Moral aspects of city life: a series of lectures

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MOEAL ASPECTS

OB

CITY LIFE.

A SERIES OF LECTURES

BY

EEV. E. H. CHAPIJST

. NEW YORK :

KIGGINS & KELLOGG,

88 JOHN-STREET.

GO
CD

T— —

1854.

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Entekeo, according to Act of Congress, in tlie Y^tir One Thousand
Eiglit Hundred and Fifty-three, by HEN^IY LYON, in the Clerk's
OflRce of the District Court of the United States, for the Soutlieru
District of New York.

PREFACE.

Some who may read this volume will, perhaps,
differ from me in respect to its themes, and the
method of their treatment, so far as the pulpit
and the Sabbath are concerned. I can only
say that the moral significance which I detect
in these subjects is stated in the first discourse,
and my own ideas of the latitude of pulpit
discussion, will be found, sufliciently qualified,
as I think, in the sixth. It has been my object^
at least, to arouse my hearers from the indif-
ference of custom, to a recognition of the
spiritual suggestions, the duties, the illimitable
relations, which are involved with every aspect
of their daily lot — to show them the argument
for religion and for a religious life, which
comes to them not merely from the pulpit and
from the peculiar associations of the Sabbath,

PREFACE.

but from every field of action, and from every
experience. In seeking to do this, I have used
that language which I deemed most efiective,
and without any refined elaboration have sent
it to type very much as it fell from my
lips. I trust, however, be the faults of this
book what they may, that some influence may
go out from it for individual virtue and reli-
gion, and for a more Christian state of society

in our great cities.

Kew-Yoek, October, 1853.

E. H. C.

CONTENTS.

Page

I. Moral Significance of the City - - 9

II. The World of Traffic - - - -31

III. The DomNioN of Fashion ... 53

IV. The Circle of Amusement - - - 75
V. The Three Vices . . - . 97

VI. The Three Social Forces - - - 119

VII. The Lower Depths - - - - 143

VIII. Society and the Individual - - - 171

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY.

THE MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

I.

THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY.

O THOU that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art

a merchant of the people for many isles. . . .Thy borders are in
the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty . . .
Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy
pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all
thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is

in the midst of thee,

EzEKiEL XXVII. : 3, 4, 27.

These words are compiled from different por-
tions of the prophet's burden concerning Tyre.
The larger part of the chapter is a magnificent
description of a great city in the fulness of its
prosperity, teeming with a busy population,
adorned with the perfection of art, ripe with
luxury, trafficking with all lands, stretching its
commerce along every shore— the metropolitan

1*

10 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

heart of nations, receiving the contributions and
sending out the life-blood of a world.

And such was the comniercial capital of the
ancient world. Such was queenly Tyre, " situate
at the entry of the sea," whose broad expanse
and dashing waves always inspire with enter-
prise, intelligence, and freedom ; and which, as it
were, breaking up the monotony of Oriental cus-
tom, gave to this metropolis a character of its
own, and, perhaps, more than any other ancient
city, identified it with our modern life. Such
was Tyre, with its purple and its fabrics, its
streets crowded with the representatives of na-
tions, its ware-houses stored with the riches of
kingdoms, and its caravans toiling over half the
globe. Such was Tyre, whose shij)s circumnavi-
gated Africa ages before De Gama was born,
and coasting far beyond the pillars of Hercules,
touched the savage shores of Britain ; wdiose sails
were fanned at the same time by the cold winds
of the Baltic and the breath of Indian seas ; for
which Lebanon yielded masts, and Egypt linen,
and Spain gold ; and wdiich, long before Rome
had a place in the eartli, wa^ought less dazzling,
it may be, but more enduring conquests, with its
commerce, its colonies, and its alphabet.

A great, prosperous, intelligent city, w^ith all
the phases of a city — such Avas Tyre ; and such,

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 11

essentially,' we may see even now, as we look
around us.

And what spectacle in the world is more im-
pressive than a metropolis like this, unfolding all
its activities ? Its piles of architecture glittering
in the sun, and the multiform humanity that stirs
within. The din of labor stretching far and wide
its brawny strength ; the cosmopolitan life foam-
ing through its arteries ; the perpetual excitement
of something new, the " first crush of the grape,"
in art, literature, and invention ; this huge brain,
in which all the nerves of the world meet ; the
pulses of its enterprise throbbing through the
land, and dashing from the bows of a thousand
ships !

And if, as the centre of human activity, it
also encloses all forms of human corruption ; if
its splendor is overlapped by poverty iind crime ;
if here the foulness and meanness of the human
heart come out full blown ; if deeds are enacted
here that are hidden from the light of day, and
that the holy stars will not look upon ; if we
must come down fiom this poetical summary of
the city and confront its sad details, walking
through lanes that are lazar-houses, and tempta-
tions that are death; why, it only deepens the
impression which I would excite in calling your
attention to this subject. It only helps show us

12 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

that, however studied — in broad daylight, or in
darkness, or by the glimpses of the moon — the
city is something more than an assemblage of
buildings or a multitude of people ; something
more than a market or a dwelling-place ; that,
deeper than all. it has a moral signiiicance ; and
that the pulpit may perform a legitimate work, in
blending its various aspects with the thoughts of
the Sabbath and the influences of religion.

Inviting your attention, then, to a series of dis-
courses upon some of these phases of City Life, I
have taken for my subject this evening the gene-
ral fact just suggested — The Moral Significance
of the City.

The poet's line

" God made the country but man made the town,"

has, doubtless, a proper signification ; but it helps
conceal a deeper truth. It rightly exalts the
Divine works and ways far above any human
achievement. When one is sick and tired with
routine, when he is deluded by the shows or
troubled with the afflictions of life, let him go
out into the calm breadth of nature, and confer
with realities that are fresh and unabused as they
came from the hands of their Maker. Whatever
is inspiring in mountains, lovely in the reach of
landscape, or impressive in the still woods, sl^all

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 13

work his deliverance from weariness and deceit.
Let the meditative man pass out from tangled
controversy into the harmonies of the universe.
Let the mind, injured by the fallacies and the
nonsense of books, recover health in studying the
stereotypes of God. And let vice and sordidness,
and the entire brood of evil passion, and the can-
kered heart, go, and be rebuked by the Holy
Presence, which is so evident in the pure air
and the sky. " God made the country" — and all
around it keeps the original stamp of the Maker.
But " man makes the town" — the fabrics of brick
and stone that shall crumble away, the uproar
and the pretension, the fickle customs, and the
atmosphere of guilt.

But wlien we pass from the things man does to
onan himself, the city assumes an interest which
does not belono; to the land or the sea. His
achievements may not be compared with the
Divine display, but humanity itself is God's work
as well as nature, and it is Llis greater work.
The book to Avhich he commits his thought seems
a feeble thing, when held up in the immensity of
the universe ; but thought, in its essence, is more
wonderful than electric currents and wheeling
constellations. In short, the interest of the city is
as superior to that of the country, as humanity is
to nature ; as the soul is to the forms and forces

14 ISIORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

of matter ; as the great drama of existence is to
the theatre in which it is enacted. In the country
we have artistic inspirations and scientific oppor-
tunities. The city reveals the moral ends of
being, and sets the awful problem of life. The
country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with
religious suggestion. The city furnishes testimo-
nies of religious need — of man's profound want
of that Light and Help which nature cannot
afford.

The city, then, possesses all the moral signifi-
cance of human life itself, inasmuch as it is the
pecidiar centre and sphere of human life. Wa]k-
ing among its crowds, and catching its various
phases, while we find so much to appal and to
sicken us, we find much also to encourage us ;
and, in all, discover confirmations of religion, and
the great argument for faith.

For, in the first place, the city illustrates the
cajpctbil'dies of luimanity. The bare material of
the citv — this assemblao^e of buildinsrs — shows
that he, who toils among them is a being of won-
derful nature, and momentous destiny. The basis
of religion — its assumption of a spiritual quality
in man — is established by this single fact. Walk
through these streets ! Survey these stately struc-
tures ! Do they not bear witness that tlie thouglit
which conce'ved them, and the ener^^v which

MORAL SIGNIFICAl^rCE OF THE CITT. 15

reared them, is something greater and more en-
during than themselves ? Man, with nothing but
his brain and his hand, has thus conquered and
moukled matter — ^has transformed the wiklerness
into this great city, '' situate at the entry of the
sea." Familiar as the achievement is, I ask you,
is there not a moral significance in it which lifts
us up to the grandest conclusions of faith ?

But when we enter, and consider the wonders
of invention and of art, the trophies of enter-
prise, and all the sinews of power, the moral
impression is still more striking. Here are the
symbols of civilization — the measures of human
progress. Here is what the mind of man has
achieved through the ages ; evident not only in
material improvements, but in laws and customs ;
in a deference to sanctions which unconsciously
control us in the street and in the home. For
even Xew York — and it is a venturesome asser-
tion to make — is better off in these respects than
Tyre with its fine linen and its purple.

Or, go into the departments of culture — the
schools and lyceums — and consider the truths that
are here accumulated, and the liglit that is difiu-
sed abroad. Observe, too, the evidences of liberty,
the influence of the pulpit and the press, the cir-
culation of free thought ; in fine, all the achieve-
ments in the worlds of matter and of mind— for

16 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

the citj is the most complete representative of
these. Applicable, I trust, here and at the pres-
ent time, as when and where he wrote, is that
noble passage of Milton. '' Behold, now, this
vast city," savs lie ; " a city of refuge, the
mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and sur-
rounded with His protection; the shop of war
hath not there more anvils and hammers working,
to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed
justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there
be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious
lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions
and ideas." And the city, I say, as representing
not only the material greatness which man has
wrought out, but his mental and social energy,
peculiarly iUustrates the moral significance which
lies in the cajxibilities of humanity. And that
herein is a moral significance, who can fail to dis-
cern? The busy, inventive, achieving intellect,
that builds the city, and fills it with the products
of matter and of mind, advancing to nobler
attainments as generations pass away, of itself
refutes the doubt of the skeptic and the dogma of
the materialist, reveals the sanctions of the high-
est faith, and justifies the interest which religion
takes in tlie soul of man. Wake up from this
indiflference, that grows out of famiharity ! Shake
off this dullness, that perceives nothing but brick,

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 17

and granite, and streaming crowds! The city,
lifting itself up so stately at the gates of the sea,
is not only a symbol of material greatness — it is
a magnificent argument for religion. The enter-
prise that runs through it is the setting of an
exhaustiess current. They who pass by you, in
worn or in shining garments, are spiritual exist-
ences, ex"hibiting, under all the phases of condi-
tion a moral significance — souls, that must endure
when these things which they have conceived in
their thoughts, and fashioned with their hands,
shall have vanished away.

But I remark, again, tliat the City especially
reveals tje moral qualities of our nature. Where
men are crowded together, the good and evil
that are in them are more intensely excited and
thrown to tl ^ surface. Here, more than anywhere
else, the humnn heart is turned inside out, and its
secret avenues are re-cast in the streets and bye-
places. Wickedness is bold, and temptation im-
portunate. And O ! what revelations of this hu-
man heart there are to scare and to sicken us.
How thin is even the veil of hypocrisy ; how im-
pudently vice stalks in the sunshine ; and how the
glimpses of tlie niglit refute the pretensions of the
day ! O ! misanthrope, take your lantern and go
abroad. You shall accumulate facts enough, not
onlv to confirm yourself, but to stagger us, who

18 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

believe -in veins of goodness and nourish heart
of hope. Let its rays flicker at once npon the
sufferings of unrequited labor, and the frost-work
of selfishness that hangs around stately halls.
Let it shine upon pools dark with undistinguisLa-
ble horrors, and the faces that look out therefrom
in which the demon has obliterated the man.
Turn it full upon pandering temptation' and wo-
manly honor fighting with hunger and drowned
in despair. Let it expose the unclean appetites
that are sleeked over with fashion, and the beast-
liness that assumes the name of "gentleman."
Let it flash upon the permitted shambles of lust,
and the licensed fountains of damnation. It w^ill
not have to throw its beams far to show the work
of crime, and the deed of violence. Cr, it may
be, the day-light furnishes instances r ^ngh, with
its folly and extravagance ; its cent.\jer cent, sor-
didness grinding muscles and souls ; its long ser-
vice at the shrine of mammon, and its patronizing
recognition of God's altar ; its sonorous piety and
small-change philanthropy; its substitution of pol-
icy for principle, and its preference of tlie tem-
poral good to the eternal Right. One must be
almost ready to say, that great cities are indeed
" great sores,'' and that their splendor is only cu-
taneous. And a fearful, humiliating lesson it is
of what is in the human heart — of what lurks in

MORA I SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 19

the moral nature of us all. The evil which fes-
ters ill the huge metropolis, has, siirelj, an awful
significance.

• And yet it is not all like this — let the Theolo-
gian's observation, let the Misanthrope's lantern,
discover what they can. It is not all like this.
The close contact that excites the worst passions
of humanity also elicits its sympathies, and noble
charities are born of all this misery and guilt.
The vast movement of business is not entirely
carried on in a sordid spirit. It is cheering to
think how^ a thousand wheels of labor are turned
by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-
sacrificing endurance ; of the good feeling that
gushes warm through these intersecting lines of
interest ; and of the honor that stands up in the
baseness of the world like a rock. Innocence may
thrive best in the sweet air of the country, but if

" life is not as idle ore.

But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And battered by the shocks of doom,
To shape and use "

then that which is strongest and noblest in our
nature is illustrated in the city. Search it again,
not to prop a theory, but with comprehensive eyes.
Along those beaten ways you will find domestic

20 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

sanctities scattered like dew ; and the fragrance
of philanthropy and prayer, sweeter than the
breath of nature, ascending to heaven. I should
not look for the truest heroism in the forlorn hope,
or the night-watch on the tented field, but in many
a garret and work-shop right around us. And
there, where womanhood works face to face with
death, or patiently plods in its weary routine, yet
keeps its heart untainted ; there, where toil bears
on its sturdy shoulders the burden of the aged
and the sick ; there where poverty ministers as
with the two mites to wretchedness yet more ex-
treme ; there, where the coarse fare is consecrated
by family aftection, and eaten with stainless hands ;
there do I discover the real greatness of our nature,
and rejoice to find, amidst the guilt of the city,
proofs of beautiful, immortal love.

In fact, the city is, as it were, an embodied man.
In its various features it symbolizes the good and
the evil that are in his own mind and heart. His
passions and appetites are illustrated in its dens of
riot, and jDlaces of infamy. Its expanding ware-
houses express his enterprise and ambition. Its
dwellings are the counterpart of his aftections.
Still nobler structures image the majesty of his
intellect, and the functions of his moral sense.
While the sacred spires that tower here and there.

MOEAL SIGNIFICAKCE OF THE CITY. 21

over all the rest, represent those instincts that rise
above the world and point beyond the stars.

And are not these mingled elements of good and
evil the very facts wliich Religion recognizes in
humanity, and to which it applies ? Are not these
the grounds of its warnings and encouragements,
its retributions and rewards ? And, from this
point of view, is there not a moral significance in
the city, and a suggestion that we should study
its diversified phases in the spirit of Him who
looked upon man with blended sorrow and regard,
and saw in him so much to love, and so much to
die for?

But I observe, once more, that the moral signi-
ficance of the city is illustrated in the pursidts
in which its multitudes are engaged. And appro-
priately is this seeking for wealth, pleasure, fame,
called a " pursuit," for it is always an object
ahead, always something to be attained. It never
imparts the satisfaction of a complete end. It
shows that the worker exists for a purpose beyond
his work ; that his money, or his power, or his
social position, is but the vehicle of a more en-
during substance. Surely there is impressiveness,
there is moral suggestion, in this universal restless-
ness— this hum, and movement, and ceaseless toil.
It proclaims a good yet to be attained, or else that
the good which is attained is unsatisfactory. It is

22 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

a testimony to the incompleteness of the earthly
state, and the transcendent destinies of the soul.
In considering the evils which cluster in the^city,
we may say that if it sets the problem of human
life in its most ghastly and discouraging shapes,
yet here also that problem will be most thoroughly
solved. But, in view of the phenomena we are
now considering, w^e may add that here, likewise,
the meaning of our earthly existence is tried out
and made comparatively clear. The spectacle of
these incessant but ever-changing multitudes, of
the good which they seek, and the results of their
getting, freshens in us the moral conviction that
this life is not only transitory but preliminary ;
that it is a discipline working out spiritual and eter-
nal consequences ; and that these mortal posses-
sions are means, not ends. All that Religion affirms
of the unsatisfactoriness of the world, and the in-
comiDleteness of the sensual life ; its interpretation
of the mingled joy and sorrow of our existence, and
its prophecy of undying good ; is re-affirmed in
the bustle of these streets — in these exultations and
disappointments' — in this crowd pouring onward,
ever onward, impelled by desires that cannot be
filled, seeking yet never attaining, grasping only
to find their possessions inadequate and their
thirst still increased for something more. And
such is the moral significance that may be de-

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 23

tected in tlie movements, tlie faces, the busy
arenas, the living tides of the citj.

Finallv, I remark that tlie city, in a special
manner, illustrates the fundamental fact that Life
itself is moral — is intertwined with spiritual sanc-
tions, and is under Providential control. That
such is the case with individuals, is readily seen.
But impressiveness is added to the fact — we dis-
cern more clearly the absolute integrity of the
Law — when it appears as operating in communities.
God can easily be forgotten in the city. On the
prairie, on the shores of the sea, in the shadow of
awful mountains, a sense of His presence forces
itself upon the most frivolous and vile. I think
that there is a weightier pressure of moral sanc-
tions— a more single-eyed perception of principles
in the country than in the city. There is a fresh-
er consciousness of dependence, too, where every
year God visibly touches the springs of nature,
and His creative glory bursts forth afresh. But
in the city there is a more intense play of secon-
dary causes, a delusion of the artificial, which shuts
man in to his own devices, and makes him less
scrupulous. The husbandman has more immediate
transactions with Providence, so to speak. Its
bounty is his treasury, and his drafts are honored
in the sunshine and the shower. The merchant
looks more to his fellow-men, and is tempted to

24: MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

twist his convictions to their caprices. On Sun-
days he finds great first principles stowed away
in. his pew, w^ith his bible and his hymn-book ;
but he carries with him a more portable set for
the negotiations of the week. He mortgages con-
science to policy, and gets a draft on the bank.
What I have already said of the integrity and the
honor that flourish among all these temptations,
will acquit me of the charge of laying down a
sweeping proposition. But I speak of tendencies.
And I would observe that in such a position,
where human achievement is so prominent, and
policy so readily becomes the law, it is well to re-
cognize the fact that the moral sanctions of the
universe move steadily forward ; that their rewards
and their retributions girdle communities as well
as individuals ; that the gain which is bought with
corruption, and the luxury which is steeped in
vice, and the prosperity which sw^eeps away the
thought of God, embosom the seeds of ruin ; that
material greatness alone, strengthened by all the
inventions of the time, cannot prop a state ; that
pro_perty is not an enduring or saving good — that
nothing endures or saves but Truth and Yirtue.
Such is the deepest moral lesson that unfolds itself
in the city w.e now look upon — such is the moral
significance of the cities that have crumbled away.
I commenced by referring to the splendor of an-

MOKAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 25

cient Tyre. Kead the description of it on the
pages of Isaiah and Ezekiel. And because of the
guilt that was mixed with its power and its beauty,
read also their solemn predictions of its fall. It
has fallen. The modern traveller tells us of its
loneliness and ruin ; the sea murmuring around
its silent .desolation, and its " columns of red and
grey granite strewing the shore and sunken in the
waves." " They shall make a spoil of thy riches,"
said the prophet, " and make a prey of thy mer-
chandize : and they shall break down thy walls,
and destroy thy pleasant houses : and tliey shall
lay thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust, in
the midst of the water." It was to become " like
the top of a rock — a place to spread nets upon ;"
and such it is !

But the desolate place on yonder shore is not
only an impressive witness to Prophecy ; it is
itself a prophet to other cities. Sitting there,
with its head cowled by desolation, and its feet
chafed by the sea, from its solemn lips there
comes an appeal to London, Paris, New York,
warning us that there is no stability in material
greatness; that corruption and luxuiy, however
fortified by power, however swathed in splendor,
cannot elude the relentless law ; but that now, as
ever, God holds the world in His hands and His
Eternal Sanctions control it.

2

26 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

But, if commimities are thus responsible, re-
member, hearer, that you and I help make up
community. Let not our consideration of the
moral significance of the great city, be too
abstract. Go forth, and look upon it as it stands
in relation to your own spiritual being, and as the
light of eternity streams through it. Remember,
that God weighs not the gold and silver that are
in it, the strong array of palaces and towers, the
glittering equipage and the machinery of toil.
He weighs not these, but souls — your soul and
mine !

"Wake up, then, O ! indifferent one, to a sense
of the moral consequences of everything you do !
Step by step, as you go, God's awards go with
you. Wake to a conception of the greatness of
this existence that embosoms the vast city, and
embosoms you ! The city ! Why, its profoundest
significance is in its connection with your own
spiritual being. See, from this point of view,
how it melts away and becomes blended with that
other city, which slopes upward, with its shining
streets and its perpetual gates. Lo ! a clear splen-
dor streams down from that, making your least
performance momentous and sublime. Lo ! in
the thick mart, the murky work-shop, and all the
bye-ways of your action, you are surrounded by
a great cloud of witnesses. Notwithstanding the

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY. 27

multitudes, the pomp, the solid walls, you are a
spirit, with your solitary responsibility, treading
the eternal path. The pealing clock tells you
that you are yet within the scope of time — but
it counts off also the periods of your inward his-
tory. It not only divides the hours of rest and
of toil, it proclaims moral defeat or moral victory.

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC.

II.

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC.

-Whose merchants are prmces, whose traffickers are the

honorable of the earth.

Isaiah xxiii. 8.

In the preceding discourse, I spoke of tlie im-
pressiveness and grandeur of a great metropolis,
with all its agents of life and power in full opera-
tion. For the most part, these are the phenomena
of Traffic — the play of reciprocal interests be-
tween man and man, between one portion of a
country and another, and between the nations of
the earth. It is material prosperity that wakes
through all the city the tumult, the excitement,
the roar of busy wheels. These stately piles are
the trophies of an industry that spins its web
around the globe. These thousand ships are the
hands of commerce reaching to every shore.
And, proposing this evening to say something
concerning this aspect of City Life, I feel that I
have not used an inappropriate term, in calling it
" The World of Traffic." For in this everv great

32 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

mart not only concentrates the activities, but
represents the foremost ideas and the executive
power of the world. Surrounded by its symbols
and instruments, its peculiar laws, its customs of
time immemorial, and its sanctions not always
founded in the eternal Kight, there stands its
throne — and, at the present hour it is the throne
of the w^orld. More than anything else now, it
absorbs the energies and fills the compass of the
world. And so its " merchants are princes^, and
its traffickers the honorable of the earth."

And if the w^ords of the text thus illustrate this
supremacy, in that supremacy also they suggest
both evil and good. And, in passing to a con-
sideration of this World of Traffic, in both these
phases, I hardly need say that I can but touch
upon some of the important topics which it opens
for us. This, perhaps, is not the place, if I had
the ability, for philosophical disquisition or analy-
sis in the matter. It involves some of the pro-
foundest and most practical problems of the time,
the discussion of which, in itself, would occupy a
series of discourses. But we are to regard this
World of Traffic now, simj^ly as it comes under a
moral light; as viewed from the stand-point of
religion.

