Article December 29, 1928 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Coolidge, Fred Smith, Cicely Hamilton, Kerr Boyce Tupper

[President Coolidge, as quoted in the Boston Evening Transcript, Massachusetts]

We cannot remind ourselves too often that our right to be free, ... our obligations to each other in our domestic affairs, and our duty to humanity abroad, the confidence in each other necessary to support our social and economic relations, and finally the fabric of our government itself, all rest on religion. If the bonds of our religious convictions become loosened, the guarantees which have been erected for the protection of life and liberty and all the vast body of rights that lie between are gone. ... When we remember further that this movement is steadily advancing through the years, we realize that it provides a complete and devastating answer to the indifferent, the cynic, and the pessimist. We cannot doubt that the world is growing better. ... The light which we shed for others will depend upon the intensity of the flame which we create for ourselves. ...

Organized government and organized society have done much and can do much. Their efforts will always be necessary; but without inspiration of faith, without devotion to religion, they are inadequate to serve the needs of mankind. It is in that direction that we must look for the permanent sources of the ministrations of charity, the kindness of brotherly love, and the renunciation of consecrated lives. ... We are not seeking an increased material welfare that leads to materialism, we are seeking an increased devotion to duty that leads to spiritual life.

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