throne on which wrong sits to rule, are built of careless, irreverent, senseless criticisms. When the account of the good and ill which we have done on earth is summed up, the heaviest item in the account against many of us will perhaps consist in the record of our idle words.
The aim of all students should be, so to pass through things temporal that finally they lose not the Eternal; so to pass through temporary aids to knowledge as not to miss perceiving the Eternal Truths. Only unpractical dreamers suppose that Truth can be grasped without adventitious and fictitious aids; all true students know that they are dependent on such aids; and their hope is so to use them as not to abuse them. We are in danger of becoming entangled in these adjuncts of Truth; of mistaking them for actual truths. Therefore The Unseen Wisdom which guides the destinies of mankind, raises up occasionally what we call "a Reformer"; whose function is to give to Humanity such a lesson as I have described the teacher of Analytical Geometry giving to a class. The Reformer reminds us that our framework of aids to investigation is not, in itself, Truth. As the mathematician teaches us to see the actual path of a planet, in contrast, on one hand, with the tangent conceived by imagining an impossible state of things from which the action of Gravity is suspended, and, on the other hand, with the Axes which are well-arranged measuring-rods, so the Reformer teaches us to look at the actual Life of Humanity, in contrast, on one side, with the Vision of an impossible Idea made simple by the omission of certain elements, and, on the other side, with that convenient mechanism by which the comprehension of our duty is facilitated for us.
