may admit, he probably does 
 admit, all this, the importance of the issues, 
 the gravity of the situation, but still he asks 
 forlornly, " How can I do anything? " He is 
 still oppressed by the sense of helplessness, he 
 is alone against a subtle, powerful, organized 
 foe. The obvious reply, it seems to me again, 
 is, organize. Would it be impossible to find a 
 few, the scriptural ten, let us say, in each pre- 
 cinct of the city, who would get together, ear- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 141 
 
 nest, single-hearted, loyal Christian men from 
 all the churches, who should form a good gov- 
 ernment club, and work together, for the wel- 
 fare of the city? Nothing of any importance 
 is accomplished in this world without organiza- 
 tion. Business is organized. What sort of a 
 factory would it be in which every man should 
 work without direction, on his own initiative? 
 How long could a railroad be managed without 
 the coordination of every part to the whole? 
 Religion is organized. The first thing Jesus 
 Christ did was to organize his work. 
 He formed at once an organization of men for 
 the service of his kingdom. How many victo- 
 ries would an army win if there were no organ- 
 ization into companies and regiments? The 
 reason for the failure of good men who are in- 
 terested in civic righteousness is perfectly plain. 
 Each man has simply thought and acted on his 
 own initiative. The great current of righteous 
 feeling, of Christian sentiment, has been di- 
 verted into a thousand feeble trickling rills, in- 
 stead of rolling on in one stream, an irresistible 
 force. It is no wonder good men feel discour- 
 aged. To go to the caucus or to the polls with- 
 out organization is like fighting a battle in the 
 fog without sight of one's comrades. You love 
 your city. You wish it well governed. You 
 know that your neighbor has similar sentiments. 
 But there is no driving power behind this senti- 
 
142 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 ment. It is like an intangible, delicate perfume. 
 But what you want is driving power, the 
 strength of the 10,000 horse power engine. 
 
 What would such a good government club 
 do.? It would, first of all, inform itself accu- 
 rately in regard to all civic problems. The 
 city is the business of the citizens, but how many 
 know with anything like the accuracy with which 
 they know their own business, the affairs of the 
 city, its financial status, the details of its gov- 
 ernment, the character of the men in authority .^^ 
 How many citizens have read the city chi^rter, 
 and know what powers it grants, and what it 
 withholds.? How many have formed an opinion 
 upon the commission plan of government or 
 even know what it is.? You are an equal part- 
 ner in a great business and it is your duty to 
 know accurately the details of that business. 
 Again, such a club could say to existing par- 
 ties, " You must nominate for office only those 
 men whose character is above reproach, whose 
 ability is unquestioned, who will administer the 
 affairs of the city strictly for the public good. 
 We will use all the influence we possess to see 
 such men nominated and elected and we will 
 oppose any man unfit for office with all our 
 strength, regardless of party. The motive 
 power of such an organization would be personal 
 interest in good government, patriotism, and if 
 men can be found in times of stress to die for 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 143 
 
 the country, I do not see why in times of peace, 
 men cannot be found who will live and work for 
 their country. 
 
 It all resolves itself ultimately into a ques- 
 tion of consecrated personality. The American 
 citizen is absorbed in his business, he is pushing 
 his own interests. He has not yet reached an 
 understanding of what the city really is and 
 what it demands. He cannot understand that 
 his obligation is any broader than his own home 
 or his own club or his own business office. In 
 the old days the burghers were drawn together 
 by a sense of common danger. The city walls 
 shut the citizen in, and he knew that the time 
 might come when every man would be needed 
 on the walls, when famine and plague and the 
 desperate assaults of the foe would call for the 
 last reserves of courage and loyalty and faith. 
 In the Middle Ages civic consciousness and pride 
 drew the citizens together and found expression 
 in those glorious monuments of Gothic archi- 
 tecture which were built by the labor of every 
 citizen, upon whose growing walls men and 
 women alike toiled, and whose heaven- reaching 
 spires symbolized the faith and aspiration of the 
 whole community. What will draw the citizens 
 of the modern city together with a common pur- 
 pose? What but a deepening religious con- 
 sciousness and a higher loyalty to Jesus, the 
 leader of humanity.? 
 
144 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 Every day the problems of civilization in- 
 crease in complexity. It is coming to be an 
 impossibility to live for one's self alone. A 
 thousand common interests draw men together. 
 We cannot live in the city of the future unless 
 we are prepared to recognize and meet our re- 
 sponsibility. Many cities are turning hope- 
 fully to the commission plan of government. 
 But the solution of difficulties is not to be found 
 in the laws of economics nor in schemes of gov- 
 ernment, but in consecrated, Christ-filled lives. 
 The giving to the city of what is most valuable, 
 personality, that is the demand. The merging 
 of self in the larger good. A service like that 
 which was given to the city of New York, stead- 
 ily, faithfully, without ostentation, by such a 
 man as Richard Watson Gilder. 
 
 " Heart of a hero in a poet's frame, 
 Soul of a soldier in a body frail, — 
 Thine was the courage clear that did not quail, 
 Before the giant Champions of Shame, 
 Who wrought dishonor to the city's name: 
 And thine the vision of the Holy Grail, 
 Of love revealed through music's lucid veil. 
 Filling thy life with song and heavenly flame. 
 Pure was the light that lit thy glowing eye. 
 Strong was the faith that held thy simple creed. 
 Thou lea vest two great gifts that will not die — 
 Amid the city's noise, thy lyric cry! 
 Amid the city's strife, thy noble deed ! " 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 145 
 
 Such is the responsibility of the average man, 
 amid the cares of business, the exacting routine 
 of professional life! To recognize the claims 
 of brotherhood, to accept all men, high or low, 
 as sharers in the city's life, to take up the bur- 
 den of participation in the government of the 
 city, to energize constantly for the enlighten- 
 ment and betterment of the city. The doing 
 of it, finally, with the highest and most unself- 
 ish ends in view. This is the task before the 
 average man. And such men working together, 
 filled with faith and courage, God will use for 
 the undoing of evil, for the coming triumph of 
 righteousness and love. 
 
XII 
 
 THE CITY OF FRIENDS 
 
 I have called you friends. — John 15: 15. 
 
 " I dreamed that I saw a new City of 
 Friends." So sang Whitman, the modern poet 
 of Democracy. It was a splendid dream, but 
 you must go back for its inspiration to another 
 dreamer of great dreams and splendid visions, 
 Jesus of Nazareth. You must go back to the 
 quiet of that upper chamber at Jerusalem in 
 which Jesus had gathered his disciples for the 
 last time. " I have called you friends." Out 
 of the silence came the steady voice of the Mas- 
 ter. " No longer servants." " I have called 
 you friends." The words were revolutionary. 
 They struck a new note in human destiny. They 
 enunciated for the first time in history the 
 principle that apparently radical differences 
 in human temperament and character are sub- 
 ordinate to what is common in the heritance of 
 humanity. The fatherhood of God does not 
 make men equal, but it does make them of one 
 
 blood, it is the unifying principle which binds 
 146 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 147 
 
 them together as a race. Mightier than all dif- 
 ferences, stronger than all prejudices and dis- 
 tinctions, is the bond which unites men as sons 
 of a common father, which imposes an obliga- 
 tion of mutual understanding and sympathy. 
 Jesus had no desire to reduce men to a dead 
 level of uniformity. No one knew better than 
 he the heights and the depths of human char- 
 acter, that wide range of diversity of gifts, 
 which adds immeasurably to the significance of 
 life. He taught that the gifts of each were to 
 be used for the redemption and development of 
 all. Life is to be lived not on a basis of hos- 
 tility and suspicion and competition, but on a 
 basis of mutual understanding, of cooperation, 
 of service and friendship. This is the great 
 gospel of friendship which circled the world with 
 light, that men are to be friends, that the an- 
 cient barriers of hatred, the old divisions of 
 class and sect, the old distinction of Jew and 
 Gentile, bond and free, are to be broken down 
 and the human race, the whole world over, is to 
 be united in the holy bonds of friendship. This 
 is the essence of his gospel and he sealed it with 
 his blood. He, the highest of the race, its con- 
 summate flower, he the divine master of men, 
 died that he might demonstrate his everlasting 
 friendship for the lowest and meanest. 
 ** The friend of sinners, yes *tis he 
 With garments dyed on Calvary.** 
 
148 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 A city of friends ! It reveals the keenness 
 and the daring of the poet's vision, that he 
 should apply this principle of Jesus to the city. 
 The practical man will say at once, " Oh, no ! 
 In the country, in the village, perhaps, where 
 life moves leisurely and calmly like the slow 
 river between the meadow banks, friendship on 
 a general scale, acquaintance, at least, may be 
 possible. But not in that maelstrom of life, the 
 city. Not in the city with its myriads of peo- 
 ple, stung to incessant action by the lash of ne- 
 cessity; not in the city with its bitter com- 
 petition, where the moments are precious and 
 time means bread for hungry mouths ; not in 
 the city where the very streets cry ' haste,' and 
 men are keyed to the highest tension which the 
 straining nerves can bear. A city of friends.'' 
 That is impossible. The city is splendid but 
 it is cruel. No, it is a beautiful dream, but it 
 cannot be." And yet I dare to say, in the name 
 of Him who died for the city, without the city 
 walls, that it must be and shall be. A City of 
 Friends ! It is based upon the Master's defini- 
 tion of life. It is the ultimate definition. You 
 cannot add to it nor subtract from it, and it is 
 universally applicable. You cannot apply it 
 in the country and not in the city. The city 
 is life at its highest point of development, life 
 at full flood, life in its supreme expression. 
 The city then is the final test of civilization 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 149 
 
 and Christianity. The city must become the 
 City of Friends; it must attain to this ideal 
 of the Master's promise and the poet's dream, 
 or life itself is a failure. 
 
