The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-25

healthy minded to repentance. and no re-
vivalists deserve 20 be trusted who 90 az
the human heart other than Christ went
at IL, through its latent moral endowrnents
OF humanity, tenderness, truth, charity;
In short, through all the democratic moral
sympathies Of our imperfect nature
The methods which once went home to
the deepest souls of rude fishermen viii
not fail now whenever there is true
evangelist behind the methods. not mere
cunning, paid, pietistie piper. playing wild,
barbaric music TO make children dance.
Never until the old. simple method OF
Christ is practiced, scorning all triding
with the truth, all dragging OF God and
holy angels down on the pretence OF lift
ing men up. all melodramatic appeal,
whether 20 superstitious hopes or supersti-
tious fears, will there be any revival Of
true religion. Christ's mission. as defined
by himself, implied no mystery beyond
the mystery that is involved in surpass-
ing moral genius; for it was TO preach
the gospel 70 the poor. 10 heal the
broken hearted to Sc. at liberty
them that are bruised, TO preach deliver
ance to captives. to heal the sick. and in
execution of this scheme he went about
doing good. He organized no church, no
order of public worship; he founded no
scheme Of philosophy. and all the philoso-
ply he taught underlies the counsels He
gave concerning practical life. The Ser
mon on the Mount declares that blessed
are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merci-
full, the poor in heart and the peacemak-
ers. He believed in the reconstruction
ofthe individual through the improvement
of character, instead Of the reconstruction
society. He was a socialist only in the
sense thar every man who desires the
improvement of his fellows is a socialist,
but he was not socialist in the modern
sense of depending on change of environ
ment TO change human character. Yet
the evolution OF Christianity. in spite of
the straight jackets OF ecclesiasticism,
has emancipated the state. uplifted labor,
broken the letters of women, harmonized
government, refined the passions and
appetites OF mankind from barbarian riot
back 70 sober, enlightened reason
Christ was the divinely laden power of
personality, working in his own time by
precept and example and with the charac-
teristic Inconsistencies of genius un-
Willingly working for all time to come
We have not yet got beyond Christ; we
have not even struggled up to
the conception and adoption of
His sole social dynamic and SOL
vent for sin and misery; the power
of sympathetic personality manifested by
every man to as many men as possible.
We anuse ourselves with the more agree
able and diyerting work of undertaking to
spiritualiZe and humanize the human
heart by social machinery, an experiment
that has always failed, like ali short cuts to
human regeneration and social reform
which ignore the superiority of the per-
sonality OF the divinely gifted reformer to
all machinery of reform. No social
machinery, however ingenious. however
well equipped with business methods, will
ever do much for the world without the
application OF Christ's shoulder to the
nhSSA IA ttiS vi 4u-
name personality manifested in the life,
speech and action of every man who sim
cerely believes that "God has organized"
the race once and forever under the order
of human brotherhood" This spirit, and
only this spirit, can help rs upward to a
nobler and purer social state.
In the imitation of Christ and the ap-
piication Of his simple creed to human
society, not in Bellamyism and Georgeism
lies the only hope of better and higher
world. With this FINAL coming of Christ
and with this only shall
All evil hearts
Grow gentle, kind hearts gentler, az the balm
OF that divinest Daybresk tghtens Earth"