Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/66

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  • lease them to-day to go out and do their creative

work in the world now? Why not on Saturday let loose that which is to burst with creative freedom on the world on Easter morning?

And I saw that this was a symbol not of history only but also of human life, that every human life is just the mystery of the infolding of latent capacities that are there wrapped up, the infolding of great ends of which no man can foretell. That is why, I suppose, a man feels such awe every time he holds a very little child in his arms. He does not know what it is that he has in his arms, what it is that will some day come bursting forth from that little child. That must have been Mary's thrill in those early days when she held her little one, knowing dimly and far away, if not clearly, that she held in her arms the mighty Redeemer of men. "When I see a child," said Pasteur, "he inspires me with two feelings: tenderness for what he is now, respect for what he may become hereafter." Of personal life it is as true as of history. Vast latent possibilities for good may come breaking forth. Now and then they do, in some truth-loving, unfearing, plain-speaking, God-obeying Martin Luther. Or they may issue in some tranquil, patient, loving-hearted, steady-spirited, immovable Lincoln. Goodness comes leaping forth, and oftentimes we are tempted to think the surroundings, the circumstances, produced it. They