 Let us define what we mean by the new City 
 of Friends. We do not mean that every indi- 
 vidual, even in the most superficial sense, can 
 know every other individual and establish rela- 
 tions of personal intimacy. That would be 
 neither possible nor desirable. It is impossible 
 to reproduce the social conditions of a village in 
 a great city. What must be done first of all 
 is to change the attitude of the people of the 
 city toward the city itself, from indifference and 
 selfishness, to interest and friendliness. We 
 must create the atmosphere of friendliness, of 
 conscious participation in the city's life. This 
 is needed beyond all things else in our American 
 cities today. Our cities have no self-conscious- 
 ness, no civic pride. The average citizen re- 
 gards his city simply as a convenient place to 
 eat and sleep and do business. He has con- 
 sidered it not in relation to his fellowmen, to his 
 neighbors, but solely as it has affected his own 
 interests. He has used the city as a workman 
 uses a tool and then flings it down. He has not 
 even interested himself enough to vote, when 
 the city has summoned him to the most sacred 
 duty of citizenship. He has too often calmly 
 permitted the worst, the most selfish men in 
 
150 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 the city to govern it, to exploit its resources, 
 to mismanage its schools, to monopolize its fran- 
 chises, and he has grumbled only when these 
 modern bandits have held him up and forced 
 him to pay tribute. He would even rather pay 
 tribute than to go to the trouble of taking any 
 active and efficient part in the management of 
 the community. He has felt no sense of obli- 
 gation and responsibility. The conception of 
 a city as an entity, a personality, a city of 
 friends, a brotherhood, fulfilling a great des- 
 tiny in the earth, working splendidly toward 
 the realization of the great ends of civilization, 
 fulfilling the commands of Jesus, realizing the 
 purposes of God, this apparently has never en- 
 tered his head. 
 
 We must destroy, root and branch, this ut- 
 terly unsocial and unchristian conception of 
 the city. It is a positively immoral concep- 
 tion. It is a denial of a divinely imposed re- 
 sponsibility. We must cease to think of the 
 city in terms of brick and mortar, of yards of 
 cloth and tons of steel. We must think of it 
 instead in terms of flesh and blood, of immortal 
 souls. Let us have improved machinery by all 
 means for our city government, but we shall be 
 bitterly disappointed if we expect any decisive 
 results from changes in the form of government 
 alone. The human factor is the decisive factor. 
 You must have men who are vitally interested 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 151 
 
 in the city, men who regard life as a divine 
 thing, who listen to the beating of the city's 
 mighty heart, who are sensitive to every phase 
 of its mysterious being. We must go back to 
 mediaeval days for examples of such a passion- 
 ate love and devotion to the city. We must 
 go back to the days when, in the cities of France 
 — ' Chartres, Amiens, Rouen — the great ca- 
 thedrals were built, which stand, in the words of 
 an old writer, " like royal standards of vic- 
 tory." Who built these glorious structures.'^ 
 Not the church, not the ecclesiastics, but the 
 people. Men and women harnessed themselves 
 into the carts which drew the stones. They 
 worked in storm and sunshine on the rising 
 walls, in order that the complete structure 
 might fitly witness to the city's pride and the 
 city's worth. 
 
 The modern city of friends must have the 
 same self-consciousness, the same civic pride, 
 the same passion for expression in service, but 
 we want it not as a desire for beautiful buildings 
 alone, but for the development in the city of a 
 beautiful and symmetrical and holy living. We 
 want the life of every man and woman built 
 into a city of righteousness, a city of friends, 
 invincible and splendid. In the new city of 
 friends, all false distinctions of class and wealth 
 must disappear, but new and finer distinctions 
 will arise. There will be no aristocracy of 
 
16a CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 wealth and pride and ostentation, but there will 
 be a new aristocracy of worth, of service. The 
 men who will be most highly honored will be 
 those who have done the most faithful service. 
 The men who will wear the badge of civic honor 
 will be those who meet the highest test of friend- 
 ship, which is not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister. But amid all distinctions, there must 
 run the spirit of consideration and thoughtful- 
 ness and courtesy. This spirit must be devel- 
 oped between the buyer of goods in the stores 
 and the seller, the teacher and the pupil, the 
 railroad employee and the traveling public, the 
 business man and his subordinates, the native 
 born and the alien. We see this spirit already 
 in the movement against the sweatshop, the 
 early buying of Christmas gifts, the broaden- 
 ing of the spirit of Christian sympathy toward 
 the alien. This must go on until all the old 
 hateful conditions are overcome by the forces 
 of Christian friendship and love. 
 
 There are some definite things which the city 
 of friends will do when it has attained self-con- 
 sciousness, when it has aroused the devotion and 
 pride of the best citizenship. For one thing, I 
 believe that the city of friends will make an ef- 
 fectual protest against war. The city has 
 always borne the heaviest burdens and experi- 
 enced the keenest sorrow in times of war. Fam- 
 ine and pestilence and massacre have desolated 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 153 
 
 its streets and destroyed its people. We of 
 the great republic of the West like to repeat 
 in our superior virtue the quartrain of the poet, 
 
 ** God said, * I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more. 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor.' " 
 
 But let me tell you that God is not half so 
 tired of kings as He is of war. It is nineteen 
 hundred years since His Son, the Prince of 
 Peace, was born, and still the Christian nations 
 stand with harness on, girded for battle, and 
 still the red ensigns of defiance fly from con- 
 stantly augmenting hostile fleets, and still the 
 morning brings to the ear of God the cry of 
 the poor, upon whom falls the burden of all 
 this useless armament. The time will come 
 when the cities will say. Not one penny more 
 shall be spent for war or for the preparation 
 for war in a Christian land. We need it all 
 for the education of our children, for the ameli- 
 oration of conditions of poverty and sickness, 
 for the advancement of science, for the spread 
 of the gospel of peace. When the city says 
 that, war will cease, for the city furnishes the 
 wealth which builds the fleets and maintains the 
 armies, it furnishes the men whose lives are sac- 
 rificed in battle, and it furnishes the widows and 
 orphans who must be supported at the public 
 
164 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 charge. When the cities say, We are cities of 
 friends, and, more than that, the people of all 
 the cities of all the earth are our friends and 
 brothers, and never again will we slay our 
 friends and our brothers in battle, then the 
 Kingdom of God will dawn upon an earth weary 
 of slaughter. When that time comes there will 
 be a marvellous expansion of all the activities 
 of life in cities. Released from the haunting 
 fear of war, enriched by the gains of unbroken 
 peace, men will go forward to new and un- 
 dreamed of triumphs in art and science. 
 
 There will be a new and a broader theory of 
 education in the City of Friends. Necessarily 
 under the present conditions we must educate 
 hastily and en masse. There is an imperative 
 demand that the child shall be fitted as soon 
 as possible to earn a livelihood. Thousands 
 of children must leave the school with only a 
 hurried and an incomplete preparation. The 
 new conception of a city of friends will entirely 
 change our point of view. The city will not 
 hesitate to provide any sum of money, any 
 teaching force necessary to carry out the 
 broadest possible conception of education, 
 which is the complete training of every indi- 
 vidual for the highest service, in accordance 
 with personal inclination and capacity. The 
 city will approach every child born within its 
 circumference as a child of God, and it will try 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 165 
 
 by individual attention to discover what God 
 intended that child to be and to do. Then, 
 regardless of time and expense, it will give that 
 child the fullest possible training, not for self- 
 ish gratification, not simply for money making, 
 but for the highest service to society, the most 
 efficient performance of the individual task. 
 This may be a dream, but it is based upon the 
 dream of Jesus and the dream of the poet. 
 The conception of friendship means to the high- 
 est degree obligation. If the city has any ob- 
 ligation to the child, it has a complete obliga- 
 tion. This obligation implies an understand- 
 ing of character and needs, a service which is 
 not fragmentary, but perfect and entire. 
 
