The record-union., 1894-03-17
IN RELIGIONS REALM
Expressions From the Various Re
ligious Newspapers
The Religious Thought of the Day as
Expressed In the Sectariau Press
Some Matters of Interest to Both
Ministers and Laymen.

president Eliot of Harvard will win
the gratitude of many for his plain utter
ances on the subject of college athletics,
even though his conclusions may not all
be approved" says the Congregational
iSt of Boston. .'Athletics, good in them
selves, have come to be more than re-
creation, more than means of physical
development. in many Of our schools and
colleges. They have come to be pro-
fession, and, in some instances, craze.
When a brutal prize fighter is euter-
tanned with adulation, dined and wined
by the students Of our two Oldest univer-
sites, it is quite time to call a halt. The
football games between colleges, held in
the neighborhood of great cities, have be-
come contests which brutallze the chief
actors and demoralize the crowds of spec
tators They have become, though. per-
haps, not as yet extensively, as truly the
resorts OF gamblers as the racetracks,
which are under the ban of law. 1t, by
limiting the contests to college fields be-
longing to one of the competitors in col
lege towns and by the other restrictions
which President Eliot suggests, the evils
which have become hagrantly associated
be eliminated, all will rejoice for athletic
games, apart from these evils, are in
many ways an advantage to the STU
dents"
"Crime should be punished" exclaims
the National Baptist OF Philadelphia. ut
is not worth while to make punishment
pleasant. There should be a check to the
maudlin demonstrations growing, we be-
lieve, out of the kindness Of heart espe-
cially prevalent in one of the sexes, such
as sending flowers to the condemned
criminal. The criminal should not be
allowed to be the center of an admiration
on the part OF group, many OF whom
would be almost willing to die ii it might
insure them this moment OF triumph,
and might crafty the conceit which is
rarely absent from the class OF which
murderers are made up. Where man
commits crime which shows that he is
already degraded TO the last degree, we
would have the punishment accordingly.
The man who beats his wife we would
have hogged. The man who commits
crimes dictated by sensual passion we
would have subjected TO the punishment
which nature and common sense indi-
cate as the one intallible remedy which
alone affords security against repetition
of the crime. 1t is all very we'll to talk
about the dictates of humanity and all
that, but the criminal is not the only
person to be consulted. Let us also
think something of the innocent victim
and the innocent who may be the next
VICTIM"
president Harper OF the University of
Chicago has been lecturing upon the
Book of Genesis in a way to startle his
coreligionists," says the LaUing Church
(P. E.) of Chicago. Taking the ground,
as it seems, that the narrative of the early
chapters is not probably historical. but
derived from the ancestral legends of the
Semites, be considers that the inspired
author has purged his material of poly
tneistic superstition and stamped upon
it the lofty conceptions of pure mono
theism. If we understand the drift of
this treatment it is equivalent to the the
ory that the narrative has been rendered
symbolical of spiritual truth and in a