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Title: The Investment of Influence
A Study of Social Sympathy and Service
Author: Newell Dwight Hillis
Release Date: December 10, 2005 [EBook #17274]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVESTMENT OF INFLUENCE ***
Produced by Al Haines
The Investment of Influence
A Study of Social Sympathy and Service
Newell Dwight Hillis
Author of "A Man's Value to Society," "Foretokens of Immortality," Etc.
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
MCMXII
Copyright 1897
By Fleming H. Revell Company.
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25
Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100
Princes Street
DEDICATION
Many years have now passed since we first met. During all this time
you have been an unfailing guide and helper. Your friendship has
doubled life's joys and halved its sorrows. You have strengthened me
where I was weak and weakened me where I was too strong. You have
borne my burdens and lent me strength to bear my own.
Because I have learned from you in example, what I here teach in
precept, I dedicate this book
TO YOU
--whether toiling in field or forum,
in home or market place,
TO YOU--MY FRIEND
FOREWORD.
The glory of our fathers was their emphasis of the principle of
self-care and self-culture. Finding that he who first made the most of
himself was best fitted to make something of others, the teachers of
yesterday unceasingly plied men with motives of personal
responsibility. Influenced by the former generation, our age has
organized the principle of individualism into its home, its school, its
market-place and forum. By reason of the increase in gold, books,
travel and personal luxuries, some now feel that selfness is beginning
to degenerate into selfishness. The time, therefore, seems to have
fully come when the principle of self-care should receive its
complement through the principle of care for others. These chapters
assert the debt of wealth to poverty, the debt of wisdom to ignorance,
the debt of strength to weakness. If "A Man's Value to Society"
affirms the duty of self-culture and character, these studies emphasize
the law of social sympathy and social service.
Newell Dwight Hillis.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I Influence, and the Atmosphere Man Carries
II Life's Great Hearts, and the Helpfulness
of the Higher Manhood
III The Investment of Talent and Its Return
IV Vicarious Lives as Instruments of Social Progress
V Genius, and the Debt of Strength
VI The Time Element in Individual Character
and Social Growth
VII The Supremacy of Heart Over Brain
VIII Renown Through Self-Renunciation
IX The Gentleness of True Gianthood
X The Thunder of Silent Fidelity: a Study
of the Influence of Little Things
XI Influence, and the Strategic Element in Opportunity
XII Influence, and the Principle of Reaction
in Life and Character
XIII The Love that Perfects Life
XIV Hope's Harvest, and the Far-off Interest of Tears
INFLUENCE, AND THE ATMOSPHERE MAN CARRIES.
"I do not believe the world is dying for new ideas. A teacher has a
high place amongst us, but someone is wanted here and abroad far more
than a teacher. It is power we need, power that shall help us to solve
our practical problems, power that shall help us to realize a high,
individual, spiritual life, power that shall make us daring enough to
act out all we have seen in vision, all we have learnt in principle
from Jesus Christ."--_Charles A. Berry_.
"And Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the company
of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them,
the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also
prophesied. And when it was told Saul, he sent other messengers and
they prophesied likewise. And Saul sent messengers again the third
time, and they prophesied also. Then went Saul to Ramah, and he said,
Where are Samuel and David? And one said, Behold they be at Naioth.
And Saul went thither, and the Spirit of God came on him also and he
prophesied. Wherefore man said: Is Saul also among the
prophets?"--_I. Samuel, xix, 20-21_.
CHAPTER I.
INFLUENCE, AND THE ATMOSPHERE MAN CARRIES.
Nature's forces carry their atmosphere. The sun gushes forth light
unquenchable; coals throw off heat; violets are larger in influence
than bulb; pomegranates and spices crowd the house with sweet odors.
Man also has his atmosphere. He is a force-bearer and a
force-producer. He journeys forward, exhaling influences. Scientists
speak of the magnetic circle. Artists express the same idea by the
halo of light emanating from the divine head. Business men understand
this principle, those skilled in promoting great enterprises bring the
men to be impressed into a room and create an atmosphere around them.
In measuring Kossuth's influence over the multitudes that thronged and
pressed upon him the historian said: "We must first reckon with the
orator's physical bulk and then carry the measuring-line about his
atmosphere."
Thinking of the evil emanating from a bad man, Bunyan made Apollyon's
nostrils emit flames. Edward Everett insists that Daniel Webster's
eyes during his greatest speech literally emitted sparks. Had we tests
fine enough we would doubtless find each man's personality the center
of outreaching influences. He himself may be utterly unconscious of
this exhalation of moral forces, as he is of the contagion of disease
from his body. But if light is in him he shines; if darkness rules he
shades, if his heart glows with love he warms; if frozen with
selfishness he chills; if corrupt he poisons; if pure-hearted he
cleanses. We watch with wonder the apparent flight of the sun through
space, glowing upon dead planets, shortening winter and bringing
summer, with birds, leaves and fruits. But that is not half so
wonderful as the passage of a human heart, glowing and sparkling with
ten thousand effects, as it moves through life. The soul, like the
sun, has its atmosphere, and is over against its fellows, for light,
warmth and transformation.
All great writers have had their incident of the atmosphere their hero
carried. Centuries ago King Saul sent his officers to arrest a seer
who had publicly indicted the tyrant for outbreaking sins. When the
soldier entered the prophet's presence he was so profoundly affected by
the majesty of his character that he forgot the commission and his
lord's command, asking rather to become the good man's protector.
Likewise with the second group of soldiers--coming to arrest, they
remained to befriend. Then the King's anger was exceedingly hot
against him who had become a conscience for the throne. Rushing forth
from his palace, like an angry lion from his lair, the King sought the
place where this man of God was teaching the people. But, lo! when the
King entered the brave man's presence his courage, fidelity and
integrity overcame Saul and conquered him unto confession of his
wickedness. Just here we may remember that stout-hearted Pilate, with
a legion of mailed soldiers to protect him, trembled and quaked before
his silent prisoner. And King Agrippa on his throne was afraid, when
Paul lifting his chains, fronted him with words of righteousness and
judgment. Carlyle says that in 1848, during the riot in Paris, the mob
swept down a street blazing with cannon, killed the soldiers, spiked
the guns, only to be stopped a few blocks beyond by an old,
white-haired man who uncovered and signaled for silence. Then the
leader of the mob said: "Citizens, it is De la Eure. Sixty years of
pure life is about to address you!" A true man's presence transformed
a mob that cannon could not conquer.
Montaigne's illustration of atmosphere was Julius Caesar. When the
great Roman was still a youth, he was captured by pirates and chained
to the oars as a galley-slave; but Caesar told stories, sang songs,
declaimed with endless good humor. Chains bound Caesar to the oars,
and his words bound the pirates to himself. That night he supped with
the captain. The second day his knowledge of currents, coasts and the
route of treasure-ships made him first mate; then he won the sailors
over, put the captain in irons, and ruled the ship like a king; soon
after, he sailed the ship as a prize into a Roman port. If this
incident is credible, a youth who in four days can talk the chains off
his wrists, talk himself into the captaincy, talk a pirate ship into
his own hands as booty, is not to be accounted for by his eloquent
words. His speech was but a tithe of his power, and wrought its spell
only when personality had first created a sympathetic atmosphere. Only
a fraction of a great man's character can manifest itself in speech;
for the character is inexpressibly finer and larger than his words.
The narrative of Washington's exploits is the smallest part of his
work. Sheer weight of personality alone can account for him. Happy
the man of moral energy all compact, whose mere presence, like that of
Samuel, the seer, restrains others, softens and transforms them. This
is a thing to be written on a man's tomb: "_His presence made bad men
good._"
This mysterious bundle of forces called man, moving through society,
exhaling blessings or blightings, gets its meaning from the capacity of
others to receive its influences. Man is not so wonderful in his power
to mold other lives, as in his readiness to be molded. Steel to hold,
he is wax to take. The Daguerrean plate and the Aeolian harp do but
meagerly interpret his receptivity. Therefore, some philosophers think
character is but the sum total of those many-shaped influences called
climate, food, friends, books, industries. As a lump of clay is lifted
to the wheel by the potter's hand, and under gentle pressure takes on
the lines of a beautiful cup or vase, so man sets forth a mere mass of
mind; soon, under the gentle touch of love, hope, ambition, he stands
forth in the aspect of a Cromwell, a Milton or a Lincoln.
Standing at the center of the universe, a thousand forces come rushing
in to report themselves to the sensitive soul-center. There is a nerve
in man that runs out to every room and realm in the universe. Only a
tithe of the world's truth and beauty finds access to the lion or lark;
they look out as one in castle tower whose only window is a slit in the
rock. But man dwells in a glass dome; to him the world lies open on
every side. Every fact and force outside has a desk inside man where
it makes up its reports. The ear reports all sounds and songs; the eye
all sights and scenes; the reason all arguments, judgment each "ought"
and "ought not," the religious faculty reports messages coming from a
foreign clime.
Man's mechanism stands at the center of the universe with
telegraph-lines extending in every direction. It is a marvelous
pilgrimage he is making through life while myriad influences stream in
upon him. It is no small thing to carry such a mind for three-score
years under the glory of the heavens, through the glory of the earth,
midst the majesty of the summer and the sanctity of the winter, while
all things animate and inanimate rush in through open windows. For one
thus sensitively constituted every moment trembles with possibilities;
every hour is big with destiny. The neglected blow cannot afterward be
struck on the cold iron; once the stamp is given to the soft metal it
cannot be effaced. Well did Ruskin say; "Take your vase of Venice
glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent
heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north
wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child
fresh from God's presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to
him--at least in this world." We are accountable to God for our
influence; this it is "that gives us pause."
Gentle as is the atmosphere about us, it presses with a weight of
fourteen pounds to the square inch. No infant's hand feels its weight;
no leaf of aspen or wing of bird detects this heavy pressure, for the
fluid air presses equally in all directions. Just so gentle, yet
powerful, is the moral atmosphere of a good man as it presses upon and
shapes his kind. He who hath made man in his own image hath endowed
him with this forceful presence. Ten-talent men, eminent in knowledge
and refinement, eminent in art and wealth, do, indeed, illustrate this.
Proof also comes from obscurity, as pearls from homely oyster shells.
Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out the
life-career of an apple woman. Her history makes the story of kings
and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger,
cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys
sleeping in an ash-box whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart
and life to the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered
and reared some twenty orphans--gave them home and bed and food; taught
them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the
trades; helped others off to Canada and America. The author says she
had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead
face. It must have been so. She "had a beautiful soul," as Emerson
said of Longfellow. Poverty disfigured the apple woman's garret, and
want made it wretched, nevertheless, God's most beautiful angels
hovered over it. Her life was a blossom event in London's history.
Social reform has felt her influence. Like a broken vase the perfume
of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after
we are gone.
The Greek poet says men knew when the goddess came to Thebes because of
the blessings she left in her track. Her footprints were not in the
sea, soon obliterated, nor in the snow, quickly melting, but in fields
and forests. This unseen friend, passing by the tree blackened by a
thunderbolt, stayed her step; lo! the woodbine sprang up and covered
the tree's nakedness. She lingered by the stagnant pool--the pool
became a flowing spring. She rested upon a fallen log--from decay and
death came moss, the snowdrop and the anemone. At the crossing of the
brook were her footprints; not in mud downward, but in violets that
sprang up in her pathway. O beautiful prophecy! literally fulfilled
2,000 years afterward in the life of the London apple woman, whose
atmosphere sweetened bitter hearts and made evil into good.
Wealth and eminent position witness not less powerfully the
transforming influence of exalted characters. "My lords," said
Salisbury, "the reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the
presence here of one man--Lord Shaftesbury. The genius of his life was
expressed when last he addressed you. He said: 'When I feel age
creeping upon me I am deeply grieved, for I cannot bear to go away and
leave the world with so much misery in it.'" So long as Shaftesbury
lived, England beheld a standing rebuke of all wrong and injustice.
How many iniquities shriveled up in his presence! This man,
representing the noblest ancestry, wealth and culture, wrought
numberless reforms. He became a voice for the poor and weak. He gave
his life to reform acts and corn laws; he emancipated the enslaved boys
and girls toiling in mines and factories; he exposed and made
impossible the horrors of that inferno in which chimney-sweeps live; he
founded twoscore industrial, ragged and trade schools; he established
shelters for the homeless poor; when Parliament closed its sessions at
midnight Lord Shaftesbury went forth to search out poor prodigals
sleeping under Waterloo or Blackfriars bridge, and often in a single
night brought a score to his shelter. When the funeral cortege passed
through Pall Mall and Trafalgar square on its way to Westminster Abbey,
the streets for a mile and a half were packed with innumerable
thousands. The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were
inscribed these words: "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me."
The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; "I was hungry and
naked and ye fed me." All England felt the force of that colossal
character. To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the
highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English
people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury--the fitting motto
therefor; "The reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the
presence and influence of Shaftesbury." If our generation is indeed
held back from injustice and anarchy and bloodshed, it will be because
Shaftesbury the peer, and Samuel, the seer, are duplicated in the lives
of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and
weak.
But man's atmosphere is equally potent to blight and to shrivel. Not
time, but man, is the great destroyer. History is full of the ruins of
cities and empires. "Innumerable Paradises have come and gone; Adams
and Eves many," happy one day, have been "miserable exiles" the next;
and always because some satanic ambition or passion or person entering
has cast baneful shadow o'er the scene. Men talk of the scythe of time
and the tooth of time. But, said the art historian: "Time is
scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm; we who smite
like the scythe. Fancy what treasures would be ours to-day if the
delicate statues and temples of the Greeks, if the broad roads and
massy walls of the Romans, if the noble architecture, castles and towns
of the Middle Ages had not been ground to dust by blind rage of man.
It is man that is the consumer; he is moth and mildew and flame." All
the galleries and temples and libraries and cities have been destroyed
by his baneful presence. Thrice armies have made an arsenal of the
Acropolis; ground the precious marbles to powder, and mixed their dust
with his ashes. It was man's ax and hammer that dashed down the carved
work of cathedrals and turned the treasure cities into battle-fields,
and opened galleries to the mold of sea winds. Disobedience to law has
made cities a heap and walled cities ruins. Man is the pestilence that
walketh in darkness. Man is the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
When Mephistopheles appears in human form his presence falls upon homes
like the black pall of the consuming plague, that robes cities for
death. The classic writer tells of an Indian princess sent as a
present to Alexander the Great. She was lovely as the dawn; yet what
especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath;
richer than a garden of Persian roses. A sage physician discovered her
terrible secret. This lovely woman had been reared upon poisons from
infancy until she herself was the deadliest poison known. When a
handful of sweet flowers was given to her, her bosom scorched and
shriveled the petals; when the rich perfume of her breath went among a
swarm of insects, a score fell dead about her. A pet humming-bird
entering her atmosphere, shuddered, hung for a moment in the air, then
dropped in its final agony. Her love was poison; her embrace death.
This tale has held a place in literature because it stands for men of
evil all compact, whose presence has consumed integrities and exhaled
iniquities. Happily the forces that bless are always more numerous and
more potent than those that blight. Cast a bushel of chaff and one
grain of wheat into the soil and nature will destroy all the chaff but
cause the one grain of wheat to usher in rich harvests.
As a force-producer, man's primary influence is voluntary in nature.
This is the capacity of purposely bringing all the soul's powers to
bear upon society. It is the foundation of all instruction. The
parent influences the child this way or that. The artist-master plies
his pupil. The brave general or discoverer inspires and stimulates his
men by multiform motives. The charioteer holds the reins, guides his
steeds, restrains or lifts the scourge. Similarly man holds the reins
of influence over man, and is himself in turn guided. So friend shapes
and molds friend. This is what gives its meaning to conversation,
oratory, journalism, reforms. Each man stands at the center of a great
network of voluntary influence for good. Through words, bearing and
gesture, he sends out his energies. Oftentimes a single speech has
effected great reforms. Oft one man's act has deflected the stream of
the centuries. Full oft a single word has been like a switch that
turns a train from the route running toward the frozen North, to a
track leading into the tropic South.
Not seldom has a youth been turned from the way of integrity by the
influence of a single friend. Endowed as man is, the weight of his
being effects the most astonishing results. Witness Stratton's
conversation with the drunken bookbinder whom we know as John B. Gough,
the apostle of temperance. Witness Moffat's words that changed David
Livingstone, the weaver, into David Livingstone, the savior of Africa.
Witness Garibaldi's words fashioning the Italian mob into the
conquering army. Witness Garrison and Beecher and Phillips and John
Bright. Rivers, winds, forces of fire and steam are impotent compared
to those energies of mind and heart, that make men equal to
transforming whole communities and even nations. Who can estimate the
soul's conscious power? Who can measure the light and heat of last
summer? Who can gather up the rays of the stars? Who can bring
together the odors of last year's orchards? There are no mathematics
for computing the influence of man's voluntary thought, affection and
aspiration upon his fellows.
Man has also an unpurposed influence. Power goes forth without his
distinct volition. Like all centers of energy, the soul does its best
work automatically. The sun does not think of lifting the mist from
the ocean, yet the vapor moves skyward. Often man is ignorant of what
he accomplishes upon his fellows, but the results are the same. He is
surcharged with energy. Accomplishing much by plan, he does more
through unconscious weight of personality. In wonder-words we are told
the apostle purposely wrought deeds of mercy upon the poor. Yet
through his shadow falling on the weak and sick as he passed by, he
unconsciously wrought health and hope in men. In like manner it is
said that while Jesus Christ was seeking to comfort the comfortless,
involuntarily virtue went out of him to strengthen one who did but
touch the hem of his garment. Character works with or without consent.
The selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very
presence chills like a cold, clammy day. Suspicious people fill all
the circle in which they live with envy and jealousy. Moody men
distribute gloom and depression; hopelessness drains off high spirits
as cold iron draws the heat from the hand. Domineering men provoke
rebellion and breed endless irritations.
Great hearts there are also among men; they carry a volume of manhood;
their presence is sunshine, their coming changes our climate; they oil
the bearings of life; their shadow always falls behind them; they make
right living easy. Blessed are the happiness-makers!--they represent
the best forces in civilization. They are to the heart and home what
the honeysuckle is to the door over which it clings. These embodied
gospels interpret Christianity. Jenny Lind explains a sheet of printed
music--and a royal Christian heart explains, and is more than a creed.
Little wonder, when Christianity is incarnated in a mother, that the
youth worships her as though she were an angel. Someone has likened a
church full of people to a box of unlighted candles; latent light is
there; if they were only kindled and set burning they would be lights
indeed. What God asks for is luminous Christians and living gospels.
Another form of influence continues after death, and may be called
unconscious immortality or conserved social energy. Personality is
organized into instruments, tools, books, institutions. Over these
forms of activity death and years have no power for destroying. The
swift steamboat and the flying train tell us that Watt and Stephenson
are still toiling for men. Every foreign cablegram reminds us that
Cyrus Field has just returned home. The merchant who organizes a great
business sends down to the generations his personality, prudence,
wisdom and executive skill. The names of inventors may now be on
moldering tombstones, but their busy fingers are still weaving warm
textures for the world's poor. The gardener of Hampton court, who, in
old age, wished to do yet one more helpful deed, and planted with elms
and oaks the roadway leading to the historic house, still lives in
those columnar trees, and all the long summer through distributes
comfort and refreshment. Every man who opens up a roadway into the
wilderness; every engineer throwing a bridge over icy rivers for weary
travelers; every builder rearing abodes of peace, happiness and
refinement for his generation; every smith forging honest plates that
hold great ships in time of storm, every patriot that redeems his land
with blood; every martyr forgotten and dying in his dungeon that
freedom might never perish; every teacher and discoverer who has gone
into lands of fever and miasma to carry liberty, intelligence and
religion to the ignorant, still walks among men, working for society
and is unconsciously immortal.
This is fame. Life hath no holier ambition. Some there are who,
denied opportunity, have sought out those ambitious to learn, and,
educating them, have sent their own personality out through artists,
jurists or authors they have trained. Herein is the test of the
greatness of editor or statesman or merchant. He has so incarnated his
ideas or methods in his helpers that, while his body is one, his spirit
has many-shaped forms; so that his journal, or institution, or party
feels no jar nor shock in his death, but moves quietly forward because
he is still here living and working in those into whom his spirit is
incarnated. Death ends the single life, but our multiplied life in
others survives.
The supreme example of atmosphere and influence is Jesus Christ. His
was a force mightier than intellect. Wherever he moved a light ne'er
seen on land nor sea shone on man. It was more than eminent beauty or
supreme genius. His scepter was not through cunning of brain or craft
of hand; reality was his throne. "Therefore," said Charles Lamb, "if
Shakespeare should enter the room we should rise and greet him
uncovered, but kneeling meet the Nazarene." His gift cannot be bought
nor commanded; but his secret and charm may be ours. Acceptance,
obedience, companionship with him--these are the keys of power. The
legend is, that so long as the Grecian hero touched the ground, he was
strong; and measureless the influence of him who ever dwells in
Christ's atmosphere. Man grows like those he loves. If great men come
in groups, there is always a greater man in the midst of the company
from whom they borrowed eminence--Socrates and his disciples; Cromwell
and his friends; Coleridge and his company; Emerson and the Boston
group; high over all the twelve disciples and the Name above every
name. Perchance, in vision-hour, over against the man you are he will
show you the man he would fain have you become; thereby comes
greatness. For value is not in iron, but in the pattern that molds it;
beauty is not in the pigments, but in the ideal that blends them;
strength is not in the stone or marble, but in the plan of architect;
greatness is not in wisdom, nor wealth, nor skill, but in the divine
Christ who works up these raw materials of character. Forevermore the
secret of eminence is the secret of the Messiah.
LIFE'S GREAT HEARTS, AND THE HELPFULNESS OF THE HIGHER MANHOOD.
"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves, for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor--
Both thanks and use."--_Measure for Measure_.
"A man was born, not for prosperity, but to suffer for the benefit of
others, like the noble rock maple, which, all round our villages,
bleeds for the service of man."--_Emerson_.
"Everything cries out to us that we must renounce. Thou must go
without, go without! That is the everlasting song which every hour,
all our life through, hoarsely sings to us: Die, and come to life; for
so long as this is not accomplished thou art but a troubled guest upon
an earth of gloom."--_Goethe_.
CHAPTER II.
LIFE'S GREAT HEARTS, AND THE HELPFULNESS OF THE HIGHER MANHOOD.
The oases in the Arabian desert lie under the lee of long ridges of
rock. The high cliffs extending from north to south are barriers
against the drifting sand. Standing on the rocky summit the seer
Isaiah beheld a sea whose yellow waves stretched to the very horizon.
By day the winds were still, for the pitiless Asiatic sun made the
desert a furnace whose air rose upward. But when night falls the wind
rises. Then the sand begins to drift. Soon every object lies buried
under yellow flakes. Anon, sandstorms arise. Then the sole hope for
man is to fall upon his face; the sky rains bullets. Then appears the
ministry of the rocks. They stay the drifting sand. To the yellow sea
they say: "Thus far, but no farther." Desolation is held back. Soon
the land under the lee of the rocks becomes rich. It is fed by springs
that seep out of the cliffs. It becomes a veritable oasis with figs
and olives and vineyards and aromatic shrubs. Here dwell the sheik and
his flocks. Hither come the caravans seeking refreshment. In all the
Orient no spot so beautiful as the oasis under the shadow of the rocks.
Long centuries ago, while Isaiah rejoiced under the beneficent ministry
of these cliffs, his thoughts went out from dead rocks to living men.
In his vision he saw good men as Great Hearts, to whom crowded close
the weak and ignorant, seeking protection. Sheltered thereby barren
lives were nourished into bounty and beauty. With leaping heart and
streaming eyes he cried out; "O, what a desert is life but for the
ministry of the higher manhood! To what shall I liken a good man? A
man shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land; a shelter
in the time of storm!"
Optimists always, we believe God's world is a good world. Joy is more
than sorrow; happiness outweighs misery; the reasons for living are
more numerous than the reasons against it. But let the candid mind
confess that life hath aspects very desert-like. Today prosperity
grows like a fruitful tree; to-morrow adversity's hot winds wither
every leaf. God plants companion, child, or friend in the life-garden;
but death blasts the tree under which the soul finds shelter; then
begins the desert pilgrimage. Soon comes loss of health; then the
wealth of Croesus availeth not for refreshing sleep, and the wisdom of
Solomon is vanity and vexation of spirit. The common people, too, know
blight and blast; their life is full of mortal toil and strife, its
fruitage grief and pain. Temptations and evil purposes are the chief
blights. When the fiery passion hath passed the soul is like a city
swept by a conflagration. Each night we go before the judgment seat.
Reason hears the case; memory gives evidence; conscience convicts, each
faculty goes to the left; self-respect pushes us out of paradise into
the desert; and the angels of our better nature guard the gates with
flaming swords.
A journey among men is like a journey through some land after the
cyclone has made the village a heap and the harvest fields a waste. An
outlook upon the generations reminds us of a highway along which the
retreating army has passed, leaving abandoned guns and silent cannon
with men dead and dying. Travelers from tropical Mexico describe
ruined cities and lovely villages away from which civilized men
journey, leaving temples and terraced gardens to moss and ivy. The
deserted valleys are rich in tropic fruits and the climate soft and
gentle. Yet Aztecs left the garden to journey northward into the
deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. Often for the soul paradise is not
before, but behind.
Shakespeare condenses all this in "King Lear." Avarice closes the
palace doors against the white-haired King. Greed pushes him into the
night to wander o'er the wasted moor, an exiled king, uncrowned and
uncared for. In such hours garden becomes desert. This is the drama
of man's life. The soul thirsts for sympathy. It hungers for love.
Baffled and broken it seeks a great heart. For the pilgrim multitudes
Moses was the shadow on a great rock in a weary land. For poor, hunted
David, Jonathan was a covert in time of storm. Savonarola, Luther,
Cromwell sheltered perishing multitudes. Solitary in the midst of the
vale in which death will soon dig a grave for each of us stands the
immortal Christ, "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
That Infinite Being who hath made man in his own image hath endowed the
soul with full power to transform the desert into an oasis. The soul
carries wondrous implements. It is given to reason to carry fertility
where ignorance and fear and superstition have wrought desolation. It
is given to inventive skill to search out wellsprings and smite rocks
into living water. It is given to affection to hive sweetness like
honeycombs. It is given to wit and imagination to produce perpetual
joy and gladness. It is given to love in the person of a Duff, a
Judson, and a Xavier to transform dark continents. Great is the power
of love! "No abandoned boy in the city, no red man in the mountains,
no negro in Africa can resist its sweet solicitude. It undermines like
a wave, it rends like an earthquake, it melts like a fire, it inspires
like music, it binds like a chain, it detains like a good story, it
cheers like a sunbeam." No other power is immeasurable. For things
have only partial influence over living men. Forests, fields, skies,
tools, occupations, industries--these all stop in the outer court of
the soul. It is given to affection alone to enter the sacred inner
precincts. But once the good man comes his power is irresistible.
Witness Arnold among the schoolboys at Rugby. Witness Garibaldi and
his peasant soldiers. Witness the Scottish chief and his devoted clan.
Witness artist pupils inflamed by their masters. What a noble group is
that headed by Horace Mann, Garrison, Phillips and Lincoln! General
Booth belongs to a like group. What a ministry of mercy and fertility
and protection have these great hearts wrought! Great hearts become a
shelter in time of storm.
All social reforms begin with some great heart. Much now is being said
of the destitution in the poorer districts of great cities. Dante saw
a second hell deeper than hell itself. Each great modern city hath its
inferno. Here dwell costermongers, rag-pickers and street-cleaners;
here the sweater hath his haunts. Huge rookeries and tenements, whose
every brick exudes filth, teem with miserable folk. Each room has one
or more families, from the second cellar at the bottom to the garret at
the top. No greensward, no park, no blade of grass. Whole districts
are as bare of beauty as an enlarged ash-heap. Here children are
"spawned, not born, and die like flies." Here men and women grow
bitter. Here anarchy grows rank. And to such a district in one great
city has gone a man of the finest scholarship and the highest position,
to become the friend of the poor. With him is his bosom friend, having
wealth and culture, with pictures, marbles and curios. Every afternoon
they invite several hundred poor women to spend an hour in the
conservatory among the flowers. Every evening with stereopticon they
take a thousand boys or men upon a journey to Italy or Egypt or Japan.
The kindergartens, public schools and art exhibits cause these women
and children to forget for a time their misery. One hour daily is
redeemed from sorrow to joy by beautiful things and kindly
surroundings. Love and sympathy have sheltered them from life's fierce
heat. Bitter lives are slowly being sweetened. Springs are being
opened in the desert. These great hearts have become "the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land."
The Russian reformer, novelist and philanthropist, had an experience
that profoundly influenced his career. Famine had wrought great
suffering in Russia. One day the good poet passed a beggar on the
street corner. Stretching out gaunt hands, with blue lips and watery
eyes, the miserable creature asked an alms. Quickly the author felt
for a copper. He turned his pockets inside out. He was without purse
or ring or any gift. Then the kind man took the beggar's hand in both
of his and said: "Do not be angry with me, brother, I have nothing with
me!" The gaunt face lighted up; the man lifted his bloodshot eyes; his
blue lips parted in a smile. "But you called me brother--that was a
great gift." Returning an hour later he found the smile he had kindled
still lingered on the beggar's face. His body had been cold; kindness
had made his heart warm. The good man was as a covert in time of
storm. History and experience exhibit now and then a man as unyielding
as rock in friendships. Years ago a gifted youth began his literary
career. Wealth, travel, friends, all good gifts were his. One day a
friend handed him a telegram containing news of his father's death.
Then the mother faded away. The youth was alone in the world. In that
hour evil companions gathered around him. They spoiled him of his
fresh innocency. They taught the delicate boy to listen to salacity
without blushing. Soon coarse quips and rude jests ceased to shock
him. He thought to "see life" by seeing the wrecks of manhood and
womanhood. But does one study architecture by visiting hovels and
squalid cabins? Is not studying architecture seeing the finest
mansions and galleries and cathedrals? So to see life is to see
manhood at its best and womanhood when carried up to culture and beauty.
Wasting his fortune this youth wasted also his friendships. One man
loved him for his father's sake. For several years every Saturday
night witnessed this man of oak and rock going from den to den looking
for his old friend's boy. One day he wrote the youth a letter telling
him, whether or not he found him, so long as he lived he would be
looking for him every Saturday night in hope of redeeming him again to
integrity. What nothing else could do love did. Kindness wrought its
miracle. Clasping hands the man and boy climbed back again to the
heights. At first the integrity was at best a poor, sickly plant. But
his friend was a refuge in time of storm. A good man became the shadow
of a great rock in life's weary land.
Our age is specially interested in the relation of happiness to the
street, the market and counting-room. We have not yet acknowledged the
responsibility of strength. Not always have our giant minds confessed
the debt of power to weakness; the debt of wisdom to ignorance; the
debt of wealth to poverty; the debt of holiness to iniquity. Jesus
Christ was the first to incarnate this principle. By so much as the
parent is wiser than the babe for building a protecting shield for
happiness and well-being, by that much is the mother indebted to her
babe. Why is one man more successful than another in the street's
fierce conflict? Because he has more resources; is prudent, thrifty,
quick to seize upon opportunity, sagacious, keen of judgment. All
these qualities are birth-gifts. The ancestral foothills slope upward
toward the mountain-minded. And what do these distinguished mental
qualities involve?
Recognizing the responsibility of men of leisure and wealth, John
Ruskin said: "Shall one by breadth and sweep of sight gather some
branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb of which he
is himself to be the master spider, making every thread vibrate with
the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of
his eyes?" Shall the industrial or political giant say: "Here is the
power in my hand; weakness owes me a debt? Build a mound here for me
to be throned upon. Come, weave tapestries for my feet that I may
tread in silk and purple; dance before me that I may be glad, and sing
sweetly to me that I may slumber. So shall I live in joy and die in
honor." Rather than such an honorable death, it were better that the
day perish wherein such strength was born. Rather let the great mind
become also the great heart, and stretch out his scepter over the heads
of the common people that stoop to its waving. "Let me help you subdue
the obstacle that baffled our fathers, and put away the plagues that
consume our children. Let us together water these dry places; plow
these desert moons; carry this food to those who are in hunger; carry
this light to those who are in darkness; carry this life to those who
are in death."
