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THE WALK WITH GOD
© Uncierivood and L'/idc-rirood
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THE
WALK WITH GOD
BY
JULIA WARD HOWE -^
Extracts from Mrs Howe's private journals j together with some verses hitherto {with a few exceptions) unpublished; and an Essay on Immortality entitled ^^Beyond The VeiV
EDITED BY HER DAUGHTER
LAURA E. RICHARDS /
NEW YORK
E. p. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE
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Copyright, 19 19, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY ^
All Rights Reserved
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Printed in the United States of America
APRi4iyi'j' 'Y
©CI.Ar)15;i30*^
TO
THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE
'^Oh! for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame. "^^
—William Cooper.
EDITOR'S NOTE
My mother left her journals to me, with no suggestion of their being published. Since, how- ever, the following passages may conceivably help and comfort other seekers of the Way, it seems in accordance with her spirit of love and service to give them to the public. I do so, trusting to her forgiveness if I have erred.
A few of the extracts have already appeared in the "Life and Letters of Julia Ward Howe," and are reprinted with the kind permission of the Houghton Mifflin Company. For permission to reprint the Essay on Immortality I am indebted to the courtesy of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.
It should be added that the journals are more or less fragmentary, and that several volumes are missing.
L. E. R. Gardiner, Maine,
February, IQIQ
vu
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Word I
The Journal, 1 864-1 868 3
To Certain Missionaries 18
The Journal, 1871-1873 19
The Apostles 31
The Journal, 1 874-1 879 32
Meditation 44
The Journal, 1 880-1 884 44
Easter Morning Service April 75, 1884 . 47
The Journal, 1 884-1 889 47
All Souls 65
The Journal, 1890 66
Retrospects 70
The Journal, 1891 71
After the Women s Rally, Sept. 1891 . . 73
Trinity Church, Boston, Christmas, i8gi . 74
The Journal, 1892 76
A Moment's Meditation in Cologne Cathe- dral yy
At Milwaukee 79
i8q2 80
The Journal, 1 893-1 895 81
1895 • • • ^^
A Song for the Youth of the Christian En- deavor Society 88
ix
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Journal, 1 895-1 896 89
The Lord's Supper 94
The Journal, 1 897-1900 94
igoo 103
The Closed Gentian 107
The Journal, 1901 108
1901 109
The Journal, 1902 iii
The Journal, 1903 115
/poj, i 116
/poj, ii 120
The Journal, 1904 121
Good Friday 125
The Journal, 1905 125
The New Hymn 129
The Journal, 1906 132
At Church 133
The Journal, 1 907-1 909 135
To Philosophy 143
The Journal, 1910 144
Meditation 145
Undated Fragments 146
Beyond the Veil 150
Endeavor 161
THE WALK WITH GOD
THE WORD
Had I one of thy words, my Master, With a spirit and tone of thine,
I would run to the farthest Indies To scatter the joy divine,
I would waken the frozen ocean With a billowy burst of joy;
Stir the ships at their grim ice-moorings The summer passes by.
I would enter court and hovel.
Forgetful of mien or dress. With a treasure that all should ask for.
An errand that all should bless,
I seek for thy words, my Master, With a spelling vexed and slow;
With scanty illuminations. And an alphabet of woe.
But while I am searching, scanning
A lesson none ask to hear. My life writeth out thy sentence
Divinely just and dear.
Julia >Vard Howe.
THE JOURNAL 1864
January 17th. I said to myself last night, "While there is God, there is hope."
January 30th. This day I feel a clearer pur- pose than ever before to try to do every day with some system vi^hat vv^ill be best for all, all things considered.
March i8th. Let me here put on record that I prefer the poorest and meanest man vj\\o has a moral sense and follows it, to the most brilliant and gallant personage who either lacks or violates the same. I ask nothing for my son but that he may keep his thought unpoisoned by inflammatory ideas and his heart free from that venom of falsity which is the inevitable companion of self- ishness carried to its highest power. Yet every man stands or falls to his own Master. We can only judge of what compels our approbation or our dis-esteem. The absolute moral value of the man is unknown to us. God forbid that any of us should be judged at our worst, even by high human justice.
April iSth. Modesty is as much shown in our judgments of others as in our judgment of our- selves.
3
THE WALK WITH GOD
June 1 2th. This service (of the Greek church) seemed very primitive in comparison with ours. It is a sacrifice to God, instead of a lesson from Him, which, after all, makes the difference between the old religions and the true Christian. For even Judaism is heathen com- pared with Christianity. Yet I found this very consoling, feeling out the varieties of religious development. I seemed to hear in the responses a great harmony in which the first man had the extreme bass, and the last born babe the extreme treble.
September joth. My theory of Limitation must teach me not to lament when one pleasure, like that of the summer life, etc., comes to end. I must also particularly learn what I have so often enforced in writing, viz., to fall back upon pleasures that do not pass, at least upon satisfac- tions.
1865
March 2yth. "I am God," says the fool. "I see God," says the wise man. For while you are your own supreme, you are your own God, and self-worship is true atheism.
Let us be always mindful of two things, perfec- tion and imperfection. The first, we worship, the second, we are. Law is the iron framework that holds the fluent universe.
May 7th. A religion is a turning primarily to God for inspiration and secondarily to our fellow men for service. Criticism of others rarely leads men to reform themselves.
May 2 1st. Let me record from my experience that you must never, if you wish to raise the moral tone of a person, dwell upon his past faults. You must, on the contrary, help him to lose the whole frame of mind of which they were a part and a consequence. With a person recovering from insanity, you would never seek to keep in view the evidences of his former state of mind. These would always tend to prolong the morbid action which must be broken up in order to pro- duce cure. Newness of heart is a good phrase.
May 30th. Unitarianism is critical, not dog- matic; regulative, not constitutive. All positive points of belief it has in common with all other Christian sects. It is more important in its in- fluence on other sects than noticeable as a sect. I
THE WALK WITH GOD
value it above measure, but at the same time rec- ognize that the ideal church is not in one de- nomination, but in all.
June Qth, Let me never go back from use to pleasure. If this remain only a silent passive prayer, it is better to keep it in this shape than not at all. But I believe that things will open up for me.
June 20th. If men must have toys, let us give them cats, dogs, horses, but not women. For the toy usage has gone far to spoil all others.
October 6th. The Sunday's devotion without the week's thought and use is a spire without a meetinghouse. It leaps upward, but crowns and covers nothing.
I have too often set down the moral weight I have to carry, and frisked around it. But the voice now tells me that I must bear it to the end, or lose it forever.
1866
January yth. There is neither more nor less in God. He is absolute good, whenever we con- template Him, whether for a moment or a cen- tury. The more we contemplate Him, the more we enjoy of His good. But in itself it changes neither quantitatively nor qualitatively. The talents (in Christ's parable) then signify the multiplication of human powers by their efficient use. The one penny of reward symbolizes the divine gift which is always the same, the differ- ence existing in its recipients.
January 14th. preached a sermon
on the supremacy of Christ which made me cry out "Preserve us from our friends." For he failed to distinguish the true philosophical ele- ment of the identity of direction of truth which is absolute. In human knowledge a small pro- portion of such truth is mingled with a much greater proportion of relative truth and absolute error. The quantitative limitation of our knowl- edge docs not lower the qualitative value and ab- soluteness of this, its smallest and most precious portion. This is the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. But this absolute truth is what im- parts dignity to its possessors, not they to it. Truth makes Christ great, not he it. Truth also made Moses and Plato great. If they had less truth than Christ, they were the less great. But
THE WALK WITH GOD
truth is none the less supreme ; and though all our knowledge be in itself relative and limited, the recognition of absolute truth is the foundation of human thought, and the pursuit and verification of this recognition makes the difference of value between one man and another.
January i6th. While we are inwardly under the dominion of our passions and outwardly un- der the fear of ordinances, we are slaves both to law and to passion. But when our reason volun- tarily consents to the moral law, we are free alike from the outward ordinance, which is no longer the power that restrains us, and from the inward slavery of our own ungoverned impulses. Per- haps liberty is intelligent and voluntary obedi- ence.
March nth. I have written somewhere: "Good is a direction — ^virtue is a habit." The first I still think true; the second Kant will not allow. ... I suppose that the victories of prin- ciple in the struggles of our lives require virtue. She does not derange good habits, but she does not rest in them.
May 27th. I have little to show for the past year's work, having produced no work of any length, and read but little in public. The doc- trine of the seed does, however, encourage us to continue our small efforts. The most effectual quickening of society is through that small still in- 8
THE WALK WITH GOD
fluence which creeps like the leaven through the dough.
All religions derive so largely from the rever- ence paid to ancestors that I am convinced that this impulse of man is a very important element of his religious capacity and culture. The Greek mythologies seem to me to be made up of the worship of wonderful ancestors. For all that was distinguished in Greece claimed descent from god, demi-god, or hero (the trinity of Greek theology). Roman piety was duteous care of one's relatives. It follows from this that the disregard of parents and elders common in Amer- ica, is in itself an irreligious trait, and one which education should sedulously correct. It is a con- tingent, not a logical result of our institutions, and though generated by them tends to their overthrow.
The directness of moral aims and the indirect- ness of moral results. In the faith in which I live and worship, there seems to me to be a straight road from the pulpit through the whole domain of business and politics, to the battlefield. One banner is carried all the way, one hymn re- sounds from end to end, one prayer comes from the preacher and is handed down and accepted through the ranks. But in the opposite wing, the path from the pulpit is devious, winding, and often lost. The true flag is viewed from a distance, poor imitations taking its place lower down, which deform its image more and more. And these in the ranks are separated from the pulpit
THE WALK WITH GOD
and get only symbols for truths, and repeat ob- servances, instead of studying out meanings.
June jrd. Have been thinking lately that lust is more cruel than hate, and that luxury is the father of cruelty. To refuse onself nothing leads to sins of commission. To constrain one- self in nothing leads to sins of omission. From these naturally follow offense of the rights of others and neglect of duties towards them. The Martha and Mary of the New Testament are domestic types of the natural order and the moral order. Martha is bowed beneath the necessities of the one, Mary is inspired by the objects of the other. Theologians "are puzzled between them, sometimes feeling the necessity of both, and not knowihg how to reconcile the two.
Sceptics do not find fault with the conception of a first cause, but with dogmatic insistence upon the ability of human authority to understand its features, explain its modus operandi with ab- solute statement, . . . where all our processes of thought become negative and inferential. The dogmatism of the church has, however, this excuse. Belief is a positive, doubt a negative. Belief is efficient, doubt abstains from all but destructive action. A mistaken belief compared to the emptiness of indifference is as plus to minus. Therefore, the clergy, measuring dis- belief against belief, assume an absolute value in favor of the latter, which, under these circum- stances, cannot be disallowed. The doubt which
10
THE WALK WITH GOD
heralds in reform is not scepticism, but devout distrust of existing institutions and belief in prin- ciples which they inadequately represent.
November nth. We must worship what Jesus worshiped. This was not himself. There are three aspects in each of us, the natural or empir- ical self, the ideal or rational self, and the actual or experimental self. The larger the develop- ment of the individual, the more clearly can we make out the three elements. This is the Three- hood which the human has, unavoidably perhaps, projected upon the divine.
December i8th. The worship of Christ, however natural and useful in its time, has sure- ly, after a certain time, tended to distract the attention of people from the study of his doc- trine and careful following of his precepts. They say, "Lord, Lord," and think they have per- formed a religious act.
11
1867
January 4th. The Individuality of Christian- ity is moral and intensive. It is an inward ex- perience, not an outward assertion.
January gth. Thought of a good essay on the deceitfulness of riches, showing that the good rich man holds all his wealth subject to the demands of all who need it more than he does.
The world is all illusion if we have not truth in ourselves. Virtue makes wise because her name implies an unending series of exper- iments founded on just principles.
January 14th. Humanity itself is only rep- resentative, the two sexes are its two terms, the ideal of humanity the third, explaining and in- cluding the two others. Hence men and women are not properly compared with each other, but with that ideal which the two are bound to rep- resent, and which difference of constitution en- ables the man to represent in one way, the woman in another. Hence, in another way, the defect of the Pharisee's prayer. He compared himself with the Publican and found himself superior, but the Publican compared himself with the divine standard and found himself wanting. Therefore, the exercise of prayer, which in the one resulted in self-assertion, in the other re- sulted in humiliation and self-rejection, and so the one profited and the other did not.
12
THE WALK WITH GOD
After bestirring ourselves to elect those who are to represent us, it becomes us to elect what we ourselves will represent, whether justice and progress, charity, mercy and effort, or sloth, lux- ury, and self-indulgence. For our lives are after all only figures of what we intend. Our repre- sentation can be either strenuous and sincere, or careless and hypocritical. Its intellectual grasp is measured for us by nature, its moral appro- priateness and efficiency is determined by our own will exercised at once in energy and discrimi- nation.
February 6th. Freedom is God's equalizer.
May 26th. To desire supremely ends which are incompatible with no one's happiness, and which promote the good of all — this, even as an ideal, is a great gain over the small and eager covetousness of personal desires. Religion gives this steadfast standard, whose pursuit is happi- ness. Therefore, let him who seeks religion be glad that he seeks the only true good, of which indeed we constantly fail, and yet in seeking it, are constantly renewed.
November 24th. A disappointment should be digested in patience, not vomited in spleen. Bit- ter morsels nourish the soul not less perhaps than sweet.
Moral philosophy begins with the fact of ac- cepting human life.
13
1868
Wednesday, January ist. May I this year have energy, patience, goodwill and good faith. May I be guilty of no treason against duty and my best self. May I acquire more system, or- der and wisdom in the use of things. May I, if God wills, carry out some of my plans for making my studies useful to others. This is much to ask, but not too much of Him who giveth all.
Sunday, January 26th. Some mental trou- bles have ended in a determination to hold fast till death the liberty wherewith Christ has made me free. The joyous belief that his doctrine of influence can keep me from all that I should most greatly dread lifts me up like a pair of strong wings. "I shall run and not be weary. I shall walk and not faint." At church the first hymn contained these lines: "Her fathers' God before her moved — " which quite impressed me ; for my father's piety and the excellence of other departed relatives have always of late years been a support and pledge to me of my own good behavior.
Saturday, February Ist. Oh, Master, in this new month forsake me not. Thou knowest my present great need. Let me, dear Master, lose all but Thee, for Thou art all to have or to lose.
Sunday, February 2nd. Church was blessed. Prayer and sermon equally dear. In petition
14
THE WALK WITH GOD
for those we love and against temptation my heart equally joined. . . . My heart uplifts itself in hope not to be divided by any personal seeking from the great army of good and faith- ful souls. The single eye, the single love — if Christ has taught anything he has taught the necessity of purity and sincerity of aim to char- acter. We do not serve God w^ith the mammon of our own vanities and other passions. I write this personal record at this moment because I wish to remember at this time its efforts and its lessons.
The thief's heart, the wanton's brow, may ac- company high talent and geniality of tempera- ment, but, thanks be to God, they need not.
Sunday, March 2gth. I have heard the true word of God to-day from Frederick Hedge — a sermon on Love as the true bond of society, which lifted my weak soul as on the strong wings of a cherub. The immortal truths easily lost sight of in our every-day weakness and pas- sion stood out to-day so strong and clear that I felt their healing power as if Christ had stood and touched my blinded eyes with his divine fin- ger. So be it always ! Esto perpetual
Monday, March 30th, Thought at break- fast of Christ's beautiful prayer about his dis- ciples, especially of the words, "I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil." I
15
THE WALK WITH GOD
desire, my dear Lord and Master, to remember this prayer as if it had been made for me. I pray that the divine echo of yesterday s sermon may follow me through the week. Let me learn truths that I have not known before, and endure patiently pain that I bring upon myself. So Thy will be done, dear Master, and if unable to do it let me suffer it sincerely.
Sunday, April I2th. A lovely Easter sermon, the Resurrection or going up of Christ typical of the raising of the soul from things sensible to things spiritual. ... J. F. C. (The Rev. James Freeman Clarke, pastor of the Church of the Disciples) from this sermon obviously be- lieves the appearances of Christ after death to have been fact, not a fancy. While he made it edifying and inspiriting to us I still feel that the significance of the occurrence, not its actu- ality, is important. I felt more hopeful and up- lifted than in many days past. Let me not fail of my Easter Resurrection, O Thou great Help of human hearts!
(After a period of mental conflict) August 15th, 1868
My divine Master, receive, I pray Thee, the thoughts and intentions of this day as the fresh starting towards a career of reriewed zeal and effort. The period just passed has left few rec- ords on these pages. Afflicted by its faults, I 16
THE WALK WITH GOD
yet leave its sum and settlement in Thy hands. I only ask that from this moment I may seek with greater directness and pray with greater fervor, and that nothing may withhold me from truly endeavoring in energetic and useful life, wrong- ing no man and leaving the fulfillment of no duty unattempted. In the year so far past I have done good and also evil, of which the meas- ure is better known to Thee than to me. Of both my heart can only speak directly to Thee without the expression and limitation of words. My testimony is only that without Thee life has no divine moments, only poor enjoyments and burning recollections. But in Thy presence grief is changed to glory, and this presence and benediction I implore of Thee, not out of desert but out of need. O Thou unspeakable One who hearest my unspoken shrift, withdraw not Thy fatherly instruction from me, but teach me true and great lessons, even if bitter ones.
So much utterance I allow my heart; now no more speech, but work, and true service, if I can find it and perform it.
17
1870 (TO CERTAIN MISSIONARIES)
Ye are they to whom Christ said, "Give your service for my need,
Let your blood be fairly shed.
Where on blood my foes must feed.
"If the hand that guards the right Or the eye, your fate require.
Yield your prowess, yield your sight To the all avenging fire."
Now the scathing fire is quenched And your bloom is withered too,
Torn and agonized and wrenched, You your halting way pursue.
But the Highest shall requite All your faithfulness and love.
Spirit powers come for sight,
Angels' wings the lame man move.
18
1871
January 20th. Had a divine glimpse this day between daylight and dusk of something like this : A beautiful person, splendidly dressed, entering the gay theatre, as I have often done with entire delight and forgetfulness of everything else, and the restraining hand of Christ holding me back in the outer darkness, the want and woe of the world, and saying: "The true drama of life is here." Oh! that restraining hand had in it the true touch, communicating knowledge of human sorrow and zeal for human service. Never may I escape it, to my grave!
May 22nd. There is much controversy to-day as to what of truth came into the world with Christianity and what was already present there. This dispute seems to me futile so soon as it is carried beyond the politeness of culture, the full- ness of study. The elements of human nature were in it from the first, as we declare when we say that God made man in His own image. It had always the animal and spiritual, the selfish and angelic sides, but that Christianity is the re- ligion of peace and goodwill to all mankind, no- body can deny. Peace is Christian, war is heathen. Let those of us who choose to believe in Christianity remember this. There can be no "most Christian" butcher. No despot, temporal or spiritual, can represent the dogma and author- ity of Christ.
19
THE WALK WITH GOD
June i6th. On Sunday we bring back the worn and dim currency of our active life to be redeemed by the pure gold of the supreme wis- dom. I bring to church my coppers and small pieces and take away a shining gold piece. Self is the talent buried in the napkin — no matter with how much of culture and natural capacity. Till we get out of self we are in the napkin. Hospitable entertainment of other people's opin- ions, brotherly promotions of their interests — these acts make our five talents ten in use to others and in enjoyment and profit to ourselves.
June i8th. We never can have the fact of the Holy Catholic Church without overcoming the exclusive pretensions of single sects, no mat- ter how numerous, to be the whole of that of which they are only a part. This antagonism is kept up by the theological method of present- ing always the points of difference, instead of the points of agreement. Thus religious war, like military, is kept up by the sheer force of despotism. If the agreement on great and car- dinal doctrines of religion were kept in sight, the differences of sects would be lost sight of in their sympathy. Women ought to be able to help in this.
Antagonisms of politics, creeds and literature. The murderous desire for wealth — the bandits of Wall Street and the Bourse. Cannot women intervene inj)usiness on a basis of absolute hon- esty? "I am not a millionaire, but I have plun- 20
THE WALK WITH GOD
dered nobody. I have taken the slow and small percentage of honest trade." In this connection, a sermon on the five talents gaining other five, the real gain of industry. Also, "a crown incor- ruptible.** The civic crown of the pure citizen, man or woman.
July gth. Samuel Bloomfield interprets the well-known text, "He that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath," to refer simply to the finances of the poor, which tend constantly to decrease, as those of the capitalist tend to increase. But in the connection in which Christ says this, it seems to me much rather to apply to the use of doctrine. He who does not use doctrine spiritually, loses what he has, i.e., gets no instruction from it. Thus there is no spiritual possession without spiritual progress. Christ seems to admonish the disciples of this when he says that saints of old desired to see his time, and were not allowed to see it, i.e., human generations must abide the unfolding of human culture and civilization. Prophetic souls could dream of the great advances of the race, and dreaming, could suggest them, but they could not bring the desired time until the race itself was ready for it.
English Christianity too muscular and too hard, not soft enough for the purposes of the human heart. On the battlefield, amid the crash of war, Western Christianity offers prayers to God that thousands of men may be slaughtered
THE WALK WITH GOD
and butchered. That is not the right sort of Christianity.
I have pointed out the difference between the spirit of Christ and the dogmas of Christianity, between the profession of Christianity and the inward growth of Christ's life in the soul. I have said that to be a Christian means only to be Christ-like.
August 14th. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. "I come not to destroy, but to fulfill." Liberal thought fulfills. Free- dom can fulfill Christianity, which absolutism would always kill.
August i8th. The natural unfolding of re- form. "His purposes will ripen fast." Provi- dence does not plant so as to gather all of its crops in one day ; first the flowers, then the fruits, then the golden grain.
August 30th. "Freely ye have received, freely give." What I have received on this island (i.e., Newport, Rhode Island). What country people receive. What the country has received. What women have received. What and how we must give. People don't know how much they know, that is the secret of ignorance; don't know how much they have, that is the secriet of discontent.
We must not cut the webs of Providence. We must disentangle them. 22
THE WALK WITH GOD
September i6th. The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. What the lost things are, which the Son of Man came to save. Lost values, lost jewels, scattered souls, darkened powers, lost opportunities.
September 17th. Jesus said to the multitude, "The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do. But do not ye after their works, for they say and do not." Nice discrimi- nation between sacred authority and its minis- ters. Revere the doctrine, avoid the unworthy example.
23
1872
March 31st. True religion must ever be tol- erant. If God speaks to me, He can also speak to you. Unity a thing of completeness, founded not upon uniformity, but upon harmony.
April loth. Great God, do not let me desert Thee ! For that is the trouble. Thou dost not desert us,
♦•
April 28th. Have been thinking for some days of a sermon illustrating the difference be- tween the mechanical and the moral in human life. Text, "the first man Adam was a living soul." Uncertain whether I should include the next sentence or not. Many people never get out of the mechanism, never attain to the con- sciousness of freedom, which is a high moral fact. Circumstances and passions, things from without and within, administer them. They do not kno.v their own power over these things. The various mechanisms, logical, passional, etc. A good subject, if I can study it out. "The Lord said unto my Lord" might be used against the pretensions of birth.
May 14th. The wind bloweth where it list- eth. The church is wrong in prescribing what people should believe. Moses and Christ did not do this. The church laid down the channels of faith, and faith forsook them. Aristocracy 24
THE WALK WITH GOD
prescribed what channels nobility should run in, and it often forsook them. The tares and the wheat — the good and the evil in institutions have to grow together. When the good is ripe, God's providence destroys the tares; this about the use of war in bringing order and discipline: blood- shed and violence the tares. Now the wheat is ripe and we may dispense with the tares.
(After a long absence from home)
August 1st. Every break in our long-con- tinued habits shows us something to amend in our past lives. What do I see in mine after this long break? That I must endeavor to have more real life and more religion. The passive and contemplative following of thought, my own or other people's, must not de-energize my sym- pathies and my will. I must daily consult the Divine will and standard which can help us to mold our lives aright, without running from one extreme to another. My heart's wish would now be to devote myself to some sort of religious ministry. God can open a way for this, in which the spirit of my desire can receive the form of His will.
August 25th. "And the whole multitude sought to touch him, for there went virtue out of him and healed them all."
The superstition of the miraculous act instead of the miraculous influence. Something true in
25
THE WALK WITH GOD
this impulse nevertheless. Mere hearing of the word is not enough. We desire personal (not physical) contact, with those who possess it. Doubtless, this high healing influence did go out of Jesus, but not more, I believe, on those who touched him than on those who did not. His touching them was the true point. Those whom his word and present influence touched, they no doubt were healed. How to seek and find to- day this personal contact with Jesus. To meet tlie multitude of men as he did, not for our own glory, but for their good. This would put us in his position. We might then find in our- selves a little of that divining power by which his help went straight to those who needed it most. We could touch Jesus at this point of faith and endeavor. Healing would then follow, in the measure of our capacity for it.
"Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have re- ceived your consolation. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep." What are these woes? The rich are delighted with ex- ternal riches. The full are filled with thoughts and things which have no satisfaction in them. Those who deride the truth will weep and mourn its power later.
September I2th. God knows best, who gives
different gifts to different people. But if to
have money, one must love it, rather let me and
mine love and have the better things, so that, as
26
THE WALK WITH GOD
a family, we pay our debts, educate our children, and hand down unimpaired and a little aug- mented our moral and spiritual inheritance.
October ijth. Have been reading F. P. Cobbe's book, "Broken Lights," a book showing much thought, piety and study; but at times she falls from her high and just argument to a lame and false conclusion. 1 note this at the end of Chapter VH where she says of Christianity, "Let it pass away, that grand and wonderful faith." As well might she say, "Let arithmetic and math- ematics pass away."
27
1873
January ist. Dear Lord, let me this year be worthy to call upon Thy name!
January ijth. In childhood we regard things with wonder, in youth we try to seize them, in old age we sit and weigh them. We women must change our measures as well as our weights, must contemplate this whole three score and ten years and see what pattern of life will suit this, not cut ofiE the first twenty years and try to re- peat them.
March ist. Went to Saturday Morning Club. Found that John Fiske had failed them. Was told to improvise a lecture on the spot. Did so. Spoke to the girls for about an hour. Perhaps never did better. Told them not to get estranged from their books till they would be afraid of them. The human library, which throws its books at you whether you will or no. The melancholy left by novel reading, the value of a little Greek, a little Latin, history, biogra- phy— music, the unifying power of art — the audi- ence at Symphony Concert goes in as many and comes out as one.
April 20th. (Points noted from a sermon.)
We are idle because we do not know what is to
be done. How did Christ know? As a child,
he understood the difference between his Father's
28
THE WALK WITH GOD
business and other business. The loving eyes with which he looked upon the world made him wise as to its need. He expresses this in his words to Nicodemus, *'A man must be born again." We must say this to the world. Every generation receives its natural birth, but for its spiritual birth, it must labor and suffer.
July 13th. Preached on the parable of the talents. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Said that self was the napkin in which the talent, if buried and laid away, became use- less and unfruitful. The envelope of self was at first silken, easy every way, then it hardened to iron, like a shirt of mail, then it became ada- mant, which only the sword of God's spirit can reach and break through. We love first our- selves, next our possessions. Christ had seen the women lament over the moth-eaten garments, the silver lost or stolen. He showed the treasure in heaven which is incorruptible. Misfortunes are talents, gifts, angels in disguise. If we improve them, we are enriched by them. "The redeemed shall walk there." God's angel of peace comes through the world, finding peace nowhere. God says: "Go again, look nearer, see the homes and hearts in which the spirit of My Christ has en- tered." The Angel goes again, finds peace springing up in many places. Isaiah's prophecy really to be fulfilled by the triumph of true Christianity. "The desert shall rejoice."
It seems to me a wonderful thing that we to-
29
THE WALK WITH GOD
day should have the power to look into the de- vout and transparent mind of Christ, luminous with spiritual knowledge and insight, to see there what this very world we live in was to him. He judged its cares, vanities, and falsehoods for us, near nineteen hundred years ago, and solved its problems with divine insight and human fore- sight. We are not compelled to adopt his view, nor indeed can we value his thoughts, unless we think ourselves; but oh! how much are our lives impoverished, if we leave him out!
"If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not, for I came not to judge the world but to save the world." How, in the face of this, can Christians be intolerant? They are in haste to judge the world, rather than to save it. What does save the world? Love, patience, and wisdom, not uncharity and condemnation.
30
THE APOSTLES
They pass from sight, those men of power, The planted seed of God's dear field.
In martyrdom's consummate flower A world-renewing crop they yield.
From lowly trade, from hours sublime In which they knew the Master's love,
From prison bonds and heathen crime, Resistless in their calm they move.
The heart which ran its own wild way. With knowledge of recorded good;
Which tarried for the poet's lay,
And loved, though wrong, the hero's mood,
From all the songs of Greece and Rome, The joys and woes of human souls.
Turns to the truths that overcome. The sacred reason which controls.
Twelve lowly men, of little lore.
With human fault and human faith.
Still from their crowned service pour The light that triumphs over death.
Oh! glory of man's true desert!
The wilderness is glad of them. And Nature, healed of every hurt,
Bears up the New Jerusalem.
31
1874
January 31st. This month ending to-day seems the most hurried of my life. . . . Some- times I have felt as if such a life as mine was of no value to the owner, and oftener than before prayer has not seemed to bring me comfort.
February 13th. (After a suffrage hearing at the State House.) . . . Spoke of our move- ment in the line of Peace and progress, and did as well as I ever did in my life. A power not my own seemed to hold me up, that of the anx- ious, earnest hearts before me, that of the truth upon me. I thank God for this occasion, for the good words of others, and for what I was able to do.
March 15th. Santo Domingo. . . . Remem- bered my prayer on reaching this place before. I pray God now no less than then, that I may do something to deserve this great pleas- ure of visiting the tropics.
March 22nd. Sunday. . . . Studied my sermon over a good deal. . . . My text was, "And you hath He quickened." Quickening of the spring, of the day, of the spirit. Our rude knocking at the door of heaven is prayer. God's soft whisper, at the door of our hearts. "If you are willing, I will come in."
March 23rd. I lay down last evening rather discouraged about my sermon. There were
32
THE WALK WITH GOD
many strangers at church who did not under- stand English . . . but this morning told
me that the people who did understand v/ere much comforted. God grant that I may help these people (Spanish negroes) still more, and do something to build up education among them.
April yth. Samana. Up early. ... I took the bull, and rode astride, safe, but uncomfort- able. . . . The schoolroom serves also for a chapel, and is called Bethsaida. . . . They asked me to read and pray. I read a part of the chapter, "He that entereth into the sheep- fold," etc. Prayed for Christ's sheep in this wilderness. It was a good moment.
April 1 2th. Sunday. My first preaching at Samana. I had the same text as at Santo Do- mingo City, but another sermon. In this I dwelt upon the gradations of life from the first creation up to the Christian dispensation and spiritual quickening. How God first quickened the earth from the void, then vegetable life, then animal life, then man, then Christian doctrine and influence. Think I did pretty well.
April igth. Sunday. Preparing for my af- ternoon preaching. . . . Text, "Philip said unto him, 'Show us the Father.' " Subject, how Christ showed and shows the Father. Spiritual insight, the constant presence, etc.
I begin to realize what a blessed rest the time
33
THE WALK WITH GOD
here has been to Chev * and to me. The very ab- sence of amusement has been good. It has been very long since I have had so much quiet work of the sort that builds up. Nothing that I have written here or anywhere gives any idea of the beauty of this country. It is the very sylvan tem- ple of God's majesty, indescribably rich and grand.
April 26th. Sunday. At work on sermon, Matt. 25:40: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren." I tried to show first, how this doctrine equalizes the opportunities of men for good and evil, since they can always do good, but neglect doing it, to others. Second, this great majesty of God which feels all good and evil done to its meanest creatures as done to itself. Third, this great championship and guardianship which God has to the feeble creatures of the earth. Fourth, an exhortation to be faithful in all human relations. I did not feel sure that my audience cared much about this sermon, but it cost me a good deal of work. My prayer afterward seemed to touch some of them.
May 2yth. Boston. My birthday — fifty-five years old. Still face to face with the mercies of God in health and sanity, enjoying all true pleas- ures more than ever, and weaned from some false ones.
*Dr. Howe.
34
THE WALK WITH GOD
June 7th. Swarthmore College. Pleasant, quiet, solid Swarthmore. Here I am, in Quaker surroundings, whose restful simplicity is most congenial to me. I feel here the earnest desire for genuine growth and culture which founds a slow but sure success. I am confirmed in my di- vision of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.
