LfflRARY OF WELLESLEY COLLEGE

FROM THE FUND OF ELEANOR PRESCOTT HAMMOND

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LESSONS FROM THE WORLD OF MATTER AND THE WORLD

OF MAN

Lessons from The World of Matter and

THE World of Man

BY

THEODORE PARKER

EDITED WITH A PREFACE ( BY

RUFUS LEIGHTON

BOSTON

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION

25 Beacon Street

St

n

EDITOR'S PREFACE

The last time that I saw Mr. Parker, just previous to his leaving Boston for the West Indies, in the latter part of January, 1859, while he was making his final arrangements, not only for the immediate voyage, but wdth a view to the possibility of his never returning, I said to him that I should be glad to publish a volume of selections from my phonographic notes of his ser- mons,— taken down from Sunday to Sunday, as they were delivered during several years previous. He gave his cordial assent to the proposal, and afterwards al- luded to it several times in his correspondence with me and with others, during the year that followed, while vainly seeking the restoration of his health in foreign lands.

Shortly before I made this suggestion he had written to me thus : " It has been a great comfort to me often to think that after I have passed away some of my best things might still be collected from my rough notes and your nice photograph of the winged words. The things I value most are not always such as get printed."

The book was commenced long since, but, from vari- ous considerations, its completion has been delayed until this time. Since whatever of truth or instruc- tion it may contain is as applicable at this day as at any other, it is believed that this postponement has not impaired its value.

The selections have been made from the sermons of ten years, extending from 1849 to 1859, and embrace a wide range of topics. A few of them have before appeared in print, having been copied out for the news-

EDITOR'S PREFACE

papers of the day, at the time of the dehvery of the sermons ; but as these are worthy of preservation in a more permanent form, it is thought best to include them here.

The aim has not been to produce a volume of bril- liant and striking passages, such as might easily have been gathered from the materials at hand, nor to pre- sent in any comprehensive and connected manner the philosophical and religious opinions of Mr. Parker, which are given at length in works already before the public. The design has been rather to bring together, in a convenient form, some of the familiar lessons with which his sermons abound, drawn from the world of matter and from the nature and experience of man, from past history and from passing events, and useful as helps in the formation of character and the conduct of life.

One of the most striking peculiarities of his preach- ing was his happy faculty of presenting the highest themes, however abstruse or complex in their nature, in such a manner as to render them attractive to the thou- sands, gathered from all walks and conditions of life, who so eagerly listened to him, and adapting them to every range of comprehension. Another was the con- tinual and varied illustration of his favorite idea that religion, while the loftiest of all human concerns, is to be applied to every department of human thought and action, and to rule not only in the church, but in the state and the community, and in the daily life of each individual man ; — not the " popular theology " which has hitherto prevailed, but the " absolute religion " of love to God and love to man, piety and morality, in their numberless modes of manifestation.

These characteristics appear prominently in this vol-

EDITOR'S PREFACE

ume, and it is believed will render it welcome to those who may have listened to the words which are here re- produced, as well as acceptable to others who aspire to what is good and noble, and rejoice in the truth fitly spoken.

"RuFus Leighton.

CONTENTS

Page I. The Material World and Man's Relation

Thereto 1

II. The Nature of Man ....... 53

III. Traits and Illustrations of Human Char-

acter AND Conduct 89

IV. Phases of Domestic Life 187

V. Education 200

VI. Human Institutions and National Life . 239

VII. The Power and Endurance of What is

Noblest in Man ^55

VIII. Human Progress 285

IX. Jesus of Nazareth 304

X. Man in his Religious Aspects .... 327

THE MATERIAL WORLD AND MAN'S RELA- TION THERETO

THE GRANDEUR OF THE NATURAL WORLD

The natural world which a man lives on and lives by — I mean the material world of nature all about us — is the same thing to all who live in the same latitude and place. And what a grand world it is ! I do not wonder that our old German heathen fathers, and so many other heathens, worshiped it. The ground under our feet is so firm-set and solid, the heavens over our head are so magnificent, the air about us is so bland when it is still, so powerful when it is stirred into stormy motion, — what a world it is! All day long there are the light, the clouds, the trees, the waters, .

the winds,

" Never weary of flowing Under the Sun,"

" Never weary of fleeting, Since Time has begun.'

All night long the good God shepherds the stars in the wide pasture of heaven ; He goeth before them, leadeth them out, calleth every star by name, and they know His voice, the motherly voice of the good Shepherd of the universe, to whom each star is a little lamb, fed and folded by the infinite presence of Him

" Who doth perceive the stars from wrong."

This natural world is a glory and a delight, "A thing of beauty, and a joy forever."

Men hard entreated with toil, or chasing after pleasure, XI— 1 I

2 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

after honor, after riches, after power, catch ghmpses of it by stealth, as it were, as the ox at the plough reaches out from the yoke, and, hard-breathing, licks up a morsel of grass. So, many men see the world of nature, and get, now and then, a mouthful of beauty. We all get something of its use, for we not only live on it, as a foundation, but by it, as food and shelter.

This natural world is " a cupboard of food and a cabinet of pleasure," as an old poet quaintly puts it. All sorts of things are therein stored up for present or future use. On the lower shelves, which the savage man can reach to, there are the rudest things, — acorns, roots, nuts, berries, wild apples, fish, and flesh. Higher up there are corn, salt, wool, cotton, stones with fire to be beaten out of them by striking them together ; then live animals of various sorts ; next, metals, iron, cop- per, silver, gold, and the like, — all ready to spring into man's hand, and serve him, when he can reach up to them and take them down. A little further up there are things to adorn the body, — ocher to paint the cheeks, feathers to trim the head, rubies and diamonds, and many a twisted shell, still further to ornament and set off the world; all sorts of finery for the Nootka Sound female and the Parisian woman. Still higher up are laid the winds to grind man's corn, waters to sift his meal; and above these are coals waiting to become fire, and to be made the force of oxen, winds, rivers, and men. Yet higher up lie the gases which are to light a city, or take away the grief of a wound, and make a man invulnerable and invincible to pain. Higher still are things which no man has climbed up to and looked on as yet. There they lie, shelf rising above shelf, gallery above gallery, and the ceiling is far out of the telescopic sight of the farthest-sighted man.

THE MATERIAL WORLD 3

A short savage, like King Philip of Pokanoket, looks on the lower shelves and takes what he wants, — a club, a chip of stone, a handful of sea-shells, a deer-skin, a bit of flesh, a few ears of corn, — and is content with them, and thanks God for the world he lives in. But the civilized man who has grown as tall as Captain Ericsson reaches higher, and takes down cattle power, wind power, water power, steam power, lightning power, and hands them to the smaller bojs, to us who have not yet grown up to reach so high. Some of the tallest-minded of the human tribe stand on tiptoe and look up as high as they can see, and then report to us the great machinery and astronomical wheel-work which keeps the sun and moon in their place ; or report of the smaller machinery, the nice chemical and elec- trical gearing which holds the atoms of a pebble together, and whereby the great world grows grass for oxen and corn for men. This is as high as any mortal man has got as yet ; and it is a great way to climb from the acorn on the bottom shelf up to the celestial mechanics on the upper shelf, which Newton and Laplace are only tall enough to look over and handle.

Such is the natural world that we live on and by. It is the home of us all, and the dear God is the great housekeeper and the ever-present mother therein. He lights the fires every morning, and puts them out every night ; yea, hangs up the lamps, and makes it all snug for the family to sleep in, beneath his motherly watch- fulness, all night long, till the morning fire awakes again, and, glittering along the east, shines into his children's brightening eyes.

This world of nature is meant for all. The sun shines on the evil and the good, and the rain rains on

4. THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

the just and the unjust. The same ground is under General Pierce and his pig, and the same heavens are over the astronomer and his dog ; and dog and astrono- mer, pig and president, all live on, live under, live in the same natural world, and the All-Bountiful is father and mother to them all, not over-honoring the astrono- mer, not undervaluing the dog or the swine. And yet what a very different world it is to pig and president, to dog and astronomer! To such as look only at the lower shelves it is a dull, hard, prosy world. To those who reach up to fashion and finery, to the nicknacks of nature, it is a dainty show of pretty things, a sort of great Vanity Fair, where Mrs. Jezebel and Mr. Absolom are to adorn and make themselves comely. To others — who see the great uses in the power of things, the great loveliness in the beauty of things, the great wisdom in the meaning of things — it is a serious world, very serious ; but a lovely world, very lovely ; and a divine world, very divine ; full of God's power, God's wisdom, God's justice, God's beauty, and God's love, running out into the blossoms of the ground and the blossoms of the sky ; the whole universe a great manifold flower of God, who holds it in His own right hand.

It always seemed to me that this material world prophesied something a great many times greater and grander than the highest man had yet seen or told of. I do not believe that God made this grand world of nature as the background to a little dwarfish picture of spirit. The great power of nature, the great beauty of nature, and its great sense, are all prophetic of a power, beauty, and sense which matter knows not of, which it will take great men and great generations of great men to fulfil and accomplish. But it will one

THE MATERIAL WORLD 5

day be. It will take place in the golden ages, which are not behind us, but before us, and which are to be reached by your toil, and your prayer, and your thought, and sweat, and watching. I love to read the prophecy which God Himself has writ in the world of nature. Every piece of coal, every bit of iron, — why, it was a prophecy of steam-engines and steam-ships, if men had only the wit to read the oracle ! And so this natural world, with its powers, its beauty, its meaning, — why, it is a prophecy of a great human world that is to come, whereof the Isaiahs, the So- crateses, the Jesuses, and the Newtons, were only the prophets who foretold the beginning of the golden ages that are to come.

LAW IN THE WOULD OF MATTER

In the universe, all is done according to law, by the regular and orderly action of the forces thereof ; there is a constant mode of operation, which never changes. Nothing is done by human magic, nothing by divine miracle. Religious poets tell us that God said in He- brew speech, " Let the earth be ! " and it was forth- with, " Let the waters bring forth fish, the air fowls, and the earth cattle ! " — and it was done. But when you consult the record of the earth itself, you find that the six days' miracle of the poet are millions of years' work of the divine forces of the universe. These forces are always adequate to achieve their divine pur- pose, with no miraculous help, no intervention, no new creation of forces ; and in that immense book of space, whose leaves date back through such vast periods of time, there is not a single miracle recorded; not once does it appear that God intervened and changed the normal action of any single thing.

6 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

One star differs from another star in glory — not at all in the perfect keeping of every law of its ex- istence as a star.

SCIENCE DEPENDENT UPON LAW IN THE WORLD

OF MATTER

The law of the world of matter is knowable by man, and when his thought comprehends that, the world of matter is manageable by his toil, and he can use its forces to serve his end. This power of science depends not only on the mind itself, but on the nice relation between that and the world of matter outside. What if this world of matter were — as the ministers often- times tell us it is — a bundle of incoherent things, no constant law in force therein, God intervening by capricious miracle, to turn a stick into a snake, water to blood, dust to flies and creeping things, mud to frogs, and ashes to a plague on beasts and men ; what if He sent miraculous darkness which could be felt, to revenge Him on some handful of wicked men ; what if by miracle He opened the sea and let a nation through, and then poured the waters back on the advancing foe ; what if the rocks became water, and the heavens rained bread for forty years ; what if the sun and moon stood still and let a filibustering troop destroy their foe; what if iron swam at some man's com- mand; what if a whale engulfed a disobedient prophet who fled from God's higher law, and kept him three days shut up, till he made a great poetic psalm ; what if a son were born with no human father, and could by miracle walk on the waves as on dry land, feed five thousand men with five little barley loaves, and have in reserve twelve baskets full of broken bread ; what if he could still the winds and the waters

THE MATERIAL WORLD 7

with a word, rebuke disease, restore the lame and the blind at a touch, and wake the dead with " Lazarus, come forth ! " Why ! science would not be possible ; there would be nothing but stupid wonder and amaze- ment, and instead of the grand spectacle of a universe, with law everywhere, thought waking reason every- where, and stirring Newton to write the Principia of Natural Science, Linnasus to describe the systems of plants, Laplace to cipher out the mechanics of the sky, Kant to unfold the metaphysics of man and the philosophy of human history, and the masterly in- tellect of Cuvier to classify the animal kingdom, — mankind thereby growing wiser, and still more power- ful,— we should have a priest's world of capricious chaos, some prophet going up to heaven on his own garment, some witch careering on a broom, and man vulgarly staring, as in a farmer's yard a calf stands gaping at some new barn-door. What is the world of monkish legend, the world of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, the world of the Catholic Church, the world of the Calvinistic Church, or of the popular theology of our times, compared with the grand world which God has made it, — stars millions of milHons of miles away looking down on these flowers at my side, and all the way between, law, order, never once a miracle, and all this so wondrously and tenderly re- lated to man's mind!

THE RELATION OF SMALL THINGS TO GREAT

Look at this clothed congregation, and see whence all this vast array of handsome dress has been gathered up ! Part of it came from the backs of fur-clad beasts, which only polar cold can bear ; the linen grew up from the cool temperate soil ; tropic heat furnished

8 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

the cotton ; the little silkworm has spun the substance of appropriate trees, which change their leaves to cov- ering for the Adams and Eves of civilization. Various colors which more than imitate the rainbow, have been gathered from the vegetable, animal, and mineral worlds ; — and all these depend, directly, on the struc- tural character of the globe itself. As the rainbow is the child of the sun and cloud, nursed by hghtning, waited on by gravitation, and girted into handsome shape by the spheric globe itself, so yonder bonnet, the triumph of the milliner's art and the wearer's taste, is daughter of vegetation and animation, grand-child of the mineral world, which dowers it with such hand- some hues, and in strict geologic descent, traces its aristocratic lineage back to the earth's attractional orbit, and the constitution of the solar system. A Httle change in that far-off ancestry, and there could not be a bonnet in Boston to-day, more than a woman to wear it, or a young man to look delighted thereon.

MIND IN THE WORLD OF MATTER

We perceive everywhere proofs of intelligence in the world of matter, — a something which knows and wills. It is not brute force, acting without knowledge and will, but an intelligent power, working by means well understood, continually directed to certain ends, which were meant to take place.

This intelligence let us call by the name of mind, — a power which knows without process of thought, wills without hesitation and choice; not mind with human limitations, but absolute.

The evidences of this mind are to be seen on every hand; on a large scale, in the structural plan of the whole solar system, — for every orb moves forever in its

THE MATERIAL WORLD 9

calculated track, which is shaped by the joint action of the sun and every planet, all of which act constantly by their law of motion ; seen also in the structure of the earth, in its complicated form, in the arrangement of its great divisions of matter into air, water, land, and in the special composition of each of these, and the fitness of each for its special function. And on a small scale, you see the same power of mind in the formation of crystals, the growth of plants, and the insects which live thereon.

Study the leaf of an orange-tree : what wisdom is dis- played in its structure ; how admirable its architecture, what nice frame-work, what exquisite finish ; how intel- ligibly are the elements combined in its chemistry ; how the power of vegetation assimilates the particles of earth, air, water, whereby it grows into a plant ! What a function the leaf has to perform, — this little mason, building up the stem of a tree, and getting ready the substance of its flower and fruit! See the apparatus by which the plant breathes and gets its food! No city government can get a steam-engine to pump water with such economy as this little Miles Greenwood uses to keep itself always fired up, and ready for ac- tion.

Look at the aphis which has its world on this little leaf! See with what intelligence the same mind has fashioned this minute creature; what organs he has to satisfy his individual wants ; what power to perpetuate his race, wherewith he takes hold on eternity, forward and backward. Behind him he has a line of ancestors reaching beyond Noah, Methuselah, and Adam. Study his internal structure ; how wonderful the means which conspire to form his insect life ! No municipal govern- ment is carried on with such wisdom. How admirable

10 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

must be that constitution which gives unity of action to all his members, — all working as one, — and secures variety of action to each, individual freedom for each special member! It is so everywhere in the world of matter.

Now turn over that great volume wherein for many million years the Daily Journal and Evening Transcript of the world appear, each leaf bound in stone ; study through this Old Testament of ages past, and in every page, in every line, in each letter, do you find the same mind, power of knowledge and will, and that power is constant in all time which this great earthen book keeps record of, and it is continuous in all space whereof its annals tell. The more comprehensively things are studied on a great scale, the more vast this mind ap- pears, in its far-reaching scope of time and space. The more minutely things are inquired after on a small scale, the more delicate appears this mind in its action. The solar system is not too big for it to grasp and hold, nor the eye of an aphis too small for it to finish off and provide for.

POWER, LAW AND MIND IN THE UNIVERSE

The whole universe of matter is a great mundane psalm to celebrate the reign of power, law, mind. Fly through the solar system from remotest Neptune to the sun, — power, law, mind, attend your every step. Study each planet, it is still the same, — power, law, mind. Ask every little orange leaf, ask the aphis that feeds thereon, ask the insect corpses lying in millions in the dead ashes of the farmer's peat fire, the remains of mollusks which gave up the ghost millions of years before man trod the globe, — they all, with united voice, answer still the same, — power, law, mind. In

THE MATERIAL WORLD 11

all the space from Neptune to the sun, in all the time from the silicious shell to the orange leaf of to-day, there is no failure of that power, no break of that law, no cessation in its constant mode of operation, no single error of that mind, whereof all space is here, all time is now. So the world is witness continually to power, to never-failing law, to mind that is every- where ; is witness to that ever-present Power which men call God. Look up, and reverence; bow down, and trust !

Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Al- mighty God. On this world about us He has inscribed His thought, in those marvelous hieroglyphs which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand. The universe itself is a great autograph of the Almighty.

DIVINE LO^TE IN THE WORLD OF MATTER

The average age of this audience is perhaps some forty years ; perhaps the human race has been on the earth a thousand times as long. Well, forty thousand years is not so large a proportion of this earth's ex- istence as my hour's sermon is of mankind's existence ; but, as Sirius is far from the earth in space, so far from you and me in time is the beginning of the ma- terial history of the earth, which the geologist finds written in the sacred codex of the world, — the Old Testament of God, written by Him in tables of real stone. Yet in that far time, many millions of millions of years away, was mind controlling the power of matter by a constant mode of operation, to this end, — • to man, — and his relation to matter was provided then. The size and shape of the earth and its attractional

12 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

orbit were then fixed; the time of day and night; the constitution of the air, which lets the solar heat and light come in ; the provision for food, shelter, medi- cine, and tools ; — all so fixed that they were sure to come, each in its proper time, — the stone first for the wild man, and for the enlightened the electric telegraph which runs beneath the sea.

In all that space and time there is no cessation of power, law, mind, whereof Earth's records tell; God immanent always, not once withdrawn. And in that mighty space, that immense of time, there is not the record of a single miracle or departure from, law. God, ever present, never intervenes ; acting ever by law, a miracle becomes needless, and also impossible. Look at all this in its vast greatness in time and space, then consider the delicacy of that Providence, and see how nicely the eye is fitted to light ; and consider this mighty space and this immense time are so with deli- cacy filled up ; and then if it is power, law, mind, which moves our astonishment at first, the deeper second thought is the love which animates that mind to use that power, and by that law achieve the dear blessing which the motive of God at first desired, — the blessing for you and me, and every living thing. Forego that transcendent truth of the perfection of the relation of matter and man which I deduce from the idea of God as infinite perfection, and the very fact of that relation leads us to infer, not only power, law, mind, but that dear love which sends the sun so sweetly round the world, —

" From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, In infinite progression."

THE MATERIAL WORLD 13

THE EFFECT OF MATERIAL CIRCUMSTANCES ON

ANIMALS

See the effect of material circumstances on animals. In the spring, warm weather brings out the flies, gnats, and swarms of other insects ; and they will multiply just in proportion to the geniality of the weather and the supply of their food. More requires more, and less requires less ; and the multiplication of insect life is exactly in proportion to the means of its support. With the increase of insects there will come an increase of the purple martin, the swallow, and other birds that feed thereon. Let a cold summer kill the insects, and the martins will disappear. Napoleon Bonaparte mul- tiplied beasts of prey and birds of rapine. They fed on the wreck of armies that went to pieces under his hand; and Napoleon Bonaparte was the great father of wolves and vultures, because he furnished the ma- terial conditions which gave them birth, as much as if he had sat on the vulture's nest, and brooded her eggs, with his own selfish bosom.

RESERVED POWER

Everywhere in the world there is an exhibition of power, force active to-day. Everywhere, likewise, there is a reserve of power, force waiting for to-morrow. Force is potent everywhere, but latent as well. All men see the active power, all do not see the power which waits till it comes of age to do its work.

In order to get the general analogy of the universe to bear upon this particular matter in hand, the power of progressive development in the human race, look at the plainest examples of this reserved power in nature. All around us the fields lie sleeping under their coverlet of

14 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

frost. Only the mosses, the lichens, and other cryp- togamy have any green and growing life. Every hide- bound tree has taken in sail, and sent down its topmast, housed the rigging, and lies stripped there in bay, waiting for navigation to open in March and April. Even the well-clad bear has coiled himself up for his hibernating sleep all winter long; the frogs and snakes and toads have hid their heads ; the swarms of insects all are still. Nature has put her little ones to bed.

" Hush, my babe ! lie still and slumber ! Holy angels guard thy bed, Heavenly blessings without number Rest upon thy infant head ! "

This is the evening cradle-song wherewith Nature lulls the reptile, insect, bear, and tree, to their winter sleep.

Look at the scene next June. What life in the ground, in the trees spreading their sails to every wind, in the reptiles, in the insects ! Nature wakens her little ones in the new morning, and sends them out to the world's great vineyard to bear the burden in the heat of the day, sure of their penny at its end.

What a reserve of power lies in the ground under our feet, in the silent throat of every bird, in the scale- clad buds on oak and apple-tree ! What energy sleeps in that hibernating bear, who in spring will come out from his hole in the Green Mountains, and woo his shagg}^ mate, and ere long rejoice in the parental joys of home,

" His wee bit ingle blinkin' bonnily. His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smUe."

A few years ago men brought from Egypt to Tuscany some grains of wheat which a farmer had laid up

THE MATERIAL WORLD 15

thirtj-five or forty hundred years ago. They put it in the ground in Italy, and the power which those Httle grains had kept so long waked up bright, and grew wheat there, just as if nothing had happened since Sesostris marched his Egyptians, and set up pillars and temples from Asia minor to the Indus, which Her- odotus saw two and twenty hundred years ago. All the coffee plants in America, it is said, have come from two little trees which a Dominican priest brought here from Spain ; and when the ship was on short allowance for water, he divided his pint a day, taking a half -pint for himself, and sparing a gill for each of his trees; and so they lasted, and were planted in Saint Domingo, and now they are spread all over the tropic continent.

Three hundred years ago New England was a wilder- ness, with wild beasts howling in the forests, and thirty thousand lazy, half -naked Indians howling wilder than the beasts. Idle rivers ran idly to an idle sea, flapping to the moon's attraction, as restless and as lazy as a summer cloud. Then New England was shaggy with awful woods, the only garment of the savage land. In April the windflower came out, and the next month the maple saw his red beauties reflected in the Con- necticut and the Merrimac. In June the water-lily opened her fragrant bosom. Who saw it? Only here and there some young squaw, thinking of her dusky lover, turned to look at its beauty, or the long-lipped moose came down in the morning and licked up its fragrance from the river's breast ; and otherwise the maple bloomed and blushed unseen, and the lily wasted its sweetness on the desert air.

Now civil-suited New England has gardens, or- chards, fields, is nicely girded with earthen and iron roads, and jeweled all over with cities and fair towns.

16 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN The shaggy wood has been trimmed away, and is only " A scarf about her decent shoulders thrown."

Three milhons of men are snugly cradled in New England's lap. The winds have been put to work. The ground, so lazy once, has no Sunday but the win- ter now. The rivers have been put out to apprentice, and become blacksmiths, paper-makers, spinners, and weavers. The ocean is a constant ferryman, always at work, fetching and carrying between the comers of the world. Even the lightning has been called in from his playground, and set to work ; he must keep the side- walk now when he travels, for we regulate the police of the sky ; Dr. Franklin began that work. The light- ning must no longer burn up meeting-houses, — a fa- vorite errand which the devil used to send him on of old time, as Cotton Mather said, — he must keep the peace now ; swift-footed, he must run of errands for the family. We say "Go ! " and the lightning has gone ; " Come ! " and the lightning is at our hand ; " Do this ! " and the lightning sets about it.

Now the difference between the New England of three hundred years ago and the New England of to- day, was all a reserved power once. The Merrimac was the same river to the Indian that it is now to the American ; the ground and sky were the same ; the earth does not secrete a different form of lightning from that which of old crinkled through the sky, ut- tering its thunder as it went.

The change in the human race from the beginning till now is immensely greater than the change from the Massachusetts of red Governor Massasoit to the Massa- chusetts of pale Governor Clifford. All the difference between the first generation of men on earth — without

THE MATERIAL WORLD IT

house or garment, without wife or speech, without con- sciousness of God or consciousness of self — and the most cultivated society or religious men of England and America, was once a power of progress which lay there in human nature. The savage bore within him the germ of Michael Angelo, of Laplace, and Moses, and Jesus. The capability of the nineteenth century lay in the first generation of men, as the New England of to-day lay in the New England of three hundred years ago, or as the wheat of the Tuscan harvest lay in those few Egyptian grains ; it lay there in the human faculties, asleep, unseen, and unfelt, with the instinct of progressive development belonging thereto. All the mighty growth of the pagan civilization, of the He- brew, the Buddhistic, the Mahometan, and the Chris- tian, lay there unseen in man. A thousand years ago, who would have dared to prophesy the industrial civ- ilization of New England to-day? When Sir Francis Drake scoured the seas, capturing every vessel that he could overmaster, great pirate that he was, murdering the crews of Spanish galleons, and burning them at sea after he had taken the silver, when he landed on the coast if Peru and Chili, and violated the women, and butchered the men, and burned the towns, leaving blackness and desolation behind him, and doing it for sport's sake, — who would have dared to prophesy the peaceful commerce which, under the twofold Anglo- Saxon flag of England and America, now covers the ocean with the white blossom of the peace of the nine- teenth century? Nobody would have dared to proph- esy this in the days of Sir Francis Drake.

But, is this progress to stop here? Have the average nations reached the capacity of mankind? Have the most enlightened nations exhausted the capacity for XI— 2

18 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

human improvement? Has the foremost man of all the world drank dry the cup of humanity? Newton, Hum- boldt, Moses, Jesus, — they have only scooped out and drank a handful of water from the well which opens into that vast ocean of faculties which God created, the mighty deep of human nature.

How has the civilization of the world thus far been achieved? By the great men coming together, a thou- sand years ago, and saying, " Let us advance man- kind"? The great men were not great enough for that. It has taken place in the providence of God, who, from perfect motives, of perfect material, for a perfect purpose, as perfect means, created this human nature, put into it this reserve of power, put about it this reserve of material elements, wherewith to make a Jacob's Ladder to clamber continually upwards to- ward God, our prayer being the hand which reaches up, while our practice is the foot which sustains the weight which the prayer steadies. There is no end to this power of progressive development in man, at least none that you and I can discover.

THE ABUNDANCE OF BEAUTY IN THE WORLD

One of the most remarkable things in the world is the abundance of beauty ; of what not only feeds, clothes, and outwardly serves the material needs of man, but also pleases the sense and soul, feeding and comforting the finer and nicer faculties of men. By the instinct of self-preservation we cling, all of us, to the material side of nature, and are thereby fed and nestled and warmed in body ; but while doing this we catch sight of nature's beauty also, and are contended in a higher sort, nestled yet more tenderly. As the hungry Jews, in the Old Testament story, went to bed grumbling, and

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rose the next morning not knowing how or whence to break their fast, and behold, there lay the manna, clean as new frost on the ground, saying as plain as food could say, " Come now, ye unbelievers, eat and be fed 1 " so this angels' bread of beauty, which, " like manna, hath the taste of all in it," lies on the ground under our feet ; it lodges on the bushes in the country, clings to the city walls, and is always falling from the sky. God, after setting before us what we turn into bread, and garments, and houses, and musical instruments, and books, gives us the benediction of beauty as an unexpected grace after meat.

The commonest things in the world are adorned, not with ornaments which are put on, but with beauty which grows out of their substance, which affects their form and shines through every lineament. The grass which springs up in the cracks of city streets, or which in meadows the farmer's ox licks up by handfuls, the delight of the cattle, who twice enjoy their food, — what a beautiful thing it is in shape, in color how ex- ceeding fair! How attractive to the eyes are the grains, from the bearded bread of horses which loves the northern lands, to the queen of cereal plants, south- em bom, and loving still the sun, the Pocahontas of grains, the great Indian Empress of Corn ! The roots which the beasts and which men feed upon, — what homely and yet what comely things they are; nay, the commonest of them all has in its homely shape a certain rather hard but masculine beauty and attractiveness. I cannot see them lying in heaps in the farmers' fields, or in wagon loads brought to market, the earth still clinging to their sides, without reverence for that in- finite wisdom which puts such beauty into such common things. How handsome are the shapes of the apple,

20 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

pear, peach, quince, plum; of the acorn, the nut, the pine cone, yea, of every leaf, from the northern melon and thistle, down to the proud palm which claps its hands beneath the tropics to its Maker's praise ! How fair are all the seeds — those which plump down into the ground, or which tangle themselves in the feathers of birds or the hair of oxen, and so are carried from place to place, or those which in their gossamer bal- loons and parachutes float far off in every breath of wind, scattering the parent beauty to spring up in fragrant loveliness for ever fresh and for ever new.

Even homely things have a certain beauty in their use. Says one of the greatest of this day's later proph- ets, " Despise not the rag which man makes into paper, nor the litter which the earth makes into corn." When you look at the uses of things, and see the relation even of the homeliest and ugliest of these to the world about you, there is a certain beauty investing even things which are most unattractive to the mortal eye. So at evening have I seen a veil of silver spread itself over some little, drowsy, vulgar New England town, coming up just to the roofs of the houses, leaving the village steeples and chimney-tops above that cloud, and the dull town looked exceedingly romantic ; and by and by the waning moon came up, and, with a star or two be^ side her, rode through the blue above, and looked down and enchanted into loveliness the vulgar town. Be- neath that silver veil tired nature slept, and men and women were transfigured with their dreams.

Even in the city, in the commonest street, if it is only a little lonesome, small plants find board and lodging in the chinky stones, and lift their thin faces, and seem to wish good morning to the rapid-stirring man or maid who knows these little apostles and botanic ministers at

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large, who are meant to evangelize the world, and are without staff or scrip, and who never chide the unthank- ful passenger. The fuci which float on the still waters, and fringe the timbers of the wharves, are lovely and attractive things ; and yet they are so little noticed that they have not yet got the welcome of an English name, and I must talk Latin when I praise these humble things. The waters themselves, parting and breaking into lovely forms before the reeking pink of some Mar- blehead or Cape Cod fisherman, and closing again be- hind it in foaming beauty, mark the sea with lovely lines of sparkling light, by night or day. The pros- trate timbers, chafing with the tide, rising and falling, decay into ornaments. Hateful things are trans- formed into animated beauty, and the bird that falls dead by the wood-side or the water-side, in a few weeks is transformed into flies, every one burnished with love- liness, a buzzing and animated rainbow in God's morn- ing sun. In the material world there is no such thing as death, only change, as day and night change to night and day again. Time tinges the scarred moun- tain-side with beauty, and paints every rock that the ocean leans against with exquisite colors that charm the eye. On the houses of the city in a fair day, and on the forms of men and beasts, and all the moving panorama of the street, there falls a light with beauti- ful eff'ect, which off'ers to the hurrying passenger a spectacle of loveliness which varies all the day and educates the mortal eye, and still more, teaches what sits behind the eye and looks thence on the world, filling the mind with cheap and tranquil beauty. Even in the town Nature's beauty never fails, and to her favorites she sings for ever as she flies, by night or day.

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At night, how pleasantly comes on the heavenly spring, and the celestial flowers begin to blossom. First come those larger and more hardy, which put out their loveliness and fringe the day, so that you would not know at first if they were the autumnal blossoms of the day or the spring blossoms of the night. Then the more delicate posies of the sky come out, timid, trembling with loveliness, and ere long the heavens cel- ebrate a White Sunday, and blossom all over with flowers ; and all night long this beauty rains its sweet influence down upon the world, a dew of cooling loveli- ness, a charity of God to soothe and heal and bless. Boys in cities look up from the noisy street at the large silent faces of the stars, and learn to fancy, and to wonder too. In the country some fair-cheeked maid, bidding her lover a long-deferred and reluctant and oft-repeated " Good-night," eyes that tranquil miracle, and as his steps fade from her ear the heavenly beauty enters to her soul, and over-gladdens with starry de- light her bosom's throbbing joy, and all night long she dreams her tranquil prophecy ; — she and her lover both are stars, and, married in heaven by the great God himself, journey through the night,

**Still quiring to the young-e^ed cherubim."

The early marketer, in rough garments, riding through the darkness, bringing men's bread to town, or he that drives heavy oxen, bringing oxen's food to

town,

" Still by the vision splendid Is on his way attended,"

and cheers the weary miles with such companionship as this. The mariner on the Atlantic, stemming eastward, meets the darkness which spots at once one half the

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globe, and with many an upward look and with many an inward thought, sails through the night, thinking when some bright particular star will stand a moment over his home, and look down on his new-born baby, cradled on its mother's breast. And then the morning hastens to meet it, and so the ring of darkness, fringed with beauty at its descending or receding edge, moves slowly round the world, dotted above with stars, and chequered below with more romantic dreams, and all night long these stars move round the center of the world, each one a beauty and a mystery, and all night long o'er city and field and sea, this hanging garden blooms for old and young, and rich and poor,

"Out-blazoning all earth's wealthy Babylons."

At length they fade away. The delicate posies of the night go first, and only a few great, hardy, ven- turesome stars endure the near approach of day, their white light gleaming through the morning red. Then they too pale away and cease, leaving the solitary sun as monarch in the desert sky.

On earth men cultivate the flower of flame. The public street blossoms all night through ; nay, in every house all day men keep the seed of fire, shut up perhaps in flint or steel or in some chemist's drugs ; but as the sun withdraws they sow the spark, and with vulgar tallow, oil, or coal or wood, rear up the lovely flower of flame, adorning with such ornament their evening meal, turning its beauty to use, and its use to beauty too.

In all these things the eternal beauty of the world speaks to us. Nay, to my mind they are windows wherethrough I look into the purposes of the eternal loving-kindness and tender mercy. Do you suppose

24} THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

it was by accident that God thus starred the earth and sky with lovehness, and set angels in the sun, and ordained each particular star as an evangelist of beauty? I tell you, No! But in these hieroglyphs He publishes the wisdom and the friendliness of the Infinite.

Men sometimes think it is only rich men and lords and kings and presidents that can own beauty. It is not so. I own all the beauty of the stars. Blue-eyed Lyra is mine; mine is the many-colored morning; and the ring which marries day and night, its beauty is my own; and all the fair-shaped loveliness of grass, and root, and com, and leaf, and flower, and beast, and bird, and tree, — it is all mine, entailed on me by the great God before creation. Yet my possession bars no other right. It is a philanthropic God who made the world, — the world itself a commonwealth, and all its beauty democratic, alms-giving of the Al- mighty unto your heart and mine.

THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD A PROOF OF GOD'S

LOVE

The forces of nature are indeed wonderful. The more I learn thereof, I am astonished still the more, — at the forces all about us, which build up the moun- tains, which frame a tree, or which spread out into the form of man ; forces agricultural, chemical, electrical, vital, spiritual, which man slowly weaves to use for great purposes, turning nature into humanity. But that is what I should expect ; I see that all this is neces- sary for the material comfort and existence of the world. But the abundance of beauty in the world is what the wisest of men would not dare look for. If you go to a farmer's homestead, you expect to find

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what belongs to his craft, — the tools wherewith he catches and bridles and tames nature, directing and spurring the ground to human work. In his where- abouts you look for oxen, horses, sheep, swine, for ploughs and scythes, reaping and threshing tools ; you expect com in his granary, hay in his bam, roots in his cellar, seeds laid by for years to come; and in his wife's department, you expect household articles, dairy furniture, the smell of milk and new butter. But if you should find native shrubs set round his house, blooming in aboriginal loveliness, as new-Eng- land plants will, all the year from April till October; if you should find nicer plants set under his window, if

" The j asmine clambers in flower o'er the thatch. And the swallow chirps sweet from her nest in the wall," —

you would say, " This man is a great way before his neighbors, the wisest in his hundred." When you go in, if, in addition to agricultural and political newspa- pers and farming books devoted to sober use, you should find a basketful of other books, volumes of poetry, the choicest in the world, — Homer, ^schylus, Virgil, Dante, George Herbert, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Emerson, — a dainty garden wherein the other beauty of God flowered in perpetual spring, and whither the farmer and his household on Sundays, or on other days, turned in and freshened their faces with such encounter, and held communion with the eternal loveliness, — why, you would be aston- ished, and discover that this man is of kindred to the great of earth.

Well, to me the world is just such a farmer's home- stead, and the surprise of beauty is a perpetual aston- ishment, showing me how rich is God in His motherly

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loving-kindness and tender mercy. It seems as if the Divine Love could never do enough for man. He sat- isfies the body's needs with bread, clothing, lodging, medicine; there is a cradle for the baby, a staff for the old man ; and then the great Father flings in this wilderness of beauty for waking men, and when slumber overtakes us a beauty more witching yet watches at the gates of the imagination, and with beauty God blesses His beloved even in their sleep. Surely there is a great Benefactor somewhere. And if the atheist will say that it is all chance, that it comes from nothing, and means nothing, — why, he even must ; at least, we must let him. And if the popular theologians say it comes from the wrath of an offended God, we must let them also have their way. But in all this I see the loveliness of the Infinite Father and Infinite Mother. Not a lichen scars the rock, not a star flames in the sky, but it tells of the infinite love- liness of the infinitely loving God.

THE ADAPTATION OF THE WORLD OF MATTER TO THE WANTS OF MAN

It is very plain that the world of matter has always furnished man with all things needed at the time, and is so made that it is continually modified by man to meet all his progressive wants. The savage in New England wanted a forest and game, a wigwam to live in, wood for his bows and arrows, acorns for his bread ; and the world furnished him with these things. Tiie Anglo-American, a civilized man, wants a mill, roads of iron, glass windows, coal fires, gas, a telegraph, portraits painted by the sun ; and the world of matter furnishes these things just as readily as it furnishes bear-skins and acorns to Uncas. Once man only

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wanted something to keep his feet off the ground while he walked. Nature affords that, and he is sat- isfied for the moment. Next he wants to ride, and not walk. Nature gives him the ox and the ass. Then man wants to go a little faster, six or ten miles an hour. Nature says, " There is the horse, sir, and the camel ; catch as catch can." Then he wants a horse that will go forty or fifty miles an hour. And Nature says, " There is steam, my dear sir, catch that ; there is lightning, put that in harness ; ride fifty or a hun- dred miles if you will, and send your thought as fast as you please, only make your road where you want to go, let your thought lead the way, and the lightning of heaven will be sure to follow." Man wants to cipher. A smooth stone on the beach helps him at first to calculate ; then there are the diagrams which God has written above our heads, and mankind studies the magnificent geometry of the Almighty God in the heavens, which were the great ciphering-board of Archimedes, Newton, Laplace, and Leverrier. Thus the outward world has got somewhere everything which everybody needs for the use, enjoyment, and develop- ment of all his faculties. The cupboard of Nature is never bare.

man's power over the world the result of

WORK

Man feels the force of circumstances, and longs for power over the world. First he asks it by miracle, of God, and tells how Moses crossed the Red Sea ; then by magic, of the devil, and tells how witches ride a broom from Salem to Marblehead. But this power of man comes of a different kind. The Golden Age is no temptation of a devil, offering bread instead of a

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stone ; no miraculous gift outright from God. This power over matter and human instinct, this power to create new circumstances, comes by work, — work of the body, work of the mind. Eden is not behind us ; Paradise is not a land of idleness which Adam lost by his first free step. It is before us. It is the result of toil; and that toil brings with it opportunity for the use, development, and enjoyment of every faculty of the body, every power of the mind. A poetic Hebrew said that Moses led Israel through the Red Sea by miracle. Suppose it were true ; it were nothing in comparison with the English Transportation Com- pany, with a line of steamers sailing each week which carry Egyptians, Israelites, men of all nations, and will insure any man's property for a penny in the pound. The New England Puritan told how, by magic, a witch rode from Salem to Boston, the devil before, and she behind, on the crupper of a broom ; and he looked up and trembled, and wished he had the power. What was that in comparison with what we see every day, when, not a witch, but lightning, rides, not the crupper of a broom, but a permanent wire, from Boston to New York, or where you will, and when it is not the devil, but a scientific man who postilions the thought across the air? What, I say, is miracle, what is magic, what are the dreams of miracle, the superstitions of magic, in comparison with the results of plain work which God puts in our power .^ Ask a miracle of God, — and there is no answer. The world is the answer, and it lies before us. Ask magic of the devil, — there is none that moves the wind. Ask the result by thought and work, and the result comes.

Man wants a farm, and he asks for it, " Lord, give me a farm," in his prayer. Says the Father, " There

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is land and water; make jour farm just as you like it. Is not the soil rich enough? There is sea-weed on the shore, lime at Thomaston, guano at the Lobos Islands ; make it as rich as you like." Man wants summer roses in the winter hour ; and the Lord says, " Rear them just as you will." He wants ships, and the Lord sends him to the mountain and mine, and under his plastic hand the mast grows in the valley, and the hemp-field blossoms with sail-cloth. He wants a factory, and the Merrimac is ready to turn his wheels; wants schools, colleges, lyceums, libraries, and the Infinite God says to him, " My little child, for these there are the ma- terial means under your hand; there are the human means over your shoulders. Use them, make what you like." If the man learns, Joy plucks a rose by every pathway, and puts it in his bosom. If he learns not, Want cuts a birch in every hedge-row, and the idle fool is whipped to school.

At this day the men of foremost religious develop- ment are the idealizing power of the human race, that family of prophets which never dies out. They have the ideal of a better state of things, a family of equals, a community without want, without ignorance, with- out crime, a Church of righteousness, and a State where the intuitions of conscience have been codified into statutes. These things are all possible, just as possible as the farm, the shop, the factory, and the school. Desire only points to the reserve of power that one day shall satisfy it.

There are two little birds fluttering about the human family. One is / Jiarve; the other is Oh, had I, One is the bird in the hand; the other is the bird in the bush, which is worth two of the bird in the hand. The highest function of / ha've is to lay the Qgg^ whence

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comes forth the fairer and lovelier bird Oh, had I. She flies off^ to the bush, and we journey thither, find- ing new treasures at every step. We see the ideal good. The child cries for it; the child-boy cries to his mother, the child-man cries to his God, both clamor- ing for the result. But the wise God does not give it outright. He says to the child-man, " Pay for it, and take it. Earn your breakfast before you eat it, and then take what you like. Desire the end, do you, my little man ? Desire the means to it, and then you shall have it. There is a reserved power in matter, another in man. Build your family, church, and state just as beautiful as you like. All things are possible to him that believeth. Build and be blessed. Lo, I am with you to the end of the world ! "

THE EFFECT OF POWER IN THE MATERIAL WORLD UPON THE MIND OF MAN

Alexander Von Humboldt — the ministers call him an atheist — says, " We find even amongst the most savage nations a certain vague, terror-stricken sense of the all-powerful unity of the natural forces with the existence of an invisible spiritual essence manifested in those forces ; and we may trace here the relation of a band of union linking together the visible world and that higher spiritual world which escapes the grasp of the senses."

The general aspect of nature, with its vast power and constant law, has a direct influence to waken rev- erence and something of awe. The sublimity of the ocean, the grandeur of the mountain, the wide plain and great river, fill all thoughtful men with vague, dreamy longings toward the great Cause and Provi- dence which creates them all, and fills them all with

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wondrous life. So the thought of the great trees, the wide-spread forest, house and home to such worlds of life, the bright wild flower, the common grass and grain, food for beast and man, — wakens religious emotions in the best and worst of us all. Still more, perhaps, the sun, moon, and stars come home to our consciousness and stir the feelings. Infinite nature speaks thus to all men, in all lands, in every stage of culture, highest and humblest. This is the reason why the rude man worships the objects of nature first, and makes gods of them ; this is the rude beginning of mankind's outward religion, which represents the inner- most facts of religious consciousness. These poor ma- terial things are the lowly rounds in the ladder which mankind travels on, till we come to a knowledge of the Infinite God, who transcends all form, all space, all time. The great and unusual phenomena of nature affect the religious feelings with exceeding power, such as an eclipse of the sun or moon, the appearance of comets, that " from their horrid hair shake pestilence and war," an earthquake, a storm, thunder and light- ning. To you and me these things are not trouble- some, but to the wild man, the savage, or the half civilized, they bring great fear and dread, and thereby waken the religious feeling, which thence slowly tends on to its ultimate work of peace and joy and love. This terror before the violence of nature is exceedingly valuable to the savage man, and it plays the same part in the history of his religion that want has played in the history of his toil and thought. It directs faculty to its function. Once nothing but hunger and fear would make man toil and think ; then in his rudeness, nothing but the violent aspect of the world would rouse his soul from its savage lethargy ; then storm and

32 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

earthquake, thunder and hghtning, were the prophets which spake to man. To the rude the teacher must also be rude. But this fear tormenting man so, he presently goes and studies nature, to see if there be cause for fear, and the knowledge which he gains thereby is real joy.

Well did a great Roman poet, two thousand years ago — copying a greater poet, whose reason surpassed even his mighty imagination — say, " Happy is he who can understand the true causes of things, and tramples underneath his feet all fear, inexorable fate, and the roar of angry hell." At length men find that the eclipse or the comet was not harmful, that the storm came not in wrath, that the earthquake tells nothing of an angry God, only of a globe not finished yet, that the thunder and lightning are beneficent, that the powers of the earth, the round ocean, and the living air are full of love. The law of nature leads men to behold the Law-giver, and the benevolence which he finds in the vast majority of cases makes him certain he shall find it when he understands those cases which he knows not yet. He goes from " nature up to nature's God," and when he knows the earth, its air, water, land, its powers of motion, vegetation, anima- tion, knows the solar system, which maintains for earth its place, knows the astral system, which furnishes earth its spot, when he looks on the unresolved nebula, which may perhaps be another astral system, so far away that it looks like dust of stars scattered in some corner of the sky, — then does his soul run over for that dear God who established such relation between the cosmic universe and the astral system, between that and the solar system, between that and the earth, be- tween the earth and his body and spirit, his mind and

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conscience, heart and soul, and then he turns and loves that God with all his understanding, with all his heart and strength; nature from without leagues with spirit from within, and constrains him thus.

THE WORLD OF MATTER AS AFFECTING THE IMAGINATION

The world of matter affects the imagination: it offers us beauty. How beautiful are the common things about us ! The trees,

" Their bole and branch, their lesser boughs and spray, Now leafless, pencill'd on the wintry sky " —

or the summer trees, with their leaves and flowers, or their autumnal j ewels of fruit, — how fair they are ! Look at the grasses, whereon so many cattle feed, at the grains, which are man's bread, and note their beautiful color and attractive shape. Walnuts, apples, grapes, the peach, the pear, cherries, plums, cranber- ries from the meadow, chestnuts from the wood, — how beautiful is all the family, bearing their recommenda- tion in their very face ! The commonest vegetables, cabbages, potatoes, onions, crooked squashes, have a certain homely beauty, which to man is grace before his meat. Nothing common is unclean. Then there is the sun all day, the light shifting clouds, which the winds pile into such curious forms, all night the stars, the moon walking in brightness through the sky, — and how beautiful these things are! Then what heavenly splendor waits for and ushers in the day, and attends his departure when his work is done. How our eye cradles itself in every handsome rose, — and all the earth blossoms once each year.

How shape and color fit our fancy, and stars so far XI— 3

34 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

off that their distance is inconceivable impinge their beautiful light on every opening eye. What delight these things give us — a joy above that of mere use! Even the rudest boy in Cove Street looks up at the stars, and learns to wonder and rejoice, and is inly fed. Set him down on the seashore next summer, and how the beauty of its sight and sound will steal into his rude, untutored heart, as the long waves roll to- ward the land, comb over and break with " the ocean wave's immeasurable laugh!" With what joy will he gather up the refuse which the sea casts upon the shore, the bright-colored weeds, the curiously-twisted shells, the nicely-colored pebbles, worn into so fair and elliptical a shape and polished off so smooth. Thus material nature comes close to the imagination of man, even in the rudest child. No North American savage but felt his heart leap at the bright sparkling water of the river, or the sunny lake, or the sublimity of the New Hampshire mountains ; and in the names which he left there, has he set up his monument of the inti- mate relation between his imagination and the world of matter, which he felt and recognized. This passing delight in nature's beauty helps to refine and elevate all men. The boy who puts a dandelion in his button- hole, the girl who stains her cheek with wild straw- berries in June — seeking not only to satisfy her mouth with their sweetness, but to ornament her face with their beauty, — are both flying upward on these handsome wings.

But man is so in love with the transient beauty of nature that he captures it and seeks to hold it forever. He puts the sound of nature into music, which he re- cords in the human voice or in wooden or metallic instruments ; he paints and carves out loveliness on

THE MATERIAL WORLD 35

canvas and in wood and stone. Patriarchal Jacob is in love with the rainbow, and so puts its colors into Joseph's coat to keep nature's beauty, while he also clothes Rachel's first-bom and longed-for boy. Thought commands toil, and bids it preserve the pre- cious but precarious beauty which the world of matter so lavishly spreads out on earth in flowers, or scatters over the " spangled heavens " in stars. Man is up- lifted and made better by this effort. When you find an Ojibbeway Indian with one stone copying the form of a blackbird upon another, depend upon it he is setting up a guide-board whose finger points upward to civilization, and the tribe of Ojibbeways will travel that way. Thus closely following the male arts of use come the feminine arts of beauty, — painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. " They weave and twine the heavenly roses in earthly life; they knit the bond of love which makes us blest, and in the chaste veil of the Graces, watchful, with holy hand, they cherish the eternal fire of delicate feelings." So nice is the relation between the world of matter and man's imagination that beauty, which is our next of kin on the material side, helps us up continually, takes us to school, softens our manners, and will not suffer them to be wild. The first house man ever entered was a hole in the rock, and the first he ever built was a burrow scooped out of the ground : look at your dwell- ings now, at the Crystal Palace, the Senate House at Washington, at these fair walls, so grateful to the eye, so welcome to the voice of man ! Man's first dress, what a scant and homely patch it was ! Look at the ornamented fabrics which clothe Adam and Eve to- day, in such glory as Solomon never put on ! Con- sider the art of music, which condenses all nature's

36 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

sweet sounds ! Man's first voice was a cry ; to-day that wild shriek is an anthem of melody, a chain of " linked sweetness long drawn out." Consider the art of the painter and the sculptor, who in superficial colors, or in solid metal or stone, preserve some noble countenance for many an age, and a thousand years hence eyes not opened now shall look thereon, and be strengthened and gladdened. From this intimate relation of the world of matter to man's imagination come the great sculptors, painters, architects, and musicians, yea the great poets, Shakespeare, Milton, and their fair broth- erhood and sisterhood of congenial souls, — softening the manners of man, and inspiring his heart, all round the many-peopled globe.

Now see on how nice an arrangement this relation rests. Matter furnishes food, shelter, medicine, tools; and the pursuit of these educates the understanding, which man did not ask for, and wisdom which he did not hope to have is thereby thrown in. There is beauty also ; it is food for the imagination, shelter, medicine, and tools for subtler needs. This gives also a higher education to a nobler faculty. Beauty does not seem requisite to the understanding alone, it is not valuable to man's mere body, certainly it does not seem necessary to the world of matter itself; but it is requisite for the imagination, and this thread of beauty, whose shape and color so witches us, runs through all the cosmic web ; it is tied in with the subtle laws of animation, vegetation, motion ; it is woven up with attraction, afiinity, heat, light, electricity; it is connected into the disposition of the three great parts of the earth, air, water, land, complicated with the subtle chemical character of each ; it depends on the structural form of the earth, that on the solar system

THE MATERIAL WORLD m

itself. So when you rejoice in a musical sound, in the sight of flowers, in the bloom on a maiden's cheek, when you look at a charcoal sketch or a bronze statue, when you read a drama of Shakespeare, or listen to an essay of Emerson, — then remember that the relation between matter and mind which made these things possible, depends on the structure of the solar system, and was provided for millions of millions of years be- fore there was a man-child born into the world.

SPRING

How mighty are the forces in the world of matter, — attraction, affinity, light, heat, electricity, vegetation, the growth of plants, animation, the life of beast, bird, reptile, insect! Yet how delicate are the results thereof! It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in this monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. But so it is. Put a little atom of your butterfly's wing under a microscope, and what delicate wonders do you find! The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work. A thoughtful man for the first time goes to some carpet factory in Lowell. He looks out of the win- dow, and sees dirty bales of wool lying confusedly about, as they were dropped from the carts that brought them there. Close at hand is the Merrimac River, one end of it pressed against the New Hamp- shire mountains and the sky far off^, while the other crowds upon the mill-dam, and is pouring through its narrow gate. Under the factory it drives the huge wheel, whose turning keeps the whole town ajar all day. Above is the great bell which rings the river

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to its work. Before him are pulleys and shafts ; the floor is thick-set with looms ; there are rolls of various- colored woolen yarn, bits of card pierced with holes hang before the weaver, who now pulls a handle, and the shuttles fly, wedding the woof to the expectant warp, and the handsome fabric is slowly woven up and rolled away. The thoughtful man wonders at the contrivance by which the Merrimac River is made to weave such coarse materials into such beauty of form, color, and finish. What a marvel of machinery it is I None of the weavers quite understand it ; our visitor still less. He goes off^ wondering, thinking what a head it must be which planned the mill, a tool by which the Merrimac transfigures wool and dye stuff" into handsome carpets, serviceable for chamber, parlor, staircase, or meeting-house.

But all day, you and I, President Buchanan, the American Tract Society, the Supreme Court of the United States, all the people in the world, are in a carpet factory far more wonderful. What vast forces therein spin and weave continually ! What is the Merrimac, which only reaches from the New Hamp- shire mountains to the sea, compared to that great river of God on whose breast the earth, the sun, the solar system, yea, the astral system, are but bubbles, which gleam, many-colored, for a moment, or but dimple that stream, and which swiftly it whirls away? What is the fabric of a Lowell mill to that carpet which God lays on the floor of the earth, from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic, or yet also spreads on the bottom of the monstrous sea? It is trod under foot by all mankind ; the elephant walks on it, and the royal tiger. What multitudes of sheep, swine, and horned cattle lie down there, and take their rest ; what

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tribes of beasts, insects, reptiles, birds, fishes, make a home therein, or feed thereon. Moths do not eat away this floor-cloth of the land and sea. The snow lies on it, the sun lurks there in summer, the rain wets it all the year ; yet it never wears out ; it is dyed in fast colors. Now and then the feet of armies in their battle wear a little hole in this green carpet, but next year a handsome piece of botanic rug-work covers up the wear and tear of Sebastopol and Delhi, as of old it repaired the waste of Marathon and Trasimenus. Look, and you see no weaver, no loom visible ; but the web is always there, on the ground and underneath the sea. The same clothier likewise keeps the live world tidy and in good trim. How all the fishes are dressed out, — those glittering in plate armor, these only arrayed in their vari-colored jerkins, such as no Moorish artist could paint. How well clad are the insects ; with what suits of mail are the beetle and bee and ant furnished. The coat of the buffalo never pinches under the arm, never puckers at the shoulder; it is always the same, yet never old-fashioned, nor out of date. The shoes of the reindeer and the ox inherit that mythical Hebrew blessing pronounced on those of the Israelites; they wax not old upon their feet. The pigeon and humming-bird wear their court-dress every day, and yet it never looks rusty nor threadbare. In this grand clothiery of the world everything is clad in more beauty than many-colored Joseph or imperial Solomon ever put on, yet nobody ever sees the wheel, the loom, or the sewing machine of this great Dorcas Institution which carpets the earth and upholsters the heavens, and clothes the creatures of the world with more imperial glory than the Queen of Sheba ever fancied in her dream of dress and love.

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How old is the world of matter, — many a million years, yet it is to-day still fresh and young as when the morning stars first sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Not a power of the earth has decayed. The sea,

" Such as creation's dawn beheld, it roUeth now."

The stars have been watching many a million years ; yet in all that heavenly host not a single eye has turned dim. The sun has lost nothing of his fire. Never old, the moon still walks in maiden beauty through the sky, and though men and nations vanish, " the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong." Centri- petal and Centrifugal are the two horses of God that make up the wondrous span that draws the heavenly chariot ; they are always on the road, yet never cast a shoe ; and though they have j ourneyed for many a million years, are to-day fresh and fleet and road- ready, as when first they drew Neptune, the earliest bom of this family of planets, in his wide orbit round the central sun. How old the world is ; yet well-clad, and its garments as fresh as if they were new, spick and span, in every thread.

What a revival of nature is just now going on in all Europe, Asia, North America, and the Islands which dot the frozen sea with green. To the arctic world, which for months sat in darkness, exceeding great light has come. Truly here is the outpouring of the Spirit of God! Yet nobody preached the reasonableness of eternal damnation to the alewives, the shad and the salmon, which now abound in our waters ; but with no minister to scare them they know what they shall do to be saved, for the Spirit of God comes into these mute disciples, who crowd up the little

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streams, float into the ponds, and spread in the great streams, and there drop, as an offering, into the temple- chest of the Almighty, all that they have, even their living, and then, like the poor widow in the New Testament story, pass out of human sight, swallowed up in that great sea of oblivion where man beholds nothing, but where God never loses sight of an ale- wife, having provided for its existence and the acci- dents of its history from before the foundations of the world. From His eye neither the great sun in heaven nor the spawn of an alewife in the sea is ever for a moment lost or hid. What new life is there in the air, which hums with little insects new-born, short-lived, yet not one of them afraid to die. Why should it be ? The Infinite Mind, which is Cause and Providence to all things that be, knows the little track of an ephemeron as well as the calculated orbit of this world, which teams its thousand million men from age to age along its well-proportioned path. " Fear not, little flock of ephemera," God says to them, " lo, I am with you also to the end of the world. Not a fly shall fall to the ground without my providence." In some warm spring day, in the shallow waters of a sluggish river, there sports a shoal of little fishes, new-born, trying their tiny fins in waters which are at once their bed and board. Suddenly a swarm of little insects, just waked into new life by the sun, springs from the bank and darkens the surface of the water, for a yard or two, with a cloud. The fishes which play there spring into the air, and in a few minutes all this cloud of flies has been swallowed down. But the fly was born with his children cradled in his body, and in the bosom of the fish itself this new generation finds its garden of Eden, where it eats, if not from the tree of knowledge,

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at least the tree of life. So while the new-born ephemera give the new-born fish a breakfast, the eater unconsciously adopts the children of the fly, nurses them in his body, and when they are grown to their majority, sets free these creatures, which had so strange a birth and bringing up in this little floating college of a country brook. Does God take care for oxen ? asks St Paul. Ay, as well as for man, and sends His apostles to these little creatures whose life is so brief. The perpetuation of their race is provided for, and they have organs which take hold on eternity. Truly the Infinite God is fatherly providence to the little fly bom in a spring day, and perishing in an hour after it sees the light.

What wonders of nature go on all around us to- day ! From the top of some tall house, look on the fair mantle which Nature has just cast on all the hills about us, and which falls with such handsome folds into every valley. Go into any one of the towns near at hand, and see what there takes place. There is not an apple-tree but has put its wedding garments on. The elm has half ripened its fruit; the maple is mak- ing provision for whole forests of future j oy ; while the trees which the farmer plants for profitable use, and not for beauty, are white with the oracles of prophecy. It is a revival of nature, whereof the Sun is the evangelical preacher. No city government warns him off* from the Common, for he preaches the everlasting gospel of the blessed God, wherewith he rejoices both old and young. There is no heresy in that. All nature hears him, and expounds his word of life. The silent fishes plentifully obey the first of God's commands, the tuneful birds repeat their litany, chanting their morning and evening psalm ; all the

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trees put on their bridal garments, — these candidates for the divine communion, who have come to take part in this great Epiphany, the natural manifestation of God to these Gentiles of the field and wood. They also share the Pentecost of the year, and celebrate their thanksgiving with such abundance as they can or know. What a Pentecost of new life is there! Ev- ery bush bums and is not consumed; yea, greatens and multiplies in its bloom and blossom, and the ground seems holy with new revelation; it is a White Sunday all round the town. How grand and vigorous the new blade comes out from the earth ; and ere long these will be sheaves, and oxen will laboriously drag home the farmer's load of grain, which in due time will be changed to other oxen, and then likewise to farmers too, and so be resurrected in his sons and daughters. What a marvelous transfiguration is that ! first the seed, then the plant, then the harvest, next bread, and at length Moses, Elias, Jesus ! No Hebrew writer of legend could ever finish half so fair a miracle as this, wherein is no miracle, but constant law at every step. Last autumn in some of the pastures fire ran along the wall, and left the ground black with its ephemeral charcoal, where now the little wind-flower lifts its deli- cate form and bends its slender neck, and blushes with its own beauty, gathered from the black ground out of which it grew ; or some trillium opens its painted cup, and in due time will show its fruit, a beautiful berry there. So out of human soil, blackened by another fire which has swept over it, in due time great flowers will come out in the form of spiritual beauty not yet seen, and other fruit grow there, whose seed is in itself, and which had not ripened but out of that black ground. Thus the lilies of peace cover the ter-

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rible field of Waterloo, and out of the grave of our dear ones there spring up such flowers of spiritual loveliness as you and I else had never known. It is not from the tall, crowded warehouse of prosperity that men first or clearest see the eternal stars of heaven. It is often from the humble spot where we have laid down our dear ones that we find our best observatory, which gives us glimpses into the far-off world of never-ending time.

In the hard, cold winter of our northern lands, how do we feel a longing for the presence of life. Then we love to look on a pine or fir tree, which seems the only living thing in the woods, surrounded by dead oaks, birches, maples, looking like the grave-stones of buried vegetation : that seems warm and living then ; and at Christmas men bring it into meeting-houses and parlors, and set it up, full of life, and laden with kindly gifts for the little folk. Then even the unat- tractive crow seems half sacred, through the winter bearing messages of promise from the perished autumn to the advancing spring, — this dark forerunner of the tuneful tribes which are to come. We feel a long- ing for fresh green nature, and so in the shelter of our houses keep some little Aaron's rod, budding alike with promise and memory ; or in some hyacinth or Dutchman's tulip we keep a prophecy of flowers, and start off some little John to run before, and with his half gospel tell of some great Emmanuel, and signify to men that the kingdom of heavenly beauty is near at hand. Now that forerunner disappears, for the desire of all nations has truly come; the green grass is creeping everywhere, and it is spangled with many- colored flowers that come unasked. The dullest bush tingles with new life in all its limbs. How the old

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apple-tree blushes at the genial salutation whispered by the wind, the Gabriel of heaven, that freest agent of Almighty power, " Hail, thou that art highly favored! Thou hast found favor with God, and in due time shalt rejoice, and drop thy Messianic apples down." Already the multitude of the heavenly host is here, — the blackbird, the robin, the brown thrush, the purple finch, and the fire-hangbird ; these build their nests, while they sing, " Glory to God in the high- est, on earth peace, good will toward men."

What if there was a springtime of blossoming but once in a hundred years ! How would men look for- ward to it, and old men who had beheld its wonders tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth. How would young men hope to become old that they might see so glad a sight ; and when beheld, the aged man would say, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation ! " Nay, wise men who knew the signs of the times would follow that star of spring till it stood over that happy country where the young child was, and then fall down and worship him. But now, in every year, in all lands, this Messianic beauty is born, this star stands still over every garden, every farm. It pauses over each elder-bush, and does not disdain the buttercup and dandelion, for, like that other Messiah, these also lie in the oxen's crib.

What a solidarity there is between the world of mat- ter and its inhabitants. They suit and fit each other like him and her. From inorganic matter up to the highest man there is a gradual and continual ascent. Vegetation is a ring, whereunto animation is a living precious stone, with which God marries man to nature ;

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and the world of spirit and the world of matter are no longer twain, but the two are wedlocked into one. How the world of matter is grateful to our flesh ! To canny man the world is very kind. It feeds us, clothes, houses, heals, and at last folds us in its bosom, whence our flesh is a perpetual resurrection, and rises again into other men, while the soul invisible fares further on in the ascending march of infinite progres- sion, whereof we see the beginning, and to which there is no end.

How the world delights us with its beauty, — feed- ing, clothing, housing, healing, the nobler part of man ! Even the savage and the baby love the hand- some things of earth. Little Two-year-old, a lumpy baby, as merry as a May-bee, comes stumbling through the grass, and loves to pick the attractive flowers, drawn by their very loveliness, that will not feed his mouth, but feed his soul. Thoughtful man makes a grand eclecticism of loveliness from earth, air, water, sky, and rainbows both Joseph's and Josephine's coat, builds his house with architectural beauty, has paint- ing, sculpture, and music to attend him.

What a fair sign of God's all-embracing love is found in this presence of beauty, — a sweet charm which fascinates us to refinement and elevation of char- acter! It does not seem needful to the conception of the world that nature should be beautiful. Why need any star be limned so fair? The moon must walk, — but need she walk in beauty? Why should the form of the apple, peach, nut, the blossom of the Indian corn, and every little grain, be made so handsome? Surely they could feed us just as well otherwise. Why set off^ beast and bird with such magnificence, and so clothe the grass of the field, which is here to-day, and

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to-morrow is cast into the oven ? Why make the morn- ing and night such handsome children, and purple the anemone with the charcoal where heedless boys have burned the grass, and out of battle-fields bring such loveliness, beauty cradled in the bloody arms of strength? You can read it all. A great poet told it two hundred years ago : " O Mighty Love ! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him " ; and it answers to his being more tenderly than he thinks. So long as a single star burns in heaven with fire, or a rose on earth flings out her own loveliness, or the water- lily rings beauty's sweet-toned bells, no Hebrew or Christian revelation shall make me doubt the infinite loving-kindness of God, to saint and sinner too. Ev- ery violet, every dandelion, every daffodil, or jonquil, is a preacher sent to tell us of the loving-kindness of God. For that doctrine, at this hour there is a ser- mon on every mount, east, south, west, or north.

And how this world of beauty and use is a school- house also for the mind, and a church likewise for the soul, to inspire men with devotion! In tropic lands, swept by hurricanes, rent by earthquakes, or desolated by volcanoes, I do not wonder that men believe in a devil who sometimes gets the better of the good God. Superstition is a natural weed in the savage human soil, which yet the rising religious blade overtops and lives down, and kills out at last. It is not surprising that everywhere, rude but thoughtful men looked on the falling earth and the steadfast sky, and saw the many forms of wondrous, yet uncomprehended life, and said, " All these things are gods," and sought to worship them. Nature is the primer where man first learns of God. There, " day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no

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voice nor language," — yet the eye finds revelations. Not only to Hebrew Moses, but to all humankind, God speaks in every burning bush, and the rising of nature's song wakes new morning in the soul of man. This perpetual renewal of vegetation, this annual wonder of blossoming, — what a religious revelation it offers to us ! How it fills us with admiration, trust, and love ! Every flowering bush burns with God, and is not con- sumed. With neither trick nor miracle. He changes water into wine, on all the vine-clad hills of Italy, France, and Spain, and fills not five thousand men, but five thousand times two hundred thousand, — a thou- sand million men, — every day ; and on the broken bread of this meal supports the multitudinous armies of beast, bird, fish, insect, reptile. No little worm is turned away unfed from that dear Father's board where the trencher is set, and all things made ready for the ephemeron born this minute, and to perish the next hour. Compared to this wonder of law, the tales of miracle, of the Old Testament or New, are no fact, but poor poetry. They are like ghosts among a market full of busy men and women.

How old is the material world, and yet forever fresh and young ! So it is with the human world. If the race of men be thirty thousand years old, then there are a thousand fathers between us and the first man ; and yet you and I are just as new and fresh, and just as near to God, as the first father and mother. We derive our hu- manity from Him, not them ; and hold it by divine pat- ent from the Creator of all. Mankind never grows old. You and I pass off as leaves are blown from the trees, decay, and are exhaled, becoming but vapors of the sky again. So also do nations grow old and pass away. At the gate where Egypt, Assyria, Judea, Greece,

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Sparta, and Rome, were admitted through, stand Spain and Italy to-day, beating at the door, and crying, " Divinest Mother, let thy weary daughters in ! " They will pass to the judgment of nations, and in due time Britain and America will be gathered to their fathers, but mankind will have still, as now, the bloom of immortal youth about his handsome brow. Thirty thousand years, perhaps sixty, nobody knows how long, has he lived here ; still not a hair is gray, no sense is dull, the eye of this old Moses of humanity is not dim, nor is his natural strength abated; and new nations are still bom as vigorous as the old, and to much better estate.

