It is not always the greatest talents that are adapted to the greatest things. It is very significant that Isaiah says, “Who is blind, saith the Lord, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I send?” In the same manner Christ often says that, to be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven, one needs a childlike nature which the unwise are closer to than the wise. And the same thing was shown during the Reformation in the case of many who were the wisest of their time, but could not decide to surrender a certain “cultured” attitude of open-mindedness and impartiality toward questions of which the learned know, of course, that one can, in any event, “look at it from another point of view.” This is yet to-day the narrow defile which very many of the cultured shun to whom Christianity would be quite right, if it only fitted in a little more with the demands of the time, if it only would give up something of its uncompromising attitude in regard to ethics, and something of its absolute demand for faith in respect to things that are transcendental and not to be proved. Christ himself would undoubtedly in his day have been able to conceive his calling in another way than he did. The story of the temptation was an event such as, once in his life, has happened to every highly gifted man, and for which he could assign place and date. Happy if he then struck the right road and no longer let himself be misled because the whole world was against him. Again and again it has finally been obliged to yield, this “whole world,” before a single soul; and we often experience yet to-day, in the smallest as in the greatest questions, the truth of the bold saying, “Who firmly holds to his mind, will fashion the world to himself.” There is therefore always a place and a need in the world for this kind of people, and in this fact they find their modest portion. They have their difficulties, to be sure; but to be without them is neither necessary nor good for them. Finally, that is a very true word a wise man once spoke, though from an opposite point of view, “In the struggle for existence there is always room above.” Only the lower and middle places are overfilled. Therefore, you who are young or are dissatisfied with your search thus far for happiness, strike at once for the highest goal. In the first place, that is the surest and best way because it is God’s will and because he expressly calls you to it. In the second place, it is, of all goals, the one that most brings peace, while all the others bring many disillusionments and bitternesses in their train. And lastly, it is the only one where the race with those contending for the same prize of victory is one with friends and helpers, and where you will not be received at the goal by enviers and secret opponents, but by sincere friends and men of the same high intent--just noble souls, with whom alone it is easy and good to live. VI. TRANSCENDENTAL HOPE VI. TRANSCENDENTAL HOPE