Middle Way

“ There is no way save by entering the mediaeval depths, penetrating to the rationale of the Middle Ages, learning the doctrinale, or emotionale, of the modes in which they still present themselves so persuasively. ”

“ Those on the outside elbow their way to the middle. Those in the middle try to keep them out. The passers-by wonder what it's all about and stop to see. They in turn try to make their way to the middle. Many are disappointed and pass on. ”

“ But all great men come out of the middle classes. ”

“ These graces soon made him acceptable to that dreary and middle-class institution, the House of Commons, where entertainment of any sort is so rare and precious a thing. Thus it happened that before long he came to be considered as a rising man, one with a future. ”

“ Upon evidences such as these, the student of art during the Middle Ages, is enabled to form a positive opinion as to the precise age of any object, or the country whence it was derived, with as full confidence as if a date had been inscribed upon it: when characteristic ornament of a general kind may be insufficient for the purpose, he has recourse to some peculiarity of costume ”

“ The great questions of the age, social and religious, move towards their solution, partly on the road, through the influence of the wanderers, a direct influence from the sincere ones, indirect from the others. Begging friars go from door to door, pardoners grow rich, pilgrims live by alms and by the recital of their adventures, always on the way, always at work. What is this work? By constantly addressing the crowd, they in the end make themselves known for what they are, and cause their listeners to pass sentence upon them; by disabusing them they render reform inevitable. ”

“ This work will prove particularly serviceable to those who investigate the details of costume, which are constantly found to be the most valuable key to the chronological arrangement of works of art during the middle ages. ”

“ Look where we will, in or out and around us, we will find that it is the middle ground—neither poverty nor excessive riches, good wholesome use without license, a turning into the bye-ways along the main road where innocent and healthy God-sent and God-intended pleasures and enjoyments are to be found; but never getting far enough away to lose sight of the road itself. The middle ground it is that the wise man or woman plants foot upon. ”

“ And a multitude discover this light in their souls, and join the prophets and pathfinders! Everybody goes abroad looking for untrodden paths; from all directions comes the cry: Here and there, to the right, to the left, is the right way! ”

“ It was a fair exemplification of a tendency which is woven into the make of our being. Tell the average mortal that it is wrong to walk on the left side of the road, and in nine cases out of ten he will conclude that the proper thing must be to walk on the right side of the road; whereas in actual life, and in almost all opinions, moral, political, and religious, the proper thing is to walk neither on the left nor the right side, but somewhere about the middle. Say to the ship-master, You are to sail through a perilous strait; you will have the raging Scylla on one hand as you go. ”

“ We have found a truly Purgational Middle state, with its sense of succession, its mixture of joy and suffering, and its growth and fruitfulness, to be profoundly consonant with all our deepest spiritual experiences and requirements. ”

“ The sight of the cross-roads is in a true sense the sign of the cross. For it is the sign of a truly Christian thing; that sharp combination of liberty and limitation which we call choice. A man is entirely free to choose between right and left, or between right and wrong. As I looked for the last time at the pale roads under the load of cloud, I knew that our civilisation had indeed come to the cross-roads. ”

“ As usual, the middle course is the most rational as well as beneficial, and if it were in our power to stop the violent swayings of the social pendulum from one extreme to the other, we would gladly do our part in the work. ”

“ The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance, — as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite, — to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. ”

“ The heart's systole and diastole; alternations of day and night, of season and tide, are reflected in the history of our race. Progress is secured by the swing of a giant pendulum from East to West, the end of each beat ushering in drastic changes in religion, economics and social polity. ”

“ But, thus this pathway is lost through error, even as in the roads of the earth; for as from one city to another there is of necessity an excellent direct road, and often another which branches from that, the branch road goes into another part, and of many others some do not go all the way, and some go farther round; so in Human Life there are different roads, of which one is the truest, and another the most misleading, and some are less right, and some less wrong. ”

“ We point to two ways in life, and if the young man and maiden. Whose feet are lingering in soft green meadows and flowery paths, will consider these two ways soberly and earnestly, before moving onward, and choose the one that truth and reason tell them leads to honor, success and happiness, they have wisely chosen the "Royal Path of Life." ”

“ In paths which they saw not, who thought me prisoner, in the paths of Thy righteousness, in the paths of Thy commandments....For every path is a way, but not every way is a path. Why then are those ways called paths, save because they are narrow? Broad is the way of the wicked, narrow the way of the righteous. ”

“ How few are they who find their way to the Realization of their own Divinity? Narrow indeed is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth to the goal. The masses follow the broad path, like fools—but few even see the narrow entrance to The Path. ”

“ I was at the time much more interested in the politics of eternity than in the politics of my own country, and would not have missed an hour of my passionate meditation on the spirit to have witnessed the most dramatic spectacle in any of our national movements. In this meditation I was brought to a wooded valley beyond which was a mountain, and between heaven and earth over the valley was a vast figure aureoled with light, and it descended from that circle of light and assumed human shape, and stood before me and looked at me. ”

“ The man from "the low road," hugging the wall, advances timidly, with hesitating step, yet like one driven by a higher power. A stranger to fear, the man of "the middle road" advances with tranquil eye, securely bold, knowing that others have care for his safety. ”

