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10 (898) THE
MORAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
There remain some very large patches and
corners in the great moral vineyard of America
that instead of bearing luscious clusters are
overgrown with rank and noxious weeds. Indeed
the weed patches sometimes seem to have
the best of it if we are to judge from area and
vigorous growth. The following figures furnish
a pointer on one moral issue which involves
and aggravates a great many others. The peo
pie ot tile United States spent in 191U for public
education $175,000,000; for woolen goods
$250,000,000; for boots and shoes $335,000,000;
for bread $600,000,000. In the same year the
people of the United States spent for liquor $1,400,000,000.
That is, the total spent for liquor
was $40,000,000 more than the combined cost of
public education, woolen goods, boots and shoes,
and bread.
These figures are terribly discouraging to the
social reformer; they are not discouraging to
Christian faith. The Church of Christ is not a
social institution, it is a spiritual kingdom of
which Christ is the one supreme head; a kingdom
whose character is created and whose activities
are inspired by the infinite Spirit of God.
The social reformer uses and appeals to social
forces; the kingdom of grace is sustained and
promoted by spiritual forces.
It is nevertheless true that while the means
to be used and the end to be attained through the
church are spiritual, that is, ordained and made
efficacious by the Holy Spirit, the Church is yet
the incomparable promoter of moral and social
reform and in proportion to the advancement
of the spiritual kingdom must be her rebuke and
suppression of social evils.
Several inferences follow. One is that the
Church of Christ must address herself to her
great commission of evangelizing the world,
which includes the winning of souls to Christ
and the edifying of believers. Both of these
are included in the primary duty of witnessing
for him. delivering his message, "whether they
will hear or whether they will forbear." This
witnessing may be done by word of mouth, as
Ezekiel was told to do in the command, "Speak
unto them and tell them, Thus saith the Lord
God;" or it may be by the written page or by
the consecrated life.
Another inference is that the blessings of Divine
grace upon the testimony of God's people
will produce moral reform and social order and
is the greatest agency in the world for accomplishing
these ends and the only one that is vital
and permanent. Therefore we infer that movements
for social reform apart from the Gospel
4 V. ? ? v: e A*. ?
p>i iiic wrailing ui regeneration ana removing
of the IToly Ghost through the redeeming love
and merits of Christ must, be ineffectual because
on a wrong basis, prompted by insufficient motive,
and destitute of one mighty force?the grace
of God. which can produce genuine and lasting
results.
Human expedients were never so numerous as
now. They were never so tactfully devised,
so completely organized nor so powerfully sustained
by talent and wealth. Yet what is the
effect upon society? Is the standard of honor
being raised ? Are men more sympathetic or self
denying? Is there less of excess and luxuriousness?
Is there less of vice or of crime? Statistics
do not sustain the claim.
The question arises, "If reform move slowly
or are stationary or decline, is not the Church
responsible." She is to the extent that she is
"ashamed of the Gospel of Christ which is
the power of God unto salvation." She turns
to another gospel?that of human expedients?
and expects that spurious gospel to supply the
leverage that will lift a sin-slaved race into a
life of righteousness and communion with God.
I
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
Portions of the nominal church are making a
mistake at this point. There is a drift which is
well known and which is indicated by the contents
of current religious literature. For example
"Our Hope" publishes extended ex-,
tracts from the official organ of the Chautauqua
Assembly from which we quote: "Creeds and
opinions which were unsafe to proclaim pub1
\ r?l v V VPQro O OTA (orn Irvrloir Inn 4- on ov!a*?
w j j vwxo ugv in v. cv/ua* laugnt ao aAiuui*
atic truths from every respectable pulpit. The
war cry is Life and Action instead of Faith and
Conversion." Again the writer says of "socalled
devotional meetings:" "They often take
the character of social discussions about the problems
of industry and labor and their future probable
solution." These meetings are "led by a
minister or a professor."
The church must get back to reliance upon the
sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God;
then moral and social questions will find their
solution. God's purposes will be fulfilled, his
kingdom will come in his own time and his
will be done on earth as in heaven.
PERSONAL RIGHTS.
The cry is most common, in connection over the
struggle over the liquor traffic, and is most frequently
voiced by the Model Liquor License
League, that the effort to control or suppress
the saloon business and the drink evil is an infringement
upon personal rights. There was
never a greater mistake than this. Those who
assert that there is such an infringement do not
know what personal rights or liberty mean except
as a license to do just what one pleases.
They have not analyzed the subject sufficiently
to see just what it is they talk of so glibly and
so speciously.
