Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/708

688 closures; and to the man who will eat the bread that has been by the labor of other hands procured for him without paying an equivalent, the kingdom of heaven is forever shut.

The personal pain, lauguishment, and imbitteredness, do not spoil for the brave man his appreciation of life, but by persistent faith and well-doing he subdues and converts contrarieties into furtherances. Socrates and Paul and Cromwell and Milton did not break their hearts or give up the tight. Lessing, after all the languor and sickness of Wolfenbüttel, refused to die, though he bore in his heart the deadly ravages of fate, till he had first presented to his ungrateful country his large-hearted offering of "Nathan der Weise." Nor was he egoistically looking forward to a world of happiness beyond the grave, as compensation for his sufferings, as reward for his magnanimous services.

Think what sort of world it would be without the pain and persecution. When in our church-pews our ears are tickled with the sweet eloquence about heaven, where there will be no tragedy, no pain, no tears, no trial of temper, no tempers, no passions, no black, all white, only white, everlasting singing, and so on, does not every masculine heart feel the most melancholy misgivings about the concern? would he not willingly sell out on that policy even at a liberal discount, could he but invest with the realized capital in this troublous yet withal interesting planet?

The truth is, the mixture and antithesis is the appetizing quality in the fare of life. The dangers, misunderstandings, jealousies, errors, and seductions, on the one hand; on the other hand the joy in healthy relations to the sensuous world, and in the esthetic contemplation of it, the sense of the ludicrous and ridiculous evermore tickled by the wonderful conjunctions of the sublime and vulgar in human affairs, the feeling of heaven in true relations to our fellow men and women, in work accomplished and duty performed, the highest bliss of all in the recognition of, and nearer and nearer identification with, the Supreme Spirit; the sense, in short, of a hell on the one hand to be shunned, and a heaven on the other to be enjoyed—whoever vividly realizes all this will not underrate life on this planet, but infinitely prize it.

Yes, this earth is dear to mortal men, not merely in spite of its tears and crosses, but also on account of them. The bitterest experiences we pass through need but to drift to the due distance in the past, and they assume a wonderfully interesting guise. Strangely, tenderly affecting in the retrospect are our riotous "Hal" days, our sighing Venus and Adonis fit, our sultry Werther fever, our sweet and bitter Faust period, and all the other dear illusions which beset us on our devious path.