Excerpt from Seeing and Being: And Other Sermons

There is nothi 1.n Rtrange, unique, phenomenal in that prophecy and vision of the hunted refugee for whom Ma dame Guillotine was sharpening her knife, but whose death, then close at hand, was not to stain her catalogue of miscon ception and ingratitude and crime. In that prophecy and vision we have a single illustration of a universal law, which s Great Hopes for Great Wherever there is a great soul, it triumphs over the misery and terror of the im mediate present. In spite of seeming failure, or, it may be, of cruel death impending, the future large and glorious looms upon its sight. There is no unreality in that closing scene in Victor Hugo's ninety-three, where till the morning breaks the prisoner Gauvain, and Cimourdain who has de creed his death and is to be his executioner, forget their mu tual relations and the approaching fatal hour as they seek to draw aside the curtain that conceals from them the glorious future of mankind. The conquered, the condemned, becomes the teacher and inspirer in that solemn and transcendent hour. It is the great soul that makes the great hope, makes it so great that it dwarfs the huge, dark failure of the present into an insignificance so absolute that it is as if it did not exist. Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, cried Latimer from out the flames; for we have lighted a candle this day in England which shall never be put out. The pages of history are illuminated in a thousand places by such incidents as these. What have they to do with the average, humdrum life of men and women? Difficult duty is never far off, but difficult duty is not always interesting and dramatic. Nevertheless, all life is of a piece; and the most dramatic episodes of history are but the toils and sacrifices, the battles and the victories, of the humblest people on God's earth writ in some larger character. That great hopes are for great souls means that, the greater the soul, the greater is the hope.

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