CONVENTIONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY. 289 Architects and builders in league with lumber dealers persuade every one possible to build a big house, and so they create a great demand for lumber and bigger jobs for architects and builders. No man has any thought of posterity. He wastes the earth's resources and so makes of it a desert. It will take centuries of tree-culture to restore the forests-if indeed their restoration is at all possible, after our country has been reduced to a dry veldt as have Spain and Palestine been reduced by the same cause, the destruction of the forests. There are now few cedars of Lebanon or oaks and pines of Spain. Soon there will be neither coal nor timber in the United States. At the present rate of mining, the anthracite mines will be exhausted within the present century and the bituminous mines sooner. But the optimist sees in this a promise of good for mankind, the rage for dollars appeased and commercialism dead and buried. It seems that the poorer a country is in natural resources the better it is for its inhabitants, if Switzerland be taken as example. She wastes not her resources on warships and armaments to destroy life and by bonded indebtedness to make slaves of the many for the benefit of the few. Let us turn our thoughts to helping all men onto their feet as we have turned them to helping the sufferers of San Francisco and other stricken cities and towns of California. What a lesson of the futility of grandeur! How the flames on this very day-April 20,1906, the day on which this paper is written, are flagellating the vainglorious! It is impossible to be otherwise than dependent. Why do we not feel the same need to feed the hungry of every city as of the stricken cities and towns above named? Why shut our eyes to the slums of Chicago, New York, London, etc? There is chronic suffering and want everywhere. Let this be cured. Let it cease forever. Now comes in brotherly love. Let it be made universal in application. If one read his New Testament (today) he will appreciate the beauty of its teachings as never before. We think little of the eruption of Vesuvius and of earthquakes in Japan-so far from home! But America is not immune. She is not "salted." Well, what is the cure? Insurance by petty insurance corporations does that meet the want? No. An incoroporate world the insurer! That is the need. And the world is near being soall men guaranteeing the well-being of each man, woman and child, the world over. That is the law of the New Testament. "We, being many, are one body in Christ and everyone members of one another. The members should have the same care one for another, and whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it. Bear ye one another's burdens" etc. The deification of love is the greatest and the best thought that ever entered the human mind. . * O thinkers! O writers! O artists of the twentieth century, when ye have surpassed the thinkers, the writers, and the artists of antiquity in sublimity and truth to nature, what shall we have? A better religion than love? A better book than the New Testament? A higher ideal of the perfect-the divine man than Jesus? It cannot be. YE 217TH LESSON. Conventionality and Individuality. Conventionality may be seen in the existence of states, churches, lodges and institutions of all kinds. Individuality manifests itself in individual effort-as the surrender of Lee was the result of the generalship of Grant, the Reformation the result of Luther's strenuousness and American Independence, of the integrity, patriotism and the indomitable perseverance and courage of George Washington. Without conventionality anarchy would ensue, without individuality stagnation would result. The former is conservative, the latter revolution 290 CONVENTIONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY. ary. The first gives stability; the second progress. Without conventionality there would be none civilized; without individuality there would be none great. The vast multitude depend on conventionality and merely subsist; the few on individuality and are to the world what heart and brain are to the human body-essential. The creature of convention may be a cipher though he occupy a throne; the individual is the sun in a clear sky at midday though a slave. He is an Epictetus or he is a Socrates or a Zoroaster or a Buddha or a Confucius or a Christ. Yes, and he is an Alexander or a Caesar or a Napoleon or a Lincoln or a Washington. And no matter where he be he is a shining light. He converts darkness into day. Of all that have ruled England how many are remembered? Alfred, Elizabeth Cromwell and Victoria; while the others are so obscure as not to be distinguishable only creatures of convention. So with our Presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, the only real captains, the rest ballast of the ship of state. What exalts the individual? Not office given by convention. It is character. I can not say that character "is born and not made;" but I do say that it is not made by convention. "A prince may make a belted knight, A marquis, duke and a' that; No one is putty to be moulded by state, church or school into symmetry acceptable to God. What is it that developes character? It is force. The Scripture that defines the "Kingdom of God" defines that force. "It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened." That subtile force is an idea, or rather an ideal. Convention says: No member of this society shall do so and so. "Thou shalt not" has never made a soul virtuous. Nothing has saving power but one's own will. Who conquered Lee? Grant. What gave him his ability? had tried and failed. said that her husband right is character, good Dignity is not in the office. More fools hold office than wise men. A wise man in office is remembered; a fool is soon forgotten. There is worth seeking only manly and womanly worth. If the office sought the man only deserving men, as a rule, would hold office. No good and great man will seek office. He is greater than any office. He makes respectable the office he may hold. Office is no aid to respectability. The ass that carried the idol was still an ass. Antoninus was greater than the office he held. He is the only "Emperor of the World," remembered with love. Was it West Point? Several "West Pointers" It was will that did the work. Mrs. Grant was an "obstinate man." Obstinacy in the character; in the wrong, bad character. Young man, live so that your stainless life, pure morals, temperate living, noble aims, unselfish deeds and honest dealings may give you dignity of character, placing you higher in your own self- respecting consciousness than any position in the gift of convention could place you. Washington was not made great in the public esteem by the presidency; but the presidency was made great and honorable by Washington's having held it. "Then let us say that come what may, That sense and worth o'er a' the earth THE "BUSINESS REVOLUTION." 