The Portland daily press., 1895-10-14
THE COUNCIL.
Continuance Of COngregationalism's
Convention.
FATHER ENDEAVOR CLARK ONE
OF SATURDAYS SPEAKERS.

| Building Righteousness Into Social ana
Political Observation-Disclosures En-
| deavor and the Great Public Questi ons
| Abstracts of the Addresses.
Syracuse, N. Y, October 12-The
fourth days session of the council of Con-
gregational churches was held this morn
ing. A resolution was adopted that a
committee be appointed for the govern
ment of the council to take. .acticn on the
matter of protecting the lives and proper
| ty of citizens in foreign ports.
Encouraging statements from theologi-
cal seminaries were made. Addresses
on education for the ministry were de-
| livered by Rev. e. f. Williams of Chica-
| go and Arthur II. Wellman of Boston.
Rev. Charles E. Jefferson, of Chelsea,
Mass, spoke as follows:
| Only blind man can be a pessimist
today. Men are ready to read the Gospel
| of the Son of God. A world conscious
ness has come into existence in these re-
| cent times in which the future is fore
| shadowed. Men believe today as they
have never believed before that God has
made of one blood all the nations of the
earth. There are no foreign lands. There
are no isolatedipeoples. And with this
sense of oneness is springing up new
feeling of human brotherhood. The
ruffian who'd strikes man in Armenia
strikes us. He belongs to u.s. and we be-
long to him. Men are speaking it as they
never spoke it before-that great word,
brother.
And with this feeling of brotherliness
has come a new emphasis on service. III
men belong together, they must serve
ono another. And this Willingness TO
serve is rising to a the level of sacrifice.
Service at it's highest means suffering.
Men are learning to suffer for one anoth-
er They are making sacrifices for prlncl-
ple They are laying down their lives
for their brethren. Even unbelievers are
doing this. They are doing it everywhere.
New York is not the only city in which
brave men are spending vitality and time
in building righteousness into social and
political institutions. Men of wealth
must use their money for the public good.
1t is the religion of men who say they
have no religion. 1t is sort OF un-
phrased Gospel written by the spirit of
the age, which the world q is accepting as
message from heaven And what is
this spirit of sacrifice but the essence of
Charity?
| And men are not stopping here. They
cannot rest with the thought that all men
are brothers. They are moving on to the
sublime discovery that One is their mas
| ter, even Christ. The millions of hand
workers in every land are turning their
faces toward the carpenter of Nazareth.
Nor is this movement confined to the
| industrial classes. 1t is still mightier in
educated circles. Science has been power
fully operative on mems minds for two
generations One result ssis n irresistible
movement back to theism as the only
basis on which thinking men can stand.
| ctI1H r6l1plOn
| They are weighing in balances the
saviors of the race. All the gods of all
| the lands have been gathered into one
| Pantheon where men can measure the
statues of those gods and compare their
messages one with the other. And in
| this Pantheon certain things are grow
| ing clear After men have studied Con-
fucius and Buddha and Zoroaster and
| Jesus they see no man but Jesus only.
| All sane mindsssare rapidly and inevitably
settling down into the conviction that
Jesus of Nazareth is the worlds God sent
| Redeemer, or else the World's redeemer
has not yet appeared.
| The world is not yet assured of the first
commandment-"Th Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart" but
| tits sure of this: Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself" The church has
placed tremendous emphasis upon the
| first: the world places tremendous en-
/
and tendenciesssmen are coming ever closer
together The worlds populations are
massing themselves III cities. These cities
are modern miracles. They are miracles
of the Son of God But what hopeful
aspects do our modern cities furnish?
Look at them Scenes of brutality and
! Inst theatres of vice and crime, arenas
in which the baser elements of human
nature slru sgle for a supremacy which
4 tbev too frequently obtain.
What can. be said Of our city popula-
tions First of all, the mass of men today
I are earnest. Many of them are earnest to
the edge of devoutness Even unbelief is
no longer fiiPpant, except in few notoris
| GUS testers who are belated stragglers Of
an age gone by. The coarse and careless
| infidelity of the eighteenth century has
vanished Earnestness is the dawn of
piety. Men in cities are learning the art
of organization. They are feeling after
Inew tmethods of cooperation. They are
testing their strength in novel combina-
tions They are experimenting with new
forms of aggregated capital and labor.
The solidarity of the race is reality
only to men who live in cities
| Men have never dreamed such dreams
as they arc dreaming now. They are
dreaming of golden ages soon to come.
They are ar~aming OF an ideal state in
which the strong shall not oppress the
weak, the ich shall not lord it over the
poor, but justice and mercy and righteous
ness shall II gn. Christian Science, Faith
Healing, Theosophy, Esotoric Buddhism,
Spiritualsn, those and a dozen others,
what are they but crude and feverish
dreams, fierce and frantic protest3 against
the blind philosophy which sees nothing
| in this world but matter?
The gods of paganism have been weighed
and found wanting. Oriental religions
are decaying, or dead. The world is
lost TheYwisdom of man is of no avail
Science and political economy stand by
the bedside OF suffering society, and they
stand there helpless and dumb There is
a world wide sense of need; a universal
restlessness and discomfort; deep and
growing expectation of some vast and
mo1nentous changes which shall usher in
a brighter age. Men. are looking for a
deiiverer. Will the church seize her op-
Rev. T. e. Clark, D. D., founder of the
Endeavor Society, spoke of Endeayorers
and Christian Citizenship as follows
What is tho attitude of the Christian
Endeavor movement toward the great
public questions of the day? On the one
| hand it is feared by some that the young
| .,oo,Io of the SOcietv NAV on bauOnd THAR