The examiner., 1886-03-13
SOCIAL BARRIERS.
ADISCOURSE ON HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
"The Rank is but the Guinea's Stamp,
 The Mans tho GOVd for a that"
ssAmd the Time will come when fhere will be for all Intelligent People, On Religion, One Language. One
 @emBe of Common Humanity.
fRxM. U. Savage ,

cay M. y. savage.)
 Nearly all of the social problems of the world are modern. The ancient world was not troubled or perplexed by them; and this for the very simple and satisfactory reason that society, in the sense in which we are accustomed to use the word, is a modern fact. There was no society," ten, twenty, forty thousand years ago. The social difficulties, therefore, that we are facing and trying to overcome are caused by the social development of the modern world. They are part t-of this develop ment, a natural and necessary step in it.. the world being what it is and men being what they are. But, though there were then no social problems, no perplexing difficulties, such as we face to-day, yet, take it, we would not care to go back to that condition of things in order to get rid of them. They are part of the progress of society, just as bitterness and extreme acidity are a part of the internal change and development that are going on inside the apple, in its process of growth and ripening. If a man never builds house, he will meet none of the perplexities of the practical builder. He will never have to determine hoao he will build, never meet any of the questions as to whether he !. shall do this or that, or how he shall over come the intractable quality of certain QhL0I1alS Wlbu WHICH no WISHES CO Q0als But he who undertakes to build will find these questions facing him at every step of the way. To solve them, one must go on with the process and complete the structure. If, then, we are to have any kingdom of God here on earth; if we are ever to lay the foundation and rear the walls and close in the dome of the temple of humanity, we must be willing to undertake the toll of thought and the struggle of effort that are necessary to solve the difficulties that meet us. and to overcome the material obstacles which are about us, and which obstruct our course on every hand.
 There is not, suppose, social evil in existence that does not have its root in in justice; and the root of injustice is selfish ness; and the root of selfshness is ignor. ance,-ignorance of our fellow men, pre- venting us from anything like intelligent, sympathetic understanding of their needs, their wants, their feelings. the fact that they are only other selves, whose rights are just as sacred as ours, whose wishes are just as important as ours, whose pros perity is just as dear to them as ours is to us. These barriers, then, that stand in the way between nations, between classes between individuals, seperating, keeping apart, preventing acquaintance, prevent ing the development of sympathy, prevent ing the growth of the feeling of human Z cause the problems which we need to solve; and these we need to get out of the way.
 These barriers existed in the extremest forms in the ancient world before society began. If we go back for little while, in imagination, and try to picture to our selves the condition of the tribes and peo- ples existing in that far-oH time, the morn ing of the worle's history, we shall find that each people and tribe and little band sA. sf1 III zAI,o without any sense of fellowship, without any sense of kinship, without any idea of rights as pertaining to others. They sim ply sought for themselves some suitable fishing ground or place for raising their cattle or developing such crude agricultural products as they learned to cultivate. They desired simply place for themselves. It never occurred to them that they had any interests identical with any other tribe or people, or that any other tribe had any claims upon them.
 Now let us note some of the many bar riers in the ancient world that kept people apart. I shall trace some of these down to modern times, showing what they are to-day, of those old times; and I shall attempt to point out some of their evils and to outline some of the forces that helped to break them down, and the tend ency of the modern world to flow together
 
 interest, welfare, and life.
 Many of the physical obstacles of the world, that we have learned by our indus trial development to overcome, were inn passable obstacles to these ancient peoples, mountain chains, for example. We scale the highest mountain summits or tunnel thsm. We laugh at them as obstacles, and rejoice in them simply as objects of grandeur, sublimity, and beauty; but, for inn h la hor ho- tween them and other peoples. Out of this seperation grew all sorts of weird, strange misconceptions of the people who lived on the other side. Not only were mountains barriers, but broad rivers, seas and oceans. These were conceived as such obstacles in the way of common humanity that, down as late as the time of the writing of that book which stands as the last one in our New Testament, the ocean, which we know to be the life of our planet, was regarded as an evil; and, when ths writer of that book was picturing to us his ideal paradise, the condition of things that was to be when the dream should be realized, he says, as a part of it, that ''there shall be no more sea"
 Not only were there these physical bar riers, but let us notice some of the mental barriers that kept people apart. The first and most important was their inability to understand each others speech, ,-the differ ence of language We have no conception to-day of what barrier this was in thpse old times. We have now all the chief lan- guages written down, and each has it's grammer and literature. We can learn in a little while enough of any of them to communicate with each other with com parative ease. Each great language has become comparatively fixed by means of it's written form and its literature, but lan- guages then were in perpetual Aux and change. There was no alphabet. There was no standard of speech. This went so far that l suppose it is true that, if a tribe speaking the same language had become seperatedeinto two parts, i'll one generation they would have found themselves unable to communicates with each other had they come together again.
 Then there are physical, mental, moral, spiritual barriers involved in the distine- tions of race,-race characteristics, all those things that make the difference to- day between an Englishman and an Amer ican, Frenchman and an Irishman. And, then,' another difference, perhaps mightier and harder to overcome than either of these,-the difference of religion.
 A large part of these barriers still re- main, modified in their form, but distinct