Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/195

 MISS WILLARD

��it was on entering that cave of gloom, and ever the right comes uppermost; and now is Christ's kingdom nearer than when we first believed.

Only those who have not studied history lose heart in great reforms ; only those unread in the biography of genius imagine themselves to be original. Except in the realm of material in- vention, there is nothing new under the sun. There is no reform which some great soul has not dreamed of centuries ago; there is not a doc- trine that some father of the Church did not set forth. The Greek philosophers and early Chris- tian Fathers boxed the compass once for all; we may take our choice of what they have left on record. Let us then learn a wise humility, but at the same time a humble wisdom, as we remember that there are but two classes of men — one which declares that our times are the worst the world has seen, and another which claims our times as best — and he who claims this, all revelation, all science, all history witnesses is right and will be right forcvermore.

The most normal and the most perfect human being is the one who most thoroughly addresses himself to the activity of his best powers, gives himself most thoroughly to the world around him, flings himself out into Lhe midst of human- ity, and is so preoccupied by his own beneficent reaction on the world that he is practically un- conscious of a separate existence. Introspection, and retrospection were good for the cloister ; but the uplook, the outlook and the onlook are alone 163

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