With all this comes that feeling of dedication to the highest purposes
which is the essential feature of religion. Religion should be known by
its tolerance, its broadmindedness, its faith in God and humanity, its
recognition of the duty of action.
And action should be understood in a large way, the taking of one's part
in affairs worth doing, not mere activity, nor fussiness, nor movement
for movement's sake, like that of "ants on whom pepper is sprinkled." As
the lesser enthusiasms fade and fail, one should take a stronger hold on
the higher ones. "Grizzling hair the brain doth clear" and one sees in
better perspective the things that need doing. It is thus possible to
grow old as a "grand old man," a phrase invented for Gladstone, but
which fits just as well our own Mark Twain. Grand old men are those who
have been grand young men, and carry still a young heart beneath old
shoulders. There are plenty of such in our country to-day, though the
average man begins to give up the struggle for the higher life at forty.
President White, President Eliot, President Angell,--few men have left
so deep an impression on the Twentieth Century. Edward Everett Hale, the
teacher who has shown us what it is to have a country. Senator Hoar,
Professor Agassiz, Professor Le Conte, Professor Shaler,--all these,
whatever the weight of years, remained young men to the last. When
Agassiz died, the Harvard students "laid a wreath of laurel on his bier
and their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had been a student all his
life long, and when he died he was younger than any of them." Jefferson
was in the seventies when he turned back to his early ambition, the
foundation of the University of Virginia. The mother of Stanford
University was older than Jefferson before she laid down the great work
of her life as completed. When the heart is full, it shows itself in
action as well as in speech. When the heart is empty, then life is no
longer worth while. The days pass and there is no pleasure in them. Let
us then fill our souls with noble ideals of knowledge, of art, of
action. "Let us lay up a stock of enthusiasms in our youth, lest we
reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose many of
them by the way."
We hear much in these days of the wickedness of power, of the evil
behavior of men in high places, of men in low places, and men whom the
people have been perforce obliged to trust. This is no new thing, though
the struggle against it, the combination of the forces of reform and
blackmail, of dreamers and highwaymen, is offering some new phases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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