ies 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 no