The
FAITH
THAT
MAKES
FAITHFUL
JENKIN LLOYD JONES
Class (^ ^
Book '^ 't
ISffiXRIGHT DEPOSm
THE
FAITH THAT MAKES
FAITHFUL
BY
WILLIAM CHANNING GANNETT
AND
JENKIN LLOYD JONES
So nigh is grandeur to our dust.
So near is God to man. When Duty whispers low. Thou must.
The youth replies, / cmi.
New Edition Printed from the Thirty-fifth Thousand
1918 The Stratford Company, Publishers
BOSTON
^^,
'5*
Copyright 1918
The STRATFORD CO., Publishers
Boston, Mass.
The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
DEC -7 I9i8
©CI.A508451
Bebtcattons;
1886 — To our yoke-fellow, John Calvin Learned, whose Faithfulness is working Faith in many.
1894 — Good greeting to him now, in the new light
1918 — To Henry Martin Simmons, beloved com- rade, also in the light, another laborer in the old days for the Faith of Faithfulness.
After Thirty-two Years
A word of explanation, perhaps of apology, is due for this attempt to give new life to an old book, — a plain little collection of sermons, that and nothing more. All the chapters did duty in the pulpit before they were caught by the printing-press. The book was an endeavor to state the universalities of religion, the maximum of faith with the minimum of dogma, the perennial conditions of the blessed life; the simplicity of the gospel of loyalty and love, which knows not the limitations of creed or race or space or time. What it was in the beginning it is now; we have not dared to try revision. Doubtless we should say many things differently, were we to say them now, but it does not follow that we should say them better. Any at- tempt to revise would be like fitting up an old homestead. When the work is done, it is no longer the old home, but a different one.
The little book has had a history quite its own. Twice the plates have been destroyed by fiire, and a third and last set, nearly worn out, was lost in the changes of a Chicago printer's shop. This new edition is printed from a copy bearing on its title-page, "Thirty-fifth Thousand," and dated 1907. For many years the Potts publishing house of New York was wont to purchase the unbound sheets from the Chicago publishers, bind and publish under its own imprint, and include in a series of devotional, life- helping little books. Several thousands were thus circu- lated. Some of the separate sermons have done extended duty in tract form. The little book has faced a traveling public in cheap editions sold at the railroad news-stands in Great Britain. Oft-times, with a certificate inserted, it has
AFTER THIRTY-TWO YEARS
served to keep the memory of the happy wedding-day. It has been translated, in whole or in part, into French, Ger- man, Swedish and Italian. Many the kind messages about it. We have reason to believe it has found welcome at the bedside of the sick, in the hands of the weary, in homes of the poor, on tables of the rich. Believers and non- believers, orthodox and heterodox. Catholic and Protestant, Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, and representatives of the Oriental world, have testified to its helpfulness.
This, of course, is joy to us. More and more it seems as if things were done through, rather than hy, their human agents or spokesmen, and our part were chiefly gladness to be used. If now, in the new dress given it by an Eastern publisher, the collection is to find a new constituency among the children of those who responded to its first appeal, its two authors will again be humbly and deeply grateful.
In 1900, through the good offices of Lady Aberdeen and Henry Drummond, the writers were parted, and two little volumes, one entitled "Blessed be Drudgery," and the other, "Faithfulness," were published by Bryce & Son, Glasgow, Scotland, with a preface by Lady Aberdeen. By her kind permission that preface is reproduced here.
J. LI. J. W. C. G.
SeptembeVy 1918,
And now — October, 1918 — this little book has a new, and a memorial, value. The first proof of the preface above had passed under Mr. Jones' eye; but, when the second came, the kind eyes were closed, and it is left to friends to carry out his intents. In the thirty-two years that have gone by since the book first appeared he has taken a leader's part in many high causes; but perhaps nothing more characteristically shows his heart and mind and will to do than the thoughts and phrases of his four sermons here re- produced,— "Faithfulness," "Tenderness," the insight that sees "Unity" everywhere, and the sense of the "Divine Benediction" resting on all things. "The Faith that Makes Faithful," — the words are his own, to be found if one seeks in these pages. In them his life is summed up — and continues.
W. C. G.
vi
Preface Written by Lady Aberdeen for the Scotch Edition
To all of us there come times when we are out of heart with ourselves and with all that goes to make up our lives. Constant worry, endless toil, perpetual disappointments, seem then to be our lot; we feel ourselves unable to cope with the evil without and within, and our belief in the "Love which walketh in Mystery" becomes weak and faint.
We are, perchance, looking back to times when we dreamt how we, too, might
"Join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead, who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity. In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self. In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars. And with their mild persistence urge man^s search To vaster issues."
And our ideals may seem dead and faded and beyond our reach. The following chapters will teach us, if even that be so, how we may "idealize our Real/' how our Drudgery may become our Blessing, how the Failures, the Burdens, the Temptations, which we are lamenting, may prove our best Friends on the upward way.
A magician's wand is put in our hands and, if we will but consent to use it, we shall see everywhere about us in that lot which seemed so dark but a little ago, gems and
vii
PREFACE
treasures inestimable which only wait to be ours by our use of them.
The ennobling influence of powers lying dormant, it may be, in our friendship; the strength, the endurance, the self-sacrifice flowing from true love and tenderness and thought for others; the steadfast loyalty to all that is highest and holiest which is begotten by faithfulness to common duty; the peace of God passing all understanding, which garrisons the hearts and the lives of those who through life and death cling to the Truth as it is revealed to them by the Spirit of Christ ; these are the angels shown to us as hovering about the path which once appeared to us so full of thorns.
We cannot read this book without feeling that such angels are not far from every one of our lives, however outwardly poor and small and narrow these may seem. And we must therefore rejoice that it is destined to exercise its ministry of high thought and helpful stimulus on this side of the Atlantic, as well as on that to which it owes its birth.
IsHBEL Aberdeen". Bordighera, March, 1890.
viu
HADDO HOUSE Aberdeen. Scotland
June 24, 1918 Dear Mr. Jones:
Please believe tliat I deeply appreciate your request, and that nothing would gratify me more than that you should reprint my little preface to your new edition, for I feel it an honor and a privilege to be in any way associated with a book which has had such an in- fluence, inspiring and comforting so many.
I wrote a preface, or rather a foreword, to each of the little books as published in Scotland. Please do with them what you like. Probably you know that it was Henry Drummond who arranged for the publica- tion of the edition by Bryce.
We shall look forward to receiving the promised copy of the book, for which we pray an extended sphere of usefulness.
Yours very sincerely,
IsHBEL Aberdeen and Temair.
Contents
Pag6
Blessed Be Drudgery. — W. C. G. . . 1
Faithfulness. — J. LI. J 20
"I Had a Friend."— W. C. G 40
Tenderness. — J. LI. J 59
A Cup of Cold Water. — W. C. G. ... 80
The Seamless Robe. — J. LI. J 101
"Wrestling and Blessing. — W. C. G. . . 120
The Divine Benediction. — J. LI. J. . . 143
Blessed Be Drudgery I
Of every two men probably one man thinks he is a drudge, and every second woman is sure she is. Either we are not doing the thing we would like to do in life ; or, in what we do and like, we find so much to dislike, that the rut tires, even when the road runs on the whole a pleasant way. I am going to speak of the Culture that comes through this very drudgery,
*^ Culture through my drudgery!'' some one is now thinking: ^*This tread-mill that has worn me out, this grind I hate, this plod that, as long ago as I remember it, seemed tiresome, — to this have I owed * culture'? Keeping house or keeping accounts, tend- ing babies, teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter, those blue overalls in the machine shop, — have these anything to do with * cul- ture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of time, a pocket-book: drudgery means limitations, coarseness, crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, head-aches. Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly magazine, the circulating library, and two gift-books at Christmas. Our real and our ideal are not twins, — never were! I want the books, — but the clothes-basket wants me. The two children are good, — and so would be two
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
hours a day without the children. I crave an out- door life, — and walk downtown of mornings to perch on a high stool till supper-time. I love Nature, and figures are my fate. My taste is books, and I farm it. My taste is art, and I correct exercises. My taste is science, and I measure tape. I am young and like stir: the business jogs on like a stage-coach. Or I am not young, I am getting gray over my ears, and like to sit down and be still: but the drive of the business keeps both tired arms stretched out full length. I hate this overbidding and this underselling, this spry, unceasing competition, and would willingly give up a quarter of my profits to have two hours of my daylight to myself, — at least I would if, working just as I do, I did not barely get the children bread and clothes. I did not choose my calling, but was dropped into it — by my innocent conceit, or by duty to the family, or by a parent's foolish pride, or by our hasty marriage; or a mere accident wedged me into it. Would I could have my life over again! Then, whatever I should be, at least I would not be what I am today!"
Have I spoken truly for any one here? I know I have. Goes not the grumble thus within the silent breast of many a person, whose pluck never lets it escape to words like these, save now and then on a tired evening to husband or wife ?
There is often truth and justice in the grumble. Truth and justice both. Still, when the question rises through the grumble, Can it be that drudgery,
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
not to be escaped, gives ''culture"? the true answer is, — Yes, and culture of the prime elements of life; of the very fundamentals of all fine manhood and fine womanhood.
Our prime elements are due to our drudgery, — I mean that literally; the fundamentals, that under- lie all fineness, and without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible. These, for instance, — and what names are more familiar? Power of attention; power of industry; promptitude in beginning work; method and accuracy and despatch in doing work; perseverance; courage before difficul- ties ; cheer under straining burdens ; self-control and self-denial and temperance. These are the prime qualities; these the fundamentals. We have heard these names before! When we were small, Mother had a way of harping on them, and Father joined in emphatically, and the minister used to refer to them in church. And this was what our first em- ployer meant, — only his way of putting the matter was, ''Look sharp, my boy!" — "Be on time, John!" — "Stick to it!" Yes, that is just what they all meant : these are the very qualities which the mothers tried to tuck into us when they tucked us into bed, the very qualities which the ministers pack into their platitudes, and which the nations pack into their proverbs. And that goes to show that they are the fundamentals. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are very handy, but these fundamentals of a man are handier to have ; worth more ; worth more than Latin
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
and Greek and French and German and music and art-history and painting and wax flowers and travels in Europe, added together. These last are the deco- rations of a man or woman: even reading and writ- ing are but conveniences: those other things are the indispensahles. They make one's sit-fast strength, and one's active momentum, whatsoever and where- soever the lot in life be, — ^be it wealth or poverty, city or country, library or workshop. Those qualities make the solid substance of one's self.
And the question I would ask of myself and you is. How do we get them ? How do they become ours ? High school and college can give much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book-processes that we go to the schools for, and commonly call * ' our education," give no more than opportunity to win these indispensables of education. How, then, do we get them ? "We get them somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it that the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and shore conspire to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long chiselings and steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier-crush and grind, by scour of floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These rounded the hills, and scooped the valley-curves, and mellowed the soil for meadow-grace. There was little grace in the operation, had we been there to watch. It was ^'drudgery" all over the land. Mother Nature was down on her knees doing her early scrubbing- work !
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
That was yesterday : to-day, result of scrubbing- work, we have the laughing landscape.
Now what is true of the earth is true of each man and woman on the earth. Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done much to bequeath those elemental qualities to us ; but that which scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours, and keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by, — that depends on our own plod, our plod in the rut, our drill of habit; in one word, depends upon our ^'drudgery." It is because we have to go, and go, morning after morning, through rain, through shine, through tooth-ache, head-ache, heart- ache to the appointed spot, and do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would be so sweet; because the school-boy's lesson must be learnt at nine o'clock and learnt without a slip ; because the accounts on the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with children, customers, neighbors, not seven, but seventy times seven times; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow, and the next day; in short, without much matter what our work be, whether this or that, it is because, and only because, of the rut, plod, grind, hum-drum in the work, that we at last get those self-foundations laid of which I spoke, — attention, promptness, accuracy, firmness, patience, self-denial, and the rest. When I think
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
over that list and seriously ask myself three questions, I have to answer each with No: — are there any qualities in the list which I can afford to spare, to go without, as mere show-qualities? Not one. Can I get these self -foundations laid, save by the weight, year in, year out, of the steady pressures? No, there is no other way. Is there a single one in the list which I can not get in some degree by undergoing the steady drills and pressures? No, not one. Then beyond all books, beyond all class-work at the school, beyond all special opportunities of what I call my *' education, '' it is this drill and pressure of my daily task that is my great school-master. My daily task, whatever it be, — that is what mainly educates me. All other culture is mere luxury compared with what that gives. That gives the indispensables. Yet fool that I am, this pressure of my daily task is the very thing that I so growl at as my '^ drudgery"!
We can add right here this fact, and practically it is a very important fact to girls and boys as am- bitious as they ought to be, — the higher our ideals, the more we need those foundation habits strong. The street-cleaner can better afford to drink and laze than he who would make good shoes; and to make good shoes takes less force of character and brain than to make cures in the sick-room, or laws in the legis- lature, or children in the nursery. The man who makes the head of a pin or the split of a pen all day long, and the man who must put fresh thought into his work at every stroke, — which of the two more
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BLESSED BE DEUDGERY
needs the self-control, the method, the accuracy, the power of attention and concentration? Do you sigh for books and leisure and wealth? It takes more * ' concentration ' ' to use books — head-tools — well than to use hand-tools. It takes more '* self -control' ' to use leisure well than work-days. Compare the Sun- days and Mondays of your city ; which day, all things considered, stands for the city's higher life, — the day on which so many men are lolling, or the day on which all toil? It takes more knowledge, more integrity, more justice, to handle riches well than to bear the healthy pinch of the just-enough.
Do you think that the great and famous escape drudgery? The native power and temperament, the outfit and capital at birth, counts for much, but it convicts us common minds of huge mistake to hear the uniform testimony of the more successful geniuses about their genius. ^'Genius is patience," said who? Sir Isaac Newton. ^'The Prime Minister's secret is patience," said who? Mr. Pitt, the great Prime Minister of England. Who, think you, wrote, **My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention"? It was Charles Dick- ens. Who said, '*The secret of a Wall-street million is common honesty"? Vanderbilt; and he added as the recipe for a million (I know somebody would like to learn it), ''Never use what is not your own, never buy what you cannot pay for, never sell what you haven't got." How simple great men's rules are!
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
How easy it is to be a great man ! Order, diligence, patience, honesty, — just what you and I must use in order to put our dollar in the savings-bank, to do our school-boy sum, to keep the farm thrifty, and the house clean, and the babies neat. Order, diligence, patience, honesty! There is wide difference between men, but truly it lies less in some special gift or oppor- tunity granted to one and withheld from another, than in the differing degree in which these common elements of human power are owned and used. Not how much talent have I, but how much will to use the talent that I have, is the main question. Not how much do I know, but how much do I do with what I know? To do their great work the great ones need more of the very same habits which the little ones need to do their smaller work. Goethe, Spencer, Agassiz, Jesus, share, not achievements, but condi- tions of achievement, with you and me. And those conditions for them, as for us, are largely of the plod, the drill, the long disciplines of toil. If we ask such men their secret, they will uniformly tell us
so. ' : '^:nw^
Since we lay the firm substrata of ourselves in this way, then, and only in this way; and since the higher we aim, the more, and not the less, we need these firm substrata, — since this is so, I think we ought to make up our minds and our mouths to sing a hallelujah unto Drudgery : Blessed he Drudgery, — the one thing that we can not spare !
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
II
But there is something else to be said. Among the people who are drudges, there are some who have given up their dreams of what, when younger, they used to talk or think about as their * ideals;" and have grown at last, if not content, resigned to do the actual work before them. Yes, here it is, — ^before us, and behind us, and on all sides of us; we cannot change it; we have accepted it. Still, we have not given up one dream, — the dream of success in this work to which we are so clamped. If we can not win the well-beloved one, then success with the ill- beloved, — this at least is left to hope for. Success may make it well-beloved, too, — who knows? Well, the secret of this Success still lies in the same old word, *^ drudgery." For drudgery is the doing of one thing, one thing, one thing, long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is this ^*one thing I do" that gathers me together from my chaos, that concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into achievements. ^ ' One thing I do, " said Paul, and, apart from what his one thing was, in that phrase he gave the watchword of salvation. That whole long string of habits, — attention, method, patience, self- control, and the others, — can be rolled up and balled, as it were, in the word ** concentration." We will halt a moment at the word: —
"I give you the end of a golden string: Only wind it into a ball, —
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall."
Men may be divided into two classes, — ^those who have a ^'one thing," and those who have no ^^one thing,'' to do; those with aim, and those without aim, in their lives : and practically it turns out that almost all of the success, and therefore the greater part of the happiness, go to the first class. The aim in life is what the back-bone is in the body : without it We are invertebrate, belong to some lower order of being not yet man. No wonder that the great question, therefore, with a young man is, What am I to be? and that the future looks rather gloomy until the life- path opens. The lot of many a girl, especially of many a girl with a rich father, is a tragedy of aim- lessness. Social standards, and her lack of true ideals and of real education, have condemned her to be frittered : from twelve years old she is a cripple to be pitied, and by thirty she comes to know it. With the brothers the blame is more their own. The boys we used to play our school-games with have found their places; they are winning homes and influence and money, their natures are growing strong and shapely, and their days are filling with the happy sense of accomplishment, — ^while we do not yet know what we are. We have no meaning on the earth. Lose us, and the earth has lost nothing; no niche is empty, no force has ceased to play, for we have got no aim and therefore we are still — ^nobody. Get your meaning, first of all! Ask the question until it is
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
answered past question, What am I ? What do I stand for? What name do I bear in the register of forces ? In our national cemeteries there are rows on rows of unknown bodies of our soldiers, — men who did a work and put a meaning to their lives; for the mother and the townsmen say, **He died in the war." But the men and women whose lives are aim- less, reverse their fates. Our bodies are known, and answer in this world to such or such a name, — ^but as to our inner selves, with real and awful meaning our walking bodies might be labeled, '^An unknown man sleeps here!''
Now since it is concentration that prevents this tragedy of failure, and since this concentration always involves drudgery, long, hard, abundant, we have to own again, I think, that that is even more than what I called it first, — our chief school-master; besides that, drudgery is the gray Angel of Success. The main secret of any success we may hope to rejoice in, is in that angel's keeping. Look at the leaders in the profession, the ** solid" men in business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by building a town in which to house their factory- hands ; they are drudges of the single aim. The man of science, and to-day more than ever, if he would add to the world's knowledge, or even get a reputation, must be, in some one branch at least, a plodding spe- cialist. The great inventors, Palissy at his pots, Good- year at his rubber, Elias Howe at his sewing-machine, tell the secret, — ''One thing I do." The reformer's
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
secret is the same. A one-eyed, grim-jawed folk the reformers are apt to be : one-eyed, grim-jawed, seeing but the one thing, never letting go, they have to be, to start a torpid nation. All these men as doers of the single thing drudge their way to their success. Even so must we, would we win ours. The foot-loose man is not the enviable man. A wise man will be his own necessity and bind himself to a task, if by early wealth or foolish parents or other lowering circum- stances he has lost the help of an outward necessity. Dale Owen in his autobiography told the story of a foot-loose man, ruined by his happy circumstances. It was his father's friend, one born to princely fortune, educated with the best, married happily, with children growing up around him. All that health and wealth and leisure and taste could give, were his. Robert Owen, an incessant worker, once went to spend a rare rest-moment with him at his country-seat, one of the great English parks. To the tired man, who had earned the peace, the quiet days seemed perfect, and at last he said to his host, **I have been thinking that, if I ever met a man who had nothing to desire, you must be he : are you not com- pletely happy?" The answer came: ^^ Happy! Ah, Mr. Owen, I committed one fatal error in my youth, and dearly have I paid for it ! I started in life with- out an object, almost without an ambition. I said to myself, *I have all that I see others contending for; why should I struggle?' I knew not the curse that lights on those who have never to struggle for any-
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thing. I ought to have created for myself some defi- nite pursuit, no matter what, so that there would be something to labor for and to overcome. Then I might have been happy. ' ' Said Owen to him, ' ' Come and spend a month with me at Braxfield. You have a larger share in the mills than any of us partners. Come and see for yourself what has been done for the work-people there and for their children; and give me your aid." *^It is too late," was the reply; ^Hhe power is gone. Habits are become chains. You can work and do good; but for me, — in all the profitless years gone by I seek vainly for something to remem- ber with pride, or even to dwell on with satisfaction. I have thrown away a life." — And he had only one life in this world to lose.
Again then, I say. Let us sing a hallelujah and make a fresh beatitude: Blessed he Drudgery! It is the one thing we can not spare.
Ill
This is a hard gospel, is it not? But now there is a pleasanter word to briefly say. To lay the firm foundations in ourselves, or even to win success in life, we must be drudges. But we can be artists, also, in our daily task. And at that word things brighten.
''Artists," I say, — not artisans. ''The differ- ence?" This: the artist is he who strives to perfect his work, — the artisan strives to get through it. The artist would fain finish, too; but with him it is to "finish the work God has given me to do!" It is
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not how great a thing we do, but how well we do the thing we have to, that puts us in the noble brotherhood of artists. My Real is not my Ideal,- — is that my complaint? One thing, at least, is in my power: if I can not realize my Ideal, I can at least idealize my Real. How ? By trying to be perfect in it. If I am but a rain-drop in a shower, I will be, at least, a per- fect drop ; if but a leaf in a whole June, I will be, at least, a perfect leaf. This poor ''one thing I do," — instead of repining at its lowness or its hardness, I will make it glorious by my supreme loyalty to its demand.
An artist himself shall speak. It was Michael Angelo who said, ''Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for it strives for something that is God-like. True painting is only an image of God's perfection, — a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony." The great masters in music, the great masters in all that we call artistry, would echo Michael Angelo in this; he speaks the artist-essence out. But what holds good upon their grand scale and with those whose names are known, holds equally good of aU pursuits and all lives. That true painting is an image of God's perfection must be true, if he says so; but no more true of painting than of shoe-making, of Michael Angelo than of John Pounds, the cobbler, I asked a cobbler once how long it took to become a good shoe-maker; he answered
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promptly, * ^ Six years, — and then you must travel ! ' ' That cobbler had the artist-soul. I told a friend the story, and he asked his cobbler the same question: How long does it take to become a good shoe-maker? ^'All your life, sir." That was still better, — a Michael Angelo of shoes ! Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker of central New York, was an artist : ' * Yes, ' ' said he to Mr. Parton, ''I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years." '^Well, then, you ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time." *^No sir," was the answer, **I never made a pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer made in the United States." Daniel Morell, once president of the Cambria rail-works in Pittsburg, which employed seven thousand men, was an artist, and trained artists. ^'What is the secret of such a development of business as this?" asked the visitor. *'We have no secret," was the answer; **we always try to beat our last batch of rails. That's all the secret we have, and we don't care who knows it." The Paris book- binder was an artist, who, when the rare volume of Corneille, discovered in a book-stall, was brought to him, and he was asked how long it would take him to bind it, answered, ^'Oh, sir, you must give me a year, at least; this needs all my care." Our Ben Franklin showed the artist, when he began his own epitaph, ''Benjamin Franklin, printer." And Pro- fessor Agassiz, when he told the interviewer that he had ''no time to make money;" and when he began his will, "I, Louis Agassiz, teacher."
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
In one of Murillo's pictures in the Louvre he shows us the interior of a convent kitchen; but doing the work there are, not mortals in old dresses, but beau- tiful white-winged angels. One serenely puts the kettle on the fire to boil, and one is lifting up a pail of water with heavenly grace, and one is at the kitchen-dresser reaching up for plates ; and I believe there is a little cherub running about and getting in the way, trying to help. What the old monkish legend that it represented is, I hardly know. But as the painter puts it to you on his canvas, all are so busy, and working with such a will, and so refining the work as they do it, that somehow you forget that pans are pans and pots pots, and only think of the angels, and how very natural and beautiful kitchen- work is, — just what the angels would do, of course.
It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He who aims for perfectness in a trifle is trying to do that trifle holily. The trier wears the halo, and therefore the halo grows as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king. This aspira- tion to do perfectly, — is it not religion practicalized ? If we use the name of God, is this not God's presence becoming actor in us? No need, then, of being ** great" to share that aspiration and that presence. The smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as well as the great ocean. Even so the humblest man or woman can live splendidly! That is the royal truth that we need to believe, — ^you and I
[16]
BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
who have no ' ' mission, ' ' and no great sphere to move in. The universe is not quite complete without my work well done. Have you ever read George Eliot's poem called ' ' Stradivarius ? " Stradivarius was the famous old violin-maker, whose violins, nearly two centuries old, are almost worth their weight in gold to-day. Says Stradivarius in the poem, — •
"If my hand slacked, I should rob God, — since he is fullest good, — Leaving a blank instead of violins. He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins Without Antonio."
That is just as true of us as of our greatest brothers. What, stand with slackened hands and fallen heart before the littleness of your service! Too little, is it, to be perfect in it ? Would you, then, if you were Master, risk a greater treasure in the hands of such a man ? Oh, there is no man, no woman, so small that they can not make their life great by high endeavor; no sick crippled child on its bed that can not fill a niche of service that way in the world. This is the beginning of all Gospels, — that the king- dom of heaven is at hand just where we are. It is just as near us as our work is, for the gate of heaven for each soul lies in the endeavor to do that work perfectly.
But to bend this talk back to the word with which we started: will this striving for perfection in the little thing give ''culture''? Have you ever watched such striving in operation? have you never
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
met humble men and women who read little, who knew little, yet who had a certain fascination as of fineness lurking about them? Kjiow them, and you are likely to find them persons who have put so much thought and honesty and conscientious trying into their common work,^ — it may be sweeping rooms, or planing boards, or painting walls, — ^have put their ideals so long, so constantly, so lovingly into that common work of theirs, that finally these qualities have come to permeate not their work only, but so much of their being, that they are fine-fibred within, even if on the outside the rough bark clings. With- out being schooled, they are apt to instinctively detect a sham, — one test of culture. Without haunting the drawing-rooms, they are likely to have manners of quaint grace and graciousness, — another test of cul- ture. Without the singing-lessons, their tones are apt to be gentle, — another test of culture. Without knowing anything about Art, so-called, they know and love the best in one thing, — are artists in their own little specialty of work. They make good com- pany, these men and women,^ — why? Because, not having been able to realize their Ideal, they have idealized the Real, and thus in the depths of their nature have won true '^ culture."
You know all Beatitudes are based on something hard to do or be. ''Blessed are the meek:'' is it easy to be meek? ''Blessed are the pure in heart:" is that so very easy? "Blessed are they who mourn." "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst — ^who starve
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BLESSED BE DRUDGERY
— after righteousness. ' ' So this new beatitude by its hardness only falls into line with all the rest. A third time and heartily I say it,: — ''Blessed be Drudg- ery ! ' ' For thrice it blesses us : it gives us the funda- mental qualities of manhood and womanhood; it gives us success in the thing we have to do; and it makes us, if we choose, artists, — artists within, what- ever our outward work may be. Blessed he Drudgery, — the secret of all Culture !
[19]
Faithfulness
"She hath done what she could.'' — Mark xiv : 8.
And yet how little it was that she did do ! Look at the two figures in this picture, and mark the con- trast. On this hand one of the great world-reformers, the founder of Christianity, is being caught in the clutches of maddened bigotry. He is spit upon and threatened by the presumptuous dignitaries of the land. He is scorned by the scholarly, almost forsaken by his friends, probably abandoned by his relations, — save that one who never ceases to cling to the most forsaken child of earth, t — the mother. The fate of an evil-doer is bearing down upon him, the inevi- table agony of the cross is before him, there seems to be no honorable chance of escape, there is no effort being made to save him.
On that hand is a poor, weak, unnamed and un- heralded woman; a woman with little influence and less means. Her vision is necessarily very limited. She can poorly understand the questions at issue. What does she know of the philosophies and the theol- ogies, the law and the prophets, which engage the attention of the excited and disputing groups at the street comers? She can plan no release, she can frame no defense, she can not speak a word in his justification. Limited so in time, strength, means, in- fluence and knowledge, what can she do?
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FAITHFULNESS
She can love him. She can give of her heart's best affection. She can be true to that inexpressible attraction, that towering nobility, that she feels. She knows that the gentle one is hated. She can read sorrow upon his benign face ; she can discover loneli- ness in his tender eyes, and she can take his side. She dares cling to him in the face of derision and weep for him in defiance to the mocking crowd. She can with willing hands bring what seems to her to be the only precious thing in her possession. She can break the flask that contains what is probably her own burial ointment upon his head. This she can do, and how little it seems! She dreams of no future fame for him or for herself. She knows little of the poetic significance or symbolic fitness of the act. Merited seems the contempt of the lookers on. Why the approving words of Jesus? Why the perpetua- tion of the story ? Because she gave all she had ; she said all she knew; she loved with all her heart. Be- cause she ^^did what she could." Can mind conceive of higher commendation than this ? Where is the hero of successful wars, the explorer of unknown countries ; where is the capitalist who has established commerce, encouraged industries, founded homes for the needy or schools for the ignorant; where is the statesman who has blessed his nation ; the philanthropist who has lifted burdens from the oppressed; the moralist who has saved souls from sin, dried up cesspools of human corruption, lifted the inebriate into sobriety; where is the prophet of religion who has led souls heaven-
[21]
FAITHFULNESS
ward and touched restless hearts with the peace of God, that deserves any higher commendation than this unnamed woman of Bethany ? She did what she could: none of those could do more. While that woman's tears fell upon the head of the persecuted, and her fingers passed through the ringlets of the brow that was so soon to be pierced by the thorns in the derisive crown, she was the peer of the noblest child of God. During that brief moment, at least, the anointed and the anointer stood on a common level; they were equal children of the Most High; she did what she could, and the very Lord from heaven could do no more.
*^She hath done what she could." This is not the text but the sermon. There is scarcely need of expansion. The heart promptly enlarges upon it, ap- plications rush through the mind, and the conscience recognizes the text and asks, — How far do we deserve this enviable commendation that was given to the Bethany woman ? Are we doing what we can, as she did, to defend the right and encourage the dutiful? Are we doing all we can to console the outcast and the despondent around us? Are we doing what we can to elevate our lives and to ennoble our calling? Are we doing, simply, what we can to stem the subtle tide of corruption, to stay the insidious currents of dissipation that eddy about us as they did the Beth- any woman of long ago ? This story comes to us with its searching questions, measuring our efforts to resist the flood of grossness, sectarian pride and arrogance
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FAITHFULNESS
that seeks to overwhelm gentleness, tender feeling and loving thought, here and now in America as then and there in Judea.
Young men and women, the sermon of the hour for you is in the words, '^She hath done what she could.'' Let it preach to you of the work you have to do in these high and rare years of youth that are so rapidly gliding by. Do what you can towards bringing out the noblest possibilities of your nature. Do what you can to think high thoughts, to love true things and to do noble deeds. Temptations beset you like those that have filled hearts as light as yours with inexpressible sorrow. Are you doing what you can to make yourself strong to resist them? Before you, hang the gilded trinkets of fashion, the embroid- ered banners of selfish lives. Are you doing what you can to live for higher aims than these ? Your lives are growing riper, your heads are growing wiser. Are you doing what you can to balance this with growth of heart, making the affections as much richer and warmer; the conscience, God's best gift to man, brighter and more commanding ? Are you doing what you can to follow your truest and to do your best?
Mothers, you dream of homes made sacred by holy influences into which the dwarfing excitements of superficial life, fashion and sensation, that so en- danger your children, may not enter; are you doing all you can to realize this dream?
Fathers, are you doing what you can toward leaving your children that inestimable heritage, a
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FAITHFULNESS
noble example ; the record of a life of uncompromising integrity, a sublime devotion to truth, a quiet but never failing loyalty to conscience?
To all of us, young and old, men and women, this scene in the house of Simon the leper comes across the feverish centuries with its quiet sermon, asking us if we are as faithful to the best impulses of our natures as this woman was to hers; if we are doing what we can to testify to the gospel of love and patience, working with all the power we have to dis- pel the clouds of superstition that overhang the world ; doing the little we can to break the fetters of bigotry, to increase the love and good will of the world; to- ward making our religion a life and our life in turn a religion of love and self-sacrifice. Are we breaking a single flask of precious ointment in disinterested self-forgetfulness in behalf of any oppressed and in- jured child of the Eternal Father? Are we simply striving the best we may to
"Look up and not down, Look out and not in, ^
Look forward and not back. And lend a hand?"
Now, as then, the real struggle of life is not for bread and clothing, but for ideas, for truth and purity; into this higher struggle this peasant woman of Bethany entered and did what she could. Are we doing as much?
Alas! the sad truth is too patent to need state- ment. Rare are the souls who live on these Bethany
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FAITHFULNESS
heights of consecration and good will. The humili- ating confession is forced from our lips that none of us do all that we can for these high things; and the second question of our sermon presses, — -Why is it thus? And to this I find two fatal and almost uni- versal answers, namely:
1. We hardly think it worth while, because what we can do is so little.
2. We are ashamed to try, for fear people will laugh at us.
Let us look to these answers. First, then, we hardly think it pays ; we doubt if anything is accom- plished. We have so little faith in the efficacy of all that we can do. This is because we are still in the bondage of matter. We are still enslaved in the feel- ing that the material quantity is of more importance than the spiritual quality of our lives. We forget that it is not what, but how we do, that determines our character. The Almighty in his providence does not ask of us uniform rents for our rights and lives, as earthly landlords sometimes do. He only asks for the rightful use of the talents entrusted to us. The taxes of Heaven are never per capita, but always pro rata. Not the formal observance of each and all alike, but every heart's best love, every hand's readiest service. Not the number of acres you till, but the quality of your tilling determines the profit of the harvest in spiritual as in material farming. This standard exacts no promises, but it accepts no apologies, for there is no occasion for apology when you have done all you
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FAITHFULNESS
can, and until that is done no apologies are accepted. *^ Oh, if I were not so poor, had more time, strength or money ! ' ' Hush ! from the loyal Bethany sister comes the gentle rebuke, '^She hath done what she could;" do thou as much and cease your bemoaning. But you say, ^*I would so like to build a church, to establish a hospital, to found a home for the afflicted, if I only could. ' ' Not you, unless out of your present revenue you have a tear for the unfortunate, a hope in your heart for him who has no hope for himself, a smile and a word for the sad and lonely that go about you ; or should you build a hospital or found a home, they would scarcely carry a blessing, for within their walls there would be no aroma of the precious ointment drawn from the flask of holy sacrifice. It is the fra- grance of consecrated souls alone that is helpful. This age is in danger of being cursed with too many so- called ^* charitable institutions," built with the refuse of rich men 's pocket-books, the rag ends of selfish for- tunes; ^^institutions" with no cement stronger than the mason's mortar to keep the walls together; insti- tutions in which there is no heat to protect the inmates from winter's cold save that which comes from a fur- nace in the cellar, and no cooling balm in summer to allay the feverish pulse save that found in a physi- cian's prescription; no religious concentration, no precious ointment poured by hands willing to do all they can.
^*If I only had speech and the knowledge ade- quate, I would so gladly testify to the faith that is in
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FAITHFULNESS
me; I would advocate the precious doctrine, — ^but — but>~"
Hold! Restrain the impiety of that '*but." *'She hath done what she could." An advocacy- more eloquent than speech is possible to you. A kind heart is a better vindication of your doctrine than any argument. Deeds go further than words in justifying your creed. Character, and not logic, is the credential to be offered at Heaven's gate; con- duct is higher than confession; being, more funda- mental than doing. ' ^ She hath done what she could. ' ' There is a potency in this standard greater than in any of your dogmas; a salvation higher than can be found in words or forms, however high or noble.
The master voice of Jesus in this sentence pleads with us to put no skeptical measure upon the power of a loving soul, the strength of a willing heart. The power of that Bethany woman is an open secret; the fame that came unsought is but the world's glad tribute to the forces it most loves. This standard always partakes of the inspiration of the Most High. Friends, we have not faith enough in the far-reaching power of every soul's best. You recall the dark days of 1861 to 1865, the time when the nation was being riddled by traitorous bullets, when acres of southern soil were being covered by the bleeding sons of the North. They were days when school-boys were translated into heroes by the tap of a drum, plough- men were transformed into field marshals, women were stirred with more than masculine heroism, as
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FAITHFULNESS
the avenues of war became clogged with their com- merce of love. How their fingers flew, how the supplies of lint, bandages and delicacies poured in from hamlet and country-side ! Then there was none too weak, too busy or too poor to make a contribution to that tiding of life that made the atrocities of war contribute to the gospel of peace, and used the hor- rors of the battle-field to teach the sweet humanities.
Within the memory of many still living, millions of human beings were chained in slavery in America. They were driven to the auction-block like fettered cattle, the sanctities of home were ruthlessly violated, the sacred rights of the human soul were trampled upon, and all this sanctioned by intelligent common- wealths, and authorized by a powerful government.
What could an unknown printer do; what could a busy matron distracted by domestic cares, sur- rounded by a houseful of children, accomplish ? They could open their hearts and let the woes of their fellow-beings in, they could imitate the Bethany woman and do all they could; and this became the mighty inspiration which gave to our country William Lloyd Garrison, its greatest moral hero, and ^^ Uncle Tom's Cabin," its greatest novel and most famous and prolific book.
Miserable indeed were the prison-pens of Europe a century ago; barbarous was the treatment of the vicious; arbitrary, cruel, and oftentimes stupid and brutal, were the officials into whose custody these moral invalids were entrusted. A gentle soul housed
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FAITHFULNESS
in a puny body felt all this, but he was untitled, un- known, was considered a dunce, at school always at the foot of his class. What could he do? He could do as much as the Bethany woman did, he did do all he could, and by doing that he revolutionized the prison systems of Europe, and wrote the name of John Howard in letters of light high upon that obelisk dedicated to earth's immortals and reared in the heart of humanity.
Paul, studying the prospects of a new gospel, looked out upon an inhospitable world. Things looked very unfavorable; the first teacher had met the fate of a criminal ; mighty Rome stretched far and near with her religious indifference on the one hand, and Jewry with its persecuting bigots and jealous sectarians on the other. Paul himself, with a ' ' thorn in the flesh," suspected by even the painful minority to which he belonged, what could he do? He could climb to that height whereon stood the Bethany woman, he could break the alabaster box which con- tained the precious ointment of his life for the blessed cause, and thus make Christianity possible. One step still further back. How small were the chances for success, how unfavorable were the pros- pects for an humble carpenter's son in the back- woods of Galilee for doing anything to improve the morals and purify the religion of the world! What ridicule and contempt were in store for him; what disappointment and defeat were inevitable! But he could do what he could. He anticipated his lowly
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FAITHFULNESS
sister, and out of the fullness of that uncaleulating consecration came the Parables and the Beatitudes, the morality of the 'Golden Rule' and the piety of the Lord's Prayer, the insight by the well and the triumph on Calvary. Out of that consecration came the dignity of soul that has led the centuries to mis- take him for a God, and that divine humility that at the same time has led the weak and the ignorant to confidently take his hand as that of an elder brother. What potency there is in a human soul where all its energies are called into action and wholly consecrated, consecrated after the fashion of the Bethany woman, — **She hath done what she could!"
But let not my illustrations over-reach my sermon. I would enforce it with no exceptional achievements, no unparalleled excellency. What if the approving words of Jesus in my text had fallen upon ears too dull to remember them, and the in- spiring story had not been told in remembrance of the woman of Bethany throughout the whole world? What if Mother Bickerdyke and her associates of the Sanitary Commission had been forgotten, and *' Uncle Tom's Cabin" had been a literary failure? Suppose Lloyd Garrison had been silenced, and John Howard had failed to lessen the inhumanity visited upon a single convict in all Europe ? What if Paul had been forgotten and the crucifiers of Jesus had succeeded in putting down the great movement of spirit which he started; would not these records have been as clear
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FAITHFULNESS
within and above for all that ? Would not God have filled their souls with the same peace and blessedness ? In God's sight, at least, would not the service have been as holy and the triumph as great ? I have cited but a few illustrations of a law that obtains through- out the universe. No more assured is science that no physical impulse ever dies, but goes on in increasing waves toward the farthest confines of an infinite uni- verse, than are we that every throb of the spirit for the best and the truest over-rides all obstacles, dis- arms all opposition, overcomes contempt, and survives all death.
"What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent."
"House and tenant go to ground. Lost in God, in God-head fomid."
Just as truly as every material picture the light of sun has ever fallen upon is forever photographed somewhere upon the tablets of space, so surely is every kindly smile, that ever lit the faces of any pain- stricken woman, or calmed the storm in the passionate heart of man, transformed into a bit of everlasting light, that makes more radiant some section of the spiritual universe.
"Gone are they, but I have them in my soul!" God is not wasteful. He poorly apprehends the Divine that regards him as balancing his books ac- cording to some scheme in which the glory or doom of the mortal is determined by some sacrificial, cere-
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FAITHFULNESS
monial or theological entry; a book-keeping in which kindly deeds, pleasant smiles and cheerful words are not entered. The salvation of the Bethany woman, and the salvation we should most covet, is the result not of faith, but of faithfulness; not the acceptance of a saving scheme proffered from with- out, but loyalty to a saving grace springing from within; not the acceptance of belief, but the dis- pensing of kindness. This salvation which comes by fidelity finds its exemplification not simply or per- haps chiefly in the muster-rolls of our churches and those whom our preachers class among the ^ * saved, '^ but among the uncounted millions of sincere souls that are content to do their daily work faithfully, carry their nearest duty with patience, and thank- fully live on in the near loves of dear hearts, though they
"Leave no memorial but a world made better by their lives."
This Bethany woman became a saint in the Church of the Holy Endeavor. She is an apostle of that gospel that makes religion glorified morality and morals realized religion; that makes life, and not doctrine, the test of religious confidence and fellowship; character the only credential of piety; honesty the only saviour; justice the ^^ great judg- ment-seat'' of God, and a loving spirit his atoning grace. This Bethany woman is a missionary of the evangel, the good news that helpfulness to one's neighbor is holiness to the Lord ; that kindness is the
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FAITHFULNESS
best evidence of a prayerful spirit; and that the graces of Heaven are none other than the moralities of earth raised to commanding pre-eminence.
This faith that makes faithful enables us to rest in our humblest endeavor. It is not for him who sits at this end of yon telegraph line, and with deft and diligent fingers transmits the message into its electric veins, to anxiously stop and query whether it will ever reach its destination, and to wonder who is to receive and transcribe it upon its arrival. That is not his business. The management is adequate to that work. Other minds and hands will attend to that. It is for him faithfully to transmit. So, friends, it is not for us to query the efficacy of those small acts; the saving power of these lowly graces; the daily, hourly messages of humble faithfulness. It is only for us to transmit: the Infinite will receive the dispatches. Like faithful soldiers, it is ^^ours not to reason why" but to do, and, if need be, die.
The lawyer may not, can not, purify his pro- fession; but he can be a pure member in it. The merchant can not stop the iniquitous practices of trade, but he can be an honest merchant or else go out of the business. The mother may not be able to keep down the shallow standards that bewitch her daughters; but she can pitch the key of her own life so high that the dignity of her soul will rebuke these standards and disarm them of their power. The father may not be able to keep his sons from tempt- ations, but he can himself desist from the filthy habit,
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FAITHFULNESS
the loose language, the indifferent life, that his ad- miring child is more likely to copy from him than from any one else. Our lives can not escape dis- appointments and weaknesses; but if we could only have faith in the efficacy of doing all we can, until faith ripens into faithfulness, there would flow into our lives a sweetness, a wholesomeness, a strength and a peace that will ultimately overflow into the world and into eternity. Studying thus, we shall find in this brief story the secret of a salvation that most of the creeds miss.
"What shall I do to be forever known?"
"Thy duty ever." "This did full many who yet slept unknown." "Oh, never, never! Thinkest thou perchance that they remain unknown
Whom thou know^st not? By angel trumps in Heaven their praise is blown — Divine their lot."
"What shall I do to gain eternal life?"
"Discharge aright The simple dues with which each day is rife^
Yea, with thy might. Ere perfect scheme of action thou devise,
Will Hfe be fled, While he, who ever acts as conscience cries, Shall live, though dead."
The second reason why we do not do all we can is that we are ashamed to try for fear people will laugh at us. Next to a lack of faith in the efficacy of what we can do, comes the blighting dread of ex-
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FAITHFULNESS
posing our weakness and our littleness to others. Sad as it may be, it is yet true that many worthy souls shrink not only from their simplest, plainest duties, but their highest, noblest opportunities, from the mere dread of being laughed at. So they indo- lently hide themselves behind the screen of what they ** would like'' to do and be rather than royally reveal what they can do and what they are. How many people to-day go to churches they do not believe in, and stand aloof from causes their intellect approves, because of the ridicule and the social ostracism such loyalty would bring them! I doubt not the hands of a dozen women in Bethany ached that morning to do the very thing this woman did do. But they did not dare; the disciples or somebody else would laugh at them, and they were right about it. They certainly would, and they did.
The woman knows that this or that fashion is ridiculous; that custom meaningless, or worse, crim- inal; but others do it. For her to refrain would be to make herself peculiar. She's afraid of beingi laughed at. The young man knows that the cigar is a filthy thing, that the intoxicating glass is a danger- ous enemy ; yet to set his face against them like flint would be to *^make himself odd." He does not dare to do all he can to dispel these curses by refusing them for himself, for fear of being laughed at. I dare not push these inquiries into the more internal things of life, lest I might be unjust. I fear that the spiritual, intellectual and social servility that
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FAITHFULNESS
might be discovered is something appalling. This moral cowardice is a practical infidelity more alarm- ing than all the honest atheism and avowed skepticism of this or any other age. Moral courage is the great want of our times, and all times. Not courage to do the great things, so-called, but to do the greater things which we call ^ kittle.'' There is always hero- ism enough to snatch women and children from burn- ing buildings, or to make a bayonet charge on the battle-field, whether spiritual or material, but always too little courage to befriend the forsaken; to do picket duty for advanced ideas, to stand as lonely sentinels in the vanguard of progress. More heroic is the smile that robs the pain of its groan than is the defiant hurrah of a charging column. More dar- ing is the breaking of a single flask of ointment by a shrinking, trembling, despised soul in behalf of what seems to be a losing cause, than volumes of wordy rhetoric from arrogant believers. It was not the presumptuous Pharisee who emptied his fat purse into the treasury box, but the poor widow who dared to come after him and dropped in her two mites, which made a farthing, that stirred the heart of Jesus ; for she gave out of a quivering life.
"Two mites, two drops, but all her house and land, Fell from an earnest heart but trembling hand; The others' wanton wealth foamed high and brave; The others cast away, she only gave/'
It was not the Chicago Board of Trade that out of growing fortunes equipped a battery, recruited a
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FAITHFULNESS
regiment, and filled the coffers of the Sanitary Com- mission, and then drove home to sleep on sumptuous couches and eat from groaning tables, that did the brave thing or gave grandly to the war for the Union, but the mother who kissed her only son on the door- step and through her tears said, ^'Go, my child, your country needs you," and then turned around to find aU the light gone out of her humble home. It is not the man who gives a hundred thousand dollars to found an institution, while he has several hundred thousand more to misuse in selfish ways, that is gen- erous; but he who gives the half of yesterday's toil, the half of his night's sleep, foregoes an expected pleasure, or does the still harder thing, stands up to be laughed at; he who sides with truth —
"Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis pros- perous to be just," —
that is true to the standard of the Bethany woman. Giving is not the throwing away of that which we never miss, but it is the consecrating to noble uses that which is very dear to us, that which has cost us much ; it is the bravely daring to be faithful over the few things given us. Doing this is what makes transcendent the courage of the Bethany woman. Probably she was one of the three women who, a few days after, stood by the cross, endured the wrong they could not cure,^ —
"Undaunted by the threatening death, Or harder circumstance of Hving doom."
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FAITHFULNESS
From the saddened radiance upon their faces streams a mellow light which reveals the rottenness of the timbers in that well-painted bridge of ex- pediency, popularity and prosperity over which our lives would fain pass. Now, as then, would-be dis- ciples withdraw from the conflict of truth with wrong ; absent themselves from the service of the ideas and the rights they believe in, instead of standing on the Golgotha grounds where rages the battle of life against forms, freedom against slavery, honesty against pretense, candor against equivocation, intelli- gent reason against conventional creed. These women bore testimony to the truth in the grandest way it is possible for human souls to testify, by standing with it when there is no crowd to lower the standard ; by voting at a place where the popular standards give way to the divine ; for surely when is swept the chaflE
"From the Lord's threshing floor, We see that more than half The victory is attained, when one or two, Through the fooFs laughter and the traitor's scorn, Beside thy sepuleher can abide the mom, Crucified truth, when thou shalt rise anew."
This Bethany loyalty is the simple requirement of religion. Not one cent, not one moment, not one loving impulse, not one thought, not one syllable of a creed, is expected, but all of this is expected; nothing less will do. God asks for no more and man has no right to expect more, but all of this he does
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FAITHFULNESS
expect and no man can evade it. Bring your flasks of precious ointment, break them, anoint with them that which is worthy, and there will escape therefrom a fragrance as pervasive, as lasting, as that which filled the air of Bethany nineteen hundred years ago ; for it will be the same flask of consecration broken by the same hand of courage, yielding the same ointment of good will, the same spikenard of love, very pre- cious. Let duty be its own reward; love, its own justiflcation. *'She hath done what she could!'' This is the fullness of the Christian excellence; it is the ultimate standard of religion.
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cc
I Had a Friend''
Our Bible is a book of lives. It is a book of men praying rather than a book of prayer, of men believing rather than a book of beliefs, of men sin- ning and repenting and righting themselves rather than a book of ethics. It is a book, too, of men lovmg: it is full of faces turned toward faces. As in the procession-pictures frescoed on rich old walls, the well-known men and women come trooping through its pages in twos and threes, or in little bands of which we recognize the central figure and take the others to be those unknown friends immor- talized by just one mention in this book. Adam always strays with Eve along the foot-paths of our fancy. Abram walks with Sarah, Rebecca at the well suggests the Isaac waiting somewhere, and Rachel's presence pledges Jacob's not far off. Two brothers and a sister together led Israel out from Egypt. Here come Ruth and Naomi, and there go David and Jonathan. Job sits in his ashes forlorn enough, but not for want of comforters, — we can hardly see Job for his friends. One whole book in the Old Testament is a love-song about an eastern king and one of his dusky brides ; although, to keep the Bible biblical, our modern chapter-headings call the Song of Solomon a prophecy of the love of the
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Christian Church for Christ. Some persons have wished the book away, but a wise man said the Bible would have lacked, had it not held somewhere in its pages a human love-song. True, the Prophets seem to wander solitary, — prophets usually do ; yet, though we seldom see their ancient audience, they doubtless had one. Minstrels and preachers always presup- pose the faces of a congregation.
But as we step from Old Testament to New, again we hear the buzz of little companies. We follow Jesus in and out of homes ; children cluster about his feet ; women love him; a dozen men leave net and plough to bind to his their fortunes, and others go forth by twos, not ones, to imitate him. ^^ Friend of publi- cans and sinners" was his title with those who loved him not. Across the centuries we like and trust him all the more because he was a man of many friends. No spot in all the Bible is quite so overcoming as that garden-scene where the brave, lonely sufferer comes back, through the darkness under the olive-trees, to his three chosen hearts, within a stone's throw of his heart-break, — to find them fast asleep ! Once be- fore, in that uplifted hour from which far off he descried Gethsemane, — ^we call it the ^^Transfigura- tion,"— we read of those same three friends asleep. The human loneliness of that soul in the garden as he paused by Peter's side,: — '^You! could you not watch with me one hour ? " — and turned back into the darkness, and into God! Then came the kiss with which another of his twelve betrayed him. No passage
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in the Gospels makes him so real a man to us as this ; no words so appeal to us to stand by and be his friends.
Jesus gone, we see the other hero of the New Testament starting off on missionary journeys, — ^but Barnabas or Mark or Silas or Timothy is with him. The glowing postscripts of his letters tell how many hearts loved him. What a comrade he must have been, — ^the man who dictated the thirteenth of Co- rinthians! What a hand-grasp in his favorite phrases — ' ' fellow-lahorevs, " ^ ^ fellow-soldievs, " ^ ' fel- ?(n(;-prisoners ! " We wonder who the men and women were he names, — *'Luke, the well-beloved physi- cian," and **Zenas the lawyer," and ''Tryphena and Tryphosa," and **Stachys, my beloved." Just hear him send his love to some of these friends: it is the end of what in solemn phrase we call the Epistle to the Romans, — what Paul would perhaps have called ^Hhe letter I sent the dear souls in that little church in Rome":- —
*'I commend unto you Phebe, our sister, that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you" (help that woman!) ''for she hath been a suc- courer of many, and of myself, too. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus, who have for my life laid down their own necks. Greet Mary who bestowed much labor on us. Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. Greet Amplias, my beloved in the Lord. Salute Ur- bane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys, my beloved.
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Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord, and the beloved Persis, and Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother- — and mine.'' And so on.
**His mother — his and mine,:" no doubt Paul had a dozen dear old mothers in those seaboard cities where he came and went. It brings him very near to us to read such words. Why, if we had lived then and had been ** radical" Jews like him, and like him had dared and joyed to speak our faith, and for it had been brave enough to stand by his side in labors and in prisons, our names might have slipped into those letters, and we have been among the dozen or twenty picked out from all the Marys and Lukes and Pauls of the Roman Empire to be enshrined in a Bible postscript, and guessed about eighteen hun- dred years aft^rward,^ — because Paul had once sent his love to us in a letter! I would far rather spare some of the words in which he tells us his thought of the Christ and the Church than those names that huddle at his letter-ends. They make the Epistles real letters, such as we mailed yesterday. They bring Paul down out of his Bible niche, and forward out of the magnificent distance of a Bible character, and make him just **Paul," alive and lovable; a man to whom our hearts warm still, because his own heart was so warm that men fell on his neck and kissed him when he told them they should see his face no more.
So much for the friendships of the Bible. Now for our own, as sacred.
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It is happiness to have some one '*glad you are alive." No wonder that poor girls take their lives when they come to feel that not one face lights up because they are in the world, or would be shadowed if they left it. We who have the friends know how much of all earth's worth to us lies in certain eyes and faces, certain voices, certain hands. Fifty per- sons, or perhaps but five, make the wide world popu- lous for us, and living in it beautiful. The spring- times and the sunsets, and all things grand and sweet besides, are at their grandest and their sweetest when serving as locality and circumstance to love. The hours of our day are really timed by sounds of coming feet: if you doubt it, wait till the feet have ceased to sound along the street and up the stair. Our week's real Sabbath is the day which brings the weekly letter. The year's real June and Christmas come at the rare meeting-times; and the true ^^Year of the Lord" was the time when certain twos first met. Let the few hands vanish, the few voices grow still, and the emptied planet seems a whirling grave- yard; for it no longer holds the few who wanted us and whom we wanted. ''Who wanted us,"- — that is the word to start with : the deepest of all human long- ings is simply to he wanted.
So Mother Nature has seen to it for the most of us that, at least upon arrival here, we shall be wanted. She sends the wee ones into the world so wondrously attractive that we get more worship then than ever afterwards, when it might do us harm. We are
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prayed for before we come, we are thanked for with the family's thanksgiving at our advent, a mother's sense of motherhood and a father's sense of father- hood have been begotten to prepare self-sacrifices for us : all this by way of welcome. In one word, we are ^* wanted" in the world when we reach it. *^No en- trance here except on business, ' ' true ; but the babies have the business, — ^who so much? Very pitiful are the young lives for whom these pre-arrangements of love fail.
But soon our helplessness is past, and what ought to be the period of our helpfulness has come; and then is there anything that we can do to make that title, ** Wanted," sure? Is there any recipe for win- ning friends? In old Rome young men and maidens used to drink love-potions and wear charms to eke out their winsomeness: in this modern time is there any potion, any charm, for friend-making? The question is worth asking, for it is no low ambition to wish to be desired in the world, no low endeavor to deliberately try to be love-worthy. Wise father he — ^^the Lord's chore-boy" one called him, — the sunny-faced old abolitionist, who brought his children up to know that ^Hhe one thing worth living for is to love and to be loved." But as to recipes for lova- bleness, the young soul in its romance laughs to scorn so kitchen-like a question. And right to laugh the young soul is; for much in the business passeth recipe. We speak of ^^ choosing" friends, of ^'making friends," of *^ keeping" or of *' giving up" friends,
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and if such terms were wholly true, the old advice were good, — In friend-making first consult the gods! Jesus, it is said, prayed all the night before he chose his twelve. But the words are not all true; friend- ship is at most but half made,''— the other half is born. What we can chiefly ** choose" and **make" is, not the friend, but opportunity for contact. When the contact happens, something higher than our will chooses for us. Fore-ordination then comes in. *^ Matches are made in heaven," and before the foundation of the world our friendships are arranged. ^' Thine they were and thou gavest them me," we feel of those whom we love best ;— borrowing words which, it is said again, Jesus used of his disciple-friends. Nothing supernatural in this; but it is so supremely natural, the secret of it roots so deep in the heart of Nature, that it passeth understanding. We can not cross the laws of attraction and repulsion; can only attract and be attracted, repel and be repelled, ac- cording to those laws. There is in Nature a great deal of that phenomenon called ^4ove-at-sight." Who- ever wrote it truly wrote, —
"Thou shalt know him, when he comes, Not by any din of drums, Nor the vantage of his airs; Neither by his crown, Nor his gown, Nor by anything he wears: He shall only well-known be By the holy harmony That his coming makes in thee !" [46]
''I HAD A FRIEND''
And, on the other hand, there is in Nature that op- posite experience of which Dr. Fell is the typical victim :: —
"I do not love thee. Dr. FeU: The reason why I can not tell, But this alone I know full well, — I do not love thee, Dr. FeU."
How often we have seen the poor doctor! How often we have been the poor doctor! And though we smile, we ache for him. It is tragedy, — this one- sidedness of friendship, these unequal gravitations of love. But what makes gravitation? The men of science can not tell us. ** Fascination" is soul-gravi- tation. ^^ Personal magnetism" we sometimes call it, using another word to hide our ignorance, and mean- ing the sum of all the mysterious centripetal forces that lodge in us and all radiations of health and beauty that go out from us. It lies in the glancing of the eye, in the flitting of the smile, in the toning of the voice, in the poise of the figure, in the grace of the notion. Nearly all have more or less of it ; but some how enviably the more, and others how lamentably the less! Some persons make more friends as they come into the room, or as they walk down the street, or as they smile their greeting, than others of us can hope to make with long and solid service.
But grant all this, — still our young lover is but half-Tight in laughing at a recipe for love. We know no cause of gravitation, but we can study its laws and apply it in a thousand forms of civilizing work: and
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whatever can be studied in its laws is subject for a science, wherever laws can be applied is subject for an art. So is it with soul-gravitation. There is, then, both a science and an art of Friendship. Besides that mystic element in it so hard to be accounted for, so hard to be acquired, there is a moral element in it which is an open secret, and this can be acquired. Indeed, so far as it is true that ^^ beauty is the flower- ing of virtue," that mystic element is moral, too. Hidden in the ^^ virtue" of the ancestors may lie the source of all the alien grace, sometimes so visibly divorced from virtue in the children; and, given time enough — say, generations, centuries — perhaps there is no limit to the outward fascination which may be earned and won. Be that as it may, so sure and large is this moral element in love that by it one can go far to ^^make" friends, after all. If we choose to be, we can be ^^ wanted" in this world. In a deep and worthy sense old Ovid, he who wrote the poem on the ''Art of Loving," might be imitated. And when you write your poem on that subject, you will without fail put into it one hint, — that friendships based on the mystic surface-fascinations are the kind so apt to end in tragedies of waning and of broken love ; whereas the attractiveness which can be acquired makes basis for the friendships apt to solidly endure. We must stop right here a moment; for different persons mean such different things by ''Friendship." 1 1 The one who uses the sacred word most easily is the one least likely to know much about the sacred thing.
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Some people know every one they speak of so very well indeed ! ^ ^ Oh yes, an intimate friend of mine, ' ' they say, when you ask if they have ever met A or B. They have ''met" him. One may well hesitate to answer Yes even to the common question, ''Do you know such or such a person ? " " Know him ? I have seen him six times, I traveled with him half a day, once I had a long argument with him, he told me stories of his childhood, and we discovered that four generations back we would have been first cousins, — but do I know him ? No. I have an opinion whether I like him or not, whether he has common sense or not, perhaps whether I would trust him or not; but I do not know that man." Much more is it in place to be modest about claiming him as a friend. Even speaking carefully, every one has at least two meanings for our sacred word. Each of us is ringed about by two circles, both commonly called "friends." The outer circle is the circle of our Likers, the inner is the circle of our Lovers. The main secret of having Likers lies in justice carried to the point of kindlmess and courtesy. Justice carried to the point of kindliness and courtesy commands the good word when people talk of us behind our back ; it commands the hearty greeting when we ring the bell ; it commands the true "I'm glad to see you" in the eyes as well as voice; it commands the excuse in our behalf when some one dwells upon our faults with over-emphasis, and with defense when people misin- terpret or misrepresent us. Now justice carried to the
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point of courtesy and kindliness is acquirable. The recipe for making Likers calls for no rare material: all I need lies right before me and around me in the opportunities of doing truthful, just, kind things by those I deal with. The recipe calls for no rare ele- ment, and the mixing and the making take no one day in the week. There is baking-day, sweeping-day, washing-day, but no friend-making-day. It is Mon- day's, Tuesday's, Wednesday's work, and lasts through Saturday and Sunday and the twenty-ninth of February. As one does his business he makes his Liker. There is no place nor time nor way of making him save as we go the rounds of common living; for by the common deeds of the common life we all test likings. What is more, the recipe never wholly fails. Try it faithfully and it is sure to bring us Likers. It is worth repeating to ourselves and emphasizing, — if we really wish to be, we can be ''wanted" in the world ; and the ambition to be wanted here is a worthy one; and the effort to be wanted nurtures in us that quick courtesy and instinctive kindliness that flower out from an unfailing justice.
But now to turn from our Likers to our Lovers. The conditions here are harder, and therefore the cul- ture gained in meeting the conditions is proportion- ately higher. Come with me to that inner circle that only holds the lives knit up with ours by a thousand crossing ties, and where we say with a yearning and exultation so different from anything felt in outer
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meanings of the word, ^^My friends !^^ And some of us are thinking of an inmost center where we never use the plural; are thinking that the truest friend- ship easts out all but two together and, for the time at least, crowns him or her alone the friend. We feel as if we had achieved our life's success in that one winning, and say with Eobert Browning, —
"I am named and known by that hour^s feat, There took my station and degree: So grew my own small life complete As Nature obtained her best of me, — One bom to love you!''
Be it so : but even then it is true to say that the secret is largely a moral secret. Nay, more true of such love than of any other to say that it is goodness which attracts. Luckily for some of us, one may love a poor kind of fellow ; but they love us not in virtue of our poorness, — it is in spite of it. They love ua for some real or fancied excellence, some evidence of truthfulness and rightfulness they think that they discern in us.
And with that word we reach a high thought worth a climb, this namely, that to have a true friend \ one must love Truth and Right better than he loves \ that friend. To win a true friend you and I must love Truth and Right better than that friend, how- ever dear. This involves another of love's tragedies; for, by this rule, wherever there is noble friendship there is always possibility of its waning; although at the time to believe that waning possible is impossi-
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ble. But the relation to be vital must be fresh each day. If there were not a new demand made by me on my friend and made upon me by my friend each time we met, a new demand to be then and there worth loving, half the charm would be gone. It is the heart mine, yet mine only by fresh necessity of winning it by nobleness,- — ^it is my heart his, yet his by an ever fresh necessity of giving it to him for his worth's sake, —that makes the deamess so ineffable. In order then to be ^^ friends" in this high sense, we must ever be ready to be renounced if we persist in a deliberate No before a duty, must be ever ready to renounce if he persists in such a No. It is not that the two must take the same idea of duty, nor that, when one fails to do his duty, he falls from all regard ; but that, when he so fails, he falls as if by fate out of that chosen place of which we have been speaking. The man is here, and, as we use the words, a good man still; as we use the words, is still *'our friend;" perhaps he even falls into a tenderer place than ever; but it is the tenderness of pity now, no more a tenderness of reverence. The short and simple fact is, that our man, our woman, has vanished : we have lost that ideal made real which we had been calling * ' friend. ' ' We cannot, if we would, feel to him as we did before. No heart-labor can put him where he was before. For Truth and Right had placed him there, not we, — they only can replace him. Those moral nature- forces behind good-will, that generate attraction, must be again invoked; and a man can only make the old
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attraction his again by reclaiming the old honor to his soul.
"We needs must love tlie highest when we see it, — Not Lanncelot, nor another/'
though Launcelot be the name of husband or of brother !
Does it seem strange to say that in this very pos- sibility of tragedy lies the ennobling power of love? From the sureness of losing it if undeserved, comes compulsion to deserve it. We feel that our friend- ship with John or with Ellen is our highest title or honor, our patent of nobility, and sit ever in a sense of glad amaze that we can call such superiority, '*my friend." There can be no consciously hidden weak- ness in us and we be safe in their affection. Perfect love casteth out fear, but only by having revealed everj^hing that maketh fear. To discover, after a year's close friendship, a concealed meanness in me, would, as meanness, degrade me in your eyes, but as concealed from you it would be treachery. So we dare not come to the point when the one we love shall think of us, *'He is a lower kind of man," or *'She is a lower kind of woman, than I imagined." If liked as much after that discovery as before, for such loyalty to us rather than to Right our love for them would actually grow less. The surprises of friendship — and how exquisite they are!^ — ought only to be of unsuspected excellences. But what woe, when one whom we have wholly trusted reels! If
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this embodiment of honor, truth and kindness reels and falls before our eyes, we have lost more than friend: for that moment we have lost our vision of God ! Goodness seems emptiness, and the very planet jars! We can understand the story told of Pascal, that once, when Arnauld seemed to prefer peace to truth, the shock to Pascal was so great that he fainted away.
Hence there must needs be undimmed sincerity, and humility even to confession, in every exalting love. Almost we have to say —
"Have I a lover
Who is noble and free, I would he were nobler Than to love meF'
And we know so well the truth of Emerson's other word, that ''in the last analysis love is only the re- flection of a man's own worthiness from other men," — know that so well that, in a half -fear lest we should gain under false pretenses the love we crave, we are impelled to exaggerate our poorness. ''Love me, love my dog," says the proverb: "Love me, love the dog in me !" says Friendship. Love me as I am, poor as I am, know me and yet love me !
Among all ennobling forces, therefore, hardly any other can be named so strong as an inmost Friend- ship. As the special culture which the winning of our Likers gives is that of quick, wide kindliness, the special culture which the winning of our Lovers gives
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is that of purity, sincerity, humility, selfishness, and the high standard for all honorable qualities: That says it,: — the high standard for all honorable quali- ties: to win and hold a friend we are compelled to keep ourselves at his ideal point, and in turn our love makes on him the same appeal. Each insists on his right in the other to an ideal. All around the circle of our best beloved it is this idealizing that gives to love its beauty and its pain and its mighty leverage on character. Its beauty, because that idealizing is the secret of love's glow. Its pain, because that idealizing makes the constant peril of love's vanishing. Its lev- erage to uplift character, because this same idealizing is a constant challenge between every two, compelling each to be his best. ^'What is the secret of your life?" asked Mrs. Browning of Charles Kingsley: 'Hell me, that I may make mine beautiful too." He replied, '^7 had a friend.^' The reverence this im- plies borders closely upon worship and the ennoble- ment that comes of that. What the dying Bunsen said as he looked up in the eyes of his wife bending over him, ' ^ In thy face have I seen the Eternal ! " is the thought of many a heart before its best beloved. That beloved is our ^^ beautiful enemy," in Emerson's phrase; our *^dear dread," as some older writer called him; our outside conscience, a kind of Jesus- presence before which we fear to do a wrong. What rare power to awake power in her friends and to set them as it were in an invisible church, this sentence attests in Margaret Fuller: '*I have no doubt that
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she saw expressions, heard tones, and received thoughts from her companions, which no one else ever saw or heard from the same persons." Some- where in her ^^Middlemarch" George Eliot puts it well: ^^ There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and con- secration; they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us ; and our sins become the worst kind of sacrilege, which tears down the invisible altar of trust. ' '
With Friendship meaning so much, capable of doing so much, do we lower or rather dignify the relation of father and mother to the child, of sister to brother, of husband to wife, when we say, ' ' Those two are each other's best friend"? In between the common likings of society and the heart's one-choice comes that whole choir of family affections. The father keeps the boy his son by making him, when young, his friend. As the years run by, the sister keeps the brother, the brother keeps the sister, in love, less by the blood-tie than by the words and works and trusts of friendship. And in the marriage itself the early love must ripen into close, abiding, inmost friendship. The happiest marriages take place grad- ually, and go on deepening all through the life to- gether. Hardly are they begun when the presents and congratulations come, and the minister says, ^^ Until death do you two part."
And for the many who can never love the one, or who, loving, are not loved as the one ; who
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"May not make this world a Paradise By walking it together hand in hand, With eyes that, meeting, find a double strength," —
for them the great solace, the great elevation, is to love lovableness, love it in all, — be it to all. This is really the end of all the single and personal affections ; this is the end even of wedded love. You may have skipped that stage, yon may have lost that usual path, but still may find the hill-top for which that path is.
A friend may have many functions. He comes as the Brightener into our life, to double joys and halve our griefs. He comes as the Counsellor, to give wisdom to our plans. He comes as the Strengthener, to multiply our opportunities and be hands and feet for us in our absence. But, above all use like this, he comes as our Rebuker, to explain our failures and shame us from our lowness ; as our Purifier, our Up- lifter, our Ideal, whose life to us is a constant challenge in our heart, ^^ Friend, come up higher, — higher along with me, that you and I may be those true lovers who are nearest to God when nearest to each other!"
But when such friend as this, — it may be the one called Father, Husband, Brother, or Mother, Sister, Wife, or simply, Friend — when such a friend as this does, as we say, go nearer to God, becoming invisible to us, it is wonderful to feel Death growing beautiful, the unseen world becoming real, and God's goodness seeming good as never before. It is that vanished one who changes all things so for us, hy adding Ms
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goodness to the unseen side of things. Noble friends — only the noble, probably — have power to leave us this bequest ; power to bequeath us a sense of God more real and good, a sense of Deathlessness more sure. Therefore we can never know the whole of a friend's blessing until he has died. We speak of circles '^broken" by death, but a circle is really incomplete until some of the friends sit in it out of sight.
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"The bruised reed shall he not break." — Isaiah xlii: 3.
Some years ago I clipped the following from a Chicago daily paper :
A Cincinnati paper says: "In a pottery factory here there is a workman who had one small invalid child at home. He wrought at his trade with exemplary fidelity, being always in the shop with the opening of the day. He managed, however, to bear each evening to the bedside of his "wee lad," as he called him, a flower, a bit of ribbon, or a fragment of crimson glass — indeed, anything that would lie out on the white counter-pane and give color to the room. He was a quiet, unsentimental man, but never went home at night without something that would make the wan face light up with joy at his return. He never said to a living soul that he loved that boy so much. Still he went on patiently loving him, and by and by he moved that whole shop into positively real but unconscious fellowship with him. The workmen made curious little jars and cups upon their wheels, and painted diminutive pictures down their sides before they stuck them in the corners of the kiln at burning time. One brought some fruit in the bulge of his apron, and another engravings in a rude scrap-book. Not one of them whispered a word, for this solemn thing was not to be talked about. They put them in the old man's hat, where he found them; he understood all about it, and, believe it or not, cynics, as you will, but it is a fact that the entire pottery, full of men of rather coarse fiber by nature, grew quiet as the months drifted, becoming gentle and kind, and some dropped swearing as the weary look on
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the patient fellow-worker's face told them beyond mistake that the inevitable shadow was drawing nearer. Every day now someone did a piece of work for him and put it on the sanded plank to dry, so that he could come later and go earlier. So, when the bell tolled and the little cofl&n came out of the lonely door, right around the comer, out of sight, there stood a hundred stalwart workingmen from the pot- tery with their clean clothes on, most of whom gave a half day's time for the privilege of taking part in the simple procession and following to the grave that small burden of a child which probably not one had ever seen."
I sent the clipping to my friend and fellow- laborer in Cincinnati, saying that I had great appe- tite for such things, and that I was always ready to believe in their possibility, but I did not care to center my interests upon fictitious incidents while there were so many real things upon which to place them. I asked him if there was any way by which he could verify the essential truthfulness of the story. In due time I received this reply : —
Dear Jones: — You sent me the enclosed slip a month ago, asking me to trace its authority, but it was not till yesterday that I found any convenient way of inquiring about it. Then by chance I met a reporter named Thomp- son, who said he wrote it, and that it may be depended upon.
Yours Truly,
Geo. a. Thayer.
With this assurance I venture to use it as a help in this study of Tenderness.
Note first the strength that lies behind this story, [60]
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the power of that feeling that avoided the debilitating compliment, suppressed the harrowing word, but ac- complished the kindly deed. There is that which passes for tenderness that might better be called *^ softness." The tremor of nerve and fluttering of heart, the trembling in the presence of suffering and turning pale at the sight of pain, is very common, quite real, perhaps commendable; but lacking strength it falls short of the grace of tenderness; it is wanting in moral quality. There is that which sometimes passes for tenderness that is more physical than spiritual, more selfish than disinterested. It springs from untrained nerves, it indicates an un- disciplined soul, one untried by severity, untempered by sorrow. Tears in the presence of suffering do not necessarily reflect that tenderness described in my text and context, that to which Jesus aspired.
"He shall not cry aloud, nor lift up his voice. Nor cause it to be heard in the street. The bruised reed shall he not break, And the glimmering flax shall he not quench; He shall send forth law according to truth, He shall not fail nor become weary Until he shall have established justice in the earth, And distant nations shall wait for his law.''
To shrink from another's suffering because it makes us suffer too is only a refined kind of selfish- ness. One may ^^not have heart enough to kill a chicken," as we say, and still be very cruel if this inability springs from weakness rather than tender-
[61]
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ness. True tenderness is that which can destroy limb in order to save life ; when necessary, it can increase the torture to reduce danger. The tridy tender soul will gladly endure itself the agony it would not inflict upon another.
**I could not bear to see him suffer, and so I came away."
* * I would like to help him, but I cannot stand the sight of so much wretchedness ! ' '
'^Some people seem to be able to wash dirty children, to teach ignorant ones, to enjoy their attempt to enlighten the stupid, to refine the coarse, to en- noble the wicked, — ^but I cannot do these things ; they work on my feelings so. They make me so miserable. ' '
These are familiar sayings and they reveal miserable weakness. Such confessions ought never to be made except in humility. Such lives need to be lifted out of cowardice into courage, regenerated out of helplessness into helpfulness. When tenderness becomes a virtue, like all virtues it becomes heroic. When we seek an example of highest sensibility and truest tenderness, we do not take her whose eyes are red with weeping over a dead canary bird, or her who **went to bed downright sick,'' as I once heard a woman confess, because **Pont," the impudent little poodle, had his foot pinched by the slamming of the carriage door ; but we go to the battle-field to find the woman who carries her water can and bandages through clotted gore with unblanched cheek. We go to the hospital and find the true physician, who is
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also the kind physician, who dares not endanger the clearness of his vision with a tear. Indeed, let those who would excuse themselves from stern and disagreeable duties on account of the tenderness of their hearts or the sensibility of their nerves remember that in life, as in literature, the profession most ac- customed to suffering has furnished the most illustrious examples of the tenderness that will not ** break a bruised reed'' except ''thereby the law of life be established upon the earth." Indeed, the tenderest soul in history finds one of his most suggest- ive titles when he is called the ''Good Physician." One of the tenderest little stories in English literature is the familiar one of "Rab and His Friends," written by John Brown, the good physician of Edin- burgh. This tells how James Noble, the carrier, brought one day into the hospital yard on his cart a woman with
'*A most unforgettable face, pale, lonely, serious, deli- cate, sweet : — eyes such as one sees only once or twice in a lifetime, full of sufferng, full also of the overcoming of it: her mouth firm, patient and contented, which few mouths ever are. I never saw a more beautiful counte- nance, or one more subdued to settled quiet.
" 'Maister John, this is the mistress. She has got a trouble in her breest, Doctor — some kind of an incoming we are thinking. Will you ta'k a look at it? Ailie, this is Maister John, the young Doctor, Rab's frien', ye ken. We often speak aboot you, Doctor.'
"And Solomon, in all his glory, could not have handed down the Queen of Sheba, at his palace gate, more tenderly than did James, the Howgate carrier, lift down Ailie his
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wife. * * * 'Twas a sad ease. Next day on the bul- letin board was the notice to the young students, —
An operation today,
J. B., Clerk.
"Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places; in they crowded, full of interest and talk. Don^t think them heartless. They are neither better nor worse than you or I; they get over their professional horror and into their proper work, — and in them pity as an ^emotion, ending in itself or at best in tears in a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a motive is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature that it is so."
From the crowded climes of the Edinburgh hospital, as thus described by the good physician, to the dingy walls of the Cincinnati pottery is a great distance in thought as well as in space; but human nature has greater reaches than that ; and in the quiet devotion of those rude workingmen to a pale, emaci- ated and probably rickety lump of humanity, that they had never seen, but which lay in the humble bed of their fellow potter, is an illustration of that high tenderness that is brave. In both cases the pictures are very sad, but as the good doctor well says, ^ ' They are better, much better, than many things that are not called sad." And they are better because they give rise to a tenderness that is not craven, a pity bom not out of undisciplined nerves but out of warm hearts. This is a tenderness based not on the physical, which allies us to all animals, but on the spiritual reality that relates us to God.
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Only the brave, then, reach that tenderness that makes one a servant of the Most High. ^^I have put my spirit upon him," is the word of the old prophet. On that account *Hhe bruised reed shall he not break. He shall not fail or become weary. ' ' We have quite enough, perhaps a great deal too much, of that emo- tion that *'ends in itself, or at best in tears and a long- drawn breath;'' plenty of that tenderness that stops with the wringing of the hands, that is so susceptible to good purposes, but is so negligent of good deeds : — that tenderness that is so anxious that a good thing may succeed, but is so careful lest the succeeding drain them of life's petty comforts and small securi- ties. But we never have enough of that ''pity as a motive' ' that quickens, gains power and gives pur- pose in the presence of suffering. This sympathetic tenderness is one of the most universal needs of the human soul, because it is felt through all ranks and conditions. It is the need of the gifted and the ig- norant, the want of the rich and the poor, the saint and the sinner.
All this suggests the second element in that ten- derness that belongs to the servants of the Most High, that makes ministers of the eternal gospel and protect- ors of bruised reeds, namely, disinterestedness. The more unselfish, the more divine is the tenderness. The most touching thing in this story of the Cincin- nati potters is not the thoughtfulness of the father, in whose heart the boy nestled all day long by a divine necessity. The boy's wan face kept flitting between
[65]
TENDERNESS
the father's eyes and his wheel hour by hour, his wasted fingers touched the father's fingers more pal- pably than did the clay he molded. That child was a part of himself; in loving the '^wee lad" he was but loving his own, aye himself, and the bits of ribbon, crimson glass or fragrant buds that he carried home night after night brought quick and ample return to the fatherly heart in the shape of the gentle 'Hhank you," the brighter smile and the more patient light upon the face. But all these motives were wanting among his fellow workmen. The dingy potters had their birds in other nests, and the little jars etched with their stiffened fingers and the cups shaped with their simple arts would have been appreciated else- where. Their lives were not bound up in the crippled frame of the invalid boy; there was nought of them- selves on that sick bed ; and yet day by day the fruit was thought of, night after night the old man's hat contained the odd collection, — a collection gathered by a tenderness that was disinterested. Day by day the old man's labors were lightened, his hours by the bedside lengthened, through a tenderness that was un- selfish. Friends, we should guard well our lives in this direction. Much selfishness lurks in our over- weening anxiety and our unreasoning solicitude for our other selves. Our great tenderness for our boy or our girl not infrequently ensnares us unto great harshness or most cruel neglect of some other one's boy and some other one's girl. We become so much burdened with our obligations to our homes that we
[66]
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forget the interests and needs of other homes. We become so jealous of the well-being and, as we say, future prosperity of our family that we lose that sensibility to the needs of society without which we become a burden and a blight. An exclusive tender- ness often turns out to be a hurting selfishness. That child is cursed with the affection of which it holds exclusive monopoly. The homes whose doors do not swing easily out into the great world soon lose their homelike qualities. The heart treasures deposited therein often become non-productive, and curse in- stead of bless the inmates. The obligations to hus- band, wife or child that are guarded by a fence so high that the claims of church, Sunday-school, so- ciety, state and all the waiting wants of the world are looked upon as rival claims to be jealously resented, will sooner or later build the fence so high that it will keep out many of the gentle influences, the sweet associations, the divine amenities that make the fire- side a blessed shelter from the storms of life and the home a peaceful haven for the aged. I once went to a man whose wealth was climbing on toward the millions, with a cause which had legitimate claims upon his interest because he was a part of humanity ; his response was : * ^No, not a cent ! It is an excellent cause. It ought to succeed. But I have a family and I must provide for them; I am getting old. A man who does not take care of his own family is worse than an infidel. I have seen enough of this world to know that I would prefer to see all my children buried to-
[67]
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day rather than leave them to the cold charities of the world/' And as he spoke his voice trembled and the tears stood in his eyes. I doubted not the sincerity of that feeling, and I know that the practice of his life carried out the sentiment. Lavish to wife and children: in the main selfish towards all the rest of the world. The tears that stood in his eyes did no credit to his head, nor to his heart. They were born out of the sensibilities of selfishness, not out of dis- interestedness. He failed to see that he was doing much toward making the world cold and uncharitable, not only to other children but to his own ; and if the world of human life were made of such as he was at that moment, it were better his children were buried than living in it, even though sheltered by liis thou- sands. Oh, that over-weening tenderness of the mother, that guards her daughter from the discipline and joys of unselfish experiences, is not the tender- ness that has in it the spirit of God ! Rather is it the love that, anaconda-like, makes victims of those whom it embraces.
The father who denies his child the discipline of that self-reliance that made him strong, turns his blessings into curses, and the arms that are thrown around to protect the boy prove instead to be the paws of a bear that hug him to death : thus it is that the fortune of the father becomes the misfortune of the boy. Cruel is that wife who allows her love to make her husband more self-centered and helpless after marriage than he was before. Hurtful is the
[68]
TENDERNESS
tenderness of that husband whose very affection makes a drooping, dependent, clinging, characterless vine of the woman that God has endowed with a per- sonality capable of standing by his side equal with himself before God and man, a co-laborer and fellow- sufferer, a sharer of his joys and sorrows, joint part- ner with him in the work of enlarging the boundaries of life. I doubt the happy outcome of the marriage that is centered simply in the dream of two made one, with no tender concern for the world, no hope to make its woes less and its joys more by means of the proposed alliance. The young man and woman who join hands at the marriage altar for the simple pur- pose of making each other happy are ever in danger of degenerating into seeking each one his own joys, and finding at last a large delusion at the bottom of the marriage cup.
You will not misunderstand me. I revere the fireside and would fain ennoble and enforce all the sanctities of the home circle. The touching breadth of the tenderness of the grimy potters in Cincinnati illustrates my meaning. Think you that any one of those hundred clay-soiled and dirty-handed work- men went home with a more petulant word to his wife, a less cheerful welcome to his own burly boy, because he had stayed fifteen minutes after time to shape that little pitcher for the sick boy; or had taken twenty minutes of his noon hour to make a few pots to fill out the old man's stent that he might go home a little earlier? Think you that any one of those hundred
[69]
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workmen appreciated his own shanty the less, be- cause he had tried to make the home of the sick child more attractive ? Oh, the lessons that sometimes come to us from the enriched homes of the poor ! We can but deplore the prosperity that leads men to be economical even of their tenderness. Let us beware of that thriftiness that doles out love where it is needed in abundance. It is the danger of modern prosperity that it so complicates life, multiplies the needs of our outward homes, and regulates by con- ventional necessities every hour of every day, every ounce of every energy, that it leaves no time or force for the spontaneous workings of that Christly ten- derness that redeems the sinner by kindness, and saves the world by love. Beware of that tenderness that unconsciously breaks a hundred reeds already bruised in trying to secure the one favorite reed from the possibility of ever being bruised. A sym- pathetic tenderness is the perpetual Pentecost that makes intelligible the language of each to all, and this communion of spirit is ever reciprocal. It gives mutual strength. She who clutched at the hem of the helper's garment, who bathed with tears the feet of the friend of man and anointed his head for the burial, ^'wrought a good work'' not only upon him; but she found renewal and forgiveness in her own soul also. Neither giving nor receiving sympathy is confined to any conventional equality. Jesus found it with the fishermen, the lowly men and humble women of Galilee, Samaria and Bethany. He gave it
[70]
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to and received it from publicans and sinners, here- tics and strangers. Oh, there is a sensibility yet to come that will show a pitiful brutality in the flippant epithets we now toss complacently from our lips, as though they were the exact phrases of political econ- omy and social science! The time is coming when men will be ashamed to classify and divide with stolid cruelty their own kin ; those to whom they are bound by a thousand ties, subtle indeed, but strong and in- evitable as God's law of gravitation. He who talks of 'Hhe masses," *Hhe dangerous class,'' *'the hope- less class," 'Hhe abandoned," ''the atheists," ''the infidels," "the criminals," "the fallen women" and "the lawless men" in such a way as to leave himself outside and above them, is a self-made spiritual exile, wanting that open vision and sensibility of soul that becomes a conscious child of God. Where the heart is most human there is the most tenderness ; the high- er and broader the soul, the greater the contact with others, — on the more points can it touch all other souls. With this breadth of life comes a sensibility worthy,
"One who, spite the wrongs that lacerate His weary soul, has never learned to hate."
'TVIaister John, I am for none o'yer strange nourse bodies for Ailie. I'll be a nourse and I'll gang about on my stockin' soles as canny as a pussie."
said James to the doctor, when his wife had been helped back to her hospital bed. And so he did,
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TENDERNESS
"and handy and tender and swift and clever as any woman was that homy-handed little man. Everything she got he gave her. He seldom slept, and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness fixed upon her.''
This was tenderness in the Poor Ward of the Edinburgh hospital.
"Not one of them whispered a word, for this solemn thing was not to be talked about. Yet they put these things in the old man's hat where he found them. He understood all about it. Every day some one did a piece of work for him and put it on the sanded plank to dry, so that he could come later or go earlier; and when the bell tolled and the little coffin came out of the door, right around the cor- ner, out of sight, there stood a hundred stalwart working men from the pottery, with their clean clothes on, most of whom gave a half day's work for the privilege of taking part in the simple procession and following to the grave that little child which probably not one had ever seen."
This was tenderness in the Cincinnati pottery;
"Whosoever giveth a cup of cold water unto one of
these little ones doeth it unto me."
"Neither do I condemn thee: go, sin no more." "Which of these three thinkest thou proved a neighbor
to him that fell among the robbers? And the lawyer said:
'He that showed mercy unto him,' and Jesus said : 'Go thou
and do likewise."
This is the tenderness taught by the great Master of tenderness, the world-inclusive heart of the Naz- arene. Is this not also the tenderness of the hospital and the pottery ? Is it not the something that reaches from James Noble, the Howgate carpenter, up to the master soul of Jesus, touching human life all the way
[72]
TENDERNESS
from one to the other; illuminating, transfiguring everything from the potter's wheel in Cincinnati, up to the cross on Calvary?
This is the tenderness that Isaiah describes, as the indispensable attribute of the servant of God. It is not only the delicacy that goes with woman's fingers, that sends jellies to sick folks, and knows how to fix the piUow for the fevered head ; it can bear the sight of suffering ; it is something stalwart, that goes with manly men as well as with womanly women; something that has courage and out-go to it. It is a world-inclusive and life-redeeming power; something that rebukes complacency, shames indolence, and in- vests every vocation, all ages, every sex, every home, with its burden of care for the human reeds that are being bruised on every hand every day. This divine tenderness makes every one that partakes of it will- ing to contribute to the higher life of all. It does not say to the abiding interests of life, * * I hope you will succeed," but it says: '*I will help you succeed." The question of every truly tender soul is not ^'What can they do?" but ^'What can I do?"
If we have caught any glimpses of this mighty power to which to-day I give the name ''tenderness," that is, love in its helpful moods, kindliness in action, the affections at work, — not, as the good doctor says, *'an emotion ending in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath," but a ^^ motive that quickens, gives power and purpose," — we see how much need there is of more tenderness in the world. I have met
[73]
TENDERNESS
somewhere a story of a poor distracted man who used to travel up and down one of the provinces of Prance, going from house to house, entering unbidden, wan- dering from village to village, accosting the men, women or children whom he met, always with the same question, — '*I am looking for tenderness, can you tell me where to find it?" The simple country- side made light of his innocent wanderings and would say, ' ' Have you not found it yet ? " * ^ No, ' ' would be the sad reply: ''and yet I have searched for it every- where." ''Perhaps you will find it in the garden." 0&. he would hurry. The gardener might refer him to the stable, and the stable-boy to the next house, the next house to the next village: so, mournfully, to the end of life, the poor imbecile, half conscious of his hopeless search, half realizing the ridicule with which he was everywhere received, died without find- ing what he sought.
Some of the earlier languages have but one word for inspiration and insanity: doubtless such cases as this helped establish the confusion. How often is uncommon sense found in the absence of common sense! and reason broken into bits, like the colored fragments in the kaleidoscope, sometimes gives won- derful combinations of beauty. The story of this poor lunatic hints at a truth most pathetic. How hard it is to find tenderness! Lives are blighted, fortunes ruined, homes made barren, high purposes in every community fall short of fruition, for want of that tenderness that is courageous and disinterested.
[74]
TENDERNESS
Plenty of kindly passion in the world, perhaps too much. Not enough of kindly judgment and kindly will. Plenty of emotion represented by the burden- some Countess in the home of Amos Barton in George Eliot's story, who took great pains to perfume the poor sick wife's handkerchief and to smooth her pil- low, while she continued to eat the bread needed by the poor parson's children. Too little of that motive represented by Mrs. Hackit in the same story, whose visit to the same vicarage brought the cooked fowl that was needed to strengthen the sick woman; or still better the motive of the Reverend Martin Cleaves, the neighboring minister, who defended the injured man's good name in his absence, and was by his side in bereavement; the man who went about '* without carrying with him the suggestions of an undertaker." ** Tender motive" is a good phrase; it suggests force, motion, power; that which can be, if necessary, divinely cruel; the tenderness of the sur- geon with his knife; the tenderness of God's un- swerving law. Let us go in search of that, adding to the persistency of the lunatic the sanity of the man of Nazareth, and then we shall find it, or, failing to find it, we shall realize what Longfellow calls the divine
"Insanity of noble minds That never falters or abates. But labors and endures and waits, Till all that it foresees it finds, Or what it cannot find — creates!"
[75]
TENDERNESS
This brings me to my last thought, — the power of this tenderness. This needs but little amplification, so well is it exemplified in the story of the Cincinnati potters.
"The entire pottery, full of men of rather course fiber by nature, grew quiet as the months drifted, became gentle and kind, and some dropped swearing as the weary look on the fellow-worker's face told them without mistake that the inevitable shadow was drawing nearer."
I do not ask you to believe the whole of this story, much less idealize it. It is easy to exaggerate the outward facts. I doubt not the reporter yielded to this temptation. Yet I believe in its essential truth because I have so often seen, as you have seen, the sanctifying power of a kind word, the renovating force in a tender deed, the enlarging power of a good thought. The inward truth of this story we are ev( r prone to understate and underestimate. Father Taylor was philosophically right when he said in his stirring way, ''It will never do to send Emerson to hell, for just as soon as he gets there he will change the climate, and the tide of immigration will set in that way." A noble impulse changed into a motive will silence the clamorous wranglings of selfishness. A noble man or woman will shed a radiance upon a ribald crowd, so as to make, for that short space of time at least, profanity and coarseness impossible. Do not drop back into a too prevalent sentimentalism over this matter. Nothing but the courageous self- abandon of the highest disinterestedness that seeks to do a kindly thing for the joy it gives to another, that
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the world, God's world and our home, may be made the better thereby, has in it this redeeming power.
Once I lay,: — a helpless, fever-smitten wreck, at the foot of a great tree just in the rear of a great battle-line. Now and then a stray minnie ball would reach my neighborhood, and vagrant shells, wander- ing far from their intended destination, would burst in the air high above me. Troops were hurrying by, orderlies flying hither and thither, and all around me were the torn and mangled, gathered in a field hos- pital. I, too weak to be of any use, too wasted even to cling to life with any tenacity, too sick to be afraid, lay there, — the most insignificant and helpless private among the thousands — ^when there fiitted by, with firm step and gentle face, a prim and dainty woman. She placed in the hand too weak to hold it a rosy, luscious apple. ^'You are thirsty,'' she said. *'I will get you a drink." And soon she came with a spoonful of precious water in a tin cup. *'It was all I could find," she said. She went her way. I have all my life, before and after, been the recipient of tender deeds, but never have I seen the like of that apple, never water so precious, nor a woman's hand that carried so much hope and renewal in a single touch. And thinking of it since, I suspect that a part^ — the best part — of that act lay in the fact that it was not for me as an individual, but for me as one in the files of a great and noble army. She came to me not because I was a friend, or a member of any narrow family, but because I was
[77]
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a brother man, the humble factor in a great move- ment. She was then and there the exponent of the divine providence. She was in league with truth, a messenger of love, a representative of God. I will believe that the infinite mystery out of which this Universe has been projected is a loving and lovable power, if that love finds expression and comes into consciousness only in that one bosom that defied dan- ger, lived above the horrors of war, that she might be helpful to me and others. I will believe in God and will say ^'Our Father," aye and ''Mother," too, in my devotions, because the power that evolves such tenderness blooms at times to fatherly care and motherly affection in your heart and mine, if no- where else in all the universe. If there are souls to whom this world seems a godless realm, who fail to find divine tokens of love anywhere, you and I are partly responsible. We have refused the spirit that invites us to become ' ' those who cause law to go forth to the nations, not to cry aloud nor lift up the voice nor cause it to be heard in the streets, ' ' but to so live that no ''bruised reed be broken" by us and no "glimmering flax be quenched." In us at least let that power "send forth law according to truth." In us at least may it not "fail or become weary until justice is established in the earth and distant nations wait for the law." There ought to be divine tender- ness enough in our lives to convert the most skeptical, to inspire the most obstinate man to divine service, and to make robust the will of the most timid woman.
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TENDERNESS
Who will say that the little Cincinnati hunch-back lived in vain, if in his short and pain-stricken career he had hallowed the life of his father, chastened the lives and mellowed the hearts of his fellow laborers, and touched the potter's wheel with that same sacred oil of disinterestedness that consecrated the cross on Calvary, and perchance quickened us into more cour- age, fresh zeal, and touched us anew with love's piti- fulness.
Time is flying; each day counts its last oppor- tunities. Oh! that we may feel now the truth that came too late to the thriftless vicar, Amos Barton, in the story, as he stood beside the cold body of his saint- ed wife: ^^She was gone from him and he could never show his love for her any more, never make up for omissions in the past by showing future tender- ness." Oh, the bitterness of that midnight prostra* tion upon the grave ! If we do not awake to our part and responsibility under this law of tenderness, I believe it will come to us some time. I hope and pray it may come, for better the pain and the life that comes therefrom than the insensibility and the living death involved therein.
''Milly, Milly, dost thou hear me? I didn't love thee enough — I wasn't tender enough to thee — ^but I think of it all now. ' '
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A Cup of Cold Water
'* Whosoever shall give one of these little ones a cup of cold water only .... shall in no wise lose his reward," said Jesus. There could not well be a simpler act, a smaller service, than that ; not one you would sooner do for those whom you do not like, or sooner ask from those who do not like you. Many a time, as Jesus walked the roads of Galilee, he must have stopped at the door of a stone hut or rested by a village spring and asked for a drink of water, just as we do in our country tramps. And some mother turned at the words, caught the look in the earnest eyes, and set down her child to bring the cup ; or some man, hailed at his plough across the field, pointed to the kid-skin bottle under the bush and told the stranger to help himself. No one would deny it. Bread may be doubtful, but bubbling fountains, pour- ing rivers, shining lakes are cups so plentiful that few ever add to the prayer for bread, **Give us this day our daily water.'' So this teacher chose a cup of cold water as his emblem of small service, when he wanted to say that not the slightest deed that is meant for good gets lost and goes uncounted. The deed is appraised by its aim. He who offers the cup to the disciple as disciple offers it to the teacher, and he who offers it to the teacher as teacher offers it to him who
[80]
A CUP OF COLD WATER
sends the teacher ; and God takes notice, and the giver shall in no wise lose reward. So said Jesus; and he spoke the thought again in his ^* Judgment" parable. Thrown out of concrete into broad impersonal phrase, the thought is that the smallest kindness to the hum- blest creature belongs to the great economy that we call Providence ; that then and there the laws of moral cause and effect begin to act; so that, some way or other, full recompense for that small deed is sure.
It is a mighty faith ! It is one of the words that show how deep-natured Jesus was, how keen his spir- itual insight. Not a sparrow falls without the Father, not a hair eludes his census, not a drink of water is forgotten. You and I echo the words; can you and I echo the faith ? But not of the faith, nor of the law of recompense that holds good a drink of water, will we think just now, — only of the Cup-Offerings them- selves, that is, of little acts of thoughtfulness for one another.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that two- thirds of all that makes it '^beautiful to be alive" con- sists in cup-offerings of water. Not an hour of life's journey but is rendered easier by their freshening or harder by their absence. Why? Because most of us are burden-bearers of one sort or another; because to most of us a large part of the journey is a dull and trivial trudge; because there is much dust upon the road, and — not so many bad places as prob- ably we think — yet many common-places: and it is
[81]
A CUP OF COLD WATER
load and dust and stretches of the common-place that make one thirsty. If the feeling on our shoulders were of wings instead of load; if on Mondays, ^*in some good cause not our own/' we were marching singing to a battle, and on Saturdays were coming back victorious, then the greetings on the way would make less difference to us. But as it is, we crave the roadside recognitions which give praise for the good deed attempted, pity for the hard luck and the fall, a hand-lift now and then to ease the burden's chafe, and now and then a word of sympathy in the step-step- stepping that takes us through the dust. And this is all that most of us can wait to give ; for we too are here on business. You can not step my journey for me, can not carry me on your back, can not do me any great service ; but it makes a world of difference to me whether I do my part in the world with, or without, these little helps which fellow-travelers can exchange. *'I am busy, Johnnie, and can't help it," said the father writing away, when the little fellow hurt his finger. ^^Yes, you could, — you might have said, ' Oh ! ' " sobbed Johnnie. There 's a Johnnie in tears inside of all of us upon occasions. The old Quaker was right: '^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."
"An arm of aid to the weak, A friendly hand to the friendless. Kind words, so short to speak,
[82]
A CUP OF COLD WATER
But whose echo is endless, — The world is wide, these things are small. They may be nothing, but they are ally'
**A cup of cold water only." One must not forget, when handing it, that the cup is one thing, the water quite another. Tin dipper or silver goblet is all one, provided we are thirsty and the water good. So the cup I speak of need be no shining deed of service, need be no deed at all; it is far oftener only a word, or the tone in a word, or the smile with a word. That word or tone or smile is the cup, — and what is the water? Your heart's sympathy. The fact that you are thinking a kind thought of me — you, of me — is the refreshment. That is what sends me on the road with the coolness felt along the veins. Of course, then, face and manner more than hands reach out the cup to me. The brusque manner of one friend, his tin cup, may be many times more welcome than the smooth manner — silver-plated goblet — of another: it holds purer sympathy. The nod with a gleam in the eyes and a wrinkle around them may- mean a deal more of heart's greeting than another's lifted hat. A ^^Good morning!" may be tendered so respectfully, — and you drop it at the next step as you drop a boy's hand-bill on the street, hardly con- scious you have held it ; or it may come tossed to you, but with something in the face behind the toss that really makes the next few moments of the morning good. I can do you a great favor in such a w^ay that you shall half hate me and my favor : you can accept
[83]
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from me a favor in such wise that I shall feel as though I had been crowned!
Therefore there are many fine cups passed about that hold no water at all, or very little; cups really made for bric-a-brac, not service ; empty goblets of fashion and etiquette ; stage-tumblers which we actors hand about momentously, — but with no possibility of spilling. Three common kinds of courtesy can make small claim to be ^^cups of cold water." First and worst is the politeness deliberately adopted to serve self-interest ; politeness by which we try to climb into people's esteem, intent upon their hen-roosts. In such courtesy it is, of course, we ourselves who drink the water, while going through all the motions of the Good Samaritan. Next and more innocent comes the conventional hat-and-glove and call-and-card polite- ness, so much more common east than west, and in Europe than America; whose absence, like a mis- placed accent, betrays the untrained American abroad. This is the realm of Etiquette, and Fashion queens it here. Many of the customs she imposes are harmless enough, though staling much the freshness of one's manners; but many are dwarf -lies which taint the manner, until at last no sympathy that we can offer has the natural sparkle of sincerity. A third kind of courtesy, better far than this, yet with little staying power to quench thirst, is the off-hand geniality easy to those whose faces light up readily, whose hands go quickly out, whose voices have a hail- fellow-well-met ring for every one; a geniality that
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carries little thoughtfulness, little delicacy, little rev- erence, and no self-sacrifice; the manner, without the heart, of sympathy. It is soon understood. Of this sort we see more in America than in England, more west than east.
And, in justice, let us say of this last kind that it is good as far as it goes. It is easy to slander the politeness of the surface. Even that second kind has use as a preventive force. It is like the one policeman in the village, — only one, but he diffuses an immense protection! It watches between neighbors, arresting little invasions of each other's comfort which, if not arrested, would so harass good fellowship. Some one has well said, '^Politeness is like an air-cushion; there's nothing in it, but it eases the joints wonder- fully." So call this politeness of the surface good, only not good for much. It carries small guarantee that the cup of water will be offered to the little ones, and still less that it will be offered when one- self is thirsty.
But it is those 'kittle ones" that give Jesus' say- ing its point. ''Whoso shall give one of these little ones a cup:" that takes the real sympathy, the real self-forgetting. And where three or four are gath- ered together in any relation of life whatever, there is almost sure to be a "little one" with reference to the others, ^ — one not so bright as they, not so win- some, not so able to hold his own. When but two meet, one is apt to be a little, the other a big one.
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And though to change the circumstances of the meet- ing is quite possibly to exchange the sizes, so that the little one becomes the big and the big one little, yet that again shows that two equals seldom meet. We can hardly talk together five minutes on any subject touching life without finding it fall in our way to say something that may hurt and something that may help or please; and those whom all like best largely win their love by this one secret, — uniformly they avoid the hurt and achieve the kindness, either being possible.
For instance, in company, — Boys, dance with some of those girls who have been sitting on the sofa ! Do it as a cup-offering of cold water, — for no more selfish reason. But then you do not know what grace it will give you in their eyes and in the eyes of all who enjoy true gentle-manliness. I knew one rare in character and mind and popularity, who lingers doubly heroed in the memory of friends: they said of Lowell, ' ^ He died in the war, — and he danced with the girls whom the others did not dance with. ' ' And Girls, when you are dissecting the young men in the party's after-talk, and some leave very little of one who is rather stupid, stand up for him like an unseen sister, if you know him to be pure and manly! If you belong to the surgeon class of women, that fact probably comes out in your manner to himself, for you are one who is apt to miss the opportunity of giving the cup of water. Did you ever read what happened to get published under the
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title of '^A Nice Girl's Rules," — rules made by a certain girl for herself, when she went into company ? they were five : ' ' To give away more than I spend on myself. To do all I can for every one at home first, before I go to walk or to parties. At a ball to make one forlorn girl happy and introduce her to some pleasant gentleman, — and to do this at every party. To draw other people out, without trying to shine myself. As soon as I feel that I am talking or acting in such a way that I should hesitate from shame to pray at that moment, to leave the room."
Again, with the old, the conservative, the fixed, there is constant opportunity to render service by the mere tone of the voice and the deference of the ad- dress. Don't they know they are old? Don't they often feel the fact of their conservatism helplessly, and therefore far more painfully than any one with whom it chances to interfere? Don't they suspect over-well that life is on the wane, and that the yellow leaf shows in their talk as they know it is showing in their face ? More than that of any other class, per- haps, thevr appeal to the young, the strong, the capable, is for that courtly delicacy of attention which is shown, not in any richness of the cup, but in the way the cup is offered to the lips.
Be a knight, be a lady, of the New Chivalry! Our words mount high, — from courtesy to courtli- ness, from courtliness to chivalry. The essence of chivalry is to look out for the little ones. We often talk of it as if it were a reverence due peculiarly to
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woman; and some fear that, should women enjoy political equality with men, chivalry would disappear. It would rather grow than disappear, even if that were all it meant, — ^ reverence of man for woman; for it is a deepening reverence, deeper far than the mediaBval sentiment, that underlies and prompts our modern movement in behalf of woman's rights, — and that which begins in a deepening feeling is not likely to endanger the expression of the feeling. But chivalry means far more than reverence of man for woman. It means reverence of strength for weak- ness, wheresoever found. Men often need more of it from a woman than they can possibly give to her. Chivalry is that in me to which every one whom I have power to injure can appeal, in virtue of that fact, with the unspoken plea, ''You must use your power to bless!" Wherever a child can be helped, wherever a stranger can be guided, or a friend who is shy be set at ease, wherever a weak brother can be saved from falling and its shame, wherever an old man's step can be made easy, wherever a servant's position can be dignified in his eyes, — is the chance for chivalry to show itself. I do not recognize a dif- ferent feeling in the one case from that which moves me in the other. The white-haired man, the tired errand boy, the servant-girl with the heavy burden, make the same kind of demand upon me; and all of them make more demand than the lady whose very silk will make people enough look out for her. They all challenge my chivalry, that is, my sense, not of
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generosity, but of obligation to help, just because I can give the help and here is one who needs it. Noblesse oblige!
And because we already see the Kingdom come in rare souls here and there, we may look forward to the time when chivalry shall have in common par- lance this broadened meaning; when to the employee in the store, to the poor in the shanty, to the servant in the kitchen, one will feel more honor bound to be thoughtfully attentive, so far as rights and feel- ings are concerned, than to any others in the circle of our friends. To be rough to social superiors may show something of the fool, but to be rough to infer- iors certainly shows in us something of the savage and the brute. ^'Whoever gives these little ones the cup," we read. The littler the one, the more imper- ious will become the impulse to offer it, the more im- possible it will be to be untender. Selfishness will have to be kept for equals, if for any. At present it is usually the other way. The lady often wears her pa- tience with her ribbons in the parlor, and her impa- tience with her apron in the basement; and at the house-door, in the shop, and in the court-room, the poor man is apt to have the fact of poverty stamped into him by those who to equals are urbane and to superiors right worshipful. And yet it takes so little to make us in humbler station or of humbler powers bless those who are above us, — so little to make those poorer than ourselves in any way bless us ! Not mon- ey, not gifts, but the simple evidence of respect for the
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station and those in it, of fellow-sympathy in their wants and their anxieties, of appreciation of their difScnlties — a pleasant, cheerful, equalizing word — will be a very Jesus-cup of cold water to many a rough-faced man and slovenly dressed woman in the forlorn districts of our city. When happiness can be manufactured so cheaply, and sells so high, and is always wanted in the market, it seems a pity that more of us do not set up in the business. Listen to this story from Tourgueneff's ''Poems in Prose:''
' ' I was walking in the street, : — a beggar stopped me, a frail old man. His tearful eyes, blue lips, rough rags, disgusting sores — oh, how horribly pov- erty had disfigured the unhappy creature! He stretched out to me his red, swollen, filthy hand; he groaned and whimpered for alms. I felt in all my pockets. No purse, watch or handkerchief did I find. I had left them all at home. The beggar waited, and his outstretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his dirty hand and pressed it: 'Don't be vexed with me, brother! I have nothing with me, brother.' The beggar raised his blood-shot eyes to mine, his blue lips smiled, and he returned the pressure of my chilled fingers. 'Never mind, brother,' stammered he ; ' thank you for this, — this too was a gift, brother.' — I felt that I, too, had received a gift from my brother."
Even our dumb animals appeal for "chiv- alry." They, too, are persons; they are "members"
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of our household. ''Treat a cow as if she were a lady/' is the inscription over the barn-door of one of our great Wisconsin dairymen. ^^My dog,'' ^^my horse," I say; but that dog belongs first to himself before he belongs to me: even his body does, and his soul is all his own. ' ' Show me a bill of sale from the Almighty!" said the Vermont judge to the slave- hunter claiming his ''property." Our creature's due is something behind mercy, — justice. It has rights. To become the "owner" of an animal is to enter into a contract with a fellow-creature, a very "little one," ' — and at once the Golden Rule and the laws of ethics begin to apply. And surely the census of these "lit- tle ones" will soon include the birds. Millions of them have been slain each year of late simply to deck our sister's hat! But the mother-heart of Eng- land and America is at letst beginning to remember that every soft breast, every shining wing, worn on a hat means that some tiny mother or father-heart, tiny, but capable of loving much and toiling for its brood, has been pierced through just to set the dec- oration there. And this in the nineteenth century of the Christ-love ! Will you not join that Total Ab- stinence society whose pledge for women is, "No mere ornament of mine shall cost a life;" whose pledge for men is, "No mere sport of mine shall cost a life, ^ — no death shall make my holiday?"
And now what shall we say of these cup-offer- ings in the Home ? That they are of more importance
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there for true house-furnishing than either money or good taste or both combined. What are they there at home? Pleasant smiles; gentle tones; cheery greetings; tempers sweet under a headache or a bus- iness-care or the children's noise; the ready bubbling- over of thoughtf ulness for one another ; — and habits of smiling, greeting, forbearing, thinking, in these ways. It is these things above all else which make a home '^a building of God, a house not made with hands;'' these that we hear in the song of *'Home, Sweet Home." Into a five hundred dollar shanty put strangers who begin to practise the habit of an- ticipative thoughtfulness for each other, and we have a ^'home." Put husband, wife and the three chil- dren into a fifty thousand dollar house, and let them avoid this interchange of gentleness, and we have only family-barracks.
Perhaps the best single test of a man lies in the answer to the question. What is he where he is most at home? If there, where he is most familiar and in power, considerateness lessens and tenderness evaporates and talk grows masterful, as if he had more rights than his wife, then the heart is shallow and the character is thin. At home one should be his best, his most graceful, most agreeable, — and more so ten years after marriage than ten days after. The same, of course, with her. Yet strange to think how many persons save their indifference for this one place that should be all tenderness; how many take pains with their courtQsy and geniality abroad, but
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at home glide into the habit of letting geniality be taken for granted instead of being granted. That tells in the course of years; for the cold moods, the silent ways, the seeming-harmless banterings, are the ways and moods that increase with the years. By and by, when the children are growing up and growing away from us, and we are growing old and would like kind words and looks a little more our- selves, we shall wish for our own sake and for theirs that we had done differently.
Men often think, ^^They love us and we know it; we love them and they know it." Nay, but it is not enough to have the love and do the duty in silence. We live not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of those we love. Out of the mouth, : — it is the spoken love that feeds. It is the kindness offered that furnishes the house. Even we men who push it coldly away want to have it offered somehow, sometime, by the wife, the sister, the children; now and then we want it visible. The presence of those children in the rooms is a constant importunity for the outspoken, not the silent, sort of love. Children bare of kisses seem as cold as children bare of clothes. We have seen chil- dren who evidently did not know how to kiss their fathers, — they went about it, when they had to, so shyly and awkwardly, — and were forgetting how to kiss their mothers. And as for women, it is a woman who writes, and all who have a mother or a sister know how truly she writes, — **Men, you to
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whom a woman's heart is entrusted, can you heed this simple prayer, 'Love me, and tell me so some- times^?^' Nathaniel Bowditch, author of the famous *' Navigator,'' added to his fame by formulating this law in the science of married life: '^ Whenever she came into my presence, I tried to express to her out- wardly something of the pleasure that it always gave me." A navigator, that, worth trusting! On the other hand, there are homes whose atmosphere sug- gests that the man has never told the woman that he loved her — but once, and that then he was exag- gerating. The loneliness of sisters unbrothered of their brothers ! The loneliness of wives unhusbanded of their husbands, — who go back to the store, the club, the lodge-room, night after night, and scarcely see their children to get acquainted with them save on a Sunday afternoon! Yes, and sometimes the loneliness of men! What half -tragedies, in homes we know, our thought falls on at these words ! Homes that began as fresh and bright with love as ours, with as rich promise of joy, with as daring a trust that the years would bring new sweetness and carry none away, — now, homes where the sweetness comes like the warm days in November, and the heart- numbness stays and grows like the cold. The lonely ones can hardly tell you why themselves; but you and I perhaps could tell them why. One writes, '^I have known a wife who, though she nursed his chil- dren, and took care of his household, and sat down with him to three daily meals, was glad to learn her
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husband's plans and purposes through a third per- son, to whom he had spoken more freely about the things of deepest concern than he could ever speak to her. The inexpressible pain caused by with-held confidence, the pressure and nightmare of a dumb, repressed life, soon did its work in changing her fresh and buoyant youth to gray-haired, premature age.'' Have you never seen a death, or at least a wasting sickness, like that which Helen Hunt called *^ Found Frozen"?
"She died, as many travelers have died Overtaken on an Alpine road by night, Numbed and bewildered by the falling snow; Striving, in spite of failing pulse and limbs Which faltered and grew feeble at each step. To toil up the icy steep and bear, Patient and faithful to the last, the load Which in the sunny mom seemed light.
And yet 'Twas in the place she called her home, she died! And they who love her, with the all of love Their wintry natures had to give, stood by And wept some tears, and wrote above her grave Some common record which they thought was true : But I who loved her first, and last, and best, — I knew /'^
Nor is it enough to have moods of affectionate expression. That would be like trusting for our water to an intermittent spring: the thirst will come when the water is not there. The habit of love-ways is the need. In many a home neuralgia or dyspepsia or the business-worry makes the weather within as changeable as it is without in a New England spring :
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sometimes a morning greeting all around that seems like a chorus to one's prayer, and then a table-talk of sympathy that sends one bravely out to his work, and one cheerily about her house, and the children brightly off to school, each with a sense that the best time in the day will be the time which brings them all once more together, — sometimes so, and sometimes a depot-breakfast, where no eye meets eye, and you hear yourself eat, and the stillness is broken by dish- jogglings and criticisms on what is in the dishes, or what ought to be and isn't, and then a scurry off like boys let loose from school.
How is it with ourselves? Bach one had better ask himself the question in the quiet, now and then. Are our homes more tender than they were a year ago, or has love grown dimmer in them? Are we closer to each other's hearts, or more wrapt up in silent selves? Do we spring more readily for those who call us by the home-names, or do the old sounds make eyes a little colder turn to look? Are the year's best festivals the anniversaries of the home-love, — the meeting-day, the engagement-day, the marriage- day, the birth-days and the death-days? It is not bread you chiefly owe your family. Father. It is not mended clothes, Mother. It is not errands done and lessons learnt. Children, that make your part. It is the way in which the part, whatever it be, is done that makes the part. The time comes when we would almost give our right hand, could we recall some harsh word, some indifferent, cutting manner,
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some needless, selfish opposition. Happy we, if the one gone out from our homes into the unseen Home has left us no such ache to bring the bitter tears! ' * Too late ! Too late to love him as we might, and let him know it!'' ^^Too late to let her know that we knew she was sweet!" Among all ^'might-have- beens'' does the wide world hold another one so sad? There is only one way to make that sad thought die, '— and that way is to clear untenderness utterly from heart and from the manner toward the others who still make home **home" to us; to re-double thought- fulness for them, and try to fill up the measure of the missed love there. When, at last, the tenderness of our bettered service is blossoming evenly, un- failingly, on the root of that old sad memory, per- haps we can feel self-forgiven and at peace.
One question more. Is it easy, after all, to offer simple ''cups of cold water"? This analysis makes us feel that unadulterated cold water may be a rarer liquid than we thought; and that if one offers it to "little ones," offers it habitually, offers it when thirsty himself, and seeks opportunities to offer it, the spring must lie not on the surface but in the depths of character. More than most other signs such cup-offering tells of a nature sweet and sound at center. It is comparatively easy under duty's lead to brace the will and go forward, dreading but unflinching, to some large self-sacrifice; but harder far, through sickness as in health, through tire as
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well as rest, through the anxieties as through the quiets of life, to be sure to lift a mere cup of water to even a brother's lips. If you are sure to do this for any body as for a brother, you are glorious !
So hard sometimes are these small deeds that there are cup-offerings of history and legend that have grown proverbial as types of self-forgetting. You remember the old Bible story about David's three heroes who brake the ranks of the Philistines to bring their thirsty king a cup of water, and what, when he received the draught, he did with it to honor them and God ; and that widow who gave the hungry prophet her last handful of meal, — and there was famine in that land. You may have read of the Mohammedan who lived in a city built amid a wide hot plain, and who made a wayside booth a few miles out on the highway, and daily went and filled a vase of water there for fainting travelers as they ap- proached,— and once it saved a life. And of Sir Philip Sidney all have heard, — how he, the wounded General, paused with his hand half -lifted to his lips, and gave his draught away to the private soldier, wounded worse, — the ''little one.'' Brother-souls to Sir Philip were the soldier in our own war, who, burning with thirst from a wound in the mouth, re- fused to touch the canteen, lest the blood from his torn lips should spoil the water for the wounded com- rades lying near; and that French soldier, who begged the surgeon to keep his ether bottle for men hurt worse than he, and stifled his own groan with
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his bloody handkerchief. Are such acts rare? No doubt: yet think not that they happen by the ones and twos. Probably no battle-field but in its red dew blossoms with these acts of brotherhood, — of angel- hood.
But when such things happen on any of the battle-fields of life, believe not, either, that the deeds begin upon those battle-fields, that they are the first heroism of their doers. Only souls wonted to sweet- ness and self-forgetting brim over with it at such hours. The little thing that makes a moment great is never all done at the moment. True — and what a prophecy it is for human nature ! — true, the average man, in health, will sometimes on an instant rise to the death-height of self -forgetting ; for a stranger's sake will leap into the sea to save, will leap before the rushing engine. But in his agony does a man reach even to the cup's height for another, unless the years behind have made him ready for his in- stant? Such little acts as Sidney's and our soldier's, therefore, live as the ideals of service, and set the standard of cup-bearing. They set the standard where Jesus would have set it; — where he did set it when in his own agony he prayed, ^* Father, let this cup pass from me, — yet not my will, but thine be done ! ' ' They uplift us to the understanding of his thought that whoso does these things to *' little ones" does them unto God.
And then the great thought comes full circle: we see that we can only do a deed to God by doing
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that deed for him, — only by offering ours as the hands with which it shall be done. Our human love for one another, and all our human help, is not less his for being ours. *^ God's tender mercy" is the name in heaven for what we call on earth — ^ ' a drink of water." Many dear things of his providence he hands to his little ones hy each other. Sometimes, how can he reach them else? And, sometimes, whom can he use to reach them but just you and me?
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"Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout/' — John xix : 23.
The unquestioned tendency of all science is to- ward Unity. With every advance in knowledge some apparent disorder becomes orderly ; the disjointed be- comes jointed. No matter how exceptional a fact may appear, when closely studied and mastered it quietly takes its place as a link in the endless chain of law; it becomes at once the effect of some antecedent cause, and the cause of some subsequent effect.
Professor Tyndall, in a presidential address to the British Association some years ago, said that the most important discovery of the nineteenth century was that known as the '^Correlation and Conservation of Force." This principle, so startling when first an- nounced, is now a matter of interesting but familiar demonstration to our public school children. Heat, light, electricity, chemical action, etc., instead of being distinct properties inherent in the matter that reveals them, are but varying modes of motion, differing phases of the undefined reality which science calls force. These manifestations, which a hundred years ago were supposed to be not only different but antag- onistic elements in nature, are now made to play hide-and-seek with one another under the hand of the experimenter. They change their guise as often and
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as promptly as the fabled gods of Greece. One of the first discoverers in this direction was our own Benja- min Thompson. He was born in Massachusetts in 1753 and sailed for Europe just before the Revolu- tionary War, and there became so eminent in science that he was titled. He took his new name from the New England village in which he taught at the age of seventeen, and is known in history as Count Rumford. While inspecting the boring of cannon in the Munich arsenal, he discovered that the increasing heat in the brass came not from some latent quality released by pressure, as was the common opinion, but that it was the transformation of the force applied to the drill. To state it in its most simple form, the heat came not from the brass, but from the horse that furnished the power. The muscular energy of the horse was changed into the motion of the drill, and this in turn became the heat of the brass. The same transformation takes place when the hands are warmed by vigorous rubbing. The sudden application of the brake to the rolling car wheel is changed into heat and oftentimes into light. You feed the tack machine, that cuts off six hundred tacks a minute, with a strip of cold iron, but if you pick up one of the tacks, made in the wink of an eye, it will burn you. The heated steam moves the piston. In the calcium light we have heat converted into light. In photography light becomes chemical action. The electric light that enables the diver to study ghastly scenes in the cabins of sunken ships ; the bar of iron that is charged with magnetism, when it is encircled
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with an electric current; the chemical affinity that precipitates the metallic solution upon the printer's form immersed in the copper bath, thus making the electrotype plates from which our books are printed, — are a few illustrations of the thousand ways in which this principle is utilized in the amenities and humanities of the industrial arts.
More sublime are the exemplifications of this principle in the great changes that take place in the laboratory of nature. Gravitation precipitates cos- mic matter into our planetary center. It becomes the heat and light of the sun. These are reconverted into the power that lifts the clouds out of the ocean, con- denses them on mountain sides, distils them again upon meadow and woodland. Under the guise of the laws of vegetation forests are reared to be again bur- ied, condensed and preserved in the coal-beds of the world. Gloomy bank-vaults are these in which are deposited the accumulated sunbeams of millenniums. Through the oven and the loaf these again become the human muscle and brain, the highest flowering of which is the poet's rhapsody and the lover's ecstasy. Through the cornfield the sun finds its way into the horse that strains the collar, and the hand of the man that holds the guiding rein.
The earlier nature-worshipers were poorly agreed in their devotions ; some worshiped the stars, more the sun, some revered the lightning, whilst still others were awed into fear or touched with reverence by meteoric stone, tree, flower, bird or beast. Now, there
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was meaning in their devotion, but little sense in their quarreling. It was the same divine mystery that consecrated each shrine ; the same divinity made holy each altar ; it was the same God, masking in all these ever shifting forms. In all their mumblings we read rude phrases of the universal ritual; the soul of man joining in the worship that will never be out- grown; a worship inspired by, and directed to, the reality which Herbert Spencer calls ' ' the cause which transcends our knowledge and conception, in assert- ing which we assert an unconditional reality without beginning and without end."
The history of religion as well as that of science proves that however ignorance, superstition and big- otry, may tug away at different sections of nature's robe, it, like the coat of Jesus, is ' ' woven from the top throughout without seam."
See how this law of unity weaves all human ex- perience into one seamless robe. The older school- books taught confidently of five senses, seeing, smel- ling, hearing, tasting, feeling; but the newer science resolves these five back into one and says they are all phases of the one sense, touch. When the waves of the unknown something are gathered upon the retina of the eye, the optic nerve reports the touch. When they strike more heavily and slowly the drum of the ear, the auditory nerve feels and reports the touch. Smell is the touch of the nostril, and taste the touch of the mouth. Language is the primal in- spiration. Even the bad grammar of the children
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frequently contains a subtle philosophy, and so we find that the intuition of speech anticipated the latest physiology, when it led us to confound the adjectives of sensation, as when we speak of ^^ sweet sounds," ^^soft pictures," ^^ smooth colors, ^^ rough smell" and ^^hard flavors," or as when the Scotchman says, ''I feel a smell."
Turning from body to mind, the true conception of soul leads us to distrust the so-called science of phrenology, that pigeon-holes man's brains like a modern postoffice. The bumps and lines within which certain faculties are supposed to act represent at best but a small side of the truth. Soul, like body, has an unquestioned unity. Strengthen it anywhere, and you contribute to the vitality of the whole. The solv- ing of a mathematical problem clears my brain for sermon writing. The musical power of the composer is heightened if he spend a part of his time in the laboratory. Doctor Holmes wrote better for his ex- perience in the dissecting-room. Nature must not be limited, as Wordsworth reminds us,
"Not only in the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air;
but in the mind of man there is
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.''
The Conservation and Correlation of Force is a spiritual as well as a material truth. There is an essential unity of the moralities, an identity of the
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virtues. The excellencies are correlated. Like the physical phenomena, light, heat and electricity, cour- age, truthfulness and humility play the one into the other. Says Bartol, '^We speak of cardinal virtues, but every virtue is cardinal." We talk too flippantly about *^ essentials" in morals. There are no unim- portant things in conduct, no '^non-essential" duties. In ethics as in phrenology we sacrifice truth to clear- ness when we tabulate our virtues, and speak of hon- esty, generosity, temperance, industry, as if it were possible to realize one without realizing all. The honest man has a keen sense of the value of a minute. The prompt man is industrious, the industrious man is never dissolute, the man that is never late at an engagement is pretty well along toward sainthood ; he will pay his debts; and he will not be afraid to die when the time comes.
All the virtues are correlated. True valor on the battle-field bespeaks a man that is tender to woman and gentle to children. Given an absorbing enthus- iasm in any direction, be it the perfection of a mach- ine, the cataloguing of fishes, the accumulating of honorable wealth, or the advancement of an idea, and you have a moral force that is translatable into all the virtues; a persistent energy that will overreach the boundaries of one life; like the induction that flashes the message of one telephone wire on to another, it is a virtue that will jump from soul to soul, will pass from home to home, from generation to generation.
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Some years ago I was invited to call upon a young man in one of our western towns, whose body was already made transparent by the ravages of con- sumption. His voice was nearly all gone, he could speak only in a whisper. He sat propped up in his chair, working diligently at a catalogue of the insects of Colorado, the study of which he had made while an invalid exile. He was anxious to complete his task before the final orders came that would muster him out of this earth service. He had no time for fore- boding or regret ; there were no shadows in the room, it was filled with a light that streamed from his earn- est eyes. And as I looked more closely I found that he was scarcely more than a boy; yet he had made himself an authority on the insects of at least three of our Western States. On his table were letters from men eminent in science in Europe and America, anx- ious to profit by the observations of this young man who was dying in a Western town. Soon after my visit the papers announced the death of the young scientist; they talked of a *^ career cut short," and ''lost to the world," ''disappointment" and so on, but, sad as early death is, there was far more joy than sor- row in his translation, more life than death in it all. What began in a boyish love of butterflies, grew, in twenty-five or six years, — what a short life ! — into a virtue that was transformed into the inquisitiveness of a thousand children in the neighboring schools ; it molded the better ambition of his city; it laid the foundations of an academy of science, which is one of
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the most creditable and best known of the kind in the west. The grave had no victory over such a life, and death had no sting to J. Duncan Putnam, the young and lamented scientist of Davenport, Iowa, who so early found a place among the
"choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end in self. In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. ******
* * This is Hfe to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow.''
If Professor Tyndall is right in speaking of this principle of ' ^ Conservation and Correlation of Force" as the most important scientific discovery of his cen- tury, is not the spiritual application of it quite as important to religion and morals? It is important because —
It simplifies the problem of living.
It multiplies the encouragements of life.
Let us attend to these separately. Many of the anxieties of conscience cease when we fully realize that doing good work anywhere for anything is weav- ing the seamless robe of character. Cumbersome codes of Egyptian laws and ancient customs were condensed
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into the Ten Commandments. Jesus reduced these ten into the one commandment of love. Rabbi Hillel, who was perchance an old man when Jesus was a babe, when asked by a disciple if he could state the whole law while standing on one foot, said, ''Yes, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'' A pupil asked Confu- cius if the whole law of virtue could be stated in one word; he promptly replied, ''Reciprocity!" — The golden rule in five syllables stated three hundred and fifty years before it was pronounced by the persuasive lips of the Nazarene ! Under this law of unity, prob- lems of salvation and patriotism are identical. One's duty to self, home and race are inseparable. Be a good workman and you are a good citizen. Be a good citi- zen and you are fitting yourself for heaven. "Be just before you are generous," is a favorite maxim with business men; but like many another shrewd Yankee saying it contains a large fallacy. Cease tearing the seamless robe. There is no generosity that is not grounded in justice, and certainly you can- not be just without being generous. The theologians have had a hard time of it in trying to reconcile in- finite justice with infinite love. In their trouble they missed the correlation ; no more intimately wedded are light and heat in the economy of the universe than are justice and love.
"All of God is in every particle of matter," said the old philosopher. So all of goodness is in every duty. "Let thy whole strength go to each." Believe in the lesson of the Seamless Robe, and re-
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ligion becomes to you a city like ancient Thebes with an hundred gates, through any one of which you may enter. ''All roads lead to Eome," was the old saying. The same may be said of heaven, if only the road be such as duty travels upon.
''How shall I be saved?" Not by creed or vicarious rite, but by doing well your simplest duty, attending to the nearest call. Rubenstein used to say, "I make my prayers at the piano." Agassiz dedicated ' ' Penikese ' ' to the study of nature by bow- ing his head in wordless prayer. The books say that Angelo's face grew radiant as the marble chips flew from his chisel. Each of the three divisions of Dante's immortal poem ends with the word "stars." Through the agonies of thought and the frenzy of poetic imagination did he win the celestial vision. These stories are illustrations of high piety, because any virtue is linked to all the virtues, and every excellency is a part of the great excellent.
I have already anticipated the second point. This simplicity brings cheer. This linking of the virtues encourages us. We are glad to take the task Providence places upon our doorstep this morning. Science interprets the gospel, — the good news of Jesus. It says to the astronomer, "Watch your stars ; " — to the farmer, ' ' Hold steady your plough ; ' ' — to the blacksmith, "Believe in your forge;" — to the house wife, "Glorify your needle, look well to your oven and attend to the babies. ' ' To one and all it says, "Pour generously the water of your life
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into any or all of these runlets and they will combine into brooks; the brooks will find the river, and the rivers all flow oceanward. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me."
In Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-One the north sent her boys to the battle front on the southern fields, where many of them, pressed by danger, won the apotheosis of character. Some time afterward it sent down another lot of men in the name of Chris- tianity, to scatter tracts, to pray for and superintend the religious interests of these boys. Some of these latter men were the callow fledglings of the divinity school, — wanting in the courage to stand where brave men in those days should stand, if higher duties did not prevent. I have seen cowards with shame- less impudence undertake to teach heroes religion; nerveless drones talking piety to those who every day carried their lives in their hands for an idea. There was more saving virtue and heavenly grace in the self-control that kept vigilant the tired boy on his midnight watch, than in a carload of this poorer kind of Christian Commission men that flocked to the
"Field that was farthest from danger,"
with their haversacks crammed with the publications of the American Tract Society. The sentinel was developing a virtue that stopped not with the sur- render of Robert E. Lee. It went on to conquer the prairies of Kansas and Dakota, and to touch with
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intelligence the wild canyons of the Rocky Mountains. The valor of the field appeared again in generous forbearance toward a fallen foe. The mothers that kept back the tears that might discourage, the girls who wrote the tear-stained pages full of laughter that the camp might be less irksome, were unintention- ally making contributions to the centennial glories that came later.
Slowly but surely is this doctrine of the Seam- less Robe investing consciously all sections of society. Some years ago I heard this doctrine quaintly but forcibly urged in the legislature of Indiana. An ap- propriation toward building a belt railway around the Capital city was under discussion. A representative from one of the rural counties of the state, some- what noted for its oratory, had the floor. After con- sidering the commercial importance of the scheme, waxing warm he met the argument of the opposition that it was a local interest, consequently not a matter for state patronage, as follows:
"Gentlemen, I represent Jackson County, a great way from the city of Indianapolis, but I support this 'yer bill, for I maintain that it makes no difference whether you live on the waist-band or way down in the pocket, it all goes the same to the strength and glory of the pantaloons, you can't holp Indianopolis without holping Jackson County: it all goes to the holp of the great state of Indianer, the third agrieult'rul state in the Union."
Judging from the current discussions in relig- ious conferences, I suspect that there is many an ac- complished Doctor of Divinity in this country who
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fails to see as clearly or state as tersely the doctrine of the Seamless Eobe that invests humanity, as this legislator. Be honest, then, be loyal; above all be sensible and loving, for these contribute to the glory of earth and the peace of heaven.
Let us study the other side of this law of morals. The vices of life are interchangeable, as well as its virtues; sins are transmittable as well as graces. Moral bluntness in one thing dulls the conscience in all directions. One perversity renders the soul cal- lous to many evils. The vices are all of a family, : — children of the same parentage. Every sin in the cal- endar is a ,burning jet of vicious gas, flowing through under-ground channels from the same retort which supplies the baneful fluid that burns in other and distant jets. Here as elsewhere it is dangerous busi- ness to classify. Nature is slow to recognize lines. We must remember that all vice is vicious and that every sin is sinful. Let us talk plainly. When I speak of the sins of dishonesty and theft, hearers are thoughtful; but if at the same time I speak of the sins of tardiness, procrastination and loafing, they smile and think I have made a ^'good point;" — as if these were not vices more nearly related than elec- tricity and magnetism; as if he who goes through life tardily does not go through life dishonestly. He robs his fellow-beings of the most valuable commodity God entrusts to his care, — time ; so valuable is time that God gives but a moment of it at once, and never
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gives that moment but once in all eternity. Again, when I talk of harlotry, women hang their heads in thoughtful shame, but when I speak of extrava- gance in dress, a vulgar love of display, a wicked sacrifice to fashion, a desire to merit the social rank in which character does not form the chief test, people smile and think the preacher is riding his hobby, — although it is a matter of scientific demonstration that these latter vices are being daily transmuted into the former as directly as motion is converted into heat or the solar ray into vital energy. That the habitual use of intoxicants is a sin against the physical and social economies of life is generally ad- mitted in these days; but when, backed by the most deliberate science, it is urged that the habitual use of tobacco is a sin against the body and society, even women smile as though it were ^'another hit;" and if I undertake to seriously apply the simplest prin- ciples of morality to the affairs of the oven and the kettle, to apply the commonplaces of physiological science established beyond a doubt, as any intelligent physician will tell you, the smile becomes a laugh. We are shocked and alarmed when the laws against careless use of gunpowder are violated and lives and property endangered thereby, but wives introduce into their drawing-rooms, mothers carry on their side- boards, even churches make sacramental uses of that which carries greater social dangers, and which is a thousand times more destructive of life and property than gunpowder and all it kindred explosives.
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All this proves that we do not yet adequately understand the sermon of the Seamless Robe. We do not sufSeiently realize the correlation of the vices and the conservation of evil. We need more clear thinking. A stronger intellectual grasp of this law alone will bring finer moral sensibilities. People trifle only with what they consider trivial. These things mentioned disconnectedly may be trifling, but the connection is certain, God is persistent and omni- present. Science is more successful than religion in enforcing this lesson of the Seamless Robe. The Rip Van Winkle *^we won't-count-this-once'' cannot ease the enlightened conscience; every ''once'' is counted by nature's detective. Every violence is recorded; every shock to love bargains for hate somewhere.
It requires a scientific test less delicate to demon- strate the inevitable connection between domestic ex- travagance and forgery, bad cookery and inebriety, than is necessary to prove the relations between elec- tric currents and the circulation of the blood.
I have said that the virtues of war were trans- mitted into the graces of peace, but the dissipations of camp were also perpetuated. The old demon of slavery changed its name and reappeared in political corruption ; it mounted the stump and dealt in parti- san swagger, in the venom of party hatred and sec- tional prejudice. The jay-hawking of the march ripened into plunder of public funds for private ends, the shameless appropriation of national domain to personal gains.
THE SEAMLESS EOBE
"Out of evil, evil flourishes, Out of tyranny, tyranny buds."
He who suppresses his conscience just a little, enough to take the road of expediency into the citadel of success, has taken the left-hand road that leads direct to all the miseries. The woman who expects to atone for a flippant word by subsequent grace, has been flirting with all the disgraces. *^Take home one of Satan ^s relations, and the whole family will fol- low, ' ' is an old proverb that fits into the new science. When the correlation of moral forces is better under- stood, we shall have fewer gluttons preaching temper- ance ; fewer dyspeptics urging moderation ; fewer gos- sips insisting on charity, less bigotry mistaken for piety, and fear of hell will be less often taken for religion.
The boldest synthesis is yet to be made. The final thing to be said is that in the spiritual life there are not two seamless robes, but one. I may have seemed to assume a line where no line finally remains : not only are the virtues correlated, and the vices in- terchangeable, but the vices and the virtues are in- vested with the same seamless robe. There is a law for lawlessness. Sin is no abnormal cloud thrown in between man and God by some regnant devil. What is it, then? Now it is weakness, deficiency of force; it is darkness, the absence of light; it is cold, the absence of heat. Again, it is misdirected energy: it is fire on the house-top, and not on the hearth; it is
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the river overflowing its banks; it is undisciplined power. ^^Good in the making," says Emerson. *^That rough movement toward the good which we call evil," is Leigh Hunt's phrase. The forces that tend even to sin are sacred forces. Shall we not heroically labor for the control of the horse upon which we are to ride into strength and glory? Wel- come the awful rapids. Welcome the Thousand Isles and the terrible dangers therefrom. Give me that tremendous responsibility which compels me to steer so near disaster that I may thereby sail the St. Lawrence of life, and find at last the vastness of the ocean. We will seek not to imprison, but to liberate energy. We will not try to grow our oak in a flower- pot, but will plant our acorn in the middle of the field. Religion has no more use for a broken spirit than a general has for a jaded horse. Better a sin- ning Saul of Tarsus than a sinless Nicodemus. Bet- ter a wayward Loyola than a submissive Simon Sty- lites, as the sequel of their lives proves. Better a fiery France than a quiescent Spain. Not too much pride, but too little; not too much freedom, but too little; not too much love of life and the good it con- tains have we, but too little. By directing, not sup- pressing, the forces within us, shall we realize and apply the gospel of the Seamless Robe.
^^The Seamless Robe!" — ever suggestive in its symbolism, first, of the inclusive spirit of the Master who wore it ; less mindful of its value than the Roman soldiers. The sects have torn the Christian unity that
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ought to be based upon his words and life. Again, it symbolizes the still larger unity of Universal Reli- gion,— that golden cord that binds all humanity ^^ Around the feet of God," of which Christianity is but one strand, albeit the best, because it is the ten- derest, the strongest because it is the most silken. This robe may symbolize the continuous existence, the endless life, a robe woven from the threads of time and eternity. This time let it stay with us, as a sym- bol of the highest truth, the inclusive unity, the uni- verse, the universality of law, the indivisible and eternal God. Blessed be science for its enforcement of this lesson. Above the voice of prophets do we hear its tones saying: ,
"Whosoever shall break the least of these command- ments and teach men to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful in that which is much."
Realizing this, duty becomes the Seamless Robe. It becomes the unbroken and imperishable will of God, and life is given us to weave this coat without seam by filling all our days with faithfulness, and our years with loyalty.
"All service ranks the same with God. If now, as formerly, he trod Paradise, His presence fills Our earth.
*******
Say not 'a small event!' why small? Costs it more pain that this ye call
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A ^great event' should come to pass, Than that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in, or exceed!"
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A fossil lies before me on the table where I write, — a little trilobite, that serves now for a paper- weight. There he lies just as he stopped in his last crawl or swim some million years ago, the body half- bent, the stony eyes still staring! One can not help wondering what stopped him, how it happened, and what else had happened in that far-off life when those black rings were snpple and the eyes saw. I wish I knew his story. You have the Venus of Milo, perhaps, on the bracket in your parlor, — that proud marble beauty, whose mystery her keepers in the Louvre have in these latter years been trying to guess anew. It would be pleasant if we had some record how she came under ^Hhat little Melian farm,'' from whose furrows she was unburied, so blurred with stain and maimed and aged, but able still to make men mute with delight. We wish we knew who felt the first delight of her, when she was young; who gave her early praise; in whose workshop she grew to such majesty of form.
Somewhat so is it with the old legends in our Bible. We wish we knew how, when, where, by whom, they came into existence. There are a hundred of them, some beautiful, some uncouth, some villain- ous in look. Now they lie fossilized in myths, — mys-
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terious fragments, like old statues. Once they were living and moving; once they were coming into be- ing as beliefs. These stories have had a life-history in men's minds and hearts. Take the Jacob story (Gen. xxxii. 24-31), where Jacob wrestles through the lonely night with the angel. To trace its origin we should have to go back to very ancient times, when men were on right familiar terms with Deity, and when the Hebrews still had many gods, and Jehovah, not yet the One, was but the Arch-Power who helped their tribe. What the beginning of this special story may have been, probably no one will ever tell except in guesses. Possibly a dim, mis- shaped tradition of some actual event lies hidden in it. Perhaps, like similar Scandinavian stories of the giants challenging the god Thor, it had a long pre- existent saga-life from mouth to mouth, before it reached a record. Its origin may have been an early bard's attempt to account for the people's name of *' Israel," '^Prince with God," by fathering it on a brave deed of some ancestor. But whatever its source, to trace it we would have to leave the mental climate of to-day, and, turning back, re-enter an atmosphere where the faith of the people crystallized itself in legends of the supernatural as naturally as the Jan- uary mist deposits itself in snow-flakes.
Such legends rise in many ways. We find their relics strewing the beginnings of all literatures, em- bedded in all old faiths. And this Bible of ours would be the rock without the fossils, would be that
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Melian farm without the statue, if it did not hold these things. The trilobite is no sacred beetle to us; but I regard mine with some awe, — it is so much older than I ! We do not worship the Venus ; but she is a joy forever in America as in old Greece. Let us use old Bibles in the same way, bringing that kind of reverence, and none other, that each thing in them deserves from to-day. Let their beautiful things be beautiful, let their wicked things be wicked, let the curious things be curious, and the true things, the grand things, be true and grand. The book is but the rock or the farm; what lies in it gives the worth. And, as a whole, the worth of this, our Bible, is very great. Much besides the fossils and the fragments lies therein. Even they, when they no longer are believed as fact, serve still as poetry, supplying hints and emblems for the spiritual experience, — as with the very example cited, the wrestling that brought blessing. What exhales and vanishes as Scripture floats far and wide as hymn, — like that other Jacob story now sung in the ^^ Nearer, my God, to thee.'' What falls from belief as story of Jacob or of Jesus, begins to fill a still higher, wider place to us as his- tory of the human mind in some old attitude of worship.
