The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 24, 1901, Page 7

THE SUNDAY, CALL. . | expense. v ation of M father. aga s person- “that pesky old her ideas rse, her notion ver would very source, and being rebuked But the phil- pastor's faith us dar- d the world te. We k wn, and our ed by the griza vi} must be fought rsons of his hu- ated in racter of t has to rts to- 1 or ur The question looks is complex & old theo- Y tion of or k law of God of the New Testament— revised versjon wilessness.” The definitions is that incomp.ete, while in the fact that go0d starting point for that ation which is impelled If we would construe t sin v eral exactness it may be a sin to catch cold or to neglect the sing of a door. Law—the law of God— moral—is universal. Presum- universe, near that Is not af- being to which perfectly obey aul moral pur- 1 be to lead a sinless life. But es that have left the trails of brute instinct the universe is for yrinth Its laws and veral parts to each but ver partially and im- od tae best and most nkind. When man fully ature and his place of verse there will be no At which may possibly pro- it But until e evil remain- continue to be the er human ignorance of aws and conditions of h the world m man well- £ Whether with the attainment of fect knowledge of these matters moral y tirely annot b ile some fo disappear is a answered in the ms of sin nly seem to knowledge ment of the physical con- W others cert spread ditions ¢ ife, the progress of knowledg the most part a pleceme ed affair, with moral refl far in the rear. It is wi moral aspects of sin— wi icked. that is—that re- ligion is chletly concerned. The Bible, for example, prohibits certain acts and courses of conduct and prescribes certain others without always giving the why and wherefore of so doing. The reason is not far to seek. It came to the knowledge of one man at a given time and place or to a few men at different places and various times—whether by inspiration or experience matters not to our present purpose—that certain things were good for men to do and certain other things the Therefore, certain commands and prohjbitions for the government of men were framed and promulgated. Some of these dealt with the motives and prin- ciples of conduct and others with words and acts only. The closeness of relation that existed between the Creator and his creatures in the most ancient ideas and forms of Bible religion sufficiently ac- reverse. counts for the divine sanction and ultl- mate authority assumed by those prohibi- tions and commands. In proportion as it came to be understood or believed that God had enacted laws of human conduct, obedience to those laws came to be re- garded as rightcousness and disobedlence as sin. In the religious sense of the term, therefore, roughly speaking, sin is neither more nor less than moral perversity. “To’ him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin,” is a familiar Bible text. As the proper sphere of religion is the spiritual fn man it naturally belongs to the offices of religion to deal with the moral qualities of human conduct. And’ now, as ever in the past, moral perversity is intrinsically the worst quality of hu- man sin, as it is also the worst in fts blighting effacts unon the wellbelng of mankind. Our sins of ignorance are many and varifed and they are respomsible for pendous aggregation of crime and cruelty a large share of the stagnation and mis- and agony which is the daily and hourly ery of human life; but these are not for result of conscious and willful wrongdo- a moment to be compared with the stu- ing. BY REVERIEND “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”” Whence come wars between nations, conflicts be- tween classes, strifes among’ individuals, jealoustes in families, murders and sui- " are avallable. cides? For the most part, without ques- tion, they are rather the product of mis- guided passion than of mere ignorance. Foul spite doing its dirty work, base slan- der assassinating character, cruel oppres- sion grinding the faces of the poor—what are these but the natural effects of active human perversity?—of that moral condi- tion to which the old Bible text refers when it describes the heart as “deceitful above all things and desperately wickea ™ It every human being always followed the best promptings of his nature these things would soon cease to be, the work of moral education would be lightened as if by a miracle ané peace harmony would flood the world as naturally as does morning light from the ascending sun. Here, however, we ch a point where collislon with some of President Jordan’s positions In his recent Sunday evening address on “Education’ seems in- evitable. I have a profound respect for Dr. Jordan's breadth, depth and judg- ment as a thinker upon the ethical side of soctal questions, and therefore I ven ture to hope that Jordan upon Spencer has been misreported in such expressions as the following: “Education means ev- ‘erything.” “A sound body means a sound life.”” “There is no such thing as vice, for vice is but the effort to get happiness without earning it.” nort stato- ments, which have the u ny appear- ance of half-truths, are culled from The Call's report of President Jordan's lee- ture, not for the purpose of evoking odium theologicum, nor with any ur friendly Intent whatscever, but becausa they seem capable of being so interpreted as to give to the lecture an anti-religious complexion and thus to falsify Dr. Jor- dan’s commonly understood att s toward religlon. Herbert Spencer pur- posely omitted direct consideration of the element of religion from his chapter on “Moral Education,” but he included in it the following sentences, which have a very suggestive bearing upon, the relativa tasks of educat religion for the uplifting of manki We are not,’ Spencer, “among those who belleve Lord Palmerston's dogma that all chil dren are born good. On the whole, ths opposite dogma, untenable as it is, seems to us less wide of the truth. Nor do we agree with those who think that, bv s«ill. ful discipline, children may be made al- together what they should be. Contrarl wise, we are satisfled that though imper- fections of nature m be diminished by wise management, thev cannot be re- moved by it. The notion that an tdeal hu- manity might be forthwith produced bv a perfect system of education Is nea. akin to that shadowed forth in the poems of Shelley, that would mank e up their old institutions, prejudices and er- rors, all the evils in the world would at once disappear; neither notion belng ac- ceptable to such as have dispassionately studied human affairs.” These are wise worc that education is not —ing™; there is such a thing as v and that there Is in human nature a root of bitter- ness which physiological culture is not ely to eradicate. For want of knowing better, therefore, I must perforce adhere to the old idea that there is in man which education alome, however many sided and thorough, ca move, and that s in the form of moral perversity is so far In man nature that nothing short of th spiritual forces of religion can rea with an effective cure. The grand, ev expanding and ever-varying work of e cation belongs to the Incidents, conditions and environment of human life, whi task of religion is with the moral sorin, of conduct, the spirituai pulsatic being. Neither can do without the ot therefore, let not the teacher despise the spiritual physician. London's Under- ground Railwa y. Rarely before has London been so pleased with a novelty submitted approval as it Is with the new Centr thrown open for public use. From t! the first train started from the S Bush terminus, at train from the bank end, h after midnight, no fewer t they imply t re- ate In h sengers had sampled the new ! on its opening day. Thousands mere had looked on. As the Iine Is open seven days a week these numbers, if regarded as average traffic figures, would mean a yearly pas- senger return of 30,000,00. To some ex- tent this trafic was doubtless attracted by the novelty of the thing. Still the management before the opening estimated an annual passenger total of over: 50,000, 000. They now see nd reason for modify- ing their anticipations, unless it is to raise them. To get down to the level of the traf which varfes from sixty feet to ninety-six feet below the street, either stairs or lifts Most people take the fine, large, airy elevators, for the stairs are long, numbering from 100 to 150 treads, a formidable fifght to waik up at all events, whatever may be sald about going down them. Arrived on the platform, one's first sensation is that of a delicious cool- ness. The thermometer may be soaring in the eightles or nineties overhead in the street, but down on this line it is always round about 45 degrees. Then the electric lights suddenly flash into greater bril- ltancy, in comes the train—they run every two and a half minutes during the busy bours—and off it goes again before time has been given to observe fully how handsome It Is with its seven elegant cars, each bullt to seat forty-eight per- sons.—London Mail. g 1 {