They have often learnt self-confidence, the
shadow of which is a good-natured contempt for ineffective people;
the shadow, on the other hand, which falls on the contemplative man
is an undue diffidence, an indolent depression, a tendency to think
that it does not very much matter what any one does. But, on the
other hand, the contemplative man sometimes does grasp one very
important fact--that we are sent into the world, most of us, to
learn something about God and ourselves; whereas if we spend our
lives in directing and commanding and consulting others, we get so
swollen a sense of our own importance, our own adroitness, our own
effectiveness, that we forget that we are tolerated rather than
needed. it is better on the whole to tarry the Lord's leisure, than
to try impatiently to force the hand of God, and to make amends for
His apparent slothfulness. What really makes a nation grow, and
improve, and progress, is not social legislation and organisation.
That is only the sign of the rising moral temperature; and a man
who sets an example of soberness, and kindliness, and contentment
is better than a pragmatical district visitor with a taste for
rating meek persons.
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