FALLING FROM HIGH PLACES.
High Christian society, both in New York and Brooklyn, has been shocked again and again during the past few years by the fall from rectitude of its eminent members. These cities have not been singular in their experiences. Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago have all furnished their instances of fall from high Christian and social positions into infamy. Men who have been trusted have betrayed their trusts. Men who have “made a good profession” have shamefully or shamelessly belied their profession. Whole families have gone down into financial ruin and social disgrace with these men. Some of the delinquents are serving out their terms in the state-prison, and some of their innocent victims and family friends are in lunatic asylums. The whole matter has been horrible—too horrible to dwell upon, or talk about. It has even been too solemn and suggestive to gossip over. Under the revelations of these great iniquities, carried on for years in secret, men have trembled for themselves and their friends. It has been feared that these were but the out-croppings of an underlying mass of infidelity to truth and honor. We have almost dreaded to look into the morning papers, lest some more shocking fall than all should be revealed. Of course there has been a great deal of comment upon the subject—wise and otherwise. The scoffer at religion has had his fling. The conscious scamp has had his little crow over his long-bruited conclusion that men are all alike, and that all are scamps as far as they dare to be. But the good men and women, in the church and out of it, have taken the whole matter very sadly to heart; and they wonder what it means. Why is it, at this particular time, that there should fall upon the Christian church such disgrace in the fall of its members? Has Christianity no hold upon men? Does it give them no strength under temptation? Does it in no way put them beyond temptation? How is it that men can go on punctiliously in the performance of their outward Christian duties, while consciously guilty of offenses against the law which, if proved, would consign their persons to prison and their names to public execration? There is a great deal that might be said upon the matter, but there are only two things which we care to notice. The first is that we have passed and are passing through an exceptional period in political, social, and financial history. Smooth times would have spared us most of the disasters which we so sadly lament. The civil war furnished great opportunities for making money rapidly, and the men who made it rapidly raised their style of living to a luxurious grade. So many made money swiftly that they had the power to revolutionize the general style of living. In this way, life became more expensive to everybody, and the most extraordinary exertions were made by all men to win a share in the general prosperity, and to display a share in their dresses, equipages, and homes. We did not hear very much about betrayals of trust while the prosperity was in progress; but when the times began to pinch, and men were trying to bridge over little gaps in their income, without showing to their families or their friends that they were in trouble, the mischief began. The first steps were undoubtedly very small, and were intended to be immediately retraced; but the pinch in the times did not relax, and the false steps never were retraced and never could be retraced. The following ones were the steps that a man makes when dragged at the tail of a hangman's cart—irresistible. Now we are simply harvesting the crop. The mischief began long since, under the pressure of special and exceptional temptations. But ought not Christianity to have been equal to such an emergency as this? This is the question the church is asking of itself. This is the question the world is asking of the church, and this is the second point that we have thought worth considering in this article. Now why does the world ask of the church such a question as this? Who taught the world its morality? Where did it acquire its nice notions of personal honor and honesty? Whose influence has planted in the public mind the sense of integrity and purity—the sense of the heinousness of infidelity to private and public trusts? Christianity has been the world's teacher, and it only asks the question which the church has taught it to ask. Why does the church feel through all its membership the deep disgrace of these untoward revelations, save for the reason that it is truly Christian, and is permeated and moved by the spirit which these crimes have violated? If the church were trying to cover up these crimes and to shield these criminals; if she were not shocked and grieved to her center; if she were not sadly questioning herself as to the causes of these terrible backslidings, she might be flouted with them. As it is, no decent man will fail to give her his sympathy. Feeling just this, and saying so much as this, we believe that we have the liberty to say a little more. We feel at least the liberty to ask a question or two. Is it not possible that in the pulpit teaching of the present day we make a little too much of salvation, and not quite enough of righteousness; a little too much of the tree, and not quite enough of the fruit; a little too much of a “saving faith,” and not quite enough of good works; a little too much of believing, and not quite enough of living; a little too much of dogma, and not quite enough of character? Certainly the pulpit has erred in this matter, and erred not a little. It is the weak place, not only in modern preaching, but in modern orthodox theology of all names; and if the church wishes to learn the lesson of her failures, she will find it here. A man whose principal motive is to get himself saved by compliance with certain hard conditions of repentance and service, is a pretty poor staff to lean upon in the emergency of a temptation which attacks his selfishness from another direction. Our revival preaching, unless supplemented by a long course of instruction in morality, is pretty poor stuff. It serves its temporary purpose well enough, perhaps; but if conversion is anything less than the beginning of a drill and training in righteousness, it amounts to very little.—Scribner.