3S
1875
January 15th. If we will accept and im- prove the gift God gives us in ourselves, we shall not have room or time for envious desires.
March 14th. On my way to the hall (Parker Fraternity, where she was to preach) I thought, **If any one asks me whether I love preaching, I shall reply, *Yes, if one loves child-birth/ which on this wise it much resembles."
May iQth. Woman Suffrage meeting at Concord. . . . Was billeted on the dear Emer- sons, so had a glimpse of paradise.
June 13th. (After attending a revival meet- ing where she heard much violent talk.) I feel that I must attack this creed of blood, which does much to keep up the cruel and sanguinary views of barbarous ages about God and man. Will take text, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." Show that Christ brought a new interest into the world; a new vision of God, the loving one; a new view of man, the hopeful and universal one; his death in its char- acter the seal to his perfect life. But we are saved by his doctrine, by the same spirit which animated his life, — we are saved by his life, not by his death, except as it was the necessary moral sequence of his life.
36
THE WALK WITH GOD
July 2jrd. Must write a sermon; "Charity never faileth." This will probably teach me as much as it will teach any one. Have read from the lovely chapter (I Corinthians: xiii) which had to me a new significance — the limited and tran- sient character of human knowledge : "We know in part and we prophesy in part." Charity is an unending self-discipline which always looks and leads towards the eternal affection. There- fore, its triumph shall be lasting and everlasting.
August 22nd. "We can teach no virtues we do not practice," occurred to me this afternoon; for without learning by experience how a virtue is acquired, how can we teach any one to acquire it? I thought of this in connection with the ex- perience of undutiful children. By the working of this natural cause, they will not make their own children dutiful. Read in Luke of the angel which appeared to Christ in Gethsemane, strengthening Him. We all see this angel when we say truly, "Thy will, not mine, be done."
August 23rd. There is no hell like that of a selfish heart, and there is no misfortune so great as that of not being able to make a sacrifice. These two thoughts come to me strongly this morning. It is something to have learned these truths so that we can never again doubt them.
September 12th. The Spirit seems to ask me always, "Shall it be my will or Thine?" and
37
THE WALK WITH GOD
I say, after all my experience, "Thy will is best. Let it be in Thy way."
November 25th. Thanksgiving Day. . . . Cannot go to church, but will thank the dear Father for the good that He brings even out of our evil. Pray earnestly never to repeat will- fully any act of this year which I have found to be an error.
38
1876
Saturday, January 8th. (Her husband lying at the point of death.) ... I pray God not to leave me in utter despair, but to send me the Comforter, bestowed in humble hope and sor- rowing resolutions. Would I could die for him ! Since I cannot, let me live so as to honor his sweet and sacred memory.
January loth. (After her husband's death.) I awoke at 4 130 and lay still to bear the chasten- ing hand of God laid upon me in severe mercy. . . . Some good words came to me. "Let not your heart be troubled," etc. "He doth not will- mgly afflict," etc.
January 14th. Began my new life to-day. Prayed God that it might have a greatly added use and earnestness.
February 8th, (After describing a memorial service for Dr. Howe.) There was a cheerful tone in the occasion which seems to me as I recall it truly Christian. The victory of the spiritual man (conscience) over the natural man (self and sense) seemed to unfold to us the vic- tory of life over death. I saw my dear com- panion . . . crowned with the best glory a hu- man soul can have. The occasion seemed to make it so clear what the true riches, the true honors are. Always to remember it, always to
39
THE WALK WITH GOD
work the better for it, is very earnestly my prayer and desire.
February gth. Yesterday seems to have filled the measure of the past. To-day I must run forward in the pathways of the future. My dear love is sometimes with me, at least as an energizing and inspiring influence, but how shall' I deserve ever to see him again ?
May 27th. . . . Why is it that we can only learn of suffering by suffering? I pray God to make this year, if given to me at all, a useful one. . . . Most of all, I think God has taught me something of the real values of life, to wit, char- acter, intelligence, and true friendship, in place of the false idols of youth, viz. : passion, pleasure, luxury and ambition.
May 28th. ... I made it my prayer that I might do everything required of me and fulfill all my own undertakings, but do nothing with a selfish purpose or with a view to any personal advantage.
December 25th. . . . Service at Brooke Her- ford's church, where some sweet but rather pa- thetic music made me shed tears, recalling dear Chev, who was alive and with us a year ago. ... I cannot be fierce against my human in- firmity, and the dear God, who shows it to me more and more, will, I trust, enable me to help 40
THE WALK WITH GOD
others through my own bitter lessons, but let all human beings pra)^ to be delivered from ingrati- tude, the easiest of sins and perhaps one of the most dangerous.
41
1878
(The journals of the next two years contain mostly records of travel in Europe.)
January 5th. Rome. To-day begins my en- try of things noted for this year, with the prayer that its precious days may have a good and use- ful record, not only of the thoughts and studies which I love, but also of service rendered in the manifold ways which a human life truly in- cludes. The want of retirement and consequent impossibility of concentrating my mind upon anything has been grievous to me, so far. I shall try and hope to do better hereafter.
January 17th. Sea, sky, and snow-crowned mountain, one fair
world. Past, Present, Future, one eternity. Divine and human and informing soul. The mystic trine, thought never can resolve.
42
1879
February iSth. Athens. A confused day in which nothing seems to go right. . . . Felt as if God could not have made so bad a day, — my day, after all (which) I made.
43
1880
MEDITATION
Why should v/e thank for Day's decline Who saw so glad the morning shine? If Spring's fair promise brings us joy, Doth not the Winter bliss destroy? We welcome Life's unfolding breath, How shall we sing the praise of Death?
At morn we go, at eve we wait To learn the mystery of Fate. Must vanish all that doth appear, Must darken all that shineth clear. Must perish all that buds and grows, From opening day to opening rose.
For "onward ever" is the word The earliest Creation heard. Nature shall close her written years With the same sentence in her ears, From God to God doth onward roll The teeming earth, the teeming soul.
January i8th. . . . My sixty years begin to weigh upon me. My spirits flag, and I often dread the fatigue of meeting with many people. My natural inertia causes me to delay indefinitely some pieces of work that I feel to be very im- portant to me, such as the writing up of my notes of travel and the settling of my financial
44
THE WALK WITH GOD
matters. I long for some hours of complete isolation every day, during which I might un- fold books, papers, etc., without fear of inter- ruption. I have much to enjoy, much to be thankful for, and very much to regret in my past mistakes and failures to do the right thing. God help me to resolve and do my best with- out losing all power in the discouraging retro- spect of so much that has been honestly erro- neous and of some things that may have been willfully wrong. God bless and help also my dear children and children's children. With these prayers I will begin my new record.
Monday, October 4th. I have felt to-day a special hope and impulse in the direction of use- ful labor. I have in mind at present two ser- mons, one on Christ's saying about building the tombs of the prophets, of which the lesson would be the importance of learning from the living teacher and honoring him, instead of merely wor- shiping reputation, whether living or dead. The second would be upon the "Still, small voice," which is the voice of God; its contrast to the violence of passion and the fury of fanaticism. I would also, if I could, continue my subject of warning to Americans, as conveyed in my Con- cord and Saratoga lectures. I must also have a paper for the Women's Congress.
4S
1882
Sunday, May 28th. Whitsunday — the be- ginning of my sixty-fourth year. God grant me this year to do only what is worth doing and to desire only what is worth desiring.
My prayer for the day was to worship God, our Father and untiring benefactor, in spirit and in truth.
January 14th. I have tried this week to do the things I ought to do for other people. , . .
April 23rd. . . . My want of faith in my- self lessens the value of my efforts. I have sometimes felt the bounds of my capacity too lit- tle. Perhaps now I feel them too much.
46
1884
April 6th. This text in the Scripture lesson struck me as good for a sermon: Jeremiah 31:34 — "For they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." Subject: The democracy of Christi- anity. I felt as never before the grandeur and novelty of Christ's having show^n that the office of the Messiah as he conceived it, was to lift up the lowly and reclaim the erring and apparently worthless. Of course, I have heard this all my life, and have thought of it a good deal. What I saw to-day was the startling contrast between this view and the general ideas, not of the Jews only, but of Christians to-day.
EASTER MORNING SERVICE April 13th.
Shall I, for envy, sell the deep content
Of God's dear thought, to me one moment lent?
In that brief moment did appear to me So vast the riches of Heav'n's treasury
That I no more considered that poor wealth Straining for which, souls lose their native health.
April ijth. I felt this day that, in my diffi- culties with the anti-suffragists, the general spread of Christian feeling gives me ground to
47
THE WALK WITH GOD
stand upon. The charity of Christendom will not persist in calumniating the suffragists, nor will its sense of justice long refuse to admit their claims.
April 14th. I woke, heavy with uncertainties, and with much thought of my own shortcomings, past and present. I may say, what I rarely re- cord, that an earnest prayer helped me very much, and set me on my feet, to walk and work another day.
April 20th. My usual worry and depression at waking. Thought sadly of errors and short- comings. At church, a penitential psalm helped me much, and the sermon more. I felt assured that, whatever may be my fate beyond this life, I should always seek, love, and rejoice in the good. Thus, even in hell, one might share by sympathy the heavenly victory.
June 17th. Black with depression. Longing to give up the fight, and retire as a veteran.
July 6th. In such peace as they only have who have been forced to go into turmoil for the sake of necessary results, and have mercifully come out of it.
July 20th. ... I thought of a text for my next sermon. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath appointed me to preach the gospel to the poor."
48
THE WALK WITH GOD
Christ twice quotes this, the second time in his message to John Baptist. He does not say, "The rulers and magnates follow me," but "to the poor the gospel is preached." A good point for me to make.
August nth, (After preaching the sermon suggested above.) It m.ay be that I am losing my power of extempore speech. I have suifered great distress about this occasion, though I do not know that it was considered a failure. I know that I had intended to strike a valorous bio v against the wealth-worship of the time. My text was from Luke 4: 17: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me ... to preach the gospel to the poor." I had studied and worked at my sermon much more than usual, and found the subject much larger than it had appeared to me at first. Like the little Christ on the shoulders of St. Christopher, it seemed to weigh me down to the ground, though I had taken it up lightly. Might this be a lesson of hope, and not of dis- couragement !
... I remember that sometimes the effort is to be our success. It shows our good will — our power may not correspond to it.
August 2Sth. In my morning prayer, which is always short, and made standing, I asked for three things, to wit, the bitter of true repent- ance, the sharp flavor of a biting and spurring energy, the sweetness of believing that my sins
49
THE WALK WITH GOD
are forgiven and that I have tried to do some- thing to help my fellow^ men.
September yth, (After preaching the same sermon, under better conditions of health and spirits.) ... I enjoyed the service myself, and had some good moments of freedom in my ser- mon, quite like my best times. ... I w^as very thankful for this good coming through, and ea- couraged to try again in the future.
December 28th, . . . Thought also of a new application of Christ's vs^ords: "This is my body." We too should so offer our bodily life to the service of God and humanity as to be able to say: "This w^hich I offer is my very body, my very blood, the essence and quintessence of my daily life, which I lived subject to the laws of use and service."
50
1885
9 January gth. I pray God to-day that I may be able to give that attention to my business af- fairs which is necessary for the security of those who are to survive me. My absent habit of mind leads me to mislay important letters and papers, and to many sins of this kind.
September 6th. Busy in the morning with preparing my sermon on the Gospel of Hope, in contradistinction to the old terrible doctrines. Danger of religious indifference and of want of religious training for our children on the present skeptical basis.
51
1886
March 30th. (After the death of her daugh- ter Julia.) Wrote to : "I am not wild, nor
melancholy, nor inconsolable ; but I feel, as Amer- ica might if some great fair State were blotted from the map, leaving only a void for the salt and bitter sea to overwhelm. I cannot so far get any comfort from other-Vv^orldly imaginings."
If God says anything to me now, He says "Thou fool." The truth is that we have no no- tion of the value and beauty of God's gifts until they are taken from us. Then He may well say, "Thou fool," and we can only answer to our name.
April 27th. Have had an uplifting of soul to-day. I am at last getting to stand where I can have some spiritual outlook. The confusion of "is not," is giving place to the steadfastness of "is."
May 30th. . . . To Church of the Disciples, where it was Memorial Day in the Sunday School. Told the children about my writing of the Battle Hymn. Told them that the true glory of God which I saw then was not in the pomp and circumstance of war, not in military glory and victory, but in the rising up of the nation to stand up for the right and to die for it if need be. I told them that whenever they would stand up for the right in any struggle, contest or trial, they would see this glory.
52
1887
April nth. To Providence; invited to attend supper of Unitarian Club and make an address. The keynote to this was given me yesterday by the sight of the people who thronged the popu- lar churches, attracted, in a great measure no doubt, by the Easter decorations and music. I thought: **What a pity that everybody cannot hear Phillips Brooks." I also thought: "They can all hear the lesson of heavenly truth in the great Church of All Souls and of All Saints ; there is room enough and to spare."
53
1888
January ist. My first act this year was to preach before the Parker Fraternity. My text was Christ's saying to Peter: "Upon this rock 1 will build my church." The text came to me almost as soon as I received the invitation and 1 wrote the sermon under great difficulties of in- terruption, removal to Boston, et cetera. My theme was the religious element in human na- ture, and its normal manifestations in worship, sacrifice and revelation, or the vision of divine things. It seemed to interest those present a good deal, as it did me.
January 20th. I have no superstition about opening on passages of the Bible, yet will record that as I opened our service book for reading this morning, my eye rested on the following pas- sage: "I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins; return unto me for I have redeemed thee."
Sunday, March i8th. Thought I ought to stay at home and work. Struck a good vein and scratched awhile, then rushed for my dear church where I heard a good deal of the good minister's * prayer and a sermon from him which
* The Revd. Charles Gordon Ames, who had re- cently succeeded Mr. Clarke as pastor of the Church of the Disciples.
54
THE WALK WITH GOD
I can only call surpassing in its beauty and pathos. "As we forgive those who trespass against us" was the text, and never did divine words receive a more divine interpretation. It will surely be published, and my head is too tired to repeat any of it here. Suffice It to say that it moved me to real heart-tears of joy and comfort. The hymn was "Nearer, My God, to Thee." I should like to write a poem about it. A woman composed it, and I heard it again and again at Theodore Parker's. Heard it most at my sweet Julia's funeral. Felt it much to-day.
Sunday, September 23rd. To church in town. A suggestive sermon from Mr. Alger on "Watching," i.e., upon all the agencies that watch us : children ; foes ; friends ; critics ; authori- ties; spirits; God Himself.
As we drove into town I had one of those momentary glimpses which In things spiritual are so infinitely precious. The Idea became clear and present to my mind that God, an actual pres- ence, takes note of our actions and Intentions. I thought how helpful It would be to us to pass our lives in a sense of this divine supervision. After this Inward experience I was almost startled by the theme of Alger's sermon. I spoke to him of the coincidence and he said it must have been a thought wave. The thought is one to which I have need to cling. I have at this moment mental troubles, obsessions of imag- ination, from which I pray to be delivered.
55
THE WALK WITH GOD
While this idea of the divine presence was clear to me, I felt myself lifted above these things. May this lifting continue.
Friday, September 28th. In my prayer this morning I had again a glimpse of the transcend- ent things. The presence of God appeared to me on Sunday last as a constant point of rever- ence and judgment for conduct; to-day it ap- peared to me as a perpetual nearness of help and loving comfort.
Extracts from my prayer at the Tiverton Serv- ice, September 9th, 1888:
"Thou who art to us the supreme of comfort and consolation, the supreme also of judgment and correction.
"We pray to thee as individual souls, to each" one of which thou hast given an immortal prom- ise and an immortal destiny — as members of families, surrounded by dear ones whose welfare is as precious to us as our own — as citizens of a country to which thou hast given a leadership of the nations of the earth." I forget what I asked for us as individuals — as members of families I asked that the bond of love might rule in our households, and that with children and servants we might remember that God is father of all and master of all. For our dear Country in this time of excitement and doubt, I asked that she might remember that, whoever may govern, God is really governor of all.
I have written this down because I thought it
56
THE WALK WITH GOD
better than my usual prayers. I write ft from very imperfect remembrance.
Text of a screed unused:
Oh ! you dear young people, upon whose faith- fulness depends the fate of further generations, do not waste precious years in the mistakes of selfishness !
