s
of things remain visible. Oh, the unimaginable length of ages when on
the earth there was no living thing! then life's ugly, slimy beginnings;
then the conscious soul's fitful dream stretching forth to endless time
and space; then the final sleep in abysmal night with its one star of
hope twinkling before the all-hidden throne of God, in the shadow of
whose too great light faith kneels and waits!

Why shall he whose mind is free, symmetrical, and open, be tempted to
vain glory, to frivolous boasting? Shall not life be more solemn and
sacred to him than to another? Shall he indulge scorn for any being whom
God has made, for any thought which has strengthened and consoled the
human heart? Shall he not perceive, more clearly than others, that the
unseen Power by whom all things are, is akin to thought and love, and
that they alone bring help to man who make him feel that faith and hope
mean good, and are fountains of larger and more enduring life? The
highest mind, like the purest heart, is a witness of the soul and of
God.

CHAPTER IV.

CULTURE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

But try, I urge,--the trying shall suffice: The aim, if reached or
not, makes great the life.

BROWNING.

The mass of mankind, if we pass the whole race in review, are sunk in
gross ignorance; and even in civilized nations, where education is free,
the multitude have but a rude acquaintance with the elements of
knowledge. Their ability to read and write hardly serves intellectual
and moral ends; and such learning as they possess seems only to weaken
their power to admire and love what is best in life and thought.

If we turn to the more cultivated, whose numbers even in the most
enlightened countries are not great, we find but here and there an
individual who has anything better than a sort of mechanical cleverness.
Students, it has been said, on leaving college, quickly divide into two
classes,--those who have learned nothing, and those who have forgotten
everything. In the professions, the lawyer tends to become an advocate,
the physician an empiric, the theologian a dogmatist; and these are but
instances of a general falling away from ideals. The student of physical
science is subdued to what he works in; the man of letters loses depth
and earnestness; and the teacher, whose business it is to rouse and
illumine souls, shrivels until he becomes merely a repeater of facts and
doctrines in which there is no life, no