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thinker is inadequate, so is the mere lover; he becomes the sentimentalist. This crisis forces upon us the question, What is it that gives reality to thought, that takes it out of the category of fiction? What is it that gives splendor to emotion and that denudes it of the shame of mere sentiment? It is the honorable, the conscientious deed that embodies as a creative force the thought and the love, that puts a new face on this poor world, that changes our captivity step by step into freedom, that creates a new fellowship between souls while the limitation lasts; that generates character, that brings us into league with God, whose reality is attested in his ceaseless improvement of his works; that sets us in covenant with the great divine Christ, whose chief word is this, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." If we employ our mind aright, we shall gain a vision from God; if we employ our human heart aright, we shall love the vision with a passionate love; and if we are honest men, we shall be able to put the vision and the love into our work and as creative forces in the service of the kingdom of the ideal, the kingdom of God, we shall win our freedom in our captivity.

The river Chebar is with you and with me. It is in your home; it is in your business; it is in your nation. Its channel is ever near us as it

flows through the life of our time. The bondage is here; we all know that. Is that all? Sorrow, limitation, frailty, meanness, death, are these the whole story? Surely not. It was never meant that we should take our captivity apart from the open heaven and the vision of God. Take vision and captivity together; what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. A dewdrop without the sun is nothing but a dull, heavy, sorrowful tear; a dewdrop with the sun in it is a jewel and a joy. Your life and mine apart from God are unendurable. I do not wonder that so many men commit suicide; if godless men were not so often cowards, they would thus seek relief in vaster numbers. The godless life is the hopeless life, the round as of a treadmill; the heart turns to dust as it toils like an eyeless Samson at its servile task. Remember that Chebar is not the only river; there is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God. There is a captivity in which the song is heard, "God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God shall help her and that right early.”

XVII

THE IDEAL IN YOUTH AND AGE

"Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." Joel 11, 28.

IT would seem that vision is the original form of mind and the ultimate form. Before you can judge or conclude about anything, you must first see it. Here are two eagles, two race-horses, two athletes; before you can judge, compare, and conclude about them, you must first see them. Here are two poems, two essays, two speeches; before you can say anything true about them, you must see into the heart of their meaning. The aboriginal form of intellect, the sunrise of intelligence, is vision. So, too, the ultimate form would seem to be vision. When you have taken to pieces in your thought a picture, a poem, a symphony, a statue, a beautiful temple, any work of art, and studied each part in detail, you do not leave it there; you put the work of art together again; and as your first contact with it was a vision of the whole, your last contact with it, greatly enriched, indeed, by the preceding analysis, is a vision of the whole.

Sir Isaac Newton beholds the falling apple; instantly there comes into his mind the vision of

the stellar universe in balance through the two great laws of attraction and repulsion. Then follow years of laborious thought, intense analytic toil; after this comes Newton's final attitude toward the physical universe; his first vision stands attested and enriched in his last. The same fact appears in the minds of the great philosophers of the race. Look at a thinker like Spinoza, Kant, Berkeley; in each case there came to the philosopher the vision of the meaning of his world; it came as a whole; it came as a rare insight and as a flash. Then followed the years of toil, the elaboration in detail, the verification in the analytic process; and after this the resurgence of the original vision larger and richer and more authentic.

The same thing is true in religion; our first contact with God is vision; then, if we are capable of it, the world of learning, the world of reflection, and the world of experimentation follows; still we look forward in this life and in the future life to the restored and mightier vision of God. Thus it would seem that vision is the first and the last form of human intelligence.

What is the meaning of vision? Is it a mere fancy? No. It means insight into the heart of some great aspect of human life. Napoleon is confronted by Austerlitz, dark as Erebus the first day; then he sees his opportunity. Alexander

Hamilton was made Secretary of the Treasury in the administration of Washington; the finances of the country were dead; Hamilton saw his opportunity; "he touched the dead corpse of the public credit and it sprang upon its feet." Plato looks into the soul of his master, sees the meaning of his master's life, and embodies his version in the "Apology" and "Phædo." The Apostle John broods the life of Jesus till the vision embodied in the Fourth Gospel takes possession of him. Lincoln sees slavery and its woe and resolves, if ever he is able, to smite that iniquity hard. The lost son, in our Lord's parable, looks about him on swine, husks, the far country, ruin; he comes to himself, sees into the meaning of the mournful condition in which he finds himself, and says, "I will arise and go to my father." Vision is insight into the meaning of life; the greater the vision the greater the apprehension of the significance of human living; the divine vision of Jesus is the divine insight into the meaning and glory of our human existence.

Visions are of two kinds, as you perceive by the text. There is the vision that issues from experience; the testimony of the courses of life is here gathered up into a great, sure intuition. There is the vision that anticipates life, the insight that is the prophet of the high possibilities of existence; one is the dream of age, the other

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