In a stormy and critical time, when much is ending
and much beginning, and a great land is heaving and quivering with
commingled agonies of dissolution and throes of new birth, are you a
statesman of earnestness and insight, with your eye on the cardinal
question of your epoch, its answer clearly in your heart, and your
will irrevocably set to give it due enunciation and emphasis? Expect
calumny and affected contempt from the base; expect alienation
and misconstruction and undervaluing on the part of some who are
honorable. Are you a woman rich in high aims, in noble sympathies and
thrilling sensibilities, and, as must ever be the case with such, not
too rich in a meet companionship? Expect loneliness, and wear it as
a grace upon your brow; it is your laurel. Are you a true artist or
thinker? Expect to go beyond popular appreciation; _go_ beyond it,
or the highest appreciation you will not deserve. In fine, for all
excellence expect and _seek_ to pay.
No one ever held this law more steadily in view than Jesus; and when
ardent young people came to him proposing pupilage, he was wont at
once to bring it before their eyes. It was on such an occasion that he
uttered the words, so simple and intense that they thrill to the touch
like the string of a harp, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the
air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.
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