Newell Dwight Hillis

“ He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks. He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching, if only he may get gain. He will sweat and swelter and burn in the tropics until malaria has made his face as yellow as gold, if thereby he can fill his purse, and for a like end he will shiver and ache in the arctics. He will deny his ear music, he will deny his mind culture, he will deny his heart friendship that he may coin concerts and social delights into cash. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shall the industrial or political giant say: "Here is the power in my hand; weakness owes me a debt? Build a mound here for me to be throned upon. Come, weave tapestries for my feet that I may tread in silk and purple; dance before me that I may be glad, and sing sweetly to me that I may slumber. So shall I live in joy and die in honor." Rather than such an honorable death, it were better that the day perish wherein such strength was born. Rather let the great mind become also the great heart, and stretch out his scepter over the heads of the common people that stoop to its waving. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In every age the critics that have refused honor to its worthies, living, have heaped gifts high upon the graves of its dead.
That generation and individual must be far from perfect that is characterized by the presence of harshness and the absence of gentleness. With a great blare of trumpets our century has been praised for its ingenuity, its wealth and comforts, its instruments, refinement and culture. But history tells of no man who has carried his genius up to such supreme excellence that society has forgotten his vice or forgiven the faults that marred his rare gifts. ”

“ A thousand times hath she encouraged heroism in poet and parent. Ten thousand times hath she been an inspiration to reformers and martyrs! Love and fidelity have embalmed her deed and lent her immortality. In the very center of the world's civilization stands her monument. For her Arc de Triomphe has been built in the human heart. Her monument does not appeal to the eye; it is not carved in stone; yet it is more permanent than gold, and her fame outshines all flashing jewels. While love and admiration endure the story of her humble fidelity shall abide indestructible! ”

“ The intellect lent a shining luster to the era of Augustus, but because it was intellect only it was gilt and not gold. Had the heart re-enforced the intellect with sympathy and justice the age of Augustus might have been an era golden, indeed, and also perpetual.
Great men capitalize the impotency of unsupported intellect. Ten-talent men have often known more than they would do. The children of genius have not always lived up to their moral light. Burns' mind ran swiftly forward, but his will followed afar off. If the poet's forehead was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ If the dungeon has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.
In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great God, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill every law ”

“ 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. ”

“ The world is a great beaker brimmed with wine of the gods. The truth and beauty of field and forest and river give a pleasure that is exquisite to a keenly sensitive and perfectly healthy youth. Like an Aeolian harp, the slightest breath avails for wakening melody midst its strings. But years multiply cares. Age increases heaviness. Time destroys its own children. The poet says: "In youth we carry the world like Atlas; in maturity we stoop and bend beneath it; in age it crushes us to the ground." For the overtaxed and invalided, the dew-drops do not sparkle as diamonds ”

“ In luminous hours men behold visions of ideal perfection hanging like stars in a midnight sky. Unfortunately for many, these visions burst like bubbles and soon pass away. Artists and sculptors look forward to an hour when, by a touch here and a touch there, the statue shall be perfected and the portrait completed; so Christ pointed forward to an hour when, having been wrought upon by darkness and by light, by defeat and by victory, by sorrow and by joy, at last wisdom shall be made perfect, judgment know no error, love have full disclosure and the soul enter into unhindered perfection. ”

“ Big with destiny, he is saved by hope. Not to-day and not yesterday can suffice. The present offers only standing room—four-and-twenty hours. Memory is a bin banked with snowdrifts, not the waving harvest-fields. Man's life is all in front of him. His large endowment asks for an extended period of time, asks seventy years for skill toward his body; asks an immortal destiny for mind and heart. He is saved by hope and futurity.
Consider the scope and functions of hope and aspiration. Man is governed from above and within; while rocks, birds, beasts are governed from below and without. ”

“ How strategic that epoch called the fourth century! He who sat in Caesar's palace looked out upon a dying empire. The old race was worn out with war and wine and wealth and luxury. Civilization seemed about to perish, and society was fast sinking back into barbarism. To the north of the Alps were the forest children, ruddy and robust, with their glorious youth full upon them. These young giants needed the dying language and literature and religion, and these great institutions needed their young, fresh blood. But between lay the granite walls builded from sea to sea. ”

“ Yet when on these high days, through song or story the poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the assembled multitude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. ”

“ For life is made up not of joys few and intense, but of joys many and gentle. Great happiness is the sum of many small drops. God makes the days that are channels of mighty and tumultuous joys to be few and far between. For highly spiced joys exhaust. All who seek intense pleasure will find not enjoyment but yearnings for enjoyment. Happiness is in simple things; a cup of cold water, health and a perfect day; dreamless sleep, honest toil, the esteem of the worthy, the caresses of little children, a love that waxes with the increasing years. ”

“ Harshness in the poet and pride in the orator make their refinement and culture seem but skin deep.
We note that Pompeii was a paradise built beside a crater. The traveler tells us if we strike the rocky earth it rings hollow. Close by the calm lake is a boiling spring. In the very heart of the orange groves rises a column of smoke and steam. "The mist of lava jars on the music of summer, the scent of sulphur mingles with the scent of roses." Not for a moment can the traveler forget that beneath all this opulence of color and fragrance rages a colossal furnace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It can rest and trust and hope. And all we upon this great earth-ship have been caught, not in a storm, but in the gulf stream of God's providence. The warm tropic currents sweep us on to the heavenly harbor. The trade winds above aid the forward flight. More than all else is the larger planetary movement that sweeps gulf stream, winds and ship onward towards the infinite. Soon shall we enter into quiet waters and cast out our anchor.
Looking forward, let us hope and cleanse all fear out of life—trust God, love him and rejoice. Even our largest problems need not dispirit us. ”

“ As a lump of clay is lifted to the wheel by the potter's hand, and under gentle pressure takes on the lines of a beautiful cup or vase, so man sets forth a mere mass of mind; soon, under the gentle touch of love, hope, ambition, he stands forth in the aspect of a Cromwell, a Milton or a Lincoln.
Standing at the center of the universe, a thousand forces come rushing in to report themselves to the sensitive soul-center. There is a nerve in man that runs out to every room and realm in the universe. Only a tithe of the world's truth and beauty finds access to the lion or lark ”