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August 30, 1911] THE
UNREST AND DISTRUST.
The prevailing demoralization in business and
social circles is attracting the attention of the
secular press. It is well that it is so. Conditions
in some respects are alarming and only
those of dim moral vision can fail to perceive
it. There is a kind of spurious optimism that is
ever glorying in the tlesh because evil and good
to its view are much the same. The antinomian
and the libertine are close friends -and can see
no harm in anything except that which limits
their self indulgence.
But the farsighted interpreter of the meaning
of events stands face to face with causes and
forecasts effects, or he sees effects and traces
them to their source. lie cannot afford to be
sentimentally indulgent toward serious defection
from standards of riedit Thp io +r?n mum*
0?-- - ?w vvwu 4U l/VV? g 1 uutj
tti eperil is too obviously imminent.
Popular magazines are devoting thousands of
pages to exposing dishonor among men in high
places, the unfaithfulness of women, corruption
in public office, demoralization in trade because
of the utter abandonments of the one time prevailing
business principle of mutual confidence,
official treachery whether in political or financial
life, and the consequent unrest and distrust on
every hand. As an instance of what observers
are thinking read this from Leslie's Weekly:
The world seems to be upset. Agitation, unrest
and distrust prevail. Kingdoms are being
uprooted, monarchies undermined, while rankest
socialism seeks its day. Great labor disturbances
with loss of life are chronicled on both sides of
t.llA nrauin Rnrnha anr) (limomita
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ful work. Lynchings, North and South, of innocent
and guilty, are reported. Mobs gather
at slightest provocation and defy the authorities.
Rioters young and old, desecrate the Sabbath.
Peaceful excursionists are insulted in our cities
by young toughs and rowdies of both sexes. The
divorce eourts are working overtime, and young
women parade the streets in oostumes that the
chorus girls of the stage have made notorious,
ridiculous and indecent. Legislative bodies are
debauched by demagogues and rankest municipal
corruption is wide-spread. The prosperity of
the country is overlooked, while upstart "uplifters"
clamor to be heard and climb for every
office in sight. The blazing sun consumes the
crops and the water supplies of cities great and
small are threatened. Rain refuses to fall and
vegetation is parched. The theaters are crowded,
while the pews of the churches are empty
and religion is at the lowest ebb. Under what
sign of the Zodiac are we living? But God
lcigua tuiu me wunu win snii survive.
God reigns and a reverent faith in his
sovereignty is the quieter for all fears, but presumptuous
indifference founded on the fact that
God reigns is fatal. There is vastly too much
talk about God's being good, and carelessness
about man's being bad.
Such reflections would be futile were it not
that they are suited to arouse the Church to
intenser activity and to more persevering appeal
to the arm of Omnipotence for help. The
spiritual body of Christ, his redeemed people are
the appointed agents for leavening the world
with righteousness. They are the salt that preserves
society from putrefaction. They are the
light that shall dissipate the darkness of sin and
expose the hideous workers of iniquity in their
true character. The Church the bride of Christ
x\- - -i. i 3 *
i* uie ugeni appointed unaer nis leadership for
ushering in the endless day of peace, holiness and
life.
What is it that throws sunshine into that
habitations of the wretched? Your charity relieves,
but your civility revives them. The kindness
of charity may hurt or may mortify its
object; but, the kindness of civility has no alloy.
I maintain that the exercise of this virtue is
more conclusive to the happiness of society than
the most liberal and expensive charities.?
Thomas Chalmers.
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE 8
THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID.
The proposition of a great university for our
Church bobs up every now and then. The resent
Assembly appointed an ad interim committee
to consider the question and report on it.
This committee will doubtless make inquiry as
to all the previous movements. They will find
plenty of material to study, beginning with the
Educational Convention held just before the
Iluntsville Assembly, and ending with the discussions
eight years ago over the suggested consolidation
of already existing institutions.
The project is not entirely a visionary one as
some would make it, and the time will doubtless
draw near soon when the situation will warrant
so great an enterprise. It must, however, be a
growth and not an artificial construction. Back
of it, or rather underneath it, there must be conditions
out of which it will spring. "When these
conditions shall have been met or supplied the
groat university will arise in all its power and
usefulness. Prior to that time the, projecting of
it will only impede the movement towards ripeness
for it.
Pyramids are built by beginning at the bottom,
not at the apex. It is to be set upon its base,
not upon its capstone. One church has during
the past forty years been showing wonderful zeal,
and has been accomplishing marvellous results,
and if she be allowed to keep on in her policy
and method of work, she will erelong point with
gratitude and pride to her finished work. In
spite of her wisdom and activity, however, she
has been building her pyramid too much from
the top down. For her theological education she
has endowment and equipment away beyond that
for collegiate work, and for the preparation of
her sons for college and seminary she has not
all told one-tenth the provision that she has for
the higher ?nd the professional training.
