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
This is the lesson of nature--the strong must bear the burdens of the
weak. To this end were great men born. Nature constantly exhibits
this principle. The shell of the peach shelters the inner seed; the
outer petals of the bud the tender germ; the breast of the mother-bird
protects the helpless birdlets; the eagle flies under her young and
gently eases them to the ground; above the babe's helplessness rise the
parents' shield and armor. God appoints strong men, the industrial
giants, to protect the weak and poor. The laws of helpfulness ask them
to forswear a part of their industrial rights; and they fulfill their
destiny only by fulfilling the debt of strength to weakness.
To identify one's self with those in bonds is the very core of the
Christian life. Not an intellectual belief within, not a form of
worship without, but sympathetic helpfulness betokens the true
Christian. God, who hath endowed the soul with capacity to endure all
labors and pains for wealth, to consume away the very springs of life
for knowledge, hath also given it power for pouring itself out in great
resistless tides of love and sympathy. For beauty and royal majesty
nothing else is comparable to the love of some royal nature. A loving
heart exhales sweet odors like an alabaster box; it pours forth joy
like a sweet harp; it flashes beauty like a casket of gems; it cheers
like a winter's fire; it carries sweet stimulus like returning
sunshine. We have all known a few great-hearted men and women who have
through years distributed their love-treasures among the little
children of the community and scattered affection among the poor and
the weak, until the entire community comes to feel that it lives in
them and without them will die. Happy the man who hath stored up such
treasures of mind and heart as that he stands forth among his fellows
like a lighthouse on some ledge, sending guiding rays far out o'er dark
and troubled seas. Happy the woman whose ripened affection and
inspiration have permeated the common life until to her come the poor
and weak and heart-broken, standing forth like some beauteous bower
offering shade and filling all the air with sweet perfume.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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