 The child must also be taught its obligations 
 to the city, to society. Friendship is a mu- 
 tual obligation. It implies giving as well as 
 receiving. Friendship is not a charity to be 
 bestowed patronizingly upon the weak. The 
 child even now, in our schools must not be al- 
 lowed to suppose that he is being educated at 
 the public expense without obligation on his 
 part. He should be taught with the strongest 
 emphasis that he has received freely and he 
 must give freely. He is the city's ward. The 
 city is training him not because he so richly 
 deserves the favor, but because the city needs 
 him, because it is anxiously looking to the com- 
 ing generations for a larger development of 
 
156 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 its life, a loftier patriotism, a more splendid 
 and sacrificial service. That, it seems to me, 
 will be the ideal of education in the City of 
 Friends: the symmetrical and complete devel- 
 opment of individual talent; the object, char- 
 acter and service. 
 
 What is the place finally of the church in the 
 new City of Friends.? It will be a place of 
 commanding influence and power. I know that 
 the church must have its forms and its creeds. 
 But the time has fully come when it must trans- 
 late all its creeds into terms of service. It 
 must not stand for negative virtues, nor for in- 
 tellectual assent only, even to the most pro- 
 found truths. It must demonstrate in the life 
 of the city the principles of the great gospel 
 of friendship. It has a tremendous pent-up 
 potentiality of power. It must send out this 
 power in life-giving streams of mercy and help- 
 fulness. If it preaches friendliness as the es- 
 sence of its gospel, it must be friendly. I do 
 not know when the great evils of the city, its 
 arrogance, its bitterness, its poverty, its mis- 
 ery, its unequal conditions, its cruelty to the 
 weak, its heartlessness toward the heavy-laden, 
 will be overcome, but I know that they will be 
 conquered. The church has no business to 
 doubt it for an instant. If it does, it doubts 
 Jesus and the cross on which he died for the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 157 
 
 redemption of the world. The church in the 
 city can never rest until it has exhausted every 
 possible effort to put into actual practice the 
 great gospel of friendship. The church can 
 never rest until it has made the effort with 
 intelligence and fervid zeal to lift every down- 
 trodden and broken-hearted and defeated life 
 up to the highest possible level of the freedom 
 of the sons of God. 
 
 There are great reservoirs of sympathy and 
 friendliness in the churches of every city which 
 are impeded by conventions, by sheer dumbness 
 and inability to find expression. I believe that 
 the time will come when this great unused de- 
 posit of friendliness will be made available, 
 when the sympathy of the church will make it- 
 self definitely felt. I think that the time will 
 come when, without intrusion, every stranger 
 who comes into a city, whatever his rank or so- 
 cial standing, will receive a Christian welcome 
 in the name of the united church of Jesus 
 Christ. I believe that the time will come when 
 the young man and the young woman coming 
 to a city friendless and unknown will be greeted 
 by the outstretched arms of the white figure 
 of the Christ, rather than by the luring smile 
 of the devil of temptation and the flaring en- 
 ticement of the street ; when all the resources 
 of Christian righteousness and Christian love 
 
168 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 shall be exerted to protect and to welcome 
 every lonely and homesick child of God who 
 enters the precincts of the city. 
 
 The task which I have outlined is not as dif- 
 ficult as it may seem. Humanity has not been 
 living through these Christian centuries quite 
 for nothing. All the forces necessary for the 
 city's redemption are in being. We need only 
 to quicken and stimulate and enlarge the forces 
 already at work. It is a question of ef- 
 ficiency, of awaking the souls of men to the 
 divine opportunity. The only reason why the 
 city of today is not the city of friends is be- 
 cause the marching columns of humanity have 
 halted upon the way. The army has en- 
 camped in the valley instead of on the heights. 
 We have seen the goal, but we have not had the 
 courage and the faith to reach it. But others 
 will take up the march, and the victory is sure. 
 The City of Friends is the shining City of God 
 which is set upon a hill and cannot be hid. 
 When men lift up their eyes to heaven to pray, 
 they must see it, and seeing they will long for 
 it, and longing for it, they will one day 
 possess it. 
 
XIII 
 THE CITY AND THE NATION 
 
 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for 
 Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness 
 thereof go forth a* brightness, and the salvation there- 
 of as a lam,p that hurneth. And the Oentiles shall see 
 thy brightness, and ail kings thy glory: and thou shait 
 be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord 
 shall name. — Isaiah 62:1-2, 
 
 History tells us that it is now nearly three 
 centuries since the Pilgrim fathers crossed the 
 stormy Atlantic and took possession of a new 
 land. The passage of time is no indication 
 of the marvellous changes which have been 
 wrought on this continent, since the landing at 
 Plymouth. I do not refer simply to the prog- 
 ress in material science which has altered the 
 face of the world, but to revolutionary changes 
 in conditions of life. The American colonies 
 were not, even after the revolution, a nation. 
 The problems which confronted society were 
 not even sectional. They were provincial, 
 parochial, individualistic. The most signifi- 
 cant thing which has been accomplished during 
 
 these centuries is the acquisition of a national 
 159 
 
160 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 consciousness. It is a sacred and an unspeak- 
 ably precious possession. A million of men 
 gave their blood that it might be cemented by 
 sacrifice. Under the providence of God the mir- 
 acle has been accomplished. 
 
 The most polyglot people on the face of the 
 earth has become a free nation with a national 
 consciousness keener and stronger than the 
 homogeneous nations of Europe can boast. 
 For good or for ill, with an influence upon the 
 world daily growing stronger and destined to be 
 decisive, we are a nation. Some sparks of sec- 
 tionalism, some local jealousies, may smoulder 
 still, but we know that North and South, East 
 and West, we are all one, and we must stand or 
 fall together. 
 
 We cannot have a national consciousness, 
 we cannot be a homogeneous people without 
 developing at the same time a national charac- 
 ter. Every observer knows that the sectional 
 characteristics which once differentiated the 
 New Englander, the Southerner, the Westerner, 
 are disappearing. There is less difference to- 
 day in dialect, in habits of mind, between the 
 people living in the extreme east and west of 
 our great domain, than exists in England be- 
 tween the farmer of Cumberland and the fisher- 
 man of Cornwall. The welding together of the 
 people, this nationalizing temper, must inevit- 
 ably produce a national character. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 161 
 
 The key to our national consciousness and 
 to our rapidly developing national character 
 is the city. Civic consciousness and civic char- 
 acter will dominate the nation. The whole 
 nation is fast becoming urban. It is not sim- 
 ply a matter of the marvellous increase of ur- 
 ban population, the indraft of the city, which 
 draws the population from the country to its 
 vortex. The tide, not of numbers merely, but 
 of commanding and preponderating influence, 
 is setting back strongly from the country to 
 the city. 
 
 The distinctively rural type is destined prac- 
 tically to disappear. The next generation of 
 farmers will be largely city bred, university 
 trained men, who will work the land scientific- 
 ally and whose sympathies and ideals will be 
 urban rather than rural. Rapid transporta- 
 tion by trolley and automobile is constantly 
 bringing city and country together. 
 
 Mighty economic forces are centralizing the 
 life of the people, fusing and blending them 
 together. The dominant, controlling note is 
 that of the city. Truly, in the phrase of Je- 
 sus, the American city is a city " which is set 
 upon a hill which cannot be hid." Its influence 
 is rapidly coming to be decisive in the political, 
 the economic, the social life of the nation. 
 What the city is today, the nation will be to- 
 morrow. The great battle of democracy will 
 
162 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 be fought in this arena. The destiny of Amer- 
 ica will be decided in the city streets, perhaps 
 even the destiny of the world will depend upon 
 the civic commonwealths of America, more po- 
 tent even, in their influence upon modem life, 
 than the ancient civic republics of Italy upon 
 mediaeval life and character. 
 
 There are two broad lines along which civic 
 consciousness and civic character should, I be- 
 lieve, develop. In each of these movements the 
 reflex influence upon the nation must be pro- 
 found and perhaps decisive. These lines of de- 
 velopment may at first seem to be opposite and 
 mutually exclusive, but I think that they will 
 both be found to be fundamental and absolutely 
 essential to our civic welfare and progress. I 
 shall call them the development of individual 
 responsibility and the suppression of exclusive 
 individual privilege. 
 
