The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-03-03
EDITORIAL BRIEFS.
BY REV. I, NJ. ATWOOD, D. D.
Canton. N, Y,


@. A. in the reading room of hotel the
other day and read a fervid appeal to
young men. In the room were seven
young men. In the course of the day
Sunday-we counted eighteen different
young men either reading or writing
there. Not one of them touched this par
ticular paper. We called one young
mans attention to it and particularly to
the article. He glanced at it and his eye
caught IL words" hundreds of thou
sands Of young men are going down every
year to an endless hell" He threw down
out of the room, remarking, Well, I'll
take my chances"
And so they do: The young men and
the men no longer young, and the young
women and the elder women, uncounted
multitudes of them, take their chances
every year. II they believed they were
going down to an endless hell would they
take their chances? The only construc-
ton that can be put upon the indiffer-
ence to religion manifested by those to
whom such appeals are habitually made,
is, that they discredit the whole story. Is
it not probable that the affront to com
mon sense offered by the idea that more
than three-fourths of mankind are des-
tined for an endless hell, is responsible
for the contempt with which religion as
a whole is treated by so many? No doubt
the author of the lurid article in the Y.
NJ. G. A. paper felt a sincere desire to
reach the great company of careless
young men and make them serious, rev
erent and Christian. But his method is
as certainly ill-chosen and Intellectual.
And why Intellectual? Either it is
true that these young men, and others
like them, are going down to an endless
hell, or it is not true. If it is true it
would be crime to conceal it. Every
one who knows it or believes it should
cry aloud and spare not. But it does
not accomplish the object desired. The
careless are not arrested and turned to-
ward new life. They ridicule and scoff,
or else are stolidly Indifferent. Now if
the thing asserted were trpe it would
carry with it a weight of conviction. 1t
could not be so generally trihed with.
The very fact that it is so ineffective
stamps it as an invention-a dogma not
fact.
There is a defect OF the first magni-
tude in that mans religion who goes on
accommodating property through long
II JsS..4v,x.Ss z..x,, -
church nor charity The defect is more
glaring il he has never, il life, been
liberal giver for good causes. But in our
obsery alton the instances are rare where
a man has been able to turn a deaf ear to
the calls of education, religion and phi
laathropy during bis active life, yet has
opened his heart and hand in munificence
at the last The rule is that men die as
they have lived Benevolsnce is habit;
niggardliness is habit. Habits indicate
character. The reason the churl is not
liberal IS because he is a churl.
Recently Unigersalist whose wealth
was reckoned by the hundred thousands
passed away. We knew that he had
money to give; we knew that he had
abundant information as to the needs of
institutions and causes which he con-
feesed were noble. We knew that he
gave sparingly all his life long, and that
he left not dollar to any public interest.
He WAS not man of vices. He was hon
est, truthful, trustworthy. But his relig-
ion never got the better of his narrow
ness and sordidpess. He had the means
to do great good; he contented himself
with doing SO little that it was scarcely
decent Such men are not blessing to
the world, and they come near being a
curse to any church that must bear the
reproach of their example.
To render such cases peculiarly ex-
asperating, it often happens, as in the in
stance above referred to, that the proper
ty accumulated by the Rvaricious Uni
versalist, but which was never at the ser
vice of Uniyersalism, falls to heirs who
use it more or less lavishly for the bene-
fit of other forms of faith. We can recite
a long list OF such cases. We know of
millions of money, accumulated by Uni
versalists, which Is now furnishing sin
ews of war to orthodoxy. UnaccountRbls,
is it not, that a UniversRlist will scrimp
his own church and her schools and mis-
sions, all his life, with the clear prospect
that the money he thus saves will be
used after his death to build orthodox
churches and endow orthodox schools?
We have said it before, we say it
again, we shall continue to say it until
it ceases to be true, that Universal
ist churches do not give so much in pro
portion to means and members rs many
other churches give, for the support and
dissemination of their religion. This is
not true OF all our churches nor Of all our
people in any church; but it is true Of
the average in both respects. And there
are two strong reasons for it, whether
there are any more or not. The first Is
that the habit OF giving for the church,
its ideas and its work, was not iuculcated
among us for long time and is not yet
fixed. The second is that We are all so
reluctant to make comparisons Of our
/ pUp e,iffa ugitb fb,sa DF ,Fbar oburobou