STUDY BUT THE BEGINNING OF CULTURE

Then, when the eye-gate, the ear-gate, the touch-gate, all the caravans of knowledge have gone trooping into the soul city, Channing reminds us that these knowledges must be assorted and assimilated by "studying hard and thinking quietly."

If some rich men fill their shelves with books that are never read, some poor men fill their memory with facts upon which they never think. The mere accumulation of truths about earth and air, about plants and animals and men, does not mean culture. No fool is a perfect fool until he can talk Latin. Trying to steal the secret of the honey bee, a scientist extracted the sweets of half an acre of blossoms. Unfortunately the vat of liquor proved to be only sweetened water, while the bee distilled the same liquor into honey. And it is possible to sweep into the memory a thousand great facts without having distilled one of these honeyed drops named wisdom and culture.

In studying the French Revolution, Carlyle read five hundred volumes, including reports of officers, generals, statesmen, spies, heroes, villains. Then, closing all the books, he journeyed into Scotland. In solitude he “thought quietly." Having brooded alone for weeks and months, one morning he rose to dip his pen in his heart's blood and write his "French Revolution." In that hour the knowledge that had been in five hundred books became the culture distilled into one.

The youth who plans the life of affairs is in danger of despising the brooding that feeds the hidden life. We can never rightly estimate our indebtedness to those who have gone apart to "think quietly."

All law and jurisprudence go back to Moses for forty years brooding in an empty, voiceless desert upon the principles of eternal justice. All astronomy goes back to Ptolemy, who looked out upon a weary waste of sand and turned his vision toward a highway paved with stars and suns. All modern science begins with that scholar who for fifty years was unknown in the forum or market place, for Charles Darwin was "studying hard and thinking quietly" in his little garden, where he watched his seeds and earthworms, his beetles and doves.

The air of London is so charged with deadly acids that the lime tree alone flourishes there, for the reason that it sheds its bark each year, thus casting off the defiled garment. In his dream the poet thought there was a mountain peak in the Himalayas so high that it towered beyond the reach of snows and rains, so that the open page there remained unsoiled through passing centuries. And to those who "think quietly" it is given to rise into the upper air, and, dwelling upon the heights, to look down upon these heated centers, with their soot and grime, their stacked houses, reeking gutters, the din and noise of wheels, the hoarse roar of the clashing streets, and in these hours of reverie the soul marvels that it was ever tossed about upon these furious currents of ambition.

In such hours Fame whispers, "Joy is not in me." Ambition, worn with its strife, confesses, "Joy is not in me." Success adds, "It is not in me." Then from a silent mountain top, where Christ doth dwell, falls that whispered invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

THE DISGUISES OF INFERIORITY

And when the soul has gone toward full-orbed splendor and stands forth with a great weight of manhood, the sage condenses the wisdom of a thousand volumes in his four maxims, "Act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never."

The principle of acting frankly demands proof in the hidden parts, rebukes him whose method is "the iron hand in a velvet glove," smites the Machiavellian policy of "smiling gently while arranging instruments of death." In their ignorance shrewd men advise the youth to cloak his unsung desire beneath an outer indifference. By such artifices and disguises small men protect themselves. Conscious of weakness, inferiority fears frankness. But great men are as open as glass beehives and as transparent as the sunbeams, for they are conscious of their enormous reserves. Nature permits no flower or fruit to conceal its real nature. The violet frankly tells its story; the decaying fruit frankly reveals its nature. No flaming candle pretends to light while emitting rays of blackness.

Victories won by concealments are lying victories, and these battles must be fought again. The law of frankness is the law of truth, that is at once the foundation of character, and rounds the structure with strength and beauty.

Vast issues also are involved in the injunction "to talk gently." Noise is weakness. The rattle of machinery means waste power somewhere. Rushing forward at the rate of thousands of miles an hour, the planets are noiseless as sunbeams, because they represent power that is harnessed and subdued. Silently the dewdrop falls upon some crimson-tipped flower. Yet the electric energy necessary to crystallize that drop would hurl a car from New York to Boston.