Superiority is to make erring men unerring and slow minds swift. Then,
indeed, comes the better day--pray God it be not far off--when strength
uses its wealth as the net of the sacred fisher to gather souls of men
out of the deep.
In overplus of strength we have the measure of a man's greatness.
Soul-power is resource for finding and feeding the hidden springs of
life and thought in others. Not all have the same capacity. The Lord
of the vineyard still sends into the white fields ten-talent men,
two-talent men and one-talent men. Each hath his own task, and each
must grasp the handle of his own being. Genius is widely distributed.
Not many Platos--only one, and then a thousand lesser minds look up to
him and learn to think. Not many Dantes--one, and a thousand poets
tune their lyres to his and catch its notes. Not many Raphaels--one,
and a thousand aspiring artists look up to him and are lifted by the
look. Not many royal hearts--great magazines of kindness. Few are
great in heart-power, effulging all sweet and generous qualities.
Happy the community blessed with, a few great hearts and a few great
minds. One such will civilize a whole community.
Classic literature charmed our childhood with the story of an Arabian
sheik. He dwelt in an oasis near the edge of the desert. Wealth was
his, with flocks and herds and wedges of gold. One night sleep forsook
his couch. Yet the gurgle of falling water was in his ear. The odors
of the vineyard were in his nostril; and to-morrow his servants would
begin to gather the abundant harvest. Ten miles away ran the track of
the caravan where his herdsmen had found a traveler dead from the
fierce heat of the desert. Yonder the desert and a dying traveler;
here an oasis with living water. Then the sheik arose; he bade his
servants fill two leathern water-bottles and bring a basket full of
figs and grapes. The next day a caravan came to a booth protecting two
water-bottles sunk in the sand. Beside them were bunches of fruit. On
a roll were these words: "While God gives me life each day shall a man
be--as springs of water in a desert place." This beautiful story
interprets for us the ministry of the higher manhood, as the great
heart becomes the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
This law of human helpfulness asks each man to carry himself so as to
bless and not blight men, to make and not mar them. Besides the great
ends of attaining character here and immortality hereafter, we are
bound to so administer our talents as to make right living easy and
smooth for others. Happy is he whose soul automatically oils all the
machinery of the home, the market and the street. And this ambition to
be universally helpful must not be a transient and occasional one--here
and there an hour's friendship, a passing hint of sympathy, a transient
gleam of kindness. Heart helpfulness is to enter into the fundamental
conceptions of our living. With vigilant care man is to expel every
element that vexes or irritates or chafes just as the husbandman expels
nettles and poison ivy from fruitful gardens.
For nothing is so easily wrecked as the soul. As mechanisms go up
toward complexity, delicacy increases. The fragile vase is ruined by a
single tap. A chance blow destroys the statue. A bit of sand ruins
the delicate mechanism. But the soul is even more sensitive to injury.
It is marred by a word or a look. Men are responsible for the ruin
they work unthinkingly! To-day the engine drops a spark behind it.
To-morrow that engine is a thousand miles away. Yet the spark left
behind is now a column of fire mowing down the forests. And that
devastating column belongs not to another, but to that engine that hath
journeyed far. Thus the evil man does lives after him. The
condemnation of life is that a man hath carried friction and stirred up
malign elements and sowed fiery discords, so that the gods track him by
the swath of destruction he hath cut through life. The praise of life
is that a man hath exhaled bounty and stimulus and joy and gladness
wherever he journeys. To-day noble examples and ten thousand precepts
unite in urging every one to become a great heart. Every individual
must bring together his little group of pilgrim friends, companions,
employes, using whatever he has of wisdom and skill for guiding those
who follow him on their desert march. For happiness is through
helpfulness. Every morning let us build a booth to shelter someone
from life's fierce heat. Every noon let us dig some life-spring for
thirsty lips. Every night let us be food for the hungry and shelter
for the cold and naked. The law of the higher manhood asks man to be a
great heart, the shadow of a rock in a weary land.
THE INVESTMENT OF TALENT AND ITS RETURN.
"The universal blunder of this world is in thinking that there are
certain persons put into the world to govern and certain others to
obey. Everybody is in this world to govern and everybody to obey.
There are no benefactors and no beneficiaries in distinct classes.
Every man is at once both benefactor and beneficiary. Every good deed
you do you ought to thank your fellowman for giving you an opportunity
to do; and they ought to be thankful to you for doing it."--_Phillips
Brooks_.
"Pity is love and something more; love at its utmost."--_T. T. Munger,
"Freedom of Faith._"
"The great idea that the Bible is the history of mankind's deliverance
from all tyranny, outward as well as inward, of the Jews, as the one
free constitutional people among a world of slaves and tyrants, of
their ruin, as the righteous fruit of a voluntary return to despotism;
of the New Testament, as the good news that freedom, brotherhood,
equality, once confided only to Judea and to Greece, and dimly seen
even there, was henceforth to be the right of all mankind, the law of
all society--who was there to tell me that? Who is there now to go
forth and tell it to the millions who have suffered and doubted and
despaired like me, and turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come? Again
I ask--who will go forth and preach that gospel and save his native
land?"--_Charles Kingsley, "Alton Locke._"
CHAPTER III.
THE INVESTMENT OF TALENT AND ITS RETURN.
In all ages man has been stimulated to sowing by the certainty of
reaping. Tomorrow's sheaves and shoutings support to-day's tearful
sowing. Certainty of victory wins battles before they are fought.
Armed with confidence patriots have beaten down stone castles with
naked fists. Uncertainty makes the heart sick, takes nerve out of arm
and tension out of thought. The mere rumor of war along the
border-lines of nations destroys enterprise and industry. Men will not
plow if warhorses are to trample down the ripe grain. Men will not
build if the enemy are to warm hands over blazing rafters. Why should
the husbandman plant vines if others are to wrest away his fruit? The
individual and the race need the stimulus of hope and a rational basis
of security that nothing shall cut the connection between the causes
sown and the effects to be reaped. Therefore, the divine word: "Send
forth thy gift and talent, and nature and providence shall invest it
securely and give the talent back with interest and increase."
What a promise for civilization was that of Christ: "Give and it shall
be given unto you!" Let the husbandman give his seed to the furrows;
soon the furrows will give back big bundles into the sower's arms. Let
the vintner give the sweat of his brow to the vines; soon the vines
will give back the rich purple floods. Give thy thought, O husbandman!
to the wild rice; soon nature will give back the rice plump wheat.
Give thyself, O inventor! to the raw ores, and nature will give thee
the forceful tools. Give thyself, O reformer! to the desert world;
soon the world-desert will be given back a world-garden. Give
sparingly to nature, and sparingly shalt thou receive again. Give
bountifully, and bounty shall be given back. Give scant thought and
drag but one plank to the stream, and thou shalt receive only a narrow
bridge across the brook. Give abundant thought to wires and cables and
buttresses, and nature will give the bridge across the Firth of Forth.
Give God thy one talent and, investing it, he returns ten. Give the
cup of cold water and thou shalt have rivers of water of life. Share
thy crust and thy cloak, and thou shall have banquet and robe and house
of many mansions. This is the pledge of nature and God: "Give, and
good measure pressed down and shaken together, shalt thou receive of
celestial reapers." The history of progress is the history of Christ's
challenge and man's response.
Christianity deals in universal. Its principles are not local nor
racial nor temporary. They are meridian lines taking in all forces,
men and movements. Nature, too, saith: "Give and it shall be given
unto you." The sun gives heat to the forests, and afterward the
burning coal and tree give heat back to the heavens; the arctics give
icebergs and frigid streams for cooling the fierce tropics, and the
tropics give back the warm Gulf Stream. The soil in the spring gives
its treasures to the growing tree, and in the autumn the tree gives its
leaves to make the soil richer and deeper. Personal also is this
principle. Give thy body food and thy body will give thee mental
strength. Give thy blow to the ax, and the ax will return the fallen
tree, with strong tools for thy arm. Give thy brain sleep and rest and
thy brain will give thy thought nimbleness. Give thy mind to rocks,
and the rock pages will give thee wealth of wisdom. Give thy thought
to the fire and water, and they will give thee an engine stronger than
tamed lions. Give thy scrutiny to the thunderbolt leaping from the
east to the west, and the lightnings shall give themselves back to thee
as noiseless and gentle and obedient as the sunlight. Give thy mind to
books and libraries, and the literature and lore of the ages will give
thee the wisdom of sage and seer. Let some hero give his love and
self-sacrificing service to the poor in prisons, and society will give
him in return, monuments and grateful memory. Give thy obedience to
conscience, and God, whom conscience serves, will give Himself to thee.
Being a natural principle, this law is also spiritual. Standing by his
mother's knee each child hears the story of the echo. The boy visiting
in the mountains, when he called aloud found that he was mocked by a
hidden stranger boy. The insult made him very angry. So he shouted
back insults and epithets. But each of these bad words was returned to
him from the rocks above. With bitter tears the child returned to his
mother, who sent him back to give the hidden stranger kind words and
affectionate greetings. Lo! the stranger now echoed back his
kindliness. Thus society echoes back each temperament and each career.
Evermore man receives what he first gives to nature and society and God.
History is rich in interpretation of this principle. In every age man
has received from society what he has given to society. This continent
lay waiting for ages for the seed of civilization. At length the sower
went forth to sow. Landing in midwinter upon a bleak coast, the
fathers gave themselves to cutting roads, draining swamps, subduing
grasses, rearing villages, until all the land was sown with the good
seed of liberty and Christian civilization. Afterward, when tyranny
threatened liberty, these worthies in defending their institutions gave
life itself. Dying, they bequeathed their treasures to after
generations. At length an enemy, darkling, lifted weapons for
destroying. Would these who had received institutions nourished with
blood, give life-blood in return? The uprising of 1861 is the answer.
Then the people rose as one man, the plow stood in the furrow, the
hammer fell from the hand, workroom and college hall were alike
deserted--a half-million men laid down their lives upon many a
battle-field. Similarly, the honor given to Washington during these
last few days tells us that the patriot who gives shall receive. From
the day when the young Virginian entered the Indian forests with
Braddock to the day when he lay dying at Mount Vernon the patriot gave
his health, his wealth, his time, his life, a living sacrifice through
eight and forty years. Now every year the people, rising up early and
sitting up late, rehearse to their children the story of his life and
work. Having given himself, honor shall he receive through all the
ages.
To Abraham Lincoln also came the word: "Give and thou shall receive!"
Sitting in the White House the President proclaimed equal rights to
black and white. Then, with shouts of joy, three million slaves
entered the temple of liberty. But they bore the emancipator upon
their shoulders and enshrined him forever in the temple of fame, where
he who gave bountifully shall receive bountiful honor through all the
ages. There, too, in the far-off past stands an uplifted cross.
Flinging wide his arms this crowned sufferer sought to lift the world
back to his Father's side. In life he gave his testimony against
hypocrisy, Phariseeism and cruelty. For years he gave himself to the
publican, the sinner, the prodigal, the poor in mind or heart, and so
came at length to his pitiless execution. But, having given himself in
abandon of love, the world straightway gave itself in return. Every
one of his twelve disciples determined to achieve a violent death for
the Christ who gave himself for them. Paul was beheaded in Rome. John
was tortured in Patmos. Andrew and James were crucified in Asia. The
rest were mobbed, or stoned, or tortured to death. And as years sped
on man kept giving. Multitudes went forth, burning for him in the
tropics, freezing for him in the arctics; threading for him the forest
paths, braving for him the swamps, that they might serve his little
ones. He gave himself for the world, and the world, in a passion of
love, will yet give itself back to him.
Recently the officials of the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the
noblest citizens of Boston assembled for celebrating the one hundredth
anniversary of the birth of George Peabody. For a like purpose the
citizens of London came together in banquet hall. Now, the banker had
long been dead. Nor did he leave children to keep his name before the
public. How shall we account for two continents giving him such praise
and fame? George Peabody received from his fellows, because he first
gave to his fellows. To his genius for accumulation he added the
genius of distribution. His large gifts to Harvard and Yale, to Salem
and Peabody, made to science and art as well as to philanthropy and
religion, secured perpetual remembrance. When the public credit of the
State of Maryland was endangered, he negotiated $8,000,000 in London
and gave his entire commission of $200,000 back to the State. He who
gave $3,500,000 for founding schools and colleges in the South for
black and white, could not but receive honor and praise. Therefore the
eulogies pronounced by the legislators in Annapolis. As a banker in
London he was disturbed by the sorrows of the poor, and for months gave
himself to an investigation of the tenement-house system, developing
the Peabody Tenements, to which he gave $2,500,000, and helped 20,000
people to remove from dens into buildings that were light and sweet and
wholesome. Therefore when he died in London the English nation that
had received from him gave to him, and, for the first time in history,
the gates of Westminster Abbey were thrown open for the funeral
services of a foreigner. Therefore, the Prime Minister of England
selected the swiftest frigate in the English navy for carrying his body
back to his native land. His generosity radiated in every direction,
not in trickling rivulets, but in copious streams. Bountifully he gave
to men; therefore, through innumerable orations, sermons, editorials
and toasts, men vied with each other in giving praise and honor back to
Peabody, the benefactor of the people.
Society, always sensitive to generosity, is equally sensitive to
selfishness. He who treats his fellows as so many clusters to be
squeezed into his cup, who spoils the world for self aggrandizement,
finds at last that he has burglarized his own soul. Here is a man who
says: "Come right, come wrong, I will get gain." Loving ease, he
lashes himself to unceasing toil by day and night. Needing rest on
Sunday, he denies himself respite and scourges his jaded body and brain
into new activities. Every thought is a thread to be woven into a
golden net. He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks.
He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself
an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching,
if only he may get gain. He will sweat and swelter and burn in the
tropics until malaria has made his face as yellow as gold, if thereby
he can fill his purse, and for a like end he will shiver and ache in
the arctics. He will deny his ear music, he will deny his mind
culture, he will deny his heart friendship that he may coin concerts
and social delights into cash. At length the shortness of breath
startles him; the stoppage of blood alarms him. Then he retires to
receive--what? To receive from nature that which he has given to
nature. Once he denied his ear melody, and now taste in return denies
him pleasure. Once he denied his mind books, and now books refuse to
give him comfort. Once he denied himself friendship, and now men
refuse him their love. Having received nothing from him, the great
world has no investment to return to him. Such a life, entering the
harbor of old age, is like unto a bestormed ship with empty coal bins,
whose crew fed the furnace, first with the cargo and then with the
furniture, and reached the harbor, having made the ship a burned-cut
shell. God buries the souls of many men long years before their bodies
are carried to the graveyard.
This principle tells us why nature and society are so prodigal with
treasures to some men and so niggardly to others. What a different
thing a forest is to different men! He who gives the ax receives a
mast. He who gives taste receives a picture. He who gives imagination
receives a poem. He who gives faith hears the "goings of God in the
tree-tops." The charcoal-burner fronts an oak for finding out how many
cords of wood are in it, as the Goths of old fronted peerless temples
for estimating how many huts they could quarry from the stately
pile.[1] But an artist curses the woodsman for making the tree food
for ax and saw. It has become to him as sacred as the cathedral within
which he bares his head. It is a temple where birds praise God. It is
a harp with endless music for the summer winds. It fills his eye with
beauty and his ear with rustling melodies.
For the poet that selfsame oak is enshrined in a thousand noble
associations. It sings for him like a hymn; it shines like a vision;
it suggests ships, storms and ocean battles; the spear of Launcelot,
the forests of Arden; old baronial halls mellow with lights falling on
oaken floors; King Arthur's banqueting chamber. To the scientist's
thought the oak is a vital mechanism. By day and by night, the long
summer through, it lifts tons of moisture and forces it into the
wide-spreading branches, but without the rattle of huge engines. With
what uproar and clang of iron hammers would stones be crushed that are
dissolved noiselessly by the rootlets and recomposed in stems and
boughs! What a vast laboratory is here, every root and leaf an expert
chemist!
For other multitudes the earth has become only a huge stable; its fruit
fodder; its granaries ricks, out of which men-cattle feed. These
estimate a man's value according as he has lifted his ax upon tall
trees and ravaged all the loveliness of creation; whose curse is the
Nebuchadnezzar curse, giving to nature the tongue and hand, and
receiving from nature grass; who are doomed to love the corn they
grind, to hear only the roar of the whirlwind and the crash of the
hail, never "the still small voice;" who see what is written in
lamp-black and lightning; who think the clouds are for rain, and know
not that they are chariots, thrones and celestial highways; that the
sunset means something else than sleep, and the morning suggests
something other than work. All these give nature only thought for
food, and food only shall they receive from nature, until all their
deeds are plowed down in dust. Give forth thy gift, young men and
maidens, and according as thou givest thou shalt receive fruit, or
picture, or poem, or temple, or ladder let down from heaven, or angel
aspirations going up.
Conscience also receives its gifts and makes a return. Give thy body
obedience and it will return happiness and health. Give overdrafts and
excesses and it will return sleepless nights and suffering days. Man's
sins are seeds, his sufferings harvests. Every action is embryonic,
and according as it is right or wrong will ripen into sweet fruits of
pleasure or poison fruits of pain. Some seeds hold two germs; and vice
and penalty are wrapped up under one covering. Sins are
self-registering and penalties are automatic. The brain keeps a double
set of books, and at last visits its punishments. Conscience does not
wait for society to ferret out iniquity, but daily executes judgment.
Policemen may slumber and the judge may nod, but the nerves are always
active, memory never sleeps, conscience is never off duty. The recoil
of the gun bruises black the shoulder of him who holds it, and sin is a
weapon that kills at both ends.
In the olden days, when the poisoner was in every palace, the Doge of
Venice offered a reward for a crystal goblet that would break the
moment a poison touched it. Perhaps the idea was suggested to the
Prince because his soul already fulfilled the thought, for one drop of
sin always shatters the cup of joy and wastes life's precious wine.
How do events interpret this principle! One day Louis, King of France,
was riding in the forest near his gorgeous and guilty palace of
Versailles. He met a peasant carrying a coffin. "What did the man die
of?" asked the King. "Of hunger," answered the peasant. But the sound
of the hunt was in the King's ear, and he forgot the cry of want. Soon
the day came when the King stood before the guillotine, and with mute
appeals for mercy fronted a mob silent as statues, unyielding as stone,
grimly waiting to dip the ends of their pikes in regal blood. He gave
cold looks; he received cold steel.
Marie Antoinette, riding to Notre Dame for her bridal, bade her
soldiers command all beggars, cripples and ragged people to leave the
line of the procession. The Queen could not endure for a brief moment
the sight of those miserable ones doomed to unceasing squalor and
poverty. What she gave others she received herself, for soon, bound in
an executioner's cart, she was riding toward the place of execution
midst crowds who gazed upon her with hearts as cold as ice and hard as
granite. When Foulon was asked how the starving populace was to live
he answered: "Let them eat grass." Afterward, Carlyle says, the mob,
maddened with rage, "caught him in the streets of Paris, hanged him,
stuck his head upon a pike, filled his mouth with grass, amid shouts as
of Tophet from a grass-eating people." What kings and princes gave
they received. This is the voice of nature and conscience: "Behold,
sin crouches at the door!"
This divine principle also explains man's attitude toward his fellows.
The proverb says man makes his own world. Each sees what is in
himself, not what is outside. The jaundiced eye yellows all it
beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it
clings. Man gives his color to what his thought is fastened upon. The
pessimist's darkness makes all things dingy. The youth disappointed
with his European trip said he was a fool for going. He was, for the
reason that he was a fool before he started. He saw nothing without,
because he had no vision within. He gave no sight, he received no
vision. An artist sees in each Madonna that which compels a rude mob
to uncover in prayer, but the savage perceives only a colored canvas.
Recently a foreign traveler, writing of his impressions of our city,
described it to his fellows as a veritable hades. But his fellow
countryman, in a similar volume, recorded his impressions of our art,
architecture and interest in education. Each saw that for which he
looked.
This principle explains man's attitude toward his God. God governs
rocks by force, animals by fear, savage man by force and fear, true men
by hope and love. Man can take God at whatsoever level he pleases. He
who by beastliness turns his body into a log will be held by gravity in
one spot like a log. He who lives on a level with the animals will
receive fear and law and lightnings. He who approaches God through
laws of light and heat and electricity will find the world-throne
occupied by an infinite Agassiz. Some approach God through physical
senses. They behold his storms sinking ships, his tornadoes mowing
down forests. These find him a huge Hercules; yet the Judge who seems
cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and
kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to
him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with
forked lightnings without and volcanic fires within. The pure in heart
see him as the face of all-clasping Love. Give him thy heart and he
will give thee love, effulgent love, like the affection of mother or
lover or friend, only dearer than either. Give him thy ways, and he
will overarch life's path as the heavens overarch the flowers, filling
them with heat by day and yielding cooling dews by night. Give him but
a flickering aspiration and he will give thee balm for the bruised reed
and flame for the smoking flax. Give him the publican's prayer and he
will give thee mercy like the wideness of the sea. Give his little
ones but a cup of cold water and he will give thee to drink of the
water of the river of life and bring thee to the banquet hall in the
house of many mansions.
[1] Mod. Ptrs., Vol. 5, Chap. 1. The Earth--Veil Star papers: A Walk
Among Trees.
VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
"Only he that uses shall even so much as keep. Unemployed strength
steadily diminishes. The sluggard's arm grows soft and flabby. So,
even in this lowest sphere, the law is inexorable. Having is using.
Not using is losing. Idleness is paralysis. New triumphs must only
dictate new struggles. If it be Alexander of Macedon, the Orontes must
suggest the Euphrates, and the Euphrates the Indus. Always it must be
on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering
march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive,
persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing
to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde.
Brief was the interval between Roman conquest of Barbarians, and
Barbarian conquest of Rome. Blessed is the man who keeps out of the
hospital and holds his place in the ranks. Blessed the man, the last
twang of whose bow-string is as sharp as any that went before, sending
its arrow as surely to the mark."--_Roswell W. Hitchcock_.
CHAPTER IV.
VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called the picture-gallery of
heroes. These patriots and martyrs who won our first battles for
liberty and religion made nobleness epidemic. Oft stoned and mobbed in
the cities they founded and loved, they fled into exile, where they
wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and slept in the holes of
the earth. Falling at last in the wilderness, it may be said that no
man knoweth their sepulcher and none their names. But joyfully let us
confess that the institutions most eminent and excellent in our day
represent the very principles for which these martyrs died and, dying,
conquered. For those heroes were the first to dare earth's despots.
They won the first victory over every form of vice and sin. They wove
the first threads of the flag of liberty and made it indeed the banner
of the morning, for they dyed it crimson in their heart's-blood. In
all the history of freedom there is no chapter comparable for a moment
to the glorious achievements of these men of oak and rock. Their deeds
shine on the pages of history like stars blazing in the night and their
achievements have long been celebrated in song and story. "The angels
of martyrdom and victory," says Mazzini, "are brothers; both extend
protecting wings over the cradle of the future life."
Sometimes it has happened that the brave deed of a single patriot has
rallied wavering hosts, flashed the lightning through the centuries,
and kindled whole nations into a holy enthusiasm. The opposing legions
of soldiers and inquisitors went down before the heroism of the early
church as darkness flees before the advancing sunshine. Society
admires the scholar, but man loves the hero. Wisdom shines, but
bravery inspires and lifts. Though centuries have passed, these noble
deeds still nourish man's bravery and endurance. It was not given to
these leaders to enter into the fruits of their labors. Vicariously
they died. With a few exceptions, their very names remain unknown.
But let us hasten to confess that their vicarious suffering stayed the
onset of despotism and achieved our liberty. They ransomed us from
serfdom and bought our liberty with a great price. Compared to those,
our bravest deeds do seem but brambles to the oaks at whose feet they
grow.
Having made much of the principles of the solidarity of society,
science is now engaged in emphasizing the principle of vicarious
service and suffering. The consecrated blood of yesterday is seen to
be the social and spiritual capital of to-day. Indeed, the civil,
intellectual and religious freedom and hope of our age are only the
moral courage and suffering of past ages, reappearing under new and
resplendent forms. The social vines that shelter us, the civic bough
whose clusters feed us, all spring out of ancient graves. The red
currents of sacrifice and the tides of the heart have nourished these
social growths and made their blossoms crimson and brilliant. Nor
could these treasures have been gained otherwise. Nature grants no
free favors. Every wise law, institution and custom must be paid for
with corresponding treasure. Thought itself takes toll from the brain.
To be loved is good, indeed; but love must be paid for with toil,
endurance, sacrifice--fuel that feeds love's flame.
Generous giving to-day is a great joy; but it is made possible only by
years of thrift and economy. The wine costs the clusters. The linen
costs the flax. The furniture costs the forests. The heat in the
house costs the coal in the cellar. Wealth costs much toil and sweat
by day. Wisdom costs much study and long vigils by night. Leadership
costs instant and untiring pains and service. Character costs the
long, fierce conflict with vice and sin. When Keats, walking in the
rose garden, saw the ground under the bushes all covered with pink
petals, he exclaimed; "Next year the roses should be very red!" When
Aeneas tore the bough from the myrtle tree, Virgil says the tree exuded
blood. But this is only a poet's way of saying that civilization is a
tree that is nourished, not by rain and snow, but by the tears and
blood of the patriots and prophets of yesterday.
Fortunately, in manifold ways, nature and life witness to the
universality of vicarious service and suffering. Indeed, the very
basis of the doctrine of evolution is the fact that the life of the
higher rests upon the death of the lower. The astronomers tell us that
the sun ripens our harvests by burning itself up. Each golden sheaf,
each orange bough, each bunch of figs, costs the sun thousands of tons
of carbon. Geike, the geologist, shows us that the valleys grow rich
and deep with soil through the mountains, growing bare and being
denuded of their treasure. Beholding the valleys of France and the
plains of Italy all gilded with corn and fragrant with deep grass,
where the violets and buttercups wave and toss in the summer wind,
travelers often forget that the beauty of the plains was bought, at a
great price, by the bareness of the mountains. For these mountains are
in reality vast compost heaps, nature's stores of powerful stimulants.
Daily the heat swells the flakes of granite; daily the frost splits
them; daily the rains dissolve the crushed stone into an impalpable
dust; daily the floods sweep the rich mineral foods down into the
starving valleys. Thus the glory of the mountains is not alone their
majesty of endurance, but also their patient, passionate beneficence as
they pour forth all their treasures to feed richness to the pastures,
to wreathe with beauty each distant vale and glen, to nourish all
waving harvest fields. This death of the mineral is the life of the
vegetable.
If now we descend from the mountains to explore the secrets of the sea,
Maury and Guyot show us the isles where palm trees wave and man builds
his homes and cities midst rich tropic fruits. There scientists find
that the coral islands were reared above the waves by myriads of living
creatures that died vicariously that man might live. And everywhere
nature exhibits the same sacrificial principle. Our treasures of coal
mean that vast forests have risen and fallen again for our factories
and furnaces. Nobody is richer until somebody is poorer. Evermore the
vicarious exchange is going on. The rock decays and feeds the moss and
lichen. The moss decays to feed the shrub. The shrub perishes that
the tree may have food and growth. The leaves of the tree fall that
its boughs may blossom and bear fruit. The seeds ripen to serve the
birds singing in all the boughs. The fruit falls to be food for man.
The harvests lend man strength for his commerce, his government, his
culture and conscience. The lower dies vicariously that the higher may
live. Thus nature achieves her gifts only through vast expenditures.
It is said that each of the new guns for the navy costs $100,000. But
the gun survives only a hundred explosions, so that every shot costs
$1,000. Tyndall tells us that each drop of water sheathes electric
power sufficient to charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of
Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy
required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the
sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and
mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from
Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But because nature
does her work noiselessly we must not forget that each of her gifts
also involves tremendous expenditure.
This law of vicarious service holds equally in the intellectual world.
The author buys his poem or song with his life-blood. While traveling
north from London midst a heavy snow-storm, Lord Bacon descended from
his coach to stuff a fowl with snow to determine whether or not ice
would preserve flesh. With his life the philosopher purchased for us
the principle that does so much to preserve our fruits and foods
through the summer's heat and lend us happiness and comfort. And
Pascal, whose thoughts are the seeds that have sown many a mental life
with harvests, bought his splendid ideas by burning up his brain. The
professors who guided and loved him knew that the boy would soon be
gone, just as those who light a candle in the evening know that the
light, burning fast, will soon flicker out in the deep socket. One of
our scientists foretells the time when, by the higher mathematics, it
will be possible to compute how many brain cells must be torn down to
earn a given sum of money; how much vital force each Sir William Jones
must give in exchange for one of his forty languages and dialects; what
percentage of the original vital force will be consumed in experiencing
each new pleasure, or surmounting each new pain; how much nerve
treasure it takes to conquer each temptation or endure each
self-sacrifice. Too often society forgets that the song, law or reform
has cost the health and life of the giver. Tradition says that,
through much study, the Iliad cost Homer his eyes. There is strange
meaning in the fact that Dante's face was plowed deep with study and
suffering and written all over with the literature of sorrow.
To gain his vision of the hills of Paradise, Milton lost his vision of
earth's beauteous sights and scenes. In explanation of the early death
of Raphael and Burns, Keats and Shelley, it has been said that few
great men who are poor have lived to see forty. They bought their
greatness with life itself. A few short years ago there lived in a
western state a boy who came up to his young manhood with a great, deep
passion for the plants and shrubs. While other boys loved the din and
bustle of the city, or lingered long in the library, or turned eager
feet toward the forum, this youth plunged into the fields and forests,
and with a lover's passion for his noble mistress gave himself to roots
and seeds and flowers. While he was still a child he would tell on
what day in March the first violet bloomed; when the first snowdrop
came, and, going back through his years, could tell the very day in
spring when the first robin sang near his window. Soon the boy's
collection of plants appealed to the wonder of scholars. A little
later students from foreign countries began to send him strange flowers
from Japan and seeds from India. One midnight while he was lingering
o'er his books, suddenly the white page before him was as red with his
life-blood as the rose that lay beside his hand. And when, after two
years in Colorado, friends bore his body up the side of the mountains
he so dearly loved, no scholar in all our land left so full a
collection and exposition of the flowers of that distant state as did
this dying boy. His study and wisdom made all to be his debtors. But
he bought his wisdom with thirty years of health and happiness. We are
rich only because the young scholar, with his glorious future, for our
sakes made himself poor.
Our social treasure also is the result of vicarious service and
suffering. Sailing along the New England coasts, one man's craft
strikes a rock and goes to the bottom. But where his boat sank there
the state lifts a danger signal, and henceforth, avoiding that rock,
whole fleets are saved. One traveler makes his way through the forest
and is lost. Afterward other pilgrims avoid that way. Experimenting
with the strange root or acid or chemical, the scholar is poisoned and
dies. Taught by his agonies, others learn to avoid that danger.
Only a few centuries ago the liberty of thought was unknown. All lips
were padlocked. The public criticism of a baron meant the confiscation
of the peasant's land; the criticism of the pope meant the dungeon; the
criticism of the king meant death. Now all are free to think for
themselves, to sift all knowledge and public teachings, to cast away
the chaff and to save the precious wheat. But to buy this freedom
blood has flowed like rivers and tears have been too cheap to count.
To achieve these two principles, called liberty of thought and liberty
of speech, some four thousand battles have been fought. In exchange,
therefore, for one of these principles of freedom and happiness,
society has paid--not cash down, but blood down; vital treasure for
staining two thousand battle-fields. To-day the serf has entered into
citizenship and the slave into freedom, but the pathway along which the
slave and serf have moved has been over chasms filled with the bodies
of patriots and hills that have been leveled by heroes' hands. Why are
the travelers through the forests dry and warm midst falling rains?
Why are sailors upon all seas comfortable under their rubber coats?
Warm are they and dry midst all storms, because for twenty years
Goodyear, the discoverer of India rubber, was cold and wet and hungry,
and at last, broken-hearted, died midst poverty.
Why is Italy cleansed of the plagues that devastated her cities a
hundred years ago? Because John Howard sailed on an infected ship from
Constantinople to Venice, that he might be put into a lazaretto and
find out the clew to that awful mystery of the plague and stay its
power. How has it come that the merchants of our western ports send
ships laden with implements for the fields and conveniences for the
house into the South Sea Islands? Because such men as Patteson, the
pure-hearted, gallant boy of Eton College, gave up every prospect in
England to labor amid the Pacific savages and twice plunged into the
waters of the coral reefs, amid sharks and devil-fish and stinging
jellies, to escape the flight of poisoned arrows of which the slightest
graze meant horrible death, and in that high service died by the clubs
of the very savages whom he had often risked his life to save--the
memory of whose life did so smite the consciences of his murderers that
they laid "the young martyr in an open boat, to float away over the
bright blue waves, with his hands crossed, as if in prayer, and a palm
branch on his breast." And there, in the white light, he lies now,
immortal forever.
And why did the representatives of five great nations come together to
destroy the slave trade in Africa, and from every coast come the
columns of light to journey toward the heart of the dark continent and
rim all Africa around with little towns and villages that glow like
lighthouses for civilization? Because one day Westminster Abbey was
crowded with the great men of England, in the midst of whom stood two
black men who had brought Livingstone's body from the jungles of
Africa. There, in the great Abbey, faithful Susi told of the hero who,
worn thin as parchment through thirty attacks of the African fever,
refused Stanley's overtures, turned back toward Ulala, made his ninth
attempt to discover the head-waters of the Nile and search out the
secret lairs of the slave-dealers, only to die in the forest, with no
white man near, no hand of sister or son to cool his fevered brow or
close his glazing eyes. Faithful to the last to that which had been
the great work of his life, he wrote these words with dying hand: "All
I can add in my solitude is, may heaven's rich blessings come down on
every one who would help to heal this open sore of the world!" Why was
it that in the ten years after Livingstone's death, Africa made greater
advancement than in the previous ten centuries? All the world knows
that it was through the vicarious suffering of one of Scotland's
noblest heroes. And why is it that Curtis says that there are three
American orations that will live in history--Patrick Henry's at
Williamsburg, Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg and Wendell Philips' at
Faneuil Hall? A thousand martyrs to liberty lent eloquence to Henry's
lips; the hills of Gettysburg, all billowy with our noble dead, exhaled
the memories that anointed Lincoln's lips; while Lovejoy's spirit,
newly martyred at Alton, poured over Wendell Phillips' nature the full
tides of speech divine. Vicarious suffering explains each of these
immortal scenes.
Long, too, the scroll of humble heroes whose vicarious services have
exalted our common life. Recognizing this principle, Cicero built a
monument to his slave, a Greek, who daily read aloud to his master,
took notes of his conversation, wrote out his speeches and so lent the
orator increased influence and power. Scott also makes one of his
characters bestow a gift upon an aged servant. For, said the warrior,
no master can ever fully recompense the nurse who cares for his
children, or the maid who supplies their wants. To-day each giant of
the industrial realm is compassed about with a small army of men who
stand waiting to carry out his slightest behests, relieve him of
details, halve his burdens, while at the same time doubling his joys
and rewards. Lifted up in the sight of the entire community the great
man stands on a lofty pedestal builded out of helpers and aids. And
though here and now the honors and successes all go to the one giant,
and his assistants are seemingly obscure and unrecognized, hereafter
and there honors will be evenly distributed, and then how will the
great man's position shrink and shrivel!
Here also are the parents who loved books and hungered for beauty, yet
in youth were denied education and went all their life through
concealing a secret hunger and ambition, but who determined that their
children should never want for education. That the boy, therefore,
might go to college, these parents rose up early to vex the soil and
sat up late to wear their fingers thin, denying the eye beauty, denying
the taste and imagination their food, denying the appetite its
pleasures. And while they suffer and wane the boy in college grows
wise and strong and waxing great, comes home to find the parents
overwrought with service and ready to fall on death, having offered a
vicarious sacrifice of love.
And here are our own ancestors. Soon our children now lying in the
cradles of our state will without any forethought of theirs fall heir
to this rich land with all its treasures material--houses and
vineyards, factories and cities; with all its treasures mental--library
and gallery, school and church, institutions and customs. But with
what vicarious suffering were these treasures purchased! For us our
fathers subdued the continents and the kingdoms, wrought freedom,
stopped the mouths of wolves, escaped the sword of savages, turned to
flight armies of enemies, subdued the forests, drained the swamps,
planted vineyards, civilized savages, reared schoolhouses, builded
churches, founded colleges. For four generations they dwelt in cabins,
wore sheepskins and goatskins, wandered about exploring rivers and
forests and mines, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, because of
their love of liberty, and for the slave's sake were slain with the
sword--of whom this generation is not worthy. "And these all died not
having received the promise," God having reserved that for us to whom
it has been given to fall heir to the splendid achievements of our
Christian ancestors.
And what shall we more say, save only to mention those whose early
death as well as life was vicarious? What an enigma seems the career
of those cut off while yet they stand upon life's threshold! How proud
they made our hearts, standing forth all clothed with beauty, health
and splendid promise! What a waste of power, what a robbery of love,
seemed their early death! But slowly it has dawned upon us that the
footsteps that have vanished walk with us more frequently than do our
nearest friends. And the sound of the voice that is still instructs us
in our dreams as no living voice ever can. The invisible children and
friends are the real children. Their memory is a golden cord binding
us to God's throne, and drawing us upward into the kingdom of light.
Absent, they enrich us as those present cannot. And so the child who
smiled upon us and then went away, the son and the daughter whose
talents blossomed here to bear fruit above, the sweet mother's face,
the father's gentle spirit--their going it was that set open the door
of heaven and made on earth a new world. These all lived vicariously
for us, and vicariously they died!
No deeply reflective nature, therefore, will be surprised that the
vicarious principle is manifest in the Savior of the soul. Rejecting
all commercial theories, all judicial exchanges, all imputations of
characters, let us recognize the universality of this principle. God
is not at warfare with himself. If he uses the vicarious principle in
the realm of matter he will use it in the realm of mind and heart. It
is given unto parents to bear not only the weakness of the child, but
also his ignorance, his sins--perhaps, at last, his very crimes. But
nature counts it unsafe to permit any wrong to go unpunished. Nature
finds it dangerous to allow the youth to sin against brain or nerve or
digestion without visiting sharp penalties upon the offender. Fire
burns, acids eat, rocks crush, steam scalds--always, always.
Governments also find it unsafe to blot out all distinctions between
the honest citizen and the vicious criminal. The taking no notice of
sin keeps iniquity in good spirits, belittles the sanctity of law and
blurs the conscience.
With God also penalties are warnings. His punishments are thorn
hedges, safeguarding man from the thorns and thickets where serpents
brood, and forcing his feet back into the ways of wisdom and peace.
For man's integrity and happiness, therefore, conscience smites and is
smiting unceasingly. Therefore, Eugene Aram dared not trust himself
out under the stars at night, for these stars were eyes that blazed and
blazed and would not relent. But why did not the murderer, Eugene
Aram, forgive himself? When Lady Macbeth found that the water in the
basin would not wash off the red spots, but would "the multitudinous
seas incarnadine," why did not Macbeth and his wife forgive each other?
Strange, passing strange, that Shakespeare thought volcanic fires
within and forked lightning without were but the symbols of the storm
that breaks upon the eternal orb of each man's soul. If David cannot
forgive himself, if Peter cannot forgive Judas, who can forgive sins?
"Perhaps the gods may," said Plato to Socrates. "I do not know,"
answered the philosopher. "I do not know that it would be safe for the
gods to pardon." So the poet sends Macbeth out into the black night
and the blinding storm to be thrown to the ground by forces that twist
off trees and hiss among the wounded boughs and bleeding branches.
For poor Jean Valjean, weeping bitterly for his sins, while he watched
the boy play with the buttercups and prayed that God would give him,
the red and horny-handed criminal, to feel again as he felt when he
pressed his dewy cheek against his mother's knee--for Jean Valjean is
there no suffering friend, no forgiving heart? Is there no bosom where
poor Magdalene can sob out her bitter confession? What if God were the
soul's father! What if he too serves and suffers vicariously! What if
his throne is not marble but mercy! What if nature and life do but
interpret in the small this divine principle existing in the large in
him who is infinite! [1] What if Calvary is God's eternal heartache,
manifest in time! What if, sore-footed and heavy-hearted, bruised with
many a fall, we should come back to the old home, from which once we
fled away, gay and foolish prodigals! The time was when, as small boys
and girls, with blinding tears, we groped toward the mother's bosom and
sobbed out our bitter pain and sorrow with the full story of our sin.
What if the form on Calvary were like the king of eternity, toiling up
the hill of time, his feet bare, his locks all wet with the dew of
night, while he cries: "Oh, Absalom! my son, my son, Absalom!" What if
we are Absalom, and have hurt God's heart! Reason staggers. Groping,
trusting, hoping, we fall blindly on the stairs that slope through
darkness up to God. But, falling, we fall into the arms of Him who
hath suffered vicariously for man from the foundation of the world.
[1] Eternal Atonement, p. 11.
GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.
"Paul says: 'I am a debtor.' But what had he received from the Greeks
that he was bound to pay back? Was he a disciple of their philosophy?
He was not. Had he received from their bounty in the matter of art?
No. One of the most striking things in history is the fact that Paul
abode in Athens and wrote about it, without having any impression made
upon his imaginative mind, apparently, by its statues, its pictures or
its temples. The most gorgeous period of Grecian art poured its light
on his path, and he never mentioned it. The New Testament is as dead
to art-beauty as though it had been written by a hermit in an Egyptian
pyramid who had never seen the light of sun. Then what did he owe the
Greeks? Not philosophy, not art, and certainly not religion, which was
fetichism. Not a debt of literature, nor of art, nor of civil polity;
not a debt of pecuniary obligation; not an ordinary debt. He had
nothing from all these outside sources. The whole barbaric world was
without the true knowledge of God. He had that knowledge and he owed
it to every man who had it not. All the civilized world was, in these
respects, without the true inspiration; and he owed it to them simply
because they did not have it; and his debt to them was founded on this
law of benevolence of which I have been speaking, which is to supersede
selfishness, and according to which those who have are indebted to
those who have not the world over."--_Henry Ward Beecher_.
CHAPTER V.
GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.
Booksellers rank "Quo Vadis" as one of the most popular books of the
day. In that early era persecution was rife and cruelty relentless.
It was the time of Caligula, who mourned that the Roman people had not
one neck, so that he could cut it off at a single blow; of Nero, whose
evening garden parties were lighted by the forms of blazing Christians;
of Vespasian, who sewed good men in skins of wild beasts to be worried
to death by dogs. In that day faith and death walked together.
Fulfilling such dangers, the disciples came together secretly at
midnight. But the spy was abroad, and despite all precautions, from
time to time brutal soldiers discovered the place of meeting, and,
bursting in, dragged the worshipers off to prison. Then a cruel
stratagem was adopted that looked to the discovery of those who
secretly cherished faith. A decree went forth forbidding the jailer to
furnish food, making the prisoners 'dependent' upon friends without.
To come forward as a friend of these endungeoned was to incur the risk
of arrest and death, while to remain in hiding was to leave friends to
die of starvation. Then men counted life not dear unto themselves.
Heroism became a contagion. Even children dared death. An old
painting shows the guard awakened at midnight and gazing with wonder
upon a little child thrusting food between the iron bars to its father.
In the darkness the soldiers sleeping in the corridors heard the
rustling garments of some maiden or mother who loved life itself less
than husband or friend. These tides of sympathy made men strong
against torture; old men lifted joyful eyes toward those above them.
Loving and beloved, the disciples shared their burdens, and those in
the prison and those out of it together went to fruitful martyrdom.
When the flames of persecution had swept by and, for a time, good men
had respite, Apollos recalled with joy the heroism of those without the
prison who remembered the bonds of those within. With leaping heart he
called before his mind the vast multitudes in all ages who so fettered
through life--men bound by poverty and hedged in by ignorance; men
baffled and beaten in life's fierce battle, bearing burdens of want and
wretchedness, and by the heroism of the past he urged all men
everywhere to fulfill that law of sympathy that makes hard tasks easy
and heavy burdens light. Let the broad shoulders stoop to lift the
load with weakness; let the wise and refined share the sorrows of the
ignorant; let those whose health and gifts make them the children of
freedom be abroad daily on missions of mercy to those whose feet are
fettered; so shall life be redeemed out of its woe and want and sin
through the Christian sympathy of those who "remember men in the bonds
as bound with them."
Rejoicing in all of life's good things, let us confess that in our
world-school the divine teachers are not alone happiness and
prosperity, but also uncertainty and suffering, defeat and death.
Inventors with steel plates may make warships proof against bombs, but
no man hath invented an armor against troubles. The arrows of calamity
are numberless, falling from above and also shot up from beneath. Like
Achilles, each man hath one vulnerable spot. No palace door is proof
against phantoms. Each prince's palace and peasant's cottage holds at
least one bond-slave. Byron, with his club-foot, counted himself a
prisoner pacing between the walls of his narrow dungeon. Keats,
struggling against his consumption, thought his career that of the
galley-slave. The mother, fastened for years to the couch of her
crippled child, is bound by cords invisible, indeed, but none the less
powerful. Nor is the bondage always physical. Here is the man who
made his way out of poverty and loneliness toward wealth and position,
yet maintained his integrity through all the fight, and stood in life's
evening time possessed of wealth, but in a moment saw it crash into
nothing and fell under bondage to poverty. And, here is some Henry
Grady, a prince among men, the leader of the new South, his thoughts
like roots drinking in the riches of the North; his speech like
branches dropping bounty over all the tropic states, seeming to be the
one indispensable man of his section, but who in the midst of his
career is smitten and, dying, left his pilgrim band in bondage.
Here is Sir William Napier writing, "I am now old and feeble and
miserable; my eyes are dim, very dim, with weeping for my lost child,"
and went on bound midst the thick shadows. Or here are the man and
woman, set each to each like perfect music unto noble words, and one is
taken--but Robert Browning was left to dwell in such sorrow that for a
time he could not see his pen for the thick darkness. Here is the
youth who by one sin fell out of man's regard, and struggling upward,
found it was a far cry back to the lost heights, and wrote the story of
his broken life in the song of "the bird with the broken pinion, that
never flew as high again." Sooner or later each life passes under
bondage. For all strength will vanish as the morning dew our joys take
wings and flit away; the eye dim, the ear dull, the thought decay, our
dearest die. Oft life's waves and billows chill us to the very marrow,
while we gasp and shiver midst the surging tide. Then it is a blessed
thing to look out through blinding tears upon a friendly face, to feel
the touch of a friendly hand and to know there are some who "remember
those in bonds, as bound with them."
Now this principle of social sympathy and liability gives us the secret
of all the epoch-making men of our time. Carlyle once called Ruskin
"the seer that guides his generation." More recently a prominent
philanthropist said: "All our social reform movements are largely the
influence of John Ruskin." How earned this man such meed of praise?
Upon John Ruskin fortune poured forth all her gifts. He was born the
child of supreme genius. He was heir to nearly a million dollars, and
by his pen earned a fortune in addition. At the age of 21, when most
young men were beginning their reading, he completed a book that put
his name and fame in every man's mouth. "For a thousand who can speak,
there is but one who can think; for a thousand who can think, there is
but one who can see," and to this youth was given the open vision. In
the hour of fame the rich and great vied to do him honor, and every
door opened at his touch. But he turned aside to become the
knight-errant of the poor. Walking along Whitechapel road he saw
multitudes of shopmen and shopwomen whose stint was eighty hours a
week, who toiled mid poisoned air until the brain reeled, the limbs
trembled, and worn out physically and mentally they succumbed to spinal
disease or premature age, leaving behind only enfeebled progeny, until
the city's streets became graves of the human physique. In that hour
London seemed to him like a prison or hospital; nor was it given to him
to play upon its floor as some rich men do, knitting its straw into
crowns that please; clutching at its dust in the cracks of the floor,
to die counting the motes by millions. The youth "remembered men in
bonds as bound with them." He tithed himself a tenth, then a third,
then a half, and at length used up his fortune in noble service. He
founded clubs for workingmen and taught them industry, honor and
self-reliance. He bought spinning-wheels and raw flax, and made pauper
women self-supporting. He founded the Sheffield Museum, and placed
there his paintings and marbles, that workers in iron and steel might
have the finest models and bring all their handiwork up toward beauty.
He asked his art-students in Oxford to give one hour each day to
pounding stones and filling holes in the street. When his health gave
way Arnold Toynbee, foreman of his student gang, went forth to carry
his lectures on the industrial revolution up and down the land.
Falling on hard days and evil tongues and lying customs, he wore
himself out in knightly service. So he gained his place among "the
immortals." But the secret of his genius and influence is this: He
fulfilled the debt of strength and the law of social sympathy and
service.
This spirit of sympathetic helpfulness has also given us what is called
"the new womanhood." To-day our civilization is rising to higher
levels. Woman has brought love into law, justice into institutions,
ethics into politics, refinement into the common life. Reforms have
become possible that were hitherto impracticable. King Arthur's
Knights of the Round Table marching forth for freeing some fair lady
were never more soldierly than these who have become the friends and
protectors of the poor. The movement began with Mary Ware, who after
long absence journeyed homeward. While the coach stopped at Durham she
heard of the villages near by where fever was emptying all the homes;
and leaving the coach turned aside to nurse these fever-stridden
creatures and light them through the dark valley. Then came Florence
Nightingale and Mary Stanley, braving rough seas, deadly fever and
bitter cold to nurse sick soldiers in Crimea, and returned to find
themselves broken in health and slaves to pain, like those whom they
remembered. Then rose up a great group of noble women like Mary Lyon
and Sarah Judson, who journeyed forth upon errands of mercy into the
swamps of Africa and the mountains of Asia, making their ways into
garrets and tenements, missionaries of mercy and healing, Knights of
the Red Cross and veritable "King's Daughters." No cottage so remote
as not to feel this new influence.
Fascinating, also, the life-story of that fair, sweet girl who married
Audubon. Yearning for her own home, yet finding that her husband would
journey a thousand miles and give months to studying the home and
haunts of a bird, she gave up her heart-dreams and went with him into
the forest, dwelling now in tents, and now in some rude cabin, being a
wanderer upon the face of the earth--until, when children came, she
remained behind and dwelt apart. At last the naturalist came home
after long absence to fulfill the long-cherished dream of years of
quiet study with wife and children, but found that the mice had eaten
his drawings and destroyed the sketches he had left behind. Then was
he dumb with grief and dazed with pain, but it was his brave wife who
led him to the gate and thrust him forth into the forest and sent him
out upon his mission, saying that there was no valley so deep nor no
wilderness so distant but that his thought, turning homeward, would see
the light burning brightly for him. And in those dark days when our
land trembled, and a million men from the north tramped southward and a
million men from the south tramped northward, and the columns met with
a concussion that threatened to rend the land asunder, there, in the
battle, midst the din and confusion and blood, women walked, angels of
light and mercy, not merely holding the cup of cold water to famished
lips, or stanching the life-blood until surgeons came, but teaching
soldier boys in the dying hour the way through the valley and beyond it
up the heavenly hills. These all fulfilled their mission and
"remembered those in bonds as bound with them."
This principle also has been and is the spring of all progress in
humanity and civilization. Our journalists and orators pour forth
unstinted praise upon the achievements of the nineteenth century. But
in what realm lies our supremacy? Not in education, for our schools
produce no such thinkers or universal scholars as Plato and his
teacher; not in eloquence, for our orators still ponder the periods of
the oration "On the Crown;" not in sculpture or architecture, for the
broken fragments of Phidias are still models for our youth. The nature
of our superiority is suggested when we speak of the doing away with
the exposure of children, the building of homes, hospitals and asylums
for the poor and weak; the caring for the sick instead of turning them
adrift; the support of the aged instead of burying them alive; the
diminished frequency of wars; the disappearance of torture in obtaining
testimony; humanity toward the shipwrecked, where once luring ships
upon the rocks was a trade; the settlement of disputes by umpires and
of national differences by arbitration.
Humanity and social sympathy are the glory of our age. Society has
come to remember that those in bonds are bound by them. Indeed, the
application of this principle to the various departments of human life
furnishes the historian with the milestones of human progress. The age
of Sophocles was not shocked when the poet wrote the story of the child
exposed by the wayside to be adopted by some passer-by, or torn in
pieces by wild dogs, or chilled to death in the cold. When the wise
men brought their gold and frankincense to the babe in the manger, men
felt the sacredness of infancy. As the light from the babe in
Correggio's "Holy Night" illumined all the surrounding figures, so the
child resting in the Lord's arms for shelter and sacred benediction
began to shed luster upon the home and to lead the state. To-day the
nurture and culture in the schools are society's attempt to remember
the little ones in bonds. Fulfilling the same law Xavier, with his
wealth and splendid talents, remembered bound ones and journeyed
through India, penetrating all the Eastern lands, being physician for
the sick, nurse for the dying, minister for the ignorant; his face
benignant; his eloquence, love; his atmosphere, sympathy; carrying his
message of peace to the farther-most shores of the Chinese Sea, through
his zeal for "those who were in bonds." And thus John Howard visited
the prisons of Europe for cleansing these foul dens and wiped from the
sword of justice its most polluting stain. Fulfilling the debt of
strength, Wilberforce and Garrison, Sumner and Brown, fronted furious
slave-holders, enduring every form of abuse and vituperation and
personal violence, and destroyed the infamous traffic in human flesh.
This new spirit of sympathy and service it is that offers us help in
solving the problems of social unrest and disquietude. Events will not
let us forget that ours is an age of industrial discontent. Society is
full of warfare. Prophets of evil tidings foretell social revolution.
The professional agitators are abroad, sowing discord and nourishing
hatred and strife, and even the optimists sorrowfully confess the
antagonism between classes. There is an industrial class strong and
happy, both rich and poor; and there is an idle class weak and wicked
and miserable, among both rich and poor. Unfortunately, as has been
said, the wise of one class contemplate only the foolish of the other.
The industrious man of means is offended by the idle beggar, and
identifies all the poor with him, and the hard-working but poor workman
despises the licentious luxury of one rich man, and identifies all the
rich with him. But there are idle poor and idle rich and busy poor and
busy rich. "If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich
people, all would be well; and if the busy poor people watched and
rebuked the idle poor people all would be right. Many a beggar is as
lazy as if he had $10,000 a year, and many a man of large fortune is
busier than his errand boy."
Forgetting this, some poor look upon the rich as enemies and desire to
pillage their property, and some rich have only epithets for the poor.
Now, wise men know that there is no separation of rich industrious
classes and the poor industrious classes, for they differ only as do
two branches of one tree. This year one bough is full of bloom, and
the other bears only scantily, but next year the conditions will be
reversed. Wealth and poverty are like waves; what is now crest will
soon be trough. Such conditions demand forbearance and mutual
sympathy. Some men are born with little and some with large skill for
acquiring wealth, the two differing as the scythe that gathers a
handful of wheat differs from the reaper built for vast harvests and
carrying the sickle of success. For generations the ancestors back of
one man's father were thrifty and the ancestors back of his mother were
far-sighted, and the two columns met in him, and like two armies joined
forces for a vast campaign for wealth. Beside him is a brother, whose
thoughts and dreams go everywhither with the freedom of an eagle, but
who walks midst practical things with the eagle's halting gait. The
strong one was born, not for spoiling his weaker brother, but to guard
and guide and plan for him.
This is the lesson of nature--the strong must bear the burdens of the
weak. To this end were great men born. Nature constantly exhibits
this principle. The shell of the peach shelters the inner seed; the
outer petals of the bud the tender germ; the breast of the mother-bird
protects the helpless birdlets; the eagle flies under her young and
gently eases them to the ground; above the babe's helplessness rise the
parents' shield and armor. God appoints strong men, the industrial
giants, to protect the weak and poor. The laws of helpfulness ask them
to forswear a part of their industrial rights; and they fulfill their
destiny only by fulfilling the debt of strength to weakness.
To identify one's self with those in bonds is the very core of the
Christian life. Not an intellectual belief within, not a form of
worship without, but sympathetic helpfulness betokens the true
Christian. God, who hath endowed the soul with capacity to endure all
labors and pains for wealth, to consume away the very springs of life
for knowledge, hath also given it power for pouring itself out in great
resistless tides of love and sympathy. For beauty and royal majesty
nothing else is comparable to the love of some royal nature. A loving
heart exhales sweet odors like an alabaster box; it pours forth joy
like a sweet harp; it flashes beauty like a casket of gems; it cheers
like a winter's fire; it carries sweet stimulus like returning
sunshine. We have all known a few great-hearted men and women who have
through years distributed their love-treasures among the little
children of the community and scattered affection among the poor and
the weak, until the entire community comes to feel that it lives in
them and without them will die. Happy the man who hath stored up such
treasures of mind and heart as that he stands forth among his fellows
like a lighthouse on some ledge, sending guiding rays far out o'er dark
and troubled seas. Happy the woman whose ripened affection and
inspiration have permeated the common life until to her come the poor
and weak and heart-broken, standing forth like some beauteous bower
offering shade and filling all the air with sweet perfume.
In crisis hours the patriot and martyr, the hero and the
philanthropist, die for the public good, but not less do they serve
their fellows who live and through years employ their gifts and
heart-treasures, not for themselves, but for the happiness and highest
welfare of others. Richter, the German artist, painted a series of
paintings illustrating the ministry of angels. He showed us the
child-angels who sit talking with mortal children among the flowers,
now holding them by their coats lest they fall upon the stairs, now
with apples enticing them back when they draw too near the precipice;
when the boy grows tall and is tempted, ringing in the chambers of
memory the sweet mother's name; in the hour of death coming in the garb
of pilgrim, made ready for convoy and guidance to the heavenly land.
Oh beautiful pictures! setting forth the sacred ministry of each true
Christian heart.
History tells of the servant whose master was sold into Algeria, and
who sold himself and wandered years in the great desert in the mere
hope of at last finding and freeing his lord; of the obscure man in the
Eastern city who, misunderstood and unpopular, left a will stating that
he had been poor and suffered for lack of water, and so had starved and
slaved through life to build an aqueduct for his native town, that the
poor might not suffer as he had; of the soldier in the battle, wounded
in cheek and mouth and dying of thirst, but who would not drink lest he
should spoil the water for others, and so yielded up his life. But
this capacity of sacrifice and sympathy is but the little in man
answering to what is large in God. Here deep answers unto deep. The
definition of the Divine One is, he remembers those in bonds, and it is
more blessed to give than to receive; more blessed to feed the hungry
than starving to be fed; more blessed to pour light on darkened
misunderstanding than ignorant to be taught; more blessed to open the
path through the wilderness of doubt than wandering to be guided; more
blessed to bring in the bewildered pilgrim than to be lost and rescued;
more blessed to forgive than to be forgiven; to save than to be saved.
THE TIME ELEMENT IN INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER AND SOCIAL GROWTH.
"All that we possess has come to us by way of a long path. There is no
instantaneous liberty or wisdom or language or beauty or religion. Old
philosophies, old agriculture, old domestic arts, old sciences,
medicine, chemistry, astronomy, old modes of travel and commerce, old
forms of government and religion have all come in gracefully or
ungracefully and have said: 'Progress is king, and long live the king!'
Year after year the mind perceives education to expand, art sweeps
along from one to ten, music adds to its early richness, love passes
outwardly from self towards the race, friendships become laden with
more pleasure, truths change into sentiments, sentiments blossom into
deeds, nature paints its flowers and leaves with richer tints,
literature becomes the more perfect picture of a more perfect
intellect, the doctrines of religion become broader and sweeter in
their philosophy."--_David Swing_.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TIME ELEMENT IN INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER AND SOCIAL GROWTH.
For all lovers of their kind, nothing is so hard to bear as the
slowness of the upward progress of society. It is not simply that the
rise of the common people is accompanied with heavy wastes and losses,
it is that the upward movement is along lines so vast as to make
society's growth seem tardy, delayed, or even reversed. Doubtless the
drift of the ages is upward, but this progress becomes apparent only
when age is compared with age and century with century. It is not easy
for some Bruno or Wickliffe, sowing the good seed of liberty and
toleration in one century, to know that not until another century hath
passed will the precious harvest be reaped. Man is accustomed to brief
intervals. Not long the space between January's snowdrifts and June's
red berries. Brief the interval between the egg and the eagle's full
flight. Scarcely a score of years separates the infant of days from
the youth of full stature. Trained to expect the April seed to stand
close beside the August sheaf, it is not easy for man to accustom
himself to the processes of him with whom four-score years are but a
handbreadth and a thousand years as but one day.
To man, therefore, toiling upon his industry, his art, his government,
his religion, comes this reflection: Because the divine epochs are
long, let not the patriot or parent be sick with hope long deferred.
Let the reformer sow his seed untroubled when the sickle rusts in the
hand that waits for its harvest. Remember that as things go up in
value, the period between inception and fruition is protracted.
Because the plant is low, the days between seed and sheaf are few and
short; because the bird is higher, months stand between egg and eagle.
But manhood is a thing so high, culture and character are harvests so
rich as to ask years and even ages for ripening, while God's purposes
for society involve such treasures of art, wisdom, wealth, law,
liberty, as to ask eons and cycles for their full perfection.
Therefore let each patriot and sage, each reformer and teacher be
patient. The world itself is a seed. Not until ages have passed shall
it burst into bloom and blossom.
Troubled by the strifes of society, depressed by the waste of its
forces and the delays of its columns, he who seeks character for
himself and progress for his kind, oft needs to shelter himself beneath
that divine principle called the time-element for the individual and
the race. Optimists are we; our world is God's; wastes shall yet
become savings and defeats victories; nevertheless, life's woes, wrongs
and delays are such as to stir misgiving. The multitudes hunger for
power and influence, hunger for wealth and wisdom, for happiness and
comfort; satisfaction seems denied them. Watt and Goodyear invent,
other men enter into the fruit of their inventions; Erasmus and
Melanchthon sow the good seeds of learning; two centuries pass by
before God's angels count the bundles. In a passion of enthusiasm for
England's poor, Cobden wore his life out toiling for the corn laws.
The reformer died for the cotton-spinners as truly as if he had slit
his arteries and emptied out the crimson flood. But when the victory
was won, the wreath of fame was placed upon another's brow. One day
Robert Peel arose in the House of Commons and in the presence of an
indignant party and an astounded country, proudly said: "I have been
wrong. I now ask Parliament to repeal the law for which I myself have
stood. Where there was discontent, I see contentment; where there was
turbulence, I see peace, where there was disloyalty, I see loyalty."
Then the fury of party anger burst upon him, and bowing to the storm,
Robert Peel went forth while men hissed after him such words as
"traitor," "coward," "recreant leader." Nor did he foresee that in
losing an office he had gained the love of a country.
What delays also in justice! What recognition does society withhold
from its heroes! What praise speaks above the pulseless corpse that is
denied the living, hungering heart! What gold coin spent for the
marble wreath by those who have no copper for laurel for the living
hero! How do rewards that dazzle in prospect, in possession, burst
like gaudy bubbles! Honors are evanescent; reputation is a vapor;
property takes wings; possessions counted firm as adamant dissolve like
painted clouds; in the hour of depression the hand drops its tool, the
heart its task. In such dark hours and moods, strong men reflect that
he who sows the good seed of liberty or culture or character must have
long patience until the harvest; that as things go up in value they ask
for longer time; that he is the true hero who redeems himself out of
present defeat by the foresight of far-off and future victory; that
that man has a patent of nobility from God himself who can lay out his
life upon the principle that a thousand years are as one day. The
truly great man takes long steps by God's side, has the courage of the
future; working, he can also wait.
For man, fulfilling such a career, no principle hath greater practical
value than this one; as things rise in the scale of value the interval
between seedtime and harvest must lengthen. Happily for us, God hath
capitalized this principle in nature and life. Each gardener knows
that what ripens quickest is of least worth. The mushroom needs only a
night; the moss asks a week for covering the fallen tree; the humble
vegetable asks several weeks and the strawberry a few months; but,
planting his apple tree, the gardener must wait a few years for his
ripened russet, and the woodsman many years for the full-grown oak or
elm. If in thought we go back to the dawn of creation--to that moment
when sun and planet succeeded to clouds of fire, when a red-hot earth,
cooling, put on an outer crust, when gravity drew into deep hollows the
waters that cooled the earth and purified the upper air--and then
follow on in nature's footsteps, passing up the stairway of ascending
life from lichen, moss and fern, on to the culminating moment in man,
we shall ever find that increase of value means an increase of time for
growth. The fern asks days, the reed asks weeks, the bird for months,
the beast for a handful of years, but man for an epoch measured by
twenty years and more. To grow a sage or a statesman nature asks
thirty years with which to build the basis of greatness in the bone and
muscle of the peasant grandparents, thirty years in which to compact
the nerve and brain of parents; thirty years more in which the heir of
these ancestral gifts shall enter into full-orbed power and stand forth
fully furnished for his task. Nature makes a dead snowflake in a
night, but not a living star-flower. For her best things nature asks
long time.
