Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other EssaysWashburn, L. K. (Lemuel Kelley)
Religion
Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other Essays
Washburn, L. K. (Lemuel Kelley)
Free thought
If we follow anybody, it is going to be a person that commands our
respect, whose greatness and goodness compel our admiration, and who did
not try to win men by tricks. We regard Jesus, as he is painted in the
four gospels, as a character below the ideal of this age, a character
that, to imitate, would dwarf the noblest man. If Jesus were alive it
would be his duty to-day to follow others, rather than to command others
to follow him.
CAN WE NEVER GET ALONG WITHOUT SERVANTS?
We recently overheard a remark which made us query if we cannot get along
without servants? A lady was commenting on the character of the “help,”
which one was obliged to employ to-day, and expressed the opinion that, if
our public schools continued to fill the heads of children with the notion
that one person was as good as another, it would not be long before it
would be impossible to get help at all.
There seems to be an idea abroad in this land as well as in others, that a
certain class of people are for the purpose of producing servants for
another class of people, and that this servant-producing class has no
right to give their children an education that is calculated to elevate
them above the position of their parents. We are not in sympathy with this
idea. If there is one person on this earth that is of less account than
another it is the person who is helpless, who is dependent upon others for
everything that makes life possible or endurable. We must confess that
there are too many people in this country who are of this kind, who must
have someone to do for them what they ought to do for themselves.
Why should one person be expected to wait upon another? Why should a man
or woman look upon a fellow-being as fit only to be a servant? Is one born
to serve and the other to be waited upon?
Such notions have no right on our democratic soil. In this country there
must be no caste, no division of society into classes.
We rejoice that such a criticism of the character of the “help” employed
in the houses of the rich as we overheard, is true, for it reveals a
condition of things that may lead to what is much needed to-day, viz.: a
simpler mode of living on the part of a great many of our American people.
Is it necessary to live in such a way that a dozen or more servants are
required in a home to keep it in order?
We believe the community in which all are independent and none are
servants is the ideal one. Why should not this be the ambition of the
race, to live in a manner that will leave others their independence and
encourage in them the desire for a home? Our children all ought to be
taught to work, and be made to work, and not be brought up with the notion
that they have the right to expect others to wait upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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