 The safety of the city, the safety of the re- 
 public depends upon the sense of responsibility 
 which is felt by all good citizens, in govern- 
 ment. I know that it sounds like Pharisaism 
 to talk about the " best people " in the com- 
 munity, and I use the term with hesitation. I 
 do not draw any religious or social line. But 
 everybody knows that there is a line between 
 the good and the evil, and there is no reason 
 why it should not be, drawn in government as 
 well as in ethics. There is a great evil class in 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 163 
 
 every community. Those who compose it are 
 not the best people in any sense of the word. 
 There is another class of honest, upright peo- 
 ple with consciences and ideals who are trying 
 to live respectably and honestly, who have only 
 the welfare of the community at heart. They 
 are the " best people," and everybody knows 
 it. It is not undemocratic to make such a dis- 
 tinction. These people have not, as a class, 
 concerned themselves greatly in the self-govern- 
 ment of our cities. They have been too busy 
 about their own affairs, too diligently con- 
 cerned in the building up of homes and fortunes, 
 Lv care very much about the government of 
 the city, so long as it did not immediately 
 touch them. In other words, they have forgot- 
 ten and neglected the fundamental responsibil- 
 ities of democracy. The result has been the 
 corruption of our American cities. The gov- 
 ernment of these cities has been taken over by 
 men with low standards of morality, without 
 conscience, without patriotism, who have ex- 
 ploited the city for their own gain. We have 
 developed in America a type of boss, of ward 
 politician, venial, corrupt, astute, cunning, im- 
 moral, and dangerous as a snake in the grass. 
 With fatuous unconcern, with self-satisfied in- 
 difference we have turned over the government 
 of many of our cities to this creature. 
 
 An English writer long conversant with 
 
164 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 American affairs declares : " The problem of 
 New York, in short the problem which confronts 
 now more than ever the whole American peo- 
 ple, is how to restore, how to reassume, how to 
 make workable and effective, self-government." 
 There is no possible way in which this can be 
 done except by personal initiative, by the sac- 
 rifice of personal inclination, and the giving of 
 personal attention to the problem. The great 
 sin of America today is indifference. It runs 
 through all our communal life; indifference to 
 the church, indifference to government, indif- 
 ference to the school, indifference to the home. 
 It is a part of that selfishness which is charac- 
 teristic of our modern life. We do what pleases 
 us, what fills our purse, what gives us individual 
 enjoyment, what employs our talents in the 
 material world, with extraordinary skill and 
 efficiency. 
 
 We have failed to develop a sense of individ- 
 ual personal concern and responsibility for any 
 task which does not contribute immediately 
 to our pleasure or to our advantage. We 
 have come to believe that we can buy any- 
 thing, if we pay the price. We have yet to 
 learn that there are some things which are not, 
 for sale in any market place. Honor, justice, 
 righteousness, the service which runs into self- 
 sacrifice, these things cannot be bought and 
 paid for. We have yet to learn that self-gov- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 165 
 
 emment means the giving of self, the sacrifice 
 of self. Government is not automatic and self- 
 perpetuating. It is concerned not with laws 
 and commodities simply, but with life. It is 
 the expression of life. It takes on inevitably 
 the color of life, the character of life. To se- 
 cure good government requires the expenditure 
 of time and thought and energy. It requires 
 organization. You cannot go away and leave 
 it and attend to your own concerns and your 
 own pleasures exclusively and find it when you 
 come back. The evil forces of the city are 
 always lurking in the background ready to seize 
 it when you turn away, ready to steal it, or 
 even to assault you and take it by force. The 
 price of civic liberty is always eternal vigilance, 
 constant and unremitting labor. If the fol*ces 
 of righteousness and law and order are unwill- 
 ing to expend the energy necessary, then the 
 city will pass inevitably to the control of those 
 who are always ready to toil and to sacrifice to 
 obtain the prize. 
 
 There is no way in which the development of 
 individual initiative can come about except 
 through what amounts to a revival of the sense 
 of personal responsibility. A revival, I mean, 
 in the genuine religious sense. We must re- 
 pent of our sins of indiff^erence. Our con- 
 sciences must be awakened. We must learn to 
 perform our civic duties because we are im- 
 
166 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 pelled from within by a high sense of honor 
 and patriotism. No machinery which was ever 
 invented can do it for us. All devices of direct 
 primaries and the referendum are absolutely 
 in vain, unless the sense of duty is awake in a 
 man's soul. The unit of political freedom is 
 not the ballot box, but the man whose duty it 
 is to deposit his ballot, and all reforms must 
 begin with him. You must go down to the bed- 
 rock of personality, and upon that foundation 
 the city and the nation will stand or fall. 
 
 The first need of the city is the development 
 of individual responsibility. The second need 
 is the suppression of individuality when it finds 
 expression in the demand for exclusive rights. 
 Our civilization has become immensely compli- 
 cated, and as life grows complicated it becomes 
 increasingly difficult to govern. The ancient 
 civilizations fell of their own weight. Social 
 justice for all classes became impossible, and 
 decay inevitably followed. It is no simple or 
 easy task which the city has set before it in our 
 day. The great problem is to secure equal 
 rights for all under the administration of law 
 and order and a firm government. The most 
 serious matter which concerns the city is the 
 position of industry, the fair adjustment of the 
 relations between the workman and his em- 
 ployer. I do not know, and I do not care to 
 predict, what the outcome of the struggle be- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 167 
 
 tween industry and capital will be. One thing 
 I do know, the struggle on both sides must be 
 conducted fairly and honorably and in accor- 
 dance with the laws of the Commonwealth. If 
 the employer, by superior wealth and cunning 
 has secured privileges which do not belong to 
 him; if, on the other hand, the laborer is de- 
 nied rights and privileges which should in jus- 
 tice belong to him, the struggle to divest the 
 one of his unjust privileges and to secure for 
 the other his inalienable rights must be con- 
 ducted in accordance with those methods of pro- 
 cedure which have always obtained among free 
 people. The people, the majority of the peo- 
 ple must be persuaded. They must decree by 
 due process of legislation what is just and 
 equitable for all parties concerned. Anything 
 else is anarchy. We may have anarchy if we 
 choose. We may have revolution. We may 
 barricade our streets and fight it out until the 
 stronger beats the weaker into submission and 
 enforces his will, establishes his law, by virtue 
 of his superior strength. We may do that. 
 But we cannot have anarchy and government 
 at the same time. That is the ominous aspect 
 of the situation in our cities. When a body of 
 men raise the standard, " No God, No Master," 
 in the streets of the city, they proclaim an- 
 archy. We in America have always believed in 
 God and we believe also in being subject to the 
 
168 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 laws which we ourselves have made. There is 
 no other way to treat a demonstration of this 
 kind except by force. You cannot parley 
 with a madman. We sympathize with the 
 wrongs of all people. It may be that grave in- 
 justice is done, but laborer and capitalist must 
 be treated exactly alike by the Commonwealth. 
 There is no occasion for violence in our free 
 American cities. Reform is marching with ex- 
 traordinary rapidity. It is hard sometimes to 
 be patient, but if workingman and capitalist 
 will be patient, all these matters will be ad- 
 justed, not with perfect equity perhaps, but 
 with as near an approach to justice as we ever 
 come in this world. The city is sensitive to so- 
 cial wrong. In every city there are groups of 
 men and women who are in deadly earnest about 
 these things. The conscience of the Church is 
 awake. The Church is today definitely com- 
 mitted to all legitimate social reforms. It is 
 studying the situation in every city with ear- 
 nest and prayerful attention. The American 
 city along this line is in advance of the age. 
 Its spirit is like that of the fine lines of Eurip- 
 ides: 
 
 " Thou hast heard men scorn thy city, call her void 
 Of counsel, mad; thou hast seen the fire of morn 
 Flash from her eyes in answer to their scorn. 
 Come toil on toil, 'tis this that makes her grand. 
 Peril on peril! Common states that stand 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 169 
 
 In caution, twilight cities, dimly wise — 
 Ye know them, for no light is in their eyes. 
 Go forth, my son, and help ! ** 
 
 The attitude of the best men and women is 
 one of helpfulness along these lines. The dan- 
 ger is even that social legislation shall move 
 faster than we can adapt ourselves to the 
 change. But we must all, no matter how great 
 our eagerness for reform, set our faces like flint 
 against the spirit of anarchy and violence. It 
 is greatly to the credit of the trades unions 
 that they have, as a rule, taken their splendid 
 stand against violence. Nothing is to be 
 gained by murder and rapine in the streets of 
 our cities. The wanton destruction of prop- 
 erty will never move men to acts of justice. 
 The employment of these methods simply delays 
 the steady march of reform. 
 
