(2656)
Religion Among Immigrants—See [Immigration].
Religion and Dying—See [Death, The Christian’s].
Religion and Parents—See [Parents as Teachers of Religion].
RELIGION AND POETRY
When will the true prophet, priest, poet, preacher come to us? For we are continually reminded that it is by the voice of the poet only that a nation is permitted to survive. Jerusalem has been permitted to come down to us forever glorified; she cherished the poets; but where is Babylon, who cast the prophets in the lion’s den? Nineveh was a city of three days’ journey; Nineveh would not hear; and where is Nineveh now? But, Jerusalem, city of poetry and song! A little place; you can cover it with a pin’s head on the maps of the world; and yet she covers more space in history, sacred and profane, than all the other cities of the world together. And this is simply because she had faith and hope; and so had her poets, and did not despise them, and her poets made her immortal. The cloven foot of the golden calf is stamping out every page of this great, neglected book. So great is the wealth of the leading families of our cities that almost every hearthstone might be paved with gold. Yet Socrates died for want of money enough to pay a fine. True or false, the Greeks had gods, even the unknown God of which Paul spoke, and they believed. They had faith and hope. And so their poets sang, sang in marble. Song is music, song is the eternal melody of beauty, and their country lives.—Joaquin Miller, Belford’s Magazine.
(2657)
Religion Demanded—See [Influence, Personal].
RELIGION DIFFUSED
Three hundred years ago there was but one Bible in a parish in England, and that was chained to a column in the church; and there was but one man to read it—the priest. And the people did not understand it then, and it was a part of official duty to go from house to house on the theory that the average parent did not know enough to teach the children the first principles of morality and of religion. Go to-day over the same community, and on the Sabbath morning you shall see the girls and the young men with Bibles under their arms, themselves teachers, going down to mission-schools, going down to instruct their inferiors. The profession has distributed its functions among the common people. Has it destroyed the profession? It never was stronger, never was as strong as it is to-day.—Henry Ward Beecher.