reat-hearted men, as pilgrims
crowd close to the winter's fire. Men neither draw their chairs close
around a block of ice, nor about a brilliant intellect. Our quarrel
with the foolish scientist is that he makes God out as infinite brain.
We rejoice at the revelation of Christ, because He portrays God as
heart and not genius.
God be thanked for great thoughts, but a thousand times more, God be
praised for good thoughts! They are fuel for the fires of enthusiasm.
They are rudders that guide us heavenward. They are seeds for great
harvests of joy. They fulfill the tale of the fairies who in the night
while men slept bridged chasms, builded palaces, laid out streets and
lined them with homes, built the city around with walls. For every
thought is a builder, every purpose a mansion, and every affection a
carpenter. As the builders of the Cologne Cathedral were guided by the
plan and pattern of Von Rile, so man's thoughts are builded after that
matchless model, Jesus Christ. And while our thoughts work, His
thoughts work, also adding beauty to the soul's strength. In the olden
tale the artist pupil through very weariness fell asleep before the
picture that disappointed him. While he slept his master stole into
the room, and with a few swift touches corrected the errors and
brought out the lines of lustrous beauty, kindling new hope within the
boy's heart. And there are unexpected providences in life, strange
influences, interventions and voices in the night. These events over
which we have no control, these thoughts of the Master above, shape us
not less than the thoughts that build from within. It seems that not
one, but two are working upon the soul's structure. As one day in the
presence of his master Michael Angelo pulled down the scaffolding in
the Sistine Chapel, and the workmen cleared away the ropes and plaster
and litter, and looking up men saw the faces of angels and seraphs,
with their lustrous and immortal beauty, so some glad day will that
angel named Death pull down life's scaffolding and set forever in the
sunlight that structure built of thoughts, the stately mansion reared
in the mind, the building not made with hands, the character, eternal
in the heavens.
THE MORAL USES OF MEMORY
"Without memory, man is a perpetual infant."--_Locke._
"The memory plays a great part in ranking men. Quintilian
reckoned it the measure of genius. The poets represented
the muses as the da
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