The herald., 1898-11-21

made clear to mems minds, they will see
how superstitious AID irrational is this fear
of God, which now characterizes so much
of religious belief and worship. They will
! find joy and peace in this world of toiling
and suffering such as they never before
/, dreamed of. That the thought and worship
cf God is not always an inspiration and rap
ture is due to the irrational and imperfect
way in which we have been taught.
| Rev. Burt Estes Howard, at the Church
of the Covenant, selected his text from
Luke xiii:89, the
Old Problem With parable of the barren
a New Meaning Zig tree and the vine
dresser who pleaded
| for it's life one year more. The introduction
of the sermon was a severe arraignment of
the owner of the vineyard, who failed to
surround the tree with the proper condi-
tions for fruit bearing, and then ordered it
curt down, as cumberer of the ground. The
parable was compared to some of the phases
OF present economic and social conditions.
"Ihe law of all life is upward tending; it
| is natural to amount to something If the
law of being is not fulfilled, either In the
case of trees or men, there is something in
the way which ought to be removed. The
problem of the day is to find what that
something is This is not only philanthropy,
it is the highest kind of religion. 1t is not
what some have termed applied Christian
| ity,' it is Christianity itself. There can be
no real Christianity that is not applied.
Poverty means congestion of population
| in the meanest quarter of city. 1t means
| the spread of disease, the creation of Grim
| inals and the bunting of moral sense. Pow
ertv itself is the mother of every kind of
wretchedness and evil. The destruction of
the poor is their poverty Drunkenness is
both cause and a result of poverty. No
wonder a saloon attracts when the quarters
are so wretched. Lack of skill is a great
cause of poverty through lack of market
for unskilled labor Machinery is taking
the place of labor more and more, but the
unskiled laborer imagines he gets hungry.
He has to have clothes and warmth, work
or no work. Ther> is little being done to
make him other than a mere peddler OF
muscle in a diminishing market, and the
number is increased by immigration. AS
the market diminishes and supply increases
the stress of competition becomes more and
more severe, and at that point in our in
dustrial system least able to have it. Re-
suit, lowering of wages to the least sum
that will enable man to live and earn.
There are large number of men who can
not find any work at all, for their sole COM
modify is brute strength.
"What is the result of it all? A verita-
BILE economic hell upon earth, to say moth
ing of the moral and sanitary hell which is
the grim accompaniment of such conditions.
You want to know something about the
economic hell? Let us visit a sweat-shop
in Chicago. Their name is legion, these hell
holes of iniquitous industrial oppression.
They are made possible by the glut of the
labor market, by the horrid pressure of
want and by the demand for cheap goods on
the part of consumers. Think of it! Chill
dren 4 years old spending long hours, day
after day in foul rooms, sewing buttons on,
finished garments, their little lives shriveled
in the fierce heat of competition and greed.
Children who have hardly ceased tugging
at the withered breasts of hungry mothers,
clutching the needle to battle with cold and
disease and want and sin. Women, old
years before their time, fercely and fever
ishly wrestling against awful odds, trying
to earn enough bread, not to satisfy their
hunger, but to keep alive on, by making
knee pants at As cents dozen. Think of
that, you women who groan over making
suit for your own child. Suppose you were
compelled, day after day, Sunday and all,
to make knee pants and waists at As cents a
dozen, not apiece, and depended on the few
cents thus earned in seventeen or eighteen
hours labor day for rent and food, clothes
and fuel Think of wan-faced, starving
Il. E-lA g., Lot
ting with hunger, cold and disease and lust,
family struggling for a wavering foothold
on the rim of life. Yet this is behind a
large part of our cheap clothing; this rises
behind goodly percentage of our bargain
sales
'Shall we cut down the fig tree or give
it chance? The problem will not solve by
increasing our police force and building larg-
er jails to hold the poor souls that come
dropping down through this awful social
hopper, holding meetings and conventions
and building mission churches and getting
up revivals; nor will these conditions be
ameliorated by dilletante dabbling in
sociology or by Summing parties piloted
through the .haunts of vice with pencil
and notebook to lend a semblance of re-
spectability to the mere Cutting of morbid
curiosity.
Legislation will not do it all, but it will
help nightly; restriction of immigration,
cheaper transportation, laws relating to the
employment of labor, municipal ownership
of street railways, laws governing the en-
ployment of child labor, schools for man
ual training with all help. The law of the
survival of the fittest is inexorable; it can
rot be abrogsted, but it can be changed into
a blessing. The fttest will always survive;
the thing to do is to induce fitness"
David Walk, in the Church of Christ at
Santa Monica yesterday, took for the
subject of his morning
Divine sermon the words of
Paradoxes Jesus in John xii, "a
25, and pointed out
that, though on their face paradoxical, they
really formulated the philosophy of Chris
tianity. The life of Christ on earth was it. |
self paradox, and can be understood only
in the light of divine sacrifice. 1t was
natural that the Greeks should de. |
sire to see the man whose mar
velous works and words trembled |
on every tongue, and so they sought an in
PRODUCTION. Their wish being made known |
to Jesus, the answer is the text. Apparently,
there is no relevancy in the reply to the re-
quest Jesus knew that they would be dis
appointed They were looking for man of
lSingly mien.
Christie r,,ust ba ;,JooJ H., f,,,:A-