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most to keep things as they are, until the tide of this new life gets so strong as to sweep away all barriers; and then there is revolution and what we call reform.

Now let us note a few of the human characteristics and tendencies that help to bring about this condition of affairs. In the first place there is in all of us a natural reverence and love for that to which we have become accustomed, for the old. It is a sentiment every way fair and sweet and beautiful, if only it keeps its place. Take it, for example, as bearing on the tender memories we have of the old homes. We go back to the places where we were born, and seek for the things that we remember: and they are not there, the atmosphere is changed, the whole condition of affairs is changed. And yet there is that tender, reverent love for the old home, the old fireside, the old faces, the old landscape, the old ways, that holds us in a sort of loved and pleasant bondage. This, I say, is well, when it is allowed. simply to play its part as poetry and sentiment in our hearts. We love old churches: we go abroad, and we can enter into the feeling of the people in England, in France, in Italy, as they look upon the parish church, gray, moss-covered, hung with vines that cling to it in every picturesque fashion. And we can begin then to appreciate what a tremendous power this sentiment of old association is in hindering even ever so desirable a change. People do not like to see these memories touched, these old places, these old scenes, interfered with. And so the tendency always is for the world to become dominated by the past, to be ruled by the dead. I am not saying now as to how much good or how much evil there is in this. I am simply pointing this out as one of the things that stand in the way of the world's reforms.

Then there is another thing: this, of course, applies especially to the matter of religion. There is the sense of loyalty to what, for one reason or another, a person has come to regard as infallible truth. We are familiar with the fact that the last thing that people are willing to touch and change is their religion; that is, as a general truth. And

this springs out of a perfectly praiseworthy motive. People have come to believe that the truth of their creed, the order of their service, the nature of their institutions, whatever touches and makes up their religion, has been revealed from God, or has at any rate come to them in such a way that they are persuaded that it is the finished and final truth. As an illustration of what I mean, take the saying of Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn. A few years ago he said that such a thing as progress in theology was absurd on the face of it, because the main doctrines of theology were God's revealed truth, and could not be touched or changed except to make them less true, and so to their injury and to the injury of the world. And when people become persuaded that they have the fixed and final truth of God, and, furthermore, when they take the next logical step, and believe that the welfare of mankind in this world and in the next depends on loyalty to this revealed and finished truth of God, then you see that there is a barrier raised up, against any suggestion of change, that is mightier than any other of which we can conceive. Here are earnest convictions of truth, here are loyalty to God, here are faithfulness to the welfare of mankind,- all these engaged in keeping things as they are. And, if it were true that the world had received an infallible and finished revelation of divine truth from God, why, then, this course in regard to it would not only be perfectly logical, but would be the highest and supremest duty of every true man. But we know that there are so many of these infallibilities in the history of the world that they cannot all be true. For at every single stage of human progress, from the lowest barbarism with which we are acquainted up to the last great council of some important church, the same claim has been made, the same attempt has been entered upon, to bar the pathway of human growth in the supposed name and on the supposed authority of God. This is so natural to human nature that it is not confined to any of the churches. We can see it and feel it in some other religion than the Christian, in some other denomina

tion of Christendom than our own; but the same tendency comes out in the freest and most liberal church in the world. There are persons in our Unitarian body who are ready to invoke the name of Channing against any further advance. They call themselves " Channing Unitarians," assume that Channing got through, that he found all the truth that was needful for the world; and, in the name of Channing and the older Unitarianism, Theodore Parker was barred. But Theodore Parker's next becomes a name to conjure with ; and there is danger that the followers and lovers of Theodore Parker may repeat the same tragi-comedy, and forbid the world to differ with him. And so the same thing goes on age after age, people assuming, without the slightest shadow of a shade of a right to assume it, that they have attained all the truth that is necessary for mankind; and so they are ready to fight against any reform which threatens to touch the order of things which they have established.

