ESTABLISHED 1844.
GREENSBORO, N. 0., WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1907.
VOLUME LIX. NUMBER 38.
All communications, whether for publica
tion or pertaining to matters c» ^ isiness,
should be sent to the Editor, J. 0. Atkinson,
Elon College, N. C.
EDITORIAL COMMENT.
School Houses and Temperance.—We used
to hear not a little about saloons supporting
the schools; that taxes from saloon privi
leges and fines from drunkenness went into
the school-fund, and if you abolished saloons:
you decreased your school-funds and short
ened the school term. While the argument
was plausible and the conclusion inevitable,
because the apparent facts were tangible and
in figures, there was always a heart-sickness,
a sort of disagreeable nausea, in the thought
and a feeling that there wals something
wrong in spite of argument and figures.
Like mose other argument of alcoholic odor
it was false to the foundation and deceptive
throughout. It is pitiful to think of what
a volume of falsehoods and hollow hypocrisy
the saloon will have to account for in the
final day of reckoning!
How utterly false and groundless was this
one argument may be seen from a little his
tory now being recorded in the affairs of
this good Commonwealth. Rapidly, for the
past few years, good people of North Caro
lina have been wiping out the saloon. County
after county has seen the last one ousted till
now seventy-seven out of a total of nine
eight have no vestige of the saloon whatev
er, and the sale in the other twenty-one is
limited and restricted. The State has a Gov
ernor who is a prohibitionist with his whole
heart and preaches temperance everywhere
he goes. Asked as to the results of this move
ment in the State, Governor Glenn said to
a reporter of the Washington Post the other
day: “One of the results is the building of
two new school-houses in North Carolina
every day.” And therein Governor Glenn
spoke the everlasting truth. Since man can
not serve God and mammon he cannot sup
port the saloon and keep up the school-house
also. And as the saloon retrogrades the
school-house multiplies and increases. Choose
you this day whom you will serve, the deadly
dram shop or the refining, life-giving school
house.
Loaves and Lilies.—The writer was on the
street of a certain city in the afternoon some
time ago when shops and factories were clos
ing for the day. He was surprised to see the
large number of laborers in overalls, soiled
by the day’s service, and with dinner pail in
hand, returning home for the night, stop
along the route and purchase a bouquet of
dowel’s to pin on the breast of those sooty
overalls or drop safely into the empty din
ner pail, to take home to wife or child there.
The first thought was that bread was not all
that these men wanted in life. That lilies
as well as loaves are necessary to supply the
heart of man.. And the man who crowds
out the lilies with heart-hunger for the loaves
only, misses the most and best of life. Love
sometimes grows in the home with lilies, and
he who crowds out the lilies in his mad
scramble for the loaves will find his home
the poorer because love and beauty and
kindness and culture are lacking there. The
’Chinese epigram is not a bad one which en
joins : ‘ ‘ If you have two loaves of bread, sell
one.and buy a lily.”
That means, which is eternally true, that
the mind and heart as well as the body must
be fed. Many a time the heart is famishing
when the larder is full. Not infrequently
the real hunger in the home is not for more
loaves, but for a few lilies—some beauty, a
little love, a ray of sunshine, a gleam of
gladness from a tender plant or a flower that
should blossom there. In our rush for the
loaves it is madness and rashness to forget
the lilies. Beauty as well as bread is neces
sary in every well kept and well ordered
home.
Four Chinese girls have just arrived at
Wlellesley College and are the first sent to
an American college by the Chinese govern
ment.
■ ' ■ ' / .
*A DESTRUCTIVE CRITIC OF 2907.
(To the Reader of 1907.
Dear Brother: Although interested in the
able writings of the higher critics of 1907,
especially in their assumption of having dis
covered something valuable, as if the “his
torical method” were new in studying the
Bible, I confess I became somewhat drowsy
under their monotonous efforts to make the
sacred writings seem to abound in misstate
ments. But I gradually absorbed their
genius and spirit, and seemed to become a
destructive critic, though calling myself a
higher critic.
While in this state of mind, sleepy though
I was, I seemed to live rapidly through the
centuries, century after century, until I
found myself moving among scholars whoc
dated their letters with the numerals, 2, 9, 0.
7.
On seeming to be roused from a semi-con
sciousness, and supposing that a thousand
years had passed from the time I fell asleep
under the dreary chanting about the mistakes
of the Bible, I seemed to be walking among
the fancied alcoves of my library, now in
creased by the additions of a thousand years,
and coming across the following correspond
ence I give you the letters, believing that it
may be interesting to the reader to observe
how the reasoning of the future destructive
critic (writing in 2907 of our times in the
spirit in which the destructive critic of 1907
writes of Bible times) will make the condi
tions of our generation to appear.
