Article March 4, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Frank S. Dietrich, C. A. S. Dwight, Walter Leopold Bennett, Orchard

[Frank S. Dietrich in Pacific Baptist.]

There is a growing consciousness of human brotherhood, with a demand that mere platitudes of justice and mercy shall be translated into working principles of daily conduct, and that greater protection shall be given to the weak against the strong. Granting that this prevalent spirit of reform may in some of its activities have assumed and may in the future assume fantastic shapes, and that some of its demands are visionary and must fail of practical results, there is no probability that there will be a reversion to former conditions. The tide of emotion and sentiment which runs so strong today may be expected to ebb again, but it will not obliterate the impressions that have been made of certain fundamental and eternal truths which in our pride and self-sufficiency we were inclined to forget or to ignore. We are learning in fact what we already knew in theory, that all national stability and permanent social progress are primarily conditioned upon the integrity and the strength of personal character. From congratulating ourselves upon the wonderful advancement we have made in government and material wealth, and upon the freedom, the luxury, and the magnificence of our civilization, we are turning aside to inquire whether or not we are also producing such character as will meet the demands and endure the strain to which the individual is necessarily subjected in the complex environment of our free modern life. The realization is growing upon us that duty is more difficult today than it was a hundred years ago, and that morality is less simple; that freedom must guard against irreverance; that extreme individualism breeds selfishness; and that greed thrives as there is an abundance with which it is supplied. It is being observed that while new burdens are being laid upon the individual and the demands for moral intelligence and moral strength are upon the increase, there is no corresponding increase in the attention being paid to moral training.

[A correspondent in Watchman.]

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