XL.
In reading the stories of many persons whom the English nation is invited to honor, I am generally struck with the predominance of the personal element. The key-note seems generally some resolve taken in early youth connected with their own temporal advancement. This one will be Lord Mayor; this other Prime Minister; a third determines to own a fine estate near the place of his birth, a fourth to become head of the business in which he started as an errand-boy. They did indeed achieve their ends, were faithful to the idea they had set before themselves as boys; but I doubt if we can put them anywhere but in the lower school of idealists. For the predominant motive being self-assertion, their idealism seems never to have got past the personal stage, which at best is but a poor business as compared with the true thing.
XLI.
Christ is the great idealist. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” is the ideal he sets before us—the only one which is permanent and all-sufficing. His own spirit communing with ours is the call which comes to every human being.
XLII.
Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends; for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self, and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble and living in another man.
But, even to him who has the gift, it is often a great puzzle to find out whether a man is really a friend or not. The following is recommended as a test in the case of any man about whom you are not quite sure; especially if he should happen to have more of this world’s goods, either in the shape of talents, rank, money, or what not, than you: