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Show CONSCIENCE, THE FOUNDATION OF A REPUBLIC Conscience the Foundation of Honorable j Success Decay of Intolerance and Bigotry An Unseemly" Worship. of A Success Charles Dickens and the Smart American Rob Roy and the I Good Old Rule Where Moral Lessons Should Be Taught. (Speech of Dean Harris, Continued.) You have read newspaper articles and hoard de-hates de-hates on platforms on the importance of developing develop-ing the material resources of our intermountaiu I states. You have doubtless read much on the im- j jKirtanoe of a new study of the units making up j f this great Republic, the individual organization of ' each of these units, and of their relation to each other. We have also our colonial and foreign re-' re-' - lationshijis and responsibilities. We have ques- I ' 1 ions facing us today, so significant in character, 7 great in possibility, that if we have ordinary in- "; telligence, even ordinary moral and mental grip, I we cannot face them, certainly we cannot wrestle with them, without growing in the process. And, : 1 insist in laying emphasis on it, that in developing 1 the . resources of our country, in endeavoring to ( solve the municipal, colonial, state and national, and even imperial problems, in attaining the high and great things which are beckoning us onward, there must be a regard for moral fibre, a regard for conscience as the foundation of all, if our glorious possibilities are to be achieved. In our day there are dangers in respect to conscience, con-science, dangers lest conscience, lest moral standards stand-ards belowcrcd. There are capitalistic combinations that seem to be inevitable, corporate trusts without, pity, resembling the Dublin Civic body, of which O'Connell. the Irish Tribune, said, it had "neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned." There are labor combinations and strikes issuing from them in which, as in the trusts, the individual, as j one of a multitude, takes positions and approves j of harangues and deeds which, if he were alone, he would never approve or even' condone. I simply ! point 1o these, I do not lay stress on them today. There is evidently a withdrawal of emphasis from conscience and with it tbe lessening sense of re-; re-; sponsibility ; and this is ominous. There is also a withdrawal of emphasis from the particular and important im-portant little things which are not attended to as they were in our father's time. But greatly to the advantage of neighborliness, and. to the advantage of the people in many respects, there is a decay of intolerance and bigotry and a growth of good will. Rut notice that wherever there is a movement having in it great possibilities for good, like that of religious tolerance, there will also be possibilities possibili-ties of evil, and there is a tendency in the present day to decry religion, to make compromises in the interests of harmony, and in order to avert the imputation im-putation of bigotry and narrowness, to make light of tradition and conscience. Rather let there be full emphasis on conscience and conscientious con-L con-L - victions, even if it compels the other man to differ from me and from you, or compels you and me to differ from him. There is also at the present time an unseemly V worship of success. This is partly due to the ma terial growth of our country, and to those opportunities oppor-tunities for success which come only when there is great material prosperity. When Charles Dickens first visited us, he observed among-us a worship of smartness and success, which he thought would yet prove the undoing of our great Republic. This is , what he writes: "The following dialogue I have heard a hundred times: 'Is it not a very disgraee- I ful circumstance that such a man and So and So should have acquired so much property by infa mous means, and, notwithstanding all the dishonesties dishon-esties of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated, toler-ated, honored and abetted by your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not V ("Yes. sir." "A convicted liar?" "Yes, sir." "He has been kicked and cuffed and caned?" "Yes. sir." , "And he is utterly debased?" "Yes, sir." : "In the name of wonder, then, what is his j . merit?" ) "Well, sir, he is a smart man." This spirit has come down to us as a result of ! the material development of our country and part- j. lv through the influence of our literature. ,; . J dare say I shall be treading upon the mental ; corns of some one, when I declare that, according t n mv judgment, it is a great evil that in connec- N lion with Christian Churches, there should be Suc- cess Clubs, 'in which the sole object presumably is j to teach boys "how to win success." In many of ffi the addresses which are heard by our school chil-dren chil-dren the great and dominant note today is "how I to win success." That spirit pervades our society ( everywhere. Failure is criminal. The man who , fails is down and out. This tendency to emphasize the value of shrewdness and ability, the shrewd-' shrewd-' nes to succeed, has always wrought great harm. Unless I am mistaken, in a former generation there was no such emphasis put upon a success that was measured by mere material standards. The man was great and respected who had character where ideals were noble and money counted for less than it does now. In those days one often heard the complimentary remark "he's an honest man. or he has an honest face," conferred upon one sneighbor f or acquaintance, implying that conscience directed i ' his thoughts and acts. I regret to have to admit J we do not so often hear the expression now, the phrase seems to have fallen away from our language. lan-guage. I will lay emphasis on one thing more, and it is something in which we all who are here this morning morn-ing are deeply intrested. Our great hope today and the future of our nation are in the school. If their be any class or profession and I do not exclude the vocation of the clergyman where conscience, moral cleanliness and heroic integrity ought to govern the will and direct the heart, it is the profession pro-fession of the teacher. In our day, the parent, unhappily un-happily and unfairly, I think, shirks his parental responsibility and trusts to the school for the moulding mould-ing of his child's character and, in a measure, for the foundation of the superstructure of the future man. Now I find in our schools a few things that need to be corrected. How under existing conditions they are to be corrected, I do not know. There is a theory of our educational system which holds that