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hm\ki Peiiils a' Oppoi|tunities. 
 
The Alliance does not hold itself responsible for the 
 expression of individual opinion contained in the papers and 
 addresses printed in this volume, with the exception of the 
 General Secretary' s paper, which is an official document. 
 
'^ATIOtiAL PeI[ILS /nd OpPOI[TDNITIES. 
 
 THE DISCUSSIONS OF THE 
 
 GENERAL + CHRISTmN + CONFERENCE, 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C, 
 
 December 7th, 8th and 9th, 1887. 
 
 UNDER THE AUSPICES AND DIRECTION OF THE 
 
 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 
 
 XT 3Sr I T" El ID STT-A-TEiS. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 The Baker & Taylor Co. 
 1887. 
 
 ® 
 
"corn'ell 
 
 UI>ilVEH3ITYi 
 
 ^ COPYRIGHT ia»8 BY 
 
 The Evangelical Alliance 
 for the united states. 
 
 PRKSS OF 
 
 Jenkins & McCowan, 
 
 224 Centre St.,N. Y. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Early in •October, 1887, the following call was issued, 
 signed by ofHcers of the Evangelical Alliance for the United 
 States, together with those of the Washington Branch, and 
 some seventy eminent clergymen and laymen, representing 
 different evangelical denominations and various sections of 
 the country. 
 
 CALL FOR THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE. ^ 
 
 TO THE CHRISTIAN PUBLIC. 
 
 Thoughtful men are convinced that the closing years of the 
 nineteenth century constitute a momentous crisis in the history 
 of the nation. There is a march of events which will not tarry. 
 The necessity of planting Christian institutions in the formative 
 West, and of strengthening them in oldei^ states, the duty of 
 overtaking the rapid growth of our cities with adequate church 
 provision, the importance of closing the widening chasm between 
 the church and the multitude, and of bringing the regenerative 
 power of the gospel to bear upon every character and life, 
 demand the instant- attention of the Christian church and the 
 full exercise of all its energies. 
 
 Popular education has multiplied wants and created tastes 
 which wealth has not been sufficiently distributed to gratify; 
 hence a growing discontent among workingmen, which in pros- 
 perous times is an ill omen, suggesting grave questions concerning 
 the next financial panic and the consequent industrial depression. 
 The conflict with the saloon drawing to a crisis, and the manifest 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 'determination of the liquor power to accomplish its ends by frauds 
 corruption or violence ; a wide-spread spirit of lawlessness ; the 
 apathy of the popular conscience; the alienation of the masses 
 from the churches, and increasing immigration — all these point to 
 growing complications in the near future. 
 
 Under monarchical governments, men have thought that if 
 power could be popularized the ills of life would mostly disappear. 
 In this country, until recently, by reason of abundant public 
 lands, a sparse and substantially homogeneous population, and an 
 almost limitless demand for labor, we have been exempt from, 
 many of the evils suffered by European peoples. But we are now 
 beginning to approximate European conditions of society. The 
 existence of great cities, severe competition, an unemployed class,, 
 increasing pauperism and crime, are the occasion and evidence of 
 a wide-spread discontent, for which the ballot affords no remedy. 
 Has not the time come for us to make demonstration of the truth 
 that the gospel can do what popular suffrage cannot do ? Is not 
 this the nation, and is not this the generation, providentially called 
 to make such application of the gospel to the life of the people as 
 has never yet been made ? Will not those who have enjoyed 
 " government of the people, by the people, and for the people," 
 be the first to learn that the essential evils of society are caused, 
 not by misrule, but by sin, and that the gospel, therefore, must 
 furnish the solution of the great social problems ? 
 
 The Christian church has not yet fully recognized its relations 
 to the entire life of the community and the nation. Even Christian 
 men, preoccupied with private concerns and overburdened by the 
 demands on their time, are prone to neglect the public welfare, 
 and are loath to accept any responsibility for existing evils. 
 
 Denominations and local churches, each intent on its own good 
 work, have fallen into a harmful competition instead of engaging 
 in an intelligent and comprehensive co-operation. 
 
 Our marvelous material growth and the progress of invention 
 have produced new conditions, to which business has been quick 
 to adapt its methods. Do not important changes in population 
 and in the habits and temper of the people require some changes 
 in the methods of Christian work ? 
 
 The undersigned, therefore, unite in calling a General Conference 
 of all Evangelical Christians in the United States, to be held under 
 the auspices and direction of the Evangelical Alliance for the 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 United States, in the city of Washington, December the 7th, 8th 
 and 9th, 1887, to study in effect the following questions: 
 
 1st. What are the present perils and opportunities of the Chris- 
 tian church and of the country ? 
 
 2d. Can any of them be met best by a hearty co-operation of all 
 Evangelical Christians, which, without detriment to any denomina- 
 tional interests, will serve the welfare of the whole church ? 
 
 3d. What are the best means to secure such co-operation, and to 
 waken the whole church to its responsibility ? 
 
 WILLIAM E. DODGE, President of the Evangelical Alliance for United States. 
 
 JOHN JAY, Chairman Executive Committee. 
 
 Rev. CHARtES A. STODDARD, Chairman Committee on Washington Con- 
 
 fcrcncc 
 Rev. PHILIP SCHAFF, I „ ^ j- c . ■ 
 
 Rev JAMES M. KING \ Honorary Correspondmg Secretaries. 
 
 Rev." HENRY B. CHAPIN, ) p„,„,^. „ c„,„,,^„. 
 Rev. GEORGE U. WENNER, f Rec°rdmg Secretanes. 
 Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, General Secretary. 
 
 Hon. peter PARKER, M. D., President Evangelical Alliance of Washington. 
 Bishop EDWARD G. ANDREWS, D. D., LL. D., Vice-President, Washington. 
 Rev. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D., Vice-President, Washington. 
 Rev. a. W. PITZER, D. D., Secretary, Washington. 
 Hon. a. S. PRATT, Treasurer, Washington.' 
 
 Rev. JAMES McCOSH, D. D., LL. D., President of the College of New Jerse,-, 
 
 Princeton, N. J. 
 Rev. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D. D., Rector Trinity Church, Boston. 
 •Rev. MARK HOPKINS, D. D.,LL. D., Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. 
 •Rev. WILLIAM L. HARRIS, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Methodist Episcopal 
 
 Church, New York. 
 Rev. MARTIN B. ANDERSON, LL. D., President Rochester University, 
 
 New York. 
 Right Rev. THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Protestant Episcopal 
 
 Church, Rhode Island. 
 Rev. THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D., Pastor Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian 
 
 Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 Rev. RICHARD S. STORRS, D. D., LL. D., Pastor Church of the Pilgrims 
 
 (Congregational), Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 Rev. G. B. STRICKLER, D. D., Moderator Southern Presbyterian Assembly, 
 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 Rev. WILLIAM ORMISTON, D. D., LL. D., Pastor Reformed Church, New 
 
 York. 
 Rev. JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y. 
 DANIEL C. GILMAN, LL. D., President Johns Hopkins University, Balti- 
 more, Md. 
 Rev. ROBERT S. MacARTHUR, D. D., Pastor Calvary Baptist Church, New 
 
 York. 
 •Rev. EDMUND DE SCHWEINITZ, S. T. D., Bishop Moravian Church, Beth- 
 
 lehem. Pa. 
 
 * Deceased since the call was signed. 
 
VIll PREFACE. 
 
 General O. O. HOWARD, United States Army. 
 
 Rev. ISAAC ERRETT, LL. D., Editor Tie Christian Standard (Disciple), Cin- 
 cinnati, O. 
 
 Hon. ALFRED H. COLQUITT, United States Senator, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Rev. timothy DWIGHT, D. D., LL. D., President Yale University, New 
 Haven, Conn. 
 
 Rev. JOSEPH T. SMITH, D. D., Moderator Presbyterian General Assembly, 
 Baltimore, Md. 
 
 Hon. LORRIN A. COOKE, Moderator National Congregational Council, Riv- 
 erton. Conn. 
 
 Rev. EUGENE H. HENDRIX, D. D., Bishop Methodist Church South, Kansas 
 City, Mo. 
 
 AUGUSTUS TABER, Esq., of the Society of Friends, New York. 
 
 Right Rev. GREGORY T. BEDELL, D. D., Bishop Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, Ohio, Cleveland, O. 
 
 Rev.T. p. STEVEN.SON, D.D., Reformed Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Rev. JESSE B. THOMAS, D. D., Pastor First Baptist Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 GEORGE W. CABLE, Northampton, Mass. 
 
 Rev. ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD, D. D., LL. D., Oxford, Ga. 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM T. SABINE, D. D., Rector Reformed Episcopal Church, New 
 York. 
 
 Rev. a. a. REINKE, D. D., Bishop Moravian Church, New York. 
 
 J. CAREY THOMAS, M. D., of the Society of Friends, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 Rev. HOWARD CROSBY, S. T. D., LL. D., Pastor Fourth Avenue Presbyte- 
 rian Church, New York. ■ 
 
 Rev. a. C. WEDEKIND, D. D., Pastor Lutheran Church, New York. 
 
 Rev. THOMAS BOWMAN, D. D., LL. D., Senior Bishop Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Hon. FELIX R. BRUNOT, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Rev. W. J. R. TAYLOR, D. D., Pastor Reformed Church, Newark, N. J. 
 
 Rev. W. H. FRENCH, D. D. , Pastor United Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, O. 
 
 President CYRUS NORTHROP, LL. D., University of Minnesota, Minne- 
 apolis, Minn. 
 
 Rev. JULIUS E. GRAMMER, D. D., Rector St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 MORRIS K. JESUP, Esq , New York. 
 
 Rev. DANIEL A. PAYNE, D. D., Bishop African Methodist Church, Wilber- 
 force, O. 
 
 Rev. J. L. JENKINS, Pastor First Congregational Church, Pittsfield, Mass. 
 
 Rev. E. 1. DRINKHOUSE, D. D., Editor The Methodist Protestant, Balti- 
 more, Md. . 
 
 H. THANE MILLER, Esq., Cincinnati, O. 
 
 Rev. DAVID C. MARQUIS, D. D., McCormick Theological Seminary (Pres- 
 byterian), Chicago, 111. 
 
 President MERRILL E. GATES, LL. D., Rutgers College, New Bruns- 
 wick, N. J. 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 Right Rev. FRANCIS M. WHITTLE, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church, Virginia. 
 
 Rev. CYRUS D. FOSS, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Metiiodist Episcopal Church, 
 Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 President JULIUS H. SEELYE, D. D., LL. D., Amherst CoUege, Mass. 
 
 Rev. MOSES D. HOGE, D. D., Pastor Second Presbyterian Church, Rich- 
 mond, Va. 
 
 Ex-GoVERNOR HORACE FAIRBANKS, St. Johnsbury, Vt. 
 
 Rev. W. W. DUNCAN, D. D., Bishop Methodist Church South, Spartans- 
 burg, S. C. 
 
 Hon. FRANCIS WAYLAND, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 
 
 President JAMES B. ANGEL, LL. D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 
 Mich. 
 
PREFACE. iX 
 
 Rev. EDWARD BRIGHT, D. D., New York. 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM A. BARTLETT, D. D., Pastor Presbyterian Church, Wash- 
 ington, D. C. 
 
 Rev. JOHN H. VINCENT, S. T. D., LL. D., Chancellor Chautauqua Univer- 
 sity, Plainfield, N. J. 
 
 Hon. FREDERICK BILLINGS, Woodstock, Vt. 
 
 GEORGE H. STUART, Esq , Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Rev. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D., New York. 
 
 President G. W. C. LEE, LL. D., Washington and Lee University, Lexing- 
 ton, Va. 
 
 Rev. HENRY M. DEXTER, D. D., Boston, Mass. 
 
 T. P. HANDY, Esq., Cleveland, O. 
 
 Rev. RANDOLPH S. FOSTER, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Hon. C. R. BRECKINRIDGE, Washington, D. C. 
 
 President JAMES H. FAIRCHILD, D. D., Oberlin College, Oberlin, O. 
 
 Rev. SAMUEL J. NICCOLLS, D. D., Pastor Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 LEWIS MILTIvER, Esq., Akron, O. 
 
 E. W. BLATCHFORD, Esq., Chicago, 111. 
 
 Rev. JAMES M. BUCKLEY, D. D., LL. D., New York. 
 
 Hon. JOHN W. FOSTER, Washington, D. C. 
 
 Rev. JOSEPH S. KEY, D. D., Bishop Methodist Church South, Macon, Ga. 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D. D., LL. D.. Pastor Broadway Tabernacle 
 Church (Congregational), New York. 
 
 In response to this call some twelve or fifteen hundred 
 delegates assembled in conference at Washington, Decem- 
 ber 7. Many letters of regret were received from eminent 
 men and from educational institutions, expressing the fullest 
 sympathy with the obj'ects of the meeting. 
 
 A large number of the delegates were the chosen repre- 
 sentatives of ecclesiastical bodies, local churches, theological 
 seminaries, and colleges. The highly representative char- 
 acter of the Conference, composed of men of wide influence 
 in their respective denominations, lent great significance 
 and weight to the approval given to many sentiments by 
 hearty applause. 
 
 It will be observed that in many of the addresses no 
 record of applause appears; not because the audience was 
 any less appreciative in these cases, but because the printer 
 was furnished the manuscript of the speakers instead of 
 a stenographic report. 
 
 The obvious necessity of adhering to the rule that no- 
 question should be put to vote, rendered it impossible to 
 entertain any of the resolutions that were privately urged in 
 behalf of various worthy reforms and of many benevolent 
 and Christian enterprises. 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 The Alliance is much indebted to the trustees of' the 
 First Congregational Church, who generously offered their 
 house of worship, the most commodious in the city, for the 
 sessions of the Conference; also to the Presbyterian Church 
 that kindly opened their house for the overflow meetings. 
 Our thanks are due to the Young Men's Christian Associ- 
 ation, and to the Chief of the Seed Division of the Agri- 
 cultural Department, for courtesies extended to delegates. 
 
 The success of the Conference was due in no small measure 
 to the committees of the Washington Branch, who, by their 
 thoughtful anticipation of every want and their untiring 
 energy, laid under obligations to them not only the Alliance 
 but all in attendance upon the meeting. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface iii 
 
 WEDNESDA Y MORNING. 
 
 Opening Address, \ 
 
 William E. Dodge, President of the Evangelical Alliance. 
 
 Address of Welcome 9 
 
 Bishop Edward G. Andrews, D. D., LL. D., Washington. 
 
 Address : The City as a Peril. 19 
 
 Rev. Daniel Dorchester, D. D., Boston. 
 
 Address 38 
 
 Rev. Simon J. McPherson, D. D., Chicago. 
 General Discussion - 48 
 
 WEDNESDA Y AFTERNOON. 
 
 Address : Immigration 52 
 
 Prof. Hjai.mer H. Botesen, Columbia College. 
 
 General DiscusstoN 75 
 
 Address : The Misuse of Wealth 81 ' 
 
 Pres. Merrill E. Gates, LL. D., Rutgers College. 
 
 General Discussion 93 
 
 Address : Estrangement from the Church 100 
 
 Bishop J. F. Hurst, D. D., LL. D., Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 ADDRESS 112 
 
 Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 WEDNESDA Y E VENING. 
 
 Address : Ultramontanism 126 
 
 Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe, D. D., LL. D., Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Address : The Saloon . . . 138 
 
 Rev. R. S. MacArthur, D. D., New York. 
 
 Address 155 
 
 Rev. A. G. Havgood, D. D., LL. D., Georgia, 
 xi 
 
XU TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 THURSDA Y MORNING. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Address : Perils to the Family '^7 
 
 Rev. S. W. Dike, Auburndale, Mass. 
 
 Address : The Social Vice • • • • '82 
 
 Col. J. L. Greene, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 General Discussion '93 
 
 Address: Illiteracy '99 
 
 Pres. John Eaton, LL. D., Marietta, O., late Commissioner of 
 Education for the United States. 
 Gei'eral Discussion 21a. 
 
 THURSDA Y AFTERNOON. 
 
 Address : Relation of the Church to the Capital and Labor Question 214 
 
 Pres. James McCosh, D. D., LL. D., Princeton. 
 
 Address 225 
 
 Hon. Seth Low, Brooklyn. 
 
 Address 234 
 
 E. H. Rogers, Chelsea, Mass. 
 General Discussion 246 
 
 THURSDA Y EX^ENING. 
 
 Address : The Christian Resources of our Country 259, 
 
 Rev. James M. Kimg, D. D., New York. 
 
 Address 277 
 
 Pres. D. C. Oilman, LL. D., Baltimore. 
 
 Address 285 
 
 Rev. W. E. Hatcher, D. D., Richmond, Va. 
 
 FRIDA Y MORNING. 
 
 Paper : Necessity of Co-operation in Christian Work 298. 
 
 Rev. R. S. Storrs, D. D., LL. D., Brooklyn. 
 
 Address 303 
 
 Bishop Samuel Harris, D. D., LL. D., Michigan. 
 
 Address • 315 
 
 Rev. Washington Gladden, D. D.,LL. D., Columbus, O. 
 
 Address 328 
 
 Prof. Geo. E. Post, M. D., Beirout, Syria. 
 
 General Discussion 332 
 
 Reception at the White House 341 
 
 Address 342 
 
 By Mr. William E. Dodge. 
 
 Reply 342 
 
 By President Cleveland. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 FRIDA Y AFTERNOON. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 '-^ Address : Methods of Co-operation in Christian Work 345 
 
 Rev. JosiAH Strong, D. D., General Secretary of the Evangelical 
 Alliance. 
 
 Address : Co-operation in Small Cities 356 
 
 Rev. Frank Russell, D. D., Oswego, N. Y. 
 
 Address : Co-operation in Large Cities 364. 
 
 Rev. A. F. ScHAUFFLER, D. D., New York. 
 General Discussion .' 367 
 
 FRIDA Y E VENING. 
 
 379 
 
 Address : Individual Responsibility Growing out of Perils and Opportu- 
 nities 
 
 Rev. A.J. Gordon, D. D., Boston, Mass. 
 
 Short Addresses 390 
 
 Rev. Henry J.iVan Dyke, D. D., Rev. James M. King, D. D., 
 
 Mr. H. Thane Miller, Rev. L. B. Bates, D. D.; 
 
 Rev. C. A. Dickey, D. D., Rev. A. T. Pierson, D. D., 
 
 Rev. Chas. U. Parkhurst, D. D., Rev. S. M. Newman, D. D., 
 
 Mr. E. B. Monroe, Mr. Wm. E. Dodge. 
 
National Perils and Opportunities. 
 
 WEDNESDAY, DEC. 7, 1887. 
 MORNING SESSION. 
 
 The Conference met in the Congregational Church, corner of 
 Tenth and G streets, and was organized at 9:40 a. m., with Mr. 
 William E. Dodge, President of the Evangelical Alliance, occupy- 
 ing the chair. 
 
 The session was opened by singing the hymn, " Come, Gracious 
 Spirit, Heavenly Dove," after which a selection of Scripture, con- 
 sisting of the Second Chapter of the Acts, 'was read by Bishop 
 Harris, of Michigan. Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D. D., of Phila- 
 delphia, then led in prayer, the Conference first rising and uniting 
 with him in the Lord's Prayer, as a visible expression of their 
 unity. 
 
 OPENING ADDRESS. 
 W. E. DODGE, President. 
 
 It is my duty, as representing the Evangelical Alliance for the 
 United States, to call this Conference to order, and to express to 
 the citizens of Washington, and their local Committee, our sincere 
 appreciation of their great kindness and gracious hospitality in 
 inviting us to their beautiful city, and in arranging the details 
 which minister to our comfort and convenience. 
 
 As the capital of the Nation, any true word spoken here, or any 
 impulse for good, will be felt through the whole land, and this 
 tends to deepen the responsibility and to widen the possible influ- 
 ence of our gathering. 
 
 1 
 
is OPENING ADDRESS. 
 
 It is proper I should state briefly the reasons which have led to 
 this Conference, and the results which are hoped for. 
 
 Acting on what they believe to be a leading purpose of the 
 organization of the Alliance, the Board of Managers have for a 
 long time carefully studied the social and economic changes which 
 so largely affect the condition of the country. 
 
 They have secured a General Secretary who has the confidence 
 and respect of all the churches ; who has been a thoughtful stu- 
 dent and observer, and, by his pen and on the platform, has done 
 large service in awakening the attention of Christians to their 
 increasing responsibilities. 
 
 Their aim has been to gather information as to all forms of relig- 
 ious work, and to the needs of all sections of the country. They 
 have endeavored to avoid all loose statements and mere sentiment, 
 and have sought for real facts. Their desire has been to know 
 whether the Christian efforts and organizations as now existing, 
 either denominational or general, are sufiScient to meet growing 
 needs, and to cover the whole ground. 
 
 The result of this investigation has been most encouraging, as 
 showing a vital Christian life and a growing interest in all Christian 
 duties. It has developed great reserved force and unused re- 
 sources in the Church, and a power which, if concentrated and 
 developed, might easily change the whole character of the country, 
 and assure its future. 
 
 It has shown a very large proportion of the population, the wealth 
 and intelligence of the land, to be in nominal membership of Evan- 
 gelical churches ; a power so great as to be able to control and 
 direct the best thought of the people, and to guide all our institu- 
 tions; a power which, if wisely directed, could bring to bear upon 
 all social questions and all disturbing elements the influence of the 
 simple teachings of Christ, which we believe contain the solvent 
 for all perils and dangers, and which can alone bring about a real 
 brotherhood and mutual confidence between all classes and condi- 
 tions of people. 
 
 But all thoughtful men will agree that at present the largest por- 
 tion of our Christian resources are unused; that many efforts are 
 misdirected; that a want of organization and mutual understand- 
 ing causes much waste of effort and money; that many modes of 
 work overlap each other; that large spaces are untouched. 
 
 Denominational agencies are highly organized, but work largely 
 
ADDRESS BY W. E. DODGE. 3 
 
 without reference to each other, and sometimes appear almost to 
 care more for the furtherance of special views than for the building 
 up of the whole Church of Christ. 
 
 Our voluntary system, with its splendid results and adaptation to 
 many peculiarities of our times, has its grave defects, especially in 
 large citjes, and needs careful study and je-arrangement. In all 
 our churches the supply of ministers is sadly behind the needs, 
 especially of those who have fitness and consecration for the hard 
 places, and for sympathetic contact with working people. 
 
 Our population is growing with startling rapidity. New and 
 wonderful means of transportation are opening the whole land at 
 once to settlement. New communities are springing up by magic, 
 and their moral and religious characters are being established as 
 rapidly. 
 
 Immigrants are pouring into the country in increasing volume. 
 These new additions to our population are not absorbed and 
 Americanized as formerly, and are settling in masses in our large 
 cities and new states — retaining language, habits and traditions 
 foreign to our ideas, and rapidly changing the character of our 
 people. 
 
 The power of the saloons is highly organized, and, notwithstand- 
 ing all the grand work done for the cause of temperance, claims to 
 control legislatures and laws. Secular unions and infidel clubs 
 €xist all through the country, and exert a baneful influence, especi- 
 ally upon our foreign population. 
 
 The Roman Church embraces a large portion of our people; and 
 while we admire and respect its religious devotion and admirable 
 charities, and have' nothing but kindness and regard for its indi- 
 vidual members, it still holds its first allegiance to a foreign power, 
 which claims the absolute right to control all consciences and all 
 peoples, and is, therefore, a dangerous menace to the Republic. 
 
 Our cities are growing in size and in influence, beyond our con- 
 ception. They are becoming great manufacturing centres, draw- 
 ing population from all sections of the interior of our country, and 
 from all the world. Their condition is not fully understood by 
 Christian people, and the provision for their religious care is sadly 
 inadequate. 
 
 The growing disregard of the proper use of the American 
 Sunday, the loose opinions as to family ties, the increased licen- 
 tiousness, the materialism of the age, the absorption in money 
 
i OPENING ADDRESS. 
 
 making, the increased luxury and enervation in many classes, the 
 dying out of religious influences in sparsely settled portions of the 
 old states, all tend to show a change in the condition of our land, 
 which demands careful consideration. 
 
 The American ideas of morality, frugal living, education, home 
 life, and respect for law are changing rapidly, and it is the duty of 
 the Christian Church to lead the new thought of the times, or cer- 
 tain disaster and punishment must come. 
 
 Our country welcomes all to a new home and conditions more 
 favorable for happiness and advance than the world has ever seen,, 
 but all who come to share its privileges must understand that the 
 new civilization, so full of promise to them, is founded on love to 
 God, respect for law, and a high moral sentiment. 
 
 The Church must embody this high standard, not only in its creeds, 
 6uf in its life. In some way we have failed in this, for the gravest 
 and most important consideration which confronts, us is the fact 
 that all over the country the artisan class is becoming more and 
 more estranged from the churches, and is gaining its instruction 
 and inspiration from unwise leaders, almost invariably of foreign 
 birth, who argue from half-truths and unfair conclusions. 
 
 Everywhere among workingmen is unrest, a looking for some 
 one to show them a higher good. A late author, himself a working- 
 man, says of the artisan: " He has been revolutionized in character, 
 passing from a simple life of few wants and necessities to a varied 
 and complex one, where he is more sensitive to social disadvantages- 
 and more sensible of his power as a social factor." 
 
 Of the poorer class of workingmen he says: " It is unquestion- 
 ably true that poverty is more inimical to society to-day, more 
 dangerous to social order, freedom and democratic institutions, than 
 ever before." 
 
 Mr. Lowell, in his admirable address on "Democracy," says: 
 " Formerly the immense majority of men — our brothers — knew only 
 their sufferings, their wants and their desires. They are beginning 
 now to know their opportunity and their power." 
 
 All this restlessness and change means grand opportunity. There 
 is no room or place for discouragement, if we are true to our respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 The duty is clear and plain, and the call of God direct. The 
 Christian Church must be united in heart, must co-operate fully, 
 must assume the aggressive, and advance along the whole line. 
 
ADDRESS BY W. E. DODGE. 5 
 
 The times call for an applied Christianity that can meet all the 
 needs and relations of man to man. It cannot remain merely 
 defensive, and must prove its adaptedness to all needs and all 
 ■conditions. The full brotherhood of men under one Father and in 
 ■one household must be its watchword, with a meaning never known 
 before. 
 
 True Christian men of all names are waking up to a fuller realiza- 
 tion of these facts. They begin to understand that a religion worth 
 the name must bring cheer into every home, hope into every life — 
 bring into close touch and sympathy and mutual confidence all 
 ■classes, must kill self-seeking and self-indulgence; and at any cost 
 of time, money or comfort, its followers must live as Christ lived 
 on earth, with the people and for the people. 
 
 The times are ripe for full consideration of these vital conditions, 
 and this gathering is called that facts may be presented, considera- 
 tions urged, and full conference be had, as to our opportunities and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 The Alliance has no thought of pushing its own views, or mak- 
 ing a place for itself. It has no theories to assert. It believes the 
 first need is for careful and accurate study. Its Only hope and 
 suggestion is that in each community Christian men, without regard 
 to name, will be willing to meet and carefully and prayerfully study 
 the problems of its own locality. It is certain this will result in 
 the adaptation of means to meet the wants and destitution sure to 
 be discovered. This will warm Christian hearts into fuller confi- 
 dence and sympathy with each other, and will advance all denomi- 
 national interests in their relation to the whole Church of Christ as 
 nothing else can do. 
 
 Such study and investigation will certainly warm up the whole 
 religious atmosphere, give purpose to Christian life, and advance 
 every good cause. 
 
 It will show to all outside the churches that this practical self- 
 denying interest in everything that touches their comfort and hap- 
 piness means something new for them ; that Christ came to make 
 their lives on earth brighter, sweeter and happier; that Christianity 
 means something more than easy church-going and self-satisfied 
 livmg. 
 
 In this study and investigation, all denominations can join with 
 perfect loyalty to their own convictions and form of worship; and in 
 the evils to be met and remedied in each locality, many things will 
 
b OPENING ADDRESS. 
 
 be found which can only be successfully met by a cordial co-opera- 
 tion of all the churches. 
 
 Christian brothers, do we believe in the teachings of our Master ? 
 They have been in the world nearly two thousand years ! Have 
 they yet been fully tried ? The Church has slowly and steadily 
 grown in wealth and influence and doctrine; but have these teach- 
 ings yet been put into practical operation ? 
 
 If God and our hopes for the future were blotted out, and noth- 
 ing but this life remained, the model of Christ's perfect life, if it 
 could be imitated by man, and His teachings followed, would make 
 this earth a heaven, and put an end to sin and evil here. This 
 example and these teachings are committed to our keeping, with all 
 the full hopes and grand possibilities they contain. What are we 
 doing with them ? Christ became a man, and showed how man 
 should live with his brothers. As the Father sent Him, so He 
 sends us to bear witness of the truth. 
 
 Let us be perfectly frank with each other in this Conference. 
 
 We rejoice rightly in the increasing growth of our churches, in 
 many forms of new and earnest work, in great sums given for mis- 
 sions and for charity, in the large proportion of young men in our 
 colleges who are firm in Christian principle, in ministers and teach- 
 ers more faithful than ever before. Most of all, we rejoice in the 
 faithful few — "the Church within the, Church" — who are ceaseless 
 in their devotion and self-sacrifice, but are we not throwing upon 
 these hard-worked, overworked pastors and members the burdens 
 which all should share ? 
 
 Of the vast number of nominal church members, what propor- 
 tion is doing its full share in the vital work needed by these rapid 
 times ? 
 
 How many are content to attend one service a day, to give small 
 sums, and occasionally to speak well of religion, if it costs them 
 nothing ? How many expect the pastor to do all the work with such 
 help as he can get from a few " enthusiasts " in the church ? 
 
 How many understand that their money is only a trust for the 
 advancement of Christ's cause on earth? After all, how pitiful the 
 whole large aggregate of money given appears, compared with the 
 amounts spent in luxuries and show by those who profess to have 
 given their lives and all they have to the lowly Jesus — Master of 
 us all. 
 
 How can an army expect victory if the rank and file stand by 
 
ADDRESS BY W. E. DODGE. 7 
 
 idly criticising, or seeking its own amusement and profit, while the 
 officers and file-leaders are in the thick of the fight ? 
 
 If grand results have come to our country from a religion so 
 strangely handled by its professors, what results would follow if 
 every man were alert and consecrated ? 
 
 We profess to be a Christian country, and we have advanced, 
 perhaps, further than has been reached before— but the leaven has 
 not entered the whole mass. 
 
 Probably one-half of our people never enter a church. When 
 we send out missionaries to foreign countries, rum and licentious- 
 ness go out with or before them from our Christian land, and get 
 to work before our ministeirs can learn the language. 
 
 Every advance of our Christian civilization westward, forms first 
 a settlement so crowded with saloons and gambling houses that it 
 is a hell on earth, and its character half formed, before our 
 churches are on the ground ; and then men and means are so 
 scanty that often it is only a forlorn hope. 
 
 We pride ourselves on our magnificent growth as a country, our 
 increasing wealth, our pride of life, and our material prosperity ; 
 but all history shows that these are always the precursors of decay 
 and ruin, if a deep foundation of morality and religion has not 
 been planted. 
 
 At the Harvard anniversary, Mr. Lowell said : " Material 
 success is good, but only as the necessary preliminary of better 
 things. The measure of a nation's true success is the amount it 
 has contributed to the thought, the moral energy, the intellectual 
 happiness, the spiritual hope and consolation of mankind." 
 
 We have been educated into a sort of fatality — a belief that 
 God would always care for our country, and we had little to do but 
 to stand still and see His salvation. But this is not gospel or com- 
 mon sense. For the first time in history, a country teeming with 
 every treasure has been put into the hands of an intelligent people, 
 with God's word in their hands and His promises behind them, and 
 His cheer always. We must _" work out our own salvation with 
 fear and trembling," but with the joyous certainty that God work- 
 eth with us. 
 
 We need a new revival, not only of higher spirituality, but of the 
 complete acceptance of the idea that each Christian man has a 
 real work to do for which he is responsible — such a revival as the 
 Crusades were, or thd Reformation ! such a stirring of the whole 
 
8 OPENING ADDRESS. 
 
 Church as came to both sections of our common country, when 
 every man was willing to give all he had, even his life, to the cause 
 he believed vital. 
 
 There are indicatioris everywhere of the possibilities of such a 
 new birth. And our earnest hope is that this Conference may be 
 the precursor and promise of its coming. 
 
 Chairman: I now have the pleasure of introducing to the Con- 
 ference, as the presiding officer of this session, the Hon. John Jay, 
 of New York, who for many years was the honored President of 
 the Alliance. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Jay, on taking the chair, said : 
 
 After listening to the impressive address of the President of the 
 Alliance, we can the better appreciate the significance — which, we 
 trust, will become historic — of this remarkable assemblage at the 
 national Capital. 
 
 Among the sermons preached in New York, on Sunday last, on 
 the dangers that beset us as a nation, was one by Bishop Potter from 
 the text of St. Paul, " It is high time to awake out of sleep ;" and 
 this gathering of citizens from distant parts, representing the mill- 
 ions who hold to the Bible and cherish the institutions founded 
 upon its truths, shows that the nation is awakening to the perils, 
 foreign and domestic, which threaten the purity of its Christian 
 civilization. 
 
 We should never forget the fact of which that philosophic rea- 
 soner of the Roman Catholic faith, Dr. Brownson, so forcibly 
 reminded us, when he said that our American civilization was " the 
 furthest point in advance yet reached by any age or nation." 
 
 Its intellectual and moral strength in our Revolutionary struggle 
 were recognized by the world, and Burke rightly attributed that 
 strength to the character of the emigrants to America from various 
 lands, exhibiting " the dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism 
 of the Protestant religion." They brought with them the best and 
 most heroic blood of the peoples of Europe — of the Hollanders, the 
 Walloons of Flanders, the Huguenots of France, the English, Welsh, 
 Scotch and Irish, of the Norwegians and Swedes, the Germans 
 and the Swiss, of the Bohemian followers of John Huss, of the Albi- 
 genses and Waldenses, of the Italian Alps, of the Salzburg exiles, 
 the Moravian Brothers, with refugees from the Palatinate, Alsace 
 and southern Germany. 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. JOHN JAY. 9 
 
 They all brought the Bible, for which they and their ancestors 
 had been ready to suffer and to die ; and their devotion to that 
 book had descended to the Continental Congress, which, a week 
 before it was driven from Philadelphia, ordered an importation of 
 twenty thousand Bibles. At the Centennial celebration, at Phila- 
 delphia, of the Declaration of Independence, the acting Vice- 
 President, Ferry, said that the American statesmen, who had to 
 •choose between the Royal authority or popular sovereignty, had 
 been inspired by the truth uttered on Mars' Hill, and repeated in 
 the ^opening prayer of the morning, that " God hath made of one 
 blood all nations of men." 
 
 The future of the Christian civilization, which has come to us 
 from our true-hearted and sturdy ancestors, on the preservation of 
 which, in its purity and beauty, depend the character of our country- 
 men and the destiny of our country, rests upon the generation of 
 to-day. 
 
 Those who assisted to purge it of the taint of slavery are fast 
 passing away — and the guardianship of our sacred heritage devolves 
 upon the present generation, as its stands, " a link in the chain of 
 eternal order ' ' between the generations that are past and those 
 which are to come. 
 
 You will now have the pleasure of hearing the Address of Wel- 
 come, by Bishop Edward C. Andrews, D. D., LL. D., of Washington. 
 
 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWS. 
 
 Mr. President and Brethren of the Convention: 
 
 The Washington Branch of the Evangelical Alliance has assigned 
 to me the pleasant office of speaking to you their word of greeting 
 and welcome. In this word, the Evangelical churches and people 
 of the city do, I am sure, most cordially concur. 
 
 With one heart we welcome you to the Capital of the Republic, 
 to a city not unworthy, as we fondly think, of the nation that now 
 is, and having a promise of beauty and magnificence that shall 
 honor the nation which is to be. We welcome you to a city which 
 is yours as well as our own; which is yours, indeed, in a sense in 
 which it is not our own. For the nation decreed and named it. 
 
10 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
 
 The nation, with a magnificent faith, mapped its magnificent dis- 
 tances, its broad avenues, its spacious parks. The nation has reared 
 all these stately piles in which the laws of a great people are made, 
 administered and judicially determined; has begun these collections, 
 already notable, in science, art and literature; has here commemo- 
 rated its noble dead, statesmen and heroes, in marble and bronze, 
 and chiefly in that lofty shaft whose simple massiveness and purity 
 fitly sj'mbolize the first great President of the Republic. And the 
 city which the nation has thus builded and adorned, the nation still 
 rules with absolute though benignant sway. Representative as you 
 are of all portions of the land, we welcome you to your own. We 
 act as your ushers; enter, examine, enjoy, indulge a laudable pride, 
 exchange congratulations as to what is, and hopes as to what shall 
 be when the political life of five hundred millions of freemen shall 
 here have its mighty heart. 
 
 But some things here are our own. In coming to this Capital 
 City, neither our fathers nor we have forgotten the life of our former 
 homes. We have builded churches, capacious and fair, and they 
 are thronged by the feet of willing worshipers. We have homes 
 where blossom all the amenities and sanctities of domestic love, 
 where feeble age is cherished with tenderest care, where maturity 
 daily refreshes itself for renewed struggle, where childhood is trained 
 for the life that is and shall be. And here, we trust, are hearts not 
 a few that, surrounded by excessive ambitions and gayeties, are still 
 loyal to the supreme Lord and Saviour, and wrought more or less 
 completely into unison with His great thought. To churches, homes 
 and hearts we bid you cordial welcome. We open all to entertain 
 you. In the name of your Master and ours, in the sympathy of 
 common opinions and experiences, of common aims and hopes, we 
 hail your coming with unfeigned joy. 
 
 " For we be brethren." We are one body, animated by one 
 Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling. To us 
 there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of 
 all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. Our lack of 
 uniformity is not lack of unity. One life from the Lord and Giver 
 of life pervades all believers and constitutes them His one- indi- 
 visible body. Even death cannot disrupt this tie : 
 
 One army of the living God 
 
 To His command we bow, 
 Part of the host have crossed the flood, 
 
 And part are crossing now. 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 11 
 
 But to some of you we are bound by more than the common 
 fraternal tie. We are your debtors for knowledge and guidance, 
 for example and inspiration. Often unknown to us in person, you 
 have silently and unseen ministered to our spiritual life. Your 
 books have enlarged our horizon, ennobled our thoughts, corrected 
 our errors, and inspired us to higher faith and better living. That 
 which you have gained in sharp and costly struggle of mind and 
 soul have you freely imparted to us. Others of you have entered 
 into self-denying and heroic conflict with the powers of darkness 
 which gather within the walls of great and crowded cities, and, 
 through faith in Christ and His gospel, have before our eyes vindi- 
 cated the salvai)ility of the lowest of our race, and of society itself. 
 And some of you, eminent in professional and business life, have 
 by strict integrity and princely munificence illustrated how every 
 department of human activity may yield effective service to the 
 Lord Christ. 
 
 Brethren, beloved for the Master's sake, and honored for your 
 faithful and large contributions to the kingdom of Christ, accept, 
 one and all, our sincere welcome. 
 
 And we welcome you the more for the specific purpose of your 
 coming. Our city is not unused to conventions — patriotic, scienti- 
 fic, educational, philanthropic. We do not undervalue any one of 
 these factors of our complex civilization ; much less do we under- 
 value the Governmental functions which are exercised in our city. 
 
 The representatives of peoples and states, who last Monday met 
 in the marble halls on yonder hill, have an office for the American 
 people, and, indeed, for humanity, of large and far-reaching possi- 
 bilities. They may affect greatly the, course of history. They 
 may abate illiteracy, may ordain equities between diverse and 
 struggling classes, may regulate in some degree the composition of 
 the American population, may strengthen fraternal ties at home 
 and confirm peace abroad, may, within the limited scope of the 
 General Government, repress crime and promote virtue, and, in many 
 ways, may develop our national resources, and guide the national 
 life. And it is occasion for devout joy that we may believe, in 
 the face of much ignorant and flippant criticism, that many of these 
 Senators and Representatives undertake their great work with the 
 spirit of patriots and of Christians. If any of them fail to do 
 this, even then are they also true representatives of our imperfect 
 national life. Shall the stream rise higher than the fountain ? 
 
12 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
 
 But concede to political institutions and laws all of utility that 
 any will claim for them, and there is still a field which they do not 
 enter. They do not reach man in his interior nature. They do 
 not restore the lost proportion and balance of his faculties. They 
 do not make good men out of bad. They do not determine the 
 faith, the character, the moral life, of the nation. So far from de- 
 termining such questions, they do, for the most part, simply register 
 the point which the nation's character has already reached. Insti- 
 tutions may affect character. Character, in the long run, absolutely 
 determines institutions. The human mind, in its diversities, 
 accounts for all history. Invisible itself, it has been successively 
 revealed as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, the Middle 
 Ages, the Reformation, Modern Europe, and now, this new phe- 
 nomenon in history, the United States. And what issue shall come 
 to this new life is simply and solely a question of mental condi- 
 tions, a question of moral character. In this is the determination 
 of all our institutions, our laws and our customs. The question 
 of character is the paramount question. Beside this all questions 
 of revenues, armaments, new States, fisheries, subsidies, land- 
 grants, and all questions of party supremacy pale into insignifi- 
 cance. Our evils and our dangers are not in our conditions, but 
 in ourselves. Sin is the radical evil. Righteousness, even the 
 righteousness which is of God by faith in Jesus Christ, is the radi- 
 cal cure. 
 
 Gentlemen, you come from pressing occupations and grave 
 responsibilities in your distant homes to deliberate on these transcen- 
 dently important topics. We thank you for coming. The work is 
 weighty ; the difficulties are great ; the solicitude is deep. May you 
 be encouraged by remembering that the great and good of succes- 
 sive generations have shared the convictions which underlie your 
 gathering ; that, for instance, in his memorable Farewell Address, in 
 paragraphs too long to be here cited, the man first in the Republic 
 and "foremost in the files of time," emphasizes the indispensable- 
 ness of national righteousness ; saying in substance, and almost 
 in the words themselves, "Public prosperity has no foundation 
 tut morality and religion ; and religion is the only security of 
 morality." 
 
 That proposition is the postulate of this Convention. 
 
 The key-note of our discussions, as indicated by the call, is in 
 the three words, peril, opportunity, co-operation. 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 13 
 
 I. That American Christianity and American Society are con- 
 fronted with perils, new, various, organized and gigantic, is obvious. 
 The city disproportionately enlarging ; immigration increasing 
 beyond our power of assimilation; wealth accumulating rapidly in 
 a few hands; monopolies repressing individual enterprise; a for- 
 eign church, hostile to American principles, fortifying itself among 
 us; the saloon, threatening every interest of the home and the state; 
 illiteracy overshadowing a large part of the body politic ; social- 
 istic tendencies among the laboring classes; crimes multiplying 
 with extraordinary energy; sexual vice patent everywhere, attended 
 by a loosening of the marriage tie and the growth of Mormonism; 
 the alienation of great masses of the people from the Church, with 
 a startling increase of Sabbath desecration ; corruption among the 
 makers and administrators of law — these are facts portentous of 
 disaster and, if unchecked, of ruin. 
 
 As Christians, we must recognize some of them as rooted in the 
 persistent evil of human nature itself, in the soul which, because 
 it does not like to retain God in its knowledge, is given up of God 
 to all unseemly thoughts and deeds. Not easily will they yield to 
 correctives. They are part of the universal human sinfulness, now 
 and here, because of new external conditions, manifesting itself 
 with unusual energy and virulence. 
 
 The situation is grave beyond question. The forces of evil are 
 alert, aggressive, and in many quarters victorious. They imperil 
 the most precious interests of ourselves and our posterity. They 
 imperil our mstitutions and our civilization. They imperil the souls 
 for which Christ died. They summon all right-thinking men to con- 
 flict severe, long-continued, and costly in every sense. 
 
 But throughout the struggle it is wise to maintain a serene faith 
 and hope. Not otherwise shall we conquer. We may, indeed, 
 exaggerate danger so as to paralyze endeavor. We may even mis- 
 interpret Providences to our loss. The Roman Christian, who saw 
 gathering on the declivities of the Alps the portentous cloud of 
 Barbarism, Hun, Goth and Vandal, soon to burst in undistinguishing 
 fury on all the fair lands of the Mediterranean basin, engulfing in a 
 common ruin all that was best and noblest in the ancient civiliza- 
 tion, could not discern how the vigor of these new races was in the 
 end to rescue Christianity from perversion and decay. When in 
 1818 the last faint trace of state religion was overthrown in 
 Connecticut, Dr. Dwight, a man eminent for a calm and judicial 
 
14 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
 
 temper, thought that the foundations of religion were giv- 
 ing way , and Lyman Beecher, then a pastor in the State, records 
 his own experience in these words, " It was as dark a day as ever 
 I saw. For several days I suffered what no tongue can tell, for the 
 best thing that ever happened to the Churches." 
 
 It is possible thus that some of the things which we fear, things 
 not sinful in themselves, may turn in ways which we do not now 
 know to the furtherance of the Gospel. I speak of urban growths, 
 of immigration, of Romanism in America, and of some forms of 
 socialistic tendency. 
 
 Nor must we forget some striking signs of Christian progress 
 with which the nineteenth century is closing ; as, for instance, the 
 better apprehension in the Church of personal Christianity as sum- 
 med up in love and loyalty to Christ; the greater unity of Christian 
 people as against the divisive tendency of dogma, organization and 
 rite; the proven power of voluntaryism, by which Churcl\ provision, 
 the edifice, the preacher and the school, have kept even pace with 
 the westward march of our population; the probable decline of 
 skepticism from that prevalence at the opening of the century of 
 which Chancellor Kent, Dr. Dwight and Bishop Moore speak so 
 emphatically; that gracious growth of the Evangelical Church in 
 the United States, by which it includes in its membership one in 
 five of the people as against one in fourteen in the year 1800 ; and 
 finally that new aggressiveness of modern Christianity by which, 
 from us as from Christian Europe, the Gospel sounds out into all 
 heathen and Mohammedan lands. 
 
 Above all, we must encourage ourselves by the declared purpose 
 of our Lord. This land, as all lands, belongs to Him. And 
 it seems no presumption to believe, that, having so singularly 
 reserved this land through the centuries for a new experiment which 
 should be free from many of the hindrances, though rich with the 
 experiences, of European history. He who times all changes in the 
 interests of his Christ will not fail to conduct that experiment to a 
 successful issue. Of the experiment may we not say, even as of 
 the outcome of His whole Mediatorial reign; 
 
 "To doubt would be disloyalty, 
 To falter would be sin "? 
 
 II. If our perils are great, so also are our opportunities. 
 A field for unfettered movement lies before the American Church. 
 No human laws control or obstruct it. It can make unrestricted 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 15 
 
 trial of all the spiritual forces with which it is endowed — of the 
 truth which makes free, of the provisions for human need of which 
 it is the purveyor, of the might of the Holy Spirit. What hinders 
 but its own lack of faith, courage, self devotion ? 
 
 And already vast resources are in its hands. It has the accumu- 
 lating prestige of the Christian centuries. It has vast properties in 
 churches, schools, publishing houses, hospitals. It has in the 
 brain and heart and brawn of its members unlimited productive 
 capacity. All that it needs in men and treasure, in knowledge and 
 love, in human accessories and divine aid, are at its command. Its 
 waste would feed the famishing multitudes. 
 
 And, moreover, as the heritage of struggling centuries, the Amer- 
 ican Church is in the midst of a people and of institutions mobile, 
 expectant, ready to be shaped by that form of doctrine into which 
 it shall be delivered. An enlarging church, a purer religion, an 
 invigorated national conscience, would promptly embody themselves 
 in better institutions, better laws, better customs, which in turn 
 would aid to yet larger successes, the system which, in the eyes 
 of all observers, was thus uplifting society. 
 
 And such is the position of America among the nations, that the 
 opportunity for the American Church is an opportunity for the 
 world. Is it self-conceit that leads to the belief, common among 
 lis, that though America makes no boast of diplomacy, and uses no 
 menace of war, her influence on the thoughts and institutions of 
 the world is far-reaching and irresistible; that society everywhere is 
 stirred profoundly by the fair vision of our liberty ensphered in 
 order, as the depths of ocean answer back to the moon; that with 
 the rising of our national life upon the sight of other lands, a new 
 era of hope dawned upon them ? And now, if the American Church 
 can effect a thorough Christianization of American society, can 
 stamp our public and private life with the characters of righteous- 
 ness and love, can any doubt that the whole world shall note the 
 fact, and by the thousand ties that bind it to us, and by the thou- 
 sand channels of communication that are opened between us, shall 
 receive a mighty impulse toward the higher life, and so the Kingdom 
 of God be hastened on the earth ? 
 
 III. Both peril and opportunity summon to co-operation. This 
 hour, beyond other hours formative and prophetic of national des- 
 tiny, calls to fraternal counsels and concerted action. 
 
 That is a striking picture which Merivale, in his " Conversion of 
 
16 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
 
 the Roman Empire," gives of the council of Nice, that gathering of 
 the chiefs of the Church, of its masters of theology and of its con- 
 fessors, to define and declare the Christian doctrine. An important 
 work was then done for all time. But it marks an advance in the 
 Kingdom of God among men, that the great evangelical bodies, 
 having at length reached a consensus of essential doctrine (a consen- 
 sus set forth with rare wisdom by the First Evangelical Alliance 
 held in London in 1846), are now disposed to busy themselves less 
 with controversy concerning creeds and governments and cere- 
 monies, and more with the practical application of Christianity to 
 the salvation of individuals and of society. They tend to concord 
 and co-operation. 
 
 But limitations suggest themselves. 
 
 First. The Alliance under whose auspices this Convention meets 
 at its organization declared, properly and in good faith, its desire 
 and intention neither " to effect an amalgamation of the churches," 
 nor " to interfere in any way whatever with the internal affairs of 
 the various denominations." Whatever larger external unity may 
 be hoped for the Church of the future; whatever wiser economy of 
 men and means, and whatever increase of spiritual power may seem 
 possible in that better relation of the churches, for which all devout 
 souls long — at present neither the Alliance nor this Convention con- 
 template any criticism or revision or abandonment of denomina- 
 tional organization or methods. No question is raised here touching 
 the necessary constitution of a true church, or the raison d'etre of 
 any particular church. Nor do any here believe that the work of 
 Christianizing the American people can be taken out of the hands 
 of the churches as such. Not by disregard of church order, nor 
 by a transfer of individual religious activity from the church sphere 
 to some kindred sphere, is progress possible. With great care, 
 therefore, does the call for this Convention recognize as a somewhat 
 permanent fact the diverse Church life of which we are severally 
 parts. But in this diversity it finds a higher unity. E pluribus 
 unum is the motto of the Republic, one and indivisible; Unum 
 corpus sumus in Christo, is the inspired legend on the seal of the 
 Evangelical Alliance, The hitherto imperfect recognition of this 
 unity in Christ is one of the sad facts of church history. But it 
 will give way, not by impracticable efforts at uniformity, not by 
 direct efforts to belittle the significance of our characteristic differ- 
 ences, but by a new vision in each church, of the supreme import- 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP ANDREWS. 17 
 
 ance of the end for which all churches stand, namely, righteousness, 
 and in single-hearted, earnest effort to secure it for ourselves and 
 our fellows. That vision and that effort will insensibly wear away 
 our bigotries and our self-will. And, thus, in so far as this Con- 
 vention shall stimulate each church here represented to aggressive 
 activity within its own lines, even if it go no farther, it will have 
 forwarded a genuine co-operation in the service of our common 
 Lord. 
 
 Secondly. Salvation is an individual thing. It is personal 
 repentance, personal faith in Christ, personal regeneration by the 
 Holy Ghost. The salvation of a nation is by the salvation of its 
 personal units. ., The marvelous conquest of the Roman Empire 
 by Christianity was attained by the successive conversion of Lydia, 
 and the jailer, and Dyonisius the Areopagite, and a "woman 
 named Damaris," and then of countless more in every rank of life. 
 Thus also must America be Christianized. Men cannot be evange- 
 lized en masse. That was the method of Charlemagne, not of 
 Christ. And here, also, is a necessary limitation of Christian 
 co-operation. The result we desire must, to a great degree, be 
 reached by separate work for individual men. No large organiza- 
 tion of Christians, however wise and good, and no shrewdly con- 
 certed activity of churches, as if massed in military corps, can sup- 
 plant the divinely appointed agencies of Christianity, to wit, the 
 faithful preaching of the word, and the luminous holiness and per- 
 sonal effort of each believer. Even new and better legislation on 
 social and moral questions, from which many hope so much, is 
 possible only as the result of such simple and separate evangelistic 
 work. 
 
 Within the limitations thus named there is large room and demand 
 for Christian co-operation. Much is to be done in cultivating a charity 
 that shall avoid distrust, criticism and interference. Much is to be 
 learned by the study of our diverse methods. Both peril and oppor- 
 tunity will be better apprehended through free consultations. 
 A large habit may be formed of working together for common ends 
 in society and the State ; and here the field lies wide before us. 
 Our public-school system is to be maintained, and is to be improved 
 by elementary religious instruction. The Sabbath is to be rescued 
 from public desecration. The drinking usages of society are to be 
 reformed. The periodical press is to be purified. Marriage is to 
 be made inviolable. Political corruption is to be overcome. Justice 
 
18 ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 
 
 for weak and wronged races is to be secured. The slums of great 
 cities are to be redeemed. Nascent States are to be fashioned by 
 the Gospel. Mormonism is to be overthrown. Immigration is to 
 be met at the threshold with Christian and American influences. 
 The Government itself is to be made, as far as practicable, an image 
 of the Divine Sovereingty. 
 
 In what form, by what means, these and like ends can be reached 
 are questions to which much of your deliberation will be given. 
 There are none who have a mind to comprehend and a heart to feel 
 the greatness of the issues before the American people, who will 
 not fervently hope that your wisdom and your spirit may contribute 
 largely to the guidance of American Christians in the conflict to 
 which they are called, and all such souls would reverently join in 
 invoking upon you light from Him who is the Light of the world. 
 
 Mr. Jay: I know that I anticipate the unanimous wish of this 
 Conference, when I extend to Bishop Andrews our sincere thanks 
 for his cordial, hopeful and most valuable address of welcome. 
 (Applause.) We will now listen to the first paper of the Confer- 
 ence. 
 
THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 BY REV. DANIEL DORCHESTER, D. D., 
 OF BOSTON. 
 
 Massed populations cannot dwell in obscurity. They are the 
 radiating centres of national life. 
 
 The rural sections get, not merely their fashions, but their social 
 customs and mold of character from the cities. Cities are moral 
 battle-grounds, potent determining factors of moral progress. The 
 problem of the cities is, therefore, one of the leading problems of 
 our civilization. Under our peculiar civil polity, the solution must 
 come from out of the hearts of the people, by the process of self- 
 government, grounded in intelligence and true virtue. 
 
 But first we need to understand the perils of the cities. To 
 unfold these in part (for it can be only partially done, within the 
 limits assigned me, to-day) is my present task. Those who follow, 
 I trust, will discuss other phases of the question. 
 
 I. PERIL FROM RAPID GROWTHS OF POPULATIONS. 
 
 The tendency to a congestion of populations has been one of the 
 marked phenomena of all history, from the days of Babel to the 
 present time. The teeming populations of Nineveh, Babylon, 
 Carthage, Syracuse and Rome, the cities of Egypt and Greece, are 
 only a few of the more notable of the great centres of the olden 
 times. Nor in our day are these large aggregations of humanity 
 confined to Christian riations. Availing ourselves, as well as we 
 can, of the very imperfect data of non-Christian countries, we find 
 China with 66 cities, whose populations exceed 50,000; 20 exceeding 
 250,000; and 4 exceeding 1,000,000. India has 25 exceeding 100,- 
 000, and 5 exceeding 250,000. Even in Africa, 25 cities exceed 
 50,000, and 6, 100,000. Japan, with a total population of 36,000,000, 
 holds 2,000,000 in twelve cities of 50,000 and upwards. Even the 
 East Indian Archipelago reports five cities ranging from 50,000 to 
 160,000 inhabitants. And many entirely barbarous countries are 
 
 19 
 
20 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 crowded with swarming masses, living in close contact, though but 
 slightly, if at all, organized as communities. 
 
 But it must be confessed that the conditions of the higher Chris- 
 tian civilizations furnish the impulse and also the facilities for 
 larger concentrations of population. While, in Japan, one in 18 of 
 the population are in cities of 50,000 and upwards; in France, the 
 rate is one in 7.5; in the United States one in 7; and in Great 
 Britain, with her more limited territorial area, one in 2.7 inhabitants. 
 
 In the United States, these large aggregations of people have 
 been the more remarkable, because of the unparalleled extent of 
 our national area. While the inhabitants have been spreading out 
 into the new Territories, filling up vast solitudes with new, organized 
 communities, so that in the last nine decades the thirteen States 
 increased to 38, and nine great Territories are rapidly maturing to 
 the condition of States, at the same time, the growth of the city 
 populations has been even more wonderful. 
 
 At the opening of this century, only six communities of 8,000 
 inhabitants and over were registered in our national census; the last 
 census numbered 286, with 22.5 per cent, of the total population 
 of the country. The table of the "Fifty Principal Cities," in the 
 last two censuses of the United States, have afforded very impressive 
 exhibits of this important part of our national life. Taking the 
 table for 1880, and constructing similar tables* for the same cities, f 
 in 1870, i860, 1850 and 1840, we have a good basis for inquiry and 
 deduction. Forty years is a sufficiently long period for testing the 
 questions involved. There are so many temporary ebbs and flows, 
 that shorter periods do not afford satisfactory basis for broad and 
 wise generalizations. 
 
 The population of these fifty cities, in forty years, increased 
 sixfold, while that of the whole country increased threefold, or 
 from 7.7 per cent, of the total population of the country in 1840, to 
 15.5 per cent, in 1880. At the same time Ihe other cities of 8,000 
 inhabitants and upwards increased in an even larger relative ratio, 
 though in much smaller aggregates. 
 
 When we examine the relative increase of these fifty cities in 
 each separate decade, we find the ratio steadily declining. The 
 
 *See pp. 743, 744 of the forthcoming volume by the author, entitled, " Chris- 
 tianity in the United States.From the First Settlement to the Present Time." Phil- 
 lips & Hunt, 805 Broadway, New York City. 8 vo. 795 pp. 
 
 fSan Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, and a few others which did not exist in 
 1840, are introduced at later dates. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 21 
 
 gain from 1840 to 1850, upon the population of 1840, was 78 per 
 ■cent.; from 1850 to i860, upon the population of 1850, was 62 per 
 cent.; from i860 to 1870, upon the population of i860, was 44 per 
 «ent. ; from 1870 to 1880, upon the population of 1870, was 37 
 per cent. 
 
 This peculiar exhibit is chiefly due to the large bases on which 
 the percentage is calculated in "each successive period, but not alto- 
 gether. The actual increase also relatively diminishes, and like- 
 •wise the percentage of gain on the whole population of the country. 
 In each previous decade, the increase of gain on the whole popula- 
 tion of the country ranged from two to two and seven-tenths per 
 •cent.; but frcwn 1870 to 1880 it was only about three-quarters of 
 ■one per cent. 
 
 While the relative increase of the fifty largest cities has thus 
 •declined, during the past forty years, that of the rural populations 
 outside of all cities of 8,000 inhabitants and upwards, if we except 
 the decade of the Civil War, has remained nearly uniform, being 29 
 per cent, in the first two, and 27 per cent, in the last. But this 
 rural population is all the while concentrating more and more in 
 newly forming centres, soon to be added to the list of cities, thus 
 enhancing the importance of the great problem of the cities. 
 
 The fact of the great and rapid growth of these centres of popu- 
 lation is not, in itself, an unmixed peril. It has its advantages, 
 bringing people near together, so that they can be easily reached, 
 and making Christian labors less obtrusive and open to carping 
 criticism. I give a typical fact : Said a young lady, a Sunday- 
 ischool teacher in the country, " If my dozen scholars were in a city, 
 I could save them. I could more readily see them' than now, scat- 
 tered as they are over many square miles, and I could bring my 
 influence to bear upon them, without exciting the gossip and oppo- 
 sition I now encounter, from people who know every move I make." 
 In foreign missionary addresses, we have been accustomed to hear 
 reference to the immense populations of Bombay, Siam and other 
 portions of the globe, crowded into small areas and speaking one 
 language, as an encouraging fact, facilitating the work of evangel- 
 ization. 
 
 The question of peril connected with the large cities starts from 
 this point — the rapid growth of the populations, producing great 
 •demands for religious provision. The . danger is that churches, 
 Sunday-schools and other religious facilities will not be multiplied 
 
22 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 sufficiently; that the number of the religious teachers and Christian 
 people, with their varied religious offices, will be inadequate to the 
 spiritual needs of these thriving communities ; or that, in the 
 changes of the population which often take place, from the centres 
 to the suburbs of the cities, the older sections will be left unsup- 
 plied with churches and the ordinances of religion. To follow up 
 the growth of these great cities, to furnish them with religious, 
 influences, to make lodgments of Christian truth in the hearts of 
 these intensely surging masses, and capture and hold them t» 
 Christianity, is a task of no small magnitude. 
 
 II. PERIL FROM LARGE ACCESSIONS OF VICIOUS CLASSES. 
 
 The manifold, large, corrupt elements concentrating in the cities 
 produce hideous congestions of evil, for such the slums may be 
 characterized. These reinforcements come from several sources. 
 
 Our rural districts send valuable additions of virtue, intelligence, 
 enterprise and real stamina; but other classes of a very different 
 type pour into the cities — uneasy, restless, roving adventurers, needy 
 and greedy men and women, thriftless families, many weary of the 
 sweat of honest toil, many whose growing viciousness shuns the 
 light and gaze of village streets, others whose overmastering pro- 
 pensities to evil break from the restraints of said communities and 
 seek large indulgence; others fleeing from the wreck of better 
 fortunes, and others from the wreck of character. With such tides 
 pouring into them, portions of the cities become large festering,, 
 fermenting slums. 
 
 Commerce, with its great advantages, brings serious disadvan- 
 tages to the large maritime cities. With their widely extended 
 commercial intercommunication with the whole world, there comes 
 familiarity with the vices of the nations — an enlarged community 
 of vice. The great seaports absorb the concentrated vices of the 
 world, and, in these days of quick and easy transit, the inland cities 
 and rural towns are easily inoculated with every evil virus known 
 in the world-wide community of iniquity. We have quarantine 
 protection against foreign pestilences, but none against foreign vices. 
 
 Furthermore the law of growth inheres in sin. Large aggregates 
 of vicious characters intensify evil, and produce monstrous devel- 
 opments of iniquity. Thus large cities become the strongholds of 
 devildom, where "Satan's seat is," and saloonocracy, prostitution, 
 gambling and a long list of nameless wrongs are rampant. Crime 
 multiplies, thrives, claims and often receives immunity. Lechery 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 23 
 
 riots and putrefies ; groggeries and other dens keep open on Sun- 
 days in the face of worthless officials ; filthy performances are 
 allowed to draw crowded houses ; and elaborately furnished gam- 
 bling hells flourish unnoticed. The slums are Babels of moral 
 confusion, of manifold tongues and manifold crimes, in crowding 
 regiments, besieging and beating back law and order. These 
 terribly lapsed masses seem utterly void of hope or desire for 
 elevation, indifferent to imitation and instruction, and defiant 
 toward remonstrance and warning. 
 
 III. — PERIL FROM THE SALOON. 
 
 This topic refluires treatment here, inasmuch as the saloon holds 
 the centre of its power in the cities. But inasmuch as this topic is 
 to be specially treated as a distinct part of the programme, I will 
 omit the discussion of it. 
 
 IV. — THE PERIL OF MISRULE. 
 
 The American policy of rule by the people is being put to a 
 severe test. Some time ago we became familiar with the phrase 
 " ring-rule " ; but we have passed far down beyond that, and now 
 hear much of "gang-rule," and "thug-rule." In some cities a 
 large part of the primary meetings are held in low saloons, which 
 good citizens will not enter; and hence the administration of city 
 affairs is determined by the lowest and most corrupt elements of 
 the population. The aldermen and councilmen thus nominated 
 and elected, with the police appointed by them, become a corrupt 
 ring, dominated by political and personal considerations, the base- 
 line of which is subserviency, and all questions of character and 
 intelligence are eliminated. The police of some cities, while com- 
 prising many persons entitled to much praise, often include others 
 of brutal instincts, incapable of using properly the formidable 
 weapons and authority which the law places in their hands. Politi- 
 cal service or the recommendations of saloon-keepers too often 
 determine the appointment of police. It is the old story of the 
 wolves selecting the. dogs to guard the sheepfold. 
 
 We read every day instances of violence and gang-rule, but 
 only a small percent is supposed to get into the papers. In some 
 river wards, citizens are terrorized by bands of young ruffians, 
 organized for robbery, drunkenness and debauchery, and murder 
 is not an unfrequent incident. The law-abiding inhabitants are 
 
24 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 sometimes helpless, and so overawed as to be afraid to testify 
 against the gang in a court of justice. Police protection is inter- 
 mittent and culpably inefficient, and crimes against person and 
 property are perpetrated with impunity. 
 
 Worse than all, the fountain-head of justice is sometimes sub- 
 micsive to "the gang," and roughs arrested are discharged because 
 they " stand well " with " the boss," usually a saloon-keeper. The 
 ■overmuch politics with which this country is cursed, and the con- 
 stantly recurring elections, place the administration of law at the 
 mercy of the ruffianly elements, and ward politics becomes a trade, 
 in which robbery and lawlessness are connived at. Gang-rule pre- 
 vails wherever ward politicians bid the police stand aside, and force, 
 the police-justice to utter decisions in the interest of disorder. 
 
 Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking on the " Menaces of Civiliza- 
 tion" before the Congregational Club of New York City, said: 
 " In any attempt to reform them by law, would we not find nine- 
 tenths of the city members in the Legislature hostile? The 
 only hope of reform lies in the action of the country members. 
 The average grade of our city politicians is a serious menace 
 to good government. Four-fifths of the representatives at 
 Albany, of New York and Brooklyn, can be depended upon to 
 vote on the wrong side of every question." This, said a leadmg 
 New York editor, from an observation of twenty years, we believe 
 to be true. 
 
 Even the registration lists in these cities, under the manipulation 
 of the gangs, are falsified. Last spring it was said that " not less 
 than 20,000 citizens of St. Louis failed to register" for an impor- 
 tant city election, among whom were a large number of persons 
 of "the best moral standing and intelligence, whose business 
 activity contributes largely to the prosperity of the city." On the 
 other hand, the vilest and most vicious elements, we are told, " had 
 their names on the lists and appeared in full force at the polls. 
 The ward politicians gathered them out of all the vile resorts of 
 the city, and used them for their own purposes, regardless of the 
 public welfare." 
 
 The St. Louis papers moralized over the degeneracy of the city 
 politics, and put the responsibility upon "the good men who do 
 not vote. ' ' But many of the best citizens replied that " for years 
 the registration lists have been the chief instrument used by the 
 worst elements for their fraudulent purposes ' ' ; that " the registry 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 25 
 
 of voters has not afforded the slightest protection against fraudu- 
 lent voting ; that there has not been an honest election in this city 
 for years ; " that hotel registers have been transferred to the voting 
 lists, and men have been found to vote upon the names ; that the 
 ballot-boxes are often in the hands of men whose Satanic mathe- 
 matics will produce any kind of election result desired ; and that 
 such things are carried on with the connivance of the party in 
 power — and why, therefore, should good men trouble themselves 
 in the vain effort of making an honest ballot overbalance fraudu- 
 lent returns ? 
 
 Baltimore has been of late conspicuously referred to as another 
 typical example Kif a city given over to the misrule of unscrupu- 
 lous demagogues and corruptionists ; ably supported by the crim- 
 inal classes. Of the judges appointed to supervise a recent muni- 
 cipal election, an authority says, one has been indicted and 
 ■convicted of crime; another has been indicted, convicted, sent to 
 jail and pardoned ; one has been indicted for assault with intent to 
 kill, the sheriff becoming his bail — the case was not pressed ; 
 another had been indicted nine times in four years; another, eight 
 times in two years; another had served in jail six months; another, 
 had been indicted for assault with intent to kill; another had been 
 ■convicted of an infamous crime, etc., etc. 
 
 With such a set of " thugs " installed as election judges, how 
 farcical must be the elections! Primary meetings are packed, 
 nominations controlled, elections dictated, and ballots counted to 
 suit. Similar facts are given concerning Cincinnati, Chicago, 
 Albany, the North End of Boston, etc., etc. 
 
 V. PERIL FROM A WIDENING GULF BETWEEN LARGE MASSES AND 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES. 
 
 The Papal elements of course stand aloof from our churches, and 
 ■can be won only with great care and wise, persevering efforts. The 
 large rationalistic and ' radical socialistic elements which come to 
 ■out cities settle themselves on the other side of the chasm. The 
 lower vicious elements belong there, by moral gravitation. Our 
 agnostics, native and foreign, have nothing in common with us. 
 But there is a large middle class, many of whom were reared amid 
 . the associations of church life in the country, and others once 
 associated with city churches, who have turned away from the 
 •sanctuary. Good observers say the breach is widening, especially 
 
26 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 in the great cities, and in some sections in the country also, 
 and there are sad signs that in too many places the Church of 
 Christ is getting farther from large masses of the people, instead of 
 nearer. 
 
 It is said that the erection of so many costly, magnificent 
 churches, to meet the desires of wealthy, aristocratic families, has 
 conveyed the impression of caste, to less favored people, has 
 increased the cost of church attendance, and has put many families 
 in a position of so great social disparity, that they have felt ill at 
 ease, have withdrawn from the sanctuary, and fallen away from pub- 
 lic worship altogether. There have been many complaints of churches 
 of " the few elect, select people; " of churches managed on "the 
 high plane of financial and aristocratic exclusiveness;" of expen- 
 sive churches, which screw out of the people pew assessments and 
 pew rents, and drive them away from the sanctuary ; of churches 
 which have ceased to imitate the great Master who " ate with pub- 
 licans and sinners," and " went about doing good." 
 
 The Sunday newspaper has been an evil factor, and modern 
 skepticism and doctrinal revulsion have had something to do in pro- 
 ducing this condition. Large masses, very many of them native 
 population, go upon Sunday excursions instead of attending wor- 
 ship. Many Protestant congregations are small, with large unoc- 
 cupied spaces in the auditorium. Statistics of non-attendance are 
 freely quoted in newspapers, conferences and assemblies. And 
 though much of the talk is mere pessimistic raving, yet there are 
 genuine facts enough to indicate that there is a great duty to be 
 performed to a large mass of worship-neglecters, and to set us to 
 seriously inquire. How can the bans of union between the Church 
 and the non-worshippers be effected ? 
 
 VI. PERILS FROM ELEMENTS HETEROGENEOUS AND LARGELY DEFI- 
 ANTLY HOSTILE. 
 
 A citizenship unassimilated into the national, moral and religious 
 life of any people is a peril. We are unable to produce from the 
 pages of history an example of a nation so greatly exposed to peril 
 at this point as our own ; and the sources of this peril are concen- 
 trating in the large cities more than anywhere else. 
 
 If the new additions to our city population were homogeneous in 
 race and general ideas, the case would be more tolerable. How 
 different is London, with only 1.6 per cent, of its immense popu- 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 27 
 
 lation born outside of the British Isles! How much easier there 
 the work of reform, philanthropy and evangelization than in the 
 heterogeneous populations of our American cities! In our urban 
 centres we find every conceivable nationality, as well as all shades 
 of religion, the darker shadows of no religion, and many owning 
 supreme allegiance to a foreign Pontiff. The tables of the United 
 States Census, showing the foreign-born population of the " Fifty 
 Principal Cities," show that there are in them people from — 
 
 Africa (not specified) in 40 cities. Holland in 50 cities. 
 
 Asia (not specified) "30 " Hungary "46 " 
 
 Atlantic Islands "33 " India "45 " 
 
 Australia "47 " Italy "49 " 
 
 Austria * " 50 " Japan " 16 " 
 
 Belgium "46 " Luxemburg "34 " 
 
 Bohemia "46 " Malta "20 " 
 
 British America "5° " Mexico "40 " 
 
 Central America "22 " Norway "48 " 
 
 China "46 " Pacific Islands "24 " 
 
 Cuba "41 " Poland "50 " 
 
 Denmark. "50 " Portugal "33 " 
 
 Europe (not specified) "42 " Russia "50 " 
 
 France "50 " Sandwich Islands "32 " 
 
 German Empire "50 " South America "49 " 
 
 England "50 " Spain "48 " 
 
 Ireland "50 " Sweden "50 " 
 
 Scotland "50 " Switzerland "50 " 
 
 Wales "50 " Turkey "33 " 
 
 Greece. "32 " West Indies "47 " 
 
 Greenland " 12 " 
 
 What more striking exhibit of the wide distribution of the most 
 diverse elements in our large cities ! What a polyglot population ! 
 The natives of fourteen of the localities are in every one of the 
 fifty principal cities ; those of fifteen other localities are in between 
 forty and fifty of the cities, and the natives of only five localities 
 are in less than half of the fifty cities. 
 
 The foreign-born population of these fifty cities was, in 1850, 
 37.1 per cent, of their total population ; in i860, 38.3 per cent.; in 
 1870, J4. 1 per cent; in 1880, 29.8 per cent., or 8.5 per cent, less 
 than in i860. This small relative decline in the percentage of the 
 foreign-born to the whole population of these cities, should be con- 
 sidered in connection with the large mass of those essentially for- 
 eign, being foreign in the second or third degree. 
 
 Those, one or both of whose parents are foreign born, sustain 
 
■28 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 the closest relations to foreign customs and ideas. The United 
 States Census for 1880 gave the number of this latter class for the 
 whole country ; but only for the city of New York, as a separate 
 locality. In that city 39 per cent, of the whole number of inhabi- 
 tants were foreign born ; adding the other class, we have 80. i per 
 -cent, either foreign born, or one or both of whose parents were 
 foreign born. The Census of Massachusetts, taken in 1885, gives 
 these two classes, in Boston, at 67 per cent. ; in Lawrence, 77.4 
 per cent.; in Fall River, 81.3 per cent.; in Holyoke, 82.7 per cent., 
 and in sixty-five towns and cities in Massachusetts, at 65.1 per 
 cent. 
 
 The foreign elements in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, 
 and some other cities will probably rank nearly or quite with New 
 York City, both classes combined being about double the number 
 of those actually born in foreign lands; and in most other large 
 cities about 80 per cent, more than those foreign in the first degree. 
 Taking the whole fifty cities, probably it will be safe to say that at 
 least 54 per cent, of their inhabitants are of the first and second 
 degree foreign, which gives us a foreign element of 4,194,617 in the 
 "Fifty Principal Cities." If these cities had no larger foreign 
 element relatively than the city of London there would be only 
 225,000 persons in all of them of the first two degrees foreign, or 
 about one-nineteenth as many as we now have. 
 
 How diverse the civilizations, the religious ideas, the social cus- 
 toms, the culture and no-culture of our new-comers! Among them 
 are some, a goodly number, whom we are glad to recognize, wel- 
 come and honor, as desirable additions to our citizenship. With 
 liberal allowance for such, nevertheless, it will not be denied that, 
 as a whole, these heterogeneous masses, with habits, sympathies, 
 political and religious predilections, so unlike and positively antag- 
 onistic to those of our native population, have weighed heavily 
 against us. Coming in large crowds, pouring into the principal 
 cities often as new and distinct nationalities, keeping up " Old World " 
 customs, introducing their crude and sometimes revolutionary opin- 
 ions into our elections, massing their forces, and effectively con- 
 trolling them, they have set aside the American Sabbath, opened 
 Sunday theatres, beer gardens, infidel clubs, communistic societies 
 and anarchistic leagues, inaugurating mobocracy, and copiously 
 filling up the ranks of the social outcasts. 
 
 In these facts lie the most serious perils of the cities. How 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 29 
 
 greviously have morals been debauched, pauperism, insanity and 
 crime augmented, and moral progress retarded by these exotic 
 masses. The problem of city evangelization has been inconceiv- 
 ably enhanced in difficulty, and its solution indefinitely postponed^ 
 by this continual addition of these radical socialistic pauper and 
 criminal classes, as too many of them have been. Under such cir- 
 cumstances it has become a grave question*, Can old world sub- 
 jects BE transformed INTO NEW WORLD CITIZENS ? 
 
 Our cities, more than any other part of the country, have 
 received large installments of foreign radicalism. The communistic, 
 anarchistic and other radical revolutionary theories, assailing gov- 
 ernment, social order, and religion, have been promulgated in the 
 largest centres of our population. The spirit of atheism is in the 
 air. It comes largely from the Old World. It steams up from the 
 slums. It organizes in leagues. It has its presses. Large batches 
 of organs of atheism and socialism are published in New York 
 and Chicago. They proclaim anarchy as a scheme of freedom; and 
 freedom is a popular word. Inflammable edicts issue from the 
 atheistic press, outspoken, defiant, steeped m the spirit of denial, 
 frothing with venom, and so shocking with rage that our blood 
 chills as we read them. .They are disseminated with a dead-in- 
 earnest zeal and diligence. These are the worst classes of our 
 foreign born populations. 
 
 " Fourteen or fifteen centuries ago," said a writer in the Congre- 
 gationalist, " our British ancestry asked the Anglo-Saxons to help 
 them in their struggles against the Picts and Scots. The Saxons 
 complied with their request, but after the enemy had been defeated, 
 remained to hold sway over the Britons." Are we not repeating 
 the old experiment ? Our Western cities are rapidly becoming 
 Germanized and our New England cities Irishized. We are being 
 dominated by those who have been invited to share in, not to 
 overturn, our beneficent institutions. Th2 aggressive radicalism 
 ' of our adopted German citizens has already projected crises in 
 more than one of our great cities, and Boston and some other New 
 England cities are shuddering over their dubious prospects. 
 
 VII. PERIL FROM ROMANISM. 
 
 The most prominent antagonism to our religious life comes in an 
 organized form, dominated and directed by a foreign pontiff, who 
 
30 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 assumes to include educational, social, religious and political mat- 
 ters within the scope of his administration. 
 
 Romanism has concentrated her adherents in the cities. Take 
 out these elements, and carry us back to the condition in 1850, and 
 how different the city problem ! The multiplication of large and 
 imposing churches and other ecclesiastical edifices, by the Roman 
 Catholic Church, has greatly impressed the public and excited alarm 
 in some quarters. Exaggerated random statements in regard to 
 their numbers are often paraded before the public. No exact data 
 exist to tell the numerical strength of Roman Catholic adherents 
 in the cities. The most satisfactory statistics are those of their 
 churches and priests, as given in their Year Books. 
 
 Taking the " Fifty Prmcipal Cities," and covering the period from 
 1850 to 1886, we find: 
 
 1850 Churches, 170 Priests, 336 
 
 i860 " 312 " 565 
 
 1870 " 495 " 1031 
 
 1880 " 676. " 1562 
 
 1886 " 825 " 1892 
 
 Comparing with the total population of these cities, we find : 
 
 1850, One church for 14,221 inhabitants. One priest for 7,295 inhabitants. 
 
 i860, " " " 12,620 " " " " 6,989 " 
 
 1870, " " " 11,486 " " " " 5,516 " 
 
 1880, " " " 11,530 " " " " 4,991 " 
 
 Here is a gain upon the population, in the number of the priests, 
 •down to 1880, the latest date for which we have the population of 
 the cities for comparison. There is a gain in the number of the 
 churches down to 1870, since which date they slightly failed to keep 
 pace with the population, there being forty-four more inhabitants to 
 one church in 1880 than in 1870. An examination of the preceding 
 table will justify the inference that the actual increase of both the 
 churches and the priests, from 1880 to 1886, has been relatively less 
 than in the previous decades. From 1880 to 1886, in twenty-five 
 of the principal cities the Roman Catholics gained only fourteen 
 churches. In the other twenty-five cities they gained 135 churches. 
 From all these facts, it seems that they have passed the period of 
 their most rapid numerical growth in the large cities, as can also be 
 shown to be the case in the country at large. 
 
 Considering the large foreign increment in the population of the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 31 
 
 ■cities, and that fully three-fifths has been originally from Roman 
 Catholic stock, the fact that they increased their churches in the 
 whole fifty cities in thirty years only 506, an average of ten in each, 
 or one-third of a church a year in each city is not very remarkable. 
 
 As to the size of their church edifices, the number of worship- 
 ers, and the number of different services on each Sunday, we have 
 no data. We know, however, from common observation, that they 
 have several services every Sunday which is also true of most 
 Protestant churches, and that their audiences are larger, as a whole, 
 than those of Protestant churches. And yet it is true that very 
 many of their people are becoming accustomed to absent themselves 
 from public worsHip, except on two or three Sabbaths each year, as 
 it is true also of too many Protestants. 
 
 In this necessarily brief statement we should not overlook the 
 very close, detailed and effective organization of its forces which 
 the Roman Catholic Church is making, with a view to supplement- 
 ing the decline of its former large gains by immigration. Its religious 
 brotherhoods and sisterhoods, its'educational and charitable insti- 
 tutions, are widely organized, and nowhere so effectively exert their 
 power as in the cities. A brief summary for four cities, not at all 
 exceptional in the list, will serve to impress us with what they are 
 •doing. 
 
 They report for the city of Baltimore fifteen conventional houses 
 of sisters, besides six monasteries, or residences of brotherhoods, 
 seventeen charitable institutions (orphanages, refuges, hospitals, 
 etc.), with about 2,000 inmates, twenty-seven parochial schools with 
 7,000 pupils, a theological seminary with 220 students, and one 
 Jesuit college with 129 students. 
 
 In the city of Boston are six convents, thirteen charitable institu- 
 tions with 3,365 inmates and 9,809 out-door patients, fourteen 
 parish schools with 5,885 pupils, and a Jesuit college with 300 
 students of all grades. 
 
 In Cincinnati they report ten charitable institutions, with 2,668 
 inmates, twenty-four parochial schools with 10,675 pupils, fourteen 
 religious communities (convents, monasteries or residences), with 
 664 brothers, sisters, novices, etc., one Jesuit college with 300 stu- 
 dents, one college of the Congregation of the Holy Cross with 200 
 students, and a gymnasium or classical school for young men 
 aspiring to the priesthood, with fifty students. 
 
 In Chicago are reported forty-seven convents and other religious 
 
32 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 communities of men and women, with over 600 brothers and sisters,, 
 fourteen charitable institutions, sixty parochial schools with 28,051 
 pupils, and one Jesuit college with 274 students, besides several 
 seminaries. 
 
 Similar exhibits of Romanism might be given of almost all the 
 large cities. They indicate that Romanism expects to stay among 
 us, is shrewdly planning to take care of its people, to gather and 
 attach to Rome, orphans, foundlings, etc., and to win the favor of 
 the general public by its hospitals, industrial schools and 
 dispensaries. 
 
 Nor should the increase of Roman Catholic churches be regarded 
 as an unmixed evil. In some respects it is an encouraging indica- 
 tion. Without these religious agencies, how could our foreigm 
 masses be held in check and controlled, especially in times of 
 panic and other provocations to violence. The argument might be 
 extended further. 
 
 Nevertheless, we believe that Protestantism would do these 
 masses more good than Romanism, if we could have access to them. 
 More than that, we believe that the Roman Catholic Church is inim- 
 ical to the best progress of society, and in direct antagonism to the 
 historic religion of the nation — the religion of the Holy Scriptures. 
 We can, therefore, by no means relinquish the cities to their 
 control, but must regard the entire population of the cities 
 as comprised in our commission to preach the Gospel to every 
 creature. 
 
 It is an important inquiry, How have the evangelical Protestant 
 churches represented in this Alliance competed with Romanism 
 and with the population in these " Fifty Principal Cities " ? 
 
 It is a matter of regret that only a few denominations publish 
 their statistics in such a form that they are available for compari- 
 sons covering a period of forty years, in these fifty cities. We are 
 confined to the following: The Presbyterians, embracing the Old 
 School and the New School while separated, and the Southern Gen- 
 eral Assembly since its secession in 1861; the Methodist Episcopal 
 and the Methodist Episcopal South; the Congregationalists; and 
 the Reformed (late Dutch) Church. For the sake of convenience, 
 we will call these six denominations. The statistics show, in 1850, 
 3,680 inhabitants of all classes to one church. In 1880,5,375; m 
 1850, 2,686 inhabitants to one minister. In 1880, 3,551 inhabitants, 
 a steady falling behind the population m both items. Since 1880, 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 33 
 
 however, these churches and ministers increased more rapidly than 
 in previous periods. 
 
 As compared with the Roman Catholics, while the latter gained 
 largely upon the population, yet they started from a very small 
 basis in 1850. From 1850 to 1886 the Roman Catholic increase 
 was 655 churches, and that of the aforementioned denominations 
 was 1,057 churches. 
 
 But this comparison does not do justice to the evangelical Prot- 
 estant denominations. Turning to the directories of seven large 
 cities, to which I have had convenient access, viz. : Washington, 
 Philadelphia, New York, Providence, Boston, Cincinnati and Chi- 
 cago — we find in 1886 1,027 evangelical churches, in addition to 
 those of the six denominations mentioned in the former calculation, 
 which, when combined with those of the six denominations, show 
 one evangelical church in 2,102 inhabitants in these seven large 
 cities, and one Roman Catholic church in 12,552 inhabitants, cal- 
 culated on the population in 1880 in the same cities, or, relatively 
 to the population, six times as many evangelical Protestant churches 
 as Roman Catholic. We doubt not the whole fifty cities would 
 give a still more favorable showing for our churches. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of the average number of churches' in 
 the whole population. If I should pause here my work would be 
 faulty, overlooking the destitute localities or sections in many of 
 the large cities, owing in the older cities to the migration of the 
 population to the newer portions and the suburbs, transferring the 
 churches with them. Many old churches, after a long struggle to 
 maintain an existence, have been closed, and been converted to 
 secular uses. Thus large masses of people are left unprovided for. 
 Typical facts will be cited which can be paralleled in most of the 
 older cities. 
 
 The Interior says that in Chicago there is a district containing 
 50,000 people, with Sunday-school accommodations for only 2,000; 
 that it is full of theatres, saloons and gambling dens; that in one year 
 7,200 boys and girls are arrested for petty crimes ; that the churches 
 do not care for that district; they are looking after the avenues. 
 
 An authority says that in New York City there is a section con- 
 taining 50,000 inhabitants, 25,000 of whom are non-Roman Catho- 
 lics, with only one chapel, having accommodations for 400 people, 
 and 287 liquor saloons; while some other sections of the city have 
 a congestion of churches. 
 
34 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 Another authority says that six Assembly Districts in New York 
 City, with an aggregate population of 360,340 in 1880, had 3,018 
 saloons and thirty-one Protestant churches — a saloon to every 118 
 persons and a Protestant church to every 11,624 persons. In the 
 Twentieth District there is said to be one Protestant church to 
 20,246 inhabitants, and a saloon to every 222. This is not quite 
 as bad as Berlin, in many districts of which, according to Professor 
 Christlieb, there was only one church for every 50,000 of the 
 population. 
 
 We suggest the query whether there may not be in Berlin some 
 Baptist, Methodist or other missions which have been ignored in 
 some of those localities, owing to the strong prejudices of the State 
 churches against these irregular interloping bodies, as they are 
 inclined to regard them. And is it not possible that in some of 
 the districts of New York just referred to, there may be German, 
 Scandinavian, Disciple, African or other evangelical bodies per- 
 forming good work for Christ in some unpretentious edifice, or in 
 halls ? 
 
 With due allowance, it still remains that there is an alarming 
 destitution of provision for religious worship in large sections of 
 our great cities. The greater destitution of Berlin does not help us. 
 
 We have said the number of the churches does not show all that 
 is Involved in the case. We are anxious to know how far the 
 evangelical Protestant churches are reaching the people. Some 
 elements in the case, we are fully aware, cannot be tested by any 
 kind of statistics, and yet ye cannot dispense with statistics. They 
 give us approximate ideas of things. The comparison of the 
 number of the communicants with the population will help us some- 
 what. But only the data furnished by the six denominations 
 referred to are obtainable, for these fifty principal cities, as 
 follows : 
 
 1840, Communicants, 104,706 Inhabitants to one communicant, 12.67 
 
 1850, ■' 157.933 " " " 15-30 
 
 i860, " 222,625 " " " 17-33 
 
 1870, " 298,474 " " " 19.05 
 
 1880, '• 414,184 " " " 18.81 
 
 1886, " 496,694 No census of population for this year. 
 
 Here is a very large actual increase — almost fivefold in 46 years. 
 
 But it appears that these six denominations combined, steadily 
 
 fell behind the populations of the fifty cities in each decade from 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 35 
 
 1840 to 1870; that from 1870 to 1880 they gained a very little on 
 the population — .24 of one person — not a very flattering exhibit, 
 certainly; but a great improvement upon the three previous 
 decades, in each of which they lost on an average more than two 
 persons. 
 
 Though there can be no comparison with the population in 1886, 
 yet the rate of increase since 1880 has been a little better than 
 from 1870 to 1880; the average yearly increase since 1880 has 
 been eleven more churches and 2,177 more communicants than 
 the average yearly increase of the previous decades. 
 
 It should also be mentioned that some of the most flourishing 
 •denominations-^he Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, African, 
 Methodists, Disciples, etc., etc., some of which during the last 
 thirty years have had the greatest growths of their entire history — 
 have been from necessity left out of these calculations. If their 
 statistics could have been included, the case would have looked 
 still better. 
 
 When we consider that during this period in which we have been 
 making these comparisons we have had immense additions of 
 foreigners, full three-fourths of whom have been non-Protestant and 
 •count against us in our comparisons, that these six denominations 
 fell a little behind the population from 1840 to 1870, will not seem 
 strange. That they have gained a little on the population since 
 1870, is full of encouraging significance. 
 
 The numerous efforts for city evangelization, more exten- 
 sively organized since 1870 than ever before, are developing 
 •encouraging results. The Young Men's Christian Associations and 
 the powerful evangelistic labors of Messrs. Moody, Penticost, 
 Jones, etc., have all contributed to this result. The relative 
 •decline of Roman Catholic immigration, and the large Protestant 
 immigration since 1870, have also been helping factors. 
 
 While looking at the perils of the present time, let us not 
 pessimise the situation. There is a judicial view of the case, 
 which will not diminish our sense of present responsibility, but 
 will give a healthier, steadier and more courageous tone to our 
 efforts. It is very doubtful whether any such aggressive Christian- 
 ity, in large cities, can be cited from the history of any of the 
 previous Christian centuries; certainly not in the last two centuries, 
 as we have witnessed in our large cities during the last forty-six 
 years. The Protestant churches of the few cities in this country, 
 
36 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 and in the larger and more numerous cities of Great Britain, and 
 all other Protestant countries, during the last century, were in a low, 
 cold, stagnant condition, wholly unaggressive. In the last half of 
 the last century, there was a little waking up in Great Britain, but 
 nothing like what we have witnessed here in the last fifty years. Had 
 we possessed no more vital power than the churches of the last 
 century, and of almost all of the previous Christian centuries, with 
 the great tides of foreign immigration, Romanism, rationalism and 
 socialism coming in upon us, we would have been utterly swamped, 
 and our churches would have wholly disappeared from the cities. 
 We must recognize the value of the breakwater, that has kept us 
 from being submerged ; the Eddystone light-houses that have 
 stood firmly where dreadful waves have been breaking ; the last 
 havens maintained where stores and comfort and refuge have 
 been offered to wild, venturesome voyagers. That under such cir- 
 cumstances these six denominations have increased their communi- 
 cants nearly fivefold in forty-six years, and, in the last sixteen 
 years, have begun to gain a little upon the fearful odds of the 
 whole polyglot population, is occasion for thanksgiving and inspires 
 courage for the future. 
 
 We are learning that the large metropolitan cities contain not 
 only the concentrated vices of the world, but also the intensest 
 concentrations of good forces. While these large aggregations of 
 evil have been gathering, we have also been organizing and cen- 
 trating in the cities, great benevolent, philanthropic, educational 
 and evangelizing societies and boards, for which only the feeblest 
 parallels could be found from one hundred to two hundred years 
 ago, and in many large cities no parallels at all. 
 
 When we become depressed and gloomy over the great corrup- 
 tions of our large cities, and feel like sinking under the discourag- 
 ing prospect, let us read what Leckey says about the great cities of 
 Great Britain in the last century, and t];ien turn to the still grosser 
 condition of the cities of the European continent at that time. The 
 evils we see in our American cities impress us deeply, because we 
 see them in the background of the clearest Christian civilization 
 that ever illumined the world. The old Roman world never looked 
 so dark and revolting as it did after Christianity poured into it her 
 divine illumination. 
 
 Where can we point, in long centuries, to religious triumphs, 
 aside from those which occurred under the Wesleyan revival in 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. DANIEL DORCHESTER. 37 
 
 England, in the last century, that can parallel the spiritual achieve- 
 ments at the Five Points in New York, and in the slums of other 
 cities, in the last fifty years ? These dark haunts are darker and 
 harder than the Feejee and Society islands in the days of their 
 savagery; but Jerry McAuley and others, as imbruted as the 
 demoniac at Gadara, have been lifted from their debasement and 
 clothed in their right minds. Some of the grandest triumphs of 
 the Gospel in this century have been achieved in American cities. 
 "What we want is greater faith in God and in His Gospel to save the 
 vilest and worst of men. The cities are fields for the achievement 
 of the sublimest results, and our Divine Saviour is able to save them, 
 if His church wfll follow His leadership. 
 
 Let us join with Dr. Guthrie in saying : " I bless God for cities. 
 I recognize a wise and gracious providence in their existence. The 
 world had not been what it is without them. The disciples were 
 commanded to 'begin at Jerusalem;' and Paul threw himself into 
 the cities of the ancient world, as offering the most commanding 
 positions of influence. Cities have been as lamps of light along the 
 pathway of humanity and religion. Within them science has given 
 birth to her noblest discovery. Behind their walls freedom has 
 fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the 
 earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or turning aside the swell- 
 ing tide of oppression. Cities have been indeed the cradle of human 
 liberty. They have been the radiating, active centres of almost all 
 church and state reformations. 
 
 " Having, therefore, no sympathy with those who, regarding them 
 as the excrescenses of a tree or the tumors of a disease, would 
 raze our cities to the ground, I bless God for cities." 
 
 Let the motto, then, of this Alliance be, capture and hold the 
 cities for Christ, as the vital strategic points of His advancing 
 kingdom. 
 
THE CITY AS A PERIL, 
 
 BY REV. SIMON J. McPHERSON, D. D., 
 OF CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 Mr. President : No hater of the city can faithfully set forth its 
 perils. Cherishing for the city the fondness of Samuel Johnson 
 or Charles Lamb, we may well thank God for its rich blessings. 
 These, however, require neither vigilance nor restraint. They reveal 
 themselves. They can do no harm. But perils love the darkness,, 
 and must be detected and faced before we can remove them.. 
 They thrive on our neglect. It is an ungracious task, which one 
 dislikes, to speak of the perils without mentioning remedies. But 
 perils are the symptoms of disease. Discovered perils are oppor- 
 tunities and incentives to disciples of the Great Physician. 
 Thorough diagnosis must precede and determine the treatment 
 which will cure. 
 
 Nor may the watchman who blows the trumpet and warns the 
 people be a pessimist any more than an optimist. He must see 
 and estimate the actual facts. Optimism begets false security and 
 languid indifference ; but pessimism leads to bitter despair of heart 
 and nerveless paralysis of life. We need not believe that the city 
 is wholly evil or that it monopolizes the perils of the hour, but we 
 may well accept the literal accuracy of Carlyle's exclamation, 
 "What a fermenting vat lies simmering and Mdden in the city.' ^ 
 The average modern city, doubtless, has far rnore than enough right- 
 eous men to save it from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah ; yet it 
 contains, at the same time, the characteristic elements of their 
 wickedness. 
 
 If our civilizations ever should perish, like those which have pre- 
 ceded, death would seem sure to begin, not with mere sluggishness 
 of circulation at the extremities, but with failure at the vital 
 centres — with fatty degeneration of the heart. 
 
 The city has always been the decisive battle-ground of civiliza- 
 tion and religion. That capital fact puts awful emphasis upon both 
 
 38 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. S. J. M'PHERSON. 39 
 
 its perils and its safeguards. Human nature, indeed, is essentially 
 the same in the city as in the country. Sinfulness, at least, is a 
 pretty constant quantity. But while the country usually stands 
 for leisure, the city stimulates and intensifies all the natural dis- 
 positions and tendencies of man, especially of fallen man. The 
 city is an artificial congestion of population. When the blood 
 flows without interference, the temperature remains normal ; but if 
 it is forced or arrested on its course, a fever breaks out. Hence, 
 from its fomented energies, as well as from its greater weight of 
 numbers, the city is apt to control. In ancient history, Nineveh 
 appears to be almost a synonym for Assyria ; Athens, for the 
 art and philosophy of Greece ; Rome, for the empire of law and 
 arms. Their civilizations rose and fell with them. In the modern 
 world there is a similar urban dominance. Not only does St. 
 Petersburg dictate terms to Russia ; Constantinople, to Turkey ; 
 and Madrid, to effete Spain ; but the whole of Occidental civiliza- 
 tion turns for its fashions, in dress, to Paris ; in philosophy, to 
 Berlin ; in finance, to London. In the New World, Boston, as Dr. 
 Strong says, is the storm-centre of New England weather. Chi- 
 cago, the Western metropolis, has a mother's influence, for weal or 
 woe, upon millions of her migratory children. Washington ab- 
 sorbs the attention of hundreds of political newspapers from coast 
 to slope. All American roads lead to New York. It is hardly 
 too much to say — as goes the city, so goes the world. 
 
 The gospel must follow these autocratic lines of influence. Our 
 Saviour himself seems to command it. His great commission en- 
 joins ' ' that repentance and remission of sins should be preached 
 in his name unto all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem," the re- 
 ligious capital. It was his own missionary method, obediently 
 adopted by St. Paul, to make every city the nucleus of developing 
 activities. The result was, that opposition to Christianity came 
 to be known as paganism, or the life of the rural districts. The 
 inertia of rest kept them long lingering in heathenism, until the 
 gravitation of the city at length attracted them -to the Cross. 
 
 This perilous importance of the city has, in every age, been en- 
 hanced by the corresponding fact, that bad men have been quick to 
 utilize it as the fountain-head of their radiating streams of evil. 
 Every one of the urgent perils, like immigration, ultramontanism, 
 divorce, the social evil, the saloon, the conflict between labor and 
 capital, which specialists are to discuss at this Conference, has its 
 
40 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 chief base of operations in the city. There, in the citadel of each, 
 the duel between Christ and anti-Christ becomes climacteric, hand 
 to hand, to the death. There we must hold highest the Christian 
 standard, with its crimson dye of Calvary, its white of holy love, 
 its blue of heavenly truth — the American banner Christianized ; 
 for just there is the crisis of battle, where it must meet at close 
 quarters the flaming flag of mingled sins and the black flag of 
 eternal death, the fitting emblems of diabolic anarchy. There also 
 the hostile hosts of Peril are most deeply intrenched, behind the 
 earthworks of permanent worldly advantages. 
 
 One of these, for example, is found in the facilities for conceal- 
 ment which a city affords to their crimes and vices. The country 
 and the village force people to live in the light. But sinners of 
 the city can lurk in the ambush of a great crowd, and lie in wait 
 for their prey. The sobering influence of a settled home, an es- 
 tablished domicile, and an acquaintance with their neighbors, is 
 largely removed. Thus, the very isolation of a city may seduce 
 men to irresponsible and sheltered deeds of darkness. 
 
 The garrisons of anti-Christ obtain another bulwark in the physi- 
 cal perils of city life. Squalor and disease are natural defenses of 
 sin. Difficulty in securing pure air, pure water and pure food tend 
 to put virtue out of reach. The sewer describes in parable the 
 waste and the contamination which flow beneath the surface of 
 every city. You remember Victor Hugo's rhetorical treatment of 
 the subject in " Les Miserables." " The history of men," he says, 
 " is reflected in the history of the sewers, and the Gemoniae nar- 
 rated the story of Rome. The drain in old Paris is the meeting- 
 place of all exhaustions and all experiments; political ecomony sees 
 there a detritus, and social philosophy a residuum. It was in the 
 sewer of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself." The tenement 
 is a kind of open cesspool, both material and moral; and we need 
 take but two steps even from the refined parlor itself to the home 
 of the deadly sewer-gas. Christianity must never forget that the 
 soul's destiny is closely linked with that of the body. Christ's 
 mission included miracles of healing as well as preaching the gospel 
 to the poor. The peril of the city may thus fortify itself behind 
 the complications of our twofold nature. 
 
 An allied peril of the city is, that it arms the enemies of God with 
 a panoply of bad habits. The primary one, perhaps, is seen in that 
 pre-occupation of mind which leaves to many men neither time nor 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. S. J. M'pHERSON. 41 
 
 «nergy for the consideration of their spiritual interests. In the 
 country, notwithstanding railways and telegraphs, books and peri- 
 odicals, religion still has fewer rivals than in the city, where busi- 
 ness and society are often so absorbing that Jesus may knock un- 
 heard at the heart's door, until the weary heart ceases to beat. 
 This habit is fostered in the city also by the multitude of diverse 
 activities, which break up continuity of thought by the allurements 
 of frivolous and sometimes degrading amusements, which render 
 the cultivated soil of character shallow or base, and by the fierce 
 strife for wealth and position, which corrupts and secularizes the 
 heart. 
 
 Around this interior habit of mind, others inevitably crystallize. 
 Gradually the city deposits the shell of conventional and artificial 
 life, which divorces action from reflection, and compresses the sus- 
 ceptibilities and aspirations of normal manhood within anincrusted 
 coat of mail. The arrows of truth are parried from the conscience. 
 The springs of good impulse are sealed. Custom shuts out the true 
 perspective, and the things of vital importance can be no longer 
 discerned. Learning is shackled with pedants ; society, with man- 
 nerists; the church, with Pharisees. 
 
 There follow naturally the gradations of caste, which first divides 
 the world into classes, and then keeps men apart and antipathetic, 
 like Hindoos. The problems of city life thus become so involved 
 that the well disposed are tempted to give up in despair; and the 
 selfish, ignoring public perils, devote themselves to luxurious 
 indulgence. 
 
 Thence emerges the consequent peril of skepticism, which seems 
 indigenous in cities. " What is truth ? " scornfully ask the Pilates 
 who are bred to urban ways. Amidst its continual unrest, the city 
 is terribly endangered by the witchery of easy new theories, and by 
 ■experimenting with patchwork reforms. This is especially true 
 now, when mechanical inventions eclipse the old miracles of mythol- 
 ogy. The progress of our time is a giant Polyphemus, going for- 
 ward at tremendous strides, seeing clearly whatever he can see at 
 all, but keeping his single eye fixed on material things. Words- 
 worth complained in his day that plain living and high thinking 
 were no more. Principal Shairp retorts in our day that plain 
 thinking and high living are the all in all. The city, where modern 
 life concentrates, grows quickly impatient with Christ's deep-cut- 
 ting requirement of regeneration. Entertaining vague and exag- 
 
42 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 gerated hopes of what physical science may do for the removal of 
 moral maladies, it consents to have its hurts healed slightly. It 
 doubts and doubts, like one superficial and blas6. 
 
 Now if these specimen phenomena of the enduring life of the 
 city indicate its permanent peril, how enormously is that peril 
 swelled by the unparalleled change in modern social conditions ! 
 Novelty itself is a peril, because it lacks the safeguards of experi- 
 ence and precedent. It is undoubtedly true, as Dr. Dorchester 
 has shown, that great cities were never before so numerous or pop- 
 ulous as now; and it is certain that the growth of the city at the 
 expense of the country has been more rapid within sixty- 
 years than in any preceding period of history. Vienna and Ber- 
 lin, as Mr. Loomis reminds us in his " Modern Cities," are each 
 nearly equal to Gibbon's estimate of ancient Rome. Paris is almost 
 twice as large. London is four times as populous ; yet, only 
 with about one-fifth of the total population of Great Britain, it has 
 about one third of the city population of that island. Thirty per 
 cent, of the population of Massachusetts lives within twelve miles of 
 the State House, and the same proportion of the people of Illinois 
 live in Chicago. New York City, with its immediate environs, has 
 almost as many inhabitants as all the rest of the great Empire 
 State, including the inland cities. The census of 1880 shows the 
 ominous general ratio of growth in cities. In 1820, 4.9 per cent, 
 of the entire population of the United States lived in cities; in 1840,, 
 8)4 per cent.; in i860, 16.1 per cent.; in 1880, 22^ per cent; and 
 in 1890 it is likely to approximate 30 per cent. These facts in 
 themselves alone create a crisis of peril. They . aggravate all the 
 old perils, and they are accompanied by new perils that are even 
 more threatening. 
 
 As Dr. Dorchester has impressively intimated, there probably 
 never was a population at once so largely foreign and so hetero- 
 geneous as ours. While London has only about 2 per cent, of foreign- 
 born inhabitants, the whole of our new nation, in 1880, averaged 
 over 12 per cent; and every large city had a far greater proportion. 
 For instance, Philadelphia County had 24 per cent. ; the counties 
 containing Boston and St. Louis, each about 30 per cent. ; those 
 including New York and Chicago, nearly 40 per cent. ; and San 
 Francisco County, 44^ per cent. At the same time, each aggre- 
 gate represented some forty nationalities. Of course, the early 
 colonists of America were also foreigners, but they were usually 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. S. J. M'pHERSON. 43 
 
 homogeneous in their new communities, and they generally came 
 from the better classes of the Old World. But our immigrants are 
 of all kinds, and chiefly from the lower elements. They include 
 not only honest workmen, but also Jesuits and other plotters, vis- 
 ionaries and revolutionists, communists and anarchists, exiles and 
 sometimes Government paupers, from almost every nation under 
 heaven. Christian, infidel or heathen. The worst of them com- 
 monly settle as parasites in the large cities. Moreover, they fre- 
 quently aggregate in separate localities, speaking foreign languages, 
 maintaining foreign customs, and perhaps propagating alien relig- 
 ions or irreligions. For example, in our city of Chicago, which is 
 really typical rather than exceptional, we have some 30,000 Bohem- 
 ians gathered in distinct congeries. Their women are supersti- 
 tious Romanists; their men, generally, apostate Romanists. There 
 are hardly five evangelical preachers in the land that can speak 
 their language. They form a missionary field, as isolated and as for- 
 eign as that of the Indians, Mormons or Chinese. Something of 
 the same isolation, at least, widely marks in our greater cities the 
 far more numerous Germans, who are now the mightiest nation in 
 the world, perhaps, for both persistence and colonization. Caesar, 
 we know, boasted that he had driven them back, finally, beyond the 
 Rhine, and yet within three centuries the)' were sitting on Caesar's- 
 throne. Long ago they transfused their blood into the veins of 
 Great Britain. To-day, although they are among the few Euro- 
 pean races still occupying the ancestral home in which history finds- 
 them, they are at the same time busy colonizing half of Christen- 
 dom ; they continue to multiply in undiminished numbers ; and 
 everywhere they stubbornly cling to their social customs, which are 
 indeed predominantly Christian but which show traces of their her- 
 editary paganism. With many admirable virtues as citizens, they 
 are frequently deficient in spiritual religion. The question is, 
 whether the American city is to assimilate these agglomerations, or 
 is to be assimilated by them. 
 
 This massing of foreign populations in the city is largely respon- 
 sible, together with our greed of money-getting and our vehemence 
 in pleasure-seeking, for the new and perilous desecration of our 
 Christian day of rest and worship. Centuries of experience show 
 that the religion of Christ must keep or lose spiritual power in 
 almost exact proportion as the scriptural Sabbath is hallowed or 
 profaned. As we learn to fill consecrated time with secular thoughts. 
 
44 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 like those of the Sunday newspaper ; with unnecessary and merci- 
 less secular works, like those of many corporations ; with secular 
 pleasures, like those of the Sunday theatres ; and even with 
 secular sins, like those of the saloon — we so far agree to abandon 
 the Sabbath, and to content ourselves with the low type of Chris- 
 tianity so widely prevailing on the continent of Europe. Are our 
 American cities, still largely within reach of the control of descend- 
 ants of Puritans, Huguenots and Covenanters, ready to do that ? 
 Here is an involved peril which is comparatively new to our 
 churches. 
 
 New also are the perils of Romanism and the saloon, which Dr. 
 Dorchester discussed. Take the saloon— while drinking intoxicat- 
 ing liquors to excess is no new thing for northern races, our system 
 of drinking has pernicious elements of novelty. The maddening 
 strength, the poisonous adulterations, and perhaps the cheapness," 
 of our liquors are relatively new. Our drinking customs also have 
 degenerated ; for the bar has largely supplanted the sideboard, 
 and so far removed the decent restraints of the home. The organ- 
 ization of the traffic is new — new in the formation of great whisky 
 and beer " trusts " for economy of manufacture and for control 
 of drinking-places, new in its systematic creation of drinking habits 
 to keep up the demand for its wares, new in frequent alliances with 
 gross moral evils, like lust and gambling, to enlarge its business 
 by combining enticements to several human passions at once, and 
 new in methodically coercing and corrupting political candidates 
 and parties for its selfish moneyed interests. Whatever plan of 
 meeting it you may advocate, you cannot ignore the monstrous 
 novelty of the peril. 
 
