love
is to deny the boundless charity which holds the heavens together and
makes them beautiful, which to every creature gives its fellow, which
for the young bird makes the nest, for the child the mother's breast,
and in the heart of man sows the seed of faith and hope and heavenly
pity.

Ceaseless growth toward God,--this is the ideal, this is the law of
human life, proposed and sanctioned alike by Religion, Philosophy, and
Poetry. _Dulcissima vita sentire in dies se fieri meliorem._

Upward to move along a Godward way,
Where love and knowledge still increase,
And clouds and darkness yield to growing day,
Is more than wealth or fame or peace.

No other blessing shall I ever ask.
This is the best that life can give;
This only is the soul's immortal task
For which 't is worth the pain to live.

It is man's chief blessedness that there lie in his nature infinite
possibilities of growth. The growth of animals comes quickly to an end,
and when they cease to grow they cease to be joyful; but man, whose
bodily development even is slow, is capable of rising to wider knowledge
and purer love through unending ages. Hence even when he is old,--if he
has lived for what is great and exalted,--his mind is clear, his heart
is tender, and his soul is glad. Only those races are noble, only those
individuals are worthy, who yield without reserve to the power of this
impulse to ceaseless progress. Behold how the race from which we have
sprung--the Aryan--breaks forth into ever new developments of strength
and beauty in Greece, in Italy, in France, in England, in Germany, in
America; creating literature, philosophy, science, art; receiving
Christian truth, and through its aid rising to diviner heights of
wisdom, power, freedom, love, and knowledge.

And so there are individuals--and they are born to teach and to
rule--for whom to live is to grow; who, forgetting what they have been,
and what they are, think ever only of becoming more and more. Their
education is never finished; their development is never complete; their
work is never done. From victories won they look to other battlefields;
from every height of knowledge they peer into the widening nescience;
from all achievements and possessions they turn away toward the
unapproachable Infinite, to whom they are drawn. Walking in the shadow
of the too great light of God, they are illumined, and they are
darkened. This makes Newton thi