THE PROBLEM OF LIVING TOGETHER.
By Walter B. Vassar
BY REV. WALTER B. VASSAR. IF we should speak of this problem as the problem of social life, it would be one of the many ways of expressing it, each meaning the same thing. It is the problem of the family, the community, and of the nations. The problem began with the race, and never before in the world's history were we confronted by it as now. We see China, old, hoary with age, living in the completest isolation, and to whom a foreign human being is a foreign foe. If ever a nation was as ill prepared as China, to live with others in the community of nations, history makes no record of it. And yet the problem of adjustment to society is hers along with ours. Humankind can not escape it. What has China to help her in the movement upward? We wish we could say that Christian nations, all of them, presented the example of the brotherhood that the Master taught; but so far we see, looking over the map of the world, what we might see in a community where every man carried a revolver in his pocket and a gun pointing from the front door of his residence. If China, now waking from its long sleep, could have the race prejudices and the race passions subdued by the spirit of the Gospel which so-called Christianity professes, who knows what might be done to conquer and win the heart of even a Chinaman? But as nations, we can not speak in the name of Christ. Our own discipline in the matter of social life is far insufficient for effective example. Many leaders in Christian thought are far enough along, however, in the school of Christ to say emphatically that if the spirit in which we are to meet this waking nation is to be of the nature and example shown by some of her western competitors, then the world's darkest night is upon us. The problem of living together finds its solving along other lines. Human brotherhood is cultivated in another spirit. The world, like the commonwealth, can only stand as it stands together.