The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-02-03

Nothing more effectively steadies a shaken life than positive faith. The word confidence" has the Latin root meaning faith" at the heart of 1t. Let faith in something or someone rise strongly, even amid deplorable situations, and in the people affected panic dies down, as- surance returns, and they pull themselves together.
 This notably is the effect Of & genuine religious faith. To be sure, in the religious realm as in any other the faith-function can be grievously misused. John Burroughs was reared in a wretched type of sectarian bigotry. His father, 8 fanatical Baptist, said he would as soon be found in 8 liquor saloon as in a Methodist church, and for a time was angrily afraid that his son might become 8 minister in that dangerous denomination. Against this sectarian narrowness John Burroughs rebelled; he became a lover of nature, a lover of his 1 fellowmen, a rare soul of singular depth and serenity, but commonly counting himself, and regarded by others, as rrrelgious. Yet, agnostic as he was in theory, his inner CO., herence and stability were rooted in something more positive than that. "As the poet 1lungers for the beautiful" he wrote, 'So the rel1g- ious nature hungers for the divine that which Jesus exempnfled more fully than any other man the humanization of the eternal power of the universe, or the fatherhood and brotherhood of God" Agnostic or no agnostic in theory, he lived by positive faiths:
 The stars come nightly to the sky,
 The tidal wave comes to the sea; Nor time. nor space, nor deep, nor
 high,
 Can keep my own away from me.
 Interior steadiness is the natural effect of a confident faith, and multitudes of insecure lives will never find coherence and poise without 1t. When, therefore, relig- ious faith collapSes. as 1t has III multitudes today, the nervous re- suits are unmiStakable. An atheist, says John Buchan, is "a man who has no invisible means of support" The old idea that without religious faith a man would go to hell has taken on contemporary meaning, for many nervous hells are being ar- rived at by precisely that route, and not preachers so much as pSychta- triSts are sayirs 1t.
 Faith in divine backing and re- source when practically utilized in daily life is incalculably reassur- ing. Bishop William Quayle. awake at night, fruitlessly worrying, heard God say to him, "Quayle, you go to bed, I'll sit up the rest of the night" Whimsically put. that ex- perience symbolizeS a matter of major importance in the cure Of anxious souls.
 In these articles we have urged the necessity of each mans shoul- dering responsibility for himself, but there is another side to the matter. One hardly knows who is more to be pitied, the man who refuses such responsibility, hiding behind rationalizationS and alibiS, or the man who takes responsibility for everything, shoulders the bur. dens of the world, worries about everyone else's business as well as his own, and so becomes a meddle- some, overstrained, distracted per- son. The sense of responsibility can be ruinously overworked until it wrecks both inner peace of mind and outer personal relationships.
 None of us is big enough to take responsibility for everything. Our accountability is limited by our ability, and that IS small. Any man. then, who can handle his proper obligations that lie near at hand,