The Gospel and Individuality

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago · Jun 21, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 24.

The Gospel and Individuality

The tendency of modern business methods as exemplified in the operations of the trusts, to eliminate individuality in employees, is a marked and baneful feature of modern industrial “progress.” As an illustration the N. Y. Independent points to the case of a young man who held a high position in one of the leading trusts, but voluntarily resigned and connected himself with a smaller business not organized on the trust system, for no other reason than that he was tired of being known as “number 396.” “Such a fact,” adds the Independent, “is a flash of illumination. Whoso cannot read political economy and American history by the light of it, is morally obtuse or scientifically cross-eyed.”

But the gospel stands, and ever has stood and will stand, for individuality, and not only for that which the individual has when he accepts the gospel, but for the highest development of individuality which he can attain in time and eternity. Individuality is the Creator’s plan and ideal for mankind, from which the race has departed by having “sought out many inventions.”