IDEALS.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 July 1901, Page 796

IDEALS.

By "Ruihi."

(suppose that we all of us possess an ideal of some sort, though perhaps dimly and unconsciously. Amiel says in his journal : '" To have an ideal or to have none

— to have this ideal or that — this is what digs gulfs between men, even between those who live in the same family circle, under the same roof or in the same room. You must love with the same love, think with the same thought as some one else, if you are to escape solitude."

Now I believe that there are very few, if any in the world, who have no ideal. Even the lowest on the face of the earth has his better moments when he is conscious that good is better than bad — that true goodness is Godlike. He may shut his eyes to the fact, he may lose sight of it, but the feeling is firmly implanted in his breast all the same. The spiders of self may weave thick, murky cobwebs, until the whole face of his picture is hidden, but the pure, tender colours are still there, although the world, and even he himself, suspect it not. His picture is only hidden, not lost, and a time will assuredly come when he will realise that it is still in his possession.

And so (it seems to me) we have all our ideals, but the sad thing in this human life of ours is that so few try to live up to theirs. George Herbert says : " Who aimeth at the stars shoots higher far than he who means a tree." It is far, far better to make our ideal too high than be content with a low one. What is it that George Eliot says on this subjeot : " Failure after much perseverance

is much grander than never to have a strivinggood enough to be called a failure."

If we, however slowly and painfully, climb the mountain side, we shall leach the summit at last, and though it is given to none of us to reach the stars, yet we are nearer to them than if we had never climbed at all, and shall behold indeed with clearer eyes the Isles of Light shining above us. So it behoves us all to make our ideal a lofty one, and each strive with all his might to approach near to it, for we can never drift upwards."

A wise man has said that : "By the ideal that a man loves and by his persistency in cleaving to it and working for it, shall you know what he really is, for the ideal, whatever it be, seen and embraced and melting into a man, constitutes his true and esseutial natui'e, and reveals itself in all he thinks and does."

Is it not a beautiful thought that if we love the true and the pure and the good, we may in time by striving become a faint image of what we love? Often and often, when we are climbing these mountain heights, we grow weary and discouraged, and our feet have a trick of falling back, making our efforts seem futile and useless, but we must take heart again, and remember that our faltering, uncertain steps are helping to form a pathway by which countless millions may leach heights undreamt of in our philosophy. What if we fail, time and again, can we not remember for our comfort how Peter of old, who walked and talked

with the One he loved, failed too, and not once but three times, in his duty to his Master. Yet in after years, notwithstanding this wavering, he unflinchingly suffered death for the Great Ideal that he worshipped. Let me quote a few lines I read in one of Ruskin's books lately : — " This is a thing I. know — and which if you labour faithfully you shall know — that in Reverence is the chief joy and power of life. Kevereucu for what is pure and bright in your youth — what is true and tried in the age of others, for all that is gracious among the living, great among the dead, and marvellous in the powers that cannot die." Think of the gi'eat and good men who have influenced the world of Christ, of Bhudda, of Mahomet; think of the millions who worship these ideals, and are nobler and better men and women for that worship! What would we Christians be if we had no ideal instead of the noblest, and most, perfect this world has ever seen or ever will see V It is the glory of the Christian religion that it ever holds up this Ideal before the eyes of all. Take it away from our gaze, let it be forgotten, and will the world be betti r or worse do you think ? Could a man ever become a better man by ceasing to worship the most perfect Ideal the world has ever seen ? (for that our Ideal is a perfect one is acknowledged by everyone, be his belief what it may) — to worship God — that is (food. This is the ideal which King Arthur gives to his knights : — " I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence their king as if he were their conscience, And their conscience as their king. To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, Co ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds Until they won her. For indeed I knew of no more subtle master

Volll.— No. 10.— 55.

Under Heaven than is the uitiidou passion for a maid, Hoth to keep down the base in man, And teach high thought and honourable deed, And court mesa and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man." Tbnnykon. 1 cannot conclude this short paper better than by quoting a few lines of prose by Coulson Kernalmn, the author of the Dead Mans Diary. They aro supposed to refer to the woman the writer loves, and I consider them very beautiful : — % ' Yes, I love her truly, and she, too, loves me or will. It is not blind love or foolish idolatry, She knows all my faults, the pitiful paltriness of my life — the Hellish acts and foolish words, the vanity and the vice — she knows them all, and yet she loves me, ma, not them, but the true me, which these faults cannot altogether conceal from her, for she knows they are not my life, but the trouble of it. So also is my love for her. I love her not only for her present self, but for the sake of the self she is seeking to be — the self which in some measure indeed she now is; for that which in our truer moments we have striven to be, the ideal upon which our eyes are ever fixed, to which (no matter how sorely wo have sinned against it in the struggle of the day) our thoughts return at night witli but ne more unutterable, if despairing, longing and love — that in some measure we are and shall be, notwithstanding our ever recurrent failure and sin. Ido not ask nor expect that she shall be always true to her ideal, for L know that to none of us is it given to walk with unfaltering feet. I remember too that she is no angel, but a woman with womanly weakness and human faults, for all of which lam touched with true and tender sympathy, to love her not the less but the more. But that she should have snch an ideal and be capable of such an aim — for that reason, if for no other — I must love and honour her with tho deepest love and honour of my soul."