REMARKS BY REV. DANIEL EVANS, D. D.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am an Orthodox professor, coming from the classic shades of Cambridge, in the quiet of the neighboring city. I have been lecturing, at the close of our theological year, upon the subject of a region in the other world, the climate of which reminds me of the atmosphere of this meeting here to-day; and the differences with reference to the opinions held by people who have not yet arrived at those lower regions are just about as diverse as the opinions that have been expressed here this afternoon.

I am glad to inform the gentleman who came to us from New York that in one part of Cambridge are four churches, the Episcopal, the Baptist, the Universalist, and the Congregationalist; and that on several occasions these various churches have united not only in the interests of temperance, but also in the interests of the moral and spiritual life; and the Universalist has preached in the Episcopal Church, and the Episcopalian rector has preached in all of these churches.

Now, I must confess that I have been perplexed in thinking over this subject. I am a member of several clubs in which two subjects are never expected to be talked about. It is not good form to discuss religion or politics. And here to-day is a group of people who have been discussing both through the morning and the afternoon session. No wonder there is so much difference of opinion. I myself belong to that group of people who hope the time is coming when men and women, however much they may differ, will yet agree to treat one another on the basis of manhood and womanhood.

If the Roman Catholic Church were dead and buried, and doomed beyond the hope of resurrection, we would still have on our hands serious problems for the solution of which we would have to get together. And as I see it, all the churches are faced with the same problem in democracy, and the sooner

we get together, and the larger the forces that we can martial, the better it will be for our common country and our common democracy. It is the task of the church, which I take to be the prophetic institution of religion, to come to the help of solving the problems of democracy. And the first great task of the church as the institution of religion is to insist upon the supremacy of right over might, of moral influence over physical force, of keeping the race up to its moral and spiritual level, and not letting it fall back to its low level when force of some kind or other was the means brought to bear upon people to make them think, feel, and act as those did who wielded the power.

It is a very striking and significant thing that there has been a revival of Machiavellism the principles laid down by Machiavelli, who held that, with reference to the rise of the nation or any part of the nation's history, moral rules did not obtain and that there is no such thing as moral duties between States. We supposed he was dead and doomed and damned. But he has experienced a resurrection, and he is now canonized by a large number of people who propose to resort to force for the solution of problems which can only be solved by moral influence.

Here were a group of Greeks. According to the newspaper their flag was one foot higher than the American flag. Instead of speaking to the Greeks and appealing to their intelligence to put it down, force is used to tear the flag in two and to pull it down and that in Massachusetts. Here are a group of common people who propose to hold a meeting on Sunday; and before the meeting is held the police are brought out. The people go to a private house, and before a speech is made they are stopped. Resort to force is made rather than resort to reason. And it is time for us to insist that you can solve no problem ultimately by force, you can only solve it by moral influence, the appeal to reason and right.

There is another problem before the church. It is to create confidence in the common people. There is more skepticism abroad at the present time on the part of the so-called "better

classes" in America, with reference to the actual working out of democracy, than there has been for many years. They interpret democracy in the terms of the ignorance, the blindness, the passion, the mistakes of the people, like Ingersoll going around the country lecturing on the mistakes of Moses and unable to see anything else in Moses but his mistakes. It is time to create once more, in the very men and women who occupy the chief seats in our churches, faith in the common manhood of the great masses of the people of our country. They may not have our manners, they may not have our traditions, they may not speak our language, they may not have the same blood in their veins; but their hearts pulsate with the same passion of freedom, and they know that this country is a country which recognizes manhood and gives a chance to every man, in whatever ship he may have crossed the sea, whatever name he bears, whatever church he goes to or does not go to, and whatever his color may be. The great American Bar Association, made up, they say, of the brains of the country, is trying at the present time to get a neighbor of mine and a personal friend, William Lewis, out of its membership because God made him colored. Would that I were a lawyer, that I might have a chance to walk out with Lewis when he walks out!

Now, these men are not the common people; they are the so-called privileged people. They are not the ignorant people; they have got college education. They are not the people who live on our back streets; they are the persons who live on our avenues. They are not the people who come into church and sit behind the pillar; perhaps they pass the contribution-boxes. So the first thing we have to do is to create once more confidence in the common people, and to have democracy not something of the breath but something in the soul of man.

It is strange to see how readily one can become undemocratic. I have some children at home. One of them came home one day and said, "Well, you know, those children don't dress well; I guess they must be poor people." I said

to my daughter, "I never want to hear you say a single word against a human being because of color, because of clothing, because of the place where he or she may live; for," I said, "I want you to remember, the time once was when your father had ragged clothes, and had at times not enough to eat, and that he worked in the coal-mines of Pennsylvania." Just at that moment a coal-team went by, and the man who was driving was as black as could be; and I said, "Your father used to look just like that man. Now, never let me hear a non-democratic remark from a child of mine." Two days afterwards she was sitting by the window and saw this coal-team again go by. She was only about seven or eight years of age. She said to her mother, "Mother, who knows but that black man will become a white minister some day?" Now, that is just it. These black men - that is, the men who have not your color of thought and color of feeling and color of social position and color of dwelling, and so forth will be all white people to-morrow.

There is one other thing I should like to say, and then I close. I presume I have been called on anyway to pronounce the benediction. There is one thing I want to say as to the problem before the churches. It is to create a moral consciousness out of which can come a great democracy. Democracy means the rule of the people, for the people, and by the people, and you cannot have a great democracy unless you have people who can rule themselves. The first moral condition for a great democracy is self-restraint upon the part of the people. Every man his own policeman, every man his own court, every man his own ruler; the master of his spirit being greater than he who taketh a city. It is out of a moral consciousness allied to great fundamental moral and spiritual realities of life- certain that back of the laws put upon our books must be the eternal law, and convinced of the power that maketh for righteousness through the souls of menit is out of such a consciousness as this that there shall come a strong, masterful, giant democracy of kings and queens and priests before God. If we can get men high enough in

religious life, they will understand one another when they come down to their common tasks in the valleys of life.

There are two mountains in Wales, so they say, the tops of which are so near that persons who are up on their summits can speak one to the other and be heard and be understood, even though they come from far distances at the bottom. It is because we are on too low levels that we have so many differences. If we ascend and speak we shall be understood, and we shall go back to our several tasks, friends the one with the other, looking forward to the time when we shall be together on the heights, and together work for God and democracy in the movement of the great historic process.