defeats their true pursuit by the very intensity of attention it
concentrates upon them; and live, as Goethe says, "in the beautiful, the
good, and the whole," the kingdom of the Eternal. Have the higher
passion that casts out the lower. The physician whose conscious aim is
the relief of human suffering and the enforcement of the laws of health,
even though a large professional income may be added to him; the lawyer
who regards himself as the minister of the Just One to uphold the law of
right and equity, whose reputation does not rest on his skill in getting
off a fraudulent company without costs, and who makes his money not by
his "practices," but by his honest practice; the man of science who
reverently devotes himself, as the servant of the truth, to "think God's
thoughts after Him," in the words of Kepler's prayer, and establish the
kingdom of law and order, in the humbleness of conscious limitation
which forbids dogmatizing; the artist who is true to his art and does
not subordinate the laws of the eternal Loveliness to the shifting laws
of the temporary market; the capitalist who looks upon himself as the
steward of the public good, and to whom material gain is the means and
not the end; the workman who does good work for the kingdom of God's
sake, knowing that every stroke of good work is a brick in the palace
of the great King, and who scorns to scamp because it pays; and,
generally speaking, every man who is so intent on helping and serving
others that his thoughts are taken off himself and centred on
another--these are the men who are seeking first a kingdom of God,
wherein dwelleth righteousness; these are the men who, living in the
higher life can rule the lower--the men whose feet are in the lilies,
and to whom the floods of earthly passion, even when they beat hardest,
end in the flight of a dove and in a triumphal arch of light.

Now, you will see at once the intensely practical bearing of this
teaching on the training of your boys. You are not called to hit down