Then there is another thing that stands in the way of reform, and this not only in religion, but in the industrial world; and that is self-interest. Men and corporations and institutions of one kind and another get so linked in with the existing order that it is for their interest to maintain that order fixed; and so they are ready to oppose anything that touches it, no matter how large may be its promise for the development of mankind. Recall that old scene in Ephesus, the story of which is given us in the Acts of the Apostles. Some of the disciples had come, with their new truth, to this Grecian city; and the people having seen what was coming, those people who were interested in maintaining the worship of Diana of the Ephesians,-especially those who had been engaged in manufacturing shrines, little images of the goddess, and had found it a very profitable business, these people roused the whole city, and they got the crowd so excited that they rushed into the market-place, and for two hours together, it is said, shouted, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" and were ready to put down and persecute and cast out anything which touched or threatened this order on

which depended the prosperity of their business. I take it that a large part of the bitterness in ancient Jerusalem against Jesus had its root right here. He had prophesied the passing away of the temple. He had said that the time was to come when the true and exclusive worship of God was not to be found there, but that people without the temple, anywhere, who were true-hearted, could offer acceptable worship to God, the Spirit. But the city of Jerusalem was a great, important, glorious city, chiefly on account of the temple. The hundreds and thousands of those connected with the temple worship found their business threatened; and all the pride and glory of the Jewish race felt itself insulted, threatened, impugned, by the promise of this new truth, which was to make the temple of no importance to the life of men.

In smaller ways in the modern world the same spirit manifests itself. I have one illustration which flashes into my mind. It has its humorous side; but it is so true to human nature! A Congregational minister in the West some years ago, when some freer and larger ideas set forth by Dr. Bushnell were being discussed, said in the presence of my brother one day that he was inclined to think that these new ideas were right, and that he thought he should probably accept them. But, after thinking the matter over a little while, he shook his head, and said: "No, I cannot do that. If I accept these new ideas, I shall have to rewrite every one of my sermons, and begin all over again." Too much labor, too much thought, too much trouble involved: the personal equation comes in, and turns the scale in favor of the old and the established ideas. What is the condition of things in England to-day, in any country where there is a nobility? I presume, if I had been born a duke or an earl, I should share the sentiments and feelings of my class, my order. But think when any question of reform comes up in England, any question touching land tenure, touching the powers and privileges of the common people in the way of the ballot, touching the question of changing the present

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order in favor of something that shall confer larger and more general rights on mankind,- think of the tremendous bribe of the position which these men of power occupy, think of the overmastering influence of self-interest that is involved! And, then, there is just one more thing that I must touch on. We are naturally lazy. There is a tremendous power of simple inertia in us,- the inertia of the comfortable people, the people who are fairly well off, who are getting their living and finding life generally comfortable in the present condition of things. They do not like to be disturbed. They do not want the trouble of thinking things over, of reconstructing the world. Even though there may come to them the faint, far-off cry of the thousands, the millions perhaps, who are not so well off as they, it is so easy to sit still; and it is so difficult, not only to consent to be disturbed, but to become one of the disturbers yourself! I wonder sometimes, when I look at the tremendous nature of these forces that are naturally arrayed against anything new, that the new ever gets a hearing, that a step forward is ever taken.

Let us turn now, and note some of the difficulties - the dangers, rather in this work of reform. There are dangers both ways,-touching the people that are to be interfered with and touching the agitator as well. In the first place, the professional reformer, the man who becomes in dead earnest to bring about some new order of affairs, is in great danger of exaggerating the evils that he attacks. He must impress the world with the great necessity of having this particular thing done. He paints the condition, therefore, in the blackest colors. He is apt to set forth his belief that this one thing that he desires changed is the most threatening, the most dangerous, the most serious evil in all the world. And he is generally inclined to carry the implication by his argument that, if only this could be attended to, the world would be fairly on its way towards the millennium. I have noticed this so many times that perhaps it has made me now and then shrink back from putting myself in the position of an aggressive reformer as often as I felt inclined

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