291 YE 218TH LESSON. The "Business Revolution." This revolution is an accomplished fact. Soon there will be no traveling men and no advertising. The hotels will languish and the newspaper press will dry up. More than 75,000 traveling men have already been dismissed from service by the trusts. But no step can ever be taken backwards. The old ways are no more. What has been the motive for change? Lust of gain. But the change is permanent. Competition is forever ended. Now we have reached the same condition in reference to trust kings as that in which our forefathers of 1776 found themselves in reference to the British king-"taxed without their consent" the prices of all products subject to the uncontrolled discretion of the trusts. The people are as helpless before those combines as are children before their parents. Soon there will be only trust barons and helpless dpendents. How all things come to harmonize! A hundred thousand dollars worth of good buildings that would have stood a hundred years to come, places of shelter and business for scores of men,have been, in the last three weeks, torn down and are now being torn down in Des Moines, Iowa, to give place to enormous structures to accomodate the new order, centralization of wealth and business, the department store. The day of small things is ended. No man can be anything but an agent who is not a member of some gigantic trust, a capitalist fattening upon dividends. The crisis will soon be upon us. Then will the new army of regulars be called into requisition right here at home to "protect the rights of property" and destroy the rights of man. There is no other purpose for making Des Moines, Nashville, Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City and other cities (chosen by the executives of the trusts) stations for brigades of the standing army of the American Empire but in anticipation of a great crisis-to have a disciplined army in readiness to hold the disinherited millions in subjection to the millionaires and billionaires. I know the politician poo poos at this. He shuts his eyes to manifest conditions breeding discontent, discord and war; for the millions will not acquiese tamely to be brought down to a worse condition of dependence and poverty than holds in thrall the coolies of the Celestial Empire. And the trusts are bringing this condition on us so speedily as to make one dizzy. And the designing trust magnates know what they are doing and they know what will inevitably follow. They know that the people cannot and will not tamely endure it. Hence the demand by them, and by them alone, for a standing army and placing of regulars in central locations, like Des Moines, to be ready to shoot down the American people, "mow down mobs." What will be the state of unrest when the department store has closed every place of business of men of small means? When the bonanza farm has spread its wings, like the angel of death, over entire counties and not one small farmstead remain? When the schoolhouse on the section corner shall have rotted down or the birds have made their nests in the deserted school desks? When the millions have betaken themselves to hovels, tents and caves? This condition the millionaire, bonanza-trust and billionaire rule that has seized the government by the throat, exploiting the army and the navy in the Spanish war, converting the chief magistrate into a slave, gutting the national treasury and murdering 5,000 men by poisoning them with meat-rotten food fit only for the cess-pool is a condition unbearable. Like in 1860, the people do not heed passing events, do not believe that an enemy threatens. Hoodwinked by the press which is owned and run in the interest of the enemy, they go blindly forward while the ground on which they walk is mined and they soon will find themselves precipitated into a hell of worse tyranny than ever before cursed any people on this earth. The tyranny of the billionaire trust. There is one hopeful sign. The course taken by President Roosevelt in preferring the public welfare to private greed-following in the footsteps of Washington-is the one hopeful sign. I am not mad at the rich man. I am mad at the greed, the blind, hoggishness of men who possess an undue portion of wealth, in reaching after more regardless of the evil their course must bring upon the world. If like Helen Gould, the good of humanity and their country's welfare were made the ambition of the wealthy, we would rejoice. What may we expect? Blindness on the part of politicians; the public weal made subordinate to greed of gold; serving the trusts; exploiting the army to enslave the nation and a "time that will try men's souls." YE 219TH LESSON. Twentieth Century Americanism. Human life is uncertain, but not more uncertain than banks and insurance institutions to those who repose confidence in them. Where one has lost his money by burying it in the ground, a thousand have lost theirs by depositing it in banks. And there isn't a man in America who has paid out money for insurance that doesn't wish he had it back, since the late revelations of the rottenness of the business, especially in the line of life insurance. The entrusting money to the care and keeping of