Looking at Lilla’s beautiful face, brightened with the radiance of belief, Cartice Doring knew that one by one she was finding her people—the people whom she dimly remembered as having been a part of her life in the remote past, and who were linked by the ties of sympathy and love to the present and all the endless future.
Her own people,—the faithful, the heroic, the aspiring, the wide-minded, the loving, the true.
Lilla was one of them—Lilla of the light heart and rippling laugh in days gone by; and of the sturdy soul and dauntless faith in sorrow and misfortune.
Now Cartice saw that her own people all became acquainted with suffering, sooner or later, and that this was the greatest of teachers to the human race. Without suffering nothing is born, nothing grows.
“Who are these in white garments?” asked the saint of the heavenly visions.
“They are those who have passed through great tribulation,” was the answer.
In fancy she saw again the long procession, made up of her people. Out of the dim and far distant past they came, filing steadily on into the unseen, endless future. In each spirit burned the quenchless fire we name genius; on each face were signs of suffering; “but no voice uttered plaints.” Not all were victors. Many were of the baffled and beaten, the disappointed and defeated, but they went to the wall with unbent head and silent, smiling lips.
“My people, my dear people,” she said, “with you I breathe the air native to my soul. You sought the truth, you found it, you lived it, and it made you free.”
What is truth? Who can answer the Roman governor’s question? In the Syriac tongue it is described as “the arrow which flies to the mark.” Nothing else reaches the mark. Nothing else has a mark. Life has no other aim and end than to free oneself from error, through a knowledge of truth. This is the only power that can set us free, and only in freedom is happiness.
But with most people the search is not for truth but success—success on the commonplace, external plane—which is the very negation of moral growth and spiritual progress. High minds, dedicated to noble ideals are few, but mediocres are numerous.