The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-12-31

the kingdom of God as well as the church. From the first day of the Christian era until now the institutions that help the ignorant protect the outcast, care for the cripples and house the poor, have gone side by side with the church in mak- ing known that Jesus has come and still rules among men. When 1 think or the bleakness of our life as compared with the warmth of the life of many communi- ties, not half as well favored, l am tempt ed to cry: O, my countrymen! Will the desire to possess and the ignorance Of using what you have blind you to those things which help a city more than pour ing gold along its streets or scattering bread for the hungry, along it's high ways?
 Public Institutions.
 For instance, in our city. there is no public library, where the ambitious youth. compelled to earn his bread to feed his body, may at the same time get hold of those books that will feed his mind for the making of more than toiler, nor where honest toll shuts out many noble soul from communion of the great who are in the flesh and yet might, in the stiffness of the rest hour, commune with the great, both in and out of the flesh, who have given the best of brain and spirit in the books with which they have blessed the world.
 l l speak no word of Encouragement Of the efforts of the noble workers In other l days to meet the wants of the city in getting together the books that make what we call public library. But how poor and indifferent do we appear when we know how a great library enriches the life and increases the happiness of the individuals of any city. Put over against this great need the wealth of this 1 city, and Is 1t strange it occurs to some that we do not know how to abound? Many successful man has testified l that he owed his first ambition to be- l come a successful and useful citizen to the influence of good books Could there l be any greater monument to the thrift and intelligence and kindllness of this great city than such a mighty public in- stituton in which every citizen, great and small, might feel that he had an interest and might take pride.
 Neglect of What We Have.
 There are other institutions, for the outeast and the sick, founded by the great women of this place. and so far maintained by them, that reflect no credit on our large life, because we are content that they shall barely exist while fine women go from door to door and beg for their support. Hospital. Mercy Home. Kindergarten, are names familiar to all, but what anguish has kept them alive is known to few. And what they have saved in human misery and degredation and vice and crime, will only be known in heaven. Can wealth look the great needs of the hour in the face and say: I have honestly tried to solve the prob lem of the needs of the society of this city?
 When MT. Bryce wrote his "American Commonwealth" he found a condition in a great American city that could not have existed, had men of opportunity known how to handle themselves. We hear men every day who speak of the evil forces combining to throttle the mu- nlciple life and get those who are pos sessed of such influence and power as to end it all in a day but who, either from contentment with what they have attained to or else because they do not know how to exercise influence, suffer things to drift along until they become so bad that from dire necessity the people have to rise, en masse, and right wrongs. This has been the history of American cities. but Is it necessary for 1t to be so all ways? There is nothing finer than fine men seeing that things go right for the good health good morals and physi- cal welfare of all the people. When one thinks of the men who should be con- cerned for the good of the city, are they not few compared to the many well fitted to mould ideas and define the currents of life?
 Culture and Refinement.
 There is as much culture and refinement In the homes of this city. propor tionately as any in America One is often im- pressed, however, with the notion that between the culture and refinement of the well-to-do there is too little consld- eration for the less fortunate. Disease may be. and often has been. taken from the hovel to the palace Great ideas Of life and high ideals of right have been taken from the palace 10 the hovel When John Baird preached before Queen Victoria, she asked him to name his sermon Religion In Common Life" and said to the great Scotchman. ''I shall try to take mine from my home to the homeless" To know how to abound is knowledge indeed.