Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1899-11-23
DANGERS AHEAD.
Dean Farrar's Indictment Of Present
Day England.
London Mail.

The dean of Canterbury is not usual
ly set down as pessimist, but his re-
cent utterance in the British religious
magazine Young Man, quoted in the
Christian Statesman, exhibits any
thing but bright view of the imme-
date outlook for religion and morality
in Great Britain. He says:
81 am neither a prophet nor
prophets son, so | will not undertake
the rash task of venturing to make any
prophecy about the future. But it has
long seemed to me that things are in
a state of unstable equilibrium, and
that another century cannot pass with
out the occurrence Of some great Euro
pean war, with all it's terrible and
heart-shaking catastrophes. Nor is it
possible to be content with the state
of things in England. The alarming
spread of betting and gambling among
workingmen and the youths of great
cities-so that this ruinous vice helps
to fill our prisons, and Tin the north of
England especially has ruined the
healthy influence of our games; the
eager love of money, which leads to
so much wild speculation and CONNER
with which we degrade the helpless
childhood of the world by deluging
savage tribes with drink, the growth OF
Hooliganism, and crimes of brutal vio-
lnnan. tho dom of q Calf1ShnaSC
which immerses itself in luxury, pleas
ure and amusement, while a poverty
more and more squalid welters almost
at the doors of the wealthy; the
growth of a sullen and angry feeling
of discomfort among thousands of the
poorer class; the decay of faith in the
deepest and most awfully vital truth;
the ever abiding and infinitely loath-
some curse of drink, which seems,
among women at any rate, to be gain
ing rather than losing ground, and, as
Pope Leo XIII. says, 'drags unnum-
bered souls to perdition;.' the tendency
to substitute niggling nulhCies and fe-
acknowledging superstitions for re
ligion pure and undeiled' all these
things give serious ground for disqui-
etude."
The great men in religion and phil
anthropy and letters, says Dean Far
rar, are all dying off, and are leaving
no one to take their places.
eve have no poet who can stand for
moment beside Tennyson or Brown
ing; no orator who can be distantly
compared to Gladstone or Bright; no
painter who reaches the level Of Land
seer or Millais; no writer nearly so
powerful as Carlyle or Ruskin; no nov
eIist-the novels now flood the world
at the rate of five day-who is worth
mentioning with Dickens, Thackeray
or George Eliot; no religious teacher
whose influence is half so telling or
ennobling as that of Maurice, F. w.
Robertson or Dean Stanley. If our age
could produce one dauntless or far
sighted mana teacher like Savonaro-
la. or Luther, or Wesley, or Whitfield;
philanthropist like Frances Of Assist
or Vincent de Paul, or Thomas Clark
son, or John Howard; a man who
| would willingly face bonds and affic-
| tions, and cataracts Of calumny, and
not hold his life dear unto himself, and
would count it glory, for the truths
sake, to
Stand pilloried On infamy's high
stage,
And bear the pelting scorn Of hall
an age;
man whose soul was so ardent with
the light of Heaven that he could Hash
conviction and reformation into depths
Of moral unreality; a man who could
fling the fire Of God, like arrows Of
lightnings, into the apparently impreg-
nable strongholds of wickedness and
shame-then We should feel livellel
hope for the immediate future"