Now that the generous impulses of Youth and the discipline of good teaching are fresh and strong in you, address yourselves to discern the most imperative needs of Humanity. So shall you learn to meet them with good service. So shall future generations rise up rightly to call you blessed.
Sunday, November 4th. In my prayer this morning I thanked God that I have come to grieve more over my moral disappointments than over my intellectual ones. With my natural talents I had nothing to do; with my use or abuse of them, everything.
I have thought too, lately, of a reason why we should not neglect our duty for others for our real or supposed duty to ourselves. It is this: ourselves we have always with us; our fellows flit from our company, or pass away; and we must help them when and while we can.
Monday, November 5th. My last day here this season. I go, thanking God for the lovely summer of work and rest, family affection and social enjoyment. It is all delightful to look
57
THE WALK WITH GOD
back upon, and another such season Is lovely to look forward to, though my age more than any- thing else makes this doubtful. However it may chance, I feel as if I should be reconciled, trust- ing in the infinite goodness and wisdom.
December joth. * * * The ideal Christ is justified by the love and worship of humanity. With our imperfect knowledge of facts con- cerning him and our equally imperfect capacity of interpreting them, It is better as well as hap- pier to hold on to this vision of the divine man, than to dogmatize either way about his nature.
58
1889
January ist. In my prayer this night I asked for weight and earnestness of purpose. I am too frivolous and frisky.
January 2gth. My word for the Danvers Suffrage meeting was Christ's two sayings about his bringing a sword and also giving peace. The sword was the weapon of discriminating thought, bringing in a better interpretation of the old faith and doctrine. The peace was what would follow the adoption of the better doctrine. Suf- frage divides society now and calls for a new study in the doctrines of freedom and justice. Peace will come when this study shall have been made and its results practically applied.
February 24th. In the evening heard Verdi's beautiful Requiem. Was struck with the ex- pression it gave to the terrorism of the old the- ology; the vengeance of offended majesty on the one hand, the piteous pleading of frightened souls on the other. As a work of human imagination, this old scheme of judgment, damnation and sal- vation was sublime; as a revelation of a Being superhuman in goodness and wisdom, it is sim- ply absurd.
June 1st, I have said to God on every morn- ing of these busy days: "Give me this day," and He has given them all; i.e., He has given me power to fulfill the task appointed for each.
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THE WALK WITH GOD
June gth. I find, more and more, that the thought which came to me at the Worcester read- ing helps me to a new view of life in which the soul perpetually gives up to God and receives from Him. What we give up in this way we receive in another, with a happy sanction and confidence.
July 15th. I take for my guidance a new motto: "I will ascend," not in my ambition but in my thoughts and aims.
July 2 J St. A dry Sunday, i.e., no church, it being the women's turn to go. ... I think of two sermons to write, one *'A spirit of Power" ; one, "Behold, I show you a more excellent way."
August gth. I think to-day of a good theme for a sermon: "The Glory that shall be re- vealed." Am not quite sure whether this is a scripture text, but could find one which would take its place. Query: What will be the glory of the future revelation? It is a truth and a glory now, only we do not see it. The eternal principles of the moral laWj the progress of the divine order. These eternal verities are always present in the world and are partially known to elect spirits here and there; but when "all flesh shall see it," then these great truths will be made known to all and will become embodied in hu- man life and government. 60
THE WALK WITH GOD
August 14th. My inward prayer is still,
"Take and give ! Take away my foolish life and
give me my life back again, informed by Thy wisdom."
September 8th. To-day for the second time I seemed to have met Mr. Alger's sermon as I drove in to attend church. The discourse was very metaphysical and long winded, but the di- rect and important train of thought was much like that which seized me as I sat in my car- riage. I thought of the different ways of serv- ing Duty; first, as Christ did, in loneliness and ^hardship. I thought of him as one standing on a lonely beach waiting to find, as he did, the pearl of a perfect doctrine with which to redeem the world ; then of a fire ship with its devoted crew ; then of a pleasant party of saintly people. This, it seemed to me, would be my best chance. Alger named several gates of Heaven, innocence, vic- tory, penitence, resignation, retribution. This was the best part of the sermon because the most tangible. Tried to write this out in verse, some of which occurred to me as I drove into town; succeeded poorly.
October 20th. We do not ask that Thy truth may conquer, because it cannot but conquer; its conquest is assured from the very foundation of the world. But we do ask that we may have a part in this great victory, the part of humble, faithful followers who have seen Thy banner un-
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THE WALK WITH GOD
rolled in its glory, which is above all other glories, above all the splendors of the visible universe, above sunrise and sunset.
May every one of us be enrolled in the Church of All Saints and All Souls, which has been or- dained, instituted and inspired by Thee, from and for all time. Amen.
Spoke to the text, "God hath not left Him- self without a witness." This witness is in all human hearts, which, with all its intense de- sires, desires most of all law, order, religion.
October 2ist. The afternoon service yester- day was a vesper with much music, really sweet and soothing. I applied my text to the coming out into the new territories; a rough Exodus stimulated by the love of gold, but with the army of fortune seekers go faithful souls, and instead of passing out of civilization, they extend its bounds. "Praise waiteth for thee in Zion" — yes, but the Prophet says: "The solitary places shall be made glad for them," et cetera. I set this down for future use.
Good Mr. Van Ness called just now and thanked me warmly for my sermon of yesterday morning. My statement of the way in which religion does bind, seems to have impressed him. I ask God to give me grace and comfort in what I have now undertaken.
I spoke also of religious faith as belief not in especial dogmas but in the power of God's truth and in man's power to receive it. 62
THE WALK WITH GOD
November 24th. Preached for Dr. Stebbins my ''Eleventh Hour" sermon. The organist in- troduced my Battle Hymn into his voluntary. I sought much in mind for my prayer, but found two leading thoughts for it, the best being: God's know^ledge not only of the evil in us but of our good capacities; also His powder of uplift- ing us to the ideal humanity for which He created us. "The seed of faith which Thou hast put in our heart through all generations, may it mul- tiply and grow and prevail with might."
"Not one glorious feature is lost to Thee, of those with which Thou didst make man in Thine own image."
My sermon and prayer told, I was assured, and indeed I felt it at the time. Deo gratias.
December 22nd. (In California.) A lovely day with dear Sister Annie and Loullie. A. would have a little Sunday service. I read part of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew and spoke first of the Bible in my hands; the same which dear father formerly used at family devo- tions. "This book preaches," I said, and then took the passage about the altar sanctifying the gift, and the temple the vow, taking Christ's in- tention in this to have been to lead his hearers in- ward from the symbolic right to the depth of the religious thought. Spoke of sincerity in religion as attainable only by efFort; getting away from the stereotyped phrases and attitudes to the in-
63
THE WALK WITH GOD
wardness of religious life. Spoke of God as the great light at which we may rekindle our little candles blown out by the strong currents of our earthly life.
64
ALL SOULS
I pace along my lonely way, Sedate, who once was wildly gay, Ferocious in my sadness too, As one whose pleasure Fate should do,
The lessons of these many years Resounding in unwilling ears. My saints were visions in the clouds. With haloes that no shadow shrouds.
But I walk painfully and slow, With many another child of woe. And pass Thy palace gate before, For judgment open evermore.
Here perfect truth shall guide the hand By which the balance fine is spanned ; And here is known the deep intent Of Love that never may repent.
Oh ! at that broad ancestral hearth. Renew the promise of our birth ! For goals that we have failed to reach, For lessons that we could not teach.
Give us the hope that never dies. Let its calm sentence make us wise. Redeemed from sorrow, freed from sin. Let us, the erring, enter in!
6^
1890
March 2nd, Preached at Church of the Dis- ciples. ... I had to think a good deal over my prayer, but found at last a leading thought in God's redeeming power by which "what we begin in weakness Thou dost establish in strength, and even what we begin with an ill and evil in- tention, Thou art able to convert into good." My first words were like the following: "O Lord, our Creator, preserver and constant bene- factor, we know that Thou art in all our life ; the most careless of us will call upon Thee in any great danger, or before any great undertaking, but the nearer things hide Thee from us, although we need Thee every hour and always. Grant that we may seek Thee with sincere and devoted hearts."
I gave thanks for the great institutions of public worship, for the fellowship of years which had made it good for us to meet together, for the holy and happy leadership which we so long enjoyed and for the renewed guidance now given to us, etc., etc.
March i6th. That I may serve God without reserve, is my prayerful wish to-day. In consult- ing my own convenience and desired harmony with my surroundings, I have so often said, "Thus far and no farther"; I now say, "As far as Thou wilt, for only Thy wisdom shall surely 66
THE WALK WITH GOD
be under my feet, the foundation of what I may attempt."
May 2 1st. In the morning, before I was well awake, this thought came to me : the sibyl's awful hand writes the scattered events of daily life into history, and in so doing, not only records but helps to shape the fate of humanity. Tried to say something of this in my speech.
May 29th. (After attending a meeting of the Universalist Women's Missionary Society.) Thank God for the word which I found to- day; the hospitality of Christendom through which I was invited, the fitness of liberal Chris- tianity for the (so-called) heathen nations to whom the old theological casuistries are in- comprehensible ; "the world our field" ; the phil- osophy of missions is this: we have need of this great extension of religious effort and sympathy; the hopeful element in women; its power in fitting them for mission work.
Thursday, June J2th. Oak Glen. Dear Mas- ter, may this season be a good one between Thee and me! May I be diligent, sincere, reason- able and charitable, and may I do what is to be done for others with a cheerful and ready heart.
Sunday, August lOth. I have been thinking both before and after the sermon of the moral near-sightedness which we acquire by living in
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THE WALK WITH GOD
only what immediately surrounds and con- cerns us. "Lift, oh, lift thine eyes," is a text from which I should like to preach a sermon.
August 24th. (After speaking to the inmates of the Reform Prison for Women at South Fra- mingham) Woke up feeling quite well and refreshed. Thought I would fall back upon the text w^hich I had first thought of in connection w^ith this occasion, a text of cheer and uplifting: "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory." Read part of Isaiah, 40th. Said that I had wished to bring them some words of com- fort and exhilaration. Pointed out how the Lord's Prayer begins with solemn worship and ascrip- tion, aspiring to God's Kingdom, praying for daily bread and for deliverance from tempta- tion and all evil; at the close it rises into this joyous strain, "Thine is the kingdom," et cetera. Tried to show how the kingdom is God, the great providential order, before and beyond all earthly government ; then the power, that of perfect wis- dom and goodness, the powder to know and rule all things, to be everj^vhere and ever present, to regulate the mighty sweep of stars and planets, and, at the same time, to take note of the poorest and smallest of us; the glor}' first of the visible universe, glory of the day and night, of the seasons, glory of the redeeming power of truth, glor}' of inexhaustible patience, of boundless com- passion and love. 68
THE WALK WITH GOD
September 3rd. Prayed in the morning for such a view of human nature as belongs to real charity. Somehow, throughout the day, a more charitable paraphrase of everybody's conduct seemed to present itself to me, as if my prayer had really found an answer.
December 8th. Some people are favored with Paul's vision. I have had Peter's: "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common."
69
RETROSPECTS
Little wicked I Once the Almighty's power did deny: "Thou art from everlasting, that is longer, But I am of to-day, and Youth is stronger. Thine are the viewless depths of Night and Day; This corner's mine, and I will have my way."
Little foolish I Once on my own fool-wisdom would rely: "The prayers and prophecies are grand, no doubt, But I this problem have well reasoned out; I apprehend Creation at a glance, And take my time to flit and flirt, and dance."
Little puzzled I Review my fooleries, and ask God why? Why these sad, silly antics didst permit? Why did I waste my seasons and my wit? "To IVIe thy young rebellious heart did say: 'This corner's mine, and I will have my way !' "
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1891
Saturday, January Jist. Oh, that we could realize in busy life, how fleeting are our oppor- tunities of showing good will and afiEection to individuals.
Saturday, April 7th. . . . The Communion which followed was to me almost miraculous. Mr. Ames called it a festival of commemoration, and it brought me a mind vision of the many de- parted dear ones. One after another the dear forms seemed to paint themselves on my Inner vision; first, the nearer in point of time; last, my Brother Henry and Samuel Eliot. I felt that this experience ought to pledge me to new and more active effort to help others. In my mind I said, "The obstacle to this is my natural inertia, my indolence"; then came the thought, God can overcome this indolence and give me increased power of service and zeal for it. Those present, I think, all considered the sermon and Com- munion as of special power and interest. It al- most made me fear lest it should prove a Swan Song from the dear minister. Perhaps it is I, not he, who may soon depart.
Tuesday, July 21st. I have read daily for some time past, a psalm of David and a chapter of Proverbs. The religion of the one, and the practical wisdom of the other, are pos- sessions too much neglected nowadays.
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THE WALK WITH GOD
Monday, July 2'/th. ''Death is swallowed up in victory"; for those of us who love the good, seeing its victories which every one who lives and thinks may see, will or should pass from earthly life in peace and contentment. The sense of his own death will be swallowed up in God's eternal victory, which the divine part of him must share.
Saturday, October loth. I am learning by experience that a pound of feathers is as heavy as a pound of lead, and much harder to handle.
Friday, December 2Sth. I saw Love as the great solvent of the world problem ; saw how God could take care of the stars and of the sparrows; infinite love would have this infinite power.
AFTER THE WOMEN'S RALLY
September i^th
The blessed web that angels weave Of love to God and love to man,
Let me therein some pattern leave Ere rounds my life its little span.
The holy church that heroes build
With lofty thought and purpose sound,
Ere Time's last rays my sunset gild, There let some stone of mine be found.
The psalm where prayer and music meet, In joy-floods, rolling from on high,
To such a rhythm, grand and sweet, May my departing footsteps fly!
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TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON
Christmas J i8gi
I have tasted mj^ Communion in a golden cup
^of joy, Tho* I held it but a moment nought its comfort
could destroy. All the bitterness of living, all life's error, all
its sin, Was sublimed to rapturous sweetness, when It
passed my cup withm.
To the Altar came a vision of the secret of the
world, Of the leaders God-inspired, of the starry flags
unfurled, Crowned Saints and armed sinners, walking in
opposing ways. Till the discords of the Ages met in mingled
hymns of praise.
Oh ! how can He who rules the stars, whose will is perfect law,
Take note of us who idols make of stubble and of straw?
The heart of Christ and Moses, and this grovel- ing heart of mine.
How can the mighty Alchemist for good and truth combine?
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THE WALK WITH GOD
"God save the king!" and yet the king to some
false god doth bow, To pleasure, wealth, or fashion, lights the rank
that crowns his brow; And on the throne or in the hut, or on the tented
field, Where God might look for seconding, despite is
all the yield.
The lamps were in bright circle hung, the waves
of melody In cadences majestical around them seemed to fly. The lamps were like the light of thought, that
shows the dark without. But the hymn was like the bond of love that
binds it all about.
My doubting heart no longer weighed the mis- chiefs of its past,
No longer in its struggle cried: "Oh, help me, God, at last!"
But thus it spake : "The solvent for all evil things is found,
And where offence of man abounds, God's grace doth more abound."
7?
1892
Sunday, January 3rd. The King's palace is all lit up in glory; we would enter in and share its inner light. What shall we bring to our Father? Overflowing gratitude. What shall we ask of Him ? His most precious spiritual gifts, above all others, steadfastness in our pursuit of good, that we may not merely flame out into brief enthusiasm which shall soon appear as a "tale that is told," but may follow our best inspirations to fruitful ends.
January 5th. I have promised the dear Lord to-day that if I may only live out this winter, I will do my best to set my house in order for those who will stand in my place. . . .
Tuesday, February 23rd. ... I suggested "the nearest duty and the furthest hope." ... I reflected that many of us, myself often included, try on the contrary for the farthest off duty and the most immediate hope.
Saturday, February 27th. We have in society, eminent individuals, decent public opin- ion, and great masses of ignorance and unprin- ciple. Now these eminent individuals, and the constantly improving public opinion, have to deal with the ignorant many, working unceasingly for their enlightenment.
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A MOMENT'S MEDITATION IN COLOGNE CATHEDRAL
Enter Life's high cathedral With reverential heart,
Its lofty oppositions
Matched with divinest art.
Thought with its other climbing To meet and blend on high ;
Man's mortal and immortal Wed for eternity.
When noon's high mass is over, Muse in the silent aisles;
Wait for the coming vespers In which new promise smiles.
When from the dome height echoes
An "Itej missa est'* Whisper thy last thanksgiving,
Depart, and take thy rest.
