The
pure fires of such a spirit declare their sacred origin; and such is
the talisman of those achievements which amaze everybody but their
accomplisher. The eye fixed on it is what divine truth declares it to
be "single!" There is no double purpose in it; no glancing to a man's
own personal aggrandizement on one side and on professing services to
his fellow-creatures on the other; such a spirit has only one aim--
Heaven! and the eternal records of that wide firmament include within
it "all good to man."
What flattered Alexander of Macedon into a madman, and perverted the
gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also
been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their
virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan
men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all
these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better
revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many
there be who pass through it "pure and undefiled." Such were the
great Alfred of England, Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, and his greater
successor in true glory, Gustavus Adolphus,--all champions of
immutable justice and ministers of peace. And though these may be
regarded as personages beyond the sphere of ordinary emulations, yet
the same principles, or their opposites, prevail in every order of
men from the prince to the peasant; and, perhaps, at no period of the
world more than the present were these divers principles in greater
necessity to be considered, and, according to the just conclusion, be
obeyed.
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