 The lesson which we have to learn in our 
 American cities is this: The city is not for 
 one, but for all. Responsibility and coopera- 
 tion are the two great principles which must go 
 hand in hand. We must bring out the very 
 best service which the individual has to give 
 and then we must join service to service, for 
 the uplifting of the whole mass, in accordance 
 with the principles of law and order. 
 
 We must strive to realize in our American 
 cities the great ideal of the prophet for Jeru- 
 
170 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 salem, a social service so high and so noble that 
 it should shine like a lamp in the midst of the 
 dark world until all nations should be illumi- 
 nated by its brightness. America is today the 
 hope of the world. We are fighting in our cit- 
 ies the battles of humanity. We must not hold 
 our peace, we must not rest, until righteousness 
 is established in our cities, until it goes forth 
 as brightness to all the earth. 
 
XIV 
 
 WOMAN AND THE ULTIMATE 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond 
 nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are 
 all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3 : 28. 
 
 The apostle Paul has been charged with a 
 great deal of bigotry and intolerance quite for- 
 eign to his nature. The truth is, he was con- 
 servative in details and grandly broad in the 
 great essentials. He had no quarrel with 
 properly constituted authority. He believed 
 in giving " honor to whom honor is due, tribute 
 to whom tribute." He was no brawler, no 
 breaker of images for the sake of creating noise 
 and confusion. He believed in the conventions 
 and the decencies of orderly society. He was 
 a gentleman, not a professional agitator. He 
 did not wish to expose the women of the church 
 of his time to criticisms of immodesty, of un- 
 womanly conduct. Therefore, he commanded 
 that they observe the customs and conventions 
 of the day. In setting forth these details he 
 
 was not legislating for all women, for all time, 
 171 
 
172 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 and nothing, probably, would surprise him 
 more than to find that anyone could suppose 
 that such was his intention. In non-essentials 
 he counseled modesty, dignity, courtesy, for- 
 bearance, self-respect, obedience. But beyond 
 this region of restraint, he emerges, to lay down, 
 with breadth of vision, with splendor of utter- 
 ance, with sublime audacity, the principles of 
 the new Christian order, the basis for the ulti- 
 mate democracy. 
 
 We must judge him, then, not alone by his 
 prohibitions, but by the utterance of the text, 
 " There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
 neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor 
 female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." It 
 cannot be said that this is a spiritual relation- 
 ship of unity and privilege only, because the 
 kingdom of God, in the mind of Jesus, and the 
 mind of Paul, is inclusive. The distinction 
 which is often drawn between things secular and 
 things holy is an artificial distinction. Man is 
 whole and life is whole, and you cannot sepa- 
 rate thought and conduct. You cannot say, 
 prayer is holy and labor is profane. Unless we 
 can succeed in making all functions holy, vot- 
 ing as well as praying, then we shall have at 
 best, only a divided kingdom, and an incomplete 
 victory of Christ over the world. 
 
 " There is neither male nor female." That 
 is to say, in the reaching out for privilege, for 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 173 
 
 development, for the realization of the ideal in 
 humanity, there can be no differentiation of 
 class, or race, or sex. In the great field of hu- 
 man progress these distinctions do not apply. 
 There is one goal of development, and in the 
 struggle toward the goal the soul alone is con- 
 cerned; there is no handicap placed upon 
 woman. She has exactly the same divine right 
 as man. The privilege of the ballot is only a 
 phase, an incident, in this struggle. It is, how- 
 ever, a valuable and an important privilege and 
 there is, in my opinion, absolutely no reason 
 why it should be an exclusively male privilege. 
 What is the ballot? Simply, a more or less ef- 
 ficient means of ascertaining the will of the self- 
 governing units in a democracy. It is the voice 
 of the people ; expressing the wish of the people 
 as to the conduct of their own affairs, the busi- 
 ness of the community, of the state, of the na- 
 tion. There is nothing mysterious or supernat- 
 ural about it. There is absolutely no reason, 
 physiological, psychological, moral, social, why 
 it should be exclusively a function or privilege of 
 the male. The constitution defines as citizens 
 " all persons born or naturalized in the United 
 States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." 
 Is any one really prepared to deny in this en- 
 lightened age that a woman is a person? If 
 she is a person, then she is a citizen, and if a 
 citizen, clearly entitled to have a voice in the 
 
174 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 community in which she is taxed, in which she 
 engages in the pursuits of the social order. 
 A very effective cartoon recently appeared. 
 It shows, in the background, four great beasts 
 of men, evidently ignorant, degraded, utterly 
 incapable of intelligent initiative, or rational 
 judgment upon any public question. In the 
 foreground stands a woman with every mark of 
 intelligence and refinement, the choice product 
 of generations of clean living, and high think- 
 ing and noble ideals. Beneath ran the legend, 
 " Shall these vote and not the woman? " The 
 logic is unanswerable. The mere fact of mas- 
 culinity does not carry with it the power to 
 participate intelligently and efficiently in pub- 
 lic affairs. You would not choose for an im- 
 portant private business position a drunken 
 loafer instead of a trained and efficient woman. 
 Why, then, should there be a distinction in 
 public affairs, in civic business .? Why should 
 the one be given full rights of natural sov- 
 ereignty and not the other? If any distinction 
 is to be made, it should be made, not along the 
 wholly illogical and indefensible line of sex, but 
 upon the basis of fitness, intelligence, ability. 
 The affairs of our cities are not so abstruse 
 and complicated that they cannot be readily un- 
 derstood by women. Government has come to 
 be a business problem. Legislation is mainly 
 along the line of social and industrial relation- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 175 
 
 ships. These are problems which women have 
 already studied, with which they have already 
 grappled. There is no peculiarity in sex or- 
 ganization which provides special intelligence 
 for the male along these lines. In regard to 
 the moral aspect of public affairs, women are 
 more sensitively organized and better trained 
 than men. Nearly all our political problems, I 
 might almost say all such problems, are at 
 bottom moral questions. Here lies the fallacy 
 of the position of those who say that this mat- 
 ter has nothing to do with morals. Some of 
 the greatest moral questions of the centuries 
 are coming before our democracy for adjust- 
 ment during the next generation, and I would 
 trust the settlement of these questions with 
 women sooner than with men. The saloon in- 
 terests have no illusions upon this matter. 
 They see the hand-writing on the wall, and they 
 know that the vote of women spells doom for 
 an institution more accursed than slavery, but 
 which, please God, is to be destroyed by the 
 prayers and the votes of women before many 
 years have run their course. The cause of 
 woman's suffrage is most fortunate in its chief- 
 est foes. To count as its most determined and 
 deadly enemy the saloon, is a distinction which 
 amounts to a coronation. 
 
 I believe, then, that there is no reason why 
 women should not be given the vote. I think 
 
176 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 that the arguments in favor of full citizenship 
 will shortly become irresistible. If the vote 
 were the only problem connected with sex, the 
 situation would be comparatively clear and easy 
 of solution. I want to turn now to certain 
 other aspects which are less clear, but no less 
 important, which have the most serious moral 
 bearing. First of all, if the franchise is to be a 
 blessing and not a curse to women in this coun- 
 try, they must repudiate, root and branch, 
 the spirit of militancy. The militant movement 
 in England is one of the most lamentable, one 
 of the most serious and menacing phases of 
 modem civilization. That night-mare horror 
 of lawlessness, of arson, of blind, hysterical 
 fury, not only discredits the cause of the full 
 enfranchisement of women, but it threatens civ- 
 ilization itself. It is of no use to say that this 
 is war, and justifiable war, for a great cause. 
 The acts of which women have been guilty in 
 England would not be tolerated for a moment 
 in modern warfare. Only savages wantonly 
 destroy the property of non-combatants. No 
 modern army, even under the greatest of provo- 
 cation would burn churches and private houses 
 and destroy priceless works of art. This is 
 not war. It is hysteria, mania, animalism. 
 Still more serious than the wanton destruction 
 of property is the logic of the situation, the 
 moral chaos into which it plunges the social 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 177 
 
 order. The cause, say the militants, is good, 
 therefore any means to bring success are justi- 
 fied. Suppose the prohibitionists and the anti- 
 vivisectionists and the socialists and the promo- 
 ters of a hundred good causes should say the 
 same thing, should indulge in unrestrained li- 
 cense and destruction, until their demands 
 should be granted. We should speedily have 
 anarchy and the end of organized government. 
 With the end of government, the franchise 
 would cease to have any meaning or value. 
 The great reforms for which women seek are 
 based upon reason, upon righteousness, upon 
 justice. They will come through toil and pa- 
 tience and sacrifice, not through the destructive 
 temper of the screaming, undisciplined child. 
 