And the first cbservation I make upon it,
regarded from this ^oint of view, is, that, of

THE WOKLD OF rRAFFIC. 33

course, in itself, it is not an abnormal world — it is
not a world outside tlie Divine sphere ; as some
would seem to imply, who, summing it up with
its dust and its sordidness, its passions and its
cares, call it by emphasis " the world" — something
alien from and antagonistic to religion, and the
sanctities of the Spiritual Life. IS^o, my friends,
it is a great, appointed field of human endeavor.
I say so, because it occupies a large place in the
order of Providence, in the history of the world,
and in the development of mankind. It springs
from the primeval ordinance of Labor, and exists
because of the necessity for a division of Labor,
out of which grows, at once, this system of
exchange — of buying and selling. But its condi-
tions are prescribed, not only by this dependence
between man and man, but by the very surface
of the globe. No region holds a monopoly of the
earth's bounty, while each contains something de-
sirable by the rest. And so ensues Commerce,
covering the land with moving caravans, and the
sea with fleets, developing the sinews of enter-
prise, and weaving the bands of human commun-
ion. How much that pertains to our most com-
mon uses, to our ordinary occupations, has come
to us from all the diversified regions of the globe.
In the streets, in our apartments, upon our tables,
meet products from the four quarters of the earth.

M MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

Fabrics from the mines of England and the looms of
Persia ; spices that retain the sting of torrid heat ;
furs that have been ruffled by the polar blast ;
gums from aromatic islands far out in distant
seas ; wood, upon whose boughs has played the
light of southern constellations. I^ay, look upon
a ship, that moving link between hemispheres, its
sails breathed upon by every climate, its hull
laden from every zone ; look upon it confronting
the imperious billows, or calmly gliding beneath
the moon ; consider the intelligence displayed in
it, the skill which it employs, the mystic compass
that guides it on its track ; consider all its
instrumentalities, not only material but social,
intellectual, moral ; and it does not require a
vivid imagination to discern in it a Divine Sym-
bol— the expression of a Providential Plan. And
so we may consider a thousand other instruments
and influences of the World of Traffic ; and we
shall find, I repeat, that it is not a world alien and
opposed to the profoundest realities of the soul, but
appointed for its use, and intimately involved with
its discipline and its growth. We see how the
Church may heave its lofty spire not abruptly
even out of Broadway and Wall-street, and how
in the mazes of business may be trained the best
men and noblest benefactors ; — God's own anoint-
ed princes and honorable of the earth.

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 35

But as ill eveiy spliej'e where moral conditions
exist, and man's freedom plajs, so in this World of
Traffic there is a mixture of good and evil. Let
us consider a few illustrations of both.

And, in the first place, I remark, that in this
great department of human activity, there is a
tendency to make r/iaterial interests supreme. In
the market, my friends, a man exposes himself to
impositions and losses such as cannot be reckoned
by dollars and cents. He is liable to be deluded
into the idea that material good is the only good.
I mean not that he is brought to confess this with
his lips, but to confess it practically ; to live as if
it were so. Engaged chiefly with that which is
visible and tangible ; handling wares, estimating
property, and beating about in the thick dust of
life, he is liable to lose inward perception, and
have no standard of estimation but a pecuniary
one ; so that he will value the very church in which
he worships only as a piece of real estate, and
have scarcely any associations with it except its
market price. He is liable to make business, not
only essential — as it is — but all-important — as it is
not j so that it encroaches upon every sacred sea-
son, absorbs all opportunities, exhausts every fa-
culty of his nature, and intersperses the noisy
routine of trade merely witli the intervals of food
and sleep. Even when the Sabbath shuts the gates

36 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

of the mart, and unbars the door of Spiritual Re-
alities— a door which for him has been closed all
the week — he is, perhaps, too weary with the six
days' efibrt to hallow the seventh, spends the hours
between a nervous idleness and a lighter foray into
the fields of business, looks over old accounts, burns
useless papers, or draws the schedule of a contract.
There are many men, I fear, who make Sunday
answer the purpose of a dull business spell, or a
rainy day. They turn over the leaves of the
ledger, instead of the bible ; mourn not their sins,
but their bad debts ; and are so busv writino; their
own letters, that they have no time to read the
epistles of Paul. Or, if such a man comes to
church, his thoughts wander to his recent or his
contemplated purchase. His presence there may
be a dead form, but it cannot be said that " there
is no speculation in his eyes." Or, finding, per-
haps, that the themes of the discourse do not
weigh in his scales ; feeliog no particular interest
in religion ; and conscious that all the stock he
has is this side heaven, he falls asleep. But, ah !
it is a serious truth, my friends, that the business
of the great city too often binds the hearts and
souls of men in material interests. In the World
of Traffic, in the toil for gain and the splendor of
wealth, they are in danger of confounding the ends
of life with the means of liviiio:, And in such an

THE WOELD OF TKAFFIC. 37

age as tins, how mucli is tins evil tendency en-
hanced. When every fresh discovery tends to
glorify the outward and tlie physical ; when new
regions of the globe open on golden hinges, and
unhoard " sumless treasure," and ^^ature herself
becomes a great arsenal of material gain and con-
quest. Would that this very science, which thus
equips and incites man for the exploration and
grasping of the outward world, might flash upon
him its revelation of what a little, transient world
it is ; and how, with his counting-room and his
iron safe ; with his banks and railroads, and facto-
ries and warehouses ; with 'New York and London,
California and Australia ; it all hangs but a golden
drop in the immensities of God, in the illimita-
ble immensities that open before the soul. Would
it might teach him what an ephemeral atom he is
in his bodily existence here, for he seems to forget
the trite lessons of experience ; forgets how the
eager feet that trod yonder pavement, and tramp-
ed through yonder mart, but a little while ago,
are now lying still ; and how the hands that
clutched for wealth, have dropped it all ; and
how, with every fresh date he sets down in his
day-book, he is unconsciously smnming up the
time when he shall be as they are, and his vanish-
ing from the street and the exchange, perhaps,

38 MORAL ASPECTS OF "^ITY LIFE.

scarcely more noticed than the breaking of a bub-
ble in the stream.

I do not, of course, mean to hint that the pre-
sent world should be too much darkened by the
penumbra of the other, or that we need halt in our
diligence because we deal with perishable interests.
This side of things has its argument, we all know,
and the proper qualifications are readily supplied ;
but I say now, that this is one of the great evil
influences in the World of Traffic ; we are liable
there to accept transient for j^ermanent good ; to
overlook the ends for which we work, and the
vast relations with which we are involved, even
in the most ordinary attitudes of life. Objects
close to the eye, shut out much larger objects on
the horizon ; and splendors born only of the earth,
eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up
the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and
quenches transcendent glories with a little shining
dust.

It is another evil in the World of Traffic, that it
establishes a dynasty of Secondary Principles.
I alluded to this tendency in the previous dis-
course, but I wish to dwell ujion it a little longer.
In making haste to be rich, a man finds himself
impeded by scruples, and is tempted to pursue a
course which, while it does not lie under the con-
straint of any human law, runs athwart the divine.

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 39

" Honesty is the best policy : " this is a recognized
maxim in the World of Traffic ; but it is not so
readily perceived there, that this term " policy "
has a definition as abstract as it is noble — meanins",
the income of God's awards, and not merely the
quick profit of barter and sale ; and that " hones-
ty " has attributes which carry it deeper than any
overt act. In this business-world, a good many
set up a standard that slants a little from the di-
vine perpendicular. I cannot see how the cir-
cumstances, as some seem to think, create an
excuse for this ; but I do see how they create the
temptation. The operations of trade may sharpen
the intellect, but they are apt to cloud the moral
sense. It is hard w^ork to read the moral law straight
through the double lens of twelve per cent, inter-
est ; and a man will find some way to hitch his
conscience to the train of a profitable transac-
tion, and keep it running in the grooves of a
thriving business. Men reason correctly enough
about abstractions, but the World of Traffic is a
very concrete world, and the finer faculties of the
soul are damaged by incessant dealing with things
gross and palj)able. People there look out for the
proceeds — for what ^SW.pay / and by the same prin-
ciple that makes " a nimble sixpence better than
a slow shilling," that which is heavy, and cliinks
in the hand, weighs more than two or three scru-

40 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

pies of conscience, and several texts in the bible.
There are some, it is true, who profess no higher
morality than this ; who lay down the proposition
that life is a scramble, and that he fulfils the end
of living best who clutches the most. These,
however, preserve a claim to consistency at the
expense of their reasoning faculties, and occupy
the same place in moral, as those philosophers do
in physical science, who insist that the only differ-
ence between humanity and the brute, is one of
organic development, and that man is merely an
accomplished ape. The mass of people, however,
even in the sordid city, have faith in their moral
instincts, but the difficulty is, these are not culti-
vated ; they are stinted and overlaid by selfish and
material interests. Go to any man in the street,
and ask him if it would be right to manufacture
and sell a poison, so seductive in its disguises, yet
so fatal in its operation, that it should delude thou-
sands and slay hundreds, and at once he cries out
" !No ! " yet he eats and sleeps over exactly that
sort of business; and next to the very column in
the newspaper, that is fairly red with the awful an-
nouncement of ''murder and suicide caused by
intemperance," stands his own advertisement of " a
fine stock of brandy, and some choice old wines."
Ask another, if he believes in the essential broth-
erhood of the race ? and he says " Yes ! " Ask

THE WOKLD OF TRAFFIC. 41

him if those whom God has crowned with immor-
tality, and over whom Christ's blood has trickled,
are not too precious to be prized in dollars and
cents ? and, if the latent Christianity within him
will speak, there is no doubt as to what he will
reply; but apply yom* proposition to a certain
" exciting topic," and you will find that the sharp
self-interest which shaves four per cent, a month,
clips likewise the finer nerves of humanity, and
that that matter, " is a very different thing."

In the World of Traffic, my friends, the intellect
is keener than the moral sense. Men do not act
directly against their perceptions of duty, but are
unconscious how much those perceptions are blunt-
ed by a near interest and a tangible good. A great
deal has been done by trade and commerce for
civilization, for freedom, intelligence, and religion ;
but a great deal, too, against these. Justice has
not always marched side by side with achievement.
In the track of enterprise around the globe, there
are marks of violence and spots of blood ; and
while in so many ways it has led the march of
progress, in others, at the present hour, it is the
most stubborn obstacle that blocks the road.

But the World of Traffic exhibits another phase
of evil, in the fact that it is an overcrowded sphere.
" Its merchants are princes, and its traffickers the
honorable of the earth," and we see the deference

4^ MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

paid to this conception, in the prevalence of the
notion, that to be a member of the commercial
world is a higher grade of nobility than to be a
toiler in the field of productive labor, Yomig
men, brought up in the pure air and among the
hills, will not stay upon the bosom of nature ; the
rumble and glitter of the metropolis reaches them
in their retirement, promising fortune, distinction,
and ease, and they rush into the conventionalities
and unsubstantialities of the town. They quit the
sphere of creative work for that of barter ; a mere
shifting from hand to hand of what somebody else
has made; so crowded, in proportion to the other,
that community has become like a reversed pyra-
mid ; they quit the fields, where they might make
the grass grow, and increase the abundance of
corn, to lean over counters, to stifle at writing-
desks, and, too often, to throw themselves away in
the tide of dissipation ; to break down in fortune,
to live and die in the endless, tantalizing chase of
experiment. And all this, because the business
of the Trader is thought to be more noble than the
sweaty toil of the Producer. It is a great mistake.
If there are any genuine distinctions, over and
above those of character — and I do not believe
there are — then he who makes a thing is greater
than he who passes it to and fro and speculates
upon it. He who utters a new thought, who

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 43

tempts out a new ear of corn, or in any way adds
to the substance of good in the world, deserves a
richer patent of nobility, than he who reiterates
other men's conclusions, or lives upon other men's
bread. And see in a great city like this, what
clusters starve and shiver like half-frozen bees
around a hive. See the pauperism that leans up
against industry with impudent reliance, or lies
down in despair. Consider the unanswered clam-
ors for employment, and the faintness of thousands
" out of place." And yet here is a broad land,
whose virgin acres can banquet a world ; here are
prairies unbroken by the ploughshare ; here are
hill-slopes swelling with promise ; here are thick
woods, awaiting the axe of the pioneer and the
footsteps of the emigrant. Talk of " the manifest
destiny " of our country, as consisting in melo-
dramatic expeditions with the stars and stripes
through the world at large! Our Providential
destiny unfolds itself in this ample and goodly
land, stretcliing deep and far away, out of whose
untried recesses comes an appeal to those who in
the "World of Traffic droop and perish, inviting
them to convert soil and sinew into food, to add
to the real substance of the land, to pour fresh
streams of productiveness into these channels of
biLsiness, and to grow men.

As it is, great is the moral significance, far-

44 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

reaching are the moral results which grow out of
this exuberance in the World of Traffic. Hence —
for I can merely name them — come competition,
with its artifices and its injuries to conscience;
and extravagance, with its pretensions and its
guilt ; and the frauds that are engendered in the
selfish crush and jostle ; and the moral curse that
accompanies the haste to be rich.

But from these phases of the great World of
Traffic, we will turn to consider — though more
briefly — its better and more hopeful aspects.

And, in the first place, it may be observed that
this activity and intelligence indicates a condition
of material and indixidxisil freeclo77i. A community
which really thrives in all the departments of its
industry, must be, essentially, a free community.
Despotism prevails more where men do not feel
that they have much at stake in the country, and
where their faculties have not been aroused. But
the toil of enterj^rise, and the sense of possession,
develope a consciousness of personality which re-
sists encroachment and chafes under oppression.
And, therefore, however aggressive upon the
liberty of others, commerce nourishes the senti-
ment of liberty in those who wield it, and Trade
and Wealth assert themselves against the exclu-
siveness of caste and privilege. The great revo-
lutions of the last two centuries were precipitated

THE WOULD OF TEAFFIC. 45

by assaults on property. Liberal ideas and popu-
lar tendencies were involved, but the immediate
form which they assumed was resistance to op-
pressive taxation. And, although we know that
profounder revolutions are to be wrought in the
world, and more universal interests secured, we
rejoice in the direction of these movements ; and,
wherever we behold a great, industrious, enter-
prising city, like this, we recognize something be-
sides material prosperity ; we discover that indi-
yidual and national indej^endence with which are
bound up so many blessings and so many moral
consequences.

But I observe, again, that the World of Traffic
is a symbol and an assurance of human progress.
Tliis is the age of the money-power ; and, what-
ever evils may be involved with it, it is an ad-
vance upon the ages of physical prowess and
brute force. We shall hardly see any more "Wars
of Succession," or any more conflicts about the
Divine Eight of Kings ; but an ague-fit in the
Bank of England, or in Wall-street, sets the whole
world a shaking ; and, if you would discover the
most sen^ive and powerful interest of the day,
consult the barometer of the stocks. Traffic some-
times breeds wars, but everybody knows that its
real interests lie in the maintenance of peace. The
great battles of the day are battles of enterprise.

46 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CriY LIFE.

The strife is not between armed fleets, but whose
ships shall come first from China, or sail the
quickest around the stormy Cape. Feudal cus-
toms, where they yet linger, are regarded as so
many creaking puppet-shows. The heraldic -ban-
ners are dropping to tatters ; the devices on the
shields are growing rusty ; plain " Mr." crowds
upon "Sir," and "My Lord." The cotton-sj^in-
ners of England control its policy. The monarchs
of the present are not IN^icholases and Josephs, but
Hothschilds and Barings ; men like Morse and
Fulton, are their kings at arms ; and the sovereign-
power of the time builds itself " crystal palaces."
For, " Its merchants are princes, its traffickers the
honorable of the earth."

And, close in connection with this phase of the
World of Traffic, is that which it presents to the
eye of the philanthropist and the Christian, as the
instrument of ends beyond itself. It is indeed
cheering to think that this far-reaching enterprise
and colossal achievement of our time, is leveling
the mountains, and exalting the valleys, and pre-
paring a highway for the Lord. Good is stronger
than evil in the world ; and these agents of Trade
and Commerce are opening unprecedented facili-
ties for the operation of Christianity. "Moun-
tains intervening," oceans rolling between, need
" make enemies of nations " no more. Quick as

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 47

thought throbs the communion of man with man
along the electric wire. A thousand steam-pad-
dles, like the stroke of hammers, are welding con-
tinents together. And the very air that wraps tlie
globe may yet become a current of reciprocity
and a binding web of love. Go among the ship-
yards, the machine-shops, the docks of this great
city, and the World of Traffic may suggest to you
something more than material good. Think,
wherever it sends out its influence, there ideas
will circulate and truth go abroad. Think, liow
the nations who control that AYorld of Traffic are
those to whom liberty is indigenous ; and who
alone, of all the earth, illustrate its benefits.
Think, how the language that is becoming the
master-speech of the world ; the language uttered
by those new-born colonies that are blossoming
around the globe ; the language that peals through
speaking-trumpets on distant seas, is the language
of the Declaration of Independence ; and that,
wherever the keels of our commerce cut their way,
there go the intelligence, the freedom, the inhe-
rent justice of the English tongue. And, more-
over, if you have any moral discernment, behold
the Providential Purpose manifest in this com-
bination of mighty interests with mighty forces.
Think of the capabilities which are unfolded in
all this mechanism and enterprise. Think of the

4:S MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

perilous wav and the long ages through which
God has brought the Gospel ; and say if this is to
render no service to that — if the World of Traffic
does not put on a moral grandeur as you gaze — ^if
there is not a meaning in its stir and its strength,
glorious as the hopes, pregnant as the prayers of
all good men ; and if its expanding greatness, and
its leaping forces, do not seem as the buddings of
Keligious Prophecy.

Yes, so I would regard it ; as an agent and an
indication of far better things — as one method in
the Providence of that Being to whom a thousand
years are as one day, and who, as He has built
up the planet on which we dwell, epoch by epoch,
so through developments which only to out vision
seem slow or hindered, surely leads forward the
progress of the race and the manifestation of His
own Glory.

But the World of Traffic has a still more solemn
significance for each of us, when we recognize it
as the sphere of our individual discipline. And
this is a fact which I wish I could impress upon
every man, in his counting-room, his work-shop, or
wherever may be the field of his endeavor. This,
my friend, is your appointed place, not merely to
acquire money, or gain a living, but to achieve
the highest moral ends. It has perils, but these
you are not to run away from ; you are to en-

THE WORLD OF TRAFFIC. 49

counter and overcome them. It is filled with ob-
structions and temptations, but it afi'ords opportu-
nities for virtue, and for religion, that are rich in
proportion to the difficulty which they involve;
and in this point of view, it is better for you than
the solitude of the country, or the abstraction of
the cloister. It is a great world, this World of
Traffic, in material splendor and achievement, in
its power, and its influence. Those who are suc-
cessful in it ; those who take rank among its great
and powerful ones, are estimated as the princes
and honorable of the earth. But it is far greater
in its moral significance — in its opportunities for
spiritual achievement, in the permanent good that
may be extracted from it, and the victory which
may be gained in it ; and, my hearers, if while
yon act in it you are more solicitious about cha-
racter than wealth, eternity than time, the ends of
life than the means of living ; if all that is really
of value in it you assimilate to the enduring facul-
ties of the soul, then in the rarest, in the only real
sense, you will be princes and honorable in the
earth.

Many of you, it is likely^ will here fulfil your
mortal term. Among these wheels and hammers
will be wrought the substance of your moral being.
Amons: these currents of trade and commerce,
you will conduct transactions either with sin, or

60 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

with God. Among these factories will be woven
the fabric of your character. In these counting-
rooms will be added up the sum-total of yom* life.
Through the tumult of this World of Traffic you
will hear the last call, and, shaking off its dusty
garments, you will render up your stewardship.

THE DOMINION OF FASHION.

III.

THE DOMINION OF FASHION.

The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets

.... the rings .... the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles,
and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, the glasses, and the fine
linen, and the hoods, and the vails.

Isaiah hi. 19-23.

These are not munitions of war, nor the devices
of some royal pageant ; but they are the symbols
of a power that has gone over the world with more
than a conqueror's success, and that maintains a
sway wider than any king. It has a code of its
own, and signs, and passports. Its honors, by
many, are esteemed the highest felicity, and its
ban is more dreaded by them than a monarch's
frown. It has a wonderful control over the out-
ward life of men ; and, witli all their diverse pe-
culiarities, and their individual wills, shapes them
into subservient platoons. It rules courts ; it
makes a common law for nations ; and shares with
Trade and Commerce a place in the foreground of
the great metropolis.

54: MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

And the pomp and luxury which the Prophet
so minutely specifies in the passage before us, show
how ancient is its reign. The text, indeed, affords
one of those revelations which abridge history,
and tell us how little humanity changes in its
generalities, even in three thousand years, and
how constantly the old repeats itself in the new.
With very slight alteration, these words might
pass as those of some contemporary speaker, descri-
bing the processions of the street, or the groups
of a ball-room.

Yes, the tendency always has been as it is, to
refine upon the original expressions of nature, and
to govern it by some rule of art. Side by side
with civilization advances luxury, and the preacher,
who, in considering the moral aspects of the city,
dwells upon its material greatness and activity, is
compelled, because of the existence of these very
facts, to notice also the Dominion of Fashion.

And yet it is not an easy subject to handle here,
and at this time. With the best that can be said
for it, it exposes so many weaknesses, and presents
so many salient points of ridicule, which have
often been and still ought to be delineated, that
there is a temptation to convert the discourse of
the Sabbath and the pulpit into something that
would be better, ^Derhaps, as a lyceum-satire. I
trust, however, that we shall be able to find the

THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 65

moral suggestions which are aftbrded by the topic
of this evening, in considering some of the fea-
tures, or characteristics of this Dominion of Fashion.
I observe, then, in the first place, that it is the
dominion of conventionalism over culture. And
this dominion is, bj no means entirely unlawful.
There is a sense in which men cannot exactly im-
prove^ but assist, nature, and yet not be charge-
able with the presumption of trying " to gild the
fine gold, or paint the lily." ^ay, what is that me-
thod which makes the gold fine, but an artificial
work that brings out its full richness and beauty
from the roughness of the ore ? So the entire pro-
cess of education is the refining and bringing out of
a man's faculties from the original ore. And in
this process, surely, good breeding has its place —
that kind of culture, which, although it may add
nothing to the intrinsic substance of the mind, or
the heart, enal)les one properly to adjust himself
to others, and to add to the stock of agreeableness
in society. There is something very fine in the
polish and ripeness of a true gentleman ; —

" The grand old name of gentleman,"

as the poet has it —

"The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ignoble use ; — "

56 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

not only in his own flexibility, but in the art with
which he sets others at ease, and calls out the best
that is in them ; and it shows us the value of mere
accomplishments. There are men in the ^vorld,
on the other hand, of decided talents and many
excellent qualities, whose influence is greatly
abridged by their uncouthness and incivility.
Their qualities are sheathed in a porcupine crust.
Their want of facility, of tact, in one word, of
adaptedness, renders them unpleasant persons in
society, and though we admire their abilities and
their worth, they are so rude and cynical that we
dread them. But little good is derived from the
company of a highly intellectual wolf, or a moral
bear. Next in importance to acting, is the method
of acting ; and manner is power.

