John M. Tyler

“ What a comedy that man should work so hard to prove that his chief glory is his opposable thumb, or a few ounces of brain matter! Man's glory is his mind and will, his reason and moral powers, his vision of, and communion with, God. And supposing it be true, as I believe it is true, that the animal has the germ of these also, does that cloud my mind or obscure my vision or weaken my action? It bids me only strive the harder to be worthy of the noble ancestors who have raised me to my higher level and on whose buried shoulders I stand. ”

“ Modern revolutions have been more and more uprisings of the people asserting the inalienable rights and privileges of their dignity as men. The trend of popular life and feeling has resembled the flow of a river or the incoming of the tide. It turns or winds as it meets obstacles in its path, but keeps in the main to a fairly clear course and direction. The people may not be against the government, they merely go their way regardless of it. ”

“ For in the dark hours others will lean on you to catch your hope and courage. To many a poor discouraged soul you must be "a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Every power and force in the universe of environment makes for the ultimate triumph of truth and right. Defeat is impossible. "One man with God on his side is the majority that carries the day. ”

“ Are there older and lower powers and modes of action, which, though once supreme, must now be rigidly kept down in their proper lower place? Are there lower motives, for which the very laws of evolution forbid us to live, just as truly as they forbid a man's living for stomach or brute strength instead of brain and mind? Are these lower powers merely the foundation on which the higher motives and powers are to rise in their transcendent glory? ”

“ If the aristocracy of wealth, learning, and culture can provide us no adequate system of ends and values in life, would it not be well for us to borrow temporarily a few from the people? Might we not to good advantage even go into partnership with them, cordially accepting their ends, and loyally and honestly attempting to find the means of attaining them? The result might be a solidarity of thought, feeling, action, and final attainment superior even to those of our Neolithic ancestors. ”

“ Thus prosperity and adversity, success and failure, continually test a man. If he can rise superior to these, can subjugate them and make them subserve his moral progress, he survives; if he is mastered by them, he perishes. Through these does natural selection mainly work to find and train great souls. They are the threads of the sieve of destiny.
In this struggle man must fight against overwhelming odds, and the cost of victory is dear. He must be prepared, like Socrates, to "bid farewell to those things which most men count honors, and look onward to the truth." ”

“ Is not much of our so-called Occidental progress really an orgy of wasted energy, neurotic excitement, half-camouflaged decadence, which will end in degeneration? We do not know yet. May there some day be a family rather than league of nations to which every one will contribute according to its special ability? If this be granted, will Huxley’s statement concerning the individual be applicable to races and peoples: “Its aim will be not so much the survival of the fittest as the fitting of as many as possible to survive”? ”

“ And the essence of heroism is self-forgetfulness. The last thought of William the Silent was not for himself, but for his "poor people." And those rugged Ironsides, "fighting with their hands and praying with their hearts," smote with light good-will and irresistibly, because they struck for truth and freedom, for right and God. These are motives of incalculable strength, and they transfigure a man and raise him above his surroundings and even himself. The man becomes heroic and godlike, and when possessed by these motives he has clasped hands with God. ”

“ Roman legions shall suffer defeat, rout, and extermination; and Roman power shall cease to terrify. All its might must decay. But "everyone that is of the truth" shall attach himself to me with a love which will brave rack and stake. All your power cannot give a grain of new life. I can and will infuse my own divine life, my own divine self, into men. And this new life is invincible, immortal, all-conquering. I have infused myself into a few fishermen, and they will infuse me into a host of other men. ”

“ And yet what a power there is in the appetite for truth and righteousness? In obedience to it man gives his body to be burned, or pours out his life-blood drop by drop for its attainment, and rejoices in the sacrifice. There are victims to appetite: there are only martyrs to truth. This soul hunger for truth and right, growing more intense as the soul is filled with the object of desire, is the only one capable of indefinite development and dominance of the will. This must be and is the mental goal of animal development, if man has a future corresponding in length at all to his past. ”

“ For heroism begets faith, just as surely as faith begets heroism.
"Where there is no vision the people perish." When the member of Congress can see nothing higher than spoils of office, nothing larger than a silver dollar, you should not criticise the poor man if his oratorical efforts do not move an audience like the sayings of Webster, Lincoln, or Phillips.
Future man will be heroic and divine, because he will live in an atmosphere of truth and right and God, and will be consciously inspired by these divine, omnipotent motives. ”

“ Primitive society was thus the best possible school of conscience; and the family and it are the great school of unselfishness. But society is even more and better than this. It is the medium through which thought, power, and moral and religious life can spring from man to man. This is its last and culminating advantage: it is that for which society really exists.
For, in the close bonds of family and social life, a new possibility of development has arisen based upon articulate speech. We might almost call it a new form of heredity, independent of all blood-relationship. ”

“ You will catch glimpses of the divinity of Nature. Most of us travel threescore years and ten stone-blind in a world of marvellous beauty. Why does the artist see so much more in every fence-corner and on every hill-side than we, set face to face with the grandest landscapes? ”

“ But preach "Christ and him crucified"—not merely dead two thousand years ago—but risen and alive for evermore, and with us to the end of the world, the grandest, most heroic, divinest helper who ever stood by a man, one all-powerful to help and who never forsakes, and every one of your hearers who is not dead to truth will catch the life, and go home alive and not alone. ”

“ And in the man of the future all these powers will be not only highly developed; they will be rightly proportioned and duly subordinated. He will be a well-balanced man. But how few complete men we now see.
We see the strong will without the clear intellect to guide it; the gush of feeling either directed toward low ends or evaporating in sentiment; the clear head with the cold heart. The high development of one mental power seems to draw away all strength and vitality from the rest. How rarely do we find the strong will guided by the keen intellect toward the highest aims clearly discerned. ”

“ Their power for good, and sometimes for evil, is inestimable. And the great advantage of social life, as a means of conforming to environment, is the medium which it furnishes to conduct the power of such men. Man's last effort toward conformity to environment, the struggle for existence in its last most real form, is the life and death grapple between good and evil. For here good and evil, righteousness and sin, come face to face in spiritual form; "we wrestle not with flesh and blood." Life is more than a game of chess or whist; it is a great battle; every man must, and does, take sides ”

“ This may be good, or even necessary, but it is not religion. "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble." We speak with pride, sometimes, of our puissant Christendom, so industrious, so intelligent, so moral, with its ubiquitous commerce, its adorning arts, its halls of learning, its happy firesides, and its noble charities. And yet what is our vaunted Christendom but a vast assemblage of believing but disobedient men? ”

“ You may answer that it is no injury that the promise is too large, the vision too grand, to be fulfilled in the span of a single life, but must become the heritage of a race. But what has been the history of Abraham's descendants? A death-grapple for existence, captivity, and dispersion. Their national existence has long been lost.
Was there ever a nation of grander promise than Greece or Rome? But Greece died of premature old [2] age, and Rome of rottenness begotten of sin. But each of them, you will say, left a priceless heritage to the immortal race. ”