The last three generations have done more than any six before in science, letters, art, religion, and the greatest art of bearing men and building them into families, communities, nations, and the human world. The religious faculty vegetates into new churches, ani- mates into new civilization men and women. Tell me of Moses, Isaiah, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Pytha- goras, Jesus, Paul, Mahomet, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin — a whole calendar full of saints ! I give God thanks for them, and bare my brow, and do them rev- erence, and sit down at their feet to learn what they have to offer. They are but leaves and fruit on the tree of humanity, which still goes on leafing, flowering, fruiting, with other Isaiahs and Christs, whereof there is no end. As the tree grows taller, the wealth of blossoms is more, and so too the harvest of its fruit. When the woods have not a leaf, when the ocean has not a drop, when the sun has not a particle of life, still shall the soul of man look up to God, and reverence the Infinite Father and Mother, love and trust; for

God created man in His own image, and gave him to XI— 4

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be partaker of His own immortality, and no devil can filch his birthright away from the meanest man. No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by in- born temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue. The little charity which palHates effects sometimes fails, but the great justice which removes the causes of ill is as eternal as God. So the most precious com of humanity which I gather from the pastures of ethics and history, and out of the deep, well-ploughed field of philosophy, I sow beside the waters, nothing doubting. Some falls on a rock, where suddenly it starts, and presently withers away. The shallow-minded bring no fruit to perfection, and only produce ears of chaff. Some drops by the wayside, and covetousness, lust, vanity, and ambition, devour it up, rioting to-day on what should be seed-corn for future generations. Some is blown before bigots, who trample it under their feet, and turn again and rend me with their sermons and their prayers. But I know that most of it will fall into good ground, — earnest, honest men and women, where in due time, if not in my day, it will spring up, and bear fruit of everlasting life, some thirtyfold, some forty, some sixty, and some a hundred. Hopeful mankind is not forgetful to entertain strangers, nor lets an angel pass for lack of invitation. Tenacious mankind lets slip no good that is old.

" One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world has never lost,"—

nor ever will.

But while the human race is on the earth, — its con- tinuing city, ever building, never done, — our individual Hfe has also another spring. Death is but a blossom-

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ing out from the bulbous body, which kept the precious germ all winter long, and now the shards fall off, and the immortal flower opens its beauty, which God trans- fers to His own paradise, fragrant with men's good deeds and good thoughts ; nay, where their good wishes and prayers pass at their proper worth.

There runs a story that one Passover Sabbath day, when Jesus was a boy of twelve, he stood with his mother at the door of their little cottage in Nazareth, — his father newly dead, and his brothers and sisters playing their noisy games. And he said, " O mother, would that I had lived in the times when there was open vision, and the Lord visited the earth, as in the days of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. These are sad times, mother, which we have fallen in."

Mary laid the baby, sleeping, from her arms, and took a sprig of hyssop out of the narrow wall, and said, " Lo, God is here ! and, my boy, not less than on Jacob's Ladder do angels herein go up and down. It is springtime now, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land, and the blossom of this grape-vine is fragrant with God. The date-tree, the white rose of Sharon, and the lily-of-the-valley, root in Him. He is in your little garden out there, not less than in grand Eden, with Adam and Eve. Look how the setting sun has sketched out all the hills ! What a purple glory flames in the west, and is reflected in the east, where the full moon tells us it is Passover day."

" Nay, mother," said the thoughtful boy ; " but He has left the soul of Israel for their sins. So Rabbi Jonas told us in the synagogue to-day. Oh, that I had lived with Elias or Amos, when the spirit fell on men ! I had also been filled with Him."

And Mary took up her wakened baby, who began to

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cry, and stilling it in her bosom, she said, " The sins of Israel, my boy, are like Rebecca's cry. God is more mother to the children of Israel than I to her. Do you think He will forsake the world? This little baby is as new as Adam ; and God is as near to you as he was to Abraham, Moses, Amos, or Elias. He speaks to you as to Samuel. He never withdraws from the soul of men, but the dayspring from on high comes contin- ually to the soul of each. Open the window, and the sun of righteousness comes in."

And Jesus paused, the story tells, and sat there, and while his mother laid the little ones silently away in their poor cribs, he watched the purple fade out from the sky, and the great moon pouring out its white fire, with a star or two to keep her company in heaven. And when the moon was overhead, there came two young lovers, newly wed, and as Jesus caught the joy of their talk to one another, and smelt the fragrance of the blooming grape, there came a gush of devotion in his young heart, and he said, " My Father worketh hitherto ; I also will work," — and laid him down to his dreams and slept, preparatory to the work which fills the world.

II

THE NATURE OF MAN

THE GRANDEUR AND THE BEAUTY OF MAN

Of all the wonderful things of God, man the won- derer is himself the most wonderful. He is so well- bom, so variously and richly gifted with personal faculties, which are so numerous for action, and which aspire so high ; so amply furnished with material means to exercise his faculties and achieve his aspiration, with all eternity for his work-day, and all immensity to grow in, — it is amazing how much is shut up within how little ; within a creature a few feet high, living on earth some threescore years ! Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material universe as a casket to keep his treasure in. All the material world is made to minister to man's development, — a cupboard of food or a cabinet of pleasure. The ox bears his burdens ; the arctic whale feeds the scholar's or the housewife's lamp ; the lightnings take their master's thought on their wings and bear it over land or underneath the sea. The amaranthine gems which blossom slowly in the caverns of the ground, — these are the rose-buds for his bosom. The human Elias goes up in his chariot of flame; he has his sky-chariot, and his sea-chariot, and his chariots for land, drawn by steeds of fire which himself has made.

You admire the height of the mountains. But man's mind is higher than the tallest of them. You wonder at the " great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts," as the Psalmist says. But man's mind is wider than the

53

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sea, comprehends the deep, learns its laws, makes the tide serve him, and the ocean becomes a constant ferry- man and common carrier of the world. Nay, in the stone which was once the ocean's rim, man reads the most private history of the sea itself, what fishes swam in its deeps a million years ago, what rushes grew on its border, what thunder-showers, from what direction, left their mark on its sandy beach, what oyster sucked its ooze. For him the waters chronicle " the ocean wave's immeasurable laugh," and record the smile which rippled round the ocean's face a million years ago, and there man reads it to-day.

In all the wonders of God, nought is so admirable as the admiring man ! Other things in comparison seem only as the sparks which flew when God's arm beat the anvil, and fashioned man. The material splendors of the world, grand and gorgeous as they are, to me seem very little when measured by the spiritual glories of the meanest man. The Andes fill me with less amaze- ment than the mountain-minded Humboldt, who ascends and measures them. To the Christian pilgrim, the mountains about compact Jerusalem are as nothing to the vast soul of Moses, Esaias, Samuel, Jesus, who made the whole land sanctified in our remembrance. Yonder unexpected comet, whose coming science had not heralded, who brought no introduction from Arago or Leverrier, and presented himself with no letter of recommendation, save the best of all, his comely face, is far less glorious than the rustic lover, who thinks of those dear eyes which are watching those two stars that every evening so sweetly herald the night. Nay, this hairy stranger is far inferior to the mind that shall calculate its orbit, and foretell its next arrival to our sight. High and glorious are the stars ! What

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a flood of loveliness do they pour through the dark- ness every night, — a beauty and a mystery ! But the civilized man who walks under them, nay, the savage who looks up at them only as the wolf he slays regards them, has a fairer and a deeper beauty, is a more mys- terious mystery ; and when the youngest of that family has grown old and hollow-eyed, and its light has gone out from its household hearth, the savage man, no longer savage, shall still flame in his career, which has no end, passing from glory to glory, and pouring a fairer light across the darkness of the material world. The orbit of the mind is wider than creation's utmost rim ; nor ever did centripetal and centrifugal forces describe in their sweep a comet's track so fair-pro- portioned as the sweep of human life round these two foci, the mortal here, and the immortal in the world not seen.

man's nature greater than his history

I see that during the whole life of mankind, be it six or sixty thousand years, very much has been done, and the results are treasured up in science, laws, ethics, forms of society and faith. I consider the attainments of the human race as a whole, and reverence it very much. I see a record of it in some great library, and I wonder at mankind, so great, in its life to have learned all that is treasured up in the Vatican at Rome, or the National Library at Paris, — and I can learn so very little in all my life, not even enough to understand these flowers in my hand. I look over the list of mighty men who have been the schoolmasters of the race, I see how they are forgot and passed by by other schoolmasters, and I wonder at the spiritual riches of man which can afford to lose whole generations of philosophers, poets,

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mighty men, and never feel the loss. I wonder at the institutions of mankind, the laws, the organizations of Church and State. But I see that the spirit of man is greater than all these ; that it can pull them all down and build greater yet, that man's nature is more than his history. So I reverence the past, its great institu- tions and great men ; but I reverence the nature of man far more than these, and put more trust in that than in all the achievements of man, all the institutions, all the great men of history, — who are but as the water- cresses, and wind-flowers, and violets, which come out in a single spring day, whilst our human nature is the great earth itself, whose bosom bears them all, and pre- pares for a whole springtime of fairer flowers, a whole summer and autumn of richer herbage and abundant fruit. Then to me the achievements recorded in the Vatican at Rome and the National Library at Paris are but a trifle, when measured by the human soul ; but as Newton's primer and Christ's first lesson-book com- pared with the mighty stature of those lofty men.

HUMAN NATURE ADEQUATE TO ITS END

Certainly we do find in human nature some things which are revolting. Many things of that character come out in human history. I suppose there is not a grown person in this audience who has not often been disgusted with himself, finding meannesses, littlenesses, basenesses in his own character. The amount of self- ishness and consequent cruelty now in the world, and the still greater amount in times past, has a very dark and ugly look. Sometimes it does seem as if it would have been better if mankind could have started on a little higher plane of existence, and been more devel- oped before they were created, so to say. Attend a

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thieves' ball, of small thieves, with their appropriate partners, in a dancing garret in Boston, or a thieves' ball in the President's House at Washington, of great political thieves, who steal territories and islands, — watch their motions, study their character, and you do not think very highly of human nature, — at the first thought and sight, I mean. But — not to pause now, and look a little deeper, in a ball of little thieves in a garret, or of great thieves in the President's saloon — it is rather idle to grumble against human nature, for, after all, this human nature is the best nature we have got, and we are not likely either to get rid of the old or to get hold of a new; and besides, it is exactly the nature which the Infinite God has given us, and it is probable, not to look deeper at this moment, that He made it just as He meant to make it, neither better, neither worse, and made it for a good end, an end, too, which the dancing of little thieves with their partners or of great thieves with theirs will not frustrate nor ultimately pervert.

MAN THE HIGHEST PRODUCT OF MAN's WORK

Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is that at the little end of the telescope, the star that is look- ing, not looked after nor looked at. " Columbus," says his monument, " gave a new world to Castile and Leon." He really opened a new destination to mankind, and the world turned on his rudder hinges, as he set the prow of his vessel westward,

" And was the first that ever burst Into that silent sea."

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But that service, nay, the effort to perform it, gave him a character which to him was worth more than all America. TThe highest product of art is not the pic- ture or statue ; it is the artist. In the soul of Raphael there was something to him worth more than all which looked out of the eyes of his Madonna or St. Cecilia. In painting the fabled resurrection and ascension of Jesus, he assisted at his own actual resurrection and ascension ; painting the picture, he was becoming a man. For the most of men his highest work was his painting; for himself it was his character. There is this twofoldness in all human work. There is the visible result for the most ; it is the crop of the farmer, the minister's sermon, the special service which each one of us does. But there is an invisible result of character for the individual, that he carries up with him to heaven; it is his, not another's. Messrs. Grist and Toll grind for the little town of Eat-and-live all their days. Quite useful are these two dusty millers; nay, indispensable to every man and woman. But to them, their little mill grinds out not com only into meal, but virtue, wisdom, trust in God, noble character. So along with their daily bread, if they are men, they are creating the bread of life for their own souls, and living on it. Milton and Shakespeare left us great words, and thereby did much service to mankind; but in writing their books, they composed their character at the same time. Besides the Paradise Lost which the great poet left behind him, there was a Paradise Found, which grew in his own silent consciousness, and which he took along with him when he shook off the dusty flesh he wore beneath. Since that time there has been many a cheap or costly edition of his Paradise Lost, not another of his Paradise Found. The fair auto-

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graphic copy thereof he carried with him, and unfolded its immortal pages before the eyes of God. So it is with us all. Our work is double. The pendulum of our life swings ever backward and forward, with its double beat, — time, eternity, — eternity, time. But the word time is what we hear, and that side of the per- pendicular is the side of the vibration we see and know. But all things we do are provisional, only our charac- ter is ultimate and final.

The first man had all the faculties of the Royal Academy, and all the faculties of the whole Calendar of Saints; but these faculties lay in him as the water- power lay in the Merrimac River, and the steam-power of England in her rivers and mines of coal, all un- developed and all unknown.

Human nature is equal to all the emergencies of U man history. i

human history

THE EVIL OF PUTTING A LOW ESTIMATE ON MijLN

The idea which we form of man, like the idea which we form of God, is a powerful element in our civiliza- tion, either for good or ill. This idea will strongly affect the condition and character of every one. " Call a man a thief, and he will pick a pocket," is already a proverb. Convince him that he is the noblest creation. _ of the great God, that his beauty shames these flowers at my side, and outblazons the stars of heaven, — then ^ he begins to aspire to have a history, to be a man ; and this aspiration corresponds to the great nature in him. Soon as you convince him of this nature he takes a step forward, land puts out wings to fly upwards.

I look with anguish on the two schemes of thought

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which degrade the nature of man, hostile in many other respects, — the materiahsm of the last or the present century, and the popular theology of all Christendonj, both^of which put a low estimate on man. The one makes him a selfish and mortal animal, only body and bones and brains, and his soul but a function of the brute matter he is made of. The other makes him a selfish and immortal devil, powerful only to sin, and immortal only to be eternally tormented. The popular theology of Christendom, one of the many errors which man has cast out of him, as incidents of his develop- ment, has much to answer for. It debases God, and it degrades man. It makes us think meanly of ourselves, and dreadfully of our Creator. What makes it more dangerous and more difficult is that both of these er- rors are taught as a miraculous revelation from God Himself, and accordingly not amenable to human cor- rection.

Now self-esteem Is commonly large enough in the individual man ; it is but rarely that one thinks of him- self less and less highly than he ought to think ; for the great function to be accomplished by self-esteem is so very important that it is always, or almost always, abundantly provided for. But it is one of the com- monest errors in the world to think meanly of human nature itself. It is also one of the most fatal of mis- takes. Nay, individual self-esteem is often elated by the thought that general human nature is rather con- temptible, and the special excellence that I have does not come from my human nature, which I have in common with every beggar in the street and every culprit that was ever hanged, but from my personal nature, and is singular to me ; not the possibility of the meanest man, but the peculiar possession of myself.

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A man thus gratifies his self-esteem at the expense of his real self -advancement and bliss.

Then, too, it is thought an acceptable and beautiful mode of honoring God to think meanly of His chief work, that it is good for nothing; for then, it is said, we do not exalt the creature above the Creator, but give God the glory. That is, in reality, we give God the glory of making a work that is good for nothing, and not worth the making. I could never think that I honored an artist by thinking as meanly as it was pos- sible on trial to think of the best work which that artist had brought to pass.

THE FALSE IDEA OF WOMAN A CAUSE OF DEGRA- DATION

In all our great towns there is a class of women whose name is infamous. It is not considered Chris- tian to recognize them ; it would be thought unwomanly to have the smallest pity for the sisterhood of crime. What brought them to this condition? Idleness or unwillingness to work? Did lust drive them headlong to that yawning gulf of shame and misery and sin, where horrid shapes make up the triune devil of this female hell? The secret cause of it all is the idea per- vading society that woman is inferior to man, and created for his convenience, with only duties, and not rights ; and that man may trample her under his feet, and brush off the blood from his soul, as the dust from his shoes. A man stumbles and falls, and we wipe off the smutch. But a woman, ay, when she sins in this way, — seldom from her own crime, often from an- other's,— we tell her that she falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.

Did you ever visit a House of Refuge, and see the

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wrecks of womankind which go to pieces in a stormy world, and leave their fragments to rot there? You pick up on the seashore at Truro or Cape Ann some relic of a vessel, perhaps an oar, with some mark by which you know when she suffered wreck. You think of the swift-sailing ship, of the day when she was launched, of the builder's sober joy, as he stood on the shore and saw the baptism of his child, when the Ocean as godfather took her and pressed her to his heart. And then you think of the sad wreck this vessel made^ how many hopes went down ; after all that forged iron and seasoned oak could do against the storm, she sank. What is a vessel compared to a woman? What is the shipwright's sober joy at the launching of his craft compared to a mother's joy when her new-born daugh- ter fills her fond, expectant arms? What is shipwreck to the wreck of womankind? You look at that frag- ment of woman, perishing by slow decay at your hos- pital on Deer Island, and you remember the mother who bore her, the bosom that gave her life, the prayers which consecrated her forehead, the childhood and girl- hood of this woman ; you think of the first gushing of the fairest well-spring in human life, when she first knew the sentiment of love ; you think of her poverty, her trials and her sorrows, her prayers, and her trust in God, as you look on that wreck, — and then you see the tragic side of the picture, and the injustice which so- ciety has done to her. They tell a story of old time, that the people of Athens sent a tribute every year of five young maidens to the Minotaur, some horrid mon- ster of a king, who slew them. How many, think you, do we pay as a tribute annually out of this city ? Can you count them by fives, or by scores, or by hundreds? Nay, but by thousands only. We do not send them in

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solemn pomp, as the Athenians did; they go at mid- night, to a death of shame.

woman's spiritual transcendence

There is a deep to which reason goes down with its flambeau in its hand; there is a height to which im- agination goes up, on wide wings borne; and that is the deep of philosophy, that is the height of eloquence and song. But there is a deeper depth, where reason goes not, a higher height, where imagination never wanders; and that is the deep of justice, that is the height of love. It is the great wide heaven of religion. Conscience goes down there, affection goes up there, the soul lives up there. And that is the place of woman. Woman has gone deeper in justice, and has gone higher in love and trust, than man has gone.

man's spirit reported in his physical con- dition

A man's soul presently reports itself in his body, and telegraphs in his flesh, the result of his doings in spirit ; so that the physical condition of the people is always a sign of their spiritual condition, whereof it is also a result. I mean the bodily health of men, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the houses they live in, the average age they reach, — all these depend on the spiritual condition of the people, and are a witness to the state of their mind and conscience, their heart and their soul. True religion, like sunshine, goes everywhere ; or a false form of religion, like night and darkness, penetrates into every crack and crevice of a man's life.

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FALSE ESTIMATE OF THE BODY

The Christian Church has done great injustice to the human body. Paul of Tarsus said, " I know that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing." That ill-considered word has been a curse to mankind. It has peopled the most civilized lands on earth with puny men and sick women, and thence with starvling babies, born but to fill up the grave. " I know there is no good thing in my flesh," said Paul. He knew nothing like it; he dreamed so or thought he dreamed so. God put no bad thing there ; it is full of good things ; every bone from the crown to the foot is a good bone ; every muscle is a good muscle; every nerve which animates the two is a good nerve. Do you think that God in making man gave him a body that was fit only to be trod under foot, with no good thing in it.f^ Trust your own flesh and your own soul, not the words of Paul, — a great brave man, but sometimes mistaken, like you and me.

THE BEAUTY OF YOUTH

How beautiful is youth, — early manhood, early womanhood, how wonderfully fair! What freshness of life, cleanness of blood, purity of breath! What hopes ! There is nothing too much for the young maid or man to put into their dream, and in their prayer to hope to put into their day. O young men and women, there is no picture of ideal excellence of manhood and womanhood that I ever draw that seems too high, too beautiful for your young hearts. What aspirations there are for the good, the true, the fair, and the holy ! The instinctive affections, — how beautiful they are, with all their purple prophecy of new homes and gen-

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erations of immortals that are yet to be ! The high instincts of reason, of conscience, of love, of religion, — how beautiful and grand they are in the young heart, fragrantly opening its little cup, not yet full- blown, but with the promise of a man ! I love to look on these young faces, and see the firstlings of the young man's beard, and the maidenly bloom blushing over the girl's fair cheek ; I love to see the pure eyes beaming with hope and goodness, to see the unconscious joy of such young souls, impatient of restraint, and longing for the heaven that we fashion here. So have I seen in early May among the New England hills the morning springing in the sky, and gradually thin- ning off the stars that hedge about the cradle of the day ; and all cool and fresh and lustrous came the morning light, and a few birds commenced their songs, prophets of many more ; and ere the sun was fairly up you saw the pinky buds upon the apple-trees, and scented the violets in the morning air, and thought of what a fresh and lordly day was coming up the eastern sky.

OLD AGE THE ONLY NATURAL DEATH

I take it that old age is the only natural death for mankind, the only one that is unavoidable, and must remain so. As virtue is the ideal life of man, so is old age the ideal death ; it is the only one that mankind ap- proves. Nobody complains of dying at a hundred, at ninety, or at eighty. We do not mourn for our dear ones, thus naturally departing in that respectable way, at that far age, as we mourn for the new-born, the half -grown, or full-grown mature man or woman. At almost fourscore my brothers and sisters laid their

father's venerable bones in the ground, not without XI— 5

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natural and irrepressible tears ; at almost fivescore, mj father, a venerable man, laid in the earth the bones of his mother, not doubtless without a tear; but there was not that heartrending agony which comes when a young man or a child is cradled in the dust. That is our time to die. If poetic Tennyson had writ a volume of elegies about his grandfather, deceased at a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty, and ex- hausted the English tongue in forms of grief, he would have been laughed at all round the land for his unnatu- ral complainings ; but now our hearts beat in unison with his sad mourning In Memoriam of his well-loved friend, nipped down in early life, only a promise, not a per- formance.

WELL-BORN PEOPLE

Parents transmit their organization and character to their children. What father or mother is there who would not wish to leave his issue a great estate of human virtue, — in their bones and muscles, health, strength, longevity, beauty, and in their soul, wisdom, justice, benevolence, piety, rather than the opposite of all these? Everything must bear fruit after its kind, you after yours. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.

Men talk of good birth, good blood. No man hon- ors the well-born more than I ; but who are they ? In America we say they are the sons and daughters of the rich ; wealth is nobility, its children are well-bom. In Europe we are told that they are the sons and daughters of lords and kings ; birth from official station is nobility. O foolish men ! Of all the children of European royalty in eighty years, there has not been born a single boy or girl who in common life would have

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won the smallest distinction. Amongst the decent peo- ple of Europe, kings, of all others, are the most ill- born. Where do the rich families of New England go to in the third generation.? Look over Boston and see. Whence come the noble talent, the great virtue, nay, the poetry, the science, the eloquence, the literature, which adorn the land? They are not rocked in golden cradles. It is not royalty in Europe, it is not wealth in New England, which is father and mother to the great masterly talent which controls and urges forward the mass of the people, with its masterly mind and conscience, heart and soul. No ! it is the children of wholesome industry, the children of intelligence, of morality, of religion, who are the well-bom. Vir- tue is nobility ; all else is but the paint men write its name withal. Health, strength, beauty, — they are physically well-born, though dropped anonymous in the obscurest ditch; still more, wisdom, integrity, philanthropy, religion, — these are well-born, noble, yes, royal, if you will, for they are the kingly virtues of humanity, and whoso has them, though he be cradled amongst cattle, and laid in the crib of an ass or ox, he only is the best born of men !

Who is there that would not covet that royalty for himself, and still more, achieve it for his daughter and his son, that, when his bones are crumbling in some ob- scure churchyard, in his children the strong and flame- like flower of manly virtue may blossom fair, and ripen its seed, and sow the green earth gladsomely withal ?

GREAT MEN

A great man is never an accident. He comes as the end of a long series of causes, which get summed up

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in him. There is nothing miraculous in the origin of such a man ; least of all should we say that a man of genius was born of no human father, for none is so obviously connected with the present condition and past history of mankind. There is a special preparation made for him in the nation whence he comes ; the seed of that crop was put into the ground ages before, and he sums up and represents the particular character of his nation. Men like Christopher Columbus are born only of maritime people ; their mothers smell of the sea. Mathematicians like Archimedes and Leverrier do not spring up among the Sacs and Foxes, but in the most thoughtful nations only. I take it that Socrates could have come only out of the Greeks. He was Athenian all through. The special character of Rome reappears in Julius Caesar, her greatest man; her am- bition, her taste for war and politics, her immense power to organize men, and her utter indifference to human life, all come out in him. The two Bacons, the monk and the chancellor, Shakespeare, Newton, Cromwell, the five greatest Englishmen, are not only human, but they are marked with British peculiarities all through. Franklin, the greatest man who ever touched our soil, is most intensely national; our good and ill condensed in him. This bright consummate flower of New England, this universal Yankee, could have been bom and bred in no other land ; that human gold was minted into American coin. God makes the family of mankind, but He divides it out into special peoples, and each man is born with his nationality in him, and the Ethiopian cannot change his skin. Von Humboldt is possible only in Germany, and though he has lived in all the world, and talks and writes in many a tongue, yet the great features of his nationality are

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as plain in every book and letter he writes as his pa- rents' likeness in his face. How quickly we distinguish between black, red, and white men ; how readily sep- arate those of our own color into English, American, German, French, Irish ! So the inner man is colored and shaped by the stock we come of. All that we do is stamped with nationality.

This imperious condition of nationality would seem terrible if it came from accident or from blind fate. As the result of that divine Providence which knows all things beforehand, and makes all work together for good, it looks beautiful, and I take it for a bless- ing. God makes us one human nature, but diverse in nationality, that we may help each other. So the hand is one, but it is separated into five fingers, to make it pliant and manifold useful. Climate, natural scen- ery, the business, institutions, and history of the nation, — each makes its special mark on you and me. The mantle of destiny girdeth us all.

The credentials of the great man of genius are writ in a larger and stronger hand, because he is to repre- sent his nation in the great court of posterity. Great men are the highest product of any people, and they have never come out of mean nations, more than great trees out of a thin and ill-adapted soil. So every great man has the marks, I think, of his special family. Therefore a particular preparation is long making, the ancestral ground for several generations sloping upwards towards the great mountainous man. If you study the family history of such a one, I think you always find finger-posts, one or two hundred years off^, pointing to him, on the maternal or paternal side, — some aunt or uncle, or great-grandfather, who looks like him. So when he comes it is not a cowp de famille,

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not like a thunderstroke out of the clear sky, but like the growth of an apple out of an apple-tree, a regular development out of the ancestral stock, and no more surprising than that a lily root bears a lily flower. Each tree, material or human, bears after its kind. If any one of us could trace our ancestral stock back two hundred years, we should find the proximate cause of the disposition bom in us. Every farmer knows that is the rule of animals. So when he buys a cow, he wants to know not only the father and mother, but the creature's grandparents also. We all thus depend on our special parentage, and it is only more apparent in the great man. None of us stands alone, but we all lean on our fathers and mothers, and they on such as came behind them ; only as a great man is taller than the rest of us, we see how he leans, because it is on a larger scale.

Now I take it that Jesus of Nazareth could have been born of no other nation than the Hebrew. That people comes out in his character, both its good and ill. The story that he had the Holy Ghost for his father is a fiction. The noble man is colored Hebrew all through. He is a Jew all over, and did not take that from one parent alone. He is as intensely national as Benjamin Franklin or Robert Burns. Men say that divine inspiration controlled the human disposition in him ; but you see how the literature of his people colored his mind, and gave a hue to his every thought and word. He is so full of the Old Testament that it runs over in all his speech. The history of his people comes out with his religious doctrines and expectations. The national idea of a Messiah affected him very strongly, turning his human genius into a special channel. He was not the less human because he was also a Jew.

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When a great man comes, he affects men deeply and widely. Every Columbus leaves a new world for man- kind, some continent of art, science, literature, morals, religion, philanthropy. But just in proportion as such a man is great and original, and so capable to influence mankind for centuries, so does he at first waken opposition, and fail to be appreciated, and that by whole multitudes of men. In his lifetime, nobody thought much of William Shakespeare as a poet. Bacon, a man of the world, the most original and cul- tivated thinker in the British Islands, must often have heard his plays. Cudworth, a man of the university, the most learned man in all England, truly great, with a mighty range of comprehension, and familiar with all literature, quoting the plays of other ages and other nations, never refers to Shakespeare. Neither of these great comprehensive men took any notice of the greatest genius Great Britain ever saw. That poetical sun rose and went up into the heavens, while these scholars sat in their corners and read by their rushlights, but knew nothing of that great luminary which was making a new day all round the world.

Colleges confer their degrees on the vulgarest of ministers, and none others, save in exceptional cases. I doubt that St. Paul ever got a D.D. put after his name in large letters ; possibly it was put before it in small ones. No Academy of Science bestows honor on the inventors of science. Men grumble at this ; even men of genius are sorry, and whine at such a fate, and complain to their wives and daughters that it is an un- grateful world, and a man of genius has a hard time of it ; — for he wants not only his genius to ride on through the sky, but a coach and six to trundle him along the street. Poor man ! When God sends genius,

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the philosophic of Socrates, the poetic of Shakespeare, or the religious of Jesus, there is no need that acade- mies bestow their honors on him; he gets his degree at first-hand, not from delegated officials. Such good wine needs no academic nor ecclesiastic bush. His college honors are conferred by the university of the people ; not until after he has ceased to be mortal, and gone home, where he sighs not for approbation, eccle- siastic or academic.

The great man of genius is the immediate result of all the people's work. It comes not of himself. With much toil the Egyptians build up their pyramid, the work of a whole nation, its most lasting monument. But Jesus of Nazareth is not less the work of the Hebrew people, the last result of all their life, by far the greatest of the Hebrew pyramids, Palestine's no- blest monument; and the beginning of Jesus was when Moses led Israel up out of Egypt.

The great man affects his people and their thought for a time proportionate to his power, and the direction he gives it. When he dies, his character lives for him ; his ideas, his spirit, have passed into the consciousness of the people, and continue there, a new force to create men like him. Shakespeare, Bacon, Newton, have been gathered to their fathers long since; but how much is there which is Shakespearian, Baconian, Newtonian ; certainly a thousand times as much as when their great genius was condensed into the poet, the philosopher, and the mathematician. Benjamin Franklin is dead, and his body sleeps in the little Quaker churchyard at Philadelphia. But how much is there of the Franklin kind of man in America ; more than there ever was be- fore, a thousand times as much as when he had it all. One or two hundred places in the United States are

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called after him, and his mind has gone into our mind more than his name into the continent's geography. The great man's character is not kept in the line of a single family. The ancestral tree roots under ground a great while, grows in its modest way for centuries, and in due time bears the great aloe blossom of genius, and the tree dies. I think no family on earth ever bears two first-rate men. There is one Shakespeare, one Burns, and if there were two Bacons, they were not otherwise known to be related than that both were Englishmen. There is one Franklin, one Cuvier, one Leibnitz, one Kant. These men may have a thousand children, but the aloe flower of genius does not appear again on the tree that has borne it once. Perhaps every family is destined to bear a great man in the ages ; only some put out that blossom early, and others it may take a thousand years to mature it. But if the flower breaks down the tree, the fruit scatters its seed across the continent. Mankind inherits the per- sonal estate of genius, which does not descend in the family. To-day there is no Jesus, but how much more that is Jesus-like ; not in Judea alone, but in all the world. All that he was now vests in the human race. This millionaire of religion left his estate in trust to mankind. God is the guardian who manages it for the advantage of all ages. It

" Spreads undivided, operates unspent :"

nay, it thickens as it spreads, and is enlarged when it is spent.

How pliant is human nature before the plastic power of a great genius ! When you and I hear some man of great mind and great rhetorical art utter his humanest thoughts, we swing to and fro as he also vibrates. His

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thought is in our thoughts, and if his cheek but blanch, ours also turns pale ; and we flush as his blood reddens in his face. So the great man affects mankind, not for a minute but for ages long.

MEN OF TALENT AND MEN OF GENIUS

There are two classes of great men, — great men of talent, and great men of genius. They are unlike in their center, very much alike in their circumference, where they meet and blend'. There is one class of un- common persons who have more of what everybody has a little. They differ from the rest in quantity, not in kind. They do as other men, but better and stronger. They create nothing new, originate nothing; but they understand the actual, they apply another man's orig- inal thought, develop and improve the old, execute much, invent little. They say what somebody else said and thought originally. They say what the great mass of the people think and cannot yet say. A man of this sort comes very close to the outside of men. That is the man of talent. Speaking practically, tal- ent is executive power in its various modes ; it is ability to adapt means to ends. On analysis, you find it is not superior power of instinct and spontaneous intuition, but only superior power of conscious reflection, power to know by intellectual process, to calculate, and to ex- press the knowledge and the calculation. It is a great gift, no doubt. It is men of great talent who seem to control the world, for they occupy the headlands of society. In a nation like ours, they occupy the high positions of trade and politics, of literature, church, and state. Talent is as variable in its modes of manifestation as the occupations and interests of men. There may be talent for war, for productive in-'

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dustry, for art, philosophy, politics, also for religion. There are always a few men of marked talent in every community. With the advance of mankind, the aver- age ability continually greatens ; it is immensely more in New England to-day than it was in Palestine two thousand years ago ; but the number who overpass the broad level which mankind stands upon, I suppose, l?ears about the same ratio at all seasons to the whole mass. Equality in rights, with great diversity in pow- ers, seems to be God's law everywhere.

But now and then there rises up a quite other man. He differs from his fellows in quality as well as in bulk, — a man of finer material and nicer make. He discov- ers new things, creates new forms out of old substance, or new substance out of human nature. He originates, thinks what no man ever thought before. He comes close to what is innermost in mankind, and not only tells what you and I thought but could not speak, but what we felt and did not know. So he not only provides words for unuttered thoughts, and so interprets the re- flection of men, but furnishes ideas for sentiments, and so makes us conscious of our innermost feeling. Thus he draws nearer to mankind than the other. Talent comes home to our business, genius also to our bosom. Out of dead timber the man of talent builds a scaffold for a house ; out of live nature the man of genius grows a great green forest, whence timber shall be cut and used so long as winds blow, and leaves are green. Working from the outside, talent weaves a web, stretching the warp, putting in the filling, thread after thread, stamps it with various borrowed forms, mechanically colored. That is well. But from the germ of life, genius bodies forth a plant, which grows from within, leaf by leaf, branch by branch, and then

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opens the flower, every petal developed in fragrant beauty, and matures the apple, rounded out from its central germ of life, curiously painted, but all the work done in the inside. Talent weaves, genius grows. One paints and tricks oif the cheek of humanity with white and vermilion, laid on from the outside ; from the inside the other beautifies the cheek of humanity with blooming, vari-colored health. One is art, the other is life.

The man of genius invents and originates, making new forms out of the commonest material. He finds general laws in facts that have been familiar to every- body since the world was. All the neighbors in Cro- tona twenty-three hundred years ago heard the two village blacksmiths beat the anvil, one with the great hammer, and the other with the small one ; Pythagoras took the hint from that rhythmic beat, and brought the harmonic scale of music out from the blacksmith's 'Hen pound ten." Every boy sees that, in a right- angled triangle, the largest side is opposite the square angle ; but Pythagoras discovered that if you draw three square figures, each as long as the three several sides of this triangle, the largest square will be as big as both the others. It was one of the grandest dis- coveries of mathematical science. Every priest in the Cathedral of Pisa two hundred and seventy years ago, and all the women and children at Christmas, saw the great lamps which hung from the ceiling, some by a longer, and some by a shorter chain ; they saw them swing in the wind that came in with the crowd, as the Christmas doors, storied all over with medieval fictions, were opened wide. None but the genius of Galileo saw that the motion of these swinging lamps was always uniform and in proportion to the length of the chains.

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the lamp with the longest chain swinging slowest, and that with the shortest completing quickest its vibra- tion. He alone saw that the swinging lamps not only distributed light, but also kept time, and each was a great clock whereof he alone had the dial, and the hand pointed to the hour in his mind. Nay, for five hun- dred years in that great cathedral these lamps, swing- ing slowly to and fro, had been proclaiming the law of gravitation, but Galileo was the first man who heard it. All the farmers in Cambridgeshire saw apples fall every autumn daj^, and a hundred astronomers scat- tered through Europe knew that the earth moved round the sun; but only one man by his genius saw that the earth moved and apples fell by the same gravitation, and obeyed the same universal law. There were two or three thousand ministers in England two hundred years ago, educated men, and they were preaching with all their might, trying to make the popular theology go down with the reluctant Anglo-Saxon people, who hate nonsense. How dull their sermons, — telling the peo- ple that man was a stranger and pilgrim on earth, with their talk about Abraham's faith and their quotation from the Epistle to the Hebrews. How dead they are now, those dreadful sermons of the seventeenth cen- tury,— save here and there a magnificent word from Jeremy Taylor or Robert South ! How dead they were then, — abortive sermons, that died before they were spoken ! But a common tinker, with no educa- tion, often in low company, hated for being religious, and for more than twelve years shut up in a jail, writes therein the " Pilgrim's Progress," which makes Calvinism popular, and is still the most living book which got writ in that century of England's great men, when Shakespeare and Milton and Herbert and

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Bacon and Taylor were cradled in her arms. Adam Smith takes the common facts known to all gazetteers, the national income and expenditures, and exports and imports, manufactures, the increase of population, etc., Jand by his genius sees the law of political economy, and makes national housekeeping into science, Shakes- peare picks up the common talk of the village, what happens to everybody, birth, love, hope, fear, sorrow, death, and then what marvelous tragedies does he make out of the drama of every man's life ! They tell a story of a man in Greece, who, one day, walking along the seashore, picked up the empty shell of a tortoise, with a few of the tendons still left, and found it gave a musical note as he touched it ; he then drew threads across it from side to side, and out of the corded shell invented musical instruments. Fire and water are as old as creation, and have been in man's hands some thirty or forty thousand years, I suppose; there was not a savage nation in Asia or America but had them. Men have married these two antagonistic elements to- gether for many a thousand years, and water boils. But from these two Robert Fulton breeds a giant who is the mightiest servant of mankind, altering the face of nature and the destination of man. Every chemist knew that certain substances were sensitive to light, and changed their color by day ; nay, every farmer's daughter knew that March wind and May sun made cloth white and faces brown. But Niepce and Da- guerre had such genius that they took advantage of this fact, and set the sun to paint pictures in forty seconds. King Charlemagne not being able to write when called upon to sign his name, daubed his palm from the ink-horn, and put his hand on the document, the great sign-manual of that giant emperor. Nay,

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five hundred years before Moses, kings had seals with their names engraven thereon, and stamped them on wax. Thirty-five hundred years later, the genius of Faustus puts together a thousand of these seals, a letter on each, and therefrom makes a printed Bible. How hard they tugged at the bow-string and plied the catapult, to knock down the walls of a town in the middle ages. Schwartz makes gunpowder, and cross- bows and catapults go out of fashion.

These are men of genius ; men of talent could never have accomplished these results which I have men- tioned. These are the men who really command the world, the original thinkers. There are not a great many of them. It seems necessary that seven-eighths of man's life shall be routine, doing to-day what we did yesterday, the same old thing over and over again. But now and then the great God raises up one man of genius in a million, who shovels away the snow, and makes a path where all men can walk, clean-footed and dry-shod. Let us reverence these men.

Speaking practically, genius is power of construc- tion, power to originate and create new forms out of old matter, new matter out of human nature. Speak- ing philosophically, or by analysis, genius is great power of instinct, spontaneous intuition. That is the element of necessity, as it were, in genius. It is, next, great power of conscious reflection, great imagination in its greatest forms, great attention, the power to bend all the faculties to the special task in hand. This is the element of freedom in genius. Genius knows the thing which it works upon and produces ; not always does it know itself. The same man is seldom synthetic to create, and analytic to explain the process of creation. Homer and Shakespeare know

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how to make poetry, but not how they make it ; the art, not the analytic explanation. Yet others have the genius for self-knowledge, power of analytic conscious- ness ; but it is not often that the poet and the philoso- pher lodge in the same body. This human house of clay is not large nor strongly walled enough, nor nice enough, to entertain two such royal guests. Human nature is too great to be made perfect, all parts of it, in a single man ;

" One science only will one genius fit. So vast is art, so narrow human wit."

As, analytically speaking, genius is power of in- stinctive intuition, and power of conscious reflection, so practically it is the highest power of work, power of spontaneous work, power of voluntary work ; and it is this which unites the womanly intuition with manly reflection. Genius is God's highest gift to man.

One common delusion of young men is that they have genius, and that a man of genius need not work, but can accomplish great results with small efforts. Hence an ambitious young mechanic sometimes thinks he can get to the top of the ladder, without stepping on any of the rounds ; and the ambitious young trader scorns the systematic and sober diligence of his father, and hopes to make a fortune at a stroke, and get his pile of gold in a few years, and not be a lifetime about it. " Nothing venture, nothing have," says he con- temptuously, and on his tall borrowed horse he rides into Chancery. So the young scholar hopes to ac- complish every thing by genius at a dash, to learn science without any study, to master a language by the inspiration of wine. But nothing comes of noth- ing.

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Real genius Is power of work ; hard work of intui- tion, hard work of reflection, and a great deal of it. Nobody doubts the genius of Lord Bacon. England never saw a harder working man. " Newton saw the apple fall from the tree, and therein discovered grav- itation," says some thoughtless young man. The apple fell from the tree one day, but it was twenty years before Newton's great branches shook down grav- itation ; it was twenty years of hard work, often six- teen hours out of the twenty-four, sometimes twenty- four hours out of the twenty-four. The great poetic souls, the Shakespeares, Miltons, Goethes, were men of mighty genius ; they were men of mighty industry also ; and if Cuvier and Laplace have the power of insight, they make the most zealous use of it.

Now genius appears in as many diverse forms as there are human occupations and interests. Some have a genius for war, and are great fighters, — the Alex- anders, Hannibals, Csesars, Attilas, Fredericks, Na- poleons, and the rest of the masters in this dreadful art to kill. It was once the most honored of all ; it is far too much honored to-day. Others have genius for practical industry, the creation of use; genius for agriculture, cattle-keeping, mechanic arts, navigation, and commerce. This form of genius has hitherto been but little honored, but is now getting the respect of the most enlightened nations. Some have a genius for art, the creation of beauty, — music, painting, sculp- ture, architecture. These are forms of genius which gd: honored long before the power of productive in- dustry is much respected, for man adorns himself be- fore he provides for his comfort, tattoos his skin before he weaves a coat to cover it. This class of men who

have a genius for art are the most honored to-day by XI— 6

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the educated portion of mankind, the world round. Then there is another department of genius, for phi- losophy, physics in its various departments, meta- physics, and theology. There is a progressive venera- tion for the great philosophers. Once they, like Anax- agoras, fled out of the city, or, like Socrates, were poisoned in it; for as they were the bane of tyrants, so they were the prey of tyrants, all round the world. Others have genius for politics, — the application of ideas to human affairs, the organization of masses of men, and the administration of that organization. This is a very high mode of genius, always valued from the earliest days, and never too much. Lastly, there is genius for religion; for piety, to feel and know God; for morality, to know and keep His laws. With the instinctive mass of men, genius for religion is valued far above all the rest, because the man who has it incarnates in himself the instinct of mankind, brings it to their consciousness, puts it into form, and is a leader of men in departments deemed by humanity most important of all. Now in the progress of man- kind, the higher powers of instinct and reflection are continually developed, and so higher and higher forms of genius arise.

Once all great genius was thought miraculous and divine. The poet called himself the Muse's son, and the priest said God came and told him the bright thought that entered his head. Now it is no longer wonderful.

The man of a high mode of genius has great power of instinct, and so he feels the sentiment of humanity which you and I feel, only he feels it first, feels it strongest ; he outruns the instinctive mass of men, and in advance of them gets new justice, new piety ; and so

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he is more popular than the people are, for he knows what they only feel, and he feels to-day what they will feel the next year or the next millennium ; and that is the reason why the man of the highest form of genius is always so dear to the heart of humanity, to the instinctive masses of men, not to those who have poorly educated but a single faculty. Scholars say the people cannot understand a man of genius ; but it is in the bosom of the people that the man of genius makes his nest and rears his young. He has power of reflection, and so is master of his instinct, not its slave. He also translates the common feeling, which he shares, into thought, and common thought into speech, and makes the nation conscious of what it felt and did not know at all. This power of reflection makes him master of men, but his power of instinct keeps him our brother still. Great talent seems to separate the scholar from the mass of toilsome men, and he looks down with scorn on the smith, the potter, and the weaver, and says with the old man in Ecclesias- ticus, " All these glory in the work of their hands ; but they shall not be sought for in the public council, nor sit high in the congregation ; they shall not sit in the judge's seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment." But great genius in its highest modes unites men ; we feel nearer to one who has it than to our mother's son ; he is more we than we are ourselves. Hence the popularity of the man of genius. He does not separate himself from men, but says " Suff^er little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." " I am not come to be min- istered unto, but to minister." He goes to the lost sheep. He is the good physician to the sick, the friend

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of publicans and sinners. The great genius is the Son of Man.

Now each great gift is a trust from God. The function of the man of great genius is to do for the rest what they cannot do for themselves. Every fac- ulty that man has is amenable to the conscience and God's law, and is to be used for its owner's advantage, but for mankind's behoof not less. The great genius for war is to defend his nation, not enslave it and man- kind, as the Csesars and Napoleons have done. Whoso has genius for productive industry must serve man- kind, will he or not, for his invention shall one day be the property of all. If a man have a genius for ac- quisition, the commonest in mankind, he is bound to use it like a brother, and not like a brute ; and what a service he may thus render to mankind by the Christian use of his masterly power ! This is an age when genius for trade is honored above all other forms. Let the trade be a religious sacrament, a communion of man with man, for their joint good, not for one man's blessing and another's harm. If a man have the mer- cantile genius or talent of Girard or Astor, what a debt he owes to mankind! What if Raphael had painted for his own eye, and then burned up his pictures ; what if Shakespeare had written dramas for his family and a few friends ; what if Newton had shown his dia- grams and calculations to the great gownsmen at Cam- bridge, and then destroyed them ; — it would not be at all more selfish than the course of the merchant, scholar, tradesman, or politician, who works for himself, and himself alone. I wish men knew the true use of great talents, the true use of the money they therewith ac- cumulate. The function of men of great genius for philosophy, letters, art, is to educate mankind. Such

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a one is to point out the errors of the popular creed, and indicate new truths. And what immense services have been rendered by men of great mind who have devoted their energies to this work ; those, for exam- ple, who have exposed the errors of the heathen myth- ology, or those who have exposed the follies of the Christian mythology, — the Martin Luthers who fig- ured in the sixteenth century, the philosophers and freethinkers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nine- teenth centuries. Such men are sent into the world as soldiers of humanity ; if they strike against man, not for man, how great is their condemnation ! There is a long line of men of philosophic genius, who have sought to educate the people, to free them from super- stition, vices of body and spirit, noble souls, who in the service of humanity died that you and I might live ; kings and priests burned them at the stake, cut off their heads, and over ground once slippery with their blood we walk secure. So a man of great poetic genius or eloquence, — how much does he owe to mankind ! What if he turns off from humanity's eyes, and never sees nor sings the highest word of mankind's joy or woe ! We drop a tear on the not religious brow of Shakespeare. But when a man dedicates his pen to lust and wine, and ribald mock and scoff, it is the greatest charity that can say to a Byron, " Neither do I con- demn thee ; go and sin no more." What evil a wicked man of talent, still more of genius, can perpetrate in his age ; but what service a man of great poetic genius can render ! Milton marred his poetry by that ghastly theology which he taught ; no man can love his idea of God. But what service he rendered to mankind by his love of freedom, and the high, brave morals he taught ! How has Mr. Wordsworth cultivated the

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sweetest virtues in his garden of the Muses, which is also a garden of Christian literature. How much has Mr. Hood done bj his two songs, " The Song of the Shirt," and " The Bridge of Sighs." How much Mr. Dickens has accomplished, with this humanity in his great, generous heart. America has one man of lit- erary genius, far surpassing all her other sons, both philosopher and poet, though with something of the lack of the accomplishment of verse ; a man who never appeals to a mean motive, who uplifts and inspires, while he gladdens and bears men heavenward on his swift, free wings, as white and clean as snow.

The highest of all forms of genius, God's noblest gift, is genius for religion, — piety, the ideal love of God; morality, the keeping of every law; philan- thropy, the love of men. Hitherto this has been the rarest of gifts. But now and then such a one comes up from the instinctive mass of mankind, an Elias, a Moses, or a Jesus.

The Greeks had a natural talent for philosophy and art, — the genius for science, literature, and beauty of old times sloping up towards Aristotle, JSschylus, and Phidias. The Hebrews had a national talent for re- ligion,— no science, no literature like that of the Greeks, no art ; but the fruits of their religious con- sciousness are treasured up for all times, sloping up towards the measure of the perfect man. Greece bore Homer and Aristotle ; mightiest in science this, chief est that in song. Palestine bore Moses and Jesus, — the last, to my eye, the greatest religious genius of all time. Starting from the Hebrew soil, he roots into the national traditions ; but his flower is human sub- stance on the Hebrew stem. He shared much of the superstition of his time, its mistaken philosophy, its

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limited notion of God, of man, and of the relation between the two ; he taught an eternal devil, an angry God, and an endless hell. That was the dust of Jeru- salem blown into his flower, the eavesdropping from the synagogue or temple. But his great genius for religion saw religion as love, the mystic love within, the active love without. His genius for philosophy, power of reflection, separated him from the creeds of the doctors of law. His genius for humanity, power of instinct, made him despise the practice of such as say and do not, make long prayers, and devour widows' houses in private. He would have mercy, and not sac- rifice. Too far before men for their comprehension, too far above them for their sympathy, what could they do but crucify him ? The most educated class hated him ; but " the common people heard him gladly," — because he had the great instinct of humanity in his heart, and preached it to their consciousness. Men felt the pres- ence of a great man, and with the instinctive loyalty of mankind they adorned him with the best they could off^er; the gewgaws of their fancy they put about his name, called him the son of David, and the Messiah ; told miracles about him ; nay, the multitude cut down branches from the trees, and strewed them, with their garments, in the way ; and ere long they called him God. Poor Attleborough jewels are all these, but the best that humanity could offer. One day mankind will drop these fancies, and we shall look on the majestic features of that Hebrew man, radiant all over with humanity, and speaking still his highest word, — love to God, and love to man. All notions of his miracu- lous conception, birth, death, and life, will vanish away, the fancied God give place to the real man, and the great services of his genius and life be plain to all men.

88 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN man's nature a prophecy of eternal growth

I wonder at the beauty of this world. I am amazed before a little flakelet of snow, at its loveliness, at the strangeness of its geometry, its combination of angles, at the marvelous chemistry which brought these curious atoms together. I reverence the Infinite God, who made the ocean, earth, air, three sister graces, for handmaids to attend this fledgling of the sky. I look up and wonder at the stars ; I am astonished at the beauty of that great constellation Orion, which every night unveils its majestic forehead to the eyes of men. I study its nebula with a telescope, and it resolves itself to stars so distant that those mighty orbs seem but flakes of cloud to the unassisted eye. In fancy I clothe them with verdure, trees of their own, and people them with beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and the like. I have confidence in the laws which lead and guide them, and they are a great revelation of the omnipotence of God. But I compare them with man, with spirit, its laws, its powers, its imperial duration, and its faculty of unbounded growth, — and Orion, with its nebula, seen to be stars, is as much inferior to man as that snowflake to the constellation. And when I reflect upon this world of consciousness, the powers born in us, — which seem but as flakelets of a cloud now, but which, seen through my telescopic faith in God, resolve themselves into stars too distant to be seen, and only dimly brought to consciousness in such a soul as Christ's, — then I forget the constellation and all the starry beauty of the world, forget the joy of trust that constellation taught, and find delight in that higher joy and nobler trust which my own nature has revealed to me.

Ill

TRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF HUMAN CHARACTER AND CONDUCT

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL MAN

In a crowded city you see the multitude of men going to and fro, each on his several errand of business or pleasure ; you see the shops, so busy and so full ; the ships, so many and of such great cost, going so far and sailing so swift ; you are told so many thousand men lodge each night underneath the city roofs, and every morning so many thousand more come here to join the doing and the driving of the town, and depart thence at night. You look at all this manifold doing and driving, the great stream of activity that runs up and down the streets and lanes, and you think how very unimportant, insignificant even, is any one man. Yonder dandy, say you, who has just blossomed out of the tailor's window, a summer tulip transplanted to the sidewalk, might drop through, and never be missed; so might that little shrinking maiden, sober as a violet, going to her work in a milliner's or bookbinder's shop. Who would ever miss these two grains of dust if they got blown off? You think of the conventions to make constitutions, of the general assemblies, of the million of men who compose Massachusetts, then of the courts and congresses and laws of this nation, its three and twenty millions of men, — and how insignificant ap- pears the little village we stand in. You think of the whole world of nations, with its fleets, armies, cities, towns, the enormous amount of property which belongs to the world, — for mankind is a rich old fellow, — you

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think of all the laws and constitutions, democratically writ on parchment, or else despotically incarnated in a Nicholas or a Grand Turk, you think of the ten hundred millions of men on the earth, — and what is America, the individual nation? It is one drop in the pitcher; it might drop out, and nobody would miss it. What is Boston, an individual town? It might cave in to-morrow, and the world care nothing for the loss, — only one farthing gone out of the inexhaustible riches of the human race. What am I, say you, an individual man? I might die outright, and what odds would it make to the world? Of what consequence is it to mankind that I am faithful or not? whether I sell brandy or bread? whether I kidnap men or make honest neat's leather into honest shoes? I am one hundred and fifty thousandth part of Boston, one twenty-three millionth part of America, one thousand millionth part of the whole human race ; — what a con- temptible vulgar fraction of humanity is that, at its best estate ! If all the world of men were brought to- gether, who would miss me when the poll of the human race was taken? I shall never much influence the general product of mankind, let God add, or subtract, or multiply, or divide me as He sees fit. What a ridiculous figure am I ! I have a few faculties, a little wit, a little justice, a small amount of benevolence, reaching to my next neighbor, and a little beyond ; a modicum of trust in God. What are these amongst so many? Let me give up. Man has no need of this one thousand millionth part of the family, and God will never miss me. The individual is nothing in this vast sum of forces, social, ecclesiastical, political, and human.

It does seem so at first. The individual man seems

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of very small consequence ; and so a man loses himself in a great city, cares little for his own individuality, and is content to be a fraction of the mass ; so much of the Whig party, so much of the Democratic party, so much of some other party ; a little fraction of Amer- ica, and a little vulgar fraction of the human race.

When you come home and look into the cradle, or on her who sits at its side, when you meet your gray-haired father, or your mother venerable and old, when you take brother and sister by the hand, or put your arm about one best beloved, — then all this is changed, and the individual seems of importance, and the greatest mass only the tool thereof. " What a nice world it is ! " says young Romeo to younger Juliet, as he gives her the first evening primrose of the summer. " The world was made for you and me," sweetly coo they to one another, " on purpose to produce this very primrose." To each Lorenzo, what is all the crowd of Venice, what are its palaces and works of art, its laws, or its com- mercial hand that reached through the world, com- pared with his single individual Jessica? To him they seem but servants to attend her. Even the moonlight which " sleeps upon the bank," and the " heaven thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," seem only designed by Heaven to serve and comfort her. " The golden atoms of the day " are only powders to enrich her hair.

When you study the action and the final result of this doing and driving in a great busy town like Bos- ton,— the shops so many and so full, the ships so costly, going so far and so fast, — of the thousands that lodge under the roof-tree of the town, and the thousands more that do business in the streets, — when you think of the laws, the social and political ma-

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chinery, and all the riches of this wealthy world, — you see that the ultimate function of it all is to pro- duce an individual man, and to serve him. For this do men build the sovereigns of the seas and the kings of the clippers, — enormous ships, nobody comprehends how big. Such is the end of all this wonderful ap- paratus, the institutions and customs of the community, the constitutions and laws of the State, the dogmas and rituals of the Church. For this men build great halls to regale matron and man and maid with music ; for this swells up the great dome of Saint Peter's, or Strassburg Cathedral lifts its finger-tower clear up into the sky. All is to report its progress, and the final result, at the fireside and the cradle, and it is valuable or worthless just as it tells in the consciousness and the character of the individual man. Even young Mr. Tulip, the dandy, is of more consequence than all the gaudy garments he has bought at his tailor's ; and modest Miss Violet is worth more than all the velvets of Genoa and Lyons, all the laces ever made at Mechlin, Brussels, and Louvain. They are her tools to serve her ; she is not for them. Omnipotence works for every man, age out and age in, century after century. Mr. Erskine said the highest function of the English Par- liament was to put twelve honest men in a jury-box. He might have brought it to the smallest point, and said the highest function of the English Parliament, and every other legislative and executive body, is to make John and Jane the best man and woman it is possible for them to be.

In looking at great things, at multitudes of men, at the great sotial forces of the world, we forget the im- portance of the individual man, and are content to sacrifice him to the great purposes of the human race,

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or of some nation. Merchants often think it is of no great consequence what becomes of the sailors, if trade only flourish. So the forecastle may be very unwhole- some and narrow, but the hold for the goods must be roomy and ventilated well. The manufacturer thinks the same of the operative, and so sacrifices the human end to the material means. Thus it comes to pass that things get in the saddle and ride mankind, and man is sacrificed, the individual cut down to suit the great commercial interest. The farmer is sacrificed to his ditch. His meadow has got a new ditch, and he a new rheumatism to remember it by. Here is a man of a large pattern, brave and manly by nature, who does nothing but buy and sell. He buys and sells all the week ; he cannot dine with his wife, sees his children only as dogs lap water on the Nile, as quickly as possi- ble, fearing the crocodiles will snap them in. On Sun- day he is getting ready to buy and sell the next morn- ing. He has no time to read or think. His fortune goes up, and he himself is at the other end of the beam, and goes down just in proportion. It is plain that this man practically thinks he is of much less import- ance than his estate; otherwise he would take more pains to be a man than to get a million of money, and would know that buying and selling and getting a for- tune are not the end of human life ; they are only the means thereto.

Napoleon the First was a great man, in the common modes of greatness ; a very small man in the modes of greatness represented by the blessed soul that fills the pages of the New Testament. But what is the best thing he could carry out of the world? Fame he left behind him, and it is likely that to-day he has no more advantage from his reputation on earth than the sorri-

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est ass-driver ever cradled in his native Corsica. The sexton at Saint Martin tolled the bells of the village at noon on the day when Napoleon wheeled his army round the corner of the road that sweeps over the Simplon. The jow of the bell went booming up the mountain, and was heard a league off, it may be ; and the neat- herd and shepherd, hearing it, said to himself, " Hans and Jean are pulling at the rope now. What great men they must be to make themselves heard from the parish church, all up the mountain, a league round." Napoleon had a reputation that filled the world ; every shot from his cannon was heard from the North Cape to Gibraltar; and even now his reputation goes round the world. But Hans's and Jean's reputation is worth as much to them to-day as Napoleon's is to him. His power over men slipped through his hands long before death took him, and the riches of the man who gave away empires and distributed crowns, gave him six cubic feet of earth at last. His power, wealth, and fame were only his apparatus for manufacturing hu- man character out of human nature. The business of Bridget and Rosanna, scrubbing in a kitchen, the busi- ness of Thomas and Charles, making shoes or cutting stone, is the same to them, perhaps of quite as muck value, as Napoleon's dealing with kings was to him. Our special calling, that of cook in the caboose of a ship, or of king on the throne of Spain, Prussia, Swe- den, is only the frame on which we stretch out the blank canvas of human nature, thereon to work out such a pattern of ideal character as we will or can. One day Death passes by the window ; I look out, he sees me ; the frame breaks to pieces, the web floats out, and goes up to God, carrying therewith my work, well done or ill done, bad pattern or good one, as I have

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made. The frame is all gone, only the pattern as- cends. Amos and Robert go out of the world, leaving millions of money and a high name. John and Han- nah will one day depart, leaving no millions of money, no great name ; but the great Divine Providence will ask the same question of each one of the four, — " What are you, my little child? How faithful have you been to your individual soul and material circum- stances? What have you made out of these things that I gave you? " That will alike be asked of Im- perial Nicholas and the man who polishes his boots: and the shoe-brush may do for one of them what the scepter does for the other. God is no respecter of either; he takes the character, achieved by the use of the one or the bearing of the other, asking no questions beyond that.

Great Michael Angelo, out of Parian stone or Car- rara marble, sculptured many a statue, which stands or sits there at Florence to astonish beholders, — his Dead Christ, made for a pope ; his Horned Moses, made for some cardinal ; his Day and Night, for the republic of Florence. But there was another statue that Michael was all the while carving and working out, day out and day in, sculptured out of spirit, and not marble ; and that was Michael himself. He made it for no pope, no cardinal, no republic of Florence ; he made it for himself and his God, and carried it home with him to the kingdom of heaven. You and I, working in our several spheres, may do the same work, and, toiling for earth, toil also for heaven ; and every day's work may be a Jacob's Ladder reaching up nearer to our God.

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CHARACTER

Look at this young man. He is building up his for- tune, and that is all men see, and they praise that, and say he is an industrious and excellent man, and will probably be rich. I see and respect all that for what it is worth. But behind his fortune there is rising up his character, stone upon stone, brick upon brick, story after story ; and b}^ and by that will be accomplished, and the great angel Death will come and pull down that scaffolding, and it will lie there, useful once, but idle rubbish now, and there will stand, resting on the rock of ages and reaching far up into the heavens, the great brave character which the man has built in the everlasting sunlight of God, itself as everlasting, and always as fair.

HUMAN WELFARE

I have often wondered that men who are so greedy for pleasure, and spend so much time in making ready what they reckon the outward means of happiness, getting money, reputation, office, did not look a little deeper, and see on what ultimate conditions human welfare might be had, even the highest human welfare. Merchants sending out adventures to Manilla or to Nootka Sound make diligent inquiry as to the things needful for the voyage, and the special merchandise which they will venture there. Their success is not all luck ; nay, luck is the smallest part of it. It is the result of good sense applied to trade. Send a ship adrift anywhere into the ocean, with anything thrust on board, it does not bring back a good return. A gardener, seeking to rear flowers and fruits, hunts the wide world over so as to get the fairest and the sweet-

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est. Then he studies the habits of every plant, learn- ing the conditions of its being, and its well-being; he fits the sun and soil thereunto, and rears his magnolia, his Amazonian lily, his peach, his strawberry, his pear, his grape, his plum.

Why should not you and I likewise study the means by which the highest human blessedness is to be had, be as careful merchants of happiness as of wheat and bricks and hemp? And why should we not plant gar- dens of delight as well as gardens of daisies and of com? I have often wondered that men who study many a science do not study the science of human welfare ; and that such as love art, and would give the world, if they had it, to paint Nature as she is, or to sculpture a man as he should be, do not study this, which is the loveliest of the fine arts, the art of con- structing human blessedness. If thoughtful men took as much pains with the voyage through time as the voyage over the waters to Nootka Sound or Manila, if they were as careful of this great garden of human life, where man is the plant, as they are of kitchen gardens and flower gardens and nurseries, — why, what a happy world we might have of it here ! And what a great horticultural exhibition of human blessedness we might have, — not every Saturday, as the gardeners' society, but every day, summer and winter, and all the year round.

THE COMMON OCCUPATIONS OF LIFE TO BE

HONORED

The common callings of the mass of men are the

means whereby this great Son of God, mankind, the

real Christ that abideth ever, enters upon his estate, and

gets the mastery of the world. To me therefore these XI— 7

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occupations of every day are what the vast forces which we name gravitation, electricity, vegetation, and life are. A woman with a broom, and cradle, a needle, a basketful of kitchen tools, and a few dollars' worth of other furniture and grocer's wares, pursuing her house- wifery, and making home pleasant, and life clean and sweet to herself, to her husband, children, brothers, sis- ters, friends, — is to me a spectacle that is admirable and delightful; ay, it is sublime. Feeding the body> educating the spirit, and helping humankind to get the mastery over the world, she is weaving that Jacob's ladder whereby mankind and womankind are climbing up to God. There is a sublimity in common things, even in what we call vulgar. Nay, it is not the excep- tional things in life which are the noblest. It is the every day's march of men like you and me ; not the high lift of the sudden spring of rare and exceptional per- sons. How we prize the relics of exceptional men, — an inkstand of Lord Byron, a pen of Walter Scott, the sword of Oliver Cromwell. But to me the tools which a man works with have a certain sanctity and venerableness ; the hod of the laborer, the smith's forge- hammer, partake of these. A wheelwright's son in Old England once became Archbishop of Canterbury ; and in his library he kept a carriage wheel which his own hands had made in his youth, and he counted it as an honorable scutcheon, and showed it as that great man's coat of arms. He never did a wiser nor a sublimer thing. But how rarely do we see this. It is only great and exceptional men who are commonly thought to have lofty and dignified vocations ; and the rest fol- low what are called " humble callings." But the civ- ilized world, with its palaces, its libraries, its academies of science, and its galleries of art, rests on the solid

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shoulders of farmers and mechanics. Let them with- draw, and it is as if gravitation itself had given out in the center of the world, and it would die of collapse. Sublimity looks very gay at a distance ; you come near, and you find its garments are of coarse stuff; and it

wears a hair shirt next to its skin.

I

The lottery of honest labor, drawn by Time, is the only one whose prizes are worth taking up and carry- ing home.

Industry is the business of man. It is a dignity, and only idleness a disgrace, a wrong, and curse. If you earn nothing by head or hand, heart or soul, then you are, and must be, a beggar or a thief, and neither pay for your board nor lodging.

FRIVOLITY

I do not know which is the saddest sight to see, — the housebreaker and the harlot in jail, or the frivolous voluptuary in his saloon or coach. I do not know which is the saddest tale to read, — the Court Journal, or the reports of trials of criminals. I do not know which is the worst. One is the earnestness of rage and want and lust : the other is the frivolity of the vain and the foolish. At one extreme of society, idlers, loungers, careless creatures there are, as heedless as flies, and as inert for any work, — the golden flies of wealth, who live and move and have their ephemereal being in a whisper of fashion. At the other end of society there are persons squalid and clad in rags, who are harvested by death from day to day, and who are just as idle, just as incompetent for any work. They swarm in the low parts of this city, wholly incapable of any effort. No

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summer wave dashes more frivolous than thej. On both of these classes the philosophical philanthropist gazes with folded arms, — for here is an evil which Orpheus might have sung to, which Moses might have thundered and lightened upon, and which Jesus might have prayed for, all in vain. He can only fold his arms and wait for the great teacher Death, who to the little and great laggard of frivolity will teach the same lesson from which there is no escape in either extreme of human life. Here are these two excep- tional classes of men ; but the great mass of the people never reach either of these extremes. The dregs and the foam of the cup of human life differ very widely from the wine which lies between.

EARNESTNESS

It is a sad sight to see a man specially earnest in his business, but a frivolous fop in every thing besides, and in morals and religion a mere scorner. One day the echo of his mockery will come back to the walls of the world which he has defiled, and ring through his house, which will seem the poorer because it is rich, and emptier because it is so full of merely worldly wealth. If the business of life be not merely to gather gold and live easy, but also to be a man, having a fourfold manly life in you, — having wisdom, justice, love, and faith in God, and so attaining the measure of a Christian man, then you must not only be earnest in business, but have a general earnestness of spirit in all that concerns your inner life. Then sometimes in our life it may be a serious question for us to ask, " What are we now, and what are we doing in our life.? Do we live the earnest life of the Christian man, or the mean beggarly life of nothing but the flesh? " That

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question may well take the rose out of the young maiden's or young man's cheek, and the thought of it make the old man turn pale. But if you respect yourself, and know you are here to become a man, then howsoever frivolous in trifles, you will never be frivo- lous in what regards the integrity of your own soul; but be ready to divest yourself of the respect of men, to strip yourself of property, if need be, in order that you may be faithful to your spirit.

You may have a general frivolity of character and be a fop, a man fop or a woman fop ; not of dress or manners only, but in your whole life. With a special earnestness you may get gain and station. But to be a man, to be a Christian, you must have a general ear- nestness of character and lay a special emphasis on what concerns your higher needs, your conscience, your heart, and your soul. Then all this grave serenity of the heavens above us, of earth under our feet, of ocean that rolls against the land, will serve as allies in our behalf; and all the events of the world, the rise and fall of states, the temptation of business, the tempta- tion of politics, the temptation of the church, — all these will be only instruments to help us forward in our march toward manhood, and to make us yet more manly and Christian men.

KNOW-NOTHINGS

In the town of Somewhere lives Mr. Many girls. He is a toilsome merchant, his wife a hardworking house- keeper. Once they were poor, now they are ruinously rich. They have seven daughters, whom they train up in utter idleness. They are all do-nothings. They spend much money, but not in works of humanity, not even in elegant accomplishments, in painting, dancing.

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music, and the like, so paying in spiritual beauty what they take in material use. They never read nor sing; they are know-nothings, and only walk in a vain show, as useless as a ghost, and as ignorant as the block on which their bonnets are made. Now, these seven " ladies " — as the newspapers call the poor things, so insignificant and helpless — are not only idle, earning nothing, but they consume much. What a load of finery is on their shoulders and heads and necks 1 Mr. Manygirls hires many men and women to wait on his daughters' idleness, and these servants are withdrawn from the productive work of the shop or the farm, and set to the unproductive work of nursing these seven great grown-up babies.

