Education and the Higher Life | Page 3

J.L. Spalding
narrowness of heart, the dullness of
imagination, which make us weak, hard, and common. Even our hatred
of the rich is but another form of the worship of money. The poor think
they are wretched, because they think money the chief good; and if they
are right, then is it a holy work to strive to overthrow society as it is

now constituted. Buckle and Strauss find fault with the Christian
religion because it does not inculcate the love of money. But in this,
faith and reason are in harmony. Wealth is not the best, and to make it
the end of life is idolatry, and as Saint Paul declares, the root of evil.
Man is more than money, as the workman is more than his tools. The
soul craves quite other nourishment than that which the whole material
universe can supply. Man's chief good lies in the infinite world of
thought and righteousness. Fame and wealth and pleasure are good
when they are born of high thinking and right living, when they lead to
purer faith and love; but if they are sought as ends and loved for
themselves, they blight and corrupt. The value of culture is great, and
the ideal it presents points in the right direction in bidding us build up
the being which we are. But since man is not the highest, he may not
rest in himself, and culture therefore is a means rather than an end. If
we make it the chief aim of life, it degenerates into a principle of
exclusion, destroys sympathy, and terminates in a sort of self-worship.
What remains, then, but the ideal which I have proposed?--"Seek ye
first the Kingdom of God." Unless the light of Heaven fall along our
way, thick darkness gathers about us, and in the end, whatever our
success may have been, we fail, and are without God and without hope.
So long as any seriousness is left, religion is man's first and deepest
concern; to be indifferent is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is disease.
Difficulties assuredly there are, underlying not only faith, but all
systems of knowledge. How am I certain that I know anything? is a
question, debated in all past time, debatable in all future time; but we
are none the less certain that we know. The mind is governed by laws
which neither science nor philosophy can change, and while theories
and systems rise and pass away, the eternal problems present
themselves ever anew clothed in the eternal mystery. But little
discernment is needed to enable us to perceive how poor and symbolic
are the thoughts of the multitude. Half in pity, half in contempt, we rise
to higher regions only to discover that wherever we may be there also
are the laws and the limitations of our being; and that in whatsoever
sanctuaries we may take refuge, we are still of the crowd. We cannot
grasp the Infinite; language cannot express even what we know of the
Divine Being, and hence there remains a background of darkness,

where it is possible to adore, or to mock. But religion dispels more
mystery than it involves. With it, there is twilight in the world; without
it, night. We are in the world to act, not to doubt. Leaving quibbles to
those who can find no better use for life, the wise, with firm faith in
God and man, strive to make themselves worthy to do brave and
righteous work. Distrust is the last wisdom a great heart learns; and
noble 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
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