The following passages may help to make good the truth of these words:
“Idealism is not folly. It prevents folly. It is the main hope of a delirious world. It is the means of informing common sense. An ideal truly cherished is never lost, save to give place to a higher ideal. An ideal is not smashed by experience of frailty; but is rather thrown into greater relief. Ideals are dissipated only by the clearer view which comes with a widening horizon. Disappointment in persons will not make an idealist a cynic, unless he has no heart.
“Unfortunately, all men are apt to reach out for the immediate thing which looms large before them. Some are worse than others. And it is only by trying to see things in perspective, by the application of common sense enlightened by idealism, that we can hope to be among the wiser. A constant regard for perfection, the constant cherishing of an intelligent idealism, will, I think, help a man ‘in the midst of the crowd to keep with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude,’—Emerson’s measure of a great man.”
“On the place of churches in national and social life, I take the ground that the important thing for a man is his religion, what he actually believes regarding his relation to the universe, rather than his church affiliation. The first is individual and real, the latter more or less artificial and a matter of expediency, a means of assisting him in making easier the spread of the views which he holds; in fine, an institution, with an object doubtless, but none the less an institution, machinery.”
“This has been a good day, in that life and human duty have been very real to me in it. In the afternoon H——, L—— and I walked out Bank Street to the canal, and, on the way back, I turned the conversation to the question of man’s duty to himself and to others, taking the position that a man owed it to himself to make the most of himself, and that, if he ever earnestly started in on the task, he would find himself moved to see that his influence upon others was in the same direction, namely, towards perfection; that if men were once taught to see the working of the rule of law in this sense, they must inevitably recast their entire views of life to their own advantage and that of society; and that if the church, instead of saying do this, because this and that authority says it is right to do it, would appeal to a man’s appreciation of what manhood means in this sense, there would be more Christlikeness among so-called professors of Christianity.”
“This, my birthday, has commenced most happily. As I lay last night on the couch in our comfortable little room, allowing my thoughts to run on into the future, and resolving to make this new year of my life one marked by real and substantial progress, —— came to me about midnight with a birthday present, which, it seems to me, could not be more in keeping with my present state of mind and resolutions. The present consisted of two splendid engravings of Hoffman’s Christ, the Child, and Christ, and the Rich Young Man. More and more, as time goes on, I am coming to realize that the virtues upon which the hopes of the world are based are to be found in that rich beautiful life of the Master. Humility, self-sacrifice and love, all that appeals to the noblest instincts of our nature, are to be found in the character of that perfect Man, who was ‘despised and afflicted, yet opened not His mouth.’
“Trammelled by a liberal share of human weakness, an unfortunate combination of high ambition and a tendency to frivolity, I can only hope to come to realize gradually all that that life represents. When one considers the wide-spread influence which even a comparatively obscure personality yields in this world, the awful responsibility which is attached to every act of volition, to every word and deed, is forced upon one. These and other weaknesses I must control, and my character I must seek to strengthen in order that my life shall not be useless, in order that I may realize dear mother’s last wish, that we may meet ‘There.’ I must try, with the help of God, to more and more conform thought and act to the model of the perfect life of Christ, a life that if men and States would imitate, there would be an end to viciousness and of man’s inhumanity to man. To be brought face to face, daily, with Hoffman’s beautiful representation should make strong resolutions stronger and more possible of realization.