 This suggests the new, general and cumulative political perils of 
 the city. While the city is growing, our "boodlers," in many 
 centres, at least, are multiplying. Their huge temptations increase 
 with their increasing opportunities. Why ? Because municipal 
 government, which is at once the touchstone and the Gordian knot 
 of all the forms of government, has assumed appalling proportions 
 and perplexities. Because intelligent citizens, who ought to be 
 volunteer tribunes of the people, fall into despair or become pos- 
 sessed with the demon of covetousness. Because their abdicated 
 throne is often usurped by unscrupulous demagogues and by the 
 ignorant, irresponsible and even purchasable electors, who also 
 belong to the royal family in our republican form of government. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. S. J. M PHERSON. 45 
 
 This is a peril of the Church, because it is a peril to human nature 
 and because the only cure for it is the redemption of the individual. 
 Another peril, with new features, is seen in the fact that the city- 
 is buffeted back and forth between selfish wealth and no less selfish 
 poverty. Mammon is the god. We look out upon our broad and 
 rich domain, producing almost every known variety of plant and 
 animal ; we look up toward our two lordly mountain systems, which 
 span the nation like the buttresses of some gigantic bridge and lift 
 us above the water level; we look down into the depths of the earth 
 at the retorts of gas, seas of oil, forests of coal and vaults of 
 precious stones, which form our tempting treasure-trove; we look 
 around to our matchless array of lakes and rivers, which both feed 
 and drain the continent like the blood-vessels of a human body; we 
 look abroad over our two great ocean highways, defending our 
 coast, indenting it with the best of harbors, and spurring us on to 
 compete fearlessly for the commerce of mankind ; and as our 
 hearts dilate with pride in contemplating the exhaustless material 
 resources of this virgin land, we disdain to have our spirits ruled 
 by the meek and lowly Nazarene. This supposititious omnipotence 
 of wealth sets up a wrong standard, for it relegates character to the 
 background. It tempts young men to believe that society adopts 
 the motto of " Every Man in his Humor:" " Get money; still get 
 money, boys; no matter by what means.'' It inspires the craze for 
 speculation, which " maketh haste to be rich and hath an evil eye," 
 which undermines sound and honest business methods, and which 
 fancies that opulence can be legitimately gained by some sort of 
 gambling without being earned. It fosters greedy monopolies. It 
 eats the heart out of public spirit and Christian love, and absorbs 
 man in the dirt-philosophy of his muck-rake. It cankers those 
 who are unsuccessful along the avaricious line of living with bitter 
 disappointment and hatred, which cruelly divide and enfeeble society. 
 It encourages some of them to adopt chimerical schemes of social 
 reorganization or disorganization, which are all vitiated by the 
 simple fact that "out of the heart are the issues of life." It affords 
 plausible grounds for those wretched appeals which anarchy makes 
 to the discontented poor. The real peril of anarchy is also the 
 peril of avarice, namely, the deadly selfishness of sin. Our peril 
 is lest we should mistake the true remedy for this fundamental evil. 
 Chicago is about the only American city that succeeds in the legal 
 suppression of anarchism. Johann Most ought to have lived in 
 
46 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 Chicago last year; for, in that case, he would now be out of reach 
 ■of the petty penalties of a New York court. But not even Chicago's 
 legal treatment can penetrate to the seat of this malady. Human 
 law can deal with it only as a skin disease. But essentially, anar- 
 chism is a heart disease, which only the Gospel can adequately 
 reach. " What is anarchism but hatred of all authority ? Hatred of 
 human authority— anarchy ; hatred of divine authority— atheism. 
 Anarchy and atheism are but different aspects of the same peril. 
 Christ's Royal Law and Golden Rule in every individual heart and 
 life is the only radical cure; and that cure strikes at the root of 
 ■every human ill. Oh, the deadly peril of not perceiving it ! 
 
 Closely connected with this thought stands one of the peculiar 
 religious perils of the city — the tendency of the rich and intelli- 
 gent to take religious care exclusively of themselves. One of 
 Christ's personal credentials was "to the poor the gospel is preached." 
 But look at the Protestant churches of the great city ! In many a 
 small town there are so many that they must live, like feudal 
 barons, by making raids on one another. In almost no single large 
 city are there half enough. In New York, says Mr. Lewis E. Jack- 
 son, below Fourteenth Street, with a population mostly poor, there 
 is one weak Evangelical church to about 5,400 souls; but above 
 Fourteenth Street, where most of the rich reside, there is one com- 
 paratively strong Evangelical Church to about 3,100. In Chicago, 
 there is, approximately, one church to every 4,500; and nearly all 
 the vigorous churches are on the avenues among the wealthier 
 classes. These representative examples may be natural, but they 
 are not Christian. We might learn much on this subject from the 
 Catholic Church, but far more from Christ, who bids us go out into 
 the alleys and lanes and compel men to come to the gospel-feast. 
 Our peril is that we have so largely lost contact, touch, with the 
 masses. For even the tramps are souls for whom Christ died. We 
 need, imperiously, what Dr. Russell, of Oswego, has so nobly 
 emphasized — more thorough and complete co-operation among the 
 churches. Human nature may not be ripe for organic union of 
 denominations. But human nature is rotting for want of concerted 
 action among the churches. There remains little sectarian hostil- 
 ity. I remember that when I went to Chicago, five years ago, 
 apprehensive in my inexperience, I was at once reassured by the 
 warm welcome of all Evangelical pastors. Sharing as I then did 
 in the popular notions of Chicago's relative wickedness, I one day 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. S. J. M'pHERSON. 47 
 
 asked a Baptist neighbor to explain this heartiness of fellowship. 
 "Why," said he, "young man, don't you see that we have such a 
 task in fighting the devil, that we have neither time nor energy left 
 to fight one another ?" 
 
 But with all our fraternity, our peril still is that we lack compre- 
 hensive plans and sustained efforts to carry the gospel to the entire 
 -community. We need to emphasize the essentials that unite us; 
 and, leaving without accent the minor facts that divide us, to super- 
 sede the desultory and scattered endeavors of unrelated churches 
 with a scheme of coalition which will enlist every church and every 
 •Christian in preaching the gospel to every creature in the city. 
 
 A final peril, qjd as Judas or Sanballat, yet new as our own latest 
 doubt, may coil itself in the suspicion that the God of Sabaoth is 
 incompetent to win his own battle. The solution of all these 
 problems belongs fundamentally to him and not to us. Who sur- 
 mises that he is driving us on toward catastrophe and downfall ? 
 He does not need us, but we certainly need him. " Except the 
 Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." Hosts of 
 the wicked may encamp against us ; but if the Lord be our leader, 
 they that be for us are more than they that be against us. Human 
 nature may be opposite ; but the divine-human nature is on our 
 side. Sin may abound, but grace does much more abound. Elijah 
 under the juniper-tree is our warning. Paul is our example. To 
 the Christians in Rome, the representative of all the ancient perils 
 of the city, he wrote : "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: 
 for it is the power of God unto salvation." To the Christians of 
 vulgar, frivolous and avaricious Corinth, he wrote: " We preach 
 Christ crucified, . . . Christ the power of God and the wisdom of 
 God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men ; and the 
 weakness of God is stronger than men." To the Ephesians, who 
 sat chilled under the shadow of the temple of the heathen Diana, 
 he wrote of "the exceeding greatness of God's power to us-ward 
 who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which 
 He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead." If 
 with this triumphant faith we actually preach the gospel to all the 
 citizens, we may yet be enabled, by Christ's grace, to transform our 
 imperiled city into " the city that hath foundations, whose builder 
 .and maker is God." 
 
48 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. SAMUEL L. LOOMIS, 
 OF BROOKLYN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "MODERN CITIES AND THEIR 
 RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS." 
 
 Fathers and Brethren : I am glad that there has been no 
 statement this morning, such as has been very common among 
 Christian people, to the effect that the modern city is, in and of 
 itself, an evil thing, an evil beast, a monstrous, inhuman thing, 
 because it is a city, and because it is growing. For, sir, unless 
 we intend to go with Mr. Ruskin, and allow that every machine, 
 that every steam-engine, that the modern contrivances for reaping 
 and harvesting, are bad and ought to be done away with, and that 
 we should return to the days of the sickle and the stage-coach, we 
 must acknowledge that the city, which has been produced by these 
 things, is part and parcel with modern civilization. It, sir, is not 
 evil because it is a city or because it is growing, but because as^ 
 such a city it is growing. 
 
 Every man whose morality or intelligence, especially whose 
 morality, is below the average morality of the community in 
 which he dwells, is, in his measure, a peril to that community. 
 The city is a peril to the modern State, because its average citizen, 
 in morality and education and intelligence, is below the average 
 morality and intelligence of the inhabitants of our land. 
 
 The only way to improve the city — this is the matter in a nut- 
 shell — the only way to wipe away its threat from the face of the 
 earth, is to use the power that God has put into this world for 
 lifting men up. He has given a power which is sufficient to lift 
 men from a lower estate to a higher one. He has put into our 
 hands a force which will raise the average manhood ; and when 
 this force has been sufficiently and wisely brought into use in the 
 great cities, the peril and the menace of those places will gradu- 
 ally disappear. They may become even centres of good, centres 
 of light and power and purity, just as they have become centres of 
 darkness. And yet, in the present state of things, the cities. 
 
DISCUSSION BY REV. S. L. LOOMIS. 49 
 
 though they are part and parcel with our modern civilization, are 
 a threat to that civilization, whose lines have not been too darkly 
 nor gravely drawn this morning. 
 
 I say, then, that, in order to improve the condition of things, we 
 must take hold of the mighty power which has been placed in our 
 hands. Our testimony here this morning, by our very presence, is 
 a testimony of our belief in the power of the Gospel to uplift the 
 common manhood of our country. This thing it can do, this thing 
 it will do, if it is faithfully and persistently used. We know it by 
 experience. 
 
 But in using the Gospel let us not turn away from the motive 
 which has been given us. We are to preach the Gospel, not because 
 civilization is imperiled, not because property is in danger, not 
 because even our nation is in peril, but because human souls are in 
 peril, and because the Christ bids us carry on His kingdom and 
 save men from a lost condition. If we turn aside from preaching 
 the Gospel for the sake of winning souls, to the idea of preaching 
 the Gospel for sake of saving property and institutions, we put 
 ourselves, in the motive which we urge, below the position that 
 Christ intended us to take. We come down to the level of men in 
 business; we even put ourselves, perhaps, below the anarchists and 
 the socialists, who always advance the idea of human brotherhood, 
 the elevation of the whole mass, in the propositions which they 
 bring forward. 
 
 Let us, then, still high advanced, hold the banner of Jesus Christ. 
 Let us not forget that Christ is able to bring peace to the troubled 
 hearts of the great towns. Let McAll, from the midst of the flar- 
 ing and crowded boulevards of Paris, stand as our witness; and 
 Chalmers, from amidst the teeming tenements of Edinburgh; and 
 Brown and Bernardo, from the reeking slums of East London; and 
 many noble men from the great cities of our land. The Gospel 
 has won, and will win, and is always able to win, the masses of the 
 great cities. Let us not forget this, and let us not lose our courage 
 and faith in its advancing power. 
 
 It is enough to make a man sad : we talk about these things a 
 great deal, but when we look to see what we have done and what 
 we are doing, we have abundant reason for the present condition of 
 things in the work of the churches. Take the simple fact which 
 has been brought forward so plainly by the distinguished Secretary 
 of this Alliance, that in New York City, since 1880, where there 
 
50 THE CITY AS A PERIL. 
 
 has been a growth of 300,000 people, there has been an increase in 
 the number of churches of only four; and it looks as if we were 
 going backward and not forward. Brethren, 
 
 "He has sounded out a trumpet which shall never call retreat, 
 He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. 
 Be swift, my soul, to answer ; be jubilant, my feet : 
 
 Our God is marching on." [Applause.] 
 
AFTERNOON SESSION, 
 WEDNESDAY, DEC. 7. 
 
 The Conference reassembled at 2 o'clock, Ex-Justice Strong, 
 late of the United States Supreme Court, presiding. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Tyler, of the Church of the Disciples, conducted the 
 devotional services. 
 
 Justice Strong : I regard it as very much out of place for me to 
 occupy the time of this assembly, and thus delay their attention to 
 the papers and discussions that are promised to us for the afternoon; 
 and I will take occasion only to say that I am in hearty sympathy 
 with the work that this Alliance is engaged in, and which it places 
 before itself for its future operation. 
 
 If there ever was a time in the history of this country, I might 
 say in the history of the world, when the precise work which this 
 Alliance proposes to itself was needful, was indispensable, it is the 
 present hour. Society throughout this country is everywhere in a 
 state of ferment, as well as in a state of formation. The effort of 
 our people to homologate, to produce homogeneity in the various 
 divisions of our people which exist, is a very great work, and it 
 needs the work of the Christian Church and Christian men of all 
 denominations. 
 
 But, as I said, I do not propose to detain you by any remarks of 
 mine. I have pleasure in introducing to you now Professor 
 Boyesen, of New York. 
 
 61 
 
IMMIGRATION. 
 
 BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN, OF COLUMBIA 
 COLLEGE. 
 
 I. IMMIGRATION. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States breathes a sanguine spirit. 
 It is founded upon trust in human nature. The spirit that 
 was abroad in the latter half of the eighteenth century was 
 that of Rousseau, and the minds of Jefferson and Franklin were 
 deeply imbued with it. The gospel of the age was the " Contrat 
 Social " with its new trinity of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," 
 which we yet see inscribed upon the walls of the churches of Paris.. 
 The same intellectual movement which produced the French Rev- 
 olution was also a strong co-operating factor in the American 
 Revolution. When the founders of the American Republic 
 stretched out their hands with a hospitable welcome to all the 
 oppressed of the earth, it was in a large measure because Rousseau 
 had taught them to believe in the inherent goodness of man. 
 They took it for granted that the oppressed, no matter who they 
 were and whence they came, were deserving characters, who needed 
 only the liberty which the new republic offered them, to grow to 
 the full stature of civic, moral and intellectual manhood. That the 
 newly liberated state needed a population to till its vast unculti- 
 vated domain was, no doubt, also an important consideration, per- 
 haps the most important. But what is interesting to note is that, 
 the material need was reinforced by a philosophical enthusiasm 
 for mankind, and a sublime faith in its future. The eighteenth 
 century knew little of the influence of heredity, but believed 
 with Rousseau that each man came pure and perfect from the 
 hand of nature, and that it was his environment which spoiled and 
 corrupted him. Rousseau held civilization — or, as he preferred to 
 call it, society — responsible for all sin, sorrow and misery. It lay 
 very near, therefore, to conclude that, on a new continent, where the 
 
 52 
 
PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 53 
 
 feudal institutions of the Old World had never struck root ; where 
 civilization, in the European sense, scarcely existed — humanity 
 could pursue its glorious^destiny unimpeded by the obstacles which 
 in the older lands had blocked its way and clogged the path of 
 its progress with blood and fire. Utopian dreams were in the air 
 and pervaded literature ; the savage in Chateaubriand is the 
 type of nature's nobleman ; and in Bernardin de St. Pierre's 
 •" Paul et Virginie," the perfection of bliss is realized on a desert 
 island by two loving hearts, unconscious of the social barriers 
 which separate them. It seemed perfectly rational to expect 
 some startlingly new social development on this vast virgin conti- 
 nent ; and it seemed only fair to invite all mankind, irrespective 
 of race, to share in the blessings of this new civilization, founded 
 upon liberty, justice and humanity. It is, therefore, scarcely to be 
 ■wondered at that the first naturalization law, which Congress passed 
 March 26, 1790, was monumental in its liberality. It offered citi- 
 zenship to any white male applicant who had spent two years in the 
 United States, provided he was of good character and was willing 
 to swear allegiance to the Constitution. But even at that early 
 period, and iij spite of the crying need of a population, this liber- 
 ality produced a reaction. The sentiment gained ground that, at 
 some time or other, the natural advantages of the country might 
 suffice to attract a larger alien population than was desirable, with- 
 out additional allurements on the part of Congress. The natural- 
 ization law of 1790 was accordingly amended by the act of 1795, 
 requiring a residence of five years before citizenship could be ac- 
 quired, and a declaration of intention two years previous to natural- 
 ization. Three years later, this law was superseded by the act of 1798, 
 requiring a residence of fourteen years, which requisition remained 
 in force only four years, being supplanted by the act of April 14, 
 1802, making the term of residence five years. This law has never 
 since been repealed. 
 
 It must be inferred, from the frequency of Congressional acts 
 relating to naturalization during the first years of our national 
 existence, that the question was seen from the beginning to be one 
 of vital importance. Although immigration on an extensive scale 
 did not begin until the forties, when the potato famine in Ireland 
 (1846-47) and the unsuccessful revolutionary uprising in Germany 
 swelled the tide, the possibility of its increase until it might 
 unfavorably affect the industries of the country, and subject its 
 
54 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 institutions to an undue strain, must have been vaguely foreseen by- 
 many ; but that it should ever assume the proportion of a veritable 
 migration of nations, amounting in a single year to more than three- 
 quarters of a million people, and in sixty-seven years to fourteen 
 millions and a half, was surely never dreamed of by the founders 
 of the Republic ; and if it had been dreamed of, some effective 
 safeguard would have been devised to protect their cherished 
 institutions from the dangers to which they would inevitably be 
 exposed in the hands of a semi-alien race, in conflict with an alien 
 spirit. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States was framed by men of 
 Anglo-Saxon origin for their own government ; and it presupposes 
 the long political evolution to which that race has been subjected 
 in the mother-land during eight or nine centuries. It presupposes, 
 the Anglo-Saxon virtues of moderation, self-restraint and sense of 
 fair play. It is only a high civilization which exhibits these civic 
 virtues ; and to impose free institutions upon a people which does 
 not possess them, is to endanger the social order and bring the 
 free institutions into unmerited reproach. There are no institutions 
 which are so inherently excellent that they fit all nations; just as there 
 is no diet so nourishing that it will agree with all stomachs in all zones 
 and climes. A republic can only be carried on by republicans 
 (I do not mean, of course, in the party sense), and if it is carried on 
 by other than republicans, it will lose its original spirit and degen- 
 erate into a disguised despotism, retaining nothing of the republic 
 except the name. And a republican, gentlemen, is not made in a 
 day, nor in a year — nor in fifty years. It takes generations of in- 
 telligent, self-restrained and self-respecting ancestors to make a 
 man fit to govern himself — fit to be entrusted with the guidance 
 of a state, whose existence and progress depend upon his vote, and, 
 above all, upon the sentiments that lie behind his vote. We see in 
 France, to-day, what an unstable and insecure thing a republic is 
 without republicans, or, perhaps I should rather say, without the re- 
 publican temperament. And the Gallic temperament, whatever 
 it may become in the future, is not to-day the republican tempera- 
 ment. The republic is there a mere accident, a temporary truce 
 of hostile parties, none of which has power enough to assume the 
 government. The republic is in a state of perpetual anxiety 
 regarding its existence, and has to strain every nerve to preserve 
 order, to keep the hungry from flying at the throats of the prosper- 
 
PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 55 
 
 ous. That the United States have hitherto been exempt from 
 anxiety on this score, is chiefly due to the fact that prosperity has 
 until recently been within the reach of the many, and there has ac- 
 cordingly existed no very strong inducements to plunder the few. 
 In no less degree, perhaps, has it been due to the fact that the 
 country has been governed, in the main, by its peaceful and con- 
 servative citizens, both of American and of foreign descent ; al- 
 though the alien element has, in national affairs at least, played a 
 very subordinate part. But we have no guarantee that this state 
 of things will continue to last. A large proportion of the foreigners 
 who come to us now are hungry malcontents, who arrive with the 
 avowed purpose to overthrow our institutions. A considerable 
 number of them are men who, on account of moral or intellectual 
 defects, do not fit into any orderly society, and who in consequence 
 are imbittered against all order ; men whom Europe is fortunate 
 in getting rid of, and America correspondingly unfortunate in 
 receiving ; men who are bent upon avenging here what they suf- 
 fered there. There are at present unmistakable indications that 
 unless some drastic remedy is applied to check the influence of 
 this class of foreigners, the relation of political and economic 
 forces which has hitherto prevailed will be reversed, and the future 
 will be fraught with perils which it is the part of prudence to fore- 
 see, and which it is too late to avert when they are already upon 
 us. It behoves us, therefore, to apply the remedy before the evil is 
 beyond control — before the elements of discontent and disorder 
 shall have transplanted to the New World the very conditions to 
 escape which they fled from the Old. 
 
 What I propose to show in the present address is that, unless 
 some such restrictive measure is before long passed by Congress,, 
 a crisis is at hand, in a not very remote future, which will seriously 
 affect our national destiny. The immigrant of to-day is not the 
 same as the immigrant of ten and twenty years ago. He is, as sta- 
 tistics prove, largely drawn from a lower stratum of European 
 society. Before the days of steam -navigation, a considerable 
 degree of courage and enterprise was required to induce a man to 
 break up from his old home and associations, and seek an uncer- 
 tain future in an unknown land, which the imagination pictured as 
 little better than a wilderness. The mere sea voyage, in a small 
 sailing vessel, with its attendant dangers, sufficed to keep the faint- 
 hearted from contemplating so risky an undertaking. Those who 
 
56 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 did migrate were, therefore, likely to be the strongest and most 
 energetic — the very ones most fitted to grapple with the hardships 
 of pioneer life on the bord«r-line of civilization. As a matter of 
 fact, the immigrants whom we received previous to 1840, when the 
 first regular steamboat connection between New York and Liver- 
 pool was established, were of a very acceptable class, and increased 
 our prosperity without perceptibly deteriorating our character. It 
 was not until the year 1820 that a record was kept of arrivals; but 
 it is estimated that the sntire immigration from 1796 to 1820 did 
 not exceed 250,000, of whom the greater portion came from Great 
 Britain and Ireland. A great many came under indenture, and 
 were obliged to labor from three to ten years to pay the cost of 
 their passage, which had been advanced by agents, until Con- 
 gress, in 1819, passed a law which largely remedied the evils of 
 this system. Very ample statistics are at hand, showing both the 
 character and the numbers and ages of the immigrants during the 
 last sixty-seven years ; but I will not weary you with a repetition 
 of what is so easily accessible. A mere general summary will suf- 
 fice for my purpose. 
 
 The number of foreign-born in the United States, according to 
 the census of 1880, was 6,679,943, and their present number is not 
 far from nine millions. There are, accordingly, about three times 
 as many foreigners now in the country as there were Americans in 
 the thirteen colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence. 
 Nay, more immigrants have arrived during the last seven years 
 than the colonies contained. If we count the children of aliens, 
 we have at the present time an aggregate of more than fifteen mill- 
 ions, or about twenty-six per cent, of the total population. Rev. 
 Dr. Strong, in his admirable book, " Our Country," estimates that, 
 if immigration is left unrestricted, our foreign-born population in 
 1900 will be over nineteen millions, and if the proportion of for- 
 eign-born to native-born children of foreign parents continues the 
 same, we shall then have a total alien or semi-alien population of 
 forty-three millions. The undoubted fact, that the more prolific 
 foreigner is continually gaining numerically upon the native, and 
 year by year becoming a greater power politically and economi- 
 cally, contains an ominous augury for the future of the Republic. 
 But still more precarious becomes the outlook when we consider 
 a circumstance not sufficiently emphasized by writers on this sub- 
 ject, viz.: the recent deterioration in the quality of the immigra- 
 
PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 57 
 
 tion. Any man, unless he be a pauper, can now obtain the paltry 
 sum necessary for buying a steerage passage to New York, and if 
 he cannot, the chances are that he is so undesirable a character 
 that it is worth while for the community to raise the sum to get rid 
 ■of him. That this is actually done on a large scale in Ireland, 
 England and Switzerland we all know, and no remonstrance from 
 ■our Government has sufficed to stop the practice. There are yet 
 so-called benefit societies in Great Britain, whose object it is to 
 reform Ireland by exporting the Irish to the United States ; and 
 it is not very long since Lord Salisbury, in a public speech, 
 ■declared that the solution of the Irish problem was assisted emigra- 
 tion. In other .words, the only solution of the problem was to 
 transfer it to the United States. 
 
 The Canadians, who have had their hospitality abused by such 
 " assisted guests," have recently sent a vigorous protest against 
 the continuance of this policy, and have, at the same time, imitated it, 
 by " assisting ' ' a large number of the imported paupers across the 
 boundary line to the United States. There is no possibility of 
 preventing this, as long as we permit the belief to go uncontra- 
 ■dicted that we are the natural cess-pool for the reception 
 ■of the human offal and rubbish of the entire world. It is 
 but a few months since the Danish Government pardoned a 
 notorious and dangerous forger on condition that he should go to 
 the United States; and to the United States he went. Whether our 
 Minister in Copenhagen reported the case to Secretary Bayard, I 
 do not know, but the Scandinavian papers were full of it. Never- 
 theless, as far as the public knows, nothing was ever done about it. 
 The Danish Government will be encouraged to repeat the success- 
 ful experiment of exporting its criminals instead of entertaining 
 them at public expense. We have, indeed, a species of investiga- 
 tion at Castle Garden, but it is not carried on thoroughly, nor even 
 in good faith. Occasionally a pauper is returned to Ireland or 
 England, but a hundred are admitted for every one that goes back. 
 As long as public opinion is not aroused on the subject, the offi- 
 cials can scarcely be blamed for interpreting the law in the laxest 
 spirit. And public opinion is fatally sanguine, prone to the belief 
 that whatever we do — whatever fatal blunders we commit — ^we 
 shall come out all right in the end. It is supposed that God is 
 personally responsible for the future of the United States, and that 
 he cannot afford to let our experiment of self-government fail. 
 
58 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 But surely the same causes produce the same effects in this coun- 
 try as they do elsewhere ? You cannot gather figs from thorns, or 
 grapes from thistles, in a republic any more than you can in a 
 monarchy. We know now that society is governed by laws as surely 
 ascertainable as those of electricity and gravitation. It would, to 
 my mind, argue no right trust in God to violate the laws, in the 
 operation of which His power is made manifest, in the hope that He 
 would interpose to save us from the consequences. What strikes 
 me with amazement, whenever I undertake to discuss this question 
 with my American friends, is their utter indifference or supine 
 optimism. 
 
 " Don't you worry, old fellow," said a very intelligent profes- 
 sional man to me recently, when I told him of my observations 
 during a visit to Castle Garden. " What does it matter whether a 
 hundred thousand more or less arrive ? Even if a million arrived 
 annually, or two millions, I guess we could take care of them. 
 Why, this country is capable of supporting a population of 200 
 millions, without being half so densely populated as Belgium is 
 to-day. Only let them come ; the more, the merrier !" 
 
 I believe this state of mind is fairly typical. It is the sublime 
 but dangerous optimism of a race which has never been confronted 
 with serious problems. Our national domain has seemed practi- 
 cally boundless, and we have never troubled ourselves greatly 
 about the class of people who undertook to occupy it, as long as 
 they added to our prosperity. But, gentlemen, even prosperity 
 may be bought at too high a price. If material increase involves 
 a menace to our institutions and a deterioration in character, it is, 
 to my mind, too dearly bought. And can there be any question 
 that such is actually the case ? If, as is easily capable of demon- 
 stration, our political life sinks, year by year, to a lower level ; 
 if the men we send to our national and state legislatures exhibit a 
 lower average of intelligence and morality than twenty or fifty 
 years ago — does it not show that the constituencies which are 
 responsible for their election are degenerating, and are gradually 
 becoming unfit for self-government ? Does it not show that the 
 institutions no longer fit the people, or the people the institutions ? 
 If the lobby in every State capital, as in our national capital, grows 
 every year more powerful in its influence upon legislation, and 
 bribery and jobbery of all sorts flourish, is it not an evidence of dis- 
 ease in our body politic, which, if not healed, sooner or later must 
 
PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 59 
 
 assume a critical phase, and precipitate disaster ? I am far from 
 holding immigration responsible for all these evils, but that it is a 
 potent, perhaps the most potent, co-operating cause, is, I think, 
 beyond dispute. 
 
 Let us take one of our great political constituencies and ana- 
 lyze the elements of which it is made up. I take, naturally, one 
 which has been largely affected by immigration, in order to show 
 the character of the alien vote. In the city of New York, which has 
 developed political trickery and corruption to the highest perfec- 
 tion, the foreign element, including the children of foreign-born 
 parents, is 80 per cent, of the total population. Out of every five 
 persons you meet in the streets of New York, four are likely to be 
 of foreign birth or the children of foreign parents. The city had 
 m 1880, 1,206,299 inhabitants, of whom 200,000 were born in 
 Ireland ; and if the ratio holds good which the last census . seems 
 to have established, that for every 100 foreign-born inhabitants we 
 have 115 born of foreign parents, the number of Irish in New 
 York City was, in 1880, 430,000, and must now be considerably 
 over half a million. The Irish, therefore, roughly speaking, consti- 
 tute fully one-third, or about 33 per cent., of the population of the 
 city. 
 
 Of natives of Germany there were in New York City in 1880 
 (including Austrians) 168,225 ; and counting Swiss and Dutch, 
 about 175,000, and, adding to these 207,000 of German parent- 
 age, we get the total number of 382,000 Germans. All esti- 
 mates regarding the growth of the city since 1880 must be more 
 or less conjectural ; but statistics of immigration show that during 
 these years the Germans have gained upon the Irish, and have 
 largely outnumbered them. Of the enormous immigration of 
 1882, which reached nearly 800,000, 250,000 (or nearly one-third) 
 were Gerrrians, while the number of Irish was only 73,000, and has 
 never in recent years exceeded 84,000. That a larger proportion 
 of the latter have, however, in accordance with their well-known 
 urban tendencies, remained in the city, is quite certain, but yet not 
 enough to make up for the great numerical preponderance of the 
 Teutons. That the city to-day has a German population of 400,000, 
 including- children of German parents, is, I think, a very moderate 
 estimate. 
 
 Among the other nationalities which contribute to our Babylonic 
 confusion, no one was in 1880 sufficiently numerous to be entitled 
 
60 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 to special consideration ; 30,000 Englishmen, 10,000 Frenchmen, 
 9,000 Scotchmen, 9,000 Bohemians, 7,000 British Americans and 
 7,000 Scandinavians, 12,000 Italians, 9,000 Russians, 5,000 Hun- 
 garians, 10,000 Poles, represent in the aggregate a vast deal of 
 alienism, but are apparently too feeble to assert the special kind of 
 alienism that is in them. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that 
 since 1880 the immigration from the most undesirable of these 
 nationalities has shown an alarming increase. The Italians have 
 more than trebled their number, and the Bohemians, Poles and 
 Hungarians have powerfully reinforced and are daily reinforcing 
 our constantly growing army of discontent and disorder. What 
 makes the situation still more unpromising is the fact to which I 
 have already alluded — that in these, as in other nationalities, it is a 
 lower stratum of the population that is represented than in former 
 years. In Italy, for instance, we received formerly the majority of 
 •our immigrants from Parma and the northern provinces — Piedmont, 
 Tuscany, Lombardy — ^where the people are, as a rule, self-respect- 
 ing and industrious ; but during recent years Naples and the 
 province of Sicily have taken the lead, having poured down 
 upon us a torrent of pea-nut venders and organ grinders, who, I 
 ■dare say, far outstrip the demand. I have, during the past year, 
 again and again seen the Battery Park black with these creatures 
 (in fact, preternaturally black), and the odors which surrounded 
 them turned the milk of human kindness within me, and made me 
 marvel at the heedless hospitality of the American nation, which 
 was willing to mingle this coarse and brutal strain in their own fresh 
 and vigorous blood. If the ordinary outward tests of intelligence and 
 morality amount to anything, then it was certain that these people 
 stood very low in the scale of development, and it would take three 
 or four generations to educate them up to the level of American 
 citizenship. And why, I asked myself, does the country, which 
 has already population enough of its own, imperil its future by 
 importing this undiluted mass of ignorance and religious bigotry 
 and superstition ? Do we still hold to that dangerous gospel of 
 our infancy, that we are the refuge and the natural protector of all 
 the oppressed of the earth ? 
 
 If we persevere in this fatal delusion we shall soon have no refuge 
 to offer; or we shall ourselves have to seek a refuge, when our 
 unbidden guest shall have succeeded in making it too uncomfort- 
 able for us at home. 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 61 
 
 Naturalists tell us that in the animal and vegetable kingdoms 
 the European breeds, on account of the severer struggle they have 
 to sustain for existence, are apt to be hardier than our own; and it 
 is not unlikely that in human struggle for existence a similar 
 result might become manifest. The English sparrow has excited 
 our national prejudice by its fecundity, its ruthless pugnacity, and 
 its generally inconsiderate behavior. The question of its extermi- 
 nation is constantly being raised; but there is no one as yet who 
 has suggested how this is to be done. In the meanwhile the spar- 
 row continues to have the upper hand, and by its low style of 
 living ousts our native birds, who cannot put up with such poor 
 fare and accommodations. But, I hear political economists urge,, 
 the immigrant increases the country's power of production and 
 consumption; he brings money into this country, he augments the 
 nation's wealth. It has been calculated by the German economist^ 
 Friedrich Kapp, that each immigrant averages in value $1,125 ^o 
 the country which receives him. At all events, he has cost that 
 amount to the society which has reared him, and loses the bene- 
 fit of his productive labor. Another authority fixes the amount at 
 $800. According to these calculations, we gain annually, through 
 immigration, the equivalent of a capital amounting to four or 
 five hundred million dollars. But there is, to my mind, a serious 
 error in computations of this sort. It is not, by any means, sure 
 that a man is worth the money which it took to raise him. Unchar- 
 itable as the remark may seem, the man may not, on purely eco- 
 nomic grounds, have been worth raising. A man is valuable 
 only where he is needed — where his labor and the sentiments which 
 he embodies increase the efficiency of the society to which he 
 attaches himself. A pauper or a criminal is a drain upon the 
 resources of the land; the anarchist, although he consumes food 
 and manufactures, is not, therefore, a valuable member of society. 
 By his sentiments, if not by his acts, he disorganizes the State and 
 decreases its efficiency. And the ultimate loss which the United 
 States may sustain by economic convulsions and the lowering of 
 the grade of its civilization, through the importation of unassimi- 
 lable foreign hordes, is beyond the power of any man to compute. 
 
 Recent statistics seem to prove that our immigration is being: 
 drawn from lower and lower strata of European society. The 
 cheapened passenger rates of the transatlantic steamboat lines 
 have enabled people to emigrate whose poverty formerly compelled 
 
62 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 them to remain at home. The bulk of Italian immigration, which 
 formerly came from the north, comes now from the south. It 
 is not only in regard to Italy that this observation holds good; but 
 also in Ireland and Prussia. In Ireland there has been a relative 
 increase of immigration from the poorer western provinces of Con- 
 naught and Munster, while formerly it was the comparatively richer 
 counties of Ulster and Leinster which sent the majority of our 
 aldermen and municipal rulers. In Prussia a similar relative 
 increase has taken place in the poorer eastern provinces of 
 Pomerania and Posen. I do not, however, attach very great 
 importance to this, as regards Pomerania, whence we have in 
 the past received many thrifty and excellent citizens. 
 
 But to return to the city of New York: We have seen of what 
 nationalities its population is made up. We have seen also (to our 
 cost!) how hopeless it is for the little American remnant to assert 
 its right to govern this vast metropolis in accordance with American 
 ideas and in an American spirit. But what right have we to won- 
 der at this result, as long as we take no measures to stem the tide 
 that is threatening to overwhelm us ? It is usually the poorest and 
 the most worthless of the immigrants, and those who have come 
 with no definite object except to get away from home: it is these 
 who are apt to remain where they first land. We accordingly get 
 in New York more than our fair share of the shiftless and vicious. 
 We grapple heroically with the problem which their existence pre- 
 sents to us. Numerous charitable institutions struggle to relieve 
 the most urgent wants, and private benevolence steps in where the 
 institutions fail to reach. The Christian churches, both Catholic 
 and Protestant, are doing a noble work in endeavoring to awake 
 the dormant souls of these miserable aliens, who herd together in 
 the filthiest and most malodorous quarters of the huge city. But 
 it is often like pouring water into a sieve. If I were to tell you my 
 own experience I might, perhaps, have the appearance of boasting. 
 I can only say that it has been inexpressibly disheartening, though 
 in that respect scarcely exceptional. My relation, however, to the 
 immigrants of the Scandinavian nationalities has been exceptional. 
 I doubt if there is another man in a private position in New York 
 who has come into closer contact with the miseries which unre- 
 stricted immigration entails, and who has been the repository of 
 more tales of alien woe than I. 
 
 It is as often the children of immigrants as the immigrants 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 63 
 
 themselves who come to grief, because of their imperfect adapta- 
 tion to the conditions of American life. My experience fully con- 
 firms that of Doctor Strong in this respect, and, reluctant as I am 
 to say it, I hold the American common school largely responsible 
 for the disasters which overtake many of those who have imbibed 
 its teachings. Our public schools, admirable though they are in 
 many respects, and Americanizing in their tendency, are in my 
 opinion imbued with a false spirit. They unduly stimulate a child's 
 ambition, and foster to an unhealthy degree its sense of independ- 
 ence. " Every one of you, boys, has as good a chance of becoming 
 President of the United States, some day, as Grant or Lincoln had 
 when he was of .your age," I once heard a public-school teacher 
 in Ohio say to his class. I marveled at the lack of judgment the 
 man displayed. But I could not find a person in that section of 
 the country who agreed with me. They all told me that that was 
 the American spirit. It may have been, at a certain immature 
 period; but it cannot remain so long. I believe a teacher should 
 stimulate a child's sense of responsibility, his pleasure in doing even f 
 the humblest labor conscientiously, his pride in sound and honest 
 workmanship; his sense of duty towards God and man, not God's 
 and man's duty towards him. His rights he is very sure to learn, 
 without the aid of a teacher. That liberty involves a redoubled 
 responsibility, is never properly impressed upon the pupils ; 
 and those of them who have not inherited self-restraint and 
 sober and moral impulses from their ancestors, are apt to be- 
 come intoxicated with the idea of the unbounded liberty they 
 expect to enjoy, and to rebel against all law and authority. As far 
 as my observation goes, I should say that the alien child, or the 
 child of alien parents, imbibes a dangerous spirit in our public 
 schools, though it is not the schools alone that are to be blamed 
 for the sad exhibit which the children of aliens make in the statistics 
 of pauperism and crime. Take Only this single item, quoted by 
 Doctor Strong, and ponder its awful significance : " Of 680 dis- 
 charged convicts who applied to the Prison Association of New 
 York for aid during the year ending June 30, 1882, 442 were 
 born in the United States, against 238 foreign born; but of this 
 entire number only 144 reported native parentage, against 536 who 
 reported foreign parentage." 
 
 If any one should take the trouble to make the acquaintance of the 
 hoodlums and young roughs, who infest all our large cities, he would 
 
64 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 find the great majority of them to be children of foreign parents. 
 I have heard worthy German and Scandinavian fathers, honest and. 
 hard-working men, complain bitterly that they found it impossible 
 to govern their children in this country, or maintain, any discipline 
 whatever in their homes. Their sons took to the street, no matter 
 what they did or said to them; and if they were punished, they left 
 their homes altogether. There is a spirit of irresponsible independ- 
 ence in the air, and it is unduly stimulated by boyish associates,, 
 by the text-books used in the schools, and by the political life, 
 which also fosters an excessive sense of dignity, irrespective of 
 intellectual and moral worth. 
 
 The alarming increase of this class of half foreign youthful roughs 
 with criminal tendencies, who in our large cities constitute the patron- 
 age of the saloons and all dens of vice, and the voting strength of the 
 different halls to which they are attached, has always appeared tO' 
 me one of the most dangerous results of immigration. To imagine 
 that this class of people is an element of strength to the State 
 and the country is certainly a most baneful delusion. A man is 
 valuable to the State only in so far as he fulfills a useful function 
 and has a definite place in the social organism. People of nomadic 
 habits, without permanent employment, weaken the social structure,, 
 and by their mere existence indicate the presence of some grave 
 disorder. Just as a body cannot with safety accept nourishment 
 any faster than it is capable of assimilating it, so a State cannot 
 accept an excessive influx of people without serious injury. The 
 process of national assimilation is necessarily gradual; and an 
 unassimilated mass in a State as in a body will give rise to more 
 or less violent disturbance, which must weaken the cohesive 
 strength, and retard rather than hasten the organic growth of 
 society. 
 
 We have, in my opinion, arrived at this point, when a continuation 
 of our former policy of indiscriminate absorption would be dan- 
 gerous, if not fatal. It is a question, not of sentiment, but of self- 
 preservation. It is the problem of problems with which every 
 individual, as well as every society, is confronted, in one shape or 
 another, viz., What degree of altruism is compatible with self- 
 preservation ? If we continue to bear the effects of foreign abuses 
 and misgovernment; if we extend our responsibilities beyond the 
 boundaries which reason and self-interest prescribe — ^we shall sooner 
 or later imperil our national existence. If others sow the wind, is 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 65 
 
 it fair that we shall reap the whirlwind ? There is a point, beyond 
 which optimism and even sympathy cease to he virtues. There is 
 already now an unnatural ferment in our society, resulting from 
 race-antagonism, class-antagonism, and lack of organic cohesion. 
 We have permitted our hospitality to be abused and we are now 
 beginning to reap the consequences. What does the appearance 
 among us of such phenomena as anarchism and socialism mean, if 
 not this ? What do the perpetual convulsions in economic centres 
 — the strikes, boycotts and riots — mean, if not this ? They are a 
 fiery writing upon the wall, which he who runs may read. They 
 mean that we have been too hospitable for our own good ; they 
 mean that we have absorbed in excessive quantities an indiscrim- 
 inate diet — some of it of an extremely indigestible kind — ^which we 
 are unable to assimilate, and which therefore produces disease and 
 disorder. A nation can perish, as an individual can — it can pass 
 through crises so serious that, if it survives, it is no longer the 
 same that it was. Its health, its strength, its faith, may be broken. 
 The new order which sooner or later follows the chaotic upheavals 
 is sure to be a different, though not necessarily a better, social con- 
 dition. If you will have patience with me, I should like to give 
 you some of my own observations, tending to show that we shall 
 soon be on the eve of a social crisis, unless we take heroic meas- 
 ures to avert it. 
 
 In 1869 I traveled through all the Western States east of the 
 Mississippi — and took particular pains to study the condition of 
 the German and Scandinavian immigrants. Everywhere content- 
 ment and hopefulness were the rule. Nearly all the people I talked 
 with told me that this was a good country, and that they had bet- 
 tered their condition by leaving the countries of their birth. They 
 found many things to criticise, in an intelligent, good-natured way; 
 but they were loyal to the United States and their institutions, 
 and anxious that their children should become good American 
 citizens. Two years ago, I again visited the great West, though 
 my opportunities for observation were less extensive than on the 
 former occasion. But they were at all events sufficient to prove 
 to me that a change had come over the spirit of immigrants. The 
 buoyant hopefulness and contentment which had impressed me so, 
 eighteen years ago, were scarcely anjrwhere to be found. The old 
 settlers, who had grown rich, were fairly well satisfied yet, but 
 they prophesied disaster, and were far less confident that this country 
 
66 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 had solved the problem of securing a maximum of happiness with 
 a minimum of restraint. The sanguine trust in the future of the 
 Republic and the excellence of its institutions were to a great 
 extent destroyed. The new-comers, who had expected to find 
 prosperity here, had found the struggle for existence as hard as 
 in the old countries, if not harder. 
 
 " America is all humbug ! " said an old Norwegian farmer to 
 me. " The poor man has no better chance here than he has in the 
 •old country. The Government is for the benefit of the rich man. 
 Everything is for sale here. You can become a governor, a con- 
 gressman, a senator — anything you like — if you have money 
 enough to buy a nomination. What is the good of calling that 
 sort of thing a democracy, and pretending that it is for the good 
 of the poor man? I tell you, everything here is humbug." 
 
 In this strain spoke the majority of those with whom I conversed. 
 A feeling of disappointment, and a more or less pronounced hostil- 
 ity to the country which they held responsible for their misfor- 
 tunes, were very prevalent. To men in this frame of mind the 
 vaporings of socialists and anarchists do not seem so preposterous 
 as they do to you and me, who are fairly content with our lot, and 
 suffer no exceptional hardships. In the case of the Germans, this 
 bitter feeling toward the natives is chiefly due to the Prohibition 
 movement, which they regard as being directly aimed at them. It 
 is, in their opinion, an unwarrantable interference with their per- 
 sonal liberty, dictated by a Puritanical fanaticism, which they hate 
 and despise. But there is also another reason for their unfriendly 
 sentiments, which lies considerably deeper. This country was 
 until recently a fair realization of the aspirations of the German 
 revolutionists of 1848. 'It was a democratic bourgeoisie — industrial- 
 ism dominant and triumphant. It raised the third estate, the 
 industrial class, the middle class (in Old World parlance), to be 
 the directing power in the State.' It was the business man, and 
 business interests, which decided national elections and foreign 
 policies. But during the last ten years a new class — the fourth 
 estate — the manual laborer, who had hitherto framed no political 
 demands — has raised its head, and threatened to remodel the State 
 in its interest. These attempts, which we all know create discon- 
 tent among the-class against whose power they are aimed, and the 
 natural resistance and self-protection of the latter, create bitter- 
 ness and disaffection among the fourth estate, who find their plans 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 67 
 
 balked and frustrated. The great historical question at the pres- 
 ent time is, accordingly, whether the fourth estate is or is not to 
 take the place of the third, as the governing and directing power 
 Much as I should regret such a revolution, it is difficult to see how, 
 with unrestricted immigration and universal suffrage, it is to 
 be averted. We have been accustomed to say that no man need 
 starve in the United States, if he is able and willing to work. This 
 was true ten years ago, but it is true no longer. I have seen in 
 New York City many families miserably destitute, through no 
 fault of their own, and unable to obtain work of any kind. Skilled 
 mechanics, who formerly supported themselves and their families 
 comfortably, have through boycotts and strikes and the exactions 
 of the Knights of Labor lost their employment, and have been 
 reduced to starvation. I could fill a book with the stories such men 
 have told me. They were mostly Germans and Scandinavians, 
 men of frugal habits and accustomed to industry. That their lot 
 is deplorable, there is no denying. And as long as immigration 
 xemains unrestricted, as long as five men enter for every one that is 
 needed, confusion must occur, and suffering must be the result. 
 
 The Knights are determined to enforce an artificial equality in 
 the rewards of labor, irrespective of merit. Industry and skill are 
 to command no higher wages than idleness and incompetence; 
 nay, the latter are to be allowed to fatten on the proceeds of the 
 former. There is no stimulus to ambition, where a man is not 
 master of his own actions, and sure of the profits of his own labor. 
 Perpetual interruption, agitation and outside interference are apt 
 to make a workman careless and improvident. If, on the other 
 hand, the immigrant mechanic refuses to join the Knights, he has 
 the choice between starving and " scabbing," and in the latter case 
 having his life daily imperiled by the assaults and persecutions of 
 the Knights. Everyone will admit that the alternative is not an 
 •agreeable one; nor need anyone wonder that men so perpetually 
 harassed lend a ready ear to teachings of the socialist, who, 
 assures him that the whole present order of society is wrong; that 
 he has been defrauded by the rich of his proper share of the com- 
 forts and pleasures of life, and that his only remedy is to join the 
 forces of the coming revolution. The parson, says the socialist, 
 promises you heavenly rewards if you only will keep quiet here, 
 and leave your plunderers in secure possession of their boodle. 
 That is a very cunning arrangement; and it has worked admirably 
 
68 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 for many centuries. But now the people are getting too intelligent 
 to be hoodwinked any longer. Religion is all a fraud, invented 
 by the ruling classes to keep down the poor. The king and the 
 priest have always been allies. Now let us turn the tables on them. 
 Tell them we are willing to renounce all the heavenly uncertainties,, 
 in return for the earthly joys of which they have hitherto had 
 exclusive possession. We will let the hereafter take care of itself ;. 
 for there is no hereafter. But there is an earth, and it is ours, if we 
 choose to take it. 
 
 This is the text of all socialistic sermons. Go down into the 
 Bowery, in New York, any Sunday evening, and you will hear this, 
 gospel preached in scores of stuffy, ill-smelling club-rooms, with 
 varying degrees of eloquence and vehemence, by frowsy-looking 
 Germans and Bohemians and Hungarians, while hundreds of for- 
 eign workmen frantically applaud their daring blasphemies. I have 
 listened to many of these discourses; and I have studied the tem- 
 per of the men among whom this diabolical gospel of hate makes 
 its converts. It may seem insignificant to you, that some thousand 
 foreigners meet in all our large cities in their assembly rooms, and 
 discuss, over their beer, the overthrow of the existing social order, nor 
 would it perhaps seem very significant to me, if the social conditions, 
 were not such as to make the minds of the lower classes peculiarly 
 receptive to this sort of teaching. Read the excellent study of 
 " Modern Cities," by Rev. Samuel Lane Loomis, and you will find a. 
 startling corroboration of my words. There is at present a universal 
 hunger among those who have been debarred from the enjoyment 
 of life's pleasures ; and a malevolent envy of those who have 
 beaten them in the struggle for existence — snatched the prizes, 
 away from their eager hands. There is a vast field here for the 
 Christian missionary; for our social order rests upon Christianity 
 as its basis, and can only be maintained by faith in revealed relig- 
 ion. If Christianity cease to be a power in the land, if the fear and 
 the love of God cease to be restraining influences in the minds of 
 men, our present social order is surely doomed. What would fol- 
 low, it is difficult to predict. Some kind of socialism probably, 
 which through untold suffering and frequent convulsions would 
 lead to some new rearrangement of social and economic forces. 
 The wild and predatory instincts of men, which are now held in 
 check, would then have sway for a season, until the soberer second 
 thought would reassert itself; and the impossibility of fashioning a 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 69 
 
 society better than the men who constitute it would convince even 
 the most rabid, that the kind of liberty which they desired must be 
 its own destruction. Or, to quote Goethe: 
 
 " For pure perfection's heights will unrestrained 
 Wild spirits vainly strive with sure disaster. 
 By well-directed strength is greatness gained 
 In limitation proves himseli the master. 
 And but through law can freedom be attained." 
 
 There is another danger to which I would, in this connection, 
 call your attention. We hear much in this country about the pro- 
 tection of American labor. We pay an enormous sum, annually 
 (far beyond the needs of the Government) for the ostensible pur- 
 pose of protecting American labor. But how does this system 
 operate ? As long as Castle Garden remains open, and an unceas- 
 ing stream of immigrants eager and willing to work for anything 
 they can get (as long as they can keep soul and body together) 
 pour in through this unbarred flood-gate, and underbid the native 
 laborer in all markets, it is the employer who is protected, 
 and not the laborer. If the freight-handlers or cigarmakers 
 or bricklayers strike (whether for adequate cause or not), 
 there is usually no difficulty in filling their places with newly 
 arrived recruits from Castle Garden. No wages are so small 
 now that there is no one who will accept them. Hungarians 
 who sleep on mattresses on the floor, and eight and ten in one room, 
 "who pick their dinners out of the ash barrels, and change their 
 linen once a month, can manage to live on wages which to self- 
 respecting American laborers would scarcely suffice to starve on. 
 And what is more, the Hungarians will manage to save something. 
 Competition in business often compels a manufacturer to engage 
 the cheapest labor he can procure, because his rivals would other- 
 wise be enabled to undersell and ruin him. He is sometimes 
 obliged to discharge self-respecting workmen whom he would 
 rather keep, and employ foreigners whose grade of living is lower, 
 because his competitors are already benefiting by the cheaper 
 labor. Wages thus show a tendency to reach the level where they 
 represent bare existence on the lowest possible plane, and the 
 laborers themselves, in their struggle to procure employment, 
 engage in a mutual competition to reduce the cost of living to the 
 lowest possible figure. The Labor Statistics of the Massachusetts 
 Bureau for 1884 show that the average earnings of the heads of 
 
70 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 families working in factories were $196 less than the actual cost 
 of maintaining such families; the difference, therefore, had to be 
 made up by child labor. Now if economic forces show this tendency, 
 is it not evidence that something is radically wrong ? For surely no 
 one can be blind enough to suppose that it is for the good of society, 
 to reduce a large class of its members to a plane of living which 
 must be degrading, and destructive of every higher instinct. The 
 Rev. Father Huntington has, in his article on " Tenement House 
 Morality,'' forcibly demonstrated the effect of miserable surround- 
 ings upon the morals of laboring men and women. " If you have 
 to live like a pig, you soon get to behave like one, too," said a 
 Swedish immigrant woman to me last winter, when I asked her how 
 she could afford to live in three rooms while her husband was out 
 of work. 
 
 And it is a fact that the moral degradation wrought by filth and 
 perpetual discomfort would suffice in itself to unfit a man for 
 American citizenship. People thus situated cannot foster the 
 spirit of self-restraint, respect for the law, and patriotism, which is, 
 and must be, the head corner-stone of a republic. If immigration, 
 by introducing an undue competition with civilizations lower than 
 ours, depresses the moral and intellectual level of American citizen- 
 ship, it is a direct menace to our institutions. 
 
 There are yet a few points which I wish to touch upon before 
 concluding. First, it has been urged that restriction of immigra- 
 tion would have an unfavorable effect upon business, by excluding- 
 skilled labor, for which we now, to a large extent, depend upon 
 Europe. A native American who has gone through the public 
 schools rarely takes up a trade, except as a temporary expedient. 
 He hopes by his cleverness soon to be beyond the necessity of 
 working with his hands. If he learns the printer's trade, it is with 
 the idea of some day becoming an editor. If he becomes a car- 
 penter or a mason, it is with a view to acquiring wealth as a 
 builder or contractor for public works. If he is a conductor or an 
 engineer, he expects to become a railroad president. Now, within 
 certain limits, this is no doubt a laudable spirit, and as long as 
 immigration furnishes a steady supply of men ready and willing to 
 work with their hands, it is quite natural that the native mechanic, 
 who has an advantage in knowing the resources of the country and 
 the conditions of trade, should rise upon the shoulders of the rest. 
 But, for every one who succeeds, how many hundreds are there 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 71 
 
 who fail, because of this unbridled ambition ! Is it not due to this 
 spirit of impatience at, and contempt for, slow and honest toil that 
 so many speculators, gamblers, sporting men, and other anomalous 
 characters fill our cities and endeavor to make a living out of the 
 corruption of politics ? I feel confident that such is the case. It 
 is, again, the spirit of the public school which bears a large share 
 of the responsibility. And I believe that, when industrial training 
 shall have been introduced instead of the present miscellany of 
 accomplishments ; when children shall acquire in the school a 
 definite, useful, practical knowledge, fitting them, not for Presi- 
 dents of the United States, but for the work and the responsibili- 
 ties of their live§ in humble or exalted stations, in accordance with 
 their powers —then we shall no longer have to depend upon Eu- 
 rope for our skilled labor. 
 
 It will possibly be inferred by some who have done me the 
 honor to listen to this address, that I entertain a low opinion of 
 foreigners. If I have conveyed any such impression, let me hasten 
 to correct it. I do not believe that there is any peculiar virtue in 
 American birth, or that Americans are, per se, superior to all other 
 nations ; but I do believe that they are better fitted than all others 
 to govern their own country. They made the country what it is, 
 and ought to have the' first voice in determining what it is to be. 
 In this alone consists their superiority. It would be folly to object 
 to the immigrated races, as races. It is as individuals that they 
 are objectionable, if objectionable at all. I know many natural- 
 ized citizens of German, Scandinavian and English birth whose 
 noble character and intelligent interest in public affairs would 
 make them an acquisition to any country. In fact, the great ma- 
 jority of the immigrants of these races are, and have always been, 
 useful and honorable men. The circumstance that we receive from 
 Germany a considerable number of anarchists and socialists, 
 ought not to prejudice us against a nationality which has contribu- 
 ted such excellent elements to our population. It is a question, 
 perhaps, which I shall not undertake to answer, whether, at the 
 present time, aliens, even of an unobjectionable character, are as 
 great a gain to this country as they were twenty or thirty years 
 ago. Quite apart from any question of character, they complicate, 
 by their mere alienism, the problems of self-government, and by 
 their mere presence give rise to economic convulsions and indus- 
 trial disturbances, which must react unfavorably upon all classes 
 
72 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 and conditions of citizens. It is not necessarily because they are 
 bad that we would largely limit their number, but because the 
 nation needs time to assimilate .he foreign elements which it 
 already has, before it can with safety receive more; for when assimi- 
 lation ceases, the coherence, nay, the very existence, of the nation 
 is in peril. I hope, therefore, that you will not put me down as a 
 rabid Know-nothing, whose bigotry has unsettled his judgment. I 
 need scarcely say that I am myself a foreigner — a Norseman ; or, 
 if you like, I am an older American than any of you, for Leif Erikson, 
 a countryman of mine, took out my naturalization papers, in 
 Massachusetts, nearly 500 years before Columbus set foot on this 
 continent. I spring from the parent stock, from which came Duke 
 Rollo and William the Conqueror ; and it is no effort for a man of 
 my blood to enter into the American spirit of constitutional liberty 
 — freedom limited by self-imposed law — for that spirit first arose 
 among the mountains of Norway, and spread from there to Eng- 
 land and to America. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I believe I have stated the problem as clearly 
 as I am capable of doing. If you ask me what is to be the remedy, 
 I shall have to admit that it presents unusual difficulties, some of 
 which appear almost insuperable. We have taken a step (and I 
 think a proper one) in excluding the Chinese; but I fear that legis- 
 lation aiming at the exclusion of any definite nationality of the 
 Caucasian race would not be upheld by public opinion. I think it 
 is highly desirable, for many reasons, to exclude the Slavonic race ; 
 but I have no expectation that it will ever be done. Equally im- 
 practicable would it be to legislate against certain classes among 
 different races. There is no sign by which an anarchist or a 
 socialist is known, and there is no possible way of distinguishing 
 him from his fellow-travelers op his arrival at Castle Garden. All 
 tests of character also are worthless, because there are a hundred 
 ways of evading them. A head-tax of $20 or $30, levied by the 
 United States, would have the effect of excluding the great major- 
 ity of the undesirable ones, but it would also exclude a great 
 many who might be regarded as desirable. Moreover, it would be 
 amenable to the objection that it is undemocratic, because it would 
 favor the comparatively well-to-do at the expense of the poor. In 
 fact, there is no imaginable method of separating the sheep from 
 the goats, nor of framing a law which would not be felt by many 
 to be a hardship and an injustice. The mere lengthening of the 
 
ADDRESS BY PROF. H. H. BOYESEN. 73 
 
 term of residence required for naturalization from five to ten years 
 would, I think, scarcely have any perceptible effect in lessening the 
 number of arrivals ; for it is not the prospect of political liberty 
 which allures the immigrant to our shores nowadays, but it is the 
 prospect of gaining an ampler and an easier livelihood. Neverthe- 
 less, the lengthening of the term would, on other grounds, be 
 highly desirable, and I hope it will be done. 
 
 The plan of restriction which I proposed some years ago is by 
 no means an ideal measure ; but it will, if properly enforced, have 
 the effect of shutting out the very worst classes ; and it has the 
 additional advantage of being perfectly feasible. My idea 
 would be that ng immigrant should be permitted to land, unless he 
 can exhibit a certificate signed by the American consul residing 
 nearest to his home, testifying to his good character and show- 
 ing that he complies with the conditions, whatever they may be, 
 which Congress may see fit to impose. In all European countries such 
 information is easily accessible; the parish, communal and police 
 authorities usually being able to furnish all information desired, 
 •concerning the individals within their jurisdiction. If the task 
 •of collecting these data were imposed upon the consuls, it would, 
 •of course, greatly increase the labor and responsibility of these 
 •officials; and would necessitate a considerable increase in their num- 
 ber. Butas a consulate in all but the principal commercial cities is at 
 present a sinecure, this objection need scarcely be regarded as a seri- 
 ■ous one. A weightier objection would be the opportunity for bribery 
 and corruption which such a law would offer to officials of question- 
 able morality. But such opportunities exist throughout the public 
 service, and must exist as long as human nature is what it is. If the 
 proper care is exercised in the selection of consular officers, and if it 
 were clearly understood that the policy of the administration favored 
 restriction rather than indiscriminate hospitality, the object of 
 the law would, no doubt, be accomplished in lessening the total 
 number of immigrants and excluding the most undesirable classes. 
 
 In conclusion, permit me to reply to a criticism which no doubt 
 Tvill be made by many, and which lies near at hand. Here is a 
 man, you will say, who, having himself accepted the hospitality of 
 the American nation, proposes to slam the door in the face of all 
 those who wish to follow his example. Well, if it were a mere 
 personal question, with no wider bearings, I presume I should be 
 liable to such a charge. I may say, however, that my father made 
 
74 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 the choice before me, having visited the United States as a young: 
 man, and brought me up in sympathy with American institutions,, 
 which he sincerely admired. I therefore found myself more at 
 home here, when I arrived, than in the country of my birth. Dur- 
 ing the nineteen years of my residence here, I have exerted all my 
 influence, in season and out of season, to make my countrymen 
 good American citizens ; to induce them to drop all quarrels and 
 prejudices and religious animosities imported from the Old World, 
 and to join heartily in labor for the industrial and intellectual devel- 
 opment of this great republic. The Scandinavian immigrants have 
 always been found on the side of law and order, and the counsel of 
 the Chicago anarchists paid them a great and well merited com- 
 pliment when he declared that he would not tolerate a single one 
 of them on the jury. It is not, however, as a Norseman that I have 
 spoken to you ; but as an American citizen who is deeply attached 
 to the country and its institutions, and who would avert, if he could,, 
 a danger which he believes to be threatening them. If I have in 
 any wise exaggerated this danger, which I scarcely think I have, it 
 is due to my zeal for the welfare of the republic, and my ardent 
 desire that this noble experiment in self-government should not 
 prove a failure. Macaulay prophesied the overthrow or dissolution 
 of the American republic in the twentieth century because its con- 
 stitution had too much sail and too little ballast. He predicted, 
 as a preliminary to this dissolution, a state of things very similar' 
 to that which we are now experiencing. In optimism, which blindly 
 hopes without taking note of actual conditions, lies our greatest 
 peril, and he who can dispel this optimism will contribute to the 
 security of the future. It is, therefore, a sign of the utmost signifi- 
 cance when the Christian churches throughout the land become 
 aroused to the necessity of grappling with these great and vital 
 problems. They are not in themselves insoluble ; but they re- 
 quire for their solution all the patriotism, the earnestness and 
 noble self-devotion which are found within the Church of Christ. 
 It is in this sign, and in this alone, that we shall conquer. 
 
GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
 REV. S. L. BALDWIN, D. D., OF BOSTON. 
 
 FORMERLY MISSIONARY TO CHINA. 
 
 Mr. President : The people of this country may well consider 
 whether the time has not come for laying some restrictions upon 
 immigration ; but, as is often the case, we began at the wrong end, 
 and restricted immigration at the Golden Gate when we ought to- 
 have done it at Sandy Hook. Restriction should be upon some line 
 of principle, and there should be no unnecessary exclusion of any 
 one nationality. The industrious, peaceable Chinaman should not 
 be excluded while lawless socialists and anarchists are freely 
 admitted. No preference should be given to immigrants from 
 Christian Europe over those from Pagan Asia, in cases where the 
 facts prove the Pagans to be the more Christian of the two. 
 
 If an immigration law, imposing a moderate tax on every immi- 
 grant, and requiring a certificate, from the American consul at the 
 port from which the immigrant sails, that he is a person of good 
 moral character, and purposes to be a law-abiding resident of the 
 United States, could be passed and enforced, it might prove a very 
 beneficial measure. Christianity can approve of such a measure, 
 as being in the interest of our country, and equally in the interest 
 of the immigrants themselves, and therefore in strict accord with 
 the Golden Rule. 
 
 But the exclusion of a Chinaman, merely because he is a China- 
 man, is unjustifiable, and our present law is an abomination. It 
 prevents the coming to this country of a Chinese preacher to- 
 preach to his countrymen — not that he is forbidden to come, but 
 that the regulations adopted to make sure that no laborer shall 
 come to this land of the free and home of the brave, require him 
 to get certain papers of the provincial authorities, which it is impos- 
 sible for him to obtain. 
 
 It also prohibits a Chinaman already here from bringing to this 
 country his wife and children, notwithstanding the fact that one of 
 
 75 
 
76 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 the chief objections urged to Chinese immigration is, that they do 
 not bring their families here. A Christian Chinaman in New 
 Haven, a respected member of one of the churches there, gomg 
 home to China for a visit, was very desirous of bringing his wife 
 and little son, and making his permanent home here. A petition, 
 signed by the President and Professors of Yale College, and many 
 leading citizens of New Haven, praying that he might have that 
 privilege, was sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, who replied 
 that, under the Act, as construed by the Department, it was impos- 
 sible. 
 
 We complain of the Chinese that they do not become citizens, 
 and proceed to remedy that evil by passing a law that they shall 
 not be allowed to become citizens. We complain that they do not 
 bring their families, and then make such regulations as will effect- 
 ually prevent their bringing them. We complain that they are not 
 Christians, and then proceed to commend Christianity to them by 
 breaking their windows, and sometimes their heads, even in Boston; 
 hy imposing discriminating taxes upon them; by driving them out 
 of their homes, burning their houses, and shooting them. Is it 
 any wonder that they are not suddenly and universally charmed 
 with Christianity ? If we were immigrants in China, and Bud- 
 dhists gave us a welcome of stones and dirt, and unjust taxation, 
 and broken glass and shot-guns, would it materially improve our 
 conceptions of Buddhism ? 
 
 When a Chinese mob raged about the residence of my colleague, 
 Martin, at Foochow, and he broke through the partition between 
 his house and the Taouist temple adjoining, the Taouist priests took 
 him and his family under their shelter, and in the presence of the 
 grimy gods of Heathenism, they dwelt secure during that dreadful 
 night. When the poor, hunted Chinese of Rock Springs were flee- 
 ing from their murderous pursuers, one sought shelter in the house 
 of a Christian minister, but was told that he had better move on, 
 and he did move on — to his death ! How long will it take this 
 kind of reciprocity to win the Chinese to Christ ? But, you say, 
 these murderous men were not Americans ; and, thank God, they 
 were not ! But the fact remains that they were foreigners — igno- 
 rant, vicious foreigners from Europe — whose immigration we were 
 encouraging by hundreds of thousands in a single year, whil,e our 
 politicians were standing aghast at an immigration of peaceful 
 Chinamen, which had barely reached the sum of 100,000 in a quar- 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. S. L. BALDWIN. 77 
 
 ter of a century. And we reaped our harvest of shame when our 
 boasted institutions had no sufficient control of those lawless 
 European immigrants to prevent the slaughter, and no power to 
 punish the offenders, or to secure any adequate redress. 
 
 We have reason for gratitude to God that, in spite of these wretched 
 exhibitions of our weakness, and our complicity with wickedness. 
 Christian kindness and Gospel work among our Chinese immi- 
 grants find the way to their hearts. A goodly number have been 
 brought to Christ in our mission schools, even in San Francisco. 
 Miss Carter's school, in the Mt. Vernon Church in Boston, had 124 
 Chinese pupils last Sunday. One of the leading Baptist churches 
 in New York has-as large a proportion of converts from its Chinese 
 Sunday-school as from its American Sunday-school. 
 
 Briefly, then, let Christian statesmen deal with this immigration 
 question on lines of Christian principle, looking to the securing of 
 peaceful and law-abiding citizens, and doing away with all dis- 
 criminations against a particular race. Let Christian philanthropy 
 meet all the immigrants who come with kindness, protecting them 
 from the miserable horde of sharpers who seek to fleece them on 
 their arrival, so that the man who is not a pauper, when he lands 
 at Castle Garden, is in danger of becoming such before he has 
 been twenty-four hours in this land of freedom. Let it meet them 
 with the warm, loving Gospel of Christ, get them into the churches, 
 and give them the right start in their new home. Let immigrants 
 of every class be protected in their just rights. Let the Roman 
 Catholic Irishman, when legally naturalized, cast his one vote, as 
 early as he pleases, but not more than once in one election. If, 
 then, the Protestants of Boston choose to perpetuate the classic 
 name of O'Brien in the mayoralty for scores of years to come, by 
 staying away from the polls, on the ground that they are so bad 
 and corrupt (because of their staying away from them), let O'Brien 
 rule, and let the Mayor of the American Athens continue to present 
 belts to brutal prize-fighters, while men who preach on Boston Com- 
 mon are sent to jail for that heinous offense, until Americans are 
 shamed into united action to abolish such a disgraceful record, by 
 taking off the heads, politically speaking, of the men who make 
 such a record for us. 
 
 Then it may come to pass that the hoodlums of San Francisco 
 shall be taught that a Chinaman has rights which they are bound 
 to respect ; decent Christian treatment may be secured to all our 
 
78 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 immigrants ; a heathen Chinaman's life may come to be as safe in 
 Christian America as a Christian missionary's life is in heathen 
 China ; our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens may be given a rest 
 from the arduous duties of governing our great cities for us in the 
 interests of rum, by the aid of boodle ; the political atmosphere 
 may be cleared of the dense fogs of corruption ; our legislative 
 halls may be purged from 
 
 " Ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, 
 For which the Heathen Chinee is by no means peculiar,'' 
 
 and Christianity, exemplified in national. State and individual life, 
 may conquer all our heterogeneous elements for Christ, and make 
 these United States, as they " of right ought to be," not only a 
 ^'free and independent," but a thoroughly Christian nation. 
 
 REV. J. M. FOSTER, OF CINCINNATI. 
 
 The immigration question must be settled in the light of our 
 Christian civilization. This Republic is a child of the Reformation. 
 John Calvin and the Reformers set up the Geneva Republic ; 
 William the Silent and the Reformers from Holland set up the 
 Dutch Republic ; Pym, Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell and the 
 Puritans gave England civil and religious liberty ; Knox, Melville, 
 Henderson and the Covenanters gave Scotland civil and religious 
 liberty. But their principles had been announced at Sinai in the 
 Decalogue, twenty-five hundred years before. The Puritans of 
 England, the Covenanters of Scotland, the Presbyterians of Ire- 
 land, the Dutch Reformed from Holland, and the Huguenots from 
 France brought civil and religi®us liberty to America. This coun- 
 try was settled by Christian men with Christian ends in view. The 
 Pilgrim Fathers, before landing on Plymouth Rock, while yet in 
 the cabin of the Mayflower, drafted a constitution of government. 
 That constitution began : " In the name of God, Amen. For the 
 ^lory of God and the maintenance of the Christian faith," etc. 
 And Webster said that ought to have been the first sentence of the 
 Constitution of the United States. In all the colonial charters and 
 compacts, and in thirty-four out of thirty-eight State constitutions, 
 a clear and distinct recognition is made of the authority of God 
 
DISCUSSION BY REV. J. M. FOSTER. 79 
 
 and the supremacy of His law in civil affairs. In all the inaugu- 
 ral addresses of our Presidents, save one, there is an acknowledg- 
 ment of the responsibility of all nations in general, and of ours in 
 particular, to the Governor among the nations. Our chaplaincies 
 in army and navy, in congressional and legislative halls, the Bible 
 in the public schools, the oath in courts of justice, the oath of 
 •office, the Sabbath laws, the laws against blasphemy, the laws 
 guarding Christian marriage, etc., all point to this one fact— that 
 this is a Christian nation. 
 
 What is the voice of Christianity on the immigration question ? 
 It is this : All men who may choose should be allowed to come 
 here without let gr hindrance, so long as they conform to our Chris- 
 tian civilization. Take the Chinese as an illustration: 
 
 The Chinamen are God's creatures, and, as such, have a right to go 
 ■where they may choose upon God's earth ; for " the earth is the 
 Lord's, and the fullness thereof." America does not belong to us. 
 It belongs to God ; and the Chinamen are just as much God's crea- 
 tures as Americans, and have the same inalienable right to dwell 
 here that we have. What right have the immigrants of 1620 to say to 
 the immigrants of 1887, " You shall not come." It is absurd. But 
 they have no right to bring their idols here, or to pursue their idola- 
 trous customs. That is a violation of the Divine Law. And our 
 ■Government was derelict in her duty when she allowed them to 
 bring their idols to San Francisco, and set up their joss-houses there, 
 and follow their heathenish practices, until a portion of that city 
 became absolutely leprous; and there was a show of reason in the 
 hoodlum cry that was raised, " The Chinese must go." That cry 
 •came rolling over the Rocky Mountains, and over the Allegheny 
 Mountains, and struck the Capitol here at Washington, and both 
 Houses responded in that infamous Anti-Chinese bill. What does 
 the bill say ? "No Chinaman shall. come to America, to work, for 
 ten years." i. No Chinaman shall come. We have them here from 
 France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Italy and Turkey. We have 
 them here from England, Scotland and Wales. Why, we even 
 have a few here from Ireland. But the patient, industrious, frugal, 
 innocent, harmless Chinaman may not come. " How has the 
 fine gold become dim ! " 2. No Chinaman shall come to work. 
 He can come for pleasure, for diplomatic purposes, to gamble or 
 steal, but he may not come to work. We do not hesitate to 
 denominate that bill anti-American, anti-humane, and anti-Chris- 
 
80 IMMIGRATION. 
 
 tian. In adopting it we were sowing to the winds, and now we have 
 been called to reap the whirlwind in the horrible massacre at Rock 
 Springs, Wyoming, and in the riots against the Chinamen yonder 
 on the Pacific slope. God has decreed it — that which a man 
 sows, that shall he also reap ; and this is true of nations. Burke 
 once said, in the English Parliament, " Except you guard the 
 rights of the humblest serf that walks your shores, you cannot pre- 
 serve the rights of England's proudest peer" — a sentence which 
 always thrills me when I think of it. We tried the experiment of 
 trampling on the black man's rights, and in 1861 God came to 
 make inquisition ; and the price demanded was $9,000,000,000 and 
 1,000,000 precious lives. North and South, and a train of suffering 
 arid sorrow which reaches even to the present hour. As if forget- 
 ful of that lesson, we are now trampling upon the rights of the 
 yellow man. And, by and by, God will come a second time for 
 retribution. Let us remember, the second visit will be more severe 
 than the first. The Chinamen, as God's creatures, have a right 
 to come to God's America. They have no right to bring their 
 idols or idolatrous customs here. That is a violation of the law of 
 God. The State should prohibit the second; it should, in no wise, 
 interfere with the first. And so that Christian principle, an essen- 
 tial element in our national life, settles the vexed anti-Chinese 
 question. That Christian principle will settle every department of 
 the immigration question. This nation began with immigration. 
 It has become a great power by immigration. It will have a 
 glorious future by immigration. Let God's law prevail ! 
 
THE MISUSE OF "WRAUTU. 
 
 BY MERRILL E. GATES, LL. D. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF RUTGERS COLLEGE. 
 
 WEALTH IS POWER. IT IS A SOCIAL FORCE. 
 
 Wealth is power. It is labor stored up in portable form. It is 
 a charged battery of social force, which may be discharged again 
 as motor-power when the owner will. It gives to its possessor his 
 option among many possible lines of effort, in any of which it will 
 further his ends. For wealth is " power to command, in exchange 
 for itself, the labor or the products of labor of others." 
 
 Wealth is pre-eminently a social force. We have met iri this 
 Conference to study " social problems " — the study which has 
 engrossed the best thought of the last century. Social problems 
 have their conditions fixed by the interplay of social forces. And 
 among social forces, wealth has a pre-eminent interest for us, 
 because it is the meeting-place of labor and power. Into its produc- 
 tion enters labor. In its use lies power. And most that concerns 
 men in their social relations is intimately connected with labor and 
 power. 
 
 Wealth cannot be so defined as not to carry in the definition 
 suggestions of a scope vastly wider than selfish personal gratifica- 
 tions. The far-reaching power of wealth for good and for evil 
 becomes more and more evident, as society becomes more complex. 
 If wealth confers on a man the power to command the labor of 
 other men, we find ourselves at once using terms so full of import 
 that no one year, no one generation alone, can show their full 
 meaning. When we speak of power in one person to command the 
 fruits of other men's labor ; when we deal with the responsibilities 
 and the rights which belong to labor and to social power — we are 
 using terms which history has freighted with significance. 
 
 81 
 
82 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SAYS TO THE TWENTIETH, "ALL MEN 
 
 MUST LABOR.'' 
 
 The centuries have their great sub-tones, the diapason-note 
 which one sounds out to another. As the eighteenth century went 
 out in revolution and blood, it said to the nineteenth, " All men 
 shall share in political power. All men shall govern." Round 
 this doctrine the nineteenth century has shaped itself, with its 
 abolition of human slavery, and its popular forms of government. 
 The sovereignty of the people under God is the significance of our 
 century. Before its resistless power, traditional and hereditary 
 privileges of princes and nobility have steadily fallen away. And 
 now, as its closing decade draws on, the nineteenth century sounds 
 out as a key-note to the twentieth : " Now that all men govern, 
 ,all men must be laborers, too. If all are to govern, all must serve. 
 Fitness for sovereignty is proved only by ability to serve all ! " 
 
 This is the emphasized utterance of our time. Before it, the last 
 stronghold of selfish privilege, the plea of wealth that it can exempt 
 its owners from God's universal law of unselfish service, the 
 demand of wealth to be allowed in peace to blind its eyes to its own 
 responsibilities, is to disappear before the law that each man is 
 bound usefully to serve all. 
 
 It is a fine old legend, "Noblesse oblige;" noble blood binds one 
 to noble service. Just so the noblest men of wealth of our time 
 are beginning — only beginning — to awaken to the power of the 
 legend " Eichesse oblige." They are beginning to recognize the 
 truth that wealth lays the heaviest possible obligation on its owner, 
 to make his unselfish service of the highest welfare of his fellow- 
 men reach out as widely as his wealth can extend that service. 
 This means that men can no longer be left, unquestioned, to use 
 their wealth, be it great or small, merely for their own selfish grati- 
 fication. It means that the unvarying law of God which attaches 
 an obligation to every opportunity, and places a duty over against 
 every right, makes no exception of wealth, with its vast powers of 
 service. " With new ability ; new responsibility." Wealth is 
 power ; and for the unselfish use of all his powers, every man must 
 give an account to the God who has taught us that " no man liveth 
 to himself alone." 
 
 POWER MAY BE MISUSED, 
 
 Wealth is power. Always power carries with it a possibility of 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. M. E. GATES. 83 
 
 its misuse. As a nation we have been told for the last half cent- 
 ury that we were going to be very rich. Each succeeding census 
 has surprised us with its statistics of our wealth. To-day, we are 
 the richest nation in the world. The figures appall us. Over 
 $50,000,000,000, with a daily increase in wealth of more than 
 $6,000,000 ! Never were we so rich as we are to-day. And yet 
 there are grave doubts, on all sides, as to whether we are gaining 
 ground, socially, politically, morally, in these prosperous years. It 
 is not long since a keenly observant (if not complimentary) visitor 
 to America told us, in the chastely severe dialect of his native 
 island, that we were "too beastly prosperous!" We understood 
 him without diffieulty ! And in our hearts we knew that he told us 
 a truth! We have ceased to feel unqualified pride in this abounding 
 wealth. We ask ourselves whether industry in money-getting 
 alone will save a nation. There is a suspicion abroad among us 
 that, while intent upon what we have called " enlightened self- 
 interest," as a people we have lost sight of a host of shining virtues. 
 A prosperous commonwealth is not insured by the material pros- 
 perity which makes wealth common. 
 
 WEALTH IS MISUSED WHEN IT IS USED MERELY TO GET MORE 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 When power is used only that the man who wields it may get 
 for himself more power, there is danger. To devise checks upon 
 power, to restrain its tendency to beget more power, is a large part 
 ■of the work of the Science of Politics. Wealth is power. And the 
 •deepest-seated danger in its use is the tendency to regard it as in 
 itself an end, not as a means for obtaining nobler ends. 
 
 The most dangerous misuse of wealth is, using it merely to get 
 more wealth. A tendency to this misuse is involved in the very 
 nature of the process of wealth-winning. It finds expression in 
 maxims like this, " Let all your spending be for tools of your 
 trade." The steady purpose of the devotees of wealth-winning is 
 to get more power without reference to any right use of that power. 
 In this grim determination to get more wealth at any cost, the 
 man moves and lives and has his being. This is that " pleomxia," 
 that covetous " I will have more," which God has expressly called 
 " idolatry." Wealth is put openly and prominently in the place of 
 God. " Of money, and through money, and to money are all things 
 in my life, and to money be the glory," is the faith that is in such 
 
8i THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 a man — a faith revealed by his actions. The clear perception that 
 the eager pursuit of wealth strongly tends thus to engross all a 
 man's powers and aspirations, will explain the fact, one has said,, 
 that the Lord Jesus Christ saw in this the only power of evil 
 which he deemed threatening enough in its tendencies to be per- 
 sonified as a rival of God for the first place in a man's life. He 
 personifies the money-god, Mammon. And He explicitly warns 
 men that they must choose between this mad pursuit of gain and 
 the service of the living God. " Ye cannot serve God and Mam- 
 mon." But the money-god has hosts of apparently single-hearted 
 servants in our land ! A passionate eagerness in money-getting, 
 a feverish thirst for quick gains, such as the world never before, 
 saw, marks our life as a people. 
 
 THE RACE FOR WEALTH. 
 
 " Money breeds ! " "It's the first ten thousand that costs; get 
 that, by foul means or fair, but gei it, and then the thousands will 
 roll up!" As this strong-sweeping current of gain gets hold of a 
 man, there comes a rapidly accelerated motion that takes the 
 breath away. There is an awful peril in launching on this subtly 
 sucking current of the determination to be quickly rich, and then 
 to be just a little richer, and then to be among the richest ! What, 
 multitudes of fresh, manly young fellows, the high aspirations of 
 home and college, still radiant in their boyish faces, we have seen 
 each year sucked into the outer circles of the great whirlpools of 
 speculation in our cities! Here surge those deep waters spoken of 
 by Paul to Timothy, where " they that will be rich fall into tempta- 
 tion and a snare and many hurtful and foolish lusts, which drown 
 men in destruction and perdition." As the whirlpool seethes on, 
 we see the drowned men tossed out, ruined in character, paralyzed, 
 broken at forty! With half-palsied brain, and eye that has lost its- 
 compelling power, such a man can now read and understand the 
 words, " He that maketh haste to be rich, shall not be unpunished."^ 
 
 GAZING AT GAIN BLINDS MEN TO MORAL DISTINCTIONS. THE 
 " HYPNOTISM " OF WEALTH-WINNING. 
 
 But even if a man escape this terrible passion of thirst for money,, 
 for the mere sake of getting money, there is another dangerous 
 effect which attends the contemplation of money gains as the chief 
 end of life. Let us call it the " hypnotizing ' ' power of gold. 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. M. E. GATES. 85 
 
 The process of hypnotizing is most effective with persons whose 
 ■will-power is not so strong as is that of the most determined and 
 ambitious victims of the will to be rich at any cost. Symptoms of 
 hypnotism, more or less clearly developed, are discernible irt most 
 men whose life is immersed in money-getting. 
 
 Here are a few sentences describing the phenomena of " hypno- 
 tism;" sentences taken chiefly from Carpenter's "Mental Physiol- 
 ogy," and not intended by him to have any bearing upon such a 
 subject as ours. See whether or not they apply to our theme. 
 
 The process of hypnotizing a person is simple. Place before his 
 eyes, and very close to them, some bright glittering object — (a gold 
 coin is often used !) — in such a way that he will constantly look up 
 to it; and let him fix his attention on this to the exclusion of all 
 other objects. The results which follow are thus described: "The 
 whole force of the man goes into this concentration of attention 
 and will-power upon the sensorial impression." There is " an 
 entire engrossment of the mind " in "sensory impressions," which 
 are " received with extreme vividness." His view "tends to be- 
 come narrower and narrower;" " it tends to unity and afterward 
 to nullity." Through this fixedness of attention upon one object. 
 Dr. Garth Wilkinson continues, " the world of sensations " " plays 
 upon" him "as upon an instrument finely attuned." He is now 
 open to every suggestion from the governing will of the manipula- 
 tor who has brought about this state of self-surrender through the 
 senses. " No doubts or difficulties present themselves to distract 
 the attention." He will undertake impossibilities at a word of 
 command. He cannot take his eyes off the object he is told to see. 
 He refuses to see what lies directly before his eyes unless the 
 master-will bids him recognize it. And all the while the victim 
 fancies himself master of his own actions; and when " he comes to 
 himself," he describes himself as having felt, in his previous con- 
 dition of pitiable slavery to another, utter obliviousness to, or pro- 
 found contemot for, anv and all other sensations and courses of 
 action than the one to which his master-sensation, induced by the 
 master- will, impelled him! 
 
 Have you not known many men who were thus " hypnotized " 
 by gazing at wealth — mesmerized slaves of the Mammon-god ? 
 The will to do anything else but make money is gone. The keen, 
 incredulous gaze with which such men meet you who preach to 
 them, when motives and aspirations higher than money-getting are 
 
86 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 suggested to thtm, shows you that they will not understand and 
 do not believe you. You cannot reach them with your voice.. 
 They do not hear you. They are as hopelessly beyond reach of 
 argument as are the shrewd, keen wild animals, whose crafty, 
 narrow-eyed intelligence in doing the one thing they plan to do, 
 you wonder at, but cannot reason with. In such men's hearts, " a 
 strong man armed keepeth the palace," and until " a stronger than 
 he" (even the Mightiest !) " shall come upon him and overcome 
 him " Mammon has sway! 
 
 THE "hypnotized" RICH MAN BLUNDERS AS TO TRUE 
 VALUES. 
 
 This perversion of all the powers of the man to money-winning 
 accounts for much of what we call the " gross materialism ' ' of our 
 land and of our time. To men thus " hypnotized " by money, sen- 
 sual delights, material evidences of wealth, luxurious surroundings,, 
 are intensely real. These are the embodiment of what they seek. 
 To the world of ideas, of broad human sympathies, of religion, 
 they are dead. They simply cannot see these great realities. This 
 one thing they do, they make money ! This one test they con- 
 stantly and automatically apply to all questions submitted to them, 
 " Is there money in it ? " 
 
 It was to a shrewd financier of this type, who had just completed 
 large plans for reorganizing his industries and his warehouses on 
 a larger scale, that Supreme Wisdom, when here among men, 
 broke out with the pitying exclamation, " Thou fool!" This typi- 
 cal rich fool had not missed a point in his calculations, so far as 
 money-making was concerned. Yet he had really made the blun- 
 der, inexcusable in a business-man, of leaving out of account, alto- 
 gether, the highest present and future values involved in his 
 transactions ! Keen money-makers of his class are after all deceived 
 in such a childish way! While they pride themselves on their 
 shrewdness, they steadily lose on every bargain. They invest 
 only in securities that cannot be realized on when the day of settle- 
 ment comes; they make no use of the finest business opening they 
 have in life, the chance to use the power their wealth gives them 
 to serve the world nobly; and the most valuable title they ever 
 hel3, the title to their own souls, they let slip out of their hands for 
 nothing! What is the real percentage of net profit, when you sum 
 up such a life ? 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. M. E. GATES. 87 
 
 FROM THIS BLINDING EFFECT OF DEVOTION TO MONEY-GETTING 
 FOLLOW A HOST OF MISUSES OF WEALTH. 
 
 From this blindness to all other forces save the material power 
 of wealth, a host of misuses of money follow. We are sadly 
 familiar with the catalogue ! Speculation on assumed values, that 
 becomes mere gambling, while it plays with the fortunes 
 and the daily bread of millions; other forms of gambling un- 
 disguised, leading directly to those breaches of trust which have 
 grown too familiar in our daily papers ; the wholesale adulteration 
 of. food and of other articles of merchandise; gigantic monopolies 
 and fictitious " trusts " organized to serve as vast trip-hammers in 
 pulverizing all rivals; the heartless recklessness of corporations, 
 regarding the life and health of employees; the printing of licen- 
 tious literature, which corrupts the boys and girls of our land, 
 poisoning life at its fountain-head; and the enormous liquor-traffic, 
 desolater . of homes, breaker of hearts, breeder of crimes, with its 
 natural outcome, the effort in the interest of the saloons to break 
 down that strong bulwark of Christianity and morality, the Ameri- 
 can Sunday. These and countless other misuses of wealth 
 threaten us — and are traceable to the principle we have noticed, 
 the narrowing of the mind to money -making as an end in itself, and 
 the consequent oblivion to all moral ideas and forces, to all noble 
 ends as motives in gaining and using the power of wealth. 
 
 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH MOST COMMON AMONG CHRISTIAN PEOPLE IS, 
 REFUSING TO MAKE ANY USE OF IT. 
 
 But the misuse of wealth which is most common among pro- 
 fessedly Christian people is, after all, the greatest peril that 
 threatens our land. The crying sin of the respectable rich people 
 of America is the ignoring of all true ends in the use of wealth — 
 the effort to evade responsibility for any unselfish use of its great 
 power for good. 
 
 The empty display of wealth, merely to outstrip others who are 
 rich, is not a use of wealth. Foolish vanity and useless heart- 
 burnings are not the gravest consequences of such reckless lavish- 
 ness. It is manifestly designed to challenge erwy. And it attains 
 its end. By such displays there is awakened, in the very poor, an 
 envy which, in multitudes, is fast turning into a deep-seated hatred 
 of the rich. It is upon envy of the rich that the anarchists chiefly 
 rely for the propagation of their doctrines. And anarchists' threats 
 
88 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 no longer have the dim, remote sound which they had for us five 
 years ago. They are growing painfully familiar. Can they in any 
 other way be so surely checked, as by those helpful uses of wealth 
 which prevent an utter alienation between the rich and the poor ? 
 While there may be generous expenditure of wealth upon the com- 
 forts and the elegancies of refined homes, families who set exam- 
 ples of wasteful, luxuriant extravagance uniformly corrupt good 
 manners and lower public morals. " Fashionable society in our 
 great towns is babyish; wealth is made a toy," says Emerson. 
 For rich men generally refuse to recognize their responsibility to 
 use wealth unselfishly for the welfare of all. Yet in such unself- 
 ish service we are called on to use all the powers and social 
 forces at our command. Why should wealth be the sole exception 
 to this law ? God has so ordered the social life of our race, that 
 no man can make the most of his own powers of mind and heart 
 and will until he employs those powers in the service of his fellow- 
 men. This is an accepted law in the realm of mind and spirit. It 
 is no less binding upon the power which material wealth places at 
 a man's disposal. No man has the slightest right to say of his 
 wealth, " It is minej I may use it selfishly if I will." Wealth is 
 power. 
 
 There still lurks, in the minds of many, a confused feeling that 
 if a man has inherited wealth, or has early accumulated it, he is by 
 this made free from the law of service, and may live henceforth a 
 useful or a useless life, as he pleases, no one having the right to 
 call him to account for it. Not so ! The compiler of the old 
 Webster's Spelling-book chose wisely when he formed the moral 
 conceptions of an entire generation of school children on that bra- 
 cing and stimulating sentence, " No man may put off the Law of 
 God ! " If a poor man applies to you for assistance, you brand 
 him at once as unworthy, if it can be said of him, " He never does 
 a stroke of work." Does the accident of having money in bank 
 make it any less disgraceful for a man to have it truly said of him, 
 " He never does a stroke of work " ? The rich man has no right to 
 live lazily on his wealth, doing nothing for his fellow-men, while he 
 is supported by the stored-up labor of his ancestors. If he has 
 health, yet does no work with brain or hand for his fellows, he has 
 no more right to exist among honest men than has the able-bodied 
 tramp ! In the social organism, he is as truly a pauper as is the 
 man who is fed and clothed from the poor-tax ! 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. M. E. GATES. 89 
 
 The misuses which we have noticed suggest the right use of 
 wealth. Its right use does not lie in indiscriminate alms-giving, in 
 filling every outstretched hand and open mouth. So wealth might 
 be made to disappear. Not so can it be rightly used. Nor does a 
 right theory of the use of wealth lead to communistic views of 
 property. If all the wealth of our land were equally divided, the 
 share of each man, woman and child, if securely invested at five 
 per cent., would yield but about forty dollars a year. If the prin- 
 cipal sum were placed in the hands of each, it would soon be 
 squandered, and inequalities of fortune would again be the inevita- 
 ble outcome of differing degrees of industry and ability in different 
 individuals. 
 
 WEALTH MUST BE USED TO PRODUCE NEW WEALTH — TO PRODUCE 
 THE HIGHEST VALUES. 
 
 Wealth must be used for service according to its own laws. It 
 must be used as capital; that is, as wealth employed in the pro- 
 duction of new wealth, of new values. But in such use of wealth 
 let us have a clear-eyed recognition of various kinds of value, and 
 ■of degrees in values. And let us insist upon the steady, systematic 
 preference of those values which are highest. Intelligence, morality, 
 ■conscience, and will-power which is steadied and strengthened by 
 conscience, have the highest economic values. Wealth so 
 used as to promote the prevalence of these qualities among 
 a people is in the truest sense employed in the production of 
 new wealth. 
 
 Just as truly as teacher and preacher are under economic laws, 
 and are bound to pay their debts and support their families, just 
 so truly are business men under moral and spiritual law, and under 
 •obligation to win and use their wealth, and all their wealth, with a 
 constant regard to the moral and spiritual welfare of their com- 
 munity and their race. No man is free to choose as to whether he 
 or his property shall come under God's law of service. He is 
 under that law by virtue of his birth, as he is in society and a 
 member of the State, without his having been asked. He owes 
 steady allegiance to that law of service, by virtue of the solidarity 
 ■of God's universe of law. And though, in managing his property 
 he may disregard this obligation, he can never escape it. 
 
 When Christian wealth, which is concentrated power of service, 
 becomes really consecrated poiuer of service in the hands of those who 
 
90 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 use it, how rapidly we shall move forward in the solution of manjr 
 of the knottiest problems of social reform ! 
 
 Wealth, since it is " the usufruct of skill, intelligence and mor- 
 ality," is under obligation steadily to. reproduce morality, intelli- 
 gence and skill. " Redeem the time " that was withheld from God's 
 work by you, while you were making money ! Buy it back, by 
 using this money conscientiously for God's work. If you have 
 inherited wealth, let the time and labor involved in the rolling up of 
 a fortune be evolved again, in days and years of active philanthropic 
 and Christian work, done by workers whom your money supports- 
 in teaching, in preaching, and in mission-fields. What vast dona- 
 tions overdue to schools of applied industry, to institutions of. 
 learning and to Christian missions, this view suggests ! 
 
 WEALTH PRODUCES THE HIGHEST VALUES, WHEN IT HELPS MEN TO 
 HELP THEMSELVES. 
 
 To educate men in the knowledge and use of their own powers,, 
 and to bring them under the sway of right principles and feelings,, 
 is the true way to make them help themselves. But in every com- 
 munity there is a mass of inefficiency, ignorance and vice, which, 
 the stronger and the better must help to elevate. The ignorance, 
 misery and sin of the world is a terrible reality. It will not let 
 thoughtful men sleep ! It ought not to let rich men sleep, unless, 
 their wealth, which is power of service, is constantly doing some- 
 thing to relieve it. " It was never meant that man should be com- 
 pletely happy, while his fellows are in pain," says one of the truest 
 of our social philosophers. 
 
 To make less this sum of ignorance and misery, the man of 
 wealth has many wise ways open to him. To help to work out 
 plans of successful co-operation or profit-sharing, opens a noble 
 avenue for service. The moral effects of such experiments on 
 employers and men are incalculably good. 
 
 " He is the rich man in whom \h& people are rich." There is a 
 growing disposition on the part of rich men to recognize this 
 truth by giving public parks, museums and libraries for the use of 
 the people. There is a growing wish to make the life of our toiling 
 men " richer with respect to soul, mind and body." But all 
 attempts to do this throw us back always upon intellectual^ moral 
 and spiritual forces, as the means, through education, of raising 
 the condition of men. Something may be done by way of pro- 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. M. E. GATES. 91 
 
 viding halls, books and apparatus for that process of self-education, 
 in matters political, social and industrial, toward which discussions, 
 in their own organizations so strongly impel our laboring-men. 
 What a difference in power to produce values, between the dollar 
 you spend to add to your dinner a dish of fruit out of its season, 
 and the dollar you put into a good book upon the duties of citizen- 
 ship, and place in the hands of an intelligent young workman ia 
 one of the labor unions ! 
 
 But even if wealth had supplied all the material appliances 
 which men need for self-education and self-elevation, the question 
 would remain. Have the men whom you wish to make self-helpful 
 the desire to help themselves ? The effort to answer this question, 
 will force us to consider such men as individuals; to come into re- 
 lations with them one by one. To influence personalities strongly,, 
 is the great desideratum. 
 
 SUCH HELP IS STRONGEST WHEN THE STRONGEST PERSONALITY 
 TOUCHES men's WILLS ONE BY ONE. 
 
 The mightiest educating power is a strong personality. The 
 greatest work which Christian wealth can do for the world is to help 
 to bring men, one by one, under the sway of that one Supreme 
 Personality, the Lord Jesus Christ ! The only hope for men is in a 
 close personal relation with a Personal Saviour. Not in masses 
 will men be lifted out of vice and sin. Society will be purified, 
 institutions will be made better and kept better, only as men are 
 drawn one by one to " Him who has been lifted up." The great 
 social discontent of our time springs from the lack of a true center 
 for each man's life, in Christ. The pitiable, blind yearnings of 
 Socialism must touch the hearts of Christians, because they are 
 the groping of men after that true brotherhood which men find 
 only when they see the fatherhood of God. Christ is the " Desire 
 of the Nations," though they know Him not. And in our time and 
 in our land, the noblest use for wealth is, in promoting efforts to- 
 bring the gospel of Christ home to the hearts of the people and to 
 bring the people home to Christ. 
 
 Since wealth has in it the noble possibility of being thus trans- 
 muted into spiritual power, how do Christians dare to use so much 
 of it for lower purposes ? If the " love of Christ constraineth us," 
 if we and all our possessions have been " bought with a price," the 
 true view is, not " how much of my money ought I to use for the 
 
92 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 Lord's work,'' but, rather, " all that I am and all that I have is my 
 Lord's; how much of my Lord's substance ought I to use on my 
 family and myself ? " 
 
 The truth is that wealth is a mighty power, but an exceedingly 
 dangerous power for him who uses and holds it. The Christian 
 who is to withstand its temptations and to use it aright must con- 
 stantly ask guidance from God. It is the " deceitfulness of riches" 
 which makes Christians imagine that they can lightly set aside or 
 ignore the emphatic warnings of God's Word regarding riches. 
 Only the power and love of God can enable Christians safely to 
 handle wealth. And when all is said, the giving of wealth for 
 Christian work is not a mere business transaction. " They that 
 trust in their wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their 
 riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, or give 
 to God a ransom for him." Only the power of the Holy Spirit can 
 transmute money gifts into Christian influences which shall win 
 souls to Christ. 
 
 "AMERICA FOR CHRIST." "THE WORLD FOR CHRIST." 
 
 The crisis in our national life calls most loudly for Christian 
 work and Christian giving in home-fields. From heathen lands 
 come such requests for Christian teachers and missionaries as 
 appall our mission-boards. In our colleges are two thousand 
 young men who say to the Church of America, "Send us; we 
 are ready to go." Now that fields are open and laborers 
 ready, shall we hold back our Lord's money, and keep these 
 heralds of glad tidings from the work they are ready to do ? 
 
 What an opportunity to use for the noblest ends that power, 
 that concentrated life-effort, which is coined in wealth ! You, 
 Christian men of means, who feel that the strength of your life 
 has gone into wealth-winning, yet who have felt your heart 
 stirred by the devotion of a Livingstone or a Hannington or a 
 Chamberlain, will you not use God's money entrusted to your 
 management to educate and support such heroic workers for 
 Christ ? 
 
 " Defer not charities till death," says Bacon, "for certainly, if a 
 man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of anothqf 
 man's than his own." Use your wealth for Christ while you can 
 yourself direct its use, while you can yourself see and enjoy the 
 mighty moral and spiritual values which are produced from the 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. ROBERT C. MATLACK. 93 
 
 right use of wealth. The example of Christian men and women 
 of property who go " at their own charges " to mission fields, is 
 inspiring ; many will follow it ! 
 
 Drawn together here by the power of Christian love, let us 
 plan liberal things for the promotion of Christ's kingdom. Let 
 us be ready to give to such Christian work as we ipay 
 here devise, time and labor which shall bless the godless homes 
 about us. 
 
 Let us give time and money joyously, for the love of Christ. 
 Let us rejoice in the brotherly spirit which pervades a gathering 
 of Christians such as this. And if we feel a joyous elation in 
 the conviction. that strong men, banded together for the service 
 of God, with His blessing can accomplish much, let us welcome 
 and not distrust that sense of social joy. 
 
 " God loveth a cheerful giver." Have you studied the precise 
 import of the word translated cheerful ? It came to me with 
 wonderful force a few days since, as I was reading my Greek 
 Testament. The word is ^^ hilaron." There is no mistaking its 
 import. God loves a whole-souled, " hilarious " giver — one who 
 is not ashamed of the cause for which he gives — one who, with a 
 strong, buoyant, joyous confidence in the cause, in the men who 
 are working with him for it, and, above all, in the God who 
 directs the work, gives freely, heartily and 7tiith a swing ! To the 
 sense of duty from the law of Christian service, shall we not by 
 God's help add this crowning grace of spontaneous, hearty, 
 hilarious Christian giving of time and money for the cause of 
 our Master ? 
 
 GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
 
 REV. ROBERT C. MATLACK, D. D., OF 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL EDUCATION SOCIETY. 
 
 • Mr. President: I have come to this city deeply oppressed with 
 a sense of my responsibility as a delegate to this Conference of 
 Christian workers. My burden has become more and more heavy, 
 as I have heard of the perils within and without by which the 
 
94 THE. MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 Church and the country are endangered. Thoughtful, wise and 
 good men who are not alarmists, but careful students of history, as 
 well as observers of our own times, have shown clearly that both 
 the Church and the State are in imminent danger through our 
 national prosperity. The nation seems to stand trembling on the very 
 pinnacle of exaltation. A false step may cast her down to utter ruin. 
 The one deep, heart-searching question of every clergyman and 
 layman of this vast audience should be, What can I do, what 
 -ought I do, to avert this calamity ? Professor Gates has laid down, 
 at some length, the great principles which should guide us in our 
 resolves at this solemn hour. 
 
 It remains for me, in the few minutes allotted me by Secretary 
 Strong, to make practical application of these principles to our 
 daily life. My official position has thrown me in contact with 
 •Christian men of great wealth in various parts of the country. I 
 am to give the results of my experience with these men, to report 
 how the matter of using their wealth for God seems to lie in their 
 minds. I must confess that, with a few noble exceptions, I have 
 found no deep sense of responsibility connected with the possession 
 of wealth; no conviction, or even just conception, of stewardship 
 among our wealthy men. Hence there is no giving " as the Lord 
 has prospered." No spontaneous, generous and proportionate giving. 
 
 The wealth of the nation is put down at fifty billions of dollars, 
 and it is increasing rapidly. A very large proportion of this enormous 
 wealth is in the hands of the ten million communicants of Evangelical 
 churches, and yet we do not give one-hundredth part Qi it to the work 
 of sending the gospel to those who are " without God and without 
 hope." With our abundant resources the work of the Lord lan- 
 guishes both here and beyond the seas. Is not this an alarming 
 fact? Will not "judgment begin at the house of God?" I fear 
 that we, the clergy and ambassadors of Christ, are largely respon- 
 sible for this state of things. 
 
 Allow me to relate a personal incident. A few years ago. I 
 preached a sermon in the city of New York, enforcing the text, 
 " If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up 
 his cross daily and follow me," and urged that self-denial is essen- 
 tial to true discipleship, and that no man could know the luxury 
 of giving to the Lord, unless he practiced it. 
 
 Soon after, one of the wealthiest men of the congregation and of 
 the city met me with the salutation, "Doctor, you preach an 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. ROBERT C. MATLACK. 96 
 
 impracticable gospel. How could a man of my wealth deny him- 
 self in the matter of giving ? I must confess that your sermon set 
 me to thinking. I have never heard anything like it before from the 
 pulpit; self-denial in money -giving is a strange doctrine. In my case 
 the application could not be made in the matter of giving money. 
 I must practice self-denial in other ways — I must deny my lower 
 nature, subdue my temper, passions, etc. God has given me my 
 talent for making money, and I must exercise it." I replied, " Dear 
 Brother, Christ's gospel, which I preach, is not impracticable; it 
 applies to every man and to every particular of his life. The law 
 ■of self-denial is as universal as the gospel of salvation. It is 
 •entirely practicable for you to deny yourself in the matter of giving. 
 It is true that your talent for money-making must be used, but with 
 the divine limitations, ' Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving 
 ihe Lord.' God gives the talent, not that you may accumulate, 
 but that you may distribute. His incentive is, ' Working that you 
 may have to give,' and He assures you that ' It is more blessed to 
 give than to receive.' " 
 
 " Pray, how could I practice self-denial in giving ? My income 
 is such that I could give the whole $50,000 you ask for Educa- 
 tion, and not feel it. I could also give the $150,000 which the 
 Church asks for foreign missions, and the $200,000 which she 
 asks for domestic missions, and not touch my capital. I could 
 run the Episcopal Church in her general and aggressive work, 
 and still add to my capital year by year. How can your argu- 
 ment apply to a man in my position ? I tell you, you preach 
 an impracticable gospel; this unreal preaching fails to reach men." 
 
 " My brother, you have made a fearful acknowledgment — you 
 have immense power of doing good; with this power comes 
 immense responsibility. It is written, ' He that hath much, of him 
 much will be required.' I believe you are honest and sincere 
 in asking, ' How can I meet my responsibility ? How can I deny 
 myself ? ' 
 
 " First then, now and here, Resolved, before God, that you will 
 never add another dollar to your fortune. 
 
 "Second, Resolved, that you will continue in business and work with 
 your usual wisdom and energy, and devote all your earnings to the 
 cause of Christ. 
 
 " Third, Resolved, that, as an example to the rising generation 
 of modest living, you will sell your mansion, reduce your 
 
9G THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 domestic expenses, and give the money thus saved to doingf 
 good. Would not this be self-denial ? " " Indeed, it would." " Is 
 it not practicable ?" " I presume so." "Ah, my brother, if you would 
 know something of the luxury of giving, try this experiment. 
 It has been tried by men who have not a tithe of your wealth, 
 and they have rejoiced in doing it. You could place in every 
 needy locality in New York a missionary and a church, and 
 support them all. Aye, under God, your single fortune, properly 
 used, would regenerate the entire city — yes, you could circle the 
 globe with gospel light." My friend evaded the force of my 
 appeal by asking, " Did not our church do well ? Did not we give 
 $3,000 ? " Thus, alas ! we lose sight of our individual and per- 
 sonal shortcomings, in congratulating ourselves upon the aggre- 
 gate of church work and church generosity. The great ques- 
 tion for each one to ponder is. What am / giving ? What am / 
 doing for the Master? 
 
 The wealthiest church of a thousand members will sing a Jubilate 
 over a five thousand dollar collection for missions, and be lauded 
 by the religious papers for its generosity, when there are fifty or 
 a hundred persons in the congregation, any one of whom could 
 have given the whole amount without modifying his luxurious 
 living or checking his rapid accumulations. 
 
 If clergy and laity were baptized by the Holy Spirit into fuller 
 consecration, so that body, mind and soul, with all their 
 powers, should be given to God, we would soon hear the nation, 
 and the entire world, singing joyfully to the Lamb, " Thou art 
 worthy, for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy 
 blood, out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, and 
 hast made us unto our God kings and priests." 
 
 Let us, brethren of the clergy, be more faithful to those whom 
 God has committed to our care. They will heed us if we plead 
 with them earnestly and affectionately to enter upon a higher, 
 nobler use of their God-given "wealth. There are thousands of 
 Christian men in this country, whose incomes or business earnings 
 are from fifty thousand to five hundred thousand dollars and 
 upwards a year, to say nothing of the multitudes who possess 
 smaller fortunes. The majority of them are absorbed in making 
 and accumulating money. They seem to know nothing of the 
 blessedness of generous giving. The more money they acquire, the 
 more blunted their sense of responsibility concerning its use, for 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. ROBERT C. MATLACK. 97 
 
 God and man, seems to become. I pity these rich men, and especially 
 the millionaires. They have little faithful instruction and warning. 
 They are flattered and cajoled, where Paul would have " reproved, 
 rebuked and exhorted with all long suffering," and Christ would 
 have cried out, " How hardly shall they who have riches enter the 
 kingdom of God." " It is easier for a camel to go through the 
 eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." 
 Self-denial and self-sacrifice for Christ are fast becoming obsolete 
 virtues in Christian life and character, and especially among those 
 who are most able to give largely to His cause. Does not this 
 indicate lukewarmness and indifference, where we should be in- 
 tensely earnest* and aroused ? Does it not show unconcern forthose 
 who are going rapidly to destruction, and intimate that we are 
 insensible to our great responsibility concerning their rescue? 
 There is certainly very little large, spontaneous and cheerful 
 giving in grateful love to Christ our Redeemer. With the increase 
 of our means, do we not generally enlarge our mode of living, and 
 add to our luxuries, rather than manifest new generosity to 
 Christ ? Is not the great question now, as in Christ's time, " Where 
 shall I bestow my goods ? " Does not this question follow us even 
 until we near the call, " This night thy soul shall be required of 
 thee." 
 
 Thousands of dollars are annually spent by Christian families 
 upon the mere refinements, elegancies and adornments of life. 
 Thousands are also spent upon our churches to gratify the ear and 
 the eye, to excite the sensibilities, and make the way to heaven easy 
 and luxurious. The gratification of the taste is surely lawful when 
 under discipline and control; but is there not a fearful dispro- 
 portion between our expenditures for these refinements and luxu- 
 ries of life, and our gifts to Christ for the spread of His gospel 
 among men ? Are we not more bent upon gratifying our taste, 
 indulging our desires, adding to our comforts, than in helping and 
 saving our fellow-men ? 
 
 The late Dr. Muhlenberg said, in view of the tendency to lavish 
 money upon ourselves, and meagerly to dole it out to Christ: "The 
 man who finds no interest in those beyond his own family, will 
 soon have a selfish household; the rector who confines his appeals 
 and labor to the work of his own parish, will soon have a selfish 
 congregation; the bishop who, by absorption in the work of his 
 particular field, becomes indifferent to every other claim, will soon 
 
98 THE MISUSE OF WEALTH. 
 
 have a selfish diocese. Selfishness, whenever and however fostered 
 and developed, must eventually work the ruin of the home interest, 
 which it attempts to serve by this narrow policy." A few thousand 
 dollars a year, contributed by the wealthiest man, will give him a 
 reputation for generosity in any congregation, when it may not be 
 a tithe of his income, and never touch his luxuries or check rapid 
 additions to his already dangerous fortune. Even those who 
 give thus liberally are encouraged to spend it, I had almost said 
 to waste it, upon the trappings of the church in which they worship, 
 rather than in ameliorating the condition of the poor, or sending 
 the gospel beyond their own borders. A few give a tenth to the 
 Lord, under the impression that this' is their full share. This is 
 law, not gospel ; defective law at best, for the Jew gave three 
 tenths to the Lord, and was charged by the prophet with " robbing 
 God " when he 'withheld it. The Gospel says, " Ye are not your 
 own, ye are bought with a price," even the precious blood of 
 Christ. His image and superscription are written upon us, and alt 
 that we have and can acquire, and we are commanded, "Whether ye 
 eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." The 
 responsibility of the Christian Church is appalling, when viewed in 
 connection with the vast wealth in the hands of her members, and 
 the power for good which is committed to her trust. We dislike 
 to speak of duty and responsibility in connection with service 
 for our Divine Master. These are cold, hard words, though 
 true and solemn. Let us get upon the higher plane of privilege and 
 luxury in doing good. Frequently God inspires us by the hundred- 
 fold reward in the life that now is, and in that which is to come. 
 If our eye be fixed upon the price of our redemption, and then 
 upon the reward of loving service, the generous sacrifice and the 
 full hand will never be wanting. Alas ! how few have any expe- 
 rience of this self-denying, luxurious giving. The great need of the 
 Church is interest in God's work, and not ability to do that work. 
 With the great increase of wealth in the Church, there is no corre- 
 sponding increase of generosity. Give till you feel it, if you woula 
 enjoy it. 
 
