Signs of the Times

[The Biblical World]

Christian democracy is a sacrificial rather than an acquisitive democracy. It is marked by the spirit of love, and love endeavors to help others to enjoy the same thing that one enjoys for himself. It would bring about fraternity by leveling people up to those with privileges, rather than by pulling people with privileges down to the level of people without them.

The church that wishes to have a part in the labor movement must preach the spirit of fraternity and concession to its own members. Rightly or wrongly, the Protestant churches have become identified in many people's minds with the capitalist group. Such a classification is open to serious question, but debate of the matter is beside the point.

If the church is to reach wage earners it must fill its members with the spirit of Christ which is ready to give justice by concessions. And it must preach the same sort of message to the labor union with its new and intoxicating sense of power. The church of Christ should be no respecter of persons. Its dealings should be with people as people and not as members of economic classes. But people in particular situations have particular duties. These it must enforce. And among these duties the generous and just use of power is not the least.

The greatest revolution that can take place in human history is the passage, not from autocracy to democracy, but from an acquisitive democracy to a sacrificial democracy; from a democracy that fights for rights to a democracy that gives justice even at the expense of privilege. In this sort of revolution the church must be not only a leader but the leader. For it is the one institution whose sign is the cross and whose watchword is love that sacrifices rather than desires.

[American Friends' Service Committee for Reconstruction Work in France]

It has been our lot to see, with our own eyes, the ruin, the pain, the want, that the spirit of hate can spread over a whole nation, a whole continent; to feel that ghastly sensation of death—dead forests, dead fields, dead villages, dead homes, dead hopes, and dead faiths—an all-embracing death which war leaves in its path. Love alone remains, and we have seen that love shall conquer hate and in time undo all that hate has done. Love of his homeland brings the peasant back in the face of awful odds to rebuild his home and his village, to recultivate his land. Love of her children makes the widowed mother strive now as in the past to give them better opportunities than she has had. Love for God reestablishes the religious life of the community and reopens the village church though its abode be only a barrack. [Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colo.]

As a result of the lack of success of the medical profession in trying to prevent and cure disease by treatments based on the germ theory, the number of people who depend on drugless healing is rapidly increasing. In an article in a medical magazine, Ely G. Jones, M.D., of Buffalo, recently said: "As physicians we have failed in our duty to the sick; we have failed to find a definite treatment for the diseases common to our country. As a result of this sad state of things there are thirty-five million people in the United States that depend upon some form of drugless healing when they are sick. It is said that 'the average mortality from disease in this country would not be over seven per cent without any medical treatment.' The mortality under the treatment of some physicians is twelve per cent. From this it will be seen that the public would be better off without them. If we as physicians are to be of any real benefit to the public the mortality under our treatment must be below seven per cent."

[Rutland (Vt.) News]

What is true of influenza is true of most diseases. Fear, fright, a mental condition, is responsible for most of them. Those cities that declared a quarantine last year on account of the epizootic or influenza epidemic—making a great hullabaloo and frightening emotional people—all showed a larger fatality list than New York, where no quarantine was declared and all schools and public meetings went on as usual.

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