The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1903-09-30
Their Want Of Horizon.

It is wonderful how persistently and how
stubbornly many persons will cling to an
idealless life. The worst offense you can
commit is to offer to clean their sky win
dows for them. They seem positively to
love darkness rather than light. Diogenes
is not offered to US by history as being e1-'
actly model of manners to royalty, for,
when asked by kingiy Alexander what gift
he would receive from him he only replied:,
"That you may get out of my sunlight
But when you choose between even Alex,
ander and sunlight there is something to
be said for the latter. In the case before
US there is no such excuse. The mind
seems to say: Leave me to a life from
which the bright fsmament of the ideal is
excluded. Let me walk on still in dark
ness" whatever lgEt be round about me.
So they are like Plato's men in the cave.
With faces toward the gloom they are con-
b the glories of world Of life which they
never see. Their stolid incredulity viii
quench the torch of your enthusiasm be-
fore it will be enkindled by it. In answer
to the cry of the disciple: eve have seen
the Lord" they will lay down conditions
before their entry into the promised land
of the ideal, into the world of spiritual re-
atty, into the realization of the unseen,
which destroys its notency to the heart
=
Such people, says the Sunday,School
Times, are much to be pitied for their want
of horizon. In their case it has to be.
created, and the process is usually tedious
and slow. Idealism is perhaps the intensest
delight in life, and it cannot be won in q
moment. It is the reward of a long culti-
vation of the vision-faculty... People who
live life of crustaceans in the Mammoth
Cave of Kentucky, lose the power OF, vision
through long disuse A rector once suf-
fered from his attempt upon his entry
into an English country parish) to create
"horizon" in the case Of an old woman
through the .grimy condition Of her win.
dows. Asthmatical and weak, living on q
dark ground floor room shut in by other
houses, she particularly needed light. But
the offer to have her windows cleaned for
her was rejected with horror. Her. remark.
to one who called soon after, referring to-
the new rector's visit, was: another king
arose. which knew not Joseph" The
would-be reformer had become the Pha-
raoh of the oppression, and Susan, lover Of
obscure sky windows, was Israel in Egypt.
This lack of horizon springs from several
causes. One is spiritual sloth.. !. It is too.
much trouble to some people to keep their
sky windows clean. All that rises above
the sordid they reject with the inertia OF
utter disregard. 1t is undesired and there
fore undiscerned. Horizon" means dis
tance, scope, long sight, and these involve
effort. Charles Kingsley extolled the Eng
lish fen country for its broad levels, un-i
broken for miles save by ancient dyke,
shining mere, whispering reed and rustlingt
poplar. To him it meant horizon, and hori-{;
zon meant-to soul that loved liberty 5as
dearly as ife-the sense of freedom and
room, of air to breathe, of scope wherein
to energize and overcome. To weaker
soul the very vastness Of that unbroken
sky, with its lonesome, glorious sunsets,
its galaxied hemisphere of stars. means the
dreadful sense of mans Ettleness and
mans isolation.
Another cause of lack of horizon is sell
fish preoccupation. The intensity of life
at the centre brooks no concern for life at
the circumference. An atrophied heart
generally carries with it poor circulation
at the peripheries. Horizon is drawn back
Such one wholly misses the spiritual
meaning of life. the solemn significance Of
the world round about him, the marvels Of
the reign of law in nature, the throbbing
of one pulse in all the movements of hu-'
manity, the presence of the supernatural
at every turn, the powers of the world to
come which stoop down to bless as angels
stoop to kiss sleeping children, the troubled
face of the tired souls of men, the mystic
ries of the heavenly kingdom which lie for
others in the homeliest things of life expe-
rience. A visitor was once extolling in an
exquisite west country landscape in Eng
land the glories of the scenery to native.
we be always here" was the sufficient
explanation of inability to admire. Hori-
zon has lost its true meaning, just as Bum
yan's man with the muck rake missed the
crown just above his head. y