The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-12-29
IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.
A Few Minutes Common Sense Chat
With Busy People.

! gencies guillotine superfcialities and lux
uries- No matter to what belief or to what
faction a man belongs, he cannot deny that
| life is the great emergency. To exist is to
| take part in a crisis The successful man is
one who makes the best choice between the
| trivial and the significant. Christianity is
| the doctrine of the important. There are
over 800, 900, 600 in the world to-day who
nominally believe in the Bible and consider
! it, as the unbeliever Heine calls it, 1.-The
/ Book of Books
Robert Raikes creating the Sunday school
! out of a dozen ragged children in GiOu-
cester, England, 100 years ago, would start
| if he saw S,34S, 900 Bible scholars with their
| 100000 teachers in the United States.
marching with measured tramp to their
| cheerful and well-equipped rooms to-day
| Instruction that was once paid for is now
eagerly volunteered and sought like a
matinee.
The Sunday school literature, led by the
Sunday School Times, with its enormous
circulation of 10000, if properly massed
and laid, could be raised to a tower equal
to the great EiheL This could be done not
once, but ffty-two times in the year. Here
we have a tremeDdo is force which it is no
longer cultivated" TO disregard.
This column proposes to wheel into line
on an independent plank movement. To
take the lowest view OF it, the shrewdest
dailieS are those that recognize the great
religious impulses of the times. The spiritual
vote of their constituencies is too heavy to
be overlooked.
The purpose of this department is to fol-
low from week to week the course of the
international Sunday school lessons. We
will give Dogma, the rabid thief Of in
tellect. no place here. These articles are
undenomi national they are uncanonical.
We dispiGy no vestments of authority.
Greed pa,eS before the personality of the
foremost alan Of history. Theological dis
putes have here no vantage ground. Time
is not long eHCOgh TO wander aside in these
lanes choke6 with briers of thought.
A Traveller once complained after hearing
Dean Stanley, that he bad gene in to find
the way to heaven, and had only learned
the way 70 Palestine. This column is not
the Baedecker of the Holy Land, or a
watered commentary on the New Testa-
nlent
There are hundreds of busy, thoughtful
people, not particularly religious, who still
have what one might RESPECTFULLY call q
sneakng esteem for christian inquiry.
There mas been no more striking secular
tribute TO spiritual possibilities in the last
decade than the fresh and solemn words of
Henry NJ. Stanley, written when he had
just emerged from the cauldron of the Dark
Continent. He says:
at the helm. I have been conscious that
the issues of every effort were in other
hands. The vulgar cali it luck Unbeliev-
ers call it chance
To the minds of practical men of the
world, the study of the Bible has seemed
hitherto but dark continent in which ex-
plorers have chiefly beaten each others
brains out with the boomerangs of their pet
creeds. We believe that the liberalized
study of the New Testament means good
government, pure society, business honor,
firm stocks. restricted rum, and comfortable
homes. From the common sense view of
the average citizen, although with the
reverence of a christian, we propose to
undertake this study.
Mr.. Howells is the sponsor of Tostoi, who
in turn takes to himself the credit of intro
ducing Christ to well-bred society. In au
humber way let this column present to you
Luke, the physician and historian. The
Sunday school work of the year 1890 is
confined to single letter written by this
remarkable man TO a personal friend. Luke
diff sred from Matthew, Mark, and John in
being a scholar and a man of the world.
lie was a Greek. and could boast of being ut
least a gentleman. 1t is to be presumed,
therefore. that he was an honest man.
He was rigid Investigator and
not easily dazzled or gulled. To be frank,
all evidence proves that his materials were
secondhand. Therefore they are the more
trustworthy. He was not blinded by the
immediate presence of an astounding per-
sonality. We crticise Josephus freely,
though he relates contemporary events.
Luke had the opportunity to Gull from man
uscript and eyewitness the reliable facts
about Christ He says this himself. Does
this invalidate him as a historians Did
Bancroft shake hands with Washington?
Did Gibbon witness the stabbing Of Caesar?
Did Grote fight at Thermopyl9!
The study for tomorrow covers thirteen
verses in the first chapter of Luke, running
from the fifth to the seventeenth.
What do we read? The prediction of
birth. Who is he that needs @ vision for
his annunciation? The avant-courier of
Christ.
Greece. Rome, Judea, the civilized world,
had paused to sigh amid the hopelessness of
rotted philosophy and decayed religion. In
teligent men awaited some one from some
where to do something to save the wreck of
society. Herod, the professional murderer,
was only one of million devil-may care
fellows who had no hope of this life or OF
the next to control them. In such a crisis
a vision at the very altar was a momentous
event. This trance of an obscure priest
foretold change. The Roman Forum and
the Greek Acr polls felt that a new tone
must arise, or there would be an irretriev-
able smash.
A country like ours can well understand
the discordant elements that surrounded
old Zacharias when he swung his gold
censor in the dull beat of routine, and the
angel swept across it.
Is the United States drifting into like
emergency to that which John the Fore
runner meta The suppressed ballot in the
south. the bought ballot in the north, the
Cronin outrage in Chicago, the heshly
crimes among the upper 400" or the under
fiven in any of our huge cities; the moral
typhoid resulting from the overlooking
sewer of foreign immgration-theset things
are enough TO startle us. They are more
than enough to need a Messiah.
To the restless and disorganized society of
Palestine Christ was hope. To ours he is
history. To them he came as a live man.
To us he comes as biography. Practically
speaking and plainly viewed, the simple fact
of Christ will be found as much of po-
ltical power in America to-day as it was in
Judea nineteen centuries ago. Shall we
use it?
Not long ago at socialistic meeting in
New York, on Sunday, the speaker pre-
sented the name of an eminent party leader
This was received with Disguised silence
and scattered Kisses. When he casually
made mention of the name of Christ this
mass of unchurched, almost lawless men,
rose to its feet and madly cheered that
greatest of reformers to the echo.
1t is curious fact that the announcement
of John the FOrerunner came I'm the vary