To be used!--that
is the sublimest thing we know.
It is a distinguishing mark of greatness that it has a tremendous hold
upon real things. I have seen men who seemed to have behind them, or
rather within them, whole societies, states, institutions: how they
come at us, like Atlas bearing the world! For they act not with their
own feebleness, but with a strength as of the Whole of Life. They speak,
and the words are theirs, but the voice is the Voice of Mankind.
I don't know what to call it: being right with God or right with life.
It is strangely the same thing; and God is not particular as to the name
we know him by, so long as we know Him. Musing upon these secret things,
I seem to understand what the theologians in their darkness have made so
obscure. Is it not just this at-one-moment with life which sweetens and
saves us all?
In all these writings I have glorified the life of the soil until I am
ashamed. I have loved it because it saved me. The farm for me, I decided
long ago, is the only place where I can flow strongly and surely. But to
you, my friend, life may present a wholly different aspect, variant
necessities. Knowing what I have experienced in the city, I have
sometimes wondered at the happy (even serene) faces I have seen in
crowded streets.
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