FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84  
85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   >>   >|  
les and made the forests a land of vineyards and villages. Mind is the beginning of civilization, but the ends and fruitage thereof are of the heart. Christopher Wren's intellect wrought out the plan for St. Paul's Cathedral. But all impotent to realize themselves, these plans, lying in the King's council chamber grew yellow with age and thick with dust. One day a great heart stood forth before the people of London, pointing them to an unseen God, "from whom cometh every good and perfect gift," and, plying men with the generosity of God, he asked gifts of gold and silver and houses and lands, that England might erect a temple worthy of him "whom the heaven of heavens could not contain." The mind of a great architect had created a plan and a "blue-print," but eager hearts inspiring earnest hands turned the plan into granite and hung in the air a dome of marble. Thus all the great achievements for civilization are the achievements of heart. What we call the fine arts are only red-hot ingots of passion cooled off into visible shape. All high music is emotion gushing forth at those faucets named musical notes. As unseen vapors cool into those visible forms named snowflakes, so Gothic enthusiasms cooled off into cathedrals. Our art critics speak of the eight great paintings of history. Each of these masterpieces does but represent a holy passion flung forth upon a canvas. The reformation also was not achieved by intellect nor scholarship. Erasmus represents pure mind. Yet his intellect was cold as winter sunshine that falls upon a snowdrift and dazzles the eyes with brightness, yet is impotent to unlock the streams, or bore a hole through the snowdrifts, or release the roots from the grip of ice and frost, or cover the land with waving harvests. Powerless as winter sunshine were Erasmus' thoughts. But what the scholar could not do, Luther, the great heart, wrought easily. Thus all the reforms represent passions and enthusiasms. That citadel called "The Divine Right of Kings" was not overthrown by colleges with books and pamphlets. It was the pulse-beats of the heart of the people that pounded down the Bastille. Ideas of the iniquity of slavery floated through our land for three centuries, yet the slave pen and auction block still cursed our land. At last an enthusiasm for man as man and a great passion for the poor stood behind these ideas of human brotherhood, and as powder stands behind the bullet,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84  
85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

intellect

 
passion
 

people

 

unseen

 

enthusiasms

 

sunshine

 
winter
 
Erasmus
 

visible

 
represent

achievements

 

cooled

 

civilization

 

impotent

 

wrought

 

villages

 

streams

 

brightness

 
vineyards
 

unlock


snowdrifts

 

waving

 

harvests

 

Powerless

 
release
 

dazzles

 
reformation
 

Christopher

 

achieved

 
canvas

masterpieces

 

thereof

 

beginning

 

thoughts

 

scholarship

 

fruitage

 
represents
 

snowdrift

 

auction

 

cursed


centuries

 

slavery

 

floated

 

forests

 
brotherhood
 
powder
 

stands

 

bullet

 
enthusiasm
 

iniquity