Sermons, American; Universalist Church of America -- Sermons
are; and these must spring up in hearts that are not merely adjusted to
the world, but lifted above it--that are not so occupied by mere
machinery as to neglect the living streams of an inward and devout
culture.
But, for another reason,--or as an extension of the same reason,--we
need to realize the truth that man is separate from and superior to
machinery. It is because, upon a practical recognition of this truth
depends the just action of all who control the interests of labor, and,
so to speak, the lives and souls of the laborers. If we should beware of
an influence that would render us _mere_ mechanics in our own higher
nature, we should likewise remove anything that makes others mere
machines, presenting for us no other consideration than the amount of
work they can perform for us, and with how little care and cost. I
cannot now enter into the great questions that spring up here concerning
the relations of capital and labor, and of the employer and the
employed. I only observe that these are among the deepest questions of
the time: questions which will be heard, which must be discussed, and
practically answered. And they who by plans and experiments, however
visionary they may seem, however abortive they may prove, are trying to
solve this problem, are much wiser in their generation than those who
content themselves with cutaneous palliatives and a stolid conservatism.
But I maintain now, that back of all these considerations stands this
truism,--that man is not a machine; that the being who toils in the
factory, the furnace, the dark mine underground, is one who needs and
hopes and suffers and dies, as sinews of iron and fabrics of brass
cannot. "The spirit of a living creature is in the wheels." A cry for
justice, for free action, for spiritual opportunity, comes not from the
roaring engine or the dizzy loom, but out from the midst of those who
are endowed with the sensitiveness and the moral possibilities that
belong to humanity, and humanity alone. Set in motion the grandest piece
of mechanism ever conceived by human genius, and still there is infinite
difference between it and the poorest drudge that bears God's
image,--between it and any human claim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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