(January 14, 1875–September 4, 1965), was a physician, philosopher, musician and a medical missionary who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. He practiced as a doctor in the hospital he founded in the jungle village of Lambarene, Gabon, west central Africa, and even used the $33,000 Nobel prize money to build a leper colony. He had won international acclaim for his writings and recitals of Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ music. Albert Schweitzer’s writings include: The Philosophy of Civilization; The Decay and Restoration of Civilization; Civilization and Ethics; Out of My Life and Thought; From My African Notebook; and The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). His philosophy of life can be best summarized in his ethic of “reverence for life.” Albert Schweitzer expressed:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.3242
In proportion as we have the Spirit of Jesus we have the true knowledge of Jesus.3243
Christianity has need of thought that it may come to the consciousness of its real self. For centuries it treasured the great commandment of love and mercy as traditional truth without recognizing it as a reason for opposing slavery … torture, and all the other ancient and medieval forms of inhumanity.3244
All living knowledge of God rests upon this foundation: that we experience Him in our lives as Will-to-Love.3245
It was quite incomprehensible to me—this was before I began going to school—why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed for myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: “O heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace.”3246
Facts call us to reflect, even as the tossing of a capsizing vessel cause the crew to rush on deck and to climb the masts.3247
One day, in my despair, I threw myself into a chair in the consulting room and groaned out: “What a blockhead I was to come out here to doctor savages like these!” Whereupon Joseph quietly remarked: “Yes, Doctor, here on earth you are a great blockhead, but not in heaven.”3248
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, in a statement printed in Guideposts, March, 1956, explained:
Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.3249