SUNDAY WORK.
No day is more appropriate for effective work in behalf of human brotherhood than Sunday. By common consent it has been set aside by the majority of civilized races for serious thought, meditation and worship, and what is more befitting this day than to think out, study out and talk out the solution to the great problem of human justice and brotherhood. To speak for the New Democracy on Sunday is no more than to gather in the fruit of all the great religions that have come down to us. The New Democracy is not religion and those who proclaim its truths are neither preachers nor priests, but it is religion's highest product. The great religions of the world, nurtured by God's hand and growing out of the fertile and sympathetic souls of the men and women of all climes and all centuries, have at last produced a practical ideal capable of being realized in actual life. This product is the New Democracy. It is the answer to the prayers of the ages. It is God's gift granted in answer to the cries of suffering of injustice and poverty throughout the world. It is God's method of redeeming society, of saving our nation, now well-nigh unto death, from greed and sin. Let each retain his attachment to his own sect and religion, but instead of quarreling about sectarian differences, let us unite in realizing our common dreams of brotherhood. Instead of building new walls to separate us, let us make one platform so large that on it all earnest sons of God can stand erect, confident of His presence.
Centuries before Jesus Christ traversed the plains of Galilee and bathed in the troubled waters of the Jordan, there was one Buddha who, despising the superstitions of his time, gathered about him others who, like him, believed that the larger part of human suffering was unnecessary and could be extinguished by human agency. This band traveled throughout the most populous districts of Western Asia teaching the great truth that the object of life's endeavor should be to lessen pain and to increase joy. Their one command was "cease causing pain; do not kill or cause to suffer any man or animal." And within two hundred years, from this little band and from this one whole-hearted man, an enthusiasm for mercy and love and justice overspread a third of the human race. Buddha's teachings were free from the multitude of miserable superstitions that haunt the people who bear his name to-day. His teachings, with those of Zoroaster, Confucius, Mencius, Moses and Christ, in their purity, attempted primarily to induce men to live as brothers, to teach men that individual good is social good and that both duty and true happiness consist in devotion to others—to the commonwealth.
Some preachers, however, get so in the habit of prophesying that, when their prophecies are fulfilled, they think it wicked and heretical to believe it. They refuse to believe their own eyes when they see the answer to their prayers. So deep-rooted has grown their habit of prayer that the means has become an end. They ask no longer to get what they ask for but for the exercise of asking, which they call pious. Their prayers answered, they are astounded. Now that their prophecies are fulfilled, they open their unbelieving eyes in wonderment and condemn those who stop asking for what is already given.