The time-principle holds equally in man's social and industrial life.
To-day our colleges have their anthropological departments and our
cities their museums. The comparative study of the dress, weapons,
tools, houses, ships of savage and civilized races gives an outline
view of the progress of society. How fragile and rude the handiwork of
savages! How quickly are the wants provided for! A few fig leaves
make a full summer suit for the African and the skin of an ox his garb
for winter. But civilized man must toil long upon his loom for
garments of wool and fine silk. Slowly the hollow log journeys toward
the ocean steamer; slowly the forked stick gives place to the
steam-plow, the slow ox to the swift engine; slowly the sea-shell, with
three strings tied across its mouth, develops into the many-mouthed
pipe-organ. But if rude and low conveniences represent little time and
toil, these later inventions represent centuries of arduous labor. In
his history of the German tribes, Tacitus gives us a picture of a day's
toil for one of the forest children. Moving to the banks of some new
stream, the rude man peels the bark from the tree and bends it over the
tent pole; with a club he beats down the nuts from the branches; with a
round stone he knocks the squirrel from the bough; another hour
suffices for cutting a line from the ox's hide and, hastily making a
hook out of the wishbone of the bird, he draws the trout from its
stream. But if for savage man a day suffices for building and
provisioning the tent, the accumulated wisdom of centuries is required
for the home of to-day. One century offers an arch for the door,
another century offers glass windows, another offers wrought nails and
hinges, another plaster that will receive and hold the warm colors,
another offers the marble, tapestry, picture and piano, the thousand
conveniences for use and beauty.
Husbandry also represents patience and the labor of generations. Were
it given to the child, tearing open the golden meat of the fruit, to
trace the ascent of the tree, he would see the wild apple or bitter
orange growing in the edge of the ancient forest. But man, standing by
the fruit, grafted it for sweetness, pruned it for the juicy flow,
nourished it for taste and color. Could he who picks the peach or pear
have this inner vision, he would behold an untold company of husbandmen
standing beneath the branches and pointing to their special
contributions. The fathers labored, the children entered into the
fruitage of the labor in his dream; the poet slept in St. Peter's and
saw the shadowy forms of all the architects and builders from the
beginning of time standing about him and giving their special
contributions to Bramante and Angelo's great temple. Thus many hands
have toiled upon man's house, man's art, industry, invention.
In the realm of law and liberty the best things ask for patience and
waiting. Out of nothing nothing comes. The institution that
represents little toil but little time endures. Man's early history is
involved in obscurity, largely because his early arts were
mushroomic--completed quickly, they quickly perished. The ideas
scratched upon the flat leaf or the thin reed represented scant labor
and therefore soon were dust. But he who holds in his hand a modern
book holds the fruitage of years many and long. For that book we see
the workmen ranging far for linen; we see the printer toiling upon his
movable types; we see the artist etching his plate; the author giving
his days to study and his nights to reflection; and because the book
harvests the study of a great man's lifetime it endures throughout
generations. The sciences also increase in value only as the time
spent upon them is lengthened. Few and brief were the days required
for the early astronomers to work out the theory that the earth is
flat, the sky a roof, the stars holes in which the gods have hung
lighted lamps. The theory that makes our earth sweep round the sun,
our sun sweep round a far-off star, all lesser groups sweep round one
central sun, that shepherds all the other systems, asks for the toil of
Galileo and Kepler, of Copernicus and Newton, and a great company of
modern students. The father of astronomy had to wait a thousand years
for the fruition of his science. Upon those words, called law or love,
or mother or king, man hath with patience labored. The word wife or
mother is so rich to-day as to make Homer's ideal, Helen, seem poor and
almost contemptible. The girl was very beautiful, but very painful the
alacrity with which she passes from the arms of Menelaus to the arms of
Paris, from the arms of Paris to those of Deiphobus, his conqueror. If
one hour only was required for this lovely creature to pack her
belongings preparatory to moving to the tent of her new lord, one day
fully sufficed for transferring her affections from one prince to
another. But, toiling ever upward to her physical beauty, woman added
mental beauty, moral beauty, until the word wife or mother or home came
to have almost infinite wealth of meaning.
In government also the best political instruments ask for longest time.
Hercules ruled by the right of physical strength. Assembling the
people, he challenged all rivals to combat. A single hour availed for
cutting off the head of his enemy. Henceforth he reigned an
unchallenged king. Because man hath with patience toiled long upon
this republic, how rich and complex its institutions! The modern
presidency does not represent the result of an hour's combat between
two Samsons. Forty years ago the eager aspirants began their struggle.
A great company of young men all over the land determined to build up a
reputation for patriotism, statesmanship, wisdom and character. As the
time for selecting a president approached, the people passed in review
all these leaders. When two or more were finally chosen out, there
followed months in which the principles of the candidates were sifted
and analyzed. "I know of no more sublime spectacle," said Stuart Mill,
"than the election of the ruler under the laws of the republic. If the
voice of the people is ever the voice of God, if any ruler rules by
divine right, it is when millions of freemen, after long consideration,
elect one man to be their appointed guide and leader." If a single
hour availed for Samson to settle the question of his sovereignty, free
institutions ask for their statesmen to have the patience of years;
working, they must also wait.
With long patience also man has worked and waited as he has toiled upon
his idea of religion. Rude, indeed, man's hasty thoughts of the
infinite. In early days the sun was God's eye, the thunder his voice,
the stroke of the earthquake the stroke of his arm, the harvest
indicated his pleasure, the pestilence his anger. In such an age the
priest and philosopher taxed their genius to invent methods of
preserving the friendship and avoiding the anger of the Infinite.
Daily the king and general calculated how many sheep and oxen they must
slay to avoid defeat in battle. Daily the husbandman and farmer
calculated how many doves and lambs must be killed to avert blight from
the vineyard and hailstorms from the harvests. Observing that when the
king ascended to the throne the slaves put their necks under his heel
and covered their bodies with dust, in their haste the priests
concluded that by degrading man God would be exalted. Prostrating
themselves in dirt and rags, men went down in order that by contrast
the throne of God might rise up. The mud was made thick upon man's
brow that the crown upon the brow of God might be made brilliant. Out
of this degrading thought grew the idea that God lived and ruled for
his own gratification and self-glory. The infinite throne was unveiled
as a throne of infinite self-aggrandizement. Slowly it was perceived
that the parent who makes all things move about himself as a center,
ever monopolizing the best food, the best place, the best things, at
last becomes a monster of selfishness and suffers an awful degradation,
while he who sacrifices himself for others is the true hero.
At last, Christ entered the earthly scene with his golden rule and his
new commandment of love. He unveiled God, not as desiring to be
ministered to, but as ministering; as being rich, yet for man's sake
becoming poor; as asking little, but giving much; as caring for the
sparrow and lily; as waiting upon each beetle, bird and beast, and
caring for each detail of man's life. Slowly the word God increased in
richness. Having found through his telescope worlds so distant as to
involve infinite power, man emptied the idea of omnipotence into the
word GOD; finding an infinite wisdom in the wealth of the summers and
winters, man added the idea of omniscience; noting a certain upward
tendency in society, man added the word, "Providence;" gladdened by
God's mercy, man added ideas of forgiveness and love. Slowly the word
grew. In the olden time people entering the Acropolis cast their gifts
of gold and silver into some vase. Last of all came the prince to
empty in jewels and flashing gems and make the vase to overflow. Not
otherwise Christ emptied vast wealth of meaning into those words called
"conscience," "law," "love," "vicarious suffering," "immortality,"
"God." Beautiful, indeed, the simplicity of Christ. With long
patience, man waited for the unveiling of the face of divine love.
To all patriots and Christian men who seek to use occupation and
profession so as to promote the world's upward growth comes the
reflection that henceforth society's progress must be slow, because its
institutions are high and complex. To-day many look into the future
with shaded eyes of terror. In the social unrest and discontent of our
times timid men see the brewing of a social and industrial storm. In
their alarm, amateur reformers bring in social panaceas, conceived in
haste and born in fear. But God cannot be hurried. His century plants
cannot be forced to blossom in a night. No reformer can be too zealous
for man's progress, though he can be too impatient. In these days,
when civilization has become complex and the fruitage high, those who
work must also wait and with patience endure.
Multitudes are abroad trying to settle the labor problem. The labor
problem will never be settled until the last man lies in the graveyard.
Each new inventor reopens the labor problem. Men were contented with
their wages until Gutenberg invented his type and made books possible;
then straightway every laborer asked an increased wage, that though he
died ignorant his children might be intelligent. When society had
readjusted things and man had obtained the larger wage, Arkwright came,
inventing his new loom, Goodyear came with the use of rubber, and
straightway men asked a new wage to advantage themselves of woolen
garments and rubber goods for miners and sailors. On the morrow
15,000,000 children will enter the schoolroom; before noon the teacher
has given them a new outlook upon some book, some picture, some
convenience, some custom. Each child registers the purpose to go home
immediately and cry to his parent for that book or picture; that tool
or comfort. When the parents return that night the labor question has
been reopened in millions of homes.
Intelligence is emancipating man. Ignorance is a constant invitation
to oppression. So long as workmen are ignorant, governments will
oppress them; wealth will oppress them; religious machinery will
oppress them. Education can make man's wrists too large to be holden
of fetters. In the autumn the forest trees tighten the bark, but when
April sap runs through the trees the trunk swells, the bark is strained
and despite all protests it splits and cracks. The splitting of the
bark saves the life of the tree. The soft, balmy air of April is
passing over the world and succeeding to the winter of man's
discontent. Old ideas are being rent asunder and old institutions are
being succeeded by new ones. God is abroad destroying that he may
save. In every age he makes the discontent of the present to be the
prophecy of the higher civilization. Despite all the pessimists and
the croakers, the ideas of manhood were never so high as to-day, and
the number of those whose hearts are knitted in with their kind was
never so large nor so noble. The movement may be slow, but it is
because the social organs are complex and intricate. With long
patience man must work and also wait.
In the world of business, also, the time element exerts striking
influence. To-day our land is filled with men who have sown the seed
of thought and purpose, but whose harvest is of so high a quality that
with long patience must they wait for the fruition. How pathetic the
reverses of the last four years. The condition of our land as to the
overthrows of its leaders answers to the condition in Poland when
Kossuth and his fellow patriots, accustomed to life's comforts and its
luxuries, went forth penniless exiles to accustom themselves to menial
toil, to hardship and extreme poverty. His heart must be of iron who
can behold those who have been leaders of the industrial column, who
now stand aside and see the multitude sweep by. Just at the moment of
expected victory misfortune overtook them and brought their structure
down in ruins. And because the seed they have sown is not physical,
but mental and moral, the fruition is long postponed.
Walter Scott tells the story of a wounded knight, who took refuge in
the castle of a baron that proved to be a secret enemy and threw the
knight into a dungeon; one day in his cell the knight heard the sound
of distant music approaching. Drawing near the slit in the tower, he
saw the flash of swords and heard the tramp of marching men. At last
the wounded hero realized that these were his own troops, marching by
in ignorance of the fact that the lord of this castle was also the
jailer of their general. While the knight tugged at his chain, lifted
up his voice and cried aloud, his troops marched on, their music
drowning out his cries. Soon the banners passed from sight, the last
straggler disappeared behind the hill and the captive was left alone.
The brave knight died in his dungeon, but the story of his heroism
lived. What the knight learned in suffering the poets have taught in
song. The captive hero has a permanent place in civilization, though
the foresight of his influence was denied him.
Those whose harvest is delayed are a great company. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning exclaiming, "I have not used half the powers God has given
me," poets dying ere the day was half done; the inventors and reformers
denied their ideals; obscure and humble workmen--the mechanic who
emancipates man by his machine; the artisan whose conveniences are
endless benefactions to our homes; the smith whose honest anchor holds
the ship in time of storm--all these labored and died without seeing
the fruitage, but other men entered into their labors.
To parents who have passed through all the thunder of life's battle and
stand at the close of life's day discouraged because children are
unripe, thoughtless and immature; to publicists and teachers, sowing
God's precious seed, but denied its harvests; to individuals seeking to
perfect their character within themselves comes this thought--that
character is a harvest so rich as to ask for long waiting and the
courage of far-off results. Nature can perfect physical processes in
twenty years, but long time is asked for teaching the arm skill, the
tongue its grace of speech, to clothe reason with sweetness and light,
to cast error out of the judgment, to teach the will hardness and the
heart hope and endurance.
Four hundred years passed by before the capstone was placed upon the
Cathedral of Cologne, but no trouble requires such patient toil as the
structure of manhood. For complexity and beauty nothing is comparable
to character. Great artists spend years upon a single picture. With a
touch here and a touch there they approach it, and when a long period
hath passed they bring it to completion. Yet all the beauty of
paintings, all the grace of statues, all the grandeur of cathedrals are
as nothing compared to the painting of that inner picture, the
chiseling of that inner manhood, the adornment of that inner temple,
that is scarcely begun when the physical life ends. How majestic the
full disclosure of an ideal manhood! With what patience must man wait
for its completion! Here lies the hope of immortality; it does not yet
appear what man shall be.
THE SUPREMACY OF HEART OVER BRAIN.
"Out of the heart are the issues of life."--_Prov. IV. 23_.
"For out of the heart man believeth unto righteousness."--_Paul_.
"Heart is a word that the Bible is full of. Brain, I believe, is not
mentioned in Scripture. Heart, in the sense in which it is currently
understood, suggests the warm center of human life or any other life.
When we say of a man that he 'has a good deal of heart' we mean that he
is 'summery.' When you come near him it is like getting around to the
south side of a house in midwinter and letting the sunshine feel of
you, and watching the snow slide off the twigs and the tear-drops swell
on the points of pendant icicles. Brain counts for a good deal more
to-day than heart does. It will win more applause and earn a larger
salary. Thought is driven with a curb-bit lest it quicken into a pace
and widen out into a swing that transcends the dictates of good form.
Exuberance is in bad odor. Appeals to the heart are not thought to be
quite in good taste. The current demand is for ideas--not taste. I
asked a member of my church the other day whether he thought a certain
friend of his who attends a certain church and is exceptionally brainy
was really entering into sympathy with religious things. 'Oh, no,' he
said, 'he likes to hear preaching because he has an active mind, and
the way that things are spread out in front of him.' In the old days
of the church a sermon used to convert 3,000 men, now that temperature
is down it takes 3,000 sermons to convert one man."--_Charles H.
Parkhurst_.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SUPREMACY OF HEART OVER BRAIN.
To-day there has sprung up a rivalry between brain and heart. Men are
coming to idolize intellect. Brilliancy is placed before goodness and
intellectual dexterity above fidelity. Intellect walks the earth a
crowned king, while affection and sentiment toil as bond slaves.
Doubtless our scholars, with the natural bias for their own class, are
largely responsible for this worship of intellectuality. When the
historian calls the roll of earth's favorite sons he causes these
immortals to stand forth an army of great thinkers, including
philosophers, scientists, poets, jurists, generals. The great minds
are exalted, the great hearts are neglected.
Artists also have united with authors for strengthening this idolatry
of intellect. One of the great pictures in the French Academy of
Design assembles the immortals of all ages. Having erected a tribunal
in the center of the scene, Delaroche places Intellect upon the throne.
Also, when the sons of genius are assembled about that glowing center,
all are seen to be great thinkers. There stand Democritus, a thinker
about invisible atoms; Euclid, a thinker about invisible lines and
angles; Newton, a thinker about an invisible force named gravity; La
Place, a thinker about the invisible law that sweeps suns and stars
forward toward an unseen goal.
The artist also remembers the inventors whose useful thoughts blossom
into engines and ships; statesmen whose wise thoughts blossom into
codes and constitutions; speakers whose true thoughts blossom into
orations, and artists whose beautiful thoughts appear as pictures. At
this assembly of the immortals great thinkers touch and jostle. But if
the great minds are remembered, no chair is made ready for the great
hearts. He who lingers long before this painting will believe that
brain is king of the world; that great thinkers are the sole architects
of civilization; that science is the only providence for the future;
that God himself is simply an infinite brain, an eternal logic engine,
cold as steel, weaving endless ideas about life and art, about nature
and man.
But the throne of the universe is mercy and not marble; the name of the
world-ruler is Great Heart, rather than Crystalline Mind, and God is
the Eternal Friend who pulsates out through his world those forms of
love called reforms, philanthropies, social bounties and benefactions,
even as the ocean pulsates its life-giving tides into every bay and
creek and river. The springs of civilization are not in the mind. For
the individual and the state, "out of the heart are the issues of life."
What intellect can dream, only the heart realizes! John Cabot's mind
did, indeed, blaze a pathway through the New England forest. But with
burning hearts and iron will the Pilgrim Fathers loved liberty, law and
learning, and soon they broadened the path into a highway for commerce,
turned tepees into temples and made the forests a land of vineyards and
villages. Mind is the beginning of civilization, but the ends and
fruitage thereof are of the heart.
Christopher Wren's intellect wrought out the plan for St. Paul's
Cathedral. But all impotent to realize themselves, these plans, lying
in the King's council chamber grew yellow with age and thick with dust.
One day a great heart stood forth before the people of London, pointing
them to an unseen God, "from whom cometh every good and perfect gift,"
and, plying men with the generosity of God, he asked gifts of gold and
silver and houses and lands, that England might erect a temple worthy
of him "whom the heaven of heavens could not contain." The mind of a
great architect had created a plan and a "blue-print," but eager hearts
inspiring earnest hands turned the plan into granite and hung in the
air a dome of marble.
Thus all the great achievements for civilization are the achievements
of heart. What we call the fine arts are only red-hot ingots of
passion cooled off into visible shape. All high music is emotion
gushing forth at those faucets named musical notes. As unseen vapors
cool into those visible forms named snowflakes, so Gothic enthusiasms
cooled off into cathedrals.
Our art critics speak of the eight great paintings of history. Each of
these masterpieces does but represent a holy passion flung forth upon a
canvas. The reformation also was not achieved by intellect nor
scholarship. Erasmus represents pure mind. Yet his intellect was cold
as winter sunshine that falls upon a snowdrift and dazzles the eyes
with brightness, yet is impotent to unlock the streams, or bore a hole
through the snowdrifts, or release the roots from the grip of ice and
frost, or cover the land with waving harvests. Powerless as winter
sunshine were Erasmus' thoughts. But what the scholar could not do,
Luther, the great heart, wrought easily.
Thus all the reforms represent passions and enthusiasms. That citadel
called "The Divine Right of Kings" was not overthrown by colleges with
books and pamphlets. It was the pulse-beats of the heart of the people
that pounded down the Bastille. Ideas of the iniquity of slavery
floated through our land for three centuries, yet the slave pen and
auction block still cursed our land. At last an enthusiasm for man as
man and a great passion for the poor stood behind these ideas of human
brotherhood, and as powder stands behind the bullet, flinging forth its
weapons, slavery perished before the onslaught of the heart.
The men whose duty it was to follow the line of battle and bury our
dead soldiers tell us that in the dying hour the soldier's hand
unclasped his weapon and reached for the inner pocket to touch some
faded letter; some little keepsake, some likeness of wife or mother.
This pathetic fact tells us that soldiers have won their battles not by
holding before the mind some abstract thought about the rights of man.
The philosopher did, indeed, teach the theory, and the general marked
out the line of attack or defense, but it was love of home and God and
native land that entered into the soldier and made his arm invincible.
Back of the emancipation proclamation stands a great heart named
Lincoln. Back of Africa's new life stands a great heart named
Livingstone. Back of the Sermon on the Mount stands earth's greatest
heart--man's Savior. Christ's truth is enlightening man's ignorance,
but his tears, falling upon our earth, are washing away man's sin and
woe.
Impotent the intellect without the support of the heart. How thickly
are the shores of time strewn with those forms of wreckage called great
thoughts. In those far-off days when the overseers of the Egyptian
King scourged 80,000 slaves forth to their task of building a pyramid,
a great mind discovered the use of steam. Intellect achieved an
instrument for lifting blocks of granite into proper place. In that
hour thought made possible the freedom of innumerable slaves. But the
heart of the tyrant held no love for his bondsmen. The poor seemed of
less worth than cattle. Because the King's heart felt no woes to be
cured, his hand pushed away the engine. A great thought was there, but
not the kindly impulse to use it. Then, full 2,000 years passed over
our earth. At last came an era when man's heart journeyed forward with
his mind. Then the woes of miners and the world's burden-bearers
filled the ears of James Watt with torment, and his sympathetic heart
would not let him stay until he had fashioned his redemptive tool.
For generations, also, the thoughts of liberty waited for the heart to
re-enforce them and make them practical in institutions. Two thousand
years before the era of Cromwell and Hampden, Grecian philosophers
wrought out a full statement for the republic and individual liberty.
The right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were truths
clearly perceived by Plato and Pericles. But the heart loved luxury
and soft, silken refinements, and Grecian philosophers in their palaces
refused to let their slaves go.
Wide, indeed, the gulf separating our age of kindness from Cicero's age
of cruelty! The difference is almost wholly a difference of heart.
This age has oratory and wisdom, and so had Cicero's; this age has
poetry and art, and so had that; but our age has heart and sympathy,
and Cicero's had not. Caesar's mind was the mind of a scholar, but his
hands were red with the blood of a half-million men slain in unjust
wars. Augustus loved refinement, literature and music. He assembled
at his table the scholars of a nation, yet his culture did not forbid
the slaying of ten thousand gladiators at his various garden parties.
We admire Pliny's literary style. One evening Pliny returned home from
the funeral of the wife of a friend and sat down to write that friend a
note of gratitude for having so arranged the gladiatorial spectacle as
to make the funeral service pass off quite pleasantly. For that age of
intellect was also an age of blood; the era of art and luxury was also
an era of cruelty and crime. The intellect lent a shining luster to
the era of Augustus, but because it was intellect only it was gilt and
not gold. Had the heart re-enforced the intellect with sympathy and
justice the age of Augustus might have been an era golden, indeed, and
also perpetual.
Great men capitalize the impotency of unsupported intellect.
Ten-talent men have often known more than they would do. The children
of genius have not always lived up to their moral light. Burns' mind
ran swiftly forward, but his will followed afar off. If the poet's
forehead was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire. How noble,
also, Byron's thoughts, but how mean his life! Goethe uttered the
wisdom of a sage, as did Rousseau, yet their deeds were often those we
would expect from a slave with a low brow. Even of Shakespeare, it is
said in the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he
poached game from a neighboring estate. Our era bestows unstinted
admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon. How noble his aphorisms!
How petty his envy and avarice! What scholarship was his, and what
cunning also! With what splendor of argument does he plead for the
advancement of learning and liberty! With what meanness does he take
bribes from the rich against the poor! His mind seems like a palace of
marble with splendid galleries and library and banqueting hall, yet in
this palace the spider spins its web and vermin make the foundations to
be a noisome place.
In all ages also the intellect of the common people has discerned truth
and light that the will has refused to fulfill. Generations ago
society discovered the doctrine of industry and integrity, and yet
thousands of individuals still prefer to steal or beg or starve rather
than work. For centuries the work of moralists and public instructors
has not been so much the making known new truth as the inspiring men to
do a truth already known. As of old, so now, the word is nigh man,
even in his mouth, for enabling society to lift every social burden,
right every social wrong, turn each rookery into a house, make each
place wealth, make every home happiness, make every child a scholar, a
patriot and a Christian. In Solomon's day wisdom stood in the corner
of the streets but man would not regard, and the city perished. Should
the heart now join the intellect, man's feet would swiftly find these
paths that lead to prosperity and perfect peace.
Fascinating, indeed, the question how feeling and sentiment control
conduct and character. Modern machinery has thrown light upon the
problems of the soul. The engineer finds that his locomotive will not
run itself, but waits for the steam to pound upon the piston. The
great ships also are becalmed until the trade winds come to beat upon
the sails. Informed by these physical facts, we now see a noble
thought or ambition or social ideal is a mechanism that will not work
itself, but asks the enthusiastic heart to lend power divine. Some of
earth's greatest orators, like Patrick Henry, have been unlearned men,
but no orator has ever fallen short of being an enthusiastic man. A
generation ago there appeared in Paris one whose voice was counted the
most perfect voice in Europe. Musical critics gave unstinted praise to
the purity of tone and accuracy of execution. Yet in a few weeks the
audiences had dwindled to a handful, and in a few years the singer's
name was forgotten. Obscurity overtook the singer because there was no
heart behind the voice and so the tones became metallic. Contrariwise,
the history of Jenny Lind contains a letter to a friend in Sweden, in
which the singer writes: "Oh, that I may live two years longer and be
permitted to save enough money to complete my orphans' home!" As the
sun's warm beams lend a soft blush to the rose and pulsate the crimson
tides through to the uttermost edge of each petal, so a great, loving
sympathy, sang and sighed, thrilled and throbbed through the tones of
the Swedish singer, and ravished the hearts of the people and made her
name immortal.
History portrays many men of giant minds whose intellect could not
redeem them from aimlessness and obscurity. Not until some divine
enthusiasm descended upon the mind and baptized it with heroic action
did these men find themselves. To that young patrician, Saul,
journeying to Damascus, came the heavenly vision, and the new impulse
of the heart made his cold mind warm, lent wings to his slow feet, made
all his days powerful, made his soul the center of an immense activity.
This glowing heart of Paul explains for us the fact that he achieved
freedom of thought and speech, endured the stones with which he was
bruised, the stocks in which he was bound, the mobbings with which he
was mutilated; explains also his eloquence, known and unrecorded;
explains his faith and fortitude, his heroism in death. And not only
has the zeal of the heart made strong men stronger, turned weak men
into giants, lent the soldier his conquering courage and lent the
scholar a stainless life--to men whose will has been made weak by
indulgence, the new love has come to redeem intellect and will from the
bondage of habit.
No one who ever heard John B. Gough can forget his marvelous eloquence,
his wit and his pathos, his scintillating humor, his inimitable
dramatisms. He did not have the polished brilliancy of Everett or the
elegant scholarship of Phillips, and yet when these numbered thousands
of admirers, Gough numbered his tens of thousands. In his
autobiography this man tells us to what sad straits passion had brought
him; how he reflected upon the injury he was doing himself and others,
only to find that his reflections and resolutions snapped like cobwebs
before the onslaught of temptation. One night the young bookbinder
drifted into a little meeting and, buttoning his seedy overcoat to
conceal his rags, in some way he found himself upon his feet and began
to speak. The address that proved a pleasure to others was a
revelation to himself. For the first time Gough tasted the joys of
moving men and mastering them for good. Within a week that love of
public speech and useful service had kindled his mental faculties into
a creative glow. The new and higher love of the heart consumed the
lower love of the body, just as the sun melts manacles of ice from a
man's wrist.
History is full of these transformations wrought by the heart. It was
a new enthusiasm that changed Augustine the epicurean into Augustine
the church father. It was a new enthusiasm that turned Howard the
pleasure-lover into Howard the prison-reformer. It was a glowing heart
that lent power to Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave Italy her new hope
and liberty. Indeed, the history of each life is the history of its
new loves. The enthusiasms are beacon lights that glow in the highway
along which the soul journeys forward. When the hero's ships were
becalmed Virgil tells us that Aeolus struck the hollow mountain with
his staff and straightway, released from their caves, the winds went
forth to stir the waves and smite upon the sails and sweep the becalmed
ship on toward its harbor. Oh, beautiful story, telling us how Christ
touches the heart with his regenerating hand to release the soul's
deeper convictions, to sweep man forward to the heavenly haven!
If sentiment working in sound can make music; if working in colors,
etc., it can fill galleries with statues and pictures; if sentiment
working in literature can produce poems, it should not seem strange
that the heart, with its affections, furnishes the key of knowledge and
wisdom. The time was when authors were supposed to think out their
truths; now we know that the greatest truths are felt out. Matthew
Arnold said that mere knowledge is cold as an icicle, but once
experienced and touched with noble feelings truth becomes sweetness and
light. This author thought that the first requisite for a good writer
was a sensitive and sympathetic heart.
Even in Shakespeare the springs of genius were not in the mind. The
heart of our greatest poet was so sensitive that he could not see an
apple blossom without hoping that no untimely frost would nip it; could
not see the clusters turn purple under the autumn sun without hoping
that hailstones would not pound off the rich clusters; could not see a
youth leave his home to seek his fortune without praying that he would
return to his mother laden with rich treasures; could not see a bride
go down the aisle of the church without sending up a petition that many
years might intervene before death's hand should touch her white brow.
Sympathy in the heart so fed the springs of thought in the mind that it
was easy for the poet to put himself in another's place. And so, while
his pen wrote, his heart felt itself to be the king and also his
servant, to be the merchant and also his clerk, to be the general and
also his soldier. He saw the assassin drawing near the throne with a
dagger beneath his cloak; he went forth with King Lear to shiver
beneath the wintry blasts; he rejoiced with Rosalind and wept with
Hamlet, and there was no joy or grief or woe or wrong that ever touched
a human heart that he did not perfectly feel and, therefore, perfectly
describe. For depth of mind begins with depth of heart. The greatest
writers are primarily seers and only incidentally thinkers. As of old,
so now, for a thousand thinkers there is only one great seer.
Having affirmed the influence of the heart upon the intellect and
scholarship, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the
religious belief and creed. It is often said that belief is a matter
of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true
that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of
all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and the
miser, for the peaceable man not less than the litigious. But of the
other truths of life it is a fact that with the heart man believes. We
approach wheat with scales, we measure silk with a yardstick; we test
the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the
sense of melody; motives and actions are tested by conscience; we
approach the stars with a telescope, while purity of heart is the glass
by which we see God. The scales that are useful in the laboratory are
utterly valueless in the art gallery. The scientific faculty that fits
Spencer for studying nature unfits him for studying art. In his old
age Huxley, the scientist, wrote an essay forty pages long to prove
that man was more beautiful than woman. Imagine some Tyndall
approaching the transfiguration of Raphael to scrape off the colors and
test them with acid and alkali for finding out the proportion of blue
and crimson and gold. These are the methods that would give the
village paint-grinder precedency above genius itself.
In 1837 two boys entered Faneuil hall and heard Wendell Phillips'
defense of Lovejoy. One youth was an English visitor who saw the
portraits of Otis and Hancock, yet saw them not; heard the words of
Phillips, yet heard them not, and because his heart was in London
believed not unto patriotism. But the blood of Adams was in the veins
of the other youth. He thought of Samuel Adams, who heard the firing
at Lexington and exclaimed; "What a glorious morning this is!" He
thought of John Adams and his love of liberty. He thought of the old
man eloquent, John Quincy Adams, in the Halls of Congress, and as he
listened to the burning words of the speaker, tears filled his eyes and
pride filled his soul. It was his native land. With his heart he
believed unto patriotism.
What the man is determines largely what his intellect thinks about God.
When the heart is narrow, harsh, and rigorous its theology is despotic
and cruel. When the heart grows kindly, sympathetic and of autumnal
richness, it emphasizes the sympathy and love of God. Each man paints
his own picture of God. The heart lends the pigments. Souls full of
sweetness and light fill the divine portrait with the lineaments of
love. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.
Happy, indeed, our age, in that the heart is now beginning to color our
civilization. Vast, indeed, the influence of library and lecture-hall,
of gallery and store and market-place, but the most significant fact of
our day is that sympathy is baptizing our industries and institutions
with new effort. Intellect has lent the modern youth instruments many
and powerful. Inventive thought has lent fire to man's forge, tools
for his hands, books for his reading, has lent arts, sciences,
institutions. The modern youth stands forth in the aspect of the Roman
conqueror to whom the citizens went forth to bestow gifts, one taking
his chariot, one leading a steed, the children scattering flowers in
the way, young men and maidens taking the hero's name upon their lips.
