ble natures feel that the generous
view is, in the end, the true view. For them life means good; they find
strength and joy in this wholesome and cheerful faith, and if they are
in error, it can never be known, for if death end all, with it knowledge
ceases. Perceiving this, they strive to gain spiritual insight, they
look to God; toward him they turn the current of their thought and love;
the unseen world of truth and beauty becomes their home; and while
matter flows on and breaks and remakes itself to break again, they dwell
in the presence of the Eternal, and become co-workers with the Infinite
Power which makes goodness good, and justice right. They love knowledge,
because God knows all things; they love beauty, because he is its
source; they love the soul, because it brings man into conscious
communion with him and his universe. If their ideal is poetical, they
catch in the finer spirit of truth which the poet breathes, the
fragrance of the breath of God; if it is scientific, they discover in
the laws of Nature the harmony of his attributes; if it is political and
social, they trace the principles of justice and liberty to him; if it
is philanthropic, they understand that love which is the basis, aim,
and end of life is also God.

The root of their being is in him, and the illusory world of the senses
cannot dim their vision of the real world which is eternal. By
self-analysis the mind is sublimated until it becomes a shadow in a
shadowy universe; and the criticism of the reason drives us to doubt and
inaction, from which we are redeemed by our necessary faith in our own
freedom, in our power to act, and in the duty of acting in obedience to
higher law. Knowledge comes of doing. Never to act is never to know. The
world of which we are conscious is the world against which we throw
ourselves by the power of the will; hence life is chiefly conduct, and
its ideal is not merely religious, but moral. The duty of obedience to
our better self determines the purpose and end of action, for the better
self is under the impulse of God. Whether we look without or within, we
find things are as they should not be; and there awakens the desire,
nay, the demand that they be made other and better. The actual is a
mockery unless it may be looked upon as the means of a higher state. If
all things come forth only to perish and again come forth as they were
before; if life is a monster which destroys itself that it may again be
born, ag