Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-08
: through the ages
One increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are broadened,

One increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts Of men are broadened,
With the process OF the suns"
Some skeptical critics maintain that it must
inevitably result from this truth that Christi
anity will be outgrown and discarded. This
faith, we are assured, has played great part
in the drama Of humanity; but already
"Superfuous lags the veteran on the stage.n
1t is no longer the helper of the onward move
ment of the race. 1t is now q conservative
barrier. Like all old things and decrepit it is
stationary even reactionary. These charges
are made noisily, If not widely. and are re-
peated as though they would become true by
virtue of the "damnable iteration" In reply,
we say that all the progress which history re-
confined to Christian nations. China
has not advanced. Central Africa has not ad-
vanced. They have had every motive, every
spring board which we have, except Christian
ity. Yet Europe and America are the fore
most PROV Of progress, while Asia and Africa
are as dead as the mummies of Thebes. But it
is said that the progress in the so-called
Christian nations is now confined to circles
outside the pole of Observation-Disclosures proof
of its exhaustion. Well. here, too. sit will
be found" remarks Professor Goodwin Smith,
ION closer inspection, that these apparent Sc
ceders from Christendom remain christians in.
their whole view of the world, of God, of the
human character and destiny; speak language
and appeal to principles and sympathies essen
TALLY Christian; draw their moral life from the
Christendom which surrounds them; receive
their wives at Christian affairs, and bring up
their children in the Christian faith" This
view IS corroborated by the author of Ecee
Homo in striking sentence: "If high and
complete morality often exists outside the
church it does not often exist Independent of
it. The atmosphere of Europe has been satu-
rated for some Is centuries with Christian prin-
ciples, and however far the rebellion against
the church may have spread, 1t may still be
called the Moral University of the world.
While this is SO 1t is idle for any virtue
that springs up in its neighborhood to claim to
be independent of 1t. Christian influences are
in the air: our very conception of virtue is
Christian" But the GROWING assurance of
the Christian that his faith can never be out
grown and discarded, whatever may be what
Renan calls "the surprises of the future" is
gotten from the fact that Christianity rests
upon one fundamental, indestructible moral
principle, viz: The love of God. our Father,
and the love of man, our brother. And the
type of character set forth in the Gospel is the
absolute embodiment of this love, both toward
God and man. This being the case" says
Prof. Goodwin Smith, whom we have already
quoted, tit is difficult to see how the Christian
type of character can ever be left behind by
the course Of human development, lose the al
newly emerging and higher type This type,
it would appear being perfect, will be final.
1t will be final, not as precluding future his
tory, but as comprehending it. The moral
efforts of all ages will be efforts to realize this
character, and to make it actually as it is po-
tentially, universal"
Meanwhile there are no indications visible,
even with a microscope that this Christian
type has been attained to. much less surpassed.