Reverence | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 16, 1875

Reverence.

If there is a country in the world where reverence and respect ought to be inculcated as cardinal virtues on the part of the young toward the aged, and on the part of every one toward those morally, intellectually, or spiritually superior, it is this, where all the habits, institutions and ideas tend toward a self-assertive and democratic equality, at par with the traditions in all ages of respectful homage paid by the inferior to the superior, by the low to the high, by the ignorant to the cultivated, by the helpless and dependent to their protectors and providers.

Undoubtedly in the Old-World idea of superiority there was much that was objectionable, arbitrary, and the mere result of caste spirit; but in our eagerness to get rid of the wickedness and injustice, have we not lost sight of the underlying principle which recognizes obligation, seeks to honor goodness, and pays a just homage to nobility of purpose and action?

The man that is capable of reverence is worthy of respect. It presupposes an innate truth and appreciation which goes far to supply the possible absence of the higher intellectual powers and faculties, while, added to these, it gives the charm of modesty and unselfishness, the absence of which no brilliancy of mental gifts can atone for. But we are fast getting rid, not only of all reverence for things high and holy and sacred, but of common respect toward those to whom we are under the highest obligations. The boy who is taught that he is “just as good as anybody,” and much better than anything that preceded him, scoffs at his father, bullies his mother, abuses those who are weaker than himself, and recognizes himself as no one's debtor. Is that good for the boy? Is it not better that he should be taught to respect and honor the best and the noblest—those who have lived, those who have thought, those who have written, those who have in any way sacrificed themselves for him or added to that sum of the world's achievements of which he stands as the representative, but to which he has not yet contributed anything?

Republics are proverbially ungrateful, but the ingratitude is not alone a national characteristic; it penetrates the remotest recesses of our modern society, and clouds the better qualities which distinguish its members as individuals. Admiration for the good, recognition of service, are overstepped by jealousy and ambition, and by the efforts which each one makes to distinguish himself above his neighbor. The true republican idea of honor and credit based upon merit is lost sight of, and distinction is sought at the expense of honor and credit rather than as the natural outgrowth of them. Offset this tendency in republican ideas, then, with the exaction of respect from children toward those who are older, toward those who know more, and a reverential homage toward those to whom they are under obligations for life, and for that truest and noblest and most worthy in the past, and the present that makes life to us so desirable.

We all in our lives tender faith and trust and devotion to something or other. It may be a man or a woman, it may be a party in power, it may be an institution, it may be money-bags, ill directed or well directed it is not so much matter; the point is that all men and women are capable of it, and may therefore be trained to bestow it in the proper direction and upon worthy objects. Let us reinstate reverence, then, in its place as one of the higher virtues, and inculcate it not alone by precept but by example.—Sel.