Saturday, June 8, 2013

Saturday, June 8, 2013


A Deeper and Larger Hope

There is no more important work in this world, no greater duty, than to help others to keep up their courage. He is our best friend whose words of cheerful confidence give more life to the heart; and he is our enemy who, by his words of doubt and his spirit of fear, saps this ardour, and takes from us our courage. To work without hope is discouraging. We need the sense of progress to cheer and sustain us. To go round and round on a treadmill of mere drudgery takes our spirit out of us. Therefore, we need a deeper and larger hope. We need to have faith in mental, moral, and spiritual progress, in the growth of the soul, in the unfolding of its higher powers, its larger faculties. We need to have faith that the years, as they come and go, may give us a deeper experience, may lift us to a larger vision, may enable us to come nearer to God in faith, nearer to man in human sympathy and love. When we have this sense of spiritual progress, we can bear outward disappointments more easily, sure that pain and sorrow will work for our highest good.

James Freeman Clarke (died June 8, 1888)


James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888)

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