SOUNDINGS 



day in 1833 when the two sat down in their walk 

 over the Scottish hills, "Christ died on the tree: 

 that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you 

 and me together." The old creeds nursed heroic, 

 God-fearing and God-loving men. True, they some<- 

 times disguised the wolf in sheep's clothing also, but 

 that is the fault of human nature. 



Let us be as faithful to our day and generation as 

 our fathers were to theirs. Wendell Phillips said 

 that to be as good as our fathers were, we must be 

 a good deal better. Shall we rail at our Puritan an- 

 cestors for the hardness of their creeds? Although 

 the Pauline plan of salvation seems childish to us, 

 it seemed the foundation of the universe for our 

 fathers. To clinch a nail you need something hard, 

 and the Calvinistic creed has clinched the resolution 

 of many a man. 



IV. A CHIP FROM THE OLD BLOCK 



It makes me more charitable toward my neighbor's 

 creed, childish though I think it is, to remember 

 that it came out of his life, or out of the life around 

 him, as truly as did my own. We cannot separate 

 man, and all that revolves around him, from the 

 totality of things. There is no depravity or cruelty 

 or perversion in the world that is not fed by the life 

 of the world. The war that has depopulated and 

 devastated Europe is just as legitimate a part of 

 total Nature as were all the fruits of the ages of 



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