Human rights become respected in the ratio in which human responsibility is felt.
Henry Ward Beecher
The Public Record
Henry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on the love of Christ has influenced mainstream Christianity through the 21st century.
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He is a being upon whom is rolled the responsibility of character and eternal destiny!
Of such a creature it were as foolish to take an estimate, by what he is and what he can do in this life, as it would be to estimate by an eagle's egg, what the old eagle is worth, with wings outspread far above the very thunder, or coming…
It is the Future that gives value to the Present.
It is Immortality only that reaches down a measure wherewith to gauge a man.
So God pleads his own relationship to the meanest human creation, as his protection from wrong; as the evidence of his rights, as the reason of his dignity!
There is something of God in the meanest creature.
In these truths we find the reason why Christianity always takes hold so low down in human life.
A Christianity that takes care of the rich, the strong, the governing class, and neglects the poor, and ignorant, and the unrefined, as the antitype of Christ.
It is in this direction only, that the declaration of man's equality is true.
But it is a truth that stands only and firmly in those grand relations which man sustains to God, to Eternity, and to future dignity--all are equally subjects of these.
If he must stand by what he is, how surely must he be given over to weakness, to abuse, to oppressions.