The reason why life is so often made into a dull and dreary business for ourselves and others, is that we accept some conventional standard of duty and rectitude, and heavily enforce it; we neglect the interest, the zest, the beauty of life.  In my own career as an educator, I can truthfully say that when I arrived at some of the perceptions enunciated above, it made an immense difference to me.  I saw that it was a mistake to coerce, to correct, to enforce; of course such things have to be done occasionally with wilful and perverse natures; but I realized, after I had gained some practice in dealing with boys, that generous and simple praise, outspoken encouragement, admiration, directness, could win victories that no amount of strictness or repression could win.  I began to see that enthusiasm and interest were the contagious things, and that it was possible to sympathize genuinely with tastes which one did not share.  Of course there were plenty of failures on my own part, failures of irritability, stupidity, and indolence; but I soon realized that these were failures; and, after all, in education it matters more which way one’s face is set than how fast one proceeds!

I seem, perhaps, to have strayed into the educational point of view; but it is only an instance of how the artistic method may be applied in a region which is believed by many to be remote from the region of art.  The principle, after all, is a very clear one; it is that life can be made with a little effort into a beautiful thing; that the real ugliness of life consists not in its conditions, not in good or bad fortune, not in joy or sorrow, not in health or illness, but upon the perceptive attitude of mind which we can apply to all experiences.  Everything that comes from the hand of God has the quality of which I am speaking; our business is to try to disentangle it from the prejudices, the false judgments, the severities, the heavinesses, with which human nature tends to overlay it.  Imagine a man oppressed by all the ills which humanity can suffer, by shame and disease and failure.  Can it be denied, in the presence of the life of Christ, that it is yet possible to make out of such a situation a noble and a beautiful thing?  And that is the supreme value of the example of Christ to the world, that He displayed, if I may so speak, the instinct which I have described in its absolute perfection.  He met all humanity face to face, with perfect directness, perfect sympathy, perfect perception.  He never ceased to protest, with shame and indignation, against the unhappinesses which men bring upon themselves, by the yielding to lower desires, by prejudice, by complacency; but He made allowance for weakness, and despaired of none; and in the presence of those darker and sadder afflictions of body and spirit, which it seems that God permits, if He does not authorize, He bore Himself with dignity, patience, and confidence; He proved that nothing was unbearable, but that the human spirit can face the worst calamities with an indomitable simplicity, which adorns it with an imperishable beauty, and proves it to be indeed divine.