The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-03-13
A WAITING WORLD.
BY REV. MARY J. DE LONG.

be taken to mean that the whole
world is waiting for the advent of a
better manhood and womanhood;
that the whole creation is in earnest
expectation OF the coming of nobler
and purer humanity. 1t is true be-
| yond question that there are better
men and women in the world today
than there ever were before; it is
true that the whole creation has
waited long for their coming; it is
also true that the world is waiting
yet and hoping for the coming of
nobler race, even the sons of God.
This old world has swung too and
fro, staggering on its way for many
long centuries, winning something
from time to time; its days of wait
ing are not yet over. The hope born
so many generations ago in the
hearts of the elect still survives The
whole creation is looking forward, not
backward, toward the time to be, not
the time that has been. There is an
eternity behind, but there is a hap
pier, sweeter eternity before.
This is the idea we get from this
sentence from Pauline Christianity.
Everything is waiting, not for the
coming of better times, of which we
hear 30 much, but of better man
hood and womanhood. We all know
this to be the worlds sorest need.
Men of tender conscience, women of
alert intellect, know that what the
world of humanity needs today, what
the whole creation is waiting and
anxious for, is the coming of better
manhood and womanhood than we
feel ourselves to be. This is the Sc
cret in all the utilities of life. 1t lies
at the heart of our magnificent
school system; it is the spirit which
animates all religious enterprises;
it is the soul of all reforms. These
are all institutional bodies which
have grown up around the hope, the
earnest expectation, of the ultimate
manifestation of people who shall
| be in very truth the sons of God.
We have no call to speak particu-
larly of all the utilities of this life of
ours, but among them may be reck
oned government. Government has
come so far, and must continue to
come, out of the enlightened con-
science, the consecrated intellect of
man. The better men, the better
government; the better men, the bet
ter laws and the better enforcement
of laws.
What we need in law is men with
power to feel and women with power
to think. If we had these two, men
of feeling and women of thought,
massed against social and political
evils, the right would win every time.
The more of unselfsh love in the
hearts of men. the more generous dis
tribution of the good things of life,
the stronger uplift in law of those
who are helpless and down trodden
Governments and laws in every ma
ton on earth are waiting for the
manifestation of the sons of God, of
men whose hearts are right and
whose intellects follow their hearts.
International peace as opposed to
war; national peace as opposed to
political agitation and financial up
heavals; municipal peace as opposed
to local disorder, to party wrangling,
to waste and expenditure, to undue
taxation, to the encroachments of
brief authority; all these things call
for higher manhood, livelier sense
of duty, a more sound and stable
morality in the thoughts and feelings
of men.
| Or, supp oss we turn to the field of
economics, to the useful application
of wealth and material resources.
The problem here lies not all on the
side of the poor as against the rich
We are sometimes almost persuaded
by the lurid rhetoric of the peripatet-
ic orator that the obligation is all on
one side; that capital has all oblga-
tons to labor, labor none to capital.
This is not so. What Labor, written
with capital letter and personifed,
needs 10 this world today is better
laborers. more skilled, more patience,
more downright and upright honesty,
more mind, more heart wrought into
it. Labor is not an entity, mass,
thing; it is a maker, creator.
What this creator needs behind it
to give it vitality, power. usefulness,
is a man. The better the man the
more worth the thing which comes
from his hands, il it is only the black
ing of boots, the scrubbing of floors.
The fire of the universal human will,
guided by the divine will from gen
Grafton to generation, will try every