The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-11-07

Mr.. Chairman ana FTtetUS'
Along with yourselves | expected
to have the pleasure of listening to
DIR. Shutter as he should unfold and
develop the subject on which the
program announces him to speak,
christianity in its Relation to Crime
and Criminals" Knowing the elo-
auent doctors habitual thorough
ness, l inferred that there would OF
course, be no phase of his subject
which it would be worth while for
any subsequent speaker to make the
theme of his discourse. Christianity
as a reforming power for criminals
would, 1 argued to myself, be thor
oughly laid before my hearers, and SO,
not wishing to convert my own pc
culiar thunder into feeble and re-
ceding echo of Minneapolis reverber-
ations, l availed myself of the lati-
tude of indefniteness in the state
ment of my subject to direct my
thought into other channels and to
other ends. l have, therefore, resort
ed for its focal significance to that
social application of the word reform
which has come into such proml-
nence in these latter days, when the
race, as exemplifed by the great ma
tions of the earth, is being born with
unexampled fullness into its social
consciousness.
Human society always has some
form. In the process of its evolution,
governments, laws, institutions, art,
literature, business, manners, phil
osophy, moral standards, religion, all
take shape according to the type and
intensity of the inner life of people
acting upon and through their envi-
ronments of circumstances and oppor-
tunities. In this way, we have had va
rieties as curious and interesting as
the varieties of man himself from the
missing link up. Viewed from this
standpoint, social forms are human
creations and challenge attention
and study as opponents of the inner
and invisible side of man.
Within a comparatively recent
period there has been spring
expansion of the vital human sap OF
the nations,-a stirring of desire and
a reaching out after things unattain-
ed. As consequence, the ordinary
institutions, practices and standards
begin to show the effects of strain.
They snap, bend, enlarge and take on
new forms adjusted to, and in recog-
milton of, the swelling force within
them.
During the century preceding the
present one, this expanding life man
Tested itself in open and active i'm
patience with arbitrary and irres-
ponsible government, and issued In
extensive changes toward democratic
form. Today, every one of the first
class nations of the earth, except
Russia, which is frst-class only in
size and power, is, in fact if not in
form, democracy. That great ma
gician, the people, has touched with
his wand the old absolutisms and
transformed them, at least in inner
substance, SO that the Imperialism of
ancient houses is but transparent
emptiness, sustaining its show and
tolerated vestige of power by allan
ces with popular forces whose agent
it has become. The swelling life of
spring becomes the full tide of sum-
mer, and the movement which, in the
last century, took political direc-
ton, in this appears as demand and
an effort for social reconstruction.
There is something imposing in a
wide survey of this great expansion.
Within few generations, all Europe
and America seem to have been born
into an irresistible dissatisfaction
with existing conditions and came
forth into tremendous and energet-
ic demand for reform, advance, bet
torment. In autocratic Russia, be-
cause the governmental conditions are
still obdurate, the movement for So
cial reforms looks in political direc-
tions too, and has the desperate as
pect of wholesale revolution akin to
destructionism. And the lingering
imperialism of Germany and Austria
gives a somewhat political tinge to
social unrest in those nations. But
in France, England and America,
where existing governmental forms
are accepted and allow room for the
spirit of reform to act, it has the So
briefly and steadiness of evolution,
without, however, being at all luke
warm or tame. Through the circle
of the great nations, yes, reaching to
the farther side of Asia and taking in
hat marvellous people, the Japanese,
the glo-Saxons of the Orient, there