The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1875-11-25
PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY.

hoods, rituals, creeds are the only app
II ratus, as yet, devised TO proclaim, max
Known and execute this law, for an app
ratus is as Indispensable here as for th
helpful sway of any other law. But thi
sacred machinery, while it has ayailed t
declare the Christian law, to interpret it, I
sxhort, TO warn, and to threaten, has faile
70 execute it, aud make it practically
daily, active, purifying presence. Every
body knows the lawn so far as we ca
know what We so partially practice. senti
ment without act, words without deeds, in
difference, to Journalism, to (what is nov
universally conventional hypocrisy.
Throughout Christendom, an immens,
ramified, complicated apparatus of materia
means is sustained at vast primary cost, will
the object of making the Christian Law
dominant over man. Yet nowhere, by nc
| single person out of two hundred milIiops
is this law, or can il be, in its fullness,
obeyed. To. rule human life, is its func.
tion-a sublime function. unique in its sub
Unity. But human life, with its relation,
closely knit by the multiplex interests OF
| civilization, is all opposed = innately,
angriiy, immovably opposed to the rule OF
love, and justice and unity. At all points,
on every day, by every person, the Christian
law which demands for its fulfillment the su-
premacy of the unselfish spiritual, alI-embrac-
ing feelings of our nature-this law il met
with resistance, with contempt, at best with
indifference. The purest cannot obey it in
full A large number, calling and thinking
themselves Christians, deny its existence.
Our customs, our necessities, our institu-
tions, our social and Industrial principles
and practices, all are arrayed against the
dominance of the Christian law of universal
good will and universal equity And against
these customs, necessities, practices-ia-
woven, inrooted In our hourly being
against these the vast, expensive, complex
Sunday apparatus for carrying out the
Christian law is powerless. Instead of
pure, fervid, practical Christianity we have
Sunday religion, one day in the week set
apart for worship and prayer. On Monday
We put aside, with our Sunday clothes, our
Sunday religion. Business is business, and
the whole body and soul, current, activity
and momentum of business are counter to
the sentiments of Sunday, and control and
subject them as inevitably as the active man
does the inactive. Six days we work in sell
fish, unchristian conditions; the seventh
idle day We play at Christianity. We leave
off work to cultivate religion; and we lay
aside religion when we set to work. We
divide our life into seven parts, whereof we
give six to Mamnon and one to God. On
the moral soil, parched from the weeks
worldly habits, we pour thin Sunday
sprinklings from stale theological reser,
voirs, which evaporate instantaneously in
the steady heat of selfshness.
This non-worship in the working week,
and lip worship on the idle Sunday, is a
of the moral life. By work
we live bodily and mentally out of work
by banning from work the Christian law, |
we Danish it from our lives. To make our
daily working life vital with justice and
love--to make all our hopes commission
with God-this is the aim of Practical
So obviously has this aim hitherto failed
of accomplishment that many = among
them earnest men, themselves Christian in
sentiment and practice = declare Chris
ti1nity to be failure. But no more than
gravitation, or the laws which govern num-
bers, can Christianity fail. For eighteen
centuries it has been light to humanity,
glowing modestly, in humble hearts. To
believe that it can fail 10 unconscious athe-
ism. But what has failed is our sectarian
apparatus and machinery, developing main
ly race of piping devotees, painfully con-
traeted into pews, narrowed by skeleton
lines of opinion, and resulting In a fatal
divorce between the religious function and
the practical function. The remedy must
be found in copious outpourings of the Di-
vine Spirit, coming like Pentecostal gales.
For this all things stand prepared. The
growth of knowledge, the immense expan-
sion of liberty, the collision of people with
people, the. accelerated interchange OF
thought through the press, the railroad, the
telegraph, and through personal contact
the vast enlargement of the liberal and cul-
tiyated class, the nndergrowth and silent
strengthening of humanitarian ideas; and
especially the modern and mighty growth OF
science, and the consequent immensely in.
creased product ed variety of human work,
whereby the Caucasian race has siezed, and
is subjecting, the vast kingdoms of the ma,
terial vorld from all these causes-cause.
implying q profound. inward, billowina
hesving of the human mind, humanity il
agIow with power, expectation, aspiration,
Soon the religious faculty will catch tn,
heat and the light Of the new age. A
ministry " se whose preaching viii
not ee Ike the pulpit, but like tha
other preacGA by the sea. of Gal,lee;
ministry that comes ''eating and drinking
with no more formal pitty than the wilc
roses in hedgerow, or the larks that SIM
As freely On. sunday as on week day. The,
will preach b practical Christianity able t
overcome the domestic, social and politics
evils of the land. The test of q church
! that il brings salvstion. It must come wit
the special remedy for the special want, tn
special cleansing for she special de6lement
'. the special opportunity for the special n,
cessity. 1t must subdue the social evil,
rescue womanhood from the industris
slums, abolish alms-giyiDg by organizing il
dustry, aud cure the baibaIisms Of ,oeiei
; by tirst removing the barbarisn of the hear
Then the church viii fulfil its mission, an
carry the Christian law of equity and lO'
into svery department of human affair
bringing spiritual salvation from spiritu
syils. moral salvation from moral evil
!: physieAl salvation from physical evils Il
larrffa n