In short, that habit of mind equally ready to accept the right and the
true, whether it come with a suspicious air of novelty and singularity,
or whether as old and vulgar it be scouted for being behind the age--
that habit which neither yields to discouragements, nor favors the
fool-hardy haste, which calculates neither time nor its own strength;
which discriminates, when to "contend earnestly," and when to "let them
alone," the dogged adherents to falsehood and wrong, to the teachings
of time and circumstances, their conscience and their God, till every
plant which he hath not planted be rooted up by these mightier
energies--the habit, realizing all the good of the radical, in proving
all things, and all the glory of the conservative, in holding fast what
is good;--this habit, so favorable to human progress, but involving so
rare a combination of seemingly opposite qualities, as scarcely to be
accounted for on all apparent influences, has been well described, as a
"life hid with Christ in God." And truly has it been remarked, in view
of the general result of ordinary tendencies and influences in forming
one-sided characters, that _becoming as a little child_, expresses no
less fittingly the conditions of entering the kingdom of nature, and
thinking with the wise, than of entering the kingdom of heaven, and
worshipping with the holy.
Pages:
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75