The argument is often heard that the stimulus
of the higher education will work the way downward
and permeate all the departments of education.
This is true, and has been proved by experience,
but only after a sufficiency of the lower
has been provided to make the higher possible.
Hotter and more practical results will be attained
by developing the stimulus at the base and crcatintf
nnrl nnnrioliinf* ~ ? 1 *1
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practicable. A large number of first class training
or preparatory schools which would apply
the stimulus at as many local points would develop
an interest among a greater number and
would thereby incite more of our youth to aspire
to the higher education. If there were one such
school, well sustained, modestly endowed with the
little that would be needful, in each Presbytery,
the product of all combined would fill our colleges
to overflowing and these full classes in the
Church colleges would fill our seminary halls.
The public system has grasped this method and
has wherever possible co-ordinated the State universities
with the high schools.
Instead, therefore, of spending time and money
upon ambitious schemes for great universities,
the Church would do well to devote herself with
equal zeal and generosity to the liberal founding
and earnest upbuilding and support of sixty or
eighty first-class schools for young men in addition
to the six or eight which she now has. She
would thereby make all our present well equipped
colleges throb with new life and thrill with the
enthusiasm of numbers and efficiency, and in a
few years would create such a need and such a
demand for a great, central institution for graduate
and professional study that such an institution
would speedily rise to become the pride of
all and the completion of the Church's educational
equipment.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.?
Gray.
$ i
0U1H (827) 11
THE SHORT CUT INTO THE MINISTRY.
It is u gratifying fact that there seems to have
been a lessening during the past few years of the
number of those who have sought to enter the
ministry of our Church by a short cut. Presbyteries
have been exercising more care in the use
of the "extraordinary" clause, and a larger proportion
of the young men who have come from
our seminary classes have been fully equipped in
their preparation.
The "extraordinary" provision of our Book
of Church Order has too often been interpreted
as meaning "extraordinarily" unfit or unequipped.
If one will read it carefully, one will
qpp tlmf if rnfnro frv no:.nn xl? 1 *
? luvm tu uura nuoic uiL' applicant tor
licensure or ordination, while deficient as to
some of the requirements, especially of a scholastic
kind, lias other qualifications to a degree not
possossed by the scholastically fitted and which
fully compensate for the absence of the scholastic
requirements. Large experience in dealing
with men, familiarity with public speaking, a
career that has brought one into such relations
to his fellow men that he has been a guide and
teacher to them, proof by practical life of having
an aptness to teach, special gifts in certain
lines that will give special access to the hearts
and minds of men, these are the conditions which
the provision contemplates. They are far from
being the same as extraordinary unfit.noss
This special provision in the Book should not
be regarded as bringing a stain upon the reputation
of any one to whom it is applied. The
rather, it should be so carefully used that it will
be an honor to the one profits by it, a badge of
distinction, telling the world that he is regarded
by others as having special qualifications for the
business to which he is giving himself. If so
used and so guarded, it will never become a
stigma to any man, but rather an honor. As it
has been used, in the majority of cases, it has
not been a credit to men to have it said of them
that they came into the ministry under the "extraordinary
clause." The looseness with which
it has been used has not only invited, in some
eases, unworthy and unfitted men to enter the
ministry, but has caused the discredit to be
passed on to the Worthy and useful. All Presbyters
therefore should seek to make its use as
rare and justified as it was the evident intention
of the Church in making such a provision.
'ihere is another short cut into the Presbyterian
ministry which is sometimes used and which
should be well guarded. It is that taken through
the back door of another denomination. It is
the going out of a church which has small re(lll
i lint wlincp minictrir mil- PIhikoIi Vioo
been accustomed, in ecclesiastical comity, to
recognize. Here again, the chief point to be decided
is, first, soundness, and next aptness to
teach. If these are found the applicant may be
duly considered as worthy of being further examined
as to such courses a? he may have taken,
but in all cases the "examination rule" which
all the ministers of our own Church expect to be
applied rigidly when they pass from one Presbytery
to another should be remembered. There
is no more reason wliv a Methodist nr Rantist
brother desiring to become connected with one
of our Presbyteries should be exempted from
this rule than a Presbyterian brother coming
from a sister Presbytery. And especially should
it be clearly demonstrated, in all cases, that the
applicants have not secured their ordination in
smother ehiireh with r view tr? niaacinor nnt i>
into ours. The dishonesty uf such a proceeding,
not to speak of other features of it, is patent,
and should at once cause the Presbytery to shut
the door tight against any such intrant.
To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering.?
Milton. : ' (| ' i
to : I ^