THINGS AND THOUGHTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 87

THINGS AND THOUGHTS.

By John Christie. — Things Needful.—

Good intentions in a man are no guarantee that good shall he done by him — indeed, it often happens that something meant as kindness, is not really kindness to the person to whom it is preferred, because that person wishes, expects, or needs help of another kind or in another form. To be of service in this connection one requires to have knowledge, judgment, and tact as well as sympathy — indeed, can. we truly have sympathy unless those other things aie antecedently in our possession?

— A Hopeless Beginning. —

The man who begins by thinking that he has nothing to learn is never likely to learn anything worth learning by xny man.

— Nature as a Witness. —

Perhaps it is Nature herself who furnishes the greatest of all proofs of the divinity of the ethics of Christ ; for in every age and country, in so far as men have, individually or collectively. Leen morally civilised, successful, or happy, they have been so through the medium of loving-kindness and righteousness. And in the nature of things it must ever be thus ; greatness and happiness can never be reached by man except through his obedience to the moial law — except through the medium of righteousness and love ; so that Christ's essential gospel is, philosophically regarded, the- ethical principle in Nature transplanted into terms which have, a direct and enduring bearing upon, human destiny. This is why Christ's method is an infallible method of moral salvation.

" Behold, the kingdom of God is within you" ; "Seek and ye shall find"' ; "What shall it .profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul " ; " Love ye one another." Let us live up to these gospels to the utmost of our power, and great indeed must be our Teward. But let us neglect them ; fail to see that they are as real, as natural, as vital as our blood and breath ; let U6 prefer the WOl'ld to our souls — the worst to the best that is in and about us ; — be without love, without genuine active human affection and sympathy, and then, indeed, in ways that are bitterly real, and under conditions that are piteously lasting, we shall find ourselves in the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is necessarily so, because like leads to like throughout the whole economy of Nature.

Surely the man who does not see Christianity hi this light must be lacking in that philosophy and that logic which the opponent of religion professes to take as his guides. Even though the supernaturalism natural to primitive times and peoples should pass away altogether, or be transferred to the sphere of metaphorie myth or allegory, Chrifi't must remain for ever as the proclaimer of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man : as the discoverer and declarer of the mighty fact that the Kingdom of God is in man's, own soul, and yet will never be found theTe unless that soul is loving and Tighteous; unless the best in man is preferred by man to all else that tempts him ;" and unless he seeks that best through 'ove for its beauty, and for the sake of the good that, in seeking it, Jie is enabled to do his fellow-men, and the greater good he will be still able to do when he finds it. And how compatible, how consistent all this is with a life full, free, frank, and splendidly joyous; free from superstition, abject fear, sins of selfishness, vainglory, uncharitableness, and bestial lusts; yet with the heart and soul open to every grace and gaiety — to everything that is not alien to loving-kindness and righteousness. Na\ . how necessary it all is to such a life. Philosophically study what Christ says, and pay not too much heed to what is sa.d about Him by men under the influence of primitive superstitions and ideals, and all this will become as clear as the eun at noonday. " Seek, and ye shall find." for " Behold, the Kingdom* of God is within you": ''Love >c one another." And when we do tlus we find that love means not only active goodwill and cordial co-operation in humane aspiration, effort, and .well-doing, but resolute abstention from everything which is inconsistent with love : abstention from ■enniitv, uncharitableness, and malignant opposition, from gain at the expense of another, and from luxury while any living creature "within reach suffers privation. This is religion, this is the gospel of Christ ; in practice it means peace and goodwill amongst, men ; all history shows that in. proportion as men hold it in their hearts and express it in their lives 3i is well with them; while, without it. they are worse than the beasts that perish, because the good that -would otherwise be in them is dead or turned to evil. And so it comes that history, logir, philosophy, and Nature her&elf are witnesses to* the regenerating gospel of that

divinely great and noble Master who is, above all others, the prophet, revealer, and exemplifier of the divinity that is in man, and in the providence of the universe.

— National Neglect of Genius. —

Man doe« not live by broad alone, nor does the ultimate proof of a country's greatness consist in wool or grain, or meat or golds or even in the physical pith of its people. The.se things are well enough in their way ; in a sense they are indispensable ; yet there is a sense in which they amount to \ery little, unless the people, while acquiring them, having and using them, sincerely strive after the righteousness which exalts a nation, and also cherish the culture which means a wise application of learning to life and to public affairs, and ample encouragement to native genius to express itself in scholarship, art and science, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, and, above all, in literature, ifet all down the highways and byways of human history, notoriously little has been done well and wisely in this connection. In the Greek and Roman days, and in the feudal and still more recent times, there have been isolated instances of princes, pontiffs, governments, and men in power encouraging scholars, artists, and poets, through policy or personal predilection ; but though they have wisely founded schools and colleges in the general interest, no people have ever made any truly national provision to meet the cases of individual men of genius. China perhaps had this end in view when, at the instance of Confucius and other sagos, she made academical attainment the test for admission to the public service ; but in practice this has, roughly speaking, meant the encouragement of a catholic conformity and the discouragement of genius, which is 1 , in its nature, protestant and in practice an innovator. In effect, the human spirit at its best — in its devotion to those labours, aims, and aspirations which dignify the individual man and refine the taste and promot-e the moral cultivation of the race — has been bitterly persecuted or cruelly neglected in all times and countries, though now and then it has been proffered post-mortem amends by means of monuments which it does not need, and which, rightly regarded, commemorate merely the perfunctory contrition of average men for irremediable wrong done to their greatest benefactors. Johnson's glowing apostrophe to the young scholar summarises the whole miserable history of the matter, practically from first 'to last, even down to our own day :

Proceed, illustrious youth, And Virtue guard thee to the throne of truth! Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rous heat, Till captive Science yields her last retreat , Should Reason guide thee with her brightest

ray, And pour on misty Doubt resistless day ; Should no false kindness lure to loose

delight, Not praise Telax, nor difficulty fright ; Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain. And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain ; Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart ; Should no Disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor Melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade ; Yet hope not life from errief or danger fre« Nor think the doom of man reversed lor

Thee : Deign on the passing world 1 to turn thine

eyes, And pause awhile from learning, to be wise: There mark what ills the scholar's life assail — , , . . * Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. See nations slowly wi?e and. meanly just, To buried merit Taise the tardy bust. If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's life and Galileo's end.

To avert all this with certainty, every country should have a social and economic code that every man "who obeyed the laws and did any service of any use to the community would be automatically assured of all the necessaries and all the reasonable comforts of life. But perhaps the nations are now moving to this state of things ; and if they are, then, when they reach it, circumstance will surely be more favourable to the man of genus, as well as to the average man, than it has ever yet been anywhere throughout the long history of the woild.

TJNBTTYABLE "Woman herself is bought and sold, lake the veriest tra?h of the v.orld for gold; But naught in all the world can buy The light of love in her lovely eye ; For that, likp the erace of God will fall As God! will have it, or never at all.