 Some of you may recall a striking incident — which was commu- 
 nicated to the New York press, a few years ago, by a deeply 
 humbled minister. One of the leading members of his church 
 was greatly distre'ssed in his last sickness, on reviewing his mode of 
 living, and reflecting upon the large amount he had spent upon his 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. ROBERT C. MATLACK. 99 
 
 family, and the comparatively small sum he had given to the 
 Lord. In every way the pastor endeavored to comfort him. He 
 spoke of his having always given cheerfully, and as much as 
 others did. He reminded him that the best of us are unprofitable 
 servants, and must look to the mercy of God. in Christ as our only 
 hope. The troubled man found no peace or comfort, but grew 
 more and more uneasy, distressed and agonized as his end drew 
 near. At last, taking the hand of his pastor, he said: "Brother, I 
 am going to the Judge unprepared to meet him, because you have 
 been unfaithful to me. For years I have lived, and taught my 
 family to live, largely for this world. We have denied ourselves 
 nothing, but spent thousands on personal comforts and luxuries. 
 When I gave hundreds to Christ and His Church, it should have 
 been thousands. My business energy, and time and money, have 
 been most devoted to self-pleasing and gratification, and how can 
 I meet my Judge and give an account of my stewardship ? I am 
 beyond recovery. Do what you can to save other professors who 
 are in the same current of worldly self-indulgence and extrava- 
 gance, which is sweeping them to destruction." 
 
ESTRANGEMENT OF THE MASSES 
 FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY BISHOP J. F. HURST, D. D., LL. D., 
 OF BUFFALO. 
 
 We have half won our victory when we see the place where defeat 
 is possible. There is an alarming multitude of people who never 
 enter the door of a Christian church, who have no sympathy with 
 the Inspired Word, and who are either indifferent or dead to every 
 sanctity of our faith. For them the Sabbath bell has no welcome 
 charm. The most are exhausted by a week's battle for existence, 
 or, rather, by the struggle of a life-time for bread. Many, indeed, 
 are groaning beneath the still heavier burden of having no labor, 
 and knowing that starvation is entering the door. The world's 
 deepest misery, like its sublimest faith, is without speech. Only 
 small needs have vital force enough to utter the wild wail of 
 despair. 
 
 This disproportion between the few who are attendants at Chris- 
 tian churches and the multitudes who never cross the threshold of 
 one, is a terrible reality. The churches are a unit in admitting the 
 unwelcome fact. No optimist, with the chimes from a dozen bells 
 in his ears at once, dares to deny that throughout Christendom, 
 where one individual pauses and enters the sanctuary on the Sab- 
 bath day, at least two others pass by, and go upon errands of indif- 
 ference, work, or downright sin. 
 
 Berlin can be considered the center of the world's most advanced 
 culture. Its university, with its two hundred professors and thou- 
 sands of students, is absolutely free. Its rays of good and of evil 
 reach farther than from any other burning intellectual center on 
 earth. Indeed, the most of the present bold and defiant skepticism 
 of England and America is only the threadbare, sun-browned, and 
 now cast-aside rags, which, some seasons earlier, had hung up in all 
 their glossy finish and buttons of very heavy brass in the Berlin, 
 
 100 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP J. F. HURST. 101 
 
 Heidelberg, and other German wardrobes. But what does the pop- 
 ulation of the magnificent metropolis of the German Empire fur- 
 nish for the churches ? For the one and one-quarter million of the 
 population of Berlin there are but sixty places of worship of every 
 sort — Jewish and Christian, State Church, and the in-flowing sects.* 
 This is but one church to about 21,000 souls. In London, with its 
 five and one-half millions of population, and its 1,647 Protestant 
 and Roman Catholic churches for that multitude, we have about 
 3,350 people for every church. In Boston, in 1880 there was but 
 one Protestant church to every 1,600 of the population ; in Chicago, 
 one to every 2,081 ; in New York, one to every 2,468; and in St. 
 Louis, one to every 2,8oo.t 
 
 SCANTY CHURCH ACCOMMODATIONS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 We have, therefore, this appalling fact before us : If every one 
 should accept our invitation to come to the gospel feast, there 
 would not be enough churches to accommodate our cordially invit- 
 ed guests. Should all the people in the Protestant, world desire to 
 hear the gospel just once, and approach the churches for a single 
 service, they would pack the very streets which run past the sacred 
 edifices. The Protestant world builds its churches as if it expected 
 only our most worthy selves, and our well-behaved and highly 
 respectable neighbors, and advantageous commercial friends, to 
 worship in them. In the parable of the Great Supper our Lord 
 portrayed the generous invitations, the forceful liberality of the 
 feast, and the many who accepted the invitations. But there is no 
 intimation that the host had a scanty table or a limited supply of 
 seats. His only anxiety, as he himself declared, was "that my 
 house may be filled." Every word which our Lord spoke, in clear 
 statement or in picturesque parable, leads to the conclusion that 
 his church is guilty, if its provision for hearing the Word is not 
 as ample as the number of the invitations which it extends. 
 
 THE HOSTILITY OF THE MASSES TO THE TRUTH. 
 
 The causes of the alarming gulf between the Christian units and 
 the unreached tens and hundreds are manifold. Some are of our 
 own making, while others belong to our social and political envi- 
 ronment. 
 
 * Loomis, Modern Cities, p. 84. 
 
 t Loomis, Modem Cities, pp. 88, 89. 
 
102 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 The root of all is, the spiritual condition of the masses is not in 
 harmony with the truth of God, or with the sanctuaries where it is 
 proclaimed, or with the universal brotherhood of believers. Thosfe 
 who hold themselves aloof from the ministrations of the gospel 
 are attracted by the secular forces about them. They stay at 
 home, if they have one, a part of the day, because the house of 
 God has no charm for them. Others, far from being able to say, 
 " A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand," were they 
 compelled to make a choice, would, unfortunately, prefer to dwell 
 in the tents of wickedness, rather than serve as doorkeepers in 
 God's house. Then the Sunday newspaper is so convenient ! And 
 so religious ! What devout editors, to glean from all the eccle- 
 siastical and religious serials of all lands such a rich anthology, 
 so broad as to satisfy all denominational tastes, and even people 
 of no confessional attachments ! How kind not to limit their 
 devotions to the use of the scissors, but even to enrich the already 
 heavily laden editorial page with some priceless theological lucu- 
 brations ! Then, how public spirited withal ! No trains so swift 
 as their Sunday morning express train, which distributes the jour- 
 nals far and wide to the expectant public. To read the whole of 
 the Sunday paper will inevitably make one late for the Sabbath 
 morning service. After the post-prandial rest at home, and 
 drive in the park, come, in the evening, the exchange of visits 
 and the renewing of old acquaintanceships, and some slight antici- 
 pations of Monday's business. But this easy-going class is limited. 
 The great majority of people who never see the interior of a church 
 are poor, lodge in basements and garrets, are ragged, and, if they 
 have a friend, are never successful in learning his address. For 
 them, the stroll on the street, or in the parks, or out on the 
 country road, or a long stay in the saloon, must take the place of 
 any attendance upon the worship of God. When once the Divine 
 Spirit reaches these multitudes, the house of God will be an attrac- 
 tion which they cannot resist. 
 
 THE ANTAGONISM OF THE FOREIGNER. 
 
 Foreigners and their children constitute about one-third 
 of our population. It is the dream of the German, the Scandi- 
 navian, the Bohemian, the Pole, the Irishman, from the time he 
 can lisp his native tongue, to wander over land and sea until he 
 jreaches this paradise — the Western World. No gentle Mignon ever 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP J. F. HURST. 
 
 103 
 
 had such delightful memories of the vines and flowers and 
 •Stately houses and tottering ruins of dear, sweet Italy, as the 
 girls and boys, children of Europe's soldiers and wage-earners, 
 have anticipations of in this broad America. The day when 
 they can step aboard the out-bound vessel at Hamburg, Chris- 
 tiana, Copenhagen, Bremen, Rotterdam, Havre or Cork, is the 
 ■day of their transfiguration. The winds which bear them ever 
 westward are freighted with more Elysian odors than any which 
 •ever swept over Calypso's island. Every mile westward is so much 
 a joy that it seems heavenward as well as havenward. We wel- 
 'Come all except the anarchist and the criminal. The American 
 people welcome the Irishman because he is a man. The average 
 politician welcomes him because he has a vote. The nation's 
 Teal conscience also bids the Chinaman welcome, and simply 
 because he is our brother. Pallisy, thou sayst truly : 
 
 "Turn, turn my wheel! The human race, 
 Of every tongue, of every place, 
 
 Caucasian, Coptic or Malay, 
 All that inhabit this great earth, 
 Whatever be their rank or worth. 
 Are kindred and allied by birth. 
 And made of the same clay." 
 
 Here, under the dome of that Capitol, we solemnly prohibited 
 the Chinaman landing in our midst. The Chinaman ought to 
 be as free to land anywhere on our shores as the American 
 missionary is, to-day, to step ashore on every foot of the 2,500 
 miles of the Chinese coast. 
 
 Out of 100 persons in — 
 
 New York, 
 
 80 are 
 
 foreign-bom, or children of foreign 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 
 SI 
 
 (( 
 
 
 ( 
 
 tt 
 
 Brooklyn, 
 
 67 
 
 it 
 
 
 ( 
 
 tt 
 
 Chicago, 
 
 87 
 
 tt 
 
 
 * 
 
 tt 
 
 Boston, 
 
 63 
 
 it 
 
 
 tt 
 
 it 
 
 St. Louis, 
 
 78 
 
 tt 
 
 
 t 
 
 " 
 
 Baltimore, 
 
 3S 
 
 tt 
 
 
 tt 
 
 it 
 
 Cincinnati, 
 
 60 
 
 tt 
 
 
 t 
 
 *t 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 78 
 
 tt 
 
 
 t 
 
 tt 
 
 New Orleans, 
 
 S» 
 
 (t 
 
 
 t 
 
 tt 
 
 Cleveland, 
 
 80 
 
 tt 
 
 
 t 
 
 it 
 
 Pittsburg, 
 
 61 
 
 t< 
 
 
 t 
 
 It 
 
 Buffalo, 
 
 71 
 
 If 
 
 
 * 
 
 « 
 
 'bom parents. 
 
104 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 Washington, 
 
 25 are 
 
 foreign- 
 
 born. 
 
 or 
 
 children of foreign-bom parents 
 
 Newark, 
 
 63 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Louisville, 
 
 S3 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 , Jersey City, 
 
 70 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Detroit, 
 
 84 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Milwaukee, 
 
 84 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Providence, 
 
 52 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 We have, then, this astounding showing: That out of twenty of 
 our largest cities as far west as the Missouri River, in eighteen of 
 them the majority of the population consists either of foreigners 
 or the children of foreigners. 
 
 Many of these people come to America with not a syllable of 
 the English language. They land at Castle Garden, and start out 
 in the American world with nothing but a foreign speech, a 
 sandwich in the hand, a pack on the back, and several children 
 trailing after them. They cluster in the cities and towns. TO' 
 win the immigrant to Christ, we need to speak to him in his 
 own language. He should be able, so soon as he lands, to find 
 a church in whatever tongue is native to him. His mind is- 
 receptive. He is ready to grasp the friendly hand. Not an hour 
 should elapse before he finds a spiritual guide who can address, 
 him in his own speech, furnish him Christian books or journals- 
 in the only language he knows, speed him on his way if he drifts 
 westward, and commend him to others who speak the same lan- 
 guage in the place of his destination. What is the case to-day ? 
 Socialistic and nihilistic literature is thrust into the immigrant's, 
 hands in his own language, as he walks from the gangway at 
 Castle Garden. He is invited to midnight socialistic meetings.. 
 His first lessons are lawlessness to the Government and disloyalty 
 to the King of kings. He soon becomes a part of the wretched 
 mass who want a shorter path to comfort and property than 
 labor. Every man's home he claims to be his home. The 
 average immigrant, speaking a Continental tongue, is a truly 
 pitiable object. The first appeals to him are as bad as heever 
 heard amid the despotisms of his old Europe. Who is the 
 anarchist ? He who believes that his worst enemy is the marL 
 who owns a house, that dynamite is the best and only gospel, 
 and that the best future is none at all. What becomes of the 
 children of these immigrants of foreign speech ? They are the 
 waifs over our reeking sea of poverty, filth, ignorance and 
 anarchy. They soon acquire our English language, but without 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP J. F. HURST. 105 
 
 the safeguards of our Anglo-Saxon Christianity. They swell the 
 numbers of our criminal classes. The whole of this second gen- 
 eration of immigrants would become powerful factors in our 
 national and Christian development, if the American Church 
 would meet the immigrant, on his arrival, with a Christian wel- 
 come and spiritual privileges. Between the upper millstone of 
 our neglect to meet the immigrant, on his arrival, with the gospel 
 in his own mother-tongue, and the nether millstone of a criminal 
 neglect of his children, we grind out the anarchist. 
 
 IS THE CHURCH THE RICH MAN's PRAYING-MACHINE ? 
 
 The typical wage-earner is taught, by the apostles of dynamite 
 and free land, that the man who lives in his own house and has 
 enough to support himself without manual labor is his bitter foe. 
 He works for that man. He sees his plenty. He knows where 
 he lives. He has struck for higher wages many a time, and 
 only secured them by a threat. The wage-earner despises the 
 employer. He keeps away from the church, and calls it the 
 rich man's club-house. Would not a larger and more consecrated 
 interest in the spiritual improvement of the unevangelized by 
 employers, in a single decade scatter this delusion to the winds ? 
 
 SABBATH DESECRATION A POWERFUL ALIENATING FACTOR. 
 
 The immigrant from the Continent brings no Sabbath with 
 him. He finds a congenial atmosphere so soon as he 
 arrives, in the desecration of a home-made origin. All the 
 skeptical and godless forces in America combine in persistent 
 effort to blot out the Sabbath from our fair escutcheon. They 
 call it in derision the " Puritan Sabbath," and establish a Personal 
 Liberty League to attack it. Poor, indeed, is their calculation.. 
 The British reformers halted over a century before they would accept 
 the Reformation without the Sabbath. They only took it at 
 last, by great and bloody struggles, with the Christian Sabbath, 
 in all its firmness and beauty. They will never surrender it. 
 By a stricter legislation, by a stronger police oversight, by a 
 surer punishment of offenders, our American Sabbath can be, 
 and ought to be, as beautiful a possession as it was to the 
 founders of James River Colony, in 1607, and more especially to 
 the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, in 1620, when they forgot the 
 bleakness of their first Sabbath on the American shore, in the 
 
106 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 Joud volume of praise and adoration to the God who had 
 delivered them from the tempest of foreign despotism and ceaseless 
 storms of their voyage across the seas. 
 
 THE CURSE OF THE SALOON. 
 
 The sale and use of intoxicating beverages is also a most potent 
 force in separating the masses from sympathy with the gospel. No 
 man who habitually uses the cup of intoxication can be a sympa- 
 thetic and devout worshiper in a Christian sanctuary. The wine- 
 glass is an opaque affair, and God cannot be seen through it. With 
 the demon of the appetite within a man, he loves the saloon, and 
 such company as frequent it, better than he loves the church. His 
 argument rnns thus : " In the saloon there is more freedom of a 
 ■certain kind. The speech, such as it is, is plainer. The society 
 is hilarious. One man does not do all the talking. No church 
 'debt is to be paid. Possibly the saloon will eventually be closed 
 on the Sabbath. But, in any event, there will be a side door yet a 
 while. When that is closed, there will be a back door. When that 
 is gone, who knows but there will be a subterranean passage to the 
 wine cup and the decanter ? " The day is sure to come — we see 
 the twilight now — when the saloon will be so deep that no pick and 
 spade, of even a Schliemann, shall be able to exhume it. The 
 saloon — that venerable structure of the alcoholic style of architec- 
 ture — is already taking on the look of a useless antique of the 
 palaeolithic age. 
 
 Take away from the indifferent and sinful masses all the poor 
 ■whom the intoxicating cup has made poor, all the children whom it 
 has orphaned, all the sorrowing women whom it has converted into 
 ■" Niches, all tears," all the vagrants whom it has stripped of home 
 and bread and bed, all the anarchists whose brain it has set seeth- 
 ing and spinning with pictures of the glory of owning nothing and 
 obeying no man, and you will need the lamp of Diogenes to find 
 the few individuals who will be left in alienation from the Christian 
 church. Let the saloon once take its departure from the Ameri- 
 can soil, and there will be such a destruction of the separating 
 forces of our polyglot population, such a clearing up of the misty 
 atmosphere which leads the employer and the wage-earner to be- 
 lieve that each is the other's foe, such an appreciation by the un- 
 evangelized of the beauty and force of Christianity, such a flowing 
 of the multitude into the Christian churches, that the treasury of 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP J. F. HURST. 107 
 
 «very church in the land will be overstrained, to provide even tem- 
 porary places of worship for the millions who are controlled and 
 absorbed by a new affection. In due time, when once the saloon 
 is gone, and the new currents of beneficence are in full flow, there 
 will be enough gold and vital energy released from bondage to the 
 worm of the still to establish enough churches for all our f)opula- 
 tion, to plant missions on the farthest shores of the farthest seas, 
 and to put the Bible into every hand, in the language of the place, 
 from the rising to the setting sun. 
 
 THE ESTRANGEMENT OF THE MASSES NOT A PERMANENT EVIL. 
 
 But that happy day of deliverance is not yet here. Perhaps the 
 bright dawn will be upon us by the time the bells ring out the 
 nineteenth century and ring in the twentieth. Meanwhile, we must 
 ■confront the fact of the disproportion between those who worship 
 with us, and pray and labor for the enlargement of our Lord's 
 kingdom on earth, and the vast multitude who never enter our 
 churches or care for their larger usefulness. 
 
 CHURCHES MUST STAY AMONG THE POOR. 
 
 The drift of the city churches is always toward the cleaner, less 
 packed, and less commercial parts of the city. All through this 
 century the attraction in New York has been northward. When 
 the strong church moves away, a weak one is left behind. It seems 
 to need but little care. A scanty allowance is left for it. So much 
 is needed for the new church elsewhere, and it must be so fine, 
 that the old church soon becomes a mere skeleton. Little the 
 people think that for the power to build the new the obligation is 
 ■due to the old ! America is the only country on earth where the 
 •city church possesses the monstrosity of a frequent, flitting day. 
 
 In Rome it is never thought of, that, because St. Peter's has to 
 be reached by a bridge, and to reach the bridge one must go 
 through dark and filthy streets, therefore St. Peter's must not be 
 thought of as a sanctuary. The mere fact that it is St. Peter's 
 makes it an attraction. In Vienna, St. Stephen's is in the midst of 
 •darker and more repellant streets; yet it is never urged against it 
 that it is too far down town, and not in the West End. In Berlin 
 and in Pans the same rule applies. St. Paul's, in London, is sur- 
 rounded still, as centuries ago, by small shops, while the city stages 
 and cabs run around it, and make a perpetual din on every side. 
 
108 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 Yet people go from palace and noble residence far away to get to 
 that beautiful temple. St. Margaret's and Westminster are by no 
 means in the midst of fine residences. Yet all these places are 
 visited by the people of every class. Why should we cry that 
 the churches must follow the people ? Who are the people ? They 
 do not consist merely of a few. They are also to be found in cel- 
 lars and garrets, and in the midst of the busiest marts of our cities.. 
 Wherever the people are, in our close-packed cities or in our far 
 Western regions, let the plain chapel exist for them. Let no score 
 or hundred be forgotten, but let God's house be built for all alike, 
 and let the poor man feel that this is his home, and his children's 
 home, and the stranger's home. 
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NEED OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 These are the days, and America is the paradise, of doing all 
 things — or pretending to do them — by the omnipotent committee. 
 The links, and not the impersonal chain, hold the anchor. True, 
 there must be an organization, compact, broad of scope, wise as tO' 
 methods and men. But that is the most efficient organization 
 which makes most effective use of the individual force. The crown 
 and glory of all true union is for the unit to do its best. The only 
 way to melt the wall of ice between the masses and the Church is 
 for every individual Christian to kindle a fire at its base. Our 
 Lord's example furnishes a practical lesson on the way to deal 
 with the masses. He always fed the hungry multitudes by indi- 
 vidual servitors. The most of his parables and precious words 
 were spoken in connection with the casual interlocutor.. If the 
 Christian church observed as much system in its evangelistic 
 methods, in reaching the one house and the one person, as our 
 shrewd politicians do in their methods of reaching the one voter, 
 there would not be a stratum of society which would not soon be 
 reached by the message of the truth. 
 
 THE NEED OF WOMAN's WORK. 
 
 The whole Christian world now admits that, for work among 
 heathen, women are absolutely necessary. Take the Zenana work 
 from the missionary forces of Protestantism, and a most potent 
 factor is at once cut off. Women are needed at this day and in 
 this land, to aid in the solution of every evil which is upon us. 
 Protestantism has yet to learn from Romanism the full 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP J. F. HURST. 109 
 
 lesson of woman's worth and force in the church. The Italian 
 masses are learning the gospel through her as a reader. The 
 ministry of McAU would have lacked one of its greatest charms 
 and most forceful agencies had Mrs. McAll not given her aid. 
 Hundreds of Christian women came to her assistance in trying to 
 rescue the homes of the Parisian ouvriers. 
 
 Where would the great temperance movement in this land be to- 
 day, but for the might and faith and tears and eloquence of women ? 
 If we would reach the masses, we must invoke the aid of women 
 such as Sister Dora or Florence Nightingale, or Oclana Hill, 
 the angel of thd world's improved lodging house. If we want 
 teaching in the'home, tender care of the suffering, wise measures 
 for brightening every slum into a Tabor of the Divine Presence, for 
 searching for the unreached and the unknown, let us say to the 
 multitude of Christian women in our land : " We have kept you 
 back too long from this white harvest-field. In God's name, go ; 
 nay, come with us, and help us save the wandering millions." 
 
 MORE LAY HELP FOR THE PASTORS. 
 
 The general understanding is, that the pastor of a church is the 
 provider of the spiritual food for the entire church. But few pas- 
 tors are sufficient for the great needs of a large parish. While the 
 Rev. Henry Fairbanks has shown that even in the country not one- 
 half the people attend any church, the great disproportion, after all, 
 is in^^the cities. Lying off, too remote to touch the hem of the 
 robe of the city church, are the helpless thousands. No pastor can 
 reach them. His pulpit demands nearly all his time, and only in 
 the most general way can he reach the outlying multitudes. Now, 
 there are Christian laymen who can take part of their time — and 
 some can be found to take all their time — in visiting every neglected 
 precinct and home, and in bringing the gospel to every heart. 
 Our forces are too scattered. Many a city pastor needs twenty 
 men and women to make his ministry effectual to any people whom 
 God has placed in dependence on him. 
 
 Were every large city church to utilize the stagnant and dormant 
 forces which it could command, every wilderness would blossom as 
 the rose. 
 
 THE ESTRANGEMENT OF THE MASSES NOT A NOVELTY. 
 
 It must be remembered that the outstanding masses, with sus- 
 
110 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 picion toward the church, if not hostility to it, present no new 
 phenomenon. The church of Christ, in its most exalted hours, 
 has never been afraid to be in the minority. At no time has it felt, 
 the force of the sympathy and strength of the most of the people. 
 It seems a threatening evil now ; but that is only because we have 
 turned our eyes towards it, and see, as never before, the over- 
 whelming danger. In the time of the ' Reformation, it was always 
 the few against the many. In all seasons of revival, after the. 
 great ingatherings, it was still only the units against the thou- 
 sands. There is no ground for present discouragement. They 
 that be for us are more than can be against us. What is the. 
 church for ? Is it to drift along gently, and land in a welcoming- 
 harbor without struggle with tide and tempest ? Christianity, like: 
 every great historical movement, has won its way to triumph, 
 security and beneficence, by passing through terrible ordeals. The 
 birth of Minerva from the brain of Jove, full-grown and heavily 
 armed, when she lifted her spear and spoke her first word, was a 
 beautiful dream of the early Greek. But the church of Christ 
 must develop by slow and severe process. It reaches its rest 
 by sweat of brow and twelve long hours of burning toil. Nothing 
 strong in truth or magnificent in possession has ever come to the 
 church by falling, as ripe fruit, into its open hand. All the 
 treasures of God's kingdom on earth have been won like pearls 
 from the depths of the ocean, and gold from the white-heated fur- 
 nace. The birthplace of the church was at the foot of a cross. 
 It gained its youthful fiber and muscle by the strain of three 
 centuries of flame and torture. Since then, few have been the 
 years when some new burden has not been placed upon it. If the; 
 great multitudes swarm on every side of it, without entering it,. 
 some speaking foreign tongues, and all without sympathy with the 
 holy institutions of the church, let us remember that this is no 
 novel picture. We must recognize the divine factor. God is 
 always on the side of his kingdom and the men who love it. 
 
 LARGER FAITH THE SUPREME DUTY OF THE HOUR. 
 
 The American church is getting into the firm conviction that the 
 heathen world will be won to Christ. But when shall we be con- 
 vinced that the Christian world will be won to Christ ? We must 
 close God's Word, and lay it aside, or else, with its open pages 
 before us, we must labor on in the full faith that the church of 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP J. F. HURST. Ill 
 
 Christ will conquer in the end. Many of the parables of Christ 
 reveal the fact that with the few who believe and work lies the 
 certain victory. The woman's leaven was small indeed, but it had 
 power to leaven the whole mass. The grain of mustard seed was 
 infinitesimal, but it grew to be the largest of all trees. All the 
 antagonistic forces had no power to resist its growth and spreading 
 branches. The sower let fall his seeds in unfavorable places, but 
 there were some which produced a harvest of thirty, sixty and a 
 hundred fold. The glory of the weak is that before them God has 
 placed his greatest promises. The handful of corn on the top of 
 the mountain produced a forest which shook like Lebanon. The 
 stone which the "builders rejected became the chief corner-stone. 
 " Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many 
 noble, are called ; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the 
 world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of 
 the world to confound the things which are mighty ; and base things 
 of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen ; 
 yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." 
 Shall the presence of vast unevangelized multitudes alarm us ? 
 Shall their hostility to our holy faith cause us to tremble with 
 dread ? No. The whole world was against Paul when, standing 
 before Felix, he reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judg- 
 ment to come. Yet it was not the prisoner Paul, standing in the 
 minority, but Felix the ruler, who stood with the majority, who 
 was alarmed, and trembled in every fold of his purple robe. 
 
 Our spiritual adversaries, who endeavor to hold the multitudes in 
 bondage, are not equal to the spiritual forces of Him who holds 
 the nations in his palm, and who has been saying, and to-day still 
 says, of all his heroic servants, " One shall chase a thousand, and 
 two shall put ten thousand to flight." 
 
ESTRANGEMENT OF THE MASSES 
 FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY REV. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D., OF 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 Mr. Chairman : The questions that are before us are of mag- 
 nificent importance. It is utterly impossible, however, in thirty 
 minutes, to go about a vast continent of thought like this. Let us 
 rather choose a limited district and confine our present observa- 
 tions to that district. I shall speak for a few moments with regard 
 to the estrangement of the masses in the great cities from the 
 church, and show both the social and the ecclesiastical factors 
 which enter into the problem. 
 
 Whatever the logic of events has proven needs not the demon- 
 stration of argument. We may assume, this afternoon, as beyond 
 dispute or denial, that the masses in our great cities are estranged 
 from the church ; and we may assume a second fact, that, how- 
 ever justly or unjustly, the church of Christ is identified, not to 
 say associated, with the higher classes, in the eyes of the lower 
 classes. And hence in discussing alienation from the church, we 
 have to discuss the alienation between the classes in society. 
 
 Now, I wish to say, beloved, that society is a pyramid, broadest 
 at the base. Daniel Webster said that there is always room at 
 the top ; but that is just where there is not room. There is plenty 
 of room at the bottom. And upon the solidity of the base of the 
 pyramid depends everything that lies above the base ; and, there- 
 fore, the pre-eminent duty and privilege of the Christian church is 
 to reach, and if necessary, re-construct, the pyramidal base of 
 society. And when we speak of the masses, we mean no invid- 
 ious term; we mean to use no term that seems to tend in the 
 direction of materialism. We heartily believe, with Sir William 
 Hamilton, that there is only one thing on earth that is great, 
 and that is man, and only one thing in man that is great, and 
 that is his soul. But mass is a term used to indicate quantity 
 
 112 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 113 
 
 in which individuality is lost, and that is what we mean by the 
 masses — the multitude in which the individual ceases to be promi- 
 nent. We lose individuality in multitude. 
 
 Now the masses are estranged from the church of God. Shaftes- 
 bury said, at the anniversary of the Open-air Mission in Islington, 
 that not more than two per cent of the English workingmen attend 
 any place of worship, Papal or Protestant ; and if we take fifty 
 of our great cities in this country as a type of all the rest, it is a 
 well-known fact that from two-fifths to three-fifths only of the pop- 
 ulation have any connection whatever with a place of worship, and 
 that, if we come down to the average attendance, less than one- 
 fifth of the popiflation of these great cities is actually connected 
 with the worship of God in any form. These are formidable facts, 
 and we ought at once to understand them and study the causes 
 and the cure. 
 
 Now, looking back for a moment to the social questions which 
 underlie the ecclesiastical, let me call your attention to certain very 
 prominent and very important facts. We talk a great deal about 
 the centralization of which cities are at once the type and the ex- 
 pression. But, dear friends, remember that while there is a centrip- 
 etal force in operation, there is a centrifugal force that is operating 
 at the same time. If you take an electrograph, and, from a vessel 
 in which you place various substances sift them- upon the surface 
 of the electrograph, you will find that according to their affinities 
 they will follow the various lines of the current on the surface of 
 the electrograph and range themselves at opposite points, in 
 accordance with these electrical affinities. Now, somewhat such a 
 fact shall we see, if we look in the' great cities. There is at once 
 an aggregation and a segregation. There is a massing of the 
 population in these great metropolitan centers, and then there is a 
 separation of the classes in the midst of the great cities. And 
 you may see how this operates. 
 
 In the first place, there is no community of labor, properly sO' 
 called, between the higher and lower classes. One works more 
 with brain, and the other more with brawn. The work to which the 
 ordinary artisan is put is oftentimes in its nature partially menial,, 
 sometimes drudgery, and sometimes even encumbered with dan- 
 gerous exposure. And these working classes feel that the higher 
 classes are not upon the common plane of labor, of toil, of exposure, 
 with themselves. 
 
114 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 Then the homes of the two naturally separate. The home of the 
 workingman is small, narrow, contracted, and without sufificient 
 sanitary conditions — light, air, space, warmth and other things. So 
 that the tendency of the rich and the well-to-do is directly away 
 from the homes of the poor. In cities where formerly rich and 
 poor comparativeiy dwelt together, we are coming to have poor dis- 
 tricts — districts in which none but the poor live — the east end 
 and the west end, the up-town and down-town, in our great 
 cities. 
 
 And then, again, the habits of life are different. Cleanliness, all 
 things that pertain not only to sanitary, but even moral regulations, 
 are comparatively disregarded in the homes of the poor. The over- 
 crowding in our great cities makes impossible .not only refinement, 
 but even decency, in the districts where the poor live. I made a 
 recent investigation in the city of New York myself. I went into 
 one room, not more than ten by twelve feet, in which there were 
 eighteen people, men and women and children, that ate and lived 
 and slept in that room. And they were not only men and women, 
 but they were blacks and whites, gathered together in the same 
 apartment. And you that have read Mr. Loomis's marvelous book 
 on modern cities, will have seen another illustration of this great 
 overcrowding. And in nothing was it revealed to me as in " The 
 Bitter Cry of Outcast London" — that startling little tract. 
 
 Then, again, the mental habits of the two are diverse. Ignorance 
 is connected with the simple struggle for existence, the daily strug- 
 gle for bread; and so the poor grow up comparatively without 
 knowledge; and superstition is the child of ignorance. 
 
 And, then, moral habits. The workingman, oppressed by poverty, 
 and in an hour of penury, is often tempted into the saloon from 
 the uncomfortable quarters of his own home; into the gilded gate- 
 ways of vice in the company of his companions. Poverty tempts 
 to theft, and even to the sale of virtue as a purchasable commodity. 
 
 And so, from these, and, may be, other things that might be 
 spoken of in social life, there is a constant divergency between the 
 higher and lower classes. They live apart, they toil apart, 
 they think apart, and they have no sympathies in common. And 
 so it has come to pass in our great cities, that what was once 
 only a district in which the poor dwelt, is becoming a slum, in which 
 now there is not only a different class of people from those who in- 
 habit the higher walks of life, but there is coming to be in these 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 115 
 
 slums the code of moral laws and the code of honor, the mental 
 and moral habits, and even the vocabulary and dialect, that are 
 especially appropriated by these slums; until it comes to pass, as 
 in the case of George W. Walker, when he visited the penal settle- 
 ments on Norfolk Island, that we find the utter subversion of the 
 human heart indicated by the utter subversion of language, until 
 a man comes to be known as a good man in proportion as he is 
 given to all iniquity, or a bad man in proportion as he even listens 
 to the remonstrances of his own conscience. 
 
 Meanwhile, in this entire lack of sympathy between rich and 
 poor, the higher and the lower classes, there comes to be a feeling, 
 however unjust, on the part of the workingman, that the higher 
 •classes are entirely oblivious of his interests, and indifferent to his 
 needs. He feels as though the heartless greed of the rich man and 
 the capitalist were seeking to get the largest amount of product out 
 ■of his labor, at the smallest amount of cost. He feels, also, that 
 ■even in the struggles that are made in the direction of reform, the 
 great mass of the higher classes of people look not only with indif- 
 ference, but with opposition, upon all endeavors to elevate his con- 
 ■dition. And we cannot altogether blame the lower classes of 
 society for this prejudice against the richer and higher classes, 
 when we remember that the Earl of Shaftesbury himself, awakened 
 by the fact of these outrages that were existing in society, kept 
 working fifty years in the Parliament and before the people of Eng- 
 land, to secure certain reformatory measures, and found that he was 
 met not only with opposition, but with positive antipathy, and even 
 by such men as John Bright and Richard Cobden and the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and William E. Gladstone — men that it 
 might have been expected would have spontaneously and instantly 
 advocated all reforms of such outrages as the Earl of Shaftesbury 
 ■exposed. Just think of it, dear friends — the idea of little children 
 being sent up smoking and burning flues, naked, and being compelled 
 to move up the flue by applying burning wisps to their naked feet ! 
 Just think of poor women being obliged, in the "ordinary routine of 
 toil, to walk every day from seventeen to twenty-seven miles in the 
 factory! Just think of all the enormities exposed in connection 
 with mills and mines and insane hospitals ! And yet think of that 
 glorious man, the Earl of Shaftesbury, being obliged to fight, as I 
 have said, for half a century, in order to bring to pass these great 
 reforms ! Do you wonder at the alienation between the lower and 
 
116 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 higher classes of society when they see these things going on 
 before their eyes ? 
 
 Not only so ; but these are tremendous questions. I said to my 
 friend who is presiding over this assembly, that I did not believe 
 that a more important assembly had met since the Council in 
 Jerusalem. When I look abroad over this assembly to-day, it 
 reminds me of the Council of Nice — at which I was not present, 
 however — when the veterans from the battle-fields all over the world 
 came up, scarred and maimed, as the witnesses for Jesus Christ, 
 to testify to his true deity. But we, reverently speaking, are dis- 
 cussing questions that have a wider bearing on the needs of the 
 human race, than perhaps even the questions discussed at the 
 Council of Nice ; for we are talking about an applied Christianity 
 in the crisis of affairs in the greatest of modern or ancient re- 
 publics ; Christianity applied to the greatest social problems. 
 And, my friends, we must remember that these questions must 
 be settled, and settled soon. We are not only verging on a crisis, 
 but we are in the crisis. The fact is that Society has long stood 
 by, while Labor, blinded and bound, has gone the rounds grinding^ 
 in the mill of capital. 
 
 But, my friends, it is also to be noted that, while wealth has 
 been multiplied and monopolized, learning, not to say knowledge, 
 has been multiplied and popularized, as Dr. Strong has magnifi- 
 cently said. And now it comes to pass that this blinded Sam- 
 son finds his locks growing and (marvel of marvels !) the eyes of 
 his understanding being enlightened ; and if Society is not careful, 
 he will get his great arms round the pillars of the commonwealth, 
 and bring the whole fabric down in ruin. 
 
 We cannot afford to neglect the condition of the common people, 
 for the condition of the common people is the condition of the 
 commonwealth. Society has a way of avenging herself for the 
 wrongs committed on the lowest of all her members. -Robert 
 Peel gave his daughter a magnificent riding habit on her nine- 
 teenth birthday, and attired in the embroidered gown, she rode 
 side by side with him in the parks of London. She had scarcely 
 returned home before she was taken ill with the most malignant 
 form of typhus fever, and in ten days was laid to rest in the 
 churchyard. And the secret is a very simple one. The poor seam- 
 stress in a garret in one of the slums, while she was embroidering 
 that garment, looked upon a husband shivering in the paroxysm of 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 117 
 
 chills, and she took the half-finished garment and laid it over him ; 
 and the garment took up the germs of fever, and conveyed them 
 from the hovel of the poorest to the palace of the peer. 
 
 And so, beloved friends, we are bound together in one bundle 
 of social life ; and if we neglect the poorest and the lowest. Society 
 will avenge herself in the destruction of the highest and the rich- 
 est, and the most cultivated. 
 
 Now, will you allow me to approach, strictly speaking, the eccle- 
 siastical side of this subject? And, I beg you, take what I say, 
 not as the result of any impulse, but of the most profound and 
 solemn conviction. And if I say anything that does not commend 
 itself to your 'judgment, at least give me the credit of being per- 
 fectly candid and outspoken. 
 
 Whatever may be the causes, the church of Jesus Christ is, in 
 the eyes of the working classes, inseparably linked with the aris- 
 tocracy, both in England and America. And I cannot wonder that 
 it is so. 
 
 In the first place, look at the location of our churches. Just as 
 soon as a district becomes known as a poor district, the churches 
 move out. They follow the lines of wealth and culture, and go to 
 the West End and build their magnificent cathedrals, while the poor 
 classes are left without any churches, or, as it seems to me, what is 
 about as bad, with churches that are specifically and professedly 
 only for the poor. I doubt very much the charity that makes a 
 school for poor children, and calls it a " ragged school;" and I 
 •doubt very much the charity that builds a million dollar church, and 
 then establishes thousand dollar chapels, and calls them " mission 
 chapels for the poor." 
 
 And then I want you to notice how the workingman views the 
 costliness of our modern church establishments. He sees that 
 here is a building that costs from $100,000 to $1,000,000 ; 
 that here is a minister that costs from $1,000 to $20,000 a year ; 
 that here is a choir that costs from $1,500 to $5,000 ; here is a 
 sexton and collector that cost, perhaps, from $500 to $2,500 a 
 year ; and then he sees the decoration of a mortgage on the church 
 building, which implies annual payments of interest. In other 
 •words, he sees that the church is a Pullman palace car, or, rather, 
 that it is an express train, limited, composed exclusively of Pull- 
 man palace cars ; and he knows perfectly well that he is not 
 expected there, nor wanted there, and you and I know just the 
 
118 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 same thing. We talk a great deal about the pride of poverty. I 
 would like to know whether it is wholly an ignoble instinct, when a, 
 man does not wish to intrude himself into the pew of another man 
 in a costly church establishment in which he cannot bear his pro- 
 portion of the church expenses. If you were a poor workman, you 
 would feel the same way. 
 
 And then, again, I want to call attention to the caste spirit that 
 prevails in our modern churches. I might have called it the caste- 
 liness of the modern churches. When God erected the church ia 
 this world, he meant that, for the first time in human history,, 
 there should be an ideal state, in which the fatherhood of God 
 should be recognized as universal, and the brotherhood of man. 
 should be recognized as universal; in which there should be nO' 
 barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, male nor fenlale, but all one 
 in Christ Jesus. But what do we see ? If James were living to- 
 day, and had written the second chapter of his Epistle as an 
 address to the modern church establishments, the satire could not 
 have been more caustic than it is: "If there come into your assem- 
 bly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and thou say unta 
 him, ' Sit thou there in a good place ; ' and there come in a poor 
 man in vile raiment, and thou say unto him, ' Stand thou there, ' 
 or, ' Sit here under my footstool ' " — that means, I suppose, in 
 the front seat, which is right before the minister, and is not de- 
 sired by anybody — I say, if the Apostle James had written that 
 very Epistle to modern churches, the satire could not have been 
 more caustic and pertinent. 
 
 The simple fact is (and we know it) that the communion of 
 saintliness is displaced by the communion of respectability. Our 
 churches are becoming the quarters of a monopoly, and the working- 
 man sees it and feels it. And it has come to be a fact that I, as a 
 Christian minister, no longer propose to deny or dispute. There is. 
 no real democracy in the church of Jesus Christ in this day, with a 
 few startling and glorious exceptions. There is, in some cases, an 
 oligarchy — the rule of a few; in some cases a plutocracy — the rule 
 of the rich; in some cases an aristocracy, at the best — the rule of 
 the cultured and really higher classes; but, in very few instances, a 
 true Christian democracy, such as Jesus Christ meant the church 
 of God to be. 
 
 Now, beloved, go a little further with me, if you please. I believe 
 that the abolishment of the parish system in our churches is one of 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 119 
 
 the greatest calamities that has befallen the churches. The time 
 was when, because there were not so many facilities for travel as 
 there are now, by horse-cars and steam-cars, people, if they went to 
 church at all, went to church in their own vicinity, just as God 
 always meant they should. The consequence was, that every church 
 had, more or less accurately defined, its own parishional limits; it 
 looked to those around it for its constituency; the pastor visited 
 those about it as his proper parish; and the consequence was that 
 the people in the vicinity of a church felt that that church was 
 there for them, and that they were expected to maintain and support 
 it, and they did. The whole beauty of that territorial system of 
 Thomas Chalmers, which is the greatest practical solution that has 
 ever been given to this practical question in modern times, was 
 based upon the system of the parish. But now, from the intro- 
 duction of our horse-cars and steam-cars running on Sunday, it 
 follows that there is no longer a parish church; it is a congregation 
 gathered from the ends of the earth, and they come together to 
 hear a certain man, and there is no longer any care of the district 
 in which the church is located. 
 
 And then, moreover, let me say that in my judgment the present 
 pew system is the most monstrous barrier that has ever been erected 
 between the churches and the common people. [Applause.] If a 
 church building is consecrated to Almighty God and is his, I 
 would like to ask, in the name of religion and common sense, what 
 right any man has to a certain topographical district in that build- 
 ing which he can fence off and say, " That is my property." It is a 
 monstrous notion. There is no foundation for it in Old Testament 
 or in New Testament. It may be equitable enough as a business 
 basis, but it is utterly inexpedient as the basis for reaching the 
 masses of the people with the word of life. A man has no more 
 right to intrude into a pew that is owned or rented by another man, 
 than he has to intrude into the house that is owned or rented by 
 another man. And if the principle of proprietorship in the house of 
 God is right, then you cannot wonder at the feeling of the working- 
 man, that he is excluded unless he can afford to pay for or buy a pew. 
 
 Moreover, I want you to notice that this proprietorship in the 
 house of God prevents the promiscuous use of the house of God for all 
 those purposes of popular and social entertainme it and amusement 
 which may become the handmaids, properly restricted, of the Gospel 
 in reaching the common people. 
 
120 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Providence of God has thrown me into contact, in the last 
 few years, with a church for the people, that I went to because it 
 was a church for the people. From the time the fires are lighted 
 on the first of October, till they go out on the first of May, 
 that building is open from Monday night to Saturday night, for 
 everything which, in the way of secular instruction, entertainment, 
 amusement and uplifting, can draw the people. We have i,8oo 
 church members, and from four to five thousand people pass in 
 and out from Sunday to Sunday. It is a church of the people, and 
 that is the only thing that in my eyes makes it a specially attractive 
 field. But I say to you,- beloved, that as long as the pew system 
 obtains in our churches, I don't see how you are ever going to have 
 the poor man feel absolutely at home in what we call the house of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Now a few words, if my time allows, on the cure of the evil, so 
 far as the cure has not already been suggested. 
 
 In the first place, there must be contact, and it must be sympa- 
 thetic contact. A kid glove is a non-conductor. It will not answer 
 to come into contact with the people, unless you come into contact 
 with them on their own plane. I can mention a man to-day who is 
 conducting a colossal business, and who is a man of great wealth, 
 and yet in a church for the people and of the people, he is absolutely 
 on a plane with every other man, and you would never know that 
 he owns a dollar, from anything in his manner, mien, dress or habits, 
 to proclaim a man of wealth or the conductor of a colossal business. 
 It is one thing for a man to build a chapel for the poor, and a very 
 different thing to put himself in the midst of the enterprise and go 
 there on a level with the poor man. [Great applause.] And every 
 poor man knows the difference; and all your theological observa- 
 tions and distinctions, and ajl your popular orations, won't change 
 the conception of the thing that is born in the intuitions of his own 
 moral nature. 
 
 When McAll went to Paris (and he has been eloquently referred 
 to) and began that work in Belleville, the very source of anarchy 
 and violence in the mob of Paris, he began, knowing only two sen- 
 tences in the French tongue. One was, "God loves you," and 
 the other was, "I love you." But on those two sentences, as on 
 the opposing pillars of a magnificent arch, he built the greatest 
 mission work of modern times. And L care not about the aliena- 
 tion of the people from the church of God, if you will give me one 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 121 
 
 man like the Earl of Shaftesbury, that goes among the costermongers 
 and buys himself a donkey and a barrow, and. then puts his arms 
 on the barrow and lends it to the poor costermongers to carry their 
 wares through the streets, and puts himself on a level with the 
 poorest, and puts off everything that will prevent his carrying out 
 the glorious mission of his life — give me one man like the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, and I will show you one man that in his individuality 
 and personality can offset the antagonistic influences of fifty 
 ■churches in persuading the poor man that there is something in a 
 true Christianity that is in sympathy with his poverty and misery, 
 and intends and is constantly striving to uplift him nearer to God 
 and heaven. 
 
 1. We need a cordial church atmosphere. The church has a 
 fourfold mission: as a place of worship and work, a school and a 
 home. The stream that runs through the church on the week day 
 will naturally run there on Sunday. 
 
 2. We need/ree churches. Romanism builds splendid cathedrals, 
 but all go in alike, prince or peasant. All shbuld enter the house 
 of God on a sovereign level of equality. 
 
 3. We must put emphasis on the democracy of Christ's church. 
 Chalmers was marked by utter absence of all the caste spirit. He 
 said the clergy were in danger of dying from dignity. The power 
 ■of Mohammedan Propaganda lies in the ability to say to lowest 
 Hottentot, " If you pronounce the formula of Islam, come up and 
 sit beside me." Terence said, " I am a man, and nothing human 
 is foreign to me." 
 
 4. We must have faith in the gospel preached in a gospel 
 spirit. Christ reached the common people, even publicans and 
 harlots. The conception of " The Lamia " was the apex of human 
 philosophy; virtue repelling vice. Christ has taught us that true 
 piety is like light, itself incapable of contamination, but carrying a 
 blessing, even to the marsh and pool. 
 
 In the second place, we must have cordiality. We must have a 
 certain atmosphere (and no other word can express it) in the 
 church of God that produces the impression upon those who come 
 in that no invidious distinction is there made, but that all believers 
 are on an equality before Almighty God. I hold that the church 
 of the New Testament sustains a fourfold relation to the commu- 
 nity. In the first place, it is a place for worship. In the second 
 place, it is a place for work. In the third place, it is a school for 
 
122 ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE CHURCH. 
 
 instruction. And in the fourth place, it is a home for every sin- 
 sick and lost soul. [Applause.] Give us, in the churches of God,, 
 the worship of God and not that of the architect ; the convenience 
 of the audience and not their inconvenience ; give us in the church 
 of God the character of a thorough home for all men and all 
 women and all children, in the name of God ; and you will soon 
 cure the alienation of the masses from the church of God. 
 
 And then, moreover, we must emphasize this idea that I have 
 spoken of, the democracy of the Christian church. What is 
 the great source of the great power of the Mohammedan Propaganda 
 in Africa to-day ? The cultivated African goes down among the 
 Hottentots and says, " If you pronounce the sacred formula of 
 Islam, ' There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet,' 
 come up and sit by me ; take my daughter for your wife and give 
 your daughter to my son for his wife : for all who acknowledge 
 allegiance to no one but God, and to no prophet but Mohammed, 
 are on an absolute and sovereign level of equality in this world and 
 in the next." Even "our Christian missionaries cannot say to the 
 East Indians, with their rigid system of caste, or to the Sandwich 
 Islanders, when they were under the tyranny of the Taboo system,, 
 or to the Africans, with their caste laws even on the Dark Continent, 
 what the Mohammedan Propagandist can say. He can offer them 
 fraternity in the next world, but he cannot offer them anything but 
 the shadow of fraternity in this world. [Laughter.] 
 
 And now, dear friends, your patience is exhausted and my time 
 is very nearly exhausted ; but I want to say that we want more 
 confidence, in this great matter, in the power of a simple, earnest, 
 vital Christianity. I want you to observe that the highest philoso- 
 phy of the Greek with reference to the relations of virtue and vice,, 
 found its expression in the fable of the Lamia. You know the 
 Lamia was a curious beast in the form of a serpent, that had the 
 power to assume a human form in order to suck the blood of 
 unwary youths. And when the Lamia came in contact with a 
 philosopher, who was to the Greek the embodiment of the highest 
 purity and virtue, we are told that the Lamia began to shrink and 
 cringe until she dissolved into the loathsome reptile that she was 
 by nature. That was the Greek idea of virtue, that it repulsed 
 vice. 
 
 But Jesus Christ shows us a nobler ideal of virtue, of which 
 the Greek never dreamed. It is a virtue that attracts vice ; that is 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 123^ 
 
 to say, that cannot be contaminated by the touch of iniquity, and 
 yet draws even publicans and sinners toward itself for healing and 
 moral and spiritual improvement. And when we have confidence 
 in this gospel of the New Testament, in the universal fatherhood 
 of grace and the universal brotherhood of love, when we give up 
 our costly fashions and are willing to live in a simple way, when 
 we feel our identification with the poorest and the lowest and the 
 most desperately lost, and get down on a level with them that we 
 may lift them, then, my friends, and not till then, shall we see the 
 alienation of the masses of the people from the church bridged 
 over in a sovereign equality between all believers. 
 
EVENING SESSION. 
 
 ^A^EDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7. 
 
 The devotional exercises were conducted by Bishop A. A. Reinke, 
 D. D., of New York, after which Hon. A. H. Colquitt, of Georgia, 
 one of the Vice Presidents of the Alliance, was introduced as the 
 presiding ofificer of the evening. 
 
 REMARKS BY SENATOR COLQUITT. 
 
 My Brethren and Friends: I accepted with pleasure the 
 compliment of an invitation to preside this evening. I accepted it 
 the more readily, because I supposed that it was a position of honor 
 without any responsibility. [Laughter.] My conception of a 
 chairman or presiding officer of a meeting was, that he was to sit 
 composedly, to look grave, to preside with dignity, to introduce 
 the speakers, and to congratulate them when they were through. 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 I am abashed to be informed by my friend, the President of this 
 Alliance (Mr. Dodge), that it will be expected that a word or two 
 should be said by the presiding officer. I am abashed because I 
 know that I stand in the presence of men of learning and of elo- 
 quence, and that I cannot trust myself to the current of unpre- 
 meditated thought. I cannot forget that even this very stand is 
 yet warm and throbbing with the tones that echoed through these 
 halls to-day. If I were to say a word, it would be to bid you God- 
 speed in this noble, this fraternal work. [Applause.] I believe 
 that the day has come when the workers for humanity, when the 
 lovers of God, when patriots and Christians, should ally themselves 
 against the already allied forces of sin, iniquity, and of the powers 
 beneath. [Applause.] It is a small matter that we, brethren of 
 
 124 
 
REMARKS BY SENATOR COLQUITT. 125 
 
 the different denominations, should quarrel with each other about 
 our orthodoxy. It is a very small matter that they, who are the 
 ministers of the gospel, should stand up in the presence of the 
 country and discuss homiletics and evolution, and all that — it is a 
 small matter compared with what we know to exist in this land of 
 ours, this land that we have known to be the land of the patriot, to 
 be talking on these abstract and abstruse questions, when we have 
 been confronted with such thought, action and principles as are 
 avowed on our thoroughfares every day that we live. It may be 
 that I am not orthodox when I say that I believe it is the mission 
 to-day of the ministers, and of Christian laymen in this land, to go 
 out into the fields a«id highways, and meet the enemies that are 
 seeking to place a barrier in the way of Christian civilization — to 
 meet the foe as he comes. 
 
 I like to hear learned sermons and magnificent discourses — 
 appeals purely to the intellect — abstract and abstruse ideas, and all 
 that. That is all very interesting. But looking at the masses of 
 mankind, and reviewing, from the standpoint which I occupy, what 
 are the conflicting emotions of society to-day, it is clear to me 
 that there is a mission given to every lover of Christ, to stand forth 
 as the propagator of that religion which tempers the politics and 
 statesmanship of this country. 
 
 I sometimes hear it said that ministers ought to occupy their 
 places in the pulpit, and that they have nothing to do with public 
 questions; that " religion is one thing, and politics another." I do 
 not believe a word of it. [Applause.] Church and state, in a 
 political sense, is not to be thought of for a moment; but religion 
 and politics ought to be wedded like a loving pair. [Applause.] 
 The breath of the Divine should fill the sails of our commerce. 
 The spirit of our Master, who preached peace, should preside at 
 our diplomatic councils. The love of our neighbor and of our 
 friend — these should be the bases, not only of our Christianity and 
 of our patriotism, but of our daily politics. 
 
 With these very general utterances, and not intending to enter 
 on any discussion, I proceed now to assume the very grave duty 
 of presiding over this magnificent assembly of good men and 
 women. 
 
ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 BY BISHOP A. CLEVELAND COXE, D. D., LL. D., 
 OF BUFFALO. 
 
 Sincerely do I congratulate myself that the subject on which I 
 am asked to speak enables me to do so, without any reflection upon 
 the Roman Catholic religion. From Roman Catholics themselves 
 W8 borrow this word, "Ultramontanism," to express something 
 which for ages they have refused to accept or to identify with their 
 faith. They reject it as a false theory of their relations with the 
 Roman pontiff. In exposing its absolute antagonism to everything 
 American, I shall have no occasion, therefore, to borrow any 
 thoughts from Protestants. I shall say nothing which has not 
 been said by the most eminent of the French divines, by their 
 most learned jurists and canonists; by such as Bossuet, in the 
 prelacy ; by L'Hopital and D'Aguesseau, among learned laymen ; 
 by the Dupins and the Fleurys, among church historians and 
 essayists ; by the learned Pfere Pithou, and by that pure and 
 patriotic king, that heroic crusader, "St. Louis" himself. In 
 fact, were I a patriotic Roman Catholic bishop in America, I 
 should fearlessly assume the positions I support to-day, and should 
 labor to impress upon my people, and upon my brethren in the 
 Episcopate, the great fact that Gallicanism furnishes the only suf- 
 ficient solution to the problem how the Roman Catholics of Amer- 
 ica can cease to be a " foreign colony" — as one of their own writers 
 ■calls them — and how they may remain faithful to their convictions 
 as to the papal obedience, and yet be true Americans. " Let us 
 be [Roman] Catholics," said the great Bossuet, "but let us be 
 Galileans." He showed his countrymen how to combine these 
 relations (i) in his Exposition of the Trent Creed, and (2) in his 
 Defense of the Galilean Liberties as professed by all the French 
 bishops in their Council of 1682. I stand to-day just where Bos- 
 
 126 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP A. CLEVELAND COXE. 127 
 
 suet would stand if he were now living in America. If the Roman 
 pontiffs gave official approbation to his Exposition, and retained 
 the French bishops in full communion after their Declaration of 
 1682, then American Roman Catholics are entitled to like freedoms 
 and privileges. I assert, as I have always asserted, that little as I 
 approve of the Trent dogmas, even as Bossuet expounds them, 
 there is no necessary antagonism between Gallicanism and the 
 ■constitutional principles of this republic. Galilean Roman Catho- 
 lics have been and are good citizens ; but Ultramontanists never 
 can be Americans. The distinction is a historic one, and is en- 
 tbrced by the laws of France from the Middle Ages until now, and in 
 the Concordat with the First Consul. In 1801 the pontiff ratified 
 and esta.blished Gallicanism as a concession to the republic. And 
 this is my position, therefore : The Roman court must accord 
 nothing less to Roman Catholics in this republic, or it declares 
 war upon our Constitution and renders it impossible for them to be 
 free Americans and honest in their professions of loyalty to the 
 government. 
 
 Ultramontanism is a formidable word, but it means just what is 
 popularly known as Jesuitism. The spirit of Northerri Europe 
 found it convenient to distinguish between what freemen pro- 
 fessed and were willing to accept, in communion with Rome, 
 and what was demanded by the court of Rome itself. They would 
 not submit to what was claimed south of the Alps, "beyond the 
 mountains." Observe, out of their respect for the pontiff, they 
 distinguished between the pope and the papal court. They vener- 
 ated him, and attributed to his court the extravagances published 
 in his name. They called it "Ultramontane" doctrine, and 
 rejected it. In later times the Jesuits embodied its maxims in 
 their society, and became an army to enforce it, everywhere and 
 by every means. But is Jesuitism essential to the Roman Catholic 
 religion ? How can it be, when every Roman Catholic nation in 
 Europe, one after another, has banished the Jesuits as intolerable 
 ■enemies of the state? How so, when Clement XIV. suppressed 
 them forever, as not less intolerable to the church ? Even Pius 
 the Ninth, in his better days, banished them from Rome. So then, 
 as a Roman Catholic, if I were one, I should quote " Infallibility" 
 for my position, that Ultramontanism is at war with governments, 
 with Christian civilization, and with the peace and integrity of the 
 Roman Catholic church itself. This position I could support 
 
128 ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 from Roman Catholic writers, the most illustrious of modern and 
 more ancient times ; and I should say to the Roman court emphat- 
 ically : " This or nothing — the American Constitution tolerates all 
 that has for ages been conceded to Galileans, but with Ultramon- 
 tanism there can be no compromise. It is warfare that cannot be 
 disguised, with all that is dear to the American people." 
 
 Happily, the spirit of the Galilean maxims has its equivalents in 
 our American Constitution, and it is actually embedded in the 
 Naturalization Laws. Let me quote them, in brief, as follows : 
 
 " I. The alien seeking to be naturalized must make oath, two years beforehand, 
 of his bona-fide intention to become a citizen of the United States, and to renounce 
 forever all allegiarue and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sover- 
 eignty ; in particular, that to which he has been subject. 
 
 " 2. When he applies for naturalization, after the two years thus provided for, 
 he must prove that he has resided in the United States five years at least ; that 
 during that time he has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to 
 the principles of the Constitution, and well disposed to the good order and hap- 
 piness of the same. 
 
 "3. If he has borne any hereditary title, or been of any of the orders of nobility 
 in the kingdom or state from which he came, he shall, in addition to the above 
 requisites, make an express renunciation of his title or order of nobility. 
 
 "4. Finally, he shall, at the time of his application, make oath that he will 
 support the Constitution of the United States, and that he absolutely and entirely 
 renounces and abjures all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign prince, poten- 
 tate, state or sovereignty, particularly the state or sovereignty of which he has 
 been a subject."* 
 
 In brief, then, our Constitution, as interpreted by legislation,, 
 asserts Home Rule for Americans. It assumes that no foreign 
 potentate whatever shall be permitted to dictate to us in matters of 
 politics, of society, of legislation, of jurisprudence, of education, or 
 of government in any of its forms. No American citizen shall be 
 subject to any foreign court, so that he may be summoned to a 
 foreign country to answer for his political conduct, or for anything 
 affecting his rights as a citizen. Our country is competent to 
 manage its own affairs; to settle the delicate relations between labor 
 and capital, and to regulate associations and organizations among 
 the people, without inquiring of a foreign court, ignorant of our 
 conditions, our wants and the spirit of our laws, what Americans 
 may lawfully do. Take, for example, the case of a Roman Catholic 
 citizen who happens to be an ecclesiastic, and who assumes a politi- 
 
 * "Revised Statutes of the United States." Title xxx, page 380. Washington. 1875. 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP A. CLEVELAND COXE. 129 
 
 cal position which some regard as in conflict with his vocation; let 
 his local superiors settle the ecclesiastical question here among 
 themselves and give him just judgment, where, if they rob him of 
 his profession and means of livelihood unjustly, they can be pun- 
 ished by the laws. As an American, he cannot lawfully be sum- 
 moned beyond seas, to be judged by an Italian court. For look, if 
 he can thus be dealt with for a wrong position, he may, also, be 
 cited abroad and punished for a right one. If they may call him 
 to account in Italy for his conduct in America when he votes for an 
 agrarian, so, also, when it comes to sustaining our common school 
 system, he may be cited to Rome and stripped of his profession, 
 because he votes to uphold and to perpetuate it. If this can be done 
 in one case, so in a thousand; and by terrorism, a thousand ecclesi- 
 astics may be forced to vote as an Italian dictates (an Antonelli, 
 perhaps, or anothei" Borgia), and every such ecclesiastic will control 
 a thousand lay voters by like terrorism. What then ? The govern- 
 ment itself may be turned into a dependency of the court of Rome. 
 The balance of power may enable a minority to usurp the functions 
 of government under color of law; and lo! we are transformed into 
 a Mexico, with no choice but to bow our necks to a foreign domina- 
 tion, or to involve ourselves in religious wars for the preservation 
 of freedom. See how wise are our laws, in their unconscious Galli- 
 canism; intolerant of all foreign interference, and, as I said, as- 
 serting Home Rule for Americans. We choose to be governed by 
 ourselves, as were our Anglo-Saxon forefathers by themselves, in 
 the darkest days of papal domination. It was then that they said to 
 the Italians: "JVolumus leges Anglice mutari." We say just as 
 emphatically of our American laws and constitutions: We will not 
 suffer them to be altered by any foreign dictation whatever. 
 
 But what is our actual concern with these principles just now ? 
 Are we threatened with alien interference and with a foreign power 
 to influence and overawe our elections ? I leave it to your own 
 burning sense of recent events to frame the proper reply. The pro- 
 posal to introduce a papal nuncio into the republic ; the residence 
 among us of a cardinal, who is a foreign prince and bound to a 
 foreign court by obligations which no American has any right to 
 assume; the goings to and fro of ecclesiastics to consult an alien 
 potentate as to our domestic questions of labor and labor associa- 
 tions, and to prescribe to our citizens what they may do or not do in 
 such issues; and the proposed establishment in this Capital, of a 
 
130 ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 university under the authority of a pontiff who, whatever the virtues 
 of his private character, has been forced to re-invest the Jesuits 
 with unlimited powers, and with functions against which every 
 Roman Catholic government in Europe has protested, not only in 
 words, but by banishing the Jesuits as public enemies and confiscat- 
 ing their estates; I ask, are not these tokens of peril to be resisted 
 here and now and for all time to come ? Are they not the prelude 
 to an open assault upon our common schools, and their subversion 
 through political subserviency ? 
 
 Let me remind you of some tokens of alien warfare on our dearest 
 relations in society, which we may rely on liberal Roman Catholics 
 to resist with us. 
 
 Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto, in a letter to Lord Randolph 
 Churchill, reminds him that he and his confraternity hold the balance 
 of power in Canada, and through it have controlled the elections 
 there; and he goes on to assert that by a similar use of the balance 
 of power, presidential elections will be decided in this republic. 
 
 In California, certain Ultramontane dignitaries have insulted 
 American social ties of the most sacred character, by reflecting on 
 the marriages of the vast majority of our countrymen as mere 
 concubinage. 
 
 Our school system is denounced in terms the most flagrant, and 
 a counter-system is set up in which the un-American ideas of the 
 Syllabus are to be imposed on thousands of our future voters. 
 Private schools, if subjected to the supremacy of our laws, and so 
 stripped of Ultramontanism, might receive the approval of Ameri- 
 cans; but as Ultramontane schools, they are a menace to the 
 republic. No schools should be permitted to exist without govern- 
 ment inspection. How destructive they must be to American 
 society, if worked in an alien spirit, under the dictation of a foreign 
 court, may be inferred by any one who reads Mr. Gladstone's 
 demonstrative reviewal of Vaticanism and the Syllabus. But 
 take a fair example. I hold in my hand a bqok issued by the 
 "Catholic Publication Society" in New York, and by affiliated 
 publishers in Baltimore and Cincinnati. It is printed in Baltimore 
 under license of its late Archbishop (Bailey) and the certificate of 
 his official censor, that it is unobjectionable — " nihil obstat." It is 
 a book of instruction for children. Its motto is (quoted from 
 Benedict XIV.), " We affirm that the greatest part of the damned 
 are in hell, because they did not know those mysteries of faith 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP A. CLEVELAND COXE. 131 
 
 which Christians must know and believe." What are these mys- 
 teries ? Let us read this authorized Ultramontane school book. 
 I quote (pp. 97-104) as follows: 
 
 " Q. Have Protestants any faith in Christ ? 
 
 " A. They never had. 
 
 "Q. Why not? 
 
 " A. Because there never hved such a Christ as they imagine and believe in. 
 
 " Q. In what kind of a Christ do they believe ? 
 
 "A. Insucha one of whom they can make a liar with impimity, whose doctrine 
 they can interpret as they please, and who does not care what a man believes, 
 provided he be an honest man before the public. 
 
 " Q. Will such a faith in such a Christ save Protestants ? 
 
 "A. No sensible man will assert such an absurdity. 
 
 "Q. What will Christ say to them on the day of judgment? 
 
 "A. I know you not, because you never knew me. 
 
 "Q. Are Protestants willing to confess their sins to a Catholic bishop or priest, 
 who alone has power from Christ to forgive sins ? ' Whose sins you shall forgive 
 they are forgiven them, ' 
 
 "A, No; for they generally have an utter aversion to confession, and.therefore, 
 their sins will not be forgiven them throughout all eternity. 
 
 "Q. What follows from this? 
 
 "A. That they die in their sins, and are damned." 
 
 A Galilean would here remind his Jesuit brethren that even in 
 the Roman Communion there was never any obligatory confession 
 ■of this sort until the times (a. d. 1215) of Innocent III. ; and I ask 
 liberal Roman Catholics whether they wish their children to be 
 instructed in such Ultramontane ideas of their Protestant country- 
 men ? Have we not a right to demand that the text-books and 
 teachers of Roman Catholic schools, if chartered by our legislatures, 
 be subject to government inspection ? If their proposed university 
 in Washington receives a charter from the United States, should it 
 not contain such a prescription ? Observe what sort of professors 
 we shall have, unless we protect ourselves like freemen. The book 
 I have quoted is commended in unmeasured terms by a "pro- 
 fessor of Moral Theology and Canon Law," which is a specimen of 
 what such professors will be likely to teach, here, at our seat of 
 government, and in constant intercourse with our law-givers, our 
 judges, our Cabinet officers and the society of the White House 
 itself. 
 
 " Professor Konings, C. S. F. R., speaking of the book which 
 
132 ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 tells US that all Protestants will be damned, eulogizes it as 
 follows : 
 
 " I have most carefully read and examined your excellent manuscript, ' Familiar 
 Exposition of Christian Doctrine. ' I took the liberty to make a few alterations. 
 I do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce this work of yours one of the most 
 useful for our time and country. It is written in the true spirit of St. Alphonsus. 
 I was particularly pleased with those chapters which treat on the Church, Papal 
 Infallibility, etc." 
 
 As he has " made a few alterations," we infer that he is the more 
 responsible for all which remains unaltered. 
 
 There is no modus vivendi with the emissaries of such a religion 
 as this Ultramontane book sets forth. But we sincerely seek a 
 modus vivendi, a means of living with our Roman Catholic brethren 
 on good terms, in Christian neighborhood, and with as true a 
 jealousy for their rights as we cherish in behalf of our own. What 
 is to supply this modus vivendi? I will give the answer suggested 
 by a Roman Catholic writer, to whom his fellow-religionists propose 
 to erect a statue, as to one of the greatest ornaments of their faith 
 in America. Their own Orestes Brownson warns them that they 
 must become Americans; that thus far they are a " foreign colony" 
 in the nation — "representing a civilization different from the 
 American, a«(/ in many respects inferior to it." He says: "The 
 foreignism which Roman Catholics bring with them . . . is 
 antagonistic to the American idea." He asserts that " they are a 
 people as distinct from the American people, in all except their 
 political and social rights, as the people of France, Italy, Spain, 
 England, Germany and Ireland." They are, " speaking in general 
 terms, a foreign people; think, feel, speak and act as a foreign 
 population." Again he says: "They who are educated in our 
 schools seem misplaced and mistimed in the world, as if born and 
 educated for a world that has ceased to exist." Now, is this to be 
 the character of the proposed university in Washington ? Certainly 
 not, if it is to be chartered by an American Congress. But I have 
 shown that every Roman Catholic who is " attached to the principles- 
 of the American Constitution," is essentially a Gallican, and, there- 
 fore, to carry out the ideas of Dr. Brownson, the Roman Catholics, 
 of America must assert and proclaim the Gallican maxims, and 
 should require the court of Rome to concede to them, as Americans, 
 all that was conceded to their co-religionists in France, under the 
 republic, in 1801. We may be sure that this position would be 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP A. CLEVELAND COXE. 133 
 
 approved by all men who honor the sentiments of Charles Carrol, 
 of Carrolton. 
 
 Let us examine the " Organic Articles " which the court of 
 Rome authorized in i8oi, I quote a few specimens: 
 
 "I. No bull, brief, rescript, decree, mandate, nor any other missives from the 
 court of Rome, not even such as merely concern individuals, can be received, 
 published, printed, or otherwise put into execution without authorization of the 
 government. 
 
 "2. No person styling himself nuncio, legate, vicar or apostolic commissary, or 
 relying on any other denomination (e. g., cardinal) shall without similar authoriza- 
 tion, exercise, on French soil or elsewhere, any function relative to the affairs of 
 the Galilean church." 
 
 In the same spirit these Organic Laws forbid the publication of 
 such a document as the Syllabus, or even the decrees of the 
 Vatican council, without permission of the government, the govern- 
 ment charging itself to license only such documents as in no wise 
 affect the laws and franchises of the republic, and contain nothing 
 that concerns or might disturb the public tranquillity. Much 
 more to the same purpose, and entering into minute details, is con- 
 tained in this instructive work of eminent French jurists. Now, 
 what do we learn from such a document? I answer: (i) We learn 
 what Ultramontanism can do, and is sure to do, against any free 
 republic, when not held in check by such safeguards; and (2) we 
 learn what the Roman Catholic "bishops in America, if they are 
 sincerely attached to the principles of the American Constitution," 
 are bound to do, exacting tantamount concessions to them as 
 Americans, and so giving their countrymen a guarantee of their 
 resolution to "abjure all fidelity" to a foreign court of Italians 
 and others who may, in so many ways, interfere with our public 
 affairs and disturb the public tranquillity. 
 
 Obviously, the American government could not enter into a 
 Concordat with the court of Rome, nor ask the pontiff to concede 
 to it the powers of authorization which were conceded to a Roman 
 Catholic state. But, if the Roman Catholics of America are sin- 
 cerely "attached to the principles of the Constitution," they will 
 exercise these poivers themselves, and will, in behalf of their country- 
 men, reject foreign interference in every particular which the 
 French republic could not permit with safety to itself. They will 
 limit every claim and interposition of the Roman court, by the 
 historic example of the Galileans, and will say, in the spirit of St. 
 
134 ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 Louis and in the words of Bossuet : " Let us maintain those sturdy 
 maxims of our forefathers, which the Gallican church has received 
 from the traditions of the church universal." 
 
 Thousands of Roman Catholics in America, as I happen to 
 know, are chafing under the vassalage in which the court of Rome 
 holds them, as compared with what she concedes to other Latia 
 churches. Their bishops themselves are mere papal vicars, and 
 wear a yoke of intolerable servility ; they are not enfranchised with 
 any autonomous powers, but are treated as children, if not as literal 
 vassals. Their laity hold no rights in the property they create^ 
 have no voice in the election of their prelates, or in the choice of 
 their clergy. That they submit, as they do, to such servitude can 
 only be explained by what Dr. Brownson has told us ; all this is 
 only possible because, as he says, they are essentially aliens; they are 
 not yet identified with the civil and social principles of Americans. 
 
 But if I were a Roman Catholic bishop in America, I would toler- 
 ate this state of things no longer. I would emancipate myself 
 and my people. I would lift them out of their position as a 
 " foreign colony " and place them on a level with all their country- 
 men, by making them indisputably " attached to the principles of 
 the American Constitution," and by bringing their local institutions 
 into harmony with it. From what the Roman court has conceded 
 in times past to Englishmen under the Plantagenets, and to French- 
 men under Louis XIV. and the Consulate, I would frame a Bill of 
 Rights and say: " These are our claims as Americans, and we will 
 not be deprived of anything which infallible pontiffs have conceded 
 to our forefathers." What would be the result ? I answer by 
 pointing to what Rome has conceded to such petty people as the 
 " Uniats " of Russia, the " Maronites," or the "United Greeks 
 and Armenians." Rome will not deny what her spiritual subjects 
 are manly enough to demand, as requisite to their citizenship in 
 this great republic. We, on our part, claim for them only what 
 they will be sure to demand spontaneously as soon as they wake 
 up to their rights as Americans, and to the precedents which entitle 
 them, as Roman Catholics, to liberties too long withheld. " So speaks. 
 St. Bernard," according to Bossuet, " with all the saints of his age, 
 and all who have been the most exemplary among the French." 
 And he adds, with eloquence: " Thus it was, also, that the most 
 saintly personage who ever wore the crown of France, the most 
 loyal to the Holy See, and the most ardent defender of the Roman 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. J. M. KING. 135 
 
 faith (you recognize my reference to St. Louis) felt obliged to per- 
 sist in the Gallican maxims and to publish a Pragmatic for the 
 maintenance in his kingdom of the common rights and prerogatives 
 of bishops, according to General Councils and the institutions of 
 the Fathers." In all I have said, I have been pleading for those 
 rights and for those institutions, in behalf of my Roman Catholic 
 countrymen. 
 
 REV. JAMES M. KING, D. D., OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Christian Friends : — I am grateful for the privilege of having 
 enjoyed, with you, this address, so accurate in historical statement, 
 and so discriminating in drawing the lines between Roman 
 Catholicism, as such, and Jesuitical Romanism. And yet I some- 
 times think, from our experience in this land, that the distinction, 
 while it ought to be made, is not duly appreciated. I heard of the 
 officiary of a given church, some years ago, summoning a pastor 
 before it, and the richest and most influential man among the 
 ofificials finally pronounced the verdict that required the pastor to 
 leave, and the objection that he had to him was that he was "too 
 personal." When, over and over again, requested to tell what the 
 personalities of the pastor consisted in, he said he was persistently 
 and continuously attacking " Satan and all his followers." 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 The fact has been referred to that I was called to follow Bishop 
 Coxe for a few moments in this discussion, because of my position 
 for some years as chairman of the Legislative Committee of the 
 Evangelical Alliance. The work of that committee is to watch 
 legislation. Well, you say, "Why watch legislation?" Because 
 it will bear watching. [Laughter. J It needs watching in many of our 
 states and especially in our great Empire State of New York. It has 
 needed watching for a number of years, to keep the Solons that 
 we have elected to make our laws from putting on the statute 
 books the beginnings of laws that shall bind us to a foreign prince. 
 That is all. Those would-be laws that would begin the wedding 
 between church and state, which forever ought to be divorced in 
 this free republic. [Great applause.] 
 
 I want to say one thing in this connection. Some very tender- 
 hearted people, who have corns on the upper part of their toes 
 
136 ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 [Laughter.] have felt that perhaps the work of the Evangelical 
 Alliance was simply "Anti-Romanism." It is nothing of that 
 kind at all. We have only taken part in the controversy with 
 Jesuitical Romanism where it was necessary to defend ourselves, 
 and have never made an assault. [Applause.] Religiously, I 
 have nothing to say in reference to Roman Catholicism. I believe 
 that multitudes of the adherents of that faith are as genuinely 
 Christian as any of the men or women I address to-night. There 
 may be memories and traditions of men with burning tapers, and 
 of interposing priests, but there are hundreds of thousands of 
 honest hearts among them that are feeling for the Christ within. 
 I claim for ourselves simply the same right of charitable judg- 
 ment concerning religious conviction. But, when religious convic- 
 tion takes a political turn, it comes to be dangerous. [Applause.] 
 
 The President of this meeting uttered a sentiment that I am 
 glad to hear from a United States Senator, namely, that he believes 
 in taking his religion into his politics. So do I. [Applause.] But 
 it is because I feel that my religion would not hurt the politics. 
 Jesuitical Romanism believes the same thing, and I pay it the 
 tribute of fidelity to its belief. It not only tries, but it succeeds, 
 in taking its religion into its politics. 
 
 You ask how? Well, I never was elected a member of any 
 State Legislature. I have been a self-constituted member of the 
 Third House for a nurtlber of years. If you want to find out the 
 virtues of a politician you want to be in the " lobby." [Laughter.] 
 The patriotic speeches that are made for home-consumption do not 
 accord at all with the quiet little miscellaneous remarks that are 
 made in the lobby. I have been in the midst of the members of 
 the Third House, who are not always particularly gratified at my 
 companionship, but then a man cannot always choose, and that is 
 what they think of me sometimes — I have stood in the midst of the 
 members of the Third House, at the capital of one of our sovereign 
 states, and listened to words that were backed upj with oaths — 
 threats of political death to men that dare oppose the putting on 
 the statute-books of laws that opened every sectarian institution in 
 the city of New York to the setting up of confessionals, and the 
 introduction of a given form of sectarian preaching. 
 
 It is as a political power that I am afraid of this Ultramontanism ; 
 and it is not only " over the mountains " this time, but it has 
 crossed the seas. But somebody says, "You are an alarmist." 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. J. M. KING. 137 
 
 Oh,. no ! I have just common sense. Why, the greatest states- 
 man, so far as genius is concerned, that has ever shaped the 
 destiny of any land — a man that you would suppose would not 
 yield to ecclesiastical power, has gone to Canossa. We have 
 hundreds of " Bismarcks " in this country. [Laughter.] It is not 
 because of the influence that Jesuitical Romanism may have on 
 the great men that we are concerned, but it is the influence exer- 
 cised by it on the petty pot-house politician. I know what I 
 am talking ^bout, because I have seen the bargains made and the 
 goods delivered. [Laughter.] 
 
 I simply want to add one or two points. The peril which 
 Bishop Coxe has s6 well put, with historical backing, is in the teach- 
 ing that makes loyalty first to a foreign prince, and second to the 
 republic. That is the unhealthy and the dangerous teaching. 
 Why is it that the order has gone forth that, wherever possible, 
 parochial schools shall be erected and measures taken for the 
 instruction of childhood ? For the simple reason that the second 
 and third generations, brought up under American instruction, 
 filled with the American spirit, chafe under the restraints of a 
 jequired loyalty to a foreign power, and they break loose. 
 ([Applause.] 
 
 The only hope of keeping youth under this foreign power 
 to-day, is to keep them under the instruction of the book from 
 which Bishop Coxe has quoted, or books of that character. 
 
 So far as I am concerned I say " Welcome," even to believers 
 in political Jesuitism. Welcome, all forms of faith to this land. I 
 would not want to close the doors against them. But, welcome to 
 ■equal rights ; that is all. [Applause.] That is all anybody ought 
 to ask. Welcome to equal rights ; and the sentiment of American 
 citizenship, backed up by Christian faith, ought to see to it that 
 there is no interference with the rights of that citizenship in this 
 land by a foreign power. Eternal separation of church and state ! 
 No sectarian appropriations ! No dividing of the public school 
 iund ! [Great applause.] 
 
THE SALOON. 
 
 BY REV. R. S. MacARTHUR, D. D., OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Going down Sixth Avenue, New York, a little time ago, I saw a 
 door, over which were these words, " Saloon: A. Blessing." This 
 struck me as being somewhat inaccurate. A man named Blessing 
 ought surely to be in some other business. Had the inscription 
 read, " Saloon: A. Curse," it would have been nearer the truth; 
 had it read, " Saloon: the Greatest Curse on this Earth," the words, 
 would have been literally true. In another part of the same city 
 there is a saloon which is properly named. Over its main entrance 
 are the words, " Hell Gate." In connection with this title there- 
 might well be given a part of the inscription which Dante places 
 over the gate of his hell : 
 
 " Through me ye enter the abode of woe; 
 Through me to endless sorrow are ye brotight; 
 Through me amid the souls accurst ye go. 
 ******** 
 All hope abandon — ye who enter here." 
 
 It is impossible to find language which will truly state how great 
 a curse the saloon is. Of some of its evils we shall, in the first 
 place, speak. 
 
 We begin with its merely negative features. It certainly is need- 
 less; it serves no good purpose to any human being. What is the 
 good of the saloon, anyway ? What legitimate want does it sup- 
 ply ? What necessity of civilization does it meet ? We do not 
 ask such questions regarding the grocery, the bakery, the market, 
 and many other kinds and places of business. They justify their 
 right to be. But we must advance a step ; the saloon is not only 
 useless, it is hurtful. It is evil in itself, and that uniformly and 
 continually, universally and necessarily. Not only does it not. 
 
 138 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 139^ 
 
 supply any legitimate want, but it creates illegitimate and 
 unholy wants. It is a child of the devil, and an agent of 
 hell. 
 
 But we must advance yet, in rightly estimating this evil. In 
 these more recent days it has become organized, despotic and 
 Satanic to an unusual degree; it has become an institution. 
 It has resolved upon the possession of political power, and it 
 is massing all its forces with that end in view. It finds politi- 
 cians ready to bow down and worship at its feet for the sake of 
 the votes which it promises to secure and to deliver. It moves 
 forward with gigantic strides, with aggressive purpose, and with 
 marvelous wisdom, toward the attainment of these unholy ends. 
 It possesses large amounts of wealth, and it can secure vast and 
 varied talents, legal and political, bad and worse, for the accom- 
 plishment of its ambitious and devilish purposes. No one ought 
 to underestimate the magnitude of its resources; no one ought to 
 be blind to the peril of our position. It claims to have — and the 
 claim seems justified by the facts — a. thousand millions of dol- 
 lars invested in its unmanly and ungodly business; it claims to 
 have not fewer than five hundred thousand employees under its 
 immediate control; it claims to have millions of followers ready 
 to obey its nod, so far as political thinking and voting are con- 
 cerned. Its revenues are larger and its profits greater, it is said, 
 than those of the one hundred and forty thousand miles of railroad 
 in the United States. All these external sources of power are 
 supported and emphasized by the appetites and passions of mill- 
 ions of its victims. No one can examine these statements, and 
 for a moment doubt the impossibility of exaggerating the resources 
 for evil of the saloon. 
 
 But we must still advance in estimating this evil. Not only is 
 the end it seeks utterly bad, but the means it employs to secure 
 its end are the worst which its black heart can devise and execute. 
 It does not hesitate at murder as one of its instruments. It is but 
 a little time since, in the brave prohibition state of Iowa, the 
 saloon took the life-blood of the noble Haddock, a Methodist min- 
 ister, a devoted servant of God, and an inspired enemy of the 
 saloon. It is but yesterday since another man, in the great state 
 of Mississippi, the son of an aged Baptist minister, and the chival- 
 rous editor of a temperance journal, a man who dared to tell the 
 truth regarding the saloon, was shot down like an animal, because 
 
140 THE SALObN. 
 
 of his faithfulness to right and his exposure of wrong. It is but a 
 little time since, in the noble state of Ohio, a church was partly 
 shattered by dynamite while a crowded audience was present, lis- 
 tening to an address on temperance and against the saloon. In the 
 light of these facts, it is Certain that the time has come when men 
 must speak brave and necessarily bitter words against this gigan- 
 tic evil. It stalks abroad through the land, destroying all that is 
 noblest in our civilization and holiest in our religion. In the 
 description which the prophet Daniel gives us, in the seventh chap- 
 ter of the book which is called by his name, of the various beasts 
 which he saw in the vision, in the seventh verse we are told of one 
 particular beast (the fourth) which was "dreadful and terrible, 
 and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured 
 and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it; 
 and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it 
 had ten horns.'' This is certainly a striking description. The 
 form of this beast is not given, as was that of the lion, the bear and 
 the leopard in previous parts of the vision. The imagination is 
 left to picture an appropriate form for a beast described by such 
 terrible images. It was so shocking a monster that no one name 
 could accurately describe it. Terms of description are heaped 
 together, although they are nearly synonymous, in order to give 
 an impressive view of this shocking creature. With its great iron 
 teeth it tore to pieces all which it could devour; with its terrible 
 feet it stamped down and crushed into the earth that which other- 
 wise it could not destroy; we have here a picture of wrath destroy- 
 ing where there was no advantage in the destruction, except the 
 pleasure of destruction itself. If the prophet Daniel had had the 
 saloon in mind when he gazed upon this vision, and when he 
 recorded these striking words, he could not have given a more 
 accurate description, alike of the spirit, the methods and the results 
 of this master-piece of Satan. The saloon is this shocking mon- 
 ster, tearing with its great teeth and stamping into the earth with 
 its terrible feet. It has trampled on the dearest hopes of fondest 
 parents; it has broken the hearts of the truest and bravest of wives; 
 it has filled the land with mourning, the grave with victims, and 
 hell with drunkards. The hands of the Saloon, which recently 
 were lifted up, pleading for "Personal Liberty," so-called, were 
 dripping with the blood of murdered souls. By all that is sacred 
 in family life, by all that is holy in the church, and by the justice 
 
ADDRESS BV DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 141 
 
 of the Eternal God, we declare that this murderer shall die for his 
 God-defying and soul-destroying crimes ! 
 
 The relations of the saloon to anarchy further emphasize its 
 evil character and its dangerous tendency. But for the inspiration 
 of hell breathed in the saloon, it is probable that bombs would 
 never have been manufactured, and, if manufactured, would never 
 have been exploded. In the saloon's murderous precincts anarch- 
 ists hold their secret conclaves, plan their nefarious plots, and 
 select their innocent victims. It is the school of anarchy, and 
 the schoolmaster of anarchists. In this way it endeavors to sap 
 the very foundations of the American republic, and tear down 
 the pillars of the church of God. It was fitting that, when the 
 justly hanged anarchists were borne to their unhallowed graves, 
 certain saloons should have been draped in mourning. The rela- 
 tion between anarchy and alcohol was thus acknowledged to be as 
 intimate as it is unholy. Destroy anarchism, and you have done 
 much toward the destruction of the saloon ; destroy the saloon, 
 and you have done much toward the destruction of anarchism. In 
 the saloon the seeds are sown which blossom into bombs and ripen 
 into murders. Sow atheism and alcoholism, and you reap uni- 
 versal dynamite, national destruction and eternal death. When 
 one thinks in perfect calmness of the plain facts regarding this 
 enemy to all that is good, he finds immediate use for the impreca- 
 tory Psalms. Indeed, no vehicle of emotion so well expresses his 
 thoughts as some of the strongest denunciations of the most 
 violent of these Psalms. As a man walks through our crowded 
 streets, watching the wretchedness produced by the saloon, he 
 finds it difficult to restrain his impatience, and his sense of out- 
 raged justice, from calling down the curse of God upon so hor- 
 rible a traffic. While I write these words, a member of my church, 
 a refined, cultured. Christian woman, lies in a city hospital, dying 
 of a broken heart. Her coarse, brutal, drunken husband, a man of 
 a different faith and nationality, has blighted her life, and virtually 
 caused the death of three of her children; and having starved, beg- 
 gared and beaten her, he now staggers, a fool and a demon, through 
 the streets. Can I write calmly ? And the saddest part of it is, 
 that this is but one of many tragedies daily enacted in the homes 
 of both rich and poor in our great cities. On a recently published 
 skeleton map of the city of New York, we have between eight and 
 nine thousand saloons represented by black spots, giving it, as the 
 
142 THE SALOON. 
 
 Hon. William Windom suggestively said in his address at the 
 Anti-Saloon Republican Convention in New York, the appearance 
 ■of a very bad case of confluent small-pox. Indeed, the language 
 is not too strong. The comparison is appropriate. These saloons 
 are a greater evil to that city than if they were exchanged for 
 small-pox pest-houses. That disease might be controlled and event- 
 ually eradicated ; but the saloon sends forth a daily and a deadly 
 poison, for which neither the wisdom of _ man nor the providence 
 ■of God has yet furnished an effectual antidote. 
 
 When we turn to the direct influence of the saloon on our holy 
 religion, we see its evils in an equally strong light. As ministers 
 and members of our churches, we must oppose the saloon with all 
 the might God gives us. It keeps whole families from the 
 house of God. It opposes us in a thousand ways. We 
 must take up the gauntlet thus thrown down, or retire from the 
 field, acknowledging ourselves to be cowards. We are not ready 
 thus to retire. The church of God lifts men up into the noblest 
 manhood; the saloon throws them down into the lowest degrada- 
 tion. The church attempts to make men over into the image of 
 God; the saloon blots out the last trace of that image from their 
 souls. The saloon robs them of the glory of manhood, and of all 
 that makes immortality desirable. The knowledge of the wretch- 
 edness which it brings to innocent wives and children, is enough 
 to break the heart of a thoughtful man with its continuous aching. 
 Seeing the work of destruction which it is constantly producing, 
 ■one is led to cry out in the bitterness of his spirit and in the agony 
 of his entire being, " How long, O Lord, holy and true ! " The 
 misery of the children of drunkards, as they are closely packed in 
 the wretched tenement houses of a great city, would move the 
 eyes of angels to tears. The real discussion of poverty and anti- 
 poverty is practically wrapped up in the subject of the saloon. Its 
 support must inevitably come in large measure from the working- 
 men of our country. In it they are now spending their millions 
 upon millions yearly. It was recently stated, in the Boston Citizen, 
 that General Swift, in addressing the Young Men's Union, of 
 Boston, on the wage-question, affirmed that $37,000,000 were 
 spent in Massachusetts last year for intoxicating drinks. The 
 saloon is the worst foe of labor; when workingmen become truly 
 wise, they will declare, with a voice of thunder, " The saloon must 
 go." It is much to the credit of one great labor organization. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 143 
 
 that no liquor dealer is deemed to be a fit associate for its mem- 
 bers. The most important reform among workingmen is not 
 fewer hours of labor, but fewer glasses of liquor. Laboring men 
 have good wages, as a rule, in this country; this country is their 
 paradise. Many of them are relatively rich. Their poverty, 
 where it exists, is due to their drink bill rather than to the small- 
 ness of their income. At this point, as at all others, the saloon 
 antagonizes the church, and all the best interests of humanity. 
 It also deadens the conscience and all the religious sensibilities. 
 It is almost impossible to get a man whose senses are steeped in 
 liquor, to think seriously of the concerns either of time or eternity. 
 The walls of his moral nature are broken down. The grace of 
 ■God, it is true, can redeem a man in his lowest condition; but, if 
 we may say it reverently, that grace has before it a gigantic under- 
 taking, an enormous contract, when it attempts to lift into man- 
 hood the victim of intemperance, when the saloon has done its full 
 work upon body and soul. Such a man is the wreck of all that is 
 worthy the name of manhood. He has ceased to exercise any 
 strong power of will; he has ceased to think of himself as made in 
 the image of God; he forgets that he is an heir of eternity and a 
 possible candidate for glory. His body is so diseased, that within 
 it there are a thousand minute cells opening their mouths and cry- 
 ing for more liquor; all his evil passions are aroused; his brain 
 refuses to think; his moral nature lies trampled by the feet of 
 demons. Nothing short of the almighty power of the Eternal God 
 ■can make anything out of such a wretched creature as this. 
 
 The saloon also discredits the word of God. That book is 
 .against the saloon; that book declares that no drunkard shall in- 
 herit the kingdom of heaven; that book, when its principles shall 
 have had their due influence, shall destroy the saloon with utter 
 annihilation with all its vile and inevitable accessories. The saloon, 
 furthermore, would rob us of God's day, as it has already robbed 
 so many men of God's image in their souls. The recent Personal 
 Liberty League had its birth in the saloon. It is a monstrosity; 
 perhaps we ought rather to say that it is the natural offspring of 
 monstrous parents. It takes the linguistic livery of heaven with 
 which to serve the devil. It uses liberty, as the Apostle Peter tells 
 us, as a cjoak of maliciousness; and, as he further tells us, "While 
 they (its originators) promise them (its victims) liberty, they them- 
 selves are the servants of corruption." Every one familiar with 
 
144 THE SALOON. 
 
 the history of this recent monstrosity can at once divine its unholy 
 parentage; it is not difficult to trace it back to the place and even 
 to the time of its birth. We may once more refer to Senator 
 Windom, whose strong words are not too strong when he says: 
 " I do not overstate it, when I say that the two hundred thousand 
 saloons in this country have been instrumental in destroying more 
 human lives, in the last five years, than the two millions of armed 
 men did during the four years of the Rebellion. Whisky is a 
 more deadly weapon than shot and shell, or any of the implements 
 of our improved modern warfare." Surely society has a right to 
 protect itself against so terrific an evil ! Surely the time is at 
 hand when that protection should be sought and secured ! Surely 
 the day will dawn when the last saloon shall be removed from this, 
 long-suffering world ! 
 
 This leads me to speak, in the second place, of the removal of 
 this gigantic curse. We may begin with ourselves. Total absti- 
 nence for ourselves will remove this curse, within a limited sphere 
 at least. We have lately heard too little on this duty. The polit- 
 ical excitement has been so great that this personal and moral 
 duty has been largely neglected. This is an old-fashioned remedy 
 for part of the evil. It is a remedy that is always at hand. It has- 
 lately been much overlooked. We want great mowing machines, 
 for cutting down the deadly weeds which the enemy has sowed;: 
 and while we have been looking for them with a great blare of 
 trumpets, thousands of personal sickles have been rusting on the. 
 walls of the temple of temperance reform. There is reason to 
 fear that with some of these political would-be mowers, the use of 
 this sickle is somewhat distasteful. We must go back to it. 
 " Take heed to thyself," is a good maxim. Let us bring out our 
 sickles; then let us train our children aright; let us care for our 
 homes, our schools and our churches, and much will be done. We 
 do not urge total abstinence on the ground of direct Scriptural 
 teaching. The day has gone by when men may urge the so-called 
 " two-wine " theory, as if it were taught in the word of God. No- 
 good comes to any good cause by unnatural and unscholarly inter- 
 pretations of Scripture. The insistence on this two-wine theory 
 has done the cause of temperance untold injury. It is always an 
 error to attempt to change the word of God from its natural 
 teaching into a forced meaning. The end sought in this case was- 
 good ; but even a good end will not justify the use of unfair means.. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 145 
 
 No man has a right to change the meaning of Scripture, even for 
 the destruction of so great an evil as the saloon. The cause of 
 temperance may well pray to be delivered from some of its zealous 
 friends; for it has been much impeded by the so-called arguments 
 urged by friends, who have more zeal than knowledge. Much has 
 been written on both sides of this discussion; but I know of noth- 
 ing so accurate, so candid, so courageous, so tolerant and so con- 
 clusive as the articles by the Rev. Dr. Alvah Hovey, which have 
 been published recently in The Baptist Quarterly Review. These 
 articles are to-day the classics on this subject. No one has yet 
 come forward to answer him, although the editors have earnestly 
 invited replies. The Bible, however, is distinctly against the 
 saloon. The spirit of God's book and the gospel of God's Son 
 destroyed the monster slavery, in the early history of the church 
 under the most despotic governments. The same spirit and gospel 
 struck the chains from four millions of slaves in our own land. 
 Not Sherman, not Grant, not Lincoln, destroyed slavery, except as 
 they were God's instruments in accomplishing his great purposes. 
 The gospel of the Son of God made the Emancipation Proclamation 
 possible. Back of the hand that wrote it, was a hand bearing the 
 print of a nail in its palm — a hand that once was nailed to the cross 
 That gospel says, with a profound meaning, whether a man be black 
 or white, red or yellow, rich or poor, bond or free, "A man 's a 
 man for a' that." That same gospel will strike down the other 
 monster, alcohol. He is a worse tyrant than slavery; he enslaves 
 body and soul, and destroys both in a drunkard's hell. The great 
 principles of God's book, the divine maxims for human conduct, 
 teach us how to regard the drunkard, and how to abstain for the 
 sake of our own safety, for the sake of our example, which might 
 hurt the weak, and for the sake of our divine Lord's glory, which 
 this curse does so much to tarnish. 
 
 Moral suasion has also its place in the removal of this evil. 
 Men may teach by precept as well as by example. All who come 
 within the circle of our influence should be led, if possible, to fol- 
 low our own total abstinence example. The medical argument 
 should be urged. Great weight has recently been brought to bear 
 upon the evils of liquor from a medical point of view. This paper 
 does not furnish space to enter into the discussion of this part if 
 the general subject; but we know that many intelligent doctors are 
 seeing the danger to which their patients are exposed by the old 
 
146 THK SALOON. 
 
 and common method of indiscriminately prescribing intoxicating 
 liquors. Travelers into the coldest regions, and also those who go 
 into tropical climates, come back to tell us that they are able to 
 endure fatigue and to preserve health better without, than with 
 stimulants. The truth regarding the scientific effect of alcoholic 
 stimulants on the human system must be earnestly taught in our 
 public schools. This is now done, as Mr. Joseph Cook has recently 
 stated, in many states and in the schools of the territories; in our 
 naval and military academies such instruction i's made compulsory 
 by an Act of Congress. A vast amount of wholesome literature on 
 this general subject has been published by the National Temper- 
 ance Society, and other organizations, within the past few years, 
 and has been scattered all over this country. These facts give us 
 hope for the future generations. They are full of encouragement, 
 and all friends of humanity must rejoice in the influence which 
 these methods of education are exerting. 
 
 The time has now come when all the friends of the church of God, 
 and of the human race, must be summoned to work along various 
 lines, in order to lessen this terrible curse. The discussion of this 
 temperance question must go on. It will not " down." It is not the 
 only question now before the American people; but we deliberately 
 and emphatically affirm that it is the most important question, eco- 
 nomically, politically and religiously, now before this republic. 
 The party which will bow down at the feet of the Satanic tyrant, 
 Alcohol, is a party for which the world has no use, God no respect, 
 and the devil no dread. Of that party the devil has absolute con- 
 trol. The party which refuses to discuss this question, and ration- 
 ally to settle it, will commit political suicide in the near future. 
 No party can afford to treat this subject with negative assurances 
 or indefinite promises. The party that does this will greatly oblige 
 the nation by dying a speedy death, and by giving thousands upon 
 thousands of voters a chance to hasten its death, and to bury it 
 out of the nation's sight. Satan himself ought to be ashamed of 
 any party which lies at the feet of Alcohol, even though it be his 
 obedient slave. Politicians must take heed. This nation is 
 aroused. It will not longer submit to the dictation of the saloon. 
 A brighter day is dawning. The procession is forming. It will 
 march to the music of a redeemed humanity and a triumphant 
 Christ. The train will go, whether these liquor-enslaved politicians 
 are on board or not. Some of us are happy to tell the masters and 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 147 
 
 the slaves of the saloon to leave the party whose name we bear. 
 Their presence is socially offensive, politically destructive, and 
 religiously abhorrent. We would rather march to the polls to be 
 defeated, without the saloon, than to be victorious with the saloon. 
 We shall have no concord with this Belial. Let liquor dealers 
 form a party by themselves; it would be a spectacle to men and 
 angels. But they will not do it; they know their only strength is 
 in keeping in good company. But the good company is weary of 
 their fellowship. No man, with a decent regard for himself or his 
 family, cares to associate, even politically, with the destroyers of 
 the nation and the race. If either the Democratic or the Repub- 
 lican party will have the moral courage, and the political wisdom, 
 to shake off the saloon, the noblest men and women in the nation 
 will rally to that party. That party will have the American repub- 
 lic and the Eternal God on its side. 
 
 The ultimate end at which we all should aim is the total extinc- 
 tion of the saloon. Toward that end we must move with unfal- 
 tering step, with buoyant heart, and with radiant face. God and 
 eternal truth are upon our side. When the conscience of the 
 nation is aroused, the minions of the saloon will disappear as 
 •chaff before the wind, or stubble in the flame. But in at- 
 taining these results, and while using these various educational 
 and moral means, we must also insist upon all forms of legal 
 restriction. Just at this point those who are friends of tem- 
 perance, and so are foes of the saloon, divide among and against 
 themselves. Rumsellers calculate always on a division of opinion 
 and aim on the part of temperance men. These rumsellers count 
 ■on this result almost with certainty; and, unfortunately, they are 
 seldom disappointed. To-day there is imperative need of unity 
 among all those who are friends of temperance, or who, at heart, 
 are foes of the saloon. If this paper may contribute anything 
 toward bringing about this result, one object, at least, of its prepa- 
 ration shall be secured. Let us all thoroughly understand that, if 
 we cannot entirely remove this fearful evil immediately, we can at 
 least lessen its power for harm. If we can reduce the number of 
 saloons by seventy-five, fifty or even twenty-five per cent, we shall 
 have accomplished so much toward the end which we seek. Shall 
 we decline to do this much, because we cannot at present do more ? 
 Shall we decline to strike the enemy one by one, because we can- 
 not destroy the whole army in a single onset ? Shall we refuse 
 
148 THE SALOON. 
 
 to reduce his strength because we cannot immediately annihilate 
 him foot and horse ? Surely, to ask these questions is to answer 
 them, and to answer them with an emphatic negative. 
 
 In speaking of the use of legal restrictions, we may be permitted 
 to name some of the methods which, in our judgment, may be 
 wisely employed. We would favor, first, as a step toward the end 
 for which we labor and pray, a system of heavy taxation upon the 
 traffic, when and where more radical measures are not possible. 
 We know that there are many who dislike the words " High 
 License." They refuse to employ them. They believe that by 
 favoring any form of license they become in a measure responsi- 
 ble for the traffic; they believe that taxation in any form implies, 
 indorsement — to some degree at least — of the saloon, with all its 
 attendant evils. There is some force in this consideration; we are 
 not without sympathy with this view, but we ought to do justice tO' 
 those who advocate heavy taxation, both in stating their position 
 and in commending their motive. We ought clearly to look at 
 the whole matter. We believe most earnestly that all who oppose 
 the saloon ought to stand together; we cannot- afford at this time- 
 to dispense with any element of power which it is possible for us to- 
 use. We must not turn and fire our sharpest arrows, or any arrows,, 
 into the faces of men who honestly, according to their own methods, 
 are with us in fighting the saloon. The rumsellers stand before 
 us an unbroken phalanx for evil; the lines of temperance men 
 for good are broken and ragged. We ought now to level all our 
 weapons at the heart of the common enemy. We must stand 
 together. We cannot all agree as to methods, but we can agree 
 as to motives, and disagree, if we must, as brethren. We ought 
 surely to agree to take all we can get to-day, and ask more for 
 to-morrow, and to move on the enemy step by step, if we cannot 
 in a grand charge. Remember, that we are speaking of heavy tax- 
 ation, not as an end, but as a means toward an end, that end 
 being the total destruction of the rum traffic. Surely, it is possible 
 to suggest a common ground of action on which Christian men 
 and all other good citizens can unite. We must remember that 
 under the common law of England every man had an undoubted 
 right to sell all beverages; that law, we all know, is the founda- 
 tion of our own jurisprudence. There were, of course, ways in 
 which damages might be secured against a man if he injured his- 
 neighbor in the exercise of his rights. Therefore, in England, and 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 149 
 
 in the various states of our own Union, limitations have been 
 placed upon this common-law right. These limitationi rest upon 
 the admitted principle that the state may enact regulations for pre- 
 sen'ing the health and the morals of the people. These limitation? 
 do not conflict with the fundamental right of each man, as guaran- 
 teed by the Constitution. 
 
 Pilots, engineers, doctors and others are licensed by the state, 
 in order to protect the state from the dangers arising from permit- 
 ting incompetent persons to engage in these avocations. The com- 
 mon-law right permits any man to prescribe medicine for the sick ; 
 but the State steps in to say that no man may exercise that right 
 who does not give evidence of possessing a certain degree of pro- 
 fessional skill. The state exercises the same principle in regard to 
 the sale of gunpowder, of poison and of other dangerous commodi- 
 ties; the same principle is illustrated when the building of wooden 
 houses in certain cities is prohibited, and when fast driving in 
 crowded streets is prevented. It is only fair to say that the word 
 license, in connection with the sale of liquor, has been greatly mis- 
 understood. Many assume that no one would have the right to 
 sell liquor except he had a license; the truth, however, is that 
 everybody would have the right to sell liquor if some persons did 
 not have a license. License laws are restrictive; they are of the 
 nature of prohibitory laws. They prohibit all citizens, with the 
 exception of a few who are specified, from engaging in this traffic; 
 and, as a matter of fact, they do prohibit more than ninety-nine 
 per cent from selling liquor. But for this prohibition, the way 
 would be open to all who were so disposed to engage in the traffic. 
 License laws might well be considered as giving permission to sell 
 liquor, in the sense in which many temperance advocates under- 
 stand the word license, if no liquor were sold in any given commu- 
 nity, and a license to sell it were issued to some in that communi- 
 ty; but in a community where everyone might sell, and where 
 thousands certainly would sell, if there were no license required, 
 the issuance of a license prevents the great majority from engaging 
 in the sale. This seems very clear; but I know that it is extremely 
 difficult to make this distinction clear to some minds, however 
 plain it may seem to others. Opinions will probably continue to 
 differ among intelligent and honest men as to the effect of high 
 license laws where they are tested. It is affirmed by many that 
 in some counties of Illinois the license fee has been so high as 
 
150 THE SALOOK. 
 
 practically to prevent the selling of liquor. It is also affirmed that 
 in that state many temperance men believe that the new law has 
 accomplished great results in restricting the evils of the liquor 
 traffic during the past four years. Probably the law has not yet been 
 sufficiently tested to enable anyone, authoritatively, either to affirm 
 or to deny. It is also said that the operation of the law in Ohio 
 and Michigan is leading to the same conclusion; but the different 
 opinions entertained regarding the effect of the law in Illinois prob- 
 ably apply also to Ohio and Michigan. That a high license law 
 will reduce the number of saloons, is very certain; that it will also 
 somewhat reduce the amount of liquor consumed, is also certain;, 
 but it is equally certain that this latter reduction will not be very 
 great — will not be in proportion to the reduction in the number 
 of the saloons. High license is but a temporary expedient when 
 and where nothing better can be secured. As between practically 
 free rum and high license, give us high license every time; as 
 between high license and a total restriction of the traffic, give us 
 prohibition every time. 
 
 Secondly, we favor local option where this can be secured. 
 The idea of this plan is to give permission to towns and counties in 
 any state where the prohibition sentiment is sufficiently strong, tO' 
 pass a prohibitory law, so far as that county or town is concerned. 
 Where the sentiment in the community is strong enough to secure 
 and enforce such a law, prohibition can in this way be obtained. 
 We all know that a law is worthless, except it can be supported by 
 public opinion; that a law without a penalty is not a law — it is only 
 advice. Under the operation of the local option law a consider- 
 able part of Georgia has reached practical prohibition. A local 
 option law would enable many communities to settle this vexed and 
 vexing question. A local option bill, it is said, will soon be intro- 
 duced into the Legislature of New York; there will also be another, 
 which provides that in cities of one hundred thousand population 
 the license fee for selling all kinds of liquor shall be at least $500, 
 and may be placed as high as $2,000; another bill may be pre- 
 sented which will reduce the number of saloons by providing that 
 there shall not be more than one to every five hundred persons in 
 any place. These bills are to be carefully prepared by able law- 
 yers and judges; they will avoid the alleged causes for the vetoes 
 by Governor Hill last year. The Episcopal Church Temperance 
 Society, the High License Association, and the Society for the Pre- 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 151 
 
 vention of Crime are united in the preparation, and are pledged to the 
 support of these bills. 
 
 I would like, thirdly, to urge all friends of temperance, 
 even though they may disagree in opinion, to unite in action 
 on at least some plan, the one which at the time and in the 
 place is the most rational and practical, for the restriction of 
 the traffic. If prohibition be possible, let it be prohibition; but if 
 not, we cannot see how any man can refuse to adopt some such 
 basis of action as this : support and vote for any measure that 
 INCREASES THE PRESENT RESTRICTIONS. That measure may at one 
 time, and in some communities, be called heavy taxation; at another 
 time, and in another community, it may be local option, or it may 
 be constitutional prohibition. This is the end toward which we 
 should aim; this is the goal which we hope eventually to reach. 
 But it is the very height of folly for men to do nothing because 
 they cannot do everything; to permit men and women to drown 
 except they are pulled out, or the pond is drained, according to 
 any one measure of reform, and especially at times and in places 
 where that measure of reform is clearly impossible. This is the 
 day of union among churches for the accomplishment of great 
 common ends; ought it to be less a time of union among temper- 
 ance organizations for the destruction of the drink traffic ? If any 
 method will reduce the number of saloons by even one, or lessen 
 the evil of the traffic by the saving of even one man, can any Chris- 
 tian man, or any other good citizen, justify himself in opposing 
 that measure ? The man who opposes a method of reform because 
 it falls short of total prohibition, especially when total prohibition 
 is clearly impossible, becomes virtually a partaker in the rumsel- 
 ler's traffic, and so also, in a measure, in his guilt. Prohibition is 
 simply a further application of the restrictive principle, by what- 
 ever name called. The man who will oppose restrictive laws, prac- 
 tically prefers free rum. Is a man ready to announce that he would 
 rather do evil now in the hope that good may come, in some vague 
 way and at some remote time, than to lessen evil in the immediate 
 present ? The man who would injure a neighbor to-day, on the 
 ground that he hopes to benefit him to-morrow; the man who prefers 
 to let the tide of evil flow through the land, because he cannot stop 
 it entirely — forfeits our respect for his common sense and for his 
 practical judgment. The man, on the other hand, whose preference 
 is for local option, or heavy taxation, and who believes that either 
 
152 THE SALOON. 
 
 of these systems is better than total prohibition, and who refuses to 
 support total prohibition, when it is possible to secure it, is worthy 
 of reprobation. He ought to give his support to prohibitory legisla- 
 tion, when that is the practical issue in his community. Wherever 
 legislation, which is certain to restrict the liquor traffic, becomes the 
 practical issue, every Christian man, and every other good citizen, 
 ought to support that legislation, even though it be not, in his judg- 
 ment, the wisest measure that could be devised, if it be the only 
 measure which at the time is possible. On this basis all friends of 
 temperance can and ought to unite. 
 
 On this basis some temperance men in the city of New York 
 have practically united ; and they are accomplishing much. While 
 some have kept aloof, because of their advocacy of the entire 
 destruction of the traffic in the future, others are quietly at work. 
 They are doing the best they can; they are taking all they can get 
 to-day; they are ready to demand more to-morrow. Their names 
 are not heralded as political temperance men, but they have accom- 
 plished good results in the restriction of the liquor traffic. All who 
 are in this movement are not agreed in their temperance principles 
 or practices; but all are agreed as to the evil of the saloon, and, in 
 order to oppose it, they have united on a practical basis of work. In 
 the past few years crime has also greatly decreased. Mr. Charles 
 L. Brace, m the last annual report of that admirable charity, the 
 Children's Aid Society, after detailing the various forms of benefi- 
 cent work which the Society is doing, sums up with the assertion that 
 " in the last ten years there has been a decrease of twelve and one- 
 half per cent in all crimes against person and property, which have 
 been dealt with by the police of this city; and this result has been 
 secured in spite of the fact that the overcrowding in the poor 
 quarters is greater than it ever was; the immigration of the igno- 
 rant and destitute classes from Europe has continued to a frightful 
 extent; the municipal government has often been the worst ever 
 known in American cities, and the population of the working class 
 districts has increased to an immense degree, having doubled since 
 1856." This society has nobly and heroically grappled with enor- 
 mous obstacles; it has grandly proved, as one of our religious 
 papers has said, that the way to do a difficult thing is — to do it. 
 
