REAL MEANING OF LIFE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 12 March 1936, Page 2

REAL MEANING OF LIFE

“You cannot have lived as long as you have, much less can anyone have lived as long as I have, without realising how much disappointment must come to us all, how little we can accomplish of all we hoped to do, bow every kind of pleasure is short-lived, said' the ex-headinaster of Bedales, Mr J. H. Badley, in one of his Sunday evening talks with his pupils. Theie are times when we are ready to echo the words of the old writer: ‘Vanity of vanities’, all is vanity’; or the still .more bitter French saying: ‘Tout passe tout easse, tout lasse’ —implying that there is nothing that is not transient, that does not break in one’s grasp, and does not bring weariness. That is life without faith; but, happily, we do not always feel like that. Something m us refuses to believe that life is so mean; ingless a thing as that. At times, when \vc tiro realty alive, when we aie using our powers most fully, whether in bodily activity, pitting our skill and endurance against difficulty, and danger, or in activity of the mind, wrestling with some problem and extending our mental grasp, or in those activities of the spirit that* are the highest of all, learning more of the. meaning, of beauty and love and seeking to bring them into our own lives and the lives of those about us—at these times do we not grow aware of a reality deeper than the disappointments and failures, deeper than the surface pleasures and distractions, something that gives both value and purpose to life? This reality many call God.”