Act So As To Elicit

The Platform Of An Ethical Society Is Itself The Altar; The Address Must Be The Fire That Burns Thereon.

We Should Seek To Free The Moral Life From The Embarrassments And Entanglements In Which It Has Been Involved By The Quibbles Of The Schools And The Mutual Antagonisms Of The Sects; To Introduce Into It An Element Of Downrightness And Practical Earnestness; Above All, To Secure To The Modern World, In Its Struggle With Manifold Evil, The Boon Of Moral Unity, Despite Intellectual Diversity.

For More Than Three Thousand Years Men Have Quarreled Concerning The Formulas Of Their Faith. The Earth Has Been Drenched With Blood Shed In This Cause, The Face Of Day Darkened With The Blackness Of The Crimes Perpetrated In Its Name.

Love Is The Expansion Of Two Natures In Such Fashion That Each Include The Other, Each Is Enriched By The Other. Love Is An Echo In The Feelings Of A Unity Subsisting Between Two Persons Which Is Founded Both On Likeness And On Complementary Differences. Without The Likeness There Would Be No Attraction; Without The Challenge Of The Complementary Differences There Could Not Be The Closer Interweaving And The Inextinguishable Mutual Interest Which Is The Characteristic Of All Deeper Relationships.

Admitting The Force Of These Contentions, Nevertheless, The Custom Of Meeting Together In Public Assembly For The Consideration Of The Most Serious, The Most Exalted Topics Of Human Interest Is Too Vitally Precious To Be Lost.