The Yale expositor., 1895-02-01


anon, and never more than now,
q disposition abroad to distrust
everybody, and because some bank
employees defraud, to distrust all
bank employees; and because some
police officers have taken brides, to
believe that all policemen take bribes;
and because divorce cases are in the
marriage relations are unhappy.
There are men who seem rapidly COM
ing to adopt this creed: All men are
liars, scoundrels, thieves, libertines-
When a new case of perfdy comes to
the surface, these people clap their
hands in glee. 1t gives piquancy
to their breakfast if the morn
ing newspaper discloses q new expos
ure, or new arrest. They grow fat
on vermin. They join the devils in
hell in jubilation over recreancy and
pollution. If some one arrested is
proved innocent, it is to them a disap-
pointment. They would rather be-
lieve evil than good. They would like
to be on a committee to find something
wrong They wish that as eyeglasses
have been invented to improve the
sight, and ear trumpets have been in
vented to help the hearing, a cor
responding instrument might be in
vented for the nose, to bring nearer a
malodor. Pessimism says of the church,
1.-THE majority of the members are
hypocrites, although it is no temporal
advantage to be a member OF the
church, and therefore there ! no temp
tation to hypocrisy" Pessimism says
that the influence of newspapers is
only bad, and that they are corrupting
the world; when the fact is that they
are the mightiest agency for the arrest
of crime, and the spread ofintelligence,
and the printing press, secular and re-
ligious, is setting the nations free. The
whole tendency of things is toward
cynicism, and the gospel of Smash-up.
We excuse David of the text for a
paroxysm OF disgust, because he apollo
gizes for 1t to all the centuries, but it
is deplorable fact that many have
taken the attitude of perpetual dis
trust and standardization. There
are, we must admit, deplorable facts,
and we would not hide or min
fly them. We are not much encouraged
to find that the great work of official
reform in New York city begins by a
proposition to the liquor dealers to
break the law by keeping their saloons
open on Sunday from 2 in the after
noon to IL at night. Never since
America was discovered has there been
worse insult TO sobriety and decency
and religion than that proposition.
That proposition is equal to saying:
'nIet law and order and religion have
chance on Sunday forenoons, but
Sunday afternoons open all the gates
to gin and alcohol, and Schiedam
schnapps, and sour mash, and Jersey
lightning, and the variegated swill of
breweries and drunkenness and crime.
Consecrate the first half of the Sunday
to God, and the last half to the devil
Let the children on their way to Sun
day schools in New York at 3 o'clock
in the afternoon meet the alcoholism
that does more than all other causes
combined to rob children of their
fathers and mothers and strew the
land with helpless orphanage. Surely
strong drink can kill enough people
and destroy enough families, and suffi-
GENTLY crowd the aims houses and PEN
itentiaries in six days of the week
without giving it an extra half day
for pauperism and assassination.
Although we are not very jubilant
over municipal reform that opens
the exercises by doxology to rum,
we have full faith in God, and in the
gospel, which will yet sink all in
iquity as the Atlantic ocean melts a
flake of snow. What we want, AMI
what believe we will have, is a great
religious awakening that will moral
ize and Christianize our great popula-
tions, and make them superior to
temptations, whether unlawful or
legalized. So / see no cause for dis
heartenment. Pessimism is a sin, and
those who yield to it cripple them
selves for tho war, ON one side of
which are all the forces of darkness,
led on by Apollyon, and on the other
SlOt Ol WnlCn dIc dll VIC lOICCS VI
light, led on by the Omnipotent.
risk the statement that the vast ma
jority of people are Going tho best they
can. Nine hundred and ninety-nine
out of a thousand III the officials of the
municipal and the United States gov
ernments are honest. Out of a thou
sand bank presidents and cashiers, nine
hundred and ninety-nine are worthy
the position they occupy. Out of a
thousand merchants, mechanics and
professional men, nine hundred and
ninety-nine are doing their duty as
they understand it. Out of one thou
sand engineers, and conductors, and
switchmen, nine hundred and ninety
nine are true to their respon-
sible positions. 1t is seldom that
people arrive at positions of respon-
sibility until they have been tested
over and over again. II the theory Of
the pessimist were accurate, society
would long ago have gone TO
pieces, and civilization would have