Education and the Higher LifeSpalding, John Lancaster
Religion
Education and the Higher Life
Spalding, John Lancaster
Education
surrounded by influences which make for righteousness; and the forces of
Nature itself must more and more be brought under man's control.
Pestilence and famine must no longer bring death and desolation; men
must no longer drink impure water and adulterated liquors, no longer
must they breathe the poisonous air of badly constructed houses;
dwellings which are now made warm in winter, must be made cool in
summer; miasmatic swamps must be drained; saloons, which stand like
painted harlots to lure men to sin and death, must be closed. Women
must have the same rights and privileges as men; children must no longer
be made the victims of mammon and offered in sacrifice in his temple,
the factory; ignorance, which is the most fruitful cause of misery, must
give place to knowledge; war must be condemned as public murder, and our
present system of industrial competition must be considered worse than
war; the social organization, which makes the few rich, and dooms the
many to the slavery of poorly paid toil, must cease to exist; and if the
political state is responsible for this cruelty, it must find a remedy,
or be overthrown; society must be made to rest upon justice and love,
without which it is but organized wrong. These principles must so
thoroughly pervade our public life that it can no more be the interest
of any one to wrong his fellow, to grow rich at the cost of the poverty
and misery of another. Life must be prolonged both by removing many of
the physical causes of death, and by making men more rational and
religious, more willing and able to deny themselves those indulgences
which are but a kind of slow suicide.
Never before have questions so vast, so complex, so pregnant with
meaning, so fraught with the promise of good, presented themselves; and
it can hardly be vanity or conceit which prompts us to believe that in
this mighty movement toward a social life in harmony with our idea of
God and with the aspirations of the soul, America is the divinely
appointed leader. But if this faith is not to be a mere delusion, it
must become for the best among us the impulse to strong and persevering
effort. Not by millionaires and not by politicians shall this salvation
be wrought; but by men who to pure religion add the best intellectual
culture. The American youth must learn patience; he must acquire that
serene confidence in the power of labor, which makes workers willing to
wait. He must not, like a foolish child, rush forward to pluck the fruit
before it is ripe, lest this be his epitaph: The promise of his early
life was great, his performance insignificant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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