p. 11 | THE REBEL by Franklin H. Wentworth

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 18, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 29.

"THE REBEL."

By Franklin H. Wentworth

Is NOT the man or woman who makes no effort to better the condition of society an enemy to society—at least a passive one? Is not the ignoring of evil tantamount to giving it full leave to spread? What, then, shall we think of the vast number of men who accept conditions as they find them, and struggle merely for individual supremacy, closing their eyes to the sordid misery of their fellow human beings, to all the great pain of the common life? Do such men know what they are here for? I do not believe it. I can not believe that they have ever put this question to themselves—this question, which to answer shows the hollowness of the things most men strive for; shows that against all time-honored institutions of established injustice, to be true to the best that is in him, one must turn rebel.

And what is the rebel? What are his characteristics? Does not all history show that those who have dared to rebel in every age were the ones who made life possible for those whom temperament or weakness compelled to submit? It is always the rebels who extend the boundaries of human right, narrowing the confines of wrong and crowding it out of existence. It is the antagonism aroused by the real thinkers God has given to the world that has always been the lever of advance. And in the conflict begotten of the impact of this ethical power upon the inertia that makes for the continuance of anything that is, the world's sweetest lives, have gone out in violence.—Franklin H. Wentworth.