On the other side of the way, the Hon. Mr. Many- boys has seven sons, who are the exact match of the merchant's daughters, — rich, idle, some of them dis- solute, debauchery coming before their beard, all use- less, earning nothing, spending much and wasting more. Their only labor is to kill time, and in summer they emigrate from pond to pond, from lake to lake, having a fishing line with a worm at one end, and a fool at the other.

These are the " first families " in Somewhere. Their idleness is counted pleasure ; the opinion of these know- nothings is thought wisdom; their example fashion; their life the reward of their father's toil. Six of these sons will marry, and five, perhaps, of Mr. Manygirls' daughters ; and what families they will found, to live idly on the toil of their grandfathers' bones, until a commercial crisis, or the wear and tear of time, has dissipated their fortune, and they are forced, reluc- tantly, to toil!

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LIVES OF PLEASURE

I recommend no sour and ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on the rose-bush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of Sensuality and Superstition. She is the secret mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fiber too much nor a passion too many. I would steal no violet from the young maiden's bosom ; rather would I fill her arms with more fragrant roses. But a life merely of pleasure, or chiefly of pleasure, is always a poor and worthless life, not worth the living ; always unsatisfactory in its course, always miserable in its end. Read the literature of such men, from Ana- creon of old to Anacreon Moore of our times, and it is the most unsatisfactory literature in the world. There is the banquet, and the wine circles, and the flowers are gay ; but behind all these is the emblematic coffin, and the skeleton stands there to scare the man from his roses and his cups. No lamentations of Jere- miah are to me so sad as the literature of pleasure. It is well to be ascetic sooner than waste your life in idle joys. The earnestness of life is the only passport to the satisfaction of life.

THE QUALITY OF PLEASURE

Let amusements fill up the chinks of your existence, not the great spaces thereof. Let your pleasures be taken as Daniel took his prayer, with his windows open — pleasures which need not cause a single blush on an ingenuous cheek.

" That which must be concealed is near allied to sin." Heed the quality of your joy. A single rose is a fairer ornament than a whole stack of straw.

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HUMAN WRECKS

Think of a young man growing up, conquered by his appetites, — the soul overlaid by the body, the smutch of shame on all the white raiment of God's youthful son, who can stoop the pride of his youth so low, and be a trifler, a drunkard, a debauchee ! The mind of man despises it, and woman's holy soul casts it aside with scorn. Stern as you may think me, and stem I surely am, I can only weep at such decay as this, — flowers trod down by swine, the rainbow broken by the storm, the soul prostrate and trampled by the body's cruel hoof.

RETRIBUTION

No man ever sacrificed his sense of right to any thing, to lust of pleasure, lust of money, lust of power, or lust of fame, but the swift feet of Justice overtook him. She held her austere court within his soul, conducted the trial, passed sentence, and per- formed the execution. It was done with closed doors ; nobody saw it, only that unslumbering Eye, and that man's heart. Nay, perhaps the man felt it not him- self, but only shrunk and shriveled, and grew less and less, one day to fall, with lumbering crash, a ruin to the ground.

TEMPTATION OF THE DEVIL

Jesus had his temptation in the wilderness, says the New Testament story. No doubt it was so. But he had it in the city also, in house, and shop, and every- where else. When the devil finds us in the wilderness, and single-handed meets us, the devil alone, and we alone, he is not much of a devil, he is not hard to put

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to rout. But the great temptation of the devil is when he is backed by interest or fashion, and meets us not alone, but in the crowd. There is small cause to fear the devil when we meet him alone, but the devil well attended by respectable gentlemen, — that is the devil who is alarming. The devil who lies in ambush under the counter, who skulks behind a bale of cotton, or rings money in your ear, or rustles gay garments, — that is the dangerous devil, and fortunate is he who sees him fall as lightning from heaven. Nay, that is the kind that goeth not out but by manly prayer and manly work.

The whole sum and substance of human history may be reduced to this maxim, — that when man departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers harm and loss.

MANHOOD LOST OR WON IN MATERIAL PURSUITS

How many men of business do I know whose man- hood is so overlaid with work that they can do no more. *' I will have an estate," says one, " and then I can ride on it and get my manhood." But, alas ! it is the estate which rides him, and not he who rides, horsed on his fortune. This carpenter looks to me like a chip or shaving of humanity, and I sometimes think he will one day change into a piece of wood. That stone-mason seems to be in the process of petri- fying. Here is a New England lumberman, who deals in logs, thinks of logs, and dreams of boards, planks, joists, and scantlings. He might make out of his logs a plank-road, and ride easily on towards the kingdom of heaven ; nay, he might construct a commodious bridge to carry him over many a deep

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gulf in that road; but instead of these, they are only a pile of lumber. So he goes on. He is a log on the stream, floating towards the sea of wealth, slippery, unlovely to look upon, and hopes to reach that end. By and by Death makes a long arm, and catches our floating log, and he stops on the shore to perish in material rot. Yonder mother has become a child- keeper, and no more. She has been that so long that her specialty of business has run away with the uni- versality of the woman ; she is a mother, nurse, house- keeper, that is all; mother of bodies, housekeeper to the flesh, nurse to matter, not to the soul that she has cradled in her arms. There goes a lawyer who seems to be made of cunning. He is an attorney at law ; he might also have been a man at law, but he scorned it, and as I look at him the inner comes outward to my eye, and his face seems only a parchment, and thereon is engrossed a deed of sale, so much for so much.

It is very sad for a man to^ make himself servant to a thing, his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business ; but how com- mon it is ! I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great pol- itician, I should like to be also something of a man.

Sometimes this excessive devotion to business is a man's misfortune, and not at all his fault. Poverty compels the sacrifice of himself ; and in such a case, let us not condemn him, but pity the condition, and ven- erate the person. It has sometimes happened that a man or woman must forego that nice culture which nature demanded, and devote all the time to the sup- port of father, mother, brother, or family. It is more frequently so with women than men, for the great burden of humanity has often been laid upon the

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shoulders that were feeblest to bear it. Most men fail of their moral development by the attempt to extend their own self too far, most women by attempting to contract it too much. Man's selfishness brings him to the ground; woman goes astray through her self- denial. There are many persons whom we must look upon as the slain and crippled of war, who are not the victims of cannon-shot and bullets, for the battle of industry has also its martyrs.

Sometimes this is a man's fault, not his misfortune. He had his choice, and chose money, office, reputation, rather than manhood. To me this is a sadder sight than to see a man stricken on the red field of hostile strife. I mourn over a man whom violence has de- prived of his manhood ; but he will recover that on the other side of the grave. Still more do I mourn over one who has turned traitor against himself, and plun- dered his own soul of his manhood. If men or women determine to seek in daily life only its material result, they become tools of business, not also men and women at their several callings. But if a farmer will take the same pains to raise character as corn, if the me- chanic will manufacture justice, benevolence, faith in God, such shall be his return. If the trader, in buy- ing and selling, wishes to deal in " charities that heal and soothe and bless," they shall be " scattered at the good man's feet like flowers." Would he traffic in the " primal virtues," they shall " shine aloft as stars " which never set. A glorious character is worth whole crystal palaces crowded full of material riches and beauty. Yonder tailor is making garments for im- mortal life, — clothing you and me with coats, but himself with an angel's robe. That shoemaker who sits in his shop, drawing his quarters and sole together.

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is shod with the sandals of salvation, that will not wear out in life's slippery road. This good silversmith is making nothing so fair as his own character; there is no jewel that gleams with such a sparkle in his windows. That carpenter is making cabinet-work for heaven. This dealer in lumber has logs that form into a great ship of life, to carry him over the sea of time, and put him on the " Islands of the Blest." That cook, feeding her household, is getting angels' bread for her own soul. Yonder housekeeper, careful and troubled about many things, has yet the one thing needful, and that good part which shall not be taken from her. This mother, rocking her baby's cradle, is training up her own soul for immortal life. How rich human nature is, how profitable daily life may be, how j oy ous its spiritual delights 1

Let us do our duty in our shop, or our kitchen, the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and we knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.

Sometimes we say. This thing is not right, but it will do in the long run. How far can you and I see? The best only a handbreadth. How clearly.? But with exceeding dimness. We say it will last our time, and so serve our purpose. Is it not worth while to remember that our time, after all, is eternity ?

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AMOS LAWRENCE

Two days ago there died in this city a man rich in money, but far more rich in manhood. I suppose he had his faults, his deformities of character. Of course he had. It takes many men to make up a com- plete man. Humanity is so wide and deep that all the world cannot drink it dry.

He came here poor, from a little country town. He came with nothing — nothing but himself, I mean ; and a , man is not appraised, only taxed. He came obscure; nobody knew Amos Lawrence forty-five years ago, nor cared whether the handkerchief in which he carried his wardrobe, trudging to town, was little or large. He acquired a large estate ; got it by in- dustry, forecast, prudence, thrift, — honest industry, forecast, prudence, thrift. He earned what he got, and a great deal more. He was proud of his life, honorably proud that he had made his own for- tune, and started with " nothing but his hands." Sometimes he took gentlemen to Groton, and showed them half a mile of stone wall which the boy Amos had laid on the paternal homestead. That was something for a rich merchant to be proud of.

He knew what few men understand, — when to stop accumulating. At the age when the summer of pas- sion has grown cool, and the winter of ambition begins seriously to set in; when avarice, and love of power, of distinction, and of office, begin to take hold of men, when the leaves of instinctive generosity fall off, and the selfish bark begins to tighten about the man, — some twenty years ago, when he had acquired a large estate, he said to himself, " Enough ! No more ac- cumulation of that sort to make me a miser, and my

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children worse than misers." So he sought to use nobly what he had manfully won. He didn't keep

" A brave old house, at a bountiful rate, With half a score of servants to wait at the gate."

He lived comfortably, but discreetly.

His charity was greater than his estate. In the last twenty or thirty years he has given away to the poor a larger fortune than he has left to his family. But he gave with as much wisdom as generosity. His money lengthened his arm, because he had a good heart in his bosom. He looked up his old customers, whom he had known in his poor days, which were their rich ones, — and helped them in their need. He sought the poor of this city and its neighborhood, and gave them his gold, his attention, and the sympathy of his honest heart. He prayed for the poor, but he prayed gold. He built churches, — not for his own sect alone, for he had piety without narrowness, and took religion in a natural way ; — churches for Methodists, Bap- tists, Calvinists, Unitarians, for poor, oppressed black men, fugitive slaves in Canada; nay, more, he helped them in their flight. He helped colleges, — gave them libraries and philosophical apparatus. He sought out young men of talents and character, but poor, and struggling for education, and made a long arm to reach down to their need, sending parcels of books, pieces of cloth to make a scholar's jacket or cloak, or money to pay the term bills. He lent money, when the loan was better than the gift. That bountiful hand was felt on the shore of the Pacific. He was his own executor, and the trustee of his own charity funds. He did not leave it for his heirs to distribute his benev- olence at their cost ; at his own cost he administered

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the benefactions of his testament. At the end of a fortunate year he once found thirty thousand dollars more than he had looked for, as his share of the annual profits. In a month he had invested it all — in vari- ous charities. He could not eat his morsel alone, the good man.

His benevolence came out also in smaller things in his daily life. He let the boys cling on behind his carriage, — grown men did so, but invisibly ; he gave sleigh-rides to boys and girls, and had a gentle word and kindly smile for all he met.

He coveted no distinction. He had no title, and was not a "General," a " Colonel," a " Captain," or " Honorable," — only plain " Mister," " Esquire," and " Deacon " at the end.

His charity was as unostentatious as the dew in summer. Blessing the giver by the motive, the re- ceiver by the quicker life and greener growth, it made no noise in falling to the ground. In Boston, — which suspiciously scrutinizes righteousness with the same eye which blinks at the most hideous profligacy, though as public as the street, — even the daily press never accused his charity of loving to be looked at.

Of good judgment, good common sense, careful, exact, methodical, diligent, he was not a man of great intellect. He had no uncommon culture of the under- standing or the imagination, and of the higher reason still less. But in respect of the greater faculties, — in respect of conscience, affection, the religious ele- ment,— he was well bom, well bred, eminently well disciplined by himself.

He was truly a religious man. I do not mean to say he thought as Calvin or Luther thought, or be- lieved as Peter, James, or John. Perhaps he believed

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some things which the apostles never thought of, and rejected others which they all had in reverence. When I say that he was a religious man, I mean that he loved God and loved men. He had no more doubt that God would receive him to heaven than that he himself would make all men happy if he could. Reverencing God, he reverenced the laws of God ; — I mean the natural laws of morality, the laws of justice and of love. His religion was not ascetic, but good-natured, and of a cheerful countenance. His piety became morality. The first rule he took to his counting- house was the Golden Rule; he never laid it by, — buying and selling and giving by that standard meas- ure. So he traveled along, on that path which widens and brightens as it leads to heaven.

Here was a man who knew the odds between the means of living and the ends of life. He knew the true use of riches. They served as a material basis for great manly excellence. His use of gold was a power to feed, to clothe, to house, and warm, and comfort, needy men ; a power to educate the mind, to cheer the affections, to bless the soul ! To many a poor boy, to many a sad mother, he gave a " Merry Christmas " on the earth, and now, in due time, God has taken him to celebrate Epiphany and New- Year's Day in heaven !

Every vice meets its own terrific punishment. What if the Honorable Mr. Devil does keep his coach and six? It is Mr. Devil who rides in it still, and no six horses will ever carry him away from himself. What if the young men invite him to sit on their platforms, and so do him honor? It only exhibits his devilship before the people in that high seat — his character published in the great magnifying-glass that is before

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him. He had better have shrunk into the lowest comer.

CONTRASTS

See what strange contrasts come to pass in our

Christian democracy — so called. I do not refer to

particular cases, but what happens every year, and

many times a year. Here is a bridal party, among

the wealthiest of a great city. All the riches of food,

furniture, and fashion which gold can purchase are

here brought together. Here is the highest result of

New England civilization, the millionaires of money

and of mind. The intellectual butterfly always loves

to bask and sun himself in the golden gleam of wealth.

The mechanics who built the house where they are

gathered never saw the inside after the key was turned

and given to the owner. The hodmen who bore the

bricks up the tall ladder could not read the Lord's

Prayer, nor write their names. The mariners who on

the ocean sail the merchant-ships, and bring home the

costly wares which go to the furnishing of the house

and its inmates, are rude and ignorant men, who have

only a brief wrestle with the triumphant elements under

which perhaps they at last go down. The vine-dresser

on the Rhine who carried the filthiest substances in a

basket on his back up the steep terraces, to nourish

the choice vintage that produced the wedding wine, is

as ignorant as the hodman, and does not know whether

Boston is in the United States, or the United States

in Boston. What beauty of dress there is; but think

of the Irish women who dressed the flax at fourpence

a day, finding their own food and lodging. Think

of the lace-weavers at Brussels, who sit in cold and

moist apartments, — for otherwise the thread so at- XI— 8

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tenuated cannot be drawn out, — so damp that con- sumption rides in the air and mows down his victims in four or five years. Think of the velvet-makers at Lyons, toihng on starvation wages for a single New England shilling a day ; yet men of better culture of intellect than the wearers of the garments oftentimes. Think of the bridal veil, the cost of which would have supported Bowditch or Franklin at Amherst College for a whole year. " Stiff with lavish costliness," it is worn by one who never earned a farthing, and never will. Think of

" The girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary broidery in, Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the work should spoil. Shaping from her bitter thought Heart's-ease and Forget-me-not."

Think of the history of the cotton, every fiber of it the toil of a slave ; of the sugar-work of the confec- tioner, every crystal of it pressed out of the Indian cane by a slave. Consider the work of the painter on the wall, who toiled in a garret at Rome, having noth- ing to comfort him but his God and his art, who at last dies of genius and starvation, unpitied, unla- mented, and all alone. Consider the gay entertain- ment, and the rude ill-paid persons who made it, — and the tragic face of Want looks out from the comic mask of modem wealth. There you see a fair picture of civilization. You see that its most coveted results are shared by very few, though produced at an im- mense cost to mankind.

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MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL RICHES

It IS not worth while to hold the raiment above the body, and the meat more than the soul which should consume it. The millionaire is not the highest product of human civilization. A rich man, a rich city, does not necessarily possess all the Christian virtues. " Money answereth all things," says the Bible proverb ; but it cannot answer for honesty, it will never do for virtue, it cannot take the place of confidence in Thy higher law. Thou Father of earth and heaven! Is our trade conducted on fair, just principles? Does the Golden Rule lie on the mer- chant's desk, measuring out between man and man the rule of the market? Have we not forgotten God's higher law? Certainly, we overrate wealth to-day, just as our fathers thought too much of fighting. The great end of business is not the accumulation of property, but the formation of character. " He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them," says the Psalmist ; but great virtues, — pru- dence, wisdom, justice, benevolence, piety, — these may be gathered from your trade; they are not uncertain riches, but imperishable, undefiled, and they fade not away.

Nature has dreadful whips for men who are seduced by pleasure, refined or gross, drawn away from the school-house and workshop of duty, playing truant, idling away time and life. Trouble comes to bring them back. That great sheep-dog lies near by the flock ; huge, shaggy, red-eyed, wide-mouthed, with mighty jaws, he is never far away.

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SILENT WITNESSES

" Joseph is a good boy," says his mother, " he never threw a stone at the pigeons before. You did not mean to hit them, did you, dear? " It is the mother's only son, and he never did a naughty thing. But I notice that all the hens and turkeys about the house run off when he draws near, and that the great speckled cockerel never crows till that little imp has gone by ; and that when he walks through the pastures all the cows keep at a safe distance. These witnesses were not summoned, but they came into court of their own accord, and their testimony convicts the mother's little darling, who " never threw a stone at a pigeon before."

Wealth and want equally harden th.e heart, as frost and fire are both alike alien to the human flesh. Fam- ine and gluttony alike drive nature away from the heart of man.

THE MODERN DEVIL

The mythological devil of times past has almost vanished from the earth. We rarely hear of him now. But the real devil of our time — what is that ? Very different is he from our fathers' devil, who was afraid of a church in daylight, and slunk off, and was afraid to look at a Bible. The modern New England devil is respectable, and does all things decently and in order. His brutal hoofs and savage horns and beastly tail are all there, only discreetly hid under a dress which any gentleman might wear. They do not appear in his body, but in his face ; you can see them there, though he does not mean you should. He rides in

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the streets, and appears at public meetings, and pre- sides, at least is one of the vice-presidents. He is always on the side of the majority, or means to be. He does not like the maj ority, but he likes their power ; he loves nobody but himself. He has large under- standing, not large reason or imagination ; has no wis- dom, but a deal of cunning. He has great power of speech, and can argue your heart out of your bosom. He cares nothing for truth, only for the counterfeit of truth. He is well educated ; knows as much as it is profitable for the devil to know, not truth, but plausible lies. He knows most men are selfish, and thinks all are. He knows men are fond of pleas- ure in youth, and power in age, and that they can be cheated and wheedled, most of them. That is the chief philosophy the New England devil knows, all he wishes to know. He is cruel, sly, has a good deal of power to manage men, to suit his burdens to their shoulders. He thinks piety and goodness are nonsense; he never says so. His religion is church-going, — for now the devil has learned a trick worth two of his old ones. He is always in his pew, with a neat Bible nicely clasped, with a cross on the side of it, — for he is not afraid of the cross, as the old devil was. He fixes his cold, hard eye on the minister, and twists his mouth into its Sunday contortions. He has read the Bridge- water Treatises, and Paley's Theology and Morality; he knows the " Evidences " like a doctor of divinity, and he must not doubt the casting of the devils into the swine, — nor would you doubt it if you saw him ; he knows God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and that it was his duty to do it. He is a life-member of the Bible Society, takes tracts without stint, and reads the theological journals as Job's leviathan swal-

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lowed the water. He sees no evil in slavery; it is a patriarchal institution, a divine ordinance, useful to Christianize the world. Pauperism is not to be found fault with ; that also is divine, — for did not Jesus say, " The poor ye have always with you ^^?

" Yet he is always found Among your ten and twenty pound subscribers. Your benefactors in the newspapers."

Sometimes he writes a book on religion. He is often with the minister, attends all the ordinances of religion, and every form of sacrament ; pays bountiful pew- taxes ; all his children are baptized with water. The minister thinks he is the very Evangelist, the chief pil- lar of his church, and wonders why he was not a clergy- man, but concludes that he thought he could do more good in a broader field. He loves to have the minister preach on doctrines ; against Jews, Infidels, Transcen- dentalists, and other heathens ; to have him preach on the Bible, on the Beauty of Holiness, on Salvation by Faith (and without works) — a very dear doctrine; on the necessity and advantages of Revelation, on the Miracles, on the Blessedness of the Righteous. But let not the minister demand righteousness of his parish, nor insist on piety in the young man's bosom, or the old man's heart. Let him never rebuke a sin that is popular, never differ from popular opinion, popular law, popular charity, popular religion. It will hurt his usefulness, and injure his reputation, and persons will not go to his church. Our church-going devil has no belief in God, man, or his own immortality. He has no truth, justice, love, and faith, and is all the worse because he seems to have them ; and so he wants morality, but no justice; society, but no love; a church

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with no righteousness on man's part, and none on God's part; rehgion without piety and goodness; he wants a minister to manage a machine. " There is no higher law," says he to the minister ; " we must keep the laws of the land, — except the laws against usury, intemperance, gambling, and the law demand- ing you shall pay your proportion of the taxes ; these laws were made for poor men, not for us." And our devil with his horns smites down the poor, and with his hoofs breaks them into fragments, and with his tail sweeps them away.

This is the devil of our times. He worships the trinity of money, the gold eagle, the silver dollar, and the copper cent, — his triune god. He goes about seeking whom he may devour, transformed into a Pharisee. He meets lads at college, and breathes into their ears, and the leprous shell of the hunker grows over the sophomore. Then farewell to your manhood, young man ! The devil has made out your diploma, and you will die in your contracting shell. So the Mexican robbers meet a man, plunder him, and then sew him up in the skin of an ox, newly killed for that purpose ; the supple skin fits closely to the man's form, and in that fiery sun it dries and contracts, and kills him with a thirsty and lingering and horrid death.

Our Yankee devil meets girls at school, and pours his leprous distilment into their ears. Then farewell con- science, poor maiden 1 The roses may bloom on your cheek, but religion is out of your heart ; decency is to be your morality. You may marry, but you must never love ; and if you do, only with your flesh, for you have no heart to love with. You are to rebuke philanthropy as fanaticism, and piety you are to over- come, and call superstition. Good taste is to be your

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accomplishment ; dress and dinner are to be your sacra- ment and communion in both kinds. No angel of religion shall ever illumine your heart; you shall have ice for your comforter ; and in that cold wintry sorrow to which we must all come, your diamond jewels will be great comfort in that hour !

Our devil meets the politician, and takes him with his cold, clammy hand, and says, " There is no higher law. Never try to cure an evil so long as you can make it serve you and your party." He meets the minister, and here his influence is worse than anywhere else. He tells him, *' Public opinion is better than the eternal law of the Father; the aprobation of your parish (hunkers and Pharisees though they be) is above the approbation of God. Salary, — it is certain good ; salvation, — it is a whim. Never be righteous over- much. Use men to serve you, and not yourself to serve them ; the less you serve men, the more they will obey you ; a crown is better than a cross. Dear Mister Minister, you need not rebuke any popular sin; the sinners are always the best judges of what is sin; so leave it to them." The poor man after that stands in his pulpit, with no conscience and heart and soul in him, and profanes the Bible by reading it, and mumbles over his prayers, which are almost ghostly, and had better be turned by a windmill than uttered by his poor voice.

The devil meets all men with this counsel, — " Prefer your pleasure to the comfort of your brother men ; prefer your comfort to their imperious necessity. Conscience is a whim of your fancy ; religion is church ceremony ; piety, sitting at prayers ; charity, public almsgiving; heaven and immortality, a silly trick, but useful for the million men ; disturb them not, but enter not into the delusion."

CHARACTER AND CONDUCT 121

This is the devil of New England to-day ; not one that slinks round by moonlight, but that seeks the day, the broad street. He is not an open mocker, but a sly and cunning Pharisee. Be warned of him, O young man, O young maiden ! He will meet you at school and college, in the parlor, the shop, the count- ing-house, the court-house, the office, and the church, and will sift you as wheat, and you shall be blown off as chaff if you do not heed, for he is seeking for your soul. In the period of passion he will seek to put a worm into your virtue, and cut off its fragrance ; look for no roses where he has been. In the period of am- bition, he will tell you all is fair in trade, and in politics all is well that ends well. Ay, where is the end? The end of self-abasement, what is that ?

This is the devilishest of devils, — earthly, sensual, devilish.

COURAGE

A man must needs have a courage which comes of his faith in God. There are various things which pass by that name. There is the courage of the murderer, who at noonday or at midnight strikes down his vic- tim. There is the courage of the lawmaker, who in the face of the nation, consciously, wilfully tramples under foot the sacred safeguards of human right, and treads down what is holy, to make mischief by statute, and bring human law into contempt. There is the courage of a Judge Jeffreys, who sets the law of man at defiance, and scorns and spits upon the law of God, to serve the rage of a brutal king. All these forms have their admirers, and the last two are sure to be applauded in Church and State in the nineteenth century, as they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth.

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There is a courage which comes of firm muscles, of nerves not over-deHcate, which has its value; and I would not underrate that sort, purely physical though it be. But the cool, calm courage which comes of self-respect, of earnestness of purpose through faith in God, is quite a different thing. That is a courage which can labor only by just and right means. That is a courage also that can wait. That is a courage that can suffer with a " Father, not my will, but thine be done." There is a courage that is noisy, that is superficial, that stirs men, and makes them shout, flushes the cheek, and fires the eye. But the courage that comes of earnestness of purpose and self-respect walks still in the street, and remembers there is an Eye that is on the man, and that is a courage that will not shrink.

MORAL COURAGE

We hate to be in a minority. But the brave man, in his own soul, intimate with God, will always try himself by the pure eyes and perfect witness of the all- judging God. He will ask, not. What will men admire.? but, What will God approve.? There have always been times which tried men's souls, and never more than now. You and I may be called on any day to forsake father and mother, and stand in a minority of one, with nobody to approve us but God. Such social trials are far harder to bear than to stand in a battle-field ; but with the witness of your own heart, and God's approbation, you are blessed indeed, and may still possess your portion in content, having more than twelve legions of angels about you, even the Father with you. Seek then, O man, the praise of God, as all the heroes of mankind have done, as the

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prophets and apostles and martyrs, and as Christ him- self has done. Never defer your sense of right to any love of praise. If you get approbation, take it as an accident of your excellence, and not as a sign. Count the praise you are clothed with as a sackcloth garment of penance which you must wear for not being above and before men ; and if you miss their approba- tion, be not sore, but the more loving. The integrity of your own soul is better than the best name which the age, present or to come, can ever give you. If you love God, that love will cast out all fear of human infamy, transcend all human praise, and fill you with saintly heroism. The fame of the Christian is not fame with men, it is good report with God ; and that

" Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set oflf to the world, nor in broad rumor lies ; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove. As He pronounces lastly on each deed. Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."

DEFERENCE TO PUBLIC OPINION

It Is not by self-respect and self-reliance that men get the reputation of being wise and prudent, but by subordination, by a cringing deference to public opin- ion; not by giving weight to superior personal qual- ities of other men, but to superior wealth, station, or great renown. When some years ago a young min- ister said some words that rang in the churches, the criticism made on him was, that he was not thirty years old. It is common for young men to postpone becoming true to their convictions until rich and well known. That is to put it off forever. Suppose Paul had waited until he was rich, or until he was a great

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and famous rabbi, before he told men that Christian- ity alone was the law of the spirit of life, — how long had he waited, and what had he done? Suppose Jesus, when about thirty, had said, " It will never do for a young man like me to respect my soul now; I must wait till I am old. Did not Moses wait till he was fourscore before he said a word to his countrymen about leaving Egypt? " — what would have become of him? Why, the Spirit of God that irradiated his vast soul would have gone off and perched itself on the mouth of some babe or suckling, who would have wel- comed the great revelation, and spread it abroad like the genial sun. Do you think that Simon Peter and John and James and Joseph would have been more likely to accept Christianity, if they had been rich and famous and old men? As well might the young camel have waited till he was old and fat and stiff, in hopes to go the easier through the needle's eye.

PERSONAL INTEGRITY

At first sight, the most attractive and popular qual- ity in woman is always beauty, the completeness of the whole frame, and the perfection of its several parts, — for it is this which like morning light earliest strikes the eye, the most salient sense, which travels quickest and farthest too. At a distance the eye com- prehends and appreciates this genius of the flesh, — the most spiritual organ of the body doing homage to the least material part of matter. But by and by, some faculty nobler than sight looks for what cor- responds to itself, and finding it not, turns off sadly from the pretty face and dainty shape ; or discerning therein lofty powers of mind and conscience and heart and soul, things too fair for the corporeal eye to

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touch, is rejoiced thereat, and then values physical ^handsomeness as the alabaster-box which holds the precious spikenard and frankincense, with whose odor the whole house is filled.

So the most popular and attractive quality in the public man, — lecturer, politician, lawyer, reformer, minister, — at first is doubtless eloquence, the power of handsome speech, for that is to larger and nobler qualities what physical beauty is to loveliness of the whole spirit. It is quickly discerned, felt as we feel lightning, it flashes in the hand, runs through our bones, and along the nerves, this music of argument. But the flash, the dazzle, the electric thrill, pass by, we recover ourselves, and look for something more than words fitly spoken. So, in the long run, the quality men value most in all public persons is integrity. Webster, Everett, and Choate, we value for their elo- quence, their masterly power of speech ; but the three Adamses, Washington, and Franklin, the nation values for their integrity. This is to eloquence what a wise, good, religious mother is to the painted girl at the opera, decked out, poor thing, to please the audience for a single hour, and win their cheap applause. In- tegrity is a marble statue which survives the sacking of cities and the downfall of an empire, and comes to us from the age of Augustus or the time of Pericles, all the more beautiful for its travel through space and time; while eloquence is like forms of chalk painted on a rich man's floor for one feast-night, the next morning to be scrubbed off and cast into the street.

Integrity is to a man what impenetrability is to matter. It is the cohesive force which binds the per- sonal particles of my nature into a person. It is that quality of stableness which enables me to occupy my

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place, which makes me my own master, and keeps me from getting lost in the person of other men, or in the tumultuous crowd of my own passional or calculat- ing desires. It is the centripetal force which holds me together, and keeps me from flattening out and thin- ning off until I am all gone into something else. It is domination over myself, not servility to another. It is self-rule by my own highest qualities. By the primal instinct of the body we fend off everything that would destroy the individuality of our corporeal frame, and thereby keep our flesh safe, whole, and sound. Everybody repels another who would wrench from him a farthing. By a similar instinct of spirit we keep off all that would impair the inner man and disturb its wholeness, and put another man's mind and conscience and heart and soul in place of our own, or which would make any evil passion to rule in place of what is highest and dearest in us. Thereby we keep our spirit safe and whole and sound. Integrity is made up of these two forces: it is justice and firmness* It is the mingling of moral emotions and ideas with a strong will, which controls and commands them.

Now the first duty which God demands of men is that they be faithful, each man to his own nature, and each woman to hers, to respect it, to discipline it to its proper manner, and to use it in well-proportioned life. If I fail in that, I fail of every thing besides ; I lose my individual selfhood. Gain what else I may, the gain is of small consequence; I have lost my own soul, and to get any thing without this and hope to keep it, is like keeping money in a purse which has no bottom. Personal fidelity is the first of all duties. I am responsible for what gifts God has given me, not at all for your gifts. You may be great, and I very

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little ; still I must use mj little faithfully, nor ever let it be swallowed up in the stream of a great power- ful man, nor in the grand ocean of mankind. Though I may be the feeblest and smallest of mortal men, my individuality is just as precious to me as nationality is to the largest nation, or humanity to mankind. This impenetrability and toughness of character is indis- pensable to all nobleness, to all sturdy manhood. It is the most masculine of virtues, the most feminine at the same time. It is fortitude of the flesh, chastity of the soul. But while I keep the mastery of myself in my own hands, I must use the help of the great men and the little men by my side, and of humanity. I must touch everybody, not mingle and lose myself in any one. I must be helped and helpful, and not mas- tered and overcome. So I can be taught by all teach- ers, advised by all history, past and present, and yet keep my flag on its own staffs, and never strike my colors to any man, however venerable, or any multi- tude, however great. Self-reliant independence, dis- creet faithfulness to the gifts God has given me, is the primal duty, is the Adam and Eve in the Paradise of duties ; and if this fails, others are not at all.

Now there are two forces which disturb and often prevent this absolute personal integrity. The first is subjective, from within; the other is objective, from without. First, the instinctive passions, by their rapid, spontaneous, and energetic activity, and the ambitious desires, love of money, respect, and official power, get easily the mastery over a man, and his noble faculties are nipped in the bud. He has no blossom of man- hood, and of course bears no manly fruit. The higher faculties of his intellect are stifled, the conscience dries up in the man, the aff^ections fade out and perish, and

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in place of that womanly religion which his soul longed for as its fitting mate, a foreign superstition, a horrible darkness, sits in his gate, making night hideous. In this case, the man fails of his personal integrity by allowing his meaner appetites to rule him. I am a free, self-mastered man only when all my faculties have each their proper place; I am a slave if any one of them domineers, and treads me down. I may be the slave of passion or of calculation, and in either case my per- sonal integrity is gone more completely than if a mas- ter from without had welded his collar about my neck and his chain on my feet. I am more disgracefully conquered, for a man may be overcome from without by superior force, and while he suffers loss incurs no reproach, and his dignity is not harmed. But if I am overmastered by my own flesh, how base is my defeat I The other disturbing force is objective, from with- out. Here other men fool me away from myself, and divulse me from my soul. Public opinion takes my free mind out of me, and I dare not think and speak till some one has told me what to say. Sometimes pub- lic law runs off with all individual morality. The man never asks what is right and manly, and squares with his conscience, but, " How far can I go and not be caught up by the sheriff.^ " How mean it is to silence the voice of God within you, and instead thereof have only the harsh formula of the crier of the court. Sometimes the popular theology turns off the man's soul from him, and sits there mumbling over those words which once flamed out of the religious conscious- ness of saints and martyrs, prophets and apostles ; but to him they are nothing but cold, hard cinders from another's hearth, once warm to some one, now good for nothing. How contemptible seems the man who com-

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mits high treason against himself, levies war on his own noblest faculties, and betrays himself, and goes over to his own enemies. Of what avail then is money got by indirect means? Justice makes us pay for it all ; it takes it out of our hide, if not out of our purse. How base is a man's respectability, the praise of men which falls on him, when he has lost that foundation which alone can hold up any praise, his own self-re- spect, and faithfulness to himself! How ridiculous is official power when the personal power of self-trust has gone ! How mean looks that man who has turned his soul out of doors to bring in the whole world ! I see him in his wine-cups, the victim of appetites and passions that war against the soul. I see him amid his riches, the slave of covetousness. I look at him when the applause of a convention of similar men repays his falseness to himself, the mere tool of the hand that feeds him. Is it worth while to take the opinion of the pave- ment instead of your own opinion, your own manly or womanly sense? Shame on us that we are such cow- ards and betray ourselves !

But how grand, and not less than magnificent, ap- pears

" The man who still suspects and still reveres Himself, in nobleness and lowliness Of soul, whom no temptations from within Force to deformity of life; whom no Seductions from without corrupt and turn Astray."

Look at such a man in his pleasures, — temperate,

full of open, daily blessedness, with no silent meanness

of concealed joy. See him in his business, — erect as a

palm-tree, no lies on his tongue, no fraud of tricky

mind, no bad money running into his purse, but the XI— 9

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New Testament's Golden Rule lying on his counter, his desk, his bench, as a meet one by which to buy and sell ! See him in the public meeting, — faithful to himself, though he stands all alone; public opinion, public law, public theology, may be against him, but a man on the side of his own soul has the Infinite God for his ally. Think not of his ever lacking friends. This is the foundation of all the rest. It is the first quality you ask of every man and of every woman. This you can build into any thing else that you will; but as the granite must be solid in the block before it is solid in the building, so you must have this in- tegral personal impenetrability in the individual man or woman, before they are worth much in any relation of life where they are placed.

Alas ! There is not much pains taken just now to promote this personal integrity. How men laugh at it continually and hiss it down. The husband asks this young woman, whom he weds, to surrender her personal integrity, and she ceases to be an individual woman, and becomes only his wife. The magistrate asks the people to give up their personal integrity; they have only to do just as they are bid and it will all come out right, he tells them, whether their souls be trod under the government hoofs or not ; and so the man who accepts that doctrine turns into a fraction of the state, and is not a person of the state. The little silken virtues, perfumed with rosemary, current in what is called the world of fashion, fit its inhabitants to be beaux and belles, not men and women, with great manly and womanly character, thoughts, feelings, prayers, aspirations, life. Some one said to me the other day: " To be respectable in Boston and welcomed into the best society, a man must sacrifice his soul ; individuality

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must go down before sociality." Jesus of Nazareth had a personal integrity as hard as the British cannon- balls which beat down Sebastopol ; but nine ministers in every ten, in his name, tell men they must cast away all integral consciousness, and be only a branch of Christ. Not so ! I also am a tree, not a branch of any man. My individuality, though it is but the smallest shrub of humanity, roots into that great field of the world where Jesus and Moses and Plato and Aristotle and Leibnitz and Newton also stood and rooted and grew. God loves me as well as he loved those great and gorgeous souls, and if he gave them ten talents, and me only two mites, which joined together make but the fourth part of a penny, he demands the same faithful use of me as of him who has the ten talents. This personal integrity is the oldest of virtues. To the spirit it is what bravery is to the body. It is the father of all the rest.

What honors do we pay to saints and martyrs who kept their spirit clean amid the fire, and laid down their body's life rather than stain the integrity of their spirit ! At the head of American statesmen stand Washington and Franklin. Neither of them had a brilliant quality, but each had such faithfulness to his idea of official duty that their influence is ploughed into the conscious- ness of the land they lived in.

Integrity is a virtue which costs much. In the period of passion, it takes self-denial to keep down the appe- tites of the flesh; in the time of ambition, with us far more dangerous, it requires very much earnestness of character to keep covetousness within its proper bounds, not to be swerved by love of the praise of men, or official power over them. But what a magnifi- cent recompense does it bring to any and every man !

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Any pleasure which costs conscience a single pang is really a pain, and not a pleasure. All gain which robs you of your integrity is a gain which profits not; it is a loss. Honor is infamy if won by the sale of your own soul. But what womanly and manly delights does this costly virtue bring into our consciousness, here and hereafter!

PERSONAL IDEALIZATION

I never trust any man's statement against his enemy. The idealization of hate destroys the personal likeness. So it is with the benevolent emotions ; they idealize and beautify. " There never was such a baby as our baby," says Edward to Susan and Susan to Edward. How do Romeo and Juliet mutually purr over each other! If a man has done us any considerable service, how do we idealize him ! The good old doctor, — how he is idealized by his patients, or the noble-hearted minister by his hearers ! " Good men are scarce," say they ; " there will never be such another." So with men who serve nations, especially if they fill a great office. The Americans idealize Washington; even painters and sculptors must transcend the fact. If some artist should paint Washington as he was at the age of sixty, and exhibit the picture, I suppose the Honorable Members of Congress would stone it with stones. A few years ago a minister, in a sermon on Washington, ascribed to him many moral excellences, and integrity greatest of all, in the heroic degree ; and wishing to paint the man just as he understood him, he mentioned the fact that he once told a great lie, and gained the battle of Yorktown ; that he sometimes swore the most terrible oaths, and got into great wrath ; that he did not believe the popular theology of his

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time, but probably thought as Franklin and Jefferson did. How angry were editors and ministers. None disputed the fact, but they were wrathful because the truth was told. The Athenians condemned Anaxagoras to death because he taught that the sun was fire. Ac- cordingly, we do not trust the Buddhist's account of Buddha. Who ever believes the eulogies delivered in Congress or in Faneuil Hall, or in meeting-houses? Funeral sermons are often as false as dicers' oaths.

But this idealization passes away. By and by the mother who has borne ten babies has seen a thousand as good as her own, and knows her children just as they are. Romeo finds gray hairs in Juliet's pretty curls. The patient finds other doctors of skill, and that his is sometimes mistaken. The parish learns that the minis- ter has neither all the human virtues nor all the great talent ; that some little man of a despised sect has some wild-flower of humanity which their favorite has not got. The nation finds out that its great benefactors had both good and ill, and did not exhaust the pos- sibility of mankind. Other Athenians built a sacred monument to him whom their fathers condemned for telling the truth about the sun. How mankind loves the actual fact, truth as it is, in nature or man!

I have at home three great books, full of panegyrics which some rhetoricians wrote about the Roman em- perors. I would give them all for one moral daguer- reotype of Julius Caesar or Alexander Severus. No wise man objects to idealization, but he does not like to have it in the same platter with the historic fact. I think the time has come when a small part of Christen- dom would like to look at a daguerreotype of Jesus, and be content with the historical person, just as he was, and give up that long series of fancy sketches

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which make up the ecclesiastical Christ ; for to my think- ing, that noble-browed carpenter, with his great trust, and pious feeling, and grand life, is worth more than all the ecclesiastical dreams about him down to this day.

Agreeable persons you always love best when pres- ent. Disagreeable persons whom you love, you always love best in absence; because imagination, stimulated by affection, supplies virtues whose ugly omission is pressed upon you when such persons are by.

THE HAPPY MAN

The happiest man I have ever known is one far enough from being rich in money, and who will never be much nearer to it. His calling fits him, and he likes it, rejoices in its process as much as in its result. He has an active mind, well filled. He reads and he thinks. He tends his garden before sunrise every morning, then rides sundry miles by the rail, does his ten hours' work in the town, whence he returns happy and cheerful. With his own smile he catches the earliest smile of the morning, plucks the first rose of his garden, and goes to his work with the little flower in his hand, and a great one blossoming out of his heart. He runs over with charity, as a cloud with rain ; and it is with him as with the cloud, — what coming from the cloud is rain to the meadows, is a rainbow of glories to the cloud that pours it out. The happiness of the affections fills up the good man, and he runs over with friendship and love, — connubial, parental, filial, friendly too, and philanthropic besides. His life is a perpetual " trap to catch a sunbeam," and it always springs and takes it in. I know no man who gets more out of life, and the secret of it is that he does his duty to himself, to

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his brother, and to his God. I know rich men, and learned men, men of great social position ; and if there is genius in America, I know that, — but a happier man I have never known.

The worst idol that a man ever bows down to is a dead saint, not a live sinner; for the live sinner shows us his sin; but we put a glory about the dead saint, and cease to see his follies, and become enslaved thereto.

MODESTY A CHAEACTERISTIC OF THE GREATEST

MEN

Almost every great man has been modest; certainly all that were great in the noblest forms of human ex- cellence. The great philosophers like Newton and Kant have been more modest than the sophomores of a college. The Shakespeares, Miltons, and Bumses, I doubt not, were not half so well satisfied with their work as is the penny-a-liner of the daily press with his, or the poet who opens a city lyceum, who mistakes the momentary applause of young men for lasting fame. Chevalier Bayard probably never boasted so much of his exploits as some arrant coward who hacked his sword behind a hedge, that he might exhibit it to the admiration of men in bar-rooms. Saint Paul reckons himself as the least of the apostles, though his works have left a monument in Ephesus, and Corinth, and Rome, and many other great cities, and your and my piety is warmed at this day by the words uttered from his great burning soul. Did not Christ refuse to be called good even.'' This modesty is one of the signifi- cant and descriptive marks of men of worth. It is of their genus and species both. Not the thanksgiving, " Father, I thank thee that I am not as other men

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are ! " but the penitent cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner!" were the justifying words which sent the pubHcan to his home a wiser and a better and a more accepted man.

Not they who court the public applause get their names joined in stable wedlock with fame; but they who scorn that applause, and ask only for their own soul's approbation, and the praise of God. Their names it is that live forever.

POWER OF FEELING ESSENTIAL TO GREATNESS OF

CHARACTER

For a complete and noble character you want a great power of feeling, and especially do you want it for all the high forms thereof. You do not need much for man in his merely mechanical and artificial function, to make a mere soldier, a mere naturalist, tailor, priest, jobber, for these names designate only special callings of men, wherein feeling is not much needed. Despotic judges never want any feeling in the jurors. The tyrant, whether a democrat or an aristocrat, never wants feeling in his magistrates ; they are to execute the law; the worse it is, the more they are to execute it; for a righteous law does itself, but a wicked law needs a great deal of executing. There will be feeling in such persons, as there are fringed gentians beside the mill-pond, which have nothing to do with the busi- ness of the mill.

A man without large power of feeling is not good for much as a man. He may be a good mathematician, a very respectable lawyer, or doctor of divinity, but he is not capable of the high and beautiful and holy things of manhood. He cannot even comprehend

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them ; how much less do and become. It is power of feeling, as well as thought, which furnishes the sub- stance wherewith the orator delights and controls and elevates the mass of men. Thought alone is never elo- quent ; it is not enough, even for the orator's purpose ; he must stand on the primeval rock of human con- sciousness, must know by experience the profoundest feelings of men, their love, their hate, their anger, their hope, their fear, and, above all things, their love of God, and unspeakable trust therein. Feeling, he must make others feel. Mere thought convinces ; feel- ing always persuades. If imagination furnish the poet with wings, feeling is the great, stout muscle which plies them, and lifts him from the ground. Thought sees beauty, emotion feels it. Every great poet has been distinguished as much for power of emotion as power of thought. Pope had more wisdom than Burns, Pollok as much as Wordsworth; but which are the poets for the man's heart and his pillow ? In great poets like Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, — noblest of them all, — there is a great masterly power of feeling joined to a great masterly power to think. They see and feel too, and have the faculty divine of telling what they feel. Poetry and Eloquence are twin sisters ; Feeling is their mother. Thought is the father. One is directed more to beauty ; sits still in the house, her garlands and singing robes about her all the day. The other is devoted more to use, cumbered with much serving, wears a workday suit. But they have the same eye, the same face, the same family likeness. Every great artist, painter or sculptor, must likewise have great power to feel. Half the odds be- tween Raphael and a Chinese painter is in the power of feeling. But few men are poets, orators, sculptors.

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or painters. I only mention these to show how for the high modes of intellectual activity feeling is neces- sary.

It is equally necessary for the common life of men. Thought and feeling both must go to housekeeping, or it is a sad family. The spiritual part of human beauty, man's or woman's, is one-fifth an expression of thought, four-fifths of feeling. The philosopher's face is not handsome. Socrates, John Locke, John Calvin, and Immanuel Kant, are good enough types of mere thought, hard thought, without emotion. It is the power of feeling which makes the wise father at- tractive, the strongminded mother dear. This joins relatives nearer than kindred blood; it makes friend- ship actual ; it is the great element in philanthropy ; it is the fountain whence flows forth all that which we call piety. Philanthropy is feeling for men, friend- ship is feeling with men, and piety is feeling with God. All great religious leaders have been men of great power of emotion, — Mahomet, Luther, Loyola, Wes- ley, Whitefield ; and what we admire most in Jesus is not his masterly power of thought, but his genius for love, power of feeling in its highest modes. His in- tellectual character is certainly a great weight, his foot-prints are very deep ; but most men do not think of Jesus as a great-minded, a great-thoughted man. " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more ; '* " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ; " — thought alone had not reached up so high as that in that age and in this young man, but a great mountain of spontaneous human feeling pressed on him, and drove that fount up to such heights of sparkling piety.

But all men of great feeling are also capable of

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great wrath. Where the sun is hottest, there the light- ning is reddest, and the loudest thunder speaks. There was never such blessing as Jesus pours out in the Beatitudes. Was there ever such cursing likewise as that, — " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hyp- ocrites ! " .? I know very well how men love to picture Jesus of Nazareth, men who never had a great mighty feeling, who never felt a mighty love, who were never swayed by a mighty wrath. They say he was the lion of the tribe of Judah ; but they think he was a lion with no teeth nor claws, who could only roar like some mouse in the wall. It is not so. They understand not his depth, nor even their own. It was not after that sort that the writers of the first three Gospels described him. They represent him not only as shed- ding his sunlight, but as thundering and lightning also. Do not tell me that those fiery words were spoken with cold lips ! Depend upon it, his eye looked round and flamed like fire in the New Hampshire woods, and men turned off^ from that countenance. In due time no doubt all became calm again. I think the power of wrath was lodged in him only as in every civilized military country there are kept great breach- ing cannon ; they are not brought out on holidays, the boys have never seen them ; and the old men hardly remember them; but once in a while in the nation's life these great cannon are brought out, and speak with fearful roar. God has lodged the faculty of wrath in man, not to be our master, but to be our servant. You see it thus in Jesus.

I do not think that we take pains enough with the culture of this emotive part of our nature, especially with the higher feelings, — love in either of its forms, directed in friendship or philanthropy towards men, or

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in pure piety towards God. Here are two reasons for this neglect of our emotional culture. One is the mer- cantile character of the people, where we calculate every thing, and somewhat overrate the understanding in comparison with the other powers ; for our arithmetic is not yet quite capable of calculating the exact value of philanthropy, of friendship, and of piety, and after aU our ciphering we have not got a calculus to appre- ciate these nice and powerful emotions. The other reason is that we have false notions about religion, for the form of religion which prevails most in North America is Calvinism, and that is the cold, hard, dry religion of a man with vast intellect and great will, but very little power of emotion, and of the higher feelings of love to man and love to God, scarce any that I could discover with any solar microscope which I have brought to bear upon his character or writings. In consequence of this, which has vitiated our religious culture in the very fountain of it, men think that feel- ing is a little unmanly, and when a young man or an old man makes his ideal of what he ought to be, he does not put in much emotion, but great wit and great understanding. Half the women in New England think it is wicked to let their affections take hold of friend, relative, husband, or child, with such a strong grasp as the feelings would naturally lay there; they think it is so much love taken from God, — as if natural love for God's creatures was not also natural love for God; as if this was not the ladder whereby we climb up to Love infinite and absolute. Besides,* the picture that has been presented of God Himself, is not such that anybody could love it much. We fear God very much, but love Him very little. I mean it is the nature of Calvinism to produce that effect.

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To be complete men we want much more power of emotion, much more love, human and divine, than is al- lowed in our schemes of education. But we want it not as our master, only our helper. Reflective man must be the lord of the instinctive emotions. Feeling masters the savage child; but the well-grown man is self-mastered, and rules his feelings, not they him. The feelings may be made the end of the man's spir- itual experience ; he may stop with emotion and go no farther. Such men remain children, and become no more. If a man cultivates his afFectional feelings, but does not put them to their natural work, then the feelings become sickly and morbid, and dwindle into mere sentimentalism. The sentimentalist is one of the unfortunate productions of society, a victim of circum- stances, like the drunkard and the thief. He nurses his feelings, perhaps, on novels, full of overwrought descriptions, high-flown expressions, ghastly sorrows, and impossible delights, and weeps at the ideal woes which are pictured there ; or if of graver turn, indulges in martyrologies, tales of dreadful wrongs which man heaps on man. These furnish excitement to his feel- ings, the man dwells in dreams of incessant emotion ; but you may ask of him any noble deed of self-denial, any sacrifice for humanity, to give up a single pleasure for an actual suff*ering man, — and you may as well look for violets in a Siberian winter. I know such men, and still more such women, from whom I should never look for any thing in the shape of works. With them sympathy is a delight, and the greater the suf- fering which calls it out, the greater the delight ; com- passion is a luxury. Some of these pass for philan- thropists. They are only moonlight philanthropists. They would like to go down on their knees to serve

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some fabulous queen who had been carried off in an encounter, on the back of a green dragon, and they dream of doing some such deed as that ; but they could not teach the cook who lives in their own house her letters, nor watch with a sick friend all night, nor go without their dinner to save a common life of such persons as they meet in the streets every day. A sen- timental philanthropy is worth just as much as a chain- cable made of glass.

Here is another form of the abortive development of feeling. The religious feelings may suffer a similar estoppel, and dwindle into mysticism and mere quietism. Men, oftener women, may have great warmth of feel- ing,— love of God, trust in God, reverence for God, delight in God, prayer to God, thought of God, — which yet has no influence on the life. It bends the knees, keeps Sunday idle, crowds the meeting-house, makes a market-place for religious books at home, to mingle with other finery, where on the same table you shall see " puffs, powders, patches. Bibles, billets-doux." It never opens the purse towards the poor, nor turns the capitalist's money to building reasonable tenements for them. When men seek religion as a means of pleasure, to cultivate emotions of trust and love of God for their own selfish delight, it becomes as fatal to them as the gaming-house, the drinking-shop, or the brothel. There is a literature which feeds this mode of action. There are other libraries besides that of Don Quixote which ought to go the same way as his went. The very Inquisition itself was built up and is sustained by men who riot in mere voluptuousness of religious emotion and stop there. These are the dangers of a wrong cultivation of the feelings.

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MEANNESS AND GENEROSITY

Generosity and meanness are to each other as heaven and hell, the two extremes of disposition and conduct in our mode of dealing with other men. Generosity is a certain manly and womanly virtue, raised to a high power; meanness is an unmanly and unwomanly vice, carried down to the last degree. One is benevolence, felt with joy and achieved with alacrity; the other is selfishness cherished in the heart, rolled as a sweet morsel under the tongue, and applied in life to the fullest extent. Each may be regarded as an internal disposition, — that is, a mode of feeling, a form of character ; and also as an outward manifestation, — a mode of action, a form of conduct. As an inward disposition, meanness is that kind of selfishness which would harm another whom it has at a disadvantage; it is injustice mixed with cowardice, and put into a form not only wicked, but hateful to our sense of right. It is a most unhandsome emotion. On the other hand, generosity, as an inward disposition, is that kind of benevolence which wishes well to such as it has at dis- advantage, and changes a power to hurt and harm into a power to help ; it is justice mixed with cour- ageous love, directed towards men whom it might se- cretly injure and harm for its advantage, but whom it chooses to help and bless for their own profit.

Now let us look at meanness in its outward mani- festation; first as showing itself in things which are measurable by money, which is pecuniary meanness, and next in respect to things not thus measurable, which is meanness of behavior. First, of pecuniary meanness. Thrift is ability to master the material world, securing power thereover, use and beauty

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therefrom, comfort and elegance therein. Man is by his instinctive nature a hoarding animal; by his intel- lectual consciousness he is also progressively thrifty. Our civilization is the child of time and of thrift. No nation, no man, no woman, was ever too thrifty, more than too strong, too healthy, too handsome, or too wise. Thrift is a point which is common, on the one hand, to generosity, on the other, to meanness. It is their point of starting; and starting thence, Amos slopes up to generosity, a continual ascent, while Fran- cis pitches down to meanness, a perpetual stumble, an everlasting descent, getting steeper and steeper as he goes down, for the farther he goes in his meanness the faster he becomes mean. Now in his pecuniary dealings with men, man mixes his thrift with selfishness, leavening that bread into ugly, misshapen, and nau- seous lumps, which he thereby embitters and also poi- sons. So his thrifty desire becomes covetousness, an ungodly longing for something which is not his, and his thrifty conduct becomes avarice, miserliness ; that is, getting what he wants without paying the natural price therefor, or the getting of his own on terms which are unjust, unmanly, wicked, and so manifoldly contemptible. An ingenious man thus distinguishes rheumatism and gout : "Put your hand in an iron vice, and let some one screw it up as tight as you can bear, and that is rheumatism ; then give the screw another turn, and that is gout." Now, what rheumatism is to gout, avarice is to meanness ; give the covetous screw another turn, and that is pecuniary meanness. The mean man is not courageous enough to turn the screw openly by daylight ; he does it by stealth, and in dark- ness,— for meanness is not only injustice, but it is a cowardly and sneaking vice in the form of its injustice.

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To make the matter more clear, let me give some examples of meanness which have come before me in my early or my later life, taken chiefly from a distance, and from persons I think unknown to you ; for it is not any specific individual that I wish to hit, but the vice itself.

One cold winter day, in my boyhood, a wealthy farmer in my native town put on his sled a cord and a half of green poplar wood, which looks very much like the best of hickory, but is good for nothing ; — it will not burn in the present state of the arts and sciences. With his oxen he drove his team to Boston, reaching the town a little before dark, at an hour uncommon for teams of wood to enter the city. He stopped in Cam- bridge Street, pulled out a stake from his sled, and dropped down a portion of his load into the street, pretending he had met with an accident, and was un- able to proceed any farther. " Why did you come so late ? " said the neighbors. " Oh," said he, " I had promised the load to a certain man. It is the best kind of wood, and is going to pay me a reasonable price. I could easily unload it and get home before night. But I met with this accident." A black man offered to buy the wood, and the farmer offered it at what he called a lower price, at a dollar and a quarter a foot. The black man took it, helped the farmer to unload, paid him his money, and asked him to stay to supper, which the farmer declined, because the pur- chaser was a black man, and passed over the bridge homewards, leaving the wood, which to the man who bought it was worth no more for fuel than so much ice ; and when he got home he told the story. It was one of the earliest examples of meanness that came to my boyish consciousness. I have met with many of XI— 10

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the same sort since, seldom quite so bad in form, but sometimes even worse.

Here is another. A poor man was a rum-selkr in a little country town in Middlesex county, and another yet poorer man, who loved his neighbor's tap better than his own house or his family, had incurred a debt at the dealer's shop to the amount of ten or twelve dol- lars, but he had no means to pay. " I'll put you in jail," said the creditor. It was years ago when the statute-book of Massachusetts was deformed by that wicked law of imprisonment for debt. The man an- swered, " You had better not ; you will have to pay my board all winter; it is now November; I have little to do this season, and I shall live better at your cost in jail than by my own little earnings at home, and when the March Court comes in, I shall swear out, and you will have nothing for your debt, and will have incurred great expense to support me." " Then I will attach your property," said the creditor. " I have not any thing except my furniture and a pig, and the law allows me that. Wait till spring, when my work begins again, and I will pay you." The creditor thought of it. The poor man had a pig, which was exempt from at- tachment, a thrifty animal which had been fattened for the winter, and was worth twenty or twenty-five dollars. It was the food of the family, granaried up in a pen. A few days after, the rum-seller met his debtor, and pretended some compassion on him, and gave him a little runty pig, not worth two dollars. " Take this," said he, " carry him home ; it won't cost you much to keep him through the winter, after you have killed your great one, and next year he will be- come a large animal." The poor man gratefully took it home. Then he had two swine, one more than the

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law exempted from attachment. And the next day, at the creditor's command, the sheriff attached the fat swine, and the poor man was left to look to the win- ter and the rum-seller's conscience for his children's bread.

Many years ago, in a large town of America, there lived a wealthy man, owning a million of money and more, got by meanness and excessive thrift. One Sun- day evening, accompanied by his daughter, he visited his son in another part of the city, and remained some hours. The merchant was old, the night stormy, the streets full of ice. The daughter could not walk home. A coach came for her, the father put her in, and to save his twenty-five cents refused to ride; and when the driver said, " Why, really, sir, I think you had better ; it is very slippery, and you are likely to fall on the ice and be hurt, so old a man as you are, begging your pardon ! " " Oh, no," said the millionnaire, " I will run across and get home before you do. I shall not fall ; I am not afraid." The carriage started, and the millionaire stealthily jumped on behind and rode home. When nearly at his own door he leaped down and ran forward, hypocritically puffing and blowing, as if he had walked briskly through the snow. He was too cowardly to steal the twenty-five cents from the coachman's pocket, and he more sneakingly stole it out from the hind end of his coach.

But the forms of this pecuniary meanness could not be counted in one hour, nor in many, for their name is legion ; but they are always the same devil. One other example, however, which I knew in a distant town, is too striking to be passed by, and too often repeated not to need condemnation. A poor young man, fighting for his education, working whilst he studied, and

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teaching while he essayed to learn, once opened a school, where he taught all manner of English branches for four dollars a quarter, and other higher discipline and various foreign and dead languages for five dol- lars a quarter ; and the quarter was twelve whole weeks. One of the wealthiest men in the town, who had a bright boy whom he wished fitted for college, urged our poor schoolmaster to take his son and teach him Latin and mathematics for the smaller price, and thus robbed him of four dollars a year, which was nothing to the father, but to the schoolmaster was what the one ewe lamb was to the poor man in the Old Testament story of Nathan and King David.

Sometimes a man sneaks away from the assessors, and hides his property from taxation, leaving the uncon- cealed property of honest men to bear the public bur- den. It is a thing not at all uncommon for a man with great property to move out of Boston at the end of April in order to escape the assessor of taxes on the first of May, and thus leave the burden to be borne by widows and orphans, mechanics and small traders, who either could not, or else would not, escape the duty which is common to all. Then, how many examples do we all know of men who will not pay their honest debts, and yet are wealthy and have the means of doing it. Safe from the law, they recognize no higher law above the statute which gives them exemption to enjoy the money which they have legally filched from honest hands. In little towns of New England, lectures are sometimes given to the public without any charge to the specific individuals who attend them ; so that no man through lack of money may be debarred of the pleasure or instruction derived from listening to the words of some man of genius, talent, or learning. The expenses

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are paid by a general subscription, where each gives what he will, and in such cases it sometimes happens that a man with property enough refuses to pay any thing, but yet crowds in with his family, and takes ad- vantage of what his neighbors paid for. Nay, in all churches where the cost is defrayed by the voluntary gift of such as will, who contribute each according to his several ability or inclination, there are always men who partake of the advantage, but decline their part of the payment, and thus, as the Methodists say, they steal their preaching. The law punishes getting goods on false pretences, but leaves untouched that other kind of swindling, getting religion on false pretences.

No man can judge of what is meanness in another; you and I can judge of the appearance. There is One who looketh into the heart, and doubtless there are those who to the eyes of men seem mean, and certainly draw upon themselves the reproach of their brothers, whose hearts are yet open and generous ; and when the dear God looks in He says, " Well done, good and faithful servants ! " Towards those persons I would bow in reverential admiration, giving them my poor applause and support, standing between them and the harshness of the world, which sees not with the divine eyes.

I have heard of mean parishes, who received the labors of some faithful and unworldly minister all the sound years of his life, and in his old age put a new man into his pulpit, which was right, but left the old man's hairs, which age had whitened, to be scattered by poverty, and brought down to the grave with sorrow and shame at the ingratitude which he was too generous to call even by its name. But, to the honor of Puritan New England, let me add that such cases are exceed- ingly rare. Now and then I have seen a mean minister

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who filched money from his congregation on all occa- sions, and stealthily got what he never paid for nor gave to the poor, but ate his morsel by himself, the fatherless not eating it with him, nor the poor getting warmed by the fleece of his sheep. For such a minister I hope I might be forgiven if I should feel something which came near to contempt. But I rejoice to think that that vice is very uncommon ; for of all the educated men in New England, I think that no class is so gen- erous with money as the ministers, who contribute their little means with rare freedom from stint. And this is the distinguishing peculiarity of no sect, but com- mon to all of them, from the Episcopalian to the Universalist ; and it is no wonder, for how could this difficult virtue fail to be kept by men who read the New Testament in public, Sunday out and Sunday in, and in private fold it to their bosoms, counting it as the Word of God?

Now, let us consider meanness of behavior. An angry man strikes his foe with all his might; a mean man strikes him after he has got him down. I shall never forget a mean boy I knew when at school. He loved fighting, and delighted to set other boys at blows, while himself looked on, and now and then he gave a kick, always to the vanquished party, and never to him except when he was on the ground. Sometimes he would beat a small boy, but never took one of his own size. He insulted girls, when bigger boys were not by to redress the insult with that summary justice which comes out of the fists of boys. He would whis- per envious and revengeful thoughts into the unwilling ears of others. I learned a terrible lesson from him in my early life, and cannot think of the tyrant with- out shuddering that such a devil should have crossed my path in my childhood.

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Here is a mean man who abuses his employers' confi- dence, cheats them behind their backs, wastes their goods, consumes their time, leaves their work undone. So he gets his daily wages by daily swindling. I meet men of this kind, in their divers forms, throughout society. Here is one, a servant of a railroad, who squanders its stock. Here is another, a conductor, who charges men for riding, and puts the price into his own pocket. Here is another, ruler of a nation, using his great official power to plant slavery where slavery never was.

Here is another mean man, who started from an humble position in society, and has risen therefrom, mounting on money; but now he is ashamed he was ever poor, ashamed of industry and economy which helped him up, and, still worse, ashamed of the poor relations whom he left behind him in the narrow street or the little village where he was born ; nay, worse than that, he seeks to keep men poor, whom he uses as his instruments for accumulating his own estate. His money gives him increase of power to help mankind; he uses it to hinder mankind. When he was an obscure and poor young man he went to meeting in some little Methodist, Baptist, or other unfashionable church, and the minister and deacon and standing committee wel- comed him, saying, " Come in ! We read St. James. There is no diff^erence between the rich man with his costly garments and the poor man with his humble attire. The rich and the poor meet together, and one God is the maker of them all. Come in, and perhaps you also will see God, who speaks to our hearts in our humbleness." Now that he has got rich and famous, he takes his money to some fashionable church, not going there to see God, but in order that men may see him.

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Here is a mean editor, who flatters the popular vices, which he yet despises. He praises all the popular great men, though he has contempt for them in his heart, and is sure to attack every one who seeks to remove a popular vice ; no term of reproach is too se- vere or too scurrilous for him to hurl at the head of such as advocate any unpopular reform. How he jeers at every woman who pays her tax, and asks to have a voice in disposing of the money. Every eighth man in America is a slave, and if you say aught against bondage, Mr. Popular Bitterquill shoots his venom at you the next day, and all his kith and kin, from Madawaska to Sacramento, repeat the virulence. He never tells you of American ships detected in the slave- trade and captured, even by Brazilian cruisers ; but if an honest man has spoken against the wickedness of the Union, he is denounced at once as a traitor.

Sometimes you see a minister mean in his behavior. Mr. Littlefaith was a man of large intellectual powers, of costly education, and commensurate learning; he had got over that superstition which blocked the wheels of most of his parishioners. They gave him the bread he ate, put on him the garments he wore, built him the house he lived in, paid for his costly books in divers tongues ; and by their actions, when the parish came up before him, and in their prayerful-looking faces as they sat under his eye, they said, " O Mr. Scholar, we cannot read your learned books ; we have not the time, nor the patience, nor the culture. Thrash out for us the kernel of that broad literary field, and then give us the pure precious grains of wheat, that we also may have the bread of life ; for why rhould we die, not only in trespasses and sins, but in superstition, in fear and trembling? Point out the errors of our public creed.

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rebuke the sins of our private conduct." And the minister, communing with himself, said, "No, Mr. Christian Parish! If I tell you the truth I have learned, and you have paid me for looking after, I shall get the hatred of such men as neither look after it, nor wish for it, nor see it. I think I shall tell you no such thing." By and by another minister, simpler hearted and younger, rises up. He sees the truth which the first minister saw, and with fear and trembling, with prayers and tears of agony and bloody sweat, he tells it to mankind with what mildness he may; and the Philistines and Pharisees all cry out, " Away with such a fellow! It is not meet that he should live. If we cannot give him damnation in the next life, we will roast him with our torments in this." Mr. Little- faith comes forward and casts the heaviest stone, and persecutes the new minister with the intensest bitterness and hate. Of all the meanness I have spoken of hitherto, this is the meanest. It is meanness in the place of piety, meanness in the name of God.

I wonder that any man can be mean. I take it that no man, no woman, would prefer disease to health, ugliness to beauty, weakness before strength. What would you think of a man who had his choice of clean health, of active limbs and senses, which at five portals let in the handsome world of strength and beauty, and yet preferred disease, and by his own choice became coated with a leprosy all over, and was ugly as the devil? Yet I would take disease, foulest leprosy, loss of limbs, these hands, these feet, the loss of every sense, these eyes, my ears that listen to man's voice or woman's speech of gold, rather than be barked about and dis- membered by such meanness as I sometimes see. Look at that man ! He is mean in his pocket, mean in his

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opinions, mean in his behavior, mean in his shop, mean in the street, afraid of a charity, mean in his house, a mean husband and swindles his wife, a mean father and wrongs his children, mean everywhere. Pass him by ; he is too pitiful to look upon ! Meanness has three degrees ; it is first earthly, it is sensual, and, finally, it is devilish.

Let us turn now to the more pleasing contemplation of generosity. What a beautiful excellence it is ! Whether manifested in the pecuniary form of monej^, or of behavior, it is still the same thing, — justice mixed with love, leavened into beauty. It is both a manly and a womanly virtue, so fair and sweet that it is always alike pleasant and profitable to dwell thereon ; for, as in the thick of the crowd, and the dust or mud of the streets, of a cloudy and dark windy day, you sometimes meet face to face with some sweet coun- tenance, so radiant with beauty that all the street seems luminous with light, filling your eye, and you pass on, a certain sense of a beatitude trickling down your consciousness all day long, to be remembered with thankfulness years after in your evening prayer, — so do I feel towards generosity ; and as beauty is handsome in any robe, for nothing fits it ill, and all becomes what is itself so becoming to each, and so draws the eye in all stations where this sunbeam may chance to light, so is generosity attractive and en- nobling to look upon in any of its forms, pecuniary, corporeal, or of the spirit.