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THE WALK WITH GOD
April iSth. . . . Had a time of discourage- ment and prostration at waking. Felt the de- mands made upon me to be utterly beyond my strength and executive power. Prayed for a lit- tle relief from this fatigue and depression. Got a little glimpse of a thought new to me, viz.; that Analysis has been the great business of the age I have lived in. Theodore Parker began an analysis of religious ideas in his famous first discourse. Garrison, Phillips and the other early abolitionists were analysts of the political con- dition of the country, from an ethical standpoint. The suffragists belong to the same class. The real humanists, as exemplified in college settle- ments, the promoters of neighborhood guilds, etc., are analysts of social economy from the same point of view. The white light of Christ's soul illuminates all this. It is the incandescent elec- tric (light?).
78
AT MILWAUKEE
The tulips on the border of the lake
A missal-like illumination make,
The waters spreading like a silver page,
Where the sun prints his text, from Age to Age,
Which the lake's heaving bosom doth efface, Yet is its teaching steadfast with our race. Message of splendor, never twice the same, Sealing Creation's story with God's name.
As the rose leaves around the rose's heart, The saints of God may gather round His throne ;
But alien spirits, in far realms apart The fellowship of Zion have not known.
Musing, I thought upon the holy band
Who ne'er the blessed sphere had passed out- side :
Fondly to them I stretched the pleading hand, To join their glorious ranks one moment cried.
But then from earth's dark corner I perceived The coming of a mighty multitude.
For whom the Light supreme its course achieved, Redeeming from the wild, accursed mood.
To these I prayed, "Oh! let me bring the news Of what in nearer vision I have seen ;
To serve their greater need my heart would choose Above the heavenly city's sights serene.
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THE WALK WITH GOD
"For to their painful progress should belong
My lessons of infirmity and sin, And how world-problems of deceit and wrong
Are solved by some who late may enter in,
"As left the Christ the sentence dear and deep Of Love's great victory which all shall crown ;
The heavenly Shepherd seeking other sheep To be redeemed and folded as his own."
December 31st. Thank God for this good year! I asked Him for this. I will not ask Him for another, but say simply, "Thy will be done!"
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1893
Sunday, January 15th. . . . The discourse led me to think of the vast work that needs be done in disseminating the helpful, hopeful views of the new Christianity — Christ's, only now be- ginning to be rightly and universally interpreted. It seems to me that if I had twenty years before me, with my present experience, and with work- ing ability even such as I now have, I could do something in this line. Perhaps I do it more than I know of. My prayer for every day is now that I may do in it something worth doing, not for personal ends, but for simple and sincere service. This at any rate helps to start the day on a good basis of intention.
Tuesday, April nth, . . . Baron Ricasoto, in the days in which he despaired of freeing his country from its numerous tyrants, devoted himself to the education of his daughter, say- ing: "Perhaps the only way in which I can be of use in some small degree, to the country, is by giving it a woman of noble character." I say to myself, "No other hope remains to you of leaving a trace of your footsteps on this earth ; make a mother worth having."
81
1894
January 1st, 1894. I take possession of the New Year in the name of Faith, Hope and Charity.
March 1st. . . . Speaking of the difficulty with which ideas already received are allowed to unfold themselves to their full significance, the inertia of mankind barring the way: "The dear Lord," I said, "had to die in order to get a new testament accepted even by those who had ac- cepted the old one."
Sunday, March lith, C. G. A. preached a funeral sermon on Mrs. Mary Hemenway. As he opened his lips, I said to myself, "What can he teach us that her life has not taught us ?" The sermon, however, was most instructive. Such a life makes an epoch, and should establish a precedent. If one woman can be so disinterested and so wise, others can emulate her example. I, for one, feel that I shall not forget this forcible presentation of the aspect of such a character, of such a history. God send that her mantle may fall upon this whole community, stimulating each to do what he or she can for humanity.
Wednesday, May 30th. Our forefathers and mothers had a mighty engine for awak- ening atttention to religion in their children — the terrible fear of everlasting punishment. We have not this fear to enforce our instruction, 82
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but we can present the fear of something quite as bad, the failure to come up to our human measure and dignity, the lowering of the moral level of the community. There is danger in these days of neglect of the home altar.
July 1st. Despite my severe fatigue, went in town to church ; desired in my mind to have some good abiding .thought given to me to work for and live by. The best thought that came to me was something like this: We are careful of our fortune and of our reputation. We are not care- ful enough of our lives. Society is built of these lives, in which each should fit his or her place, like a stone fitly joined by the builder. We die, but the life we have lived remains, and helps to build society well or ill. Later on I thought that it sometimes seems as if a rope or chain of mercy were let down to pull some of us out of sin and degradation, out of the hell of passion. If we have taken hold of it and have been rescued, shall we not work to have others drawn up with us? At such moments, I remember my old wish to speak to the prisoners, never fully realized.
December 2nd. Enjoyed the service and the Communion, of which indeed I did not partake. But such a good thought came to me while the others went to the altar. This was that the en- tirety of Humanity is the body which the Chris- tian spirit is to vitalize and illumine. The eating
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of one bread and the drinking of one cup in commemoration of that heroic feast and sorrow, symboh'zes for me, and doubtless for many, the great unity of faith and feeling which true re- ligion should bring among the peoples of the earth. I longed to be able to write a sermon to the text: ''This is my body." Possibly I may manage to do this.
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1895
January ist. I was awake very early and made the prayer that during this year I might not say one uncharitable word, or be guilty of one ungenerous action.
January 20th, To church with joy and thankfulness. A sermon on "The tongue and its abuses," very practical and good. Was per- plexed and sad at waking with remembrance of •my many shortcomings. The text, "Come unto me," etc., presently brought me light and com- fort.
June 2nd, To Communion In the afternoon. The minister asked whether I would speak. I told what I had felt as I entered the church that afternoon, "a sort of realization of the scene in that upper chamber, its gloom and its glory. What was in that great heart whose pulsations have made themselves felt down to our own time, and all over the world? What was its sorrow? It bore the burthen of the sorrows and distresses of humanity, and we who pledge him here in this cup are bound to bear our part of that burthen. Only thus shall we attain to share in that festival of joy and of revealed power which followed the days of doubt and despair." All this came to me like a flash. I have written it down from mem- ory because I value the thought.
8^
Far from our dwellings, high or low,
May evil deeds remain, Let none of us consider good
What brings another pain.
In all that makes Life beautiful
We'll study to excel, And serve and bless the sacred spot
Where we are called to dwell.
These pilgrim steps wax faint and slow, And weary grows the load,
But hark, the golden trumpets blow Within the gates of God.
Music in her dulcet voice
And in the well-tuned lyre, Music too in each true heart
That heavenward doth aspire.
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THE WALK WITH GOD
Saturday, June 15th. I am glad that I have at last found out that the battle of life is an unending fight against the evil tendencies, evil mostly because exceeding right measure, which we find in ourselves. Strange that it should take so long to find this out. This is the victory which God gives us when we have fought well and faithfully. Might I at least share it with the saints whom I have known !
Sunday J July 14th. When I lay down to take my rest before dinner, I had a momentary sense of the sweetness and relief of the last lying down. This was a new experience to me, as I have been averse to any thought of death as op- posed to the activity which I love. I now saw it as the termination of all fight and struggle, and prayed that in the life beyond I might pay some of the debts of affection and recompense which I have failed to make good in this life.
Saturday, July 2'jth. Work, worship, wel- come. These three words will do for a motto of the life which I now lead, in which these words stand for my ruling objects, "welcome," denoting "hospitality," in which I should be glad to be more forward than I have been of late.
July 28th. O God, no kingdom is worth praying for but thine!
87
A SONG FOR THE YOUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR SOCIETY
Phalanx of youth, so fair and brave, Set your bright banner in the sky;
O'er minds ennobled let it wave, O'er hearts to duty ever nigh.
The years that marshal gallant men. Passing, withdraw them from the field ;
Our leaders resolute of ken,
In turn to Death's stern challenge yield.
Who shall uphold what valor gained, When those who led the fight are gone,
When noble spirits, nobly trained, Fall, from the contest, one by one ?
Children who show their true descent Fulfill the promise of their sires.
The faith unswerving and unbent. The heart unstained by low desires.
O valiant army that shall be,
Approach, and breathe the solemn vow
That binds to truth's high chivalry! The time to enroll your names is now.
In Heaven's own armory of light Availing weapons you shall find;
Stronger than sword and cannon's might The prayerful heart, the steadfast mind.
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THE WALK WITH GOD
The cross, with Love's own glory crowned, The stripes and spangles of the free,
With these your watchword shall resound, "Our country, God, and liberty."
From The Golden Rule.
August 4th. I had one most happy sudden thought in church. This was that this vital breath which sustains me is related to that which sustained the dear Christ, and in a way, descends from the same source. The sermon of to-day, emphasizing the Human Love in its relation to the love of God, suggested to me many of my own shortcomings in this regard.
Sunday, September ist. The Communion which followed the sermon brought me more light. Beautiful was the thought of this festi- val of all time, for all humanity — Christ, the gift of God to the whole human race. It seemed to me that I had been jealous of the splendid shows which amuse a few idle rich people, giv- ing no pleasure to the multitude. I now feel reassured that the best things are for all.
November 28th. I had felt a special discour- agement at waking this morning. Later I sought and found a deliverance from this in the dear Lord's parable of the lost sheep.
89
1896
Sunday, February gth. I had in church a mo- mentary glimpse of the meaning of Christ's say- ing, "I am the vine, and ye are the branches." I felt how the source of our spiritual love is in the heavenly Fatherhood, and how departing from our sense of this we become empty and barren. It was a moment of great comfort. C. G. A. wishes me to preach for him one Sun- day in March. My heart seemed to ask to-day before service, "Why does the past fade so out of our consciousness? Why can we not retain our hold upon it — its dear shapes, our departed friends? What is the true inwardness of death?" . . .
Sunday, March 1st. I had a moment's glimpse of something very dear and deep, namely : that if I have the love of God truly in my heart, I could not lose it even in Hell.
March 2gth. A very delightful sermon from C. G. A. "Ye are the light of the world" ; "Let your light so shine," etc. ... I feel stirred by this sermon to take a more active part and interest in religious work. I pray for some spe- cial call or opening which shall point that way. I cry, Oh, let this light of true Christianity pene- trate like a dart of fire into the very heart of the world's heathendom. Had I lived a more con- sistently serious life, I might have hoped for 90
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such a mission, yet my working day has been most mercifully prolonged. My own thought on en- tering our church and seeing it adorned with palms was the immortal character of heroic ac- tions. For us the dear Christ still enters Jerusa- lem on Palm Sunday; he is still crucified on Good Friday; he rises from the tomb on Eas- ter. In such things, once is always.
Wednesday, April 8th. I asked in my prayer this morning, feeling miserably dull and weak, that some deed of help and love might be given me to accomplish to-day. Between 12 M. and I P.M. came three gentlemen . . . praying me to make an appeal to the women of America for their Armenian sisters, who are destroying them- selves in many instances to avoid Turkish out- rage. ... I felt that I had had an answer to my prayer.
May 27th. I have found for myself a text in Psalm 85, 8th verse. "For he will speak peace unto his people, but let them not turn again unto folly"; which may Heaven forbid!
July 5th, Determined that I would go to
church to-day. I intended to walk, but at s
instance sent for a cab and ordered the driver to return. On entering the church I found that
was to preach, and found too that there
was to be a Communion service. Was minded, in view of the order already given, to leave after
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the sermon, which was a very literary perform- ance, and did not much correspond with what I wished to hear. In view of the Communion, something seemed to ask me; "Is not the dear Christ's Communion worth an extra half dol- lar?" So I told my cabman to return in half an hour, and went back into the church, where the sacred, simple rite brought me many dear and intimate thoughts, and a sort of panorama of dear ones who have passed from this visible world, including my two departed children. As I tasted the wine, I prayed that the life blood of a true humanity might enter into my veins, bind- ing me with a tie of Christ-like love to my fel- low creatures. The choir sang very softly three verses of "Nearer, My God, to Thee," and I thought that I felt the nearness.
July loth, I pray this morning for courage to undertake and fervor to accomplish something in behalf of Christian civilization against the tide of barbarism, which threatens to over- sweep it.
November ist. I prayed quite earnestly this morning that the dimness of sight, which has lately troubled me, might disappear. My eyes are really better to-day. I seemed at one mo- ment during the service to see myself as a little child in the Heavenly Father's nursery, having played my naughty pranks (alas!) and left my tasks unperformed, but coming, as bed-time 92
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draws near, to kiss and be forgiven. I also thought why God sends His rain on the just and the unjust. It is to the end that the Good shall constantly increase in power and that its victory shall know no interruption.
December 31st. And so farewell, year of many mercies! God send me and mine another as good!
93
1897 THE LORD'S SUPPER
From the lips of Christ this goblet comes
That here you tender me, From the lips whose summons woke the dead
In ancient Bethany.
The lips whose music thrills the world
With high beatitudes; The lips that gave command to feed
The hungering multitudes.
Oh ! bitter was the draught to him,
On the chill verge of death, Who at the banquet gave this pledge
Of love surpassing faith.
Put far from me the stains of earth.
My heart in twain be riven For him who through the centuries saith,
"Thy sins be all forgiven."
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January 1st. (Written on the fly-leaf of the Journal.) The good God make me grateful for this new year, of which I am allowed to see the beginning. Thy kingdom come! I have many wishes, but this prayer will carry them all.
January 3rd. Woke early with a choking throat, a feverish pulse and an aching head. Supposed myself sick for some days to come, but determined to go to church. A helpful sermon on Hope. I, alas! was heavy with my cold and drowsed somewhat. The Communion serv- ice which followed was truly comforting, uplift- ing and delightful. Among other thoughts, this came to me: I thought myself at the Heavenly Father's feast in poor and degraded garments, corresponding to my own merits. Before any one could exclaim: "How came she here?" the Heavenly One Himself seemed to cover me with a beautiful garment, so that I should not be out of harmony with the occasion. This waking vision moved me to many tears. I shall try to hold fast its meaning.
May 27th. This is my 78th birthday. If the good God sees fit to grant me another year, may He help me to fill it with good work.
June 26th. Had a little time of quiet thought this morning, in which I seemed to see how the intensity of individual desire would make chaos
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in the world of men and women if there were not a conquering and reconciling principle of harmony above them all. This to my mind can be no other than the infinite wisdom and infinite love which we call God.
December i8th. When I lay down to take my nap before dinner, I had a sudden thought — a vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. I seemed to see how the human could in a way reflect the glory of the divine, giving not a mechanical but an affectional and spiritual re-showing of the great unfathomable glory.
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1898
January ist. May God bless this New Year to me and mine. May it bring true peace and divine wisdom to the peoples of the earth.
May I in some way do something to help this.
January Jist. Have made a special prayer that my mind may be less occupied with my own shortcomings, and more with all that keeps our best hopes alive. Felt little able to write, but produced a good page on the principle: Nulla dies sine linea.
Friday, May 2yth. Dear Heavenly Father, thanks for the life which Thou gavest me, sev- enty-nine years ago to-day. What a boon has this been ! To gain the experience of later years with faculties unimpaired and bodily senses still preserved. . . . Dear Lord, if my life is pro- longed, let it be for good, for something better than I have yet done. Yet for that even, end- less thanks.
Sunday, June I2th. To the dear church in a dull mood. The cloud suddenly lifted and I felt myself happily swept into the divine order, so that I dared to say to God, *1 love Thee!" A thrice blessed moment, pledging to renewed ef- fort and good service.
December 5th. Woke very early and had a long and desperate worry over my money mat-
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ters. A prayer bettered my state of mind. I pray for courage and strength and not to break down in health, or in resolution to work, as well as I can, to the utmost.
December 7th. Awoke with my usual sinking heart. Prayed for a loving and contrite heart, a wise and patient mind, and physical strength to finish all that I have in mind.
December nth. Enjoyed my 'evening's preaching greatly. Felt to offer the principal prayer. All day I had thought of "Thine is the glory," and had wished to express my thought in it. In my prayer I quoted the whole phrase and said: "Lord, let me live in Thy kingdom; our weakness may rely upon Thy power; our dark lives may be brightened by Thy glory." After the service many people came forward to thank me. One lady said: "Mrs. Howe, your prayer carried me to the very gates of heaven."