“ In such case no person would turn either to the right hand or to the left, in consequence of the motives, the sayings, or the doings of this one or that one; but they would march straightforward in the path that leads to eternal life; and if others stepped out of the way, they would walk straight along. ”

“ I can be one little corner; there's all Middlefield beside. Isn't there work for you as a citizen and as a Christian in our little town? Suppose you go to Middlefield with the same motives that you would go on a mission to India, Africa, or the Isles of the Sea! ”

“ Our course, Gentlemen, is onward, straight onward, and forward. Let us not turn to the right hand, nor to the left. Our path is marked out for us, clear, plain, bright, distinctly defined, like the milky way across the heavens. ”

“ Side by side, my brother, we have studied modern history, meditating over those great catastrophes which are at once lessons to rulers and a warning to the people. Side by side, we have also thought over and formed a common judgment that every century ought to have, and actually has, its legitimate necessities and natural aspirations. ”

“ And the great mass of the Middle part of our community, the part which comes between those who labour with their hands, on the one side, and people of fortune on the other, is brought up at establishments of this kind, although there is a certain portion broken off at the top which is educated at better. But the great mass are both badly taught, and are also brought up on a lower plane than is right, brought up ignobly. And this deteriorates their standard of life, their civilization. ”

“ Now this great century, the last of the true Middle Ages, which as it drew to its own end gave birth to Modern Society, has a special character of its own, a character that gives it an abiding and enchanting interest. ”

“ Yet the thirteenth century does not only illustrate the crowning glories of the Middle Ages: it suggests new modes of thought that indicate that the Middle Ages themselves are passing away. The triumph of the Church bore 8with it the seeds of its own ruin, in the world of thought as well as in the world of action. ”

“ He went forth at once and wandered for four years up and down the Midland counties seeking for light, for truth, for firm ground in the quicksands of disintegrating faiths, for a common principle where men seemed to pull every way at once. ”

“ But the line of human progress is like a mountain road, veering and twisting, and often appearing to turn back upon itself, and having many by-roads, which lead us astray. If we know but a few miles of it we cannot tell whether it leads north or south or due west. ”

“ But my country, the Middle State, the Flowery Land, stands proudly alone, having survived, in one unbroken line, ever increasing in size and brilliancy, down to the present day. And in the future it will spread into a myriad branches, to be fused together in one furnace. Ah, beautiful is my country! ”

“ There is a path across the deep, - The King’s Way, the King’s Way! There’s a path across the deep, - A path the Island ships shall keep; A way by which to those we win, Whose hands we clasp, whose hearts are kin, England’s sons across the sea ”

“ While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being full of substance; you may call them the skin, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: they had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. ”

“ To this keen observer and lover of human nature, the many years of contact with this vivid, arduous East Side life—reinforced and interpreted by constant reading and thinking—brought an ever-increasing sense of social interrelation and interdependence. ”

“ The WAY has its beginning, progress, and termination; and the nearer we approach the consummation, the farther is the beginning behind us; it is only by leaving the one, that we can arrive at the other. You cannot get from the entrance to a distant place, without passing over the intermediate space, and, if the end be good, holy, and necessary, and the entrance also good, why should the necessary passage, the direct road leading from the one to the other, be evil? ”

“ And then there is a second road, the hard black road of difficulties that all men must travel. It begins at the place whence come the days of men, and it runs straight across the hoop of this world to the place where the sun goes down and all the days of men have gone and all their days shall go; far beyond is the other world, the world of spirit. ”

“ Descending from the best of ancestral stock, born and reared in what was known as the Great Middle West, in an atmosphere of national independence, a region of our country where we find the highest type of our American civilization, he grew to manhood under the most favored auspices. ”

“ If you wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going into universities and libraries, something also by the work that is doing on cathedrals and churches or in them, but quite as much by looking at the roads; for if there is any motion in society, the road, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate the fact. ”

“ Besides all this, it is worth while to note that the eighteenth century, particularly during the first half, was a time of depression in poetry and art and architecture, and that for a time it appeared to be at a standstill in all moral and religious progress. But there was, nevertheless, in almost every field of human activity a new spirit stirring which wrought an amazing change before the century came to an end. ”

“ In the litter of journalism and the chatter of politics, it is too much of a puzzle even to be a problem. For instance, a friend of mine described his book, _The Path to Rome_, as a journey through all Europe that the Faith had saved ”

“ Nothing is so invariably a characteristic of life here as its incessant change from place to place. People, goods, thoughts and things, are in a perpetual state of movement and interchange between State and State, between the North and the South, between the East and the West ”

“ And we understand by the Center in itself, with the aspiring Wrathfulness, with the wrathful Will to Nature, the dark World, and with the Egress out of itself to Manifestation, the outward World; and with the second Will out of the first, which enters again into the Liberty, we understand the Light World, or the Kingdom of Joy, or the true Deity. ”

“ The road is an arduous one. The aged philosopher, you remember, was asked by a youthful monarch, "Tell me if you please in a few words what is the final fruit and outcome of philosophy?" The philosopher answered him, "Cultivate yourself diligently in all virtue and wisdom for thirty years, and then you may be able to partly understand the answer to your question."
It is an arduous road, but it leads to reality. ”