Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 2: Renaissance and ReformationLord, John
History
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 2: Renaissance and Reformation
Lord, John
History
So we believe America was discovered, not so much to furnish a
field for indefinite material expansion, with European arts and
fashions,--which would simply assimilate America to the Old World,
with all its dangers and vices and follies,--but to introduce new
forms of government, new social institutions, new customs and
manners, new experiments in liberty, new religious organizations,
new modes to ameliorate the necessary evils of life. It was
discovered that men might labor and enjoy the fruits of industry in
a new mode, unfettered by the restraints which the institutions of
Europe imposed. America is a new field in which to try experiments
in government and social life, which cannot be tried in the older
nations without sweeping and dangerous revolutions; and new
institutions have arisen which are our pride and boast, and which
are the wonder and admiration of Europe. America is the only
country under the sun in which there is self-government,--a
government which purely represents the wishes of the people, where
universal suffrage is not a mockery. And if America has a destiny
to fulfil for other nations, she must give them something more
valuable than reaping machines, palace cars, and horse railroads.
She must give, not only machinery to abridge labor, but
institutions and ideas to expand the mind and elevate the soul,--
something by which the poor can rise and assert their rights.
Unless something is developed here which cannot be developed in
other countries, in the way of new spiritual and intellectual
forces, which have a conservative influence, then I cannot see how
America can long continue to be the home and refuge of the poor and
miserable of other lands. A new and better spirit must vivify
schools and colleges and philanthropic enterprises than that which
has prevailed in older nations. Unless something new is born here
which has a peculiar power to save, wherein will America ultimately
differ from other parts of Christendom? We must have schools in
which the heart as well as the brain is educated, and newspapers
which aspire to something higher than to fan prejudices and appeal
to perverted tastes. Our hope is not in books which teach
infidelity under the name of science, nor in pulpits which cannot
be sustained without sensational oratory, nor in journals which
trade on the religious sentiments of the people, nor in Sabbath-
school books which are an insult to the human understanding, nor in
colleges which fit youth merely for making money, nor in schools of
technology to give an impulse to material interests, nor in
legislatures controlled by monopolists, nor in judges elected by
demagogues, nor in philanthropic societies to ventilate unpractical
theories. These will neither renovate nor conserve what is most
precious in life. Unless a nation grows morally as well as
materially, there is something wrong at the core of society. As I
have said, no material expansion will avail, if society becomes
rotten at the core.
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