There is a class of people, too, who abhor cere-
mony so intensely, that they fall into rudeness;
which, in some instances, is as much a piece of
afi'ectation as any custom of etiquette. Not only
would they have every disagreeable fact seen just
as it is, but, for fear it will not be seen, thrust it
foremost. Tliey do not simply tell you all your
faults, but tell them in the bluntest way ; and, lest
you should have too good conceit of yourself, they
use the privilege of friendship to give your com-
placency a kick. They discharge their consciences
with a pugilistic vigor. Forgetting that truth not

THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 57

only can be, but should be, spoken in love, they
utter it in such a way that, instead of impressing
with conviction, it only rankles as a barb of insult.
Their sincerity is an offensive nakedness, and their
frankness impudence.

Now, so far as Fashion, sparing a man's integri-
ty, and leaving all his faculties free scope, disci-
plines him into an agreeable manner, and lends to
his speech a genial courtesy, it has a lawful influ-
ence. And I hope I shall not be misunderstood
when I say, that in our nature there is a certain
instinct of luxury even, which indicates a legiti-
mate use. Those tastes which cherish and develop
the fine arts, which attach themselves to the beau-
tiful and the graceful, and from the raw material
of things draw out softer textures, and more exqui-
site expressions, assuredly have their sphere. And
these can operate best in those conditions of refine-
ment and leisure which exist peculiarly under the
dominion of Fashion. And consider, too, what
many of these customs, which come under the de-
nomination of luxury, accomplish for others.
What a source of extra employment to thousands
is the magnificent dwelling, or the rich garment,
and divers other things which are not sheer neces-
saries of life, but which money, and custom, and
culture, call into existence.

The Conventionalism of Fashion, then, as distin-

68 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

guislied from nature, and overlying it, is not all
an evil. But that there is great evil involved with
it — falsehood, meanness, harm — I liardly need say.
See, for instance, in the Dominion of Fashion,
what a violation there is of physical law: and
surely this is not an improper topic to be touched
upon in the pulpit. I^ay, my friends, far other-
w^ise. From the sacred desk there should be more
open and strenuous speaking uj)on this point. For
the physical law is also God's law — the expression
of His Intention the enactment of His Will. It
has had no set place of proclamation, no vocal ut-
terance. But its administration is abroad on the
pure air of heaven, and its decrees are in the light.
It is not engraved on tables of stone, but its sanc-
tions are in every part of your wonderful, throb-
bing organism ; in the currents of the blood, the
hand-writingof the nerves, and the tablets of the
lungs. While you obey it, its mystery works on,
with serene unconsciousness, affording that plea-
sure which there is in bare existence itself ; in the
play of muscle and the equal pulse of health ; in
full deep breathing, and sweet sleej), and the ex-
hilaration of the sunshine and the air. But violate
it, and the relentless consequences will tell you
how sacred and how divine it is. Saying nothing
now of the moral and intellectual interests that
are involved that violation is a physical injury, and

THE DOMI^s'IOX OF FASIIIOX. 59

a sin hecause it is a pliysical injury. And when
cnstom does not assist nature but abuse it, it is no
lawful dominion, but a usurpation.

And need I tell you in what ways, especially in
great cities. Fashion does abuse Mature ? The sub-
stitution of night for day, the stifling rooms, the
thin garments which are the sacrifice of health to
vanity, the compressed lungs, the protracted ex-
citement, the late meal, the indescribable food
seasoned with every kind of disease, the wine that
heats the blood and dishevels the faculties, and the
numerous instances in which the mufflers, and the
bonnets, the hoods, and the mantles, and the change-
able suits of apparel, are not merely expressions of
grace or courtesy, but^ symbols of rebellion.

And, under the Dominion of Fashion, not only
is conventionalism exalted over Nature in the vio-
lation of physical law, but of absolute beauty and
wholesome tastes. It is the lawless and often ri-
diculous rule of caprice, controlling people, though,
with a rigor which they dare not disregard. Would
any pure instinct, if left to itself, induce men and
women to assume such outrageous garbs and shapes
as frequently are witnessed in the van of fashion ?
Such distortions and discomforts, canonizing de-
formities, and exaggerating defects, and marring
genuine nature. Men we see, so gorgeous and so
diso-uised, that thev look like walkinoj chambers of

60 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

imagery, or cjlindrical chess-boards, and we know
not whether we behold a party of gentlemen or
the intrusion of a menagerie ; while on the other
side appear those animated pictures — not painted
in oils, however— who have twisted their fair forms
beyond any definition of anatomy. These w^ould
regard with surprise and amusement the savage
who bores his nose, or paints rainbows around his
eyes, and yet he has only succumbed to another
phase of the same Dominion of Fashion. With
all his self-torturing and tattooing, however, his
way of rendering allegiance is, on the whole, more
comfortable ; and I am inclined to think evinces
full as much taste.

But besides these outward and manifest usurpa-
tions. Conventionalism often, by the power of
Fashion, represses and kills the natural emotions
of the heart. Everything must be done by the
rules of etiquette. A hearty laugh is vulgar, and
even mourning must go on by pattern. Some-
times, to be sure, there may occur periods of liter-
ary affectation, or drenching sentimentalism — a
distilled compound of Werter and Eousseau, from
which almost anything is a deliverance ; but gen-
erally I suspect a languid repose, an indifference
that is not to be penetrated by any surprise, is the
standard. Nothing is to be marvelled at, nothing
is to awaken a fresh gush of admiration and enthu-

THE DOMIXIOX OF FASIIIOX. 61

siasm, or break the frigid apathy of contempt.
Probably this, in many instances, ensues from an
exhausted capacity for pleasure, which has been
exercised so intensely in its pursuit that everything
loses zest— the world really does become worn out,
and reveals nothing new — at least from that plane
of life. At any rate, no one can deny the heart-
lessness, the constraining and deadening forms
which prevail in this mode of life, nor won-
der that people of a genial, spontaneous nature,
should be glad to escape from its routine, break
over its barriers, and never make very fashionable
men. For I am speaking now, it will be recol-
lected, not of refinement, not of real gentility, or
high breeding, but of Fashion, which is often nei-
ther good sense nor good manners.

And, with this repression of natural feeling,
come that frivolous formality, those tedious, lying
compliments, that masked insincerity, that meagre
sumptuousness and cold splendor, in which the
satirist finds his materials, and which difirers from
sweet and kindly courtesy, as glittering frost-work
dificrs from glittering dew. It may seem that I
am pursuing a train of discussion beyond the war-
rant of the place and the time ; but really, my
friends, whatever is injurious, capricious, insincere
— in one word, essentially unnatural— is immoral
and irreligjious. There are customs, there are moral

62 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITT:.

consequences involved in this world of Convention-
alism. It implies a disregard of truth, a selfishness,
a shallow conception of life, which the preacher
ought to expose, and which he has a right to sj^eak
against. When I think what slavery is proclaim-
ed by these chains and bracelets ; what silly ca-
prices ordain these changeable suits of apparel ;
how much good substantial nature is smothered in
these mufflers and tortured by these crisping-]3ins ;
indeed in what a miserable machinery thousands
are living ; I think one may subserve a moral pur-
pose by launching at it a shaft of ridicule, or a
bolt of condemnation.

But I observe, in the second place, that the Do-
minion of Fashion, is the dominion of the Exter-
nal over the Personal. And here, again, let us
discern some benefit, and acknowledge a lawful
influence.

" Ground in yonder social mill,"

says the poet,

" We rub each other's angles down,
And merge ... in form and gloss,
The picturesque of man and man ; "

and surely, in some respects, it is well that it is so.
In order that a man may preserve his integrity, it
is not necessary that he should retain those hard
granitic corners that fit into no social system, and

THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 63

either encroach upon others or keep them at a dis-
tance. Fashion, as a common curve of propriety
which a man cannot with decency overstep — a
circle of custom which outlaws disagreeable eccen-
tricities— has a wholesome sway. Society is itself
a compromise of individualities, and no one has
any business in it who cannot reasonably conform.
A man has no right to be outre, and to poke his
personality in every body's w^ay. A studied revolt
from general customs is often an afiectation equal
to any that walks in chains and bracelets ; and one
may be as vain of being out of the fashion as of be-
ing in it. It is a repetition of Diogenes on Plato's
carpet ; and the fop is little else than a cynic turned
inside out.

Kor, in saying that Fashion exalts the external
over the personal, iio I mean to say that it represses
egotism, which is a very different thing from
individual steadfastness, and sometimes manifests
itself extremely the other way. A vain man is
not one with a dignified consciousness of his own
personality ; but rather one with a nervous solici-
tude about himself — a fear that he shall not be
noticed enough, with a half-suspicion that he may
be a sham, a counterfeit, and^ therefore, an extra
endeavor that his chink and jingle shall be heard
in the world. A man of real, intrinsic power does
not advert 'se it witli ribbons and stars and velvets.

64: MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

The Napoleon inside the plain grey surtont out-
shines all the coronation robes. Personality, then —
individual integrity — is a different thing from ego-
tism. And I say it is an evil influence in the
Dominion of Fashion, that it seduces, or forces a
man from an honorable loyalty to himself. In
other words, Fashion is the science of appearances,
and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather
than to he. He must live in the same style as his
neighbors — ^his house must be as fine, as richly
furnished, as luxuriously kept. Imitation^ espe-
cially in the city, is the source of more misery
and wrong, than almost anything else that can be
named. The fear of losing caste, and of what the
people will say, and the wish to be reported gay,
munificent, rich,— does not the great evil which
stares one in the face as he looks around upon this
metropolis — the great sin and shame of extrava-
gance— take its rise in this? For we are an ex-
travagant community. It is a time of peace and
of luxury, and men must rise into notice by their
way of living. One builds an elegant mansion,
and another must outstrip him. One is distin-
guished by a splendid vehicle, and another drives
the fastest horses. It is expected that you will be
awed before the presence that blazes with dia-
monds, and confess the sovereignty that astonishes
a watering-place with its parade and profusion.

THE DOMINION OF I ASHION. 65

It is useless to saj that a good deal of tliis is really
vulgar; I merely observe that it is the way of
distinction — it is the fashion, and tempts men to
be untrue to their convictions — untrue to tlie-^n-
selves. For where there is one who can suj)port
this display, very likely there are ten who can't,
and yet who feel that they must to keep up ap-
pearances— and w^ho scrimj:) necessaries to affect
luxuries, content with a thin gilding so long as it
looks like gold, or else who launch out in a ruinous
splendor. And not only ruinous, but when tried
by the social law, how unjust ! Now, I have
already said that there is a lawful sphere of refine-
ment, and even of luxury. Let there be stately
mansions, elegant apartments, choice furniture.
Let there be parlors that shall be studios of esthetic
beauty, and breathe the inspiration of sculpture
and of picture. I must confess, I have but little
respect for what a good many people call " Econo-
my"— I do not mean the legitimate thing, but as
they illustrate it — for as they illustrate it, it is
certainly one of the shaMiest of the virtues. This
glorification of saving^ as though saving were
good for anything except noble ends and uses —
this dollar and cent conception of the great uni-
verse— this piling up and packing away of money,
and sending it out in investments to see it roll back
a2:ain in doubled bulk — merelv to sav — " I am

Q6 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

worth so mucli," — look at tliis marvelous, thread-
bare, scrimping virtue of saving • for no earthly,
and certainly for no spiritual end — and then all
the while living in a meagre, pent-up way, when
they might create all around them such a world
of suggestion, and beauty, and noble culture, and
high aims, and make their money worth something
to themselves, and pay interest when they are
done with all banks and real estate — I say this
afiair, which some miscall " Economy," seems to
me, to have about as much glory in it, and about
as much benefit, as there is in the occupation of
boys scooping sand out of a beach, and piling it
up in heaps.

And yet, I would not, by a single hint, favor
the other extreme. I say, on the contrary, that
here is a profuse expenditure, running beyond
all the bounds of refined and elegant living, which
no one, whatever his means, has a right to indulge,
so long, at least, as there are such shar^:) contrasts
in society.

The rampant extravagance of the city, is not only
fearful, as prophetic of the crash that must fol-
low the strain, but one feels that, somewhere, there
must be a sacrilegious wrong, when the sap of so
much social benefit is concentrated in the flower-
ing of a selfish luxury; something incongruous in
this magnificence girdled with ghastliness ; this

THE DOMINION OF FASHION". 67

black eclipse impinging upon the orb of prosper-
ity ; this sharp contact of apoplexy and consump-
tion ; this Want that crouches by marble steps and
stretches out its leanness in the wintry star-light.
Society thus looks like a huge ship, Avith music,
and feasting, and splendor on its deck, and its sails
all set and glistening, Avhile down in the hold there
are famine, and pestilence, and compressed agony,
and silent, choking despair.

There is more than ruin, then, there is injustice,
there is fraud, there is inexpressible wrong, in that
extravagance which is the strain of vanity to keep
up ap23earances — the determination, let what may
suffer, to be in the fashion. And surely, then, it
is one of the bad influences of this Dominion of
Fashion, that its externals are so attractive as to
seduce men from their integrity, their self-esteem,
the resources of character, into the insensible ca-
reer of imitation, feeling that not in the fashion
they are nothing.

It is obvious that there are otJter ways in which
this influence operates, besides leading to the ex-
travagance upon which I have dwelt. How this
deference to externals may cause a man to smother
his convictions, and speak untrue words, and per-
form wrong deeds, which a proper self-regard
would never let him do ! So that his personality,
so to speak, becomes entirely loose, and floats this

68 MORAL A&PECTS OF CITY LIFE.

way and that, according to the social currents
around him ; so that we have in fashionable society
no original, individual developments, but a silken
and gilded monotony.

Ah ! the moral injury wrought, and the sin
committed, when the outward rules the inward,
and the solicitations of the world overcome spirit-
ual laws ; when a man lives only for appearances ;
and cares not %ohat he is, but what he seems to be.
The root of all genuine principle is dead then.
Your chains and your bracelets then may all look
very line, and your rings, and your changeable
suits of apparel ; but what have they cost ! Jew-
els torn from the soul in virtues and in an individ-
ual consciousness, the barter of which is the dear-
est bargain a man ever made.

I observe, finally, — although this proposition
embraces what has just been said, — that the Do-
minion of Fashion is the dominion of the Sensuous,
or Superficial, over the Moral and the Enduring.
I have said, that it is the Science of Ajjpearances.
It disciplines the manners, it prescribes the dress,
and presides over the external arrangements of
life. And I have indicated, in some respects, the
beneficial ofiice which it thus discharges. But it
should be remembered, that the things with which
it deals are not, in any sense, vital ^ they do not
belong to the substance of being; tlie}-- are but its

THE DOMINION OF FASHION. 69

shows, and transient forms. And yet in these
shows and forms, thousands plant their hopes and
spend their energies. Custom is their religion ;
Fashion becomes the supreme law, and they plead
it for what they do or neglect to do. Custom, I
say, is their religion ; Observance their worship ;
and the chains, and the bracelets, and the rings,
and the glasses, and the fine linen, are their idols.
They are absorbed in the glitter, they are swept
away upon the surface of life. Therefore, there is
no intros2)ection, no scrutinizing of their own
hearts ; there is no moral reference, no conception
of the meaning of existence, and of the solemn re-
alities involved wnth it. Sorrow finds them with-
out any support, and death comes, a ghastly in-
ti'uder, striking the wine-cup from their hands.

Thus it is, my friends, that Fashion in itself
alone, is not really liigh-breeding", or genuine cul-
ture, ])ut sensuous refinement — an education of the
eye, the ear, the palate, and, in general, a fasti-
dious voluptuousness. And so, drawing away all
the sap from the spiritual roots of a man's being,
and concentrating it in the faculties of sensual en-
joyment, we discover the reason why moral decay
always accompanies extreme fasliion, and luxury
and enervation go together. It has been the rule
in other places — I will not press the question
whether it is so here — that fashionable society is

TO MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

the most corrupt society. Gross vice may prevail
more in the lowest class, but there is a pressure
of necessity there, an energy of passion, that really
renders it less abominable than the accomplished
frivolity and epicureanism that rots as it shines.
And fashionable society, I do not say always, but
too commonly, is full of this.

Herein also — in the exaltation of sensual enjoy-
ment over moral claims — maybe found the springs
of the selfishness and indifference which character-
ize the Dominion of Fashion. The effect of ex-
ample, and the relations of humanity, are disre-
garded in the zest of individual gratification. It
cannot be denied, that the must stubborn obstacle
to all reform, to all hopeful and humane move-
ment, exists in the customs of what are called " the
upper classes." Shut in by gilding and velvet
from the inclement realities of life, their ears do
not hear the sounds of woe, their eyes do not see
the ghastliness and abomination, their hearts do
not feel the electricity of the common humanity
Opportunity, indulgence, pampered selfishness,
separate them in thought and in sympathy from
the great multitude, so that the cry of complaint,
and the jar of crime, are but the noise of a rabble,
and the appeal of the philanthropist only a fanatic's
scream. I must say, once more, that I am not
speaking of the truly refined, the gentle, the rich,

THE DOMINION OF FAyHION. 71

among whom so often prevails the noblest recogni-
tion of these social claims ; but of those who are
body and soul the subjects of Fashion; who live
only by its rules and for its ends. And I say that
among these, sensual enjoyment, and selfish objects,
are apt to supersede moral obligations, and clog the
march of human progress.

And, finally, how the sense of Religious truth, of
personal responsibility and spiritual ends in life, is
absorbed in this outside glitter and attitude ! How
time is wasted, and strength misemployed, and God
forgotten, and the soul neglected ! Ah ! my friends,
the words of the Prophet may have seemed almost
trivial to you, when I quoted them as my text.
But when we look at them more considerately,
there is very solemn suggestion in them. Those
rings and bonnets, and glasses and bracelets, how
much solicitude did they awaken, in the days to
which these words refer ! To how many were they
the supreme objects of life! How many besoms
heaved under them ; how many bright eyes flashed
brighter on account of them ; how^ regal, how tri-
umphant, did beauty appear in them, because of
the homage which they secured, and the pride
which they gratified ! But, for ages those bosoms
have been still, those eyes quenched, that beauty
ashes. And the rich apparel, and the ornaments,
are but the symbols of curious and vanished cus-

72 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

toms. But still here is the same solicitude, the
same vanity, the same idolizing of material forms,
the same living for perishable ends. Here, also, is
the same spiritual nature, urging its more enduring
interests — the same Infinite Excellence presenting
its supreme claims. And, while the past and the
present assure us that custom may have its forms,
and fashion its sphere ; the departed, from those
memorials once so gaudy, but now so quaint and
solemn, and our own souls from their innermost
depths, protest against all that dries up the noblest
springs of our humanity, or usurps the control of
Heaven.

THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT.

IV.

THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to eveiy purpose
under the heaven.

ECCLESIASTES III. 1.

We may understand the text as a statement of
Fact^ or a statement of Law / a declaration of
things as existing bj human action, or by Divine
appointment ; of what God ordains, or what man
finds the opportunity to do. Tlie world is govern-
ed. It is bound about by limitations, and moves
in the orbit of a Supreme intention. There are
certain grand elements of existence, certain original
features in every form of life, which are not at
human disposal, but bear the stamp of Creative
ordinance. There is a time to be born, a moment
when, without conscious action of our own, we are
summoned into this marvelous existence, and be-
come the inheritors of its responsibilities. There
is a time to die : a crisis which man mav retard,
which he may hasten, but which with inevitable
footsteps co7nes, to seal up all these faculties, and

76 ' MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

to stop the heart. And between these barriers of
life plays many a force, glides to and fro many a
dispensation, higher and profounder than our reach.

Nevertheless, inside this Supreme Government,
scope is left for man's agency — a time for every
purpose of his heart, a season for every work of his
hand. Yes, sad as the truth is, there is a period
for all the sin of his nature to ripen, and it does
unfold. There is a time for falsehood to achieve
its end, and for fraud to work its plot. There is a
time for Usurpation to sit upon its throne, and
War to shake out violence and death from the
folds of its crimson banner. And, Avhether we con-
template this harmony of Providence moving
calmly on, with its evolving issues and its fixed
plan ; or these human activities, so often jarring
and dislocated ; in either instance we may say —
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to
every purpose under the heaven."

But, my friends, in reality there is a relation be-
tween these phenomena of Fact and of Law —
these Divine ordinances and these human activi-
ties— which resolves the text into one general de-
claration. It is, in short, the relation of Use and
Abuse. We may understand the words before us
as declaring a fitness in the intention of things.
Everything has, or indicates, an original use. It
may itself be a deformity Ot disease, neverthe-

THE CIECLE OF AMUSEMENT. YY

less it illustrates a Law; just as a diseased organ,
or a deformed limb, illustrates a Law. So, wheu
any abuse prevails in human action, though the
abuse is itself wrong, and the agent guilty, we shall
find somewhere back of it an intention, a faculty,
an original ground, of which it is the perversion,
but which is intrinsically good. The generic fact
of sin is the abuse of free-agency. Tlie element of
selfishness in the world is the abuse of a wise in-
stinct. And, sometimes, not only the degree^ but
the hind^ of a thing, is itself an abuse. Thus,
while some would say that intemperance is an
abuse of intoxicating drinks, and, therefore, argue
that these have a use ; I should say that intemper-
ance is an abuse in degree of the appetite of thirst,
and the mere use of intoxicatino^ drinks as a 'bever-
age^ an abuse in kind, just as the use of any other
insidious poison as a drink, would be an abuse in
kind. But thirst itself, as an original quality of
our nature, has its good purpose and its season.

This, then, is the proposition which I draw from
the text — that there is a fitness in the original in-
tention of things, and that intention may be traced
back even from an abuse. Everv abuse sio-nifies
some use. The application of this principle to the
subject that specially comes before us this evening,
is obvious.

In the first discourse of this series, I remarked.

78 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

that the City represents the individual man — both
the good and the evil that are in him. There, pro-
jected on a grand scale, are the symbols of all his
appetites, his faculties, and his instincts ; and,
agreeably to the principle just laid down, these are
traceable in the abuse as well as in the use.
Amidst the pomps of Fashion, and the restless tides
of Traffic, the Circle of Armisement kindles its
lights, and puts forth its solicitations. And, abused
as it is, especially in the great metropolis, both in
degree and in kind, still it is a Fact related to some
Law — it symbolizes some original intention in our
nature. I am aware that, taking the etymology of
the word A'fnusement, as that which merely detains
the mind in a sort of aimless loitering, an argument
may be urged against its law^fulness in* any de-
gree. But I employ the term in its general accep-
tation. And need I say that it has a lawful sphere
— has its wise purport and its proper season ? In-
deed, it may be said, " there is no fear that men
will err on this side ; the great danger is at the
other extreme, and the j^ulpit, if it speaks at all
upon the subject, had better direct its energies to
that point." To which I reply, that undoubtedly
there is great danger ; and I hope that, before I
conclude this discourse, I shall not be found un-
faithful in regard to it ; but it appears to me that one
vital element in this abuse, grows out of the failure

THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. T9

to properly recognize the use — especicilly on tlie \ art
of the pulpit and of religion. At any rate, I have
no confidence in the expediency of an error, and
believe that the point of a good argument is often
blunted by exaggeration. I^ow, if either directly
or inferentially we deny the lawfulness of all amuse-
ment, or refuse it fair scope, we simply confound
the use with the abuse ; we press against an origin-
al tendency which will break out, and when it does
break out, finding no landmark of just discrimina-
tion, it goes where it will. All represented as alike
bad, are alike indiflerent. Give sufficient scope to
gunpowder, and it will play off harmlessly ; cram
it too tight, and it will burst the gun. Nothing can
be worse than to unduly multiply the catalogue of
sins, so that one is hedged in with restrictions, and
can hardly take a step without thinking that he
does wrong. For, when once he violates conscience,
whether by actual or by fancied transgression, his
moral sentiment is dislocated, so to speak, and in
the reckless sense of guilt, he is as likely to commit
a real fault as an unreal one. But we erect a strong
barrier against evil-doing, when we show that all
true good, all genuine enjoyment, lies in the path
of virtue — when we make it plain that sin is un-
necessary.

