One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.”
That is well enough, but it is not an inspired writing; it is a cry rather of despair than conviction, and oft repeated to make up for want of certainty. Of things mundane we have acquired a tolerable knowledge, however much there is yet to be learnt; but that in us which we call the Soul will never be satisfied till it learns something of the hereafter. Who will teach it? Do we know more now than they did when men fought with bows and arrows, or flint weapons, instead of hundred-ton guns fired by electricity?
Standing alone in some vast solitude where man and his doings have no part, have made no mark and left no trace—where face to face with Nature, with mountain and plain, forest and sea and a limitless firmament, man’s somewhat puny efforts are forgotten, there comes an intense longing for something higher and nobler than the life we live. The soul of man cries out for light, for some goal towards which he may by effort and sacrifice attain; for he is not lacking in the qualities that have made heroes and martyrs throughout all the ages. If he cannot rend the veil and scale the heights of heaven, he can grasp the things within his reach; and, realising that there are problems beyond his intelligence, he can yet give his life to make easier the lot of his fellow-creatures, seeking humbly, but courageously, to follow, no matter how far behind, in the footsteps of his Great Exemplar. Nor need his efforts be less strenuous, his object less worthy, because this passionate cry of a voice, stilled centuries ago, strikes a sympathetic chord in his heart.
“Yet ah! that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale, that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse—if dimly, yet indeed reveal’d,