There are, however, those who call themselves philosophers to whom selfreverence, in any high degree, seems as futile as any of their early hopes and dreams, since they consider the human race and its concerns to be only among the smaller affairs of the universe. These people declare that there is something a little mortifying to their vanity in the sense of the insignificance of the human race which almost invariably overcomes them when they see it in a mass. Not, be it understood, when they see it in the roaring, turbulent mass of an infuriated mob; then it assumes, indeed, some of the greatness of elemental forces, and swells and surges like the sea, with one wave fortifying another; but in the common stream of population going to and fro upon a thousand pitiful small errands along some thoroughfare. Watching this stream for any length of time, it irresistibly occurs to them that just so the ants go and come with their little burdens, their wealth of grains of wheat and barley bigger than themselves, just so their soldiers march to battle, just so their slaves toil on at home; and they half wonder if to any superior eyes that chance to rest on us we can be of more consequence than these ants are in our own. At the same time they confess that it is odd that recurrence and multitude should make small and common that which in the single and isolated instance is often found to be grand and uncommon in the great senator, mighty soldier, singing poet, lovely woman. Yet we have only to take the separate features of any of these isolated instances of humanity say, the malcontents to find the same sensation recurring, and to feel assured that if man be made in the image of any thing
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| To every earnest, striving soul. |
divine, it is his inner and spiritual body, and not all the varying eyes and ears and noses. For if it were one of these, even so much as one ear, for example, which one, of all that we meet? This little curled, pink-rimmed, and shell-like ear of the maiden, with its jeweled tip, this pair that stand out on either side of the head like vase handles, these that remind one of the answer of the worthy who, on being asked if the story he was about to relate was fit for the auditor's ears, replied that they were long enough, or those where old age, as it too often does, has smoothed out all the charming whorls and creases, and left only a large flat surface of cartilage, those that hold themselves pricked up, alert companions, as if they meant no whisper should escape them, those pinned back so flatly that what goes in on one side may easily come out at the other, those that wag as the scalp moves, those that have the pointed segment of the faun's ear, those that are lobeless, or those that project themselves into space like a trumpet? Yet when one can find so much in the mere outward guise of so small a portion of the frame, so tiny a member as the ear, and is aware that its inner construction is so complicated and delicate with vibrant membrane and labyrinthine passage, it is not easy to recur to such a fancy as that of the insignificance of the owner of such an instrument. No! Man 'who has dared, and who has been given the power to dare, to search almighty secrets, to weigh the sun, to catch the colors of the elements from which stars are made, is a being of importance in the creative eyes, and he owes a debt of selfrespect to the Power that made him. "Your body," says Rutherford, "is the dwelling-place of the spirit, and therefore for the love you carry to the sweet Guest give a due regard to His house of clay, for the house is not your own." We read in the "Records of a Quiet Life" that it is one of the hardest things in the world to be true to one's self in one's intercourse with others. "There is scarcely anything that requires more real courage. How little is there of true freedom from all put-on conversation and manner! The more truly Christian is our spirit, the more truly shall we rise out of this bondage, which is of the earth earthly, to preserve our truth and uprightness of character, to be in all places and at all times and with all people one and the same, not equally open or equally communicative, but equally free from what is artificial and constrained, and steadfast in keeping fast hold of those principles and feelings which are known to be according to God's will and law." The great poem of the "Happy Warrior" does not apply to the soldier merely, but to every earnest, striving soul on earth.
"Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought;
Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright;
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn,
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there.
But makes his moral being his prime care.
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which 'heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover, and attired
With sudden brightness like a man inspired;
And through the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need."
I have thought that the story of Miss Moggaridge's Provider was an illustration of that sweet self -reverence which implies absolute belief and truth in Providence, and of the truth of the saying of Thomas A Kempis that, "From a pure heart proceedeth the fruit of a good life."
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