Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1881-12-02
PUBLIC SPIRIT /:
4 THANKSGIVING sERMON,
ny REV. GEO. u. Cow, D.D.,
PREACHED IN THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, BRAT
TLEDoRo, VT, THURSDAY, NOV. 81 1881.


TLEDoRo, VT, THURSDAY, NOV. ~, 1881.
TEXT, Matthew xiI.s5.lO: "And one of them,
| lawyer, asked him question, trying him, Master,
which is the great commandment in the law7 And
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all
thy mind This is the great and nrst commandment.
And second like unto II is this Thou shalt love thy
| neighbor as thysen On these two commandments
hangeth the whole law and the prophets"
My theme is public spirit. 1 select the
words just read for text because they fur
nish the only moral ground of such a senti-
ment. If there be no Infinite Spirit no alb
solutely true and perfect being, the free, self
| determining source of truth and goodness,
then the human spirit is a deusion, mans
moral nature is lie, We are only self-con-
scious machines, and the emotion of child
towards his parents is no more worthy to be
called love than is the attachment of an ivy
to the wall.
Without God man is not free. Without
God love is impossible. Without God there
is no unity of intelligent beings, no truth, no
law of spiritual life. Without God the peo-
pie in any place no more constitute a society
than do the cattle in pen. Jesus, therefore,
| only proclaimed the absolute and eternal
| truth upon which the social life of all intelli-
gent beings must be built, when he said that
all-controlling love for God and man is the
great and first commandment in the law.
This law is double, but its parts are insepara-
|
ries with it love for every finite spirit made
in the divine image. You cannot love God
as the true and perfect being and not love
every fellow being upon the same principles,
that is, as yourself. For the man of God ev-
cry intelligent being is the object of an i'm
measurable love. 1t marks our low spiritual
condition that our love for our husbands and
wives our parents and our children is so
much like the love of an ivy for the wall
I'll, l.1I. "a Al, IL Al.
the crib in which he finds his meal. II shows
how little of the spirit of the Christ there is
in our religion that we rebel against the gold
en- rule as if it were something visionary and
| impracticable. 1t proves man to be filled
with the spirit OF Christ when he never brings
a cup of cold water 10 his own thirsty lips
without taking pains, to the extent of his abil-
ity, that every other man may be supplied
with the same life giving draught.
1t is out of this law of love for God and
man that a true public spirit proceeds Self
ishness begets no such spirit Selfshness is
! devilish. Love is divine. Selfshness leads
men to build for themselves; love leads them
to build for each other and for all men. Self
ishness can divide communities into quarrel
ling factions. 1t can stagnate public enter
| prise and give town a bad name. 1t is love
that carries man beyond his own house and
! garden to sacrifice his own advantage for the
house and do a small business if need be, so
that the whole town may prosper and institu-
| tions of public interest be built or to build
a larger house, cultivate larger garden and
do larger business if thereby the public
good may be promoted Selfshness does not
dwell exclusively in any one kind of house.
So the love Of God and man which begets
public spirit may live in palace or in a hum.
bier home.
A public spirited man is broad minded
man. His eye traverses the whole circle of
| human wants. Most of all he is alive to the
spiritual wants of mankind,-to mans need
of the things which will make him noble and
generous and strong and happy.
According, therefore. TO the measure Of his
intelligence he will be engaged in three fields
of unselfsh work. First of all, he knows the
persons about him, their names, where they
live and what their necessities are. He puts
the needs of these neighbors along side of his
own and carries them as a part OF the burden
of his own unsehsh life. This we call the
field of private benefcence
But he does not content himself with work
ing in this field alone. He knows that all
over the world there are men and women in
great destitution of the things that make men
noble and happy. His eye traverses the whole
circle of human needs. To him man is q
man and his neighbor, if he has any unsatis-
fed needs, whether he is a Leadville miner,
a Mexican half breed Hindoo pariah or a
Chinese mandarin. He is aware, also, in what
grand enterprises his fellow.me of like pre-
cious faith with himself are engaged to reach
the regions of mans greater destitution and
he has some stock in them. His love Of his
neighbor works in this great field of mission
ary enterprise and must be represented in all
its great departments.
But need say that this man, just because
he is a genuine man, owning the supremacy
of Christ's law Of love, does not content him
self with working in these two fields alone
In these he will be constantly at work, but he
cannot forget third He is broadly intelli-
gent. Nothing human is foreign to him.
Every man who needs anything is his neigh
Dor, and he knows that every man needs his
love and its blessed fruits. He cannot, there
FORE work in two great fields of Christian en-
deavor and neglect a third as great. He is
not only an individual with individuals liv-
ing around him, but also member of socie-
ty. He is a citizen of town, of county, of
a state, of a nation. He is a member of q
church, or religious society or Of good fel-
lowship, mutual helpfulness lodge or encamp-
ment or club. But whether he is a member
of any of these last named voluntary associa-
tons or not and his unselfshness will be
pretty sure to carry him into some one or
more of them-this at least will be true of
him. he will know that he belongs to a COM
munity, that he is one of many persons
who have common interests, who are so re-
lated to each other that they must act togeth-
er in securing their common welfare. They
may be bounded by the limits of a village
corporation, a town, a county, a state or q
nation. To-day and for one set of interests
it is one boundary and tomorrow for anoth-
er set of interests it is another boundary, that
encloses them. The public spirited citizen
recognizes all these common interests. Being
broadly intelligent and unselhsh man, he
never forgets that he is a member of this
community, whatever its particular limits may
be. Whatever the organization through
which he acts it is for the community that he
acts. Is it through the town, it is for the
community represented in the town that he
acts. Is it through the church, he acts for
the community which the church is lAboring
to reach. These organizations are not agen-
cies through which he seeks to secure his
own selfish ends mere tools of his own un-
godliness They are agencies for securing
the welfare of the community. He loves his
neighbor, that is, every man in the commun-
ity, as himself, and he understands that there
are many common wants of the people of his
community which can be reached only
through community action. He owns this
community life. He studies its needs. He in
terests himself in all community action by
which these common wants may be supplied.
Community interests are his interests. II is
the welfare of his neighbor that is involved
in these community interests, and he loves his
neighbor as himself, This is the third great
field of the unselfsh mans endeavor, the field
of public spirit.
have drawn out this classification of the
fields of Christian endeaTor, that might fix
special attention upon this third field of pub
lie spirit. l believe that very unselfsh men
have sometimes been SO absorbed in their par
ticular church work, or lodge work, or po-
litical party work, as to forget the interests of
the community in which they live. am con-
tending for broadly intelligent Christian
charity, and surely that charity is not broadly