Completing the circle of humanity is still a worthy ambition

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One hundred and seventy years ago, the book The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty was published. The author was Leigh Hunt.

I know this because a first edition is sitting next to me as I type. I rediscovered it on one of my forays into trying to create order from chaos in my book-filing universe.

Leigh Hunt, author of Religion of the Heart.Credit:

Hunt was one of several literary stars of London in the early 1800s. His friends and acquaintances included William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, John Keats, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.

My tendency to scan through every book I rediscover on the shelf or in a box marks me as the worst librarian in history, but it also leads to paths of insight and reflection. The title to this one was the key: The Religion of the Heart. Not the religion of the narrow-minded or the religion of the sword.

Hunt seemed to be working towards a position of one drawing from the inner well, without institutions, to slake his thirst for how to lead a good life, a spiritual life.

The book had its origins in a small private pamphlet called “Christianism, Belief and Unbelief Reconciled”, but over the years Hunt broadened it to include not only philosophy but ritual.

Almost two centuries ago, it showed that faith and words are links in a chain. A previous owner marked this section: “The consummation to be desired by mankind is, not that all should think alike in particulars, but that all should be alike in essentials, and that there should be no belief or practice irreconcilable with the heart.”

Indeed.

One can’t help but read some passages in the light of current events, such as the findings of the royal commission into robo-debt or tyrants such as Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of innocent men, women and children.

In a section headed “Of Our Duties to Others”, Hunt writes: “Our duty to others consists in imagining ourselves in their places, and doing them good accordingly.

Religion of the Heart was first published in 1853.Credit:

“We are not to be slow in endeavouring to right those whom others wrong; but on all occasions, whether acting for or against individuals, we must bear in mind the good of the community, as the warrant of all that we do.”

This dovetails into the “Duties Commonly Called Public”: “Public and private duty is, in the end, the same. What we owe to ourselves, we owe to our neighbour; what we owe to our neighbour, we owe to the whole world. This is the circle of humanity.”

Too often, of course, as history has proven, that circle is broken. In fact, you could question whether it has ever been whole.

We owe it to ourselves, and our neighbours, to at least try to make it so, for the heart’s sake.

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