From pride and presumption,
O Lord, keep us free,
And make our hearts humble,
And loyal to Thee,
That living or dying,
In Thee we may rest,
And prove to the scornful
Thy statutes are best._
THOMAS WISTAR
If we should be told that at birth a strange and wonderful gift had been bestowed upon us, one such that by means of it, in after life, we could accomplish almost anything we wished, how we should guard it! With what delight we would make it work, to see what it would do! We should never be tired of such a toy, because every day it would reveal new possibilities of power and delight.
Such a gift God has given us in our power to think. What a mysterious and deep-hid gift it is! Nerves and sensations, a few convolutions in the brain, acts of attention and observation, certain reactions following certain stimuli: the result, a world of worlds spread out before us; unlimited intellectual possibilities within our grasp!
What is thinking? Thinking is an attempt to express infinite thoughts, affections, relations, and events, in finite terms. The child strings buttons. The philosopher strings God, angels, devils, brutes, men, and their appurtenances and deeds. Hence no real thought will quite go into words. Out beyond the word hangs the infinite remainder of our idea. The search for a vocabulary is the search for a clearer articulation of ideas.
Thinking is the power to take up life where the race has left off attainment, and to lead the race one step farther on, by a new concept or idea. It is a curious thing, this little turn in the brain, a thought. We cannot see it, or touch it, or handle it. Yet we can give it, one to another, or one man to the race. It has an infinite leverage. One great thought moves millions onward. Plant the word steam, and globe-transport changes. Plant electricity, and a hundred new industries spring up. Plant liberty, tyrants fall. Plant love, chaotic angers disappear.
If we refuse to learn to think, we refuse to do our share of the world's work. We are like a horse that balks and will not pull. While we sulk the universe is at a standstill.
Spelling and arithmetic, history, etymology, and geography, are not tasks set over school-children by a hard taskmaster, who keeps them from sunshine and out-of-door play. They are catch-words of the universe. They are the implements by which each brain is to be trained to do great work for the one in whom it lives. What every earnest soul asks is not gold, fame, or pleasure. It is: Let me not die till I have brought millions farther on.
We cannot deliberately make thoughts. Thought is like life itself: science has not found a formula which will produce it. But just as marriage produces new lives, though we cannot say how, so study and meditation produce thoughts. Something new appears: a concept which was not with the race before.
The work of sages has been to rule the thinking of the race. They receive the inspired ideas and spend their lives in teaching them to others: in setting up intellectual vibrations throughout the world.