 Why cannot temperance men of all wings — total abstainers and 
 moderationists, Catholics and Protestants, believers and atheists. 
 Christians and heathen, indeed, all who are opposed to the saloon — 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. R. S, MacARTHUR. 153 
 
 thus unite ? What principle would they necessarily sacrifice ? Is 
 not the attainment of the end worth more than giving honor to 
 one's own method of doing the work? If the energy spent in 
 opposing one another had been expended in practical work, the 
 number of saloons might have been reduced at least one-half in 
 this city and country during the past four years. What has been 
 done, shows what great results might be secured, if all united in 
 an earnest endeavor to use the legal machinery, which the laws, 
 as they now stand, make available. 
 
 This paper does not mean to strike any doleful note. This 
 grand Christian Conference is at once a noble consummation and a 
 joyous prophecy. No assembly of men for a generation, we hon- 
 estly believe, is to bear more or better fruit. We are not talking 
 much of a Christian union; we are simply having it, enjoying it, 
 and using it for a glorious onset on the kingdom of darkness. 
 Loyal to our denominational distinctions, we are better fitted to be 
 consecrated to all the forms of work for our common Lord, in 
 which all can unite without detriment to distinctively denomina- 
 tional endeavors. We profoundly believe that the world is not 
 growing worse; it never was so good as it is to-day. The church 
 was never so intelligent, so benevolent, and so consecrated as 
 to-day. Laymen are coming forward into positions of prominence 
 and power. The quarter of a century just closed is the most won- 
 derful quarter of a century the world has ever known ; a glance at 
 Germany, Italy, Russia, Britain and America will justify this 
 strong statement. Never before were such great political, moral 
 and religious questions earnestly asked and rightfully answered. 
 This is not the devil's world. The hand pierced on Calvary's cross 
 is on the helm of the universe. We are swinging forward into a 
 nobler life. Especially is this true of America. If I am not an 
 ■optimist, I certainly am no pessimist. No Miserere is to be chanted 
 to-day; a 71? Z>tf«/« better befits our hearts and lips. The eastern 
 sky is already radiant with the crimson and gold of a brighter day; 
 its sun in meridian splendor will soon flood the world with its super- 
 nal glory. The church of the crowned Conqueror over death and 
 the grave is moving forward " conquering and to conquer," and all 
 the foes of Jesus Christ will one day lie in sweet submission at his 
 pierced feet. 
 
 To America to-day the eyes of the nations are directed. This 
 land, in all its wonderful history, is marked by peculiar providences 
 
154 THE SALOON. " 
 
 of God. Attention has often been called to the fact that, but for a 
 storm that wrecked a Mohammedan fleet, America might have 
 been discovered by an Oriental nation, and Moslem temples might 
 have covered its virgin soil. But for other marked providences it 
 might have been brought, in its feeble beginning, under the sway 
 of Romanism ; France, Italy and Spain contended for its control. 
 The words of Alexander Hamilton, as recently given by Dr. 
 Harper, spoken in circumstances widely different from these in 
 which we repeat them to-day, are still true as when spoken : " It 
 is ours to be either the grave in which the hopes of the world shall 
 be entombed ; or the pillar of cloud that shall pilot the race 
 onward to its millennial glory. Let us not forget our immortal 
 trust." 
 
 It is certainly true that we are, to a considerable degree, to- 
 determine the destiny of the world ; it is still true as when Emer- 
 son said it, as quoted in " Our Country," that wonderful little 
 volume by Dr. Strong, our honored secretary: " We live in a new 
 and exceptional age. America is another name for Opportunity. 
 Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Provi- 
 dence in behalf of the human race." It is certain that many of 
 the greatest economic, social and religious problems of the present 
 and the future are to be solved in America. The nation which slew 
 and Jjuried the monster, Slavery, after four years of tears and blood, 
 can slay and bury the twin monster. Intemperance. For this 
 work, O Church of the living God, now gird thyself in the might 
 of thy conquering Lord. The conflict is long and bitter. It was. 
 begun in Eden ; it shall end in Eden restored. Jesus Christ is 
 king. The seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent. 
 Into the glorious warfare the church is now entering afresh " fair as 
 the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." 
 
THE SALOON. 
 BY REV. A. G. HAYGOOD, D. D., LL. D.. OF GEORGIA. 
 
 A large volume wtould suffice for only a partial discussion of the 
 subject upon which I am asked to read a short paper, " The 
 Saloon," considered as one of the " Perils " that menace our insti- 
 tutions. It is like trying to set forth in a paragraph in the morn- 
 ing paper the combined horrors of war, famine and pestilence. 
 But subjects, vast and manifold, can never be adequately discussed ; 
 they can only be talked about, as men talk of the ocean, seeing a 
 little of it from the shore. 
 
 My subject is indeed hackneyed, but it is not commonplace; it 
 is a very old theme, but it concerns a very live issue. We are not 
 talking of an evil afar off; it is imminent, ever-present and omni- 
 present. It is not of an endurable inconvenience that we speak; 
 it is a monstrous and terrible thing — cruel, remorseless, pressmg 
 its iron hand hard upon all that is good in human life. This 
 paper considers only an admitted evil; it has not to do with 
 remedies. This, however, is true, and it gives us hope; when once 
 the people really see the evil thing the saloon is, they will find the 
 remedy. 
 
 In this discussion " Saloon " stands for the liquor traffic — par- 
 ticularly the retail sale of intoxicating drinks — to which the drunk- 
 enness, not only of our own country, but of the civilized -(vorld is, 
 confessedly, mostly due. Some consideration of the evils of drunk- 
 enness is relevant to a discussion of the "Peril " that lurks in the 
 " Saloon," for the reason that drinking-places create and foster 
 drinking habits. No form of words can over-state the curse that 
 drunkenness brings upon the human race, and no ingenuity of state- 
 ment can separate drunkenness from the trade that lives upon it. 
 and fosters it that it may live upon it. Allowing that 
 some drinking begins and goes on independently of the 
 
 156 
 
156 THE SALOON. 
 
 traffic, it remains substantially true that the saloon is respon- 
 sible for the drunkenness that is in the civilized world, and for all 
 the evils that grow out of it. The defenders of the saloon are wont to 
 dismiss all statements that condemn their trade, with sneers at the 
 fanaticism of temperance cranks. At this place I introduce a few 
 sayings of men who cannot be put aside as fanatics. A volume 
 could not contain the important testimony that might be brought for 
 confirmation. The few presented here are taken from an admirable 
 work entitled, " Alcohol and the State," by Judge Robert C. Pit- 
 man, of Massachusetts. 
 
 The London Times : " The use of strong drink produces more 
 idleness, crime, want and misery than all other causes put together." 
 
 Governor Dix of New York, vetoing a local option bill: " Intem- 
 perance is the undoubted cause of four-fifths of all the crime, 
 pauperism and domestic misery of the state." With Governor 
 Dix will agree all judges, magistrates, keepers of prisons, directors 
 of hospitals, and superintendents of asylums for the insane, 
 and all others who have to do with the crimes and miseries 
 of men. 
 
 Charles Buxton, M. P., the noted English brewer: "If we add 
 together all the miseries generated in our times by war, famine and 
 pestilence — the three great scourges of mankind — they do not 
 exceed those that spring from this one calamity." 
 
 Mr. Bruce, Home Secretary under the Gladstone ministry: 
 " Intemperance is not only a great evil, but the greatest of all evils 
 with which social reformers have to contend." 
 
 Judge Pitman follows these and many other expressions from 
 eminent and well-informed men with a suggestive reflection: 
 " But to admit a truth is one thing; to realize it, is another. I have 
 for years had a growing conviction that these general and sweeping 
 statements fail to impress, not only the public, but some of the most 
 thoughtful men." He strengthens his position by an apt quotation 
 from Coleridge: " Truths, of all others the most awful and inter- 
 esting, are too often considered as so true that they lose 
 all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory 
 of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded 
 errors." 
 
 In dealing with the saloon, the thing most to be feared is, that the 
 mass of the people do not fear it. We are used to it. As soldiers 
 in war look on wounds and death till they grow hard of heart, so 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. G. HAYGOOD. 157 
 
 the people are so familiar with the plague of drunkenness, that they 
 do not realize the ruin it is bringing to everything in our civilization 
 that is good. 
 We may consider 
 
 THE SALOON IN ITS RELATIONS TO BUSINESS AND MONEY- VALUES. 
 
 What is business ? In the conception of political economy, busi- 
 ness is the sum total of a whole people's productive industries and 
 legitimate exchanges. The terms "industries" and " exchanges " 
 are qualified, because real business does not include products that 
 are harmful or exchanges that are without fair equivalents. Making 
 dynamite bombs is not manufacturing; gambling — whether by 
 cards, dice, lotteries, " cotton futures " or " corners " on food sup- 
 plies, is not trade. A sound political economy excludes the liquor 
 trafific from business, because it is destructive of all other business. 
 As well class vampires among useful animals. Intoxicants do not 
 create or increase productive energy; they add nothing to skill — 
 they destroy. Strong drink is not an aid to progress, it is a hin- 
 drance; it is not an engine, it is a brake, retarding movement up the 
 steep grade the human race is trying to climb. 
 
 Allowing what little medicine claims for the cure of disease, and 
 what little science and the mechanic arts require, the fact remains, 
 that the liquor trafific in all its branches lives upon the drink-habits of 
 the great and unnumbered multitude that does not use intoxicants 
 as a medicine — that does not use alcohol in the arts. If the traffic 
 depended on medicine and the arts for its profits, the saloon 
 would speedily disappear from civilization. Its occupation would 
 be gone. 
 
 The last report of the Secretary of the Treasury gives us a sug- 
 gestive and illustrative statement. On page 449 is a table giving 
 the " Quantity of distilled spirits of the different kinds known to 
 the trade, produced, withdrawn, and remaining in warehouse in the 
 United States, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1886." The totals 
 are, bourbon whisky, 52,442,462 gallons; rye whisky, 21,492,829; 
 alcohol, 11,998,296; rum, 2,469,161; gin, 755,838. How much of 
 this sea of intoxicating liquors did science claim, for the year end- 
 ing June 30, 1886 ? The Secretary says: Of bourbon whisky, 
 7,009 gallons; of rye whisky, none; of alcohol, 20,798 gallons; of 
 rum, none; of gin, none. The rest went through the liquor traffic, 
 that depends on the saloon for its sales and profits. 
 
158 THE SALOON. 
 
 It comes to this: the money spent for intoxicants is wasted and 
 worse. It means so much taken from legitimate business and so 
 used as to hinder business; it means so much less for what is good, 
 useful and needful. 
 
 It does not answer to say the maker and the seller get this 
 money and it is not wasted, it remains in the country. As well 
 say because the swindling lottery managers get rich, their victims 
 have not wasted money. The money that goes for nought is 
 wasted, no matter where it goes. 
 
 It is estimated, with good reason, that about 600,000 men are 
 employed in one way and another in the liquor traffic; say one in 
 every one hundred of the whole population. Very high authorities 
 say that the nation's drink bill averages $900,000,000 per annum. 
 Who realizes what such figures mean ? As well talk of the distances 
 to the fixed stars ! All this money goes to the comparatively few 
 who make and sell intoxicants; all this money comes out of the 
 pockets of the whole people, only one in on^ hundred of them 
 making any profits out of the vast sum that changes hands. I say 
 ■whole people and not merely the drinking people, for this great 
 sum of $900,000,000 represents not merely what the drinkers 
 waste ; it means also the custom that every other trade has lost. 
 And far more; for if the drinkers can earn somehow $900,000,000 
 for drink, sober they could earn vastly more for honest trade. 
 
 What men pay for their drinks, does not complete the bill of 
 costs the saloon imposes upon the country. I am not speaking 
 of the moral desolations that flow from the saloon over the homes of 
 the people (figures are impotent here); I am considering the lowest 
 values — money values. Dr. William Hargreaves, in a work issued 
 by the National Temperance Society, justly adds to what is paid 
 for drinks, what should be charged to "consequential damages" 
 against the saloon — that under legal sanction exists by the will of 
 the people it oppresses and robs. To the drink bill, add the loss 
 to productive industry of the persons employed in the traffic, and 
 of habitual drunkards ; add the cost of supporting drink-made 
 paupers, lunatics and criminals ; add the cost of police and of the 
 criminal courts, most of which drunkenness makes necessary; and 
 of the entire enginery society employs, in a wholly inadequate 
 and nearly hopeless way, in its irresolute and hesitating effort to 
 protect itself against the saloon, and to support the burdens it 
 imposes — and we have a total of nearly $2,000,000,000. The 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. G. HAYGOOD. 159 
 
 saloon and its issues cost the country this vast sum ; that is, waste 
 it, and worse. 
 
 We seem to live in a period of contradictions. It is a period 
 of productive enterprise in nearly all directions ; the world was 
 never so busy, never worked so hard, never earned so much. But 
 suffering increases. We need not go theorizing to find explanations; 
 $900,000,000 wasted for drink ; as much more lost through the 
 results of drink ; these are not leaks in a dam, they are crevasses 
 when the Mississippi is at high flood. Inundations follow. In 
 these facts is explanation enough of hard times, suffering and 
 ■discontent, in a period when labor gets better wages than it ever 
 got before, when»money can buy more good things than it could 
 ever buy before. If what wage-earners alone waste in saloons 
 were used to buy useful commodities, hard times would cease. 
 Business would have in it such life, health and equilibrium that 
 the desperate gamblers of Wall Street could not organize a panic. 
 Not every wrong that pinches labor is due to the saloon ; labor 
 has a just complaint against exacting and oppressive monop- 
 olies, but if labor were free from the saloon tax, every other 
 €vil could be borne, or remedied. The statistics of crime, 
 pauperism, ignorance and lunacy, in every state of the Union 
 and in every civilized country, sustain and enforce these con- 
 clusions. 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE SALOON TO POLITICS 
 
 is a large theme. It is only custom that makes the existence of the 
 saloon possible in a free country. If from the beginning our nation 
 had been free from the saloon in politics, and it should come down 
 upon us in a day, it would convulse the people with indignant and 
 expulsive energy. Every country neighborhood would rise in 
 wrath against the mortal foe of good government. A million 
 foreign soldiers, landing at Hampton Roads and marching on the 
 Capital, would not shock or stir the people more profoundly. If 
 done for the first time, no community, great or small, would recog- 
 nize or submit to the issues of any election for any office conduct- 
 ed under the auspices and determined by the power of the saloon. 
 But we do submit to such things — submit without a word. 
 
 Through the generations we have been growing used to the saloon 
 in politics. It has come to be like a life-long lameness — a part of 
 the cripple's life. He does not mind it ; he can hardly get on 
 
160 THE SALOON. 
 
 without it ; soundness of limb would bereave him. All along in 
 our nation's history, as in the history of other countries, there has 
 been a feeling of unrest in society, in relation to the liquor traffic. 
 There has been an instinct apprehending peril, and vaguely and 
 often blindly seeking to protect itself. This is the meaning of 
 all the restrictive and regulative legislation from 1636, when Plym- 
 outh Colony enacted a feeble statute, licensing and seeking to hold 
 in check a trade that even then was felt to be hurtful. Very much 
 in the spirit of the old colonists, society has gone on for two 
 hundred and fifty years, gravely piling up little sand-heaps, imag- 
 ined to be dykes, against a rising and angry sea. 
 
 To state fully the evil power of the saloon in our politics, requires 
 a knowledge of the evil thing and its ways that no good and honest 
 man can have. The saloon people understand their power, and use 
 it to the utmost. Some years ago, a bar-keeper in Richmond, Va.,, 
 heard some talk of a reform movement in municipal politics. 
 He laughed it to scorn, and declared his faith in his god : " Any bar- 
 room in Richmond is a bigger man in politics, than all the churches- 
 in Richmond put together." A leading senator, who was not a Pro- 
 hibitionist, but who had voted against the insolent demands of the 
 whisky ring, said to me in this city three winters ago : " Men talk 
 of the power of banks, railroads and other great corporations in 
 Congressional lobbies; I tell you, the hardest ring to stand up 
 against is the liquor ring." Seeing what the liquor power has 
 accomplished in national and state legislation; how it challenges 
 the respectful attention of the great parties, and has always done it; 
 how it manipulates municipal governments, whether in great cities 
 or interior villages ; how it packs legislatures, town-councils and 
 juries; how it subsidizes what newspapers it wants, or, when it can- 
 not hire, sets up its own; seeing how desperately hard it is ta 
 resist, and how often and completely it wins — there seems to be 
 reason in the senator's conclusion. 
 
 It may well be so. The liquor power has vast resources, 
 and its profits are so great it can well afford a lavish use of 
 money. It is directed by shrewd men, ripe in evil wisdom, 
 and they know how to put their money where it will dO' 
 the most good. They are unscrupulous, and hesitate at noth- 
 ing they dare. Conscious of their power, they will dare most 
 things. 
 
 As long as men are weak or wicked, the liquor power endured 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. G. HAYGOOD. 161 
 
 will buy or compel what it wants. Our tyrant has every oppor- 
 tunity ; the universal diffusion of the saloon secures an active, 
 interested, potent ally, in every precinct. Elective affinities bring to 
 the saloon, and into the circle of its despotic influence, the very 
 men it needs — the men who cast their ballots with the least 
 intelligence, the least conscience and for the lowest price. A 
 pauper drunkard who can stand up long enough to deposit his 
 ballot, counts as much as the Chief Justice. This statement 
 does not revile our principle of universal suffrage, but it does 
 show how necessary it is to guard so great a power from per- 
 versions so easily accomplished. 
 
 Mr. R. D. Lodce (Petroleum V. Nasby), who knows men and 
 the methods of the liquor power better than- most observers, 
 states the case with conclusive force and clearness. Some of his 
 strong statements I quote at this point: 
 
 " The loss to the country in the amount of money actually 
 paid for intoxicants, and, consequently, worse than lost, is the 
 least of the evils resulting from it, and consequently the least 
 important reason for prohibition. A far more important reason 
 is the infernal part it plays in politics. In Toledo, with 90,000 
 population, there are 800 whisky and beer shops. The vote of 
 the city is 15,000. Now, these shops will average two votes each, 
 the proprietor and one assistant, which makes a total of 1,600. 
 This is a tremendous power, especially as it is wielded by one 
 head. All these men belong to the Liquor Dealers' Association, 
 and act together. These men have no principles. They are not 
 divided upon tariff, currency and other questions; politics is part 
 of their business, and their vote is cast as one, that it may be made 
 profitable. They are in a business that everybody looks upon as dis- 
 reputable; they are in it to make money, and they care not how 
 they make it. In party contests this power has two points to make. 
 First, to demonstrate that it is a power which is not to be meddled 
 with. No matter whether the candidate aims at the Presidency, a 
 seat in Congress, a school directorship, or a park commissionership, 
 the first question the Liquor Dealers' Association asks, is. Is he a 
 temperance man ? If he is, the whole power of the organization is 
 turned against him. They want it understood that no one can be 
 elected to any place of honor or profit without their help. The 
 showing of this power ensures them against such troublesome inter- 
 ference as the enactment of early-closing laws, Sunday closing. 
 
162 THE SALOON. 
 
 large taxation, and above all, prohibition. They aim at the 
 control of the law-making power as well as the law-executing 
 power. 
 
 "Secondly, they want their places to be made the center 
 of political management, the places where committees meet, 
 and from whence money used in the elections is to be dis- 
 pensed. From this money they take their toll, as a matter of 
 course." 
 
 Mr. Locke shows that if, to the i,6oo men immediately engaged 
 in saloon-keeping in Toledo, there is added the men who are in 
 collateral trades and who are directly influenced by them, there 
 will be a total equal to nearly half the entire vote of the city. Who 
 can gainsay his conclusion ? " It is a power which can and does 
 control the cities of the country. Parties vie with each other in 
 bidding for the saloon vote, nominations are made with sole refer- 
 ence to it, and this unholy power would become the government, 
 but for the counteracting influence in the country, which is yet, to 
 some extent, free from its dominion." 
 
 Could not every city and large town in the country furnish con- 
 firmations of the foregoing statements ? 
 
 One illustration, startling and instructive, I offer. It is taken 
 from a recent official report made to the House of Representatives 
 of the Legislature of Tennessee. The committee was " appointed 
 to ascertain the number of liquor dealers in the state, and the 
 amount of revenue due, and the amount paid to the state by 
 liquor dealers." In the introductory statements of the committee, 
 preceding their appalling columns of statistics, occurs this para- 
 graph : 
 
 " We have been reliably informed that in a certain district of the 
 state the present Judge and Attorney-General were supported in 
 their election by whisky dealers, with the express understanding 
 that they should not be prosecuted for not taking out a state 
 license to sell whisky, or, if prosecuted, that the fine, if any at all, 
 should be nearly nominal." 
 
 The committee naively add : " In this case, as in all others of 
 delinquent payers, the clerk should issue a distress warrant and 
 take immediate steps to collect such tax due the state." As if the 
 bad thing they discovered was the loss of revenue ! What 
 sort of distress warrant should the outraged people issue in 
 such a case ? 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. G. HAYGOOD. 163 
 
 THE SALOON AND MORALS. 
 
 It is enough to name this part of the subject. As well repeat 
 the multiplication table here, as to argue that the saloon fosters 
 -vice and breaks down virtue — fosters every vice and breaks down 
 every virtue of which man is capable. The vilest vender of liquor 
 knows this, and, when he speaks truly, does not deny it. The 
 saloon recognizes its evil nature ; it never pleads the good it does 
 as a reason for existence. It has absolutely but one motive — 
 money-gettmg ; it lives on men's weaknesses and vices ; it makes 
 men weak and bad, that it may extend its trade and increase its 
 gains. Its greed js insatiable and pitiless ; it adulterates what it 
 sells with drugs, and makes the thirst of its victims a mere animal 
 rage, that overturns the reason, sears the conscience and paralyzes 
 the will. 
 
 We are considering the "Saloon as a Peril" to our institu- 
 tions. It does not need argument to show that whatever impairs 
 or destroys the morals of the people, impairs and destroys what- 
 ever is good in their institutions. 
 
 Certain conditions that obtain in our national life at this time 
 increase the power of the saloon to do its work of ruin. 
 
 It is not too much to say that we live at a time when opportunity 
 is only equaled by the perils that come with it. History has no 
 parallel for the marvelous growth of our nation in all the elements 
 ■of material greatness. Ours is a vast country, wit)i resources 
 unmatched in any part of the world. 
 
 Our territory is filling up with all sorts of people from all 
 countries. Presently there will be a hundred millions of us — at no 
 •distant period, twice a hundred millions. With the immigrants flock- 
 ing to our shores are many of the excellent of the earth, and they 
 are welcome; among them come thousands who bring us only evil, 
 and every kind of evil. These have no ideas or sympathies in 
 common with the genius of our institutions. There is nothing in 
 them in harmony with those influences and principles of life that 
 have made us a great people; they come with notions and feelings 
 hostile to what is truly characteristic and good in our national life. 
 The worst elements in this foreign life gravitate to the saloon as 
 soon as it reaches our shores. It is in sympathy with the saloon, 
 and, as all men know, in the large cities and towns the foreign 
 element is the surest support of the liquor traffic. In the large 
 
164 THE SALOON. 
 
 cities there are few elections that the saloon and its foreign vote 
 cannot control. The bad element in the foreign life that is steadily 
 flowing in upon us, the saloon only makes worse. And every evil 
 tendency, native and imported, is by the intensity of our Ameri- 
 can life forced into more rapid development than would be possible 
 in a lower and less eager country. The saloon aggravates all. In 
 
 THE SOUTHERN STATES OF THE UNION 
 
 the saloon has a rare opportunity for its evil work; it has made the 
 most of it. Emancipation brought great blessings to both races, 
 but it also brought new responsibilities and new dangers. The 
 negro race in slavery was a sober race. As a rule, under the old 
 x^gime, they could not get intoxicants; for them prohibition was 
 enforced. Emancipation opened the saloons to them. The life- 
 long restraint seemed to make them eager to exercise their freedom 
 in whisky buying. Of the lower order of saloons in the Southern 
 States the negroes are steady customers. They buy cheap liquors, 
 and therefore the worst. The mass of them are very poor, and' 
 dram-drinking keeps them poor. They are ignorant and easily 
 imposed on. The saloonist knows their weaknesses and uses them 
 foir his ends; he is master now. 
 
 In this case the exception illustrates if it does not prove the 
 rule. The press despatches, giving the result of the recent election 
 in Atlanta, Ga., were evidently not written by a hand over-partial 
 to the Prohibitionists. The despatches dwelt upon the fact that 
 the saloon vote prevailed in every precinct in Fulton County but 
 one, " the South Bend District." The reporter felt that an expla- 
 nation was due the country, and he added : " In this district is 
 located Clark University, a school for colored people, and the 
 result in this district is attributable to the colored students." 
 
 As a rule, the saloons may count on a solid vote from the unedu- 
 cated colored vote. The uneducated white vote is little if any 
 more to be depended on by reformers. But there are more than 
 six millions of negroes in the Southern States, and thinking people 
 will consider what possibilities of mischief their condition gives tO' 
 the saloon in politics. 
 
 Whatever is weak or bad in our institutions the saloon uses for 
 its profit, and by using makes worse. The best things in our 
 national life are unfriendly to the saloon, and it seeks steadily their 
 overthrow. The saloon hates the Sabbath, because Christian con- 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. G. HAYGOOD. 165 
 
 science makes Sunday dram-selling illegal and punishable. It 
 wants more of Saturday night's wages than Saturday night's trade 
 affords. The saloon is the natural enemy of the home; if boys are 
 contented at home, they will not spend their time and money in 
 drink-houses. It is the enemy of education, for education abridges 
 its power to delude the people. It is, by instinct, the enemy of the 
 church, for religion does not patronize it nor make peace with it. 
 It hates the Bible, as the inspiration of every movement towards 
 enlightening and lifting up its victims. 
 
 The more carefully they inquire into the subject, the more 
 clearly will the true lovers of free institutions, of virtue and relig- 
 ion, see that in the saloon is a great peril to all they hold dear — 
 a peril only, and that continually. 
 
 The Chairman: It may add something to the force and sig- 
 nificance of what Dr. Haygood has said with reference to the 
 negro vote of the South, to state that he is very familiar with the 
 effects of intoxicating liquors upon the negroes. He is the general 
 agent of the " John F. Slater Fund," which devotes the proceeds of 
 a million of dollars annually, to the education of the negroes of the 
 South. 
 
MORNING SESSION. 
 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8. 
 
 The session was opened with devotional exercises, conducted by 
 Rev. J. G. Butler, D. D., of Washington, and Rev. L. T. Chamber- 
 lain, D. D., of Brooklyn. Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court,, 
 presided. 
 
 The Chairman: The subject of the first paper to be read this 
 morning is " Perils to the Family," a subject that ought to be one 
 of interest to every citizen of our countr)-: for what concerns the 
 family, concerns not only the safety of the civil government, but in 
 Urge measure the safety of the church. I take pleasure in pre- 
 senting to the Conference the Rev. S. W. Dike, of Auburndale,, 
 Mass. 
 
 166 
 
PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 BY REV. S. W. DIKE, OF AUBURNDALE, MASS. 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL DIVORCE REFORM LEAGUE. 
 
 I am to make a few suggestions on a subject too great to be 
 fairly outlined in a brief paper. 
 
 The object of our study is the simple family of Christian civili- 
 zation. The essentials of this family are one man and one woman, 
 united in wedlock, together with their children. Other persons 
 may be connected with them by ties of kindred or of service, or 
 this simplest form of the family may become a fragment through 
 the losses of death. But these are accidental relations or natural 
 deficiencies. We are now to deal with the simple, ideal family, 
 which we all hold to be the true family of nature and Christian 
 civilization. 
 
 Though it would be agreeable, and even necessary to a complete 
 view of the case, to turn to more hopeful aspects of the subject, 
 the terms of the theme confine us to the perils of this family. Let it 
 also be kept in mind that we have nothing to do here with either 
 the optimistic or pessimistic views as such. It is our present duty 
 to make a simple statement of facts, with some attempt to put them 
 where their deeper meanings can be seen. It may be interesting, 
 and in some degree profitable, to know whether the family life of 
 our people, as a whole or in sections of the country, is better or 
 worse than it was twenty years ago; but the inquiry does not seem 
 to me to be of very great practical use. For, after all we may 
 gain from that point of view, very little light is thrown upon the 
 more important question that is really before us. That question 
 is this: 
 
 Is the family in this country where it should be ? Has it the integ- 
 rity and ability to do its appropriate work, and to do this under the 
 peculiar strain modern society is putting upon it ^ Before this inquiry, 
 all question as to the comparative strength of the family of to-day 
 
 167 
 
168 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 and of a hundred or less years ago must retreat to a subordinate 
 place in our study. 
 
 The main reasons for this Conference, if I understand them, 
 rest on the conviction that our social life is putting all the forces of 
 our Christian civilization to the test, and that the time has come 
 to measure the perils and examine our resources. We want better 
 churches, better schools, better industrial organizations, and better 
 political institutions; and, as will be seen, I trust, before this paper 
 closes, we want better families as the very foundation of nearly all 
 the rest; and accordingly, we ask. Is the family where it should be ? 
 Has it been studied and guarded and used and improved even as 
 the churches and schools have been ? 
 
 I. The perils of the family considered by itself. That is, let us 
 first look at the family merely as one of the things in society — 
 simply as a social product, if you please — and see what its perils 
 are. The United States have ten or twelve millions of families. 
 In round numbers, half a million of these are produced every 
 year, through that number of marriages. Now, what is our 
 success in this most important production ? We will take substan- 
 tially the tests used to determine the success of any business. 
 Everybody, no matter what his opinions may be on ways and means 
 of solution of the problems involved with our subject, will agree 
 that the great ends of our domestic institutions are best served, 
 and that they come nearest their intended objects, when the fol- 
 lowing chief conditions are most fully met: 
 
 First, the number of families annually formed in happy marriages 
 among the adult population of proper age in a country, will bear a 
 high ratio to that population. Secondly, they will be reasonably 
 fruitful in well-reared children, and in the perfected character of 
 the parents through the home life. And thirdly, they will continue 
 pure and strong until the natural end of the union which gave them 
 being, in the death of either husband or wife. I think you can 
 take these conditions, with the careful qualifications which are to 
 be understood as going with them, before any set of people of 
 common intelligence and morality you may meet, and command 
 unqualified consent to their justness. When these conditions are 
 not met, there is something wrong, as every manufacturer, every 
 producer of any sort in the land, as well ais the student of vital 
 statistics, can easily see. 
 
 Let us apply the last test first, as that is the one most usual, 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. 169 
 
 «specially in vital statistics. What proportion of the national prod- 
 uct of families meets an untimely end ? Take those which are 
 judicially dissolved. I regret that I must write several months 
 before the results of the important investigation into the 
 statistics of and relating to marriage and divorce, ordered by the 
 last Congress, can be known. But let me give some facts that we 
 •do know, with more or less completeness of detail, concerning 
 fifteen or more states and territories. In two or three of them the 
 divorces have never risen to five per cent of the marriages for the 
 same period. In a few they have been between five and ten per 
 cent. In some three or four they have been repeatedly as high as 
 ten per cent, and there is good reason to believe that in California, 
 and perhaps in other states or territories, they have reached twelve 
 or even fourteen per cent of the marriages. 
 
 Now these facts amount to a practical confession that five, ten, 
 twelve, and even fourteen per cent of the families in certain large 
 communities are beyond the reach of all Christian or philanthropic 
 or civil means of relief, and the only thing that can now be done is 
 for the state to put them out of the way, somewhat as ancient 
 society used to relieve itself of its defective classes, or to set free 
 persons who have failed in one or more marriages, to make a new 
 experiment. And to this percentage actually granted to show the 
 extent of the disease, we must add a fourth to represent those 
 Avhose petitions for divorce are denied, though these do not all 
 belong exactly to the class I am speaking of. But we must add 
 something, and a good deal larger figure than those who have not 
 looked into this particular phase may guess, to cover the numbers 
 ■of families dissolved by desertion and other means without legal 
 process. In some cities and towns, investigation shows that con- 
 siderable numbers discard the legal steps out of one marriage into 
 another, and that illicit unions as substitutes for marriage are of 
 dangerous frequency. This practice is not unknown in country 
 towns. 
 
 Here, then, in many communities, through the courts or in open 
 disregard of law, something fatal to the very existence of the fam- 
 ily occurs to from one-tenth to one-fifth of the families, before they 
 have lived one-half of their appointed years. 
 
 But what shall we find when we add to this number those other 
 families where the formal existence is continued, but among whom 
 unchastity, adultery, intemperance, cruelty and other loveless rela- 
 
170 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 tions have robbed domestic life of its virtue and made many 
 unions a living death ? Here statistics fail. We can only observe 
 and reflect on that which forces itself upon our minds. 
 
 The declining fruitfulness of the family — to take up the second 
 test — especially among people of the so-called native stock, 
 has become a matter of serious concern. In Massachusetts, 
 the mother of foreign birth has on the average fifty per cent more 
 children than the mother born in this country. It is true that the 
 death-rate among children of foreign parentage is much greater than 
 among the others, but after all allowance for this, the parent of for- 
 eign birth rears a much larger percentage of children than the other. 
 And notwithstanding the presence of the foreign element, the birth- 
 rate in some of the older states is lower than in most European 
 countries, and is steadily declining. Francdf is the only country in 
 Europe whose birth-rate is as low as that of Massachusetts, and 
 France is alarmed at her condition. Massachusetts is indifferent. 
 For she can still recruit her population from Ireland and Canada. 
 But other states are doubtless just as badly off. No well informed 
 physician believes that this low birth-rate is to any great 
 degree due to loss in reproductive powers, though there is some- 
 thing in this — more, however, as effect than as cause of a declining 
 birth-rate. In three or four sections, and these are large enough 
 to be seriously indicative, the physicians are of the opinion that 
 legitimate children would be fifty per cent more numerous but for 
 criminal deeds. This refers to all classes of people as a whole. 
 In some of our cities, and among intelligent and even Christian 
 people, and very widely too in rural communities, it looks as if 
 there is a prevalent and growing intention, even at the cost, if need 
 be, both of good morals and law, to let the inferior classes rear 
 most of the children. Many of the families which are best fitted 
 so far as pecuniary means and social opportunity are concerned, 
 are deliberately choosing to be unfruitful. And it is the testimony 
 of gynaecologists that more of their patients come from this 
 class than from those women to whom maternity has brought its 
 natural ills. 
 
 We must not shut our eyes to the fact that there is a very strong 
 tendency among us to turn over the work of rearing the children 
 who are to be the parents of the next century, to the classes who 
 are least fitted for the task, and that we are thus greatly adding to 
 the burdens of state and church. The so-called dangerous classes 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. 171 
 
 multiply. We accept the increase and try to care for it, but with- 
 out seeking to cleanse the fountain or to increase the forces of 
 the good through the laws of nature as well as by special grace. 
 
 It is difficult to speak now with confidence on the marriage-rate,, 
 for most of the states publish no trustworthy statistics, and this, 
 rate rises and falb within certain periods following the fluctuations, 
 of business and other social disturbances. But in the older com- 
 munities it is probably steadily declining. There is also an 
 undoubted increase in cities, and probably elsewhere, of those whO' 
 deliberately forsake marriage for illicit relations. 
 
 The paper that is to follow will deal with the vice that touches. 
 the physical basis of the family. I will simply say, that our general 
 failure to look at this subject squarely and frankly, our popular dis- 
 regard of its true point of view — from the family as well as from 
 the individual — and forgetfulness of its effect on the most sacred 
 and organic relations, take this vice entirely out of the ordinary 
 categories and make its perils far greater than those of other 
 vices, as judged through any ordinary comparisons by count of 
 instances. 
 
 The evil of divorce has increased with alarming rapidity within 
 twenty or thirty years. In some states the greatest increase has. 
 taken place within twenty years. In some it has reached a high 
 rate, and now increases slowly or not at all. And in these it has 
 permeated very thoroughly all classes outside the churches, and 
 made sad inroads in the church itself. I incline to think that the 
 divorce-rate in this country, in most states, is double what it was. 
 thirty or even less years ago. It certainly has doubled in Europe 
 within that period, though the highest rate there is only five per 
 cent of the marriages. But here, unlike the case in Europe, the 
 highest rates in many of the states are not to be found in the 
 largest cities, but in rural counties. Intelligent New England has 
 repeatedly granted over 2,000 in a single year, and Ohio alone has 
 nearly reached that number. The evils of democracies seem demo- 
 cratic in their hold on the people. The Roman Catholic popu- 
 lation everywhere, probably, and the foreign population generally 
 in the East, is comparatively free from divorces. But in the 
 West the foreign, element, especially the non-Catholic, seems 
 to vie with the rest in the resort to courts. There is, also, 
 reason to think that heedless marriages, a decrease in the whole 
 number of marriages and of children, with an increase in illegiti- 
 
172 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 mate births, and a great increase in the various offenses against 
 chastity, have accompanied the increase of divorces. 
 
 I have no time to speak of Mormon polygamy. It is hardly 
 necessary to do so ; for it is simply an open and defiant challenge 
 of the monogamous family in theory and practice. Its very nature 
 and gross concentration make its evils obvious, and really less of a 
 menace to our -social order than the secret sapping of the theory of 
 the family through the silent working of divorce and these other 
 evils, from their general diffusion. 
 
 Looking, then, at the family, simply as a product of society, 
 we find grave perils. They vary in different states. In some, 
 divorces are notoriously frequent; in others, disorderly marriages 
 and the like are more numerous than the divorces, and divorces 
 tend to increase in those states formerly most free from them. 
 With the increase of common interests all the states suffer through 
 the evils of any one. Comparisons are of little use among our- 
 selves or with Europe, whose social morality affects us more 
 deeply every year. We have seen enough to know that our own 
 society falls far short, in producing a maximum of sound families 
 that attain those great objects, and reach that natural end which 
 marks the termination of a successful life. 
 
 The present state of the law that regulates and protects the 
 family is a very great source of danger. Our marriage laws are 
 simply inadequate. Compare the legal protection of the family 
 with that given to real estate. Every woman who owns real 
 property finds ample legal protection. She may have a bond for a 
 •deed. The written deed duly made out, with the assurance of a 
 perfect title, signed, sealed, witnessed and fully recorded, with 
 •every transfer properly noted, so that not only those immediately 
 concerned, but the entire public, may know at any time the exact 
 legal condition of every piece of real estate in the land, with laws 
 aimed at protection against fraud, abuse of trust, theft, incendia- 
 rism and other injuries — and reasonably well enforced too — these 
 are the protections which every woman has for her property. But 
 her hold on the family in marriage is a very different thing. 
 In more than one-third of the states and territories a marriage 
 is legal without a scrap of writing, or a witness, or even the 
 intervention of an official of any sort. No decent system of public 
 record exists in many states, while very few both keep and publish 
 these records. Where licenses are required, the mere word or the 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. I73 
 
 oath Of an interested party is the basis of the permit, and no 
 evidence is demanded to prove freedom from a former marriage. 
 We have to take the people who move into our communities, and 
 the immigrants from Europe, simply on trust in respect to their 
 domestic ties; and this is frequently shamefully abused. And 
 our laws protecting chastity are probably less frequently enforced 
 than those of any other class, unless we except those in defense 
 of the Sabbath. The legal protection of property is infinitely 
 superior to that of the family. 
 
 Our divorce laws are almost as various as the number of legis- 
 latures that make them. Divorces can be obtained for a dozen 
 legal causes in some states, and they are often made elastic 
 enough to cover every conceivable reason for divorce. They can 
 be obtained in 2,700 courts in the United States, and in some 
 legislatures besides. These courts sit frequently, and sometimes 
 constantly, in open court or private chambers. The procedure is 
 often so easy that fraud is frequent; and disregard of the rights 
 of others, haste and the eager hurry to marry another, can be 
 readily gratified, and in some states divorce can be had by 
 either husband or wife, almost for the asking. The conflicting mar- 
 riage and divorce laws of the country have less to do with the 
 increase of divorces than most people think, but they are a great 
 evil in their opportunities for fraud, and in the uncertainty they 
 give to the legal status of the married or divorced, as they pass 
 from state to state, and of their children. And not the least of 
 the evils is their effect on the popular ideas of what marriage 
 and the family are. And then the national government has 
 allowed the crude territorial legislatures to make their own laws 
 on this subject, and these in many cases stamp upon a future state 
 an exceedingly loose system of domestic law. This has been 
 done; while Congress is directly responsible for the laws of the 
 District of Columbia, whose effects have long been an offense to 
 her best citizens, and against whose compulsory administration 
 high-minded judges have inwardly revolted, and sometimes openly 
 complained. Congress has regulated marriage and divorce in 
 Utah, but neglects Dakota and the Capital of the country. 
 
 If the condition of public law be an indication of social con- 
 dition, and it is usually so regarded, I do not believe there is any 
 considerable civilized people in the world that is taking so great 
 risks with the family as we are in these United States. Property 
 
174 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 is carefully protected. The individual, especially woman as an 
 individual, has increasing security. But there have been no corre- 
 ;sponding gains in the laws of the family. As a whole, with the 
 notable exception of modifying the family law of property to 
 suit the demand of the individual in the interests of property, 
 we are about where we were fifty years ago in family law; 
 before railroads, factories, telegraphs, daily newspapers, foreign 
 immigration, and a silent change of the basis of the defenses of 
 morality from the authoritative and dogmatic to the more purely 
 natural and rational grounds, had wrought a tremendous social 
 revolution. As a mere matter of fact, the old defenses of our 
 domestic life are proving weak before the new social strain upon 
 them. 
 
 But we have not yet taken the real measure of these perils. 
 Let us take another point of view. 
 
 II. The perils of the family considered from its relations to the 
 social order. The family is historically the germ of all other 
 social institutions. The history of the rise and growth of relig- 
 ious institutions gives large place to the story of their development 
 from the family. Political institutions — village, community, town, 
 ■city, state, nation — have come out of the family, as the oak 
 springs from the acorn. The early and later history of property 
 is intimately connected with that of the family, and the whole 
 modern industrial system is largely an expansion from the domes- 
 tic industrial order, and profoundly connected with the family. 
 Educational institutions are no exception to the rule. All the 
 great modern social institutions have primarily drawn their life 
 from the family. The two most distinct products of modern 
 society are probably the individual, and his liberty of contract. 
 JBut as Sir Henry S. Maine, the great English historical jurist, 
 shows us, these have come at the expense of the family and 
 status through property, as the great instrument of the move- 
 ment. As the individual and the principle of contract have 
 ^rown, the family and status have shrunk correspondingly from 
 their old place in law. 
 
 Now if the family were nothing more than the historic germ of 
 the other institutions, we might safely let go of it, as we gain the 
 higher and broader development, just as the full-grown oak can 
 spare the acorn. But we cannot do this. For the family is the 
 abiding element in them all, and of society as a whole. In the 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. 175 
 
 process of their growth it becomes the all-pervading tissue that con- 
 stantly enters into the entire fabric, and builds up and supports 
 every part of it. {n a highly organized society, the home receives 
 and distributes to the individual the inspiration and power of religion, 
 and then it sends back to the church its own religious strength or 
 weakness. No other agency does more fundamental, probably 
 no other does so much good work as the family, toward the 
 instruction and practice of those principles of obedience, order, self- 
 restraint, regard for others, and self-sacrifice, which go to make 
 ^ood citizens and good rulers. No other factor enters more largely 
 into the industrial problems of the times than the home. Scarcely 
 any other single element of wealth has, when taken in the aggre- 
 gate, the economic importance of the home. And after all that 
 may be said in behalf of our system of common schools,, the family 
 yet remains the source of a great and invaluable part of our educa- 
 tion. Or, to sum up in the words of Professor H. B. Adams, of 
 Johns Hopkins, who has done so much for the study of social insti- 
 tutions in this country: " The family, oldest of institutions, perpetu- 
 ally reproduces the ethical history of man, and continually recon- 
 structs the constitution of society. All students of sociology should 
 ^rasp this radical truth, and should also remember that the school 
 and college, town and city, state and nation are, after all, but modi- 
 fied types of family institutions, and that a study of the individual 
 elements of social and political life is a true method of advancing 
 sociology and politics in general." I do not fear contradiction 
 from any competent scholar in political science when I say that 
 the study of the single family on its homestead would yield richer 
 scientific knowledge and more practical results in the great social 
 sciences, than almost any other single object in the social world. 
 Pursued historically, the student would find himself at the roots of 
 property, separate ownership of land, inheritance, rent, taxation, 
 free trade and tariff, and discover the germs of international law 
 and the state. The great questions of the day, as we call them, 
 are little more than incidents to the working of the great social 
 institutions; and these, we have already seen, are the expansions 
 and modified forms of the family, amid its unceasing support and 
 activity. "Sociology," the late Dr. Mulford used to say, "is the 
 coming science, and the family holds the key to it." " The family," 
 he also wrote, " is the most important question that has come before 
 the American people since the war." It is of this institution that 
 
176 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 we are so careless in law and practice. No statistics can measure 
 the dangers of trifling with this element of social vitality. With 
 the problems of a young nation on our hands, wUh these amid the 
 seething waters of our times, and with European populations and 
 European problems pouring in upon us, our fundamental institu- 
 tion is too weak for the storm and stress that are upon us. A good 
 family, if it be an average family, or even if it be the best family 
 any nation possesses, is not good enough for us. Peril here exists 
 if the strain is telling at all. And how much it is telling, we may 
 learn from the records of our divorces, and from the sadder facts 
 of daily observation. 
 
 III. The misuse and misapprehension of the family are a source 
 of peril. When any social institution enters so universally into the 
 whole structure of society, and does so large a share of its work 
 as the family, misuse, whether in positively erroneous forms of 
 activity, or in neglect to secure proper exercise of natural functions, 
 is perilous in the extreme, and all the more so, because the evil is 
 subtle and escapes observation. Now, it is almost impossible that 
 the growth of modern civilization can have gone on with its steady 
 increase in the surrender of power and offices from the family t& 
 the other institutions of society, and especially that the great work 
 of bringing the individual into that larger place now given to both 
 man and woman, can have been accomplished without marked effect 
 upon the strength of the family. This movement has undoubtedly 
 been essential to human welfare, and within due limits it is entirely 
 wholesome. By it the family is continually reinforced and rein- 
 vigorated for its own work from the state, the church, the school 
 and industrial society. But the trouble lies in getting beyond the 
 line of safety, or in violating the law of social proportion. If 
 the family does not have its full share in care and use during 
 this social development; if interest in other institutions turn 
 activities away from it; if its great essential functions — those 
 which it cannot surrender, even in the highest stage of civiliza- 
 tion — fall into neglect or be wrongly exercised, there is danger 
 both for the family and all the other institutions with it. 
 
 I think historical and comparative study of the various social 
 institutions will show that just here is one of the weak points 
 in our modern society. Two or three references will serve to- 
 illustrate this, in respect to the practical uses of the family. 
 The remarkable growth of the Sunday-school, for one instance,. 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. 177 
 
 as a means bf the religious training of the young, and latterly, of 
 all ages, has clearly not been attended by a corresponding advance 
 in the religious work of the family. It may have carried this 
 work of the family beyond what it was in the infancy of the 
 Sunday-school ; but the gain, if it exists, has been incidental, 
 and not a direct result of conscious aim. But the improvement 
 in the religious uses of the home has made nothing like the 
 great advance of the church through the Sunday-school. This 
 century, and the last score or two of years especially, not to say 
 the last dozen years, have witnessed a marvelous succession of 
 useful measures for the more vigorous prosecution of the work 
 of the Christian church. But they have generally been devices 
 for the better use of the local church, in some form of assembly 
 or collection of people, and for affiliated Christian effort on the 
 same principle. Conference, association, congress, are the words 
 we hear in ecclesiastical circles. Get people together, is the cry, 
 if you would do them any good. But there has been no such 
 effort and ingenuity put forth in behalf of the family. Almost 
 nothing has been done in this direction until within a very few 
 years; the home studies of Chautauqua and Miss Ticknor of Boston, 
 the more recent home department of the Sunday-school, and the 
 profoundly significant philanthropic methods lately adopted in 
 New York and other cities, by which the home is made the center 
 of preventive and reformatory work, have been initiated with great 
 promise for the future. The collective forms of work must always 
 have a large place, but it is dangerous to give them the whole place. 
 It has the serious limitation of its nature in that it always rests on 
 the possibility of getting enough people together for its objects. 
 And it has positively bad effects, in so far as it blinds the church 
 to its own crying need of religious activity in the home, and to the 
 suffering of the family for want of it. The evangelization of the 
 entire population of the country, by the attempt to put a church, 
 depending mainly on various forms of congregational activity, 
 within easy reach of everyone in city or rural district, is not, perhaps, 
 quite a physical impossibility, but it is and must be a sociological 
 failure. For sociology clearly shows, if I understand its lesson on 
 this point, that the human race acts in three great kinds of collec- 
 tion — in families, in local assemblies of the people, and in repre- 
 sentative bodies; and that is the most successful social order in 
 which every one of these three kinds of collection receives its full 
 
178 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 care, and is made to do its full work for the great social body. .The 
 great peoples of civilization have succeeded or failed in proportion 
 to the nearness of their conformity to this social principle. And it 
 is our danger that we are looking to two of these social forms more 
 than we are to the other, which is scientifically first and funda- 
 mental, and we are doing this while more than half our people live 
 in country towns, and, probably, nearly one-third of these beyond 
 easy access to a church. 
 
 This is the case in religion. It is too much so in education and 
 philanthropy Unless we see to it that the educational functions 
 of the home are more carefully developed, and a closer co-operation 
 between home and school is secured for their common work, a far 
 more real grievance will exist, and in most influential quarters too, 
 than the Roman Catholics think they now have. The family also 
 suffers from neglect in our reformatory work. We look too far 
 away from it for the chief sources of poverty, intemperance and 
 crime, and we begin our reforms too far down the stream we seek 
 to cleanse. Of course, in the interactions of society, the same 
 thing is often at once both cause and effect. If the saloon 
 poisons the home, it is also to be remembered that the home often 
 makes the saloon welcome. Close the saloons and you help, but 
 will not cure the thirst of a bad home; but make healthy homes, 
 and you do much to shut the saloons and dry up most of their 
 springs. When we learn to use our statistics more scientifically, 
 and trace out together the several contributing causes of crime, 
 distinguishing more between the proximate and the real, and give 
 each its place, and mark its relative value, there is little doubt that 
 we shall find that the immoralities of sex, and the other evils of 
 defective family life, have more to do with crime, and very likely, 
 poverty, than even the monster evil of intemperance.* There is 
 a vast deal of misdirected and, therefore, wasted philanthropic 
 work in this country, for want of a sound, working knowledge 
 of the place of the family and its home, in the work of building 
 society. This appears also in the study of industrial problems, 
 where even the eager pursuit of political economy as a science. 
 
 *The inspector of the causes of crime, for England and Wales, has estimated 
 that intemperance and licentiousness have about an equal share in the crimes of 
 those countries. One of our most eminent statisticians and experts in criminal 
 and other social statistics in the United States has given it as his opinion that 
 licentiousness is the most powerful cause of crime in this country. 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. 179 
 
 has yet but here and there brought its students to see the eco- 
 nomic value of the home; while the measure of it as an indus- 
 trial factor is, so far as I know, yet wholly unattempted. 
 
 In connection with the celebration of the seventieth birthday of 
 Mommsen, it has been said, in explanation of his success as a 
 Roman historian, that Mommsen has had the insight and compre- 
 hensiveness to conceive of the history as the outgrowth of institu- 
 tions. It is just this insight into the place and work of the 
 elementary social institutions that the American mind needs in 
 order to understand our great perils and their reforms. For I 
 suppose that if there is any one moral lesson taught by Roman 
 history, and indeed, by the history of all the great Aryan peoples, 
 it is that religion is the source and the soul of all social power, 
 and the family is its first great place of development, and remains 
 its stronghold so long as national vigor continues. It may almost 
 be held as the fundamental law of civilization. All disregard of it 
 is especially dangerous when political power is lodged in the hands 
 of the people. 
 
 The family has not been studied as other institutions have been, 
 particularly in a way to reach the teachers of the people. When we 
 think of the great mass of literature on the nature and work of the 
 church, the Sunday-school, the common school and higher educa- 
 tion, on political and economic problems, and compare this with 
 ■what we have on the family, we shall readily see that we are in 
 peril for want of both elementary and thorough means of study. 
 We have no treatise on the family like that of Mulford on the 
 Nation, and the class of books which it represents. Whoever 
 studies the family will find very few books bearing very directly 
 on this subject. I have found it difificult to point pastors and 
 others to many good books within their means, out of which they 
 could get more than a chapter here and there; and still more in 
 speaking on the family, because the larger portion, even of the 
 graduates of our colleges and seminaries, are almost wholly ignorant 
 of the chief elements in the science of the family and social insti- 
 tutions. The universities, among which Johns Hopkins deservei 
 pre-eminent notice, and some of the law schools, are far in advance 
 of those institutions which train most of our ministers. 
 
 May I say, in conclusion, that it seems to me there is an impor- 
 tant work for the Alliance in co-operation with other agencies in 
 meeting these perils of the family. The facts, as they appear in 
 
180 PERILS TO THE FAMILY. 
 
 the records of our courts, in social and criminal statistics gener- 
 ally, and in the state of our laws, can be brought before the people. 
 These can be made clear and forcible in a better popular knowledge 
 of the place and work of the family in society. And the results of 
 a broader study and wider range of reading in the historical and 
 comparative lines of scientific sociology can be made intelligible 
 and even popular. The National Divorce Reform League has 
 aimed to open these sources of knowledge, and most gratifying 
 results have attended the work. But there is a very great work for the. 
 Alliance also. It has the ear of the churches, and will have it. 
 within its own far-reaching plans. 
 
 I venture to urge a greater intimacy between those who are 
 known distinctively as Christian teachers and the scholars in the 
 great social sciences. I think those who have had a considerable 
 familiarity, both with ecclesiastical meetings and the papers read 
 before them, and with the kind of work they see done by scientific: 
 men in the departments of social science, or whose personal 
 acquaintance has let them into the thinking and work of the two 
 classes of minds, cannot but have been struck with one or two. 
 things. The two classes of men are at work more and more upon 
 what are ultimately the same problems, and are moved more and more 
 by a common spirit. Another impression is, that the two are not. 
 in close enough relations to each other. And a third is that the 
 methods and ways of getting at things are too different. The study 
 of social institutions, the uses of the historical and comparative 
 methods, and the movement towards more scientific statistics, have 
 wrought great changes in the last fifteen or twenty years in mate- 
 rial, methods and results, which no clergyman who deals with the 
 family or any other social problem can ignore, without constant- 
 exposure to mistakes he cannot afford to risk making. 
 
 If this Alliance can become the means of bringing about these 
 closer relations between the great rank and file of the Christian 
 ministry and laymen on the one hand, and our scholars and spe- 
 cial students, who are mostly earnest Christians, on the other hand, 
 it will do a great work for the people. The pastor — whose work and 
 years take him away from institutions of learning, and from those 
 intimacies with scholars and business men of great affairs which, 
 do so much for those who can live among them — needs something 
 which the periodical press, even though he get at the more helpful 
 reviews which have sprung up so plentifully within a half-dozen 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. S. W. DIKE. 181 
 
 years, cannot do for him. A medium of communication for the 
 circulation of tracts, essays, reports of work and investigation, refer- 
 ences to literature on the family and the home, not to speak of 
 other important matters, will soon find itself well used. For one, 
 I waAt to see this special problem of the family, with its perils, its 
 needs, and its great possibilities, brought before the Christians and 
 citizens of the whole country as only combined and systematic 
 «ffort can do it. 
 
 The Chairman: The subject of the next paper is "The Social 
 Vice." This subject may not in some of its aspects be a very 
 agreeable one, but as what will be said will affect or bear upon the 
 very existence of our social organizations, it would be well to con- 
 sider thoughtfully what Colonel Greene may have to say upon this 
 subject. 
 
THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 BY COL. J. L. GREENE, OF HARTFORD, CONN. 
 
 The preliminary step in every form of intellectual activity is the 
 search for the unit of the subject-matter on which it is to be 
 exercised. The more evidently is this the case as the subject- 
 matter rises in the scale of complexity and importance. Every 
 workable theory of its development, every fruitful body of thought 
 concerning it, every proposed scheme of treatment or of action 
 involving it, originates in and takes its direction from some knowl- 
 edge or some conception of that ultimate, irreducible, microcosmic 
 form of the matter in question, of which its total bulk is but the 
 multiple and aggregate. Such knowledge or such conception is. 
 the material of which we build; it is the guide to our processes; it 
 is the test of success, and it is itself tested by the degree in which 
 all the problems into which it is supposed to enter can be resolved 
 into its formula of elements. 
 
 Man's dealing with himself is no exception to the rule. Every 
 study of his own abilities and capacities, and every theory of his 
 relations, rest upon sonie simple and elemental view of himself in 
 which all these are potentially present if not yet in action. Owing, 
 perhaps, to the individual pressure of our wants, to that unsearchable 
 mystery and certainty of individual free will, and to its inseparable 
 consequent, individual responsibility, and, in general, to that which, 
 constitutes personality, that view is usually the individual one. 
 Our theories of the political and social and economic state, and 
 even of the kingdom of heaven, usually refer to the individual man,, 
 his powers, his rights, his wants, his capacities. Humanity in any 
 of its possible estates is apt to be viewed but as the aggregate of 
 his isolated, sterilized mdividuality. 
 
 Without stopping to deny anything that has been or may be 
 propounded from that point of view, it concerns us now to say 
 
 182 
 
ADDRESS BY COL. J. L. GREENE. 183 
 
 that, so far as we know and are charged with the solution of the 
 problems of humanity with its capacities and aspirations, its hopes 
 and fears, its vast and disheartening failures, its slow and painful 
 successes, its gradual, struggling uplift, and in the light that shines 
 before it, the ultimate human element in them is not the individual 
 man. He never stands, he never will stand, from his earthly cradle 
 to the full fruition of his powers in the endless life, nor even in the 
 blight of darkness and loss, in abstract solitude. He is always and 
 indissolubly associated more or less closely with others of his kind. 
 As a mere verbal proposition he can be posited as an individual, 
 the primitive, single, savage, unmeaning human atom of the cabinet 
 philosopher. But as a matter of fact, for any human purpose, the 
 moment he passes from figuring as an intellectual abstraction into 
 any state of activity, the moment he ceases to be used as a physical 
 or metaphysical manikin and becomes alive, he is inconceivable as 
 absolutely individual and distinct. 
 
 Man is set in community. He never escapes it. Out of it he is 
 a creature we never see and cannot know. He is a thread in its 
 texture, and signifies nothing apart from it. He is in community, he 
 is of community. His life is the product of other lives; it pro- 
 duces other lives, but not by itself, and only through community. 
 He lives, and is significant only as he touches and is touched by 
 other lives. Strictly alone he is as the dead. Physically, mentally, 
 spiritually, he is vital and fruitful only as he is in community with 
 other life. To isolate him in conception can therefore lead only 
 to barren thought and moral error. 
 
 Hence, we must discard the cadaver of the demonstrators of 
 spiritual, moral and social anatomies, and take for our human unit 
 the simplest, complete form of living mankind; that form in which 
 we find man in the complete and fruitful exercise of all his powers, 
 in the potential fulfillment of every function. Only so can we 
 know him and combine him. Our unit, our microcosm, must be 
 that simple form of community which is irreducible, yet containing 
 the possibility of the display of every human power; that form 
 which makes complete mankind. That form is the family. The 
 simplicity of its structure is absolute; it is irreducible, indivisible; 
 it is only, perhaps, destructible; the bond of its strength is the last 
 that can be broken; the conditions which it meets make it the only 
 necessarily permanent form of community, and they also determine 
 its own changeless form; it is the lowest sufficing form; simple as 
 
184 THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 it is, it opens the whole field of love and service and law; 
 it alone survives change, and it is the imperishable base of 
 order. 
 
 It is ultimate. Break down all else; destroy nations and tribes, 
 kingdoms and neighborhoods, commerce and industries, and econ- 
 omic systems; so long as the family remains, the potency of all 
 these remains, and their reconstruction is sure; the source of order 
 is not destroyed; its germ is not crushed; its mission among men 
 is not denied; its principle is intact in the unbroken household 
 whence it may set out to renew the earth. 
 
 Accordingly — and this in part must be my apology for approach- 
 ing my topic through a statement of the fundamental and compre- 
 hensive character of the family — we find that every scheme of dis- 
 order in the social state, and every theory of lawlessness in the 
 spirit of man, attacks the integrity of the family and seeks its 
 destruction, or its perversion and degradation by violence or cor- 
 ruption. The anarch instinctively recognizes that until the family 
 is destroyed, until the affections of home are blotted out and turned 
 to lust, and its sweet sacrifices and responsibilities are denied and 
 replaced by tyranny and hate, the fountain of love and service, and 
 the root of law and order remain to restore verdure and flower and 
 fruit after his fiery blight. 
 
 And not only is the family the ultimate form of that community 
 to which service and law and order are eternally indispensable; it 
 is the ultimate home, the very citadel of morals. 
 
 The reproduction of life is the highest function of which any 
 creature is capable. The reproduction of human life, the gender- 
 ing of a human soul to live and act, to love or hate, eternally; to 
 be a deathless source of beneficence or of woe; to rise or fall in 
 endless scale; to set out upon that unending road upon which its 
 feet may never pause^ — this is the highest moral act of which human 
 beings are capable. And not only is this human life, this human 
 soul, derived from other human lives; but so are its impulses and 
 its first imitative actions; so are its first unconscious moral 
 impressions and bias. 
 
 Such are the affections and the necessities of human nature, and 
 such are the numerous exigencies of the case, that the reproduc- 
 tion and fostering care, development and training of human lives is 
 continuously possible only in the family state. Experience proves 
 it. Outside the family, nature soon halts in impotent confusion. 
 
ADDRESS BY COL. J. L. GREENE. 185 
 
 Here is the ordained, indispensable source of life, the beginning of 
 nurture, and the permanent home of morals. 
 
 And yet one step more. The life that is born and nurtured and 
 taught, and set out on its course of undying action in the family, is 
 the image of God. No matter how distorted, crippled, blinded 
 infirm, degraded ; it is the image of the livmg God, possessing in some 
 remaining trace or in some potency of restoration, every feature, 
 ■every faculty, every attribute of the divine Father of us all ; the 
 image which our Lord Jesus Christ came to restore in us through 
 our following of him in his humiliation, his death, and the 
 resurrection in his likeness. The incarnate Son of God reveals 
 to erring man the Father he has left and lost, and sets himself the 
 eternal, perfect example of a human life, and declares it to be a 
 divine life. The end and fruit of Christianity is Christ's likeness 
 in men, the restored, perfect express image of God. In the cradle 
 of life and the first school of nurture is its native home. In this 
 well-fenced field can its results be most securely sought, from the 
 first tender leadings, to the strong self-denial which toils toward 
 perfection through willing sacrifice and suffering ; and in this one 
 abiding human institution where its work begins and bears its full- 
 est fruit, it may find a sure refuge when it has been betrayed in 
 every other house of its friends, and we search for faith upon 
 the earth. 
 
 The cement of this institution, its final bond and tie, and from 
 which all its other bonds derive their force and value, is the pure affec- 
 tion, the mutual loving service of husband and wife, of father and 
 mother. It is only a pure human love that builds the home in 
 unselfish devotion, endows it with countless ministries of benefi- 
 cence, and holds it proof against all the gates of hell. Neither the 
 union for selfish convenience nor that of base passion can produce 
 the results of a true home, any more than they resemble the deli- 
 cate and tender, unconscious glory and majesty of a pure affection. 
 Unselfish purity is the alchemic touch, wanting which, all is base, 
 corrosive metal. And so to this spiritual grace in heart and life, 
 in soul and body, do we come at last for the hope of true loyalty 
 and service, law and order, faith and morals, Christ-like lives and 
 glory with Christ hereafter: we see how certain it is that the pure 
 in heart, and they only, shall see God. And for the corruption 
 and destruction of this grace, how many and cunning and danger- 
 ous and successful are the modes and agencies provided and set 
 
186 THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 afoot by the economy of evil. Impurity is about us like a cloud. 
 It presses inward at all points like an atmosphere. Its grossest 
 forms are its fewest forms ; and its creeping mist tarnishes and 
 defaces even more than it destroys. 
 
 It is not needful in this place to dwell upon the outbreaking,, 
 defiant forms of this evil. The open doors of hell stand wide in 
 every city and town, to lure the footsteps of our sons into the ways- 
 of death, and to make traffic in woman's ruin; and we jostle on the 
 streets their emissaries who with hellish craft and unpitying hearts 
 lure the untaught, the unwary, the giddy, foolish girls to recruit 
 those swiftly thinned ranks that fill our hospitals and our potter's, 
 fields with loathsome disease and premature death, and who put 
 into the hands of our youths and our children a literature of 
 unspeakable depravity. The secret lust of the outwardly respectable 
 has its unsuspected homes of sin in all our quarters; the breakers 
 of marriage vows, men and women, masquerade in our society; the- 
 miserable poor herd in a promiscuity that makes innocence impos- 
 sible and purity almost so; the low wages that make the bargains- 
 on our shop counters press upon the unnumbered army of work- 
 women the constant temptation to sell soul and body to supply 
 needed comfort; and the air of the round world throbs wearily day 
 and night with the foul speech and deadly mirth of foul minds and 
 hearts. But these things we all might see and know for ourselves, did 
 we not try to shut our eyes to them, and draw our skirts about us, 
 and feel that our only responsibility in regard to them is to avoid 
 them. Human pity and Christian charity and righteous indignation, 
 all have here their work of redemption and healing and repression. 
 Let us to-day rather consider some of the commonly unnoticed 
 things which make possible what we loathe and deplore. And here 
 among the multitude of general causes it is difficult to select and 
 rank the most important. Perhaps the order of time is as good 
 as any. 
 
 For the vast majority of American children, the first, and there- 
 fore most potent, outside influence is the public school. Here are 
 thrown together, for years, with little restriction upon, and less 
 supervision over their intercourse, children of both sexes; the lisp- 
 ing infant and the nearly grown man and woman; the refined and 
 the common; the gentle and the brutal; the innocent and the vile; 
 the ignorant and the knowing; the sweet, tender, pure, defenseless 
 little souls to whom all things are yet pure, who know no guile and 
 
ADDRESS BY COL. J. L. GREENE. 187 
 
 suspect no evil, and those in whom lust has been prematurely 
 awakened by evil knowledge and temptation, and sin has already 
 begun some form of spiritual death and bodily vice. 
 
 What is the result ? What can we expect ? For what have we 
 provided the conditions ? What father does not know how often a 
 son's first knowledge of himself is gained from impure associates 
 at school ? What can he expect as to the quality and influence of 
 such knowledge so derived ? What mother does not have evidence^ 
 in the vile words her children use, perhaps ignorantly, that their 
 minds and hearts are being filled with foul thoughts ; that they 
 are being made to hear of vice they may not yet understand ? It is a 
 marvel of our time; and marks a fearful lack of a sense of responsi- 
 bility for results, that tender children, well guarded at home, are 
 turned loose in the heterogeneous crowd of the public school, and 
 never an effort is made to extirpate or defend against the evil 
 influences that are as rife there as fungi in a swamp. 
 
 If a personal statement may be pardoned here, I would say, that 
 having been recently asked to take some oversight of the White 
 Cross work in my own town, the first thought was for the schools, 
 and the first plan to get the teachers to organize some simple form 
 of society among the older boys, to teach them their duty toward 
 themselves and their responsibility for the younger ones, and to 
 repress, as far as possible, all vice of thought, language and behavior. 
 
 It is remarkable, if not amazing, to see how utterly the objections 
 once so strenuously urged against the modern novel have been for- 
 gotten, and how, from being reluctantly conceded a possible legit- 
 imate place in the later refining and equipping of an educated man 
 and woman, it has come to be a part of the daily mental food of 
 nearly all persons, no matter what their age or training. It is 
 almost the sole reading, with one exception, of a majority. That 
 there is much fiction that is pure and noble, and. is an attractive 
 and wholesome teacher, and an immense power for good, we must 
 gladly admit. But it is not the bulk of fiction, nor the part most 
 consumed. And, as an agency for false teaching, scarce anything 
 can compare with the modern sensational novel. The mind is led 
 out on the lines of extravagant fancy, and put off its guard; it is 
 carried idly along without self-direction or sustained effort until it 
 loses the power of both; the imagination is fed upon highly wrought 
 and swift succeeding climaxes, and becomes thoroughly impatient 
 of the slow movement and quiet commonplace of daily life; it 
 
188 THK SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 forgets how patient and humble a thing true heroism is, and sees all 
 things in strange, uncouth relation, in feverish, sensuous dreams; 
 it thinks and speaks in extravagances. And the modern novel 
 deals almost exclusivel}' with the most intimate relations of men 
 and women, under every conceivable variety of difficult and mis- 
 leading conditions, ingeniously contrived to disturb the balance 
 as to those things which one need see most clearly, most truly, and 
 with a quiet mind. In it every vice of opinion, every degree of 
 falsity, every shade of impurity, every suggestion of evil and every 
 denial of good, from faint innuendo and sneer, up to the realism of 
 Zola, floats into the somnolent mind on the current of a fascinating 
 diction, and is lodged home in the heart unnoted in the thrill of a 
 dramatic situation. 
 
 And the modern newspaper of the sensational sort — and they 
 are the many, and read by the many — divides the field with the 
 modern novel. They have grown together, and supplement and re- 
 act upon each other. And if the average newspaper has no theory 
 of immorality to propose, its best space and greatest energy and 
 highest enthusiasm are given to gather daily from the face of the 
 whole earth and set forth every scandal, every filthy and horrible 
 crime, every lapse from virtue, every ruin of a soul, with a luxuri- 
 ance of detail and a suggestiveness of comment that leaves no evil 
 thing to be learned or thought of by those who read it. Journalism 
 boasts its enterprise, that its eyes are turned into every comer; 
 and it is true. Alas, that in the majority of cases it feels called to 
 purvey motal contagion ! It feeds the minds and hearts of men 
 on their own vices. It delights their eyes and imaginations with 
 the mirror of their own deformities and foulness; and its justifica- 
 tion before men for this evil service is that they delight in it and 
 demand it. If, as many affect to believe, there be no such person 
 as Satan, what a waste of material for sardonic mirth! How hope- 
 less of remedy to all but the eyes of Divine pity and Almighty 
 power must seem such a spread and depth of evil conditions! Who 
 can touch all this pitch and not be defiled ? 
 
 Even more insinuating, more appealing, more subtle and abun- 
 dant and powerful in suggestion, more definite and permanent in 
 many of their lessons than any form of literature, are the forms of 
 art, whether in painting, sculpture or music. How great a record, 
 how instantly known and read of all men, of the conceptions of 
 beauty, of the hopes and fears and faiths, the joys and sorrows, the 
 
ADDRESS BY COL. J. L. GREENE. 188 
 
 light and darkness, the sweetnesses and bitternesses of long past 
 generations of men, has come down to us through their media! But 
 here, as in literature, in our day at least, the tares and the wheat 
 are growing together. And of the disseminators of impure sugges- 
 tion, both in its own examples and still more in the strange but un- 
 deniable influence it has upon the art of other countries, a certain 
 well-known type of French art must be reckoned among the chief- 
 est. It is the product of de-spiritualized minds, and does not see 
 its own shame. It is of hopeless fleshliness, fleshly; it has no hope 
 of the future to teach; its clothed figures are suggestively self- 
 conscious; and it exhausts ingenuity in the delineation of mere 
 physical nakedness, "without even innocence, much less spirituality, 
 to mask the uncovering. Its outward gayety, and forced, artificial 
 sentiment do not conceal the cinder of the burnt out life. Time 
 would fail me to point out a tithe of this evil influence; but its 
 range is from the picture-galleries of the rich down to the adver- 
 tisements that reek with shameful hint in the shop windows of every 
 street in the civilized world. 
 
 And when the child passes from the teaching and pressure of all 
 these things into the world of personal contacts, into association 
 with his fellows and under the influence of human institutions, and 
 is taught their faiths by their works, how does he fare then in this 
 matter ? Does he find nothing in the standards of judgment and 
 the conventions of society to confuse his own moral sense and blur 
 the definitions of good and evil ? 
 
 Among many notable things in this regard I will mark two. Soci- 
 ety judges and visits the sin of impurity in women and in men 
 very differently. Perhaps it is because it feels its own power and 
 knows her weakness, and has not wholly ceased to be a coward. 
 But the unfortunate woman who sins, or is even suspected of it, 
 repent she never so bitterly, purify she herself never so wholly in 
 heart and life, loses caste; is socially outcast; every door and every 
 heart is shut, and every hand is raised against her. But her com- 
 panion in guilt, as a rule, and especially if he be wealthy or well 
 placed socially, is not disqualified in any of his relations, even 
 for marriage with a pure woman. What shall the child judge from 
 this ? That character signifies in one and does not in the other; or 
 that the bar of God knows one law for the one and a wholly differ- 
 ent law for the other ? 
 
 Again, how does the child, before whom lies this all-important 
 
190 THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 moral step, hear marriages judged ? Is it by beauty and fitness of 
 character and singleness of pure-hearted devotion; or by the 
 material and social gains or losses apparently involved ? Does this 
 child learn, from what it sees and hears, to look upon its coming 
 mate as the lifelong companion of its own soul in all the joys and 
 sorrows and labors and duties and burdens of this sphere; or as 
 the other party to a bargain in which material consideration must 
 be balanced, with a vague hope that each may chance to get more 
 than is paid for? " Be not deceived: God is not mocked." 
 
 And here come in the modern theories of government and law, 
 and take entire control of marriage and divorce as purely civil mat- 
 ters wholly within the control of the state as a secular power, 
 treating the whole as a matter of the making and annulling of a 
 mere contract; treating it, perhaps, somewhat more seriously in 
 some states than ordinary contracts, but in essence no whit differ- 
 ently. The only conditions involved are, on the one hand, capacity 
 and legal consent to the contract ; and on the other, its breach as 
 a contraqt. Hence that astounding facility of divorce in many states, 
 so familiar that it has ceased to be shocking. The true character of 
 the union as the highest act of the children of God, is wholly 
 ignored, left to individual consciences under no bond to the state, 
 and to the churches and institutions of religion, from which all 
 action save in a purely civil capacity is taken away. It signifies 
 much that in the eye of the law the minister of religion performs 
 the marriage ceremony, not as a minister of religion, but merely as 
 a marrying officer under the law; and that divorce laws usually have 
 reference to no body of either ecclesiastical or even divine law, or 
 religious opinion. And this significance is greatly intensified in 
 view of the character and growing proportion of the foreign element 
 in our population. Much of that population goes through our 
 towns, and passes on to make peaceful homes of industry and 
 thrift and virtue on our interior lands — builders at least of material 
 strength and commercial prosperity. But fast growing numbers 
 gather in our cities and villages, where they gain increasing control of 
 the political machinery, and thus affect our legislative assemblies and 
 their acts. And these people have, in their own eyes at least, come from 
 tyranny to freedom, and tyranny is, in their minds, identified 
 more or less with the whole body of the law whose propriety they 
 deny; and freedom is license. The anarchists, who in their press 
 and their daily meetings openly preach their gospel of hate and 
 
ADDRESS BY COL. J. L. GREENE. jgj 
 
 destruction, and raise a form of terror in all our towns, represent 
 .but the extreme, the final outcome, of a moral taint and intellect- 
 ual error that is spread in varying degree through a great body of 
 -our non-Americanized population. Free love, abolition of mar- 
 riage, separation at will of either— these be their doctrines of the 
 foundations of society— and the children of these destroyers are in 
 the schools of all our large towns. It goes without saying what 
 their influence is. 
 
 Cause and home, as of every other social ill, so of this— there 
 stands, distinct and mighty, that great open school of self-indul- 
 gence, the saloon, with its pupils of every grade, from the initiate 
 young man greedy of pleasure and toying with danger, secure in 
 the conceit of his own self-control, to the miserable worn-out 
 -wretch shivering in horror over the darkness of the pit. It perverts 
 «very sense, brutalizes every appetite, destroys every moral sensi- 
 bility, and sets the body on fire. Its beastly victims think and 
 speak of beastliness, and the incredulous sneer at manly virtue; 
 and devilish glee over woman's ruin are of the highest wit and 
 choicest humor of the bar-room. 
 
 In view of this whole matter, considering its character and the 
 intrinsic nature of its remedy, let us ask what is the attitude of 
 Christian people toward, and their action in regard to it ? 
 
 With here and there exceptions, the answer must be that their 
 attitude is that of avoidance, and their action is to stand still, shut- 
 ting their eyes. The attitude is instinctive. The subject is so 
 intricate and delicate, so difficult to touch, so easily handled mis- 
 takenly, it is so easy to do harm rather than good, so hard to know 
 just the good needed in any case, and there is so much of a false 
 shame as well, that the whole thing is shirked, and children rarely 
 hear a word of what is to them the most important personal matter of 
 this life, from those who are responsible for their entrance upon and 
 training for it. Rarely, at home, at school, in Sunday-school or 
 church, do they receive that which would neutralize or at least min- 
 imize the evil knowledge they will receive from evil sources, and 
 the temptations they must encounter. 
 
 But we have no choice. There is but one remedy. We can 
 fight impurity only by teaching purity. We can guard our child 
 against dishonor only by teaching him how to possess himself in 
 honor. We can prevent evil knowledge only by forestalling it with 
 pure knowledge. We can save him from temptation of the devil 
 
192 THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 through his manhood, only by teaching him that it is his as a child 
 of God; that so he is in the likeness of the creative power of God;, 
 that the family which is founded in the dual image of God is the 
 earthly image of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The true order among Christians in this matter requires that the 
 church teach the parents what they need to know, and that the 
 parents teach the children. But there is a vast field outside this 
 range where such work is needed, both for the saving of those who 
 are outside, and for the more perfect defense of those within. 
 And for this I know nothing better to suggest than the organization 
 of the White Cross League, which originated in the Church of Eng- 
 land, and is meeting with remarkable success. It requires very lit- 
 tle machinery, and is easily used within guilds, church and school 
 societies, and any religious or other associations of young men. Its- 
 pledge is as follows: 
 
 "I, 
 
 PROMISE BY THE HELP OF GOD 
 
 I. — To treat all women with respect, and endeavor to protect them from wrong 
 
 and degradation. 
 2. — To endeavor to put down all indecent language and coarse jests. 
 3. — To maintain the law of purity as equally binding upon men and women. 
 4. — To endeavor to spread these principles among my companions, and to try 
 
 and help my younger brothers. 
 5. — To use every possible means to fulfill the command, 'Keep thyself 
 
 PURE. ' " 
 
 This is comprehensive, and it places the subject where it belongs,, 
 a matter lying in the spiritual life and character of the man. 
 
 If I have spoken truly, though not the half, in this matter — and I 
 have spoken nothing which is not open to all who will see — it is 
 time that we lay to our hand. For, standing here in Christian con- 
 ference, at the period when Christians throughout the world com- 
 memorate the time of this mortal life in which our Lord Jesus Christ 
 came to visit us in great humility, and are musing with expectant 
 hearts on that approaching day when he shall come again in his 
 glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we must 
 remember that as with the great Baptizer in that first advent tide^ 
 so it is with us, who are the body of Christ on earth, broken and 
 divided though we present him, in this later day we also are set 
 " to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord." 
 
GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
 
 J. CAREY THOMAS, M. D., OF BALTIMORE. 
 
 Mr. President and Members of the Convention : I wish 
 to emphasize the ifnportance of giving expression to the sentiment 
 of men in favor of "personal purity" on the part of men. This 
 sentiment exists; but few are aware how little it is known. Good 
 men are often reticent on this subject. Men of loose habits are 
 outspoken. The White Cross movement, with its pledge and its 
 literature, has made possible such expression. A few earnest men 
 in any church or community, or Young Men's Christian Associa- 
 tions, banded together, and pledged to be outspoken in favor of 
 pure life, pure talk and true manliness toward women, will do 
 much to help young men perplexed by the absence of such experi- 
 ence, on the part of those older and more experienced than them- 
 selves, and half inclined to believe those who deny the possibility 
 of pure lives on the part of men. In small places particularly, 
 public sentiment amongst men might and ought to be made to 
 be on the side of purity, and thus many young men saved from 
 defilement. 
 
 This work is eminently a work of prevention, an ounce of 
 which is better than a pound of cure ; a moral sanitation, letting 
 in the sunlight and pure air. How much this is needed, all who 
 study the question know. Care should be taken that it be done 
 in the manly, hopeful. Christian spirit of the White Cross League. 
 A tract such as "True Manliness," or "Buried Seed," or the 
 pledge offered, will often open the way. One example of the good 
 they sow may be given. 
 
 A workingman in a large piano factory joined a White Cross 
 league. He worked at a bench with a number of men. Every 
 day the party was subjected to hearing the recital of stories of 
 impurity and low jests. He had long been troubled by this, but 
 now he felt he must do something. He procured some copies of 
 
 193 
 
194 THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 the tract on true manliness, and put one at the place of each of 
 the men; after reading these the men accused him of the act. 
 This he did not deny, and three-fourths of the men agreed with 
 him, and the evil talk ceased. 
 
 PROF. SIMEON E. BALDWIN, 
 
 OF THE FACULTY OF THE YALE LAW SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, CONN. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : My friend Mr. Dike, in his 
 thoughtful paper, has insisted on the reliance we ought to place on 
 the family as the basis of all society, and on the careless way in 
 which our government and people regard it. 
 
 It is, I think, one of the things in which the Old World was wiser 
 than the New. The Greeks and Romans, we all know, made every 
 family a church. The father was the priest. It had its household 
 gods. It was so in a measure with the Jews, with the Hindoos, 
 with every ancient race. 
 
 And now let me ask. Which of our Christian churches has best 
 remembered this lesson of ancient history? Not, I say, any church 
 represented here. It has been best remembered by that oldest 
 church of all, comprehending to-day the greatest number of Chris- 
 tians in the world — the Roman Catholic church. And I rise here 
 as a layman, sent here from the General Conference of one of our 
 religious denominations in my own state, to say, with some little 
 regret, that I am sorry that in this great convention a more kindly 
 tone has not been manifested towards that venerable Christian 
 church which has its center at Rome. 
 
 A Member: I object to that. I don't believe it's a Christian 
 church at all. 
 
 Prof. Baldwin: That is precisely the sentiment that has been 
 uttered from this platform, and I rise here as a layman to say that 
 in what I have done (and I have done something) in social reform, 
 I have found in my own state, Connecticut, no truer friend in 
 many of these very questions that have come before this body, 
 than gentlemen of the Roman Catholic church. My friend Mr. 
 Dike and I stood together in Connecticut, as organizers of the 
 National Divorce Reform League. One of the best helpers in the 
 cause was a Roman Catholic. Now, I do not desire to raise any 
 
DISCUSSION BY REV. J. W. M. WILLIAMS, 195 
 
 ■question of antagonism to the gentleman on the floor. I simply 
 want to say this, and I do say it-that I think one of the great 
 friends to the cause of social advancement in our cities is the 
 Roman Catholic church. We can't afford to reject its aid It 
 guards the family; it looks at the children, it looks at the home, 
 from the standpoint of a Christian organization; and we ought to 
 make friends with- that church, we ought to bring them in with us 
 in all these causes of Christian and social reform. And unless we 
 do It, we reject one of the great factors that is ready to our hand 
 to help on the cause of Christ in America. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I want the privilege of saying one word on behalf 
 •of the Alliance. I am sorry that Mr. Baldwin, whose admirable 
 work we all respect, has entirely mistaken the temper of the Alli- 
 ance and of what has been said here. I know of no one connected 
 with the Alliance or any of its branches who has not the most 
 sincere respect for the piety, for the charitable organization, and 
 for the order of the Roman Catholic church, and for the good done 
 by it. We all admire and respect many of its members, and 
 among them, all of us have Christian friends whose character we 
 respect and love. The only word that has been spoken here (and 
 it was put admirably in the address of Bishop Coxe last night) has 
 been the fact that we do not believe in the power which is recog- 
 nized by so large a number of the Catholic church — the allegiance 
 to a foreign power that has no sympathy whatever with our advance 
 as a republic or as a Christian nation. [Prolonged applause.] 
 
 Against that, as American citizens and as Christians, we must 
 always protest. Against their attack on our public schools, or on 
 any of our institutions, we must always protest. But toward them 
 as Christians, many of them earnest, faithful, devoted and useful, 
 we have nothing but love, sympathy and regard, and will always 
 work heartily with them ; and we will defend, to our last blood, the 
 rights for them that we claim for ourselves. [Great applause.] 
 
 RKV. J. W. M. WILLIAMS. D. D., OF BALTIMORE. 
 
 Mr. President: I have listened with profound interest to the 
 two papers that have just been read, and I would change the title, 
 "but not one sentiment uttered. These papers show the value of 
 •childhood and the value of womanhood. They have shown clearly 
 
196 THE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 that the family is the first school, and we all know that woman is 
 the chief professor in that school. [Applause.] They show very 
 clearly that the family is the fountain of society, and we know 
 that the children are the outflowing from that fountain; and as they 
 are pure, society is pure and we are safe. It is not the coming 
 man so much as the coming woman. [Applause.] For woman, 
 after all, rules the world, either for good or for evil. You go to 
 the excavated city of Pompei. Your guide conducts you to the 
 old oracle, and shows you where the priest sat and answered the 
 questions that were propounded. The priest was the real oracle. 
 And I have recently made a discovery — but it is as old as the 
 world, and I think you will perceive it to be so — the real man is 
 the woman he carries in his heart. If she be an angel of a 
 woman, she will be apt to make him an angel of a man; but if she 
 be a devil of a woman, look out for him. [Applause.] There, 
 sir, is a great rule; and if in this Evangelical Alliance we can 
 impress upon the ministers, and upon Sunday-school teachers, and 
 upon our families the value of childhood, and they are trained in 
 the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and act on the principles 
 taught in the word of God, the men and women of the coming 
 generation will be a power that can resist the flood of error and 
 skepticism and desolation that is flowing in upon our land. The 
 hope of America is not in your Democratic party, or your Repub- 
 lican party, or your Prohibition party: the hope of America is in 
 the education of our children and the purification of our family. 
 
 Some years ago, a company of travelers stood upon the upper 
 tier of the Coliseum of Rome. Our present Minister to Spain 
 said on that occasion, quoting a passage, " When the Coliseum 
 falls, Rome falls." I added immediately, "The Coliseum has 
 fallen, and Rome lies in ruins." 
 
 Fellow-citizens, when the purity of the marriage relation and 
 the purity of our family fall, America falls. [Applause.] 
 
 REV. M.W. PRESSLEY, D. D., OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 I want just one moment, Mr. President, and only a necessity 
 that is felt deeply in my heart, and one that has been pressed 
 upon me from the outset, prompts me to lift my voice in this 
 assembly now. 
 
DISCUSSION BY DR. M. W. PRESSLEY. 197 
 
 I believe the city from which I come is considered a pretty fair 
 city. The Quaker element has always been a conserving element 
 there, and when we talk about aggressive measures in the attack 
 of evil, we have a great many ministers, eloquent and true, who 
 invite us to go upon some promontory and count the church spires. 
 We have 700 of them, one to every 1700 people, but it is a solemn 
 and awful fact, that we have to look square in the face, and I 
 believe that it is one that the ministry of all the cities of our 
 country must soon look in the face, that we have almost as many 
 houses of infamy in our cities as we have houses of worship to 
 Almighty God. Now it is true (and I see some of the pastors 
 here now) that we' have beneath the very spires of our churches 
 houses of infamy, where young souls are led down to ruin and 
 damnation, because we have not had the courage to roll up our 
 sleeves and put our hands to the evil, and throttle it at its very 
 seat. And I trust that when we go back from this Conference, 
 ■which has been a real inspiration to us all, that in the future it 
 "will be as concrete as it has been abstract; that when we go back, 
 we shall not be ashamed to have our ministerial robes corrupted, if it 
 require it, with contact with suffering, sinful, sinning humanity. 
 And I believe, as Dr. Pierson intimated, that if our religion, kid- ' 
 gloved though it may be in some respects, could be soiled by an 
 honest contact with these living, awful, damning realities that we 
 have to face in our cities, it would be far better for us. And I 
 trust that very soon we, as ministers, shall erect upon our pulpits 
 and in our souls this standard, that a man shall be as deep and 
 as great a disgrace to society who allows his pure name and his 
 fair character to be assaulted, as any woman who may have per- 
 chance, by the inducements of the devil, lost her character. Let 
 us elevate this one pure standard. The gospel of purity is what 
 we want; and I trust that all of us will receive such inspiration as 
 I believe God has enabled me to receive. And I do believe that, 
 if my own city is a representative one, if we do not very soon meet 
 and master this gigantic evil, we shall see the cancer develop- 
 ing upon the very body of Christ. 
 
 I esteem it a privilege, and I feel that God has prompted my 
 heart, to give utterance to these things, and I bid God-speed to 
 the great army of ribbon- workers ; and I believe that if we could 
 come into living, personal, sympathizing contact with such noble, 
 God-inspired women as Frances E. Willard, whose imperial intel- 
 
198 TllE SOCIAL VICE. 
 
 lect and queenly graces are doing much to elevate from the slums 
 to a position of purity and power the masses of our country, we 
 should receive a further inspiration, and redouble our energy in this 
 great work. 
 
ILLITERACY. 
 
 BY PRESIDENT JOHN EATON, LL. D., 
 OF MARIETTA, O. 
 
 LATE COMMISS^PNER OF EDUCATION FOR THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 A measure of ignorance, a sign of darkness, an invitation to 
 fraud, a cover to iniquity, illiteracy is hostile to man's welfare, 
 hinders industry and prosperity, obstructs virtue, imperils piety. 
 Every alliance to promote human good may fitly discuss illiteracy 
 as a mpst serious obstacle. Who shall measure its resistance to 
 man's advancement ? Was ignorance ever hailed as the mother 
 of devotion ? Must not all who go forth bearing the light of the 
 gospel seek to increase knowledge and have the divine word read ? 
 How does illiteracy stand in the way of the consecration of Ameri- 
 can life to its highest ends? A full answer must not be attempted. 
 
 I. The amount and relations of illiteracy. We are dependent 
 upon the decennial census for data. 
 
 Both the reading arid writing tests are applied, giving as " intelli- 
 gent," a low measure of attainments; besides, considering the incli- 
 nation to claim ability, when not possessed, some experts would cor- 
 rect the figures by adding thirty -three and one-third per cent. Can we 
 say how much ignorance is meant by illiteracy ? Is it a lack of erudi- 
 tion, or only of power to read and write the alphabet ? Could we de- 
 termine the exact relation of intelligence to virtue, our task would be 
 greatly relieved ; but no one would assume to draw an unvarying 
 line around either ignorance or intelligence, nor will we attempt to 
 measure out the exact size or significance of illiteracy. We may 
 consider all illiterate who cannot read or write. What a world of 
 thought and fact, human or divine, must remain unknown to them ! 
 Commit to them the progress of mankind, with all its present 
 attainments, and how soon our boasted arts would be buried in the 
 barren wastes of barbarism ! If knowledge is power, ignorance is 
 weakness, and in the presence of perverted intelligence becomes a 
 
 199 
 
200 ILLITERACY. 
 
 temptation, adding greatly to its power for evil. Do we not count 
 the mere presence of knowledge as a safeguard ? Make the igno- 
 rant know, and how soon they begin to protect themselves ! How 
 are vices and crimes reduced by lighting the streets of our cities 
 by night ! Our theories of the action of the will may allow it to 
 choose wrong in the sense of right. The advance of civilization 
 may carry with it possible evils, that must be prevented by the 
 greater effectiveness of virtue. We need not here enter upon this 
 
 ' relation of ignorance to evil, or attempt to explain exceptions, We 
 believe that the life of Him whose name describes our civilization 
 is the light of men, and that it is ours to labor to hasten the day 
 when it shall lighten every man who cometh into the world. We 
 believe that thus come our purer social life, our advance in the 
 sciences and arts, with our larger liberties, our free institutions, 
 our government, resting on the intelligent will of the majority 
 manifested in the form of beneficent laws. 
 
 First. Consider our adult male illiterates or ignorant voters. 
 Our total voting population numbers 12,830,349, of whom 11,343,- 
 005 are whites, and 1,487,344 are colored. Of the whites 886,659, 
 or 7-8 per cent, are illiterate, and of the colored race 1,022,151, or 
 68.7 per cent, are illiterate. We cannot pause sufficiently to con- 
 sider the depth of meaning in these figures. Of every one 
 hundred white male adults, eight, and of every one hundred colored 
 male adults, sixty-nine voters, or jurymen, or witnesses, or soldiers, 
 are illiterates. Did the Fathers build this fair fabric of freedom in 
 the belief that it could stand the shocks and storms of years on a 
 foundation with so large a fraction of ignorance ? How far could 
 this per cent be increased, and the day of ruin put off which has 
 been predicted by the foes of our government ? These ignorant 
 men have a right to seek and accept office. What eight per cent 
 of offices would you assign to these whites, what sixty-nine per cent 
 to these blacks ? The figures do not allow native whites to escape 
 from the responsibility of this ignorance by charging it to foreign- 
 ers or blacks. No section is free from its perils. Bring these 
 masses face to face with the majorities in our elections, and mark 
 how many their united strength would determine ! 
 
 The members of our respective political parties believe in the 
 Tightness of their principles, and seek to make their appeal to reason 
 
 . and conscience ; but the figures declare the alarming fact that in 
 eleven states these illiterate voters outnumbered the votes cast by 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JOHN EATON. 201 
 
 either of the political parties in the presidential election occurring 
 near the taking of the census. Thus, should these multitudes unite 
 under any strong, impassioned leader, they could take control of 
 legislation in these eleven states, and elect twenty-two members of 
 the United States Senate, and a corresponding number of the 
 national House of Representatives. May I not be excused from 
 attempting to delineate the possible influence of this adult male 
 illiteracy, upon bossism, bribery and other forms of political cor- 
 ruption ? Should these 1,908,810 ignorant voters be set apart in 
 states by themselves, they would equal all those entitled to vote 
 in all the New England states, together with all those in the states 
 ■of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Oregon. Should these con- 
 centrations be made, what chance would there be for liberty regu- 
 lated by law among them ? How long could these states be 
 guaranteed a republican form of government ? Who could tell the 
 ■disastrous influence upon our public affairs, our own peace and our 
 prosperity ? Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the vastness 
 ■of our country, its varied climate and natural resources, and the 
 ■complex elements of its population and civilization, must increase 
 the difficulty of solving the questions to be decided by majorities, 
 and thus demand a more extended intelligence on the part of k 
 larger number of citizens, if these questions are to be peaceably 
 ■determined for a long period in the future. Something more than 
 the eternal vigilance of illiteracy is required as the price of our 
 liberties. How long would an ignorant body of voters guard the 
 nice balances which preserve the harmony of our social, civil and 
 religious forces — each in its own orbit, all moving toward the per- 
 fection of human government ? Did not our liberties rest on the 
 will of the people, did they depend on the decree of czar, or 
 the action of an aristocracy or an oligarchy, there might, accord- 
 ing to some notions, seem to be an excuse for indifference ; and 
 yet even imperialists are admonished, by Sadowa and Sedan, that 
 the terrible arbitrament of arms finds victory in intelligence and 
 •defeat in illiteracy. 
 
 Secondly. The economic relations of illiteracy. 
 
 This Alliance believes in this world as well as the next. Christi- 
 anity gives promise of this life and of that to come. It enforces 
 the value of time, urges the duty of honest industry, emphasizes 
 the improvement of means, holds a man responsible for his posses- 
 sions, reveals the laws according to which wealth will conduce 
 
202 ILLITERACY. 
 
 neither to effeminacy nor corruption nor oppression, and according- 
 to wiiich labor will neither be defrauded nor suffer want. When for- 
 tune drops wealth into the hands of the ignorant, who expects from 
 it any of its higher uses ? In all questions between capital and 
 labor, ignorance is liable to become a hindrance to justice by pre- 
 venting the prevalence of clear and large views, and by bringing 
 into play passion and violence instead of reason and moderation. 
 Every man's wealth has its beginning somewhere in the hand of 
 toil. Labor and capital are alike dependent upon its efficiency. 
 Shall we enumerate the embarrassments to the productiveness of 
 labor and capital by the illiteracy of the laborer ? Untaught: first,, 
 he is not observant; second, he is not so thoughtful or reflective;: 
 third, he cannot so surely see errors or correct them; fourth, he 
 cannot improve processes, or implements, or machinery so readily; 
 fifth, he is more clumsy, and suffers the disadvantage of having to 
 use heavier and ruder implements; sixth, he is more liable to 
 destroy and waste ; seventh, he works by rule of thumb, and can- 
 not so well follow those of science; eighth, he requires more 
 supervision ; ninth, he is less able to understand the complications of 
 labor, and less capable of acting wisely for the interest of himself 
 and associates, and less likely to use methods of reason, and more 
 likely to be trapped into hasty and useless schemes by the design- 
 ing; tenth, he is more likely to become a pauper or a criminal. It 
 would be interesting to ascertain how much this ignorance among 
 laborers has to do with their non-attendanc§ upon churches. Sab- 
 bath-schools, and other means of religious improvement, and the 
 absence of their children from public schools. 
 
 Thirdly. The great mass of illiterates, ten years old and over, in 
 relations other than political and economic. 
 
 We take these figures as they are. without considering those 
 under ten who will never receive further instruction, or those over 
 ten who may yet have the benefit of schools. The total popula- 
 tion, ten years old and over, was 36,761,607, of whom 6,239,958, or 
 seventeen per cent, were illiterate. There were 32,160,800 whites, 
 of whom 3,019,080, or 9.4 per cfent, were illiterate; the colored num- 
 bered 4,601,207, of whom 3,220,878, or 70.1 per cent, were illit- 
 erate. Notice how nearly equal are the white and colored, each 
 numbering over 3,019,080, the colored exceeding the white only 
 by about 200,000. How shall we measure the tremendous fact 
 that there are more than 6,000,000, who can have no communica- 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JOHN EATON. 203 
 
 tion with their fellow-men by writing, and who are shut out from 
 so many of the influences which elevate the intelligent. Fortu- 
 nately, they are so intermingled with them, and are surrounded by 
 so many influences which speak to the senses and the untaught 
 reason — fortunately the personal activities required in the exercise 
 of American liberties are such that they are subject to a measure 
 of education, and are often carried forward to good results in 
 spite of their illiteracy. Yet, substantially, in vain for these mill- 
 ions do we establish libraries, print and circulate Bibles, tracts,, 
 books, magazines, newspapers. Send them the colporteur, or Sab- 
 bath-school teacher, or the preacher, and he can accomplish little,, 
 save as he gives ' oral lessons or teaches letters. Our Sabbath- 
 work is mainly among the intelligent. 
 
 The number of illiterate brought under any iorm of Sabbath 
 instruction is small compared with the great mass. How shall we 
 measure the significance of their illiteracy to the family, society 
 and the church, to the progress of truth, liberty, virtue and piety ? 
 Suppose these illiterates should be put by themselves in a territory 
 the size of New, York ; they would equal its entire population and 
 have remaining 1,157,087, or more than the entire population of 
 New Jersey. When these regions were thus peopled they would 
 become missionary ground; and should there appear among them 
 the advocates of the Bible and their opponents, and the advocates 
 of the supremacy of the church over the state, the defenders of a 
 free conscience, the Mormon and anti-Mormon, the destroyer 
 of the Sabbath and its defenders, the friend of purity and the advo- 
 cate of impurity, the defender of the family and its destroyer, the 
 teacher of the common school and his opponent, the preacher of 
 temperance and the rum-seller, the friend of law and order, and 
 the socialist, communist and anarchist— would not this Alliance, 
 nay the whole world, contemplate the contest with the profoundest 
 interest? Would not every bad cause consider the prevailing 
 ignorance ground for its success, and every good cause see in it 
 the disadvantage to itself, and unite with every other good cause 
 to eradicate the universal illiteracy ? 
 
 Again, suppose all these illiterates are put in families by 
 themselves— indeed they are very much so now, and on this 
 account the family is less available for their elevation— the 
 number of persons in our families ten years old and over would 
 hardly average four to the family. If this average should pre- 
 
204 ILLITERACY. 
 
 vail, there would be 1,559,984 families wholly illiterate. What 
 a spectacle in a land of free Christianity, free Bibles and 
 free schools! 1,559,984 families (shall I say homes?) in which 
 there is not a member to whom the printed page freighted 
 with truth, divine and human, for the blessing of the body and 
 mind and the salvation of the soul, is hardly more than a blank ! 
 But these are the alarming conditions in our rural districts and 
 around our city homes. Do we go up to Jerusalem — they are on 
 all our roads. Shall we pass by on the other side ? Possibly we 
 may find, in taking care of them, the only way to Save ourselves. 
 From such benighted homes shall it be difficult for the saloons or 
 brothels, for polygamy, intemperance, idleness, impurity and 
 mendicancy, to find their recruits ? Where else will the arch enemy 
 of man's good revel with greater success ? Let him secure a few 
 sharpened intellects, schooled in his arts, and how rapidly and cer- 
 tainly will the deepest depths of sin and degradation be found. 
 There they shall " walk after the flesh in all uncleanness," "de- 
 spise government," be given to "riot," "speak evil," "cherish lies;" 
 ^' spots," "blemishes are they;" "cursed children," "natural 
 brute beasts," that " shall perish in their own corruption." 
 
 If you have never studied one of these centers of corruption in 
 •our cities, or locked corners of population in out of the way rural 
 •districts, you can have no proper conception of the horrors they 
 •contain. Erect a light in one of these centers, and how soon you see 
 improvement. Study the history of Five Points or the efforts of Dr. 
 Chalmers or Oberlin, or similar labors among the degraded the 
 world over, and you have the same lesson. They are nigh every 
 •one of -us. Study the facts gathered by our organized charities or 
 in our police courts, trace the increasing number of tramps in 
 their hiding-places, and you will verify these statements. We need 
 more careful surveys of social conditions. Otherwise, how can 
 churches or pure and cultivated homes most wisely labor for 
 the degraded around them ? The laws of sanitation are often vio- 
 lated among the ignorant, and fatal diseases go forth thence to 
 destroy those who would closely guard their health; but immorality 
 is no less communicable. No building of walls will ensure against 
 the deadly influence of surrounding contaminations. The presence 
 of a single illiterate given over to iniquity is a terror to every 
 youth within nis influence. Who does not remember the thousand 
 or more whose corrupted blood was traced to the one Margaret, 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JOHN EATON. 205 
 
 the mother of criminals, or the $1,300,000 they had cost the com- 
 munity ? Was not a county of intelligent people recently shocked 
 to find that in its institutions for the care of the dependent or 
 criminal over sixty inmates traced their descent to a single ances- 
 tor, and he is still alive and an inmate ? Does any one believe that 
 the giving to these degraded ones industry, letters, knowledge, 
 virtue or piety will pauperize them ? Does a free gospel poured 
 out like the sunlight, do free schools or libraries, pauperize? 
 Shall we wait action till darkness asks for light, vice for virtue, sin 
 for holiness ? Did Christ wait till the world, lying in wickedness, 
 sought and welcomed him to home and comfort ? Does Christi- 
 anity wait till pa^nism gives its greeting, and sustains its agencies 
 and institutions ? No, the mission of good to evil is not determined 
 by the hard laws of selfishness. 
 
 We err when we regulate our efforts against illiteracy by the law 
 of supply and demand. Again, is it improper to ask here before 
 the Evangelical Alliance of the United States, if there is not some- 
 thing distinctive of American Christian civilization not found in 
 any other than English letters, and not translated into any other 
 than American literature ? Else why are our liberties so misunder- 
 stood ? The Fathers came to enjoy the privilege of a free conscience 
 enlightened by the Scriptures. Out of their planting, by divine 
 culture our civilization has come laden with the richest fruitage for 
 mankind. Many now arrive among us for the same purpose, 
 sharing in the support and benefit of our advancing liberties; but 
 in the great numbers that come — so great that year and year they 
 who cross the wide and separating oceans and are received, all 
 unconsciously, among the homes of our broad land, outnumber 
 the greatest migrations that came from Asia to Europe and joined 
 in that ceaseless flow from the East to the West, transforming 
 nations and races in their savage progress — iri these vast multi- 
 tudes coming hither, there are many who are totally illiterate and 
 many who read in their own tongue, but have never learned of our 
 Protestant Christian freedom, who reject the spirit of our free 
 institutions, and as to the great objects of this American Evan- 
 gelical Alliance are substantially illiterate, and come not to enjoy 
 and preserve our liberties, but only to get gain, as do Chinamen 
 and others, or to destroy,' as do anarchists — to add to the perils 
 associated with the millions of illiterates already among us; trained 
 under the evils of paganism, or no religion, or a perverted 
 
'206 ILLITERACY. 
 
 Christianity, whose first fruits are likely to be unbelief and immo- 
 rality, having lived under governments that are oppressive, used to 
 authority that is tyrannical, and wealth that establishes caste and 
 •delights in cruelty. Some of them, polished in intellect by 
 renowned schools, become leaders among us against a pure 
 Christianity, and seek to destroy a free government which offers 
 «very man of them a share in its suffrages and offices, and under 
 which the roads to wealth and honor are regulated, neither by 
 descent nor caste, but where they are open to all alike — where the 
 rudest laborer if educated, thrifty and honest, may exchange places 
 with the millionaire— where in all the world man's material con- 
 dition comes nearest to the untrammeled enjoyment of the healthful 
 operations of organized life; where in moral and intellectual 
 •opportunities man comes nearest to the enjoyment in which the 
 highest spiritual life is offered from the cross of Calvary by a 
 dying Saviour to a fallen world. 
 
 But you will not expect me to dismiss this subject without some 
 reference to the prevention of illiteracy or its remedy. I remark, 
 first, that illiteracy should have the united opposition of all the 
 agencies that rally under the banner of this Alliance. Illiteracy 
 is a hindrance to all objects which intelligence would promote. 
 Carlyle declares that " all mankind has done, thought, gained or 
 been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books." 
 The power of books, and the influence of all human experience, 
 true science, pure literature and art, the rewards of honest toil, the 
 benefactions of intelligence, unselfish or consecrated wealth, should 
 be aroused against illiteracy. Every man who would benefit his 
 fellow should lift up the light that is in him against its darkness 
 and peril. 
 
 Secondly. We naturally expect the church, divinely commis- 
 sioned to save men, to be among the most active of the organ- 
 ized agencies seeking to prevent or remedy illiteracy. To which 
 of the duties enforced by its divine teachings is not this evil 
 a hindrance ? In the discharge of what one of them is not 
 man's intelligence at once helpful and enlarged ? They who 
 do His will shall know of the doctrine ; they go on to know the 
 Lord. Every duty offers its reward of knowing. Whence comes 
 a higher motive to learn ? What has' it not done for man's 
 progress ? Has not the church a special mission to teach all 
 nations ? Where has it accomplished its work more effectually than 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JOHN EATON. 207 
 
 where there is entire separation of church and state ? Where pro- 
 duced a better government, or brought about a more general dif- 
 fusion of light or practice of virtue, or a more universal dissemina- 
 tion of temporal comforts, or a higher spiritual life ? But to see 
 how inadequate all these efforts are, glance at what has been 
 accomplished in religious schools and by churches. We only use 
 figures synchronous with the census. 
 
 In the three classes of schools— those of theology, those of sec- 
 ondary and- superior instruction— under Protestant and Catholic con- 
 trol there is only a total of 139,826 students, and only an invest- 
 ment in productive funds and other property of $82,195,728. 
 Great as the Sabbath worship would appear on the first impression, 
 -allowing that there are now 28,170,300 sittings in the religious 
 edifices of all the various denominatiorjs, there would be required 
 21,830,000 additional sittings, which at the average expense of $ 1 2 
 per sitting, would cost $261,960,000; to supply the preachers required 
 at the average of one to every 375 persons, there would be needed 
 58,213 more clergymen; giving these men a preparation at the 
 usual rate of $100 per year, over and above what they earn, would 
 •cost $17,463,900. Their first year's salary, on an average of $500, 
 would require $29,106,500, making a total cost of supplying the 
 preached gospel to the millions now without places of worship 
 ■over the enormous sum ,of $308,530,400. Shall I note here also 
 what the church may be expected to do in circulating religious 
 books, tracts and papers, and especially the holy Scriptures ? It is 
 believed that our Sabbath-school work, according to accurate 
 figures, does not reach half of the children who can read. Shall 
 the church then turn itself from the religious work specially com- 
 mitted to it, which it is doing so inadequately, and attempt to estab- 
 lish at its own voluntary expense, elementary schools for the 
 instruction of our millions of illiterate children ? If it expects to 
 ■do this by conducting parochial schools, to be under the direction 
 of a foreign potentate, but to be supported by money raised by 
 taxation and paid out of the state treasury, then it makes a prop- 
 osition which strikes death to the very center of American life, and 
 which every patriot. Catholic or Protestant, should resist to the 
 utmost. 
 
 Thirdly. We consider the American plan of elementary educa- 
 tion by the state as a prevention or remedy of illiteracy. The 
 state, as no other agency can, touches all the children, equalizes 
 
208 ILLITERACY. 
 
 the expense by a tax upon all property, and has power and agencies; 
 to enforce all obligations involved. Qualified teachers, and all 
 needed houses and other provisions, should be supplied, and the 
 attendance of every child upon adequate instruction should be 
 made absolutely certain. What would a single year's ten-months' 
 school do to scatter darkness and let in light ? Every state and 
 territory has legal provision for a free school system, but all require 
 improvement. More children should attend, and more remain 
 longer in school. There should be no truancy and less irregu- 
 larity, better teaching and appliances, and constant progress. In 
 a number of southern states public schools continue for only two 
 or three months during the year. But taking schools as they are, 
 there was by the last census a large increase in illiteracy, and by 
 the school statistics there were 5,754,759 youths of school age 
 not enrolled. Allow that the odd thousands may be provided with 
 private instruction, there would remain five millions for public pro- 
 vision ; furnishing these sittings at twenty dollars per sitting, it 
 would cost $100,000,000. Thirty thousand additional teachers would 
 be required, and to qualify them, at the rate in New York, would 
 cost f 1,000,000 ; their pay for a single year of ten months would 
 amount to $9,600,000, or there would be required a total outlay by 
 the end of the first year of $1 20,000,000. What agency, personal 
 or associated, or of state or church save one and that the nation, 
 is equal to this demand ? Besides, these necessities are not 
 equally distributed; where there is larger demand, there are less 
 means. In the late slave states, where public school provisions 
 have mainly begun more recently, there have been great losses; 
 the burden of illiteracy on thrift is enormous, and affairs have 
 been passing through the transition from slavery to freedom. The 
 free school work has gone forward, gaining strength, giving 
 instruction to whites and blacks, raising the school tax here and 
 there above the figures common in places where public schools 
 have flourished longer. The gravity of the situation has seriously 
 impressed thoughtful minds. Peabody and Slater have given 
 their millions, private charity through church and other agencies 
 has bestowed millions more. Thus, Christian effort has established 
 an array of schools and colleges for the youth of those recently 
 slave states, never paralleled in conditions .and character in the 
 history of mankind. The principle of self-help is strained to the 
 utmost. Shall it be destroyed by over-tax, and a relapse come,. 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JOHN EATON. 209 
 
 followed by a degradation of all classes that still shadows and 
 oppresses Jamaica, where emancipation was so long ago accom- 
 plished ? Can we expect communities to tax their property to the 
 extent of confiscation for school privileges ? Using synchronous 
 figures, out of a white school population in the South of 3,899,961, 
 2,215,674 have been enrolled in schools, and out of a colored 
 school population of 1,803,257, there have been enrolled 784,709, 
 at a total cost of $12,475,709 per year. The good work goes on; 
 but how long shall it be so inadequate ? It is hoped that the 
 appeal of wise citizens and able statesmen will be speedily 
 answered by appropriate national action. 
 
