States--a country about whose greatness there shall be no doubt, and
on whose honor there shall be no stain, a country that shall in the
highest sense stand for law and efficiency and justice, and one for
which not some, but _all_, would be willing to die, because all would
know that the government was thinking wisely for every one of its
citizens.
So in our courts. The same principle would work. The average citizen
in America knows only this about our courts, that he wants to keep
away from them. So far we have not been assured of justice. The poor
man has not stood an equal chance with the rich, nor the black with
the white. Money has been freely used for the changing of laws, if
need be. In South Carolina a white man stole an automobile and was
sentenced for thirty days; on the same day and by the same judge a
Negro who stole a bicycle was sent to the chain-gang for three years.
Such a travesty on justice can not much longer abide in a country that
has passed through fire. Let us turn our faces to the morning.
Our churches need a new baptism. About thirty years ago the conviction
began to force itself that somehow the church as an organization was
becoming too set and staid in its ways, that it was in fact a
beautiful antique, regarded with somewhat amused condescension by the
young men and women who played golf on Sunday or the crowds that went
to a baseball game. Suddenly we became fearfully introspective; we
studied sociology; we read "The Inside of the Cup"; we were ashamed of
the impotency of the old sermons on justification and regeneration;
and we swung to the other end of the pendulum. Our churches began to
be "institutional"; the most famous evangelist in the country became
the one who was outstanding for his use of slang; the music in Sunday
Schools became rag-time; and in general in religious services there
developed a tendency to attract the crowd by using the methods of the
vaudeville stage. Evening services in Protestant churches partook more
and more of the nature of socialistic conferences, and, in general,
dignity and reverence suffered. After a few years of this we have
found that we are just at much at fault in another way as we were
thirty years ago. We have done away with Puritanism, it is true; but
in its stead we have placed irreverence and worldliness. Such is the
situation in the church, in organized, conventional religion; when we
look at the still larger principle of vital Christianity, at the heart
of things of which mere churchgoing is only a symbol, we are still
more appalled. Neither bigotry nor irreverence is right. Young people
will not tolerate cant; but neither will they be attracted to a
worship that features what they can find better done in a theater.
Simple goodness and kindness, however, never fail to command respect.
Love is never hissed off the stage; and the love of Christ, pure and
simple, is sufficient even for the sorrow of such a sad world as ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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