Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1884-01-17
Is the World Growing Worse.

1t is a popular fallacy that the world
is growing worse. Many ministers
tell us so, and would have us believe
that every day takes us further down
the hill. In confederation, we are
pointed to the hundreds of crimes
that come flashing over the telegraph
wires every day, to the current criminal
court records and the present vast
number of skeptics and infidel philoso-
| piers. To any one judging from SUPER
fetal signs it would appear that wick
edness is increasing at fearful rate.
But is it SOP Are the arguments offered
in proof substantial? II should be re-
membered in the first place that we Of
to-day have an infinitely wider range
of knowledge than did those of twenty
| five or even ten years ago. The prob
abilities are, that fully as many crimes
were committed then as to-day, in pro-
portion. Only we did not know of
them all. The telegraphic system was
not so perfect, the efforts of shrewd
and energetic newspaper men not so
strenuous, the circulations of the news
papers themselves, not one-fourth so
wide and general. Crimes that to-day
horrify the whole country, n few years
ago shocked only few counties at
most; abscondings, breaches of faith
and defalcations that everybody reads
of now, on the day of or after their
occurrence, were then heard of by only
few, and weeks, perhaps, afterward.
There were just as many such in the
''good old days." in proportion. If
criminal dockets show that the Eighties
are cursed with more robbers, murder
ers and miscellaneous scoundrels than
the 'Forties or the 'Fifties, it is because
the world has grown in numbers since
then. 1t is perfectly safe TO say that
when the percentage of growth is
taken, crime will not be found increas-
ed. So far rs the unbelievers are con-
cerned, they form no trustworthy
index. Infdelity has been fashionable
with some people since we began to
reckon our time by A. ID. They had
just as many off-color philosophers fifty
years ago or twenty-five years ago, rs
we have now, the growth of the world
being always remembered. We are no
more cursed than our grandfathers
were.
A good guage is charity. 1t may be
set down as true that if people con-
tinues charitable its morals are not
retrograding. We will take this then
as guage, and we shall find that, when
disaster comes to a city or country,
and when u call for relief goes up from
those stricken, n stream of help rs
broad and wide rs humanity itself goes
rushing forth to meet and satisfy the
call. Dozens of examples might be
given. The thousands of dollars that
went TO Ireland in her trying hour, the
myriads of trains that carried succor TO
the sufferers by the western fires some
years ago, or coming near home, the
generous response 10 Shenandoah s
appeal, from almost every settlement,
village and city of the state,-all this
attests the bond of brotherly love
among us, as strong and true to-day rs
it ever was. So long as we have this
in full measure our morals as nation
or as world are not travelling back
ward.
There is an enormous quantity of
wickedness in the world, of course,
and there always will be. The only
point made here is that the wickedness
isn't increasing any faster than the
people increase, and that we are not
any blacker than they used to be. The
twentieth century will find fearful
number of bad men and women on
earth, but the nineteenth dawned upon
q fearful number also. The world is
not growing worse WilttomSp0T
Breakfast Table.