Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

"Have patience, O my soul! Make the things of this present hour-the men, the possessions, the experiences—make these yours, and then all things, present and to come, shall be yours." The soul, in its best moods, longs to linger about these things present, even when it shall live amid the things to come until it shall possess them. As we nestle closer to our mother nature, and see how affectionately she welcomes us and entertains us with ever-increasing beauty and truth, do we not say, "Oh! let me ever live with thee" ? We could not ask for a heaven of greater happiness than that which should give us the time and the power to explore life's mysteries, to comprehend nature's miracles, to catch the transient beauty which comes and goes on cloud, and river, and flower, and transcribe them on our spirits, and make them a part of our being. Oh! there is enough to live for, in all these things present and things to come, to make us very real and earnest, and anxious to gather from men that which can make us better and stronger; from the world that which shall make us love God, and wonder at his works; from life and death the power to control our destiny; from the things which we now have, and the promise of those which are to come, faith, hope, and charity. Standing on the summit of such development, although we are poor, yet are we rich; although weak, we are strong; although destitute, we are not forsaken; though cast down, we are not destroyed; though dying, yet behold we live; for all things are ours.

[blocks in formation]

ber

thed

expl

) Cu

d:

ts, a

ught

COM

Sathe

from

Wonder

ol our

e pr

harity.

gh we

rong;

down,

live;

BEING BY DOING AND TRYING TO DO.

THE best and surest power in every person is that which springs from what they are-from their essential nature. And because it does come from their nature, they can not get outside of it, to estimate or understand it. What we are in our essential natures we can not tell, since we can only estimate ourselves by our own thought; and hence there is at last that power of thought which estimates, left unestimated. And every person, when driven, in defense of his convictions, from his remotest inferences inward to his centre of certainty, is compelled to say, "It is so because it is so;" or, rather, "It is so because I am what I am.” I have a given belief: the reason I give for it is some anterior belief; and the reason for that some other still anterior, and so on until at last we come to the end of the series-to some first belief, of which no proof can be given. Or, if we trace any given experience inward through the narrowing, concentric circles of certitude, we come finally to our first and deepest experience, which has no other to rest on. Hence there is a centre of nature in us all, about which our characters crystallize, from which our constant personal influence radiates, of which we must be unconscious except as others wonder at it or testify to its power. And yet it is this very power, which springs from our nature as easily as waters from a fall, and accomplishes results as easily as waters

carry mill-wheels in falling; it is this power, of which we think least because we know least, that constitutes our real worth and occasions our real usefulness. Our actual strength is hidden in unconsciousness, beyond the reach of pride or the most morbid self-inspection. Through the alchemy of experience the special things for which we strive are transmuted into the gold of reality, and are buried in the founda tions of our life. And only as our special efforts and impulses become fixed habits of activity do they become a part of ourselves-do they become ourselves. But then, when they have become habits, they no longer surprise us, they no longer satisfy our aspiration, because we know and think nothing further of them. So long as we can do a given thing only occasionally in choice moods and favorable circumstances, we take pride in it; we ask others to see us do it; we expect them to wonder at it when done. Yet so long as the doing of it is thus occasional, it is uncertain, and not a part of our own nature, upon which God and man can rely for permanent results. But by and by, through constant repetition, it becomes a habit, and then we think nothing of it; then we count upon it as a part of our reliable resources, and straightway use it for practical purposes, and begin to strive for some new thing which is difficult and almost impossible.

When the pianist begins his practice, he is glad if he can play passages of eighth, sixteenth, or thirty-second notes; but eventually he will run a sweet stream of chromatics across eight octaves, and trill half a thousand quavers a minute, and yet think no more of it than a scholar thinks of the alphabet while reading Shakespeare or Milton. This capacity of the pianist becomes not only second nature, but nature to him; and while we marvel at the rapidity of his

which

tes our

al streng

of pride
alchem
e are tr

the four
ts and:

becom

But t

Surprise.

know

can d

1 favor

s to see

. Yet

ertain, a

and ma

through

we think

Our relie

purposes

difficult

he can

tes; but

across

minute,

of the s capa

e, but

execution, he marvels that we think it wonderful.

And so

it is through the entire range of our capacities. It is what
we are that tells permanently on others; and it is striving to
be what we are not, which makes us what we are.
We are
at this moment the sum of our habits. The true response
of man's nature to God's fidelity is habit. The legitimate
result of law acting on free-will is habitual obedience.

But we are made so that we can not find satisfaction in what we are; we are not conscious of its worth, it seems so natural; we are satisfied only by becoming something more; we get a knowledge of our present attainment only as we try its capacity for new attainment. A merchant knows little of his real power by the routine of business which has become nature to him. Only when he measures himself by some new enterprise, some enlarged endeavor, does he get an idea of what he is and what he can do.

Oh! how wonderful is this power of the soul to absorb and appropriate through experience the highest possible developments, and to transform them into the nerve and fibre of our being-to sink them in the foundations of still higher growth. Consider how blank is the mind and soul of each babe! Weaker in muscle and more helpless in instinct than the young of animals, it knows not that it hears with the ear, or sees with the eye, or smells with the nose; conscious only of varied impressions, received it knows not how nor whence. But from birth there begins this experience, repeated over and over thousands, millions of times, until it acquires habits of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, willing, loving, aspiring, which become henceforth his own nature, and can not be taken away from him. And where or when this process shall end God only knows. For consider how quickly we take the

greatest wonders into our daily habits, and look around for new wonders. Once we wondered that cars could be drawn by steam; now we wonder if they are not drawn forty miles an hour. That miracle of steam-power is now as common as the muscle of our arms; and we accept it as a matter of course, in our use of time and our responsibility for it.

We pledge ourselves to do a given deed in Chicago two days hence; we get into a car which is almost like a sittingroom for comfort; we are hurled over mountain and plain, through swamp and prairie, as if it were the most natural thing that such wondrous powers should be tributary to a human soul.

We can not imagine any thing which, previous to the experiment, would seem more miraculous than the annihilation of time and space by the telegraph; and yet we now accept the telegraph as a natural increase of our responsibilities, which we are quite equal to. It is only a longer arm, a swifter foot, a more telescopic eye. And the same is true of all the great discoveries which have passed into habits of use and expectation.

Who can tell the wonders which serve us day and night, and which we regard as our rightful servants? Now, where is the end to the miracles which such a being will appro priate? To what worlds of light can you transport him, where he will not make his home? Give him the flight of an angel, it would soon become his habit, like the telegraph; give him the telescopic eye of the spirit, it would soon become his habitual range of vision; give him angelic powers of art, or the most marvelous ability to invent and produce, he would soon cease to wonder at them. Indeed, you can not imagine a heaven so miraculous that man's nature could

« AnteriorContinuar »