Unfortunately multitudes have declined those high gifts, turning away
from the open door of the schoolhouse and college; many young feet have
crossed the threshold of the saloon. Having entered our museum or
art-gallery, multitudes enter places of evil resort.
Despising the opportunity offered by music or eloquence, by book or
newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and
self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance,
stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is
making beautiful the pathway of knowledge, that young hearts may be
allured along the shining way. By a thousand arts and devices young
people of refinement and culture are founding centers of light among
the poor. The opportunity that William the Silent found in the
starving millions of Holland; that Garrison found in the miserable
slaves of the South; that Livingstone found in Africa, the modern hero
is finding in the tenement-house district. Through sympathy a new hope
is entering into all classes of society.
The heart is also coloring industry. This year it is said that more
than a score of great industrial institutions in our country have, to
the factory, added gymnasium, recreation-hall, schoolroom, library,
free musicals and lectures. The intellect has failed to solve the
social problems by giving allopathic doses from Poor Richard's Almanac.
Impotent also those dreamers who have insisted that society must have
socialism--either God's or the devil's. Impotent those who, during the
past week, have proposed to cure economic ills by spitting the heads of
tyrants upon bayonets. But what force and law cannot do is slowly
being done by sympathy and good-will. The heart is taking the rigor
out of toil, the drudgery out of service, the cruelty out of laws,
harshness out of theology, injustice out of politics. Love has done
much. The social gains of the future are to be to the gradual progress
of sympathy and love.
Unto man who goes through life working, weeping, laughing, loving,
comes the heart believing unto immortality. For reason oft the
immortal hope burns low and the stars dim and disappear, but for the
heart, never! Scientists tell us matter is indestructible. And the
heart nourishes an immortal hope that no doubt can quench, no argument
destroy, no misfortune annihilate. Comforting, indeed, for reasons,
the arguments of Socrates that life survives death. After the death of
his beloved daughter Tullia, Cicero outlined arguments which have
consoled the mind of multitudes. But in the hour of darkness and
blackness, for a man to put out upon Death's dark sea, upon the
argument of Cicero, is like some Columbus committing himself to a
single plank in the hope of discovering an unseen continent.
In these dark hours the heart speaks. In the poet's vision, to blind
Homer, falling into the bog, torn by the thorns and thickets and lost
in the forest and the night, came the young goddess, the daughter of
Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him
up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and
wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the
upward path. For even in its dreams the heart hears the sound of
invisible music. Oft before reason's eye the heart unveils the Vision
Splendid. The soul is big with immortality. When the heart speaks it
is God within making overtures for man to come upward toward home and
heaven.
RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
"To live absolutely each man for himself could not be possible if all
were to live together. In course of time, in addition to utility,
certain more sensitive individuals began to see a charm, a beauty in
this consideration for others. Gradually a sort of sanctity attached
to it, and nature had once more illustrated her mysterious method of
evolving from rough and even savage necessities her lovely shapes and
her tender dreams. To assert, then, with some recent critics of
Christianity, that that law of brotherly love which is its central
teaching is impracticable of application to the needs of society, is
simply to deny the very first law by which society exists."--_Richard
Le Galliene, in "The Religion of a Literary Man._"
"It is only with renunciations that life, properly speaking, can be
said to begin. . . . In a valiant suffering for others, not in a
slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever
lie."--_Carlyle_.
"You talk of self as the motive to exertion. I tell you it is the
abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is noble, all that is
good, all that is useful, nearly all that is ornamental in the
world."--_Whyte Melville_.
"Jesus said; 'Whosoever will come after Me, let him renounce himself,
and take up his cross daily and follow Me.' Perhaps there is no other
maxim of Jesus which has such a combined stress of evidence for it and
may be taken as so eminently His."--Matthew Arnold.
CHAPTER VIII.
RENOWN THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION.
History has crowned self-sacrifice as one of the virtues. In all ages
selfishness has been like a flame consuming society, like a sword
working waste and ruin, but self-sacrifice has repaired these ravages
and achieved for man victories many and great. The church owes so much
to the company of martyrs whose blood has crimsoned her every page, the
state is so deeply indebted to the patriots who have given their lives
for liberty, man has derived such strength from those who have endured
the fetter and the fagot rather than belie their convictions, woman has
derived such beauty from the example of that Antigone who died rather
than desert the body of her dead brother, as that each modern youth
beholds self-sacrifice standing forth clothed with immeasurable
excellence.
Not large the company of the Immortals whose birthdays society
celebrates. Yet when on these high days, through song or story the
poet or orator draws back the veil and reveals to the assembled
multitude the face of some Garibaldi or Hampden or Lincoln, the beloved
one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but
also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget
him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no
ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the
mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. A sentinel with a flaming
sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those
aspirants named Ease, Avarice, Self-indulgence.
"Shall I be remembered by posterity?" asked the dying Garfield. In
this eager, tremulous question the renowned and the obscure alike have
a pathetic interest. For the deeply reflective mind oblivion is a
thought all unendurable. The tool man fashions, the structure he
rears, the success he achieves, not less than his marble monument,
looks down upon the beholder with a mute appeal for recollection. To
each eager aspirant for everlasting remembrance Christ comes whispering
his secret of abiding renown. Speaking not as an amateur, but as a
master, Christ affirms that he who would save his life must lose it,
that he who would be remembered by others must forget himself, that the
soldier who flees from danger to save his body shall leave that life
upon the battlefield, while he who plunges his banner into the very
thick of the fight and is carried off the field upon his shield shall
in safety bear his life away. Hard seem the terms; they rebuke ease,
they smite self-indulgence, they deny the maxims of the worldly wise.
But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their palaces that
they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and Loyola found an
exhilaration denied to kings; while each Sir Launfal, in his ease
denied the Holy Grail, has in the hour of self-sacrifice discerned the
Vision Splendid. To each young patriot and soldier looking eagerly
unto the tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young
scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes this word: Life is
through death, and immortal renown through self-renunciation.
This law of self-sacrifice is imbedded in nature. Minot, the
embryologist, and Drummond, the scientist, tells us that only by losing
its life does the cell save it. The new science exhibits the body as a
temple, constructed out of cells, as a building is made of bricks.
Just as some St. Peter represents strange marble from Athens, beauteous
woods from Cyprus, granite from Italy, porphyry from Egypt, all brought
together in a single cathedral, so the human body is a glorious temple
built by those architects called living cells. When the scientist
searches out the beginning of bird or bud or acorn he comes to a single
cell. Under the microscope that cell is seen to be absorbing nutrition
through its outer covering. But when the cell has attained a certain
size its life is suddenly threatened. The center of the cell is seen
to be so far from the surface that it can no longer draw in the
nutrition from without. The bulk has outrun the absorbing surface.
"The alternative is very sharp," says the scientist, "the cell must
divide or die." Only by losing its life and becoming two cells can it
save its life.
Later on, when each of the two cells has grown again to the size of the
original one, the same peril threatens them and they too must divide or
die. And when through this law of saving life by losing it nature has
made sure the basis for bud and bird, for beast and man, then the
principle of sacrifice goes on to secure beauty of the individual plant
or animal and perpetuity for the species. In the center of each grain
of wheat there is a golden spot that gives a yellow cast to the fine
flour. That spot is called the germ. When the germ sprouts and begins
to increase, the white flour taken up as food begins to decrease. As
the plant waxes, the surrounding kernel wanes. The life of the higher
means the death of the lower. In the orchard also the flower must fall
that the fruit may swell. If the young apple grows large, it must
begin by pushing off the blossom. But by losing the lower bud, the
tree saves the higher fruit.
Centuries ago Herodotus, the Grecian traveler, noted a remarkable
custom in Egypt. Each springtime, when the palms flowered, the
Egyptians went into the desert, cut off branches from the wild palms
and, bringing them back to their gardens, waved them over the flowers
of the date trees. What was meant by this ceremony Herodotus did not
know. The husbandmen believed that if they neglected it the gods would
give them but a scanty crop of dates. It was reserved for the science
of our century, through Drummond, to explain the fact that the one palm
saved its dates because the other palm lost its fertilizing pollen.
Should nature refuse to obey this law of losing life in order to save
it, man's world would become one vast Sahara waste, an arctic
desolation.
The law of sacrifice is also industrial law. Great is the power of
wealth. It buys comfort, it purchases travel, it secures instruments
of culture for reason and taste, it is almoner of bounty for sympathy
and kindness. Flowing through man's life, it seems like unto some Nile
flowing through Egypt with soft, irrigating flow, bearing man's burdens
upon its currents, giving food to bird and beast. But the story of
each Peter Cooper, each Peabody, each Amos Lawrence, is the story of
the ease of life lost to-day that the strength of life may be saved
to-morrow. Each young merchant loved luxury and beauty, but in the
interests of thrift he denied the eye its hunger, the taste its
satisfaction. When pride asked for dress and show, the youth rebuked
his vanity. When companions scoffed at the young merchant as a niggard
he subdued his sensitiveness and inured himself to rigid economy. When
increasing wealth began to lend influence, and society urged him to
give his evenings to gayety, the young merchant denied the social
instinct and gave his long winter evenings to broadening his knowledge
and culture. Having lost the lower good, at last the time came when
the American merchant and philanthropist had saved for himself
universal fame. Having lost ease and self-indulgence during the first
half of his life, he saved the higher ease and comfort for the second
period of his career.
Similarly of the young men in Parliament who to-day have charge of the
destinies of the English empire, it may be said that they have saved
their lives, because the fathers lost theirs. One hundred years ago
these fathers made exiles of themselves in the interests of their sons
and daughters. The East India merchant exiled himself into the tropic
land where heat and malaria made his skin as yellow as the gold he
gained. Others braved the perils of the African forests, dared the
dangers of Australian deserts, endured the rigor of the arctic cold.
Losing the lower and present happiness, they saved the higher ease and
comfort for their sons. The self-denial of yesterday brought the
influence of to-day. Upon this principle God has organized the
industrial world. Man must take his choice between ease and wealth,
either may be his but not both.
Sacrifice is also the secret of beauty, culture and character.
Selfishness eats sweetness from the singer's voice as rust eats the
edge of a sword. St. Cecilia refused to lend the divine touch to lips
steeped in pleasure. He who sings for love of gold finds his voice
becoming metallic. In art, also, Hitchcock has said: "When the brush
grows voluptuous it falls like an angel from heaven." Fra Angelico
refuses an invitation to the Pitti palace, choosing rather his crust
and pallet in the cell of the monastery. The artist gave his mornings
to the poor, his evenings to his canvas. But when the painter had worn
his life away in kindly deeds, men found that the light divine had been
transferred to the painter's canvas. Eloquence also loves sincere
lips. The history of oratory includes few great scenes--Demosthenes'
plea for Athenian liberty that resulted in his death, Luther's single
challenge to the hosts of Pope and Emperor, Wendell Phillips' at
Faneuil Hall, Lincoln's at Gettysburg. All these risked life for a
cause, and were baptized with eloquence, their words being tipped with
fire, their minds hurling thunderbolts.
Sacrifice also is the secret of beauty. After a little time the life
of pleasure and selfishness will make the sweetest fact opaque and
repellent, while self-sacrificing thoughts are cosmetics that at last
make the plainest face to be beautiful. In the calm of scholarship men
have given up the thought that culture consists of an exquisite
refinement in manners and dress, in language and equipage. The poet
laureate makes Maud the type of polished perfection. She is "icily
regular, splendidly null," for culture is more of the heart than of the
mind. But as eloquence means that an orator has so mastered the laws
of posture, and gesture and thought and speech that they are utterly
forgotten, and have become second nature, so knowledge becomes culture,
and physical perfection becomes beauty, only when it is unconscious.
In the moral realm also, the gains for the soul begin with loss. In
the hour of temptation he who sacrifices the higher duty to the lower
pleasure will find that ease has shorn away the strength of Samson.
Victor Hugo has pictured a man committing suicide through poverty, and
deserting the duty and dwelling where God has placed him. But waking
in the next world, the man perceives a letter on the way to himself
announcing a large inheritance which would have been his had he but
been patient. Therefore the great novelist affirms that God makes such
a man begin over again, only under harder conditions, the existence
that here he has willfully shattered. What a tragedy is his who, to
save the present good, will lose the higher life. Whittier expressed
the fear that Daniel Webster saved his life only to lose it. In his
works the poet recalls the time when for genius of statesmanship and
weight of mentality Webster's like was not upon our earth. But in an
evil hour the statesman saw that the presidency was a prize that could
be gained by giving the fugitive slave law as a sop to the South. In
that hour his character suffered grievous injury. In the attempt to
save men's votes he lost men's higher respect. In deepest sorrow his
admirers, abroad and at home, cried out: "O, Lucifer, thou son of the
morning, how art thou fallen!"
The law of sacrifice is also the law of progress and civilization.
When history exhibits as dead the nations that have been
pleasure-seekers it declares that the state that saveth its life shall
lose it. In our own land the bankruptcy and gloom that have for years
overshadowed the South speak eloquently of a national gain that is a
loss. One hundred years ago the North freed its slaves. Later, when
the constitution was adopted, many statesmen believed that slavery was
losing its hold in the South. Jefferson said: "When I think that God
is just I tremble for my country." In that hour the statesman
prophesied that slavery would soon melt away like the vanishing snow of
April. But when Whitney invented his gin and the raising of cotton
became very lucrative slavery took on new life. It was Lord Brougham
who first said that when slavery brought in 100 percent, while it was
seen to be immoral, not all the navies of the world could stop it.
Later, when it brought in 300 percent, it became a peculiar
institution, patterned after the system of the patriarchs. But when it
brought in 300 percent master and slave became a Christian relation,
and slavery was baptized with quotations from the Old Testament.
But avarice could not forever blind men's eyes to scenes of sorrow, nor
stop their ears to sounds of woe. When the horrors of the slave-market
and the infamies of the cotton-field filled all the land with shame
reformers arose, declaring that the attempt to compress and confine
liberty would end in explosion. In that hour Northern men made
tentative overtures looking to the purchase of all slaves. But
slavery, Delilah-like, made the southern leaders drunk with the cup of
sorcery. They scorned the proposition. In the light of subsequent
events we see that in saving her institution the South lost it, and
with it her wealth, while in losing her slaves the North gained her
wealth. Under free labor the North doubled its population, its
manufactories, its riches and waxed mighty. Under slave-labor the
South dwindled in wealth and became only the empty shell of a state.
The spark fired at Fort Sumter kindled a conflagration that swept
through the sunny South like a devastating fire and revealed its inner
poverty. When four years had passed by the farmhouses and factories
were ruins, the village was a heap, the town a desolation. Graveyards
were as populous as cities, each village had its company of cripples,
the cry of the orphan and the widow filled all the land.
When Charles Darwin returned from his voyage around the world, he sent
a generous contribution to the London Missionary Society. The great
scientist had discovered that in lessening her wealth through missions
England had saved her treasure through commerce. Traveling in foreign
lands, Darwin noticed that the Christian teachers in schools that now
touch 3,000,000 of young men and women in India, were really commercial
agents for England's trade. In awakening the minds of the darkened
millions the teacher had created a demand for books, newspapers and
printing-presses. In awakening the sense of self-respect the teacher
had created a demand for English clothing and the product of English
looms. Also the influence of each home, with its comforts and
conveniences, created a demand for English tools and improvements of
labor. Summing up his observation, Lord Havelock said that each
thousand dollars England had spent upon her missions had brought a
return of a hundred thousand dollars through her commerce. Hitherto
the interior of China has been closed to English merchants. To that
dark land, therefore, England has sent 200 teachers whose homes are
centers of light and inspiration. When two-score years have passed
English fleets will be taxed to the utmost to carry to China, as now to
India, her fabrics of cotton and wool, her presses, looms,
sewing-machines, her pictures, her libraries. In giving of her wealth
to found these destitute schools England will save it a hundred-fold
and find new markets among 300,000,000 people.
Sacrifice is also the secret of influence. Long ago Cicero noted that
tales of heroes and eloquence and self-sacrifice cast a charm and spell
upon the people. When men sacrifice ease, wealth, rank, life itself,
the delight of the beholders knows no bounds. If we call the roll of
the sons of greatness and influence we shall see that they are also the
sons of self-sacrifice. The Grecian hero who lost his life that he
might save his influence is typical of all the great leaders. Phocion
was a patriot and martyr whose single error in judgment brought down a
catastrophe upon his beloved Athens. When the fierce mob surrounded
his house and prepared to beat down his doors, friends offered Phocion
escape and shelter, but the hero went calmly forth to meet his death.
When the day of execution arrived the cup of poison was handed to the
other leaders first. The jailer was careful to see to it that before
he reached Phocion he had only a few drops of hemlock left in his cup,
but the hero drew out his purse and bade a youth run swiftly to buy
more poison, saying to the onlookers: "Athens makes her patriots pay,
even for dying." Losing his life, Phocion, found immortal influence.
The history of Holland's greatness is the history of one who saved
liberty by losing his own life. William the Silent was a prince in
station and in wealth, yet for Holland's sake made himself a beggar and
an outlaw. He feared God, indeed, but not the batteries of Alva and
Philip. His career reads like one who with naked fists captured a
blazing cannon. Falling at last by the dagger of a hired assassin, he
exclaimed: "I commit my poor people to God and myself to God's great
captain, Christ." When he died little children cried in the streets.
He lost his life, said his biographer, but saved his fame. And what
shall we more say of Italy's hero, who wore his fiery fagots like a
crown of gold; of Germany's hero, who lost his priestly rites, but
gained the hearts of all mankind; of England's hero, whose very ashes
were cast by enemies upon the River Severn, as if to float his
influence out o'er all the world, of India's hero, William Carey, the
English shoemaker, who founded for India an educational system now
reaching millions of children and youth, who gave India literature,
made five grammars and six dictionaries, and so used his commercial
genius through his indigo plantation and factories that it made for him
a million dollars in the interests of Christian missions? Of this
great company, what can we say save that they won renown through
self-renunciation! What they did makes weak and unworthy what we say.
Just here let us remember that the statue of Jupiter was a figure so
colossal that worshipers, unable to reach the divine forehead, cast
their garlands at the hero's feet. For this law of sacrifice is the
secret of the Messiah. Earth's great ones were taught it by their
Master. Jesus Christ, "being rich, for our sakes became poor."
Because the law of sacrifice is the law of the Savior, man gains life
through death and renown through self-renunciation.
THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.
"A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in
the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and
of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate
sympathies--one may say, simply 'fineness of nature.' This is, of
course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness, in
fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy.
Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no
touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have
felt a bent rose leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and
behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar
animal, but if you think about him carefully you will find that his
non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine
nature, not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the
way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way and in his
sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique
on points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of the probable
signs of high-breeding in men generally will be their kindness and
mercifulness."--_Modern Painters_.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GENTLENESS OF TRUE GIANTHOOD.
History has never known another such an enthusiasm for a hero as the
multitude once felt toward Jesus Christ. There have indeed been times
when such patriots as Garibaldi, Kossuth and Lincoln have kindled in
men an enthusiasm akin to adoration and worship. Yet let us hasten to
confess that the qualities calculated to quicken men into raptures of
devotion appeared in these patriots only in fragmentary form, while
they dwelt in Christ in full-orbed majesty and splendor. The welcome
Chicago gave to Grant upon his return from his journey around the
world; the enthusiasm excited by Kossuth when in 1851 he drove through
Broadway, New York; the wave of gratitude that swept over the Italian
multitude when Garibaldi appeared in Florence--all these are events
that bear witness to society's devotion to its patriots and heroes.
But, be it remembered, these scenes occurred but once in the history of
each of these great men.
It stirs wonder in us, therefore, that Christ's every journey across
the fields took on the aspect of a triumphal procession, while His
popularity waxed with familiarity and the increasing years. Indeed,
full oft the rapture men felt toward Him amounted to an intoxication
and an ecstasy of devotion. True it is that men now look upon Him
through a blaze of light, and, remembering His achievements for art,
liberty and learning, have stained His name through and through with
lustrous colors. As at eventide we look out upon the sun through white
and golden clouds that the sun itself has lifted, so do we behold the
carpenter's son standing forth under the dazzling light of nearly two
thousand years of history, while the heart colors His name with all
that is noblest in human aspiration and achievement.
Nevertheless, be it instantly confessed that from the very beginning
this divine Teacher exhibited qualities that kindled in men an
enthusiasm that amounted to transcendent delight. The time was when
scholars attempted to explain His influence over the multitude by
portraying Him with a halo of light about His head. Fortunately these
ideas that robbed men of all fellowship with their divine brother have
perished, and now we know that there was nothing unusual about His
appearance, nor did any effulgent light blaze forth from His person.
Whether or not unique beauty of face and form was His we do not know.
Coins and statues portray for us the Roman emperors and the Greek
scholars. Yet art has broken down utterly in the attempt to combine in
one face Christ's majesty and meekness, strength and gentleness,
suffering and victory. All that we can know of His personal appearance
must be gained through imagination, as it clothed Him with those traits
that alone cannot account for His influence over the multitudes. What
sweet allurement in the face that made children leap into His arms!
What winsome benignity that made mothers feel that His touch would
return the babe with double worth into the parent's bosom!
Purity in others has been cold and chaste as ice. How strange that in
Him purity had an irresistible fascination, so that the corruptest and
wickedest felt drawn unto Him, and "depravity itself bowed down and
wept in the presence of divinity." What all-forgiving love, what
all-cleansing love, in one who by a mere look could dissolve in
repentant tears men long hardened by vice and crime! What an
atmosphere of power He must have carried, that by one beam from His eye
He could smite to the very ground the soldiers who confronted Him!
Did ever man have such a genius for noble friendship? What bosom words
He used! What love pressure in all His speech! How were His words
laden with double meanings, so that hearing one thing, men also heard
another, even as they who hear the sound of the distant sea, knowing
that the sound they hear is but a breath of the great infinite ocean
that heaves beyond in the dim, vast dark. Among all the heroes of time
He walks solitary by the greatness of His power, His beauty and the
wonder of love His personality excited. Standing in the presence of
some glorious cathedral or gallery, beholding the Parthenon or
pyramids, the rugged mountain or the beautiful landscape, emotion and
imagination are sometimes so deeply stirred that men lose command of
themselves and break into transports of admiration. But the enthusiasm
evoked by mountain or statue or canvas is as nothing compared to the
rapturous devotion felt by the multitude for this One, who united in
full splendor all those eminent qualities of mind and heart that all
the ages and generations have in vain sought to emulate. High over all
the other worthies He rises like a star riding in untroubled splendor
above the low-browed hills.
In all ages great men have educated themselves by reading the biography
of ancient worthies, and emulating the example of the heroes of
antiquity. Great has been the influence of these reformers and
philosophers, statesmen and poets, hanging in the heavens above men and
raining down inspiration upon the human imagination. Yet from all the
worthies of the past, and all modern heroes, man has drawn less of
inspiration and personal influence than from the single example of this
ideal Christ. Passing by His influence upon institutions, education,
art and literature, we shall do well to consider how His example has
instructed man in the art of a right carriage of the faculties in the
home and market-place. In the last analysis, Jesus Christ is the only
perfect gentleman our earth has ever known--in comparison with whom all
the Chesterfields seem boors. For nothing taxes a man so heavily as
the task of maintaining smooth, pleasant and charitable relations with
one's fellows. And Christ alone was able always to meet storm with
calm, hate with love, scowls with smiles, plottings with confidence,
envy and bitterness with unruffled tranquility.
In all His relations with His friends and enemies the quality that
crowns His method of living and challenges our thought is the
gentleness of His bearing. Matchless the mingled strength and beauty
of His life, yet gentleness was the flower and fruitage of it all. For
in Him the lion and the lamb dwelt together. Oak and rock were there,
and also vine and flower. Weakness is always rough. Only giants can
be gentle. Tenderness is an inflection of strength. No error can be
greater than to suppose that gentleness is mere absence of vigor.
Weakness totters and tugs at its burden. When the dwarf that attended
Ivanhoe at the tournament lifted the bleeding sufferer he staggered
under his heavy burden. Weakness made him stumble and caused the
wounded knight intense pain. When the giant of the brawny arm and the
unconquered heart came, he lifted the unconscious sufferer like a
feather's weight and without a jar bore him away to a secure
hiding-place for healing and recovering. He who studies the great men
of yesterday will find in the last analysis that gentleness has always
been the test of gianthood, and fine considerateness the measure of
manhood and the gauge of personal worth. No other hero moving through
the crowds has ever been so courteously gentle, so sweetly considerate
in his personal bearing as this Christ--who never failed to kindle in
men transports of delight and enthusiasm.
The crying fault of our generation is its lack of gentleness. Our age
is harsh when it judges, brutal when it blames and savage in its
severity. Carlyle, emptying vials of scorn upon the people of England,
numbering his generation by "thirty millions, mostly fools," is typical
of the publicists, authors and critics who pelt their brother man with
contemptuous scorn. The author of "Robert Elsmere" exhibits that
polished scholar and brilliant student as one who gave up teaching
because he could find no audience on a level with his ability or worthy
of his instruction. Having begun by despising others, he ends by
despising himself. Now the popularity of Elsmere's character witnesses
to the fact that our generation includes a large number of cynics who
scorn their fellows and in Elsmere see themselves as "in an open
glass." To-day this tendency toward harshness of judgment has become
more pronounced, and there seems to be no leader so noble as to escape
brutal criticism and no movement whose white flag may not be smirched
by mud-slingers. What epithets are hurled at each new idea! What
torrents of ridicule are emptied out upon each social movement!
The fact that society has oftentimes destroyed its noblest geniuses
avails little for the restraint of harshness. For years England was
wildly merry at Turner's expense. The newspapers cartooned his
paintings. Reviews spoke of them as "color blotches." The rich over
their champagne made merry at the great artist's expense. After a
while men found a little respite from the mad chase for wealth and
pleasure and discovered that Turner's extreme examples represented
peculiar moods in nature, seen only by those who had traveled as widely
as had Turner, while his great landscapes were as rich in imaginative
quality as those of any artist of all ages. Only when it was too late,
only when harshness had broken the man's heart, and scorn had fatally
wounded his genius, did scholars begin to adorn their pages by
references to Turner's fame, did the rich begin to pay fabulous sums
for the very pictures they had once despised, the nation set apart the
best room in its gallery for Turner's works, while the people wove for
his white tombstone wreaths they had denied his brow and paid his dead
ashes honors refused his living spirit.
In similar vein we remember the English-speaking world has recently
been celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Keats, who is the only
pure Greek in all English literature, for whose imagination "a thing of
beauty was a joy forever," and whose genius in divining the secrets of
the beautiful amounted to inspiration. We know now that no poet in all
time, who died so young, has left so much that is precious. Scholars
are not wanting who believe that had he lived to see his maturity Keats
would have ranked with the five great poets of the first order of
genius. Yet the publication of his volume of verse received from
"Blackwood" and the "Quarterly" only contempt and bitter scorn. Waxing
bold, the penny-a-liners grew savage, until the very skies rained lies
and bitter slanders upon poor Keats. Sensitive, soon he was wounded to
death. After a week of sleeplessness, he arose one morning to find a
bright red spot upon his handkerchief. "That is arterial blood," said
he; "that drop is my death-warrant; I shall die." And so, when he was
one-and-twenty, friends lifted above the boy's dust a marble slab, upon
which was written: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Now
his name shines like a star, while low down and bespattered with mud
are the names of those whose cruel criticisms helped to kill the boy
and whose only claim to immortality is their brutality.
Witness also the contempt our age once visited upon Browning, whose
mind is slowly becoming recognized as one of the rich-gold minds of our
century. Witness the sport over Ruskin's "Munera Pulveris," and the
scornful reception given Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Now that a few
years have passed, those who once reviled are teaching their children
the pathway to the graves of the great. The harshness of the world's
treatment of its greatest teachers makes one of the most pathetic
chapters in history. God gives each nation only a few men of supreme
talent. Gives it, for greatness is not made; it is found as is the
gold. Gold cannot be made out of mud; it is uncovered. And God gives
each generation a few men of the first order; and when they have
created truth and beauty they have the right while they live to
kindness and sympathy, not harshness and cynicism. No youth winning
the first goal of his ambition was ever injured by knowing that his
father's face did not flush with pride, while his mother's eyes were
filled with happy tears, in joy of his first victory. No noble lover
but girds himself for a second struggle the more resolutely for knowing
that his noble mistress rejoiced in his first conquest. Frost itself
is not more destructive to harvest fields than harshness is to the
creative faculties. Strange that Florence gave Dante exile in exchange
for his immortal poem! Strange that London gave Milton threats of
imprisonment for the manuscript of "Paradise Lost!" Passing strange
that until his career was nearly run universities visited upon John
Ruskin only scorn and contumely, that ruined his health and broke his
heart, withholding the wreath until, as he said pathetically, his only
"pleasure was in memory, his ambition in heaven," and he knew not what
to do with his laurel leaves save "lay them wistfully upon his mother's
grave." In every age the critics that have refused honor to its
worthies, living, have heaped gifts high upon the graves of its dead.
That generation and individual must be far from perfect that is
characterized by the presence of harshness and the absence of
gentleness. With a great blare of trumpets our century has been
praised for its ingenuity, its wealth and comforts, its instruments,
refinement and culture. But history tells of no man who has carried
his genius up to such supreme excellence that society has forgotten his
vice or forgiven the faults that marred his rare gifts. What genius
had De Quincey! Marvelous the myriad-minded Coleridge! The
opium-habit, however, was a vice that eclipsed their fame and robbed
them of half their rightful influence. Voltaire's style was so
faultlessly perfect that if the sentences lying across his page had
been strings of pearls they could have been no more beautiful. But
Voltaire's excesses make a black mark across the white page before each
reader's mind. Rousseau's writings are so melodious that, long after
laying aside the book the ear would be filled with the sound of
delicious music were it not that the reader seems ever to hear the moan
of the four children whose unnatural father, without even giving them a
name, placed them in the foundling-asylum.
Early Carlyle wooed and won one of the most brilliant girls of his day,
whose signal talent shone in the crowded drawing-rooms of London like a
sapphire blazing among pebbles. Yet her husband lacked gentleness.
Slowly harshness crept into Carlyle's voice. Soon the wife gave up her
favorite authors to read the husband's notes; then she gave up all
reading to relieve him of details; at last her very being was placed on
the altar of sacrifice--fuel to feed the flame of his fame and genius.
Long before the end came she was submerged and almost forgotten. One
day two distinguished foreign authors called upon Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle.
For an hour the philosopher poured forth vehement tirade against the
commercial spirit, while the good wife never once opened her lips. At
last the author ceased talking, and there was silence for a time.
Suddenly Carlyle thundered: "Jane, stop breathing so loud!" Long years
before Jane had stopped doing everything else except breathe. And so,
obedient to the injunction, a few days afterward she ceased "breathing
so loud."
When a few weeks had gone by Carlyle discovered, through reading her
journal, that his wife had for want of affection frozen and starved to
death within his home like some poor traveler who had fallen in the
snows beyond the door. For years, without his realizing it, she had
kept all the wheels oiled, kept his body in health and his mind in
happiness. Only when it was too late did the husband realize that his
fame was largely his wife's. Then did the old man begin his pathetic
pilgrimage to his wife's grave, where Froude often found him murmuring:
"If I had only known! If I had only known!" For all his supreme gifts
and rare talents were marred by harshness. Intellectual brilliancy
weighs light as punk against the gold of gentleness and character.
Half Carlyle's books, weighted by a gentle, noble spirit, would have
availed more for social progress than these many volumes with the bad
taste they leave in the mouth. The sign of ripeness in an apple, a
peach, is beauty, and the test of character is gentleness and kindness
of heart.
One of the crying needs of society is a revival of gentleness and of a
refined considerateness in judging others. There is no disposition
that cuts at the very root of character like harshness, and there is
nothing that blights happiness and breeds discord like unlovingness and
severity of judgment. We hear much of industrial strife, social
warfare and want of sympathy between the classes. Be it remembered,
gentleness alone can be invoked to heal the breach. There is a legend
that when Jacob with his family and flocks met Esau with his children
and herds, the angels of God hovered in the air above the two brothers
and began to rain gifts down upon their companies. Strangely enough,
each forgetting the gifts falling in his own camp, rushed forth to pick
up the gifts falling in that of his brother. There was anger stirred.
