The Reformed Presbyterian Standard and also 0\ir ... - Rparchives.org

November 18, 1914.
A EAMILY EAfm
3
EDIT ORIAL
John W. Pritchard, Editor.
The Star Notes last week told of the golden
wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel
M. Orr, at Los Angeles, California. Mr. and
Mrs. Orr until late years had their home in Allegheny,
Pa., and are well known to many in
Allegheny Church.
"THE WOELD HAS GONE AFTEE HIM."
Other people than Jesus have told men what
to do and have told them well. Confucius said
some good things. So did Buddha. Jesus excelled
them in that he told men the shortest
distance between two points. He knew the
straight way. But the difference between the
disciples of Jesus and the disciples of Buddha
did not lie so much in the difference in the
sayings as in the fact that Jesus put his sayings
into life. The Missouri idea is, after all,
cosmopolitan. Men need to be shown before
they can get a new idea in any practical way.
Most of us are ready enough to tell men what
they ought to do, and especially what they
ought not to do, but the crowd is waiting for
catch the rhythm and march with him. That
is what Jesus did, what he is doing. Hesitatingly,
painfully, the world is going after him.
THE BUSINESS MAN AS A PEEACHEE
OF EIGHTEOUSNESS.
There was a time within the memory of some
of us when every trade, whether of a spool of
thread or a suit of clothes, had about it the
the ministry of the Covenanter Church. In clinging taint of immorality. It was the part
their student days this home was open to them.
The date, 1864, carries us ba,ck to soldier days.
of the seller to appreciate the quality of the
article beyond its worth and of the buyer to
They are remembered for diligent labor in the depreciate. The former asked more than the
market value and more than he expected to
Sabbath School both in Pittsburgh and Allegheny,
and the Messiah Mission so long con­
get, while the latter cut the figure below what
he was willing to pay. Then the two of them
ducted by them in East Allegheny, still survives
spent fifty cents' worth of God's precious time
in the morning Sabbath School of
the
trying to beat the fellow man out of a dime.
Perhaps none of our forebears thought that the
gentle exaggerations of excellences and defects
was any breach of the moral code, or that
the waste of time would be laid to their account.
A man in New York was seized with
the idea that if his goods had but one price
both buyers and sellers would be gainers. But
the customers did not see it that way, that is,
not right away. What was the use of buying
if you could not jew the clerk. Therefore
they dropped off from six thousand to one.
Then they began to come back and kept coming.
The six thousand mark was passed and
became twelve. Then some other merchants
began to take notice. The salesmen could sell
more goods and the customers could buy more,
both could be courteous and part in good humor.
It took only a little figuring to show
the man who can "show them." Philip said, that this kind of goodness paid good dividends
"show us the father." That was what Jesus at the desk. Therefore it was stereotyped,
did. The main trouble with the Pharisee seemed
which saved setting up the types again. _ One
to be that when he had told men what to do finds the old method now only in a second­
he had no energy left to put his speech into
life. His deeds came to the birth and could
hand store. The moral of this paragraph is
that even a department store can preach the
not be brought forth. Jesus is the best commentary
gospel of righteousness.
on his teachings. We can understand There is a great saving of moral force when
them by looking at him. Men say that his righteousness thus became automatic. If a
plans are not workable now, but no one doubts man wanted to keep the faith by the older
that he made them work. Those who would method he needed to make a study of every
not listen to his words may have listened to
his life. Men have been listening to his life
ever since. One of the greatest difficulties with
trade. If the seller received too much it might
encourage him to further extortion; if the buyer
paid too little it might lead him to penuriousness.
mea is that their own lives make so much noise
By the one-price method we have
that they do not get still long enough to hear
Jesug.
But the most important thing about Jesus
is that he made people want to do what he said.
And he not only made them want, but he helped
them to satisfy their want. "To as many as
received him," and that means those who listened
to him, "to them gave he power to become
made a decided advance toward business righteousness.
The man who sits in the office of the store
sometimes has five salesmen to direct, sometimes
he has fivethousand. The average would
make a fair audience for most preachers. Then
the store man does not have his audience with
him only about thirty minutes twice, or once,
.sons of God." Confucius and Lao-Tse and a week. He has it maybe ten hours a day
Buddha, all the false prophets, could not give and fifty to sixty hours in the week. And
men power. Jesus could tell people, he could each man and woman of them all is preaching
show them, he could give them power to do. to the customer on the other side of the counter
something of the religion which he gets
That is what the crowd needs now. Conventions
are called which announce that Christ is
from the man in the back office. What is needed
is to inspire the man in the office and then
tiere, or he is there, but nothing, comes of it.
What is needed is the man who will get out
he will preach a sermon on righteousness to
and beat time to his own words till others
the whole neighborhood every day in the week.
THE NEED OP IMAGINATION.
If you were to ask ten men coming out of
church, "Do men do wrong with full knowledge
that it is wrong" nine of them would
answer that he did. They define sin as something
which you do when you know that you
should not do it. As a matter of fact the nine
men would not be altogether right, nor the
tenth altogether wrong.. Lee in his book on
"Crowds" says something like this: "If the
men who were shouting for the crucifixion of
Jesus had stopped to think quietly for ten minutes,
part of them would have gone home. If
they had thought hard for twenty minutes another
section of the mob would have slipped
away. If they had thought hard until the next
day there would not have been mob enough to
have harried Pilate to his fatal decision."
What they lacked was imagination. They
could see the present, but not the day after.
There was one man with an imagination which
saw the day after to-morrow. He saw all that
others could see and then so far into the future
that he forgot the awful pain in his hands and
feet and turned to Jesus with the prayer, "Lord
remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom."
Another man in the crowd had an imagiation
that could see what was over the hill.
That was John.
Why is it that alcohol has such an affinity
for crime That is because the. man can see
too much. He wants to shut out tomorrow
and tonight. Therefore drugs.
There was once a man named Joseph Cannon.
His post office address is Danville, Illinois.
But he is only a memory now because he lacked
imagination. His trade mark was a cigar uptilted.
His speech was punctuated with profanity.
But it suited the hour so well that he
was a kind of nicotine hero insomuch that he
was called Uncle Joe. Then something happened.
Joseph Cannon, M. C, did not know
exactly what it was, but tomorrow came along
and found him unprepared. He is elected
again from Danville this year, but in this tomorrow
he can never be Uncle Joe. He has
been retired with dishonor.
A half century ago Mr. Eockefeller saw
something in oil that other men did not see,
at least as soon. He saw how oil could be cornered
and he saw how he could get the railroads
to help him do it. He had what one
might call a decade imagination while his rivals
had only an annual affair to get along with
and therefore the Standard Oil Company.
In this decade Mr." Eockefeller was a great
success. He did what others would have liked
to do and did it first. He used the business
niethods of his time and showed what eould be
done in oil. But his mistake lay in the fact
tliat he did not have a half century imagination.
That is the reason why he is nursing
llis dyspepsia in his great house in Tarrytown,
one of the loneliest men in America. He does
not know what has happened to him. He did
what the imagination of his time made possible,
what men at that time approved. But the
next day after day after tomorrow came, which