In these dark hours the heart speaks. In the poet's vision, to blind Homer, falling into the bog, torn by the thorns and thickets and lost in the forest and the night, came the young goddess, the daughter of Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the upward path. For even in its dreams the heart hears the sound of invisible music. Oft before reason's eye the heart unveils the Vision Splendid. The soul is big with immortality. When the heart speaks it is God within making overtures for man to come upward toward home and heaven.
RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
"To live absolutely each man for himself could not be possible if all were to live together. In course of time, in addition to utility, certain more sensitive individuals began to see a charm, a beauty in this consideration for others. Gradually a sort of sanctity attached to it, and nature had once more illustrated her mysterious method of evolving from rough and even savage necessities her lovely shapes and her tender dreams. To assert, then, with some recent critics of Christianity, that that law of brotherly love which is its central teaching is impracticable of application to the needs of society, is simply to deny the very first law by which society exists."—Richard Le Galliene, in "The Religion of a Literary Man."
"It is only with renunciations that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin. . . . In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie."—Carlyle.
"You talk of self as the motive to exertion. I tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is noble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is ornamental in the world."—Whyte Melville.
"Jesus said; 'Whosoever will come after Me, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.' Perhaps there is no other maxim of Jesus which has such a combined stress of evidence for it and may be taken as so eminently His."—Matthew Arnold.
CHAPTER VIII.
RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
History has crowned self-sacrifice as one of the virtues. In all ages selfishness has been like a flame consuming society, like a sword working waste and ruin, but self-sacrifice has repaired these ravages and achieved for man victories many and great. The church owes so much to the company of martyrs whose blood has crimsoned her every page, the state is so deeply indebted to the patriots who have given their lives for liberty, man has derived such strength from those who have endured the fetter and the fagot rather than belie their convictions, woman has derived such beauty from the example of that Antigone who died rather than desert the body of her dead brother, as that each modern youth beholds self-sacrifice standing forth clothed with immeasurable excellence.
Not large the company of the Immortals whose birthdays society celebrates. Yet when on these high days, through song or story the poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the assembled multitude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. A sentinel with a flaming sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those aspirants named Ease, Avarice, Self-indulgence.