So only can we serve God, so only can we love him. To be content with ignorance is infidelity to his infinite truth. To rest in a lesser 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.