Through education, we have the ability to change and improve the World in which we live. By touching the lives of students, outstanding educators make the future brighter for all of us. If it be true that, in ages of equality, humans readily adopt the notion of a great central power, it cannot be doubted on the other hand that their habits and sentiments predispose them to recognise such a power and give it their support. Humans connect the greatness of their idea of unity with means, God with ends; hence this idea of greatness, as humans conceive it, leads us into infinite littleness. To compel all humans to follow the same course toward the same objects is a human notion;–to introduce infinite variety of actions, but so combined that all these acts lead by a multitude of different courses to the accomplishment of one great design, is a conception of the Deity. The human idea of unity is almost always barren; the divine idea pregnant with abundant results. Humans think they manifest their greatness by simplifying the means they use; but it is the purpose of God which is simple—His means are infinitely varied. As the humans who inhabit democratic countries have no superiors, no inferiors, and no habitual or necessary partners in their undertakings, they readily fall back upon themselves and consider themselves as being apart. I had occasion to point this out at considerable length in treating of individualism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Hence such humans can never, without an effort, tear themselves from their private affairs to engage in public business; their natural bias leads them to abandon the latter to sole visible and permanent representatives of the interest of the community, that is to say, to the State. Not only are they naturally wanting in a taste for public business, but they have frequently no time to attend to it. Private life is so busy in democratic periods, so excited, so fully of wishes and of work, that hardly any energy or leisure remains to each individual for public life. I am the last person to content that these propensities are unconquerable, since my chief object in writing this essay is to combat them. I only maintain that at the present day a secret power is fostering them in the human heart, and that is they are not checked they will wholly overgrow it. I have also had occasion to show how the increasing love of well-being, and the fluctuating character of property, cause democratic nations to dread all violent disturbance. The love of public tranquility is frequently the only passion which these nations retain, and it becomes more active and powerful among them in proportion as all other passions droop and die. This naturally disposes the members of the community constantly to give or to surrender additional rights to the central power, which alone seems to be interested n defending them by the same means that it uses to defend itself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

As in ages of equality no human is compelled to lend one’s assistance to one’s fellow-humans, and none has any right to expect much support from them, every one is at once independent and powerless. These two conditions, which must never be either separately considered or confounded together, inspire the citizen of a democratic country with very contrary propensities. One’s independence fills one with self-reliance and pride among one’s equals; one’s debility makes one feel from time to time the want of some outward assistance, which one cannot expect from any of them, because they are all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament one naturally turns one’s eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of universal depression. Of that power one wants and especially one’s desires continually remind one, until one ultimately views it as the sole and necessary support of one’s own weakness. In democratic communities nothing but the central power has any stability in its position or any permanence it its undertakings. All the members of society are in ceaseless stir and transformation. Now it is in the nature of all governments to seek constantly to enlarge their sphere of action: hence it is almost impossible that such a government should not ultimately succeed, because it acts with a fixed principle and a constant will, upon, humans, whose position, whose notions, and whose desires are in continual vacillation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

It frequently happens that the members of the community promote the influence of the central power without intending it. Democratic age are periods of experiments, innovation, and adventure. At such times there are always a multitude of people engaged in difficult or novel undertakings, which they follow alone, without caring for their fellow-humans. Such persons may be ready to admit, as a general principle, that the public authority ought not to interfere in private concerns; but, by an exception to that rule, each of them craves for its assistance in the particular concern on which one is engaged, and seeks to draw upon the influence of the government for one’s own benefit, though one would restrict it on all other occasions. If a large number of people apply this particular exception to a great variety of different purposes, the sphere of the central power extends insensibly in all directions, although each f them wishes it to be circumscribed. Thus a democratic government increases its power simply by the fact of its permanence. Time is on its side; every incident befriends it; the passions of individuals unconsciously promote it; and it may be asserted, that the older a democratic community is, the more centralized will its government become. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

