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STRIVING.
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down all obstacles with glacial rigidity, rather than an embodiment of grace and beauty as well as of power, conquering by its attractiveness as much as by its solidity, for grace is just as much a part of character as is truthful action. How imperfect are all definitions of character when it hovers about us as a dream of beauty, a blessed reality, an intangible, actual union of strength and loveliness, as an ideal of a friend, the realization of our Christ, the blending of all separate perfections in the fatherhood and majesty of God! Without irreverence or familiarity can we say that God is character; that in Him are united the artist of the exquisite foreground with its tiny patches of beauty and the creator of the distance that pushes its shadows into chaos. The child longs to resemble his ideal, the parent; the parent places his ideal in the exceptionally great man and woman, and they reach forward after divine excellence, which, because of its unapproach-

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