Epithets and stones began to fly, until all the air was filled with
flying weapons. In such a scrimmage the messengers of peace had no
place. Soon the sound of receding wings died out of the air, the gifts
ceased to fall and all things faded into the light of common day. This
legend interprets to us how harshness breeds strife and robs man of his
gifts from God and his happiness through his brother man.
Several years ago an industrial war was waged in the coal districts of
England that cost that nation untold treasure. It is said that the
strife grew out of harsh words between the leaders of the opposing
factions. It seemed that the industrious and worthy poor men
overlooked the fact that there were industrious and worthy rich men and
insisted on speaking only of the idle and spendthrift rich. Then
followed his opponent who, as an industrious and worthy rich man,
insisted on ignoring the industrious and worthy poor, but spoke only of
the idle and thriftless poor, the paupers and parasites. Soon
gentleness was forgotten and harshness remembered. Soon there came the
trampled cornfields and the bloody streets.
Teachers also need to learn the lesson of Arnold of Rugby. One day the
great instructor spake harshly to a dull boy, who an hour afterward
came to him with tearful eyes, and in a half-sobbing voice exclaimed;
"But why are you angry, sir? I am doing my best." Then Arnold learned
that a lesson easy for one mind may be a torture for another. So he
begged the boy's pardon, and recognized the principle of gentleness
that afterward made him the greatest instructor of his time.
Not war, not pestilence, not famine itself, produces for each
generation so much misery and unhappiness as is wrought in the
aggregate through the accumulated harshness of each generation.
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they who with humble
talents make themselves like the mignonette, creators of fragrance and
peace! Thrice blessed are they who with lofty talents emulate the
vines that climbing high never forget to blossom, and the higher they
climb do ever shed sweet blooms upon those beneath! No single great
deed is comparable for a moment to the multitude of little gentlenesses
performed by those who scatter happiness on every side and strew all
life with hope and good cheer.
Life holds no motive for stimulating gentleness in man like the thought
of the gentleness of God. Unfortunately, it seems difficult for man to
associate delicacy and gentleness with vastness and strength. It was
the misfortune of Greek philosophers and is, indeed, that of nearly all
the modern theologians, to suppose that a perfect being cannot suffer.
Both schools of thought conceive of God as sitting upon a marble
throne, eternally young, eternally beautiful, beholding with quiet
indifference from afar how man, with infinite blunderings, sufferings
and tears makes his way forward. Yet He who holds the sun in the
hollow of his hand, who takes up the isles as a very little thing, who
counts the nations but as the dust in the balance, is also the gentle
One. Like the wide, deep ocean, that pulsates into every bay and creek
and blesses the distant isles with its dew and rain, so God's heart
throbs and pulsates unto the uttermost parts of the universe, having a
parent's sympathy for His children who suffer.
Indeed, the seer ranges through all nature searching out images for
interpreting His all-comprehending gentleness. "Even the bruised reed
he will not break." Lifting itself high in the air, a mere lead pencil
for size, weighted with a heavy top, a very little injury shatters a
reed. Some rude beast, in wild pursuit of prey, plunges through the
swamp, shatters the reed, leaves it lying upon the ground, all bruised
and bleeding, and ready to die. Such is God's gentleness that, though
man make himself as worthless as a bruised reed; though by his
ignorance, frailty and sin he expel all the manhood from his heart and
life, and make himself of no more value than one of the myriad reeds in
the world's swamps, still doth God say: "My gentleness is such that I
will direct upon this wounded life thoughts that shall recuperate and
heal, until at last the bruised reed shall rise up in strength, and
judgment shall issue in victory."
And as God's gentleness would go one step further, there is added the
tender lesson of the smoking flax. Our glowing electric bulbs suffer
no injury from blasts, and our lamps have like strength. The time was,
when, wakened by the cry of the little sufferer, the ancient mother
sprang up to strike the tinder and light the wick in the cup of oil.
Only with difficulty was the tinder kindled. Then how precious the
spark that one breath of air would put out! With what eagerness did
the mother guard the smoking flax! And in setting forth the gentleness
of God it is declared that, with eyes of love, He searches through each
heart, and if He find so much as a spark of good in the outcast, the
publican, the sinner, He will tend that spark and feed it toward the
love that shall glow and sparkle forever and ever; for evil is to be
conquered, and God will not so much punish as exterminate sin from His
universe. His strength is inflicted toward gentleness, His justice
tempered with mercy, and all his attributes held in solution of love.
No longer should medievalism becloud God's gentle face. Cleanse your
thoughts, as once the artist in Milan cleansed the grime and soot from
the wall where Dante's lustrous face was hidden.
With shouts and transports of joy and admiration men welcome the
patriot or hero who in times of danger held the destiny of the people
in his hands and never once betrayed it. And let each intellect soar
without hindrance, and the heart pour itself out before God in a
freshet of divine love. Great is the genius of Plato or Bacon,
revealing itself in tides of thought, but greater and richer is the
genius of the heart that is conscious of vast, deep fountains of love,
that may be poured forth in generous tides before the God whose throne
is mercy, whose face is light, whose name is love, whose strength is
gentleness, whose considerateness is our pledge of pardon, peace and
immortality.
THE THUNDER OF SILENT FIDELITY:
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF LITTLE THINGS.
"We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not
by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite
authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things.
There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His
guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and what
is true of Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most
reverently when most habitually; our insolence is in ever acting
without reference to it, our true honoring of it is in its universal
application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its
sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing, but my
excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every
argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough
on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in
our lives. The snow, the vapour and the strong wind fulfil His word.
Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these, that we should
forget it?"--_Ruskin_.
"I expect to pass through this life but once. If there is any kindness
or any good thing I can do to my fellow-beings let me do it now. I
shall pass this way but once."---_William Penn_.
CHAPTER X.
THE THUNDER OF SILENT FIDELITY:
A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF LITTLE THINGS.
Schliemann, uncovering marbles upon which Phidias and his followers
carved out immortality for themselves, has not wrought more effectually
for the increase of knowledge than have those excavators in Egypt who
have uncovered the Rosetta stone, with other manuscripts of brick and
marble. Of all these instructive tablets and tombs, none are more
interesting than one picturing forth a national festival in the Jewish
capital. Upon his canvas of stone the unknown artist portrays for us
Herod's temple with its outer courts and columns and its massive walls.
We see the public square crowded with merchants and traders, who have
come in from the great cities of the world to this festival of the
fathers. With solemn pageantry, these Jews, who were the bankers and
merchants of that far-off age, march through the streets toward the
gate that is called Beautiful. In the vast parade are men notable by
their princely wealth in Ephesus and Antioch, in Alexandria and Rome.
We see one advancing with his retinue of servants, another with the
train which corresponds to his wealth. One group the artist exhibits
as characteristic. Advancing before their lord and master are four
servants, who lift up in the presence of admiring spectators a platter
upon which lies a heap of shining gold. The murmur of admiration that
runs through the crowd is sweeter to the old merchant's ear than any
music of harp or human voice. Passing by the treasury, what gifts are
cast upon the resounding table! How heavy the bars of gold! What
silver plate! What pearls and jewels! How rich the fabrics and
hangings for the temple! As at St. Peter in the sixteenth century, so
in Christ's day it seemed as if the whole world were being swept for
treasures for enriching this glorious temple.
But when the lions of the procession had all passed by, there followed
also the crowd of stragglers. From this post of observation we are
told that Christ saw a poor widow advancing. With falling tears, yet
with exquisite grace and tenderness, she cast in two mites, or one
half-penny, then passed on to worship him whom she loved, all
unconscious of the fact that she had also passed into immortality. For
the noise of the gold falling into the resounding chest has long since
died away. Jerusalem itself is in ruins. The old temple with its
magnificence has gone to decay. The proud thrones and monarchies have
all fallen into dust. But the silent fidelity of this obscure woman is
a voice that thunders down the long aisles of time. A thousand times
hath she encouraged heroism in poet and parent. Ten thousand times
hath she been an inspiration to reformers and martyrs! Love and
fidelity have embalmed her deed and lent her immortality. In the very
center of the world's civilization stands her monument. For her Arc de
Triomphe has been built in the human heart. Her monument does not
appeal to the eye; it is not carved in stone; yet it is more permanent
than gold, and her fame outshines all flashing jewels. While love and
admiration endure the story of her humble fidelity shall abide
indestructible!
The great Italian first noted that thrice only did Christ stretch forth
his hand to build a monument, and each time it was to immortalize a
deed of humble fidelity. Once a disciple gave a cup of cold water to
one of God's little ones, and won thereby imperishable renown. Once a
woman broke an alabaster box for her master, and, lo! her deed has been
like a broken vase, whose perfume has exhaled for two thousand years,
and shall go on diffusing sweetness to the end of time. Last of all,
after the rich men of Alexandria had cast their rattling gold into the
brazen treasury, a poor widow cast a speck of dust called two mites,
and, lo! this humble deed gave her enduring recollection.
It seems that immortal renown is achieved not so much by the solitary
deed of greatness as by humble fidelity to life's details, and that
modest Christian living that regards small deeds and minor duties.
Ours is a world in which life's most perfect gifts and sweetest
blessings are little things. Take away love, daily work, sweet sleep,
and palaces become prisons and gold seems contemptible. The classic
poet tells of Kind [Transcriber's note: King?] Midas, to whom was
offered whatsoever he wished, and whose avarice led him to choose the
golden touch. But lo! his blessing became a curse. Rising to dress he
found himself shivering in a coat with threads of gold. Going into his
garden he stooped to breathe the perfume of the roses, and, lo! the
dewy petals became yellow points that pierced his face. Breakfasting,
the bread became metal in his mouth. Lifting a goblet the water became
a solid mass. Swinging his little daughter in his arms one kiss turned
the sweet child into a cold statue. A single hour availed to drive
happiness from Midas' heart. In an agony of despair he besought the
gods for simple things. He asked for one cup of cold water, one
cluster of fruit and his little daughter's loving heart and hand.
And as with wealth, so wisdom without life's little things is impotent
for happiness. Genius hath its charm; nevertheless, the wisest of men
have also been the saddest of men. The story of literary greatness is
a piteous tale. History tells of many beautiful and gifted girls who
have married scholars for their genius, fame and position. When these
honors were theirs they wakened to discover that all were less than
nothing, since tenderness refused its mite and sympathy gave cot its
cup of cold water. Home and fame became dungeons in which the soul sat
and famished for love's little courtesies.
For no palace was ever so beautiful, no royal wine quaffed from vessels
of gold was ever so sweet as to satisfy hearts famishing for one mite
of that heavenly manna love prepares, or one cup filled with kindness.
Down in a corner of a window of an English palace may be found faint
lines scratched with a woman's diamond. What a tragedy in those words,
"My prison!" It seems the sweet girl, Jane Grey, entered her palace
with a leaping heart, but her lord had no time to break upon her white
forehead the tiny box of life's ointment. Hers was the palace; hers
also a thousand rich gifts called titles, lands, castles, maids of
honor, dresses, jewels. Yet because the castles held no sweet
courtesies the journal of that beautiful girl reminds us of some young
bird that beats with bloody wings against the bars of an iron cage.
For life is made up not of joys few and intense, but of joys many and
gentle. Great happiness is the sum of many small drops. God makes the
days that are channels of mighty and tumultuous joys to be few and far
between. For highly spiced joys exhaust. All who seek intense
pleasure will find not enjoyment but yearnings for enjoyment.
Happiness is in simple things; a cup of cold water, health and a
perfect day; dreamless sleep, honest toil, the esteem of the worthy,
the caresses of little children, a love that waxes with the increasing
years.
Our appreciation of the principle that greatness of any form is an
accumulation of little deeds will be freshened by an outlook upon
nature's method. The old science unveiled the universe as a divine
thought rushing into instant form, stars and suns being sparks struck
out on the anvil of omnipotence. The new science has found that
earth's every atom has been slowly polished by an infinite artisan and
architect. If we descend into the sea we shall find that the reefs and
islands against which the tides of the Pacific dash in vain are built
of coral insects, whose every organ exhibits the delicate skill of a
diamond or snowflake. If we stand upon the fruitful plain where men
build cities we shall discern that each flake of the rich soil
represents the perfect crystallization of drops of melted granite. If
we take the wings of the morning and dwell upon the summit of the
Matterhorn there also we find that the mountain hath its height and
majesty through particles themselves weak and little. For the
geologist who analyzes the topmost peak of the Alpine ridge must go
back to a little flake of mica, that ages and ages ago floated along
some one of earth's rivers, too light to sink, too feeble to find the
fiber of a lichen, therefore dropped into the ooze of mire and decay.
Yet hardened by earth's processes, the day came when that flake of mica
was lifted up upon the mountain's peak, wrought into the strength of
imperishable iron, "rustless by the air, infusible by the flame,
capping the very summit of the Alpine tower. Above it--that little
obscure mica flake--the north winds rage, yet all in vain, below
it--the feeble mica flake--the snowy hills lie bowing themselves like
flocks of sheep, and the distant kingdoms fade away in unregarded
blue." [1] Around it--the weak, wave-drifted mica flake--booms all the
artillery of storms, when electric arrows with blunted points fall back
from its front, as it lifts its might and majesty toward the enduring
stars.
If ages ago the sages said, God is not in the earthquake, nor in the
storm, but in the still small voice, now science reaffirms the
declaration that omnipotence is revealed not so much through awful
cataclysms and earthquake forces as through the silent agents and
hidden processes that make the plains to be fruitful and hillsides to
be rich in corn. In the past astronomy has been the favorite science,
emphasizing the distant stars and suns. The science of the future is
to be chemistry, emphasizing atoms and elements. Journeying outward in
pursuit of the footsteps of God, advancing upon his distant and dizzy
march, man's vision faints and falls upon the horizon beyond which are
indiscernible splendors. Journeying inward upon the wings of the
microscope, we shall find that there is another realm of beauty beyond
which the utmost vision of man cannot pierce. For before the
microscope "the last discernible particle dies out of sight with the
same perfect glory on it as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirts
of the universe." If God is throned in the clouds He is also
tabernacled in the dewdrop and palaced in the bud and blossom.
The history of nations and individuals teaches us that the greatest
gifts are poor and empty and the most signal talents worthless if the
small things be not done, the two mites be not given. For life is
marred by little infelicities and ruined by little errors. The broken
columns and marble heaps in lands where once were cities represent
destructions not so much through tornadoes and earthquakes as through
small vices and unnoticed sins. In modern life also, journeying
through city and forest and field, the economist returns to tell us
that life's chief wastes are through little enemies and foes. It is a
minute bug that steals the golden berry from the wheat; it is a tiny
germ upon the leaf that blights the budding peach and pear, it is a
rough spot upon the potato that fills all Ireland with fear of famine;
it is a worm that bores through the planks of the ship's hull and
alarms old seacaptains as approaching battleships could not.
The enemies of human life are not enemies that fill man's streets with
banners and charging cannon. We wage war against the dust mote
ambushed in the sunbeam; we fight against weapons hurled from those
battleships called drops of impure water; we wrestle with those hosts
whose broadsides invisible rise from streets foul, or fall from
poisoned clouds. Such enemies that lurk in dampness and darkness, a
thousand fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand. That
great catastrophe that overtook Holland a century ago is not explained
by a tidal wave that pierced through the dikes; the disaster was
through the crawfishes that opened tiny holes and, weakening the
bulwarks, let in the onrushing sea.
It was but a trifling error also that robbed the generations of one of
man's divinest pictures. Three hundred years ago the monks made tight
and strong the roof above the room where was Da Vinci's "Last Supper."
A thousand tiles were fastened down and all save one were perfect. The
one hid a secret hole. When months had passed and the driving storm
came from the right direction the rain found out that hidden fault and,
rushing in, a flood of drops streamed down o'er the wall and made a
great black mark across the noble painting, and ruined the central face
forever.
Human life is ruined through the absence of humble virtues and the
presence of little faults. There is no man so great, no gift so
brilliant, but let it be whispered that there is falseness in the life
of the hero, and immediately his greatness is dwarfed, his eloquence
becomes a trick, his authority is impaired. Reading Robert Burns'
poems, he seems wiser than all the scholars, wittier than all the
humorists, more courtly than princes. His genius blazes like a torch
among the tapers. But watching this son of genius and of liberty weave
a net for his own feet, and fashion a snare for his own faculties, with
wistful hearts we long, as one has said, "to hear the exulting and
triumphant cry of the strong man coming to himself, I will arise." But
he loved the barroom more than the library, and so fell on death at
seven and thirty, and lost his right to rule as a king o'er men's
hearts and lives. Byron, too, and Goethe had gifts so resplendent that
in kings' palaces they shine like diamonds amid the pebbles. What a
constellation of gifts was theirs! Culture, sanity, imagination, wit,
courage, vigor--all these stars were grouped in their mental
constellations! Yet little vices dethroned these kings and made them
plebeian. It is the absence of little virtues and sweet domestic
graces that seem trifling as the two mites that robs the Roman poets
and orators of their power over us. They had urbanites indeed,
flowers, music, art, oratory, letters, song. The events of each day
were executed like a piece of music, and even their sarcophagi were
covered with scenes of feasting and revelry. But they were not true;
and that false note jars through all their pages. Harshness in the
poet and pride in the orator make their refinement and culture seem but
skin deep.
We note that Pompeii was a paradise built beside a crater. The
traveler tells us if we strike the rocky earth it rings hollow. Close
by the calm lake is a boiling spring. In the very heart of the orange
groves rises a column of smoke and steam. "The mist of lava jars on
the music of summer, the scent of sulphur mingles with the scent of
roses." Not for a moment can the traveler forget that beneath all this
opulence of color and fragrance rages a colossal furnace. Thus the
harshness and selfishness found in the eloquence and poetry of the
ancient writers rob us of all joy in their splendid gifts. We yield
homage only to the greatness that is also goodness. To ten-talent
power the hero must also add tenderness to his own, kindness to the
weak, unfailing sympathy to all. No giant is a full giant until he is
also gentle, stooping to give his two mites to the weak, bearing to the
weary his cup of cold water, ever emulating that hero, Sir Philip
Sydney, wounded sorely indeed, but pushing away the canteen because the
soldier, suffering great pain, had greater need.
In one of his essays Lowell notes that the great reform monuments are
the humble deeds of humble persons, taken up and repeated by an entire
people. The final victories for liberty and religion are emblazoned
upon monuments and celebrated in song and story, but the beginnings of
these achievements for mankind are often given over to obscurity and
forgetfulness. Our age makes much of the "Red Cross" movement. Hardly
fifty years have passed since two English girls boarded the steamer
that was to carry them to the Crimea. Upon the distant battlefields,
with their deserted cannon, wounded horses and dying men, at first
these gentle girls seemed strangely out of place. The hospitals were
full; neglected soldiers were lying in the thickets, whither they had
crawled to die. Counseling with none, these brave girls moved across
the battlefields like angels of mercy. Many years have passed. Now
these nurses bring hope to every battlefield, and minister to every
stricken Armenia, for the story of that sweet girl has filled the earth
with "King's Daughters." One hundred years ago also England left her
orphan babes to grow up in the country poorhouse, midst surroundings
often vulgar, profane and brutal. One day two sweet babes, unnamed and
unwelcomed, lay in the garret of a county-house in the outskirts of
London. Then a poor, half-witted spinster, hearing of the young
mother's death, found her way to the garret, brooded o'er the babes
with all the dignity of our Mother of Sorrows, took the babes to her
heart and planned how, with six shillings a week, she might keep bread
in three hungry mouths. Four years passed by, and one day the lord of
the manor stayed a moment before this woman's hovel and heard her
prayer for the two boys clinging to her skirts. Soon the story of the
woman's mercy was heard in every English pulpit, and in every town men
and women made their way to the county-houses to take away the orphan
babes and found instead some asylum for God's little ones. Now noble
men in distant lands plan homes and shelter for little children, and
the work of the obscure woman is a part of the history of reform.
Humble also is the origin of the anti-slavery movement that won its
final victory at Appomattox. A century and more ago a young Moravian
made his way to Jamaica as a Herald of Christ and his message of
good-will. The horrors of slavery in that far-off time cannot be
understood by our age. Then each week some African slaver landed with
its cargo of naked creatures. Slaves were so cheap that it was simpler
to kill them with rapid work and purchase new ones than to care for the
wants of captives weakened by several summers. What horrors under
overseers in the field! What outrages in slave-market and pen! So
grievous were the wrongs negroes suffered at white men's hands that
they would not listen to this young teacher. At last, despairing of
their confidence, the brave youth had himself sold as a slave and
wrought in the fields under the overseer's lash. Fellowship with their
sufferings won their confidence and love. When the day's task was done
the poor creatures crowded about him to receive Christ's cup of cold
water. Long years after the young hero had fallen upon the sugar
plantation his story came to the ears of young Wilberforce and armed
him with courage invincible against England's traffic in flesh and
blood. Soon Parliament freed the West India slaves and Lincoln
emancipated our freedmen. But side by side with the heroes of liberty
famed through monument and solemn oration, let us mention the young
Moravian hero who loved Christ's little ones, and in giving "two mites
and a cup of cold water," lost his life, indeed, but found immortal
fame.
This modest deed that bought renown also tells us that enduring
remembrance is possible for all. Great deeds the majority cannot do.
Two-talent men march in millions, but the ten-talent men are few and
far between. Many scientists--one Newton. Thousands of poets--but the
Elizabethan eras are separated by centuries. Great is the company of
the orators--but to each generation only one Webster and one Clay. As
each continent hath but one mountain range, so the elect minds stand
isolated in the ages. All greatness is mysterious, and like God's
throne, genius is girt about with clouds and darkness. If great men
are infrequent, the world's need of great men is as occasional.
Society advances in happiness and culture, not through striking,
dramatic acts, but through myriads of unnumbered and unnoticed deeds.
Even the heroes dying upon the battlefield ask not for Plato nor Bacon,
but for a cup of cold water. To Benedict Arnold, dying in his garret,
came a physician, who said, "Is there anything you wish?" and heard
this answer; "Only a friend." Traitors sometimes each of us also.
Traitors to our deepest convictions and our highest ideals, and in the
hours when the fever of discontent burns fiercely within us, and the
mind seems half-delirious in its trouble, we also ask for a friend
bringing a mite of sympathy and a cup of cold water. Let us confess
it--we are all famishing for love and the kind word that says: "In
your Gethsemane you are not alone."
God secures for us our happiness, not through speech about the heavens
and firmament, but through the comfort that comes through speech over
little things. He feeds the birds, adorns the lily, clothes the grass,
numbers man's troubles. He is the Shepherd seeking the one sheep, the
father waiting for the lost son. His kingdom is a little leaven
working in the world's meal, His truth being no larger than a grain of
mustard-seed. Above each little one bows some guardian angel beholding
the face of its heavenly Father. And He who unites grains of sand for
making planets and rays of light for glorious suns, and blades of grass
for the solid splendor of field and pasture and drops of water for the
ocean that blesses every continent with its dew and rain, teaches us
also that great principles will organize the little words, little
prayers, little aspirations and little services into the full-orbed
splendor of an enduring character and an immortal fame.
Happily none need journey far nor search long for opportunities of
humble fidelity. Into our midst come each year thousands of boys who
are strangers in the great city. Passing along the streets these
lonely lads behold each horse having some friendly hand to care for it.
Yea! each sleek dog hath some owner's name engraven on the collar for
the neck. But for the youth, weeks pass by, and no face lifts a
friendly smile, no hand is outstretched in gentle kindness, and oft the
thought is bitter: "No man careth for my soul." The youth who sits in
the seat beside you asks only that the leaflet be shared in
brotherliness, and you may lift upon the discouraged one a smile that
saith; "Once the battle went sore with me, also, but be of good cheer,
you shall overcome." Such friendliness is the two mites that buy
enduring rembrance. For if each must fight his own battles, face for
himself the spectres of doubt, and slay them; if each must be his own
surgeon and draw the iron from the soul, still sympathy is a precious
boon, and it is given to man to give the cup of tenderness to the
warrior sorely wounded in life's battle. In ancient times when men's
cabins were built on the edge of the wilderness, not yet cleared of
wild beasts, sometimes the little ones wandered from the path and were
lost in the forest, until the cry of terror revealed the awful danger
that threatened and caused the mother to speed forth with winged feet
and lift her body as a shield against the enemy. Daily these scenes
are re-enacted, not in songs and dramas, but through the work of those
who rescue the city's children from squalor, filth and sin. What
redemptions' man's little deeds do bring!
For $30,000 Peter Faneuil bought immortality and forever associated his
name with liberty. To-day that amount will erect the social settlement
in the needy quarter of some city and give hundreds of young people
opportunity and field for Bible-schools, kindergartens, nursery,
gymnasium, mothers' classes, men's clubs, singing-schools and also
associate man's name with the happiness and civilization of an entire
community. Mammon will care for the children of strength and good
fortune, and fame will guard the sons of success; let us guard the weak
and lowly. In the Roman triumph, when a general came home with his
spoils, many captives went with his chariot up to the capital. And
happy 'twill be for us if in the hour when the sunset gun shall sound
and we pass beyond the flood God's little ones mourn us with tears of
gratitude while all the trumpets sound for us on the other side.
[1] Ruskin's Modern Painters, Vol. iv., page 284. [Transcriber's note:
In the original book, there was no footnote symbol in the page where
this footnote appeared. I've made a best guess of its intended
location.]
INFLUENCE, AND THE STRATEGIC ELEMENT IN OPPORTUNITY.
"And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign fought without a general?
If Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo
without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead these
innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future of the whole
human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front,
from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to the two great
strategic centres of the Black Forest and Trieste? No one cause them,
blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war
without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible: and by
the pressure of the Huns behind, force on their flagging myriads to an
enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first beyond the powers of
mortal men? Believe it who will; I cannot.
"But while I believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates
into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages
since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed
down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it
at a certain moment and crisis of his life--if I be superstitious
enough (as thank God I am) to hold that Creed, shall I not believe that
though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have had a
general in Heaven; and that in spite of all their sins the hosts of our
forefathers were the hosts of God?"--_Charles Kingsley_.
CHAPTER XI.
INFLUENCE, AND THE STRATEGIC ELEMENT IN OPPORTUNITY.
The history of a Jewish battle includes a dramatic incident. In the
thick of the fight an officer brought to one of his soldiers an
important prisoner. "Keep thou this man," said he, "with the utmost
vigilance. Upon his person hang the issues of this campaign. His
skill in leading the enemy, his courage and treachery have cost our
side many lives. If by any means thou shalt suffer him to escape thy
life shall be for his life."
Then, straining more tightly the cords knotted around the prisoner's
hands and feet, the officer turned and plunged again into the thick of
the fight. From that moment the soldier's one duty was to guard the
prisoner whose escape would work such havoc.
Strangely enough, he became negligent. Careless, he leaned his bow and
spear against the tent. Hungry, he busied himself with baking a few
small cakes. Weary, he cast himself upon the ground, dozing upon his
elbow. Suddenly a noise startled his nap. He sprang up just in time
to see his prisoner make one leap, then disappear into the thicket.
A concealed knife had cut the thongs. Negligence had let "slip the
dogs of war." That night when the general returned to his tent he
found the prisoner had escaped.
Fronting his master the terror-stricken soldier had no excuse to offer
save this; "While thy servant was busy here and there the man was
gone." Gone opportunity!--and lightning could not equal its swift
flight. Gone forever opportunity!--and the wings of seraphim could not
overtake and bring it back. Gone honor, gone fidelity, gone good
name!--all lost irretrievably. For though dying be long delayed,
coming at last death would find the soldier's task unfulfilled. From
"It might have been," and "It is too late," God save us all! For not
Infinity himself can reverse the wheel of events and bring back lost
opportunities.
The genius of opportunity lies in its strategic element. In every
opportunity two or more forces meet in such a way that the one force so
lends itself to the other as momentarily to yield plasticity. Nature
is full of these strategic times. Iron passes into the furnace cold
and unyielding; coming out it quickly cools and refuses the mold; but
midway is a moment when fire so lends itself to iron, and iron so
yields its force to flame as that the metal flows like water.
This brief plastic moment is the inventor's opportunity, when the metal
will take on any shape for use or beauty. Similarly the fields offer a
strategic time to the husbandman. In February the soil refuses the
plow, the sun refuses heat, the sky refuses rain, the seed refuses
growth. In May comes an opportune time when all forces conspire toward
harvests; then the sun lends warmth, the clouds lend rain, the air
lends ardor, the soil lends juices. Then must the sower go forth and
sow, for nature whispers that if he neglects June he will starve in
January.
The planets also lend interpretation to this principle. Years ago our
nation sent astronomers to Africa to witness the transit of Venus.
Preparations began months beforehand. A ship was fitted up,
instruments packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the
telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that
opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line.
That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer
knew that his eye must be at the small end of the glass when the planet
went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had
passed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon
her axis. Not for astronomers only are the opportune times brief. For
all men alike, failure is blindness to the strategic element in events;
success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment
arrives. When nature has fully ripened an opportunity man must stretch
out his hand and pluck it. Inventions may be defined as great minds
detecting the strategic moment in nature; Galileo finding a lens in the
ox's eye; Watt witnessing steam lift an iron lid; Columbus observing an
unknown wood drifting upon the shore. To untold multitudes nature
offered these opportune moments for discovery, but only Galileo, Watt
and Columbus were ready to seize them. As for the rest, this is our
only answer to nature: "While thy servant was busy here and there, the
strategic moment was gone."
This majestic principle often appears in history. There is a strategy
in Providence. Nations, like individuals, have their crisis hours.
Through events God makes all society plastic, and then raises up some
great man to stamp his image and superscription upon the nation's hot
and glowing heart. As scholars move back along the pathway of history,
they discern in each great epoch these strategic conditions. How
opportune the moment when Jesus Christ appeared!
Alexander's march had scattered every whither the seeds of learning;
the Greek language had turned the whole world into one great whispering
gallery, in which the nations were assembled; all the provinces around
the Mediterranean were linked together by the newly completed system of
roads; the Roman judge was in every town to set forth the rights of
citizens of the empire; the Roman soldier was there to protect all who
brought messages of peace; the long-expected hour had struck. Then
Christianity set forth from Bethlehem upon its errand of love. Along
every highway ran the eager feet of the messengers of peace and
good-will. Events were fully ripe, and soon Christianity was upon the
throne of the Caesars.
How strategic that epoch called the fourth century! He who sat in
Caesar's palace looked out upon a dying empire. The old race was worn
out with war and wine and wealth and luxury. Civilization seemed about
to perish, and society was fast sinking back into barbarism. To the
north of the Alps were the forest children, ruddy and robust, with
their glorious youth full upon them. These young giants needed the
dying language and literature and religion, and these great
institutions needed their young, fresh blood. But between lay the
granite walls builded from sea to sea. Now mark what Charles Kingsley
called "the strategy of Providence." Suddenly a blind impulse fell
upon the forest children. Two columns started southward. The one
rested upon the North Sea and marched southeast; the other rested upon
the Ural Mountains and marched southwest; the two met and converged
upon Trieste. Without maps or military tactics or plans, wholly
ignorant that Napoleon's favorite method of attack was being carried
out by them, these two columns converged toward the Alpine pass, and
for ten years pounded and pounded against the Roman walls until these
yielded and fell. Then the forest children poured down into the
vineyards and villages and cities of the dying empire. Multitudes
remained to intermarry and preserve the dying race. Other multitudes
returned to their old home to sow the northern forests with those great
ideas that were to carry civilization through the long night of the
dark ages.
Another strategic hour came in the thirteenth century. Then all Europe
was stirred with new and awakening life. It was dawn after darkness.
Constantinople had fallen and scholars laden with manuscripts went
forth to sow Europe with the new learning. The times were fully ripe
for another great forward movement for society. Only one thing was
lacking--great men for leaders. In that strategic crisis six leaders
appeared. God gave each wing of the army of civilization a genius for
its general. Copernicus overthrew superstition and brought in science;
Luther gave religion, Gutenberg the printing-press, Calvin
individualism, Michael Angelo art and the beautiful, Erasmus critical
scholarship; and because the old world was filled with debris, and the
new ideas needed room, Columbus gave the new world, offering what
Emerson calls "the last opportunity of Providence for the human race."
Surely this was a strategic moment in history, giving each citizen
unique opportunity.
The strategic element enters into the individual career. Destiny is
determined by our use of our critical hours. It is as if life's great
issues were staked upon a single throw. Not but that the forces we
neglect are permanent. It is that the strategic condition has passed
out of them. The sluggard driving his plow into the field in July has
sun, soil and seed, but the torrid summer refuses to perform the gentle
processes of April. The man who in youth's strategic days denied to
memory the great facts of nature and history, in maturer years still
has his memory, but the plasticity has gone. It now refuses to hold
the facts he gives it. The Latin poet interprets our principle by the
story of the maiden in the boat, holding her hand in the water while
she toyed with a string of pearls until the string snapped and the
treasure sank into the abyss. The miner interprets opportunity lost
through him who, for a rifle and a blanket, traded a rich copper mine
that has since paid its owner millions. The historian interprets it by
Napoleon's bitter signal to his General, tardy at Waterloo, "Too late!
the critical hour has passed." Froude interprets it through the old
hero bitterly condemning himself over his wife's grave, knowing that
his wild love and fierce outburst of affection were impotent now to
warm the heart that froze to death in a home.
Ruskin interprets it through a nation that allowed her noblest to
descend into the grave, garlanding the tombstone when they refused to
crown the brow; paying honors to ashes that were denied to spirit;
wreathing immortelles only when they had no use save for laying on a
grave where was one dead of a broken heart through a nation's
ingratitude. Above all, Jesus Christ interprets it at midnight in
Gethsemane, when he saw the torches fluttering in the darkness, heard
the clanking of sabers and soldiers' armor, and in sad, reproachful
irony wakened his disciples with these words: "Sleep on, now; sleep
forever if you will! Henceforth no stress of your vigilance can help
me; no negligence of your duty can harm me beyond the harm you have
already wrought. Take your ease now. Sleep; the opportunity has
gone." Then was the disciples' joy turned into mourning, and for
garments of praise did they put on ashes and sackcloth. An irreparable
loss was theirs. Yet for all of us each neglected duty means a
tragedy. It is always now or never. The treasure wrapped up in each
strategic opportunity is of infinite value. To-morrow can hold no joy
when yesterday holds this memory: "While I was busy here and there my
opportunity was gone."
How strategic the period of youth! Then the chiefest forces of life
flow together in sensitive conjunction. Then four great gifts like
four great rivers unite in one majestic current to bear up the young
man's enterprises, and sweep him on to fame and fortune. Opportune are
all the days when health spills over at the eye and ear and laughs
through the lips. Men worn out are like overshot wheels--the life
trickles and the buckets are filled slowly by long rests and frequent
vacations. Young men are like undershot wheels--always, by day and
night, the water overflows the banks.
Each morning the young soul wakens to the supreme luxury of living.
The world is a great beaker brimmed with wine of the gods. The truth
and beauty of field and forest and river give a pleasure that is
exquisite to a keenly sensitive and perfectly healthy youth. Like an
Aeolian harp, the slightest breath avails for wakening melody midst its
strings. But years multiply cares. Age increases heaviness. Time
destroys its own children. The poet says: "In youth we carry the world
like Atlas; in maturity we stoop and bend beneath it; in age it crushes
us to the ground." For the overtaxed and invalided, the dew-drops do
not sparkle as diamonds; the wet grass suggests red flannels and cough
sirups. For the nervous the bird's song is a meaningless chatter. For
the sickly the clouds are big black water-bottles, though time was when
they were chariots for God's angels, curtains for hiding ministering
spirits trooping homeward at night, leaving all the air sweetly
perfumed. It is the body that grants the soul permission to be happy.
To the opportunity offered by health may be added the years lying in
front of the young heart like a great estate, as yet unincumbered.
Powerful enthusiasms, too, are the inheritance of youth. Noble
feelings, fine aspirations then pass through the mind, as in May the
perfumed winds from the South pass over the fields. These motives beat
upon the mind as steam upon the iron piston. Workmen excavating at
Pompeii threw up soil that had been covered for 1,800 years. Exposed
to the sun, young trees sprang up. Without the force of light and heat
and dew and rain these seeds were dormant or dead. Thus each mind is a
dead mind until the full warmth of great impulses quickens the dormant
energies. The hopes, the ambitions, the aspirations of youth all
conspire to make this a most strategic period. Then all the forces of
life unite in a great gulf stream for bearing the soul up and sweeping
it forward to new climes and richer shores.
Strategic the hour of prosperity. Men discount the speech of poverty,
but the rich man's words weigh a ton each. It has been said that the
poor man's dollar is just as good as the rich man's only when both are
anonymous, for the dollar with a million behind it will go further than
the dollar with a thousand behind it. This is a proverb: "A bid from
Rothschild electrifies the market." Each new achievement and success
builds higher the tower of observation that lifts the great man into
the presence of the nation. All eyes are upon the prospered
individual, all ears are alert to his whisper. Prosperity's voice is
the voice of an oracle, all her words are winged. Every successful
venture in the world of commerce or statecraft quadruples influence
over the nation's youth. This principle interprets the curiosity of
the boy in store or bank, asking a thousand questions about his
successful employer. It explains why the eager aspirant for political
influence searches all the journals for some word from Gladstone or
Castelar or Bismarck. A sentence from these great champions hath
sufficed for reversing the policy of a government. The memory of many
triumphs lies back of the great leader's words and lends them weight.
Success is an orator; it charms multitudes. Full oft one who is a
veritable genius for making homely truths beautiful has accomplished
less for his age than some prosperous man whose few stumbling words
have sufficed for shaping national policies and guiding his generation.
All the young are drawn into the wake of the successful. Wealth
fulfills the story of Orpheus, whose sweet voice made the very stones
and trees follow after him. Truly wealth is an evangelist, the almoner
of bounty toward college and library and art gallery and liberty and
religion. But its chief use is in this: It enables its possessor to
repeat his industry, integrity and thrift in the children of a nation.
All youthful hearts do well to covet wealth, wisdom and leverage power!
But man should remember that the chief value of prosperity is in its
capitalization of personality, and the rendering of others sensitive to
example and precept. Should man forget this, earth will hear no sadder
cry than his when, closing the life career, he exclaims: "While thy
servant was busy here and there the opportune moment was gone."
Friendship yields these plastic moments and unique opportunities. For
the most part the soul dwells in a castle locked and barred against
outsiders. No man can keep open-house for every passer-by. But
friendship is an open sesame, drawing every bar and bolt. How the
heart leaps when the friend crosses the threshold! His shadow always
falls behind him. His coming is summer in the soul; his presence is
peace. Friendship glorifies everything it touches. When on a stormy
night our friend comes in he seems to warm the very fire upon the
hearth; he sweetens the sweet singer's voice; lends new meaning to the
wise man's words; gives reminiscence an added charm; makes old stories
new; makes the laughter and smiles come twice as often and stay twice
as long. Friendship lies upon the heart like a warm fire upon the
hearth. By reason of friendship history exhibits every great man as
leaving his school of thought and a group of disciples behind him. His
spirit lingers with men long after his form has disappeared from the
streets, as the sun lingers in the clouds after the day is done, as the
melody lingers in the ear long after the song is sung. Longfellow,
after a day and a night with Emerson, literally emitted poems and
plays. He was stimulated by friendship as bees by rose liquor and the
sweet pea wine. Friendship always makes the heart plastic. Then the
mental furrows are all open and mellow; sympathy falls like dew and
rain; then the heart saith to its friend: "Here am I, all plastic to
your touch; work upon me your will; for good or ill--I am thine."
Therefore, friendship imposes frightful responsibilities; in asking and
receiving it we assume charge of another's destiny. This is the very
genius of the teacher's influence over his pupil, the parent's over his
child, the general's over his soldier, the patriot's over his people.
Better a thousand times never open the furrow than to leave it
unfertilized.
How strategic life's better hours! One of God's precious gifts is the
luminous hour that denies the lower animal mood. Mind is not always at
its best. Full oft our thought is sodden and dull. Then duty seems a
maze without a clew and life's skeins all a tangle. The mind is
uneasy, confused and troubled. Then men live to the eye and the ear
and physical comforts; they live for houses and beautiful things in
them; for shelves and rich goods upon them; for factories and large
profits by them. Responsibility to God seems like the faint shadow of
a vaguely remembered dream. The voice of conscience is in the ear like
the far-off murmuring of the sea. The soul is sordid and the finer
senses indurated. The angel of the better nature is bondslave to the
worst. Then enters some element that nurtures the nobler impulse.
Some misfortune, earthquake-like, cleaves through the hard crust. Or
some gentle event, like the coming of an old friend or the returning to
the old homestead, stirs old memories and kindles new thoughts.
Slowly the heart passes out of the penumbra. The mind, too long
obscured like a sun eclipsed by clouds, searches out some rift.
Suddenly reason comes into the clear. God rises like an untroubled sun
upon the soul's horizon. How crystalline life looks! The mind
literally exhales fancies and pictures, and each stick and stone is as
full of suggestions and ideas as the forest is full of birds. Old
problems become clear as noonday. Difficult questions lie clearly
revealed before the mind like landscapes from which the fogs are
lifted. Once the mind crawled tortoise-like through its work. Now it
soars like an eagle. The soul seems a sweet-spiced shrub, and every
leaf is perfumed. If in dull, obscure hours the soul was like a wooden
beehive drifted o'er with snow, in its vision-hours the soul is like a
glass hive out of which the bees go singing into sweet clover-fields.
In these hours how unworthy the material life! How insubstantial the
things of iron, wood and stone! Bodily things seem evanescent, as
frost pictures on the window on a winter's morn. Then honor,
integrity, kindness, generosity alone seem permanent and worth one's
while. How easy then to do right. All habits that fettered the
faculties like iron cuffs are now felt to be but ice fetters, quickly
melting. Then the nobler self, using no whip of cords, looks upon
meanness and selfishness, and by a look drives them from the heart and
life.
Then years are fulfilled in a single hour. Then from its judgment-seat
the soul reviews its past career, searches out secret sins and scorns
them. How unworthy are vanity and pride and selfishness. In what
garments of beauty and attraction are truth and purity clothed. The
soul looks longingly unto the heavenly heights, as desert pilgrims long
for oases and springs of water. Unspeakably precious are these
strategic hours of opportunity. God sends them; divineness is in them;
they cleanse and fertilize the soul; they are like the overflowing
Nile. Men should watch for them and lay out the life-course by them,
as captains ignore the clouds and headlands and steer by the stars for
a long voyage and a distant harbor.
INFLUENCE, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF REACTION IN LIFE AND CHARACTER.
"So each man gets out of the world of men the rebound, the increase and
development of what he brings there. Three men stand in the same field
and look around them, and then they all cry out together. One of them
exclaims, 'How rich!' another cries, 'How strange!' another cries, 'How
beautiful!' And then the three divide the field between them, and they
build their houses there, and in a year you come back and see what
answer the same earth has made to each of her three questioners. They
have all talked with the ground on which they lived, and heard its
answers. They have all held out their several hands, and the same
ground has put its own gift into each of them. What have they got to
show you? One cries, 'Come here and see my barn,' another cries, 'Come
here and see my museum;' the other says, 'Let me read you my poem.'
That is a picture of the way in which a generation, or the race, takes
the great earth and makes it different things to all its children.
With what measure we mete to it, it measures to us again. This is the
rebound of the hard earth--sensitive and soft, although we call it
hard, and feeling with an instant keen discrimination the different
touch of each different human nature which is laid upon it. Reaction
is equal to action."--_Phillips Brooks_.
CHAPTER XII.
INFLUENCE, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF REACTION IN LIFE AND CHARACTER.
To the mystery of life and death must be added the mystery of growth.
When Demosthenes exclaimed: "Yesterday I was not here; I shall not be
here to-morrow; to-day I am here," he suggested a hard problem. Having
solved the enigma, what went before life, and answered that mystery,
what follows after death, there still remains this question: "How can a
babe in twenty years take on the proportions of the great orator and
reformer?" Rocks do not grow, nor diamonds, nor dirt, but a shrunken
bulb does become a lily, and a tiny seed a mustard tree. In vain does
the scientist struggle with this problem--how an acorn can expand into
an oak; how in a single summer a grain of corn can ripen a thousand
grains, like that from which the cornstalk sprang.
Men are indeed familiar with the bursting of buds, the cracking of eggs
and the growth of children; yet familiarity robs these facts of no whit
of their mystery. No jeweler ever goes into the field with a basket of
watches to plant them in rows, expecting when autumn hath come to pick
two or three wagon-loads of stem-winders from iron branches; yet, were
this possible, it would be no more strange than that in the autumn the
husbandman should stand under the branches to fill his basket with
peaches or bunches of figs. For wise men it is no more difficult to
think of a growing engine than of a growing oak. What if to-morrow an
engineer should plant a cannon ball. Having watered it well and kept
the ground loose through hoe or spade, suppose that when a few weeks
have passed the outline of a smokestack should push through the soil,
to be followed a little later by a rudimentary steam whistle, the
outlines of a boiler, and, rising through the sod, rude drive-wheels,
piston-rods and cylinders, until after six months the great engine
should stand forth in full completion. This phenomenon would be no
more wonderful than that which actually goes on before man's blind
eyes, when a tiny seed enlarges into the big tree of California and
constructs a vegetable engine that lifts thousands of hogsheads of
water up to the topmost boughs without any rattle of chains or the din
of machinery.
With difficulty man constructs that musical instrument called a
mouthharp, but nature, in six weeks, out of a little blue or brown egg
constructs a feathered music-box that automatically conveys itself from
tree to tree. But the mystery that has gone on in that tiny blue egg
lying in the nest is just as great as if some housewife had planted an
old spinning-wheel in the full expectation of reaping a Jacquard loom,
or had buried a jew's-harp in the garden expecting in the fall to pick
a grand piano. To the mystery that is involved in enlargement by
growth must be added the mystery of intelligence. It is not an easy
thing for an expert housewife, using the same formula, always to
achieve the same happy results in the white loaf. He who plants a
strawberry seed will find that the tiny seed will construct a plant,
lay in the red tints according to rule and mix the flavor of the berry
to a nicety that is the despair of the chef. In the tropic forests
there is a flower with a deep cup and the pollen at the bottom. This
pollen lies upon a little platter, and underneath the platter is that
form of trap known as a figure four, much loved by boys. When the bee,
creeping down into the flower, touches that platter, it springs the
trap that throws the fertilizing pollen upon the legs of the bee, to be
conveyed to the next flower. Wise men can, indeed, imitate this
device, but a single seed will in a few months construct many scores of
these mechanical devices. To-morrow morning the embryologist in his
laboratory will place an egg under a glass cylinder in an atmosphere of
98 degrees. Four hours pass and suddenly the scientist perceives an
atom in the heart of that egg give a quick lashing movement. Another
moment witnesses two quick throbs. Growth has begun and in four
months' time the young eagle with firm strokes will lift itself into
the soft air. From the chamber of life and the chamber of death God
hath never drawn the curtains. The chamber of growth is another most
holy place in which God alone doth stand.
Deeply impressed by the fact of growth, scientists have also marveled
at the principle that controls the harvest. Rocks enlarge by
accretion, but from what a rock is at the beginning, the geologists
cannot tell what will be the shape of that rock when all deposits are
finally made. As to growth in seed and shrub, like produces like. He
who sows wheat reaps wheat, not tares. He who plants a grape receives
a purple cluster, not a bunch of thorns or thistles. He who sows honor
shall reap confidence. He who sows frankness shall reap openness. No
Peabody sowing industry and thrift reaps the harvest of indolence and
idleness. Theodore Parker, loving knowledge and for it denying himself
sleep and exercise, reaped wisdom, and also wan and hollow cheeks,
while the iron frame and ruddy cheek are for the child of the woods who
loves exercise in the open air. He who aspires to leadership and would
have the multitude cheer his name, he who longs for the day when his
appearance upon the street shall mean an ovation from the people, must
make himself the people's slave, defy all demagogues, brave the fury of
party strife, oft be execrated by politicians and sometimes be hated by
the multitude. Having sown self-sacrifice and love, he shall reap fame
and adulation. For nature's law is universal and inexorable--like
produces like. The sheaf is simply the seed enlarged and multiplied.
The sowing contains the germ of all the harvests to be reaped.
The new biography of Benedict Arnold tells us of the despair of the
traitor's final days, the remorse that gnawed his heart, the agony that
filled his life. Yet no arbitrary degree was imposed upon Arnold. He
plotted the surrender of the interests committed to him as a general,
planned the stratagem that ended in the capture and execution of Andre,
and received $30,000 in gold for his treachery. Having gone over to
the enemy, he placed himself at the head of a band of English troops
and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and
pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of
avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped
distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed
treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and,
dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his
body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary
degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of
harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's
career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall
he also reap is the law of nature and of God.
The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is
unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all
of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial
exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was
shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a
"hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat
and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old,
Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he
dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice
led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother's absence, Jacob used
the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and,
simulating the brother's voice, he extorted from his dying father those
tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to
his father's title, wealth and power. Full twoscore years passed
swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns
to crafty Jacob.
But silently nature was working out the harvest of retribution, through
that law of heredity that makes sons repeat the qualities of their
father. When Jacob was now advanced in years his ten sons began, to
develop craftiness, and soon they plowed great furrows of care in the
father's face. In those days of care his young son Joseph stole into
Jacob's heart like a sweet sunbeam, and, with his open, loving ways,
filled his father's heart with gladness. When the elder brothers knew
Jacob had given Joseph a coat of many colors they remembered the craft
of their father in his early career. One evening, when the herds and
flocks were scattered widely over the hills, Simeon sent out messengers
and called his brothers together for a conference. In that hour he
said: "Wist ye not how our father, being a younger son, supplanted his
elder brother, Esau? And behold his craft will now make his younger
child, Joseph, to supplant his elder brothers! Do ye not remember how
our father, Jacob, took a kid and made his hands like unto the hands of
Esau? Let us now take a kid and make its blood represent the blood and
death of Joseph. What Jacob did for his father, Isaac, let his sons do
to their father, Jacob." Thus, with subtle irony, nature made the
man's sins to come back to him. A boy, Jacob deceived his father, now,
grown gray and old, his boys brought their father an armful of deceits.
In that hour when Reuben and Simeon held up the coat of many colors,
all red with blood, great nature might have whispered to Jacob: "It is
the blood of the kid that you slew for deceiving your father returning
to enable your sons to deceive you." For, having sowed deceit, deceit
also and stratagem Jacob reaped. Himself a son, he thrust a dart into
his father's heart. Become a father, his ten sons became archers,
skilled with darts that filled their father's heart with agony. For
nature loves justice; her rule is law, sometimes her rod is iron.
The principle that every deed is a seed that contains the germ of its
own reward or punishment has received full interpretation by the poets
and dramatists. In his "Paradise Lost," Milton has made a detailed
study of the principles of the spiritual harvests. The poet represents
Satan as an angel, fallen indeed, and sadly battered by his fall, yet
still an archangel glorious for strength and beauty. Having visited
Paradise and accomplished the destruction of Eve's innocence and Adam's
happiness, Satan returns home, passing over a bridge of more prodigious
length than now arches the gulf between earth and hell. When the
prince arrived at Pandemonium, the capital of Lucifer's realm, he found
that the leaders of the fallen host had arranged a reception in the
great banquet-hall of the palace. In the presence of the applauding
throng, the prince told the story of how he had succeeded in opening
the earth as a place to which these exiled angels might retreat from
the prison in which they had been so long confined, and pointed to the
great bridge spanning the abyss 'twixt earth and hell. When the loud
cheerings and rejoicings over this fact had ceased, Satan told by what
stratagem he had succeeded in inducing man to break friendship with
God. It was not by disguising himself as an angel of light. But,
affirmed Satan, man cared so little for the laws of God that, although
disguised as a serpent, he induced man to sin.
"Then awhile Satan stood, expecting their universal
shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears
On all sides from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long
Had leisure. Wondering at himself no more,
His visage drawn, he felt; too sharp and spare
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each the other, till supplanted down he fell,
_A monstrous serpent_ on his belly prone,
_Reluctant, but in vain_. A greater power
Now ruled him, _punished in the shape he sinned_,
According to his doom."
Also when Satan attempted to speak, Milton says, only a hiss went forth
"from forked tongue to forked tongue." When many days had passed by
and their hunger was very sore because these fallen angels had seduced
man by an apple, it came about that when, fierce with hunger, they
seized the fruit ripe upon the branches, the apples were found to be
filled with soot and ashes. By these striking suggestions Milton gives
us his idea how angels and men reap what they sow. Should the literary
critic seek an appropriate heading for the tenth book of "Paradise
Lost," he could hardly find one more appropriate than this: "What Man
Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap."
This law of the spiritual harvest that visits retribution upon
unrighteousness or visits reward upon integrity seems to have cast a
spell of fascination upon all great writers. Even those who have
written upon liberty, law, patriotism, or love have not been content to
end their task until they have, through song or story, illustrated this
law of the soul's seedtime and harvest. The ancient poet who wrote at
a time near to the dawn of history makes a strong man go forth to seize
his neighbor's flocks and herds, but returning the prince found that in
his absence enemies had looted his palace and carried off not only his
treasure, but his wife and children. In ending the tale the writer
adds the reflection that "God is just!"
Later on the Grecian threw this moral principle into a tale for
children, a story that still lives under the title "Baucis and
Philemon." One day two travelers entered a village, but as they drew
near, each housewife slammed her door, while rude boys threw clods at
the wayfarers and let loose their dogs, who snapped and snarled after
the travelers. Passing quite beyond the village the pilgrims came to a
humble cottage. As they approached his door Philemon came forth to
offer refuge, and apologized for the rudeness of his neighbors. The
old man prepared for them seats in the grateful shade and hurried to
bring them fresh water from the cool spring. Baucis also hastened to
bring the loaf, with her one small honeycomb and her pitcher of milk.
When the glasses were filled twice and thrice and still the rich milk
failed not, the old housewife marveled, until she found that in the
bottom of the pitcher there was a fountain from which the rich milk
gushed so long as it was needed. Nor did the honeycomb fail, nor did
the sharp knife make the wheaten loaf to be less. Having told us that
the morning brought disaster to the inhospitable villagers, but brought
assurance from these angels who had been entertained unawares that
Baucis and Philemon should never more want for earthly goods, the
writer of the olden times sets forth for us the principle that good man
and bad alike reap what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest
like unto itself. Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of
this principle. Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor
Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his
own scaffold. David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him
of his wife, and when a few years have passed, in turn David is robbed
of his wife, his palace also, and his city.
Walter Scott believes in moral retribution. He tells us of a youth who
deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that
when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might
split and, rebounding, pass through his eye. Now it happened that the
brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon. That night,
alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing
to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that
he had wickedly planned for his brother. George Eliot, too, has
dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle. The
orphan child, Tito, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who
lavishes upon him all his wealth. But when the youth was grown to full
strength and beauty, one night Tito left his adopted father in slavery
and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land. Years passed by
and, with his stolen wealth, Tito bought wife, palace, position, fame.
He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as
that he would reap a similar harvest. But one day the people
discovered his falsehood and attacked Tito. A mob pursued him through
the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast
himself into the River Arno. When Tito had swum far down the river to
the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ashore, he looked up,
and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured
trotting along the shore side by side with the swimmer. In the old
man's eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp knife.
What the youth had sown years before now at last he was to reap. When
increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked
beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a
wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that
river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received
defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him
as a harvest--good measure, heaped up, and shaken together.
History permits no man to escape the reflection that if, for the time
being, individuals have escaped this moral law, nations have felt its
full force. Nature does, indeed, walk through the fields with
footsteps so gentle as to disturb no drop of dew hanging upon the blade
of grass. Nature also hath her sterner aspect, and for the sons of
iniquity her footsteps are earthquakes, her strokes are strokes of war
and of pestilence. When Sophocles worked out the law of moral
retribution for King Oedipus and Antigone, his daughter, the poet might
well have gone on to note that if the Grecian army had sacked the
Trojan cities the time would come when the Roman fleet would sack her
cities and make her sons to toil as captives. Later on, if the Roman
conquerors swept the East for corn and wheat, looted stores and shops,
pillaged palaces for treasure for triumphal processions, the time came
when Nature and God decreed that the vast wealth piled up in the Roman
capital should excite the cupidity of the Goths, until at last the
streets of that great city were swept with flame and store-houses were
pillaged by marauders. In reviewing the history of Venice Ruskin was
so impressed with this principle of the moral harvest that he affirms
that the history of palace and cathedral, of fleets and navies, is
simply the story, written by a pen dipped in fire and blood, of how the
children reaped what the fathers had sown.
For many months past the statesmen of England have been sending forth
discussions reviewing the career of their country. In the light of the
Eastern problem one of these authors reflects that whenever England has
sown injustice to a weaker nation she has reaped injustice and
retribution for herself. He notes that in the last century the
governors of England--for example, Lord Hastings--went through the land
robbing rajahs, despoiling the people by false weights and measures,
until they had turned the whole country into one vast desert. The hour
came when before the House of Commons Burke impeached Hastings for high
crimes and misdemeanors, as the enemy of India and England and all men.
But England was content to impose a trifling fine upon her wicked
official. How could she give up the treasure she had filched for
herself? Years passed and an injured people brooded upon its wrongs,
and the time came when what England had sown in tears she reaped in
blood. One day the Indian soldiers mutinied. The next day the wells
were filled with the bodies of English officers, their wives and
children; then merchants and missionaries and travelers were
slaughtered. For weeks the strife went on. If once the English
soldier had pillaged the Indian villages, now, in turn, the English
quarters were pillaged. "Blind of eye and hard of heart," said the
sage statesman. "Retribution hath been visited upon us," said the
great leader. "Our jealousy and greed hath ended with that sword being
sharpened against ourselves." The note of conviction is in the voice
of this statesman, but what saith be save this: "What a man soweth,
that also shall he reap!"
All young hearts may well remember that it is safe to do right, but
dangerous to sow wrong! No matter how smooth, how soft and sweet, seem
the paths of sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider,
beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of
serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns
and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant
and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection
from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws
never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the
wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth
who to-day walks on the street, perchance he would find many who,
through excess, are draining away the rich forces of nerve and brain
and blood.
Daily they deny reason its book, taste its music, love its noble
companionship. At last, when the harp of the physical senses begins to
give way, and they fall back upon the mental faculties for pleasure,
then these faculties that have been starved shall, in turn, make men
suffer. In that hour reason or memory shall say: "Because I called and
ye refused; because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded,
therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock at your
desolation when your fear cometh as destruction and your desolation as
whirlwind." In Daniel Webster's words of disappointed ambition, "I
still live," we see that a statesman sows what he reaps. In Goethe's
fearful cry for "more light" we see that the poet who sows darkness
shall reap darkness. In Lord Byron's piteous "I must sleep now" we see
that he who sows morbidness and passion reaps feverishness and shame.
The law is inexorable. He who sows foul thoughts shall reap the foul
countenance of a fiend. He who sows pure thoughts shall reap the
sweetness and nobility of the face of Fra Angelico. He who sows
reflection shall reap wisdom. He who sows sympathy shall reap love.
The good Samaritan who sows tenderness to the man wounded by the
wayside shall reap tenderness when angels stoop to bind up his broken
heart.
THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.
"Love is the fulfilling of the law."--_Romans, xiii, 10_.
"Men may die without any opinions, and yet be carried into Abraham's
bosom, but if we be without love, what will knowledge avail? I will
not quarrel with you about opinions. Only see that your heart be right
with God. I am sick of opinions. Give me good and substantial
religion, a humble, gentle love of God and man."--_John Wesley_.
"Therefore, come what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend
your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness,
we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that
large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and
which even the overbearing world cannot withstand forever! Learn the
new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but to love _as
He loved_. Go forth in this Spirit to your life duties, go forth,
children of the Cross, to carry everything before you, and win
victories for God by the conquering power of a love like
his."--_Frederick W. Robertson_.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.
The purpose of Christ's mission to earth was the development of ideal
manhood. The instruments he fashioned and the agents he ordained all
wrought unceasingly toward a manhood that was ample in faculty, fertile
in resource and ripe in those qualities that make for maturity of
character. He sought to teach men how to carry their faculties through
all the strife, collisions and rivalries of life, without damaging men
or being damaged by them.
Always to the children of good fortune right living has seemed easy,
for these live midst sheltered conditions and exhibit goodness as
naturally as the sheltered southern nooks have grass and flowers when
all the northern hillsides are brown with death or white with snow.
But Christ came teaching the children of weakness and misfortune how to
bear up midst adversity, how to sing songs at midnight and how, through
defeat, to march to final victory. So beautiful was the manhood he
unveiled before men that, beholding it, men low and men high, the
publican and prodigal, the centurion and ruler also, quivered with
hope, as the harp quivers under the touch of the harper.
For his ideal includes every quality that kindles admiration and
delight; all gentleness, all goodness, all simplicity, the refinement
of the scholar, the insight of the seer, the courage that makes the
youth a hero. In luminous hours men behold visions of ideal perfection
hanging like stars in a midnight sky. Unfortunately for many, these
visions burst like bubbles and soon pass away. Artists and sculptors
look forward to an hour when, by a touch here and a touch there, the
statue shall be perfected and the portrait completed; so Christ pointed
forward to an hour when, having been wrought upon by darkness and by
light, by defeat and by victory, by sorrow and by joy, at last wisdom
shall be made perfect, judgment know no error, love have full
disclosure and the soul enter into unhindered perfection.
Great are the achievements of the chisel upon the block of marble,
marvelous the skill with which a master turns a dead canvas into
lustrous life and beauty. Matchless the power that turns a clod into a
rosy apple, a seed into a sheaf of wheat, a babe into a sage; yet
neither nature nor art knows any transformation like unto that wonder
of time when, by slow processes, God develops man out of rude and low
conditions of life unto those high and spiritual moods when selfishness
gives place to self-sacrifice, coarseness to sweetness, hardness to
gentleness and love, and perfection dwells in man as ripeness dwells in
fruit, as maturity dwells in harvests.
The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to
fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one
long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet,
rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton,
"what God may have determined for me I know not, but this I know--that
if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of
any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued
not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and
night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence,
the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in
purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and
neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial
palace whence he came, are never out of mind. In picturing forth these
conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to
summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.
Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his
fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire
is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is
inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from
Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty--and must be united
in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face--so the
poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal
manhood, divide the kingdom of character. "The true man cannot be a
fragmentary man," said Plato. Is he not one-sided who masters the
conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in
drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said
the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of
the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret
their loss. Those who have no experience are dazzled with there
[Transcriber's note: their?] glare, but I have been behind the scenes
and have seen all the coarse pulleys, which exhibit and move all the
gaudy machines that excite the admiration of the ignorant audience."
Nor is scholarship enough. From Solomon to Burke, the wisest men have
been the saddest of men. The Scottish physician who ordered his
secretary to select from his library all the books upon medicine and
surgery that were printed prior to 1880 and sell them, tells us how
futile is the pursuit of wisdom and how rapidly the systems of to-day
become the cast-off garments of to-morrow. Nor must the perfect man
represent power and wealth alone, for "the wealth of Croesus cannot
bring sleep to the sick man tossing upon his silken couch, and all the
Alexanders and Napoleons have shed bitter tears, conquering or
conquered." He who is merchant or scholar or ruler, and only that,
climbs his pillar like Simeon Stylites.
All such know not that the world itself is a pillar all too small for
the soul to stand upon. This life-chase after bubbles, this fighting
for trifles, this pursuit of false grails, reminds us of the story of
that Grecian boy lured to his death by the enchantress. Going into the
palace garden to pluck a rose, the youth beheld the form of a young
girl standing in the edge of the glimmering woods. With soft words and
sweet, she called him. Forgetting his dear ones in the palace, the
youth ran after his enchantress. Along a pathway of flowers she danced
before him, sometimes sweeping the strings of her harp, sometimes
singing, and shaking her curls at his haste, ever shooting arrows from
her eyes, yet ever just eluding his embrace. On and on she led him
into the bog, that covered his garments with mud, through the thorns
and brambles that tore his white skin, over rocks steep and sharp.
