It aims at improving society through the
uplifting of the individual, not at uplifting the individual
through social agencies. We have improved upon that in our latter-
day wisdom, for the Christian ought to be inherently unpatriotic,
or rather his patriotism ought to be of an all-embracing rather
than of an antagonistic kind. I do not want to make lofty excuses
for myself; my own unworldliness is not an abnegation at all, but a
deliberate preference for obscurity. Still I should maintain that
the vital and spiritual strength of a nation is measured, not by
the activity of its organisations, but by the number of quiet,
simple, virtuous, and high-minded persons that it contains. And
thus, in my own case, though the choice is made for me by
temperament and circumstances, I have no pricking of conscience on
the subject of my scanty activities. It is not mere activity that
makes the difference. The danger of mere activity is that it tends
to make men complacent, to lead them to think that they are
following the paths of virtue, when they are only enmeshed in
conventionality. The dangers of the quiet life are indolence,
morbidity, sloth, depression, unmanliness; but I think that it
develops humility, and allows the daily and hourly message of God
to sink into the soul.
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