A movement is started in Italy to celebrate religiously the close
of the nineteenth century.
The idea is to erect at different points on the Peninsula
nineteen colossal statues of Christ. The statues, one for each
century, are to be of cast-iron, gilded, heroic in size.
There can be no objection to the idea, since it gives expression
to proper religious feeling. But should it fail of execution,
that would be quite as well. ----
For one Man only in all the history of the world no statue is
needed. To the glory of one Man we can add nothing save through
obedience to the laws which He brought on earth. ----
Where a weak woman is kindly treated, where children are received
with tenderness, where the hungry are fed and the old cared for,
there is a monument to Christ--such a monument as He would ask to
have built.
The wisdom of Confucius, the self-abnegation of Gautama, the
lofty idealism of Zoroaster, may be fitly commemorated and
perhaps magnified by human monuments or human praise.
But men can build nothing that shall add to the glory of that
life which is the basis of good among all men.