The Project Gutenberg EBook of Towards the Great Peace, by Ralph Adams Cram

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Title: Towards the Great Peace

Author: Ralph Adams Cram

Release Date: January 8, 2004 [EBook #10642]

Language: English

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TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE

BY

RALPH ADAMS CRAM, LITT.D., LL.D.

1922

INTRODUCTION

For the course of lectures I am privileged to deliver at this time, I
desire to take, in some sense as a text, a prayer that came to my
attention at the outset of my preparatory work. It is adapted from a
prayer by Bishop Hacket who flourished about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and is as follows:

_Lord, lift us out of Private-mindedness and give us Public
souls to work for Thy Kingdom by daily creating that Atmosphere
of a happy temper and generous heart which alone can bring the
Great Peace._

Each thought in this noble aspiration is curiously applicable to each
one of us in the times in which we fall: the supersession of narrow and
selfish and egotistical "private-mindedness" by a vital passion for the
winning of a Kingdom of righteousness consonant with the revealed will
of God; the lifting of souls from nervous introspection to a height
where they become indeed "public souls"; the accomplishing of the
Kingdom not by great engines of mechanical power but by the daily
offices of every individual; the substitution in place of current
hatred, fear and jealous covetousness, of the unhappy temper and
"generous heart" which are the only fruitful agencies of accomplishment.
Finally, the "Great Peace" as the supreme object of thought and act and
aspiration for us, and for all the world, at this time of crisis which
has culminated through the antithesis of great peace, which is great
war.

I have tried to keep this prayer of Bishop Hacket's before me during the
preparation of these lectures. I cannot claim that I have succeeded in
achieving a "happy temper" in all things, but I honestly claim that I
have striven earnestly for the "gene