The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-06-07
DIR. PATTON SCORES RIGHT-LIV-
ING RASCALS.


when the strong men of the country
are at their best and when notable ut
terances fall upon the ears of college
graduates. There is something about
youth that brings out the best that is
in a man, so that when a successful
address he feels that he must say moth
ing to lower the high standards and
noble ideals. One of the most notable
addresses of the present year was that
by President Patton, of Princeton
Theological Seminary, on s"Christian
of American preachers This writer
heard him Sunday after Sunday some
years ago and found in his sermons a
holiness, a breadth, an originality and
freshness without faint of sensational
ism, and ever since has found profit
in reading his sermons and writings.
His mature years and his primacy at
Princeton, now as always the teacher
of ethics and sound religion as we'll as
leader in learning and letters, gives
weight to his views.
In his commencement sermon on
Christian Morality he declared that
the only way to study a great move
ment or a critical period is to study
the leading men of the times, those
who represent the type. In referring
to the types of men of the present
day. Doctor Patton told how easy it
was for a man to climb the social lad
der and be recognized in the highest
walks as long as he had his money
with him. but as soon as he lost his
wealth his so-caIled friends lost his ad-
dress. In touching on another type
he said:
81 hate a cold blooded, right-living
rascal that has accumulated his $40,-
900, 900, teaches Sunday school regu-
larly and, within the range of the
law, drives his hard bargains every
week day. If such men would ask me
what | thought of them l would con-
graduate them on keeping out of Jail.
The general tendency now is for each
man to do unto his neighbor as his
neighbor would do unto him, only he
tries to do it first
These are not the words of some
sensation monger to a thoughtless au-
dience They are the words of the
greatest Presbyterian divine in Amer
lea to class of the best educated men
of our country. This brief arraign-
ment of men who think they can
drive hard bargains every weekday"
and atone for it by teaching Sabbath
OF ha int cd
for a conspicuous millionaire whose
money came to him through oppreS-
sion and destruction of weaker. COM
petitors but it fits him and others like
him. Before Luther's day rich men
thought they could buy indulgences for
sin, and by large gifts to the church
buy eternal life. Tt is plain that there
are trust magnates among us today
who entertain the same idea of the
Christian religion. DR.. Patton's plain
words are needed. He is no pessimist
but he looks at things as they are, and
in his sermon went on to say:
1.-THE meek shall inherit the earth.
but we are all so anxious for the
earth that it leaves little show for the
ness will be no longer a virtue, but
the principle that might makes right
seems destined to prevail.
up to the present time most men
have accepted the general content of
ethics but now the philosophers, led
by Nitzchke. are carping at the validi-
ty of the principles of Christian ethics,
and in the future the moral standard
is destined to be lowered.
: ,'It is easier to write perfect sys-
tenn of ethics than to practice an every
day one. A man may sit all day evolv-
ing ethical problems and working out
a system by which to solve them, but
some one ought to keep an eye on
him at night
In the frenzied finance which domi-
mates this age, the current idea of the
financiers and their imitators is that
the inheritance of the earth promised
to the meek is that they shall labor
i'm the heat of the day for the enrich
ment of others and that they shall in
herit only as much of the products of
their labor as will let them continue
to grow crops upon which the specu-
lators and gamblers will get rich.