Generosity implies self-denial of low appetites, so that you prefer another, and postpone yourself, set- ting his comfort above your luxury, his indispensable necessity before your comfort, and putting also your

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soul with its higher aspirations before your body with its grosser needs. And yet the generous man does not count it self-denial; no, rather it is manifold letting loose and indulgence of his nobler elements ; for as the water runs down and the fire flames up, so the generous man does of his proper motion ascend, — to him a descent, the fall of meanness, being as adverse as for the flame to run down or the water up. I wonder if my experience has been peculiar to me, or is there really so much generosity in the world as there seems to me, and do others likewise so abundantly meet there- with.? For though I have found rough places in the earth, and trod them barefoot besides, and cloudy nights above, yet have I also met with such as made the rough places smooth, and continually in space do the clouds turn out their silver lining on the night, or a white star trembling through looks so generous that all the sky below seems fair, as it reveals the handsome- ness of that sweet heaven above, beyond all reach of actual storm. Everywhere do I find less meanness and more generosity.

A ticket-seller at a railroad counter the other day told me of a mean man, who inherited a large estate, he being the only child. He had a pew in the Orthodox meeting-house, whereof he was church member, and he let a seat to a poor woman for three dollars a year. She lived miles away, and could not always come through the snow and rain. When twelve months were gone by, she told him she should not want his seat again, and offered him his money. He counted up the Sundays since first she came to his seat, and found that she had kept it one more than there were Sundays in his Christian year, and so he demanded six and a quarter cents besides. But that was a solitary ex-

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ample ; the whole church could not furnish another ; nay, the village, in its two hundred years of municipal life, could not tell such another story ; and every finger in the town pointed at the man till the grave closed over him, and it points to his gravestone to this day. The fact that this was an exception shows the generosity of the little town.

On nights of j oumeying, and at other times of sleep- lessness, I sometimes think over the generous men and women I have known, recounting their liberal deeds, which spread out before me like a wide meadow in June, beautiful with buttercups, and fragrant with clover and strawberries newly ripe, deeds which their actors have long since forgot, and which I, of all living men, am now perhaps the only one who can remember and re- count. As these come up before me, at this transient resurrection of the just and generous, my eyes brim and run over with thanks to the dear God who gives such gifts unto men, and created us with a nature that bears this harvest of nobility, as New England soil grows oaks and pines, the natural herbage of that generous ground. I am not insensible to that cloudy meanness which sometimes shuts down and gathers in about us, but some generous star always relieves the gloom, and shines a good deed in what were else a naughty world, and tells of that whole heaven of generosity into whose calm depths meanness can never come. For each example of meanness, I have a whole encyclopasdia of generosity, a vast litera- ture of generous men, and still more of generous women, — for this sweet violet of the heavenly spring, prophetic of a magnificent summer, like other tender and delicate virtues, thrives best in that fair warm soil on the feminine side of the human hill. In all

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fishing after intellectual prizes, it is the masculine Peters who first draw the net on the right side of the ship, and take miraculous draughts therefrom, and the net yet not broken. But in the chase after that higher and well-favored excellence of conscience, heart, and soul, it is that other and feminine disciple who outruns the bearded and broad-shouldered Peter, and first sees the angels of humanity, finds the ascending nobleness, and tells the men slow of heart in believing, that she has seen the Lord.

Look now at generosity in its pecuniary form. How much generosity of money is this- town daily wit- ness to, with all its small and great vices, its snobbish vulgarity, and the mean insolence of upstarts who ride on money. Spite of all that, I think Boston is the noblest city in the world, surely the most generous with its money. Nowhere on earth is a miser less es- teemed, nowhere so much despised. By his money he gets pecuniary power in the street, has stocks for sale, dollars to let, houses and shops to lease, and so of course he has commercial power; but through his mi- serly money he acquires no political honor, not the least. He cannot buy an office of the United States Government, he can never get any thing at first-hand from the American people. He gets no social honor. True, he has matrimonial and ecclesiastical power, for a city is like the " great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts." Some marketable woman will sell her body to his arms ; some hireling minister will he fee to praise him while above ground, and to deck him with fancied virtues when below the soil; some commercial editor, as marketable as any thing in his price-current, will hold him up as a pattern for imitation ; the Mercan-

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tile Library Association, despising the miser, on its public days will give him a seat on its platform among honorable merchants ; nay, when the Cradle of Liberty spills out the child of humanity, and men-stealers crowd thitherward, an ungodly pack, our mean rich man has his place on the kidnapper's platform. That is all the honor the miser can get in Boston, to the credit of the dear old Puritan town, the mother of so many virtues. There his money breaks down. He gets no honors of the people at first-hand, only old damaged honors of the retailers and hucksters of such things ; and least of all can his money bring him the homage of the heart which we honestly pay to noble^ ness in rich or poor. Dead examples and living still reveal this remarkable fact, — the names of mean rich men of the last generation publicly rot in their merited infamy, and the names of others for the next fifty years will make some future gibbet creak with their undying shame.

Boston, all New England, is rich In monuments of pecuniary generosity. Look at some which chronicle its most conspicuous acts. There is Harvard College, with its schools of theology, law, medicine, science, its professorships, its libraries, — the New England schol- ar's joy and honorable pride; with its charitable en- dowments, which like an arm from the clouds hold out a lamp to many a bright boy, or come like the prophet's bird, bringing bread and flesh in its beak ; with its ob- servatory, holding the telescope where the eye of culti- vated genius looks through the glass of commercial generosity, and beholding worlds unseen to the naked eye of sense, declares its revelation to all mankind. These are monuments of New England riches, trophies of generous men, who provided for literature and art

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and science which they could not understand, but that their sons and the sons of the people should be made glad thereby ; nay, such as left no son nor daughter have thus made a long arm to reach to countless gen- erations and do them good. Here too is the Boston City Library and the Athenaeum, likewise fountains of sweet waters in what were else a literary wilderness. Here too are the Lowell Lectures, where one man's money turns into wisdom, science, and philosophy for the people. Then behold the hospitals and asylums all about the town, built by private generosity, asy- lums for the needy and the sick, where the rich man's money is transfigured into the scientific mind, the skil- ful hand, and the affectionate watchfulness which soothes the sick head and cheers the fainting heart. Here, too, are asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the crazy, and the fool, and manifold other charities to help the widow and the fatherless, and those friend- less girls whom the public leaves to die with earthly damnation, whereof some young man, living in his body, officiates as devil, or serves as imp.

Above all cities, Boston has an honorable fame for the large bounty of her wealthy men. I need not here recall the names of those newly immortal, who entail riches on the public, the dead hand of their ever-living charity still scattering the wealth its gatherers, heav- enly Christians now, loved to transmute to human ex- cellence. But for each one such, there are hundreds of men not largely rich, but not less generous, whose generosity is not seen. We mark the lightning, we hear the thunder, but there is a noiseless passage of electricity from the earth to the sky, which every day is a million times stronger than the thunder and light- ning in the heeded storm. Where there is one rich man

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who sweeps up the crumbs that fall from his table, and nobly makes thereof a public gift, there are a thousand men who cut a morsel from their needy loaf, and stint their humble meal; but it is not told of, though it feeds the poor man's babies, or helps the scholar on his upward way. Let us honor the gen- erosity of the millionaire, but not forget the generosity of the hand-cartman or the hod-carrier, who spares six- pence from his daily drink or tobacco, or goes supper- less to bed, to help the widow or the baby of another man who drew a hand-cart. These things you and I do not see ; there is One who beholds them, and gives the reward. No Pharisee saw the widow's two mites ; some vulgar rich man probably turned off with scorn ; but Jesus said she had given more than they all, and now they are a gospel all round the world. They are a Bible Society of themselves. The great funds of the Bible Society, the vast expenditures of the Society for Foreign Missions, the money which builds all the meet- ing-houses of New England, Catholic and Protestant, are accumulated mostly by small driblets from the people, a shilling here, a dollar there. Nay, the proud library of Harvard College was founded by a few min- isters, giving or lending such books as they could spare. Massachusetts once taxed herself, making every house- holder pay one shilling, or a peck of com, to Harvard College. It is a magnificent monument to the gen- erosity of the old Puritanic State, and she did this also when her settlements only reached from Wey- mouth to Ipswich, and did not extend twenty miles inward, and besides she was fighting a war with the Indians.

Here is a man, surely not rich, who helps to build chapels for the poor, houses also of most Christian

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architecture for men of small means, and with others' ejes he watches for poor boys and girls in the crowded ways of Boston, and puts a piece of coin between the child of humanity and the child of sin, and saves many a son and daughter from perdition. That counte- nance, not more beautiful with its natural comeliness than when it is transfigured with generosity, I love to look upon, when I meet him in all manner of philan- thropies, at the Warren Street Chapel, which is almost his child, in his houses of comfort and of cheapness for the poor, or on the Committee of Vigilance, which in the hour of Boston's madness helped to watch in keeping her children from the stealer's hand. When public generosity halts, it is such men who hold up the weak hands, strengthen the feeble knees, and con- firm the trembling heart.

How many young men and women do I know whose generosity is a little excessive, and my older and gray prudence must moderate their youthful experience, and give back half their benefaction, lest the young man's tap be too much for his barrel. If a bright boy at col- lege needs a little assistance, there is always some man or woman who reaches out a golden hand and helps him on. Nay, in more than one instance have I known the dead hand of an old miser reach out of the ground, by entailment still clutching his money, and wishing to spend it meanly, but some dear daughter held that hand in her bosom, and the leprous hand, turned clean and white once more, scatters broad the charities that heal and soothe and bless.

If a man have a generous disposition. It will appear not only in the giving, but in the mode of getting ; for it is narrow generosity which looks only to the spend- ing, not also to the acquisition. So let me tell a gen- XI— 11

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erous tale of a merchant. He was a jobber in dry goods. One day a country customer came into his store, and handed him a memorandum, a large one, of articles he wished to purchase. The generous man looked it over, fixed the price to each article, and then said, " The steamer came in last night ; I have not got my letters yet ; there may have been a fall in goods, and perhaps you had better wait a couple of hours, and go out and inquire, and then come back." He went out, found the goods had fallen in price, and came back and reported it, saying he could get them cheaper elsewhere. " Very well, that is all right," was the reply of the merchant. There was generosity at the till. Generosity which puts its hand in and gives out is common enough, but generosity at the other extreme is rarer; but is it not the Golden Rule, which has two ends, giving and getting .^^

See another form of generosity in the manly use of the body. Every war brings to light examples of amazing physical generosity, which yet surprise no- body because they are so common. In the Crimean War there were only two things which to my eye were admirable; one was that heroic bravery of the manly flesh, the other the more heroic bravery of the woman's heart, to which I need only refer. I have small respect for fighting, not the greatest esteem for animal cour- age, in which a bulldog, I suppose, would be superior to a Franklin or a Channing, perhaps to a Paul; but I have devout reverence for a man whose conscience is in it, who lays his life down in a battle sooner than relinquish a duty ; great reverence for the men who have gone to Kansas to plant the tree of freedom over the heart of the continent, though they are sure to water it with their blood, which the national adminis-

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tration meanly thirsts to drink. This generosity com- manding the heroic flesh is common amongst men, not rare amongst women. It appears everywhere in war, and it appears elsewhere when there is no battle of that kind to be fought. In railroad disasters, so com- mon in America, how seldom do you hear of any cow- ardice amongst the men. With what manly disdain of death do the engineers, stokers, and brakemen per- form their duty, even laying down their lives to save the lives of those put under their hands. Here is an example of generosity which looks in the same direc- tion. A railroad train not long since was detained in a snowbank, and the passengers had no food for thirty hours ; and when bread came, not a man would bless his mouth with a morsel till every woman had been abundantly supplied. It did not get into the newspapers ; the thing is so common, we expect it always. In troubles at sea, how rare is it that you hear of any lack of heroism. I remember but one ex- ample in my time : When the " Arctic," ill-built, ill- managed, ill-manned, became a ruin, there was such un- manly cowardice as I think the ocean has very seldom seen, or buried in his broad and venerable breast. But with what indignity was it treated in all corners of the land ; every sailor, from the forecastle to the quar- terdeck, looked upon it as a slight put upon his own profession, and we shall not hear of such another act of cowardice till we are old men. When a fire breaks out in any city, how noble men plunge into the flames, amid beams which blaze under them, and rafters which fall burning from the roof, and where red-hot walls bow and tremble. What heroism and generosity is there in all that ! Last autumn, when the yellow fever came to Norfolk, how did the despised American slave

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come out and share the loathsomeness of his master's disease, or that of his mistress, waiting perhaps on some woman who had robbed the stalwart man of his manhood and made him a beast of burden.

" Forgot were hatred, wrongs, and fears ; The plaintive voice alone he hears. Sees but the dying man."

One such who might have escaped from the city, when the pestilence had dismantled the guard, and repealed every Fugitive Slave Law, when solicited to leave, refused to abandon his master in his distress. He waited till he had become healed of his sickness, and then fled off, and when questioned, told me the tale. In one of the large towns of the North there is a youngish man who is a mariner. I should not dare to tell his name or that of his vessel, lest I should betray his neck to the Southern gallows. Across the gulf of African bondage this man in his ark of deliverance has brought more than a hundred fugitive slaves, and set their feet safely down on free soil. I have seen some of his passengers, newly landed, and the grati- tude which they expressed for him was such as you might expect from a soul that had stood on the edge of the imaginary Calvinistic pit, and had thence been snatched away, and carried to a place in the kingdom of heaven. It is not so hard a thing to front a cannon in battle as to go into the Southern States, month after month, and year after year, and take men out from the fetters of bondage, and set them down in a large, free place, fronting the ghastly gallows of the South, its prison, and its certainty of injustice and wrong.

You see a memorial of this kind of generosity in yonder tall finger of stone on Bunker Hill, which

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points up to God's higher law, in deference to which the men whom the monument commemorates laid down their lives on that venerable spot. Perhaps you have more reverence for fighting than I, perhaps less ; at any rate we can honor what lay at the bottom of the fighting and is ready for other generous and heroic action, — the stern consciousness of duty, and willing- ness to postpone self that right may go forward and humanity triumph.

Look now at generosity of a nobler kind, at gener- osity of character. In its highest and most difficult forms of manifestation, it devotes its mind and con- science and heart and soul to noble works. There are men who have no money to offer, more than Simon Peter had of silver and gold, who are never called on to face peril, nor have the power to make the lame man walk and praise God; who yet have other things to endure which make the soldier's heroism seem poor and cheap. How many examples do we see of this gener- osity, which is not condensed into a few acts, a water- spout of benevolence, but diffused over a man's life, an evening dew, generously coming down in meadows newly mown, with noiseless foot, cheering the weary and heated plants, bowed together, and in no wise able to lift themselves up !

Some years ago I knew an old man in Boston, not rich in money, but whose life ran over with continual good deeds. He begged other men's bread for the needy, this great mediator between dollars on the one side and want on the other, and gave it to the poor, with the benediction which made it sweeter than storied manna to the Hebrews, faint and ready to perish. His presence with the afflicted was a sovereign balm that soothed the smart of agony, and made glad the faint heart. His arms were folded round many an orphan.

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" Beside the bed where parting life was laid. And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed. The generous champion stood: at his control Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise."

Like the providence of God, he mixed beauty with benevolence, and, begging from rich men's gardens, carried flowers to many a sick girl or failing woman, that the eyes soon to be shut on earth might at their close look on some beautiful blossom, which like that other star of Bethlehem should go before her, and at length stand still before the spot where angels were gathered to receive her spirit newly-born.

Here is a woman whose generosity is public, which looks into the jails of America, and teases half the legislatures to give the lunatic a home. Nor do I honor less another, whose generosity of soul runs over continually with rarest Christian beauty, and gilds the outside of the cup, which to hundreds of orphan babies is their cup of life, and also of blessedness ; nor less two women more, whose ever-living humanity seems almost as generous as their God's, with uncompromising self- denial devoted to those deeds which themselves requite, and while they are a blessing to whoso takes, are also a beatitude of immortal life to such as do. But of these and other such let me speak softly, for their right hand would tremble if the left hand overheard it at its work. Time would fail me should I presume to tell of a tithe of examples of this kind of generosity which every year, every month, makes known to me. I cannot count the apple-blossoms for the coming month ; so in silence let their beauty exhale to heaven, while the sweetness half turns and transfigures itself to fruit for times to come.

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Here is a man in a sister city, of fine powers and scholarly attainments, a most intense love of literature as art and profession, who devotes his toilsome days to the friendless children of the streets ; and the powers which he might convert to fame and riches for himself, he turns into humanity, and therewith transfigures to virtuous men and women the sons and daughters of the vulgar streets of New York, who would else choke the jails, and perish by the vengeance of the public law. How much higher generosity is this than the mere giv- ing of alms ! Why, it is the pelican feeding not her own young, but another's young from her own bosom.

Not many years ago the schools of Massachusetts were quite incompetent to their great work of the pub- lic education of the people, and one of Massachusetts' noblest and ablest sons, on the high road to honor and to wealth, a politician and a lawyer, president of the Massachusetts Senate, gave up his chance of riches, renounced the road to public fame, and became school- master-general to all the children of the State. His labor was double his former work, his pay not half his customary fee, and of honor he had none at all; but mean ministers, mean schoolmasters, mean editors, made mouths at the first superintendent of our common schools, and that was his immediate reward ; nay, when he modestly asked of the legislature a little room in the State House, with proud disdain the Democrats turned their backs on him, and said he should not have it ; nay, when the politicians of the State grew stingy, and doled out not quite enough to build a Normal school-house, and not another cent could be pinched from them, our poor, generous lawyer sold his books to build the school-house for the wealthy State, in that neglected cause spending and being spent, though at

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that time the more he loved Massachusetts the less he was loved in return. Now in another State he toils for a college where he receives no pay, supporting his fam- ily by bread earned by toil elsewhere, lecturing over all the land in the winter, that the rest of the year he may teach the children of Ohio in a college which as yet can only afford to give him his house and firewood. In due time Massachusetts woke up from her sleep, when it was a little too late, and turned round and gen- erously honored the generous man.

Here is a man in a New England town whose life for many a year has been one act of continual generosity. His purse has been only too open to every noble char- ity. He is one of the many benevolent men I know, whose benevolence I never ask for any one, because the hand is more ready to give than to take the new or get the old ; but he is also one of the few to whom I say, " You give too much ! It is more than you owe in justice, or even in charity. Hold back a little, good sir, this time." The door of his hospitality seems never shut ; his elastic walls are an alms-basket to many an African for whom Boston men are hunting with the dog of the law. Therein the Ethiopian has changed his skin. Theological faith which can remove moun- tains,— what is it to these works, which can transfigure an African slave into a self -respectful man, and that with no miracle but charity? Poor forsaken men, hated and evil-entreated of the world, find there a shel- ter, and the cause which he knew not he searched out. Others went amongst the sound, seeking their ease and comfort ; this good physician was found among the fiick, the friend of publicans and sinners. Was the cause of humanity unpopular, because too high for popular comprehension? White men of superior edu-

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cation, and a social respectability which might over- awe the public into reverence for the rare virtue they had not grown up to, and could not therefore compre- hend, shrunk off, and even threw stones at such Sa- maritans as lifted up men fallen among thieves ; — he went forward manfully, and with open face endured the public shame which waits on all who will be wise before their time, and go above it. With spiritual hospitality more generous than his material welcome, he looked for those ideas which are the forerunners of a better time, and was not forgetful of such strangers, and so fed angels at his board, not always unawares. When all New England trembled before the devil, he wel- comed universal salvation. He only judged of God's mercy by his own. When woman was counted inferior, flattered by fops and evil-entreated by the law, he remembered his mother was as dear to him as his father, had equal rights with him, and he sought to secure equal rights for all womankind. When the advocates of a dark theology sought to block the wheels of progress in front, to silence the freedom of speech, and put the chains of ecclesiastical bondage all round New England pulpits, and with a thread of Spanish iron to sew up the mouths of young Protestants in the nine- teenth century, he also resisted that wickedness, and took part for justice, truth, and mercy, the more openly and strongly because the world made righteousness a reproach, and blackened Christianity with the name of infidelity. There was generosity far superior to that which lays down its life on the battle-field. It is easy to be generous with money, so long as you only give the crumbs which fall from your table ; nay, it is not hard to bestow public alms or public charities with some little self-denial, when you thereby win the praise of

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the churches, which now pay honor to this form of charity, and never fail to do so, — God be thanked for that ! Nay, when want stares you in the face, it is not easy for one bred on the Bible to say to the poor man, " Depart, and be ye warmed and fed and clad ! " and never give any thing. There is none of us into whose consciousness St. James's Christian rebuke would not spring at once, when he needlessly turned thus off. But to practise self-denial of money, ease, honor, quiet, and do it continually, year out and year in, and never be weary, and to do this for a despised cause, to be despised on account of it, — why, such generosity as that is only to be expected from a man in his babyhood nobly born, and who has elevated his noble birth to lofty heights by a continual practice of religious self- denial and faith in the dear God.

Here is a man in Boston, born to what most men covet most, namely, a competency of money and that social standing which comes of an estate some gener- ations old, well gifted with the power to know, and the wondrous power to tell, till others think they knew it all before, blessed with a culture to correspond, a man fitted to be an ornament to the society of this town, and to shine in the official honors of the State. At an early day this man espoused the cause of men despised of all mankind; his purse was open to the slave and all that were oppressed, and his eloquent voice came pleading with America, " Why will you do such wicked- ness,— the meanest form of wrong?" — "O brother men ! " he cries, " your constitution is a covenant with death, an agreement with hell. It must not stand, it cannot stand, it shall not stand ! Away with it ! Learn to love mercy, and do justly, and walk humbly with your God." Did he not know that office, honor.

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social respect, would all flee from him, and he be counted as the off scouring of the world? It was as plain to him twenty years ago as now. He made him- self of no account that he might serve man, yes, God. Can you appreciate this generosity? Then you are wiser than your town, more Christian than that Church miscalled of Christ.

I have sometimes complained of the superior educa- tion of America, that it is almost exclusively of the intellect, and not of the higher spiritual faculties. Surely our scholars have cut themselves off from the instinct of humanity. A thousand men college-bred will have less justice, love, and piety than a thousand farmers from the fields, or mechanics from the shops. But among the scholarly men of the land, there is one above the rest, great in generosity as well as in exquisite genius, wherein he excels all the children America has borne in her bosom. In his place as minister, lecturer, writer, he never said a mean thing; but as the apple or feather or falling meteor drops to the center of the world, so by his own generous instinct, the greatness of his humanity, does he gravitate towards the noblest and fairest things. Where justice is, where truth, love, religion are gathered together, there is he in their company, this highest, brightest, fairest star in all America's literary heaven. While other scholars pale away, this man, full of generosity, still keeps his eye undimmed, and his voice, like a trumpet, calls to the people, " Come up higher ! Come up higher ! "

As I spoke of the mean minister, I must also say a word of a generous one. In another city there is a son of Boston, also of our venerable college not far off, who is a minister of righteousness ; not a worshiper of the fictitious Christ of the Church, but an admirer of the

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real Jesus, who brightened the world with his flowery presence. He is a friend of contemplative Marys, and of Marthas also, careful and troubled about much serv- ing. He is the friend of publicans and sinners, of Lazarus^ laid at the rich man's gate, and of Dives, at whose porch the unheeded beggar lay ; full of devout- ness, which is partly personal and partly inherited, but also the freest of men. Thoughtful for himself, he asks of others to think for themselves, notwithstanding he is a minister, and never ventures to put his mind in place of theirs, and usurp authority in the heart of those who listen to his words. All the humanities con- gregate in his house, and are there at home. He is the champion of temperance, peace, education, and is also the great advocate, and one of the earliest, for the American woman and the African slave. He has so much nobleness that few of his ministerial brothers have humanity enough to understand him, and so they revile this man, and cast out his name as evil, and he bears it all with that same magnanimity of soul which the good mother shows to the wickedness of every little feeble-bodied baby when it is nervous and sick. Pious without bigotry or narrowness, moral without austerity, earnest always, but never harsh, strict to himself, in- dulgent to a friend, and lenient to a foe, — his face gleams, like that of Moses in the story, with the manly generosity of his heart, and it is a benediction in the church where he statedly preaches, and has been some- times also a benediction to you, when with that evan- gelical sweetness he has stood before you, and preached peace and righteousness, and judgment to come. In the meeting-house he is beautiful, and in his home, with his wife and children, his presence is a beatitude done into flesh and blood. When I meet the good minister,

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I thank God, and take courage, and say, " Whatever Jesus would have thought of jour opinions, I am sure he would have sat down by your side and put his arms around you, and said ' my brother ! ' "

There is one form of spiritual generosity not com- mon, and perhaps not commonly praised, and that is forgiveness of injuries, to feel no enmity to your enemy, to bless them that curse you, to do good to such as hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you. That is the severest test of the highest generosity, and of all the crosses Jesus called on his disciples to take, there was none so heavy to be borne as this. Who is there that is generous enough to be just to a foe? How rarely do we find virtue in a man who opposes our sect, our party ; or if one crosses our private path even, how commonly do we pay him back with the meanest hatred and con- tempt. Now generosity does not require that we should think black white, nor vice virtue, nor that we should consider any of the present attempts against personal liberty any thing less than the open wicked- ness which they appear on their face; but whatsoever judgment conscience requires against the wrong deed, it demands also love, a sense of kindliness to the most evil and most malignant doers of the wicked deed. I can find some examples of this highest generosity, now with men, of tener with women, perhaps ; and in com- parison with this sweet virtue of forgiveness, how mean seems all the vengeance in the world! To be able to hold your hands, and look on the man who has wronged you bitterly, and say, " My brother, the deed was of the devil, the doer I forgive, and here is my brotherly hand," — in comparison with that, envy, hate, revenge, triumph over a foe, seem like those little worms which

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crawl in the mire where an elephant walks over them, with his imperial and majestic tread.

From antiquity there have come down to us the ven- erable names of great men, heroes of the flesh, also of the thoughtful intellect. I bow before their lofty memories, and the reverence does me good. Men of generous blood and noble deeds were they. But amongst them, and yet something apart, as if of nicer and more feminine mind, there stands one whom God gifted with most wondrous genius for religion, and all the dear humanities. He dared to make a generous use of what the Father generously gave, and stepped in front of the world so far, that when the world could not comprehend him, nor even tolerate, but nailed him to the cross between two thieves, he bowed his head and said, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." I honor the generosity of money, the generosity of the flesh ; but the highest generosity, gen- erosity kept still in death, which breathes its life away in a beatitude for its murderers, — why, it transfigures humanity out from its lowly weeds, and discloses that nature a little lower than the angels, the very image and likeness of God.

Do not suppose that a great, generous man will fare so well in the newspapers, in the streets, with the priests of commerce, as a mean man will. He will fare well in his own character, and have the sympathy of our Father and Mother in heaven, — recompense from God. A really generous man will have patience with mankind, will continually see meanness preferred and generosity despised ; for his greatness of gift was not given him, nor his greatness of achievement attained, for his own sake, but mankind's also. So he asks no pay for gen- erosity, spending and spent for others, though the more he loves them the less he be loved of them.

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Men talk as if there were not much generosity in mankind, and for proof they point to the fate of the highest greatness of virtue on earth, and to Humihty, who walks barefoot, bearing another's burdens through the street, and is splashed by the mud in the garments and in the face, by the coach and six where Pride flaunts by, while the crowd hurrah for the coach and six and the gilded worm that sits therein, " Look," says the unbeliever in generosity, " at Moses fleeing from Egypt, at the treachery of his country- men; at the prophets slain and sawn asunder; at John the Baptist, his head in a dish ; at Jesus crucified be- tween two thieves ; at Mahomet forced by those whom he would uplift and bless to flee at night from Mecca on a yellow camel, snatching hastily a cruse of water and a bag of barley ; at Arnaldo da Brescia burned by the pope, and his ashes scattered in the Tiber; at John Huss and Jerome, burned alive by the great men of their times ; at the reformers of our time. The State hates him who would mend the State ; whoso would bless the Church with more piety, the Church bans with its curse and remands to its hell. Look at Boston at this day, where it is thought respectable to tread personal liberty down underneath the hoof of the vulgarest of office-holders. Where then is the generosity amongst men ? It is only exceptional, here and there a little ! "

I see how mean and selfish Napoleon the Great was treated in his lifetime, and how in his noblest days gen- erous Washington was met, a price set on his head by his king, and every Tory who hated personal liberty, from 1776 to 1787, threw stones at him. But this does not discourage me. I look at these examples, and in their completed history do I see the generosity of man- kind. The cry of Israel reached the ears of Moses;

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their treachery had exiled him ; he goes down to Egypt, and the Red Sea opens before his banners, he finds bread in the desert, water in the rocks, and ere long is not only the nation's king and lawgiver, but the nation's god. The words of the prophets, too true in their time for the popular belief, have become the Holy Scriptures of the Jew. John the Baptist lays his head under a dancing harlot's sword, but he bequeaths his memory, with sturdy faithfulness and love, to the keep- ing of mankind. The apostles of whom the world seemed not worthy, the world turns and worships. The name of Arnaldo da Brescia becomes a fire all over the Catholic country. John Huss and Bohemian Jerome are honored by the world, while it despises the pope who slew them. See what welcome America gives to her hero now ; even mean men, Tories, make capital out of the nation's reverence for him. Listen to the world's judgment of Napoleon the Great: — " Let him stand there, a colossus of bronze on his column in the Place Vendome, a thousand cannons high, starred all over with his victories, glittering with the twofold light of military and political genius." That tall column, a thousand cannons high, is only the gallows on which he gibbets his mean selfishness to the lasting gaze and indignation of mankind. The Mahomet whom Mecca was not able to honor, is worshiped as the great legis- lator of millions of men. Jesus crucified between two thieves, — two hundred and sixty millions bow their faces down before him, of whom those seemingly the least reverent call him the greatest and the noblest of men, in whom humanity rose highest.

Everywhere you find more generosity than meanness. Open your eyes in any little town, and see how many generous men, and yet more generous women, there are.

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I know persons, young and old, who continually post- pone their own delight for the sake of generous deeds ; their own vineyards they keep not, that others' they may tend. It is by such generous souls that the world moves on. Selfishness smokes his cigar, drinks his voluptuous wine, is clad in purple and fine linen, is welcome to many a gay saloon; while Nobleness is austere to his body, and pinches and spares for lofty ends, and into his house come all the virtues, and bless- ings in their train.

O young man ! O young woman ! It may be you cannot practise the generosity of the dollar; you may not have it, though most have this power to some extent. If you are rich, by all means lay largely out here, re- membering that what is generously spent in this way for another, God pays back to you in good you never asked nor thought. God is your debtor. He is never bankrupt ; he pays not merely cent for cent, but mani- fold. Practise, by all means, generosity of the body, which is in the power of all ; and likewise generosity of the soul, which is spread over the whole life; in every department of human action there is daily opportunity for the exhibition of that. Let us abhor the vice of meanness ; let us practise generosity, not profligately, but in a manly and womanly fashion, at any rate with human nobleness. It is a religious duty ; for God has been generous towards us, in the nature in which He has created us, in the world He has given us, in the flowers that adorn its ground, in the stars that spangle its sky. He has sent us that prince of generosity, the dear Jesus, who used his noble gifts never with mean- ness, always with generosity, setting us an example how we also ought to do.

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CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN FORMALITY

When jou see old Mr. Goodness, an unpretending man, honest, industrious, open-hearted, pure in his life, full of justice and mercy and kind deeds, you say, " That man is a Christian, if anybody is." You do not ask what he thinks about Jonah and the whale, about the beast with seven heads and ten horns, the plagues of Egypt, the inspiration of the Bible, the nature of Christ, or the miraculous atonement. You see that man's religion in the form of manly life ; you ask no further proof, and no other proof is possible. When you say you wish Christianity could get preached and practised all round the world, thereby you do not mean the Christianity of Dr. Beecher, of Dr. Wayland, of Calvin or Luther ; you mean that religion which is nat- ural to the heart of man, the ideal piety and morality which mankind aims at. But when the Rev. Dr. Ban- baby speaks of Brother Zerubbabel Zealous as a great Christian, he means no such thing. He means that Zerubbabel has been baptized, — sprinkled or dipped, — that he believes in the Trinity, in the infallible inspira- tion of every word in the Bible, in the miracles, no matter how ridiculous or unattested; that he believes in the total depravity of human nature, in the atone- ment, in the omnipresence of a personal devil, going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and eternally champing in his insatiate maw nine hun- dred and ninety-nine out of every thousand, while God, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost, can only succeed in saving one out of a thousand — perhaps one out of a million. Banbaby reckons him a Christian because he has been " bom again," " put off the natural man," — that is, made away with his common sense and common

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humanity so far as to believe these absurd things, — draws down the corners of his mouth, attends theologi- cal meetings, makes, long prayers in words, reads the books of his sect, gives money for ecclesiastical objects, and pays attention to ecclesiastical forms. He does not think old Mr. Goodness's long life of industry, tem- perance, charity, patriotism, justice, brotherly love, profits him at all. He is only an unregenerate, im- penitant man, who trusts in his own righteousness, leans on an arm of flesh, has been bom but once, and will certainly perish everlastingly. It is of no sort of consequence that Zerubbabel is a sharper, has ships in the cooly-trade, and is building swift clippers down in Maine to engage in the African slave-trade, as soon as the American Government closes that little corner of its left eye which it still keeps open to look after that. Old Mr. Goodness's " righteousness " is re- garded " as filthy rags," while Zerubbabel's long face and long prayers are held to be a ticket entitling him to the very highest seat in the kingdom of heaven. At the Monthly Concert for Foreign Missions the Rev, Dr. leads in prayer, and Brother Zerubbabel follows. Both ask the same thing, — the Christianization of heathen lands. But they do not mean that form of the Christian religion which is piety in the heart and morality in the outer life. They mean compliance with the popular theology, not the Christian religion proclaimed in those grand words, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself," and illustrated by a life as grand as the words. They mean the Christian formality, as set forth in the little creed, and illus- trated by the lesser conduct, of a very mean, bigoted, and yet earnest and self-denying sect.

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Be not familiar with the idea of wrong, for sin in fancy mothers many an ugly fact.

GREATNESS AND GOODNESS

Take goodness, with the average intellectual power, and compare it with mere greatness of intellect and so- cial standing, and it is far the nobler quality; and if God should offer me one of them, I would not hesitate which to choose. No, the greatest intellect which God ever bestowed I would not touch, if I were bid to choose between that and the goodness of an average woman; I would scorn it, and say. Give it to Lucifer, give me the better gift. When I say goodness is greater than greatness, I mean to say it gives a deeper and serener joy in the private heart, joins men more tenderly to one another and more earnestly to God. I honor intellect, reason, and understanding ; I wish we took ten times more pains to cultivate them than we do. I honor greatness of mind, — great reason, which intuitively sees truths, great laws, and the like ; great understanding, which learns special laws, and works in details ; — the understanding that masters things for use and beauty, that can marshal millions of men into an organization that shall last for centuries. I once coveted such power, and am not wholly free from the madness of it yet. I see its use. I hope I am not ignorant of the joys of science of letters; I am not of the pursuit of these. I bow reverently before the men of genius, and sit gladly at their feet. But the man who sees justice and does it, who knows love and lives it, who has a great faith and trust in God, — let him have a mind quite inferior, and a culture quite little, — I must yet honor and reverence that man far more than he who has the greatest power of intellects

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I know that knowledge is power, and reverence it; but justice is higher power, and love is a manlier power, and religion is a diviner power; each greater than the mightiest mind.

THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL OF MANLY CHAR- ACTER

To rest in mere thought is not satisfactory. So the natural man longs to put his thought into a thing. Action must complete it. What runs in his head must forth to run in the mill. No artist is contented with thinking a handsome figure; what is in him must out, a statue or a picture. This faculty is in us all.

Now there is one great feeling in us, namely, the desire for a perfect, manly character. It may be a (Jim feeling, but there it is, — the instinctive and spon- taneous desire to be and to do all that nature demands, the most that we can be or do. In the human race the instinct of progress drives men ever forward, ever upward ; for though you and I may be sentimental and dreamy, the human race is no sentimentalist, but a fierce, hard worker. In the individual man this instinct is the desire of human perfection. Though often dim, now and then something stirs us to form an ideal. The picture of a complete man, — how fair it is in the young man's or woman's mind! No painter or sculptor could ever fancy an ideal of the outward man beautiful enough to correspond to the ideal of a manly character which the young, earnest heart con- ceives. This is the child of our feeling and our thought. Shall it be only a thought? Shall this will be only a dream, to do nothing, to be nothing when the dream is over? No, it must also be a reality of character, not coming at one spasmodic act, but a

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deed that comes of us as the grass grows out of the

ground,

" Or as the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads."

That is the end and expression of our ideal, that is the limit of our deepest feeling and our highest thought. If the feeling be strong, and the ideal just, it is amazing how much can be done in a small space. A very small stream, if it start high enough, will turn a great mill, if the machinery be made to suit. How unpromising a field for genius seemed the humble form of Scottish song ; but what a strange beauty did Bums put therein ! What a profane place was the Globe Theatre in the time of Elizabeth and stupid James, with its Merry Andrews, its clowns, its harlots, and its unspeakable obscenity I What a pulpit was that out of which to preach manliness ! Bacon and Cudworth, the greatest minds of that age, never dared to look there to gain a single grain of inspiration and thought. But out of that unholy pulpit Shakespeare preached such manly piety, such actual humanity, as not Eng- land, nor Europe, nor the old classic religion, had ever heard before set forth in accents so divine. And if, with such accessories for his art, the poet could play such a part as principal, think you that any stage is too narrow to admit the entrance of the noblest char- acter, and the performance of the drama of the great- est life? I think penniless Socrates had not a very wide space, nor Jesus of Nazareth a very uncommon outlay of circumstances, to help him manufacture and display his character. Look round you, and see what characters have been formed in the humblest positions of society, that have reached up to the topmost heaven of your thought and mine.

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Men talk of Christian architecture. I have seen the grand architecture of England, France, Germany, Italy. I bow down in admiration almost at its rare beauty. But the nicest piece of Christian architecture I ever saw was in this city the other day. A man whose face shows the beatitudes that are always in his heart, a grocer, with his own money and that of others builds a large and commodious edifice, parted off into reasonable tenements for the poor. I looked it over, and I said, I have been to Strassburg Cathedral, I have seen Notre Dame and St. Peter's, but this is Christian architecture, the word of Christ become not flesh and blood, but stone and wood.

If we have great thoughts and feelings, we must make them into life magnificently great, and then

" Make channels for the streams of love Where they may broadly run, — And love has overflowing streams To fill them every one."

THE FOUNDATION OF SELF-RESPECT

In forming a manly character, in endeavoring to at- tain the true end of manhood, one of the first things I would advise man is this : Respect your own nature. But to do this, you must have things in you to respect.

Here is human nature to begin with. I may have but little, and another may have much, and a third much more. But it must be educated and developed and practised upon; for if you do not cultivate your mind and other faculties, then, though you may respect your nature, you cannot trust it, and you must accord- ingly be a pensioner on other men for what your mind and conscience and heart and soul ought to bring, and you will end by being a slave. My mind may be very

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small, and yours great ; the whole of my spirit may be a thimbleful, and yours the great ocean-deep. But if I am true to my own, though never so little, I can respect myself as much as you ; and though my little craft must wait in the bay, while your great argosy ventures far out to sea, I can still have as much self- respect as you. By being thus true to my faculties, I get intellectual, moral, afFectional, and religious in- dependence of character. There is no real and lasting self-respect without this continual fidelity to your spirit ; no real self-respect without that fourfold piety, the piety of the intellect, of the conscience, of the affections, and of the soul. There can be no real modesty before men without this ; you may cringe and crouch, and be as humble as Uriah Heep in the story, but it will be in vain ; your modesty will be a cheat, your deference to others a trick, your humility hypocrisy, and a piece of cunning; not natural sweet- ness and grace of affection running over your soul. This self-respect is consistent with the truest modesty. The man " suspects and still reveres himself." This respect is at variance with vanity, which fills its shal- low maw with silly men's applause; at variance with pride and haughtiness, and malignity of vanity; with self-conceit, not thinking of itself more highly than it ought ; it is hostile to insolence ; but it is a sister virtue in that fair-faced family of loves, where Faith and Hope and Charity together dwell, and feed their sweet society with revelations from the living God.

All personal beauty seems little when we see the virtues of a man, — only the shadow of that divine substance. The perfect symmetry which men ascribe to Jesus, the beauty of his form and face, — all that

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fades into nothing when we know that out of his own heart he could pronounce those beautiful Beatitudes, and with his dying lips say, " Father, forgive them."

TO WHAT END IS OUR LIFE

There is an end of mortal life. Then we gather up the things we have accumulated in this world, they are added to our soul, and we carry them out of the world with us. Then no man will ever be sorry that in his youth he bowed his forehead to God in prayer ; no man will be sorry then that he clasped his hands in the in- stant of his resolution, and swore that he would rever- ence the dreams of his youth, and keep undefiled a conscience in his heart, and honor his God with a great life. This is sacramental and holy. Rejoice, O young man, in the strength of thy life, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth ! But remember that for all these things God continually calls you to account. Remember into what littleness men may make their lives taper off and vanish away, so that they come from riches and toils and honors with nothing in their hand that is worth gathering. Remember what an eternal joy a man may glean from a small field of life, and go home with the sheaves in his bosom, and be welcomed with a smile from his God.

Of old time Michael Angelo took his copies from the persons in the street, and wrought them out on the walls and the ceiling of the Vatican, changing a beggar into a giant, and an ordinary woman who bore a basket of flowers on her arm into an angel ; and the beggar and flower-girl stand there now in their lustrous beauty, speaking to eyes that wander from every side of the green world. The rock slumbered in the moun- tain, and he reached his hands out and took it, and

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gathered the stones from the fields about him, and built them into that awful pile, which, covering acres on the ground, reaches up its mighty dome towards heaven, constraining the mob of the city to bow their foreheads and to vow great prayers to God. So, my brothers and my sisters, out of the common events of life, out of the pasions put by God into your hearts, you may paint on the walls of your life the fairest figures, angels and prophets. Out of the common stones of your daily work you may build yourself a temple which shall shelter your head from all harm, and bring down on you the inspiration of God.

IV

PHASES OF DOMESTIC LIFE THE DURATION OF THE FAMILY

The family is the oldest institution in the world. It was a long time before there was a king, with his throne of power, or a priest, with an altar whereon to lay his sacrifice. Church and State came after man- kind had been some time on the earth; but the first generation of men founded a family ; and the family will last forever. Forms of government constantly change; despotism gives way to a monarchy, the mon- archy to a republic, and the republic also will pass by, and be succeeded by brighter and nobler organizations of wisdom, justice and love. Still the family subsists, knowing no revolution, only a gradual progress and elevation. Forms of religion are as mutable as the letters we write in the sand on the seashore; heathen- ism is gone, Judaism is gone, and what you and I call Christianity, as a limited form of religion, will also pass away. But all of wisdom, justice, love, and piety which any of these three forms has ever matured, will live forever after the name is lost. With this mutation and passing away of forms of government and religion, the family remains always so, and will still subsist. After the last priest has buried the last king in the ground, after the last stone of the pyramids has been exhaled to heaven an invisible vapor, when the moun- tain that has fallen has literally come to naught and cannot be seen to the eye, — still the family must sub- sist, its roots in the primeval instincts of the human race.

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HOME

To most men, home is the dearest spot in the world. The home of our childhood, long after we become old men, is consecrated by the very tenderest of memories. There is still the cradle which rocked and sheltered us in its little nest, which was once the ark of a mother's hope. There is the little window where the sun came peeping in at morning, but never came a bit too soon, nor staid a bit too long. There were father and mother, — they still are there in our affection, — the tall parental mountains of humanity, so they seemed; each stood at either end of our little Garden of Eden, the paradise where we were born, to defend us from the cold and bitter blasts of mortal life. There was the father, manly, earnest, toilworn, and industrious, whose daily sweat purchased for us a manly benediction on our daily bread. There, too, was the more venerable form of mother, the dearest name that mortal lips can ever speak. The Turk is right when he says that a man may have many a sister, many a wife, but only one mother. Doctor Arnold, one of the ablest and most religious Englishmen of the present age, says that he knows God only through Christ. I should respect him more if he had said he only knew God through his mother; for the mother is still to the hungry heart of mortals the fairest, the holiest incarnation of the ever- living, ever-loving God. It is she who feeds our body from her own body's life ; it is she who feeds our soul from her own spirit's life. She taught the feet to walk, the tongue to speak, guided our stammering lips. Her conscience went before us as a great wakening light, and it is through her that we first became ac- quainted with our Father, God.

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Every man that has ever had a home that was a home feels thus, I think, about the little roof that sheltered him in his childhood, and blessed the morning of his days. How gladly great and earnest men, who have gone out into the world and done battle there, — their life often a battle, — look back to the little roof that sheltered them when they were children. The old man may be rich and his father have been never so poor ; he may dwell to-day in a palace, and have been born in a log-cabin in the mountains; but the house which held his cradle is still the holiest temple of the affection to him. How men love to go back in fancy to the home of their childhood, if home it were. The old man leaps all at once, in his dreams, from his children, yes, from his grandchildren, to the time and place when he was a child, and a grandfather's hand was laid on his head, who is now himself a grandfather, or father of grandfathers even ; all the space between five generations is passed over at once, and he is a blessed boy again, his early home lingering in his ven- erable memory for all his mortal life, — the glad re- membrance of brother and sister, the beautiful affec- tion of uncles and aunts, who seemed a special prov- idence of love, watching over him, and dropping their balmy offerings in his expectant hand.

Then to most men their actual home, not that which they inherit in their memories from their fathers' and mothers' love, but that which they have made out of their own love, is the center of the world and its para- dise for them. There are those for whom we would lay down our lives, and be proud of the sacrifice, counting it a delight, not a denial, a great triumph. There are the tenderest friends, whose daily intercourse beautifies us with the remembrance of mutual kindness and for-

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bearance. There husband and wife give and forgive, bear and forbear, — for the wedded Hf e is ruled by the same elements as those that rule and checker the sky,

" O'er which serene and stormy days With sway alternate go."

There are the little olive-plants that spring about the table, there are brothers and sisters, and those not joined always by kindred blood, but by the tenderer tie of kindred soul. In families where only filial and parental love is the bond that joins, and not connubial love, there is the same attachment, tenderness, and fondness for home.

In all our homes error has been, for blood ill-^ tempered vexes all but the rarest of men. There have been pain and penitence for the error, but mutual for- giveness brings a divine blossom out from the human weed. Sickness has been there, and pain has wrung the brow. There have been many a sorrow and tear for hope deferred, for mutual disappointment ; sorrow for the wrong we suffer, and worser sorrow for the wrong we do. Death has also been there, now joyous, now melancholy, — death giving a sacredness to the home, for the house in which one has never been born, or in which one has never been bom to the other world, is only half a house ; it is a fancy of the carpenter and the painter, it waits for the finish of life. Life, too, is there, for the family is the gate of entrance to the mortal, and the gate of exit to the immortal world.

MARRIAGE

In his enamoured hour, the young man puts a glass- bell over the young woman, then out of romance paints

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a maiden fairer than the romantic curving moon, en- dows her with virtues collected from written fictions and from his own dreams, and then loves the visionary angel. The young maiden does the same, only painting her ideal fairer than the young man his, with less austere traits than he puts upon her. By and by time breaks the bells, the mist of romance has vanished, the vision- ary angel has fled, and there are two ordinary mortals left, with good in each, ill in both, and they are to find out each other, and make the best of life they can. No doubt there is always a surprise to the most discreet and sober persons. There are ill things which we did not look for in our mates, in ourselves, but there are good things also unexpected. With brimming eyes the wife of five years' standing has sometimes said to me, when I asked intimately how her marriage sped: " I thought I knew him before you married us, but I did not know what a deep mine of noble things there was in him." And the husband of five and forty years' standing. has sometimes told me of the same discovery in his wife, when age had loosed the modest portals of the manly tongue, and the words came straightway from his heart. Perhaps the mutual surprise is as often a mutual pleasure as unexpected disappoint- ment. Men and women, and especially young people, do not know that it takes years to marry completely two hearts, even of the most loving and well-assorted. But nature allows no sudden change. We slope very gradually from the cradle to the summit of life. Mar- riage is gradual, a fraction of us at a time. A happy wedlock is a long falling in love. I know young per- sons think love belongs only to the brown hair, and plump, round, crimson cheek. So it does for its begin- ning, just as Mount Washington begins at Boston Bay.

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But the golden marriage is a part of love which the bridal day knows nothing of. Youth is the tassel and silken flower of love ; age is the full com, ripe and solid in the ear. Beautiful is the morning of love with its prophetic crimson, violet, saff^ron, purple, and gold, with its hopes of days that are to come. Beautiful also is the evening of love, with its glad remembrances, and its rainbow side turned towards heaven as well as earth.

Young people marry their opposites in temper and general character, and such a marriage is commonly a good match. They do it instinctively. The young man does not say : " My black eyes require to be wed with blue, and my over-vehemence requires to be a little modified with somewhat of dulness and reserve," — and when these opposites come together to be wed, they do not know it; each thinks the other just like himself. Old people never marry their opposites ; they marry their similars, and from calculation. Each of these two arrangements is very proper. In their long jour- ney, those young opposites will fall out by the way a great many times, and both get away from the road; but each will charm the other back again, and by and by they will be agreed as to the place they will go to, and the road they will go by, and become reconciled. The man will be nobler and larger for being associated with so much humanity unlike himself, and she will be a nobler woman for having manhood beside her that seeks to correct her deficiencies, and supply her with what she lacks, if the diversity is not too great, and there be real piety and love in their hearts to begin with. The old bridegroom having a much shorter journey to take, must associate himself with one like himself.

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A perfect and complete marriage, wHere wedlock is everything jou could ask, and the ideal of marriage becomes actual, is not common, perhaps is as rare as perfect personal beauty. Men and women are mar- ried fractionally, now a small fraction, then a large fraction. Very few are married totally, and they only, I think, after some forty or fifty years of gradual approach and experiment. Such a large and sweet fruit is a complete marriage, that it needs a very long summer to ripen in, and then a long winter to mellow and season it. But a real, happy marriage, of love and judgment, between a noble man and woman, is one of the things so very handsome, that if the sun were, as the Greek poets fabled, a god, he might stop the world, and hold it still now and then, in order to look all day long on some example thereof, and fesist his eyes with such a spectacle.

ELEGANCE DOES NOT MAKE A HOME

I never saw a garment too fine for a man or maid; there was never a chair too good for a cobbler or cooper or king to sit in, never a house too fine to shel- ter the human head. These elements about us, the gorgeous sky, the imperial sun, are not too good for the human race. Elegance fits man. But do we not value these tools of housekeeping a little more than they are worth, and sometimes mortgage a home for the sake of the mahogany we would bring into it? I had rather eat my dinner off the head of a barrel, or dress after the fashion of John the Baptist in the wil- derness, or sit on a block all my life, than consume all myself before I got to a home, and take so much pains with the outside that the inside- was as hollow as an

empty nut. Beauty is a great thing, but beauty of XI— 13

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garments, house, and furniture, is a very tawdry orna- ment compared with domestic love. All the elegance in the world will not make a home, and I would give more for a spoonful of real hearty love than for whole shiploads of furniture, and all the gorgeousness that all the upholsterers of the world could gather to- gether.

THE mother's influence ON THE CHILD

The schoolmaster sees the mother's face daguerreo- typed in the conduct and character of each little boy and girl. Nay, a chance visitor, with a quick eye, sees very plainly which child is daily baptized in the tran- quil waters of a blessed home, and which is cradled in violence and suckled at the bosom of a storm. Did you ever look at a little pond on a sour, dark day in March? How sullen the swampy water looked. The shore pouted at the pond, and the pond made mouths at the land ; and how the scraggy trees, cold and bare- armed, scowled over the edge ! But look at it on a bright day in June, when great rounding clouds, all golden with sunlight, checker the heavens, and seem like a great flock of sheep which the good God is tend- ing in that upland pasture of the sky, and then how different looks that pond, — the shores all green, the heavens all gay, and the pond laughs right out and blesses God. As the heaven over the water, so a mother broods over the family, March or June, just as she will.

THE WILL TO BE TRAINED, NOT BROKEN

Men often speak of breaking the will of a child ; but it seems to me they had better break the neck. The will needs regulation, not destroying. I should as soon

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think of breaking the legs of a horse in training him, as a child's will. I would discipline and develop it into harmonious proportions. I never yet heard of a will in itself too strong, more than of an arm too mighty, or a mind too comprehensive in its grasp, too powerful in its hold.

The instruction of children should be such as to ani- mate, inspire, and train, but not to hew, cut, and carve ; for I would always treat a child as a live tree, which was to be helped to grow, never as dry, dead timber, to be carved into this or that shape, and to have certain mouldings grooved upon it. A live tree, and not dead timber, is every little child.

ILL TEMPER

A single person of a sour, sullen temper, — what a dreadful thing it is to have such a one in a house ! There is not myrrh and aloes and chloride of lime enough in the world to disinfect a single home of such a nuisance as that. No riches, no elegance of mien, no beauty of face, can ever screen such persons from utter vulgarity. There is one thing which rising per- sons hate the reputation of more than all others, and that is vulgarity ; but, trust me, ill temper is the vul- garest thing that the lowest bom and illest bred can ever bring to his home. It is one of the worst forms of impiety. Peevishness in a home is not only sin against the Holy Ghost, but sin against the Holy Ghost in the very temple of love.

GOOD TEMPER

I am surprised that intelligent men do not see the immense value of good temper in their homes ; and am amazed that they will take such pains to have costly

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houses and fine furniture, and yet neglect to bring home with them good temper. Depend upon it, this is the most valuable thing a man can send home or keep at home. Is well-polished mahogany so much more valuable than a well-tempered man or woman, that we must make so much sacrifice for the former, and so little for the latter, as we do oftentimes.? A feast of nightingales' tongues, after the classic sort, is very poor beside a feast of pleasant words from kind hearts full of mutual love, each assuming the other better than himself.

INTEMPERANCE IN THE FAMILY

Shall I tell you how Poverty comes in at the door when Intemperance looks out at the window, and makes the wife shiver and peak and pine, and the children dwindle, and their faces look sad and prematurely old? The careful stranger, going into a village school for the first time, with unerring certainty picks out the drunkard's children ; not by their dress, for though rum stains it, the wife's diligence takes it out ; but he reads it in the corners of the child's mouth, in his eye, and in the drooping cheek ; he sees signs of the sorrow, and the agony, and the bloody sweat, which God meant to try heroes with, and great men, which he never meant for blameless babes. Shall I tell of the wife, — the domestic effect of intemperance on her, — the sus- picion kept from her own consciousness at first, then a belief of her husband's shame only manifest in her weeping prayers to God, and in a tenderer yearning towards him who deserves her love the less, but gets her pity more? Shall I speak of the full conviction of her husband's shame, of the effort still to screen his infirmity from the public gaze? All that I have seen

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a hundred times, and you have seen it too. I have heard of armed men rushing into the battle's seven- fold heat, and bringing out a brother, a friend, a general, or a king; but woman's loyal heart defends her falling husband from worse foes. With naked breast, she goes into that fight, the most hopeless and cruellest of battles, to screen a husband from the world's well-merited scorn. So she lives, married, but the saddest of widows, till one day the clods of the valley are sweet to her, and the same bells that rang joyfully at the half -marriage, thought to be a whole one, now toll at the only real wedlock she has known, the union of her body to the grave and her soul to God. But the husband knows not of the cruel suffer- ing he has caused, whereby he slowly murdered her, nor cares that his daughters and sons are walking monuments through the streets, of the same horrid death which yet the earth relucts from, and will not hide within her breast.

VIRTUE BEGINS AT HOME

Piety is the beauty of life everywhere. It is beau- tiful in the court, in the senate-house, in the mechanic's shop, at the farmer's plough, but its sweetest and fairest face it puts on at home. So a star shines beau- tiful for all the world, a great public light; but it shines fairer, looks larger, and comes nearer, when you see it out of a window in a narrow street in the city, and Sirius or Lyra thus seen looks down upon you with fuller, sweeter, diviner light.

Home is the place wherein we must cultivate all the narrow virtues which cannot bear the cold atmosphere of the outward world. If we are to reform the church the state, the business, or war, we need great ideas

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trumpeted abroad ; but we must come home at last to teach the baby in its mother's arms. It is in the house that we must rear up those tender plants which are one day to be a hedge to keep the world of wickedness out of the garden of our civilization. We want great and good men. Where shall we find them.^ Here and there in society you find one. Study his history, trace him back through the beginning of his professional life, through college, academy, and school, and at last you find where the great Amazonian river of excellence took its rise. It was in his mother's arms ; thence he received the piety, there he got the magnanimity which stands him in such stead, and arms him that he faints not and never fails.

Mrs. Motherly has lived many years a wife, many a mother, grandmother even. She is as industrious as the good woman in the Book of Proverbs, and her hus- band's large estate is as much of her saving as of his getting. What housekeeping is hers, where there is plenty, neatness, order, regularity, nothing wasted. She is early up, not early down. How busy those fingers are, how nice those stitches seem! How thoughtful she is, with no idle gossip, with serious thought, sound sense, handsome wit ! What exact judgment! How she trains her children, — well edu- cated all of them, some at college, some for trades, all for work, hand and head work. Her daughters both know and do. But she has educated her husband as well as her children. Much of his integrity was hers first ; a great deal of the benevolence which makes him honored in the gate was her benevolence ; he holds by courtesy in his name, but by his wife's right; she showed him that love of God meant love of man; and that religious life lasted seven days out of the week.

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She trained up her children, fed them from her bosom, from her soul also. How charitable she is ! " She went and did it," the neighbors say, " while we were talking about it." The house is so full of affection that it runs over, and goes all round the town. She is one of the Lord's servants to do kindly deeds, and is worth two or three New Testament angels, who only come on great occasions ; she is a human angel, of the Church of the Good Samaritan. She has children on earth, grandchildren ; children also in heaven ; and in her evening prayer they all gather about her, like the angels about St. Cecilia, half on earth, half in heaven. How handsome her face is now ! not in fea- ture, but in expression, — a New England face, full of Christian graces; the Bible is not fuller of trust in God than her face is written all over with the good deeds she has done. How venerable that face, full of half a century and more of noble religious life! Her children also rise up and call her blessed.

PIETY AT HOME

Religion is majestic in the state; it may be grand in the church, — in the church building a great institu- tion, in the state swaying the destinies of millions of men. But piety looks lovelier and sweeter at home ; not arrayed in her court dress, not set off in her church regimentals, but dressed in her homely week-day, work- day clothes. It is a little striking that the word piety, which so often rings in the Christian Church, is men- tioned only once in the English Bible, and then coupled with the admonition to show itself first at home.

EDUCATION THE VALUE OF EDUCATION

Here we are, my friends, to work for our daily bread. That is no curse, — say Genesis what it may. But there is another work to be done at the same time, that is, to build up an intellectual character. It would not be pleasant to have for an epitaph, " This man got money, and nothing more." It would be worse to be yourself a tombstone, and be followed in life with this living epitaph about you. Yet there are such men, so building themselves.

How much we can do for ourselves in this matter of education ! An educated man doubles his estate in a few years ; but he may double himself, his personal power, perhaps in less time, and so will multiply the higher modes of joy. That is not all. He blesses others while he cheers himself. Each spot you justly cultivate enriches the continent, salubrifies the air, and improves its temperature; and so each man who justly cultivates his mind, the one bright spot of verdure, salubrifies the consciousness of men. He is one more worker on this side of material comfort; one more apostle of the true, the beautiful, and the good, faring forth, commissioned by his God to evangelize the world. A well-instructed man, with mind enlarged, and con- science, and heart, and soul developed, is a safeguard and defense, a fortress and high tower. Such a one aids the great work we all pray for, which the noblest men have labored to bring to pass, which Christ died for. No one of these has ever wrought in vain, nor

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does, nor ever shall. The fruit of your fidelity, — you enjoy it here; you enjoy an apple, it may be, plucked from the tree of knowledge. You take it with you also when you go hence. And the seed, love, shall spring up, and become a tree to feed, and heal, and gladden the nations of the world for many a thousand years to come.

EXPERIMENTS

All man's conscious activity is at first an experi- ment — an undertaking of which the result is not known until after the trial. All experiment is liable to mistake. There are many ways of doing a thing, but only one way of doing it best ; and it is not likely that every individual of the human race will hit the right way the first time of trying. What succeeds we keep and it becomes the habit of mankind. I take it, all the experiments ever made, however ruinous to the individual man, have to the human race been worth all they cost, and it was not possible for the human race to have learned at a cheaper school than that dear one which experience has taught.

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF INDUSTRY

The outward value of industry we see very plainly ; but its educational value, that is the thing really of the greatest importance. All the life of mankind has been school-time ; all the industry of mankind has been edu- cation for the body and spirit; all the tools of the human race, from the crooked stick which caught the first fish to the last magnificent clock, are instruments for the education of mankind. But it was not human wit that established this great school. O no, far from that. Men asked for bread and cloth, but in getting

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those they grew wiser and better. The plan of the world's education lay in the vast mind of the Infinite God. I have often tried to tell how the influence of nature leads you to admire the wisdom of God ; and that spectacle is truly a brave one. But you cannot study the history of a single tool man works with but you are amazed at the wisdom of God which made that tool, by which man feeds his mind at the same time he feeds his mouth.

See how work is education. The industrious boy, with active body and mind, goes to learn a trade. It is only the actual trade the father thinks of, but every tool the boy learns to master helps his intellectual development. The attempts made to improve the cattle of New England have improved the farmer more than his stock. Every bettering of a working tool is a bettering of the workman. The use of cattle in the rude ages is to be set down among the instructions of the human race. You see the effect of labor in the rude Irishmen who come here to us ; it is the great school for them, for the head and hand must work to- gether. You may see the educational eff'ect of this in New England in an eminent degree. Here is a great industrial activity, and hence there is a great amount of thought, growth, development of mind. The introduction of manufactures into New England has done more for the head of the people than for their purse. Demand a skilful hand, it must needs have a skilful head likewise. Labor has been the great school for the education of mankind. The brute labor, the military labor, the positive productive labor of our times, — these only mark three great classes in the man- ual labor school of the world. We ask only for the material result, poor ignorant children as we are ; but

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the Infinite God gives us also the spiritual training of our higher powers, something that we know not of. Different kinds of industry have different educational values. The higher the work is, the higher the power it demands, and the more education it gives. The more complicated the instrument which the man learns to master, the more thought it calls for, the greater the power it develops. Thus all the higher callings of mankind are instruments to elevate men to higher and higher education. We seek them first for the material purpose, but the good God uses them for a spiritual purpose, making the cupidity and the vanity, as well as the wrath of man, serve His infinite design. With us in New England there is a continual effort of earnest men to engage in the higher forms of industry, and so there comes a distaste for brute labor; and so the American youth is pressed into such callings as demand skilful labor. As fast as we get tired of brute labor, we bring in nature's forces to do it for us. Ad- vertise for brute labor which demands nothing but a strong arm, force of muscles, and the uneducated for- eigner applies for that place ; advertise for skilled labor, and the educated New Englander comes to the place. So a crowd of cultivated applicants press into all the high places of human toil, and there is an in- tense activity of body and mind to accomplish these material purposes. Once only war could sting and drive men to such activity as business demands every day now. We are up early and lie down late, busy with hand, and with head busier yet. We ask only ma- terial power; but the good God throws us in spiritual power.

Men do not very well understand what a great check

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the want of material means is to the development of the rudest class of men in society. They know that poverty is want of bread, want of shelter, want of clothes, want of warmth; they do not see that it must necessarily be also want of wisdom, want of justice, want of love, want of piety, want of manly develop- ment, and that this is the great misery of want.

ALL MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL FORCES FOR MAN's

BENEFIT

Where all work is done by the hands of men, man- kind is poor, and spiritual development is poor; only few men have comfort, elegance, beauty ; and fewer still have intellectual education, and manly use and enjoy- ment of their powers. Now we have wind, water, fire, electricity, steam ; these do our work, and leave the hands free. The power of machinery in England alone is greater than the physical power of all the in- habitants of the earth. The three million people of New England at this day, with their power over ma- terial things, have got a greater productive force than the four hundred millions of Chinese. This industry will be so productive one day that mankind will be rich enough to afford means of culture for intellect, con- science, heart, and soul to every child bom. Hitherto this immense force of machinery has done little for the mass of men ; it has raised them absolutely, but in some countries has not elevated them relatively. The day-laborer of England to-day is far behind the capitalist of four hundred years ago. In America this is not so ; but the complicated and costly machin- ery generally has not lessened the hours of toil for those who do the work. It is destined however to have this effect, and already it begins to accomplish it.

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The practice of working but ten hours a day, which has become universal in all the large towns, and will soon spread over all the country, is one sign of it, and marks the turn of the tide, which set always before in one direction. There will doubtless be a great ex- tension of this power of machinery. Nature is full of forces waiting to serve us and do our work, and leave us free to apply our time to higher purposes of toil. More servants wait on man than he will take notice of. Once the river was only a boundary be- tween states ; now it is a great productive power. Once steam was only a boy's plaything ; now it crosses the ocean, spins and weaves, and serves us in a thou- sand ways. These are but a hundredth part of the mighty forces nature holds in her bosom, waiting to give to him that is ready to take.

It is a thing possible that all work of the human race shall one day become as educational and as at- tractive as the work of the poet and naturalist is to them. Then there will be no drudgery in the world; ^nd I think there are steps taken towards that point. When the science of the ablest mind is directed to securing the welfare of all men, to distributing the best gifts of civilization to all, then what results are possible to us alll Then as so much power of pro- duction, and so much of spiritual power, comes from the organization of a thought in the material world, how much more will come from the organization of a thought in man. We see the power of men organ- ized in an army, where the energy of the ablest directs the bodies of a hundred thousand men to the work of destruction. We see the power of men organized in a Church like the Catholic, in a State like the English, in a community like the Jesuits, where the organiza-

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tion is not for the good of all. We see the power of organization for commercial purposes in a bank, for productive energy in a manufactory. One day we shall have the accumulated riches, power, wisdom, jus- tice, love, and piety of mankind organized by the wisdom, justice, love and piety of some new Messiah, organized in society, which shall secure the welfare of all men ; and we shall have a society which shall bear the same relation to the absolute religion of the Infinite God which the community of the Jesuits bears to the Roman Church and the pope. Then there will be an industry so great that there will be a material basis sufficient for the spiritual development of every child. Then all these results of material civilization will be for all men, not merely for a few. Then all industry will be attractive and educational, and the material and spiritual riches of mankind be spread broadcast, like the blessed air and sunlight of God on the earth.

THE NEED OF HIGHER EDUCATION

All the life of a child, and of a man, is educational, no doubt. The baby's hunger for its food, its strug- gles against such as would oppose its infantile caprice, the young man's hunger and struggle for other things, the trials of passion, the trials of ambition, — all these are educational, and the worth of such school-time is obvious enough. So all the life of the human race is doubtless school-time, and all its struggle against material want and against human rapacity is educa- tional. We have teachers who address different facul- ties, and give different lessons, — Want, with its terrible ushers. War, Slavery, Ignorance, Fraud, Pros- titution ; many-liveried Sin is a rough schoolmaster in the primary school of mankind's education. These

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teach slowly, and we learn very hard under such tute- lage. Religion, with her sweet-faced helpers, Piety, Morality, Beauty, Plenty, Wisdom, keeps school for her more advanced pupils, who under such tutelage learn gladly and fast, and have a higher delight in the enjoyment of higher faculties thus brought into work.

In consequence of the youth of mankind, and the inexperience consequent thereon, there is a great lack of development of the higher faculties of man; and his happiness is always proportioned, first, to the great- ness of the faculties which are used, and, next, to the completeness of their exercise and satisfaction. So there is a great want of the higher modes of happiness amongst men everywhere. The general modes of life quicken mainly the inferior spiritual faculties of man, not the superior. The public educational forces, business, politics, literature, preaching, do not tend directly to produce noble men, men of great mind and conscience, and heart and soul. Men like Jesus of Nazareth are exceptional. There is not much machin- ery in the world that is calculated to turn out men of that stamp. Nay, men like Washington and Franklin are exceptional ; now exceptional by birth, born with genius ; then exceptional by culture, bred under uncommonly favorable circumstances. Even physical beauty is the result of exceptional circum- stances ; it is not instantial in any nation, in any tribe, or in any family of men ; all Christendom is a set of homely folks to-day. Men are contented with this state of things, because they form a low estimate of human nature, and do not know what great things we are capable of and meant for. Less than a hundred years ago, three hundred women sat the longest day

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of summer on Boston Common, and spun with three hundred several wheels, and at the day's end they had a few hanks of cotton and linen thread and woolen yarn, and they were well content with their day's work. But when it was found out that any lazy brook in New England, if set properly to work, could spin more in a day than all these three hundred women in a month, not a woman was satisfied to trun- dle with her foot, and turn with her hand, the wheel, on Boston Common or in her house. And just as the power of the brook lay sleeping there, and waiting to be set to work, so do greater powers in man than are yet developed lie sleeping and waiting to spring to their toil.

