In the Universe there is nothing which exists separate and apart from other things. The satellites hold to the planets, the planets to the suns, the suns to one another, all in obedience to the same laws which bind the body to earth, and cause the water to flow and the vapor to rise. For the senses there is separateness, but for the mind there is union and unity. Communion is the law of souls as of bodies. Both are immersed in a boundless world, from which if they could be drawn forth they would cease to be. The principle of this infinite harmony is love, is God.
The right human bond is that which unites soul with soul; and only they are truly akin who consciously live in the same world, who think, believe, and love alike, who hope for the same things, aspire to the same ends.
Our mental view never reaches the ultimate nature of being, and hence our knowledge, whether of material or of spiritual things, is incomplete. Faith is the effort to supply the defect which inheres in all our knowing. Knowledge springs from faith, faith from knowledge, as rivers from clouds, clouds from rivers. The more we know, the more we believe; and our growing consciousness does not make us content to rest in a mechanical view of nature, but it brings home to us with increasing power the awfulness of the infinite mystery, which we more and more clearly perceive to be a spiritual rather than a material fact. If at present there is a certain failure of will and consequent discouragement in the pursuit of moral and intellectual perfection, this is a result of our passing bewilderment in the presence of the revelations of science and of the mighty forces it places in the hands of man, and not of any new knowledge which tends to inspire misgivings concerning the being of God and our kinship with Him:—-
From nature up to law, from law to love:
This is the ascendant path in which we move,
Impelled by God in ways that lighten still,
Till all things meet in one eternal thrill.
As the Universe revealed by the Copernican astronomy and the other natural sciences is infinitely more sublime and marvellous than such a world as the Israelites, the Greeks, or the Romans imagined, so they who see rightly in the luminous ether of modern intelligence understand better than the ancients that human life is not an ephemeral and superficial, but an immortal and central power, enrooted in God, and drawing its substance and sustenance from Him.
The appeal to shame is a poor argument. The fact that men of great intellectual power and learning have held an opinion to be true does not make it so. New knowledge may have shown it to be false, or the general advance of the race may have changed the point of view. The presumption of the larger wisdom of the Ancients we cannot accept: for we, not they, are the true ancients. The purest and the holiest prayer men speak is this: "Thy will be done." They who utter it from the inmost soul, find peace, even as a fretful child sinks to rest upon the mother's bosom. In learning to love the will of God they come at last not merely to believe, but to feel that His will guides the Universe, and that all will be well. When an utterance comes forth from the depths of our spiritual being, men cannot but hearken. It is as though we should bring to exiles tidings of a long-lost home and country.
To what a weight he stoops who addresses himself with fixed resolve to the life of thought! The burden indeed is heavy, but the pathway lies through pleasant fields where great souls move to and fro in freedom and at peace. And as he grows accustomed to his labor, the world widens, the heavens break open, the dead live again, and with them he rises into the high regions where the petty cares and passions of mortals do not reach.
He who would educate himself must make use of his own powers. He must observe, think, examine, read, argue, ponder; he must learn when to hold judgment in suspense, and when to give the wings of the soul free sweep through the high and serene realms of truth and beauty. The farther we dwell from the crowd, with its current opinion, the better and truer shall we and our thoughts become. They who write for multitudinous readers rise with difficulty above the dignity of mountebanks.
There is a radical defect in the character of whoever works in the spirit of a trifler, however blameless his conduct. The power to inspire faith in the seriousness and goodness of life is a sufficient test of the worth of a scheme of education.
No one should fill an office which he is unable to hold without hindrance to the play of mind and heart that makes him a man. The dignities we possess at the cost of knowledge and virtue are like jewels for the sake of which one goes hungry and naked; mere glittering baubles for which we barter the soul's prosperity.