The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-08-19
PMeRIMs NoT rEnFEcT.
As John D. Long strikingly Set Forth
 af PIyan0mfh.

Ah 1OHA A&s ANA8 EtEahA8t8AE 1GA E OhtA
 at Plymouth.
 From his Address at the 300th Anni-
 versary of the First Church There.
 Even in this Pilgrim Colony, the Saints can be counted on the fingers. We are apt to think of 1t as,-a little Kingdom of Heaven on earth. But It Is amusing to read the loving ana Scriptural phraseology under guise of which the knife of shrewd dicker was the very elect intrusted with it's affairs were false to the trust and ussd their positions to feather their own nasts-- much falser to their trust tsan any President of modern insura y'e com pany The first minister sent to 1t in 1924 was a factious hypocrite who stirred up strife and was shown to have been a llbertine, guilty of gross immortality. The second was cross between a crank and an idiot and was shipped off In short order. One of the original number was hung for wilful murder. Within the first decade social vices infested the community, drunk enness. pickering, islander, licentious- ness, even crimes against nature. and all this in a community of very limited numbers. No New England village of today need fear comparison. But the good prevailed with them over the evil
 
 hereafter prevail
 I believe that all the present eruption and riot and violence which startle us today are only the boiling of the caul- dron which, hot and scaiding now, Is sloughing of the scum.
 But, on the other hand. do not shut my eyes to the perils. I recognize the discontept in the body polite which shakes the foundations under us like the tremofs of an earthquake. It is q discontent that arises not from the fact that the greatest body of the people have little. for they never had so much. IL arises from the fact that the man who has a hundredfold more than the Pilgrim compares himself, not with the Pilgrim. but with his neighbor. who has a hundredfold more than himself. The man who walks hates the man who drives a horse, but when he has his horse is unhappy becsuse of the man who spins by him in an automobile, blowing a horn and raising a cloud of dust, and whom he hates. The great problem of our material age is not the accumulation, but the distribution of wealth It is the inequalities that sting and make fosters. It takes a fit- tie philosophy to accept the inevitable laws of nature. yet the inequalities of fortune, which naturally arise under condition of equal rights and privileges for all. are the very stimulus to enter prise, to activity.
 It is well for us, however justly im- patient we may be of the powerful massing of capital which have set go- Ing the great industrial wheels of pro- duction and employment, to carefully guard. while properly restricting them against itoo violent an impairment of enterprise and investment, which might result In disaster not only to financial but industrial interests, cut off the flow of wages and support and kill the goose that lays the golden egg on which all of us alike are5directly or in- directly feeding.
 Is 1t not just here that the church has It's present great opportunity as a mighty conservative power for wisdom and righteousness, for peace and con- tent? For content is happiness, and discontent is misery Not the pulpit alone. not the preacher alone, but the Church of the people, the Pilgrim Church. the Church gathered 300 years ago today at Scrooby--the Church of all men and women who believe that God reigns, Church which, with all it's forces united and working together, is a power mighty enough to meet and solve the problems of our day. however full of peril they seem.