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1899
Thursday, May 2Sth. Emerson was as great in what he did not say, as in what he said. Second-class talent tells the whole story, reasons everything out; great genius suggests even more than it says.
Saturday J October 2ist. ... I must re- member that this may be my last summer here, or anywhere on earth, but must bear in mind that it is best to act with a view to prolonged life, since without this outlook, it is very hard for us to endeavor, or to do our best. . . .
Sunday, November igth. ... I had prayed for some good thought of God. This came to me in the shape of a sudden perception to this effect: "I am in the Father's house already." This was a comforting glimpse, but only a glimpse, passing very quickly.
Thursday November joth. . . . The An- glican (Communion) service, though impressive, shocks me by offering the body and the blood of Christ. In what mystical sense the dear Lord told his disciples to eat the one and drink the other, I do not know, but to me the Eucharist is a simple feast of gratitude in which remembrance is far more congenial than this allegorical partak- ing, which the Romanist doctrine of the real presence makes possible.
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(From a note-book of this period)
O, Thou whose gifts are beyond words, Thou in whose loving Fatherhood we are content to abide, help us to know that Thou art near us to-day and every day of our life on earth.
Thou hast wonderfully opened to us the knowledge of Good and Evil and hast endowed us with the ability to pursue the one and to avoid the other.
Give us, we pray Thee, that faith in the con- quering power of good deeds and purposes which may enable us to contend successfully against the ' infirmities and temptations to which our nature is subject. May a sense of the true values of life keep us in the path appointed for us. May we seek the patience of the saints, the wisdom cf the prophets, and the self-devotion of the mar- tyrs, and may our worship give us a place in the great Church Universal of Love and service for- ever. In Christ's name, Amen.
Sunday, December 3rd. . . . Without the painful consciousness of my sins, how could I have had the sense of the love and mercy oi God which makes this moment so beautiful to me? . . .
Wednesday, December 13th. ... As I knelt by my bedside before lying down, I said: "I thank God that I have been heart and hand in touch with the people of my time." 100
1900
Friday, March joth. . . . Had a special good moment this morning before rising. Felt that God had granted me a good deal of heaven, while yet on earth. So the veil lifts sometimes, not for long. . . .
Tuesday, May 8th. . . . Spoke, I think, of the fact that it takes the v^^hole of life to learn the lessons of life. Dwelt a little on the fact that fools are not necessarily underwitted. Nay, may be people of genius, the trouble being that they do not learn from experience.
Friday, May 25th. Went in afternoon to Unitarian Meeting at Tremont Temple. . . . Eliot asked if I would give a word of benediction. I did so, thanking God earnestly in my heart for granting me this sweet office, which seemed to lift my soul above much which has disturbed It of late. Why is He so good to me? Surely not to destroy me at last!
April 23rd. Had a sort of dream vision of the dear Christ going through Beacon Street in shadow, and then in his glory. It was only the flash of a moment's thought.
July 1 6th. While in church I had a new thought of the energy and influence of Christ's teaching. "Ask and ye shall receive," etc.
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This little series of commands all incite the hearers to action: ask, seek, knock. I should love to write a sermon on this, but fear that my sermonizing days are over. Alas !
Sunday, April 8th. Christ's victory was in the fact of his death, as he invited and met it, not in what people said of him after it.
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spite of wind and current, I'll hold on my course, Match the wayward torrent With a spirit force.
Lo, a word, a golden, In my cradle laid, I am so beholden, It must be obeyed.
I must soothly speak it, Ever and anon, Tho' no hearer seek it, Tho' no crown be won.
As the orient-prophet Alexander slew
Would have brought him profit, Telling what he knew ;
So I breathe my sentence Oft, in many a spot. It had been my repentance, Had I said it not.
Say, if death should find me Singing, still unheard, Trouble should not bind me : I have said my word.
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Sunday, June 3rd. At breakfast had some overpowering thoughts of the goodness of God. Prayed for the power of true worship. Service at church delightful. An inspired Whitsunday sermon from C. G. A. Before church had a thought of some sweet spirit asking to go to Hell to preach to the people there. Thought that if he truly fulfilled his office, he would not leave even that forlorn pastorate.
Sunday, June 17th. ... To church, where I had one of the blessed glimpses which sometimes relieve my spiritual darkness. It came in this thought: if I were in the depths of Hell itself, I could keep hold of the divine hand. I felt such an assurance of the divine love and mercy that it lit up for me the whole service.
Thursday, July 26th. Have prayed to-day that I may not find life dull. This prolongation of my days on earth is so precious that I ought not to cease for one moment to thank God for it. I enjoy my reading as much as ever, but I do feel very much the narrowing of my personal relations by death. How rich was I in sisters, brothers, elders! It seems to me now as if I had not at all appreciated these treasures of af- fection.
September 2nd. I had before service began a clear thought that self is death, and deliverance from its narrow limitations, the truest emanci- 104
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patlon. In my heart I gave thanks to God for all measure in which I have attained, or tried to attain, this liberation. It seemed to me that the one moment of this w^hich we could perfectly at- tain would be an immortal joy.
October 2 1st. Thinking about "how the pure in heart can see God," it suddenly came to me that we can see Him (reflected) in the faces of His saints — rather, we see something of His glory thus. Went to Channing Church to hear David Muzzey preach. He read the parable of the prodigal son beautifully, and gave me a feel- ing of the way in which the dear Master might have told the story. This seemed like a little glimpse of the great glory. The sermon, which was very eloquent and delightful, was on forgive- ness.
October 2jrd. Prayed last evening that I might not have the dreadful depression at wak- ing, and did not have it.
December 25th. "Let us pray for the whole estate of Christ's Church militant."
The Anglican service says this, and I echo it to-day. The Christian Church, fighting against the dark and dreadful evils of society, armed with the faith, which is overcoming the world, and which, I think, finds it best interpretation in the Saints and Fathers of our Unitarian denomi- nation.
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1901
January yth. I have had a morning of vision- ing, lying in bed. "Be still and know that I am God," seemed to be my sentence. I thought of the Magdalen's box of spikenard, whose odor, when the box was opened, filled the house. The separate religious convictions of the sects seemed to me like so many boxes of ointment, exceeding precious while shut up; but I thought also that the dear Lord would one day break these sepa- rate boxes, and that then their fragrance would fill the whole earth, which is His house.
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THE CLOSED GENTIAN
Thou promise of a glory unfulfilled, Enclosed as if some frost thy heart had chilled ; Thy blue is stolen from the vault above ; Surely, the golden secret of thy love Is star-distilled, too precious for revealing For mean delight's unconsecrated feeling.
In my life's garden grow^ such flowers as these, Unfolding not to sunshine nor to breeze. Their outer semblance to the world fair shown, Their inner beauty seen of God alone.
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November 1st. Question is, can I get through with this removal (from Newport to Boston) and live through it? My Heavenly Friend must help me. This departure is a sad one for me, for, like John M. Forbes when he left Naushon for the last time, I say to myself, "Never again, perhaps." Yet my fear is rather that I may live too long, losing my faculties, and perhaps bowed down with infirmity. Fortunately I feel that "God knoweth which is best."
November 2nd. I leave this dear place to- day, thrnking God for a most precious summer, and trusting Him for all that is to follow.
[o8
Who are you that care for me When before my desk I sit, Taking measure of my wit, Waiting on unmeasured fire Which my fellows should inspire?
Beauty at gay banquet shining? Bard in lonely garret pining? Not for you my snare is thrown, You have idols of your own.
But to some discouraged spirit Which the muse-gift would inherit, But for clouding griefs and cares Shaming youth with silver hairs, Waiter at the closed door That shall open nevermore.
Some worn mother, cradle-weary, Wife, whose loveless days grow dreary. Dreamer, cheated of fruition, Learner, hopeful of tuition. Soul, that bravely did begin But, encountering mortal sin. Withers like a rose that grieves O'er the canker in its leaves.
Boldly unto these I cry: "Heaven will not your suit deny. Courage draw from Nature's breast : Scan the roll of martyrs blest,
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To a swifter measure move, A diviner armor prove; Lift thy heart, be of good cheer While I whisper in thine ear: *Hope forsake not, help is near.* "
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1902
Sunday, February i6th. Have thought a good deal this morning of this cream of genius in which the fervent heat of youth fuses conviction and imagination and gives the world its great masters and masterpieces. It cannot outlast the length of human life, of which it is the poetry. Age follows it with slow philosophy, but can only strengthen the outposts which Youth has gained with daring flight. Both are divinely or- dained and most blessed. Of the dear Christ the world had only this transcendent efllorescence. I said to Ames yesterday, "I find in the Hebrew prophets all the doctrine which I find in Christ's teaching." He said, "Yes, it is there seminally." We agreed that it was the life which made the difference.
May joth. I wish now to find time to write a sermon on "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Sunday, June iSth. . . . O Thou, nearest and dearest, help us to feel Thy presence, and to make it felt ; help us to feel that Thou art not a dream of philosophy, nor a legend of old world story, but an ever-present help and consolation, the strength of our strength, the life of our souls. Help us also to realize the importance of our life on earth. What a gift is this! How full of beauty, of comfort, and of lessons of deep import !
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Let us not deem what we do of no consequence. Let us remember that our work is Thy work, and that we must account to Thee for its faithful per- formance. Teach us that every task of ours faithfully performed will stand upon Thy record, and that every neglected one will leave there a melancholy blank."
Saturday, July 5th. (Written to a youngs girl-) . . . Get all the education that you can. Cul- tivate habits of studious thought with all that books can teach. The fulfillment of the nearest duty gives the best education. . . .
July Jith. Finished rough draft of sermon. I think that the dear Lord might grant me to speak a few times more even if it should shorten my term of days a little.
Monday, November 17th. I had this morn- ing so strong a feeling of the goodness of the divine Parent in the experience of my life, espe- cially of its most trying period, that I had to cry out, "What shall I, who have received so much, give in return?" I felt that I must show that forbearance and forgiveness to others which the ever blessed One has shown to me. , . .
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FROM NOTEBOOKS OF 1902
Notebook No. 4
All error was in its time intended truth. It is on account of this that its removal asks a rev- erent hand, not a rash one.
My best prayer would, I think, be that which should ask God to enable me to feel that love and reverence for the human race which they deserve.
Notebook No. 12. Good Friday
This festival appears to me one of the deepest that men keep — the great depth of sorrow, not only for the sufferings of the dear Christ, but for the wickedness and cruelty of which human na- ture is capable, as shown in those who persecuted him while living, and who put him to an agoniz- ing death. I have been thinking now of a day, years ago, when I sat with my dear daughter in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the remem- brance of this dear church was present with me. I asked permission to sing a hymn which we have often sung in this place :
"Go to dark Gethsemane,
Ye who feel the tempter's power."
But this is also a festival of the brightest hope that mortals can know. I feel this to-day espe-
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cially after hearing the notice read this morning, of a meeting in which ministers of so many creeds are to come together, Catholic, Jew, Epis- copalian and Unitarian, to take counsel concern- ing the duty of the State. It seems to me that, in the older time, one denomination was afraid that the love of God would not suffice for all re- ligionists. But now we seem to have reached a point at which we perceive something of its abundance. It flows and overflows, and could fill the whole Universe with its fullness.
I prayed this morning that I might find to-day a real Pentecost — I feel that it has been one.
(Church of the Disciples — May i8th, 1902. I have written this from remembrance, for my- self, not for Others.)
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1903
Tuesday, January 13th. . . . The education of a savage race is a slow process. "We our- selves do not know how long it took to civilize our ancestors, how many aeons there are between Babel and Boston."
April I2th. (After regretting her physical in- ability to attend church.) I had ... a feel- ing that I could not be banished from God's presence, that I should find Him everywhere.
Wednesday, May 27th. . . . My life has been crowned with undeserved blessings and with honors which I do my best to deserve. My prayer is that death may find me at work for something worth working for, but I pray most now for those whom I shall leave behind me, that their comforts and good service may ever increase. . . ,
"^
Methought I was a little child
That came from wandering home at night, From errant plays and gambols wild
To where a hearth was broad and bright.
Voices of welcome and of cheer Brought music to my eager ear, And as I knelt for nightly prayer, Father and Mother love were there.
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Thursday. May 28th, My prayer for the new year of my life beginning to-day is, that in some work that I shall undertake I may help to make clear the goodness of God to some who need to know more of it than they do. . . .
Monday, June 22nd.
"The stars against the tyrant fought In famous days of old. The stars in freedom's banner wrought Shall the wide earth enfold."
Thursday, June 25th. . . . The William James book which I finished yesterday left in my mind a painful impression of doubt ; a God who should be only my better self, or an impersonal pervad- ing influence. These were suggestions which left me very lonely and forlorn. To-day, as I" thought it all over, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob seemed to come back to me ; the God of Christ, and his saints and martyrs. I said to myself: "Let me be steeped in the devotion of the psalm, and of Paul's epistles!" I took up Coquerel's sermons on the Lord's prayer, simple, beautiful; positive. . . .
Sunday, July 5th. (After a Communion service.) ... I said to myself: "I am morally a poor, lame, distorted cripple, how can I walk in the Christian ranks?" It seemed as if God answered, "I have all eternity to straighten you out." Then the cup seemed to bring me the
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very essence of Christ's sacrifice, his very heart's blood, so to speak.
It ^
August nth. Have had a wonderful coni forting vision of God's love and w^isdom seemed to me that this dearest moment might in- dicate some trouble near at hand, for which it might give me strength and courage.
August 3 1st. I seemed to have an answer to prayer this morning. I had prayed to have a fresher sense of Christ's personality in my mind. At my early waking I had such a refreshment. My mind seemed to follow him in his works and words even to the end.
Sunday, September 6th. . . . The Commu- nion service was very comforting. Especially did Christ's words come to me, "Abide in me," etc. I felt that if I would abide in him, old as I am, I could still do some good work. "Yes, my strong friend," my heart said, "I will abide in thee." . . .
Sunday, November 8th. . . . In late after- noon some visioning, i.e., lying down to rest and asking and answering questions in my mind :
Question: Can anything exceed the delight of the first mutual understanding of two lovers?
Answer : This has its sacredness and its place, but even better is the large affection which em- braces things human and divine, God and Man. Ii8
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Question: Are Saviour and Saints alive now?
Answer: If you believe that God is just, they must be. They gave all for His truth; He owes them immortality. These thoughts helped and satisfied me, particularly the last one.
November 29th. This came into my mind, apropos of reformers generally. "Dost thou so carry thy light as to throw it upon thyself, or upon thy themef This appears a legitimate question.
December nth. Had a bright glimpse of the overcoming goodness of God in the early morn- ing.
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Give me room on your shelf, I pray ; Take me down to read some day.
I've lived in an heroic age, And in my mind, as on a page, Much of its wondrous way is writ, Much of its wisdom and its wit. Its holy passion, nobler still, Its majesty of human will Crystallized in many a deed, In many a counsel, good at need.
We are out of fashion now My rhymes and I, oh ! well I trow. Year eighteen hundred fifty-three Witnessed no bond twixt you and me.
And yet the sentence I have said Was on my infant cradle laid :
"Write, though nobody should read. Speak, tho' not a soul should heed."
I have written of my day, I have said my honest say. Suffer me on thy shelf, I pray.
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1904
January ist. I renew my prayer that I may not waste the days which remain to me, few or many.
February yth. ... I came into church in no spiritual state of mind, but seemed to say to God : "I cannot visit thee, do Thou visit me." . . .
I spoke of the small beginning.
. . . What could one man do? He did come upon the word which was to resolve all the discords of the human world; to show mankind that they were natural friends, not enemies, mem- bers of one vast household, the family of God's children. I said: "This light which was in Christ's mind illuminates the whole world with its glory. The word spoken, the life lived two thousand years ago, is nearer to us than what happened last year or last week. It is ever with us, the same yesterday, to-day and forever."
February 14th. I had prayed for some spe- cial good thought at church, and found it in a vivid feeling of the redeeming power and grace of God, through which our errors are remedied and our good efforts aided. I thought of my own beloved family, deservedly held in honor and esteem, and felt how little credit I have deserved for this happy result of my married life — the splendid, high-toned father, and the divine Provi- dence, have filled up what my shortcomings have left wanting.
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April lyth. I have hoped to die quietly in this house (in Boston) but it is possible, old as I am, that God may have work for me to do else- where. If so, I shall be content to fall wherever He shall appoint.
June I2th. Remember to forget j^our trou- bles, but don't forget to remember your blessings.
