Page:TheYoungMansGuide.djvu/462

 criticism; how many a holy aspiration, destined to bear abundant fruit for God and souls, has been forced back into the poor heart from whence it had ascended, there to be stifled utterly and forever, leaving that heart, as the poet so graphically represents it, 'like a deserted bird's nest filled with snow,' because unkindness had robbed it of that for which, perhaps, alone it cared to live. How much, then, we may believe has been lost to the world of all that is good and great and beautiful through the instrumentality of unkindness; and if it be thus, what developments, on the other hand, may we not expect, in the order of grace as well as of nature, in the hearts and minds of men beneath the genial sun of kindness.

"Even in the common things of life, and in the natural order, how striking are the results of the passage of this Heaven-sent missioner, this angel of light and consolation.

"If we reflect upon it, kindness is but the outcome and exemplar of 'he divine precept: Thou shall love thy, neighbor as thyself. There is nothing we personally so much appreciate as kindness. We like others to think of us kindly, to speak to us kindly, and to render us kindly actions and in a kindly manner. Now, we should know how to put ourselves in the place of others, and thus we should testify to them that kindliness that we value so much ourselves.

"When our divine Lord came down upon