If we of the year 1907 know something of
the conclusions of the learned gentleman of
2907 to be false, whose letters I now reveal,
or if his modes of reasoning are absurd, or if
he lays stress on insufficient data in his logic,
or, especially, if he is ludicrously given to
denying the statements of eye-witnesses to
the facts which we of our time know to be
true, these faults must not be attributed to
me: for I copy the letters and publish them
exactly as I found them a thousand years
before they were written.
J. J. Summerbell.)
Dayton, Ohio.
•Copyrighted by The Christian Sun. All
rights reserved.
EIGHTH LETTER.
Kinkade, New Zealand, 30, 10, 2907.
My Dear Grandson,
Although I have abundantly proved that
the people of 1907 were egotistical barbari
ans, as would naturally be supposed of those
not having the advantages of the year 2907,
I will in further letters give you additional
evidences. But now I wish to speak briefly
of another point:
From what I have already written, you
may possibly suppose that I derived only
pain from my investigations of the condi
tions of 1907, But, on the contrary, in some
respects I found satisfaction. For in that
year and a few years prior to it the higher
critics were active to a creditable degree.
My satisfaction was not excited by the doc
trines they taught*; for some of them have
since been refuted; but my satisfaction was
excited by the disposition they manifested.
They were incessantly teaching their tenets,
and with the grand spirit of the martyrs
they denied everything related by witnesses,
if the thing was miraculous in its nature, or
even remarkable. That enabled them, al
though they did not so intend it, to under
mine the spiritual elements of Christianity,
by exciting doijbJ; concerning many of the
events related/in the Bible. They placed
mueh emphasis on the negative. Professing
to believe in the teachings of Jesus, they
cast doubt on so many things stated in the
Bible concerning him, that the doubts be
came the center of interest; and faith, the
element of Christianity so valued by Jesus,
was beaten down. Men began to doubt every
thing. They ceased to repent of sin, they
ceased to put faith in Christ, and gave them
selves up to respectable worldliness.
Unfortunately for the cause of truth, the
preachers of that time who won men from
sin to righteousness were those who denied
the conclusions of the higher critics. The
higher critics themselves were not instru
mental in the conversion of sinners. The ef
fect of this was that the more the higher
criticism was successful, the more materialis
tic became society.. Financial dishonesty be
came prevalent, because most men doubted.
Doubt was their habit of mind. They doubt
ed each other. Nobody trusted a stranger.
Very few trusted their acquaintances. Even
employers did not trust their employes.
This condition of the civilized world be
came so pronounced that hundreds of ma
chines and devices were invented to prevent
employes from stealing the money received
by them from the patrons of their employ
ers. In small groceries, if the owner em
ployed a clerk, he had a machine called a
cash register on the counter to prevent that
clerk from stealing his money. All kinds of
business men announced in some way that
they could not trust their fellow men. Doubt
prevailed widely.
x When men begin to doubt, there is no sal
vation for them unless faith in some higher
and worthier object can be excited in their
hearts. Lacking that, they go on downward,
doubting themselves, doubting other men,
doubting the Bible, doubting God, doubting
the future life, and even doubting the moral
laws. Each man lives for himself, and cor
ruption is the result.
Humiliating as it is for us higher critics
to admit it, the period when we had the
most adherents since the Dark Ages was the
time alluded to in the following quotation,
which I make from the language of the ed
itor of a periodical called “Current Litera
ture,” of the year 1907. Accompanying
the numerals 1907, is the frequent prayer
of that period, June; undoubtedly addressed
to Juno. It seems that many periodicals of
that year regarded her as their special di
vinity. Notice the degradation testified to
by many witnesses, whose evidence the editor
lays before his readers. The quotation is as
follows.
“As the Neue Frei Presse of Vienna is
tempted to think, the source of our difficulty
ig itwofold. First,there is the businesslike
view we take of everything. ‘Imagine,’ it
says, ‘what must be the state of the public
mind when it can be seriously maintained
that an official should conduct the govern
ment of a great city just as if it were his
private business. This, nevertheless, is the
attitude to public affairs of many otherwise
enlightened men in America, to whom dem
ocratic government is nothing more than a
branch of business like selling groceries at
wholesale.’ Another source of our difficulty
is described in the Vienna daily as the right
of the judges to interfere with the executive
and the judiciary. Theoretically, it explains,
the three branches, executive, legislative,and
judicial, are independent. Practically, the
judiciary can, ‘whenever it pleases,’ nullify
the acts of the lawmaking body and paralyze
the arm of the executive. “Nothing is more
remarkable than the regularity with which
American courts throw the adminstration of
the country into confusion by interference
with its procedure at every stage.’ To the
Kreuz Zeitung it seems clear that our spstem
of government is being undermined by the
courts. They are controlled, it says, by vest
ed interests. ‘There is very little public
ity ” we read, ‘in the acts of the courts of
law in the United States. The most import
ant decisions are announced, it may be,from
the bench, but the real work is done behind
closed doors. There is not even a pretense of
doing justice. All is made to depend upon
the pedantic technicalities of the moment.’