INTELLECTUAL CULTURE

The greatest man New England ever bred or bore once pointed out the " way to make money plenty in every man's pocket." If some one greater than Dr. Franklin should show how to make wisdom plenty in every man's head, what a service that Poor Richard of the soul would render to mankind; for then money also, power over matter, would be abundant enough, and what is a great deal costlier than all money. But as yet I fear that few persons are aware of the vast treasure which God has given in this mind of ours, with its threefold grandeur of understanding, imag- ination, and reason, — its practical, poetic, and phil- osophic power. Very few men seem to know to what extent this mind is capable of culture and improve- ment.

The ground under our feet is capable of indefinite bettering. Nobody has yet found a limit to its power to produce either use or beauty. From his acres no

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farmer has ever compelled the uttermost blade of com, or coaxed the last violet, so that the land shall say to the husbandman, " Hold, there ! This is my very best. I can no further, — so help me God." There is always room for another blade of corn, and another violet. Man is the schoolmaster for nature, and the elements learn. What an odds betwixt the agricul- tural power of New England to-day and three hun- dred years ago, between the land of forests and the land of farms ! And yet we are not near the limit of this productive power. " To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new," says every farmer and gardener. To the human mind there is no limit, conceivable to us. In many generations savage humanity comes up to a Socrates or an Aristotle. Humanity does not stop there ; it takes a new departure, and rises again, — for a man of genius is only one twig on the world's tree, where the highest bird of humanity alights for a moment, and with her beak plumes her wings for a higher flight. Aristotle and Socrates only got so far as they could in threescore years and ten, not so far as humanity could in threescore years and ten ; nay, not so far as themselves can reach in seventy times seven years ; for I take it the old philosopher who ceased to be mortal some three and twenty hun- dred years ago, drinking the wicked hemlock which was his city's reward to him for being the wisest man in all the round earth, is but the feeblest infant com- pared to the vast philosopher he has expanded into, in the centuries that have since passed by. Taking, therefore, the immortal nature of man into considera- tion, as well as his mortal, there is no limit conceivable to his power of growth and expansion.

This intellectual culture is of great value. First, XI— 14

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it is a means of power over nature, and hence of com- fort, of riches, of beauty. Money is the conventional representative of value, but mind is the actual creator of value. Wisdom, — it is bread, it is beauty, it is protection, it is all forms of riches, in fact or in pos- sibility. Thought is power over matter; thereby we put want at defiance. Do you wish to increase the riches of America, of Massachusetts, to enlarge the amount of food, houses, clothes, means of comfort and ornament? Cultivate the mind; it is practical power. Do you wish to put national poverty at defiance? Enlarge the power of thought. The mind of New England runs through the school-house, and then jumps over the ditch of poverty, where lie Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and many another country that never took its start by the run in the school-house, and so failed to leap the ditch, and there lies to perish. The wisest individuals are seldom the richest persons ; but the wisest nations are always the wealthiest. But this is the very lowest use of wisdom. Yet it is indis- pensable; it prepares the material basis whereon high character is to rest, and be builded up.

Wisdom is able to help the higher forms of human development. It is valuable as money ; it is more valuable likewise as manhood. The power of mind is itself an end, furnishing wonderful and elevating de- lights ; but it is likewise a means to the higher develop- ment of qualities nobler than the mere intellect.

But as an end, the delight of intellectual power, of thought, of reflection, of imagination, of reason, — what a grand and noble satisfaction it is ! It is a sublime pleasure to read this great book of Nature, the Old Testament of God, written not on two, but on millions of tables of stone, all illuminated with those

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diagrams of fire, that bum night after night all round the world; to know the curious economy whereby a rose grows out of the dark ground, and is beautiful all over and fragrant all through ; to learn the curious chemistry whereby nature produces green and golden ornaments, fed by the same ground, watered by the same clouds, and furnished into such various beauty by the same sunlight which they absorb and reflect.

What a glorious thing it is to understand this New Testament of God, the nature of man, his past, his present, and his future ; to understand the more curi- ous physiology of the human spirit, and that marvel- ous chemistry of mind, metaphysics, psychology, ontology, whereby we build us up the beings that we are, flame into flowers more radiant and more fragrant than any rose wrapped in its cloth of gold.

The man of letters has the sublime joy of welcom- ing the income of new thought to his mind, of creating new forms thereof. Homer, wandering from town to town, — how delighted his heart must have been with such a paradise of poetry coming up, growing, blos- soming, bearing fruit in his masterly mind. Poor Scotch Burns, in the midst of his wretchedness, caused by wantonness and drink, consoled himself with " the vision and the faculty divine " of the poet, the " ac- complishment of verse " embalming his thought in such lovely forms that mankind will never let them perish, nor break off a thread therefrom. How great are the delights of science, to the naturalist, the astronomer, the geologist. Entranced in his toilsome studies, Newton forgot the heat, forgot the cold, was careless of day and night, and the untasted food for breakfast, for dinner, and for supper, came before him, and before him went ; he touched it not. Toil

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was it? Ay, it was the toil of heaven. It was God's toil, but it was itself a beatitude.

But this exalted enjoyment is for but few persons. Few creators are there in literature or in science. There is only one Homer, but a great swarm of imi- tators, commentators, and translators. Let us not find fault with them. They cut off a scion from the great poetic tree, carry it abroad, and plant it in other lands, where it shall grow, and thousands shall gladden at its sight, and pause, and pitch their tents in its welcome and blessed shade. It is a great joy to take thought at second-hand. Then men rejoice in what others discover and create. You may enjoy society, without being father and mother to all your acquaintance. The pleasures of the intellect not cre- ative, but only recipient, have never been fully appre- ciated. What a joy is there in a good book, writ by some great master of thought, who breaks into beauty, as in summer the meadow into grass and dandelions and violets, with geraniums, and manifold sweetness. As an amusement, that of reading is worth all the rest. What pleasure in science, in literature, in poetry, for any man who will but open his eye and his heart to take it in. What delight an audience of men, who never speak, take in some great orator, who looks into their faces, and speaks into their hearts, and then rains a meteoric shower of stars, falling from his heaven of genius before their eyes ; or, far better still, with a whole day of sunlight warms his audience, so that every manly and womanly excellence in them buds and blossoms with fragrance, one day to bear most luscious fruit before God, fruit for mortality, fruit for eter- nity not less. I once knew a hard-working man, a farmer and mechanic, who in the winter nights rose

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a great while before day, and out of the darkness coaxed him at least two hours of hard study, and then, when the morning peeped over the eastern hills, he yoked his oxen and went forth to his daily work, or in his shop he labored all day long; and when the night came, he read aloud some simple book to his family ; but when they were snugly laid away in their sleep, the great-minded mechanic took to his hard study anew ; and so, year out and year in, he went on, neither rich nor much honored, hardly entreated by daily work, and yet he probably had a happiness in his heart and mind which the whole country might have been proud to share.

It is only a small class of men who have much time for literature or science. The class that has most is not the most fortunate nor the happiest. Some persons mourn at this ; but you do not wish the whole world to be run over with medical plants, or roses and anemones ; it must be mainly set with grass for the cattle and com for men. There will always be twenty thousand farmers for one botanist, a million readers for one great creative poet. With the mass of men to-day their life is devoted to industry, — the creation or traffic in material things. To mankind, literature and science are only the little dainty garden under the window, where, in her spare time, the noble farm- er's daughter cultivates her great hollyhocks and marigolds, or little plants at their foot, dainty mignon- ette, heart's-ease, and forget-me-not, to cheer her father, all foredone with toil, or to signify to her lover what fragrant affection she bears for him, and how she thinks of him when far away, while watering her forget-me-nots with her love, not less than with water drawn from the well ; or therein she cultivates

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choice herbs, to take away the grief of a wound, or to lengthen out the little span of human life. So, to the mass of men, literature and science are not the web of life ; they are only the little fringe, an orna- ment which hangs round its borders.

But what a delight power of thought gives to the commonest occupations of life, though it may not exhibit itself in power of speech. The man of letters utters words, the man of business things. Com and cattle are the farmer's words, houses are the language of the carpenter, locomotives are the iron-worker's speech, and the wares of the merchant are the utterance of his mental calculation. There is a great mistake in respect to this matter. The sophomore at college, who knows very poorly the grammars of some half a dozen tongues, and can speak and write without vio- lating the rules of the king's English, thinks his cousin and uncle, who cannot talk five minutes with- out violating the king's English, are very poorly educated. But the power of thought is one part of culture, and the power of speech is only another. I do not say that we overrate the power of speech ; we underrate the power of thought. I once knew a grocer, who knew the history of all the articles in his wealthy shop, whence they came, how they were pro- duced, for what they were useful. He made his shop a library, and got as much science, ay, as much poetry, out of it as many a scholar from his library of iDooks. He was a grocer; but he was also a man in the grocery business, which is another thing. So the farmer, builder, smith, may get a grand culture from his calling. It is only the mistake of men, and the poverty of the world's civilization, which would limit the power of thought to any class of men. One day

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mankind will be wise and rich enough to enable every- body to start with a great capital of culture. Then we shall find that the commonest callings of life are as educational as the callings of the minister, the doc- tor, and the lawyer, and other avocations which we now call liberal.

But what an odds is there in the power of thought amongst men in the common callings of life. I sup- pose there are a thousand young men in Boston, be- tween twenty and thirty years of age, salesmen, clerks, and the like, with no inherited or accumulated prop- erty, their body and skill their only estate. They earn from three hundred and fifty to a thousand dol- lars a year, and spend the whole of their income. When thirty years old they will not have a cent more property than when twenty, except what consists in fine clothes, opera-glasses, watches, rings, and other articles of show. They have no books, and very little intellectual culture. They are up late at night, down very late in the morning. They know all the opera- dancers and the reputation of actors ; but if you were to ask them whether Samuel Adams was born and bred in Boston or Savannah, they would scarcely know ; or whether the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock before Columbus discovered America, or some hun- dred years after. You smile, — but what a dark side there is to it all. Trace such a young man through life, his public career in the shop where he unwillingly passes his time and earns his money, his private career through the theater, dram-shop, and brothel, till at last he comes to the grave, a worthless fragment of humanity. But this is not all. You cannot be a fool but a hundred others must smart for your folly ; and the bitter execrations which the writer of the

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Book of Proverbs launches on the head of the fool, apply to the fool in morals, not to the simpleton. They are well deserved, and the human race knows how true they are.

Now and then you see one who resolves also to be a man. He wastes little on ornament outwardly, is not distinguished by his gay apparel ; he wears angel's garments next to his soul. He masters his business, knows all its details, the history of the articles he traffics in, makes his shop serve his mind, while it pays a profit also to his purse. He lives in his reason, in his imagination, as well as in his appetites. Which gets the most delight in his life, this man or the man who is the slave of his senses ?

Many years ago, a noble young man was bom of one of the poorest families in this State. He served for a time in a ship-chandler's shop in a wealthy town, and did the service in the family of his master, living in the kitchen. Sometimes a stranger in the family would ask, " What's Nat doing? " and some one would reply, with a smile of ridicule, " He's making his almanac." It was an almanac whereby the boy Bowditch, thirteen years old, in a ship-chandler's kitchen, was learning the lessons which God is teach- ing in the heavens. He kept his own time, knew the quadrature ; full of thought, the mutations of his in- tellect were recorded therein. But when the master of a ship, sailing through the darkness, the light burn- ing in the binnacle, there was a brighter light that burned in his little cabin, where he was building up the great manhood which is now one of the ornaments of his town, his state, his nation, and the world.

For the first lessons in thought and the right use of the mind, the child must depend on his parents, and

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especially on the mother. Woman is the oldest school- master, mother of bodies, mother also of the culti- vated mind, — body and soul feeding on the mother's breast, which colors the mortal thought for fourscore years. What a difference between the girl born and bred in a family of thinking, well-cultivated men and women, and one of a family with no education, no desire for it, no thought. A vast estate, a great house, rich furniture, teachers of dancing, music, mathematics, language, painting, history, philosophy, — I would give them all for one good, refined, ele- vated, noble woman, to cradle her little immortals, not only in her bounteous lap, but also in her affluent mind. The formation of the character is a mighty trust God gives into woman's hands, and very for- tunate it is that she has such a superiority in many nice matters.

What a difference there is in the culture men and women get. Here is a young woman of showy ac- complishments, who chatters, and frolics, and plays a quick-step, and sings an Ethiopian song. She has pert wit, a shallow soul, is idle and vulgar-minded. Poor young woman ! I know your history. Some foolish young man will one day call you wife; there will be a communication of gifts, the congratulation of hollow-hearted friends, who mean nothing, and your wedding will be a sacrament of confectionery. Then what a household there will be ! Real sorrows will come into it, and of what comfort will your showy accomplishments be then? And do you expect to train up children on silks, and rings, and fashions, and porcelain, and negro minstrelsy? Nothing comes of nothing ; — it is a law of Almighty God. " Van- ity of vanities," should be engraved over the portal of such a home.

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Here are some also seeking for a noble intellectual culture. Thej array them in such garments as cus- tom demands of them, have spare time and money for their mind. Where ideas are spoken there are these young women found. A little money purchases a few good books, and these ships of thought unlade their wealthy freight at the poor girl's door. Daugh- ters of rich men also have I known, not a few, some of them gifted with God's sweet benediction of beauty, seeking noble culture of the mind, in art, letters, science, — power to think, to understand, to create. I see the future of these young women. Their char- acter is something I am sure of. I know that granite is hard, and will last. I know that these characters, so delicate, will stand all manner of fire, which granite cannot. Each one of these will be a candle in some happy home, where one by one a thousand little torches will get lit, to scatter light through the dark- ness, each one a lamp of beauty and blessedness. Real sorrow will come also to the homes of these women, when young, and when no longer young. It will shake the door and come in, but wisdom sanctifies the sorrow, and the angel of destruction lays a blessing where he took a friend, and the house is filled with the odor of ointment coming from the alabaster box which the angel brought and broke.

The value of intellectual culture, — nobody knows it all. How it affects a man's religious growth. What an odds between the religion of the man who thinks and knows, and that of one who merely accepts folly traditionally handed down. What a difference between the minister who never thinks, but only prat- tles and gossips, or at the very utmost only quotes, with no aboriginal piety and wisdom, and the minister

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who reaches his own right arm into God's heaven, and gets inspiration for himself, and then preaches a natu- ral religion based on the facts of every man's con- sciousness, on the constitution of the universe and the higher law of God. The ignorant minister, hawk- ing at geology and schism, preaches superstition in the name of God, and Atheism springs up in his fur- rows, and shouts behind him, — " No higher law ! " " Down with Jesus ! Away with him 1 Not this man but Barabbas ! " But the wise minister goes forth, carrying precious seed. He shall come also, bringing his sheaves with him. Thousands of generations shall rejoice in his life, long after the tombstone shall have crumbled into dust on his forgotten grave. You can- not be a fool without cursing mankind; you cannot be wise without blessing them. Every particle of wisdom you gain for yourself is given to^ the whole world. " Thou shalt serve the Lord with all thy mind ! " — what a great command it was. And is it not your duty and mine, ay, is it not our privilege, to cultivate the gift God has given us, and enlarge it into glorious beauty, and then have the crown and the satisfaction which shall come from true wisdom in this life and the life to come?

Riches have their service. I have nothing to say against them, very much in their commendation. But who is there that would not have inherited wisdom from his father, rather than all the gold of California ? Is there a mother or father who would not rather leave wisdom to their children than all riches.? Few men can leave a great estate of gold; every man can leave an estate of wisdom if he will.

I value the education of the intellect not for its

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present j oy alone, but for the greater growth it gives, the enlargement of the cup to take in more and higher

joys.

BOOKS

I fear we do not know what a power of immediate pleasure and permanent profit is to be had in a good book. The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too. It sails the ocean, driven by the winds of heaven, breaking the level sea of life into beauty where it goes, leaving behind it a train of sparkling loveliness, widening as the ship goes on. And what treasures it brings to every land, scatter- ing the seeds of truth, justice, love, and piety, to bless the world in ages yet to come.

The accomplished orator treads the stage, and holds in his hand the audience, hour after hour, descanting on the nation's fate, the nation's duty. Men look up and say how easy it is, that it is very wonderful, and how fortunate it is to be bom with such a power. But behind every little point of accomplishment, there is a great beam of endeavor and toil that reaches back from the man's manhood to his earliest youth.

THE POWER AND INFLUENCE OF IDEAS

Whatever a man consciously makes is always a thought before it is a thing. This is true of all things, from the point of a pin to the political insti- tutions which join five and sixty millions of Russians

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into an empire. The pin is pointed with thought, and sticks in the inventor's mind before it exists as a fasten- ing in a baby's garment. The Russian Empire is only the thought of Peter the Great and his rather short- hved ten successors, added to the thought of such as went before them. So far as the noble life of Jesus of Nazareth came out of his will, that is, so far as it was personal life, not mechanical but self-conscious, it was first a thought. The excellencies of his right- eousness were first only opinions, ideas, intentions. Thus a thing is the outside of a thought; a thought is the inside of a thing. A steam-engine is only a great opinion dressed in iron, and it ran in somebody's head before it could be set a-going on any railroad; nay, the railroad itself is a thought, — the bars, the cross-ties, and the foundation.

There are false ideas and true ones. A truth Is an idea which represents things as they are, a falsehood is an idea which represents things as they are not. Falsehood Is of two forms. First there is uninten- tional falsehood, and when that is arrived at carefully, it is a mistake; when it is jumped at capriciously, it is a whim. Then there is the intended falsehood, which is not a mistake, but a mistelling, a lie. While a man firmly holds to a false idea, thinking It true, he will naturally follow it out, and he is to be respected for his fidelity to his own conscience, even though his conviction be wrong. Not the truth of opinions, but the conscientious fidelity wherewith we arrive at, and keep, and apply the opinions, is the test of manly virtue. Truth or falsehood, however, must bear fruit after its kind, and a man's sincere belief in a falsehood, and his fidelity to his own consciousness, will never secure him from the bad consequences of a bad thought

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when it is made a thing. The Canada Indians, de- ceived bj the hunters, fully believed that gunpowder was raised in the fields like wheat and caraway, and sowed it in their little gardens for seed; but their sincerity of belief did not make it sprout and grow ; they waited a long time, but the gunpowder harvest never came.

Now, as a good deal of a man's conduct, and so his character, depends on his will, and as ideas, true or false, are the patterns whereby the will shapes our time into life, and our generic human substance into specific personal character, you see how important it is to^ have true ideas, which represent the facts of human nature, human duty, and human destination, to start with. The chaisemaker, the tailor, the shoemaker, each wants good material to work on, good tools to work with, and good patterns also to work by ; else his manufac- ture is neither useful nor beautiful. Now we are all mechanics of life, whereof ideas are the patterns. In the conduct of life, it is not enough to feel right, to desire right ends ; we must think right, devise ideas which are the right means to right ends. A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful, it is true; but a naked savage looking on a sheep does not become clad in broadcloth. Men merely desiring an excellence of manhood do not attain to it. We must form an idea thereof, devise the means thereto, and copy it into life.

In the conduct of rational and civilized men there are always three things, — first an emotion, next an idea, and ultimately an act. In the conduct of the lower animals there are two things, emotions and acts, no ideas. God is mind for the emmet and the bee ; it is His ideas, not theirs, which they copy, in wax or in

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dust. There is no public opinion in the ant-hill; there is no opinion at all, only instinctive feeling and instinctive action. But man has the power to create the middle terms between his primitive emotion and his ultimate act. He can know beforehand how his work will look when it is done. So, under the general provi- dence of God, man is mind to himself, and constructs the patterns whereby he fashions his conduct, his life, his character. God taketh thought for oxen, not they for themselves. Man must take thought for himself. The beavers at the Lake of the Woods last summer forecast no plans of the huts which they were making, with the walls uncommonly thick, to provide against the hard winter. They did not know the hard winter was coming; God knew it, and thought for them, and daguerreotyped the fashion of their huts, which the beavers followed, ignorant, unconscious,

" Glad hearts, without mistake or blot. Who do the work, yet know it not."

But Michael Angelo at Rome, who at the end of the middle ages was about to build St. Peter's Church, the, great beavers' hut of all Christendom, before he drove a nail, or bought a stick of timber, had to work years long in setting the house up in his head ; yea, the form of every girder, the junction of every groin, where two arches meet, the shape of every brick, the form, size, and shape of all the scaffoldings, — all these had their patterns in Michael's thought before they became tangible things. God gives man the power to con- struct the middle terms, ideas, the power to make the patterns which he will follow. When the in becomes out, the excellence or defect of the ideal will appear in the actual work. The wheel which ran awry in the

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head will not run true in the mill, whether the con- trivance be a mill for grinding a man's coffee in the morning, or a contrivance for grouping one and thirty states into a great government. The wool grows on the back of the wild sheep at Thibet, while she takes no thought for raiment. The housekeeping of the sheep family, and the government of the sheep flock, is all provided for, whilst they take no thought for the morrow. But God gives man the risky privilege of managing these things to a great degree for himself. Hence while the beavers at the Lake of the Woods build just as their first ancestor, the protoplast and old Adam of beavers, built a hundred thousand years ago, while the wild sheep of Thibet is dressed just like the primitive ewe of the sheep kind, and manages her fam- ily in the same way, while the governor of the flock has known no change, — man alters his house, his dress, his domestic economy, his government, and all things,

" From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still. In infinite progression."

The change of ideas comes first. They are the seeds of actions and institutions in time to come. Our republi- can government, its virtues, its vices, our churches, our families, — they are the outside of ideas which our fathers set a-going, a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand years ago. To-day, what new ideas there are coming into life, — John the Baptists crying in the wilderness, forerunners of the Messiah, promising the kingdom of God 1 Like the old forerunner, they are often said to have a devil, nay, to be devils, though some day whole Jerusalems will gird up their loins and go out to meet them.

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Men do not see the power of an idea, " It is only an opinion, nothing but a thought," say we ; " let it alone ! " Wait till the opinion becomes the thought of a nation, till the idea is an act, as it will be, and then who shall stand against it, when it presses forward like the tide of the Atlantic sea? As you look carefully, every thing resolves itself back into an idea ; the solid fixtures of the world, — how swiftly they return to their primitive form, and, as you look at them, melt away into a thought. A man builds his ship out of ideas, and by these sails over the sea, fronting the storm. Fulton's idea condensed all the two and thirty winds into the boiler of his boat. A single man at Washington, sitting at a topographical bureau, has by his thought shortened the average voyage from New York to the equator twelve days, — for a thought is a short way of doing a long thing. A few years ago the town of Lawrence was nothing but clay in the ground, timber in the woods, water in the Merri- mack, and a thought in a Boston merchant's head. A mill is a private opinion made public in matter; a republic an idea worked out into men. The faulty thought appears in the crazy wheels of the loom, which snaps the thread, or in the perverse institution of the State, which confounds the welfare of men. Pope Gregory the Seventh has been dead almost eight hundred years, and at Avignon or elsewhere his pow- erful dust has crumbled, dissolved, and disappeared, with other dust ; but his dead hand, with a thought in it, still keeps every Catholic priest in the wide world from wedlock. The whim of some Oriental fanatic, who has been dead these three thousand years, grates the windows of half a million nuns in Christian Eu- rope. The laws of nations are only thoughts, better XI— 15

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or worse ; the theologies of the world are only opinions condensed. Judaism, Heathenism, Christianity, is each an idea. Monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, is only a thought, carried into an act ; and as the thought, so the thing. Speculative opinions, are they ? So men say. Look again ! — the opinion is an institution, to bless or curse mankind.

There is a wide difference in the power of men to de- vise ideas, false or true. Here is a woman who cannot lift the wicker cradle in which her puny baby cries ; here is a stout man who can hoist up six or seven hun- dred pounds weight, carry it a hundred yards or so, and set it down, his knees not smiting each other mean- while. Now there is a greater difference between the speculative power of men than between that maternal butterfly and the burly truckman. One man can only carry a little bowl of thin, sour opinions, superstition and water, which some priestly monk mixed to con- found and intoxicate the world a thousand years ago. Here is another who can take on his head a whole world of ideas, gathered from the past, the present, and the future, received into his inspired brain from the great God, and he moves in consequence with such momentum that he goes through Church and State, and death cannot stop him, — but Moses, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus ran by their tombstones several thousand years, nor will they stop for some thousands of years to come ; and you and I catch hold of their wide-spread skirts, or are sucked in with the whirl- wind of their sweeping rush, and so are ourselves car- ried forward through Church and State. There are great bad men whose large speculative power devises mistakes by accident, or lies by whim, — ideas which represent selfishness, Injustice, hate, impiety, practical

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atheism. They sow the world with wickedness, they beget drunkards, they spawn tyrants, they are authors of widespread misery to mankind. Then there are great good men, whose ideas represent the natural benevolence of our humanity, justice, love, piety. What different results come from the thought of a Jesus, or the thought of a Nerol Knowledge is al- ways power for good or ill, because it gives the man the ability to do things short. Now when a man of ideas is a good man, and uses his great power for a noble purpose, then he carries out the great idea of God; when he is a bad man, then he is the greatest curse to the world.

Now see the practical influence of ideas ; first of false ideas. Here is a young man who thinks the chief end of life is enjoyment, mere animal pleasure. That is his idea of life. He thinks there is no higher law of God, above the transient instinct for selfish, sensuous delight, no law of God above his private passion. See how his thought becomes a thing. Wine, horses, cards, dice, indecent romances, licentious pic- tures, women debauched and debauching, and men yet more debauched, and debauching yet worse, — these are his companions, the tools of his work. By and by there will be a character, selfish, mean, contemptible, and a loathy body, that disease is fast tearing to pieces. That will be the publication of his idea. On his tombstone you might write, " Here continueth to rot," &c.

Here is a man not young, who thinks this life is the time to get money, honor, social distinction, and no more ; to get them, no matter how. That is his idea. See what his life is, how it ends. Late in his existence, I shall not call it life, he has a warm house, a cold

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heart, a full purse, an empty soul, a deal of respect and honor; but a character contemptible and almost "worthless. He leaves a great estate in house and stocks, a great reputation in the newspapers and the meeting-house, and he takes into the kingdom of heaven a little, mean, dastardly, and sneaking soul, so small that it seems hardly worth taking across the grave and paying the toll on at Death's door. And so he passes away, leaving the fortune of a million- aire, and a character which a beggar would be ashamed to have dropped as a pittance into his alms-basket. The debauchee is only an idea in the flesh, the hunker is his own opinion published in his existence.

Here is an idea that God made woman for man's con- venience, not a person, but a thing to serve a person, a pin for man to hang his garment on ; that she is in- ferior to man in the substance of her nature, in the purpose of her life. See what comes of it. The sav- age makes woman his slave ; the civilized man bars her from business, education, political rights. Out of that idea has come the enforced celibacy of pagans and Christians, the enforced marriage of lust. The harems of King Solomon, of Louis the Fifteenth, and of Brigham Young, are all founded on that thought. It sets the Circassian girls for sale in the market of Con- stantinople; it puts English, French, and American girls for hire, worse than for sale, in the shambles of Paris, London and Boston. ' The idea was a thought in the dull head of the savage, in the dark mind of some Hebrew Jew three thousand years ago ; it is a fact in the saloons of Solomon, Mahomet, Louis the Fifteenth, and in the dens and cellars of Ann Street in Boston, or the Five Points of New York. You meet it results in the alms-house and the house of correc-

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tion. Woman is the tool of man's selfishness, and he may do what he will with the staff which he carries in his hand ; — that is the thought. See in what ghastly letters it is writ in all the great cities of the world.

Here is another idea, that men are not equal in the substance of human nature, and the rights consequent thereon ; but a man's substantive rights, ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic, individual, are proportioned to his accidental power, and so the strong may use the weak for his interest, and against theirs. It is noth- ing but a thought, — how harmless it seems ; but when it has become a thing, then what is it? All the selfish aristocracies in the world have grown out of it. The mill-owners in Saxony, Silesia, and Belgium, oppress their poor and ignorant serfs in factories, under this idea; in England it gives the land of sixteen million men to twenty-five thousand aristocrats ; and in Amer- ica it keeps three and a half million men in bondage, and fills the sails of all the slave-trading ships upon the ocean. It is only an idea, one end of it ; the other spreads out into all the oppression which there is in the wide world.

Here is another thought yet ghastlier ; — that God is an ugly God, mighty and wise, but not just and lov- ing; that he hates the sinner, and loves only a few mean bigots who crouch down and debase their little souls in the dust, in the dear name of God. The function of religion is to appease the wrath of God, to intercede with Him that He may spare some one of us. See what this idea comes to. In the individual man it comes to fear and trembling. He is afraid to think lest he offend God; reason is carnal, belief spir- itual; thought is only human, faith is divine. So the

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man does not dare to be wise, lest he enrage his God; he does not dare trust his conscience, nor his affections, nor his own great, natural, religious soul, lest God who made man and all these powers should be angry because he used them as they were made. So supersti- tion comes in the place of manly life, fear in the place of love, and the priest pinches a man's forehead from its native ampleness into nothing but the forehead of a beast. In the hands of the priest this idea is the horridest tool which any tyrant ever wrought out or wrought with. He paints his grim and devilish conception of God on the window of the medieval church, and the people cannot look up at the light but this horrid phantom stands there between them and the sun. It is only an idea, but it built the Inquisition, — Italian, Spanish, East In- dian, Mexican, South American; it hung Mary Dyer on Boston Common; it burnt John Rogers at Smith- field; it has been the parent of persecution since the world began. It is only a thought at first ; it spreads into misery, it ends in the notion of eternal torment, it makes a hell on earth. Religion is the master ele- ment in man ; it is meant to rule. Ideas of religious matters are the most powerful ideas in the world; their influence is the widest in its spread, the deepest in its intensity ; and if they are false, then they work the most hideous woe, and every other false thing stands behind them as its castle and fortress.

But true ideas are more powerful than false. The forces of the material world and the purposes of God are on their side ; eternity is their time of triumph.

Here is a young man who has the idea that it is his duty to be a man, a whole man, true to all his nature,

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his body co-ordinate with his spirit, that mastered by its own higher powers. It is only a thought in that young man's head, but what a hfe will come out of it. He will have the natural and legitimate delights of the body, joys that not only bless but refine and ele- vate. He will seek for such riches, such respect, power, station, honor, as he thinks he needs, will seek them by legitimate ways. He will get them, or fail thereof; and either way he will be a noble man ; not living to eat and drink, but eating and drinking to live. His wealth will be a means of life, not life's end; a help to character, not a substitute for it. Is he a servant, — he will be a man serving, faithful to every duty, writ- ing out in his humblest, poorest work, the integrity of his own consciousness. Is he rich, able-minded, — he will use every faculty for its legitimate purpose, and by his culture, his office, his fortune, he will only lengthen out his native arm that he may work in a broader field and do more good.

Out of this idea what beautiful lives come forth. It makes a good citizen, father, mother, husband, wife, sister, aunt, friend. O young man ! O young woman ! there are few things I could wish you to inherit so fair as this to start with in life. If your mother gave you this, this only, count yourself well-bom, ay, rich, and translate your mother's beatitude into your own con- scious act. That bud, — what a youth it will blossom into I What a fruit it will mature into in the autumn of your life !

Here is another true idea, — that it is the function of the strong to help the weak. What a world of good will come of it ; nay, has already come ! The strong-minded man must be the teacher of the weak, the well-mannered set lessons to the ill-bred, the man

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of high station use his position for all the rest, and most of all for whoso needs it most. The strong classes must help the weak, the rich aid the poor, not by charity so much as justice; helping them to start as the thriving start, and to gain riches for them- selves by honest industry, not by the pecuniary charity of another. The educated must help the ignorant, the self -respectful the abandoned, the civilized the savage, the religious those with no religion, not barely call them pagans, infidels, or atheists. The free must help the bound.

That idea is older than Jesus of Nazareth, but it shows in his great life like fires at night; and that large human glory which burns around his brow, so that we see him two thousand years off, came out of this thought, — " The Son of Man has come to save that which is lost." What a good work it does now I In Catholic countries it builds hospitals, founds col- leges, establishes sisterhoods of charity, sends mission- aries all over the world. In Protestant lands it founds great, noble, political and social institutions not less^ schools for the ignorant and the poor, asylums for the old, the orphan, the sick. In New England it offers the free school to everybody, and furnishes the alms- house, wherein men shall be protected against starva- tion, or perishing by cold ; it goes further, and teaches the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak^ the crazy to be calm, yea, the drunkard to be sober, the criminal to mend, and seeks to be mind even to the fool. There are a few men who seek to be freedom to the slave, spite of the Church, spite of the State. Look about you in the humane institutions of Massa- chusetts and New England, from the free schools to the private charity that would snatch women from the

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"worst fate that can befall them, and see the influence of an idea. I am proud of this nineteenth century. It is a great triumph of mankind. I love to think of the wealth it has created, the roads of earth, wood, stone, iron, which it has built, the ships, the shops, the mills, the thousandfold machinery whereby we soothe and cheer and comfort the bodies of the world. But the fairest work of this nineteenth century is its philan- thropy. I am far more proud of that. From the sixth to the sixteenth century, what was called the Christian Church built cathedrals and monasteries, — the thought of a half savage people done into stone, great prayers in marble, painted glass and music. But the idea of justice now is getting incarnated into men, and I like best that architecture which builds up living stones, quarried even in the street and the jail. I am thankful for the medieval temple of stone, but more thankful for the effort in our time to incarnate the thought of God, and make His word our flesh.

Here is one idea more: God is infinite in power, wis- dom, justice, love, and holiness. Religion is the service of God by the normal use, development, and en- joyment of every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, every power we are born to or have ac- quired. That is the greatest idea which tenants any mortal mind. Alas, it is only a thought as yet ! As yet there is no nation, no sect, no community, no single church even, that has taken the idea, and sought to make the thought a thing. One day it will be the thought of a church, then of a circle of churches, then of a nation, at last of mankind, — and, oh, what a world is to blossom out of this great thought !

How poor it seems to get good patterns for shoes, for coats, desks, carpets, houses, railroads, ships, and

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yet not have good ideas for noble human life, — to have a bonnet which represents more artistic ideas in the milliner than human ideas in the wearer. It is a little mortifying to think how many good mechanics, merchants, lawyers, doctors, there are, how few good men. But that is not first which is spiritual; after the bud the blossom, after the blossom the fruit. All this mere material work is to serve as basis, whereon mankind is to build up character. Noble things are the John the Baptists which run before great Mes- sianic thoughts which you and I are to build into some kingdom of God here on earth. A great idea will become a great many things. A true one will become beautiful institutions, noble women, and noble men. One great truth Jesus of Nazareth broke into eight fair Beatitudes, that smaller men might the better carry it. What wonders they have wrought, and are working still! What great ideas are now starting in the world ! Great truths — nothing can stop them ; they have the momentum of the universe, for the In- finite God is behind them and pushes them on ! Think you that armies of soldiers, congresses of politicians, crowds of debauchees, of hunkers, practical atheists, can ever stop a single thought of God? Hold up your hand against the lightning, and stop a thunder- bolt ! you shall do it sooner than that. Not a truth can perish. As I think of the great ideas now stirring amongst men, I feel as in a florist's shop when I look on buds, scions, and seeds that are designed for the gardens and farms of men. I look forward a few years, — there are blossoms, there is fruit, abundance, come out of these. So out of this great idea that God is Infinite Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Holiness, that human religion is the service of Him

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by the normal use, development, and enjoyment of every limb of this consecrated body, with every fac- ulty of this enchanting spirit, with every power we have earned or inherited, — I see what men, what fam- ilies, what churches, what towns, states, nations, and what a world shall in due time come. Ay, truth is strongest, and prevails over all!

THE USE OF BEAUTY

The spectacle of loveliness over our head, and under our feet, and all around us in the world, is of more usefulness to us than we know. I never knew a farmer, however rough, who did not take delight in the beauty of his waving field of wheat, apart from its use, who did not see loveliness in the Indian com, from the first moment its tender spike broke through the sod, to the last moment when its yellow ear hung over and down, naturally protected against the inclemency of winter. The clown of the country rejoices in his father's oxen and sheep. We do not see the use of this at first; but when the farmer's boy lies awake of autumn nights, to hear the ripe apple plump to the ground through the moonlight, when the farmer's daughter wakes before dawn to listen to the song of earliest birds, and see the clear glitter of the morning star, and in those things finds a compensation for many a hardship and sorrow, and gets an impulse to sustain her life amid the toil of the dairy and kitchen, — then you see the high use of this material beauty wherewith God environs us round, in the heavens over our head, and in the earth under our feet. When the Scotch peasant at his work learns such a lesson from the little daisy which he turns up with his ploughshare, — " Wee, modest flower," — you see that God was not asleep

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when He created all this beauty and put it round us ; for the farmer's daughter, and son, and Burns the poet, only tell what thousands know, but cannot speak, and what millions feel, but do not know, and still less can speak.

THE ELEVATING INFLUENCE OF BEAUTY

As the world of art comes out of man's love of ma- terial beauty, so the world of science comes from man's delight in the ideal intellectual beauty of related things ; and then the worlds of art and science, — how much they do to elevate man from the gross material condition into which this savage child was bom. It is for this purpose that God sows the world with dew- drops in May and June, and spangles heaven all over with stars that burn forever in their immortal beauty. The use of things causes man first to fear, and drives him. Then beauty charms his eye to love, delight, and trust. As fathers and mothers please their chil- dren with picture-books, and teach the A B C on blocks of yellow wood, to fix the baby eye, and as these chil- dren find wisdom whilst looking only for delight, so the dear Father leads all his human family upwards and on, delighting us with the shape of an apple, the color of a rose, or the mystery of a star, or the romance of the new moon, till we learn art and science both, and we learn the commandments while we are looking at the pictures in this great primer of the Lord.

MORAL EDUCATION

How many a thief might have been an honest me- chanic, doctor, lawyer, minister, had some honest man taken a little charge of him in his boyhood ; how many a girl, predestined by her circumstances to the vilest

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degradation, would have been saved by a kindly word and the putting into a good wholesome family ! Al- ready we begin to take steps that way. Adult schools in our great cities are the most beautiful pieces of Christianity that I have yet seen in what is called a Christian world. There is no charity like education. It must, however, be moral as well as intellectual.

SELF-IGNORANCE

It often happens that men are not very well ac- quainted with the best things in them, they see them so seldom. We live with our human nature as the Mexicans lived in California, not knowing the un- summed gold which slept unseen, waiting to be brought to light. A young fellow whom I knew, once did a brave thing, which brought in its train a deal of self- denial. He did not mean to do it ; it did itself, and he was astonished. " How came I to do such a thing .^ " quoth he to himself, when he got home and sat down alone with his God and the darkness. And so he looked to see whence came that rath flower, un- expectedly springing up in its fragrant beauty, and he found there was a whole bank of just such violets, which he had not known before, enough to sweeten all the winds of heaven. It is so with us all. So old stories tell that Grecian Narcissus went about with rude swains in Attica, and thought himself but one of them, — ill-mannered and boisterous, and not treat- ing well the swine which he fed, — till one day by accident he saw in the water a face as beautiful as Aphrodite and Phoebus Apollo both united, and was astonished to find it was his own, and that he too belonged to the handsome kindred of the gods. From that day forth Narcissus went another man, and drove

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his swine a-field as if he were himself a god, scorning all unhandsome and all ungodly conduct. Thus it is with all men, not knowing what manner of spirit we are of, till accident, or some great man, or some great event, lets us into our own secret, and we are introduced to ourselves.

VI

HUMAN INSTITUTIONS AND NATIONAL

LIFE

THE COMPLETE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY

The Indian went poor and cold. There was the Merrimac clapping its hands and saying, " I will spin for you as soon as you are ready to have me." And when men were wise enough to organize its powers, it commenced spinning and weaving for them ; and when we are wise enough to organize men as well as we now organize matter, then the Napoleons and Csesars, the great rivers of humanity, will not be for- ever overflowing their banks, raging and tearing and committing destruction, but spinning and weaving for us after their great sort, — a harness by which you and I can work together and achieve a great good, the man of genius for himself and society, and society for itself and the man of genius at the same time. The greatest thing which any man can ask of God is an opportunity to use the gift he has. A complete organization of society would give every man an op- portunity to use his gift.

Work is the only universal currency which God accepts. A nation's welfare will depend on its ability to master the world, that on its power of work, that on its power of thought. The wealth of New Eng- land runs out of the school-houses of New England.

THE IDEA OF A REAL CHURCH

The aim of a real church must be, first, to promote the sentiment of religion, — religion as an instinctive

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feeling of dependence upon God, obligation trust in God, love of God; a sense of ultimate dependence on His providence, of unavoidable obligation to keep His law of nature, of absolute trust in the infinite fatherly and motherly providence of God, and of complete and perfect love of Him which shall cast out every fear for the present and the future. It is also to promote the idea of religion, to develop it as a conscious thought, so that what at first is a fact of mere instinct shall presently become an ideal of self -consciousness ; and that man shall be self-conscious of this unavoidable dependence, this obligation, this absolute trust, and this complete and perfect love. It is likewise to pro- mote the application of this form of religion, with this sentiment and this idea, to life, and all departments thereof, the personal, the domestic, the social, the na- tional, and the universal human form of life.

That, I take it, is the end for which a church is to be organized ; a church, I mean, which believes in the infinite perfection of God. It is to accomplish this to the extent of its power, to desire to do it universally, - — that is, for every man, and perfectly for each man. It is to help every man in the world to the attainment of this form of religious development and religious delight, aiming to do it for all who are within its reach, being limited only by its power. That is the end for which the church of absolute religion is to strive. It is not to attempt to change the will of God, not to affect God towards man, but to affect man towards God.

The means to this end are very simple ; to get men of great religious genius, talent, or experience, and set them to teach that part of religion which they know either by the intuition of their genius, by the

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toil of their reflection, or by the disciphne of their life, and so give others opportunity to listen. When there is such teaching as that, there will always be listening enough. When the father sends his son to have his corn ground, it is not necessary to tell the boy to gather the lilies out of the pond ; he will do that of his own accord. Rivers of hearers always run down into the ocean of Paul's and Jesus's piety. It was so on Mount Tabor, and it is so in London, Paris, Vienna, everywhere that an earnest man lifts up an earnest and manly voice.

Then for the concrete application of these ideas to life, a very simple organization is easily made; now to spread the ideas, now to reform an evil, then to dispense charity, and the like. In God's world there is always enough for each, too much of naught. Scattered about in society there are always men of religious genius, with a telescopic heart for religious sentiments, a telescopic mind for religious ideas, in advance of mankind. These are the natural teachers, who preach with authority, not as scribes and Phari- sees, appealing to another authority. The church is their place, the pulpit their joy and throne. These men of genius for religion there are. Then there are men of large talent for religion, and others with large experience of the discipline of life. These will be special teachers of religion, one having a special talent for one thing, and another for another. A particular church is fortunate if it can get an eminent man of religion for its teacher, a man of genius, great character, great conduct, great life. It is like getting a great lake to flow through a thousand pipes, into the streets and lanes of a great city, the mountain water bubbling up in the haunts of filth and disease. XI— 16

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Of what inestimable value is a man who can light the fire of piety in a thousand or a million hearts, and set each one of these as a candle lit in the dark to shine all about him. You see what relation such a man bears to the business, politics, science, literature, morals, and manners of his age. He will act as a critic, to judge others by his idea ; as a creator, to make better politics, juster business, to apply humanity to the perishing classes of men, to apply piety to the science, letters, morals, and manners of his age. If it be possible, such a man ought to be of the foremost intellect. It Is a disgrace to our times that while strong men, of large ability, go In whole troops to the bar, the senate, and the market. It is chiefly little men who sneak into the pulpit, and put on the lion's skin of a prophet, with nothing to say, where presently there is no one to listen. You see the effect of this all over the land. The religious teacher ought to be a man of foremost intellect and culture, as well as piety ; but foremost as he may be, he must go back and look after the very hindmost of men, after the pauper, the idiot, the drunkard, and the felon, after men whose Iniquity pauperizes the world, and makes felons of men. Amid artificial distinctions, he is to know no man as rich or poor, high or low, saint or sinner; he is to cheer the penitent, to seek and save that which is lost. This is the highest function of the highest man, — to take the inspiration which he gets from God, and scatter it broadcast over the world, and out of his own great bosom to feed the hungry masses of men. The greatest praise of a church of this character would be that it gathered together the outcast, the hated and hunted, that It was the church where publicans and harlots found the doors

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wide open, and religion flowing in a great stream to them ; not the church merely of decorous and orderly men ; for the church in our time, like Christ in his day, is come not to call the righteous, but sinners to re- pentance, and to strengthen the righteous.

I know, my friends, this is a very unusual idea of the work of a church, the requisitions of a minister, or the functions of his office. Some men say he must never meddle with business, or the state, or the per- ishing classes, must never expose a great social wrong. Well, if a man is to appease the wrath of God, — who is never angry, — if he is to communicate salvation by a machine, if he is to explain a book merely, then I admit he has nothing to do with the state, which may go on in its wickedness; nothing to do with business, which may tread the poor to the ground; nothing to do with science, letters, morals, or manners. But if God be the Infinite God, if your heart and mine thirst for religion, then, if the minister is to promote re- ligion, he is to meddle with the state, business, the per- ishing classes, literature, science, morals, manners, every thing that affects the welfare of mankind.

THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL CHURCH

You know the idea of a church, which is a beautiful one. It is that of a body of men and women meeting together, with a common reverence for that great Soul that overlooks the world, with a desire to promote their progress in religion. They choose the ablest man they can find to help them in their work, a man of large education, able in conscience, and powerful in soul. They say to him, " Come, we will give you your daily bread, and you shall break the bread of life for us. You shall warn us of our sins, encourage us

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in our virtues, shall stimulate our mind with truth, our conscience with right, our heart with love, and our soul with faith in God. Your right hand shall grasp the heavens, and bring down electric fire; you shall dash the thunderclouds to pieces, and give us the early and the latter rain, to quicken every herb and flower at our feet."

What a beautiful thought is such a church, with such a minister, a real live minister serving a live church, bringing out of his treasury the old things of human experience and the new things of human nature, and so putting his prayer and inspiration into the public life; and the people encouraging him in every word he utters. Think of Boston with four or ^\e score of such churches as that, and eighty or a hundred such ministers. That would be a sign of Christianity not to be spoken against. And what a work would they do against the great sins of this place, — laying their hands on pauperism, and stopping that ; putting down crime, and abating mis- ery ; turning up their concave mirror towards God to receive new inspiration from Him, and holding up their lenses to every quarter of the world to gather new fires from heaven and old fires from earth. Eighty or a hundred such churches in Boston would make us a city of saints in ten years.

But look at the fact of the four or five score of churches here. Among their ministers are good and excellent men, whom I love and honor. I am not speaking of them individually. There is no complaint made against them in general ; they fit their position exactly. But see what they aim at. As a body, did they ever oppose an evil or a falsehood that was popu- lar, or support a truth that was unpopular? In this

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great city there are hundreds of anvils ringing with active industry; the churches are the only places that sleep. Compare a bank or an insurance office with a church; one is all alive with enterprise, the other is nothing. Compare a business man with a minister, a superintendent of a railroad or a factory with the superintendent of a church, and see the difference. Just now the railroads have sent out a powerful engi- neer to learn some new way to tunnel the Alps ; they wish to have him bring back a new method of hewing rocks and cutting away mountains. It is proper that this should be done. But who ever heard of a church's sending out a competent man to inquire of some new body of men who had discovered a way of tunneling through sin, and cutting down the great mountains of iniquity? We have able men in all other professions, of large talents, of industry which rises early and re- tires late ; we have a vast amount of activity which works all day long ; no country was ever richer in ability than the spot on which we stand. But where are the great ministers of Boston? There is talent enough all over the land ; you may hear the foot-fall of genius in your streets any day ; but it wears not the steps of the pulpit. Why not? Because we do not want it to preach to us ; it might " hurt our feelings." You see in the minister a smooth man, with the faculty of words, not with the faculty of things, who glides smoothly over the surface, never scratching through the varnish of the world ; a man of low mind and con- science and soul, of no ambition to serve the world with wondrous truth and beauty and piety, even though he creep on his knees to earn his daily bread. Why is it so? It is because the people love to have it so. It is not the prophet Isaiah, nor Paul, nor Christ,

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that we wish to have our minister; but it is a priest. " Do as other men do," — that is our Sermon on the Mount. " Look out for jour dollars and your re- spectability,"— these are the beatitudes which are preached to-day. Do you think we want to have other churches and different ministers here? These answer the end they were designed to serve. Like people, like priest. I state the truth that our ministers are little men ; but think not that I blame them. I only mention the fact as one sign of the place and rank which Chris- tianity holds in this town.

Suppose a great man should come to Boston, with the pure, absolute religion in his heart, as it came from the nature of God. Suppose he should preach it with eloquence that transcended all we know of old inspira- tion. Suppose he was a learned man, full of the storied history of the past, its curious literature, its hard'won experience. Suppose him rich in science, keeping even pace with the advance of men, so that he swept the whole ocean of human thought, and gathered the gems of every land. Let him have prudence to foresee, as well as power to remember; let him be as wise as learned ; let him have a far-reaching genius, which at a single stride goes whole ages before man- kind. Let him be a million-minded man, endowed with reason, understanding, and imagination which can gather poetry from every star in heaven and every little flower that springs up by the wayside. Let him stand so tall as to catch the first gleam of truth far below the horizon, and reflect it down to you and me, and to the humblest mortal. Let him preach this re- ligion, blasting every sin with lightning, feeding our righteousness with sunshine, falling like God's sun and rain on the evil and on the good. Let him apply his

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religion, giving his truth to our mind, justice to our conscience, love to our heart, and faith to our soul; telling us what is wrong in our daily life and our theology, and in place thereof importing directly from God the universal right, the true and good, to bless mankind. Let him do all this with the power of a thousand men, and love equal to the affection of a million men. Let him be a good man; let him crumble up all his substance to feed the poor. Let him have charity and hope and faith even beyond the apostles, and let him bring it all to work and wake religion in our hearts, and aim to establish it among mankind. Suppose such a man should come, — should we give him a welcome? Should we ask him to our pulpits? No. Should we suffer him to be? We should tell him his learning was folly, his genius madness, his love a cheat, his inspiration insanity, his reason fanaticism, and his love of God infidelity. We should say of him, as they said of the old prophet, " He is clean contrary to our ways, and we will have none of him." A few good men would gather about him, and welcome him, and say to him, " Prophet, sow the seed of God in our hearts ! It is poor soil, but possibly a com or two may come up and take root, and keep alive the seed of godliness on the earth." They would shelter him with their bare bosoms if need were ; but the rest of us would only hate him, as the Jews hated the Christ whom they cast off.

NEW INSTITUTIONS REQUIRE NEW SOIL

All experience shows how difficult it is to build up new institutions on the ruins of old institutions in the same country. Christianity came very early to Rome, but it has always been vitiated by the old paganism

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that is there. The Christians very early at Rome be- came the intensest bigots. They were forced into bigotry by the paganism around them; but even their bigotry could not weed paganism out of their ranks. Christianity is the democracy of religion ; but at first it could not organize its democratic idea amongst the ancient people, because the old aristocratic forms of religion preoccupied the ground. The old crop had so injured the soil that it would not take kindly to the new seed that got sown there., Christianity, there- fore, thrived much better amongst the new nations of the north than amongst the old nations of the south, simply because it did not find the ground preoccupied by religious institutions and mythology. Protestant- ism is the democracy of Christianity ; but Protestantism could not be carried out in countries that had long been stained by Catholicism. Accordingly it has never borne its legitimate fruits on the continent of Europe, nor even in England.

This same difficulty appears in the political develop- ment of mankind. The great ideas of America are not wholly our own ; they were bom the other side of the sea, they existed as sentiments hundreds of years ago, and as ideas a hundred years ago ; but the old institutions lay there in the way, and hindered these new ideas from becoming facts. After the old crop was out of the ground, the old stubble still choked the rising com. See how difficult it is to establish a re- public in France ; not from lack of ideas, nor of men who welcome the ideas, but on account of the old in- stitutions ; the stumps of old theocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, are still in the ground, and it is hard work to get them out. This rule goes far. The old civil- ization has perished from Egypt, Asia Minor, India,

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Greece, Assyria, Italy, but no new civilization has come to take its place. These countries are still in the hands of the despot. Clear off the despots, mak- ing the soil clean of these old stumps, and it would take very kindly to the new seed. This will not always be so. The same thing takes place in agriculture. The savage crops his ground till he has exhausted it and it will grow no more com, and then he turns to a new soil; but the scientific farmer brings new crops out of the same soil. Nations do the same. I doubt not that mankind will one day reclaim Egypt, India, Greece and Italy, for a new development in arts and freedom. Mankind has not learned how to do it yet. Accordingly it was a great advantage to mankind that there was a new and virgin continent, which God had hid away off here in the Western ocean, where the ideas of Christianity, Protestantism, and Democracy might come. Our fathers took these ideas in their hands and sought to set them up in England. Driven thence, they sought to erect them in Holland. But the king and priest turned our fathers out of doors, and they fled here. It seemed a hard fate, but it was the best thing for them, for their ideas, and for man- kind; for had they attempted to found such a nation in Europe, it seems to me they could not have accom- plished in a thousand years what they have now done in two hundred and fifty.

MAN PROPOSES, AND GOD DISPOSES

The institutions which tend to make us rich, intelli- gent, and free, are circumstances created by man. The machinery wherewith we make carpets at Lowell, and woolens and muslins at Manchester, turned by the brute forces of material nature, is the work of men.

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The machinery of institutions which help make the character of New Englanders, machinery turned by the spiritual forces of human nature, is just as much the work of men as the other. What we call Chris- tianity is a human scheme of religion, a republic is a human scheme of government, both machines con- structed by human thought. Two hundred years ago the institutions of New England, church, state, society, commerce, and the like, tended to make rough, strong men and women, able-bodied farmers, mechanics, sol- diers, hunters, Indian-killers. The circumstances of New England at this day tend to produce a very dif- ferent form of humanity. In two hundred years we have altered the machinery, made the mill turn out a very different and superior form of work. It is true that two hundred years ago no man said, " Go to, now I Let us devise us institutions which will produce such men and women." They trapped for other game, and found in their net prizes they looked not for. Fight- ing Indians and Frenchmen, New England did not think she was getting rid of the English king and nobility. Putting up saw-mills on Charles River and iron-mills at Saugus, holding town-meetings, this good old mother that bore us all did not know she was educat- ing her children. She was filling her mouth, building her houses, she did not know what else. When with marsh hay she thatched the first school-house in New Plymouth, she did not see that the Patent Office at Washington would one day come, as only a small wing thereunto, Man proposes, and God disposes a great many things which man never thought of. Old patri- arch Jesse, remembering his sons in battle, sent strip- ling David with bread and cheese to his brothers ; but when he got there, David slew the giant and became

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Israel's king. So goes the world. Man proposes a saw-mill, and God disposes it into a college.

NATIONAL PROGRESS

It is a good thing for a nation to be born into human history, to do its work, and then cease to cumber the ground. Most men seem to pray that America may be perpetual, that the Union and Con- stitution may last forever. I hope not. Surely there are better things in store than this " universal Yankee," and better States than this " model Re- public," with its worship of money and its sacrifice of men. All the good things we have shall be preserved, the evil perish, and the nation with it. Mankind will one day bury the American State as gladly as the Babylonian, or Egyptian, or Roman, was gathered to its fathers. This nation shall also do its work and pass away ; and future discoverers will dig in the ruins of Boston, as antiquaries explore the Indian re- mains of the West; and they will come upon some remnant of our civilization, and they will say, " These people were not wholly savage." Better institutions, better forms of religion, will appear, and better men will tread the ground over our heads. They will have gathered up every good thing that we brought to light, and put it in the golden urn of history, to be kept forever.

The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and rapid growth of the higher faculties of man. Cities have always been the fire- places of civilization, whence light and heat radiate out into the dark cold world.

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THE HIGHEST FUNCTION OF A NATION

The highest function of a nation is to bring forth and bring up noble men and women. High character, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious, is the fairest fruit which grows on national institutions, and this is always the test question, " What manner of men and women does the nation bear and breed? " If they be mean and low, it is vain to boast of farms and mines, of mills and palaces, and riches high piled up. Nay, Democracy and Christianity are good for noth- ing, if they bear not men. A Newton, a Franklin, a Washington, a Socrates, a Jesus, a Luther, an Isaac Hopper, how much land or factory stock, how many million votes, would you set off against them.f^ Venice produced cold and material beauty ; she never nursed a saint in her bosom, nor bore a sage, nor orator, nor bard ; while poor and ragged Scotland teems with poets, orators, philosophers, philanthropists, noble men.

HOW TO ESTIMATE THE VALUE OF A NATION

In estimating the value of a nation, you must not merely count the men, you must weigh them. You must not barely weigh the dollars, but gauge and measure and scan the quality of the men who own the dollars. An armful of Hebrews, a handful of old Greeks, have been of more value to the human race than all the four hundred millions of Chinese, with their Tartar and Malay progenitors. A single Moses, Socrates, or Jesus would weigh down whole provinces of the Celestial Empire.

The constitutions which people value most are writ on the parchment of a drum-head, in the costliest of

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ink, which man carries in his heart, — and they are writ to the awful chime of cannon and the falHng of towered towns.

Chief Justice Blackstone said that woman was the favorite of English law. He should have said she was the favorite victim of English law.

SUDDEN WEALTH IN A NATION NOT FAYORABLE

TO PIETY

Covetousness is the great sin of America just now. The priest of mammon comes up with his " Thus saith the Lord ! " and the true God is bid to stand back. This was never so in New England before. New Eng- land for a long time was an exception in the world's history, and the class of men here who had the highest intellectual culture, and the largest wealth, and fore- most social position, was the class in whom religion culminated and was preponderant. You could not have found another example of this in the whole globe of lands. Why was that? Because New England was a religious colony, and men came here on account of their religious character ; came, as our fathers said, to sow the wilderness with good seed. The Puritan mother grimly took her austere baby in her religious arms, and fled over the waters, to bring up, in a log cabin, this little child to obey God, — come what might come to him, come what might come to men, — to obey God at all times. Now the Puritan blood is strong blood. It does not run out in one generation or two ; it does not get much adulterated except after several generations.

Now sudden prosperity and a great increase of wealth has come within fifty years, and it has brought the

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consequences which sudden wealth never failed to bring- on a nation, state, or city. It has brought a decline of piety in the class of men foremost in social rank. The religion of New England is no longer an excep- tion in the history of the world. I am not blaming any one, only stating the facts.

VII

THE POWER AND ENDURANCE OF WHAT IS NOBLEST IN MAN

THE POWER OF THOUGHT

The power of mind is amazing. How much we can do with thought. It is the universal solvent which reads all difficulties. All things which men make are thoughts first. Bows and arrows, the last gun, the last plough, were all thoughts before they were things, and hit the mark in some man's mind before they were let fly in the open air. The house, the ship, the bridge, the factory, were all thoughts ; when you come to the bottom thereof, you see they hang balanced between a man's mind and the earth's gravitation. So with the institutions of England and America ; the common law, civil law, statute law, were all thoughts. The invisible mind of man is the great workshop of the human race; there unseen hands construct the mills which grind for us peace, quiet, order. All civil mouths open at the miller's trough ; so all men revolve about the thinker. The fine lady whom I saw in the street the other day, carrying half an ass's load of finery, and such a weighty ballast of jewels, for so low and small a sail of wit, is yet the fine ore of those rough, able minds who have woven her up out of such manifold threads. Nay, the fop is equally beholden, and if little thought goes in his hat, very much went to it. What a busy, bustling, noisy city is this Bos- ton. It reminds the Biblical man of the net which hungry Simon Peter saw in his vision, wherein were four-footed beasts, wild beasts, and creeping things.

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But as you look it all over and through, you see that this city likewise is knit at the four corners, and the whole is let down out of the heaven of man's intellect, and it all resolves itself to thought again ; the great machinery, the wares in the windows of the shops, and all the other contrivances of use or beauty, are all transmuted, and you see the stock they were woven out of, and the little shop of man's brain wherein they were fashioned up.

A quiet man sits in his little room, and thinks down into the depths of human nature, and learns the con- stant modes of operation whereby men should keep the eternal laws of God; and he thence constructs in- stitutions which are to mold the destinies of millions of men not yet bom. He is the most influential man in all the town. He makes no noise, thinking his silent work ; you do not hear his voice in the street, with the rumbling of loaded drays, the shouting of drivers trundling their costly merchandise, the noisy railroad trains which carry it thence across the con- tinent. Perhaps nobody knows him, or sees that he is thinking. He is not a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, no Doctorate of Laws waits for him ; he is one of the forces of the universe, and it would be ridiculous to doctorate him. Great ships are unloading at the merchants' wharves, great wheels turn the manufacturers' mills with endless buzz, and the clock is never silent, while the thinker makes less noise than the carpenter putting up a shelf in the room hard by, or the girl bringing his cheap dinner home; and he is yet doing a work which will last when mer- chants and ships, and manufacturers and mills, have all gone down the stream of time and vanished into silence and perished utterly. Ships of thought noise-

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lessly unlade their wares at his door, where the river of God, which is full of water, comes to turn also his silent mill, and there is no looker-on.

How quietly this goes on. Did you ever see the vegetative force, or hear the centrifugal forces of the earth, the moon, the sun, in virtue whereof we walk, or sit, or stand, or continue to be? What a busy, bustling city was Athens, four hundred years before Christ! What pride there was of rich men, and shouting of their slaves, what bawling of orators in the forum, what traffic in the markets and shops, what braying of donkeys, and noise in the fields 1 Now all this is hushed and silent; the rich men are forgotten, and the bawling of orators, the stir of the markets, and the braying of donkeys, long since ceased to be heard. But through the ages comes the voice of that one great thinker, Socrates, and sways the counsels of thoughtful men all round the world. So is it with- Jesus of Nazareth. In Jerusalem were gatherings of merchants from Alexandria and Damascus, Tarshish and Babylon; the Roman proconsuls there held their court, and Herod the Great was also there, with his dangerous power and untamed lust. What troops of priests and Levites were there, and the high priest with his urim and thummim on his breast, the ark of the covenant behind the veil, and the seven golden candlesticks were also there. But now it has all passed away, — the pomp of Herod's glory, the solemn grandeur of the high priest; nobody asks strength or might from the urim and thummim; the ark of the covenant is gone ; the seven golden candlesticks have been carried to Rome and thrown into the Tiber, and no man knoweth where to seek for them ; the temples and walls of Jerusalem have crumbled before XI— 17

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the Roman power, and Rome herself has been driven to waste, and her gods are only the playthings of the poet. But the thought of a Nazarene peasant has come down to us, an obscure young man riding on a donkey, attended by barefooted peasants and humble fishermen, and has driven out from the old temples all that bought and sold and made merchandise therein, and now fills the wide green world with temples and priests.

The free institutions of New England are only the thoughts of our fathers done into men, and our thoughts will one day be institutions if they are true and great, and you and I are greatly true thereunto. Said an old man to another, " We must put down that young thinker. He raises terrible questions." The truth was, the young thinker had got thoughts, and truths, too, that the old man had not, and would not tolerate. Put him down.^ It cannot be done! There is not force enough in the human race to annihilate a single truth, though one man of the earth had it, and all the rest had it not.

THE POWER OF TRUTH

The collective action of mankind is to proceed from the same motive, to obey the same moral law, aim at the same noble mark, and reach the same perfection, as the individual action of a single man. Mankind is but a great man. So a true idea must not only become private excellence in the corporeal, intellectual, moral, afFectional, and religious character of a particular man or woman, but come out in the joy and gladness of whole millions of men. It will not only chase errors from my heart, but burn them up from the whole world of men ; for, as a spark of fire falling into dry grass

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in the Northwest territory must needs bum and sweep over a wide reach of prairie, so a great truth, burning at first in a single soul, must ere long consume the false doctrines, from the family, community, nation, human race ; nay, rather, as a true theological doctrine is creative more than destroying, like a single grain of corn it will come up, and grow, and bear fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, and so become the parent of other stalks and fields of com, and in time it will sow the continent with its precious seed, and feed men by the million. So great truths about man, God, religion, bum for many a night in some humble mind, all obscure and unheeded, and of a Sun- day in some lowly pulpit they get preached to a few shoemakers, to farming folk with their sweethearts and little ones and wives, sitting there in their pews ; and they will one day be a fire in the dry grass and thick old woods of theologic error, which shall crackle, and burn, and fall before the flame ; and next they will become corn for daily bread and for future seed; and so at length shall they turn into happy life, widespread over many a green island of the sea, over broad con- tinents, and become condensed into the focal civiliza- tion of great cities, full of men rich in material and spiritual worth.

There never was a great truth but it got reverenced ; never a great institution, nor a great man, that did not, sooner or later, receive the reverence of mankind.

ONLY TRUTH AND JUSTICE WILL SATISFY MAN

Now man is so made that nothing but truth will sat- isfy him. Interest may seem to demand a falsehood, but such is the nature of man, that, spite of interest,

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he will have truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The self-will of popes and kings, of courts and crowds, may frighten me from the truth to-day ; to-morrow I will turn to it, and confront the ax and the fagot ; nay, I will convert popes and kings and courts and crowds. Human nature demands the true relation between man and man, demands justice. Hence it makes laws, enacting to-day the justice that it sees, and nothing but justice will satisfy it. To-day per- sonal selfishness triumphs, and men make a law which is un j ust ; but to-morrow it must all be made over again. No passion, no purchased injustice, can pre- vail over the conscience of mankind ; that will grav- itate towards the right, just as the waters from Mount Washington will run down on either side, and seek and find the sea. No judge, no supreme court, no army, can make injustice go down with mankind. Write it, enact it, get soldiers to execute it, get mean lawyers to enforce it, get hireling judges to declare it constitutional, get base priests to declare it is of God, — it is all in vain ! Slowly, silently, step by step, mankind advances, and advances, and advances, and puts its foot on the wicked thing, and treads it into dust. Only truth satisfies the mind at last, only jus- tice the conscience. The human race is in perpetual convention to revise its constitutions, to amend its laws. History is a revolution of mankind, a turning over and over again. Therein conscience gets the victory over selfishness, justice comes nearer and nearer to conquest every day. Truth is never lost from man's science, nor a single grain of justice from human laws. No par- liament, nor king, nor pope, nor president, nor conven- tion, nor crowd, with " manifest destiny " to aid them, can ever make a lie or a wrong respectable in the eyes

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of mankind. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright, or science without truth, or law without justice; down they must. Let me be sure that a thing is true, — I know mankind's intellect shall welcome it. Convince me that a thing is right, — I know that slowly, inch by inch, mankind will march towards that right, form lines upon it, defend it with their life's blood. In man's love of truth and justice, I see the grandeur and glory of human nature. I look, with profoundest gratitude to God, on this steadfast prog- ress of mankind in justice, and I look on it with amaze- ment too ; for I also know the power of passion, the mighty force of self-interest. But there is a con- science in us which, like the attraction of sun and moon, on the waters, sways the nations of men, and leads us forward in the path we have not trod, and which only God's eye hath seen.

Justice is the keynote of the world, and all else is ever out of tune.

INTEGRITY WINS

There is nothing which mankind respects so much as integrity ; we pay homage to every form of it. This quality in a man wins the esteem of his fellows more than wealth or eloquence, or brilliant talents, and in a woman attracts men more than elegance of dress or beauty of person. Beauty in woman is a well-written letter of recommendation, introducing her to the world and bespeaking the kindly offices of every man. It is also the " cynosure of neighboring eyes," and by its sidereal magnetism, draws all men unto it. But if it be attended with Indolence and selfishness, if the bearer of this epistle in the flesh turn out a wicked mother, an

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evil wife, a false sweetheart, with what scorn do we look on the beautiful devil, whose shame cannot be hid, neither by the dress of Eve in Eden, nor that of many-skirted Empress Eugenie in Paris. What hom- age do we pay to the womanly integrity of every aunt, sister, daughter, wife, or friend, never so ugly, who will do duty, though at the cost of great self-sacri- fice!

