Education and the Higher Life | Page 4

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, again to destroy itself,--were it not better that the
tragedy should cease? For many centuries men have been struggling for
richer and happier life; and yet when we behold the sins, the miseries,
the wrongs, the sorrows, of which the world is full, we are tempted to
think that progress means failure. The multitude are still condemned to
toil from youth to age to provide the food by which life is kept in the
body; immortal spirits are still driven by hard necessity to fix their
thoughts upon matter from which they with much labor dig forth what
nourishes the animal. Like the savage, we still tremble before the
pitiless might of Nature. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, untimely
frosts, destroy in a moment what with long and painful effort has been
provided. Pestilence still stalks through the earth to slay and make
desolate. Each day a hundred thousand human beings die; and how
many of these perish as the victims of sins of ignorance, of selfishness,
of sensuality.
To-day, as of old, it would seem man's worst enemy is man. What
hordes still wander through Asia and Africa, seeking opportunity for
murder and rapine; what multitudes are still hunted like beasts, caught
and sold into slavery. In Europe millions of men stand, arms in hand,
waiting for the slaughter. They still believe, because they were born on
different sides of a river and speak different languages, that they are
natural enemies, made to destroy one another. And in our own country,
what other sufferings and wrongs,--greed, sensuality, injustice,
deceit,--make us enemies one of another! There is a general struggle in
which each one strives to get the most, heedless of the misery of others.
We trade upon the weaknesses, the vices, and the follies of our
fellow-men; and every attempt at reform is met by an army of
upholders of abuse. When we consider the murders, the suicides, the
divorces, the adulteries, the prostitutions, the brawls, the drunkenness,
the dishonesties, the political and official corruptions, of which our life
is full, it is difficult to have complacent thoughts of ourselves. Consider,

too, our prisons, our insane asylums, our poor-houses; the multitudes of
old men and women, who having worn out strength and health in toil
which barely gave them food and raiment, are thrust aside, no longer
now fit to be bought and sold; the countless young people, who have,
as we say, been educated, but who have not been taught the principles
and habits which lead to honorable living; the thousands in our great
cities who are driven into surroundings which pervert and undermine
character. And worse still, the good, instead of uniting to labor for a
better state of things, misunderstand and thwart one another. They
divide into parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste their time
and exhaust their strength in foolish and futile controversies. They are
not anxious that good be done, nor asking nor caring by whom; but
they seek credit for themselves, and while they seem to be laboring for
the general welfare, are striving rather to satisfy their own selfish
vanity.
But the knowledge of all this does not discourage him who, guided by
the light of true ideals, labors to make reason and the will of God
prevail. If things are bad he knows they have been worse. Never