Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William BrossFinley, John H. (John Huston)
Religion
Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William Bross
Finley, John H. (John Huston)
Christianity -- 20th century
If, on the one hand, this unsettlement has caused pessimism and
distress on the part of those who cannot see that a living faith is
bound to be a growing thing, an organism and not a crystal, it has
brought about a very different attitude on the part of many others,
who feel that certain obvious religious duties are incumbent upon
them, even if they may never be able to solve for themselves such
questions as modern scholarship has raised. The social and business
life of to-day has one fine feature, unfortunately quite dissociated
from the Christian Church, although created largely by Christian
people. Men, immersed in business and professional life, have yet
religion in their hearts; they know the need, for their own spiritual
health as well as for the good of the community, of guarding against
the tendency to selfishness and absorption in gain. And so we have
springing up everywhere Rotarian Clubs and Kiwanian Clubs and many
other organizations of similar kind, which foster a genial and kindly
rivalry in well-doing. Once a week men gather and refuse to admit
that they are growing old. They laugh and are happy. They are looking
around for some good thing to do. Is it an industrial training home
for boys, away among the mountains, in the best of surroundings, far
from the city streets; is it the installation of a new hot-water
apparatus in their city hospital--to take two instances known to
me of the activities of a Rotarian and a Kiwanian Club--they throw
themselves into the effort with zeal, and get, as surely they should
do, joy for themselves in the securing of joy for others. Behind
it there lies the feeling that whatever the uncertainties of faith
may be, there are certain duties incumbent upon all who love their
kind. It is better to be unselfish than selfish, better to be glad
than frowning, better to come out of your isolation and know your
neighbor and competitor than to retire into your shell and imagine
all kinds of evil about his persistent activities. Such a movement,
spreading with somewhat of the fire of a crusade, is just another
evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit, another proof that
religion is the most pronounced and permanent bent of the human mind.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, and the Spirit
will always manifest himself in varying modes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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