Amongst public men, eloquence is what beauty is to a woman, or what riches are to a private citizen. What crowds will hang on the words of Mr. Fair-Speech 1 They are swayed to and fro by the motions of his finger, quivering with unmeaning gesture, uplifted in the air. They are overloaded by the sounding words which ring from his lips. Mr. Items, the penny-a- liner, Mr. Hifalutin, the editor of the Spread Eagle and Know-Nothing Gazette, each declares the gods have come down to us in the likeness of man, each brings his sheep and oxen to do sacrifice, and breaks down the English language with his stupid adulation. But by and by the mass of men find out that Mr. Fair-Speech is all talk, his eloquence foaming at the mouth. It is ascertained that the eloquent lawyer pleads as well for the wrong as the right ; it is found out that the lecturer aims to please for his own sake, not, with manly generosity, to instruct for that of his hearers ; that the politician knows no " higher law " above the selfishness of his party or his own am- bition; that the Rev. Dr. Hot-and-Cold takes a " Southside " view of every wickedness, and for thirty pieces of silver he would privately sell Jesus a second time, and publicly attribute to Iscariot every Chris- tian virtue; — and when men come to understand this, they look with contempt upon the mean creatures who

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prostitute their genius to earn the wages of iniquity, and turn off to some plain, honest, earnest man, — minister, lawyer, politician, lecturer, — who only aims to tell the unheeded truth, and gives saving counsel to " do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God," and take what comes of it; and when he dies, though there are no " seventy mourning coaches, and one hundred and forty sorrowful horses," and no flies of fashion and wealth to buzz about his dead face, yet of him it shall be said, as of the first Christian martyr, " Devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him."

THE JOYS OF CONSCIENCE

Conscience brings delights which far surpass those of the intellect. No creation of literary or scientific genius can give such joy as the organization of justice into human life, and the re-enactment of the laws of nature into the institutions of court and state and church. No doubt there is a proud delight in creating works of literary or artistic genius, but what are they to the works of justice and humanity? Leib- nitz makes his Calculus of Infinitesimals, Newton con- structs his Principia of the Heavens, Bacon devises his New Instrument of Thought, Laplace describes in science the Mechanics of the sky, and Von Hum- boldt groups all the knowledge of mankind into one great Cosmos of order and beauty.

These are great works, attended with well-propor- tioned joy. But the Bacons who make new instru- ments for morals, the Leibnitzes who calculate the infinitesimals of conscience, the Newtons who determine the principia of ethics, and the Laplaces who organize the celestial mechanics of human society, and show how

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men can live together peaceful and blessed, the Hum- boldts who shall condense the science of past times and present into one great human cosmos, where the strong and weak shall dwell happily together, — how much grander is their work, and how much more joy does it bring the man, and those who shall rejoice therein!

THE PREPONDERANCE OF GOODNESS IN THE WORLD

OF MAN

As I look over a year of time, I am astonished at the amount of goodness which I have seen, more than I am at any thing besides. The evil lies atop, it is in sight of all men who open their eyes, while deeper down there is laid the solid goodness of mankind, which is not always visible, and never at a glance.

What we name goodness is made up of four ele- ments. The topmost and chiefly obvious thing is be- nevolence, general good willing, what we call kindness, a feeling of relationship toward all mankind, or toward those special members of the human family who stand nearest to us. This benevolence is colored into various complexions by the circumstances of the individual, and is turned to various specialties of hu- man action, directed now to one form of humanity, and then another, but it is always marked by good temper, good humor, or good nature.

Benevolence being the most conspicuous element in goodness, we think it is all. But as you look a little deeper, you find the next most obvious element is sin- cerity. The benevolent man is what he seems. He does not wax himself over with a fair outside, to hide his mean substance by a surface show of splendid and costly qualities. His wood is solid ; it is not a plank of deal, veneered over with a thin coating of rose-

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wood, but as he seems outside he is inside. His virtu- ous complexion is not painted on him, but runs through all his substance.

Thirdly, there comes justice, that fairness which aims to give every man his due. But with our good man, it is commonly justice which is more anxious to do duty for others than to claim right for himself; more anxious to pay an obligation than to collect a debt. It is justice mixed with that sweet leaven of mercy which makes it a lighter but more attractive bread, a good deal different from that sour unleavened bread of justice merely. In those that we call good men, the affections are a little stronger than con- science; so the good man's justice is sometimes not quite plumb, it bends a little, from his personal in- terest. But that is a failing which leans to virtue's side. The good man has more justice than other men, but designs to be a little more than just towards others, and is a little less than just to himself. Such a man is like those generous traders who always make a liberal scalage in selling, and then make some little de- duction also when they come to settle. His conscience makes him just, and his affections go further and make him generous also, for generosity is justice pliis kind- ness.

At the bottom of all there lies piety, — the universal love of the first good, first perfect, and first fair, the love of God, " who is of all Creator and defense." The good man may not be always conscious of this piety ; there have been cases where such have called themselves atheists, that ugliest of all names. But, depend upon it, piety is always there at the bottom of all goodness ; for piety is not that merely technical and special thing which it is sometimes mistaken for.

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but it is that general steadfastness and integrity, that faithfulness, which is to a man what perpendicularity is to a wall or a column, what solidarity and impenetra- bility are to matter in general. If a pyramid stands six thousand years, and never cracks in a single stone, you will be pretty sure that it rests on a good bottom, even if the pyramid does not know it, nor know what it stands on.

If I were to express the proportions of goodness by figures, I would call the complete goodness ten ; and piety would be four parts, justice two, sincerity one, and benevolence three.

I suppose many of us are a little disappointed with mankind. The world of the girl's dream is not the world of a young woman's actual sight and touch, and stiU less is it so of the woman no longer young. In the moonlight of dreamy youth, as we look out of the windows, and rejoice in the blooming apple-trees, how different does the world seem from what we find it the next day, when, in the heat of a May sun, we go about and remove the caterpillars from the scrubby trees. A boy bred in a wealthy family in a little village, se- cluded from the eyes of men, filling his consciousness with nature and the reflection of human life which deep poems and this great magnificent Bible and other religious books mirror down into his own soul, goes out into the world, and finds things very different from what they appeared when seen through the windows of the home which his father's and mother's affection colored with the rose and violet of their own nature. A young minister bred in a frugal, literary, and re- ligious home, living a quiet life, has rather a hard experience when he comes to his actual work, — the world seems so different from what he dreamed it was,

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and he encounters so much covetousness, hypocrisy, selfishness in its many forms. " It is a very bad world," says he, looking at it with eyes too pure for iniquity, across the New Testament. " If it appears so to me, how damnable it must look to God, in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, and who charges the angels with folly." So some night, after preach- ing, as he walks home through the darkness, discour- aged and despairing, and looks up to the stars, so old and so young, so heavenly bright, so distant, yet looking so large and near and familiar, — he says, " What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou regardest him.^ " And his womanly wife, who walks close at his side, whose " meddling intellect " does not " misshape the form of things," but, like a star itself, lets God shine through her and sparkle out of her, answers him, say- ing, " He made him a little lower than the angels." But after our man has learned to orient himself in the universe, knowing which way the east is, after the moonlight has gone, and he has removed the caterpil- lars from the apple-trees, and has felt the summer, and draws towards the appointed weeks of harvest, and sees the same branches which the caterpillars ate in the spring now bending down with great rosy apples, — things look more hopeful, and he finds a great deal of goodness which he did not expect.

We find that much of the wickedness we see is only a chance-shot, the gun went off before the man was ready. In human action there is always more virtue of every kind than vice, more industry than idleness, more thrift than spendthrift, more temperance than intemperance, more wisdom than folly. Even the American politician does not tell so many lies as he

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tells truths. Sincerity is more common than hypo- crisy; no nation is ever affected; the mass of men are in real earnest. All the natural trees grow solid all the way through; they have bark on them, but it is a real bark, there is no veneering of mahogany on any northern pine. Even the hypocrisy which a man var- nishes himself withal is only the homage which he pays to the virtue he imitates. It is a gilt jewel; he does not like to pay the price of the gold one; the gilt jewel is a testimonial that he would like to have the gold one if it did not cost too much. There is more conscious justice than conscious injustice in the world, more trust than jealousy, more peace than war, more men who help the good time coming than men who stave it off, more piety than impiety, more goodness than badness. In all the world, mankind never put up a single gravestone to evil, as such. There are many temples, no doubt, which are made dens of thieves, but they were all built as houses for the Father, not one of them ever dedicated to the devil. The Christian year, as put down in the calendar of the Catholics and Episcopalians, is full of saints ; but nobody ever publishes the Devil's Calendar, full of wicked men. No man will ever write on his father's tomb, " He was an eminent slave-trader." Mr. Ma- son's sons will not write on his tombstone, " Author of the Fugitive Slave Bill." No miserable minister who, for the meanest fee, shall stand in some pulpit, and preach funeral eulogies on such wicked men, will praise them for deeds of this kind ; he will try to varnish them over, and say they were mistakes.

All these things show how constantly the good pre- ponderates in mankind. Do you doubt this? Some- times it does not seem so, but it all becomes plain from

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this great fact, that mankind continually improves ; for nothing is clearer than this, that the human race is perpetually advancing in all sorts of virtue. Those Adams and Eves whom God sent into the world, naked and rough and savage as a wild ass's colt, have grown up to a quiet, respectable civilization, and dotted the world over with monuments of human excellence. Soon as a scholar studies history, his common sense sees this great fact, that the human tree grows up out of the ground, not down into it, and at each recurring White Sunday it is more beautiful with blossoms, and heavier laden with apples at each harvest. It would be a sorry impeachment of the great God to charge upon Him that the world was made so badly that the wheels could never overcome their friction. Take the world, and you see no great improvement from month to month, or perhaps from year to year. Look at a star for ten minutes, and it does not seem to have moved at all ; look at it at six o'clock and then again at twelve, and you will see that it has changed immensely. So look at mankind from one hundred years to another, and you see what progress Christendom has made.

But not to look over so wide a field, what does any man see in his little sphere of observation? Truth prevailing over error, right over wrong, piety over impiety, goodness over wickedness. The seed of good- ness does not come up very quick, but it never rots in the soil; it comes up at last. It does not grow very swiftly at first, but it does grow stout and stocky, as the farmers say of good substantial corn. When I see a young man with any truth that others have not, any justice, any kindly charity, any higher degree of piety, I am sure that he will prevail, just as cer- tainly as that the best com will ultimately be planted

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by the farmer, bought by the miller, and eaten by the rest of mankind. Let a little modest minister to the smallest audience utter some new truth, propose some better form of religion, and though the timid man clutches the pulpit cushion, and does not dare look the church members in the face, while his cheek turns pale, and his eye flashes with unwonted light, though all the ministerial associations shall cry, " Away with such a fellow ! " — I go up to him and say, " Fear not ! Humanity is on your side, and if the swine trample your pearls under their feet, do not mind it ; it is because they know no better; one day the human race will sift the ground under your feet, and gather even the dust of the pearls and fashion it into beauty to wear about humanity's neck as an ornament." The team of elements carries you swiftly over iron roads, where oxen once slowly dragged you along; and just so it is with all goodness. It is certain to come up when it is planted, sure to grow and to live forever. All this shows the superiority of the good in the hu- man race over the evil therein. The swine that is washed may return to his wallowing in the mire ; it is his element; but the man, when the devil has been cast out, haunts the tombs no longer, crying, and cutting himself with stones. Perfection is the pole-star of humanity, and our little needle has its dip, and its variation, and sometimes declines from the pole, now at this angle, then at that,

" But, though it trembles as it lowly lies, Points to that light which changes not in heaven."

These are very encouraging things. But without looking so far as that, I am often struck with the amount of goodness all around me. Sometimes in a

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railroad car by night I love to people the hours by counting up the good men and women I know in all walks of life, and in all denominations of Christians, and some not Christian, and not Hebrew even, who have no religious name whatever, but who have so much religion in them that they have not counted it yet. After all, there is only one religion, just as there is but one ocean, and though you call it North Ocean, South Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific, it is still only one water. In some places it is deep, in others shallow ; here it is cold, there warm ; it is troubled here, smooth there ; still it is always the same Ocean, and the chemical qualities of the water are still the same. When I run over the moral inventory of the persons I know, I am astonished to find how many good men and women there are, and what a little dear kingdom of heaven is about us all the time, though we take small account of it.

I love to look for some excellence amongst bad men, and almost always find it. There is no dead sea of hu- manity anywhere. Though you toil all night and catch nothing, in some lucky moment you throw over on the right side of the ship, and presently your net breaks with the draught of fishes, only not miraculous. Those Boston men who in Congress voted for the Fu- gitive Slave Bill, do no such thing in private, but both of thenL contributed honest money to hide the out- cast, and carry him where the stripes of America shall never keep him from the stars of freedom. There are many depraved things done without any conscious depravity.

See how many good things are continually coming to pass. Not long since this circumstance came to my knowledge. A Maryland woman lost her husband, a

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" fast man," who spent more readily than he earned. He had the reputation of wealth, but when his estate came to be settled, there was no property remaining but sixteen slaves. His widow, a kind-hearted woman, hired these persons out, and lived very comfortably on their earnings. One day it occurred to her that it was a little hard for her to be living on the earnings of these persons, to whom she contributed nothing. She asked one of the most sensible of them what she thought of it, saying, " Would you Kke to be free ? Why don't you run away .? " " We had thought of it," was the answer, " and some of us came together and talked it over, but we said you had no property excepting us, and we did not like to bring you upon the town." The good woman was so much struck with this that that day she set them free. Some offered to bring back their wages to her. She is now supporting herself with her needle. This shows an amount of self-denial that very few men would be willing to come to. One of our countrywomen, who has traveled the United States over, making exploring expeditions of loving-kindness and tender mercy, pass- ing through wildernesses and deserts that burned with vice, in order to establish hospitals for the insane and lift up the poor, was once robbed of her purse by a highwayman in Georgia, who gave it back to her when he found it was Miss Dix, scorning to rob such a woman. Need I mention again that woman whose hu- manity seems sweetest in the wintry darkness of Crimean war, that Nightingale of mercy who makes perpetual spring- and summer in the desolate camp of the soldier? No star shines so beautifully as a good deed in a naughty world, and there is not a street in Boston, however short, not a lane, however dirty, but

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some window thereof burns with that hght which shines in the darkness, though the darkness compre- hendeth it not. If a wrong is done to anybody, some- body by and by finds it out. Men scourge the apostle of humanity in the market-place, but there is always some good woman, some kind man, to wash the apos- tle's stripes and bind up his bruises, and lay healing herbs of grace on the tortured flesh, and carry a sooth- ing balm to the soul that smarts, but will not forbear from its work ; and when the martyr dies, somebody gathers up his ashes and sows them as seeds of good- ness, one day to blossom all round the religious world. How many good men you find, always taking offices of charitable trust which bring no money or honor, but who will not be forgotten in the recompense of the just men whose hearts grow white and blossom with benevolence as they grow old. How many good Samaritans there are in the world, always happening to pass where somebody lies fallen among thieves.

I love to walk through a library full of old books, the works of mighty men who once shook the ground under them ; yet all forgotten now ; and I think how rich-minded the human race is when it can afford to let such intellect lie, and never miss that wealth. But goodness is hid much oftener than great intellect. I do not mean that it is hid in its action, but from men's sight. But for each man of this stamp, there are several women. There is no town but has many sisters to every Lazarus, generous mothers, kindly aunts, faithful friends, whose footsteps are like those of spring, flowery to-day, in some weeks fruitful, — those who leave tracks of benevolence all through the cold and drifted snow of selfishness which piles the streets of a great metropolis. It is these persons, women XI— 18

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and men, who carry on the great movements of man- kind. They clear and till the fields where some Moses, Jesus, Paul, or Luther gathers an abundant harvest, brought home amid the shouting of the people, " Ho- sanna ! Hosanna ! " The topstone of yonder monu- ment is only the highest because it rests on every block underneath, and the lowest and smallest helps to hold it up ; only the foundation was laid with sweat and sore toil, while the capstone was hoisted to its place amid the shouting of multitudes. It is in this way that all the great humanities are carried forward. They advance most rapidly in New England, because we have more men and women of this stamp amongst us than elsewhere are to be found in the world. No- body knows the power of a good woman, in the quiet duties of her home, where she is wife, mother, sister, aunt ; and in the neighborly charities of the street and village she sets afoot powers of excellence which run and are not weary, or walk and never faint.

You and I may not have much intellectual power; perhaps our thought will never fill the world's soul, nor guide the world's helm ; we may not have reason enough to dig down to the roots of things, nor imagination enough to reach up to the fruits and flowers, nor mem- ory to reach back to the causes, nor prophetic power to reach forward to their consequences. But all the little space within our reach we can occupy with good- ness, and then the whole house will be filled with the fragrant beauty of our incense, which we offer towards man, and which steals up as a welcome sacrifice towards God. In a wintry day, I have sometimes found a geranium in some poor woman's kitchen, and it filled the whole house with its sweet fragrance. So it is with this goodness. Piety is the root of all manly

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excellence, and it branches out into a great many things. How you and I can increase this goodness in ourselves, and then in the world; for, though the bodily power is capable of great increase and develop- ment, and you see the odds between the thrifty hand of the mechanic and the clumsy hand of the Irish clown; though the intellectual power is capable of wondrous culture, as you see how the use which the well-bred scholar makes of his intellect differs from the clumsy attainment which the poor ignorant man can only reach, — yet neither the cunning hand nor the cunning brain of man is capable of such immense de- velopment as those moral, affectional, and religious faculties whose fairest, sweetest blossom is what we call goodness. And what you and I set on foot for ourselves, ere long belongs to the whole world. This is the precious privilege which God gives us, that when we attain it for ourselves, we win it for the whole human race, and though when we go thitherward we carry the fragrance of our flower along with us, its seeds drop into the ground, and live forever on the earth to bless mankind.

DISINTERESTED PHILANTHROPY

Sir Robert Peel, cradled in affluence, in a famous speech in Parliament, declared that he had no belief in disinterested philanthropy. You can hardly find a respectable mechanic, a respectable trader, an ear- nest man or woman in the middle class of society, who does not believe in disinterested philanthropy, who does not practise it almost every day, and that too as a religious practice. The circumstances which are about the industrious class help call into play this belief and practice of disinterested philanthropy.

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Serious men who feel the sore travail of the world, and eat honest bread which they have got by the sweat of their brow or the toil of their brain, will not be content to have religion a mere emotion in their heart, a delicious dream of devotion, a rhapsody of love to God. It must be also love to man. They will never be quite content with mere routine, with a mere form of ritual words and ritual worship; both must lead to a form of actual, practical life with them.

PHILANTHROPY SHALL PREVAIL

The thing for which I most fervently send up my thanks to God is the increase of piety and love towards the Infinite God of perfection, and that this piety takes the form of philanthropy, and what is abstract love of God becomes concrete love of man. Let us give thanks by putting our piety in this noble and lovely form. Be sure we are to triumph; not to-day, not to-morrow ; but as the sun struggles with the darkness of the dawn, and triumphs over the clouds, and at last sends his meridian beams down upon the ground, so shall human philanthropy triumph over the malignity, the darkness, and ignorance of men, and the angel& below shall co-work with the angels above, and God's kingdom come down here on the earth.

Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rej oice in.

GREAT BENEFACTORS UNRECOGNIZED

If you should go into a garden, ignorant of botany, you would see many plants seemingly of no value, and only a cost, but which yet turn out precious herbs or produce rare flowers, whose beauty is their own excuse

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for being, and excuse enough beside. So in the gar- den of mankind, which God only understands, there are various employments which seem at first to be of no value, but which turn out to be of the greatest im- portance.

When Socrates left off stone-cutting, and went to teach philosophy at Athens, it seemed as if he did not earn the poor pulse he ate and the sorry garments he continued to wear; but it turned out that his talk was the most valuable work done in that generation. Socrates carved out great statues of thought, and set up colossal figures of men along the highway of life, to freshen and inspire us forever.

When Archimedes at Syracuse, an apparent loun- ger, with a large head and thoughtful face, and brow serene as midnight, spent his days in drawing figures in the sand, circles and spheres and sines and cosines and tangents, I take it that the fishermen in the bay thought he was a fool, and not worth the flounders he ate ; but when Syracuse was besieged by an enemy, that man was the king of the nation, and reaching a huge arm of wood over the walls of the city, he twisted and twirled and tumbled the ships of the foe to pieces ; and then men began to understand better the work of the head.

In later years, when Galvani hung up the leg of a frog on an iron fence, and noticed the muscles twitch, his servants no doubt thought he was an idler and a fool ; but that was the first step in the discovery which now sends thought from Nova Scotia to New Orleans as quick as thought.

When Homer strolled from village to village, sing- ing for his supper as he went, no doubt the cheeseman, as he trundled his wares from one place to another.

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thought Homer a dismal drone, and grudged the poet a lodging in his bam ; but the " wondrous tale of Troy divine " comes down through the ages as a strain of sweet music, now so trumpet-like, and then so lyri- cal, that the poor farmer's boy beguiles the weary labors of the plough by singing it, and others catch up the strain and speed it on to millions more, until his high thoughts, swept into music on the ten strings of his sounding lyre, have become commonplaces to all men.

When Moses left the keeping of Jethro's sheep in Midian, and went into the mountain, no doubt the shepherds thought he was a fool ; and when he was alone on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, the men of Israel thought he was asleep or a lounger; but when he came back with the Ten Commandments in his head, he proved that there was another kind of work besides tending cattle.

So when that young carpenter of Nazareth left his tools, probably the sandal-maker of Nazareth might have said, " He will never earn his shoes with all his preaching." But from that young carpenter of Nazareth came those blessed Beatitudes which have planted the seed of piety in many a million hearts, and which will never be forgotten as long as man shall endure.

Thus from Socrates, and Archimedes, and Galvani, and Homer, and Moses, and Christ, comes the work of the world. In the great machine of human society, only God knows all the wheels, and many kinds of work are done by men whose various modes of operation we know not. All kinds of real work then should we honor. This man plays with lightning, and brings nothing to pass ; but his son after him takes the mail

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through the air. This man plays with soap-bubbles, and men laugh at him; but his son perchance may carry us where his predecessor carries the mail. Thus persons apparently of no value may be perhaps of great service to the race of men if they work diligently after their kind.

NO GOOD THING LOST

Mankind never loses any good thing, physical, in- tellectual, or moral, till it finds a better, and then the loss is a gain. " No steps backward " is the rule of hu- man history. What is gained by one man is invested in all men, and is a permanent investment for all time. What a careless nation drops and runs by, another carefully picks up and carries forward, if it be of any service. No nation gives up clothes for the sake of primeval nakedness ; nor houses of stone, brick, and wood for a hole in the ground and hollow trees ; none ever abandons wheaten bread, the result of toil and thought, for the sake of acorns and wild peanuts.

A great genius discovers a truth in science, the phi- losophy of matter; or in philosophy, the science of man. He lays it at the feet of humanity, and care- fully she weighs in her hand what was so costly to him, and is so precious to her. She keeps it forever; he may be forgot, but his truth is a part of the breath of humankind. By a process more magical than magic it becomes the property of all men, and that forever.

Kepler had some of the most whimsical theories that ever entered into the mind of man ; but he discerned three great general laws which govern the heavenly bodies. His whims all perish ; it is only here and there that some black-letter scholar has found them out ; but

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his laws find their place in the humblest manual of astronomy, are used in every school of New England, and will never be forgot.

WyclifFe started the Reformation in the fourteenth century, — a single monk in his cell at Oxford teach- ing the great truths of Protestantism. He died in 1384, and it seemed as if the truths he started perished with him. Forty-four years after, the Council of Constance ordered his bones to be dug up and burned. There was not much left of the thin man in the little churchyard at Lutterworth ; but the Bishop of Lin- coln sent his officers — vultures with a quick scent at a dead carcass — to ungrave him. To the spot they came, they took what little they could find, and burnt it to ashes, and cast it into the Swift, a little brook running hard by, and they thought they had made away both with his bones and his doctrines. How does it turn out ? An historian says thus : — " The brook took them into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean, — and thus the ashes of WyclifFe are the emblems of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over." It did not lie in the power of the Council of Constance, the Bishop of Lincoln and his officials, to hide one single truth from the conscious- ness of mankind. Let men hear once, and the word roots into that soil forever.

In some little New England village there comes up a dear feminine flower of wisdom and philanthropy, and by and by the whole town is fragrant with that blossom, and the children who are bom there a hun- dred years later are better born than elsewhere in the surrounding towns, because that woman passed through the village and spread the sweetness of her character

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in the very air, and it shamed vulgar men and women out of their coarse obscenity, and hfted them up when they knew it not. Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix, and their noble company of similar good angels who bless the world, will all die, but the style of char- acter which they represent will never die. It will go on increasing and enlarging, till it fills all Christen- dom with its sweet and blessed influence.

ALL EXCELLENCE IS PERPETUAL

A man gets a new truth, a new idea of justice, a new sentiment of religion, and it is a seed out of the flower of God, something from the innate substance of the Infinite Father; for truth, justice, love, and faith in the bosom of man are higher manifestations of God than the barren zone of yonder sun, fairer revelations of him than all the brave grandeur of yon- der sky. Well, this seed from the flower of God takes root in the soul of man, and it can never be dislodged or rent away ; while every plant which the Heavenly Father has not planted is destined to be plucked up. No truth fades out of science, no justice out of poli- tics, no love out of the community, nor out of the family. The sage, the saint, or the poet, gets a scion from the tree of life and grafts it on the wild stock of human nature. It grows apace, flowers every spring, and fruits every autumn, and never fades away ; more than that, ere long it sucks all the life out of the wild ingrafted branches, and itself becomes the tree. A great man rises, shines a few years, and pres- ently his body goes to the grave, and his spirit to the home of the soul. But no particles of the great man are ever lost ; they are not condensed into another great man, they are spread abroad. There is more

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Washington in America now than when he who bore the name stood at the nation's head. Ever since Christ died there has been a growth of the Christ-hke ; there is a thousand times more of Jesus now on the earth than when the Marys stood at his feet. Once there was Httle corn in the world, and a woman's lap might have held all the seed of the bread which now feeds the earth. Righteousness grows like corn, — that out of the soil, this out of the soul. Let a man have more truth, more justice, more love, more piety than other men, and the world cannot get rid of him; he rides on the shoulders of mankind, and they cannot cast him off. Nobody can write him down, or howl him down ; only himself can write himself down ; and he can never write down a single truth nor a single grain of justice he has once given expression to ; it is insured at the bank of the Infinite God. Peters may deny, and Judases sell, and Arnolds turn traitors ; but the truth goes on with the irresistible gravitation of the uni- verse, and the silent laws of God conduct it onward to its triumph.

GOOD NOT LOST AMIDST THE BAD

There is good in the worst of men ; there is a great deal of good amongst them. In Fagin's den of thieves Mr. Dickens paints a sweet, beautiful creature, as clear as a sunbeam, and not less benevolent ; and he is true to nature. In a great tragedy of ^schylus or Shakespeare, while in one scene there is a con- spiracy, a murder, or a revolution, trial, sentence, in the next there will be some sweet love-scene, tender and woosome, and most elevating. As after funeral marches heavily beat on muffled drums, or painfully played by horns gagged by the players, the returning

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soldiers step to lively and more stirring tunes, so among the worst of men there are little spots of heav- enly, human sunshine, — a faithful wife, daughter, mother; nay, perhaps a son who redeems the ugliness of his father. Were not Abraham and righteous Lot found in the midst of Sodom? And Sodom could not go under in fire and brimstone till these sweet angel- men had marched out. Was not upright Nathan, bold as a star, found in cruel David's wicked court? Did not Christ come out of Galilee?

EACH INDIVIDUAL EXCELLENCE FOR MANKIND'S

BENEFIT

Men often deceive us ; they fail from weakness, nay, from badness. We often deceive ourselves. Conven- tions are not what we could wish; the election disap- points us ; revolutions turn out badly, as it seems. But slowly, continually, forever, truth gains over error, justice over iniquity, love over hate, and religion over impiety. It is not much that any man, however great, can do to the consciousness of mankind. All that Leibnitz, or Newton, or Bacon, or Luther, added to mankind was a small part of what mankind has. But even you and I can do something to bring about the time when all nations shall live as the brothers of one family ; for every effort which we make for our own countrymen is for the freedom of all mankind; every thing that you do for the education of the mind, the conscience, the heart, and the soul of your country, your community, your family, yourself, is so much done towards the education of all mankind. All that you do for industry, philosophy, science, art, for tem- perance, for peace, yes, all that you do for piety in your own heart of hearts, — that likewise will accrue

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to the advantage of mankind ; for every atom of good- ness incarnated in a single girl is put into every person, and ere long spreads wide over the earth to create new sunshine and beauty everywhere. Thus you and I in our humble sphere may work with the vast agencies of humanity, and the great Father in heaven shall work with us, through our understanding, our hearts, our prayers, and our toil.

VIII

HUMAN PROGRESS

MAN TO MAKE HIS OWN PARADISE

As you look on the world inferior to man, mineral, vegetable, animal, you see that all is full of order. The law of God is kept throughout; the actual of nature comes completely up to the ideal of nature. Every animal has internal unity, and is at peace with himself. So far as he has any consciousness at all, he has integrity of consciousness. His little dot of spirit is surrounded by a hedge of animal instincts so high that he never strays abroad and is lost. Every natu- ral beast is contented, is mainly happy, unhappy only by transient fits, permanently at peace. It never vio- lates the law of its structure. Its general nature is the individual character also. The wild dog is never crazy ; it is only domestic dogs that go mad. The ape is said to be stupid; but stupid is no reproach to him, no source of pain; he brings up his children just as well as the Faculty of Harvard College could do it for him or themselves. No wild goose is idiotic or a simpleton. If dogs delight to bark and bite, it is because it is their nature to do so. If bears and lions growl and fight, it is because growling and fighting are their natural functions. No one of the Ten Com- mandments which God published on His Sinai to the beasts is ever violated by dog or lion. The father alligator eats up his little ones, and feels no remorse ; it is part of his natural food ; the mother never re- proaches him for his taste ; there is harm, but no wrong; hurt, but never injury. Natural instinct

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keeps the police of the animals as perfect as gravita- tion keeps order in the sky. No wild bull ever op- presses the herd of bulls that he rules over; his administration is perfectly constitutional; the politics of the herd are all made for them. God is the legis- lative, judiciary, executive power; the cattle are only tools, factors always, agents never. No wild swine is a glutton; he is as temperate as a vegetarian. With the animals, from the smallest emmet to the largest mastodon, death is but a momentary pang; it is not thought of before it comes in sight; the loss of asso- ciates is soon forgot. Family union is provisional, no more, not final; a brief conjunction, not permanent, of life-long affection. So is the parental instinct ; it is a fact for the season, no more. If a snow-storm in April destroys the robins by bushels, as it has done the last month in New York, the survivors do not go into mourning; the next fair, warm day brings out the same sweet carol as before ; the Golgotha of robins echoes with the melodious twitter of the unreflecting birds ; they pair anew, and build their procreant nests ; no memento mori stares them in the face ; their coun- tenance is never " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." In all the animal world, nervous activity, sensitiveness, is perfectly balanced by the power of muscular endurance. All the laws of nature are made for them, and all are kept. Their characters are not their work any more than the uniform color of their skin. They ask not if Duty's eye be on them.

There is no morality, no immorality, no doubt, no remorse. All is the work of Providence. It seems as if it were very fortunate to have your character made for you, your condition insured in your instincts. And it is the good fortune of the beasts ; their lot has

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fallen to them in pleasant places, and the arms of the great God are about the hairy or the feathered crea- tures, the winged, or the finned, or the creeping things that He has made.

In the world of man it is altogether different. While the beasts have their paradise around them, made beforehand, man's paradise is before him. Theirs is to be passively enjoyed; man's is to be created by himself, and then actively enjoyed. The beast's char- acter is his nature, in its instinctive development. Man is to make his character out of his nature ; not by instinctive action alone, but by reflective, volun- tary action as well. God is sole providence to the dog, the bear, and the lion. Man is partly his own provi- dence, working with God, who has taken man into that partnership, to share the higher risk, and to share the profit. The individual beast is progressive only from birth to his adult years ; there he stops ; the lion is no more in the nineteenth century after Christ than he was in the nineteenth century before Christ. The family of beasts has no progress of the species.

" Such as creation's dawn beheld, such are they now."

Man advances continually. No man is full-grown. Jesus will not be called good ; his ideal haunts him and shames his actual. The cat and dog and ox kind are fast moored by Providence in the same harbor; the fleet of animals rides at anchor all their life ; but man- kind looses from port and sails the sea with God, driven by every wind, voyaging to other shores and continents continually new. " Nothing venture, noth- ing have."

Why is it so.? Why did God, while binding nature fast in fate, set free the human will.^ I know not.

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This I do know; out of His infinite wisdom and love, He confers the greatest possible blessing on beast and man. He gave to the beasts what was best for them. Unprogressive here, who knows that they shall not be progressive likewise in some hereafter that waits for the emmet and the lion.^^ God made man for a higher lot; the beast to have his condition insured in his instinct, man to produce his condition. It is good fortune for the beast to be found — to man it is a great blessing that he is left to make — his char- acter.

THE FALSE IDEA OF MAN A HINDRANCE TO HIS

PROGRESS

I know of no cause which so cripples mankind in Christendom as the false doctrine that he can of him- self do nothing, and be nothing ; that he must not trust his very highest faculties in their moral activity ; that his righteousness is as filthy rags. This doctrine runs through Christian literature, and stains the hymns, ser- mons, and prayers of many an able, educated, and well-meaning minister, who stands in his pulpit and manipulates and magnetizes his hearers into a numb palsy of the soul./

Nobody can surpass mankind with impunity ; he who does so must pay for it.

man's PROGRESS NOT BY MIRACLE, BUT BY THE USE OF NATURAL FORCES

Rome was not built in a day. In all affairs, time is an important element. The " Great Eastern " was long in building, and long in getting launched. In much time, and for much time, are all great things done.

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Slowly and tranquilly the productive works of nature go on. God's infinite power works slow, alike in the world of matter and the world of man ; nothing by leaps, all by steps, never a miracle, ever a law. How long was the earth in getting fit for plants, animals, men ! How slow grow up the trees ! Within ten miles of us there is a grove of oaks which, brooded by the ground, had left the shell before Columbus was a boy ; they are growing still, and I gathered acorns from them last autumn. How slowly the human race achieves its destination, little by little. You and I are hasty, and want the end without the means ; we cry out, " How long, O Lord.? " But that Infinite Power, so terrible when considered as bljnd fate, so dear and beautiful when known as wise Providence, says never a word in human speech, but does continually, in fact, in much time, and for all time. All things have a slant I , forward, but a gradual and slight one. Israel is a little in advance of Egypt, Greece of Israel, the Roman Church of the Hebrew or heathen, the German of the Roman, and the American has already got a little beyond any European church. Whatever excellence one generation gains, after it all generations keep. Continually is God speaking to men, hearing, under- standing, remembering, for all time, — ever-giving God, ever-taking man. Through you and me doth Causal Power create forever, and through us doth the same Providential Power conserve forever what is good.

As we look forward, how dull and slow time seems. From the now of desire to the then of satisfaction, the road looks long; and what a heavy-footed creature is this dull beast of Nature !

XI— 19

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" How slow the year's dull circle seems to run, When the bright minor pants for twenty-one !"

To the school-girl how long are the last six days be- fore Christmas ; to the politician how interminable the week before election, while he cannot tell who shall be governor. Some prophetic patriot looks on America, and has his brilliant hope: he sees the day when demo- crats shall live democracy ; there shall be no bondsmen then, white or black ; drunkenness and ignorance will be taken away, and want and crime, bereft of these ugly parents, in whose shadow they walk, will also be dead and gone ; the children of Irish beggars, now shod by your charity, and fed by the crumbs from lavish or parsimonious tables, will boast of " Our Puritanic Fathers," for the Celtic blood will have become mingled with the Saxon, as Angle, Norman, and Dane have mixed their blood before, which runs now in your humanity and mine; then the Ethiopian shall have changed his skin, and the African, baptized by our covetousness as slave, shall come white out of the American Jordan, clean as Naaman of old from his leprosy, and the scar of the fetter and lash be no more visible on the bondsman's child than the stain of Anglo- Saxon, Norman, Danish piracy marks your face or mine. Our patriot sees that good time coming when the war of business shall be changed into industrial peace, the co-operation of toil and thought, and as great a blessing thence follow to mankind as now there is from the present diminution of war and ceas- ing of religious persecution. The ideal hovers over our patriot's head, and he wonders when this bird of paradise shall light and build her spicy nest, and rear her young, to beautify the air with such celestial sight and sound. " How long? " cries he, " O Lord, how

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long? How slow the ages roll! Why is his chariot so long in coming? " and he would fain have a miracle, and God do in a moment what it will take mankind a hundred or a thousand years to work out. But the Infinite God makes no miracle, trusting America's des- tination to the great human civilizing forces which are concentrated in the men of America, and the circum- stances which girt her round. Why should God miraculously put forward the hands on the great dial- plate of eternity? The hour will strike in time; the machinery, never so complicated, is yet perfect, and will do its work just at the hour.

Two thousand years ago that great religious genius, the manliest man of manly men, whom Christendom yet worships as its God, uttered his grand Beatitudes, and foresaw what would be, what must be, when the Golden Rule of man's nature, and so of God's, shall be- come the carpenter's square, the trader's yard-stick, the rule by which the merchant shall straighten his col- umns and regulate his accounts. On the two com- mandments, love to God, and love to man, were to hang not only all the law and the prophets, but the church, state, community, family, man and woman. When he saw all this, I do not wonder that he thought God would intervene and miraculously aid the work at once. The Old Testament poetry told him of miracles ; that, as the Israelites fled from Egypt, the Red sea opened and closed ; that the rocks, moved with compassion, shed water for the people's thirsty mouths ; that the quails flew to their camp and fed them, and filled the place round about a yard deep with their meat ; that for forty years the heavens rained manna down, and fed them with angels' bread; that the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up wicked men. In such

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an age, when men fancied that God wrought out His great designs only by intervening with a miracle, I wonder not that such a man, so born, with such genius in him, so bred, with such deference to the miraculous, should say, " This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled ; " " There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom ; " " Therefore take no thought for the morrow ; " and, " Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you ; " — miraculously added, for God, who took thought for the ravens, would take more thought for them. And when he saw his schemes fail, that Jerusalem, which he would have folded to his heart, persecuted the prophets, and turned also against him, when the scribes and Pharisees mocked at him, and spit on him, and crucified him, I wonder not that he broke out, " My God ! my God ! why hast thou forsaken me?" — and yet there came the wiser thought, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Some years later, when the young wife gathered up the dead limbs of her husband, and folded her babies to her breast, or when, still more common, the husband himself was baptized in the blood of his martyred wife, • — woman runs before that other disciple and in all matters of the heart and soul comes soonest to the end, — I do not wonder that men and women expected miracles, and said, " The world must end if men suffer this much longer; eternity shall take the place of time, and we who suffer under the lash shall judge angels." I do not wonder they thought so. But it was not so to be. The old constant mode of operation still went on, with never a miraculous act of the primeval power.

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never break in the long continuity of man's historic march, from Adam to Jesus, and from Jesus down. The force that God put into mankind, that was suffi- cient to do the work in time, and time was part of the plan. That grand idea of Jesus, his kingdom of heaven on earth, as he called it sometimes, which he thought so close at hand, turned out to be only an ideal which hovered over men's heads, and has led the way through many a red sea of war, over many a dry and thirsting wilderness, and still our feet come not yet to that promised land : for that kingdom of heaven is not to be given by God's instantaneous miracle, but to be won by man's continual thought and toil; not found, but to be made, and the making of it is worth as much as the enjoying it when it shall be made.

This is indispensable to the religious education of mankind, and if the desire of Jesus and the early Chris- tians could have been brought about, if the Son of Man could have come in his glory, and men could have been clothed like the ravens, and fed as these flowers from the natural ground and sky, — it would have been all over with man, the poor creature would have dwindled and peaked and pined from off the earth. He was not made so to be treated. So is it in all the great affairs of man, in the march of humanity, where- unto Divine Providence is leader, marshaling us to battles we could not shun, and to victories we dreamed not of. Then when it is over, we see it were not well for Divine Providence to interfere, and by a moment's miracle give mankind what He offers us as the recom- pense of toil and thought for many an age. The prophecy of Jesus, and the prayers of the Christian martyrs and their worse martyred friends, are not ful-

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filled by miracle, but, better yet, the Paradise of God achieves itself by mankind's normal work.

POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL OYER CIRCUM- STANCES

The power of human nature by will to make new circumstances out of human instinct is greater far than the power to change matter into tools for human work. In 1614, when Captain John Smith coasted New Eng- land, what a country it was ! — its features grim with rocks, its face shaggy with woods, hoarse with the voices of the wild winds, wild beasts, and wilder men. Now what a change, from the roar of the forest to the murmur of the city ! But this human New Eng- land of to-day differs from the human New England of 1614, more than the material New England of this day differs from the material New England of that.

What if some Captain John Smith could have coasted the human world, thirty, or forty, or only twenty thousand years ago, and made a chart of the coast of mankind, set down the attainments of human experience, and recorded the soundings of human con- sciousness. Why, what a world of man he would have found ! — man with only instinct, naked in body, naked in mind; without a house or tools, without experience of art, without law or religion, without manners or language ; a brute and silent herd of men, subordinate to the forces of material nature, frozen by the north, burned by the south, scared by thunder, devoured by beasts ; men with no state, no church, no community, no marriage ; men in herds, as fear or instinct gathered them ; men in droves, as some hooting giant scared them together. He would have found the young protected only by the descending instinct of mankind, the child

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often a victim to his mother's caprice, the father sac- rificing his cub when startled by a dream, hke Abra- ham in the Old Testament. He would have found the old men and women left to the weak mercies of the ascending instinct, often left to perish, and some- times slain in most dire extremity.

Then let him come and coast the world anew, sur- veying the headlands of human experience, and sound- ing the deeps of human consciousness, and he finds that New England has tamed the world of matter, has or- ganized human nature. Mind mixed with the Con- necticut is a mill ; mixed with iron is a railroad or a boat ; mixed with lightning is a carrier-boy from land to land. Reason mixed with human instinct makes a greater change. Mind joined with passion is a family; conscience joined with instinct is society; am- bition united with mind and conscience is a state. The family, community, and state are the most mar- velous visible tools of man. The school is the garden for the intellect, the college is the greenhouse for the nicer intellectual plants, which are tropical as yet, and cannot bear the world's cold atmosphere. But nature is a great nursery for the mind, the conscience, the affections, and the soul ; and the minister should be a seedsman and florist, a nursery-gardener of the spirit, seeking all the world over for the choicest seeds and nicest scions to sow or graft, continually get- ting new varieties of good to make the world blossom with. A home is the choice garden bower of the world, where two vines, which have wooed one another out from all the world, twine together, tendril and clasper and branch and stem, till the two flame into one prophetic bloom.

Man's power over nature is immense, by its laws to

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make new circumstances that shall favor him. See the results in the annual crop of tools, cattle, com. But the power of human nature over human instinct is immenser still, by its laws to make new circumstan- ces, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and political. See the results thereof in the annual crop of truth, of justice, of love, of religion. In 1864 England raised an iron crop which weighed two million of tons. What was it to the crop of justice which England raised that j^ear, which emancipated eight hundred thousand men? Material circumstances must affect men for good or ill ; that is the law of God. But He has so made the world that when man knows what circumstances favor his body or spirit, he can himself then create them, and use the material world as a great inclined plane to slope upward from the savage to the saint.

THE NECESSITY FOR AN IDEAL

The difference between the ideal and the actual per- vades all self -respectful earnest work. It is only the young bantam of poets who is wholly satisfied with the frivolous rhymes he throws forth, the penny-a-liner who is contended with the jingle of his thin and empty verses ; while the lofty bard, whom all the Muses crown with their ninefold wreath of loveliness, is worn with disquiet, and vexed with care, to tend the sacred fire committed to his charge. Only the sign-dauber is satisfied with the Washingtons and Franklins he pil- lories for the public eye; but to Angelo's vision a greater Moses looked out from the marble and shamed his sculpture ; and a fairer Madonna smiled above every Virgin Raphael drew. No institution ever comes up to its ideal, it only draws near to it. How self-respect- ful Paul rates the churches he founded! How Crom-

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well chides the parliament of his day ! How the stem Puritans of New England rebuked the churches, for their pride and self-conceit and unwillingness to en- dure for the truth's sake ! It is a pleasing sight to see men doing well, but not content to let well alone, impatient to do better ; to see nations doing so, reform- ing their constitutions, revolutionizing the first ideas of their government to get nearer the ideal. I take little interest in a man who knows nothing of this struggle, with no ideal, who makes no more progress in the world than the Rock of Gibraltar or the Colossus of Rhodes. King David is the most interesting of all the Hebrew kings, not merely on account of the su- perior genius of his character, but because we see the battle between his ideal of a perfect man and the ugly fact which he knew his life to be. This having an ideal, better than the fact, to struggle for, I say, is natural and indispensable to a man who respects him- self, is earnest, and trusts his God.

DEATH A BLESSING TO MAN

It is a good thing for a man to be bom into the flesh, and wear it awhile, and after he has done his work it is a good thing for him to be born out of the flesh, and live elsewhere; and if we live natural lives, we shall one day be glad to die out of the body, and shall only regret that fact because we leave our friends grieving with some natural tears in their eyes.

What a world it would be if nobody died ! How old- fashioned, and conservative, and bigoted it would be- come! The very babies would be born old-fashioned children, and no man would be permitted to marry until a thousand years old, nor allowed to vote till one and twenty hundred. If the majority of voters were three

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or four hundred years old, what progress would be pos- sible ? Tubal Cain — to borrow him from the Old Testament — would object to all improvements in the iron manufacture, because he must learn something new ; and Noah to all improvements in ship-building ; and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be opposing agricultural societies, and Samuel prohibiting any amendment of the constitution, and Job's friend Elihu would think nobody wise but old men ; the prophets, even the most radical of them, would turn out to be nothing but priests, and old reformers would have gone to seed, and be as bearded and prickly and grim as thistles in September. Even the saints would be as odious as the mummies now are ; and ancient fine ladies, remembering to have waltzed with Nebuchadnezzar, aired themselves at the opening of the Hanging Gar- dens, assisted at the consecration of the first Pyramids, or talked ancient Egyptian with the first dynasty of kings, would be putting down all rival aspiring beau- ties, just blossoming out of new buds, fair as truth, and welcome as liberty. God be thanked that we are bom, and also that in due time we pass out of this world, and carry to that brighter sphere a few grains of goodness gathered here.

THE FOUNDERS OF NEW ENGLAND THE TRUE

WAY TO HONOR THEM

From 1600 to 1700 there were great discoveries. Electricity and the circulation of the blood were found out ; telescopes and thermometers were invented. There were a few great men writing great books, — Galileo, Keplar, Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Locke ; mighty men crowded into a single century. But the greatest work done in that century was that of the Puritan setting his

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foot in New England. Suppose New England had been peopled with men of no higher principles than peopled Cuba or Carolina or Georgia, — what would America be ? For two hundred years it has incessantly been making proclamation of the results of this work. Well, all that could be done by men with nothing but the fear of God, with no faith in Him as the Infinite Father, but with faith in him as a King, with but little faith in man, by men afraid of human nature, afraid of the devil, and afraid of God. Their heroism was exceedingly imperfect. They re-enacted the tyranny they fled from. The heroism of love they knew noth- ing of. They did not love the red man, nor the black man. They did not love their God; they feared Him, and swore they would keep His law.

We reverence the founders of New England. It is better to have been born of that stock than of kings and nobles. How shall we honor them ? Not by pray- ing their prayers and believing their creeds. The times call on us for a nobler heroism than that, — for the heroism of men who reverence God as the Infinite Father. Man is His highest work. Fidelity to our whole nature is our own highest duty. It is not the heroism of fear, — the time for that has gone by, — but it is the heroism of love. You and I are not called on to leave father and mother for religion's sake, only to be faithful to our own soul and to be true to our God, come what may. But there is as much de- mand for heroism of spirit now as ever, only the duty is not so difficult, and no man perils his life, only his respectability. To the heroism of our fathers, in highest reverence, let us add the nobler virtues, the heroism of love, which works not with pike and gun, but with firm justice and patience. Let us build our

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fathers' monument, not of marble, but of men, build- ing a Church on faith in the Infinite Father, and faith in man as the true son of God; our State on the unchanging justice of the Father and the inalienable rights of man ; our society on the golden platform of mutual respect, forbearance, and love ; our individual character on free piety, free goodness, and free thought ; — and we shall carry on the work which our fathers began, and some two hundred and thirty years after us there will be a long track across the world, where the grass is greener and the flowers fairer and more fragrant, because our feet have trod the soil. Then men shall say of us, — " Poor and humble men, they saw but a few things. They reverenced their fa- thers, but they did not hug their bones ; they were true to their own consciousness, and all the world is better because these men have been."

THE PROPHECY OF THE PAST TO THE FUTURE

What has been done in the last half -century is a great achievement looked at as history, — we may thank God for that, — but I had rather look at it as proph- ecy. The progress in material things in America, the increase in power over nature throughout the Christian world, the rapidity of communication, the desire for freedom of body and soul, the improvements in political institutions and ideas, the progress in the churches, and of the laws, and in the great philanthropies of our time, — these to me are a prophecy of a nobler triumph of mankind, a greater victory of religion than the highest sages ever dared to foretell in their inspired oracles. They all point to a time when man shall be deemed the noblest of God's works, and shall have do- minion over nature, and shall develop his spirit to the

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fulness of the stature of a perfect man. They point to a society where the quahties of a man shall be deemed more and greater than the property of a man, a society where the strong shall help the weak; to a Church where respect is paid to human nature, where man reverences the free spiritual individuality of man, where God is worshiped as the Infinite Father, not with fear, but with love ; where religion is confessed to be free piety, free goodness, free thought ; where nature, material and human, is recognized as the Scrip- ture of God ; where truth is the creed, and faith and works are the two great forms of communion with God and man ; a Church which, like this great soul of Christ, goes to seek and save that which is lost, and under him sees Satan falling as lightning out of heaven ; to a State whose statutes recognize the unalien- able rights of all men to life, liberty, property, to a free development of their nature, a State whose law is justice, and the welfare of the negro's child is as care- fully cared for as the welfare of the whole State, and any insult offered to it by a man is as promptly re- dressed as an insult by a nation to the majesty of the State. Yes, I think history points to a world where the nations shall learn war no more, nor count men of other speech as strangers, but shall seek to make a Christian world where nations shall dwell together, one great family, in love and peace. All this must come. Ideas which are now but sentiments, which are nothing but a tendency, will one day be a fact ; as Christ's Sermon on the Mount, they will make a new literature. Church, State, and world; they will make all things new.

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THE NEXT HALF-CENTURY

This is the first Sunday of a half-century. We stand on the confines of two ages. The men who fought the Revolution are dead, and the harvest of their labors is about us ; their memory is in our hearts ; let them pass on with our blessing only. The last year has brought us joy, and it has brought us grief. Some of you during its progress have found a fitting mate, and have rejoiced in the dear name of husband and wife. Some of you have felt the breath of your first- born, and by this sweet tie have been linked to this world. Others have laid down in the grave husband or wife, parent or child, or dearest and most heart- beloved friend. Joys and sorrows have come, — what have they done for us.^* Have they made us better.'' Have they made us worse.? That is the question, — not what we have had, but what we have earned and made out of it. The time that God has given us, how have we woven it into a life?

How few of these here to-day saw the beginning of the last half-century ! Only a few venerable heads, which I see gladly before my eyes. How few of us will see the close of the next ! Not one in ten of us all. God will send down His blessed angel of death to carry us, year by year, heavenward to Himself. Only some of these little ones will remember that they heard the half- century ushered in by one whose name will be forgot- ten then in the crowd of wiser and better and more enlightened men who will come after me and take my place. But of us all, how few there be who fifty years hence can look back on this day and remember these flowers ! To such persons I would say. Remem- ber the prophecy which I have got out of these last

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fifty years, and be faithful to that ; and then fifty years hence teach the young children to prophesy as fairly for the next half -century to come. Long ere this century shall end, I and most of you will have gone home to our God. We may carry good report ; before we go, we may achieve a noble manhood. How much we can do in a year! How much of wisdom, of justice, of good- ness, and of holiness, we can gain in ten years ! What cubits we can add to our stature ! The end of life is to be a man; all other things, marriage, paternity, joy, sorrow, are only means ; that is the end. Joy will come to you. Every year will bring sorrow. Will you complain of that.^ Does not the same God give us winter and summer.? How beautifully can we use them both! How nobly we can build up ourselves, how blessedly our families ! You and I can help accom- plish that prophecy, can help form that Christian society, church, state, and world, whereof I have spoken; and in 1901, though the snow lie on our for- gotten grave, we shall be at peace, gone home to our Father in the kingdom of heaven, amid joys and satis- factions which the eye has not seen nor the ear heard, and which the heart of man has not conceived of; and though the snow rest on our unrecorded grave, and our name be forgotten, we can leave a world behind us that is better and fairer and holier because we have lived in it; and rising to our own stature, we shall have taught little children to rise to a stature greater than our own, and by their Christianity to shame the poor religion which you and I have learned to live.

IX

JESUS OF NAZARETH

THE CHARACTER OF JESUS

It is plain that Jesus was a man of large intellectual character. He had an uncommon understanding, was clear in his sight, shrewd in his judgment, extraor- dinarily subtle in his arguments, coming to the point with the quickness of lightning. What an eye he had for the beauty of nature, — the little things under his feet, the great things all about him ; for cities set on a hill, and for the heavens over his head! What an eye for the beauty of the relations of things ! He saw a meaning in the salt without savor, with which men were mending the streets, not fit even for the dunghill, — and what a lesson he drew from it ! He saw the beauty of relation in the lilies, clad by God in more beauty than kingly Solomon ; in the ravens, who gather not into storehouses and barns, and yet the great Father feeds and shelters them under His own godly wings. He had reason also which saw intuitively the great universal law of man's nature. And as the result of this three- fold intellect, he had an eloquence which held crowds of men about him till they forgot hunger, thirst, and weariness, even the drawing on of night. He had a power of reasoning which sent away the scholarly Pharisee, who had journeyed all the way from Jerusa- lem to confute this peasant. His eloquence was quite peculiar. His mind full of great ideas, his heart aflame with noble sentiments, — he knew how to put these into the homeliest words, and yet give them the most lovely and attractive shape. In that common

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speech, religion was the text, his commentary was the salt without savor, the raven flying over his head, the lilies-of-the-valley, the grass, dried in the sun yester- day, to-day heating the earthen vessel whereon a poor woman clapped her unbaked bread ; it was the tower of Siloam, which fell on men not worse than the sur- vivors ; it was the temple, the great idol of the nation, of which should be left not one stone upon another: all these were his commentaries. It was no vulgar mind that could weave such things into common speech in a moment, and make the heavens come down, and the earth come up, — with marvelous rapidity and instinctive skill, seizing and using every implement that might serve as a medium between his heavenly thought and the understandings of common men. When he spoke, some said that it thundered ; some said that an angel spoke ; and some said it was the elo- quence of genius. Studying in the schools makes nothing like it.

Then there is this peculiarity about his Intellect. In reading the first three Gospels, you find in him a mind which does not so much generalize by a copious induction from a great many facts ; but it sees the law, as a woman sees it, from a very few principles. And so there is less of philosophical talent than of philosophical genius. You are surprised more at the nice quality of this intellect, than at its great quantity. On this account he anticipated experience. There is not a single word in the three Gospels which betrays the youth of Jesus. You would all say, — Behold a full- grown man, long familiar with the ways of men. You would never think he was a young man, scarce thirty years old. But I do not say you find in Jesus at thirty

the immense philosophical reason which marks Socrates, XI— 20

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Aristotle, and Bacon at sixty or seventy, in the ma- turity of their wisdom; nor would I say that you find such monuments of imagination as you meet at every step in Milton, Shakespeare, or Dante ; nor that you find such a vast and comprehensive understanding as you meet in the practical managers of states and empires. The thing would not be possible. In the Old Testament you find the writings of some men of distinguished ability, — the author of the Book of Job, of various parts of the Book of Proverbs, of Ecclesiasticus, of Ecclesiastes, of the Wisdom of Sol- omon, of the Prophecy of Isaiah. They were men of very large intellect, old, familiar with men, had seen peace and instituted war, knew the ways of the market- house and of kings' courts. In comparison, the words of Jesus, a Nazarene peasant, only thirty years old, are fully up to the highest level of their writings. You never feel that he was inferior to them in intellec- tual grasp.

Now the common idea that Jesus received this intel- lectual power from miraculous inspiration destroys all the individuality of his character, — for it makes him God, or else a mere pipe on which God plays. In either case there is nothing human about it, and it is of no use to us.

But his greater greatness came not from the intel- lect, but from a higher source. It is eminence of con- science, heart and soul ; in one word, it is religious eminence. Here are the proofs of it : He makes re- ligion consist in piety and morality, not in belief in forms, not in outside devotion. He knew it is a very easy thing to be devout after the common fashion, as easy to make prayers as to fill your hand with dust from the street. Was it a little thing in Jesus to

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declare that religion consisted in piety and morality? All the world over, the priests made religion to con- sist in forms, rituals, mutilating the body and spirit, in attending to artificial ordinances. Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets in love to God and love to man. Men worshiped the Sabbath; he religiously broke it. They thought God loved only the Jew, and above all some Jewish priest, with bells on his gar- ments ; but he set up a traveling Samaritan as the religious man. What a gnashing of teeth there was in the Jerusalem Association when he said the Samari- tan was a great man ! Doubtless it was a story founded on fact, — some good-natured Samaritan, jog- ging on his donkey from Jerusalem to Jericho, seeing the poor man, and giving him his sympathy and aid. It took a man of great religious genius to say that two thousand years ago ; it is a rare thing to compre- hend it to-day. See the same thing in his love of the wicked. He went to cure the sick; not to cure the righteous, and save the well. His sympathy was with the oppressed and trodden down, and very practical sympathy it was too. The finest picture of an ideal gentleman which antiquity has left is contained in the Book of Job. But Job's ideal gentleman is very proud, overbearing to man beneath him. " Their fathers," said he, " I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." The Book of Job is one of the best in the Old Testament, — full of poetry, which is a small thing ; and full of piety and morality, which is a great thing. This is the limitation of that ideal gentleman. Now Jesus goes out to that despised class of men, and says he came to seek and save them. Was that a small thing? Even to-day, in democratic Bos- ton, to be a minister to the poor is a reproach. He

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is esteemed the most fortunate minister who is minis- tered unto, and not who ministers. The man who in Boston gathers crowds of men from the common walks of Hf e, — what is he called ? " A preacher to the rab- ble,"— that is the ecclesiastical title. What was it in the old civilization two thousand years ago, — a civili- zation controlled by priests and soldiers, who had a sword to offer to the beggar and the slave, and who looked with haughty scorn, like Aristotle and Cicero, on men who got their bread by the work of their hand ?

The third thing was his trust in God. The Hebrews were and are more remarkable for their faith in God than any other nation that ever lived. In this, Jesus was a Hebrew of Hebrews, the most eminent of his tribe in this vast quality. But witness that his faith was in a God who loved all men, in the God who went out to meet the prodigal, and met him a great way off, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and was more joy- ous over one sinner that repented than over ninety-nine that needed no repentance. The first Gospel does not understand this, and therefore denies the width of Je- sus' faith in God, and makes him limit his ministry to his own nation ; but the second and third Gospels put it beyond a doubt.

Now the impression that he has made on the world, the character of his influence, the opinion which the human race has formed of him, — all confirm this judg- ment, derived from the historical record of his words and works. It seems to me that his actual character was higher than the character assigned to Jehovah in the Old Testament, to Zeus in Greece, or Jupiter in Rome. He made a revolution in the idea of God, and himself went up and took the throne of the world.

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That was a step in progress ; and if called upon to worship the Jehovah of the Old Testament, or Jesus of Nazareth, a plain man, as he is painted in the first three Gospels, I should not hesitate, I should worship my brother; for in the highest qualities this actual man is superior to men's conception of God. He loves men of all nations, is not angry with the wicked every day; hating sin, he has the most womanly charity for the sinner. Jesus turned the heathen gods out of the heathen heaven, because he was more God than they; and he ascended the throne of Jehovah, because in his life he gave more proof of justice and love than Je- hovah, as He is represented in the Old Testament. Let us not be harsh; let us not blame men for wor- shiping the creature more than the Creator. They saw the Son higher than the Father, and they did right. The popular adoration of Jesus to-day is to me the best thing in the popular ecclesiastical re- ligion.

But I do not believe in the perfection of Jesus, that he had no faults of character, was never mistaken, never angry, never out of humor, never dejected, never despairing. I do not believe that from his cradle to his cross he never did, nor said, nor felt, nor thought, a wrong thing. To say that was his character, I think would be as absurd as to say that he learned to walk without stumbling, or to talk without stammering, or could see as well at three hours old as at twelve years, and could reason as well at thirty days as at thirty years. God does not create monsters, he creates men. I cannot say that in his popular teachings there are no errors. It seems to me very plain that he taught the existence of a devil ; that he ascribed evil qualities to God, wrath that would not sleep at the Day of Judg-

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ment ; that he believed in eternal torment. His predic- tion that the world would soon be destroyed, and that the Son of Man would come back in the clouds of heaven, and that this should take place during the life of men then living, was obviously a mistake. So with the promise of temporal power to the twelve apostles. All this shows the limitations of the man. Men claim that Jesus had no error in his creed or his life, no defect in his character. Then of course he is not a man, but God Himself, or a bare pipe on which God plays ; and in either case there was no virtue, no warn- ing, no example in the man. And I think that Jesus would be the last man in the world ever to have claimed the exemption that is claimed for him by the clergy in all Christian lands. I know that what I say is a great heresy.

The coming of such a man was of the greatest im- portance to mankind. He showed a higher type of manliness than the world had ever seen before, or men deemed possible. There was manly intellect joined with womanly conscience and affection and soul; there was manhood and womanhood united into one great humanhood of character. Men were shut up in na- tionalities. He looked at humanity ; all men were as brothers. Men looked out at some old conception of a God, who once spoke on Sinai, and who said His last word years ago. He told them there was a living God, numbering the hairs of their head, loving the eighteen men whom the tower of Siloam slew, and just as ready to inspire the humblest fisherman by the Gahlean lake as Moses. He found men undertaking to serve God by artificial rites and ceremonies, sacri- fices, fast days, feast days; and he bade them serve him by daily piety and morality; and, if they could

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not find the way, he walked before and showed them, — this was the greatest thing that could be done.

I think that Jesus of Nazareth was greater than the Evangelists supposed him to be. They valued him for his miraculous birth and works, because he was the He- brew Messiah. I do not believe his miraculous birth and works, I am sure he was not the Hebrew Messiah. I should not think him any better for being miracu- lously born ; the common birth is good enough for mankind. I think the Christian churches greatly un- derrate Jesus. They make his death his great merit. To be willing to spend a few hours in dying for man- kind,— what is that ? We must all meet death ; if not to-day, some other day, and to spend a few hours in dying is a trifle any day ; for a few dollars a month, and a bit of bunting with stripes on it, you may hire men any day for that. But to be a man with such a character as that, possessed of such a masculine quan- tity of intellect, and of such a womanly quality, with such a feminine affection and soul, — I would rather be that than be a dozen Hebrew Messiahs wrought into one. To teach men that religion was piety and mo- rality, and what belonged to them ; to tell them that religion was not for Saturday only, but for Sunday, Monday, and every day ; for the fireside and the way- side; to live that religion, merciful to the merciless, hating sin with all his character, but loving the sinner with all his heart ; able as the ablest-minded, but shed- ding his sunlight on the dark places of the earth, — I would rather be such a man than a hundred incarna- tions of the Olympian Jove. Men vastly underrate the character of Jesus in looking to make him a God. They have forgotten the mighty manhood which burned in that Galilean breast.

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This was the cause of his success. He was a great man, and of the highest kind of greatness ; not without faults, but the manhest of men ; not without errors in his doctrine, as it has been reported. He called men off from a dead Deity to a living God, from artificial sacraments to natural piety and morality. He preached natural religion, gave men a new sight of humanity. It was too great for them. The first generation said he was a devil, and slew him ; the next said he was a God, and worshiped him. He was not a God, but a man showing us the way to God; not saving us by his death, but leading us by his life; crucified between two other malefactors, as the Scrip- ture tells, buried secretly at night, and now worshiped as God.

Though almost two thousand years have passed by, Christendom has not yet got high enough to reverence the Galilean peasant who was our brother. We honor his death, but not his life ; look to him to save us in our sins, not to save us from them. Men call him ''Master," and scorn his lesson, "Lord," and reject the religion which he taught, — to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep a life un- spotted from the world.

I look on Jesus as the highest product of the human race. I honor intellectual greatness ; I bend my neck to Socrates, and Newton, and Laplace, and Hegel, and Kant, and the vast minds of our own day. But what are they all, compared with this greatness of justice, greatness of philanthropy, greatness of religion? Why, they are as nothing ! I look on Jesus not only as a historical prophet, but as a prophetic foretelling. He shows what is in you and me, and only comes as the earliest flower of the spring comes, to tell us that

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summer is near at hand. Amid the Caesars, the Max- imuses, the Herculeses, the Vishnus, the Buddhas, and the Jehovahs, who have been successively the objects of the earthly or heavenly worship of men, Jesus comes out as these fair flowers come in the wintry hour, tokens of a summer yet to come, of the tropic realms, where all this beauty blossoms all the year. I thank God for the history which Jesus is ! I thank Him more for the prophecy which he is!

THE JESUS OF FACT AND THE CHRIST OF FANCY

The Jesus of Nazareth who sums up religion in piety and morality, and goes about healing the sick, who brings good tidings to the poor, who violates old rituals, teaching men to have faith in the actual God, who is as much alive to-day as he ever was, and as ready to inspire men, — what a difference between him and the Christ of Fancy in the popular churches of Christendom ! There is not a great sect in the whole world where Jesus of Nazareth would be thought a great Christian ; not one where he would not be deemed the chief est of infidels. How widely have the popular churches departed from the historic fact of Jesus ! Each sect and country has its Christ of Fancy. The Roman Christ of Fancy loves the pope, and says, ** Confess yourselves, hear mass, reverence the priest ! Do not read the Bible." The Protestant Christ of Fancy says, " Call no man master ; all are brothers ! Search the Scriptures 1 He that believeth and is bap- tized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned ! " The Russian Christ of Fancy blesses the Autocrat, bids him fight the Turk, etc. The French Christ of Fancy approves Napoleon, and bids the people give him their necks. The English Christ of

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Fancy establishes the Episcopal Church, upholds the nobility and gentry, and allows the people to perish. The American Christ of Fancy is a kidnapper, and would send back his mother to slavery to preserve the Union. The politician's Christ of Fancy would have religion kept out of politics, lest it make men mad.

What is the meaning of all this, — the honor which men seek to bestow on Christ.^ Jesus of Nazareth was more than they think it possible for man to be, and so they call him God. The miracles they tell about are only the flowers that bloom beside his pathway, the palm branches and garments men strew before him. Nay, he was more than they thought God could be, and so they made him God.

What an encouragement is his character, his life, his honor amongst men ! His highest thought is still the prayer of the best, his life their model. The carpenter of Nazareth has routed all the gods of Olympus, overturned their temples, banished them from the earth. To the highest conception of God men had, they have now added the gentleness and love of Christ, and so enriched their idea of God. But the same inspiration that filled his soul waits for you and me now. The same history with mankind is for us all, for every truth we teach shall pass into the world's life, our justice be incarnated into its institutions, and every noble thing we have got in advance of mankind shall be added to the popular conception of God, and our earth also shall ascend to heaven. The mem- ory of Jesus is still with us ; his history is the world's greatest encouragement. But where does he dwell .f^

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" Think ye, in these portentous times

Of wrath, and hate, and wild distraction, Christ dwells within a church that rests A comfortable, cold abstraction?

He stands where earnest minds assert

God's law against a creed dogmatic. And from dead symbols free the truth

Of which they once were emblematic.

He is where patriots pine in cells.

To felons chained, or, faint and gory, Ascend the scaffold steps, to leave

Their children's heritage of glory.

He is where men of fire-touch'd lips

Tell, to astonish'd congregations. The infamies that prop a crown,

And paint in blood the wrongs of nations.

