THE KING’S BUSINESS 465 God bless Billy Sunday! But God forbid that we should attribute his marvelous successes to his eccentricities and extravagances. If we thought his success were attributable to these things, we should cease to believe in Billy Sunday. We stand today on the truth of our Lord’s statement, “Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you” (Acts 1 :8 ), and the man who is endued with the power of the Holy Spirit will accomplish things, even though he is led to adopt quiet and unostentatious methods and to use chaste English, and is no adept in the use of slang, and even no adept in the art of advertising.
The Wall Street Journal of Monday, March 29, 1915, contains a most notable and remarkable edi- torial when we consider the source from which it
Remarkable Editorial from a Secular
Newspaper
, comes. It reads as follows: A “BUSINESS”' REVIVAL.
In an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal some eight years ago, and republished many thousands of times by English-speaking newspapers all over the world (perhaps oftener .than any other production of the kind), it was pointed out that a decline in religious belief was a serious matter for the business of this or any country. - It was advanced then, and the proposition is now repeated, that any man engaged in commerce would prefer to do business with one who sincerely believed in God, and responsibility in a future life for errofs committed during his little time on earth, than with one who believed in nothing. To put it in the baldest form, the insurance risk would be less. Such a man would try to keep his contract not because he feared the courts or the police, but because he believed himself responsible to the Highest Court of all. Not long ago it was pointed out in these columns that one of the effects of the war might be a widespread religious revival. There is a difference, not of degrees but of kind, between the man who sincerely believes in something and the man who doubts everything. It would be wrong to say that the form of his belief does riot matter. But if he is sincere, it is better to believe some thing than nothing. Perhaps nine-tenths of the evils from which we suffer are beyond the reach of statutory law. But they are all susceptible to amendment by conscience through the mercy of God. There is every sign that such a religious revival is developing; and if this is the case, it is of infinite concern to business men. Even such movements as . are inaugurated by spectacular evangelists, who preach down to their hearers rather than up to their God, are significant If that sort of froth or scum is apparent on the surface, there is a movement of greater depth and potency below. In this direction lies reform, because the only real reform starts in the individual heart, working outward to popular manifestation through corpo rations, societies and legislatures. Here, then, is the better remedy, and a better promise for future business managed under the best standards of honor and humanity, than anything Con gress can enact, or the Department of Justice can enforce. Here is a move ment which renders investigation committees unnecessary, which brings em ployer and employed together on the common platform of the love and fear of God. Th,is is the promise of the future, and it is something which Providence in its infinite mercy grants us, to assuage the wickedness and misery of war. If this great thing emerges from the terrible conflict now in progress, if thereby there shall be created peoples sober, reverent, industrious, forbearing and not deficient in that wholesome sense of humor which is bred of piety and humility, we may say that, in spite of ourselves, through the goodness, of God war is not all loss. The above editorial occupied the leading place on the first page of the
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