Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 15
General
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 15
Literature -- Collections
The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he knows
naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also the future
and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the future, and hope
is born. He learns that all human life is one life; that all human
joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows, and through participation
enters the present heaven--the heaven of love. He turns his mind
towards the past, and out of retrospection wrests a vigorous faith.
What soul could fail to conquer an invincible trust in the pure, the
good, the holy, the ideally human, the truly Divine, if it would look
with single eye into its own past, into the past of history? Could
there be a man in whose soul such a contemplation of the past would
fail to blossom into devout insight, into self-conscious and
self-comprehending faith? Must not such a retrospect unveil the truth?
Must not the beauty of the unveiled truth allure him to Divine doing,
Divine living? All that is high and holy in human life meets in that
faith which is born of the unveiling of a heaven that has always been;
in that hope born of a vision of the heaven that shall be; in that
love which creates a heaven in the eternal Now. These three heavens
shine out upon you through your child's eye. The presentiment that he
carries these three heavens within him transfigures your countenance
as you gaze upon him. Cherish this premonition, for thereby you will
help him to make his life a musical chord wherein are blended the
three notes of faith, hope, and love. These celestial virtues will
link his life with the Divine life through which all life is one--with
the God who is the supernal fountain of life, light, and love....
Higher and more important than the cultivation of man's outer ear, is
the culture of that inner sense of harmony whereby the soul learns to
perceive sweet accord in soundless things, and to discern within
itself harmonies and discords. The importance of wakening the inner
ear to this music of the soul can scarcely be exaggerated. Learning to
hear it within, the child will strive to give it outer form and
expression; and even if in such effort he is only partially
successful, he will gain thereby the power to appreciate the more
successful effort of others. Thus enriching his own life by the life
of others, he solves the problem of development. How else were it
possible within the quickly fleeting hours of mortal life to develop
our being in all directions, to fathom its depths, scale its heights,
measure its boundaries? What we are, what we would be, we must learn
to recognize in the mirror of all other lives. By the effort of each,
and the recognition of all, the Divine man is revealed in humanity....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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