Human Elevation | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 3, 1857

Human Elevation.

“I know,” says Channing, “but one elevation of a human being, and that is the elevation of the soul. Without this, it matters not where a man stands, or what he possesses; and with it, he towers—he is one of God's nobility, no matter what place he holds in the social scale. There are not different kinds of dignity for different orders of men, but one and the same to all. The only elevation of the human being consists in the exercise, growth, and energy of the higher principles and powers of his soul. A bird may be shot upwards to the skies by a foreign force, but it rises in the true sense of the word only when it spreads its own wings, and soars by its own living power. So a man may be thrust upwards in a conspicuous place by outward accidents, but he rises only so far as he exerts himself and expands his best faculties, and he ascends up, by a free effort, to a noble region of thought and action.”