File:Arena magazine - Volume 40 (1908) (14768627565).jpg

Identifier: ArenaMagazine-Volume40 (find matches)
Title: Arena magazine - Volume 40
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: B.O. Flower (ed.)
Subjects: Progressivism -- United States liberalism reformism social reform Christian Socialism Gay 90s political commentary Benjamin Orange Flower Progressive era social gospel
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indifference could in any slightestdegree be held accountable for the blight- ing of one small life? And was myindifference the result of carelessness orignorance, or was it just a flat refusal toadmit that I was in any sense a keeperof these children—a refusal to take anypart in their affairs, even though it werean affair of life or death to them ? «^j Gradually vague questions began toshape themselves in my mind, questionswhich, a few months before, I would havedismissed with disdain, as too imprac-tical to be worth considering—questions,for instance, as to whether the unneces-sarily expensive clothes on my back, andother personal luxuries I indulged in,could have any possible connection withthe state of my soul. Was there, I asked myself, in allthe mass of suffering and injustice aboutme, at least some infinitesimal part thatmight be wiped out—if I were reallyawake, soul as well as body? And wasit at all possible to be awake spiritually Digitized by Google 466 An Awakening.
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AN AWAKENING.—LOOK PLEASANT, PLEASE! and yet have my eyes shut to thesethings ? I had a feeling that theanswers to such questions might upset allmy comfortable theories as to my ownpersonal exemption from responsibilityfor the misery, which, paradoxical as itmay seem, I had up to this time regardedas, somehow, a part of the divine order ofthings. But slowly it began to dawn onme that to questions such as these mywhole life could be my only answer. The thought of my poor, neglectedlittle compatriots, had made me halfregret for a moment, that check for theSwiss children. But, after all, I con-cluded, was it not they who had reallywaked me more truly than the robins atthe dawn of this new day ? And could onewho had slumbered in selfish ease so long,count any price too great for this Awaken-ing to life of that divine germ we call theSoul, through which Gods love pours into strengthen us, only in proportion as our love pours out to strengthen others ? I had gone out to see a sunrise—an

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