s, laborious teachers may instruct us for years in God,
and virtue, and the soul, and we may remain nearly as ignorant of them as
at the beginning; whilst a look, a tone, an act of a fellow-creature, who
is kindled by a grand thought, and who is thrown in our path at some
susceptible season of life, will do much to awaken and expand this
thought within us. It is a matter of experience that the greatest ideas
often come to us, when right-minded, we know not how. They flash on us
as lights from heaven. A man seriously given to the culture of his mind
in virtue and truth finds himself under better teaching than that of man.
Revelations of his own soul, of God's intimate presence, of the grandeur
of the creation, of the glory of disinterestedness, of the deformity of
wrong-doing, of the dignity of universal justice, of the might of moral
principle, of the immutableness of truth, of immortality, and of the
inward sources of happiness; these revelations, awakening a thirst for
something higher than he is or has, come of themselves to an humble,
self-improving man. Sometimes a common scene in nature, one of the
common relations of life, will open itself to us with a brightness and
pregnancy of meaning unknown before. Sometimes a thought of this kind
forms an era in life. It changes the whole future course. It is a new
creation. And these great ideas are not confined to men of any class.
They are communications of the Infinite Mind to all minds which are open
to their reception; and labor is a far better condition for their
reception than luxurious or fashionable life. It is even better than a
studious life, when this fosters vanity, pride, and the spirit of jealous
competition. A childlike simplicity attracts these revelations more than
a selfish culture of intellect, however far extended.--Perhaps a caution
should be added to these suggestions. In speaking of great ideas, as
sometimes springing up of themselves, as sudden illuminations, I have no
thought of teaching that we are to wait for them passively, or to give up
our minds unthinkingly to their control. We must prepare ourselves for
them by faithfulness to our own powers, by availing ourselves of all
means of culture within our reach; and, what is more, these
illuminations, if they come, are not distinct, complete, perfect views,
but glimpses, suggestions, flashes, given us, like all notices and
impressions from the outward world, to be thought upon, to be made