The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-10-02
Sunday-SchOOl Lessons.
One Human Mistake.
THIRD QUARTER.

ONE gross mistake stumbled into by
some men is that they do not recognize
the full size of religion as a factor for
good in the world. They find them
selves born into a world which religion
has mellowed and frightened for many
centuries; but they do not stop to CON
slider that the world has not been al
ways as good as it is now, and that its
Improvement has been steadily COM
mensurate with the growth of Christian
ideas. They come to maturity and find
themselves, and people generally, doing
business on, or near, the precepts of
the Bible; but they do not credit the
Book with the spread and popularity of
the only fundamental principles by
which mankind can successfully do
business. They have no thought but
that they have come into kingdom of
fair-dealing made by man, where the
principle OF ''mine and thine" honesty
and commercial kindness have ALWAYS
prevailed. 1t never occurs to the OBJ
jecting class that every cycle of reform
making pleasant the paths of
men, increasing physical comforts,
quickening and augmenting moral
and mental ideas into great
and abiding power, has had religion as
its radius. They fail to reflect that no
great reform has ever become perma-
nent whose movers forgot God and left
the Bible out of the cornerstone. The
irreligious and thoughtless do not see
that the power brought into the world
by Christ is the great upward motive
power among men to-day, and that
Christianity is the soul of all society
worth living in. If they will train their
intellectual telescope upon the idola-
trous and barbarous spots of earth
where Christ is still a stranger, and
compare what they see in the distance
with the scene lying at their feet, they
will straightway become believers in
Christianity as the friend of their kind,
if not in Christ as their personal Savior
for two worlds. They are the children
of noble parentage, but they do not
stop to trace back their genealogy. The
children of Christianity are many more
than the children of Christians. We
recognize in religion large moral influ-
ence over the irreligious.
There is class of moral directors to
the Christian Church, whose ungrateful
words against any human institution
would beget some device to compel
justice. Yet, while they forever hurl
stones in the face of their benefactress,
she prays for them and smilingly invites
them forward to the seat for anxious
souls. If they ever see a Christian
society in error, they attribute it not to
human weakness, but call it a fault of
the Christian system. If ever they de-
tect church-member in sin, they mao
nifty the sin to twice the size at which
they see the same act in another man,
and spread its color over the local
church or entire denomination in
present, or late, fellowship with the
offender. Yet they by action strangely
make the true confession which thew
will not set to the music of utterancc.
They would not live and trust for family
safety in any community whence the
Christian church had been expelled.
Seeking new home, their first inquiry
is into the existence and condition of
the church in that quarter; they know
that schools are poor and peace uncer-
tain where the people do not worship
God. There are very few men so prac-
tically obtuse that they do not prefer
that their children associate with those
of Christian families as every way more
desirable companions than those whose
parents erect no altar to the living God.
And while those who are perpetually
fishing for notes in neighboring ewes
always declare that Christians are
sringy and cheat in trade, they usually
go in search of some Christian of fat
purse to head the subscription list for a
brass band and fireworks on the Fourth.
or for town-pump; and they prefer to
buy goods of the merchant who has the
reputation of being Christian.