rue, good, or
fair is rarely at once admitted to be so; but what is practically useful
men quickly accept, because they live chiefly in the world of external
things, and care little for the spiritual realms of truth and beauty.
The ignorant do not even believe that knowledge gives power and
pleasure, and the educated, except the chosen few, value it only for the
power and pleasure it gives. As the disinterested love of truth is rare,
so is perfect sincerity. Indeed, insincerity is here the radical vice.
Good faith is essential to faith; and a sophistical mind is as immoral
and irreligious as a depraved heart. Let a man be true, seek and speak
truth, and all good things are possible; but when he persuades himself
that a lie may be useful and ought to be propagated, he becomes the
enemy of his own soul and the foe of all that makes life high and
godlike.

Now, to be able to desire to see things as they are, whatever their
relations to ourselves may be, and to speak of them simply as they
appear to us, is one result of the best training of the intellect, which
in the world of thought and opinion gives us that sweet indifference
which is the rule of saints when they submit the conduct of their lives
wholly to divine guidance. Why should he whose mind is strong, and rests
on God, be disturbed? It is with opinion as with life. We cannot tell
what moment truth will overthrow the one and death the other; but
thought cannot change the nature of things. The clouds dissolve, but the
eternal heavens remain. Over the bloodiest battlefields they bend calm
and serene, and trees drink the sunlight and flowers exhale perfume. The
moonbeam kisses the crater's lip. Over buried cities the yellow harvest
waves, and all the catastrophes of endless time are present to God, who
dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not troubled, and
shall not we who are akin to him learn to look upon our little meteorite
without losing repose of mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to
trust that he who made all things will know how to make all things
right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some investigator should
find him at fault or thwart his plans? As living bodies are immersed in
an invisible substance which feeds the flame of life, so souls breathe
and think and love in the atmosphere of God, and the higher their
thought and love the more do they partake of the divine nature. Many
things, in this age of transition, are passin