These observations apply especially to young men
in the city. For, in the first place. Amusement

80 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

here is especially needed. Work, in the country,
is blended with maii}^ sources of deligh t. The la-
borer sows his grain and binds his sheaves in the
glorious theatre of I^ature. Her beautiful forms
unfold before his eyes, her changing liveries diver-
sify his landscape, and her sweet songs throb
among the pulses of his toil. But, in the city, shut
up with bales and boxes ; or in the din of the
work-shop ; the requisite contrast lies apart from
the field of labor. And then, in the city, evil
amusements are more intimately associated with
the good, and, perhaps, predominate. ]^ow, when
his day's work is ended, the young man feels the
need of relaxation. He follows the impulse ; and,
if he has been taught to regard all such indulgences
as sinful, or at least as a dangerous compromise,
he thinks of no distinction, but rushes to that which
most immediately attracts his senses or tempts his
passions. Whereas, had the proper discrimination
been taught him, he would have found his evil
choice opposed by at least one more barrier of
conscience, — and it might have been a saving bar-
rier.

I am not so sure, then, that there is no danger
of encroaching upon the lawful sphere of amuse-
ment, nor w411 I suffer any fear of misrej^resenta-
tion to prevent me from asserting that s]3here.
There are degrees of amusement that are gross

THE CIECLE OF AMUSEMENT. 81

abuses ; there are Mnds of amnseraent that, tried
by any moral standard, are wrong ; but amusement
itself, relaxation, recreation, call it what you will,
finds ground in original faculties or tendencies of
our nature. Look at it for a moment. Are not
provisions made for the genial play of humor, and
the flashes of wit ? Are these original appoint-
ments, or superinduced and illegitimate qualities ?
Is not laughter as natural as tears? Tell me, mo-
rose man, tell me, ascetic, what is the significance
of a child's laugh ? Is it not spontaneous, that
clear, pealing delight, gushing up from valves of
joy that God has opened, and expressive of His
own Beneficence ? Is it not natural as the carol of
birds ; as the leap of the fountain that tosses its
jets into diamonds? Ah! time tempers that
laughter. Heavy burdens of care, and a moral
consciousness, often make it alien- to the heart.
We get into the shadow of so many dear graves;
we find so many occasions for repentant sorrow ;
or it may be so many strangling passions spring up
within us, or such a shriveling sordidness takes
possession of us ; that in after years it is less fre-
quent, and is broken. Tliere is reckless laughter,
too ; there is heartless laughter ; but when one can
give, and does give, a clear, honest laugh, or in any
way shows forth a genial sympathy, there is still
left something of the innocence of nature and the

4*

82 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

pulse of goodness. It is true, there are those, the
intensity of whose inner life, and the circumstances
of whose lot, may repress tumultuous joy ; yet
there is an attractiveness in them, as though that
which in others breaks out in laughter, were dis-
tilled into spiritual serenity, and comes forth now
and then in the sun-burst of a smile. Temperament
has much to do with all tliis. But, still, I distrust
a sour goodness, a mechanical elongation of the
face ; and in that which is natural find scope for
playfulness, and a sphere of amusement.

Moreover, in the multitude of created things,
there are many whose office it seems to be to stir
us with joy, and fill us with cheerfulness, and mix
the rugged realities of life with exquisite delight.
Sights and sounds there are that cannot be turned
into the channel of drudgery, and that elude the
grasp of science. When philosophy has finished
its deductions, and utilitarian ingenuity exhausted
itself, there is still an overplus of something that
touches the spring of pleasure — still hovers around
us that indescribable beauty which is

*' A joy for ever."

And is all this without intention in the Divine
Scheme? or does it show that there is a lawful
sphere of pleasure, and that whatever in nature,
or in human agency, ministers to this in due pro-

THE CIECLE OF AMUSEMENT. 83

portion, has its season in the economy of human
life?

But the lawfuhiess of amusement rests iirmlj
enougli upon the single fact that it is needful. Our
nature is an instrument of many chords. To keep
it in order we must play upon all its strings. JS^ot
only so, we must change its actiyities. Kelaxation
must counterbalance tension. The care-worn brain
must find refreshment in a harmless exhilaration
of spirits, and the strained intellect be released
from its task while the body is set to vigorous ex-
ercise. Xot even the higher sentiments can be
kept exclusively at work, without paralyzing the
springs of their own vitality.

There are other benefits, too, growing out of
amusement of a proper kind and degree, upon
which I will not enlarge — social benefits, meliorat-
ing the solitary and intense selfishness which is so
apt to spring up in the life of toil and of trade.

Kow the majority of religious people, probably,
will agree with what I have said in the abstract,
and yet look doubtfully upon almost any specific
amusement, as though it were a compromise with
sin, and essentially, antagonistic to the great ends
of our being. This should not be so. Let the law-
ful Circle of Amusement be acknowledged. Let
us protest against any ascetic denunciation of it ;
any confoundino; it with frivolity or vice. Let it

84 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

be elevated into the sacredness of an ordinance
established in the conditions of our nature, and, as
such, to be heeded bv the laborer in his toil, the
merchant in his close counting-room, and the stu-
dent in his closet. And let not the Pulpit keep
back its word of encouragement, from a false ex-
pediency, or a fear of the other extreme.

And, after all, I do not think that there is too
much relaxation among us. Too much of certain
kinds there may be ; but of others not enough.
The prevalent sound in the great city is not that
of joy or merriment, but of grinding labor, of per-
sistent toil, often in its motives and in its ends as
injurious to the intellect and as wasting for the
heart, as the merest routine of frivolity. Let the
aching sinews relax. Let the dull eye be kindled
with the inspiration of a lawful delight. Let the
tired brain be amused, for often when it is inert,
a power steals into it to brace it for new exertion,
and for higher achievement. " To every thing there
is a season, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven." AYithin the Scheme of Life, guarded
and restrained by its sanctities, there is a Circle of
Amusement.

But, it will be asked. What kinds and what de-
grees of amusement are lawful? Instead of en-
deavoring to answer this question by specifications,
by naming this or that as good or bad, I prefer to

THE CIRCLE OF AMUSEMENT. O >

set forth a few general principles, which may di-
rect ITS in the considerations of use and abuse — of
right and wrong. Indeed, tliere is but little effi-
cacy in a mere code of negations ; that teasing
scrupulousness, which does not at all kill the heart
of evil desire, but keeps one calculating how little
good he may do, and how much inclination he may
gratify. Far better the inspiration of positive
principle, which carries him by its own instinct
away from the wrong and into the right.

I would say, then, in the first place, in regard to
any form of relaxation or enjoyment, we may know
whether it is lawful or not — whether it fulfils the
proper ends of amusement or not — by ascertaining
whether it refreshes or exhausts our energies ;
whether our entire nature is strengthened by it, or
made weaker, especially in its higher powers ;
whether, after our indulgence, we are better fitted
for the severer duties of life, or enter upon them
with reluctance and languor, and a morbid craving
for a continuance of tlie indnlgence. In short, we
may readily ascertain wliether its tendency is to
maintain the balance of our nature or to derange
it, and to vitiate us physically and morally.

That is a vicious mode of indulgence, for in-
stance, which injures bodily health ; which violates
those physical laws, the sacredness of which I re-
ferred to in the last discourse It is vicious, whe-

86 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE.

ther the injury is involved in the kind of indulgence,
or in the descree. That method of amnsement
which involves exposure to heated and over-
crowded rooms and damp night-air, to shattered
nerves or excited passions, for these very reasons,
is wrong ; and we need go no further for a list of
scruples.

That kind of amusement, again, furnishes a suf-
ficient standard of condemnation in itself, which
lowers our tastes, and brutalizes our feelings. A
good many in this city entertain strange ideas of
amusement. For, judging by their practice, it
consists in an utter abandonment of all manliness
and decency. They not only unbend the bow,
but burn it up. Young men, whose sole concep-
tion of enjoyment is concentrated in the word
''''Fast " — who grow fast, live fast, go fast on the
track of destruction, with their own folly for a lo-
comotive, and champagne and brandy for the
steam-power ; converting themselves into liquor-
casks, propping up door-posts, hanging over rail-
ings, and startling the dull ear of night with rick-
ety melody and drunken war-whoops. There are
others, half fop and half ruffian, who divide their
time between the favorite racer and the pet pugil-
ist, and whose idea of the millennium, probably,
would be tliat of a protracted Fourtli of July.
And, yet again, those who ?eem to identify amuse-

THE CIRCLE OF AMrSE:MENT. 87

ment with the least possible exertion of thought,
and to Yalue it in proportion as it is void of any-
thing that can for a moment tax their i^easoning
facnlties, or challenge their wit.

ISTow, different conditions of life, different men,
require different amusements. I would not pre-
scribe one method for all. Nor do I believe that
recreation should be a dull, strenuous pursuit.
It should be an unbending from tight convention-
alities. It should be hearty, genial, sometimes
merely receptive ; for often thus, as I have already
said, unconscious vigor is poured into the mind,
such as comes to ns in a quiet, passive drinking-in
of nature. But there is no lawful element of
amusement in brutality, or beastliness, or empty
folly.

"VVe may be sure, too, that any amusement is
wrong in kind, or in degree, which interrupts our
proper relations, or intrudes upon higher spheres.
How many are there who can find no employment
for an evening, except in some entertainment, or
public excitement. " Where shall we go ? " is their
question. They never think that possibly they
might stay at home. That there are, or should be,
among these domestic sanctities, springs of delight,
pleasanter than any that flow beyond those walls.
He is a miserable being, who has no resources of
enjoyment w^ithin himself, b"t depends entirely

88 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

upon foreign suggestion ; wlio, in fact, must run
away from himself, and pitch into the waves of su-
perficial excitement, a perpetual whirl and glitter
that drowns all personality, and sweeps away soul
and sense. So, too, is that a miserable way of liv_
ing, w^hich destroys the personality of the Home ;
wliich finds there no indigenous pleasures, but
makes us think we must call into it a perpetual
rout and confusion, or turn home out of doors.
That is a miserable style of living which accepts
none of the responsibilities of home ; does not re-
cognize its significance, but makes it a mere den
to eat and sleep in, and for the rest leaves it empty
and cheerless. My friends, in this method of liv-
ing, there are interests involved, deep as the roots
of national character, vital as the springs of a peo-
ple's life, l^eglect the claims of home for the so-
licitations of amusement ; let all the ideals of life
be comprehended in what is termed "Society;"
and there strikes a rot into the holiest relations.
Eeverential ties are loosened, and the sanctities of
domestic honor valued lightly. And then the roots
of national stability are torn up. Institutions are
fashions that change with the months, and the
people, and the people's history, become a game
of foot-ball. But happy is the land whose granite
'leart is warmed by sacred hearth-fires, and in
vhose homes are nourished venerable associations

THE CIRCLE T AMUSEMENT. 89

and local attachments. These intense sympathies
are not less but more favorable to broader claims.
These enrich the blood, and toughen the fibres of
a noble patriotism. These impart that vitality
which withstands oppression, and clings to the
right. These send some element of purity and
honor into a nation's life, lend it that identity of
soul which stirs to this common suggestion of the
altar and the home ; and, hemming it around with
the father's ashes, and the children's hopes, make
it a land worth living and worth dying for.

Indeed, where the life of the home is neglected,
there is no true manliness. Fathers ! whose sons
are growing up miserable shoots of dissipation,
what nourishment have their best faculties receiv-
ed at home ? Mothers ! whose daughters are hap-
py only in the whirl of vanity and extravagance,
what has been their example ? Members of fash-
ionable society ! there is not only excess, but in-
expressible evil, in any method of amusement that
breaks up domestic quietude, and leaves no time
for domestic responsibilities, and no delight in
domestic j^leasure.

And this point upon which I have dwelt, may
stand as an illustration of the wrong of any amuse-
ment which unfits us for serious occupation, which
intrudes upon the time claimed by other and higher

90 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

things, and which renders effort, thought, or reii-
gion distasteful to us.

Let me observe, again, that there are some
amusements which are injurious through their as-
sociations, yet which, in themselves, may not be
intrinsically wrong. It Is doubtful, to be sure,
whether these associations have not become so in-
herent in the system as to render it incurable, and
make all endeavors to extricate it useless. And
yet, I am inclined to believe that such an extrica-
tion is possible, and in some instances, to a good
degree, has been effected. It depends much upon
the people whether it shall be more generally so,
or not. But of one thing I am certain, that where
incentives to drunkenness and opportunities for
licentiousness, are kept as parts of the machinery
of any amusement, no pure and good mind should
patronize it. I said I would not specify ; and yet,
that I may be distinctly understood, I will say that
I do not share to its full extent, the feeling of so
many of the wise and virtuous against the drama.
I believe it may be, and in some instances is, ex-
tricated from its worst associations. I believe if
Shakespeare can be read in an unobjectionable
way, it is possible to represent him in an unobjec-
tionable way. But I have but little sympathy with
it as it is generally brought before the public. I
have nothing but denunciation for it, so long as its

THE CIECLE OF AMUSE:MENT. 01

doors open into the dram-sli023 and the brothel. I
have no respect for the wit that sharpens itself
with impure suggestion, or the genius that vents
its energy in profaneness. Indeed, in all this, there
is little that marks real genius or wit — there is not
only immorality, but an evident poverty of inven-
tion. And they are most to blame who encourage
these accessories ; who will sit with their wives and
their daughters, and hear that which they would
shut out of their parlors, or kick into the street.

Let me say, again, that any amusement is intrin-
sically either right or wrong ; though, as I have
already remarked, different modes of recreation
may be needed by different persons. But, so far
as the moral quality of a thing is concerned, if
wrong for one it is not right for another. For in-
stance, I doubt the validity of any amusement that
is thought proper for the people but improper for
the minister. I know that the clergyman should
weigh well the tendencies of his example, and, if
at all, err on the side opposite a dangerous extreme.
Let any one ask himself, " What is there in this
amusement which makes it right for me, but wrong
for the minister ? What is there in it which lets
me enjoy it coolly, but wonder so much at him ?
Is it a latent conviction in my mind that it is es-
sentially wrong, or only a professional incongruity
on his part? If a professional incongruity, why?"

92 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

This may lead to two discoveries. In the first place,
we may find that we entertain a wrong conception
of the ministerial oflace, and of the relations of the
clergyman as a man. Some appear to regard the
minister himself as a sort of institution, of which
the color of the coat, the tie of the neck-cloth, and
the cast of the features are essential parts. Indeed,
it is not certain that a dyspeptic hue is not one of
the requisite symbols. At least, it is, I fear, too
much the case that the man is absorbed in the of-
fice, and the office regarded in a mechanical and
conventional way. The true minister, as I conceive,
is a true man, with the head and heart of a man,
who is fitted for his work, not by his unnaturalness,
but by his universal sympathies and vital experi-
ence, and who is none the less acceptable in my
sorrows because he has been a participant in my
lawful joys ; who does not come to me mechani-
cally, but w^ith the hand and the voice of a tried
friend. I believe that a minister's power with the
people, so far as the efficacy of the truth depends
upon any organ, is in proportion to his manliness,
w^hich should be pure from taint, but at the same
time a complete manliness. If any kind of amuse-
ment, then, is lawful, there is nothing in his office
that should prevent his due participation in it.
And if he deems it lawful, let him not skulk about
it, but join in it openly. But, on the other hand,

THE CmCLE OF A:MUSE]NtENT. 9i3

if it is wrong, let him not only avoid it, and lift up
his voice unsparingly against it, but let those who
wonder at his presence, ask if their sense of the in-
congruity is not a rebuke of themselves as well of
him. I have said nothing here to lighten the con-
scientious scruples of the minister — let him be so-
licitous and watchful. But, I repeat, any amuse-
ment is intrinsically right or wrong, and not mere-
ly the clergyman, but everybody else, is bound to
learn and to act upon the distinction.

I observe, finally, that while there is a lawful
Circle of Amusement, it is not a circle enclosing
all other claims, but included within others. A
fearful mistake is made by those who live as though
the former were the true idea ; who make pleasure
the horizon and the ultimate term of life; who live
only in the external and the sensual ; who treat
trivial things as though they were paramount, and
supreme interests as subordinate ; who, in fact, re-
cognize no great end in life at all ; who detect none
of its solemn meanings ; who pass among its signifi-
cant lights and shadows in the heedlessness and
flutter of a perpetual holiday. A mere life of plea-
sure— need I describe the incongruity, the moral
hideousness, the guilt of that which so palpably vio-
lates the ordinance that gives a season and a time
for every thing under the sun ? ^ay, consider the
disgust, the dissatisfaction and horror which it

94 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

brings into the experience of those who thus waste
and desecrate the privileges of existence. A life
of mere Pleasure ! A little while, in the spring-
time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in
the jub:lee of health, it may seem well enough.
But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when
age comes, and sorrow, and death. A life of plea-
sure ! What does it look like, when these great
changes beat against it — when the realities of eter-
nity stream in ? It looks like the fragments of a
feast, when the sun shines upon the withered gar-
lands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and
the dead lees of wine. And are any of you thus
living, absorbed with painted deceits and the evan-
escent sparkle of indulgence ? Are these the chief
delights of hundreds and thousands in this very
city ? And yet around them all is life, with its
relations, life with its mysteries, life with its
privileges, life rushing into eternity ; while, from
its sorrows as well as its joys ; from its neglected
opportunities, from its deep heart, and from its
graves, there comes the declaration, — " To every
thing " — not to mere amusement, O ! pleasure-
seeker ; not to mere indulgence, O ! immortal
spirit clothed in mortal conditions— '^ to every tiling
there is a season, and a time to every purpose un-
der the heaven."

THE THREE VICES.

V.

THE THREE VICES.

" They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick ; they
have beaten me, and I felt it not : when shall I awake ? I will
seek it yet again."

Pao VERBS xxni. 35.

No survey of the Moral Aspects of City Life,
however general, will permit us to overlook those
grosser forms of evil by which so many of its
thousands are tempted and overcome. These, in
fact, largely contribute to that moral significance
of the metropolis, of which I spoke in the first
Discourse. The array of buildings, the luxury and
f-plendor, the countless wheels of trafiic, are little
compared to the spiritual issues that work within ;
the flashes and the shadows that come out from the
defeat or the victory of human souls. Perhaps
you regard only the material city, with its tiara of
wealth and its sceptre of commerce. But think of
what goes on in its heart, deep as the heart of man !
Think, among all these roofs, what a theatre of
grandeur a single gaJTet may be ; its walls burst-

5

08 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE.

iiig away into an immensity broad as the moral
relations of our natm-e ; its transactions vital as the
sum and essence of life ; its spectators those who,
from higher seats, sympathize with earth, and re-
joice when one sinner repents. Amidst the pomp
and brilliance of gay saloons, think what darkness,
and blasting, and inner lightnings ! Think, not-
withstanding the firm streets, and the stability of
the houses, on what surges men are afloat, tossed
to and fro, and drifting in tempest and in wreck:
to use the graphic language of the context, feeling
like those " that lie down in the midst of the sea,
or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast," crying
out, " they have stricken me, and I was not sick ;
they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall
I awake ? I will seek it yet again."

Especially, then, we cannot pass by the regions
of vice, if we would dwell upon the moral lessons
of the city, any more than we can fail to see, with
our outward eyes, its symbols and opj)ortunities all
around us. And, as we pause for this purpose,
we perceive that, out of the general ground of
vice, there rise three vices more prominent than
the rest, and which peculiarly force themselves
upon our attention. Let us, for a few moments,
study their character and their features.

Tlie first, whether we regard its extension
through space and numbers, or its vast circle of

THE TITREE VICES. 99

consequences, may be truly termed colossal. Its
shame falls upon almost every hearth, and its in-
fluence poisons all the arteries of public good.
There is hardly a quarrel or a crime that cannot
be traced to it, and it has, perhaps, the lion's share
in the entire stock of human misery. Like other
vices, it is insidious — its whole method is delusive
and dangerous. Admit its premiss, and you are
in the whirl of its fatal conclusions. It has
various disguises, yet under all its power is sure
and deadly. It employs the charter of custom,
and the solicitations of friendship ; it calls itself
*' Good-fellowship," and " Anti-fanaticism." But
it is no respecter of classes. In parlors and hovels,
in rags and broad-cloth, its dupes stumble and die.
It strikes manly strength and beauty with untimely
rottenness ; genius is drowned by it ; the brain-
links of logic are broken, and the tongue of elo-
quence utters a tuneless babble. Indeed, it has
the art to cheat men out of their very personality,
and to change them into maniacs and fools. No
sanction of the moral nature or of the aflections
is too strong for it ; it kills self-respect, and breeds
monstrous issues in the wells of natural love. And
yet this vice, that has all the diseases and the woes
in its employment ; that is so brutal and disgust-
ing in its specific forms ; when we consider the
scale of its ravages, dilates intt the horribly sub-

100 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

lime. No pestilence has wronglit "with more
terrible fatality ; no conqueror has shed so much
blood. Gather together the bones buried at the
foot of the pyramids, and the mangled forms
crushed by the heel of battle at Waterloo — from
all earth's fields of war call up the dead — and
there will answer to the summons no such army
as the host of victims this might summon from
the church-yards of the land. In the city, of
course, as the centre of so much passion and appe-
tite, it has a dreadful sway. And, whether it
hangs out its signals flaring to the street, or tin-
kles in crystal goblets in the halls of -fashion, it is
known — at least, wives, mothers, desolate children
know it — as the vice that puts the cup to the lip,
and steals away all that is dearest in the life.

The second vice to which I refer, is not so
widely spread as Intemperance, but its fruits are
hardly less terrible. Gaming appeals not merely
to the passion of avarice, but to that love of
hazard, that fascination of chance, which has such
a mysterious influence over men. Perhaps the
professional gamester, unscrupulous in his methods
and certain of his end, is animated chiefly by the
spirit of gain. And, in all the ranks of rascality,
I know of none more odious, except those who,
like him, practice vice with a hard heart, and a
cool head. In other men. the indulgence of vice

THE THKEE VICES. 101

blends with the play of the emotional nature ;
passion swamps the brain. But this man frains
himself to restrain passion, with all the solicitude
of a stoic. He will not drink enough to flush his
blood or obscure his mind, lest his ingenious pro-
cess of villany should be balked by some error of
calculation, or some jar of sympathy. And there
he sits with his spider eyes, and deliberately plucks
his victim — plucks his money, his honor, his very
heart-strings. But in the case of many, I repeat,
a spirit of desperate enterprise blends with the
desire for gain. They are fascinated by the ex-
citement and the hope that quiver on " the haz-
ard 01 the die." I may observe, by the way, that
it is a spirit not confined to the gaming-house,
and does not always operate with cards and dotted
bones. How much of it throbs in the arteries of
trade, and is dignified by the name of " Specida-
tionf^ But in the gaming-house, it is involved
with certain guilt, and with results more or less
liorrible. Besides, there is not only the magic of
luck to tempt a man, but the hope of retrieval,
the fury of loss, and the stake that is backed by
despair. I need not say, in trite words — a dread-
ful vice, a vice fearfully prevalent in the great
city. Hark to the click of cards, the rumbling
balls, the rattling dice ! That is the artillery of
hazard ; those are the sounds that carry anguish

102 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE.

into a thousand tearful, sliuddering hearts. Those
are the implements with which men try to shirk
God's ordinance of labor, and lay a spell on for-
tune. Click and rumble ! there they strike ! — the
maddest passions of the human heart. There they
go ! rejDutation, happiness, and love ; the employ-
er's money, the friend's claim, the wife's dear
relic; all the sanctities of the man thrown down
and lost. What preaching do we require against
this vice, more powerful than that which the in-
terior scenery — the breasts and souls of those pre-
sent in the gamin g-rooni' — might furnish ? Terri-
ble is the evil that goes on thus, night after night,
in the city. Show forth, O ! interests that are
sacrificed there, and tarnish the golden piles with
tears and blood. Roll out, clouds of pent up
agony and despair, and dim the glittering chan-
deliers. Blossom, O ! walls, with the tapestry of
remorse, the ruin and the crime, that are linked so
fatally with the gambler's vice.

