Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long;
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song.
Surely these last, who have not accepted tradition in the mass, who
believe that we must, as our Lord demanded of the Jews, of our own selves
judge what is right, because therein his spirit works with our
spirit,--worship the Truth not less devotedly than they who rejoice in
holy tyranny over their intellects.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE QUESTIONING FERVOUR.
And now I turn to the other class--that which, while the former has fled
to tradition for refuge from doubt, sets its face towards the spiritual
east, and in prayer and sorrow and hope looks for a dawn--the noble band
of reverent doubters--as unlike those of the last century who scoffed, as
those of the present who pass on the other side. They too would know; but
they know enough already to know further, that it is from the hills and
not from the mines their aid must come. They know that a perfect
intellectual proof would leave them doubting all the same; that their
high questions cannot be answered to the intellect alone, for their whole
nature is the questioner; that the answers can only come as questioners
and their questions grow towards them.
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