Editorial August 16, 1919 Issue

Reverence

Ella W. Hoag

Reverence is a holy quality and has to do with holy things. It is that which honors and reveres all that is true and valuable and noble and good. It unites with God's purpose to protect and establish every least idea of divine Mind, and thus helps to bring forth treasures both new and old. It is grateful for all loyalty to the right, wherever it has been or is being expressed. It values experience because it knows experience is the educator which helps one to separate the true from the false.

In spite of all this, humanity is prone to brush aside these deep lesson, and with the inherent arrogance of ignorance pronounce all that it chooses to style "old" as valueless, and then call for what it denominates young and progressive. It is even apt to say that reverence itself is a worn-out virtue and does not belong to an alert, advancing age. Now he who disregards reverence might profit by recalling the old Bible story of the bears that came out of the woods and ate up the naughty children who cried, "Go up, thou bald head!"

A younger generation which constantly calls out to the elder, "Fossils!" should stop and realize that it may be sneering at experience, and would thus prophesy for itself a "laid on the shelf" period; for as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he." That which fails to reverence and value the good which others have won through long effort will, in its own future, inevitably find a lack of appreciation for its own work. It is a proverb that "experience is a hard teacher," and it has been recently quoted that "history is philosophy derived from examples." Then why not save one's self much difficulty by being willing to appreciate the good others have already worked out, and with reverence for good learn from the valuable experiences of others.

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