"The ideal form of human society," Canon Kingsley declares, "is
democracy. A nation--and were it even possible, a whole world--of free
men, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master,
for One is their master, even God; knowing and doing their duties
toward the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each other; not
from fear, nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they have
seen the beauty of righteousness, and trust, and peace; because the
law of God is in their hearts. Such a nation--such a society--what
nobler conception of moral existence can we form? Would not that,
indeed, be the kingdom of God come on earth?"
To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold--and never abandon
or lose it. Then what a spectacle is _practically_ exhibited by our
American democracy to-day!
FOUNDATION STAGES--THEN OTHERS
Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our
current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of
absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed
for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through
society our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on
the subject which I find possessing many good people. The advent of
America, the history of the past century, has been the first general
aperture and opening-up to the average human commonalty, on the
broadest scale, of the eligibilities to wealth and worldly success and
eminence, and has been fully taken advantage of; and the example has
spread hence, in ripples, to all nations.
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