WISE WORDS OF GLADSTONE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3039, 23 March 1881, Page 3

WISE WORDS OF GLADSTONE.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic. _ I have no dreams of a golden age ; there will always be more than enough to deplore, more than enough to mend. But let us at least thrust aside the needless difficulty of wanton crimination ; and let us labour, in patience and good-will toward all, tj handle and direct for the best the movements of our time. No wave on the great ocean of time, when once it has floated past us, can be recalled. All we can do is to watch the new form and motion of the next, and launch upon it to try, in the manner our best judgment may suggest, our strength and skill. We cannot change the profound and resistless tendencies of the age toward religious liberty. It is our business to guide and control their application. Do this you may. But to endeavour to turn them backward is the sport of children, done by the hands of men; and every effort you make in that direction will recoil upon you in disaster and disgrace. The free expression of opinion, as our experience has taught us, is tho safty-valve of passion. The noise of the rushing stream, when it escapes, alarms the timid 5 but it is the sign that we are safe. The concession of reasonable privilege anticipates the growth of furious appetite. That which is the truth teaches the doctrine of love to all persons, but by virtue of that love it teaches also to hate the errors which mislead, and the delusions which blind them. The truth, therefore, is necessarily exclusive of its opposite; and to propose a peace between them is simply a disguised mode' of proposing to truth suicide, and obtaining for falsehood victory. We live as men, in a labyrinth of problems, and of moral problems from which there is no escapes permit us. Solution for them we have none. But a scheme came 1880 years ago into the world which is an earnest and harbinger of solution. The Christain thought, the Christain tradition, the Christain sooiety are the great, the imperial thought, the tradition, the society of this earth. It is from Christendom outward that power and influence radiate, not toward it and into it that they flow.—From " The Might of Eight."