He cries : ' On, brethren, draw the sword. Loose the bold pen and tongue, unfearing,

The weakness of our human flesh Is ransom'd by your persevering ! ' "

THE MISSION OF JESUS

What did Jesus come for? To seek and to save that which was lost, not to destroy it ; and to lose his own life, not to save it. His great ability of intellect separated him from the sympathy of his age. The controlling men could no more understand him than an oyster could follow an eagle in his flight through the sky. His motives were beyond their comprehen- sion. Men commonly sought the society of the rich and great ; he that of the poor and lowly. They as- sociated with the famous and respectable ; he was the friend of publicans and sinners. There were able men enough about Jerusalem, seeking for ease, honor, respectability, and money. I find no fault with them

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for that; they sought the best things they were ac- quainted with. He sought to serve and bless mankind. He asked his daily bread, no more ; no service, honor, fame, and would not be called Master, though he was master of them all ; he would not be called good even. See what kind of persons he held up as models to man- kind : the despised Samaritan, who went out of his way to do good to a national enemy, whom his nation hated, and did it after the man's own countrymen had passed by, and left him half dead ; the poor and hated publican, who dared not lift up his eyes to God, abashed with consciousness of sin in the sweet pres- ence of the Father; the poor widow, who stealthily dropped her two mites, saved by penurious self-denial, into the temple chest. These were the models he held up for the adoration of mankind, while Herod and Pilate passed by in pomp, and got the admiration of the people, and the high-priest stood there, arrayed in his costly robes, and was greeted with the applause of the multitude. See how he lived in daily contact with want and ignorance and lowness and sin ; but he saw want to relieve it, ignorance to teach, lowness to raise it up, sin to awaken the soul in the sinner's bosom, and elevate it to God. He went amongst men who seemed to think that God died in giving birth to the Old Testament, as men now think he died in giving birth to Christ and the New Testament. He told them of God, not a thousand years off; showed them his providence, not in killing Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and taking the Hebrews through, high and dry ; he ap- pealed to facts, not fiction ; he showed God's providence in the grass blooming to-day, though feeding the oven to-morrow, in the lilies-of-the-valley, taking no thought, but clad in more beauty than Solomon; in

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the fowls of the air, the raven seeking his food afar, the sparrows, three of them sold for a penny, yet not one of them falling to the ground without the Father. They wanted faith ; and he not only had it, he showed it, he lived it, he was faith manifest in the flesh.

Do you wonder such a man made enemies of the priests, the scribes and the Pharisees? It was not pos- sible it should be otherwise. His greatness put their littleness to shame, his charity was their condemnation. Those awful words, " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees ! " were not half so condemnatory as the parable of the Samaritan and the story of the Prodigal Son. They could understand his criticism ; it scorched and withered them up ; but his creation was keener still, though they comprehended it not. Men bred under a different ideal of religion could not see him as he was, more than a fly can see the State House. No wonder they hated and slew him.

Do you wonder that he was loved? He went out to seek the lost, — the poor, who had none to comfort ; the sick, who had nobody to heal them, except that great physician; the despised children of Abraham, who remembered the priests' and the Levites' hate, and paid for it with scorn and indignity and contempt. Do you wonder the people heard him gladly? I can understand how such a man looked on the sons and daughters of Abraham, poor, condemned, and self- condemned ; I can understand how he went and poured out his great human heart and his great human soul to them, in words that ran round like a river of fire, and they turned and blessed the man who spoke a human word to their hungry human soul. Very likely there were men amongst them who had given up all hope of religion, who had no joy in the remem-

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brance of the past, and no hope in the future ; men who despaired of man and had no faith in God. There are always such men. They are not bad, only sick men, and desperate. The churches cast out such men as infidels ; they ought to take them to their arms, and cheer, and comfort, and heal, and bless them. That is always a partial church which has not a corner in the chancel for such as call themselves infidels. I can understand how Christ spoke to such men ; how he solved their doubts, healed their wounds, and cured their griefs ; not by a special answer to every special question, — I do not believe even his wisdom could have given a satisfactory answer to every particular and troublesome doubt, — but by awaking a natural re- ligious sentiment in the heart. I can understand how such men left every thing and followed him ; how on foot, and sore, tired, and hungry, they forgot their fainting and the famine in their mouth for the great plenteousness which so filled their soul. It is always a great day when a man of genius is born, a man of merely intellectual genius ; it is a very great day when a man is born into the world with a genius for justice, for love, and for piety. If he can speak only to scholars, in a scholar's speech, it is a great thing, and the human race may well hold its Christmas festivals at such a birth. But when a man comes armed with such a genius that he, with his single soul, can fill up all the space between highest God and humblest man, so that he can hear with his own ears, and at first hand, the thoughts of God, and with his own mouth, and at first hand, tell them to the people, needing no mediator between him and God, on the one side, and between him and man on the other side, — then you have a very rare soul, and mankind may well celebrate its Easter

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for that. And Jesus was such a one. He had the power of receiving truth from God, and the power of telhng it, in a way and with an eloquence which was thunder and lightning to the people, such as the world had not seen before. It would be rather wonderful to see a man come now to seek and save the lost; it would imply something more than great intellect, — an unconscious gift of conscience, affection, and the religious power. What was it to do this two thousand years ago.^^ Now we have Jesus for our model, and a hundred sects in all Christian lands, fired by his ex- ample ; some believers in his theology, some disbelievers, from St. Augustine down to Robert Owen ; some believ- ers in the theology of the times, some disbelievers, the believers in real goodness towards men.

I have always looked on Jesus as the greatest pat- tern of a man that the human race has produced; but in nothing does his greatness appear so high as in the direction in which he goes to work. He turns to the needy, and seeks for the lost. Here was the great- est man God had raised up, engaged in the greatest and highest function a man can fill. Suppose such a man should come now, as much before the popular religion in our time as he was then before the popu- lar religion in Jerusalem, — how would he be received? Some think if such a man were to come, he would re- port himself at the Boston Association of Ministers, and be invited to stand in pulpits, and perhaps to de- liver a " Thursday Lecture." I doubt that he would do any such thing. If so, I think he would shake the pulpits worse than last week's storm shook the steeples. I have some doubts whether the ministers of the nine- teenth century would come off any better than the ministers of the first century did. I think he would

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turn his attention to the lost now as he did then; he would not have far to go to seek and find them. Here are the materially lost, fugitive slaves who do not own their own bodies, and are hunted by men who are members of churches, who take the sacrament in the church in the name of Christ, on Sunday, and the next day kidnap their brother men. He would care for these outcasts. He would raise the drunkard, the criminal, the poor, — men who never enter a church from year to year, and in a great city die and have no consolation, who know of no Redeemer, human or divine. How many thousand men and women there are who hear no word of religious instruction, religious rebuke, or religious comfort, who have only one act of religion, as it is commonly called, performed in their presence, and that is the burial service read over their coffin-lids. I think Christ would have a word to say to and for all these men. I think there would be such a Sermon on the Mount as would make the ears of mankind tingle. Then there are men spiritually lost, and I think he would say a word to them. Thunder it might be, terrible at first, but like thunder, as cleansing to the sky ; not so like lightning, which shatters where it shines, as light, which cheers and revives what it falls upon. I think he would tell them of the falseness of their life, of the unsatisfactoriness of joys in which religion had no part; that Christian hypocrisy is a poor substitute for Christian religion before men, and poorer before God. I think he would show them that religion is natural, is human nature itself at its work; that he would prove to them their need of it, and show them the means of supply.

Well, Jesus, when he did come, came to seek and to save the lost. He had to pay for it with his life.

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Had he come to lose men, and not to find them, he might have had rank and fame, have been in the senate of King Herod, with plenty of money and honor. But now see the odds. Men could not understand him then ; but his idea went into a few minds, his example into more, and ten years had not passed by before there were men going all over the world, seeking for what was lost; and before a hundred years, in every great city of the heathen world there were Christians, whom his idea had inspired and his example had quick- ened into life. Now what a different world it is be- cause he has done as he did! Take that name out of the world, that great character out of the world, and all its influence, and what should we he? I speak within bounds when I say he has advanced the civiliza- tion of the world at least a thousand years. Yet we understand very little of his religion. We have talked so much of his divinity that we have forgotten his humanity.

Today is Easter Sunday, and all over the Christian world, save puritanical New England, it is a day of rejoicing. It is to the Catholic Christian the great festival of the Christian year. Men celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. To me all that is mythology; yet I welcome the day which brings men to a conscious- ness of that great soul, and wish men could see what he came for, and how he did his work. This seeking to save the lost is the special thing which makes him so dear to mankind. If he had lived such a life as Herod did, do you suppose men would ever have told the story of his resurrection from the dead, and cele- brated Easter Festival over that event? No, they would have hated him the more if he had been raised

from the dead. It was his character that made men XI— 21

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believe he wrought miracles. It is this which makes his memory so precious to the world.

THE STRENGTH OF JESUS

It is easy now to see the main features of this vast man, Jesus. He was uncommonly large-minded, with one of the best heads, it seems to me, that the good God ever sent ; more delicate however than big, more marvelous for the quality of his mind, its rare niceness, than for that great quantity which you see in Na- poleon, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato. He was great- hearted, too, with conscience true and sensitive, and a great deep religious soul. There lay his strength. It is not for his masterly intellect that I value him the most, nor do you, nor does the world; but for his re- ligiousness. And so we commonly underrate the greatness of his intellect. It seems plain that he had that quick intuition which belongs eminently to woman, but which is the attribute of every man of high genius ; and that great width of comprehension which can gen- eralize multiform principles to a universal form of truth; and that perception which finds the beautiful in things homely, the sublime in things common, and the eternal in what is daily and transient. The man of genius has always the peculiar excellence of man's and woman's mind, is human, masculine and feminine too ; and in all history no great man has been so wom- anly as Jesus, maidenly and motherly both. Hence, on his masculine side, he has awful severity against a false theory, which makes wickedness and misery, and builds dungeons for mankind. Hence, on his womanly side, he is so gentle and full of tenderness towards the man who holds, who administers, or who makes the wicked theory. He hates sin with manly detestation;

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the sinner he loves with woman's piety. He does not appear logical and philosophical, but acute, sharp- sighted, deep-seeing, full of persuasion, with a natural eloquence ; not the elocution of the schools, but that spontaneous beauty of speech which belongs to a great conscience, heart, and soul, when furnished with great intellect, — understanding, reason, imagination. He was fierce as a tropic hurricane when he denounced, " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees ! " How he thundered and lightened, a great earthquake of elo- quence, against the wickedness of his time ! What a typhoon of indignation he let fall on the man-stealers of that day ! Some three years ago, when the city of Boston kidnapped Thomas Simms, I read those awful passages which make my blood run cold ; in private I read them and in public too. It was a good gospel for that day, two thousand years ago ; alas me ! it fitted our time as well. I hope never to read them again in public or in private. That was the masculine side of Jesus. No spring sun was milder, softer, or more tenderly kissed the first spring violets on the hillsides of West Roxbury, than he was to the penitent and self -faithful soul. Great public sins he scourged and cauterized with actual lightning; there was no other way ; but the individual sinner he took into his motherly arms and pressed to his bosom, warmed him with his breath, cheered and comforted and blessed, and then laid him down tranquillized and beautified and sancti- fied too, that he might sleep and wake with God.

THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH

When such a man as this bowed his head on the cross, with his " My God ! why hast thou forsaken me? " and at length with a triumphant, " Father, for-

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give them, for they know not what they do ! " — it is very plain that death could not hold his doctrines bound, nor prevent his character from having a vast and permanent influence on the world of men. He was cut off^ in his early manhood, long before great men reach the maturity of their intellect, conscience, and soul. He had just begun to open his plans. Yet considering all the circumstances of the age and the history of his people, I think him fortunate in his death, not less than glorious in his life, — not without error of doctrine, probably not without defects of per- sonal character and conduct. Take him as he was, measure him by his own age, and then by other ages, by his nation's standard and his own, and then by the highest ideal of humanity, — and you look not only with admiration, but with deepest gratitude, with heartiest brotherly love, on this greatest, highest, purest of the world's great reformers of religion ; and you thank God and take courage that you have strength to tread your own course, and are sustained and strengthened by the magnificence of his thoughts, the beauty of his life, and those dear Beatitudes which, through all the storms of eighteen centuries of war and bloodshed, have come down to us, whispering their sweet accents of " Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men ! "

THE INTEGRITY OF JESUS

From the day when Jesus was nailed to the cross to this day, the whole human race has been blessed by the heroism which suffered, bled, and died there. What if he had known no higher law than the consti- tution which Moses taught, and the law which the scribes and the Pharisees set up in his name? Where

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would we have been, and what would have been the con- dition of the world? I suppose it is as easy for a man of great genius to be false to his integrity, as it is for you and me, — and of nothing is God so chary as men of great genius, — and if Jesus had refused his allegiance to the truth of God, what had the world been to-day? Surely a thousand years behind what it is now; for from that day to this, there has arisen no such great religious genius. Great men there have been, — I would not deny it, — but no man's head so towers into the sky ; no other man ever sent out such streams of sympathy to men. To-day, how shall we most truly revere him? As the other churches do? No ! Not by stopping where he stopped, not by warp- ing our spirit to suit his words ; but by having the same integrity of soul that he had, by being as faith- ful to our humble spirit as he was to his giant soul. He is not the Christian who says, " Lord ! Lord ! " and believes all the traditions writ here in this book in his name; but they are Christians who use their faculties as Christ used his, who reverence their own individuality of spirit, contented to think as they must, not as they will, those who keep a blameless fidelity to their own sense of right. In that way, my brothers, you and I, with our humble powers, shall continue the work which Christ began, and in time the world itself will be a Christian world, even in a higher sense than Jesus saw, and we shall be as welcome sons of God as this great soul Christ, and in His own time the Father shall lay His hand on our head with this bene- diction, " Come, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you."

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THE GOODNESS OF JESUS A PROPHECY OF FUTURE

GOOD

This is Palm Sunday. Some eighteen hundred years ago to-day there rode into Jerusalem on an ass's foal a man who took this view of goodness which I take, and had its triumph too. Not only that, — he was himself the goodness which I poorly recommend ; a man of large intellect, reason, and understanding too, but of immense goodness. Men dimly felt he was their king, commissioned to displace all false and un- real kings ; and so they saw in him the fulfilment of an old and doubtful prophecy. I see in him the ful- filment of more than that, — the fulfilment of this yearning of the human heart, which, deceived by great- ness, and trodden down by its power, still looks up- ward towards God, and asks for its Saviour. I see in him the coming of that time when oppression shall not always reign, but a brighter day shall begin ; when, having passed by the savage period when men worship the giant in body, we shall have passed by a period a little less savage when we reverence the great head, not the great arm, and shall come to a time when men reverence a great conscience, heart, and soul, and the eminent men of the world, so deemed, who rise up to places of preeminence and power, shall be men like Jesus Christ, and the laws that they make and the example they set shall be the laws of God and the life of God on this earth. This time I know will come. Christ is the perpetual prophecy of it, and my own heart gives me an ideal prophecy. We need not wait for it. You can train your children so as to make it real. You can be that goodness yourselves.

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS

THE INFINITE GOD

You and I must needs lament over sorrows that cross our several paths. When a ship is wrecked with fire, we cannot understand how so many lives should be destroyed by a single man, and we must needs mourn. We must lament at the sufferings of mortal men. But as soon as we remember that the Infinite Loving-kindness comes down to every little child, to every thin-winged fly that fastens itself upon the wall of a summer's day, we do not mourn as those without hope; but as those that see through the gate of mor- tality the immortal beyond. Then your daily life, rich or poor, obscure or famous, will become more beautiful, its toils have meaning, its sufferings point to the future, where what here was discipline shall be delight. Sorrows are only the hither side of the world. Yonder it turns out its silver lining to the day, and is radiant all over with rainbow beauties and descending peace; in your consciousness there is serenity, there is trust, there is tranquillity, and a delight in God which nothing breaks and which nothing can even mar.

My friends, I am not telling you the poor day- dreams of an idle man. I am no mere sentimentalist ; I look the ugliest facts of nature in the face, the uglier the closer; I never speak to you but I remember the crime and the heartlessness which predominate in this great commercial city ; I never cease to remember that my brothers are kidnappers, and that three millions of my fellow-creatures are the slaves of this wicked

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nation. I paint nothing in rose colors. God shall paint, not I. I am not altogether ignorant of human nature, as it is to be learned by the philosophic study of the essence of man, or as it slowly unfolds itself in the records of human history. I know men as they are to-day, in the house, and the shop, and the field. I am no bigot, blindly attached to a traditional creed, and bowing because my fathers bent their heads. I study the evolutions of religion, as the evolutions of science ; everywhere I find their trace, in a heathen as a Hebrew, in a Mahometan or Buddhist as in a Chris- tian, asking only for the fact. I am no moonlight sentimentalist ; but by hardy toil, as well as a wise pas- siveness, I would feed my mind. And yet this is the sum of my story, the result of my philosophy, — that there is an Infinite God, perfectly powerful, with no limitation of power; perfectly wise, knowing every thing, the meanest and the vastest, at first as at the end ; perfectly just, giving to every soul what is promised in its nature ; perfectly loving and perfectly holy.

The worship of the Infinite God, the consciousness of His presence in our hearts, — that is the sublimest triumph, the dearest joy, the delightfulest of all human delights. Beginning here, it brightens and brightens like the dawn of the day, until it comes unto perfect brightness, and the face of the Father gleams on the forehead of the son.

man's idea of god

Every people has its idea of God, which is the re- sult of its history and the measure of its civilization. With the wild man and the savage this idea is very rude. Then it becomes more elevated, then more.

First, mere force contents man in his God ; then a

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little mind is added; then more mind yet; then justice is put there, then love. Mankind continually revises its idea of God, because it has the feeling that God is perfection, and as it develops the feeling into an idea, the new result must be added to the Divine Being. Successively does Israel leave behind him his gods for newer and better ones ; the Unitarian and Universalist leave behind the Trinity, that Cerberus of God, growl- ing forever round his endless hell of mankind, and fare on, asking for higher and higher ideas of God. I put it to you, individually, and I put it at this minute to Jew, Gentile, Christian, Mahometan, to all throughout mankind, — will any thing content you less than the Infinite God of perfect power, perfect wisdom, perfect justice, perfect love.? And in all the tongues of earth does mankind answer, No ! Yea, with great groanings which cannot be uttered, the ten hundred millions of mankind cry out, " Show us the Father which satisfieth us ! Give us the infinite perfection of God ! Sure of that, of all else are we likewise sure." To this high end the Bibles of all the nations have helped, writ in many a tongue ; the great philosophers have also helped mankind to an appreciation of the true idea of God, who is Infinite Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Holi- ness, Infinite Cause and Providence, Father and Mother to every worm, to every child, to Jesus who speaks the world's great truth, to Peter who denied him, to Iscariot who betrayed, and to those other Peters and Iscariots who still crucify him afresh and put him to open shame.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

The soul of man connects him with the world which the eye hath not seen, to which there is no end, the

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world of God. At first man worships the Divine only as force. But as he grows from babyhood to child- hood, where now we are, we prize in God more than force; we prize justice, holiness, love. We learn to know the Infinite God, telegraphing to us in all the high hours of mortal life ; we learn to hold communion with Him, and from the boundless ocean of Divinity to fill our little cup with truth, with justice, love, and trust, and our little spirit runs over with the inspira- tion which God has poured therein. We learn to dwell conscious of the Infinite Father and Mother of us all. His truth in our intellect. His justice in our conscience. His love in our heart. His holiness in our soul. His will our will, and our life in most intimate concord with the eternal life of the Infinite Father. Consciousness of His perfect providence strengthens our spirit, pre- pares us for daily work, for trial, for suffering; we cross seas of trouble, this pillar of fire going before us in our darkness ; we march over wastes of sadness and affliction, this cloud over our head, and eternal promise before us, our shoes not worn, our raiment not waxed old upon us ; we smile in trouble, we are bold in danger, we are fearless in tribulation, and we are immortal in death.

GOD MANIFEST IN ALL HIS WORKS

Three hundred years ago men said it was wicked to study this world; almost all the clergy of Europe said so. To know God, said they, you must read the Scriptures ; — not those from our Father's hand, under our feet and over our heads, but only the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New. Now men find the handwriting of God in the flower that Springs up in the sidewalk of the city, and that the

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Ten Commandments are writ on every fiber of the human body, and that God's law is writ in the solar system, and in the swing of the pendulum in yonder monument, true to the higher law of God. See how the philosophy of man's nature is studied. With the same freedom that the naturalist drops his plummet into the shallows of the ocean, not fearing to expose the secrets of God, hid in the deep, the metaphysician with reverent hand drops his plummet into the deeps of the human soul, with the same absolute confidence in God. So men study the history of man, pass through the gates of the Hebrew Eden, and find huge empires, with cities, and states, and arts, and arms, far before Moses. But the same blessed features of the Eternal Father do they find; the same religion waits upon their footsteps, the same love sheds down its sunlight on saint and sinner.

NO ABSOLUTE EYIL IN GOD OR HIS WORKS

Mankind will outgrow this belief, which has hitherto prevailed in the theologies of the world, that there is a devil outside of God, or a worse devil of malignity inside of him. As fast as we understand the material world, will God's wisdom, power, and goodness come forth. Then as we cultivate the nobler faculties in us, will all fear of God vanish. Then we shall see that the terrible evils which disturb the world — slavery, war, drunkenness, the despot's oppression, the priest's hypocrisy ■ — are only a part of the divine purpose, means for to-day, not ends forever; they are to the world of man, what night and darkness and storm and earthquake are to the world of matter; and this prate of hell is but the cry of a child, who shall one day grow up to manhood, and sing lofty psalms with noble

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human voice. Then we shall find that the pain which we thought a mere tormentor, sent to vex us, was but a watch-dog which the Eternal Father set as sentinel by the cradle of His child, to keep watch over the desire of all nations. Then we shall see that death, which man once thought came from the devil's envy, is only birth out of the mortal into the immortal; the earth for a time broods over the mortal body, laid in its ma- terial nest, and out of that egg the never-dying soul comes forth, a bird of paradise to fly along the gardens of heaven, and sing its psalms of praise and thanks- giving and delight, filled with that perfect love which casts out fear.

Science prepares him for his task, and surveys the round world, noticing the inorganic and the organic and moving things therein, goes down under the bot- tom of the world, and there reads the hieroglyphic writing of God in the sand which for a million of years has never seen the light ; flies through the vast universe, and then comes rounding back with this everlasting testimony, which he has learned from the material world, — " Everywhere have I found power immense, wisdom unbounded, law, a constant mode of operation, whereby this wisdom directs this power for a purpose ever good, never evil." And while he sings that psalm, for a sublimer search he goes down into the depths of human nature, and opens the ark of God's covenant in the innermost of human consciousness, and finds written, — " God is infinitely perfect, perfect Power, Wisdom, Justice, and All-embracing Love, He has made the universe from a perfect motive, for a perfect end, provided it with perfect means, and therein se- cured blessedness for every man." Then from the world of matter there seems to go up one glorious

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psalm, echoed from the flowers of earth, each blossom and little berrj ringing its chime, and from the stars of heaven each mighty orb re-echoes the psalm, — " Tell to man that perfect love shall cast out

PEAR."

god's law

Look beneath you ! With what magnificence of peaceful order did the harvests of use, and beauty also, come out from the ground, all summer long ! They kept their law, and, year by year, the whole world of beasts and men is fed abundantly thereby. Look above you! With what sublimity the moon walks through the sky, the stars keep their eternal order, the planets wheel with mathematic regularity, and the unorganized fragments of the solar system, the comets, with " tresses and trains of colder and feebler light," dance their parabolic courses along the sky, and never flirt their robes in wantonness against sun or moon or earth or star ! It is a natural law which " doth pre- serve the stars from wrong ; " it is that by which " the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong." And do you think that self-conscious, self-directing man — with whom the continuous progressive development of his nature is the aim and end — can thrive without keeping that eternal law of right which God wrote in us for our rule of conduct, personal and social .^^

Cowardice and Fear may say, " I must ! " Passion or Ambition, " I would 1 " Caprice, " I will ! " But when Conscience says, " Thou should'st ! Thou ought'st ! " then say thou, O man, O woman, " I shall ! " and the stars in their courses will fight for you, and the eternal perfection of God will be on your side.

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THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL

I know how men sometimes admire a human statute which violates the law of God, how they glorify the man who made it, while they forget the eternal right, written as those sparkling stars all over the sky, written in our own hearts. I know how they pass men by, and call them fanatics and infidels and traitors, who simply declare they will never violate God's law at the command of men. You see this in Congress, in the newspapers, and everywhere around you. So have I seen children, some of the larger growth, admire a sky-rocket. " How beauti- ful ! " they exclaim. " How high it shoots, and what a shower of golden rain it scatters down! What a man he must have been who could have devised this ! Honor to the city which spends money for playthings in the sky ! " Meanwhile, far above the heads of the rocket-makers and admirers, there shone a fair and noiseless star. Millions of years had it been there, millions of years to come it will be there, " a thing of beauty and a joy forever." Far off on the perilous ocean the storm-tossed mariner, ignorant of his where- abouts, not having seen sun nor moon nor star for many days, on some gloomy night looks up to heaven, and through a rent in the clouds above him, the star is shining there serene and beautiful ; and seeing its welcome light, as dear to him as smile of wife or child, he knows thereby the spot he occupies in space, and, guided by this trusty messenger that cheers him home, comes safely bounding over the deep, and moors his star-conducted ship safe in her destined port. Mean- time also the astronomer in his watch-tower, heedless of the fireflies of man, over the puppet-show of powder

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in the sky, looks on that fair orb, a point unchanging in a world of flux, and learns to measure the slow and solemn vibration of this boundless system of suns and worlds and moons, knowing thereby our whereabouts in space, to what comer of the universe this globe and its kindred orbs are tending on. So amid all the jar- ring of parties, the noise of politicians, and the golden rain of expediency and compromise, " duty exists, im- mutably survives," and shines continually though it " lowly lies," obedient to that " light that changes not in heaven."

Many a politician bids us look only at the spangling rockets, all heedless of the constitution of the eternal God. Men admire him and applaud him, and he goes up like his own rocket, and comes down like the stick. But still there shine the ever-living laws of God; they hold on their way, altering not, forever still the same, to guide all men to peace and port, a fixed station in a world of flux, to show us the vibration of these hu- man orbs, and teaching us our whereabouts in moral space, our thitherwards towards heaven or hell.

THE JOY OF KEEPING GOD's HIGHER JAW

You know how preachers often speak of the joys of this life. I think they are apt to undervalue them. They make light of success, of riches, of comfort, of the joys of a happy home. I love these joys, and every day I thank my God by a constant cheerfulness for what of them I have received or won. I say I think these joys are undervalued; and yet they may be estimated too high. But the joys of goodness, of charity, of love to man, and love to God, that faith which never wavers, — no man ever exaggerated these, no man can ; as no painter can ever portray the sparkle

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in a star, or paint the varied beauty of a rose, or the sweet fragrance embosomed in a Hly's cup; for the imagination of man cannot come up to the fact, and speech delays behind. All this joy comes to indi- viduals from personal faithfulness to God's higher law.

Nor is this quite all. Soon we must leave behind us all the things that we gather here. The honors will go back to such as gave them ; our gold and silver and houses and lands will belong to others, and we shall go out of the world with nothing but our manhood. Then of what avail will it be to us that we scorned God's higher law, and grew respectable, and won honors though we had nothing to attach them to our- selves ; but with a single breath death blew them all away, and scattered them over the world? What will it avail us to have passed for giants, when at the touch of death, the giant leaves his empty robes and the painted parchment of his reputation, and slinks out of earth with a soul no bigger than a baby's newly bom.'' At a theater you shall see a man who in a play's brief hour, with tragic strut, fills out the part of some great duke or emperor; but when the curtain falls, and the footlights, and the headlights, and the sidelights are put out, the palace of pasteboard shoved aside, and the wardrobe thrown in a corner, the actor, jostled by the audience, forgetting his umbrella even, foots it towards his home, to be teased by his children, and scolded by his wife, and the next day dunned by his creditors. So it is with this poor man, who the night before seemed lord of all. So must it be with men who gain what others reckon greatness, by violation of God's higher law.

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RECOGNITION OF GOD AND TRUST IN HIS MEANS

The most beautiful and tender of all human emo- tions are connected with God. The strongest and the deepest are those which directly join us with Him, and bind us to Him ; for religion is the great gravitation of the soul of man for time and for eternity, holding us to the central point of all the universe. Other emo- tions which relate to things merely of time and sense we love to associate with God, and thereby sanctify still further our daily work. We love, in times of sorrow, to anticipate the heavenly rainbow which the eternal sun will cast about the shoulders of each thunder-cloud, scarfing therewith the destroying arm. In the night of sorrow, when our eyes fail from looking upwards, not finding a single star in all the terror of the sky, we love to cast forward our thoughts to the morning which will scatter the darkness, and pour the purple light on all the hills. What is not immediately religious we love to make so by implication. So the thoughtful man is glad to anticipate his daily toil with a prayer, full of eternity, and to round off his work with a twilight psalm of thankfulness and praise, mak- ing the work that is to be done, and that which is already finished, like a sacrament. Consciousness of God runs thrugh all a good man's life, like the Nile through Egypt, making a garden on either side, cre- ating bread and beauty wherever its waters fall to rest. The net of humanity, full of all manner of toils and cares and weepings and joys, is knit by the four comers, and let down from heaven, and the voice of God tells us, " Call not thou common that which God hath cleansed."

In nature God is all about us, a presence not to be XI— 22

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put by, the moving of all motion, the living of all life, the loving spirit in all that loves, and the being of all things that are. A man naturally devout loves to connect God with all the material world. Even the rudest men who notice the power that is in the material universe, connect God with all that is sublime and awful. What makes them shudder and turn sick at heart, — the thunder, the earthquake, and the storm to them is God's voice. But gentler and more refined men see God in the beautiful. The little grass is rooted in God, and every rose fills its cup brimful of Deity. He rounds and beautifies the spot on the wing of a butterfly, and decks each microscopic insect with brilliant loveliness, and gives the spider her curious art to spin and weave, and walk the waters dry-shod, with no pretending miracle. Philosophers well-bred love to associate God with all the works which we call nature. He is the great weaver, and nature is His living web, ever old, ever new, where static and dynamic forces put in the warp and woof ; and from the various threads, mineral, vegetable, animal, human, he weaves up the most complex patterns, glittering with chemic, botanic, vital, spiritual power. Everywhere the phi- losophers meet God ; they find footprints of the Creator in the old red sandstone, in each atom thereof; and in the chemic mysteries of a leaf or a grain of com they find the wisdom of God, and in that wonderful power by which the fresh maiden beauty of to-day comes out of New England's cold ground, and makes summer loveliness all round the town. Astronomic Mr. Mitchell, at Nantucket, from his high tower turns his telescope to some far-off star, and as its flowery light crosses his eye, with pious reverence he wipes a tear away, thinking the far-off light is a whisper of

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God that missed his ear, and now comes impinging on his eye. In times when no false theology intervenes between the philosopher's cultivated mind and the in- stinctive religious sense in his soul, then he sees that the laws of heaven are only God's great geometry, and in the intersecting lines in the section of an ele- phant's tooth he finds the same thought which God has made fossil in the stones beneath his feet. Then nature seems dearer to us when through it we see God. I can trust the finite universe when I know it all rests on the Infinite God, that the ocean rolls at His com- mand, and by His unwavering laws the summer poplar- leaves are twinkling all day in the light poured down from Him. Then the all-absorbing ocean loses its cruel look, and all things instinct with life are instinct not less with God.

Not less, but even more, do we love to associate God with man, and weave religion's golden thread through all the fabric of our daily life. So men delight to connect the Deity with the great forces of the nation. Say the Hebrew prophets. It was Jehovah who brought up Israel out of Egypt, and by His right hand led the people across the sea. " Remember His marvelous works that He hath done. His statutes and His judg- ments," says one of the greatest of poets. " As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings," so the Lord brought up Israel out of Egypt, they say. You and I love to say it was the Lord who lifted our fathers across the untrodden sea, and planted a vine in the wilderness, watered and tended and trained it up. All nations feel this, and in mani- fold mythologic speech love to set forth the fact of God's universal providence, which they see not at

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large, folding all nations into one embrace of loving- kindness, but they see it each in its own special history, and no more. So all nations love to begin their great acts with some religious sign and symbol that they recognize only God as supreme. So of old time, when men founded a city, built a bridge, pitched a camp, it was a voluntary sacrifice, their choicest offering made in acknowledgment of God. Now on such occasions, it is a psalm, a hymn, or some spoken word of prayer by which God is acknowledged.

Not less does the individual man love to connect religion with his common life in all its greatest acts. All the world over marriage is a sacrament, a religious act, and connubial love is but a fragment of the soul's great love of God, and when that fresh jewel glitters on the bride's and bridegroom's heart, they love to look to that rock whence the splendid particle was broken off. At the birth of a baby, with a religious thought, father and mother take the nursling in their arms, and look in the newly opened eyes, and give the child their benediction and a name; and when you and I shall receive the heavenly birth, with religious emotion men will take up our cold clay and lay it in its last cradle, which then shall hold nothing but the flesh, and their thought shall follow our ascending soul. Birth, mar- riage, death, are all marked by religion, each a sacra- ment. Men love to have it so. It is not the craft of priests alone, it is great Nature working at our heart. The stream of religion comes down from the tall moun- tains of humanity, fed from the virgin snows which the Infinite God places thereon, and it runs journeying thence through all the plains of mortal life to the far- off ocean of eternity. We set up our little mills thereby, and it turns the wheel of the priest, but he

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makes not the stream more than the miller makes the Merrimac, or the sailor the ocean he traverses. So in all our life we love to look up, and reverence, and trust. The deep of humanity in us calls to the deep of divinity in God. We love to lie low in His hand, and trust; it is a calm and holy joy. We want some- thing secure. How transient and movable are the waters ! We drop our anchor down till it touches the bottom, and we have holding ground in God, and feel safe. Thou, O Lord, art eternal, our fathers' resting- place and our God. In our joy it is more joyous to remember the deep well of Deity whence we have filled our little cup; when our household doves are drinking from the brim, we love to remember that the water was itself rained down from heaven, and is God's cup of communion with mankind. And when we are washed away by some great sorrow, and in our distress we are bowed together, and in nowise able to lift ourselves up, we still love to remember that the stream which bears us is the river of God, and will one day carry us through the gates of heaven. There are times of grief for public calamity, which make us shudder and grow sick at heart, when we go stooping and feeble, with failing eyes and trembling heart, and it is great comfort then to look up and trust in God.

I know not how men live without this. In the hey- day of joy the shallow man may be content, and when the nation mourns he may sit down and eat and drink and make merry, heedless of the ruin wrought about him, perhaps by his own hand. But even then, to the shallowest of men there will come a day when eating does not satisfy, and drinking does not fill the man, and when his mean soul turns in upon himself and finds no comfort save in his God.

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It is a great thing therefore to know that there is a power and a wisdom which guides us and the world, stilhng the noise of the waves and the tumult of the people ; to feel that there is a j ustice immense, immeas- urable, irresistible, which sways the ocean of human forces, and whereof we recognize the tidal pulsations in our private heart ; and to trust the love unbounded in its power, more than motherly in its quality, to rely thereon, to be sure thereof, to be satisfied therewith. When evil men rule on earth, and violent are exalted, when the wicked walk on every side, when noble men are cloven down, then it is sweet to remember the Holy One who foresaw it all, and knows there is a morning which is to come out of all this darkness and shame it into day. Let me know there is an Infinite Cause which makes the world aright, an Infinite Providence which rules the world aright, — I will not fear what men can do to me ; troubled on every side, I am not distressed ; perplexed, not in despair ; persecuted, not forsaken ; cast down, not destroyed. Every earnest man feels this, and to come to this is a great step forward.

This consciousness of trust in God is not only a strength and defense, it is a source of deep and sweet delight ; nay, it is so delightful that contemplative and dreamy men have loved to let themselves down into the depths of this tranquillity, and rejoice in the Lord, when there seemed nothing else left to rejoice in. In pleasant days they kept abroad; but when the public weather became harsh, and rough, and stem, the stormier things were without, the farther they with- drew within. So when the skies are fair, and the tropic ocean waves are still as the mirror wherein some maiden knows the beauty of her face, the paper nautilus swims on the surface of the summer sea, and fears not while the

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" Little breezes dusk and shiver "

around her handsome shell. But when the clouds darken in the sky, and tempests lower, and the winds begin to roar, and the waves to swell, she sinks without a murmur to the deep, thence to a deeper deep, where all is calm and still, and so her frail shell survives the storm that rends the ocean's breast above. Many a religious book has been written by such men, full of sweetness and piety, and running over with trust. Such are the works of William Law, Saint Bridget, Saint Theresa, Madame Guyon, Fenelon, and many more. Once in my early boyhood's days they were a deep delight to me, and when the little ocean of my private world was vexed with storms, I too could sink down to this calm, blessed water, and pray, and dream, and rest in God. There are many such. Sick, they wait for the Good Physician to come and heal them; penitent prodigals, they fold their arms and wait for the Father to come to them ; impotent folk, they wait for the angel to trouble Bethesda's pool, and dip their passive forms into its waters, and heal them of their hurt. This is a form of trust in God which Christian churches love to preach, — this idle, passive trust, ly- ing in God's hand, or man's, and asking God to do our work, waiting for God's providence to do without us. So in Mahometan countries the plague comes into a city, Bagdad, Damascus, Constantinople ; the authori- ties are all still, it is the will of God, say they ; the people are all still, it is the will of God ; the priests only pray, " God's will be done ! His purposes are right," — and the pestilence walks at noon-day, with none to bar the city gates.

But a manly trust in God is much more than this girlish feeling. This is indeed trust in God's prov-

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idence, in His purposes, confidence in His character as a perfect Creator and perfect Providence ; it is a certain acknowledgment that he, hke a wise engineer, sets thing against thing, and makes a perfect machine out of all the universe, which, each part doing its duty, shall bring about at last a perfect result as his ultimate end. It is a great step, I confess, to arrive at this, either brought to it by one synthetic act of instinctive religious consciousness, or by a long process of reason- ing, deductive, inductive, transcendent. It is full of comfort when we have reached it. As a sentiment of faith in God, as a mere feeling of faith triumphant over every doubt and every fear, it is of great use. When suffering comes it enables a man to lay his head on the block, to spread his arms out for crucifixion; it gives men courage to endure ; " God will, repay us," they say. There is never in time of trouble any lack of that sort of courage, and of this trust in God. The Jews have made their name classic by this kind of fortitude ; the early Christians abound in it ; so do the Mahometans, so the early Quakers, and so the Puritans. But that is not all ; it is not half. Trust in God is trust in His purposes, no doubt; but likewise in the means which led thereto, in the forces of men. The purposes are divine, are they? No doubt of it. But the means are all human. Mahometanism spread by human art ; Hebrew faith by Hebrew courage and He- brew toil went abroad ; and the faith of the Christians, who met together in a little upper room in Galilee, became the world's faith by human heads and human hands and human life. God wrought no miracles. Prayer is an excellent thing ; it is the preface to work, it is the preface to this great Bible ; it is not the Bible itself, it is not the work; it is the grace before meat.

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it is not the food. I mean the verbal prayer. A man makes a prayer to God, which is a great effort of his soul; it stirs him to his very depths, and out of that stirring there comes work.

The celestial mechanism of the sky is wrought out of material things ; there is no thought but God's, no will but the Eternal's ;

though

" Nor real voice nor sound Amid the radiant orbs is found ; ''

" In reason's ear they all rej oice, And utter forth a glorious voice."

That mechanism bears up the daily or nocturnal beauty of the heavens, but the heavens know it not ; the sun is heedless matter, obedient, passive, not willing; so is it with the botanic mechanism of the ground, green or blossoming with all New England's vari-colored vege- table life. In heaven above, in earth beneath, all is heedless mechanism, not conscious life. These material things are only the basis whereon man, out of living stone, by his own work, is to build himself a temple to God. In this human mechanism every wheel is conscious and self-moved. We are instruments of God, but we are voluntary workmen, not passive tools. The North Star, if it had consciousness, might be supposed to be content to be passive and merely trust the purposes of God. But you and I must trust also the means of God, and apply them to reach His end. These means are human, they are you and I, our pow- ers to think, to will, to do.

Now, trust in God demands that we apply God's means, in God's way, for God's ends. That is what we are here for. The farmer trusts in God, but he does not think God will fill his bam with summer hay, nor

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with autumn corn ; he trusts the means of God, ploughs well his land, toils with the sweat of his own brow and the labor of his oxen ; he enriches the soil, culls out the nicest seeds, sows them with care, and all the summer long he daily tends the plants his skill has brought out of the ground. Does he trust God the less for the end, because he uses the means thereto? No sailor thinks he can pray himself across the sea ; he wants a stout ship, compass, charts, the appliances of scientiific skill. Does he tinist God the less because he confides in the natural means which God provided to reach his end? It has been a great error of religious men to scorn the human means, while looking for the human end. They call efforts- to achieve the end by human means " tempting Providence," " leaning on an arm of flesh." Ah me ! God gave us arms of flesh ; they are arms to lean on, to work with, the instruments of God's spirit. It is in vain to say that we trust God to avert any harm, and do nothing, to rely on prayer without any work. A prayer of that sort is only a puff of wind. I do not ask God to write a sermon for me, nor to select a hymn, nor to send a message to New York. He has put means in my power for these things ; if I use not the means, it is because I do not trust Him. Here is a young man, poor in the material things of earth, which he longs for as a basis for a nobler purpose. Rich in genius, he wants education, the best the age can afford him. In the silence of his chamber, in some rude New Eng- land town, he prays mightily to God, with sweaty brow and clasped hands, prays for culture, for means of growth ; and as he feeds his father's swine, or hews wood, or toils in the dusty field on long summer days, his prayers go up to God, — " Give me the culture that I want, which my heart hungers and thirsts for." He

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trusts in God, but assiduous toil must supply the means to go betwixt his prayer and the end he seeks ; no in- spiration shall teach him mathematics, no angel comes down from heaven to unloose the bars wherewith pov- erty has bound his spirit up ; no Michael nor Gabriel shall rend the sky and bring a single book to fill his lean satchel. He must be his own angel, must take the inspiration God offers to his genius, but which he gives only on condition of faithful work. If that youth has trust in God it is not an idle trust.

The poor man had fallen among thieves. The priest went by on the other side ; the Levite looked on him and passed on ; and I doubt not both of them, when they got home, remembered him in their prayers, and hoped that God would take care of the poor man, and quietly laid their lazy heads on their pillows, thinking that God's providence required no human hand. But the good Samaritan used God's means to accomplish God's end, put him on his own beast, bore him to an inn, gave the host his fee, and said, " Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee." Which of these three was not only neighbor to him that fell among the thieves, but which had trust in God? You and I wish this nation pros- perous, peaceful, happy, and rich. We trust in God that it will be so ; we deplore its evils, and ask God to remove them. God will do no such thing. I should be sorry if He did. God will not turn out a bad officer from his place. He will not elect a good man to be president, or judge, or sheriff, or minister. He leaves it for us. If we want national prosperity, we must learn to keep the natural laws of God, be faithful to the native sense of right, not false thereto ; our statutes must be just ; we must make a political machine

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which shall secure to all their natural rights ; for rulers we must choose wise men, who reverence God and keep His commandments ; we must follow our rulers as far as their commandments are true and right, not a step farther. What is to become of our trust in God, if, when called upon, we tread God's laws under our feet? If we decide to use God's means for national success, then it will come, and we may leave liberty a priceless inheritance to our children.

Ecclesiastical men have palsied the life of mankind, have bidden us wait for God. God waits for us, as means to establish the kingdom of heaven.

How beautiful is the feeling of trust in God — con- fidence in His purposes, in His character. But when it becomes an idea as well as a sentiment, and an act, how much more beautiful is it. It is not the bud or the grain, it is the full com in the ear, the bread of nations. The paper nautilus is a beautiful thing, sailing the waters where " little breezes dusk and shiver " round its pretty shell, sinking to the water's deeper depths when the storm begins to rise ; but a great steamship that takes two thousand men within its oaken ribs and steers over the Atlantic, fearless of every storm, is a different thing from the nautilus. That is a trust in God which works, and is a seed and a life.

I honor the piety of William Law,

" Which nursed my childhood, and inf orm'd my youth,"

the piety of Madame Guyon, and Fenelon, and Bridget, and Theresa ; I reverence them all. But far more do I reverence the piety of Oliver Cromwell and his trust in God, which knew how to make use of human means to serve God's end. That was the piety of our fathers, that planted the vine that shelters our head and feeds

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our mouth. It was the piety of Paul, which dehvered him out of the jaws of the lion. It was the piety of Jesus, which said, " I am not alone, more than a legion of angels are with me," and " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

DEPENDENCE UPON GOD

Every man who thinks at all, feels the need of an as- sured support, something that is positive, that is per- manent, that is absolute, to rely upon. By our very nature we must depend and lean. How dependent we are ; not self -originated, not self -sustained, only self- directed in part, and in how small a part every one of us knows; for probably if we could have had our will not one of us would have been in this house to-day. The great events of our lives are events which take place in spite of us, even more than in accordance with our will. Now, it is a great thing to know that the Cause which originates, which sustains, and in so large a measure directs, is infinitely powerful, wise, just, loving, and faithful to Himself. If I am sure of that, then I am safe ; I am sure of the end of all my life, and am sure that though to-morrow may turn out just what I wish it should not turn out, the end will turn out vastly greater than I have ever dared to desire; I am sure of the means to the end, sure that they are adequate to bring it about.

There are times when men do not much feel the need of this absolute trust and reliance. In moments of j oy some men never feel it. But with many men, even in their periods of highest success, there comes a dim forefeeling of the brittleness of their joy, and they must look through the glass of their delight, and see the perennial heaven beyond them, before they can be

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satisfied even with their momentary joy. With most men, their outward hfe is a tragedy. As I look on your faces from week to week, and see the emotions which come out as they are stirred by a sermon, I see that to almost every one of you beyond the age of girl- hood, life has been a tragedy. Perhaps it is most so with the highest and holiest natures, for either their high powers lack development, or, gaining that, they lack human sympathy ; and in their case that is a ter- rible tragedy. Youth plays a magnificent and dreamy overture to the great opera of life. What a full orchestra of passions, hopes, imaginations, loves, the earthly and the celestial ! what a chorus of promises there is for the great drama of mortal life ! But anon there is disappointment, sickness, failure, and defeat ; the defeat of your purposes, sometimes the failure of your principles. Then there is the loss of your friends; the better part of you taken away, and you left, only half of yourself, to pursue the j our- ney of your life alone.

"The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from the eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."

The overture of youth has presently gone by ; that or- chestra of earthly hopes and passions and loves has got stilled; passion has throbbed itself to silence and sleep ; hope halts a great way this side of the ful- filment it promised, and there are grim realities that meet us on the stage of mortal life that we never dreamed of or desired. Then the consciousness of the infinity of God is the most priceless joy in the heart. With that you know that all this change and disappointment was foreseen, was provided for, is part.

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of the heavenly mechanism of hf e, that the Great Director of the world cast His parts wisely, knows how it will turn out.

man's right to god's PROYIDENCE

The old theology which came from the savage or half-civilized period of man's history, thought to honor God by teaching that He was not love, only power, not law, but mere caprice, and so might consistently violate the higher instincts of His own nature, or of the crea- tures He had made, and doom man to eternal woe. It taught that God owed no duty to the world, that He was not amenable to man, to His own justice, or His own love, and man had no right to any thing from God. All was a favor, something thrust in by His grace, not given on man's claim.

But it is not so. It is irreverent to think that God is this mere arbitrary will, this loveless, lawless force. I have a right to eternal salvation, on condition that I do the duties which my nature requires and makes pos- sible for me to do. You all of you feel so, in spite of that old theology which fed us in our babyhood, and still colors all our bones with its own ghastly com- plexion. What meanness it is on our part to think that God made man so badly at the first, from a motive so selfish, and put salvation and ultimate welfare out of our reach, hard to be won, and doled out only as an alms to a miserable few ; that he demands only duty of man, and allows no claim to right. Suppose it should happen as the popular theology represents, and at the last day the worst of all mankind should be brought up for damnation, and stood at the head of the human column of wicked men, millions of millions strong, with an eternity of torment before him, and

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the Judge should say, " Wickedest of sinners, what hast thou to offer as a reason why sentence of eternal woe should not be pronounced against you?" And the meanest and wickedest of men might rise up and say, " Why hast Thou made me thus ? At the begin- ning, before I was formed, before the earth was created, Thou knewest every force that would be about me or within me, and here on the threshold of damnation do I upbraid Thee, and demand salvation." The man would be right. Oh, my friends, it is the worst of blasphemy against the Almighty God which our theology teaches, in attributing to Him these ghastly attributes. Instead of the All-beneficent, whose presence is fragrant in these flowers, and is beautiful above the clouds of heaven, it has given us a great ugly Devil, all mind to think, all power to smite, but no heart to love, no conscience to decree justice, no womanly arm to take the universe to himself, and warm it with his breath, and bless it with his never-ending love. Let us tread such a theology under our feet, and out of the heart God has given us let the fragrant piety of nature exhale as that of these flowers towards heaven. Doubt not that the natural, inalienable right which we claim of God will be allowed. Doubt not that the divine duty will be abundantly discharged. What He requires of us is the performance of our duty, as it seems plain to us. If we hold up our little cup, be sure the Almighty will rain the beneficence of His heaven down into it. If we try to think, we shall have wisdom ; if we feel for justice, it will come to us; if our hearts yearn for love, benevolence will come in ; and when we seek trust and faith in our Father, be sure He lets Himself down into us, as dew comes to meadows newly mown, or snows in winter on the mountains of our northern land.

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There need be no fear in this quarter. Depend upon it, the Judge of the earth will do right, and made us so that while we are doing what we think to be our duty, that will lead us to boundless welfare here and infinite heaven hereafter. You and I do not know the details of His purpose, and still less do we know the special means thereunto, or the special function our means shall accomplish ; but still we instinctively trust and look up with joy. The plan is His, ours is the daily work, with the details which conscience sets before us. This is the first of all rights, our inalienable right to the infinite providence of the perfect God.

GOD CARES FOR EACH AND ALL

A great general proposes for himself a certain ob- ject. He will secure that object, and cares very little for the character of the means he employs, excepting so far as they are instrumental for achieving his end. Napoleon desires to carry a certain castle, to capture a fortress. " It will cost ten thousand men," he is told. " I will give ten thousand men," is the reply. He cares not. But the Infinite God must care for the means as well as the end; for each individual man is an end of God's creation and God's providence, as well as the whole human race ; and though the general in his finite power and grasp will sacrifice the individual for the sake of the whole, the great God can never do so. If He do, it must be from lack of power, wisdom, justice, love, or holiness, which the Infinite God cannot lack. Therefore the individual must be as carefully provided for as the whole mass of men. This follows from the infinite perfection of God.

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FAITH IN GOD

No doubt there is an element in the religion of each man which is common to all men. In times of domestic trouble, the family of conflicting sectarians — Trinita- rians, Unitarians, Baptists, Methodists, Universalists — all gather about the grave of some venerable father or mother, and their else discordant hearts are har- monized by the same religious word, which is wide as human life, and deep as human need, and high as human aspirations are when their fair and far-ascend- ing flight embraces, purifies, inspires, and blesses all. So in times of national trouble, when the great ark which contains the tables of political liberty is brought in peril of the Philistines, Catholic and Protestant, Greek and Jew, true believer and disbeliever — all wheel into line and form an army where their discord- ant feet keep time to the same martial notes, and their conflicting souls blend with one accord in the deep feeling of religious patriotism common to all. If the Catholic Church in America should become as threat- ening as it is in Italy, France, and Spain, the Protes- tant sects in the United States would find a national hymn we all could sing, and the great psalm of self- defensive Protestantism would unite Trinitarian and Unitarian, Salvationist and Damnationist, the wor- shiper of the Bible and the follower of human nature. But we do not often go down to this deep, wide ocean which cradles the great continents of humanity ; rather do we dabble in those shallow waters which wash sec- tarian and partial shores ; and as unity of faith in God is the most centripetal of all attractions, so dis- cordant faith in God drives men asunder with most destructive force. Light and darkness can have com-

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 355

munion ; they mingle every morning and night, and put a twihght circle of loveliness round either horizon, so that, as the world goes whirling through space, there is a rainbow ring of beauty which surrounds it from north to south, wherein this great world continually rolls. There may be communion of light and dark- ness ; spring and autumn are the mingling of heat and cold; but there is no communion between faith in the God of Love and faith in the Devil of Hate ; these two are stark opposite. So I say that as unity of faith is the strongest of centripetal forces, so dis- cordance thereof is the strongest of repellent things.

LOVE TO GOD

I love God as I can no other being, — father, mother, wife, child ; my love to Him transcends them all. It is reverence, it is gratitude, it is adoration, it is trust ; my will melts into His, and the two are one. All selfishness is gone, and in the life of God within my consciousness do I find my own higher life. We have our special times for feeling this love, our several ways of express- ing it ; and unhappy is that man or woman who tattles thereof, foaming at the mouth in some noisy confer- ence, as in the village dog barks to dog; but blessed is he whose noiseless piety sweetens his daily toil, filling the house with the odor of that ointment ; thrice blessed when it comes out in the character of the men whose holy lives, glittering with good deeds, adorn the land they also serve and heal and bless.

HARMONY BETWEEN MAN AND GOD

What an immense variety there is in forms of reli- gion ! What odds between the sensuous glitter, the splendid costliness of the Catholic service in St. Pe-

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ter's Cathedral at Rome to-day, and the bare devotion of the Quakers in some Friends' meeting-house at New Bedford or Philadelphia ! What a difference be- tween the barbarous idolatry of the New Zealanders, sacrificing a man before a clay image, and the Trin- itarians of Boston consulting together, and with great self-denial agreeing to send some stalwart-minded and earnest man as missionary to convert those New Zea- landers from their savage idolatry ! The odds between the flora of New Holland and New Hampshire is smaller than between their forms of religion. The ele- phant of the tropics differs from the sea-bear of the Aleutian Islands less than the religion of the African elephant-hunter differs from that of the Russian hunter who captures the sea-bear at Alaska. Yet each worshiper is sincere, and these different forms of religion have grown out from the ground of humanity as the flora and fauna of the tropics and arctics come from the circumstances thereof.

How fleeting are the forms of religion ! What a complex mythology had the Greeks two thousand years ago ! Now it is all gone. God and goddess, nymph and muse, have only left their handsome footsteps in the marble of Greece, or their breath in her literature. Nobody prays now to Pan ; no sacrifice is offered to Pallas Athene. Olympian Zeus has but his monument in the graveyard of buried deities, not a worshiper in all the world. His last devotee was an English scholar who wanted to sacrifice to him a bull in a parlor in London, and he was carried to Bedlam. All these deities are fossils now ; none thinks them live gods. The terrible deities which Roman Lucretius fought against with his sword of verse have fled, routed before him, driven beyond the flaming walls of

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the universe whereof he sang; not a god of them is left. Curious is it to see to-day in Rome itself the temples of Ceres, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva, and think of the gods whom humanity has banished thence, the stone outlasting the deity. You look on the statues there, corpses of gods which once millions of men wor- shiped; now there is none so poor to do them rever- ence. A new crop of religions has come up on earth and overgrown the old, and crowded them out. Within seventeen hundred years Christianity has driven away the old religion from three-quarters of Europe. The Christ of the Church has put all the Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic deities to open shame. But that form of Christianity in which our fathers worshiped in the German woods has itself been driven off by another form of Christianity which differs from its predecessor not less widely than that differed from the religion which it displaced. Once Teutonic Arminius met Ro- man Varus with his legions, and slew them on the old red ground of North Germany. Fifteen hundred years later, Teutonic Luther met Roman Leo with his legions of priests, and put them down on that same old red ground of North Germany. The difference between the Teutonic heathenism of the Germans in the eighth century and the Roman Christianity which displaced it, is far less than the odds between that Roman Christianity and the religion which brings us together to-day.

The name Religion includes the pious conscious- ness of the six great world-sects, — Brahmins, Hebrews, Romans, Buddhists, Christians, and Mahometans, with all the ruder forms. The term Christianity embraces a great variety of ideas and forms, quite hostile to each other.

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Look deep, and you find something permanent in all these fleeting forms of religion, an element of unity common to each, amid diversities so great. All the re- ligions that are or have been unite in this : They aim to establish harmony between God and man. That conscious desire is the point common to all. In all the ruder forms men seek this harmony by an attempt to alter the disposition of God, to make him conform to us, not us to him. Such is the aim of all sacrifice, — to affect the Deity, not the worshiper. All the Old Testament sacrifices and ritual observances are to please God. Circumcision did not increase the piety or morality of parent or child; it was only designed to alter the disposition of Jehovah. This rude notion still prevails in Christian churches. There you will be told that all the sermons are for God's sake. The Catholic priest tells us we must please God. The Protestant minister commonly thinks that by his prayer he shall influence the Eternal God. He does not seek to lift up himself and such as pray with him, but only to alter the mind of God; not to make men divine, but God human. Nay, for seventeen hundred years this has been the chief doctrine of all Christen- dom, that Jesus came on earth, lived and died, not to teach humanity to men, but to persuade God to mercy ; not to make us love each other, or to love God, but to make God love us ; for this surely has been the doctrine of the Christian Church, that his death, as an atone- ment, was the great thing, not his life of virtue and his words of such strength and beauty.

But when we get enlightened, we find that the way to attain harmony with God is by conforming ourselves to Him, not by seeking to conform Him to us. By and by we find that there is a God of infinite perfection in

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power, wisdom, justice, love, and holiness ; and then we find that God needs no instruction, for He is all-wise, and before the beginning of creation He knew all which would happen in the history of the human race, in the life of you and me, every act, every word, every feeling, and provided for it beforehand. He needs no appeasing to alter His affection, for He is all love, and has an infinite desire to confer the highest possible of conceivable blessing on the whole human race, and on each individual thereof.

When we come to this conclusion, we take pains to bring ourselves into harmony with God. All sacrifice disappears, all mutilation of the flesh or spirit, all ceremonies which do not grow out of the natural wants of mankind.

Then comes the worship of God in spirit and in truth, not in one place only, but in all ; not on the Sab- bath or new-moon days, but all time is holy, all life is religion, a continual attempt at conformity with God, It is only by this worship in spirit and in truth, in all time and in every place, that men establish a real har- mony between man and God, and we become at one with Him. It is only by this one religion that the grand aim of all religion can be achieved. No words, no sacrifice, no ceremony, no belief, can instruct, ap- pease, or persuade the Infinite God in the very least degree. Nothing can alter Him.

In all civilized religion, there are finger-posts point- ing to this desire of all nations, — complete rest in God, the perfect love which casts out fear. What longings for it are there in the Old Testament and Apocrypha I How many a noble soul felt the poverty of ceremonial religion, and broke out into grand lyrics and psalms ! " Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abom-

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ination unto me ! " — is the protest which Isaiah puts into the mouth of God. The prayer of David is, " Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me ! " " The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not despise ! " It was for this that believers built their temples and pyramids, and hewed out their statues, — ugly sphinxes in Egypt, handsome deities in artistic Greece.

The atheist who smote the people's religion of fear, sought the same thing. He also longed for rest to his soul. In our own day a religious poet has mostly summed the matter up, — the effort of mankind to this end before Jesus, and the result of peace which comes from the worship in spirit and in truth.

" Tranquillity ! — the sovereign aim wert thou

In heathen schools of philosophic lore;

Heart-stricken by stern destiny of yore. The Tragic Muse thee served with thoughtful vow; And what of hope Elysium could allow

Was fondly seized by Sculpture, to restore

Peace to the mourner. But when He who wore The crown of thorns around his bleeding brow Warm'd our sad being with celestial light,

Then Arts, which still had drawn a softening grace From shadowy fountains of the Infinite,

Communed with that Idea, face to face; And move around it now as planets run. Each in its orbit round the central sun."

The common forms of religion are not this worship in spirit and in truth, of which I speak. What de- light there is, however, in this high worship which rests on the consciousness of the infinite perfection of God. I am sure of Him, sure of His nature. His purpose. His motive, its end and means. I seek to conform my finite being to His infinite purpose, and so make a harmony

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between Him and me. I catch the tune from God, as it sounds in the innermost of my consciousness, and then I accord all the strings of my harp thereto, and sing the songs of Zion, counting no land strange to such music. Nowhere, not even by the waters of Baby- lon, shall I hang my harp on the willow, and sit down and weep in despair.

All forms of religion have some truth in them, else they had not been ; even as all kinds of food have some little nutriment, and even for that men hold them fast. But this absolute religion, this worship in spirit and in truth, at all times, in every place, and with each faculty, — that is the only form of religion which has nothing to hinder the most complete and perfect human joy. Intellectually it is delight in the Mind of the universe, the Infinite Wisdom whence all truth and use and beauty flow. Morally it is joy in the Conscience of the world, whence comes the justice that sets metes and bounds to all, and is the world's great universal Will, overriding all individual human caprice. Affection- ately it is delight in the Heart of the universe, whence comes this great motherly love which fills the heavens with starry fire, and clothes the earth with such mag- nificence, and robes the lily in fairer raiment than im- perial Solomon ever put on, and pours its tender mercy forth till the earth is filled with the odor of that oint- ment. Religiously it is joy in the Infinite God, Father to Moses, Jesus, to you and me, to the most op- pressed slave that groans on a plantation in Alabama or Carolina ; ay, to that slave's cruellest master, to the worst of murderers or kidnappers in our Northern States.

In the sorrows of life, it is hope, resignation, and absolute trust; ay, it is certain knowledge that the

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discipline of grief and disappointment leads to delight in our eternal destination, an eternal weight of glory which nothing else can work out for us.

The old forms of religion are passing away, and will be forgotten. They were the scaffolding whereon men went up and down, or the derricks wherewith they lifted up the precious stones they had quarried out, wherewith they were building up the great temple of the perfect religion, the worship of God in spirit and in truth. That springs from the nature of man, and accords with the nature of God, and shall never pass away.

THE FALSE IDEA OF INSPIRATION

The old ecclesiastical idea of inspiration, although not so powerful as once, still retards the progress of mankind. It is an exceeding great wrong to begin with, for it makes us worship the Bible as a master, not use it as a servant to help. We are told that it contains the writings of men miraculously inspired; that it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we must accept its doctrines, not because they are true, but because they are Biblical. The Bible is not to be merely a quickener of men's thought, it is to be a substitute for thought ; not a staff that we are to walk by, but to be legs for us to walk upon. We can no longer come to the great fountain whence Esaias and Jesus drew their living water; they drew the well dry and put the living water into Biblical troughs, whence we are to drink as we see fit.

Now, looked on in this way, we fail to see the real value of the Bible itself. There are great truths in it, and in this way we may get those truths, and that is a great thing. But besides this, there are great

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characters in the Bible; and the character of a great man is worth much more than the special truths that he teaches. The philosophical conclusions of Aristotle, Socrates, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, are not worth so much as the character of these men, the intellectual manhood which brought them to their conclusions. If Aristotle and Socrates lived now, they would not stop in the nineteenth century after Christ where they stopped in the fourth century before him. To take the prophet's mantle is a very good thing, no doubt, but to take the prophet's spirit is very different, and a great deal greater and better, and more. Now, if you take the Bible as a miraculous authority, the last standard of human appeal, then, though you get the truths that are taught in it, you do not get the char- acter of the men who wrote it. The words of Moses, Esaias, Paul, Jesus, represent what these men came to in their day, not what the same men would come to in our time, starting from the higher platform with the greater impetus and momentum to start with. The character which carried Jesus so far before his age is more than the special truths which he taught. What grand words in his beatitudes, in his parables often- times, in that last brave prayer of his, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Do you think that a man who went so high as that eighteen hundred years ago, would stop where he did if he lived in these days.? Do you think that Jesus, living at this day, would believe in the devil, in eternal torment, and speak about the wrath of God, and expect the world to end during the life of his immediate followers .^^ That he should have believed so then was perfectly natural, and we should not judge him as if he acted in the light of our times ; nor should we put ourselves into the dark-

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ness of his times. To do this is not to honor Jesus. I think it is to dishonor him. Then, too, if jou think his character was wholly made for him, and not by him, was the work of God and not of the man, wrought out with no struggle, no tears, no fear, no mistakes, no sin, if his noble words were only miraculously in- spired,— then Jesus is nothing of himself ; he is the lightning-rod, not the power which lightens and thun- ders ; he is not a human fountain, only a cup full of the divine water, and God made the cup and filled it, and Jesus has- no merit in being such a cup, none in being so filled. Some materialists of our day teach that a man's character is made for him, not by him, and he is the instrument of human and material circum- stances. If you apply that doctrine to the manliest man, and say that Jesus had nothing to do with mak- ing his character, it is the worst application of this materialistic theory which we all denounce. With the common view of inspiration, the highest man becomes only a poor puppet on the world's great stage, and moves just as God pulls the strings. Then the noble souls of the Bible are all dwarfed, and degenerate into little mean machines, and the goodly host of prophets, the glorious company of apostles, and the noble army of martyrs, are only wheels of the mill, and on the irre- sistible crank thereof the almighty hand of God is laid, and turns it round, and the hammer rises and falls just as He wills, and no more. What comfort is it to me to know that Jesus was faithful, if I know that God held him up so that he could not fall, when I am to be tempted, and there is no miraculous help for me.^ Of what value is his example then.^^ I wish to be wise, and men tell me that God shot down wisdom into Jesus, as he will not into me, and what comfort to me is that.^^

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Then, too, this notion turns the world into a base juggle. How mean it looks with no natural laws, no constant mode of operation! What a world, where a man's word stops the sun for twenty-four hours, that a Hebrew soldier may slay his antagonists, who are not worse than himself! Look around at the world of nature as it is to-day, — every apple-tree on the cold hills of Massachusetts fragrant with blossoms ! Look at the wheat hid under the snow all winter long, now through all the Northern States growing bread to feed not only industrious America, but belligerent Europe also ! Look at the spring grains which, with boun- teous hand, the farmer but a week ago scattered over the soil, which his oxen had furrowed before him ! See the noble Indian corn just waiting to burst out of the earth, and presently it will drink in God's light from above, and God's moisture from beneath, and get the solid substance of the ground wherewith to build up its exogenous stalk! And then look on the world of miracles as it exists in theology, arid how grand is the world of nature, and how mean and contemptible is the world of magic which theology tells us of! Now scientific men do not find magic anywhere ; but every- where they see law, everywhere order, everywhere exactness. They do not find any miraculous inspira- tion. Newton learns mathematics by mathematical thought, and Kant explores the more wonderful celes- tial mechanics of the human mind by hard toil. It is by labor, sweat, and watching, that men of science achieve their wonderful results. But in religious mat- ters it is said men get religious inspiration with no thought at all. And so to many men of science the whole business of religion is an imposture, and they turn off from it with scorn and loathing. Who is to

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be blamed for this? In the name of God, men have taught what the science of the human mind must needs reject, and do you wonder that the most rehgious men of science at this day are rehgious without a God? They cannot resist the rehgious instinct within them, and they are rehgious without a God. They have got a here, but no hereafter ; an earth, but no heaven.

This notion of miraculous inspiration keeps us from a knowledge of the great powers of human nature. It was once natural that men in a rude stage should have thought the best thoughts that came to them were shot down like lightning from on high, that they had noth- ing to do with it. But now we need not stop there. We make fools of ourselves by yielding our intellect to some priest, and stopping our reason because a man quotes, " Thus saith the Lord." These great truths in the Bible did not come by miracle, but by labor, and watching, and prayer, and tears. The parables of Jesus did not come like lightning; they came from the toil and prayer and daily endeavor of that manhest and noblest man.

" Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came. Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, — The canticles of love and woe."

This is the way in which inspiration comes.

THE TRUE IDEA OF INSPIRATION

How can the finite mind communicate with the In- finite Mind, and receive inspiration from God?

We get the material power which we covet, not by

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entreating God to bestow it upon us, but by learning the mode of operation of the material forces of the world. We take what we can manage for our special purposes, and slowly learn to use this power, and thereby get communications of material force from God, and share His power over the world of matter. It is small things that we take first, next greater, and at length, some thirty thousand years after creation, the philosophical mechanic makes the waters carry his boat or his great ship. The elastic element reacts on the oars under his hand, and his little shallop glides smoothly along, or the wind fills his sails, and three hundred and forty-six miles in a day his ship traverses the sea. The same wind turns his mill at home. The river in its ascent is an inclined plane that reaches all the way from New Orleans to the Falls of St. Anthony, and steam puts his ship up its slanting side, or lifts the cargo a thousand feet into the sky. In its descent the same river is another material force that will grind his corn, forge his iron, spin and weave for him. The gravitation of the earth pulls all things to its center, with swiftly accelerated speed. It draws down the sand through his hour-glass, or keeps yonder pendulum in its constant oscillating swing, all day long, all night through ; the earth's gravitation keeps time for little, feeble man. The earth and water smite with his tilt- hammer, and shape for him the stubborn iron, softened by fire, into chains, anchors, axes, knives, and watch- springs, shaping it as he will. Fire carries him on land or sea, — his f orgeman to stand, his porter to travel. He also makes the clouds his chariot, and walks on the wings of the wind. He controls the lightning, and makes the winds his angels, and the flames of fire his ministers. Thus man, who aspires to share the

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material power of God, gets his portion of it, and be- comes a partner with Him in the world, and so the might of God is imputed to man, and he is inspired with power. He gets it by normal work, and the amount he receives is in proportion to his original ability, to the quantity and quality of voluntary use made thereof. Aspiration alone is not enough. Aspiration with nor- mal work, of head and hand, secures this communion with God. Man puts his thinking hand into the treasure chest of God's material power, and takes just what he has skill to use. By this process he becomes inspired with the material power which God put into the universe. Still he does not take it all. It stretches away before him and above him, vast treasures of power not yet made use of. There is always this re- served power, which man sees but cannot master, and beyond that yet other power, not mastered and not seen. Ever mankind goes on, ever aspiring for more, ever working for more, ever inspired with more. There is no other way for man to get the communication of this material force. It is on these inevitable conditions that God grants it to man.

