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
This is so obvious that I should apologize for repeating it more
than two thousand years after it was recorded (by Herodotus, as I
recall), except for the fact that the world has not heeded it. As
a distinguished university president said a few nights ago in my
hearing, the world needs a "bath in the obvious." While I should not
characterize the perusal of H. G. Wells's _Outline of History_ as
taking this sort of an ablution (so far as some of his conclusions
are concerned), I think that he was justified in giving more space
to this remark of Croesus and the incidental circumstances of its
relation than he gave to certain whole periods of national or race
existence. It is the caption that should be written at the top of our
world Enochian pillars.
And I should write below it that utterance of President Fisher, of
England's Board of Education, made in the midst of the war, when the
days were darkest:
"Education is the eternal debt which Maturity owes to Youth."
And beneath that I should put, I think, the lines of Gilbert Murray,
whom I saw the same day, taken from the lips of Hecuba:
"God, to Thee
I lift my praise, seeing the silent road
That bringeth justice ere the end be trod
To all that breathes and dies."
What should be written in detail below these captions, I should
let a great international committee recommend--a committee with
planetary consciousness which could let each people continue the
excellence that has "grown habitual to its being," and yet include
such instruction in the excellence of others as to abate the hatreds
that now divide the men of the earth, even as they were divided by
their misunderstandings in that early post-Noachian period when Eber,
the son of Shelah, named his boy Peleg, "because in his day the earth
was divided," and the children could no longer read the lessons upon
Enoch's pillars.
I travelled the entire length of this line during the war, from the
edge of the desert on the farther edge of which Enoch's pillars
stood to the North Sea. From the Mount of Olives I heard and saw the
beginnings of the battle of Armageddon--not an allegorical battle,
but the literal battle, for when I made my way to Headquarters down
on the plain of Sharon, General Allenby, coming out of his map-room,
said: "I have just had word that my cavalry are at Armageddon. The
battle of Armageddon is on." And a few nights after I walked through
the broken entanglements of wire across that plain, past the Mount,
as the dawn came, where our Lord is said by some to have delivered
what we call the Sermon on the Mount, on to Nazareth, the little city
which a Denver paper referred to familiarly as "Christ's home town."
And I thought the thousand years of peace referred to in the Book of
Revelation had come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account