The last vice to which I refer, I suppose must be
limited to general terms, and meagerly described,
lest its very illustrations should become its allies.
ISTone, however, strikes a deeper blow at the sanc-
tities of life. It involves man's degradation and
woman's shame. It reaches wide and far under
the respectabilities of society, and is concealed by
many a whited sepulchre. It brands disgrace upon

THE THREE VICES. 103

one sex, but with the other carries a bold front
into high places and pure air. It is a sewer of
uncleanness that under-flows society, and sends a
taint through the public morals. It is tlie tempta-
tion to a thousand wrongs, and the fruitful spring
of crime. It is the leprosy that cleaves to great
cities. It is the abomination that has walked the
streets of Corinth, and Rome, and Pompeii, as it
now walks the streets of Paris, and London, and
IS^ew York ; always an agent of social dissolution
— an indication of national decay — in proportion
as it is restrained, or shameless. It carries wdth
itself the curse of perverted affections and violated
law — the curse that saps the intellect, and brutal-
izes the heart, and burns to the bone. How can
W' e describe it more concisely, w4th more awful
impressiveness, than it is described in this very
book of Proverbs, embodied as " the strange wo-
man . . . which forsaketh the guide of lier youth,
and forgetteth the covenant of her God." " Her
house," adds the wise man, " Her house inclineth
unto death, and her paths unto the dead. Kone
that go unto her return again neither take they
hold of the paths of life."

Such, then, are the three vices which are more
prominent than all the rest in the midst of the
great metropoHs. It may appear needless to have
mentioned them, and useless to speak against

104 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

them ; such a deep seat have they in the corrup-
tion of the human heart. But, as I said in the
commencement, no moral survey of city life would
permit us to jDass them by, and their rootedness
and prevalence only makes it the more necessary
that we should speak against them. And, in con-
ducting this appeal, I know of no better argu-
ments against vice in general, and these three
vices in particular, than those which may be
drawn from the language of the text itself.

Taking up the suggestions which this affords, I
observe, then, in the first place, that the votaries
of any vice do not realize the injury which it in-
flicts. Much of that injury they may be conscious
of, but not of its depth or full extent. This is
illustrated by the fact that what they would shrink
from with horror in the commencement of their
career, becomes in a little while the easy and un-
conscious movement of a habit. Set before any
young man, just starting in life, the lowest stages
of drunkenness. Show him into what a physical
deformity, a tenement of disease, the votary of
intemperance has converted the goodly fabric of
his body. Show him the intellectual wreck ; the
dislocation and paralysis of the affections. And
do you think that the drunkard himself realizes
this — habitually realizes it, I mean — with the force
with which it strikes the other ? No, the flame of

THE THREE VICES. 105

appetite has seared the nerves of sensitiveness,
and his spiritual acuteness has been bhmted in
proportion to the depth of his descent. The two
emotions left to him are the impulse and the
gratification, without a moral check between.
The habit that degrades him, that brutalizes
him, that makes him much lower than the brute,
has become as spontaneous as his pulsation or
his breath. And that marvelous humanity which
was once a cliild, shielded from all roughness
in the solicitude of a mother's love, and that
blossomed into strength and hope, like you, young
man ; w^hich felt gladly the blessing of existence,
and felt proudly its claims in life ; see now, how it
is kicked about, and battered, and spit upon — the
dilapidated shrine of a soul that has burnt too low
in its socket to reveal to itself its own debasement.
" Aha ! " says he, " they have stricken me, and
I was not sick ; they have beaten me, and I felt it
not." Indeed, it seems to me that this is the most
awful consequence of any vice — to live in it spon-
taneously, without any higher ideal, without any
moral sensibility; to become level with it, and
closed up in it ; the entire humanity contracted,
the arteries dried up, the spiritual nerves benumb-
ed, the nature discrowned and narrowed to one in-
tense desire, one passionate gratification ; so that
others see it, and mark the meanness and the loss.

106 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

but the victim himself perceives it not. We think
too hardly, my friends, of positive pain. There is
hope in that ; there is mercy in that ; but in loss,
privation, deadness of faculty, therms retribution.
There's retribution ; not in what is suffered hy the
man, but in what is wasted ^the man. And the
slave of vice comes to just this — he wastes away.
Young man ! put by the implements of hazard ;
there is a deadly magic in them to dry up the
sweetness of nature, and to narrow the heart into
a hell. Turn from the way that goes " down to the
chambers of death." Not only because sensuality
stamps its ghastliness upon the face, and plants its
torment in the bones ; but because of the wel-
comed degradation, the unconscious shame. Dash
down the glass. Why suffer your faculties, your
very nature, to be consumed in its depths ? In the
light of an honest pride, of a manly dignity, con-
sider the essential meanness of all vice. Not only
has it gained complete mastery over your moral
sense, drowned your truest convictions, and per-
verted your best feelings ; but see what a picture
of humanity you present — snoring in the bar-room,
reeking in the gutter, grinning like an idiot,
whooping like a savage, tumbled about like a foot-
ball, the lines of intelligence chiseled from your
face or daubed with blood and bruises, your lips
black with blasphemy, your brow fanned by licen-

THE THREE VICES. 107

tious passion, your heart dry, your brain hot, your
memory shattered, a bankrupt in your limbs, a
caricature of a man ! This is sometimes called
" Pleasure " — but it is Yice ; a spell so potent that,
Avhile it strikes body and soul with grievous wounds,
they are not realized, and its victims are often un-
conscious of, or even rejoice in their degradation,
crying out, as it were — " They have stricken me,
and I was not sick ; they have beaten me, and I felt
it not."

But there is another characteristic of vice which
may seem to, but does not, contradict this. I have
been speaking of the unconscious degradation into
which the drunkard, or gamester, or libertine, de-
clines ; but I remark now, that there are also
streams of consciousness which break in upon this
guilty routine. There are seasons when a vague
sense of misery and loss steals into the soul, like
the sense of a dream, and the wretched victim cries
out, — " When shall I awake ? " For, although the
best faculties of our nature may be drugged into
an habitual lethargy, no man can utterly rid him-
self of his manhood. It loill startle him sometimes,
wdth a feeling of incongruity, a fitful, nightmare
consciousness. The paralyzed nerves will, for a
moment, thrill again ; for a moment, into the dark-
ness that enwraps his spirit, the clear blue heaven,
and all the sanctities of life, will flow. Indeed, is
not this a very common experience with those w^ho

s

108 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

are far gone in vice ? Fain would I think it is so,
for there is hopefulness in the fact. Fain would I
believe that, like one who, standing under a canopy
of cloud and of shower, sees afar off the fields
where the sunshine is glancing upon the green
leaves and the corn, the prodigal, sometimes,
through a lift in his moral darkness, catches a
glimpse of the far-off past ; apprehends the con-
trast between his own condition and a true and
healthy life ; and feels that he is living in an awful
dream. It may all be forgotten, and the next mo-
ment he may spontaneously yield to the sweep of
passion. But, whatever the result, I apprehend that
there is no testimony against vice so forcible and
so terrible, as that which now and then bursts from
the lips of its very victims — with a sense of the
spell which they have woven around their own
souls, a sense of its incongruity and essential mise-
ry, and a sense of their impotence, crying out, —
*' When, O ! when shall we awake ? "

And yet, yielding to the current of habit, and
quickly lapsing, the slave of vice exclaims — " I
will seek it yet again !" For, of all the rest, this
is the most fearful characteristic of vice— its irre-
sistible fas cmati on ; the ease with which it sweeps
away resolution, and wins a man to forget his mo-
mentary out-look, his throb of penitence, in the
embrace of indulgence. ^' I will seek it yet

THE THKEE VICES. 109

again." Dreadful charm ! that opens the gates of
temptation, and closes the door of hope ! There
has been, perhaps, a season of recovery ; of fresh
determination, and solemn vows. The soul has
begun to feel the gush of health, and life to put on
its natural look. The faces of friends are bright-
ening up, and hearts that were wrung with anguish
beat with hope. When, all at once, the old temp-
tation passes by, looks upon him with the sweet,
insidious fascination, and the sinews of his purpose
shrink before it ; his nature is all weakness once
more, and, sadly and faintly, like one who is de-
scending an abyss, his words come back upon the
ear,— "I will seek it yet again !" This, I say, is
the most fearful characteristic of vice. You can
never tell when it has lost its hold of you. When
you think that all is clear, some subtle cord may
remain to trip you, and drag you down. Ask the
reformed libertine, when he can be certain that
the sparks of evil passion are quenched ; ask him
who has renounced cards and dice, what would be
the result of a single game ; ask the man who with
tears and prayers has set his name to the pledge,
for what he would risk a single taste — even the
smell of the flask ; and their answer will testify to
the potency of vice over those who have once felt
its sway. And this is enough to enforce the pre-
cept—do not tamper with it in any shape, to any

110 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

degree. No man who lias entered upon its indul-
gence ever meant to be its slave. He would only
seek " a little pleasure " — some " relaxation natural
to the exuberance of youth and health." But let
the fate of the Gamester, Libertine, and Sot, warn
you against its very beginning. Repel the first
solicitation, as though it threw open for you the
ghastly chambers of death. Refuse the first game,
as though upon the tempting heap before you, you
saw spots of suicidal blood. Set down the first
glass, as though its ruddy circles spread out into
tliat great maelstrom which carries down the wreck
of thousands. The first step ; O ! avoid it ; for
thus began the wretched infatuation of multitudes
who, on this very Sabbath, in this very city, in bar-
rooms and haunts of shame, have said — " I will
seek it yet again ! I will seek it yet again ! "

My friends, I might go on and delineate the
physical woes ; the injuries one by one inflicted on
the intellect, and the heart, and the moral sense,
by these Three Yices. But in all T could not com-
prehend more than is involved in these words be-
fore us — words which describe the spiritual wast-
ing and paralysis ; the fitful, startling conscious-
ness ; the dreadfuF infatuation of their votaries.
Upon the grave of some such votary, how often
might be written an inscription like this: — "Here
lies one who w^as kindly nurtured, and well taught,

THE THREE VICES. Ill

but who grew up to spurn the dearest relations,
and phmged into the world to enjoy life. In the
great city he gratified every appetite, and tried
every form of Yice. At length began to appear
the inevitable results. The stamp of dissipation
was set upon his face, and his hold on respectabil-
ity was shaken. He neglected business. He de-
scended, step by step, from the man of high life to
the kennel-sot. He was tormented by the worst
forms of disease. He died by inches. At times,
to make his condition more awful by the contrast,
glimpses of better days broke in upon him — the
face of his father, the sad look of his mother, or of
his neglected wife, whom he hurried to the grave.
But he was in the setting of a dreadful current, and
he went on. And so, quickly, the end came. He
raved at it, he struggled with it, he clenched his
hands and tried to pray. No one cared for him.
And so he died ; while from the drinking-house
hard by, peals of laughter broke over his cold re-
mains, from those who had shared his prosperity,
joined him in his revelry, and forgotten that he
had ever lived."

Or, perhaps, as an appropriate epitaph, it might
be said of him, that he was one of those who, hav-
ing surrendered his own life to sensuality, and run
through the entire circle of profligacy, was not
merelv a victim of vice, but a seducer of others ;

112 MORAL ASPECTS OF CriY LIFE.

one who most vividly embodies our conception ot*
a fiend ; not a nature cast down in spiritual impo
tence, and groping in tlie chaos of its faculties, but
one who tempts men to sin, and delights in the
work. He was a gamester, with a cool brain, and
an eje like a hawk ; paring away the scruples of
the uninitiated, feeding with c-unning suggestion
the flame of hope, and laughing at the hell of rage
and terror into which it finally turned. He was a
libertine, relieving the tedium of satiety by con-
taminating the purity and pandering to the pas-
sions of another. He was a strong-headed wine-
bibber, and he put the cup to another's lips to
make him a toy for his amusement, and the butt
of his jokes, and then sent him home to his friends
a madman or a fool. He was that meanest of
all God's creatures whom we are compelled to call
human — that thing bloated with sin, bankrupt in
principle, an excrescence on society, rotten himself
and rotting others — " A Man About Town."

But, I say, whatever delineation we might give
of the course and the consequences of vice, these
words contain the awful significance of the wliole
— " They have stricken me, and I was not sick ;
they have beaten me, and I felt it not ; when shall
I awake ? I will seek it yet again."

I will say briefly, in closing, what, did time per-
mit, I should urge more at length. I have select-

THE THREE YIOES. 113

ed Intemperance, Gaming, Licentiousness, as the
special topics of this discom'se, not only because
they are the most prominent representatives of
Vice in general, but because they are peculiarly
capable of being removed by public action. Their
power may be broken, and their influence narrowed,
by Laio / and it becomes every citizen to act upon
his responsibility to this eff'ect. I am aware that
legal penalties cannot kill appetite, or quench in-
ward dispositions. But if this is an objection to a
penal statute in one instance, it is an objection in
all instances. The law against murder cannot pre-
vent the murderous disposition — the penalty for
stealing does not make one any less a thief at heart.
Law is not a moral and regenerating force ; it is
restrictive, and has reference to overt acts. And
if, in this capacity, it is legitimate and efiicacious
anywhere, it is so when it confiscates the imple-
ments of the Gamester, or stops the traffic of the
dealer in intoxicating drinks. I repeat, therefore,
that it becomes every citizen to exert all his influ-
ence in erecting legal safeguards against these
monstrous vices. It is a shameful inconsistency,
that the law should busy itself only with conse-
quences, and neglect and even foster causes. It
leaves uncared for the hot-beds of iniquity, and
shuts up the vagrant and the thief. With one
hand it licenses a dram-shop, and with the other

114 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

builds a gallows. Hearer, where are your influence
and your vote in this matter ?

Again, Public Sentiment is a powerful agent in
regard to vice. How many of us are implicated,
unconsciously it may be, with these very immoral-
ities w^hich all so unhesitatingly condemn ? How
widely-spread, in community, under different names,
is the prin€ijc>le of gaming. How many of us ta-
citly overlook that licentiousness in one sex, for
which public opinion blasts the other. How much
are thousands who consider themselves sober and
temperate people, to blame for drunkenness — sanc-
tioning the use which leads to such fearful abuse,
and throwing the veil of their respectability over
its tendencies and its horrors. Prevalent vices,
after all, do not grow directly out of the hearts of
the absolutely vicious. They have secret and far-
reaching roots in customs and opinions maintained
unconsciously, or deemed to be innocent, and every
one should ask himself — ^how much do I contribute
to that corrupt sentiment in the body-politic at
large, of w^hich these gross vices are only the ul-
cerous indications ?

But, at least, in regard to this matter of Yice,
let each see to himself that he is pure and free.
And, with this admonition to all, I turn especially
to the young men in this great metropolis; for to
these Three Yices in particular are they exposed.

THE THEEE VICES. 115

And to them I saj, beware of a false notion of in-
dependence and manliness ; beware of that miscon-
ception of these qualities which exhibits itself in
swaggering and roughness ; in the quantity which
you can drink, and the ingenuity with which you
can blaspheme. Be not so solicitous to rebut all
suspicion of " greenness " as to come out in vice
full blossom. Better live green and die green,
than to be thus rotten before your prime. And do
not give up the feeling of regard for parents — of
veneration and obedience. Depend upon it, though
the world may not all be justly styled a glittering
masquerade, you will only too soon learn the emp-
tiness of many of its professions, the fair-weather
deceit of its promises, and the frail tenure of its
friendships. But the flame in those old bosoms,
that kindled over your cradle, and glowed through
long hours of watching, still burns on with an ar-
dor that no change can abate, and that death's
cold river can hardly quench. And if this paren-
tal love is thus strong in its nature, when cherished
and responded to it is mighty in its influence over
us amidst the thick temptations of life.

And I tell you nothing new, but something that
is profoundly and solemnly true, when I urge you
to seek the control and the guidance of Eeligious
Principle. This alone can give you firmness
amidst the solicitations of passion and of appetite.

116 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

By this comes tlie resolution that is born of earn-
est prayer. This furnishes the inspired wisdom
that refutes the sophistries of vice. This reveals
those spiritual realities which enable us by contrast
to detect the hollowness of splendid guilt, the folly
of mis-spent time, and the degradation and the
misery that are mixed with indulgence.

Young man ! have you known something of the
wayofYice? Kow, in this quiet Sabbath-hour,
renounce it, turn from it, forever ! Let your de-
cision be for the good and the upward course. Go
not forward on that fatal path. Say not, O ! say
not — " I will seek it yet again ! "

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES,

VI.

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES.

— For his word was with power.

Luke iv. 32.

The doctrine of Jesus, which went down to the
roots of man's spiritual nature, and moved its
deepest springs, was so different from the drj,
hard formalities of their customary teachers, that
the people were astonished at it. It was more
than instruction — it was a moral impulse and
awakeninrg. Not only did they perceive its truth
— thejfelt it. " For his word was with power."

But, while this was the quality of all the Sa-
viour's teachings, it is not improper to say that
every noble sentiment, every truth spoken in love,
in some degree partakes of it. It is the highest
function of any great utterance, not to impart in-
struction merely, but inspiratio7i ^ not to direct
men over the same dead level of facts, but to en-
large their nature, and to lift them up. I^ay,
even a false and vile utterance, when it takes hold
of the sentiinents of men, becomes a power — a

120 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE.

mischievous force — whose influence is incalculable.
The mis-statements with which it deceives the in-
tellect may be easily refuted, but it is difficult to
drive out the impression with which it has inocu-
lated the entire system.

In one word, truths, opinions, ideas, spoken or
written, are not merely facts, or entities, they are
forces / and it is easy to discover their supremacy
over all the energies of the material world. Every
invention, every utensil or vehicle, like the loco-
motive or the telegraph, assists society — ^is a means
by which it is developed ; but the developing pow-
er itself is the intelligence which runs to and fro
with the rail-car, is the sentiment which leaps along
the wires. Everything grows from the centre out-
ward ; and so humanity grows from moral and in-
tellectual inspirations. The globe on which we
live unfolds its successive epochs through flood
and fire, and gravitation carries it majestically on-
ward towards the constellation Hercules. But the
history of our race — the great drama for which the
physical world afibrds a theatre — is developed by
more subtile forces. Whatever touches the nerves
of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position,
is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning.
It projects us into another sjDhere ; it throws us
upon a higher or lower plane of activity. Thus,
a martyr's blood may become not only " the seed

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 121

of the Church," but of far-reaching revohitions ;
and the philosopher's abstraction beats down feu-
dal castles, and melts barriers of steel. One great
principle will tell more upon the life of a people,
than all its discoveries and conquests. Its charac-
ter in historj will be decided, not by its geogra-
phical conformation, J3ut by its ideas. In the great
sum of social destiny, England is not that empire
whose right arm encircles the northern lakes, and
whose left stretches far down into the Indian Sea ;
but an influence w^hich is vascular ^'ith the genius
of Bacon and Locke, and Shakespeare and Milton.
And our own America, reaching from ocean to
ocean, and crowned with its thirtv stars, is not a
mere territory on the map, a material Aveight
among nations, but a sentiment — we will trust and
believe — a sentiment to go abroad to other people,
and into other times, caught from apostles of lib-
erty, and kindled by champions of human right.

As we look around then, upon the great city,
which, more than any other place, represents the
form and working of the age, let us remember that
what is stirrino^ in the world's heart, and chano-incr
the face of the times, is not really the influence of
invention, or art ; is not, primarily, the mighty com-
merce that clusters about its wharves, or the traffic
that rolls through its streets ; but that intelligence,

that sentiment, those thouglits and opinions, whose

6"

122 MOI?AL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

written or spoken word is power. And these social
forces, more potent in the long run than machinery,
or money, or even than custom, we find sufficiently
well represented for my present purpose by the
Press ^ the Plaffonn^ and {\\q Puljnt. I do not speak
exclusively or exactly, but very generally, when I
select the Press as the organ of Literature, the
Platform of Seieiioe, and the Pulpit of Morality
and Religion. And, my friends, these — Literature,
Science, Morality and Religion, are the great
Forces of our age, and have a significance which
we cannot overlook in surveying the Moral Aspects
of City Life. Let us, then, endeavor to discover
something of this significance.

E^o organ of intellectual and moral influence, in
other words of Social Force, is in our day more
prominent than the Press. For it is the great
vehicle of Literature, Avhether its form be that of
book or journal, whether the subject matter be
esthetic or political. Sending its influence far be-
yond the reach of the human voice, and into the
most private hours, it gathers to itself all the fa-
cilities of the age. Its productions, fast as steam
can make and cari-y them, go abroad through all the
land, silent as snow-flakes, but potent as thunder.
Everybody who has anything to say rushes into
print, besides a good many who have nothing to say.
Few, in the present time, write for immortality, but

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 123

a good many for contemporary hearing. The old
authors, who wrought their lives into a single book,
worked for a lineal fame — an audience stretching
downward through generations ; but now, the Press
is simply an additional tongue of steam and light-
ning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his
instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day.
His audience is broad, but the interest may be
local and ephemeral. The good and the evil of
this literary activity, are too apparent to require
much discussion. Cheap publications bring the
purest style and the best thoughts of the wise and
the good, within the reach of all classes ; but, by
the same facility, bundles of folly and of moral
pestilence come into our kitchens and chambers,
like tlie frogs of Egypt. In all this, however,
there is one fact worthy consideration. It is only
merit of some kind that lives, and really goes
abroad. Ten thousand works, much heavier than
the brains from which they spring, drop by their
own gravity, and are cast out and trodden under
foot of men. But that which attracts and moves
the people, is a literary power ; sometimes, alas !
an evil power — the power of genius burning into
the heart its own intense and unholy passion, or
fascinating the intellect with its splendid sophis-
tries. And, surely, there can hardly be a keener
retribution, than the consciousness of having writ-

124 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

ten a strong, bad book ; ixjpower that seizes upon
the minds and characters of men, and heaves np
their inner life with wicked suggestions, and peo-
ples it with lascivious imagery ; a book thrown out,
perha23s, when the intellect was misty, and the
blood hot, and repented of with tears in more sober
days, but going down, from generation to genera-
tion, to inject its poison and to leave its scars.
Doubtless such books do live and do their work ;
doubtless such instances there are of evil intellect
and gifted sin. But, after all, my friends, are they
not rare instances ? Is it not true that those books
at the present day, which pass eagerly from hand
to hand, and move the popular heart, are, by a
great majority, inspired with truth, and pregnant
with the spirit of humanity ? To say nothing of
those volumes which communicate simple facts, or
whose tone as well as purpose is religious and
moral, consider what is the character of those works
of fiction which are widely read and applauded.
It is not misanthrojjy, it is not Werter-sentimental-
ity or Rochefoucauld-skepticism, it is not unclean
wit. It is the tale that throws a genial light upon
our common humanity; that reveals the spirit of
chivalry shining in weather-beaten faces and
throbbing in humble hearts; that casts a halo of
glory around childhood's innocence and faith,
strikes out sparks of goodness from the netlier

THE THKEE SOCIAL FORCES. 125

depths, brings up to our sympathies the ragged
and the castaway, and shows God's bhie sky of
pitying tenderness bending over them alL A wo-
man takes up her pen to delineate a great social
W'rong, and the story becomes as the lightning that
shines from one end of the heaven to the other.
It takes hold of the souls of people, as formal
logic and sharp statistics never did. The press
cannot send it out fast enough. From hand to
hand, from land to land, it leaps like sparks of
electricity. Translators seize upon it, dramatists
mold it, poets catch themes from it, bards sing it.
It is in vain to send out other books to catch and
stop it. They do not ride by its side, but are
sucked down in its wake. It is as useless to hurl
counter-arguments, as to attempt to batter down
the Atlantic when a storm has got hold of it.
Such a storm-gale is the poj^ular feeling and con-
viction that responds to this book.

