Editorial July 4, 1908 Issue

THE ESSENCE OF LOYALTY

John B. Willis

Modern life presents one very encouraging fact in the distinct growth of the social sense, the consciousness of racial and international brotherhood, and one of the indications of this advance is found in the world-wide interest in the great national holiday which the people of the United States are just now celebrating. In well-night every important city of the world the representatives of other nations now vie with resident Americans in the joyous commemoration of what is conceded to be one of the greatest and most beneficent events of history.

As the world's indebtedness to the self-sacrificing loyalty of the founders of this Republic—to their sense of justice and right, their convictions of truth and duty—is thus being recognized, there is awakened a new thought of the responsibility under which our gain by their loyalty has placed us. If we prove ourselves at all worthy of our inheritance, we are bound to be as true and faithful as were our forbears, not necessarily to their convictions or point of view, but to their spirit, their ethical grounds of action.

Just here many well-intentioned people make a mistake which militates against all advance, and which dishonors the spirit and example of those whom they profess to revere. To illustrate: Some time since a young man who had been actively identified with the Methodist church was led by a series of convincing experiences to accept the truth of Christian Science and to witness publicly to the physical and spiritual benefits derived therefrom. He soon became convinced that this teaching was the highest expression of the gospel of Christ Jesus, and that it was his duty, as well as his privilege, to identify himself with the new movement. Most of his friends and relatives respected his convictions and wished him well, but there were some who declared him to be recreant to his ancestral faith and a discredit to his family, and "they cast him out."

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