August 1 6th. Very tired, but will not adver- tise the fact. This morning a text came to me with uncommon clearness: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." This stamps Christianity as a fresh revelation of the divine. It was in Christ, and was a power of reconcili- ation between the dreaded power of God and sinful, imperfect man.
October 5th. (She quotes some words spoken by her before a Peace Congress.) . . . "Let me remind you that there is one word even more holy than Peace; namely. Justice. It is anterior in our intellectual perceptions. The impulse which causes men to contend against injustice is a divine one, deeply implanted in the human breast. It would be wrong to attempt to thwart it." . . . My heart was so full that it said to me, "At the foot of the cross, there thank God for this word given to thee, and ask the dear Christ if it was according to his desire."
October gth. I have felt more strongly than ever of late that God is the only comforter. In 122
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my rather foolish disappointment about my speech on Friday evening, my one cry was, "Thou only canst console me for what may have been partly my fault," for I should assuredly have had leave to speak if I had asked for it. To-day has brought me full consolation in a view of what I might yet do if life and strength are still vouchsafed to me. With this came a sad retro- spect of the wasted opportunities of my life. These great serious things were always present to work for in days in which I exerted myself to amuse others and myself too. It is quite true that I have never given up serious thought and study, but I have not made the serious use of my powers which I ought to have made. The Peace Congress has left upon my mind a strong impres- sion of what the lovers of humanity could accom- plish if they were all and always in earnest. I seem to hope for a fresh consecration, for oppor- tunities truly to serve, and for the continuance of that gift of the word which is sometimes granted me.
October 23rd. My last Sunday in this dear place. (Oak Glen, Newport.) Thank God most earnestly for what I have enjoyed this sea- son, and for what He has allowed me to do in the way of public service. If I come here no more, may blessings rest upon this place where my days have been most precious.
November 6th. Not well enough for church ; depression so severe in early morning that I felt
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I must force myself to render service to some one, or else find my days intolerable, so I have
writ a letter in Italian to , to please
Maud, who has sent him her book just out.
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1905
GOOD FRIDAY
Why is it good? This ever-mournful day That saw the Saviour walk his deathward way, The cruel cross upon his shoulders bound, The robe to mock, the thorny crown to wound.
Was it not good, a guerdon past belief. His loving message to the dying thief, The pardon which the Heaven's high Majesty Sealed to this wreckage of Humanity?
Methinks the anguish of that hour was paid When the low wretch his supplication made, And the meek King, divinely fair and wise. Returned it with the gift of Paradise.
Sunday, January ist. . . . But while I live, dear Lord, let me truly live in energetic thought and rational action. Bless, I pray thee, my own dear family, my blessed country, Christendom and all mankind. This is my daily prayer and I record it here. Is it amiss that in this prayer my own people come first? No, for family affection is the foundation of all normal human relation. We begin with the Heavenly Father and open out to the whole human brotherhood.
Friday, January 20th. . . . You can't do good with a bad action. (Apropos of the shot
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fired at the Czar.) The reason why a little knowledge is dangerous is that your conceit of it may make you refuse to learn more.
Sunday, February 5th. ... At Communion I asked earnestly for a word and this came to me :
"Christ wished to be remembered, a human trait in which he shows his sympathy with us. Do we not all desire to be remembered ? When we approach the limits which will separate us from familiar scenes and belongings, do we not wish to remain a living presence in the mind of our friends? Christ did not desire this for his own sake only. He knew how precious is the element of personality, how much more easily we should follow his doctrine and example, if we should cherish a personal remembrance of him. In other speculations on religious topics our thoughts grow dim and vague. It is so hard to think clearly on these great mysteries of spiritual life and relation. This Communion brings bacK to our minds *'the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." We are in the presence of the living Father, of the dear Brother. We are again at that solemn feast in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. We see the bread that was broken, the cup Vv^hich was tasted in bitterness, but which was destined to become a cup of resplendent joy and glory for all mankind. We feel the pres- ence which was promised to be with us to the end of the world." 126
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Sunday, February I2th. (After a concert.) . . . The thought that God had set all human life and work to music overpowered me, and coming home I had a rhapsody of thanksgiving for the wonderful gift. . . .
Friday, May 5th. ... I prayed that I might never anywhere undertake to speak without a true heartfelt word to say. No "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal." ... I spoke of the necessity for religion inherent in the human constitution; the old ideas which made religion appear inimical to real life ; of Christ's v/ord "That they might have life," and of what our church had been to me, "leading me on by sweet music."
Without religion you will never know the real beauty and glory of life; you will perceive the discords, but miss the harmony; will see the de- fects, but not the good in all things. . . .
May 27th. My 86th birthday. ... I ask, "What shall I render to the Lord for His good- ness to me?" He will show me what I shall do, for surely He has not granted me this extension of life and of working power for no good end.
June nth. Whitsunday at the dear Church of the Disciples. Our last Communion service in that dear place (i.e. before removing to a new building). It was given to me to say these words: "I have been asking myself how
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people like most of us can have any true idea of goodness, perfect and divine. As I entered this dear place the thought came to me that we can only know goodness by love, and we know love by its gifts. So on this consecrated day we recognize the love of God in the gifts of God, by His Providence which in dark ages stirred up for us inspired souls; the glorious law-giver Moses, the Hebrew prophets, and him in whom their prophecies culminated, the Christ who is coming to his own to rule the world. Perhaps the great- est gift of all is that God has given us the power to work with Him, so that we are not only the heirs of the ages (but) of His revelations which have been handed down from one generation to another. He has enabled us to give as well as to receive, and thus even in the humblest way to add something to the gifts, beyond words, beyond thought, beyond measure, with which God has made us rich." . . . Dear Lord, grant me a new Pentecost, a fresh inspiring.
Tuesday, September 5th. Some bright mo- ments to-day. At my prayer a thought of the divine hand reaching down over the abyss of evil to rescue despairing souls. At my reading a thought of the great spiritual presence which made itself felt by the writers of the psalms, and a persuasion of the infinite beneficence of God, all most consoling and uplifting.
Saturday, October 2 1 St. . . . "Love to learn and learn to love." 128
THE NEW HYMN May 30, 1905
With echoes of a time long past,
With images that ne'er decay, With grief in mold of gloiy cast,
Draws near our Decoration Day.
Hushed be the hum of toil and thrift, Unheard the boast of ease and wealth ;
A distant music should uplift
The pulse of man's diviner health.
Sound, Bugle, but no more to call The gathering legions to their task.
Flowers, bloom your brightest, though you fall Where sculptured stones a burial mask.
With noiseless footsteps on they come.
With aspect solemn and severe, As answering taps of muffled drum,
The Heroes of the Past appear.
Oh! silent Phalanx! did we heed The deathless message that you bring,
Armed should we be for every need, Trained for great Duties' marshaling.
"We who our blooming manhood gave To keep our Country's promise true.
Salute you; from each warrior grave. Our pledge of brotherhood renew.
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"Never for empty sound of fame, Never for heaps of sordid gold,
Never for popular acclaim
Be the Land's sacred birthright sold.
"Be this the lesson of our fight, So plain that many reading, run :
Rise ever up for human right,
And rest in God vi^hen Right has won."
130
Monday, October 23rd. . . . "Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear Thy name." Psalms 61 ;5.
A good text for a sermon on reverence for the wisdom of the past. This also occurred to me: "There is no shadow without a substance, no reflection without an object. ErgOj the image of God which is shadowed here, reflected there, in the human mind throughout the ages, is not an empty chimera, but represents a vital and abid- ing fact. As the years behind me grow in num- ber, I find myself depending more and more upon this persuasion of God in the past."
November igth. (After the dedication of the new Church of the Disciples.) ... I had prayed God to give me a good word and I had done my best to find one, so I spoke with more confidence than usual, and felt sure I did not speak in vain. A heart-response seemed to come from the congregation, and I said to myself, "The shaft was polished."
December Jist . . . "Ye show the Lord's death till he come." What is the Lord's death which we are to show? It is the death to self and sense, to all that is base, selfish and unworthy in our nature, so mixed with good and evil. Paul said: "I die daily." Sleep is an image of this death. It brings a blessed resurrection, a new beginning with renewed hope and effort.
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1906
March 31st. Was low in my mind in P.M., but had a happy lighting up when I lay down for afternoon rest. Feel the immensity of God's goodness, and took heart for the future.
July 25th. I had a severe time at waking, re- membering so much left undone, and the rest of it. What can comfort us but the goodness of God, in view of our own shortcomings?
Friday, October 26th. Had a sudden blessed thought this morning, viz.: that the tabernacle "Eternal in the Heavens" is the eternity of truth and right. I naturally desire life after death, but if it is not granted me, I have yet a part in the eternal glory of this tabernacle.
Tuesday, November 13th. I had this morn- ing a sudden thought or glimpse of the goodness of God, which made me feel that He can give us all of Heaven in one instant of time, if He so pleases. I ought to do a better day's work for .this vision, which indeed had nothing visual in it, only an instantaneous suggestion.
132
AT CHURCH
Within the many mansions
That God's dear love doth keep,
Where is the darksome closet That hides the miser's heap ?
I saw the miser walking
With others, robed in white.
No frown upon his forehead. His features all alight.
"Oh, friend, where is thy treasure, Gathered in many a year?"
"I'm richer far without it ; We want no money here."
133
(From a notebook)
"The Sabbath is my best debt to the Past, and binds me to some gratitude still. It brings me that frankincense out of a sacred antiquity." R. W. Emerson's funeral.
The Church of Christ is no completed thing, but a perpetual protest against evil never van- quished, and a promise towards a kingdom of Heaven never reached.
134
1907
January ist. I earnestly pray for God's blessing on this year. . . . The dear Father has done so much better for me, in many ways, than I have ingenuity to wish that I can only say, "Thy will be done, only desert me not.'*
September 2yth. Had quite a visioning dur- ing my noontime "lie-down." Transported with gratitude for the blessings of life to me and to all people. Prayed for some way of expressing this gratitude in word or deed. Seemed to get in answer the text, "Few and evil have the days of my pilgrimage been" to preach from, express- ing the contrary feeling on my part, as my days have been many and full of good, in spite of my own grievous shortcomings.
'November 3rd. To my dear church. It was Communion Sunday, and dear C. G. A. told me in an undertone that I might have my usual lib- erty. So I think that the dear Lord helped me to say a few words about the divine hospitality which gives us this feast, "which is the Lord's supper, and he has made it ours, an invitation which has lasted nigh upon two thousand years and still holds good!"
November 15th. It occurs to me that it might be more blessed to help the souls in hell than to luxuriate with saints in heaven.
135
1908
January ist. My first word in this record of a new year must be a prayer to the Heavenly Father that I may waste none of the precious time granted me to so unusual an extent. The last year was rich in work and experience. I scarcely dare to hope for another as fruitful in both of these regards, but I shall hope that in it I may do my best with such ability as God may grant me. I do pray to this end. Amen, amen.
January I2th. A heavily rainy morning. Could not go to church. Had prayed the dear Father to give me this one more poem, a verse for this year's Decoration Day, asked for by Amos Wells of Christian Endeavor belonging. I took my pen and the poem came quite spon- taneousl)^ It seemed an answer to my prayer, but I hold fast the thought that the great Christ asked no sign from God and needed none, so deeply did he enter into life divine. I also thought regarding Christ and Moses, that we must be content that a certain mystery should envelop these heroic figures of human history. Our small measuring tape or rod is not for them. If they were not exactly what we take them to be, let us deeply reverence the human mind whicB has conceived and built up such splendid and im- mortal ideals. Was not Christ thinking of some- thing like this when he made the sin against the Holy Ghost and its manifestations the only un- 136
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pardonable error? He surely did not mean to say that it was beyond the repentance which is the earnest of forgiveness to every sin.
February 2nd, . . . Communion service, at which this word was granted me. "I have been thinking of two things very different from each other, yet with the same meaning. First, the theory of some philosophers, that the distinctions of time result simply from our modes of thinking. We can only bear our weight of thought by day's lengths, while the eternal present is ever here. The other is the word of the Psalmist, that to God a thousand years are as yesterday when i£ is past, or as a watch in the night, only a frag- ment of the twenty-four hours. How near does this thought bring our commemoration to that last supper, Christ and his disciples! It is only these two years of God away. The wish that we could feel his very sorrow, that divine sorrow over the sin and suffering of mankind, and this long way that the human race must travel before it can even see the way out of it. And with this suffering, the divine joy mixed with it, the joy of knowing that the victory of Good over Evil is sure, that the way of mankind is God-ward, in spite of all our ignorance and evil. Would not our two-fold vision determine us each to place society upon a higher level, each to do what he can to help lift this common weight?" People thanked me much for these words, for which I thank God.
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March JOth. On lying down for my usual rest, I was seized with a fit of visioning such as I have not had in a long time. My thought was that Christ saw the world as God sees it. My prayer, that I might once, if only for a moment, see it thus. I tried to express this in some poor halting rhymes which I will try later to improve.
May 3rd. Another churchless Sunday. Ah me! Don't let me get the habit of not going!
(N. B. She was physically unable to go atl this time.)
November 28th. Have been much troubled of late by uncertainties about life beyond the present. Quite suddenly, very recently, it oc- curred to me to consider that Christ understood that spiritual life would not end with death, and that his expressed certainty as to the future life was founded upon his discernment of spiritual things. So, in so far as I am a Christian, I must believe in the immortality of the soul, as our Master surely did. I cannot understand why I have not thought of this before. I think now that I shall nevermore lose sight of it.
November 2gth. . . . The dear minister's sermon was upon the great Faith chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. . . . Taking all this with my meditations, I feel as if I were placed in the saddle again, as if a firm hand had lifted and placed me there.
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December gth. Wrote screed for Simmons College: "And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." Not to lose the good in the world through ignorance of it.
139
1909
March 3rd, Our experience of the goodness of God in our daily life assures us of His mercy hereafter, and seeing God everywhere, we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
March 2yth. Had to-day a little bit of vision- ing with which I think that I could willingly de- part, when my time comes. The dreadful fear of being buried alive disappeared for a time and I saw only the goodness of God, to which it seemed that I could trust all question of the fu- ture life. I said to myself: "The best will be for thee and me."
April 8th. My prayer for this Easter is that I may not waste the inspiration of Spring. This may very easily be my last on earth. God pre- pare me for what shall be !
July 4th. I had a good meditation of which I will record a little here. The three great questions of our spiritual thought are these: whence, whither, where ? Whence come we and the order of our Day? Whither do we journey and where do we arrive? To all three the an- swer seems to me to be "God." The fundamen- tal doctrine of Christianity is the compatibility of all real human interests. We must study till we find the secret of this. Machines do much toward this reconciliation. I think even that 140
THE WALK WITH GOD
Governor Draper's automatic loom may prove a step in the true direction since it releases so many humans from the necessity of bodily fa- tigue and risk. Query: What becomes of the humans who used to tend the looms? How can we every day have the consciousness of God which is essential to true worship ?
August 3rd. A soupqon of east^wind brought me very foolish vagaries of mind, which soon gave way to better thoughts. I seemed to say to God, ''If any one I know was as sorry as I am for all that has been amiss with my life, I think I should forgive him or her."
Had a delightful sitting under my tree with the last verse of the twenty-third Psalm.
October I2th. Think it was to-day that in lying down a sudden feeling of my errors and shortcomings in life seemed to give me a most blessed assurance of God's Fatherhood. I desire to recall this often.
October 30th. Have had what I may call a spasm of gratitude to God for His great good- ness to me, sitting in my pleasant little parlor with the lovely golden trees in near view, and the devotion of my children and great kindness of my friends well in mind. Oh, help me, divine Father, to merit even a very little of Thy kind- ness!
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December 25th. Thanks to God who gave us the blessed Christ ! What a birthday was this ! Two thousand years have only increased our gratitude for it. How it has consecrated Baby- hood and Maternity! Two infants, grown to man's estate, govern the civilized world to-day, Christ and Moses. I am thankful to be still here in the flesh as they were once. Oh ! that I may never pass where they are not.
142
TO PHILOSOPHY
I have served thee like a slave, Took whate'er thy right hand gave. With thy holy robes of state I my meanness did not mate, Counterfeiting wise and great.
But I might remove the dust Gathered, and the mournful rust, Where, unmarked of careless eye, Thy neglected glories lie.
Once I saw a serving-maid Dead, in goodly garb arrayed. From her earnings she had saved Gold, and these last splendors craved.
