Article October 28, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from G. Silvester Horne, Robert L. Kelley, Francis W. Gibbs

[Rev. G. Silvester Horne in Zion's Herald.]

The kingdom of God, said Paul, is righteousness. The fight for justice and right is a strenuous and arduous fight, and has fewer emotional satisfactions than are experienced by those who obey only the impulse to do the kind and generous thing. I am not going to decry the spirit of charity. It is a very beautiful fruit of the Christian tree, and that tree is barren indeed without it. But I am bound to say this, that whenever we are tempted to put generosity before justice we are building an edifice without laying our foundations; we are trying to get at the supreme luxuries and gratifications of our religion without laying upon our souls the burden of its primary responsibilities and fundamental duties. We talk of the church of Christ as if she existed to be a sort of universal hospital—to bind up the wounds of those who have suffered hurt from the cruelties and injustices of life. Her first business is to end these injustices and cruelties, so that men and women and little children shall be hurt by them no more. We talk as if our business was to take the little ones who are stunted and depraved by being suckled in dram-shops, and try to nurse them back to health and morality; but our real business is to prevent their being taken into these places, and to win for them a fair start and chance in life. We talk as if our main business was to comfort and cherish the poor, mutilated victims of King Leopold's fiendish rule upon the Congo; but our real business is to end that tyranny, and establish righteousness throughout that bloodstained land. We talk as if our business were to add a few soothing comforts to the lot of the victims of sweated industries, but our business is to fight for fair wages, wholesome dwellings, and all just and honorable conditions of life. Once let it be assumed that the kingdom of God is charity, and not righteousness, and you breed the effeminate strain of Christian, and you may as well abdicate all pretensions to be concerned for the establishment of God's will on earth even as it is done in heaven.

[Christian World.]

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