As the individual seeks help in looking back over his course, so it may help us if we look back a little over some of the significant passages in the movement of mankind. History is to the race what memory is to the individual. One's best treasure is the memory of his happy and heroic hours. The best treasure of humanity is the story of its happy and heroic souls. Let us call before us some of these, and see how they answered the questions we ask.
Following this clew, we run back along the line of what may be called "our spiritual ancestry." Turning naturally to our own next of kin, a child of New England, going back from the teaching of his youth to his fathers and to their fathers, soon finds before him the Puritan. When we study the Puritan it appears that he was a most composite product, and that just behind him, and essential to the understanding of him, is the great mediaeval church. Studying the church, there is nothing for it but to go back to its foundation, and ponder well the one from whose person and teaching it grew. And to know at all the mind of Jesus we must know something of the mind of Judaism, of which he was the child. Indeed, the popular religion of to-day bases itself directly on the Old and New Testaments; so that our lineage must clearly be traced from this as one of its origins. Another ancient line attracts us, by a history which blends with Judaism at the birth of Christianity, and by a literature which is rich in moral treasures. We must glance at some of the landmarks of the Greek and Roman story.
And here our present study may define its bounds. We will not go back to the progress from the animal up to man, nor survey the prehistoric man; nor will we turn aside to the religions of Egypt, Arabia, and the East; and we can but lightly glance at the early Teutonic people from whom we are descended after the flesh. It will sufficiently serve our purpose if we touch a few salient points among our more direct progenitors in the life of the spirit. And, after all, our richest search will be in the years nearest ourselves.
But no version of history simply as history gives an adequate basis for the higher life. That life must be worked out by each for himself, equipped as he finds himself by inheritance and circumstance, and guided largely by the sure and simple laws of conduct which he drew in with his mother's milk. Study and thought may help a little, and so such essays as the present are offered for whatever they may afford. Of all human studies, history, at its best,--the knowledge of whatever of worthiest the past of mankind affords,--such history is of all studies most delightful and inspiring, for it is the contact through books with noble souls--and the touch of a great soul is a natural sacrament. Such history has significance mainly as its events and characters find parallels in the mind that reads. The soul of to-day, catching from the past the voices of prophets and leaders, thrills with a sense of kinship. The story of American independence means most when the reader has fought his own Bunker Hill, and wintered at Valley Forge, and triumphed at Yorktown. The death of Socrates has small significance unless something in the reader's heart answers to his affirmation that "nothing evil can happen to a good man, in living or dying." The life of Jesus and the story of Christianity are most fully understood when life's experience has brought the Mount of Vision and the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross and passion, the resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.