Our Dangers
•’ We are afflicted with the had citizenship of good
“A New York brewer said: The church people can drive us and we k?iow it. Our hope is in workifig after they grotv tired and cotitinuing to work three hundred and sixtyfive days in the year.”
“This new social ideal is little more fhafi a millennimn of Christian co7nfort. It needs to be elevated, illuminated, and glorified by Christ’s social ideal. It is quite possible for Society to be at the same time well housed, well fed, 7vell clothed well educated, and well rotted.’’’
Strong.
“Righteoiisjiess exalleth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.^’’ Proverbs 14. :J4.
Whatever in national life makes people better is an element of safety, and whatever makes people worse is an element of danger. Righteousness is light; sin is shadow. As righteousness prevails, the nation is safe; as sin prevails, the nation is in danger.
The form of sin that threatens our very national existence is selfishness. Corporations that have in view simply money-getting, without regard to the rights of others, are a national menace, and cast a shadow upon our institutions. As with corporations which represent immense capital, so with organizations which represent large numbers of men. An organization can be as selfish as a corporation. The organization which has in view simply its own advancement, without regard to the rights of others, is as great a danger as a corporation cursed with the same spirit of self-seeking.
The drink-habit is another danger that threatens destruction of body, mind, and home. In our fight for legal prohibition, and it has been none too strong, we have forgotten to instruct the young as to the evils of tippling. It is an alarming fact that the decanter is taking its place on the sideboard, and the wine glass on the table. The Washingtonian movement drove the demijohn from the home to the street corner, — a better place for it, but it threatens to return to the home and do its dastardly work among the women and children. Americans plead for liberty. Our forefathers died for it, and the liberty which we have gained is in danger of rotting into license.
In the prison of Chillon there is a deep dark shaft into which prisoners once fell to their death. The keeper would take them out into the dark corridor, shout to them that they were free, and urge them to take their liberty. As they rushed for the outside, they fell into this shaft, and were crushed to pieces. So this watchword of personal liberty may lead many a one to fall into the shaft of drunkenness, where body, mind, and morals, are destroyed.
But a greater danger even than the liquor habit is the organized liquor traffic. Carlos Martin in his book “Christian Citizenship,” gives the following facts. There are engaged in the liquor traffic of this country 1,397,500, all males and voters. They run 200,000 saloons. Capital is directly invested to the amount of one thousand millions, and another one thousand millions indirectly interested. The liquor bill of the United States is one thousand millions. There goes up in tobacco smoke another six hundred millions. We spend for clothes and for meat, three hundred millions, each, for shoes tv,-o hundred millions, one hundred millions for schools, and the pitiful sum of five millions for foreign missions. This liquor traffic sends to the penitentiary 40,000 men and women every year, and distributes through the country its annual quota of 319,000 idiots.
In the territory- from Maine to Pennsylvania there is one liquor dealer for every 64 voters. From Delaware to Florida one liquor dealer for every 117 voters. From Ohio to Kansas one for every 70 voters. From Kentucky to Arkansas one to every 105 voters. From Montana to California one to ever>’ 39 voters. So that we have an average for the United States of one liquor dealer to about everj’ 80 voters. And these liquor dealers are organized. In solid phalanx they move together. Temperance people are divided, but they are a unit. They stand ready to use their voice, their money, and their votes for the support of their traffic. And v.-hen we remember that this great liquor interest is controlled to a large extent by foreign capital, while three-fourths of the brewers and maltsters in this country are of foreign birth, the danger to our institutions is increased. It has been truly said, and ought to be echoed over the land, unless this government destroys the liquor traffic, the liquor traffic will sooner or later destroy the government.
Another danger is the importation of foreign ideas. I do not fear numbers from immigration. This country is big enough to hold and support most of the world, and because a man is poor he ought not to be pushed back into the hold of a ship and returned to his grinding poverty and oppression. If he is honest and industrious, let him have a chance in this free air, and on these broad acres. Not numbers, but the ideas that they bring, endanger our institutions.
First of all, I would ask a man who lands on Ellis Island: Do you believe in the American ballot box, in rule by the majority? If he says, No, I would tell him to go home and live among those that hold such views, where his company will be congenial. I would ask. Do you believe in the American schoolhouse? If he replies. No, I would advise him to return to the land of ignorance from which he came, and enjoy it the rest of his life. I would ask,
again: Do you believe in the American Sabbath? Here the Sabbath is not a holiday, but a holy day. It has the attractive features of the Sabbath given us by the Bible, and brought with the pilgrims to Plymouth Rock. On this day the working man has a right to rest, the Christian a right to worship; the wheels of machinery stop, and our country pauses to think of God. If he says, I do not believe in such a Sabbath, but in a day of beer drinking, carousing, business and frolic, I should inform him that he can be better accommodated on the other side of the ocean. He is not needed here. He will be a discord amid the harmonies of our beloved land.
