The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion. In a free society these institutions must be wholly free - which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.
Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do.
If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
I am highly susceptible to the force of all truly religious music, especially to the music of my own church, the church of Shelley, Michelangelo, and Beethoven.
As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil.'
The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.