It repeats approvingly the remark of an
English paper that in our courts ‘justice and
common sense are sacrificed to procedure’
whenever that conduces to the advantage of
a wealthy litigant. The obvious moral that
monarchical institutions are vastly superior
to the system of government prevailing in
the United States is drawn by the inspired
organ of the Wilhelmstrasse.
“The breakdown of Americrn .justice, as
the London Mail deems it. accounts for that
loss of confidence in courts of law which,
it fears, is ‘the most serious political fact’
our statesmen have to deal with. It traces
the difficulty to an inefficiency of American
judges generally, ‘which no one denies,’ and
to the great importance attached to mere
technicalities when it is a question of ‘
‘some great corporation on the one hand and
an elementary principle of popular govern
ment on the other.’ The use of the writ of
injunction is, says a writer in the London
Post, ‘a flagrant scandal.’ No English court
says this conservative daily, ‘would pervert
the writ of injunction with such indifference
to every consideration of fair play’ as fed
eral courts have done ‘time and again.’ The
American lawyer it describes as ‘the hanger
on of corporations.’ No man of wealth has
any fear of the law. ‘The superior courts in
America,’ chimes in the London Outlook, ‘do
not ask, when an appeal is taken jto them,
Is the judgment just ? but Is there any error
of whatever kind in the proceeding of the
trial court? If there is, the presumption of
prejudice exists at once and the whole case
has to be tried over again. It is this fetish
worship of forms and rules that has made
the judicial procedure of America a menace
to society.’ This menace has taken the form
of predatory wrealth to which the courts are
subservient, and of indifference to human
life which makes the United States show *
far higher proportion of murders to the mil
lion inhabitants than any other country in
the world except Italy and Mexico—‘and
America is the only land where the number
of murders is actually on the increase.’
“In the past twenty-seven years, as the
figures are given in the various European
dailies which have gone into the subject, the
number of murders and homicides here was
over 132,000. The executions were 2,286.
‘In 1883 the number of murders was 1,808,
nd in 1904 had increased to 8,482. Btit the
number of executions had increased only
from 108 in 1885 to 116 in 1904. ’ Nothing
to the London Outlook seems more remarka
ble than the indifference o f theAmerican ju-_
diciary to the scandals growing out of this
condition of things. ‘Just as they have elab
orated the machinery of polities until democ
racy is bound and helpless in its toils, so
they have magnified the mere technicalities
of the law until justice has been thrown in
to the background"and lost sight of.’ ‘Thus
it is that we find suclPSbsurdities, ’ adds the
London Mail, ‘as that of the United States
Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in the
land, reversing a judgment because the rec
ord failed to show that the defendant had
been arraigned and had pleaded not guilty.’ ’?
You will observe, my dear grandson, that
the witnesses quoted by the editor of the per
iodical, all resided on the opposite side of
the Atlantic ocean from the courts they crit
icise. This remoteness from the locality of
the courts show’s that they could have had
no prejudice; they had no interest in the lit
igation complained of. If these witnesses
to the corruption of American courts could
have been distant three thousand years from
the time criticised, as wTell as three thou
sand miles, we wrould be absolutely certain
that their testimony was true.
This is the principle, you understand, by
which in the year 1900 we so beautifully
demonstrated that Jesus did not literally rise
from the dead. We showed that Peter and
John, tw’o of the witnesses, lived at the very
time of the event reported; that they were
deeply interested, because of their affection
for Jesus. Therefore their evidence cannot
be accepted. And even Paul’s evidence must
be rejected (though he never saw Jesus till
aftr the resurrection), because he preached
the resurrection. That very fact disqualifies
him as a witness. He lived too near the
time, and suffered too much because of his
testimony, and manifested altogether too
much enthusiasm on the subject. It is much
safer to accept the testimony of Hr. Lyman
Abbott and Dr. Crapsey, who lived 1900
years after the event, and who are not pre
judiced by having ever seen anything so re
markable in all their lives. T.heir testimony7
far outweighs that of the the hundred dis
ciples who saw JesusV t one lime after he
rose from the dead: for all of them must
h." e been prejudiced or mistaken.
When Jesus told his disciples to handle
him and see, it must have been an optical il
lusion, or a mistake of hearing. This is
scientific; because now we just know that
Jesus was not there. What we know is
science.
But I find that I cannot tell it all in this
letter.
About a year ago September cotton was
selling in New York for 8.64 cents a pound;
this year it is selling for 11.74. The estimat
ed crop this year is some shorter than last,
and the cotton supply is not great now.
The Southern Railway discharged 150
employees at the Spencer Shops last week.
There is to be a general cut i» force and in
expenses throughout the Southern system, it
is reported, owing to recent hostile legisla
tion.
The Illinois Central Ry. has placed an or
der for fifty new locomotives and seven thou
sand cars.
Your affectionate grandfather,
Higher Critic.