The Higher Powers of Mind and SpiritTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Mind and body; New Thought
There is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of American
institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. Did
they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of
a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than
we perhaps realize, but one outcome. Steeped in selfishness, making
themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the
soul--less than men--they are not only enemies of their own better
selves, but enemies of the nation itself.
Bolshevism in Russia was born, or rather was able to get its hold, only
through the long generations of Czarism and the almost universal state
of ignorance in which its people were held, that preceded it. The great
preponderance and the continually growing numbers of men with
imagination, with a sense of care, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood,
in our various large enterprises is a force that will save this and
other nations from a similar experience.
I have great confidence in the Russian people. Its soul is sound; and
after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent
themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient
force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert
itself. There will be builded a new Russia that will be one of the great
and commanding nations of the world. In the meantime it affords a most
concrete and valuable lesson to us and to all other nations--to strike
on the one hand, the forces of treachery and lawlessness the moment they
show themselves, and on the other hand, to see that the soil is made
fertile for neither their entrance nor growth.
The strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal
free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see
that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and
carefully guarded. In such a government the nation and its interests is
and must be supreme. Then if built upon high ethical and moral standards
where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its
life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a
fit and effective member of the Society of Nations.
Internationalism is higher than nationalism, humanity is above the
nation. The stronger however the individual nation, the stronger
necessarily will be the Society of Nations.
Love, sympathy, fellowship, is not inconsistent with the use of force to
restrain malignant evil, in the case of nations as in the case of
individuals. Where goodness is weak it is exploited and becomes a victim
of the stronger, when, devoid of a sense of mutuality, it is
conscienceless. Strength without conscience, goodness, ungoverned by the
law of mutuality, becomes tyranny. In seeking its own ends it violates
every law of God and man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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