It is nothing to a man to be greater or less than
another--to be esteemed or otherwise by the public or private world in
which he moves. Does he, or does he not, behold, and love, and live, the
unchangeable, the essential, the divine? This he can only do according
as God hath made him. He can behold and understand God in the least
degree, as well as in the greatest, only by the godlike within him; and
he that loves thus the good and great, has no room, no thought, no
necessity for comparison and difference. The truth satisfies him. He
lives in its absoluteness. God makes the glow-worm as well as the star;
the light in both is divine. If mine be an earth-star to gladden the
wayside, I must cultivate humbly and rejoicingly its green earth-glow,
and not seek to blanch it to the whiteness of the stars that lie in the
fields of blue. For to deny God in my own being is to cease to behold
him in any. God and man can meet only by the man's becoming that which
God meant him to be. Then he enters into the house of life, which is
greater than the house of fame. It is better to be a child in a green
field than a knight of many orders in a state ceremonial.
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