There are personal rights, inherent in the very
existence of men, springing out of the fact of
his being. But when society was organized, and
society began, in its fundamental conditions and
primitive stages, as soon as there were two people
in the world, personal rights began to be in
a certain and legitimate way abridged, and
with the larger development of society they became
more and more subject to this legitimate
abridgment. They are not lost. They are simply
merged into certain other forms of privilege
of larger value. Or if it may be so expressed
they are merely exchanged for certain
other possessions of greater value. The surrender
of a personal right is in view of a like surrender
by others, that all may share alike in the
result, the common weal. As each individual
has his personal rights, society, composed of the
individual possessors of these rights, makes its
provision, in behalf of these possessors, for the
regulation of those rights at every point where
they will infringe upon one another. To do
this each surrenders his personal rights to the
good of the whole, and gets in exchange the
protection of himself by society in that which
he has the right to be or to do or to possess.
Still further,, all personal rights imply restraints
of some kind. My personal rights must
not interfere with another man's, nor his with
mine. The only way in which to prevent such
interference is for each of us, by agreement, to
restrain his own rights at the colliding point.
This restraint is exercised through the prohibitons
which society, and society composed of
these same individuals, makes. Personal rights
would last but a little while if it were not for the
restraints which society places upon them. One
has well illustrated the conditions in saying:
" All 1am ft nwa!>iKi
ii.i ian wi a piumuiiui j cuoiauicr, 111 wimiever
field. abridges personal liberty in order that the
sacred liberty of the commonwealth might not
he destroyed. In order to protect life, railway
trains are ordered to slow down to a speed
of eight or ten miles an hour inside of corporation
lines, and automobiles are controlled by similar
I O T Hi [ September 20, 1911
regulations. The driver of the machine might
claim unjust discrimination against him, and a
wicked curtailment of his personal right to run
through a crowded street at sixty miles an
hour; while the railroad company might bold
that it is a great loss of revenue to adjust sche
dules to municipal regulations. But here the
life and the welfare of many, decrees that the
personal rights of a few should be abridged."
Thus to any one who will think it will not appear
that laws designed to lessen the public
and private ills that come from the presence
amongst us of the liquor trade are contrary to
the personal rights of men. The law for all
which abridges the exercise of the personal rights
of a few and which brings its benefits and pro
teetion to all alike, is not to be set over against a
personal right which if exercised would benefit
the individual and harm everybody else.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT AND
CHRISTIAN CONDUCT.
Christ's Sermon on the Mount, popularly socalled,
was on the subject of righteousness, and
righteousness viewed in contrast with the Pharisees'
type. The chief difference between that
which Christ and that which the Pharisees taught,
lay in the fact that the latter laid stress upon the
outward and formal, whereas Christ made the
heart, the inward condition, the important factor
in a correct life. "As a man thinketh in
his heart, so is he." "The Lord weigheth the
spirits."
The various relations ado;* vvhich Christ viewed
this subject and t.u;ght us were, literalism,
externalism and icrmalism, censoriousness
covetousness. He inculcated the opposite of
these, viz., conformity to the spirit of the law,
inward agreement to the demands of God, a
gentle, forgiving spirit, and a trustfulness in
God that will allay all f-ar of want and make
needless any anxiety as to the things of this
life.
Thus He laid the basis in good definite and
principles, for the Christian conduct. He was
not content with this, however. A mere negative
presentation of the case would not satisfy His
gracious mind and heart. He tells where to
find the power to develop the correct life. '' Ask
and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find;
knock and it shall be opened to you." Hew
much more shall your Heavenly Father give u?c
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him t''
"With Christ's Word to encourage him, and
the Spirit's power to animate him, how splendidly
the otherwise impossibility of a proper
Christian life is turned into the most hopeful and
practicable thing in the world! With Christ on
his side the believer can do anything; Augustine
put the thought most strikingly when he said,
" (ThiHstinnsi urn ttio TiicrVif 5o
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Light lighting!"
The most encouraging feature of this great
summary of Christian living and Christian hope
is in the words, touching some of the discouragements
we meet with, and the anxieties we can
hardly help, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness; and all these things shall
be added unto you." A restored relation to God,
through the righteousness of Christ, is the foundation
and beginning of everything else that
is good. Out of relation to God, it matters
not how much we seem to possess, we are all
astray and destined only to evil, only awaiting
the day of the revelation of God's wrath.
The "humanness," if the word may be used,
of this summary of Christian life and conduct,
is one of its great charms. Not only is it,
in its structure and development, attractive
to all students of the forms and laws of thought
and human expression, hut in its marvellous
adaptation it shows that He who spake this Ser