 Finally, if we 'contemplate the problems committed to us as a 
 people — the part assigned us, m the providence of God, in bringing 
 all people to a knowledge of Him — are we not admonished to make 
 all haste and unite all agencies to remove all internal hindrances ? 
 How would all our questions of peace and war be simplified, and 
 our difficulties reduced, if there were among us no illiterate Mormons 
 or Indians or Chinese, or other foreigners, no illiterate natives, black 
 or white ! Franklin called attention to the possibility that France 
 might take the place of old Rome among the nations, and the French 
 become the universal language, and it was hoped that England and 
 the English might possibly follow as second. Then, perhaps 
 42,000,000 spoke French, and 18,000,000 or 19,000,000 spoke 
 English. Now, it is estimated that over 1 20,000,000 speak English 
 as their own tongue; and counting the progress of English in con- 
 tinental Europe, among the islands of the sea, and elsewhere, espe- 
 cially in India and Japan, the number who can understand English 
 may be reckoned at 150,000,000. Should it be true, as estimated by 
 Professor Muller, that in two hundred years English will be spoken 
 by more people than are now living, and become substantially the 
 language of the globe, how needful that we rid ourselves of 
 illiteracy, and come fully to our share in this great responsibility 
 in the service of mankind and the Master. How unspeakable the 
 privilege of bearing the humblest part in furnishing free Christian 
 institutions, science, literature, art and home, social, industrial and 
 civil life in their highest form, nearest to the divine pattern for the 
 future nations of the earth! 
 
210 ILLITERACY. 
 
 REMARKS OF NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, NEW YORK. 
 
 Mr. President : What'I have to say will detain the Conference 
 but a moment. It seems to me that we should not pass from the 
 consideration of this subject without recognizing its full scope and 
 importance. The dangers of what we may call intellectual illiteracy 
 — the inability to read and write — have been fully and cogently 
 presented to us by Mr. Eaton. But intellectual illiteracy is only 
 one feature of this great subject, and by no means the most 
 important. We are being brought face to face, in this country, 
 with a wide-spread moral illiteracy, which is infinitely more danger- 
 ous than any intellectual illiteracy can ever be. This moral 
 illiteracy manifests itself by an inability to read the everlasting 
 distinctions between the good and the bad, the virtuous and the 
 vicious, the right and the wrong, and to write these distinctions in 
 the practical affairs of life. How fast this evil is spreading in one 
 or two respects, we have heard this morning. Every day, as we 
 read our paper, we are confronted with column after column 
 devoted to the narrative of instances of social, political, family 
 and business dishonor or crime. It is but rarely that we are 
 agreeably surprised at not finding at least half a dozen instances 
 of this moral illiteracy recounted. And, sir, while far from being 
 a pessimist, I believe that this illiteracy is spreading, and spread- 
 ing rapidly, and that this Conference has before it no subject 
 more serious or worthy of more careful consideration. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that great crimes happen without a 
 cause. They are not freaks of nature. They are the logical 
 outcome of certain causes. The frivolous falsehood leads grad- 
 ually to the outrageous lie, and the petty pilfering to the great 
 robbery. Inexact and immoral habits of thought and action are 
 at the bottom of all this, and I believe that our system of educa- 
 tion is largely responsible for it. We observe carelessly, we think 
 inexactly, and we express ourselves inaccurately. It is to these 
 simple and seemingly unimportant lapses that moral illiteracy traces 
 
REMARKS OF N. M. BUTLER. 211 
 
 its origin. Gradually all mention of ethics and religion is being 
 eliminated from the schools; and it is even fashionable in some 
 quarters, to make ethics an elective study in our colleges and 
 universities. This may be the effect, perhaps it is, of the revul- 
 sion against the ecclesiastical control of the school which prevailed 
 during the Middle Ages. But however it arose, it is a danger- 
 ous condition of things. It permits young men to go out into the 
 world without a word being spoken to them of the moral law and 
 of the inimitable distinction betwen the right and the wrong. 
 They readily come to look upon fashion or social convenience as 
 the arbiter of morals, and when this stage is reached, the disease 
 of moral illiteracy has set in. 
 
 This Conference will be glad to know that an educational move- 
 ment, which is now sweeping over this land, gathermg strength as it 
 goes, will afford us valuable assistance in fighting moral illiteracy. 
 As I have hinted already, the inexactness of thought and action 
 which too much of our education permits or encourages, must be 
 checked, if moral illiteracy is to be killed at the root. The man- 
 ual training movement will do much toward this. Permit me to 
 make a single illustration. A boy studies well, and goes home at the 
 end of the week with a mark of ninety-five per cent in geography, 
 let us say. Both parent and child, and perhaps the teacher also, 
 are gratified at this, and in their gratification lose sight of the fact 
 that ninety-five per cent -is still short of perfection. The ninety-five 
 gained puts out of sight the five lost, and, in consequence, the 
 exact truth, and approximation to truth, come to be looked upon as 
 the same thing. In other words, ninety-five is confounded with one 
 hundred. Bad mathematics, but worse morals. Moral illiteracy has 
 been made possible. Suppose now, that the same boy, in the curric- 
 ulum prescribed by manual training, makes a lap-joint in the wood- 
 working room. If it is ninety-five per cent of true, it will no nearer 
 fit than if it were fifty per cent of true. It must be perfect, it must 
 "be exact, or it will not fit. Then, for the first time perhaps, it 
 flashes into the boy's mind that truth is single, that it is perfect, 
 that it is always the same. Approximations, however close, are not 
 the truth. When the schoolboy learns this lesson, and forms his 
 character by it, he will never afterwards become a moral illiterate, 
 unless of his own free will. Education will have done all it can 
 do, to teach him to read and write in morals. Time will not per- 
 mit the amplification of this illustration. I only desire to impress 
 
212 ILLITKRACY. 
 
 upon the Conference this one thought. We band together to 
 stamp out intellectual illiteracy, for it prevents the progress of 
 knowledge; and knowledge is desirable. Let us also band together 
 to stamp out moral illiteracy, which prevents the development of 
 character; and character is essential. 
 
AFTERNOON SESSION. 
 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8. 
 
 The devotional exercises were conducted by Rev. Arthur 
 Brooks, of New York. Hon. James B. Angel, President of the 
 University of Michigan, presided. 
 
 On taking the chair. President Angel said : 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : In complying with the very kind 
 request of the officers of the Alliance, to occupy this chair for a 
 brief session, I desire to express my deep sense of the honor they 
 ■confer upon me, by giving me even this brief connection with a 
 body so eminently representative of all the noblest purposes, 
 moral and religious, of the American churches and the American 
 people. 
 
 How deeply I, in common with you all, desire the accomplish- 
 ment of those purposes, and trust that the results of this meeting 
 may be far-reaching and permanent, I need not now stop to say. 
 I am sure that I should but very poorly enter upon the discharge 
 of the pleasant duty entrusted to me, if I should deprive you for a 
 single moment longer of the pleasure and profit which I know we 
 are all to receive from the distinguished gentlemen who are now 
 to address us. I therefore have the pleasure of announcing that 
 the first paper is upon the subject, " The Relation of the Church 
 to the Capital and Labor Question," and will be read by our ven- 
 erable friend, the Rev. Dr. McCosh, who needs no introduction to 
 any American audipnce. [Applause.] 
 
 213 
 
RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR QUESTION. 
 
 BY PRES. JAMKS McCOSH, D. D., LL. D., OF 
 PRINCETON. 
 
 The history of our world is given in epitome Gen. iii. 15. "I 
 will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy 
 seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise 
 his heel." The world is not a scene of pure good or of unmixed 
 evil ; it is one of contest between the evil and the good ; between 
 the seed of the serpent, the animal and the malignant, and the 
 seed of the woman, the pure and loving power. Scientists have at 
 last hit on the right phrase to characterize our condition ; it is " a 
 struggle for existence." 
 
 The Americans know that the European countries are the scene 
 of a great conflict between the landed aristocracy on the one 
 hand, and those who have no inherited property on the other. 
 But we have fondly cherished the idea that we might not have 
 to face such a fight in this country, where every man has a vote, 
 and has as much liberty as he can make a good use of. Many 
 are astonished when they find that the quarrel has come over 
 to this country, only taking a somewhat narrower shape — the con- 
 test between capital and labor. 
 
 The great Teacher, the head and prophet of his church, has 
 laid down the law clearly and definitely. For this purpose he 
 took advantage, as he often did, of an incident. (Luke xii. 13.) 
 " And one of the company said unto him. Master, speak to my 
 brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said, 
 Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?" Our Lord declines 
 to exercise jurisdiction in the case. He had a commission from 
 heaven, but the power to settle disputed questions of money was not 
 included in it. We learn, from other parts of Scripture, that there 
 were officers who had power over property and life, and if this man 
 was receiving injustice, to repair the injury. (Rom. xiii. i.) "The 
 powers that be are ordained of God." We call those who are 
 
 214 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JAMES M'coSH. 215 
 
 entitled to exercise them magistrates. The mediator, the Saviour, 
 he tells us, did not come from heaven to earth to exercise any such 
 powers. (John xviii. 36.) " My kingdom is not of this world." 
 He adds, " If my kingdom were of this world then would my 
 servants fight," and might become judges and dividers of 
 property. 
 
 " Art thou a king, then ? " the Jews asked ; to which he 
 answered, "Thou sayest that I am a king," which is a Hebrew 
 phrase meaning, " I acknowledge that I am a king." " To this end 
 have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I 
 should bear witness unto the truth." In other words, to reveal 
 God's will to man, especially this : "It is a true saying, and worthy 
 of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save 
 sinners.'' 
 
 We have in this the full truth which my Scottish forefathers 
 understood so well, on which they acted, and for which they suf- 
 fered. God has two kingdoms in this world, a temporal and a 
 spiritual, the difference between which can be easily understood by 
 those who give their attention to the subject. The one deals with 
 things of this world; it has judges, legislators and executive officers, 
 and has power over property and life. The other has to do with 
 the truth which God has revealed, with the soul, its conviction, its 
 conversion and its sanctification, and has means to carry out these 
 in the Word, sacraments and prayer. God is sovereign in both 
 kingdoms. The one should not intrude into the province of the 
 other. They may form an alliance to promote common ends, 
 such as order, peace, education and morality. But each, mean- 
 while, must retain its independence. The state has no right 
 whatever to dictate to the church in spiritual matters, and the 
 church has no right to lay down laws to the state in temporal 
 affairs. 
 
 Christ is the sole head and king of his church. The church, 
 which is his body, is his representative. It is entitled to exercise 
 the power committed to it by its head. It should take nothing 
 less. It should claim nothing more. Had those distinctions 
 been kept steadily in view, the countries of Europe would have 
 been saved from many of the usurpations of the church of Rome 
 over kings and rulers, to the moral enslavement and degradation 
 of the people. This on the one hand, and on the other the Prot- 
 estant churches of Europe, would have been saved from the 
 
216 RELATION OK THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 patronage, government and law, which has appointed worldly- 
 minded pastors, and hindered the living energies of the people. 
 It may interest some of you to know that I am one of the few 
 remaining ministers of that band of between four and five hun- 
 dred who gave up their livings (mine was one of the most envi- 
 able), and formed the Free Church of Scotland, because the state 
 interfered with the liberties of the church, and commanded us to 
 settle a minister against the will of the people. I mention this to 
 show that what I preach to you I have practiced. 
 
 So the church as a church, in its official capacity, as met to 
 deliberate, and decide ; as it carries on Christ's work ; those who 
 rule in it as they carry out its decrees have no power to interfere 
 between labor and capital, and when invited to do so they should 
 say, " Who made me a judge and a divider over you ?" 
 
 But is this all that the church has to do ? that is, to do nothing ? 
 No, verily ; emphatically, I say no. She has power given her by 
 her great head which she must exercise, and she is failing in 
 one of her most important duties if she neglects to do so. I 
 believe Christ to be the great peacemaker of the universe ; he is 
 the mediator between God and man ; and his church, which is 
 his representative, should be the great peacemaker on earth ; the 
 mediator between the nations, between the rich and the poor, 
 between capital and labor. To accomplish this end she must not 
 take either side ; she must be on both sides ; she must aid both 
 in the good ends which they have in common, in turning both 
 capital and labor to the good of all. 
 
 In the very case in which our Lord declined to interfere because 
 he had no commission, he proceeds to exercise a high office, 
 entrusted to him in the councils of heaven, and bearing both on 
 capital and labor. He said to the man and all bystanders, " Take 
 heed and beware of covet6usness," and explained that there was 
 something higher than wealth and social status. " For a man's 
 life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he posses- 
 seth." He and his church have to tell all that there are higher 
 possessions than earthly ones, to command those who have capi- 
 tal to devote it to a high purpose, to the good of those who 
 have none. ' ' 
 
 The church has a duty to discharge toward those who have 
 capital and those who have none. But she must do it in Christ's 
 way. She must act as Christ acted, and as Christ would act were 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JAMES m'cOSH. 217 
 
 he now upon the earth. " The weapons of our warfare are not 
 -carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong- 
 holds." These are the weapons which God hath put into our hand 
 which, and which alone, the church is entitled to use. And they 
 are powerful, far more than carnal weapons, to the pulling down 
 of strongholds. I have often wondered why Paul, the brave, the 
 impetuous, did not denounce the iniquities of Tiberius and of Nero, 
 and assail slavery, with its degradations and cruelties . He did 
 both, but in a more effective way than by invective ana stirring up 
 rebellion. He tells rulers how they should act; they are to be a 
 terror to evil-doers, a praise and protection to such as do well. 
 He laid down the principle that all men are "of one blood" and 
 are equal, and thus did more to abolish slavery than Clarkson, 
 Wilberforce or Garrison. It was thus that the Scriptures under- 
 mined polygamy and unnatural crimes, by inculcating genuine 
 love ; and reared asylums for, the indigent and the diseased; and 
 raised the whole tone of morality and society to a higher level. 
 
 The church should not attack either capital or labor. I am 
 •convinced that we should not by arbitrary enactments hinder any 
 man from bettering his condition. We must allow any man to 
 acquire wealth, if he gains it lawfully. An accumulation of capital 
 is necessary to a nation's prosperity; it is required in order to give 
 work and food to the laborer and his family, and to foster trade 
 and commerce, with all the blessings they bring. Not only so, but 
 within definable limits we must allow man to have property in land 
 and to cultivate it, and thereby, whether he means it or not, to 
 raise corn and cattle to feed the people. As each class seeks its 
 own interest, there will be collisions of interest, jealousies and 
 wars. The church must be on its guard against joining in the 
 strife. Maintaining an independent position, it has to mitigate the 
 horrors of the contest, to soften the oppressor, and to cheer the 
 oppressed. Without joining in the battle, it will have the happi- 
 ness of nursing the wounded, of comforting the disappointed, 
 the bankrupt and the poor; and of giving to the dying a cup of 
 cold water, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God 
 and of the Lamb, 
 
 The church has a message to deliver from God. She must see 
 that she delivers it. It is to all classes. It is to the {)Oor. " To 
 the poor the gospel is preached," is one of the grand characteristics 
 ■of gospel times; one of the aims which Christ had in coming into 
 
218 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 the world. If the church loses 'the poor, she loses one of the ele- 
 ments of her strength; she loses the favor of her Head, she loses 
 the favor even of the world, which will insist on her acting, as her 
 Master did, in caring for the poor, and will have no respect for a 
 church which ministers merely to the rich. The minister of relig- 
 ion, then, is the minister of the poor. Yes, but he is the minister 
 of the rich also. They too need to hear the glad tidings of salva- 
 tion. All their wealth cannot satisfy their immortal souls. Riches 
 may bring pleasure, but they bring cares; likewise they bring 
 temptations. The heart that is clothed over with purple, under- 
 neath which all is supposed to be filled with comfort, may ache as 
 keenly as that which is seen throbbing under rags. You bestow 
 your gifts on the poor; "have you nothing from Him that sent you 
 to me, to give me peace," is the cry of many a man and woman 
 who has every earthly good. When they are visited with disease, 
 the rich and poor are very much alike, though the one class may 
 have a little more comfortable couch than the other. But all are 
 laboring under spiritual disease — the disease of the soul, which is 
 far more fearful than the disease of the body. " There is no dif- 
 ference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." 
 Christians, you have the universal remedy; to your care it has 
 been committed, and woe be unto you if you keep back the medi- 
 cine from any who are ready to perish. 
 
 It has sometimes been charged against the church, or certain 
 branches of it, that it neglects the poor. I am prepared to show 
 that the accusation is unjust. There may have been exceptions,, 
 but the church has been the best friend of the poor in all ages 
 since Christ gave the poor to the church as its special charge. 
 The gospel minister is the minister of the poor, but he has a mes- 
 sage to the rich also, who may be rich in this world's goods, but poor 
 in the true riches. I have often found that the young minister 
 who will not wait upon the rich to win them to Christ, is influenced 
 by nothing else than a vulgar pride, which is fond of the flattery of 
 those beneath him, but will not for Christ's sake wait on those who 
 are their superiors. Among other learning, our theological students 
 should study to acquire manners which are not offensive to any, 
 and which will make them welcome in the dwellings of those above 
 them as well as those beneath them in station. The churches as a 
 whole, with many imperfections, have been trying to do their duty 
 to the extremes of society, the rich and the helpless poor. There is an 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JAMES M'COSH. 219 
 
 intermediate class, which in America has more influence than either 
 of the others. It is the great middle class, including our profes- 
 sional men, our bankers, merchants, storekeepers, farmers, higher 
 artisans. This supplies the great body of the members of the 
 American churches. Upon this class, or rather classes, the church 
 depends for its sustenance, and the means of extending its useful- 
 ness at home and abroad. They constitute the bone and sinew of 
 our churches, as they do of our country. It is well that we 
 have them at present. We must seek to retain them by all the 
 means which Christ hath put in our power, especially by maintain- 
 ing a high standard of doctrine and of duty, and of activity in 
 benevolent and missionary work. But we must beware of turning our 
 churches into mere middle class institutions, depending and look- 
 ing solely to those who can pay pew rents, who have good dresses 
 for the Sabbath, who can visit with the minister and the minister's 
 family, and maintain among themselves a genteel society. Per- 
 haps there is a temptation here to our American churches. For 
 there is another great class, of whom I am to speak in the remain- 
 der of this paper. 1 am not to take up the labor question, but 
 the classes who labor. For my part, I am not satisfied with 
 the position which the laboring men have in the nations of the 
 world. It is not what it ought to be, and not what I hope it is to 
 become. They earn by the toil of their hands most of the wealth 
 which we possess. They know this, and they complain that their 
 share of it is too small. I rejoice in every lawful attempt that is 
 made to improve the condition of the sons of toil. I rejoice to 
 hear of the master, aided it may be by his wife and his sons 
 and daughters, seeking to improve the workmen in his employ- 
 ment. The Queen of England has set the example in her dealings 
 with those under her, and is followed by vast numbers of ladies in 
 the old country. There are ladies, married and unmarried, with 
 their families, all over this country, who are doing a like work 
 in a like spirit. The ministers of religion should encourage and 
 aid them, organize and wisely direct them, and this as part of 
 their ministrations in the service of their Master. All this alleviates 
 the evil, but does not remove it or dry up its sources. I maintain 
 that if the working classes are elevated in comfort or character, it 
 must be by themselves. 
 
 When I visit a new country, I take pleasure in viewing the king's 
 palace and the nobleman's park, but I also enter the houses or 
 
"220 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 huts of the common people. What scenes of privation have I 
 been obliged to look upon, all out of the ordinary traveler's route, 
 in the cabins in Ireland and among the crofters of Scotland. From 
 my travels on the continent of Europe I can understand how emi- 
 grants should come in such flocks to this country. When I enter 
 a new city, I admire its temples and palatial dwellings, but I 
 insist on diving down into the miserable haunts, seen in America 
 as readily as in Europe, where comfort is impossible, and from 
 which all decency is banished by the crowding of the sexes, but in 
 which our boys and girls are brought up, early learning vice, to 
 transmit it to the generation following. We have no right to inter- 
 fere with the laboring men, when they are seeking to elevate them- 
 selves above this degraded state. You say it is their own fault 
 when they are in this condition. This may be so, but it is the 
 office of the church, as it was that of Christ, to seek and save the 
 lost and raise those that are fallen. 
 
 The attempts of the working people will not always be wise. The 
 leaders whom they follow will not always be their best friends. 
 Measures will be adopted which, so far from benefiting them, will 
 ;greatly injure them. Mobbing, boycotting, even wounds and 
 massacres, will be resorted to. Oppression drives wise men mad, 
 and they will do deeds of madness. Some will become fanatical, and 
 persuade themselves that there can be no God ruling over this world, 
 where such evil is allowed to exist. But, it was to a world with 
 such scenes in it that the Son of God came. It is in such a world 
 that the church has a place, and an ofifice assigned to it. It sees 
 the evil around it, and it must use all the means placed at its dis- 
 posal to lessen and remove it. It has to address itself to both sides 
 in the quarrel. It has fearlessly to denounce the crimes committed 
 by tyranny on the one hand, by lawlessness on the other. But its 
 special duty is to proclaim what is right to both parties. It has a 
 special commission to elevate those who earn their bread by the 
 sweat of their brow, the class to which the God-Man belonged, and 
 in whom He may be supposed to take a sympathetic interest. 
 
 When I was a citizen of another country, I paid a visit to America, 
 traveled 7,000 miles in it, and Often visited the churches incognito. 
 When I visited your congregations, I was often asked, "What do 
 you think of them ?" I answered," I think much of them; but where 
 are your laboring classes ?" I put this question sincerely, not know- 
 ing how to answer it, for the workingman dresses so well that it is 
 
ADDRESS OF PRES. JAMES m'coSH. 221 
 
 difficult to distinguish him from other classes. Where is the labor- 
 ing man in our churches ? is the question I am still putting, seek- 
 ing an answer. 
 
 One-half certainly, perhaps three-fourths, of our entire popula- 
 tion belong to the working class. Are they in like proportion 
 among these well-clothed people who sit in our pews ? In a book 
 written by Mr. Loomis, with an introduction by one you can trust. 
 Dr. Josiah Strong, it is said: " Go into an ordinary church on Sun- 
 day morning, and you see lawyers, merchants and business-men 
 with their families; you see teachers, salesmen and clerks, and a 
 certain proportion of educated mechanics ; but the workingman 
 and his household are not there. It is doubtful if one in twenty of 
 the average congregation in English-speaking Protestant city 
 churches fairly belongs to this class; but, granting the proportion to- 
 be so great as one in ten, or one in five, even then you would have 
 two-thirds of the people furnishing only one-tenth or one-fifth of 
 the congregation."* Then the writer tells the story of a newspaper- 
 reporter, who visited the congregations of the City of Churches. " He 
 donned the garb of a, decent laborer and presented himself for 
 admission at each of the principal churches in the cities. At some 
 he was treated with positive rudeness, at others with cold politeness. 
 Only one or two gave him a cordial and, even then, a somewhat 
 surprised welcome." 
 
 Your artisan is often a difficult man to win to the church. He 
 is well educated, intelligent; he toils from morning to night; "he 
 owes not any one;" he argues that he and his fellow-workmen have 
 made the wealth of the country, and get a very little share of it ;. 
 and he and his children have to live sparingly, while they see abun- 
 dance of possessions around them. He becomes jealous of those 
 who fare sumptuously every day," who have fine clothing, live in 
 these elegant dwellings, who roll in carriages with prancing horses, 
 that threaten to run over him as he trudges along wearily on foot. 
 It is difficult to win such a man to Christ and his church. But 
 that man has an immortal soul. The command laid on you and 
 me is to "preacli the gospel to every creature." You who sit in 
 these cushioned pews put money in the plate to send the gospel to 
 Timbuctoo. Do you send it to that man who lives next door to- 
 you and combs your horses and works your garden ? The com- 
 
 * Modern Cities, by Samuel Lane Loomis, p. 82. 
 
222 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 mand is laid on you, comfortable Christian, sitting comfortable 
 there at your fireside in your house of cedar: "Go out into the 
 highways and hedges and compel them to come in." We minis- 
 ters preach the gospel to them that come to us, but even as Christ 
 was sent to those who were not seeking him, so we have to go to 
 those who will not come to us. 
 
 I still ask, What place have the workingmen in our churches ? 
 For myself, I am not prepared knowingly to answer this question. 
 Since coming to this country my intercourse has been mainly with 
 students. Thanks to God and the young men, and not to me, I 
 have been able to keep the students in the most pleasant relation- 
 ship toward the church, or, rather, the churches. But as a student 
 of human nature, I have looked beyond the college walls, and I 
 think I see that the churches and the workingmen have not the 
 confidence in each other which they ought. I know it is difficult 
 for ministers to win the hearts of our laboring men, who are often 
 independent to the extent of being proud. I fear that it is especially 
 difficult in America, where the laboring classes are not so depend- 
 ent on the upper as in the old countries, and where they know 
 their rights. They tell us that every man's house is his castle. 
 ■ And certainly you should not attempt to enter that castle by force. 
 But you may knock at the gate, and find that you are invited to 
 enter. You are to be looking and waiting for opportunities of get- 
 ting access to them, not for personal ends, but for their good. 
 They must be approached respectfully, according to the command, 
 "Honor all men." Above all things they hate "condescension," 
 as it makes them feel their inferiority. But there are ways of 
 reaching them. 
 
 The churches of America must return to the old method, which 
 has been from the beginning, to that of pastoral visitation first, and 
 along with that, of evangelistic visitation. Paul reminds the elders 
 of the church at Ephesus, when he returned to visit them, " after 
 what manner I have been with you at all seasons," and have taught 
 you " publicly, and/r^»z house to house." (Acts xx. 18-21.) 
 
 The great Teacher mingled freely with the people, and was found 
 giving instruction in the dwellings of the rich and the poor. Paul, 
 in sending salutations to this one and that one, speaks of the 
 churches which they had in their houses. It can be shown that 
 from the days of Christ and his apostles such visitations have been 
 kept up in all living churches. 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. JAMES M'COSH. 223 
 
 It is not for me to bring accusations against the American 
 ■churches, that some of them have very much given up this system- 
 atic visitation. It is now thirty-five years since I gave up my pas- 
 toral work, yet I look over the intervening period, with keen 
 interest, on the one or two days a week I spent in visiting 
 my people, commonly one day in visiting the families, and 
 another day in visiting the sick and aged. I have passed 
 through diversified scenes since, but I look back beyond them, 
 with deep emotion, to the mother with the babe on her lap, 
 ■and the other children seated on stools around her, and the 
 talk I had with them. Often did the tears trickle down the moth- 
 er's cheeks, as I ■Spoke to them as immortal beings who might live 
 together and love together forever. I did not always see the 
 father during the day, but I met him as I went back in the even- 
 ing to hold " a church in the house," and he thanked me for the 
 interest which I had taken in the young man, his son. I am moved 
 when I recall these family scenes. I think I shall be able to recog- 
 'nizesomeof these people in heaven, and that possibly they will 
 welcome me there. 
 
 A minister will not be able to reach the hearts of his people 
 unless he visits among them. I remember that when I began to 
 preach I had about twenty carefully prepared sermons. But some 
 fifteen of them would not preach ; they were not fitted to move 
 men and women, and I burned them. I never learned to preach 
 till I visited among my people; they encouraged the young man 
 with a ruddy countenance, and they opened their hearts to fiie. 
 The workingman spoke of his difficulties in making the ends 
 meet, and the dying man committed his children to me, and-grand- 
 mother thanked me for my kindness in teaching her grandson in 
 my Bible-class. No part of a minister's life is so rich in memories 
 as these pastoral visitations. I had sometimes difficulties in win- 
 ning certain self-sufficient and sulky men, but I waited for oppor- 
 tunities. Sometimes I gained the husband by the wife, more 
 frequently the father by the children. I remember one tradesman 
 of skill and character, who shied all my attempts to bring him to 
 church. But I kept my eye upon him, and the fit time came. He 
 and his family were prostrated by malignant and infectious fever. 
 I was with him and his family daily, and, thanks to God, when he 
 recovered, he was won to Christ and his church. 
 
224 
 
 MESSAGE FROM BRITISH ALLIANCE. 
 
 The Chairman: I am authorized to interrupt for a moment the 
 course of the ordinary proceedings, in consequence of a telegram, 
 which I hold in my hand, which shows that these meetings are not 
 only sustained by the deep interest of these crowded audiences, 
 and by the sympathy, as we know, of millions of our friends 
 throughout this land, but that the hearts of Christian men far 
 beyond the sea are throbbing with the liveliest interest in our pro- 
 ceedings here. This telegram is dated " London, December 8," and 
 is from the Council of the Evangelical Alliance there, to the 
 Chairman of the Evangelical Alliance Conference at Washington. 
 It reads: 
 
 " British Council, now sitting, cordially sympathize with you,, 
 praying for a rich blessing from our one Master." 
 
 Mr. Dodge: Mr. Chairman, we have an inexorable rule here,, 
 that under no circumstances should we put anything to vote, but I 
 suppose no rule is perfect without some exceptions. And I will, 
 therefore, venture to move that this Conference, now in session, 
 gratefully acknowledge the salutation of our brothers, and instruct 
 the Secretary to return them a cordial answer by cable to-day. 
 
 The Chairman : I will venture to ask so many as are in favor 
 of this to manifest their sentiment by rising. 
 
 The members of the Conference rose unanimously, and the 
 following message was sent in reply to the above telegram: 
 
 " Message of sympathy acknowledged by rising vote and grate- 
 ful enthusiasm. Conference most successful." 
 
RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR QUESTION. 
 
 BY HON. SETH LOW, OF BROOKLYN. 
 
 It is clearly impossible to deal with a question as large as this, 
 in all its aspects, within the proper limits of a short address. It 
 will be in line with the central thought of this Conference, I 
 think, if I attempt to define "as distinctly as I can, the light which 
 is thrown upon the subject at large by a consideration of it along 
 the line of organized capital and organized labor. This is the 
 characteristic and dominating aspect of the question in our time 
 and in this land. If we may take a hopeful view here, all is well. 
 If not, then is our case sad indeed. 
 
 In approaching the consideration of this question in our own 
 country, we must not forget that here every citizen is a voter. 
 Two facts, therefore, strike us at once. They are so patent we 
 cannot fail to see them. They seem at first sight so antagonistic 
 that they puzzle and bewilder us. On the one hand, there never has 
 been a time when the individual has counted for so much; on the 
 other, there never has been a time when the individual has counted 
 for so little. Politically, at the present time in this country, the 
 citizen, just because he is a man, is entitled to his vote. He may, 
 upon election day, if he wishes, negative the judgment and the 
 preference of the President of the United States, as to any official 
 to be chosen. The President of the United States, in many 
 respects, is the most powerful ruler in the world. In the matter of 
 appointments and patronage, I suppose him to be quite the most 
 powerful ruler. But when it comes to the choice of a new pres- 
 ident, the vote of the humblest citizen in the land is as powerful as 
 his. Side by side with this spectacle of the political power of the 
 individual, we seem to see the individual, as a factor in the busi- 
 ness concerns of men, disappearing quite as strikingly. The indi- 
 
 225 
 
226 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 vidual capitalist is disappearing in the corporation ; the individual 
 laborer is disappearing in the Trades Union or in the Knights of 
 Labor. The first question that rises to our lips, in the presence of 
 these strangely different tendencies of the time, surely, is, What does 
 it mean ? Is it possible that, after the race has struggled for so 
 many centuries to make the individual politically free, to secure 
 for him the opportunity and impulse for growth involved in politi- 
 cal and individual freedom — is it possible that, after all, individual- 
 ity is to be lost by indirection, through the corporation on the one 
 hand and the Trades Union on the other ? I do not think so. This 
 strange contrast is only a new illustration — the illustration of our 
 own times — of that great law which is powerful in social as well as 
 in physical life — the opposition of forces. Were it not for gravity, 
 the revolution of the globe would throw us all violently into space; 
 were it not for the revolution of the globe, gravity would fasten us 
 to the earth. By the opposition of these two forces, the equilib- 
 rium is adjusted so nicely that a fly can walk. Were it not for 
 conservatism among men, progress would always be revolutionary; 
 were it not for liberalism, conservatism would make society stag- 
 nant. By the opposition of these two forces, wherever the equilib- 
 rium is maintained, social progress is both steady and orderly. 
 If my premise be correct, it becomes us, then, first of all, not to 
 be alarmed by the apparent difficulties which confront us, owing 
 to the presence in our midst of these two antagonistic tendencies. 
 What we are to do is to find their equilibrium. So considered, 
 neither tendency can be spared. Together they furnish, instead 
 of ground for fear, the best ground for hope that the transition 
 of society from the old order to the new, wil! be a movement 
 towards better and more permanent conditions. 
 
 It often has been shown that the last fifty years have witnessed a 
 revolution throughout the civilized world, in the methods of com- 
 munication, in the methods of travel, largely also in the manner 
 of living, greater than can be traced through century to century, 
 from the beginning of recorded history down to this epoch. Men 
 say that this is the result of the great advances made during the 
 last fifty years in physical science. No doubt it is; but it is import- 
 ant to notice that the fullness of time did not come for science 
 until human history had reached the point where these two antago- 
 nistic tendencies touching the individual had become, both of 
 them, ready for their consummation. In other words, that which 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. SETH LOW. 227 
 
 seems to me to have happened as to society, may be illustrated by 
 a reference to the discovery of printing. Only when the type 
 had been individualized, only when each type came to represent a 
 single letter, was the era of combination reached. So now, as I 
 ■conceive, we have reached in human society, and in this country 
 in its highest form, the era of combination. That this depends 
 largely upon the individualizing of the man, appears from the fact 
 that where the individual is freest, politically, there also the organ- 
 ization, both of labor and of capital, is most complete. Some one 
 has said that when printing was discovered, it seemed as though 
 " a new fiat for light had gone forth from the lips of the Almighty." 
 Does it not seem, as one reflects upon the mighty changes which 
 have been wrought since the hidden forces of nature were 
 placed at the service of combining society — does it not seem as 
 though, in a very real sense, the time was already upon us when 
 the Lord "will make all things new"? For this, at least, may be 
 said: Combination implies community of interests; it is not utter 
 selfishness. So that whatever selfish abuses may be traced to 
 it, are abuses working in defiance of its own fundamental law. 
 
 If this be a correct conception of our own times, it follows, 
 ■does it not, that combinations among workingmen, and combina- 
 tion among capitalists, the Trades Union and the Corporation, are 
 in no necessary sense antagonistic to each other, any more than 
 gravity working upon us is antagonistic to gravity working upon 
 •our antipodes. They simply are different manifestations of the 
 same force, the force which emphasizes the interdependence of 
 society, as against the individualizing forces of popular govern- 
 ment. The forces which work in society are like the physical 
 forces of the universe, in this respect at least, that they operate 
 according to fixed law. The problem of mankind as to both kinds 
 of forces is to ascertain the law of their operation. Until this is 
 done, the same force which is waiting to be our servant, baffles, 
 perplexes, troubles us. The method of ascertaining the law is the 
 same in both cases, by experimentation and study. The present 
 relation between labor and capital in this country seems to me 
 simply to reflect the fact that we have not yet perfectly learned the 
 laws which control these new forces that are expressing them- 
 selves in combinations of labor and capital alike. People have 
 said, "Labor must combine because capital combines," and in- 
 :stantly there has arisen an unmistakable sense of antagonism 
 
228 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 between the two forms of organization. The point I wish to 
 emphasize is, that this is not the reason why labor combines. In 
 the present age labor would combine even if it were conceivable 
 that capital did not. Combined labor, as a matter of fact, does 
 make the same demands of the individual employer as it makes, 
 of the corporation. The two forms of combination, the combina- 
 tion of capital and the combination of labor, are not antagonistic; 
 they are only different expressions of the same force. This fact 
 is of the utmost consequence. It is necessary that it should be 
 laid to heart both by the capitalist and by the laborer. It goes to 
 the root of many of the troubles which have marked in recent 
 years the so-called conflict between capital and labor. Two results 
 should flow from it ; the belief that the tendency towards com- 
 bined action on the part either of capital or of labor is not to be 
 regretted ; and the earnest purpose to ascertain the laws which 
 govern this tendency, and to recognize the limit of safety in it. 
 
 It is clear that great mistakes mark the progress of society, 
 hitherto, towards completer organization both along the lines of 
 capital and of labor. I cannot see that one form of combination 
 is more free from just blame than the other. The directors of 
 corporations have ridden over the minority rough-shod. They 
 have organized subsidiary corporations for their own benefit, to 
 absorb the profits of the parent concern. They have managed, 
 with as little thought as possible, for the interest of stockholders 
 not in sympathy with the direction. The directors of labor organ- 
 izations have been equally regardless of the interest of their 
 minority. Strikes have been ordered contrary to their interests, 
 and generally their rights have been compelled to yield to the 
 power of the majority. Individual laborers are persecuted, and 
 denied the right to earn their own living except by permission of 
 the organization, and upon terms satisfactory to it. All these sorts 
 of troubles, however, it is to be noted, are sins of capitalists 
 against capitalists, and of labor against labor. It is only the old 
 story under the modern form of combination, of the oppression of 
 the weak by the strong. It perhaps is not out of place to say, on 
 this occasion, that if the sins of this kind which labor commits 
 against labor seem to be largely chargeable to foreign-born citi- 
 zens, the exactly parallel class of wrongs which capital commits 
 against capital cannot be so disposed of. They reveal the ten- 
 dency to precisely the same sort and manner of sin on the part of 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. SETH LOW. 229 
 
 the native born. I point this out in passing, because we want to 
 be as frank with reference to the beam in our own eye as we are 
 in regard to the mote in our brother's eye. 
 
 But there is a class of faults chargeable equally to both 
 kinds of combination, which in each case pass beyond their own 
 lines. The corporation has debauched legislatures and corrupted 
 judges. It has employed the best legal talent to be obtained, to 
 enable it, while keeping within the letter of the law, to circumvent 
 its purpose. It has acted as though the community had no rights 
 which a corporation might not violate, provided it could do so with- 
 out a personal liability on the part of its manager. The labor 
 organization, on the other hand, has assaulted society in ways as 
 dangerous and as far-reaching. By its doctrine of sympathetic 
 strikes, it has made the innocent suffer far and wide. It has 
 attempted to take society by the throat, in response to its motto, 
 " An injury to one is the concern of all." The difficulty is not 
 with the motto, but with its application. Once adopted by society 
 as a whole, the motto need not be challenged. Taken as a watch- 
 word by one section of society against all others, it threatens to 
 •divide every community into hostile camps. All wrongs of this 
 type, whether practiced by the capitalist or the laborer, are not 
 wrongs of capital against labor, or of labor against capital ; they 
 are wrongs in each case against society as a whole, perpetrated 
 under the forms of organization. Every good citizen, whether he 
 be a capitalist or a laborer, is bound to denounce and resist both 
 equally, whether the wrong proceeds from capital or from labor. 
 
 Up to this point, therefore, it is evident we have not touched 
 directly upon any influence which tends to strengthen the impres- 
 sion that there is a conflict between labor and capital, and that 
 labor must organize because capital does. There is, however, one 
 particular in which the adoption of the corporate form by capital 
 has affected importantly and directly its relation to labor. The 
 employer, under the corporate form, is no longer the individual 
 with his human sympathies, and his close, personal contact with 
 those whom he employs. The employer is actually a body corpo- 
 rate, without soul and without conscience. Boards of directors, 
 filled with the thought that in fact they are trustees, too often have 
 believed that their trust on behalf of the stockholders was a mon- 
 eyed trust simply. They have felt under obligations to get the 
 most labor for the least pay. They have not always felt under 
 
230 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 obligations to protect the reputation of their stockholders for fair 
 dealing and regard for those in their employ. So much has this 
 been so, that I have heard it said a man would rather work for the 
 meanest individual he ever knew than for the best corporation. 
 Literally taken, this, no doubt, is an exaggeration. In effect, I do 
 not believe that the statement misstates what thus far has been the 
 tendency.- Perhaps I am too hopeful, but I cannot help feeling- 
 that this tendency is less strong than it was. Our large railroad 
 corporations, for example, seem to me to be growing, even if 
 slowly, to quite a new and larger conception of their duty to their 
 employees. It is of no consequence to my argument that this 
 result has been reached in great measure through compulsion from 
 the labor organizations. We are concerned, for the moment, only 
 with the fact; only with the ultimate result to society of combina- 
 tion both of labor and of capital. If I am right, it is chiefly in its 
 attitude as an employer, therefore, that combined capital has given 
 the impression of hostility to labor. It is here also, if anywhere^ 
 that that impression may be most largely removed. 
 
 In one other respect I think the action of combined capital 
 has strengthened this impression. I have been speaking of 
 combined capital in its simplest form, in the single corporation. 
 Think of it for a moment in its further development, where 
 many corporations combine in a pool or a trust. Every such, 
 combination seeks, directly, only the good of the stockholders. 
 Who ever heard of one being formed to enable the combination to 
 pay higher wages, or to provide better accommodations for their 
 workmen ? Who ever heard of a fixed proportion of the artificial 
 price so obtained being set aside for the benefit of labor ? So long 
 as such combinations think of the stockholders only, capital must 
 not wonder that it excites the antagonism of labor, and incurs the 
 ill-will of society, so far as society is not a direct sharer in the ben- 
 efits. These two points seem to me to be the principal ones, where 
 capital in its organized form has been in direct conflict with labor 
 in our own day. Unhappily, the antagonism here has been direct 
 enough and potent enough to account in large measure for the 
 prevalent feeling on the part of labor, that labor's relations to cap- 
 ital must be and can be, safely, only for self-defense and for 
 aggression. So long as this feeling lasts on both sides, it is aggra- 
 vated as much by the attitude of labor as by the attitude of capi- 
 tal. From the nature of the case, however, I think it is only a 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. SETH LOW. 231 
 
 passing phase. The first impulse with both forms of organization — 
 for it must be remembered that both are comparatively new — has 
 been to try their strength. They try it upon each other, and they 
 try it upon society. These struggles constitute the experience by 
 which, in time, both forms of organization will learn the limits of 
 their power and the laws of their own usefulness. If I am right, 
 the remedy for this feeling of antagonism lies in a changed bearing 
 on the part of the corporation towards labor, whereby every thought 
 for the stockholder shall involve a thought for the laborer, every 
 benefit for the stockholders some benefit for the laborer. Every 
 such change on the part of the corporation, I cannot doubt, will 
 be responded to, !n time, by a corresponding change in the attitude 
 of labor. 
 
 The tendencies of our times in other directions have aug- 
 mented the difficulty which would have been troublesome enough 
 in any case. The great improvements in machinery, the develop- 
 ment of steam and electricity as servant forces, have resulted 
 in an enormous increase in the power of production. This has 
 been accompanied by a subdivision of labor, which has made 
 the occupation of the individual workman less and less interesting. 
 Instead of one man making a shoe, and enjoying the range of 
 occupation and thought involved in the various parts of the proc- 
 ess, sixty men now make sixty different parts, each man's work, 
 in most instances, being as mechanical as that of the machine he 
 tends. Is it not fortunate for his manhood and for society that 
 the man who is thus made a machine has become, in the realms of 
 politics, more and more a man ? This belittling of the life which 
 has come to so many workmen has aggravated, I do not doubt, 
 their sense of antagonism to capital. The same influences which 
 have reduced the workingman in his daily scope have widened 
 indescribably the privilege and opportunity of capital. Has capital 
 appreciated as it should the responsibility and the duty which 
 come with the privilege— the duty, as Ruskin puts it, " of living 
 belfry and rampart " — the duty to awaken and to defend ? I do 
 not think envy is a stronger force to-day than it always has been. 
 Differences of condition count for something, no doubt. But the 
 only antagonisms which are dangerous are those which spring from 
 grievances which are genuine. 
 
 With this statement of the case before us, we now are ready to 
 consider for a few moments the relation of the church to the ques- 
 
232 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 . tion we have been discussing. Whatever it be, it must be a rela- 
 tion to individuals. The kingdom of heaven still, as of old, is a 
 little leaven, leavening the whole lump. I hope it has been made 
 clear that the church has no mission to bemoan, nor to fight 
 against tendencies to combination, either on the part of labor or of 
 capital. The laws which these tendencies obey are as inexorable 
 as the tides of the sea. In their effect on individuals they may 
 appear sometimes to be cruel. They are cruel only as the waves 
 are cruel ; these drown the innocent babe as readily as the strong, 
 bad man ; but the same waves which drown some, float multitudes 
 to homes and happiness and rest. The church should rather 
 rejoice, I think, that these tendencies are absolutely hostile to utter 
 selfishness. Through the corporation, the large stockholder of 
 necessity gives opportunity and advantage to the small stockholder. 
 Through the Trades Union, the average man fares better than 
 before. So far as both are true to the law of their own being, 
 they illustrate one of the fundamental teachings of the Christian 
 faith — that a man may not live for himself alone. It is precisely 
 here that the church's mission begins. These organizations, in 
 their management, must be made unselfish. Although in them the 
 individual in a certain sense is lost, nevertheless they are controlled 
 by individuals. The church must teach all such to be just, to be 
 generous, to be upright. It is her old mission to preach to the 
 strong that they shall not oppress the weak. Let her preach to 
 the capitalist and to the laborer alike, her old lesson of individual 
 responsibility. Let her preach to both that the corporate or 
 organized form has not lessened but rather increased this respon- 
 sibility by so much as it has increased their power. Let the church 
 teach that a director is a trustee, and not at all a man who has 
 the inside track, and a trustee not in point of money only, but 
 also in point of honor, that the good name and the good fame of 
 his stockholders suffer not from selfish disregard of the men in their 
 employ. Let the church teach equally that the manager of the 
 labor organization also is a trustee, that he has no right to lead 
 his followers to disregard the rights of others in their efforts to 
 establish their own. Let the church see to it that her mouth is 
 not stopped by gags of gold. Let her denounce the wrong^doings 
 against society of the wealthy capitalist, in his control of organiza- 
 tions, as warmly as it denounces the wrongs done by organized labor. 
 Let the church openly give her sympathy to flesh and blood 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. SETH LOW. 233 
 
 rather than to dollars and cents; but because she does so, let her 
 denounce the wrongs done in the name of labor as bravely as she 
 denounces the wrongs done by capital. And finally, let the 
 ■church teach with increasing earnestness that duty and responsi- 
 bility go with privilege, that those who have received much from 
 the community owe the community much. So shall the leaven of 
 Christ's doctrine of human brotherhood tend more and more 
 towards its longed-for consummation — the realization of that divine 
 ideal in the affairs of men when it may be said, not only that an 
 injury to one is the concern of all, but that the good of all is the 
 constant concern of every one. 
 
 The Chairman : In the further discussion of this subject, ' ' The 
 Relation of the Church to the Capital and Labor Question," we 
 have the very great pleasure of having to participate with us a 
 representative of the laboring men themselves, Mr. E. H. Rogers. 
 
RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE 
 CAPITAL AND LABOR QUESTION. 
 
 BY MR. E. H. ROGERS, OF CHELSEA, MASS. 
 
 Mr. President and Christian Friends: The modern Protest- 
 ant world looks to Christ mainly as a personal Saviour. Our sys- 
 tems of theology, it is true, verbally recognize him as Prophet,, 
 Priest and King ; but they have hitherto taken no intelligent note 
 of his pre-existing function, as the Master Builder, under God, of 
 the universe. 
 
 It is self-evident that, as the prophetical and priestly offices 
 imply and indeed assert his power as a king, so they all point 
 toward the inference that a world must have been created by him 
 to form the arena upon which his power should be exercised. 
 The fact that this commanding proof of the divinity of our Lord 
 has been obscured, has not been due to any lack of evidence in 
 the Scriptures. It is remarkable that St. John, though the most 
 spiritual of the evangelists, should begin his gospel with the state- 
 ment that, " All things were made by him; and without him was 
 not anything made that hath been made." The unknown author 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews also recognizes the basic relation of 
 Christ to the outward and visible frame-work of nature in the 
 expression which he applies to him : " Through whom also he 
 made the worlds." 
 
 St. Paul agrees also with these statements, and we are not 
 without the direct testimony of the Lord himself upon this point: 
 " My Father worketh even until now, and I work." To which we: 
 may add with undoubted propriety, the following words with refer- 
 ence to his earthly parentage: "My Father was a toiler, and I 
 too toil." The incarnation modified somewhat his function, and 
 makes him the Master Workman of the laboring masses. 
 
 The incidental evidence which the gospels offer upon this point 
 
 234 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. E. H. ROGERS. 235 
 
 is very strong. Christ repeatedly uses the term "hireling" in a 
 depreciatory sense. The great body of the people of his day, as of 
 the present, were either slaves or wage-workers. Now, as it will 
 not be claimed that the Master intended to offer gratuitous dis- 
 respect to the industrious poor, it follows that he did deliberately 
 use language which reveals the fact that the wage or " hireling " sys- 
 tem, by which the labor of Christendom is at present conducted, 
 does not meet his approval. With such discrimination did he 
 do this, that the words of the evangelists will bear a very close 
 analysis. In the tenth chapter of St. Luke, the expression is 
 used in both versions, " For the laborer is worthy of his hire." 
 But I am told by competent scholars that the original Greek calls 
 for the use of a very different word, namely, " reward," instead of 
 "hire," an alteration which would fully express the evident inten- 
 tion of Christ to do honor to labor, and it would also emphasize 
 his censorious use of the depreciatory expression "hireling," in 
 other connections. 
 
 I have thus briefly outlined some of the reasons for believing 
 that Jesus Christ, in addition to his other titles of honor, is the 
 Supreme Master Builder of the universe. This function precedes 
 and underlies all the others, and it will not reach its consummation 
 until the earth shall present the ripened fruit foretold by the 
 Hebrew prophets. 
 
 It is now in order to make an unprejudiced inquiry whether 
 the slow and troubled progress of the divine kingdom is not 
 largely due to our failure, hitherto, to recognize the authority 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the above-named capacity. I am 
 not so presuming as to attempt to thrust my unsupported 
 individual opinions, in such an important matter, upon you. The 
 Protestant working-people of America are already upon record in 
 a very pronounced effort looking toward the final adoption, in our 
 churches, of measures of a distinctively secular character. It 
 came about as follows: 
 
 During the year 1872 a group of wage- working laymen, resident 
 in Boston and its vicinity, formed themselves into an association 
 called " The Christian Labor Union." The central idea of this 
 organization was expressed in the third paragraph of its constitu- 
 tion, which reads thus: 
 
 " The Christian Labor Union assumes that Jesus founded no 
 new church, but that he came to expand the one then existing 
 
236 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 into perfect form, by laying aside its cumbrous ceremonial, and 
 unfolding to their fullness those spiritual principles in it which per- 
 tained to the temporal life of man, as well as by bringing man into 
 a right relation to God " 
 
 The Union also urged upon all Christians the prayerful consid- 
 eration of three practical propositions. The first of these would 
 extend the obligations of church organization and membership to 
 such mutual care in sickness and pecuniary distress, as is now 
 provided in the various benefit societies. The second would direct 
 the attention and secure the support of the churches in their 
 corporate capacity, to all forms of industrial co-operation, from 
 the Trade Union to the isolated Christian community. The 
 third calls upon the churches to expand the above principles 
 and measures to their full limits, by withdrawing the support 
 which they now tacitly give to the maxims of trade, substituting 
 therefor the Bible teaching that " labor cost is the just limit of 
 price." 
 
 The above Union was in active operation for the period of six 
 years. It held two conventions in Boston; one of them in the ves- 
 try of Park Street Church, the other in Winthrop Hall, the religious 
 home of the Congregationalists. It raised and spent more than a 
 thousand dollars in publishing two periodicals, Equity, and 
 The Labor Balance, also a number of tracts. Its membership 
 involved a wide range of opinion, but a remarkable degree of har- 
 mony pervaded its councils. It had also an outside membership 
 of a. very comprehensive kind. The Catholic church was repre- 
 sented in the person of the late Hon. T. Wharton Collens, of New 
 Orleans, La., widely known in that city; he was its largest patron 
 in respect to funds. On the other extreme of doctrine a devout 
 layman of Montreal, Wm. Brown, a Presbyterian — also deceased — 
 sympathized strongly with the aims of the Union. 
 
 It is worthy of special notice, that it commanded the respect of 
 other labor- organizations. A most determined effort was made by 
 one of them, however, to crush it by ridicule, but without success. 
 This assault came from the theoretic anarchists. Its defeat dis- 
 closed the fact that considerable numbers of rationalistic working 
 people recognize Scriptural truths on secular subjects. 
 
 I have been thus particular in the account of this organization, 
 for the reason that it seems to have been of the nature of a proph- 
 ecy of future developments on the same line of thought. It was 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. E. H. ROGERS. 237 
 
 begun without enthusiasm, but with a great sense of religious obliga- 
 tion. It ended from natural causes, without the discouragement 
 of its members. Those of them who are now living are as confi- 
 dent to-day as they were then that Jesus Christ, our Master Work- 
 man, is now directing the great crisis which is upon the world. The 
 result, we apprehend, will be rest for the bodies as well as the 
 souls of all who labor in his vineyard. 
 
 Our reasons for this belief base themselves on natural conditions 
 and exposures. It is now some years since the more observant and 
 ingenuous students of political economy admitted certain facts 
 having a very important bearing upon the operation of commercial 
 law, in its relation lioth to labor and capital. It was observed that 
 wages did not fluctuate with the freedom attaching to the price of 
 merchandise; more than this, it became evident that the conditions 
 of labor in its relation to the duration of daily toil were so disas- 
 trous that it is universally true that, " The more hours men work 
 in any staple branch of manufactures, the less they receive in the 
 form of wages." 
 
 Out of these observations and conclusions an axiomatic truth 
 has been evolved, namely, that human labor cannot be wisely 
 or justly treated as a commodity. The reasons for this are as 
 follows : The labor of a human being stands in such relations to 
 his personality that it cannot be held or hoarded for an advance 
 in price, as merchandise and money are; its capacity of exercise 
 perishes by the mere lapse of time. The trader and the capitalist 
 can wait without obvious and necessary injury, but the lost time 
 of the laborer carries with it his opportunity to toil, while it is 
 passing. The labor, which should have been developed yesterday, 
 has gone beyond the control of its owner. Under the unrestricted 
 operation of commercial law, the great body of working people are 
 held so rigidly to the universal daily necessities of food, clothing 
 and shelter for themselves and those dependent upon them, that 
 they must accept, at the moment of its offer, such wages as their 
 state of development makes essential to their life. There would 
 not be so much to be said about these disastrous conditions as 
 there is, if working people were homogeneous. If all were married, 
 or if all were single, or if all were adult males or adult females, 
 or, still further, if all were youths, manifestly a uniform scale of 
 wages might be adopted having the elements of justice; but as it 
 is, single men constantly underbid married men, hence the family 
 
1238 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 dwindles. Both classes of adults are underbid by youths, because 
 they can work for less than even the single man or woman can do. 
 Superficial reformers demand the same pay for women as is given 
 to a man for the same amount of work. But it is impossible to 
 comply with this demand under individualized competition. The 
 facts which have been given show that neither men nor women are 
 paid for what they produce; they are only paid for what they have 
 come to regard as necessary costs of living. A woman can unques- 
 tionably live upon less income than a man, and as long as wage 
 competition continues, a living is aU that she will get. The above 
 remarks, however, need qualification in all cases in which the organ- 
 ization of the trades enables them to obtain justice. 
 
 But we must follow the effects of wage competition still further, if 
 -we would learn its final and most impressive lesson. We have seen 
 that it breaks down the family; the state and the church are both in- 
 Tolved in any disaster to the home, and this danger comes in its most 
 impressive form when a heathen people, with their narrow needs 
 and consequent low wages, invade, as the Chinese and some other 
 depressed peoples are now doing, our partially Christianized civiliza- 
 tion. Under normal conditions of national growth, the differences 
 of sex, age and condition, whether married or single, which have 
 been alluded to, present indeed great obstacles to industrial 
 equity ; but these are modified by the influences which cluster 
 around and spring out of national unity. Commercialism finds 
 its climax in the effort to remove this last barrier which lies in 
 its way. 
 
 One more exposure of labor demands our attention. Under present 
 ■conditions, it is incumbent upon capitalists to withhold employment 
 from those who would be glad to labor, using, instead of their toil, 
 the vast forces of modern invention. The highest authority ir 
 Massachusetts estimates the cost of machine power equal to that 
 of a man at thirty-one cents a day; so that in this aspect of his 
 exposures, every human laborer has to bid against a dummy, whose 
 cost of maintenance is even less than that of the Chinese. 
 
 The vast accumulation of national wealth which is accruing 
 under these conditions is heavily loaded, in the eyes of Chris- 
 tian sociologists, with the unavoidable consequence, that what is 
 wealth to one class is debt to another, and those who are in debt 
 for it are very largely those whose illy requited manual toil pro- 
 duced the most of it. Under these circumstances, the rapidly 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. E. H. ROGERS. 239 
 
 increasing wealth of the country is an occasion for anxiety rather 
 than boasting. 
 
 These last considerations are still further intensified by the 
 investigations already spoken of, concerning the functions of capi- 
 tal. It has been held until within a few years that the wages of 
 labor are paid from accumulated capital. Out of this belief the 
 " Wage Fund " theory originated. It naturally followed, from this 
 view, that cultivated society was inclined to wink at the oppression 
 of the poor in their wages, inasmuch as the money thus obtained 
 constituted a permanent fund from which future laborers were to 
 be supported. But the whole theory has been triumphantly refut- 
 ed. Capital, phifosophically considered, is only a "tool" in the 
 laborer's hands. In a large sense we are always and everywhere 
 paid out of the production in which we are at the time engaged. 
 Capital has, of course, some economic value even as a tool, but it 
 is entirely secondary to that which is usually claimed for it. The 
 facilities which capitalists have to stint the just reward of toil, and 
 the motives they have to increase the facilities of production, are 
 prominent factors in hastening the coming industrial crisis. 
 
 These two remarkable developments concerning labor and capi- 
 tal have sapped the foundations of the received systems of political 
 economy. They confirm the doctrine of the Bible, that large 
 accumulations of gain-gotten wealth are not only unnecessary, but 
 that they are positively injurious to society. I will say, in this con- 
 nection, that I find no evidence in the Scriptures that they or their 
 authors are opposed to the accumulation of wealth from natural 
 sources; and under such customs as prevailed during the patriar- 
 chal and theocratic systems of society the work-people of Abra- 
 ham and Boaz were not strikers. 
 
 It thus appears that the wisdom of the century which has elapsed 
 since Adam Smith attempted to prove that self-interest forms a 
 sufficient foundation for economic science, has come to nought. It 
 remains to be seen that the Bible is correct in its teachings, that 
 the only safe guide for men in their economic as in all other 
 affairs is self-sacrifice. It may also further appear that the condi- 
 tions of general prosperity are such that, in the last analysis, capi- 
 talists are as much dependent on equitable organization as we have 
 seen that laborers are. For this purpose I shall appeal directly to 
 the Old Testament — the Bible of Christ— for what seems to me to 
 be a sufficient authority for my belief that the principles of the 
 
240 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 sociology of Moses must be studied and applied to the exigencies 
 of modern society. Apprehending that this inquiry is what Christ 
 is now prompting in his function as the Master Workman, I shall 
 carry the argument forward to the gospels. 
 
 The Book of Deuteronomy contains, in the fifteenth verse of the 
 eighteenth chapter, the following prophecy of Moses, addressed 
 to the children of Israel : " The Lord thy God will raise up unto 
 thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto 
 me; unto him ye shall hearken." 
 
 This prediction has been generally accepted as referring to Christ. 
 It is remarkable in two respects ; it stands alone as a prophecy, 
 and it is immediately reaffirmed in the same chapter as a divine 
 promise, so that it comes to us with the additional authority which 
 is understood to attach to the expression, " Thus saith the Lord." 
 In making further allusion to Scripture, I shall rely upon this con- 
 joined prophecy and promise, as a corner-stone to the outline of a 
 theology which shall respect existing opinions and belief in relation 
 to the unseen world, but which shall insist on a more practical 
 recognition of the exposures of the present life. We sing with 
 emotive fervor concerning the gospel, "that the half was never 
 told." But we little suspect that this is literally true! We adore 
 Christ as a being filled " with grace and truth," but we know little 
 or nothing of him as one " in whom were hid all the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge.'' 
 
 The Protestant world is nearly a unit in asserting that Christ 
 "claimed no authority over secular affairs." But if this is the 
 correct idea of the scope of his mission, what becomes of the 
 strongly marked characteristics of Moses, by which nearly the whole 
 force of the old dispensation was developed in the direction of 
 laws and institutions having for their evident aim the material pros- 
 perity of the common people. Certainly these characteristics are 
 not presented in the modern gospel. It does not proclaim a Christ 
 who has even attempted to relieve us from the harsh natural con- 
 ditions of poverty and excessive toil. A careful study of the 
 evangelists reveals the existence of doctrinal misconceptions in 
 this direction of a very marked character. To the work of their 
 exposure we will now address ourselves, appealing for this pur- 
 pose again to the Old Testament before passing to the gospels. 
 
 In the eighteenth chapter and twentieth verse of the Book of 
 Numbers, the following statement is made by Jehovah to the high 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. E. H. ROGERS. 241 
 
 priest Aaron. " And behold I have given the children of Levi all 
 the tenth in Israel, for an inheritence for their service which they 
 serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation." 
 
 As ordinarily understood, the above services were limited to the 
 administration of the imposing ritual of the ceremonial law. 
 That this view falls far short of the real facts in the case, is evident 
 from the following summary of the functions of the Levites, from 
 the " Commentary on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews," written 
 some years ago by the late Dr. E. C. Wines, a social scientist of 
 reputation, and also a Christian believer. " The tribe of Levi then 
 comprehended the learned of all names; the sages and professors 
 of law and jurisprftdence, of medicine and physiology, of the physi- 
 cal and mathematical sciences; in short, all the so-called liberal arts 
 and sciences, the possession and application of which constitute the 
 civilization of a country. It was to be the chief instrument of a 
 continuing and progressive mental, moral and religious culture of 
 the people. Its business was to produce, preserve and protect all 
 the necessary sources and conditions of national civilization; to 
 form and train up the people of the country to be obedient, free, 
 useful citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the state, and 
 prepared to die in its defense." Briefly stated, the meaning of the 
 above is, that when the Hebrew people paid their yearly tax of a 
 tenth of their crops, or their cattle, they also paid in the same act, 
 not only their preachers, doctors and lawyers, but all their pro- 
 fessional men of every kind. In other words, every individual of 
 the nation could claim — under proper conditions, of course — the 
 services of the cultivated classes of the country without further fee 
 or reward. In addition to this, they had no rent to pay. 
 
 This view of Dr. Wines is sustained by the testimony of the 
 Syrian missionary. Dr. W. M. Thompson, who says in his well- 
 known volume, " The Land and the Book " that " The Hebrew 
 commonwealth, or church, was a religious corporation, which guar- 
 anteed extensive worldly advantages to every faithful member. 
 The letter of its promises is almost wholly temporal, and if we 
 glance back at the history of the Holy Land, from Abraham to this 
 day, we shall find that religion has been inseparably interwoven 
 with the secular affairs of the people." 
 
 The authority, however, of any number of modern scholars would 
 be of but little account in such a weighty matter, were it not sus- 
 tained by the general course of revelation. At this point I am at 
 
242 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 liberty to refer to the Book of Proverbs for very direct evidence 
 supporting the positions already taken. It is now conceded 
 that these sayings were not all of them written by Solomon. 
 It is in the very nature of a proverb that it shall originate 
 among the people, growing out of their circumstances and ex- 
 perience. Seen from this point, the maxims to which Solomon 
 gave the sanction of his name, demonstrate that the Hebrew 
 people were, for nearly five centuries at least, under the control of 
 a deep religious sociology. This book magnifies the divine law ; 
 it deprecates usury, and it points out the evils of suretyship in such 
 a manner as to prove the corporate character and action of the 
 Levitical priesthood as organized by Moses. The tithe was 
 undoubtedly received by them as a body, and they were responsible 
 as such for the acts of their individual members. This made it not 
 only selfish and dishonorable for one of them to seek private advan- 
 tage by giving bonds, but treason to the church-state of which they 
 were members, and impiety toward God. The denunciation of 
 usury is, of itself, decisive of the sociological character of the law, 
 for it is conceded that no limit can be put on speculative price 
 without the help of organization. It is evident that the Levitical 
 function was in such active exercise, m organic relations to the wel- 
 fare of the people, as to be gratefully recognized by them in their 
 homely sayings. The moral grandeur of the Proverbs as a histori- 
 cal exponent of the sociology of Moses can only be fully realized 
 by a comparison of its leading ideas with those of our own times, 
 as expressed by Benjamin Franklin in " Poor Richard's Almanac." 
 The relation of the great Hebrew prophets to this theme must be 
 passed for lack of time. I pause a moment, however, to say that 
 Zechariah contains evident allusions to the culmination of the 
 industrial question. The closing verses of his fifth chapter point, 
 if I mistake not, very directly to our country as the location, 
 and its two great churches as the means by which righteousness 
 shall be established in the earth. These verses are as follows: 
 " Then lifted I up mine eyes and looked, and behold there came 
 out two women, and the wind was in their wings ; for they had wings 
 like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the 
 earth and the heaven. Then said I to the angel that talked with 
 me. Whither do these bear the ephah? And he said unto me, "To 
 build it a house in the land of Shinar, and it shall be established 
 and set there upon her own base." 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. E. H. ROGERS. 243 
 
 This prophecy connects in a very lucid manner with the twelfth 
 ■chapter of Revelation, where "the woman flies upon the two wings 
 •of a great eagle" — our National emblem — " into the wilderness," 
 where she is " helped by the earth." 
 
 The discovery of America was, so Charles Sumner says, " the 
 greatest event of secular history." Upon its soil civil govern- 
 ment has, theoretically at least, reached its highest form in the 
 ■establishment of a republic. The question now presents itself, 
 whether the church of Christ is not to receive a similar impulse, 
 and, in the words of a preacher who has already responded to the 
 new forces, " burst in glory from the dead chrysalis accumulations 
 ■of many centuries.*' 
 
 We now come to the all-important consideration of the language 
 and actions of Christ on the topic under consideration. In the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount he honored the '| Law" in the most conspicu- 
 ■oiJs manner, declaring " That he came not to destroy the law, or 
 the prophets," thus most remarkably approving the denunciations 
 •of the people by the Hebrew seers, for disobeying it. He pro- 
 ceeds to recognize its permanent obligation by saying that it would 
 not " pass away " until the " heavens and the earth " should fail; 
 and, still further, comments on its perfection by the allusion to its 
 " least commandments." 
 
 We cannot suppose that Christ referred to the ceremonial law; 
 with his appearance on the earth, all occasion for its continued 
 •observance had ceased. It is equally vain to limit the scope of 
 his language to the brief wording of the Ten Commandments; 
 manifestly the grand features of the sociology of the Hebrews 
 were designed in order to enable them to comply fully with the 
 ten elementary commandments of the " law." That I am justified 
 in these conclusions, will appear from his conduct in the syna- 
 gogue at Nazareth, as recorded in the fourth chapter of St. 
 I/uke's Gospel. 
 
 This was Christ's first public act after his baptism. It had 
 been preceded, it is true, by the marriage at Cana; by his pres- 
 ence there he recognized the family as lying at the base of human 
 society, but in the proceedings at Nazareth he vindicated his 
 claim to lordship over the more comprehensive organizations of 
 the church-state which Moses had founded under his direction. He 
 read from the Book of Isaiah as follows : " The Spirit of the Lord 
 is upon me, oecause he hath anointed me to preach good tidings 
 
244 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 to the poor ; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, 
 and recovery of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 In commenting upon the above, I remark that in this, Christ's 
 inaugural address to his countrymen, he confines himself entirely 
 to material benefits; but the full force of his language can only be 
 felt by a fuller knowledge of the circumstances than we find in 
 the current commentaries. The Hebrew world of labor was fast 
 lowering to the gentile level of slavery, which was the irresistible 
 tendency of the masses of the Roman Empire. Debt was inevi- 
 table. Chattelship unavoidably ensued, the debtor being sold to 
 satisfy the claims of his creditors. While the Sabbatic periods 
 of the Hebrew sociology were observed, this bondage could not 
 continue over seven years ; but these had fallen into contempt, 
 under a veil so thin as to be transparent. Christ announced his 
 intention to liberate the slaves of Nazareth ! That his meaning 
 was apparent, is very evident from the social convulsion which 
 followed; that he barely escaped with his life, is plainly stated. 
 
 Now, if Christ's mission was, as modern theology asserts, wholly 
 spiritual, and limited to the individual conscience, he might, so far 
 as we can see, have availed himself, m the Judgment Hall at Jeru- 
 salem, of the whole power of the Roman government, by simply 
 telling Pilate that he did not propose to interfere with any of the 
 existing institutions of Judea or Galilee. But he did not do this, 
 and the reason is evident; these transactions at Nazareth would 
 have condemned him even if no other occurrences of the same- 
 nature had transpired. 
 
 But there were other acts of Christ which deserve our notice in 
 this connection. His conduct in Galilee warrants the belief that 
 he intended to follow in the steps of Moses in caring for the tem- 
 poral welfare of the people. The twelve and the seventy were sent 
 out with the command, " Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise 
 the dead, cast out devils." A single allusion by St. Mark to- 
 "repentance" excepted, there is not a word in the Galilean- 
 gospel about baptism, regeneration, or any other rite or experience, 
 which we have been accustomed to associate with Christianity. 
 But the primal gospel was also organic in its nature; the two com- 
 missions which were sent out by Christ were not limited to personal 
 evangelizing. On the contrary, they were directed by him to- 
 inquire, when they entered a city, who in it was " worthy;" and the 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. E. H. ROGERS. 245 
 
 account renders it probable that these parties were approached in 
 their public relations. That both missions referred to communities 
 in their organized capacities, is still further indicated in the instruc- 
 tions to "wipe off the dust" of the cities which rejected them, to 
 " salute no man by the way," and "to go not from house to house;" 
 peculiarities which would dispense with many of the ordinary activ- 
 ities of the apostolic gospel as we now have it, such as tract dis- 
 tribution, pastoral visits, prayer-meetings, revivals, and the like. 
 In short, there is very little in the instructions or in the proceed- 
 ings on these occasions of a spiritual character. 
 
 The awful woes leveled against these cities by Christ are 
 strangely disprop'brtionate in volume and force, if regarded as 
 addressed solely to individuals. But if we consider that the King 
 came in his royal authority to his own, proposing the reformation 
 of all that was wrong in public institutions as well as in private 
 character, and that his rejection by them was decisive, not only 
 of the fate of the nation, but that it modified temporarily his rela- 
 tion to the whole race, then we can perceive its propriety. Its 
 importance may be inferred from the episode at the Last Supper, 
 when the Master called the attention of the apostles to the orders 
 he had formerly given them, to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom 
 to the Galileans, and reversed them to suit the altered circum- 
 stances, warning them to " sell their cloaks and buy swords." 
 
 I have time for only one more statement, which I draw from the 
 occurrences of the great Forty Days. It is a most extraordinary 
 thing that the last, and apparently the most important of all of the 
 discourses of Christ should have been addressed to two otherwise 
 unknown men during the walk to Emmaus ; and that of this dis- 
 course a single verse should be all that is preserved, as follows : 
 " Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, be expounded unto them 
 in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself." 
 
 I trust that I shall be pardoned for avowing my belief that the 
 above discourse was addressed to humble workingmen, and that 
 its oral dissemination accounts in large measure for the extraor- 
 dinary success of the early church in its appeal to the poor of the 
 world. I cannot doubt but that it related, in part at least, to the 
 material aspects of the heavenly kingdom — aspects which unhappily 
 have been obscured in the lapse of ages. 
 
 Finally, I call to mind the wonderful vision of St. John, and as 
 I have studied diligently its message, I find that the last " voice " 
 
246 RELATION OF THK CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 of command from Christ in heaven bears directly upon our theme. 
 It is as follows : 
 
 " Come forth, my people, out of Babylon, that ye have no fellow- 
 ship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." (Rev. 
 xviii. 4.) 
 
 GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. A. G. SCHADE. 
 
 Mr. President: You will perceive that I speak altogether in 
 German. I did not have time to study the English language as I 
 would like to have done, because I had to work amongst the 
 Germans. 
 
 I fell in with socialism in Switzerland twenty years ago. They 
 wanted to make me an agitator. And since that time I have 
 studied the question of socialism. Six years ago, in Cleveland, I 
 was called an alarmist, but I am justified to-day in making a little 
 alarm. 
 
 Mr. President, let me appeal to this grand Convention to some 
 practical end for the laboring Christians. In the socialistic organ- 
 izations there is crystallizing the anti-Christian spirit of the nine- 
 teenth century, and they will try to get every workman in. If 
 they get our workmen in their societies, we will not have them in 
 churches. Before they get them all in, the church has to awaken 
 and try to organize them. The necessity is proved to me by the 
 fact that some capitalists of Cleveland don't like organized society 
 at all. But if we can direct their thoughts in such a way as to 
 guide them and instruct them, and, bv the way, tell them, " We 
 love you," then we accomplish a great deal which all the other 
 organizations of to-day do not accomplish. You will find my 
 pamphlet here that I wrote for a dozen of millionaires in Cleve- 
 land. They were not acquainted with the question, and when 
 they came into our secret sessions, where we wanted to counteract 
 the anarchistical schemes of two years ago, I had to repeat the 
 same things every time, so I thought I would write them down. 
 But they didn't have time to read them, and they read the news- 
 papers from Chicago, and they got the result which I predicted. 
 And I know of what I speak from observation of history, that in 
 
REMARKS BY REV. A. C. SCHADE. 247 
 
 twenty years we will give a little more time to the question, if we 
 do not act in time. There are still in every city, even among the 
 foreigners of whom there is so much said, many who would like to 
 be led. Now it amounts to something, if in every large city we 
 will have ten men of each congregation to organize in a Christian 
 way. No one church can do it, and I would not advise to follow 
 that example of Cardinal Gibbons. We want to have concerted 
 action, and not only in one city. I guess that was the reason why 
 the effort in Boston died of a natural death. We must organize 
 in every city in the Union, not a secret society, but a strongly and 
 well organized society, so that we are sure no infidel and no social- 
 ist will get in, and* the name of Christ and the Christian spirit will 
 banish them from such a Christian laborers' party or society. 
 Now give me ten of each congregation, and I can prevent a strike 
 in a shop of 2,000 workers. I have proved it. Mr. Chisholm (I 
 may mention some names : you will excuse me, I am a German) 
 told me one day, that they could not open the shops, and he was 
 relying on my thirty men (I have fifty in my congregation) that 
 they should go to work. By the way, some of them had been in 
 France with their guns, and they were not afraid to march through 
 two or three thousand strikers. I told Mr. Chisholm, " They will 
 not break the strike this time." Next day it was put on the boards 
 that prices in London had advanced, and they would grant the ten 
 cents ; and the machines are going still. I hope we will work on 
 that line, my friends. You have an opportunity to speak to the 
 capitalists; although I think very few of you have a chance to lis- 
 ten to the German talk in the street-cars as I do, and as my 
 Brother SchauflBer has a chance to listen to the talk of Bohemians 
 on the street-cars, and on their way to the shop and going home. 
 
 We have to study these things in the sessions of our societies, 
 and we will have a chance to ferret out the anarchists who are 
 coming into these shops and trying to overturn the minds and rea- 
 sons of our Christian people by their everlasting discontent. Give 
 us a small organization, but a true one, and sustain it, and go in 
 yourself and extend a hand of Christian fellowship to a poor laborer, 
 if he is a Christian. I don't believe in a brotherhood of socialists 
 with Christian people. I can't have socialists in my congregation. 
 
 One word more. I can't have a capitalist in my congregation. 
 [Laughter.] Mr. President, I will tell you why. I would tell him 
 the truth — because I am independent. A minister who has to 
 
248 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 watch his salary is not very apt to tell the rich members in the 
 church what they are to do. I can find out some of your capital- 
 ists who don't believe in Christ. And I will not drive them out of 
 the church because they are socialists and capitalists ; but I will 
 tell them they cannot be in our church, and cannot be my brethren, 
 if they don't love my Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 MR. GEORGE MAY POWELL, OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 CHAIRMAN OF THE AMERICAN ARBITRATION COUNCIL. 
 
 Three years' intense work in seeking to aid in securing Chris- 
 tian settlements of strikes and lockouts, and in advancing other 
 phases of right in the labor, question, has taught us that the 
 influence of evangelical religion has been the star of hope in one 
 of the darkest, wildest storms that ever swept over our country. 
 In this work we have sometimes needed the counsel and influ- 
 ence of senators and merchant princes and others. All these have 
 received us kindly, but we have never found any practical co- 
 operation, except from such of these men as were sons of the 
 church. Counsel and influence were all we asked, as we have 
 paid our own bills in it thus far. 
 
 We all see there are millions of money involved in these struggles; 
 but we consider even -these vast sums small, beside the hunger and 
 cold, and mental and other physical sufferings of women and children, 
 and of poor, helpless, honest men who were more than willing to 
 work. But all these millions of dollars and all this suffering com- 
 bined are small beside the moral questions at stake. Giving a man 
 work is often to save him. By parity of reasoning, to throw 
 him out of work is to lose him, and it may be his family, soul as 
 well as body. Therefore, as the government Labor Bureau chief 
 has well said, in substance, " The labor question is one of ethics." 
 Hence the propriety of discussing it in such a presence as this, in 
 the form of the " Relation of the Church to the Capital and Labor 
 Question." 
 
 If this question is viewed through sordid and selfish lenses, it is 
 as enigmatic as the handwriting once on a Babylonian palace 
 wall. Its solution will confuse and baffle those most wise in 
 worldly wisdom. Yet seen and analyzed in the light of a sermon 
 
REMARKS BY MR. G. M. POWELL. 249 
 
 •delivered near twenty centuries ago, on a Syrian mountain as a 
 pulpit, its interpretation is arrived at with the clearness and pre- 
 cision of algebra. 
 
 In the work of my committee, we have not been able to settle 
 as many of these industrial turmoils as we could wish; but we have, 
 directly and indirectly, settled those involving many millions of 
 dollars in the aggregate. Better still, we have helped those most 
 ■directly interested to see how to settle them for themselves. 
 Thinking they had done it themselves, they were better satis- 
 fied, and so made more willing to abide steadfastly by the results. 
 Our work has also been so blessed that we have been enabled 
 to " side-track " Some gathering labor troubles off into profit- 
 sharing, or into productive co-operative measures. 
 
 In all these lines of effort we have relied largely on scattering 
 hundreds of millions of tract pages on arbitration and other Chris- 
 tian measures, through the secular and the religious periodical press. 
 See, for example, ''Strikes, Lockouts and Arbitration;' an 
 article in the Century of April, 1886. In it there were about 
 a quarter million issue of rules of arbitration, which had been 
 tested in strike settlements which we had successfully organized 
 and completed. Also notes and comments on the same, making 
 it easy for many others to satisfactorily use them, as many did, 
 all over the country, without any further action on our part. Over 
 a further million of these rules, etc., were issued and scattered, 
 through republication from this magazine, by local newspapers 
 from ocean to qcean. Better still, accounts of how such troubles 
 had been prevented by such conciliation as that in the Peace 
 Courts of France, and by the culture of Christian relations 
 between those earning and paying wages, were set forth in that 
 paper and its more than a million of re-issue. See also an address 
 of ours on the general subject of Industrial Friction, before the 
 managers of the Chicago Board of Trade, October 26, 1886, and 
 an address on " Profit-sharing " which we gave at the Social 
 Science Congress at Saratoga, September 9, 1887. 
 
 We treat liquor and tobacco as the great side-track of waste of 
 billions of the people's money, and Christian temperance work, 
 •especially that of the W. C. T. U., as the track to run this treasure 
 into the true economic interests of labor and capital. We claim 
 that " under-consumption " is a term giving truer diagnosis of one 
 great cause of labor troubles tiian "over-production;" because, 
 
250 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 when the mass of the people spend the two billion or more of 
 dollars, now worse than wasted annually in drink and dissipation,, 
 in buying home-made products sorely needed in their homes, the 
 song of labor will be pitched in the major instead of the minor key. 
 
 In our public papers and addresses we recognize home and city 
 missions— especially the latter — as the Gibraltar of this whole 
 subject. But we find, too, the weakness, as well as all the strength- 
 we have, in the church. For example, we see in the Sabbath 
 the base-line of this campaign. The question being, as held by Mr. 
 Carroll- D. Wright, the government Labor Bureau chief, "one of 
 ethics," conscience is its spinal column, and the Sabbath the day 
 for it to be given strength, so that laborers and capitalists may see 
 just what the Golden Rule demands of them, and have grace given 
 to act accordingly. Yet an address on the Sabbath question, 
 given by a prominent city pastor, which we hoped to use with good 
 effect, turned out to be instead, a weapon of the enemy. He treated 
 the Sabbath of the Puritan as having no foundation in the New 
 Testament. He took the specific ground that, as the curved line 
 is "the line of beauty in art," so we must vary our practice in 
 Sabbath observance by changing demands of our times. He even 
 sneered at the Puritanism of one who would not ride on a Sunday 
 street-car. 
 
 Aside from the question as to whether or not the theater is the 
 lock of strength of the demon of impurity, we recognize it as a 
 terrible enemy to the economic interests of labor and capital, in 
 exclusively secular senses. It is the place where teps of thousands 
 of skilled workmen and women actually spend a majority of their 
 earnings. They do this to an extent that keeps them sharply up 
 to the danger line financially. Consequently, in times of labor 
 trouble, their most natural tendency is to swell the ranks of the 
 dangerous classes. 
 
 Notwithstanding it was set forth in a request by our Commis- 
 sion to a large and influential body of clergy, to do some of the 
 kind of preaching on this subject that hits something, they de- 
 clined. Investigation gave us sadly significant proof that they 
 declined for fear of consequences of hitting paying and influential 
 members and officers of their churches. But we will not now 
 further multiply unpleasant illustrations. 
 
 The importance of city missions being what it is to the labor 
 question, likewise the training of young men for the ministry,, 
 
REMARKS BY MR. G. M. POWELL. 251 
 
 what the laity will do in the future for their extension and sup- 
 port, is intensely germane to the subject before us. That they are 
 not up to the mark is seen by such a fact as that there are several 
 sons of the church in our country whose yearly net income is. 
 greater than all that is annually spent by all our Protestant denom- 
 inations, in either home or city or foreign missions, or in educating 
 theological students. 
 
 Antinomianism in the church, active as well as passive, is a 
 twin brother of Anarchy. It is seen in treatment of domestic 
 servants ; in slacktwistedncss on such subjects as the Sunday, 
 and dress, and amusement questions; in many a church member 
 giving more money for either theaters or tobacco than for all 
 good objects put together. Still, what is wanted even more than 
 money is for every Christian man, woman and child to be an act- 
 ive, every-day missioner. No man or woman is likely to become 
 an anarchist, or, in an unwise sense, a labor agitator, who has 
 been the subject of oersonal mission work by any Christian work- 
 er, young or old. Wh^n the sons and daughters of the church 
 are simply doing the kind of daily mission work that their own 
 spiritual health, nay life, demands, labor troubles, and others like 
 unto them, will vanish like morning mists when the sun arises in 
 its strength. No one who is not giving and working and doing 
 it, as one here has well said, " hilariously," is not living up to 
 his or her privilege or responsibility as a Christian citizen. All 
 this should be done in a loving, fraternal way. For the Bread of 
 Life is not to be given like throwing a bone to a dog ; nor with 
 an " I £tm holier than thou " air ; nor yet as if the service was 
 done as a great accommodation to the Almighty. 
 
 Sometimes, when the heart sinks in view of the magnitude and 
 powers of evil influences, especially among those to whom we have 
 a right to look for co-operation and sympathy, we find this thought 
 as " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." " This is God's 
 work, and he is able to take care of it." We love to think, watch 
 in hand, how he is swinging the whole solar system around the 
 great central sun of the Pleiades, at the rate of three thou- 
 sand miles every sixty seconds ! This, too, on an orbit so 
 vast that ages are required to once measure the circuit. Then, 
 to turn to the thought that he makes and cares for organisms so 
 minute that six thousand of them could stand on dress parade on 
 a line an inch long. 
 
252 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 The question, in conclusion, is not, " Is he able and willing to 
 take good care of these matters ? " but, " Are we on his side, 
 or the other?" Jesus taught nothing with more emphasis—not 
 even his own divinity— than that many clergy as well as laity, 
 who expect to enter the gate that is golden, will not. Let 
 us all then, as we go down from this mount of communion, with 
 solemn hush in our hearts, ask ourselves whether we as inte- 
 gers of his visible church are doing our part to have it stand as 
 the bulwark of right, to give comfort and succor and strength to 
 all the wrongs and the rights which are represented in this great 
 question of labor and capital. 
 
 REV. G. K. MORRIS, D. D., OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 Mr. Chairman: It appears to me that we cause confusion of 
 thought upon this subject, by forgetting that the entire quarrel 
 between labor and capital is but another expression of human 
 depravity. If we study the two classes, we find that the members 
 of them have identically the same aim. Each man is endeavoring 
 to do the best he can for himself. We discover that they are all 
 governed by precisely the same principles, commonly spoken of as 
 the principles of business, taught in political economy; and these 
 principles are the very essence of human selfishness, formulated by 
 the intelligence of Christian civilization, without its Christ-like 
 spirit. In other words, the principles of business are a civilized 
 barbarism — every man for himself, and every man using all the 
 power he has to get advantage over every other man. 
 
 The mistake of the church has been in permitting the so-called 
 principles of business to pass unchallenged, and in its failure to 
 modify them so far as they are essential, by bringing them into the 
 warm bosom of the principles of the gospel of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The principles of business teach us to formulate our activities 
 selfishly— to buy everything in the cheapest market, to sell every- 
 thing in the dearest market; to forget that what we buy and sell is 
 but the outcome of soul energy, the form given by the exercise of 
 the power of flesh and blood. Now, the principles of the gospel 
 say, " Let not every man look upon his own things only, but every 
 man also on the things of another." Let us teach the gospel, as 
 
REMARKS BY MR. J. D. CUTTER. 253 
 
 formulated in this word, to our young aspirants for a business 
 education. Let us teach, in every business college, to be thought- 
 ful for your fellow-men — " Whatsoever ye would that others should 
 do to you, do ye also to them." Forget not the effects of your 
 sharpness and your superiority of intellectual endowment, and your 
 superiority through the endowment of capital. Forget not the 
 effects of your rush and push and energy upon quivering hearts 
 and throbbing brains and immortal souls. 
 
 In a word, sir (for I do not want this bell to startle my nerves), 
 the disease is a disease of the heart. The great Physician is the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. The remedy is the gospel, and we, the minis- 
 try, are its representatives. God help us to study the labor 
 question, to get the mastery of it; then to take Christ to the capi- 
 talists and Christ to the workingman, and see to it that the great 
 machinery of business keeps time with the great heart-throb of 
 Christ and with the pulses of humanity. [Applause.] 
 
 MR. JOHN D. CUTTER, OF BROOKLYN. 
 
 Gentlemen : I haven't any speech, but I would like to say one 
 word. 
 
 This is a selfish world, and we are all governed by selfish princi- 
 ples. I take it that these speakers we have heard to-day are in 
 the main governed by selfishness. They have not cheated the 
 widow, they have not bought something for much less than it was 
 worth; but the natural tendency is to selfishness. And yet we 
 hope for the triumph of the gospel, and we hope to convert the 
 masses to it. 
 
 I once knew a gentleman who wanted to buy a factory for the 
 purposes of his business. A man came to him and said, " I want 
 to sell a factory that is worth $20,000, but as I am much pressed 
 for money, and must sell it, I will sell it to you now for $15,000." 
 The gentleman thus addressed said, " I never make a bargain of such 
 importance as this without consulting my wife. I will see her, and 
 give you an answer later." He consulted his wife, relating to her 
 what the man had said. The wife asked, " Is the factory worth $20,- 
 000 ? " " Well," said the husband, " I suppose it is." " Then," said 
 the wife, " why should you not pay $20,000 for it ? " He went back 
 to the shop next day and told the man that he would take the factory 
 
254 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
 
 and pay him $20,000 for it. [Applause.] Now, is that an excep- 
 tion to the general rule ? Do the speakers that we have heard 
 to-day do business on that principle ? When a girl comes to 
 them and wants to be employed in the kitchen, and asks for $20 a 
 month wages, do they tell her that $25 is little enough ? Or, do 
 they not> in effect, say, " The gospel is a good rule, but I cannot 
 live up to it." I certainly cannot live up to it. 
 
 The great trouble, as it seems to me, with the laboring classes is, 
 that we are not only selfish, but we take an unjust advantage of 
 them. We do not curb selfishness by statute law, as we ought to 
 •do. Take, for instance, the cases of the railroad corporations. 
 Everybody sees that there is great injustice arising from the opera- 
 tions of those companies. Everybody sees that speculation is 
 debauching our people. When a law is wanted to regulate and 
 control a bank or an insurance company, and make it perfectly 
 safe, the legislatures of our states find no trouble about it; at least 
 they do not in New York State, in which I live. But in making a 
 law for a railroad company they say, in substance, " Go anywhere 
 you like; take what you want; issue such stocks and bonds and 
 mortgages as may suit you — taking in as much ' water ' as you 
 please." [Laughter.] 
 
 Now, it is just as easy for a law to be made that will regulate 
 and control a railroad company as any other company. The rail- 
 road is the highway of the future, and no railroad should be built 
 anywhere except where demanded by the people, and laid out by 
 the people's engineers. Then, when authority is given to build 
 that road, let it be built with money that is actually paid in, repre- 
 sented by one kind of stock, which everybody can understand, 
 instead of, as now, being in " preferred " and "non- preferred," 
 " first mortgage bonds " " second mortgage bonds," " third mort- 
 gage bonds " and other bonds, on the principle of " Now you see 
 it, and now you don't." [Laughter.] Look at the difference 
 between railroad bonds and city bonds, and between railroad stock 
 and bank stock! Why should men gamble in railroad bonds any 
 more than in city bonds ? Why should they gamble in railroad 
 stocks, any more than in bank stocks ? Nobody knows when rail- 
 road mortgages are being put on, or taken off. 
 
 Our laws should be made simple and clear to the average under- 
 standing, and these corporations should be kept within the proper 
 bounds of reason. Insist upon it that this shall be done, and that 
 
REMARKS BY REV. A. M. PROUDFIT. 255 
 
 ■"square dealing'' shall be expected of railroad companies, as of 
 other people. Then the common people will not see such terrible 
 injustice, such gross neglect of their interests. But it is useless to 
 hope that this year, or some other year, we shall all come to love 
 our neighbor better than ourselves, or as well; or that we shall pay 
 him as much as we receive ourselves. We shall not be able to do 
 it. We might as well admit the fact that this is a selfish world, and 
 endeavor to adapt our laws to that fact. 
 
 REV. ALEXANDER M. PROUDFIT, OF 
 BALTIMORE. 
 
 Mr. Chairman AND Brethren: I wish to emphasize just two 
 points that have been brought up in the discussion of this afternoon. 
 In the admirable paper of Dr. McCosh, he said he desired to speak 
 about capitalists and laborers — not about capital and labor. That 
 is just bringing the thing down to the concrete. We have had a 
 great deal of discussion about the abstract. This last speaker has 
 brought the matter down to the concrete, as did the speaker before 
 him. We need analysis as well as synthesis in this work. We 
 want to bring the matter down to the analytic for just one moment. 
 The first point I wish to refer to is that respecting the alienation 
 — the estrangement, as it was called yesterday — of our laboring 
 classes (or the " masses ") from the church. We have been told 
 this afternoon that we must make the church free to them, and that 
 we should call on them and welcome them among us. Dr. Morris 
 has touched one very strong point to-day when he said that the 
 root of all this trouble lies in the heart — that it lies in moral 
 depravity. I believe, with all my heart, the truth of what Dr. 
 McCosh has said, that if we ministers want to reach the people, we 
 must seek them out in their homes. In the twenty-five years of 
 my ministry I have pursued that course. But, although my church 
 is wide open, and although everyone is welcome, and although I 
 have, every Sunday of my life, in the city of Baltimore, tramps 
 sitting in the best pews of my church — men without a linen collar and 
 without a whole coat — although my ushers bring them in and seat 
 them comfortably, yet I get very few of them, comparatively. I go 
 through the streets and lanes of Baltimore, I send out my pastoral 
 Aid Society and my church missionary, a reliable man, a young 
 
256 RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO CAPITAL AND LABOR, 
 
 man who is a candidate for the ministry in my church, to go and 
 try to get the people to come. There is a deep alienation which 
 nothing but the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts will cure. 
 
 Now do not let the impression go out from this great assembly 
 that the church is not seeking to win the masses. We are trying 
 to reach them. Dr. Pierson is trying to win them, and the majority 
 of us, I suppose, are doing all that we can to reach them. And 
 yet we do not reach them. They are alienated from the church and 
 from the gospel. They are wrapped up in worldliness, many of them, 
 and in sinful pleasure. We must have an outpouring of the Holy 
 Ghost, convincing the people of sin, righteousness and judgment, 
 and then they will hear the gospel. 
 
 We have heard about organized capital and labor; but I am 
 going to lift up my voice for a moment in behalf of a class of labor 
 that is not organized and that does not have adequate protection; 
 that is, the sewing women. Tom Hood did a glorious thing when 
 he wrote " The Song of the Shirt." It set the whole British nation 
 on fire. It ought to be reiterated and reiterated, and we ought to 
 preach in that line. I have a number of sewing women in my 
 church, and have taken pains to inquire into their circumstances 
 and income. Let me tell you of one case — for I have time for 
 only one. 
 
 I was asked a few weeks since to go and see a sick member of 
 my church, a woman between seventy and eighty years of age. I 
 found her in a third-story room on Pennsylvania Avenue. A deli- 
 cate daughter, also a member of my church, was with her, working 
 hard to support her mother, the church aiding them by a liberal 
 sum, keeping them in a comfortable room while they wrought to 
 keep soul and body together. The only other support of the 
 family was a lad seventeen years old, who was learning the plumb- 
 ing trade. He was a delicate boy, in danger of going into con- 
 sumption. Anothef brother had died of consumption. I asked 
 the young woman what she was doing for a living. She said she did 
 sewing on pantaloons for a tailor in Baltimore. I said, " What do 
 you get a pair ? " She answered, " Thirty-five cents a pair, finding 
 my own buttons and thread." She said the thread cost five 
 cents for enough to sew two pairs. I asked how many pairs 
 she could make in a day. She replied, " If I did not have to take 
 care of my aged and helpless mother and to attend to my house- 
 work, if I could devote all my time to sewing, I could make 
 
REMARIiS BY REV. A. M. PROUDFIT. 257 
 
 possibly two pairs a day. As it is, I average a pair and a half, 
 and sometimes only one pair." Out of this she had the whole 
 family to support, with the assistance of two or three dollars a 
 week, which the boy was getting as a " 'prentice hand." I said to her, 
 " I will ventilate that." She turned to me with tears in her eyes 
 and said, " Do. If you raise up your voice for the sewing women 
 you will be doing a great work." 
 
 She is only one of a great class. And I tell you, Christian men 
 and ministers, we need to talk more about those who have no one 
 to fight for them, to protect their rights. The Christian women 
 of this country need to organize one more society in addition to 
 that which has be€n spoken of to-day, viz., a society to secure the 
 rights of the sewing women. Dr. Morris has hit the nail on the 
 head when he says it is selfishness at the bottom of the trouble. 
 We buy where we can get goods at lowest prices, and sell where 
 •we can get the largest prices. And until men and women are 
 willing to pay a liberal price, and to demand that the man who sells 
 to them shall pay a liberal wage to his \^orkers, this evil will 
 never be remedied. 
 
EVENING SESSION. 
 THURSDAY DECEMBER 8. 
 
 The Conference was led in prayer by Rev. M. Rhodes, D. D., of 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: For nearly two days, brethren, we have studied 
 thoughtfully the dangers which are before our country. But we 
 are. full of hope to-night. We turn our eyes toward the East 
 to see the bow of promise, and to know just what resources God 
 has given us with which to meet these dangers. 
 
 I feel that we are peculiarly fortunate in our Chairman for this 
 evening — one who has done so much to bring brightness and hope 
 to our country. I have very great pleasure in introducing, 'as the 
 Chairman of this session of the Conference, General Joseph R. 
 Hawley, United States Senator from Connecticut, who, I think, is 
 known to all of you. 
 
 On taking the chair, General Hawley said: 
 
 " I am sure I am very much obliged to the managing committee 
 of the Alliance, for connecting me, even in so slight a degree, with 
 this most noble body of men, and with its remarkable work 
 done in these three days. I regret indeed that I have not been 
 able to hear all the papers and addresses that have been presented 
 before you, but I congratulate myself that I am here this evening. 
 
 The subject for the evening, as you have already heard, is 
 "The Christian Resources of Our Country." The paper is to be 
 read by Dr. James M. King, of New York, a gentleman well 
 known to you all, whom I have the pleasure now to introduce. 
 
 258 
 
THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. JAMES M. KING, D. D., OF 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 I. HISTORICAL. 
 
 The Christian resources of our country rightfully claim all there 
 is of Christ and the Bible in our history, government, laws, insti- 
 tutions, homes and hearts. And this embraces all that gives per- 
 manency to justice, and efficacy to mercy, and dignity to man, and 
 glory to God. We have the cumulative resources of the educa- 
 tion and Christian teaching of the near as well as of the remote 
 past. We are the heirs of modern as well as of ancient history. 
 We have the powers at our disposal, to dictate what the immediate 
 and, with that, what the remote future of our country shall be. 
 
 When- De Tocqueville, some fifty years since, returned to France 
 and reported in permanent form the results of his wise and philo- 
 sophic study of our institutions, he said: "Although the travelers 
 who have visited North America differ on many points, they all 
 agree in remarking that morals are far more strict there than else- 
 where. It is evident that, on this point, the Americans are very 
 superior to their progenitors, the English." 
 
 This same political philosopher said : " The new states must be 
 religious in order to be free. Society must be destroyed unless 
 the Christian moral tie be strengthened in proportion as the politi- 
 cal tie is relaxed; and what can be done with a people who are 
 their own masters, if they be not submissive to Deity ? It cannot 
 be doubted, that in the United States the instruction of the people 
 powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; 
 and such must always be the case, I believe, where the instruction 
 which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral 
 education which amends the heart. 
 
 259 
 
260 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 " The sects which exist in the United States are innumerable. 
 They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Crea- 
 tor; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from 
 man to man. Christian morality is everywhere the same. Chris- 
 tianity, by regulating domestic life, regulates the state. Every 
 principle of the moral world is fixed and determmate. Religious 
 zeal is warmed by the fires of patriotism. 
 
 " The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who, 
 after having shaken off the authority of the pope, acknowledged no 
 other religious supremacy. They brought with them into the New 
 World a form of Christianity, which I cannot better describe than 
 by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This contributed 
 powerfully to the establishment of a republic and a democracy in 
 public affairs; and, from the beginning, politics and religion con- 
 tracted an alliance which has never been dissolved." 
 
 These utterances, as intelligent citizens, we do well to contemplate. 
 Refugees from civil and religious persecutions founded the nation, 
 and the legitimate offspring of such a parentage was civil and 
 religious liberty. Almost everything worth possessing in our insti- 
 tutions was secured for us by our Christian ancestors.- Let us 
 hesitate before we surrender the fortresses that are the foundations 
 and defense of our institutions. 
 
 The state, under our form of government, historically and in 
 fact, has to recognize Christian morality as the basis of its own 
 existence; and, therefore, while it exists for secular and civil pur- 
 poses, finds itself substantially the creature of Christianity. And 
 whenever it has found itself engaged in a struggle for its defense 
 or existence, it has never issued from the struggle until it has 
 adopted for its war-cry some principle that has had its birth in 
 Christian morality. Professor Atwater, of Princeton, has said: 
 " Morality enters into the very being of the state, as the impelling 
 and final cause of its formation. Its very end is to promote the 
 prevalence of justice by self-imposed laws — imposed in the exer- 
 cise of its own free activity by its own constituted authorities, 
 and not by any alien power." 
 
 Church and state co-exist in this land, but they are not wedded. 
 They have their individual work to perform. The secular inter- 
 ests are guarded and promoted by the state; the moral and relig- 
 ious interests, by the church. And yet so closely are they related 
 to each other that the state depends for its existence upon the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 261 
 
 character given its citizenship by the church, and the church in 
 turn receives protection from the state for its property, and from 
 interference with its worship and instruction. Our experiment has 
 proved that religious freedom is the best friend of genuine Chris- 
 tianity, and that it is also the best foundation for a " government 
 of the people, by the people, and for the people." The voluntary 
 principle is here .the aggressive energy of Christianity. While we 
 have no established national church, with obligatory membership, 
 and no taxation for the support and promulgation of any creed, 
 and while citizenship and political rights are independent of church 
 membership, we are not a nation without religion. The union of 
 church and state is a different question from the upion of religion 
 and the state. Union in both of these cases is possible, but sepa- 
 ration of religion from the state is impossible. A learned law 
 writer has said: " Those things which are not lawful under any of 
 the American constitutions may be stated thus: i. Any law 
 respecting an establishment of religion. 2. Compulsory support, 
 by taxation or otherwise, of religious instruction. 3. Compulsory 
 attendance upon religious worship. 4. Restraints upon the free 
 exercise of religion according to the dictates of the conscience. 5. 
 Restraints upon the expression of religious belief." It is not 
 toleration which is established in our system, but religious equal- 
 ity. We accept this summary when construed in the light of our 
 history. 
 
 II. WE ARE A CHRISTIAN NATION. 
 
 Every government necessarily has some form of religion recog- 
 nized in its state institutions, and is molded by its power. Histor- 
 ically, we are a Christian nation. The divine authority of the Bible 
 is certainly taken for granted in the very make-up of our govern- 
 ment. Every officer, from the President down to the lowest official, 
 is inducted into office under the solemnity of an oath on that vol- 
 ume. The Christian religion, and the morality that it teaches, in 
 one way or another, permeate all our institutions. Everything in 
 our political system indicates the recognition of the principle that 
 the Bible is the common standard of right and wrong in morals. 
 In all the evidences of the prevalence of religion in a nation, we 
 present an array most formidable. Look upon our Christian 
 churches and Sabbath-schools; upon our colleges and seminaries 
 of Christian learning; upon the distribution and study of the Bible; 
 upon the sacredness of the Sabbath; upon the unstinted benefi- 
 
262 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 cence and multiform charities— almost all the overflow of Christian 
 love. Government requires the Christian oath as the standard both 
 for entering upon the duties of citizenship a;nd office-holding. 
 American jurisprudence, as well as English common law, rejects 
 the testimony of atheists, because an oath has no meaning, no 
 sanction, in the mouth of one who does not believe in a just God 
 and a future retribution. Government appoints days of thanks- 
 giving, fasting and prayer. The Congress of the nation and 
 the navy and army have their chaplains, with the salaries paid 
 from the national treasury. States exempt church property 
 from taxation, and employ the ministers of religion in all their 
 penal, reformatory and beneficent institutions. The state punishes 
 offenses against God and religion — such as Sabbath-breaking, blas- 
 phemy, perjury, sacrilege, religious imposture, and violation of 
 burial-places. 
 
 Now, legislation is the expression of human sentiment, and it 
 would seem to be the shallowest kind of pettifogging, to claim that 
 the legislation in these directions of a Christian people was dictated 
 by a desire simply to lessen human evils, regardless of the fear and 
 favor of God, whose expressed will taught man that they were not 
 only evils, but sins. Dr. Woolsey, in noticing the legislation in 
 these directions, says: "On the whole, while laws against irrelig- 
 ious acts notice them in part on account of their human evils, I 
 cannot help finding in them another element, proceeding from relig- 
 ious feelings themselves, from reverence for the divine Being 
 irrespective of their injury to human society. Man, in his legisla- 
 tion, cannot get rid of his sentiments ; even in the later attempts 
 at legislation, when the limits are more exactly drawn between that 
 which is injurious to society in some specific way, and that which 
 is sinful, the sentiment will assert its right in defining crime or 
 enhancing punishment." 
 
 Christianity constitutes the most important part of the common 
 law of the land. It is the strength of the law because it is 
 intrenched in the sentiments and affections of the people. 
 President Dwight, of the Columbia College Law School, has 
 recently written : " It is well settled by decisions in the courts of 
 the leading states of the Union that Christianity is a part of the 
 common law of the state. Its recognition is shown in the adminis- 
 tration of oaths in the courts of justice, in the rules which punish 
 those who willfully blaspheme, in the observance of Sunday, in the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 263 
 
 prohibition of profanity, in the legal establishment of permanent 
 charitable trusts, and in the legal principles which control a parent 
 in the education and training of his children. One of the Ameri- 
 can courts states the law in this manner : ' Christianity is and 
 always has been a part of the common law of this state. Chris- 
 tianity without the spiritual artillery of European countries — not 
 Christianity founded on any particular tenets — not Christianity 
 with an established church and titles and spiritual courts, but 
 Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.' 
 
 "The American states adopted these principles from the com- 
 mon law of England, rejecting such portions of the English law on ' 
 this subject as were not suited to their customs and institutions. 
 ■Our national development has in it the best and purest elements of 
 historic Christianity as related to the government of states. 
 Should we tear Christianity out of our law, we would rob our law of 
 its fairest jewels, we would deprive it of its richest treasures, we 
 would arrest its growth, and bereave it of its capacity to adapt itself 
 to the progress in culture, refinement and morality of those for 
 whose benefit it properly exists." 
 
 Goldwin Smith says : " Not democracy in America, but free 
 Christianity in America, is the real key to the study of the people 
 and their institutions." 
 
 III. DISTINCTIVE CHRISTIAN IDEAS. 
 
 The distinctive Christian ideas and teachings of the word of God 
 ■belong to our invoice ; individual liberty and the increased value 
 set upon human life, honor to womanhood, and her elevation and 
 emancipation, and the consequent elevation of man as this is recog- 
 nized. From the moral necessities of the case the benevolence of 
 the country is in Christian hands, or the offspring of Christian 
 thought. Only Christianity is benevolent. Modern legal benefi- 
 cence had its birth in Christ. The connection is inseparable 
 between the Christian church and all those institutions which have 
 the relief of human wants and the promotion of human well-being 
 for their object. The spirit of Christian love foresaw that there 
 would be permanent liabilities to suffering and want in this change- 
 ful and uncertain world of ours, which no extemporaneous charity 
 could adequately meet. And this foresight has gladdened many a 
 sad and weary heart, in spite of the abuses which human ignorance 
 and indolence have permitted. Hence, out of Christian faith have 
 
264 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRV. 
 
 arisen all over the land the institutions for the relief of sin-cursed 
 and ignorance-cursed humanity. It is this power working with us, 
 " with a force unchanged and unwasting, upon which democratic 
 institutions are based, with educational, philanthropic and mission- 
 ary enterprise. The hospitals for the sick, the asylums for the 
 aged, the homeless and the orphan ; the consecrated ministry of 
 skill and genuis to the blind and the deaf, as the fruit of which the 
 blind become readers by their fingers, while the old miracle of the 
 Lord seems repeated as the dumb are taught to articulate ; the 
 ministry to the insane and the imbecile, which has been carried 
 in our time to such superb consummation ; the ministry to even the 
 criminal classes, who might seem severed by their offenses from 
 further claim upon society, but for whom the plans of prison reform 
 are incessantly at work " — all these illustrate the exhaustless; 
 Christian resources born of the new conception of man's duty to 
 man. 
 
 Dr. Storrs writes : " In Virgil's fourth eclogue, written, perhaps, 
 forty years before Christ, he hails with song the birth of a child 
 who is to restore the Golden Age. His figures seem caught from 
 the prophecies of Isaiah. The boy of whom Virgil is supposed to 
 have written was imprisoned by Tiberius, and starved to death in 
 his solitary dungeon. The child of whom Isaiah wrote now leads 
 in triumph toward unreached ages, the aspiring and hopeful civili- 
 zation of the world. In his name is the hope of mankind. In 
 the sign of his cross, Christendom conquers. 
 
 " This Christianity has shown in itself the power to reconcile, to 
 liberate, and to set forward nations, with a steadiness and a strength 
 which. had certainly before been unknown in the world." 
 
 " It has never been more signally declared than in recent years 
 in amended legislations, expanded philanthropies, widened missions. 
 It has made the enlightened and aspiring Christendom of to-day 
 the fact of chief importance, therefore, in the progress of man- 
 kind; its true glory is that it has wiped the tears of sorrow from 
 the eyes of its disciples and has comforted hearts which were deso- 
 late with grief; that it has given celestial visions to those who 
 dwelt beneath thatched roofs, and has taught a happier humility to 
 the proud; that it has shed victorious tranquillity on those who 
 have seen the shadows of death closing around them, and has 
 caused to be written over their graves the lofty words of promise 
 and cheer, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.' 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 265 
 
 " This is the diadem of this religion, sparkling with gems lucid 
 and vivid, such as never were set in any philosophic or poetic crown. 
 Because of these effects, and not merely for its influences upon 
 cosmical progress, men have loved this religion with a passionate 
 intensity beside which all other enthusiasms were weak. Because 
 of these, if for nothing else, it will live in the world till human 
 hearts have ceased to beat.'' 
 
 All beneficent conceptions of the fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of man had their origin in the Christian religion, and 
 in their hold upon man, constitute a part of our resources. 
 
 The Christian conceptions of God, of man, of man's duty toward 
 God, of man's duty to man in politics and society, and the duties of 
 nations toward each other, are the germs from which spring all the 
 beneficent powers of the highest civilization. 
 
 Christianity improves man's condition by regenerating him, and 
 does not seek to regenerate him by improving his condition. It 
 has forced upon the mass of our population the sense of the neces- 
 sity of righteousness in the spirit, as the source and the safeguard 
 of righteousness in conduct, and has lifted into new purity the 
 most depraved, who seem abandoned of God and man. 
 
 When its perfect purposed supremacy in the world is accom- 
 plished, there will be societies and governrnents as pure as the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and as supreme over sin and evil as the 
 incarnate Lord. 
 
