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| Wealth and Want | |||||||
| ... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity. | |||||||
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Prayer and Works Henry George: Thy Kingdom Come (1889 speech)
“Thy kingdom come!” When Christ taught
that prayer He did not mean that humans should idly
phrase these words, but that for the coming of that
kingdom humanity must work as well as pray!
Prayer! Consider what prayer is. How true is the old fable! The wagoner whose wagon was stuck in the rut knelt down and prayed to Jove to get it out. He might have prayed till the crack of doom, and the wagon would have stood there. This world — God’s world — is not a world in which the repeating of words will get wagons out of mire or poverty out of slums. We who would pray with effect must work! ...
When we consider the achievements of humanity and
then look upon the misery that exists today in the very
centres of wealth; upon the ignorance, the weakness, the
injustice, that characterise our highest civilisation, we
may know of a surety that it is not the fault of God; it
is the fault of humanity. May we not know that in that
very power that God has given to His children here, in
that power of rising higher, there is involved —
and necessarily involved — the power of falling
lower.
“Our Father!” “Our
Father!” Whose? Not my
Father — that is not the prayer. “Our Father” — not the
father of any sect, or any class, but the Father of all
humanity. The All- Father, the equal Father, the loving
Father. He it is we ask to bring the kingdom. Aye, we ask
it with our lips! We call Him “Our Father”, the
All, the Universal Father, when we kneel down to pray to
Him. ... Read the whole
speech |
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... because democracy alone hasn't yet led to a society
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