The soul, which vivifies, moves, and supports the body, is a
more potent substance than the hard bones and heavy flesh which
it vitalizes. A ten-pound weight falling on your head affects
you unpleasantly as substance, much more so than a leaf of
the New Testament, if dropt in the same direction; but there
is a way in which a page of the New Testament may fall upon a
nation and split it, or infuse itself into its bulk and give
it strength and permanence. We should be careful, therefore,
what test we adopt in order to decide the relative stability of
things.
Every house, workshop, church, school-room, atheneum, theater,
is the representative of an opinion. What the eye sees of them
is built of bricks, iron, wood, and mortar by carpenters,
smiths, and masons; but the seed from which they grew and
the forces by which they are upheld are ideas, affections,
conceptions of utility, sentiments of worship. Strike these out
of a people’s mind and heart, and its homes, temples, colleges,
and art-rooms fall away, like the trunk of the oak when its
life-power is smitten, and only the bald, sandy surface of
savage life remains.--THOMAS STARR KING.
(1483)
=Ideas, Worthless=--See DISAPPOINTMENT.