The Power of Religion by Horace Bushnell

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1858

The Power of Religion.

By Horace Bushnell

We shall never have done hearing, I suppose, of Regulus and Curtius, and such like specimens of the Roman virtue, great in death; but the whole army of the martyrs, comprising thousands of women and even many small children, dying firmly in the refusal to deny the Lord Jesus, are a full match and more, by the legion, for the bravest of the Romans. What but the mighty mastership of religion has ever led a people up through civil wars and revolutions, into a regenerated order and liberty? What has planted colonies for a great history but religion? The most august and most beautiful structures of the world have been temples of religion; crystallizations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents, more or less directly, the fruitfulness and creativeness of the religious talents. The real summit, therefore, of our humanity, is here.—Dr. Bushnell.