This may ore completely explain what frequently takes place in democratic countries, where the very people who are so impatient of superiors patiently submit to a master, exhibiting at once their pride and their servility. The hatred which people bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become more scarce and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely at the very time when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason of this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye; whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of genera uniformity: the more complete is this uniformity, the more insupportable does the sight of such a difference become. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds upon. This never-dying, ever-kindling hatred, which sets a democratic people against the smallest privileges, is peculiarity favourable to the gradual concentration of all political rights in the hands of the representative of the state alone. The sovereign, being necessarily and incontestably above all the citizens, excites not their envy, and each of them thinks that one strips one’s equals of the prerogative which one concedes to the crown. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The human of a democratic age is extremely reluctant to obey one’s neighbour who is one’s equal; one refuses to acknowledge in such a person ability superior to one’s own; one mistrust one’s justice, and is jealous of power; one fears and one contemns one; and one loves continually to remind one of the common dependence in which both of them stand to the same master. Every central power which follows its natural tendencies courts and encourages the principle of equality; for equality singularly facilitates, extends, and secures the influence of a central power. In like manner it may be said that every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relives it from inquiry into an infinite number of small details which must be attended to if rules were to be adapted to humans, instead of indiscriminately subjecting humans to rules: this the government likes what the citizens like, and naturally hates what they hate. These common sentiments, which, in democratic nations, constantly unite the sovereign and every member of the community in one in the same pardoned for the sake of its tastes; public confidence is only reluctantly withdrawn in the midst even of its excesses and its errors, and it is restored at the first call. Democratic nations often hate those in whose hands the central power is vested; but they always love that power itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Thus, by two separate paths, I have reached the same conclusion. I have shown that the principle of equality suggests to people the notion of a sole, uniform, and strong government: I have now shown that the principle of equality imparts to them a taste for it. To governments of this kind the nations of our age are therefore tending. They are drawn thither by the natural inclination of mind and heart; and in order to reach that result, it is enough that they do not check themselves in their course. I am of opinion, that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us, individual independence and local liberties will ever be the produce of artificial contrivance; that centralization will be the natural form of government. A democratic people is not only led by its own tastes to centralize its government, but the passions of all the humans by whom it is governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labour without ceasing to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers. It is a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the State, since they are centralizing for their own benefit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Among the public people of democracies there are hardly any but humans of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government: the former are scarce, the latter powerless. Justice as proportional justice cannot fulfill the quest implied in a concrete situation, but love can. One should never say that love’s work starts where the work of justice ends. For love shows what is just in the concrete situation. Nothing is more false than to say to somebody: since I love you and you love me, I do not need to get justice from you or you from me, for love eliminates the need for justice. Such language is used by people who want to avoid the obligations which are connected with justice. It is said by tyrannical rulers to their subjects and by tyrannical parents to their children. And even if they do not say it, they act accordingly. It is a clever way of trying to escape the responsibility and the self-restriction demanded by justice. Often, the love which supposedly transcends justice is nothing more than an emotional outburst of self-surrender, alternating with emotional outburst of hostility. Therefore it is false to say: Loves gives what justice cannot give; love drives to a self-surrender which is beyond the demand of justice. There is much self-surrender which the demand of proportional justice, exempli gratia death for a cause on which one’s own existence depends. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

However, there are other kinds of self-surrender which are not demanded by proportional justice. They are demanded by love. However, if they are demanded by love they are demanded by creative justice. For the creative element in justice is love. Love, in this respect, has the same relation to justice which revelation has to reason. And this is not an accidental analogy. It is rooted in the nature of both revelation and love. Both of them transcend the rational norm without destroying it. Both of them have an “ecstatic element.” Love in some of its expressions, exempli gratia in which Paul gives in Cor. Xiii can be called justice in ecstasy, as revelation can be called reason in ecstasy. This also is confirmed by Paul when he derives both revelatory experiences and the working of love from the divine spirit. And as revelation does not give additional information in the realm where cognitive reason decides, so love does not drive to additional acts in the realm where practical reason decides. Both give another dimension to reason, revelation to cognitive reason, love to practical reason. Neither of them denies that to which it gives the dimensions of depth, namely to reason. As revelation does not contradict the structures of cognitive reason (otherwise revelation could not be received), so love does not contradict justice (otherwise it could not be actualized). This consideration points to the dependence of the whole realm of moral action on the presence of the Spiritual power. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The relation of justice to love in personal encounters can adequately be described through three functions of creative justice, namely, listening, giving, forgiving. In none of them does love do more than justice demands, but in each of them love recognizes what justice demands. In order to know what is just in a person-to-person encounter, love listens. It is its first task to listen. No human relation, especially no intimate one, is possible without mutual listening. Reproaches, reactions, defences may be justified in terms of proportional justice. However, if there were more mutual listening, perhaps they would prove to be unjust. All things and all humans, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen, they want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. They want justice from us. However, we can give it to them only through the love which listen. Love in its attempt to see what is the other person is by no means irrational. It uses all possible means to penetrate into the dark places of one’s motives and inhibitions. It uses, for example, the tool provided by depth psychology which give unexpected possibilities of discovering the intrinsic claims of a human being. Through it we have learned that human expression can mean something quite different from what they seem or intended to mean. They seem to be aggressive, but what they express may be love, inhibited by shyness. They seem to be sweet and submissive and they are actually symptoms of hostility. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Words, well meant, but uttered improperly, may produce in reaction complete injustice. Listening love is the first step to justice in person-to-person encounters. And it has also a function in encounters with living nature and nature generally. However, if we tried to purse the problem of human justice and injustice toward nature, a large new field of inquiry would be opened, too large for our present task and too much in need of references to art and poetry task and too much in need of references to art and poetry for an ontological analysis. The second function of creative justice in personal encounters is giving. It belongs to the right of everyone whom we encounter to demand something from us, at least that even in the most impersonal relations the other one is acknowledged as a person. However, this minimum of giving drives toward a maximum—including possible self-sacrifice if the occasion demands it. If it serves the purpose of reuniting love, giving is an expression of creative justice. It is obvious that under this criterion it may mean the demand to resist and to restrain and to deprive. Here again psychological wisdom can help to do what appears to be the opposite of giving love. Creative justice includes the possibility of sacrificing the other one in one’s existence, though not in one’s being as a person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

