And this is not wrong. Buddha bids us seek truth and morality without
hope. The sentimentalist would say, 'Work for the love of labour;' but
we hold that this is not inducement enough. Walk hard, because fatigue
ought to be a pleasure? No! walk to produce the fatigue, that you may be
able to know to the full extent the delightful flavour of rest. Work, be
it at painting or writing, that you may see the idea embodied and
perpetuated; if it be at bricklaying, that you may see the wall rise up,
layer by layer; help the needy and afflicted, that you may comfort them;
raise the fallen, that you may see them rise.
Be pure and charitable and as sinless as you can with the help of God,
that you may stand holy in that holy Light. Use your influence to make
those purer around you, that you may have only the incense of purity
surrounding you now and hereafter. Thus, to be virtuous after the creed
of Gautama is work such as Hercules worked at the stables of Augeas; to
be virtuous, as Jesus Christ taught, is to be inspired with the presence
of God all through earth's life and stand unsubdued at its close.
When Hannibal, and after him Napoleon, crossed the Alps, Italy lay to
their hand; the certain prospect of Italy, fertile and rich, aided them
in the removal of fearsome barriers, imparted to them the daring to
brave toppling crags, slipping ice-ridged streams, appalling heights,
quivering avalanches, swaying to and fro as they passed, swinging over
in their rear with that muffled soul-sickening thud which they knew
meant a snowy grave to those behind. Italy, the grape-hung, the
sun-laved, was before them on the other side, with its wealth and
power--nay, it was with them, in their hunger and bitter cold, as the
presence of God is with the devout every hour of his earth-life.
But when Bonaparte came within sight of Moscow, the vision of which had
supported him and his famished army all through those awful icy leagues,
and beheld in the light of those blazing domes the destruction of his
hopes, then, and only then, the full bitterness of that winter march
began.
So with the warrior prince-leader of Israel, when he stood up face to
face with God and cried out in the passionate strength of his
man-thirst, 'Let me go over and see the good land'--the land he had
worked and walked so long to see, for which he had given up all the pomp
of the Egyptian court, and, still greater sacrifice, the erudite society
of the sumptuous priesthood, to consort with a nation of spiritless,
ignorant, and discontented slaves.