 There are more serious aspects of this sub- 
 ject, still. The entirely reasonable demand of 
 women for a share in the government of democ- 
 racy has led certain radicals into the extreme 
 positions of a distinctive " feminist " movement, 
 as if this were the inevitable and necessary 
 outcome of the struggle for fundamental rights. 
 These extremists do not hold that no differen- 
 tiation of sex can affect the rights and privi- 
 leges of women ; they hold that there is no dif- 
 ferentiation, and that all distinctive occupation 
 is a menace to women. They claim that the 
 home is a woman's worst enemy, that the 
 " mothering " of dolls by little girls is a de- 
 
178 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 grading and demoralizing pastime, which 
 should in no case be permitted. One writer 
 says that " the work of the home is essentially 
 humiliating." " Labor in the home steals from 
 woman her individuality, her opportunities for 
 self-expression and self-development; it makes 
 her stupid, limited, harsh, or sentimental; it 
 deprives her of her beauty and her grace, di- 
 vorces her from her true social function and 
 generally unfits her to become the equal com- 
 panion whom man could respect." Such con- 
 tentions as these constitute a serious and a dan- 
 gerous menace to society. They run counter 
 to all the spirit of progress and achievement 
 of civilization. Improvement comes, not by de- 
 stroying but by improving the type, not by 
 robbing a flower of its essential characteristics, 
 not by making it less but more of a flower: by 
 increasing its fragrance and its color and the 
 beauty of its contour. The woman is not im- 
 proved by making her less, but more a woman, 
 by taking those qualities which are lovely and 
 desirable, and increasing their significance and 
 power. As the woman gains in privilege, she 
 should increase in womanliness. There is no 
 reason why she should be unsexed as she ad- 
 vances in knowledge and experience. 
 
 Nor is there any reason for attacking the 
 home because certain political rights should be, 
 in justice, accorded to women. Again, you are 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 179 
 
 not obliged to destroy a rose in order to im- 
 prove it. The home is a divine institution. 
 The world would be desolate, life would be 
 cheap and poor and futile without it. Drudgery 
 is connected with it, sacrifice is necessary for it. 
 But drudgery and sacrifice are necessary ad- 
 juncts of any type of successful life. Women 
 do not escape them, when they go into business 
 and the professions. Drudgery and sacrifice 
 are not necessarily sterile and bitter. Beauty 
 and radiance have always streamed from the 
 crosses of service and nowhere more gloriously 
 than from the cross-bearing of the home. In- 
 stead of mocking the home and demanding its 
 abolition, progressive and educated women 
 should be defending and exalting it. They 
 should make of home-keeping the highest of all 
 professions, the most exalted of all callings. 
 The resources of science should be called in, 
 trained intelligence should be enlisted to solve 
 its problems. It seems to me that the domestic 
 science departments of our high schools and 
 colleges should be enlarged in scope and pur- 
 pose. They should aim not only to teach the 
 technical and theoretical sides of domestic econ- 
 ony, they should exalt home-making as a pro- 
 fession, they should set forth the ideals and the 
 opportunity and the possibilities of the home. 
 They should not pretend that home-making is 
 not difficult, but they should teach it as an art. 
 
180 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 the most exacting and comprehensive of arts, 
 but the noblest also and the most rewarding. 
 They should teach that the woman who mas- 
 ters this art is no less worthy of consideration 
 and honor than the woman who succeeds in 
 medicine or law, or who becomes pre-eminent in 
 business or in science. We may be sure of one 
 thing. The home will survive all attacks which 
 are made upon it. It is too precious and valu- 
 able to be lost. Women should count it a 
 privilege and a glory, that it must remain al- 
 ways her distinctive field. From it she may go, 
 to exercise all the rights of citizenship, but to 
 it she must return again as to a divine calling. 
 Again, the feminists of the radical type make 
 a grave mistake in emphasizing and fostering 
 sex antagonism. There are antagonisms and 
 clashings enough in the world without adding 
 any which are wicked and unnecessary. A sex 
 war would be an unthinkable disaster to the 
 race, yet many women are zealously promoting 
 the idea. Nothing is to be gained by antago- 
 nism between men and women. The future wel- 
 fare and progress of each depends upon the co- 
 operation and help of the other. In this field 
 lies the great significance of the profound sen- 
 tence of Paul. " There is neither male nor fe- 
 male, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." This 
 means that there may be differences in detail, 
 differences which charm and not repel, essential 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 181 
 
 and deep-lying diversities in that profound and 
 unsearchable thing we call personality, but es- 
 sential harmony of spirit; equal and common 
 rights and privileges in society, a common 
 reaching toward the goal of spiritual perfection 
 and power. I am old-fashioned enough to be- 
 lieve with Tennyson that woman should 
 
 " Set herself to man. 
 Like perfect music unto noble words: 
 And so these twain upon the skirts of Time 
 Sit side by side, full summed in all their powers. 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
 Self reverent each and reverencing each. 
 Distinct in individualities. 
 But like each, even as those who love. 
 . . . thought in thought 
 
 Purpose in purpose, will in will they grow. 
 The single pure and perfect animal. 
 The two-celled heart, beating with one full stroke. 
 Life!" 
 
 It seems to me that the matter of supreme 
 importance to-day is along these great spiritual 
 lines. The question of the ballot may now be 
 taken almost as a matter of course. It is 
 hardly in the field of argument. It is inevita- 
 ble. Women will be given this privilege whether 
 they desire it or not. It is in the line of the 
 inescapable evolutionary progress of democ- 
 racy. Women can afford to wait for it with 
 patience and dignity. The really important 
 
182 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 and serious matter is whether women who are 
 in search of civil rights are to be led into by- 
 paths of hysteria and insanity, in regard to the 
 whole question of the place of women in society. 
 We have enough hysterical and unbalanced men 
 in the field of politics now, without adding any 
 women to the number. Women will have the 
 ballot, they will have political power. There is 
 danger that those who have conducted the agi- 
 tation for these privileges shall come to think 
 that agitation is the chief end of life. They 
 must consider how women may use their influ- 
 ence as a sane, judicial, temperate, constructive 
 force. 
 
 Life is the great problem in a democracy, 
 and not simply agitation for this or that. 
 How may life as a whole be built up and con- 
 served and ennobled, in the home, in the school, 
 along the line of industry and trade. How 
 shall we take this old earth, scarred by battle, 
 marred by the hatred and fury of men, and 
 make the tears and the blood bring forth in our 
 age, a harvest of beauty and peace? These 
 are the really great questions. Let me insist 
 again that the great ideals of humanity can 
 never be wrought through hostility and war be- 
 tween men and women. War is never justifi- 
 able, except as a basis of reconstruction and 
 growth. We do not need it between the sexes. 
 Their interests are common, their goal is one. 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 183 
 
 Neither can do without the other. Let them 
 strike hands then, in mutual understanding and 
 faith, each admitting the strength of the other, 
 acknowledging frankly the fundamental differ- 
 ences, glorying in the fundamental likenesses 
 and unity. Let them approach together this 
 great enterprise. Let them build together the 
 ultimate democracy in which there shall be no 
 more war, in which hatred and injustice shall no 
 more find place, which shall be the new Eden, 
 not for man, not for woman, but for each and 
 both. For this task woman is especially en- 
 dowed. Let her not pervert her divinely given 
 powers, but let her use them generously, nobly, 
 sanely, for law and order and discipline and 
 righteousness. So shall she take her rightful 
 place in the state. So shall she build with man 
 the ideal commonwealth, and the glory and the 
 honor shall be hers. 
 
XV 
 
 THE CITY OF VISIONS 
 
 And he showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, 
 descending out of heaven from God. Having the glory 
 of God. And her light was like unto a stone m^ost 
 precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. — 
 Revelation 21 : 10. 
 
