The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-01-26

economical in their use of it.
 This economical use of religion il
 matters Of public life may come an,
 probably does from certain ill-de
 fined idea that in corporate or civil
 matters religious and ethical princi
 ples are not quite strictly applicable
 We have all learned that a man vii
 lie and steal and practice graft as {
 member of corporation who would
 be morally incapable of so doing If f
 were only matter of his own private
 business. I once had in my church a man who on being criticized for his qu estionable business practices, and or hf'W he could harmonize his conduct with his religious principle, replied that he did not try to, in fact that he made study of keeping his religion and his everyday behavior as far apart as possible. Another Christian on be- ing told that his business usages were hardly of a character to hasten the coming of the millennium, answered that the millennium was something that he had no interest in.
 Hard To Be Good All the Time.
 "In that way there is on the part Of all men, I suppose, or almost all, an easy disposition to keep as much as we can of life's activities outside of the domain of ethical and religious restraint. There are so many differ ,nt kinds of things that a man has to do that it is bit of an uphill work to be good all the time, no vacations, no Saturday half-holidays, seven Gays of running of unmitigated propriety. It Is just the labOrious monotony or that kind of thing that prompts men 10 fence off a part of the territory of life for kind of ethical playground where they can do as they like and God not supposed to care.
 That was exactly what occurred in SamueIs time when the people clam Ored for a secular ruler. Samuel lad been too much of a Cromwell to hit Off popular convenience and the pre- vailing feeling was that if they could l have a ruler that was less of a prophet and more like the common run of peo- l pie they could be saved the trouble a part of the time at least, or behaving better than they liked to do.
 Wanted to Go to -.
 | 'We appreciate their feelings per- fectly. They felt as the ooy did who on being told that heaven was to be one perpetual Sabbath, asked if it would not be possible for him to go down to the other place. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. And as re- gards the matter of political ethics much of the same sentiment prevails
 
 by experience, pretty genera! preju- dice against having matters of civic interest and duty touched in the sane tury.
 Sabbath for Religion.
 When a colored preacher scored his congregation for the cold shoulder they turned on the DecalOgue. they complained that they didn't want the ten commandments talked about in the pulpit; they must have their Sab baths for religion. Of course, we pray for the president and for those asso- ciated with him in authority That is purely non-committal, and neither the Lord nor the congregation will be able to infer from that what we think of the president. so that no ones devo- tional spirit will be rufhed, whatever his views on Panama, undesirable citi zens, tariff, big corporations, revised spelling or the shooting up at Browns vile. There is more pulpit politics on Thanksgiving day than all the rest of the year put together. That is because Thanksgiving day is thought of as be- ing only about half as holy as the Sabbath. and that odd fifty per cent. of secularity permits of getting in little work on such things as governors and aldermen.
 Need Philippics of To-day.
 "Now what makes this conservative attitude so inexplicab1e is that no one objects to pulpit philippics on the bad civic conditions that existed four thou sand years ago, or on the tricky poli- ticianS that manipulated those cOndi- tions, which is in itself sly confession both on the part of the pulpit and the pew that in the days when Moses, Da- vid and Elijah lived the kingdom of God embraced the state and all civic interests as much as 1t did the temple and the ark of the covenant. But un- der ordinary conditions, when the civic temperature is only normal, and it is not Thanksgiving day and there is no election in sight, and the modern Ahabs and Jeroboams are pushing their interests with only moderate en- thusiasm, homiletical references to civic concerns are generally regarded as a postponement or the interests of the kingdom of heaven to those that the kingdom of heaven has not exactly anything in particular to do with.
 Present Day Heaven.
 "My conception of the kingdom of heaven is something that just at this present is particularly interested in what is going on at present, in to-day's Ahabs and Jezebels, rather than in anticipated one, and in events that make up the national life of to-day rather than in those that are simply 
 obsolete. The duty of the present prophet as much as it was the duty of Elijah and Jeremiah is to take eternal principles and to measure existing con- ditions and institutions against those principles as standard. That does not involve entering into the discussion of political technicalities that have no relationship with ethics nor into the discussion of methods of administra- tion of matters of legislation so far as no princil is contained. But the fact is that nine-tenths of the whole business is wrought out of moral in- gredients and wherever that is the case the Church itself and the Church through its chosen representative has something to say and it is coWardly of it does not say it.
 Church False to Calling.
 hat is the way I feel about it. And when I se> in all our large cities like Kew York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, churches by the hundreds throwing the heaviest em- phasis on @ heaven that is going to como bye and bye and on iniquity that prevailed thirty enturies ago. dangling little spotless babies over a Christian font, but dumb as all oyster to conditions that ruin children and youth faster than we ci,n baptize them. I am pretty sure that the Church Is false to it's calling, a traitor to its prerogatives and condemned by its failure to do What it was divinely or ganized to do. It is the kingdoms of this world Scripture tells uS that are