Now it is in just the same way that we satisfy the next and higher aspiration, for the intellectual power that we covet so much. We think, or try to think, and so develop the mind in all its faculties. We study out- ward things about us to render them into thought. We study the world of matter for the science which lies within it, for the spiritual germ which God laid away in this material oyster. To the mere eye of sense the stars are dots of light ; to the thinking mind there is astronomic science hid in them ; they are a revelation, not of God's material power only, but of His power of thought also. The savage sees the wild flower, —

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" The primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose is to him. And it is nothing more."

But to the thinking man the science of botany is in the primrose. To the senses, man is matter, hving, moving, f eehng ; to the mind he is a most curious array of physical and metaphysical science. These outward things contain God's thought ; and as we study them we get communications with that thought, and are in- spired with God's wisdom. Intellectual toil is the con- dition of intellectual inspiration. The whole visible universe is one medium of cummunication with God. So, too, man studies the history of mankind, or his own nature, and learns yet other thoughts of God, which become his thoughts, communicated from God to us on this condition of intellectual toil, and by this medium of our own nature and history, and so we are inspired by God. Now just as men cultivate their mind, scholastically or practically, so do they receive com- munication of God's thought, and are inspired with the intellectual power of God. Human nature is one medium of communication with God. So as the mind becomes cultivated we get new thoughts from him in two ways ; first from the things about us, and from things that have been and still are taking place ; and next from the nature within us. New ideas flash upon us, coming we know not how ; they are the result of our mind's action, and are controlled by the constitu- tion of our individual mind. The poet gets them poetically, the philosopher philosophically, the practi- cal man in the form of business ; because one cultivated his imagination, the other his reflective reason, and the other his practical understanding, each after its own

kind. Now as each does this faithfully, he grows wiser XI— 24

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and wiser, and has more intellectual power to get wisdom from within and without. So it is with the human race. Thus the civilized man has more intellectual power than the rude man thinks God possesses. New- ton knew more about the heavens than Homer's god. Immanuel Kant understood the nature of man far bet- ter than any New England savage supposed God understood it. Men acquire this communication of in- tellectual power in proportion to their quantity of intellectual nature, and the normal use they make thereof. The man of great genius is capable of more, the man of small genius of less. He that uses his tools well gets more, he less who uses them ill. " To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance." Now we can receive the communication of intellectual power from God only on this sole condition of intel- lectual work. But men are so made that the human race continually advances ; men are bom . with greater capacity for this intellectual power, then with better opportunities to develop, mature, and enjoy it. So from this twofold condition there is a continual increase of the intellectal power of mankind; and we get more and more truth in all forms from God. All the cir- cumstances which improve the powers of man help us to increase the intellectual ability of man, and receive more inspiration. Thus all schools, good books, and the like, help to develop the intellectual nature. These are the roads which the Holy Ghost travels. You do not hear that God inspires mathematical truths into men who never undertook to cipher. The new mathe- matical ideas come to men busy with mathematical thought. " Fulfil the condition, and have the recom- pense," is what God says to man. Still far away and above all, there stretches the infinite mind, the infinite

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wisdom, the perfect object of intellectual aspiration. The finite mind industriously holds up its little cup. The Infinite pours down from His fountain, and fills it full. When the oak-tree is a span log, and no more, it finds moisture and solid food just as it needs; when the oak-tree is a hundred feet high, with great, broad arms, it still finds moisture and food enough.

In the same way men get moral inspiration, and com- munication of God's justice. The normal use of man's moral faculties is the condition on which he gets it. As the richer harvests come from good seed sown in good soil, well tilled, so do we get richer returns of justice from the conscience which we nicely cultivate, and new moral ideas spring up in us, and we grow wiser in conscience. Here too the amount of moral inspira- tion is in proportion to the quantity of the man's nature and the normal use thereof. Here likewise is progress of the individual man, and of mankind, in the receipt of justice from God, and on the same condition. Con- tinually, as men get civilized, men are born with better organization for justice, and furnished with better means for the development of the moral nature they are born with. Here too are mediums of communica- tion. All the just and good men that ever lived, from Moses to the last writer of the New Testament, and from him to our day ; all the noble women that have ever been, the goodly company of prophets, the noble army of martyrs, — all these are mediums for receiv- ing this moral inspiration from God, and giving it down to us. The House of Refuge for friendless girls, asylums for the unfortunate, legislatures which re- enact justice into laws, courts which execute humanity in their decrees, — all these are instruments which pro- mote the communication of justice from the Most High

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God. Thus mankind advances continually, and con- tinually becomes more just, juster even than the old idea of God. The good father who teaches his child to obey conscience, to be kind to those who are unkind to him, is a higher being than the author of Genesis supposed God to be. Miss Dix, who goes through the land caring for the unfortunate, prepares mankind to receive moral communication and inspiration from the infinitely just God. Still, go as high as we may, our ideal travels before us, a cloud by day and a fire by night, the infinite ideal of our moral aspiration ; and the more we gain, the more we want. As the oak-tree becomes larger it requires more light and moisture, and as we grow greater we ask more justice, and receive it still.

It is in the same way that man goes on in his higher devlopment, and receives affectional inspiration.

All these come from the infinite source of all things, and we get inspiration by the normal use of our facul- ties in their normal condition, not by their abnormal. Inspiration is not miracle, it is law ; it is not capricious- ness, it is a constant force. Fulfil the conditions, and the inspiration comes. My friends, inspiration is a fact in human history, in your life and mine. You and I may have communion with God, have it constantly. The Infinite God is ultimate source of all things. We go to that eternal fountain, and thence draw the waters of life in proportion to the size of our cup and our diligence in using it. The well is very deep, but it is brimful, and the man with the shortest arm and the smallest cup may dip therein and find abundance. As all trees root in the ground, and take hold of the air, so we all in God. There is only one kind of inspira- tion; it is the income of God to our consciousness iiL

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its various modes, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious. There are different degrees of it ; Jesus had much, Paul less. The degree depends on us ; it does not depend on the caprice and variableness of the Deitj. There are high hours of visitation from the living God ; we all know them in our ecstatic moments, when we are wrought into a great act of prayer. Then the mind is quick, the conscience quick, the affections travel wide ; we can forgive any sin, love the worst men, be kind to the vile ; then in idea we are perfectly holy, and what satisfies us in our common modes of consciousness we tread under foot. That is when we have got the high- est degree of inspiration ; it is the result of our former life and the discipline of our faculties, for when we start at first we cannot come up to this. All faculties are mediums of communication, avenues of inspiration. God does not build a road from Himself to us, and then refuse to travel on it. You and I may have inspiration of the same sort as came to Moses, to Esaias, " whose hallowed lips were touched with fire," and to Jesus. We all may be inspired. When you are faithful to your own powers, you are not only receiving communi- cation through them, but you are preparing yourself at the same time to receive yet more and more. There is a continual progress of this inspiration for the in- dividual and the race. It is unbounded. There is no limit to the supply in God; there is no end to the capacity in mankind to receive it. Is any one of us so good, or wise, or loving, as he might be, ay, as he could he? We shall receive this inspiration on the natural condition which belongs to our soul. Much material power is there in the world not yet converted to the world's use. The foodful ground will double its harvest any time when man spades it through with

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twice the thought that he does now. How many streams run down, waiting to be mills, factories, black- smiths for mankind ! As yet we have used but a small part of the material power which God waits to com- municate to us. So we have used but a very small frac- tion of the intellectual, moral, and affectional power which is laid up, a great treasure of the highest strength in the nature of man. You and I can draw therefrom any day just what we will, and what we have the capacity to receive. Doing this, we shall pre- pare the way for better things to come. And where we painfully travel with prayers, and tears, and pos- sibly with blood also, the human race may move smoothly onwards, passing over the road which our hands have leveled, and our feet have made easy for the world's progress ; and then other men will go fur- ther and further on. Another three centuries might make out of the intellectual, moral, and affectional treasures of human nature in New England, what the last three centuries have made out of the material forces of this continent.

Like the devil in the New Testament legend of the temptation, a false doctrine may offer mankind whole kingdoms of the earth, if he will fall down and worship it. It cannot convey an inch of soil and give a good title ; it is only a squatter for the night, and if a sover- eign in the darkness, when the morning dawns he is dislodged by the real owner and comes not back again.

THE NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS

FACULTY

The religious faculty, connecting man consciously with the eternal world and its Divine Cause, is the great-

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est of all our spiritual talents, and as such has the most abiding power and far-controlling force. Its action may be of the most elevating or the most degrading tendency, accordingly as it works well or ill, with our nature or against it. No faculty of the body or spirit can so debauch and brutalize man as this when mis- directed or abused ; the abuse of the religious talents wrought such havoc in the scribes and Pharisees, that Jesus of Nazareth declared that publicans and harlots should enter into the kingdom of heaven sooner than they.

But the normal development of the religious faculty has the most ennobling influence on the whole character ; nothing so strengthens and refines a man. In our pres- ent stage of civilization there are two truths which seem necessary to the development of this faculty, — the idea of immortal life for each person, and the idea of the infinite perfection of God. These are no doubt the grandest, the highest, and most valuable ideas which mankind knows ; these are the two greatest lights in the heaven of human consciousness, to rule alike our day and night; but as the sun and the moon, they are no monopoly of men of genius and great learning; they are not conclusions wrought out by careful study, but facts given us in the nature of man, which we feel instinctively at first. This feeling of human immor- tality and God's perfection was lived as life, long before it was uttered by the philosopher or the poet; and accordingly no truths are more widely welcomed throughout the world than these.

With these ideas there may come forth a normal de- velopment of the religious faculty, according to its nature, and this marks the individual character with a fourfold excellence of tranquillity, energy, harmony,

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and beauty. It affords a composure and a rest which else we cannot attain to. We feel, we know the Infinite God, and repose not only in His being, but in the facul- ties of His being, in His perfect power, perfect wisdom, perfect justice, perfect love, and perfect holiness. And we rely not only on the existence of these qualities in God, but on the product of these qualities, on His works, which are like His being. He is perfect Cause of all, creating all from a perfect motive, for a perfect purpose, as a perfect means. He is perfect Providence not less, and the power, wisdom, justice, and love, once active to create, continually act to preserve, develop, and bless. Thus knowing God, we know our own im- mortal life, and are conscious of that divine nature in us which shall never die, but unfold and grow into worlds of new excellence ; for our soul is only a seed, whose present power and growth we know, but not the forms of its future growth. Thus conscious of our immortality and God's perfection, we are full of trust ; our absolute allegiance becomes absolute confidence; we fear the end of nothing. How can we, if we are sure of God? We know there is a Providence which watches over us, works with us, for us, through us, tends us by day and by dark, protects our dear ones, our country, and all mankind ; that He desires the best of all possible things for each and all ; that He has the perfect justice to will the best, perfect wisdom to de- vise the best, and perfect power to achieve the best. What then can we fear? Is not God the Father and Mother of all? and if God is for us, who can be against us? We are only to do what we know is our duty, and take what follows thence; it is what God designed should follow thence. God asks no more of us, puts up with no less. We may succeed in life, our

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plans may prosper, health and happiness may attend us; and then we have a rapture beyond all this, and God will make eternal welfare out of this transient success. Or we may fail in our pursuits, we may have to bear with sickness, poverty, loss of friends ; but we know that which we suffer here will be compensated at the end, that what is discipline to-day shall be delight hereafter. America may perish, as Naples, Athens, and Rome ; Boston may go where Sodom and Gomorrah went, — still we are sure that the Infinite God will con- vert these seeming accidents to real good. Knowing this, I have composure, tranquillity ; I can be still ; I can face the racks of the Spanish Inquisition, or the cold, continuous sorrow of disappointed earthly life, and smile upon it all. All men do not know the value of this tranquillity ; but he who has been in doubt and fear, and then found rest for his soul, knows that no common joy is worth the very pains which precede this satisfaction. A man wanders in the doubts of science, and, still worse, in the fears of the popular theology, which is called Christianity, and he thence comes out to the clear light of natural religion, the warmth of piety in him, and the sun of God's infinite perfection about him, — and what a day it is he walks in, con- trasted with the darkness he has just escaped from!

With this tranquillity there comes new energy. As soon as we have a certainty of God, and rest in His causal providence, we have new confidence in our own faculties ; no limb of the body then seems imperfect or insignificant ; no power of the spirit mean, — for as God made them as they are, we cannot complain ; we are sure they are adequate for His divine purpose, and also for the personal duty we are to achieve ; we shall use our faculties, great or little, with the strength God

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has given us. If our spiritual stature is small, and the crowd throng us, we know that God has planted some sycamore-tree for our little stature, into which we shall climb to see the great procession of heavenly things pass by. Every intellectual talent is greatened by the culture of the religious faculties. A man who has this religious development in any department of industry will do more work, with less confusion, than one devoid of it. " An undevout astronomer is mad," says a famous poet; he looks with but a fraction of his eye, he has cut off half his faculty. But an un- devout blacksmith, carpenter, doctor, lawyer, is just as mad ; his arm is the weaker, and his faculty the less. One of the sources of greatness in Dr. Franklin was his religious trust, an entire rest in God, and tranquil- lity of soul, which went so far beyond the priesthood of his times that they called him infidel, — who had flown on spiritual wings far beyond the seeing of their eyes. The weakness which we see in so many able- minded men in America to-day, is owing to the fact that they tie up the right arm of human strength, and put out the right eye of human light, — and what wonder that they go impotent and blind, and stumble by the wsij? Then how much clearer is the conscience, with what greater certainty does it perceive the rule of right, when it knows and has a general trust in Him who is the right. How much stronger too is the will to adhere to it. All history shows that nothing so confirms the will of man as the religious faculty; the saints and martyrs of all lands and of every age are a witness of it. The power of love acquires also a similar increase of strength ; the affectional feelings are nicer, the quality of love more delicate, the quan- tity greater. Our love for those nearest and dearest

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to us is strengthened, and it expands to a wider circle ; we love our country more, and can bear more for it; nay, our love embraces all mankind, without distinc- tion of tongue or nation. Religion is the deepest in- centive to world-wide philanthropy, and at last we come to love even the wickedest of men, — those who produce or encourage the crime and the misery which we seek to abolish.

With this energy of each faculty there comes a harmony of all ; the various talents work well together, and there is a certain equilibrium between the body and spirit. The instinctive passion of youth gives way to the counsels of the spirit, and the ambitious calcula- tions of manhood only quicken, not corrupt, the mind, conscience, and heart. Nothing so harmonizes the various talents of a man as well-proportioned religious culture, for it not only allows the natural rights of body and spirit, but demands them. Strong will and strong conscience are enough to make a martyr, — often a most incongruous character, — but it is only this harmony of all the powers that makes the saint, whose duty is delight, who is happy while he bears the cross, whose energy of work is rounded off at last with the sweet tranquillity of rest.

Then as the crowning grace of this fourfold excel- lence, there comes what we may call the heauty of the spirit ; for as there is a certain handsomeness of the outward person, a completeness of the whole, and the perfection of each part, which is the union of health and strength, that draws the eyes of all beholders, and compels the admiring reverence of whoso sees, — so there is likewise a beauty of man's spirit, the comple- tion of the whole and perfection of each part, a union of spiritual strength and health, which yet more in-

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timately draws the eyes of the heavenly-minded, and compels the admiring reverence of every holy soul. There is as much difference in the beauty of spirits as of bodies. Covetousness, hate, lies, fraud, unclean- ness of lust, selfishness, irreverence, bigotry, revenge, superstition, fanaticism, fear, — these are the ugliness of the inner man, and no corporeal obliquity of limb or feature can ever compare with the ghastliness of this inner deformity. But temperance, wisdom, cour- age, charity, reverence, trust, integrity, holiness, the aspiring virtue of the finite, — these are the beauty of the inner man, the altogether beautiful of the human soul, and this the well-proportioned culture of the religious faculty is sure to bring ; and the harmony, energy, and tranquillity, which are the special colors that complexion the soul's excellence, will all blend into one threefold arch of heavenly beauty, a rainbow of hope and promise, spanning our human world. All men do homage to the highest form of material beauty, and the sculptor and painter copy its loveliness and immortalize it in their work, and men worship it as a thing divine. But, what is this mere beauty of the evanescent flesh compared to that transcendent and eternal loveliness of the soul which dwells within the human frame .^

What homage do men pay to the beauty of the intellect, reverencing that precious jewel in the homely head of Socrates ! Above all the bravery of the body they count the piety of Jesus, reckoning and honoring his manly virtue as the eternally beautiful of the hu- man soul, whereunto churches and cathedrals all round the world are builded up, as not unfitting monuments.

I admire the men of great intellectual grandeur, the inventors who create thought, the organizers who make

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it a thing, and the administrators who run the material or human mills with it. I greatly reverence such as greatly mix their thought with brute material things, and so convert water, wood, metals, earth, fire, light- ning, into the form of man, to do his human work ; those too who organize humanity itself into lovelier shapes, till the national lump is leavened with a great idea, and rises into a well-proportioned state. None reverence more than I the poet's great imagination or the philosopher's great reason. But to me the most cheering specimens of mankind are not these men of great intellect; I pass by Cromwell, Napoleon, Csesar, Hannibal, and Alexander ; I leave Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, and Homer; I fly over Kant, Newton, Leib- nitz, Bacon, Descartes, Aristotle, Socrates, and others of that kin, born lords of reason, of most illustrious birth, or on the common level of ordinary life, — and I pause before some man or woman of common intel- lect, but well-developed religious faculty, and there I bow me down more joyous than to the great of earth. Here are the beatitudes of our humanity, the just conscience, the loving and self-denying heart, the soul that trusts God with lowly and aspiring reverence. Here I find the proudest triumphs of mankind, and, going out from many an humble house, where dwells some man or woman of surpassing purity, cleanness of eyes, and delicacy of religious love, I say, " God cre- ated man in his own image," I clasp my hands with thanksgiving and say, " In the image and likeness of God createdst thou him, but a little lower than the angels, and here thereof is the proof."

By the well-proportioned culture of the religious faculty we gain this tranquillity, energy, harmony, beauty. We set the little wheel of our personal fac-

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ulties in the great stream of God's law, and all the omnipotence, all the omniscience of almighty justice, holiness, and love come and turn our humble mill day and night, and grind for us. It is vain for wicked- ness to sit up late, to rise early, to eat the bread of carefulness, while God giveth to those that love him, even in their sleep.

IDEALIZING FORCES

We all need something to idealize and beautify our life. Science, literature, art, music, all work that way, this for one, that for another. Poetry is a very com- mon idealizer. The affections are a strong and beauti- ful power of this sort; they come into the rich man's palace and the poor man's cottage, and they cheer him for his toil, and bless him at all times of his life. But the most powerful of all these idealizing forces, and the most beautiful too, is religion in the soul of man ; for when science has lost its charm, when music ceases to fascinate, when poetry stirs us no longer, when the objects of affection have passed away, and our eye sees them not, and even in the darkness our hands grasp not their well-beloved forms, — still the heart and flesh cry out for the living and Most High God, and still that Infinite God comes down, our ever- lasting light and our glory.

In his prayer a man enters into communion with himself, talks with his higher self to know what he ought to do, and with his lower self to understand what he is.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY THE LIGHT OF RELIGION

To my religious eye, even if uncultivated by science, the world is the theater of God's presence. I

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feel the Father. I see the beauty of His thought in the morning red, in the mists that fill up the valleys, in the com which waves in the summer wind, in the bil- lows which dash their broken beauty on every shore, in the stars which look down on the mists of the valley, on fields that wave with corn, on the billows that dash their broken beauty on the shore. I see in the moon - — filling her horns with loveliness, pouring out such a tide of beauty as makes the farmer's barn seem al- most a palace of enchantment, — the thought of God, which is radiating its silver sheen over all the world, and changing it to a wondrous beauty. Nature then seems nearer to me, a thousand times more beautiful, when I' regard it as the work of God, even if I look with my eye all uncultivated with science, or do not understand the wonders that I see.

But when science comes also, with the light of reli- gion, to expound the world, and I see the laws of inorganic matter, of mineral, vegetable, animal, human life, when I see that these laws are but the constant modes of operation of the Infinite God, His mind tele- graphing to us in the material world, when I under- stand the wonderful hieroglyphics which He has writ, — then how different is the world! What was before only a seed-field to feed my body, or only a workshop for my hand, is now a cabinet, a university full of the beauty of thought. The beauty of nature, then, is not mere beauty of form, and outline, and color; it is the beauty of law, of wisdom, the contrivance of means for an end; finite means for an infinite end. It is the beauty of love, the infinite goodness pouring itself out through nature, and supplying the sparrow that falls, and the human race which is proudly marching on to its brave development. Yes, then the whole universe

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seems to my eye but as one vast flower which blooms of God, and is fragrant with His never-ending love. Then every anemone beneath my foot, and every star above my head, runs over with the glorious thought of God which fills up my soul; and the universe, which was just now only a workshop for my hand, and then a curious problem for my head, is now a vast temple for my spirit; and science also is a psalm and a prayer.

The aspect of individual human life is changed yet more. I see that it is a part of God's providence. My hfe seems not now so poor and insignificant as it did before. It is a part of the infinite world of God, a needful part, an indispensable part ; and worthy of God to create, to provide for, and to bless. Without religion, without the worship of the Infinite God, I feel myself but as one sand on the shore of time ; I am so little, that I may be lost in a world so large and so complicated. In the jostle of the universe, what will become of me, say I, a single atom of soul, a little monad of spirit.^ What will become of me in a uni- verse of worlds.? I am too insignificant to be thought of. Then I ask, what shall become of me when I cannot care for myself .^^ Who shall see that I am not lost and blown off forever.? But when I know of the infinity of God, and the relation that He sustains to the world of matter and the world of man, then I know that His providence comes down to me, that infinite power embraces me, that infinite wisdom watches over me, that infinite justice upholds me, and the love of the Father folds me in His infinite bosom, and I cannot be lost. I know that I have a right, an inalienable right, to the protection and the blessedness of the Infinite God ; and though mortal fathers neg-

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lect me, and mortal mothers drop me from their bosom, the Infinite Mother will hold me in her arms of blessed- ness and beauty forever and forever.

Then the success of life is twofold more successful. Wealth, riches, fame, power of mind, genius, the achievements of a grand life, — these I should look on as not only good for their own sake, but as pins in the wall whereby my human vine is to climb up to higher growth, and bear greater clusters, rich with the wine of mortal life, not for me only, but for all man- kind ; for I see then that every excellence of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Moses, of Jesus, of John, and James, and Bridget, and Michael, is not only a blessing for each of these persons, to go on for ever enlarging in worlds beyond the tomb, but is a blessing that spreads on earth, " spreads undivided, operates unspent," and ere long shall be communicated to every mortal child that lives.

Then the defeats of life, the sad privations of the

world, poverty, shame, sickness, death, the loss of the

heart's fondest hope, the breaking of the pillars that

we leaned upon for support, — all that is little; the

good God foreknew it, provided for it all, and will

round it all at last into a globe of infinite satisfaction.

In my youth, the merely mortal passions and affections

put round me a globe of glories, and painted thereon

my boyish dreams, the fairest things I knew. How

gay they looked in the early morning of mortal life!

But experience comes and shatters my globe that

hedged me in from the universe, and my morning

dreams lie in a ruin at my feet. But the breaking

of the glass that environed me, the shattering of my

dreamy prophecy, that introduced me to the heavens,

and over me are the perennial stars which never veil XI— 25

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their face, and shine forever from glory to glory. I have changed the glass figure, and have a star that never sets.

We sigh over the ruins of defeated mortal hopes, where a human soul went through into eternity. There, with many a tear-drop, we build us a monument, seeking with marble to honor the mortal flesh, so dear to our arms once, and our hearts too. But Religion builds there her arch of triumph, and looks onward to the unfading glory, and unfading promise, unfading growth of what was here, which is now immortal and divine beyond. Over the waste places of the earth, faith in God plants her garden of Eden, where the tree of knowledge is fairer than the bud of hope we bore in our bosom, where no angel with two-edged sword fends us off from the tree of life. I know of no sor- row which religion cannot assuage, — the sorrow for those that die, and the keener, more bitter, biting sor- row for those that do not die. Religion is our arm against fate; nay, there is no fate, when armed with that enchanted shield. It is all providence, fatherly providence, motherly love. Human Nature will weep her tears, but they will be blessed tears when they are shed, when you know that God is all in all, and no little soul is ever lost ; that God takes the little tear-drop, and lays it by, and what was bitter weeping once shall be a jewel on our forehead forever and forever.

Have you been wicked; have you wasted days, and wrought guilty deeds in life ; do the sins of passion cry out against you, or, still worse, and still commoner in New England, the sins of calculation, — this is the sad- dest torture of the mortal heart. If I have wounded my own flesh or my own soul, it is a torture ; but if I have wounded another's flesh or another's soul, the

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 387

torture is bitterer still. But even here religion is com- fort. The sin was partly a mistake, grievously to be answered for, no doubt, still not eternal; and out of dungeons of crime, or from scaffolds of wickedness, shall souls go up to God unblemished and made pure. It cannot be that the Infinite God will suffer a pirate, an assassin, a malicious murderer, or even the kidnap- per that haunts our streets, monster though he be, to rot in his ruin. Oh, no ! He made all these for right- eousness, and even in their sin-polluted souls there is a germ that may lift the spirit up at length to piety and philanthropy, to love, and the blessedness of heaven.

REVIVALS or RELIGION

Extraordinary efforts have recently been made in "this town and neighborhood to produce what is called a " Revival of Religion." These efforts have been followed by certain results, and many more are to follow, some good, some ill. Let us look at the mat- ter with the careful thought which its importance demands.

The religious faculty is the strongest of all our spiritual powers, as indeed it must needs be, consider- ing the vast function it has both here and hereafter ; and hence the men of great religious genius who help develop such sentiments and ideas as the coming age requires, always take the strongest hold on the world, controlling the widest multitudes for the longest time, and receiving the most lasting gratitude of man- kind. Witness the influence of Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mahomet, and the adoration paid to these four men to-day, — for each is somewhere worshiped by millions as a God. But none of the high spiritual powers is

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so easily excited as the religious, and hence millions of men who have not much intellectual development, and who have little moral or affectional culture even, have yet a large activity of some of the humble religious faculties, and so are controlled by the devout disposi- tion. It is not difficult to find thousands of men in New England who cannot be stirred to any intellectual curiosity, nor roused to righteous lives, nor interested in any broad scheme of human benevolence, who will yet kneel and pray words, and join churches, and who would even bear tortures under the excitement of the devout feeling. Nay, men with little mind, with un- developed conscience, with cold hearts, — ignorant men, low men, cruel men, — can yet excite the religious feel- ings of multitudes, leading them just where they choose. Ancient history is full of examples, whereof modern history has no lack. In our own land, look at Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, — men of small talents, with no progressive ideas, men of low, malignant, and licentious character; and yet they seize the religious affections of thousands of men, and lead them just where they will. Other examples could be found, of lesser magnitude and humbler mark, much nearer home. These things being so, it is to be expected that the religious faculty should make greater mistakes in its progressive development than, any other. It is the big boy that falls heaviest to the ground, and perhaps bruises his limbs the worst. The follies of human science, taught in the name of human reason, are noth- ing compared to the follies of human religion taught in the name of miraculous revelation from God. Science never taught anything so ghastly as the Calvinistic idea of Deity. The evils which come from false phi- losophy and bad forms of government are trifling to

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 389

the hardships which come from a false form of re- ligion,— from false ideas about God, about man, and the relation between them. Look at Italy and Spain to-day ! — six and twenty millions of people crushed to the ground by a false religious idea, which in one place a king, in the other a pope, forces into the people's throat with his cannon-shot and bayonets !

Of the five great world sects, the Brahmins, the Jews, the Buddhists, the Christians, and the Mahom- etans, none started with such humane ideas, with such pious moral feelings in its originators, none had such a magnificent character in its founder, as the Christian sect, but no one has taught such absurd doctrines, none has practised such wanton and monstrous cruelty, and I think there is none at the present day in which so great fraud is imposed upon the people by the priest- hood.

This religious feeling being so mighty, so easily ex- cited, and so powerful for good or for ill, it will be at once seen that if any man can arouse it thoroughly, and guide it aright, furnishing true ideas of religion, and thereby directing men to the natural work of life, doing common things in such sort that they shall grow up to noble characters, — he will do the very greatest spiritual service that one man can perform for another, or his race, because to his reformation there must be no end; for the subjective feeling and abstract thought of that single man will come out in the concrete, ob- jective life of individuals, families, societies, nations, state and church, and spread all round the world, and end only with the world's termination. Accordingly you find as a fact that all the great progressive move- ments of mankind begin in a revival of religion ; that is, in the quickening of that faculty which j oins man to

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Infinite God. So to achieve any great work I always appeal to this faculty. That once started, then I have got a great general power, which can be turned in any one of a thousand beneficent directions.

Amongst all the foremost nations of the world, great respect is felt for the name " Christianity ; " but the word has two quite different and antagonistic mean- ings. Sometimes it stands for that form of religion which consists in piety, the love of God, and morality, the keeping of those laws which God writes on matter and in spirit ; and then it is a Bethlehem star, which goes before wise men and men of genius, alluring mul- titudes of hopeful souls to new triumphs, to which mankind is to march forward and make certain. But commonly it means only a compliance with the popular theology, and a profession of belief in certain doctrines, some of which are utterly false and abominable, and the practice of certain forms, which once represented the religious life of earnest men, whose footsteps shook the world, but which have now only traditional meaning, and represent no life at all. In this latter case, the word " Christianity " is not a Bethlehem star, going before wise men, and guiding hopeful nations ; it is only a street-lamp at the door of a common tavern, fed with train oil, paid for at the town's expense, and daily trimmed and lit by a dirty man in a greasy frock, who does that work because thereby he makes the easiest and most respectable living. The first of these two things I will call the " Christian Religion," because I believe Jesus of Nazareth meant this, and this only, when he said, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." The other I shall call the " Christian Formality," not because

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 391

it was taught by Jesus, for it was not, but because it is specially and peculiarly appropriate to the sect called by his name.

Now, which of these two ideas is sought to be built up by revivals, and the results which flow from them? I am sorry to say, that, so far as my observation has extended, these efforts seem designed to build up what I have termed '' Christian Formality," rather than " Christian Religion." The operators in these revivals teach that if the most pious and moral man in the town does not accept the popular theology for his creed, and observe the popular ritual of their sect, then he needs conversion just as much as the most abandoned profligate in a brothel or a jail; that if such a man dies without accepting the " Christian Formality," God will plunge him into everlasting damnation, and keep him there forever, and will take exquisite pleasure in watching the never-ending agonies of his child. It is never taught that piety and morality will save a man from the wrath of God ; they may be of service in this life, but are good for nothing for the life to come.

To secure this end, the salvation of the soul from the wrath of God, powerful ministers, specially trained for the work of getting up revivals, hold protracted meet- ings for prayer and preaching, day after day, and week after week, holding several meetings each day. In these assemblies there is no discussion of anything; a few speakers have it all their own way, and they ap- peal to the fears of their hearers, — the fear of death, and the fear of damnation after death. The sinfulness of man is dwelt upon in the most extravagant manner. It is not sin in the concrete — drunkenness, lying, licentiousness, covetousness, kidnapping, dealing in coolies, buying and selling slaves, perhaps your own

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children — that is denounced ; it is sin in the abstract, sin born in us, and not to be got rid of save by miracu- lous help. Man is represented as a poor, feeble, help- less worm of the dust, but, alas ! a worm that never dies. The preacher dwells on his lost state hj nature, and his inability to help himself. Then he speaks of God, and takes all the awful passages out of the Old Tes- tament and the New which tell of the wrath of God, and eternal damnation, and picture the torments of hell. He makes the hearer look down and see millions after millions of men in the wormheap of hell, writhing as the fire blazes up from beneath, while the devil stirs it, and then bids him look up to the calm, peaceful, and beautiful heaven ; and then tells of the mercy of God in sending His only-begotten Son to save mankind, and how easily salvation is to be secured ; — the man is only to renounce his natural, " carnal reason," and believe every thing in the Bible (or what is more, every thing he says is in the Bible) ; he is to be con- vinced that his nature is good for nothing, and go to Christ, and rely upon his merits to save him. Pas- sages are read from the Bible of the most appalling character, and when men shudder with horror, the preacher says, " These are not the words of man, they are the words of God ; " and the audience shivers all over with the thought. Then dreadful hymns are sung, and the tones of the organ fall upon the congre- gation like the world's wail over its own slaughter and ruin. Then come descriptions of heaven, and the j oy of the blessed ; and the preacher tells of the mother in the New Jerusalem looking over the battlements and down into the ditch of hell, where she sees her profligate son writhing in the beginning of an agony that is to last forever, and then striking her golden

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 393

harp anew, and saying, " The Lord God omnipotent reigneth; blessed be the name of the Lord." The whole is mixed with prayers of the most extravagant character. You are told that now is the only time, this the only way. Then come individual conversation, coaxing, entreating, threatening, wheedling. Skilful women slide into the confidence of men, and ask them to save their souls ; shrewd men entreat women, like Mary of old, to " ponder these things in their hearts,'* and flee from the wrath to come ; and the minister, in a voice of thunder, tells his hearers, " He that be- lieveth and is baptized shall be saved ; he that believeth not shall be damned."

You see the eff^ect of this. Remember how easy it is under any circumstances to excite the religious feel- ings. Remember how strong is marvelousness in most men, how easily reverence is stirred in any generous nature, how terrible and agonizing is the power of fear, and how readily an excited crowd believe any thing told them by a famous and powerful speaker, who horrifies and palsies them with fear, electrifies them with hope, prostrates their reason, all their higher faculties, — and you need not be astonished that many persons are brought over to the preacher's will, and, in a moment of delirious agony, believe, as they are bid, that they are the greatest of sinners, that all their works are wickedness, and that God is the dreadful monster they are told of, ready to tread them down into bottomless torment.

Now and then a good effect is produced. Hard, cold men, given to the lusts that war against the soul, are sometimes scared into the sober paths of duty, or frivolous women, consumed by worldliness and vanity, and walk therein the rest of their mortal lives. But

394 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

commonly the case is far different. Many thoughtful and moral men are disgusted with this folly and rant, and turn with contempt from every thing that bears the name of religion, and the most painful forms of infidelity and atheism are sure to come, — a lack of confidence in any higher law, in a creating Cause and preserving Providence that guides the world, a doubt that it is well to follow truth, and not a popular lie. Many who are converted in such haste, fall off again ere long, and return to their actual wickedness, — " and the last state of such men is worse than the first." Some ten years ago, there came to a certain country town a famous revivalist, and forty-five men and women were converted; within six months after- wards, the church cast them all out again, every man, every woman. While in those who remain steadfast, how much is there of bigotry, and a self-satisfied and selfish spirit! nay, worse still, — a hatred towards all who differ from them. Nor is that all. What ter- rible worldliness and inhumanity ride on the same sad- dle with the most zealous Christian formality, — Christ on the pommel, the devil on the pillion, each one rein, each one spur!

This form of religion rebukes the vices of passion, and therein it does well, and I am not sorry that these vices, which cannot be reached by the voice of entreaty, " charm we never so wisely," can yet, by this iron knout of fear, be scourged into sub j ection. But, alas I worse vices — the lust of money, of power, of distinc- tion, the vices of old men, men of hard heads and stony hearts, spiritual pride, self-conceit, arrogance, bigotry, hate — it leaves in full strength.

While these revivals go on, what a lesson there is for you and me ! What zeal, what self-denial have our

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 395

brothers shown for the highest they know ! If we have juster ideas of man, know his nobler character and cor- responding destination; if we know that the Infinite God, who loves all the things He has made, suffers no sparrow to fall to the ground without the benediction of His providence, and will still less suffer a human soul to fall to final ruin ; if we know that religion is the nat- ural piety of the heart, and morality the normal exer- cise of all the powers of man ; if we know that salvation, here and hereafter, is noble character, the effort for it, the longing after it, the prayer, even, that we may long for it, — what a noble work is demanded of you and me! If we have set our eyes on that religion which human nature demands, then it ought to appear in our superior excellence of character. We ought to be better citizens, patriots, husbands, wives, parents, children, guardians, friends. We ought to educate our children to a more religious manhood, and ourselves be more honest in our work and trade, and kinder and more charitable to all. If grand ideas and great senti- ments lodge with me at night,

" Next day I cannot rest A silent witness of the headlong rage And heedless folly by which thousands die. Bone of my bone and kindred flesh with mine."

These things being so, the age asks two things of you and me. One is criticism, — that we tell the actual wrong, and the consequences thereof, and then tell the ideal right, and what will come of that. That is the first thing. The next is, creation, — example ; that our character be a new gospel, which shall stir the in- nermost heart; our life a Sermon on the Mount, or a sermon in the street, or a sermon in the kitchen, for which men, learning to comprehend, shall thank God

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and take courage, and grow strong for many a day. That is slow work. It makes no noise ; it will not get into the newspapers ; men will not ring bells and say, '^ Behold ! twenty dipped last Sunday, and forty sprin- kled to-day, sixty added to the church ; " — but un- pretendingly the blacksmith hammers his iron all the week, his very anvil made an altar whereat he serves God ; noiselessly the mother goes before her little ones, walking in piety and morality, and " her children will rise up and call her blessed ; " honestly the trader buys, honestly sells ; manly men look after the sick, the drunken, the crazy, the poor; with charitable justice they remove the causes of poverty and crime, and in brotherly love lift up the fallen, and save such as are ready to perish ; they reform the drunkard, they lib- erate the slave ; the savage wilderness bows before them and disappears, with its hideous, howling beasts of prey ; behind them laughs the human garden, wherein all the virtues bloom ; — and " by their fruits ye shall know them ! "

SUPEEFICIAL RELIGION

It is to me one of the most pitiful of sights to see men and women whipped into religion by misfortune, as idle boys of old time were whipped into their lessons, and as lazy men are scourged by poverty to manly in- dustry and work. These persons endure for a time, but when money comes back, when new friends fill the ach- ing void which old ones had left, the new religion is withered and dried up, because there was no deepness of earth. So Jonah's gourd sprang up in a single night, to shelter the prophet's head, but the morning sunbeam looked on it, and it melted down and was gone. Such persons set up religion in the day of their dis-

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 397

tress, as a man holds an umbrella over his head in a summer shower, but the storm passes by, and religion is cast aside as the umbrella, to lie with rubbish in a comer till the next storm comes, when it will be taken up again to shelter their heads, but poor and old, and dingy and rent, worthless as a shelter, and contemptible as an ornament. There are some homely lines which well describe the consciousness of such men :

" The Lord and the doctor we alike adore Just on the brink of danger, not before; When the danger is past, both alike are requited,^ — The Lord is forgotten, and the doctor slighted."

But with other persons, with great depth of soul, the occasion only is transient ; the religion it wakens lasts forever, and bears fruit continually. Now and then you see this in a nation, which persecution or war scourges into religion. It was so with the Hebrews, so with the founders of New England. Have you never seen men and women whom some disaster drove to a great act of prayer, and by and by the disaster was for- got, but the sweetness of religion remained and warmed their soul? So have I seen a storm in latter spring; and all was black, save where the lightning tore the cloud with thundering rent. The winds blew and the rains fell, as though heaven had opened its windows. What a devastation there was ! Not a spider's web that was out of doors escaped the storm, which tore up even the strong-branched oak. But ere long the lightning had gone by, the thunder was spent and silent, the rain was over, the western wind came up with its sweet breath, the clouds were chased away, and the retreat- ing storm threw a scarf of rainbows over her fair shoulders and resplendent neck, and looked back and smiled, and so withdrew and passed out of sight. But

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for weeks long the fields held up their hands full of ambrosial flowers, and all the summer through the grass was greener, the brooks were fuller, and the trees cast a more umbrageous shade, because that storm passed by, — though all the rest of earth had long ago forgot the storm, its rainbows, and its rain.

POPULAR PREACHING

What sort of preaching do men demand in the pop- ular churches? It is not all moral and religious truth that they want ; it is only the Scriptural portions, and you must keep the Scripture mistakes as well. It must be only Protestant truth ; only the Unitarian, or Calvinistic, or Methodist, or Baptist. So you see how the truth gets winnowed away, till it is a very little thing. Nor is this the worst. The minister is not to preach all of religion ; not all of the little which he needs must know; only so much as is acceptable. He must not weary the people; must not demand a deep piety of hard and worldly men, nor of frivolous dan- dies. No, it is called sentimentalism, it is moon- shine. He must talk about faith in God. It must not be faith in the Almighty God present here in Boston, and everywhere else, with eyes of terrible loveliness that go through the world, having a wisdom and justice that overlooks nothing, a love and holiness which will leave no wrong unrighted at last. The faith he preaches must not mean that. It must be faith in the graven image that Nebuchadnezzar set up, with a head of gold, bosom of brass, and feet oF clay. He must not preach a noble morality which does right always, without fear or favor. He must not touch a public or private sin, must not speak of in- temperance to rum-sellers, nor must he rebuke licen-

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 399

tiousness amongst debauchees, nor say a word against grinding the poor in the face of the grasping and avaricious milhonaire ; must not speak of f rivohty before the ears pohte of dandies of either sex. If he speaks to slaveholders, of Baltimore or Boston, he must never speak of the sacredness of human liberty. He must make the Epistle to Philemon a new fugitive slave law, sanctioned by Christianity, to return the poor outcast. He must not expose the sins of trade; it would hurt men's feelings, drive them from one church, where they got nothing good, to another, where they could get nothing worse.

Nor is this the worst. In selecting the minister, the inquiry is not, " Is the man able ? Has he talents large enough, and genius for religion ; education which makes him master of himself, and a leader of others, gathering the result of human toil for six thousand or sixty thousand years? Has he the morality to make us better? Has he piety, to charm us in our sorrows, to beguile us from our sins? Has he courage, justice, wisdom, love, and religion enough to make us better men, the church better, the city a better town, and the nation a better state ? " I do not believe these ques- tions are ever asked by the controlling men of the prominent churches of this city.

This is the question which is asked, though not ad- mitted : " Is he low enough for us, mean and servile to the right degree? and can he obscure the light of Christianity so that it shall not dazzle our eyes, — which are keen-sighted as the eagle's to look at money and respectability, but which are stone-blind when we look at truth and righteousness and God? "

Christianity, my brothers, is free piety first of all, and free goodness next, and free thought. That is

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Christianity in the abstract. It is concretized and made human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; not the whole of it, but as much as we are hkelj to under- stand. But is that abstract Christianity the ideal of the churches of Boston .^^ Is Jesus Christ the ideal of Christians which they look to see realized? Only the idol; the substitute for life, not the stimulus thereto. In the ideal of a church, men go thither to become better. Is that the popular motive for church-going? No ! The Christianity of this city is mainly a pre- tense. Do you believe the mass of the people wish Christianity preached in the hundred churches of this city, to have actual wrong preached down, and ideal right preached up ; that they would honor the man who would dare to preach thus? As they honored Jesus, with a crown of thorns and a cross. " Hail, preacher of Christianity ! " would sound as well in Boston as " Hail, King of the Jews ! " sounded in Jerusalem.

In the midst of this departure from the ideal, and setting up an idol in its place, there is something for you and me to do, — and that is to set the Christian's ideal plainly before us, to look on it often in our prayers, though with eyes streaming with penitence, to measure our thoughts, words, and feelings, and see that the faith that is in us be worthy of a Christian man.

THEMES FIT FOR SUNDAY'S PREACHING

Sunday before last I spoke of the Prospect of Demo- cratic Institutions in America. It was near the anni- versary of Washington's birth, and the occasion of the day and the peril of the times alike demanded some mention of that subject. Last Sunday I said some-

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 401

thing of the result of the most democratic institutions in the world, as it appears in the Material Condition of the People of Massachusetts, — for the significance of these institutions appears in the numbers of people, their property, health, education, and their means for preserving their persons and their property.

External subjects were both of these, yet of great importance to us all. Some men think them not quite fit for Sunday's preaching. " One is politics," say they, " the other mere economy ; neither is better than ciphering." No doubt of it. But there must be foundations to the house, outer walls, and roof, not less than kitchen, parlor, chambers, and the like, with their several furniture. Masons must do their rough, laborious work before the upholsterer can be called in. Let no man despise the great thick walls of granite laid under ground, nor the piles of wood they some- times rest on, driven ten or twenty yards into the earth. The rude bricks piled on the foundation-stones are likewise indispensable; so also the slate-stones on the roof whereunder all the joys of the family are snugly nested. Without the political institutions of the democracy, the great general welfare of Massachu- setts would not be possible; and without that general welfare, represented by peace, plenty, health, means of education, power to protect property and person, why, the common religion would be quite other than it is now. If starving men pray, it is only for bread; fulness is then counted the first virtue, and a dinner is imputed to a man for righteousness. Men under tyrannies either crouch down into superstition, or, if too noble for that disgraceful decay, they seek first of all to punish the crimes of state which keep them down. That is not first which is spiritual ; it is the XI— 26

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flower that comes after the root, and out of the bud, not before it.

Men say you should not think of the week on Sun- day, nor of your business in your devotion, nor bring your world into your church. But this is just what I would do, — remember the week in my Sabbath, my business in my prayer, the world in my church. I would do this that all these things might be sanctified. In your highest state, it is always well to remember your lowest, and so get lifted up.

THE POWER OF RELIGION

In the market, the reading-room, the editor's office, the court-house, or the senate-house, religion seems a very small power, which affects nobody much. Young men graduating at college say they will be lawyers, or doctors, or merchants, and lay hold on some influence which moves men ; religion they will not touch, it not moving men. It is left out of the account of public powers by the political economist, and statesmen smile gravely when you speak of religion as one of the forces that sWay the world, and think you are young. But when you come to look at the history of nations, — America, England, France, Germany, — you see that, after all, it is sentiments and ideas of religion which, in their silent or their stormy action, sway the nation and control the State ; and when you take into your account the whole life of the human race, when you look at such facts as Puritanism, Protestantism, Mahometanism, Christianity, — then you see that all the great civiliza- tions of the world have sprung out of religious feeling, have been shaped and controlled by religious thought. Men love to connect religion with the cardinal points

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 403

of their life, with the birth of a baby, with the betrothal of a girl, with a marriage or a funeral. The finite hinges on the infinite, and the little life of Oliver and Jane revolves round that point ; the large life of Eng- land and America turns on the same, and the world hinges on its consciousness of God. In the long war- fare of the world, the saint conquers the warrior, and the prophet of religion triumphs over the statesman, though he have a kingdom at his back. Did not a carpenter's boy, bom in Bethlehem, drive Jupiter Olympus out of the heathen world.?

THE GREAT PECULIARITY OF CHRISTIANITY

The great peculiarity of Christianity is not recog- nized even now. The common notion of Christianity is that it is a positive command, and rests on the au- thority of one man, and not on the nature of God ; that Jesus was only a wiser Moses, who received the laws of God, and made new ones and added thereto. And so the common ecclesiastical mode of proving Chris- tianity is by quoting texts. Men do not see that the New Testament contains things that establish unchris- tianity, sometimes put into the mouth of Christ him- self. One of the most dreadful things in the world is tyranny; but the worst tyranny can be justified out of the commands of St. Paul, and it has been justified. The accidental things of the New Testa- tament, which have no relation to Christianity, are thought to be of great importance.

Christianity is not to rest on the authority of Jesus, but to become the great practice of absolute religion, and to carry us farther forward, and not to be re- strained even by the limitations of Jesus himself, if he had such.

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Man is the highest work of God, Christianity the highest revelation of God. Moses and Jesus were a partial revelation of God, for man is more than Moses and Jesus. Christianity is not more than human na- ture, but it is less ; it is only one side, but its glory is that it completely represents and satisfies that side. The ethics of Christianity are not more than human nature. With the Hebrew ethics the appeal was made to authority ; with the classic ethics the appeal was made to human history, to experience and man's sense of expediency ; but with the Christian ethics the stand- ard is human nature, and the love of right, of truth, and of justice; in one word, the love of man and the love of God; and round these two foci, goodness and piety, hereafter the absolute religion, in even balance, is to run and form its fair and harmonious ellipse of the perfect religion. The Christian man is to do right, not because Christ said so, but because it is right; not only the right which Christ commanded, but all which he can learn. Pure, unsullied love is to be the highest passion of man. The God of Christianity is the God of love. Morality is to spring spontaneous and un- bidden out of the human heart, free as reason, beau- tiful as truth. Here is Christianity ; not the Chris- tianity of the past, nor of the present, of Catholic or of Protestant ; but the Christianity of man's heart, of man's nature, and God's nature, and with the glori- ous gospel of everlasting life ; and it seeks in man the standard of right, absolute, perfect, and inflexible. It enthrones Reason and Conscience as king and queen. Religion, the royal child of this imperial pair, lays her hand on this harp of a thousand strings, and, tuning all to harmony, wakes the human hymn of sweet accord which steals up to God, the prophetic chant of the

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nations as they march to their bright destination, seek- ing to enter into the kingdom of God, which has been the prophecy of the saint, and is to be the brightest achievement of mankind. As they go, they seem to sing, " Lift up your gates, for the King of Glory shall come in." Future ages speak to us and say, " Who is this King of Glory? " Man, is the answer; Man marching in his majesty, and going home to God.

The Hebrew ethics are behind us ; and the heathen, with their anarchies, their despotisms, war, slavery, ignorance, and want ; not unredeemed by the presence of earth's mighty men, — Moses, Zoroaster, Pythago- ras, Socrates, and the rest. Around us lies the toil- some world, dimly enlightened from above; our own transactions have dimmed the windows through which the light should come. Here the sons of men walk, some with prone faces, and some erect, their coun- tenance unveiled, and future ages sparkling in their eye, and worshiping as they go, the one dear God, who pities their errors, foreknows their wanderings, but with providential arm surrounds the sinner and the saint, and while he bears the innocent lamb, his right hand still leads back the wanderer, still blessing all as heretofore.

Such is behind us, around us ; but before us light dawns, and shines on pure fields and perfect, where Christianity, the inward thought, shall be the outward fact ; and Christian piety shall be the common senti- ment ; not rare, but the sentiment of every day ; and where Christian virtues shall become Christian deeds ; and the ideal of Christian prayer become the actual, the daily Christian life, and men are friends of men, nations of nations, and all of us conjoined to God.

406 THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN man's future controlled by his present

It seems to me plain that our condition in the next life must be consequent on our character and conduct here. But our character and conduct depend on such a long series of circumstances, that it is not only diffi- cult, but it is wholly impossible, that you and I can tell how much any man is to be blamed, how much any man is to be praised. I know how much I am to be blamed very often ; I do not know how much anybody else is. He will judge for himself perhaps; the good God surely will. I know what actions and motives are noble ; I esteem men who do such actions, have such motives, and show a noble character. But to the eye that takes . in the whole universe, the eternal as well as the present, things must have a very different look. How much of our character depends on the physical constitution we are born with, the size and shape of the brain, the temperament; how much on the circum- stances of early life, parents and education ! Even the character of the church that a man is bred up in determines whether he shall be a kidnapper or a philanthropist, very often. How much depends on the temptations and opportunities of daily life! I make no doubt there are bad men who have deserved a prison for their conduct on earth, who will yet rise in the kingdom of heaven, in God's sight less blameworthy than the judge who condemned them from the bench. God can understand these things, and must doubtless make allowances. I cannot suppose that He is to re- ward men for having had opportunities for develop- ment, and punish others for not having had such opportunities. Therefore when we say that a man's condition in heaven must be controlled by his character,

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we go far into the recesses of our innermost being; I mean, it must be dependent on our fidelity to our nature here.

I cannot think that death is a misfortune to any man. It must, it seems to me, be a step forward, even for the worst man, whose hfe has been crooked from beginning to end, stained with crime all the way through. The good God will suffer no son of perdi- tion to fall to the ground. In our justice there is more vengeance than love; we want to smite down the man, because he has done us a wrong. But the In- finite God looks out for each offender, and while He takes care of the whole world, so that not an atom of flower-dust is lost, will take care of every individ- ual soul.

This doctrine of immortality is of priceless value as an encouragement for the individual and for mankind. The seed we sow in time comes up and blossoms in eternity. Then what a consolation is it to say, I know that character is its own reward.

But how much suffering there is in this world for which man wants compensation, part of which he has not brought upon himself, part of which he has. The most obvious justice shows that if a man has suffered wrongfully, he ought to have some compensation in the next life ; a deeper j ustice shows that if he has sinned he ought to have a chance to retrieve his wrong. I expect to suffer in the next life, as in this, for every conscious wrong thing that I have done ; and I will lift up my soul and say, " Father in heaven, I thank Thee for it. Even by suffering let me be made better; let me step ever forwards and upwards." But what a comfort and consolation there is in this. Our tears drop into an ocean that seems bitter ; they are changed

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into pearls, and we shall wear them round our forehead ; and the powers of our soul shall be enlarged, and I doubt not that ere we have been dead many years we shall have expanded into excellence, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious, which we dream not of here, in our highest conceptions. This strengthens us for every duty, prepares us for every trial and cross.

man's eternity

Human machines for printing, weaving, and the like, wear out at last ; but the divine machine of man or mankind never wears out, and as it goes on produces more and more perfect and lofty specimens the longer time it runs. If I know that I am to live forever, and to increase in quantity and quality of being continu- ally, that it is so with every little baby that is bom and dies to-day, with all mankind, — savage, civilized, en- lightened,— how very trivial seem the disasters which befall me or mankind, especially if I know they have all been foreseen and overruled for the ultimate good of every child that suffers ! I pray my foolish pray- ers to God, — " O Father, give me riches, power, the praise of men to-day." " Dear child," says God, " I will not give you these things ; I will give you more vast faculties, capable of infinite development, with all eternity for their growth, their use, and their enj oy- ment. Take these things, and be contented with noth- ing else."

I am, let me suppose, a poor unfortunate mortal; nothing goes well with me ; I go ill with myself. I am driven about, doing much that I would not. But here within a life-sail of me is eternity. This grub of a body goes through its chrysalis of death, and the winged soul is borne to its appropriate place. It shall

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carry with it nothing of this earth, but only the result of my use of life; and it shall make small odds to the infinite justice of the Father of us all, whether that faithfulness had a handful of brain more or less, or a handful of gold more or less, or of renown.

THE TRANSCENDENT WORLD

Matter and spirit are the only two forms of existence that we directly know, the one by sensational observa- tion, the other by spiritual consciousness. If you and I were matter and nothing else, we should know nothing of spirit ; if spirit and no more, we should know noth- ing of matter ; but now we know both, because ourselves are both material and spiritual. But yet, as we are only matter and spirit, we know nothing directly of that transcendent world which is above matter and above spirit ; we know nothing of the details thereof, but we cannot suppose that God is limited to these two forms of existence, matter and spirit; He must tran- scend both. There may be other worlds of existence as much superior to ours as the mind of Von Humboldt is superior to this drop of water. I make no doubt that there are such transcendent worlds, peopled with beings fitted to their sphere. I doubt not that departed spirits are in that world, with power, function, blessed- ness, as much superior to those of Von Humboldt or Florence Nightingale, as their power, function, and enjoyment are superior to those of the dullest insect on this plant beneath my hand. I doubt not that by the facts of observation and consciousness God is mani- fest to beings in that world in a style of glory such as you and I can no more directly dream of than the little insects on this plant can dream of the reflective con- sciousness of philanthropic Miss Nightingale or philo-

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Sophie Humboldt. But as directly I know nothing of that world by observation or consciousness, I do not meddle much therewith, and I never seek evidence of God therefrom. When we shall be turned into that world, it will be soon enough for you and me to attend to its duties ; but here I think we may be pardoned if in our sad days we cast longing looks upwards and forwards towards that promised land which is* our cer- tain heritage ; and if women and men with whom the world has gone hard, do, in their gloominess, look for- ward to that, and long to be present in it, and count the present time to move slow, I find no fault with them. We all indulge in this feeling. What would become of us if there was not that certain and ideal world which we could flee unto when perplexed and cast down in this ?

SPIRITUAL RICHES

A man who has got rich suddenly thinks he is tall, when he is only high; he thinks he has done his work, when he has only got his tools and his trade ; — for money, honor, power, are only what the lapstone and shoe-hammer and knife are to the shoemaker. The art to use these is only the trade, not the work ; means, not end.

If you want to get rich, to get office, to get honor, America is the best country under the sun of God, and opportunities are plenty enough. But if you wish to seek for higher things you must go on your own feet, the pioneer even of yourself; and the good God who was with the slow tongue of Moses, and brought Israel out of Egypt, will go before you as a pillar of cloud in your prosperity, a pillar of fire in the day of trial, will lead you into the land of promise ; dry-shod you

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 411

shall pass the Red Sea, and find angels' bread in the wilderness, and water in the rocks ; every mountain shall smoke with the presence of God, and glitter with the lightning of His commandments ; Jordan shall dry up before you, as your feet touch it; and, bearing the ark of God's covenant in your hand, all the glories of the promised land shall open before you.

SPIRITUAL ASSESSMENT

What if the assessors of this city, who take an in- ventory of our worldly property, could also take an inventory of the spiritual estates which men have ac- quired from the human nature born in them and the circumstances about them, and publish an annual book, rating men as they will stand in the kingdom of heaven. What a record that would be ! What odds in spiritual estates would you see ! What millionaires of piety, what kings of nobleness, nay, what emperors, ruling whole realms of virtue, wisdom, justice, and love; what paupers in excellence, yea, what slaves in respect to manhood, should we find !

But this is no fancy. There is an assessor who takes the inventory ; there is a book wherein it is all written down ; you and I and all other men have each a page in that vast book ; God only sees it. Every day we get income from our estate exactly in proportion to what we are worth, a daily dividend, the result of our action ; and it is all posted in the ledger of life, which is the record of our character. God is the Great Accountant, and the laws of matter and of mind are the book-keep- ers that never err.

TOLERATION

You and I talk of toleration ; but if a man has a name for God different from ours, we give him a bad

41^ THE WORLD OF MATTER AND MAN

name. But the great God has infinite toleration for all. The old Egyptian sculptured out an ugly sphinx, and knelt down and prayed before it ; the Greek, out of Parian stone, carved a statue of Venus Aphrodite, or Phoebus Apollo, the god of the sun, and knelt down and worshiped it ; the Catholic carves a statue of the Virgin Mary, or paints it ; and the cold Puritan, in his unadorned meeting-house, with no sculpture and no pic- ture, folds his hands, and prays aloud to his dreadful God ; the Quaker, in his church, with no ornament, folds his hands, turns inwardly his eyes, and utters no word. But the same prayer from Egyptian, Grecian, Catho- lic, Puritan, Quaker, goes up to God, who is Father and Mother of all five, and blesses each alike. It is not the name which is of importance ; it is the thing.

THE ORTHODOX HEAVEN

I could not enjoy the popular notion of heaven, with nobody in it except good orthodox Christians. A few years ago a minister said that Dr. Channing undoubt- edly went " the other way," — never reached heaven. If I had been that orthodox minister, I could not have slept comfortably for a single night, until Doctor Channing had been carried up there ; nay, if I had gone there myself, with my orthodoxy in my head, and found that Doctor Channing was left out, I could not have taken any comfort in heaven till that one lost soul was restored. Who is there that, if he should go to heaven, and find that Cain had been cast out, and Iscariot left behind, and the Boston kidnapper's ugly face missing from that place, would not call the philanthropists together, and see if something could not be done to bring there the great murderer, the great betrayer, and those of our time who thirst and hunger for human

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 413

souls? Why, we could not sit down at the table of the Lamb In the kingdom of God, if Cain had not a plate, and Iscariot a chair, and if there was not room for the kidnapper of Boston.

THE FUNCTION OF PAIN

The fact that there is pain in the world of man, which while it serves the race, has no compensating benefit for the sufferer here, is a clear indication that pain has another function for the part of man which is not material, but spiritual. It points to an hereafter, — and one for beasts, not less than man ; for as here on earth man's body seems to have been brought to its present condition, and made the fitting habitation for a master mind by many developments through inferior beasts, which keep him company still and attend his march, so I doubt not, it will be in that other world; and you and I may think like the Indian, that,

"Admitted to that equal sky, Our faithful dog shall bear us company."

THE SADNESS OF FUNERALS

A funeral in its common forms, with the common ideas connected therewith has sometimes seemed to me to show the greatest want of faith in God. It is not taught in sermons in the churches, nor set forth in prayer and psalm at funerals, that death is a blessing to the dead, that the grave is only the golden gate of immortality, its iron side turned towards us, but its pearly, golden side turned the other way, only the gate which lets the mortal through. We bury our friends under cold clay, with the publication of our infidelity, when the soul of faith in God ought to shine out of our

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countenance, and beautify the cold body which lies there before us, whose soul has winged its way upwards to its Father.

INFIDELS

You and I have been called infidels. We are so, tried by the common test. Our Christianity is not the com- mon form. Our form of religion is another gospel; our God is not the jealous God who damns the sinner to eternal woe ; not a God who subjects the soul of man to a law of sin and death, but makes it free by the great law of His spirit. Yet we have been charged with this infidelity. While we are thus different from other sects, I believe we have not been charged with doubting the infinity of God ; never with a disbelief in the power of truth, justice, love, and holiness to regenerate your heart and mine, to regenerate and bless the world ; never even with the faintest doubt that God's purpose was a perfect purpose. His plan perfect, and the human means thereto were beautifully designed by infinite wisdom to accomplish His end.

HEROISM OF THE SOUL

Everybody can understand the physical valor which confronts death and danger, and charges up to the cannon's mouth in battle ; but everybody cannot under- stand the heroism which says, " Please God, I will keep the integrity of my conscience undefiled, though you tear my flesh with wild horses." When men do under- stand it, they pull down the monument of the soldier to build a chapel to the heroes of the soul, and melt up the insignia of crowned kings to get gold fine enough to write the name of some tent-maker or fisherman. At first men do not appreciate this heroism of the soul.

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 415

If they did they would pluck the stars out of heaven to make a diadem to put on the hero's head.

COMPENSATION

I know not how men without religion get along in the world. It must not only be hard, but hopeless. Continually there are sorrows for which the earth has no recompense. Here a man is sacrificed. The world gains, does it? It is the man's loss. Arnold von Winkelreid takes a sheaf of Austrian spears in his bosom, breaks thereby the Austrian ranks, the swift tide of freedom flows through, and Switzerland is free. Winkelreid is dead, his fireside chair is empty, all night the dog howls for his master, the wife is a widow, his babes fatherless. What recompense is there on earth? For Hebrew Jesus, for Roman Regulus, for Athenian Socrates, the world has no compensation. Here is one born so that education is impossible ; want makes him a clown. This girl is the victim of circumstances ; the world's hardness makes her short life one long blush of infamy. The powers of human nature were born in her, she was made for heaven ; but the vices of society nipped them in the bud, and made her a harlot. Earth has no recompense. What compensation is there to the slave for his bondage? to the patriot who dies, and sees Turkey, Italy, Hungary, France, die with him? Earth answers not. What compensation is there for the blind? Earth has none to show. What for the deaf? The world gives no answer. What for the fool? Wis- dom knows it not. The compensation, the joy, for their discipline, must come in the eternal world. I know not how ; the fact I am sure of. That one and one make two is not clearer to me. I am not more certain of my own existence. It follows from God's infinity.

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God left us free a little, one hand winged with free- dom, the other bound by fate. But His infinite provi- dence, infinite love, must so overrule the world that no man shall suffer absolute ill. What is not compensated now, hereafter God Himself will pay. Our next condi- tion must depend, not on our circumstances here, not on the accidental virtue or vice which these circum- stances make, but on the use ourselves have made of our gift and our opportunity; and though the little that we gain may be so little that men despise it and count it vile, God treasures it up, and will bless us for that. Few men know how much may be done in the midst of circumstances that seem evil. We may make a mini- mum of sorrow out of a maximum of adverse condi- tions ; yea, we may get a maximum of human fidelity out of a minimum of opportunity and gift. It is an immense advantage to know the soul's immortality, and be sure of eternal life ; to know the infinite perfection of God, and be certain that the great Mother folds us in her arms and will bless us for ever. The greatest practical thing is to get the discipline out of the world, its joy and its sorrow. It is a hard world, is it.?^ One day we shall thank God for its hardness, and bless him for its sorrow.

COMFORT IN RELIGION

Religion is to help us endure and suffer what cannot be avoided and overcome. It is an active force to ener- gize and harmonize all powers, making us aspire. But it is also a passive force, to tranquillize, to calm, to compose the consciousness of man, to give us peace, and rest, and beauty, and tranquillity. A form of re- ligion which is only for activity is not adequate for any man during his whole life.

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 417

There are dark, rainy days of life, when no man can work, days full of affliction, times of sickness, disap- pointment, great sadness of heart. Then we want com- fort, consolation, peace, and rest. Stout, vigorous, hearty, and in haste, I want a horse, and a swift one, to carry me up hill and down ; but old, feeble, tired, spent, I want a staff to lean on, a pillow to sleep on.

The old forms of religion had very little comfort for the old, the feeble, the sick, the disappointed, and the bereaved. I wonder not that there was in Rama a voice heard, lamentation and mourning, — Rachel weep- ing for her children, and refusing to be comforted. There was small comfort for her in the theology of those times. The old armies went forth to battle without doctor or surgeon, without lint or bandage, or ambu- lance. Jehovah, Baal, Jupiter, had priests by the hun- dred in their camp, never a doctor. It was very much so with the old forms of religion. They were for ac- tion, not for consolation. The Old Testament is a col- lection of brave books, the works of deep-hearted men, strong-minded men some of them, some full of beauty, others full of consciousness of right, all of them trem- bling before their God. Now and then there are words of comfort ; others scattered here and there into which we impart our own consolation. True, the Bible has no jeers for the unfortunate; but it has small comfort for the poor, the decrepit, the sick, the disappointed, and the sinful; it is a dreadful book for those, taken as a whole. The captive Jews hung their harps on the willows ; there was no consolation for them when they thought of Jerusalem trod under the Gentile's foot. The Old Testament is a sad book to die by. It might hold up the hands of strong Moses, fighting against Amalek ; but when you come to stand by the grave of XI— 27

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wife or child, it is a hard book, and poor ; and when a people stood at the grave of their nation, no comfort sprang out of the ground ; it was Rachel mourning for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were not. The old forms of heathen religion were no better, most of them were far worse. True, immor- tality shone on the Grecian hills with a fairer light than of old lit up Horeb and Lebanon and Zion; but the classic forms of religion were very sad at the best for the sick, the disappointed, and the afflicted. Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, Minerva, were gods that loved the conquerors, not the conquered; one can get very little comfort from these worldly deities, that honor the suc- cessful, and such only.

But let me be sure of the infinite providence of God first, then of the immortality of the soul, and I can face anything in the shape of sorrow, disappointment, sick- ness, death. I know it is for a little while, and now; and everlastingly it is overruled by the infinite love of the great, dear Mother of the world. So I will be still. I can conceive of nothing which a man cannot bear with fortitude, if sure of these two things.

THE HIGHEST JOY

I never undervalue any form of normal joy. I re- joice in the humble pleasures of the insect, of the worm that eats my rosebuds in the spring before their open- ing hour. I like to see the happiness which spring awakens in the bosom of the frog and toad ; the joys of sheep and oxen are dear to me. I love the happiness of children, of the soft baby, rejoicing in its mother's arms, of the stammering little one, whose first word seems a Spartan achievement. I love to see the happi- ness of boys, with ball and sled and skate, of girls with

MAN IN HIS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS 419

hoop and doll and dainty joyous games ; to see the joys of men, rude men and poorly developed too, whose talk is of oxen and ships and shops and markets and divi- dends,— this undeveloped clown of the country, joying in nothing but his clover, this undeveloped clown of the city, joying in his cotton. I love to see the joys of successful enterprise ; I love the proud and brave delight of science, of letters, and artistic skill, of such as trace the way to every star, of such as unroll the wonders of the ancient scroll beneath our feet, of such as disenchant the flesh of pain, or send the well-tended fire of heaven to extinguish the accidental fires that men have left untended here on earth. I love the joys of men who unroll the mighty volume of human conscious- ness, and with metaphysical eye and Ariadne thread wind through this labyrinthine world of man. I love the joys of the historian, moralist, bard, of men in youth seeking the object of instinctive passion in blame- less wedlock, of men seeking the objects of instinctive aff^ection, and finding themselves anew in the little im' mortals God drops into their arms. I value all these things ; yea, I bless in my morning and my midnight prayer the dear God who so plentifully spreads the table with such various food, for lofty and for little men. But I must not forbear to say that the joy of loving God alone surpasses all these joys, and hinders none, nay, helps all.

DATE DUE
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GAYLORD			PRINTED IN U.S.A.

WELLESLEY COLLEGE LIBRARY

3 5002 03238 5168

BX 9815 .P3 1907 5

Parker, Theodore, 1810-1860.

Leseons from the world of matter and the world of man

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