Newell Dwight Hillis

“ From beautiful objects men are passing to beautiful thoughts and deeds. We begin to hear much of the art of right living and the science of character building. Having lent charm and value to column and canvas, to marble and masterpiece, beauty now moves on to lend loveliness to mind and heart. For it seems an incongruous thing for man to adorn his cottage, lend charm to its walls and windows, make its ceilings to be like the floor of heaven for beauty, while within his heart he cherishes groveling littleness, slimy sin, light-winged evasions, brutal passions. ”

“ When the first warm days of May come to a land chilled through with the frosts of winter, all pastures and meadows, all vineyards and orchards, even the desert and the mountain rift awake to a new bloom and beauty. The revival of learning which culminated in that golden age known as the Renaissance was ushered in by the poet Dante, with his love for Beatrice and his immortal poem called the Divine Comedy. Dante has been likened unto that angel who descended from Heaven and, standing with one foot on the sea and one on the land, lifted the trumpet to his lips, and wakened the whole world. ”

“ The social vines that shelter us, the civic bough whose clusters feed us, all spring out of ancient graves. The red currents of sacrifice and the tides of the heart have nourished these social growths and made their blossoms crimson and brilliant. Nor could these treasures have been gained otherwise. Nature grants no free favors. Every wise law, institution and custom must be paid for with corresponding treasure. Thought itself takes toll from the brain. To be loved is good, indeed; but love must be paid for with toil, endurance, sacrifice—fuel that feeds love's flame. ”

“ Fortune is made or marred when the youth selects his companions. Friendship has ever been the master-passion ruling the forum, the court, the camp. The power of love is God-breathed, and life has nothing like love for majesty and beauty. Civilization itself is more of the heart than of the mind. As an eagle cannot rise with one wing, so the soul ascends borne up equally by reason and affection. Plato found the measure of greatness in a man's capacity for exalted friendship. All the great ones of history stand forth as unique in some master passion as in their intellectual supremacy. ”

“ In these dark hours the heart speaks. In the poet's vision, to blind Homer, falling into the bog, torn by the thorns and thickets and lost in the forest and the night, came the young goddess, the daughter of Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the upward path. For even in its dreams the heart hears the sound of invisible music. Oft before reason's eye the heart unveils the Vision Splendid. The soul is big with immortality. ”

“ But once the lightning has passed the darkness is thicker than before. And to men come luminous hours, rebuking the common life. Then does the soul revolt from any evil thought and thing and long for all that is God-like in character, for honor and purity, for valor and courage, for fidelity to the finer convictions deep hidden in the soul's secret recesses. What heroes are these—in the vision hour! With what fortitude do these soldiers bear up under blows—when the battle is still in the future! But once the conflict comes, their courage goes! ”

“ And now the Republic was to be destroyed, the Constitution torn into shreds and stamped under foot, the Declaration of Independence made a thing of jibes and scorn in the palaces of Madrid and Constantinople, while slavery, with black fingers, was to knit its claws into the throat of the angel of liberty and choke the life out. Suddenly men saw that the only way to insure liberty for the white race was to destroy slavery for the black races. Men determined that the majority had their rights, and that these rights should not be wrested away by the minority, fighting in the interests of slavery. ”

“ All that Athens had been to the age of Pericles, Florence was to be to the era of Savonarola. Neither time nor events have availed to lessen the hold of Florence upon the great men of earth. Because of her rich associations with genius and beauty, the greatest souls of the earth have often turned feet toward Florence, as the birds of paradise leave the desert to seek out the oasis with its fountain and flowers. ”

“ When the flames of persecution had swept by and, for a time, good men had respite, Apollos recalled with joy the heroism of those without the prison who remembered the bonds of those within. With leaping heart he called before his mind the vast multitudes in all ages who so fettered through life—men bound by poverty and hedged in by ignorance; men baffled and beaten in life's fierce battle, bearing burdens of want and wretchedness, and by the heroism of the past he urged all men everywhere to fulfill that law of sympathy that makes hard tasks easy and heavy burdens light. ”

