The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-03

HuCill lSllSlOuS lSHOItllCS, lHullLeTeuCe, Responsibility and impiety in which thousands of our youth are growing up. Deterioration here goes on with speedy progression. These irreligious youth, untaught in and contemptuous of the sanctities of the family, must soon be the fathers and mothers of another generation. What is the out look sor the home and for all the con- serving influences of character and conduct which home signifies?
 The modern prophet and missionary of the Lord has now to contend with an agency which at first was supposed to be one of his most valuable coadju- tors, but which depraved to devilish uses one oe his most powerful and in- sidious antagonists. I refer to the printing press, which supplies immoral pictures and literature, and which fur nishes forth the sensational and vul- garlzed neWSpaper-far worse in it's heaps of grossness on Sundays than on other days-stimulating mercenary, ir- reyerent, brutish and criminal instincts in thousands of our youth. Whence the reform of this decivilizing agency is to come, God only knows, but that there must be reform and regeneration or we shall relapse into barbarism is plain enough. One part of the country is as badly off as another in this re- gard, and everywhere there is need of prophetic testimony on behalf of a purity, a Judgment, righteousness so salient and flaming that this evil shall be purged away.
 The socialistic movements of the time have intense interest for the Con- gregational prophet and missionary especially at the west. From the time of Pentecost the point where Christian- ity has touched the matter of property has presented always the most diffi- cult and delicate questions It is so to-day. The air is full of threatening elements and no one can tell in what form or in what direction they may combine in a storm of social revolution.
 Closely connected with socialistic agi- tation, which concerns itself largely with bread and butter there is the growth of an un-Christian and lust provoking luxury and the increase of gambling and the gambling spirit, which, in it's various forms, many com petent judges regard as beyond intem- perance and licentiousness-far the most extended and pernicious evil of our times. The reason is that the gambling spirit touches all the business and so all the legislative and domestic life of the nation. Its baleful influence is felt in all the maneuvres and in fuences of a presidential campaign, and in the cost of every loaf of bread and of every pound of meat served on our tables. It discourages honest industry, fosters the passion to live by one's wits, def1es law, gives kind of cynical. shal- low and desperate tone to society, and innames the minds Of millions with the thirst for sudden riches.
 It is no wonder that these evils are reflected in our politics and state and national legislatures, where there seems to be little principle, or morality, and where the gravest issues are discussed and settled from the standpoint of the iobber and mercenary. In our disap- pointment and indignation at congress and our public men, we need to reflect that they are but opponents of tenden- cies hidden deep within the people themselves which nothing but the vis- ion of righteous and Judging God, mediated through the voice, the life, the moral leadership of His consecrated people and self-denying prophets can cure.
 An even more marked disclosure Of the imperative need of the missionary prophet is to be found in the frightful increase of crime in our country within
 T the last decade, despite the great tide of Christian effort
 It appears that the homicides in the United States increased from 3,561 in 1889 to the enormous number of lO,500 in 1895, or in round numbers, from 5S murders in a million inhabitants in 1889 to 1855 murders in a million inhabitants in 1895.
 In no civilized country on the face of the globe is life so unsafe as in this country.
 Put along with this these two facts: First. that i'll many communities, east and west, there is no ministration of the gospel whatever, no Sunday school, no moral instruction, no missionary prophet of duty and righteousness, be- cause churches have become so apathet- ic that missionary societies have no money to support them; and second, the extravagant and sordid expendi- lures at weddings and feasts made in recent months by ostensibly Christian people; and do you not think that there is a call, such as never existed in this country, for laying emphasis upon that old Hebrew type of prophesying of judgment and righteousness which made Isaiah and all the rest, the mighty witnesses of Jehovah in their day? day?
 There is, however, an even more sig nificant aspect of these ghastly statis- tics of murder. More alarming than their number last year is the fact that only 132 out of the 10, 800 murderefs were legally executed for their crimes, while in the same year there were I'll done to death by lynching. Law is set at naught in both directions. One mur- derer in 45 was legally executed in 1890, while only in "A in 1895. Meantime life for this crime has become almost a farce If all the murderers who have been thus sentenced during the last six years were now in confine- ment there would be 42,000 of them, but the eleventh census shows only :, ,351 so confined. The remainder, sub tracting the dead have been weakly pardoned, and the majority of them are now at large, living witnesses of the degradation into which have fallen the o-Saxon sense of justice and re- spect for law which once were our pride and the guarantee of our stabili-