Editorial February 13, 1909 Issue

DOING AND BEING

John B. Willis

This may well be named the altruistic age, for in no period of history perhaps has so much thought been given to the problem of relieving human need. World-wide effort is being made for the removal of unjust and untoward conditions,—the unfair and discouraging lot which has come to the many quite apart from any question of merit or choice, and which in human rule inevitably begets the shiftlessness, the viciousness, and the immorality which stand so insistently in the way of social betterment and progress.

With splendid heroism and self-forgetfulness men and women are going into the heart of the human wreckage of our great cities, or they are furnishing the means which will enable others to go, if perchance some may be rescued from the swirling tides of impulse and habit, and for all this they merit and receive only words of praise. Never theless all who have thought deeply of these things, and who have acquainted themselves with the lessons of history, cannot fail to see that if this endeavor were multiplied ten thousandfold it would still prove wholly inadequate apart from that ideal of life and that demostration of truth which Christ Jesus presented to men.

Many of the needy were no doubt touched by his helpful giving and kindly deeds, but they were quickened and redeemed only as they perceived his nature and power, and laid hold of the marvel of truth which he brought them,—that they could become like him, be his followers, do his work. It was the appeal inspiration of the life he lived, the truth he demonstrated, which lifted them above the hopeless plane of their old experience.

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