Evolution (1895; 1909)
Transmission: A Meditation for the New Age (1983)
BBC broadcast (16 November 1934) on German rearmament, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 566
The 1930s
Balder the Beautiful (1877)
Context: “O Balder, he who fashion’d us,
And bade us live and move,
Shall weave for Death’s sad heavenly hair
Immortal flowers of love.
“Ah! never fail’d my servant Death,
Whene’er I named his name,—
But at my bidding he hath flown
As swift as frost or flame.
“Yea, as a sleuth-hound tracks a man,
And finds his form, and springs,
So hath he hunted down the gods
As well as human things!
“Yet only thro’ the strength of Death
A god shall fall or rise —
A thousand lie on the cold snows,
Stone still, with marble eyes.
“But whosoe’er shall conquer Death,
Tho’ mortal man he be,
Shall in his season rise again,
And live, with thee, and me!
“And whosoe’er loves mortals most
Shall conquer Death the best,
Yea, whosoe’er grows beautiful
Shall grow divinely blest.”
The white Christ raised his shining face
To that still bright’ning sky.
“Only the beautiful shall abide,
Only the base shall die!”
“We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.”
Addressing a Bible class in Plains, Georgia (March 1976), as quoted in Boston Sunday Herald Advertiser (11 April 1976)
Pre-Presidency
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)
Context: The apprehension that we shall be swamped or swallowed up by Mongolian civilization; that the Caucasian race may not be able to hold their own against that vast incoming population, does not seem entitled to much respect. Though they come as the waves come, we shall be all the stronger if we receive them as friends and give them a reason for loving our country and our institutions. They will find here a deeply rooted, indigenous, growing civilization, augmented by an ever-increasing stream of immigration from Europe, and possession is nine points of the law in this case, as well as in others. They will come as strangers. We are at home. They will come to us, not we to them. They will come in their weakness, we shall meet them in our strength. They will come as individuals, we will meet them in multitudes, and with all the advantages of organization. Chinese children are in American schools in San Francisco. None of our children are in Chinese schools, and probably never will be, though in some things they might well teach us valuable lessons. Contact with these yellow children of the Celestial Empire would convince us that the points of human difference, great as they, upon first sight, seem, are as nothing compared with the points of human agreement. Such contact would remove mountains of prejudice.
"Rockweeds" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 21 (March 1868), p. 269.
Context: The heart of God through his creation stirs,
We thrill to feel it, trembling as the flowers
That die to live again, — his messengers,
To keep faith firm in these sad souls of ours.The waves of Time may devastate our lives,
The frosts of age may check our failing breath,
They shall not touch the spirit that survives
Triumphant over doubt and pain and death.
"The Good Time Coming"
Voices from the Crowd, and Town Lyrics (1857)
As quoted in "The Status of Annexed Territory and of its Free Civilized Inhabitants" (1901), North American Review, vol. 172, no. 530 (January 1901), p. 22.
