The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-26
IT IS MIGHTIER THAN LAW
DE. NEWMAN SMITH ON THE POWER
 OF PERSONAL INFLUENCE.


 no Material worth--soeial Millennium an Idle Dream. "The Power of Personal Influence" was discussed yesterday morning in Center church by the pastor, Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth. The text was from Pauls epistle to the Romans, eighth chapter, third and fourth verses, as fol- lows:
 "For what the law would not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin condemns sin in the flesh"
 Dr. Smyth said, in part: "It Is true of human society and it's progress, it is true of our politics and the worlds political history, that many things which no law or system of laws can accomplish may be wrought for the good of men by the higher virtue of personal presence and influence Think for @ moment how true this is. What | the law in our towns and cities could | not do to keep people out of evil and l trouble, that God, sending good men l and women in the spirit of His Christ | has wrought in many dark places 1 There are some things in the making of l a city which the laws can do; there are many more things which the laws can not do. We are apt to exaggerate the power of the law to produce human welfare, especially if we see some evil thing piercing a friend, or if we see overwhelming men some presumptuous l wrong. So we may make the mistake of supposing that some widespread evil thing can be overcome by a stroke of law, or that the kingdom of virtue, tem- perance or industrial independence can come through the legislature. There are indeed some things which the laws may reasonably be expected to accom- plish. The state may secure certain healthful external conditions of life. It may prohibit within the reach of its power certain hurtful social practices,
 Tt may, to some extent, lend public l aid to the higher forces of education and morals. But experience shows that human governments very soon come to the end of their province, where it must be said. what the law could not do Among the things which positive law cannot do are such as these: It cannot create among the people virtue, frugal ity, temperance, equality of conditions Law cannot create money values; it cannot convert paper rags into nation al wealth Fiat values have no natural worths. It is idle to dream that the social millennium can come in through change of administration; it is social quackery to imagine that the kingdom of heaven can be established on earth through any economic panacea. What the law could not do: God sending His own son; this scripture, descriptive of Gods higher method of successful working among men, might furnish a key to all our social and reformatory work It is through the advent of per- sonal Christian power that our civiH- zaticn is to be saved. It is the power of personal goodness that is to prevail where men are tempted and women struggling with evil conditions, and lit tie children are born in an atmosphere of shame. God sending his own sons that is the higher note for the redemp- ton of all out cities and towns. It is the home missionary not for our coun- try's salvation.
 "Glance again at the manifestation of the superiority of personal power, which history affords. It holds equally true on the smaller scale of the politics of a single city, and on the larger scale of our national history. What charters have failed to do for city; what con : stitutions and laws have not wrought for state, that some masterful man has done for the people. If you will examine closely the causes of the fail UT of economic and efficient govern ment in many of our cities, you will find doubtless faulty forms of muni- cipal government enough-city char ters, indeed, with so many defective f1ues in them that the wonder is not that so much of the peoples fuel is consumed to no purpose in them, an6 that there is so much municipal smoke but rather that before this the whole house has not caught fire from them But with all the defects and ill-assort' ed contrivances in civic constitutions IL tom and root of the matter, you shal find that the real underlying cause fol the civic failures which you deplort | lies not so much in these admitted i'm perfections of municipal systems bu rather in the absence of the persona Il power of the community-the absence = of true personal inf1uence-just wher, - it ought to come in to do what no law ,, can accomplish. And, sometimes, wha a city charter could not do in that i was weak, that, the presence and in = fiuence of right minded men has ac complished for a people. The highe
 working of personal presence and in fluence is the one thing always needed a bad system of government may b.
 redeemed by it, and the best system would fail without it.
 How true this is likewise on thu larger scale of.politics. What laws ana institutions could not do in history great men, sent by God, have accom- plished for the deliverance of peoples Where European diplomacy now fails one noble man, with wisdom made lu minous by vision of the eternal right and with will firm as a nations mora courage might accomplish, and that probably, without firing gun. In ou
 own political history, likewise, ther have been times when our institution