of truth and beauty can exalt, visions of vice can debase and degrade.
In that picture where Faust and Satan battle together for the
scholar's soul, the angels share in the conflict. Plucking the roses
of Paradise, they fling them over the battlements down upon the heads
of the combatants. When the roses fall on Faust they heal his wounds;
when they fall on Satan they turn into coals of fire. Thus the
imagination casts inspirations down upon the pure, but smites the evil
into the abyss. The miseries of men of genius like Burns are perpetual
warnings to youth against the riotings of imagination. There are
poems, also novels and lurid scenes in the city, hanging pictures
before the imagination and scorching the soul like flames of fire. For
as of old so now, what a man imagineth in his heart that he is. For
not what a man does outwardly, but what he dreams inwardly, determines
his character.

Most men are better than we think, but some men are worse. As steam in
the boiler makes itself known by hisses, so the evil imaginings heave
and strain, seeking escape. Many forbear vice and crime through fear;
their conscience is cowardice; if they dared they would riot through
life like the beasts of the field; if all their inner imaginings were
to take an outward expression in deeds, they would be scourges,
plagues and pests. In the silence of the soul they commit every vice.
But they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; the revealing day
will come when the films of life shall be withdrawn, and the
character shall appear faithful as a portrait, and then all the
meanness and sliminess shall be seen to have given something to the
soul's picture. Oh, be warned against these dreams, all ye young
hearts! The indulgence of the imagination is like the sultriness of a
summer's day; what began so fair ends with sharp lightnings and
thunder. How terrible is this word to evil-doers! "As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he."

It is also given to this vision faculty to redeem men out of
oppression and misfortune, and through its intimations of royalty to
lend victory and peace. Oft the days are full of storms and
turbulence; oft events grow bad as heart can wish; full oft the next
step promises the precipice. There are periods in every career when
troubles are so strangely increased that the world seems like an orb
let loose to wander widely through space. In these dark hours some
endure their pain and trouble through dogged, stoical