he who has the clearest and intensest vision of what is at issue in the great battle of life, and who quits himself in it most manfully, will be the first to acknowledge that for him there has been no approach to victory except by the faithful doing day by day of the work which lay at his own threshold.

on the other hand, the universal experience of mankind—the[62] dreary confession of those who have merely sought a “low thing,” and “gone on adding one to one;” making that the aim and object of their lives—unite in warning us that on these lines no true victory can be had, either for the man himself or for the cause he was sent into the world to maintain.

no, there is no victory possible without humility and magnanimity; and no humility or magnanimity possible without an ideal. now there is not one amongst us all who has not heard the call in his own heart to put aside all evil habits, and to live a brave, simple, truthful life. it is no modern, no christian experience, this. the choice of hercules, and numberless other pagan stories, the witness of nearly all histories and all literatures, attest that it is an experience common to all our race. it is of it that the poet is thinking in those fine lines of emerson which are written up in the hall of marlborough college:

“so close is glory to our dust,

so near is god to man—

when duty whispers low, ‘thou must,’

the youth replies, ‘i can.’”

it is this whisper, this call, which is the ground of what i have, for want of a better name, been speaking of as idealism. just in so far as one listens to and welcomes it he is becoming an idealist—one who is rising out of[63] himself, and into direct contact and communion with spiritual influences, which even when he shrinks from them, and tries to put them aside, he feels and knows to be as real—to be more real than all influences coming to him from the outside world—one who is bent on bringing himself and the world into obedience to these spiritual influences. if he turns to meet the call and answers ever so feebly and hesitatingly, it becomes clearer and stronger. he will feel next, that just in so far as he is becoming loyal to it he is becoming loyal to his brethren: that he must not only build his own life up in conformity with its teaching, must not only find or cut his own way straight to what is fair and true and noble, but must help on those who are around him and will come after him, and make the path easier and plainer for them also.

i have indicated in outline, in a few sentences, a process which takes a life-time to work out. you all know too, alas! even those who have already listened most earnestly to the voice, and followed most faithfully, how many influences there are about you and within you which stand across the first steps in the path, and bar your progress; which are forever dwarfing and distorting the ideal you are painfully struggling after, and appealing to the cowardice and laziness and impurity which are in every one of us, to thwart obedience to the call. but here, as elsewhere, it is the first step which costs, and tells. he who has once taken that, consciously[64] and resolutely, has gained a vantage-ground for all his life.