 IV. VOLUNTARY SUPPORT OF CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 While we are a Christian nation, absolute separation of church 
 and state is one of our principal resources of strength. Voluntary 
 conditions have been proven here to be the best promoters of a 
 pure religious life among the people, in that Christianity here has 
 rnade greater progress m an equal period than in any other land or 
 age. Voluntary Protestantism is the very genius of republican 
 government. Dr. Dorner, after visiting this country in 1873, said: 
 " Columbus was encouraged by the hope that the new land would 
 serve the honor of our Redeemer. This is not accomplished m 
 the sense of Columbus — through the conversion of the heathen — 
 but in a far higher sense. The discovery of America has a con- 
 nection in time and spirit with the Reformation, for, as it were, a 
 new land arose from out the sea to serve as a bulwark and a reserve 
 for the church of the Reformation. The Americans feel already 
 
266 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 that they have a special mission; namely, to march in their fresh, 
 earnest way into the fight against the skeptical and the supersti- 
 tious, at the same time showing Christianity in a new light, as a liv- 
 ing force which needs no outward human aid in order to make itself 
 respected, but which free spirits most need." 
 
 Dr. Schaff says: "In the United States, where all denominations 
 are equal before the law, and stand on the same voluntary footing 
 of self-support and self-government, the Christian activities keep 
 pace with the enormous tide of immigration and the intellectual, 
 social' and commercial growth of the people; and churches, 
 schools, colleges, seminaries, libraries, home and foreign mission- 
 ary societies, and all sorts of benevolent institutions are there, by 
 the joint zeal of the different denominations, multiplying with a 
 rapidity that has no parallel in the annals of the past." 
 
 V. HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 The higher educational resources of the country are largely 
 under Christian control. There are 370 colleges and universities 
 in the United States, with 3,000 professors instructing 35,000 
 students. About eighty per cent of the students are in denom- 
 inational colleges, and ninety-four per cent of the students in de- 
 nominational colleges are evangelical. 
 
 Institutions for higher education in the United States, under 
 control of evangelical churches, have in attendance, so far as can 
 be ascertained (with at least one-tenth not reporting), over 58,000 
 students, with property and endowment funds valued at over $34,- 
 000,000. It is possibly not an extravagant estimate to put the 
 number of youth who are students in the advanced educational 
 institutions of the churches at 175,000. 
 
 There are 120 theological seminaries of evangelical churches in 
 the United States, with 4,000 students, and the rate of per cent of 
 increase of students in literary and theological institutions over the 
 increase of the population is higher than at any period in our 
 history. 
 
 VI. THE COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 Fenelon says, " Moral education is the bulwark of the state.'' 
 The idea of the common school is traced to an act of the colonial 
 legislature of Massachusetts in 1642. At first it was a strictly 
 church school, in charge of the minister of the township, and the 
 children were carefully taught in the orthodox faith. The school- 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. ^67 
 
 master was next to the minister. The religious requirements were 
 incorporated in the laws. The present and former generations of 
 the population have been educated in schools that were never 
 merely secular. In fact, we have not attempted purely secular 
 education until recently, and that only to a very limited extent. 
 While there has been no national system of public schools in the 
 past, and while uniformity has 'proved itself to be, perhaps, both 
 impracticable and undesirable under our form of government, it is 
 to be hoped that the Christian sentiment of the people will see to 
 it that the future develops no purely secular system of education 
 for our citizenship. And. while the local-option plan, leaving the 
 whole question of* the character of the instruction to the local 
 school boards, to be decided by them according to the composition 
 and wants of the community, is likely to prevail, it is to be hoped 
 that the friends of Christian morality will come to the defense of 
 the right of the children and youth to a kind of instruction that 
 recognizes their responsibility and immortality, and reminds them 
 of the fact that our institutions are the fruit of the Christian faith. 
 
 The public school system, pressed into secular uniformity, can- 
 not meet the moral needs of our mixed population, and cannot 
 meet the demands upon a Christian people or promote the interests 
 of genuine Christian morality. Christianity must solve the ques- 
 tion of the education of the masses upon Christian, and not upon 
 secular grounds. 
 
 We are about convinced that the time has come when we must 
 demand that the state, assuming to teach its citizens as a prepara- 
 tion for the responsibilities of citizenship, must not only recognize 
 Christianity as the religion of the people, in conformity with 
 historic and judicial precedent, but must require the teaching of 
 Christian morality wherever education is supported by taxation or 
 by state grant. 
 
 And not only must we insist upon the common schools teaching 
 Christian morality, but when the state (as with us) enters upon the 
 questionable work of higher education, and seeks to prepare 
 teachers for their work in the common or higher schools, then we 
 must put the salt of Christian morality in at these fountain-heads, 
 or make up our minds to forfeit the respect both of God and of 
 good men, and invite a reign of irresponsibility and immorality. 
 
 We are told that history and precedent have nothing to do with 
 this question in its present demands for solution. As well might 
 
268 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 the individual say that birth and educational opportunity have 
 nothing to do with determining present duty. We are told that we 
 must keep retreating until we reach tenable ground. , This is the 
 cry of the enemies of righteous government and of humanity, and 
 it ought not to be echoed by the lovers of goodness or of God. 
 
 Is it not time for the populations that give character to our civili- 
 zation and stability to our government to assert themselves ? Is it 
 not time to return to the foundation principles upon which our 
 liberties and integrity as a nation rest ? Is it not time to banish 
 this sickly sentimentality that, under the hypocritical concession 
 of religious freedom, retreats in the presence of secularism, of 
 Jesuitism, and of atheism ? 
 
 VII. THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH AS A CIVIL INSTITUTION. 
 
 Deluz, of Geneva, says : " At the very foundation of the ques- 
 tion of the Lord's day, which we seek to enforce, is nothing less 
 than physical and spiritual health, family and Christian life, national 
 prosperity, and the advance of the kingdom of God." 
 
 We have the Sabbath with its sanctions protected by law in almost 
 all of the states. The civil Sunday could not stand a decade 
 without its Christian sanction by the consciences of the God-fear- 
 ing, whose power placed the legal safeguards on the statute-books. 
 It is a physical boon ; it enhances social and family life ; it saves 
 many from incessant groveling in low and depressing employment; 
 it breaks in upon the anxious, restless ambitions and rivalries of 
 life ; it tones down distinctions between rich and poor, capitalists 
 and laborers ; it gives breathing-time, which, at the least, may be 
 used aright. It is used by multitudes as an opportunity for relig- 
 ious duties, where they are met by the word of God, believe, and 
 are saved. As a witness for God, a memorial of bliss, and a 
 promise of enduring rest provided by our loving heavenly Father, 
 the day itself possesses power for good. 
 
 VIII. FINANCIAL AND MATERIAL. 
 
 It is estimated that with our agricultural, mining and manufac- 
 turing resources at all adequately developed we can sustain and 
 enrich a population of 1,000,000,000. Our present wealth as a 
 nation is estimated at over $50,000,000,000, constituting us, while 
 the youngest, the richest nation on the globe. At least $10,000,- 
 000,000 of this wealth is in the hands of members of evangelical 
 churches. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 269 
 
 Emerson says ■ "We live in a new and exceptional age. America 
 is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like 
 a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race." 
 
 Providence has placed the material as well as the spiritual 
 resources within our grasp, and has promised to back us with 
 omnipotence. It is for us to say what shall be the issue of the 
 experiment. 
 
 Dr. Strong says : " For Christians to apprehend their true rela- 
 tion to money, and the relations of money to the kingdom of 
 Christ and its progress in the world, is to find the key to many of 
 the great problems now pressing for solution. Money is power in 
 the concrete. It commands learning, skill, experience, wisdom, 
 talent, influence, numbers. It represents the school, the college, 
 the church, the printing-press, and all evangelizing machinery. It 
 confers on the wise man a sort of omnipresence." 
 
 Dr. Bushnell says : " Talent has been Christianized already on a 
 large scale. The political power of states and kingdoms has been 
 long assumed to be. Architecture, arts, constitutions, schools and 
 learning have been largely Christianized. But the money power, 
 which is one of the most operative and grandest of all, is only 
 beginning to be ; though with promising tokens of a finally com- 
 plete reduction to Christ and the uses of his kingdom. That day, 
 when it comes, is the morning, so to speak, of the new creation." 
 
 No man has been authorized by the Master to dictate to man the 
 measure of his capacity to give money. The basis of Christ's 
 judgment of man's stewardship is not what a man gives, but what 
 he withholds. An enlightened mind, a cultured conscience, and a 
 sanctified heart can only determine the extent of the Christianized 
 moneyed resources of our country. 
 
 The consciousness of stewardship in the use of money was never 
 ■either relatively or actually so general as now, implying a rising 
 tide that hastens on to flood ; proving the potency of Christian 
 love in human hearts to conquer selfishness and to create a spirit 
 of sacrifice. 
 
 IX. NUMERICAL EVANGELICAL STRENGTH. 
 
 The evangelical churches number 112,744, with 83,854 ministers 
 and 12,132,651 communicants. Multiply this number of commu- 
 nicants by 3^, the lowest multiple used by discreet statisticians, 
 to get the number of adherents of evangelical Christianity in our 
 -country, and we have 42,464,278. These churches have accom- 
 
270 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 modations for 25,000,000 people, with a property valuation of $600,- 
 000,000. 
 
 X. ROMAN CATHOLICISM. 
 
 This is an Evangelical Alliance, but in estimating the Christian 
 resources of our country we cannot in justice ignore the Latin or 
 Roman church. It has vitality in so far only as it is Christian, 
 and this is equally true of Protestantism. Its wholesome restraints, 
 upon ignorant multitudes, its benevolences, its ministrations to the 
 sick, afflicted and poor, and its care for neglected childhood, are 
 all commendable. It has, already, in multitudes of its membership 
 and adherents, yielded to the molding influences of the public 
 schools, and to the transforming power of republican institutions. 
 
 It is far better for its adherents to be under its influence than to 
 be unchurched and unbelieving. Say what we may concerning its 
 defects, deplore its corruptions and traditions of men and its poli- 
 tical power, yet multitudes of those who bow at its altars are there 
 because they are feeling after the Christ; and can we doubt that 
 he emerges from the mummeries, and putting aside the intervening 
 priest, touches the bruised souls and feeds the hungry hearts ? 
 
 The Roman Catholic church has in our country 154 hospitals,, 
 with 30,000 inmates; 320 asylums, with 40,000 inmates; it cares 
 for 20,000 orphans; it has 124 Jesuit and other colleges and insti- 
 tutions of high grade, with 19,000 students; it has 577,000 students 
 of all classes under its instruction, and its church buildings and 
 other edifices number about 4,000, with a church-seating capacity 
 of 3,000,000. 
 
 It claims as members and adherents, 7,000,000 of our population,, 
 and it has property valued at $70,000,000. 
 
 XI. MISSIONS. 
 
 The demands for Christian work of our extended domain, and 
 the composite character of our population, have so broadened our 
 scope that our people are more and more realizing their obliga- 
 tions to send the gospel to all the foreign nations that contribute 
 to our population. And every dollar and Bible and missionary we 
 send abroad, in accordance with the divine law, increases the 
 wealth of the remaining resources. The invoice of our Christian 
 resources in organized form can only be approximately tabulated. 
 Local, national and denominational societies for home, city and 
 foreign missions, for the publishing and distributing of tracts and 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 271 
 
 Bibles, for promoting Sunday-schools, for advancing temperance 
 and education, for providing outlets for all conceivable forms of 
 benevolence, utilizing a mighty host of workers — of these the only 
 accurate record is kept on high. 
 
 The foreign missionary societies of the evangelical churches have 
 in the field 2,500 missionaries; the laborers of all classes number 
 over 13,000; the communicants, 332,000; mission scholars in their 
 schools, 152,000; and they now contribute about $3,000,000 annu- 
 ally for their support. 
 
 About $4,000,000 annually are contributed for home missions. 
 This is an inadequate representation, because it does not include 
 the uninvoiced amounts given by lotal home missionary organ- 
 izations, and individual church efforts in the cities and centers 
 of population. 
 
 The steady movement upward in benevolence places momentum 
 in the invoice of our resources. In 1850 the receipts for home 
 and foreign missions were $1,232,000. In 1886, $7,000,000; an 
 increase calling for gratitude, but not for special congratulation, 
 and certainly not for boasting, when we consider the undoubted 
 fact that about $10,000,000,000 of the wealth of the country is in 
 the hands of members of evangelical churches. It must in justice, 
 however, be remembered that a multitude of these church mem- 
 bers are the subjects of missionary benefactions, and the limited 
 number who do give, are also contributors to all other benevolent 
 and philanthropic causes. 
 
 XII. THE UTILIZED ENERGIES OF WOMANHOOD. 
 
 The broadest opportunities for the exercise of the gifts and 
 graces of Christian womanhood constitute one of our mightiest 
 modern resources of strength. The mourners and comforters of 
 the race, as women have always been, make up two-thirds of the 
 membership of the Christian church. They were the last faithful 
 friends of the Nazarene at Calvary and the first preachers of his 
 resurrection. In leading souls to Christ, in self-sacrificing minis- 
 trations to the diseased, the poor and the sorrow-stricken, in mis- 
 sion fields, in molding the character of youth, in temperance, and 
 in all reforms based on the well-being of man, and in mitigating 
 the horrors of war, genuine Christian womanhood is exalting, the 
 gospel ideal of stewardship, and that without unsexing herself, or 
 trenching upon the well-defined scriptural prerogatives of man. 
 
272 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 Aside from the multiform works of Christian women in home direc- 
 tions, women's foreign missionary boards are now supporting about 
 i,ooo missionaries and teaching about 20,000 pupils, and minister- 
 ing to a great multitude of sick and distressed in heathen lands. 
 
 XIII. RACE. 
 
 Christianized Anglo-Saxon blood, with its love of liberty, its 
 thrift, its intense and persistent energy and personal independ- 
 ence, is the regnant force in this country; and that is a most 
 pregnant fact, because the concededly most important lesson in 
 the history of modern civilization is, that God is using the Anglo- 
 Saxon to conquer the worM for Christ by dispossessing feebler 
 races, and assimilating and molding others. 
 
 Dr. N. G. Clark says: " The English language, saturated with 
 Christian ideas, gathering up into itself the best thought of all the 
 ages, is the great agent of Christian civilization throughout the 
 world, at this moment affecting the destinies and molding the char- 
 acter of half the human race." 
 
 In our country, the ends of the earth, with all forms of civiliza- 
 tion, come to us, and this Anglo-Saxon blood, baptized by the 
 Spirit of God, can impart its own virtue to the amalgam, producing 
 " a more powerful type of man than has hitherto existed, a civiliza- 
 tion grander than any the world has known," and that, not as the 
 result of conquest by wars, but conquest by assimilation. 
 
 XIV. THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. 
 
 \ 
 
 Evangelical Chi^istianity must gladly accept and utilize the 
 irrepressible publicity of the nineteenth century, never reviling nor 
 restricting the liberty of the press, except when it commits offenses 
 against natural rights. It is one of our principal sources of 
 power. The right solution of social and political questions closely 
 connected with Christianity necessitates that every voice should be 
 heard save that of open and criminal revolt. Repression would 
 retard solutions. 
 
 De Pressens^ says: " Perfect liberty of thought is of the first 
 necessity, not only for what is good and true, but for that which is 
 false and bad." Jeremiah records for God: "The prophet that 
 hath a dream, let him tell a dream: and he that hath my word, let 
 him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat ? 
 saith the Lord." 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 273 
 
 Error refutes itself in tiie act of showing -itself. A hidden evil 
 is the only incurable one. 
 
 Milton said: " Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose 
 upon the earth, so truth be among them we need not fear. Let her 
 and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew her to be put to the worst 
 in a free and open encounter ?" 
 
 The religious press, and very much of the work of the secular 
 press, in furnishing religious intelligence and in the discussion of 
 public questions from the Christian standpoint, as many, if not 
 most of them, do, as educators of the public conscience, are among 
 the most powerful agencies for Christian civilization. 
 
 There are publilhed in the United States nearly 15,000 news- 
 papers and periodicals, about 9,000 being published weekly. 
 The entire circulation would probably reach 25,000,000 copies, 
 while the entire njimber of copies would exceed in a single year 
 2,000,000,000. 
 
 Of religious newspapers and periodicals there are about 700, 
 circulating more than 120,000,000 copies annually. The relative 
 increase in the circulation of the religious press is in advance of 
 the secular press. The receipts of the religious publication houses 
 of the evangelical churches have reached an annual average of 
 $5,000,000. 
 
 XV. LATENT POWERS. 
 
 Among our resources we must count the latent power in indi- 
 vidual Christian lives, which is mightier than the developed and 
 revealed. This is also true of the latent power in numbers and in 
 capacity for work in our churches, and in the latent financial 
 resources of our membership. Let the nominally Christian people 
 of this country go to praying, and then go to living and acting in 
 accordance with their prayers, provided only they close their pray- 
 ing with the Lord's Prayer, and this nominally Christian nation 
 would speedily become actually Christian, and instead of assembling 
 to determine how best to defeat the devil, we should soon assemble 
 to welcome the descending Lord back to a world that crucified 
 him, but now made ready to crown him. Pentecostal blessing 
 would liberate all these latent energies. When shall these dry 
 bones live and move ? 
 
 XVI. THE DIVINE PROMISES. 
 
 The Christian resources of our country are made up of the 
 invoice of all of Christ's possessions in this goodly land, and of all 
 
274 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 of Christ's promises. "The kingdoms of this world" are his. 
 " All power is given unto him in heaven and in earth." But the 
 question is, How much does man, the steward, concede to Christ, 
 the master and proprietor ? We must not forget that we are to act 
 as though we believed the fact that all our resources are essentially 
 Christian. They belong to God, whether we admit it or not., 
 
 " This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." 
 " All things are possible to him that believeth." " If God be for 
 us, who can be against us ? " " How shall he not with him also 
 freely give us all things ? " Inspiration perfectly answers its own 
 question. 
 
 " For all things are yours; whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, 
 or the world, or life or death, or things present, or things to come; 
 all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." No won- 
 der the apostle cries out in holy triumph in the face of foes, " I 
 can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." 
 
 His abiding presence inspires us; the memory of his past deal- 
 ings impels us; the promise of his coming draws us. We are 
 encompassed about with omnipotence. Let individual Christians 
 stand shoulder to shoulder, not inquiring of one another whence 
 we came, and how we are called, but rather, what we desire and 
 whither we are tending. Our symbol a cross, standing luminous 
 by the side of an empty grave. In hoc signo vinces. 
 
 " Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." When these truths become the common 
 experience of individual Christians, the millennial light will burst 
 over the mountains. 
 
 XVII. THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 "When Jesus ascended up on high and led captivity captive," 
 he " gave gifts unto men." " When the Comforter is come, whom 
 I will send unto you from the Father, he shall testify of me, and ye 
 also shall bear witness." " Ye also." The Holy Spirit is not our 
 accompaniment; we are his. 
 
 The office-work of the Holy Spirit is now more intelligently and 
 more extensively recognized in religious effort,as the sole dependence 
 of the church for effective work, than has been the case in centuries. 
 This has given tone and character and potency to religious expe- 
 rience, and heroism and endurance to religious zeal. It has inspired 
 the thought and experience of the priesthood of believers with its 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. J. M. KING. 275 
 
 personal dignity and personal responsibility, taught by evangelical 
 Protestanism, and has expanded it into spiritual and practical 
 results, with the highest type of piety and personal godliness yet 
 attained by relatively large numbers in any age. It has inspired 
 this Conference, with the universal approval of good men of all 
 varieties of evangelical thought, of the new plans and purposes for 
 utilizing dormant Christian energies, and Christianizing the thought- 
 less and neglected, and for massing the forces of righteousness. 
 
 Resources of history, character, money, machinery, education, 
 numbers, the press, a chosen race, and the divine promises, are all 
 necessary instruments, but they are strengthless and useless for 
 ■good, either singly or in combination, until baptized by the Holy 
 Spirit; then, singly, they take on strength, and, massed, they 
 become as omnipotent as God. These human appliances, wielded 
 by the Holy Spirit sent by Christ, shall become like him, sweet in 
 sympathy, pure in holiness, vital with love. If from this time 
 forth in this capital city, where is located the fountain of our 
 country's law and the throne of our nation's power; if in this 
 favored land, the saved sons of men would put on the whole armor 
 ;0f God; if all the daughters of Zion would clothe themselves with 
 the beautiful garments of salvation, and,' baptized by the Holy 
 :Spirit, would move together for the renovation of a heritage once 
 uncursed with sin — no pen or pencil could picture the result. God- 
 less temples would tumble ; incense burning to unknown gods 
 would be quenched; air polluted with blasphemy would be purified; 
 ignorance would flee away; the flood-gates of intemperance would 
 be closed; the fires of passion would be quenched; and fountains of 
 bitter tears would be dried up. Every hill-top would glimmer with 
 the light of truth, and every valley show the temple of our God. 
 
 " In the wilderness would waters break out, and streams in the 
 desert, and the ransomed of the Lord would come to Zion with 
 songs and everlasting joy upon their head, and sorrow and sigh- 
 ing would flee away." 
 
 " Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire; 
 
 Let us thine influence prove; 
 Source of the old prophetic fire, 
 
 Fountain of life and love." 
 
 In our centennial year the French people proposed to place, 
 and have since placed at the gateway of our commerce, upon an 
 island in New York Harbor, a bronze statue of liberty, more than 
 
276 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 a hundred feet in height, standing upon a pedestal of the same ele- 
 vation. This majestic statue towers by day against the sky, while 
 by night streams of light radiate from the head. It is the first 
 object seen by those who come down to the sea in ships as they 
 approach our coasts from every clime, telling them the story of 
 our free institutions. Let us pray that Jesus, the great liberator 
 of our race, may so get the mastery in this najtion that the immi- 
 grant coming to our shores, and entering the gateway .of our liber- 
 ties, shall find his eyes looking first upon works of righteousness; 
 and that the first sound that greets his ears shall be a voice cry- 
 ing, ' ' Behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 world." Then shall we not only rejoice in the centennial of our 
 national liberties, but in the millennium of gospel liberty. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT D. C. OILMAN, LL. D., 
 OF BALTIMORE. 
 
 The speaker to whom we have just listened with the greatest 
 interest, has gone over so wide a field, and yet has shown so much 
 power of compressing what he has to say, that those of us who 
 follow can only take up some of the subordinate themes which he 
 has introduced, and expand them. I invite your attention to the 
 intellectual resources of this country, and especially their relation 
 to the advancement of religion. But I find even this theme far 
 too suggestive. I should be glad to spend all the time allotted me 
 in a discussion of popular education, as secured by the American 
 system of common schools ; but instead, I can only say. Long 
 may they live. May their imperfections be removed, their deficien- 
 cies supplied, and may they never fail to receive the confidence 
 and support of Christian people. It would be .an agreeable task 
 to devote my half hour to the American system of college educa- 
 tion, and to show how, under the influence of Christian churches, 
 the higher general instruction of the country has hitherto been 
 supported ; but instead, I can simply express the hope that these 
 institutions may continue to be successful in training up youth for 
 the service of church and state. 
 
 I choose a different phase of the subject, and remind you that 
 we have entered upon a new epoch — the age of universities as dis- 
 tinguished from colleges, and that their influence upon the advance- 
 ment of Christian faith has not yet been measured among us. If 
 there are any persons present unfamiliar with the terms employed 
 in college circles, let me remind them that calling an institution a 
 university does not make it one. Now, as formerly, there are nom- 
 inalists and realists. You may have the name without the sub- 
 stance ; you may have the reality without the charter or the style. For 
 
 277 
 
278 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 example, the Smithsonian Institution and all the allied organiza- 
 tions for scientific activity in Washington, exercise two at least of 
 the most important functions of a university —" the advancement 
 and diffusion of knowledge among men." They constitute a uni- 
 versity. Elsewhere, likewise, are men at work in faithful, laborious 
 researches without the aid of university resources, but in the full 
 possession of the university spirit. If it is necessary before this 
 audience to distinguish between colleges and universities, let me 
 say that colleges are to teach what is known, to discipline youth 
 in habits of intellectual vigor, to develop character; while universi- 
 ties are partly for providing professional education and partly for 
 promoting inquiry, investigation and discovery in all departments 
 of human thought. The best collegiate professors are gifted 
 teachers; the best university professors are gifted thinkers. Per- 
 haps the highest duty of a university is the ascertainment of truth. 
 They save from the inheritance of the past the gold *hich is buried; 
 they dig from hidden veins the precious ore which has never been 
 brought to light; and the old gold and the new, refined and stamped, 
 are blended in the currency of mankind. During the last twenty 
 or thirty years great progress has been made in this country,' in the 
 actual development of these ideas, and we are living in the foun- 
 dation days of universities — some of them built upon sand, and 
 some of them on rocks. 
 
 It is quite worth while, in a conference like this, to consider 
 whether these establishments growing up in every part of the land 
 are to be helps or hindrances to religious faith. Many persons are 
 filled with apprehensions, particularly as they see certain doctrines 
 in which they have trusted, proved erroneous, and statements, 
 which they have thought to be facts, abandoned as derelicts. 
 Under these circumstances a survey of a broad field is called for 
 — a survey which will clearly show that in the long run universities 
 uphold ideality, spirituality and faith. 
 
 I can do little more than indicate in this brief address, the line of 
 arguments which may be followed when universities are assailed 
 as the foes of Christianity. 
 
 Universities are in fact the children of the church. The great 
 historic foundations, from the time of Bologna — about to celebrate 
 its eight hundredth anniversary — attest the fostering care of the 
 ghurch before the days of the Protestant Reformation; and from 
 this later date until now, the various religious bodies of the world 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. D. C. OILMAN. 279 
 
 have sought to strengthen their influence by means of kindred 
 organizations. Protestants and Catholics have vied with one 
 another in the maintenance of these schools of superior study. 
 
 Recall the biographies of intellectual and religious leaders. 
 Wycliffe, the morning star of the Reformation, was master of 
 Balliol College in the University of Oxford. Luther was a profes- 
 sor of Philosophy in the University of Wittenberg, when he nailed 
 his famous propositions upon the door of the castle church. 
 Francis Xavier was sent to the University of Paris at the age of 
 eighteen. " The university at that time," we are told by a good 
 authority (H. I. Coleridge), "was neither perfect in discipline 
 nor immaculate m morals, or even in orthodoxy. Young men 
 were exposed to as great temptations as are now incurred by the 
 students of any continental university." " From dangers like 
 these, he was saved by means of the greatest of all blessings which 
 he received at Paris, the friendship of Ignatius Loyola." The 
 influence of Calvin as an interpreter of the Scriptures, has been 
 attributed largely to the fact that while studying in the Catholic 
 college at Bourges, he was taught by a German, the Greek language, 
 and introduced to the study of the New Testament in the original, 
 so that (as he himself tells us) "all who were desirous of a purer 
 doctrine were in the habit of coming to him, though a novice or 
 tyro, for the purpose of learning." It was at the University of 
 Oxford that John and Charles Wesley were first called Methodists, 
 because they were so methodical in their religious lives and so 
 strict in the performance of their religious duties. The great 
 Cardinal Newman, universally acknowledged by the Protestant and 
 the Catholic alike, to be " one of the most remarkable men whom 
 the English church has produced in any century," shows in every 
 stage of his life the effects of his Oxford education. Frederick 
 Denison Maurice, one of the most influential of our contempora- 
 ries, spent all his days in the university atmosphere, the medical 
 school, the college of law. Kings College in London, and at length 
 the University of Cambridge. Who in our day has done more 
 than he to uphold the ideas of spiritual religion ? Arthur Hallam 
 wrote to Gladstone, very many years ago, " The effect which 
 Maurice produced on the minds of many at Cambridge by the 
 single creation of the Society of the Apostles, is far greater than I 
 can dare to calculate, and will be felt directly and indirectly in. 
 the age that is upon us." 
 
280 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 In reviewing Maurice's " Christian Socialism," the Rev. Llew- 
 ellyn Davies says: " What was paradoxical in Maurice's teaching — 
 and it must be admitted that there is much in it that had this air — 
 is due chiefly to his seeing God in all things, and all things in God. 
 I cannot think there has been anyone since the first age of Chris- 
 tendom, however full of faith, in whom this kind of sight has been 
 quite so habitual as it was in Maurice." 
 
 If, instead of looking at individual lives, we consider the origin 
 of religious movements, we shall again perceive the influence of 
 universities. In all great crises of thought their counsel is sought. 
 In the Reformation they led men back to the study of the original 
 texts of the Scriptures. They restored to due consideration the Greek 
 and Hebrew languages. They gave us the authorized version of 
 the English Bible; to their professors we are largely indebted for 
 the recent revision. Of the translators of the authorized version, 
 it is said that nine were sooner or later Professors of Greek and 
 Hebrew in Oxford and Cambridge, and nine were heads of colleges. 
 A still larger proportion of the recent revisers were professors of 
 Greek and Hebrew. Universities have unraveled for us the hiero- 
 glyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and 
 Babylonia. Their scholarship has turned the discoveries of archae- 
 ology to the explanation and support of the sacred texts. The 
 Oxford movement of the last generation, however we may regard 
 it, was the manifestation of religious faith and fervor in a society 
 of scholars. Even to-day, some of the noblest examples of devo- 
 tion to the religious welfare of mankind are found among the 
 scholars of the English universities; some of whom devote their lives 
 to labors beyond the seas, and others with equal self-renunciation 
 engage in philanthropic labors among the outcast and the needy in 
 the cities at home. Lord Acton, in the opening article of the 
 new Historical Review* makes this significant remark: "The 
 academic socialists are proceeding to reconstruct history, making 
 property and the social condition the determining factor, above the 
 acts of government or the changes of opinion ; and this is by many 
 degrees the most important addition made of late years to historic 
 science." There is no nobler indication, none more hopeful, than 
 the eagerness with which young men are studying these social ques- 
 tions, and the readiness with which they are throwing themselves 
 into every effort for the good of their fellow-men. 
 
 ♦Page 41. 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. D. C. OILMAN. 281 
 
 These are but illustrations — a few chosen almost at random 
 from a multitude that might be given — of the influence of universi- 
 ties. Why should we not be assured that universities will always 
 promote the highest nature of men ? They are devoted to the study 
 of the nature and history of man, and to the nature and history of 
 the microcosm in which he is placed; and their discoveries perpet- 
 ually lead up to the recognition of moral laws governing human 
 society, and to the evidence of an infinite power holding the atoms 
 in their place. So too the methods they employ are particularly 
 directed to the ascertainment of truth and the detection of error; 
 and these methods are those which all men everywhere can make 
 use of. Moreover, the end in view — the ultimate end of all educa- 
 tional and scientific effort, as well as of all legisbtion and states- 
 manship — is identical with that at which Christianity aims, that 
 which was heralded in Judea nineteen centuries ago, by a multitude 
 of the heavenly host, saying, " Peace on earth, good-will to men." 
 
 Great results have followed in this direction from the activity of 
 universities. I might rehearse its material results — such, for exam- 
 ple, as the series of discoveries which have given to this part of the 
 nineteenth century the name of the age of electricity — discoveries 
 which have entirely changed our commerce, our diplomacy and 
 our missionary efforts. I should prefer to dwell upon the estab- 
 lishment of the principles of international law by the agency of 
 Christian scholars, from the days of Grotius until now. When, a 
 few weeks ago, the deputation of members of Parliament visited 
 Washington to urge the necessity of arbitration in disputes between 
 states, a company of university professors with other scholars were 
 assembled in Heidelberg for the study of questions in international 
 law tending to the preservation of peace. In another subject, progress 
 has been made within recent years full of actual and expected 
 benefit to mankind. I refer to the group of studies known as 
 biological, which have thrown a flood of light upon the physiologi- 
 cal nature of man. Advancing in their train, comes pathology, the 
 clearer recognition of the origin and development of disease, and 
 consequently the discovery of remedies for many of the ills which 
 beset humanity. Psychology, interpreter of the subtle relations 
 which exist between the spiritual nature of man and the corporal 
 tenement in which it resides, is at work in the house of Physiology. 
 It is exposing the errors, the blunders and the deceits of the insid- 
 ious impostor and ignoramus, that poses under the name of 
 
282 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 spiritualism; it is revealing the laws of the brain and nervous sys- 
 tem, our thinking-apparatus; and is establishing, as it seems to me, 
 the insufficiency of all materialistic theories respecting the nature of 
 the intellect and soul. • From these studies, which a few years ago- 
 were looked on with so much distrust, we have already learned so 
 much that is fraught with good, that alarm is silenced, and expecta- 
 tion is alert. Natural theology is now drawing its arguments from 
 biology, and one of the ablest defenders of the faith, now living in 
 England (Dr. Fairbairn), has clearly declared his opinion that 
 "Rightly understood, evolution mightily strengthens the argument 
 for the being and continued activity of God. It gives," he says, 
 " not simply a new and truer doctrine of the Creator, but a 
 sublimer and diviner doctrine of Providence." 
 
 In view of all these things, no one ought to be afraid of the 
 advancement of knowledge; no one ought to be afraid of institu- 
 tions engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. Every one who 
 believes that the world is organized upon a plan, should also 
 believe that it is the duty of intellectual men to discover and 
 reveal as much as they can of this plan. Every one should recognize 
 in universities, resources consecrated to the establishment of truth,, 
 and should hold them precious. 
 
 But, you will ask me, Does not error creep into university work ? 
 Are not many things taught that are not truths, inaccurate asser- 
 tions, unverified hypotheses, uiiwarranted opinions ? I cannot deny" 
 that this is so, but I will ask you how these errors are to be got 
 rid of ? Is anything human perfect ? Are the workings of our 
 own minds perfect ? Is human society perfect ? Is the Christian 
 church perfect ? Do not errors creep into the most sacred deliber- 
 ations ? How are we to eliminate these errors ? Only by the pros- 
 ecution of the search of truth, only by training scholars in the 
 detection of error. If there is an error in mathematics, it must be 
 the trained niathematician who will detect it. If there is an error 
 in biology, it is the trained biologist who will reveal it. If there is. 
 an error in chemistry or physics, it is the skilled chemist or phy- 
 sicist who will eradicate it. If we would get rid of error in the 
 instructions of universities, and in the opinions of society at 
 large, we can succeed only by prosecuting the search after truth, 
 by men of the highest education, who will record what they find 
 out; who will give to the world processes and results that every one 
 else may test, criticise or combat, until the truth itself is estab- 
 
ADDRESS BY PRES. D. C. OILMAN. 2S3 
 
 lished. In all the difficulties that beset us, and they are many; in 
 all the dangers to which youth are exposed, and they are many; in all 
 the perplexities that communities and churches feel, and they are 
 many — let us never fail to believe in the progress of truth, the 
 attainment of knowledge, the advancement of science. In times 
 when error is heard, when unworthy leaders are at the front, let us 
 be assured that in the long run, in the progress of centuries, even 
 in the progress of decade after decade, the world grows better. As 
 misery, vice and sin grow less, religion has a freer field, and 
 Christianity extends its invigorating and uplifting influence. 
 
 As I look at the progress of our times, hear the discussion of 
 many theories, watch the rapid march of research, and come into 
 contact with minds of various orders, I am more and more impressed 
 by the fact that in the advancement of all things valuable, silent, 
 quiet, unseen forces are steadily at work. In every military cam- 
 paign there must be soldiers at the front, and soldiers in the rear; 
 those who face the enemy, and those who make the plans. So in 
 the advancement of good ideas, there must be those who encounter 
 face to face their opponents, and there must be unseen forces work- 
 ing steadily to provide the principles that others will apply. I 
 often ask what branch of the Christian church will be first to place 
 on its flag and assert everywhere that Science is the handmaid of 
 Religion, that every effort made to extend the domain of human 
 thought, and to interpret the plan of the creation, is an effort to- 
 extend the reign of righteousness and truth. When the churches, 
 thus more fully recognize the value of advancing knowledge, and 
 when universities more heartily recognize the truth of Christian 
 doctrine, as well as the beauty of Christian life, then shall we say 
 with the Psalmist, "Jerusalem is- built as a city that is at unity 
 with itself." "Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within 
 thy palaces." Then will men acknowledge, if they do not now,, 
 that the beauty of poetry, the truth of science, the exactness of 
 philosophy, and the faith which as Christians we hold most dear, 
 are so many agencies by which the race is helped, or so many 
 instrumentalities by which individuals are fitted for the world that 
 is to come. 
 
 With the moitto which the Secretary of this Conference introduced 
 upon the title-page of his instructive and impressive volume entitled 
 "Our Country," I will conclude these remarks: "We live in 
 a new and exceptional age; America is another name for oppor- 
 
284 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 tunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine 
 Providence in behalf of the human race." 
 
 But I will add to this motto these words of Isaac Taylor: " It is 
 the first characteristic of spiritual Christianity, that it attaches a 
 sovereign importance to truth, as furnishing the only solid support 
 for the motives of self-government, purity and charity." 
 
THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. W. E. HATCHER, D. D., OF 
 RICHMOND. 
 
 The call for this Conference was startling. It rang like a fire-bell 
 in the night, and there is something positively pathetic in the 
 intense and devout response with which it has been met. But why- 
 are we here ? Not to indulge in unthinking and self-complacent 
 optimism, nor yet to express a doubt as to the conflict. We are 
 not here to determine whether with ten thousand we are able to 
 meet him that cometh with twenty thousand. He has already 
 come, and the battle between the Prince of Light and the legions 
 of darkness is raging. This is a council of Christ's warriors around 
 the camp-fire, to study the movements of the enemy, estimate our 
 own strength, and whet our swords for that war which can never 
 end until the crown of our republic has been put upon the brow 
 of the Captain of our salvation. 
 
 The summons which called me to take part in these discussions 
 sounded like a paraphrase of the olden cry : 
 
 " Watchman, tell us of the night, 
 What its signs of promise are." 
 
 Standing here a southern stranger, I beg modestly to make my 
 answer from the Christian watch-tower of the South. This I do in 
 no narrow spirit, and with no wish to bring the South into any 
 unpleasant contrast with any other portion of our country. I adopt 
 this course, only because of my better acquaintanceship with the 
 South, and because too it is always easier to grasp a great subject 
 by examining it in its several sections. . We are now studying the 
 Christian resources of our country, by which I understand all the 
 means, actual and possible, within our reach for confronting the 
 evils now rampant in our midst, and for bringing the millions of 
 our population beneath the peaceful reign of Him whose right it is 
 to rule. 
 
 285 
 
'286 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 It may help our investigatidns to look at a few figures. In the 
 southern states, in which are included Virginia, West Virginia, 
 Kentucky and Missouri, as well as those states south of them, we 
 have a population of nearly 19,000,000, of which 12,000,000 are 
 whites, and 7,000,000 are negroes. As to the religious status of 
 this part of our population, I present these figures: 
 
 Ministers. 
 Presbyterians, all branches. . . 2,300 
 
 Episcopalians 875 
 
 Methodists, white and colored. 5,930 
 Baptists, white and colored. . 13,100 
 Other evangelical denomina- 
 tions 3>'S° 
 
 Church 
 
 s. s. 
 
 S. S. 
 
 Members. 
 
 Teachers. 
 
 Scholars. 
 
 350,000 
 
 26,800 
 
 224,000 
 
 75.500 
 
 •5,700 
 
 80,000 
 
 1,440,000 
 
 95,000 
 
 965,000 
 
 2,350,000 
 
 143,200 
 
 1,670,000 
 
 570,500 
 
 49,000 
 
 480,200 
 
 25.385 4.786,000 319.700 3.019.200 
 
 Take these figures for what they are worth. They are not abso- 
 lutely, but approximately correct. As a fact, they fall below rather 
 than exceed the truth, for there is much unreported Christian work 
 among southern people. This exhibit indicates an actual 
 Christian force of nearly 5,000,000 church members, 25,000 
 ministers, 319,700 Sunday-school teachers, and 3,000,000 of Sunday- 
 school scholars. As to this vast array of church members, I can 
 not become responsible for the safe delivery of every one of them 
 at the gates of the New Jerusalem. But it may be justly said that, 
 in point of devoutness and right living, they will compare fairly 
 ■with professed Christians in other portions of the world. This 
 statement reminds us that a vast proportion of our people are 
 unsaved, and yet it affords us ample ground for profound gratitude 
 and hope. It ought to be added that never before were the Chris- 
 tian people of the South so well organized, so aggressive, or so 
 hopeful as they now are. Year by year, we are having rich 
 acquisitions to our ranks, and the outlook for yet greater conquests 
 is most inspiring. 
 
 It is not easy to make an inventory of our Christian stock. 
 Even the more material elements of spiritual power are not easy 
 to define ; but there are facts in the religious situation of the South 
 which are suggestive of present strength and future progress. 
 
 I. First of all, we have a strong and far-reaching Christian senti- 
 ment in the South. It is historic, hereditary and deep-rooted. It 
 pervades almost every grade and rank of our social system. Our 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. W. E. HATCHER. 287 
 
 people believe in the Bible, and stand by the old gospel. As a 
 rule the Sabbath is respected, though the railroads and the saloons 
 are seriously invading its sanctity: the Christian minister is almost 
 universally honored, and the bulk of our population attend public 
 worship. We have very few divorces in the South ; this not so much 
 on account of good legislation, as through the influence of a dom- 
 inant religious sentiment ; and if I may speak for Virginia, the 
 most of our divorces result from the marriage of minors, who 
 escape from the restraints of their parents, elude the Virginia laws, 
 -cross the Potomac, enter our national capital and are married 
 under the shield of the United States government. It may be 
 needful to remind you that we have in the South, a singularly homo- 
 geneous population. Except in the newer states beyond the Mis- 
 sissippi, and a thinly scattered foreign element everywhere, we have 
 really but two great classes of population — Anglo-Saxons and the 
 negroes. As for the whites, they are the original stock — descend- 
 ants of the old English settlers, and long identified with the history 
 •of the country. They are of those who in the past fought the 
 battle of religious liberty, and have been enjoying it ever since. 
 They have been brought up in the faith of their fathers, and show 
 no serious symptoms of revolt from it. If strangers have come , 
 among us, they have been for the most part assimilated and 
 absorbed into our social and religious systems. 
 
 What I have said of the white people, can be said with almost 
 equal justice of the negroes. They are a Christianized race. I 
 speak not as a sentimentalist or enthusiast, and do not mean to 
 hold up this race as the highest type of spiritual life. They retain 
 some marks of their servility, and some older traces of their super- 
 stition, and are behind in the moral aspects of their religious lives. 
 But admitting this, it is pleasant to testify that they are a religious, 
 in a good degree an evangelically religious, people. 
 
 They believe in God, and in Jesus Christ his Son ; in the Bible, 
 in the fullness and finality of its authority ; in repentance and 
 regeneration ; in Christian organization, and rigid standards of 
 church discipline, and are extraordinary church builders. Slavery 
 had its evils — grievous and many. What these were no one could 
 possibly know so well as the more thoughtful and conscientious 
 people of the South ; and if I know the southern people, as I 
 believe that I do, I can assure you that there are none who rejoice 
 more cordially over the abolition of slavery than they do. For 
 
288 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 that marvelous work which Christian philanthropy has done for 
 the uplifting of the emancipated race, the whole earth ought to be 
 grateful. At the same time, there is one fact which ought never 
 to be forgotten, and that is that the Christianization of the negro 
 came before his personal and political freedom. He was con- 
 verted under the ministry of his master. He grew up in a Chris- 
 tian home, sat in the same house and under the same ministry with 
 the whites, was a member of the same church, sang the same 
 Christian melodies, and rejoiced in the same good hope of eternal 
 life through Jesus Christ. 
 
 That there have been and still are sharp differences and antag- 
 onisms between the two races, is not wonderful. These will 
 probably continue until the saloon-keeper and the demagogue shall 
 have become food for worms, and Christian statesmen become 
 leaders of the people. But despite these divergencies and hostili- 
 ties, which are far greater in the report than in the fact, it is much 
 to say that the two races are bound together in the strong bonds of^ 
 a common religious faith. They are one in Christ Jesus. This 
 gives us an immense vantage-ground. A common Christian senti- 
 ment pervades our duplex social organism, and binds labor and 
 capital into a real unity. We may squabble about politics and 
 have occasional tilts over the social problems, but both races believe 
 in Christ, and, all things considered, are living together in remark- 
 able harmony and peace. 
 
 This widely prevalent religious sentiment, this settled presump- 
 tion in favor of the gospel, is one of our towers of strength. An 
 avowed infidel is a rare spectacle with us, and a noisy, blatant 
 atheist upon a southern platform championing his hatred of the 
 Bible, would startle our people about as much as a roaring anarchist 
 brandishing his dynamite bombs in the public street. Not that all 
 are Christians. Alas ! far from it. There be many who refuse to 
 obey Christ and wantonly sell themselves to Satan, but they do not do 
 so on the ground that they disbelieve in the divine authority of the 
 Bible. Nor is there any disposition to foster or pet those modern 
 forms of infidelity which flourish under Christian names. Recently 
 in two of our leading Christian denominations, men of imperial gen- 
 ius and magnificent learning, have undertaken to recast, or to cast 
 out our fundamental theological doctrines, but only with the result 
 that they were sternly invited to walk out and away with their 
 sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. W. E. HATCHER. 289 
 
 In this sober and conservative religious conviction we have a 
 precious inheritance. It is a citadel of strength, protective, puri- 
 fying and transforming. 
 
 2. In the second place, we have in the South, in its unimpaired 
 strength and sanctity, the Christian home. The lordly palaces of 
 the old South are gone. Their turrets have crumbled; their 
 gates are shattered; their inclosures are down; their oaks and 
 cedars are dead; and the voice of luxurious revelry is hushed 
 within their walls. The southern home of to-day is a plainer affair. 
 It is a modest house with unshowy furniture, and without its liver- 
 ied servants or gleaming equipages. Not that we have not yet 
 wealth, comfort an9 beauty in many of our southern homes: but 
 the old aristocratic mansions which formerly crowned the hills of 
 the South have departed, and in their stead have sprung up new 
 homes — homes that are the fruit of honest toil — homes for the 
 common people, and even homes for the negroes, for thousands of 
 them are becoming freeholders. It is a matter of congratulation 
 that our homes are so many, so well ordered and so permanent; and 
 most of all are we thankful that so many of them are Christian 
 homes. In point of magnificence and luxury they are behind, but 
 they have at least their Bibles, their altars, their devout fathers 
 and mothers, their Christian songs, and their happy social evenings. 
 
 It is beneath the roofs of these Bethany homes that our Saviour 
 comes to bless us in our humble struggle to train our children for 
 him. It is from out their gates that we are sending our sons and 
 daughters, with the love of God in their hearts, and with the name 
 of Christ on their lips. That some of them are wrecked on the 
 stormy seas of life, is sadly true, but even they at last turn their 
 dying eyes to the God of their fathers and mothers. Our young 
 people are for the most part church members, and not only stand 
 in the liberty of Christ, but are going forth in their trained strength 
 to be the friends of truth and righteousness. It is in the purity and 
 devoutness of our homes that we feel that much of our strength 
 lies. It is from that source emanate the influences which purify 
 society, refine our civilization, and add stability to our government. 
 
 3. We are fortunate also in having our institutions of learning 
 under the most positive Christian influence. 
 
 To this statement there may be some exceptions, which are the 
 creatures and beneficiaries of the state. But even these cannot 
 escape from that pervasive Christian sentiment already mentioned; 
 
290 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 and, besides, they have in them Christian teachers, and always a 
 body of godly, faithful students, well organized for the Master's 
 work. 
 
 Our colleges are denominational. They are the outgrowth of 
 Christian enterprise and liberality; they are in the hands of public- 
 spirited and God-fearing trustees; they are manned by devout and 
 exemplary teachers; they are filled with youths, three-fourths of 
 whom are Christians, and their courses of study are dictated by a 
 distinct Christian sentiment. You know that our colleges have 
 known great adversities. Many of them lost their buildings, endow- 
 ments and equipments, and they have been compelled to do their 
 ■work under the gravest disabilities. Our academic and collegiate 
 teachers have been ill-paid and sorely strained; but, animated by 
 (their unfailing faith in Christian education, they have toiled nobly 
 on. Parents have made vast sacrifices to educate their sons and 
 daughters, and these young people have willingly submitted to 
 scanty rations and threadbare outfits, that they might equip them- 
 selves for usefulness. These hardships have had their compensa- 
 tions. We have reared a sturdy and stalwart race. There has 
 been no need that we should legislate religion into our colleges, for 
 the bulk of our young men were godly, and too hard at work, and 
 too eager to learn, to be unmanageable. Happily we have had 
 enough religion in our colleges to take care of itself. 
 
 In the matter of popular and technical education we are far 
 behind. But we are doing much for the broad academic educa- 
 tion of our sons and daughters. As already said, the major part 
 •of our college-trained youths are Christians, and we look to them 
 to become mighty auxiliaries in the preservation of our govern- 
 ment and in the Christianization of our people. This seems to be 
 the time for putting on exhibition our jewels. The South has few 
 millionaires, few diamonds and few rich corporations. But she 
 can modestly point to her thousands of educated girls and boys, 
 and say with maternal pride, " These are my jewels." 
 
 4. Let me pause for a moment to emphasize another cheering fact 
 in the religious situation of the South. The president of one of 
 our leading theological seminaries has recently uttered the opinion 
 that there was never before such a wide-spread desire on the part 
 of our young men to enter the Christian ministry as is now mani- 
 fested. This is true beyond question. But not so true in our 
 .larger cities, where the base commercial spirit so completely posses- 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. W. E. HATCHER. 291 
 
 ses the popular mind, that it even whips the boys out of their 
 primary schools and sends them forth as money-makers. But in 
 the South the larger proportion of the population is in the country. 
 They are rustic, and are not so easy mannered as the dwellers in 
 the cities, but they read and think and pray more, and many of 
 •our most richly endowed youths are coming into the gospel minis- 
 try. Our academies, colleges and seminaries are filled with these 
 ministerial candidates, and in some cases the number is no greater 
 simply because of the limited means for aiding them in their 
 education. We are far richer in men than in money; but let the 
 Lord be praised that our money is increasing, and much of it is 
 coming into the hands of Christian men who are learning to use it 
 for Christian purposes. 
 
 After all, the most vital and magnetic resource for converting 
 the world is the living preacher. He is the divinely selected 
 organ for communicating the heavenly message, and for riveting 
 it upon the human soul. In the ministers which the South is 
 sending forth, we feel that we are making our best contributions 
 for the salvation of our country. 
 
 5. Finally, let me say that there is a growing spirit of evangelical 
 unity among the several Christian denominations of the South. I am 
 not here to preach the funeral of denominationalism, nor to fore- 
 shadow any speedy amalgamation of the religious sects of the 
 South. That is a great problem — so complicated, delicate and 
 difficult, that we are not meddling with it and do not wish to 
 be meddled with on that subject. But several things can be said 
 with all confidence. First, we have, in a large measure recovered 
 from that irritating and vituperative spirit of controversy which 
 formerly marred our peace and divided our forces. We have 
 learned that charity is intended not so much for those who agree 
 with us, as for those who are separated from us by sincere and 
 cherished convictions. Next, we have discovered that there is no 
 inconsistency between clinging loyally to our own convictions 
 and at the same time cordially co-operating with our Christian 
 brethren in common work for the Master. Quietly and gradually 
 we are clearing the brush and briers from the common ground, so 
 that we can come more closely together. Already we are looking 
 into each other's faces, touching elbows in kindred work, and learn- 
 ing to keep step to the music of each other's bands. 
 
 Why there are so many divisions in the army of Christ, is a 
 
292 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 question which, though answered a thousand times, remains unan- 
 swered still. I suppose that every man in this great assemblage, 
 with one single exception, feels fully prepared to explain the 
 mystery, and I would gladly pause and hear these explanations. 
 The exception is myself. If my salvation depended upon it, I 
 could not tell why so many lines have been drawn across the external 
 kingdom of our Lord. But one thing is significant. When these 
 divergent sects join forces in battling for the salvation of men, the 
 world always wakes up. There is a peculiar spiritual power in 
 co-operative Christian work, and that power we are beginning to 
 recognize in the South as one of our resources. 
 
 And now you have it. In actual material we have largely 
 over 4,500,000 church members, and 3,500,000 persons in our 
 Bible schools. To this add a rich Christian sentiment; thousands 
 upon thousands of godly homes; well-devised educational move- 
 ments under gospel influences; many young men entering the 
 ministry; and a spirit of fraternity and helpfulness among Chris- 
 tians of every worthy name. 
 
 And this is our stock-in-trade. It seems not much — indeed, very 
 little when put in contrast with the thickening perils and crying ■ 
 wants of our country. Even if we add it to the yet richer streams 
 of Christian influence, which have their rise in other portions of 
 our republic, we still feel that we are as Gideon with his three 
 hundred on the hill-top, while the valley of Jezreel was crowded 
 with the Midianites. What can we do ? Can we meet him that 
 comes with the majesty of his numbers and the fury of his assault ^ 
 
 Strange picture that, on the northern shores of the Galilean lake. 
 Even the patient Jesus is worn out, and for once has cut the crowd 
 and taken to the desert. Too happy indeed are the disciples to 
 follow him into his hiding-place and have him to themselves. Is it 
 to themselves ? Here they come — thousands upon thousands — 
 swarming, unbidden, unwelcomed and intruding. The little church 
 views them with disfavor, and makes no prayer for them, except 
 that they be sent away. Feed them! There are no resources — 
 nothing but five loaves and two small fishes. But hark! Hear 
 the compassionate Saviour speak : " Make the men sit down upon 
 the ground." And then above the meager supplies he lifts his eyes, 
 asks the blessing, the multitude is fed, and the resources are mul- 
 tiplied for future uses. 
 
 Behold another shore ! Thronged with millions — millions of new- 
 
REMARKS BY REV. A. BROOKS. 293 
 
 comers — rpugh, ravenous and hostile. They threaten the peace 
 of our Zion; they imperil our liberties and privileges; they crowd 
 and jostle us out of our rights. What shall we do ? Bind them 
 with legislative restraints ? Load them with political proscription ? 
 Refill the ships and send them away ? Put up the bars and keep 
 them back ? Ah, I think I hear that same voice, " Bring them to 
 me, make them sit down, and give them to eat." Bring out the 
 loaves and the fishes, and let the almighty Saviour breathe l)is 
 blessing upon them. He can transform and multiply our resources 
 ;so that we shall have not only enough for America, but our bas- 
 kets shall be filled with supplies for all the nations of the earth. 
 
 The Chairman 'next introduced Rev. Arthur Brooks, of New 
 York. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. ARTHUR BROOKS. 
 
 We have heard for the last three days a very discouraging state- 
 ment of the position of things with regard to the Christian ministry. 
 We have heard exhortations to the ministers to come out of their 
 apathy and be courageous in new endeavor. But we have not heard 
 it stated with sufficient clearness that, after all, the Christian min- 
 istry and the Christian church are exceedingly active and exceed- 
 ingly earnest in what is put before them, but are sadly limited and 
 hampered as to the most direct and powerful method of action. 
 We have not heard enough of the one great existing resource of 
 ■our country and of the church, which is above all others in power 
 and influence; that is, the power of the living force, the living man. 
 We have, undoubtedly, great Christian resources of other kinds, but 
 if we had not the living men to go out and ^preach the gospel, our 
 case would be desperate. When the multitude was fed on the hill- 
 side in Galilee, there was the Master, and there were the loaves and 
 fishes, but after all there was an Andrew and a small boy, and if 
 they had not been there, the multitude, apparently, would never 
 have been fed, and would have gone away hungry. 
 
 This is not the first crisis that the Christian church has met. It 
 began with precisely such difficulties as we have to-day, only they 
 were on a larger scale than those we have now. There was such 
 darkness of the human mind as is unknown to us to-day. How 
 did our Master conquer that ? By his own power, indeed, and by 
 
294 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 the Holy Tpirit, but he conquered also by the twelve men whom 
 he sent out. If we' have not the power of consecrated men to 
 stand between God and the people who are to be brought to God, 
 then, indeed, we have no resources upon which to rely. 
 
 We have in this country no religious establishment. A religious 
 establishment, in other countries, means that every acre of the land 
 is under the influence of a state church. Our people threw all that 
 behind them. Our forefathers said, " Our country and our people- 
 are able to take care of themselves in religious matters." We were 
 then a country with a widely distributed religious population. 
 Now, the movement of our time has taken our people out of the 
 country and massed them in the cities, as well as poured into both 
 country and city this strange heterogeneous emigrant population of 
 which we have heard so much. We have, therefore, country dis- 
 tricts in which there is no knowledge of God taught, and we have 
 city districts in which there is no knowledgd of God prevailing. 
 Until we bring into that city district and that country district the 
 most eminent power to preach the word of God in its fullness, we 
 shall not have brought the resources of our country fully to bear 
 upon Christian work. And when we have once brought that, all 
 else will follow. 
 
 What we need to-day is the means of bringing the most power- 
 ful men into the fields where the most difficult work is to be done. 
 We want more ministers; everywhere, even from the South, whose 
 religious condition has been so happily described to us, comes up 
 the cry that the supply of able ministers of the New Testament is 
 failing. But when we have them, we want to be able to. place them- 
 where men's hearts are coldest and men's difficulties are greatest, 
 and to proportion the ability of the man to the importance of the 
 work which he has giveg him. A man must not be compelled to 
 leave a hard field of work, for which he is well equipped and pre- 
 pared, because the necessity of the proper training and education cf 
 his family call for greater resources than he can there obtain. It 
 is better to spend thousands of dollars in supporting properly, good 
 and strong men at needy points, than in the erection of buildings 
 and the opening of secular and philanthropic agencies. 
 
 Unite rich and poor in one church by carrying the rich to the 
 churches of the poor. We can do that if, in those churches, the 
 men are to be found who can give the best exhortation, comfort 
 and instruction. For that we shall need enlarged contributions and 
 
REMARKS BY REV. A. BROOKS. 295 
 
 endowments ; but what does that mean, except that we are willing 
 to put our most material and earthly resources, our money, at the 
 service of our highest and most spiritual resource, our consecrated 
 man. A celibate ministry we have forever rejected, and we know 
 the blessing of the family life in connection with our ministry, as 
 a center of pure and ennobling influences. JVe put that among the 
 resources of our modern Christianity. But that we may keep and 
 use our ministry, with its sphere of usefu'ness and influence thus 
 enlarged, we must recognize its importance more clearly thin ever ; 
 we must put it above all other considerations, and give to it of our 
 best, whether it be the sons from our firesides or the money from 
 our purses. For fheir personal strength and comfort the laity appre- 
 ciate the ministry. They provide for them, and they give to them 
 of their abundance. But as the great evangelizing power of the 
 land, worth for what they accomplish far more than they can pos- 
 sibly cost, this value seems to be little understood. Our parishes 
 provide for themselves strong men, but to place and maintain such 
 men in the fields where the prospect is darkest and most discour- 
 aging, that is a policy of which as yet we see but few signs, and the 
 inauguration of which would be a result well worthy of such a 
 Conference as this. 
 
 The Chairman (General Hawley) : Mr. Dodge asks me to 
 make a few remarks. I would have no objection were the hour 
 earlier. The subject is one not only of overwhelming importance, 
 but it has also its fascinations. Pessimistic views very largely 
 prevail in this country. It is a daily matter of conversation. 
 Discussions of the future of our country, among men, even of 
 intelligence, seem to excite the gloomiest anticipations. It does 
 not seem to me that there ever was such a task placed before the 
 people of any nation of the world, as is placed before the United 
 States. There are coming here to us large numbers of people of 
 all varieties of religion, and some of no religion at all. Some men 
 come here because they love our form of government; others, not 
 because they care about that, but hoping that in some way or other 
 they will get an easien living here. Of course, one can make a 
 gloomy picture out of such material. 
 
 It seems to me, however, that no man who has any belief in the 
 Christian religion has any right to be a pessimist. [Applause.] I 
 was not so taught to interpret the Bible. I was taught to believe 
 in the future glory and absolute, final, magnificent triumph of our 
 
296 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RESOURCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 institutions. It is a safe prophecy that, given a new, unoccupied 
 continent, with a free school, a free press, free religion and a free 
 ballot, in the end the truth, justice and wisdom of the gospel of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ will win the fight. [Great applause.] 
 
MORNING SESSION. 
 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9. 
 
 Rev. J. G. Van Slyke, D. D., of Kingston, N. Y., and Rev. O. H. 
 Tiffany, D. D., of Philadelphia, conducted the devotional exercises. 
 
 REMARKS BY MR. DODGE. 
 
 Mr. Dodge said : We have been together for two days, and nave 
 talked earnestly and thoughtfully of our perils, of our glorious 
 opportunities, and of the great Christian resources, used and 
 unused, of this country. 
 
 This morning we devote our thought to what, after all, is the 
 turning-point of our whole work here — how, as Christian brothers, 
 we can co-operate so that in aggressive work there shall be an 
 advance along the whole line, wherever there is service to be done 
 for the Master we all love. We know that in many things nothing 
 can be done unless we are willing to co-operate and work together 
 as servants of one Master, and we know that work can be done 
 without touching our differences of ritual, or dogma, or thought, or 
 form of worship. It is only as servants of Christ, loving one Lord 
 and striving to save our country for him, that we shall best learn 
 how to do his work. 
 
 We are paired and disappointed that the Rev. Dr. Storrs, the 
 warm friend of this work, who expected to be with us this morn- 
 ing, has been prevented by illness, but he has prepared a careful 
 paper which touches this point most closely, and which I know 
 will interest everyone. It will be read by his friend and ours, Rev. 
 Dr. Chamberlain, of Brooklyn. 
 
 297 
 
NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN 
 CHRISTIAN VS^ORK. 
 
 PAPER BY REV. R. S. STORRS, D. D., LL. D., 
 BROOKLYN. 
 
 The argument on this subject can be put in small compass. It- 
 requires no expansion, or extended illustration. Indeed, the argu- 
 ment has been already effectively presented ; and all which needs 
 to be done in this paper is to state the conclusion to which the 
 preceding papers and debates must have conducted, with irresistible 
 force, those who have given attention to them. 
 
 The perils which threaten the Christian civilization of our land,, 
 in our times, have been clearly set forth, without exaggeration, and 
 certainly with no superfluous emphasis. There is a positive peril 
 arising from the aggregation of vast multitudes in cities, of all races 
 and tongues, of all possible varieties of faith and unbelief, among 
 whom are many of the more resolute and skillful of the criminal 
 class, among whom even those who desire to lead a quiet and 
 orderly life have often few local attachments, with few confirmed 
 neighborly sympathies, and" where in the excitements and hurry of 
 life it is hard to generate or to maintain a wise and controlling 
 public sentiment. Other perils have also pressed themselves suc- 
 cessively on our view ; from the immense foreign immigration con- 
 tinually pouring into the land, and bringing elements of ignorance, 
 superstition, a degraded and hopeless poverty, a distrust of law as 
 aristocratic and oppressive, with, not unfrequently, a distinctly 
 anarchic socialism, constitutionally hostile to our liberal and Prot- 
 estant institutions, and even to established social order ; from the 
 misuse of wealth ; from illiteracy ; from the power of the saloon 
 in political management, and in the direct control of votes ; from 
 the estrangement of probably increasing multitudes from the 
 church. There is peril to the family, from prevailing disregard of 
 the sanctity and obligation of the marriage relation, from the social 
 
 298 
 
PAPER BY DR. R. S. STORRS. 299 
 
 vice, and from the pernicious facility of divorce ; peril to our intel- 
 ligent Protestant faith, from the aggressive activity of a system of 
 religion hostile to it, determined to substitute for it another gospel 
 which is not another, and represented by a hierarchy compactly 
 organized, richly endowed, and animated by a constant governing 
 devotion to the pontiff at Rome ; peril to society, from the exag- 
 gerated and imperious claims of a considerable portion of those 
 who depend on daily work for their daily wage, and from the tem- 
 per of hostility toward accumulated capital which is perhaps extend- 
 ing among them. 
 
 All these have been impressively set forth ; and no doubt the 
 facts thus presented*and grouped are sufficient to excite, and fully 
 to justify, grave apprehension in the minds of those whose thought- 
 ful attention they have attracted. It may, not improbably, appear 
 to some that they are perils too vehement and imminent to be 
 either arrested or averted ; that contending against them will be 
 like the effort to swim up stream against a fierce current ; that all 
 which can be done is to build here and there a temporary dam 
 and make occasional tranquil spaces, in which the furious press 
 and rush* of evil influences shall be. checked or transiently sus- 
 pended ; that any attempt to make good conquer evil and take 
 the place of it in our rapid and turbulent American society, is 
 almost hopeless from the beginning. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Christian resources in the country 
 for meeting this emergency in our history have been exhibited ; 
 and it is evident that if they are called into full activity, and are 
 wisely and efficiently used, there is no occasion for despair. 
 The church of Christ, in the various sympathetic Protestant com- 
 munions which here have their home, is not a feeble and forceless 
 body, without clearness of brain or vigor of will, and without 
 tenacious grip in its muscle. There is a distributed power in it, 
 moral, spiritual, social, financial, which needs only to be fully 
 evoked, and set at work in appropriate directions, to arrest the evils 
 which threaten to overwhelm us, and to master them by the forces 
 working for good, which are as fresh for us to-day as they were for 
 the earliest Christian disciples, and which can surely conserve the 
 Christian development which they have created. The only ques- 
 tion is, How can these forces be summoned to the effort needing to 
 be made, and be used most effectively for the accomplishment of 
 the end which we all have at heart ? And the answer comes at 
 
300 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 once, with a force as inevitable as that of the law of gravitation, 
 bearing upon it as clear a self-evidence as belongs to the sunshine: 
 It is to be done by bringing the scattered resources and energies 
 which in their dispersion are relatively powerless, are certainly insuf- 
 ficient for the effect, into harmonious co-operation, making them 
 interact on each other, while acting together to maintain the intelli- 
 gence, the virtue, the religion, in which has been always, and must 
 be hereafter as heretofore, the security and power of our civilization. 
 
 There is nothing artificial or fanciful or doubtful about this 
 answer. It is not theoretic, conceived in the study, and elaborated 
 by cautious speculative thought; it is intensely practical, appealing 
 immediately to every man's judgment. It is not an unfamiliar 
 suggestion, for the first time set forward under these special cir- 
 cumstances. It is generically the very answer which men instinct- 
 ively make whenever a work too great for individual effort,- but 
 not too great for combined endeavor demands to be done. Every 
 important manufacturing establishment is planted by the common 
 counsels, with the combining labors and investments, of several or 
 of many persons. So the railway is laid out and built; so the 
 mine is developed ; so the bank, the insurance company, the steam- 
 ship line or the telegraph line, is organized and established; and so 
 men unite for the furtherance of public welfare by any great local 
 institution, the library, the hospital, the seminary or college. Gov- 
 ernments are established or are revolutionized, reforms are initiated, 
 philanthropies are advanced, city missions are prosecuted, on just 
 this basis. Organic union is not required among those thus asso- 
 ciated, in the church, or the club, or in the same political party. 
 Coroperation in effort alone is needed : compacting into a whole, 
 forces which in their separateness are weak; combining the individ- 
 ual wires, the tensile strength of each of which is not great, into 
 the cable which can bear without yielding, enormous loads, with the 
 incessantly repeated strain of severe concussive impacts. This is 
 the law for the safe beginning and the prosperous progress of all 
 large institutions, of all wide, popular movements; and this is the 
 law which fronts us to-day, assembled in this Conference, with the 
 peremptory challenge of an imperative command. 
 
 Such co-operation is needed for giving to all who earnestly desire 
 the best things for our land, a place and a part in the work to be 
 done: putting culture, where it exists, or genius, or wealth, or 
 social influence, where such are found, side by side with energetic 
 
PAPER BY DR. R. S. STORRS. 301 
 
 purpose, a fervent zeal, a power to touch the popular heart ; and 
 making them all bear directly on the enlightening and rectifying 
 efforts which are needed quite as much in our cities and prosperous 
 towns as in remote hamlets, or along the frontiers, where the 
 instincts and even the customs of barbarism constitute a continua. 
 danger and threat. Such co-operation is essentially needed to keep 
 the efforts of those who are willing to work and to give for the 
 public welfare, from being wasted in the foolish enterprises of 
 denominational rivalry, or worse than wasted, in the manifold 
 bitter alienations and prejudices which these are wont to leave 
 behind them. 
 
 It is needed to kSep the spirit of those working together for the 
 one supreme end, alive and alert ; to reinforce it in courage, to 
 animate it with hope, and to inspire and sustain an exhilarating 
 enthusiasm, which shall count no labor too great to be attempted, 
 no obstacle too great to be overcome, no sacrifice, even, too rare 
 or exacting to be joyfully made. The minds of these, separated 
 from others, even when attempting a noble enterprise, are apt to 
 become moody and morbid through their isolation. Minorities, 
 long continuing to be such, commonly become either timid or 
 acrid in their temper. Courage, expectation, a certain dynamic 
 force of faith, hope, and determinate resolution, come with the 
 consciousness that multitudes with us ,are intent on the ends which 
 to us are supreme; that we are essentially affiliated in purpose with 
 a great host of eager, capable, strenuous laborers, determined on 
 success and expecting to achieve it. The seeming paradox is thus 
 realized, in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of its 
 parts; as the army has a might which cannot be computed by 
 adding to each other the individual forces of those assembled and 
 organized in it. 
 
 For its effect, too, on those on whom a just and salutary moral 
 impression needs to be made, such co-operation appears indispen- 
 sable. Individual effort they will scoff at, as palpably, even ludi- 
 crously, ineffective. Dissociated effort of scattered and unallied 
 squads of workers will have but little importance to their minds. 
 But if all who love the truth and the Master, who value righteous- 
 ness, who feel in themselves the impulsions of charity, and who are 
 determined to make our Christian civilization secure and perma- 
 nent, and to perfect its beauty, shall combine — as they may — to 
 dissipate error, to conquer vice, to subdue the forces of misrule, to 
 
302 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 extend the range of a pure religion, and to further that magnificent 
 welfare which educatiGn,virtue and religion subserve, then the energy 
 of their co-operative purpose will infallibly be recpgnized, its power 
 will be felt, and evil influences will widely cower and shrink before it. 
 
 As to the methods of such co-operation it does not belong to 
 me to speak. They will be presented clearly and earnestly, I am 
 sure, with a wisdom corresponding to the earnestness, by those to 
 whom that branch of the subject has been committed. As to the 
 necessity of such co-operation, on which I have said words enough, 
 perhaps, to furnish a text for further discussion, I am sure that I 
 have said no word too much. It, and it only, can by any possibility 
 lay firmly the foundations on which the great structure of an intel- 
 ligent, free, advancing civilization is here to be reared or to be 
 sustained. Without it, we may well despair. With it, we may 
 have the assured hope which nothing enfeebles and nothing daunts, 
 and which bears within it the presage of success. Without it, the 
 Christian forces in the country will still be a multitude, but they 
 will in no sense form a body, harmoniously working, with manifold 
 instruments, for a common end, under the inspiration of one sov- 
 ereign spirit. With it, they will be associated forces, moving con- 
 sentaneously on different but converging lines, and marching to 
 victory as an army with banners. 
 
 I cannot but think that the best instruction which God has tq 
 give to his people to-day, in the nation which he providentially 
 planted, and to which he has given such promise of the future, 
 and such opportunity and power for good, will concern the method 
 of securing among them that cordial sympathy and mutual respect 
 in which past differences shall be forgotten, and out of which shall 
 come a co-operative effort for the accomplishment of spiritual ends, 
 as naturally and surely as such effort comes when great secular 
 works, of commerce or of politics, engage men's minds. For such 
 instruction we must pray; and when its stately though soundless pil- 
 lar of light shall show the way, we must be eager to walk therein ! 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I am sure that all the members of the Conference 
 will join the officers of the Alliance in thanking Dr. Storrs most 
 heartily for his kindness in preparing this paper, although himself 
 prevented from being here. [Applause.] 
 
 I now have the great pleasure of introducing to the Conference 
 the Right Rev. Samuel Harris, Bishop of Michigan, who will address 
 us in regard to co-operation. 
 
NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN 
 CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 ADDRESS BY BISHOP SAMUEL HARRIS, D. D., 
 LL. D., MICHIGAN. 
 
 Mr. President: As I understand it, this Conference is the out- 
 ■tiome of a great popular movement. It represents a deep and 
 wide-spread concern for the safety and perpetuity of our free insti- 
 tutions and our popular government. It is felt that a crisis in our 
 national history has arrived, when it is the duty of Americans to 
 take counsel together concerning tne preservation of American 
 interests. This feeling is shared by millions of our countrymen, 
 who are of one mind in the estimate which they set on our 
 American civilization, and of one heart in their entire devotion to 
 it. And while, sir, we who take part in these deliberations can 
 claim no formal representative character, yet there is a real sense 
 in which we are representatives. For we are here simply in obe- 
 'dience to a great popular impulse. It becomes us, therefore, tq 
 ■speak with simplicity, with courage and with candor — with the 
 simplicity of men who are subdued by a sense of great responsibil- 
 ities, with the courage of men who speak out of deep convictions 
 of duty, and with the candor of men who are stirred by the immi- 
 nence of conflict and the presence of danger. 
 
 For, sir, it is well seen that the peculiar civilization which we 
 are concerned to defend and preserve is gravely threatened. There 
 are vast and hostile forces of evil that are being marshaled and 
 organized against it. While those whose feelings and convictions 
 we share are divided, scattered and dispersed, there are magnifi- 
 cent combinations and organizations of those who contend 
 against and oppose what we hold dear, and there are strongholds 
 of vantage that are being garrisoned and manned in our very 
 'midst. 
 
 It is felt, therefore, that the need of this hour is co-operation 
 
 303 
 
304 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 among all true lovers of our country and of its civilization as we 
 understand it; that it would be madness for those whom we repre- 
 sent to remain divided in this hour of danger. In other words, it 
 is felt that if our American civilization is much longer to endure 
 as we prizg it, then combination must take the place of division, 
 and co-operation must take the place of competition, among the 
 evangelical Christians of this land. [Applause.] 
 
 But, sir, the movement which has brought us together depends 
 upon convictions which are even more definite and cogent. I have 
 said that it is our American civilization which we are concerned to 
 defend and preserve. The term, though large, has, nevertheless, a 
 definite meaning. The civilization which is established here has its 
 own peculiar character, and we believe that it is the outcome of 
 centuries of our Christian development, and that essentially, and 
 in its ideal form, it is the very flower and consummation of that 
 development. Any essential change, therefore, in our civilization 
 we would esteem to be a grievous loss, and any departure from its 
 type would be a degeneration, whether radical or reactionary. We 
 believe that Bishop Berkeley was speaking not only in poetic but 
 in prophetic strain when, from the rocks of New England, he saw 
 and sang the completion here of the divine "plan in the great drama 
 of human history. And the reasons upon which these convictions 
 are founded are, if well taken, of the utmost dignity and force. 
 For we believe that the great Statesman who projected our civiliza- 
 tion was Jesus of Nazareth. We believe that he long ago laid 
 down the principles upon which our civil society was founded. We 
 believe that the revelation by him of God's fatherhood was the 
 declaration of man's brotherhood. We believe that his proclama- 
 tion of a message of peace and pardon, as an amnesty to be per- 
 sonally received and personally appropriated by the individual soul, 
 was the proclamation of man's emancipation from all despotisms, 
 whether socialistic or imperial. We believe that when he inaugu- 
 rated his cross, he decreed the condemnation and overthrow of 
 all tyrannies, whether of superstition or of force, and that he pro- 
 posed, as the goal of human progress, the establishment of liberty 
 under the protection of eternal law. 
 
 Long did these principles have to contend with manifold opposi- 
 tions. World-emperors and world-popes, temporial despotisms and 
 spiritual tyrannies, long thwarted and resisted them. But under 
 the leadership of Christ they won their gradual way. The Reforma- 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP HARRIS. 305 
 
 tion was one of their victories; the revival of learning, the renais- 
 sance of art, the inauguration of the inductive method in science 
 and philosophy, marked their triumphal progress. In the mean- 
 while, Protestant jurists, philosophers and divines, like Grotius and 
 Locke and Hoadley and Warburton, were formulating the principles 
 ■of civil and religious freedom, in accordance with which our -fath- 
 ers built the great republic. 
 
 And so it came to pass that in spite of the aristocratic tendencies 
 and traditions of some of our Revolutionary sires, and in spite of J 
 the theocratic tendencies and purposes of others, our fathers builded 
 wiser than they knew, because the providence of history held up 
 before their eyes the ideal of a state which was present to the mind 
 of Jesus. Therefore our attachment to our American civilization 
 is more than a civic preference or patriotic affection. It is founded 
 on a deep devotion to our divine Master and Lord. We account 
 our American civilization to be both Protestant and evangelical, 
 and therefore to be equally opposed to imperialism and socialism. 
 1[ Applause.] And we are concerned to defend it against all attacks, 
 not simply because it is ours, but because we believe it is our 
 Lord's. 
 
 Now, sir, the consistency of the divine purpose in establishing 
 our evangelical civilization here is signally illustrated in the fact 
 that it was primarily confided to the keeping of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. By reason of its peculiar characteristics and its training in 
 history, that race was singularly fitted for its task: endowed with a 
 certain race conservatism and a certain persistency of race type, it 
 has sturdily maintained itself, even to the present time. Refusing 
 to depart from its own type, it has compelled other peoples to con- 
 form to that type and constrained them to accept its institutions, 
 to speak its language, to obey its laws. Hence, in spite of the 
 enormous immigration that has come to these shores, our civiliza- 
 tion has mainly continued to be an Anglo-Saxon civilization. We 
 have continued mainly to preserve our old Anglo-Saxon ideas of 
 home and school, just as we have been able to keep habeas corpus 
 and trial by jury. And so it has come to pass that, although our 
 nation is composite, it continues to be homogeneous, obeying the 
 fews of Alfred and speaking the language of Shakespeare and 
 Milton. [Applause.] 
 
 Along with these characteristics there have been others that have 
 been preserved: a certain sturdy loyalty to conscience; the fact 
 
306 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 that duty, not glory, is the watchword of heroism; an intense 
 devotion to the sanctity and inviolability of home; a jealous regard 
 for local privileges and personal rights; a spirit that is at once con- 
 servative and progressive, that is able to remember and venerate 
 its own past, while it stretches forward into the future; in philos- 
 ophy, a regard for what is practical; in religion, a devotion to what 
 is ethical and real. These are the characteristics which up to this 
 time have safeguarded our Anglo-Saxon civilization, expressing 
 themselves in the constancy with which up to this time, thank God, 
 our people have defended an open Bible, the Christian Sabbath, 
 liberty of conscience, and the dignity of a sober, decent and reason- 
 able worship. [Applause, and cries of "Hear, hear."] 
 
 But, Mr. President, divine Providence does not guarantee the 
 faithfulness nor ensure the safety of any nation, no matter how 
 honored and favored. Though this civilization be of God, yet it 
 must be kept and defended by man. The path of human history 
 is strewn with the monuments of national dereliction and conse- 
 quent decay. We have but to remember desolate Jerusalem, and 
 ruined Antioch, and wasted Ephesus, and grass-grown Thyatira, 
 to know that golden opportunities and royal privileges may be 
 forfeited by whole peoples as well as by individual men; and 
 that when the faithless nation is derelict, then its type begins to 
 be depraved, its civilization begins to decay, and the light sweeps 
 back upon the sun-dial that marks its progress. It has been so 
 in other ages and beneath other skies, and it will be so even 
 here, unless we front and resist the dangers that threaten us. 
 
 What those dangers are — oh ! I am no alarmist, but I would 
 be honest to-day — what those dangers are, my brethren, has been 
 fitly told us. We should be fools and blind if we did not see 
 them; we should be cowards and traitors if we did not front 
 and fight them. [Applause.] They are not new; they are old — 
 old and grim as the immemorial darkness out of which they come. 
 Our fathers have met them and put them to rout on a hundred 
 battle-fields. [Applause.] But now they are swelling to vaster 
 proportions; and what is more, they are beginning to show a pur- 
 pose to combine, a genius for organization, while our forces are all 
 scattered and divided. Not only are they assaulting our out- 
 works, but they are setting up their banners around our very 
 citadel ; they are beginning to work treason in our own ranks, 
 to seduce our politicians, to betray our leaders ; they are begin- 
 
I " ADDRESS BY BISHOP HARRIS. 307 
 
 ning to debauch the public conscience in order that they may 
 destroy its liberty. 
 
 What, then, is the duty of this hour, but co-operation ? [Applause.] 
 There is need for all Protestant lovers of their country to co-oper- 
 ate in Christian work. The words of the theme of this hour are 
 none too strong. There is a necessity of co-operation. But, Mr. 
 President, it is necessary to bear in mind and constantly to affirm 
 that the kind of co-operation which we are concerned to promote 
 is not political. It should constantly be borne in mind that it will 
 not do, Christian brethren, for us to be suspected of being here to 
 serve or to contest any party claims or any party ends. [Applause, 
 and cries of " Hea'r, hear."] The spheres of state and church are 
 distinct. Jesus long ago decreed it, when he said, " My kingdom 
 is not of this world." We all have our own serious and earnest 
 political convictions, and each one of us is convinced, I trust, that 
 his convictions are right. But, my brethren, we are here to con- 
 sider something far more profound than any political issues: to 
 consider how public opinion may be regenerated, how the public 
 conscience may be requickened, how the national instinct may be 
 revived, and how that ultimate power may be best invoked which 
 shall save the precious liberties of body, mind and soul, for us and 
 for our children. [Applause.] 
 
 Sir, if I dared to content myself with taking a merely superficial 
 view of this question, I might well pause here to emphasize the 
 necessity of co-operation in order to preserve those institutions 
 which are at once the outcome of evangelical civilization and its 
 best defense. Pardon me if I do pause for a moment in order to 
 mention a single one of those institutions, which will best illustrate 
 the force of my argument. Jt has passed into a proverb, that the 
 safety and perpetuity of republican institutions depend upon the 
 virtue and intelligence of the people. Now, sir, there is one Amen- 
 ckn institution, the peculiar outcome of our evangelical civiliza- 
 tion, which is far more essential to good citizenship than is ordi- 
 narily supposed, and that is imperiled this day — far more gravely 
 imperiled than you and I, perhaps, have hitherto thought. I 
 mean the free common schools of our country. [Applause.] 
 
 Sir, I live in a state where that system is elaborated, manned 
 and equipped, and where it is contending daily and hourly and 
 hand to hand with the most tremendous problems of foreign immi- 
 gration. As I go about, I see the work that it is doing. I see 
 
308 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 that it emancipates the children of aliens, and not only fits them for 
 freedom, but it is making them free. I see the shackles of error 
 and superstition fall from their minds. It is the greatest work 
 that is being done for good in this land, my brethren, against 
 ultramontanism to-day. [Applause.] Nevertheless we Protestants, 
 by our divisions, have almost betrayed it. By our divisions we 
 have almost surrendered, as we have already discredited, this 
 precious power. With wily cunning, ultramontanism has 
 taken advantage of the divisions of Protestantism in order to 
 banish the Bible from our public schools. And now, with savage 
 inconsistency, it redoubles its attacks upon them because they are 
 godless. The answer is, " No, no, not godless yet, though you 
 have attempted to make them so; not godless yet, so long as godly 
 men and women are the teachers; not godless yet, so long as our 
 children shall issue from Christian homes in the morning and 
 return to Christian homes at night." [Applause.] But we Prot- 
 estants, by our divisions, have left our common schools almost 
 defenseless, while ultramontanism is making its organized assaults 
 upon them. To our shame be it said that we have neglected, 
 practically disowned, the offspring of our own civilization, handing 
 it over to the tender mercies of selectmen or supervisors, who 
 are often but the tools or the dupes of ultramontanism or infi- 
 delity. [Applause.] 
 
 Ah ! Christian friends, unless we are blind and mad, this must 
 not continue to be so; but the great Protestant communions must 
 co-operate to defend and preserve our common schools, well know- 
 ing that, in spite of all our neglect, it is there that ultramontanism 
 is being confronted and withstood to-day. 
 
 But, sir, I dare not rest my case .in any view which, however 
 conclusive, is merely superficial. It is not simplj* for systems and 
 institutions that we are concerned, but it is also for the truth and 
 life which sustain and support them. It has well been said by 
 our brother, the Secretary of this Alliance, in words which I hope 
 will live (I believe they will), that the great danger that confronts 
 us is sin — sin in the form of worldliness or sensuality or selfish- 
 ness or unbelief; sin, which gladly welcomes skepticism or social- 
 ism or ultramontanism, or any system that proposes to remit per- 
 sonal responsibility; sin, which loves and gladly welcomes anything 
 ' that panders to the indolence and pride of the human heart. It is 
 because human governments cannot deal with sin, but only with 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP HARRIS. 309 
 
 conduct ; it is because schools cannot rehabilitate the decrepit 
 will and regenerate the insurgent or depraved affections, that poli- 
 tics and education alone cannot cure our evils. Sin is the arch 
 enemy of our civilization, and for this the one and only remedy is 
 the gospel of the grace of Jesus the crucified. [Applause.] 
 
 What we need, my Christian brethren — let us not conceal it or 
 gloss it over — what this hour is calling for as with the peal of a 
 trumpet, is religious co-operation — that kind of co-operation which 
 shall best set forward the interests of evangelical Christianity in 
 our land. 
 
 When, fourteen years ago, the great Evangelical Alliance met in 
 the city of New Y6rk, the divisions of Protestantism were apolo- 
 gized for and defended. It is true that even then some brave 
 words were uttered, pointing out the essential and ineradicable evils 
 of such division; as when the brave and good Professor Tayler 
 Lewis said, " Division is never to be treated as a good per se. I 
 can never go with those who regard denominational distinctions as 
 things totally innocent or indifferent, much less desirable. Let 
 union — ecclesiastical union — take place without delay, between 
 those bodies that are divided by the least interval. Let the last 
 parting be the first to come together. Let it be deeply impressed 
 on every mind that the greatness of the sin of schism is in the 
 inverse ratio of the smallness of the dividing interval." [Applause.] 
 
 But, my brethren, the weight of the thinking and of the utter ■ 
 ance at that time were on the other side. The divisions of Protest- 
 ant Christendom were not regarded as evil. Now, however, 
 a new spirit is abroad, and is growing in strength, thank God ! 
 [Applause.] I have not time to discuss the causes of the 
 change, though those causes are most interesting and important. 
 Suffice it to say that a great awakening is taking place, I believe, 
 in this land of ours. Everywhere is being felt, with more and 
 more distinctness, that division is at once the opprobrium and 
 the weakness of Protestant Christianity. [Applause.] Ah! my 
 heart was stirred; I felt that a new era had begun to dawn, that the 
 old night of brotherly strife was almost past, when my dear friend, 
 the Secretary of this Alliance, sent me the invitation to come and 
 speak here on this topic, and when he said, " The new work of the 
 Evangelical Alliance is inspired by the conviction that the time has 
 fully come when co-operation among denominations and local 
 churches must take the place of competition." [Great applause.] 
 
310 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 Yes, friends, the time has fully come when, if this American 
 civilization of ours, which we are set to defend and preserve, is 
 much longer to endure, there must be co-operation. 
 
 Let me give two or three reasons which support this claim. The 
 first I need only barely mention. It has been already alluded to. 
 And that is, the necessity of making the most of our resources, to 
 prevent the wicked waste of energy and power which is sapping the 
 very life of Protestantism. Why, sir, in the great West — nay, all 
 over our land — there are thousands of places where there are 
 resources and room for only one evangelical body, and where the 
 Christians, if we preachers would let them, notwithstanding their 
 differences of taste and opinion, would gladly unite and form one 
 Christian family. [Great applause.] In many such places — Oh! 
 I fear I must say in all of them — such Christians are divided into 
 one, two, three, six, a dozen feeble sects, struggling, not against 
 sin and worldliness, but for bare existence, and working, not against 
 evil, but against one another — a sight to make devils laugh, but 
 angels weep. 
 
 The same evil consequences result from our divisions in our 
 great centers of population. The cry is going up that our great 
 cities are being lost. Why is it, except that the strong and well- 
 furnished men, who have built our cities and who ought to hold 
 them for freedom and for God, are hopelessly divided among 
 themselves, thinking only of their little sectarian interests, while 
 ultramontanism and its secret allies are working together. Breth- 
 ren, this is Chough to show the evils of our divisions — the wild, 
 wicked waste of power, of resource, of energy, of purpose. 
 
 But I pass to another reason, not so often insisted on. There is 
 a necessity of co-operation among Protestants in order adequately 
 to provide for, and consider the tremendous problems of human 
 destitution, incapacity and want. As our country grows older and 
 richer, these categories of human need increase. As the country 
 grows, the proletariat grows, and the ranks of those who call them- 
 selves " the disinherited." Oh ! ill-omened word ! The disinherited 
 are constantly increasing. Under the influence of misleading tra- 
 ditions and false theories brought with them from the Old World, 
 they use their freedom here for the purpose of forming combina- 
 tions which strike at the root of freedom, and organize a fierce 
 socialism which is at once a portentous insurrection and a mon- 
 strous despotism. It is a reaction toward the condition of tribal 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP HARRIS. 311 
 
 savagery, from which it has been the function of the gospel to lift 
 men. Its deepest and most violent antagonisms are not against 
 wealth merely, but are against human liberty, against individual 
 hope, individual aspiration, individual freedom. 
 
 What is the remedy ? You may tell me, " The law." I answer, 
 "TJie gospel." [Applause.] You may tell me, "Force." I 
 answer, "Love." [Applause.] Nevertheless, brethren, because 
 of our divisions Protestant Christianity has lost touch with the 
 disinherited. By our divisions we shall cease to sympathize with 
 men as men. We are losing our power to enter into the lives and 
 hearts of men as men, because we segregate our sympathies into 
 the channels of narrow sectarian work. Ah ! yes, friends, I tell 
 you that the very first duty of Protestants is to come together, in 
 order to regain our sympathy with men as men, and in order to 
 illustrate the truth of that principle which we preach, in order to 
 urge and teach contentment and neighborliness to the poor and rich 
 alike, in order to illustrate man's brotherhood by bringing the rich 
 and poor together in the house of God, and in order to urge and 
 teach effectually the old truth that a man's life consisteth not in 
 the things that he hath. It is just here that Protestantism, divided 
 as it is, has lost its influence over the masses, because our divi- 
 sions have impoverished our love for man as man, and because our 
 very charities are made narrow, exclusive, sectarian, ineffectual. 
 It is just here that ultramontanism makes its great appeal, by its 
 magnificent organized charities. I know, sir, full well, how 
 faulty Rome's pretentious institutionalism is. I know that often it 
 fails to minister to the want that it creates, that it often encourages 
 a thriftlessness which it leaves us Protestants to feed and clothe. 
 I know perfectly well that as a charitable system it is for the most 
 part a stupendous failure, while as a financial system it is a brill- 
 iant success — building its churches and its schools and sending 
 jubilee gifts to a foreign pontiff. But, at all events, ultramontanism 
 does pretend to care for the poor, and it has a magnificent system 
 for showing its care, while divided Protestantism cannot even 
 undertake to do this, and therefore it fails to exercise its noblest 
 functions, to do what it could do, if it would co-operate, better 
 than ultramontanism or any other system in the world — that is, 
 show forth the truth of its own great principle that all men are free 
 and equal before God. [Applause.] 
 
 But, sir, I rise to reasons of even higher dignity and force. 
 
312 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 Co-operation is necessary in order to preserve the integrity of faith 
 and perpetuate its power. The power of true Christianity depends 
 largely on the maintenance of the proportion of faith, on the 
 assignment of its regal truths to the sovereign positions which 
 they are entitled to occupy, and in the keeping of all secondary- 
 truths and mere opinions in strict subordination. But, Christian 
 brethren, it is the tendency of division to break up that classifica- 
 tion, to degrade those regal truths by lifting secondary truths and 
 njere opinions to an equality with them — [At this point the warn- 
 ing bell was struck, indicating that the speaker had but three 
 minutes in which to conclude. Cries of " Go on, go on."]-— nay, to- 
 lift up those things above those regal truths; because you and I 
 know that it is regarding secondary truths and mere matters of 
 opinion that we Protestants have divided. [Cries of " Hear, hear."} 
 Ah, do we not therefore seem to justify the reproach that, after 
 all, it is not for truth, but for mere opinion or taste, that we are 
 contending with one another ? [Applause.] The only remedy for 
 this is for us to co-operate in the defense of the eternal truth.. 
 That is the only answer and the only remedy. 
 
 So also in regard to the historic relation of such truths. Evan- 
 gelical Christianity has a noble past. It is entitled to claim its. 
 inheritance of all the ages. There is no single feature of apostolic 
 order that we evangelical Christians may not co-operate and claim 
 for all of us if we will, without sacrificing a single verity, and so 
 reclaim the dignity and the grandeur of that historic order which 
 good men once felt it necessary to surrender for a time, but which 
 our loving God, in his good providence, has preserved for us all, 
 and which are now freely offered to all the heirs of our common 
 lineage. It is not my part to enlarge upon this; but, brethren, I 
 will not stand here and fail to make briefest allusion to it. Co-oper- 
 ation — oh ! real co-operation — is all that is necessary to bring us. 
 together, and to make us the sharers of the historic faith, the 
 defenders of the historic order. [Applause. Here the bell struck, 
 indicating that Bishop Harris's time had expired.] 
 
 I have left myself no time to allude to the greatest reason of 
 all [Cries of " Go on, go on. "], but happily you are all conver- 
 sant with it. 
 
 President McCosh : I move that we give him ten minutes 
 more. [Applause.] 
 
 Bishop Harris continued: I want only three minutes. Co-oper- 
 
ADDRESS BY BISHOP HARRIS. 313 
 
 ation is necessary in order to fulfill the mind of Christ and to con- 
 vert the world. The honor of Jesus and the world's conversion 
 are bound up in the theme of this hour. He whose we are and 
 whom we serve has solemnly declared it to be so. He has de- 
 clared that the conversion of the world and his own honor depend 
 upon the oneness of those who believe in him. [Applause.] 
 
 In the upper chamber at old Jerusalem, on the night of his 
 Passion and after his great Supper, he prayed, in the midst of 
 his disciples, his memorable intercessory prayer. He said: "I 
 pray for them. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is 
 truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall 
 believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as 
 thou. Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one 
 in us." 
 
 My Christian brethren, we dare not claim for ourselves or for 
 our constituencies that we have hitherto been one in the meaning 
 and the spirit of that prayer. We know that we have been miserably 
 and selfishly divided, and therefore the work of evangelical 
 Christianity languishes; the liberty of mind and soul and spirit, 
 which Jesus gave to our fathers for our inheritance, is endangered. 
 The poor are wandering about our land as disinherited indeed, 
 unblessed, uncared for and unfed. The cry of desolate cities is 
 going up to God. The church — oh! she mourns for these. her 
 wandering children, for even the disinherited are yet the children 
 of our common Father. And so the light of our evangelical 
 Christianity and civilization is beginning to grow dim. 
 
 The remedy is simple. I do not say it is easy, or easily applied, 
 but I do say that there can be no manner of doubt as to what that 
 remedy is. Brethren, it is co-operation, unity — such unity as 
 shall abolish our divisions and extirpate our competitions and 
 settle our jealousies and strifes. It is for nothing less than such 
 co-operation that I have dared to plead this day in the presence of 
 my Master and before you, my brethren, as I have stood here to 
 speak of the necessity of co-operation. [Applause.] 
 
 Mr. Dodge: As I was coming yesterday to one of these services 
 in a crowded car, everybody excepting one old lady got out at 
 the corner and came to the church. She turned inquiringly to the 
 conductor and asked, " Why, where are all those people going ? " 
 He replied, " There is an Angelical Alliance meeting up here." 
 [Laughter and applause.] 
 
314 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 Was there not a shadow of truth in that remark ? Have we not 
 felt the spirit prayed for and spoken of by our dear brother who 
 has just sat down ? Is it not possible that the angels are hovering 
 here, and wondering whether we, Christ's children, are willing to 
 rise to our opportunities, and whether, in the grand work to be done 
 for him, we are ready to co-operate ? 
 
 I have now great pleasure in introducing to the Conference one 
 who has done much to teach us all in regard to this great subject, 
 and who, I know, will be listened to with delight — Rev. Dr. Wash- 
 ington Gladden, of Columbus, Ohio. 
 
NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN 
 CHRISTIAN ^A^ORK. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D. D., 
 LL. D., OF COLUMBUS, O. 
 
 • It seems to be universally acknowledged that the existing divi- 
 sions in the Christian church are needless, wasteful and pernicious. 
 Diversity of operation there might be, and must be; for, in grace 
 as in nature the divine power works with manifold wisdom, produc- 
 ing a rich and beautiful variety of characters, activities, organiza- 
 tions. Uniformity of belief, of polity, of ritual, is neither attainable 
 nor desirable. But diversity is one thing, and division is another. 
 Oak and elm and pine and palm stand each in his own order, with 
 a glory of his own, but among them is no schism ; lily and lark- 
 spur, sumac and syringa, all have their own ways of proclaiming 
 the beauty of the Lord, but they do not trample one another under 
 foot, nor dispute with one another the claim to the sunniest places 
 in his garden. Unlike these diversities in nature, the divisions in 
 the church of Christ manifest, not variety merely, but also variance. 
 It is not only the manifold wisdom of God that they display, but 
 the multiform perversity of men. 
 
 The life of the Spirit might reveal itself in many forms of faith, 
 in numberless methods of work; but it cannot be the life of the 
 Spirit that finds expression in the tempers and the practices that are 
 constantly displayed in the relations of these sects one to another. 
 That the new commandment should govern congregations as 
 well as individuals, that there should be mutual friendship and 
 helpfulness among neighboring churches, seems to be evident 
 enough on the face of it; but the churches are imperfectly Chris- 
 tianized; under the draperies of courtesy the weapons of a bitter 
 and unscrupulous rivalry are often concealed. 
 
 That such divisions are scandalous, seems, I say, to be generally 
 admitted ; the matter is one that appears to be lying, of late, rather 
 
 315 
 
316 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 heavily on the conscience of Christendom; and there is a great 
 deal of talk about it, as to how it came to be, and who is to blame 
 for it, and what can be done to make an end of it. For the cure 
 of this malady, some of the ecclesiastical physicians prescribe 
 organic unity. But it is evident to-day that such a formal consoli- 
 dation of the churches under one government is yet a long way 
 off. What changes the years may bring we cannot predict, but 
 the conditions are not yet ripe for any attempt in this direction. 
 
 Another suggestion looks toward liturgical uniformity. It is 
 urged that, if the people could be induced to sing the same hymns 
 and pray the same prayers, a foundation would be laid for closer 
 fellowship. But I apprehend that this proposition would meet with 
 no more favor than the other. Some changes in the simple ritual 
 of our non-Episcopal churches are already in progress — changes 
 in the direction of congregational worship; but this movement has 
 gone about as far as it will go; and the prejudice — if you please to 
 call it by that name — against any fixed forms of worship is still 
 inveterate in all these churches. If we must wait for Christian 
 union till it comes as a result of liturgical uniformity, we shall 
 have long to wait. 
 
 Another prescription for the malady of schism is an increase of 
 sentimental unity — more frequent union meetings, in which we can 
 tell one another how much we love one another, and thus manifest 
 to the world the fact that we are really one. It is all very well, 
 doubtless, for us to tell one another publicly that we love one 
 another, if it is true; and we cannot too diligently manifest the 
 fact that we are one, if it is a fact; but it is not edifying to tell one 
 another untruths; and if there are suspicions of sham in our exhibit 
 of fraternity, the world will not fail to make the most of them. In 
 sad truth, however, we have said so much about Christian union 
 and have done so little, that talk on this theme is discredited;, 
 there has been a tremendous over-issue of these verbal endear- 
 ments, with the natural consequence of a great depreciation. The 
 inflation of our religious phraseology is one of our common dis- 
 orders; the product is what we call cant; and there is no part of 
 our familiar religious speech that is more grievously inflated than 
 that which relates to Christian union. We shall not mend matters, 
 therefore, by increasing the wordy circulation, though that is the 
 remedy generally resorted to in times of inflation. Profession 
 would better halt until practice comes in sight. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 317 
 
 Sentimental unity is nugatory; liturgical uniformity and con- 
 solidated government are impracticable. Is there any other remedy 
 for this curse of schism within the reach of the churches ? It 
 seems to me that there is such a remedy; and that it is best 
 described by the word which furnishes our theme for the morning — 
 co-operation. Surely the possibility of co-operation and the duty 
 of co-operation are beyond controversy. We may not all believe 
 the same things ; but we can agree that those who are seeking the 
 kingdom of God and its righteousness should not hinder or obstruct 
 one another; that they should seek to combine their efforts for the 
 establishment of this kingdom. 
 
 To some extent these divided churches do already co-operate. 
 Members go from one church to another, and are received into full 
 fellowship; ministers pass from the service of one denomination to 
 that of another, in some cases, with scarcely a word of comment; 
 in most cases, with no serious loss of reputation among those from 
 whom they are separated. This is practical co-operation. Such a 
 free exchange of workers is helpful to the work. In the kingdom 
 -of heaveny as well as in the kingdom of industry, the mobility of 
 labor is a matter of importance. 
 
 United efforts are sometimes made for the prosecution of evan- 
 gelistic work. Sometimes these efforts appear to be successful ; in 
 the view of many they are highly desirable. Under wise manage- 
 ment we might gather into the churches those who were before 
 beyond their reach. But I am not inclined to value these efforts 
 so highly, as some good men do, because I believe that the church 
 is the strategic center of evangelistic effort; and that a movement 
 which calls the people away from the churches, and undertakes, by 
 means of services somewhat spectacular and sensational in rinks 
 and theaters, to develop a sporadic and exceptional religious inter- 
 est, is attended with so many drawbacks, and with so much 
 demoralization in the life and work of the churches, that its net 
 gains are small. The number of conversions in these meetings is 
 always enormously exaggerated; and those who do profess conver- 
 sion under such circumstances are with great difficulty brought 
 into the churches. The attempt to evangelize a city by great union 
 meetings of this description is a little like the attempt to warm a 
 city by a big bonfire in the public square. It is much better to 
 warm the houses; and the houses can only be warmed by carrying 
 the fire into them. Wholesale evangelization is not, according to 
 
318 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 my observation, profitable business; the hand-to-hand work of the 
 churches is far more productive in the long run. We have no 
 arithmetic with which to compute or compare the intrinsic value 
 of souls; but if by a soul you mean a man — and that is probably 
 the most intelligible definition of the word — then it is safe to say 
 that a man converted in a church is worth to the kingdom of heaven 
 here on the earth, more than a man converted in a rink. More- 
 over, the abandonment of the regular work of the churches for a 
 considerable period, and the resort to these outside assemblies, 
 seems to be an admission of the truth of the gravest charge against 
 the churches — that they are inadequate to the work of evangeliza- 
 tion. I do not like to make this admission. What is still more 
 important, the kind of doctrine, and especially of Biblical interpre- 
 tation, to which we are treated in these evangelistic services, under 
 such leadership as is generally secured, is rather hard to endure. 
 It often becomes a serious question with a conscientious pastor,, 
 how far he can countenance teachings which, although for the 
 moment they may seem to be effective in exciting the emotions of 
 ignorant people, are certain in the end to prove destructive to the 
 Christian faith. For all these reasons, I do not expect to see these 
 methods of wholesale evangelization growing in favor among the 
 churches. I speak my own thought, and fully recognize the fact that 
 many good men do not accept my estimate; but it is not, I think, 
 in this direction that we shall wisely look for increasing co-opera- 
 tion in Christian work. 
 
 The thing to be aimed at is much less ambitious and demon- 
 strative. It involves not the merging of the churches in some 
 grand outside combination, but the strengthening of the churches, 
 each in its owr field, for its own proper work. And to this end 
 it is of the first importance that each church should have a field of 
 its own, in which it shall not be intruded upon, and a definite work 
 to do, for which it shall be held responsible. The co-operation, 
 which is necessary and imperative, is that which shall prevent 
 destructive competition, and which shall secure the prompt and 
 certain occupation of all neglected fields. The phenomenon which 
 now everywhere confronts us, is the overcrowding of most of the 
 prosperous and promising neighborhoods, and the abandonment 
 of those which are inhabited by the poor. In every booming town, 
 and in the favorite residence portion of every city, you find twice 
 as many churches as are needed; in many a rural district, and in 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 319 
 
 all the more densely populated quarters of our great cities, there 
 are not half as many churches as are needed. In that section of 
 New York City which is bounded by Central Park on the north, 
 Twenty-third Street on the south, Third Avenue on the east, and 
 Sixth Avenue on the west, there are a great many more churches 
 than the population requires. In all that part of the city below 
 Fourteenth Street, largely inhabited by' working people, the 
 churches are few in proportion to the population. This is a typic- 
 al instance. Something like it can be seen in most of our cities. 
 In western towns with great expectations, the churches are mul- 
 tiplied in a preposterous way. Often you will find ten religious 
 societies in a town of fifteen hundred people. The existence of 
 these churches illustrates the lack of that co-operation for which 
 I am pleading. It is competition, not co-operation, that has planted 
 them. The immediate result of genuine Christian co-operation in 
 one of these towns would be the extermination of half its churches. 
 
 The Christian co-operation which the times demand, will follow 
 the hearty recognition of one simple principle — that of the equal- 
 ity of all Christian churches. Without the recognition of this 
 principle no valuable co-operation will ever be secured; the cor- 
 dial acceptance of it would open a clear path for all Christians to 
 be workers together with God. 
 
 A prominent clergyman of one of the Protestant denominations 
 said in the meeting of the Church Congress, at Hartford: "The 
 denomination which I represent on this platform generously rec- 
 ognizes the parity of every other Christian church." " Generously " 
 is not a felicitous word in this connection. There is no generosity 
 in recognizing other people's rights. Omitting the adverb, the 
 declaration fairly states what ought to be. I wish it were true of 
 the denomination of which it was affirmed — or of any other denom- 
 ination ! Where is the sect that honestly recognizes the parity of 
 every other Christian church — even of those with which it pro- 
 fesses to be in fellowship ? In union meetings, as I have said, 
 the fact is profusely recognized; in church work it is generally 
 ignored. The zealous sectarian propagandist is not often restrained 
 from pushing his enterprises, by the presence of another Christian 
 church in the field which he wishes to occupy. Some members of 
 his denomination are m that neighborhood, and he proposes, as he 
 says, " to take care of them." This means that the faith and the 
 morals of these fellow-sectaries of his would suffer if they were 
 
:320 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 permitted to become communicants in another Christian church. 
 If the church now occupying the field were of his own denomina- 
 tion, he would say, unhesitatingly, that there was no room for 
 another church. The reason why he pushes his new enterprise on is 
 simply this: he believes in his heart that his church is the only 
 triie church; and that the other, though bearing the name of a 
 ■church, and good enough to say sweet things about in ani m meet- 
 ings, is really of a type so defective and degraded that all members 
 of the true church should be diligently kept from all association 
 with it. it is ridiculous and disgusting for those who believe in 
 this way to say that they believe in the parity of Christian churches. 
 But such things are occurring over all the land every day, and 
 nothing can be plainer than that they are due to a shameless repu- 
 diation of this principle. To enforce this principle, therefore, to 
 show its implications, and to get it recognized everywhere, is the 
 first condition of successful co-operation. Not much harmony of 
 action can be secured among churches that do not honestly respect 
 ■one another's rights. And the right to life is certainly as sacred 
 as any other. 
 
 We must endeavor to convince our zealous propagandists that 
 the Golden Rule applies to churches as well as to individuals. You 
 strenuous Congregationalists, who are burning to plant a new church 
 of your own in the midst, betwixt a Presbyterian church on the one 
 hand and a Methodist church on the other, consider how you would 
 be affected if one of those churches were your church, and if a 
 greedy Presbyterian or Methodist came forcing his church into 
 your field, already fully occupied. 
 
 Having won for the principle of the parity of the churches some 
 measure of genuine respect, we shall clearly see the necessity of the 
 next and most important step, which \^ frequent and regular friendly 
 consultations of the churches of the vicinage, through representatives se- 
 lected by them, about the work in their common field. We have ministers' 
 meetings now, in many of our cities, but these will not at all answer 
 the purpose. It is the churches and not merely the clergy that 
 must confer and co-operate; and the counsel and help of the lay- 
 men are indispensable to any effective" work. The question would 
 arise as to what churches should be included in this consultation. 
 That matter should be determined by each group of churches for 
 itself. Every church accepting the creed of the Evangelical Alli- 
 ance might be invited. For myself I should prefer, for this purpose 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 321 
 
 of conference, to make the Apostles' Creed the basis of union. It 
 would not, I think, be impossible to agree upon some satisfactory 
 platform. In the large cities it would be difficult to bring all the 
 churches together; but, as Dr. Strong has suggested, two or more 
 wards of a city might form a group, with a defined district and a 
 manageable territory. The whole city could in this manner be ' 
 subdivided. 
 
 The representatives of the churches thus assembled must bind 
 themselves strictly to conference upon the work to be done in their 
 proper field. They can have nothing to do with doctrines or politics 
 or liturgies or laws. Their sole business is to find out what are the 
 needs of the community in which they stand, and how those needs 
 may best be supplied. They are simply the outlook committee of 
 the kingdom of heaven in that field. First they must inform them- 
 selves respecting the condition of every neighborhood in their 
 diocese; and this information will be full of food for thought, and 
 of stimulus to action. 
 
 Why should not the representatives of the churches in every 
 community assemble thus, statedly, to confer together respecting 
 the work to be done by them in Christianizing that community ? 
 What right have they to neglect this consultation, and to go on 
 year by year in their careless, hap-hazard, competitive propagan- 
 dism — with no method in their campaigning but the method of Kil- 
 kenny Fair? How can any work so vast and intricate and delicate 
 as this, be effectively done, without good understanding among 
 the workers? In many things they cannot agree. That goes 
 without saying. Questions will be started that must be dropped 
 summarily and finally because it is impossible to reach unanimity 
 concerning them. But the point is to find out what the subjects 
 are upon which they do agree; the interests in which they can 
 unite. Their differences may be taken for gfanted at the outset. 
 The object of their coming together is not to discuss these, but to 
 see how many kinds of Christian work they can cordially unite in 
 doing. 
 
 There is reason to hope that such a conference of the churches 
 of any city or neighborhood would interpose a powerful check to 
 that over-production of church organizations in the favorite locali- 
 ties of cities and in the growing towns, which has become such a 
 scandal to our common Christianity. That would be one of its 
 first results. I cannot think it possible that we should see what 
 
322 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 we now see on the Back Bay in Boston, or on Murray Hill in New- 
 York, or in many of our western towns, if the Christians of these 
 communities had been in frequent friendly consultation about their 
 common work. A wholesome public opinion would have been 
 generated in these conferences which would have restrained the 
 ' sections. In the republic of God, as in every other republic, the 
 ultimate power is a sanctified public opinion; and there is need of 
 some means of developing and directing this public opinion, so that 
 its impulse and its restraint shall be effective. That service would 
 be rendered by such a conference as I am advocating. This body 
 would not need to possess power over the churches; indeed its best 
 results would be secured if it wholly refused to exercise any, even 
 the faintest semblance of ecclesiastical functions, and devoted 
 itself mainly to investigating, discussing, and reporting to the 
 public the facts respecting the condition and the needs of the field 
 committed to its care. 
 