private individuals, as are the bankers and insurance officials, is not just a mild form of insanity, but a very malignant one-so the people begin to be aware. The truth is that the old order in every line is broken-is passed away. Public ownership and public control are become the imperative demands of mankind, which mean a new birth of democracy. "Of the people and by the people and for the people" is its meaning in every thing, political, social and economic. Governmental savingsbanks for the care of the earnings of the toilers and old-age pensions and the bountiful care by the state of the helpless and the widows and the orphans, is the need. Life insurance is altogether wrong-a bribe offered to the prospective beneficiaries to take the lives of the insured. Any man or woman is a fool to offer a bribe to some person or persons to murder him or her. How many women have killed their husbands for the insurance on their lives, and how many men their wives? The penitentiaries are full of them. Confidence in human nature-confidence in the loyalty of wife or husband-how far ought it be extended? Read the records of divorce courts. They are an eye-opener. Confidence in private money-making concernshow far ought it extend? It ought to be nil. There is no ground for confidence on the side of the people in the uncontrolled individual. Let the public control all interests. Bureaucracy ought to be put an end to in everything. Let every one take care of himself, or let there be common care of each. Whom you do not control, do not trust. The new order is Christian Socialism. The foundation of the new order is altruism. Socialism means equality. Altruism means "all things common." The two are one. The time is near when the individual will say: "my life is not my own, much less my so-called 'property.' I live and labor for the good of all. My mission is to make the world the better, the wiser and the happier for my living in it." "It is not with me," he says, "how much may I have, but how much may I give; not how much may I hold and monopolize, but how little may I personally get along with. I would rather," he continues, "live in a cave or a tent than in a castle, if so be I may add the more to the common weal." It is to seek the path of usefulness rather than the path of greediness. Not just spasmodically to rush into a tent ("To your tents, O Israel!") to fight for your country; but to keep ever "THE YOUNG MAN AND THE PULPIT." 293 in that tent from youth to old age with the sword of righteousness in hand. Let our whole life be campaigning in the field for the common interest, as was the life of St. Paul. That is the new order. That is Americanism. That is Christianity. That is Christian Socialism. And it is not new either. What is it but the ancient order? The world is again approaching it because the world is becoming again enlightened as of old when taught by the sages of Greece who fashioned the models for all posterity in all lines of art, literature, philosophy, etc. It is all as men think, and all are coming to think the same thoughts-coming to be of one mind, as were the early disciples of Christ. We reach it by going up from barbarism to civilization as by them of old time it was reached in the same way. It is the ripened fruit of modern culture, as the Pentecostal church was of Greek and Roman culture, grounded on the philosophy of Pythagorus and Plato. Ours must be a religious movement as was that of old. The fatal defect of European Socialism is its non-religious and its immoral character, negatively at least, not standing for temperance or uprightness-not for righteousness, directly or even secondarily -not for any lofty ideal of personal purity-not even social welldoing; but for more bread and butter. Hence it must fail. Only Christian Socialism will win acceptance in America. That ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time defines "Twentieth Century Americanism," because it is the coming order, not just of the United States of America, but, indeed of the United States of the World, and that, too, prior to the year A. D. 2000. YE 220TH LESSON. "The Young Man and the Pulpit." The leading article of the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post of September 2, 1905, has the above title. The writer says that a great majority of the preachers today occupy a false position. A few years ago, he says, a certain man, with good opportunities for investigation and a probability of sincere answers, asked every young preacher whom he met during a summer's vacation these questions: "First: Do you believe in God the Father; God a person, God a definite intelligence-not a congeries of laws, etc., but God a person in whose image you were made? Not a man answered 'yes.' They all referred to the latest thought as much confused on the matter,' etc. * * "The second question was: 'Do you belive that Christ was the son of the living God, sent by Him to save the world with a divinely appointed and definite mission, dying on the cross and raised from the dead-'yes' or 'no?' Again, he says, "not a single answer with an unequivocal, earnest, 'yes.' * * * "Then came the third question: 'Do you believe that when you die you will live again as a conscious intelligence, knowing who you are and who other people are?' Again not one answer was unconditionally affirmative." And he adds: The men to whom these questions were put were particularly high-grade ministers." And finally, he asks: "How could such priests of Ice warm the souls of men?" That writer insists that this is all wrong. He would have the ministers "men of faith." "James Whitcomb Riley gave me," he says, "the best recipe for faith in God, Christ and Immortality I have ever heard: 'Just believe,' said he; 'don't argue about it; don't question it; just say, 'I BELIEVE.'" And he adds: "If you cannot prove God and Christ and Immortality, you cannot disprove them." Now if this writer had gone a little farther back than James Witcomb Riley for authority he would have found it in the Canons of the Greek and Roman Churches. "CREDO"-is their law. To enforce this |