 The Bible begins with a great poem of the 
 
 creation. It traces the broad stream of life 
 
 back to its far off beginning, its ultimate source 
 
 in the creative energy of God. Then it gives 
 
 us those matchless stories of the patriarchs, 
 
 individuals whose characters loom grandly 
 
 upon the remote horizons of history. The 
 
 stream then broadens from the individual to the 
 
 family, from the family to the tribe, from the 
 
 tribe to the nation, but it is still a provincial 
 
 history. It is the story of God's dealing with 
 
 one nation. Then the stream narrows once 
 
 more to the individual. The one absorbing 
 
 theme of the New Testament is the personality 
 
 of the one man Christ Jesus. In him the soil 
 
 of human history, watered by blood and tears, 
 
 brings forth its consummate flower. But we 
 184 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 185 
 
 find that even he is not the final term in the as- 
 cending series of human progress. The Bible 
 begins anew at this point. Jesus the supreme 
 personality gives his life that a new cycle of 
 human experience may begin. He is the " new 
 Adam," in Paul's expressive phrase. He dies 
 that the whole human race may have a new life 
 in him. The New Testament relates of course 
 only the beginning, the initial stages of a racial 
 development which has never stayed in its prog- 
 ress from the days of the apostles to our own. 
 The New Testament, the Bible however, ends as 
 it should, in prophecy, with a splendid vision 
 of the culmination of the redemptive processes 
 which were initiated by the life of Jesus. It 
 is a vision of life glorified and transformed but 
 no longer individualistic. The apostle does 
 not show us as the result of the long struggle 
 upward from the brute, a superman, a supreme 
 character, the ultimate product of evolution, 
 a God-like being, endowed with all wisdom and 
 power. He shows us instead a glorified city, 
 a divine and holy society. The redemptive 
 forces of life, set in motion by the sacrifice of 
 Jesus, reach their goal in a new civilization, in 
 the perfect interplay of social forces, in those 
 mutual relationships of human life, which find 
 their highest exemplification in the city. And 
 so the great apostle of love sees a vision of a 
 city, radiant as a jewel, beautiful beyond de- 
 
186 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 scription, coming down out of heaven, originat- 
 ing in the mind of God, but descending upon 
 earth, fulfilling in the earth the will of God as 
 it is fulfilled in heaven. What a splendid con- 
 ception it is ! Not just man redeemed, but all 
 that man has wrought into the city redeemed. 
 The whole city for which it stands, refined in 
 the fires of God's love and discipline until it 
 shines like a jasper stone most precious, clear 
 as crystal. Can you think of anything more 
 optimistic and inspiring? We say, the most 
 hopeful and sanguine of us say, " Perhaps some- 
 time, we shall make an impression, through our 
 toil and our faith, by God's grace upon the 
 city. We may in time, or our children's chil- 
 dren may sometime be able to make it a little 
 cleaner morally, a little less cruel, a little less 
 dangerous, a little less evil." But the inspired 
 genius of the apostle does not halt in its flight 
 short of perfection. He sees every evil elimi- 
 nated, every wrong righted, every life trans- 
 formed. We have no right to think of any 
 lesser consummation. We must say, " We are 
 working for the perfect city, the city of ideals, 
 of visions, of dreams." The goal before us is 
 the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down 
 out of heaven. And some day the dream will 
 come true. The city of our vision, of the 
 prophet's vision, of God's vision, will come true. 
 It will shine in its radiance like a jewel in the 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 187 
 
 diadem of the king. It will match in its actual 
 manifestation of beauty and power that great 
 song of a redeemed humanity which brings to a 
 close the great literature which we call the 
 Bible. 
 
 How may we realize this inspired vision of the 
 apostle? By more visions of our own: By 
 more prayer: By closer contact with the di- 
 vine sources of power. I have pointed out be- 
 fore, I wish to emphasize again in the strongest 
 way possible that the great temptation, the 
 great peril of the city is materialism : absorption 
 in the physical side of this present world. The 
 situation at this time is a strange one. There 
 is no conflict today between science and re- 
 ligion, between the material and the physical. 
 We have reached the end of the old dualism, 
 the old idea of two mutually exclusive spheres. 
 Religion has won the battle. The best scien- 
 tific thought today fully admits the validity of 
 the main contentions of religion. It no longer 
 denies the existence of God. It recognizes the 
 fact that spiritual phenomena have the same 
 scientific standing as physical phenomena. 
 They are facts to be investigated, to be studied 
 and classified, not vagaries and hallucinations 
 to be ignored. But the victory bids fair to be 
 a barren one, because of the supreme indiffer- 
 ence of humanity at large. Men accept this 
 conclusion with only the mildest manifestation 
 
188 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 of interest. " So science has concluded that 
 there is a God? Well, what of it? I am too 
 busy about my own affairs to care for anything 
 so remote as that." What does the roaring 
 traffic of the street care for God? What do 
 the great factories, belching smoke, the hurry- 
 ing trains, the ships which come up to the 
 wharves with the salt of the seven seas upon 
 their funnels, what do they care for God? 
 What does the great world of men and women, 
 bent only upon the pursuit of pleasure, care for 
 God? The battle is not won merely because 
 science admits that the great creative energy 
 of the universe is not blind force, but a life- 
 giving spirit. We shall never see the city of 
 God coming down out of heaven until We co- 
 ordinate the two spheres of the spiritual and 
 the material. In the past, the church has been 
 as blameworthy as the world. The church has 
 insisted that the two spheres were entirely at 
 variance. It has called to men to separate 
 themselves wholly from this evil world, to mor- 
 tify the flesh, to enter within the holy and ex- 
 clusive circumference of the ecclesiastical 
 sphere. But the city of God is no more to be a 
 cloister exclusively for the retreat of holy men 
 and women, than it is to be exclusively a mart 
 of trade without a heart. There can be no city 
 of God until the two are mingled, until trade is 
 made holy and the man of business is the man 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 189 
 
 of visions, until the church is made practical 
 and ministers to all the needs of men. I can- 
 not understand why these false distinctions 
 should so long persist when the example of the 
 Master has for so many centuries been so 
 clearly before us. He was the Word made 
 flesh. He was the unimaginable love and glory 
 of God entering and leaving life at its lowliest 
 portals. In his divine life there was never any 
 separation of the two spheres. Jesus began 
 his career in a carpenter's shop. What was 
 the difference, do you think, between his life 
 during those long years of labor, and the life of 
 the ordinary carpenter's apprentice? It was 
 this : The ordinary apprentice says, " I am 
 bound here to a life of ceaseless drudgery, noth- 
 ing but hard labor and poverty is in store for 
 me. There is no God in the heavens. I will 
 eat and drink and take what pleasure I can in 
 life, for tomorrow I die." But the mind of Je- 
 sus, as he did each day's task faithfully and 
 well, was full also of dreams and visions. Ah! 
 what dreams and visions ! Sometimes the dim 
 old shop was filled with a celestial radiance and 
 he saw the coasts of the heavenly country shine 
 beyond the thin veil which separates time and 
 eternity. When he went out into the open air, 
 beneath the blue Syrian sky, he saw everywhere 
 in the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, the 
 growing grain, a divine significance which he 
 
190 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 applied instantly to the needs of human life. 
 And finally when the consciousness of a redemp- 
 tive mission dawned fully upon his enraptured 
 soul, he went forth from his carpenter's shop to 
 reveal the glory of the commonplace, to awaken 
 in the souls of men the consciousness of a divine 
 origin and a divine destiny. He touched the 
 water at the marriage feast and it glowed to 
 wine, he touched the eyes of the blind beggar 
 and the glory of the sunlight broke in upon the 
 darkened soul. He spoke to the common 
 woman of Samaria and revealed to her one of 
 the most profound spiritual truths which ever 
 fell from the lips of a teacher. He took the 
 men of Galilee, toilers at the oar, business men, 
 tax collectors, and made them apostles and 
 priests of a new spiritual kingdom. And at 
 last how did he reveal the supreme heights of 
 his redemptive love for men? Not by a burst 
 of heavenly splendor, not by some radiant 
 transfiguration. He took the wood of the 
 malefactors' cross, and by the power of his 
 spirit he fashioned it into the splendid symbol 
 of a redeemed race. 
 
 Jesus thus constantly mingled the two 
 spheres of the material and the spiritual into 
 one sphere of a holy and redeemed experience 
 of life. And we must do the same. It is the 
 supreme task of Christianity. Not to take men 
 out of the world. Not to deny the physical 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 191 
 
 life, but to irradiate and transform it. We 
 are to teach the men of the city that they are 
 to look for no sudden and miraculous transfor- 
 mation of the city from misery and sordidness 
 and squalor into the splendor of the streets of 
 gold and the gates of pearl. We are to teach 
 men that they must work out its redemption 
 through the energy of their redeemed lives. 
 
 " Not where the wheeling systems darken. 
 And our benumbed conceiving soars, 
 The drift of pinions, would we hearken. 
 Beats at our own clay shuttered doors. 
 
 " The angels keep their ancient places. 
 Turn but a stone, and start a wing, 
 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces. 
 That miss the many splendored thing! 
 
 ** But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) 
 Cry ; — and upon thy so sore loss 
 Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder 
 Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross. 
 
 " Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter. 
 Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hands: 
 And lo, Christ walking on the water 
 Not of Genesareth, but Thames ! '* 
 
 Some day the poet will come with a keener 
 sense of the beauty of the common-place than 
 Wordsworth, with broader sympathy than Bal- 
 sac, with a more profound understanding of life 
 
192 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 than Shakespeare, and he will reveal to the full 
 the splendor beneath the city's grime, the divine 
 possibilities which beat within the city's heart. 
 
 The redemption of the city must come from 
 the impulsive power of the spirit energizing in 
 all the activities of life. It is exactly like the 
 power of the sun. In the spring-time, the sun 
 makes every seed which has the germinating 
 principle within it awaken to life and beauty. 
 It is absolutely impartial in its service. It 
 calls with its compelling voice to the seed of the 
 smallest flower and the seed of the mightiest 
 tree. But once above ground the sun does not 
 dictate how each seed shall grow. Every seed 
 developes its own type of excellence, of beauty, 
 of usefulness. This is the way in which the 
 power of the spirit must interpenetrate the 
 sphere of the material. It does not dictate to 
 men or to institutions, but it must be the im- 
 pelling power behind them all. As Paul ex- 
 presses it, " There are diversities of gifts but 
 the same spirit, and there are diversities of ad- 
 ministration but the same Lord, and there are 
 diversities of operation but the same God 
 worketh in all and through all." These words 
 might be applied, must be applied to the prob- 
 lem of the modern city. The divine Spirit must 
 be the guiding principle in all the manifold and 
 divine operations of the city's life. 
 
 The church does not go to men of business 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 193 
 
 and say, " I can conduct your business better 
 and more profitably than you can yourself. 
 Listen to my dictation." The church goes to 
 the business man and says, " You must recog- 
 nize God in your affairs. You are not living 
 wholly for yourself. You are not making 
 money for yourself alone. You are a steward 
 of God. You cannot leave God and the spirit 
 out of the reckoning, for you are in the grasp 
 of forces mightier than your own personality, 
 clever and strong as that may be. You may 
 amass wealth greater than the resources of em- 
 pires, you may build the Babel tower of your 
 business as high as the stars, but in the hour 
 of darkness a voice will speak, calm, stern, dis- 
 passionate, ' Thou fool, this night thy soul 
 shall be required of thee.' You must not con- 
 duct your business without the heavenly vision. 
 You must conduct it righteously, in accordance 
 with God's great laws and with consideration 
 for your brother-men." 
 
 That is the meaning, I believe, of certain 
 movements in our largest business interests to- 
 day. Men are beginning to recognize this 
 truth. The heads of great business houses are 
 enunciating the principle of their own accord. 
 They are beginning to realize that there must 
 be spiritual vision as well as business insight in 
 the conduct of affairs. The time will come 
 when every man will respect the rights of every 
 
194 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 other in the city, and that will mean that every 
 evil business will be given up, because all evil 
 reacts upon the social order; and no man can 
 be permitted to corrupt the people of the com- 
 munity for his private gain. Today we say to 
 a man, " My friend, your business is evil. It 
 takes your neighbor's child and stunts him, de- 
 prives him of education and development; or, 
 it takes your neighbor's child and makes a beast 
 of him, deprives him of reason, and destroys 
 the fair promise of a life useful to the com- 
 munity. His proud mother's heart is breaking 
 and his father's hoary head is bowed with 
 shame." He replies, "Well, what of it.? My 
 business is my own. My neighbor must take 
 care of his own children. I deny the responsi- 
 bility." And the city allows him to continue 
 in his business. Now this is simple lack of vi- 
 sion on the part of the city. The city of the 
 future will accept no such excuse. It will not 
 permit the rising generation to be defiled and 
 weakened on the plea of business expediency. 
 All private actions will be determined by pub- 
 lic necessity based upon the principle of love, 
 the spiritual vision. 
 
 The church will go in the same spirit to that 
 great institution of the city, the school. It has 
 no desire whatever to interfere in its manage- 
 ment. It must say, however, that the com- 
 munity is assuming in the conduct of this in- 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 195 
 
 stitution not a civic function alone, but a spir- 
 itual responsibility. To stand in the place of 
 the parent and the home in the life of the grow- 
 ing child, to direct its development, this is a 
 holy occupation. It must not be undertaken 
 then lightly, but soberly, and reverently and 
 with a full appreciation of the spiritual nature 
 of the task. There are those who deplore the 
 tendency to special and elaborate technical and 
 commercial training in our schools. There will 
 be no danger if you do not separate the spirit- 
 ual and the practical spheres, if you make your 
 training inspirational at the same time it is 
 technical. You must give the boys and girls 
 who are working with facts and figures the 
 dream-stuff of the poets and the prophets also. 
 You must teach them to see visions in the work- 
 shop and the office. The function of the school, 
 whether it is fitting for the professions or for 
 the trades, is not utilitarian merely. Its ob- 
 ject must be to train the child's imagination as 
 well as his intellectual faculties, to teach him to 
 see visions as well as to do sums in mathematics, 
 to fit him for citizenship in the heavenly city, 
 the new Jerusalem. To that end the teachers 
 of our schools should consider themselves called 
 of God to their high office. 
 
 The church must go to men in the realm of 
 politics, not to interfere in the functions of 
 government. Why do we hear so often the 
 
196 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 phrase " the church must not meddle with poli- 
 tics "? Are politics so holy, or so corrupt, 
 that they do not come within the vision of the 
 church ? The church has no wish to " meddle " 
 with politics, but it has the God-given pro- 
 phetic right to demand that all government 
 shall be conducted righteously and with spir- 
 itual vision. It has the prophet's inalienable 
 right to denounce misgovernment and corrup- 
 tion in the city. If there is any material func- 
 tion which is holy, it is that which concerns the 
 government of a great city, the interests of all 
 the people. The church must say to those 
 who are chosen by the people, " Yours is a sa- 
 cred trust and we shall hold you strictly to the 
 just and honorable performance of it." I be- 
 lieve that the time will come when the highest 
 type of American manhood, yes, and American 
 womanhood, will count it an honor and a privi- 
 lege to serve the city in accordance with the lof- 
 tiest ideals of righteousness and love. 
 
 In the new city of visions men will take time 
 to live; earnestly and rationally and right- 
 eously. They will take time to acquaint them- 
 selves with the treasures of history and litera- 
 ture and art. They will take time to think, to 
 pray and to worship God decently and in order. 
 What is all this haste of the modern world 
 about .^ The nobler race of the future will look 
 back with amazement and disgust upon a period 
 
AND CIVIC PRIDE 197 
 
 in which the world was so feverishly busy, so 
 absorbed in a headlong pursuit of money and 
 pleasure that it had no time for good manners, 
 to say nothing of the interests of the soul and 
 the worship of Almighty God. We must give 
 up this insane worship of the material or we die. 
 We must have the heavenly vision or we perish 
 utterly. Human experience is worth some- 
 thing. On the pages of history, the Spirit has 
 written large: 
 
 " They reckon ill who leave me out." 
 
 What is the real strength of the great Chris- 
 tian nations today.? Is it in their armaments.? 
 That is their fatal weakness. Is it their world- 
 wide commerce, is it the long list of kings and 
 emperors who are forgotten dust? No. It is 
 the interpenetration of the lives of the people 
 by the Spirit. It is in their memory of those 
 great souls whose lives have been the flowering 
 of the Spirit. Luther, Wickliffe, Cromwell, 
 Milton, Goethe, Shakespeare. It is in the in- 
 fluence of the thousands of unsung lives of ob- 
 scure preachers and teachers who in schools 
 and parish churches have kept alive the flame 
 of faith in the hearts of the people. 
 
 The city of visions will come. God through 
 his poets and dreamers never prophesies in vain. 
 The difficulties which seem insuperable will yield 
 to the faith and the valor of God's chosen peo- 
 
198 CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 pie. Shining like a jewel, costly and beautiful 
 beyond compare, its towers and battlements will 
 stand against the sunrise of the future. The 
 city of peace and holiness and love, of beauty 
 and honor and faith, of visions and dreams. 
 The city in which no one shall be afraid, in 
 which all shall have an equal opportunity, in 
 which innocence and helplessness shall be a sa- 
 cred trust, and the weakest shall be watched 
 over with the tenderest care. In which 
 
 *' No one shall work for money, 
 And no one shall work for fame." 
 
 In which the burdens of each shall be shared by 
 all. In which God shall be worshipped in Spirit 
 and in truth, and Jesus shall be crowned Lord 
 of all. 
 
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