 Of course it would be speedily ascertained that large sections of 
 the larger cities are greatly neglected; and, without usurping 
 authority over the churches, this conference might aid in dividing 
 up this neglected territory among them, so that every portion of it 
 should be under the care of some particular church. As to the 
 methods by which this work may be done, Dr. Strong will speak 
 more fully; I only indicate it as one of the things to be aimed at 
 in the co-operation of the churches. To' secure the thorough 
 shepherding of all the neglected multitudes, to make sure that every 
 square of every ward in every city is assigned to some church, or some 
 Sunday-school, or some religious organization which is distinctly 
 responsible for the care of it, and is called on at stated intervals to 
 make report of what it has done and is doing, or of what it has 
 failed to do — this is a great step in the direction of Christian 
 union. If the churches can unite sufficiently to accomplish this, 
 they will have gone far toward a solution of the problem we are 
 considering. 
 
 Is there any reason why the churches of any community, acting 
 as one body or divided into convenient groups by geographical 
 boundaries, should not undertake such a systematic division of the 
 whole field among themselves ? Is not such an assignment of the 
 destitute portions of the city to the several churches or religious 
 organizations a perfectly feasible undertaking? No church in 
 New York would start out alone upon the work of evangelizing the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 323 
 
 whole of the ten down-town wards. The enterprise is so vast that no 
 one is willing to attempt it alone. But many a church would gladly 
 undertake the care of a district a quarter of a mile square — a six- 
 teenth of a square mile — in the hope of doing something to enlighten 
 its darkness. It is indeed probable that some of the churches 
 would fail to take up the work thus assigned to them; but many of 
 them would faithfully perform it; and the reports of successful 
 workers would spur the negligent to their tasks. 
 
 What serious obstacle, I ask, is in the way of such a parceling 
 out of the neglected districts of the cities among the churches ? 
 These churches could not agree upon one form of government or 
 one statement of doctrine, much less could they unite in one ritual 
 of worship or one method of work; but they could certainly, agree 
 to divide up the destitute territory — the missionary ground — of the 
 cities among them, and thus provide for the care of the whole of it. 
 And what right, I ask again, have these churches to neglect to 
 make such a division of this work among themselves ? How can 
 they justify or excuse themselves for leaving vast tracts of these 
 great cities almost wholly destitute of religious influences ? They 
 are verily guilty in that they have suffered these heathenish condi- 
 tions to exist in these cities. And it is evident that the evangeli- 
 zation of these districts will require the united efforts of all who 
 profess and call themselves Christians. It cannot be done by 
 desultory, happy-go-lucky methods. There must be some unity of 
 purpose, or no progress will be made. And while the obstacles in 
 the way of any formal union of the churches are, as we have seen, 
 insuperable, and while even those combinations for evangelistic 
 purposes sometimes may seem of doubtful utility, this measure of 
 co-operation, which proposes only that the churches of every com- 
 munity come together statedly for consultation respecting the 
 work to be done in their respective fields, that they inform them- 
 selves and the public fully concerning this work, and that they 
 divide up the missionary ground among them, so as to put the 
 responsibility for the care of every part of it upon some one organ- 
 ization — this, it seems to me, is entirely simple and practicable; 
 I can see no reason why it should not be set in operation at once 
 in every city and town in this country. 
 
 If these stated conferences were established, other results might 
 follow. It would be possible to come to an understanding about 
 the summer work, so that the common scandal of the desertion 
 
324 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 of the cities by the pastors in the months of July and August 
 should be quieted. It is true that many of the well-to-do people 
 of the cities are absent during these months; that the con- 
 gregations -at that season are apt to be thin, and that there- 
 fore it is the best time for the pastor to take his annual rest; 
 but it is also true that the poor are always with us in the cities 
 all summer long ; that there is more sickness and mortality, 
 especially among children, then than in any other part of ihe 
 year, and that the need of pastoral care and sympathy is 
 no less then than during other seasons. Some arrangement 
 ought therefore to be made among the pastors, whereby a suf- 
 ficient force should be in active service through the vacation 
 season ; and the people of each congregation should know to 
 whom they might go for counsel and comfort in affliction. An 
 arrangement of this nature could easily be made if the churches 
 were statedly meeting for consultation about their work. 
 
 Doubtless such a conference of the churches would be tempted 
 to undertake many things, but its wisdom would be demonstrated 
 in attempting few things, and only those things in which there 
 was entire agreement. The devices of power by which wills are 
 arrayed against wills, and minorities are coerced by majorities, 
 could never be employed in this assemblage; its usefulness 
 would depend on the unanimity of its operations. 
 
 I was asked to speak on the necessity of co-operation in Chris- 
 tian work, but I could not enforce the necessity of co-operation 
 without showing what I mean by co-operation; and the presenta- 
 tion of this simple plan has involved, at every step, an exhibi- 
 tion of the reasons which prove its necessity. 
 
 It is necessary for the churches of Christ in every community 
 to confer together with respect to the work committed to them, 
 because it is their common work, and no church has a right to 
 make all its plans and carry on its enterprises without consulta- 
 tion with its partners and associates in the work. 
 
 It is necessary to consult, after this manner, in order to avoid 
 collision and confusion. 
 
 It is necessary in order to secure the complete occupation of 
 the field, and the reclamation of the neglected portions. 
 
 It is necessary because it is necessary for Christians to act 
 like reasonable beings, and this lack of counsel and concert is a 
 symptom of insanity. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 325 
 
 There are, however, one or two special considerations which 
 emphasize this necessity, to only one of which I will refer in 
 closing. 
 
 The need of keeping the working classes within the reach and 
 the healing and comforting touch of the church is beginning to be 
 urgent. There is no radical cure for our social disorders, and our 
 industrial conflicts, but Christianity— the Christian gospel, the 
 Christian law, the Christian life that incarnates both law and 
 gospel. The masters need it as much as the men; both classes 
 must take Christ's yoke and learn of him. 
 
 We are still able to reach the masters, but the men have been 
 slipping away from us. This has been disputed; but the afifirma- 
 tions of the fact on this platform have been so strong that I need 
 not spend any time in enforcing it. The fact that great numbers 
 of these people are somewhat disaffected toward the churches is 
 not to be denied, and this disaffection extends to the existing 
 industrial regime, and even to the government of the country. 
 Many of the working people think that the machinery of church 
 and state is in the hands of the rich; that the working classes are 
 being exploited for the benefit of those above them. Most of this 
 discontent exists in a mild form as yet; but here and there the 
 poison in the blood breaks out in an abscess, which you call 
 anarchy. The anarchistic temper is only an exacerbation of a 
 state of mind which in large classes may be said to be epidemic. 
 Few of our people are tainted with theoretical anarchy, but it is 
 the measure of discontent prevalent among them that makes 
 anarchy possible. 
 
 Now, doubtless, the heroic treatment of overt anarchy is the 
 right treatment. The law can-do no other than throttle the man who 
 conspires to throttle the law. But the conditions out of which 
 anarchy springs will never be cured by the hangman; and your 
 hangings, as you will find, are terribly dangerous operations, unless 
 there goes along with them a vigilant, resolute, thorough-going, 
 self-denying effort to get at the bottom of this social discontent, 
 and cure it. The complaints of the workingmen are often unrea- 
 sonable; even so, they must be quieted with reason and love, not 
 with sneers or objurgations. They are not wholly unreasonable. 
 The workingman, as Mr. Depew has said, has a grievance, and it 
 behooves all men of good-will to try to understand it, and to help 
 him remove it. This is the burden that is laid on the Christian 
 
326 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 church to-day. If there is any more pressing duty, I do not know 
 where to look for it. The church of Christ must put itself into 
 sympathetic and helpful relations with the toiling classes. With 
 the wealth it has accumulated, the culture it has gathered, the 
 social prestige it has won, it must go out after these people, and 
 make common cause with them, bearing their burdens with them, 
 and so fulfilling the law of Christ. 
 
 The work that it is called to do for them must also be very 
 largely institutional work — permanent work, no mere evangelistic 
 raids through their territory. Into the neighborhoods where the 
 working people live, the churches of Christ must go and stay. Of 
 the sin of abandonmg these neighborhoods they must first repent; 
 then they must go back and do works meet for repentance. From 
 every rich church in every great city, a colony of its elect disciples 
 — wealthy, cultivated, earnest men, with their families — ought to 
 go forth and plant itself in one of the neglected districts, building 
 there, not a mission but a church, a Christian church, where the 
 rich and the poor should worship together, owning the Lord, who 
 is the maker of them all. This church should be the spiritual home 
 of the people who establish it; they should have no other church 
 relationship; their Sundays and many of their evenings should be 
 spent in its service; it should be not only a preaching-place on 
 Sundays, but the shelter of industrial schools for boys and girls 
 on week days, and the meeting-place of clubs for workingmen, and 
 guilds for workingwomen ; it should become the center of all gra- 
 cious and beautiful ministries for all that region. Through this 
 dear and sacred fellowship these people of wealth and intel- 
 ligence could put themselves in closest relation with the life 
 about them ; they could win the confidence of the toiling classes, 
 and help them in bearing their burdens and solving their 
 problems. 
 
 But this is work that cannot be done by hired men, neither by 
 city missionaries, nor by theological students, nor by any other 
 serviceable stipendiaries. It calls not merely nor mainly for your 
 money, it calls for you. An incarnate Christianity is the only kind 
 of Christianity that will convert these multitudes. What they want 
 most is not chapels nor instructors, but friends. It is the helpful 
 hand, and the appealing eye, and the cheery voice, and the gracious 
 presence in their assemblies and in their homes, that will win their 
 trust; these, and these alone, will convince them that the Christ of 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 327 
 
 Bethlehem and Nazareth was not a myth, but a Son of God and 
 Saviour of men. 
 
 To do this work, as every man can see, there must needs be con- 
 sultation and co-operation; the neglected districts must be subdi- 
 vided, and each church must have a field of its own into which it 
 can send its own colony of consecrated laborers, for which it shall 
 be held responsible, and in which it shall be protected, by an organ- 
 ized and vigorous public opinion, from sectarian invasion and com- 
 petition. If this Conference shall secure in all the cities of the 
 land this measure of co-operation, its labor will not be in vain. 
 
 Chairman : I' now have the great pleasure of introducing to the 
 Conference the Rev. George E. Post, of Syria, who has done grand 
 service in connection with the American Mission there, and who 
 has a word of help, instruction and warning to us, in reference to 
 the divisions of Christian work in that section of the world. 
 
NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN 
 CHRISTIAN "WORK. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. GEORGE E. POST, M. D., 
 OF BEIROUT. 
 
 The past of the Christian church has been an age of creeds; 
 the present is an age of deeds. In the past we have been discover- 
 ing what we were to believe concerning God. In the future, we 
 are to find what duty God requires of man. The past has been 
 an age of strife; the future is to be an age of Christian life. 
 
 Two years ago I was standing on the top of a naked rock on 
 the .western shores of Asia. In front of me lay the remnant of an 
 ancient port. To the left was a valley, with a few ruins of the far- 
 distant past. On a hillside to the west was a vaulted chamber, 
 said to have been the prison of the Apostle Paul. On the crest of 
 a range of rocks overlooking this hill on which I stood, was a 
 battlemented wall, and in the distance a stream crossing to and 
 fro and emptying into another stream, and on the right a mass of 
 broken stones, where once was the great Temple of Diana of the 
 Ephesians — the Seventh Wonder of the world. 
 
 This feverish plain, these naked rocks, these few scattered 
 stones, were all that remained of this Seventh Wonder of the 
 world and the first of the seven churches of the Apocalypse. I 
 then went through that country, and I found that everywhere the 
 ancient Christian churches were represented by stone-heaps, 
 mounds covered with grass, ancient tombs. I went on to Antioch, 
 where Christians were first called by that holy name. I went on 
 to Bethlehem, where Christ was born; to Nazareth, where he lived; 
 to Jerusalem, where he suffered and died; and to the Mount of 
 Olives, from which he ascended into heaven. I found all these 
 countries, where the fathers of the 'Christian faith lived, where the 
 Scriptures were given and from which the Word of Life spread out 
 
 328 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. G. E. POST. 32& 
 
 to all the world, under the heel of an enemy and an alien — a false 
 prophet. I found the Christians scattered, divided, powerless. 
 
 Can you believe, brethren, that such is the state of those lands 
 that were once the home and the origin of Christianity ? And can 
 you believe that this may be the state of the lands that are now 
 the domain of Christendom ? For 1300 years these countries have 
 been under the power of Islam, and they will remain under the 
 power of Islam until Christians join together and fight, shoulder to 
 shoulder, in the cause of Christ. 
 
 When Christians first received the word of Christ, they com- 
 menced to divide. There were Paulists, there were ApoUosites, 
 there were Cephasites, and there were Christians; there were 
 Manichaeans and Sabellians and Nestorians and Armenians and 
 Copts and Maronites and Greeks and Jacobites. What a cata- 
 logue for us ! And yet our catalogue is longer still. [Laughter.] 
 
 Those people fought in the theaters and they fought in the 
 churches, and they assembled, as Gregory said, "like cranes and 
 geese," in their councils, and anathematized each other. They 
 separated from each other; and then came the storm and the 
 flood; then came blood and fire and ruin, and the church of Christ 
 went down in the dust. 
 
 What has been in the past may be in the future. The Christian 
 church, after this, narrowed within its borders in the barbarian 
 kingdoms of Europe, bereft of Northern Africa, bereft of Western 
 Asia, bereft of Eastern Europe — of all its classical cities and all 
 its centers of power — passed a thousand years in penitence and 
 sorrow and obscurity before it arose again to enter upon the con- 
 quest of the world ; and then the spirit of God came and reformed 
 the church in Europe, and we set out once more for the world's 
 conquest. What did we then do ? We began again to divide, to 
 anathematize, to separate, to fight one ariother, to unchurch each 
 other, and in this guise we are going forth to the conquest of the 
 world again. 
 
 We have heard much of what is taking place in our West, in our 
 South, in the desolate places of our great cities; but I come here 
 to plead the cause of the world lying in darkness. I come to tell 
 you. Christian brethren, that your deeds here, of which you take the 
 responsibility, are reacting in our mission fields. I come to plead 
 the cause of a Mohammedan, who has been brought by persever- 
 ing labor, by prayer, by instruction of the missionaries, to a knowl- 
 
330 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 edge of the truth as it is in Christ; and who has been brought, at 
 the peril of his life, to confess the name of his Saviour; and who 
 has stood up in our church in Beirout and taken upon himself the 
 vows of Christ. He knows what that means. He knows that it 
 means to him death, or expulsion from his home, and hiding in 
 some place of obscurity in a distant land. 
 
 What is the result of that man's conversion ? There comes an 
 emissary from a Christian church in America and tells him, " Sir, 
 you have joined the church of Christ, as you think, but that is not 
 the church of Christ. Come to me and I will confirm you and 
 introduce you into the church of Christ. " And there comes another 
 emissary from another Christian church in this country and tells 
 him, " Sir, you have not been baptized. Come and I will immerse 
 you under the water, and you will then become a Christian." And 
 there comes another emissary from a Christian church and tells 
 him, " Sir, the Christian church is not an outward organization. 
 You must come out of the church that you have joined and live a 
 separate life." You think this is a thing of romance — a thing of 
 fancy. I am telling you an actual fact, brethren. I am telling 
 you things as they are, not things as I imagine them. 
 
 My Christian brethren, this is something that reflects the senti- 
 ment of the churches at home. This is a thing inflicted upon us 
 by your divisions here. We stand on the picket-line, we stand at 
 the front, we stand at the post of danger, we are lifting up the ban- 
 ner of the cross in the face of an uncivilized and unbelieving world, 
 and we have succeeded in convincing them that Christ is the 
 Saviour, and that under that banner they must fight. Then there 
 come emissaries from you who tell them that it is all wrong, and 
 that they must begin all over again. 
 
 Dear Christian brethren, will you suffer this thing to go on ? 
 [Cries of " No, no."] Will you suffer your Christian missionaries 
 at the front to be paralyzed, to have their voices made silent, to 
 have their testimonies made ineffective, by reason of your divi- 
 sions ? Dare«you do it in the face of almighty God and in the 
 face of a dying world ? 
 
 I have heard something said about the possibilities of Chris- 
 tian co-operation; and I agree with the last speaker in regard to 
 the advantage of parceling out a given district and dividing it 
 among the churches. But, Christian brethren, I go further than 
 that. I believe that there are circumstances under which we must 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. G. E. POST. 331 
 
 relinquish our denominational affinities, and our denominational 
 education, and join heart and hand with other Christians, in a 
 church which shall be the church of Christ in no distinctive denom- 
 inational form. [Applause.] I do not speak as the result of inex- 
 perience, but I speak having in my mind a model of such a church, 
 which we have in the city of Beirout, where I live. 
 
 Sixty years ago, when your pioneer missionaries went to that 
 land they found a small community of people, consisting of Eng- 
 lishmen, Germans, Swiss and Americans. They desired to give them 
 the ordinances of religion. I may say by way of preface, that the 
 mission was one formed by the American Board, which was at that 
 time a union organization between the Presbyterians and Congre- 
 gationalists; but from the beginning those brethren were inspired 
 to establish a union church. They determined that they would 
 give a model, if possible, to the future converts. There were Epis- 
 copalians, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians of both schools, 
 then existing, and Congregationalists. There were also, at a later 
 peripd, Plymouth Brethren and Friends. They organized that 
 Anglo-American Union congregation, and it has lasted sixty years. 
 At the time of our Civil War, when the sentiments of the English 
 were somewhat hostile throughout the world to Americans — when 
 the sentiments of Americans were divided, that church stood the 
 shock of that war, and the division of public and private sentiment 
 without for a moment faltering in its career. [Applause.] There 
 it stands to-day, and, please God, it will stand there to the end of 
 time. 
 
 There have come there some members of the Church of England, 
 who cannot join in this work, and they have set up a little inde- 
 pendent service there, and have invited the Episcopalians to sepa- 
 rate from the other body and worship with them. A very few of 
 them go off into a little room apart, and worship on the Lord's day. 
 But, thank God, the great majority of the Church of England, resi- 
 dents in Beirout join heart and hand, and give of their means, 
 time and influence to the support of this institution. 
 
 We have another specimen of union there. We have a hospital 
 which was established by the Knights of St. John, that noble order 
 of which the president is Prince Albrecht, and among the leading 
 members of which are the Emperor of Germany and his son, and all 
 the princes and nobles of that land that are members of the national 
 ■church of Germany. They have put that hospital in the charge of 
 
332 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 the professors of the Syrian Protestant College, and there we join, 
 heart and hand together; worshiping together with one impulse 
 and with one love. 
 
 Now, Christian brethren, I have pledged myself not to prolong 
 this meeting by prolonging my remarks beyond the time allotted 
 to me. But I am going to say to you before we part, that I 
 implore you in the name of Christian common sense — I implore 
 you in the name of that mystic union which I know binds heart to 
 heart, and which I see reflected from the eyes of all now in this 
 audience — in the name of that Christ who said, " Let them be one- 
 even as we are one" — in the name of our great country, which we- 
 who have been forcibly separated from it, love more than you do, 
 and in which we take more pride than you can — in the name of 
 the heathen wOrld lying in wickedness, bleeding from a thousand 
 wounds, in the name of all that is good and precious, rise up and 
 carry to your homes the impulses of this meeting. Let it not be- 
 iherely a place where we shall have talked of union, but where you 
 will have made the solemn resolve to bring about union — that in.this- 
 matter you will go hand in hand, as fellow-Christians, that you will 
 go to your conventions, to your conferences, to your presbyteries^ 
 and to your associations, and that you will cause the bigots and 
 fanatics to stand aside, in order that this great work may be accom- 
 plished. [Prolonged applause.] 
 
 GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
 
 Dr. Strong : I hold in my hand a letter from Professor George 
 P. Fisher, of Yale Theological Seminary, who had expected to be 
 present, at the invitation of this Conference, to say a few words. I 
 will read his letter: 
 
 "New Haven, Conn., Decembers, 1887. 
 "Mr. William E.Dodge, President of the Evangelical Alliance for the U. S. 
 "A large committee, of which I am the chairman, was appointed, in 1886, by 
 the National Congregatioftal Council of the United States, to take measures for 
 the promotion of inter-denominational comity. It was the judgment of the 
 National Council that a method should be found, ' whereby the forces of Christ's 
 kingdom should not only forbid all friction with each other, but should be har- 
 moniously united in an aggressive work against the kingdom of this world.' Our 
 
REMARKS BY REV. PHILIP SCHAFF. 333 
 
 committee were instructed to confer with the general ecclesiastical organizations 
 of all other churches of the evangelical faith, in order to secure this result, and 
 ' to save the needless expenditure of Christian force,' in reference especially to 
 new territory that ' shall hereafter be occupied. ' We were, also, to consult with 
 other ecclesiastical bodies with a view to the holding of an inter-denominational 
 ■congress, for the attainment of the desired end. 
 
 " In attending to the business committed to us, myself and my associates have 
 been struck with the fact that in the Evangelical Alliance, we have already an 
 ' inter-denominational congress, ' one function of which is the promotion, by 
 judicious means, of just that sympathy and concurrence of action which the 
 national Congregational Council was anxious to procure. Hence, I have been 
 authorized to communicate to you, and through you to the Alliance, the pro- 
 ceeding of the Council, as above related, and to ask that such action may be 
 taken and such recommendations made by the Alliance as will tend to put a stop 
 to that unseemly and hurtful competition and rivalship of different denomina- 
 tions in the propagation of the gospel in this country and abroad, which is to 
 some extent a scandal in the eyes of the world, and an obstacle to the spread of 
 the futh which we hold in common. 
 
 " I am, Very Respectfully Yours, 
 
 "George P. Fisher." 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I am glad to know that just this spirit which comes 
 to us from the great Congregational body is filling the hearts of the 
 best men in all the various divisions of the church of Christ in 
 this country. 
 
 I am now going to introduce to you one whom you all know, one 
 -who perhaps by his pen and his work, for years (and certainly by 
 his long devotion to the Evangelical Alliance, so that he is almost 
 its father) has done more than any other man in the country to 
 acquaint Christian men with each other. That man is 
 
 REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Foreign immigration was pointed out as one of our chief perils, 
 and some speakers have taken a pessimistic view. I am an optimist 
 on the ground of God's presence in history and Christ's promise to 
 be with his church all days even to the end of the world. The 
 Evil One is mighty, but God is almighty and over-rules the wrath 
 of his enemies. Foreign immigration from the different national- 
 ities and churches of Europe may for a while retard, but cannot 
 arrest, and will ultimately benefit, our civilization and Christianity 
 by widening it and infusing into it the best elements of the Old World 
 
334 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 and of past ages. If anywhere on this globe there is room for 
 developing a cosmopolitan nationality and the highest type of 
 Christian civilization, it is on the virgin soil of North America- 
 Here will be written the last, and I hope the best, chapters in the 
 history of the human race. " Westward the star of empire takes its 
 way." This line of the Irish philosopher expresses a law of 
 history which follows the sun, rising in the east and setting in the 
 west. 
 
 The people of this republic have a healthy and vigorous organ- 
 ism, with a good stomach, a clear head and a warm heart, fully able 
 to digest and assimilate, to educate and evangelize, all the foreigners 
 of the Caucasian race that seek a new and better home under the 
 protection of our laws. The past is secure ; we need have no fear 
 for the future. 
 
 But in this great work we need the united efforts of all our 
 churches and Christian agencies. We cannot spare a single denom- 
 ination. There is work enough for all, and we should wish them alt 
 God's blessing in every effort to promote learning, virtue and piety. 
 Only let friendly co-operation be substituted for selfish competi- 
 tion and collision. It is no business of this Alliance to attack any 
 Christian church or sect, but to rally the best elements of all for 
 a closer union and co-operation in the kingdom of their common 
 Lord and Master. Its motto is not war, but peace; not separa- 
 ration, but union on the basis of freedom. There is a time for 
 separation, and there is a time for reunion. The time for separa- 
 tion is passing away, the time for reunion is coming on. The 
 reunion of Christendom, the realization of the promise of " one 
 flock" (not "fold") and "one Shepherd," will be one of the 
 chief problems of the rising generation. 
 
 Conferences like these, which bring Christians of different creeds 
 face to face in fraternal consultation, are a powerful agency in 
 promoting that great end. They are a means of grace, and have 
 a happy effect upon the outside world. In union is strength. 
 
 Christian union looks to co-operation in active work and is pro- 
 moted by it. The Evangelical Alliance has nothing to do with 
 churches, but by bringing individual Christians' closer together, it 
 acts upon the denominations to which they belong. The time has 
 come when it ought to take a step further, and suggest to them the 
 desirableness of mutual official recognition. Co-operation must be 
 made pr^-ctical by denominational action. The various societies. 
 
REMARKS BY REV. J. B. CLARK. 335 
 
 of domestic and foreign missions should come to an agreement by 
 which injurious rivalry and collision may be prevented. Smce the 
 occupation of Rome by the United. Kingdom of Italy, there have 
 been organized about a dozen Protestant congregations, which 
 represent as many different denominations, and show to the Italian 
 mind the confusing spectacle of a divided Protestantism. The 
 same is the case on the fields of heathen missions. The mission- 
 aries see and feel this difficulty, and tell us that the root of the 
 evil is at home. Each denomination is anxious to propagate itself, 
 rather than ^e kingdom of Christ. 
 
 Let us look at this matter seriously, and endeavor to remedy 
 the evil. Let this Alliance devise ways and means to induce the 
 missionary societies at home to present to our foreign population, 
 and to the heathen, our evangelical Christianity as a unit in spirit 
 and in aim. The result will be a multiplication of converts, a 
 speedier overthrow of idolatry and superstition, and a hastening 
 of the triumph of the kingdom of our common Lord and Saviour 
 throughout the world. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. J. B. CLARK, D. D., 
 OF NEW YORK. 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I would not occupy 
 even one half of one of these five minutes, except to offer a 
 simple word of testimony, which I hope will be cheering. I speak, 
 as it has been represented to you, for the American Home Mis- 
 sionary Society, which has been sixty years planting churches in 
 the great West, and knows something about the value and neces- 
 sity of these methods of co-operation, and has seen something of 
 the friction and the waste of attempting any Christian work where 
 they do not exist. 
 
 There is one law — the first law — of this Society, which, if it 
 were adopted in good faith, and carried out in good faith by all 
 similar bodies, would put an end forever to all sectarian strife on 
 Home Missionary ground, and would economize, to the last cent, 
 every dollar of Home Missionary funds. That law is this : never 
 to plant a Congregational church on ground that is fairly occupied 
 
336 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 by any other Christian denomination [Applause], and never to 
 assist a church with missionary funds which has been planted in 
 violation of that rule. This is the double law of the organization. 
 It is perfectly well known to our field superintendents, and I am 
 happy to say that it is being obeyed, to the best of their knowledge, 
 to the letter, because they know that if it were disregarded, their 
 places would be required of them at once. We, therefore, find no 
 trouble with that law, so far as securing obedience to it is con- 
 cerned; but how to secure a wise and just administration of the 
 law in all cases, is not so easy. What is a fair occupation of 
 ground ? That is always a troublesome question. For instance, 
 here may be a dead church occupying the ground — a church noto- 
 riously inoperative. It is enjoying a probation after death [Laugh- 
 ter], which is hopeless. It cannot supply the religious wants of the 
 ■community, and the community knows it. It has life enough for 
 just two things— life enough to object to being revived, and life 
 enough to object to any successor which should attempt to come 
 upon the ground and do its work effectively. 
 
 Then there may be a church that in its own way has life enough, 
 but its own way is one that does not meet the wants of the commu- 
 nity. Or, there may be a booming town, to which a railroad is 
 about to come, and in which three churches are planted — a number 
 too many for the present population, but not sufficient for the pop- 
 ulation which is expected. The difficulty in that case is, that the 
 railroad may not come at all, hut may go another way. Then the 
 question is. Which of the churches'is fittest to survive? 
 
 But, alas, there is another difficulty. It is when a church is fill- 
 ing every want, and the agent of some other church comes in and 
 organizes a church of. his denomination, the result being that there 
 are in that community two ^eak churches depending upon mis- 
 sionary funds, where one strong and self-supporting church might 
 exist. 
 
 We have found by experience that there is just one remedy for 
 all these evils^one sufficient solution of all these difficulties. It 
 is this: wherever the field agents of all these missionary boards 
 which you represent, are willing to come together and join their 
 hands in Christian fellowship and Christian service- — wherever they 
 are willing to put the kingdom of Christ above the interests of 
 , party or sect — where they are willing to unite on some simple 
 terms of comity, or some simple business arrangement, by which 
 
REMARKS BY REV. J. H. BROYSON. 337 
 
 the people on the ground in each of these fields shall be allowed 
 to determine for themselves the question what church they 
 prefer, and all others keep " hands off " until that question is 
 determined; and especially where the missionary boards at home 
 shall stand behind their agents on the field, and wholly support 
 them in that action, there, Mr. President, is love, there is harmony, 
 and there is Christian co-operation; there are the best fruits of 
 Christian co-operation, and there is economy of Christian forces — 
 Christian men and Christian money. 
 
 The next speaker introduced was Rev. J. H. Broyson, D. D., 
 of Huntsville, Ala. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. J. H. BROYSON, D. D. 
 
 Mr. President and Brethren: The key-note of this Conference 
 that has been assembled here, has been sounded by my respected 
 brother from Michigan (Rev. Dr. Harris). It is the mediatorial 
 prayer of that divine King who reigns in yonder realm of love. 
 It is the unity of God's people. And with that key-note others 
 have told us that the American nation has passed the front line and 
 now stands in advance of all the nations of the earth. How signal 
 the fact that while this is true, the church comes together unit- 
 edly to-day, with her forces joined, to lead forward the hosts in 
 the great cause of our divine Master. 
 
 And now, as our President has said, the key-note is co-operation 
 in the great work in which we are engaged. Whatever difficulties 
 may lie in the way, they can be adjusted in detail. The issues 
 that have been presented before us at this Conference are strong 
 and to be feared, but a great military commander has well said " In 
 the face of the enemy combine your forces." So let the Christian 
 hearts of the country be combined to-day in the great cause that 
 is now before us. 
 
 The Spirit of unity of that religion which we represent to- day, is 
 the third person of the adorable Trinity— the Holy Spirit. That 
 Spirit gives unity to every heart, gives strength to every heart, 
 gives power to every heart, and it will bring God's people into one 
 glorious unity. 
 
 What is the indirect cause of which this great assembly here is the 
 
338 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 representative to-day ? My brother from the foreign field has given 
 it to us. It is the foreign missionary force standing on the picket- 
 line on every shore, combined in the name of our divine Master, 
 and its reflex influence has come to the English-speaking people, 
 that are the great missionary element of the nineteenth century. 
 [Applause.] That brings us together here. And we have now had 
 a despatch from across the ocean, from our brethren, the English 
 people, showing that our hands and our hearts are one. Let the 
 English-speaking people arise in their strength, in the name of our 
 divine Lord, and push this work onward, through all lands, to the 
 ends of the earth. May the Lord hasten it in his time. 
 
 REMARKS BY MR. WM. B. BOERUM, 
 OF BROOKLYN. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen: This grand spectacle of 
 brethren from all parts of this Union — brethren among the laity 
 as well as the ministry — gathered together here at the capital of 
 the nation, is, as I take it, to produce the spirit of Christ among- 
 the people. 
 
 As to co-operation, of which so much has been justly said, the 
 true co-operation that is to be desired above all things is union in 
 Christian spirit. We may multiply denominations if we please, and 
 instead of eighty or a hundred, have eight hundred or a thousand,, 
 if the spirit of \ Christ pervade them all. That is the important 
 thing, that the spirit of Christ among all men should be working 
 for the salvation of souls. A distinguished Christian gentleman 
 made this remark on this subject: "I would as soon expect every 
 family in this land to keep house as I keep house, as to expect 
 every church and every denomination to pursue the same methods 
 in carrying on Christian work." But I would have the church pro- 
 duce the spirit of Christ in the hearts of all their people, so that 
 there might be good neighborhoods, so there might be good citizens, 
 so that there might be good merchants, good manufacturers, good 
 working people — so that all the people might possess this spirit. 
 
 I listened a short time ago to a sermon from a gentleman whO' 
 has spoken here this morning, the sermon being from these words:. 
 " Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." When Christ 
 
REMARKS BY MR. WM. B. BOERTJM. 339 
 
 said those words to his disciples he said in substance, " Follow me 
 and I will give you influence over men, I will give you an influence 
 over evil-minded men, I will give you an influence for good over 
 the hearts and minds of all men, to turn them from evil ways to 
 good ways." That is what the Saviour said at the very beginning 
 of his ministry, in saying to his disciples, " Follow me " 
 
 Now, what is it to follow Christ ? To have great patience with 
 one another, kindly consideration for one another, love of each 
 other and a kindly interest in each other's welfare. This will 
 settle all the difficult questions of life. 
 
 I have seen this spirit brought to bear in mercantile associations, 
 and business organizations, where there were some discordant ele- 
 ments. Some Christian-hearted man, talking to his fellows, would 
 say, "Let us come together, and, as intelligent Christian men, 
 adjust our affairs so that there may not be this discordant element, 
 but that we may work together to produce that which we are all 
 seeking; that is, the advancement of our business interests and a 
 greater power for doing good." 
 
 This will settle all labor questions. On my way here from New 
 York, a merchant said to me on the train, " I am determined by 
 the help of God to conduct my business upon purely Christian 
 principles." And he said, " My people come to me and say to 
 me, ' I come to you for counsel and advice because you are a Chris- 
 tian man;' " and he said to thenv " Did I ever mention the subject 
 of Christianity to you ? " " No," was the reply, " but you act, and 
 your actions speak louder than words." So, brethren, remember 
 that our Saviour, when on this earth, astonished the people more by 
 the gracious words he spoke, than even by his acts. The people 
 marveled at them; they had been accustomed to harsh words. It 
 is this soft answer, produced by Christianity, which turns away 
 wrath, and overcomes the words that stir up anger. We want more 
 and more of this practical Christian life. We want it in business, 
 and in all our ways. I thank you, brethren, for listening to a plain 
 layman, who cannot speak to you with eloquence, as other gentle- 
 men have done, but who speaks with a heart full of love and with 
 an earnest desire to do all in his power to help produce this spirit 
 of Christ among men. 
 
 Mr Dodge: I cannot close this meeting without asking a friend 
 whom we have fortunately with us, to say a single word, so that he 
 may be knowrf to our American friends who are present. The 
 
340 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Johnson, of England, whom I now have the pleasure of 
 introducing to you, is here as the representative of the great Pan- 
 Missionary Conference, which is to be held in London next year. 
 He represents, I think, nearly all the foreign missionary asso- 
 ciations of all the various churches of England. He knows what 
 co-operation means; and a single word of cheer from him, and an 
 introduction to you, will I know be grateful to the Conference. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. JAMES JOHNSON. 
 
 I would not presume, brethren, to stand before this great audi- 
 ence in my own name. I come before you as the formally desig- 
 nated representative of forty-eight foreign missionary societies 
 which exist in England. Alas, that there should be so many, but 
 thank God that they should be one, as they now are, in proposing 
 to have a conference for a new start — as we hope, a new era — in 
 missions, in the coming century — I mean the century which we 
 now begin. 
 
 I have come, brethren, as a represcHtative of societies that are 
 now raising among themselves upwards of a million of pounds ster- 
 ling, for the spread of the gospel of God almost exclusively among 
 the heathen; and they send me with this message to you, our breth- 
 ren in America, requesting you to send over representatives, first, 
 of your foreign missionary societies, and secondly, representative 
 men belonging to your different churches, appointed in what way 
 you will, that they may come and sit with us, and, as workers 
 together in this great enterprise, be the means of starting afresh in 
 the grand work given to the church of God by her divine Head — 
 " Go ye into all the world." 
 
 I come here to speak of co-operation. We have begun by co- 
 operation in this arrangement among ourselves, but we want the 
 grand Anglo-Saxon race, which God has raised up for some great 
 purpose [Applause] , to be united with us in this work : we want 
 to go heart and hand together in it. I ask you, brethren, 
 will America take the hand of Old England to begin this work ? 
 [Applause.] It was a saying of Dr. Duff, that grand old missionary 
 whom some here knew well, that the church that ceased to be 
 ■evangelistic (by which he meant evangelistic to the heathen), will 
 
RECEPTION AT THE WHITE HOUSE. 341 
 
 soon cease to be evangelical. I go a little further than that. I 
 say that the grand way of uniting the churches of God is by unit- 
 ing them in foreign mission work. 
 
 The old despots in Europe teach us a lesson in this matter. 
 How do they keep the peace in their own borders ? When they 
 find the people beginning to unite— a course which might result in 
 the overthrow of the despots, they get up a foreign war. France 
 and Russia know that policy well. That is the grand danger to 
 the peace of Europe — that despots are obliged to keep the atten- 
 tion of their people engaged in foreign enterprises or war, in order 
 that they may keep peace at home. I say that that is the devil's 
 policy. 
 
 Now let the churches of Christ represented by the grand Anglo- 
 Saxon race — and I would say the Saxon race, for the grand old 
 Emperor of Germany is a noble man [Applause] — let this race rise 
 up to the importance of this great enterprise, and by uniting in carry- 
 ing on foreign mission work we shall be recognizing the importance 
 of unity at home. 
 
 I will not trespass, however, upon your time to say a word that 
 seems to be in any way connected with war. I would take higher 
 ground. I believe the grand policy of foreign missions is truly 
 Christian in this way: it carries us out of ourselves. I take for an 
 illustration the feast. " When thou makest a feast, call not thy 
 neighbors and the rich ones who are able to invite thee in turn, but 
 go into the highways and invite the lame and the halt." These 
 poor heathen cannot recompense thee, but it will recompense thee 
 to do good. We have the blessed assurance that "thou shall be 
 recompensed " and that is enough. 
 
 RECEPTION AT THE WHITE HOUSE. 
 
 Immediately after the ihorning session, the members of the 
 Conference, together with the Washington branch of the Alliance, 
 were given a reception by President and Mrs. Cleveland. 
 
 The party having taken up a position in the East room, the 
 President and his wife entered, when the officers of the Conference 
 were at once formally presented by Colonel Wilson, Marshal of 
 the District of Columbia. , 
 
342 NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 Mr. Wm. E. Dodge, as President of the Evangelical Alliance, 
 then addressed the President as follows : 
 
 On behalf of the delegates of the Christian Convention now in 
 session in this city, I want to say to you, Mr. President, how 
 greatly we value the privilege of paying our respects to you. And 
 I am sure you will forgive me for saying that it is a great additional 
 pleasure to us to have the rare privilege of meeting your chosen 
 partner in this historic home, who has so wonderfully endeared 
 herself to all the people of the land, and has so rapidly won their 
 loyal love and respect. [Applause.] We represent all shades of 
 religious opinion, we represent all sections of the country, and we 
 are met here, not to emphasize our differences, but to find points 
 on which we can agree, and to pledge ourselves to higher and more 
 loyal service to the Master we all serve and to the country we all 
 love. 
 
 We believe that the time has come in this country for an applied 
 Christianity, and that the simple teachings and the example 
 of our Lord can act as a solvent of all social and economic 
 difficulties, and can bring into close touch and sympathy all 
 classes of people. We know this will tend to elevate this coun- 
 try, and to bring it back to the high American ideas which have 
 been the basis of its prosperity and growth. In all this we are 
 sure you heartily sympathize with us. 
 
 REPLY OF PRESIDENT CLEVELAND. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It gives me great 
 pleasure to greet so large a delegation from the Evangelical Alliance 
 of the United States. The purposes of this Alliance, as I under- 
 stand them, are to apply the teachings of the Christian life to the 
 problems and to the exigencies of our social and political life. This 
 movement cannot fail to be one of the greatest importance. All 
 must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christianity 
 results in the purest patriotism, in the most devoted and scrupu- 
 lous adherence to public trusts, and in the best type of citizenship. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 Those who manage the affairs of government are by this Alliance 
 reminded that the law of God demands of them that they should 
 
REPLY OF PRESIDENT CLEVELAND. 343 
 
 i 
 
 be courageously true to the interest of the people, and that the 
 Ruler of the universe will require of them a strict account of their 
 stewardship. [Applause.] 
 
 The people, too, are thus reminded that their best interests and 
 their happiness and welfare are best subserved and promoted by a 
 conscientious regard of the rights and interests of their common 
 brotherhood. 
 
 I am especially pleased that your movement and endeavor is not 
 cramped or limited by denominational lines [Applause] ; that your 
 credentials are found in a broad and generous Christian fellowship. 
 In your noble mission it is necessary, if you would seek to teach 
 the people toleration, that you yourselves should be tolerant; if 
 you would teach them liberality for the opinions of each other, you 
 yourselves must be liberal. [Applause.] If you would teach them 
 unselfish patriotism, you yourselves must be unselfish and patriotic. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 In this noble endeavor of yours, if undertaken in a broad and 
 generous spirit, you must arrest the attention and the respectful 
 consideration of your fellow-citizens, and teach the people that a 
 government for the people must depend for its success on the 
 morality, the justice and the interest of the people. [Applause.] 
 
 With true benevolence and with patriotic love, it must be that 
 your endeavor will go far to the enlightenment ajid the improvement 
 of our people, and to aid in the greatness of the destiny of our 
 beloved land. [Applause.] 
 
 The remaining member.-- of the party were then severally pre- 
 sented to the President and his wife, both of whom cordially shook 
 hands with each. 
 
AFTERNOON SESSION. 
 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9. 
 
 The devotional services, with which the session was opened, 
 were conducted by Rev. Henry J. Van Dyke, D. D., of New York. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I have great pleasure in introducing to the Confer- 
 ence as the chairman for this session, Hon. J. W. Foster, who has 
 been the honored representative of this country in so many of the 
 courts of Europe, and has always been a friend of everything that 
 was good in our country. 
 
 REMARKS BY HON. J. W. FOSTER. 
 
 On taking the chair Mr. Foster said: 
 
 Dear friends, it seems a work of supererogation on my part, a 
 stranger to most of you, to introduce to this audience one who is 
 so well known to you as the gentleman who is first to address us 
 this afternoon. I think you will agree with me that one of the 
 most pleasant incidents of this Conference has been that it has. 
 afforded us an opportunity to see the face and hear the voice of 
 him whose pen, before we came together, was so familiar to us. 
 [Applause.] I feel that no living man has done more to awakert 
 the Protestant church to a higher loyalty to our country and 
 to our Lord and Master, than Dr. Josiah Strong, who will now 
 read a paper on "Methods of Co-operation in Christian Work." 
 [Applause.] 
 
 341 
 
METHODS OF CO-OPERATION IN 
 CHRISTIAN W^ORK. 
 
 REV.JOSIAH STRONG, D. D., GENERAL SECRETARY 
 OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 
 
 We have listened to presentations of the perils threatening our 
 Christian civilization, which are well-fitted to sober our habitual 
 American optimism. To show that there is no occasion for panic 
 and no excuse for pessimism, we have ftiade an inventory of 
 the vast Christian resources of our country. We have had the fact 
 strongly emphasized that, in order to utilize these resources in full, 
 to meet the rising tide of perils, there must be a better understand- 
 ing, a much larger measure of co-operation among denominations 
 and local churches. We now come logically to the consideration of 
 Practical Methods of Co-operation in Christian Work. 
 
 The higher the form of life, the more complex is its organization, 
 and the more perfect is the co-operation among its several 
 organs. The same is true of civilization. The application of steam 
 and electricity has given a mighty impetus to civilization because 
 they created vast possibilities of organization and co-operation. 
 And the progress of modern material civilization has been made 
 chiefly by seizing upon these possibilities. These two correlative • 
 ' principles have been applied to commerce, to business, to trans- 
 portation, to manufactures, to almost every form of industry; and 
 thus the forces which are developing our material civilization have 
 been multiplied many fold. But Protestant Christianity has not, 
 as yet, laid hold of these two great principles which characterize 
 the civilization of the nineteenth century. So far as organization 
 and co-operation are concerned, Protestant Christianity is nearly 
 a hundred years behind the age. It is still living in the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 There must be preserved a certain parity of growth between the 
 
 345 
 
346 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 material on the one hand, and the moral and spiritual on the other. 
 So far as the former outstrips the latter, our civilization becomes 
 materialistic, our prosperity becomes our peril. And this is the 
 great peril which threatens our Christian civilization to-day. Its 
 lower elements have outgrown the higher; hence a demoralizing, 
 animalizing tendency. If Christianity is to control our future 
 development, to overmaster the material and make our lusty physi- 
 cal life the servant of the intellectual and moral, it must avail itself 
 qi these two great principles which have given such a marvelous 
 impetus to our material civilization. 
 
 And exactly this, the inauguration of intelligent and compre- 
 hensive co-operation in aggressive Christian work is the inspiration 
 of this new movement of the Alliance. It seeks nothing for itself; 
 but being, in the judgment of many eminent men, the medium 
 through which this desired co-operation can be most fitly and 
 hopefully sought, it has accepted this work as a solemn duty, prov- 
 identially laid upon it. 
 
 While studying the situation we consulted many wise men, and 
 when our plans were sufficiently matured, we submitted them in 
 outline to leading clergymen and laymen of all evangelical denom- 
 inations. The endorsement which they received was so unanimous 
 and hearty that we venture to offer them, by way of suggestion, to 
 the Christian public. 
 
 It is proposed to invite the ministers and active laymen of each 
 community to come together and form local alliances ; and through 
 this point of contact between the members of all evangelical 
 denominations, can be secured, it is believed, 
 
 I. Co-operation in the study of sociological and industrial 
 problems and in the application of Christian principles to their 
 solution, 
 
 II. Co-operation in reaching our entire population with the 
 gospel, and 
 
 III. The co-operation of the Christian millions of the land for 
 the accomplishment of needed reforms, and for the defense of 
 •cherished American institutions. Let us consider 
 
 I. Co-operation in the study of sociological and industrial prob- 
 lems, and in the application of the principles of the gospel to their 
 solution. 
 
 The conflict, not between capital and labor — each of which is the 
 complement of the other, and which are as necessary to each other 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. JOSIAH STRONG. 347 
 
 as are the two wings of a bird— but the conflict between capitalists 
 and laborers, shows that our industrial system has not been informed 
 by Christian principles. The fact of estrangement between the 
 well-to-do and the ill-to-do, the indifference and exclusiveness of 
 the one class and the discontent and even bitterness of the other, 
 together with the sefishness of both, are proof that the principles of 
 the gospel have not yet permeated our social system. Is not the 
 world waiting and suffering for the application to its every-day 
 affairs of that gospel which was to bring " peace on earth " as well 
 as peace between heaven and earth ? 
 
 At Saratoga, a year and a half ago. President Seelye called 
 attention to the fact that some great focal idea controls the think- 
 ing of various ages; that for the first three centuries of the Chris- 
 tian era that idea was God; that during the fourth and fifth cent- 
 uries that idea was man; that next came, logically, the doctrine of 
 union between God and man, or ■ the doctrine of salvation ; that 
 next came, naturally, the doctrine of human brotherhood, the rela- 
 tions of man to man, and that this has been the growing question 
 since the Reformation. 
 
 As each of these doctrines grows out of the preceding by logical 
 sequence, which was observed by President Seelye, it is evident 
 that the next doctrine to be matured is that of man in his relations 
 to his fellow. And as Christ's teachings contain the true doctrine 
 of God, the true doctrine of man and of salvation, so also they 
 contain the true doctrine of human brotherhood, of social relations ; 
 and the widespread discontent which so generally characterizes 
 the artisan class of Christendom to-day is due to the fact that these 
 teachings of Christ have not been thoroughly applied to men in 
 their relations with each other. Has not the time come for such 
 application ? May it not be that* we are just now entering upon a 
 new era in the history of the church and of civilization, viz., 'the era 
 of applied Christianity 1 
 
 There is evidence that this nation has been commissioned of 
 God to lead the way. The meeting on our shores of all kindreds 
 and peoples and tongues tends to make ours a cosmopolitan civil- 
 ization; and the fact that races which for centuries have inherited 
 mutual antipathies are here commingling in their daily life, marks 
 this as the land where first will take place a readjustment in the 
 relations of man and man, based neither on the accident of birth 
 nor on the incident of wealth, but rather on the broad basis of 
 
348 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 human brotherhood and Christian fellowship. The many rule here 
 as nowhere else. Public opinion expresses itself in law, and makes 
 itself felt in the modification or transformation of existing institu- 
 tions, much more quickly than in other lands, even in those which 
 are popularly governed. Moreover, our artisan classes are the 
 most intelligent in the world; and this fact is highly favorable to 
 their intelligent co-operation in hastening a better day. 
 
 And not only does this people seem to be providentially chosen 
 for this work, but the hour for undertaking it would seem to have 
 come. According to the logic of the ages, it is the next thing in 
 order. Our civilization has developed to a stage where it has 
 become not only possible but necessary. The natural order of 
 growth is, first, that which is physical, then that which is spiritual. 
 It was first necessary to conquer the continent, to lay material 
 foundations for a great civilization, to develop our political institu- 
 tions, and to settle the great questions growing out of them. All 
 this has been substantially accomplished, and now the problems of 
 the hour, pressing upon every thoughtful mind, are these very 
 questions. Nor will these sociological problems cease to be para- 
 mount until correctly solved, and the true solution will be found 
 only by applying the teachings of Christ. 
 
 It is suggested, therefore, that the leading Christian men of each 
 community come together statedly, not to speculate, not to develop 
 new theories of society, but to study the problems of their own 
 town, to find what are the real hindrances to its moral and spiritual 
 progress, and devise practical means for their removal. Let them 
 study the work and become inspired with the spirit of such men as 
 Oberlin and Chalmers. Let them acquaint themselves with 
 methods which in various instances have proved successful in reach- 
 ing and elevating the masses. And whenever their experience 
 throws' new light on methods of dealing with pauperism, or prevent- 
 ing crime, or evangelizing city slums or neglected rural districts, 
 when progress is made in adjusting the relations between employer 
 and employed on Christian principles, let the national Alliance 
 have the light, and it will reflect it to all its branches. Thus 
 through co-operation, these branches will stimulate one another, and' 
 each will profit by the experience of all. 
 
 Local alliances can render important service by preparing read- 
 ing-matter of the right sort and scattering it widely among working- 
 men. The artisan classes are now largely left a prey to chimerical 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. JOSIAH STRONG. 349 
 
 reformers, social quacks and political charlatans, the results of 
 whose teachings are deeper discontent and stronger class antipa- 
 thies; popular lecture courses might be provided for workingmen, 
 acquainting them with the fundamental principles of political 
 economy and such historical facts as bear upon livmg questions. 
 
 When state and county and local alliances have been formed 
 throughout the land, their regular meetings, together with great 
 national conferences like this, cannot fail powerfully to stimulate 
 the study of such questions from a Christian point of view or to 
 throw much light on methods by which the various branches of the 
 church of Christ can best co-operate in applying his teachings to 
 the entire life of every community. Thus co-operation through 
 local alliances will afford a method of developing methods. 
 
 II. Again, through the local alliance all evangelical Christians 
 •can co-operate in reaching the entire population with the gospel. 
 
 There are multitudes in our churches to-day who, so far as any 
 •aggressive Christian work is concerned, undertake nothing in par- 
 ticular, and succeed in doing it. This inactivity, however, is not 
 always due to indifference. Not a few are interested and would 
 gladly serve, but know not what or how to do. They are like the 
 idlers of the market-place, spoken of in the parable. It does not 
 ■appear that they were lazy or indifferent; but in answer to the ques- 
 tion, " Why stand ye here all the day idle ?" they replied, " Because 
 • no man hath hired us." Most people lack initiative. Whether in 
 mechanical industries, or in commerce or art or war or government, 
 it is the few who plan and the many who execute, the few who lead 
 and the many who are led; and as long as human nature remains 
 what it is, this must be true in Christian work as elsewhere. Our 
 church members lack leadership. If work were apportioned and 
 responsibility individualized, it would be accepted. There is 
 abundant latent power in our churches to reach the non-church 
 going population. Let the local alliances organize this power, and 
 make it active to that end. The method of organization for such 
 work is given in detail in a panjphlet which the Alliance will gladly 
 furnish on application. It describes the methods successfully em- 
 ployed in Oswego, N. Y., and was written by Dr. Russell, of 
 that city, who will follow me with an object-lesson, showing the 
 happy working of the system in that community. The narrow 
 limits of this paper permit only a condensed statement of these 
 methods. 
 
350 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 The local alliance, in undertaking systematic work in behalf of 
 the non-church-going population, will need an accurate knowledge 
 of facts. How many people are there in the town or township not 
 effectively reached by the churches ? How many attend church 
 only occasionally or not at all ? What is the church preferepce of 
 non-attendants ? How many children are there not in Sabbath- 
 school ? How many are Roman Catholics ? How many families, 
 are needy ? How many persons are out of employment ? How 
 many sick ? The number of saloons, houses of ill-repute and 
 gambling-places ? 
 
 In order to gain this information and follow it up systematically, 
 let the local alliance appoint from each church efficient laymen — 
 one for every hundred members, more or less — who shall direct 
 the work. Let the pastors and these laymen select from their own 
 church ten visitors for each director. Most of them ought to be 
 women. Divide the community into as many districts as there are 
 directors or supervisors, equalizing the work as nearly as possible. 
 Divide each district into ten sub-districts and assign a visitor to 
 each. It will be found generally on this system that each sub-district 
 averages about ten non-church-going families; though in our great 
 cities the number will be larger. In such cases it would be well to 
 increase the number of visitors. After "the first canvass has shown 
 just where the non-church-goers are and how many they are, the 
 work will be more equitably divided by re-districting; after which 
 each visitor should retain the same sub-district for the year, in 
 order that they may each become refilly acquainted with the peo- 
 ple upon whom they call. 
 
 Before the canvass is begun, all the visitors meet the directors 
 and pastors for instructions and prayer. When brought thoroughly 
 into the spirit of the movement, made familiar with their duties and 
 supplied with uniform blanks, they enter upon their work; which 
 will not be found so great but that each visitor can call on his entire 
 charge monthly. 
 
 The canvass will reveal non-church-goers, not a few, who are 
 members of churches elsewhere, but who have failed to transfer 
 their membership and have become negligent of Christian duty. 
 Some who rarely or never attend church will express a preference 
 for some minister or denomination. Each pastor is informed of 
 his own and charged with the duty of finding them. Those who 
 express no preference are cordially invited, in the name of all the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. JOSIAH STRONG. 351 
 
 churches, to attend the nearest place of worship. If the first 
 invitation is declined, perhaps the twelfth will be accepted. 
 
 Each visitor reports to his director, and the board of directors 
 tabulate their facts at regular meetings. This board serves as a 
 sort of clearing-house between the co-operating churches. 
 
 The visitors have a monthly meeting, in which they exchange 
 experiences with mutual profit. Public meetings, at stated times, 
 sustain the interest of the churches in the work and ensure their 
 sympathy. 
 
 The methods thus hurriedly outlined have proved entirely 
 successful with a population as small as nine thousand, and with 
 orte as large asr twenty-six thousand. It is believed they would 
 prove equally applicable to a village, and, with certain modifica- 
 tions, to the largest city. In the latter case, it is suggested that 
 there be formed a city ajliance, which shall be auxiliary to the 
 national organization. Let the city alliance form various branches 
 in different districts of the city, and the churches of one district, 
 containing a population of twenty-five or perhaps fifty thousand, 
 can co-operate through their local alliance, and work their district 
 as if it were a small city by itself. The relations of these various 
 branches to each other and to the city alliance can be easily 
 adjusted. 
 
 Nothing suggested is rigid. There is the greatest possible free- 
 dom of adaptation to the peculiar conditions of different communi- 
 ties. Experience will improve on methods, and free intercourse 
 will soon afford each branch the advantages of the best. 
 
 We recognize obstacles. There are difficulties to be overcome. 
 But then, duty is often difficult; it is never impracticable. Such 
 co-operation as has been sketched may require more grace than is 
 possessed by some brother, but not more than he can get. While 
 he is awaiting a fuller supply he will perhaps offer some objections, 
 which we may be permitted to anticipate. It is said that " the 
 proposed undertaking is formidable." It certainly involves work; 
 but most things do that are worth the doing. Philadelphia has. 
 demonstrated that such a canvass can be thoroughly made in a 
 great city. If one in ten of our evangelical church-membership 
 will give a half day once a month to such work, the gospel can be 
 carried to the home of every non-church-going family in the 
 United States twelve times a year. It is objected that " ladies of 
 culture cannot be induced to engage in such house-to-house visita- 
 
\ 
 
 352 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 tion." They can be, if they have the spirit of Christ; and if they 
 lack it, they will not be wanted. " But such work will be very 
 expensive." On the contrary, it is found to be trifling. 
 
 It is asked, " Will not people resent such inquiries into their church 
 habits?" Yes, to some extent, but not so as to embarrass the 
 work. Much will depend on the good sense of the visitors. I knew 
 a visitor who gathered the desired facts concerning more than 
 twelve thousand people of all sorts, and in only two instances met 
 with the slightest rebuff. 
 
 "But," it is urged, "there are too many organizations already." 
 Since whatever concerns the intellectual, moral or spiritual welfare 
 of the community that can be accomplished better through 
 co-operation than by individual or denominational effort is germane 
 to the local alliance, it will greatly simplify work and obviate the 
 necessity of multiplied organizations. 
 
 " But are not pastors overworked already; how can they under- 
 take additional burdens ? " Yes, many pastors are being worked 
 to death — killed, because they are trying to do their own duty and 
 that of the church besides. And it is that for which the church 
 pays the minister — to do the aggressive Christian work, which 
 ought to be the business of every Christian. Every one knows 
 that the work of the church is done by a very small minority of its 
 membership. The great majority are under the impression that 
 all personal Christian work may be commuted for a money consid- 
 eration, that the pastor and a city missionary or two are employed 
 to do such work in their stead. As well might a regiment of 
 soldiers expect their colonel, with an aid-de-camp or two, to fight 
 their battles. There are no substitutes in this war. Christian duty 
 cannot be done vicariously. 
 
 It is this work, left undone by the many, which causes the char- 
 iot wheels of the church to drive heavily, and which is working so 
 many ministers to their death. This new movement proposes 
 greatly to increase the working force of the church. The member- 
 ship undertakes a vast amount of personal work, now left almost 
 wholly to the clergy. This co-operative movement will serve all 
 the great ends for which the pastors are laboring. It at once 
 stimulates the growth of congregations and Sabbath-schools. It 
 meets the three great prerequisites for reaching the masses; that is, 
 it arouses a desire to reach them, it furnishes the information 
 necessary to sustain interest, and mingles the leaven with the meal. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. JOSIAH STRONG. 353 
 
 It increases the spirituality of the church. A large proportion of 
 the membership cannot thus engage in systematic, personal Christian 
 work without gaining to themselves and the church a rich blessing, 
 and enjoying an outpouring of the Holy Spirit which has been the 
 great need of the church in all ages. Surely the overtasked pastor 
 is the last man who can reasonably decline to enter so helpful a 
 movement and lead his people into it. 
 
 The co-operation should not be confined to the churches which 
 join hands in the local alliance. When a sufificient number of local 
 alliances have been formed in the same state, they should come 
 together and organize a state alliance. A secretary for the same 
 should be secured who will push the work of local and county 
 organization. The county alliances could co-operate in finding and 
 evangelizing the destitute neighborhoods far removed from churches. 
 There are many such neglected localities in the country as well as 
 the city, especially in mountain regions, north as well as south. 
 
 Plans might be wrought out by which an inter-denominational 
 committee of the state alliance could do something, perhaps much, 
 toward securing a wiser distribution of churches, a better economy 
 of men and means. The introduction of railways has shifted popu- 
 lations. Many villages in the older states have been depleted, so 
 that churches perhaps once necessary, or at least justifiable, are now 
 forced to struggle for existence and fall into competition. There 
 are often three or four feeble churches where one or two could do 
 the work as well, and hence better. Our frontier towns likewise 
 suffer sometimes from a congestion of churches, while other towns 
 and large city populations of twenty, forty and even fifty thousand 
 souls have but one Protestant church, and perhaps none at all of 
 any kind. This is not doing the Lord's business on business prin- 
 ciples. A comprehensive study of the whole field with reference 
 to all the denominations at work in it, and a large-souled Christian 
 co-operation among them, might do much to relieve both the famine 
 in the ministrv and that in home missionary society treasuries. 
 
 III. Through the local alliance can be secured the co-operation 
 of the Christian millions of the land for the accomplishment of 
 needed reforms, and for the defense of cherished American 
 institutions. 
 
 Does any one doubt that the ten or twelve million members of 
 evangelical churches in the United States could, if united in aim 
 and methods, accomplish any moral reform within the range of 
 
354 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 possibility ? There is now no facility for concert of action. If a 
 measure of vital importance to public morals were pending in Con- 
 gress or a state legislature, and the moral and Christian sentiment 
 of the nation were a substantial unit for or against it, there is no 
 organization through which it could promptly and effectively act. 
 We must expect crises, state and national, when such an organiza- 
 tion will be imperatively needed. Indeed, such exigencies are so 
 clearly in sight, that such an organization ought to be near at 
 hand. The enemies of the Christian Sabbath are organizing in 
 several states for the express purpose of breaking down our Sabbath 
 laws. To a united front we need to oppose a united front. If we 
 had local alliances in every community, a few days would suffice 
 to cover a state with documents and bring to bear upon legislatures 
 a pressure which would be irresistible. 
 
 Another illustration of the need of a comprehensive organization, 
 which will make possible the co-operation of our Protestant churches, 
 is the attack upon our public school system, the attempt to pervert 
 public funds to the support of sectarian schools. The Alliance 
 has abundant evidence that this is the fixed purpose of Ultramon- 
 tanism in the United States, a policy which is fraught with immi- 
 nent danger to our free institutions. 
 
 The common school is the principal digestive organ of the body 
 politic. It does more than anything else to assimilate the children 
 of the immigrant. In the common school these - children of 
 European peasants are the peers of any. They breathe a new 
 atmosphere of self-respect and independence, and are taught to 
 think. With such a training there is little danger of their being 
 made the minions of a foreign potentate. 
 
 The parochial school would build a wall around these children 
 and separate them from Americanizing influences, would make of 
 Irish children Irish men, of German children German men. Our 
 land is broad enough for a thousand million Americans, born in 
 whatever land, but not large enough for these diverse elements 
 among us which refuse to be of us. 
 
 If our organization for Christian co-operation proposed for itself 
 no other objects, the defense of cherished and endangered institu- 
 tions and the prosecution of moral reforms would amply justify its 
 existence. But high as these aims are, they are not the highest. 
 Let us not misunderstand ourselves, or mistake the true hiding of 
 our power. If this movement is to have a profound meaning; if it 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. JOSIAH STRONG. 355 
 
 is to meet the mighty emergency of the times ; if it is to do what 
 must be done, penetrate the very heart of the nation with purify- 
 ing and saving power; if it is to give direction to the new life which is 
 quickening the millions — it must lay hold of motives and of might 
 which are higher than human. It is true, the only way to elevate 
 our civilization is to elevate our citizens. The only way to save 
 institutions is to save men. But we shall not save men if we seek 
 them for the sake of our institutions and our civilization. They 
 were made for man, not man for them. And we shall fail of the 
 lower unless we aim at and achieve the higher. 
 
 Christ did not die to save our country; his agony was not for 
 institutions. He did not leave the glory which he had with the 
 Father before the world was to save magnificent business blocks 
 from the frenzy of a vandal mob. He died for every man. Our 
 government, our civilization, our cherished American institutions, 
 the legacy of the fathers — dear as they are to us— are only a part 
 of the scaffolding of that temple which God is rearing in the earth, 
 built of living stones, fashioned after the similitude of the head- 
 stone of the corner. And that shall abide. It was these eternal 
 values which inspired the life and death of the Son of God, and 
 such has been the inspiration of the great movements and the great 
 men that have regenerated society. Divine motives are accom- 
 panied with divine power. 
 
 When John Knox in travail of soul exclaimed, " Give me Scot- 
 land or I die! " it was the salvation of men for which he agonized. 
 It is when men thus enter into fullness of sympathy with the sav- 
 ing God that they are made the mighty instruments of that power 
 which in heaven and earth has been given to the Lord, Christ. 
 
CO-OPERATION IN SMALL CITIES. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV, FRANK RUSSELL, D. D., 
 OSWEGO, N. Y. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Brethren and Fathers: So far as there is 
 anything peculiar in this method of Christian labor on the part of 
 the churches, it had its spring from the association of nearly a dozen 
 pastors, somewhat through correspondence, under the leadership of a 
 gentleman and father whom I delight to name. Rev. S. A. Bronson, 
 an Episcopal clergyman of Ohio, for fifteen years the President 
 of Gambler College, a man filled with the Holy Spirit, now eighty- 
 five years of age, with natural powers almost unabated — a man 
 singularly skillful in methods of organization. Personally, I have 
 felt that I have sometimes received a great deal more credit in this 
 matter than I deserve. These ministers, in sacred assotiation with 
 this man, lamented, through weekly meetings that lasted half a 
 year, over the spectacle of the lack of Christian work in the 
 average community-. — the masses being unreached; and the ques- 
 tion arose to their minds how the difficulty could be remedied. The 
 inefficiency of revivals; the fact that of Christian work the churches 
 do some; that evangelists and revivalists must do some; that some ' 
 is relegated to other bodies; that lodges and other organizations 
 must do some of it — all this was present to their minds. They saw 
 that the churches were not doing it, or that, when they were doing 
 it here and there, spontaneously, it seemed as though they were 
 working at a disadvantage; that an isolated church was endeavor- 
 ing to work the whole field, while the whole field did not belong tO' 
 one church; and it seemed as though no church could do its own 
 work well, unless it was also assisting in doing the work of all the 
 churches in a given community. 
 
 The association of pastors, to which I have already referred, 
 made a computation of how many workers would fit a certain field 
 or territory, and discussed the question whether to organize these 
 
 356 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. F. RUSSELL. 357 
 
 -workers first, or to arrange the map of the territory first, and match 
 the workers to the work. This subject was long and carefully 
 studied, and it was thought that, if the territory were divided into 
 districts of one hundred houses each, which might lie right along 
 on one side of the street, and if these districts were subdivided 
 into "fields" having ten dwellings each, and a field assigned to 
 each worker, the greatest practicable amount of good might be 
 effected. In places where a large Catholic community was known 
 to be, the number of workers could be increased. Then, if for 
 €very one hundred church members there could be drawn ten workers 
 who would visit from house to house, with a director chosen from 
 the same one htftidred church members, who would efficiently lead 
 them, apportion to them their respective fields, and watch over 
 their reports and instruct and encourage them in their practical 
 work, it was believed that this would be the most efficient and 
 orderly plan of organization. Where there was a fraction of a hun- 
 dred church members— exceeding fifty, in addition to the full 
 hundreds — then another director and another set of ten workers 
 should be chosen from that fraction. 
 
 It was found by experience that in the choice of these ten, it 
 would be well to choose fifteen, because some are " going visiting," 
 and some " don't want to," and some " can't " — which is the mean- 
 est "cant" ever uttered. [Laughter and applause.] So it was 
 found that if we counted the workers by fifteens, instead of 
 tens, and held a third of them for a reserve force, we should 
 be ready. 
 
 These ministers were united; their hearts were together; they 
 had lamented over the matter together. They had decided not to 
 call their church a "field " again. It is not their field; it is their 
 force. The outlying community is their "field." They con- 
 cluded that they were the representatives of this force, and had 
 been appointed — called of God — to set them to work — thunder- 
 ing into their ears the admonition to go into the lanes and high- 
 ways and compel people to come in ; to say to every active member 
 of their church that it was his or her duty to go at this work. They 
 had lamented over the fact that often when they had pronounced 
 the benediction and the congregation had gone out, many a pastor 
 had gone down into his own heart, and after meditation had found 
 himself involuntarily saying: " There, I have preached the gospel 
 to the very people in this community who need it the least, while 
 
358 CO-OPERATION IN SMALL CITIES. 
 
 the people in this community who need it the most I do not preach 
 to; I cannot get at them." 
 
 So these pastors made their arrangements. They chose their 
 supervisors. They brought them together. Some of these men 
 were deacons and some were not. They were all bright men, how- 
 ever, devout men, business-men — men that we felt would per- 
 severe. They came together — thirty-two of them, with nine or 
 ten pastors. We had a pretty good meeting. We told these 
 gentlemen what we proposed to do — that we proposed to organize 
 these forces that had been given to us, and put them into the field, 
 and so work them that we would not have to blush for the fact 
 that right in the sound of our church bells were families living, into 
 whose presence the gospel had never been carried. 
 
 Some said it was impracticable. Others said, " We tried a 
 canvass here a few years ago and got papers and everything printed, 
 but it fell flat. I do not believe in it." "Well," we said, "but 
 this is not a canvass. This is a thing to be perpetuated. This is 
 not a revival." The terrible thing about a revival is, that it stops. 
 The " boxes " get hot, and the train stops. We thought we would 
 try not to get the boxes hot, but to let the train go right ahead, 
 steadily, but so that it would reach every house. 
 
 The supervisors said " Amen," and went ahead with the work. 
 It was asked what should be done with the Catholics. We said 
 we would do the best we could for them. It is a wonderful 
 population — the Catholic population in Oswego. I never saw any 
 Catholic population so unbigoted, or having priests so unbigoted. 
 It fell to my lot to visit three priests on my side of the river. Two 
 of them " did not know anything about it," and were apparently 
 serene and unruffled about the condition of things. But one of 
 them said, " If you can find some good-for-nothing Catholics that 
 nothing can be done with, send them to me, and I know that I 
 can point out to you a good many good-for-nothing Presbyterians, 
 and when I find any such I will send them to 5'ou." [Laughter.] 
 Ever since that time, when he has met me that priest has said 
 " Good morning. Father," and I have returned the compliment. 
 But he said to me, " Our church relations are such that we cannot 
 unite with you." I said "All right; then I promise you that as an 
 organization, when we have made our first canvass we will not 
 instruct our workers to continue their visits on your families; we 
 will leave you out. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. F. RUSSELL. 359 
 
 We made a canvass of the districts and fields. We knew that 
 they would shrink pretty well after the first visit. We knew pretty 
 well about what districts would shrink, and about how much. We 
 therefore arranged our map and made a list of houses. We 
 intended to have a list of ten houses to each field, and ten fields in 
 each district, and we approximated pretty closely to that. Then 
 we got some cards printed, bearing a request to a minister, whose 
 name should be supplied, to call upon the person or family that 
 should be indicated. The visitors were asked by the pastor to 
 serve in this work. I do not believe they were voted for in any 
 instance. Each church handled that matter as it saw fit, because 
 we believed tltat every denomination should keep house in 
 its own household after its own fashion. We were not ask- 
 ing one of the churches to give up anything. We were sim- 
 ply asking them to come together and capture the city for the 
 Lord. 
 
 When the names of the visitors came in from the different 
 churches, there were, I believe, thirty-five or forty from the Congre- 
 gational church, and sixty-five from the two Presbyterian 
 churches. Then we said, " Now, how shall we balance this mat- 
 ter so that not one of these denominations shall feel, or have any 
 cause to feel, that there is any other one getting the larger part of 
 this excellent loaf ? " So we put the Presbyterian cards all in one 
 basket, and put the supervisors in a row. They took out one 
 card each. Then we passed the Methodist basket, and they took 
 out one card each ; then we passed the Lutheran basket, and they 
 took out one each ; so that when we got through, each of these 
 men had ten tickets, representing various denominations, perhaps 
 two of one kind, two of another, three of a third, "and so on. 
 The thing was pretty well balanced between the denominations. 
 Then, each of the supervisors drew a district, and the workers 
 drew their respective fields. But the supervisor may appoint them', 
 in some equitable way, to their respective fields. It may be neces- 
 sary to make some changes, however. One lady looks at her field 
 and says, " Oh, that is on Orange Street, from Eleventh to Four- 
 teenth. I never could visit there, in the world." When asked 
 why, she answers, "Because they are such fine houses." Very 
 well. The supervisor very soon hears of another visitor who says, 
 "I could not go down on the Flats for anything. If I had a good 
 neighborhood I would go." "Then," the supervisor says, 
 
360 CO-OPERATION IN SMALL CITIES. 
 
 " swap." [Laughter and applause.] So that by a little adjust- 
 ment of that sort the matter is arranged. 
 
 When I called my supervisors together, I do not believe I ever 
 preached the gospel so well to any men as I did to those forty. 
 Even then, some of them shrank from the work ; but not many. 
 Some could not go into fine houses ; others could not go into the 
 houses of the poor ; others could not go into saloons. In that 
 case they were told that if they found a place, such as a saloon, 
 that they shrank from entering, they should report it to the super- 
 visor. When we got the visitors together and heard their state- 
 ments we learned much as to the revision of the plan and its 
 further extension. Their suggestions were valuable. We gave 
 them a schedule of blanks to fill, but we instructed them not to go 
 about this work perfunctorily. We told them they were not 
 census-takers, and should not go into a house and ask, " How 
 many children have you ? " and, " Where do you go to church ? " and 
 pull out their pencil and paper and put it down, but to say that 
 they called in the interest of the church work, that everybody had 
 heard about ; that the house lay in the visitor's district, and that the 
 visitor wanted to make their acquaintance. They had, however, 
 taken pains to inquire, perhaps next door, and had noted down 
 what they had heard about the family, so that they had a pretty 
 good preliminary account before they entered. They left their 
 blanks at home and filled out their report when they got back 
 from their visit. We explained to them that their first monthly 
 report would, necessarily, be defective. We hoped it would, 
 befcause we wanted them to get acquainted. Some of them 
 said, " Must I go every month — twelve times a year ? " Then they 
 would say, " I cannot do that ; I have so much work on hand now." 
 But we said, " You can give one afternoon a month to the Lord." 
 When the matter was fairly launched and the work started, there 
 were very few who said they could not attend to it. 
 
 We called monthly meetings. At these meetings we held a long 
 session. The first part of the meeting would be a meeting of the 
 executive committee composed of a couple of laymen and a couple 
 of pastors, and then a meeting of the supervisors and visitors. It 
 was thought that where there were so many (there being 303 of 
 them) they would be audience enough, and it was deemed best 
 not to have the audiences too large. We had the " question box " 
 arrangement, with which you are all familiar. That was for the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. F. RUSSELL. 361 
 
 purpose of gathering their suggestions and especially their testi- 
 monies; and their testimonies are the most wonderful I ever heard 
 in any class of evangelical work whatsoever. It is like a perpetual 
 revival. It is quite common for them to say, " When I entered 
 upon this work I thought I could never get used to it, but 
 when I got used to it I would not give it up for anything." 
 One of them said, " I would not have believed that a crippled, bed- 
 ridden woman, nearly seventy years old, who has been confined to 
 her room for three years (ever since she has lived in Oswego), 
 would tell me that not a Christian, let alone a minister, has ever 
 spoken one word to her." Another said, " If anybody had told 
 me three months ago that I would go into a person's house and 
 would be found praying with her, I should have scouted the idea; 
 but when a sick women told me that no one had spoken of relig- 
 ion to her for three or four years, and as I took her hand, she 
 ■asked, with tears in her eyes ' Can't you kneel down and pray with 
 me ?' I could not help doing it." [Applause.] We had many such 
 ■experiences. 
 
 Now let us look at the results. For one thing, prejudices were 
 broken down through personal acquaintance. I believe that this will 
 heal more disorders in a community and stop more prejudices 
 ■against the churches than anything else, and that it should be 
 more generally understood. Let people become acquainted. 
 Some people say to a pastor, " I have had nothing to do with 
 ■church matters for ten years, but my wife has become acquainted 
 with some of your church people and has got to going to your 
 church, and the children are going to your Sunday-school; and I 
 guess I'll go around to the church myself." [Laughter and 
 applause.] • 
 
 These pastors said they would not do anything, or make any 
 ■appointment that would interfere with their attending the meetings 
 of the supervisors and visitors on the night appointed for their 
 meetings, and they kept their word. 
 
 Each visitor was provided with a card to be sent to a minister, 
 asking him to call at the house indicated; that a family at that 
 house had expressed a preference for the particular church of that 
 minister. Some visitors reported that they had found it difficult to 
 •ascertain which church people had a preference for. When they 
 asked the question, they would perhaps receive the answer, " Don't 
 care for any of them." This would be followed up by the question 
 
362 CO-OPERATION IN SMALL CITIES. 
 
 " In what church were you brought up ?" To which the answer 
 would perhaps be, " My husband was a Methodist and I was brought 
 up in the Presbyterian church, but we don't care for any of them 
 now." " Is this little boy the only child you have ?" "Yes, Henry is 
 our only child." " If Henry should die, which minister would 
 you ask to officiate at his funeral ?" " Oh, I suppose we would ask 
 Dr. Stebbins." That is enough. Dr. Stebbins is requested to call 
 upon that family. Sometimes when a minister is advised that a 
 preference has thus been expressed for his church he has said, " I 
 know that family. I have passed the house many times, but I 
 never knew that they had any Presbyterian inclinations." Or a. 
 Baptist minister would say, "Why, I know that family; but I 
 never knew they were Baptists, or had any inclination that 
 way." These visitors would report monthly the number of per- 
 sons they had called upon. As a consequence of their labors^ 
 there are recruits in the Sunday-school, in the prayer-meetings and 
 in the church. Many persons will tell you, when asked how they 
 came into the qhurch, that Mrs. So-and-so had called upon her;, 
 that she had told her that she was brought up in the Sunday-school 
 of such a church, and that the visitor had said to her " Then won't 
 you come up and take some interest in the church — your old 
 church home ?" And so she had come. 
 
 By this plan there is no opportunity for a clashing between the 
 churches. A visitor, if a Methodist, would not ask a person whom 
 she found with Presbyterian leanings, to come to the Methodist 
 church. She knows that her duty is to pilot that woman to the 
 Presbyterian church ; and if a Presbyterian visitor found a woman 
 inclined to the Methodist church, the visitor would pilot her there. 
 It does not count any more, nor any less, to take a sheep out of 
 one pen and put it in another. [Laughter and applause.] What 
 we want is to get all the sheep. 
 
 This exercises a reflex influence that is wonderful. The pastors 
 observe that the visitors, although so " overworked," as they are 
 sometimes disposed to think, do not stay away from Sunday- 
 school or from church service. They are all aglow when they 
 come to the church, because they are filled with the spirit of the 
 Lord that is engendered, through his influence upon them, by the 
 work in which they are engaged. 
 
 As a consequence of this work our census is reliable, because it 
 is being revised all the time. We know just how many saloons. 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. F. RUSSELL. 363 
 
 there are, and how many children do not go to Sunday-school. 
 We know just how many young people are leaving. Ministers 
 very often say that the reports of our foreign missionaries are 
 reliable, because they live in the communities of which they write; 
 they know the habits of these communities, and they are honest 
 men, who will not misrepresent. When they write anything for 
 the public prints, we rely on them. So we know that anything 
 reported by our visitors is cojrect, because of their personal visits 
 to houses once a month for a year. We know the figures are 
 reliable. I thank you very kindly, brethren, for your close atten- 
 tion. [Applause.] 
 
 The Chairman: I am going to exercise a privilege which our 
 President extended to me privately, when he introduced me to the 
 audience. I am going to say a word, inspired by this very inter- 
 esting and very practical address to which we have just listened. 
 
 One of the rules of this Conference is, that we cannot take any 
 vote, so that if I should desire you to authorize me by a vote to 
 say something, there is no means of giving effect to the request. 
 But I know that the success of this meeting has weighed very 
 much on the minds and hearts of these brethren who have prepared 
 it for us. I wish for myself, and also for many who have expres- 
 sed the same sentiments that I feel, to express our heartiest thanks 
 to President Dodge and Secretary Strong for the efforts which they 
 made to secure sointerestingaprogramme, and for the judicious and 
 well-timed selection of topics of practical interest, and the excellent 
 selection of speakers. The papers and addresses that we have thus 
 far heard, have been of the highest possible interest, and our 
 thanks must go out in liberal measure to the gentlemen who have 
 prepared those papers and addresses. [Applause.] 
 
 I make these remarks as preliminary to the discharge of the 
 very pleasant duty assigned to me, of announcing the address 
 which is next in order, entitled " Co-operation in Large Cities " — a 
 subject of large importance, as we can all readily understand. For 
 this paper, the officers of the Conference have been fortunate in 
 securing the services of a gentleman so well fitted by experience 
 and ability as the Rev. Dr. Schauffler, of New York, whom I now 
 have the great pleasure of introducing to you. 
 
DENOMINATIONAL CO-OPERATION IN 
 LARGE CITIES. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D. D., OF 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 For four men, passing over different roads, to meet at a given 
 point, is not difficult. For four regiments to traverse four roads 
 and meet at the rendezvous, requires careful management. For 
 four armies to accomplish the same task, requires the highest de- 
 gree of skill and the rarest talent. In the same way, for a few 
 Christian workers to co-operate in aggressive effort is a simple 
 matter easy of accomplishment. A larger measure of grace and a 
 higher degree of ability is needed to unite four churches of the 
 same or of different denominations in a given work. But to unite 
 many churclies of many denominations in the work of any large • 
 city, calls for the very highest degree of unselfishness, and the 
 very wisest adaptation of means to ends. 
 
 Probably no man living has wisdom enough to lay out any plan 
 •of co-operation among denominations in large cities, that would be 
 anything more than ideal. Before it could become a reality, it 
 would have to be largely discussed and extensively modified. If 
 as the result of such discussion, any plan were eventually adopt- 
 ed, experience would soon point to needful changes. 
 
 In all discussion of our theme, one or two facts of past expe- 
 rience must ever be borne in mind. Foremost among these is 
 the fact that for more than a quarter of a century the tendency 
 has ever been toward a tightening of denominational ties. Espe- 
 cially has this been true in great cities. The very power of a 
 multitude of churches of the same polity concentrated in one city 
 has made each denomination feel that it is sufficient unto itself, 
 and need not look abroad for allies. The result has been that the 
 segregation of these bodies has gone on rapidly, until to-day none 
 
 364 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. F. SCHAUFFLEK. 365^ 
 
 ever thinks of asking what the other is doing. Each works 
 along its own lines, practically ignoring the existence of the 
 others. 
 
 There are at present, however, signs visible to the close observer 
 
 — not many indeed, nor very well defined, but none the less real 
 
 that a turn in this denominational tide is slowly setting in. The 
 problem of how to reach the masses is being discussed with an 
 eagerness that augurs well for the future. The sad fact that in 
 great cities the denominations have one and all been falling behind 
 in the work of the church, is arousing anxious attention. In this 
 case, as in so many others, to fully recognize the evil is a great 
 step towards remedying it. The very existence of a great confer- 
 ence like this, which seriously discusses the question of denomina- 
 tional co-operation, proves that leading minds are actively engaged 
 in seeking for the solution of a most difficult question. We have 
 no idea that denominational barriers are about to disappear. But 
 we do believe and devoutly pray that in that aggressive evangelis- 
 tic work, which surpasses the resources of any single religious, 
 body, a form of co-operative effort may yet be devised and carried 
 into effect. 
 
 As a feeble contribution towards this much-to-be-desired con- 
 summation, we offer the following thoughts in a tentative way. 
 
 Three methods of pursuing the work lying before the church are 
 supposable. 
 
 First. Carry the work on in purely denominational ways. This 
 has been tried for many years. That much good has been accom- 
 plished in this way, all gladly admit. That friendly rivalry even, 
 when properly restrained, has had a wholesome influence, none will 
 deny. But the fact remains that the work undone has steadily 
 increased from year to year. In great cities, the world is gaining 
 on the church. This may be explained by referring to the fact of 
 imijiigration, but explanation does not do away with the stern facts 
 of the case. Yes, in great cities, the world is gaining on the church 
 Purely denominational effort has not met the case. At least, in 
 New York no single denomination has yet developed force enough 
 to hold the ground against the adverse power of incoming godless- 
 ness. Our Episcopal friends, by reason largely of their greater 
 solidarity of government, have come the nearest to this desired end. 
 But even they would hardly claim that they had done all that the 
 case demands. If, then, we may judge of the future by the past^ 
 
366 CO-OPERATION IN LARGE CITIES. 
 
 something more than purely denominational work is imperatively 
 called for. 
 
 Second. Carry on the work in an inter-denominational way. By 
 this we mean, let the various bodies unite, and, through their repre- 
 sentatives, push the battle into the lines of the enemy. Let pres- 
 bytery and classis, association and convocation, co-operate organi- 
 cally in aggressive action. However desirable such union might 
 be, we presume all would agree that, for the present at least, it is 
 entirely impracticable. Before any such millennial consummation 
 would be reached, denominations must have learned at least the 
 lesson of territorial non-interference. This lesson is still unlearned, 
 and if learned, is unpracticed. There remains, therefore, only one 
 alternative. 
 
 Third. Carry on the work in an undenominational way. Let the 
 various bodies maintain each its own churches, as heretofore. But 
 for the attack on the seats of Satan, from which particular denom- 
 inations have so largely recoiled, let undenominational energies 
 be enlisted. While it may yet be too much to expect that presbytery 
 or association shall officially recognize any work not under its 
 exclusive jurisdiction, it is not vain to hope that individual churches 
 may largely unite their energies in union work along strictly evan- 
 gelical lines. In addition to this, there are many laymen of large 
 means and larger hearts who will respond willingly to any call for 
 help that comes from work well done. Much undenominational 
 work is already being done, which from its very nature cannot be 
 accomplished in any other way. The Young Men's and Young 
 Women's Christian Associations, the Children's Aid Society work 
 in emigration and in education, the Industrial Education Associa- 
 tion and other kindred organizations, show their means and their 
 workers from all bodies of evangelical believers. They stand as 
 proof of the fact that undenominational work is not only possible, 
 but actual. This liberal spirit may well be cherished and applied 
 to new fields of activity. The London City Mission Society shows 
 ■what can be done in the world's metropolis; and what has been so 
 grandly accomplished there, is possible in our large cities. In 
 New York an undenominational city missioti exists, in addition to 
 Methodist, Baptist and Episcopal city mission societies. That 
 ■which has there complicated the problem and caused the three 
 bodies above mentioned to withhold largely their support, has been 
 the fact that, unlike the London Society, ours has gone so far as 
 
REMARKS BY REV. R. A. EDWARDS. 367 
 
 to establish churches and administer the ordinances. The New 
 York society still receives aid from all denominations through 
 individuals, but many churches have ceased to contribute, on account 
 of the difference of opinion and of the proper ministry in the methods 
 of administering the sacraments. Yet all these churches at the 
 same time cordially acknowledge the evangelical and Christian 
 nature of the churches established by that society. Co-operatioh in 
 any large city in undenominational work, such as visitation, night 
 missions, gospel temperance meetings, neighborhood meetings, 
 should be easy, and is perfectly possible. The initiative must in 
 all such cases be taken by individual clergymen arid laymen, since, 
 as we have seen, official endorsement is not yet to be expected. 
 We go farther than this, however, and believe that with wise 
 management denominational co-operation is possible, even when 
 the work is pushed in destitute districts as far as the establishment of 
 churches in which the sacraments are administered. Under a recent 
 change in the New York society, signs are already apparent that 
 the support of laymen of various religious bodies is on the increase. 
 Churches, also, which have thus far held aloof, are slowly falling into 
 line, recognizing that the society fills a vacancy unfilled by any 
 denomination, with the growth of a sense of need, and the proof that, 
 an undenominational body can better meet that need, at least in 
 some of its phases; and with a corresponding growth of inter-denom- 
 inational confidences, we are persuaded that the ground lost would 
 be recovered. 
 
 Dr. Strong : We have all heard of the work which was inau- 
 gurated in Philadelphia a year ago — the canvass which was 
 made of a million of people. The vice-president of the organiza- 
 tion that did that work is present with us, and for five minutes will 
 talk to us about it— Rev. R. A. Edwards, of Philadelphia. 
 
 REMARKS BY REV. R. A. EDWARDS. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: You have heard in a 
 general way, no doubt, of the work in Philadelphia. It differed 
 somewhat from the work that you have heard of as done in Oswego 
 and New York, in that it struck, as in our orderly Quaker City 
 would be expected, the happy mean. We did not get things quite 
 
368 CO-OPERATION IN LARGE CITIES. 
 
 as they have them in Oswego, nor are we quite so denominational in 
 Philadelphia as they are represented to be required in New 
 York. When the work began, we found it'difficult to get our people- 
 to go out to visit, particularly in the good neighborhoods. The 
 ladies of my own congregation said, " Give us the little streets and 
 the by-ways; we do not like to go to these better-class houses with 
 their beautiful fronts." 
 
 The result was with most pastors as it was with me, that we had 
 almost to drive the " dear things " out of the lecture-room to the 
 wOrk. Their chief difficulty lay in the matter of introducing them- 
 selves, so I prepared a little card for them, which was afterwards- 
 adopted by the central committee, and used all over the city. It 
 read as follows: 
 
 (( \A/E should be glad to see some member of the family 
 for a few moments. 
 " We have called with reference to the special religious 
 services to be held by the churches of the city during the 
 second week, in January. 
 
 Visitors." 
 This was handed the servant. They were relieved of embarrass- 
 ment, and the persons called on knew they were not going to see 
 booksellers or sewing-machine agents. When they came back it. 
 was almost like the disciples returning to the Master, and saying, 
 " The spirits are subject unto us." Their faces were radiant, 
 their hearts glad and their spirits thankful. 
 
 That visiting work was the best part of the whole thing. In 
 January we held services for a week in the 300 churches in the 
 movement. I cannot, say that was a success. All the churches 
 being open, as a general thing only the regular attendants came;, 
 but there was an impetus given to the work by that week's meet- 
 ings that has been felt since in all the churches. In my own 
 church the Bishop of the Diocese came, and presided and spoke at 
 a meeting in which the Episcopal service was rendered, and 
 addresses were delivered by Rev. Dr. Danforth, of the Congrega- 
 tional church. Rev. Dr. Tiffany of the Episcopal church and others. 
 Then the elegant First Regiment Armory was opened for religious 
 services. Objection was made this morning by a very able speaker,- 
 whose essay is worthy of all praise, to these outside services — 
 
REMARKS BY REV. R. A. EDWARDS. ' 369 
 
 services outside the churches. But if he could have seen this 
 service in the First Regiment Armory building, he might not 
 have spoken as he did. The building was given to us for relig- 
 ious services for the Sunday nights in January and although 
 they were wild and stormy, more persons were present than 
 are now in this spacious edifice. I had the honor to be the 
 chaplain of the regiment at that time, and I had two of my 
 best cornet men staad by the door before service and play the 
 familiar tunes of the Gospel Hymns. After earnest preaching and 
 singing, the clergymen went down among the people and got others 
 to help them, and they spoke to individual souls and asked, " Are 
 you a Christian^" There was one woman there, who, when the 
 minister approached her, almost laughed in his face, but the ques- 
 tion " Are you a Christian ?" followed her, and when the oppor- 
 tunity came to meet him in the inquiry-room she was there. And 
 she came again and again, bringing her sister with her, and the 
 whole family were brought into the church through the medium of 
 that one service. Successful services were also held in some 
 theaters. . 
 
 It has been said here that undenominational movements cannot 
 be very well carried on. We are going to have, in January next, 
 in Philadelphia, in my own neighborhood, union meetings, con- 
 ducted by the evangelist. Rev. B. Fay Mills, in which seven 
 denominations altogether will be represented. The main service 
 will be held in the Congregational church, but we are going to 
 have meetings in other churches. We are also going to have 
 neighborhoods visited — not with books and pencils, as last year, 
 but we shall take the books of last year and see where the families 
 are that do not attend church, and have them visited. We shall 
 also distribute a tract calling attention to our special work. 
 
 The work of this year has done very great good, and is telling 
 upon our city in a number of ways. The other day there called 
 upon the mayor of Philadelphia — a man who is trying to have the 
 rum-shops closed in Philadelphia on Sunday — a delegation of busi- 
 ness-men, lawyers and clergymen to thank him for his noble ser- 
 vices in endeavoring to enforce the Sunday laws of Pennsylvania. 
 Of the six thousand saloons in Philadelphia, only one or two hun- 
 dred are now open on Sundays by a side or back entrance. So we 
 are feeling the benefits of this work of city evangelization. Men 
 have had their attention called to it, as they never have had before; 
 
370 CO-OPERATION IN LARGE CITIES. 
 
 and the Law and Order Society of Philadelphia is now reaping great 
 benefits in connection with the work of Christian evangelization. 
 
 Let us not be too hard upon " brown stone." There was a time 
 when you and I thought it was a little hard to sit by a colored man 
 in the street-cars, or go to the polls with him. But the other day 
 we read in the newspapers that the ladies of Atlanta had gone to 
 the polls with them, in the temperance cause, which is to be the 
 great cause of the future. [Applause.] You thought it strange, 
 perhaps, to be put on an equal footing with those men, but when we 
 get used to it, it does not hurt us. And so it is comparatively easy 
 for most here present, who are Christians of growth and experi- 
 ence, to visit and work for the Master. Let people living in " brown 
 stones " know more of this work of city evangelization and realize 
 its importance, and they soon will be following where others of 
 their wealthy neighbors have already led. 
 
 We had a conference in Philadelphia last month which was largely 
 attended and lasted for three days, and we are going to have a 
 meeting next week in which prominent men will read papers, etc. 
 We are then going to make preparation for a renewal of the work 
 begun in January. It may be, if God's providence opens the way, 
 and his blessing is upon us, that it will be followed up month after 
 month. We are also going to try, if possible, to introduce into the 
 neighborhood of our brown stone houses what is known as the 
 "King's Daughter" movement. I had the pleasure of meeting 
 Mrs. Bottome in regard to coming to Philadelphia. She said she 
 was coming to Washington, and, if she comes here I , bespeak for 
 her, from the ladies of this pleasant city, hearty interest and sym- 
 pathy in her work. She forms groups of ladies, ten in number, 
 who meet in their own parlors and who reach out in various direc- 
 tions and bring in others. They' consecrate themselves to the work 
 of the Master — the King's Daughters seeking to be all glorious 
 within by consecration of heart to God, and devotion of life to 
 mankind. 
 
 REV. THOS. H. MeMULLEN, ARIZONA. 
 
 The necessity for co-operation in Christian work by the churches 
 in the United States, seems to be agreed iipon, at least by this 
 Conference, if the applause that greeted the addresses upon that 
 subject was indicative of the approving judgment of delegates and 
 
REMARKS BY T. H. m'MULLEN. 371 
 
 audience. The'recognition of this necessity is the natural product of 
 the clear, adequate business-like understanding of the dangers and 
 perils threatening our Christian civilization, both without and 
 within the church, so abundantly indicated in the papers and 
 addresses upon the various special topics with which this Confer- 
 ence has been occupied the past two days. 
 
 Perils to the family, perils to the church, perils which threaten 
 this Christian nation and menace her free institutions will hence- 
 forth be better understood and more thoroughly appreciated than 
 ever before. However many and imm'inent these perils may be, the 
 _gratifying truth has been demonstrated, that the Christian re- 
 sources of our country are, if united, and consecrated to the cause 
 of Christ, abundantly adequate to arrest and overcome them. 
 
 The great practical question of the hour is that of method in 
 utilizing these Christian resources. If improved methods be not 
 •devised; if a new enthusiasm, born of the Holy Spirit, be not in- 
 fused into the life of the church, manifesting itself in hosts of de- 
 voted men and women, and the consecration to God of some of 
 the hoarded Christian wealth of this country — then we have not 
 received the blessing which I have hoped this Conference would be 
 instrumental in bringing down from the Source of all good. 
 
 The church in this country has, in the co-operative work of 
 previous years, had little of regular method, but it has, however 
 unmethodical, been slowly but surely cultivating and ripening a 
 spirit of brotherly love, toleration and Christian fellowship, and 
 gradually, but with probably sufficient rapidity, evolving that spirit 
 of unity so necessary for co-operation, which at last enables us 
 (the most of us) to look over, above and beyond creed, dogma, 
 tradition and denominationalism, and clasping each other by the 
 hand, say " My brother !" 
 
 This happy spirit of fraternity and loving Christian fellowship 
 is' due in no small degree to co-operation in Christian work, and is 
 one of the richest blessings brought from above to the church by 
 such co-operation. Time was, within the memory of most of us, 
 when co-operation even for counsel was unpopular; now method 
 of co-operation in actual, evangelical, personal work is the burnmg 
 question. Have we not, in this respect, felt the blessing of a greater 
 measure of the spirit of our Lord, so that we all will encourage 
 and engage in co-operative Christian work in cities large and small, 
 as well as in rural communities ? 
 
372 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION. 
 
 While there is so much we all honor and love, in the zeal, con- 
 secration and industry of the various bodies of Christians in this 
 land within their several denominational pales, yet might we not 
 hope for grander, more glorious results, if, as a matter of method, 
 all our Christian endeavor was inspired alone by love for God, 
 faith in Christ, and zeal for our common humanity, absolutely 
 divorced from party ties and untrammeled by denominational 
 obligations ? 
 
 It would be a sad task for the future historian to write of this, 
 century, that sin overcame righteousness because the adherents of 
 the right would not use the best methods of co-operation in Chris- 
 tian work ; and still more solemnly sad would be the verdict of the 
 critic of our era who found that such methods were not employed 
 because loyalty to sectarian parties, into which the disciples of 
 Jesus had divided themselves, forbade their use for fear denomina- 
 tional interests would be disturbed. 
 
 But remembering our Saviour's piteous prayer " for all them that 
 shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, 
 as we are one, as thou. Father, art in me and I in thee, that they 
 also may be one in us;" and reading afresh St. Paul's stern admo- 
 nition concerning " them who do make divisions," and his solemn 
 exhortation " to be of one spirit and one mind, speaking the same 
 things in the same judgment," light breaks ahead, revealing a 
 glorious vision of a reunited church under the single banner of 
 the Prince of Peace, led on by no motive but love for Christ and 
 humanity, marching up against every peril that confronts Ameri- 
 can and Christian civilization, and with a shout of triumph and 
 praise vanquishing every foe. 
 
 REV. JOSHUA RUSSELL. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The last service that 
 I attended at my home was a gathering of some four hundred 
 Christian people, representing about eight denominations scattered 
 among some eighteen churches. They were gathered with the 
 purpose of thoroughly districting a city of about thirty thousand 
 people, in which there are at least six thousand workingmen em- 
 ployed by a single great manufacturing and railroad establishment. 
 
REMARKS BY REV. J. RUSSELL. 373 
 
 As I have sat here listening to the methods that have been pro- 
 posed, I have felt that there was not very much difference between 
 thirty thousand people and a million people so far as methods of 
 work are concerned. For, there is a common human nature every- 
 where. The little city of thirty thousand or fifteen thousand 
 inhabitants must be reached by essentially the same method by 
 which the city of three hundred thousand or a million of people is 
 reached. I believe that our methods will be successful largely 
 in proportion as they start right. 
 
 Listening to Dr. Post this morning, from Beirout, as he held up 
 before us the necessity of co-operation in the foreign field on 
 account of the' gigantic forces of paganism and heathenism that 
 confront the Christian church, I was reminded of the words of Dr. 
 Burt, (sainted man !) who said that when he was in the United 
 States as a Christian minister he was glad to be known as a Pres- 
 byterian; that when he crossed to the continent of Europe and 
 faced the great divisions there, especially as the line was drawn 
 between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, he rejoiced to be 
 known as a Protestant; but when he stood in the far East, con- 
 fronting great pagan and heathen institutions, he forgot that he was 
 a Presbyterian and a Protestant, and remembered only that he 
 was a Christian. [Applause.] 
 
 But, my friends, this is not, it seems to me, after all, the true 
 source of co-operation. This is simply that to which resistance 
 brings us. I believe there is a source of co-operation which is vital — 
 not external, but vital — not simply the pressure of the atmosphere 
 that holds us to our places and holds life and the organism together, 
 but the vitalizing power which takes oxygen into the blood. I 
 'believe that our methods must start with a common life. "We are 
 one body in Christ." And no co-operation will be successful that 
 does not start with Jesus Christ as its heart and living center. 
 
 There are certain tests or criteria to which all methods of co- 
 operation must be subjected. Life is aggressive. The most aggres- 
 sive thing in all ^he universe is life, and the least aggressive is 
 death. Our methods, therefore, must be aggressive. They must 
 be intelligent, they must be scriptural: they must be flexible, so as 
 to be adapted to emergencies. They must be more than that; 
 they must be practical. It was only a little while ago that a com- 
 pany of physicians was gathered from the continent and from 
 Great Britain. In that little conclave a Parisian surgeon of great 
 
SYi METHODS OF CO-OPERATION. 
 
 eminence detailed an operation which he pronounced to be marvel- 
 ously brilliant, and when the keen, cultivated practicalism of the 
 Anglo-Saxon confronted him in the question propounded by an 
 English physician, as to how many times these " marvelously brill- 
 iant " operations had proved successful, the answer was, " Not in 
 one case!" But still it was brilliant. There are a good many 
 experiments that are brilliant but are not practical. One thing 
 more. Our methods must have the note of immediateness — an 
 eternal NOW, the monosyllable of all Christian activities. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 REV. SAM W. SMALL. 
 
 Mr. President: The subject of co-operation in efforts to reach 
 the masses in the great centers of life in this country is a subject 
 which you will appreciate as coming very close home to me. Since 
 Jesus Christ, through his great love, less than twenty-seven months 
 ago, reached down and raised me up from the depths to which sin 
 and intemperance and recklessness against God had brought me, I 
 have been giving, daily and hourly, the best service of my heart,, 
 in its prayers, and of my hands and head and feet in their labors,, 
 to try to reach and rescue men like myself, thus utterly helpless, 
 and hopeless. [Applause.] 
 
 I can say to you to-night that what I am, I am by the grace of 
 God. What I have been able to do, be it much or little, has been 
 wholly by the grace and power of Jesus Christ. And, standing^ 
 before you, I feel like saying that, if I had no other mission in 
 the world, I should feel that I was doing my fellow-men a gooci 
 to simply stand silent in their midst, as a witness to the power of 
 Christ to reach him who had gone, it seemed, down into the utter- 
 most depths of degradation through sin, and to bring him back 
 again and to make him sober and pure, and invest him with hope 
 of heaven. To reach the masses is one of the ^reat problems of 
 the day, and no one can appreciate it better than those who are 
 actively engaged in these efforts. 
 
 Before you this evening I should not open my mouth were it 
 not to say that from the experience which I have had, in co-opera- 
 tion with Rev. Sam Jones in many of the largest cities of the 
 country during the past twenty-four months, it is my conviction 
 
REMARKS BY REV. S. W. SMALL. 375 
 
 that nothing is so much needed for the freedom of the enslaved 
 
 those who are bound in the spiritual bonds of iniquity and dark- 
 ness — as that there shall be among the churches co-operation in 
 every movement, and with every man that gives signs of earnest- 
 ness and honesty. [Applause.] 
 
 We have had the pleasure of laboring in many of the cities of 
 the West, and of the South, and of the North, and have even been 
 over the borders into Canada; and I can say to you that every 
 meeting we have ever held, that had about it the elements of suc- 
 cess and that brought many to a knowledge of their sins, was 
 brought about where we had the most hearty and most unquestion- 
 ing co-operation of all denominations. We have seen this result 
 of co-operation in a most marvelous degree. We had it in a most 
 wonderful measure in the city of Chicago. Perhaps few move- 
 ments have ever so much moved that city on the subject of spirit- 
 ual light, and on the subject of the recovery of the lost, as that move- 
 ment, while it was in progress. One gentleman who has enter- 
 tained you here, Rev. Mr. McPherson, and other ministers, as well 
 as the officers of the Young Men's Christian Association in that 
 city, gave us their hearty co-operation. There was a great work 
 done there, and a great movement started, the results of which 
 only eternity can tell. 
 
 In Baltimore we had the co-operation of nearly all the denomina- 
 tions. Among them there were no persons more vigilant, active, 
 determined and earnest than some who are sitting as your col- 
 leagues in this Conference — among them some ministers of the 
 grand Episcopal church. 
 
 I can only add one word that may be of any value to you. We 
 may differ with reference to the personal characteristics of men ; 
 we may differ as to their learning or as to their logic; we may 
 have a super-sensitiveness as to the collocation of words and as to 
 the use of terms. I say to you that I had the same when I was a 
 sinner. [Laughter.] For that reason I heard very little preach- 
 ing, because I never could hear any that was exactly on my line, as 
 I would have projected it. But none of these things ought to 
 interfere with the matter of co-operation. If the difficulty is 
 merely a matter of methods, your co-operation will correct them. 
 Corrections do not come from holding off and criticising one 
 another and turning upon the preachers, however humble they may 
 be, the guns that should be turned on sin and iniquity. In all 
 
376 METHODS OF CO-OPERATION. 
 
 these matters, instead of asking "Who is he?" "Where does he 
 come from.?" "What church does he represent?" "What 
 grammar did he study?" ask, "Is he consecrated to Christ ?" 
 "Does he mean well to this community?" "Has Christ ever 
 honored his work?" If so, go in with him, heart and soul, to 
 bring souls to Christ. If you give men as they come among 
 you a hearty invitation and hearty co-operation, I say to you 
 that unless all the signs fail, you will get good results. I know 
 that there are these differences of opinion and of judgment, but I 
 know, too, that they do not count in the great estimate of God. 
 Men may call a man a crank. What difference does that make, 
 provided the crank makes the world move the length of his life 
 nearer to God ? Let men call him a crank. Let us not be dis- 
 mayed or discouraged or discomfited by ridicule. Let us put our 
 whole heart into the work. We are not measuring our work by 
 the judgments of the ungodly. We can afford to say, as was said 
 of Wendell Phillips — that " fanatic " — when he went forth to try 
 to relieve suffering and to give liberty to those who were bound: 
 
 " The insects hissed. 
 
 Till he taught them to understand, 
 That the highest crimes may be written 
 
 In the highest law of the land. 
 'Disturber' and 'Dreamer,' the Philistines cried, 
 
 While he preached an ideal creed, . 
 Till they learned that the men who had changed the world, 
 
 With the world have disagreed; 
 That the remnant is right, when the masses 
 
 Are led like sheep to the pen, 
 And the instinct of equity slumbers 
 
 Till roused by instinctive men." 
 
 And when these instinctive men come, fired by the Holy Ghost, 
 lifting aloft the cross of Christ, in which sign we conquer, flock to 
 it as loyal soldiers of Jesus Christ, the Captain of your salvation, 
 and men will follow in the train that they know means victory in 
 the end. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I wish to say one thing very solemnly to those who 
 are here as delegates. We have been listening to these addresses 
 with interest. We have studied our perils, our resources, our 
 opportunities to work for the Master. We have studied also some- 
 thing of the methods. Now before we go home we want to come 
 
REMARKS BY REV. D. L. GRAHAM. 377 
 
 very close to God, our Father, to ask what is our personal duty. 
 It is very easy for us to say, " Yes, this work is good ; " " Yes, 
 we, in our town or state, ought to co-operate; " " Yes, we hope 
 this will be taken up by somebody." The question to-night is one 
 of personal consecration — " What is my individual duty ?" "What 
 am I doing as a citizen of this country — for which Christ died — 
 to help on this great work ? " I do hope that all those who are 
 here, and who have been touched and helped, as I am sure we all 
 have been, will be willing to come to-night, so that we may have a 
 meeting of real personal consecration to the Master. Let us see 
 our duty, and then work in the light of that duty and of our con- 
 science. * 
 
 Dr. Strong: We will now hear for five minutes from the Rev. 
 Dr. Daniel L. Graham, of Philadelphia who represents the Free 
 ^Baptists of this country. 
 
 REV. DANIEL. L. GRAHAM, D. D. 
 
 Taking the sentiment of Dr. Lewis that was quoted this morn- 
 ing — some fifteen years ago I reached the conclusion that denom- 
 inations among Baptists was a wrong thing. There are about one 
 million three hundred thousand Baptists in this country known by 
 various names different from the name " Baptists." There are the 
 Free Baptists, the Disciples, the Church of God, Dunkers, etc. 
 Some twelve years ago I set myself to work to gather these into 
 one. In Philadelphia, we have succeeded in forming a co-opera- 
 tive union. We forget the names of the past. We are now called 
 " United Christians," and this work, as we learn by the newspapers, 
 is going on throughout the length and breadth of the land. I 
 simply rise to say that a work that seemed so far off a half century 
 ago is now pressing upon us, and, by the grace of God, we have 
 seen the beginning of success. I only wished to state this fact, and 
 add that I heartily indorse everything that it has been my privi- 
 lege to hear in this Conference, regarding co-operation. 
 
EVENING SESSION 
 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9. 
 
 Mr. James Wood, of the Society of Friends, conducted the 
 devotional services. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: Through all the hours and services of these three 
 days, our hearts and prayers have all been toward this evening. 
 We can talk easily of duty. What are we willing to do ? I hope 
 to-night that the tender presence of our dear Lord will be here by 
 his Spirit. I hope we can hear his yoice in that prayer for us and 
 for all who love him. "As the father hath sent me into the 
 world, even so have I sent you into the world." That commission 
 is for each one of us as individuals The dangers that a!re around 
 us, the magnificent opportunities for meeting them, and the grand 
 opening which God has given us, make us glad to live in these 
 times of his rapid working. We have been walking together with 
 hearts aflame and voices in accord. To-night we come down to 
 the close question of conscience, " What is my duty and respon- 
 sibility ? I have been here and listened to all these words of wis- 
 dom and help and encouragement and guidance; and I am going 
 home. What am I going to do in my community when I get there ? 
 What does Christ expect of me as his servant?" All things are 
 possible to us when God is helping us. No one here is so weak or 
 feeble, or has so little influence, but that, with God behind him, he 
 can change the tone and character of the whole community in 
 which he lives. May we have that spirit of consecration to-night. 
 May there be a thorough searching into our hearts as to our open- 
 ness and readiness for the Holy Spirit. Christ is waiting for us. 
 Are we ready to open our hearts and consecrate our lives to him 
 to-night ? This will be the burden of our evening service. I now 
 have great pleasure in introducing to you Rev. Dr. Gordon, of 
 Boston, who will address us on " The Individual Responsibility 
 growing out of our Perils and Opportunities." 
 
 378 
 
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY GRO^A^- 
 ING OUT OF OUR PERILS AND OP- 
 PORTUNITIES. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. A. J. GORDON, D. D., 
 OF BOSTON. 
 
 John Foster used to say, " Power to its last particle is duty." 
 It is a faithful saying and worthy of all consideration. Without 
 ability there can be no responsibility, as without a substance there 
 can be no shadow. And even with the substance there can be no 
 shadow except there be sunlight to cast it; and with ability there 
 can be no clear sense of responsibility except we stand in " the light 
 of the knowledge of the glory of God." Therefore what we need 
 is not a revival of ethics, as some are saying, but a revival of vital 
 piety. For men will not recognize their stewardship to Christ until 
 they recognize Christ's lordship over them, and it is written in 
 Scripture that " no man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 Now we are accustomed to say that responsibility is measured 
 by opportunity. That is certainly one of its measures. But there 
 are two factors necessary to constitute an opportunity, viz., the 
 ability and the occasion. There may be the ability without the 
 occasion, or there may be the occasion without the ability; in 
 either case we have but half an opportunity which cannot evoke 
 any very great responsibility. But where both are present in large 
 degree — ability and occasion — the upper and nether millstones of 
 accountability have come together, and woe be to the Christian who 
 gets between them. For if now corn is not ground into bread for 
 a suffering world, the owner of the corn will be ground; if he does 
 not give his substance he shall be in peril of losing his soul. It is 
 estimated that eight billions of dollars are treasured up in the hands 
 of Protestant Christians to-day in the United States, a sum so great 
 that it staggers our mathematics to compute it. That is one single 
 element of our ability. , Into our doors, the untaught and unre- 
 
 379 
 
380 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 generated populations of the Old World are pouring by the hun- 
 dreds of thousands every year, while through our doors we can 
 look out upon every nation of the globe as a field ripe for mission- 
 ary harvest. Here is our occasion. It is enough to startle one into 
 alarm, to think of the stupendous obligation created by the con- 
 junction of these two elements. 
 