children in their studies should follow the line of least resistance. Some of our business men have been complaining, and I suppose justly so, that in the government, or lack of govenimont, in many of our schools, there is not sufficient attention paid to thoroughness in the training of our boys. If this be so, we may safely assume, it leads to moral and intellectual weakness. For well-nigh half a century general education in the United States has been a fetish. Started by well-meaning men, with the best possible intentions?, and much hope of great results, carried on at heavy expense, is it unreasonable to pause and ask if the harvest has been at all in proportion to the sowing i We cannot, if so disposed, go back upon what has been done, and no one proposes to stop the work. But. how about the results, about the grain we have reaped from our sowing? It is no exaggeration to say that today social unrest in our great country is more pronounced than it has ever been, while it is open to serious question whether social conditions are really better in the main than they were half a century ago. So far as we are able to judge, poverty is as acute, if not more so, than it ever was; drinking and gambling are certainly more universal; medical authorities tell us that insanity and degeneracy are rapidly on the increase; crime is becoming menacing. Murder, Mur-der, divorce and suicide hae ceased to excite attention, at-tention, and everywhere discontent has become an obession. It is true immense fortunes are more rapidly accumulated than was possible at any previous pre-vious period of history, and this fact is perhaps one of the greatest of the evils confronting us. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, where men decay." In spite of our civilization and our creeds we are confronted with the problem of the unemployed and no serious attempt has yet been made to solve it. In our great centers of population spasmodic employment was provided last winter for a few hundred of the 90,000 men said to be demanding work, but this was only a palliative of the most illusive kind. To say that more diffused education has not produced the results expected does not nec-. essarily mean that education is a failure, for we would not return to former conditions were it possible. pos-sible. But if our nation is to avoid, a frightful social eruption some change in existing conditions will have to occur, and a change take place greater than any mere legislation can bring about. Of course all sorts of nostrums are propounded almost daily for making the seething mass of misery in our great cities an elysium of content. In the circumstances cir-cumstances we cannot wonder that communism, anarchy an-archy and radical socialism, which promise relief in a speedy and easy way, are clutched at by those unfortunates un-fortunates to whom any change cannot be for the worse. For the slogan of their propaganda is that of the robber chieftain, Rob Roy: And why? Because the good, old rule Sufficeth them; the simple plan, . That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can. It may or rnay not be true that universal, ' and what must necessarily be a superficial and defective education has engendered discontent; anyhow it is here and has to be faced and logically dealt with. It is absurd to argue with hungry and desperate men, but it is equally absurd to contend that nothing can be done to help them into a better state. The social ploblems today are accentuated crime and discontent. Society seems absorbed in one mad race for wealth. Would it not be well to pause and consider if there be anything wrong in the education of our youth; to examine carefully our environment, otherwise society may have a rude awakening, and some day discover, when too late, that there is no wealth to chase. There is a laudable laud-able ambition that if persereved in and held for admiration in our schools will go far to improve conditions. Germany has done a great deal, and so has Great Britain,' but there ought to be and there is a higher ambition for us. that is the high ideal of Republican citizenship, of true democratic manhood, and if there be a genuine education it ought to include these. A manly man feels it beneath him to do the mean thing, to be a liar or to be dishonest. It ought to be a part of the boy's home training, and of his education that dishonesty, and meanness, mean-ness, and trickery are unbecoming to a man who knov the dignity and worth of true manhood. The more thoroughly we develop manly men and womanly women, the stronger will we be in the future, fu-ture, for, depend upon it, ladies ana" gentlemen, the future of a nation rests more upon the moral character of its citizens than upon its advancement advance-ment in arts and science, or on the grandeur of its material structures. It was said of old that nothing greater, nothing wiser, nothing more glorious than Imperial Rome had ever arisen upon the earth ; and yet, like all other human things, Rome, with its glorious architecture, its works pi art, its matchless statuary stat-uary and paintings, was swept away, and so' com-' com-' (Continued on Page 5.) i . ( CONSCIENCE, THE FOUNDATION FOUNDA-TION OF A REPUBLIC. (Continued from page 1.) plete was its destruction that for a time the very ruins of the capital of the pagan world were absolutely abso-lutely deserted. "Quenched is the golden statue's ray, The breath of heaven hath swept away What toiling hands hath piled. Scattering wise heart and crafty hand, As breezes strew on ocean's strand, The fabric of a child." You can pick up arts and sciences for various purposes on ten months' notice, any where and at any time, but manly and moral character is something some-thing that can only be built up by long years of hard work, by the advice and example of others, by self denial, pure living, and association with those who have already reached the high moral plain of a true manhood or womanhood. But it is well for us, ladies and gentlemen, to hold as axiomatic truth that, as the foundation of political security is faith in the integrity of man, and the foundation of domestic security is faith in the virtue of woman, so the foundation of all security and of all happiness, temporal and eternal, is in a good conscience and reliance on the mercy of God. . . It is in the home, in the school, at the university, univer-sity, and here, that these moral lessons must be taught and these high ideals held up for admiration; admira-tion; and the seed of decent living once planted in the home and the plant nourished in the school, depend de-pend upon it, it will live on forever. |