"Forty-one years ago, Daniel Williams, keeper of [{192}] the light at Little Traverse Bay, in Lake Michigan, went out in a boat for the rescue of a ship's crew in distress, and did not come back alive. For three days the storm continued. But his sorrowing widow did not forget other lives, and each night climbed the winding stairs and trimmed the lamp. This duty she discharged until the government learned the situation, when it authorised her to continue. And she is still at her post."

Lighthouse keepers are not the only people who live thus. There are countless lights kept alive in homes where want or weariness or stormy sorrow have long since and often entered, and have again and again seemed about to overwhelm, but where, after many years, faithful souls, well known to many of you, are, despite fortune, still at their post, with the light burning.

And now, I ask you, What is the spirit which rules such lives? It is a spirit which is familiar in song and story; for men always love to tell about it when they meet with impressive examples of its workings. What I regret is that, when men repeat such songs and stories, familiarity breeds, not indeed contempt (for our whole nature rejoices to think of such deeds), but a certain tendency to false emphasis. We notice the dramatic and heroic incidents of such lives, and are charmed with the picturesque or with the thrilling features of the tale. And so we seem to ourselves to be dealing mainly with anecdotes and with accidents. We fail [{193}] sufficiently to consider that back of the exceptional show of heroism there has to be the personal character, itself the result of years of devotion and of training-- the character that has made itself ready for these dramatic but, after all, not supremely significant opportunities. Only when we in mind run over series of such cases do we see that we are dealing with a spirit suited not only to great occasions, but to every moment of reasonable life, and not only to any one or two callings, but to all sorts and conditions of men.

The spirit in question is the one which is often well illustrated in the lives of warriors who willingly face death for their flag--if only they face death not merely as brutes may also face it (because their fighting blood is aroused), but as reasonable men face death who clearly see what conditions make it "man's perdition to be safe." There are two tests by which we may know whether the warriors really have the spirit of which I am speaking, namely, the spirit that was also, and quite equally, present in the widow who, in all the agony of a new grief, and through the storm that had taken away her husband, still climbed the lonely stairway and trimmed the lamp which he could never again tend. The first test that the warrior and the lighthouse tender are moved by the same spirit is furnished by the fact that those warriors who are rightly filled with this spirit are as well able to live by it in peace as in war; are, for instance, able even to surrender to [{194}] the foe, when fortune and duty require them to do so--to surrender, I say, with the same calm dignity and unbroken courage that Lee showed in his interview with Grant at Appomattox, and that inspired him in the years of defeat and of new toils through which he had still to live after the war. That is, the warrior, if rightly inspired, is as ready for life as for death, is as ready for peace as for war; and despises defeat as much as danger--fearing only sloth and dishonour and abandonment of the service. The other test is whether the warrior is ready to recognise and to honour, with clear cordiality, this same spirit when it is manifested in another calling, or in another service, and, in particular, is manifested by his enemy. For then the warrior knows that warfare itself is only the accident of fortune, and that the true spirit of his own act is one which could be manifested without regard to the special occasion that has required him to face death just here or to fight on this side. If the spirit of the warrior bears these tests, his faithfulness is of the type that could be shown as well by the lonely light-tender in her grief as by the hero for whom glory waits. And again, this spirit is the very one that martyrs have shown when they died for their faith; that patient mothers and fathers, however obscure and humble, show when they toil, in true devotion, for their homes; that lovers mean to express when they utter such words as the ones which we earlier quoted from Mrs. Browning. And lest all these [{195}] instances should impress you with the idea that the spirit in question has to do only with brilliant emotional colourings, such as those which fill our imaginations when we think of war, and of brave deaths, and of heroic triumph over grief, and of lovers' vows, let me turn at once to what some of you may think to be the other extreme of life. Let me say that, to my mind, the calm and laborious devotion to a science which has made possible the life-work of a Newton, or of a Maxwell, or of a Darwin is still another example, and a very great example, of this same spirit--an example full of the same strenuousness, the same fascinated love of an idealised object, and, best of all, full of the willingness to face unknown fortunes, however hard, and to abandon, when that is necessary, momentary joys, however dear, in a pursuit of one of the principal goods which humanity needs--namely, an understanding of the wonderful world in which we mortals are required to work out our destiny. It is not a superficial resemblance that the lighthouse tender and the scientific man both seek to keep and to spread light for the guidance of men.

The lighthouse tender, the mother, the warrior, the patriot, the martyr, the true lover, the scientific investigator--they all may show, I insist, this same essential spirit,

"Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see;"

[{196}] superior to fortune because something that is worthier than any fortune seems to call them to their task. Such are undismayed in defeat. So Newton was undismayed when he looked for the needed confirmation of his theory in the motion of the moon and for the time failed. He worked on steadily, without any effort to win renown by hasty publication of possible explanations, until new advances of science showed why confirmation had so far been lacking and brought him what he needed. So Lee turned to the new life after the war. So the widow climbed the lonely stairway, despite her lost one, and because of her lost one. So the martyrs faced the lions. These all were sustained through long toil, or bewildering grief, by a spirit that tended to make them masters of their own lives and to bring them into unity with the master of all life.

We have illustrated the spirit. We now ask: What is the principle which dominates such lives? Is it or is it not a principle such, that one at any time wholly devoted to it could thereafter, upon a reasonable review of life, wisely regret having chosen to live thus? If it is not such a principle, if on the contrary it is a principle such that any reasonable view of life approves it, let us know what it is, let us detach it from the accidental conditions which at once adorn and disguise it for our imagination, let us read it so as to see how it applies to every sort of reasonable life--and then we shall be in possession [{197}] of the solution of our moral problem. Then we shall know what it is that, if we are indeed rational, we really choose to do so soon as we learn how to live.

VI

If we consider carefully any such faithful lives as I have just exemplified, we see that, however simple-minded and unreflective some of the people may be who learn to live in this way, the motives that guide them are such as will bear a great deal of thoughtful reflection.