The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-10-13
DR. SMITH ON THE STRIKE
STIRRING SERMONFROMCENTER
 CHURCH PULPIT.

The Country Must Reap the Results of
 Corrupt Politics in Pennsylvania
 The Preacher Compares What the Situ-
 alton Would be if the Pennsylvania
 Coal Mines Were Located In Massa-
 chusetts-A Return Needed 50 tho Firs.
 Principles of Constitutional Liberty.
 Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth preached a
 stirring sermon yesterday morning in
 the pulpit of Center church on the coal
 strike. The sermon created much inter-
 est and was commented upon by many
 as valuable analysis of the situation
 by one well qualified to point the lesson
 of the situation,
 Dr. Smyth, taking his text from
 Isaiah 30:15, said that this was the pro-
 phetic message now to be proclaimed
 form the pulpit: in returning to the
 first principles of government and
 standing by the old virtues of industry
 we shall be saved. A new value is put
 upon some old virtues in time like
 this of public stress and strain. We
 should not turn to the vendors of new social panaceas, but return to the first principles of constitutional liberty in this country. AS these have been main tained by our supreme court they will not fail the people if we trust to them. One issue is often made paramount in public affairs; that one issue now, upon the right settlement of which all others must wait, is the right of the individual working man and his liberty to do with his might whatsoever his hands find to do. Fisher Ames said hundred years ago: q want my boy to see a free school, free paper, and free church; and then to walk forth endow- ed with the right to work with his hands for whom or with whom he sees fit. If necessary let there be a row of soldiers to see that he shall have that right, and let 1t be long row" So say we first~of all to-day. It is a serious question whether in the organization of labor, even in communities like this, the right and the liberty of the individual WI iNillSs AIldiA nave HUI DGCIl uu5~ | ly abridged; and whether in a single instance that right is destroyed, blow | is struck at human liberty throughout | the whole land. It would be fatal to our free institutions if in any settle ment of industrial warfare that right l and liberty of the individual working man should be surrendered. Many voices are now proclaiming new social | gospels-I trust that from their wisdom,
 or beyond their folly, men may learn | to live more humanly in right relations l and in happier air. But amid sall l these new social voices I would return to an old article of the social creed which over two hundred and fifty years | ago the first preacher upon this shore l confessed as his social creed: I believe I that it represents the bedrock upon ! which our industrial prosperity has | been built and upon which it must rest;
 it would be a sound platform fer the l settlement of the strike; this old social | principle for the present hour-"con- | cerning giving every man his due. That | unto all men is to be given whatsoever I his due to them in regard of their of- 1 fee, place, gifts, wages, estate, and con- dition; endeavoring ourselves to have a conscience void of offense towards God | and towards men," There is responsi- | bility, and the dignity of labor, and a | voice of freedom in that old social
 creed. I would commend this resolu- tion for adoption to our own board of aldermen as a better resolution and more effectual for the settlement of the ! strike, than the resolution which they ! adopted last Monday, in which they asked the president to take action which if he could be conceived as at- | tempting, would render him liable to l instant impeachment, and which, if he
 could cary it through, would make him | the destroyer of constitutional liberty
 We are to be saved by returning tC and resting ill a religious humanity | The time is past when we can have
 religion without humanity, but unhap-
 oily the age is not yet past when men
 seek to weave a web of humanity which is without religion. When we cry | shame upon a nerveless governor per | haps we forget that what Pennsylvania
 has for years sown-the wind of cor
 rupt politics-the country must now
 reap. The new value to be put now or
 the old principles of religious humanity
 is brought out the moment we suppose 1 that the coal fields are situated in Mas
 sachusetts, and in the moral and re- l ligious environment of Massachusetts 1 intsead of in a state notorious for its
 civic and political corruption; in a
 state whose moral forces and political
 virtues are still represented in the sen- ate by Hoar, and not by Quay. The | Sermon on the Mount is the great re-
 ligious charter of humanity; but in ii
 the blessing of the peacemaker is not
 promised to the sons of corruption but
 to the children of God. Not with the 1 help of such men shall our industrial
 warfare be settled right. If for years | the people of Pennsylvania have been sowing the wind in such n0litics the