The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and Service — John Shaqi
The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and ServiceHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and Service
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Conduct of life
These all fulfilled their mission and
"remembered those in bonds as bound with them."
This principle also has been and is the spring of all progress in
humanity and civilization. Our journalists and orators pour forth
unstinted praise upon the achievements of the nineteenth century. But
in what realm lies our supremacy? Not in education, for our schools
produce no such thinkers or universal scholars as Plato and his
teacher; not in eloquence, for our orators still ponder the periods of
the oration "On the Crown;" not in sculpture or architecture, for the
broken fragments of Phidias are still models for our youth. The nature
of our superiority is suggested when we speak of the doing away with
the exposure of children, the building of homes, hospitals and asylums
for the poor and weak; the caring for the sick instead of turning them
adrift; the support of the aged instead of burying them alive; the
diminished frequency of wars; the disappearance of torture in obtaining
testimony; humanity toward the shipwrecked, where once luring ships
upon the rocks was a trade; the settlement of disputes by umpires and
of national differences by arbitration.
Humanity and social sympathy are the glory of our age. Society has
come to remember that those in bonds are bound by them. Indeed, the
application of this principle to the various departments of human life
furnishes the historian with the milestones of human progress. The age
of Sophocles was not shocked when the poet wrote the story of the child
exposed by the wayside to be adopted by some passer-by, or torn in
pieces by wild dogs, or chilled to death in the cold. When the wise
men brought their gold and frankincense to the babe in the manger, men
felt the sacredness of infancy. As the light from the babe in
Correggio's "Holy Night" illumined all the surrounding figures, so the
child resting in the Lord's arms for shelter and sacred benediction
began to shed luster upon the home and to lead the state. To-day the
nurture and culture in the schools are society's attempt to remember
the little ones in bonds. Fulfilling the same law Xavier, with his
wealth and splendid talents, remembered bound ones and journeyed
through India, penetrating all the Eastern lands, being physician for
the sick, nurse for the dying, minister for the ignorant; his face
benignant; his eloquence, love; his atmosphere, sympathy; carrying his
message of peace to the farther-most shores of the Chinese Sea, through
his zeal for "those who were in bonds." And thus John Howard visited
the prisons of Europe for cleansing these foul dens and wiped from the
sword of justice its most polluting stain. Fulfilling the debt of
strength, Wilberforce and Garrison, Sumner and Brown, fronted furious
slave-holders, enduring every form of abuse and vituperation and
personal violence, and destroyed the infamous traffic in human flesh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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