So when I am dead and gone, Robe thou me, O holy one! Let thy sacred livery O'er my marble features lie; Service in thy noble house Fill my record, pay my vows.
143
1910
April 1st. Very much tossed up and down about my poem for James Freeman Clarke's cen- tenary. ... I repeated to that I had ar- rived at the conclusion that to help the religious progress of mankind was to give them the great- est benefaction. I said: "That may be the most frequent taste, but it is the rarest talent."
April 3rd. . . . Coughed in the night and at waking. Suffered much in mind, fearing that a wild fit of coughing might make my reading (of her poem for Dr. Clarke's Centenary) unaccept- able and even ridiculous. Imagine my joy when I found my voice clear and even strong, and read the whole poem (forty-four lines), without the slightest inclination to cough. This really was the granting of my prayer, and my first thought about it was: "What shall I render to the Lord for all His goodness to me?" I thought: "I will interest myself more efficiently in the great questions which concern Life and Society at large."
May 27th. . . . What dare I ask for more? Only that I may do something in the future to deserve all this love and gratitude. I have in- tended to deserve it all and more, yet when in thought I review my life, I feel the waste and loss of power through want of outlook. 144
MEDITATION
My temple has a lofty roof Wherein all planets are at home: My sight, which holds a world aloof, Still fails to circumscribe Its dome: While verdure-covered pines and larches Astounding columns rear, and arches.
The floor of emeralds, gold-embossed. Is swept and garnished, free of cost, Its music-pipes the birds supply, Singing like angels as they fly. Where is Its altar's watch and ward? Dear God ! it Is not veiled or barred. Where'er a penitent shall kneel, A contrite heart Its burthen feel. Or where pure spirits, glad and free. Thrill with the touch of ecstasy. Refuge of rapture or despair. There waits true worship : God is there.
145
UNDATED FRAGMENTS
(1 he following prayer was written in August, 1 910, at the request of an American woman, mar- ried in British Columbia, who had formed a club of American women for patriotic purposes.)
August. O Thou whose gifts are beyond words, Thou in whose merciful Fatherhood we are content to rest, help us to know that Thou art near us to-day and every day of our mortal lives! Thou hast wonderfully framed us with capacities for good and for evil, opened to us the knowledge of good and evil, for noble progress or for selfish indolence and infirmity of purpose, and hast endowed us with power to pursue the one and to avoid and oppose the other. Give us, we pray Thee, that strength which can come from Thee alone, that faith in the power of good deeds and purposes which can enable us to overcome the infirmities of our nature and not only to acquiesce in Thy will, but to be zealous for its fulfillment. May a sense of the true values of life restrain us from all unfruitful wanderings from the way appointed for us. Give us the patience of Thy saints, the wisdom of Thy prophets, the self-devotion of Thy martyrs, and let our weekly worship place us within the limits of the great church universal which embraces Divine Love and human service.
O, Thou whose best gifts are best in that they reveal Thyself, be pleased to continue to us, 146
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residents in a strange country, the mighty in- heritance of our own dear land. The truths made known to saints of old on mountain tops of prayer, or in the wholesome valleys of humility, let them guide our feet in the sincerity of wisdom. Never let us doubt that Thy loving foresight encircles our path with a principle of defense which cannot be gainsaid nor overcome. May we hold as our greatest treasure the truth that Humanity is one, and that to keep its glori- ous domain, regard must be had to what each may claim from all and all from each, freedom, sympathy, and justice. Let us remember that our lives are not ours to waste in unfruitful pleasure, but in loving service, which we shall perform, as Thou, our God, shalt instruct and guide us, in the name of Thy m.ighty ones who have overcome the deceitful and selfish world, and are gathered in the priceless harvest.
H7
(An answer to the question: "What is reli- gion r')
I should say, religion is the loving recognition of the right, and the resolution to aid, further and exemplify it by grateful and willing service to the Divine and the Humane history of Re- ligions shows the progress of the race, but in it all, the permanence of certain convictions. The tables of Moses still rule the civilized world, and the Christian church still rehearses them with the doctrines of its Founder. But Christ dares to point out the limitations of Moses, and the strength of his gravamen against the Jews lies in their failure to recognize the teachings of the later time. In their blind and literal interpreta- tion of the sacred traditions they fail to discern and follow its true guidance. Moses, for the hardness of their hearts, delivered to them the precepts which they were able to follow, but the new and divine interpretation of the spirit of the divine law pointed to new duties and required of them fresh sacrifices and efforts, and so I should say that any religion which prohibits the onward movement of the human mind and conscience is so far wanting in one important element of Religion, the onward impulse of Faith and Hope. Where this is wanting, the third and greatest, Charity, is usually also wanting.
The cruelties of human judgment, of human criticism, are all doomed to give place to a can- did spirit of justice. Those functions are per- 148
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petual in society, but they can be so exercised as to kill, in the one instance, to cure in the other. The cup of Christian Communion appears to me the pledge of this reconciled and redeemed hu- manity. It is the Holy Grail, and all shall taste it and with it taste the sweetness of self-sacrifice, of self-surrender.
Life is something, while the senses heed
The spirit's call; Life is nothing, when our grosser need
Engulfs it all.
149
BEYOND THE VEIL*
I am invited to write a paper of some two thousand words on the subject of Immortality. I accept this invitation to discourse in print upon a theme which has long been familiar to me. I believe that some part of me is immortal. I have always so believed. It should be easy to give some account of the why and v/herefore of this belief, yet, strange to say, I do not find it so. The effort of many da5^s has only produced a certain set of disjointed statements which, although in no wise contradictory to one an- other, cannot, with my poor skill, be made to introduce and explain one another. Perhaps the best thing I can attempt will be to examine briefly what I really think about a future life, and, if possible, why I think so and not other- wise.
To begin, then, with the simple notions of my childhood. I was born in a world in which the belief in a future life was almost unquestioned. The blessedness of heaven and the torment of hell were presented to my infant imagination as the ultimates of my good or ill conduct in every- day life. Like most other children, I believed what I was told, and in general tried to obey the commands of my elders. I loved to hear about the heavenly life, which somehow seemed
* Copyright 1910. Reprinted from In After Days by permission of Harper & Brothers, owners of the copyright.
150
THE WALK WITH GOD
to furnish the skyscape of my days as they were added in weeks, months, and years. I recall having once made an offering to the God of my childish prayers. The altar was a little stool, the sacrifice some small objects which I supposed to be of value. I remember also refusing to say my prayers to a new nursery assistant, be- cause it did not appear to me fitting to take a stranger into my confidence, a scruple which the authorities of the same nursery speedily overruled.
Wordsworth has said:
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," And "trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home."
And later, Emerson says of Michel Angelo,
"Himself from God he could not free."
Even so naturally did my idea of merit include a divine Absolute, whom to please or displease would furnish the tests of good or ill con- duct.
Let us pass over many years of experience, individual, mostly not unusual, and come to where the enlightened intellect of the twen- tieth century finds itself obliged to stand. It is perforce an age of question, and all thought
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which penetrates below the surface of things- must take this attitude of interrogation, which should be reverent, and which may be insolent. In the first place, this wonder book, the Bible. Is it an exception to all human rules and laws of action? Did the ancient chroniclers do their best to set down the record of Creation and its consequences? Did the psalmist, the prophet, the moralist, each in turn contribute his highest human power of expression and forethought to this marvelous treasure of an Eastern people? Or did the living God of Israel dictate the vol- ume, chapter and verse, to scribes especially selected? Once this question would have been held to be impious. Now it is inevitable ; and if the Book is a human work its contents must be judged by human standards.
Supposing this to be so decided, the systems of promise and threat which men have built upon it are also without the authority of the abso- lute, and our dreams of an endless future of recompense, painful or pleasurable, for the deeds done in the body, have all the qualities of dreams and none other.
What then? Have we lost our God? Never for one moment. Unspeakable, He is; the benef- icent parent, the terrible, incorruptible judge, the champion of the innocent, the accuser of the guilty, refuge, hope, redeemer, friend; neither palace walls nor prison cells can keep Him out. Every step of our way from the birth hour He has gone with us. Were we at the gallows' 152
THE WALK WITH GOD
foot, and deservedly, He would leave a sweet drop in the cup of death. He would measure suffering to us, but would forbid despair. The victory of goodness must be complete. The lost sheep must be found — ay, and the lost soul must turn to the way in which the peace of God prevails. We learn the dreadful danger of those who wander from the right path, but we may also learn the redeeming power which recalls and reclaims them.
So fade our heavens and hells. Christ, if he knew their secrets, did not betray them. On the boundless sea of conjecture we are still afloat, with such mental tools as we possess to guide us, with the skies, the stars, the seasons, seeking a harbor from which no voyager has ever re- turned.
So much, the later schemes of thought have taken from us. Shall we ask what they have given us in exchange for what we have lost?
It seems a little strange that with the ac- cumulated wisdom and power of the ages a far- mer's son of Massachusetts should have been the first clearly to enunciate this important phrase, "The transient and permanent in reli- gion." We must have known of this distinction all along. In all that we think, and in much that we believe, constant growth and metamor- phosis take place. Paul says, "When I was a child, I thought as a child ; I believed as a child." How full of beauty were these visions of child- hood, but also how evanescent, each evolving it-
153
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self into one more advanced in thought, in understanding, until the moment in which Love
"Smote the chord of self, that trembling Passed in music out of sight."
Does our acquaintance w^ith this wonder world terminate with the days and years of our age? Shall death forever divide us from all the marvelous story of our spiritual experiences of evil seeming for a time to prevail, of the blessed eternal good whose conquest of evil is certain and final?
Tell us, you stars mysteriously hung to measure the depths of the heavens. Tell us, thou pitiable, shameful way of excess and error, with thy heroic redemption. Let the Jew speak:
"Whither shall I go from Thy presence? If I ascend into heaven. Thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold! Thou art there also."
Let the apostle speak: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" In all these things we are conquerors, through Him that loved us, and loving once, loves ever.
To me has been granted a somewhat unusual experience of life. Ninety full years have been measured off to me, their lessons and opportu- nities unabridged by wasting disease or gnawing poverty. I have enjoyed general good health, comfortable circumstances, excellent company, and the incitements to personal effort which civilized society offers to its members. For this
THE WALK WITH GOD
life and its gifts I am, I hope, devoutly thank- ful. I came into this world a hopeless and ignorant bit of humanity. I have found in it many helps tov^^ard the attainment of my full human stature, material, mental, moral. In this slow process of attainment many features have proved transient. Visions have come and gone. Seasons have bloomed and closed, passions have flamed and faded. Something has never left me. My relation to it has suffered many changes, but it still remains, the foundation of my life, light in darkness, consolation in ill fortune, guide in uncertainty.
In the nature of things, I must soon lose sight of this sense of constant metamorphosis whose limits bound our human life. How about this unchanging element? Will it die when I shall be laid in earth? The visible world has no answer to this question. For it, dead is dead, and gone is gone. But a deep spring of life within me says: ''Look beyond. Thy days numbered hitherto register a divine promise. Thy mortal dissolution leaves this promise unful- filled, but not abrogated. Thou mayst hope that all that made thy life divine will live for thine immortal part."
I have quoted Theodore Parker's great word, and have made no attempt, so far, to bring into view considerations which may set before us the fundamental distinction between what in human experience passes and what abides.
In the first place, human life passes, like other
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life. The splendid blossom, the noble fruit. In- quire into its power and glory after two-thirds of a century have passed over it. You will find weakness instead of strength, the mournful attar of memory replacing as it can the fresh fra- grance of hope. The bowed form suggests the segment of a mystic circle. The restricted mind turns its tools into toys. "They did not measure the infinite for us. Let us get from their uses such pleasures as we can."
Life passes, but the conditions of life do not. Air, food, water, the moral sense, the mathemat- ical problem and its solution. These things wait upon one generation much as they did upon its predecessor. What, too, is this wonderful resid- uum which refuses to' disappear when the very features of time seem to succumb to the law of change, and we recognize our world no more ? Whence comes this system in which man walks as in an artificial frame, every weight and lever of which must correspond with the outlines of an eternal pattern?
Our spiritual life appears to include three terms in one. They are ever with us, this Past which does not pass, this Future which never ar- rives. They are part and parcel of this conscious existence which we call Present. While Past and Future have each their seasons of predomin- ance, both are contained in the moment which is gone while w^e say, "It is here."
So the Eternal is with us, whether we will or not, and the idea of God is inseparable from the ij6
THE WALK WITH GOD
persuasion of immortality ; the Being which, per- fect in itself, can neither grow nor decline, nor indeed undergo any change whatever. The great Static of the universe, the rationale of the stead- fast faith of believing souls, the sense of beauty which justifies our high enjoyments, the sense of proportion which upholds all that we can think about ourselves and our world, the sense of per- manence which makes the child in very truth parent to the man, able to solve the deepest riddle, the profoundest problem in all that is. Let us then willingly take the Eternal with us in our flight among the suns and stars.
Experience is our great teacher, and on this point it is wholly wanting. No one on the far- ther side of the great Divide has been able to in- form those on the hither side of what lies beyond.
Yet our whole life, rightly interpreted, shows us the never-failing mercy of a divine Parent. We may ask, "Whither shall I go from Thy presence?" And we may answer, ''Surely, good- ness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my eternal life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
The anticipation of a life beyond the grave so belongs to our human mastery over the condi- tions of animal life that it seems to be an integral part of our human endowment.
We feel something in us that cannot die when blood and brain, muscle and tissue, have reached the brief and uncertain term of their service. For so long, the body can perform its functions and
THE WALK WITH GOD
hold together, but what term is set for the soul ? Nothing in its make-up foretokens a limited ex- istence. Its sentence would seem to be, "Once and always."
The promise of a future life is held to have such prominence in Christ's teaching as to lead Paul to say that the Master "brought life and immortality to light." How did he do this? By filling the life of to-day with the consciousness of eternal things, of truths and principles which would not change if the whole visible universe were to pass away.
No one to-day, I think, will maintain that Christ created the hope which he aroused to an activity before undreamed of. The majority of the Jews believed in a life after death, as is shown by the segregation of the Sadducees from the orthodox of the synagogue. The new teaching vindicated the spiritual rights and interests of man. From the depths of his own heart was evolved the consciousness of a good that could not die. Man, the creature of a day, has a vested interest in things eternal. The solid principles upon which the social world is organized, the laws of which Sophocles makes Antigone say that "they are not of to-day nor yesterday."
Creatures of a day as we seem, there is that in us which is older than the primeval rocks, than the ^v\rj out of which this earth, our temporary dwelling-place, was made. The reason which placed the stars, the sense of proportion which we recognize in the planetary system, finds its ij8
THE WALK WITH GOD
correspondence in this brain of ours. We ques- tion every feature of what we see, think, and feel. We try every link of the chain and find it sound if we ourselves are sound. This power of remotest question and assent is not of to-day nor yesterday.
It transcends all bounds of time and space. It weighs the sun, explores the pathway of the stars, and writes, having first carefully read, the history of earth and heaven. It moves in company with the immortals. How much of it is mortal? Only so much as a small strip of earth can cover. These remains are laid away with reverence, hav- ing served their time. But what has become of the wonderful power which made them alive ? It belongs to that in nature which cannot die.
A babe wept on the borders of the Nile, a foundling, destined for death, but fated to dictate rules of action to the human world. How did this come about ? The babe, rescued and grown to manhood, has come upon something as un- changeable as the law of numbers.
O, baby in the Nile shadows, wiser than the Sphinx ; O, saint in the Athenian prison ; O, dis- coverer of the second birth, regenerator of man- kind— what do you teach us ? The eternal hope which lies in God's eternal goodness. What is best for thee and me will be.
159
(From a letter.)
**0, do you know how beautiful that austere vision of death looks to one quite bewildered with the perplexities of life, how consoling, how sooth- ing the thought of that sleep of new creation? All the gifts of God are good — ^were it not strange if He kept not the best for the last?"
160
ENDEAVOR
'What hast thou for thy scattered seed,
O Sower of the plain? Where are the many gathered sheaves
Thy hope should bring again?" "The only record of my work
Lies in the buried grain."
"O Conqueror of a thousand fields !
In dinted armor dight, What growths of purple amaranth
Shall crown thy brow of might?" "Only the blossom of my life,
Flung widely in the fight."
"What is the harvest of thy saints,
0 God! who dost abide? Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs
In blood and sorrow dyed? What have thy servants for their pains?"
"This only, — to have tried."
161
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