THE FANATIC. II5 



that his faith is the product of a diseased, ill-balanced intellect, yet the fact 

 remains that not a stain sullies his bright career, and that if it is a chimera a 

 will-o'-the wisp that draws him forward, it has led him into a life noble, self-sacri- 

 ficing, glorious. 



It was an old saying of Cicero's, " No man was ever great without divine 

 inspiration." And i,t is beyond doubt that the purer, the more unselfish the 

 motive actuating a man, the more heroic and worshipful his life. As that motive 

 rises towards the supreme and infinite beneficence, the more transcendent and 

 luminous are his deeds. As Longfellow has it : " Great men stand life solitary 

 towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external 

 nature gives their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens 

 and consoles them, and of which the laborers on the suface do not even dream." 



Even in the lower plane of life we look with interest on the man who dares to 

 take a risk, and if he wins we applaud. He who risks his all on a lofty object 

 one which touches in some way universal humanity, one that scorns sordid re- 

 sults, is heedless of the clamor even of those it would ennoble, who brings to this 

 end deathless resolve and refined powers, will leave behind him something more 

 than footprints in the sands; the living rock bears his name carved deep and 

 plain. No matter if his age is careless of his work, the unfolding years are sure 

 to build a temple to his praise. It is as Emerson says : " When a man lives 

 with God his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook, the rustle of 

 the corn," The true man is not swerved from his course by misinterpretation or 

 apparent failure. He knows " if his eye is on the eternal" that the transitory 

 and the present will by and by merge into a day of cloudless beauty. 



Thirty years ago men were scorned as fanatics who spoke of a law higher 

 than the constitution; and the multitude drowned in derisive shouts the voices of 

 those who pleaded for universal liberty as the birthright of the human soul. To- 

 day builds marble cenotaphs over their sunken .graves and writes their words 

 among the noblest thoughts of the great age. Now, as ever, the children of those 

 who stoned the prophets, garnish the sepulchers of those their fathers put to 

 death. Yesterday's doubt is the belief of lo-day The world has always had 

 men who, outrunning their own age, have left blazed trees and scratched rocks 

 whereby the multitudes following after might find their way to happier plains and 

 climes. 



Carlyle tells us the old Northmen " thought it a shame not to die in battle ; 

 and if natural death seemed coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh 

 so that Odin might receive them as warriors slain." They held it to be a man's 

 duty to be brave, to subdue fear. This, says Carlyle, is true to this hour. " A 

 man shall and must be valiant, trusting imperturbably in the appointment and 

 choice of the upper powers. Now and always the completeness of his victory 

 over fear will determine how much of a man he is." The perennial fibre of the 

 man possessed of sympathetic gifts, unflinching endurance and a high motive, 

 makes him the embodiir.ent of Odin's hero. 



Placing his chair beside that of the Abyssinian king, Gordon was told by that 



