the youth grows great. Emerson speaks of sailing the sea with God alone. The founders of astronomy dwelt on a plain of sand, where the horizon held not one vine-clad hill nor alluring vista. Wearying of the yellow sea, their thoughts journeyed along the heavenly highway and threaded the milky way, until the man became immortal. Moses became the greatest of jurists, because during the forty years when his mind was creative and at its best, he dwelt amid the solitude of the sand hills around Sinai, and was free for intellectual and moral life. History tells of a thousand men who have maintained virtue in adversity only to go down in hours of prosperity. That is, man is stimulated by the crisis; conflict provokes heroism, persecution lends strength. But, denied the exigency of a great trial, men who seemed grand fall all to pieces. Triumphant in adversity, men are vanquished by drudgery. An English author has expressed the belief that many men "achieve reputations when all eyes are focused upon them, who fall into petty worthlessness amid obscurity and monotony. Life's crowning victory belongs to those who have won no brilliant battle, suffered no crushing wrong; who have figured in no great drama, whose sphere was obscure, but who have loved great principles midst small duties, nourished sublime hopes amid vulgar cares, and illustrated eternal principles in trifles."
Responsibility is a teacher of righteousness. God educates men by casting them upon their own resources. Man learns to swim by being tossed into life's maelstrom and left to make his way ashore. No youth can learn to sail his life-craft in a lake sequestered and sheltered from all storms, where other vessels never come. Skill comes through sailing one's craft amidst rocks and bars and opposing fleets, amidst storms and whirls and counter currents. English literature has a proverb about the incapacity of rich men's sons. The rich man himself became mighty because he began in poverty, had no hand to help him forward, and many hands to hold him back. After long wrestling with opposing force he compacted within himself the strength and foresight, the frugality and wisdom of a score of ordinary men. The school of hard knocks made him a man of might. But his son, cradled in a soft nest, sheltered from every harsh wind, loving ease more than industry, is in danger of coming up without insight into the secrets of his profession or industry.
Responsibility alone drives man to toil and brings out his best gifts. For this reason the pensions given to scholars are said to have injured some men of genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas to raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The generosity of his friends gave the poet a home and all its comforts without the necessity of toil. Is it possible that ease and lack of responsibility, with opium, helped wreck him? What did that critic mean when he said of a rich young friend, "He needs poverty alone to make him a great painter?" It is responsibility that teaches caution, foresight, prudence, courage, and turns feeblings into giants.
The extremes and contrasts of life do much to shape character. Ours is a world that moves from light to dark, from heat to cold, from summer to winter. On the crest to-day, the hero is in the trough to-morrow. Moses, yesterday a deserted slave child, to-day adopted by a king's daughter; David, but yesterday a shepherd boy with his harp, and to-day dwelling in the King's palace; men yesterday possessed of plenty, to-day passing into penury—these illustrate the extremes of life. These contrasts are as striking as those we find on the sunny slopes of the Alps. There the foothills are covered with vineyards, while the summits have everlasting snow. In Wyoming hot springs gush close beside snowdrifts. During man's few years, and brief, he experiences many reverses. He flits on between light and dark. It is hard for the leader to drop back into the ranks. It is not easy for him who hath led a movement to its success to see his laurels fall leaf by leaf. After a long and dangerous service men grown old and gray are succeeded by the youth to whom society owes no debt. Thus man journeys from strength to invalidism, from prosperity to adversity, from joy to sorrow, or goes from misery to happiness, from defeat to victory.
Not one single person but sooner or later is tested by these alterations. God sends prosperity to lift character to its highest levels. It is an error to suppose that the higher manhood flourishes in extreme poverty. Watkinson has beautifully said that "humility is never so lovely as when arrayed in scarlet; moderation is never so impressive as when it sits at banquets; simplicity is never so delightful as when it dwells amidst magnificence; purity is never so divine as when its unsullied robes are worn in a king's palace; gentleness is never so touching as when it exists in the powerful. When men combine gold and goodness, greatness and godliness, genius and graces, human nature is at its best." On the other hand, adversity is a supplement, making up what prosperity lacks. The very abundance of Christmas gifts ofttimes causes children to forget the parents who gave them. Some are adorned by prosperity as mountains are adorned with rich forests. Others stand forth with the bareness, but also with the grandeur and enduring strength, of Alpine mountains. Character is like every other structure—nothing tests it like extremes.
When friendship and love have enriched man, and deepened all the secret springs of his being, when grief hath refined and suffering mellowed him, then God sends the ideals to stimulate men to new achievements. An ideal is a pattern or plan held up before the man's eye for imitation, realization and guidance. In the heart's innermost temple of silence, whither neither friend nor enemy may ever come, there the soul unveils its secret ideal. The pattern there erected at once proclaims what man is and prophesies what he shall be. In old age men think what they are, but in youth, what we think, we come to be. Therefore must the pattern held up before the mind's eye be of the highest and purest. The legend tells us of the master's apprentice, who, from the small bits of glass that had been thrown away constructed a window of surpassing loveliness. The ideal held up before the boy's mind organized and brought together these broken bits, and wrought them into lines of perfect beauty.
Thus by his inner aspirations, man lives and builds. The inner eye reveals to the toiler a better tool or law or reform, and the realization of these visions gives social progress. The vision of conscience reveals new possibilities of character, and these give duty. The vision of the heart reveals new possibilities of friendship, and these give the home. As the sun standing upon the horizon orbs itself, first in each dewdrop, and afterward lifts the whole earth forward, so the ideal repeats itself, first in the individual heart, and afterward lifts all society forward. Thus unto man slowly building up his character comes the supreme ideal, when Jesus Christ stands forth fully revealed in His splendor. He is no empty abstraction, no bloodless theory, but bone of our bone, brother of our own body and breath, yet marred by no weakness, scarred by no sin, tossing back temptations as some Gibraltar tosses back the sea's billows and the bits of drift-wood. Strong, He subdued His strength in the day of battle, and bore Himself like iron. Yet He was so gentle that His white hand felt the fall of the rose leaf, while He inflected His gianthood to the needs of the little child. Nor could He be holden of the bands of death, for He clove a pathway through the grave, and made death's night to shine like the day. "I have but one passion," said Tholuck. "It is He! it is He!" As Shakespeare first reveals to the young poet his real riches of imagination, as Raphael first unveils to the young artist the possibilities of color, so man knows not his infinite capabilities until Jesus Christ stands forth in all His untroubled splendor. Having Him, man has not only his Teacher and Saviour, but also his Master and Model, fulfilling all the needs of the highest manhood and the noblest character.
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