Of Things in Heaven and Earth

Behind the scenes of this time and season is this insistent thought: There must be much more than mere materialism to make life worth living. What this world needs beyond all these material marvels is what civilization itself needs−the spiritual counterpart of the material progress that men have made.

Perhaps we could put into words partly what we have in mind by going back to the story of Scrooge, which Dickens has left for our reading. The marvel was not that a man suddenly began to spend some of his misered money−the marvel was that there was a transformation in the man himself, inside. The marvel was that he saw something beyond this world−and something in this world beyond what he could touch with his hands. And the moment he did, his own life and the lives of others were lifted.

These sentences appeared somewhere in print: “Scientists are begging us to catch up spiritually with their discoveries . . . Unless we rise to higher spiritual levels, we shall destroy one another . . . .” The world is off balance because men have given their minds and their means much more to material matters than to spiritual insight and understanding.

If we can give hope, we shall have given a greater gift than men’s hands have ever made. If we can give to those who live in doubt an unshakable assurance of eternal verities, we shall have given a greater gift than men’s faculties have ever fashioned. To help men find faith in their fellow men, faith in themselves, faith in an unfailing future, and faith in God and all the realities of life, here and hereafter, is a glorious kind of giving.

These words from Hamlet come to mind: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”