Now I can imagine someone asking, "Why should we be enthusiastic? What is the good of it?" and to this question I would reply by giving as the three chief reasons: firstly, that nothing great or good can be accomplished without enthusiasm; secondly, enthusiasm in a good cause is one of the chief means of forming and ennobling the character; and thirdly, that it is commanded and commended by Christ.
To prove the truth of my first reason, you need only turn your thoughts to the world's history, and recall to your memory the many enthusiastic workers and fighters--"fanatics," as the world often mockingly calls them--who have striven, often literally unto death, to promote some good cause or establish some truth, and then ask yourselves, "Would they have accomplished what they did if they had been lukewarm, and half-hearted in their work, and daunted by every fresh obstacle that beset their path?" No, they would not; for, as you all know, obstacles there are in plenty, and, as a Greek writer says, "It is only true enthusiasm which can overcome all obstacles; it is not the power, but the will and the desire which are often wanting in us."
As illustrations of enthusiasts think of St. Paul with his tremendous missionary energy, Socrates, Wilberforce, John Howard, and, in our days, of the women, the "pioneers," who fought against apparently insuperable difficulties for the opening of the medical profession and a university career for themselves and other women.
Secondly, enthusiasm in a good cause forms and moulds the mind by giving it some definite object of pursuit, which prevents aimlessness of purpose, waste of time and capabilities, and selfishness; it ennobles it by raising it above trivial or low thoughts, by attuning it to higher melodies than those of this earth, and by breeding in it single-mindedness and fostering sincerity, "which is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic" (Carlyle). Browning and Michael Angelo, two powerful workers themselves, bear testimony to this ennobling influence of enthusiasm, for the former in his _Saul_ writes--
"'Tis not what man does which exalts him, But what man would do,"
and the latter, "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for perfection strives for something that is God-like."