Ever and anon the youth stopped to pluck the thorns from his hands and
bind up his bleeding feet; then, gathering his torn purple about him,
he plunged on, in the hope of drinking at last the sweet cup of her
sorcery. When, at the end of the day, the desire of his heart was
given him, the illusion fell away, for the youth embraced not a
beautiful maiden, but an old hag, who had led him into the desert to a
hut whose stones were darkness and whose walls were confusion.
As the term genius includes all those forms of culture termed poetry,
music, eloquence, leadership, so love is a term that includes all those
shapes of human welfare known as education, refinement, liberty,
happiness. Properly defined, love is that exalted state of mind and
heart when reason is luminous, when judgment and imagination glow under
its influence just as the electric bulb glows under the living current.
There are three possible states and moods under which the mind may
fulfill its functions. There is a dull and quiescent condition when
reason and judgment act, but act without fervor. Power is there, but
it is latent, just as heat is in the unkindled wood lying on the grate,
but the heat is hidden.
Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the influence of
conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and flashes of thought,
through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and
spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and
throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the
nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures
literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the
lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second
stage is associated with talent, but when, through birth or ancestry,
the mind works ever in regnant and supernal moods, it is called genius.
Affirming that all minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we
may also affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce
has been wrought during these exalted states when love for the work in
hand has rendered the mind luminous and crystalline.
It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature's
secret. When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird
it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot,
with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable
pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied
spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable
only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice. But when
the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded
gradually away in the manner described by him in his "Intimations of
Immortality," then also his power to describe nature faded away. For
only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.
His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was
accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias.
Passing his hands slowly over the broken marble, the sculptor entered
into the thought of the great Grecian, and with love for his art
glowing in his face and thrilling in his voice, he mused aloud upon the
genius of Phidias. Love of his art made all his days bright and all
his moons honeymoons. When Wyatt Eaton, the artist, was in Millet's
home he noticed that when the wife called the artist from his task to
his noonday meal, the artist's whole being had so gathered itself into
the eye that there was no life left with which to hear. Love lent
genius skill. No other sentiment is so universal or so powerful in its
influence as love that energizes the mind and heart. Love lent
swiftness to the feet of Sir Galahad; lent his heart courage; lent his
sword victory. Entering the palace, love, said Cicero, "makes gold
shine." Love for the birds lent fame to Audubon; just as love for the
bees lent fortune to Huber. Love of knowledge hived all the wisdom in
the libraries; love of beauty adorned all the galleries; love of
service organized all the philanthropies. To-morrow, at the behest of
love, and in the interests of dear ones at home, all the wheels will
begin to revolve; all the trains go out and all the ships come in.
When a man of real force and worth passes upward into that high state
of purity and sweet reasonableness called love, he becomes almost
sacred and exhales an ineffable and mysterious atmosphere. Great is
the power of trade; wonderful the influence of fortune and force;
marvelous the hundred instrumentalities and institutions of society,
but above all of them is man, whose love can indeed "make riches
splendid," whose wisdom love can make mellow, whose strength love can
make gentle, whose defeats love can turn into victories. In that hour
one hundred men dwell in one man.
Love also perfects morality and fulfills all ethical laws. What health
is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark's song, what perfume is
to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness
and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to
degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed
from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness
to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover
from the poison of Circe's cup than to escape the effect of
disobedience to the laws of God.
Fortunately nature is so organized as to keep the consequences of
ill-doing ever before man's eyes. Disobeying the law of fire man is
burned; disobeying the law of steam man is scalded; disobeying the law
of honor friends avert their faces, or the door of the jail closes
behind the wrongdoer. So few are these laws and so simple that they
could not be plainer were they emblazoned upon the sky as an
ever-present scroll. There is the law of reverence. Conscious of
vastness and sublimity, in the presence of mountains, man, frail,
ignorant, passing swiftly to his grave, is asked to bow his head in the
presence of the Eternal One.
There is also the law of truth in speech, the law of purity in thought,
the laws that forbid theft and covetousness and killing. But all these
laws are gathered up and fulfilled in love, just as the seven colors of
nature are gathered up and fulfilled in the one white sunbeam. And he
who loves will fulfill all these laws. Loving himself, man will not
waste his physical treasure. As it was vandalism for the iconoclasts
to pass through the cathedrals of Europe whitewashing the frescoes and
breaking down the statues, much more is it vandalism for men to destroy
that temple of God called the body. If man loves his mind he will,
through culture, lead what is germinal and latent forth into full
blossom and fruitage. He who loves scholarship will make haste to
double the books in his library. He who loves sweetness will double
the sweetness of his melody. He who loves friends will double their
number and strengthen their affection. He who loves industry will
strengthen his toil and lend it influence. Looking toward the home,
love fulfills the law of helpfulness. Looking toward the weak and
poor, love fulfills the law of service and sympathy. Looking toward a
great crisis for humanity, love fulfills the law of martyrdom.
Just as summer fulfills all ripeness and growth for seed and root and
tree, so love fulfills all laws for self and man and the all-loving God.
After thirty-six years of tireless toil Herbert Spencer has brought to
a conclusion the labors of a lifetime. His final volume places the
capstone on the structure of his philosophy. In reading these pages no
thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that for science also has dawned
the vision splendid. If history began with an era of force, its last
and crowning achievement will be the era when love, organized into laws
and institutions, will lend perfection to civilization. The upward
march of mankind has been slow and accompanied by tremendous losses.
At the beginning strength prevailed and weakness went to the wall; the
bird with the swiftest wing first reached the fountain, the deer with
the swiftest foot reached the place of shelter, the ox with the
strongest thrust reached the richest fodder. Pushed back, weakness
perished, while strength prevailed and propagated.
This law of violence received its first check through the parental
instinct. Parenthood built a fortress with walls and bulwarks about
the babe. Love of offspring caused a weakness to survive. At last an
era dawned when many parents united to construct a shield for weak
children indeed, but also for weak adults. The state lifted the shield
between weakness and its oppressor. The widow and the orphan were
permitted to glean after the harvesters. The traveler, passing through
the field, might pluck a handful of corn or pull a bunch of figs. The
creditor must not take the blanket or coat from the laborer nor the
boat from the poor fisherman, nor the plane or saw from the poor
carpenter. Stimulated by Christ's example and teachings, society began
to multiply the bulwarks against tyranny and selfishness. Looking
toward the child, for the protection of weakness and unripeness, the
state built these shields called the school and library, looking toward
the unfortunate and those weak in body or mind, the state built
bulwarks called asylum and hospital. Looking toward the chimney-sweep,
the factory boys and girls, the state began to soften pain and mitigate
the distress of labor. Looking toward the serf and the slave and the
prisoner, the novelist and poet constructed song and story as shields
for the protection of the weak and the oppressed.
One hundred years ago a man was as a beast of the field, and the
slaughter of men in Italy, by the tyrant who ruled over them, stirred
no more thought in England than the news of the slaughter of so many
beasts. But fifty years ago the state had become so gentle toward the
weak that when Mr. Gladstone made a protest against the savagery and
infuriated cruelty wrought upon the inmates of the dungeons of Italy,
then the heart of Europe turned toward Rome, the throne trembled upon
its foundations. Formerly when any foreign government wished to
colonize Africa, they sent out a regiment of soldiers, cut off a slice
of the country and annexed it. Now public sentiment forbids such
tyranny. The only way the aggressive nations can obtain possession of
new territory is to do it under the name of a protectorate,
sugar-coating, as has been said, the deeds of tyranny. If the dungeon
has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the
land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing
up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.
In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like
a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is
being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the
less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great
God, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill
every law; when kindness and sympathy shall be organized in manners and
customs. All the revolutions of the past, all the clangor of war, all
the tumbling down of Bastilles, all the piling up of cities, is as
nothing to the advance of the world toward that era when love shall
perfect man's institutions and civilization.
Love also perfects religion. It is the glory of Christ that he unveils
the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and
all-perfecting love. Looking backward, man finds that all religions
fall into four classes: There is the religion of fear and force, when
man offers sacrifices to appease the gods and conciliate justice.
There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and
the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or
friend. There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful
intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to
some cave, give themselves to reverie. In all such self becomes an
orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and God. Last of all there is
the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage.
It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious
in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in
art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in
courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and nobility;
all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer
and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce--all
these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness
and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing
above life, seems to have been informed with divine love, as with a
presence.
And when love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to
bless others. Christ's disciples are not here to be ministered unto,
but to minister. Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle
toward those with hollow eyes and famine-stricken faces. Love is
kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened
countenance. Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity, as a
man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in
the Alpine drifts. And this religion of love takes on a thousand
modern forms. If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm,
as did Grace Darling to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to
those tossed upon life's billows, to succor and to save. For love is
making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and
will at last make the church and state beautiful. Men will not bow
down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor esthetic power; but, in
the presence of a great soul, filled with vigor of inspiration and
glowing with love, man will do obeisance. There is no force upon earth
like divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will
sweeten and regenerate society.
Love also fulfills immortality. Of late science has reduced the number
of things that endure. The astronomer tells us the sun is burning up,
and will be a dying ash-heap as truly as the coal in man's cellar will
be exhausted. The geologists tell us the flowing of "the crystal
springs wearies the mountain's heart as truly as the beating of the
crimson pulse wearies man's; that the force of the iron crag is abated
in its time, like the strength of human sinews in old age." The
everlasting mountains are doomed to decay as surely as the moth and
worm. It seems that the shining texture of stars and suns must wax
old, like a garment, and decay. If now youth is eager to master all
knowledge, plunge into the thick of life's battle, forge some tool,
enact some law, right some wrong, the time will speedily come when the
man will sit down amid the ruins of his life and confess that his idols
have been shivered, one by one.
He who loves endures. For him always all is well. That youth with a
great love for nature's treasures that promised fame, but who found his
open book crimson with the life-current, may dry his tears, for love is
immortal and beyond he will fulfill the dreams denied here. Because he
loves the slave, Livingstone, falling in the African forest, need not
fear, for love will make his work immortal. The sweet mother, whose
love overarches the cradle with thoughts that for number are beyond the
stars, need not fear to leave behind the gentle babe, for everlasting
love will encircle it. Falling into unconsciousness and putting out
upon the yeasty sea midst the falling darkness, man may call back: "I
still live." For God is love and God is eternal. Therefore man who
loves is immortal also.
HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let Darkness keep her raven gloss;
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with Death to beat the ground!"--_Tennyson_.
"Soul, rule thyself. On passion, deed, desire,
Lay thou the laws of thy deliberate will.
Stand at thy chosen post. Faith's sentinel:
Though Hell's lost legions ring thee round with fire,
Learn to endure. Dark vigil hours shall tire
Thy wakeful eyes; regrets thy bosom thrill;
Slow years thy loveless flower of youth shall kill;
Yea, thou shalt yearn for lute and wanton lyre.
Yet is thy guerdon great; thine the reward
Of those elect, who, scorning Circe's lure,
Grown early wise, make living light their lord.
Clothed with celestial steel, these walk secure,
Masters, not slaves. Over their heads the pure
Heavens bow, and guardian seraphs wave God's sword."--_V. A. Symonds_.
CHAPTER XIV.
HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.
The soul is monarch of three kingdoms. Man lives at once in the
present, the past and the future. Memory presides over yesterday;
to-day is ruled by reason; to-morrow is under the sway of hope. The
ancient seer who stood by the historic vine reflecting how the rain of
yesterday had disappeared to give its sweet liquors to the roots only
to reappear to-morrow in purple clusters, gave us a beautiful image of
himself. Each human life is like unto a vine--its trunk manifest in
the present; its roots deeply buried in the past; its branches throwing
themselves forward, ripening fruit for days to come. Life is a solid
column of days all compacted together. To-day's usefulness is in the
number of wise, happy and helpful yesterdays, whose accumulated
treasures crowd forward the soul's present activities. But for his
yesterdays stored up in memory man would be impotent for any heroic
thought or deed. He would remain a perpetual infant. As the child
journeys away from the cradle memory gathers up and carries forward
faces, words, books, arts, sciences, literatures, and these
recollections are embalmed and transmitted as soul-capital, legacies
unspeakably precious.
Yesterday, therefore, is no mausoleum of dead deeds; no storehouse of
mummies. Memory is a granary holding seed for to-morrow's sowing;
memory is an armory holding weapons for to-morrow's battles, memory is
a medicine-chest with balms for to-morrow's hurts; memory is a library
with wisdom for to-morrow's emergency. Yesterday holds the full store
of to-day's civilization, contains our tools, conveniences, knowledges;
contains our battlefields and victories; above all gives us Bethlehem
and Calvary. But alone man's yesterday is impotent; his to-morrow
insufficient. The true man binds all his days together with an
earnest, intense, passionate purpose. His yesterdays, to-days and
to-morrows march together, one solid column, animated by one thought,
constrained by one conspiracy of desire, energizing toward one holy and
helpful purpose, to serve man and love God.
God governs man through the regency of hope. The reasons thereof are
self-evident. Man is born a long way from home. No cradle rocks a
full-orbed manhood. The babe begins a mere handful of germs; a bough
of unblossomed buds. It is a weary climb from nothing to manhood, at
its best. As things rise in the scale of being the distance between
birth and maturity widens. Mollusks are born close up to their full
estate, sandflies mature in two days, butterflies in two weeks,
humming-birds in as many months. But let no man think the vast
all-shadowing redwood trees of California grew in a mushroomic night.
When the seed first thrust its rootlets down into the soil and its
plumule up to the sunshine it entered upon a long career. Saved by
hope after 800 years of growth it gives shade to myriads of birds;
beams for lath and loom and ship in the service of industry; lends pen
and pencil to poet and artist in the service of beauty; through desk
and pew enters into man's intellectual and moral life; through
instruments of convenience strengthens the sweet amenities of the home;
working, it also waited and is saved by hope.
Man stands at the very summit of creation. He is at the head of all
that creep and swim and walk and fly. Preparatory to his dominion he
begins with the lowest and runs the whole gamut of experience of all
living things below him. And hope alone can save him as he journeys
upward through all the intermediate stages on his way to his throne and
his God. Big with destiny, he is saved by hope. Not to-day and not
yesterday can suffice. The present offers only standing
room--four-and-twenty hours. Memory is a bin banked with snowdrifts,
not the waving harvest-fields. Man's life is all in front of him. His
large endowment asks for an extended period of time, asks seventy years
for skill toward his body; asks an immortal destiny for mind and heart.
He is saved by hope and futurity.
Consider the scope and functions of hope and aspiration. Man is
governed from above and within; while rocks, birds, beasts are governed
from below and without. Gravity holds the bowlder in its place. The
channel saith to the river: "Thus far and no farther." The fawn that
is struck, the lion that strikes, the eagle dwelling above both, are
controlled by fear. The charioteer drives his steeds from behind and
controls by rein and scourge. But man is controlled from within and in
front. God does not scourge his children forward through whips of
fear. Hopes moving on before him lure him onward. The Italian artist
shows us the child passing near the precipice. Then drew near a gentle
guardian spirit. The unseen friend rolled along the pathway apples of
Paradise and the child, following after with shouts of glee, was lured
from danger. To the beauty of the artist's thought Homer's story adds
elements of instruction. When the Grecian boy was pursued by a giant
whose breath was fire, whose hand held a huge club, two invisible
beings lent help. One took the boy's hand and lifted him forward, the
other casting an invisible cord over him flew before him until his
speed was doubled and the palace gates gave shelter. Oh, beautiful
story of God's gentle rule o'er men! When troubles sweep over the
world like sheeted storms, when men fear exceedingly and strong men
cower and shrink and little ones believe the next step to be the
precipice, then God smiles. Striking some sweet bell he sends forth
messengers to lure men forward; they hang stars in man's night; they
whisper that the twilight is nothing, since it is morning twilight;
that fears are bats and owls hooting at the dawn; that hope is a lark
singing the new day; that God reigns and all is well. Then depart all
fears and superstitions. The courage of the future comes; the columns
begin a forward march. These upward movements of society are the
yearnings of God's heart lifting his children forward by hope.
Hope and aspiration also furnish the secret springs of civilization.
All things useful and beautiful were once only hopes and ideas. Free
institutions are ideals of liberty, crystallized into word forms.
Tools and instruments are ideals dressed up in iron clothes. The early
forest man dwelt in a cave; ached with cold and moaned with hunger.
Going into the forest to dig roots he found honey hived by the bees and
nuts stored up by squirrels against the winter. Straightway hope
suggested to him a larger granary, whence hath come all man's bins and
storehouses. Man plucked a large plum and found it sour, and another
plum small, but sweet. Hope suggested that he unite the two and strike
through the abundant acid juices of the one with the sugar of the
other. Thence came all vineyards and orchards. Digging in the soil
tired him, but hope suggested that his pet ox might pull his forked
stick; when the wooden stick wore blunt hope replaced it with an iron
point; when the iron point refused to scour hope suggested steel; when
the steel made his burden light and doubled the pace of his steeds,
hope suggested a seat on the plow; when the riding-plow gave him time
to think, hope suggested he could increase the harvest by doubling the
depth, when the weight was overheavy for his beasts, hope suggested a
steam-plow. The Kensington Museum exhibits the growth of the plow
idea, as it moved from the forked stick to the "steam gang." If in
this procession of material plows we could see the procession of ideal
plows we would find that thoughts and hopes are a thousandfold more
than material things.
By hope also do the people increase in wisdom and culture and
character. Millions of men are digging and toiling twelve hours each
day; and God hath sent forth hope to emancipate them from drudgery.
The man digging with his pick hath a far-away look as he toils. Hope
is drawing pictures of a cottage with vines over the doorway, with some
one standing at the gate, a sweet voice singing over the cradle. Hope
makes this home his; it rests the laborer and saves him from despair.
Multitudes working in the stithy and deep mines sweeten their labor and
exalt their toil by aspiring thoughts. Thinking of his little ones at
home, the miner says: "My children shall not be as their father was; my
drudgery is not for self, but for love's sake; the sweat of my brow is
oil in the lamp of love; I will light it to-night on the sacred altar
of home." Here is the secret of the rise and reign of the people.
This explains all man's progress in knowledge and culture. As the
fruits and flowers rise rank upon rank in response to the advancing
summer, so all that is most refined and exalted in man's mind or heart
bursts forth in new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the
revelation of that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration
incessantly proceed.
Hope's noble ministry hath grievous enemies. Among these let us
include a false use of the past. Yesterday contains sins and mistakes,
but multitudes err in dwelling too much upon their wrongs. Each man
hath had his temptations, each his fierce conflicts and defeats, each
bears grievous scars from the battle-field. Yet if one constantly
revives all his old sins life will be filled with hideous specters.
Memory will become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors.
We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will
be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp"
light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be
poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its
offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the
contents cast out at regular intervals; the individual throws away his
old clothes, old tools, old vehicles. Why should not the soul have its
refuse valley--where the past is cast out of life and memory?
Farmers' boys sometimes set steel traps by shocks of corn whither come
quail and prairie chickens. Stepping upon the traps, the cruel jaws
close upon foot or wing and the bleeding bird beats out its life upon
the frozen ground. Memory often with cruel jaws holds men entrapped.
A single error wrecks the whole life. But once forgiven of God let the
sin go. Reflection upon past sins is good only so long as it produces
revulsion from sin, and like a bow shoots the soul toward God and
righteousness. God is like a mother who forgives the child's sin into
everlasting forgetfulness. Man should be ashamed to remember what God
forgets. "I will cast your sins into the depth of the sea." Someone
says: "God receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it
cleansed--itself unsoiled." Gather up, therefore, all thy sins--old
wrongs, old hatreds, burning angers, memories of men's treachery; stuff
them into a bag and heave them into the gulf of oblivion. Your life is
not in the past, but in the future. "We are saved by hope."
Multitudes may embitter their new year by undue reflections over
opportunities neglected and lost in the past and denied in the present.
Professor Agassiz tells of a friend who sold his farm in Pennsylvania
for $5,000 to invest it in Dakota, and after losing all in the new home
returned to find the German who purchased the homestead had found oil
and great wealth in a swamp which he had tried to drain off. An old
gentleman recently told of his refusal in 1840 to accept as payment of
a small note a lot on a corner in Chicago now worth a million dollars,
and he shed bitter tears over the loss of property he never owned.
When Ali Hafed heard of the diamonds in India he sold his estate and
went forth to seek his fortune. His successor, watering his camel in
the garden, saw the gleam of gems in the white sand and discovered the
Golconda mines. Had Ali Hafed had eyes to see his would have been
boundless treasure at home instead of poverty, starvation and death.
These and similar legends stand for the opportunities that have gone
forever. How many neglected their opportunities for education; how
they knocked unbidden at every door and no man opened. Others were
denied culture, and now feel they are unfulfilled prophecies. Many by
one error have injured eye or ear or lung or limb or nervous system.
They grievously handicapped themselves. Others by ingratitude,
infidelity to trusts, treachery to friends, have poisoned happiness.
Repentance is theirs, and also forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. The
past is full of bitterness.
Let the dead past bury its dead. The future is still ours. The trees
in October willingly let go their leaves to fall into the ditch. Their
life is not in last year's leaves, but in the infant buds that crowd
the old leaves off. Put forth new activities. Open new furrows. Sow
new seed. All the tomorrows are thine; but they are few and short.
Fulfill his dictum who said: "I am as one going once across this vast
continent; I would lean forth and sow as far as hand can scatter my
seed. Let the angels count the bundles." No man should be discouraged
in whom God believes, preserving him in life. Let hope in God sweeten
life's bitterness.
Another enemy of hopefulness is found in nervous excesses and overwork.
Men drain away their vitality. Ambitions unduly stimulate the brain.
Many break the laws of sleep and the laws of digestion and the laws of
nerve sobriety. They spend their brain capital. Then they grow
hopeless toward home and business. Ill-health spreads a gloom over all
life. Every judgment is pessimistic; it could not be otherwise. The
jaundiced eye yellows the landscape. The sweetest music rasps like a
file upon the nervous ear. Thomas Carlyle's pessimism was largely
physical. He overworked upon his life of Oliver Cromwell. Maurice
once said: "Carlyle believed in God down to the time of Oliver
Cromwell." Once, in a moment of depression, Lyman Beecher prayed:
"Lord, keep us from despising our rulers, and help them to stop acting
so we cannot help despising them." Poor, nerve-racked Pascal, grew
fearful lest his affection for his sister, who had nursed him through a
long illness, was sinful. One day he wrote in his journal: "Lord,
forgive me for loving my dear sister so much!" Afterward he drew his
pen through the word "dear." Hope and trust toward God go with health.
Sickliness is not saintliness. God cannot save by hope what man
destroys by ill-health.
Dean Stanley used hopefulness as a test of all systems of truth.
Rightly so. God is the God of hope, and his truth, like himself,
carries the atmosphere of good cheer. The falsity of medievalism
appears in this--it robbed men of joy and gladness. God was the center
of darkness. His throne was iron. His heart was marble. His laws
were huge implements of destruction. His penalties were red-hot cannon
balls crashing along the sinner's pathway. Repentance toward God was
moving toward the arctics and away from the tropics. Christianity was
anything but "peace on earth, good will to men."
Philosophers destroyed God's winsomeness. The reformers came in to
lead men away from medievalism back to God himself. Men found hope
again in redemptive love. They saw that any conception of God that
dispirited and depressed men was perverted and false. No man hath done
more to establish this fact than him who long ago said: "Any
presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that does not come to the
world as the balmy days of May comes to the unlocked northern zones;
any way of preaching the love of God in Christ which is not as full of
sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the advent; any
way of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as
many birds as there are in June and as many flowers as the dumb meadows
know how to bring forth; any method of bringing before men the doctrine
of salvation which does not make everyone feel, 'There is hope for me
in God--in the divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of
human life and society,' is spurious--is a slander on God and is
blasphemy against his love."
Hope hath her harvest also for teachers and reformers. Often men think
their work is squandered. They seem to be sowing seed not upon the
Nile, to find it again abundantly, but in midocean, to sink and come to
naught. Parents and teachers break their hearts, fearing their
watchfulness and instruction have failed. Men sow wheat and wait six
months for a harvest; but they sow moral seed Sunday and on Monday whip
their children because the seed has not ripened. They forget that
apples bitter in July may be sweet in August. To-day's vice in the
child is often to-morrow's virtue, as acid juices through frost become
saccharine. Yesterday the mother rocked a little angel in the cradle;
to-day she moans: "Alas, that I should have rocked a little fox, a
little serpent, a little wolf!" To-morrow the child becomes a model of
truth and integrity.
The sage might have said: "It is good that woman should hope and wait."
Truth's errand has always been a successful errand. Not a single
social truth or civic truth or moral truth has ever been lost out of
the world. Secrets of cruelty and fraud, secrets of oppression and sin
perish, but nothing that makes life happier or better hath been
forgotten. We do not have to keep God and truth alive, they keep us
alive. Vegetable seeds can be killed, but not moral seeds. When God
issues his silent command to the earth flying into winter and wheels it
back toward summer, it is given to no man to put a brake upon warmth;
nor can he go up against the spring with swords and banners. But
easier this than staying the upward march of mankind. God is abroad
upon a mission of recovery. Open thy hand, O publicist! and sow thy
seed. The seed shall perish, but not the harvest.
Our childhood was pleased with the story of the old monk who was
shipwrecked alone on a desert isle. He always carried with him a few
roots and seeds. Planting these, he died, but sailors coming twenty
years later found the isle waving with fruit trees. To the beauty of
this legend let us add the truth of one who has made all this land his
debtor. In 1801 a youth passed through western Pennsylvania. He was
collecting apple seeds with which to found orchards in the then
unbroken states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. When he came
to an open, sunny spot in the forest he would plant his seeds and
protect them with a brush fence. Years afterward new settlers found
hundreds of these embryo orchards in the forests. Thrice he floated
his canoe laden with seeds down the Ohio to the settlers in Kentucky.
To this brave man, called by our Congressional Record "Johnny
Appleseed," whole states owe their wealth and treasure of vineyards and
orchards. This intrepid man is a beautiful type of all those who,
passing through life's wastes, sow the land with God's eternal truths,
whose leaves and fruits heal nations. If God remembers the roots in
dark forests he will not forget his truths in human hearts. Therefore,
sow thy seed. Ye are saved by hope.
The ground and basis of all hope whatsoever is God. It is his good
providence and redemptive love in Jesus Christ that make us optimists.
Hope is not within the scope of our wisdom or culture or skill; and
hope is not in our health or tool or treasure. We journey into an
unknown future. It is not given to us to know what a day or an hour of
the new year may bring forth. How impotent are the wisest and
strongest in the hour when we hear the sound of the ocean and in
darkness ford the deep and dangerous river, beyond which is high and
eternal noon. What can the child on some great ocean steamer caught in
a winter's storm do to overcome the tempest? Can it drive the fierce
blasts back to their northern haunts? Can its little hand hold the
wheel and guide the great ship? Can its voice still the billows that
can crush the steamer like an egg-shell? Can its breath destroy the
icy coat of mail that covers all the decks? What the child can do is
trust the Captain who has brought this same ship through a hundred hard
storms. It can rest and trust and hope. And all we upon this great
earth-ship have been caught, not in a storm, but in the gulf stream of
God's providence. The warm tropic currents sweep us on to the heavenly
harbor. The trade winds above aid the forward flight. More than all
else is the larger planetary movement that sweeps gulf stream, winds
and ship onward towards the infinite. Soon shall we enter into quiet
waters and cast out our anchor.
Looking forward, let us hope and cleanse all fear out of life--trust
God, love him and rejoice. Even our largest problems need not dispirit
us. Problems are not to be analyzed, but accepted. He who analyzes a
flower loses it. He who cracks a diamond to see what it is, is without
both gem and knowledge. Life's great questions are seeds. Plant a
seed, then wait. Some day the flower and fruit will explain the seed.
It is well to lay aside difficult questions to be asked some day at the
throne of God. Then we will look back to smile at what now disturbs us
exceedingly. Remember the Russian Cathedral--travelers tell us the din
and noise of the crowds thronging under the dome to those above the
dome become a strain of soft music. It is good to hope and wait.
Because God lives and loves, man should enter the future as he enters
temple or cathedral--to dedicate all its days to hope and aspiration.
INDEX.
Anti-slavery movement, the, Wilberforce, 211
Arnold, Benedict, 243
Arnold of Rugby, 189
Audubon, wife of, 98
Bacon; Pascal, 75
"Baucis and Philemon", 249
Caesar, the value of personality, 16
Carey, William, 171
Carlyle, wife of, 186
Christ, coming of, 122
Christian manhood, the, 259
Christ the supreme example, 30
Civilization, achievements of, 136
Civilization, Christ's promise for, 52
Classic writer, tale of a, 24
Culture, Character, Beauty, the secret of, 163
Darwin on Christian teachers, 168
Desert, oases of, 35
Divine Teacher, the, 177
England, career of, 253
England, orphan babes of, 210
English visitor, the, 148
Fame a holy ambition, 29
Faneuil, Peter, 215
Fathers, the; uprising of 1861, 55
Feeling and sentiment, 142
Forest, a--differing conceptions of, 60
Fourth century, the, 223
France--king of; Marie Antoinette; Carlyle, 63, 64
Friendship an open sesame, 231
Garfield, 158
Genius marred by absence of humble virtues, 207
Gentleness, lack of, 181
God, erroneous conception of, 191
God, man's attitude toward, 65
God, punishments of, 85
God the ground and basis of all hope, 194
God's world a good world, 36
Gough, John B., 144
Great hearts, 134
Greatness an accumulation of little deeds, 202
Grey, Jane, 201
Growth by accretion; from seed, 242
Heart and intellect, 138
Heart and the age of cruelty, 139
Heart transformations, 145
Heroism--the Divine Teacher; Henry Grady; Napier;
Browning; Ruskin, 92-95
Holland, greatness of; William the Silent, 170
Homer's ideal, Helen, 119
Hope and aspiration, functions of, 282
Hope, enemies of, 286
Hope long deferred, 112
Howard; Goodyear; Patteson, 79, 80
Hugo, Victor, 165
Human life, enemies of, 205
Humanity and social sympathy, 100
Industrial law the law of sacrifice, 161
Intelligence, ignorance, 125
Keats, 183
"Keep thou this man", 219
King Saul and the seer, 14
Labor, problem of, 124
Labor, fruition of, 127
Law of violence, the, 270
Life a column of days, 279
Life, problem of, 239
Life's better hours, 233
Lincoln, Abraham, 56
Livingstone, 180
Love, definition of, 264
Love and immortality, 275
Love the fulfillment of all ethical laws, 268
Lowly woman, career of a, 19
Man governed through hope, 280
Man, influence of for good or evil, 13
Man, the great destroyer, 23
Man, a force-producer, 25
Man, unpurposed influence of, 27
Moral retribution, 251
Nature, favors of, 71
Nature, mysterious workings of, 241
New womanhood, the, 98
Nerve and brain force, drain of, 255
"No man careth for my soul", 214
Opportunity, genius of, 220
Orations--American; humble heroes; parental sacrifice;
suffering of ancestors; a tribute to the early dead, 81-84
Patriot, the; scholar, the, 70
Peabody, George, 57
Phocion, patriot and martyr, 170
Pompeii, 229
Progress and civilization, law of, 166
Progress, mainspring of, 261
Prosperity, 230
Religion, man's idea of, 121
Religion perfected by love, 273
Retribution, harvest of, 245
Rosetta Stone, the, 197
Science and God, 204
Seas, secrets of, 73
Secret springs of civilization, 283
Self-sacrifice, law of, 159
Society, 58
Society, crying need of, 188
Society, progress of, 123
Spencer, Herbert, 270
Spiritual harvests, Milton's study of, 247
Strategic element, the, 225
The Christian the perfect gentleman, 262
The heart and religious belief, 147
The heart in industry, 151
The heart in civilization, 149
Thirteenth century, the, 224
Thought, liberty of, 78
Time-element, the; Robert Peel; honors are evanescent;
man's social and industrial life; realm of law and
liberty, 113-119
Time-element in business, 126
Turner, 182
Tyndall, 74
Unsupported intellect, impotency of, 140
Wealth and position--Lord Shaftesbury, 21
Wealth and poverty, 103
Webster, Daniel, 165
Widow's mite, the, 198
Wisdom, culture, character increased by hope, 285
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