Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
Yet there is a marked difference between this quality and that of
self-conceit. When Carlyle said of the grammarian who criticised his
grammar, "Why, mon, I'd have ye ken that I mak' language for such men as
ye to mak' their grammar books from," he stated a fact. He was
self-reliant, but not conceited. So with Ruskin, when, in response to my
question as to what literature I should read to cultivate a pure style
of English, after commenting on the worth of several masters, concluded
somewhat as follows: "And there are those who say you should read what I
have written, and I agree with them, for I believe I have written more
carefully than most men." That was critical self-judgment, not
self-conceit. Still we are all more or less familiar with the conceit of
ignorance, the assumption of men and women who do not know the mere
alphabet of the subjects they profess to be experts on. Recently, on our
sleeping car, when a few people got together to sing, one of the
passengers, with a self-conceit that was as ludicrous as it was
ignorant, spoke of the baritone voice of one of the women and discoursed
learnedly upon the bass of the man who was singing tenor.
We have a writer in California who knows so well that he knows, that
some of us think he knows "by the grace of God," without study or
effort. His whole radiancy is one of cocksure self-conceit.
Who has not felt the radiancy of the miserliness of some men and women!
Those who would "squeeze the eagle on a penny until the poor bird
screams."
In his _Tom Brown at Rugby_, Hughes shows that Arnold always radiated
his full appreciation of all the good in all the boys under his care.
Maud Ballington Booth is a wonderful illustration of training to
perceive the good radiancies in men and women in whom most others can
see and feel only evil.
Is not this a quality of soul to be highly desired? How beautiful, how
helpful, how comforting to others long used to feeling that only the
evil of them is radiated to others, to feel the sympathy of a
large-hearted, pure, beautiful soul which has responded to the weak
radiancies of the good that struggles for life within.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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