p. 311 | History-Making

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 22, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 20.

History-Making.

It is a great part of his task when a historian has found out where to look for the materials of his history; and sometimes the materials for history are found in rather strange places. Thus in a recent study of the sociology of Berlin by a prominent professor of the University there, the author is compelled to say: "The social history of our people must be written to-day at the doors of the drinking-saloons." It is a sad thing for any people when its life is to be traced within the doors of the dram-shop, rather than within the doors of the home; and the words of the German professor may well prompt the pointed query, Where would the inquirer seek, not alone for the materials for the social history of the American people, but for the individual life-history of every one of us? A great deal depends upon the answer to the question whether he would find the materials for our life-story in the saloon or in the home, at the gambling-table or in the study, at the theater or at the little mission hall, in the ways that lead to death, or in the house of God. Each of us is leaving, day by day, materials for a history which the angels of God will write with smiles or with tears; and we ought to see to it that they will not have to gather the record of our life-deeds from places which are the abodes of darkness and the gates of hell.—S. S. Times.