The Primal Interest of Religion
The primal interest of
religion is with the individual, through the inspiring power of
personality. It is forever the “fifty
righteous in the city” that saves the city.
Let all secular movements go on, to relieve the stress of circumstances;
the real source of energy is found in personal character, in the actual
excellence and virtue that radiate from high and pure lives. No more vague and senseless notion ever
possessed an honest but ignorant mind than the notion that the machinery of
things will do the world’s noblest work.
All excellence, all renovating powers are fully vested in persons, and
there can be nothing in a nation or a state, or a city, however exalted its
aims, or however perfectly organized, which is not in the persons composing the
city, the state, or the nation. An
ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of personal worth. All our inspirations, all our visions of
eternal beauty are visions, remembered glances of persons, or some ineffable
glory of that Infinite Person, all good.
To speak of any progress or improvement or development of a nation, or
society, or humankind, except as relative to some greater worth of persons, is
to use words without meaning.
— Horatio Stebbins (died April 8, 1902)
 |
| Horatio Stebbins (1821-1902) |
No comments:
Post a Comment