The Gospel and Social Questions (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ...reason for the indifference of the masses about the Churches and religion is the emptiness of their lives. This is part of what has been said already, but it has a significance of its own. It is a common remark how soon working men and their wives are old. And there is force in it. Nor is it always the result of the conditions oi their lives, in hard toil and unsanitary surroundings. It is to some extent the action of the mind, or rather the want of mind, on the bodily frame. Nothing stays time in its influence on looks so effectually as a genuine interest in something worth doing. When the man in the middle classes has parted with his romances, as they are cynically described; when the first fires of human passions have slowed down, and the ties of early friendships have relaxed, he has still much left. There are the resources of education, the craving for some form of recognition or fame, and the pursuit of wealth. The last is the premier incentive. With most men, it alone stays when all else is gone. But take a case, type of many, from the working classes. By the time a youth has reached the age at which the law regards him as a man, he has often as much wage as he ever expects to earn. He gets married far too young, and, as I have seen it frequently enough, by the time he is thirty or thirty-five in the count of years he is fifty or fifty-five in the toil and turmoil of life. Almost all living interest in himself or in his outlook for the future has thinned out like wasting magic. When he should be at his best and most strenuous years, it is common enough for him to have reached the anti-climax of a dull existence, when, to use his own words, he is indifferent as to which end goes first. There is a great...