many years; for time and
intercourse with men and varied experience are indispensable elements.
It is like the ideal of religion which makes the saint think himself a
sinner; it is as exacting as the miser's thought which makes millions
seem to be beggary; like the artist's vision, like the poet's dream, it
allures and yet forbids hope of attainment. The seeker after wisdom
must have a high purpose, a strong soul, and the purest love of truth.
He cannot live in the senses alone, nor in the mind, nor in the heart
alone, but the spiritual being, which is himself, yearns for whatever is
good, whatever is true, whatever is fair, and so he finds himself akin
to the infinite God and to all that he has made. When his thought is
carried out to atoms weaving the garment which is our body, and molding
the world we see and touch; when he beholds motion lighting, warming,
thrilling the universe,--he is filled with intellectual joy, but at the
same time he perceives that all this is but a phase of truth; that God
and the boundless facts are infinitely more than drilled atomics
marshaled rank on rank until they form the countless hosts of the
heavens. When the men of science have labeled the elements, and put
tickets upon all natural compounds, and with complacency declare that
this is the whole truth, he looks on the flowers around him and the
blooming children, on the stars above his head, on the sun slow wheeling
down the western horizon, on the moon climbing some eastern hill, and
his inmost soul is glad because he feels the thrill of the infinite,
living Spirit, and forebodes to what fair countries we are bound.

And when they proclaim the wonders science has wrought,--increase of
physical enjoyment and social comfort; the yoking of lightning and steam
to make them work for man; the providing of more abundant food; the
building of more wholesome dwellings; the lengthening of life; temporal
benefits of every kind,--he joins with those who utter praise, but knows
that infinitely more than all this goes to the making of man's life. So
he turns his mind in many directions, and while he looks on the truth in
science, does not grow blind to the truth in religion; while he knows
the value of what is practically useful, understands also the priceless
worth of what is noble and beautiful, and his acquaintance with many
kinds of thought, with many shades of opinion confirms him, as Joubert
says, in the acceptance of the best.

CHAP