“ In the long ago the star moving on before guided the wise men of the East to the manger where the young child lay; and still in man's night God hangs aspirations—stars for guiding men away from the slough of content to the hills of paradise. The soul hungers for something vast, and ideals lure to the long voyage, the distant harbor, and are the stars by which the pilgrim shapes his course.
Life's great teachers are friendship, occupation, travel, books, marriage, and chiefly heart-hungers. These yearnings within are the springs of all man's progress without. ”

“ What scant, feeble portraits of God some men have! What can an Eskimo, whose highest conception of summer is a stunted bush, know of tropical orchards, of luscious peach, pear and plum? If the student has seen only the broken fragments of Phidias, what can he know of the Parthenon as it once stood in the zenith of its perfection, in the splendor of its beauty? But if man's reason can cull out all the lustrous facts of nature and history, and if his imagination has strength and skill to bring them all together, then how beautiful will be the face and name of God! ”

“ Some misfortune, earthquake-like, cleaves through the hard crust. Or some gentle event, like the coming of an old friend or the returning to the old homestead, stirs old memories and kindles new thoughts.
Slowly the heart passes out of the penumbra. The mind, too long obscured like a sun eclipsed by clouds, searches out some rift. Suddenly reason comes into the clear. God rises like an untroubled sun upon the soul's horizon. How crystalline life looks! The mind literally exhales fancies and pictures, and each stick and stone is as full of suggestions and ideas as the forest is full of birds. ”

“ Calm majesty is in the face of Washington; pathetic patience and divine dignity in that of Lincoln; unyielding granite is in John Brown's face, though sympathy hath tempered hardness into softness; intellect is in Newton's; pure imagination is in Keats' and in Milton's; heroic substance is in the face of Cromwell and in that of Luther; pathetic sorrow is found in Dante's eyes; conscience and love shine in the face of Fénelon. Verily, the body is the soul's interpreter! ”

“ If in dull, obscure hours the soul was like a wooden beehive drifted o'er with snow, in its vision-hours the soul is like a glass hive out of which the bees go singing into sweet clover-fields. In these hours how unworthy the material life! How insubstantial the things of iron, wood and stone! Bodily things seem evanescent, as frost pictures on the window on a winter's morn. Then honor, integrity, kindness, generosity alone seem permanent and worth one's while. How easy then to do right. All habits that fettered the faculties like iron cuffs are now felt to be but ice fetters, quickly melting. ”

“ Then for the first time in history did disheveled ones so feel the beauty of goodness that an irresistible enthusiasm drew them about Him to kiss the very hem of His garment. All the excellencies of life, and more, unite in Him; the orator's persuasive speech; the artist's love of beauty; the scholar's passion for truth; the patriot's love of country. His also is more than the love of mother, lover, friend, for his is the love of Saviour. To-day He rises over each soul in such majesty of excellence as to include the excellencies of everything in heaven and everything on earth. ”

“ Memory is a granary holding seed for to-morrow's sowing; memory is an armory holding weapons for to-morrow's battles, memory is a medicine-chest with balms for to-morrow's hurts; memory is a library with wisdom for to-morrow's emergency. Yesterday holds the full store of to-day's civilization, contains our tools, conveniences, knowledges; contains our battlefields and victories; above all gives us Bethlehem and Calvary. But alone man's yesterday is impotent; his to-morrow insufficient. The true man binds all his days together with an earnest, intense, passionate purpose. ”

“ Daily each one comes under its rule and sway. The mind loves truth, and the body tempts man to break truth. The soul loves honor, and passion tempts it to deflect its pathway. Man goes forth in the morning with all the springs of generosity open; but before night selfishness has dammed up the hidden springs. In the morning man goes out with love irradiating his face; he comes back at night sullen and black with hatred and enmity. In the morning the soul is like a young soldier, parading in stainless white; at night his garments are begrimed and soiled with self-indulgence and sin. ”

“ And let each intellect soar without hindrance, and the heart pour itself out before God in a freshet of divine love. Great is the genius of Plato or Bacon, revealing itself in tides of thought, but greater and richer is the genius of the heart that is conscious of vast, deep fountains of love, that may be poured forth in generous tides before the God whose throne is mercy, whose face is light, whose name is love, whose strength is gentleness, whose considerateness is our pledge of pardon, peace and immortality. ”