And so, my friends, I think we shall iind that
when a work of literature becomes really a living
element — a social force — -it is commonly not only
a work of merit, but a work of essential truth and
humanity. But, in considering the moral signifi-
cance of the Press, at the present day, with espe-
cial interest must we regard that most diffused
and worderful of all its products — the daily neios-
^ajper. I say wonderful, for I know of nothing

126 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

more so. It is an embodiment of the time, not
only because it contains tlie passing intelligence,
but because the most marvellous inventions and
stupendous energies of the time have produced it.
It lies damp upon your breakfast-table — open it,
and you have the world as it looks now, daguerreo-
typed. The speech you heard last evening is sub-
stantially there ; has been read by this time in
Connecticut, and is flying towards Iowa. The
electric-wire has enabled it to tell you some trans-
action only a few hours old in New Orleans. The
steamship, whose lanterns as you slept came
streaming through the midnight, has brought Eu-
rope to your chair. And what though great evil
IS blended with this wonderful agency? What
though the editor's leader is nnsonnd, or tainted
with personalities ? What though here is a scur-
rilous attack, and there a lying puff? Here, on
the other hand, are all the facts of the time, and
the antagonistic opinions of men, spread out with
a generous catholicity. What though in one
column lurks a foul advertisement? — in another
the moral sentiment of the time rebukes it. What
though quackery promises to cure Pandora's box of
evils with a box of pills ? a little further you may
read the conclusions of true science. In short, my
friends, I maintain here that the good overbalances
by far the evil, and out of this very generality of

THE THKEE SOCIAL FOllCES. 127

tlie newspapers we get the results whicli Milton
predicted. " Thongli all the winds of doctrine,"
says he, " were let loose to play upon the earth,
so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by li-
censing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.
Let her and Falseh^d grapple ; who ever knew
Truth put to the worse, in a free and open en-
counter? Her confuting is the best and surest
suppressing." In all these blended aspects of the
daily journal, we detect the ultimate benefit, and
the moral significance of freedom. It is itself a
cause and a consequence of freedom. Whatever
evil may blend with its temporary influence, it is
intrinsically the agent of liberty, and it is the first
thing at wliich a despot strikes. When I consider,
too, the cosmopolitan spirit which it must beget,
bringing together, as it does, the interests and
sympathies of the world, I look upon it as an in-
strument of progress, and of hope — a great social
force — a force to be watched, to be criticised, but
a force whose impulse on the whole is in the right
direction.

But I mentioned the Platform as another of
these Social Forces, This agent comprehends
much that I am compelled to pass by — much that
has an essential influence upon social movements.
By the Platform, I mean all those methods of oral
address and discussio which are less formal than

128 MOKAX ASPECTS OF CIT. IFE.

the Forum, tlie Professor s chair, and the Pulpit.
Everybody is aware that such institutions as the
jDopular Lyceum, such edifices as Metropolitan
Plall, and the Tabernacle, are peculiarities of our
own time. The lecture roou:. so common all over
the land, and in many instances taking the place
of public amusements, is a new thing. Yforld-
conventions and philanthropic anniversaries, are
products of the nineteenth century. All the great
questions of the day and brought into the hearing
of the people — the problems of society, of reform,
of national policy, are there stated and discussed.
And so the living voice of the orator, always so
potent in a democracy, is, especially in our age and
country, a Social Force, changing the ideas and
influencing the sentiments of men. The Moral
and Peligious bearings of all these points, may
well be considered, and many of them must be
estimated highly in their contributions to this kind
of Social Force. But I prefer now to select out
of these, for more imuiediate illustration, the
Moral and Peligious relations and significance of
Science. For this also is popularized. The philo-
sopher of our day does not shut up his knowledge
in bristling technicalities — does not limit it to the
initiated few. The geologist brings the fruit of
his researches within the bowels of the earth, the
i.stronomer comes from his study of the heavens.

THE THEEE SOCIAL FORCES. 129

to enlighten the public mind, and to apply the
Truth thus yielded by nature to luinian needs and
conditions — at least to instruct and improve. And
what effect has science upon the minds and hearts
of men now ? Will it make them better, or lead
them away from* higher realities, and holier
Truths? It must be said, that some are inclined
to put these revelations of nature to merely a
secular use. They treat it simply as a quarry
of materials, or a reservoir of forces. They wind
their way into its secrets, they coax and bind its
energies, that they may refine the methods of lux-
ury, or increase the mass of wealth. With impo-
sing forms they advance to these results. With
the ship and the plough, the compass and the tele-
scope, the rail-car and the telegraph, the furnace
and the loom. Nor can we deny the grandeur of
this spectacle of man's use of science, his dominion
over nature, as exhibited at the present day. Here-
in, too, is a moral significance. It is a proof of
his immortality, that while these material elements
are united with his body, and hold the mortgage
of his dust, they are obsequious to his purposes,
and before the moral and intellectual man as-
sume an attitude of inferiority. This is a new
proof of his immortality, that flashes out in the
wide diffusion of science at the present day^ — that
man appears as a workman, nature but as an im-

130 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

plement. But none the less it is a mistake, my
friends, to overlook the better significance of na-
ture, and make it simply a minister to our lusts ;
to seek in its enormous forces only the agents of a
use that is limited to the earth, and ends in ashes.
Xature, in its very attitude of an agent, declares
a higher end than itself, as a part of His Ways
who is not a mere physical creator, an engineer,
or architect ; but a m-oral and spiritual Deity, who
has not ordained this wondrous frame of things
only for earthly and material uses.

Another class, apparently, rest with scientific hv-
vestigatiou. and see nothing around them but a col-
lection of laws and phenomena. A materialistic phi-
losophy, however, or a godless positivism, cannot
be said to be popular at the present time, or to con-
stitute a Social Force. It is simply an assum^^tion
to consider the universe as a mere machine, a huge
orrery, and so to shut up all the avenues of faith
and prayer. God comprehends nature, but nature
does not comprehend God. Depths of Reality and
Modes of Operation — an unfathomed Region of
the Divine — lies around this world of nature. Do
ihe bars of matter shut out God from the soul ?
Has He no communication with the human spirit
except in concert with electric currents or chemi-
cal processes ? Surely, He who iu nature moves
all things with the pulse of Law, from some region

THE THREE SOCIAI. FOKCES. 131

outside nature may pour unseen forces which shall
sway the least man's life, and play into this austere
regularity in such a way as to number and shelter
the hairs of our heads. And who shall say that
Prayer has no ground of reason, because Science
cannot Und any avenue for it ? Who shall forbid
this instinct that cleaves every cloud strait up to
God, because visibly He does not reach down His
Hand ? Can He not respond to the cry that goes
up from the cottage by the seaside, where the wife
remembers her tempest- tossed husband, because
the winds hoist and wheel and the waves dash by
law ? Can no Light from His calm Love be shed
upon the mourner's tears, because the sky says
nothing, and the long grass is still? Peradven-
ture He may find some way of access, untraceable
in the workings of matter, unseen through optic
glass, when the mother pleads for her wayward
boy, and beseeches Him to touch the issues of his
heart !

But while this tendency of Science at the pre-
sent day, with the few, is thus open to criticism
vindicating the Christian Faith, let us have no
dread of its disclosures or its popular inflnence.
The profoundest significance of IS^ature is Peli-
gious. Let us welcome all that Science may bring
from the earth beneath, or the heavens above.
No virtual discord \\\\] remain between the Works,

132 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFZ.

and what our own souls, in their wants and aspira-
tions, assure us are the Words of God. Intimate
as we may become with the secrets of Nature —
wide as its starry portals may open on our sight —
it will render none the less evident our moral need
and alienation ; none the less evident the wonder
of that Love Which yearns from the Cross, nor the
Glory that bursts from the broken Sepulchre. For
my part, I do not believe that in proportion as we
obtain exact knowledge we dry up the sources of
reverence and faith. Wide as the realm of dis-
covery may spread, still it is belted by a zone of
mystery, and in the most familiar fact there beats
a heart of wonder. ISTor is there more that kindles
our admiration, or excites our humility, in the
darkness of ignorance, than in the splendors of
truth. Law, surely, is no less divine than impulse ;
or Order than irregularity^ Imponderable gases,
and magnetic spines, are as wonderful as stone or
leaf, and this world of new scientific names is in-
volved with the old Infinity. So far, then, as the
influence of Science becomes a popular or Social
Force, I do not anticipate an irreligious result, but
quite the contrary.

And, surely, one foresees something better than
sordid or sensual achievement in those yastpixicti-
cal applications of Science which gleam and play
around us. Will not these material agents gradu-

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 133

ally lift men above material drudgery, into a freer
action of brain, and a fresher realm of heart ?
What barricades of prejudice and error, too, shall
the telegraph oversweep ! what warp and woof of
brotherhood shall the punctual steamship weave!
The expectant throbs of Enterprise contain a moral
pulse, and the swarthy front of Labor shines with
glorious prophecy. Depend npon it, this is the
moral significance of the practical Science of our
day. It heralds higher advances of intelligence, and
Religion, and the Spiritual Man, and God's King-
dom upon the earth.

And so, as I look around me in the great city,
and consider the operations of the Press, with its
word of power in Literature ; and the influence of
the Platform, with its word of power in justice,
and philanthropy, and science, I welcome Avith
more enthusiasm than ever the great truth set
forth in the recent lines of one of our poets.
" Sometimes," says he —

" — Sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man.

" That all of good the past hath had,
Remains to make our own time glad ; "
*****

" And still the new transcends the ola.

In signs and tokens manifold :
Slaves rise up men, the ohve waves
With roots deep set in battle-graves !

134 MOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LITE.

" Through the harsh voices of our day,
A low, bweet prelude finds its way ;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
A light is breaking, calm and clear.

" That song of Love, now low and far,
Ere long shall swell from star to star !
That light, the breaking day, which tips
The golden-spired Apocalypse !

And now, among these other Forces in the
midst of the great city, what is the position and
influence of the Pulpit ? It is the organ of that
" Word " which in a special sense is said to have
been " with Power." It represents the great in-
terest of Morality and Religion, which in reality
is the profoundest Social Force. It would not be
correct, however, to say that the estimation in
which the Pulpit is lield at the present day, is the
measure of the estimation in which Morality and
Pe]io:ion are held. For these Influences have or-
gans beside this, through which they reach the
popular mind and heart. And, notwithstanding
the striving and the excitement, and the immense
materialism of our age, I am inclined to think
there is no less positive Religion in the souls of
men than ever; but, considered as a great, living,
practical Peality, there is more. Worldliness
enough there is : sin and moral deadness, to an
appalling extent ; but I do not believe there is
any more than under otlier influences, compara-

THE THREE SOCIAL FORCES. 135

tively speaking. I believe the profoundest drift
of things in the present age, is not towards irreli-
gion, but Religion. Only a fresher, broader, more
practical definition of Religion is given. And I
should say that this decides somewhat the estima-
tion in which the Pulpit is now held. It is not
respected so much as it was, merely for itself —
merely as a professional 2)lace. It is not so much
respected as an organ of routine, of dogmas, of
sharp dialectics — a mere word. But if it is a Word
of Power ; if it is a Message of practical, vital
Truth ; if it breathes the fresh, earnest spirit of
Religion ; if it touches the living nerves of hu-
manity, and strikes present and actual sin in the
teeth ; if it makes men feel the reality of religious
things — of God, of duty, of eternity ; if it heaves
lip the common plane of life with these stupend-
ous Sanctions, and reveals the moral significance
of the least act and of every thing ; if it shows
how much of Divinity is concerned with humani-
ty, and the sacredness of the obligations that bind
man to man ; oh ! if, as with the peal of a resur-
rection trumpet, it breaks up dead formalities and
guilty customs, and sends a thrill of moral convic-
tion into every artery of human life ; if it tears
away the veils of form, and the technicalities of
creed, and shows men the Actual Jesus, and brings
thorn, v.-itli tlieir sin-sick, tJiirsty, weary souls close

136 MOEAi ASPECTS OF CITT LIFE.

to his Pitying Face — close to his Living Heart ; —
it has in this age great power — and never had
more.

The pulpit speaks for great and everlasting real-
ities, and its language, therefore, should have all
the earnestness and freshness of reality. It should
break away from a mere traditional formality and
routine, and address the mind and heart of to-day
with a living sympathy. It should let the light of
eternal relations, of Divine Sanctions, stream
through actual and present interests. And yet, in
all this, there need be no compromise of its essen-
tial sacredness, or its dignity. It must not be con-
verted into a mere lyceum-desk, or a rostrum for
every kind of disquisition. It is a mistake to say
that the Church and the Pulpit are no more sacred
than the world outside the walls, and to feel that
they have no special significance. Absolutely,
" every spot is holy ground ; " but the law of as-
sociation works with different degrees of intensity,
and the mass of men, at least, receive an awaken-
ing and refreshment of their sympathies from cer-
tain places and symbols, without which the stream
of their spiritual life would settle into a stag-
nant level. Professing that all places are alike
sacred, they at length find no sacredness any-
where. But still it is the office of the Pul-
pit not to restrict the idea of sanctity, but to

THE IHKEE SOCIAL FOKCEfcf. 137

diffuse it, and to show the religious and moral side
of everything in life and in the universe; for the
soul of man, his conscience, his affections, his will,
have relations to ever^^hing. Religion thus shed
into actual and daily life, becomes less vague, more
real, more practical ; while enough is left of mys-
tery, of aspiration, of tenderness and of awe, to
touch the issues of the most inward and sensitive
piety. In one word, the Pulpit is sacred not in it-
self, but because of its themes ; and better is the
fisher's boat, with the eternal heaven above it, and
the rudest realities of life around it, where the
word is preached by a soul too much in earnest to
study its attitudes, than tha mere perfunctory and
formal decencies of a reading-desk. The Pulpit is
set for the great theme of religion, and, however
it speaks, let it be so that men shall feel that it
speaks for the most imminent and stuj)endous real-
ities. Let it be conservative against reckless inno-
vation, and ever}' kind of theory that denies the
true sanctions of the individual or of society, and
would set the world at loose ends. Let it give
due honor to the past, and be not afraid of a tra-
ditional reverence. If a preacher covets martyr-
dom in our age and country, he will be likely to
meet with it here. He will find it full as popular
to fall into a lax liberality and a general sweep of
innovation, as to stand by ancient landmarks and re-

138 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LQ'E.

iterate old and solemn truths ; while others, who
boast of their heresy, and make a parade of their
sniferings for conscience' sake, are enduring a per-
secution that looks very much like an ovation, with
the fagots concealed in " sacrificial roses." And
yet it cannot be denied that the legitimate tenden-
cy of the Pulpit is to reform ; for Christianity,
continually leavening the lump, is a progressive
element. Let not the preacher confound a shallow
bigotry, an owl-like stolidity, a time-serving timi-
dity, with that reverent loyalty which "holds fast
that which is good." The great w^ork of the
Pulpit, whether applied to individuals or to com-
munities, is the work, of legitimate reform, in
which, by a natural law, the genuine seeds of
the past are retained and developed in the vesicles
of the future. The peculiar power of the Pulpit
has always been a reformatory power, smiting like
thunder upon the ears of present abuse, directed
against actual sins, breaking up the sockets of con-
crete customs, and piercing to the core of corrupt
institutions and corrupt hearts. The preacher, es-
pecially in the city, must be a true reformer, defi-
nite, emphatic, bold ; not too dainty, not too clas-
sical, not too polite to recognize and mention in
clear language the sins right about him. He must
be really independent, without saying much about
it. He should preach as if lie felt that although

THE THKEE SOCIAL FOKCES. 139

the congregation own the church, and have bought
the pews, they have not bought him. His soul is
worth no more than any other man's, but it is all
he has, and he cannot be expected to sell it for a
salary. The terms are by no means equaL If a
parishioner does not like the preaching, he can go
elsewhere and get another pew, but the preacher
cannot get another soul. And, indeed, all who re-
flect upon the real efiicacy of the Pulpit, must
perceive that the essential condition of that eflica-
cy is freedom, and that he is indeed liable to have
his influence overwhelmed by other forces of the
age, w^ho overlooks the dark tide of evil that
dashes against the very walls of the sanctuary to
talk in abstract terms of something which afl'ects
men in general, but no man in particular. Xever
did the Pulpit need to be more bold than at the
present hour, and to assert its ofiice of reproof and
rebuke by rising above all taint of patronage or
compromise. And yet it is to be remembered that
the world can be saved, not by the reformer, but
by the Redeemer. The Pulpit must not be merely
an organ of societies and schemes for the renova
tion of mankind collectively, and upon some out-
ward points of complaint. Below this, more need-
ful than all this, productive of all this, it must
strive for the work of individual regeneration,^ and
cause each hearer in this bustlino', external, mate-

140 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

rial age, to feel his personality, his sin, and
the effort he must make, under the Eye of God, for
his own soul.

The Pulpit that thus, in the present age, and
among the excitements and diversions of the me-
tropolis, brings men to feel religion as a reality,
the greatest of realities, is a mighty social force ;
for then it is truly the organ of that Word which
was with power. And in this conviction let th<^
preacher " magnify his office." There is no agen-
cy of press or platform that can take its ]3lace,
or accomplish its work. This is the power of the
living presence, the living voice and sympathy.
And it is the agent of a power, working not mere-
ly for the world, and through the world, but above
the world. A power which the deepest experiences
of life, so peculiarly realized in the great city, de-
mand— a power of rest for the weary, of peace for
the troubled, of promise for the penitent, of eter-
nal light hovering far around the thick dust of
traffic and the j)erishable objects of so much aspi-
ration and so much effort — a power that stands by
us when the great city, w^th its streets and crowds
and solid walls fades away, and the soul goes up-
ward.

THE LOWER DEPTHS.

VII.

THE LOWER DEPTHS.

— " And who is my neighbor ?"

Luke x. 29,

This is a question of universal application, but
there is no place where it has so much significance
as in the great city. For, should the answer be
given in a full revelation of fact, the most apa-
thetic woiild be startled to discover who^ literally,
their neighbors are — to see what awful contrasts
of humanity are separated by a few brick walls;
how the rim of splendor melts into the outer dark-
ness ; and how the heights of refinement, and
luxury, and domestic purity, hang immediate and
steep over the Lower Depths. There they are,
close together — inpinging one upon the other —
magnificence and wretchedness, feasting and star-
vation, filth and diamonds, fiuttering rags and
chariot-wheels. There they are, men of Midas-
fingers making golden what they touch — men
whose escutcheon of respectability a breath has
never tarnished — jostled side by side with the con-

144 MORAJ. ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

scripts of poverty, and soldiers serving in " the
tenth legion of sin." There they dwell, very near
those to whom life is a routine of comfort, those
to whom it is a stand-np fight with death and des-
pair. Daughter of purity ; sweetest flower of na-
ture ; from whose innocence all taint shrinks back,
and whose " honor charms the air ;" next to thee
walks the abandoned child of shame, with unmen-
tionable guilt upon her head, for whom there
opens no door of home, from whom society turns
away its face ; and yet over this sharp contrast
God bends an equal solicitude as lie bends His
own blue sky, and He, at least, sees the chord of
relationship that runs from the high sanctities of
thy station, and throbs down even in those Lower
Depths.

And it is this iact of relationshij? even with the
most degraded morally, or by social position, that
gives a peculiar significance to the question of the
text, when asked in the midst of the city. It is
to reveal the far-reaching application of the an-
swer to this question, that I now propose to con-
sider these most wretched aspects of city life. We
will turn away from the world of traffic, from the
gay dominion of fashion, from the circle of amuse-
ment, from the grand spheres of intelligence and
power, and even from the more splendid forms of
vice, and walk a little while through these ave-

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 145

nues that run close beside them all — through these
Lower Depths that echo so mournfully to the in-
quiry— '' Who is my neighbor?"

It may not be necessary to say, that these Low-
er Lejyths comprehend two conditions not necessa-
rily identical ; the condition of abject vice, and of
destitution. Far be it from me to confound honest
poverty with anything that looks like moral obli-
quity ; or to say that because one is reduced to
the last strait of physical need, and is com-
pelled to herd with the vilest, he therefore, of
course, is vicious. And yet one of the very points
that I must bring out before I close this discourse,
is the too-common connection which actually does
exist between these conditions. But, however
separate they may be in moral respects, socially
they are at the bottom of the scale — they present
the most wretched features of humanity; they
unfold the most awful problems of civilization.
And, therefore, I treat them together.

The Lower Depths of Vice in this Metropolis !
Who would unfold all their lineaments and drag
them here into the public light, if he could ; w^ho
could, if he would? As there are certain w^on-
ders in nature which no man can completely re-
produce, either by the pencil or by words, so
there are immensities of human degradation which
require the ej^e-witness to apprehend. You, your-

146 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

self, must walk througli those reeking labyrinths ;
must breathe that fetid air ; must see into what
shapes of moral abomination and physical disgus;t
man can distort himself ; must learn from inspec-
tion how intellect, and soul, and heart, can all col-
lapse into a mere lump of animality, a condition
ten-fold lower than the brute's, because of the
hideous deformity and tlie unniistakable contrast.
You, yourself, must go into lofts and cellars,
where all the barriers of shame are broken down
and childhood confronts the coarsest spectacles of
infamy — into the apartment bare of every thing
except the deadly bottle, and the rags where the
father cuddles in his drunken sleep, or the mother
among her babes lies prostrate in her drunken
helplessness. You, yourself, must witness tlie
frolicsome hell of midnight, where the lowest
vices, the grossest conceits of the heart, put
on bodily shapes and dance together — the pre-
sence of dishevelled womanhood, worse in its
degradation than man can be — the unclean laugh-
ter, the quarrel, the artilleiy of blasphemy. And,
then, v,diile it is like letting you down into a
nether v/orld, and giving you a lurid revelation of
horrors you had not conceived, you did not think
could exist in a land of relinement, and churches,
and homes, you can carry away with you only the
terrible impression, the swimming mist of 1 ideous

THE LOWER DEI THS. 147

transactions, and hideous faces — you cannot de-
scribe to others. And, probably, it is well that it
is so. There is no edification in the mere details
of vice. And for the young and the innocent,
it is a good thing, slight as these brick walls
are, that they are thick enough to shut out this
abominable reality. Nevertheless, it is necessary
we should know that these Lower Depths do
exist— opening down close by us — in the midst
of the Great City. And whatever facts shall
help us to realize that thus not a few but a vast
army of our fellow-men, our neighbors, are exist-
ing— that down in those black pools, afltections,
minds, souls, are sweltering and perishing — that
there men, and women, and children, are matted
together in the very offal of debasement — that
up against the w^alls of our dwellings heave surges
of moral death out from human hearts, and dash-
ed back by our indifference upon those hearts
again — any facts that will help us to realize this,
must be w'elcomed and urged, whatever may be
our squeamishness or our horror. For my part,
at present, I merely reiterate the fact that suoli
Depths there are, very near to us. And, while
here to-night we assemble in this goodly temple,
a dreadful worship is going on there, under dark
canopies of ignorance, and recklessness, and sen-
suality ; with CTirses for prayers, and crime for

14:8 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

sacrifice, and all around abused and fallen shrines
of humanity. And, my friends, no pursuit, no
station, permits us to be entirely aloof from this
— with all this each of us has something to do,
if there is any significance in the question, " Who
is my neighbor ?"

