The Religion of Love.
The religion that makes us love one another here—not the kind that says we shall know each other there; the religion that has to do with human passions, human trials, human needs, instead of the frigid form or the fevered frenzy; the religion that avoids the extremes of heat and cold—that's the kind the world needs most.
Christ taught love, kindness, charity. He spoke not of beautiful churches and opera-singing choirs. He spoke not of robes, vestments, forms or rituals.
One of the most beautiful things in the Bible is the story of the good Samaritan with his simple, unostentatious aid to a wounded man—a man whom the Samaritan knew as an enemy of his people, but who was none the less a brother. And you will remember how the priest of the temple—the man who taught charity and love—drew up his skirts and passed the wounded man by.
31.
Love of Country.
Patriotism—one's love for one's country—is a natural and a beautiful sentiment. With the spirit of idealism behind it, it becomes one of the noblest sentiments that has been developed in the course of humanity's long upward march to civilization.
To-day, on Europe's battlefields, millions of men are hazarding their lives. They do so gladly, willingly, with a firm and reasoned conviction in the justice of the cause for which they fight. That is intelligent patriotism—the kind of patriotism that is based on understanding and knowledge.
But the world to-day is conscious that there is another kind of patriotism—a false patriotism that is fostered and fomented by ambitious governments for purposes of aggression and aggrandizement.