Seeking Life And Other Sermons

ch was close by our side all the time. Men who live best and longest are apt to come, as the result of all their living, to the conviction that life is not only richer but simpler than it seemed to them at first. Men go to vast labor seeking after peace and happiness. It seems to them as if it were far away from them, as if they must go through vast and strange regions to get to it. They must pile up wealth, they must see every possible danger of mishap guarded against, before they can have peace. Upon how many old men has it come with a strange surprise, that peace could come to rich or poor only with contentment; and that they might as well have been content at the very beginning as at the very end of life. They have made a long journey for their treasure, and when at last they stoop to pick it up, lo! it is shining close beside thefootprint which they left when they set out to travel in a circle. So we seek to know our fellow-men, and think that the knowledge can be gained only by long and suspicious experience and watchfulness of their behavior ; but all the while the real power of knowledge is sympathy, and many a child has that, and knows men better than we do with all our cautiousness. And so we plot, and lay our schemes, and go long ways about to make men like us, it may be to be famous, when their liking lies right at our feet; to be ours certainly any moment when we will just be simple and true, and forget ourselves, and genuinely care for other me... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.