But turn from this, for a little while, to con-
sider the Lower Depths of Destitutiooi that exist
in the bosom of the Metropolis. I speak not now,
of course, of mere poverty — that state where la-
bor, and often the most strenuous labor, is neces-
sary to comfortable subsistence. This is the lot
of a large majority, perhaps always must be —
and certainly it is a condition full of blessings.
There are thousands of people who ought to be
extremely thankful that they are not rich. Who
owe their health, their mental power, their viva-
city of spirit, the enjoyment of their homes, to
the very strain and drive of their lot in life. Had
they tumbled into the lap of wrealth, they would
have lain in it as in a feather-bed, mere bundles of
laziness, nervousness, and fatuity, doing nothing,
and in the true sense of the term worth nothing.
I do not say, of course, that those who earn wealth,
are apt to come to this — ^but that this would be
the case with a good many, if their wishes had
been granted — if they had been born rich, or
some one who had got to die had thouo;ht of

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 149

them, aid " left them something." I believe
they really are not lit to be rich, and are bettei
off as they are — in the harness.

But, aside from this common run of poverty,
there are depths of absolute Destitution — not of
limited means, but of real want^ — not of bread
earned in the sweat of the brow, but bought
wdth the blood and the sinew and the very essence
of life — with that which is more sacred than life.
My friends, this is a busy population here in our
city — for the most part a cheerful population,
with homes to go to, and food to eat, and clothes
to wear, -and something to do. And yet, in this
city, there are, I am told, fifteen thousand pau-
pers. Comfortably lodged, we will hope, the most
of these people are who crowd the streets — and
yet a friend of mine told me of a room he had
visited, not more than twelve feet square, in
wdiich slept thirty persons, three tiers deep. This
is but a specimen. In another of the same size,
says a writer, " were live resident families, com-
prising twenty persons, of both sexes and all ages,
w^ith only two beds, without partition, or screen,
or chair, or table, and all dependent for their mis-
erable support upon the sale of chips gleaned from
the streets at four cents a basket." "Another,
seven feet by five, an attic room, containing
scarcely an article of furniture but a bed, on

150 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

which lay a fine-looking man in a raging fever,
without medicine, or drink, or suitable food ; his
toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the
floor, and his little child asleep on a bundle of
rags in the corner ;"• — " another, of the same di-
mensions, in which, seated on low boxes around a
candle placed on a keg, were a woman and her
eldest daughter, sewing on shirts, for the making
of which they were paid four cents ; and even
at that price, out of whicli they had to support
two small children, they could not get a supply of
w^ork ;" and yet " another, warmed only by a tin
pail of lighted charcoal placed in the centre of
the room, over whicli bent a blind man endeavor-
ing to warm himself, around him three or four
men and women, swearing and quarrelling," and
in one corner a dead woman, and in the other two
or three children on a pile of rags. But why pur-
sue the catalogue ? This is but a glimpse into the
Lower Depths of Destitution that open downwards
from the doors of luxury and the splendid halls of
fashion, and help make up the features of the City.
"With all this, let imagination paint the surround-
ing scenery — the filth, the damp, the rottenness,
the noisomeness, the stifling air, the moral debase-
ment ; and thouo^h it mav be true that " one half
of the world does not know how tlie other lialf
lives," it will help us to think liow a v.'ide circle

THE LUWER DEPTHS. 161

of men and women around us try to live — it will
add, perhaps, some significance to the query in
the text.

But, leaving these general circumstances of des-
titution, there is one point upon which I wish es-
pecially to dwell. T allude to that large class of
women who do their best to light off starvation
by the most toilsome labor, and who yet too often
see before them only dishonor or death — the nee-
dle-women of our City. Perhaps this is treading
upon the business interest of some. I can't help
it if it is. Perhaps I don't know as much about
it as I might ; but I knoAv enough to make me
sick at heart. It may be there is no remedy for
it ; but whatever may be the state of the system,
in some way or another it is a foul one, and
I will not be restrained from saying that such a
condition of things is an abominable shame. "Why,
I am informed from one source, that based on a
calculation made some two years ago, the number
of those who live by sewing exceeds fifteen thou-
sand. Another, who has good means of infor-
mation, tells me there are forty thousand earn-
ing fifteen shillings a week, and paying twelve for
board; making shirts at four cents a piece.
Another statement divides these workwomen into
three classes ; — the first are but few, whose fine
sewing will procure them steady employment-, at

152 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

something like living wages. The second is con-
stituted of those whose wages do not average over
two dollars and a half per week, — ^the third are
widows, sometimes stricken in years, who, by the
most intense assiduity, may get one dollar and a
half per week. Take what estimate we will, then,
here aj'e thousands, not paupers, not drunkards
and idlers, but working at starvation wages ; fight-
ing death on the one side and the devil on the
other ; and if these are not the Lower Depths of
Destitution^ what are ? And just consider. This
scanty pittance depends upon good health, con-
stant labor, contracted sleep, isolation from every
social and almost every moral interest. Before
the weary seamstress is the appalling thought of
the sick-day, the failing eyesight strained by the
dim lamp and the twilight, the sinking constitu-
tion broken down by unremitted exertion. Oh !
it is terrible to be seized thus by the iron fingers
of necessity, and to be fastened, body, heart, soul,
to a machine which must be kept in motion by
the efibrt of the entire life, or the life itself is
crushed out. And, then, when we consider tliat
they are working not alone for themselves, but
for children whose cry for bread is a stab to the
holiest sensibilities of a mother ; then, when after
all their toil, their sleepless nights, their aching,
un-resting days, starvation looks not merely upon

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 153

them, but upon those joung babes, who, who won-
ders that tliey should take the price of dishonor,
though it be as the price of blood ? I do not ex-
cuse this desperate resource— to which thousands,
I am told, compelled by these conditions, do re-
sort— I do not excuse it ; I have no judgment to
pass upon it ; but O ! gay lady, gathering scorn-
fully about thee the robes that these silk-worms
of destitution have wrought out of their very
life-strings ; O ! puffed-up moralist ; O ! canting
preacher ; I will believe that if the angel who
records does not " blot out with a tear," God may
see that the core of their hearts is sounder and
better than yours. And this is the dread alterna-
tive with thousands — starvation or sacrifice. We,
in our comfort, may reason abstractly and reason
right — may say what we would do; but God
keep us from like temptations ! Such is another
phase of the Lower Depths around us. My
friends, in the shifting of fortune — the mysterious
work of this world's change, — who can tell how
dear to him she may be who will be com-
pelled thus to face hunger, and fight with
despair? But, however that may be, this we
hic^jo^ that it is one of us who thus suflers — that
it is our neighbor. Much more upon this point I
might say ; but I had rather quote here those
lines so familiar — but lines which, if a noble end

154: IVtORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

of humanity makes poetry, belong to the very
highest poetry — I cannot refrain quoting from
that poem of Hood's, which is set to tlie very
motion of the needle-woman's toil, and is the
most articulate expression of her woe.

" With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread —
Stitch, Stitch, Stitch,

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch

She sang the song of the shirt.

Work ! work ! work I

While the cock is crowing aloof.
And work — work — work !

Till the stars shine through the roof !
It's oh ! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,

If THIS is Christian work !

Work — work —work !

Till the brain begins to swim ;
Work — work — work !

Till the eyes are heavy and dim !
Seam, and gusset, and band.

Band, and gusset, and seam.

Till over the buttons I fall asleep,

And sew them on in a dream.
# * -K- ■:f * * »

Work — work — work !

In the dull December light,
And Work — work — work !

When the weather is warm and bright :

THE LOWEK DEPTHS. 155

While underneatli the eaves

The brooding s"w allows cling,
As if to show their sunuy backs,

And twit me with the Spring,

Oh ! but to breathe the breath.

Of the primi'ose and cowslip sweet.

With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet :

For only one short hour.
To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want.
And the walk that costs a meal.

♦ -Sr -K- * * *- *

Oh ! men with sisters dear !

Oh ! men with mothers and wives !
It is not linen you're wearing out,

But human creatures' lives !
Stitch, Stitch, Stitch !

In poverty, hunger, and dirt.
Sewing at once, with a double thread,

A SHROUD as well as a shirt."

Such, then, are some of the features of the
Lower Depths of Vice, and the Lower Depths of
Destitution. And mark, although I have specified
the difterence, how easily, I may say necessarily,
thev run tos^ether, so that what is said of the one
bears upoji t]#ie other. And, my friends, what can
be said ? Is there any remedy ? or must we be-
lieve that this sruilt and miserv, so extreme and
abject, must exist in the world, and cleave to the
great city for ever. For my part, 1 have no theory
to propose, — I am no adept in Political Economy,
' — I represent no association or scheme. I believe

156 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

that no orga-nic change of society can be sudden —
no radical evil can be plucked out and thrown
away at once. I have simply hinted at a few
facts, to refresh your consciousness of who your
neighbors are — -of what relations you sustain here
iu the metropolis. And yet, as any discourse must
be profitless unless it suggests something for us to
do^ let us see if out of the present aspect of City
Life we cannot draw some duty, and receive some
moral impulse.

One of the most obvious things in contemplating
these Lower Depths of Yice and Poverty, is tlie
fact that mere Education is not a sufficient remedy.
Iveligious teaching is not enough. Do not think,
for a single moment, that I under-estimate it. I
knovv' that the moral power which religion imparts
is mighty over external circumstances, and that
there is no true reformation unless its regenerating
life strikes into the very centre of the heart. In
the hour of temptation nothing else can be depend-
ed upon. Do not accuse me of being merely an
outside reformer, holding the theory that all man
requires to make him stand erect is a few circum-
stantial props. I hold to no such thing. But it is
sheer cant to accuse those who say with me — -
" give to the poor and the vicious physical and
immediate help " — it is sheer cant to accuse them
of holding any theoi'y of mere circumstances, We

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 157

do say, that tracts, and Bibles, and religions con-
versation, will be but little heeded by those who
are nnmb with cold, and perishing with hniiger;
that in order to get at their inner nature, a thick
crust of physical misery must be removed ; that
foul alleys, and fetid apartments, have a bad
moral influence, and that the gospel itself has far
less efficacy than in the clear light and the sweet
air. And this was the way our Master worked.
He laid hold of the evil that was closest at hand — •
touched the blind eye, the fevered brow, the
withered limb, and would not dismiss those whom
he had fed with the richest Spiritual food, fasting
for want of material bread, lest they should "faint
by the wa}^" So these, in the Lower Depths of
the great City, who are fainting by the way, must
be restored with bread and meat ; these who are
shivering with the winter's frost, must be warmed
and clothed ; and we must reach their deepest
nature— intellectual and moral — by removing that
cramp of physical position, that craving of physi-
cal need, which they most distinctly feel. I must
confess, that when I look upon the condition of the
extreme poor, I draw some consolation from the
fact that all their faculties are not cultivated into
a refined sensibility—that their condition is not as
miserable to them, as it would be to hearts and
minds educated and used to all the advantages of

158 :\IOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

life. The keenest sting of poverty is inflicted up-
on those who have fallen from a station of comfort
and respectability into the association of brutality
and vice, as well as utter need. To have a mem-
ory of better things, together with the conscious-
ness of present evil ; to look back upon a reach of
sunny days ending in this unutterable darkness ; this
is indeed calamity. And so to educate the mind
and the heart, without furnishing employment for
the hands, and nourishment for the body, would
only render the fact of destitution more terrible ;
because it would refine the sense of it. No : let
this inner and outer help work together as much
as possible, but let the most immediate want be
the most immediately met. Why, how much
must the fundamental conception of life itself be
affected by the pressure of these sharp material
circumstances. We know that sorrow intrudes
everywhere, and responsibility rests upon each in
proportion to his gifts, and the solemn messenger
comes and lays his hand upon all. l^or can w^e,
for a moment, be deluded by any external posses-
sion or privation as a standard of essential happi-
ness or misery. But I say that life itself — ^life as
a fact — is a different thing to those who have op-
portunities to live, to get above it, to look beyond
it, to use it for its highest ends; it is a different
thi'ig from what it is to those who have to snatch

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 159

and struggle like drowning people to preserve
the sheer spark of vitality ; who are bent down
to grinding toil that leaves no time for thought,
and who are pitched by circnmstances into the
very sweep of gnilt. I do not say, then, that the
circnmstances are all ; bnt that the circumstances
are mighty, and must be modified and removed
before the higher influences of knowledge, of
temperance, or Keligion can eflectually work, or
find admittance.

Again, mere Charity is not a sufficient rem-
edy for these evils. That which encourages pau-
perism, of course will not diminish pauperism.
Men will hardly be won from a life of destitution
and vice, so long as a mere cry of dependence
will procure them a supper and a bed. The pit-
tance which you bestow for clothes or fuel may
relieve a temporary necessity, but it does not
make them any better — it does not give them any
more real povrer to help themselves. And insti-
tutions of benevolence, for almost every form of
human need, are not wanting in our city. Money
is given quite freely. There are few hearts that
will not be touched by the appeal for shivering
women and starving children. But, after all,
what effect does this have upon the nether springs
of destitution — upon the shoals that cluster and
putrify in the sinks of vice ? We may well ask,

160 MORAL ASPECTS OF CTTY LIFE.

wlietlier by the gift of a spontaneous generosity,
the play of an easy sympathy, we do not think
to rid ourselves of a stringent responsibility — ■
whether what is demanded of us by the condition
of these our neighbors in the Lower Depths,
is not really — " More Justice, and less Charity;"
whether we must not rid ourselves of a selfish
interest, and of a selfish benevolence, and recog-
nize more distinctly the claims of each and all
with whom we are bound up in the ties of a com-
mon humanity.

In one word, not attempting now any philoso-
phical speculations upon this subject, and passing
by the consideration of overcrowded spheres ot
activity, and direct agencies of temptation, like
the innumerable dram-shops which throw down
as fast as the philanthropist can set up ; there are
three points, going beyond the mere giving of
alms, which I would urge upon those who give
any heed to the question — '*• Who is my neighbor ?"

And, first, I may say to the ricJi that they can
do much in clearing out these Lower Depths, by
the erection of a class of dwellings divided into
compartments, each of which shall be a complete
home, cheap enough for the humble laborer, and
yet furnished with the accessories of pure air,
fresh light, and clean water. I need not dwell
upon the effect wliich the kind of habitation has

THE LOWER DEPTHS. ' 161

not only upon the physical, but also the moral
welfare of men. The seeds of vice, as well as of
suffering, are nurtured in foul atmospheres and
crowded rooms. The scheme which I propose to
the rich capitalist is no " lending to the Lord,"
but a dollar-and-cent matter, and those who act
shrewdly upon it will not only put their wealth
to a noble use, and rank among the benefactors
of the age, but will, I doubt not, find it in a busi-
ness sense profitable. And remember, it opens
an opportunity for thousands who now do not
fairly breathe and live.

My next remark concerns not only the capital-
ist, but people of moderate means, who are willing
to give, and every year do give something, for
the relief of poverty and the eradication of vice.
To these I would say, so disburse your money that
it will not feed a recumbent idleness, but excite
the poor to maintain themselves. I have said that
those who dwell in the Lower Depths require not
charity, but justice. They have a right to room
enough, and facilities enough, in this world, for
the development of their own humanity, and
what many of them seek is not food or money,
but work. Let us then encourage any system
which proceeds upon this plan of enabling the
needy to help themselves. My friends, I repre-
sent no society here to-night, I am the mouthpiece

7#

i62 ^rOEAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

of nobod}' 's scheme, but there is an Association in
this city which well illustrates the idea I am now
endeavoring to enforce. I allude to " The Shirt
Sewers' Union." This association employs from
seventy to one hundred women in a spacious and
comfortable work-room, free from all evil contact,
with a certainty of punctual payment and steady
employment. jS^ow our means should go to create
and encourage some such system as this, or that
which a noble missionary is endeavoring to carry
out in the most degraded region of this meti'opolis.
More than food or raiment or shelter for the poor,
is needed employment, for it strikes at the deepest
sources of suffering and guilt.

Finally, there is something which persons of
any degree or means may do — they can and should
cherish a large sympathy, a Christian spirit to-
wards the poorest and the vilest. Your neighbor!
what impediment makes you fail to recognize this
relationship, even with the most degraded '? Think,
those men and women down there in the Lower
Depths, are not worthless flakes tossed from the
flying wheel of existence, and ground into the
mire, but souls that God counts precious, and that
Christ loves. Oh ! in the spirit of him who told
the story of the Grood Samaritan, and who has
thrown upon the darkest passages of life the light
of a beautiful humanity, in his spirit call up be-

THE LOWER DEPTHS. 163

fore yourselves those toiling and those degraded
ones, and think, should he pass along the streets
of this cit}^, with what an Eye and what a Heart
he would regard them. Xay. even that most de-
based class of women, are tliey to be thrust wholly
from the consideration of the pure and the good ?
Alas ! then where is their hope ! We cannot ex-
cuse their guilt; we cannot make it a light mat-
ter; lest right and wrong be confounded, and an
easy taint creep into all the social relations. But,
after all, are we sure that we press the condemna-
tion only upon the actual transgressor? Remem-
ber by what power so many of them have fallen.
Not one in five hundred, I believe, tVom vicious
inclination — thousands of them through the deep-
est and tenderest afiections of the human heart. I
do not acquit them — 1 do not say it is a matter
of moral indifference ; but I do say, carry the guilt
up where it really belongs — lift a share of it from
the heads of these frail ones in the street, and
cast it upon thousands of men caressed and re-
spected in high places. Let the sharers, too often
the authors of their guilt, bear their full part of
the punishment and the shame. But respecting
these fallen ones, I preach my Master's Gospel of
Mercy. They are human— the lineaments of their
kind, ay, the traits of their womanhood are in
them. Encourage any effort, any "Home" that

\C)4: :\rDr.A.L aspects of city life.

affords them opportunity to retrace their steps.
Tell them not that their recovery is hopeless ; for
this is the last bond that confirms the sinner in his
ffuilt — the conviction that there is no chance foi
recovery ; that try as he may, do as he may, there
is no help for him, the world turns its face from
him, and he must go stumbling to the grave with
his sin and his reproach cleaving to him. What
right have you and I, with our temptations, per-
haps, not more nobly resisted ; with our guilt, it
may be, less excusable in God's sight; what right
have you and I to wrap ourselves in our righteous-
ness, and set up this virtuous scorn, and refuse this
help to anything that like ourselves is human ?

But especially be ready with encouragement for
those who toil on in their destitution, and yet re-
tain their moral loyalty. ISTow I hold in utter con-
tempt those who disavow all faith in womanhood,
and vent their skepticism and their ribald sneers
against their mothers' and their sisters' sex. But
having all faith in womanhood, and resj^ect for it,
my chief honor is for that woman who, in priva-
tion and exposure, in the midst of temptations that
appeal to the deepest motives of her daily life,
still toils on, and endures and suffers, and not for
a moment thinks of wavering from the right, and
scorns the proffered wrong, and bears the jewel of
h.er reputation sparkling and pure through the

THE LOWER DEPTHS.

165

trial. I would go farther to render homage to such
an one, than I would to a crowned queen. And
such there are — even in the Lower Depths such
there are. I was much struck with an incident
related to me by one who is nobly toiling in those
regions of our city. In the course of his labors,
one day, he found, in a most wretched apartment,
some seven or eight wo;nen and children, of dif-
ferent ages, marked by all the abominations of in-
toxication and shame. But in the apartment also
was one girl, whose fine face and intelligent bear-
ing especially attracted his attention. She was
evidently not a member of the family occupying
the room, and, upon inquiry, he ascertained that
she was the daughter of a mechanic, had been
brought up under better influences, and was yet
alien to the vice all around her. She held in her
hand a book in which were some lines, written as
she said by her brother, then at sea. They were
entitled, " My Childhood's Home," and were as
follows :

" Our early home, that place so dear,
la memory I could trace ;
And almost feel the burning tear
Fall from a mother's face.

" That childhood's home's deserted now,
That mother's voice is still,
And the winds breathe soft aud low
Sad music from the hill.''

166 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

But a breath of sanctity from that " Child-
hood's home" had lingered about lier. Step by
step she had descended into this wretchedness.
And yet, parting one by one with almost every ar-
ticle of clothing, she had battled against tlie worst
temptation and come out unscathed from the
flame. I don't know, my friends, why we should
look back to the bloody arena, or the crackling-
fire, or some prominent scene in history, for in-
stances of sublime, womanly heroism. I find it
amidst those grimy walls, those reeking vapors of
lust and crime ; heroism transcendently beautiful.

I have always been much affected by anotlier
incident, which I read some time since. It was
originally related by Dr. Taylor in his Tour
through the manufacturing districts of the IS^orth
of England. " We entered one house," says he,
" tenanted by a young couple, whom I first mis-
took for brother and sister. They were husband
and wife, about six years married, but fortunately
without children. On a table of the coarsest
wood, but perfectly clean, stood what we were
assured was the only meal they had tasted for
twenty-four hours, and the only one they had a
reasonable hope of tasting for twenty-four hours
to come. It consisted of two small plates of meal
Dorridge, a thin oaten cake, some tea so diluted

t it had scarce any color, and a small portion

THE LOWEK DEPTHS. 167

of the coarsest sugar in the fragment of a broken
bowL Their furniture had been sold piece-meal
to supply pressing necessities, their clothes had
been pawned ; thev had hoped for better times,
but they felt that their condition had gro\\'n worse.
The man would have gone to a foreign land, but
he would not leave his wife alone to die. My
friend asked him, whether under the circum-
stances he did not j*epent his early and imprudent
marriage. He paused, looked fondly at his wife,
who returned his gaze with a melancholy smile of
endearing aflection — he dashed the tear aside, and
with calm firmness replied — "Never! we have
been happy, and have suffered 'together; she has
been the same to me all through."

Beautiful triumph of good over evil ! In hun-
dreds of dark places art thou born this hour.
Deathless love is baptized in dens of misery ; and
noble self-sacrifice toils on in temptation and pain.

And when I think that in the lowest depths of
human life there are those who svith suffering and
sorrow hold fast their integrity, I am almost glad
that life is not longer ; and when I think of the
Christian faith and patience brightening around
their dying beds, there comes to me a fresh inter-
pretation of the words in the Apocalypse — " What
are these wdiich are arrayed in white robes ? And
whence come they ? . . . These are they which

168 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

came out of great tribulation^ and have washed
their robes, and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb. . . . They shall hunger no more, neither

shall they thirst any more For the Lamb

which is in the midst of the throne shall feed
them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of
waters : and God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes."

