This last, of course, is very little. Even that little I use doubtfully,
timidly, tremblingly. That is the utmost reach to which present
race-development and personal development have brought me. With regard
to the opportunities all round me I am as if I stood beside an airship
in which I could fly if I knew how to work its engines, which I do not.
Other conveniences besides airships would be of no good at all to me if
someone more skilful than I didn't come to my aid. There is probably no
person living of whom the same is not true. Large portions of
omnipotence are placed within hands which are too busy grasping other
things to seize all that they could hold.
I remember the encouragement it was to me when I understood that to hold
anything at all was so much to the good as a starting-point. I had been
in the habit of dwelling on the much I had missed rather than on the
little I had apprehended. But the little I had apprehended was, after
all, my real possession, and one I could increase. It is like the few
dollars a man has in a savings bank. That at least is his,
notwithstanding the millions he might have possessed if he had only
known how to acquire them. There are many instances of a few dollars in
the savings bank becoming the seedling of millions before the span of a
man's life is passed.
To be glad of what we can do while knowing it is only a portion of what
will one day be done is to me a helpful point of view. "There may be
truth in all this," is the observation of a young lady who has scanned
what I have written, "and yet I don't believe that we shall ever conquer
fear." That, it seems to me, is to tie chains and iron weights about
one's feet when starting on a race. If we are to keep in the race at
all, to say nothing of winning it, the spirit must be free. One must add
the courage which springs from a partial knowledge of the truth to the
patience one gets from the understanding that as yet our knowledge of
the truth is but partial.
XI
I often think that if the churches could come to this last admission it
would be a help to themselves and to all of us. As already hinted I am
anxious to keep away from the subject of churches through a natural
dread of bitterness; but this much I feel at liberty to say, saying it
as I do in deep respect for the bodies which have kept alive the glimmer
of Divine Light in a world which would have blown it out. In a
partially developed race the churches can have no more than a partially
developed grasp of truth. A partially developed grasp of truth is
much--it is pricelessly much--but it is not a knowledge of the whole
truth. Not being a knowledge of the whole truth it should be humble,
tolerant, and eager to expand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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