Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1891-09-03
Value of Ideal Characters.

What was Christ's view and example
in regard to this great faculty of idealism?
Why, IL created hundred fold more hct,
tious persOndses and events naA Dickens,
or Thackeray. or any other novelist, ever
did. We read that h seldom spoke to
the people except In parallels. And
what were his parbles? They were ideals,
hat were more vivid than the abstract
reals of actual, human life. They were
fictitious transactions, experiences, and
actors; but every one Of them hal a true
human basis, or possibility of fact, which
carried its instruction to the listener
mind with the double force of truth.
Take, for example, the Prodigal Son.
Historically he was fiction. But to the
universal and everlasting conscience and
experience of mankind there has not been
human son born into this world for two
thousand years endowed with such i'm
mortal life and power rs that young man.
He will live forever He will give power
GAS long as the heart has passion,
AS long as life has woes
He will travel down all the ages. and.
! in loving sympathy and companionship
with the saddest experience of human
nature, he viii stand DIT every door and
iair Ct sin and misery and shame; he will
! stand there as he stood in his rags, hunger
! and contritiOn among the swine, and say
10 the fallen, with his broken voice and
falling tears; II will arise and 90 unto
my father, and say unto him, Father, |
! have sinned against heaven and in thy
! sight, and am no more worthy to be called
/ Thy son; make me as one of thy hired
/ servants.
TIE Good Samaritan historically was as
/ fictitious being as the Prodigal Son, But
! what one man has lived on the earth since
! he was introduced to the world who has
+ been worth to it the value of that ideal
character? What one mere human being
, has worn actual flesh and blood for the last
F.! two thousand years, who lives with such
intense vitality in the best memories. life
impulse, and action of this living genera
ton as that ideal of good neighb0r?
! What brightest star in our heavens above
would we hold at higher worth than tne
light of lis example? Forever and for
ever, as long as men shall fall among the
| thieves that beset the narrow turnings of
| life. or into the more perilOus ambush of
| their own appetites and passions, so long
the Good Samaritan will seek for them
with his lantern III one hand and his cruet
of oil in the other, and pour the healing
sympathy of his loving heart into their
wounded spirits; so long will he walk the
thorny and story paths of poverty, sin,
and guilt; and, with hand and voice soft
and tender with Gods love, raise the
fallen, bind up their wounds, and bring
them back to the bosom of the great sal
vattion.
Take away these ideas from the world,
H. IoT1O
could humanity have ever been lifted
it could have taken hold of something let
down to it from above? And what was
that something? It was the divine gift
of this very creative faculty of the mind,
which people nickname Imagination.
Whele would civilization have been to day
had it not been for these ideals which
Imagination. if you please, has embodied
| in Sou pture, painting, architecture, and
even In the clmm0nest of industrial arts
, There was time in the history of Greece
when its early settlers almost wOrshipped a
| henefactor who first taught them to build
huts aud W. ar clothes, instead Of living in
, caves and eating 9corns like will beasts.
: What force. then. WIS it that gave the
steady continuity of progress from that
first hut of wattles on Grecian soil to
! the magnificent Pantheon Of Athens ?
I was this very God-given faculty Of the
mind to build ideals on the low and mar
| row basis of actual fact. For every ideal
must have at least feeble real for its point
: o. departure, otherwise it loses the vital
> itv Of truth. it makes a clean severance
| from human experience, aud conveys no
available instruction 10 the mind.
: But this creative faculty of the mind
does something more than people the past
> and the future with its representations. 1t
> fills this living present with its human
deals, which are as dear to Us as ''the
, immediate jewels of our souls; dearer far
than the bare human realities that belong
to our actual companionShip. How cold
and cruel would fall tie hand upon our
; hearts and homes that should drive out Of
q our Ellen the beloved ideals that walk
with us among its flowers. ard even taste
with us the forbidden fruit of its tree OF
a knowledge of good and evil. Why, every
: day ideals marry and are given in mari
g age TO each other in our midst. The hap
niest homes on earth are the home of liv.
= ing-ideals: the homes of husbands and
e wives. parents and children, radiant with
: the idealiSm which ones gives 10 the other
$ There is many poor woman, pinched and
t pale with poverty, who can say, and does