The third and most paradoxical form in which justice is untied with love is forgiving. Their unity is indicated in the Pauline term: justification by grace. Justification literally means: making just, and it means in the context of Paul’s and Luther’s doctrine to accept as just one who is unjust. Nothing seems to contradict more the idea of justice than this doctrine, and everybody who has pronounced it has been accused of promoting injustice and amorality. It seems to be utterly unjust to declare one who is unjust, just. However, nothing less than this is what has been called the good news in Christian preaching. And nothing less than this is the fulfilment of justice. For it is the only way of reuniting those who are estranged by guilt. Without reconciliation there is no reunion. Forgiving love is the only way of fulfilling the intrinsic claim in every being, namely its claim to be reaccepted into the unity to which it belongs. Creative justice demands that this claim be accepted and that one be accepted who is unacceptable in terms of proportional justice. In accepting one into the unity of forgiveness, love exposes both the acknowledged break with justice on one’s side with all its implicit consequences and the claim inherent in one to be declared just and to be made just by reunion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

For the most part, “religion” is not equated with the ultimate dynamic of faith, but rather with human’s systematic ambition to give a name to the Unconditioned. This ambition is not only justified; it is also necessary to faith itself. For faith cannot be communicated unless it is couched in language; and language, if it is to be understood, must have a recognizable frame of reference. A system of speech that will express the Unconditioned by pointing to it cannot be purely intellectualistic. Faith as being ultimately concerned is a centered act of the whole personality. If one of the functions which constitute the totality of the personality is partly or completely identified with faith, the meaning of faith is distorted. An intellectualistic bias makes faith into an act of intellectual, unconditional belief in a set of supposedly revealed, or at least infallible, statements; this distortion forgets that faith is not knowledge, but beyond knowledge. A voluntaristic overemphasis makes faith into a product of the will-to-believe; but no command to believe and no will to believe can create faith. Finite humans cannot produce the certainty which belongs to faith. Finally, there are emotionalistic distortions where faith is a matter of merely subjective emotions, without a content to be known and a demand to be obeyed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

A safe course avoiding these pitfalls must be charted. The concrete content of faith, the linguistic expression of the Unconditioned, is neither mere knowledge, nor mere will to believe or mere feeling. Connected with all three, it lies deeper than any. Yet only the rational faculties can provide a distinct knowledge of anything. One must then conclude that, although it is intellectual, the process of tacking a name on the Unconditioned cannot aim at a distinct knowledge. All it can do is to devise adequate symbols and myths. The symbols and myths must be related to the elaborate conception of Revelation. No concrete content of faith is human-made in the ordinary sense of the terms. One cannot invent symbols of the infinite; none can be produced intentionally. No poet can purposely set oneself the task of elaborating a new symbolic of the Absolute. Rather, symbols are provided along with human’s perceptions of the Unconditional. Those elements of the concrete Universe that were present to one’s consciousness, or even to one’s unconscious, within the situation where one identified oneself with an unconditional concern, may all become for one adequate symbols of faith. In order to be meaningful to a collective unconscious of the group in which they appear. The peculiar experience in which the ground of being (the Unconditional) is reached any potential symbols of it are provided by revelation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The congeries of elements that contribute to this experience form a revelatory situation, a revelatory event, a constellation of revelatory character. A revelatory event, since it is an event, can be studied historically. It is dated and located. Yet there is no new revelation with each new revelatory event: always and everywhere there is only the one revelation, namely the manifestation of the depths of being. What strikes humans as a new revelation actually is a new awakening. Thus understood, revelation is the manifestation of what concerns us ultimately. Negatively, it opens our eyes to the abysmal element in the ground of being; it lays bare the fact that, though we are, we might not have been; this threat of non-being, or shock of non-being, is a necessary element in revelation. Apart from it one cannot reach ultimacy, for ultimacy faces us precisely when every conditioned element of being has been discarded. What remains is then, seen from the dark night, non-being, abyss. However, a revelation that would end there would foster despair, not faith. Faith is sparked wen revelation shows the beneficial sides of the mystery of being: as ground and not only as abyss. The correlation of abyss and ground in revelation nevertheless show how near despair may be to faith. The hell of despair is the strange work that love odes within us in order to open us up for its own work, justification of one who is unjust. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

