It is significant in this connection to note that the farther we go back in the history of religion, the more the moral reference of situations is secondary and the supernatural reference primary. The ten commandments, for example, were first of all a divine behest, and only secondarily a series of laws founded on the essential requirements of human well-being. But as we come nearer to our own day, the moral quality of situations tends more and more to usurp the primacy of the old supernatural reference. The limit of such evolution is the disappearance altogether of the supernatural, the evaluation, ultimately, of all situations and activities in terms of their inherent good or bad for the life of humanity and the world.
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The old loyalty, in short, was the loyalty of loving children; the new loyalty is the loyalty of strong-charactered men and women. Has the time come for moral and spiritual maturity? To some of us there is no longer an alternative. “When I was a child I spake as a child; I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” In the light of spiritual maturity, the god of magic, the god of miraculous power, the god of loving protection, the god of all-seeing care—the Parent God—must give way to the God that is the very inner ideal life of ourselves, our own deep and abiding possibilities of being; the God in us that stimulates us to what is highest in value and power.
THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
August 18, 1914
My Fellow Countrymen:
I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself during the last troubled weeks what influence the European war may exert upon the United States; and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us will be, and to urge very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the nation against distress and disaster.
The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned.
The spirit of the nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say; upon what newspapers and magazines contain; upon what our ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on the streets.
The people of the United States are drawn from many nations and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle.