The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-11-08

| anu eQual certainty Ol IOllONlHS tfS't cycle of decadenee and death; the world is past master in all these things Or the great republic may devote ltselt With its passionate love of humanity matchls ss daring, it's huge aggre ad or thinking men, the llugest that IS or ever was on earth, to the development or this one ideal remaining untr ed, Christianity. It may not succeed, and even If succeeding civilization dedi, cated to Christ may be found to contain elements of decay even as one ded cated to family love or liberty, but if it il, ! at least, when we go to take our place In the vast hall of the dead, 1t will not be to stand with the shades of an hun- dred European nations that were but the feeble echoes and imitators of what had been before, but it will be to stand with the mighty spirits of the Nile and the Euphrates among the few great original civilizations of all time.
 No living man with any pre- ems ons to knowledge of the past questions to- l day that any civilization to be success tul must be universal. No matter what other elements of decay there may ha e been in the old civilizations the one po- tent and all sufficient reason for that decay was that they thought they uld succeed by themselves. Even where the largest causes of their decline seem to have been internal corruption 1t was corruption brought in from W thout, the blight or the poison of vastly infer'- ! or peoples. The great republic to suc- i ceed must make her civilization the worlds. Not necessarily her flag and her government the worlds, but her Ideal the worlds, and s nee that ideal is Christianity or nothing, then Chris tianity the worlds.
 Now the most significant fact in the situation to-day is that American Christianity is complaining of the poli- ties, the immortality the indifference to ! God in the midst of which she feeds herself, and Is herself away behind that same politics and immcr lity an indif- f ference to God in zeal for humanity A ssionary lecturer in New York the other day declared in the spirit of con- plaint apparently that each thirteen- inch shell fired in the war cost enough to found several mission stations. Of course it did, but is there anything to complain of in that? We have m- plained for years that supine govern- ] ments profersirg to be Christian al- lowed the most horrible inhumanities to be practiced under their pro tion. The portion of the hard-won 1llars and gallant work of the American board for years neutralZed by the caprices of a German war lord and the truculsnt treachery of a Russian cabinet is fresh in our minds. The government we love has fired some thirteen inch shells echoing round the world, spatt ring the brains and blood of the oppressors of mankind against the very faces of the reactionary cabinets of Europe. Now
 let the church fire some thirteen inch shells too.
 The cry from the thirsty souls Of a humanity just beginning to sae the light is of incredible insistence, and the reply of American chur h is more selfish and cold-blooded than Gesma- nys to Armenia. Of this church, sev- en hundred members. people believing or protesting to believe in the salva- tion of Christ, have declared they would not be responsible for a gift of two cents a week to evanFe ize the world and though that number may possibly be reduced fifty by those who may cast in bit of change or a small bill if they happen to be around when a collection is being taken, it still leaves the Ger man war lord an angel of light com pared with the Grand avenue church.
 And the answer of thousan nds of ether churches is not materially q fferent. The mission boards say every day to outstretched hands asking nothing but tools, we have nothing to give and what cry it is. Says woman of Tn- dia coming in secret to one of our lady workers, 'Is it true that He died for women?" In Micronesia young men thronging to the doors of our training school, ard we cannot take them be- cause it costs five cents a day to edu- cate them and the churches of Am srica cannot afford it. GA devoted African missionary lying i'll at her mothers g home In Illinois, whither she had b zen sent from the field worn out, copy of the Herald was carelessly left lying by her bedside. She took it up and read which of the missions shall be dropped; shall it be the African missions? The nurse could not understand the caus of another chill and the stony stare com- ing into the eyes, for she did not know her patient had read this estimate of the American churches of the value of lives snatched from vice too deep to he told) In Armenia one hundred thou sand strong men killed, one hundred thousand more perished of want, three hundred thousand and more in desti- tuition; our missionaries still at their posts through blood and fire and the American churches order their support cut down fCrty-five per cent. A stu : dent uprising in America unparalleled, men willing to give their lives and no money to send them.
 Is it really to be thought that indus trialism and government by the people means anything to civilization or hu- man progress; that twenty story New York sky-s raper is any nearer world 1 and heaven success than an Egyptian pyramid: that a railroad is any 9arar , to God than a caravan; that kerosene oil distributed by a pipe line is any more precious in heaven than olive ol? And yet and yet, industrial growth and thirteen inch shells represent progress in this way and only this way; they represent physical victory dominance of will and strength; if then that will and strength be dedicated to the re- demption of the world to new civiliza- tion, there is indeed progress, but if