Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals by Henry Frederick Cope
page 88 of 179 (49%)
page 88 of 179 (49%)
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infinite.
What a glorious thing is this passion for the right; what visions it has seen, what strength it has given to their realization. It is the great tide that, moving restless and resistless in our bosoms, has carried us on towards God. We cannot but believe it is born of him. It does not originate in him, for it disturbs his peace, it stirs him from sloth, it spurs him to new and often unwelcome endeavours. It ever holds before him the shining possibility of a perfect being in a perfect world. No wonder Christ used the figure of hunger and thirst. Literal appetites have been the motives back of the world's struggle for physical rightness; yet these cravings have not been more general or more forceful than those of the soul. But for hunger and thirst man would have lived in perfect content with the form and facts of life as he found them; progress, all that we call civilization, would not have been. Man is happy in proportion as necessity compels him to heed these cravings. So is it in the moral world; the struggle has been our salvation. To cease to strive for rightness is to cease to live. Individually and nationally they are happy who accept the rigorous climate of lofty ethical ideals, who are not content to take life as they find it, but who seek to cultivate flowers and fruits of paradise on the sterile, rocky soil of the human heart. This is the life that Jesus shows, the life that seeks and finds the truth, that with passionate ardour seeks right relations both with His fellows and with His Father. Out of the fullness of experience, in the midst of His own struggle He encourages all who strive; they shall be satisfied. No |
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