The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-10-05
THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF REL1aro
He who believes in a future lii
citizen of two worlds. He NOV

| ne WHO believes III IutuI6 IL
citizen of two worlds. He NOV
this, but his highest thought az
spiration are fixed on the future.
such person, what takes place here
and now is not unimportant, but it Is
| infinitely less important than what
shall take place hereafter. He looks
upon his life here as but prepara-
ton for the life to come. He meas
ures everything by the infinite.
Wealth, luxury, power, distinction
he may not despise these, but he looks
upon them as being but temporary,
mere delights which are given as tests
of his character. Faith in eternal
life snooths out every inequality and
injustice of the present life under the
great weight of the infinite, 1t make
the poor feel rich, and giy
fortunate a sense of
bility and trusteeship.
II there has been mar ~
in religious faith, that fact must De0l
profound, far-reaching significance.
It alters the basic conditions of civili-
zation. 1t becomes a factor In the
markets. 1t changes the standards
and affects the value of things which
are bought and sold. 1t concerns the
immediate interests of those who
never had such a faith, almost as
much as it does the lives of those
who have had the faith and lost it.
The question, therefore, is of practi-
cal, immediate and tremendous i'm
portance to Wall Street quite as much
as to any other part OF the world, has
there been a decline in the faith in
the future life, and if so, to what ex-
tent is this responsible for the special
phenomena of Our time, the eager
pursuit of sudden wealth, the shame
less luxury and display, the gross and
corrupting extravaganza, the misuse
of swollen fortunes the indifference
to law, the growth of graft, the abuses
Of great corporate power, the social
unrest, the spread of demagogy, the
advances of socialism, the appeals to
bitter class hatred?
Whatever may be a mans own
personal benefits, there is no one who
would not prefer to do business with
a person who really believes in flu
ture life. If there are fewer men of
such faith in the world, it makes a.
big difference, and if faith is to con-
tinue to decline, this will require new
adjustments. There are certainly,
on the surface, many signs of such a
decline. Perhaps. if it were possible
to probe deeply into the subject, it
might be found that faith still abounds,
but is no longer expressed in the old
way. But we are obliged to accept
the surface indications. These in
clude a falling off in church atten-
dance, the abandonment of family
worship, the giving over of Sunday
more and more to pleasure and labor,
the separation of religious from secu-
lar education under the stern demands
of non.sectarianism, the growing up
of a generation uninstructed as our
fathers were in the study of the
Bible, the secularization of portion
of the church itself, and its inability
in large way to gain the confidence
of the laboring people. If these are
really signs of decay of religious
faith, then indeed there is no more
important problem before us than
that of either discovering some ade-
quate substitute for faith, or to take
immediate steps to check develop
ment which has within it the seeds
of a national disaster. Wall Sheet
L0zxznnL.