a certain upward tendency in society, man added the word, “Providence;” gladdened by God’s mercy, man added ideas of forgiveness and love.  Slowly the word grew.  In the olden time people entering the Acropolis cast their gifts of gold and silver into some vase.  Last of all came the prince to empty in jewels and flashing gems and make the vase to overflow.  Not otherwise Christ emptied vast wealth of meaning into those words called “conscience,” “law,” “love,” “vicarious suffering,” “immortality,” “God.”  Beautiful, indeed, the simplicity of Christ.  With long patience, man waited for the unveiling of the face of divine love.

To all patriots and Christian men who seek to use occupation and profession so as to promote the world’s upward growth comes the reflection that henceforth society’s progress must be slow, because its institutions are high and complex.  To-day many look into the future with shaded eyes of terror.  In the social unrest and discontent of our times timid men see the brewing of a social and industrial storm.  In their alarm, amateur reformers bring in social panaceas, conceived in haste and born in fear.  But God cannot be hurried.  His century plants cannot be forced to blossom in a night.  No reformer can be too zealous for man’s progress, though he can be too impatient.  In these days, when civilization has become complex and the fruitage high, those who work must also wait and with patience endure.

Multitudes are abroad trying to settle the labor problem.  The labor problem will never be settled until the last man lies in the graveyard.  Each new inventor reopens the labor problem.  Men were contented with their wages until Gutenberg invented his type and made books possible; then straightway every laborer asked an increased wage, that though he died ignorant his children might be intelligent.  When society had readjusted things and man had obtained the larger wage, Arkwright came, inventing his new loom, Goodyear came with the use of rubber, and straightway men asked a new wage to advantage themselves of woolen garments and rubber goods for miners and sailors.  On the morrow 15,000,000 children will enter the schoolroom; before noon the teacher has given them a new outlook upon some book, some picture, some convenience, some custom.  Each child registers the purpose to go home immediately and cry to his parent for that book or picture; that tool or comfort.  When the parents return that night the labor question has been reopened in millions of homes.

Intelligence is emancipating man.  Ignorance is a constant invitation to oppression.  So long as workmen are ignorant, governments will oppress them; wealth will oppress them; religious machinery will oppress them.  Education can make man’s wrists too large to be holden of fetters.  In the autumn the forest trees tighten the bark, but when April sap runs through the trees the trunk swells, the bark is strained and despite all protests it splits