From nature up to law, from law to love: This is the ascendant path in which we move, Impelled by God in ways that lighten still, Till all things meet in one eternal thrill. As the Universe revealed by the Copernican astronomy and the other natural sciences is infinitely more sublime and marvellous than such a world as the Israelites, the Greeks, or the Romans imagined, so they who see rightly in the luminous ether of modern intelligence understand better than the ancients that human life is not an ephemeral and superficial, but an immortal and central power, enrooted in God, and drawing its substance and sustenance from Him. The appeal to shame is a poor argument. The fact that men of great intellectual power and learning have held an opinion to be true does not make it so. New knowledge may have shown it to be false, or the general advance of the race may have changed the point of view. The presumption of the larger wisdom of the Ancients we cannot accept: for we, not they, are the true ancients. The purest and the holiest prayer men speak is this: "Thy will be done." They who utter it from the inmost soul, find peace, even as a fretful child sinks to rest upon the mother's bosom. In learning to love the will of God they come at last not merely to believe, but to feel that His will guides the Universe, and that all will be well. When an utterance comes forth from the depths of our spiritual being, men cannot but hearken. It is as though we should bring to exiles tidings of a long-lost home and country. To what a weight he stoops who addresses himself with fixed resolve to the life of thought! The burden indeed is heavy, but the pathway lies through pleasant fields where great souls move to and fro in freedom and at peace. And as he grows accustomed to his labor, the world widens, the heavens break open, the dead live again, and with them he rises into the high regions where the petty cares and passions of mortals do not reach. He who would educate himself must make use of his own powers. He must observe, think, examine, read, argue, ponder; he must learn when to hold judgment in suspense, and when to give the wings of the soul free sweep through the high and serene realms of truth and beauty. The farther we dwell from the crowd, with its current opinion, the better and truer shall we and our thoughts become. They who write for multitudinous readers rise with difficulty above the dignity of mountebanks. There is a radical defect in the character of whoever works in the spirit of a trifler, however blameless his conduct. The power to inspire faith in the seriousness and goodness of life is a sufficient test of the worth of a scheme of education.