Am I My Brother’s
Keeper?
Above all else this country needs a nation-wide revival of
old-fashioned prayer-meeting relation—
A religion that makes men realize that if there is a heaven,
there must also of necessity be a Hell—
A religion that makes a man realize that every act is
recorded on his own conscience, and that though that may slumber, it can never
die—
A religion that makes an employer understand that if he is
unfair to his employees and pays them less than fair wages, measured by his
ability and by their efficiency and zeal, he is a robber—
A religion that makes an employe know that if he does not
give full and efficient service, he too is a robber—
A religion that makes a farmer who packs bad fruit at the
bottom and deceives the buyer by the good fruit on the top, realize that is a
theft just as much as the one who robs a hen roost at night—
A religion that makes a man who robs a railroad of its fair
or its freight bill know that he robs himself of all right to feel that he is
an honest man—
A religion that makes a man realize that by driving too hard
a bargain with his servant, his employe, or his merchant, he can be just as
much a profiteer as the seller or producer who swindles by false weight, false
packing or false charges—
A religion that will teach church members who fail to
contribute to the extent of their ability to the support of religion, and that
compels them to recognize that if they are paying their pastor less than a
living salary, they are robbing God and man alike—
A religion that will make the laboring man, who, by threats
or by actual violence against the nonunion man, strives to keep him out of
employment, realize that he is at heart a murderer and is murdering the
individuality, and the liberty of his fellow man, and is displaying a hatred
which, if it has the opportunity, will commit physical murder—
A religion that will make the politician who yields
principle for the sake of party, who worships at the feet of any class and
sells his soul for political preferment know that he is not only a coward and a
poltroon, and unworthy of the respect of any decent man, but which will also
make him see that he is helping to murder human liberty, as great a crime as
murdering the individual man—
In short, we need a revival of that religion which will make
every man and woman strive in every act of life to do that which, on the great
Judgment Day, they will wish they had done, as with soul uncovered they stand
before the Judgment Seat of the Eternal.
Until the people of this nation accept and live this
religion there will be strife where there should be peace, there will be
strikes and lockouts and murder where there should be co-operation and harmony;
there will be hatred where there should be friendship and love.
In the Golden Rule, followed in the fullness of the spirit of
this kind of religion, there would be found a solution for every business
trouble; there would be created friendship between employer and employe;
capital and labor would work in harmony and with efficiency, efficiency for the
capital and efficiency for the labor, with profit to both.
Religion of this kind is not measured by the hope of a
Heaven hereafter but by the full fruition now of “Peace on earth to men of good
will.”
It is not merely the chanting of hymns here or in the world to
come, but it is in the recognition and full application by rich and by poor, by
learned and unlearned, that each one is indeed his brother’s keeper that we can
bring this country and the world back to safety.
A nation-wide acceptance of this, the only true religion in
action, would bring business peace and world peace where there is now turmoil,
and men would then cease to seek to gain their aims by lawless acts of
immorality, but would in spirit and in deed follow the Divine command, “All
things whatsoever ye would that men do to you, do ye even so to them.”
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