Yet it remains a sad fact that every child that is born clearly bears upon it the stamp of such a destiny, whose attainability is, with most, more and more lost with advancing age, although a heavy curse hangs over the head of him who draws away from this destiny a single one of the millions endowed with a nature called to the highest things.
Nevertheless, this is actually so, and, as was said at the beginning, it is impossible that there should be none but noble souls on earth; that would be at once the “state of eternal rest.” Such a noble and “exclusive” society we picture for the future life, so far as we can imagine that life at all. But there must always be at least a number of people who will not bow the knee to the “Baal” of the hour and just as little desire to live out their lives on a merely natural basis (for this is of the nature of animals); but their only care is, that God may continually dwell upon the earth.
To this, all are called, especially those who belong to the fellowship of Christianity; and if few are actually “chosen,” yet they form an élite to which every man has access. This kind of aristocracy will never pass out of existence, and to it undoubtedly belongs the immediate future, the more the democratic reform wins the upper hand in the life of the nations. But it will also, wherever it is genuine, be ever confirmed and upheld by God. An aristocracy, on the other hand, that no longer has any basis in its nation, is certainly a false or degenerate aristocracy that rightfully falls into decay.
For the genuine aristocracy there is another and a sterner privilege than what are commonly considered privileges. Something more is demanded of it than the continuous longing ordinary souls have for happiness and pleasure. And it is not good for it if it is ever quite absolved of the sorrows which alone keep it in this disposition, or if it succeeds or is disappointed in something that sprang from ordinary motives. The belief in the purifying power of sorrow and therefore in its necessity is always the kernel and centre of all true ethics, whether based upon philosophy or upon religion. The noblest of all earthly lots is sorrow cheerfully borne, and the blessing that springs therefrom for many. And herein lies the key to an otherwise perplexing riddle; and on this account many men, who will have nothing to do with religion, nevertheless stand nearer to it than many who are loud in their religious professions. Whoever can accept sorrow with a good-will and turn it victoriously to the building up of a better nature within him, is and will remain a noble man, with a nature fundamentally religious, much as his reason may resist any positive confession of religious faith. And in this one point lies the unity, which, silently surmounting all limitations, binds the nobler men of every faith and confession.
And so, a noble soul must be able to endure a considerable amount of injustice as it now exists in the world, apparently never to cease; nor will it find a cause of offence either in its own misfortunes or in those of others; nor must it try too carefully to escape a reputation for being somewhat foolish.
It is not always the greatest talents that are adapted to the greatest things. It is very significant that Isaiah says, “Who is blind, saith the Lord, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I send?” In the same manner Christ often says that, to be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven, one needs a childlike nature which the unwise are closer to than the wise. And the same thing was shown during the Reformation in the case of many who were the wisest of their time, but could not decide to surrender a certain “cultured” attitude of open-mindedness and impartiality toward questions of which the learned know, of course, that one can, in any event, “look at it from another point of view.” This is yet to-day the narrow defile which very many of the cultured shun to whom Christianity would be quite right, if it only fitted in a little more with the demands of the time, if it only would give up something of its uncompromising attitude in regard to ethics, and something of its absolute demand for faith in respect to things that are transcendental and not to be proved.
Christ himself would undoubtedly in his day have been able to conceive his calling in another way than he did. The story of the temptation was an event such as, once in his life, has happened to every highly gifted man, and for which he could assign place and date. Happy if he then struck the right road and no longer let himself be misled because the whole world was against him. Again and again it has finally been obliged to yield, this “whole world,” before a single soul; and we often experience yet to-day, in the smallest as in the greatest questions, the truth of the bold saying, “Who firmly holds to his mind, will fashion the world to himself.”
There is therefore always a place and a need in the world for this kind of people, and in this fact they find their modest portion. They have their difficulties, to be sure; but to be without them is neither necessary nor good for them.
Finally, that is a very true word a wise man once spoke, though from an opposite point of view, “In the struggle for existence there is always room above.” Only the lower and middle places are overfilled.
Therefore, you who are young or are dissatisfied with your search thus far for happiness, strike at once for the highest goal. In the first place, that is the surest and best way because it is God’s will and because he expressly calls you to it. In the second place, it is, of all goals, the one that most brings peace, while all the others bring many disillusionments and bitternesses in their train. And lastly, it is the only one where the race with those contending for the same prize of victory is one with friends and helpers, and where you will not be received at the goal by enviers and secret opponents, but by sincere friends and men of the same high intent—just noble souls, with whom alone it is easy and good to live.