"It is in the spirit of this justice that I believe Christ shall come to

judge the world; not to condemn and punish so much as to reconcile and to

right. We live in an age of seeming preparation for indefinite war. The

lines are drawn harder and faster between the rich and the poor, and on

either side the forces are embattled. The working-men are combined in vast

organisations to withstand the strength of the capitalists, and these are

taking the lesson and uniting in trusts. The smaller industries are gone,

and the smaller commerce is being devoured by the larger. Where many little

shops existed one huge factory assembles manufacture; one large store, in

which many different branches of trade are united, swallows up the small

dealers. Yet in the labour organisations, which have their bad side, their

weak side, through which the forces of hell enter, I see evidence of the

fact that the poor have at last had pity on the poor, and will no more

betray and underbid and desert one another, but will stand and fall

together as brothers; and the monopolies, though they are founded upon

ruin, though they know no pity and no relenting, have a final significance

which we must not lose sight of. They prophesy the end of competition;

_they eliminate_ one element of strife, of rivalry, of warfare. But

woe to them through whose evil this good comes, to any man who prospers on

to ease and fortune, forgetful or ignorant of the ruin on which his success

is built. For that death the resurrection and the life seem not to be.

Whatever his creed or his religious profession, his state is more pitiable

than that of the sceptic, whose words perhaps deny Christ, but whose works

affirm Him. There has been much anxiety in the Church for the future of

the world abandoned to the godlessness of science, but I cannot share it.

If God is, nothing exists but from Him. He directs the very reason that

questions Him, and Christ rises anew in the doubt of him that the sins of

Christendom inspire. So far from dreading such misgiving as comes from

contemplating the disparity between the Church's profession and her

performance, I welcome it as another resurrection and a new life."

The minister paused and seemed about to resume, when a scuffling and

knocking noise drew all eyes toward the pew of the Gerrish family. Mr.

Gerrish had risen and flung open the door so sharply that it struck against

the frame-work of the pew, and he stood pulling his children, whom Mrs.

Gerrish urged from behind, one after another, into the aisle beside him.

One of them had been asleep, and he now gave way to the alarm which seizes

a small boy suddenly awakened. His mother tried to still him, stooping over

him and twitching him by the hand, with repeated "Sh! 'sh's!" as mothers

do, till her husband got her before him, and marched his family down the

aisle and out of the door. The noise of their feet over the floor of the

vestibule died away upon the stone steps outside. The minister allowed the

pause he had made to prolong itself painfully. He wavered, after clearing

his throat, as if to go on with his sermon, and then he said sadly, "Let us

pray!"




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