The Crusades were a magnificent revival. The Reformation was a revival.
The Salvation Army movement is a revival. But the greatest revival of
all times is even now upon us: it is a revival in the scientific
circles of the race. Time was when science and religion were supposed to
be at odds; to-day the intellectual phalanxes are sweeping Christward
with an impetus that is sublime! Thinkers are finding in the large life
of religion a motive power for their thought, their growth--a reason for
their existence--a forecast of their destiny. We are beginning to
realize the dynamic value of Belief. This revival is coming, not with
shouts and noise, but with the quiet insistence of new ideas, of new
facts--with the still voice of scientific announcement. The atheist is
being overcome, not by emotion, but by evidence; the scoffer is being
put down by cool logic.
Hence the evangelist of to-day is more than a man who can popularly
address a public audience, and by tales and tears arouse a weeping
commotion. The evangelist is a man of intellect and prayer, who can
preach the gospel to a scientific age, and to a thinking coterie--a
coterie of college men and mechanics, of society women and
servant-girls, of poets and of mine-diggers, of convicts and of
reformers. To-day calls for the utmost intellectual resources of the
teacher of the truth, for a great imagination, great style, great
sympathy with men, large learning, and unceasing prayer!
3. His rule is over social ideals. He must be a man of social insight.
The social spirit is abroad in the world, but it is woefully erratic
and misguided. Any one thinks he can be an altruist. Why not? Take a
class in a college settlement, make some bibs for a day nursery, give
tramps a C.O.S. card, with one's compliments, and attend about six
lectures a year on Philanthropy--the lectures very good indeed. One is
then a full-fledged altruist, _n'est-ce pas_?
The philanthropy of to-day has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each
present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a
hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called
philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach
themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy gown will gather burrs.
It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at
ignorance, and to go a-peeping through the slums! We have not yet
realized the fulness of redemption. Of what avail is it to save one
street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain
unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not only the individual,
but his environment, his friends, and his future state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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