onward to the land of promise; whether we
are to be overwhelmed by the material world which we have so
marvelously transformed, or with the aid of the secrets we have
learned, are to rise Godward to a purer and fairer life of knowledge,
justice, and love.

Is the material progress of the nineteenth century a cradle or a grave?
Are we to continue to dig and delve and peer into matter until God and
the soul fade from our view and we become like the things we work in? To
put such questions to the multitude were idle. There is here no affair
of votes and majorities. Human nature has not changed, and now, as in
the past, crowds follow leaders. What the best minds and the most
energetic characters believe and teach and put in practice, the millions
will come to accept. The doubt is whether the leaders will be
worthy,--the real permanent leaders, for the noisy apparent leaders can
never be so. And here we touch the core of the problem which Americans
have to solve. No other people has such numbers who are ready to thrust
themselves forward as leaders, no other has so few who are really able
to lead. In mitigation of this fact, it may be said with truth, that
nowhere else is it so difficult to lead; for nowhere else does force
rule so little. Every one has opinions; the whole nation is awakened;
thousands are able to discuss any subject with plausibility; and to be
simply keen-witted and versatile is to be of the crowd. We need men
whose intellectual view embraces the history of the race, who are
familiar with all literature, who have studied all social movements, who
are acquainted with the development of philosophic thought, who are not
blinded by physical miracles and industrial wonders, but know how to
appreciate all truth, all beauty, all goodness. And to this wide culture
they must join the earnestness, the confidence, the charity, and the
purity of motive which Christian faith inspires. We need scholars who
are saints, and saints who are scholars. We need men of genius who live
for God and their country; men of action who seek for light in the
company of those who know; men of religion who understand that God
reveals himself in science, and works in Nature as in the soul of man,
for the good of those who love him. Let us know the right moment, and
let us know that it comes for those alone who are prepared.

CHAPTER II.

EXERCISE OF MIND.

O heavens! how awful is the might of souls
And what they do