The gist of our Jacob legend is simply this: Jacob wrestles through the lonely night with a strange, strong Power, that maims him; but, instead of yielding, he clings and wrestles on, and will not let go wrestling, until he has extorted a blessing from his
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hurter. And when, in turn, he asks the stranger's name, no name is given him; but Jacob guesses it is his God, and calls that night's struggling-place, ''God's Face." And he limps off in the morning lame in his thigh, but a crowned victor; and for his prowess wins a new name, '^ Israel," or '* Prince with God."
Here we have something very fine, — a meaning universal, and fresh as yesterday's struggle with our own life's difficulty. The teaching is that Wrestling is the condition of Blessing, — that the long, deter- mined clinch brings coronation, and makes a new man of us, — maimed, perhaps, but still a nobler and stronger man than before the struggle.
A most aged doctrine ? Yes : all the old religions ring with it. Most common-place? True: the ele- ments of heroism are very common-place. Those short two worded sentences from Paul (2 Cor. vi. 4-10; iv. 8, 9, 16-18), that sound like leaping bugle-calls from one in the front, are just it,: — this aged doctrine about struggle. Half the chapters of Epictetus are battle-music on this one theme. But because each one has to find out for himself how true the doctrine is, and has to find it out a great many times before the faith becomes as much a part of him as it is good to have it, let us draw it out and say it over once again.
How do we treat our difficulties? That is the question that has no second. It stands all by itself in its importance. The answer to it gives our destiny. How do we treat our difficulties? Do we take their
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maiming only, or do we win their blessing too? The question that has no second.
Di&Gulties, not difficulty. They are many, and of different kinds, although their hurt in essence is the same, and their gift in essence is the same.
1. First of all rises up that difficulty known as the Inherited Burden, You probably have one. A dull brain perhaps, or some weak organ in your body, or the outlaw passion in your temperament, the brute in the family blood that ought to have been tamed by the grandfathers. We will not complain ; but who would not have made himself a little brighter, had his opinion been asked at the right time ? How many of us, forty years old, but have ached in the same spot where our mothers ached, and because they did, and been able from that ache to predict afar off which of the wheels of life will perhaps stop first and stop all the rest? And who can help sometimes charging the hardness of his life-struggle, or his failure in the struggle, to those two persons in the world whom he loves dearest?
We will not complain, I say; but it is getting easier every day to complain weakly of this burden and yield to it in miserable self-surrender, because we are just finding out, by the help of the doctors and physiologists and the new philosophy of organic nature, how much we may in perfect honesty attri- bute to it. The old dogma said that we inherited our sin, and that all our woe was brought into the world with that garden-sin in Eden ; and this dogma
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was a dim hint of the great fact recognized by our evolution doctrine of today. But, after aU, that gar- dener was so far away that we could not practically reach him to lay our personal responsibility off upon his shoulders. To-day we are learning to see right in our homes our Adam and our Eve, who have actually inlaid our body, mind and tastes with their bequests ! And as this knowledge grows, weak hearts are likely enough to abate their trying, because (they say to themselves), ^^He and she are to blame, not I.'' And one effect of our evolution theory may be to make more cowards and renegades in life.
Weak hearts and renegades, indeed! As if the knowledge did not teach this rather, : — that, if the responsibility be less, the fate is even stronger than we thought, and needs the stouter wrestle; and this, too, — that, if in one way the responsibility be less, it is greatening in two other ways. Knowing the ten- dencies received from father and mother, we know the special dangers that are threatening in our natures, and therefore, what we mainly have to guard against. Again, to-day we knowingly, no longer unknowingly transmit our influence to our children, — and men and women awake to suffering they inflict are doubly hol- den for it. This new emphasis upon inheritance, truly understood, is both comforting and spurring. Com- forting, for to those who mourn over-much at what they see in their little ones, thinking it all their per- sonal bequest, it says: ^*You are responsible only for the half or the quarter part of this : for the whole an-
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cestry has been counted into you, and through you reaches yours." A comfort that, when, after all our trying, our boy turns out badly, or our daughter dies young after suffering six years. And the new knowl- edge spurs, because it says to parents, ^^For part of your children's birth-fate you are responsible, since by patient energy your dull brain can be a little quick- ened, your blood can purify itself, your body can make its weak places somewhat stronger, and, above all, your unbalanced temperament can be controlled and trained and much ennobled; and if you make these self-improvements firmly yours, they may be largely handed on to them/' That we are not fit to have our children, unless we have trained ourselves beforehand for their birth, is what our new evolu- tion doctrine says to us; and thereby it will grad- ually become a great uplifting and salvation to the race.
The earnest wrestler, knowing all this, will never wholly surrender to the poorness of his brain or his body or his temperament. Not to poorness of the brain: for that dull head that we inherit may go with days that shall leave us perfect in self-respect, although dull-headed. No sight is more impressive than that of humble self-respecting workers, boys or girls, or men or women, who, day in, day out, do their duty in the quiet stations where small talent hides them, respresenting the Moral Law incarnate in their little corners. Not to the poorness of one's body: what sight more beautiful than the patience,
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the self-forgetfulness, the wide and eager pity for others' trouble, which suffering sometimes generates in the life-long sufferer who bears her weakness great- ly, although in other ways her service has to be the service of those who cannot even ** stand,'' but have to lie, ^^and wait"? Who has not known or heard of some mighty invalid who found sphere and mission- field on a sick bed?
Not even to the poorness of one's temperament will the earnest wrestler yield. There is one example in the world more touching and inspiring even than these last. It is that of a man wrestling hard with his inherited burden when it takes the form of a Besetting Sin, — which is very apt to be that brute in the family blood. But even if it be a devil of his own wanton raising, we watch him, we cheer him, we tell him we know all about it, and that he is doing nobly, and helping us in our struggle; we pity him, if he falls; we reverence him as holy, if he wins. Let such a straggler know that we know he is the hardest fighter of us all. And if he wins, his be- setting temptation actually turns into his guardian angel, and blesses him through life. Our besetting sin may become our guardian angel — let us dare to say it ! Let us thank God that we can say it ! This sin that has sent me weary-hearted to bed, and des- perate in heart to morning work, that has made my plans miscarry until I am a coward, that cuts me off from prayer, that robs the sky of blueness, and the earth of spring-time, and the air of freshness, —
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and human faces of friendliness, — this blasting sin that has made my bed in hell for me so long, — this can he conquered, I do not say annihilated, but — better than that — conquered, captured, and trans- figured into a friend: so that I at last shall say, ^^My temptation has become my strength ! for to the very fight with it I owe my force." We can treat it as the old Romans treated the Barbarians on their frontiers, — turn the border-ruffians within ourselves into border-guards.
Am I speaking too confidently? But men have done this very thing, and why not you and I ? Who has not his besetting sin to be tranfigured thus? But it will take the firmest will we have, the clearest aim, the steadiest purpose. It must be for the most part a lonely Jacob-struggle. The night will cer- tainly seem long. And yet, in our clinch, the day may dawn before we think it, and we shall have won the benediction and earned the name of ^ ^ Israel, ' ' ** Prince with God,'' and learned that even besetting temptation may be '^ God's Face," — but that wrest- ling, and wrestling only, is the condition of such bless- ing.
2. These are forms of that main difficulty called the ^^ Inherited Burden." There are others close akin, called by the general name -^Hard Lot.'' ' ' Hard Lot, ' ^- — again the very name is a challenge to our sleeping powers. The hard lot called Poverty, Ignorance, Narrow Conditions, Accidents, is wait- ing to give us, after the struggle, Temperance^ Dili-
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gence, Fortitude, Concentration. But after the struggle; that is, as we wrestle with those condi- tions, these elemental powers are waked in us and slowly trained, and at last are left ours, — our in- struments by which to carve out life's success and happiness.
A boy in the town has no chance for education like the boys of richer fathers in the neighborhood, — no college, or high school even; or the yearning for education has come after the school-days are over. Will that boy, like Theodore Parker, the farmer's son in Lexington, turn the pasture huckle- berries into a Latin Dictionary? or like Chambers, the great Edinburgh publisher, will he learn his French and science in the lonely attic, after the fourteen hours ' work at the shop are done ? Will he, like Professor Tyndall, rise every morning, for fif- teen years, and be at his books by five o'clock? A girl in the town seeks for a ' ' one-thing-to-do ' ' to save herself from a frittered life. Harder yet it is for her than for the boy, for social custom is against her. Will she be daring, and not only daring but persistent? The history of achievement is usually the history of self-made men and self-made women; and almost invariably it is the history of tasks, — if not imposed by the hard lot of circumstance, then self-imposed. The story of genius even, so far as it can be told at all, is the story of persistent indus- try in the face of obstacles ; and some of the standard geniuses give us their word for it that genius is lit-
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tie more than industry. A woman like '^George Eliof laughs at the idea of writing her novels by inspiration. ^^ Genius," President Dwight used to tell the boys at Yale, '^is the power of making ef- forts/'
A man sees some great wrong in the land. No money, no friends, little culture, are his. He hesi- tates, knowing not what to do; but the wrong is there; it burns in him till somehow he finds a voice to cry against it. At first only a faint sound heard by a few who ridicule, and by one or two who say, ^'Amen.'' And from that beginning, through the ridi- cule and violence, '^in necessities and distresses, in labors and watchings and fastings,'' he goes on, ^'as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing all things," till men are persuaded and confounded, and the wrong is trampled down, and the victory is his ! Such things have been done within our knowledge. The two men who started the anti-slavery movement in this land were a deaf saddler and a journeyman printer, both of them poor in everything but daunt- less purpose. At Philadelphia, a few years ago, a band of gray-headed men met to look back fifty years and talk over their morning battle-fields in that great cause accomplished. What a lesson of faith those Abolitionists have taught the nation, — faith that a relentless wrestler can win blessings from the Hard Lot and the Untoward Circumstance!
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to throw us: he bears the name Ov.r Failures, How well ke know him ! What a prince of disheartenment he is! What arguments he has to prove to us that trying is no more of any use ! He is our arch-devil. And he, too, and because arch-devil, will be our arch- angel, if we will have it so, — the one who warns and guides and saves. Half, two-thirds, of our best ex- perience in life is his gift.
Look out along any path of life at the state- liest figures walking in it. They are, most of them, figures of men that have failed more than once. Yes, any path. *'It is very well," said Fox, the great English orator, 'Wery well for a young man to dis- tinguish himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be satisfied. Show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and has yet gone on and I will back him/' Every one has heard of Disraeli sitting down writhing under the shouts of laughter with which his dandy first speech was re- ceived in Parliament. *^I have begun several times many things, and have succeeded in them at last,'' he said ; ^ ' I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.'' And it did come to even a dandy, who could ' ' begin many times. ' ' When John Quincy Adam's Diary was published not very long ago, it was strange to find him, as a young man, lamenting his absolutely inability to speak extem- pore. An ineradicable difficulty, constitutional, he thinks, — and he died known as ''the old man elo- quent." These happen, all of them, to be the words
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of orators; but success in all lines of life is reached, or not reached — ^is lost — ^by exactly the same prin- ciple. Whatever the high aim be, ^'strait is the gate and narrow the way" which leads to success in it. The great chemist thanked God that he was not a skilful manipulator, because his failures had led him to his best discoveries. The famous sculptor, after finishing a great work, went about sad: **What is the matter r' asked his friend. ^'Because for once I have satisfied my ideal, and have nothing left to work toward. ' ' He wanted to fail just a little ! Said a successful architect of the young men in his of- fice, who kept on copying his designs, ^'Why do they do the things they can do? why don^t they do the things they can^tf Miss Alcott wrote and burnt, and burnt and wrote, until at last her ^^ Little Men and Women'' came out of the fire. By the failure in art, by the failure in science, by the failure in business, by the failure in character, if we wrestle on, we win salvation. But all depends upon that if. Our failures pave the road to ruin or success. *'We can rise by stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things," or those dead selves can be the stones of stumbling over which we trip to our de- struction.
4. Again, have we ever known what it is to wrestle with Wrong done to us, — wrong so bitter, perhaps, that the thought brings shadows on the face and seems to be a drop of poison in the heart? And have we learnt from it, as many have, what
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Paul's ^* Charity" chapter means; what inward sweetness forgiveness has; how we can almost bless our injnrer for the good he has done us in thus teaching us to know our weakness and in calling out our better nature to conquer our poorer? *'It is royal to do well and hear oneself evil spoken of," said an old sage. Royal, — but blessed to be able to have that feeling toward the evil speaker, which is not contempt, and is not pride, and is not wholly pity even, but real and living friendliness welling up through our wound toward him by whom the wound was made.
5. Have you never wrestled with Religious Doubts? Sometimes not the bottom of our knowl- edge only, but the very bottom of our faith in goodr ness, seems to give out. Perhaps some fearful tragedy has happened. Death or pain on its mighty scale has stalked abroad; or some great sin is triumphant, and the dishonest man, the mean man, the selfish man is exalted, while goodness has to hide its head; and it seems as if it were madness to talk about the Eternal Righteousness. Perhaps our own life's dis- appointments have soured our hearts and blurred our eyes, till the brightest scene of pleasantness can wear November grays, and we say, ' ' It is always win- ter, and never spring, to us." Perhaps dear old ideas, around which our gratitude and reverence have twined, are in decay, as new light breaks in from undreamed-of realms of thought,: — from an evolution theory, upsetting and resetting all our his-
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tory of providence; from a theory of mechanism in mind and morals, which seems at first glance to turn ourselves into physical automata, and to dim all hope of a life beyond the body; from a vision of Law, Law, Law, till we see no room in the universe for a Lawgiver, no place in our experience for sing- ing songs and looking gladly upward. And if, hav- ing felt these doubts, you have wrestled with them, not bidding them go, not letting them go, but hold- ing on to them, and thinking deeper, reading farther, looking more patiently and less dogmatically, — above all, living more purely and unselfishly, — ^have you not found the chaos turning at least by patches into cosmos, as the brown fields of April take on their green? Have you not caught, here and there, a vision, which for the moment made the old peace come again? Have you not found that life, the greater bringer of mysteries, was somehow also the great solver of mysteries? If not you, many a man has thus ^^ beaten his music out" from the solid ar- guments of despair; has known what it is to pass from drifting doubts, not into certainties, but into Trust that has to be spelled with capitals, if printed ; Trust that can tell its meaning best not by any expla- nation, but by cheer and serenity, and a feeling as of awed triumph in life and in death!
6. Once more. Death: have you ever wrestled with the death-sorrow till you know its inner sweet- ness? sweetness greater than all, I would almost say. The loss is loss. We say, perhaps, ^'It is their gain,"
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and wish to be willing ; but we are not willing. Our hurt gets no relief. The days go by, and the empti- ness is as empty, and the silence as silent, and the ache as relentless in its pain. What shall we do? Our friends look on, and wish that they could help us. And they know that help will come, because to their own wrestling it once came. They know that the heart of this pain is joy indeed. And if you ask how it came about in distress so very sore as yours, their differing words will probably amount to this, — that such pain can be stilled in one way only, and that is, by being more actively unselfed, by doing more for others right through one's sadness, by try- ing hard to do simply right. It takes a wrestle, yes ; but they will assure us it is an inward fact, whose chemistry they do not pretend to understand, that helpfulness and duty done at such a time deepen and sweeten into something within ourselves that almost seems a new experience from its exceeding peace. It is not time making us ' ' forget, ' ' — nay, just the oppo- site : we know that somehow this new peace is vitally connected with that pain; and, at last, we come to think of them and feel them together. Later, we be- gin to call it peace, and forget that it was pain. And, by and by, the hour in memory which is our linger- ing-place for quiet, happy thoughts is the very one which is lighted by a dead friend's face. It is our heaven-spot; and, like the fair city of the Apocalypse, it hath no need of sun, for the glory of that face doth lighten it. Perhaps, as life goes by,
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there will be more than one of these green pastures with still waters, in our inner life. And then we shall find out that each death-sorrow is unique. From a brother's or a father's loss one can but dimly under- stand, I suppose, a mother's feeling when her child has vanished. Each death is so unique because each life and love has been unique. No two deaths there- fore, will bless us just alike, and we can still name our new strength or our new trust from the separate love: it still is ''Katie's" gift, or it is ''Father's" gift. And thus the very highest and deepest and holiest of our experience in some way wear the like- ness of those friends that we have lost.
It is only another instance of the correlation of Pain with Gain — through struggle; the correlation of difficulty with exaltation — through w'restling: through the struggle, through the wrestle, through our will facing the hard thing, clinching it, never letting go, until we feel the gladness crowning us. We speak of the "ministry" of sin, of suffering, of disappointment, of sorrow, and speak truly; but none of these "ministers," not one, until they have been mastered. First our mastery, then their ministry. We say, ' ' The Lord hath chastened us : " yes, but by summoning us to a wrestle in which it is our part never to let go! It is not the mere difficulty that exalts. None of these six or seven things that I have spoken of, neither the Inheritance, nor the Temptation, nor the Hard Lot, nor the Failure, nor the Injury, nor the Doubt, nor the Death, suffices by
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itself to crown us. They may just as likely crush or warp or embitter us. They do crush very many ; and if they do not crush or embitter you or me, it is be- cause we have used our wills against them. They only give the opportunity, and we decide whether it be the opportunity for bondage and maiming, or for the blessing and the new name, ''Israel." All de- pends on us.
On us, — but only, after all, as all things which we do depend on us. On us, because the Powers which are not ourselves work jointly with us. Not what we can not do only, — as making roses, earth- quakes, solar systems, — but all that we can do also, — breathing, eating, thinking, — confesses that Power. And as in every heart-beat the universal forces of chemistry come into play, as in every footstep the universal force of gravitation lays hold of us to keep us poised, as in every common sight and sound the universal force of light and the universal laws of undulation are invoked, as in all ways physical we only live and move and have our being iq virtue of that which is not we, — so is it with these still more secret, not less real, experiences. Surely, not less real are these inward correlations, this moral chem- istry, by which, at the working of a man's will, pain is changed iato patience and pity and cheer, tempta- tion into safeguard, bitter into sweet feelings, weak- ness into strength, and sorrow into happier peace, at last. Are these facts one whit less real than the facts of the body's growth? A thousand hours of
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struggle in every year attest the facts for each one separately. Here, also, as in the body's breathing and digestion, a Great Life joins on to our little life, maintaining it. It is we and the Not- We with us. Call it by what name we will, we depend, and can depend, on an Infinite Helpfulness in all our trying. The success we seek may fail for many reasons ; but I feel sure that Eternal Powers adopt every right endeavor; or rather, that every right endeavor plays into Eternal Powers of Right, and is thereby fur- thered toward that success which will really most bless you or me, the trier. If angels do not rejoice over us repenting and bear us up, as the Bible says, it is because the very Present Help that bears us up has a greater name than *^ angel,'' and is nearer than the heavens. No, not on us alone does all depend, — because — ^because we never are alone ! I suspect that, followed to its deepest source, our faith in the Good- ness of the universe will be found breaking out from some such private experience, solitary in each one, but sure to come to each one that will have it, — that inward blessing follows pain and struggle.
But it helps our faith to trace in others also this — law of transfiguration, shall I call it? And if we wish such help, whom shall we look at? Two classes. First, the '* self-made men," as they are styled, because from hard material they have forged their own success. They are our models of courage and persistence, of diligence and fortitude and tem- perance, of force and concentration. By these signs
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they have conquered. We all recognize their vic- tory, and gladly do them reverence. Their epitaphs might read, ^' These men by wrestling accomplished all they undertook."
But more reverently yet I look upon another class, — the men who have tried as faithfully and from the hard material have 7iot won great success, so far as we can see; the women who have worked, and in working have never dreamed of gaining spe- cial victory. Perhaps they lacked some needful element of force; but, quite possibly, all they lacked is a little selfishness. The world knows little of them. They count among the common lives, possibly even among the failures. Emphatically, these do not accomplish all they undertake. Only the few who are nearest know of their striving, and how truly the striving has crowned their brows. They them- selves are not aware of coronation. They themselves only know that they have tried from day to day, and never seemed to do the day's whole duty, and that life has brought many hard problems, — but that now the problems are getting solved, and that it is quite possible to be happy, and yet have failed. They are humble usually, with an air of wistfulness in their eyes and in their talk, as of men who have been comforted by aspiration, not attainment. They have learnt to hope that
"All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, All I can never be,
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All men ignore in me, — This I am worth to God."
They have learned to hope that. They have learned that they will never do great things. Still, if any hard thing is to be done, specially any burden to be borne, you will find them already there at work when you have made up your mind to go. They are great common-helpers. They think they know nothing, and truly they are not geniuses ; yet bright people in straits have a habit of coming to them for advice. Not rich, yet men and women whose practi- cal aid in trouble is counted on without the asking. They are rare friends, because their minds are so rich with life's experience, their hearts so sweet with it. They speak the fitting word to us in our self- building, because there was once a scaffolding, long since taken down, by which they built that same part in themselves, and they remember all about the difficulty. They are better than a poem by Brown- ing, or even that letter of Paul or the chapter in Epictetus, because in them we meet the hero-force itself in brave original.
I passed a woman in the street one day, and passed on, for she did not see me. But why not speak? I thought, so back I turned, and, besides the greeting, she dropped on me four sentences such as we go to Emerson to read, — made me for the time four thoughts richer in three minutes. They were life distilled in words, — her life distilled; though she told me then and there that she ^^died" long be-
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fore, — she seemed to herself in latter years to do and be so little. Perhaps she had died, and I saw her immortality; for only the wings were wanting on the old shoulders. She had been a humble struggler ; and, as I saw her, she seemed to wear a crown and the name, '* Israel.''
I will sum it up. Here is all my sermon, and in another woman's words. She calls her poem, ''Treasures."
^'Let me count my treasures, All my soul holds dear, Given me by dark spirits Whom I used to fear.
Through long days of anguish
And sad nights did Pain Forge my shield Endurance,
Bright and free from stain.
Doubt in misty caverns,
Mid dark horrors, sought, Till my peerless jewel * Faith to me she brought.
Sorrow, that I wearied
Should remain so long. Wreathed my starry glory.
The bright crown of Song.
Strife, that racked my spirit
Without hope or rest. Left the blooming flower
Patience on my breast.
Suffering, that I dreaded, Ignorant of her charms,
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Laid the fair child Pity, Smiling in my arms.
So I count my treasures, Stored in days long past;
And I thank the Givers, Whom I know at last!"
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The Divine Benedidion
"And the peace of God, which passeth all understand- ing, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." — Philippians iv: 7.
Our Bible is a turbulent book. The Old Testa- ment is a sea in which the waves roll high. Even in its calmer conditions, the white caps are ever in view. Mid the din of earthly battles the turmoil of the spirit appears, restless longings of the heart, quenchless fires of hope and shame, the unceasing antagonisms of thoughts. Not less but more turbu- lent is the New Testament, because the contest has carried the flag inward, the line of battle is formed on spiritual rather than on material fields.
And yet the great Bible word is peace ; over and over again do we come upon it ; peace is the prophetic dream and almost the universal promise. According to Young's Concordance, the word occurs some one hundred and seventy-five times in the Old Testa- ment and eighty-nine times in the New, forty-two of which occur in the letters of the first great soldier of the cross, the hunted, homeless and apparently- friendless Paul. Although Jesus said, *^I come not to bring peace but a sword,'' yet he went to his martyr death leaving behind him the serene promise, ^* Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."
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All this leads up to the text, which suggests the Divine Benediction, ^Hhe peace of God, which passeth all understanding.'' We touch here the great paradox of religion. All lives, like, those re- flected in the Bible, are cast upon stormy seas. Stormy have been the centuries. Feverish are our years. Anxious are our days. How restless the heart of man ! what distrustful days it spends, ending in sleepless nights! and yet, peace is the hunger of the human heart; it is the pathetic cry of the soul. Surely ^^how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of them that publish peace!" Now and then the spirit is permitted to receive the divine benediction; and these moments of realization give assurance that our wants are reasonable, and that the hunger may be satisfied. Peace is the endowment of religion; the peace strains of the Bible ever carry with them the religious refrain. Jesus and Paul, knowing peace, knew something that politics, society and money can not give.
The text suggests the first thing to be said con- cerning the peace of religion, the peace that is of God — viz.: ^^It passeth understanding." It is something deeper than knowledge, it is not com- passed by our reason. The most helpful view Chicago can offer is that indefinite line of vision far out in the lake where the water meets the sky. The finest line in every landscape is the horizon line. On the border land of thought lie the reverences. Where our petty certainties end, there our holy worship
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begins. The child trusts father or mother, because in them it discovers a power it cannot understand; it rests upon that reserve force it can not imitate or measure. When man or woman discovers in the other unexpected forces, a fervor unmeasured, a power of endurance unexpected, then love finds a di- vine resting place. The love that is trustworthy, that has the divine quality of lasting, is the love that rests on the foundation ^' which passeth understanding.'' To call for explanations or to try to measure, with the clumsy tools the brain affords, profoundest verities of any moment in our lives is to pass out of the peace of God into the pitiful turmoils of men. The man loves the woman with a pure love when he finds in her a power he can not understand. The woman loves the man with a peaceful love when it rests on forces that are beyond her measurement. We swim buoyantly in the sea in which, if we try to touch bottom, we shall be drowned. Music, art, com- panionship, owe their power to that which eludes analysis, ''which passeth understanding." The sim- plest pleasures have a circumference too wide to be circumscribed by our compasses; the color of the violet, the perfume of the rose, the flavor of the strawberry, bring a joy beyond our measuring and give a peace that transcends our reason, not because it is unreasonable, but because it springs from the same source as that from which reason comes. How much more does the peace-giving power of truth- seeking, right-doing, and loving envelop our under-
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standing; it encloses it, and consequently can not be encompassed by it. When the lonely heart awakens to a sense of fellowship and its isolation is enveloped with kindred spirits; when finiteness melts into in- finitude; when weakness feels the embrace of a love that is omnipotent; when ignorance bows before infinite verities, and knowledge grows large enough to find its measureless ignorance; then that knowl- edge is changed into the wisdom that is '' better than riches," the ^' peace that passeth understanding." The love that needs proving is not the love that brings peace. The God that is understood, that can be held in your terms and handled in my words, has little peace-producing power; he is not God at all, as the jargon of the creeds, the quarrels of the sects, and the restlessness of the theologians amply prove. Who has not felt the truth of James Martineau's words when he said:
"Those who tell me too much about God ; who speak as if they knew his motive and his plan in everything, who are never at a loss to name the reason of every structure and show the tender mercy of every event; who praise the clev- erness of the Eternal economy, and patronize it as a mas- terpiece of forensic ingenuity; who carry themselves through the solemn glades of Providence with the springy steps and jaunty air of a familiar; do but drive me by the very definiteness of their assurance into an indefinite agony of doubt and impel me to cry, 'Ask of me less, and I shall give you all.' "
In all this I mean no disrespect to the inquirer. There is no irreverence in thoughtf ulness ; I re- member with Tennyson that ^Hhere is more faith in
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honest doubt than in half the creeds." There is a wide difference between the reverence that is touched into life-mellowing power on the horizon line of knowledge ; that is rooted in the subsoil of being, the unexplored depths of experience; and that nervous clutch of timid souls that grasp at a faith that con- flicts with knowledge. I would not shut the eyes in the temple lest in looking they discover blemishes in the altar. This is superstition; that is religion. The bigot is afraid to think; the true devotee of the nine- teenth centry is most afraid of thoughtlessness. Not he who distrusts the methods of reason, but he who follows every line of investigation, finds at last all lines melt into transcendent beauty, fade into the hallowed mystery that is pervaded with the peace of God. Not a sense of emptiness but of fullness re- wards the investigator. The ^^ peace that passeth understanding'' rests on the infinity of reality over there, not on the finiteness of our ignorance, which stops here.
"When doors great and small, Nine and ninety flew ope at our touch, Should the hundredth appall?
* * * ♦ *
"I but open my eyes, and perfection, no more and no less. In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
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The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-com- plete, As by each new obeisance in spirit I climb to his feet."
Let us think more intently of these horizon lines that *^pass our understanding/' which yield first a beauty and then the peace of God. Thus thinking, the world hangs together better, the uni- verse comes out, breaks upon the soul and claims it as its own. Short lines reveal the antagonisms of things, the friction of ideas, the contradiction of experiences. Long lines show things in their rela- tions; antagonisms blend into harmonies, and the friction becomes the result of blessed movement, the great wheels that move in the mechanism of Divine order. *^The world is not all in pieces, but all to- gether," says Bartol. I believe in science, but peace is the gift of religion; because the method of the first is analytic, it pulls apart, it dismembers, it is in search of differences. Eeligion — not theology, but religion — is synthetic; it puts together, it rests in the Infinite Unity. The words holiness and whole- ness are related. Peace comes when we take things in the large. It is well to know that oxygen and hydrogen are the component parts of water, but when our thirst is slaked, when we plunge and swim in glad freedom, these elements blend in unquestioned unity. Blessed be science, her work is most religious, but it is not religion. We need the solvents in the laboratory to test our ores, to find our metals. Let the botanist destroy the one flower that he may bet-
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ter understand the beauty of its countless companions in the field. Let the students have now and then a body to dissect, that the living tenement of the soul may be better understood and appreciated. But do not forget in any of these cases that ^'man puts asunder what God joins together." Division is in the thought, union is in the fact. Go in search of God with your microscope, seek him with your telescope, and you are pretty sure to miss him. Hold your love, human or divine, at arm's length. Try to test it with your little probes, and the chances are that you will kill it altogether ; you will not find it, not because it is so small, but because it is so great. Your tools are the clumsy things. ^^ Canst thou by searching find out God?" asks the old sage. No, because he is in the search. My friend M. J. Savage sings this truth in these exquisite lines:
"Oh, where is the Seaf the fishes cried, As they swam the crystal clearness through,
"WeVe heard from of old of the ocean's tide, And we long to look on the waters blue, The wise ones speak of the infinite sea. Oh, who can tell us if such there be?"
The lark flew up in the morning bright. And sung and balanced on sunny wings; And this was its song: "I see the light, I look o'er a world of beautiful things; But, flying and singing everywhere. In vain I have searched to find the air."
Herbert Spencer has called his system of phil- osophy ''synthetic." John Fiske, his ablest inter-
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preter, calls his work '^ Cosmic Philosophy." These very titles prophesy great religious outcome. They will eventually lead us not only in the '^ways of wisdom" but into the ^^ paths of peace." The old theologies were analytic; based on them the the- ologians' work is still to divide; they are trying to separate goats from sheep, heretic from Christian, theist from atheist. This is dreary business; it brings such small returns. The peace of God comes not on these lines. Discordant notes become har- monious in the distance, the hard and cruel things to-day prove to be parts of a blessed providence ten years from to-day. That which is a puzzle in the life of the individual becomes a principle in the his- tory of the race ; the blackest pages of local history are the illuminating spots in the story of humanity. The impassioned faith of the apostle, '^Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," is the simple lesson of the scientific student of history. Do these long lines lead us to the peace of God? I may not know why the road is rugged, but if it leads to the delectable mountains I will cheerfully climb, rocks and brambles notwithstanding. If it be true that
"By the thorn road, and none other, is the mount of vision won,"
I am for the mount, all the same. If it be true, ''No cross, no crown," we seek the crown notwith-
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standing. When I am immersed in my little troubles, and my heart is weak with loneliness, it does help to think how blessed have been the great troubles of the world, how wilderness wanderings have led to Canaan. Seven years of privations and war pre- ceded the first century of a republic whose material growth is paralleled by its increasing hospitality to thought. Four years of awful battle, four millions of emancipated slaves. How little did the Continen- tal soldier know of the republic! How short-sighted were the men of vision even during the last war! Let us not begrudge tears if they fall on soul gar- dens that bloom more beautifully for the watering. Welcome trouble, welcome loneliness, and the inex- pressible pain it brings, if thereby somewhere, some time, and to somebody it brings in some fuller measure ^'the peace of God that passeth under- standing. ' '
I have yet touched but one end of this great truth. We must never forget the near end of the long line that leads to ^Hhe peace of God." The Greek word translated ^^ peace" in my text, means also unity, concord. This leaves large responsibility at the small end of things. Nay, the great end of things for you and me is the end at which we stand. We must put ourselves in line. The horizon glories array themselves only to the eyes that are turned that way. Our lives are fragments of the perfect whole; if we invert or pervert them we mar the whole pattern. Our to-days and to-morrows are
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segments of eternity. As long as we think of our- selves as objects of some special spite, as neglected children, the unfortunate victims of bad luck, or even that we are tortured in some special way for mere discipline's sake, the ''peace of Grod" is not for us; but when we realize that we are linked to Jupiter, that the pulse in my wrist is a part of that rhythm that causes the tides of the Atlantic to ebb and flow, that the earthquake at Charleston was the working of the same force that lifted the AUeghanies and folded the geologic layers of the Rocky Mountains, then shall we be prepared to enter into ''the peace that passeth understanding;" then our human loves become a part of the Divine love. When we know that our life is engirdled with law, fortitude will change grief into resignation and defeat into tri- umph. If you would help a soul bear its present sorrow, introduce it to a greater one. Put your small grievances into their proper perspective, and they cease to be grievances, because you have re- moved the stumbling block. It is not the province of religion to explain the ways of God to man, it is not for me to apologize for the universe ; it is for us to recognize the facts. As we discover these, religion helps us either to bear or to change them. Would you know the peace of God, realize that you are a part of that infinite majesty, strive to catch now and then a note of the heavenly melody, chant a stray chord of the infinite harmony, remember that every- thing beautiful springs from a beauty that is be-
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hind it, every strong will rises from a strength un- derneath, and all your loves are fed from the fountains of infinite love. And for yourself you may mar the beautiful or reflect it, you can either enter into the strength or become its victim, know the love or thwart it. We are impatient only when we forget the infinite patience, we are petulant when we turn away from the unresting and unhasting stars that move in their unimpassioned orbits in darkest nights. We are discouraged when we fail to keep step with the solemn tramp of the genera- tion. The wrong judgments of men hurt us not if we remember that the balances of God are justly poised. No thought of ours is insignificant if we reverently cradle it in the thought of God. No plan of ours will be abandoned if we are sure it is a part of the infinite plan. We have a will of our own only when we believe it to be God's will also.
A friend wrote me the other day from the heart of the Adirondacks, sitting on the grave of John Brown :
^*It is hard to put it all together- — the human part of it into the setting; — to think that from this cranny in the wilderness, a man not unlike all the farmers around went out and did the deed which begun and half won the war, and, that deed done, was brought back here, is lying there uner the sweet-briers on the mound, with his name forever safe among the *mad men' of history, the heroes and the nation shapers. Here they come, another party just driven up from somewhere out in Sanity to see the grave, — two of them were not born when John Brown did it — nine hundred and forty of them so far this year. ' '
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Thus it is that a man's small plans reach out into futurity, when they spring out of angel purposes; thus it is a mortal man casts an immortal shadow.
^^The great deed ne'er grows small," and every kind word, helpful smile, and guileless kiss, are great deeds, and they always will make for ''the peace that passeth understanding," such as my friend found when the sunset glows rested upon the lowly grave in the valley of North Elba, rimmed round by the great mountains.
Poetry is not rhymed fancy but the higher truth, the truth within the facts, the thought that is not reached by thinking, the sensibility out of which sense springs. Thus the poet is ever the truest in- terpreter of religion. He who sees the matchless harmony, the measureless power, and infinite delicacy all around him, sees God, but he who feels himself intricately dovetailed into all this, who realizes that man is the most intimate child of all the forces of God that play around us, knows '*the peace of God that passeth all understanding."
"Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-mom, Blue ran the flash across: Violets were born!
"Sky — what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!
"World — how it walled about Life with disgrace,
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Till God's own smile came out: That was thy face!"
The beauty of the violet, the glory of the soli- tary star, lead up to the fullness of the divine ten- derness revealed in a woman's face, and this leads us inward to seek the sources of ^Hhe peace that passeth understanding/' The power that taught the bird to build its nest, that surveyed the streets in the ant-village, guides us.
"He is eyes for all who is eyes for the mole." Restless, weak, sinful man is more than bee or bird. That progressive teacher that instructed the wood- pecker to excavate a home in the rotten tree ripened in man his reason. The granite palace and the pub- lic library are diviner mysteries than the pine tree, as the state house is a more towering manifestation of the invisible God than the Rocky Mountains.
"Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves and feathers from her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with mom each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone."
The best of all this is that life enlarges and deep- ens mostly through experience, not through the lore of books, but by the discipline of life. God writes his name upon the hearts of men with his own tools.
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As the rivulet scoops out the valley and molds the hill-side and carves the mountain face, so the stream of time sculptures the soul into grace and smooths the human heart into tenderness.
One beautiful morning when the train stopped at Falls View to give the passengers a touch of that mighty majesty in nature, the Falls of Niagara, I helped out an old lady, who, on her way from Nova Scotia, was taking her first railroad ride in the eighty-third year of her life. She was coming west, as she cheerfully said, to die in the home of her son, who lived at Sandwich, Illinois. He was the only one left of the eight she had reared to manhood and womanhood. The passengers, as is their custom, soon fell into clusters on the brink of the precipice. There were young women just from school, who were profuse with their superlatives, '^most splendid," '^magnificent," '^ awful!" There were young men who jumped, clapped their hands, threw up their caps and hurrahed. The middle aged were awed into more reverential manners, and made their comments to one another in subdued undertones. I watched and waited to see what powers of interpretation eighty-three toilful and tearful years had given to this simple soul, the venerable grandmother, the mother of seven buried children. Aye, in vain do we attempt to fathom the meaning of these words, ''seven buried children!" She stood silent and mo- tionless. I watched the furrowed face, but no gleam of emotion came to the surface. At last the bell rang,
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and as she turned she said, with traces of tears in her voice, but none in her eyes — I think tears do not readily reach the surface in the eighties — ^^ Mister, what a deal of troubled waters is there!" and that was all. Ah, the seething, tumbling, unceasing roar of that outward Niagara must have started again the memories of the still greater Niagara of life, unseen to outward eye, unknown to all the rest of the world, but to her tempestuous with its grief. In its stream rebellious passions boiled; clamorous wants and misty longings had channeled their chasms in her heart, and more than once deafened her ears to all other sounds.
Well hast thou interpreted, venerable grand- mother! Sublime is the immobility secured through the knowledge of a still greater cataract! Yes, there is a *^deal of troubled waters'' at Niagara, but you know of another river —
"whose waters were a torrent Sweeping through your Ufe amain."
Farther down, the waters cease their troubling; eddies, whirlpools, fretting isles and jutting rocks are all passed, and even the troubled Niagara finds peace at last in the bosom of the great ocean. Poised and purified it rests in the arms of infinite law,
"And still it moves, a broadening flood; And fresher, fuller grows A sense as if the sea were near, Toward which the river flows.
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"G thou, who art the secret source That rises in each soul, Thou art the Ocean, too, — thy charm, That ever deepening roll!"
So in lowliest lives we find foundations for *Hhe peace that passeth all understanding.'' In life, in its meanest estate, besmirched with passion, dis- traught with misplaced confidences, weakened with unrequited loves, back of the beggarly rags of in- ebriety, we may overhear the groans of the imprison- ened spirit: we may detect the blush long since retreated from the face, still haunting with its redemptive glow some of the inner recesses of heart and brain; so we who have already been taught that there is that which has high uses for lowly things, which conserves the beautiful in coarsest elements, come back to that ''peace that passeth understand- ing," and believe that
"warm Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul. Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the
whole O' the gray, and, free again, be fire."
Then, in common with the noblest prophets of all religion, we shall have a growing faith in the possibilities of human nature, a deep confidence that underneath all sin there lies the God-like essence in man; and in the face of all the horrid facts of the police-court and the prison, the wretched abuse of human confidence, the brutal staining of human innocence, we will believe that
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"a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That what began best can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once prove accurst."
Yes, the faithful dog that asks for our sympa- thetic pat upon its head, the child that nestles in your lap, the man whose arm lovingly sustains you, the woman whose lips are graciously tendered you to kiss, — these little threads of celestial origin weave for us heavenly garments, and our dear, earthly loves become celestial by-ways beyond our under- standing. God's own love comes to us through the lowliest door, and the arms of the Eternal embrace us in the babe's clasp.
Still we climb, and still the divine benedic- tion salutes us, embosoms us. If science ever melts into a sense of infinite reality, if highest intelli- gence kneels in devout confession of ignorance, if the shyest human love knows no boundaries between it and the love of God, how surely will the high en- deavor of conscience land us at the feet of Omnipo- tence, and give us ''the peace of God that passeth all understanding"! Follow duty, if you would know the Christ-like calm in the presence of wrong ; follow duty if you would change resentment into patience, resistance into forgiveness. Duty is the great moun- tain road to God. ''When we cease to long for per- fection, corruption sure and speedy leads from life to death," says William Morris. He who does not turn a willing ear to the voice of conscience will soon
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miss the divine on every hand. Music, poetry, paint- ing, sculpture, science, one after the other will silently close their doors in the face of him who does not seek the right. The ''peace of God'' shines most visibly on the brow of the brave. See it when Abraham Lincoln strikes the schackles from off human limbs. See it make noble the great Gladstone as he stands up in the face of centuries of wrong to plead for the right of those who fail to exact it for them- selves. Do your duty, else no knowledge, beauty or love will ever lead you to the peace of God. He who says, ' ' 1 may not be great ; I may miss all peace, but I will be true,'' stands at the altar from which the divine benediction is ever pronounced.
Lastly. Following the quest for the divine bene- diction, even what the blessed old book calls the ''last enemy" turns out to be no enemy after all, but a friend. Chastened lives are better than merry ones ; earnest souls are more needed than happy ones. Somehow beyond my understanding I am sure that peace is the reward of that chastened life. I love this earth and the life rooted therein, its sunshine and its flowers, its dear terrestrial loves and its high ter- restrial duties, and it is tragic to sever these ties. But on the horizon line I feel sure that the tragedy melts into tenderness, that on the death-heights there lies repose, and even on battle days there is peace beyond the clouds. The tears we shed at the grave may drop on celestial fields and may help grow the
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grain we fain would garner here. What we must leave undone here may be the better done there.
"On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round.''
Once, when I had tried to say something like this in a sermon, a listener came to me with a grate- ful but disappointed face, saying: ^'I believe it's true, all true, but how is one to feel it? I can not see it ; what can I do to see it ? " I could only reply : ^*We can only catch glimpses of it now and here. Only on rare truth-seeing and truth-telling moments will the apparently conflicting lines combine in the higher unity.'' My listener's solicitations reminded me of that one day that was given me to taste Alpine delights, one little day out of a life-time into which the anticipations and dreams of years gone were to be compressed, and out of which the recollections of years were to be drawn. Of course I was out of bed long before day-light, because I had but one day to do that for which the complacent sleepers around me had weeks and months. I began the day by going in search of that mighty work of Thorwaldsen, the most impressive product of the chisel I have ever seen or expect to see. I traced its lines on the solid rock in the first gray of early dawn, and then hastened to catch the first boat on Lake Lucerne that was to leave me at Waggis, for I was to make the top of Rigi by the right of climbing. I disdained an elevated rail- way. It was a cold, foggy, threatening morning.
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The captain shook his head as he tried to tell me in broken English that Eigi had not unveiled its glory for five days. I began the ascent expecting to be contented with the fatigue of the climb, though no view were given me. I had the fog, and, part of the way, the rain all to myself; bits of near ruggedness tantalized and detained me, but no distant glories, no mountain vistas, were possible.
I could hear the tinkling of cow-bells in deep chasms below me into which I could not look, and occasionally the call of goat-herds came from the heights above me where I could not see. Near sur- prises constantly delighted me ; here and there I was helped and touched inexpressibly by the wayside shrines erected for the encouragement of the herders who sought the uplands for their pasturage, long be- fore those heights were sought for their beauty. In those foggy, enveloped fastnesses I was as good a Catholic as any one. The crude art, the rustic image of Mary, the weather-eaten crucifix were bathed in reverence, redolent with a piety that was as much mine as of those who reared them centuries ago, and who to-day claim exclusive monopoly of the symbolism. After a while I got a glass of goat's milk and a piece of black bread from a mountaineer, in lieu of the breakfast I did not stop to eat; and still I climbed. The fog was so dense at times that I could scarcely see the slender trail a few yards ahead of me. Two hours and a half, three hours, and still no break in the clouds. The dampness had
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reached through my clothing, the spirit was growing chilly as well as the body. I heard voices above me. They were talking English ; they were coming toward me; they were descending, cross and disappointed; they advised me to turn around and go down with them. They laughed at my persistence in keeping on, for had they not been up there two days and two nights, and was it not darker this morning than it had been at all ? But this was my one day. I would make an Alpine summit, though no vision was granted. Another half hour of fog and the mist relented a little. Again I could hear voices away above me; I was approaching one of the inns on the way. Suddenly I came upon a very little boy crying piteously. His herd of a dozen goats with distended udders would not be driven up the hill to be milked. While he was driving or pulling one a few yards up- ward, another in search of a neglected tuft of grass would with her nimble feet descend the crag up which he had driven her with so much labor. I tried to speak a kind word to him, but my English made him cry all the harder, and when I tried my German on him he screamed, and, to tell the truth, his crying made me think that our feelings were very much alike. I wanted to cry from sheer loneliness and disappointment. Fortunately my English frightened the goats as well as the boy. Not feeling good for anything else, I was glad to become goat-herd, and so I drove them right royally, while the small boy followed ungraciously a long way behind, as if still
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suspicious of the sanity of one who could not talk better than I could. A warmer glow came into the atmosphere, things assumed more definite outline, the little mountain station was revealing itself above me. Panting and out of breath, I sat down to rest on a big rock. After a few moments I turned to look for the boy; when, lo! there they stood all before me, about me, above me, the entire system of the Bernese Alps — Pilatus, the Wetterhorn, the Glarnisch — a hundred and twenty miles of them, like a line of white-hooded nuns kneeling at prayer, and —
"O'er night's brim day boiled at last, Boiled pure gold o'er the cloud-cup's brim, Where spirting and suppressed it lay.
* * * * * m
Forth one wavelet, then another, curled. Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose-reddened, and its seething breast Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world."
Such is the answer I would make to the friend who asks to be shown the unity that over-arches all our discord, who begs for the revelation which would bring the ''peace that passeth all understanding." Life is a short day's climbing; mists and rain en- velop us. Often we toil up expecting small returns, doubting at times the existence of mountain ranges, content at last to become humble herders of a few goats, perchance. Then suddenly the simple task is overtaken with a glad surprise. A halt, an unex-
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pected turn, and a revelation breaks upon us, and then our years stand around draped in white, capped with Alpine splendors, and the whiteness of their peaks is not miracle or dogma, not creed, sect or text, not the hope of heaven or the fear of hell, not a devil overcome or a distant God reconciled by the vicarious flow of a Savior's blood; but the celestial common- places of earthly duties and human privileges; a mother's love, a father's manly care, the love of home and children, the heart ties, soft as silk but strong as iron, that either bind us to God, or mangle and cripple us, as we heed or defy them. These bring us the ^* peace of God which passeth all understand- ing," and, to complete the thought of the text gar- rison our hearts and our thoughts in the ideal, the Christ Jesus of the soul.
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