Paris gives the fashion in dress to the world, and it is a sad fact that she is giving the fashion in immorality to many of our great cities. A leading editor lives in Paris and runs a personal column in his New York paper, which makes it unfit to enter a decent home. I have heard of two families which have been wrecked through this nastiest piece of journalism.
The black carriage on the streets of Paris, which Frances Willard denounced, has been threatening to come to America. It means over there that prostitution is legal, that wo men have the right to sell their virtue, and men the legal right to trade in their shame. If we would be safe as individuals, and as a II nation, we should erect a barrier as high as heaven against this flood of filth.
Infidelity is another danger which Americans may well fear. This government is founded upon the truths taught by Christianity. The pilgrims landed on their knees. A republican democracy was organized after the manner of the first Congregational Church founded at Plymouth and Salem. Take Bible principles out of our institutions, and you have left a carcass or a skeleton. Lifidelity, by rejecting the authority of God’s law, weakens respect for all law. Go to a meeting of the wide-mouthed anarchists who fume out their sulphurous exhalations against marriage, the state, the church, the Sabbath, and everything which we deem holy, and you will find that every man of them is an infidel.
A few years ago the champion infidel of this country headed a movement of the smutdealers in favor of repealing what is known as the Comstock laws against sending obscene literature and pictures through the United States mails. He lent his influence and eloquence, so far as he could, to the opening of the gates which would let this flood of moral filth into the homes and schools of our land. The enemy to be feared more than the guns of foreign nations is the spirit that rejects the Bible, ridicules the church, scorns to worship, recommends suicide, and gives free rein to all sorts of indulgence.
Patriotism should prompt us to be Christians, for Christianity makes men righteous, and thus exalts our nation. Every man who loves his flag should love the Bible and the cross, for without the civilization which has come to us through the Bible and the cross of Christ, the flag would mean nothing.
The only safeguard against the dangers we have mentioned, and the only remedy for the evils that exist, is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, If that is preached, and believed, and lived we will have a righteous people: if that is denied and rejected and scorned, we can expect nothing but anarchy and ruin. Valentine Burke, a notorious thief and burglar, with hardened features, enters a meeting where Mr. Moody is preaching. He hears of One mighty to save; he repents of his sins, and turns to God. He confesses Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and becomes an honest man the rest of his life. The problem as to what should be done with criminals, in his case, is settled once for all. Let Jesus into a man’s heart and there is no longer a criminal to deal with.
A poor drunkard with delirium tremens is on his way down Water Street, to throw himself into the East River. Dismissed fourteen times from the United States Navy for chronic alcoholism he has despaired, and thinks that the best thing he can do is to destroy himself. He sees a light above a transom, and hears floating through the light the words:
“There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains.”
He halted, and said to himself: “These are the words my mother used to sing to me when a boy. I will go in and listen a moment.” Sitting down in his drunken stupor he heard redeemed men tell how they were saved by the grace of God. Jerry McAuley rose and invited those who wished to be saved from their sins to come forward and kneel at the bench. To use his own expressive language “I staggered up against the cross of Christ, the blood fell upon me, and washed my soul whiter than snow.” From that day to this, and it has been over five years, this man, now a preacher of the gospel, has been working for the uplifting of his fallen brother. The problem of drunkenness, you see, is settled. Let Christ into the soul, and he will either destroy the appetite, or give strength to overcome.
On the title-page of a little book written by Mrs. Whittemorc of the Door- of Hope, New York, are two faces, one of them wrinkled, sour and hard, the other with an expression of ineffable sweetness, gentleness and purity. These faces belong to the same person, yet not the same, and the photographs were taken only one year apart. “Blue Bird,” the denizen of the slums in New York, comes to this Door of Hope in her degraded condition, hears of Jesus, trusts him, loves him, begins to tell others about him, and before she died was a model of virtue, an enthusiastic worker for the uplifting of her fallen sisters. So here the problem of prostitution is settled. Take Christ into the heart of a man or woman, and a pure life will be the result.
But, after all, the whole matter rests with the individual. Men cannot be saved by wholesale. God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, and as a man he pleads with us. “Son, give me thy heart.” We may form our socialistic schemes, but they will not work without a righteous people. Laws for the government of sheep cannot be applied to wolves and tigers. The tiger and the wolf must be transformed into the sheep, and then the socialistic economy meant for sheep will work well. Every man must open his heart, and let Christ come in and reign. In the picture of Holman Hunt, which represents Jesus standing at the door and knocking, you will notice there is no latch on the outside, no knob by which Christ can enter.
The latch and the key are on the inside. The lesson taught is practical and pointed. Even God himself will not break down the door, we must lift the latch of our will, and let him in, if we would have him to occupy our heart house. Lift the latch, and the entrance of Jesus will be the entrance of light and life.