A NEW YORK paper forcibly and properly rebukes parents who send undisciplined boys to college, and then expect the professors to keep the young rebels against authority out of mischief, or from positively evil conduct. Commenting upon this opinion, the Interior well says:—
"It is the business of a professor to teach, not to play the double role of guardian and spy. At the government academies, at West Point and Annapolis, a peculiar relationship between the cadets and the faculty exists, and the boys can be disciplined by recognized authority; but such relationship cannot be established in an ordinary college, and ordinary students cannot be thus controlled in respect to every detail of their daily existence. If a boy, freed from the restraints of home, uses his liberty at college to make a fool, a scamp, or a loafer of himself, he ought to be dismissed from college in short order. It is an outrage on diligent and serious-minded students to have such fellows put into the same classes with them; or to have the professors' time, which ought to be given to those who are anxious to learn, taken up in efforts to coax or coerce the unruly ones."
Sunday Lawlessness in Chicago
By Editor
The Sabbath Association of Chicago are becoming stirred over Sunday desecration. It appears that the mayor will not enforce Sunday closing of saloons. At a recent mass-meeting in Central Music Hall, according to The Advance, Dr. Barrows said:—
"Sunday lawlessness is doing as much to drag our city down as the churches are doing to lift it up, even when aided by such powerful friends of righteousness and reform as the papers of Chicago might be if all were willing to do their duty."
What a confession this is of the weakness of the churches. Christ has promised "power" to his servants, but it seems that all that he has vouchsafed is, in the minds of these Chicago reformers, as nothing compared to civil law. As showing the support of the Roman Catholics to the movement, Dr. Barrows said:—
"The most eloquent words denouncing the Sunday saloon which I have ever heard in this hall came from Catholic lips, and, after our last meeting here on the eve of the spring election, the strongest indorsement of our movement which I saw anywhere I read in the Catholic journal."
And why should not Catholics defend their own? The religio-civil Sunday originated with them. But why do not these people work for saloon closing on all days? Is it proper and righteous six days of the week and only wrong on Sunday? All of these agitations prove just one thing, and that is, that it is not so much the saloon closing that they desire as it is Sunday laws. It is not the workingman but Sunday which is so dear to their heart.
The Value of Christian Missions
By Editor
THE recently published statement of Lieutenant Wood, of the U.S. navy, that missions in China are a failure, has called out considerable evidence to the contrary. The most recent expression of this character is from ex-Minister Benjamin, until recently our representative at Teheran, who gives in the current Unitarian Review striking testimony to the value of Christian missions. No one, he says, who has lived amid foreign missions but must be aware, and will admit, if candid, that the influence of missions in a reduction of tyranny and cruelty, an enlightenment more rapid than ordinary events would have caused, a general amelioration of society, and a greater readiness to welcome the progressive movements of the period, has been very great, and is gaining constantly in geometric ratio. It has proved, in truth, one of the great factors in awakening the Orient from its lethargy.
Christian Science Is Neither Christian Nor Science
By San Francisco Chronicle
THAT fad of the present day, which calls itself "Christian science," is a misnomer in every respect, for it is neither Christian nor science. Ostensibly based upon the tenet of the Christian religion, the logical sequence of its dogmas is the denial of the necessity for the redemption of the world by the mediation and death of Jesus Christ, and such a denial obviously destroys its claim to be called "Christian." As to its science, it pretends to the exercise of miraculous powers of healing, and every miracle is a flat contradiction of science, so that it can lay no more claim to science than to Christianity.—San Francisco Chronicle.
William Ings’s Address
By Editor
THE address of Elder William Ings will be, until further notice, St Helena, Cal., care of Rural Health Retreat.