So in our courts. The same principle would work. The average citizen in America knows only this about our courts, that he wants to keep away from them. So far we have not been assured of justice. The poor man has not stood an equal chance with the rich, nor the black with the white. Money has been freely used for the changing of laws, if need be. In South Carolina a white man stole an automobile and was sentenced for thirty days; on the same day and by the same judge a Negro who stole a bicycle was sent to the chain-gang for three years. Such a travesty on justice can not much longer abide in a country that has passed through fire. Let us turn our faces to the morning.
Our churches need a new baptism. About thirty years ago the conviction began to force itself that somehow the church as an organization was becoming too set and staid in its ways, that it was in fact a beautiful antique, regarded with somewhat amused condescension by the young men and women who played golf on Sunday or the crowds that went to a baseball game. Suddenly we became fearfully introspective; we studied sociology; we read "The Inside of the Cup"; we were ashamed of the impotency of the old sermons on justification and regeneration; and we swung to the other end of the pendulum. Our churches began to be "institutional"; the most famous evangelist in the country became the one who was outstanding for his use of slang; the music in Sunday Schools became rag-time; and in general in religious services there developed a tendency to attract the crowd by using the methods of the vaudeville stage. Evening services in Protestant churches partook more and more of the nature of socialistic conferences, and, in general, dignity and reverence suffered. After a few years of this we have found that we are just at much at fault in another way as we were thirty years ago. We have done away with Puritanism, it is true; but in its stead we have placed irreverence and worldliness. Such is the situation in the church, in organized, conventional religion; when we look at the still larger principle of vital Christianity, at the heart of things of which mere churchgoing is only a symbol, we are still more appalled. Neither bigotry nor irreverence is right. Young people will not tolerate cant; but neither will they be attracted to a worship that features what they can find better done in a theater. Simple goodness and kindness, however, never fail to command respect. Love is never hissed off the stage; and the love of Christ, pure and simple, is sufficient even for the sorrow of such a sad world as ours.