Wheeling majority. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1907-192?, 1910-06-02

ments of man.
And 30 behold the spectacle in this
year of grace. 1908! international
amity guaranteed by great armies
upon the land and great naVies upon
the seas; business a matter of mo-
nopoly, which means, according to
the famous Rockefeller philosophy
| the cutting of a thousand buds that
| the one perfect rose may bloom; in
| dustry founded not upon the law OF
| due reward for service done, but up
on the law Of wages; children driven
by greedy and heartless employers
and by still more greedy and heart
less parents to their daily labor in
| factories and mines, at the cost OF
| health, education and morals; wo-
men toiling like slaves in tenements,
department stores, ETC., for wages in
sufficient to. keep body and soul to-
gether; life competition in which
the strongest survives and the weak
est goes to the wall; life game in
which the few gain everything and
the multitudes nothing; life great
brotherhood, In which one brother
gets the necessities Of existence
(coal, oil. beef, sugar, etc. away
them pay the price," in which one
highways from all the other brothers
and puts on all the traffic will bear, "
in which one brother controls the
means of production and distribu-
ton and makes his other brothers
fight against one another for the high
privilege of laboring ten or twelve
hours a day for starvation-wage,
in which one brother makes a for
tune of 100000 and thousands
of other brothers die like dogs in the
gutter, In which one brother com
plains at his ten-course dinner and
millions of other brothers thank God
for their potato! Colossal, naked
egotism, vulturous greed" every
where triumphant; and love, broth
erhood, sacrifice-the talk of senti-
mentalists and the dream Of weak
lings! Love our neighbor? Oh. no!
We fight him. compete with him, use
him, spend him, robyhim, ruin him
anything but love I and serve him!
I'VE call it Society,"" says Carlyle,
land go about openly processing the
totalest separation"
If the religion OF Jesus means love
of God and love of ones neighbor, as
he declared, then what claim has our
society to the name of Christian?
Oh, yes! 1. know that we have
churches in every smallest village,
schools at every crossroads, hospitals
on every hilltop. settlement-houses
in every slum. II know that Satan
has not yet won the world, that the
fight against evil is not yet given up
in despair, that God Is not yet dead
But 1 also know that. after nineteen
hundred years lived in the light of
the teachings of Jesus, the evils of
which have spoken should be. utter
ly destroyed. instead OF flourishing
apparently as prosperous as ever. ]
know that for every church today
l can count saloon; beside every
school can place a gambling den;
every hospital can balance with
hundreds of disease-laden tenements
and lffe-destroying factories; and for
every settlement-house I can point
you to a dozen houses Of ill-fame.
/ know that Satan, If not yet all-vic-
.torious, Is not yet defeated; that the
fight against evil, II not yet surren-
deredS is not yet triumphant; that II
God is not yet dead, he is not yet
alive to the majority of men.
after the death of Jesus, there ought
to be less sin, less crime, less dishon-
esty, less Mammon-worship, less bru-
tai selfishness, and more virtue, more
integrity, more love of God and SER
vice of man. I know that while So
ciety today Is not as bad as 1t might
y -@1- a. a<A =
might be. And it is therefore that
protest, therefore that l complain,
therefore that / assert that some
thing or somebody Is responsible.
For the political, industrial and so
cial evils Of our age and country,
believe that the Christian churches
of America are very largely respoR-
sible-responsibl not because they
(have actually fostered the rampant
Mammon-worship and greedy selfish
ness Of our time, but because in the
very face of these conditions of
which have spoken, they have re-
NAMED utterly indifferent-oblivi-
GUS to everything but their own pet
ty affairs of dogma, ritual and eccle-
siastical organization. Processing,
like the prophet of old Israel, to hate
iniquity, they have done nothing to
smite it and destroy it from of the
face of the earth; processing to love
righteousness, they have done little
or nothing to establish such righte-
BUSINESS as the essence of religious
character and as the sine qua non of
spiritual salvation. Claiming to teach
a religion the two commandments of
which are love to GOD and love to
man, they have been content to make
love to God matter of prayer and
praise, of bowed head and bent knee,
for one hour on Sabbath morning;
and love to man they have reduced to-
a maximum of rule-of-thumb aims
giving to the poof.= 1t is no mere
chance, as one Of the historians Of
our day has pointed out, that the
same years which witnessed the OPP
ening OF the present age of wide
spread political, Industrial and social
corruption mark as well the begin
ming of the alarming decline OF the
Chriafian church Here in every