A revelatory situation always has two side both of which escape the ordinary superficial structure of life. We are now touching the rock bottom of being-itself. We are at the parting of nothingness and being. What then takes place is no longer simply an event; it is a miracle! And what is experiences is no mere experience; it is ecstasy. Ecstasy is the state of mind in which reason is beyond itself, that is, beyond its subject-object structure. The mind then is thrown out of its normal balance, shaken in its structure. Reason reaches its boundary line, is thrown upon itself, and then is driven again to its extreme situation. What is then known is known as the Unconditional; it escapes all the conditions of common human knowledge and experience, since it underlies all of them and gives them the power to be. If inspiration is the same for the cognitive quality of the ecstatic experience, it cannot mediate knowledge of finite objects or relations. It does not add anything to the complex of knowledge which is determined by the subject-object structure of reason. Inspiration opens a new dimension of knowledge, the dimension of understanding in relation to our ultimate concern and to the mystery of being. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Israel will be gathered and will enjoy millennial rest—Lucifer was cast out of Heaven for rebellion—Israel will triumph over Babylon (the World)—Compare Isaiah 14. About 559-545 Before Christ. “For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the people shall take them and bring them to their place; yea, from far unto the ends of the Earth; and they shall return to their lands of promise. And the house of Israel shall possess them, and the land of the Lord shall be for servants and handmaids; and they shall take them captives unto whom they were captives; and they shall rule over their oppressors. And it shall come to pass in that day that Lord shall give thee rest, from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve. And it shall come to pass in that day, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the kind of Babylon, and say: How hath the oppressor creased, the golden city ceased! The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers. One who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, one that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth. The whole Earth is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and also the cedars of Lebanon, saying: Since thou art laid down no feller is come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the Earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kinds of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee: Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave; the noise of thy viols is not heard; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! Art thou cut own to the ground, which did weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thy heart: I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the aides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and shall consider thee, and shall say: Is this the man that made the Earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? And made the World as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, and opened not the house of his prisoners? All the kings of the nations, yea, all of them, lie in glory, every one of them in his own house. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“However, thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and the remnant of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet. Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land and slain thy people; the seed of evil-doers shall never be renowned. Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquities of the fathers, that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor sill the face of the World with cities. For I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of Hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of Hosts. The Lord of Hosts hath sworn, saying: Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposes, so shall I stand—that I will bring the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot; then shall his yoke burden depart from off their shoulders. This is the purpose that is purposes upon the whole Earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all nations. For the Lord of Hosts hath purposes, and who shall disannul? And his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

“In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden. Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken; for out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent. And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety; and I will kill thy root with famine, and he shall slay thy remnant. Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved; for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in one’s appointed ties. What shall then answer the messengers of the nations? That the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it,” 2 Nephi 24.1-32. LORD and Master, Jesus Christ, Co-eternal Word of the Father, made like us in all but sin, for the salvation of our race: enable us to be not only hearers of Thine oracles, but also doers of the word, and to bring forth good fruit, thirty-fold and an hundred-fold, that we may attain the kingdom of Heaven: and speedily may Thy compassion overtake us; for in Thee are our glad tidings, O Saviour and Guardian of our souls and bodies, and to Thee we ascribe all glory. O LORD, in prayer I launch far out into the eternal World, and on that broad ocean my soul triumphs over all evils on the shoes of mortality. Time, with its gay amusements and cruel disappointments, never appears so inconsiderate as then. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

In prayer I see myself as nothing; I find my heart going after Thee with intensity, and long with vehement thirst to live to Thee. Blessed be the strong gales of the Spirit that speed me on the way to the New Jerusalem. In prayer all things where below vanish, and nothing seems important but holiness of heart and the salvation of others. In prayer all my Worldly cares, fears, anxieties disappear, and are of as little significance as a puff of wind. In prayer my soul inwardly exults with lively thoughts at what thou art doing for Thy church, and I long that Thou shouldest get Thyself a great name from sinners returning to Zion. In prayer I am lifted above the frowns and flatteries of life, and tastes of Heavenly joys; entering into the World I can give myself to Thee with all my heart, to be Thine forever. In prayer I can place all my concerns in Thy hands, to be entirely at Thy disposal, having no will or interests of my own. In prayer I can intercede for my friends, ministers, sinners, the church, Thy kingdom to come, with greatest freedom, ardent hopes, as a son to his father, as a lover to the beloved. Please help me to be all prayer and never to cease praying. “Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching,” reports 1 Timothy 4.11. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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