Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-07-31
OLD-TIME RELIGION
BY BISHOP w. 4. GAMBLER

1. GAMBLER
means and the ruinou3 results which must
follow.
The depopulation of the rural districts
a powerful factor in the destruction of
the commonwealth of ancient Greece and
Rome.
Xenophon deplored the fact that the
Greeks ran away from the country to the
city, but his complaint was unheeded
Varro warned the Romans in vain against
running in the same road to ruin.
The Roman people forsook their farms for
urban life. Thus the agricultural areas
were cheapened, and great capitalists bought
up at small prices the abandoned lands,
turning thousands Of acres into luxurious
estates for purposes Of pleasure.
At the same time during which the popu-
lation in the rural region was thus depleted
the large cities became over-crowded.
And what a population was thus huddled
together! There was no middle class. There
was the overfed rich, immersed in riotous
living, and the underfed poor, living amid
want in inferior houses for which they paid
exorbtant rentals.
The great mass of people lived in idleness
and looked to the State for support. Grain
was imported by the government for their
sustenance. AS they witnessed the con-
sumption Of luxuries by the rich they be-
came irritable and inflammatory in their de-
lsIII Nv 'GInsBeu oUqnd eql uodn spugm
they called for grain only, but at length
they demanded oil and wine. AT last their
daily cry for dread and games" by
which they meant both food and amuse-
ments provided at public cost
The moral results were even worse than
the material consequences. The rich were
too absorbed in pleasure and the poor too
Immersed in care for either class to feel any
concern for the public welfare. There was
utter want Of moral earnestness in all
classes. Interest in great questions of state
Il 4 ,1cI 1JoIo,
and degenerate populace with promises of
larger gifts to be extracted from the Golfers
of the State. Devotion to all high principles
of political government and personal morali-
ty persisted. The profession of virtue was
cynically regarded a mark of hypocrisy.
Religious life withered and all high things
vanished away under the blasting breath of
hot winds of seusualty.
Art declined and literature became foul
and fetd, if it might have been called litera-
ture at all.
Even the amusements of the pleasure-mad
people tended steadily to run downward
course until they ended in the deepest degra-
daton and the yilest exhibitions Of immoral
ity. The theater of former days gave way to
fouer shows which were as far below the
earlier dramas as the movies of today are
below the work of Jefferson and Booth in
former generation. The circus and the glad
iatorial combats (the prize fights of Romeo
were the chief amusements of the people,
and brutal spectaces demanded by a brutal
people made their patrons ever more beastly.
Nothing stands between country and
the same end of destruction but the Chris
tian religion and it not arrest the dam
gerous evils which threaten it except in SO
far as it is embraced and practiced in daily
life
The cities especially must become more
Christian Where the greatest strain upon
the life Of the nation is found there must the
strongest moral support be set up; and the
greatest strain is in the cities.
There are town takers who never weary
Of speaking and writing about "the problem
of the country church," and doubtless there
is such a problem.
But the problem Of the city church is far
more perpeXing and urgent than that Of the
country church.
A religion of mere spectaces and pro-
grams designed to entertain rather than to
regenerate, is worse than useless. 1t misrep-
resents the Christianity from which it de-
rives the name under which it DISCUSSES it's
essential paganism.
To the congested population Of our
cities requires something more vrtuous and
vrie than the conventional exercises gener-
ally found in what are called fashionable
churches"
"a fashionable church," Save the mark!
What has fashion to do with anything with
which Christ has to do?