The White Soul | AdventAI

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 1, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 14

The White Soul.

VIRTUE has ever two followers. The first walk in the train for the love they bear her divine form, for the delight of gazing on those lines of beauty which glorify her face, and for the ineffable serenity she breathes into their souls. The other class have their eyes solely on the rewards scattered along her path. Blind to her rare symmetry and the majesty of her step, deaf to the music of her voice, they are only eager to clutch the shining gifts she lets fall. The first do right because right is right, not for love of gain, nor for fear. Gain is the motive of base spirits, and fear the spur of craven souls.

A young Frenchman brought to D'Alembert the solution of a difficult problem. Said he, “I have done this in order to have a seat in the Academy.” “Sir,” replied D'Alembert, “with such disposition you will never gain one.” Science must be loved for its own sake, and not for the advantage to be derived. No other principle will enable a man to make progress in science. And so of virtue. He who would progress in virtue must love her for her own sake. There are two ways in which this progress can be made. First, by the positive love of all that is high, pure, just, and true; and, second, by uprooting from the heart every base passion, every vicious inclination, every low tendency, every ignoble feeling. Here each has his own besetting sin. A vindictive disposition dominates over one; with another, pride is the bane of virtue; with another, jealousy. The person who is eager in his pursuit of virtue has no temptation to corrode his heart with schemes of revenge, no enthusiasm to waste on trivial objects, no time to throw away on trivial enterprises. His eye is ever fixed and steady; and though it may catch and reflect fleeting images of strife, envy, or revenge, they are soon forgotten, and melt away in the earnest gaze upward.

One excellent way of cultivating whiteness of soul is by reading biography.

“Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime.”

We want to see those we read about in their true characters, as they appeared in the simplicity of fireside associations, and stripped of the robes they wore before the crowds that honored them. When we thus know Lincoln, for example, how little consciousness the man seems to have had of himself; how earnest he was to get at the exact truth of statements made; how sincere in his charity for all, how incapable of malice toward any. The interior life of Alice Cary appears to have been, in an uncommon degree, serene, pure, and high. Envy, detraction, selfishness, scorn, had no part in that noble womanhood. She saw not the excellence she had reached, but that which was still to be pursued; she considered, not how far she had outrun others, but how far she herself was from the goal.

Scorn and vindictiveness tarnish and blacken the soul more quickly and effectually than any other of the passions. Revenge taken into the heart and cherished there, poisons every noble aspiration. Envy, hatred, pride, pollute the soul to its very center; but the love of truth, purity, honor, justice, and intelligence, because these are in themselves worthy of our highest love, will mold the character, and insure a consciousness of integrity and spotlessness of soul that will be in possession when—

“Victors’ wreaths and monarchs’ gems Shall blend with common dust.”