The herald., 1897-02-28
A STUDY IN SOCIAL EVOLUT|ON-..A FRAGMENT
Paper Read Before the Sunset Club February 26 by the
Rev. Burt Estes Howard

ton. The masses do not think. They
| feel and act. But behind their feeling
and their action there is an idea. II
was not thought out, 1t was born. The
brooding spirit of the Almighty, who is
slowly bringing order out of confusion
overshadows the soul of our common
humanity, and straightway the soul OF
the people is pregnant with holy
| thought Then does the age give birth
| to a new spirit which sits upon the throne
| of Judgment. LAS the lightning when
| it lighteneth out of the one part under
the heaven, shineth unto the other part
under the heaven" so suddenly great
principle flames into the consciousness
| of the multitude. Then the idea hard
ems into a conviction, but it is senti-
ment not logic, that Sands at the arm
| orers anvil forging the weapons of the
people. In every mighty movement of
| history when the multitudes have lifted
| like flood against some institution they
had doomed to destruction, they have
been pushed on by force of which tho j
were but dimly conscious 20 an end far
larger than their thought had grasped.
The restless tides of time roll II. from
the eternal deeps, and generations of
men, their arts, their sciences, their
achievements, their joys and their sac
rifices are laid like the wash of the sea
sand in thin deposit that is slowly
building Gods world. But every While
some hidden power long pent within the
heart of humanity shakes itself free
from the fetterinsSbonds Of convention
ality and custom and utters itself in a
social revolution. Then do the pillars
of the earth tremble and history is COM
PEELED to trace new coast line of human
progress They that are blind see only
the mad, erratic impulse of the mob, but
they that have eyes to see catch g.!mpses
of the Shekinah that is leading the race
toward its perfection. The upheavals
of the peoples that have marked and
made the epochs of the worlds history
are not the products of reason. but cf a
strange instinct. Humanity became
possessed of a spirit of divine discon-
tent. The idea was born. Men follow
ed it, Under the spell of some name-
less call the race, like Abraham of old,
Jared forth not knowing whittier 1t was
going, obedient to an instinct that was
resistless.
BENEFICENCE OF DESTRUCTION
But if the progress Of the world is
written in upheayals of the people, and
if these movements are the product OF
instinct rather than of deliberate rsas-
oning, it is equally true that destruction
must play no small part In the process.
The path by which the race has emerged
from the crudity and barbarity Of the
past is strewn thick with the wrecks Of
institutions once honored and mighty;
and with the broken pieces of cast-off
forms of faith once possessed of imperial
dominance. 1t is the tendency of every
type of civilization to crystalline into
permanence. But the growing life of
humanity can never remain fixed in i'm
mobile forms And when the rigid CIV
iliZation becomes too narrow to hold the
Ynandinp ideals of the n6nnln then dO
the people burst forth from the contract
ed chrysalis and rise into larger and a
better estate. 1t Is always easy to see
the beneficence of destruction. In the
dust and turmoil and confusion of swift
change, the great lines on which the
future is shaping truer and juster civ
ilization do not readily appear. But
when we look back from long historic
perspective, when we see the larger and
diviner forms of physical and social and
spiritual life rising up in their glory out
of the ruins of the petty limitations
which have held the ages preceding
them. then we understand that what
seemed to be the grim demon Of destruc-
ton is after all the high priest of evolu-
tion who stands in eternal service at the
font Of life. Forms change because the
informing soul Of things moves on. And
in the long, weary march upward to-
go before construction in the way.
Leaving OUT of consideration the spora-
die and vicious outbursts of evil and
baseness, the great upheavals Of the
people which have shattered many an
historic institution and dashed in pieces
tradition hoary with age and have clear
ed broad place where a better civiliza-
tion could rear itself, have always over
thrown only those forms of civil and re-
ier;or nd r0ndifinrg that
must needs be wrecked in or
der to release into the life OF the
world the forces that make for the
larger welfare of the race. When the
ground has long lain fallow the sharp
share Of the plowman must break it up
and furrow it deep. Social revolution
is the springtirne of new epoch. 1t
need not be violent. 1t must be de-
structive. Whatever stands in the way
not of some of the people. but of all of
the people-must be done away. The
failure to recognize this truth has been
the superb folly of history.
ENDLESS ADVANCEMENT
But destruction is not an end in itself.
1t is only the herald Of a new era, the
casting Up of the highway for the COM
ing of construction. The downfall of the
wrong and the inefficient and the insult
ficient must be followed by the building
up of that which is right and efficient and
sufficient for its time. Construction Is
not the work of the masses. 1t is the
task Of the few. Each age produces,
and produces usually from the ranks of
the common folk, a handful of master
minds, who, with prophetic insight and
a divine wisdom, bring a new and high
er order out of the agments of the
old. Aye, new and a higher order.
The movements of men and things and
worlds are but an upward striving to-
ward divine ideal Out of the confus-
strife and toll out of the ignorance and
ions and cross purposes, out of the
the poor, blind yearnings of the people,
out of our pitia BILE failures and loss
yea, out of our very weakness and
aywardness-there are being slowly
fashioned by the power that holds the
destiny Of the nations in his fingers an
earth that shall be just and true and
righteous. There is no room for pess-
imism in world so full of the signs of
evolution. Evolution believes in gos-
pei of endless advancement. 1t faces the
future with a passionate hope, and sees
in every achievement of mind and heart
a broken CLEAN of the glory that is yet
to be. 1t invests even the crude bung-
ling struggles of the race with the sa-
cred breastplate of prophecy. 1t believes
that all the history of men is being WOW
en- on one great thread Of purpose, that
there is
zone God, one law. one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves"
ETERNAL PROGRESSION