Nature's weakest forces are manifest in thunder. Her monarch energies work silently in the roots and harvests, or lift, without rattle of engine or noise of wheel, countless millions of tons of water from ocean into the air. For gentleness is not weakness. Only giants can be gentle.

WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME

But the strongest man needs to "await occasions." For the right thing can be done at the wrong time. Preparing telescopes and instruments of photography, the astronomer sails to Africa, and there waits weeks for the moment of full eclipse to come. In February the husbandman finds the sun refusing warmth, the clouds refusing rain, the soil refusing seed, but, waiting for occasion," to! in May the soil wakens to full ardor, the sunbeams wax warm, the clouds give forth their treasure, and the husbandman enters into his opportunity.

In his reminiscences General Sherman explains his victorious march to the sea by saying that during his college days he spent a summer in Georgia. We his companions were occupied with playing cards and foolish talk he tramped over the bi's made a caret may of the country, and years later bis expert low'edge won his vietav.

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But whether we ting or working, man must "hurry never.” It is reat that makes Paste Copfidence is composed. ness is trang? Sty Dead of eers, se be"lets, can be hurled swifty. Liv seeds or not be forced. Sowy the acorn goes

toward the oak. Slowly the babe journeys toward the sage. Slowly and with infinite delays Haydn and Handel moved toward their perfect music. Filling barrels with manuscripts and refusing to publish, Robert Louis Stevenson attained his exquisite style. Millet described his career as ten years of daubing, ten years of drudgery, ten years of despair, and ten years of liberty and success.

Man begins at nothing. Life is a school. Duties are drillmasters. Man's faculties are complex. Slowly the soul moves toward harmony, symmetry, and beauty. He who "hurries never" has found the secret of growth, serenity, and repose.

If the greatest scientist is he who discerns some law of gravity that explains the forward movement of all stars and planets; if the great historian is he who unfolds one social principle that governs all nations, so he is the greatest moral teacher who discovers some unit idea that sweeps all details into one glorious unity, as did Channing when he said, “Let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common."

All undefined and indefinable the spiritual glow and beauty lie upon the soul, like the soft bloom upon a ripe peach. What song is to the birds, what culture is to the intellect, what eloquence is to an orator, that the spiritual is to character. It is the soul made ample in faculty, fertile in resource, struck through and through with ripeness, and inflected toward Christ's own sympathy, self-sacrifice and love.

The spiritual element also explains the influence of the highest art. Too many of our modern painters are fleshly. There is mud in the bottom of their eyes. Their pictures are indeed so shallow that a fly could wade through them without wetting its feet. But Fra Angelico, preparing to paint, entered his closet, expelled every evil thought, subdued every unholy ambition, flung away anger and jealousy as one would fling away a club or dagger. There, with face that shone with the divine light, upon his knees he painted his angels and seraphs, and the spiritual breaking through the common lent a radiant glow and an immortal beauty to his priceless pictures.

LIFE'S CROWNING PERFECTION

Culture can do much, but art, music, books, travel have their limitations. When that brave boy returned from battling with the Black Prince, the tenants gathered before his father's castle and presented him tokens of love and honor. The farmer brought a golden sheaf, the husbandman brought a ripe cluster and a bough of fruit, the goldsmith offered a ring, the printer gave a rare book, while children strewed flowers in the way. But last of all his father gave the youth the title deeds of his inheritance and lent him name and power. Thus the fine arts can beautify thy life, lend culture to reason, lend refinement to imagination. It is God, the soul's father, who crowns life with the keys of influence and power. The secret of character is the secret of Jesus Christ. He can lend reason true wisdom. He can lend taste true refinement. Freeing the soul from sin, He can crown it with strength and beauty. He can make thy life a song, and thy career a symphony.