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

VIII.

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.

So the carpenter eneoui'aged the goldsmith, and he that smooth-
eth with the hammer him that smote the anvil.

Isaiah xli. 7.

" It is the universal law of all that exists in finite
nature," says a philosopher of the present clay,
'' not to have, in itself, either the reason or the
entire aim of its own existence." We need not
look far for an illustration of this. In the system
of l^ature all about us, we find that each thing has
its intrinsic peculiarity — a life in and for itself.
But this is only part of its meaning, and by no
means the grandest part. It is also a member of a
general body, and discharges an office as such.
Thus, for instance, we may consider the earth it-
self as a combination of chemical constituents, an
assemblage of geological or geographical forms.
But, when we begin to study its adaptations — when
we discover how each mountain-chain, and every
sea that scoops its surface, and every plant that
clings to its bosom, belong to a great order of mu-

172 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

tnal demand and supply — when we regard the
entire globe not as a mere mass of matter swinging
in space, but as a theatre of sentient existence, and
especially of spiritual education, we detect in it a
sublime significance. And, wherever we turn our
eyes, we see the great fact that nothing exists in
and for itself alone. It is reiterated in the circula-
tion of the waters and the changing currents of
electric life, in the trees that drop their unreluct-
ant fruit, and in those fossil remains of beings that,
living and perishing ages ago, make our materials
of use and beauty.

Involved with this fact — what indeed may be
called another form of stating this fact — is the
law of differences. All movement, all life, comes
from the contact of dissimilar things. The universe
is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it
is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the
planet to the rotting leaf. The vapor climbs the
sunbeam, and comes back in blessings upon the
exhausted herb. The exhalation of the plant is
wafted to the ocean. And so goes on the beautiful
commerce of nature. And all because of dissiini'
larity — because no one thing is sufficient in itself,
but calls for the assistance of something else, and
repays by a contribution in turn.

But this law is equally apparent when we pass
fj'om the physical world into the sphere of human

SOCIETY A2vD THIE ^DIVIDUAL. 1T3

association, and of private action. And its
best illustration is found in the conditions of a
inetroj)olis. Indeed, from tlie operation of busi-
ness alone, both in its conscious and its unconscious
movements, we iray draw the entire significance
of Society and the Individual — of what each man
contains in himself, and has a special mission to do
— and of what, either by way of obligation or reli-
ance, binds him to others. It is a beautiful spec-
tacle— the industry of a great city waking up in
the morning light, and moving in all its spheres.
The smoke puffing afresh from forge and factory ;
the rattle of wheels here and there breaking the
early silence ; the strokes of labor commencing
from roofs and workshops ; the steamers panting
at the wharves ; the white sails filling with the
breeze ; the warehouses opening their eyelids
along the streets ; the multiplying footsteps, the
increasing voices — until, one by one, all these en-
ergies slip the leash ; one by one these waves of
sound swell into the universal roll of activity and
toil. And thus do these several interests, starting
out from difi'erent points, really form one vast, in-
ter-dependent mechanism, bound about by laws of
common weal and common obligation. Each has
his own work to do, yet each receives from and
gives to others, while the profoundest .esson un-
folded in this intercourse, is a clearer paroaptian

174 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

and a moral apprehension of the demands and the
limits of these relations. The great lesson tanght
by this mechanism of Ti'ade and Labor ; the great
lesson taught by the mingling yet distinct life of
the city; is, in fact, threefold, and with a consid-
eration of this I propose to complete the present
Series of Discourses.

" The carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and
he that smootheth with the hammer him that
smote the anvil." These words, referring to one
prominent sphere of City Life, are applicable to
the whole, and may stand as the symbol of the
whole. They indicate the threefold lesson of
which I spoke. In the first place, there is the in-
evitable social relation — in the second place, the
demands of that relation — and, finally, the individ-
ual work, the specific mission inside that relation.

In the first place, I say, in the great city, there
is an inevitable social relation, as with the carpenter
and the goldsmith, brought together to do their
part in a common work — in the general field of
endeavor. In every man there is much tliat is to
be comprehended only by reference to Society.
Without tliis, his qualities on the one hand are in-
complete, on the other superfluous. The pheno-
mena of exj^ression^ for instance, which have for
their organ that wonderful telegraph the human
face, pre-suppose the communion of others, who

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDTJAL. 175

are to intei-pret these inscriptions of identity, and
this play of thonght. The instrument of sijeech^
again, — that branching hixuriance of language,
which becomes more vascular the closer we pare
it to the roots — this faculty which of itself lifts
man infinitely above the brute, and instead of con-
fused moanings spreads around the earth a net-
work of articulate intelligence ; of what signifi-
cance would it be without the social relations ?

But man's wants, as well as his capacities, find
their complement only in Society. His heart
could not endure solitude. We do not comprehend,
perhaps, how much we live in others — how much
we need them, and receive from them. Our eyes
are listless, as the busy forms that crowd these
streets pass before them. If a hundred, or a thou-
sand, should drop away, we would not heed it. "We
may think as little of the essential connection be-
tween ourselves and the throng about us, as- we do
of the arteries that carry the blood to and from our
hearts. But now let us suppose that a sudden dis-
pensation should sweep away all this multitude,
and leave one of us in the great city alone. As he
stepped forth in the morning, how would the
strange silence smite upon him ? How painfully
would he listen for the accustomed roar of wheels,
and look for the unnoticed crowd to pass by!
The hollow echo of his feet upon the pavement, at

1Y6 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CTrY LIFE.

every step, would be more terrible than thunder.
As he passed the rows of dwellings, with no chil-
dren's faces at the windows ; as he descended into
the world of traffic, all still as the desert — his soul
w^ould grow sick within him. The monarch of
this mast-girdled domain, he would envj the con-
dition of the meanest slave. There would be no
wealth for him in the unclaimed riches of banks
and ware-houses ; no temptation in the luxury of
palaces ; no enjoyment in holding at his will all
which those vanished thousands toiled for, or vain-
ly envied. Then, by its deprivation, would he
learn the silent joy that throbs in the contact of
man with man — the life that springs up in mutual
dependence — in the circulation and interchange
of powers; and the utter desolation of a solitary in-
dividualism. And these feelings would not wear
away by custom, but the solitude would grow more
ghastly day by day. How gladly then would he
hail the appearance of the neglected cripple who
used to sit by the way-side ; or of one human face,
though it should emerge from the lowest den of
shame. And if, by another dispensation, those
multitudes should all flow back again, he would
throw off the spell of loneliness as an ugly dream,
and find a new being in the presence of swarms
whom he can never know, and whom now he
passes unheeding by.

SOCIETY AND THE IXDIYIDUAL. 177

All ! depend upon it, there is an unconscions in-
spiration with which the carpenter enconrages the
goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the ham-
mer him who smites the anvil — an inspiration
caught from simple contact; from hidden sympa-
thies that run to and fro through humanity as
through a common organism. And this is the
practical inference to be drawn from this inevita-
ble relationship, from the bare fact of society ; —
that humanity is corporate, bound up in an indis-
soluble unity, and that no group or member is un-
affected by the general good . or evil, any more
than the public weal can escape the influence of a
specific disease, or a local benefit. Like the beauti-
ful law of nature to which I referred in the com-
mencement of this discourse, no one has in himself
" either the reason, or the entire aim of his exist-
ence." It is absurd for any man to style himself
*' Independent^ He may have unlimited pecu-
niary resources at his command, but what are
these without the ministration of other men?
How essential to his welfare is the meanest drudge,
and the very breath of those whom he despises.
It is folly for a class of people to set themselves
apart as exclusive — as holding an inherent and di-
vine patent of nobility. Especially ridiculous in
American society, where it is inconsistent not only
with the mutual dependence ordained by nature,

8"^

178 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

but with our theory of man. We, in that theory,
know no impassable barriers. AYe repudiate
badges and uniforms. We recognize the manhood
of every man. The doctrine which blazes out to
tlie world in the front of our great charter, is
equality of birth-right, identity of blood, the dig-
nity of a like spiritual nature. Therefore, let no
impediment be set in his way. Let no chain be
upon his heel, no smutch of caste upon his fore-
liead. If there is genuine force in him, he shall
encounter no hereditary obstacle. Though he
sprung from the Ipins of a beggar, he may climb
to a seat grander than a throne. What a misera-
ble farce, then, is an American " aristocracy " —
an '^ujyjyer ten-thousand" — when it claims by
these terms any actual separation from other con-
ditions of men. If a man can amuse himself
with the conceit that a few hundred thousand dol-
lars, a fine establishment, costly wines, and horses,
really make him a greater personalit} in the uni-
verse than the poor brother by his side, so that
the latter has no business to " come between the
wind and his gentility," why — it may do no great
harm, so long as he keeps the conceit to himself.
Or, if a class of people choose io jplay nobility, or
affect a titled distinction, it's as lawful, perhaps,
as any other comedy. Though we may remind
them that their only source of nobility is in the

SOCIETY AND THE ES'DIYIDrAL. 179

very things tliev aflect to despise. Their good,
honest fathers, and grandfathers, industrious and
steady, had more nobility in one muscle of their
sweaty toil, than runs through all tlieir arteries, I
can respect the aristocracy of family — the con-
sciousness of blood that has flowed through his-
toric veins, and throbbed under blazoned shields
on fields of renown. I can respect the aristocracy
of talent, rising above all material conditions in
its splendor and its power. I can respect the
aristocracy of enterprise, that bursts all obstacles,
and itself earns and holds with a modest self-as-
sertion. But of all aristocracy, the aristocracy of
mere vulgar, flaring wealth, and nothing else, is
the emptiest and the silliest. Absurd, my friends,
so far as its pretensions clash with our theory of
Society. But this, or any other exclusiveness, is
more than absurd, it is really impossible, when we
a:et at the actual constitution of nature. For, I
repeat, no man, no class, can be exclusive. Each
depends upon all, lives by the help of all, is
bound up with the welfare of all— in one living,
sympathetic organism. And this fact, with the
practical inferences that grow out of it, is one
phase of the lesson unfolded by the individual
and social relations of City Life. And the prac-
tical inferences growing out of this fact, appear
in the second phase of that three-fold lesson;

180 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

namely, in the demands of this social relation.
As in nature, so inhuman communities, they exist
not merely because of sympathies, but because of
dissimilarities. One has some gift, some power,
that the other has not. Xot men equal in all re-
spects ; not men able to do precisely the same
thing ; but " the goldsmith encourages the car-
penter, and he that smootheth with tlie hammer,
him that smites the anv^il." And in the need of
this mutual help, there rises a demand for it. I*^ow
here is a point where the Spirit of Christ — the
spirit of the great social Law — and the spirit of
the world, appear in vivid contrast. Those who
are controlled by the latter sentiment — and they
are the vast majority — seize upon the privilege of
the social relation to please themselves. Ask sue)
an one what is his object in the great cit}^ — wha
is his chief end in social intercourse; and if he
reveals the deepest motive of his heart, he will
say : " Why, I avail myself of these relations,
in order to get more wealth, more enjoyment,
more power." All this might be legitimate, if
he would not make it so exclusive — if he would
not only consider what he can obtain from others,
but what he can render to them. But in the city,
I suspect, the most prominent figure, the figure
that might be significantly inscribed on the stores,
and tbe houses, and even the churches, is number

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 181

one. " Take care of number one " is the text
virtually written at the head of the day-book, and
worn like a police badge riglit over the heart.
Xot a bad principle, up to a certain j^oint, but
when made the supreme motto of life see wliat
an eftect it has upon all moral discrimination. It
qualifies all duty into expediency. Every plan of
action puts on a business aspect. The deepest
sanction lies in that which will prove profitable.
And here is the foundation of the social wrongs,
which prevail so fearfully in a metropolis like
this. Here is the foil of adamant which turns
aside all the sallies of reform. Upon this ground
stands every den of infamy, every haunt of profli-
gacy and crime in the city. They who tempt
thousands of the young to their ruin, they who
put the cup of destruction to their brother's lips —
rest upon the single plea — ^that it is jprofitahle.
They regard society in the simple, selfish light —
as a condition to be used for their own advantage,
and to this end would suck its veins dry, and fill
them with poison and death. This is the selfish
principle carried out to its grossest results. And
there are thousands, who, while they do not stand
upon these practical conclusions, occupy just these
premises. Many a man there is, clothed in re-
spectability, and proud of his honor, whose cen-
tral idea of life is interest and ease — the concep-

182 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

tion that other men are merely tools to be used
as will best serve hiin ; that God has endowed
him with sinew and brain merely to scramble and
to get; and so, in the midst of this grand
nniverse, which is a perpetual circulation of
benefit, he lives like a sponge on a rock, to absorb,
and bloat, and die. Thousands in this great city
are living so, who never look out of the narrow
circle of self-interest; whose decalogue is their
arithmetic ; w^hose bible is their ledger ; wdio have
so contracted, and hardened, and stamped their
natures, that in any spiritual estimate they would
only pass as so many bags of dollars. What have
they to do with the abstract right ? They are en-
gaged w^ith compound interest. The needs and
demands of humanity to them are nothing — only
as they may effect real estate. Suffering, vice,
destitution, dash against them as against metallic
men. If the new Jerusalem should flash upon
tliem in a vision, they would only compute the
worth of the golden streets and the jasper walls.
And while many do thus live, and live respectably
and unimpeachably, see, I repeat, see how closely
ihis prmciple of living is linked to the meanest
vices and the worst crimes. One man takes up
the conception that he is placed here merely to
make money ; to get all the profit out of society
he can. Another assumes tha^ the sole object of

SOCIETY AKD THE IXDR'IDUAL, 183

existence is to afford him pleasure, and he uses all
opportunities to gratify his appetite and his pas-
sions. He holds no tie sacred, no sanction su-
preme, that opposes this impulse. And yet ano-
ther claims that the world owes him a living, and
if he can get it in no other way, gets it with the
point of the knife, or the muzzle of the pistol.
IS'oAV these are very different forms of action, but
their essence is one thing — the conception that
every man lives for himself alone, and is to get
out of others all that he can.

But the Christian Law of society, shedding its
light even through the mist of the great city, re-
veals the truth that these human dissimilarities are
tlu'own together not for mere self-aggrandisement,
but for mutual help ; that man is placed here not
simply to receive but to give. And for this some
power has been granted to the least and to the
poorest. To every one has been alloted some fac-
ulty of mind or body, some gift of fortune, or it
may be merely a capacity to sympathise and con-
sole. But this truth it inculcates not merely in a
precept. Through all the complex interests of so-
ciety, through our hard and polished customs, our
hollow respectabilities, our oppression and our
contempt, there beams the Image of One Life per-
]ietually unfolding Itself in Acts of Sacrifice ; of
One Meek Face, looking upward in Prayer, and

184 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

downward in Compassion, droo^^ing beneath the
Cross, streaming with its own blood — presenting
us, in our avaricious grasping and our selfish ease,
not only with the Ideal of individual Character,
but the Expression of Social Duty.

All this mav seem, to many of you, a kind of
abstract discoursing, and yet it unfolds a very sim-
ple and pregnant principle, which no man who
perceives can be at a loss to apply. It is merely
the principle that we are placed in society not
only to be served, but to serve — not only to get
but to give ; and that no one fulfils the end of his
existence who does not, in some w^ay, help and
bless others, either by money, or sympathy, or
good influences. And it is equally plain — capable
of proof in innumerable daily instances — that the
neglect of this principle lies at the foundation of
every social wrong. It might be better to illus-
trate this by details ; but, in fact, I did this in the
last discourse. The great mass of that heart-
sickening vice and destitution to which I alluded,
is by no means the result of mere idleness, or
wicked inclination, but heaves up here in the
city's midst, a dark festering heaj^, because of lack
of help and lack of sympathy ; because of this
selfish and one-sided conception of our social re-
lations. Or, if another illustration is needed, take
a subject upon which I have already touched in

BOCrETY A2vD THE LNDIVIDUAL. 185

the course of this series ; a subject to which refer-
ence at this time is especially a}3propriate, because
every one of us is going to act in reference to it,
this way or that. I mean the subject of Intem-
perance. Everybody says it is an evil — from the
mother, who prays God with every fibre of her
heart to pluck her boy out of the dreadful vortex,
or the wife whose mingled tears and blood testify
to its brutality and its shame, to the vote-seeking
demagogue whose sophistr}^ belies his reason. The
respectable citizen who suffers its taint in every
vice, and feels its curse in a thousand ways, says
it is an evil — and the reeling bacchanal, too
drunk to know that he is drunk, protests, with
thick-tongued energy, that " it is a great evil."
But w4iat is it that keeps the evil running on?
Why does this man sell it? Because he makes
money by it. And why should he not sell it, so
long as respectable people use it ? Ah, my well-
disposed friends, animated by a great deal of be-
nevolence in general, but none in particular, the
principle which I have been discussing somewhat
abstractly ; the principle that we are placed in
social relations not merely for self-aggrandizement
but for mutual help — that society has not only
benefits for us but demands uj^on us — this princi-
ple, perhaps, butts right against your practice.
The same doctrine that would cause the dealer, of

186 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

his own accord, to sweep the imjDlements of his
traffic from his shelves, would cause you to shatter
every decanter and demolish every wine-cask in
your house. For, surely, you do not keep it there
because your appetite is positively fascinated with
it — ^you are not enslaved to its use ? Of course it's
a mere luxury with you, a tribute to custom, a
symbol of hospitality. And, I say, if you heeded
this social law, that we are bound up in relations
■with others not merely to receive from them but
to encourage and help them, then your influence
and your action in this matter could go but one
way. You would have nothing to do w4th that
which you say is an evil ; with that which you
know curses others ; with that which, by one
method and another, injures you, and me, and
every man. Is there no connection between your
use and this abuse f Look down into that black
swamp of beastliness, that pool of loathsome in-
temperance. Did it spring up spontaneously
there ? No : it has been fed by rills trickling
from heights of respectability, and through mar-
ble aqueducts of fashion. Those faces, pale, dis-
torted, furious, tossed about in that dark sea of
slime and fire, look upward to you, and catch a
reflection that plays through the prism of your
cut-glass decanters, and the colors of your cham-
pagne and cogniac. At least, if you really believe

SOCIETY AND THE INDR'IDTJAL. 187

that intemperance is an evil, yonr refusal to use
intoxicating drinks will make one channel less by
which it may get ont into the world. Let that
evil be denounced not merely by protest of voice^
but by examjyle. And this will be the case if
you comprehend the significance of your social
relations, and you will find, upon reflection, that
the truths now urged constitute not merely a
tissue of fine-spun argument, but something that
is very practical.

And this specific instance illustrates the princi-
ple be — whatever may the demand upon our social
obligations — the principle of mutual help growing
out of mutual dependence. Above all other regu-
lations and sanctions, in the great city, is needed
Christ's Law of Love. How it would change
these aspects and illuminate these spheres of life,
through which I have led you in this series of
discourses. Cherish, I beseech ^^ou, for it is very
deep, very fruitful, that sympathy which, pene-
trating below all conditions and symbols, recog-
nizes the manhood of every man, his abstract
spiritual value, his relations to all the rest. Cherish
that fact of human unity in diversity which is^
revealed to the reflective eye amidst all the di-
versities of toil and traffic, in the whirl of amuse-
ment, in the crowded streets, in the disguises of
vice, in the coarsest forms of poverty and guilt.

188 MORAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

This, I say, is the most significant lesson that
comes to us from the social relations of the great
city — the need of Christ's spirit and Christ's Law
of Love.

But I observe, finally, that after we have con-
sidered the unconscious and inevitable relations of
society, and the demands growing out of these re-
lations, there still remains the individual^ with
his solitary experience and his own peculiar work.
The carpenter may encourage the goldsmith, and
lie that smoothetli with the hammer him that
smites the anvil ; but each has his intrinsic im-
portance, each his special task, as every particle
in nature has its own being and essence bound
up though it is with the indissoluble whole. So,
among all the thousands of the great city, there
is a very deep and very solemn sense, in which
every man is alone. He is alone in the work ac-
complished in his own soul — alone in his respon-
sibility for the work he does. It is the tendency
of such a condition of life to carry one away from
this central truth — to cause him, in the excitement
of the multitude, to forget, not in the selfish but
in the spiritual sense, his supreme end and his
specific accountability. I shall be sorry if the
strain of these discourses has had any influence to
lead you too far away from this fact — that each of
you is a soul — integral, priceless, poised upon its

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 189

vO'.vn responsibility ; out of which flow all the issues
of life ; to which appeals all its moral signifi-
cance.

With a due consideration of mutual dependence
and the law of service heed all your social relations,
but remember there are elements in your nature
which reveal your personal importance, as inde-
pendent of everything else except God. There
are forms and activities without, but nothing is so
real as that world within. 'No friend or guest in
the house or the street, is so intimate with you as
the tenants that abide in your own spiritual nature.
Envy, it may be, is there, and avarice, and lust,
and pride ; and, mingling with the rest, there are
Reverence moving you to worship. Faith drawing
up your trust and fastening it upon the Infinite,
and Conscience pronouncing its momentous judg-
ments— and these would constitute a real existence,
an interior world for you, though there were not
another creature around you. Each man occupies
an original position. Every great fact comes straight
to him. Every appeal of duty must run through
the alembic of his reason, his conscience, and his
will. The cope of heaven bursts above him, the
unfathomed depths open beneath him, the myste-
ries of God and Immortality come streaming in
with their awful splendors, and truths that have
confounded the loftiest intellects, truths that in all

190 MOKAL ASPECTS OF CITY LIFE.

ages have roused up the sonl from its foundations,
and baptized it with reverence, and kindled it with
love, environ him as intensely as if he were the
first-born of men, set face to face with fresh and
Mnresolved problems.

Let this be the thought, then, with which I close
the present series — the thought of individual re-
ality, of individual responsibility ; for out of it
the essential good of life must come, in it the es-
sential good of life must grow. So, in the deepest
sense, we must live in spiritual solitude; so in the
deepest sense we must meet the discipline of life.
So must we die. One by one from among these
crowds we must go forth alone. In all our effort,
then, in all our spheres of action, is there needed
a more important question than this — ^' What is
my spiritual state ?*' Whatever our opportunity,
whatever our time, shall we not find both time
and opportunity, in the profoundest and the noblest
sense, to attend to ourselves f

In the first part of this discourse, I described
the morning light falling upon the great city and
waking up all its activities, summoning forth one
by one its sights and sounds, and gradually reveal-
ing its net- work of reciprocity and obligation.
Let us contemplate another scene. The daylight
has departed. The places of business are closed.
The crowds have vanished ; the tumult is hushed ;

SOCIETY AND THE IXDIYIDUAL. 191

and the magnificent city is covered with a shadow.
And yon, perhaps, a conscions personality, stand
alone in the silence. Dweller in the great metro-
polis, look npward ! Those are lights on the path-
way of your destiny. Yon will go forth heyond
them all. Look aroimd ! The noiseless air that
enwraps you is filled with the flowing Life of God,
with which your innermost being is involved, and
which perpetually searches you and holds you up.
Appropriately has' the great city retreated from
your sight with all its aspects, and its huge pulses
of care and passion still. For all this is really,
is essentially, external to yourself; and there
comes a moment when you will feel it to be so.
There comes a moment when this consciousness
of God will be as of face to face. There comes
a moment when all this world will slip away
from you into shadow — and there will be nothing
but eternity before

*

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