The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915: What Americans Say to EuropeVarious
Philosophy
The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915: What Americans Say to Europe
Various
World War, 1914-1918
The time has come, in my opinion, for us to take account of the things
which we really believe, and of the God Whom we really worship. If we
have been following false gods, let us honestly endeavor to re-establish
fundamental and essential values, to discover anew what is of supreme
worth and set our faces resolutely toward its realization. The need of
our modern world today is the same as that of the ancient world at the
time of the coming of Christ. His message to the world as indicated by
His teaching, and His life was an arraignment of the ancient regime as
regards three crucial points.
The Brotherhood of Man.
First, the religious and moral beliefs of that age had become purely
formal. There was the letter of conviction, but not the spirit of it.
The creed, the ritual, the ceremony were there, but the life had
departed. And so today our beliefs have lost vitality to a large extent
because we have been content to indulge in formulas oft repeated, which
have ceased to have significance for our thoughts or for our feelings.
We have allowed ourselves to be betrayed by words which are mere sounds
without substance. We have verbalized our beliefs, and have
depotentialed them of vital significance. Take, for instance, the
phrases, "The fatherhood of God" and "The brotherhood of man." They have
been so often upon our lips as to become trite; their real meaning has
disappeared. It is easy to repeat the words, and to be satisfied with
the repetition, and nevertheless remain wholly insensible to their
profound import, and under no compulsion whatsoever to obey their
sublime command. We assent to the formula: but it does not become a
determining factor in our purposes and plans. There is perhaps no age in
the history of the world which has so emphasized the idea of the
brotherhood of man as our own, and never in all history has there been
such a denial of this idea as by the present European war. If the
brotherhood of man had been the living, dominant idea of our
civilization, could this present tragedy of the nations have occurred?
If the world had believed profoundly in the idea of God, would we now be
daily reading of the ghastly scenes where human life is no longer
sacred, where love gives place to hate, where the constructive forces of
the world are superseded by the destructive, and all the passions of
man's brute inheritance are given full play and scope?
Second--In the teachings of Christ there was a remarkable expansion of
the idea of God. Instead of the tribal God worshipped as the God of
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He substituted the idea of God, as the
God of all peoples and all races, the God of the Jew and Gentile, of the
Greek and barbarian, of the bond and the free. It was the great apostle
of the Gentiles who at the centre of Greek civilization announced this
fundamental conception of Christianity to the old world:
God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on
all the face of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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