Newell Dwight Hillis

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Of all the wonderful things God hath made, man the wonderer is himself the most wonderful. No casket owned by a king, filled with gems and sparkling jewels, ever held such treasure as God hath put into this casket of bones and sinew. The imagination cannot paint in colors too rich this being, who is a miniature edition of infinity. It is not fiction, but fact, to say that reason is a loom; only where Jacquard's mechanism weaves a few yards of silk and satin, reason weaves conversation, sympathy, songs, poems, eloquence—textures all immortal. And memory is a gallery ”

“ If it were possible for each young student to sit down and speak with the library and laboratory as with a familiar friend, we would hear wisdom's voice uttering one report: "I love them that love me." None of those forms of mental wealth called art or science or literature, enters the mind unasked or stays unurged. All the shelves are heavy with mental treasure, but only the eager mind may harvest it. Beauty sleeps in all the quarries, but only the eager chisel wakens it. Wealth is in every crack and crevice of the soil, but nature forbids the sluggard to mine it. ”

“ Before our admiring vision the Divine Teacher seems like some sacred husbandman, His garden our earth, good men and great earth's richest fruit. He asks each youth to love and make the most of himself, that later on he may be bread to the hungry, medicine to the wounded, shelter to the weak. He bids each love his own reason, getting wisdom with that eager passion that Hugh Miller had for knowledge. He bids each make the most of friendship, emulating Plato in his love for his noble teacher. He asks each to love industry, emulating Peabody, whose generosity gushed like rivers. ”

“ And here is the orator rising to plead the cause of the savage, and of the slave, before men who feel no sympathy, and are as castles locked and barred. But the love for the poor shines in Wendell Phillips' eyes, trembles in his voice, pleads in his thinking, until the multitude become all plastic to his thought, and his smile becomes their smile, his tear their tear, the throb of his heart the throb of the whole assembly. Here is the Scottish girl, in love with truth, standing midst the sea, within the clutches of the incoming tide. She is bound down midst the rising waters. ”

“ Books also preserve for us the spirit of earth's great ones, just as the cellar of the king holds wines growing more precious with the lapse of years. From time to time God sends to earth some man with a supreme gift called genius. Passing through our life and world, he sees wondrous sights not beholden of our eyes, hears melodies too fine for our dulled hearing. What other men behold as bits of coal, his genius transmutes into diamonds. In the darkness he sleeps to see some "Midsummer Night's Dream;" in the day he wakens to behold the tragedy or comedy in his friend's career. ”

“ 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! ”

“ This newness is a perpetual stimulant to curiosity and study. Gladstone's recipe for never growing old is, "Search out some topic in nature or life in which you have never hitherto been interested, and experience its fascinations." For some, once a picture or book has been seen, the pleasure ceases. Delight dies with familiarity. Such persons look back to the days of childhood as to the days of wonder and happiness. But the man of real vision ever beholds each rock, each herb and flower with the big eyes of children, and with a mind of perpetual wonder. ”

“ These weighty words bid all remember that life's one task is the making of manhood. Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man. The forces that increase happiness are many, including money, friends, position; but one thing alone is indispensable to success—personal worth and manhood. He who stands forth clothed with real weight of goodness can neither be feeble in life, nor forgotten in death. Society admires its scholar, but society reveres and loves its hero whose intellect is clothed with goodness. ”

“ Thus discerning the noble qualities in mother or patriot, in hero or friend, we trace their beautiful qualities back to God, from whom all noble souls borrow their excellence. In the largest sense all the elements of power in sea and sky and sun, all the beauty of the fields and forests, of summers and winters, are letters in nature's alphabet for spelling out the name of God. As a diamond has many facets, and every one reflects the sun, so the universe itself is a gem whose every facet reflects the mind and genius of God. ”

“ Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safely through forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong, pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is his compass. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but the voyager yet may be saved if only the compass is kept. In time of danger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his hand or foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friends and outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It is the soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For strengthening the body the shepherd leads forth his flocks and herds, and for its raiment the weaver makes the looms and spindles fly. For the body all the trains go speeding in and out, bringing fruits from the sunny south, and furs from the frozen north. All the lower virtues and integrities spring from its desires. As an engine, lying loose in a great ship, would have no value, but, fastened down with bolts, drives the great hull through the water, so the body fastens and bolts the spirit to field, forest, and city, and makes it useful and productive. ”

“ Watkinson has beautifully said that "humility is never so lovely as when arrayed in scarlet; moderation is never so impressive as when it sits at banquets; simplicity is never so delightful as when it dwells amidst magnificence; purity is never so divine as when its unsullied robes are worn in a king's palace; gentleness is never so touching as when it exists in the powerful. When men combine gold and goodness, greatness and godliness, genius and graces, human nature is at its best." On the other hand, adversity is a supplement, making up what prosperity lacks. ”

“ So for the great jurist imagination reached up even into the heavenly armory and plucked such weapons as the hero needed.
Our intellectual tread will be firmer if we define the imagination and consider its uses. The soul is a city; and the external senses are gateways through which sweep all the caravans of truth and beauty. Through the eye gate pass all faces, cities and landscapes. Through the ear gate pass all sweet sounds. But when the facts of land and sea and sky have reported themselves to the soul, reason sweeps these intellectual harvests into the granary of memory for future sowing. ”

“ Life is won or lost by its master thoughts. As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood. It was said of John Keats that his face was the face of one who had seen a vision. So long had his inner eye been fixed upon beauty, so long had he loved that vision splendid, so long had he lived with it, that not only did his soul take on the loveliness of what he contemplated, but the very lines of the poet's face were chiseled into beauty by those sculptors called thoughts and ideals. ”

“ For I know of none who hath been faithful in his much after the fashion of the pauper woman's fidelity with her little."
For intellect weighs light as punk against the gold of character. Should God give us to choose between goodness and genius, we may well say, "Give genius to Lucifer, let mine be the better part." Intellect is cold as the ice-palace in Quebec. Heart-broken and weary-worn by life's battle, men draw near to some great-hearted men, as pilgrims crowd close to the winter's fire. Men neither draw their chairs close around a block of ice, nor about a brilliant intellect. ”

“ Daily he is here to stir the mind with holy ambitions; to wing the heart with noble aspirations; to inspire with an all-conquering courage; to vitalize the whole manhood. By making the individual rich within he creates value without. For all things are first thoughts. Tools, fabrics, ships, houses, books are first ideas, afterward crystallized into outer form. A great picture is a beautiful conception rushing into visible expression upon the canvas. Wake up taste in a man and he beautifies his home. Wake up conscience and he drives iniquities out of his heart. ”

“ He believed that every great man was possessed of a great memory in his own department. He was the great artist whose mind searched out and whose memory retained the beauty of each sweet child, the loveliness of each maiden and mother. He was the great scientist who remembered all the facts, forgot no exception, and grouped all under laws. The great orator was he whose memory stood ready to furnish all truths gleaned from books and conversation, from travel and experience—weapons these with which the orator faces his hearers in a noble cause, controls and conquers them. ”

“ His great soul overhung his friends as the harvests overarch the fields, "filling the flowers with heat by day, and cooling them with dews by night." His friendship is like a mother's, a lover's, a friend's, but larger than either, and deeper than all. The rising of a star, that glows and sparkles with ten thousand effects, can alone be compared to this Son of Man, who flamed forth upon his friends such majesty of beauty, such royalty of kindling influences. ”