 But I think that another measure of our responsibility is the 
 present day perils ; for those perils have their remedy in the 
 eternal provision of the gospel which we carry in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 Have you ever noticed how largely in the beginning the truths 
 of the gospel took their shape and expression from prevailing 
 errors and objections ? As in minting the coin, the gold is 
 ■driven into all the ruts and cavities of the die, so in uttering the 
 gospel Christ matched and molded it to the errors and objec- 
 tions and unbeliefs of his age. Therefore the gospel will ever 
 be found to be adapted to meet prevailing errors since it was 
 originally shaped to those errors. Thus also with Christianity as 
 a whole — it was run in the matrix of human sins; it was shaped to 
 the needs and yearnings of the human race. Therefore I know 
 the gospel is divine because it is so wondrously human; because 
 it fits into all the turns and folds of man's need. Christianity does 
 not answer the woes and sorrows and yearnings of our race, there- 
 fore, with harsh negations, but with gracious affirmations. She 
 ^ives what our restless humanity demands, only in a higher and 
 better form than they dream of. 
 
 I. If we look at the great laboring class of society, we hear 
 from some of its representatives the impatient murmurings of 
 Communism. 
 
 I know of no answer to such murmurings which is at once so 
 subduing and so potent as the divine communism which is pre- 
 sented in the New Testament. I open the first chapter of the 
 church's history and I read this rerriarkable statement concerning 
 the primitive Christians: "And all that believed were together, and 
 had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods ana 
 parted them to all as every man had need." '■^ Neither said any of 
 them that aught of the things which he possessed was his o^vn." 
 (Acts ii. 44, 45.) At once I hear the current comment on this text 
 — that it represents only a provisional and temporary condition of 
 things and that it was not intended for a permanent model. Yes I 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. J. GORDON. 381 
 
 That is the way we are apt to look upon ideals which are too high 
 for our faith or too hard for our selfishness. It is the exegesis of 
 covetousness and self-interest that has largely fixed this interpreta- 
 tion upon this text. As a matter of fact there is not the slightest 
 intimation anywhere that this feature of the primitive church was 
 intended to be transitory. And in a time when it is necessary for 
 us to call out our reserves, I am profoundly grateful for this lofty 
 and divinely appointed example of Christian communism. Of 
 course in translating this example into practical experience we 
 must take into account all the modifying texts such as " If any 
 will not work, neither shall he eat," which excommunicates from our 
 community all'the idle and shiftless; and " If any man provide not 
 for his own, especially for those of his own house, he has denied the 
 faith and is worse than an infidel," which enjoins upon us the duty 
 of making decent provision for the family. And what we shall 
 find as the resultant is this : that the church according to its primi- 
 tive ideal is the one institution in which every man's wealth is 
 under mortgage to every man's want, every man's success to every 
 man's service; so that no laborer in any part of the field should 
 lack the means for prosecuting his work so long as any fellow- 
 disciple in any other part of the field has ability to supply his lack. 
 This I believe is the divine communism on which the church was 
 founded, and by which it was intended to be perpetuated. And if 
 we could present this fresh, unsullied ideal in active operation, to 
 the discontented working classes to-day it would be the most 
 powerful answer possible to their bitter complaint of the selfishness 
 and unsympathy of men. 
 
 A thoughtful senator, speaking from wide experience, recently 
 said: " So long as it is possible for a single man to hold a hundred 
 million dollars of property, and to wield the vast power which 
 such wealth puts into his hands, so long will there be discontent 
 among the laboring classes — a discontent which will inevitably 
 find expression in the doctrines of communism and anarchy." 
 This is certainly no extravagant statement. Two centuries ago 
 quaint Thomas Fuller said: " If any suppose that society can be 
 peaceful while one half is prospered and the other half pinched, let 
 him try whether he can laugh with one side of his face while he 
 weeps with the other." I am not concerning myself now, how- 
 ever, with those outside the church, but those within. 
 
 As surely as darkness follows sunset will the alienation of the 
 
382 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 masses follow sanctimonious selfishness in the church. If a 
 Christian's motto is, " Look out for number one," then let him look 
 •out for estrangement and coldness on the part of number two. 
 The church millionaire stands at exact antipodes to the church mil- 
 lennial, and in proportion as the former flourishes, the latter will 
 be hopelessly deferred. It is not an orthodox- creed which repels 
 the masses, but an orthodox greed. Let a Christian man stand 
 forth conspicuously in any community, as honest as the law of 
 Moses, and, yet let it be seen that he is building up an immense for- 
 tune by grinding the faces of the poor, and compelling them to turn 
 the grindstone for him while he does it, and he will wean a whole- 
 generation from the gospel. The reckless " I don't care for the 
 church," which is coming up in ever-loudening chorus from the 
 poorer classes, is but the echo of the stolid and selfish " I do care 
 for myself and my own, that we may live luxuriously and fare 
 sumptuously," which is the undeniable expression of so many 
 Christian lives. We have no power to prevent men of the world 
 from heaping up colossal fortunes if they wish to do so. But our 
 gospel plainly forbids Christians to do it. "Lay not up for your- 
 selves treasures on earth," said Jesus to his disciples for all time — 
 a text which it requires no very skillful exegesis to explain ; but 
 which it would require a very ingenious exegesis to explain away. 
 It is the violation of this plain command on the part of multitudes 
 of Christians which constitutes one of the greatest perils of the 
 American church to-day. 
 
 God is very emphatic in condemning this sin, saying, "Ye have 
 robbed me in tithes and offerings, even this whole nation." And 
 this theft cannot be condoned by a post mortem restitution. God 
 has assessed tithes upon the living, not legacies upon the dead, and 
 if wealthy Christians insist that their dues to God shall be paid 
 from the skeleton fingers of a corpse instead of from the living 
 fingers of a man, they rob their giving of its greatest value. 
 
 I wonder not that President Wayland used to condemn strongly 
 what he called " a long-tailed benevolence." It is the least effect- 
 ive form of charity, for the circulation is always feeblest at the 
 extremities. If the Christian is to bless humanity with a warm 
 flesh-and-blood sympathy, let him extend to men the help of a liv- 
 ing hand, and not merely touch them with the cold tail of a residuary 
 legacy. 
 
 Dr. McGlynn told the exact truth when he recently declared 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. J. GORDON. 383 
 
 that the corruption of the church is traceable to these two things 
 — Roman gold and Roman purple. From the days of Constan- 
 tine that corruption has gone on. As fast as the church became a 
 -coffer for hoarding coveted wealth she became a coffin for enshrin- 
 ing a dead Christianity. And to-day the scandal of Christendom 
 is exhibited to our^aze in a pope claiming to be the true and only 
 vicar of Christ, living in a palace with six hundred attendants, 
 enjoying a personal income of a million and a half dollars annu- 
 ally, while upon his approaching anniversary the kings of the earth 
 are proposing to vie with each other in sending him sumptuous 
 presents, many of which will be wrung out of the grinding poverty 
 ■of their subjacts. Oh, if according to the dream of devout 
 Catholics of the Middle Ages some Papa Angelicus were to arise, 
 an angel-pope who should fling out this vast and prodigal church 
 wealth among his penniless subjects while he himself once more 
 took up the primitive commission and went forth without purse or 
 scrip, what an " anti-poverty " argument would that be for men 
 and angels to witness ! I say all this not to cast gratuitous contempt 
 on Rome, but to bring a solemn warning to America. That eight 
 billions of money hoarded up in the hands of the Protestant Chris- 
 tians of the United States constitutes a tremendous danger. I 
 cannot see how the church can keep hold of it and be able at the 
 same time to take hold of the million hands of poverty and illiter- 
 acy and spiritual destitution which are stretched out for help. 
 An eminent clergyman of England has described his visit to the 
 death-bed of a wealthy parishioner. As he knelt by his side he 
 twice requested him to give him his hand while he prayed, which 
 he strangely declined to do. But as soon as the death gasp was 
 over and the blankets were turned down, the reason was apparent. 
 It was found that both hands were holding his safe-key in their 
 death grip, so that he had no hand of fellowship to extend to the 
 minister praying for his soul. Where are the Church's hands to- 
 day, when the greatest opportunity ever brought within the reach of 
 any generation of Christians is just within her grasp ; opportunity 
 for the salvation and shaping of a new race in a new world ; and of 
 recovering the old races in the old world from their long bondage 
 to death? Is it possible that with the memory of Him "who 
 though rich, for our sakes became poor," ever before us we should 
 be found impotent to take hold of this opportunity, because we 
 could not let go of our safe-keys ? 
 
384 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 Here is a momentous question on which both the safety of the 
 church and her hold upon the masses largely depends. In 
 this world as well as in the world to come, there is an impassable 
 gulf between Dives and Lazarus. If the church deliberately 
 chooses the company of Dives, putting on purple and fine linen and 
 faring sumptuously every day, she cannot keep with Lazarus. The 
 attempt may be made to effect conciliation by tossing biscuits 
 across the gulf; or investing in second-class cars called "mission 
 churches " for those on that side who can be persuaded to ride in 
 them. But this will not do. It is not money that is wanted so 
 much as fellowship to bring the disaffected masses into sympathy 
 with the church. The word Koinonia, community, or having in 
 common, is a great characteristic word of the New Testament.. 
 The church is a heavenly commonwealth in which there is a com- 
 munity of life with the Head, and a community of goods with the 
 members, and a community of sympathy with the world. If only 
 the church could once more stand forth, transfigured in its primi- 
 tive ideal, it would be certain to repeat its primitive conquests. 
 Let the ministers of our great metropolitan churches who enjoy 
 munificent salaries begin the reform by becoming like the chief 
 apostle, poor that they may make many rich; and let the million- 
 aire pew-holders follow their lead by parting their goods to such as 
 have need, and see if the growing spirit of communism would not 
 be speedily arrested, not by the counter-irritant of ridicule, but by 
 the emollient of Christ-like example. 
 
 2. If we look to the upper and best educated classes of society 
 we are confronted with a wide-spread and growing Agnosticism. 
 And what is Agnosticism ? It is culture ending in ignorance, as the 
 highest mountain peaks are lost in clouds. I would not deride or 
 pour contempt on this manifestation, lest I might be guilty of what 
 an old writer has called " beating a cripple over the head with his 
 own crutches." A loud-mouthed and boastful infidelity may 
 awaken our contempt, but a lame faith stretching out its hands 
 towards the great mysteries of life and eternity deserves to be pitied 
 rather than pelted. And so I have delighted to quote to men of 
 this school the words of Scripture concerning our Great High 
 Priest, " Who can have compassion on the ignorant — the agnoousin, 
 the agnostics." — "Who can have compassion upon the agnostics 
 and upon those that are out of the way." 
 
 But how shall the church meet this growing sentiment without 
 the church ? 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. J. GORDON. 385 
 
 I may surprise you when I answer that at least one way to meet 
 it is with an humble Christian agnosticism. 
 
 Christianity is not a system of philosophy, but a revelation to 
 faith. The attempt to survey and map out its doctrines according 
 to our logic-charts has always proved injurious. If theologians 
 insist on being wise above what is written, the natural reaction will 
 be that neologians will be ignorant below what is written. I am a 
 most decided believer in a positive gospel ; and concerning every- 
 thing that has been revealed I consider we may be just as sure as 
 concerning the conclusions of mathematics. But not everything 
 which we desire to know has been revealed. The gospel exhibits a 
 divine reserve, as well as a divine revelation; and the same voice of 
 the great Teacher which declares concerning one realm of truth, 
 " To you it is given to know," declares concerning ' another realm, 
 " It is not for you to know." 
 
 Now while upon such questions, as that of the resurrection 
 of the body at Christ' s second coming, there is a flood of light 
 from' Scripture, upon the state and employments of the soul between 
 death and the resurrection hardly a ray of light has been thrown; 
 and while the most positive information has been vouchsafed as to 
 what God will do for the heathen who hear and believe the gospel, 
 he has nowhere exactly informed us what wilt be the ground and 
 method of his dealings with those heathen who have never heard 
 the gospel. And yet such minute survey of this terra incognita of 
 the intermediate state has been attempted; and such learned con- 
 clusions concerning this mystery of the heathen's accountability 
 have been put forth that great religious bodies have been set in 
 battle array and vast missionary interests have been imperiled upon 
 these issues. If the most learned man in the whole fraternity of 
 theologians had long ago faced these questions with a positive and 
 dogmatic " / don't knotv" he would have been worthy to be counted 
 "a prophet and more than a prophet." For it is the glory of a 
 prophet that he can handle themes and deliver messages the full 
 scope of which he does not presume to understand, (i Pet. i. 
 
 lO, II.) 
 
 Now it has been the- misfortune of Christian philosophers from 
 the beginning until now, that they have made theology "dark with 
 excess of light." The heresies which have afflicted the church 
 have almost without exception been invented by learned scholars ; 
 and the speculations which have blighted the faith of believers 
 
386 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 have generally been hatched and brooded in the theological schools. 
 The great mass of plain and practical Christians have as a rule 
 kept the faith in its purity. For they have been content to believe 
 more than they know; and to accept more than they could under- 
 stand. Reason and faith are like the two compartments of an hour 
 glass; when one is full the other is empty. Those who have been 
 determined to know all things, revealed and unrevealed, have often 
 thereby reduced their faith to the minimum, and in so doing they 
 have contracted the very faculty by which we are to apprehend 
 God. 
 
 Now what I am urging is this: that just as sumptuous wealth in 
 the hands of the church has always been a curse, begetting 
 among the common people a moral and material poverty of the 
 most abject sort; so a sumptuous learning in the schools of theol- 
 ogy has proved a curse to the faith and piety of Christians by 
 inducing a contrary extreme of deep religious poverty. This is 
 exactly what agnosticism is — the spiritual pauperism which stands 
 over against the theological and philosophical wealth with which it 
 has been attempted to endow the gospel of Christ. Paul declares 
 that in giving the gospel God " destroyed the wisdom of the wise." 
 If this wisdom of the wise gets installed in our theological chairs 
 and presides there, it will in turn destroy the gospel. It is written 
 that " when the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by 
 the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." If the 
 wisdom of this world attempts to reverse this order, and to please 
 men by the learnedness of preaching it will darken and bewilder 
 those that would believe. Here, I solemnly conceive, is one of the 
 most serious perils to which our Protestant ministry is exposed 
 to-day, that it shall be impoverished by excess of learning; that 
 instead of going forth with the humble equipment of the word of 
 God which is " the sword of the Spirit," it shall attach the first 
 importance to German learning and to Greek philosophy. Having 
 enjoyed the best advantages of the schools, for which I am devoutly 
 thankful, I am perpetually humbled to see how much better many 
 of the unschooled lay-preachers of our time can handle the Script- 
 ures than the mass of clergymen who have passed through the theo- 
 logical curriculum. I do not undervalue the seminary in saying 
 this, but beg that we should consider the point at which it is most 
 conspicuously failing. I would wish, for one, that no more chairs 
 might be endowed in our theological institutions for teaching the 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. J. GORDON. 857 
 
 relations of Christianity to science; that those courses in polemics 
 which stuff men's heads full of the history of all the heresies 
 which have afflicted the church from the beginning, might be 
 shortened more and more; and the time thus saved be given to 
 the one thing of studying the Bible and practicing with the 
 "Sword of the Spirit." 
 
 Magnificent, and far surpassing all that has gone before, is the 
 electric light; but the shadow which it casts is the darkest and 
 densest that ever yet fell upon the earth. And I believe that in 
 New England, where the light of philosophic Christianity has been 
 the most brilliant, and the intellectual lenses and reflectors for its 
 diffusion the most clear and polished, the shadows of agnosticism 
 and atheism fall most darkly. 
 
 Oh that our teachers of theology were content to know less, that 
 they might know more; that they were less endued with the spirit 
 of modern thought and more deeply baptized by that Spirit that 
 has been sent to us " that we might know the things that are freely 
 given to us of God." 
 
 The acute and eloquent Robert Hall set it forth as the sum of 
 his experience, that power in the pulpit depends neither on " refine- 
 ment of thought nor subtlety of reason." And then he added, 
 ^' You have only to draw your instructions immediately from the 
 Bible, imbibe deeply the mind of Christ, and let his doctrine inspire 
 your heart, and your situation in comparison with other speakers will 
 resemble the Angel of the Apocalypse who was seen standing in the 
 sun. ' ' 
 
 3. If we look now to the lower and criminal classes, we are con- 
 fronted with that most perilous of social perils, strong drink. The 
 loudest appeal that comes from its victims is the cry for protec- 
 tion. Not permission for this pestilence to walk in darkness and 
 this destruction to waste at noonday, but prohibition is the most 
 earnest plea. The recent instance of a gentleman who is the sub- 
 ject of an uncontrollable periodic appetite advertising in the papers 
 that he would pro-iecute to the extent of the law any one who 
 should ^ell him strong drink, is a typical case. Not only the 
 drunkards' wives and children, but the drunkards themselves by 
 thousands in their lucid moments, cry out for protection against the 
 liquid fiend. And looking at it simply as citizens, it would seem 
 clear that they should have what they ask, if Mr. Gladstone's 
 maxim is true, that it is the duty of the government to make it as 
 
388 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 easy as possible for its subjects to do right, and as difficult as pos- 
 sible for them to do wrong. 
 
 But I am speaking for the church now. And I am free to say 
 that unless she is deliberately ready to make " a covenant with 
 death and an agreement with hell," her voice ought to be unani- 
 mous for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of strong 
 drink. If that were her voice, government and legislators and 
 congressmen would not be long in hearing of it and acting accord- 
 ingly. It should be enough for the Christian that his Bible says, 
 " Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that putt est thy bot- 
 tle to him and makest him drunken." For when God says " Woe,"^ 
 no government has a right to say " Weal." If, then, we are so far 
 gone in apostacy that nation and state and city are found playing 
 the rSle of Tetzel and peddling indulgences to these man-slayers 
 and home-destroyers, whether under the name of high license or 
 low license, it is certainly time for Luther to be heard from in 
 every Christian pulpit throughout the land. To me it is as clear 
 as day what the voice of the church ought to be on this question, 
 unless she is ready to be left behind in working righteousness, to- 
 be out-moraled by the moralists and out-humanized by the humani- 
 tarians. 
 
 I tremble to think what a half-century more of legalized license 
 of the liquor traffic will do for our country if it shall be permitted. 
 And my apprehension is not merely in regard to the ruin and 
 havoc it will bring to the drunkards' homes; but especially con- 
 cerning its effects upon sober Christians, in debauching their con- 
 sciences and confusing their ethics. When I tell you that there 
 are cities in Germany where prostitution is not only licensed, but 
 made so respectable that the candidates for the harlot's profession 
 are required to bring a certificate that they have been confirmed 
 in the Established Church before their permit can be granted, you 
 can see what the principle of license leads to. If we have not 
 reached this depth of shame in our country we are on the way to it, 
 when ministers of Christ are found riding in Tetzel' s indulgence 
 wagon and lending their sanction to the auctioning off of licenses 
 to the rumsellers — " high licenses " it may be — which are as 
 respectable as the confirmation certificates just referred to, but 
 which lead just as surely to the lowest hell. 
 
 I know, of course, the defense which is made of such permis- 
 sion; " Men will sell strong drink, therefore regulate the traffic." 
 
ADDRESS BY DR. A. J. GORDON. 389 
 
 Nowhere in Christendom is the church called to lend a hand in 
 regulating wrong-doing. It is for Christians to resist evil to their 
 utmost; if then the wrong goes on, let it go branded with the trade- 
 mark of the devil, and not legalized by the revenue stamp of the 
 state. Neither is there any argument for the Christian in the re- 
 iterated statement that law must not be in advance of public senti- 
 ment; and that until the people are ready to enforce prohibition 
 the evil must have legalized permission. For does not our Scrip- 
 ture make it clear that law is the standard of right, even though it 
 may not at once establish the right; that " by the law is the knowl- 
 edge of sin," even when it is not the immediate destruction of sin ? 
 
 A great thSologian has declared in memorable words that 
 "of law no less can be acknowledged than that her seat is 
 the bosom of God." Alas for the ethics of the Christian 
 church, when she assents to the proposition that law has its seat in 
 the bosom of the people ! Which means, being interpreted, that 
 Mt. Sinai must test the public sentiment of the worshipers of the 
 golden calf on the plains below, before she presumes to put into 
 the decalogue the prohibition, " Thou shalt not make unto thee 
 any graven image." Here is a kind of Antinomianism at which 
 the church may well be alarmed, the theory which makes law 
 the thermometer of public opinion, rising or falling in its enact- 
 ments with the changing temperature of the times, instead of mak- 
 ing it the theometer — if I may coin a word — the God-measure 
 which shall indicate to the people the eternal and unchangeable 
 standard of divine righteousness. The first question in regard to 
 law is not, " What can be enforced ? " but, "What is right ? " The 
 Scriptures clearly pronounce drunkard-making and robbery and 
 prostitution to be sins. In trying to resist these evils, we may find 
 out " what the law cannot do in that it is weak through the flesh." 
 But if a prohibitory statute is not able to stop these things, it can 
 make criminals of those who practice them, and this is of 
 immense importance for enabling the innocent and uninstructed to 
 " discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that 
 serveth God and him that serveth him not." 
 
 Then let the church make answer to the needs and perils of 
 society, according to her own high principles. Let her exhibit her 
 primitive ideal of having in common, to those who are clamoring for 
 a community of goods. Let her present her own doctrine of 
 believing without knowing to those who have been blinded by over- 
 
390 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 much light, and let her hold up God's "Thou shalt not" to those 
 who need the restraints of law to help them to do good when evil 
 is present with them. 
 
 After Dr. Gordon's address, President Gates, of Rutger's College, 
 led the Conference in prayer. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: We are now going to have a series of short 
 addresses directly to the point of our evening's work. I hope all 
 our friends here will remember how easy it is to awaken in one's 
 own heart a glow of sentiment that comes from the enthusiasm of 
 numbers, and from the earnest pleadings of those who talk to us. 
 That false sentiment we do not want to-night. We want to have 
 the truth come home to us with a practical force that shall influence 
 our wills. God has something practical for each one of us to da 
 for our brethren who are suffering and dying about us. I will call 
 first on Rev. Dr. Van Dyke, of New York. 
 
 REV. H. J. VAN DYKE, D. D. 
 
 When that fiery cross which was the symbol of warfare in ancient 
 Scotland appeared shining upon the brow of some distant hill, 
 beneath the gloom of night, the question was, not who would 
 admire and applaud that flaming signal, but who would first answer 
 its summons, and spring forth to snatch the torch from the hand 
 of its bearer and carry it on its mission. 
 
 The question to-night is not, who has heard and admired these 
 words which have been spoken to us here, but who will answer to 
 the call, " The Son of God goes forth to war. Who follows in his 
 train?" Who springs to take the cross, at cost of personal sacri- 
 fice, at cost of pain, of suffering, of reproach, or whatever it may 
 be; at cost of long, weary, distasteful, monotonous labor? Who 
 springs to take the cross of the warfare of Christ and carry it forth, 
 that its call may be answered, not only here, but with a clarion 
 voice in every corner of our land. I tell you. Christian friends, 
 the practical purposes of this Alliance are not in danger from out- 
 ward opposition, but they are in danger from fat, supine, inert, 
 comfortable indifference. - 
 
 I would illustrate. We have had a good deal of talk here about 
 the political dangers of our country. I live in a village called 
 
REMARKS BY DR. H. J. VAN DYKE. 391 
 
 New York. [Laughter.] They have a street there called Fifth 
 Avenue, supposed to run through the center of the country. How 
 many people do you suppose voted at the last election, on Fifth 
 Avenue, between 40th and 68th streets — a distance of a mile and 
 a half ? Just twenty-eight ! The peril of our citizenship is in the 
 men who do not care enough for their country to vote. The peril 
 of the church is in Christians who do not care enough for Christ 
 to work for him. 
 
 Now, what do we want from this Conference ? We want what 
 the child in the Sunday-school said was wanted from the speaker 
 who got up very late. The speaker said "Well children, what 
 shall I say to yeu ? " A little boy, away back, said " Say ' Amen.' " 
 What wewant from this Conference is an "Amen." But there are 
 two kinds of Amens. There is the " Amen " of a departing con- 
 gregation, and there is the " Amen " that is like the tramp of an 
 advancing army coming forward to battle. That is the kind of 
 Amen we want from this gathering. That can be given by every 
 church. 
 
 We believe here, as has been so well said to- day, that all churches 
 are equal. All churches are equal. No, I am wrong. There is 
 one church that does not stand on the same basis as the others. 
 You may go into the High Church if you like, you may go into the 
 Free Church if you like, you may go into the Low Church if you like, 
 you may go into the Broad Church if you like, but I beg you, for 
 your own soul's sake, and for Christ's sake, do not go into the 
 Hard Church. 
 
 The Hard Church is the church which reduces theology to an 
 arithmetical calculation, and makes religion a matter of personal 
 salvation, whereas religion is a matter of doing the will of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. I see that Hard Church floating on the sea of human 
 life, dark, gloomy, repellent, and into it I see the Elder Brother of 
 the parable clambering to save his life. He goes in and shuts the 
 door behind him, and that little ark floats out over the waters. 
 No joyous song comes from those windows. There are no enter- 
 prises of rescue; there is no hand stretched forth to save the perish- 
 ing; and, unlovely, it floats among the other ships that crowd the 
 sea. I see them drawing nearer the heavenly shore, and as every 
 ship comes in, I see the throng of angels rush down to welcome it 
 with shouts and joyous songs. Some come in with cordage rent, 
 sails torn, masts shattered, and the vessel almost dismantled. To 
 
392 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 those most crcwded with wretched passengers, who have suffered 
 most from the fury of the storm, the welcome is most joyous. Now, 
 at last, the Hard Church comes into port, but the angels that come 
 to welcome her are silent. There are no songs ■ upon their lips. 
 Slowly they drag her on the shore, and the doors are opened, and 
 those amazed travelers step forth. They are saved, but saved 
 alone. Saved, but saved without the sweetest joy of heaven. They 
 have found a place, but, oh ! it is the lowest place, on the out- 
 skirts of the throng, far from the King in his beauty. There those 
 elder brothers, who cared only to save their own souls, at last 
 learn the lesson which Christ would have taught them here on 
 earth if they had heard him — that he that loveth, dwelleth in God 
 and God in him. 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I am going to ask a dear friend of a great many in 
 this room to say a few words to us. God, in his wonderful prov- 
 idence, took away from him, years ago, the sight of his earthly 
 eyes, only that his heart and brain might work the sweeter and 
 stronger and more constantly for his fellow-men. He has been 
 an inspiration and help to me, as I know he has been to a great 
 many, and I am sure he will say a word that will be of great value 
 to us. I am going to ask Mr. Thane Miller, of Cincinnati, to 
 occupy a few minutes. [Applause.] 
 
 MR. H. THANE MILLKR. 
 
 May I ask that you simply applaud in your hearts, because I 
 want to ask every man and woman in this large audience, with the 
 President's permission, to unite in a prayer of song, just as softly 
 as you can sing it. Let every one sing, from the heart, this prayer, 
 and mean it: 
 
 "Nearer, my God, to thee, 
 Nearer to thee." • 
 
 Can you sing these next lines ? 
 
 "E'en though it be a cross 
 Thai raiseth me. 
 Still all my song shall be, 
 Nearer, my God, to thee, 
 Nearer to thee." 
 
REMARKS BY DR. C. A. DICKEY. 393 
 
 The verse having been sung, Mr. Miller continued: 
 Amen. Even so may it be. Do you know, dearly beloved, 
 that Jesus, the Master of assemblies, is here in deed and in truth, at 
 this very moment ? Do the eyes of your spirits see Jesus ? Do you 
 feel his presence? Do you recognize his touch, beloved? "Do 
 you hear him say to you, as you are sitting for a few last moments 
 upon this mount of privilege, "Go ye into all the world and 
 preach the gospel ? " That is the commission that every clergy- 
 man in this house, every layman, every soul here, should hear 
 Jesus giving at this moment. And are we prepared for it ? Are 
 these things so, that we have heard in these few days, as to the 
 perils in the church, and the perils outside the church? Dear 
 friends, are the remedies we have heard suggested, true remedies ? 
 I tell you, my mind has been almost paralyzed as I have thought 
 of these things from the world's standpoint, but it has been a per- 
 fect calm when I have thought of them from God's standpoint. 
 For he is able to cure all these diseases, if you and I are willing to 
 be personally consecrated to him. The wealth will pour out, the 
 talent will come to the rescue of the ministers and others, to help 
 them. Everything needed is in God's possession. It is simply 
 that you and I ar^ not consecrated. Are we willing for the con- 
 secration to-night ? 
 
 Dear friends, I do not know where we can find any remedy in 
 any book, in any paper, in any address, equal to the remedy that 
 Jesus Christ proposes. It is simply that we should give ourselves, 
 body, soul and spirit, to him, utterly, to command us. When we 
 do that, his work will prosper in our hearts and in our communities. 
 
 REV. C. A. DICKEY, D. D. 
 
 Mr. Chairman: I can very truly say that nothing but the duty 
 that you pressed upon me would have allowed me to give consent 
 to break the silence of such a meeting as this. For it does seem 
 to me that, after all that has been said, it has come to the time 
 when the voice is very distinct to be still, and to know that the 
 Lord himself, is God. It is very difficult to bring into the utter- 
 ance of a few sentences, any words that are human that can do 
 
394 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 the work expected to be done in these few remaining moments 
 of this last interesting meeting. And yet, I know that the heart of 
 the chairman of this meeting is so deeply impressed and bowed 
 down with a desire that this meeting shall not break up until our 
 hearts have been broken up in the resolve and determination, by 
 the grace of God, and by the help of his promised Spirit, to make 
 the influence of these three days a power, felt outside of the meet- 
 ing that has been thrilled from hour to hour with these impressive 
 words and with these most impressive themes. And yet we all 
 respond to the words that he himself has uttered more than once 
 in the meeting — that unless God will give us, somehow, the grace 
 and the spirit to make this a consecration tneeting, all the other 
 meetings have been held in vain; all the other themes have been 
 discussed in vain; all else that has been done within these walls 
 will be powerless unless God will give us, in answer to our prayers 
 and united desires at this moment, his Spirit. 
 
 Ever since he asked me to speak a single word, I have been able 
 to think of but one text in the word of God, and that I have always 
 carried, as a minister of the gospel, for these twenty-five years as a 
 plea to sinners. But it seems to me that God's Spirit has put a 
 new interpretation upon it, and I thought he bade me carry it as a 
 word to saints to-night. And my one word from the word of God to 
 you, my friends, is " Quench not, quench nof,'QVENCii not the Spirit 
 of God that is so manifestly in this meeting." But it is a thought 
 enough to distract us; it is a thought that should surely distress 
 us; it is a thought that ought to drive us to our knees — the 
 thought that it is possible that we should be those who would 
 quench the spirit of this sacred conclave that has been held, and 
 this Council that is convened for Christ. 
 
 I do not fear the world. It has not power to quench the Spirit 
 of God. I do not fear all these evils and perils that have been 
 brought to our attention. They have not power to quench the 
 Spirit of God; but it seems to me that God, in his word, clearly 
 indicates that we by our indifference can quench it; that we, by 
 unbelief can quench it; that we, by unfaithfulness, can quench it. 
 My prayer with you all is that God will give us the grace not to 
 quench the Spirit of God by any indifference or by any unfaithful- 
 ness. Let us remember, my hearers, that the Israelites came once 
 to the very brink of the last river that separated them from the 
 promised land, and went back in defeat and despair, because of 
 
REMARKS BY DR. C. H. PARKHURST. 395 
 
 unbelief. Let us remember that they came until they saw the very 
 mountain-tops of the promised land, and went back because of 
 unbelief. Let us try to realize the awful fact, to-night, that it is 
 possible for us, with power enough, to take the world for Christ, 
 for I believe that a quickened church can, to-day, conquer the 
 world; and if we can only be quickened here, as we go home to 
 the many towns, neighborhoods and cities that we represent; if 
 the fire can be taken off this altar that has been kindled with such 
 beauty and fervor and power; if you and I can light our own 
 torches at this altar; and if we can go back with the fire of the 
 Spirit of God that is here; if we will only accept it — then I believe 
 that God will give that victory for which we are praying, and 
 instead of the church being harassed and impaired in its efficiency 
 by its own unbelief, and Christ kept back from his coming by our 
 hardness of heart, I believe we shall hear it, and hear it in all its. 
 glory and melody — the song that we are hoping to sing together, 
 the song that will be Christ's own song of victory. God help us 
 to repeat it. I w.anted to say but one word — let us not quench 
 the Spirit of God. [Applause.] 
 
 Mr. Dodge : With God's help we can do everything. We want 
 him very close to us to-night; and I want to ask you all to bow 
 your heads in a moment of silent prayer, after which the Rev. Dr. 
 Parkhurst, of New York, will speak to us. 
 
 REV. CHARLES H. PARKHURST, D. D. 
 
 My Dear Friends: I am not oppressed by the vastness of the 
 audience, but I am by the terrific solemnity of the hour. I am glad 
 we are come near to the close of these services. I went out at the 
 close of our afternoon addresses, simply burdened, oppressed, 
 distressed, by what had been put upon us in the way of stirring, 
 glowing and inspiring fact. I am glad we are almost through. I 
 have looked forward to this evening with dread. I know how ten- 
 derly close this service lies to the heart of our honored President, and 
 to the hearts of those who are associated with him in the manage- 
 ment of the work of this Alliance, and it seems to me that the 
 practical results and fruitage of these three days of work and con- 
 
396 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 ference together are to be determined by what transpires here this 
 evening. 
 
 We have been immensely interested. Now, what is to be the 
 outcome ? You know how easy it is to sit in the presence of an 
 orchestra, and to watch, for example, the flutist, if you please, and 
 to be intensely interested in, and to have your eyes tenaciously 
 riveted upon the wonderful digital dexterity of the flutist, and all 
 the time to suppose that your enthusiasm is the enthusiasm of an 
 appreciative musician, yet you may have not the slightest compre- 
 hension of that which the musician is doing; you are simply inter- 
 ested in, delighted with, the digital dexterity of the performer; and 
 just in the same way you and I may sit here day after day, for 
 three days or for a week and be delighted with the intellectual 
 acumen of those who have addressed us or who have read papers 
 to us, and all the time be supposing that our hearts are enlisted in 
 the glorious work of united Christian endeavor which this Alliance 
 represents. Yet our hearts may be as hard as flint, as cold as ice. 
 
 You know how it is possible that a tender, gracious gospel story 
 out of the very blessed Word itself can be told to a man whose 
 heart is hard; and the tears that roll from his eyes will be as big 
 and as glossy as those that come from the eye of the saint, and he 
 thinks all the time that it is the power of the gospel. Yet it is sim- 
 ply because nature has endowed the hard-hearted man exactly as 
 it has the tender-hearted man — with the possibility of weeping. 
 
 Now the question that comes to us, as we come close to the end 
 of the evening of this last great day of the feast, is, not how 
 interested our thoughts have been; not how we have been drawn 
 out intellectually toward those who have spoken to us and have 
 read carefully elaborated essays to us; not how many tears we 
 have shed, as the tender, touching, soul-stirring truths have been 
 presented to us; but how far has it got down into our hearts, and 
 how much of the disposition of self-sacrifice has been wrought in 
 us. That is the point. 
 
 These theories that have been presented to us, we believe, are 
 true. We have enjoyed the theories. We have delighted in the 
 idea of inter-denominational or undenominational work. . But who is 
 to do the work ? No blessings can come without sacrifice. Why, 
 the great central idea of our glorious gospel is sacrifice. The 
 •cross of Jesus Christ is the core fact of the gospel. There has 
 nothing been wrought in the world for 6,000 years that has not 
 
REMARKS BY MR. E. B. MONROE. 397 
 
 been paid for. There is no such thing as gratuity. Everything 
 has its cost-mark written in characters more or less legible. 
 Look back through the whole later history of our world. Go back 
 to the time of Christ, and you will observe that every result that 
 has been wrought has been paid for. Every uplift that has been 
 accomplished in society has been achieved by means of the shed- 
 ding of blood. We sometimes think it more or less open to criti- 
 cism — the singular sacrificial customs that characterized the old 
 Hebrew people. Yet these old rites, singular and unique as they 
 were, every one of them clustered along the straight line that binds 
 the crucified Lord with the Lamb slain, from the foundation of the 
 world. We cannot get away from the principle involved in the 
 sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If it was necessary 
 for him to die in order that the world might be uplifted, it is neces- 
 sary for you and me to expend ourselves in order that we may 
 uplift the world. 
 
 Now, the solemn question, the great practical home-question 
 that comes to you and me to-night is this; As I go back to my 
 field of work, as you go back tp your field of labor, how much are 
 you willing to sacrifice — how much are you willing to burn in order 
 that the world may be brightened ? How much are you willing to 
 be self-impoverished in order that the world may be made richer ? 
 That is the great question. That is the practical question we have 
 to answer to ourselves. There is no gain without cost. And, dear 
 friends, before God and humanity, the measure of your power and 
 of my power is according to the personal individual genius that 
 you and I have for self-sacrifice and for martyrdom. [Applause.] 
 
 Mr. Dodge: I am going to ask ^ layman who knows most 
 thoroughly what practical work is — Mr. E. B. Monroe, of Con- 
 necticut — to say a few words. 
 
 MR. E. B. MONROE. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Christians: I see the topic begins 
 with the words " Individual Responsibility." That means every 
 one of us. You, sir, have told us that the duty, the burden, the 
 responsibility, is upon us from the Master, that when we leave these 
 gatherings we should go to our homes to work. Now, I could go 
 
398 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 one step further. We should go to work for our fellow-men for 
 the glory of God ; but if, as days pass by, we find nothing com- 
 ing from our thought, if we find that our arms hang down, and 
 our feet are idle, and do not run the way of the work of the 
 Lord, then I think we have another duty — the duty to search 
 our hearts to know the reason why. One fine spring morning, 
 riding through the plain from the beautiful Lake of Tiberius, on 
 the way, by Cana of Galilee, to the home of our Saviour at 
 Nazareth, I met a Bedouin armed, his gun upon his shoulder, a 
 weapon of beauty to me, a weapon of power, as I thought. 
 Desiring to possess such an example of their fire-arms, I bought 
 the gun. The ramrod test told us, as my dragoman tried it, that 
 there was in the gun the bullet and the powder. We touched 
 the flint, we put the powder in the pan, but with all we could 
 do, the gun would not go off. We tried it with a match-lock 
 and it would not go off. By and by I took it to the gun-smith, 
 and, unscrewing at the breech, we found that an enemy of the 
 Bedouin had rammed home a solid wad before- the powder and 
 before the ball, and the fire could not go through. 
 
 Now we have the powder and the ball. We have been told 
 our peril here to-night; -we have been told our power. There is 
 the spark of the Holy Spirit always ready. Why do we not do 
 the work for which our Maker made us ? I say then, as the one 
 word only, that when we have gone home, and when we find 
 our work does not go on, let us search our hearts and find out 
 what the enemy of souls has rammed down so that the spark 
 cannot come to the powder — ^whether it be our selfishness, our 
 indolence, or our fear of Jhe face of men; whether it be our 
 lack of faith; let us find it out, or else we shall be useless in 
 the Master's service. 
 
 I believe this is the message: Individual Responsibility, the 
 work of all of us, the work of each of us, to do what we can 
 to meet the peril, to save our fellow-men; and if we do not 
 work, then we should go down upon our knees before God and 
 search our hearts, and find out what is in the way. Let us all, 
 as we go to our homes, ask ourselves, " Are we doing the work 
 for which our Master placed us here ? " 
 
 Mr. Dodge: We will ask our friend. Dr. King", of New York, to 
 say a word, following his paper of yesterday — a word of inspira- 
 tion and help to us, as we go back to our homes. 
 
REMARKS BY DR. J. M. KING. 399 
 
 REV. J. M. KING, D. D. 
 
 Mr. President: The first sessions of this Conference were 
 devoted to perils. But I have noticed in the entire progress of 
 the discussions under other divisions of the work, and even 
 down to this afternoon, when we were reaching the remedies, 
 that there has been more said about perils than about everything 
 else. 
 
 I have been .asking myself the question, as I looked out into 
 the face of this concourse to-night, "What peril?" "Why all 
 this fuss about peril?" "What does it mean?" "Is it that 
 multitudes of people are living in uncomfortable circumstances ?" 
 •"Is it that distress comes to homes that can exist but a little 
 time anyway, and then the distress ends?" 
 
 No, my brethren. This awful fact presses home to my soul 
 to-night; it is the peril of loss of soul to these people that we 
 want to reach. That is the peril. And Brother Parkhurst has 
 told us that to remove the peril cost the shedding of the pre- 
 cious blood of the only-begotten Son of God. 
 
 The late President Finney said if he could have a thousand 
 men endowed with ordinary gifts of intellect and heart, who 
 believed with all their being that the world was lost without the 
 shedding of blood, he could bring the world to the foot of the 
 cross. The thought I want to impress upon my own heart and 
 upon your hearts as you go out to-night from this wondrous 
 Convention, is the fact that we are to carry the knowledge of 
 salvation by blood to the perishing millions that are about us. 
 That is the solution of the problem. 
 
 How utterly base and insignificant are the petty differences 
 that divide us, when we stand in the presence of a dying world, 
 to tell them how to be saved ! 
 
 One night, a few years ago, in one of my pastorates in New York, 
 there came to my home a very degraded man, who said to me, 
 "Come, come quickly; there is a woman dying over here that 
 wants counsel of a priest." When I went with him, it was to one 
 of the most degraded sections of the city, where fallen women con- 
 gregate. When I reached the place, I found that couriers had been 
 
400 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 sent in different directions, and I found a- Presbyterian clergyman 
 and a Roman Catholic priest by the side of the dying woman. As 
 I entered the room, the priest said to me, "We have been talking 
 to her. You talk to her now." After putting a few simple, direct 
 questions to the dying soul, I said ,to her, " Believe on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." Almost in a moment there 
 came into her face a transfigured look. But in the hour and 
 article of death, which came in about thirty minutes from the time 
 of my entering the room, the power of her early education asserted 
 itself over her, and she thought she could not die in safety without 
 the last ministrations of the church of Rome. She called for 
 extreme unction. But the priest saw that she was dying, and that 
 whatever was to be done, had to be done quickly. He said to her, 
 " Do you believe that the blood of Jesus Christ saves you ? " "Oh,, 
 yes," she said, "I believe it." "Then," said he, "never mind, 
 about extreme unction. When you get up to the gates of glory and* 
 meet Peter, and he asks you what is your title of admission, look 
 him in the face and say, 'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth me 
 from all sin.' He will understand it, and he will let you in." 
 
 In a home of extreme poverty that I am accustomed to visit, 
 lies a blind hunchback. She does not seem to be able to do 
 much for the uplifting of a fallen race, but she writes a little poetry 
 once in a while, amd she once put a piece in my hand which, when 
 I got into the horse-car, I read. You may call it very poor 
 poetry, but I call it very good gospel, and if we can carry it in 
 our hearts and into our lives, as thebenisonof this last hour of the 
 Conference, touched by the Spirit of God, hell will wail and heaven 
 rejoice. 
 
 Hunchback as she was, she felt that she must be doing some- 
 thing for the Lord. [Applause]. What is the claim of God on 
 me, therefore, who have at least decent physical and intellectual 
 powers? The verses ran like this: 
 
 "I must be doing something for the weary and the sad, 
 I must give forth the love that makes my heart so glad ; 
 For God so fills my spirit with a joy that passeth show, 
 I fain would do his bidding in the only way I know. 
 So to suffering and to sorrow, I shall always give my heart, 
 And pray to God that every day I may some good impart, 
 Some little act of kindness, some simple word of cheer, 
 To make some drooping heart rejoice, or stay some falling tear. 
 And when I've crossed the river, and passed its waters o'er. 
 
REMARKS BY DR. L. B. BATES. 401 
 
 And feel that some will miss me upon the other shore, 
 
 My grateful spirit evei- shall bless the Lord divine, 
 
 Who crowns the humblest efforts of a human love like mine." 
 
 [Applause.] 
 Mr. Dodge: If a blind hunchback can ring out such a note 
 of cheer and gladness in work, what ought we to do ? We shall 
 now be glad to hear Rev. Dr. Bates, of Boston, for a few moments. 
 
 REV. L. B. BATES, D. D. 
 
 Mr. President: I do not know that I care about hearing 
 another word in relation to any theory. I would like action. At 
 *the back of one of our capes, four years ago this very day, about 
 lo o'clock in the morning, the signal gun was heard. The cap- 
 tain of the life-boat sounded his trumpet and his men rushed to 
 the boat. Three times they pushed her out into the surf, and 
 three times she came back. The fourth time they were success- 
 ful. They rowed out in the snow-storm, but found the sea so 
 rough that it was with great danger that they could board the 
 wreck. There were just six men and the captain in the life-boat, 
 and eight men holding on to the wreck. Twice the men in the 
 life-boat rowed around the wreck. One of the men said, " Cap- 
 tain, what shall we do ? " He said, " At the next sea I shall put 
 the boat on the wreck. Then, every man of you save a man." But 
 it was asked, " What will become of the other man — there are 
 eight of them." The captain replied, " God will take care of him." 
 At the next sea he put the boat on the raft (for the wreck had 
 become a raft), and every man pulled a man into the boat, and the 
 eighth man jumped in with them. They rowed through the 
 breakers to the shore. They put them into the Humane House 
 and carefully nursed them. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon a 
 rocket went up just about on the same shoal, and the captain 
 said, " Men, there is another wreck out there; we can't see it, but 
 there are men perishing." The men went to work once more, took 
 the boat down to the surf, and four times the boat came back. 
 Then the men straightened up and said, " Captain, back of these 
 hills are our wives and children; if we go again, to-morrow they 
 
402 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 may be widows and fatherless. "Yes," said the captain, "I- 
 understand that, but those men out there have wives and children, 
 and if we do not go, there will be other widows and fatherless chil- 
 dren." He sprang into his boat and they went out again and saved 
 fifteen men and brought them on shore, and watched them through 
 the night. The next morning, the wives and children came from back 
 of the hills, and telegrams went all over New England, announcing 
 what these men had done; and there came back telegrams from 
 the governors of two of our states, sending their congratulations 
 to those brave men for saving citizens of their states. 
 
 We have been hearing the signal gun by day, we have been see- 
 ing the rockejt by night. The church is the life-boat, and the only 
 one that has come down from glory. She struck the rocks on 
 Calvary, but the red blood of the Son of God floated her out on 
 the ocean, and wherever the signal gun is heard, if a man here and 
 a man there will respond to it, each will save his man, and in a 
 few years we shall hear no more about the perils; the signal gun 
 will be silent, there will be no more rockets, and but one strain — 
 " All hail the power of Jesyis' name." 
 
 Mr. Dodge: Our last regular talk will be from our friend. Dr. 
 Pierson, of Philadelphia, whom we have all learned to love during 
 these days. [Applause] 
 
 REV. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D. 
 
 Mr. President: Beloved: This is too solemn a moment for a 
 cheer. I have stood on supreme mounts of privilege in my life, 
 but I calmly say, in the presence of God, that this is the supreme 
 hour of my life. The early apostles had two supreme hours. One 
 was on the Mount of Transfiguration, when, in beholding the glory 
 of the Son of God, all remnants of lingering doubt as to his divin- 
 ity were removed; and the other was when the flames of fire on the 
 day of Pentecost sat on the head of each of them, and prepared 
 them to go forth to rescue a dying world. 
 
 Beloved, we talk of opportunity, responsibility, peril. There 
 is nothing so dangerous as light unused and knowledge unsancti- 
 fied. In Retzsch's " Illustrations of Faust " is one of the most 
 remarkable pictures I ever saw. The demons in the under world are 
 
REMARKS BY DR. A. T. PIERSON. 403 
 
 ■contending for the soul of Faust, and the angels in the upper world 
 are watching the struggle with intensest interest, as though they 
 would, if possible, take some part in the contest. They are plucking 
 roses from the bushes of Paradise and raining them down on the 
 heads of the demons, and when they touch the heads of the 
 demons the roses turn t6 burning, blistering coals of fire. 
 
 Brethren, do you know that we are going down from this 
 Mountain of Privilege, in every single instance to be either better 
 men or worse men. We can never be what we were before. When 
 blessings leave God's hands as roses, if they strike an ungrateful, 
 unfaithful, disloyal and selfish heart, they will turn to burning, 
 blistering coals of fire. 
 
 I have learned two lessons to-day as I have never had them 
 emphasized before. One is that I cannot get nearer to my Lord 
 without getting nearer to my brethren. And if there is anything 
 that I sorrow for to-day, except the second thing that I am going 
 to speak of in a moment, it is that I have not loved my brethren 
 of all denominations of Christ's blessed church more than I have. 
 That dear brother that spoke to us from Michigan to-day — a royal 
 man — we lived in Detroit together for several years, and his house 
 and my house touched almost, at the rear. I said to myself this 
 morning, " That shall, at the very least, henceforth be my attitude 
 with Bishop Harris, of Michigan — back to back, beating off com- 
 mon foes, never face to face opposing each other. [Applause.] 
 
 Brethren, in that noble life of Michael Angelo — Grimm's 
 biography — the author says that all the influences of the day would 
 have made Angelo and Raphael enemies ; but the fact was that 
 they both rose so high above the common level that, like mount- 
 ains otherwise solitary in a landscape, they felt themselves neces- 
 sary to each other in the high altitudes to which they rose. 
 [Applause.] So I say to you to-day, if we get up above the com- 
 mon level of worldly and secular things, we shall feel ourselves 
 necessary to each other in the exalted atmosphere of a diviner life. 
 
 The other lesson that I have learned to-day, and which I pray 
 ■God we may all learn, is that there is no such thing as real access 
 and fellowship Christward that does not put away our idols. It is 
 a humiliating thing, brethren, to make a personal confession, but 
 these are hours that we shall never have repeated in this world. 
 It is now more than thirteen years since God showed me that the 
 barrenness of my ministry was owing to the worship of idols. 
 
404 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 From my boyhood, literary culture — ambition after literary 
 applause — had been the idol of my heart. In the secrecy of my 
 closet, God said to me, "If you will give up the idol of literary 
 applause and give yourself to rescuing the perishing, I will give 
 you souls." I said, "I will do it." Within eighteen months of 
 that time God gave me more souls br6ught to Christ by my simple, 
 humble instrumentality than in eighteen years that went before. 
 
 O, brethren, brethren, brethren ! Here we have been looking 
 into the face of a glorified Christ, and , looking into the face of 
 transfigured brethren — for they have been transfigured in his 
 glory, and we have been looking into the face of a lost world — of 
 a coming judgment. What are we going to do about it ? I tell 
 you to-night, that, by God's help, I am going to be a new man in 
 Christ Jesus for the rescue of the perishing ; and my supreme 
 desire at this moment is that this Mountain of Transfiguration may 
 pass into an upper room of Pentecostal effusion, and that before 
 we leave this house to-night we may have the tongue of fire to go 
 and preach the gospel to a dying world. That is my farewell mes- 
 sage to my brethren and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 O, beloved, beloved ! Is it possible that we are to see truth as 
 we have seen it here, to see needs as we have seen them here, and 
 to see each other as we have seen each other here, and to see a 
 lost world, as we have seen a lost world here, and not go down 
 from this mountain to meet the woes and wants of humanity with 
 an anointed tongue and a transfigured life ? [Great applause.] 
 
 Mr. Dodge : We could never leave this house, where we have 
 had so much of hospitality and kindness, without hearing from 
 our dear friend, the pastor of this church, who has given so much 
 of himself to us during the last three days — the Rev. Dr. S. M. 
 Newman, our host and friend. 
 
 REV. S. M. NEWMAN, D. D. 
 
 Brethren : It is very evident that this is an hour of consecra- 
 tion. What the extent of that- consecration in each individual 
 heart may be is known only to the living God, who by his Holy 
 Spirit searches us, each one, at this moment. As brother after 
 brother has spoken, my mind has reverted to the scene at the River 
 
REMARKS BY DR. S. M. NEWMAN. 405 
 
 Jordan, where our Lord and Master was baptized. Coming down 
 to the brink of the river, he was received by John the Baptist and 
 entered upon the moment of his consecration to his Messianic 
 mission. The hour was the hour for which he had been waiting 
 all the first days of that life which he had spent in the village of 
 Nazareth. You remember the delights and the harmonies of the 
 scene — how, when the baptism was performed, it was accompanied 
 by those manifestations which made it, to the mind of the Lord 
 Jesus, a moment of supreme consciousness of the destiny to 
 which he was to come. But, as I have thought of him at that 
 moment, I have learned to think in these later years of the next 
 experience of his life. We read in the gospel according to St. Mat- 
 thew that after this baptism, with all its delights, had occurred, he 
 was led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the 
 devil. Consecration always brings an exposure, because consecra- 
 tion brings new thoughts; brings, in our cases, a tumultuous expe- 
 rience of mental graspings, of spiritual upliftings, of endeavor after 
 something different from what we have been. And I have thought, 
 as I have wondered how this great congregation would go down to 
 their homes — I have thought that possibly some of us would go 
 down to lives in which our watchfulness would be set aside because 
 we thought that the moment of consecration was everything, and 
 that, by the experiences of that moment, we were protected from 
 the dangers of the Evil One. Now, as we go back into our work, 
 it must be remembered that temptation lies close by the side of 
 consecration, and that, as in our Master's case, so in ours, what we 
 need is to have such an experience of consecration as to secure 
 the victory over the temptation which shall follow. 
 
 What are the temptations in our cases ? As we go down from 
 the Mount, it is an exposure to the old possession of notions of our 
 own ; it is an exposure to the old prejudices which come in to 
 restrict, to thwart, to set aside, the blessed influences of these last 
 three days. And unless we learn self-control in the presence of 
 statements other than our own expressions of belief, unless we can 
 hear the forms spoken which are not used by us, and believe that 
 the men who use those words and forms are doing the Master's 
 service with us, then we are not ready, in spite of the influence 
 which has been cast upon us, for the work which lies at our doors. 
 It is only through a consecration which has, in other words, a vic- 
 tory in it, that we are ready for service. 
 
406 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 Mr. President, I shall have hereafter a new fondness for this 
 platform, where I have stood so many times and undertaken to 
 speak the blessed words of the Lord Jesus Christ. It has borne 
 the tread of men who have been sanctified through suffering for 
 the work which they are doing. It has had upon it men who have 
 come across the water to preach and do the gospel work of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ in this great land of ours ; and for their pres- 
 ence, of all shades of belief. Episcopalian, Moravian, Lutheran, 
 Friend, for their presence and their words and the power of their 
 spirit, and the influence of their countenances, and the glances 
 of their eyes, I bless God to-night. 
 
 I cannot accept without protest the slight reference which 
 has been made to my part in the work of hospitality. It is true 
 I did open this church, with its, I think, comfortable association 
 and audience room, for your coming; but had it not been for my 
 brother here — my Southern Presbyterian work-fellow; had it not 
 been for my beloved Episcopalian lay friend, my Southern Meth- 
 odist fellow-pastor and my Presbyterian coadjutor upon the com- 
 mittee, I could have done nothing. So L say that in remembering 
 me, you must remember us all. It has been our delight these last 
 few days to put ourselves at your feet, because we knew the bless- 
 ing you had to leave in our midst. It has been said in my hearing 
 to-day that the country could not get together a more remarkable 
 body of men than has met in this room during the last few days, 
 for nine prolonged and blessed sessions of Christian conference. 
 I believe it. For this presence I thank you, for myself and for 
 these brethren and for the Christian people of the city. We are 
 your debtors. And we ask that the God of Abraham, the God of 
 Isaac, and the God of Jacob, who never forgets the minutest detail 
 of our lives; who never leaves out of his thoughtful and blessed 
 attention a single concern to the lowest of his children — may pre- 
 side in all your hearts, by the power of his Holy Spirit, and may 
 show unto you by that blessed Spirit the things of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. The commission has been spoken of here to-night: "Go 
 into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." There 
 should be with every preacher a supreme emphasis laid upon the 
 word "gospel" — "preach the gospel to every creature." The 
 gospel is "the things of Christ." 
 
 Beloved friends, may the. Holy Spirit make these last moments, 
 as they go away irresistibly — moments of victory, moments of con- 
 
CLOSING EXERCISES. 407 
 
 secration to duty, moments of resolution, not in human strength, 
 but in divine strength; moments of transcendent appreciation that 
 the world can be conquered only when Christians are one. May 
 God bless this Evangelical Alliance for the United States of 
 America, as it starts from this point for a career, the next years of 
 its existence, which we trust will be one of increasing light and 
 satisfaction and power to all our vast land and population. 
 
 Mr. Dodge, in closing the exercises of the Conference, said: 
 Resolutions would be very cold as coming from us to-night, but 
 we want, with all our hearts, those of us who are connected with 
 the Alliance and those of us who have come from other cities and 
 from other parts of the country, to thank our brothers here for 
 their generous hospitality, for their Christian welcome, and for all 
 the facilities and comforts they have given us. We hope and know 
 these meetings will leave a blessing here. And now as we part let 
 it be with a note of gladness and joy, that in these grand times 
 of the world's history we are called to service for the Master. 
 
 In the old days, when in castle courts and in old walled cities, 
 the leaders for the fray called to arms, not only was the shout of 
 legions heard, but every sword was drawn from its scabbard and 
 all flashed together in the light, and the bearers swore allegiance, and 
 fealty to each other and their cause, and then went out to the fight. 
 Let us, servants of so grand a Lord, go out with such a feeling. 
 
 Even in this moment of enthusiasm and deep feeling may I 
 state just what the practical thing is we want to do. We want not 
 only in our hearts to rejoice that God loves us and will save us. 
 We want, not only to hope that others will take hold and organ- 
 ize great works of charity and of good: we want to know to-night 
 what the Saviour who has redeemed us, and to whose cause we so 
 gladly pledge ourselves— has for us to do. 
 
 We have ventured to indicate repeatedly during these meetings 
 what seemed to us the simple and first thing for you to do. 
 
 You want to find out intelligently what your duty is. When 
 you go home, will you study carefully what is just about you ? 
 
 You who are pastors, and you who are leading men in your com- 
 munities, will you not meet with those who have with you a stake 
 in the community, who have with you a love for our common 
 country and a love for our risen Lord, and study what the needs are. 
 
408 CLOSING EXERCISES. 
 
 Do you know, if your experience is not different from all others, 
 that when you find out what the needs are just by your home, 
 when you find the sorrow and distress, the darkness and the ignor- 
 ance, that you go by every day, when you find how much trouble 
 and need for work there is, if you have a spark of love for Christ 
 in your heart, you need nothing more ? 
 
 God will give you intelligence and wisdom, and I believe that the 
 common sense, the earnest faith and the consecration of the church 
 of Christ will be able to meet the great emergency that is upon us. 
 Find out what it is God wishes you to do, join with your Christian 
 friends of all faiths in earnest work. Then we shall always re- 
 member with joy these days of blessed instruction, help and 
 ' inspiration ; and this will be the beginning of a work which I hope, 
 with God's blessing, will quietly go through the whole land until 
 every dark spot is uncovered, and until the example and teachings 
 of Christ our Lord are the inspiration and the life of our country. 
 
 I am going to ask our friend Mr. Thane Miller, of Cincinnati, to 
 lead us in a closing prayer, and then we shall all heartily and 
 gladly join in singing the first and last verses of the hymn begin- 
 ning, " Christ for the World, we sing." 
 
 After prayer by Mr. H. Thane Miller, the benediction was pro- 
 nounced by Rev. Dr. Pitzer, Secretary of the Washington Alliance, 
 and the Conference adjourned sitie die. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Accession of vicious classes a per- 
 il to cities 22 
 
 Acton, Lord 280 
 
 Adams, Prof. H. B 175 
 
 Address of welcome 9 
 
 Africa, cities of 19 
 
 Ages, focal ideas of 347 
 
 Agnosticism, definition of 384 
 
 " Alcohol and the State " 156 
 
 Alliances, local, plans and work 
 
 for 346 
 
 America, character of early emi- 
 grants to 8 
 
 Prosperity of 83 
 
 American Church, duty 01. . . . 4 
 
 . Opportunities 14 
 
 American Constitution does 
 
 not tolerate ultramontanism. . . . 128 
 American Home Missionary So- 
 ciety, policy of. 335 
 
 American Ideas of morality, etc., 
 
 change of 4 
 
 American labor, alleged protec- 
 tion of 69 
 
 American Society, changed con- 
 ditions of 4 
 
 Perils of 13 
 
 Anarchy, relation of to the sa- 
 loon 141 
 
 How best treated 325 
 
 Andrews, Bishop E. C, address 
 
 hy 9 
 
 Angel, Hon. J. B., remarks by. . 213 
 
 Angelo, Michael 403 
 
 ANGLO-Saxon race 272, 305 
 
 Antagonism between labor and 
 
 ■capital, remedy for .231 
 
 Antinomianism, brother of an- 
 archy 25 1 
 
 Applied Christianity, the demand 
 
 of the times 5 
 
 Christianity, the lack of .... 347 
 Arbitration Committee, work of 249 
 
 Art, a minister of impurity 188 
 
 Atheism among foreign bom 29 
 
 Atwater, Prof 260 
 
 Bacon , 92 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bailey, Archbishop 130 
 
 Baldwin, Prof. S. E., remarks by 194 
 Baldwin, Rev. S. L., remarks by 75 
 
 Baltimore, misrule in 25 
 
 Baptist Quarterly Rev 145 
 
 Bates, Rev. L. B., remarks by. . . 401 
 
 Beeches, Lyman 14 
 
 Beirout, church of 331 
 
 Hospital of 331 
 
 Benedict XIV 130 
 
 Benevolence, Christian 263-264 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop 304 
 
 Berlin, churches of 34 
 
 Ratio of churches to popula- 
 tion in loi 
 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre 53 
 
 Bernardo 49 
 
 Bible and temperance reform.. 144-145 
 Bibles, importation of, ordered by 
 
 the Continental Congress 9 
 
 Biology and Natural Theology. . 282 
 Birth rate among natives arid 
 
 foreigners contrasted 170 
 
 1 1 Bixter cry of outcast London" 1 14 
 Boerum, Wm. B., remarks by. . . 338 
 
 BossuET 126, 134 
 
 Boston, ratio of churches to pop- 
 ulation in loi 
 
 Boston Citizen 142 
 
 Bottome, Mrs 370 
 
 Bowery, the sociahsm of 68 
 
 Boyesen, Prof. H. H., address by 52 
 
 Brace, C. L 152 
 
 Bright, John 1x5 
 
 Brooks, Rev. Arthur 213 
 
 Remarks by 293 
 
 Brown, A. G 49 
 
 Brown, Wm 236 
 
 Brownson, Dr. Orestes 8, 132 
 
 Bronson, Rev. S. A 356 
 
 Broyson, Rev. J. H., remarks by. 337 
 
 Bruce, Mr 156 
 
 "Buried Seed " 193 
 
 Burke 8 
 
 Burt, Dr 373 
 
 Bushnell 269 
 
 Butler, Rev. J. G 166 
 
 409 
 
410 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Butler, N. M., remarks of 210 
 
 Buxton, Chas. .. 156 
 
 California, divorces in 169 
 
 Calvin, John 78,279 
 
 Canadians' protest against pau- 
 per immigrants 57 
 
 Canvass of cities proposed for lo- 
 cal alliances 350, 351 
 
 Difficulties of 351, 352 
 
 Capital and Labor Question, re- 
 lation of church to 214, 225 
 
 Capital a tool 239 
 
 Canterbury, Archbishop of . . . . 115 
 
 Carlyle 38, 206 
 
 Carrol, C 133 
 
 Carter, Miss, her Chinese school. 77 
 
 Caste in modern churches 118 
 
 Catholic chutch, etc. (See Ro- 
 man Catholic church) 
 
 Census, U. S 20. 27, 28 
 
 Centuries, key-notes of 82 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas. .49, 119, 121, 348 
 
 Chamberlain, Rev. L. T 166, 297 
 
 Character determines institu- 
 tions 12 
 
 Chateaubriand 53 
 
 Chicago, Bohemians in 43 
 
 Churchless districts of 33 
 
 Ratio of churches to popula- 
 tion in loi 
 
 Children of foreign parentage, 
 
 character of 62-64 
 
 China, cities of 19 
 
 Immigration from, contrasted 
 with that from Europe .... 76 
 
 Chinamen, exclusion of 75, 76 
 
 Chinese immigrants, rights of. . 79 
 Laborers, competition of . . . . 238 
 
 Persecutions of 76-80 
 
 Schools 77 
 
 Chisholm, Mr 247 
 
 Christ, as Master Builder 234 
 
 Christian Civilization, perils of. 7 
 Christianity, Ancient home of, 
 
 its present condition 328, 329 
 
 A part of common law of the 
 
 state 262 
 
 In the United States, etc ... 20 
 Relation of, to U. S. Govern- 
 ment 260-262 
 
 Christian laborers' party, need 
 
 of 247 
 
 Labor Union 235 
 
 Principles of. 236 
 
 Resources of our country . 259,277- 
 285 
 
 Christlieb, Prof. 34 
 
 Church, American duty of 4 
 
 Ancient divisions of. 329 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Church, Alienation of working- 
 men from 220, 221 
 
 A middle-class institution 219 
 
 A peace-maker 2 16- 
 
 Duty of, to the poor . . 217-220 
 
 to the rich 218 
 
 Free, of Scotland 216 
 
 Members, Wealth of, in U. S. 268 
 
 Relation to foreign-bom 185 
 
 to State 215, 
 
 Responsibilities of 98 
 
 Churches, the Casteliness of 1 18. 
 
 Costliness of 117 
 
 Estrangement from, no nov- 
 elty 109, IIO- 
 
 Evan gelical. Numerical 
 
 strength of 269, 
 
 Migration of 107 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph... 130 
 
 Cities, Growth of.' *. 3, 1^ 
 
 Of non-Christian countries.. 19- 
 Influence of civilization upon. 20 
 Growth of, in United States . . 20,42 
 
 Fifty principal 20. 
 
 Relative increase of 21 
 
 Perils of, from vicious classes. 22 
 
 Aggregations of evil in 22. 
 
 Saloons in 23, 44 
 
 Misrule in 23, 44. 
 
 Widening giilf between 
 
 masses and church in .... 25, 46 
 Heterogeneous and Hostile 
 
 elements of 26- 
 
 Romanism in 29 
 
 Influence of 39 
 
 Facilities for concealment in . 40 
 
 Bad habits of 4a 
 
 Skepticism of 41 
 
 Proportion of foreign bom 
 
 in 42 
 
 Mammon, worship of 45, 
 
 Religious exclusiveness of 
 
 rich in 46 
 
 Separation of classes in. .113-115 
 
 Overcrowding in 114. 
 
 World gaining on church in . . 365 
 Division of neglected parts 
 
 among churches, value of. . 323. 
 Large. Co-operation in. . . . 364 
 
 Small. Co-operation in 356 
 
 City mission societies 367 
 
 The, as a peril 19, 38 
 
 Civilization, American precious- 
 
 ness of 304, 305 
 
 Committed to Anglo Saxon 
 
 race . 305 
 
 Must be defended 305, 
 
 Importance of common school 
 to 307- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 411 
 
 Clark, Dr. N. G. 272 
 
 Clark, Rev. J. B., remarks by. . . 335 
 
 Clark University 164 
 
 Clarkson 217 
 
 Clement XIV 127 
 
 Cleveland, Pres., reply of. 342 
 
 CoBDEN, Richard 115 
 
 Coleridge, H. I 279 
 
 Coleridge, S. T 156 
 
 Colleges and Universities, num- 
 ber in U. S . . .■ 266 
 
 Value of Property 266 
 
 Collins, Hon. T. W 236 
 
 Colonial Charters, authority of 
 
 God recognized in 78 
 
 Colquitt, Hon. A, H., remarks 
 
 by « 124 
 
 Columbus, his hope in the discov- 
 ery of the New World 265 
 
 Combination, The era of 227 
 
 Common Schools in U. S 266,267 
 Relation of, to American Civ- 
 ilization 307 
 
 Commerce, disadvantages from, 
 
 to cities 22 
 
 Communicants, ratio of, to pop- 
 ulation in fifty cities 34 
 
 Communism of New Testament. , 380 
 Conference of Churches regard- 
 ing work in their common field. 
 
 Value of 320-323 
 
 Congregational Council, Com- 
 mittee of on inter-denominational 
 
 comity 332 
 
 Constitution of U. S., origin 
 
 and spirit of S^i 54 
 
 Does not tolerate ultramon- 
 
 tanism 128 
 
 Continental Congress an im- 
 porter of Bibles 9 
 
 "Contrat Social." -. .. . 52 
 
 " Conversion of the Roman Em- 
 pire." 16 
 
 Cook, Mr. Joseph 146 
 
 Co-operation in Christian Work 
 demanded by perils and op- 
 portunities 15 
 
 Why needed,298, 300-304, 319-328 
 
 Power of . . 300 
 
 The duty of the hour 307 
 
 Kind needed 309 
 
 Necessary to preserve the faith 312 
 to fulfill the mind of 
 
 Christ 313 
 
 Existing forms of 317 
 
 True principle of 319 
 
 Frequent and friendly consul- 
 tations necessary for 320 
 
 Between Missionary Boards . . 336 
 
 Co-operation, Methods of, in 
 
 Christian Work 345 
 
 In study of prob- 
 lems 346 
 
 In reaching entire 
 population . . . 349 
 Accomplishment of, reforms, 
 
 etc 353 
 
 Saving men 355 
 
 In small cities 356- 
 
 Methods and results in Os- 
 wego 35^363 
 
 In large cities 364. 
 
 Corporations and Trade Un- 
 ions not antagonistic 227 
 
 Corporations, public injuries 
 
 from 229. 
 
 Heartlessness of 230 
 
 Corruption, political, in cities.. 23, 24 
 Coxe, Bishop A. C, address by. 126 
 Crime, decrease of in New York 152 
 Produced by licentiousness.. 178- 
 Criminals sent from Europe to 
 
 United States 57 
 
 Proportion of foreigners 
 
 among 63 
 
 Crisis, the present social 116 
 
 Cromvi'ell 78. 
 
 Cutter, J. D., remarks of 253 
 
 D'Aguesseau 126 
 
 Danforth, Dr 368 
 
 Dante 138 
 
 " Democracy " 4, 7 
 
 Denomination Agencies, 
 
 Defects of 2 
 
 Depew 325 
 
 De Tocqueville 259, 260 
 
 Dickey, Rev. C. A., remarks by. 393 
 
 Dike, Rev. S. W., address 167 
 
 Divisions of Protestantism, 
 
 Change of public opinion re- 
 garding 309 
 
 Divorce, increase of 171 
 
 Divorce Laws 171 
 
 Divorce Reform League, Na- 
 tional 180 
 
 Divorces, percentage of to mar- 
 riages in U. S 169 
 
 Dix, Gov 156 
 
 Dodge, Pres. Wm. E. 
 
 Opening address i 
 
 Remarks by, 19S, 224,258, 297, 313, 
 
 333. 342, 376, 378, 39°. 392, 407 
 Dorchester, Rev. Daniel, ad- 
 dress by 19' 
 
 DoRNER, Dr 265 
 
 Drink, cause of poverty 143 
 
 Cost of in Massachusetts. ... 142 
 Drinking customs of this country 44 
 
412 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Duff, Dr 340 
 
 DupiN 126 
 
 DwiGHT, Dr 13, 14 
 
 DwiGHT, T. Pres 262 
 
 Kast Indian Archipelago, 
 
 Cities of. 19 
 
 Eaton, Pres. John, address by . . 199 
 
 Education, higher 266 
 
 Edwards, Rev. R. A., remarks by 367 
 Emigrants to America, char- 
 acter of early 8 
 
 English language, spread of . . . 209 
 English workingmen, alienation 
 
 of from churches 113 
 
 "Equity" 236 
 
 Erikson Leif 72 
 
 Estrangement of the masses 
 
 from the church 100, 112 
 
 Europe, increase of divorce rate in 171 
 Evangelical Alliance. 
 
 General Secretary of 2 
 
 Recent investigations of 2 
 
 Suggestions of 5 
 
 Limitations of its functions . 16, 17 
 
 Legislative committee of 135 
 
 Should meet the perils of the 
 
 family 179, 180 
 
 Telegram from council of . . . . 224 
 
 Spirit of last meeting 309 
 
 New movement of 346 
 
 Kinds of co-operation pro- 
 posed by 346 
 
 Evangelical churches, numerical 
 
 strength of . . 269 
 
 Evangelization, most profitable 
 
 methods 317, 318 
 
 Eairbairn, Dr 282 
 
 Fairbanks, Rev. Henry 109 
 
 Family, perils to 167 
 
 How constituted 167 
 
 Normal conditions of 168 
 
 Untimely dissolutions of . . . . 169 
 
 Declining fruitfiilness of. 170 
 
 Laws protecting 172, 173 
 
 Relation of to social institu- 
 tions 174 
 
 Misuse of 176 
 
 Office of in religion 177 
 
 In education and philan- 
 thropy 178 
 
 The human imit 183 
 
 The germ of social order. . . . 184 
 
 The citadel of morals 184 
 
 Families ancient 194 
 
 Number ofin U. S 168 
 
 Fenelon ; 266 
 
 Fifty principal cities of U. S 20 
 
 Foreign population in 27 
 
 Progress of Prot. church in . . 32 
 
 Ratio of Communicants to 
 
 population in 34 
 
 Filth, a cause of moral degrada- 
 tion 70 
 
 Finney Pres 399 
 
 Fisher, Prof. G. P., letter of. .. 332 
 
 Fleury 126 
 
 Forces, opposition of, illustrated 
 
 in our time 226 
 
 Foreign born in U. S. 
 
 Number of 56 
 
 Customs of, etc 28 
 
 Dangers from 60 
 
 Character of their children 
 
 62-64 
 
 Present contrasted withformer 
 
 condition 65, 66 
 
 In chief cities 27, 42, 103 
 
 In cities of Mass 28 
 
 Foreigners and crime 63 
 
 Foreign elements of population, 
 
 danger from 55 
 
 Foster, Hon. J. W. , remarks 
 
 by 344 
 
 Foster, John 37y 
 
 Foster, Rev. J. M., remarks by 78 
 
 Fourth Estate, rise of 66 
 
 France as a republic 54 
 
 Franklin, Benj 52, 209, 242 
 
 Free Church of Scotland 216 
 
 Fuller, Thos 381 
 
 Gallicanism 126 
 
 Garrison 217 
 
 Gates, Pres. M. E. address by.. 81, 390 
 General Secretary of Alliance, 
 
 character of 2 
 
 German immigration, increase of 60 
 
 Germans as immigrants 43 
 
 Germany, early emigration from 53 
 
 Gibbon , 42 
 
 Gibbons, Cardinal 247 
 
 Oilman, Pres. D. C, address by. 277 
 Gladden, Rev. Washington, ad- 
 dress by 315 
 
 Gladstone, Wm. E. ...115, 130, 279 
 
 Goethe 69 
 
 Gordon, Rev. A. J., address by 379 
 Governmental functions .... 11 
 
 Limitations of 12 
 
 Graham, Rev. D. L. remarks by 377 
 Greene, Col. J. L., address by. . 182 
 
 Grimm 403 
 
 Grotius 281, 305 
 
 Gulf between masses, and church- 
 es, a peril of cities 25 
 
 Guthrie, Dr 37 
 
 Haddock 139 
 
 Hall, Robt 387 
 
 Hallam, Arthur 279 
 
INDEX. 
 
 413 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander 154 
 
 Hamilton, SirWm 112 
 
 Hampden 78 
 
 " Hard Church " 391 
 
 H ARGRAVES, Dr. Wm 158 
 
 Harlan, Justice 166 
 
 Harper, Dr 154 
 
 Harris, Bish. Samuel, address 
 
 by 303: I, 337, 403 
 
 Hatcher, Rev. W. P. , address by 285 
 Haygood, Rev. A. G., address by 155 
 Hawley, Gen. J. R., remarks 
 
 by 258, 295 
 
 Hebrews, ancient taxes of. .... 241 
 
 Henderson 78 
 
 Heterogeneous and hostile ele- 
 ments, a Source of peril in 
 
 cities 26 
 
 Hoadley 305 
 
 Holy Spirit, power of in church 
 
 and history 274, 275 
 
 Home, the, in educational and 
 
 reformatory vi^ork, 177 
 
 Hood, Thos 256 
 
 HovEY, Dr. A 145 
 
 Hugo, Victor 40 
 
 Huntington, Rev. Father 70 
 
 Hurst, Bishop J. F., address by 100 
 Hypnotism of wealth-winning ... 84 
 
 Illiteracy 199 
 
 Political perils of 200, 201 
 
 Economic relations of. 201 
 
 A source of vice 204 
 
 Moral ; 210 
 
 Illiterates number of in U. S. 
 
 200, 202 
 
 " Illustrations of Faust". . . . 402 
 Immigration, 
 
 Address on 52 
 
 Character of early 8 
 
 Effected by Potato Famine. ... 53 
 
 Revolution in Germany 53 
 
 Extent of 54 
 
 Deterioration in quality of 
 
 55. 56,57.60,61,62 
 
 Plans for restriction of. 72, 73 
 
 Chinese 75. 77. 79 
 
 Voice of Christianity on 79 
 
 Immigrants, 
 
 Average value of 61 
 
 Pauper and Criminal 57 
 
 Character of . . . 43, 104, 205, 206 
 
 Domestic relations of. 173 
 
 Children of 63 
 
 Impurjty differently estimated in 
 
 men and in women 189 
 
 India, cities of 19 
 
 Individual responsibility, etc. . . 379 
 Individual effort needed 108 
 
 Inaugural addressed. Divine au- 
 thority recognized in 79 
 
 Institutions determined by char- 
 acter 12 
 
 Introduction, card of 368 
 
 Ireland, potato famine in 53 
 
 Irish problem, Lord Salisbury's 
 
 solution of 57 
 
 Irreligion, laws against 262 
 
 Italian immigration, increase of. 60 
 
 Deterioration of quality 60 
 
 Jackson, Lewis E 46 
 
 Japan, cities of j 9 
 
 Jay, Hon. John 8 
 
 Jefferson 52 
 
 Jesuits banished fi-om European 
 
 nations, etc 127 
 
 Johnson, Rev. Jas., remarks by 340 
 
 Jones, Rev. Sam 374 
 
 Kapp, Frederick 61 
 
 Kent, Chancellor 14 
 
 King, Rev. J. M., remarks by. 135, 399 
 
 Address by 259 
 
 Kingdoms, two of God in the 
 
 world 215 
 
 " King's Daughter " movement. . 370 
 
 Knights of Labor 67 
 
 Knights of St, John 33 1 
 
 Kno.x, John 78, 355 
 
 Konings, Prof 131 
 
 Labor, American, alleged protec- 
 tion of 69 
 
 Labor and Capital, relation of 
 
 church to 214, 225, 234 
 
 Vs. merchandise 237 
 
 Statistics of Mass 69 
 
 Laborers, competition of foreign 
 
 with native 69 
 
 Labor organizations, abuses with- 
 in 228 
 
 Injuries of to the public 229 
 
 Labor troubles, ethics of 248 
 
 Lamia, the .... 122 
 
 Latent powers in Christian cities 
 
 ofU. S 273 
 
 Lay help 109 
 
 " Laws of Ancient Hebrews " . . . . 241 
 Learning, peril from excess of. . . 386 
 
 Levi, office of the tribe of 241 
 
 ' ' Les Miserables " 40 
 
 Lewis, Prof. Tayler 3^9 
 
 L'HospiTAL 126 
 
 Liberty, statue of 276 
 
 License of the liquor traffic 
 
 148, 149, 388 
 Licentiousness a cause of crime. 178 
 
 Liquor, as medicine 146 
 
 Quantity produced in U. S . 157 
 Proportion devoted to science. 157 
 
414 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 XiIQUOR TRAFFIC. 
 
 Number employed in 158 
 
 Expenditure and waste of, 158, 250 
 iocAL Alliances, plans and work 
 
 for 346 
 
 Local option 150 
 
 Bills proposed in New York. . 150 
 
 iocKE, R. D 161, 162 
 
 London, 
 
 Homogeneousness of popula- 
 tion 26 
 
 Size of 42 
 
 Ratio of churches to popula- 
 tion Id 
 
 London City Mission 366 
 
 London Times 156 
 
 LooMis, Rev. S. L., remarks by.. 48 
 
 Quoted 42, 68, loi, 114, 221 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius 279 
 
 Low, Hon. Seth, address by 225 
 
 Lowell, James Russell 4, 7 
 
 Luther 279 
 
 Lynch, Archbishop 130 
 
 MacArthur, Rev. R. S., address 
 
 by 138 
 
 MACAULAV...I 74 
 
 Machines compete with labor 238 
 
 Machinery improved, social in- 
 fluence of 231 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry S 174 
 
 MAMMON-worship 84 
 
 Margaret, mother of criminals . 204 
 Marriages, number of in U. S... 168 
 Martin, Mr., his escape from mob 
 
 at Foochow 76 
 
 Massachusetts, foreign bom in 
 
 cities of 28 
 
 Birth-rate in 170 
 
 Early schools of 266 
 
 Labor statistics of 69 
 
 Matlack, Rev. R. C, remarks 
 
 by 93 
 
 Maurice, F. D 279-280 
 
 Mayflower, constitution drafted 
 
 in 78 
 
 McAll, Rev. R. R 49, 120 
 
 McCosH, Pres. Jas., address by. . 
 
 214, 255, 312 
 
 McGlynn 382 
 
 McMullen, Rev. T. H., remarks 
 
 by 370 
 
 McPherson, Rev. S. J. , address by 38 
 
 Merivale 15 
 
 Melville 78 
 
 Methods of co-operation in Chris- 
 tian work 345 
 
 Mills, Rev. B. Fay 369 
 
 Miller, H. Thane, remarks by.. 
 
 392, 408 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Milton 273 
 
 Ministers, need of more 294 
 
 Misrule, a peril to cities 23 
 
 Misuse of wealth Si 
 
 Missions of American churches. . 
 
 270-271 
 " Modern Cities". .42, 68, loi, 221 
 
 Modern life, luxury of 97 
 
 Mohammedanism, democracy of. 121 
 
 Mommsen 179 
 
 Monroe, E. B., remarks by 397 
 
 Moore, Bishop 14 
 
 Mormon polygamy 172 
 
 Morris, Rev. G. K., remarks by. 252 
 
 Moses, sociology of 240-241 
 
 Muhlenberg, Dr 97 
 
 MuLFORD, Dr 17s 
 
 National Divorce Reform League 180 
 
 Naturalization Laws 53, 128 
 
 Negroes, intemperance among... 164 
 Influence of saloons over. . . . 164 
 
 Religious condition of 287 
 
 Newman, Cardinal 279 
 
 Newman, Rev. S. M., remarks 
 
 by 405 
 
 Newspapers. 
 
 Sources of impurity 188 
 
 Number and circulation in 
 
 U. S 273 
 
 Sunday 26, 102 
 
 New York City. 
 
 Lack of churches in . . 33, 34, 46, 59 
 Ratio of churches to popula- 
 tion lOI 
 
 Political corruption of 59 
 
 Foreign population of.. 59, .60, 62 
 Foreigners among criminals. . 63 
 
 Decrease of crime in .... 152 
 
 New York City mission 317 
 
 New Testament, communism of. . . 380 
 
 Nice, Council of 16 
 
 NoN-church-goers, number of 100 
 
 Novel, modern, a minister of 
 
 impurity 187 
 
 Oberlin 348 
 
 Opening address i 
 
 Opportunities of the American 
 
 church .... 14 
 
 Opposition of forces, illustrated 
 
 in our time 226 
 
 Optimism of Americans 57, $8 
 
 Organic articles of ,1881 133 
 
 Oswego, Methods and results of 
 
 co'-operation in 356, 363 
 
 " Our Country " 56, 154, 283 
 
 Pallisy 103 
 
 Parish system, value of. 119 
 
 Parkhurst, Rev. C. H., remarks 
 of 395,399 
 
INDEX. 
 
 415 
 
 Parochial school, makes foreign- 
 ers 354 
 
 Paul et Virginia 53 
 
 Peabody 208 
 
 Peel, Robt., death of his daugh- 
 ter 116 
 
 Perils threatening Christian civ- 
 ilization 298 
 
 Personal Liberty League 143 
 
 Pew System ... 119 
 
 Philadelphia, houses of infamy 
 
 in 197 
 
 Ratio of churches to popula- 
 tion 197 
 
 Religious work in 368-370 
 
 Phillips, Wendell 376 
 
 PlERSON, Rev. A.' G., address by.. 112 
 
 Remarks by 401 
 
 PiTHOU, Perfi 126 
 
 Pitman, Judge U. C 156 
 
 Pius IX. banished Jesuits 127 
 
 Political life, deterioration of 58, 59 
 
 Politics and religion 125 
 
 Politics and the liquor power. 160-162 
 
 " Poor Richard's Almanac " 242 
 
 Pope, Wealth of the 383 
 
 Population, Growth of 3 
 
 Post, Rev. Geo. E., address by.. 328 
 
 Potato famine of Ireland 53 
 
 Potter, Bishop 8 
 
 Powell, G. M., remarks by . . . . 248 
 Pressley, Rev. M. W., remarks 
 
 by .... 196 
 
 President of U. S., power of 225 
 
 Pressens6, De 272 
 
 Press, freedom of 272 
 
 Printing, discovery of 227 
 
 Professors in colleges, etc., 
 
 Number of 266 
 
 " Profit-sharing " 249 
 
 Progress, signs of 14 
 
 Prohibition movement, influ- 
 ence on German citizens 66 
 
 Promises, Divine, regarding prog- 
 ress of church 273 
 
 Prostitution, licensed . *.. . 388 
 Proudfit, Rev. A. M., remarks 
 
 by 25s 
 
 Proverbs, book of its sociology.. 242 
 Psychology, value of recent in- 
 vestigations in 281 
 
 Public schools, impure influences 
 
 of 186 
 
 Pym 78 
 
 Railroad companies, proper laws 
 
 for 254 
 
 Raphael 403 
 
 Registration lists, manipula- 
 tion of 24 
 
 • PAGE 
 
 Reinke, Bishop A. A 124 
 
 Religion and politics 125 
 
 And socialism 68 
 
 Rhodes, Rev. M 258 
 
 Rogers, E. H., address by 234 
 
 Roman Catholic church, edifices of 31 
 
 In Baltimore 31 
 
 In Cincinnati 31 
 
 In Chicago 32 
 
 In chief cities , . . .' 30 
 
 Strength of, in U. S 270 
 
 Charitable institutions of .. . 311 
 
 A friend of social purity 194 
 
 Attitude of Alliance toward. . 195 
 Ecclesiastics of, their civil 
 
 rights 129 
 
 Roman Catholics and divorces. . . 171 
 In America, true position of.. 134 
 Roman Catholic population; how 
 
 dealt with in Oswego 358 
 
 Rome, ancient, compared with 
 
 modern cities 42 
 
 Divided Protestantism of. . . 335 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore 24 
 
 Rosseau 52 
 
 RusKiN 47> 231 
 
 Russell, Rev. Frank, address 
 
 by 349, 356 
 
 Russell, Rev. Joshua, remarks by 372 
 Religious, edifices, sittings in 
 
 U. S 207 
 
 Exclusiveness of rich 46 
 
 Needs of U. S. ; cost of .sup- 
 
 plyin); 207 
 
 Newspapers, number and cir- 
 culation of, in U. S 273 
 
 Republicans necessary to repub- 
 
 hcs ... 54 
 
 Resources, Christian, of U. S. . . . 299 
 
 Retzch 402 
 
 Sabbath desecration 105 
 
 Responsibility of foreignersjfor 43 
 Sabbath, the, a civil institution.. 268 
 
 And labor movement 250 
 
 Threatened 354 
 
 Saloon, the 44,138,155 
 
 Wealth and power of 139 
 
 Viciousness of 140, 163 
 
 Relation to anarchy 141 
 
 Degrading influence 142 
 
 Costliness 142 
 
 Causes poverty 143 
 
 An instrument of destruction. .144 
 Total extinction of a proper 
 
 aim 147 
 
 In business 157 
 
 In politics 160, 162 
 
 In the Southern States 164 
 
 A minister of impurity 191 
 
416 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Saloons, imperil cities 23 
 
 Number of, in New York. . . . 141 
 
 In U. S 144 
 
 Separate masses from gospel.. 106 
 
 Salisbury, Lord 57 
 
 Scandinavian immigrants, char- 
 acter of 74 
 
 Schade, Rev. A. C, remarks by. 246 
 SCHAFF, Rev. Philip, remarks by. 333 
 SCHAUFFLER, Rev. A. F., address 
 
 by 364 
 
 School, common, importance of, 
 
 to American civilization.... 307 
 Our best defense against ul- 
 
 tramontanism 308 
 
 .Attacks upon, by ultramon- 
 
 tanism 308 
 
 School-book, ultramontane... 131 
 School population, enrollment of, 
 
 in the South 209 
 
 Statistics 208 
 
 Schools, American public, inju- 
 rious influences of. 186 
 
 Defects of . . .. 71 
 
 Religious, in U. S 207 
 
 Estimated cost of, for U. S . . . 208 
 Science, handmaid of religion .... 283 
 Sectarianism, evils of . . . 311, 335 
 
 In ancient church 329 
 
 In mission fields 330 
 
 Seelye, Pres 347 
 
 Seminariks, Theological, number 
 
 of in United States 266 
 
 Number of students in 266 
 
 Shairp, Principal 41 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of. .. 113, 115, 121 
 
 SiDNlJY 78 
 
 Sin, the great danger 308 
 
 Slater 208 
 
 Slums, genesis of 114, 115 
 
 Small, Rev. Sam W. , remarks by 374 
 
 Smith, Adam 239 
 
 Smith, Goldwin 263 
 
 Smithsonian Institution 278 
 
 Socialistic organizations, spirit of 246 
 Socialists, assault on religion .... 68 
 
 Social vice, the 182 
 
 Society, American, perils of . . . 13 
 Southern States, population of 286 
 
 Religious statistics of 286 
 
 Christian sentiment of. . 286, 288 
 
 Christian homes of 289 
 
 . Educational institutions of . 290 
 
 Christian young men of 290 
 
 Spirit of Christian unity in . . 291 
 
 Sparrow, English 61 
 
 Speculation , 87 
 
 State Constitutions, authority of 
 
 God recognized in 78 
 
 St. Louis, fraudulent elections in. 24 
 Ratio' of churches to popula- 
 tion in ... loi 
 
 " Strikes, Lockouts and Arbitra- 
 tion" 249. 
 
 Strikes, prevention of 247 
 
 Strong, Mr. Justice 51 
 
 Strong, Rev. Josiah, address by. 345 
 quoted 39, 56, 63, 116, 154, 221, 
 269, 308, 309, 321. 
 Storrs, Rev. R. S., paper by 298, 264 
 SuMMiiR work of churches adjusted 
 
 by co-operation 324 
 
 Sumner, Charles 243 
 
 Sunday newspapers 26, 102 
 
 Swift, Gen 142 
 
 Taylor, Isaac 284 
 
 Temperance in politics 146 
 
 In schools 146 
 
 " Tenement House Morality "... 70 
 
 Tenement, the, character of 40 
 
 Tennessee, saloon in politics 
 
 of 162 
 
 Terence 121 
 
 Theater and Economies of Labor 250 
 
 " The Labor Balance " 236 
 
 " The Land and the Book "... 241 
 ' ' The Song of the Shirt "... . 256 
 Thomas, J. Carey, remarks by .... 193 
 
 Thompson, JJr. W. M 241 
 
 Tiffany, Rev. O. H 297, 368 
 
 Toledo, liquor power in . . 161 
 
 Total abstinence commended .... 144 
 Trade Unions and Corporations 
 
 not antagonistic 227 
 
 " True Manliness " 193 
 
 " Two-wine theory" 145 
 
 Tyler, Dr 51 
 
 ' ' Ultramont anism " 1 26 
 
 History and meaning of the 
 
 word .... 126, 127 
 
 Equivalent to Jesuitism 127 
 
 Intolerable to American Con- 
 stitution 12S 
 
 Encroachment of, on Ameri- 
 
 can'liberties 129, 130 
 
 Danger from 136 
 
 Best Defense against 308 
 
 Assaults the public school 308, 354 
 Undenominational work, value 
 
 of 366 
 
 UNDER-consumption 249 
 
 United States, 
 
 Growth of cities in 20 
 
 Possible population of. 268 
 
 Wealth of 268 
 
 Revised Statutes of 12S 
 
 Unity, Christian, proposed meth- 
 ods of promoting 316, 317 
 
INDEX. 
 
 417 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Universities, distinguished from 
 
 colleges 278 
 
 Children of the church 279 
 
 Influence over religious teach- 
 ers 280 
 
 In religious movement 281 
 
 Study of Scriptures in 281 
 
 Errors in work of; how elim- 
 inated 282 
 
 Van Dyke, Rev. H. J 344 
 
 Remarks by -390 
 
 Van Slyke, Rev. J. G 297 
 
 Vicious classes, accession of, a 
 
 peril to cities 22 
 
 Visitation, pastoral 222 
 
 Voluntary support of Christian 
 
 institutions* 265 
 
 Voluntary system, defects of . . . 3 
 
 Wage Competition 237, 238 
 
 "Wage Fund" 239 
 
 Wages, peculiarities of 237 
 
 Walker, George W 115 
 
 Warburton 305 
 
 War of rebellion, cftst of 80 
 
 Washington Conference, call for iii 
 
 Reasons for holding 2 
 
 Importance of 116 
 
 Wayland, Pres 382 
 
 W. C. T. U 249 
 
 Wealth, Misuse of 81- 
 
 Is power 81 
 
 A social force 81 
 
 Obligation connected with ... 82 
 Amount and increase of in 
 
 U. S 83, 94, 268 
 
 Passionate pursuit of 84 
 
 Hypnotizing power of . ... 85, 86 
 
 How misused 87 
 
 Subject to the law of service . 88 
 
 Wealth, Right use of 89, 90 
 
 Noblest use for 91 
 
 Demanded by the crisis of our 
 
 times 92 
 
 Amount of in hands of Chris- 
 tians in U. S 268, 379 
 
 Wealthy men, conceptions of 
 
 stewardship among 94-9^ 
 
 Webster, Daniel 78, H2 
 
 Wesley, Chas 279 
 
 Wesley, John 279 
 
 White Cross League, pledge of. . 192 
 
 WiLBERFORCE 217 
 
 WiLLARD, Miss Frances C 197 
 
 Williams, Rev. J. W. M., remarks 
 
 by 19s 
 
 William the Silent 78 
 
 Wines, Dr. E. C 241 
 
 WiNDOM, Hon. Wm 142, 144 
 
 Womanhood, utilized energies of 
 
 in U. S 271 
 
 Woman's work 108 
 
 Wood, Jas 378 
 
 WoOLSEY, Dr 262 
 
 Wordsworth 41 
 
 Working - class, unsatisfactory 
 
 position of 219 
 
 Homes of 220 
 
 Churchlessness of 221 
 
 Peculiarities of in U. S 222 
 
 Working-men. Alienation of from 
 
 churches 113 
 
 English alienation from 
 
 ' churches 113 
 
 Unrest among 4 
 
 Wright, CD 250 
 
 Wycliffe 279 
 
 Xavier, Francis 279 
 
 Zola 188 
 
CALL OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 
 
 The Conference lately held in Washington made a deep impression on the 
 country. It was remarkable for its numbers, character and earnestness. 
 
 There was an extended discussion of the dangers to our national Ufe. The great 
 resources of the Christian church — so largely unused — were fully considered. 
 All present felt that new and remarkable opportunities existed for bringing the 
 practical teachings of Christ to bear upon the social problems of the times. 
 
 It was shown that active co-operation of all Christians was absolutely needed 
 and easily possible, not only without interfering with the work of any church, 
 ' but distinctly helping forward that of each. A deep impression of personal re- 
 sponsibility grew out of these discussions, and the members left with the convic- 
 tion that wise and prompt action should be taken. 
 
 We, therefore, venture to suggest that in each city, town and neighborhood, 
 ' pastors of all denominations, and such laymen as they may select, be invited to 
 meet and carefully study the needs and problems of their special locality. This 
 may include such organized visitation as shall give a certain knowledge of those 
 who do not attend religious services, and as far as possible the reasons which 
 keep them away. It is especially desirable to devise plans for winning the con- 
 fidence of working people. Such visitation can readily include a knowledge of 
 the sick and deserving poor, the number and location of saloons and places of 
 ill repute, and all the evil influences that affect the moral character of the com- 
 munity. Such study will draw Christians into closer sympathy, and will so reveal 
 needs as to stimulate earnest and united action, by which alone the desired work 
 can be effectively done. 
 
 As the value of the work will depend chiefly on its continuance, we suggest 
 that permanent organizations be formed, and in order that they may be mutually 
 helpful and that they may co-operate in the prosecution of moral reforms and in 
 the defense of cherished and endangered institutions, we invite such organizations 
 to become branches of the National Alliance. 
 
 Documents will be furnished on application to the General Secretary. 
 
 W. E. DODGE, President. 
 JOSIAH STRONG, Secretary. 
 John Jay, Chairman Ex. Com. 
 
 42 BIBLE HOUSE. 
 
 FORMS OF BEQUEST AND DEVISE. 
 
 BEQUEST OF MONEY. 
 
 I give and bequeath to the " Evangelical Alliance for the United States of 
 America," organized in 1885 as a corporation under the Statutes of the State of 
 
 New York, the sum of dollars (or so many shares of 
 
 stock). 
 
 DEVISE OF LAND. 
 
 If the gift is of land the form may be as follows: 
 
 I give and devise to the ' ' Evangelical Alliance for the United States of 
 America," organized in 1885 as a corporation under the Statutes of the State of 
 
 New York, all that certain house and lot (or piece of land) situate 
 
 , etc. 
 
 N. B. — The legal title of this corporation is : 
 
 The " Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America. " 
 
CHRISTIANS AT WORK. 
 
 The proceedings of the eight Says' Convention of Christian Worfters in the 
 United States and Canada, which was held in the Broadway Tabernacle, New 
 York City, September 21-28, 1887, will come from the press about March I. It 
 is a book of nearly two hmidred and fifty pages, and contains the addresses, 
 papers, etc., a stenographic report of the questions and answers and short ad- 
 dresses which followed the papers,' making a vivid pen-picture of the Convention. 
 It contains more than fifty papers and addresses of considerable length, in addi- 
 tion to the large number of short addresses, and questions and answers on prac- 
 tical topics relating to Christian work among the classes not reached by the 
 ordinary ministrations of the church. It will be a real help and inspiration to 
 any Christian who is interested in Christian work among the masses. 
 
 A few of the subjects are: " Ministerial Training, its Defects and Remedies," 
 Rev. John H. Denison, D. D., pastor WiUiams College Church. [2] "What can 
 the Ordinary Church do to Win the Masses," Rev. D. A. Reed, pastor Hope 
 Church, and President of the School for Christian Workers, Springfield, Mass. 
 [3] " The McAU Mission Methods and their Application to American Cities," 
 Rev. A. F. Beard, D. D., Rev. Josiah Strong, D. D. [4] "The Ideal Church 
 for the People," Rev. A. T. Pierson, D. D. [5] " The Boys' Club," Rev. John 
 C. Collins, New flaven. Conn. [6] "The Training of Theological Students in 
 Mission Work," Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D. D., New York City. [7] "The 
 Housing of the Poor in Relation to Christian Work," Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D. 
 [8] "Thejuvenile Penny Savings Bank for Mission Sunday-schools." [9] "Open- 
 air Meetings," Rev. K. A. Torrey, Minneapolis, Minn. [10] "Do we need 
 Churches or Missions, or both, in City Evangelization," Rev. Graham Taylor, 
 pastor Fourth Congregational Church, Hartford, Conn. [11] "Our Foreign 
 Mission Field at Home : Its Extent and Importance ; The DiflSculty and Prac- 
 ticability of Working It," Rev. H. A. Schauffler, D. D. [12] " The New York 
 Working Girls' Associations," Miss Grace H. Dodge, New York City. [13] 'How 
 to Conduct a Gospel Meeting," Rev. S. P. Holcombe, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Those desiring copies shoulJ order at once, as only a few hundred remain of 
 the first edition of twenty -five hundred copies. Single copies 60 cents. Two 
 copies for one dollar. Address, 
 
 Rev. JOHN C. COLLINS, Sec'y, 
 
 New Haven, Conn. 
 
 JUST PUBLISHED. 
 
 BE STRONG TO HOPE. 
 
 By REV. FRANK S. CHILD. 
 
 i6mo. Cloth, 75 Cents. 
 
 A book of comfort and good cheer for the weary, 
 burdened and depressed: it is strong and helpful, bring- 
 ing tranquillity to the troubled and quickening the dis- 
 couraged into the very mood and power of victory. 
 
 . " God bless this hearty, wholesome, cheery book." — William Elliot Griffis, D. D, 
 
 " I find it better medicine than that the doctor brought me." — Prof. Edward North, L. H. D. 
 *' In this little book the religious philosophy of trouble is strongly conceived and scripturally 
 
 applied By clear tbinkmg and easy illustration the author has made a useful book." — 
 
 N. y. Evangelist. 
 
 •• We heartily commend the volume for its purpose, its style and its tactung."—Illustrattd 
 
 Christian Weekly. 
 
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A Book for all who love God and Country. 
 
 The lOOth Thousand of "that Wonderful Book," 
 
 OUR COUNTRY: 
 
 ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE AND ITS PRESEN7 
 CRISIS. 
 
 By Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D. 
 
 With an Introduction by Prof. AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 229.PAeES. 12mo, PAPER, 2S CENTS. CLOTH, BO CENTS. 
 
 This is probably the most powerful work that has come from the 
 American press during the present century. With a brilliantly 
 marshalled array of unimpeachable facts, it portrays America's 
 material, social and religious condition and probable trend, points 
 out the perils which threaten her future, and, with wonderful clear- 
 ness and tremendous force, both shows the means of averting 
 danger and inspires enthusiasm for the task. The wide circulation 
 of this book has given an extraordinary impulse to the work of 
 holding America for the highest, political, social and religious, 
 national life. The following notices show what the press and the 
 pulpit think of it : 
 
 " Strong, careful, thoughtful." — Boston Journal. 
 
 *' Stirring, startling, convincing." — The Guardian. 
 
 " Ought to reach a circulation of a million." — N. Y. Evangelist. 
 
 " Ought to be read by every person in this country." — St. Louis Central 
 Baptist. 
 
 " Words are feeble in the recommendation of this book. It enlightens, 
 stirs, quickens, and makes the blood boil with patriotic zeal and Christian 
 vehemence," — Pulpit Treasury. 
 
 " ' Our Country' is the one book next to the Bible that I want them (the 
 people) to read." — Rev. A. T. Reed, Plainville, Conn. 
 
 " It thrills me through and through." — Rev. T. O. Douglas. 
 
 " The best book of its sort ever published." — Rev. Wayland Hoyt, D.D. 
 
 " It seems to me the most important book which has been issued in this 
 decade." — Rev. Charles F. Deems, D.D. 
 
 " This volume is a storehouse of information. We recall no recent volume 
 which has so much packed into it of value for the minister, the editor, the 
 teacher, and in general, the patriot, as this little volume on ' Our Country.' " 
 — Christian Union. 
 
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EVANGELISTIC WORK 
 
 In Principle and Practice. 
 
 By Rev. Arthur. T. Pierson, D.D.. 
 12mo. Cloth, $1.26. 
 
 A new book on that method which has been one of the most 
 potent means of building up the Christian Church — Evangelization. 
 It is written by an acknowledged master of the subject. 
 
 " This book is preeminently a book for the hour. It is at once 
 a fruit of the reviving evangelistic spirit and a welcome and powerful 
 force for the promotion of that spirit among the disciples of Christ. 
 All who are working for Christ, especially all ministers and teachers, 
 ought to procure and study this book." — Christian Statesman. 
 
 " More truth, perhaps, than can be found in any single uninspired 
 book, concerning 'evangelistic work,' is included in a voluine with 
 this title, by Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. Truths of the first imp"ortance 
 are spoken concerning methods and the treatment of the poor. After 
 having set down the principle as he believes it to be, the author has 
 enforced it in sketches of Whiteiield, Howard, Finney, Chalmers, 
 Moody, Bliss, and others. The book ought to have a wide circulation ; 
 it cannot but be productive of the greatest good. " — Hartford Post. 
 
 "Every phase of the question is discussed, the methods and 
 merits of different evangelists are set forth, apostolic and modem 
 preaching compared, and the causes of failure and success in minis- 
 terial work portrayed. It Is a book to be studied by all church 
 workers. " — Indianapolis Journal. 
 
 " The book is dedicated to Dwight L. Moody, and would seem 
 to contain nearly all that can be said in the way of information, 
 instruction, example, or exhortation upon the subject." 
 
 — Baptist Standard. 
 
 " The chapters on the great Evangelists are delightfully written 
 in a lofty and devout spirit." — Indianapolis News. 
 
 " His views will be accepted as of orthodox authority." 
 
 — Washington Critic. 
 
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MODERN CITIES 
 
 AND THEIR RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS, * 
 
 By Rev. SAMUEL LANE LOOMIS. 
 
 With an Introduction by Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D. 
 
 12mo, Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 " For all who love their fellow-men, this book will be a stimulus 
 and a guide. It presents clearly and forcibly the increasingly difficult 
 problem of the modem city, and will prove to be a storehouse of in- 
 formation to all workers in this field. Like ' Our Country, ' by Rev. 
 Dr. Strong, this book is one of the most marked books of the current 
 year. Every worker in city or country should read and inwardly 
 digest this suggestive volume." — Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D,D. 
 
 " This volume is in point and substance the companion volume to 
 be read in connection with ' Our Country,' by the Rev. Josiah Strong, 
 D.D. The author's sociology is sound. The chapters on methods 
 of philanthropic endeavor, and especially those which show what has 
 been done, are wise and helpful. We commend the book heartily to 
 our readers." — The Independent. , 
 
 " This is an important little volume, and a fit companion to place 
 side by side with the remarkable work by Dr. Strong, entitled ' Our 
 Country.' It is a book which will startle many and convince all who 
 read it. It ought to go into every household in the land." — Christian 
 at Work. 
 
 " The author has reached more nearly to the. true cause of the 
 difficulty, and the proper manner to remove it, than any other author 
 with whose works we are acquainted." — Hartford Post. 
 
 "A striking and sensible book — one of the clearest and best things 
 ever written on this live and stirring current question." — Michigan 
 Christian Advocate. 
 
 "A timely book, well written, sensible, practical. A book that, 
 deserves reading. " — Springfield Union, 
 
 " The present volume is directly to the point, wise, timely, and 
 earnest. " — Christian Sanctuary. 
 
 " This is a very able book." — Baltimore Sun. 
 
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A Great Book on a Great Subject, 
 
 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS; 
 
 Or, the Voice out of the Cloud. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REY. .ARTHUR T. PIERSOH, D. D. 
 
 l6mo, $1.25. 
 
 " One of the most important books to the Cause of Foreign Missions — 
 ^nd through them to Home Missions also— which ever has been written. 
 It should be in every library and every household. It should be read, 
 studied, taken to heart, and prayed over." — Congregationalist. 
 
 " Surely if the inspiration and the force of this ' Crisis of Missions' 
 were imbibed and felt by the whole sacramental host, there would be a 
 mighty uprising, a grand anointing, and a holy crusade to storm the 
 kingdom of darkness all along the line, and speedily add the crown of 
 earth to Christ's many crowns !" — HomiUtical Review. 
 
 " This is a book for every Christian to read with prayer and a sin- 
 cere desire to know his personal duty in this great and glorious work. " — 
 N. Y. Observer. 
 
 ' ' We do not hesitate to say that this book is the most purposeful, 
 -earnest and intelligent review of the mission work and field which has ever 
 been given to the church." — Christian Statesman. 
 
 ."A closely compacted array of facts, arranged under distinct heads 
 and welded together by the strong rivets of logic, vivified and made almost 
 a thing of life by the evident presence throughout its pages of the guiding 
 power of the Holy Ghost." — Sight Rev. Wm. Bacon Stevens, Bishop of 
 J'ennsylvania. 
 
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A Work of Profound Interest to the Christian World 1 
 
 SOCIALISM AND 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 By A. J. F. BEHBENDS, D. D. 
 
 <♦> 
 
 This book treats from a new point of view the problems 
 raised by the most frequently advanced social theories of the 
 day ; their relations to the reciprocal duties of Labor and 
 Capital, and the position of the Christian Church with reference 
 to the social and industrial movements that are taking place 
 about it. 
 
 -CONTENTS :— 
 I. Social Theories. II. Historical Sketch. III. The Assumptions 
 of Modern Socialism. IV. The Economic Fallacies of Modern Socialism. 
 V. The Rights of Labor. VI. The Responsibilities of Wealth. VII. The 
 Personal and Social Causes of Pauperism. VIII. The Historical Causes of 
 Pauperism and its Cure. IX. The Treatment of the Criminal Classes. 
 X. Modern Socialism, Religion and the Family. 
 
 l2mo.. Paper, 50 cents; Cloth, $I.OO. 
 
 " It is a book for the times in the interest of truth, and justice, and pure 
 religion. We have read it from beginning to end, with unflagging interest, 
 and shall read it a second time this summer, and hope to lay some extracts 
 before our readers." — JV. Y. Observer. 
 
 " It is the first approach to a popular systematic presentation of the 
 principles of the destructive socialism of the day. The questions which it 
 discusses are now so prominent, and their social bearing is so vital, that 
 ministers should deal with them. We commend this volume to them, 
 especially to all who desire to get an intelligent view of one of the burning 
 questions of the day." — Presbyterian Journal. 
 
 ' ' The book should be in every home, and we are sure that if the princi- 
 ples which it advocates, and the information which it presents were given to 
 every family in the land, the present disturbances in our country would soon 
 be at an end." — St. Louis Central Baptist. 
 
 " If this spring gives America a more timely or useful book, I shall be 
 surprised."— Proy. M, B. Riddle, D. D., Hartford Theological Seminary, 
 
 "We need a volume that shall be broad enough to take in the whole 
 field ; one that thinks the subject through, and is not confined to one or 
 more phases of it. This Dr. Behrends gives us." 
 
 — Illustrated Christian Weekly. 
 
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 THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., 
 
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